Most Hallowed Lit
From aliens to art forgers to rougarous, Southern literature is leaning into myths and legends, too
Here at Country Roads, we revel in the mystery and wonder that our October Myths & Legends issue brings. Sometimes that means delving into the South’s dark tapestry of folklore, and sometimes it means unpacking stories of unexplainable encounters or true crime close enough to home to send a chill down one’s spine.
So, we were thrilled to discover the recent releases of three new books that will keep fellow intrigue-hunters turning pages, uncovering some of the Gulf South’s strangest and most captivating stories.
Carnival of Creatures
by Alexis Braud and Candice Huber
As aficionados of nerd culture know well, open-source roleplaying games present infinite potential for imagination, from the comfort of your very own living room. In traditional Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, you can transform into a wizard, a warlock, a sorcerer, or a druid, and promptly enter a new world. But what if an open-source tabletop game allowed players to roleplay as a rougarou? Or the Honey Island Swamp Monster? Or even the Axeman of New Orleans?
A new book from illustrator Alexis Braud and author Candice Huber is changing the game—presenting twenty of Louisiana’s creepiest and strangest folkloric figures, cryptids, and mythologized historical personalities alongside illustrations, descriptions, and statistics so they can be incorporated into Evil Hat Productions’ already-established Fate Core open-source game system. “I mean, I'm an old school nerd,” Braud explained. “I've been gaming since high school. And I love folklore. It was a great place to put a lot of knowledge.”
Late in 2019, Braud had a book signing for a previous project at Huber’s shop Tubby & Coo’s—a traveling, queer-owned bookstore in New Orleans. By the time the evening was over, they had plans to create a Louisiana monster manual for gaming together, at Huber’s suggestion. “And that idea hooked in my brain,” Braud told me.
It was deeply embedded enough that, a few months later, when the world shut down and art markets and festivals ceased operating, Braud got to work illustrating Louisiana’s mythical creatures. With much of the concept work accomplished, Braud approached Huber again. “Like, ‘hey, so I'm this weird author you met that one time and you only ever spoke to me once, and I've been working on this project for a year. Are you still in?’” Huber was, and now the fully fleshed-out gaming manual—including background information on the legends, vibrant illustrations, and detailed information on gameplay is available via Tubby & Coo’s, as well as through most major booksellers nationally.
"That’s what I really want to do with these books, is get our stories, get Cajun stories, get Louisiana folklore, into the hands of people that aren't just into folklore—they're nerds. And nerds latching onto something gives it a vigor, and a life force, and an impetus, and a gravity that will put people in styrofoam pants on their days off..." —Alexis Braud
And while Carnival of Creatures was published with gameplay in mind, its author and illustrator took their folkloric research seriously—drawing heavily from resources like the Bary Ancelet collection at the Center for Louisiana Studies and materials made available through the Historic New Orleans Collection.
“That’s what I really want to do with these books, is get our stories, get Cajun stories, get Louisiana folklore, into the hands of people that aren't just into folklore—they're nerds. And nerds latching onto something gives it a vigor, and a life force, and an impetus, and a gravity that will put people in styrofoam pants on their days off, dressed up like a robot,” Braud laughed. “I want nerds to love Cajun culture as much as I do. I want them to nerd out on zydeco music and boudin, and the language and our stories and our folklore … it's not just a book. The people who are really passionate about stories, which is what a lot of the gaming community and the fantasy community is—I'm giving them our stories to play with.”
Letting in Air and Light
by Teresa Tumminello Brader
In February 2010, a newspaper landed on Teresa Tumminello Brader’s doorstep, and she was shocked to find it included news about her own uncle: William Toye was being federally indicted for forging paintings he was passing off as those of Louisiana folk artist Clementine Hunter. “My uncle was certainly a legend in his own mind,” Brader said. “That is absolutely how he thought of himself.”
Brader was twelve years old in 1974, when her Uncle Bill was first charged for his Hunter counterfeits, and it would be almost forty years, when he was caught again, before she’d learn of her family’s best-kept secret, straight from the local newspaper.
“When we were growing up, the 1974 arrest was kept from us. And looking back, I can see why my mom was like, ‘This goes into the category of things we don't talk about.’ Because it's shameful. It's a crime,” Brader said. “So when we did find out about the secret, we're like, ‘what?!’ You know, secrets like that are gonna come out. And I guess my mom hoped that it wouldn't. But in the meantime, we could have dealt with it. We could have experienced it as a family…I mean, I could have done without the shock, when I discovered it.”
“My uncle was certainly a legend in his own mind. That is absolutely how he thought of himself.” —Teresa Tumminello Brader
In her new memoir Letting in Air and Light, Brader attempts to sort through her memories of her uncle William Toye, who occupied one half of a double shotgun house in New Orleans’s Riverbend neighborhood with his wife Beryl, while Brader’s grandparents occupied the other half. Over the years, many outlets, including Country Roads, reported on FBI agent Randy Deaton’s case against Toye—often including uncontextualized details about the man, describing him as a hoarder with a home filled with cats. Brader realized much of the story——Toye’s family history, his squandered brilliance, and his struggles with mental illness—were left out.
“That was the one thing that stood out to me is that there was no perspective from family members—not to say that they needed that. And maybe he didn't deserve that,” Brader said. “But I thought it was something that I could delve into, because I knew my grandparents more than these people writing who mentioned them…And I knew some of these family stories, or even my own interactions with him, that fueled some of his delusions.’”
In Letting in Air and Light, Brader switches perspective from chapter to chapter, alternating between her own memories of her childhood and her eventual grappling with this case much later; and imagined fictionalized vignettes from Toye’s childhood, pieced together by Brader’s imagination but adhering closely to family anecdotes, newspaper articles, and other details she was able to glean over the years. “...I needed both memoir and fiction, to get at the truth, as I know it,” Brader writes in her preface. “After reading more and more details of Uncle Bill’s crimes, I decided there was no point in overly fictionalizing his story. The facts are too sensational on their own.”
Brader’s memoir brings the reader full-circle, to when Deaton hands her one of her uncle’s Hunter forgeries at a talk about the case at the Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, not knowing her relation. Brader writes of her own anxiety, though she committed no crime, in that moment, lamenting that “[Toye and his wife’s] deplorable legacy will, to some degree, run alongside the brilliant legacy of Clementine Hunter.”
In writing this book, Brader makes a concentrated effort to honor Hunter’s legacy, while sorting through her own family trauma and projected shame in a way that she found healing. She said she hopes others can draw inspiration from her expression of working through her family’s secrets, too. “I feel like stories can heal. Well, at least to certain extents. They can't heal everything,” said Brader. “I feel like I healed myself maybe a little bit, by the time I'd finished writing.”
Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Pascagoula Alien Abduction
by Philip Mantle and Dr. Irena Scott
It’s difficult to imagine what might make an esteemed physiologist in Ohio and a prominent UFO researcher and publisher in the North of England both take such keen interest in Pascagoula, Mississippi. But Philip Mantle and Dr. Irena Scott’s new book Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Pascagoula Alien Abduction delves deep into the ongoing case of the alleged Pascagoula abduction of 1973—when fifty years ago this month, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, two shipyard workers, reported being taken aboard a floating ship and examined by strange creatures before being dropped back where they had been fishing on the Pascagoula River.
There are many reasons why this case has captivated those like Mantle and Scott, who have devoted their lives to researching UFOs and other extraterrestrial phenomena. There is the fact that within hours of the alleged abduction, both Hickson and Parker were in the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office being separately interviewed and then secretly recorded together (and the fact that while the officers expected the secret recording to include the men laughing and joking about a made-up incident behind closed doors, what they captured instead was genuine terror). The following day, the two men were interviewed at Keesler Air Force Base, and checked for radiation—and in that interview, which was recorded by a stenographer and remains on-record, the men’s stories aligned exactly with what they’d told the sheriff’s office the day prior. Then, under hypnosis each man separately recalled the ordeal of strange creatures bringing them aboard a ship in vivid detail.
But perhaps the biggest factor to set this case apart from other well-known alleged alien abductions is the plethora of witnesses who have emerged, testifying that they, too, saw a strange flying ship—or even something more—around the Pascagoula River on the night of October 11, 1973. Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Pascagoula Alien Abduction focuses on these witness testimonies, many of whom have stepped forward in recent years, initially hesitant to be associated with the event fifty years ago.
One of the most striking is a couple, the Blairs, who were in their parked Pontiac across the river at the time of the Parker-Hickson abduction. After an interview with Calvin Parker appeared on FOX 10 News in 2018, their daughter left a YouTube comment, saying that her mother had fearfully told her children on several occasions about seeing the strange ship that night—and even the not-quite-human creatures in and near the water. Her husband Jerry had insisted for decades that he did not see what she saw, and urged her not to say anything for fear of being labeled insane.
But perhaps the biggest factor to set this case apart from other well-known alleged alien abductions is the plethora of witnesses who have emerged, testifying that they, too, saw a strange flying ship—or even something more—around the Pascagoula River on the night of October 11, 1973.
Then, in September of 2019, after a long period of hospitalization and with his heart only functioning at 15%, Jerry confessed to his wife that he, too, had seen the unexplainable ship and gray creatures, which he had previously denied to avoid public ridicule. He recorded a video admitting what he’d seen, and requested to speak with Mantle, who promptly conducted an interview.
The book also delves into the unexplained gap in time between when the Blairs approached the water and returned to their car from 9 pm until midnight, though they did not believe it had been nearly three hours—positing that perhaps the Blairs experienced an abduction, as well. These aspects of the book and others will be intriguing and chilling for some, and will induce raised eyebrows for others, especially given Mantle and Scott’s approach of simply presenting information and accounts through as unbiased a lens as possible. “Make of it what you will,” Mantle told me, “We’re just presented the evidence that we have, and you can draw your own conclusions from it.”
This confession from the Blairs is one of many witness testimonies and new pieces of evidence presented in Beyond Reasonable Doubt—the title of which was inspired by a courtroom drama Mantle watched from his home in West Yorkshire. “We were convinced, if we were able to take all of that data to court, all of that evidence, we could prove beyond reasonable doubt that something extraordinary happened that night.”
“We were convinced, if we were able to take all of that data to court, all of that evidence, we could prove beyond reasonable doubt that something extraordinary happened that night.” —Philip Mantle
Calvin Parker, who spoke with the writer of this piece for a 2021 Country Roads story about the encounter, and lived a quiet life with his wife Waynette despite being regularly hounded by journalists, recently passed away on August 24, 2023. “I'm glad he lived long enough to see the subject of UFOs being taken seriously, because that just happened very recently,” said Dr. Scott.. “And I'm sure it's helped him a lot, because he kept quiet for about fifty years, on account of harassment and that sort of thing.”
Before Parker passed, he wrote a foreword to Beyond Reasonable Doubt, expressing his gratitude to Mantle for encouraging him to tell his story and write his own book, as well as to the many witnesses who have gone on the record about their own sightings surrounding his and Hickson’s reported abduction, which he found vindicating after undergoing years of harassment and ridicule for his own reports. “There simply isn’t another case like this. I feel honored to have known Calvin [Parker] and to be part of the telling of the story, part of revealing more information,” Mantle said. “Everything that Irena and I have obtained since then, it's just grown and grown and grown and grown, and continues to do so. It hasn't stopped.”