The Bottle Tree

Are your premises safe against haints, furies and other such ornery spirits? Have you painted your front door blue? Has the neighborhood seen a sudden upsurge of bottles dangling upside down in the trees?

She knew that there could be a spell put in trees, and she was familiar from the time she was born with the way bottle trees kept evil spirits from coming into the house — by luring them inside the colored bottles, where they cannot get out again.

—Livvie, by Eudora Welty

To continue reading about bottles trees on Dave Tabler's ever-excellent Appalachian History blog: Click Here.