It seems like everyone in Savannah has a ghost story.
While some of us pride ourselves on the designation of "America's Most Haunted City" by the American Institute of Parapsychology, Savannah isn't the only area of the United States, or even the world, crawling in ghosts and lore.
The podcast "Homespun Haints" takes a closer look at individual ghost stories, regional legends, cryptids, and everything else that goes bump in the night as told by many of the people who have experienced them.
Podcasting is a format that naturally lends itself to storytelling. Whether you’re listening in your car or at the gym, you can get lost in the story of someone else’s experiences with the paranormal.
Becky Kilimnik and Diana Doty, who originallymet in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2006, have been talking about their own experiences as well as finding other people whose lives crossed over into the strange and unusual.
“Diana [Doty] was in grad school, and my husband was in college there. We were there for just three years. It happened to be the same three years,” said Kilimnik. “We connected over our love for spooky things and good food, and good wine, and trying to make the most of living in Daytona Beach because it was very different from where either of us had ever lived before.”
The two bonded over living in the liminal space that is Daytona and sharing ghost stories during trips to the beach. After those three years, life took them to separate states, but soon those folk stories shared over days in the hot sun and salty water would pull them back together.
“I think you just called me out of the blue,” Doty said during our talk with Kilimnik recently. “And not too long after you were like, okay, I have this idea for a podcast.”
What came out of that phone call was “Homespun Haints”.
Kilimnik said, “I've been obsessed with the oral tradition of storytelling which was really popular in my hometown. I grew up in upper East Tennessee in Appalachia. If you know a lot about that region, you know that it's very rich culturally, especially with storytelling, but it's also very poor. A lot of times, the only thing we could afford to do is just sit around a bonfire that someone would start in their cow field and tell stories.”
The storytelling tradition was something that Kilimnik missed after moving away especially the ghost stories that people would share.
“That was one of the things that was so rich about that region. Everybody had a ghost story. It was part of your upbringing. When I moved away to Chicago, that would be one of the first ice breaker questions I would ask somebody. ‘Hey, where are you from? Do you have a ghost story?’ I got some odd looks.”
Kilimnik recorded a few episodes of a podcast and sent them to Doty for her opinion. Doty thought she needed a co-host. What resulted was “Homespun Haints”.
Each episode tackles someone’s personal experiences ranging from a demon in a Mumbai, India, dorm room to a haunted parking lot in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“We are not ghost hunters,” Doty explained. “Nor do we pretend to be them. We appreciate what paranormal investigators add to our beliefs and ability to connect with this field, but we don't really care. We just want to hear what people’s subjective experiences were, the words that they would use to describe what happened, and just marvel at how interesting it is to be human and how all humans seem to have these paranormal encounters, and rarely can put a clear name on them until they talk about them with somebody else.”
In June, I had the pleasure of being one of Kilimnik and Doty's guests on Homespun Haints. After quite a few technical difficulties on my end that resulted in recording it from the floor of my closet, I had a great time chatting with them.
Kilimnik had visited Savannah before, and we were able to talk about some of the places she had heard about and delve more into the myths, paranormal encounters, and history. That episode is called “In Savannah, the ghosts hunt you.”
If you'd like to listen to "Homespun Haints," it's available on most podcast streaming services including Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts. For more information, check out their website at homespunhaints.com.
Enocha Edenfield is no stranger to Savannah ghosts. You can find more of her ghost explorations on YouTube and TikTok. She also runs Enocha Edenfield Tours for those looking to investigate Savannah's haunted past with her.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Boo Business: Podcast ‘Homespun Haints’ focuses on the personal experiences of ghost stories
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