The spooky season starts early as The Hamilton County Historical Society hosts a conversation about ghosts, witches and other forms of horror in southern Illinois
The September meeting of the Hamilton County Historical Society will be Tuesday, September 26 at 7 p.m. at Farris Family Restaurant in McLeansboro, Illinois. After business is wrapped up, they’ll be treated to a presentation by Todd Atteberry, author of The Haunted History of Southern Illinois, The Folklore, Backroads & Graveyards of Little Egypt.
Hamilton county has the distinction of being the home of the oldest ghost story in southern Illinois, as well as a connection to witchcraft in the settlement days. And of course, the greatest horror inflicted on Hamilton county came from the sky, in the form of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado. These will be among the topics discussed, and the audience is encouraged to speak of their own experiences and memories.
As a photographer and writer specializing in historical subjects in the United States, Ireland and Britain, Todd has picked up on the folklore of the places he’s explored. Now old enough to be a historical subject himself, and settled into his hometown of Carmi, he’s turned his attention to southern Illinois.
Todd’s photography and writing have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Herald, BBC, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC, Huffington Post, Broadway World, Country Living Magazine, House Beautiful and Good Housekeeping. Past clients include: The Daughters of the American Revolution, The Civil War Trust, Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth Massachusetts, History Press, Historic Hudson Valley and the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow.
His writing and photography can be found at witcheryart.com. Visited by close to two million people since it went online, its success pushed Todd to start releasing books. “I keep finding other people’s books where my stories are quoted, and sometimes stolen outright. So I figure if I’m going to go to the trouble of writing them, I might as well get paid.”
His greatest reward to come from the site however, is it was a Google search that led his wife Lisa to it, researching a haunted castle in Northern Ireland that Todd had visited. Which eventually increased the population of Carmi by one.
Todd is also the author of Haunted Travels in the Hudson River Valley Of Washington Irving: The Sketch Books Vol. 1, A Year On Walt Whitman’s Long Island, and coming this Christmas, The Haunting of Long Island.
