Author Tim Tingle talks about crafting Texas ghost stories

Texas storytelling duo debuts “shreikquel” to ghost tales for young readers

More Spooky Texas Tales
Tim Tingle and Doc Moore; illustrated by Jeanne A. Benas
104 pages | 6 x 8 | cloth, litho case
24 b/w illustrations
978-0-89672-700-7

The fearsome Chupacabra stalks the desert valley, while a grandson wanders far from the ranch.

The woman who’s just moved to the neighborhood wears strange sunglasses after dark. What could be behind them?

A man picks up a hitchhiker—only to discover that his passenger is not human.

Kids of all ages find chills and thrills in Tim Tingle and Doc Moore’s stories of the weird, the macabre and the mysterious, all collected from the lore and legends of the Lone Star State. “‘Spooky Texas Tales’ is our most popular book everywhere we go,” says Tingle, who presents programs for middle schoolers statewide.

In addition to “Skinwalker,” the authors’ most requested school concert story, the new book, “More Spooky Texas Tales” adds spine-tingling twists on the account of La Llorona, the weeping woman, said to be the world’s best-known ghost; the classic tale “The Money’s Paw”; the story of “The Screaming Banshee Cattle of the Night Swamp,” and seven others.

Told with humor and lively modern-day detail, these renderings by veteran storytellers not only please and entertain but preserve a wealth of folklore from a culturally diverse region of the country.

University Press staff talked with Tim Tingle at the Texas Book Festival earlier this month, while he visited with kids and parents and inscribed stacks of books, and we followed up with more questions by e-mail.

 

TTUP: Where do spooky Texas tales come from, exactly? Do you draw these from your imagination, stories you’ve gathered over time, personal experience, or perhaps a mixture of these?

Tim Tingle: The stories in More Spooky Texas Tales are from multiple sources. Some, like “La Llorona,” are reworkings of traditional Southwestern-based folklore. Some are folktales transplanted from other lands—as most Texans are—such as Ireland’s “Mary Culhaine.” Others are fictional tales based on my life experiences, and personal stories Doc Moore and I have collected over the past two decades.

TTUP: Do you have a favorite spooky tale? What draws you to this particular one?

The most enjoyable-to-write of the stories based on my life is “Screaming Banshee Cattle of the Night Swamp.” My son, Jacob, trudged his way through the divorce of his two favorite people in the world, and this story is dedicated to him. Some thirty years ago, as we travelled across East Texas and Louisiana in my old pick-up truck, we actually fabricated a tale of swamp-dwelling cattle. “Screaming Banshee” is also a prime example of a new approach and a new purpose to this sequel (shriekquel!). In addition to providing entertaining and historically informative ghost stories, we wanted to include modern themes and real-life situations.

Thus, a tale of swamp creatures of the night becomes a father-and-son bonding experience; a runaway discovers the meaning and importance of family in “Two Graves,” and a cynical big sister realizes the consequences of her choices in “The Gypsy Drum.” We also hoped to demonstrate the wide diversity within our state. We are transplants looking for the garden of freedom, most of us. We come from south of the border, north of the Red River, and from multi-racial and multi-lingual backgrounds. A perfect example of this theme is the heroine of “Catfish and the Owl,” Miss Jolie, who proclaims herself to be “part-Cajun, part African-American, part-Choctaw, and all the way American!”

TTUP: What role has story telling had in your life? Has it always played a role, or did you come upon it later in life?

I have always been a talker of tales, and made up the most unbelievable lies as a child to get out of trouble. I soon discovered that if the lie was completely preposterous, my mother would laugh and shake her head, call her best friend on the phone to tell her my crazy story, and often forget to punish me (children, do NOT try this at home!).

I began writing in the second grade, first short plays which my friends and I would act out in our backyard playground. By high school I wrote poetry, but was too afraid to show it to anyone. I think this early fascination with poetry gave me a vital appreciation for the importance of every single word on the page. My editor and I once argued for four days over a single comma in a story, a single comma which was holding up the publication of the book. We laugh about it now, and are proud that writing matters so much to us both.

TTUP: Why ghost stories? And why Texas ghosts, at that?

I am a Texan. I grew up cheering for Texas football and basketball teams. I knew Texas was a unique place to grow up, and I still immensely enjoy exploring the stubbornness, the deep loyalty, and the anomalies of thought, sometimes in the same sentence, that characterize the Texan viewpoint. (By that I mean to say that Texans can be tender and compassionate to friends, and downright despotic to those who disagree, without seeing any inconsistency!)

So, I write of Texans and their nightmares, and their various means of overcoming them. Ghosts lurk in the fear-barrel of every Texan, but we never give up or in.

Doc Moore and I have crossed Texas many, many times, looking for ghost stories. Sometimes, we went with no agenda, and simply set up camp in the coffee shop of a small town for a few days, letting our waitress know we were writers looking for local ghost stories. We have haunted libraries, attended Texas Folklore Society meetings, and travelled wherever we thought a ghost might be hiding. We have uncovered quite a few, real and imagined.

TTUP: Is there anything in particular that compels you to write stories for children?

Children are fascinated without being analytical, and a child’s mind is a sweet sea of imaginative thinking. I like to see the lights come on when a child is reading or listening to a story.

Children also enjoy the titillation of a good ghost story, and are not too proud to show their fear. They shiver and wrap their arms around themselves, they laugh nervously, then flood the author with cool and thoughtful questions at the climax of the tale.

TTUP: How do you hope these stories will affect the reader?

When Doc Moore and I write, we hope that the reader will be somehow changed by the experience of the reading. A more insightful way of seeing others, a more sympathetic attitude to the personality quirks of others, these are our immediate goals. So, we strive to create fascinating and believable people, but not perfect people. We want the reader to identify with the main character’s problems, and thereby realize that he/she, the reader, can solve and overcome these challenges, too.

We write to shine a bit more light and hope on the human situation.

* * *

Also by Tim Tingle and Doc Moore:

Spooky Texas Tales (for young readers)  978-0-89672-565-2

Texas Ghost Stories (for adult readers) 978-0-89672-526-3 paperback; 978-0-89672-519-5 cloth

For more information on these and other Texas Tech University Press books, visit www.ttupress.org. Local vendors interested in ordering the book may contact Texas Tech University Press at (800) 832-4042, fax (806) 742-2979.  For more information or review copies, contact the TTUP marketing department, (806) 742-2982 or ttup@ttu.edu.