Donnamarie Emmert (photo courtesy of Virginia Living and Kyle LaFerriere)
Donnamarie Emmert, the Haint Mistress, has been entertaining people with her stories for 30 years. Her Spirit Tour in Abingdon, Virginia, has been going on for 20 years.
“Since the first grade, when I had the role of The Narrator in ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker,’ I’ve always enjoyed theater and performance. Storytelling was just a natural transition. When I actually began, it was a fluke. I heard about the storytelling program at East Tennessee State University and thought to myself, ‘Self. How cool would it be to have a Masters in Storytelling?’
“I’ve been fortunate enough to tell at the Children’s Fair in Sacramento, California, and the Main Library in San Francisco. I’ve told tales in Scotland at the Auchtenmuchty Folk Festival. Those were back in the early years of my telling. Now, I stay much closer to home and tell the ghost stories of Main Street Abingdon,” she says.
She was literally handed her destiny when her friend Rick Humphreys handed her a set of notecards from a history tour he gave. He told her that he wasn’t going to do it again, but that the ghost stories were extremely popular.
“From those notecards, I did my own interviews, which consisted of me just sticking my head in people’s back doors and asking, “Hey, y’all got any ghosts in here?” Those stories are some of the best I ever got.
“A story — any story — has to have a base. Ghost stories especially. One can’t just point to a building and say, ‘There’s a ghost in there. Next.’ How boring is that? I place my stories inside the framework of the history of that building, which, in Abingdon, is very easy to do. Not only do you get a believable ghost tale, but a nice chunk of Abingdon’s own story,” Emmert says.
Her favorite story, at the moment, is Miss Lucille, the primary ghost of the old courthouse.
“She’s not alone — there are several ghosts in there — but she’s the best known. She was reported to eat her lunch in a closet, because she didn’t want people seeing her not working. When she died, she didn’t miss a day of work. She is both dedicated and doesn’t like change,” she says.
Tour dates for the Halloween season are at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 8-10, 15-17 and 22-30. Text 276-706-6093 for reservations. Tours are $20 per person, cash only. Walking tours meet at Wolf Hills Coffee. Wear comfortable walking shoes and appropriate clothing for the weather. Not recommended for people under 10. Due to the nature of Abingdon’s brick sidewalks, the tour is not recommended for wheeled conveyances.
Ghosts don’t care if it’s October. Private tours are available throughout the year. For more information, visit www.haintmistressofabingdon.wordpress.com.
