Not as popular, but too common, is the "slaves were here" explanation. Watching a DVR'd episode of Ghost Hunters, I heard a woman at a historic house that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad explain a supposedly haunted room by sharing the accepted lore about the space: (paraphrase) People say some slaves got in here an sacrificed an animal. (More ominous music)

Why do we never hear this?

Worried homeowner: I just don't understand what is happening. Furniture is moving about the house. My wife hears disembodied voices in the laundry room. Our little Billy is interacting with a shadowy figure in the backyard and the dog refuses to go into the basement.

Ghost expert: Well, Mr. Homeowner, we've done some research and...some Episcopalians once held a church service right on this very land! (duh, duh, duh, DUH!)

What? Not scary enough for you?

As a black woman, I am sensitive to the ways that the traditional spiritualities of African or African-influenced peoples get a bad rap in American pop culture. The mythologies and rituals related to the "dark continent" are understood to be less legitimate than those of Western ones.

The words Voodoo and Santeria conjure up all kinds of nasty images, thanks in part to racist Hollywood depictions of the faiths. Even I once bought into these beliefs being extra spooky. It wasn't until I took a fascinating class on radicalism and the black church that I learned the truth about African religions and how people of the Diaspora adapted them, using them for spiritual strength and to spur the battle for civil rights.

One may not share the belief system or worship style of, say, adherents of African animist religion, but I maintain that this belief system is no more frightening than the Celtic polytheism that influences a lot of modern New Age belief and indeed some of traditional Christianity. Why is New Ageyness seen as benign, if not a bit silly, while African-based traditions on the other hand are viewed as dark and demonic?

Oh, I know this is a little thing. Ghost stories are meant to be harmless fun. I take them in that spirit. But it rankles when I see drumming, gyrating, chanting, scantily-clad Africans, bathed in firelight, used as shorthand for impending evil in some film. And it annoys me that the tour guide at the Underground Railroad stop mentioned above would assume slaves were summoning ghosties with their dark tribal religion, instead of, say, gathering spiritual strength for what must have been a harrowing journey to freedom.

What exactly is so scary about the traditional religions of brown people?

Copyright Tami Winfrey Harris.