wail of the crab boy

Wail of the crab boy

The Gullah culture is very predominate throughout the Low country. The Gullah are the ancestors of Africans who were brought over from the West Coast of Africa known in the 1700’s as the Rice Coast. They were skilled rice planters who had been working the fields in their homelands for nearly 3000 years. The Gullah are also said to have preserved more of their African heritage than any other group of people in the United States. They speak an English-Creole mix known today as Geechee speak, or properly referred to as Sea Island Creole. The Gullah people also have strong beliefs in the supernatural. The fear of boohags and haints is a very real part of the voodoo religion that many of the community once subscribed to. These beliefs led to stories and folktales, such as the following, being passed down through the generations.

When I was little we lived in a small wood house right there beside the water at Murrells Inlet. Sometimes, in the morning we could hear faint cries coming from way down the creek over toward what they called Drunken Jack Island, today it is Huntington Beach. My mother didn’t like no foolishness. She used to say it was just a bird echoing from some far off tree; But we knowed better than that. Us children couldn’t figure out why mama would make up something like that, until the Gullah women who worked with my mother told us that it was the ghost of Crab Boy crying for help. They had a word for spirits of children who died unnatural deaths. They called them "drolls."

No body ever did know what Crab Boy’s real name was. He weren’t from around here, you see. He had come down to stay with his kin that lived here at Murrells Inlet.

Before Freedom, Crab Boy’s uncles had been slaves here on the Waccamaw Neck. Their job had been to provide all kinds of seafood for the planter’s table. After Freedom, they had no where else to go really, so all of them stayed at Murrells Inlet, living off the creeks and marshes. Crab Boy’s uncles and cousins caught all sorts of fish that they sold to the people living in cottages all around the area. Stone crab claws brought the most money, but they took patience and skill to catch.

Crab Boy’s uncles always brought him along when they gathered their bounty from the creeks. He learned to cast a shrimp net and to gather oysters careful like, so as not to cut hiself on their shells. His uncles warned him over and over not to try and catch stone crabs the way they did until he got older. Did he listen? Shine no! One day when the tide was just past its low point; Crab Boy was out exploring the creeks all alone when he saw the most perfect stone crab hole. He had watched his uncles pull crabs out so easily that he was sure he could do it too. He crouched down in the dark mud around the hole and slowly reached in, until nearly his whole arm was in the burrow. Finally, he felt the hard, sharp, shell of the creature. As he tried to slide his hand under the shell, the crab grabbed hold to his finger with its crushing grip. The boy yelled out in pain, and tried to yank his arm out of the hole. It wouldn’t budge! The crab had wedged itself against the sides of the hole with its legs and shell. It would not let go of the boy’s finger.

Crab Boy screamed louder and louder for help. His kin folk heard his cries and began searching for him, but in the maze of creeks and marshes his cries seemed to come from every which a way. His frantic relatives searched and searched until the rising tide. They found Crab Boy’s limp, lifeless body at the next low tide, his arm still trapped in the stone crab burrow.

As a child I always did wonder how they ever got his arm out so they could bury the boy’s body. Nobody ever did answer that question for me. But whenever us children went out into the marsh they always reminded us to leave stone crabs alone. And whenever we heard the droll calling from down toward Drunken Jack Island, we knowed it was the droll spirit of Crab Boy.

- from Ghostly Tales from South Carolina by KendellChad Watts available on amazon