Raw Head is perhaps the most hideous of boogeymen—assembled from parts borrowed from various species, which somehow makes him even more fearsome than Frankenstein’s Homo sapiens mix-and-match monster. While the story of Raw Head originated in 1500s England, it really took root in the American South, where Raw Head and his sidekick Bloody Bones became oft-invoked figures used to scare kids and bond adults. According to Appalachian historian Dave Tabler, the word haint can refer to an angry dead spirit, but also to “an undefinable something that scares the bejeevers out of you.” Raw Bones is a haint story, and haint stories are the reason that southern porch ceilings are often painted a pale, sweet, powdery sky blue—a group of light shades known collectively as “Haint Blue.”
In the 1700s, Raw Head and his fellow ghosties inadvertently spawned a design craze that continues today and is celebrated by design bloggers and folklorists alike. Like Millennial pink, Haint blue isn’t a specific color so much as a collection of colors—what makes the color Haint blue isn’t the color itself, but rather how it is used. Robin’s egg blue on a porch ceiling is Haint blue, but Robin’s egg blue in a bedroom is just that—light blue. According to Gullah folk traditions, blue ceilings and blue doors can keep unwanted specters, phantoms, spooks, and apparitions from strolling in through the front door. It fools them into thinking that the door is part of the sky, that the porch is surrounded by water, that the house is protected by something sublime, more powerful and permanent than a coat of paint. It’s trickery though design, and trickery is something the Gullah people knew well.