Plat-Eye
Plat-Eye is a Gullah and Lowcountry South Carolina night-haunt, most often a black dog with eyes that swell as it blocks a traveler's path after dark.
At a glance
- Tradition
- American folklore
- Region
- Southeastern United States (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Doom-Howlers
- Symbols
- Ghost
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- Ghost is image-domain A ghost is the returning dead made present to the living, apparition of unfinished business and unresolved grief, by turns vengeful, pitiable and tenderly protective.
why
The tradition sets it apart from the broader category of "haints," restless ghosts in general, treating the Plat-Eye instead as a specific, named kind of apparition with its own recognizable behaviour and its own reputation.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Form
- Shapeshifts human animal
why
some tellings describe it as a shapeshifting spirit not fixed to any one body at all
Behaviour
- Spectral black dog either guides or misleads travelers
why
Gullah and broader Lowcountry tradition along the South Carolina and Georgia coast tells of the Plat-Eye, a night-haunt most often described as a large black dog whose eyes begin small and swell alarmingly as it draws near a traveller.
- Treasure guardian
why
Much of the tradition ties the haunt to guarding something — buried treasure, or the site of an improper or unmarked burial — and explains it as the unsettled spirit of someone who cannot rest, bound to one particular spot rather than free to roam.
- Repelled by fresh water crossing
why
Traditional protections named against a Plat-Eye include prayer, carrying certain charms, and crossing running water, on the belief that it cannot follow a person across a stream. The core image — swelling, warning eyes met on a dark road — is consistent across the sources, but accounts vary on origin, some treating the Plat-Eye as restless dead and others as a nature spirit with no human history at all, and on how dangerous an actual encounter is, ranging from a bad fright to real physical harm.
Utility powers
- Shapeshifting
why
It is also reported taking other animal shapes, including a calf, hog, or cat, and some tellings describe it as a shapeshifting spirit not fixed to any one body at all.
Roles
Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.
- Death carries
3 citations
- Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, s.v. "Plat-Eye."
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Plat-Eye."
- Maria Leach, editor, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, s.v. "Plat-Eye."
- Hero meets
3 citations
- Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons, s.v. "Plat-Eye."
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Plat-Eye."
- Maria Leach, editor, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend, s.v. "Plat-Eye."