There‰’s a story that I heard growing up in North Carolina about a spot known as the “Devil‰’s Tramping Ground.‰” This is a place where no trees grow. Animals avoid going near it out of fear of something. Local legend says that this is the place where the Devil appears to spread sin throughout the world. As a kid I loved these kinds of stories. I devoured all the “TRUE GHOST TALES‰” books at my library when my parents weren‰’t looking and stayed up all night with my head under my sheets hiding from Satan and ghosts and other demonic nightmares of my imagination.

As I grew older my love of what I now know is Southern gothic never left me. It‰’s probably the primal nature of good vs. evil ‰ÛÒ the known vs. the unknown ‰ÛÒ that keeps me coming back to stuff like Night of the Hunter and the works of William Faulkner. They‰’re steeped in old-time religion but underneath the church floorboards is something horrifying writhing and waiting to attack.

In his song “The Mistress Witch of McClure (Or, The Mind That Knows Itself)‰” Sufjan Stevens creates his own version of Southern Gothic. In a scant three-and-a-half minutes Sufjan tells the frightening tale of a family dealing with supernatural revenge. The plot as I see it is this: Three ordinary kids decide to follow their dad into a place they‰’ve never been before. There they find a woman chained to a bed (their mother maybe?) and try to flee. Unfortunately their father has already shut and locked the door behind him and they are trapped with this woman. They are freed by their father but it is too late ‰ÛÒ either a curse or the realization that they‰’re father “left us now for dead‰” causes the family to splinter and descend into madness. At the end only Sufjan‰’s narrator character is left with his sanity, shivering from the cold and dragging his babbling brother through the snow to get away from their clearly disturbed, violent, naked father

It sounds horrible doesn‰’t it? Well if you hear it in the context of the song it doesn‰’t sound that bad. Sufjan uses minimal accompaniment ‰ÛÒ only two guitars, vocal harmonies and a trumpet ‰ÛÒ to make the song sound sweet. It‰’s only when you really pay attention to the lyrics you discover it‰’s dark, dark, dark true nature. It‰’s a truly fascinating and engrossing story punctuated with a beautiful score.

Of course, my interpretation could be completely wrong. Listen to it, and if you feel like I‰’m reading way, way too much into the lyrics let me know in the comments.