Appalachian Dumb Supper

A Place for Ghosts to Come & Sit A Spell by Susan Sheppard

Not many years ago in the back hills of Roane County, West Virginia an ancient practice called a “Dumb Supper” was put on by school girls one shadowy fall evening as a thunder-storm threatened on the horizon. Dumb Suppers were used to invite in spirits of the dead and also for fortunetelling, especially finding out who one will eventually marry. This made the Dumb Supper popular events for young women.Also called soddag valloo in the Welsh language, the “Dumb Supper” is still practiced in parts of Appalachia but is particular to the Isle of Man off England and Ireland. Traditionally, the Dumb Supper is an offering to the spirits of the dead, and is mostly practiced around the times of Halloween and also May Day but Dumb Suppers can be put on any night of the year. There are aspects of the Séance during the Dumb Supper, except during the Dumb Supper food is offered to the dead and the ancestors. It is believed certain events will take place where a ghost enters the room and divines the future. Strange happenings are promised to occur. No one should talk when waiting for the ghost to enter the room and sit in his chair or else the spell will be broken. In the past, the dead were feared and so the setting out of food was probably meant to appease their ghosts. In recent days, spirits are looked upon with more interest and possibly the Dumb Supper is one way of enticing the spirits to come in.
The Dumb Supper is performed in earnest to attract spirits where an empty chair and plate is set at the table in order to clear a space for the ghost or ancestor to enter in and rejoin the living. This is done to create a portal between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Often a candle is placed in the front window so the dead can find their way home. Other members of the family can take part in the Dumb Supper, and not a word is to be spoken during the meal. Everyone is told to be aware of what is happening in his or her surroundings such as cold breezes, phantom whispers or talking or objects being moved in the room. This means the dead are present ready to make their predictions for the future. Young women often put on Dumb Suppers to find out future mates, as this is what is promised to be divined.

On this particular evening in Roane County, a curious girl remembered hearing her grandmother talk about Dumb Suppers put on years ago and thought it might be a good idea to try one. The parents would be gone most of the evening and it seemed an ideal time to have some ghostly fun. Beneath storm clouds a full, incandescent moon was hidden. Eagerly the girls took plates out of the cupboard and set them on the dining table. They added knives, forks, and cups, leaving one chair empty as a place for the spirit to sit whenever he appeared. The girls asked for no one in particular, allowing the fates to decide what ghost would come to visit. They lit a candle, placed it in the center of the table and switched off the lights.

Lightning flashed and the winds shook the house. Soon the front door banged open, winds entered the room and snuffed out the candle. Darkness overtook them momentarily. The oldest girl jumped to her feet and switched on the lights. Napkins were strewn about the room, and the chair where the dead person was supposed to sit overturned. But something else grabbed the girl’s attention. There was a pen knife no one recognized left on the plate where the ghost had come to sit. No one recognized the knife. It had not been there before. The girl who had put on the Dumb Supper immediately took the knife and wrapped in a handkerchief. She never told her parents how she and her friends had spent the evening so hid the knife deep inside her drawer. It stayed there.

Years later, now a young woman, she met a man she was instantly attracted to. Their relationship progressed until they became engaged. On one visit to her home the woman told her fiancée about the frightening Dumb Supper that she and her friends had put on, and how they found a knife no one recognized. This sparked his interest and he asked to see it. As she turned it over into his hands, the fiancee told her it was a favorite knife of his that he had lost years ago and never knew what happened to it. The man recognized it by the notches he had made in the ivory handle years earlier. Her fiancée was stunned. How the knife had made its way to the woman’s home and was left on the plate at the Dumb Supper remained a mystery.

The couple married and lived happily until the man died suddenly in the same house where the Dumb Supper took place and where the knife had manifested itself. Now the mysterious knife belonged to the spirits of the dead—truly.

Susan A. Sheppard