What is a "haint" in the novel, The Turner House?

A haint is a pale-hued specter that reveals itself to the Turner family for the first time when Charles first begins sleeping in the whatnot room. The specter challenges Charles for the room he is in, and Charles fights back. Later, his brother Quincy insists that it emitted an electric-like blue light that flickered whenever Charles landed a punch and at one point it had even winked at him. Seven-year-old Russell fainted and Lonnie cried, his bladder letting go right there in the hallway.

Haints have been known to push people into wells or make men who’d been hanged dance in the air. Francey would later add that its’ skin was translucent like a jellyfish and it had huge, dark disks for pupils.

The fact that Charles sees a specter or spirit is important because his father and his uncle also saw spirits or haints and Viola even adds that his uncle Friend was killed by the one that followed him. His father Francis stopped seeing his benign haint when he moved to Detroit.

For Francis, the haint symbolizes his father's spirit. For Charles, the first visit from a haint is aggressive, as is the second, but after that the visits are mostly benign and in the end the specter seems to symbolize his father or a representation of him.