Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – Boojum and Hootin Annie in the Balsam Mountains: Gemstones, Moonshine Jugs, and Haywood County Folklore In the high country of western North Carolina, between the tourist glow of Waynesville and the deep coves that run toward the Smokies, there is a stretch of ridgeline where stories and promotion have tangled together for more than a century.

Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – The Hopkinsville Goblins: Little Green Men on a Kentucky Farm On a hot Sunday night in August 1955, a caravan of cars pulled up outside the Hopkinsville, Kentucky police station. Inside were eleven people from a small farm community called Kelly, just north of town. Some were crying. One man’s pulse was racing.

Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – Wizard Clip and the Priest’s Field: Poltergeist, Frontier Faith, and a Haunted Farm in the Shenandoah Valley In the lower Shenandoah Valley of West Virginia there is a quiet patch of fields and houses that once answered to an unsettling nickname.

Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – The Legend of the Blowing Rock: Wind, Lovers, and a High Country Cliff If you stand on The Blowing Rock on a clear afternoon, the world falls away in layers of blue. The cliff juts out from the Blue Ridge crest above the Johns River Gorge, a stone prow hanging thousands of feet over forest and river. Below, the gorge carries water south toward the Catawba.

Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – Sensabaugh Tunnel: Ghost Tourism, Urban Legend, and the Real Sensabaugh Family Along the Holston North of Kingsport, Tennessee, the land folds into low ridges and narrow hollows along the North Fork of the Holston River. Farmhouses sit back from the road, the railroad keeps to its own bench above the creek, and narrow lanes carry locals through places that do not make most highway maps.

Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – The Rivesville River Monster: Ogua, Giant Turtles, and the Stories Marion County Tells Itself On a warm summer night at Rivesville in Marion County, the Monongahela River looks almost tame. Barges push coal up toward Pittsburgh. Fishermen sit on the bank near the mouth of Paw Paw Creek or lean against the rail of the pedestrian walkway, watching their lines disappear into the dark water.

Appalachian History Series – Little Shepherd Trail: Inspiration Mountain on the Spine of Pine Mountain If you ease your car out of the Clover Fork valley and up US 421, there is a point where the pavement breaks over the spine of Pine Mountain and a narrow road slips away along the crest. Locals call it the Little Shepherd Trail.

Abandoned Appalachia Series – Goss Park and Cupp Lake of Harlan County High along the crest of Pine Mountain, where the Little Shepherd Trail clings to the ridge above Putney, there is a quiet pull off that looks almost forgotten. A few old tables, a weathered shelter, a narrow lane down toward a small mountaintop lake. On modern maps it appears as Goss Park or Goss Park Camping Area. In tourism copy it is sometimes called a hidden gem.

Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Ronald D. Ray of Perry, Kentucky On a ridge above Frankfort, where the wind comes hard off the Kentucky River, a granite sundial throws its shadow across a fan of stone. Each day the shadow falls on the name of a Kentuckian killed in Vietnam, timed to the anniversary of that soldier or Marine’s death.

Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of the George Sharp Davis of Perry, Kentucky On a cool October day in 1937, a coal cutter from Hazard walked into a temporary studio and sang “The Harlan County Blues” for Alan Lomax.

Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Joseph C. Eversole from Perry, Kentucky If you stand on Graveyard Hill above downtown Hazard and look past the traffic and parking lots below, the story of Perry County’s founding families is written in stone.