Appalachian Folklore & Myths In American cryptid lore, Mothman usually shows up as a fully formed monster. He has wings, glowing red eyes, and a habit of appearing right before disaster. Yet if we back up and treat him like any other Appalachian folk figure, the story looks less like a jump scare and more like a case study in how legends grow.

Appalachian Folklore & Myths Introduction Somewhere in the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky, people will tell you, there is a hillside gravestone that carries a warning: “you will never leave Harlan alive.” Tour guides mention it. Facebook posts swear by it. Fans drive winding mountain roads hoping to stand in front of the stone that inspired one of Appalachia’s most haunting modern songs.

Appalachian Figures In the early 2000s, the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? turned “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” into a global hit. Long before that soundtrack and long before the Stanley Brothers or Bob Dylan sang the song, a quiet singer from Wayne County, Kentucky stepped into a Chicago studio and cut the first commercially released recording of it. His name was Emry Arthur.

Appalachian Figures Micajah Burnett is usually remembered as the Shaker architect whose limestone houses and twin spiral staircases still surprise visitors at Pleasant Hill in Mercer County. He is less often remembered as a frontier boy from Wayne County, growing up on the edge of the Appalachian plateau before he ever laid out a village street or calculated a water system.

Appalachian Figures On a modern map, Elk Spring Valley in Wayne County, Kentucky looks like one more fold in the Appalachian foothills. In the early nineteenth century it was a busy crossroads, a place where Virginia and North Carolina families filtered into Kentucky, then followed the rivers and roads south into Tennessee.

Appalachian Figures On November 29, 2024, Robert Elledy “Bob” Gable died in Lexington at the age of ninety. Obituaries described him as a Navy veteran, Stanford trained engineer, governor’s candidate, arts patron, and for seven years the chair of the Republican Party of Kentucky. Beneath that public résumé is a story that belongs squarely in Appalachian history.

Appalachian Figures On a farm called Strawberry Hill outside Grantsville, Maryland, a sickly girl once spent more time in the woods than in a classroom. She memorized wildflowers instead of spelling lists and pressed ferns into homemade notebooks.

Appalachian Figures Gridiron Glory on a Garrett County Shore When most people scan the long lists of “notable people from Garrett County, Maryland,” they expect names tied to timber, railroads, or the ski slopes at Wisp. Tucked among them is a different kind of figure.

Appalachian Figures On a quiet day in Edinburg, Virginia, you can walk into the Shenandoah County Library and find a doorway that opens into the past. The sign over that doorway reads “Truban Archives.” Inside are shelves of county records, family photographs, oral histories, and rare local publications that might otherwise have disappeared.

Appalachian Figure From Appalachian boyhood to Denver rings and Hollywood lots If you know Richard “Fighting Dick” Gilbert at all, you probably know him as the burly cop or henchman in Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang shorts, forever being tripped, drenched, or humiliated for a laugh. For decades he was part of the Hal Roach stock company, the dependable heavy in the background of other people’s jokes.

Appalachian Figures On a Monday morning in May 1919, a Knox County lawyer who had grown up on Big Richland Creek took the oath as Kentucky’s thirty ninth governor. The Louisville Courier Journal marked the moment with the headline “Black Becomes 41st Governor” and reminded readers that James Dixon Black’s promotion came not by election but by succession when Governor Augustus O. Stanley departed for the United States Senate.