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Just in time for Halloween, a suite of spooky tales to make your skin crawl.
Also, tales of the supernatural.
And, ghost stories galore.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
In This Episode:
It’s the season for gathering around fires and telling spooky stories. Mike Allen is an award-winning science fiction, fantasy and horror writer based in Roanoke, Virginia. Besides writing, Allen also runs Mythic Delirium. It started as a sci-fi poetry zine. Now it’s a publishing imprint that puts out books. Host Mason Adams visited Mike to speak with him about his work.
Since that interview in 2023, three new Mike Allen books have been published: Slow Burn, a collection of stories and poems, The Black Fire Concerto, a post-apocalyptic horror novel, and Trail of Shadows, a horror novel that begins on the Appalachian Trail.
Spooky stories can be about people, but sometimes they’re just about a place. A patch of land or an old building can develop a reputation that grows and grows over the years. Some are off the beaten path, but others you can drive right up to. In Mingo County, West Virginia there’s an old single-lane railroad tunnel that’s become a local legend.
Back in 2018, reporter Molly Born ventured inside the Dingess tunnel to find out what makes it so unsettling.
Some people are afraid of ghosts. Others want to figure out ways to communicate with them – like Anita Allen, a writer and paranormal investigator in Roanoke.
Host Mason Adams talked to her about a couple of her ghost encounters.
Haunted places dot Appalachia — moonlit hollers, mist-shrouded cemeteries, and dusty buildings that hold unspoken secrets. Playwright and theater director Dan Kehde knows just such a place, in Charleston, West Virginia.
WVPB’s Jim Lange brought us this story in 2021.
Scott Worley oversees Haunted Beckley in Beckley, West Virginia, where he’s spent most of his life. He collects stories and gives history and ghost tours. This story isn’t exactly about ghosts — but people who commune with them. We’re talking about spiritualism, a religious practice centered on the idea that people can communicate with the dead and even seek advice through seances.
Spiritualism has gone in and out of style for generations. In the 1800s, though, it became a mainstream trend that attracted celebrities like Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.
Worley tells us about what spiritualism looked like in West Virginia during that time.
A growing number of farms are turning themselves into Halloween destinations with corn mazes and pumpkin patches. Roxy Todd and All Things Considered host Craig Wright explored a few of these farms in western Virginia.
James Froemel is an actor and storyteller in Morgantown, West Virginia. He’s also an occasional contributor, providing readings of short stories by Appalachian authors. For the Halloween season, he sent us a pair of tales from Ruth Anne Musick.
“The Return of the Headless Man” and “The Murdered Girl” were collected and retold by Ruth Anne Musick. They’re available in the story collections The Tell-Tale Lilac Bush and Coffin Hollow, respectively.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Blue Dot Sessions, Mary Hott, Jeff Ellis, Gerry Milnes, Hello June, Paul Loomis and Red Sovine.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Abby Neff is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
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Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
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An Us & Them episode honored by the Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters for Best Podcast examines the hidden side of homeownership in Appalachia. While West Virginia has the nation’s highest homeownership rate, aging housing stock and low incomes leave many residents living in deteriorating conditions. Reporting from western Virginia, this episode explores what happens when owning a home doesn’t mean building wealth.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsBy some measures, West Virginia has the nation’s highest homeownership rate. However much of that housing is old and needs repair. Our latest episode of Us & Them is a recent award winner from the Virginia AP Broadcasters. Trey Kay uncovers an aspect of the housing crisis we don't often hear about – structures without electricity or running water that people call home.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsFluorspar is a little-known mineral used to make everything from steel, aluminum and gasoline to uranium fuel and batteries. For the Appalachia Mid-South Newsroom, WKMS’ Lily Burris reports the largest known deposit of the critical mineral in the U.S. is in western Kentucky – and its applications in artificial intelligence (AI) could reawaken the region’s mining industry.
Continue Reading Take Me to More NewsThe economy is everything we buy or sell and services we use. It can be a broad category and most of us struggle to understand what it all means. The show "Planet Money" from NPR dives into those topics and attempts to make sense of it. And now, the show has published a book called Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. We speak with the author and one of the program's hosts.
Continue Reading Take Me to More News
