Appalachian Folklore | Why America’s Oldest Mountains Produce Its Creepiest Folklore

You may have heard the stories and rules of these woods. The warnings, the omens, the tall tails. Creatures and cryptids that roam the isolated lands attempting to lure you in with tricks in the darkness. These legends have been passed down for generations, but why? How are there so many unique anecdotes that come out of the same region? Today, we're taking a deep dive into the monsters and myths embedded across Appalachian folklore. This is Redweb. Welcome back Task Force to another episode of Redweb, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the unknown. I am your resident mystery enthusiast, Trevor Collins, and joining me hearing this case for the very first time Alfredo Diaz. Welcome back Task Force to another episode of Redweb, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries. So Appalachia, which by the way, since I have covered this region over the course of like six and a half years of this podcast, I have learned growing up. It's not Appalachia. If you're local to this area, it's Appalachia. Okay. So a little lesson for everybody. I certainly learned that. You guys taught me in the comments last time we covered this area, but it is, we're going to talk about the entire overview and history of this region. We're going to go quite back because I always find that it's important to understand where we've been to understand where we're going to understand what's happening now. You got to understand the workings in the society, the history, the stories. And then of course, we're going to dive into the legend, starting out with the rules, some of the superstitions of this area, many of the tales that have been passed down from generation to generation. I mean, stories that grandparents tell kids about that haunt them at night. And then of course, we're going to dive into the biggest legends of the region, many of which we have covered over the years of this podcast. So this is a great way to refresh some of the kind of famous names we're going to cover. But of course, if you're interested task force, I'll tell you when we get there, but we have dedicated episodes that have released sometimes six years ago, five years ago, of some of the topics we have here. So if you want a deeper dive into any of the subtopics, you can get those at your heart's content, the end of the episode. And then of course, some theories as to why this particular region holds so much history and not just history, but like folklore and superstition and rules. Why is there so much eeriness around these woods and mountains beyond just, of course, there's dark eerie woods over here, right? Right. Yep. So lots to cover, lots to dive into. Of course, we are in the throes of October, our favorite month. And if you want to support us, you can go to redwebpod.com, get this podcast, add free lots of exclusives. And this Wednesday, you will see a poll. We always like to surprise you guys with what those polls contain. But it's like, where are we going to go? Goes hunting next or what movies do we want to cover in movie club? Sometimes what topics we feature on this podcast, a great example of what you can find on those polls will be Friday's movie club. You guys voted on it. And we are covering Disney Channel's original movie, Halloween town. It kind of holds up. I'll be honest, it kind of holds up. It was a good time. It was a good time. It could just be the nostalgia play though for us. You might have never seen this movie or don't have fond memories of the, you know, Disney channel original series and in that case, you might go, what are these guys smoking? I want those fresh eyes. I want to see what people who haven't seen this movie. What they think. Yeah. I think that's a good point. I want to see the people who have seen this movie. Like, what are your opinion? What are your thoughts? Are we just, you know, nostalgic goggles on or like what's going on here? Also, you know, that'll set you up nicely for what we have next Monday. Because Fredo, we are a little tired because we just got back from our ghost hunt, which comes out next Monday. So as always, the podcast comes out as normal on Monday. You can listen to the history of this place. Some of the ghouls and goblins that would quite go smoothly that we're going to be investigating. And then at youtube.com/redwebpod, that's where you can watch the entire ghost investigation. And then redwebpod.com holds many of the exclusives. So it's sometimes it's like deleted scenes, things that don't make sense in the final edit, but of course our static cameras. And they are completely unedited. We put those down at the beginning of the investigation and let them roll. And this time, they actually caught a lot of stuff that we're going to need to be pulling into the episode because Fredo, as always, there's always some things we just can't explain. There's always some things we can't explain. I'm at the point now and it just, it sounds ridiculous. But at the same time, a lot of you guys are talking about, well, there's energy that's building up. There's energy that's following you guys now, who I don't like that. And so it's like, okay, with energy building up, so are the encounters building up. I say encounters because there are things here that are even more unexplainable. And I just, I just don't. I was in the camp at like, it's not real, but I'm not messing with it. I'm in the camp now of there might be probably is some type of residual energy or echo or something because I just, man, it's like, there's two things that happen during this goes hunt and I just don't know if you're going to explain them. Right. Everything in isolation has an excuse. But when you have so many things stacking up, the more you try to bat them down with reasonable explanations, the more you start to sound like you're the mad man. Like, okay, well, how many things can you, how many like weird consistencies? And you kind of explain away before you start to sound like you're in denial. Yeah. Right. We have something. I'll just say this. We have something for the first time. Move on camera. Yeah. Yeah, dude. I never thought that that stuff was real when I, when I used to grew up watching these shows. I go, sums happen in behind the scenes. We had no expectation of this. It's on the stabilist of grounds because it's, it's concrete. We, we try to debunk it with like movement. Anyway. We want to move the other way if anything. So lots to explore in, in the ghost hunt coming up. We'll talk more about it. Of course, next week and the following after that, and then we'll do a debrief at some point. So leave us comments. If there's things you saw or heard or explanations you have, we like to react to those after the episode comes out. But that's everything going on this season. Of course, we have a vlog on Sunday. We're going to do scary stories at the end of the month. Again, there's lots happening, but I don't want to overstay our welcome in the promos here because there's lots to dive into in the Appalachian region. All right. Oh, I said Appalachia. Sorry. You're just going to have to forgive me. All right. Let's talk about the Appalachian region and get into it. Frato, how much do you know about this, this area? And have you been there? It's on the opposite side of the country from where you grew up. I haven't been there. Don't know much about it. You know, it always sounded so foreign to me just by, just by name. Didn't really know that there was like too much cryptid-wise, but it seems like everywhere is haunted. Everywhere's got something. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I'm interested to see what they got, to be honest. Oh, yeah. And some of these are going to ring big bells. Not to remind you of the ghost investigation where a bell was going wild, but some of these are going to ring bells for you. Is that like Sasquatch or yet? Isn't that? Yeah. Yeah. He's out there stomping away. Yeah. That foot fetish fiend. Yeah. He's got his paw prints all over this mountain. Okay. So I'm going to give you a map of this region as we dive in. That way, Task Force, you know where we're at. If you're not, you know, familiar with the region, it's pretty expansive. So Appalachia is the geographical region here in the eastern part of North America. It is along the aptly named Appalachian Mountains. It extends from central parts of Alabama and Mississippi all the way northeast to southern parts of New York, which honestly is much more expansive than I would have guessed. The core darker red region is the familiar place that I'm aware of. That's the places we always used to go during fall break down to like Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge in Tennessee. So we were kind of right on the edges there, rent in a cabin in those woods. That's what our family used to do. Oh, yeah. I'm, it really runs along the east through most of it kind of stops just for like what is a Florida. Right. Kind of midway down through Georgia and South Carolina. Well, yeah. The top part of Georgia, I'll say. Yeah. The top. It's lengthy. I could see why there'd be stories and things about it. It's just, it's probably, you know, thick, thick forests. It's got a lot of it. Very much so. Yes. So across these 13 states, it is huge roughly 206,000 square miles or roughly 533,000 square kilometers if you prefer, but West Virginia is kind of the only state that's fully steeped in Appalachian region. It's not like parts of it. It is fully steeped in there. And you guys did earlier this year, the Moundsville investigation. The Moundsville ghost hunt up there in West Virginia. So you've been there, even if you didn't feel like it, you know, you were driving through these mountains. Oh, yeah. That's right. That's snuck that on you. You know, there was reason. This is why I couldn't go but man, I was hoping I could go so I could tell you tall tales about that area. Hmm. Things, you know, I go week by week where I go, okay, I got to do these things this week and then I go, all right, what to do today? What's the next day? And then I go, oh, I have a ghost hunt this week and then I get back to the day. And then, you know, a day before I go, okay, I got this shit back for this ghost hunt and I do that and then I'm out. Hmm. The vlog will show you about 27 hours from departure to arriving again at the parking garage. It is a whirlwind kind of trips or sometimes you don't even know where we're at. We're just, we're just in the throes of it. But this area, as you can imagine, pre-America, pre-colonies was first inhabited by Native American hunter-gatherers thousands of years ago and this area was ruled by natives with several different tribes sharing different parts of this vast region. But by the late 17th century, of course, English explorers have arrived in Appalachia. And at that time, the region was mostly under the control of the Algonquian tribes. Many of them, mainly, I think, the Shawnee peoples. But you might recognize the Algonquian people from the Pukwaji episode. We did a little bit of their folklore. We talked about them centered primarily on the Pukwaji, which also kind of carries up I believe into, if I remember correctly, Massachusetts. So the remaining southern part of the region was then controlled by, principally, the Cherokee nation. Now, European settlers didn't colonize the area until around the 18th century. And from that point forward, you know, this area contained mostly isolated farmlands. And it's worth remembering, I mean, these mountains are obvious when we think about it. You know, we know the mountains are there. But when you're in the 1700s and you don't have ways to fly or drive, you don't have paved roads. You don't have railways that are set out ahead of you. Someone's got to blaze that trail. And because of the treacherous mountain terrain, a lot of these places remained isolated for quite some time. And then after the Civil War, the northern region of Appalachia started to feel a little bit of that economic boom. Now some areas grew into major industrial cities. You look through Pennsylvania, there are several. While others became mining and lumber towns, and they were profiting off the increased demand of their goods locally. However, as with capitalism, I suppose, over time, the business went from profitable to a little bit more exploitative with the resources and profits no longer staying in the region. However, they were leaving the region, going to big companies instead. And so this led a lot of local communities in the Appalachian area to kind of turn to poverty and disease. Because it was dangerous working conditions, of course, but they also weren't able to just uproot and leave these very isolated towns. They didn't have the urban areas to move around in, instead they kind of were stuck, unable to relocate and start fresh. Now of course, there's a bit of a somber note, but again, I think it's always worth knowing the history of the stories we cover because it gives us a lot more context as to where these stories might come from, what's at the heart of these stories, what's going on culturally, societally. But in addition to this, comes some of my favorite facts geographically about this area. Now again, you look at these mountains and they're not rocky pointed tips. They're very softened. And so it's kind of strange to call them mountains when you look at the Himalayas or the Rocky Mountains across the other side of the nation. They're soft and worn peaks, though, are the product of nearly 480 million years of weathering, in some cases billions, and we'll talk more about this, but my favorite fact that I actually learned just a few years ago, the Appalachian Mountains are part of a historic mountain chain that include two other very well-known mountains and areas. The Scottish Highlands and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. So you're talking about the eastern side of North America, the Scottish Highlands, and then the mountains that run along the northwestern part of Africa all used to be part of the same mountain chain, millions and millions of years ago. Yeah, Pangio type stuff. Yes. So this gives you an idea of just like, these mountains have seen it, man. Damn. You know, it just, yeah, the whole everything being connected just doesn't come up much anymore. No, not at all. So you kind of just like reshushed that in my mind again and it's kind of wild to think about it because yeah, it's like, okay, pieces of the land were all like together. It broke off and everything. You know, not really thinking too much in detail about like, what about, you know, a mountain range getting broken up into pieces and then there's now, you know, almost halfway across the world one way this way. And it's like, oh, yeah, like that literally got broken up. That's pretty cool. It's very cool to like the, the permanence of things, the object permanence, you know, when we talk about the movement of continents now we're like every year, the Atlantic gets a few millimeters larger or, you know, whatever. And so it's like, it's so slow and imperceptible. Yes, why would you ever think about Pangaea or what have you, but it is so cool to know that these mountains were all part of something that's now so spread apart. But as a result of this geographical isolation, we talked about potentially this ancient geographical history of this ancient land. There's so much rich history, oral traditions and of course countless stories that come out of this region, including several different legends as to what makes Appalachia so dangerous in the first place. This episode of Redweb is sponsored by Ethos, you know, Task Force, when my wife and I bought our home, it sparked a real conversation about our future and making sure we're totally protected against life's unpredictable what ifs. With all the amazing things life can offer, there are sometimes bumps in the road that leave you a little lost and distraught. You know, we've seen family members come and go over these years and we've seen how life insurance can be a safety net in times like those. Insurance can be intimidating, but Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and get coverage the very same day. Ethos likes to keep it simple. There's no medical exam and you just answer a few simple health questions and you can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies are even as low as $30 a month. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/redweb. That's ETHOS.com/redweb. Ethos.com/redweb application times may vary, rates may vary. This episode of Redweb is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long term partner BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide, with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Task Force October 10th is World Mental Health Day, but your brain doesn't know that. Stress doesn't politely sit around and wait until that date, burnout doesn't kindly RSVP. You know, ultimately, mental health is a part of regular life. The therapy isn't just for those big life choices either. It can be a place to talk about those smaller things. The work situation that may be taken up too much space in your brain, a relationship dynamic that you can't quite put your finger on, or simply the sense that something in your life feels off. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. If you don't have insurance or live outside the U.S., well, you can still get 10% off your first month. Visit BetterHelp.com/RedWeb to explore your payment options. That's BetterHELP.com/RedWeb. So before we dive into any of the main creatures and cryptids that are said to roam these lands, I want to go through some dare I distill it into rules horror because one of the things that intrigues me the most about Appalachian folklore in addition to the stories that are told are kind of the rules that seem to permeate these lands. Rules that are passed down from generation to generation as to what you shouldn't should not do in order to stay safe, not attract the attention of something sinister. So many have heard warnings and from these warnings come series of rules and superstitions. The first off and this will not be, you know, exhaustive. There are so many different rules. Some people report rules from their family that other families haven't even heard. So task force, two things for me, if you're from this area, one, please share any rules or superstitions that I don't cover that you might be aware of. And two, if I get anything wrong because I'm not from this area, please let me know. This is like complete book learned, not street learned. So I am so fascinated with this stuff. I love the engagement we have with you guys, the task force. So feel free to engage, especially on the discord if you have any other rules. So let's start in no particular order. Don't whistle at night because it might attract monsters, cryptids or bring the attention of other creatures that you simply don't want focused on you. Another rule is don't roam the woods at night and if you do, don't turn on any lights. As once again, it could attract the murderous things that lurk in the dark and bring harm to you. Now here's the one that I always hear about and I was very, I find it the most unsettling and I was very excited to share it with you. If you hear your name, call out through the trees, never answer it, and certainly never follow it. Now, this is not a person that's calling out to you though, in fact, often times it's reported to sound like someone you know or love. There are stories of people that are in their childhood home, and they hear their grandmother call to them even in the basement. You know, Jonathan come down, and then the grandmother will show up in the other room and say, "Don't go down there. That wasn't me." I mean, this is the kind of stuff the horror movies are made of, you know? Yes. And… Absolutely. I'm trying to put myself in the headspace. I'm like, "Well, I'd never answer someone calling my name. What if it was your significant other?" Exactly. What if it was your child? And what if it's saying, "Help!" So what if it's a call for help or a cry or a scream? What do you do? That's why I find this one so unnerving. Oh, maybe they're going to have to wait like two minutes as I make this phone call. Yeah. I'm going to… You know what? You make a phone call. You have a safe word. You know what I mean? You say like, "If you're in help, don't cry out, help. Call out. The taxes are due." Yeah. Honey, I've lost the cat. We don't have a cat, you know, or you know. But what if it learns your little safe word? I mean, what are you just supposed to do? At that point, the entity is super powerful and strong and they probably got you anyways, you know. They're just… Right. You say, "I'm put me down as a statistic. I'm going in the woods." You know, I'm going in, unfortunately, but I don't like any of that. I mean, that's the kind of stuff you see in horror movies all the time. Say, "Don't go stupid." It's a movie. Why are you following? Why? Because you know. You know. You know. There's no plot armor in real life, though. No. No, there isn't. Oh, man. That's a… That's good. Oh, okay. We are in October. Yeah. Yeah. That's a sinister one. Because like, it takes so many different forms. And I always, okay, I always took this as a mimic. I've referenced this in many episodes over the last couple of weeks. However, in Appalachia, it's not referred to as a mimic. It isn't that there's some sort of mysterious known entity known as the mimic that lives out there. I believe it is a modern internet interpretation of this rule. And then creepypastas have started to form around this concept. And they take the name as mimic. I've also seen the name "Fleshgate G-A-I-T." It's kind of a cryptid of internet make that has a very uncanny appearance almost made out of multiple body parts, but again, it has this uncanny valley version of the loved ones' voices. And it tries to lure you in. Yeah, no. Yeah, I don't like any of that. But you can… You know that that's one of those rules that will really tickle the minds of creative storytellers for sure. Now do not rock an empty chair. It's another rule that I've seen pretty much all over the place. I went down rabbit, holes on reddit, so many different blogs and vlogs of people that are from this area sharing their experiences, and one of the ones is like, the elder generation would often yell at kids for rocking an empty chair. And I saw so many different reasons as to why, usually it's just being told off and scolded for doing it, but some of the reasoning includes it would invite wandering spirits or malicious entities to maybe come visit your porch, or wherever this chair is, maybe visit your home by rocking that chair. Others have said that they've seen chairs rocking on their own, and that is a sign that there was a wandering spirit visiting you at that time. Kind of with that in mind, I've also seen stories of people like there are rules that if you are sitting around a campfire, and it's always a man, but if a wandering traveler sits down at your campfire and doesn't say anything, offer them food or drink, don't look them in the eye, and then leave on solid terms. Kind of like get yourself out of there, but don't really poke and prod. And honestly, that works for normal people too, not just monsters creeping up out of the woods. I've heard of that. It's a little, just because it's been out lately, just a little Zeus' law type thing. Oh, hold on, Zeus' law, what's Zeus' law? Odyssey. Oh! Odussy. Odussy. Odussy. Yeah, Zeus' law, and it's like, be welcoming because you don't know if it could be a god in this guy's type thing. This is like a, be welcoming, it could be something that's terrible. Dang, alright, that one went right over my head, that's a good point. Zeus' law. Well, there's another one that involves the fog. And it is said that you should never walk into the thick fog, and in fact, avoid walking through the fog in general, because it is said that's where the spirits roam. And then lastly, as far as my list here again, there are many out there. Do not speak of the strange things you see in the trees, because once it is named, it becomes real. It's almost like, if you just ignore it, maybe it will go away, but if you name it, it might stick around. It might take on a little bit more energy, and we've talked about this many times, especially across poltergeist-centric activity. And yes, it's also part of movie lore, but once you start to believe in something, it almost empowers it in a way, and then it can maybe start to manifest more or lurk around your property more. They're kind of like giving it power. Yeah. You see a hand around a tree that then slinks away? No, you didn't. No? You just forget about it. Yeah. Oh, dude. If that, I mean, I'm just any, I'm reserving the right right now. If I am even fairly certain, I see something like that, like a hand slink around a corner. I am out. I don't care if we are two minutes into this goes hunt, you guys will get a video. I am gone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gone. That's force. I'm like, that's, that could be a real person. I'm good. Yeah. Good night. Exactly. Exactly. Again, not to harken back to all of our ghost hunts, but when we were at Pennhurst and we did that tunnel thing and I went down in there and I tried to stay in there alone, it wasn't the dark. It wasn't possible bumps in the night or ghost. It was the idea that any old person could be down there rustling away. That's what's freaking me out. The idea that someone comes suddenly bustin' around the corner, sprinting at you out of the dark, that freaks me out. People are scary. A ghost? What's it going to do? Maybe, maybe give me a chill and make me scared a little bit, but I mean, I don't know am I going to get ghost slapped? Great. Well, I can't get ghost killed probably. It's a thing too. I'm also starting to kind of realize with these hunts. I feel like it would take a lot for a ghost to actually harm you. It's more so noises and that sucks, you know. Yeah. Because I don't know. Maybe it's just because you need so much energy to cross a plane or whatever, but I'm very kind of like certain. I'm like, okay. There's not. We might get noises and stuff, but they actually have something up here and like, all of you stalk you, hunt you, hurt you, etc., I'm like, ah, that's a, it seems like a lot. Right. Now, as soon as people start commonly, instead of hearing things or maybe seeing things, as soon as people commonly start getting picked up off their feet and thrown around, then we'll talk, you know. And we'll hold on. If that happens, I think I need to start talking to some ghosts because then I can get some sort of like gene gray ability. But instead of being psychic, it's just me talking to a ghost and saying, ghost, go pick up my candy bar and bring it to me. And then it floats across the room and everyone thinks I'm like an X-men or something. Damn, but what will the toll and the price that you'll be paid for having a companion like that? Yeah. I don't know. What a ghost one. Company then? I don't know. I could work out. Could I sacrifice a juice box so that way they can then have like a ghost box and then they can so they can then have the taste of some like 2026 juices? Ah, the little taste of the modern life. Right. Right. Or maybe, you know what? Maybe they can't hit the play button or something. And so I put in a couple of VHS tapes of, you know, golden girls and then like, they get seasons on seasons. Oh, thank you for being a friend. Yeah. Exactly. My dad's already struggling to get through some of these streaming apps, a ghost from another generation. They're not going to know how to set that up even if they can hit button. So like, you know, I get it planned for him. Yeah. So you're like, let me, let me put you on, let me put you on a little for you, a little for me, a little scratch your back scratch my back, you know, and then you make me look like I got super powers. A little for you. A little for me. It seems like a little for you a lot for me. They're just carrying a few things for me. You know, they're just, I'm just going, and they're making it look like I'm carrying stuff. I feel like there's a lot of cracks in this foundation that there's no cracks because listen, their, their feeble 18th century minds have not been, we can't even hold ourselves up against a TikTok. You know, I start showing TikToks to a Victorian ghost child, the crumbling, you know, they'll start carrying anything and making me look like I got all sorts of powers, you know. I could Chris angel mine freak off the ground and it's actually just two, two ghosts picking me up. That's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. Poke holes in that. Okay. Halfway. All right. Well, let's get back into the eerie. You know, I had a little palette cleanser there because this area, not only does it have many rules, but there's a lot of superstitions in this area. Some you've likely heard of, and many that might be new to you, Frato. Because I feel like some of these are, I don't know if they started here and then permeated out, or if they started elsewhere and then kind of became localized. But when you think about the history, a lot of death happened at home, you know, there's not a lot of big cities and urban sprawl and things, it's like small towns. And because of that, you know, when people got sick in their dangerous work conditions, death would be very close to home. You know, loved ones would pass maybe in their bedrooms, right? And so you can see why this region would have developed so many superstitions specifically around death. For example, it has said that when someone dies, you were meant to stop the clocks. To mark the time, yes, but also to prevent another death, as deaths were said to come in threes. So as you might have heard, like Hollywood, for example, if two people died pretty close in time to one another, it was often predicted that somebody else in the community would die soon thereafter. It does, you know, I feel like superstition, you know, very much so let's, let's do this so then this doesn't happen, which I totally get, I totally understand how many times people go knock on wood, you know, and then knock on wood just in case it takes you two seconds to do it, it might, it might just save you the hassle or the headache. So I get, I get it. Yeah, it's like you with the ghosts. It's like I might not believe, but why would I risk it if I've got a rule here? Why not? Yeah, that's true. When Christian and I were saying goodbye to the boiler room, because all these places have a damn boiler room, we did say like, this is a goodbye, you're not welcome to join me, et cetera. Now, is there any, any evidence that shows that that's a thing that works? Not really. Do we do it anyways? Is it our knock on wood? You damn right? Christian and I said it twice each, we went back down to check on like the hemutifier and make sure it's plugged in because you unplugged it to do the hunt, we say goodbye again. Yeah. Well, you know what? I'm going to start a superstition right now. Two goodbyes as a hello, say it twice, you kind of undid it, you know, it's like, it's kind of like it became a welcome. Yeah. It's like, oh, you say goodbye. I get you open it back up. I ended the chain of communication here. You rekindled it. Yeah. Or you said goodbye for me because I didn't do it this time, whoops. But also with death, it is said to cover mirrors is important because when someone dies, their spirit can be trapped inside the mirror. Not like that movie mirrors or whatever it was called, but I have heard this before. And then let's see, there's another one that I saw that was at dusk time. If you hear the screech of an owl, it's kind of a bad omen. There are many bad omen's like this, you know, things like if you hear a bird chirping in your yard, a specific bird, turn over one of your shoes and that bird will stop. Things that are a little bit more innocuous. But this one is kind of like an omen of death, maybe like a bad negative energy, maybe bad luck kind of thing. I think I heard another one that was about bees and that bees carried the tail of death. And so when someone dies, you know, again, there's a few interpretations of this. You're said to go out to your beehives and let the bees know because if you don't, they might become sick, stop producing honey and, you know, the word of death is carried by the bees, I guess. But many of these warnings, these rules, these omen's can simply be seen as kind of helping you avoid common pitfalls or accidents on this treacherous terrain. You know, going out at night, yes, you're avoiding something sinister in the woods, but you're also avoiding very dangerous wooded mountainous terrain in the dark. So many of them openly focus on protecting you from creatures that call out to you from the forest and or whatever calls these mountains home. Some of these legends are brand new to the task force, of course, but some have been covered before. And though it's been quite some time, like I said, so it's almost like a good excuse to remind everybody about some of these things. There's been many people who have joined the task force over these six plus years. So some of these might be new to you. And if any of these are interesting, right, we're going to cover like four or five things. Each of them has their own dedicated episode. If we remember, we'll put the links to those in the description so you can go conveniently listen to them. But before we continue, you know, we'll talk about theories as to the superstitions and rules and things as well. But do you have any thoughts on the superstitions and what have you before we dive into the bigger monsters and myths, Fredo? No, I mean, I just see why we have it, you know, look at the area, the grand scale of it, the range, the amount of states that touches and whatnot. So it's like, yeah, there's going to be superstition. There's going to, it's deep, I'm sure people have gone missing or that's where people want to go missing or various things happen just because it's dead. It's not heavily populated area, et cetera. Can't fire stories. Let's just talk about, just talk about it. Absolutely. I mean, so many disappearances happen in places like this. And yeah, I mean, it could be something sinister lurking in the dark. But equally, if not more likely, it could be simply that a lot of disappearances happen in the wilderness. Again, we'll talk about the theories. But first and foremost, Fredo, let me show you this next image. I labeled it alpha for you, your convenience, because this creature certainly is an alpha. Who we looking at? Oh, man, that's a biggie foot. That's big feet right there. What if he had one big foot and then a normal foot, maybe it's big feet? Yeah, he probably would have like an off-tilted, like hip, it's how you know I'm old. That's something. I would straight to hips too. I'm like, oh, man, those hips are going to be so off set, it's going to be so, he would not be, he'd be limping. He'd be limping. He'd be cart around in the wheelchair, it'd be very difficult. You know, that's show up in his shoulders, he'd be carrying himself all wrong. But bigfoot is first and foremost on our docket here. Also known, like you said, aptly, as Sasquatch, he also has his albino cousin in the Himalayas, the Yeti. But also locally, he's got some other names. I've never heard of these before. So if these are wrong, they're kind of funny. So they could be wrong, woodbooker, and Bujum, never heard these before. Sorry, woodbooker? Yeah. Who came up with that name? I don't know. Appalachian task force? Fact check me on this one. This is fascinating. Fascinating names for bigfoot. Now it's a large ape-like creature that lurks in the forest. Of course, there's a photo, the infamous photo I showed you from Roger Patterson. We go deep into this photo and the history of it, debunking it, what have you. But the legend of bigfoot has been told for centuries. There are variations of this creature that exist in several different cultures, which adds so much credence to the idea of a large ape-like person. Now bigfoot has been spotted in California and the Pacific Northwest. I would almost say, just from my understanding, that those are the principal areas of the traditional bigfoot. But several sightings have also made their way over to Appalachia and anywhere there are thick dents and remote forests. Now bigfoot is often described as a half man, half ape-like creature standing anywhere from 8 to 12 monstrous feet tall, he lives in the woods, he leaves behind large footprints that would be impossible for any known human to leave behind. Unless you know that you're a human and you're leaving like the movie troll, you're leaving like intentional prints everywhere. These are a feat bigger than any known living human. Now witness is often described seeing these large creatures crossing roads, deep within the trails, some often report hearing unexplained, heavy footsteps, knocking sounds, even vocalizations, other times they feel a strange, sudden sense of feeling like they're being watched, which often happens in dark and eerie woods. Some people have smelled them before they've seen them, because you know with all that hair in summer heat, those, and no showers, these things can carry a strong musky and pungent odor that can, it said, appear out of nowhere, and that's why the Florida version of this whole thing is the skunk ape, because if you're hanging out in the wetlands, just constant mossy soggy dude, hairy and wet don't go together. How are you even mildly comfortable at all? How are you surviving? Let me just be frank. Yeah. Yeah, I think a point. Even should have like balled you quick, because like if you're just wet all the time and hairy, you just got decay on you, you know, you're just dry rotting alive. That's a very good point. Now the Appalachian Bigfoot has some distinct behavioral characteristics that maybe separate it from its other cousins. The Sasquatch of this particular region appears to be particularly intelligent. These traits include using the terrain to conceal their presence, stalking strategically from elevated positions, and understanding human routines in order to stay hidden, but also maybe interact with people. You have states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina who all report some versions of the Bigfoot, but they are the ones with the highest numbers. of Bigfoot sightings across the Eastern United States. The common idea here, right, is that this Bigfoot is much like the prominent Loch Ness monster theory. That Bigfoot is some sort of missing link along the evolutionary chain, or just some sort of tall bipedal hominid that we thought long extinct, right, like Gigantopithecus, and then somehow it survived in the remote wilderness, and thrived without evolving, or without kind of becoming extinct, or with, somehow, without human intervention, without us seeing it. For millions of years, or at least the hundreds of thousands that humans have been around. But as unlikely as that sounds, like there are still creatures usually small and in the Amazon, or usually in the depths of the ocean, but there are still creatures that we discover every year. So there's a slim but open possibility that that's real, right, that there is a Bigfoot out there. I mean, super slim, how are they avoiding so many people, the human population, the technology now? Yeah, especially now. Yeah, that gets a little rough. Maybe we can lure them out with a couple of NBA contracts, because if we're talking 12 feet tall. That's true. You could be living the high life, okay? You could get you a nice, high-quality razor, shaving shave, so damn, live a nice, cool life. Yeah. What would a bald Bigfoot look like, and would it look like us? Probably right. It's like a really big person. Yeah, maybe that's how we find out they got like, like, rows of nipples, like a dog, you know, instead of just the two human ones. Yeah, there'd be some weird like that or something, something off. I don't know. We get into the weeds on the theories and the, the bunking and debunking of Bigfoot in its episode. But I've always been fascinated about this creature. I did a, I had one of my first reports that I had to memorize multiple pages of essay was back in like fifth or sixth grade, was on Bigfoot and the Yeti. So history runs deep with this big guy. But not as deep as the history of this next creature with the task force. The possible misunderstood hero or villain will never know, I see your eyes rolling 15, 360s back in your head. We got the moth man. He's back on the docket moth man as another cryptid said to be in the Appalachian area. Let me go ahead and just chuck up this illustration from Tim Bertolink here for you guys. He's, he's terrifying. He's misunderstood hero. He's kind of sexy. We're all over the place with moth man. That's true. He's cheeked up on a Tuesday, but people love him. People love him. They love him. There's a whole festival like where, where we land with this guy, you know what I mean? We got a land somewhere, we got a land somewhere and there's no in between either. You're two camps. He's either the vicious villain that caused a bridge to go down. We'll talk about it or he's just a failed hero that failed so hard. He quit. Because, you know, and we'll talk about that too, but he's got, well I'm glad you're wearing your Batman shirt because this is like a Batman of our time just like weaker, weaker branding, you know? Yeah. He's got his branding together. He's got to get it. Because moths, we talked about this before. They got that dust on him and so like, you know, he's he's walking around. I wouldn't want a moth sized or a, well a moth sized man would be weird, but a man sized moth. That's true. I hate that. Yeah. One size bat. Now, that strikes fear and justice. Oh, definitely. I mean, terrifying little fangs and everything or giant fangs at this point, but a moth, they're just going to the brightest point of light in the room. What else are they doing? All right. So, from the first sighting, we have in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, not too far away from Mountsville, where you guys did that ghost hunt, but this was in the 1960s and witnesses reported seeing a human-like figure with large, expansive wings. And the big thing was piercing red eyes of swooping out of the dark. We give the entire story about the teens that are driving and drifting through the forest when they see this creature at an old factory. But there have been several sightings reported since then. And this led newspapers to dub the creature, moth man, just because the nature of its eyes and its wings and it had some antenna and other probabisky. But soon afterward, the National Press picked up on this very same story and the local legend became a nationwide sensation and it's branded the area. They've got local festivals and everything. But sightings of moth man continued over the following year. And other reports started to ramp up as well. Not only do we have moth man in the area, but now we have other sightings like UFOs, the suspicious men in black are seen investigating the area we did a whole episode on them too. But just mysterious and sometimes bald white men in black suits, poking in prod and following these mysterious tales through the 60s. You know who are they? Is it the government? Is it something else? But unfortunately, on December 15th, 1967, tragedy struck the small town of Point Pleasant. Because of course, they're right there next to the Ohio River and they had silver bridge which crossed that river over into Ohio. Now that bridge collapsed in the middle of rush hour traffic and 46 people were killed in this accident. Now afterwards, because of the heightened moment, we don't know for a fact if it was the accident that begot the eyewitness accounts or if the eyewitness accounts are true. But ultimately many stories came out saying that they claim they saw moth man at the bridge shortly before the collapse. And so many people, you know, this led more people to fear the idea of moth man that he was suddenly now the herald of doom, the harbinger of something unfortunate to come. And sightings of this creature kind of ended immediately after that. But of course, if you listen to our episode on the creature, you may conclude otherwise because up until this moment, it seems like moth man is seen lightly terrorizing young people doing things they shouldn't, you know, pranksters, grave diggers, these guys driving through the forest at great speeds. And that's why I think he might be a misunderstood hero. Could he could be misunderstood? Definitely. I remember this door is a movie, right? There was a movie. Yeah. Richard Geer. Yeah. And when you first see him too, you have these beautiful effects of the two red eyes suddenly jump scare flying at you and you're like, yes, now that happened. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Did we do it? We didn't do that for me. Did we did? I think we did a live watch party on Patreon. And then we uploaded our so you can time code sync it up. I believe if that's still up, that's what it was. So you can kind of watch it with us task force. Yeah. That's the next one you might remember is the bellwitch. Now the bellwitch is widely regarded as one of the most documented cases of a haunting in American history. Now a lot of cases tend to say that they're the most haunted or the most fearful or whatever. But this is one of the most documented, which I find to be very, very fascinating. So the bellwitch case is also the only instance, by the way, of a death being attributed to a paranormal entity. We joke about being thrashed and killed by a ghost. This is the first time and the only time we're legally speaking. It is within the court of law that it's been determined death by paranormal entity or been argued at least. Now the legend starts in 1817 in Adams, Tennessee with a man named John Bell shortly after bell and his family moved into their newly purchased farm. Like always, like all these stories begin, they start to notice strange things. No one gave them the warning when they moved in, but now they're living there. And I do have an illustration of this house, because it's long before photography. Take a look at image B, that is an illustration of the bellwitch house that they moved into. Two story house, maybe like a two fireplace on each end of the house. Yeah. Probably keep it warm, but it's very quaint, very cozy looking. Very cozy looking place. It looks nice. Yeah. I like it, except for the witch. Yeah. Yeah. People apparently didn't warn them about. It's kind of messed up. Hmm. Beautiful house, two stories, two fireplaces, lots to love, little haunted. You know? A little bit. Terrible listing on Zillow. So they move in and okay, so you're asking, what are these things? Let's try to debunk it or maybe there's something to believe here. They're hearing, thumping in the walls. Like inside the walls, we're not talking about modern dry wall where there's maybe you know, insulation or hollow points where creatures can get in, you know, this is an old log cabin. You're hearing the thumping in the walls, unexplained cracking creaking and groaning throughout the house, which could be settling, but the biggest thing that unnerved them was the scratching at the windows and on the second story too. Now at first, the family was completely unfazed. There's a lot of ways you can kind of wave this away and explain it, right? Animals, creatures in the night, whatever. However, the haunting soon escalated and the family started to experience physical attacks. They were pinched, slapped, the children were even pulled from their beds, and most of the attacks centered primarily on John and his daughter Betsy. Sometimes the polter guy seemed to speak to them. They would hurl insults at John specifically so they could even hear them in the darkness. Now of course, I'll say this one more time. I'm greatly truncating a lot of detail here, so there wasn't an episode on this. But ultimately, for years, the family kept the haunting a secret. They would fear what their community would think, what their church would think, if this got out that they're seeing something potentially demonic. Is this a personal thing? What does it mean about us? Now eventually, John told his neighbor about what they had experienced. It just became too much to not share. And their neighbor actually visited and he experienced the same thing, immediately verifying that something was going on. And soon after, it seemed that everyone started to know about the haunting of the bell farm. So the point where people would travel far and wide just to try to catch a glimpse of whatever it was causing this. Now, the poltergeist was eventually named Kate. After again, details go by, they claimed to have communication with this entity. And it claimed to be the witch of a local woman who was named Kate Bats. Now a couple more years go by and John came down with a sudden illness that has since been attributed to this bellwitch. The illness led to John's death with reports saying that he was cursed, poisoned by a mysterious black liquid that came somehow from this entity. Now the reason why they point towards the witch and maybe don't look any closer at the neighbor's family or visitors is that supposedly Kate, the entity, took credit for this death, saying that she poisoned him because he was a bad man. Things then went back to normal for at least some time until the daughter Batsi became engaged to a local man. Then the poltergeist returned. I rate and disapproving of this engagement, she reportedly talked Batsi into ending the engagement and then once again left. But before leaving, promised to return in seven years time. And sure enough, she did return, but this time she's visiting John Bell Jr. And she talked to him for three nights in a row about the past, the present and the future, kind of like I guess a Christmas Carol. She's talking to him like it's the ghost of Christmas past, present and future. And I don't remember honestly, it's been so long since we covered this. I don't remember the details of that, but of course they're in our episode on it. But ultimately those nights go by. John Bell Jr. is kind of reporting on this to the family. And after this, she says she's leaving for good. She explains she wouldn't be back for this time another 107 years. So this would have taken us all the way to 1935, though that's where the story kind of becomes wishy-washy. We don't know if she returned, if she returned to the descendants of the Bell family, or if she returned to the house, the homestead, the town, somebody else. And if she did, maybe she was either missed, misattributed, or maybe she just didn't return. We don't know after that point. But it's unique, though. It has this, I'll come back. And I've, you know, that's not common in these kind of cases. No, it's also, you know, that's a good chunk of time. So you're stuck in this weird limbo where it's like, okay, it's so far out that I should just continue my life. Right. It's also going to be something that is on its way here. So do I prepare, do I chill for a bit, then prepare? Like it's, it's almost worse because it's always in the back of your mind. It's always in the back of your mind, but you have the privilege. And maybe your kids have the privilege of being like, hey, you don't got to worry about it. But, but someone, some of your progeny somewhere down the line will, I was about to say, someone is going to have to deal with this and it's kind of, it's just like, you're just kicking the bucket. Right. Right. You're kicking the can down the road. You're kicking the bucket. You know, you know, you're kicking the can. There you go. There you go. Just a small bucket. But hopefully you kick the bucket. You'll got to deal with it. But then it's like, I don't know. I'm sorry. This is something that I dealt with and you will have to deal with it. Situation. That sucks. Imagine you're just born to any old family. You just have the privilege of existing in this, in this life. You're the chemical magic that is a self-aware flesh and blood piece of material. And you, you're talking to your, your parents and they go, honey, we have a, a visitor coming and it's been 106 years since she said this, but you're the one that's going to have to face this. You know, I don't know what I would do if I knew that that was happening in my time. I wouldn't want to put up with it. That's the, I might, I might look forward to it. You have a young choice. You have no choice. Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to convince myself that it would be interesting. Right. She was looking out for the, for Betsy. Don't marry the bad man. Yes, she did kill your, you know, great, great grandfather or something, but maybe he was bad. You know, so just be a good guy. And this ghost might look out for you, help you with your gene gray powers, you know. That really was becoming excellent. Well, what way can we do it? You're looking for your ex gene to be woken up. I'm looking for other ways, you know, shortcuts. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point. You're like, I'll take the, the different route here. Okay. Maybe you could learn some witchcraft. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Anyway, it never did happen, but I feel like that would be a terrible story to inherit. You know, it'd be another one if you were like, Oh, thank God, I can just pass that off to my kid. You know, okay. Next up, again, not an exhaustive list of everything going on. We have two more things here, but we have the flatwoods monster in the summer of 1952. You have two brothers, Edward and Fred May, and they were having a normal afternoon together playing football on the playground at the flatwood school. You know, just doing what two brothers do with the names Ed and Fred. Now, suddenly they saw as many of these encounters begin a bright streak in the sky. And it's not just kind of floating there. It shoots by in the sky above them. And then they see it land in the nearby property of a local farmer. And so they go, uh, Ed, Fred, what the heck was that? And wisely, they don't go chasing it immediately. They rush home. They tell their mother, Kathleen May, about what they saw. They armor up with some witnesses. They say, Hey, we saw an unidentified flying object. And then the entire May family pulls together, you know, May family strong, you know, together strong. They then get some of their friends and they head out to the farm. Now, this is good instincts. And when they get there, they see an object in the woods. It's glowing red. And they say they see some steam emanating out from it. And inside whatever this thing was, this orb that opens up is a 10 foot monster with a blood red face and a fluorescent green body. Now, you might recognize this image because to beat a dead horse here, we've covered this one. But take a look at this. Oh, yeah. It's the weird, it's like an alien robotic type of. Yeah. I remember that. I was like, this is one of the weird cryptid for sure. Yes. It's got like a water droplet shapes kind of glass type helmet, these two glowing eyes, robot torso and a skirt or a dress, something something really weird. Yeah. Now, of course, again, glossing over some of the details, but ultimately upon seeing this monster, it reportedly hissed and then floated toward the group. Kathleen was later quoted saying the creature quote, looked worse than Frankenstein. The group then ran out of the woods and reported their finding to the local sheriff. And one hour later, several armed men reportedly returned to the scene wherever they saw this entity. And again, with all the steam, heat and glow, it does sound like a mechanical creature that's running hot or something, you know. It does. They get there, you know, these armed men, they report a foul odor. They saw like heat waves in the air. You know, when you see like a mirage or like super hot air and it's kind of warbly, they're reporting this. And so coupling all that together, it does sound like some super hot machinery or something that if it entered the atmosphere and crashed, would be glowing red hot and would be emanating a lot of heat. But from here, it kind of becomes a mystery because what was found was reportedly gathered and then sent off to Washington DC never to be seen again among what was sent. And again, this is all we really have our metal fragments and an oil stain that was taken from Kathleen's dress. Somehow an oil had become stained on her dress and that became a sample that they took back to DC. Now, the theories kind of run the gambit on this one, but it is very interesting because it's one of those UFO cases that has so much unique detail that it doesn't just kind of copy pace what we normally hear about. It's unique looking creature. Definitely and very detailed too. And whatever, not that we'd ever know is government, but it's like, what ever happened to a sample? Yeah, that's the thing. I want to know what that sample turned out to be. You know, if it's a carbon based oil, you know, like, okay, yeah, sure, carbon based life forms could be all over the place, but I'm like, is this an oil of this earth, or is there something weird about it? Is it a hydrocarbon that we're aware of, or is it like, I don't know, you know? Like, or honestly, like, maybe I joke about this in that episode, but this reminds me of some sort of like, farmer who was like smarter than they then he got credit for, was working on some sort of advanced machinery, and he was caught, you know, like maybe somehow like, I don't know, the logistics here, but maybe somehow a light cast into the sky that brought attention down to him, and he's like, this was one of my machinations, you know, like the Wizard of Oz or something. - Is yeah, yeah, a good point. - I don't know, but it's interesting. I really like this creature, and I think Task Force really resonated with it as well. But speaking of UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomenon, here's something I don't believe we have covered. The Brown Mountain lights, and this refers to a phenomenon seen in the night sky above specifically, Brown Mountain in North Carolina. I have two images of this phenomenon, one in color and one in infrared. - Whoa, ton of lights. Kinda like, I don't know, it's weird. It's like an interesting shape, kinda like a person with really skinny legs. - Wait, huh? Person with skinny legs? - Just like the shape of it. I don't know, it's just very weird. It's like a dime with like a point, like a long way. - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like some sort of Rorschach test. I was curious, I was like, what are you looking at? I see what you're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Just trying to like, simplify what the image looks like. And there's a ton of them. - It looks like, yeah, like a ball of light with like a vertical streak of light down through it. - Yeah, yeah, well, it's weird, it's weird. - Mm-hmm. So these lights have been seen for decades over Brown Mountain. - Decades? - Yeah, dude. And like, the second image definitely looks like either one along exposure to a shooting star or like a meteorite falling through the atmosphere, but what you'll see on the left side there is there's kind of a zig and zag. - Yes. - You know, that's not super common for something entering the atmosphere without some level of control. So, and they could also be blurry from again, the exposure or from movement. This is one of many photos that I have seen that wasn't kind of editing itself. A lot of people edit those lights in the sky and make them look a little different or try to make them more prominent. So they're a little modified. But ultimately, as you can kind of understand here, there are unexplained lights that have been spotted in the sky for actually over a century, dude. Witnesses describe them as glowing orbs that hover before then exploding or suddenly disappearing or shooting off into the distance. Now, the thing that makes these really interesting, Frato, is that these precede a lot of the top secret projects that we talk about in Project Blue Book, you know, we talk about a lot of unclassified top secret aircraft that come out through the 50s, 60s and 70s. The first reported sighting of this is in 1913, okay? There's a fisherman who claimed to see a strange moving light above the horizon and from there reports continued. And initially, the US Geological Society determined that the lights were not strange orbs or anything like that, but instead headlights of trains, cars and other natural lights that might be passing through the area. And this explanation was widely believed and taken at face value until 1916. Just a few years later, this theory was challenged and ultimately widely believed to be disproven, almost by accident. Because there was a major flood that ripped through the area that year and this washed out roads and bridges, it took out power for several weeks and yet, during this time, when no cars or trains could pass through the area, no lights would be in the area because the power outage, these strange orbs still showed up. Now, there's a few theories about what these orbs might be in recent weeks, actually. We went deep into what orb light could be explained by, but Native American folklore says that these orbs might be ghosts and spirits of grieving women searching for fallen warriors. As this was the site of a gruesome battle between the Cherokee and the Kataba tribes. And many, as you can imagine, perished in that fight. Now, in recent years, researchers have concluded that these orbs are likely what's known as ball lightning and potentially mountain gases naturally found in the area. Now, ball lightning is a very rare but real phenomenon where glowing spheres appear during thunderstorms. They're not fully understood as to how they form, why they form, et cetera. They're still lightly unexplained, but they've been seen so often that they're understood and, you know, science is after the answer, right? But there isn't a single consensus for this. You know, scientists believe that it's caused by either vaporized silicon, plasma bubbles, or ions producing electrical discharge, again, trying to truncate possible scientific explanation. You know, there are geographical regions as to why these might be here. Methane released by decaying matter is another thing that could kind of float up into the air and for whatever reasons, spontaneously combust or oxidize. And this could create small flames or glowing lights. Again, there's room for the skeptic here with a lot of answers, but many people are believers simply because of that 1916, essentially debunking of those more human-based reasons. The thing, too, is just like once you get towards some more modern times, the crazy thing is that this has been a thing for a very, very long time and still kind of unidentified. The thing is what you get towards modern times, I've seen people do crazy stuff with their cameras in the exposure time. And so, just like dang, like lights now, it just kind of succumbed to that category of like it could just be someone with a DSLR that is just doing some tricks with the exposure. - Everyone's always like, we got these fork, I mean, we've been guilty of saying this. Everyone's got these 4K phones in their pockets. Why aren't they capturing high definition? You know, ultra-high-D proof of like anything. But with that advanced technology, it comes even more routes to fake it. Those are many of the things that have happened throughout this region, not exhaustive. Maybe task force, if there's anything big we missed, let us know in the comments in the discord. Anywhere you interact with this podcast because maybe we'll revisit the Appalachian area with more rules, more superstitions, and more, you know, I mean, we didn't even touch the Jersey Devil, which admittedly I think is slightly out of this region, but it's nearby. But there's like plenty of things that happen in this area. But while it's clear there are several different local legends around the Appalachian region as a whole, there's no one theory that can explain them all. - No. - You know, there's a few debated theories as to why it's such an area that is haunted and contains so many stories. And that's kind of what we'll talk about. But otherwise, like I said, each of these has their own episode to really try to address each of them. But first off, let's talk about the geography. Because again, the Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. I talked about, you know, the 480 million years of weathering they've gone through, but there have been core samples throughout these mountains that they date over a billion years old. - That's like a reasonable measure of the universe and it's age. - It makes you realize that we're such a tiny like blip on the timeline, man. - We barely exist. - Yeah. - You know, we're so small and so facet big, we're over. And the grand ticking of the clock of the universe age were not even a full second of the universe's 24 hour clock. Now, fun fact, throughout its ancient history, geographical models indicate it once rivaled the Himalayas and its oppressive mountainous range. You know, so there's reasons to believe that this was once the tallest or at least one of the tallest mountain ranges in the world. And so now when you see its rolling hills, its soft mountains, it really gives you an appreciation for its age visually. I love the smokies. I love this region. Now, this typography being so old, being so weathered, allows for deep hollows, extensive caves and extremely isolated environments where shadows can become exaggerated. Cell service doesn't exist in modern times, but even in like the 17th century, like we're talking about, or 18th century, horse and buggy is gonna be hard to permeate these areas. And for all of these reasons, you know, combined with the lack of light pollution, its remote isolation, you know, you have very dark nights and the bubbling fears that arise with that. Of course, you also have the geography, which is organically creepy and unsettling, but also dangerous on its own. Perhaps the terrain isn't haunted, but rather an extremely isolated and treacherous piece of earth, especially at night. You know, a lot of our missing 4-1-1 cases we've talked about, where people go disappearing in the blink of an eye in the wilderness, happen in places like this. There could be caves that are uncharted that you just fall into and no one ever finds you again. - True. - So the geography itself could be the monster hiding in the night. - I mean, it also could just be a hub, right? - You know, that's true. - Yeah, we talked about earlier how there isn't like one theory that brings it all together. It's like, well, yeah, what if it's a hub? - It could be a hub, a collection of all these theories, an attractor for the sinister, because again, if there is some sort of metaphysical realm, Another dimension, another dimension. plane of whatever? Where else would they be except for one of the most ancient places on Earth, right? At a point, it is an ancient place. Yeah, I mean, even just as a story, of course it would be an attractor for entities or what have you. But moving into the next kind of sweeping theory for the whole region, is that of oral tradition? Because it's thought that people, you know, have settled in these rural isolated places for so long that stories and legends have just simply stood the test of time. Those communities sometimes become insular because travel in and out of them at least in the early colonial times were extremely difficult. And so these stories kind of bounce around the region until now in modern times they can pop out. And so they stay pure and unique and interesting until they can flee rather than being permeated by other stories and blended and, you know, like mixed in with other ghost stories. And so they have this natural societal purity to them because simply because of the isolation, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's a good point. Who knows what could be brewing an isolation, you know? Like a story just snowballs, what became eerie to you, you kind of, you know, like when you have kids or family members, you want to ham it up a little bit, you know, there might be truth to the origin in some way. There might be true stories, but within that, you know, maybe some of these stories simply aren't truth at all, but rather stories that have snowballed into what they are now, right? Whether they started true or not, they have the game of telephone and isolation has kept them kind of pinging off the walls until they evolve. You know, for example, I mentioned this before, you know, maybe it starts in truth that, you know, don't go to the woods at night. Maybe the truth to that is simply an early warning in the 1800s. Like, hey little Huck Johnson, don't go wandering out at night because we got this candlelit cabin and our lights don't emanate beyond the porch. You know, there's there's steep cliffs and I don't know, do you trip and twist an ankle and just stay out overnight and just succumb to nature. Who knows what might befall you in the dark? Yeah. It doesn't always have to be a creature. That's that's true. And then from there, it spins into this whole tale and everything. Yeah. Yeah, like, oh, if you do go out at night, there is a creature. So that will further keep you indoors, right? I also put in my notes here, I'm not sure why it evolved into don't roam the woods at night, but if you do, don't use a light because that might attract because I'm, because now that's kind of counterintuitive to this theory, you know, if you're trying to like, protect oneself from the treacherous nature of the dark or what have you. Right. You would want to lie. Yeah, I mean, unless it like brings a town wanted attention, like, is that what we're getting at? Yeah. I mean, yeah, then then we start to fall into the camp of, yes, we are trying to protect you from the monsters that walk amongst the forest or any, any, maybe person that's wandering around. But what have you? I don't know. It's interesting to kind of dissect how these could start or why. But ultimately, this theory states that it became part of the social norm to use these stories as a way to warn travelers about the actual logistical dangers, right? Getting lost in the woods, falling into an uncharted cave. What have you? And while I'm mentioning this, there are, I will say this because there's probably people thinking it, there are bobcats in the area. However, while they may be the source of many cries that one might hear in the night, you know, it appears that there has never been a documented human fatality caused by a bobcat attack, which is impressive as it is kind of relieving. Interesting. Yeah. Because this is not common for, you know, maybe other cats of prey across the world. It's not a common thing for these cats to be killing. It's just not that they haven't, right? And so this is interesting that bobcats kind of stay out of sight, stay away from people. Yeah. I think for the most part, a lot of animals just like don't want anything to do with humans are like, uh, get away from it. Yeah. Yeah. Now this last one does kind of talk about the land and its history because others speculate that the lore of the land stems from the immense tragedy that the land has seen, the scars that accidents have left on them, and the land has seen both literal and spiritual bloodshed from early settlers, Native American feuds, the civil war, coal mining disasters, widespread poverty and the illness and sickness and disease that that spreads. Not to mention again, the eon, literal eon of extinct creatures who once roamed this area. Now, I'm not saying that you're going to be haunted by the ghost of a T-Rex, though why wouldn't that be possible? I don't know. I mean, good point. Maybe I don't know. Like what point did you? Is it? I don't know. Is there like an IQ thing? Like why aren't we being haunted by other things? Yeah. Well, Mr. T Rex, it seems that you didn't pass the IQ test. Therefore, you don't get the choice to go back to earth. Yeah. It's like, I don't know. Like what about like apes? Yeah. All right. He's a very old damn high dolphins. Yeah. Ghost dolphins. Why don't we have ghost dolphins? Or maybe we do, and they're just all underwater. The hold on. That's a good question. Like why are like what determines only humans get to come back? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how do you childs and like children and stuff like that? I don't know. He goes to children and yeah. Now, I've always thought ghost being a ghost would be a just a horrible way to exist because you're just locked down to one spot. You got nothing but time to kill. Maybe that's why you start haunting people. But maybe it's that over time. If ghosts are real, you just eventually fade into something else or nonexistence or maybe you just get bored with it or maybe I don't know. You know, maybe you are actively haunting a place and then you start to see the ghosts of T Rex's and you just, you know, lay in low. I mean, I don't know how it all works. Yeah. But I want to go out to see now and I want to drop a mic down below the ocean. I want to be like ghosts of dolphins past. If you're here, give us a sign and you'll hear. It's not coming. That's good. It was good. It was subtle. It worked. It might be possible. That's all I'm saying. They pass your IQ test. I'd be more likely to like ping out with a ghost dolphin, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. You could fool me with that. Dolphins could be dicks, though, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I don't know. So I was curious. Okay, let's get back to the T Rex ghost. Let's stay on track here. So I was curious what kind of ancient monsters used to rule these lands. And back during a time, there was a time when this area was an island. You know, when a huge body of water used to run through the great plains and this whole region was just an island known as Appalachia. There was a like a cousin to the T Rex that was like 8 to 10 feet tall. So way more horrifying because if it got you, it would hurt more. You wouldn't just die instantly. You'd be thrashed about or whatever. Did you know that there's a dinosaur named the Appalachiosaurus? No, no. Yeah. That just like roamed in that area. Yeah, it just used to live when this was like a dedicated island. I mean, it was way bigger than the Appalachians themselves, but like, yeah, it, uh, it was like an 8 to 10 foot tall iteration of the T Rex. Dang. Okay. Yeah. So you kind of make eye contact with this thing. Be kind of nasty. But ultimately, this theory is one we've seen before, right? That tragedy on a piece of land has the ability in some way possibly to imprint on the landscape, affect it with activity, maybe leave ghost behind, or just in some way, impartant energy that we humans can somehow sense without fully understanding yet. Now, this theory also states that because of the tragedy of the land, it seems to be more haunted or maybe attractive to ghosts, spirits, cryptids, because of this energy. It's kind of like the instinct you had. Like, maybe it's just a great attractor just due to its history. Though it's also possible, like we've said, that the history of this place colors one's expectations of what you might encounter in the area. If I grew up, and Mima was telling me that, uh, I might hear her voice calling from the basement, but it's not her. Man, that's gonna happen to me at some point. But either way, man, it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop this, this area from being alive and thriving with eerie stories to tell. Man, I am a big fan, whether they're fact fiction or somewhere where I want them to be real, but also from over there. Like, I'm so interested in this folklore. It's fascinating. But all in all, it's a beautiful region of the country. If you haven't been there, you should absolutely check it out. But that is at least a scratching of the surface of Appalachian folklore, Fredo, lots to unpack, lots familiar territory. What do you think? What are you feeling? What surprised you maybe about this? I just think it feels like a hub. Yeah, it feels like a hub for all these different things, which is really cool. And then from there, it's what you want to explore. You want to explore alien-type things, you want to explore cryptids, witches. How does it's got it all? It feels like it does have it all, but also the same time. This is a piece of land that's been around well before we've been around. And so I'm just like, uh, you know, who's to say? I mean, now I'm realizing squunks in here. Yeah, I was thinking about earlier. In the northern wetlands of Pennsylvania. I am surprised that it extends up into Pennsylvania so much. I've been through Pennsylvania beautiful plays, rolling hills for sure, a lot of flat ups. there too. Very fine. Man, Pennsylvania is a beautiful state, though. All of these states are gorgeous. Big fan. Well, anyway, now if you go, you'll, you'll understand at least a little bit of that sinister history and it will be a little harder to sleep at night when the, when the sun goes down. But if you ever hear a voice in the dark calling your name, just don't be doing it. I was just thinking that just don't, just don't. You know, I mean, Nike just do it. Just don't, you know, that's our, that's our slogan. It says Redweb, just don't, if you heard it, you didn't, and that's how it goes. You didn't know you didn't. No, you didn't task force. Thank you all so much. A few shout outs here. Our newest member of the task force, also a buff scientist is King tyranny. And we also have our buff scientist of the weak shepherd XQ. And then our squunks, aptly for, for the Appalachian episode, we've got Brett Omura, Zara Thustra, Andy Schrock and Gavin Day, just a name of you. You've all been wonderful. And thank you all so much. This is our biggest month of the year. And again, we have so much going on, whether it be our haunted house vlog, our ghost hunt vlog, our ghost hunt itself, the scary stories and the movie clubs and the the themed episodes that we're doing this month. Everything is a little bit different, but they all contain in some way the eerie unresolved, the unknown and the haunted. But with that, Fredo, a happy Halloween. I'll see you next week for the ghost hunt where you and I, we didn't plan super well, but we both wore this very shirt. We did the Patreon exclusive and our only patron exclusive merch so far. Redweb mystery tour shirt. Check it out if you're a Patreon member. Go grab it. You guys really like that shirt. It is a good shirt. It's one of my favorites. Now we keep, we keep it every new release. I'm like, new favorite, new favorite, new favorite. We try to top it. We try to do more, but you know, we don't want to follow you guys. We want to try and do better and better every time. So thank you. Absolutely. All right, Fredo, with all that said, I'll see you right back here next Monday for our ghost hunt.