Haunts & Hollows: True Tales Of The Gothic South

A thundershower of gore rains down on a Tennessee tobacco field. Biblical stories tell of frogs, eels, blood and more falling from the skies. Raw meat and gristle blanket a South Carolina cotton farm and foretell the end of days.

A collection of true tales from the Gothic South with a single thread running through: the undeniable presence of blood—in unbelievable quantities—where it simply shouldn’t be. 

In this episode:

• The tiny town of Coalburg, Alabama, where dark clouds rained down millions of slithering eels on a warm evening in 1892

• The Macon, Georgia, blood fall of 1842 that included chunks of meat, gristle, and organs that weighed up to 25 pounds

• The 1843 blood fall in Laurens, South Carolina, that one popular preacher identified at a deadly omen portending the Book of Revelations

• The infamous Atlanta Blood House that seeped gallons of type O blood from the walls, floorboards and crawl spaces in September 1987

• The Lebanon, Tennessee, blood fall of 1841 that spread gore for more than 800 yards across a field of terrified farm hands 

What falls from the sky in the American South? Sometimes it’s rain or snakes or eels. And sometimes it’s blood.

Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter >

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales Of The Gothic South is where true crime meets Southern folklore. Every other week, mystery author Liam Ashe digs past the haunted plantations, urban legends, and moss-draped cemeteries to uncover the real, often much darker history behind them. Lower the lights, lock the doors, and settle in. Tonight, the truth may just be stranger than the legend.

Subscribe and you’ll get an intro to every episode, including early access and an exclusive Research Folio.

Music courtesy of Geoff Harvey, Pixabay.

A popular granny who poisoned her family for the money and the laughs. An angel of death nurse who kept a list of the souls she saved. A teen babysitter who smothered her young charges for no reason at all.

Six true tales from the Gothic South with a single thread running through: woman who, for either money or reasons they couldn’t explain, killed family, friends, and complete strangers.

In this episode:

• West Virginia “Angel of Death” nursing assistant Reta Phyllis Mays who was suspected of killing more than a dozen elderly veterans starting in 2017

• The bizarre case of nurse Bobbie Sue Terrell whose story included arson, psychiatric care, self-harm, and string of shocking deaths at Saint Petersburg’s North Horizon Health Center in the 1980s

• Florida native Christine Laverne Slaughter who was charged with the smothering and shaking deaths of six infants who had been entrusted to her care

• The South Carolina story of Lavinia Fisher, a 19th century inn keeper and alleged highwayman, who was said to have run a profitable murder ring as one of America’s earliest female serial killers

• Church-going grandmother Janie Lou Gibbs from Cordele, Georgia, who used arsenic to kill her husband, grandson, and three sons

• The infamous Nannie Doss, known as the Giggling Granny, an American serial killer responsible for the deaths of nearly a dozen people between 1927 and 1954

Listener discretion advised for graphic true crime content.

Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter >

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales Of The Gothic South is where true crime meets Southern folklore. Every other week, mystery author Liam Ashe digs past the haunted plantations, urban legends, and moss-draped cemeteries to uncover the real, often much darker history behind them. Lower the lights, lock the doors, and settle in. Tonight, the truth may just be stranger than the legend.

Subscribe and you’ll get an intro to every episode, including early access and an exclusive Research Folio.

Music courtesy of Geoff Harvey, Pixabay.

A devious Atlanta bride whose careful planning couldn’t ensure her new husband’s death. The sensational murder trial of a South Florida socialite ends with a question mark. An Alabama serial killer who disappeared only to return as her own twin sister.

Six true tales from the Gothic South with a single thread running through: woman who said “Til death do us part” and truly meant it.

In this episode:

• The historic true crime case of Frankie Silver who, in 1833, became the first white woman executed in North Carolina

• The 1805 murder trial of Polly Barclay who paid her brother and her lover to shoot her husband as he returned to their farm in Wilkes County, Georgia

• The sensational case of Daisy Grace who shot her husband Eugene in 1912 but managed to secure her freedom on a technicality

• The unsolved murder of Jacques Mossler, possibly by his eccentric wife Candy Mossler and nephew Mel Powers, in his Key Biscayne apartment

• Florida serial killer Judy Buenoano who used arsenic, a canoe trip, and explosives to take care of husbands, boyfriends, and her own son

• The bizarre case of serial killer Audrey Marie Hilley who escaped prison more than once before dying in the Alabama wilderness

Listener discretion advised for graphic true crime content.

Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter >

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales Of The Gothic South is where true crime meets Southern folklore. Every other week, mystery author Liam Ashe digs past the haunted plantations, urban legends, and moss-draped cemeteries to uncover the real, often much darker history behind them. Lower the lights, lock the doors, and settle in. Tonight, the truth may just be stranger than the legend.

Subscribe and you’ll get an intro to every episode, including early access and an exclusive Research Folio.

Music courtesy of Geoff Harvey, Pixabay.

A deadly tornado that claims the lives of dozens of child workers. A second storm that brings fire, heartache, and many more deaths. An invisible killer that snuffs out the living before they even know there’s an alarm.

Four tragic true tales from the Gothic South with a single thread running through: a small southern town that can’t escape death, no matter how hard it tries.

In this episode:

• The Kelly Barnes Dam collapse of 1977 that nearly wiped a small Southern bible college off the map
• The 1903 Georgia Cotton Mill disaster that claimed more than 50 lives
• The Gainesville Tornado of 1936 and the Cooper Pants Factory tragedy that left more than 200 locals dead and more than 2,000 homeless
• The 2021 industrial accident at a Foundation Food Group poultry plant that killed six and injured a dozen more

Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter >

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales Of The Gothic South is where true crime meets Southern folklore. Every other week, mystery author Liam Ashe digs past the haunted plantations, urban legends, and moss-draped cemeteries to uncover the real, often much darker history behind them. Lower the lights, lock the doors, and settle in. Tonight, the truth may just be stranger than the legend.

Subscribe and you’ll get an intro to every episode, including early access and an exclusive Research Folio.

Music courtesy of Geoff Harvey, Pixabay.

A doomed railroad man still swinging his phantom lantern. A Confederate soldier haunting a Greensboro cemetery with half a skull and an empty canteen. A bizarre true story of Lincoln assassination conspirator whose head went missing for more than 100 years before it was buried.

Three tragic tales from the Gothic South with a single thread running through: when you bury a body without its head, you’re going to get a ghost.

In this episode:

• The legend of Joe Baldwin, a Carolina railway worker who lost his head in a tragic collision at Rattlesnake Bend

• The Lonely Ghost of Greensboro Cemetery, a young private who took a cannon ball head on and never lived to tell his own tale

• The true tale of Lewis Powell, a violent Civil War soldier and failed assassin whose body was returned to his family without his head

Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter >

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales Of The Gothic South is where true crime meets Southern folklore. Every other week, mystery author Liam Ashe digs past the haunted plantations, urban legends, and moss-draped cemeteries to uncover the real, often much darker history behind them. Lower the lights, lock the doors, and settle in. Tonight, the truth may just be stranger than the legend.

Subscribe and you’ll get an intro to every episode, including early access and an exclusive Research Folio.

Music courtesy of Geoff Harvey, Pixabay.

A young lothario who was flayed alive for his illicit intentions. Two predators that stalked Lover’s Lanes in the early 20th century. A vicious serial killer who hunted the South’s lonely highways for more than a decade.

A collection of terrifying tales from the Gothic South with a single thread running through: the vicious killers who stalk the innocent youth on Lover’s Lane.

In this episode:

• The 20th century urban legends of the Dead Boyfriend, the Killer with a Hooked Hand, and Skinned Tom

• The Petting Party Bandit that terrorized Memphis, Tennessee, in the 1920s

• The Atlanta Lover’s Lane Killer that killed three and wounded three others in the 1970s

• The Colonial Parkway Killer that hunted along Virginia’s rural highways in 1980s and 1990s, although a dead man may be guilty of the more than dozen murders

Listener discretion advised for graphic true crime content.

Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter >

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales Of The Gothic South is where true crime meets Southern folklore. Every other week, mystery author Liam Ashe digs past the haunted plantations, urban legends, and moss-draped cemeteries to uncover the real, often much darker history behind them. Lower the lights, lock the doors, and settle in. Tonight, the truth may just be stranger than the legend.

Subscribe and you’ll get an intro to every episode, including early access and an exclusive Research Folio.

Music courtesy of Geoff Harvey, Pixabay.