March 26, 2025 • 19 mins
George Noory and author Mark Muncy explore stories of ghosts and bizarre creatures in the Smoky Mountains, including the Lightning Ladies of Tennessee, the Native American legend of Spearfinger, and a vampire like creature on a bloody Civil War battlefield.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.
Author Mark Munsey with Us has written many books on
the topic of sci fi and horror. Host the Eerie
Travels podcast. Mark has been featured in many documentaries, including
the Course of Robert, the Hunt Doll in the Trail
of UFOs. Mark, welcome back. How have you been?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh great, good to hear you again. George. It's been
a while, so it is.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You concentrate a lot on Florida, but you're moving a
little bit into the Tennessee North Carolina area, now.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Huh, Yeah, the Appalachians called me back. I grew up
in West Virginia Kentucky area, right on that border, and
so that was the folklore of my youth. We moved
down to Florida. I was there for three decades or more.
But as I was doing these Florida stories, I kept
(01:00):
stumbling on all these wonderful Appalachian folk tales and the
cryptids up there, and more and more of the bigfoot
hunters and ghost hunters. We're talking about these amazing places
all along that. So that became my focus for the
next five years and now really deep diving into the Smokies.
And I've even moved here. I'm now in western North
(01:22):
Carolina in the Hills of the Smokies.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I've got a live show coming up in April
in the Charlotte, North Carolina. It's a gorgeous area.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, we love Charlotte. That's about mid state. It's a
beautiful We did a recent event, there was a Bigfoot
event over there that was a lot of fun. So
hopefully head back that way soon. We'll hope to catch
your show.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So absolutely. Now You've got a book coming out in
August called The Eerie Travel Presents Dark Side of the
Smoky Mountains, Right.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, that's what we've been working on for a couple
of years now. And my co host of the Pie Cast,
Eric Alance, She's chiming in on this one with fun
places to eat and fun places to visit while I'm
doing all the deep dives on all the spooky you
know and crazy stuff with the folklore, the legends, the cryptids,
the ghosts, all that fun stuff. And then my lovely
(02:16):
wife Carrie Schultz illustrating it like always.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
How scary are the appellations.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Oh, if you really start deep diving into this, you
find that it is probably one of the darkest places
on the planet. I mean, it's the oldest mountain range
in the world. Everybody thinks of the Himalayas, the Rockies
and all that. The reason the appalations are kind of
smaller is they've been worn down by years, and so
(02:47):
there are these There are places here. One of the
forests is live in is the not Tahilia Forest, which
means land of the Noonday Sun, because at noon's the
only time the sun hits certain spots in these valleys
and these hollers and coves. And that's why there's so
many dark history and so many dark legends. And then
(03:09):
there's so much national forest out there that there are
things out there that we may never find, and that's
why it's beautiful. It's the last true wilderness.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Mark has sent us about six illustrations that we've got
on the Coast to Coast dam dot com highlight Reel website.
Just go take a look at some of those. Some
of those are pretty down scary.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Mark, Yeah, some are pretty creepy. We've got One of
my favorites is the lightning lady, which is a fun
story out of a place called Cade's Cove, which is
a pretty popular tourist spot. It's right in the near
towns in Tennessee. They call it the Sleepy side of
the Smokies. It's before you get to Bidge and Forge
(03:53):
and Gatlinburg and all the touristy spots. And they've preserved it.
It's like a historical area with old buildings and cabins
and stuff like that. And there was this legend of
this church there where a bride was being married and
on her wedding day, out of the blue sky she
(04:13):
got struck by lightning and died. And then these people
growing up in that area are terrified of it. And
there's this one lady who is so terrified of it
that she refuses to knit with metal needles, and she refuses,
he refuses to have metal furniture in her house, and
(04:34):
to the point where her husband's not allowed to have
a metal bed. And finally she gets sick, starts failing health,
and she tells her husband, look, you're gonna have to
remarry after I go, but never have any metal furniture
in the house. And he's like, okay. She dies and
(04:54):
he gets a new bride, and the new bride's like,
oh no, all this wood furniture's got to go. I
need a it's not comfortable. So he gets a metal bed,
and sure enough, a few days later, the young bride
is kicked out of bed in the night by an
unseen force and the bed is struck by lightning. So
now there's two lightning ladies of Cade's cove. And when
(05:18):
we went there to study the story, the park rangers
were asking him about it, and he says, funny, there's
something I need to show you. And he walks us
a little ways away from the from the church, and
there's a rock there that is covered in soot and
you touch it and he brushes it off and you
realize it's a copper vein, and he's like, and it
(05:40):
just gets repeatedly struck, struck by lightning. It's like a
natural lightning rod. So maybe that's why these ladies were
struck by lightning, as they were just so close to this,
you know, rock vein there.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So why does that area mark seem to be so
mysteriously haunted?
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I think think I got to go back with the
whole John Keel and the Mothman prophecies that there's just
these windows that he called them, these hot spots, you know,
like the Bermuda Triangle or up near Point Pleasant, West
Virginia and all that, And that's part of the Appalachians.
I think the Appalachians, and this particularly the Smokies, they
have that the reason they're called the Smokies is that
(06:21):
mist that rises from them. It's a natural phenomena, but
maybe it's just triggering things. Plus, there's so many caves
and minerals. I mean, this was the gym capital of
the world, so there's crystals everywhere, constant crystal mining and
all that. So it's it's just I think that's what
(06:42):
triggers it all. There's there's there's more. I'm sure there's
science here that we don't understand.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Tell me the methodology you use to research the upcoming book.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Well, first things first is collecting stories. I talked to
a lot of local historians, but then I also talked
to Cherokee storytellers Cherokee historians, because they're you know, they're
big in this area. That's where they this was the
land they called home before we got here. But then
(07:15):
I also get out and go out with bigfoot hunters
and ghost hunters and UFO hunters, and I get their
stories and the places they the hotspots that they like
to go to, and then I'll tie all that in
with folklore and then true history. I'll dig into the
newspaper archives, historical societies and somehow I try to get
(07:36):
a piece it all together and get what I think
is an accurate representation of the hotspot or the legend.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, with Mark Munsey, we're talking about a haunted area
around the Appellachians, and we're going to get into a
lot of different things that have been happening out there.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
What would you.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Say, Mark, might have been the scariest moment for you
when you were doing your research.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
There's a row road in the Smokies that's called the
Tail of the Dragon. It's pretty famous. It's a lot
of motorcycle people and people with fancy cars love to
drive it because there's three hundred and eleven turns in
eleven miles. It winds through the Smoky mountains and it's
(08:19):
pretty high up and there are some deep cliffs right
next to the road, and a lot of people die
on this road. It's probably one of the most depths
in the United States every year on that road because
people always try to take it at record speeds and
all that. So it's a very dangerous road. And we
were on that looking for a story of a ghost writer,
(08:42):
like right out of the Marvel comic books, a skeletal headed,
headless horseman, but on a motorcycle. But while we were
on it, sure enough, we very close to falling off
of a cliff. So that was pretty terrifying, and I
think the real scare sometimes are scarier than any legend.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
What is Spearfinger? What was that?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Okay, Spearfinger is one of those If you ask the
Cherokee about Spearfinger, they speak about her in hush tones.
She is the stone Witch, a shape changing creature of
ancient times that would has a very long finger that
was like a dagger, and she was made of stone,
(09:29):
and then she would steal your liver like Hannibal Lecter
Stylehe and the Cherokee actually banded together. Several villages that
had been at war with each other banded together to
hunt this lady. She would turn into an old lady,
or she would turn into a beautiful lady, and she
would infiltrate your family or your village and slowly kill
(09:50):
everybody by drinking their livers. So they actually had to
fight to stop her and the Ninaway, which are basically
like the higher beings of the Cherokee. They sent birds
to warn the warriors on where to strike her because
she was so impervious to weapons. And the titmouse comes
(10:12):
in and says, you know, cries to kill her in
the heart, but they keep shooting her heart. It's bouncing off.
They didn't realize her heart was in her hand. So
they send down the Carolina chickadee, and the chickadee points
to her hand and says he or here, and that's
where they are able to kill her supposedly, but her
spirit still haunts the land. But that's why the Carolina
(10:33):
chickty is supposed to be good luck. When you go
on a trip, If you see a Carolina chickadee, you're
gonna come back safe. So do that before you go
on the tail of the dragon. That's what I recommend.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Well marks wild as these stories are, there's got to
be some basis of truth behind the folklore, don't you think?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I one hundred percent agree? I think Spearfinger there is
real fear there when people talk about it, and if
you start looking into it, you realize the story of
Spearfinger is very similar to what we you know, the
Navajo called skinwalkers. It's very similar to stories that the
Apache had and the Creek and all these other Indians
(11:12):
and Native Americans. They had these same legendary creatures that
they were terrified of and had a dozen ways of
protecting themselves from. To them, these aren't stories. This is
history they did, you know, this is how they kept it.
And I think that there's something to it.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Something happened to these people for them to come up
with this kind of crazy, outrageous story. And I think
you're absolutely right, there was. There's some truth to all this.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah, the Ninawe stories and they're almost when you start
hearing about them, it blends in with stories of the Ananaki,
the stories of the angels and the higher beings and
possibly aliens. When you start really looking into it and
you're like, Okay, this fits right in with ancient aliens,
This fits right in with some of these other stories,
(12:04):
and it's just that's that's that's their version.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I'm going to go through a list of these creatures
with you, Mark, and you can explain them to us.
The next one, who were the moon eyed people of
the Cherokee?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
What was that?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
That's right there. So the Cherokee talk about a race
of people who lived here before they got here, and
they said that they were pale skinned with blue eyes,
and that they were so unaccustomed to bright lights that
like they lived in caves maybe or something like that.
(12:38):
And they if you go to North Georgia, the Blue
Ridge kind of south of the Smokies, but still the
same sub range, there's a wall of stones there. And
the Cherokee elders back in the eighteen hundreds were telling
us that, oh, these we were built by the moon
eyed people. And it's like a three foot wall. It's
(12:59):
hundreds of feet long of stone stacked up in the
middle of nowhere on this mountain hill. And there's some
effigy mounds there, and they said the moon eyed people
made them, and that they went to war with the
moon eyed people and chased them into the earth. And
if you go to Murphy, North Carolina, there's actually an
effigy carving of what they call the moon Eyed people.
(13:21):
And if you look at that statue, it looks an
awful lot like we would call gray aliens today. It's
a crazy story, and maybe we drove them into the earth.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, I was gonna say, are some of the stories
that we were going to be talking about tonight's still occurring?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
There are, yes, there are many that are still sighted
and there are many that bigfoot hunters going out looking
for bigfoot stumble on some of these things. And then
ghost hunters going out for ghosts sometimes stumble on other
things that they weren't expecting. So it's I think that's
what happens with everything. When you're looking for something, might
(14:00):
come across something that you didn't expect. So never really
just never put on your blinders right, keep open, keep
an open mind for everything when you're out there.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Let's pop over to Ashville for a moment. What's the
story of the haunting of Chicken Alley?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Oh, this is one of those. Ashville is full of haunts.
I think it doesn't get enough credit. I think it's
like Saint Augustine or Savannah or even Washington, d C.
With all the ghosts and everything. Ashville has its own
set of crazy ghosts. And one of my favorites is
this one. There's a road in downtown Ashville. They call
(14:37):
it Chicken Alley because there were always chickens there and
there were also several brothels there back in the day,
Asheville was kind of like the wild West in its
early days, and there was a doctor there who tended
to the poorer people and liked to tend to the
people with social issues and stuff like that that hung
(14:57):
out in these bars and brothels. I think he also
liked to participate there. He was noted for his top
hat and his cane, and one time there was a
bar fight and he got in the middle of it
to try to protect people and got stabbed and killed. There.
He was murdered several He stabbed several times, and his
murderer got away. And his spirit is still seen today
(15:22):
in Chicken Alley, walking with that cane and knocking on doors.
And the best part is is every once in a
while he bends down and pets a ghost chicken that's
still seen there. So I love that there's a big
mural of a giant chicken that when you're dry, when
you walk down that alley, there's a big mural of
it there, so can't miss it.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And now what's chicken manga battlefield.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
What is that?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Well? All right, So one of the bloodiest battles of
Civil War was right outside Chattanooga again, Blue Ridge Mountains,
the foothills of the Smokies. They the Battle of Lookout Mountain.
They called it the Battle of was it the Battle
above the Clouds because it was so high and it
was the Smokies were kind of doing their thing. But
(16:09):
it's also right under Rock City. You remember those old
Sea Rock City signs and all that. But they had
a creature that wasn't just like a Civil War ghost there.
I mean, they've got plenty of those there. They've got
a lady in white, they've got you know, go fantom
brigades and all this. But there was supposedly the night
of the battle, we're talking thousands of dead, many more
(16:32):
wounded and just littering the field from both sides of
the Civil War. And this creature with long, scraggly hair,
almost like a vampire, you know, just strolling amongst the
dead and draining them of their life or their blood.
And it had giant green eyes, and so he's called
(16:52):
Old Green Eyes. And people in that park, which is
now a National park, still see this thing, and it's
there's park rangers who have talked to us about, Oh
they're encounter with Old Green Eyes. They have to be
off the record, and we'll go on the record and
say it, but they'll talk about it. But they even
have an Old Green Eyes Festival now in Chattanooga every
(17:16):
October because they saw how much money Mockman Festival makes
up in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. So they got to
have their own now.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So now there's a road that apparently goes nowhere in
the middle of the Smokies. What's that all about?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Okay, So Fontana Dam, which was made famous by the
great movie The Fugitive where he does the big jump
off the dam. It was built in the middle of
the Smoky Mountains and there's a lot of history behind it.
Most famously it was built to power Ashville, but it
(17:51):
was also secretly built during the War to power what
would become the Manhattan Project. It was the secret building
place right thinks south west and the desert. No, we
were building it in North Carolina up until they tested
it way out in the desert. But so this dam,
they built it up and they had to flood several towns.
(18:14):
They had to chase people away. So there was a
lot of emminent domain forcing people off their farms that
they'd had for generations. Some of these families have been
there since the Revolutionary War. And to make it up
to them, they promised they would build them this big
new highway that would take them to where they could
(18:35):
still access their old graveyards, they could still access the mountains. Well,
after about five years of building it, they just stop.
And so it's this big highway that ends in a
tunnel that just goes nowhere, and so they do call
it the road to nowhere. And there are many many
(18:55):
stories where that tunnel just ends, it goes in a trail.
You can still get out to those old cemeteries in
the old sunken towns or half sunken towns, the town
of Proctor most famously, you can when the water's low.
You can sometimes see the church steeples still up. But
there's also strange unusual lights that walk along there, you know,
(19:18):
like walking along the shore.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.
Author Mark Munsey with Us has written many books on
the topic of sci fi and horror. Host the Eerie
Travels podcast. Mark has been featured in many documentaries, including
the Course of Robert, the Hunt Doll in the Trail
of UFOs. Mark, welcome back. How have you been?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Oh great, good to hear you again. George. It's been
a while, so it is.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
You concentrate a lot on Florida, but you're moving a
little bit into the Tennessee North Carolina area, now.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Huh, Yeah, the Appalachians called me back. I grew up
in West Virginia Kentucky area, right on that border, and
so that was the folklore of my youth. We moved
down to Florida. I was there for three decades or more.
But as I was doing these Florida stories, I kept
(01:00):
stumbling on all these wonderful Appalachian folk tales and the
cryptids up there, and more and more of the bigfoot
hunters and ghost hunters. We're talking about these amazing places
all along that. So that became my focus for the
next five years and now really deep diving into the Smokies.
And I've even moved here. I'm now in western North
(01:22):
Carolina in the Hills of the Smokies.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So I've got a live show coming up in April
in the Charlotte, North Carolina. It's a gorgeous area.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, we love Charlotte. That's about mid state. It's a
beautiful We did a recent event, there was a Bigfoot
event over there that was a lot of fun. So
hopefully head back that way soon. We'll hope to catch
your show.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So absolutely. Now You've got a book coming out in
August called The Eerie Travel Presents Dark Side of the
Smoky Mountains, Right.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, that's what we've been working on for a couple
of years now. And my co host of the Pie Cast,
Eric Alance, She's chiming in on this one with fun
places to eat and fun places to visit while I'm
doing all the deep dives on all the spooky you
know and crazy stuff with the folklore, the legends, the cryptids,
the ghosts, all that fun stuff. And then my lovely
(02:16):
wife Carrie Schultz illustrating it like always.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
How scary are the appellations.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Oh, if you really start deep diving into this, you
find that it is probably one of the darkest places
on the planet. I mean, it's the oldest mountain range
in the world. Everybody thinks of the Himalayas, the Rockies
and all that. The reason the appalations are kind of
smaller is they've been worn down by years, and so
(02:47):
there are these There are places here. One of the
forests is live in is the not Tahilia Forest, which
means land of the Noonday Sun, because at noon's the
only time the sun hits certain spots in these valleys
and these hollers and coves. And that's why there's so
many dark history and so many dark legends. And then
(03:09):
there's so much national forest out there that there are
things out there that we may never find, and that's
why it's beautiful. It's the last true wilderness.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Mark has sent us about six illustrations that we've got
on the Coast to Coast dam dot com highlight Reel website.
Just go take a look at some of those. Some
of those are pretty down scary.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Mark, Yeah, some are pretty creepy. We've got One of
my favorites is the lightning lady, which is a fun
story out of a place called Cade's Cove, which is
a pretty popular tourist spot. It's right in the near
towns in Tennessee. They call it the Sleepy side of
the Smokies. It's before you get to Bidge and Forge
(03:53):
and Gatlinburg and all the touristy spots. And they've preserved it.
It's like a historical area with old buildings and cabins
and stuff like that. And there was this legend of
this church there where a bride was being married and
on her wedding day, out of the blue sky she
(04:13):
got struck by lightning and died. And then these people
growing up in that area are terrified of it. And
there's this one lady who is so terrified of it
that she refuses to knit with metal needles, and she refuses,
he refuses to have metal furniture in her house, and
(04:34):
to the point where her husband's not allowed to have
a metal bed. And finally she gets sick, starts failing health,
and she tells her husband, look, you're gonna have to
remarry after I go, but never have any metal furniture
in the house. And he's like, okay. She dies and
(04:54):
he gets a new bride, and the new bride's like,
oh no, all this wood furniture's got to go. I
need a it's not comfortable. So he gets a metal bed,
and sure enough, a few days later, the young bride
is kicked out of bed in the night by an
unseen force and the bed is struck by lightning. So
now there's two lightning ladies of Cade's cove. And when
(05:18):
we went there to study the story, the park rangers
were asking him about it, and he says, funny, there's
something I need to show you. And he walks us
a little ways away from the from the church, and
there's a rock there that is covered in soot and
you touch it and he brushes it off and you
realize it's a copper vein, and he's like, and it
(05:40):
just gets repeatedly struck, struck by lightning. It's like a
natural lightning rod. So maybe that's why these ladies were
struck by lightning, as they were just so close to this,
you know, rock vein there.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So why does that area mark seem to be so
mysteriously haunted?
Speaker 3 (05:59):
I think think I got to go back with the
whole John Keel and the Mothman prophecies that there's just
these windows that he called them, these hot spots, you know,
like the Bermuda Triangle or up near Point Pleasant, West
Virginia and all that, And that's part of the Appalachians.
I think the Appalachians, and this particularly the Smokies, they
have that the reason they're called the Smokies is that
(06:21):
mist that rises from them. It's a natural phenomena, but
maybe it's just triggering things. Plus, there's so many caves
and minerals. I mean, this was the gym capital of
the world, so there's crystals everywhere, constant crystal mining and
all that. So it's it's just I think that's what
(06:42):
triggers it all. There's there's there's more. I'm sure there's
science here that we don't understand.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Tell me the methodology you use to research the upcoming book.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Well, first things first is collecting stories. I talked to
a lot of local historians, but then I also talked
to Cherokee storytellers Cherokee historians, because they're you know, they're
big in this area. That's where they this was the
land they called home before we got here. But then
(07:15):
I also get out and go out with bigfoot hunters
and ghost hunters and UFO hunters, and I get their
stories and the places they the hotspots that they like
to go to, and then I'll tie all that in
with folklore and then true history. I'll dig into the
newspaper archives, historical societies and somehow I try to get
(07:36):
a piece it all together and get what I think
is an accurate representation of the hotspot or the legend.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, with Mark Munsey, we're talking about a haunted area
around the Appellachians, and we're going to get into a
lot of different things that have been happening out there.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
What would you.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Say, Mark, might have been the scariest moment for you
when you were doing your research.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
There's a row road in the Smokies that's called the
Tail of the Dragon. It's pretty famous. It's a lot
of motorcycle people and people with fancy cars love to
drive it because there's three hundred and eleven turns in
eleven miles. It winds through the Smoky mountains and it's
(08:19):
pretty high up and there are some deep cliffs right
next to the road, and a lot of people die
on this road. It's probably one of the most depths
in the United States every year on that road because
people always try to take it at record speeds and
all that. So it's a very dangerous road. And we
were on that looking for a story of a ghost writer,
(08:42):
like right out of the Marvel comic books, a skeletal headed,
headless horseman, but on a motorcycle. But while we were
on it, sure enough, we very close to falling off
of a cliff. So that was pretty terrifying, and I
think the real scare sometimes are scarier than any legend.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
What is Spearfinger? What was that?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Okay, Spearfinger is one of those If you ask the
Cherokee about Spearfinger, they speak about her in hush tones.
She is the stone Witch, a shape changing creature of
ancient times that would has a very long finger that
was like a dagger, and she was made of stone,
(09:29):
and then she would steal your liver like Hannibal Lecter
Stylehe and the Cherokee actually banded together. Several villages that
had been at war with each other banded together to
hunt this lady. She would turn into an old lady,
or she would turn into a beautiful lady, and she
would infiltrate your family or your village and slowly kill
(09:50):
everybody by drinking their livers. So they actually had to
fight to stop her and the Ninaway, which are basically
like the higher beings of the Cherokee. They sent birds
to warn the warriors on where to strike her because
she was so impervious to weapons. And the titmouse comes
(10:12):
in and says, you know, cries to kill her in
the heart, but they keep shooting her heart. It's bouncing off.
They didn't realize her heart was in her hand. So
they send down the Carolina chickadee, and the chickadee points
to her hand and says he or here, and that's
where they are able to kill her supposedly, but her
spirit still haunts the land. But that's why the Carolina
(10:33):
chickty is supposed to be good luck. When you go
on a trip, If you see a Carolina chickadee, you're
gonna come back safe. So do that before you go
on the tail of the dragon. That's what I recommend.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Well marks wild as these stories are, there's got to
be some basis of truth behind the folklore, don't you think?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
I one hundred percent agree? I think Spearfinger there is
real fear there when people talk about it, and if
you start looking into it, you realize the story of
Spearfinger is very similar to what we you know, the
Navajo called skinwalkers. It's very similar to stories that the
Apache had and the Creek and all these other Indians
(11:12):
and Native Americans. They had these same legendary creatures that
they were terrified of and had a dozen ways of
protecting themselves from. To them, these aren't stories. This is
history they did, you know, this is how they kept it.
And I think that there's something to it.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Something happened to these people for them to come up
with this kind of crazy, outrageous story. And I think
you're absolutely right, there was. There's some truth to all this.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah, the Ninawe stories and they're almost when you start
hearing about them, it blends in with stories of the Ananaki,
the stories of the angels and the higher beings and
possibly aliens. When you start really looking into it and
you're like, Okay, this fits right in with ancient aliens,
This fits right in with some of these other stories,
(12:04):
and it's just that's that's that's their version.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I'm going to go through a list of these creatures
with you, Mark, and you can explain them to us.
The next one, who were the moon eyed people of
the Cherokee?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
What was that?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
That's right there. So the Cherokee talk about a race
of people who lived here before they got here, and
they said that they were pale skinned with blue eyes,
and that they were so unaccustomed to bright lights that
like they lived in caves maybe or something like that.
(12:38):
And they if you go to North Georgia, the Blue
Ridge kind of south of the Smokies, but still the
same sub range, there's a wall of stones there. And
the Cherokee elders back in the eighteen hundreds were telling
us that, oh, these we were built by the moon
eyed people. And it's like a three foot wall. It's
(12:59):
hundreds of feet long of stone stacked up in the
middle of nowhere on this mountain hill. And there's some
effigy mounds there, and they said the moon eyed people
made them, and that they went to war with the
moon eyed people and chased them into the earth. And
if you go to Murphy, North Carolina, there's actually an
effigy carving of what they call the moon Eyed people.
(13:21):
And if you look at that statue, it looks an
awful lot like we would call gray aliens today. It's
a crazy story, and maybe we drove them into the earth.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, I was gonna say, are some of the stories
that we were going to be talking about tonight's still occurring?
Speaker 3 (13:39):
There are, yes, there are many that are still sighted
and there are many that bigfoot hunters going out looking
for bigfoot stumble on some of these things. And then
ghost hunters going out for ghosts sometimes stumble on other
things that they weren't expecting. So it's I think that's
what happens with everything. When you're looking for something, might
(14:00):
come across something that you didn't expect. So never really
just never put on your blinders right, keep open, keep
an open mind for everything when you're out there.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Let's pop over to Ashville for a moment. What's the
story of the haunting of Chicken Alley?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Oh, this is one of those. Ashville is full of haunts.
I think it doesn't get enough credit. I think it's
like Saint Augustine or Savannah or even Washington, d C.
With all the ghosts and everything. Ashville has its own
set of crazy ghosts. And one of my favorites is
this one. There's a road in downtown Ashville. They call
(14:37):
it Chicken Alley because there were always chickens there and
there were also several brothels there back in the day,
Asheville was kind of like the wild West in its
early days, and there was a doctor there who tended
to the poorer people and liked to tend to the
people with social issues and stuff like that that hung
(14:57):
out in these bars and brothels. I think he also
liked to participate there. He was noted for his top
hat and his cane, and one time there was a
bar fight and he got in the middle of it
to try to protect people and got stabbed and killed. There.
He was murdered several He stabbed several times, and his
murderer got away. And his spirit is still seen today
(15:22):
in Chicken Alley, walking with that cane and knocking on doors.
And the best part is is every once in a
while he bends down and pets a ghost chicken that's
still seen there. So I love that there's a big
mural of a giant chicken that when you're dry, when
you walk down that alley, there's a big mural of
it there, so can't miss it.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
And now what's chicken manga battlefield.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
What is that?
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Well? All right, So one of the bloodiest battles of
Civil War was right outside Chattanooga again, Blue Ridge Mountains,
the foothills of the Smokies. They the Battle of Lookout Mountain.
They called it the Battle of was it the Battle
above the Clouds because it was so high and it
was the Smokies were kind of doing their thing. But
(16:09):
it's also right under Rock City. You remember those old
Sea Rock City signs and all that. But they had
a creature that wasn't just like a Civil War ghost there.
I mean, they've got plenty of those there. They've got
a lady in white, they've got you know, go fantom
brigades and all this. But there was supposedly the night
of the battle, we're talking thousands of dead, many more
(16:32):
wounded and just littering the field from both sides of
the Civil War. And this creature with long, scraggly hair,
almost like a vampire, you know, just strolling amongst the
dead and draining them of their life or their blood.
And it had giant green eyes, and so he's called
(16:52):
Old Green Eyes. And people in that park, which is
now a National park, still see this thing, and it's
there's park rangers who have talked to us about, Oh
they're encounter with Old Green Eyes. They have to be
off the record, and we'll go on the record and
say it, but they'll talk about it. But they even
have an Old Green Eyes Festival now in Chattanooga every
(17:16):
October because they saw how much money Mockman Festival makes
up in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. So they got to
have their own now.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So now there's a road that apparently goes nowhere in
the middle of the Smokies. What's that all about?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Okay, So Fontana Dam, which was made famous by the
great movie The Fugitive where he does the big jump
off the dam. It was built in the middle of
the Smoky Mountains and there's a lot of history behind it.
Most famously it was built to power Ashville, but it
(17:51):
was also secretly built during the War to power what
would become the Manhattan Project. It was the secret building
place right thinks south west and the desert. No, we
were building it in North Carolina up until they tested
it way out in the desert. But so this dam,
they built it up and they had to flood several towns.
(18:14):
They had to chase people away. So there was a
lot of emminent domain forcing people off their farms that
they'd had for generations. Some of these families have been
there since the Revolutionary War. And to make it up
to them, they promised they would build them this big
new highway that would take them to where they could
(18:35):
still access their old graveyards, they could still access the mountains. Well,
after about five years of building it, they just stop.
And so it's this big highway that ends in a
tunnel that just goes nowhere, and so they do call
it the road to nowhere. And there are many many
(18:55):
stories where that tunnel just ends, it goes in a trail.
You can still get out to those old cemeteries in
the old sunken towns or half sunken towns, the town
of Proctor most famously, you can when the water's low.
You can sometimes see the church steeples still up. But
there's also strange unusual lights that walk along there, you know,
(19:18):
like walking along the shore.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at
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