June 25, 2025 • 30 mins
Join us for one of the creepiest podcasts exploring haunted places in America—starting with Dead Man’s Hollow, a forest shrouded in ghost stories, urban legends, and unexplained disappearances.
Host Robert Barber takes you deep into the shadows of this Pennsylvania landmark, where folklore and fact blur, and where some believe the land itself remembers every tragedy that touched it.
In this episode of State of the Unknown, we trace the stories left behind—murders, accidents, and whispers of something watching from the trees.
Sound Attributions:
AMBForst_Late Spring.Forest Edge.Morning.Byrds.A Light Wind In The Trees 1_EM by newlocknew -- https://freesound.org/s/811685/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Dark-City_futuristic_ambient(near-machinery-vents)_by_OnlyTheGhosts.ogg by OnlyTheGhosts -- https://freesound.org/s/251624/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
FIREBurn_Big Fire In The Forest.Artificial_EM_(34lrs).wav by newlocknew -- https://freesound.org/s/636917/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
calm forest April NL Kampina 04 DeNoise 200401_0141.wav by klankbeeld -- https://freesound.org/s/577488/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Bone Crack by Afilion -- https://freesound.org/s/185147/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
RAMELET_Charline_2016_2017_whistledMelody.wav by iut_Paris8 -- https://freesound.org/s/390137/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
night at the forest lake nature atmo by Garuda1982 -- https://freesound.org/s/645971/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
Shine by NMTVESounds -- https://freesound.org/s/582344/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
Whispers Loop Mix 3.wav by ashleyxxpiano -- https://freesound.org/s/205628/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
sad piano improvisation for film royalty free by kingvitaman -- https://freesound.org/s/414032/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0
State of the Unknown is a documentary-style podcast tracing the haunted highways, forgotten folklore, and unexplained phenomena across America’s 50 states.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:03):
There's a place just outside Pittsburgh where the
woods never feel quiet.
Even when the wind dies and thetrees stand still, something
moves.
It's a stretch of forest andruin along the Monongahela
River, overgrown, half swallowedby time.
(00:23):
Once, it was alive withindustry.
Now, it's alive with the weightof what happened there.
Violent deaths, vanishings, aplace where too much went wrong
and too little was made right.
People hear voices in the brush,see lantern lights flickering
(00:45):
through the fog, feel watchedwhen they're alone on the trail.
Some say the spirits are justechoes of the past, the factory
workers who died in fires, infalls, in silence.
Others think it's darker thanthat, that what's here never
left because it never had peace.
(01:09):
They call it Dead Man's Hollow,and it earns that name.
Dead Man's Hollow is more thanan eerie name on a map.
It's a real place with realblood in the dirt.
A string of violent deathsmarked this ground.
Factory explosions, drownings,lynchings, even a body strung up
(01:34):
from a tree, and each one left amark.
Locals tell stories of screamsthat echo with no source, of
hands that reach from the river,of black mist that follows
hikers through the trees.
This isn't just folklore.
(01:54):
The records are there.
The tragedies are real.
And the fear?
That's real, too.
Because Dead Man's Hollowdoesn't just hold a haunted
past.
It breathes with it.
(02:24):
I'm your host, Robert Barber.
And today, we travel to thehills outside McKeesport,
Pennsylvania, to a tangle offorest and ruin where stone
walls crumble beneath moss andthe silence is anything but
empty.
A place where industry collapsedinto decay, where the woods
remember every body buriedbeneath the vines, and where
(02:48):
hikers still feel watched longafter the trail ends.
This is the story of lost lives,restless legends, and a forest
that refuses to forget.
This is the story of Dead Man'sHollow.
And this is State of theUnknown.
(03:13):
There's a hush that falls overthis place.
Not silence, never that.
The wind still moves through thetrees.
the river still drags itselfpast the banks, but beneath it,
something lingers.
Dead Man's Hollow lies justsoutheast of Pittsburgh, 900
(03:34):
acres of dense forest, sheercliffs, and the skeletal ruins
of what used to be industry.
It backs against the YakoganyRiver, and what's left behind
doesn't feel entirely abandoned.
In the 1800s, This was a placeof labor, of brick kilns,
(03:56):
smokestacks, and furnaces so hotthey could melt stone.
The Union Sewer Pipe Companybuilt its factory here in 1890,
carving out a clearing in thehollow to house men, machinery,
and fire.
They laid rail lines, builtwalls, and left behind a scar in
(04:18):
the woods that never quitehealed.
But the name Dead Man's Hollowgoes back further.
Some say it was 1874.
Two boys walking near the riverstumbled on a body, half hidden
in the brush.
Murdered.
Shot through the head.
No ID.
(04:40):
Just a stranger, dead in thewoods.
The story made the PittsburghCommercial Gazette.
The paper said the man had beenthere for days, already rotting
in the July heat.
and in the years that followed,more bodies turned up.
Some drowned, some shot, nonewith answers.
(05:03):
By the time the factories came,the name had stuck.
Locals said the hollow wascursed, that men went in and
didn't come out, that sometimes,in the dark, you could still
hear screaming echo off therock.
Over time, the kilns wereabandoned, the rails rusted, the
(05:27):
factory walls collapsed intobrush, and the forest began to
take it all back.
But the name stayed, Dead Man'sHollow, because the dead don't
always stay buried, and thisplace never forgets.
(05:48):
Long before it earned its name,Dead Man's Hollow was part of
something bigger, a machine ofsmoke and labor that fueled the
American century.
Nestled along the YakoganyRiver, just south of Pittsburgh,
the hollow sits within a valleycarved by both water and
industry.
(06:09):
These hills held clay, coal, anda thousand ways to make a
living, or lose one.
By the late 1800s, WesternPennsylvania had become the
heart of American manufacturing.
Steel, glass, railroads.
This was the empire of theworking class.
(06:29):
And McKeesport, the nearest townto the hollow, was booming.
Its foundries burned day andnight.
Riverboats hauled freight pastblackened hillsides.
And the people who lived here,immigrants, veterans, farmers
turned factory hands.
They carved out entire livesfrom ash and river mud.
(06:53):
The hollow, in those days, wasno mystery.
It was a worksite.
The Union Sewer Pipe Company ranits clay operations here, an
industrial sprawl of kilns,outbuildings, and smokestacks
that rose like fingers from theforest floor.
Workers lived in shanty townsalong the hillside.
(07:16):
They walked to work through thewoods.
A thousand feet from thetrailhead, you'd find flames
licking from chimneys and theheavy breath of furnaces rolling
through the trees.
This place was alive with labor.
Men caked in soot.
Children running barefoot withlunch pails.
The smell of brick dust hangingthick in the air.
(07:40):
But it was a hard life and adangerous one.
There were no unions.
No safety boards.
No guardrails around themachines.
A misstep could take your hand.
A loose pulley, your life.
And the closest thing to adoctor was a company man with a
(08:00):
notebook.
Still, they stayed.
Because the work was steady.
The pay enough to keep food onthe table.
And the woods around them, forall their silence, were
familiar.
But the hollow...
was changing.
By the 1920s, the industry beganto falter.
(08:22):
The kilns cooled, the buildingsfell quiet, and nature crept in.
The forest came back fast, fastenough to swallow a brick wall
in a season, to break apartconcrete with its roots.
The old paths turned toovergrowth, structures
collapsed, and the hollow becamea ruin.
(08:47):
What was once a place of laborbecame a place of legend,
abandoned, overgrown, and thickwith stories no one could quite
verify.
They said people died here,workers who never made it home,
a man crushed beneath a railcar, a boy drowned in the river,
(09:09):
and others who disappearedwithout explanation.
Official records are scarce.
But something lingered.
Enough that locals avoided thetrails after dark.
Enough that hikers reportedwhispers in the trees.
Enough that the name stuck.
(09:29):
Dead Man's Hollow is a placewith too much past to be
peaceful.
And just enough forgotten tofeel dangerous.
The name wasn't metaphor.
Dead Man's Hollow got itsreputation the hard way, through
blood, through bodies, throughstories that left behind more
(09:53):
questions than names.
The earliest known death onrecord happened in 1874, before
the factories even arrived.
A local man vanished whilehunting near the hollow.
His body was found days later atthe base of a ravine.
No witnesses, No explanation.
(10:14):
Just broken bones and a torncoat.
As if something, or someone, haddragged him there.
In the decades that followed,the deaths kept coming.
Some were accidents.
Men caught beneath machinery.
A brick worker crushed during awall collapse.
(10:35):
A runaway rail car that jumpedthe track and tore through a
tool shed, killing two.
In 1902, a 17-year-old girlnamed Catherine was found dead
in the hollow, strangled.
No suspects, no motive.
Her body discovered near thebase of an old kiln, half
covered by brush.
(10:57):
It shocked the town.
But within weeks, the casefaded.
Other headlines took its place.
And Catherine became a namewhispered only in warnings.
Don't go into the hollow alone.
Some say she was just in thewrong place at the wrong time.
Others believe she knew herkiller.
(11:18):
But no one ever found out forsure.
And her death joined a growingledger of lives cut short in
these woods.
Others' deaths were even harderto explain.
Like the story of the man in the1920s who was found hanging from
a tree limb 20 feet in the air.
No ladder, no rope in hispossession.
(11:41):
One version of the story saysthe papers called it suicide,
but no article was ever found.
Just the same lines passed downagain and again.
Not every story tied to thisplace can be traced or proven.
Some are just told.
Passed from voice to voice,untethered from paper or record.
(12:04):
But they still stick, and theyshape how the hollow is
remembered.
Then there's the legend of thewhistling boy, a teenage worker
who had vanished on his way tothe kiln.
They searched for hours, thendays, never found the body, only
a single boot, and the sound ofa whistle still echoing from the
(12:27):
forest at night.
Some deaths made the paper,others only made it into memory.
The hollow had become a magnetfor the lost, the troubled, the
drunk.
People who went into the woodsalone and never came back.
Some locals talk about bonesfound in the brush, a skull by
(12:50):
the riverbank, even a boot, theysay, with a foot still inside.
No official reports, no casefiles, but the rumors never
really stopped.
By the 1950s, the industrialruins were just that, ruins.
(13:10):
Crumbling brick and concreteburied in moss.
Teenagers came to party.
Thrill seekers broughtflashlights and dares.
Hikers passed through withoutknowing what lay beneath their
boots.
That's where the stories turneddarker.
Talk of a body found in the 90s,bound, stabbed, left under
(13:33):
stone.
Some say that death led toanother discovery, an older
body, buried deeper in with thesame wounds.
No names, no convictions, justwhispered patterns.
There's no record of these casesin the public file, but in towns
(13:53):
nearby, people still talk aboutthem, as if silence was just
another way of marking thegrave.
Today, the hollow is protectedland, a nature reserve, a
historical site, but it hasn'tbeen cleaned of memory.
People still hike it.
Still bring dogs, cameras, andcuriosity.
(14:16):
But most don't stay past dark.
And they don't go alone.
Because the deeper you go, thequieter it gets.
The birds stop.
The wind disappears.
And the trails?
They don't always lead wherethey should.
Dead Man's Hollow isn't just aruin.
(14:38):
It's a place full of absences,some marked, most not.
And whatever remains doesn'talways stay buried.
By the 2000s, Dead Man's Hollowhad transformed on paper.
From industrial ruin toprotected nature reserve, from
(14:59):
coal dust to clean trails.
But the stories never stopped.
Hikers began reporting strangethings, footsteps behind them
when no one was there, coldspots in the middle of summer,
and the sense that someone orsomething was watching.
(15:21):
Flashlights flickered out in thesame bend of trail.
Camera batteries drained withoutwarning.
Phones refused to hold signal inthe old brickyard clearing.
One group of amateurinvestigators came out in 2014,
armed with audio recorders, EMFdetectors, and motion sensors.
(15:41):
They didn't expect much, just aquiet night in the woods.
What they got was somethingelse.
They picked the old kiln site attheir base, right near where
Catherine's body was found overa century earlier.
At 1.17 a.m., the motion sensortriggered.
Nothing visible, no wind, noanimals, just a sudden
(16:05):
activation.
Then came the EMF spike,followed by the unmistakable
sound of footsteps, slow,deliberate, on the leaf-covered
stone.
They asked the air, who's here?
And on playback, a voice camethrough.
Two words, still me.
(16:30):
Other groups reported similarphenomena.
A figure spotted between thetrees.
Glowing orbs that blinked outwhen approached.
A low rattling hum that seemedto come from underground.
Park rangers mostly dismiss thestories.
They chalk it up to animals.
Imagination.
(16:51):
Overactive storytelling.
But off the record, some willadmit they've seen shadows
moving against the tree line.
heard voices on foggy mornings,felt an icy grip near the ruins
of the old mill, and the localvolunteer group that helps
maintain the trail, they alwaysstop working before dusk.
(17:12):
Always.
Because even in daylight, thehollow has a weight to it, a
stillness that feels too heavy.
It's not just haunted by ghosts,it's haunted by memory.
And memory, in a place likethis, doesn't let go easily.
(17:34):
Some places haunt you because ofwhat had happened there.
Dead Man's Hollow feelsdifferent, like it remembers.
Locals say the woods there don'tjust feel wrong, they feel
aware.
Paths change, compasses spin,and sometimes the silence isn't
(17:56):
just quiet, it's heavy.
Like the trees are listening.
Long before the area became anature reserve, it was known for
something else.
Industrial wreckage.
The remains of the Union SewerPipe Company still litter the
trailheads.
(18:17):
Brick ruins overtaken by ivy andmoss.
But it's not just rust and stonethe forest hides.
Hikers report getting turnedaround in areas they've walked a
dozen times.
Phones die without warning.
Flashlights dim.
One group claimed to walk incircles for over an hour, only
(18:38):
to find themselves back wherethey started, without ever
turning around.
Some think it's psychological,an overactive imagination
triggered by isolation.
But others aren't so sure.
In 2012, a pair of amateurinvestigators recorded a
low-frequency hum in the easternpart of the trail system.
(19:01):
No nearby machinery, no knownseismic activity.
The hum disappeared the nextday, but they both described the
same thing.
A rising pressure in the chest,a kind of internal static, like
being watched from inside yourown skull.
And then there are the figures.
(19:23):
shadow forms, fleetingsilhouettes, not just seen, but
felt.
One witness said he saw a womanin white standing in the hollow
center, pale dress, barefoot,head turned slightly toward him,
like she was listening tosomething only she could hear.
He called out.
(19:45):
She didn't move.
When he looked away for just asecond, she was gone.
Other hikers have describedhearing footsteps behind them,
soft, steady, matching theirown.
But when they stop, thefootsteps don't.
It's not every visit, not everytrail.
(20:05):
But when it happens, the storiessound eerily alike.
As if the land is telling thesame story over and over,
through different voices,different eyes.
Dead Man's Hollow doesn't justecho with ghosts.
It replays them.
It sets the stage again andagain.
(20:26):
And if you walk it long enough,you might find yourself playing
a part.
Not all ghosts wear chains.
Some just tell stories.
Ask around in Elizabeth orMcKeesport and you'll hear them.
Accounts pass between hikers,old-timers, and park volunteers.
(20:50):
Stories that don't always makethe paper, but linger like fog
on the trail.
There's the man who saw thelantern light deep in the woods
and followed it for nearly 20minutes.
It always stayed just ahead,never too far, never close
enough to see who held it.
Eventually, he stopped, turnedaround, but when he did, there
(21:13):
was no trail behind him, justthick woods and silence.
A former park ranger once told alocal reporter about hearing
voices late at night.
Not shouting, not conversation,just one voice, repeating a name
over and over again.
(21:34):
He searched the area.
No one there.
When he came back the nextnight, same time, same spot, the
voice was still there.
The name?
Catherine.
One of the most persistent locallegends is that of the watcher.
Not a ghost, not quite a spirit,more like a presence.
(21:58):
People say you don't see thewatcher, you feel him.
When the wind dies, when thewoods go still, when you
suddenly realize you're notalone.
A teenager walking the trailnear dusk claimed to hear
breathing behind her.
She turned.
No one.
(22:18):
But when she started to run, thesound followed, faster, closer,
until it was right behind her.
She made it to the parking lot,got in the car, locked the door,
and then heard a hand slap theback window, hard.
When she turned, justcondensation, no prints.
(22:40):
Others report sudden changes inmood, an overwhelming wave of
dread, nausea, Tears for noreason.
One visitor said he broke downsobbing in the middle of a
bright afternoon hike.
No memory of why.
Just the sound of water drippingnearby.
Even though it hadn't rained indays.
(23:04):
Then there's the man who broughta voice recorder.
He asked a simple question.
Is anyone here with me?
Later, when he played it back,he heard something beneath his
voice.
Low.
Breathy.
It said, still.
These aren't campfire tales.
(23:24):
They're too fractured for that.
They don't follow structure.
They don't chase endings.
They just happen.
And then they stay with you.
Dead Man's Hollow isn't crowded,but it isn't empty either.
And if you ask the rightquestion, the hollow might just
(23:46):
answer.
There is always a reason, evenif it's buried.
Dead Man's Hollow has drawnspeculation for decades.
Some look for logic.
Others lean into the unknown.
And the truth, if it exists,might lie somewhere in between.
(24:09):
Start with the obvious, the landitself.
This place was once anindustrial site.
Brickworks, kilns.
Runoff tunnels board into thehillside.
The ground is unstable inplaces.
Caverns collapse.
Gas pockets shift.
Now I've walked some of thosetrails.
Stepped over broken stone thatused to be something.
(24:32):
Furnace walls, maybe.
It doesn't take much imaginationto believe something strange
could echo out of those ruins.
But then again, plenty of placeshave ruins.
Not all of them feel like this.
Then there's the science.
Some researchers point toinfrasound, low-frequency
vibrations just below thethreshold of human hearing,
(24:56):
known to cause unease,disorientation, even panic, the
kind of thing a faulty sewerpipe or buried kiln might create
under just the right conditions.
Now that explanation makes senseto me.
It's tidy.
It puts the weird back in thebox.
But it doesn't explain whymultiple people describe the
(25:17):
same figure, the same voice,over years, over decades.
I can see something externalcausing.
Well, what amounts tohallucinations?
But hallucinations, just likedreams, can't be the same for
multiple people who have neverencountered or spoken to each
other across years and years ofreported experiences.
(25:41):
Others, they chalk it up tosuggestion.
The name Dead Man's Hollow alonesets the stage.
You add the stories, thesilence, the isolation, and the
brain does the rest.
Fear sharpens the senses untilthey start to lie.
(26:02):
Now, I want to believe that,that most of this is just
expectation.
But some of these stories, theydon't sound like imagination.
They sound like memory.
Paranormal investigators offer adifferent angle, residual
energy, a kind of psychicrecording left behind by trauma.
(26:25):
The hollow is seen death,violent, accidental,
unexplained.
If you believe in emotionalimprint, this would be the
place.
And then there are the outliers.
Some say the hollow is a thinplace, where the veil between
worlds wears down.
Not ghosts, but intrusions,moments that bleed through.
(26:50):
For me, that's harder to wrap myhead around.
I'm not sure I believe indoorways, but I do believe some
places feel off.
Not haunted, not sacred, justwrong in a way that doesn't fade
with sunlight.
Other theories go deeper.
(27:11):
Underground chambers, ley lines,even time slips.
No proof, just patterns.
But patterns persist.
Now, at the end of the day, Idon't know what's here.
I've stood in that hollow,listened to the wind stall
mid-breath, watched theflashlight die for no reason.
(27:33):
It could all be in my head, butit sure didn't feel that way.
Something's waiting in thatvalley.
And whether it's a memory, amyth, or something we haven't
named yet, it's not done withus.
Some places just feel different.
(27:56):
Even before you know thestories.
Even if you never hear a name.
Dead Man's Hollow has thatfeeling.
Not loud, not showy, justpresent.
Like the woods are holding theirbreath.
We've heard the stories.
Natural gas, psychologicalprojection, residual energy.
(28:18):
Each one makes sense on paper.
But they don't quite explain whypeople keep coming back with the
same story.
That something was behind them.
That the trail changed.
That a voice whispered, evenwhen they were alone.
Not every legend needs proof.
Some survive because they tapinto something deeper, not just
(28:40):
fear, but recognition.
Because we all know what it'slike to sense something we can't
explain, to feel watched, tofeel remembered.
Maybe Dead Man's Hollow isn'thaunted by spirits.
Maybe it's haunted by attention,by everything that was never
(29:00):
laid to rest.
What makes this place stick withpeople isn't a spectacle, It's
absence.
The gaps.
The quiet.
The sense that the story hereisn't over.
And maybe never was.
When we walk these trails, we'renot just stepping through woods.
(29:21):
We're walking into a space thatresists forgetting.
And if there's anything ghostsfeed on, it's memory.
If you ever visit, go quietly.
Respect the stillness.
And if something moves justbeyond your line of sight, don't
rush to explain it.
Let it be what it is.
(29:45):
This has been State of theUnknown, where we follow the
stories that don't end clean,and the questions that don't go
quiet.
If this episode stayed with you,follow the show now so you don't
miss what's next.
And if you believe these storiesdeserve to be heard, leave a
review, just a line, just a fewwords.
(30:06):
It helps more than you know.
Want to go deeper?
Visit stateoftheunknown.com.
You'll find full episodes, shownotes, behind-the-scenes photos,
and a place to submit a story ofyour own.
Because this isn't just apodcast.
It's a gathering of questions.
And the answers are out there.
(30:27):
Until next time, keep your headdown and your footsteps light.
There's a place just outside Pittsburgh where the
woods never feel quiet.
Even when the wind dies and thetrees stand still, something
moves.
It's a stretch of forest andruin along the Monongahela
River, overgrown, half swallowedby time.
(00:23):
Once, it was alive withindustry.
Now, it's alive with the weightof what happened there.
Violent deaths, vanishings, aplace where too much went wrong
and too little was made right.
People hear voices in the brush,see lantern lights flickering
(00:45):
through the fog, feel watchedwhen they're alone on the trail.
Some say the spirits are justechoes of the past, the factory
workers who died in fires, infalls, in silence.
Others think it's darker thanthat, that what's here never
left because it never had peace.
(01:09):
They call it Dead Man's Hollow,and it earns that name.
Dead Man's Hollow is more thanan eerie name on a map.
It's a real place with realblood in the dirt.
A string of violent deathsmarked this ground.
Factory explosions, drownings,lynchings, even a body strung up
(01:34):
from a tree, and each one left amark.
Locals tell stories of screamsthat echo with no source, of
hands that reach from the river,of black mist that follows
hikers through the trees.
This isn't just folklore.
(01:54):
The records are there.
The tragedies are real.
And the fear?
That's real, too.
Because Dead Man's Hollowdoesn't just hold a haunted
past.
It breathes with it.
(02:24):
I'm your host, Robert Barber.
And today, we travel to thehills outside McKeesport,
Pennsylvania, to a tangle offorest and ruin where stone
walls crumble beneath moss andthe silence is anything but
empty.
A place where industry collapsedinto decay, where the woods
remember every body buriedbeneath the vines, and where
(02:48):
hikers still feel watched longafter the trail ends.
This is the story of lost lives,restless legends, and a forest
that refuses to forget.
This is the story of Dead Man'sHollow.
And this is State of theUnknown.
(03:13):
There's a hush that falls overthis place.
Not silence, never that.
The wind still moves through thetrees.
the river still drags itselfpast the banks, but beneath it,
something lingers.
Dead Man's Hollow lies justsoutheast of Pittsburgh, 900
(03:34):
acres of dense forest, sheercliffs, and the skeletal ruins
of what used to be industry.
It backs against the YakoganyRiver, and what's left behind
doesn't feel entirely abandoned.
In the 1800s, This was a placeof labor, of brick kilns,
(03:56):
smokestacks, and furnaces so hotthey could melt stone.
The Union Sewer Pipe Companybuilt its factory here in 1890,
carving out a clearing in thehollow to house men, machinery,
and fire.
They laid rail lines, builtwalls, and left behind a scar in
(04:18):
the woods that never quitehealed.
But the name Dead Man's Hollowgoes back further.
Some say it was 1874.
Two boys walking near the riverstumbled on a body, half hidden
in the brush.
Murdered.
Shot through the head.
No ID.
(04:40):
Just a stranger, dead in thewoods.
The story made the PittsburghCommercial Gazette.
The paper said the man had beenthere for days, already rotting
in the July heat.
and in the years that followed,more bodies turned up.
Some drowned, some shot, nonewith answers.
(05:03):
By the time the factories came,the name had stuck.
Locals said the hollow wascursed, that men went in and
didn't come out, that sometimes,in the dark, you could still
hear screaming echo off therock.
Over time, the kilns wereabandoned, the rails rusted, the
(05:27):
factory walls collapsed intobrush, and the forest began to
take it all back.
But the name stayed, Dead Man'sHollow, because the dead don't
always stay buried, and thisplace never forgets.
(05:48):
Long before it earned its name,Dead Man's Hollow was part of
something bigger, a machine ofsmoke and labor that fueled the
American century.
Nestled along the YakoganyRiver, just south of Pittsburgh,
the hollow sits within a valleycarved by both water and
industry.
(06:09):
These hills held clay, coal, anda thousand ways to make a
living, or lose one.
By the late 1800s, WesternPennsylvania had become the
heart of American manufacturing.
Steel, glass, railroads.
This was the empire of theworking class.
(06:29):
And McKeesport, the nearest townto the hollow, was booming.
Its foundries burned day andnight.
Riverboats hauled freight pastblackened hillsides.
And the people who lived here,immigrants, veterans, farmers
turned factory hands.
They carved out entire livesfrom ash and river mud.
(06:53):
The hollow, in those days, wasno mystery.
It was a worksite.
The Union Sewer Pipe Company ranits clay operations here, an
industrial sprawl of kilns,outbuildings, and smokestacks
that rose like fingers from theforest floor.
Workers lived in shanty townsalong the hillside.
(07:16):
They walked to work through thewoods.
A thousand feet from thetrailhead, you'd find flames
licking from chimneys and theheavy breath of furnaces rolling
through the trees.
This place was alive with labor.
Men caked in soot.
Children running barefoot withlunch pails.
The smell of brick dust hangingthick in the air.
(07:40):
But it was a hard life and adangerous one.
There were no unions.
No safety boards.
No guardrails around themachines.
A misstep could take your hand.
A loose pulley, your life.
And the closest thing to adoctor was a company man with a
(08:00):
notebook.
Still, they stayed.
Because the work was steady.
The pay enough to keep food onthe table.
And the woods around them, forall their silence, were
familiar.
But the hollow...
was changing.
By the 1920s, the industry beganto falter.
(08:22):
The kilns cooled, the buildingsfell quiet, and nature crept in.
The forest came back fast, fastenough to swallow a brick wall
in a season, to break apartconcrete with its roots.
The old paths turned toovergrowth, structures
collapsed, and the hollow becamea ruin.
(08:47):
What was once a place of laborbecame a place of legend,
abandoned, overgrown, and thickwith stories no one could quite
verify.
They said people died here,workers who never made it home,
a man crushed beneath a railcar, a boy drowned in the river,
(09:09):
and others who disappearedwithout explanation.
Official records are scarce.
But something lingered.
Enough that locals avoided thetrails after dark.
Enough that hikers reportedwhispers in the trees.
Enough that the name stuck.
(09:29):
Dead Man's Hollow is a placewith too much past to be
peaceful.
And just enough forgotten tofeel dangerous.
The name wasn't metaphor.
Dead Man's Hollow got itsreputation the hard way, through
blood, through bodies, throughstories that left behind more
(09:53):
questions than names.
The earliest known death onrecord happened in 1874, before
the factories even arrived.
A local man vanished whilehunting near the hollow.
His body was found days later atthe base of a ravine.
No witnesses, No explanation.
(10:14):
Just broken bones and a torncoat.
As if something, or someone, haddragged him there.
In the decades that followed,the deaths kept coming.
Some were accidents.
Men caught beneath machinery.
A brick worker crushed during awall collapse.
(10:35):
A runaway rail car that jumpedthe track and tore through a
tool shed, killing two.
In 1902, a 17-year-old girlnamed Catherine was found dead
in the hollow, strangled.
No suspects, no motive.
Her body discovered near thebase of an old kiln, half
covered by brush.
(10:57):
It shocked the town.
But within weeks, the casefaded.
Other headlines took its place.
And Catherine became a namewhispered only in warnings.
Don't go into the hollow alone.
Some say she was just in thewrong place at the wrong time.
Others believe she knew herkiller.
(11:18):
But no one ever found out forsure.
And her death joined a growingledger of lives cut short in
these woods.
Others' deaths were even harderto explain.
Like the story of the man in the1920s who was found hanging from
a tree limb 20 feet in the air.
No ladder, no rope in hispossession.
(11:41):
One version of the story saysthe papers called it suicide,
but no article was ever found.
Just the same lines passed downagain and again.
Not every story tied to thisplace can be traced or proven.
Some are just told.
Passed from voice to voice,untethered from paper or record.
(12:04):
But they still stick, and theyshape how the hollow is
remembered.
Then there's the legend of thewhistling boy, a teenage worker
who had vanished on his way tothe kiln.
They searched for hours, thendays, never found the body, only
a single boot, and the sound ofa whistle still echoing from the
(12:27):
forest at night.
Some deaths made the paper,others only made it into memory.
The hollow had become a magnetfor the lost, the troubled, the
drunk.
People who went into the woodsalone and never came back.
Some locals talk about bonesfound in the brush, a skull by
(12:50):
the riverbank, even a boot, theysay, with a foot still inside.
No official reports, no casefiles, but the rumors never
really stopped.
By the 1950s, the industrialruins were just that, ruins.
(13:10):
Crumbling brick and concreteburied in moss.
Teenagers came to party.
Thrill seekers broughtflashlights and dares.
Hikers passed through withoutknowing what lay beneath their
boots.
That's where the stories turneddarker.
Talk of a body found in the 90s,bound, stabbed, left under
(13:33):
stone.
Some say that death led toanother discovery, an older
body, buried deeper in with thesame wounds.
No names, no convictions, justwhispered patterns.
There's no record of these casesin the public file, but in towns
(13:53):
nearby, people still talk aboutthem, as if silence was just
another way of marking thegrave.
Today, the hollow is protectedland, a nature reserve, a
historical site, but it hasn'tbeen cleaned of memory.
People still hike it.
Still bring dogs, cameras, andcuriosity.
(14:16):
But most don't stay past dark.
And they don't go alone.
Because the deeper you go, thequieter it gets.
The birds stop.
The wind disappears.
And the trails?
They don't always lead wherethey should.
Dead Man's Hollow isn't just aruin.
(14:38):
It's a place full of absences,some marked, most not.
And whatever remains doesn'talways stay buried.
By the 2000s, Dead Man's Hollowhad transformed on paper.
From industrial ruin toprotected nature reserve, from
(14:59):
coal dust to clean trails.
But the stories never stopped.
Hikers began reporting strangethings, footsteps behind them
when no one was there, coldspots in the middle of summer,
and the sense that someone orsomething was watching.
(15:21):
Flashlights flickered out in thesame bend of trail.
Camera batteries drained withoutwarning.
Phones refused to hold signal inthe old brickyard clearing.
One group of amateurinvestigators came out in 2014,
armed with audio recorders, EMFdetectors, and motion sensors.
(15:41):
They didn't expect much, just aquiet night in the woods.
What they got was somethingelse.
They picked the old kiln site attheir base, right near where
Catherine's body was found overa century earlier.
At 1.17 a.m., the motion sensortriggered.
Nothing visible, no wind, noanimals, just a sudden
(16:05):
activation.
Then came the EMF spike,followed by the unmistakable
sound of footsteps, slow,deliberate, on the leaf-covered
stone.
They asked the air, who's here?
And on playback, a voice camethrough.
Two words, still me.
(16:30):
Other groups reported similarphenomena.
A figure spotted between thetrees.
Glowing orbs that blinked outwhen approached.
A low rattling hum that seemedto come from underground.
Park rangers mostly dismiss thestories.
They chalk it up to animals.
Imagination.
(16:51):
Overactive storytelling.
But off the record, some willadmit they've seen shadows
moving against the tree line.
heard voices on foggy mornings,felt an icy grip near the ruins
of the old mill, and the localvolunteer group that helps
maintain the trail, they alwaysstop working before dusk.
(17:12):
Always.
Because even in daylight, thehollow has a weight to it, a
stillness that feels too heavy.
It's not just haunted by ghosts,it's haunted by memory.
And memory, in a place likethis, doesn't let go easily.
(17:34):
Some places haunt you because ofwhat had happened there.
Dead Man's Hollow feelsdifferent, like it remembers.
Locals say the woods there don'tjust feel wrong, they feel
aware.
Paths change, compasses spin,and sometimes the silence isn't
(17:56):
just quiet, it's heavy.
Like the trees are listening.
Long before the area became anature reserve, it was known for
something else.
Industrial wreckage.
The remains of the Union SewerPipe Company still litter the
trailheads.
(18:17):
Brick ruins overtaken by ivy andmoss.
But it's not just rust and stonethe forest hides.
Hikers report getting turnedaround in areas they've walked a
dozen times.
Phones die without warning.
Flashlights dim.
One group claimed to walk incircles for over an hour, only
(18:38):
to find themselves back wherethey started, without ever
turning around.
Some think it's psychological,an overactive imagination
triggered by isolation.
But others aren't so sure.
In 2012, a pair of amateurinvestigators recorded a
low-frequency hum in the easternpart of the trail system.
(19:01):
No nearby machinery, no knownseismic activity.
The hum disappeared the nextday, but they both described the
same thing.
A rising pressure in the chest,a kind of internal static, like
being watched from inside yourown skull.
And then there are the figures.
(19:23):
shadow forms, fleetingsilhouettes, not just seen, but
felt.
One witness said he saw a womanin white standing in the hollow
center, pale dress, barefoot,head turned slightly toward him,
like she was listening tosomething only she could hear.
He called out.
(19:45):
She didn't move.
When he looked away for just asecond, she was gone.
Other hikers have describedhearing footsteps behind them,
soft, steady, matching theirown.
But when they stop, thefootsteps don't.
It's not every visit, not everytrail.
(20:05):
But when it happens, the storiessound eerily alike.
As if the land is telling thesame story over and over,
through different voices,different eyes.
Dead Man's Hollow doesn't justecho with ghosts.
It replays them.
It sets the stage again andagain.
(20:26):
And if you walk it long enough,you might find yourself playing
a part.
Not all ghosts wear chains.
Some just tell stories.
Ask around in Elizabeth orMcKeesport and you'll hear them.
Accounts pass between hikers,old-timers, and park volunteers.
(20:50):
Stories that don't always makethe paper, but linger like fog
on the trail.
There's the man who saw thelantern light deep in the woods
and followed it for nearly 20minutes.
It always stayed just ahead,never too far, never close
enough to see who held it.
Eventually, he stopped, turnedaround, but when he did, there
(21:13):
was no trail behind him, justthick woods and silence.
A former park ranger once told alocal reporter about hearing
voices late at night.
Not shouting, not conversation,just one voice, repeating a name
over and over again.
(21:34):
He searched the area.
No one there.
When he came back the nextnight, same time, same spot, the
voice was still there.
The name?
Catherine.
One of the most persistent locallegends is that of the watcher.
Not a ghost, not quite a spirit,more like a presence.
(21:58):
People say you don't see thewatcher, you feel him.
When the wind dies, when thewoods go still, when you
suddenly realize you're notalone.
A teenager walking the trailnear dusk claimed to hear
breathing behind her.
She turned.
No one.
(22:18):
But when she started to run, thesound followed, faster, closer,
until it was right behind her.
She made it to the parking lot,got in the car, locked the door,
and then heard a hand slap theback window, hard.
When she turned, justcondensation, no prints.
(22:40):
Others report sudden changes inmood, an overwhelming wave of
dread, nausea, Tears for noreason.
One visitor said he broke downsobbing in the middle of a
bright afternoon hike.
No memory of why.
Just the sound of water drippingnearby.
Even though it hadn't rained indays.
(23:04):
Then there's the man who broughta voice recorder.
He asked a simple question.
Is anyone here with me?
Later, when he played it back,he heard something beneath his
voice.
Low.
Breathy.
It said, still.
These aren't campfire tales.
(23:24):
They're too fractured for that.
They don't follow structure.
They don't chase endings.
They just happen.
And then they stay with you.
Dead Man's Hollow isn't crowded,but it isn't empty either.
And if you ask the rightquestion, the hollow might just
(23:46):
answer.
There is always a reason, evenif it's buried.
Dead Man's Hollow has drawnspeculation for decades.
Some look for logic.
Others lean into the unknown.
And the truth, if it exists,might lie somewhere in between.
(24:09):
Start with the obvious, the landitself.
This place was once anindustrial site.
Brickworks, kilns.
Runoff tunnels board into thehillside.
The ground is unstable inplaces.
Caverns collapse.
Gas pockets shift.
Now I've walked some of thosetrails.
Stepped over broken stone thatused to be something.
(24:32):
Furnace walls, maybe.
It doesn't take much imaginationto believe something strange
could echo out of those ruins.
But then again, plenty of placeshave ruins.
Not all of them feel like this.
Then there's the science.
Some researchers point toinfrasound, low-frequency
vibrations just below thethreshold of human hearing,
(24:56):
known to cause unease,disorientation, even panic, the
kind of thing a faulty sewerpipe or buried kiln might create
under just the right conditions.
Now that explanation makes senseto me.
It's tidy.
It puts the weird back in thebox.
But it doesn't explain whymultiple people describe the
(25:17):
same figure, the same voice,over years, over decades.
I can see something externalcausing.
Well, what amounts tohallucinations?
But hallucinations, just likedreams, can't be the same for
multiple people who have neverencountered or spoken to each
other across years and years ofreported experiences.
(25:41):
Others, they chalk it up tosuggestion.
The name Dead Man's Hollow alonesets the stage.
You add the stories, thesilence, the isolation, and the
brain does the rest.
Fear sharpens the senses untilthey start to lie.
(26:02):
Now, I want to believe that,that most of this is just
expectation.
But some of these stories, theydon't sound like imagination.
They sound like memory.
Paranormal investigators offer adifferent angle, residual
energy, a kind of psychicrecording left behind by trauma.
(26:25):
The hollow is seen death,violent, accidental,
unexplained.
If you believe in emotionalimprint, this would be the
place.
And then there are the outliers.
Some say the hollow is a thinplace, where the veil between
worlds wears down.
Not ghosts, but intrusions,moments that bleed through.
(26:50):
For me, that's harder to wrap myhead around.
I'm not sure I believe indoorways, but I do believe some
places feel off.
Not haunted, not sacred, justwrong in a way that doesn't fade
with sunlight.
Other theories go deeper.
(27:11):
Underground chambers, ley lines,even time slips.
No proof, just patterns.
But patterns persist.
Now, at the end of the day, Idon't know what's here.
I've stood in that hollow,listened to the wind stall
mid-breath, watched theflashlight die for no reason.
(27:33):
It could all be in my head, butit sure didn't feel that way.
Something's waiting in thatvalley.
And whether it's a memory, amyth, or something we haven't
named yet, it's not done withus.
Some places just feel different.
(27:56):
Even before you know thestories.
Even if you never hear a name.
Dead Man's Hollow has thatfeeling.
Not loud, not showy, justpresent.
Like the woods are holding theirbreath.
We've heard the stories.
Natural gas, psychologicalprojection, residual energy.
(28:18):
Each one makes sense on paper.
But they don't quite explain whypeople keep coming back with the
same story.
That something was behind them.
That the trail changed.
That a voice whispered, evenwhen they were alone.
Not every legend needs proof.
Some survive because they tapinto something deeper, not just
(28:40):
fear, but recognition.
Because we all know what it'slike to sense something we can't
explain, to feel watched, tofeel remembered.
Maybe Dead Man's Hollow isn'thaunted by spirits.
Maybe it's haunted by attention,by everything that was never
(29:00):
laid to rest.
What makes this place stick withpeople isn't a spectacle, It's
absence.
The gaps.
The quiet.
The sense that the story hereisn't over.
And maybe never was.
When we walk these trails, we'renot just stepping through woods.
(29:21):
We're walking into a space thatresists forgetting.
And if there's anything ghostsfeed on, it's memory.
If you ever visit, go quietly.
Respect the stillness.
And if something moves justbeyond your line of sight, don't
rush to explain it.
Let it be what it is.
(29:45):
This has been State of theUnknown, where we follow the
stories that don't end clean,and the questions that don't go
quiet.
If this episode stayed with you,follow the show now so you don't
miss what's next.
And if you believe these storiesdeserve to be heard, leave a
review, just a line, just a fewwords.
(30:06):
It helps more than you know.
Want to go deeper?
Visit stateoftheunknown.com.
You'll find full episodes, shownotes, behind-the-scenes photos,
and a place to submit a story ofyour own.
Because this isn't just apodcast.
It's a gathering of questions.
And the answers are out there.
(30:27):
Until next time, keep your headdown and your footsteps light.
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