Roots and Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast

What They Saw in the Woods: Two Unexplained Appalachian Encounters

Deep in the Appalachian Mountains, there are places where the woods seem to hold on to the past. Old homeplaces disappear beneath weeds and briars, forgotten trails wind through the hills, and sometimes people encounter things that should no longer be there or perhaps were never supposed to be found at all.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia P...

You’ve probably heard of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

But here in Appalachia, we had our own.

The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency began in Virginia as a railroad detective operation and grew into one of the most powerful and controversial private detective organizations in the Appalachian coalfields.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast™, we trace the rise of Baldwin-Felts from its Southwest Virg...

A Stranger on the Appalachian Trail: The Randall Lee Smith Case

In 1981, two young hikers made their way north along the Appalachian Trail through the mountains of Southwest Virginia. They were experienced enough to know the trail, they had a destination ahead of them, and there was little reason for anyone to believe their journey would end differently from thousands of others who had walked those same miles.

But when they failed to...

In 1959, a husband and wife were traveling a lonely mountain road outside Saltville, Virginia, in the darkest hours before dawn when something began moving alongside their car.

At first, it was little more than a shape in the darkness. But as the road twisted through the mountains, the couple realized whatever they were seeing wasn't staying behind them.

It was following them.

And eventually, it came after their car.

The creature was d...

High on Whitetop Mountain in Southwest Virginia, long before modern music festivals became what they are today, thousands of people were climbing a remote Virginia mountaintop to hear fiddles, banjos, ballads and traditional Appalachian mountain music.

Beginning in 1931, the White Top Folk Festival grew from a local fiddlers’ contest into a gathering that attracted musicians, folklorists and visitors from across the country.

Th...

In 1981, a twin-engine airplane landed at a small airport tucked into the mountains of East Tennessee.

What authorities found aboard would turn into one of the biggest cocaine cases the region had ever seen.

Inside the airplane were more than 600 pounds of nearly pure cocaine. Federal drug officials at the time estimated its street value at more than $200 million.

But the airplane was only the beginning.

The investigation would lead au...

A young Appalachian couple. A spur of the moment New Year's Eve road trip. A few days in one of America's most mysterious cities. And a series of strange encounters that would stay with them long after they returned home to the mountains.

Christy and Jeff, not their real names, were in their early twenties and living in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains when they decided they wanted to do something different for New Year's E...

The stories don't always end when an episode is released. Sometimes, that's when they truly begin.

This week on Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, I'm on the road for a personal trip, but I couldn't let another Saturday pass without spending some time with all of you.

In this special update episode, we revisit two recent stories after listeners reached out with information that adds an entirely new perspective.

First, I...

The Story Behind Tom Dooley | The Real Story of Thomas C. Dula, Laura Foster, and America's Most Famous Murder Ballad

Most people know the song "Tom Dooley." Few know the true story behind it.

In this episode, we travel to Wilkes County, North Carolina, where one of Appalachia's most famous true crime cases unfolded in the years following the Civil War. Long before Wilkes County became known for moonshine, the birth of NASCAR, and Me...

The conversation continues in Part 2 of our special interview with Danny Gordon as we take an even deeper look into one of Appalachia's most enduring UFO mysteries, the 1987 Wytheville UFO Incident. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, we highly recommend starting there before joining us for the conclusion of this fascinating discussion.

For nearly four decades, reports of strange lights, unexplained aerial objects, and unusual en...

For the first time, Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast brings you a full-length video interview.

This special two-part conversation features Danny G, one of the leading researchers of the 1987 Wytheville UFO Incident, one of the most compelling and well-documented UFO cases ever reported in Appalachia.

In the fall of 1987, something extraordinary happened over the skies of Wytheville, Virginia. Over several weeks, dozen...

As America celebrates 250 years of independence, Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast takes you back to the Appalachian frontier to explore one of the most overlooked chapters of the American Revolution.

When most people think about the Revolutionary War, they picture Philadelphia, Boston, Lexington, Concord, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Founding Fathers. But while those famous events were unfolding along...

On March 14, 1912, a quiet morning in the mountain town of Hillsville, Virginia, turned into one of the deadliest courtroom shootings in American history.

It started with a guilty verdict.

Less than two minutes later, Judge Thornton Lemmon Massie, Sheriff Lewis Webb, Commonwealth's Attorney William Foster, juror Augustus Fowler, and 19-year-old Bettie Ayers had all been fatally shot. The violence inside the Carroll County Courthouse ...

This week on Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we travel into the mountains of Harlan County, Kentucky, for one of Appalachia’s darker pieces of folklore: the legend of Red Dog Holler.

Harlan is a place known for coal, conflict, labor struggles, deep hollers, hard work, and stories that do not fade easily. Before we step into the legend itself, we look at the world that shaped it: the coal camps of southeastern...

Most people have never heard of Cloyd’s Mountain, but in one brutal hour it became the bloodiest Civil War battlefield in Southwest Virginia.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we travel to Pulaski County, Virginia, near Dublin, to tell the story of the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain, fought on May 9, 1864. This was not one of the famous Civil War battlefields most people learn about in scho...

What happened inside the Russell County Jail on the night of May 29, 1960?

That question has lingered in Southwest Virginia for more than six decades.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we travel to Lebanon, Virginia, to examine one of the most debated cases in Russell County history: the death of Deputy Jonathan Elkanah “Caney” Boyd.

For more than thirty-five years, Caney Boyd served the ...

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we travel into the mountains of Southwest Virginia for the story of Robert Sawyers Sheffey, a Methodist circuit rider, mountain preacher, and one of the most unusual religious figures remembered in Appalachian history.

Robert Sayers Sheffey was born in Wythe County, Virginia, on July 4, 1820. Orphaned as a young child, raised for a time in Abingdon, and later conve...

In this Memorial Day special of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia, we remember Appalachian men and women whose lives became tied to some of the most difficult moments in American military history.

Memorial Day is often confused with Veterans Day or Armed Forces Day, but its meaning is different. Memorial Day is set aside to honor the men and women who died in service to the United States. And in Appalachia, that remembrance h...

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we tell the story of Old 97, the Southern Railway Fast Mail train whose name would become one of America’s most famous railroad ballads.

On September 27, 1903, Southern Railway’s Fast Mail Train Number 97 was racing south through Virginia carrying United States mail moving from New York through Washington, D.C., toward New Orleans. Known for speed and s...