These Haunted Hills With Author Tabitha Prock

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yes, big footstepping through the past, Alien send the Secret

(01:06):
size Evp's in the data night, ghostkiss in in the
film Light don't know the form, what we bring it
to Your truth Behind the fail got of Peculia talking
about the phrase the freaking the weird phylis We tip
around you see quet all of us in the past.

(01:27):
Preacher's call from a timeless license, stic freckling Place singles
from the hoisly days.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
All right, welcome everybody. We got a few people already
in here. Got a good hutting out, Yeah we do.
We got a great show.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
I hope you're ready to hear some scary stories.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, some some spooky stories, spooky.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Some Appalachian spooky stories. We're going to get some tonight.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, it's going to be a friend. I may not
get bail, like spooky story. I might don't be able
to sleep.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
I'm tired enough. I'll be able to sleep tonight. I
didn't sleep well last night. I haven't had any coffee today.
Oh yeah, so it's it's my fault because I don't
drink cokes or anything else. So not having any coffee.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
So yeah, tonight we got an author. Her name is
Tabitha Prock. She's a native of Monroe County, just a
stone's throw from us right now, and that's in Tennessee.
She began her writing career as a newspaper reporter in

(02:47):
nineteen ninety six, and her work celebrates the enduring spirit
of mountain resilance and explores the supernatural side of the Appalachia.
Her book These Haunted Hills, it's a comp compilation. I
said it didn't a compilation.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yes, you got it.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Of handed down ghost stories. Thank you very much, thank you.
It's a compilation of handed down ghost stories and first
hand accounts of the strange and unexplained. Now. She also
currently writes weekly stories for her substackscribers, with her latest
research into East East Tennessee's paranormal accounts featured throughout the

(03:34):
month of October. So and you can go to her
substack at substack dot com slash at Tabitha Prock. So
we're gonna go ahead and bring her own. Hello. Hi,
how are you doing.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
I'm doing good. I'm a little nervous that I'm gonna
be okay.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well, did I blotch it?

Speaker 4 (04:03):
No, not at all. No, I wasn't sure what to
ride exactly, So I just you know, I used.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I kind of rewrote it, so I mean it's I
like to do to make it more, make it, make
it lean.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah, he's a blinging kind of guy.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
We're glad to have you.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, thank you for coming and joining us.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
I know why I asked you. I asked you a
few months ago and I said. She never responded. I
think she was scared. Maybe maybe this is all fun.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Yeah, ask Adam. You know our good friend Matt Seber.
The first time we asked him to come on our show. Uh,
he come all the way out and he told his wife,
if I don't come back, these are the guys and
this is where they live.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, he came to the studio and done it and
didn't know, Madam didn't know. Yeah, that was yes.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
Yeah, speaking of bravery, was telling my sister earlier when
we were talking about the show tonight that you know,
big food is not really that scary, and shadow people
are not that scary. That being on a live show
to me is very scary. So you know, I'm trying
to get my nerves.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Just just remember this. We mess up all the time
and they don't really get us too bad.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
For it.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
So okay, so maybe everybody will be kind to us.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yes, yes, yeah, you don't have to worry about it
too much. I'll tell you. What's funny about that is
that the more you worry about it, the more when
when I sit there and start getting cognizant of what
I'm doing instead of just letting it flow, I mess
up more. So just talking to friends across the coffee table,

(06:06):
you know, that's it. That's all we are.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
Okay, sounds good.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
So, uh. You know a question that we usually start
off asking is what got you into wanting to write
the book and collect these, you know, ghost stories and
do these kinds of things.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
So I was a kid in the seventies and a
kid in the eighties, was born in seventy five, so
I was just born in a time when I think
with gen X and before that, and our parents and
our grandparents love to tell scary stories to kids, and

(06:46):
so I've heard a lot of scary, strange stories, everything
from ghost stories to more creepy pair and normal things too.
There is a big foot legend, and not Vernon caused
a white thing. It's a white big foot, and so
I heard stories about it a lot a lot, and

(07:09):
just I've had actual experiences from childhood to adulthood that
are things that I just cannot in no way explain
other than the fact that it's unexplainable. So that's kind
of how I got started. I started collecting mentally first
all the stories, and then as I grew older and

(07:29):
had kids on my own, I started to realize, you know,
that my grandmother's getting older and my dad's getting older,
and if I don't collect these stories and put them
down as busy as I am, I'm gonna forget and
I'm not gonna have them for my grandchildren and thereafter.
And they were stories that were just meant to be shared.

(07:50):
I think oral history is a huge part of Appalachian culture,
so I wanted to preserve that as best I could.
And when Amazon came out and they started doing this publishing,
I decided that I was I taught you to tell
my grandmother all the time when I was little, I'm
going to put this into a book someday. So when
the opportunity came about that I could go on to

(08:11):
Amazon and create the book and make it available, I
just she was just so happy when we first got
those hard copy shipments, and she could hold those stories
in her hand and actually read them. She shared them
with everybody. She told everybody about the stories because they
are honestly all They belong to all of us. There

(08:33):
are family stories. I just had the opportunity to put
them all together into a book, and I still continue
to put those together in other ways now, like on sepsack.
I've made seven available for free tonight, and I have
free stories all throughout my sepsack. I think I have
twenty seven stories in all. I just started about a

(08:55):
month ago, so I plan on using that space a
lot for in the future, and of course, in the
mens of October, I'm going to be adding even more
of recent research that I've been doing, so I'm really
excited about that too.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Well, that's amazing, Yeah, I mean that's a lot.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
So when.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
When you was, you know, doing collecting all these stories
and everything like that, did you try to hit up
all the you know, the older folks first so you
get all the stuff before they passed on.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
Yeah, I sure did, and I was glad that I did.
Starting with my grandma, I would go through again and
again the same stories I had heard as a child.
They started to even mean more as I grew older,
so I came up with even more questions. And then,
of course the dawn of the Internet, I could go

(09:54):
and research and be like queer, ma'm I'll get this
story about this witch turning into a deer, you know,
and I would be able to to trade that actually
finding that a lot of our stories are Scottish heritage.
Some of my family is of Cherokee heritage, so all
that blending of these oral stories could be traced back
far ancient than I ever imagined as a kid, and

(10:18):
so I did. I started with her my dad, who
passed in twenty twenty, that he was a great storyteller.
So I collected a lot of stories from him and
anybody that I could meet up with. As I was
a newspaper reporter, that one of the first things that
I did was go to my editor and publisher and say,
let me, please, let me interview as many of the

(10:40):
older generation as I possibly can. And so they let
me do it. And I would go out and I
would go through Coca Creek, through little pig trails, going
all around trying to find these houses, these homes of
people that didn't get out a whole lot that had
wonderful stories. So as a newspaper reporter, I made that
sort of my passion to get out there and collect

(11:02):
as many of those stories as I could.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Was it hard for you to? I mean it would
be for me because I'm kind of shy when it
comes to people, and I'm doing a podcast that's weird
it anyway, it would be hard for me just to
go knock on somebody's door and say, hey, I'm doing
this story. I would shoot me.

Speaker 4 (11:25):
That's actually where a great friend of mine who I
actually ended up writing his memoirs for him. His name
is Sandford Grade, and Sanford own Coker Creek Village at
one point when they used to have the Autumn Gold
Festival there, and Samford and I became really good friends,
and he knew that I love to write these kind

(11:46):
of stories, so I only had to write a couple
for him to catch on and say, oh, I know
this person and that person, and he would literally take me.
I would follow him. He would make the introduction, he
would invite some people to the Cokerkook Village General Store
and we would sit around and swap stories. And I'll
never forget a little guy named Neil Kelly, who he

(12:08):
had to play on his heart his harmonica. He had
to play roadwood caskets before we started the interview, so
he played his Roasewood casket story. And then I asked
him after I had interviewed him, I said, Neil, do
you have any ghost stories? And he said, well, I do,
but it's not really a ghost story. It was about
a story that they were trying to scare this other

(12:29):
guy because they were fined for the same sweetheart, and
they were following him and they had a sheet. They
always have a sheet in the mountains, scaring people with it.
But they followed him throughout the came out of the
woods following him and kept picking up pace until they
started chasing him, and he jumped a fence and oddly
enough landed on a hog and the log took off,

(12:52):
and so it was chaos, of course, and he laughed
and he said, I'll never forget that. It's my favorite
ghost story.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
You know what you're going to get, that's good.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
I used to know a guy in Cleveland, well actually
he was my ex grandfather in law, I guess, and
he would sit on the front porch and when I
go down there, and tell me these stories of foreigner. Yeah, me,
and and he talked a lot about CC camps. Have

(13:26):
you heard of that?

Speaker 4 (13:28):
He talked a lot about what I'm.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Sorry, these CC camps that they had over there.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
Actually, yes, I actually visit visited with a man back
in the nineties. His name was Howard Darnell. And Howard
was a city kid who was moved into the cc
Sea camp at the time when they needed to put
young men to work. He came into Coca Creek to
that CCC camp, met a lady, young lady named Pearl,

(13:56):
and settled and lived his entire life other than the
times he was in the war, came home, lived his
whole life in Coca Creek, most beautiful house. And when
I went to visit him, he had a kerosene refrigerator,
a woodcook stove, and a black and white television that
he ran from a car battery once a day to
watch Doctor Quinn medicine woman.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, he would tell me about the CC camps. His
his family, his mother and father, I guess, and all
his brothers sisters would go down there and they would
get the scraps from the food that they were eating
down there, and they would they would give them to
them and they would bring them back and eat them.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Well, that makes a lot of sense because foreigner and upwards,
you know, around Smithfield Road and in Coca Creek that's
very isolated. So yeah, the people that I interviewed up there,
they were doing yourself you know type of people and
really knew how to live from the land and make
do and be creative. And just being able to interview

(15:01):
them and hear their stories of resilience and just so interesting.
So I really enjoyed always getting to talk to those people.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, So what's your favorite ghost story or paranormal for
strange things that's happened up there.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
Well, I'm gonna have I'm gonna have to say, in
Conca Creek, the craziest, strangest thing that I ever heard
was a couple of guys were out driving. You know,
when you don't have anything to do in Monroe County
and other places in the Southeast, you drive down the
back row, you go for a job, you drive the
back road, and so that's what these guys were doing.
And they had pulled over in one little isolated place

(15:46):
and separated, and one of them just came running back
to the truck scared to death. The other guy was
telling me the story. He said, he was quite as
a sheet. He was scared to death. I had never
seen him scared in my life. And he said, what
is wrong with you? And he said, you're not gonna
believe this. But I looked down in the haller and
there was this woman and there were lots flying around

(16:08):
her head that looked like little people. And I thought, oh, wow,
that is a really crazy story. And I never forgot
that story. So every time I go to Crove Creek,
I think, oh, wonder where that lady with a lights
flung around her head is now. But yeah, that was
probably the craziest story of Coca Creek. When you talk

(16:29):
about Rafter and CdCO and ball play, a lot of
the stories to do with ball play have to do,
of course, of the indigenous Cherokee tribe, because ball play
is named for the lacrosse type game that they would play,
and it wasn't just a game for them. It was
a ritual like thing that they would really get together.
They did it a lot of time to settle disputes

(16:53):
in a way that prevented them from actual fighting. But
it was a pretty rough game. So I have a
story kind of about that in a way, and I
think that's a pretty creepy story. Ball Play and City co.
I have a really interesting story about an old church
that it ended up being a paranormal experience that went

(17:15):
through my family through a decade actually, that I think
is very interesting. So I can talk to you about those. Yes,
there was a couple of guys when it comes to
the ball Play area. They were actually in the area,

(17:35):
had been in the area and they had drove down
onto the river and they were finishing and all of
a sudden, on one side of the river, it just
got super dark, and then they started to hear like
something beaten six against the trees, like lots of things

(17:56):
beaten six against the trees. It was very loud and
it spooped them. And so of course they had a
hunting light, so they tried to shine it across the river.
And those lights will go a long way. You can
usually see them off way off in the distance. That
light would go into that void and it would not
shine across the river. It would almost like it was

(18:18):
a vortex, so that it was actually eating up all
the light from that hunting light, and it was going nowhere,
and so it scared them enough. It got so loud
and noisy that they eventually just packed up and said,
we're in the wrong place at the wrong time. We
just need to get out of here. And they were
telling me the story, and that's when I started to
research a little bit more about the lacrosse type game

(18:40):
they would play and how it was a very important
thing that they would do, and that it was that
area is very sacred, So, you know, I just don't
know if it was a residual type of memory of
the land, because I do feel like this earth is
very old, so we don't really know how it holds memory.

(19:00):
But I believe that a lot of our paranormal experiences
probably just do come from a time being simultaneous in
a way and things happening, and it just seems like
that makes sense to me in my world. So I
think that I don't know what happened that night with them,
but I do know that whatever that darkness was, the

(19:21):
hunting light was not shine through it.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Wow, maybe it's a portal.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah, I mean, I've heard a lot of stories about that.
A lot of people have talked about vortexas there's actually
a place that I was told about, Reagan Valley has
that's where I grew up, and not very now has
a lot of spooky stories. But one of the stories
I always heard as a kid was that you they
would never tell me where this actually was, and the
tree is actually gone now, but there was a large

(19:50):
tree and it was along the side of the road
that you could walk toward it, and you could get
to a certain point and your hair would lift up
and it would feel like all of everything around you
was sort of a voyek, just sort of like what
imagine that darkness was. So I always thought that was pretty interesting.

(20:10):
I never wanted to ever find that tree. I'm glad
they didn't tell me where it was that as far as,
like you know, paranormal expenses affecting your physical body, I
think my dad had the most interesting one ever, and
take fensive with my grandmother. It was he was probably

(20:31):
six years old and his younger brother was just a baby,
and mamma loved to make create paper flowers for decoration Day,
and so she would always make these paper flowers and
she would do them in wax, and then she would
share them with people in the community. They may have
paid her, I don't know, but she would deliver them
all around before Decoration day. And one day she went

(20:54):
with Daddy and his brother walking, because they walked everywhere
they went in the community. And she was walking around
and she was delivering house to house these crape paper
flowers before decoration day. And it started to drizzle a
little bit. And if you know those stories, if it's
raining and it's drizzling, it's gonna be creepy. So just

(21:17):
trying to find a place, you know, to get some shelter.
And there was this old church, they call it the
Old Kitchen Church, Kitchen being a last name of a
family up there. And they went into this church. It
was unlocked, not being used maybe for storage, but the
benches were still in there. They walked in and they
Daddy said, he you remembers. They walked to the front

(21:39):
of the church and all of a sudden, they could
not move. He could not move a mestool. He doesn't
remember mamma moving. And he didn't see his brother move
at all, even though he was a baby. No movement,
no noise, nothing, So he said, it lasted a few
seconds and he then he was able to move and

(21:59):
they GoF Now I didn't even deliver the flowers. They
took off and went back home. Well, strangely enough, when
that old church was being torn down, as it always
happened in Appalachia, you make use of whatever is old
or to be reused. So when they tore the church down,
Daddy and some mothers in the family they helped tear
it down, and they took some of the lumber. So

(22:21):
they took this lumber and they built a house that
I called a little house that I grew up in
in Mount Vernon. And they built this little house and
in the they built a back room on using most
of that lumber. And Dad was back there one night
just reading, and she all of a sudden felt the
same exact things. He froze. He was light awake that

(22:44):
he could not move, and it immediately took him back
to that day when he was just a kid in
that same church with that same feeling. And so he
just so happened he had been read in his Bible
and he started to reach for it. He started just
in his head saying, you know, whatever this is, I
don't want it here. It needed to go. So it

(23:05):
took it to and it's finally just let kind of
let go and lifted and he could move again. But
in that same house that I grew up the in
when I was probably ten or eleven, they built a
room for me, not out of the kid in Church Woods, thankfully,
but still I was in my room one night, finally
had my own room, very excited my little sister, she

(23:28):
was probably about six, and she was a typical little sister,
always busy, always playing, running around. And it was really
late at night, so everybody had gone to bed, and
that something woke me up. And it was running like
it was running circles in the house. And it was
a small house that it sounded like something was doing

(23:49):
something very small, was doing laps in the living room.
And so there was a living room and kitchen with
one room, and there was my bedroom door. So I said,
I'm gonna scare her and teach her lesson. She is
never going to try to get up and play at
not time by herself again. So I'm thinking, I'm really
going to scare her, and I listen, and I wait
for the steps to get closer and louder, and I

(24:11):
jump out to scare her and nothing is there. My
sister was in her room, in the room asleep, and
everybody else in the house is asleep. So I have
no idea that I know that that lumber something about it,
something I don't know. There's some energy there that just
hung on. So those sort of like things that kind

(24:35):
of combined and fan throughout our lifetime that I thought
was always very interesting. So I compiled those into the
book from Emma and for Dad and back in the
day about fifteen years ago. As far as Appalachian culture
is concerned me growing up, you know, there's three places

(24:56):
and you always want to be cautious, and that is
by water, in the wood, or in the back roads.
So that's kind of where a lot of the stories
from our family originate. It was either in the wood,
someplace in the mountains, or on a back road or
someplace near water.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
Well you know, I mean, like you said before, all
scary stories usually start on a stormy night or you know,
something something like that. But but really a lot of
paranormal investigation, gators and stuff like that. I really do
believe that the energy of running water, falling water storms

(25:42):
that that does, you know, create more energy in the
air and and things like that that could actually help
things to manifest that normally wouldn't have the energy to manifest.
And so but now you're talking about say, stuff that
happens with that, would you know that could be explained

(26:06):
as residual hauntings, you know, and that does tend to
happen to objects and properties and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (26:16):
Oh, I agree. And speaking of objects, it reminds me
of a story that's in the book about a mirror,
because you know, mirrors are always also very scary. Sometimes
the weird things can happen with mirrors. Yeah, well, there's
this one was I remember it. I experienced it as
a child. I know that this is just part of

(26:37):
my lived experience that and my aunt and uncle lived
in a house. There was a trailer that had it
was sort of I guess nineteen sixties because this was
the early eighties, so it was an older trailer that
they have purchased while they were building their house, and
it had a bar area, step up kitchen, dining area,

(26:59):
and it had in that there was a little bar
with a built in mirror into the wall so you
could remove it. It was there and when they first
moved in, what they noticed was like she would clean
that mirror, and it seemed like progressively that mirror continued
to get foggy, like it would just fog up and

(27:20):
she would clean it, and it just had like this
white fogginess to it. And then the fog started to
sort of take shape, and over the weeks it started
to take the shape of a face, which scared her
quite a bit, and she was gonna do whatever she could.
So she loved to paint. She was a great artist,

(27:42):
and so she painted in the same sort of color
as white, a little bit lighter color. She painted these
beautiful white flowers all over, like a vase of flowers
all over this mirror. And of course when we show
up to do it, we're all asking questions and she're
are like, why did you paint the mirror? You know,
they have, you know, an answer like, oh, we thought

(28:02):
it would be pretty. And then, of course, you know,
kids are very observant and they're very good listeners. So
in listening, I realized why they really did paint the mirror,
and so all of us were just sort of once
I told everybody else, this is really why they painted
that mirror. We were terrified of that mirror. The strange

(28:23):
things would always happen in that house. One of the
things that happened was all the kids. She had two
boys and a daughter, and they would go visit relatives
across Mount Vernon from one side basically of High He
sixty eight over to the other. So they would all
gather up and go with her dad. And she was
cleaning one day and she had thought that the younger

(28:45):
boy had went with their rest. That she saw a
little boy and she asked him, like, why are you
back early? Who brought you home? And he didn't say
anything to her, and she yelled his name and tried
to find him, and she thought it was really weird
that he would hiding from her. And then about the
time that she was trying to look for him, they
were the car pulls in and everybody's accounted for in

(29:08):
the car, and we have no idea to study who
the little boy was. They just happened to show up
at this house.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
That's interesting.

Speaker 4 (29:20):
I loved doppelganger stories, and it's not the only one
that I ever heard. And I heard another one that
was an actual first hand account from an aunt. I'm
telling you my family they have all these stories. But
some time I think it was in the eighties, my

(29:41):
aunt was getting ready for bed and she saw her sister.
They're close to the same age. She saw her sister
in a blue gown walk into the house while she
was in the kitchen, and she started talking to her,
and then she went to the spare bedroom that she
had leaned up against the wall with her head down
like she was upset, and she asked her what's wrong,

(30:03):
and she wouldn't answer. The woman didn't answer, and she
went straight and just swiftly went into another room, and
so my aunt thought, well, maybe she just wants to
be alone. She didn't answer me, so i'm's gonna let
it be. And then the next morning she woke up
and remembered, I need to go check on her because
she seemed to be having a really bad night. So
she went in, the bed was made. She thought, wow,

(30:25):
she left really early. So she called her to check
on her, and she had been with her family the
whole night. Her sister had not been anywhere near her house,
and it looked identical, she told me, like she wore
this woman was identical to my sister. So two Stoppelganger stories.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
I guess that, you know, that would be kind of creepy.
You think that it's it's a relative. Yeah, so I'm like, oh, okay,
you know whatever, And then the next day Yeah, otherwise
it's like what were you doing here?

Speaker 4 (30:59):
Yeah? Extremely and sailing when you find out that you know,
that was a mystery the whole time.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah. I don't get creaked out often, but that would
creek me out.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
That close to home and faces that you see every
single day, not seeing who they are, that's definitely one
that would keep me up and not so. I don't
know if you've heard of donaldnck Cabin. That donal Y
Cabin is a cabin that was built in eighteen hundreds

(31:34):
by a man named his last name was don Ley,
and it's actually I don't know if it's still available
for rental from the Forest Service. That people do camp there.
And so some cousins of mine decided they were gonna
have this big thrill and never gonna go during Halloween.
They're gonna rent out the cabin and all of them
were going to go stay in it. And it has

(31:54):
no of course, no electricity. It's primitive champing, so that
you had to bring your sleeping bag and everything, and
there was rocking chairs on the porch and they brought
camp chairs, I think, so they're all sitting around and
immediately when it got dark, everything got quiet except for
the rockers on the porch that started to rock and

(32:15):
then it sounded like something was walking across the roof.
So they were like, oh, you know, we're in the
middle of the woods, just wild animals is fine. And
they had actually lighted the door. So they were sitting
around trying to carry each other, and the door flew open.
The door was shut and latched, but it flew open immediately.
So they packed up and decided, okay, that's a nuts,

(32:38):
we're gone. Let's just get out of the woods. So
they took off out of the woods. That we have
heard several people say that in the area of Donnally
Heaven and Dolly Kaven itself is a really creepy area.
They always feel like they're never alone and that so
many is always always has an eye on them. And

(32:59):
so my my son and his cousin they like to
go also camping this primitive cabin up there near the river,
and they feel the same way, like we no matter
how alone, it feels, we have something watching us all
the time up there.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Now do you do you think what's that feeling? Does
it feel like it's you know, do you think that
it's a person, or do you think it's a fast
watch or.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
I think I'm not really sure it's I think the
feeling of being watched is more out of whatever's watching,
is more out of curiosity or guardianship than anything else.
It's almost like they're holding face saying, you know, this
is our characory. We want to watch, you know, keep
an eye on you because you're you're it's okay, but

(33:53):
we want to just still make sure that you know
you're being kind and being good to where you are.
And so I feel like that's probably the feel of
it the most. Now, there is a story Coca Creek.
There are stories of things stalking, and one of the
ones that I can think of most is a guy

(34:14):
who was out hunting. He was buying self And we
always said as kids, like we don't go hunting by ourselves. Ever,
that's not like if we're going out at night, we're
going together, but we don't go in the woods at night.
We don't whistle in the woods. We cover our curtains
over in the night time. We don't look out the
window in the dark. But this guy was buying for

(34:34):
some reason, and he had been hunting, and he was
on his way home. I think he was squirrel hunting.
I'm not sure, but he as he realized after a
few steps down the mountains that he could hear an
echo of steps behind him. So it was like it
was trying to match his pace, but it kept a
little bit of a distance, and it would begin to

(34:54):
match his pace quicker and quicker. So the faster he
tried to go home, the quicker the pace of this
whatever was behind him got. And so he then stopped
and he the fipstep stopped and he shined his light around,
didn't see a thing. So he decided when he saw
the porch flight of home, that he was gonna make

(35:15):
a run for it. So he starts running, and the
faster he ran, the faster the pace of course got
behind him. That he could just feel like, this thing
is on my heels and I have got to make
it to that front porch. So when he got almost
to the porch, he started to yell for everybody, that
somebody to open the door, and he yelled and yelled
until finally somebody heard it, and they opened the door

(35:37):
and he slammed it behind him and something slammed against
the door. Opened it and looked everywhere. There was nothing injured,
nothing to be found that something physical was actually following him.
And it did hit that cabin door and made a
noise in a big stop. So I'm not sure what

(35:57):
it was, but it was definitely something that was interested
in stalking him and following him.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Sounds like a bigfoot. So like a bigfoot. Yeah, they
like to mimic, mimic you when you're like walking, and
they walked beside up with the same pace and you
start yep, that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
Ye again. In Mount Vernon, my dad and his brothers
they walked in the sixties everywhere they went, so they
would walk and visit family members. Didn't think anything of
walking a long way during the day, during the weekends,
and always late at night when they were coming home.
So my uncle, who was the oldest, told the story

(36:43):
about walking home one night and as he was walking
down the name Reagan Valley Road. He was walking along
the road and he could hear again something behind him
was walking finding the pace with him, and he turned
and didn't see anything. He could almost in places here
like clicks. So he was here a click here and there,

(37:05):
and he thought that is just weird. What is this?
So he turned and the way he told us, and honestly,
you know, now that I'm older, I think was he
just blessing that he said, I turned and I saw
this shadowy figure thing, and I ran as fast as
I could sort it with my head down. I was
gonna tackle it. And he said he ran towards the direction,

(37:27):
and when he looked up as he thought he was
in the you know, closing in on it, gonna tackle it.
If there was nothing there, so it probably moved pretty
fast or two knows that that was an experience, you know,
just like the one in Coca Creek that lowered down
the mountains in the valley area of below Teleco. So

(37:48):
we have a lot of their stories about things stalking
us in not burning along the telecoplanes and then of
course in the mountains too.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah. I lived on Reagan Road for a short time,
Reagan Valley. Yeah, yeah, there was a house down there.
It was like an old white farmhouse that was told
to be haunted by something. I can't I can't remember
exactly where it was at or anything, but I always

(38:20):
remember them telling me about this house that was on
that road. It was like in a curve.

Speaker 4 (38:25):
Okay, there was a lot of stories in that area
as just haunted structures, but also the land being just
really strange and haunted church graveyards. There had lots of
accounts of people seeing things. One person accounted to me
that they were driving around Eliezer, which there's a graveyard

(38:49):
in a church, and that church still has an out house.
It's falling down, but it's still there. It's a very
old church in the eighteen hundreds. And he swore that
he saw ants over and saw this little the fence
along the graveyard. There were three men there in suits,
standing and talking, and he thought, what are those men

(39:09):
doing here in the middle of the night. It pitched
dark almost, but he could see them and started toward
him to see, like who is this And there was
nothing there. So it was there one minute, gone the next.
And then another person, different church, but same area. They
were walking along a different road, noticed a woman on

(39:31):
the church ships and of course it was the proverbial
old lady in white that we hear throughout history. But
if the lady he explained had never heard the story
of the Lady in White from anywhere, but he said,
she was on the steps and she was wearing a
white dress, and she looked like she was really sad
and crying, and so I waved to her because she

(39:53):
looked up and I waved her, and she just immediately
didn't pay attention to me. So he said, I started
the walk toward her or find out if everything was okay,
And as he walked toward her, she stood up, looked
at him, and walked into the graveyard area and totally vanished,
like gone in an instant. And so of course that

(40:13):
scared him enough that he decided to hurry home and
tell the story to everybody that would listen. But there's
really strange stories all throughout Monroe County, in the valleys
and even Sweetwater they have done. Like I said, I
worked as a tour guide to the Last Sea, and
whether those stories were true or not, they sure scared me.

(40:35):
When I was on boat Dauty down there by myself,
you know, during the day, it was like not time,
and so it was scary. But yeah, there's a lot
of lot of strange things happening around here.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, they used to tell a story at the Lost Sea.
I guess it was in that main cavern, the big
open up cavern where there used to be a bar
down there. Yeah, and people drink and drink and drink
and drink, and you know, wouldn't affect until they got
up on the surface exactly.

Speaker 4 (41:07):
Yes, the temperature and being underground, they didn't feel the
effects of the alcohol. That for some reason, some of
they decided to make the way out these tall steps
in the beginning of the time, the cavern taverns, and yeah,
people fell down the steps quite often. Once they started
up and got nearly to the surface, they would fill

(41:29):
their facts and just you know, fall down. Of course.
It was called Craighead caverns, and they tell the story
that it was used for indigenous tribal council meetings, most
likely the Cherokee and possibly before that, but it was
used and it was used by people in the area
to store vegetables like potatoes. Funny story, not really scary.

(41:55):
It was scary to me at the time that I
was on a tour and we were talking and about
the potato pit area where people would cover over their
potatoes and it's like a community potato storage and they
would go get them as they needed them, because this
fifty eight degrees or so underground, and so a good
refrigerator when you didn't have one. I was in my

(42:15):
story telling all about this, and I noticed that the
people were watching something over my head and one of
them had a video camera, so he was shining the lights,
and as he shined the light, I could see the
shadow of something and he said, there's a bat. And
so maybe in seventeen and thinking, I know, I practically
live in this cave. I am not going to be

(42:37):
act like I'm scared of anything. I said, oh, yeah,
these bats they don't bother you. They're around, but they
will not bother you. And about that same time, this
bat starts to fly all around my head and I
slipped out, and I'm sure they thought this woman, we
are colin her bluff. I was terrified at that fat
at that moment.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
Well, we were doing a one of the I don't
know places we was at last year. I think it
was a Halloween. We actually had a guy come up
and tell us a story about Citico Creek, him being
there hunting, and he said that he hasn't gone hunting

(43:26):
since but he said that he was up there at
it was not time at this time, that already hunted
all day. They come back, they were set, they had
their camp and everything set up, fire was going and
you know, after they ate and stuff, they went and
went to bed. Then they started hearing like wood knocks

(43:51):
and stuff. Yeah, and then something started more than when
something's started encircling the camp. Wow, the camp, and he
said it was bigfoot, but he's he said that that
next morning they packed up and they left and they've
never been there hunting again.

Speaker 4 (44:13):
That's that reminds me of a me and I saw
not too long ago that said, you know, in the daytime,
I don't believe in ghosts, but atn I'm a lot
more open minded because when those when it gets dark
in those woods and all the noises show up, it's
just so apparent that you're not alone and you don't
know what all is on the other side, if the

(44:34):
tent or everything else. And we hear a lot of
accounts in the Indian Boundary area city Coo Creek area
of Drum Towns, lots of drumming and rattling sounds like
shaker rattles. Yeah, so there's been several people that have
told us stories about that terrified them. They would leave
in the middle of camping because they couldn't handle the

(44:57):
nighttime noises that they couldn't explain.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Hm.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
I would love to hear that though, because I would
almost guarantee that that would be a residual haunting type
thing of the natives when they when they lived there.

Speaker 4 (45:14):
That makes a lot of sense. I think that, you know,
like I said earlier, this land holds onto stuff and
there were you know, there were some things that have
happened throughout time here and it just seems to converge
in this one area and other places are probably the same.
That Telecoplanes had three huge mounds. We don't know if

(45:36):
it was Mississippian or otherwise. There's a lot of researches
going into it, but I still have not found what
resonates with me, like, yes, this is definitively it. I
cannot really put my finger on it. But my dad,
he was there when they were excavating. I think it
was the University of North Carolina. He was a young
boy when they were there and they were measuring out

(46:00):
where different structures were along the area of the plains
and they were opening up and finding human remains that
they were large humans. So the skeleton that he watched
them measure was twelve feet just the skeleton and it's
tests measured twenty four inches across, and you watched them

(46:22):
measure it and held it in his memory like, this
is the biggest person I've ever seen in my life.
And he told that story to being over and over
again because he said that really happened. I want you
to always remember if I saw this with my own eyes,
they uncovered something there that was bigger than any human
I ever saw. So who knows, you know, it's just

(46:45):
very interesting.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
Well that could go back to a lot of you know,
Native American folklore of the giants and stuff like that
that were here. You know, during the time that they
were here, and even before they were.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Here, absolutely they told stories of the red hair giants
and the giants that would stalk them. So you have
a lot of that happening sort of over and over,
whether it's supernatural or actually happened and social times. But
I tend to believe stories that I hear often. I

(47:23):
know that there has to be some grain of truth there.
There has to be something you know, and we have
of course Doue kaloo. That was kind of like the
big scent and is it boojum from North Carolina and
the booger, you know, everybody called it that that was
like the big scent of the area. And of course
the white things. My grandmother actually wore that she saw

(47:46):
at one time she was visiting. We sort of lived
in this little community where my grandparents had a house
and my aunts and uncles, and in our little house
we were just putting walking distance of each other, and
so she would walk from place to place to be everybody,
and she was visiting my aunts. We had a pretty
huge barn, and then under below the barn they were

(48:06):
what we called the bottoms that were just like this
place for papall Planet Tina. It's at this big level
area of ground. And she came in the door, shut
the door behind her. She looked scared to dance, and
she wore she said, I saw it. I saw the
white thing that came out of the barn, and it

(48:28):
started down towards slowly towards the bottom, and then it
just set up and it was gone. And she believed
all her life that she had saw it. Down on
her property, and people used to hear it. They would say,
you know, it screams. It sounds so lonesome. It's the
worst you know, howling screaming sound you've ever heard that

(48:48):
type of thing. It would mimic women's voices or women's
screams sometimes things like that. So there's a lot of
stories about that.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Well, a lot of a lot of stories like that.
You know, you have a bigfoot doing the same thing
right saying for women, you would they'll they'll sound like
babies and stuff like that, so it changes and uh
and other things. Yeah, so they try to lure women

(49:23):
and and kids into the woods for some reason.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
Oh, that's very scary. And that reminds me of that
the Nunn of He or the Cherokee little people that
the people who live everywhere story where you know, the
story was that they were protectors of the land. They
also watched out for people, the innocent, protected others. So

(49:46):
I don't know if you've heard the story of n
Quassie Mounds where they were being attacked and warriors were
told said to have come out of the mountain and
out of the mounds defending that like and for the
Cherokee and so Niclasun is very famous for that in Franklin,
North Carolina. But the yeah, the little people of the Cherokee.

(50:11):
It's also a very interesting story. And the Moon eight
people are different, kind of reminding of an Appalachian Lord
of the Rings. When all these different you know, characters
that it sounds interesting to learn more about it. I
would love to do that eventually, and I think it's
just so fascinating. Yeah. A lot of the.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
The old Cherokee legends and lore and stories and stuff
are just there. They are interesting because you know, they
go back for so long and they're really tied to
the people. But the land itself.

Speaker 4 (50:53):
Too, you know, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's it's just like
the land in some way, remember, and it's sort of
residual of course and holding space for the things that happened.
So I think that's what makes it a little bit
more spooky. It could account for the feeling of the
you know, the vor Texas and the strange happenings and

(51:14):
the shadow people. Speaking of shadows, I have one more
quick story that I thought was pretty scary. My cousin
went to prom I think is around two thousand and two,
he's always been interested in spooky stories. But they were
out to have fun, you know. After Prom. They were

(51:34):
driving down Ballplay Road in a convertible and ahead of
them all of the kids in the car saw this
shadow figure. It was almost like it was lamping, like
the Hunchback of Notre Dame, across the road pretty far
ahead of him. So they the driver kept as cool

(51:54):
and you thought he would have to not have to
get He didn't want to hit this person or whatever
it was. So when he made it too and he
had passed that the girl in the car had a
camera prom not she and this was two thousand and two,
some no you know, smartphones, she got up out of
the convertible and she just started to snap pictures one
after the other. And when they got the pictures developed,

(52:18):
it was mostly you know, a blur that you could
see that somebody was taking pictures while the car was moving.
But on a few of them there was this black
just swat of as mudge. He showed me the pictures.
It was the creepiest thing. There was just this huge
smudge across a few of them, like whatever this is,
it's not letting you take its picture or else it's

(52:38):
in another dimension and you just can't get there. You know.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
That goes to a lot of there's a lot of
stories about you know, people seeing things like that on
the sides of the road where it's a they don't
know if it's a spirit, if or what it is,
you know, and those are some pretty scary tales when
you really think.

Speaker 4 (53:06):
About it, you know, that's true. Almost like a sentinel
or guardian, there's something that's happened there and they don't
want people to forget. Kind of what are reminding me
of that? They're just there for you know, a little
bit of a warning to say take care right here. Yes.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Another another thing too though, is is we had It's
been over a year, I guess, but one of the
first times we had Mike Ricksecker on and we was
talking about shadow entities and stuff like that. Uh. He
was at a location one time and they were filming,

(53:47):
and he said that what he believes that they witnessed
wasn't was neither. He said that it seemed more like
a time slip.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
Like them seeing something seeing them and the other thing
just as much as it did because they were like,
what what's that?

Speaker 2 (54:12):
What's that?

Speaker 4 (54:12):
You know, they were haunting each other. Yes, yes, that
makes perfect sense to me when I think about the
minerals that are in the land here, with the limestone
and the other gemstones, different things are in our location.
The geology of this area would be very conducive to

(54:35):
a natural time machine, kind of like it would if
you thought about it in scientific terms. The elements that
you might need to combine to be to create a
time slip becauld very likely happen in those locations where
you have underground you know, crystals and gemstones and lime
zone and all these things together. And I think about

(54:57):
the crystal radios that people used to make, you know,
back in the forties, and I think, okay, well, so
they are used in a way to create sound or
together some sort of ways through the air. So it
makes sense to me that that could be a possibility.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Oh yeah, you know, our area is full of quarts,
and quarts resonates at a specific frequency, you know. I mean,
that's why they have quartz watches and all that stuff,
because because the residence frequency of that quartz itself is
what helps you know, keep the time and all that
other stuff. Yes, and so yeah, quarts and all those

(55:37):
those things do have certain frequencies that are it's amazing
when you actually start looking into what they're capable of doing.
You know, take two quarts and put them under pressure
and rub them together and they'll create light.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
Yes. Yeah, we actually visited New Haven, Connecticut, and there
was a museum there in one of their collections with
different types of raw and they were specifically ultraviolet rocks.
So if you shine a certain light on them, they
shine very ultra violet colors, which I found so fascinating.

(56:11):
I had no idea that rocks could do that, but
I was really fascinated by that.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Yeah. I've watched some stuff on on YouTube of people
going on the shores and stuff up there with the
with the black lights and they find those yellow ones
and the orange ones and and.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
And it's such a testament to show, even scientifically, that
there are things in existence that we do not see
with the human eyes, but they are still there. Yes,
And it's just very interesting, very interesting correlation. I guess that,
you know, the end scene is very present in our
everyday live and in areas around all over you know

(56:52):
the world, that very much show in Monroe County in
the southeast and East Tennessee area.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, I got a question. I like history a lot.
I don't know if there's anything paranormal that's happened there,
but there was. It's over I guess it's on the
Chirolla Skyway or close to it. It's called Fort Loudon
Massacre site.

Speaker 4 (57:19):
Oh, the Cane Creek Massacre.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah, yeah, can I.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
Can I tell you? And so in the seventeen fifties,
Fort Louden was established as one of the outermost post
of settlements by the Europeans in America at the time,
and so it was also until eighteen nineteen. Around about
that time period, it was also belonging to the indigenous tribes,

(57:47):
very much of the Cherokee Nation at the time. So
when Fort Loudon was established, they got along quite well
with the Cherokee, but there became there was intention that
throws to bald until the point was that they were
being held siege inside the fort, unable to leave. Part

(58:08):
of that was because of some Cherokee that had been
held prisoner and eventually lost their lives as prisoners at
Fort Prince George, I believe it was. But there was
I think seven people, seven Cherokee that died during that time,
so they laid speech to Fort Louden. Nobody could go in,

(58:29):
nothing could nothing could go in, nobody could come out.
They had to survive on whatever they could. So they
ended up actually I think they had to make meals
of their horses or any animals that they had in
the fort. So eventually they came to the conclusion that okay,
we're gonna make this agreement. Captain Severe they we will

(58:51):
let you guys leave, but we're gonna escort you on
the Teleco Road, which was the Warriors Trail, or the
Warriors passed where the Unicoi turned hike. We're gonna expert
you and we're gonna watch you and then you you're
gonna link up with other people in the area of
Kane Creek. So they walked if you can imagine from

(59:13):
von Or area where the Fort Ladden, you know, it's
been reestablished, so the other one is actually underwater that
the Fort Ladden there in vone Or. They walked all
the way to Cane Creek above Tellico Plains. When they
got to Cane Creek to camp for the night, their
Cherokee God left. They weren't sure where he went. That

(59:35):
it turned out later that night several people were massacred,
and they believed that the women and children were probably
taken into the tribe because they were never found either.
And so there's actually a house quite near this massacre
location that has had very much kerneral things happen in it.

(59:59):
People do not stay there. I think it might even
be vacant if it's not torn down by now, because
nobody would live there for very long. They would move
in and it would be so intense that they could
not stay and live in a house with so much activity,
And that's probably very likely the reason.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Yeah, Now was it the Was it the French or
was it the British.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
I can't.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
I think it was it was British because Fort Prince
George was named after King George there. That was during
the time of the French and Indiana War. Of course,
the French sided with the indigenous tribe against so there
may have been some French warfare type, you know, things

(01:00:49):
going on at that same time because of their their
divide between English and the French and the tribal nations.
That it was during the French Indian warrior that's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Very interesting to me. Maybe we need to go over
and investigate that little plotland.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Yeah, as soon as she was saying that, you know,
all that was going on, I was like, why haven't
we done an investigation there?

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
I think there have been a few people who have
been into that location, and maybe there's been a few investigations.
I'm not really sure. I've never really followed up on it.
I do know a few people had to asked some
questions to me about it, and from history, I knew
that that had taken place, and I always thought that

(01:01:39):
was very interesting that they chose that year. Yet, and
of course it was it had been great Teleco, which
was their chief town. That had several, you know, principal towns,
but Teleco was very much one of them, so that
may have been where all the reinforcement was that. I

(01:01:59):
do believe that the only ones massacred. The number of
people massacred equal the number of lost Indigenous people from
Fort Prince Georges that have been taken prisoners. So I
do believe that they just felt like an eye for
an eye for a tooth, and so they didn't massacre anymore.
But then again, I may be wrong. They may have

(01:02:21):
massacred more.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Right, Yeah, I like that story. I mean, I don't
like what happened, but I like the story.

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Yeah, it's kind of like you know that the old
sagas of you know, the the times when America was
early and a lot of things happened, and it was
just I can't imagine living in that type of wilderness
and trying to, you know, fend for yourself in an
unknown territory. That that would have been absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Well to most of the white settlers that came back
back then, like you said earlier, you know, most of
them were Scott's Irish, and they actually pushed the boundaries
and went further than you know, where the king said
that they were even supposed to go. They went further

(01:03:17):
on and further up and in, And that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:20):
Makes sense, I don't you know, I don't doubt that
a bit. And knowing people about Elaika that they're going
to always push the boundaries. They don't tell me that
I can't settle here because they will.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
I can't make liquor what are you talking about?

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
I was thinking of our stories that you know, we
were going to talk about tonight, and I was thinking
about Cudico and places that I saw, you know, My
papa probably had some seals in this day, some sashed
jars up there, and a few stumps in those hills.
He was definitely a moonshiner. Yes, you know, that was

(01:04:01):
just the way, and that's kind of how I look
at it, you know, as we can't change anything about
the past. We can't. We just can make our daily decisions,
but we can't ignore the things that happened either, because
that's how we make sense of what we do today.
And so that's kind of why I share these stories
because I feel like, you know, it's just has been

(01:04:22):
my way of making sense of things and everyday life
and a way of carrying memory that has lasted, you know,
hundreds of years rather than decades. And that's why I
lived interviewing the eighty year old and nine year old people,
because those stories, if I had it collected them would
have been gone forever and there was some wisdom in

(01:04:44):
there that I carry with me to this day. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
I'm sure they love telling them too, Oh yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
They left. I got taught how to make brit apple pies.
I would leave with you know, special heirloom thieves that
came over the mountain from North Carolina on a wagon
and you know, people would tell me. They would start
their story with did you know I was born on
a blue snow and and of course that led to questions.

(01:05:14):
So it was it was an easy, always an easy
interview because I rarely had to ask very many questions.
They would always be followed by such rich storytelling. It
just felt so easy and delightful that I will never
forget the people that I interviewed and just think of
them often.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
Yeah. The one, the guy that I talked to that
was from Foreigner and he just named a bunch of
different places every time. He was a good man, great man.
I'm not sure his last name was in prop Oh
really he lived in Cleveland, Oh, Okay, but he was
from that area.

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
Okay, So that's my husband's family, and his grandfather loved
to tell stories. He was from Steer Creek in the
Steer Creek area of about Tellico or near Tellico, and
that he worked in a CCC camp back in the
day as well. So I think there's probably a few

(01:06:18):
PROCs here and there, and could be possibly one or
two in the Cleveland area.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Yeah, I mean he would I would go down there
like every weekend, and see him with with my wife then,
and he kind of had sort of Alzheimer's all And
the first thing he would say to me is you
ever hear the foreigner?

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
Have you ever heard of this?

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
You ever hear of that?

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
And he is telling me all these stories about the
see See camps every time. I just loved loved him.
I heard him before, but I loved him telling me that.
And he even told me one time that he rode
his bicycle from Teleco from well Coker Creek all the
way to Cleveland to see his girlfriend, which was his wife,

(01:07:07):
you know. Then he wrote that far.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
It's very interesting how far they were willing to travel
in their own sitch or by bicycle. And I used
to go visit with someone that we're sort of related
to that he grew up in Coker Creek, and he
would tell me stories of traveling walk getting started early

(01:07:32):
in the morning and walking across all those mountains into
North Carolina, you know, far into North Carolina, walking mile
every day and then knowing that he was going to
turn around and come home. And I would always ask him, like,
how did you make it through the woods at not
in Coker Creek and North Carolina without just getting peered
to death. And he said, oh, well, you just don't

(01:07:54):
think about it. That's another thing with the older generation.
They will just nonchalantly tell you the most scariest things,
just like they were telling you to go across the street,
you know, and get a drink of water. It was
just so funny how they would their delivery, especially a
lot of the men in my life there, delivery was
always just so nonchalant, like yeah, this happened, Yeah, that happened.

(01:08:18):
The women, though they could really tell some stories, they
put a lot of emotion into it. So it was
very interesting to see the different styles of storytelling. And
I'm always fascinated by that still today because I love
to hear stories and tell stories, and I think you'll
always be a part of my life.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Yes, well, do you have any more that you might
want to share.

Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
I'm trying to think if there was maybe one or two.
And oh, you know, I do have a couple of
which old stories about witches. Okay, that was probably one
of the first, and with like paranormal stories, I guess
I should say that I ever heard. I think that's
like your waning stories, is the stories about witches so

(01:09:08):
I was very small, and my cousins were very small,
and we would hear time and time again, more time
than one two stories. One was about and it was
always somebody who lived just down the road. Have you
ever noticed that it was always close enough to scare
you just enough. So it was always this person that
lived over the hill or down the hall, or down

(01:09:29):
the road. And so that's kind of how that story
I always started that there's this lady. She's a little peculiar,
and people thought that she was a witch because weird
things would happen if people made her mad. And years later,
you know, I heard the story of the bell Witch,
and I thought, wait a minute, I have heard a
similar story just like this Thislan, but right here at home.

(01:09:52):
And so this lady apparently the story the legend, because
I'm gonna say it's definitely got to be a legend.
The legend was that she had the ability somehow to
turn people into mules and use them to play her fields.
So yeah, the story that I always heard as a

(01:10:12):
kid was there's this lady and there's this man and
woman that the family knew, and the man started to
go downhill, his health started to decline. He was always tired,
he couldn't get through the day. He just had all
these physical issues. And he said, I feel like I
have worked all that long, even though I've been asleep,

(01:10:32):
I feel like I've been worked all that long, and
I just can't get to rest. I just can't get well.
And so the wife thought it was very strange. And
there's always some wiser woman in the area that you
go ask, and usually it's your granny, your mama. So
she went and asked an older lady. I think it
was her granny. But she said, what is going on?

(01:10:52):
And she said, I think this woman is doing something
like putting some kind of a curse or something on
your husband. And so she said, I think you should
follow her. And the story was that she heard her
husband get out of bed, he woke up, he walked
out and almost like a trance, out of the bedroom,

(01:11:13):
out the door, and she followed behind him, and she
talked across the hill she saw a mule and the
lady had it, getting ready to plow her fields with it,
and she took off back home. And my grandmother told
this part of the story just as if it was
the absolute truth. She said, so the woman went back

(01:11:35):
and she wanted to find out what do I do
to get rid of this curse? What do I do?
And the woman told her, this is what you need
to do. You need to cut out the feagery of
a person. And it's gonna be this lady that you're
thinking is doing this to your husband. And you're gonna
take it and find a beach tree, and you're gonna
get an iron nail and you're gonna take it and

(01:11:57):
tap one time into this beech tree. And then every
single day after that, you're gonna tap one time until
that little paper doll is tapped all the way in.
The nail has tapped all the way in. So my
grandma swore that she witnessed this doll on this tree
and that it had the bart had begun to peel off,

(01:12:19):
and she said it was almost like it was trying
to get away. Well, that was really funny to me,
and I thought, what it probably is killed that like
the bark probably just fell off the tree because there's
a mail in it that you know. So she said
that the health of the man. Oh in another store.
Another part of the story is always this the way

(01:12:40):
that you make this stick is that they're going to
know that something's up, so they're going to invite you
to their homes or they're going to send you a gift,
so you don't accept the gift, and you do not
ever go to their home being invited by them. So
because if you do, you create a sort of agree
and they can continue to do the mule thing. So

(01:13:05):
they she said she followed all the instructions the man
telltree games, he didn't start going out at night, he
wasn't sick all the time, and they just felt like, okay,
so what we're gonna do. The horse you over the door,
and we're gonna carry an iron now in our pockets,
and we're never going to go visit, and we're never
gonna accept gifts from this household. So that's what they

(01:13:26):
said they did, and that's how the curse basically was broken.
That sory was told to me time and time again.
The other story is so strange, like turn you know,
you can imagine being seven or eight years old and
thinking turn into a mule. What that's pretty scary, little kid,

(01:13:50):
you know, to go some things I can handle that
turn me into a mule. I don't know about that,
but the next story. It's the other sort of witch

(01:14:10):
story that Mama always told. And she said, and Daddy
told us a lot. They said that there was a
guy who's really good at hunting. He could shoot so precise,
he was so accurate. But there was this white deer
that he came across one day and he shot at it.
Every time he shot at it. He was a good shot,

(01:14:31):
and he could never get this deer and he was
just it was driving him crazy to think, I have
got to figure out how to get this deer, and
time and time again he would never be able to
hit it. So he told his wife about it, and
his wife said, this is not This sounds you know,
this sounds odd. She said, I think there's something more
to this story, judging from her Scotch Irish heritage that

(01:14:54):
you know there's something more to this story. You need
to pay attention. So basically, she advises him to melt
down a silver dollar, make it into ammunition and use
that to hunt with. So she said, the next time
you see the deer, shoot it with that, and he did.
He shot at it, he hid it in the leg

(01:15:14):
and it took off. He traced the blood trawel to
a house in another holler, and he went down, was
going to go in and knock on the door. They
got spoops. He decided, maybe I'll go home and ask
more questions first before I get into something. So he
goes home. He tells his life, I hit the deer

(01:15:36):
with that silver bullet and it did bleed, but I
traced it to a house, and now I don't know
what to do. And she said, Okay, you're going to
go back to that house, and you're gonna tell her
that you're looking for your dogs and you were out
hunting and you just wondered, you know where if they
had seen your dogs. Just make up that kind of

(01:15:56):
story so that you could get some more information. So
he goes to the house. He knocks from the door,
and this young lady comes to the door, and he's
a little surprised because he is not sure if she
lived there. And so what he said was, I've lost
my dogs. Did you live here? And she said, well
I do, but I'm staying with my granny. She lives here.

(01:16:18):
And he said, well, do you think she's been out today?
Has she seen my dogs? And she said, well, she
has been out today, but she got injured I don't
know if she saw your dogs. That she was out
walking and she fell on a sob and she hurt
her leg and it's bleeding pretty bad. So I've got
her a doctor in her back here, and I've got

(01:16:39):
her leg banded steps to try to stop the bleeding,
get her heeled up. And he thought, okay, So that
answers a lot of questions, things that I never wanted
to hear in my life, probably, But he does back
home and he tells his life, and she basically gives
him the same instructions of never shoot at that white
beer again, and never go near that house to a

(01:16:59):
horseshoe over here door, and carry a Nron mail in
your pocket. And so they had all these different protections
that they had carried over, you know, from Scotland and
other places. So she used every bit of you know,
knowledge that she had from the old world to defend
their home against this white deer that could this person

(01:17:21):
that could obviously in the story of shapeshift into a
white deer. So shape shifters stories like that I found
were very common in Scotland, Ireland, England, really all over.
So of course they carried goes within you know, through
the years as they settled in this area and somehow

(01:17:44):
it made it down to me here in the nineteen
seventies early eighties.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
Well, what's funny is that iron is something that's used
against the faith.

Speaker 4 (01:17:54):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they do not in this research that
I've done, and they are not, you know, good with irons.
They don't want to be around it. It weakens him
or something like that. There's a lot of stories that
I have read in a lot of research from Ireland
and Scotland that say a lot about that, which I

(01:18:16):
think is also pretty interesting that it covers such a
huge fan of time and it's still told, you know,
the memory still hold right.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
Well, there's a lot. There's some people now that are
doing some some investigations on on they're actually looking at
the old accounts of the faith because a lot of
times the people were when they were abducted for better sense, uh,

(01:18:49):
they had missing time usually a few hours. Oh yeah,
And they really think that it's almost an ancient abduction series,
like what we would call it gray alien or alien today.
Everything fits almost perfectly when it comes to it. They

(01:19:12):
called it, they called.

Speaker 4 (01:19:14):
It something so interesting, so they understood it to be
what they the information that they had. I'll tell you
something creepy that happened with me and Ai. And I
was working on some research and I just decided, I'm
going to ask Ai to show me a picture of
the scariest thing in the mountains and the Smoky Mountains

(01:19:36):
and the Tennessee Hills. What is the scariest thing out there?
And it created a picture of a female, a woman
that had a really long neck and her face was
a very gray alien type face, but she had human
skin and her eyes were just terrifying. And I thought,

(01:19:56):
holy smoke, that is the last thing that I would
have very visiting to show me was a woman in
the woods. So what's going to share me to death? Now?
I'm not going to go camping for a while. But yeah,
I mean, those stories are prevalent throughout all of this area,
and there's so much of you know, the missing for

(01:20:16):
one one that can't be explained, and things that you
know disappear and they show up that can't be explained.
So it's very interesting to think about the possibilities of
that being some type of abduction phenomenon or you know,
something to that nature, or else you know that we

(01:20:37):
hear stories of inner earth, you know, being and things
like that. I've heard a lot of stories about that.
Thinking of that. One last story, a friend of ours
was telling us and looking at him telling this story,
the man believes every word of it. He told us
that he was out early in the evening and he

(01:21:00):
had walked for some reason, was walking in the field
and there's like this big open field with tall grass,
and that place is really eerie anyway, But he was
walking and at first to get dark, and as he
turned to come back home, down in the lower part
of his near his home on his land, he saw

(01:21:21):
a figure walking and he looked, and whatever it was
stopped and they it was like they both realized that
they weren't alone. But he said, this thing he's for
he believed that it had scales. He said, if I've
ever seen a reptilian figure, why that person was a

(01:21:42):
reptile person, saying, because it was standing upright, it looked
to have scales. It was a greenish color, and it
looked like its head was like the shape of a lizard,
and its eyes are very large. And it stopped and
he knew, he said, I knew it was there and
right and he could see it better than I could see.

(01:22:02):
He could see maybe better than I could seek him
for her. So that's the first like reptile lizard man
story I've ever heard of this area. But it really
piqued my interest on that's another thing to add to
my list of things I need to know more about.

Speaker 3 (01:22:18):
Yeah, I think that's one of the first I've heard.

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):
Yeah, that's the only one I've ever heard of. So
I actually was talking earlier today and I said, I
really need to call him up and see if he
can recount this story again, because it's been a few
years and I want to see if he tells it
just the same, because the expression on his face, the
look in his eyes like when he told the story,
you could see the fear almost like he never wants

(01:22:45):
to ever have that experience again. M hm.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
He saw a sleeve stack. He was in the Land
of the Lost what now? Yeah, yeah, crazy, that's great.

Speaker 3 (01:22:59):
I mean, wasn't that in North Carolina or something like
that though, where they had the the riptel thing that
damaged a car like chase some people and did some stuff.
Oh no, there's a book on it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
Didn't know you're thinking about. I'm pretty sure it was
the lizard man, that's what they called it. Yeah, but
I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
I thought that was Carolina or something. I don't remember
now either.

Speaker 4 (01:23:29):
I think I remember that in one of n correct
Burn's books he talks about a lizard or reptilian thing,
and I think it was South Carolina or someplace. I
could be wrong. That that was really one of the
first stories that I had heard paranormal stories. And when
this guy started telling me about this, I just I

(01:23:50):
couldn't believe it. I just thought, oh wow, I thought
those things were at least I didn't have to worry
about that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
But now, yeah, that would be weird. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Yeah, I wonder what they eat people.

Speaker 4 (01:24:04):
Interesting, Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Yeah, cows missing, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:10):
Maybe fish, I don't know. Maybe if they were hanging
and hanging around in like a pasture area had been.
It's more like a hayfield, I guess, very open type
field though a lot of rolling heels, so you know
who knows good hiding places, I guess, And those tall
grasses and the rolling heels, maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:24:31):
I think that could be where. You know, like we
was talking about time slips and stuff like that. I
also believe that sometimes we have the veil will get
thin between worlds as far as you know, alternate alternate worlds.

Speaker 4 (01:24:54):
Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me, like they sort
of blend together. And yeah, like players of an inions
kind of how I see the layers of our dimensions
of you know, we don't really know how many, but
if you made a cross section, you could see that
there are many, and we just have one little slip,
one little sliver of that onion skin, and it's layer

(01:25:15):
after layer after layer.

Speaker 3 (01:25:17):
Yeah, yep. And then every once in a while you
could just you happen to see into something you weren't
supposed to be able to see, even though it's paper
thin right next to us at all times.

Speaker 4 (01:25:29):
Yeah, exactly, it just lifts a little and whatever the reason,
it just happens. I think that that could be the
explanation for a lot of the things that happened around
here in other places.

Speaker 2 (01:25:42):
For sure, especially for like residual stuff that you see
at the same time at the same Yeah, that that
probably could be just the thin line that you see
through at that certain point.

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):
In time, exactly, Yeah, simultaneous. But I think, you know,
Einstein sort of believed that he believed that everything was
happening all at once, that with our linear thinking and
our human brains, we just couldn't perceive it. It would
be like perceiving exactly twenty two cares. You know, there's

(01:26:18):
no way your human brain and visually you can do that,
or I couldn't do that. But imagining all the multiple
timelines and multiverse and the layers of dimensions and the
time being all at the same time, I mean, that's
some Star Trek stuff right there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
Well, we really appreciate you coming on, Tabitha and telling
us some really good stories. I mean, that was great.

Speaker 4 (01:26:47):
Thank you so much. I've enjoyed it. It's a lot
of time. It's what I absolutely love to do, is
collect and tell and write stories. So I'm still continuing
at my best to do that as much as possible.
I actually am a garden school guarden coordinator, so I
teach kids how to grow food and other indigenous practices

(01:27:12):
like holding that heritage in the area, teaching them about
companion planting like the Three Sisters, and so I try
to bring my storytelling into the classroom as much as possible.
With the science of growing food and harvesting and all
that but lately I have wanted to get back more

(01:27:32):
into the writing process, so I've revisited these Haunted Heels
and I've sort of looked at it, did a little
bit more research on some of the stories, and just
really been in deep thought about my writing. So I
created a substack not long ago, about a month ago,
and so substack dot com at Tavisaproc you can find me.

(01:27:54):
I did release about I think there are seven these
Haunted Fields, like brief little story stories there. One of
them's a big Foot sort of experience that I had
that I didn't talk about tonight, but it is there.
The stories on there for free for everybody to read.
It's a paid subscribers prescriptions or sorry subscription. I used

(01:28:16):
to get mad at people for saying prescription subscription service.
So you can subscribe and pay really your monthly. But
then there are also many stories on there that you
can subscribe and discontinue for free, and those stories are available,
including all the Haunted Hills stories are available for free.
So if you go on and subscribe for free, you'll

(01:28:39):
still have access to these Haunted Hills stories and every
news story that I release throughout now in the month
of October. I'm gonna try to do as best I
can to get a lot of those paranormal stories out
over the next few months for everybody to hopefully enjoy
and collaborate on, and you know, find people to tell

(01:29:00):
me some more good stories.

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):
That'll be awesome. Yeah, maybe maybe you'll have another book
come out sometimes, Yeah, I hope.

Speaker 4 (01:29:09):
So I'm hoping that I can build on these haunted
hills and collect, you know, a few more good stories.
I think definitely that Lizard Man is going to be one.
I would have to work on.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
It.

Speaker 4 (01:29:22):
Yeah, Yeah, there's a few. And a house specifically in Ruleville,
there's a man to small mound across the road from it.
There's been some very strange things that have happened, and
it's a farmhouse from the early eighteen hundred, so it's
one of the oldest houses when Monroe County actually became
Monroe County. It's one of the oldest houses around and

(01:29:44):
it has some really good stories with it. So I've
been collecting those and a few more. So I have
a few notes together. I'll start to drop those through
Subtack and then probably most likely everybody will read from
Subtack first and when I have an NFL can pile
them and make them available digitally or imprints.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
Sounds good.

Speaker 3 (01:30:08):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:10):
I had a good friend of mine that had a
story about a mound and it was his sister and
his nephew. His nephew was pretty young at the time,
but they were going back over to their mothers or
her mother's was going to go visit her mother. And

(01:30:33):
on the way there, they started to build a housing development.
But they found a mound there, so that they stopped building,
of course.

Speaker 4 (01:30:42):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:45):
But she said it was, you know, just starting to
get dark, and they started to round. It's like it's
kind of an almost a ninety degree bend there where
you come around and you can look off to your
right and then on the hill you can see the
Tennessee River and then there's a mound there.

Speaker 4 (01:31:03):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (01:31:03):
And but she said before they come around that bend,
she says, there was lights going. She said it like
a rock and roll show, like all the lights and
stuff going. So as they rounded the corner, there's a
big UFO there.

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:31:20):
And it just kind of just was was just sitting
there and it just lifted up as she'd come around
the corner, it lifted up, went across the trees where
she was, you know, over the road, and just she said,
in two seconds was was gone, wow, oh my goodness.
But it was over there like where the mound was.

Speaker 4 (01:31:43):
That's that's happened. I mean, there's been terrible account of
that all the way back, you know, to comes when
they would only report those things in the newspapers, you know,
became an early incident of those types of things. This
particular story was a young boy who lived in the
house at the time was getting into a lot of mischief.

(01:32:04):
And he'd otherwise been a really good kid, but he
was getting into a lot of trouble and he would
always say that his friend did it. His friend told
him to do it, and so all the things that
he would do. He was constantly saying, but my friend
said that I should do this and get into mischief basically,
And finally his mom said, who is his friend and

(01:32:26):
where is he because he's in trouble, and he said, well,
he lives. He actually lives in the ground that he
goes into the tree in the yard and that's how
he gets to his home across the road where the
mountains the dad said, I'm putting a stop to this.

(01:32:49):
I am not having this. So he actually, I think
he cut this tree, said that he was going to
cut this tree. And the person that told this story
to me and I high a family member who lives
there now, and they have plenty of really good stories
there too. That the story was when the tree was
cut down, it had this sap that ran front it,

(01:33:11):
and it was red, and he had never seen trees
that read before that it literally was reda pulling out
from around the tree when he cut it down. But
the problems ended. The kids said, oh, he hadn't come
around here anymore. So I thought that was very strange,

(01:33:32):
and so I started to look into trees as portals,
and you know different, because trees are actually the oldest
living things right now on this planet. They're older than
anything else other than the Appalachian Mountains, but they have
been here for a while, and we don't know. Maybe
everything in trees show up often in folklore. So I

(01:33:54):
just thought that was a very interesting story when you
put all those into context, right.

Speaker 3 (01:34:01):
Yeah, yeah, okay, that's interesting because you had like the horse,
tree of Life and all kinds of stuff like that
exactly it's very prominent.

Speaker 4 (01:34:11):
Yeah, big drizzle.

Speaker 3 (01:34:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's.

Speaker 4 (01:34:25):
Something.

Speaker 3 (01:34:25):
Landing is asking what kind of tree was it?

Speaker 4 (01:34:27):
Do you know? And I want to say, and I
may be wrong that it was a create myrtle tree. Okay,
I can find out. I can see some checking and
double check on that. But yes, it was very strange.
And even as a garden educator, I don't have any
experience of tree having red stuff like that, but I

(01:34:50):
thought it was quite interesting and added is just a
little bit more spookiness to the story. So you know,
I'm not sure exactly, but I do know that there
is a maund across the road from that house, and
people have experienced children have talked to people in the
house that are not supposed to be there that they're

(01:35:11):
much older, specifically a man who's told her that he
failed down the stairs because his chest hurt. And they
looked into the history of the home and realized that, yes,
an older gentleman did have a heart attack on these
stairs years ago, and this little lady was exactly right

(01:35:32):
about what happened to a person in this house. I
a lot of strange stories to do with that structure,
for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:35:40):
Wow, that's that goes beyond right there where they're actually
having communication with.

Speaker 4 (01:35:47):
Yeah, I think kids and animals tend to really be
very perceptive when it comes to things that we don't
see or feel. And we were actually watching some sort
of documentary. I can't say whether it was a dog
man documentary or something to do with Vig said it
was one of the two around this time. It is

(01:36:08):
last year. And our dogs a little chocolate, big old
named Biscuit, and he is a very happy, go lucky dog.
But we were watching this one specific show and there
were no strange noises, There was nothing happening in this
show to cause him any alarm whatsoever. But at one

(01:36:28):
point he starts barking as loud and halling as hard
as he can at the television. And it was just
a couple of people talking about these things, and so
we were both like, turn it off, turn off whatever
it was up to our dog or our house. So
it was very weird that that should be a little

(01:36:51):
because I thought, wow, you know, I never thought of
that being able to affect us on this side of
the television, but that was weird.

Speaker 3 (01:36:59):
Well, so when it comes into manifesting, we can manifest
things unknowingly by our thoughts and our actions and everything.

Speaker 4 (01:37:15):
And so.

Speaker 3 (01:37:17):
I do believe that that is definitely possible. But what
I'm wondering. The first thing that popped in my head,
and this is just comes from I guess all the
years of of you know, doing paranormal investigations and stuff,
is maybe try to be quiet during that time and
get a.

Speaker 2 (01:37:38):
A really good.

Speaker 3 (01:37:39):
Voice recorder and record that part of it and see
if you can put it in a computer. And maybe
he's hearing something that maybe there was.

Speaker 4 (01:37:50):
Yes, interesting, Yes, that really was extremely just strange for
him to just walk straight towards the TV. He was
really going to stand between us and the TV on
the wall and whatever he was hearing or saying, you know,
he he perceived it as some type of threat because

(01:38:10):
he's a very gentle kind dog and he he was
he was angry and upset that night and was defending
his home.

Speaker 3 (01:38:18):
YEP, I bet you he heard something that no one
else heard.

Speaker 2 (01:38:24):
Be wild if if that girl from the Ring stepped
out of the TV.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
We don't want the bad things like that to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
But wouldn't it be wild occas just feeling.

Speaker 4 (01:38:40):
That would be a story.

Speaker 3 (01:38:42):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 4 (01:38:47):
Whether I would be have the you know, ability to
tell it, I don't know after relying somebody else to
tell that one, and may just be the innocent bystander.

Speaker 3 (01:38:58):
We we had a pretty crazy when back when Jason
and I really first first started. Well it wasn't when
we first started, was it. It was when we kind
of started back up again, and we had a little
girl that was she's being tormented. I guess an entity

(01:39:22):
was telling her to hurt her sister. Oh no, And
I don't know if you're familiar with the black eyed children, Yeah, okay,
So I asked her to draw me a picture, and
it pretty much it was like a little girl saw
the black eyes looked like a black eyed chiked one.

(01:39:43):
Wow anw they're reported, But its mouth was open and
it had like rows and rows of like razor sharp teeth,
like like shark's teeth.

Speaker 4 (01:39:53):
Really yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:39:56):
And the interesting part of it is is that I
told it that I was going to get it out
of the girls house. So I went and did an
investigation first. Then Jason was going to go in and
do an investigation the next day, and you know, kind
of compare notes and see if we agreed on because
I honestly believe it was a object that was that

(01:40:20):
was haunted and but that picture it was weird. I
polded it up, put it on top of the microwave
and was going to take it to work because at
the time Jason and I worked together. When I went
got finished getting dressed and everything, came back out to
get the photo, it was gone. It wasn't on top
of the microwave. The wife's like, no, sir, I didn't

(01:40:44):
touch it. And I started looking for it, opening up
the cabinets above the microwave, and there it is on
the second cabinet up above the microwave, just sitting there.
I got there, I don't know, because my wife and
I were the only ones that house.

Speaker 4 (01:41:01):
Oh wow, yeah, you know, it's scary because I do
feel like, you know, we we're pretty creative, being both
energetically physically all the way around. And I think what
we give density to can sort of show up and
it adds more ways, you know, the more density we

(01:41:23):
give to that. And I think fear is such almost
like a food, you know, it's just a factor that
always ways in when we're scared. It feels like you know,
that ancept the energy around us, and I don't know,
things just happen when that happens to us, right.

Speaker 3 (01:41:46):
Yeah. The one of the weird a couple of weird
things that actually happened afterwards was, you know, I came
back home from work three o'clock in the morning. The
smoke alarm outside of our bedroom. All the smoke alarms
in that house was wired in and weren't battery operated,
just started going off. But the second one out of

(01:42:07):
bed and opened up the door and stepped into the hallway,
it turned off. Oh wow, And uh yeah, And I
told it. I said, look, I said, I didn't invite
you over here. You're not allowed to be here, you know.
I pretty much told that it had to leave.

Speaker 4 (01:42:21):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:42:22):
And I still said that I'm still going to get
rid of you.

Speaker 4 (01:42:25):
Yeah, house in a family member still live there. My
husband refuses to spend the night. He said, I'm not, no, no,
not going to spend the night there ever. But it
was a house that when she moved in, and we

(01:42:46):
have actually gotten like her home landline would call our
landline back in the day and it would be the
middle of the night and we would think something has happened,
like is there an emergency, me, is she okay? And
we would finally get in touch with her, and she
was had any hall that her number. We had collar IDs,

(01:43:07):
so her number showed up somehow or other. There was
a connection being made. Phone calls are moving from one
place to the other through the landline. And I went
up to visit. We all went up to visit during
the day one day and I was standing not really
doing anything, but I was looking into a mirror and

(01:43:28):
there's this little porcelain cat and it just like literally
just slid off of the shelf. I was standing right
in front of it. It slid right off the shelf
towards me and fell to the floor, and all everybody
just stopped and looked like, what in the world. But
water will turn on? Like the think the water will

(01:43:52):
turn on myself And somebody was in the bathroom turned
the water off, started to walk out of the him
and heard the water turn back on. Yeah, that was
probably the creepiest thing with the water.

Speaker 1 (01:44:08):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:44:09):
That happened was that they literally witnessed the water being
off and then the water coming on by it. Phil
So that's happened quite a few times. But what they
found out was and she didn't know this when she
bought the property, that a man had actually lived in
that house alone and had passed away and nobody checked

(01:44:33):
on it, and so it was a while before they
found him. So when it came to check on and
he had passed away alone, and that she didn't know
she'd already bought the property, she had already been living there.
But some neighbor kids actually came over and said, we
don't like your house and basically proceeded to tell her

(01:44:54):
the story of this man who used to live there
that died. And since then, you know, she he's been
very suspicious of everything, every little bump and you know,
thing that happened in that house, because some strange things
really have happened, and I think we've all sort of
witnessed in one way or another a few things that
we just can't explain.

Speaker 3 (01:45:15):
Oh, that's that's amazing. Those are the kind of houses
we'd like to investigate.

Speaker 4 (01:45:21):
Yeah, those are the kind of houses my husband likes
to stay away from.

Speaker 3 (01:45:29):
Jason would would have concurred with that.

Speaker 2 (01:45:32):
Yeah, I didn't like it. I stepped away for two
weeks after the first sign of uh of trouble, and
I wouldn't go back. I don't know, it was weird.

Speaker 4 (01:45:48):
That's kind of how I am, Like, I'll I love
to hear some stories, and then when it gets a
little too creepy, I think, Okay, I'll let somebody else
investigate that one and write about that one and just
tell me more about that other stuff. So I kind
of try to steer clear of some things. They just
frightened me a little bit too much. That there's tons

(01:46:09):
of stories that people have told me that I still
really haven't investigated that have to do with haunted places
and appearances and people time and again accounts that they swear,
you know, this happened. I witnessed it, I saw it,
I experienced it, and it's really hard to say, no,
you didn't. You know, it's kind of impossible to say

(01:46:33):
whatever happened didn't happen, because knowing myself the things that
happened to me. And at one point in my own house,
I saw a black figure coming down the hallway and
I was asleep in the recliner and I headed forward
it and was basically like get out of my house,

(01:46:53):
half to sleep, but also very angry and scared, not
really realizing what I was doing, I guess, and I
was thinking I was dreaming, but I know I wasn't
dreaming because my husband at the same time I did this,
was in the back. It was in the bedroom asleep,
and he yelled and he said tab and I said

(01:47:14):
what And he said, why did you do that? And
I said why did I do? Walt, I'm in the
living room in the hallway, and he said, why did
you jerk the blanket off me? And I said, I
didn't jerk the blanket off you. And so I went
in the bedroom, turned the light on. Sure enough the
blanket had been jerked off the bed. So I totally

(01:47:35):
experienced that, you know, firsthand account nothing's strange just happened,
you know, like that into our little biscuit guy dog.
But that was over twenty years ago, and we still
live in the same house and nothing that strange has
ever happened, other than we have a scrapyard and we've
had some weird things show up there from just copper

(01:47:58):
and aluminum making shapes and stuff in the driveway that
we can't really explain. So some weird things have happened,
and nothing to that degree that it is about twenty
years ago that was probably one of the scariest things
that ever happened to me in my life.

Speaker 2 (01:48:15):
Wow, that's a good story too.

Speaker 3 (01:48:18):
Yeah, that's a good story. Look that week more stories
out of you.

Speaker 4 (01:48:23):
We did.

Speaker 2 (01:48:27):
So we got just about twelve more minutes a little under.
We do want to thank you for coming on and
absolutely hopefully we can do it again. Uh, sometime we can.

Speaker 3 (01:48:43):
So how do you feel are you? Did you nervousness
go away?

Speaker 1 (01:48:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:48:47):
Yeah, once I started talking, I'm a lot more calm.
You were ampletely right. I was terrified all day. I
was just so nervous. I woke up nervous and I thought,
why did I do Why did I decided to do this?
You know, the link out to my friends. I was
so vigilant, like I was so excited to share the

(01:49:09):
link and say, oh, I'm gonna be on the your
tub and tune in and listen. And then it hit
me sometime last night, like tap, what did you just do?
All these invitations out and you have no idea what
you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:49:26):
Well, there's just like thirty thousand people listening right now.

Speaker 4 (01:49:30):
Oh that is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:49:32):
No, I'm just joking. I'm just joking.

Speaker 4 (01:49:37):
Okay, if there's just three people.

Speaker 2 (01:49:41):
Yeah, it's good. So you a lot of people showed up. Yes, good, Yeah,
and we got to do it again. Whenever, you know,
we get the chance, we'll all are back at you.

Speaker 4 (01:49:55):
That sounds great. I'll start, you know. I'm I'm working
on some stories now, gathering some information and doing some
research into some things that I've been told recently. And
usually everybody pretty much that I meet, they have some
sort of strange story, especially if they have lived here
in the rural areas. And most of Monroe County is

(01:50:18):
ruraled so we have a lot of heels and hollers
and woods, so there's plenty of stories still out there.
And I'm just very excited about writing again. I haven't
written in a really long time, so it's been a
while and I'd just like to get back to it.
Another thing about my steps back is I used to
do a column called that Was the End, and it's

(01:50:40):
stories about growing up and not vernon growing up in
Appalachia and some funny stories, some just special stories special
to my heart. That those can also be found on
substack as part of the collection of stories. So if
anybody's interested and reading any of the things, that I write.

(01:51:02):
I love to write, I love to hear from readers,
so I'm buy everybody to just check it out and
you know, read a few stories that I have available,
and if it resonates fantastic, I would appreciate, you know,
all the attention and companionship that I can get from readers.
I just enjoyed that, and hearing from them and getting

(01:51:24):
to know them is always a hoighlight of any writer,
So I just appreciate that too.

Speaker 3 (01:51:30):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:51:31):
Yeah, and that substack dot com slash at Tabitha Prock
that's right. Yeah, I got it up on the screen
so people can see it.

Speaker 4 (01:51:41):
Correat you.

Speaker 2 (01:51:43):
Also, you can find her book on Amazon These Hills Hills.

Speaker 4 (01:51:49):
Yes, it's available in Kindle Unlimited, so if you have
a Kindle Unlimited account, it's free to read, so you
can just check it out through Kindle Unlimited, or you
can order the digital version, the Kindle edition, and there's
a print edition. I think I've got it set at
about six dollars. I tried to be really reasonable and

(01:52:10):
make it available to anybody, So if you have Prime,
it's free shipping and it's six folks, So check it
out if you want just a copy to keep for yourself.
It's that little, small little booklet that you know, was
just a collection that I intended for my grandmother, and
then people started to ask for copies. So I made
it available on Amazon because that just is the easiest place,

(01:52:34):
I think for people to find, and sub tech is
my way of just having worked in progress and sharing
it with the public quicker than I would be able
to in book form. So that's kind of where I
am with that.

Speaker 2 (01:52:49):
All right, Well, I hope we hope you have a
good night and the good rest of your night. We
kept you for about two hours.

Speaker 4 (01:52:57):
Oh wow, Well it went by really fast and we
hope you enjoyed it. I did. I did. I'm gonna
enjoy this dark, rid home. I drove down so that
you guys could hear me really well without thinking now
I have to walk back to the house down the driveway.
So that was you know that, the stories. So maybe

(01:53:22):
they'll leave a lot on for me.

Speaker 2 (01:53:27):
So this will go up on our YouTube Facebook and
rumble uh if if anybody else wants to to uh
hear Tabitha's stories.

Speaker 4 (01:53:37):
Thank you so much and I appreciate all the listeners
out there all.

Speaker 2 (01:53:41):
Right, thank you, have a good night.

Speaker 4 (01:53:44):
You you too, Bye bye.

Speaker 3 (01:53:48):
That was awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
That was That was a great show. I like the stories, yes,
and I like the history too, right, you get both.
She brings the history along with it.

Speaker 3 (01:54:00):
Yeah, yeah, that was that was amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:54:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:54:03):
So guess what, everybody, it's time to go. It's about
time to go. But before we go, I want to
show you something. This is We're almost done. This is
our copy. We need to make some more revisions, but
we've got an Oh look it's green. It doesn't show

(01:54:24):
up in the Hold on, let me fix that. The
words does not does not show up because they're green.
Is that not awesome?

Speaker 2 (01:54:39):
Let's see if I can fix it so you can
show it?

Speaker 3 (01:54:42):
Yeah maybe?

Speaker 2 (01:54:44):
All right? Now was that okay?

Speaker 3 (01:54:46):
So now you'll be able to see it and just
see our see our green screen behind us right here,
newest one Comprehensive Guide to Paranormal Investigations. So it's a
nice little thick book.

Speaker 2 (01:55:04):
So it's going to be on Amazon.

Speaker 3 (01:55:06):
Yeah, with our other book, yes, East Tennessee Hauntings and
Lore addition too, But this is the new book right here,
A Comprehensive Guide to Paranormal Investigations. It will have we
will have a a companion book, yep, which is not
really a book, it's a it's a journal that'll be

(01:55:28):
going with this too. So but yep, so you could
see it. It's about to come out. Everybody about to
come out. Get ready for it. If you like paranormal investigations,
this is one of those books that will lead you
down the road of how.

Speaker 2 (01:55:48):
To Yes, so.

Speaker 3 (01:55:52):
All right, so remember you can find us at Paranormal
on Facebook, YouTube x and Rumble Union Live every Thursday
from seven to eight pm Eastern times, Saturdays from eight
to ten pm Eastern Time, and we're also on Saturdays
from ten to eleven. If you're in the metro Atlanta area,

(01:56:14):
you catch us on WDJYFM. That's ninety nine point one FM.
Now for listeners outside of Atlanta, you still listen. You
just go to wdjy fm dot com or on our website.
We're all still on Subspace radio on all major podcast platforms.
Remember we do have a book out now, well, East

(01:56:35):
Tennessee Huntings and More, Edition two because East Tennessee Huntings
and More Edition two is available on Amazon worn on
the four one.

Speaker 2 (01:56:46):
Join us, Join us, Join us with the y'all.

Speaker 3 (01:56:53):
Thursday, Thursday, everybody, have a good night, have a good weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:56:58):
Stay curious, Yes, have you ever wondered what lurks in
the shadows, what secrets the night hides, what strange phenomena
might be happening just beyond your perception. Join us as
we journey into the world of the paranormal, exploring everything
from ghosts and UFOs to cryptids and unexplained occurrences, from

(01:57:29):
haunted houses to all things paranormal. Join us in the
search for the truth behind the veil. Welcome to Paranormal
four one one

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