Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South

Liam Ashe
  • 5.0 (1)
  • History

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

Episodes

  1. 6d ago

    Roots Soaked in Blood | Ep 12 | Three Great Oaks from the Darkest Corners of Southern Gothic Lore

    In the shadowed woods of the South, our ancient trees have witnessed history. Some? They seem to collect it. On this episode of Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South, we dig into the roots of three infamous Southern oaks and the bizarre and sometimes unsettling deaths tangled in their branches. First, the Fairchild Oak in Florida, where two plantation owners, decades apart and both fleeing crushing debt, were found dead beneath its limbs with no cause of death ever confirmed. Then, Savannah’s Candler Oak, a 300-year-old giant beside the city’s old hospital, whose reputation as a “hanging tree” blurs the line between documented history and ghost-tour legend. And finally, the darkest of the three: the Devil’s Tree of Port St. Lucie, tied to serial killer Gerard John Schaefer, Jr. and a string of brutal murders that shook Florida in the early 1970s. Some of these stories are proven. Some are folklore. All of them ask the same question: what do you do when the only witness left is a tree? Listener discretion advised for graphic true crime content. Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Roots Soaked in Blood | Ep 12 | Three Great Oaks from the Darkest Corners of Southern Gothic Lore

  2. Jul 21

    3000 Miles To Die | Ep 11 | The Bizarre Last Days & Death of Robert Dennis Blair Adams

    A construction crew shows up to a Knoxville job site expecting an ordinary Thursday morning. Instead, they find a half-naked body sprawled in the parking lot and a scene that makes no sense. Thousands in cash, gold bars, and jewelry. All untouched, scattered like they'd been flung from a moving car. This wasn’t robbery. So, what was it? The dead man is Blair Adams, a 31-year-old Canadian foreman who, in his final weeks alive, transformed from a steady, sober construction worker into someone convinced unnamed enemies were hunting him. He drained his savings, got turned away at two different borders, then flew to Washington, D.C., only to immediately drive nearly ten hours in the opposite direction, straight into a town where he knew absolutely no one. Hours later, he was dead in a parking lot off I-40, his clothes rearranged by someone else’s hands. The only clue? A stranger’s hair clutched in his fist. Nearly three decades on, investigators still can’t answer the two questions that matters most: Why Blair? Why Knoxville? Join me as I retrace Blair Adams’ final 3,000-mile journey and the mystery that refuses to end. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    3000 Miles To Die | Ep 11 | The Bizarre Last Days & Death of Robert Dennis Blair Adams

  3. Jul 7

    Still On The Hunt | Ep 10 | Three Southern Serial Killers Who Were Never Brought to Justice

    The South doesn't forget easily, but some secrets it keeps buried deep. In this episode we uncover three chilling cold cases where predators vanished without a trace, leaving investigators haunted decades later. First, follow the trail of the so-called Flat-Tire Killer, whose hunting ground stretched from California to the canals of South Florida, perhaps claiming more than 30 lives. Even today, DNA evidence only muddies the waters. Then head to the swamp and scrubs of Charlotte County, where Dan Conahan, the convicted Hog Trail Killer, sits on death row. But a mass grave of eight more victims raises a terrifying question: was he working alone, or is a second killer still out there? Finally, travel to Richmond, Virginia, where the Golden Years Killer targeted elderly women in their own homes for six brutal years, leaving behind a confession so unreliable it may have obscured the truth forever. Three killers, dozens of victims and zero convictions that fully close the books. Are these predators dead, imprisoned for other crimes, or still walking among us? Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Still On The Hunt | Ep 10 | Three Southern Serial Killers Who Were Never Brought to Justice

  4. Jun 23

    Rattling in His Head | Ep 9 | The Crimes & Execution of William Seymour Keener, the First Man Hung in Rabun County, Georgia

    Every town has its secrets. Some of them happen to end at the end of a rope. In the summer of 1895, three young sisters took a Sunday stroll through the mountains of Rabun County, Georgia. Only one came home. The man responsible was their neighbor and cousin. He was a man who, by most accounts, had never caused a lick of trouble in his life... until something in his head began to rattle. William Seymour Keener described it himself as something that had torn loose, a strange noise at the top of his skull that caused him constant pain. Was he a cold-blooded killer? A man lost to madness? How had his love for one girl turned into an obsession that festered for years in the shadows of the Appalachian foothills The newspapers of the day couldn’t agree. Neither could the courts. In this episode, we unearth a story buried in century-old newsprint: a murder trial, a failed lunacy plea, a jailhouse confession, and an execution that local legend says was marked by church bells ringing five hundred times. This is the true story of the first man legally hanged in Rabun County, and why his ghost still lingers. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Rattling in His Head | Ep 9 | The Crimes & Execution of William Seymour Keener, the First Man Hung in Rabun County, Georgia

  5. Jun 9

    Infamous in Death | Ep 8 | The Southern Gothic Tales of Five Women Whose Haunting Legends Refuse To Stay Buried

    What happens when your death overshadows your life? What if you lived for years in anonymity only to become infamous in the next life? From a Florida housewife whose ghost walked a lonely highway stretch for years waiting to uncover a terrible secret to a Charleston socialite whose grave at Old Stone Church still draws offerings from believers in her witchcraft, these are stories where death is only the beginning. In this episode, we explore the legends of five women whose ordinary lives gave way to extraordinary, and often chilling, afterlives in Southern Gothic folklore. These tales include a trip to the Mississippi Delta to uncover the legend of the Yazoo Witch, a woman who made a promise from the depths of a quicksand grave and may have kept it twenty years later in a wall of fire. Then it’s on to a Montgomery college campus, where a lonely New York girl in red never quite checked out of Old Pratt Hall. And finally, the remarkable true story of the Greenbrier Ghost, a murdered West Virginia woman whose spirit may have helped bring her killer to justice from beyond the grave. These are five women who may have died, but their legends refuse to stay buried. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Infamous in Death | Ep 8 | The Southern Gothic Tales of Five Women Whose Haunting Legends Refuse To Stay Buried

  6. May 26

    No Such Thing as Coincidence | Ep 7 | The Bizarre Connections Between Different True Crime Cold Cases in the Gothic South

    What are the odds? In the world of true crime, that question can mean everything. Or perhaps nothing at all. Two women named Mary Morris are murdered four days apart on the same stretch of road. A son gives a stranger a ride home, only to find that stranger may have killed his mother. A machete murder in Saint Augustine leads to a second suspicious death, and a book that someone desperately didn’t want written. A Florida swamp legend and a vanished judge share a web of names that seem too tangled to be accidental. And two young Atlanta women, same bank, same desk, same anonymous bouquet of roses, disappear two years apart under eerily similar circumstances. Coincidence is everywhere if you look hard enough. But so is conspiracy. In this episode, we untangle some of the South’s most baffling cold cases, the ones where the clues don’t just point to a killer, they point to each other. The question isn’t whodunit, it’s whether these chilling parallels mean anything at all. Sometimes the most unsettling answer is “Maybe.” Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    No Such Thing as Coincidence | Ep 7 | The Bizarre Connections Between Different True Crime Cold Cases in the Gothic South

  7. May 12

    Blood Fell Like Rain | Ep 6 | The Bizarre, Unexplained History of Blood Falls in the Gothic South

    What falls from the sky in the American South? Sometimes it’s rain or snakes or eels. And sometimes it’s blood. From a Kansas slaughterhouse hurled by a tornado across a hundred miles of open sky to a Tennessee tobacco field soaked in gore that drew five hundred horrified spectators, the Gothic South has a long, strange relationship with blood that falls from above. But these aren’t just folklore and tall tales. Ancient Greeks wrote about it, and medieval chroniclers tracked it. Scientists, preachers, and self-proclaimed experts have argued about it for centuries. One team even blamed the butterflies. And then there’s the Atlanta house that simply started bleeding from the walls and floorboards one quiet September night. There was no known crime and no explanation, just plenty of blood In this episode, we trace the long, unsettling history of blood falls, from Homer’s Iliad to your own backyard, and asks the question nobody really wants answered: What’s falling out of that red cloud moving toward you right now? Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Blood Fell Like Rain | Ep 6 | The Bizarre, Unexplained History of Blood Falls in the Gothic South

  8. Apr 28

    Deadly Dames, Part 2 | Ep 5 | Six More Lethal Southern Ladies with a Mind for Murder

    What if the most dangerous person in the room wasn’t the one you’d ever suspect? History has a way of overlooking women, and for decades, even the FBI refused to acknowledge they could be serial killers at all. This episode of Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South aims to set the record straight. In this second installment of our Deadly Dames series, we round out our list of twelve lethal women with six more cases that are equal parts fascinating and disturbing. Along the way, we unpack why female killers are so much harder to catch (Need a hint? They tend to know their victims, favor undetectable methods like poison, and often operate in plain sight as trusted caregivers). The first trio killed not for money, but out of psychological compulsion: a veterans’ hospital nursing assistant who fatally injected elderly patients, a mentally ill nurse who kept a handwritten list of her victims, and a troubled babysitter who suffocated multiple children in her care. The second trio were coldly profit-driven: Charleston’s legendary 18th-century innkeeper who allegedly poisoned travelers, a churchgoing grandmother who arsenic-poisoned five family members for insurance payouts, and the infamous “Giggling Granny,” Nannie Doss, who killed eleven people across three decades, including four husbands, before anyone thought to look her way. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Deadly Dames, Part 2 | Ep 5 | Six More Lethal Southern Ladies with a Mind for Murder

  9. Apr 14

    Deadly Dames, Part 1 | Ep 4 | Six Brutal Brides & Wicked Widows Who Don't Let Murder Get Their Way

    They baked the pies. They nursed the sick. They wept at the funerals. And, in a handful of cases, they quietly arranged for those funerals to happen in the first place.  In this episode of Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South, we’re pulling back the black lace veil on six women history has branded Brutal Brides and Wicked Widows. From a teenage axe murderer in 1831 Burke County to a Florida poisoner who ran out of luck on death row, these women weaponized the very roles society handed them, whether grieving wife, devoted mother, or doting caregiver, to devastating effect. Were they cold-blooded predators? Victims of impossible circumstances? Products of a world that gave them no other option? The answers, as always in the South, are complicated. What isn’t complicated is the body count. Six women. Multiple states. Arsenic, revolvers, a fireplace, and one very suspicious canoe trip. Some were executed. Some walked free to applause. And at least one vanished into the backwoods and was never quite the same again. Grab something warm. You're going to need it. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Deadly Dames, Part 1 | Ep 4 | Six Brutal Brides & Wicked Widows Who Don't Let Murder Get Their Way

  10. Mar 31

    The Deadliest Town in Georgia | Ep 3 | One Southern Town That Draws Death Like Flies to Honey

    Some towns get hit by disaster once and disappear. Others take a hit and keep coming back for more. From a preacher’s curse that erased an entire county seat to a 30-foot wall of water that swallowed a sleeping Bible college campus, Georgia's past is littered with tiny communities that fate and Mother Nature simply wiped from the map. No place, however, has paid a higher price than Gainesville, Georgia. It’s a city that has survived a devastating downtown fire, two catastrophic tornadoes decades apart, and a deadly industrial accident that killed workers before they even knew what hit them. In this episode of Haunts & Hollows, we peel back the folk tales to reveal the true stories behind Georgia’s most lethal towns. These stories have now been told for generations, including a mad preacher calling for the wrath of God, more than 100 child workers trapped beneath a burning cotton mill, and entire families who were buried as they died, side by side in unimaginable conditions. Because sometimes the scariest stories aren’t the ones we make up around a campfire. They’re the ones carved into headstones. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    The Deadliest Town in Georgia | Ep 3 | One Southern Town That Draws Death Like Flies to Honey

  11. Mar 17

    Rest in Pieces | Ep 2 | Bury a Body Without Its Head and You're Gonna Get a Ghost

    What happens when a body is buried without its head? In the South, you get a ghost. . . and a whole lot of history. From the fog-drenched lowlands of South Carolina to the blood-soaked battlefields of the Civil War, the Gothic South has always had a complicated relationship with the dead, especially the incomplete dead. In this episode, we trace the folklore of headless and dismembered spirits back to their real-world origins, starting with Washington Irving’s legendary Headless Horseman and the ancient folk tale tradition that inspired it. Along the way, you'll meet Joe Baldwin, a doomed railroad brakeman still swinging his phantom lantern in the Carolina darkness; a Confederate soldier haunting a Greensboro cemetery with half a skull and an empty canteen; and the genuinely bizarre true story of Lewis Powell. A Lincoln assassination conspirator and failed murderer, Powell was a man whose head spent over a century lost in a Smithsonian skull collection before finally coming home to Florida. Part ghost story, part American history, this episode will make you think twice about what (and who) might be buried beneath your feet. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Rest in Pieces | Ep 2 | Bury a Body Without Its Head and You're Gonna Get a Ghost

  12. Mar 2

    Lovers Slain on Lover's Lane | Ep 1 | Where Romance Meets the Reaper in Small Town America

    Every small town has one, that stretch of road where the streetlights stop and the rumors start. You probably know a few of the stories: the boyfriend who never came back, the hook on the door handle, and the scraping sound on the roof you were too afraid to explain. But what if the scariest thing about Lover’s Lane isn’t the legend? What if it’s the true story hiding underneath it all? In this episode of Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South, we trace the strange evolution of America’s most chilling parking spot folklore, from the postwar teenagers who accidentally invented Lover’s Lane culture to the ghost of a skinned man still prowling the woods of rural Tennessee seeking revenge on cheating hearts. Then things get darker. Behind the campfire tales are the real killers: the Phantom of Texarkana, the Zodiac, the Atlanta Lover's Lane shooter, and the shadowy figure who hunted couples along Virginia’s Colonial Parkway for over a decade, a killer whose crimes went unsolved until DNA evidence finally told the truth thirty years too late. Romance, murder, folklore, and justice delayed: this one’s got it all. Roll up the windows, lock the doors, and turn up the volume. And maybe, just maybe, don’t park somewhere too dark tonight. Dive Deeper with the Research Folio. Get a full transcript, list of sources, supplemental media, and more for each drop plus early access to new episodes. A special perk for our email subscribers. Get the Newsletter > Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

    Lovers Slain on Lover's Lane | Ep 1 | Where Romance Meets the Reaper in Small Town America
  • 12 Episodes

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Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South. Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

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