Stay ConnectedWelcome to “Stories of Appalachia,” the podcast where hosts Steve Gilly and Rod Mullins have been unraveling the captivating history and folklore of the Appalachian region since 2015. Join them as they guide you through mist-covered mountains and winding rivers, exploring the stories that define the heart and soul of Appalachia.
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Copyright: © Copyright Steve Gilly
In the late 1780s a man from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, William Hewitt, crossed the Ohio River seeking to find solitude in the Appalachian wilderness after heartbreak changed his life forever. Living alone in caves and rough dugouts for nearly fifty years, Hewitt lived in peace alongside the Shawnee, served as a scout during the War of 1812, and became a legend across southeastern Ohio.
But the strangest chapter of his story began after his death.
Join us as we tell the haunting true story of the Hermit of Hewitt’s Fork.
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In September 1894, a routine drilling operation on a Tyler County, West Virginia, farm broke into a massive natural gas pocket, unleashing one of the most powerful and uncontrollable wells the world had ever seen. For nearly a year, the Big Moses well defied human engineering, triggered massive fissures in the ground, survived two separate lightning strikes, and wasted billions of cubic feet of gas.
Join us as we tell this wild true story from the West Virginia oil boom era about the legendary Big Moses gas well.
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Vincent “Clawhammer” Witcher became one of the most feared Confederate guerrilla leaders along the Virginia/Kentucky border in the Civil War. As the leader of what was called “Witcher’s Boys, he operated from the Ohio River in what’s now West Virginia down into northeast Tennessee, bringing brutal violence to both friend and foe alike.
This week we tell his story, including notorious incidents in Lee County, Virginia and Unicoi County, Tennessee, that earned him the name “The Devil in the Mountains.”
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The early settlements along the Watauga and Holston Rivers in what’s now Tennessee were the very beginning of "The Wild West." While names like Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and William Bean filled the history books, another man was standing right beside them at nearly every major turning point—yet his story has been lost to time.
In this episode, suggested by one of our listeners, Steve and Rod tell the story of Captain William Asher. One of the first to arrive in the Watauga settlement, Captain Asher served as a Patriot in the American Revolution, fought the Chickamauga, established fortified stations on the frontier and guided surveyors as they headed west, only to meet a sudden, tragic end while hunting deer near his home at Bean Station.
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In 1781, as the American Revolution raged, Appalachian settlers in what’s now West Virginia rose in armed rebellion against the Virginia government. Angry over crushing taxes, forced military service, and wartime demands, John Claypool led an Appalachian backcountry revolt that sparked panic across the Shenandoah Valley. This is the little-known story of Claypool’s Rebellion, another one of the Stories of Appalachia.
Quill Rose was a Confederate veteran, bear hunter, blacksmith, storyteller, and moonshiner who lived deep in the Smoky Mountains along Eagle Creek. In this episode of Stories of Appalachia, we tell his story, from Cades Cove in the 1840s through war, family life, isolation, to his illegal whiskey-making in the mountains.
Along the way, Quill became a figure known not just for survival, but also for his loyalty to family, his reputation with Plott hounds, his run-ins with the law, and the many colorful stories told about him, many of which he told himself.
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This week we have not one but two podcast episodes for you!
In this one, we go to Glen Ferris, West Virginia, a town at the falls of the Kanawha River, to tell the story of the Glen Ferris Inn, a place that hosted presidents, businessmen, Civil War generals and even, it’s said, a ghost!
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This week we have not one, but two episodes for you!
For this story, we travel back to December of 1908, when people in Russell and Adair counties in Kentucky were shaken after 12-year-old Mamie Womack failed to return home from school. Her disappearance that winter afternoon triggered a desperate search, as neighbors, family, and bloodhounds followed a trail through the woods that uncovered a horrible crime.
As the hunt for answers widened, suspicion fell on Elmer Hill, a young man with ties to the Womack family, who also went missing. What followed was a multi-county manhunt involving posses, bloodhounds, and growing public outrage. Hill would eventually be captured after days on the run, but the case would not end in a courtroom.
In this episode of Stories of Appalachia, Steve and Rod tell the story of Mamie Womack’s disappearance and the chilling fate of the man thought to be responsible, another one of the Stories of Appalachia.
In the late 1600’s, Dr. John Lederer, a German immigrant to the Virginia colony, became one of the first Europeans to explore the Appalachian region. Between 1669 and 1670, Lederer made three trips into the Blue Ridge Mountains, traveled west and south through Native territories in Virginia and the Carolinas, and searched for a passage west through the Alleghenies.
Along the way he encountered wolves, rattlesnakes, deadly spiders, Native villages, rumors of strange bearded white men, and stories that hinted at vast inland waterways beyond Appalachia. Lederer’s journal about his travels became one of the earliest written descriptions of Appalachia.
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The highest mountain valley in Virginia is Burke’s Garden, also referred to as “God’s Thumbprint” for its bowl-like shape.
It was here that something began killing sheep in the winter of 1952. Night after night, farmers woke to fresh losses, and no one could agree on what was responsible. Was it a wolf, a panther, or something stranger and unexplainable?
This week we tell the story of Burke’s Garden and the mysterious predator that became known as the “Varmint of Burke’s Garden” and gripped an Appalachian community with fear for nearly a year.
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