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Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic
Author: Southern Gothic Media
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Step into the world of the unknown and unravel the dark history, and infamous legends of the American South. Join us as we journey into the heart of this rich and fascinating region, uncovering its ghostly stories, haunted places, and eeriest tales through captivating storytelling, in-depth historical research, and an immersive audio soundscape. From the Bell Witch of Tennessee to the haunted Waverly Hills Sanatorium, the ghostly tales of the Myrtles Plantation, the Curse of Lake Lanier and beyond, get ready for an unforgettable experience that brings history to life and uncovers the truth behind classic tales of the paranormal.
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On April 4, 1841, President William Henry Harrison became the first U.S. president to die in office—just thirty-one days after his inauguration. For generations, the story was told the same way: an aging man caught in the cold, refusing a coat, delivering the longest inaugural address in history, and paying for it with his life. Pneumonia, they said, brought on by his pride.
But the truth may be far more unsettling. Modern researchers argue Harrison’s death wasn’t a cautionary tale of hubris, but the result of Washington, D.C.’s primitive infrastructure—a city where waste seeped into the very water drawn for the White House. What followed was not a chill turned deadly, but a gut-wrenching infection that stripped the president of his strength, leaving him delirious and dehydrated in his final days.
It’s a mystery at the intersection of medicine, politics, and folklore—one that forces us to rethink the legacy of America’s shortest presidency.
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Just upriver from Jamestown, Berkeley Plantation stands as one of Virginia’s most historic estates. Its story begins in 1619 with the Berkeley Hundred, an early settlement that saw both hope and heartbreak on the colonial frontier. Over the centuries, its halls would witness the rise of the Harrison family, whose descendants signed the Declaration of Independence and held the presidency, while its grounds bore witness to one of the Civil War’s darkest summers, when Union troops camped here after the Seven Days Battles and the solemn notes of Taps were first carried across the James.
But alongside its celebrated past, Berkeley holds a legacy steeped in tragedy. A lightning strike in 1745 claimed the lives of Benjamin Harrison IV and his daughters inside the mansion, and some say their presence still lingers in its rooms. Visitors tell of doors opening on their own, chandeliers trembling without cause, and the apparition of a young girl gazing silently out across the river. Others speak of phantom soldiers pacing the shoreline, or the distant roll of a spectral drum that recalls the property’s days as a wartime encampment.
Berkeley Plantation remains a place where the weight of history and the spirits of those who lived it continue to live on.
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On Merritt Island, Florida, most visitors come for the Kennedy Space Center, where rockets have carried astronauts beyond the Earth. But tucked away on the south side of the island, down a crooked mile of oak trees draped in Spanish moss, sits a much older landmark—Georgiana Cemetery. It is one of the oldest graveyards in Brevard County, and among its weathered stones lies the grave of a young woman whose death remains one of Florida’s darkest mysteries.
Her name was Ethel Allen. She was just nineteen when, in November of 1934, her body was discovered on the banks of the Indian River Lagoon. Brutally attacked, left nearly unrecognizable, and partially burned, her remains shocked the community. A ruby ring and a small tattoo were all the investigators had to identify her. And while suspicion quickly fell on a man calling himself William Wilson, the trail went cold when he fled town under another name.
Decades later, the story of Ethel Allen is still unsettled. Some point to the man later unmasked as Willard Borton, a career criminal who lived by theft and died in prison. Others whisper that jealousy or betrayal may have driven someone closer to her to kill. No one was ever brought to justice, and her murder has never been solved.
But in Brevard County, her memory lingers. Visitors to Georgiana Cemetery and to Ashley’s Restaurant, one of the last places she was seen alive, report unexplainable voices, phantom touches, and the apparition of a young woman in out-of-time clothing. Nearly a century after her death, locals say Ethel Allen still wanders, looking for answers the world has yet to give her.
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On a cold February morning in 1896, a farmhand near Fort Thomas, Kentucky, stumbled upon a body at the edge of a ravine. The victim was a young woman in a blue checkered dress, her gloves sliced, her head missing. Within days, a pair of petite boots and a ledger entry in a small-town shoe store revealed a name that would haunt headlines across the country: Pearl Bryan of Greencastle, Indiana.
What followed became one of the era’s most sensational crimes. The press painted Pearl as a ruined innocent. Detectives chased rumors across Cincinnati saloons and backrooms. Two promising young men, a dental student named Scott Jackson and his roommate Alonzo Walling, were soon at the center of the storm. Theories multiplied. Was Pearl lured to the city for a secret procedure that went wrong, or was something far darker at work?
As the case moved to trial, the testimonies clashed, the city buzzed, and crowds swarmed the crime scene for souvenirs. Confessions were offered and withdrawn. A doctor’s name surfaced. A cabman emerged with a harrowing account. Through it all, one detail refused to rest: Pearl’s head was never found.
In this episode, we trace the investigation that gripped the Midwest, the courtroom drama that ended on the gallows, and the morbid fascination that turned Pearl Bryan into a murder ballad and a legend. We follow the facts through the noise, and ask the question that still lingers more than a century later: what really happened to Pearl, and where is the missing piece of her story?
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BlueLife is a new post-apocalyptic sci-fi audio story which has its world premiere on September 1st. I'd love you to listen, and if you like what you hear please subscribe to the email list on the website so you will be one of the first to hear the episodes when they are launched.
The BlueLife script was an Austin Film Festival semi-finalist. It received a staged reading at the Festival where it was roundly praised. The creators Mark Vashro and Kenneth Heaton both have lengthy experience in stage and film. Mark produced the short film Thunder Road, which won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, and his bicycling documentary Bike Against the Wind earned him top honors as Best Director at the Boise Film Festival. Mark is also a well-known Bay Area actor, having appeared in numerous stage productions. Ken’s play The Ontological Detective was produced off-Broadway, and his Mustard Seed won the Southern Playwrights Competition. As an actor, Heaton has appeared in the Academy Award-nominated short, The Letter Room, and on Hulu’s Chance. Both Vashro and Heaton play roles in BlueLife.The seasoned cast includes, among many others, Mapuana Makia (Apple TV’s Invasion, the CW’s Family Law, Doogie Kamealoha, M.D., Two Sentence Horror Stories) as Persephone, Joel Marsh Garland (Poker Face, Orange is the New Black, Birdman or [The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance], The Last OG, Hello Tomorrow) as The Clown, Donna Jay Fulks (X-Men ’97, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, I Love That for You) as Fiona Thomlinson, and JillMarie Lawrence (Dexter: Original Sin, Ocean’s Eight, City by the Sea, Law & Order) as Faye Emma MacArthur. Vashro and Heaton have teamed up with Audio Producer/Sound Designer Rachel Boyd (Audio Producer on Fear Daily, Producer, Editor and Voice Artist for Codename: Blank!, Lead Producer for Hearing the Haunted).
BlueLife is a character-driven series set in the post-apocalyptic city-state of Los Angeles, which is believed to be the last bastion of humanity on the planet. In the midst of environmental collapse, two warring factions fight for control of a life-saving drug, BlueLife, which will determine the outcome of the human race. Set in the year 2088, shortly after the ‘Second Blood War,’ our story deals with the ideas of class and power. This series combines the styles of Blade Runner, LA Confidential, The Matrix, and the series Firefly.
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Spooky season is finally here! Join us for another edition of our listener-submitted stories... from haunted cemeteries, a creepy old mirror, to the possible sighting of a spirit on a Civil War battlefield.
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Just south of Savannah, Georgia, where the low country stretches into swampland, lies a quiet tributary shaded by thousand-year-old cypress trees. Today, paddlers drift across its dark waters, taking in the beauty of the moss-draped forest. But for many who visit, Ebenezer Creek carries a sense of unease—a heaviness that lingers in the air. Some say that when the water rises after storms, you can still hear desperate voices calling from its banks.
In December of 1864, during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea, this peaceful waterway became the site of an unthinkable tragedy. Thousands of formerly enslaved men, women, and children trailed behind the Union Army, believing the blue uniforms meant deliverance. Instead, a single callous order at Ebenezer Creek left them abandoned on the wrong side of the water, with Confederate cavalry closing in. What followed was chaos, betrayal, and death on a massive scale.
For the soldiers who watched, the memory never faded. Some called it necessary. Others called it murder. In the years that followed, the tragedy at Ebenezer Creek cast a shadow not only on Sherman’s victory but on the promises of freedom itself.
In this episode, we trace the march that led to Ebenezer Creek, the massacre that unfolded there, and the echoes it left behind—from ghost stories on the water to one of the most famous broken promises of Reconstruction. mysteries.
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Just off the old Natchez Trace, in the quiet woods of Tennessee, stands a broken marble column marking the grave of Meriwether Lewis. The monument was meant to honor one of America’s greatest explorers, but its shattered form also reflects a life cut short under circumstances that remain unsolved more than two centuries later.
In 1804, Lewis and Clark led the Corps of Discovery across thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness. They mapped rivers, documented new species, and forged fragile relationships with Native Nations, returning home as national heroes. Yet only a few years later, while traveling east on government business, Lewis stopped at a frontier inn called Grinder’s Stand. Before dawn, gunfire rang out. By morning, the celebrated explorer was dead.
From the start, the explanation was contested. Some, including Thomas Jefferson and William Clark, believed Lewis had taken his own life after years of depression, financial trouble, and lingering illness. Others pointed to inconsistencies in the testimonies, the absence of eyewitnesses, and the violence of the scene to argue that he was murdered. Over the years, theories have ranged from robbery on a lawless road to political assassination, while modern scholars have even suggested his death may have been linked to malaria or another untreated disease.
In this episode, we retrace Lewis’s final journey along the Natchez Trace and examine the testimonies left behind. We look at the evidence for suicide, the motives for murder, and the generations of speculation that have kept this mystery alive. We also consider the more recent efforts by Lewis’s descendants to exhume his body, hoping that modern science might finally answer the question that has haunted his legacy: how did Meriwether Lewis really die?
This episode of Southern Gothic originally aired on January 29, 2021.
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Just a stone’s throw from the quaint downtown square of Harrodsburg, Kentucky—the oldest town in the state—sits a small city park. Families gather there for picnics, children play on the swings, and joggers circle the open green. But tucked at the edge of it all, surrounded by a white picket fence, is something far more unusual: a single grave. Its headstone bears no name, only the word “UNKNOWN.”
Nearly two centuries ago, this was the site of Graham Springs, a luxurious resort built around the region’s famed mineral waters. Guests came from across the South to drink, to dance, and to be seen. And one summer evening in the 1840s, among them was a beautiful young woman whose arrival would leave a mark on Harrodsburg forever.
Locals call her the Dancing Lady. Some say she was a stranger who waltzed the night away at Graham Springs before collapsing on the ballroom floor, never to rise again. Others whisper her death was not from joy at all, but from something darker—disease, scandal, even murder. With no family to claim her and no true name to inscribe, she was buried where she fell.
Over the years, her story has only grown stranger. From ghostly encounters in the park to modern-day efforts to solve her identity, the Dancing Lady of Harrodsburg remains one of Kentucky’s oldest and most haunting mysteries.
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Just a stone’s throw from the quaint downtown square of Monticello, Arkansas, stands a sprawling Queen Anne mansion framed by towering trees and ornate stained glass. Known for its turrets, grand columns, and intricate woodwork, the Allen House is the kind of place that stops you in your tracks.
But behind that beauty is a story steeped in tragedy. For decades, one upstairs room was locked tight, its contents left untouched. Over the years, whispers grew—of strange sounds in the night, of figures glimpsed in windows, of an unseen presence lingering in the halls.
Today, the Allen House is regarded as one of the most haunted homes in the country. In this episode, we explore its layered past, the family who called it home, and the enduring mystery that has kept Monticello talking for more than seventy years.
Special thanks to the Grave Talks podcast for allowing us to you segments from their interview with Mark Spencer.
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Tell Me Your Ghost Story is a podcast where real people share their real-life encounters with the paranormal. Host Kassie Askin invites guests to share their unexplainable encounters in their own words. Some stories are terrifying, some are heart-warming, and some just might change the way you see the world. Kassie isn’t looking for answers or theories, just stories that are sure to haunt you.
Listen to more episodes of Tell Me Your Ghost Story now on your favorite podcasting app!
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The Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for over 400,000 United States service members and their eligible family members, and the most well-known and highly esteemed national cemetery in the country. Yet few know of how this esteemed burial ground came to be; a result of overcrowding cemeteries during the Civil War, in a place that was seemingly chosen out of spite-- the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
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On a lonely gravel road in Mississippi, 12 miles southwest of Meridian, is a dilapidated old truss bridge, no longer open to cars or traffic. It spans 112 feet, giving travelers access across the Chunky River, a short tributary of the Chicksasawhy River. This bridge, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, had been built to replace one erected by early settlers of the region in 1850 which give carriages and horseback travelers a Southwestern route in and out of Meridian. But legend says the bridge is also haunted by the spirit of a man named Stuckey.
This encore episode of Southern Gothic originally aired on June 7, 2023.
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Just outside of Bath, North Carolina is a unique landmark that has puzzled folks for over two centuries-- a series of small depressions in the ground, known as the Hoofprints of Bath. According to legend, not only have these depressions been around for over two centuries but they are also the product of a legendary horse race with the devil.
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St. Catherine's Island sits off the coast of Georgia, just fifty miles south of Savannah. This beautiful barrier island has served as a wildlife refuge for several decades, but its history is far darker than what anyone who has visited the island's serene forests and peaceful beaches could ever imagine. In 1597, it was the site of a violent rebellion that left several Spanish friars dead. According to legend, some believe that the echoes of those friars can still be heard chanting in the night, even over four centuries since their demise.
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Fear Daily takes you into the shadows of the past, unearthing the 1990's most terrifying tales of monsters, madness, and life after death. Join us as we explore the ghost stories and supernatural encounters left on an old online bulletin board that continues to operate somewhere in an unknown part of the Pennsylvania Rust Belt - a time capsule of society's greatest fears.
Written by Brennan Storr, creator of The Ghost Story Guys, and hosted by Brandon Schexnayder, creator of Southern Gothic... Fear Daily is guaranteed to be the stuff of nightmares.
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It was a hot summer night in 1868 when Laura Schafer lit a kerosene lamp and stepped into the darkened hall of her family’s Alexandria home. The flame cracked. Her dress caught. And by the time her screams reached the street below, it was already too late.
What should have been Laura’s wedding day became the date carved into her gravestone. And hours later, the man she was meant to marry—Charles Tennesson—met his own tragic fate.
Today, the building at 107 North Fairfax Street is an ice cream parlor. But those who’ve worked there over the years tell a different story. A faint smell of smoke. Screams echoing down the staircase. A lamp that seems to move on its own. Some believe Laura Schafer never left the house where she died—and that she’s not alone.
In this episode, we unravel one of Alexandria’s most enduring ghost stories, tracing the true events behind the legend of the Burning Bride. We’ll examine the historical record, explore how folklore reshaped Laura’s memory, and hear chilling reports from those who still feel something lingering behind the old brick walls.
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In 1977, Reverend Willie Maxwell was shot dead in front of six hundred mourners at a funeral in Alexander City, Alabama. The man who pulled the trigger—Robert Burns—did it in plain sight. He didn’t run. He didn’t deny it. And when asked why, he simply said, “I had to do it.”
But that moment was only the end of a far more disturbing story.
For years, Reverend Maxwell had been surrounded by tragedy. His wife. His brother. His nephew. Even a teenage girl under his care. One by one, they died under strange circumstances—each followed by a suspicious insurance claim. And each time, the preacher walked free.
Rumors spread that Maxwell was untouchable—not just legally, but spiritually. Some said he practiced voodoo, protected by rituals and dark forces that kept the law at bay. He was feared. Respected. And, in some corners, believed to be cursed.
The story drew national attention, even bringing Harper Lee out of seclusion. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird spent years researching the case for a true crime book she called The Reverend. But the manuscript was never finished.
In this episode, we explore the strange, winding story of Willie Maxwell—his rise, the trail of bodies, the whispers of black magic, and the explosive trial that followed his very public death. It’s a story with no easy answers. One that still haunts the South to this day.
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Reserve your spot on the Knight House overnight ghost hunt today!
Built in 1815, the Knight House is the oldest standing structure in Christian County, Kentucky—and after more than two centuries of history, it has more than a few stories to tell. From its ties to early Kentucky power brokers and whispers of the Underground Railroad to tales of shadow figures, piano keys echoing in empty rooms, and the squawk of a phantom parrot, this grand old home in Hopkinsville has seen it all.
In this special episode, we sit down with Eric Freeman-Sims, the current owner and steward of the Knight House, to talk about its storied past, strange hauntings, and the massive restoration effort underway to preserve this overlooked gem.
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Tucked deep in Mississippi’s Tunica Hills, where ancient bluffs rise from the loess soil and moss hangs heavy from the trees, stands one of the oldest plantation homes in the state—Cold Spring.
Built around 1810 by a Scottish-born army surgeon named Dr. John Flavel Carmichael, this historic home near Pinckneyville has witnessed generations of Southern history—and, according to local lore, has never quite been emptied of its spirits.
In this episode, we trace the story of Cold Spring from its earliest days as Spanish territory through its transformation into an American cotton plantation, and explore the life and eccentric death of Dr. Carmichael, a man said to still haunt his wine cellar.
But the most enduring legend of Cold Spring belongs to a young woman named Catherine McGehee. Heartbroken and obsessed after a vanished romance, her tragic tale of love, loss, and waiting has been passed down through generations. They say her face is still etched in the upstairs window—burned there by lightning, or perhaps by longing.
Join us as we uncover the history, folklore, and unanswered mysteries of one of Mississippi’s most quietly haunted places.
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At first glance at the title, I thought this was about tRump! 😄
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this episode made me think of Julian in Anne Rice's "Mayfair" series, Lestat didn't come to my mind.
my kiddo and iblove this series! our favorite was the 3 part Nola one!
Love this podcast, the new orleans 3-part episode is my favourite!
I like the show, but the pauses! The pauses between clauses(?) or in the middle of a sentence are too long. Please work on your speech flow!
Nor-folk? Do you even southern bro?
it's pronounced EDisto. this episode killed me due to the wrong pronunciation. it's like Edis-tow
what is the song that you are playing during the intro?