Just in time for Halloween, a suite of spooky tales to make your skin crawl.

Also, tales of the supernatural.

And, ghost stories galore.

You'll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.

In This Episode:

• Mike Allen And “The Button Bin”
• Molly Born And The Spooky Old Tunnel
• A Ghost Story
• Another Ghost Story
• Spiritualism And Mediums
• Pumpkin Patches As Tourist Destinations
• The Return Of The Headless Man And The Murdered Girl

Mike Allen And The Button Bin

It’s the season for gathering around fires and telling spooky stories. Mike Allen is an award-winning science fiction, fantasy and horror writer based in Roanoke, Virginia. Besides writing, Allen also runs Mythic Delirium. It started as a sci-fi poetry zine. Now it’s a publishing imprint that puts out books. Host Mason Adams visited Mike to speak with him about his work.

Since that interview in 2023, three new Mike Allen books have been published: Slow Burn, a collection of stories and poems, The Black Fire Concerto, a post-apocalyptic horror novel, and Trail of Shadows, a horror novel that begins on the Appalachian Trail.

Molly Born And The Spooky Old Tunnel

Spooky stories can be about people, but sometimes they’re just about a place. A patch of land or an old building can develop a reputation that grows and grows over the years. Some are off the beaten path, but others you can drive right up to. In Mingo County, West Virginia there’s an old single-lane railroad tunnel that’s become a local legend.

Back in 2018, reporter Molly Born ventured inside the Dingess tunnel to find out what makes it so unsettling.

Ghost Story

Some people are afraid of ghosts. Others want to figure out ways to communicate with them – like Anita Allen, a writer and paranormal investigator in Roanoke.

Host Mason Adams talked to her about a couple of her ghost encounters.

Another Ghost Story

Haunted places dot Appalachia — moonlit hollers, mist-shrouded cemeteries, and dusty buildings that hold unspoken secrets. Playwright and theater director Dan Kehde knows just such a place, in Charleston, West Virginia.

WVPB’s Jim Lange brought us this story in 2021.

Spiritualism And Mediums

Scott Worley oversees Haunted Beckley in Beckley, West Virginia, where he’s spent most of his life. He collects stories and gives history and ghost tours. This story isn’t exactly about ghosts — but people who commune with them. We’re talking about spiritualism, a religious practice centered on the idea that people can communicate with the dead and even seek advice through seances.

Spiritualism has gone in and out of style for generations. In the 1800s, though, it became a mainstream trend that attracted celebrities like Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Worley tells us about what spiritualism looked like in West Virginia during that time.

Pumpkin Patches As Tourist Destinations

A growing number of farms are turning themselves into Halloween destinations with corn mazes and pumpkin patches. Roxy Todd and All Things Considered host Craig Wright explored a few of these farms in western Virginia.

Return Of The Headless Man And The Murdered Girl

James Froemel is an actor and storyteller in Morgantown, West Virginia. He’s also an occasional contributor, providing readings of short stories by Appalachian authors. For the Halloween season, he sent us a pair of tales from Ruth Anne Musick.

“The Return of the Headless Man” and “The Murdered Girl" were collected and retold by Ruth Anne Musick. They’re available in the story collections The Tell-Tale Lilac Bush and Coffin Hollow, respectively.

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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Blue Dot Sessions, Mary Hott, Jeff Ellis, Gerry Milnes, Hello June, Paul Loomis and Red Sovine.

Bill Lynch is our producer. Abby Neff is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens

You can send us an email: [email protected].

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Inside Appalachia is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.