Camp Gagnon - Unsolved Mysteries of Appalachia: Vanished & Never Found

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Today, we take a closer look at the eerie mysteries surrounding the Appalachian region. We’ll talk about the disappearance of Dennis Martin, Magnetic Frequencies in Appalachia, the Bell Witch Haunting, and other interesting topics... Welcome to Camp! 🏕️👕🧢 Use CHRISTMASCAMP at checkout for 17% off when you shop at https://camp-rd.com/collections/christmasShoutout to our sponsor: BlueChew 🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTImestamps:0:00 What Is Appalachia?2:37 The Disappearance of Dennis Martin8:39 The Search For Dennis11:47 Legends of Appalachia13:06 Magnetic Frequency In Appalachia19:35 The Vampire of Bladenboro30:04 The Bell Witch Haunting38:04 What’s Your Appalachian Experience?#podcast #foryou #horror #scary #mystery #crime #history #knowledge

A six-year-old boy vanishes in the Smoky Mountains without a trace, and what followed was one of the largest and strangest search operations in American history. But that's just the beginning. A blood-draining creature that terrorizes a North Carolina town. And finally, the Bell Witch, America's most famous ghost story, that might actually be our host. This episode is just going to be fun. We are blending legend, science, and real mystery.

And trust me, by the end, you will never look at the dark Avalachian woods. same. I even pose my own theory about what I think could be happening in this stretch of planet Earth to cause such strange and unexplainable events. So, without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up people and welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gaggonon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all time forever. Yes, this is my attempt to understand everything that's ever happened. Everything from history, science, math, electrophysics, philosophy.

And sometimes just straight up, just fun ghost stories, all right? We did, well, we did a ghost story episode last year for Halloween. And I had a nice time. Skin walkers. Skinwalkers, dude. A lot of people liked, a lot of people in the comments. See, Christos, I need you just to pipe down really fast, all right? Because I completely forgot to shut you up.

And the fans are going to be mad because they've been telling me to just put a cap in it for a while. Guys, I need you to know something. I didn't sleep at all last night. My baby was up. There's baby vomit on my shirt. I had to switch my pants because there's actual fecal matter on my right thigh. And this is the only thing that gives me any life anymore. You know what?

Just sit in this freaking tent going to camp and just being here with you guys. Now, that loud obnoxious laugh is not a skinwalker. It's not some type of ghost. It is my good friend. David Sanchez. What about? What about, loco. Okay.

And also Christos, how are you, pal? What's going on? All right. So look, guys, today we're talking about one of my favorite topics. This is just going to be a good old fashion ghost story episode. All right. I don't want you to be too stressed. I know you're like, oh, Mark, the world's ending. New York is Sharia law.

It's a communist. Everything's falling apart. You're Muslim now. Look, none of that matters today, okay? Because this is not the place we're going to get political hot takes. We're not going to get the up-to-date facts on every little thing. This is just a place for me just to, you know, just to light up. Drop in.

Get your shit pushed in. Chill out with your boys and just look at some fun stories, all right? Or maybe, I don't even know if we should make jokes like that because I had a woman reach out and say, hey, I love watching all your videos. Me and my kids listen to them in the car. So, my bad. But you know what? That's the problem for a later of day.

We'll just cross that bridge when we got there. Guys, we're talking about Appalachia or Appalachia, or however you really pronounce it. I'm not even really quite positive, to be honest with you. I've heard different pronunciations. I'll probably oscillate back and forth. But we're going to be going through all of the crazy stuff that's ever happened in Appalachia. If you don't know, this is a very strange mountain range.

And I'll explain to you why it's strange and what some of the most bizarre things that have ever happened in this mountain range are. And what some of the explanations are. All right, we're going to get into all of that. So where do we begin? One of the stranger things, no pun intended, that has happened, happened back in 1969. June 14th, there was a six-year-old boy named Dennis Martin who went missing, and he was playing hide-and-seek with one of his relatives in the Great Smoky Mountains. And before the sun goes down that evening, he's gone. And this leads to one of the biggest rescue missions the National Park Service has ever organized.

Even to this day, there's never been a wider search for another child than this one. Sorry, my voice cracked. So what happened to Dennis Martin? Well, this whole thing gets pretty bizarre. The weekend was meant to celebrate Father's Day, and the Martin family spanning three different age groups had trekked up to like a big grassy area called Spence Field. And this covers roughly like, I don't know, 150, 200 acres. And it's basically where like Tennessee meets North Carolina. So Dennis goes up there with his dad William, his older brother Douglas, who's like nine at the time, and then his grandpa Clyde.

The previous day, they had walked 10 miles, starting from Cades Cove, and they set up camp for the night in Russell Field. and then completed their journey to Spence Field when the morning came. Once they actually reached the grassy clearing, they discovered another group was already there, Dr. Carter Martin and his family who was traveling from Alabama. Now, the Martins weren't relatives to the Tennessee Martins. They just randomly and coincidentally have the same name. So around like 4 o'clock, the children are, you know,

basically trying to find stuff to do, and they have an idea to basically, you know, quietly, you know, creep around and try to, like, scare the grown-ups, okay? And the strategy is pretty straightforward. Douglas and the rest of the kids would come from one way, while Dennis would go around the opposite side and then suddenly appear and frighten them, all right? However, there's an issue with the plant. Dennis has a bright red shirt that's going to show his location.

So because of this, the bigger kids instruct him to take a different route by himself, going around the distant edge of the clearing where the dense sort of like plants would conceal his shirt. So William Martin kept his eyes on his son as the boy headed towards, you know, sort of like where the woods sort of open up. and his red shirt makes it pretty easy to see all of his movements. And in case you're unfamiliar with, like, the plants in this region, there's a couple, there's these laurel, these mountain laurels, and these rhododendron plants.

And they're basically like these giant, like, bushy, dense pieces of vegetation. And they're pretty to look at, you know, but they're pretty difficult to get through. So roughly five minutes later, Douglas and the other children carry out their roles. They, you know, bust out, they catch the adults by surprise, they freak out, everyone laughs, and that, you know, it's a pretty successful little gag. Now, this is where things go wrong. Because Dennis didn't come back. And his dad, William, was staring at the same spot

where he'd last spotted his son's red shirt. And he shouted his name and no one responded. He yelled even more loudly and then still no response. And so now they're getting worried. And he continues to shout and they're still silence. The problem was that Dennis was, you know, he's a well-behaved child. He always responds on his parents' call him.

He wasn't the kind of kid who would just, like, wander away and stay hidden and try to, you know, like scare his parents. by making them terrified that he's gone. Like he would come back if his name's called. So William starts going to the direction of the forest and his father, the grandfather of Dennis, Clyde starts looking in the other direction. The two Martin families are scattered through the clearing,

shouting Dennis' name trying to locate him, and by 6 o'clock that evening, as the sun begins to disappear and the air is growing cold, everyone realizes that something is seriously wrong. Now, this is where the story kind of takes a weird turn. I'm sure some of you watching at least have probably heard about this specific missing child cage from, or this missing child case from Appalachia, right?

This is, you know, one of the most well-known disappearances ever recorded, right? There's a young boy hanging with his friend and family, and then the next minute, he's gone. So about seven miles to the southwest area of Spence Field is an area known as Sea Branch, and there's a guy named Harold Key who is just enjoying, like, an outdoor meal with his relatives. Sometime during the period from 6 o'clock to, like, roughly 7, you know, two hours following when Dennis actually vanished,

he heard a noise that would disturb him for the rest of his life. And it was a shriek that he heard that he later described as sickening and fundamentally wrong. Those are his actual words. Now, this wasn't the sound of like a creature or like a bobcat or something or, you know, something that he had encountered in as many years of living in these mountains. This wasn't someone crying up for help. It was something different. And the cry made Harold and his family members raise their heads from eating

and they look towards the forest actually begins. And just a few minutes after hearing this shriek, they witnessed something. A person came out of the trees, rushing quickly through the plants and the bushes, but this wasn't just like a regular hiker. This person's movement suggested that he was either in danger of something or chasing after something, and his looks were unsettling to the key family. And his appearance was messy and wild. His hair hung down beyond his shoulders.

His clothing was ripped up and filthy. He seemed like someone who had been. surviving in the wilderness for, you know, many months, and draped across a stranger's shoulder, Harold and his family members claimed that they could see what appeared to be fabric or garments. This instant, you know, this bizarre sort of man that they noticed, the Key family was watching him, and as they're watching him, he's switching directions and then rushes back into the woods and then vanishes from sight. Now, Harold Key made sure to remember the exact time, somewhere between six and seven on the evening of June 14th. Now, keep in mind, this happens in 19,

And when we look at the sequence of events, Dennis Barton went missing at half past four from Spence Field. Then two hours after that event, seven miles away, Harold Key hears this terrifying scream and then observes this wild-looking man carrying what seemed to be some type of fabric. Is it possible for a six-year-old boy to go seven miles through wild terrain by himself? Probably not. However, it is possible that someone or something may be transported him that distance. This is what theorists will propose. But again, that's also pretty uncertain. So when the night actually arrives, Dennis's grandpa Clyde walked nine miles downhill to notify the authorities that the boy was gone.

A huge storm was starting to roll in. And as he made his way down, he's, you know, this is, you have to remember, this is a time before, like, mobile phones or internet. So people had to actually travel to go inform the right people in organizations about, you know, an emergency. I mean, just imagine, like, you know, finding missing people today is hard enough. but finding missing people in the 60s, 70s, 80s, before the internet, or before camera systems or phone pinging, anything like that, it made it insanely difficult. So when Clyde finally arrives at the Ranger office, the intense rainfall had already started. Two and a half inches fell within three hours, which would basically erase any path or signs that Dennis could have left behind. And what followed this event was a rescue effort, unlike anything seen before.

1,400 people offered to help their search through 56 square miles of the Smoky Mountains to locate Dennis. Now, this went on for over two weeks. Federal investigators from the FBI started to actually build cases and put files together to actually build the case. Special Forces soldiers who had just returned from Vietnam came to assist the search. The rescue mission grew so enormous that it actually began damaging potential clues just from all of the foot traffic in the region. An overwhelming number of people were attempting to find Dennis. Now, three days after Dennis's disappearance, the search team discovered something that seemed significant. They came across small footprints in wet soil near Eagle Creek, which was multiple miles away from Spence Field.

Now, the footprints revealed a detail that is even stranger. One print showed a barefoot, while the other displayed the design of a boy's Oxford shoe in size two and a half, the exact type and size that Dennis would have been wearing. Now, the trail of Prince headed toward a body of water before just abruptly ending. Now, park authorities, you know, quickly rejected this clue for unclear reasons. Their explanation was that, you know, the Prince had to belong to a Boy Scout who was a part of the search team since they appeared too distant from where Dennis was last spotted. And, you know, it seemed to be made by someone beyond six years old, which didn't really make much sense. And looking back now, it seems ridiculous that this would ever be ruled out, but that was what was done at the time.

Now, a foreign park ranger named Dwight McCartre examined those same footprints for many years afterwards, and his conclusion was that the prince didn't match any group movement pattern. They headed away from where the searchers were actually looking at the time. Additionally, they revealed intentional movement with clear destination unlike, you know, the aimless walking of a confused child. They went in one singular direction. Plus, none of the young people that were helping with a search had been walking around without one shoe. Now, this creates a major inconsistency in the reasoning. Now, the authorized search operation, carried on for an additional two weeks before it concluded without success. Dennis Martin was never located. Not a single piece of his clothing was ever found and his body was never recovered. He essentially vanished from existence at, you know, half past four on June 14th, 1969. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you need help pitching your tents.

Yes, and that's what we do over here at camp. Maybe you're, you know, in line waiting for a concert somewhere and you just need something to lean on. Who knows? Maybe you just need help pleasing the special man or woman in your life. And that's why I want to talk to you guys about Blue Chew. Blue Chew is the ultimate service to get you discrete supplements rate to your home. And what do these supplements do? They give you that leg, that third leg, the important one. And Blue Chew is going to help you lay it down. Okay? It's an amazing service that's coming straight to your door. And for the listeners of this very program, they are going to get their first month of Blue Chew for free. All you need to use is the promo

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month. Yes, that is at Bluetooth.com. Use the promo code gagdon and start laying it down like they deserve. Let's get back to the show. Now, the case has received extensive attention and similar disappearances have occurred beyond just this single incident. Now, why is this case worth bringing up?

Well, I think that this case kind of sparks what, you know, was almost kind of seen through like, you know, internet circles and kind of like, you know, folk story circles as like this Appalachia phenomenon. So this region, this Appalachia, you know, mountain range, produces more mysterious occurrences in each square mile

than any other region in North America. I mean, talk to anyone who, you know, has resided in the area. And if you search, you know, online for terms like Appalachia's stories, you're going to get, you know, everything from skin walkers to Wendigues to, you know, slender man, to serial killers, everything. I mean, I know people that have actually hiked on this trail, and they've described even their own weird personal stories. And this moment, I think, with Dennis,

was one of the first things to really bring into the national spotlight, just how weird and unforgiving this stretch of land can be. Now, throughout America's protected wilderness areas, specifically in the isolated parts of this mountain range, young people and adults go missing in places where it seems impossible for someone to vanish. I mean, tracking dogs will lose, you know, like, ascent trail at, like, weird odd spots. You know, skilled hikers are discovered deceased in places that they shouldn't have even been able to reach. And there's just so many unique characteristics about this piece of geography. And that is why it is such a standout topic for discussion.

Now, you've probably been told, you know, the area is, you know, eerie and frightening and you should avoid entering the forest after dark and all that kind of stuff. But what gives it this distinctive nature? What causes more individuals to go missing in this wilderness area compared to, you know, parks that are 10 times bigger? Now, some people would, you know, conjecture that the reason there are so many bizarre and anomalous experiences in this area is what they call, you know, by some researchers, thin places. And this is what people, you know, kind of in, you know, sort of paranormal circles will describe as a place. where the laws of reality that we know appear to stop working properly. And this concept of thin places has been around for thousands of years. So an investigator named David Pauldies has dedicated many years to recording what he refers to as over 400 missing cases and instances of people just going missing that share sort of similar strange similarities.

Now the Appalachian Mountain Range or Appalachia, whatever you want to call it, all right, it's existed longer than it's ever been called that. 480 million years. And scientists who study rocks in Earth formations have identified four major periods when these mountains were formed. And they call these, you know, different events erogenes, the Grenville, the Taconic, the Acadian, and the Alleghenian. I mean, so these are some pretty, you know, difficult to pronounce names that I would say I kind of crushed, you know, shout out to me. But all of this crazy, intense geological activity results in a unique electromagnetic setup that doesn't really exist anywhere else on the planet. So there's actually a scientist called Dr. Michael Persinger who works at Laureate Unipzig. and he demonstrated that magnetic fields can change how people's minds actually work or how

reality is perceived in ways that can actually be scientifically measured. He used something that he called his God helmet device. This is a tool that produces weak magnetic signals that aren't much more powerful than, you know, something that would come out of like a hairdryer. But using this device, he was able to make 80% of the people he tested experienced things that seemed supernatural. Now, the participants described feeling like a presence around them or being stared at or losing track of time or having sensations of, you know, being separated from their bodies like astral projection. And they were describing things that, you know, in any other setting would be sort of described as supernatural or paranormal. The interesting thing about this is that the same type of

electromagnetic patterns that person here artificially creates in his lab also happen naturally throughout some areas of the Appalachian Mountain Range. Now, there is a phenomenon known as the Brunswick Magnetic Anominy that runs from South Carolina all the way up to Pennsylvania. And within the zones affected by this anomaly, navigation tools will just fail to work. They'll spin uncontrollably. Electronic devices will just stop working for any clear reason. And this kind of stuff is actually happening. A researcher named Dr. Karen Fisher, who actually teaches at Brown University, discovered

that the lithosphere, which is, you know, Earth's natural electromagnetic fields, is unusually thin underneath these mountains as well. Now, this area is also packed with, you know, mineral deposits of quartz. So when the shifting of Earth's plates puts pressure on the quartz, it produces what scientists call a piezoelectric field. Now, this results in specific areas where the standard laws of governing space time

just don't function in ways that we can normally measure. Now, Persinger's scientific work demonstrates that when the massive plates beneath the Earth's surface move around, they create this, you know, electromagnetic irregularity that then activates a specific part of the human brain called the temporal lobe. Now, this specific part of the brain

is connected to sometimes what people would call, you know, spiritual experiences or, you know, experiencing periods of lost time and just really changes how we perceive reality. Pershinger's scientific work demonstrates that when the massive plates beneath the Earth's surface actually move around, they will create these electromagnetic irregularities that will activate specific parts of the human brain that we know as the temporal lobe. This particular section of the brain is connected to spiritual experiences or time management or even just perception of reality. So when it's affected, people will describe

having these weird supernatural experiences or periods of lost time or just fundamental changes in how they interact with reality. Now, when scientists actually stimulate the temporal lobe in controlled settings, it causes people to feel things that aren't there or have, you know, like spiritual meetings with entities in some way in their consciousness

or even develop just blank spots in their memory, all of which matches what people who survive these, you know, missing cases will describe experiencing. Essentially, the Appalachian Mountain Range functions potentially as a giant, you know, electro-magnetic laboratory that then affects how people experience reality that then causes them to get disoriented, you know, go do things that they would normally do, you know, traverse a specific trail that seems strange, or even just claimed to have experienced or witnessed or witnessed something that didn't actually happen.

Now, let me just put a few disclaimers on here. Persinger's study, uh, while it was, you know, peerage, viewed and legitimate at the time, it has been difficult to actually replicate. So a lot of scientists will debate over the specific piece of data and say it's not, it doesn't really stand up to scientific credulity. So I just want to put that out there that it's not necessarily, you know, the most broadly accepted piece of data, but I do think it's interesting. And I don't know if anyone's ever drawn this connection before to the strange electromagnetic anomalies that actually happen in the mountain range. But to be, it makes sense, right? If there's a, you know,

some type of causal link between electromagnetic stimulation in your brain that causes you to experience things that are strange and then you have a period, you know, a piece of earth that is causing you to experience the similar kind of electromagnetic anomalies that maybe there is some type of connection. So I just want to put that out there before we keep going. And one final element of this region that I think is probably worth touching on is that there's so many stories in folklore that comes out of it because so many different cultures descended upon it around at the same time. So, I mean, throughout the, you know, colonization of America, you have Scottish settlers coming in, you know, Celtic settlers from Ireland with their own sort of story.

You have Germanic settlers coming in from Germany, also mixing in with, you know, the native populations that are living in the range. And they're all kind of sharing stories and creating this kind of shared taboo. Not to mention, you know, you have West African migration through the slave trade that's also bringing in African sort of voodoo practice into the region as well. All that to say, you have this strange piece of land where all sorts of bizarre things. are happening, and then you have folklore coming in from around the world, all mixing at one unique moment. And all of these kind of elements of these different stories still persist to this day. What's up, people? We're going to take a break because we got new merch. That's right. It is the holiday season and the good folks over at Camp R&D have been cooking up in the lab. We got the

Christmas sweaters with the aliens. We got the Christmas sweaters with the conspiracy vibes. You already know. I mean, this one might be my favorite one. A Christmas tree full of aliens, full Christmas sweater energy. And then of course, if you just want something simple, you know, you bust out the camp logo tea with the little Christmas lights on it. Come on, bro. Get cute for Christmas. Okay, it is a holiday season. All right, we're celebrating the birth of the savior, okay? And what better way to do it than a cop a couple threads for the person in your life that you know that loves a campsite that loves hanging with us every single week. And right now, we're running a promo through the holidays. That's right. Use the promo code Christmas camp for 15% off. I just made those. I just made those.

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I love you all. God bless and Merry Christmas. And potentially that is one of the explanations behind the beast of North Carolina, the beast of Bladenboro, the vampire of the Appalachian Mountains. Now, if you've never heard this story, it starts in January 1954, when something or someone began slaughtering animals in an area around Bladenboro, North Carolina. However, the way these animals died wasn't typical of regular predators that would kill them. Instead, their blood was completely removed from their bodies. Now, I've heard numerous stories.

of this type of thing happening. The chupacabra famously, you know, throughout South and Central America, we'll talk about this beast, this thing, this like goblin creature that will suck the blood out of goats and stuff like that. And this is a specific one to North Carolina. So the town's police chief, Roy Forres, had witnessed numerous animal attacks throughout his career, right? He's working as a cop in North Carolina.

But when he inspected the deceased dogs on New Year's Eve, 1953, he recognized that something was very strange. Something was seriously off with these bodies because the bodies showed no marks from defending themselves or, you know, no clumps of fur nearby indicating that there was a fight or some type of struggle. The animals appeared as if they had just been emptied out, like almost like surgically. Like it was that straightforward. Like the creature or the person that did this appear to have, you know, all the blood removed.

So they just, you know, went in and somehow surprised these dogs and took their blood for some reason that even to the state no one can really explain. Even a statement from the autopsy verified this. The autopsy, the actual corner that looked into it, said that there weren't more than two or three drops of blood in their entire bodies. Now, another weird characteristic was that the injuries on each animal were virtually the same. They showed careful, precise work. They had crushed jawbones, torn bottom lips. So whatever was doing this was carefully or almost like systematically removing the blood from these creatures. Now this took place in Bladenborough, this tiny community of like 800 people where, you know, the headlines are going to be just like high school basketball games, stuff like that.

However, during a 13-day period in January 1954, something emerged from the surrounding pine woods that transformed this tiny little town in the Appalachian Mountains. into a place of terror. Something was taking the blood from these animals. And the tail just gets even weirder. So December 29th, 1953, a lady living in a neighboring community of Clarkton spotted this big, like, feline-type creature vanishing into the night, maybe like a bobcat or, you know, some other type of, like, you know, big cat that lives in the mountains. When the morning arrived, her neighbor's dog had completely disappeared.

Several days after that, on January 1st, a man named Johnny Vow. figured out how this creature was operating. He explained, basically in his own words, my dogs put up a good fight. He said that there was blood all over the porch, big puddles of it, and there was a pool of saliva on the porch as well. This thing, or this person, killed one dog at 10.30 and left it lying there. My dad wrapped the dog up in a blanket, and that thing came back and got the dog, and nobody has seen it since. And then at 1.30 in the morning, it came back and killed the other dog and took off. The second dog was located three days afterwards, and according to witnesses, the top of the dog's head was basically torn off and its body was crushed and it was wet like it had been inside the mouth of

the creature or something to that effect and the other dog's lower jaw was completely torn off. Two days following the incident on January 3rd, police chief Forres brought out the specially trained coon hounds to pursue the killer. In case you're unfamiliar with these types of animals, they're basically trained and raised to chase down anything, basically, you know, raccoons historically, but they can basically catch any four-legged creature. However, these dogs, were picking up on a scent of whatever this thing was, and then they instantly pulled back in fear, refusing to track it.

And it was very strange for a police chief who had trained these dogs since there were puppies to do this exact task. They have never, ever once rejected a scent. Now, they started making these whimpering sounds as they were retreating from whatever evidence that the creature had left. Now, the medical examination took place the same day

and verified what Forres was worried about. The animals hadn't been consumed for food. They were consumed for their blood. Basically, all of their blood was. just removed from their bodies. Now, on January 5th, someone's pet rabbit was discovered with its head cleanly removed and its body still retaining warmth. That very same day, a gentleman named Tater Shaw, seriously, the sickest name ever, Tater Shaw, saw something that would disturb him for the rest of his life. He came across a goat whose skull had been completely flattened. He described

the head flat as a fritter, his exact words. Shaw held four fingers across his hand to demonstrate the size of the pop prints. However, the events continued. On January 6, Mrs. Kinlaw walked out on her front porch around half past 7 of the evening to hang up some wet clothes, and just 20 feet from her in the approaching darkness was this thing. This 21-year-old mother glanced up to observe this large feline-type animal approaching her with a purpose. The creature's eyes caught and reflected the light from her porch as it kind of evaluated this potential new victim. and this is the first time that it had ever been reported to be this close to a human being. Now Mrs. Kinlaw led out a scream and rushed back into the house and her spouse Charles

snatched his shotgun and went outside. But he discovered only paw prints. These marks that are, you know, about the size of four fingers across spread throughout the yard. Therefore, this creature that had been carefully killing with exact precision, you know, numerous dogs and other animals, had now demonstrated curiosity in humans. Now following this incident, fear was moving through this entire town. Female residents began locking themselves inside their homes. Once the sun went down, male residents who had never previously owned guns, started buying weapons and, you know, shotguns, handguns, anything they could actually get their hands on.

Households that had outdoor toilets or outdoor showers began keeping everything inside. Then there was a noise that the creature would make. And this turned out to be one of the most disturbing aspects of this entire story. So people who heard it described it as otherworldly. They said it would almost sound like a baby screaming or a woman with a knife in her back. These are actual quotes from the people who heard it. There was an experienced hunter named S.W. Garrett who heard this noise while he was tracking and said that it reminded him almost of a panther's cry, which was strange for him.

And he confessed that he had actually never encountered anything like it. The sound traveled through the pine woods and it would just make anyone. that heard it terrified. Now, in addition to all of this, people who saw the creature describe something that is impossible to kind of categorize. They said it was something that was four and a half feet in length. It was covered in fur.

It looked almost like a bear or like a big cat, and they would estimate that it weighed somewhere between like 80 and 150 pounds, though some estimated even more. Some people judge its weight based on how loudly it moved through the bushes, and the footprints were discovered that revealed these claw marks

that measured at least one. inch in length. Some witnesses called it, you know, brownish with like, almost like tabby cat-like markings, while others said that it was dark with more of like a feline face. Yet every single witness agreed on one characteristic that it traveled with an awareness of a hunter, of a true predator, and moved around its victims with patience of something that wasn't in a hurry at all. Now, many people have supposed this was some type of, you know, large wildcat. that was, you know, maybe performing or operating in a strange way due to some type of illness. But by January 7th, close to 1,000 hunters had arrived in Bladenborough.

These are experienced big game hunters who had taken down lines in Africa. These are, you know, a lot of college guys from UNC Chapel Hill, basically hoping to claim a prize, local farmers carrying their bird dogs and small hunting rifles, and every single one of them believed that they were going to be the person to capture the creature from Bladenborough. But none of them were successful. The town's mayor, Woodrow Fusel, ran the community movie theater and, you know, had the natural talus with someone who knew how to get people fired up and attract a crowd.

He was a politician, right? So as hunters flooded into the community, he arranged for a showing of a movie on January 9th titled The Big Cats. And this was, you know, as the promotional material would state, now you see the cat. We've got him on the screen and in Technicolor. On the same day that the film was shown, Fusel ended the hunt. There were too many weapons, too much sort of frantic energy, and way too great a risk that someone's going to get overly excited and accidentally kill another person. The newspaper headline from the Wilmington Morning Star perfectly summed up the situation and said, the vampire beast wins in Bladenborough. On January 13th, a man named Luther Davis came across a bobcat caught in a metal trap four miles outside of town.

He shot the animal and he pulled it into the town's main square where Mayor Fusel suspended it from a flagpole alongside a notice. that said, this is the beast of Bladenborough. The killings came to an end, and the hunters departed for home. The news outlets kind of shifted their attention, and it seems like, you know, things were done. However, in my view, this doesn't sound like a vampire, like big cats aren't just going to be sucking blood out of animals all over town. So the real question is, what was that thing?

What actually happened? Sure, bobcats will make loud noises and can be irritating, but, you know, they don't remove blood. and is it possible for a 20-pound bobcat to kill a 90-pound dog and then also get all the blood or just completely flatten a skull and break the jaws with this type of precision? Additionally, why would tracking dogs that were specifically raised to be confident and skilled at following sense refused to pursue the trail? Many years afterwards, Mayor Fusel confessed to someone that was interviewing him and he said,

A little publicity never hurt a small town. However, despite all the coverage on this small town, it has never been definitively proven and what was actually taking the blood out of these specific animals. And the mystery persists today. But that is just one of the strange things that happened in the mountains of Appalachian. What's up, beautiful people of America? I am on the road. That's right.

I'm doing my hour of stand-up comedy in many cities, some of which are near you. Going to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Chicago, you can get tickets at my website, www. www.markagnonLive.com. We also got the link in the description. I would love for you guys to come on out. I say what's up to everybody after the show if you want to come hang, have some laughs, grab a pick with me, shake my hand and tell me some crazy story. I would love to see you guys there. Can't wait. Let's get back to the show. Now, maybe the best or most infamous story of all comes from a quiet Tennessee farm in the early 1800s that became the center of maybe America's most strange or discussed legend.

The haunting of the bell witch. Now, at 1817, something began terrorizing. the Bell family in Robertson County, Tennessee. By 1820, three years later, this haunting, whatever presence was tormenting this family, claimed the life of the family's father, John Bell, and became one of the most well-known supernatural legends in American history. So this story begins in October of 1817. John Bell is a hunter in Tennessee, and he's out with his dogs, hunting. And these dogs are normally chasing wild animals without hesitation,

but then they suddenly cowered behind him. In his cornfield, Bell saw a strange creature. This is like a dog with like a rabbit's head staring at him with this sort of like strange predatory intelligence. And so he fires his gun and the creature vanishes. And then by December the strange noises begin inside the Bell home. Each night after the family goes asleep, something is moving through the walls. Scratching, it's gnawing, it's chewing. Maybe it's just rats.

Maybe it's a rodent that gets into the walls. But the sounds grow louder, and they grow louder. And even louder until the whole house is starting to shake. Yet in daylight, the walls show no damage. When they investigate the walls, there's nothing in them. And then in January of 1818, 12-year-old Betsy Bell wakes up screaming. Her face is covered in red marks. Something invisible or paranormal had attacked her in her sleep.

And soon the attacks worsened. Her hair was getting yanked, sharp objects are jabbing her skin, and her blankets are ripping away from her in the same. the freezing nights. And this unseen force is saving its most cruel torment for the father, John Bell Sr. His face becomes partially paralyzed. His tongue begins to swell. And during meals, his throat suddenly tightens, basically leaving him gasping for air as he's being choked and feeling as though this invisible presence is watching the entire time. And doctors are baffled. Though, to be fair, it was 1818, but still, the medicine men of the time didn't understand what this phenomenon was.

And by the spring of 1818, the entity began to speak. And a faint, raspy voice said to sound almost like an elderly, you know, Appalachian woman. It said, I am a spirit. I was once very happy, but I have since been disturbed. And over time, the voice grows stronger. It recited scripture flawlessly. It was debating theology with ministers that would visit. And repeating sermons that were happening in churches that were 13 miles away.

It would even share gossip from nearby towns, and it was said to have spoken multiple languages and accents. The entity identified itself as Kate and claimed to be the ghost of Kate Bats, a neighbor who had quarreled with John Bell over land many years before. But there was one problem. Kate Bats was still alive and remained alive for another 27 years, and that made this the first recorded instance of a ghost claiming to be someone who hadn't yet died. When family friend James Johnston, a respected church leader, stayed overnight to investigate, the entity in the middle of the night yanks off his covers and strikes him.

Terrified, he screams out, in the name of the Lord, who are you and what do you want? And silence followed. And for the rest of the night, nothing else happened. Words of this haunting started to spread, and soon hundreds of people were flocking to the bell property. Local townspeople, ministers, doctors, even travelers and passers by would stop. and see the home. Newspapers actually dubbed it the wonder of the 19th century.

The entity seemed to like the attention to. It conjured fresh fruit out of nowhere. It would sing drinking songs and it would share gossip about visitors' lives and sometimes it would just vanish mid-conversation only to return with detailed accounts of events happening miles away. And despite the spectacle,

the haunting had a more sinister purpose. The spirit showed affection only to Lucy Bell, calling her the kind of woman alive. It tolerated John Bell Jr., but relentlessly tormented Betsy, especially targeting her engagement to a neighbor, Joshua Garner, the engagement that eventually collapsed because of the haunting. As for John Bell Sr., the entity made a promise, I have come to kill old Jack Bell. Now, over the following months, John Bell's health was deteriorating rapidly. His paralysis and his face worsened, his speech started to become slurred, and he would have these violent seizures that

kept him bedridden. On December 20th, 1820, John Bell Jr. found his father unconscious, beside a small bottle of a dark liquid, and no one in the family had recognized it. So to test it, they gave a small drop to the family cat, and the cat immediately convulsed and died. The liquid was clearly a poison. Now, at that moment, the house filled with a mocking laughter and said, I gave old Jack a big dose of that last night while he was asleep. The voice cackled. John Bell died later that day. During his funeral, the spirit actually interrupted the service, singing songs and continuing to laugh. Now, because of this, Tennessee remains the only state to ever list a supernatural cause as a potential factor in a death.

Now, this story is one of the most infamous hauntings that has ever been written about in American history. But there's only one issue. The story, virtually every single detail of it, comes from a book written by Martin Van Buren Ingram. Now, this is not Martin Van Buren the president. This is an author who wrote. a book in 1894 titled The Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch. Now Ingram claimed that this account was based on a journal written by Richard William Bell, John's son. But Richard was only six years old when the haunting began, and no one has ever seen this supposed journal.

So modern researchers believe that it likely never existed. And Ingram's credibility is shaky at best. He referenced an 1849 Saturday evening post article about the Bell Witch that no historian has ever found. and his version contains a lot of anachronisms, a lot of details that don't fit between this 1817 to 1821 timeline. And by the time he actually wrote this book, every first-hand witness was long dead. Now, earlier fragments of the story do exist in some capacities. By 1820, a diary by a military officer, John R. Bell, mentions hearing of a girl accompanied by a mysterious voice that drew thousands of onlookers. Additionally, newspapers from 1856 also referenced this.

Bell Witch legend, proving that some version of it predated Ingram's embellishments. So maybe there is, you know, some small kernel of truth. Perhaps this is a case of, you know, psychological distress that, you know, potentially affected, you know, this one guy and maybe the family created the story in order to understand what was actually happening to their father. Another theory centers on Richard Powell. This was Betsy's former school teacher and the man she eventually married in 1824. Powell was 11 years older and had shown romantic interest in during the haunting. He was also reportedly skilled in ventriloquism, mystical sciences, and hypnosis. Now, some people have theorized that it was possible to, you know, that potentially this man

orchestrated parts of the haunting to manipulate Betsy and eliminate her fiancé, to effectively break up their marriage, and additionally to kill her father who was against them getting together in the first place. Now, whether this is a hoax, you know, hysteria, something unexplainable, one thing that's undisputed is that this story remains one of America's most enduring pieces of Appalachian folklore. And personally, I would like to imagine that something crazy happened. It would make for a better story. My favorite theory is that this one dude just tried to bang Betsy, and so he learned ventriloquism to kill her dad. That's way more interesting to me. But ladies and gentlemen, that is the conclusion of today's ghost story time of the Appalachian Mountains.

I mean, I'll be honest, I think these stories are pretty fun. They're not going to keep me up at night, I'll be honest. So what we have discussed here today only covers a small fraction of the incredible Appalachian folklore that's out there. And I chose these particular stories because, you know, I think that there are some of the more fun ones to share. And I'm curious to hear what you think. Has this ever happened? Have you ever spent time in Appalachian, you know, experienced anything strange, something

you can't really, something you can't explain? And what do you think about this magnetic theory? You think it's possible that there's just a strange frequency, some type of geological occurrence that happens on this place on the earth that causes people to experience strange and sort of unexplainable events. I would love to know what you think. As always, thank you for joining us for another episode of camp. Check out history camp and religion camp where we get into more specifics on those particular topics, respectively.

Also, come see me on the road, Mark Gagnon Live. Thank you guys so much, and we'll see you next time.