Old Gods of Appalachia - Episode 31: Season Three Prologue

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Welcome to Season 3, Family. Join us as we walk in the shadows of the mountains and see a few of those who we might meet in the dark.CW: References to mutilation, occult phenomena, family dysfunction,and being unhoused due to the death of an elder; monster sounds.Written by Steve ShellNarrated by Steve ShellSound design by Steve ShellProduced and edited by Cam Collins and Steve ShellIntro Music: “The Land Unknown (The Pound of Flesh Verses)” written and performed by Landon BloodOutro Music: "As Above, So Below" written and performed by Landon BloodDeluxe Benefactor: Scared to Death PodcastSeason Sponsor: Sucrebeillle – Visit sucreabeille.com/products/nightshade and use the code LOVEGODS. Spend $25 anywhere in the store and add a dram of Nightshade to your cart to get that dram free.LEARN MORE ABOUT OLD GODS OF APPALACHIA: www.oldgodsofappalachia.comCOMPLETE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA RITUAL:FacebookInstagramTwitterBlueskySUPPORT THE SHOW:Join us over at THE HOLLER to enjoy ad-free episodes, access exclusive storylines and more.Find t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and other Old Gods merch at www.teepublic.com/stores/oldgodsofappalachia.Transcripts available on our website at www.oldgodsofappalachia.com/episodes.Old Gods of Appalachia is a production of DeepNerd Media and is distributed by Rusty Quill. All rights reserved.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/old-gods-of-appalachia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, hey there, family, if you love Old Gods of Appalachia, I want to help us keep the home fires burning, but maybe aren't comfortable with the monthly commitment. Well, you can still support us via the ACAS supporter feature. No gift too large, no gift too small. Just click on the link in the show description, and you too can toss your tithe in the collection plate. Feel free to go ahead and do that.

Right about now. This episode of Old Gods of Appalachia is brought to you in part by Sucrebe, a women-owned and operated perfumery unlike any other. Sucrebeye not only brings you the finest in small batch perfumes. Their website is a virtual treasure trove of stories and content including oddling tales, a podcast where they read you stories from the site. Heck, they even feature another podcast called The Fearless Broadcast, featuring interviews with other women business owners.

And family, did I mention that Sucrebeye is also responsible for a massive indie marketplace, mostly consisting of other women makers. If you look down in the show notes family, you'll find a link to their vibrant Facebook group, as well as a link for a special offer for old gods family members. Spend $25 anywhere in the store and add a dram of nightshade. Sint notes include a big glass of whiskey, sandalwood, amber, and real Elang, Elang. Just use the code, Love Gods, L-O-V-E, G-O-D-S, Sukra Bay. Welcome to the dark side. We Smell Awesome.

This episode's special Deluxe Benefactor, the good folks over at the Scared to Death Horror podcast. Nearing 150 episodes of demonic possession, hauntings, shadow people, black-eyed children, alien abductions, and so much more and so much worse. As horror, Dan Cummins, attempts to terrify his wife Lenz with two supposedly true tales. each week. Lens gets back at dance with potentially scarier stories, sharing at least two listeners submitted encounters with the paranormal, often the most disturbing part of the show. So, family, if you need more chills in your life,

if you don't quite feel twitchy enough, it's time for scared to death. New episodes drop every Tuesday night, The Stroke, before midnight Pacific time. Available anywhere you listen to podcast, You can also go over, search for them on YouTube and enjoy the show there. So if you're looking for something scary, mysterious, and interesting to take your mind to a dark place. Check out Scared to Death.

Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences. So listener discretion is advised. O Appalachia, O home place and hearth, oh prison and pride, we invoke your name this night with both love. Your rolling shoulders swallow the setting sun, oh mother, it is that fear that moves both heart and tongue to draw tight curtains so that we might let the darker hours pass unseen and call in the deepest night. We hear you call to us in voices that belong. to our dead and gone, and we know better, but we follow you into the darkened woods all the same. Bramble and briar tearing at our clothes and skin trying to save us from ourselves, but we push on, hoping to find somebody who knows our name and can show us the way out.

Oh, labyrinth of promise prosperity, kept by kings who would feed us to their own indiscretions, No golden thread for us to follow through these dread halls built on this the corpse of our mother That wind deeper and darker until we meet much worse than minotars in the middle And none of us have even come close to building wings We see you Oh fallen tree father lit by a half moon Perating broken prayers at an altar you never meant to build But you did

Oh, bit back, brother, fresh from the underneath, full-sooted from head to toe, lungs full of tomorrow's fresh hell in a voice, choked with the rasp of good money sliding down the chute, eager to move on to greener grass and higher hopes, but found that the company owns so much more than just the town, set guards on your family, paid you in script and bloodied months, Mows showed you how much worse it could be until you found your words, but more importantly, your guns, and then you spake forth with a fire that your will would be done on earth, just as it was in Harlan, just like you did back on Blair Mountain and in Maitwan and in painting cabin creeks and however many other haulers that nobody bothered to put up a plaque for.

No entry in the museum for the bodies they never found. Oh, fire and forge. Hard-hearted hammer that shapes and breaks us on the anvil of a God that no one really remembers, so we make new with what we're told. Oh, sweet soil, blessed for battle and burial, we bleed and kill even though you were never ours to begin with. And of this dark and bloody ground asks you for just a little bit. bit more. You give it your last until you have nothing, are nothing, hollowed out and waiting to be filled for the dark to find you.

The sun, dreads off my friend to the shadow. Now the spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter time some shall depart from the faith given heed to seducing spirits and the doctrines of death. Devils. 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 1. Invincible, abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is. John Milton, Paradise Loss. Beneath the new moon in the deepest woods between Harlan, Kentucky, and the Virginia lie. A boy presses through the darkest night of the year in search of answers. He clutches what he thought would be his granny's old Bible to his chest. When he rescued it from their house before the bank nailed the doors shut and cast him to the wind,

he'd expected to find answers inside. Now, he wasn't much interested in the good news of the gospel within, but in the tangled roots and spidery lines of a family tree that adorns the inside cover. A place where an orphan boy might learn the names of his folks kept from him from these many years, for reasons unexplained. Instead, he'd found a list of other names. The pages beyond found a testament of a different kind that had explained why he had never known his people,

why no one would give him work, why the good folks that had helped so many others had turned their backs on him. A record of hard truths that had brought him here to speak with those who might be willing to barter. with one such as him. In the furthest reaches of West Virginia, there is a rock. A rock mighty and tall and set on the edge of the only known naturally occurring lake

in a place where the cold just don't act right. And this place, that sweet black diamond comes out of the earth all soft and hot. And if you try to burn it, well, you might as well buy the devil a birthday present, kiss your behind goodbye. for there is a strangeness to the land here. The rock and the men who live there seem to dance to a different tune and answer to neither man nor God hain't nor thing. This is not a place for outsiders.

And you do well to keep on moving, friend. If the men of the rock seek you out, pray that the green or the dark hide you well. for their purpose is their own and is usually not for others to know. When you're a girl born neath a moonless sky to a father whose very sea bore the taint of what sleeps beneath the grave and a mother who was not but a cold spot in a house so grand and haunted that even the ghosts stayed away, darkness is all that you know. Some might say you were forged and honed rather than raised.

A sacrificial dagger to be worn on your daddy's belt and drawn when his will need be imposed upon the world. To stand in the deep places and see your daddy call forth those who have been. Hollowed. You have borne witness to the purging of the light in the eyes of men as they are twisted into new shapes. to suit your family's ends. You have come to love the finer things, and why not? You have earned them with every threat whispered

in the halls of industry and government and every spine you ever snapped in the hill towns and hollards. You have slept the sleep of the cold and soulless and have been visited in dreams by those who would promise you ascension, rebirth and supremacy. Why shouldn't you have all the pretty dresses and glittering rings? Why shouldn't you have fine mirrors and cones to adorn your hair fashioned from the bones of those you have conquered in his name?

Your daddy founded an empire on coal and bones and blood, tearing down mountains and carving whole civilizations out of the wilderness like some wraithed skin. God. Bless your daddy. Bless him well and an anoint his head and his hands and his feet in tears. Bless him and adorn his brow in dead roses. Bless his sightless eyes that watch over us all.

Bless his ever-bleeding throat as he rests inside his fine black box hung in the sight of those who sleep beneath. May he forever hold their favor. Just as you hold his. Let the shone. Sheep organize and squawk about the power of their union, then watch them scatter when the hollow men come to call. Let them wage their little wars and kill their own

so their blood might feed the hungry earth of the mountain they sold themselves to. Let the bean counters tremble at your eldest brother's name, and let the men down in the mines cower at your middle brother's ghost as they grind themselves to gray dust beneath the skin of the world. Those wise enough and quick enough to have survived to become old men know that the bearer to truly be feared is old E.P.'s baby girl. Yes, sir. Precious as a pearl.

Criedful as a peacock, pretty as a picture. And in the far reaches of a forgotten place, we cannot. and will not name, reclaimed his amber crown, and seeks those who would serve his court. Once again, his great shadow moves through the deepest and coldest places, where the sun don't never quite reach, and the mountain breeze always carries an edge of frost. He waits for those who would seek his counsel,

those who would pay him homage, He is, after all, the very best. There are those who choose, and those who are chosen by the darkness. By smoke or by blood, by fire or by blade, they make their way into the lost places seeking to be found. They turn to the dusk for the dawn has failed them, and this season will carry their stories and those of many others

But the dark has power That the green won't show So as above So below When the fire don't burn And the grass don't grow In the good folks turn Either seeking power

Or by the lot of birth They find their way Beneath the cold, dark earth What can you do? Help never go in the beast speaks true. May mom, dark as bowels show. Because as above, so below. Well, hey there, family, and welcome, welcome, welcome one and all to season three of old gods of Appalachia

as above, so below. I hope y'all are ready Because we're going to be journeying deep into the stories of those who have chosen darkness Who have chosen to walk within the shadow of the mountain And have shunned or been shunned by the light of the green and whatever else might be out there We're going to take you all to some places we've never been And you might see a familiar face pop up here or there in the darkness I guess you're just going to have to listen and find out

And family, this season, it will be ever more important that you complete your social media ritual. So head on over to old gods of Appalachia.com or you will find links to our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, the Discord server. So you can keep up with all of our special announcements. We're going to be popping up with some really, really fantastic things this season. And we want to make sure you stay ahead of the curve of finding out when they're coming. And we want to thank everybody who's stuck with us on our Patreon. You literally keep our lights on. I know we say that all the time, but it is true.

You have changed our lives, and we hope we can give back to you and make these stories and this journey into the inner dark. As special for you is this going to be for us. If you would like to properly bind yourself to the family, head on over to patreon.com slash old gods of Appalachia. You can get all your episodes, ad free, and a day early, as well as access to exclusive storylines like Build Mama a Coffin, Black Mouth Dog, Door Under the the floor, special little things like Steve reads and Cam reads and all kinds of neat little features and access to Discord live events, all for very reasonable sums to be tossed into the collection plate, patreon.com slash old gods of Appalachia. Old Gods of Appalachia is a production of deep nerd media distributed by Rusty Quill.

Our intro and outro music is by Brother Land and Blood. Today's prologue was written and performed by Steve Shell. Special thanks to this episode's Deluxe Benefactor, the Scared to Death podcast. For all your spooky needs of black-eyed children, folks possessed by demons, and other foul spirits, scared to deathpodcast.com.

Talk to you soon, family. Talk to you real soon.