The Confessionals - 460: The Tennessee Triangle

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

In Episode 460: The Tennessee Triangle, we are joined by author Donna Hartley! Donna recently published the book Historic Haunts of Sumner County, Tennessee in which she documents the strange happenings in an area that makes up a mysterious triangle of paranormal activity. This triangle stretches from the Bell Witch Cave to the Cragfont House, and down the Long Hollow Pike. Inside its borders, there is a tendency for bizarre occurrences to be the norm! She also tells us about the things that happened in her own house that seemed to be spawned by the writing of this book. Donna Hartley's Book: https://amzn.to/3RBcUUfGet your tickets to the 1st Annual Dogman/Cryptid Conference: https://bit.ly/3MXCnnuBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/join SPONSORS GET Cerebral: getcerebral.com/tony GET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionals GET Hello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionals16 Promo Code: "confessionals16" for 16 FREE MEALS!!! Get Emergency Food Supplies: www.preparewiththeconfessionals.com Get Beard Oil: bit.ly/2FbOhN5 CONNECT WITH US Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletter SOCIAL MEDIA Subscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaI TikTok: @theconfessionals Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7h Show Instagram: theconfessionalspodcast Tony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficial Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcas Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkelOUTRO MUSICVanTesla - ShutUp N DriveYouTube: https://bit.ly/3yH4kvGApple Music: https://apple.co/3nDfsU1 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3nErEUI

Merkel Media This was all circulating around the base That a giant had to kill But no one was supposed to talk about it Long, bony fingers Reach up underneath the door Curl up to grab it

And then disappear When he came over to me Dude, he slithered over to me And this giant comes out of the cave And they're all frozen And he starts running and firing up this giant With a giant move, he's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast and spears, Dan holds him up like this.

Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face, they basically decapitated. 10 yards away. Feel something pulling at my leg and I look over and there are two small gray entities pulling it and they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air. breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Yeah. Welcome to the show.

Everybody are listening to The Confessionals. I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you've a crazy wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. That's The Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, theconfessionalspodcast.com.

Hit the contact section. You can reach me that way as well. Either it works for me, just get a hold of me. If you want more shows on a weekly basis, every Thursday, we drop a member show to members only on the website and the Castos app. Plus, you get the Tuesday shows ad free and access to all overtime segments. So if that interests you, go to the Confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the join button and become a member today. If you want to have yourself emergency supply food that's stocked up in your pantry for the emergency in your life, go to prepare with the confessionals.com.

That's prepare with the confessionals.com. A lot of great deals there. If you buy a three-month supply of food, we'll knock off $150 for you. If you buy a four-week supply of food, we'll knock off $50 for you. There's savings in buying in bulk. So go ahead and check it out, prepare with the confessionals.com. Also, friends, we have the very first annual dogman slash cryptic conference. It is being hosted by Josh Turner from Paranormal Roundtable, and the MC of the event is going to be Ken Gearhart.

There's going to be a lot of great speakers there. Steve Stockton. I've been hearing a lot about Steve Stockton recently. A lot of people have been coming to me. talking about Steve Stockton and how cool he is. I'm excited to meet him myself, and you should be excited, too. If you want to get tickets to this event to meet Steve Stockton and all the other speakers and me if you want to meet me too, you can go in the description of this very episode.

Click the link and you can get your tickets right there right away before they sell out. Go ahead and check that out. All right, friends, this week we have Donna Hartley coming on the show, and she is the author of Historic Haunts of Sumner County, Tennessee. I really enjoyed this conversation, obviously. I'm infatuated with everything in Tennessee. But her and I talk about this book and what she wrote in it, which kind of covers a lot of different topics. But it seems like in this area, there's like a triangle of action.

And how many times do we hear about the triangles of action? You know, up in Alaska, down in Bermuda Triangle, now Tennessee has its own little triangle of action. And I dig it. So we have a great conversation going from white flying cryptids to the crag house, to her own personal house being haunted, to caves. We go all over the place. I know you're going to enjoy this conversation. So let's get to Donna right now.

Okay, today we have Donna Hartley on the show. Donna, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. So, Donna, you have written a book called Historic Haunts of Sumner County, Tennessee. First of all, I want to ask you as a fellow Tennessee and where is Sumner County compared to, like, where I'm at, because I'm in the Knoxville area. Okay. We consider ourselves middle Tennessee, but we are about 25 miles north of Nashville. Our county borders Kentucky. We're about 40 minutes from Bowling Green, due north of us. So we're almost as close to Bowling Green as we are to Nashville. So you actually live in Sumner County, then? I do. County seat. County Seat. Gallatin. So you were writing this book, I guess it's starting out,

writing this book because you were interested in hearing and documenting these stories of the county you live in, right? Right. I've been doing the Gallatin Ghost Walk for 17 years. This will be, wow, this will, yeah, this will be our 18th year. It's a history mystery tour talking about the paranormal in Sumner County, but mostly, well, it's all centered around the history here. The history here is, wow, it's a microcosm of the American experience, the westward expansion. the post-revolutionary America. And so our history here is fascinating, multifaceted, very diverse.

And the paranormal happenings can all be tied to historical events and just the general history of the area. So we'll get to the book in a second, but I'm interested to hear how you got into doing those tours and stuff. Is that just something that spawned from a personal interest of yours? And you decide. Yes, and my background is journalism.

I also have a law degree. I don't practice, but my husband has been an attorney for 38 years. And I assist him, but mostly I'm a writer. Mostly I'm a journalist. And I'm also interested in history. My husband is a civil war reenactor and I be reenacting, civilian reenacting. And we're just, we're so rich in civil war history here, not because of the battles, but we can get into that. I just decided, well, I started hearing so many ghost stories and tales of the supernatural here.

And I thought, well, let me work that into the history so that, well, history can be told through the ghost stories. I have a lot of high school students, a lot of high school classes that specifically book my tour to teach their students about the history of the area. That's really cool. So you're pretty well taught and learned on the history of the area. A lot of the stuff coming from the Civil War. And this book kind of gives like a mixture of historic and haunts. That's why you call it the way you called it. But as I guess you were doing research for this book,

you actually had some things happening, I guess, around you as part of the process of writing for this book, right? Well, so I've been doing the tour as long. as I've lived in my house. And my house is, was haunted. I live in an 1883 Victorian two blocks from the Gallatin Public Square where so much tragedy happened during the Civil War. And I just realized, you know, I've got something going on here and had some investigations and so forth

and lived with it for a good long while before I finally dispensed with whatever has been here because it went from innocuous to problematic, possibly demonic, and that's when it got serious. And throughout this, of course, I'm doing the Gallag and Ghost Walk. I'm hosting a history mystery tour. And for three years of this, I'm doing the book. And the more I got into actually sitting down and writing the book and doing research, the worse things got. to the point of needing, let's see, let's see, I had three pastors, a priest, a shaman, just in general,

if you can cleanse my house, come give it a try. But it did get progressively worse once I started actively writing the book. That's interesting. And so I guess we'll start diving into this then as far as like some of these experiences you had, what, so you, you were already living in a haunted house and it, it got worse as you were writing the book. That's what you're saying, right?

It got, it got worse, concurrently with a publisher contacting me about doing a book based on my tour. And that spring, once I signed that contract, Yeah, I mean, I had something tapping on the windows at night. I had my security camera catching not just Forbes, but as an investigator told me, having looked at the footage, he said, something is trying to materialize at your front door.

And it would knock on the door and there would be this mist that was just rolling around, you know, and trying to form into something. And I had this night after night on my security camera. I would sit down to work on my computer and things would shut off and on. It would pixelate. The screen would pixelate in a funny way that it never had before. And yeah, just bizarre stuff started happening. My husband, who's completely oblivious to the paranormal,

He does the tour with me. He helps with the tour. But I mean, like, I had been seeing a shadow person in my hall for as long as we had lived here. And he didn't see it until the spring that it got so bad three years ago. He got, did you see that? I'm like, yeah. It's like, I see that all the time. He goes, well, you know, I don't.

Well, yeah, welcome to my world. Yeah. Well, I can understand, I guess if it's one of those things where did he believe in this kind of stuff before he had that experience? It's hard to say. He goes right there with me, you know, dressed in his Confederate uniform as a Civil War soldier. I am in period dress, you know, where we do our tour in, in period dress. And as long as he has done that and listen to all the stories. And he's had other experiences over the years. we've had so many electronic disturbances here. We went through three brand new televisions one summer in a period of about a month. Wow. Because they would just blow up.

You turn them on and it would just... And we went through three brand new televisions. They do like to disturb electronics. And that seems to be, once I started really heavily writing the book, they like to disturb electronic. I'm surprised you and I are able to, you know, because they will get involved anytime I'm talking about them. Or when we hang up, when this is over,

something will happen. It's strange here because they like to interfere with electronics, which isn't unusual, as you know, from talking to so many people. Electronics are one thing that the paranormal will manifest through. and, you know, we're here with grown children that live in a different state. No way are we watching Nickelodeon or Disney Channel, but our TV will come on in the middle of the night,

we'll go in there and Disney Channel's on. It's just some very strange things that happened here with electronics. So do you know the history of the house in the sense that could there have been, Could there be some kind of like child entity? Is that what you're, that maybe you're implying that that is like turning on those kind of TV channels? Possibly, yes. A psychic has told me that.

From time to time on the tour, we will have people take the tour that maybe don't, don't tell us that they're sensitive or, or say they're sensitive right off the bat, you know, or this one, this one quote, psychic. And I, you know, I don't know how to feel about that. Here I am. having written a book full time into the paranormal in one way or another.

And I still have some reservations about, you know, the way I think about the paranormal is a long story too long, too long for here. And I'm a Christian. And, you know, I have to put this into my belief system. And so to describe how I feel about that is longer than you've got. But, you know, so when someone comes on the tour and says, I'm a. psychic and start seeing things while on the tour. I don't know. But I had a quote psychic on the tour that stood in my front yard and said, yeah, two little boys here. And I went, well, no, what do you mean?

She just no. She said, you have two child spirits here. She said, they are two little boys, about 10 and 12 years old. And they died before 1900. in a house nearby or in this house and they just they just want to still be here with you and your family and I'm like yeah okay well you know and that and and that that kind of that would explain that and some some other things that happen that are fairly mischievous that have happened to me in this house um I painted when I first moved here I painted my bedroom a really pretty

robin's egg blue and shortly they're at after blue objects began appearing in the house that did not belong to us that we'd never seen before, a little blue marble, a little piece of blue glass. And I opened my locked car one morning, and there was a blue feather on the driver's seat. And my car was locked and had been locked. And how a little blue feather appeared on my driver's seat, I don't know. But what she said kind of makes some sense. So I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that's interesting. And so I'm assuming then part of your tour is you taking people by your house. We do. We do. And we talk about my house a little bit. You know, I don't want to spend that much time on it. I also don't want people traipsing by my

house and, you know, looking at it, staring at it, taking pictures. And we live. And we live. We live where we work, both of us. So my husband has a law of this shingle outside. And the day somebody referred to my husband as the haunted lawyer, I went, wait a minute. And now I'm telling it on national radio, national podcast. But I'm kind of private about some of the things that have happened here because a few of them are rather of a demonic. nature and I am so glad that they are gone. I understand that.

I don't mind the mischievous stuff, the feathers and the blue and the and the turning on Nickelodeon. That's okay. That's kind of cute. But no, I've had the tapping on the windows and the trying to materialize. And those things happened after I had my house cleansed, had the salt around the perimeter, had a priest here blessing the house. And what I bring to my experience from that is, thankfully, they can't get in, but they're out.

They're out and they're tapping to get in. And, you know, I don't give them a door. I don't give them an opening. I don't give them a foothole. Makes me wonder why and where they came from if they were always there and just you, like, so if you're you're living in the house, you're writing the book in the house, and if there's some kind of intelligent entity or something around you as you write, it's seeing that you're giving attention to the history trying to manifest itself to you, is it that it's trying to make its way into

the book? But like the demonic stuff, it just, it makes me wonder if it's, if it's something that the writing of the book spawned or if it was always there dormant? I think it was, I think it was always they're dormant and it became, I believe, I believe they feed off of each other. And if you read the first chapter of the book, Cragg Font, about Craig Font, which I am, can make this statement, I believe Craigfant may be the most haunted private residence, formerly private residence in the country. And I'll put that up against Myrtle's Plantation and everything else. And whereas you have a very gentle spirit there of Mrs. Winchester that has been seen and many times.

She is still there on her property. Despite having died in 1866, there are demons, absolute demonic things in Craig Fond. And they coexist. And I don't know if that is kind of a, you know, a parallel to the world. The world exists with good and evil. You know, many times I think I want to get 15 religious fervent people out to crowd fun and get rid of those things. And I have asked deacons at our Baptist Church, let's get a bunch of people out there and pray them out. And one of the deacons who has lived on the property and seen it firsthand just looked at me and said, Donna, there's too many of them.

There's just too many of them. And I don't like to see good Christian men give up and throw up their hands and say, there's too many of them. We can't do it. But that's crack font. Wow. I don't know. But I think they coexist. And I think since I'm two blocks from the square where we had so much, we had 100 innocent civilians hanged, some as young as 12 years old, two blocks from me.

There were nine Civil War hospitals contiguous to the square. and I live next door to one of them. So I believe that the environment here is so conducive to paranormal activity that they're just, they're here. They're all here. I believe that they are here all the time. It's kind of like a movie, playing in the background, Sumner County Life. And occasionally, the veil is pierced and we see them or we experience them.

That's interesting. So Craig Fond, like, is it a place that somebody lives right now? No. It's a state historic site. It is a beautiful home. 1799, I think it was built, built by a Revolutionary War veteran, General Winchester, came on a land grant. That's your typical westward movement.

the new republic was giving land to people, you know, give them a 700-acre land grant for their service to the revolution. And that's how Middle Tennessee was settled. Most of the people lived in forts for maybe 10 years. Children were born and raised in forts because of the Indian depredations. But General Winchester builds this three-story rock. home out on this beautiful hillside in anticipation of a great future while other people are living in forts. He's building this three-story mansion with a ballroom on the top floor.

And, you know, it has been home to Winchester's for generations, survive a civil war, and had other families, you know, lived there. it has been in the state's possession now for about 35 years as a historic site. So if it's in the state's possession, I'm assuming they don't let ghost hunts happen. They have had. Some have happened. And usually what happens, they don't get much. Because it's even been, I think, on a television show up here and a show, nothing much happens. people are there because they don't the spirits don't perform on cue out there but things happen when they leave and now crag font pretty much doesn't want you to mention ghosts and their name in

the same breath like i'm doing wow so try i don't know and i have not heard how the powers that be crag font have received my book which about an entire first chapter is about crag font because i talked to the caretaker out there, the docent and the director that was there for 30 or 40 years. And I simply turned on a camera and interviewed him for, well, just turn him loose and let him talk. And he started with the very first day he was at Craig Fond, being a total skeptic, and ended with the day he walked out because it just became too much. And it was time to retire. So he retired because of the activity there? Well, he was almost 80 years old.

He'd lost his wife. But yes, the last day he was there, having had things happen to him like 10 pairs of glasses knocked off of his face and twisted in front of his very eyes. He had had his hat turned around and his hat was knocked off his head. and he looked back and his hat was on fire. The last day he was there, he was walking down the stairs, and I'm told this is on a security camera,

but no one's allowed to see this. He felt something brush his shoulder and jerked around, and there was a rope tied into a noose across his shoulder. Now, this man is a former sheriff's deputy. he is a Christian person. He is as sober as a judge. And, you know, he's not making this up. He has no reason to it.

He has had so many experiences out there that are just unbelievable. They filmed the sequel to Roots, part of it out at Craig Funt. And they had strange things happen during the filming of that as well. Then I talk about that in the book. But, yeah, crack font's just a hotbed of paranormal activity. Clearly. I had heard moving here to Tennessee that Tennessee has tons of paranormal activity in general, the history. And it seems like from what I've been gathering from people in the area and stuff, because it's funny, now I'm introducing myself to new people in my life.

And they're like, so what do you do for them? And like, okay, here we go, you know? Let's see if I can win some friends here. And so I tell them what I do and stuff. And it's like everybody I talk to has some kind of story experience. And a lot of people push it back to the history of Tennessee in this area, especially Civil War. People talk about finding Civil War artifacts still in this area.

It's stunning to me. It's stunning to me in the sense that I come from an area that's so heavily populated that any kind of history. historical pieces like that are either found and preserved or they're buried or they're gone. And so people walking around being able to find, you know, bullets and stuff from the Civil War and things like that, I find very fascinating. But it also lends to this idea that maybe we're living on spiritually haunted grounds of sorts, you know. Well, and people point are quick to point to Indian mounds. We have those two.

We have a little bit of everything. Craigmont is half a mile from a major Indian mound that is being studied by the state right now. It's had several archaeological digs there. I mean, they were finding things in the ground when the settlers came here. There were phenomenal finds because, and the Native American influence here is interesting. because they didn't want to live here. Tribes were here populating this area until about 1,500 years before White, just 1,500 years before White Ben came.

And then they suddenly left. They would not live here anymore, despite everything that would make it conducive, what made it so attractive for the settlers to live here, fertile land, prevalent water, game animals. You would think that is right where Indians would want to live.

No, not for the last 1,500 years. Something made them leave this area and they would only hunt here. And they fought settlers' toothed and nail for the hunting rights. They didn't want to live here. Why? Was there something here?

You know, that I've researched, I've talked to some historical experts on the history of Native Americans, and they would say, well, you know, they would interpret a lot of natural happenings as being something supernatural. Maybe a meteorite fell, and they went, whoa, this is bad place, remove it, whatever. But something happened here where they did not want to live here. and as I was just about finishing the book, and I was talking to some ladies out in the Mount Olivet community about apparitions they had grown up seeing as children,

full-bodied apparitions of Native Americans in a full Indian warrior dress, they were used to seeing these on their property. and I was just fascinated. And I thought, yeah, so I interviewed them about that. And as we were kind of closing the interview, they said, and then there's the giant white flying creatures. Oh, my gosh. And I'm like, okay, oh, yes.

You know, out Long Hollow Pike, you used to couldn't drive on that road at night. but what this giant you didn't know what it was a bird or what its wingspan went from one side of the road to the other and it would just fly above your car and just hover there and then it would just go off and i'm like oh well there's a whole other chapter and indeed because i researched that and now this is kind of like the thunderbird or the southwest legend of the you know the thunderbird type of creature. The Cherokee here had the Tlanoa, and it was a giant flying bird that would cruise the riverbed areas and pick up small animals and sometimes children and fly away.

And that is a Cherokee legend. And these women were telling me they were seeing this as late as the 1960s and 70s. Wow. So I got really interested in that. It's very hard to find anything on it. I mean, as we know, Native Americans, it's an oral history. You don't find things written down. And so now I am just all over researching the Tijuana of the area because very few people know anything about it. And it's pronounced T-L-A-N-U-W-A. Okay. And that's the creature that is being described. I would describe it as a flying cryptid. Wow. And from your vantage point in perspective with the research of it, would you say if it's in the category of people describing thunderbirds or do you think this is something completely different than what people would call thunderbirds? It's different than a thunderbird. It's not the southwest thunderbird.

There is a, I mean, I did research the Tijuana and, you know, in Cherokee legend in this area, it flew along the riverbanks, lived in. a cave and I don't know if you know this about Tennessee yet, but Tennessee for such a small state has 20% of a nation's caves. Yes, and I'm very excited about that. Tennessee and Kentucky have a lot of caves and we have caves here. The caves we call Lackey's caves have never been fully explored. They were used during the Civil War for Confederate soldiers to hide in and to escape the Union occupation troops here. And so we have some cave lore here. And I guess the Tijuana fits into that.

It fits into the settlers around here that were living in forts. We're largely hiding from the famed Cherokee warrior called dragging canoe. He was called the Red Napoleon because his exploits and his war tactics were so. interesting and successful. And so Cherokee legend, we had Cherokees here and it fits very much into the presence of the Cherokee here. That's incredible. That's their legend. Tijuana is their legend. I'll tell you, I am so excited about living here and digging with the history. You know, Pennsylvania's got some great history too, but this is a different type of history that I like.

Now, you mentioned about the Native Americans that eventually they wouldn't live here. I think you said 1,500 years before the white people came, the Europeans, they're like, we're out of here, we'll hunt here, but we're not going to live here. Do you get the sense that that's because of this creature or maybe some like the legends of the giants living in these areas? We don't know. We don't know. And, yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the giants.

the giants and then also the little people. Do you know about that? I was just learning about the little people of Appalachia, like right next to me. Like I live four miles away from the Smokies. They actually, they have found some little people like pygmy graves in some counties not too far from here. Wow. So, you know, I don't know. How do you scare, you know, fierce,

Native American warrior type people like Cherokee. I don't know. I mean, of course, this is the precursors to Cherokees and so forth. But I mean, I don't know. I think something supernatural, as they would describe it, supernatural happened. Either a creature like the cryptid creature or lights in the sky or orbs or something. You know, we're 45 miles from the best. Hell witch cave for heaven's sakes.

I think we are kind of in a little Bermuda triangle of paranormal activity. I mean, I think we're, I think Craig Funt or something nearby may very well be a portal, an enormous portal. Wow. Because here we've got just all these. We don't just have, you know, ghosts. We have flying cryptids. We have, we've had some Bigfoot claims. You know, and this didn't use to all be nice rolling farmland conducive to growing crops and raising thoroughbred horses, which is our history here.

You know, this used to be all deeply forested. So the possibility of Bigfoot, yeah, sure. Okay, let's talk about the sponsor for this episode, which is Hello Fresh. With Hello Fresh, you get Fresh Farm, pre-portioned ingredients, and, seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep, skip the trips to the grocery store, and count on Hello Fresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable, and that's why it's America's number one meal kit. Listen, you can choose from 55 plus weekly options featuring pre-portioned, high-quality ingredients picked at peak ripeness. Hello Fresh delivers fresh quality

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shopping. That's money back in your pocket. So go to hellofresh.com slash confessional 16 and use code confessional 16 for up to 16 free meals and three free gifts. Go to hellofresh.com slash confessional 16 and use code confessional 16 for up to 16 free meals and three free gifts. End quote. Repeat the line. Do you think that the big foot could have been the third? threat of the natives? I'm just, I can't get off that topic. I keep thinking like what could have made people who were from here, lived here, they were people of the earth, they hunted, they lived off the land, they lived, you know, primitively compared to what we're used to, even what the Europeans were used to moving here. Like, what could make them leave an area, but only to come back to

hunt it, not to live on it. It just makes me very curious. It makes me curious too, but we don't know, and we may never know. I mean, this is an oral tradition. People, the legends that we know of only barely scratched the surface. And we may never know. That's interesting. Well, we may never know, but it doesn't mean we can't stop trying to figure it out. I think there's been countless of situations where we, throughout history, you feel like you hit a dead end with something.

and then all of a sudden somebody discovers something, they make a connection between two ancient words that when they put it together, you're like, oh, now it all makes sense, you know? Yeah. And so I always hold hope with that. But when it comes to like the giants, little people, so I remember when I first started this podcast five years ago,

I had talked to a guy and I think he might have been on an episode because I don't want to misspeak as to who I'm thinking of. So I'll keep names out of it. But I was talking to a man who is originally from Tennessee. And he talked about how his grandfather told him a story of how when his grandfather was a child, they had found these bones out in a field. And the scientists that came out and excavated it, it turns out it was a giant skeleton. And they paid him as a little boy like a dollar per, I forget how it was, but like, I want to say retrieving the bones, but that doesn't seem right to me.

That almost makes me feel like I'm crossing stories with the Dead Sea Scrolls because a scientist with the Dead Sea Scrolls, they messed up because they said to the young men there, they said, go up in the caves and bring us a piece down. Every piece you bring us will pay you for it. So they started breaking the Dead Sea Scrolls to get more money, which is why we have very, very inaccurate pieces. But anyways, I think I might be confusing the stories. But either way, he talked about how the scientists came, they excavated this giant skeleton or skeletons, and it just was taken away, and that was here in Tennessee. Have you, through your research and stuff, come across these legends?

Well, only very briefly, and there's not that much out there written down about finding both giant bones and these little people. But that's as much as I know. That is as much as I know. And how old they are, not sure. So you keep bringing up the little people. Do you know, do you believe the little people existed or do they still exist? I haven't been that far into that subject.

And so I don't know. That has not been my focus because I've had enough on my flight just with, you know, the history and the, you know, what is seen and so forth. And, you know, it hasn't, nobody, nobody has come to me with a little people or a giant story in my county. Yeah. I think that I feel like the, those stories, at least the little people from what I've been seeing, really are towards East Tennessee where I'm at because of the mountains and everything. And there's been legends of them still existing there. So I'm personally, I'm looking at trying to explore that a little more stuff. But with what you've been researching and stuff, there are several locations that you have covered that are haunted locations. Is there a certain location that outside the one you were talking about with the crag font, with the possible being a portal, which I was like, oh, boy, you know.

Is there any other one that you would think that maybe people would look at and like, oh, there's nothing haunted about that. but in actuality, it's very haunted. Is there any kind of surprise haunting locations that you've come across? No, because it's odd. Like you were talking about people of Tennessee are approachable about talking about the paranormal because here, you know, whereas some other places, you start talking about ghosts and spirits and strange things. And you're going to run across people that go, oh, no, you know, look at you like you're nuts.

they don't do that here because everybody knows some, everybody's either experienced something or knows someone that has. So you really can't point to a location and say, oh, that isn't, you know, that couldn't be or, I mean, it doesn't have to be old. People think that hauntings only occur at very old Adam's family looking houses. And that's very much, very much not the case because, well, again, and this is, this goes back to Native Americans.

There was a subdivision, a brand new subdivision being built in our county almost to Nashville, very much on the dividing line. But it was fairly close to an old fort, an old station, as we call it. And people, they were, you know, building new houses every day and new families were going in there. And they were all having experiences. they were all having, you know, their, well, it was kind of like in poltergeist. I mean, if they would come home, their garage door was going up and down or, or, you know, they left everything all, you know, fine in the morning.

They come home while the drawers are pulled out, but their house hasn't been broken into. And the most dramatic thing that happened was the family that had a three-year-old boy and he did not want to sleep in his bed at night. And he kept saying, there's somebody in my room. I'm not going to stay in there. And the parents would go in there. everything was fine. So this was, you can tell how long ago this was because it was when the baby monitors

that had the actual visual screen where you could see what was going on, you know, in your child's room, the parents got one of these brand new, newfangled things. And one night, the son comes in the room and says, not sleeping in my room, there's somebody in my bed. And mom looks over at the monitor and dang, there's a little naked Indian boy. shoulder-length black hair, little beads around his neck, sleeping in the sun's bed. And they go screaming in there. Of course, they get in there. Nothing's fair. But, you know, that subdivision is very close to what I'm talking about, the Tlanoa and the people

that saw the full-body warrior apparitions in their homes growing up in the 30s and 40s. So the Native American influence and the spirits thereof, there you go. go. You would think a brand new subdivision, unless you've seen polter guys, would be fairly pure, normal free, but not this one. Yeah, you know, and that really kind of makes me think about just this general area, Tennessee. I didn't really quite understand this moving here until I got here, but Tennessee is actually a very popular landing spot these days for people throughout the country. And, you know, I don't know how it is all over Tennessee, but I know where I'm living in East Tennessee, it's extremely highly trafficked right now by outsiders.

And as a result, they are building houses left and right. Subdivisions are popping up. And it reminds me of a story when I was a kid growing up. I remember watching a TV show, a haunted TV show. And it was a brand new house, family moves in, and they're experiencing all this bizarre haunting stuff. And they never concluded as to the cause of it. it was just a mystery. And looking back on it with what you said, I think there really does need to be

given consideration to the ground you're building these homes on and the history that's involved there. You were talking about the Indian mound that the science was researching and things like that. It makes me wonder how many people in East Tennessee, Tennessee, all these areas that are popping up and becoming very populated and all these new houses, I'm very curious now, as to how many people are going to start experiencing paranormal activity in brand new homes because they built it on maybe on top of an Indian burial ground that, you know, was ancient? Well, if you think about it, we're walking around on burial mounds all the time. Without being too politically correct, we are very ethnocentric that we came here, conquered,

and that's it. So any spirits will only be in our frame of reference from the history that we know. And as we know, our history that we know does not go back the 6,000 years that people were walking around here. And 6,000 years of non-white people walking around where we're walking around right now is going to result in some burials. We don't know what we're walking on and we don't know what we're walking in on and around. And if we don't fully understand the unseen, if these things are, these things of the past are never really gone and they're kind of playing in the background on some other plane of existence and we just happen to bump into them every once in a while. We've got more than just white men history to go by. you know, we're intersecting with thousands of years of human struggle and life, birth, death, where we're walking around every day.

That's a great point. It kind of just, it's like it's layered history. It's layered. And so many times we're on the top layer, we're breathing still. And we talk about the most recent layer of history that we can recall as the reason for a haunting. and how many times does somebody recall that kind of a situation and you walk away saying it still doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense as to why. And maybe it's because, you know, they're actually experiencing something that stems back 6,000 years. And I find that really interesting. It's a concept I haven't really thought. I mean, we're talking 6,000 years. That's BC. And this is like extremely long time ago.

Yeah. We don't know what was here. We don't know what was here. We don't know even maybe how they buried people or if they buried people or, you know, what the spiritual world was like then. How does that coincide with what we now know? There's so much we don't know, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And we're probably intersecting with it on some level all of the time.

And the only explanation we have for some of what we experience is, oh, ghosts. You know, so it's complex and we've only scratched the surface. As we leave the top, before we leave the topic of, which we did a while back, of things that went on in my house writing the book, I will tell you something that I have not even told on my tour and have told very few people. So now I'm going to tell it, you know, to the nation on a podcast. But when the book was written, when it was gone, when it was coming out that very week, and I was establishing, I was putting up a website, I was creating a website.

And I was, you know, typing along, had a problem, needed technical support. You can go down to the little chat bubble. on the server, I guess, is the right term. I'm kind of old school here. But anyway, I can chat with the people that host the website and say, hey, I'm having trouble doing this and I'm doing a chat. Well, so I'm doing a chat talking about what I'm having trouble with, or I'm trying to get the person on the line.

I don't have the person on the chat line yet. But I'm saying, hey, I need help with this, and I'm waiting for the reply to say, okay, well, you know, do this, do that. no reply, no reply. I'm like, okay, you know, it says, be with you in a moment, so I'm sitting there. And then up pops these words, hello from the other side. And I think, oh, man, these go-dady people are hilarious. That's just funny. They're seeing that I'm Sumner County History Enhants.com, and in that just real cute. And I went, yeah, ha-ha, that's funny. Now help me with my problem, ha-ha, you know, no reply. No reply.

No reply. So then I start getting kind of freaked out. And I went, I'm going to get up and walk away for a little while and come back. And I do. And nothing. No one's helping me. So I look and I see that on GoDaddy, they keep a record of all, all the chats that you've had about an IT support issue so you can go back and look up what happened, you know,

and maybe fix it again if you encounter the same problem. Great, ingenious. Well, guess what? This isn't on the chat lock. It's like it never happened. So who replied to me, hello from the other side? That's incredible. And I have told very few people that because I'm, you know, I'd be waiting for it. Yeah, right. That was somebody for. from GoDaddy, except no, it wasn't because every single chat you have with their IT people, it's on, it's recorded, so you can go back and look at it. Wow. Yeah.

Wow. So that gives me real, like, portal vibes. It was almost like that, that chat was like some kind of doorway into or maybe to hear. Yeah. I just want to know why it only said that. and nothing else. Like, can you imagine if you're like, yeah, ha, ha, it's like, I'm not kidding. Hello. I know. Yeah. Or maybe all of a sudden, Adele starts singing. Anyways, I think that's insane. And so did you tell your husband about that?

Yeah. And he's just kind of like, oh, wow, that's creepy. You know, he doesn't react. He's very literal. He's very, he's just very literal. Something, it would have to happen to him. him, you know, for him to. And even then, he would be like, well, I don't know. There's probably an explanation, but there's not. I mean, when I told him, I said, yeah, but, you know, it's not on the log, you know, there with, along with the other many IT things. I have said, hey, how do you do this? I'm, you know, I'm lost here trying to build this website. And that was not among the recorded chats. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So, with Craig Fond, you mentioned about the portal and it just kind of hit me. What about Craig Fon

makes you feel like it could be some kind of portal location? Is it just the mere fact that it has so much activity? Yes. And I don't know about laylines and this sort of that has been brought up. And I'm not even sure what laylines are. Are you familiar with that term? I'm familiar, but you're talking to a guy who's podcast or first scientists, like, like a hundredth. Like, I don't know L-E-Y,

lay lines. That's been posulated. I just know if you draw a line from our public square, which is so haunted, every single building on that square,

there's activity. And if you draw a straight line from there as the crow flies to crag font, it's a straight line. And then it's another straight line over to the Bellwitch Cay. and then you draw it back to connect the triangle,

you're including where the Flanawa was seen and the full-bodied apparitions of the Indian warriors. And, you know, I'm just like, if that little area, our little area, has so much activity that there has to be some sort of, it's some sort of vortex for something. It's just unbelievable.

The activity north appeared towards Portland in an area where investigators that I have talked to spend the night and heard a scream that is like a big foot scream. They saw orbs and lights traveling, you know, through a creek bed. and they saw a misty figure on a bridge. I mean, this was all happening in the same location at once. And there's something here that just brings all the phenomena together. But again, we don't know what. Why is this so conducive to basically every form, of paranormal activity maybe except flying saucers.

I don't hear about UFOs very much. But you know, you'll hear people talk and, of course, Wes Garner does about Bigfoot, UFOs, orbs, and paranormal activity occurring together in close proximity and in close nexus of time. And we've got that. We have got that. So I just came out with an episode not too long ago as a member show called the

Interdimensional Creature of Tennessee. I didn't know what else to call it because I think in the episode we were discussing the topic of Bigfoot related creature. But at the same time, there was a unseen force involved. And he is actually, this location where all that happened is out in that area. And I'm going to actually next month. month be visiting the farm that he he was on, that he had some of his experiences because I'll be speaking out of the conference and after the conference I'm going to head there.

But when you mentioned Portland, I remember initially we were looking at the Portland area to move to. Oh, well. Yeah. That's my county. That's my county. Yeah. Because I was just like, I was trying to find an area that I knew I wouldn't have issues

with internet. And I didn't want to be too far out there. And then I wound up migrating. over to the Knoxville area looking and I was like, oh, okay, so this is still, you know, I'm not too far out there. Like, you know, I can still have, you know, internet and good quality internet because that's what I need, obviously. And then I was closer to the Smokies. But anyways, that area, you described it earlier. What was it? Like the Tennessee Bermuda Triangle or something like that? Well, yeah, I mean, but I'm talking about, you know, Bell Witch Cave was about

40 miles east of us and then, you know, Craig Funt is like eight miles from here. And where the Tijuana is another maybe 10 miles from where I am right now. But, you know, I just kind of sit in the middle of a triangle of activity. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. And in fact, with the Bellwitch Cave, I heard of it. But once I came here and people find out what I do, that's one of the first things they say, you got to check out the Bellwitch Cave. And I'm just thinking, maybe I got to check out the Bellwitch Cave, you know. Is it something that you can walk around, or is it more closed off? You know what? I have never been over there. I don't, we went over there one time and it was, the cave was closed. And I forget what was going on. It must have been a holiday

or something. There wasn't much, but they have an incredible festival, like in September or October, and they have a play about the Bell Witch. Now, I've seen that when it came to a, Weyer County. But yeah, there is, I don't know if it was on your show or Wesis where he interviewed, or it might have been astonishing legends, one of the three that interviewed a park ranger over there. There's a state park close to the Bellwitch Cape. And that park ranger knows a whole lot about the Bellwitch, the history of the area,

the phenomena in the area. I have not personally explored it. Well, I think that I'm going to have to head on over there and check it out. He needs to. I'm going to be trying to find this park ranch because I don't think it was me, but it sounds like something that I... You need to. He's really, he's a course, a down-to-earth guy, and he's very steeped in the history, but he also knows the paranormal side of things over in the area, and I think it would be well worth your

time to go check that out. I want to as well. as I expand on maybe future books and so forth, I'm going to need to know what goes on over there because I think it influences what goes on here. I think this is all part of the same pattern, if you will, or maybe the same origins, because obviously the Bell Witch entity was very demonic.

I mean, you've got Andrew Jackson saying, I would rather fight the Indians again than spend another night at the Bell House. So, you know, you know, it was scary. And whatever happened over there is very demonic. What happens at Craig Fond is oftentimes demonic characteristics at the very least. extreme poltergeist behavior. And some of the things we encounter here in this central area in Gallatin have a demonic component. Some of them are just a little too twisted to be just something like a ghost walking

through your house. So I would like to find the common denominator of that and the origins of it. But we may never know if it comes from a time outside of recording. history like we just discussed. How will you ever know? Yeah, exactly right. I mean, I think sometimes we're left to reserve ourselves as not knowing and just trusting that, you know, it just, it is what it is at this point, you know. Now, with something you said earlier in the conversation, I know you said you didn't want to, you know, take up all the time talking about, but I would be interested to hear maybe how you feel about some stuff, just in the

sense that you mentioned about your Christian faith and how that relates with everything that you've experienced and what you look into and stuff. And I'm in as very similar boat as you as, you know, like I, you know, if I go to a church, right, and I say, what do you do for a living? Well, I'm a paranormal podcaster. And sometimes you get people just staring at their eyes get real big and they're like, oh, Satan get away from me, you know? And it's just like, I just, you know, so like, I mean, How do you, I don't know, like, what are your thoughts? Have I reconciled that? Yeah, yeah.

I'm a fairly recently convert to Catholicism. I grew up with a Baptist grandmother and a Catholic grandmother. So I was a Presbyan all my life. And at my advanced age, I have come to Catholicism. Having studied it and having had half my relatives were Catholic, and I attended a Catholic high school for two years. So it's not that I've been, you know, averse to the faith.

And here in the Bible well, where everybody's Baptist, Catholics are often, you know, kind of looked at as those other people, you know, those Mary worshipers and so forth. Well, there is a Catholic belief that coincides with a lot if what I have encountered in the paranormal. And that's purgatory. and I honestly believe that some of the spirits that we encounter are people working out purgatory in this on earth.

And that is not, does not go against Catholic beliefs. There are some Catholic theologians that do work with exorcisms and do work with supernatural things that say that that's, is entirely possible that ghosts are souls in purgatory working out their purgatory in this way. Now, I tend to think that makes some sense. I do not believe in tarot cards. I do not do. I do not do Ouija boards. That is opening a door.

In fact, I was working in my front yard one time in a young man. came by and said, I used to visit this house all the time. My aunt and uncle lived here. And I said, really? He goes, yeah, I would come home from school. I'd get off the school bus here at their house and spend every afternoon here. And then I'd spend the night here sometimes on the weekends. He goes, hey, go in your parlor here on the corner.

Have you ever seen like some burn spots in the wood floors? And I went, yeah, it looks like just the gnarled, you know, the old wood. but yeah, I noticed that it looked like, could have been, you know, a candle or something fell over. And he goes, yeah, one time my friend and I were playing with the Ouija board and I went, well, there you go. You know, that could explain some of the things in my house. You know, you don't open that door. Paranormal investigators will tell you, don't do it. I mean, you don't have to have a priest or a Baptist minister's telling you don't play with Ouija boards.

It's very practical people and paranormal investigators will say, don't do it. Don't do it. And so, you know, I don't do Ouija boards. I don't do taro cards. I don't do crystals. I don't believe in opening those doors. There's enough that manifests without going out and looking for it or calling it down, frankly, because I've seen it. I've experienced it, and I didn't call for one of them.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm in a very similar boat. And, you know, it's just, I don't know. Like, I just, I find myself kind of keeping to myself a whole lot just because I don't feel like having to go down these roads of conversation with people in life and just, you know, like, it's just a lot of times, sometimes I just kind of like, you know, wave at people and just keep walking kind of thing because as soon as that, that question comes up of what do you do for living?

And then all of a sudden it's just like this long conversation and turns into the debate and all that stuff. So, uh, I know. Yeah. I, the only book store, the only place I approached,

because I found it very easy to go into, you know, at most, most places you can't do this, but here in Sumner County, you can walk into a business or walk into somebody's home or whatever. Hey, you ever,

you ever have anything, you know, ghostly or paranormal happen here. And people don't just go, oh, whoa, ooh, you're, are you nuts?

You know, they'll usually tell you something. And something probably has. And something probably has. happened there or if they don't have something happening there they know somebody that does so you know this is this is how the book writes itself um but i went into one historic home that's now a uh a gift shop and a tea room and and the guy was like oh you know i said are there's you know any spirits here only the holy spirit i'm like uh-oh i can just look right now and uh i go well i don't know and then he gives me

this religious spiel and I know the church he goes to and that's that's cool that's fine but uh you know totally closed mind but that's rare you don't encounter that kind of closed mind even among the very faithful here because it's so prevalent it's kind of a part of our lives here in sumner county actually that's incredible i i love it i absolutely love it makes me feel right at home so uh well uh don You are the author of Historic Haunts of Sumner County, Tennessee. Where can people get it? Because we forgot to talk about that earlier. All right.

Well, it's on Amazon.com. You can order it and get it very quickly on Amazon.com books. And it's also my publisher is the History Press, Arcadia Publishing, Arcadia Publishing. And I have it locally here in Gallatin. and it should by now be in Barnes and Noble and other such outlets where books are sold. That's really cool. Let me ask you one more question. How has it feel to have a book sold in Barnes & Noble? That's just, I don't know. If I ever had a book on a bookshelf, I'd be like, I made it, you know?

Well, I don't know because I haven't been and I haven't seen it at Barnes & Noble. I'm just told it's there. I don't know. This whole thing has been kind of, of surreal in a way. I guess I've been doing this so long with the tour and, you know, writing hard news and feature stories and things that aren't supernatural for so long that I just, it hasn't really sunk in, you know, that that I've written a book on the paranormal because that's just not, not my, not my writing background at all. I'm, you know, hard news and magazine features and things like that. And so maybe it'll have to sink in a while or I'll have to see it on the shelves at Lawrence Noble. I don't know. I'm still a little bit at the place on the square that

handles my book exclusively. All of the copies there are autographed. And occasionally I've been there and they will say, hey, somebody will be looking at my book and they'll say, the people at the register will say, hey, there's the, you know, the author's right here. And people like get all excited and go, will you sign my book? And, you know, that, that kind of, that kind of shakes me up more than thinking about seeing it at Barnes & Noble, that somebody thinks that me signing their book is a big deal. That just doesn't really, that doesn't really register with me that, well, yeah, I don't know why you think this is a big deal, but okay. I totally, I totally understand.

And I'm just, I always say I'm just a former trucker now podcaster. I'm nothing special. I just, I have fun with life and do things. And so that's how I found myself here. And it seems like somebody was asking me, you know, well, hey, what are you going to do this afternoon? I'm like, well, whoa, I'm talking to Tony Markle. And that's how it feels to have your, have your book at Lawrence Noble. Like, it feels the same way it feels like, well, I'm going to be talking to Tony Oracle on the Confessionals. Don't you know what that is? Well, if you don't, you should.

So I appreciate it. Don, I appreciate you being here and sharing about your book and just having a good conversation about your area because it's something that I'm very interested in. Yes. And I hope if you come to the Portland area or whatever, if you're coming this way, well, you need to come on down because I can point you in some directions that you're definitely going to look at. And also I want to show you something that was written in 1909, a book about witchcraft in North Carolina, very close to where you're living.

I think that the witchcraft connection with West North Carolina and East Tennessee is something you want to look into. Because, you know, in the late 1700s, early 1800s, even through the 1800s, witchcraft in North Carolina, Carolina was very compatible with a strong Christian faith. And it's interesting how those two intersected. You had me at witchcraft. So I'm very interested in that. Very. And so you said you said that was it was written in 1906? 1909. And, you know, they were they were interviewing people. They were very old. But, you know, they had been through the early 1800s. And I believe that's the Celtic tradition. That's the Scots. and the Irish and bringing the very close to the land, to the seasons, to the signs in the sky, to the animals and the elements. And they did not find that incompatible.

Believing that a witch could curse your livestock was not incompatible with their very, very strong fundamentalist Christian beliefs. And I find that absolutely riveting. So I've been studying this man's book, and I can send you a link about that. And I want to delve into that a little bit more because Middle Tennessee had some of that, too. But it's really, really heavier in your area. And I think that's something you're going to want to look at. Well, that's sure, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it.

And if you did enjoy, please, please, share the show with your friends. I don't care where or how you share the show. Just share the show. If you enjoyed it, that's best thing you can do to help this show grow. Share the show. And also rate and review it on iTunes. if you want to do that. But also, more importantly, please go ahead and purchase Donna's book Historic Haunts of Sumner County, Tennessee, especially if you're a local Tennessee and you're

going to want to know what's going on in your state, right? And she also did send me that book that was printed back in the early 1900s. I'm going to be digging into that. There's going to be a lot of great things coming from this show, friends, moving forward into the future. I got a lot of great guests lined up, a lot of guests I want to line up, and we're all going to have a lot of fun doing it. So hang in there with me for this ride. It's about to get real good. All right, friends, until next week, stay safe, take care, and remember. The truth was set you free, but first it'll piss you off. Bye.