The Confessionals - RELOADED | 460: The Tennessee Triangle

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

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.Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsUNCOMMON GOODS: uncommongoods.com/tonyGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducer Donna Hartley's Book: https://amzn.to/3RBcUUf

Merkel Media I guess it's time to go back in time Are you telling me you built a time machine Out of a Dolorean Time is but a stubborn illusion I have a lot of memories

Of the past People are time traveling within themselves Time travel Is possible This was all circulating around the base that a giant had been killed but no one was supposed to talk about it. 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 moves, 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 them in the face. Shoot them in the face. They basically decapitate them. I feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over and there are two small, gray entities. And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air. Couldn't breathe. And I couldn't move. Because I know I'm seeing a monster. Okay. I reloaded.

Yeah. Welcome to the show. Everybody are listening to The Confessionals. I'm your host, Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you have a crazy wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.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. 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, and 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 as a fellow Tennesseean, where is Sumner County compared to like where I'm at where because I'm in the Knoxville area okay we are middle we consider ourselves middle Tennessee um but we are about 25 miles north of

Nashville um our county borders Kentucky we're about 40 minutes from bowling green due north of us bowling green is due north of us so we're all we're almost as close to bowling green as we are to Nashville so you're you actually live in sumner county then I do. County seat, Gallatin. So you were writing this book, I guess starting out, you're 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. 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 just... Yes, my background is journalism. I also have a law degree. I don't practice, but my husband's 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's 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. So you were already living in a haunted house and it got worse as you were writing the book. That's what you're saying, right? 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, he'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. 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 what, 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, 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 the way I think about the paranormal is a long story 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 it's longer than 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 want to still be here with you and your family. And I'm like, yeah, okay, well, you know. And that kind of, that would explain that and some other things that happened that are fairly mischievous that have happened to me in this house. I painted, when I first moved here, I painted my bedroom a really pretty Robin Zeg Blue.

And shortly thereafter, 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. And I also don't want people traipsing by my house and, you know, looking at it, staring at it, taking pictures. 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, you know, 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. 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 wind. nose and they're 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 living in the house, you're writing the book in the house, and if there's some kind of intelligent,

uh, entity or something around you as you write, it's seeing that you're giving attention to the history, trying to manifest itself to, to you, uh, is it that it's trying to make its way into the book? Uh, but like the demonic stuff, uh, it, 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 there dormant and it became, I believe, I believe they feed off of each other. And if you read the first chapter of the book, Cragfont, about Craigfont, which I am, can make this statement, I believe Craigfont may be the most haunted private residence, formerly private residence in the country. And I'll put that up again,

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, 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 fund 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, 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 of 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 were 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, live 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 on 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 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 knock off his face.

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 Font. And they had strange things happen during the filming of that as well. And I talk about that 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, like now I'm introducing myself to new people in my life. And they're like, so what do you do for them? Like, okay, here we go, you know? Let's see if I, 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 fighting 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 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 are quick to point to point to Indian mounds. We have those two. We have a little bit of everything.

Craig Fon 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, they were finding things in the ground when the settlers came here. There were phenomenal finds.

Because, and the, 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 it's 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' tooth and nail for the hunting rights. They didn't want to live here. Why? Was there something here? you know, that, you know, 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, you know, 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. Yeah, I would describe it. as a flying cryptid. Wow.

And from your vantage point and 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. The Tennessee, for such a small state, has 20% of the 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. to escape the Union occupational 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 were 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 tell you, I am so excited about living here and digging up 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 1500 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, 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 bellwitch cave, for heaven's sakes.

I think we are kind of in a little Bermuda triangle of paranormal activity. I mean, I think Craigfant or something nearby may very well be a portal, an enormous portal. 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, when 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.

Do you think that the Bigfoot could have been the 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 don't, 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 um 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 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 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 it, 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 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, with the crag font, with the possible being a portal, which I was like, oh boy, you know, is there any other one that that you would think that maybe people would look at I'm 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 the hauntings are only occur at very old Adam's family looking houses. And that's very much, very much not the case. Because, well, again, 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 a 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 there 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. Wow. So the Native American influence and the spirits thereof, there you go. You would think a brand new subdivision, unless you've seen poltergeist, 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, 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. And it just- 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 it's complex and we've only scratched the surface i i as we as we leave the top before we leave the topic of um which we did a while back of things that went on in in my house writing the book um i 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 GoDaddy people are hilarious. That's just funny. They're seeing that I'm Sumner County History Enhants.com.

And isn't 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 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. counter 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 you know, right. That was

somebody 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, uh, portal vibes. Like, it was almost like that, that, that chat was like some kind of doorway into, or, or maybe two here. 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, 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, there's, he's just very literal. Something. It would have to happen to 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, but there's,

not. I mean, when I told them, 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 CraggFont, you mentioned about the portal and it just kind of hit me. What, what, what, what, what, what about Cragg? track font makes you feel like it could be some kind of portal location. Is it just the mere fact that it has so much activity? Um, 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 for scientists like a hundredth. Well, I don't know L-E-Y, lay lines. That's been postulated. 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.

It was 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. Uh-huh. And I'm going to actually next month be visiting the farm that he was on, that he had some of his experiences because I'll be speaking out at a 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, Bellwitch Cave is 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. 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. 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 our county. But, yeah, there is, I don't know if it was on your show or Wes's 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 phenomenal. 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. And I'm going to be trying to find this park range 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, 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 recorded 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 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 Episcopalian all my life. And at my advanced age, I have come to Catholicism, having studied it and having had 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 of 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, that say that that 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 Luigi boards. That is opening a door. In fact, I was working in my front yard one time, and 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? and 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. minister's telling you don't play with Ouija boards. 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 tarot 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 a 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 question comes up, but 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 I know. Yeah. The only bookstore, the only place I approached, because I found it very easy to go into, you know, at 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, are you nuts? know, they'll usually tell you something 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. But I went into one historic home that's now a gift shop and a tea room. 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 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 cool. That's fine. But, 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 love it. I absolutely love it. It makes me feel right at home. So, well, Donna, 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. I have it locally here in Gallatin. It should by now be in Barnes & Noble and other such outlets where books are sold. That's really cool.

Let me ask you one more question. How does 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, like, I've been 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 surreal in a way.

I guess I've been doing this so long with the tour and writing hard news and future stories and things that aren't supernatural for so long that it hasn't really sunk in, you know, that I've written a book on the paranormal because that's just 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 Mobile. I don't know. I'm still a

little bit at the place on the square that that handles my book exclusively. All of the copies there are autographed. And occasionally I've been there, you know, 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, gladly.

I totally, I totally understand. I, 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 you're kind of, somebody was asking me, what, you know, well, hey, what are you going to do this afternoon? I'm like, well, whoa, I'm, 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. It feels. It feels the same way it feels. like, well, I'm going to be talking to Tony Oracle on the confessions. 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, 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, which In Witchcraft in North 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 it was written in 1906? 1909.

And, you know, 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 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 the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy, please, 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 into

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 such a free, but first it'll piss you off. Bye.