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Southern Gothic Media

Step into the world of the unknown and unravel the dark history, and infamous legends of the American South. Join us as we journey into the heart of this rich and fascinating region, uncovering its ghostly stories, haunted places, and eeriest tales through captivating storytelling, in-depth historical research, and an immersive audio soundscape. From the Bell Witch of Tennessee to the haunted Waverly Hills Sanatorium, the ghostly tales of the Myrtles Plantation, the Curse of Lake Lanier and beyond, get ready for an unforgettable experience that brings history to life and uncovers the truth behind classic tales of the paranormal.

Southern Gothic

On April 4, 1841, President William Henry Harrison became the first U.S. president to die in office—just thirty-one days after his inauguration. For generations, the story was told the same way: an aging man caught in the cold, refusing a coat, delivering the longest inaugural address in history, and paying for it with his life. Pneumonia, they said, brought on by his pride.

But the truth may be far more unsettling. Modern researchers argue Harrison’s death wasn’t a cautionary tale of hubris, but the result of Washington, D.C.’s primitive infrastructure—a city where waste seeped into the very water drawn for the White House. What followed was not a chill turned deadly, but a gut-wrenching infection that stripped the president of his strength, leaving him delirious and dehydrated in his final days.

It’s a mystery at the intersection of medicine, politics, and folklore—one that forces us to rethink the legacy of America’s shortest presidency.

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What Really Killed President Harrison? | Minisode

Just upriver from Jamestown, Berkeley Plantation stands as one of Virginia’s most historic estates. Its story begins in 1619 with the Berkeley Hundred, an early settlement that saw both hope and heartbreak on the colonial frontier. Over the centuries, its halls would witness the rise of the Harrison family, whose descendants signed the Declaration of Independence and held the presidency, while its grounds bore witness to one of the Civil War’s darkest summers, when Union troops camped here after the Seven Days Battles and the solemn notes of Taps were first carried across the James.

But alongside its celebrated past, Berkeley holds a legacy steeped in tragedy. A lightning strike in 1745 claimed the lives of Benjamin Harrison IV and his daughters inside the mansion, and some say their presence still lingers in its rooms. Visitors tell of doors opening on their own, chandeliers trembling without cause, and the apparition of a young girl gazing silently out across the river. Others speak of phantom soldiers pacing the shoreline, or the distant roll of a spectral drum that recalls the property’s days as a wartime encampment.

Berkeley Plantation remains a place where the weight of history and the spirits of those who lived it continue to live on.

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The Haunting Legacy of Berkeley Plantation

On Merritt Island, Florida, most visitors come for the Kennedy Space Center, where rockets have carried astronauts beyond the Earth. But tucked away on the south side of the island, down a crooked mile of oak trees draped in Spanish moss, sits a much older landmark—Georgiana Cemetery. It is one of the oldest graveyards in Brevard County, and among its weathered stones lies the grave of a young woman whose death remains one of Florida’s darkest mysteries.

Her name was Ethel Allen. She was just nineteen when, in November of 1934, her body was discovered on the banks of the Indian River Lagoon. Brutally attacked, left nearly unrecognizable, and partially burned, her remains shocked the community. A ruby ring and a small tattoo were all the investigators had to identify her. And while suspicion quickly fell on a man calling himself William Wilson, the trail went cold when he fled town under another name.

Decades later, the story of Ethel Allen is still unsettled. Some point to the man later unmasked as Willard Borton, a career criminal who lived by theft and died in prison. Others whisper that jealousy or betrayal may have driven someone closer to her to kill. No one was ever brought to justice, and her murder has never been solved.

But in Brevard County, her memory lingers. Visitors to Georgiana Cemetery and to Ashley’s Restaurant, one of the last places she was seen alive, report unexplainable voices, phantom touches, and the apparition of a young woman in out-of-time clothing. Nearly a century after her death, locals say Ethel Allen still wanders, looking for answers the world has yet to give her.

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The Unsolved Murder of Ethel Allen | Encore Episode

On a cold February morning in 1896, a farmhand near Fort Thomas, Kentucky, stumbled upon a body at the edge of a ravine. The victim was a young woman in a blue checkered dress, her gloves sliced, her head missing. Within days, a pair of petite boots and a ledger entry in a small-town shoe store revealed a name that would haunt headlines across the country: Pearl Bryan of Greencastle, Indiana.

What followed became one of the era’s most sensational crimes. The press painted Pearl as a ruined innocent. Detectives chased rumors across Cincinnati saloons and backrooms. Two promising young men, a dental student named Scott Jackson and his roommate Alonzo Walling, were soon at the center of the storm. Theories multiplied. Was Pearl lured to the city for a secret procedure that went wrong, or was something far darker at work?

As the case moved to trial, the testimonies clashed, the city buzzed, and crowds swarmed the crime scene for souvenirs. Confessions were offered and withdrawn. A doctor’s name surfaced. A cabman emerged with a harrowing account. Through it all, one detail refused to rest: Pearl’s head was never found.

In this episode, we trace the investigation that gripped the Midwest, the courtroom drama that ended on the gallows, and the morbid fascination that turned Pearl Bryan into a murder ballad and a legend. We follow the facts through the noise, and ask the question that still lingers more than a century later: what really happened to Pearl, and where is the missing piece of her story? 

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Pearl Bryan's Gruesome Death | Encore Episode

BlueLife⁠ is a new post-apocalyptic sci-fi audio story which has its world premiere on September 1st. I'd love you to listen, and if you like what you hear please subscribe to the email list on the website so you will be one of the first to hear the episodes when they are launched.

The ⁠BlueLife⁠ script was an Austin Film Festival semi-finalist. It received a staged reading at the Festival where it was roundly praised. The creators Mark Vashro and Kenneth Heaton both have lengthy experience in stage and film. Mark produced the short film Thunder Road, which won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, and his bicycling documentary Bike Against the Wind earned him top honors as Best Director at the Boise Film Festival. Mark is also a well-known Bay Area actor, having appeared in numerous stage productions. Ken’s play The Ontological Detective was produced off-Broadway, and his Mustard Seed won the Southern Playwrights Competition. As an actor, Heaton has appeared in the Academy Award-nominated short, The Letter Room, and on Hulu’s Chance. Both Vashro and Heaton play roles in BlueLife.The seasoned cast includes, among many others, Mapuana Makia (Apple TV’s Invasion, the CW’s Family Law, Doogie Kamealoha, M.D., Two Sentence Horror Stories) as Persephone, Joel Marsh Garland (Poker Face, Orange is the New Black, Birdman or [The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance], The Last OG, Hello Tomorrow) as The Clown, Donna Jay Fulks (X-Men ’97, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, I Love That for You) as Fiona Thomlinson, and JillMarie Lawrence (Dexter: Original Sin, Ocean’s Eight, City by the Sea, Law & Order) as Faye Emma MacArthur. Vashro and Heaton have teamed up with Audio Producer/Sound Designer Rachel Boyd (Audio Producer on Fear Daily, Producer, Editor and Voice Artist for Codename: Blank!, Lead Producer for Hearing the Haunted). 

BlueLife is a character-driven series set in the post-apocalyptic city-state of Los Angeles, which is believed to be the last bastion of humanity on the planet. In the midst of environmental collapse, two warring factions fight for control of a life-saving drug, ⁠BlueLife⁠, which will determine the outcome of the human race. Set in the year 2088, shortly after the ‘Second Blood War,’ our story deals with the ideas of class and power. This series combines the styles of Blade Runner, LA Confidential, The Matrix, and the series Firefly.
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Introducing: BlueLife

Spooky season is finally here! Join us for another edition of our listener-submitted stories... from haunted cemeteries, a creepy old mirror, to the possible sighting of a spirit on a Civil War battlefield.

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Listener Tales, Volume Four

Just south of Savannah, Georgia, where the low country stretches into swampland, lies a quiet tributary shaded by thousand-year-old cypress trees. Today, paddlers drift across its dark waters, taking in the beauty of the moss-draped forest. But for many who visit, Ebenezer Creek carries a sense of unease—a heaviness that lingers in the air. Some say that when the water rises after storms, you can still hear desperate voices calling from its banks.

In December of 1864, during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea, this peaceful waterway became the site of an unthinkable tragedy. Thousands of formerly enslaved men, women, and children trailed behind the Union Army, believing the blue uniforms meant deliverance. Instead, a single callous order at Ebenezer Creek left them abandoned on the wrong side of the water, with Confederate cavalry closing in. What followed was chaos, betrayal, and death on a massive scale.

For the soldiers who watched, the memory never faded. Some called it necessary. Others called it murder. In the years that followed, the tragedy at Ebenezer Creek cast a shadow not only on Sherman’s victory but on the promises of freedom itself.

In this episode, we trace the march that led to Ebenezer Creek, the massacre that unfolded there, and the echoes it left behind—from ghost stories on the water to one of the most famous broken promises of Reconstruction. mysteries.

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The Massacre at Ebenezer Creek

Just off the old Natchez Trace, in the quiet woods of Tennessee, stands a broken marble column marking the grave of Meriwether Lewis. The monument was meant to honor one of America’s greatest explorers, but its shattered form also reflects a life cut short under circumstances that remain unsolved more than two centuries later.

In 1804, Lewis and Clark led the Corps of Discovery across thousands of miles of uncharted wilderness. They mapped rivers, documented new species, and forged fragile relationships with Native Nations, returning home as national heroes. Yet only a few years later, while traveling east on government business, Lewis stopped at a frontier inn called Grinder’s Stand. Before dawn, gunfire rang out. By morning, the celebrated explorer was dead.

From the start, the explanation was contested. Some, including Thomas Jefferson and William Clark, believed Lewis had taken his own life after years of depression, financial trouble, and lingering illness. Others pointed to inconsistencies in the testimonies, the absence of eyewitnesses, and the violence of the scene to argue that he was murdered. Over the years, theories have ranged from robbery on a lawless road to political assassination, while modern scholars have even suggested his death may have been linked to malaria or another untreated disease.

In this episode, we retrace Lewis’s final journey along the Natchez Trace and examine the testimonies left behind. We look at the evidence for suicide, the motives for murder, and the generations of speculation that have kept this mystery alive. We also consider the more recent efforts by Lewis’s descendants to exhume his body, hoping that modern science might finally answer the question that has haunted his legacy: how did Meriwether Lewis really die?

This episode of Southern Gothic originally aired on January 29, 2021.

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The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis | Encore Episode

Just a stone’s throw from the quaint downtown square of Harrodsburg, Kentucky—the oldest town in the state—sits a small city park. Families gather there for picnics, children play on the swings, and joggers circle the open green. But tucked at the edge of it all, surrounded by a white picket fence, is something far more unusual: a single grave. Its headstone bears no name, only the word “UNKNOWN.”

Nearly two centuries ago, this was the site of Graham Springs, a luxurious resort built around the region’s famed mineral waters. Guests came from across the South to drink, to dance, and to be seen. And one summer evening in the 1840s, among them was a beautiful young woman whose arrival would leave a mark on Harrodsburg forever.

Locals call her the Dancing Lady. Some say she was a stranger who waltzed the night away at Graham Springs before collapsing on the ballroom floor, never to rise again. Others whisper her death was not from joy at all, but from something darker—disease, scandal, even murder. With no family to claim her and no true name to inscribe, she was buried where she fell.

Over the years, her story has only grown stranger. From ghostly encounters in the park to modern-day efforts to solve her identity, the Dancing Lady of Harrodsburg remains one of Kentucky’s oldest and most haunting mysteries.

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The Dancing Lady of Harrodsburg

Just a stone’s throw from the quaint downtown square of Monticello, Arkansas, stands a sprawling Queen Anne mansion framed by towering trees and ornate stained glass. Known for its turrets, grand columns, and intricate woodwork, the Allen House is the kind of place that stops you in your tracks.

But behind that beauty is a story steeped in tragedy. For decades, one upstairs room was locked tight, its contents left untouched. Over the years, whispers grew—of strange sounds in the night, of figures glimpsed in windows, of an unseen presence lingering in the halls.

Today, the Allen House is regarded as one of the most haunted homes in the country. In this episode, we explore its layered past, the family who called it home, and the enduring mystery that has kept Monticello talking for more than seventy years.

Special thanks to the Grave Talks podcast for allowing us to you segments from their interview with Mark Spencer.

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 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Into History: History Without Interruption⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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The Heartbreak and Hauntings of the Allen House

The Constant is a History of Getting Things Wrong. Every other Tuesday they look at the accidents, mistakes and bad ideas that helped misshape our world. Like the breakfast cereal magnate who spent his fortune dynamiting the sky, or Marie Antoinette’s hypnotist, or the mobster who tried to escape prison through resurrection.
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Intoducing: The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong

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