Southern Gothic

Haunted American History is a daily campfire-style podcast blending American history, folklore, and original ghost stories. What scares you? Let’s find out! Listen now on your favorite podcasting app! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the fall of 1880, a Tennessee farmer named David Lang was said to have vanished in broad daylight, in the middle of his own pasture, with his wife, children, and two visiting men watching from only yards away. No trees. No brush. No place to hide. One moment he was standing there, waving, and the next he was simply gone. The story has become one of the most infamous disappearances in American f...

Rising above the hills of Weston, West Virginia, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum stands as one of the most infamous psychiatric hospitals in American history. Originally opened in the mid-19th century as part of a nationwide mental health reform movement inspired by Dorothea Dix and the Kirkbride Plan, the asylum was meant to represent progress and compassion in the treatment of mental illness....

Just north of downtown Walton, Kentucky, along an old turnpike that once carried stagecoaches between Lexington and Cincinnati, stands a two-hundred-year-old brick building with a reputation that has never quite faded. Known today as Gaines Tavern, the structure has been called many things over the years: a frontier inn, a family home, a community gathering place—and, for more than a century, the...

The Longfellow House in Pascagoula, Mississippi is an elegant antebellum mansion overlooking the Gulf of Mexico—symmetrical, refined, and seemingly untouched by time. But beneath its pristine façade lies a reputation shaped by violence, exploitation, and stories that refuse to fade. For generations, locals have whispered that the house was built on suffering tied to the domestic slave trade, and t...

Do you like your spooky stories with some historical context? Do you like your history with a pinch of the paranormal? Then Weird in the Wade is the podcast for you. Weird in the Wade is about all that’s weird, wonderful and a little off kilter in a small English town called Biggleswade and its surrounding area. Each episode we explore a story that will make you pause and ponder, whether its a hau...

On a storm-soaked night in June of 1900, just outside McDonough, Georgia, a Southern Railway passenger train plunged into the flooded waters of Camp Creek, triggering one of the deadliest train disasters in Georgia history. Weeks of relentless rain, a washed-out trestle, and a fateful decision made under impossible conditions combined to turn a routine run toward Atlanta into a mass casualty event...

For nearly three centuries, New Orleans has carried a reputation as a city where sin, superstition, and the supernatural collide. Long before ghost tours and vampire legends, early residents were already whispering that the Devil himself had claimed a foothold in the Crescent City. By the early 1800s, those whispers centered on a single mansion along St. Charles Avenue—a grand, unsettling house th...

Along a quiet stretch of US 301 in coastal Georgia stands a lonely white farmhouse, the last surviving remnant of a place that once claimed to be a thriving frontier town. Locals say it is all that remains of Jacksonboro, Georgia, a community that rose with promise and then collapsed into nothing, leaving only the Seaborn Goodall House behind. For nearly two hundred years, the reason for Jacksonbo...

In the summer of 1833, the tiny mountain town of Morganton, North Carolina became the stage for one of the most shocking events in early Appalachian history: the execution of nineteen-year-old Frankie Stewart Silver, a young mother condemned for the brutal murder of her husband, Charlie Silver, in their remote cabin above the Toe River Valley. What happened inside that one-room home has fueled nea...

The Arkansas Old State House Museum is the oldest standing state capitol building west of the Mississippi River. Since 1833, the building has witnessed many of the most important events in Arkansas history, but according to some who visit the property, echoes from that past remain in forms that visitors don’t quite expect. In fact, some even claim that the apparition of a man still wanders the Old...

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In December of 1946, Atlanta woke to a nightmare unfolding in the heart of downtown. The Winecoff Hotel—once celebrated as a modern marvel and boldly advertised as “absolutely fireproof”—was swallowed by flames before sunrise, trapping hundreds of guests inside a building that was never supposed to burn. By morning, it would become the deadliest hotel fire in American history. For decades the Wine...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the American railroad was more than transportation — it was a symbol of speed, modernity, and danger, giving rise to some of the country’s most enduring folk legends. Among songs like “The Wreck of the Old 97” and “John Henry,” one ballad rose above the rest to become railroad folklore’s defining tale: “The Ballad of Casey Jones.” In this episode of Southern G...

Along a sharp bend in the Tallapoosa River in eastern Alabama sits one of the most important — and most haunting — battlefields in American history. In 1814, this quiet stretch of water became the site of a brutal clash between Red Stick Muscogee warriors and the forces of Major General Andrew Jackson, a fight that would reshape the future of the Southeast and forever alter the Muscogee Nation. Bu...

On August 23, 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing while his family was on a fishing trip at Swayze Lake in Louisiana. An eight-month search ensued, but the boy was eventually found in Mississippi– at least that’s what the Dunbars believed. Join us as we dive into one of the most well-known missing person cases in the history of the American South. Want to Listen to Southern Gothic Ad-Fre...

The Cold War, Prohibition, the Gold Rush, the Space Race. Every part of your life - the words you speak, the ideas you share - can be traced to our history, but how well do you really know the stories that made America? We'll take you to the events, the times and the people that shaped our nation. And we'll show you how our history affected them, their families and affects you today. Hosted by Lin...

In a city famed for its grand antebellum mansions, Natchez’s oldest building feels like it belongs to another world entirely. Rough-hewn timbers, crooked shutters, and centuries of whispers cling to the walls of King’s Tavern, where legend says a young woman named Madeline met a grim fate at the hands of jealousy—and where, decades later, workers unearthed something chilling behind a fireplace: bo...

Tucked deep in the hills between Cookeville and Monterey, Tennessee, there’s a narrow, graffiti-covered bridge locals say you shouldn’t cross after dark. It’s called Crazy George’s Bridge, and according to legend, the spirit of an old railroad worker still wanders there—lantern swinging, searching for his missing head. They say if you whisper his name three times, you might just see him. Some clai...

Head east out of Washington, Georgia, and you’ll find a lonely little grave surrounded by a moss-covered stone wall — the final resting place of Captain Abram Simons, a Revolutionary War veteran, tavern keeper, and horseman known for living life on his own terms. Local legend says that when the Captain died in 1824, he was buried standing upright, musket at his side, so he could “meet the Devil fa...

Just outside Fayetteville, Arkansas, there’s a dip in the land the locals call Ghost Hollow — a quiet patch of woods where fog clings low and the wind carries a sound you’ll never forget. They say a young bride died here long ago, her wedding gown catching fire before she could reach the creek below. On still nights, her screams are said to echo through the hollow — a cry for help that never comes...

On the corner of Sixth and Park in Old Louisville stands a tree like no other — its gnarled trunk twisting back over itself, its branches draped with beads, ribbons, and charms left by visitors who whisper their wishes into the wind. Locals call it the Witches’ Tree, and legend says it grew from a curse. More than a century ago, the city cut down a sacred maple that once stood on that same spot —...

In the quiet community of Furman, Alabama, an old house still stands — its white siding fading beneath the moss-draped oaks, its brick chimneys watching over more than a century of secrets. But what chills folks most isn’t inside the Purifoy-Lipscomb House. It’s what lies just behind it. There, in a ring of earth where nothing grows, locals say you can still hear it — a man’s desperate voice risin...

Just off the coast of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, lies a tiny strip of sand and scrub known as Drunken Jack Island — a place born from rum, revelry, and one very unlucky pirate. Local legend says Jack was part of Blackbeard’s crew, left behind after a night of heavy drinking when the tide rolled out and the ship set sail without him. Stranded with nothing but barrels of rum and the company of...

On a hill above the Cane River in Natchitoches, Louisiana, three white columns stand where a grand antebellum mansion once rose — the only trace of a building that’s been gone for more than a century. For the students of Northwestern State University, they’re more than a landmark. They’re the heart of one of Louisiana’s most enduring ghost stories. They say a young woman once lived — and died — wi...