Southern Ghost Stories

The Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago has spent over a century accumulating grandeur, secrets, and a staggering collection of ghosts. But among the shadowy figures, none cuts deeper than the spirit on the twelfth floor—a four-year-old boy whose phantom footsteps and quiet laughter echo down the halls after midnight. In August 1939, Adel Langer, a mother who had just fled Nazi-occupied Prague, gave i...

In 1938, Earl Carl Harris believed a $15 bottle of High John the Conqueror elixir could perform two miracles: force a woman to love him and make him invisible to the police. But when the love potion failed on his landlady, Christina Eastmond, Harris brutally murdered her—only to casually remark "I guess it didn't work" when detectives tracked him down in Ontario weeks later. Host Allen Sircy untan...

For Tennessee Tales Tuesday, Allen Sircy takes you back to an August afternoon in 1950 inside the Larkin & Larkin General Store in Carter's Valley, Tennessee, to unravel the tragic, true story of Carl Walters—the quiet, forty-year-old local farmer who drew a pistol and executed two women in broad daylight. Driven to a deadly breaking point by an unexplained chronic illness, his teenage son's s...

Tucked behind the archery range at Louisville's E.P. Tom Sawyer Park lies a dark history that most visitors never notice: the forbidden entrance to Sauerkraut Cave and the grim footprint of the former Lakeland Asylum for the Insane. Long before thousands of forgotten patients were buried on these grounds—and long before the asylum's history was marred by fatal abuse, crude lobotomies, and rumored...

Today Allen is traveling to the riverbanks of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to unravel one of the most thoroughly documented and terrifying mysteries in American folklore: the legend of the Mothman. Beginning in November 1966—when gravediggers and young couples encountered a seven-foot-tall, winged figure with glowing red eyes that could keep pace with a car at a hundred miles per hour—we trace t...

Today we are going back to Devon, England, in 1885 for one of the most astonishing moments in criminal history: the execution of John "Babbacombe" Lee. Convicted on thin circumstantial evidence for the gruesome murder of an elderly heiress, Lee was led to the scaffold where executioners tried—and failed—to hang him three separate times, only for the trapdoor to mysteriously jam every single time h...

Today on Tennessee Tales Tuesday, we are going down the winding backroads of Sumner County, to explore one of the region’s most chilling cryptid legends: the Westmoreland White Thing. Traced back to a catastrophic 1940s circus train derailment along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, this ghostly, razor-clawed creature supposedly escaped its cage and vanished into the dense forests and limes...

In this "From the Vault" episode, we unearth the chilling history and lingering spirits of Cragfont, a massive 1802 estate built by Revolutionary War hero Brigadier General James Winchester that many claim to be the most haunted location in Tennessee. Behind its historic walls—once home to the Winchester family, over 100 enslaved workers, and a legacy marked by heartbreak—lies a hotbed of restless...

We’ve all heard the childhood playground rhyme about Lizzie Borden giving her parents forty whacks with an axe, but almost every single word of it is historically wrong. In this episode of Southern Ghost Stories , we tear down the myth and look at the brutal reality of the 1892 Fall River massacre that left Abby and Andrew Borden dead, the high-profile trial that ended in a shocking "not guilty" v...

CreepyCon is this weekend! We had some tickets to give away and we have some big news about the show! Allen will be there in the Southern Ghost Stories booth all weekend signing books. Come out this weekend and experience CreepyCon in Knoxville, Tennessee. Be sure to like, subscribe and leave a review! Check out Allen's books on Amazon! https://amzn.to/3HEf2u9 Got a question or comment? Hit us up...

Southern Ghost Stories takes you inside a chaotic 1926 congressional hearing where an undercover investigator for Harry Houdini dropped a political bombshell: secret, table-tipping séances were allegedly being held inside Calvin Coolidge's White House. While the administration dismissed the rumors as total nonsense, the public couldn't ignore the chilling parallel to Abraham Lincoln—another presid...

For Tennessee Tales Tuesday, Allen Sircy takes you back to Christmas Day in 1867, when a brutal Memphis saloon brawl set off a chain of events that ended on a black-painted scaffold. We dig into the bizarre case of Sam Moody, a convicted murderer who choked on the gallows for eleven minutes before his body was handed over to a legendary local root healer. Did he actually die that day, or did an ol...

As New Orleans' oldest burial ground, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 holds centuries of history, but its most infamous resident is undoubtedly Marie Laveau, the undisputed Queen of Voodoo. Born in 1794, Laveau rose from a French Quarter hairdresser to an incredibly powerful and respected figure, leveraging town gossip, traditional herbal medicine, and a blend of African rituals and Catholic traditions t...

At 428 Greene Street in Key West, Captain Tony's Saloon is famous for its ties to Ernest Hemingway and Jimmy Buffett, but beneath the tropical music lies a history built on death. Originally an 1850s icehouse used as a makeshift morgue for shipwreck victims, the bar also encloses a notorious chinaberry tree once used for public executions—a grim legacy corroborated in the 1980s when workers uneart...

In 1884, Irish immigrant Patrick Hartnett brutally murdered his wife with an axe inside a cramped Cincinnati tenement room while their six children watched in terror. Instead of fleeing, Hartnett dropped the weapon and danced a jig next to her corpse. His unpredictable behavior continued all the way to the gallows of the Ohio Penitentiary, where a botched calculation on the drop effectively decapi...

Today on Tennessee Tales Tuesday, we're heading to Adams, Tennessee to explore one of the most famous and unsettling hauntings in American history—the legend of the Bell Witch. What began as strange noises on the Bell family farm in 1817 soon escalated into something far more disturbing, with unseen forces pulling hair, slapping family members, speaking in a disembodied voice, and allegedly tormen...

Tucked away off Calhoun Square on Abercorn Street sits Savannah’s infamous Espy House, a home steeped in dark, conflicting Prohibition-era legends. One local tale claims the corrupt, bootlegging Judge Espy covered up the brutal mob execution of his own son, Wesley, after a gangland romance went sour. Another even darker rumor attributes the hauntings to a drunken domestic dispute between the Judge...

This episode of Southern Ghost Stories chronicles the tragic 1880s murder of Allie Wentworth along Harlem Road in upstate New York. After being shot, Allie’s killer was never found, leaving the tight-knit farming community deeply shaken. Over the following years, locals and cynical outsiders alike reported terrifying encounters on the road, describing an invisible force that panicked horses and th...

In 1879, a blood feud shattered a longtime friendship when politician Robert A. Alston and businessman Edward Cox drew pistols inside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, leaving Alston dead and Cox headed to prison. The root of their deadly falling out was a corrupt, post-Civil War prison labor system that turned close allies into bitter rivals. Today, both men rest just yards apart in Decatur C...

On the corner of Eighth and Douglas in Nashville, a comedy club draws weekend crowds looking for a laugh, but the building’s heaviest history stays backstage. In 1984, comedian Ron Douglas was fired from the venue after a battle with alcoholism, leading him to spend his final, lonely hours drinking himself to death inside the club's green room. Decades later, employees and comics still report unex...

Step into one of Savannah’s most notorious paranormal hotspots as we unlock the vault to revisit the chilling history of the 17Hundred90 Inn. Far more than a quaint dining and lodging experience, this historic structure—originally three separate 19th-century residences—is teeming with restless spirits. We dive deep into the legendary hauntings of Room 204, where the heartbreaking ghost of Anna rep...

You’ve been asking, so it’s finally time for another Q&A episode! This week, Allen digs into the listener mailbag to tackle your biggest burning questions about the unexplained. From his own creepy personal experiences living in a haunted house in South Nashville, to the real history behind New Orleans' spooky reputation, nothing is off-limits. He’s breaking down the truth about cryptids like...

CreepyCon takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee July 31st to August 2nd at the Knoxville Convention Center. It is one of the largest horror conventions in Tennessee and we have two free tickets to give away to our listeners! Check out the episode for all the details! We might just see you July 31st through August 2nd in Knoxville. Be sure to like, subscribe and leave a review! Check out Allen's book...

Long before ghost tours packed the streets of Savannah, the 1909 Gribble House murders nearly tore the city apart. When three women were brutally slaughtered inside a Frogtown boarding house, local police resorted to one of the most bizarre investigations in American history—using bloody wax mannequins and a hired "ghost" to psychologically break their suspects. This episode of Southern Ghost Stor...

Printer's Alley has long been the heart of Nashville nightlife, a place filled with music, vice, and larger-than-life characters. Few were more beloved than David "Skull" Schulman, the colorful owner of Skull's Rainbow Room and the self-proclaimed Mayor of Printer's Alley. In this episode of Southern Ghost Stories, we explore Skull's rise from newspaper boy to nightclub legend, the tragic loss tha...