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Weird Appalachia - Ninurta - 06-12-2024
The Appalachian region of America is old. Very old. Perhaps one of, if not THE, oldest existing mountain range in the world. Once a huge, tall mountain range exceeding even the current Himalayas in height, these mountains once rose to around 45,000 feet above sea level, although now they max out at around 6000 feet, after millions of years of erosion.
The only older mountain range I'm aware of is the bedrock remnants of some ancient mountains east of here near the Virginia - North Carolina border that now amount to mere folded hills, the remaining core of a great mountain range that has worn down to nearly nothing over time.
There is strangeness in these hills. Old family tales tell some of it, but those can always be set down as "campfire stories"... until one experiences some of the weirdness for themselves, as I have. Over a long lifetime, one may expect to encounter the occasional glitch in the matrix here, always unexpectedly. I've seen and heard things here that I can't explain. Note well that I said I can't explain them, not that there are no explanations. Just because I can't figure something out doesn't mean that it can't be figured out.
Some things I've never even heard of anywhere else. Not old legends, not shared experiences across a wide range of people, just one-off things that leave me scratching my head and wondering what the hell was that? As an example was the "clanking" noise I once heard coming from the ground at my feet. Never heard of that anywhere else but here, and it wasn't something I expected to encounter on that dark night so many years ago. It just suddenly WAS, and I've never heard it again afterwards.
Other things fit into a more universal framework, like "skyquakes", strange noises emanating from the skies with no observable source. Grace is actually the one who first detected and recorded those at this location. She couldn't explain them, either, although she has zero belief in paranormal things. That doesn't negate the fact that she has also experienced things here in the Appalachians that she has no explanation for. The skyquakes are one, and feeling... "something"... or "someone"... get into the bed at night when no one is there is another.
Note that in recent years, I've heard tales of "skinwalkers", "the rake", "chpuacabras", etc. I tend to discount most of those as "copycat" stories set in these mountains that actually belong to other areas. "Skinwalkers", for example, are a Navajo thing that have never occurred here. This isn't Navajo country. Shapeshifting witches of the Indian variety here almost always changed into owls. "The Rake", "Chupacabras", and "Slenderman" all had their start elsewhere with the development of the internet, and have never occurred here despite tales to the contrary. There is already enough native weirdness here without having to import tales from other places or brand new inventions designed for internet dispersal.
So this thread is intended as a collection point for strange but true tales from the Appalachians. I'll try to add some of my personal experiences here over time, but also more general stories are welcome to it. "Feral people", "Moon-eyed People", strange disappearances, cryptids and the like are all fair game.
To kick things off, here is a video that covers most of the mountain range, north to south, with some of the strangeness that radiates from these mountains. It's a pretty fair overview of what goes on here.
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RE: Weird Appalachia - VioletDove - 06-12-2024
Ooohh…I love it when you talk about Appalachia stuff! I’ve never been there and probably never will, but it fascinates me.
Can’t wait to see more!
RE: Weird Appalachia - Ninurta - 06-13-2024
(06-12-2024, 11:38 PM)VioletDove Wrote: Ooohh…I love it when you talk about Appalachia stuff! I’ve never been there and probably never will, but it fascinates me.
Can’t wait to see more!
Well, we're hillbillies around here - I've got a reputation to uphold in the rest of the world!
So what do folks want to know more about - "feral people", Appalachian witches, or more personal experiences?
Or something else? Goatman? Sheepsquatch? Spearfinger? Moon-Eyed People?
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RE: Weird Appalachia - VioletDove - 06-13-2024
Haha! I’m pretty hillbilly myself. The hills around here just ain’t as tall as the ones there.
I haven’t really heard about feral people and the Appalachian Witches sound interesting.
RE: Weird Appalachia - Infolurker - 06-14-2024
It is the werewolves. All of it
RE: Weird Appalachia - VioletDove - 06-14-2024
Could be coincidence or FB 100% tracks where you go and what you read. I had to put it here because it seems to fit. A little Appalachia Folklore randomly landed in my newsfeed
I don’t know if it’s a real folklore but maybe @"Ninurta"#2 can verify.
I can’t quote the post because I lost it but I’ll try to remember what it said.
They are called Death Crowns or Angel Crowns. They happen when feathers in a pillow become matted in a certain way. This is seen as a sign that a loved one made it to Heaven. Then it is preserved, usually becoming a family heirloom.
There is a theory that some kind of electrical charge causes it but some people believe it’s a miracle.
There are supposed to be some in a museum in Tennessee.
That’s basically all I can remember. I only kind of skimmed through it before I had to go do something else and then when I went back to give it a good read couldn’t find it.
RE: Weird Appalachia - Ninurta - 06-14-2024
(06-14-2024, 02:44 AM)VioletDove Wrote: Could be coincidence or FB 100% tracks where you go and what you read. I had to put it here because it seems to fit. A little Appalachia Folklore randomly landed in my newsfeed
I don’t know if it’s a real folklore but maybe @"Ninurta"#2 can verify.
I can’t quote the post because I lost it but I’ll try to remember what it said.
They are called Death Crowns or Angel Crowns. They happen when feathers in a pillow become matted in a certain way. This is seen as a sign that a loved one made it to Heaven. Then it is preserved, usually becoming a family heirloom.
There is a theory that some kind of electrical charge causes it but some people believe it’s a miracle.
There are supposed to be some in a museum in Tennessee.
That’s basically all I can remember. I only kind of skimmed through it before I had to go do something else and then when I went back to give it a good read couldn’t find it.
That's not something I've ever encountered that I know of, but that doesn't mean it's not so. There is a lot of weirdness here that I've run into, but there is a lot more weirdness that I HAVEN'T run into... yet.
My paternal granny was said to be a witch. The same was said for dad, as he was born "under a veil" or "with a caul", and that is supposed to confer strange powers on the conferee... and the same has been said about me, especially by my sisters, because I sometimes just "know" things that I shouldn't have any way of knowing.
But back to Granny. She was known to occasionally see "balls of fire" descend on houses and drop through the roof, and invariably the next morning someone in that house would be dead. She "knew" things some times, and taught some of my female cousins unusual means of divination that I've seen them use. There's no telling what she knew and did that I've never heard about.
My maternal granny, the one who lived in this house, was a "granny woman" or "medicine woman" that knew all manner of cures and concoctions out of the woods and from other sources. Just last week one of my cousins and I were talking about that, with him recalling how she cured him of a poison ivy infection. I never had that problem, because poison ivy has never affected me. He said she used buttermilk and some other goopy stuff to cure it. Just slathered it all over him wherever the rash was present.
I know she used to make cough medicine out of moonshine, rock candy, honey, and wild cherry bark. I think I still have a little jar of it on a shelf here that she made, and which will never be used. She's not around to make any more, y'know?
I've also got a mason jar of some concoction she made out of elderberries and God only knows what else. That'll never be used, either, and to be truthful I can't recall what it was used for anyhow.
She also used to cure whooping cough in children. When my ma was young, whooping cough was a big problem around here. A lot of folks bought special "whooping cough lamps" for their kids, but granny used asafoetidia instead. She'd hang a little cloth bag of it around the afflicted child's neck. If you've ever smelled it, it's no wonder it worked - if I was a kid and had asafoetidia hung around my neck, I'd do my damndest not to breath at all!
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RE: Weird Appalachia - Ninurta - 06-14-2024
Top 5 cryptids of West Virginia. "Sheepsquatch" is mentioned in this video from southern West Virginia, in Boone County. It's also been reported in this area, but I've never seen it, nor do I expect I ever will. we're not far from Boone County. The video also goes over Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, and a couple of others, one of which I've never heard of before, some giant half-turtle half gator thing said to live in the Monongahela River.
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