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Noah Conner
12/3/14
FYS Ghost Fiction

Ghost Fiction Research Essay- Appalachian Trail

In my research I studied the effect of the environment and history on ghost stories that are
told on and around the Appalachian Trail. The Appalachian Trail is a very unique place in the
United States because it takes up such a large area in the nation. The trail stretches from Georgia
all the way to Massachusetts, it goes through fourteen states and is around 2200 miles long. The
trail has been through a lot of history, starting from the Native Americans, to the European
settlers, to now. Through the research I have found that the Appalachian Trail has very unique
ghost stories because of its history and from all the regions that the trail covers.
The Appalachian Trail was first settled by the Native Americans over one thousand years
ago, in that time they learned how to use its fertile soil and well wooded areas to have prosperous
tribes all along the trail. Through the time of the Native American inhabitants on the trail, many
stories had arisen. From sprits of animals still lurking in the woods to evil spirits snatching
people when they walked at night all alone. As the stories were created they would be passed up
and down the trail which made the stories slightly change as they got handed down, which makes
each regions take on the same story unique to their area. Also many Native American burial
grounds have been dug up and discovered along the trail which has caused curses and haunting
to many residents and their houses that were built on or around these sites.
Later in time, to around three to four hundred years ago the first European settlers started
to come over on ships and soon started to colonize in America. Soon the Europeans started to

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spread farther and farther west till they reached the Appalachian Trail. People started to settle on
the trails land for its many resources and wildlife for food. Most of the time they were able to
live semi-peacefully with the Native Americans and usually kept their distance from one another.
In later years around the 1840s the Americans started to forcefully drive out the Native
Americans and the Appalachian Trail became part of the Trail of Tears. The Trail of Tears was a
big contributing factor on ghost stories on and around the trail. Many Native American lives
were lost on the trail and many people have reported that they have seen the ghost of the Native
Americans still walking the trail today. Many people believe parts of the Appalachian Trail are
cured by the Native Americans because they were forced to leave their homes.
Another key aspect on ghost stories along the trail were the slaves that were killed on the
property owned by slave owners, and slaves killed trying to run away. During the time period of
around the 1750s and 1860s many incidents of slaves being brutally murdered along with
owners being murdered had popped up in small groups along the trail. One of the most gruesome
stories told along the trail is the story of the a slave owner who beat his two slaves every day no
matter what they did, one night when the slaves were finally fed up with their master they
stabbed him in the middle of the night with a metal stake. After the slaves had killed their master
they took it a step further and started to eat him, they ate the whole body till all the remained
were bones. Neighbors and other friends of the slave owner discovered their friends bones and
hung the two slaves that had ate him. To this day people still say they can see the two ghost
slaves walking around in the woods hungry for more human flesh. I found this story to be one of
the creepiest stories that I had found, and I believe it shows just how scary some of the stories on
the trail can be.

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War has been around since humans have lived on this Earth, and one place in America
that has seen multiple wars is the Appalachian Trail. The Appalachian Trail was battle grounds
for three major wars, The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. All of these
wars were very brutal wars with thousands of casualties. This is a big part of the trails ghost
story history because of the fact that there has been so many ghost soldier sightings on and
around the trail. One predominate theory about dead soldiers is that their bodies are never at
peace because they died on the battle field and never received closer on how the war they fought
in ended, and how they never got to say goodbye to their families. Another reason why the ghost
are still not at rest is because of the body disposal during the wars, many soldiers were dumped
in shallow unmarked graves and to this day many families have never found the bodies of their
ancestors that lost their lives during these wars. The greatest war that was fought on American
soil was most likely the Civil War. More people lost their lives in the Civil War than any other
war in America. During this time many big battles were fought such as the Battle of Bull Run,
Gettysburg, and The Battle of Antietam, all fairly close to the Appalachian Trail or its foothills.
The Foothills of the Appalachian Trail are very famously known, almost as well known
as the Trail itself. The Foothills are the outskirts of the trail where you can still see the
geographic characteristics of the trail. The Foothills spread out a farther distance from the trail
and therefore the Foothills have a lot more history around them. In the Foothill area many
occupations such as mining were very popular. Many ghost stories have arisen from the mining
areas because of unsafe work conditions and the many deaths caused by these conditions. There
are numerous accounts of death from breathing in toxic chemicals inside the minds to mines
collapsing on workers and trapping or killing them.

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Another occupation that helped that spread of ghost stories up and down the trail were
traders and merchants. Most traders traded and sold furs and other animal parts. They would
travel up and down the mountain range selling to the Europeans and Native Americans alike. As
they would travel they would tell their stories on what they saw and heard from other people, this
helped circulate stories around the regions. A lot of ghost stories involve traders and merchant
selling cursed and haunted items to unsuspecting buyers. One of the more famous stories of this
is simply called Rope. The story says that a man bought a long old cord of rope from a
traveling merchant, when he took it home and made a hammock out of it, it would shake at night
and throw him out of it. After a couple nights of getting tossed out of bed, the man gets his friend
to watch him sleep and soon realizes that the hammock actually shakes him onto the floor. When
the man finds the merchant he discovers that the rope was actually used by a town to lynch and
hang slaves. This story provides an example on how the ghost stories on the Appalachian Trail
are different to any other ghost stories around the world.
In more modern days the Appalachian Trail has been known for its great hiking trails and
its wonderful wildlife that you cannot see anywhere else in the world. But still even today the
Appalachian Trail has been known for its darker side as well. The Appalachian Trail in many
areas is still only inhabited by small amounts of people and still slightly broken off from the rest
of normal society. The bad reputation of the trail has been made by such shows as
Moonshiners, the show shows the process and distributions of illegal moonshine throughout
the Appalachian Trail and southern America. But the trail also has many different tourist
attractions as well. The trail and mountain ranges are best known for the wonderful camping and
hiking spots as well as its nature and ghost tours.

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In modern times some books have been made with ghost stories from the Appalachian
Trail and its Foothills. Some of these book are, Appalachian Winter Hauntings by the Woodland
Press, which covers the northern Appalachian region down to Maryland. The Cold, Cold Hand
by James Burchill, which covers the Appalachian Foothills around Tennessee, Virginia, and West
Virginia. Also Easy as One, Two, Three by Phillip DePoy, this book cover the Sothern area of the
mountains going all the way down from West Virginia to Georgia. Even though all three of these
books have similar themes in them, they all have different stories with different situations and
they are for the most part, from different regions on the Appalachian Trail. This offers not only a
different look of the regions ways of telling stories but also it shows what different cultures find
scarier than others such as the more North you go the stories become more about dead soldiers,
while South you come across more stories about Native Americans and dead slaves.
Religion is a very big part in most ghost stories. Religion brings demons, spirits, and
angels into stories, and can make ghost stories less or more frightening. One interesting things
about the Appalachian region is that there are so many different religions that have been through
the area that many stories have more than one religious reference in them and from more than
one religion. The Appalachian Trail has many religions on its land, such as Native American
beliefs, Catholicism, Judaism, Cajun and voodoo practices, and many other nature and spirit
based religions that are not based off of Native American practices. Religion can bring out fears
that no simple ghost story can, they can make you not only fear for your life but also for your
afterlife. With so many different religions in the Appalachian area, it makes the ghost stories told
that much more unique.
The Appalachian Trail has had a very rich history from the Native Americans to the
European settlers to the modern age; many things have changed about the trail. One thing that

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has not changed about the trail however are the stories. The stories that have been passed down
from generation to generation, and most commonly passed down orally. That is one of the unique
characteristics of the Appalachian Trail ghost stories, is that through hundreds of years, most
keep on the tradition of just telling the stories not writing them down. This started since the very
beginning, since most people could not read or write they would pass down all their information
orally. Even though some stories can become twisted from person to person, region to region,
state to state, the stories will always live on. The Appalachian Trails history and geography does
affect ghost stories that are told, but that is why the stories told on the Trail are unique, and
different from every other place in the world.

Resources-

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-http://www.blueridgeoutdoors.com/go-outside/appalachian-trail-ghost-story/
-http://www.appalachiantrail.org/about-the-trail/history
-http://theathiker.com/ghost-on-the-appalachian-trail/
Posted by The AT Hiker on Nov 9, 2011
-http://www.clemson.edu/agcom/dale/aged480/jennifer/keybat.htm
Website created by Jennifer L. Meador
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php/29091-True-ghost-stories-of-the-AT