Dark Side of the Holler Podcast

About Dark Side of the Holler Podcast

Strange Tales from the Backwoods. Cryptids, Cults, and Hauntings from Appalachia and Beyond. dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Waylon Graves

Category

fiction · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

21 Aug 2026

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

8 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   Why’s the Book about a Killer Car 600 Pages, Steve?

   Editor’s Note: There’s a misconception that Stephen King sets all his books in Maine. The one I’m discussing takes place in Pennsylvania, a good deal closer to my neck of the woods. So I’m claiming it for Dark Side of the Holler, suburban horror or not. For years, folks told me not to waste my time reading Stephen King’s On Writing. Then somebody told me I ought to. I listened to the audiobook and found it pretty compelling. What I appreciated most was the absence of rules, formulas, and checklists that every other asshole on the internet seems determined to sell aspiring writers. I’d grown up watching movies based on King’s novels, but never managed to get very far into the books themselves. Now that I’m an adult trying to make a living telling stories, I figured it was time to find out what made the old bastard so successful. So I picked up a copy of Christine, and the first thing I thought was, Why’s your killer car book 600 pages, Steve? My first introduction to Christine was John Carpenter’s 1983 film. I watched it with my dad, who always talked about buying an old car and fixing it up together once I was old enough. We never had the chance. The movie is pretty bare bones. Arnie “Cuntface Cuntingham” Cunningham is a comically nerdy dork who gets terrorized by a gang of comically evil greaser hoodlums. Naturally, they’re equipped with the same trademark switchblades that seem to come standard with every Stephen King bully. One afternoon, Arnie falls in love with a rusted-out heap of a Plymouth wearing a FOR SALE sign. He buys the thing against everybody’s better judgment and sets about fixing her up. As his mechanical skills improve, so does his confidence. His acne clears up, he develops a backbone, and before long he’s dating the prettiest girl in school. Unfortunately, his car is a jealous, spiteful bitch. Movie Christine is rotten from the assembly line. She knows what she wants, and she isn’t particularly shy about murdering anybody who gets in her way. Her influence over Arnie reminds me of Peter Parker and that black suit in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. The more time he spends with her, the bigger an asshole he becomes. None of the characters are especially complicated, but I didn’t give a damn about that as a kid. I wanted to watch a car drive itself, run down bad guys, and magically repair its own mangled body. And I’ll tell you what, those effects still hold up. Carpenter’s crew used practical effects and reversed footage to make Christine pull herself back together. Watching that crumpled Plymouth straighten her own sheet metal is still more convincing than most of the expensive CGI slop Hollywood shits out today. Carpenter was brought onto the project before King had even finished the novel. The book and movie both came out in 1983, and considering the circumstances, the adaptation is remarkably faithful. Carpenter didn’t go inventing a bunch of unnecessary bullshit. He took what King had written and carved it down into a digestible 110-minute horror picture. After reading the novel, I understand why he had to. Christine is 600 pages because it isn’t really about a killer car. It’s about love. Possessiveness. Obsession. The ugly things people do when they believe somebody or something belongs to them. The car is almost incidental. Hell, Christine barely does anything for the first 300 pages. She might as well be a haunted typewriter, although I doubt that would’ve sold nearly as many copies. I enjoyed the hell out of this book, but I also began to understand some of the complaints people have about King’s writing. King is an unapologetic pantser, and it shows. The novel begins in first person, narrated by Arnie’s best friend, Dennis. Once Dennis is incapacitated and removed from the action, King abandons that perspective altogether and starts telling the story in third person, wandering through one character’s head after another. When Dennis becomes available again, we return to his first-person narration. It’s a peculiar way to construct a novel, particularly when you’re accustomed to hearing that a writer ought to establish a point of view and stick with it. King apparently didn’t give a shit. He also spends an extraordinary amount of time telling us what people think, what happened to them twenty years ago, what their parents were like, and what some miserable bastard had for breakfast before his life went to hell. For every page of action, there seem to be four pages of digression and backstory. And somehow, the whole thing works. I’m entertained. I’m engrossed. I care about these people. That’s something Carpenter couldn’t accomplish in the movie, and it’s probably why so many adaptations of King’s work feel hollow compared to the books. Strip away all those wandering thoughts and miserable histories, and you’ve removed much of what makes the characters worth caring about. What surprised me most, though, was how much I recognized myself in Arnie Cunningham. Arnie runs himself ragged working on Christine. He’s exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, spending every spare minute trying to make something meaningful out of what everybody else considers worthless trash. Meanwhile, the rest of his life keeps demanding his attention. I know that feeling. Writing my first three books, I spent countless nights doing the same thing. Working long after I should’ve gone to bed, thinking about the work when I was supposed to be doing something else, getting irritated whenever life interrupted me. Arnie sometimes can’t remember fixing certain parts of Christine, even though he must have done the work himself. I occasionally find pages of prose in my typewriter that I have no recollection of writing. And I can’t help imagining Stephen King sitting alone in a room, looking like hell, doing his damndest to wrestle another book out of his head. Book Arnie is a lot more interesting than his movie counterpart. He’s intelligent, sarcastic, and funny, with a face full of pimples and a bad habit of getting pushed around. A diamond in the rough, if you’ll forgive the expression. The only person who seems to recognize his worth is Dennis. Dennis is everything Arnie isn’t. He’s a handsome football player with friends, confidence, and no shortage of girls interested in him. Yet he chooses to spend his time with Arnie. The two have been friends for years, attending high school together and working summer road crews to save money for college. They’re an unlikely pair, but Dennis sees something special in Arnie that nobody else seems to appreciate. In much the same way Arnie sees something special in Christine. And that’s where things start getting complicated. Arnie’s mother is an overbearing, controlling woman who cannot stand the thought of her only son growing up and leaving home. He’s entering his senior year, and she knows her days of telling him what to do are numbered. Dennis loves his friend, but he’s grown comfortable being the handsome, popular half of their friendship. He has a hard time accepting the changes happening to Arnie, particularly when those changes begin taking Arnie away from him. Then there’s Leigh, Arnie’s beautiful new girlfriend, who discovers she’s competing with a Plymouth for her boyfriend’s attention. Each of these people loves Arnie, in their own fashion. Each believes they know what’s best for him. And each resents the amount of himself he’s giving to something that doesn’t involve them. They all begin calling him obsessive. But from Arnie’s perspective, this is the first substantial thing he’s ever done for himself. He found something he wanted. He bought it with his own money. He’s learning the skills necessary to restore it, and for the first time in his miserable teenage life, he’s making decisions without asking anybody’s permission. Everybody who supposedly loves him seems determined to put a stop to it. His parents refuse to let him keep Christine at the house, forcing him to rent space at a garage. He takes a job making shady deliveries across state lines to help cover the expense. When Christine is finally roadworthy, he’s forced to move her again, this time to an airport’s long-term parking lot at the end of a bus line. The more they try to control him, the farther away he goes. And the farther away he goes, the more time he spends with Christine. It’s a miserable little paradox. The people terrified of losing Arnie are helping drive him into the arms of the very thing they’re afraid of. Meanwhile, the people who hate Arnie are determined to destroy the one thing he loves. Buddy Repperton and his gang eventually get their chance. They find Christine sitting alone and defenseless and beat the living shit out of her. They smash her windows, tear apart her body, destroy the engine and finish the job by shitting all over her dashboard. I lived in Oakland, California, for a decade. The first time some goddamned shitters break into your car and wreck it, you experience a particular combination of shock, anger, and resentment that’s difficult to explain to somebody who hasn’t had it happen. You feel violated. But Christine isn’t merely Arnie’s transportation. She’s the love of his life. As far as Arnie is concerned, the woman he loves has been brutalized, raped, and left for dead. And every person who ever hated Christine, every person who tried to come between them, becomes an accomplice to the crime. Arnie’s anger is justified. And so is Christine’s. Now, sure, there’s the small matter of Christine being a murderous supernatural parasite that drains the life out of whoever owns her. We probably ought to acknowledge that. But what if Christine isn’t entirely to blame? What if the real problem is that Arnie is the only person willing to love her? Imagine if his family had welcomed Christine home. If his mother had stopped trying to control him. If Dennis had accepted that his friend was changing. If Leigh had been willing to share a little of Arnie’s attention. What if they’d all gone cruising together, happy as pigs in shit? Would Christine have needed to kill anybody? In Carpenter’s movie, Christine is murdering people before she even leaves the assembly line. She’s evil from the factory, and there’s not much room for interpretation. The novel is considerably more mysterious. Christine’s first owner, Roland D. LeBay, is a miserable, bitter old bastard with a violent history and an unhealthy attachment to his car. There’s plenty of reason to suspect that whatever’s wrong with Christine has something to do with him. But there’s another way of looking at the story. LeBay loved Christine. He loved taking her out on the road. His young daughter died after choking on a hamburger while riding in the car, and afterward, his family came to hate the Plymouth. But LeBay couldn’t understand why he should have to get rid of something he loved because something terrible had happened inside it. His wife eventually killed herself in Christine, using a rubber hose connected to the exhaust pipe. As a final fuck you to her husband, she chose to die inside the one thing he cherished most. Afterward, Christine was left to rot. Years passed. Her paint faded, her body rusted, and the world forgot about her. She sat there deteriorating until a pimply-faced teenager happened along and saw something beautiful beneath the ruin. Arnie didn’t see a worthless old wreck. He saw Christine. And Christine saw him. There’s even a scene in the novel where Christine visits Leigh in the night, communicating in her own way that she needs Arnie more than Leigh ever could. It’s easy to dismiss the whole thing as the manipulations of a jealous, possessive monster. But isn’t that how everybody else behaves toward Arnie? Christine is certainly dangerous. I won’t argue otherwise. But she’s also remarkably hospitable to the people willing to accept her. She invites them inside. She takes them for rides. She offers Arnie something nobody else seems capable of giving him without demanding that he remain the person they want him to be. Of course, there’s a nasty contradiction buried in all this. Arnie wants independence, but Christine gradually takes possession of him. The more he pours himself into restoring her, the less of himself he seems to have left. His body changes. His personality changes. He loses track of time. Eventually, even his memories become unreliable. He escapes the control of his family and friends only to surrender himself completely to his car. But I understand how a fellow might end up making that bargain. When you’re building something you love, something you’ve dragged out of the dirt and devoted a piece of yourself to, it becomes awfully difficult to distinguish between the work and the person doing it. You start resenting the interruptions. You neglect things you shouldn’t. You stay up all night chasing some little improvement that nobody else will ever notice. You convince yourself that once it’s finished, once you’ve finally made the thing everything you know it can be, the rest of your life will somehow fall into place. And if somebody tells you it’s ruining you, well, what the hell do they know? I think the tragedy of Christine is that things might not have needed to end the way they did. Christine could have been a miracle to somebody miserable and alone. Arnie could have restored a beautiful old car, found some confidence, and gone on to live a perfectly decent life. Maybe the two of them could have been happy. But the goddamned shitters wouldn’t let them. Or maybe I’m writing all this in Christine’s defense because I see too much of myself in Arnie Cunningham. And like Arnie, I know I can fix her. Make her real nice. If you enjoyed this little descent into madness, give it a like, leave a comment, and subscribe for more strange tales from the backwoods. I’d especially like to hear whether you think Christine was the monster, or just another misunderstood woman with terrible taste in men. You can find my books, artwork, and more of my ramblings at DarkSideOfTheHoller.com. Until next time, keep to the backroads, and watch what you fall in love with. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Death by Cryptid

   Have you ever sat on your porch at night and stared out beyond the reach of the light? A twig snaps. Something moves through the brush. Could be a deer, a raccoon, a possum, or any number of ordinary things going about their ordinary business. Hell, it could be a bear. But when you cannot see what made the sound, your mind gets busy. It paints something tall between the trees. Something intelligent. Something watching. Maybe even something calling your name. That is what cryptids do best. They give shape to an old and shapeless fear. They turn the dark into a place of possibility and let us explore our dread with a little wonder mixed in. Most of the time, its good fun. We tell stories, trade sightings, argue over blurry photographs, and go looking for footprints in the mud. Most of the time. A monster does not have to exist to hurt somebody. It only has to become real inside the mind of a person willing to act on that belief. On May 31, 2014, two twelve-year-old girls lured a classmate into the woods near Waukesha, Wisconsin. They stabbed the victim nineteen times, and later said they hoped the attack would impress Slender Man and earn them a place as his servants. Slender Man was not an old legend handed down beside the fire. Eric Knudsen created him for an online photo contest in 2009. In five years, that invented face in the fog had gathered enough folklore around it to become real to two frightened children. In July 2018, a man attacked a sixty-five-year-old inside an Alexandria, Virginia, business. The victim was stabbed more than fifty times with a box cutter, and his neck was broken. His attacker said he believed the man was turning into a werewolf. He was found not guilty... by reason of insanity. Then there was the killing along Oklahoma’s South Canadian River. In June 2022, two friends went noodling along the river. Somewhere along the way, one became convinced that the other had summoned Bigfoot to kill and eat him. He beat and strangled his friend. At trial, the attacker claimed he had seen a twelve-foot creature downstream and took his friend’s behavior as proof that the trap was closing. Bigfoot never came out of the trees that night. The monster the killer feared was already standing on the riverbank, looking out through his own eyes. Those killings are terrible, but at least we know what happened. Some tragedies are not so clean. They hang in the air for years, feeding every theory that wanders close enough to take a bite. That brings us to Missing 411. Many of you already know the name. David Paulides has built a library of books, films, and videos around people who vanished or died in forests, mountains, and national parks. I used to be a fan. On long hikes, I would retell those stories to whoever was unlucky enough to be walking beside me. Nothing makes the last few miles go faster than convincing your companion that some nameless thing might be pacing you from the other side of the rhododendron. Paulides points to recurring details. Water. Boulder fields. Berry patches. Search dogs that cannot find a scent. Clothes discovered away from the body, sometimes said to be folded. Bad weather arriving during the search. Victims found in places that searchers had already covered. Children turning up farther away than anybody thought they could travel. Stack those details together, speak in a low voice, and it starts to sound like something intelligent is hunting in the wilderness. Paulides does not tell you exactly what that something is. He keeps the center of the story empty. Bigfoot, extraterrestrials, portals, government conspiracies, and secret predators can all move into that vacant space. His history as a Bigfoot researcher and his long presence in paranormal media certainly color the picture, but he does not have to defend one explanation if he never names one. That is a fine way to build a mystery. It is a poor way to prove one. The trouble begins with the lack of a meaningful baseline. A map covered in clusters looks ominous until you ask how many people visit those places, how difficult the terrain is, and how many ordinary disappearances would be expected there. A busy national park ought to produce more lost hikers than an empty patch of woods. The criteria bend, too. A case may appear significant because dogs lost the scent, while another remains in the collection even though dogs followed one. A missing person’s clothes may seem inexplicable until you account for paradoxical undressing caused by hypothermia. A body found in an area already searched sounds impossible until you have watched fog, snow, rock, and thick brush hide something ten feet from your boot. Weather wipes away scent. Water carries evidence. Fear ruins judgment. Exhaustion makes a mile feel like ten, and panic can send a lost person deeper into the country when the road is just over the ridge. Start pulling on individual threads and some of the mysteries loosen. Medical problems, substance use, dangerous weather, suspected foul play, and other ordinary details sometimes sit outside the version of the story being sold. Data analyst Kyle Polich audited randomly selected cases from one of Paulides’s books. The disappearances were real, but Polich found no extraordinary pattern. The cases looked like the accidents, crimes, and unresolved losses we would expect to find in the wilderness. That does not mean every case has been solved. Some people walk into the woods and are never seen again. Their families are left with an empty chair and questions that may outlive everyone who remembers their face. The absence of an answer is real. It just is not proof of Bigfoot, a portal, or anything else waiting behind the pines. When somebody disappears in the wilderness, you can invent a supernatural monster if you like. Or you can take a harder look at the person who stood beside them. For as long as people have gone into wild country, some have used that isolation for ugly purposes. The wilderness offers distance, confusion, dangerous ground, and a ready-made excuse. Folks fall. Weather turns. Trails vanish. Accidents happen every day. Sometimes an accident is exactly what happened. Sometimes it is not. The phrase Alpine divorce comes from Robert Barr’s 1893 short story of the same name. In it, a husband plans to murder his wife in the mountains and pass her death off as an accident. The term found new life in 2026 as women shared stories about partners abandoning them on hikes, charging ahead, refusing to wait, or storming off after an argument. Most of those stories are not attempted murders. That is what makes them useful. Malice is not required to turn the wilderness deadly. Pride will do. So will impatience, resentment, recklessness, or plain indifference. In January 2025, a couple attempted a winter ascent of Austria’s highest mountain. The woman became exhausted and hypothermic near the summit. Her more experienced boyfriend eventually left her and descended to seek help. She froze to death roughly fifty meters below the top. That truth is colder than a murder plot. There was no creature stalking them. There was no curse on the mountain. There was a long chain of human decisions, and at the end of it, a woman was left alone in the snow. We search the treeline for monsters with claws, glowing eyes, and enormous footprints because an outside threat is easier to understand. It gives the story a clean shape. The creature came from the darkness. The creature did the killing. Case closed. Human danger is rarely so considerate. An unexplained death may be an accident. It may be negligence. It may be deliberate violence. Sometimes the evidence will never confess. Mystery, however, should not become permission to ignore the dangers we already understand. Maybe there really are monsters hiding in the woods. I have spent enough time in the dark to leave that door cracked. But the cases we can prove tell us something worse. A monster does not need fur, fangs, or glowing red eyes. Sometimes it looks exactly like the person who followed you onto the trail. Or the one who came back without you… For more strange creatures, old legends, and human darkness tangled beneath them, follow the Cryptid Carl Chronicles. If you enjoyed this trip into the shadows, like the video, leave a comment, and subscribe for more strange tales from the backwoods. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   22 Sept 2026

   The Boy in the Glass Tomb

   High on a wooded ridge in Pleasants County, West Virginia, the ruins of a small concrete tomb hold one of the strangest stories in Appalachian folklore. In 1904, a seven-year-old boy known as Ikie died. What happened afterward transformed a family tragedy into a legend that has survived for more than a century. Stories say Ikie’s body was preserved inside a concrete crypt, surrounded by his toys. His mother returned to the tomb to clean it, sit beside him, and, according to the darker versions of the tale, remove her dead son from his resting place and rock him in her arms. Then came the vandals, rumors of stolen remains, strange nighttime visitors, and the eventual reburial of Ikie’s bones. But where does history end and folklore begin? In this episode of Dark Side of the Holler digs into the documented history and disturbing legends surrounding Ikie’s Tomb and the grief at the center of one of West Virginia’s eeriest stories. Dark Side of the Holler explores Appalachian folklore, cryptids, hauntings, strange history, and the things still hiding in the hills. Follow Dark Side of the Holler for more strange tales from the backwoods. Subscribe to the podcast and YouTube channel so you don’t miss the next story.https://www.youtube.com/@dsothmag (https://www.youtube.com/@dsothmag) Read Dark Side of the Holler and join the mailing list for new stories, magazine releases, books, artwork, and upcoming episodes.https://darksideoftheholler.com (https://darksideoftheholler.com) If you enjoyed the episode, leave a rating or review and share it with somebody who likes their Appalachian history a little darker.And if your family has a ghost story, local legend, strange encounter, or piece of forgotten Appalachian folklore, send it to Dark Side of the Holler. Your story may become a future episode. https://darksideoftheholler.com (https://darksideoftheholler.com) Dark Side of the Holler is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   15 Sept 2026

   You Need Not Fear Me

   His rifle had grown heavy and slick in his hands. Sweat soaked through his shirt, gnats worried his ears, and every groundhog in the hills surrounding Grant Town seemed to have received word of his coming. The sun lowered behind the ridges, throwing long shadows across the spoil banks and company roads, and Jennings Frederick turned home with an empty game bag, pondering the few days he had left before he was due to enter the Air Force. The path carried him beneath a stand of maples where the sunlight broke against the leaves and fell in pale green pieces. The air smelled of damp soil, crushed weeds, and the distant sulfur stink of the mines. Insects whined in the undergrowth, but nothing else moved. Then something began jabbering in the trees. Jennings stopped. The sound came fast and high, like a human voice trapped on a tape recorder spinning three times its proper speed. It moved from one side of the path to the other without disturbing a branch. Jennings raised his rifle and searched the shadows beneath the maples. “Who’s there?” The jabbering stopped. A voice answered. You need not fear me. The words never passed through his ears. They appeared inside his head fully formed, cold and clear beneath the rustle of the trees, as though something had reached through his skull and plucked them against the tender meat of his brain. I wish to communicate. Jennings turned slowly, keeping the rifle against his shoulder. “I can hear you. Come on out.” I come as friends. Something moved behind him. He spun around and found only a wall of green leaves trembling in the heat. We know of you all. The woods pressed close around him. He heard his own breath, hot and ragged, while sweat crawled from his brow and stung his eyes. The voice had not said it knew him. It knew them all. I come in peace. Jennings lowered the rifle and reached for the handkerchief in his back pocket. He told himself the heat had gotten to him. He had skipped lunch and walked too far beneath the summer sun. A drink of water and a few minutes in the shade would set him straight, and by the time he reached home, the voice would be nothing more than a feverish notion he would feel foolish remembering. I wish medical assistance. A sharp pain pierced his wrist. Jennings jerked his arm and thought he had caught it in a patch of briars. He looked down, expecting thorns and blood. Instead, three green fingers had wrapped around him. Each was nearly seven inches long and narrow as a switch, with small round suckers puckered along its underside. A black needle protruded from every fingertip. All three needles had buried themselves in the tender skin above his hand. The fingers tightened. I need your help. Jennings followed the thin green hand to an arm no thicker than a quarter, then traced that impossible limb into the brush. The creature stood seven feet tall. Its body was long and narrow, jointed beneath a hide resembling the stalk of some enormous plant that had grown without sun. Fibers crossed its chest and twisted around its limbs like vines strangling a dead tree. Its face carried the loose arrangement of human features, though whatever had fashioned it possessed only a crude understanding of where those features belonged. Pointed ears rose from the sides of its head. A sparse tuft of dark growth clung to its crown. Its yellow eyes watched Jennings with the ancient patience of a hungry crocodile. He tried to pull away. The arm looked as though he could snap it across his knee, but it held him with terrible strength. Jennings planted both boots against the ground and dragged backward until his heels tore trenches through the leaves. The creature remained still. Its narrow body did not bend or sway. A wet sucking noise came from the fingers. The skin beneath the cups drew tight. Blood traveled through the creature in three dark threads, running from Jennings’s wrist into the fingers, across the hand, and up the narrow arm. The fibers of its body flexed and swelled as they received him. Jennings screamed and swung the rifle one-handed. The stock struck the creature’s shoulder with a hollow crack, like an axe biting rotten timber. The thing leaned over him, its eyes turning slowly behind their glassy surfaces. Yellow darkened to orange, then deepened into a red so rich that Jennings thought of fresh blood beneath lantern light. The eyes spun faster as the creature fed. He tried to raise the rifle again, but his arm would not move. The pain faded first, and the forested hills followed. Trees bent away from him and stretched into green tunnels while those red eyes remained fixed at the center of the world. His heartbeat slowed. Each pulse pushed another mouthful of blood through the needles. Jennings watched his life travel up the creature’s arm. The horror remained somewhere far away, trapped behind those rotating circles. His body understood, but the warning could no longer reach his mind. His knees softened. The rifle slipped from his hand and landed among the leaves. The creature pulled him closer. Its mouth opened. There were no teeth, no tongue, nothing that belonged inside an animal. A dark cavity lined with pale fibers opened and closed as though breathing him in. The air around it carried the smell of torn roots and something sweet left too long in the sun. His vision narrowed. The maples disappeared. The hills disappeared. The whole world collapsed until only the red eyes and the sucking fingers remained. He imagined the creature releasing him after it had emptied him. He saw himself crumpled beside the path, skin white and slack, while the groundhogs crept from their burrows to nose around his corpse. Someone would find the rifle first. Ma would stand at the edge of the woods and refuse to go any farther. She already knew what waited among the trees. Three years earlier, she had warned them about the flying saucer and the little green devil tethered to it. Nobody took her seriously except Jennings. He searched the grounds, cast the footprints, gathered the strange hairs, and took photographs of everything he could find. He wrapped the evidence and sent it to the Air Force. They called it a weather balloon. They kept the evidence all the same. In a few days, Jennings would belong to them too. With his blood pumping into this thing’s veins, he wondered what they already knew. Perhaps they had seen the creature before. Perhaps they understood why it came to these hills, what it needed from the people living beneath them, and how long its kind had watched man crawl from its caves and build little fires against the dark. The creature’s spinning eyes slowed. Red faded toward orange. The hold over Jennings’s limbs weakened, and pain flooded back into his wrist. His heart hammered against his sternum, fighting to drive what blood remained toward his brain. The needles withdrew. Jennings fell backward and struck the ground. He clutched his bleeding arm while the creature towered over him, its narrow chest swollen with the blood moving beneath its fibers. It watched him gasp among the dead leaves. “I helped you,” Jennings whispered. The creature tilted its head. Words entered his mind once more, faint and hurried. We know of you all. Then it turned and its legs unfolded beneath it and hurled the thin body up the hillside. Each leap carried it dozens of feet through the brush. Saplings snapped against its chest. Leaves spun in the air behind it. Within seconds, the creature vanished among the trees. A low humming rolled through the ground. Jennings felt it in his ribs before he heard it. The vibration climbed in pitch, shaking loose leaves from the maples and sending birds tearing from their branches. Somewhere beyond the ridge, something large rose above the forest. He saw no saucer through the canopy. A pale disturbance moved behind the leaves, followed by a vast shadow passing across the sun. The humming ascended until it became a pressure inside his skull, then broke and disappeared. The woods settled around him. After several minutes, the birds began to sing again. Jennings remained on the ground with his hand clamped over the punctures. Blood ran between his fingers and spotted the leaves. His rifle lay a few feet away, useless. When he finally reached home, he told his family he had fallen into briars. It was easier than telling them the truth. Easier than describing the fingers, the rotating eyes, or the dark veins swelling with his blood. Easier than admitting that when the thing said it needed help, some part of him had believed it. For years, Jennings Frederick kept the encounter hidden. When he finally revealed what had happened beneath the maples outside Grant Town, writer Gray Barker gave the creature a name. The Vegetable Man. It sounded harmless when printed on paper. Almost funny. A name for a sideshow attraction, a comic-book villain, or something parents might invent to frighten children into finishing their supper. Jennings knew the grip of those green fingers around his wrist. He knew the wet sucking sound they made as they drew blood from his veins. He knew the hills sheltered things that looked upon mankind and saw only warm meat. Most of all, he remembered the creature’s first promise, spoken while it waited unseen among the trees. You need not fear me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   9 Sept 2026

   Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

   The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum was supposed to be an act of mercy. Built in Weston, West Virginia, according to the principles of the Kirkbride Plan, it was designed around a radical idea for its time: that the mentally ill were human beings who might actually get better if given sunlight, fresh air, space, dignity, and care. It was built for roughly 250 patients. Eventually, thousands passed through its halls. As the institution became overcrowded, the line between treatment and confinement began to disappear. People suffering from mental illness were joined by alcoholics, addicts, epileptics, and others society simply didn’t know what to do with. Treatments became more desperate. Electroshock. Insulin shock. Lobotomies. But this isn’t really a story about an old asylum. It’s a story about what happens when a society decides certain people are inconvenient. The buildings change. The terminology gets nicer. The methods become more sophisticated. The impulse remains. Welcome to the Dark Side of the Holler. Written and narrated by Waylon Graves. #WestVirginia #Appalachia #DarkHistory #TransAllegheny #WaylonGraves This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

6. 

   2 Sept 2026

   The Greenbrier Bunker

   Beneath the luxury of West Virginia’s Greenbrier resort, the federal government concealed a massive Cold War bunker designed to shelter Congress during a nuclear attack. It was stocked, staffed, and kept ready for decades. While ordinary Americans faced the prospect of fallout, radiation sickness, and societal collapse, lawmakers planned to continue governing from underground. In this episode of Dark Side of the Holler, Waylon Graves examines the Greenbrier Bunker not simply as a strange relic, but as a monument to hierarchy—concrete evidence of who the government expected to survive and who was left out of the plan. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

7. 

   26 Aug 2026

   The True Story Behind Donnie Darko: The Legend of Bunny Man Bridge

   What if the nightmare behind Donnie Darko had roots in a real American urban legend?In October 1970, police in Fairfax County, Virginia received reports of a man dressed in a rabbit costume terrorizing people along lonely back roads. In one encounter, he allegedly hurled a hatchet through a car window. In another, a man dressed as a rabbit was reportedly seen attacking a house with an axe.Then the stories got stranger.The Bunny Man became an escaped asylum patient. A murderer. A ghost haunting an old railroad bridge outside Clifton, Virginia.Today, Bunny Man Bridge remains one of Northern Virginia’s most infamous urban legends — and its strange similarities to Frank, the terrifying rabbit figure from Donnie Darko, are hard to ignore.This is the true story of the Bunny Man, the history behind the legend, and how a few strange encounters in 1970 became a monster that refuses to die.Dark Side of the Holler explores Appalachian folklore, cryptids, hauntings, strange history, and the stories lurking just beyond the firelight.Subscribe for more.#DonnieDarko #BunnyMan #UrbanLegends This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

8. 

   21 Aug 2026

   Kelly-Hopkinsville Goblins

   This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dsoth.substack.com (https://dsoth.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Reach and audience

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.