This week, we are bringing you an episode from our friends over at the podcast Spooked. There are some places, deep in the woods, far away from civilization, that are magical. Chuck is hiking in the Appalachian woods when he stumbles upon one of these places: Dismal Falls. But Dismal Falls isn’t all fairies and rainbows. It’s a place of dark magic. This story comes to us from the Spooked podcast. You can listen to more heart-pounding episodes of Spooked on any podcast platform. Produced by Greta Weber, original score by Clay Xavier, artwork by Teo Ducot. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the podcast 'Spooked' about?
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This week, we are featuring an episode from our friends over at the podcast, Spooked. Spooked features true-life supernatural stories told firsthand by people who can barely believe it happened themselves. Spooked is made in partnership with KQED and is hosted by the iconic Glenn Washington, who also shares stories of his own.
You may also know Glenn Washington from his show Snap Judgment, which I have been a longtime fan of. This is a show that is near and dear to my heart, in fact. When I was younger, I used to drive a truck around all day for work, and I spent, I don't even know how many hours, just sitting in traffic in that truck, listening to Glenn Washington on the radio.
So I'm very excited to be doing this with Spooked. Every episode is scored with original music and sound design, transporting you to the other side of the veil. These stories demand listeners to question their own map of reality. This episode is called Dismal Falls. Once again, it's from Spooked, and I think you're going to like it.
They say out of sight is out of mind. But I have wandered countless times to meet with those I cannot see. For they are still in mind to me. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned. As a kid, my grandfather had a shotgun. He brought it out twice every year, once as the clock turned over on New Year's Eve. He'd run out to the porch and blast into the sky. Plow, plow, plow, plow, plow, plow.
Granddaddy, granddaddy, you said whatever goes up has got to come down. No, not on New Year's Day, baby. The other time. was the night before Halloween. We're in Detroit. Thousands of fires erupted the moment the sun set over the horizon. The city's rage, blazing orange and red and gold. Devil's night.
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Chapter 2: Who hosts the 'Spooked' podcast?
And I watched granddaddy get his gun, set up his folding chair on the porch and sit smoking his cigarette, stroking the barrel. I get back up in the house now, baby. Take care of your grandmama. All around us, Detroit burns. And hiding behind the bars on our windows, looking out into the darkness past granddaddy, I see shadows running on the sidewalk.
Hooded figures wearing Batman, Superman, Donald Duck masks, carrying torches, gasoline containers, some pausing to consider our home. than hearing the cock of his gun barrel before deciding to move on. And if he's gonna stay up to protect us, I'm gonna stay up to protect him. all night long if I have to, and I try. Watching, watching shadows, fires, police cars. I try.
Then first light presses me awake. My face sleep-mashed against the window. I jump up, scared, open the front door and see my granddaddy still sitting sentry on the porch, still holding his shotgun, pulling the dregs from his last cigarettes, his pack of super long menthol cools. You keep your granny safe like I asked you? Yes, sir. Good boy. Granddaddy, weren't you scared?
Chapter 3: What is the story of Granddaddy's night watch?
Then, for just an instant, his eyes flashed hot. He looks at me like he's seen something else. Someone else. I already paid the fire once, baby. I won't pay it again. Before he says it, I never knew how his sister had passed. I didn't understand that it wasn't an accident.
I didn't know that someone had meant to burn his black family from their home in the middle of the night and how every person that crawled out of that inferno long ago took something of the flame with them. I didn't understand that he's been battling a different fire for a very long time. Then the burn passes from his eyes and he's almost my grandfather again.
And I need him back from that place he just went. Granddaddy. Granddaddy, can I have just a little bit of ice cream and put my cornflakes? He looks at me all the way then.
Baby, you're going to have a lot of ice cream in there if you don't tell your grandmama.
Spookstars. On this spooked road, we know full well that things are never as they seem. That people are often fighting invisible battles against unseen forces. We know all of this. But still... There's a different type of magic to being in the wild that highlights the mystery of everything we do not see. Our next storyteller, Chuck. Chuck comes face to face with his unknown.
Deep in the Appalachian wilderness, a place called Dismal Falls. Spook.
My name is Chuck. I've been hanging out in the woods since I was really young. Kind of been out there ever since. Between backpacking tours and wilderness therapy, ended up making it what I do for a living at this point. So this happened in 2015, it was summertime. And the camp that we were working out of, our main base camp, from what I understand, it was an old Christian summer camp.
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Chapter 4: What happens when Chuck explores Dismal Falls?
I'm not sure the details, but it was pretty old camp. A lot of the cabins that we used had been kind of redone a little bit. And then of course we had the horse stables And we had, I want to say like probably 15 or 16 of them, older horses, a lot of them. And the horses were actually essentially in therapy as well. The kids would work with them for part of their therapy.
And then the horses were also being rehabilitated from abusive homes at the same time. At night, you would hear, down by the stables, the donkey. His name was Stanley. It was a mini donkey. And he would start going off at night down there. I don't know if anybody out there has ever heard a donkey freaking out, but it can be kind of weird, a little bit scary.
But he would do that pretty consistently. And then usually the next day when we would go down to do horses, first thing we do is groom them. And when you go to groom them, their manes and tails would be just completely in knots. Even if we had brushed them the day before, the horses would be in poor shape.
So at the time, I really didn't think a lot of it, but I would have kids going to be like, look at this. Like, I didn't do this. I'd be like, okay, like, what's your point? They'd be like, we were the last group here. Like, I didn't do this. And I'm like, well, maybe Miss Ann did it. You know, like, it's not part of my pay grade right now to worry about the horses' names.
I don't know a whole ton about horses, but I do remember... Growing up, my great-grandma would talk about that happening and she said it meant there was a witch on your farm. I guess it was because she would go out and every single day the manes and the tails on the livestock were tangled up. It was like somebody had gone out and just went haywire on these animals.
And they'd be skittish and they would be jumpy and they just were not in a good mood at all. That was one of the few things she ever talked about was she said, I swear there's a witch out here. And she would, I mean, she'd say it all the time. From the first time it happened down by the horse stables, I mean, I definitely thought of that. I remembered her saying that immediately. That damn witch.
But I was like, well, you know, if it happens a couple of times, whatever. It's not a big deal. You know, like, well, it's coyotes or something like that. But with how consistently it happened there, I did start to wonder a little bit about that. I'd heard about Dismal Falls. I'd read about it. I read about it initially on a photography website.
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Chapter 5: Is there a witch at Dismal Falls?
And I saw pictures of it, and I was like, man, that's a beautiful waterfall. I want to get out there and go see this. And I got linked over to a book called Land of Waterfalls. And this is by a guy named Jim Bob Tensley. He wrote it in 88. And he wrote it about Transylvania County mainly. Which is the land of waterfalls, as they call it. There's tons of waterfalls out there, charted, uncharted.
There's some that don't even have names. And he describes it as one of the most foreboding places in the southern Appalachians. I was mainly reading to get directions. I just want to know how to get out there. Decided I was going to go check it out the next day. And so I drove up and I parked there at the base camp and started my hike up there.
It's almost like a tunnel made out of rhododendron and mountain laurels that are so low to the ground that they're almost over your head. Very thick to get through. You're kind of on hands and knees. And that goes on for some time. Then you pop out of that. It opens up a little bit for you. And you're still going up a really steep grade. Pretty blind. You can't see a whole lot.
And you come around this corner and on your left side, there's this really large boulder. I mean, it's got to be the size of a house. It's a big boulder. So I took note of that and kept on moving. And not too long after that, you come to this point where the trail splits into two. At that point, I stopped and got my map out. I was not sure which way to go 100%.
The lower route that stayed pretty flat, according to the map, would go to the dismal wall. But the other trail that goes, I mean, from where I was at, it looked like it went straight uphill. That's the one that goes to the waterfall. I mean, it is really steep. So I start the climb up that way. I get probably about halfway up it and just felt like I was being watched.
I got that, just that pit of your stomach feeling and hair on the back of my neck kind of stood up. And weirdly enough, my nose actually started bleeding right then too. I kind of turned around to where this kind of sense was coming from. And all I could see was just this foot and part of a robe disappear into the rhododendron thicket. Just caught a glimpse of it.
At the time, I mean, we had been out the night before. I was dehydrated a little bit, kind of tired, and a little bit hungover. And so I was like, I'm definitely seeing things. Like, I should take a break. And I'm thinking, I'm like, well, how is that possible? Because I didn't hear anything. And with how thick the leaf litter is there, you can hear anything. It was quiet.
It's very quiet out there. So I'm thinking about all this and it's just, it's getting me flustered. So I'm just like, all right, I'm going to keep going. Kept on moving and eventually I got to the top of this hill that I've been climbing, and I crested over the top of it, and there's a tree there.
The tree has got a rope coming down from it that goes to another tree, and that tree has a rope, and then from there, it kind of puts you down in the rhododendron by the banks of Dismal Falls. It's just a big, long bridal veil. Really, really pretty waterfall.
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Chapter 6: What mysterious encounter did Chuck have at the waterfall?
And then she's out of sight.
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Do you know what went down at the Viper Room the night River Phoenix died? Or how about the mysterious death of Brittany Murphy? Are you aware of how Steve McQueen escaped murder at the hands of the Manson family? The obsessive killing of Dorothy Stratton? The real-life murder that inspired David Lynch's Twin Peaks? The three conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death?
These stories and more are told in the new podcast, Hollywoodland, where true crime and Tinseltown collide. Hollywoodland is hosted by me, Jake Brennan, creator of the award-winning music and true crime podcast, Disgraceland. Follow and listen to Hollywoodland wherever you get your podcasts.
Are you obsessed with cults? Then, oh goody, do I have a podcast recommendation for you. It's called Sounds Like a Cult, and it's a show about the modern-day cults we all follow. Think Les Jonestown and the Mansons, and more Disney adults, church camp, momfluencers, or people who are just obsessed with their Stanley Cup?
I'm Amanda Montell, sounds like a cult's host, and every week I choose a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist and analyze it with the help of expert guests, listener call-ins, and fascinating stories to figure out if the group of the week is a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out level cult.
If you're new to the show, I recommend starting out with one of my favorite episodes, like the one on the Cult of Purity Rings featuring Kelsey from Normal Gossip. We also just did an episode on the Cult of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Discussions get very juicy on Sounds Like a Cult. The show is available on all major podcast platforms and new episodes come out every Tuesday.
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