Bonus episode Bigfoot creatures

We all remember the childhood dare… turn off the lights, look into the mirror, and say her name three times. 🪞🩸 But who was Bloody Mary REALLY? A queen? A witch? A grieving mother? Or something much older? This week on Poisoned Appalachia, we’re going beyond the childhood ghost story to uncover the dark history and folklore behind the woman in the mirror. Tell me… did you ever try to summon Bloody Mary as a kid? And did anything happen? 👀

He was born in a small West Virginia town. Decades later, he became one of Florida's most feared serial killers. But one 17-year-old girl would help bring his killing spree to an end. This is the story of Bobby Joe Long and the incredible survival of Lisa McVey. 🎙️

For years, Fred Zain was one of West Virginia’s most trusted forensic experts. Prosecutors relied on his findings, juries believed his testimony, and men were sent to prison based in part on the science he presented in court. Then DNA testing began telling a very different story. In this episode of Poisoned Appalachia, we uncover the Fred Zain scandal—questionable lab results, ignored warnings, wrongful convictions, and an investigation that cast doubt on scores of criminal cases in West Virginia and beyond. We also look at the innocent men who lost years of their lives before the evidence against them finally began to unravel. How many lives can one trusted expert destroy before someone finally checks his work?

Fairies in Appalachia? Absolutely—but forget the tiny wings, glitter, and happily-ever-afters. Long before the modern fairy tale, the Fair Folk of European folklore were mysterious, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous beings that demanded respect. And when Scots-Irish, German, and other European settlers crossed the Atlantic, they brought those old beliefs with them into the Appalachian Mountains. In this episode of Poisoned Appalachia, we trace those stories from the forests and mountains of the Old World into the hollers of Appalachia. We’ll explore the Fae of Scottish and Irish tradition, supernatural beings found in German folklore, and how generations of immigration helped transform these ancient beliefs into something distinctly Appalachian. Because our ancestors didn’t cross the ocean empty-handed. Their stories came with them. And some of those stories found a very comfortable home in the mountains.

Sometimes, the darkest stories in Appalachia aren’t legends. They’re history. Five days before Halloween in 1948, a strange yellow fog settled over the Pennsylvania mill town of Donora and nearby Webster. At first, life continued beneath the haze. There was a Halloween parade. A Friday night football game. The mills kept running. Then people started struggling to breathe. As the fog thickened, doctors and firefighters fought through streets where visibility had nearly disappeared. And soon, people began to die. In this episode of Poisoned Appalachia, we travel to Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River Valley to uncover the story of the Donora Death Fog—what caused it, what the people trapped beneath it endured, and how one deadly October weekend helped change America’s understanding of industrial pollution. Because in Appalachia, industry has always come with a price. And in Donora, the price was the very air people breathed.