Mountain history, told close to the road.
Stories of Appalachia treats the region’s past as something still tied to roads, creeks, mines, and family memory. Its episodes move patiently through pioneers, coal strikes, Civil War violence, blues musicians, hermits, pilots, and mysteries that never quite close.
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Stories of Appalachia is a regional history show centered on the people, conflicts, legends, and remembered places of the Appalachian region. It is built for listeners who enjoy a story that can start with a familiar town name and end in an unsolved disappearance, a labor standoff, a Civil War killing, or a blues stage far from home. The pacing is steady. The show does not rush past dates, family names, county lines, old trails, coal camps, forts, churches, or the local landmarks that make a story feel placed rather than merely summarized. Episodes about James Herrod and Casper Mansker use frontier biography to trace how early Kentucky and Tennessee settlements took shape. Those accounts also leave room for uncertainty, especially where birth records, oral tradition, and disappearance stories do not fully agree. Labor history gets similar patience. The 1895 Flat Top coal strike is framed through Black miners, the Pocahontas Coalfield, wage cuts, company-store costs, railroad competition, militia deployment, and the UMW’s early organizing in the region. Civil War episodes are graver. Stories of the Kirkland Bushwhackers and Daniel Ellis focus on mountain borderlands where Union and Confederate loyalties split families and where violence did not stay neatly on battlefields. The show also makes space for strange local characters. Tandy Kusenberry’s retreat from society, Vaughn Shores’s risky flying, and moonshine-linked aviation stories show the series’ taste for lives that seem too odd to have traveled through ordinary records. Music history adds another current, especially in episodes on Stick and Brownie McGhee, East Tennessee, church music, medicine shows, and the blues’ place alongside country and bluegrass memory. The result is not slick documentary distance. It feels researched but conversational, serious without becoming stiff, and willing to admit when the trail runs into folklore. Stories of Appalachia works best when local detail matters as much as the headline event.
Made for: For listeners who like regional history, folklore, Civil War border stories, coalfield labor history, frontier biography, and music roots told with local texture. It especially suits people who prefer patient narrative over polished spectacle.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its attachment to place: roads, creeks, forts, county lines, coal camps, and remembered landmarks carry the storytelling. It balances oral tradition with dates and documented context, leaving uncertainty visible instead of smoothing it away.
Welcome to "Stories of Appalachia," the podcast where hosts Steve Gilly and Rod Mullins have been unraveling the captivating history and folklore of the Appalachian region since 2015. Join them as they guide you through mist-covered mountains and winding rivers, exploring the stories that define the heart and soul of Appalachia. www.storiesofappalachia.com
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Stories of Appalachia brings regional history and folklore to the Music beat through careful storytelling about the places behind Appalachian culture.
Steve Gilly and Rod Mullins tell Appalachian history as a conversation between researched narration and local recollection. Stories of Appalachia moves from the fatal record surrounding Big Bull Tunnel to the life of daredevil pilot Von Shores, keeping attention on people and…
A cursed railroad tunnel gives your Appalachian curiosity a properly ominous entrance.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A moonshine pilot story carried by family memory and one upside-down landing.
Stories of Appalachia follows Vaughn Shores as a local daredevil running routes from Pound and Clintwood into southeastern Kentucky, with possible reaches into West Virginia and southern Ohio about a hundred years ago.
A railroad tunnel story becomes a hard, local history of accidents, deaths, and a reputation that sticks.
Big Bull Tunnel comes through as a plain railroad tunnel near St. Paul with a dark history that never feels inflated. It moves through accidents, rock falls, serious injuries, and deaths, then circles back to the killing of the night watchman, so the tunnel's reputation for bad…
John Gatewood's story holds together through cattle drives, family traces, and an ending that never quite resolves.
Stories of Appalachia treats John P. Gatewood as a figure shaped as much by gaps as by action: a Fentress County man remembered as a Confederate bushwhacker or guerrilla who had ridden with Champ Ferguson.
A Wolfe County blast leads into the perilous nitroglycerin work around oil fields.
Stories of Appalachia turns the Torrent, Kentucky nitroglycerin explosion into a compact, grounded piece of regional industrial history. The episode begins with four men killed when more than 100 gallons of nitroglycerin exploded at a plant near Torrent, then broadens into the…
Rowdy paranormal lore with the lights flickering.
Chicago critics DeRogatis and Kot pair new-album reviews with deep dives into records like Rumours.
Billboard's Keith Caulfield and Katie Atkinson break down the week's Hot 100 and 200 charts.
Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson trace viral internet stories from Reddit threads to courtrooms.
Hosts Steve Gilly and Rod Mullins explore the life of John P.
Hosts Steve Gilly and Rod Mullins explore the 1919 nitroglycerin explosion at the Home Torpedo Company in Torrent, Kentucky, which killed four men.
David Biddix, a communications specialist and local historian in Mitchell County, North Carolina, shares his firsthand experience of Hurricane Helene's devastating impact on the Appalachian region.
Stories of Appalachia examines John Sevier’s January 1789 attack on John Watts’s Cherokee and Creek winter encampment at Flint Creek in Upper East Tennessee.
Stories of Appalachia follows William Hewitt, a 1764 Virginia-born pioneer who abandoned settled life for Ohio's wilderness.
Stories of Appalachia recounts the September 6, 1894, Big Moses blowout in Tyler County, West Virginia, where gas lifted drilling equipment and sounded 10 miles away.
Stories of Appalachia traces Vincent Addison Witcher's transformation from a Virginia lawyer into the Confederate bushwhacker known as Clawhammer.
Stories of Appalachia examines John Claypool’s 1781 rebellion against Virginia’s 82% property tax and wartime draft.
This episode explores the life and mysterious disappearance of James Harrod, the founder of Kentucky's first permanent British settlement, delving into historical details and unsolved aspects of his story.
This episode explores the unusual story of Roger Tandy Cousin Barry, a wealthy Kentucky man who abandoned society after global adventures to live as a woman-hating hermit in Appalachia.
This episode discusses the 1895 Flat Top Coal Strike in the Pocahontas Coalfield, led by black miners, which helped the United Mine Workers unionize the region.
This episode explores the life of Casper Mansker, an early long hunter and explorer who helped open Tennessee's Cumberland region to settlement, beginning with his unusual birth on an immigrant ship in 1750.
This episode tells the story of Daniel Ellis, a wagon maker from Carter County, Tennessee, who became a target with a Confederate bounty on his head during the Civil War.
Stories of Appalachia turns to Vaughn Shores, the daredevil pilot tied to Pound and Clintwood.
The show returns to the Big Bull Tunnel near St.
This episode explores the 1925 Asheville Sessions by OK Records as a crucial early spark in recording Appalachian Mountain music, predating the famous Bristol sessions and highlighting the oral tradition of this musical heritage.
This tenth anniversary special episode features two dark Appalachian ghost stories, starting with the tale of the Wardlaw sisters in Christiansburg, Virginia.
This episode explores the story of the Bridge Burners, Union loyalists in East Tennessee who secretly sabotaged Confederate supply lines by destroying railroad bridges during the Civil War.
David Biddix, a communications specialist and local historian in Mitchell County, North Carolina, shares his firsthand experience of Hurricane Helene's devastating impact on the Appalachian region.