A bluetick hound chased a coon to the edge of a flooded pit in McDowell County, West Virginia. What he found there broke something in him that a thousand years of breeding couldn't fix.

He never chased again.

This is "The Dog at Marley Fork" — an original Appalachian horror story.

Two teenage boys follow a borrowed dog up a mountain they weren't supposed to cross. When the dog reaches an old mine site and won't come back, they go after him. What they find at the water's edge doesn't make sense. What happens to the dog makes even less.

Afterward, they stop at the Dollar General for batteries. The man behind the register is shaking. He's been shaking for weeks. They don't know why.

In this episode:

• An original Appalachian horror story (~20 minutes)
• No gore. Slow dread.

The Pit — the novel this story precedes — is available now for Kindle, Audible, and paperback. Just click here.

About Wallace Cole: Wallace Cole grew up in Monroe County, West Virginia. He collects the stories mountain people carry but don't tell outsiders. The Pit is his first novel. The Fox Is Still On Fire, a nonfiction series examining Appalachian warnings, is also available.

Like Wallace Cole stories?
📚 Find more Appalachian horror by Wallace Cole on Amazon - Click Here

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Broken saplings. Eight to ten feet up. In a row. Through remote timber where the surrounding trees were untouched. A true story of life in Appalachia.

A cow horn, nine feet up in an oak, in woods so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat.

Tree structures that matched formations being documented two thousand miles away — by researchers Wallace had never heard of, in forests he had never visited.

He noticed all of it years before he knew anyone associated these things with anything.

That sequence is the only part that matters.

The Fox Is Still On Fire: The Warnings is now available on Amazon.

Twelve unwritten rules. Exposed in writing for the first time. The things Appalachian people were told to do — and never do — in the woods, on the roads, on the porch, and in the presence of the dead. Rules that traveled across mountains, state lines, and generations without changing.

The explanations changed constantly.

The rules didn't.

The Fox Is Still On Fire: The Warnings — Wallace Cole

Available now at amazon.com.

Pay attention to what is paying attention to you.

Like Wallace Cole stories?
📚 Find more Appalachian horror by Wallace Cole on Amazon - Click Here

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The Fox Is Still On Fire, Episode 1: Don't whistle after dark.

Where I grew up in West Virginia, that wasn't advice. It was a rule — and the old people who passed it down couldn't always tell you where it came from. They only knew you followed it.

In this episode, Wallace Cole reads Chapter 1 of his book, The Fox Is Still On Fire, a book of warnings common across Appalachia. What he finds isn't a simple superstition. It's a pattern — one that stretches across cultures, across continents, and across centuries, carried by people who had no way of knowing they were all saying the same thing.

Why did so many unconnected communities arrive at the same warning?

What were the old people trying to protect their children from?

And why does the rule survive long after the explanation has been forgotten?

The story begins with a whistle in the dark.

In This Episode

• The rule Wallace heard before he was old enough to question it
• Why Monroe County grandmothers repeated it — and why they couldn't always say why
• The night Wallace whistled in the woods and something answered
• Appalachian oral tradition and the difference between explanation and instruction
• Strikingly similar warnings from cultures that never had contact with one another
• Why some warnings outlast the civilizations that created them

"The story may disappear. The warning remains."

Follow the Podcast

New episodes are coming. If you love Appalachian storytelling, folklore, and the questions that linger in old places, follow the show so you don't miss what's next. And if you know someone who grew up hearing rules nobody could explain, send them this episode. They'll know exactly what Wallace is talking about.

Pay attention to what is paying attention to you.

To check out The Fox Is Still On Fire, Click Here

Like Wallace Cole stories?
📚 Find more Appalachian horror by Wallace Cole on Amazon - Click Here

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The bathroom light was on.

I had turned it off before I went to bed. I know that the way I know my own name. I've turned off the bathroom light in a thousand hotel rooms across this country.

It was on. And it was moving.

Night Two at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. Six guests in the entire building. Off-season. The week before partial winter closure. In Episode One, I gave every strange thing that happened a reasonable explanation. The notebook. The shoes. The sound in the hall.

Night Two, the explanations started coming harder.

In this episode: what a maintenance worker wrote in 1962 and then filed away and never mentioned again. A chef who won't go into his own basement after ten o'clock. A housekeeper who watched someone disappear from a fourth-floor corridor — and finished her shift anyway. A room that had been empty all week. And what happened at 2:17 in the morning when I finally ran out of reasonable things to tell myself.

I'm not a ghost hunter. I don't perform fear for an audience. I'm an investigator who goes to places that have things wrong with them and tries to explain what's there.

Night Two at the Stanley, I couldn't find the right explanation.

Episode Three drops soon. Subscribe so you don't miss it.

This episode is a work of narrative horror inspired by the history, folklore, and public reputation of the Stanley Hotel. Certain characters, conversations, events, and experiences have been fictionalized or dramatized for entertainment purposes.

Some land gets sold. Some land gets inherited. Some land gets fought over in court for years.

And some land — nobody claims. Not because it's worthless. Because something won't allow it.

In Monroe County, West Virginia, a property dispute over an unnamed hollow leads a land surveyor deep into terrain that doesn't appear on any official map. The trail cameras keep losing their SD cards. The soil keeps losing its tracks. And the county records keep losing something far more important.

This isn't a ghost story. There's no haunted house. No cursed object.

Just a hollow that has been deliberately left off every map, deed, and survey since 1798.

And a question that surveyors have been asking — and never answering — for over two centuries:

Who owns it? Or... what?

Enjoyed this one? ⭐ Leave a rating on Apple Podcasts — it takes 10 seconds and helps more listeners find the show. 🔔 Follow on Spotify so new episodes land automatically. 📩 Share this episode with one person who sleeps with the lights on.

We read every review. Every single one.

The Stanley Hotel inspired Stephen King's The Shining. Stephen King stayed in Room 217 and left with a nightmare that became a novel. Jim Carrey stayed in Room 217 and left in the middle of the night — and has never said why.

I stayed four nights. Off-season. Mostly alone.

This is Episode 1 — Nights One and Two. The staff said things. The hotel said things. Some of it I can explain.

Some of it I can't.

Stuff That Scares Me is hosted by Wallace Cole — raised in haunted Appalachia, where the old folks knew things they wouldn't say out loud.

This episode is a work of narrative horror inspired by the history, folklore, and public reputation of the Stanley Hotel. Certain characters, conversations, events, and experiences have been fictionalized or dramatized for entertainment purposes.

A search team spent the night in an abandoned fire-watch cabin above Cranberry Wilderness — West Virginia, December 1987. (Based on a True Story)

Something circled that cabin for hours.

It hit the door twice, hard enough to bow the wood inward. It breathed through the gaps. It dragged something slowly along the outside wall, from one end to the other, the way you drag something when you want the sound to carry.

Feel the cold. Feel the dark. Feel the walls shaking.

In this episode Wallace Cole presents the account of Eddie Mercer — experienced tracker, seasoned back-country man — who spent a night in an abandoned West Virginia fire-watch cabin that he has never been able to fully leave behind. A blizzard. A search team. Something outside that circled for hours, hit the door hard enough to bow the wood, and its frosty, stinking breath came through the gaps when the hitting stopped.

They never found the hunter they went in for. He was recovered the following spring, two ridges over. The official cause of death was "exposure."

If you enjoy Appalachian horror, wilderness encounters, dark folklore, and immersive narrated storytelling — follow Stuff That Scares Me for new episodes weekly.

Listen on your favorite podcast platform and follow the channel on YouTube: @StuffThatScaresMe

Like Wallace Cole stories?
📚 Find more Appalachian horror by Wallace Cole on Amazon - Click Here

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Nine experienced hikers fled their tent barefoot into the snow.

In Episode Three of Stuff That Scares Me, Wallace Cole reconstructs the final hours of the DYATLOV PASS incident and presents the conclusion he believes the evidence requires.

This episode explores:

• What likely happened inside the tent on the night of February 1st, 1959
• Why the hikers cut through the walls instead of using the door
• The meaning of the footprints leading into the tree line
• The significance of the cedar tree and the ravine
• The forensic reality of compressive crush injuries without external trauma
• The Mansee accounts of the Menk and why similar descriptions appear across cultures worldwide
• The unexplained radiation found on specific garments
• Why the official investigation may have reached a conclusion they dared not openly state

By the end of this episode, Wallace Cole presents the only explanation that holds up under all of the evidence.

Something came to the tent.

If you enjoy wilderness horror, unexplained encounters, dark folklore, cryptid mysteries, and immersive narrated storytelling, be sure to follow Stuff That Scares Me for new episodes weekly.

Listen on your favorite podcast platform and follow the channel on YouTube:
@StuffThatScaresMe