For decades, people across Florida have reported seeing something large, hairy and foul-smelling moving through the swamps, mangroves and forests of the state.

They call it the Skunk Ape.

In this episode of The Southern Blueprint, we head into the Florida wilderness to trace the strange history of one of the South’s most famous cryptids. We’ll look at the terrifying 1977 encounters that drove the Stoeckman family from their home in Key Largo, a bizarre 1974 incident along U.S. 27, police encounters, the Florida legislator who actually tried to protect the creature, and the man who has spent most of his life searching Big Cypress for it.

We’ll also dig into the 1997 wave of sightings, Dave Shealy and the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, the mysterious Myakka photographs, possible escaped primates, black bears, modern videos and the question that has followed the legend for more than fifty years:

Is the Skunk Ape simply one of Florida’s greatest pieces of folklore?

Or is there really something out there in the swamp?

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Few names are as deeply woven into the history and folklore of New Orleans as Marie Laveau.

She was a real woman who became something much larger: a Voudou leader, healer, devout Catholic, confidante, and eventually the legendary Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Nearly 150 years after her death, stories still surround her—secret ceremonies, gris-gris, Grand Zombi, courtroom magic, mysterious disappearances, ghostly encounters, and a tomb where generations of people have gone to ask Marie for help.

But where does the real Marie Laveau end and the legend begin?

In this Spooky Season episode of The Southern Blueprint Podcast, we go back to nineteenth-century New Orleans to follow Marie’s life, the rise of New Orleans Voudou, the strange stories that followed her while she was alive, and the even stranger ones that began after she died.

And maybe the biggest question of all: What if at least some of the stories about Marie Laveau were true?

🎃 Spooky Season has officially begun at The Southern Blueprint.

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Subscribe to The Southern Blueprint Podcast, share this episode with someone who loves strange Southern stories, and come spend Spooky Season with us.

In July of 1987, 42-year-old Ann Robertson Jones was found murdered inside her home in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

At the time, Pigeon Forge was becoming one of the South’s most familiar family vacation destinations. Dollywood had opened the year before. Tourism was booming. Families were pouring into Sevier County for cabins, souvenir shops, mountain views, and the promise of a Smoky Mountain getaway.

But beneath that bright image of Pigeon Forge is one of the darkest cases in the town’s history.

Ann was a mother and local business owner who ran the Wild Hare T-shirt Shop in Settler’s Village. Her murder would lead investigators into a disturbing story involving Gary June Caughron, a 27-year-old man working near the shopping center, and April Ward, a 14-year-old girl whose testimony would become central to the case.

This true crime episode follows the full story: the events leading up to Ann’s murder, the brutal crime scene, the nearly year-long investigation, April Ward’s statements, the evidence against Gary Caughron, the questions raised by the defense, the trial, the death sentence, the later appeals, and the parole fight decades later.

This is a difficult and disturbing case, but it is also one that deserves to be told carefully, with Ann Robertson Jones kept at the center of the story.

In the summer of 2015, North Carolina experienced one of the most unusual shark-bite clusters in its recorded history. Over just twenty-four days, eight people were bitten along the coast, from Ocean Isle Beach and Oak Island to Surf City and the Outer Banks. Two teenagers lost arms during attacks that occurred less than ninety minutes apart, while several other swimmers suffered serious injuries in the days that followed.

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Members receive additional content and full access to our private Discord community, where we continue the conversation about Southern history, mysteries, folklore, travel, books, bourbon, wildlife and the stories featured on the podcast. You can join through the Patreon link in the episode notes.

In this Shark Week episode, we reconstruct each of the eight incidents, examine the environmental conditions that may have contributed to the cluster and explore why shark attacks create such intense public fear. We also look at the influence of Jaws, the actual odds of being bitten, the sharks found along Southern coastlines and North Carolina’s surprising prehistoric connection to the megalodon.

This is the story of the summer North Carolina became the center of a national shark panic—and what those attacks reveal about fear, survival and the wild Atlantic just beyond the beach.

In 2006, Abraham Shakespeare went from working-class Floridian to multimillionaire overnight after winning a $30 million Florida lottery jackpot.

For most people, that kind of money sounds like freedom.

For Abraham Shakespeare, it became the beginning of a nightmare.

As word of his fortune spread, so did the requests for money, the business schemes, the lawsuits, and the people looking to profit from his generosity. Abraham was known as a kind, trusting man who loved helping others—but that generosity made him vulnerable.

Then he disappeared.

Friends and family were told he had simply left town and wanted to be left alone. Strange text messages appeared. Suspicious phone calls were made. A typed letter surfaced claiming Abraham had started a new life.

But something felt wrong.

In this episode of The Southern Blueprint Podcast, we dive into the shocking true story of Abraham Shakespeare—one of the most disturbing lottery-related murder cases in American history. We’ll explore Dorice “Dee Dee” Moore, the manipulation, the undercover sting operation, the secret recordings, and the investigation that led detectives to a concrete slab in Plant City, Florida.

This is a story of sudden wealth, betrayal, greed, and the dark side of winning big.

Sometimes the greatest fortune can become the greatest curse.

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In January of 1991, a bizarre story out of Channelview, Texas, became a national obsession. Wanda Holloway, a mother from a blue-collar town east of Houston, was accused of trying to hire a hitman to kill the mother of her daughter’s junior high cheerleading rival.

But behind the “Pom-Pom Mom” headline was a deeper story about ambition, motherhood, resentment, small-town status, family dysfunction, and the danger of living through your children.

In this episode of The Southern Blueprint, we trace Wanda’s life from her upbringing in Channelview, her fixation on her daughter Shanna’s cheerleading dreams, the rivalry with Verna and Amber Heath, the recorded conversations with Terry Harper, the trial, the overturned conviction, and the aftermath that followed.

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Anne Bonny is one of the most famous pirates in history, but she may also be one of the most mysterious.

Born in Ireland and raised in colonial South Carolina, Anne Bonny defied nearly every expectation placed upon women in the early 1700s. Drawn into the dangerous world of Caribbean piracy, she left her husband, joined forces with the infamous Calico Jack Rackham, sailed alongside fellow female pirate Mary Read, and became one of the most feared women of the Golden Age of Piracy.

In this episode of the Southern Blueprint Podcast, we separate documented history from pirate legend as we explore Anne Bonny's remarkable life. From her childhood in Charleston and the bustling ports of the Atlantic world to Nassau's pirate stronghold, daring raids in the Caribbean, her capture by pirate hunters, and the dramatic trial that sentenced her to death, we follow Anne's story from beginning to end.

We also examine the enduring mysteries surrounding her life, including her relationship with Mary Read, the theories surrounding her disappearance after receiving a stay of execution, and the recently discovered Jamaican death record that may finally reveal what happened to one of history's most legendary pirates.

Was Anne Bonny truly the ruthless pirate described in eighteenth-century accounts? Did she escape the gallows and return to the Carolinas?

Join us as we explore the history, legends, treasure theories, and unanswered questions surrounding Anne Bonny, the Pirate Queen Legend.

On September 14, 1987, Circuit Court Judge Vincent Sherry and his wife, Biloxi city councilwoman Margaret Sherry, were found murdered inside their home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

At first, the case seemed to point in several directions: local politics, city corruption, organized crime, revenge, or someone from Judge Sherry’s legal past. Margaret had been an outspoken critic of corruption in Biloxi and had told people she was working to expose what was happening inside the city. Vincent, meanwhile, had once practiced criminal defense law and had crossed paths with people connected to the Gulf Coast underworld.

But as investigators dug deeper, the case moved away from the obvious and into something stranger: a lonely-hearts scam being run from inside Angola Prison, money moving through a Biloxi law office, and a loose network of criminals often associated with what became known as the Dixie Mafia.

In this episode of The Southern Blueprint Podcast, we look at the murders of Vincent and Margaret Sherry, the rise of Kirksey McCord Nix’s prison-based scam operation, the role of Pete Halat, LaRa Sharpe, Mike Gillich, John Ransom, Thomas Leslie Holcomb, and the years-long fight by the Sherry family to uncover the truth.

This episode also explores what the Dixie Mafia actually was — not a traditional Mafia family with a formal hierarchy, but a loose Southern criminal network built on favors, fear, corruption, money, silence, and violence.

For background and reference, this episode draws in part from Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia by Edward Humes, along with court records, reporting, and public case summaries.

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