Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - BONUS： Ghost Story Spooktacular ｜ Appalachian Witch, The Black-Eyed Children

00:00:00.000 hello everyone good evening welcome to rowan and pine

00:00:05.040 whose story edition it is october 30th it is the eve of all hallows eve when we were recording this

00:00:14.120 some people call it devil's night oh i like that let's call it that it's devil's night

00:00:21.860 mischief night

00:00:22.540 mischief night that's a throwback to our

00:00:25.620 Sion episode

00:00:26.340 if anybody missed

00:00:29.560 our Instagram live I know a lot

00:00:31.720 of people did

00:00:32.340 these

00:00:35.480 are the stories that we read

00:00:37.840 because

00:00:38.640 the recording did not go as planned

00:00:41.000 let's just say that

00:00:42.280 yeah

00:00:43.340 alright I have

00:00:47.740 some ghost stories from

00:00:49.480 appalachia these are from reddit um this first one hilariously this person's username is doobie

00:00:58.400 doobie doobie doobie amazing um okay so the intro is just kind of the story may be short

00:01:10.420 blah blah blah just happened two or three years ago um he was with a friend or he or she they

00:01:19.180 we're with a friend um and it's just a little backstory at the beginning um so i was with a

00:01:27.720 friend i'll call him mark mark was at my house one evening doing the usual things watching ufc

00:01:33.580 playing xbox this is probably why i thought this was a man it was extremely late when we finally

00:01:39.780 got bored and decided to go for a walk on a nearby trail to smoke a joint this is not a

00:01:44.660 particularly long trail, but it is very dense in the woods that surround it, and it is easy to get

00:01:50.500 freaked out when thinking of your surroundings. We finally got about halfway into the trail,

00:01:55.380 which is about 30 minutes of a walk, where we stop, pack a joint, and stand on the trail to

00:02:00.200 chill and talk. The forest is very alive tonight. There are always noises in the woods, but the

00:02:05.260 amount of animal activity for the time was unsettling. At this point, it was probably past

00:02:10.040 1am this was strange and kind of eerie but not alerting as any sort of predatory animal in the

00:02:15.820 area may cause a disturbance we finish smoking and continue our walk when almost immediately

00:02:21.120 the forest falls dead quiet and as soon as the forest goes quiet there is a voice it almost

00:02:27.120 sounds like a mocking humanoid voice shaky and uncertain almost like an old children's toy like

00:02:33.100 the ones with the crackly speakers and robotic voice i don't like this yeah that's why i told

00:02:39.620 you I said this story gave me chills. This immediately sets us off. We bolt directly down

00:02:44.740 the opposite length of the trail but the sound does not gain distance. It doesn't get closer

00:02:50.280 per se but no matter how far we run down the trail this eerie voice remains the same volume

00:02:55.240 going over and over with no quieting or stopping. At this point I'm convinced that we're in genuine

00:03:01.240 danger something I've felt very few times. Finally after sprinting for who knows how long

00:03:07.060 we exit the trail gasping for breath and almost at the verge of tears of how frightening this was

00:03:12.600 we begin to exit the trail and about five minutes from the exit there is a bone shaking

00:03:17.920 heart stopping murderous scream from directly behind us i know what a mountain lion sounds like

00:03:24.000 this was not an animal this was not someone playing or watching a movie this scream sent

00:03:29.440 birds flying from nests and made my heart drop into my stomach it was the most genuinely depraved

00:03:35.340 and violent scream that i have ever heard this is a true story and i've only told maybe three people

00:03:41.460 all of who seem to brush it off as false i've never been a person to push for the existence

00:03:46.760 of the paranormal or spiritual but i genuinely believe genuinely believe i encountered something

00:03:52.100 inhuman in those woods oh god yeah i i believe you doobie doobie doobie man doobie doobie doobie

00:04:00.760 oh that's insane the way it was described as like an old broken down toy i can imagine 0.70

00:04:11.160 exactly in my head what that sounds like yeah i don't like it i don't like that at all

00:04:18.560 there's a response of somebody who had a really similar experience at all in the mountains of

00:04:26.100 Appalachia so this response is from I'm assuming it's Rach 1874 so this response says oh wow I

00:04:36.720 feel this in my bones my uncle my mom's brother has a farm in the southeast west Virginia since

00:04:43.440 the 70s long before I came into this world mom is the oldest of five and my uncle built a bunch

00:04:49.100 of houses on the farm so family could use it whenever some live there and other like my family

00:04:54.460 visited often. My mom and older sister and I would go for weeks on end to spend time with the family

00:05:00.060 and I always loved it because I have a ton of cousins and I was a baby for a long time. So

00:05:04.500 mostly I tagged along with my cousins and felt extremely safe like I was in my happy place. I

00:05:10.060 don't really remember anything totally out of the ordinary when I was really little other than I

00:05:15.400 remember an imaginary friend who I exclusively played with at the farm nowhere else and we moved

00:05:20.780 extensively for dad's job so i lived in many different places what i remember like a red flag

00:05:26.300 already it's like an imaginary friend just for one place just at the farm what i remember after age

00:05:34.340 five was suddenly being old enough to not have to walk to not have to have someone walk me to and

00:05:39.380 from other houses which i thought was so cool so i used to explore my uncles liked to bow hunt and

00:05:44.640 had taken me there a few times not too far into the woods so i was able to go back on my own and

00:05:49.640 find their little tree platforms they had built to hunt from i thought they were cool little tree

00:05:53.900 houses not tree houses oh no they're killer stations i'm just kidding your story sounds a

00:06:02.680 lot like the very first time i ever took off by myself in the woods without another family member

00:06:06.820 with me it was the winter i wanted to be out in the snow and explore so i found my way up to the

00:06:12.440 mountain that is what i called it but in fact it was probably just a massive hill and into the

00:06:17.140 trees. I couldn't find the spot I was looking for and got pretty frustrated with my eight-year-old

00:06:21.500 self, so I sat down by a creek to catch my breath and figure out where I was. I couldn't have been

00:06:27.460 sitting more than about three minutes when something let out a scream I can only describe

00:06:31.380 as blood-curdling. I thought it was a fox, most likely, until I heard another voice crying,

00:06:37.320 just weeping and wailing, and the sorrow was palpable. My cousins had always told scary

00:06:42.740 stories about Appalachia, and I figured that they had followed me into the woods and they were 0.98

00:06:46.680 trying to scare the pants off of me for shits and giggles. I called out like, okay guys, not funny, 0.97

00:06:52.340 I'm going home, enough, and I followed my footprints in the snow as fast as I could back to the farm.

00:07:00.660 The screaming and crying didn't stop. Stayed consistent as I moved, which really made me

00:07:05.700 convinced it had to be my cousin's. I don't think I heard words, just crying and screaming,

00:07:10.560 but it wasn't pleasant. I made my way back to the main house, my uncle's house, which was the

00:07:15.640 biggest on the property, invisible from the edge of the woods, and I absolutely booked it. Ran full

00:07:21.620 tilt to get to the kitchen door. I remember getting through the door and slamming it behind me

00:07:25.760 because I was a combination of terrified and annoyed that my cousins were playing a prank on

00:07:30.240 me. The next closest cousin in age is nine years older than me, so I was often the butt of the

00:07:35.760 pranks. Well, wouldn't you know, every family member was accounted for in the living room and

00:07:40.640 kitchen the older male cousins and my uncles were in the kitchen putting their snow boots and coats

00:07:46.320 on to come look for me i had apparently been gone for several hours and they were worried

00:07:50.620 according to my mom i was white-faced my hands were covered in scratches through my mittens

00:07:55.780 and i guess i must have fallen or something they were so worried i had disappeared i should add i

00:08:01.900 set off from my aunts from my aunts to walk to my uncles and had decided to take a detour and

00:08:07.280 didn't tell anyone oops i was eight and didn't really read and really didn't think about how

00:08:13.620 that might be bad mom said i looked like i had seen a ghost i asked if anyone had come out to

00:08:19.120 the woods to look for me they said no we've been looking at different houses and we were just about

00:08:23.620 to come look for you because they saw my footprints head into the woods i told them about where i went 0.90

00:08:28.680 and what i heard and my uncle whose property it was said ah oh shit i think you probably ran into 0.99

00:08:33.660 the witch. I'm over here thinking oh some crazy lady lives in the woods and I probably stumbled 1.00

00:08:38.440 near her cottage. Nope the witch was just what they called the unknown entity that roamed the 1.00

00:08:43.120 woods screaming crying and mimicking people's voices and giving people a good sense of doom

00:08:48.020 and dread. No one had a straight answer about possible folklore or anything like that but all

00:08:53.420 my older cousins had their own experiences with similar happenings over the years. Scared the

00:08:58.880 living daylights out of me and while I've been back to the farm over the years I can tell you I

00:09:02.680 have never set one foot near the woods tree line even as an adult i was grateful my family didn't

00:09:08.300 think i was crazy but they said a general rule is not to be in the woods alone so i listened

00:09:13.040 to my knowledge nothing physical ever happened with anyone in this entity more of a prankster

00:09:18.400 than anything but oof the appalachia has some wild stuff oh my god it says i definitely remember

00:09:27.520 some strange stuff happening during the week we had my aunt's funeral when i was 21 and random

00:09:32.340 voices or red eyes or smoke apparitions

00:09:34.360 on the woods edge but I never want to

00:09:36.280 check them out after that one incident

00:09:37.880 I don't blame them. Holy shit 1.00

00:09:42.080 I definitely 0.98

00:09:44.220 do love that it was

00:09:45.080 they call it the witch

00:09:46.820 can you imagine

00:09:49.040 just hearing like screaming

00:09:51.560 and the mimicking

00:09:53.220 mimicking like other voices

00:09:55.080 I'm getting chills

00:09:57.000 absolutely

00:09:58.000 oh Jesus Christ

00:10:01.340 i don't get freaked out by scary stories that often but like these ones i was like oh

00:10:06.240 yeah if i heard like weird voices and stuff i don't like that yeah and i think like i think

00:10:14.120 there's something about reading scary stories that i find them like way scarier than like

00:10:18.240 watching anything or like yeah something like that because your own imagination gets gets you

00:10:23.420 with them right yeah um yeah crazy i love when reddit gives you a gem like that

00:10:31.340 Mine seems to be a relatively well-known story in the area that it's in.

00:10:37.940 And I find like news articles referring to it.

00:10:41.020 So, which is pretty cool.

00:10:42.740 Where's the area?

00:10:44.480 Area is in the UK.

00:10:47.300 Okay.

00:10:48.780 So this is the story of the black eyed children of Canuck Chase.

00:10:54.140 and I took it and reworked it from a book called Ghost Stories by an author called Hannah J. Tidy

00:11:01.740 I just wanted to make it work better for time and for reading out loud so in the heart of

00:11:10.880 Staffordshire lies a stretch of land known as Cannock Chase 30 square miles of forest

00:11:16.600 heath and forgotten mines it looks at first glance like nothing more than a pocket of English

00:11:22.660 wilderness quiet windswept and still yet for generations the chase has been talked about

00:11:28.840 in the same breath as ghosts monsters and things better left unseen the stories go back centuries

00:11:36.700 locals have spoken of shadowy creatures in the woods enormous cats with panther-like silhouettes

00:11:43.140 stalking across the fields figures that look almost human but too large too still

00:11:48.820 lights that drift silently between the trees but none of these tales for all their variety

00:11:55.520 are quite as unsettling as the legend that took root in the late 20th century

00:11:59.780 the sightings of the black-eyed children the reports began quietly surfacing in the 1980s

00:12:07.900 long after the chase had endured a darker chapter between 1964 and 1967 the area had

00:12:15.760 been terrorized by a series of abductions and murders the victims were all little girls

00:12:21.640 it began when a cyclist discovered a nine-year-old barely clinging to life on the edge of a forest

00:12:28.340 strangled and left for dead a year later two others aged five and six were found lifeless

00:12:35.260 in a shallow ditch in the summer of 1967 another child was taken and murdered near the same stretch

00:12:42.100 of woods. The killer, a man named Raymond Morris, was eventually caught after one of his intended

00:12:49.140 victims escaped and led police to his car. He was imprisoned for life, but the horror he left behind

00:12:55.720 seemed to cling to the landscape like a stain that would not wash away.

00:13:01.260 Roughly a decade later, the first reports of the black-eyed children began.

00:13:06.780 Some said that these were the restless spirits of the murdered girls, wandering endlessly through

00:13:11.760 the trees seeking something or someone they had lost. One of the earliest accounts came from 1982

00:13:18.520 shared years later by a local investigator named Lee Brickley. His aunt had been out walking with

00:13:25.320 a friend that summer the air warm and still. In the early evening she heard a faint voice calling

00:13:30.760 for help. It was the thin frightened cry of little girl. Fearing someone was in trouble she followed

00:13:37.300 the sound along a dirt path until she saw a child running ahead of her, her pale dress

00:13:42.260 fluttering as she moved. The woman called out trying to reach her, but no matter how

00:13:48.120 fast she ran, the girl always stayed just ahead. Then suddenly she was gone. The woman

00:13:54.840 stumbled, fell and injured her foot badly enough to end her pursuit. When she later 1.00

00:14:00.240 told the story, her family urged her to report it to the police. Officers searched the area

00:14:05.820 but found no trace of a child

00:14:07.560 and no missing persons were ever reported

00:14:10.020 the story might have faded into local folklore

00:14:13.920 if not for what happened more than 30 years after that

00:14:17.040 in 2014 after the death of Raymond Morris 0.99

00:14:21.040 the piece of shit from earlier 0.99

00:14:22.240 sightings of the black-eyed children surged again 1.00

00:14:25.880 emails and testimonies began to flood into Brickley

00:14:29.780 now a well-known chronicler of Canuck's hauntings

00:14:33.620 one man wrote that he had been walking his dog through the woods with his wife when they heard

00:14:38.600 giggling the kind of laughter that children make when they're playing somewhere nearby

00:14:43.400 they searched for the source and found instead a girl standing on the path ahead of them

00:14:49.420 she was perhaps 10 years old with long hair and a pale face and her eyes completely black 0.68

00:14:56.680 without iris or white stared directly into theirs for a long moment no one moved then the girl

00:15:05.260 turned and slipped between the trees disappearing into the darkness as though she had never been

00:15:10.380 there the man's wife wanted to follow but he refused something about the encounter had left

00:15:16.580 him cold another witness a woman named mrs kelly described a similar experience she and her young

00:15:24.880 daughter had been walking in Birches Valley when a scream tore through the woods. Thinking a child

00:15:30.980 was in distress, she rushed down towards the sound. The trees were empty, the air still. She turned to

00:15:38.300 comfort her daughter and there, only a few paces away, stood a small girl. The child's hands were

00:15:45.340 pressed tightly over her eyes. Mrs Kelly asked if she was hurt, if she was the one who had screamed.

00:15:51.660 slowly the girl lowered her hands what looked back at her was not human two hollow pits of

00:15:59.120 black where her eyes should have been glistening and depthless before mrs kelly could react the

00:16:06.040 girl was gone in the years since others have reported seeing similar figures male children

00:16:13.800 at the edge of vision standing too still watching their eyes always the same entirely black

00:16:20.800 absorbing the light around them. A few pieces of supposed evidence have also surfaced.

00:16:27.840 A photograph taken in 2014 by a woman named Melissa Mason appeared to show a translucent

00:16:33.300 figure beside her own child in a tree. A year later a paranormal group recorded a video in the woods

00:16:39.860 after six hours of searching. In the beam of their torch a shape crossed the darkness

00:16:45.500 faintly luminous child-sized moving just beyond the light's reach.

00:16:50.800 The investigators noted that while the forest around them was completely black, the figure seemed to emit its own pale glow as if made of the same faint light that outlines a dream before it fades.

00:17:04.480 What the witnesses encountered, no one can say.

00:17:08.260 Perhaps it is only legend, a story born from grief, guilt and the lingering horror of what happened in this place so many years ago.

00:17:16.560 But the details never seem to change.

00:17:18.900 a small child silent except for a plea for help or a burst of laughter appearing briefly among

00:17:25.340 the trees, skin pale as moonlight, eyes dark as coal. Those who see them often describe the same

00:17:32.900 final sensation, a feeling of being watched long after the apparition has vanished, as though

00:17:38.960 something unseen still lingers in the forest waiting to be noticed again. To this day,

00:17:45.000 can a chase remains beautiful quiet and haunted a place where the past has not quite released its

00:17:51.200 hold and where if you walk alone after dark you might hear the faint echo of a child's voice

00:17:56.460 calling softly from the shadows help me and if you answer the stories say you may find her

00:18:04.020 standing just ahead on the path smiling faintly her eyes shining black in the beam of your light

00:18:10.000 yeah it's interesting because like just like the black eyeball like sounds scary

00:18:21.260 but then when they said they walked up to it and it was like a pit yeah like that's scarier

00:18:28.000 yeah and the fact that it has like the classic giggling children and the whispering children

00:18:35.360 in the woods like those are things that you know you never want to hear um I just I just don't want

00:18:41.500 to hear any disembodied giggling when I'm yeah really anywhere I know especially in the woods

00:18:48.300 where you can't see around we inadvertently both picked uh woodland stories but um I think it's

00:18:53.280 very on brand for us it is I think it's with the tragedy and like the backstory of that one as well

00:19:01.620 yeah like you don't really know how to feel about it because you you kind of wish if there

00:19:06.980 are spurts there that they would be at rest it doesn't sound like they are especially very

00:19:12.780 heartbreaking yeah as powerless as they were in life maybe we're getting a little thrill from

00:19:18.920 scaring the absolute shit out of people in death maybe that's what they're doing that you just got

00:19:24.740 the like giggling outside the door oh i didn't but hopefully hopefully your mic i hope it shows

00:19:31.980 up because yeah there was it could sound like disembodied child giggling there's no children

00:19:36.980 here there's what's that giggling i'm alone actually i'm alone in the heist there's no

00:19:42.160 child outside my door those were i love ghost stories i love me too scary stories and i love

00:19:49.100 telling them to you me too nice happy spooky season everybody i hope you spooky season

00:19:56.020 have a great halloween a safe halloween and it takes your mind off how shitty the world is for

00:20:03.020 a while it has been fun to try to look forward to the little thing yeah that's what we we have

00:20:10.260 to keep doing and it's technically celtic new year so it's a good time to start fresh

00:20:16.060 with pumpkins yes with pumpkins and witches and all the other fun spooky halloween things

00:20:25.260 i hope you enjoyed our october halloween episode happy halloween everybody happy halloween

00:20:31.780 looking for your next obsession the creators collective podcasts is your gateway to the dark

00:20:48.100 the chilling and the downright fascinating we're a community of independent podcasts with one goal

00:20:53.880 to share the best in true crime paranormal tales folklore and unexplained mysteries

00:20:58.900 Whether you crave cold cases that won't stay closed, haunted histories that refuse to be forgotten, or stories that make you sleep with the lights on, there's a show waiting for you in The Collective.

00:21:09.820 And when you join us, you're not just listening to one podcast.

00:21:13.200 You're stepping into a world of creators who love this stuff as much as you do.

00:21:18.080 Check out The Creators Collective today.

00:21:20.160 Follow the link in our show notes to discover your next favorite podcast.

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Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - October 31, 2025

BONUS： Ghost Story Spooktacular ｜ Appalachian Witch, The Black-Eyed Children

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