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Chapter 1: What dark history does the Barrow family hold in Appalachia?
There's a place with a road. On the road walks the man. In his hand there's a knife as he strides through the land. Past the farm, past the town, past the fool, past the dam. Don't wonder, don't cry, don't argue, don't try. There's no stopping this man with this blade in his hand. You've crossed over to a very special episode of Spooked. Stay tuned. Spooksters.
There's a place I visited recently where at first, things seemed like everywhere else. Mostly nice people. Good people doing the best they can. But still in this place, things... They seem to twinkle, to hum, sometimes even growl. In a lot of other places, they try to forget, but this place, this place seems to remember. Recall events that were supposed to be long forgotten.
For whatever reason, they can't stay buried here. A place where stories are not just stories and monsters are not about bedtime. And this place, it's too delicious. It's too magical. Too born of shadow for me to keep it to myself. So today, I'm opening the door, inviting you to cross through with me into old gods of Appalachia.
Now these mountains, you may think you know the hills and hollers some of us remember from childhood, but look closer. The towns, they might have other names, but no names at all. What happened in the 1900s might happen tomorrow or may not have happened yet. And yes, there are monsters. Get ready. Part 1. Old Gods of Appalachia. Starts.
Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences. So listener discretion is advised. The Barrow clan began digging deep in the mountains of Appalachia and selling what they found there long before this country was even the radical dream of a few folks looking to dodge some tax men from across the ocean.
By the 1800s, their influence in the mountains of Pennsylvania had become such an accepted fact of life that the little mountain township of Pine Grove was renamed Barrow to honor the family and the company they had founded. There is power in a named family, and in this case, a great dark power.
The rechristian of the town brought with it a great festival celebrating the glorious history of coal, the bituminous and the anthracite, the soft and the hard, the graves both deep and shallow. The local holiday culminated in a ceremony atop Coal Hill, the high point and center of town, atop which crouched the Barrow Mining Company's newly built home office.
A grand and sprawling affair of limestone and white columns topped with a shining copper dome that shamed the local churches and the county courthouse with its stateliness.
After a marching band played and paychecks were handed out early, the patriarch of the Barrow family, one Elias Pontius Barrow, known to most folks as simply E.P., flanked by his adult children, delivered a speech on the front steps of that grand new building wherein he unveiled the new town sign. which featured the family name and the date carved deep into its stone face.
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Chapter 2: How did the Barrow clan gain power in coal country?
Barrow's service. He inclined his head to his younger sister in greeting as he spoke.
Our father has an important errand which he has chosen to entrust to you.
Again, Benuel grated angrily, eyeing Polly with malice. If her incorporeal brother could do her harm, Polly didn't doubt that he would. But Benuel didn't have the juice these days. He might still be driving half-starved hill folk to madness with a whisper, but he'd long since grown too weak to affect her. His days on this plane were numbered.
Of course. I am, as always, at your disposal, Daddy. Daddy?
EP's voice echoed from the depths, harsh and resonant, as his children flinched, snapping to attention.
Yes, Daddy?
Yes, sir.
Yes, Daddy?
Yes, of course. I understand. Thy will be done, Daddy.
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Chapter 3: What rituals are associated with the Barrow family legacy?
Yes, ma'am. We'll see to it. The following evening, as the sun began to sink below the gentle curves of the Allegheny Mountains, Polly Barrow's shiny black car wound its way down the mountain into the small but thriving community of K-Burrow.
It was a bit before suppertime, when children had not been called in to wash up just yet, and their smeared daddies had not begun to stagger home, exhausted from the day's labor at Pasco No. 3 Mine. Home to 397 souls and counting, Cabra boasted a rail station, a small but well-appointed family-run hotel, a two-story general store, and three churches. Pasco No.
3 and the rail station were, of course, properties of Barrow and Locke, and employed put near every able body in Cabra. One would think the rabble would be grateful. who provided the roofs over their heads, the food to feed their innumerable broods of children. My barrow and lock, of course.
Polly's father had even approved construction of a baseball field, of all things, to provide even an entertainment for the citizens of Kayborough in the warmer months. And still they received reports of agitation from their loyal men on the ground in Kayborough. Rumors of unionization meetings held in secrets and impending strikes abounded, and the populace was on edge.
Crane and Churchman had recently paid a visit to Cabra Hotel and spent some time in its saloon, chatting with a local miner known to have a taste for gin, after which a bottle was purchased and the cheerful party retired to the very cabin they had established as their current base of operations. And at that point, the conversation had taken a less friendly but more fruitful turn.
And in good time, Mr. Crane had persuaded the man to provide the name of a co-worker he had seen leaving coded messages in other folks' dinner pails around Pascoe No. 3. Romeo Capriotti was the name this loyal company man had supplied Mr. Crane.
Along with an address and everything he knew about the Capriati clan, the Capriatis were a large family of the Catholic persuasion and attended Mass at St. Barbara's every Sunday without fail. Romeo's older sister had taken her vows with the sisters of St. Joseph and served at an orphanage up in Charleston.
Their mama was known to make the best pepperoni rolls in Bexar County, which she made for every church potluck and picnic and sold out of a little cart at every county fair every summer. Romeo, his three brothers, two remaining sisters and mother, lived in a sprawling old farmhouse out on the edge of Kayboro with their granddaddy.
Romeo's daddy had passed a few years back with the black lung, but the Capriotti boys had followed him into the mines. And they brought in enough to keep the family afloat, Mrs. Capriotti and the girls, working the farm. The family was well-liked and well-respected in the community. They had influence. They would have to go.
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