Deep in the mountains of Appalachia, people have been disappearing for centuries.

Some walked out into the wilderness and never came home. Some vanished from quiet farming communities where everybody knew their name. Others disappeared in places so remote and unforgiving that even massive search efforts turned up nothing at all.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we explore some of the most haunting missing persons cases connected to Appalachia and the mountains that continue to hold their secrets.

We begin in 1792 with the disappearance of five year old Katy Sage near Elk Creek in what is now Grayson County, Virginia. A little girl vanishes while chasing butterflies in a garden on the Appalachian frontier. Search parties comb the wilderness for months with no trace of her ever found. For decades her family is left with only questions, rumors, and heartbreak.

Then we travel to Sugar Grove, Virginia in the late 1940s and examine the disappearance of Willis Rex Roberts, a seventeen year old boy from a respected Smyth County family who walked home from school one afternoon and was never seen again. Through old newspaper archives, census records, and local accounts passed down through generations, we follow the last known traces of Rex Roberts before his trail suddenly disappears from history.

We also examine one of the most famous missing child cases in American history, the disappearance of Dennis Lloyd Martin in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park during Father’s Day weekend in 1969. More than fourteen hundred searchers, including Green Berets, National Guardsmen, park rangers, rescue squads, helicopters, and experienced woodsmen combed nearly sixty square miles of rugged mountain terrain searching for a little boy in a red shirt. They found nothing.

The episode then moves to Wytheville, Virginia and the disappearance of Israel Ray Smith in 2008. Israel vanished from his apartment leaving behind his vehicle, keys, lights, television, and gaming controller as if he had simply stepped away for a moment and never returned. Investigators from multiple agencies, including the FBI and United States Marshals Service, spent years chasing leads that ultimately went nowhere.

We also cover the disappearance of Gary Shannon Earp Jr., who vanished in 2017 after his truck was found still running near Tumbling Creek inside the Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area in Southwest Virginia. His wallet, money, glasses, and untouched breakfast remained behind while search teams combed the mountains for answers that never came.

Along the way we reflect on other missing persons cases tied to Appalachia and discuss why these mountains have long been a place where people can vanish without explanation. Rugged terrain, isolated trails, forgotten mountain roads, deep forests, underground cave systems, and generations of oral history all contribute to the mystery surrounding these disappearances.

This episode contains discussion of missing persons, death, grief, wilderness dangers, and unresolved cases.

If you enjoy Appalachian history, true crime, folklore, unsolved mysteries, cold cases, frontier history, mountain culture, missing persons investigations, and stories rooted in real Appalachian communities, this episode of Roots & Shadows is for you.

Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast explores the true crime, history, folklore, legends, mysteries, and forgotten stories of Appalachia and the surrounding mountain regions. From Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee to the Great Smoky Mountains and beyond, we tell the stories that still echo through these hills.

In 1987, something unusual was happening in the skies over Southwest Virginia.

Across Wytheville and Wythe County, people began reporting strange lights moving through the night. These were not quick glances or distant flashes. Witnesses described objects hovering low, moving silently, and changing direction in ways that didn’t match anything they recognized. Some said the lights followed their cars down backroads. Others described structured craft with multiple colors.

Calls started coming in. Neighbors talked. Families watched the skies. And before long, what started as a few scattered sightings turned into one of the most talked about UFO waves in Appalachian history.

Local law enforcement acknowledged the reports. Radio stations began covering the story. People gathered, comparing what they had seen, trying to make sense of it. The sightings stretched across Wytheville, Rural Retreat, and surrounding parts of Wythe County. Night after night, more people came forward.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we go back to that moment in time and walk through what was seen, how it was reported, and how the story spread across the region. This is not just about what people saw in the sky. It is about how a community reacts when something does not make sense.

We also step back and look at the bigger picture. After World War II, reports of unidentified flying objects increased across the United States. The federal government responded with programs like Project Blue Book, which investigated thousands of sightings before shutting down in 1969. By the time 1987 came around, those official investigations were gone, leaving communities like Wythe County to deal with these events on their own.

As the story grew, so did the questions. Were these experimental aircraft. Misidentified natural phenomena. Something explainable that just had not been identified yet. Or something else entirely.

And then there are the parts of the story that sit just outside the official record. Stories of warnings. Stories of people being told to stop asking questions. The idea that has followed UFO sightings for decades. The possibility of so called men in black.

In Appalachia, stories have a way of holding on. They get passed down, reshaped, remembered differently depending on who is telling them. Over time, the line between what was seen and what was said can begin to blur. But at the center of this story are real people who looked up at the same sky and saw something they could not explain.

This episode brings together eyewitness accounts, historical reporting, and the broader history of UFO sightings to tell the story of what happened in Wytheville and Wythe County in 1987. Not as a legend, but as a moment that people here still remember.

Because in places like this, the mountains hold onto things. The stories stay. And sometimes, the questions never really go away.

🎧 New episodes weekly from Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast

This week on Roots and Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we head into Smyth County, Virginia, to a quiet stretch of land along the South Fork of the Holston River, an area that doesn’t look like much at first glance, but once held one of the most ambitious industrial communities in this part of Appalachia.

In the mid-1800s, Abijah Thomas built more than just a home here. He built an operation, iron works, a tannery, and Holston Mills, where wool was turned into cloth that would eventually be used for Confederate uniforms during the Civil War. Around it, a small village took shape, complete with homes, a school, a post office, and a store. For a time, it was a place where people lived and worked, all centered around the river.

At the top of it all stood his octagon house, completed in 1858 and built on a scale most homes in this region never reached. Seventeen rooms. Ten bedrooms. Thirty-two windows looking out over everything that made that place function. Built from bricks made on site, the house still stands today as the last physical reminder of what was once there.

But like so many stories in Appalachia, it didn’t last the way it was built to. War, shifting economies, and the loss of the system it depended on slowly unraveled everything Abijah Thomas had created. The mills were eventually sold, moved, and later destroyed by fire in Salem, Virginia. The town that once stood along the river faded out of existence.

Today, only pieces remain.

Part of the old grist mill still stands. A few homes from that time can still be found. And the house, still standing above it all—holds onto more of that story than anything else that’s left.

While visiting the Octagon House, I was able to see—and even touch—fingerprints still entombed in the bricks. Marks left behind by the hands that built it. Historians, including Ben Jackson, have studied these fingerprints in structures like this, raising the question of whether they were left intentionally… a quiet way for people to leave something behind in a time when most of their stories were never recorded.

In this episode, we also talk with the Octagon House Foundation about the work being done to preserve the home, not just as a historic structure, but as a future cultural center where people can come to better understand the full story of the place, including the lives connected to it.

If you’re interested in learning more, visiting, or getting involved, you can find the Octagon House Foundation online at:
👉 https://smythoctagonhouse.org/
Or on Facebook: Octagon House Foundation

Because in Appalachia, some places don’t just disappear…
they leave something behind.

In September of 1996, in the small town of Marion, something happened that this community has never fully moved past.

She was 68 years old. A retired schoolteacher. The kind of woman people didn’t just know, they remembered. For decades, she taught fifth grade in Smyth County. She stayed active in her church. She volunteered. She checked on people. And if you needed something… she was the kind of person who would bring it to your door.

On the night of September 3rd, she was home.

By the next evening, something wasn’t right.

A neighbor went to check on her. The phone wasn’t being answered. The door didn’t feel right. And when police stepped inside that house… they found something that would shake this town to its core.

What followed was an investigation that moved fast. A community that came together. And within days, two local men were arrested, Harold David Davis and Joshua David Widener.

Both of them gave statements.

Both of them told investigators what happened inside that house.

And both of them blamed the other.

The evidence would connect them both to the case. DNA. Items recovered from the scene. Details that matched in ways that couldn’t be ignored.

But even after the arrests… even after the trial… even after the sentences…

the full truth of what happened inside that home that night has never been clearly established.

Who went through the window?

Who made the decisions that led to her death?

And why has that answer never been fully told?

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we go back to Marion, Virginia, into a case where the facts are known, the outcome is final, but the truth still feels incomplete.

Because here in Appalachia, the roots of a place are built on people like her.

And sometimes… the shadows come from the questions that never get answered.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia, we explore two lost treasure stories rooted deep in the mountains of Appalachia, both tied to real places, real history, and mysteries that have never been fully solved.

The first story takes us into one of the most well-known legends in Appalachian history: the lost silver mine of Jonathan Swift. Said to have been discovered in the mid-1700s, Swift and his men reportedly mined and smelted large amounts of silver somewhere in the mountains, returning multiple times to work the site. He left behind journals filled with directions, references to river forks, mountain gaps, rock houses, and hidden landmarks that people have been trying to follow for over 250 years. While many have searched in Kentucky, some clues suggest the story may belong closer to Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee, where real evidence of silver deposits has been found.

The second story brings us to Saltville, Virginia, during the Civil War, a place where the most valuable resource wasn’t gold, but salt. By 1864, Saltville had become one of the most important industrial sites in the Confederacy, producing massive amounts of salt used to preserve food and sustain the war effort. Because of that, it became a target. Union forces raided the area, battles were fought, and by the end of the year, the salt works were destroyed.

It’s in that moment of uncertainty and chaos that the story of Abraham Smith takes shape.

According to local accounts, Smith buried a large amount of gold, often described as around $60,000, somewhere between Allison’s Gap and Saltville to keep it from being seized. What happened next depends on how the story has been passed down. Some say he never made it back. Others say the location was shared but never recovered. There are even versions that speak of a deathbed confession pointing to the treasure’s location, though no official record has ever confirmed it.

Despite years of searching, no one has ever been able to prove where it was hidden, or if it’s still there at all.

From hidden silver mines to buried Civil War gold, this episode of Roots & Shadows looks at the line between history and folklore, and the stories that continue to live in the mountains long after the truth has been lost.

In the late 1700s, long before Tennessee became a state and while much of Appalachia was still considered the western frontier, something began taking shape in the mountains that most people have never heard about. It wasn’t just talk or frustration with distant government. It was a real attempt to build something new.

This is the story of the State of Franklin, a lost chapter of American history that nearly became the 14th state of the United States.

At a time when Virginia and North Carolina stretched across vast and rugged land, the people living in what is now Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia found themselves far removed from the decisions being made in places like Richmond. Travel took days. Communication took weeks. And when problems came, whether it was conflict, lawlessness, or survival on the frontier, help didn’t always come at all.

Leaders like John Sevier and Arthur Campbell began to see that the needs of the people in these mountains were different from those back east. They believed a new state could offer better representation, stronger protection, and a government that actually understood the realities of life on the frontier. What followed was something few people realize ever truly existed.

Franklin wasn’t just an idea. It had its own government, courts, elections, and leadership. People lived under it. Taxes were collected. Laws were enforced. For a brief moment in time, it functioned as a real state.

And then it came down to a vote.

When the proposal reached Congress under the Articles of Confederation, the State of Franklin fell just one vote short of becoming an official part of the United States. One vote separated what was from what might have been.

But the story doesn’t end there.

As North Carolina moved to reassert control, tensions grew. Two governments operated in the same place at the same time. Neighbors were forced to choose sides. And what started as a political disagreement slowly became something much more personal. The conflict between John Sevier and John Tipton would bring that divide into the open, showing just how fragile the situation had become.

Even in Virginia, the movement raised alarms. Arthur Campbell’s support for a new western state drew the attention of Governor Patrick Henry, who saw the effort as a threat to the stability of the state. Laws were passed, lines were drawn, and what had once been an idea rooted in distance and necessity was now treated as something far more serious.

In the end, the State of Franklin didn’t fall in a single moment. It faded. Support weakened, pressure mounted, and the structure that had once held together began to slip away.

But for a time, it was real.

This episode of Roots & Shadows explores the forgotten story of America’s lost state, the people who tried to build it, and the question that still lingers today, who gets to decide what a place becomes?

In 1942, something happened in the mountains of Southwest Virginia that most people today have never heard about… but for a short time, it shook a quiet Appalachian town in a way that couldn’t be ignored.

It started with two soldiers, Charles Joseph Lovett and James Edward Testerman, men who had already stepped outside the lines of military order. What followed was a chain of decisions that carried them out of the structured world of the Army and into something far more uncertain. After going absent without leave, the two men made their way through Virginia, committing robbery along the way, eventually setting their sights on a small Appalachian town.

By the time they reached Abingdon, they weren’t just passing through.

They were looking for something, a connection, a place, maybe even someone they thought might help them. But what they found instead was a situation that escalated quickly and violently, pulling federal law enforcement directly into the mountains.

When agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation stepped in, the encounter didn’t end in a quiet arrest. It ended in gunfire.

Hubert J. Treacy was killed.

Charles L. Tignor was wounded.

And for a brief moment in time, the kind of violence most people associated with distant cities found its way into the hills of Appalachia.

What followed was a manhunt, a capture, and a case that moved quickly through the federal system. Lovett and Testerman were taken from the region and placed into custody, their story shifting from something people witnessed firsthand… to something recorded in court documents, prison records, and federal files.

In the end, both men were sent to serve life sentences at one of the most infamous prisons in American history, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, known to many simply as “The Rock,” where some of the most dangerous inmates in the country were held.

But here in Appalachia, the memory of what happened didn’t completely fade.

Because stories like this don’t just disappear.

They settle into the land.

They become part of the place.

And over time, they move from something people saw… to something people remember.

In this episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we step back into 1942 and walk through the events that brought federal agents into a quiet mountain town, the violence that followed, and the lasting mark it left behind.

Because around here, the roots run deep, in the land, in the people, and in the history we carry.

And the shadows…

Well, sometimes they come from the moments we’d rather forget.

In the mountains of Southwest Virginia, there are places people don’t talk about unless you ask, and even then, you might not get much more than a short answer and a look that tells you not to press it any further.

This week on Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast, we travel to a quiet holler in Rich Valley, where stories have been passed down for decades about something that has been seen there, something that doesn’t quite make sense, and something that, according to the people who’ve experienced it, has never really left.

What started in the 1970s with two men standing at the top of the holler quickly turned into something more. Both of them saw the same thing in broad daylight, a white object moving across the road, up the bank, and toward a house, and not long after, tragedy followed. Years later, that account would still be told the same way, with no change in the details.

Over time, other stories began to surface. A group of sisters who grew up in and around that holler described seeing something from time to time, not every visit, but often enough that it stopped feeling like coincidence. They spoke about a tall white figure, something shaped like a person but not quite right, and more than anything, they described the feeling that came before it. A sense that something wasn’t right, something that made the hair stand up on the back of their necks before they ever saw anything at all.

There were other moments too. Strange sounds with no clear source. A heavy impact against the side of a house that left no mark behind. And a belief passed down in that area that if something falls and you don’t go find out what it was, it can bring bad luck.

At one point, someone from outside the community came into that holler believing something was tied to the land itself, something that had been there for a long time and never left. What came of that is still unclear, but the stories didn’t stop.

Not everyone who has spent time there has experienced anything unusual. Some people have lived in that holler for years and never once seen or felt anything they couldn’t explain. And that matters, because in a place like this, both of those things can be true at the same time.

And even now, those stories continue.

In 2020, a young girl who had grown up hearing about that holler went looking for it, expecting nothing more than a good story. But what she saw that night matched descriptions that had been passed down for generations, down to the smallest detail, something she had never been told before.

Because in Appalachia, you’ll always find both.

The roots, in the land, the families, and the history that’s been carried forward for generations.

And the shadows, in the stories people remember, the things they’ve seen, and the moments they can’t quite explain.

And sometimes, the truth sits somewhere in between.