In the Appalachians, with all the hollows (and hollers) and thickly wooded slopes, the little springs rising unexpectedly out of dark holes and vanishing again—that’s a landscape full of hidden things. That’s a place where the Devil can pace and strange lights can lead you astray, where you might see something that looks like a deer but doesn’t move like a deer. It’s fertile ground for fear. But people still have to live here, so we get stories about what to do when you meet the Devil or the not-deer, and the cautionary tales about what happened to people who didn’t do the right things. It’s endlessly fertile ground for storytellers, that’s for sure.
