They baked the pies. They nursed the sick. They wept at the funerals. And, in a handful of cases, they quietly arranged for those funerals to happen in the first place.
In this episode of Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South, we’re pulling back the black lace veil on six women history has branded Brutal Brides and Wicked Widows. From a teenage axe murderer in 1831 Burke County to a Florida poisoner who ran out of luck on death row, these women weaponized the very roles society handed them, whether grieving wife, devoted mother, or doting caregiver, to devastating effect.
Were they cold-blooded predators? Victims of impossible circumstances? Products of a world that gave them no other option? The answers, as always in the South, are complicated. What isn’t complicated is the body count.
Six women. Multiple states. Arsenic, revolvers, a fireplace, and one very suspicious canoe trip. Some were executed. Some walked free to applause. And at least one vanished into the backwoods and was never quite the same again.
Grab something warm. You’re going to want it.
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Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South
Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, mystery author Liam Ashe uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South.
Subscribe now and never miss a tale. You’ll get an intro to every episode, including a Research Folio and early access. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.