Every town has its secrets. Some of them happen to end at the end of a rope.
In the summer of 1895, three young sisters took a Sunday stroll through the mountains of Rabun County, Georgia. Only one came home. The man responsible was their neighbor and cousin. He was a man who, by most accounts, had never caused a lick of trouble in his life… until something in his head began to rattle.
William Seymour Keener described it himself as something that had torn loose, a strange noise at the top of his skull that caused him constant pain. Was he a cold-blooded killer? A man lost to madness? How had his love for one girl turned into an obsession that festered for years in the shadows of the Appalachian foothills The newspapers of the day couldn’t agree. Neither could the courts.
In this episode, we unearth a story buried in century-old newsprint: a murder trial, a failed lunacy plea, a jailhouse confession, and an execution that local legend says was marked by church bells ringing five hundred times.
This is the true story of the first man legally hanged in Rabun County, and why his ghost still lingers.
Front page photo from the collection of the Rabun County Historical Society.
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. 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.
