In the shadowed woods of the South, our ancient trees have witnessed history. Some? They seem to collect it. On this episode of Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South we dig into the roots of three infamous Southern oaks and the bizarre and sometimes unsettling deaths tangled in their branches.
First, the Fairchild Oak in Florida, where two plantation owners, decades apart and both fleeing crushing debt, were found dead beneath its limbs with no cause of death ever confirmed. Then, Savannah’s Candler Oak, a 300-year-old giant beside the city’s old hospital, whose reputation as a “hanging tree” blurs the line between documented history and ghost-tour legend. And finally, the darkest of the three: the Devil’s Tree of Port St. Lucie, tied to serial killer Gerard John Schaefer, Jr. and a string of brutal murders that shook Florida in the early 1970s.
Some of these stories are proven. Some are folklore. All of them ask the same question: what do you do when the only witness left is a tree?
Listener discretion advised for graphic true crime content.
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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.
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