Appalachia in the Digital Age: When your home becomes a haunted house
If you ask me where I’m from, before I say my state, the town I was raised in, or the city I currently live in, I will say Appalachia.
I recently started a new job, and when my boss asked me where I’m from, he raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Oh, wow,” he said. “I’ve seen some crazy videos about Appalachia. Wait- how do you pronounce it?”
After telling him it’s pronounced app-uh-LATCH-uh, I listened as he described a video about feral gnome people who live in the mountains.
Gnome people was a new one, but I was becoming familiar with this supernatural re-branding my home was undergoing.
Myself and other Appalachians do believe our region has a kind of mystic allure to it. The Rockies may be higher, but our mountains are older than bone. The New River is the only river in the world, other than the Nile, that flows due North. (Many other rivers actually do flow North, but we don’t like to acknowledge that.) Rumour has it that the Appalachians are mystically drawn to the highlands of Scotland because, during Pangea, our mountains were one.
Yes, Appalachia has its own magic and myth, but recently, it’s taken on the reputation of being one of the most haunted places in America, if not the world.
According to Tiktok, the 200,000-mile mountain range that spans 13 states is a relentless land of ghosts, skinwalkers, gnomes, and God knows what else could be hiding in those woods.
The common claims of scary Appalachia tok are mysterious whistles coming from the woods at night, feral people caught on camera in the woods at night, and someone calling your name or crying for help - again in the woods at night.
In one video with 3.3 million likes, a woman shows her nighttime routine to stay safe in Appalachia at night. Eerie music plays as she closes her curtains, locks her front door, and turns on her security system.
With that kind of preparation, she could keep anything out.
Another video shows a man whose face is kept off-screen as he listens to creepy whistles coming from “the woods.” Could that whistling be coming from the face just off-camera? The 3.5 million people who liked the video didn’t think so.
I have long wanted Appalachia to be at the center of some kind of cultural conversation in my life. From the opioid epidemic to generational poverty to environmental destruction via pipeline, Appalachia is at the forefront of some of our country’s most pressing issues.
Instead of a light being shone on the struggles of Appalachians or, more importantly, the resilience of Appalachians through art, culture, and community, the region is being associated with the ghost stories we make up to comfort ourselves in the face of true disenfranchisement.
It’s easier to claim feral people and ghosts haunt this land rather than the failings of our government and our culture.
We can tell our ghosts stories for fun, but we can’t forget the real people and real struggles of a real region.
Mae Oetjens is a multi-genre writer from southwest Virginia and lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her work has been featured in the museum of americana, Volume 31. She participated in Season 17 AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship program and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2023 with a degree in Political Science.