Original oral accounts from the unique people who live in the Great Smoky Mountains. They embody their distinct ideals, beliefs, values and life patterns. There is wit, surprise, and, in some cases, wisdom. You will meet real moonshiners, people who have encountered unexplained events in their everyday lives, and tales of true love. The wild isolation of the Smokies nurtured independence, and a caring spirit.
Some of the most visited national parks in the country have a dark side. Aside from crowds of hikers, campers, and general tourists, there's a dark side to these three locations in California; the famous Yosemite, Joshua Tree and Mount Shasta. From strange disappearances, grisly murders and bone-chilling paranormal hauntings and ghost sightings; these pristine locales have a lot more to offer than just serene hiking trails or camping. In this second installment of National Park Mysteries & Disappearances, Steve Stockton, along with Bill Melder, presents the reader with a side to these locations you've never heard before. So, put aside your nature guidebooks, forget about the pretty leaves, and the relaxing streams as well as the miniature golf, the funnel cakes and all the other "tourist traps" and prepare for a wild ride on the dark side of these major national parks.
When seven-year-old Dennis Lloyd Martin went missing in the Great Smoky Mountains national park on June 14, 1969, it began the most extensive search and rescue attempt in the national park service history. The book contains documents and interviews never before released to the public. The search effort involved approximately 1,400 searchers, the Green Berets, and Special Forces, but no trace of Dennis Lloyd Martin was ever found.
From its opening moments featuring the aftermath of a plane crash on a tropical island, the television series Lost (2004-2010) became one of the most intriguing and talked about programmes in the era of digital media. This contribution to the Constellations series is the first full-length account of Lost and explores in detail what made this series both a popular hit with critics and the public (as 'quality' or 'must-see' TV), and also a series accruing intense fan scrutiny (as cult telefantasy). Lost is discussed in terms of its generic hybridity, and in particular how it incorporates and reframes familiar tropes of science fiction in the context of a Survivor reality TV-style plot on the one hand and as a 'mystery box' of extremely complex hermeneutic codes and hyperdiegesis on the other. Further, it explores the ways in which Lost uses science fictional narrative approaches to the intersections between themes of gender, identity, community, science, faith and philosophic thought. The book also discusses the series' relationship with its narrative extensions in online games, merchandise, secondary texts and paratexts. Constellations: Lost is thus an important retrospective examination of a significant television series that was also a pioneering transmedia text.
One of the most visited national parks in the country has a dark side. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the country, with 12.1 million recreational visits in 2020. Aside from crowds of hikers, campers, and general tourists, there's a dark side to the Smokies, the town of Gatlinburg and the surrounding foothills. From strange disappearances, grisly murders and bone-chilling paranormal hauntings and ghost sightings; this pristine paradise has a lot more to offer than just serene hiking trails or camping. So, put aside your nature guidebooks, forget about the pretty leaves, and the relaxing streams as well as the miniature golf, the funnel cakes and all the other "tourist traps" and prepare for a wild ride on the dark side of the Great Smoky Mountains.
There is a sinister side to National Parks; one the Forest Service does not want you to know about...National Parks are a place for family fun, camping, and adventure. Millions of Americans and foreign tourists flock to National Parks around the globe each year. But for some, they go through the entrance, never to come out again.In the last century close to 1100 people have disappeared while on a visit to a National Park, just in the USA. Yet, research into this high rate of missing people associated with various National Parks around America is difficult. The National Park Service does not want anyone to research the missing, according to one ex-officer. Is a conspiracy in the works to ensure millions of visitors still come to the National Parks or is it a case of keeping details of an ongoing investigation quiet?
The chilling tome that launched an entire genre of books about the often gruesome but always tragic ways people have died in our national parks, this updated edition of the classic includes calamities in Yellowstone from the past sixteen years, including the infamous grizzly bear attacks in the summer of 2011 as well as a fatal hot springs accident in 2000. In these accounts, written with sensitivity as cautionary tales about what to do and what not to do in one of our wildest national parks, Whittlesey recounts deaths ranging from tragedy to folly—from being caught in a freak avalanche to the goring of a photographer who just got a little too close to a bison. Armchair travelers and park visitors alike will be fascinated by this important book detailing the dangers awaiting in our first national park.
These beautiful mist-shrouded mountains can, and often do, turn deadly... Volume I of Into the Mist depicts men and women in extreme situations, struggling to survive against brutal and often deadly adversity. Through the book's 13 chapters, Into the Mist readers will: -Piece together the events leading to a tragic encounter between an elementary school teacher and two black bears in the park's backcountry. -Share in the heroic response of the park's rangers in the face of brutal weather events, including the March 1993 "Storm of the Century," and their successful efforts to rescue hundreds of stranded visitors and ultimately prevent loss of life and limb. -Experience a lone hiker's final moments as he succumbs to bitter cold without benefit of a shelter as wind-driven snow piles ever higher on the trail. -Learn how the body of a murdered Jane Doe discovered in a park stream leads to a cross-country hunt for her killer. -A bonus appendix lists the park's leading causes of death and most dangerous places.
Still unsolved, still baffling, still claiming new victims. Here are the untold stories. A pilot reports a strange haze enveloping his plane, then disappears; eleven hours after fuel starvation, as if calling from a void, he is heard 600 miles away. He requests permission to land, then vanishes forever. A freighter steaming over placid seas disappears without a trace. A pleasure yacht ghosts past without a soul on board. A pilot calls for help because a "weird object" is harassing his plane. A jet collides with an "unknown" and is never found. . . . Into the Bermuda Triangle is the first comprehensive examination of these baffling disappearances in more than a generation. Drawing on official reports from the NTSB and other investigative agencies as well as interviews with scientists, theorists, and survivors, leading authority Gian Quasar not only sets the record straight on previously examined cases, he also offers a bulging file of new cases, the collective results of his twelve-year investigation. In meticulous detail this unflinching account: Documents confirmed disappearances of airplanes and ships Gathers new testimony and reexamines old interviews from eyewitnesses and survivors Explores possible explanations ranging from zero-point energy to magnetic vortices Challenges our assumptions with the sheer weight of accumulated evidence In this age of technological and scientific discovery, there are still mysteries that transcend understanding. The Bermuda Triangle is one. "The best book I've ever read on this important subject."—Andrew Griffin, The Town Talk
Now updated with new material that brings the killer's picture into clearer focus. In the fall of 1888, all of London was held in the grip of unspeakable terror. An elusive madman calling himself Jack the Ripper was brutally butchering women in the slums of London’s East End. Police seemed powerless to stop the killer, who delighted in taunting them and whose crimes were clearly escalating in violence from victim to victim. And then the Ripper’s violent spree seemingly ended as abruptly as it had begun. He had struck out of nowhere and then vanished from the scene. Decades passed, then fifty years, then a hundred, and the Ripper’s bloody sexual crimes became anemic and impotent fodder for puzzles, mystery weekends, crime conventions, and so-called “Ripper Walks” that end with pints of ale in the pubs of Whitechapel. But to number-one New York Times bestselling novelist Patricia Cornwell, the Ripper murders are not cute little mysteries to be transformed into parlor games or movies but rather a series of terrible crimes that no one should get away with, even after death. Now Cornwell applies her trademark skills for meticulous research and scientific expertise to dig deeper into the Ripper case than any detective before her—and reveal the true identity of this fabled Victorian killer. In Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed, Cornwell combines the rigorous discipline of twenty-first century police investigation with forensic techniques undreamed of during the late Victorian era to solve one of the most infamous and difficult serial murder cases in history. Drawing on unparalleled access to original Ripper evidence, documents, and records, as well as archival, academic, and law-enforcement resources, FBI profilers, and top forensic scientists, Cornwell reveals that Jack the Ripper was none other than a respected painter of his day, an artist now collected by some of the world’s finest museums: Walter Richard Sickert. It has been said of Cornwell that no one depicts the human capability for evil better than she. Adding layer after layer of circumstantial evidence to the physical evidence discovered by modern forensic science and expert minds, Cornwell shows that Sickert, who died peacefully in his bed in 1942, at the age of 81, was not only one of Great Britain’s greatest painters but also a serial killer, a damaged diabolical man driven by megalomania and hate. She exposes Sickert as the author of the infamous Ripper letters that were written to the Metropolitan Police and the press. Her detailed analysis of his paintings shows that his art continually depicted his horrific mutilation of his victims, and her examination of this man’s birth defects, the consequent genital surgical interventions, and their effects on his upbringing present a casebook example of how a psychopathic killer is created. New information and startling revelations detailed in Portrait of a Killer include: - How a year-long battery of more than 100 DNA tests—on samples drawn by Cornwell’s forensics team in September 2001 from original Ripper letters and Sickert documents—yielded the first shadows of the 75- to 114 year-old genetic evid...
