Uncovering Eldritch Evils: OLD GODS OF APPALACHIA

If you ask anyone who knows me, they will confirm that I am obsessed with podcasts. I have an absurdly intricate system in which I listen to them (possibly a future article, depending on if I can make it make sense to anyone other than me). If people are looking for podcast recommendations, I am the person they come to. One that is always on the top of my list of fiction podcasts is Old Gods of Appalachia, created by Steve Shell and Cam Collins. The show is described as “an eldritch horror fiction podcast set in an Alternate Appalachia, a world where these mountains were never meant to be inhabited”.

I started listening to this show during the 8-hour car rides from Pittsburgh to Charlotte, NC, for holidays during college. This route takes me all across Appalachia (pronounced apple-at-cha) from the steel towns around Pittsburgh, through the coal fields in West Virginia, to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and North Carolina. This podcast provided an excellent soundtrack to follow me as I went through small towns and hollers whenever I inevitably missed my exit. It combines some of my favorite elements of storytelling into a beautiful, dark, and gripping story. From the Jack Tales and ghost stories my Grandma would tell me, to the stories of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe I read in middle and high school, and putting it all into an audio drama/podcast format which I currently love.

The mountains from which this show emanates are the oldest in the world. They are older than dinosaurs, trees, Saturn’s rings, and even bones. They have the history of nearly all terrestrial life on earth in them and when foolish and greedy men come ripping the mountains up to find coal, lumber, and other resources, this history inevitably is discovered and begins wreaking havoc on those in its path.

Coal mining, especially in the early 1900s, was one of the most dangerous industries in the country and one of the most corrupt. Explosions and collapses were common, and pay was poor and often in scrip which could only be exchanged in company stores. This show takes the capitalist evils put on everyone from children to old men and makes them visceral and unreal, turning a union-hating boss into a literal demon (Act I of Season 3) or turning the bodies of those who died in a preventable explosion into undead creatures that burn the town to the ground (Act I of Season 1). The environmental message is also clear, if greedy men far away had not dug in these hills then these evils would stay locked up.

The show uses two opposing mystical forces to illustrate the conflict between and within the characters in this show. The Green is the “manifestation and magic of life”. It is often used as the force of “good” in the show but what nature wants and what people want do not always align. It counters the Inner Dark, the force of a deep evil trapped in the mountains eons ago that exploits peoples’ greed to try and set itself free. While this is often the underlying conflict, these forces operate on a scale far too great to notice for the (mostly) mortal people this show focuses on.

The Inner Dark also corrupts people with Faustian bargains of wealth and fame, or to prevent their personal demise at the expense of so many others. These characters are always met with comeuppance, and as they whimper and cry for their lives they realize that everything they had done to keep themselves safe was all for nothing.

The Green is capable of being corrupted as well. In the main arc of Season 2, the Dead Queen, a dark manifestation of The Green, escapes her binding and goes on a rampage, killing many men who have done wrong to women or children, and anyone who interferes with her revenge.

While the show is technically an anthology and each season can be listened to independently, there are enough through-lines and repeat characters that it is best to start with the first season and work one’s way forward in order of release. If you want to start listening there are over 50 episodes of the main story as well as holiday specials and other bonus episodes, not to mention all the additional content on their Patreon. It is my favorite podcast and if you are a fan of witchcraft, hideous creatures, running through the woods, or oral storytelling, this is the podcast for you.

They also have turned the podcast into a TTRPG which is super fun and cool and people should play with me…..please.