Georgia Legends & Lore (American Legends)

Settle in for a juicy bushel of Peach State bafflement.

Turn a metaphorical shovel of red Georgia clay to find a world teeming with inexplicable, head-scratching mystery. The legends here predate the state’s founding by hundreds of years, when Native people settled in and began grappling with the land. Now treasure hunters ply Civil War sites for the Confederacy’s lost treasure, with spectral soldiers galloping nearby. Hairy beasts lope through dark woods, while the night sky above bustles with disconcerting activity, like the UFO once spotted by Jimmy Carter. In this Georgia, psychics help convict murderers. The super-strict and thoroughly deceased former owner of Savannah’s Telfair Museum punishes rule breakers, and a ten-foot ’squatch emits a pungent stench at Minnehaha Falls. Join folklorist Alan Brown on a jaunt through the most confounding elements of Georgia’s long history.

Alan Brown teaches English at the University of West Alabama in Livingston, Alabama. Alan has written primarily about southern ghost lore, a passion that has taken him to haunted places throughout the entire Deep South, as well as parts of the Midwest and the Southwest. Alan’s wife, Marilyn, accompanies him on these trips and occasionally serves as his “ghost magnet.” Her encounters with the spirit world have been incorporated in a number of Alan’s books. In 2018, Alan decided to explore another abiding interest of his―mysteries and legends―in books like Eerie Alabama and The Unexplained South.