Harlan

Number four: Natasha Louise Fugate-Jones.

In 2015, 34-year-old Natasha Fugate-Jones left the inpatient rehabilitation center she was staying at in Harlan, Kentucky and headed for her grandmother, Ola Chaffin's house in Fisty, Kentucky.

Natasha had struggled with addiction for a while and was doing her best to get into recovery for her two sons, Connor and Hunter.

Natasha's two sons lived with their grandmother, and she knew that the two would have happy and fulfilling lives with their grandmother while she got her life back on track.

I recently got into like minors union rights.

OK, meaning have you heard of a film called Harlan County USA? I

have heard of it.

I have not seen it.

So it's a

doc.

It's a, it's a documentary from 1976, uh, Harlan County, I think will probably be most familiar, uh, to those listening who like the show justified because justified takes place in Harlan.

Um, There's also a fairly popular country bluegrass song called You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive that's been covered many, many, many times, written and performed by Patti Loveless originally because her father was a coal miner in Harlan.

There were exceptions, though.

The famous Harlan County War kicks off in 1931, which is another big minor struggle in Harlan, Kentucky, in the Appalachian Mountains.

So this is an eight-year struggle, actually, where hundreds of people are killed on both sides.

It begins after coal operators in February 31 announced a 10% wage cut after wage cuts had been carried out previously.

We'll come back to it when we do the second part of this series.

But just to say, this is where the infamous Sheriff J.H. Blair comes to the fore.

If you know the song, Which Side Are You On? And there's that line, they say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there.

You'll either be a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair.

We have four hospitals.

I- we used to do five hospitals, and in Harlan, Kentucky, um, they quit delivering babies, so all those in Harlan come to Whitesburg, which is Letcher County.

So we do sev- usually 72 to 75 babies a month, just in Whitesburg.

So you, you said you go primarily to Whitesburg.

As you can tell, got a lot of directions to go this evening.

They're watching us in Harlan, Kentucky.

They're watching us in Denver, Colorado, Bayou La Batre, Alabama, and Houston, Texas.

This is gonna be a general statement, but trust me, there's a lot of meat on the bone to the statement itself.

So we have many hats that we wear and we get out there and we work and there's a lot to it.

So we want to talk today about the different kinds of outreach, specifically each one of them and how it's different out in the east, out in Harlan where you are, and in E-town where I'm from and where I work, how it's different for both of us and how we go about planning or handling each event that we we have to set up

yeah so i could only imagine uh you know in rural eastern kentucky we have our uh what i call mom and pop stores we have people that you know i'll just walk in and they know me when they walk in that's Hey, Shane, how's your day going? Hey, Shane, what have you been into? How's the family? We know these people personally.

So there's a lot of small businesses.

So I had three counties.

So I have all three counties.

When we come to Cram to Cruiser, so Harlan County.

The schools are involved.

Make your plans right now by heading over to southerngothicfestival.com. That's southerngothicfestival.com. Southern Gothic is a podcast that explores the history behind some of the American South's darkest days, greatest mysteries, and most chilling ghost stories.

On our most recent episode of Southern Gothic, we went on out to Harlan County, Kentucky, where we explore the legend of Headless Annie, the purported apparition of a young girl wandering the winding roads of Black Mountain at night, all in search of her head.

Now, by all accounts, this legend seems to be a bit shaky when it comes to a factual foundation, but as you heard, with a past as violent as the place known as Bloody Harlan is, y'all, it'd be crazy for us to think that the legend of Headless Annie is the only ghost story down there in the shadow of Black Mountain.

You see, on the southwestern side of it, just outside the town that's actually called Harlan as well, is Red Dog Road.

A narrow, rugged mountain road that steeply winds its way up into the wooded hills above town.

The road is rough enough that local tourism officials warn folks they shouldn't make the trip without four-wheel drive.

Not at all.

And it turned out there was no way he could have been.