Want to thank the gentleman I met at the camp out for the idea for this one. Don't remember his name but he told us about a hunter they found dead leaning against a tree. He died from a heart attack

East Ridge Hollow

Local legend has always been that it is best to stay away from East Ridge Hollow. That’s what the old timers said anyway. There was a large family named Isbell living out there until the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919 wiped them all out. The whole family died and well, it being so isolated way back there no-one found out about it for a few weeks and when they did it was just terrible. Dead livestock, kids, old people, lying all over the place and buzzards, hogs and other wild animals had eaten most of them in the meantime. The county sheriff went out there with a prison work gang and cleaned it all up. Dug a big pit and threw everything in all together except for what they knew was human and that was all buried in one grave. It was hard to tell what was what though. And I can’t imagine they were real particular about it either. For years afterward someone’s dog would drag up an arm or leg bone from out of the woods and JR’s coon dog brought back a skull one day. Everybody just sort of knew it was from East Ridge Hollow and let it go at that.

So again, folks just didn’t go out there much. Then later the new county road by passed the entry to the cove and after ten or so years you wouldn’t even know that anyone had ever lived out there unless you were looking for it. The house, barn and out houses had fallen in and the rock chimney collapsed. That’s what I was told by an old timer who was thought to be the last person out there and that was over thirty years ago. Said he wasn’t going back either. Never really said why, but just that he didn’t have any business out there and no one else did either. Just not a place for decent folks was all. And being that nothing was over in that part of the county anyway that’s just how it stayed since. Property ownership passed to the last living relative and it was finally let it go to the county for unpaid taxes. A timber company acquired it with four other sections of land. They had it surveyed and decided the East Ridge Hollow wasn’t profitable to cut so it just sat there for about forty years.