Roger Manley

This book was meh for me. I've lived in East Tennessee my entire life, and it did in fact have a few things in it that I wasn't aware of, mostly things from West Tennessee.

It highly annoyed me with much of its content, however. Plenty of it was just blatantly wrong and badly researched, and other entries were ridiculous. I especially took offense at the authors claims of "rumors" of "vampires" in the covered bridge from my home town of Elizabethton... which the author in fact admitted were only ever "brought about recently" from a local newsman hanging upside down in the bridge one Halloween in the 90's. There's so much more history and rumored hauntings and other things of interest in the area (why were the Overmountain Men not mentioned above and before any of the other things from Elizabethton???) that I just don't understand why they had to grasp onto ridiculous things instead of looking for the more interesting and historic things that have been around for ages. They did at least relay a few local supposed hauntings mostly on par with the way they're actually told, so I guess they get credit for that.

I know it sounds pet-peevish, but I mean, hey, it's my opinion and this book was written by someone I consider an outsider. I really feel like you have to be from around here to understand around here. My neck of the woods, anyways. I know how absurd that sounds, but I'm sure we're all protective of our turf to an extent.… (mer)