There Are 6 Rules For Driving Appalachian Back Roads at Night… (From An Appalachian Local)

If you want to walk up into this country and come back down alive: The Appalachian Book of the Living and the Lost, at www.Otisboone.com Some night on a back road in these mountains, your car is going to sink down on its back springs like somebody just climbed in behind you. What you do next is the last of six rules I was raised on for driving Appalachian back roads after dark. The first five each have two reasons under them, what my people were afraid of and what the road itself will do to you. Why you never swerve for anything that steps into your lights in West Virginia, the worst state in the country for hitting an animal. Why you don't stop for anybody walking the road, and the murdered woman truck drivers say still turns up in their cabs on Trace Mountain in Logan County. Why you slow down at every roadside cross, from West Virginia's blue memorial signs to the Tail of the Dragon. Why the one thing that drowned people in their own cars during Hurricane Helene is also the only thing that gets you home some nights. And why a car flashing behind you is no reason to stop, especially in the National Radio Quiet Zone, where your call for help may never go through. The sixth rule only has the first kind of reason. #Appalachia #AppalachianFolklore #WestVirginia #AppalachianMountains #BackRoads #MamieThurman #TailOfTheDragon #HauntedRoads