The autumn of 1907 settled over Harlan County with an stillness that seemed to press down on the mountains themselves. Pine Mountain cast its long shadows across valleys where hunting cabins dotted the landscape along the Cumberland River, and men came as they always had, following the game trails into the deep woods. By December, seven of them had walked into those forests and never walked out again. For months, the disappearances were treated as separate tragedies.
County Clerk Thomas Whitfield recorded each in his precise cursive, noting ages, occupations, last known locations, and the same bleak notation in every case: no remains recovered. The Harlan Daily Enterprise reported the losses as isolated incidents, the predictable toll of an unforgiving wilderness. An editorial from October 28th suggested that the wilderness claims its due each season, a sentiment that reflected the era’s casual acceptance of the dangers hidden in the Appalachian hills. It was not until 1962, during a renovation project tied to a federal initiative that would create the Daniel Boone National Forest, that something surfaced to challenge that acceptance.
Work crews under the direction of foreman Samuel Ledbetter had taken on an abandoned homestead roughly twenty-three miles southeast of Harlan proper, a property that had been deserted for decades. Beneath a loose floorboard in the main living area of a substantial log cabin, they found three leather-bound journals. The journals belonged to Tobias and Elijah Blackwood, brothers who owned approximately three hundred acres of dense woodland carved out of the southeastern part of the county. The deed, filed in 1876 and transferred to the brothers in 1899 following their father’s death, described land that rose from the waters of the Cumberland to the ridge of Pine Mountain, encompassing Bear Creek Hollow and the eastern face of Stony Point.
The entries spanned from 1899 to late 1907, and together with county records, newspaper clippings, and interviews with descendants, they would piece together a story that the official record had spent decades burying. The investigation was never officially concluded. In 1967, the case was permanently archived with the Kentucky State Historical Society, where it remains largely forgotten. The Blackwood brothers had existed on the margins of the community for as long as anyone could remember.
Known in neighboring McCreary County as reclusive trappers, they appeared every few months in the small township of Whitley City to trade pelts for supplies. Harold Jenkins, who ran the trading post there, kept meticulous ledgers, and his entries track the brothers with the precision of a man who found them unsettling. They typically arrived at dawn, exchanged furs, and departed before other customers arrived. The ledgers list their usual purchases: salt, coffee beans, ammunition, occasionally tools, and very rarely tobacco for Elijah.
Jenkins’s diary offers a closer look at the men behind the transactions. An entry from November 1904 describes Tobias, the elder, as standing near six and a half feet tall with shoulders like an ox, his hands bearing the scars of countless seasons in the wilderness, yet counting coins with the delicacy of a banker. His brother, smaller but no less imposing, watched the door as if expecting trouble that never arrived. Jenkins wrote that they moved through his establishment like wolves among sheep.
He admitted, in private, that nothing had ever gone missing, but he always found himself checking his inventory more carefully after they left. What struck Jenkins most was that the brothers appeared remarkably well-fed for men who lived so deep in the wilderness, particularly during winter months when game grew scarce. Other mountain dwellers grew lean in the harsh Kentucky winters, but the Blackwoods did not. When questioned about their hunting success, Tobias gave a cryptic reply: they had ways of ensuring the table was always full.
Jenkins noted the response in his diary repeatedly over four years. He never got a better answer. The cabin where the brothers lived stood in a remote clearing roughly seventeen miles from the nearest neighbor. A narrow dirt path twisted through dense pine forest to reach it, and the approach was marked by peculiar arrangements of stones placed at irregular intervals.
A logger named James Harkins recalled his father, who had delivered supplies to the Blackwood property in 1901, describing those stones as standing like silent sentinels that seemed to follow you with invisible eyes. The path was unusually level and well maintained, wide enough for a horse but not a wagon, forcing visitors to approach in single file. The location appeared on an 1899 survey map commissioned by the Kentucky Land Office, but maps from 1910 onward omitted the property entirely, as if the land itself conspired to forget. A 1910 geological survey connected to a coal exploration initiative showed only uninhabited wilderness where the cabin should have stood, despite its substantial construction.
Those few who had seen the cabin described it as unusually large for a wilderness dwelling. It was built of hand-hewn oak logs, notched and fitted with remarkable precision, with a stone foundation extending roughly ten feet into the ground to create what witnesses described as a full underground level, accessed through a trap door in the main room. Luther Collins, a hunting guide who claimed to have visited once in 1906, gave a statement to the Harlan County Sheriff in 1908 during the belated investigation into the disappearances. The main floor held a large central room with a massive stone fireplace, two smaller rooms presumably used as bedrooms, and a separate kitchen area with an unusual brick oven built into the wall.
But what struck Collins most was the collection of knives displayed on a wooden rack near the kitchen entrance. He counted thirty or forty different blades. Some he recognized as hunting or skinning knives. Others looked like surgeon’s tools.
All were kept polished and arranged by size. When Elijah saw him looking, he explained they were family heirlooms from their father’s time as a field medic during the war. The brothers had lived largely unnoticed by authorities until 1907. Their property taxes were paid annually through Jonathan Pierce, a lawyer in Whitley City, whose brief notes indicate the land had been acquired by their father during post-Civil War redistribution.
Pierce met the brothers only twice: once to execute the will after their father’s death, and again in 1902 to draft a document ensuring that if either brother died, the property would pass fully to the survivor, with no claims permitted from any other parties. Pierce noted that this seemed odd, as neither brother was known to have family or heirs, but he fulfilled the request without question. Military records accessed in 1965 by researchers identified the father as Sergeant Ezekiel Blackwood, formerly of the 13th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, Company C. He had served as a field hospital assistant during the latter years of the war, with a notation that he was particularly skilled in amputation procedures.
Pierce’s notes mentioned that the elder Blackwood had peculiar dietary requirements necessitating the family’s isolated lifestyle. In a letter to a colleague dated 1904, Pierce elaborated slightly: the elder Blackwood suffered from some digestive malady acquired during his military service. According to his sons, he could consume only very fresh meat prepared in specific ways, or he would suffer terribly. No further explanation was provided, and the medical records of that era could not identify what condition might require such restrictions.
The brothers had no formal education beyond what their father taught them, and neither had ever married. Their isolation was nearly complete. Local children were warned to avoid the area near Pine Mountain where the Blackwoods lived, though no specific reason was given beyond the usual cautions about respecting private property. Eliza Jenkins, the trading post owner’s daughter, recalled in a 1966 interview that her father would say, with a gravity that ended the conversation, that those who wandered onto Blackwood land tended not to wander back off it.
What triggered the events of 1907 remains unclear, but two factors likely played a role. September arrived with temperatures averaging twelve degrees below normal, with an early frost on the tenth that damaged crops throughout the region. The cold pushed game animals deeper into the mountains, driving hunters further into territory they had not previously explored. At the same time, a county ordinance passed that summer eliminated private property restrictions for licensed hunters during hunting season, a measure designed to prevent wealthy landowners from monopolizing the best grounds.
The ordinance, preserved in county records, stated that from September 1st to December 31st, licensed hunters may pursue game across property boundaries, provided they do not damage structures or livestock. The Blackwoods reportedly appeared at a county meeting to oppose the ordinance, one of their only known appearances in town, but their objections were overruled. The meeting minutes note only that objection was raised by residents of Pine Mountain District. The brothers were not named.
Whatever the cause, the ordinance brought strangers onto Blackwood land. On September 17th, 1907, William Thornton, a 43-year-old bank clerk from Lexington, told his three companions he was going to check traps along the eastern ridge of Pine Mountain. They had established their camp near the Cumberland River, roughly seven miles from the Blackwood property. Thornton had shot a sizable buck the previous day and was in high spirits.
He departed at approximately 8:30 in the morning, carrying his Winchester rifle, a skinning knife, and a small pack with food and water. When he failed to return by sundown, his companions waited until nightfall before searching. They found his rifle leaning against a tree approximately four miles from their camp, along with a partially filled canteen and a bloodstained handkerchief. The rifle appeared to have been placed deliberately rather than dropped, as if Thornton had set it aside voluntarily.
No other trace of the man was discovered. A storm moved in that evening, washing away any potential tracks. A search party of the sheriff, two deputies, and local volunteers combed the area for three days and found nothing further. On September 23rd, Sheriff Harlan Daniels concluded that Thornton had likely suffered an accident in the rough terrain and either succumbed to his injuries or been carried off by scavengers.
The report’s final notation read: Mr. Thornton’s disappearance, while tragic, is consistent with the dangers inherent to hunting in remote areas. His companions returned to Lexington, where Thornton’s wife commissioned a headstone in the Lexington Cemetery. No body was ever recovered to place beneath it.
A month later, on October 23rd, two brothers from Cincinnati named James and Robert Caldwell failed to return to their lodgings in Cumberland. James was twenty-eight, Robert thirty-one. Both were experienced hunters who had traveled to Kentucky specifically for the white-tailed deer that were abundant in the region. They had arrived on October 20th and taken rooms at a boarding house run by Mrs.
Edith Simmons, a widow who catered to out-of-state hunters. According to her statement to Sheriff Daniels, they had mentioned finding promising sign near a creek that feeds into the Cumberland, up where the mountains get steep. The description matched the general vicinity of the Blackwood property. Two days after the men departed, their horses returned to the stable without riders.
The stable hand, Joseph Miller, reported that the animals appeared agitated but not injured, and were still saddled. Mrs. Simmons, examining the saddle bags, found an unusual amount of meat wrapped in oil cloth. Assuming it to be venison and believing the brothers had gone to retrieve more game, she prepared it for her boarders.
The meat was consumed before the brothers were officially declared missing. When investigators questioned her about its appearance or taste, she reported nothing unusual, only that it was tender, as if from a young animal. One boarder, a Mr. Douglas from Virginia, commented that it was the sweetest venison he had ever tasted, and asked about the brother’s hunting location so he might try his luck in the same area.
Mrs. Simmons did not recall whether she had told him. The search for the Caldwell brothers lasted five days and yielded nothing beyond a single spent rifle cartridge that could not be definitively linked to either man’s weapon. The Cincinnati Inquirer ran a small article on November 2nd noting that they were presumed lost to the hazards of the Kentucky wilderness.
Their parents traveled to Harlan County in mid-November and returned to Ohio without answers. Robert’s wife was expecting their first child, born in February 1908, a boy who would never know his father. She wrote to Sheriff Daniels in March of that year, pleading for any additional information. The sheriff’s response, if one was sent, is not included in the records.
The third disappearance came in early November. Frederick Schmidt, a 39-year-old German immigrant who worked as a butcher in Louisville, traveled to Harlan County alone on November 3rd. He signed out of the Railroad Hotel in Harland Town on the morning of November 5th, telling the clerk he planned to hunt for several days before returning. He never checked back in.
His disappearance was not noted until November 15th, when he failed to return to his job in Louisville. By the time Sheriff Daniels was notified, nearly two weeks had passed. Winter weather had set in, making a thorough investigation impossible. Schmidt’s equipment, including a distinctive German-made rifle with his name engraved on the stock, was never recovered.
The fourth and fifth disappearances occurred on November 26th and involved two local men: Thomas Howard, a coal miner, and Peter Jenkins, a carpenter, brothers-in-law and lifelong residents of Cumberland. They left their homes for what was intended to be a two-day hunting trip, telling their wives, who were sisters, that game had become scarce in their usual grounds and they would head to the high country instead. When they failed to return on November 28th, their families immediately reported them missing. A search party of fellow miners and neighbors who knew the terrain well found their initial campsite, which appeared to have been abandoned hastily.
The campfire had been extinguished, but the cooking equipment was left behind, along with a partially dressed rabbit carcass left to spoil. The men’s rifles were missing, suggesting they had been armed when they left camp. The sixth disappearance occurred on December 12th. Reverend Isaiah Thornfield, a traveling preacher from Tennessee who had been conducting revival meetings throughout Harlan County, believed no soul was too remote to receive the word.
According to his assistant, Timothy Greer, the reverend had heard of reclusive families living in the mountains who had not seen a preacher in years and felt called to minister to them. He departed on horseback on the morning of December 12th, carrying his Bible and a small bag of provisions. Three days later, his horse returned to the church in Harland without its rider. The saddle bags held the reverend’s Bible, apparently untouched, but his other belongings were missing.
Greer organized a search with church members. It yielded no results. The final disappearance of the season, and the most disturbing in retrospect, occurred on December 23rd. Mary Caldwell, sister of the missing Caldwell brothers, had traveled from Cincinnati to Harlan County, determined to learn what had happened to her brothers.
Despite warnings about the dangerous winter conditions, she hired a local guide named Jeremiah Stone to take her to the area where her brothers had planned to hunt. They set out on the morning of the 23rd, following the direction Mrs. Simmons had indicated the Caldwell brothers had taken. As they approached the foothills of Pine Mountain, Mary insisted on proceeding alone for a short distance to a ridge where she believed she could get a better view.
Stone advised against it but yielded, agreeing to wait with the horses. After approximately thirty minutes, he became concerned and followed her path. He found no trace of her. As darkness approached, he returned to Cumberland to seek help.
A search party formed the next morning, Christmas Eve, but a severe snowstorm delayed their efforts. By the time weather permitted a thorough search, any tracks or evidence had been obliterated by several feet of snow. Mary Caldwell was never found. Seven disappearances within a single hunting season should have triggered a coordinated investigation.
Several factors prevented it. The victims came from different locations, many were out-of-state visitors without local connections, and the disappearances were spread over months. Sheriff Daniels was also dealing with labor unrest at several coal mines, which consumed much of his department’s resources. And the remote, dangerous terrain made extensive searches difficult, especially once winter set in.
The Harlan Daily Enterprise published an editorial on January 8th, 1908, noting the unusual number of missing people but attributing it to the particularly harsh winter and an influx of inexperienced hunters unfamiliar with the treacherous mountain landscape. The editorial concluded with a call for stricter regulation of hunting licenses for out-of-state visitors. It made no suggestion of foul play. The Blackwood property remained untouched until 1932, when the county reclaimed the land for unpaid taxes.
The brothers had not been seen at the trading post since December 1907. The last confirmed sighting of either brother was December 26th, 1907, when Elijah Blackwood made an unusual wintertime journey to the trading post in Whitley City. Harold Jenkins’s diary entry from that date describes Elijah as haggard and distracted, his clothes stained, his manner more agitated than anything Jenkins had ever observed. He traded an unusually large quantity of meat and pelts, purchasing supplies that suggested long-term travel: preserved foods, ammunition, a new knife, and a heavy coat.
When Jenkins inquired about Tobias, Elijah replied only that his brother remained at home tending to private matters. Jenkins noted that Elijah departed heading west, rather than north toward the Blackwood property. That was the last confirmed sighting of either brother. The deed transfer, filed in the Harlan County Courthouse on April 15th, 1932, described the land as abandoned and without structures of value, suggesting the cabin had been destroyed or deteriorated significantly in the intervening years.
No one showed interest in the remote parcel until 1962, when the Forest Service planned to construct a fire observation tower on the highest point of the former Blackwood land. During excavation for the tower’s foundation, workers discovered the remains of a cabin that had apparently burned decades earlier. The site report filed by Samuel Ledbetter noted that the foundation extended approximately ten feet below ground level, with evidence of multiple underground rooms or chambers, unusual for structures of this region and era. Among the charred timbers, they found a metal box containing the three leather-bound journals, partially damaged by fire but still legible.
The discovery was reported to Forest Service headquarters in Winchester, Kentucky, where officials decided the find had historical rather than criminal significance due to the apparent age of the materials. Dr. Eliza Montgomery, an anthropologist from the University of Kentucky, examined the journals as part of a research project on Appalachian isolation communities. Her preliminary report, dated October 3rd, 1964, described them as a remarkable window into the psychology of extreme isolation and the development of parallel moral systems in remote communities.
The journals contained daily entries in two distinct handwritings. The entries from 1899 through early 1907 focused on the mundane aspects of wilderness survival: hunting reports, weather observations, maintenance of their property, and occasional philosophical reflections that Montgomery described as surprisingly articulate for men with presumably limited formal education. Beginning in March 1907, the tone shifted, particularly in the entries attributed to Tobias. He wrote with increasing frequency about encroachment and violations of their territory.
An entry dated March 23rd reads: Found bootprints along the eastern creek bed. Strangers walking our land without permission or acknowledgment. Father would not have tolerated such trespass. Subsequent entries tracked Tobias’s growing paranoia, his language becoming increasingly hostile.
By August, he wrote about setting additional deterrence along the property boundaries, though he did not specify what these entailed. Elijah’s entries during this period expressed concern about his brother’s state of mind. On August 17th he wrote: He rarely sleeps, spends nights walking the perimeter, speaks often of father’s lessons and our duty to the land. I fear the isolation has begun to wear on his mind.
Yet he refuses to consider even our customary trading journey this month. The most disturbing entries were recipes, detailed instructions for preparing various cuts of meat from what the brothers referred to as two-legged game. They became more frequent and detailed starting in September 1907. Tobias wrote on September 18th: Unexpected bounty yesterday.
Trespasser carried identification from a Lexington banking establishment. Elijah processed the meat while I disposed of the remainder as father taught us. The liver was exceptionally tender when prepared with wild onions and salt. We will preserve the rest using the smoking technique father preferred for the leaner portions.
His entry from October 25th reads: The older one provided better marbling in the flank portions. Elijah objects to my terminology, but father was always clear that proper nomenclature is essential to proper preparation. We are not savages. We are custodians of an ancient knowledge.
Elijah’s entries during this period became increasingly distressed. On November 3rd he wrote: He is merely protecting what is ours, as father would have wanted. But father’s hunger was born of necessity during wartime, not this eagerness Tobias now displays. He speaks of setting lures rather than merely defending our boundaries.
I find myself unable to sleep, though the meat does sustain us through these cold nights. By December, the brothers were in conflict. An entry from December 14th in Elijah’s handwriting reads: Confronted him about the preacher. There was no threat there.
The man merely sought to bring his God to our door. He said, all trespassers are the same. That intention matters not when the result is violation of our sanctuary. He becomes more like father with each passing day, but father at least maintained control of his appetites.
Montgomery’s research was abruptly discontinued in November 1964, and her paper was withdrawn from publication. University records indicate she requested a sabbatical shortly thereafter and relocated to Oregon. She never returned to the research. The journals were placed in restricted access storage following a review by the state attorney general’s office in early 1965.
A brief memo attached to the case file states only that no actionable evidence exists to warrant further investigation of incidents occurring more than fifty years prior, particularly when no identifiable remains have been recovered. The case was officially designated of historical interest and archived. In the years that followed, a folklore collector named Martin Ridley traveled through Harlan County recording oral histories. In 1966, he interviewed Abigail Jenkins, the 87-year-old daughter of the trading post owner who had known the Blackwood brothers.
The transcript of that interview, deposited in the American Folklore Collection at the Library of Congress, contains a chilling account. Abigail told Ridley that her father had rarely spoken of the Blackwoods, but near the end of his life, he had confided things he’d kept secret for decades. In December 1907, Elijah Blackwood had come to the trading post alone, his behavior more erratic than usual. Elijah’s hands trembled so badly he could barely count his coins.
His clothes were stained dark in places, and he smelled of smoke and something her father described as like a slaughterhouse. He traded an unprecedented amount of meat, which he claimed was venison and wild boar, though it was packaged differently than their usual offerings. Elijah kept looking over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to follow him into the store. When her father asked after Tobias, Elijah became agitated and said something he found disturbing enough to remember word for word: Tobias has developed a taste that can’t be satisfied with animal flesh alone.
I fear he’s changing into something father always warned about. Elijah paid with several gold coins rather than the silver they typically used. When her father commented on this, Elijah explained they had found the coins in a trespasser’s pockets. Before departing, Elijah told him: If Tobias comes looking, you never saw me.
For your own safety, remember that. Elijah never returned to the trading post after that visit. Abigail also recounted that several items belonging to missing hunters had surfaced for sale in Knoxville the following spring. A pocket watch matching the description of one owned by William Thornton appeared in a pawn shop.
A distinctive hunting knife belonging to one of the Caldwell brothers was recognized by a fellow Cincinnati hunter in a Knoxville general store. No connection to the Blackwoods was ever established, and authorities considered the appearances coincidental, possibly the result of scavengers who had found abandoned equipment. The interview concludes with Abigail sharing a detail omitted from official reports. Her father had sampled the meat Elijah brought in that final visit and became violently ill afterward.
He described it as if his body was rejecting something fundamentally wrong. He couldn’t keep food down for nearly a week. On his deathbed years later, he confessed his suspicion that he had unwittingly consumed human flesh. He told her: Abigail, I’ve carried this knowledge like a stone in my gut for years.
That wasn’t any deer or boar Elijah brought in that day. I have been a hunter all my life and know the taste of every animal these mountains produce. What I tasted that day was something else entirely, and may God forgive me for it. When Ridley asked if her father had ever reported his suspicions to authorities, she replied that he had not.
Who would believe such a thing? And by the time he was certain, years had passed and the Blackwoods were long gone. The physical evidence of what occurred in those woods in 1907 has largely vanished. The fire that destroyed the Blackwood cabin appears to have been deliberately set, though by whom remains unknown.
Forensic analysis conducted cursorily in 1962 indicated that the fire had burned at an unusually high temperature, consistent with the use of accelerants. The project report notes evidence of multiple points of origin for the fire, inconsistent with accidental causes such as lightning strikes or chimney fires. This finding was not pursued, as the age of the site placed it outside criminal interest. In 1967, before construction of the fire tower was completed, workers discovered a series of stone-lined pits approximately half a mile from the cabin site.
Forest Service reports describe them as possible root cellars or storage facilities, approximately six feet deep and eight feet in diameter, lined with fitted stones and covered with heavy wooden lids that had partially collapsed over time. Work was halted when bone fragments were found among the stones. Dr. Walter Richardson, a forensic anthropologist consulted by the Forest Service, conducted a brief examination and concluded the fragments were non-human, likely deer or wild boar, noting that the cutting marks visible on some specimens were consistent with butchering practices common in the region.
His report, dated June 8th, 1967, recommended resuming construction. The pits were filled in and covered. No photographs of these excavations exist in public records. But Richardson’s original field notes, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 1978 by journalist Thomas Carter, contain an observation omitted from the official report: several of the larger bone fragments exhibit unusual cutting patterns inconsistent with standard game butchery.
The precision of certain cuts suggests knowledge of anatomy beyond that typically possessed by hunters or trappers. Without more complete specimens, conclusive identification is impossible, but the possibility of human remains can’t be entirely ruled out. The fire tower stood for only seven years before being decommissioned due to what official reports called persistent structural issues and unexplained equipment failures. Rangers assigned to the tower frequently requested transfers, citing unsettling noises and a persistent odor of cooking meat, despite the remote location.
One ranger, David Coleman, submitted a detailed incident report in August 1970 describing what he called an unnerving experience during his overnight shift. At approximately 2:15 in the morning, he was awakened by what sounded like multiple individuals moving around the base of the tower. When he called out and shined his flashlight, no one was visible, yet the sounds continued for nearly twenty minutes. The following morning, he found numerous footprints in the soft earth surrounding the tower, circling the structure completely, yet no tracks leading to or from the area.
Coleman requested transfer the following day. His report was filed but not investigated. The tower was dismantled in 1974, and the area was designated a wildlife conservation zone with restricted public access. The most compelling evidence of what occurred on the Blackwood property comes from a private source.
In 1968, a collector of Civil War memorabilia purchased a trunk of documents at an estate sale in Knoxville. Among the papers was a letter dated January 3rd, 1908, from Elijah Blackwood to a cousin in Tennessee. The collector, Herbert Simmons, recognized the name from regional folklore and brought the letter to Dr. Montgomery, who had resumed teaching at the University of Kentucky but had abandoned her research on the Blackwood case.
Montgomery authenticated the letter by comparing the handwriting with known journal entries, confirming its likely legitimacy. The letter, written on water-stained paper in fading ink, contains a confession. Elijah wrote that their father had taught them that human flesh contained special properties that would grant strength and longevity if consumed regularly. He claimed that Ezekiel Blackwood had survived the harsh winter of 1865 while serving with the Union Army by consuming the flesh of fallen soldiers, developing an addiction he passed to his sons through both instruction and practice.
Father taught us that certain men, particularly those who lived clean lives and abstained from spirits, provided meat that could sustain not just the body, but the spirit. He called it the ultimate sustenance and believed it had extended his life beyond natural limits. He trained us to identify suitable subjects, to prepare the meat in ways that preserved what he called its essence, and to dispose of the remaining evidence in ways that nature herself would conceal. Elijah described how, following their father’s death in 1899, he and Tobias had initially abstained from the practice, subsisting on conventional game.
But during a particularly harsh winter in 1901, Tobias reverted to their father’s ways when a lost trapper sought shelter in their cabin. He justified it as self-defense, as the man had become delirious with fever and threatened them with his knife. But I saw the look in my brother’s eyes as he prepared the meat, Elijah wrote, the same hunger that had possessed father in his final years. The brothers reached an uneasy compromise: they would only consume individuals who trespassed on their land and posed some perceived threat.
This arrangement held until the hunting season of 1907, when the county ordinance brought more hunters into their territory. Tobias became increasingly possessed by the hunger, eventually hunting humans deliberately rather than opportunistically consuming trespassers. He began to set traps not for animals but for men. He studied their movements, identified their camps, and selected targets with the precision father had taught us for choosing prime deer.
What had once been reluctant necessity became eager pursuit. The letter states that on Christmas Eve 1907, Elijah discovered Tobias preparing a stew containing parts of a young woman who had been searching for her missing brothers. When I recognized female garments among the discarded belongings, something broke within me, Elijah wrote. Father had been explicit that women were never to be considered suitable.
Something fundamental had changed in Tobias. He was consuming not for sustenance, but for pleasure. The expression on his face as he stirred that pot haunts me still. This crossed a moral line for Elijah who, according to the letter, killed his brother that night and burned the cabin with Tobias inside.
I struck him from behind with father’s old army shovel. As he bent over the hearth, I told myself it was mercy, not murder, that the brother I had known was already gone, replaced by something that merely wore his face. I poured coal oil over everything that would burn and lit the flame that I hoped would purify what we had become. Perhaps it is cowardice that I did not join him in that pyre.
The letter concludes with Elijah’s statement that he was heading west to escape the hunger that never truly leaves. His final lines read: I feel it still, cousin, the craving father planted in us. In my dreams I taste it still and wake famished for something deer and rabbit cannot satisfy. I go west to lose myself where no one knows the name Blackwood.
Though I fear that what father awakened in our blood can never truly be put to rest. If there is a God, may he forgive what we have done in these mountains. I know I shall never forgive myself. The collector attempted to contact authorities in 1968 but was reportedly told the case was closed due to the passage of time and lack of evidence that could lead to prosecution.
The letter’s current whereabouts are unknown; the collection was dispersed after the collector’s death in 1969. Montgomery, who had seen and transcribed the letter, refused to discuss it further, stating only that some historical materials are best left unexamined. The legacy of the Blackwood brothers manifests in the curious fact that the southeastern portion of what is now Daniel Boone National Forest has one of the lowest hunter visitation rates in the entire Appalachian region. Despite abundant game and spectacular vistas, the area remains largely untraveled.
A Forest Service visitor analysis conducted in 1978 found that hunters and hikers alike tend to avoid the specific section that once contained the Blackwood property, even when unaware of its history. Local guides refused to take groups there, citing dangerous terrain or protected wildlife habitats. Jeremiah Hullbrook, a hunting guide interviewed for the analysis, stated simply: There are places in these mountains that don’t welcome human presence. That’s one of them.
Animals know it, too. You won’t find deer or turkey in that hollow, no matter how good the foraging might be. Park rangers interviewed for the assessment acknowledged an unofficial policy of discouraging camping or hunting in that section. We don’t put it in the official guidelines, one ranger explained, but new staff are quietly advised to direct visitors elsewhere.
We’ve had too many incidents over the years. Equipment failures, unexplained injuries, hikers reporting disorientation, even with compass and map. One ranger, speaking anonymously, admitted there was something not right about that hollow. Animals avoid it.
Plants grow wrong there, twisted somehow, even though the soil and sunlight are no different from the surrounding areas. We just tell people the area is being rehabilitated. The coordinates that would have marked the Blackwood cabin do not appear on any official forest maps produced after 1970. Topographical surveys seem to skirt the area entirely, leaving a small but noticeable blank space in the otherwise meticulously documented national forest.
This cartographic omission was officially attributed to a surveying error that was never corrected, though several former Forest Service employees have suggested it was intentional. Perhaps most telling is the fate of those who attempted to investigate the Blackwood case. Montgomery abandoned her promising academic career shortly after examining the journals, taking a position teaching at a community college in Oregon, where she reportedly refused to discuss her previous research. Thomas Carter, who filed the Freedom of Information Act request in 1978, published a single article about the case in a small regional magazine before abandoning the subject.
When contacted by subsequent researchers in the early 1980s, he refused to discuss the matter, saying only that some stories carry consequences for those who tell them. Martin Ridley, who interviewed Abigail Jenkins, died unexpectedly of a heart attack just weeks after depositing his recordings at the Library of Congress, despite having no history of cardiac issues. Dr. Walter Richardson, who examined the bone fragments, requested reassignment to a university in California shortly after submitting his report and never published on forensic anthropology again.
In the decades since, the story of the Blackwood brothers has been reduced to a footnote in the region’s folklore. Local residents share watered-down versions around campfires, usually framing it as a tale of two strange hermits who may have attacked trespassers rather than consumed them. The more disturbing elements have been largely excised from oral tradition, perhaps out of a collective desire to forget. Occasional rumors surface of hikers finding unusual stone formations or metal implements in the unmapped section of the forest, but no official investigations have been conducted.
In 1992, a backpacker reported discovering a stone-lined pit similar to those described in the 1967 Forest Service reports, but when rangers visited the coordinates he provided, they found no such structure. The backpacker later recanted, stating he must have become disoriented in the dense forest. The last documented reference to the case in government records appears in a 1973 internal memo from the Kentucky State Police Archives, authorizing the transfer of all materials related to the 1907 disappearances to deep storage, with a notation that they are to be preserved but not digitized or included in any public-facing catalog. The memo includes a curious addendum: annual verification of secure containment required.
Why files relating to a case more than sixty years old would require annual security checks is not explained. A Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2002 seeking access to these materials was denied, citing ongoing investigation status, despite the case having been officially closed decades earlier. When pressed for clarification, state officials claimed the designation was an administrative error, but still refused access to the files. Today, hunting licenses issued in Harlan County include a map with a shaded area marked simply as environmentally sensitive zone, no hunting permitted.
This zone corresponds precisely to the former Blackwood property, though no official explanation for the restriction is provided to license holders. The designation cannot be traced to any specific environmental protection order or wildlife conservation initiative. Local residents know better than to ask. They simply nod and avoid the area, particularly in autumn.
During the research for this account in 1968, a journalist from the Louisville Courier Journal traveled to the area to interview elderly residents who might have remembered the events of 1907. Most refused to speak on record, but one man, then in his nineties, offered a perspective that perhaps best captures the lingering shadow of the Blackwood brothers. The mountains remember what people try to forget, he told the journalist. Those brothers weren’t the first to develop unusual appetites in these hills, and I doubt they’ll be the last.
Some hungers don’t die with the men who felt them. They sink into the soil, seep into the water, and wait for someone new to feed them. The journalist’s article was never published. His notes were found in his abandoned vehicle near the forest boundary.
He was reported missing, but was later discovered in a hospital in Nashville, having checked himself in under a false name. He had no memory of the three days following his interview and left journalism shortly thereafter. When contacted by researchers in 1969, he refused to discuss the Blackwood case, saying only: Some stories aren’t meant to be told. Some appetites shouldn’t be remembered.
In the years since this investigation was compiled, the eastern ridge of Pine Mountain has been occasionally subject to unexplained forest fires, despite no lightning strikes or human campfires reported in the vicinity. Rangers note that these fires typically occur in late September or October, burning intensely but never spreading beyond the boundaries of what was once Blackwood land. After each fire, rangers report finding unusual arrangements of stones that were not present before the blaze, circular patterns reminiscent of cooking pits that appear to have been recently used, despite the area being officially off limits to visitors. Perhaps it is merely the wind and rain rearranging the landscape after the fires pass through.
Or perhaps, as local folklore suggests, some appetites burn eternal, rekindled each autumn when the hunting season begins and strangers once again enter the ancient woods of Harlan County, Kentucky.
