I’ve been on a bit of a Southern history jag since coming back from a trip to my home state of Georgia. Turns out I know very little about where I grew up. Some of my stranger findings:
Mary Shotwell Little Vanishes at Lenox Square-Well, We Think!: how had I never heard about this 1965 unsolved disappearance? A woman disappears from the biggest shopping mall in Atlanta. Her car is found with 40 unaccounted for miles on it… but the last sightings of her were six hours away in Charlottesville NC. Was she kidnapped or did she fake her own death–and in either case, why? See (or listen) also here and here.
Disappearance of Dannette and Jeannette Millbrook: I’d not heard of this one and no surprise – back in 1991 the authorities wrote off the Augusta, GA teenagers as runaways on no evidence whatsoever. Though re-opened in 2013 the Millbrook sisters’ case still didn’t get much attention until The Fall Line podcast focused on it for an entire season. A sad, frustrating cold case hopefully soon to come to a resolution.
The Georgia Guidestones: not hours away from my hometown yet I’ve never been (never been to Rock City or Ruby Falls either – yes, I am a slacker). A still anonymous “Small Group of Americans Who Seek The Age Of Reason” commissioned these in 1979 and they’ve inspired speculation and conspiracy theory ever since. Project Archivist covered these in one of their early episodes; their guest Raymond Wiley co-hosted Out There Radio back in 2005 based out of the University of Georgia radio station WUOG (where back in the early 1990s I hosted the dance music show during my student days).
And finally a whole blog of Georgia Mysteries for my future rabbit hole needs.
Local histories/mysteries are always fascinating; they’e kinda neighbourhood gossip, extra-morbid-style. 😉
I know, right? How did these get past me for the first half of my life??