HGB Ep. 531 - The Haunting of Loretta Lynn

Moment in Oddity - The Eschif in Perigueux (Suggested by: Karen Miller)

In the country of France, there is a very unique building that dates back to 1347 called the Eschif in Perigueux. It is located in the city of Perigueux (pear-hee-GOO) and consists of an oak timber framed building with wattle and daub infill. Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making buildings where a wattle, or woven lattice of wood strips, is daubed with a sticky material which was typically a mix of wet soil, sand, animal dung and straw. The unusual building is balanced on the narrow ramparts of Puy-Saint-Front (poo-wee-sant-fron) which was the medieval center of Périgueux, and is supported on oak struts along its length. At nearly 700 years old the fact that this building is still intact is amazing. During the middle ages the building was used as a method of surveillance of the Tournepiche (TOR-na-peesh) bridge, which was a toll bridge. The building, which is shaped like a house, sits atop a wall. The rampart looks to be approximately 20 feet high. Aside from the angled support beams, the width of the supporting rampart looks to only be about a third of the building's footprint if it were sitting on the earth. Structural engineering today can produce all sorts of amazing feats, but a nearly 700 year old building still accomplishing this in modern times, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The Three Mile Island Accident

In the month of March, on the 28th, in 1979, the Three Mile Island accident occurred. Three Mile Island was a nuclear generating station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The accident started at 4 a.m. and began releasing radioactive gases and iodine into the surrounding areas. There was a failure in the non-nuclear secondary system which then was compounded by a valve in the primary system which became stuck in the open position. There were further mechanical failures that arose. The Three Mile Island incident is considered one of the worst accidents in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history. It brought about new regulations to the nuclear industry. This also stimulated the anti-nuclear movement activists who fought for the ceasing of nuclear production due to worries of regional health effects. The cleanup of three mile island began in August of 1979, officially ending in December of 1993. The nuclear plant was restarted in 1985 but then was officially retired in 2019. The decommissioning is predicted to be finished in 2079 at an expected cost of $1.2 billion.

The Haunting of Loretta Lynn (Suggested by: Ivy Johnson) 

Hurricane Mills Rural Historic District is the name of Loretta Lynn's ranch in Tennessee. This is a large 3500-acre property that is basically its own little village. Loretta Lynn wasn't shy about telling people that her ranch was haunted. Loretta embraced the paranormal and even claimed to have her own psychic abilities. The world lost an amazingly talented singer and songwriter when she passed in October of 2022. On this episode, we will explore the life of this coalminer's daughter and the hauntings that surrounded her.

Loretta Lynn once said, "To make it in this business, you either have to be first, great or different. And I was the first to ever go into Nashville, singin' it like the women lived it." We think she was being modest as she proved to be both great and different. While many might think of her as a classic country and bluegrass singer, she wasn't afraid to twist things up as she did in 2004 when she recorded the duet "Portland Oregon" with rocker Jack White of the group White Stripes. She was only the second country music singer to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And with three Grammy Awards, seven American Music Awards, eight Broadcast Music Incorporated awards, 13 Academy of Country Music awards and eight Country Music Association awards, she remains the most awarded woman in country music history. Although she rose to these great heights, she started from very modest means.

She started as Loretta Webb in April of 1932, named for film star Loretta Young. Loretta was born to Clara and Theodore Webb in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky. Ted was a coal miner who battled black lung disease for many years before dying of a stroke at the age of 52. She had seven siblings, one of whom is country music star Crystal Gayle. Butcher Hollow was a remote Appalachian hamlet and the family lived in dire poverty in a mountain cabin with Ted Webb providing much of the family's food from what he raised on their property. The family clearly had music though, based on the musical success that has come from this family, right up to Loretta's granddaughter Emmy Russell who tried out for the recent season of American Idol and got her ticket to go to Hollywood. But becoming a music legend wasn't initially in the stars for Loretta. Getting married and raising a family seemed to be her destiny and it came early. She was only fifteen when she met 21-year-old war veteran Oliver "Doolittle" Mooney Lynn. The couple were married a month after meeting and Doo, as Loretta called him, moved her to northwest Washington to live in a logging community.

The marriage would last nearly fifty years until Doo died in 1996. It wasn't a happy marriage. Doo was a hellraiser and a serial philanderer. Loretta had four children by the time she was twenty. The couple would add twins in 1964 after Loretta got started on her music career. And it was that music that saved her sanity. Imagine being moved away from your country roots and everyone you knew at such a young age and then being responsible for a home and children when still a teenager. Loretta wrote in an autobiography, "I married Doo when I wasn't but a child, and he was my life from that day on. But as important as my youth and upbringing was, there's something else that made me stick to Doo. He thought I was something special, more special than anyone else in the world, and never let me forget it. That belief would be hard to shove out the door. Doo was my security, my safety net. And just remember, I'm explainin', not excusin'... Doo was a good man and a hard worker. But he was an alcoholic, and it affected our marriage all the way through." That something special was definitely her voice. Loretta would sing while doing her chores of hand laundry, gardening, canning, cleaning and cooking and Doo would listen and tell her over and over that she was better than anyone he heard on the radio. 

Doo was so impressed with Loretta's singing that he bought her a guitar and told her she needed to learn how to play it and write songs. Lynn said, “After he got me the guitar, I went out and bought a Country Song Roundup. I looked at the songs in there and thought, ‘Well, this ain’t nothing. Anybody can do this.’ I just wrote about things that happened. I was writing about things that nobody talked about in public, and I didn’t realize that they didn’t. I was having babies and staying at home. I was writing about life. That’s why I had songs banned.” She started performing at nightclubs in the area and one night when she was at a club in Vancouver, Canada, executives from Zero Records heard her sing and they offered her a contract. She debuted her first single "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl" in March 1960. The song was based off a woman Loretta met while performing at a club who was very intoxicated and told her about how terrible her life was and was recorded in the Bakersfield Sound style, which meant it had a west coast shuffle. Doo and Loretta hopped in their Mercury and drove around the country self-promoting the song to radio stations.

Nashville loved the song and she was invited to sing at the Grand Ole Opry on October 15, 1960. The Wilburn Brothers befriended her and helped her polish her style and got her signed by Decca Records. That contract came because Decca producer Owen Bradley loved Loretta's song "Fool #1," but he didn't want to sign another female country singer. Teddy Wilburn said he could only have the song if he signed Loretta. Brenda Lee went on to make "Fool #1" a pop hit. Owen eventually came to adore Loretta and he dubbed her "the female Hank Williams." Loretta's first song with Decca was 1962's "Success." This made the top ten and would just be the first of 50 top-10 hits for Lynn. The Grand Ole Opry invited her to be a regular member of the cast in 1962 and it would be during this time that she would become friends with another subject of one of our haunted people episodes, Patsy Cline. Cline taught her how to dress and style her hair and make-up and the friendship was so enduring that Loretta named one of her twins after Patsy.

In 1966, Lynn's song "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)" hit No. 1, making her the first country female recording artists to write a No. 1 hit. Controversy was a part of many of the songs that Lynn penned. Her most controversial was 1973's "Rated X." The song was about the stigma women faced in the early 1970s after getting divorced. It reached No. 1 and spent a week there. The White Stripes often included the song in their play list at concerts in the late 1990s. Loretta teamed up with Conway Twitty in 1971 to record a duet and it was the beginning of a long and beautiful professional relationship. They would have five No. 1 consecutive hits from 1971 to 1975 together. *Fun Fact: Shel Silverstein who wrote the beloved classics "The Giving Tree" and "Where The Sidewalk Ends," wrote Lynn's No. 1 hit "One's on the Way."

The 1970s were a huge peak for Loretta. She made many appearances on TV talk shows, was featured on the cover of Redbook and Newsweek, was the first woman to win "Entertainer of the Year" at the CMA Awards and she was named "Artist of the Decade" by the Academy of Country Music. She's the only female to have that honor. The film "Coal Miner's Daughter" debuted in 1980 starring Tommy Lee Jones as Doo and Sissy Spacek as Loretta. Spacek won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. The movie was based on her first autobiography. Lynn would write a second one in 2002. Loretta continued to produce hit sings and albums for the rest of her life, even experiencing a late career resurgence in 2004 that continued to 2022. The year 2012 brought a third autobiography. Her 50th studio album dropped in 2021. Loretta had a stroke in 2017 and broke her hip during a fall in 2018, but she fought back and continued performing. She died in her sleep at the age of 90 on October 4, 2022. She was buried on her ranch next to Doo, who had died in 1996. His death was heartbreaking for her and she never remarried.

Loretta's ranch is the sixth largest attraction in the state of Tennessee. It stretches over 3500 acres and is known officially as Loretta Lynn's Ranch. Loretta and Doo were looking for a piece of Tennessee they could call their own when they stumbled upon Hurricane Mills in 1966. The property had been around since the late 1800s and the Lynns wanted the big house on the hill. The owner of the house would only sell if the couple would buy the whole town too. So they bought the full 3500 acres in 1966. There were many historic buildings, including a grist mill on the property. The Lynns preserved the old grist mill and the village is centered around it. The Hurricane Creek Dam was built in 1839 from wood and stone and refaced with concrete in 1912. There was also the Hurricane Mills Bridge, which is a gorgeous steel bridge built in 1911 by the Nashville Bridge Company and the Hurricane Mills General Store and Post Office, built in 1926. A school is also on the property. The Hurricane Mills Rural Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The paperwork has very detailed descriptions of all the buildings: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NRHP/99001449_text

Loretta and Doo lived in the Classical Revival-styled mansion here from 1966 to 1988 that was originally known as the Hillman-Anderson House. It was built in 1876 and has a two-story Queen Anne-style front porch with the rest of the farmhouse being in a Neoclassical Revival-style. The interior has a central-hall floor plan with a curved, self-supporting staircase in the central hall. There is molded trim, carved scrollwork and paneled doors and transoms and Greek Revival and Queen Anne wooden mantelpieces. The Lynns renovated, adding a new kitchen, a one-story side wing, new bathrooms and central heat and air. After they moved out, the home was open for touring, so that people could see how they lived and see memorabilia and family photos. A replica of the cabin she grew up in has been recreated and is on the property for touring and was used in the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter." The museum on the ranch features Loretta's outfits she wore during performances and awards she won. And up until her death, Loretta lived in a small private residence behind the mansion. There are several guest cabins and 300 powered campsites for RVs where people can stay and there are many things to do on the ranch from horseback riding to hiking to fishing to jeep events to motorcycle events and there are places to eat.

There is a paranormal side to Loretta Lynn via not only her haunted ranch, but the woman herself. Loretta claimed that she could see and talk to spirits from a very early age and at first she didn't think it was strange. She thought all kids experienced the same thing. Lynn claimed that her mother had been psychic too and she thought that it came from the Cherokee side of their family. Her mother would have premonitions of things that would happened two weeks later. People would laugh when she would tell them things, but after she continued to be right about so many things, family members started believing her. Loretta claimed her mother had told her that she would meet Doolittle. Psychic abilities came to Loretta not only in being able to see family members and others who had died, but she would have very vivid dreams. Many times, the dreams would scare her. Often she would say that spirits didn't scare her, but her dreams did. Shortly after moving to Washington, she awakened at 4am and told Doo that her father had died. She saw him in a coffin. Several minutes later, a neighbor knocked on the door and told Loretta she needed to come to his house for a phone call because she and Doo didn't have a phone. The call was her sister-in-law telling her that her father had passed. When she got home for the funeral, she told her mother that her father was in the coffin and suit she had dreamed about. 

Loretta Lynn appeared on "Celebrity Ghost Stories" on Season 3, Episode 9 and psychic Kim Russo came out to explore the ranch. Loretta told the show that the mansion had been used as a Civil War hospital. Album covers that lined the walls of the staircase would get turned upside down and would be crooked. At night they would hear things like disembodied footsteps. Her twin daughters would tall her stories in the morning about a woman who would come and stand by their beds. This would be a woman dressed in white with her hair up in a hairdo from another period. Her son Jack once claimed that he laid down on his bed one night after doing some drinking and he was awakened by a man trying to pull his boots off. When he turned and looked at the man, he saw that he was wearing a Civil War soldier uniform. His dog was in the room and growling at the guy. The dog lunged at the guy and went right through him. That's when Jack realized he was looking at a ghost. Jack got up, ran out of the room and nearly fell down the stairs because he was so scared and running away.

Loretta was really sick on tour once and had to be put in the ICU. She dreamed that she had lost her boy. Shortly after that her husband came in and told her that Jack had died. He had been riding a horse and he drowned in the river on the property. The really weird twist to this story is that Loretta's mom had visited her right after the Lynn's had purchased the property and as they walked the property, Loretta's mother grabbed her arm and told her that one of her children was going to drown there and that she should move away. Loretta had hoped that her mother was wrong. A seance was conducted on the property with the singer and her closest friends and they contacted a spirit calling himself "Anderson." He seemed angry to have them contacting him and Loretta claimed that he started shaking the table angrily and it eventually broke apart.

Loretta was walking up to the mansion on a day when it was misty raining and she looked up and saw a woman in white standing on the balcony. The woman was crying and wringing her hands. Loretta thought that perhaps her twin's babysitter had upset the woman, so Loretta went in and asked the babysitter, Gloria, who the woman was. The babysitter said that no one was there, but her. The balcony was empty when they checked. Loretta wanted to know who the woman was so she visited several people in the area inquiring as to who had built the house and who had lived in it. One woman brought out an album of pictures and Loretta was looking through them trying to find a picture of the woman and she found it. The lady in white was a member of the Anderson family and her baby died during childbirth and she mourned herself to death. She cried all the time. Kim Russo claimed that a James Anderson joined her in the car as they drove onto the ranch. He wanted the car to be stopped near an open field and he told Russo that he was going to serve as a guide for her. She got out of the car and could feel a vortex of energy and she could hear the horses and sounds of battle from the Civil War. She could smell the artillery and saw a lot of bloodshed. Those spirits are still running around the property. James said he sticks around to protect Loretta and her family after her husband died. James claimed he was going to mess with the audio to let them know he was around and Loretta's audio got really overdriven at one time.

Loretta's grandson told Tennessee’s WJHL News that “The power happened to go out one night, and as I was rounding the corner to get back into my room, the chandelier was the only light that was on in the house. What’s so strange about this is that the entire house is on the same electric breaker. There’s no possible way the chandelier could have been on while all the other lights were off.” Lynn's son Ernest and his girlfriend had said they didn't like to be outside their home on the property at night because there were so many spirits around. They would see the apparitions of Confederate soldiers and that was probably because several had been buried in the yard near their home. WKRN visited the house in 2016 and the crew claimed some weird stuff happened in the haunted room upstairs. One thing was knocking coming from inside the closet. They would open it and find nothing inside that could be causing the knocking.

Loretta's ranch was the first celbrity home that the Ghost Adventures team visited. They caught the following EVP: "Get Your House Back", "I Hear Them, I Hear Them Coming", "I Need To Go Down The Stairs", "Possibly In Trouble", "Loretta", "Lynn", "I Was Hurt", Vulgar Voice, "Gonna Cut Ya", "Ya Can't Touch Them." Aaron and Zak both claimed to be physically touched.

A review on TripAdvisor in 2011 reads, "We Loved Our Fall Visit to Loretta Lynn's Hurricane Mills Ranch. We did not know of the History of Paranormal Activity in the Area until we watched the Show on BIO last night. I remembered these Photos taken down at the River by the Campground during the "Songwriter's Festival" in 2009. We were puzzled with the two photos as there was no fog or mist in the area. No light other than from a few campfires nearby. It was clear and nothing was in my Camera View when I personally took these Photos. As you can see several were made within seconds of the ones with the Strange Mist / Orbs and are fine. I compared my photos with other Friends who were taking Photos that night. No one else had anything strange show up in their Photos. We could not explain these photos."

A tour guide was leading a group through the house and stopped at the staircase. She stepped up onto the staircase in the foyer and explained that the spirits don’t like it when you mess with the picture frames. And the guide then moved on of the picture frames. She turned around and then noticed that the visitors were looking at her funny, or rather at something behind her. They claimed that a shadowy kind of thing had appeared behind her. She was then pushed off the second step onto the floor. All the tourists ran out of the house and the tour guide followed them.

Loretta hasn't been gone that long and there haven't been any stories about her apparition appearing anywhere...yet. But if there was a place she was going to haunt, no one could doubt that it would be her ranch. Was Loretta Lynn psychic and is her former home haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 453 - The Life and Afterlife of Hank Williams

Moment in Oddity - Frozen Ice Age Bison For Dinner?

Any time there is a discovery of an ancient preserved creature it usually garners quite a bit of interest. That was the case when a gold mining family discovered a frozen Steppe Bison in Fairbanks Alaska. The bison had been preserved in the permafrost some 50,000 years. Its carcass was covered with a blue chalky substance when it was discovered. The substance was a mineral called vivianite which turned a vibrate blue when the bisons body surface contacted the air. Paleontologist Dale Guthrie named the Steppe Bison "Blue Babe" after Paul Bunyan's blue ox named Babe. As the animal was being worked on to the preserve the hide for display purposes, Guthrie discovered that the well preserved neck meat smelled like fresh beef. Dale was a hunter and familiar with preparing and eating frozen meats. He was not fazed by the thought of eating meat that was thousands of years old so on April 6th 1984, he prepared a meal for a few select guests. Twelve people dined on Ice Age Steppe Bison stew and wine that evening. The meal was described as delicious and none of the guests were said to have suffered any ill effects. Enjoying a stew made from unusual meats may not seem strange to those with an exotic palet, but eating a stew made from meat that is 50,000 years old certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Saffron Revolution

In the month of September, on the 29th, in 2007, the Saffron Revolution came to a culmination. The Revolution was brought about by the government when they removed all fuel subsidies without any announcement and allowed the price of oil and gas to skyrocket. As we see today, the rise in cost of these fuels also drives up the prices of all commodities. Initially after this price hike, protestors began hitting the streets. However, the campaign garnered new attention when on August 28th, Buddhist monks joined the protest in the city of Sittwe (sit-way). The monks turned their alms bowls upside down, refusing to accept alms from generals. Meaning, symbolically, they were refusing to give Buddha's blessings to the generals. The Saffron Revolution was named so due to the color of the Buddhist monks' robes. That participation of the monks, in such a religiously devout nation, had great impact. Citizens who had not been brave enough to protest previously joined the monks in the tens of thousands in protests across the nation. These protests were met with violent military crackdowns resulting in deaths, hundreds of injuries and arrests. Although the Buddhist monks demands were not met at that time, the Saffron Revolution was an important movement towards a democratic government. This was achieved in 2015 with Aung San Suu Kyi’s (Ong San Sue Chee's) National League for Democracy winning general elections, becoming Myanmar’s first non-military government in 54 years. 

The Life and Afterlife of Hank Williams

Hank Williams was an American musician, songwriter and singer whose influence has touched some of the greatest singers of our time, from Elvis to Johnny Cash to The Rolling Stones. There was so much promise and talent in this young man, but it was cut short by his struggle with addictions. Perhaps it is that tragic truth that has left his spirit at unrest. Join us as we look at the life, legacy and spirit of Hank Williams.

In 2010, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded Hank Williams a posthumous special citation describing him as "a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life." There are many things about this man that we imagine most people don't know. He came from simple beginnings, in a family that knew tragedy all too well. Hank was born Hiram Williams on September 17, 1923. The accounts written on the life of Williams claim that he was named for Hiram, the King of Tyre, which was a city that was located in today's Lebanon. The Bible reveals a narrative in which this king sent building materials and men to help construct the first Hebrew temple in Jerusalem. This may be true, but the name Hiram might also be a tribute to Hiram Abiff. This is a character out of Freemasonry that is credited with being appointed by Solomon as chief architect of that temple. There are several rituals conducted by Freemasons in honor of Hiram Abiff. We're not sure if the King of Tyre and Hiram Abiff were actually the same person and have been combined into one person over the course of history, but their narratives are different leading us to think that they were different people and the King of Tyre may be the only one who was actually a real person. Irregardless, Hank's parents were Freemasons.

Jessie Lillybelle "Lillie" and Elonzo Huble "Lon" Williams were living in Mount Olive, Alabama when Hank was born. The couple had already had one son who was born in 1921 that died two days after birth and a daughter named Irene who was born in August of 1922. So they had their children back-to-back. Before the children were born, Lon worked as a railroad engineer for a lumber company and he served during World War I. During that service, he fell from a truck sustaining severe injuries to his head and collarbone. During this early part of Hank's childhood, his parents were strawberry farmers. Over time, Lon's face would become paralyzed leading Lilly to have him hospitalized for seven years in the 1930s and Hank will only see his father once during that time. These would have been his pre-teen and teen years.

On top of the pain Hank must have carried from not having his father around, he was born with spina bifida occulta, which would cause him lifelong back pain. Lillie was left to raise her children alone during the Great Depression. The family moved to Georgiana, Alabama in 1931 and the house they rented there burned down and the family lost everything. Lillie was given a second house to live in rent free by a local man and this is today the Hank Williams Boyhood Home and Museum. That house was built in 1850 and is a two-story white wood frame house with a wraparound porch and it sits on stilts. There was a wood burning stove and running water, but the family had to use an outhouse for a bathroom. Hank and his sister would help out financially by selling produce from their garden and peanuts and Hank also shined shoes. No one knows for sure who gave Hank his first guitar, but it was while living at this house when Hank was eight. Many accounts claim it was his mother and we'd like to believe that was true. 

After receiving the guitar, Hank met a local black street musician named Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne, who led a band and Hank paid him for guitar lessons, in which he learned chords, chord progressions and bass turns. He then started playing on the street for tips to help support the family. Singing was natural for Hank. Even before he could talk well, at the age of three, his mother said, "He used to stand on the organ stool at Mt. Olive Baptist Church and try to sing while I played for the little congregation there." Payne was a huge influence on Hank and gave him his affinity for the blues. It was also in Georgiana where Hank would start drinking alcohol at the age of ten. This too may have been influenced by Payne who was never without his homemade mixture of alcohol and tea. The nickname Tee Tot referred to teetotaler, which Payne clearly was not. More than likely, this was tongue-in-cheek since his alcohol drink of choice was spiked tea.

In 1937, Lillie moves the family to Montgomery, Alabama and starting running a boarding house. Hank started entering talent shows in the bigger city. He won $15 for his first one with a song he wrote himself. Shortly thereafter, he made the sidewalk in front of WSFA Radio his stage and he caught the eye of producers who invited him on air occasionally. In 1940, he formed the group Drifting Cowboys. They performed in clubs and social gatherings. Hanks alcoholism picked up and he blew a lot of the earnings on alcohol. World War II started and the band broke up because everyone was drafted except Hank who was medically disqualified. Williams was fired from the WSFA radio station because he always showed up drunk. He moved to Oregon to work in the Kaiser shipyard. Eventually, he came back to Alabama to work at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company in Mobile.  

Medicine shows were a thing in 1940s Alabama and Hank started performing in them. It was at one of these shows in 1943 that he met Audrey Mae Sheppard who was a married 21-year-old mother of a daughter. Sheppard told Williams that she wanted to move to Montgomery with him and they could start a band. He had her come and in December of 1944 they got married at a filling station near Andalusia, Alabama. There's was just one problem though. Alabama required a 60-day reconciliation period after a divorce and Audrey was still in that window, so the marriage was declared illegal. It eventually worked out and the couple would have a son on May 26, 1949 named Randall Hank Williams or Hank Williams Jr. Sheppard worked as Hank's manager and also sang duets with him. He began writing songs voraciously during this time and went back to having a show on WSFA Radio.

In 1946, Williams tried to get on the Grand Ole Opry and was rejected if you can imagine. Sheppard suggested they go a different route and find a music publishing company. They found success with Acuff-Rose Music and Hank was signed to a six-song contract. This led to Williams recording his first session with Sterling Records. In 1947, he hopped over to MGM Records and gets his first hit, "Move It On Over." This was a massive country hit, but also is considered an early rock and roll song. All through this, Hank continued to drink and ended up being committed to a sanitarium to get him sober. The band was tired of the drunkenness and left Williams. They weren't the only ones done. Audrey was done too and asked for a divorce. They wouldn't go through with it, but it was a sure sign of the turbulence in the relationship. Fame would come after the couple moved to Shreveport, Louisiana and Williams joined the Louisiana Hayride. In 1949, "Lovesick Blues" becomes another hit and  the Williams move to Nashville, so Hank can join The Grand Ole Opry. With this, the Drifting Cowboys were back again.

It was around this time that Hank experimented with another style that entailed Hank reciting religious-themed writings accompanied by a pipe organ. He marketed this material under the pseudonym Luke the Drifter. He did this to protect his image just in case this failed. People figured out who Luke was when he started performing these recitations at his concerts as well. "Cold, Cold Heart" becomes another hit on the country charts in 1951 and Williams ended up back in the hospital for detox. In November of that year, he made his first television appearance on The Perry Como Show where he sang "Hey Good Lookin'" with Como. That same month, Hank went hunting with his fiddler and he fell, aggravating his back issues and leading to a spinal fusion. Hank was only 27 at this time and now morphine became a problem along with the alcohol.

Hank would have another problem. Audrey was really done with the marriage this time and she told him to get out of the house. The divorce was official on May 29, 1952. Before that though, Hank had hooked up with a dancer named Bobbie Jett and she would give birth to Hank's daughter, Jett. She would be born five days after Hank's death and his mother would adopt her and raise her until her death. Hank's sister Irene would send the girl into the system and she wouldn't know she was Hank's daughter until the 1980s. After the fling with Bobbie, Hank took up with Billie Jean Jones and they married in October of 1952. Hank had jumped the gun again though with this marriage. Billie wasn't divorced. her divorce wasn't official until 11 days after the marriage. A judge later ruled the marriage was not legal after Audrey and his mother pursued the issue. Williams was already dead at that time.

Hank was a regular performer still on the Grand Ole Opry, but in August of 1952 he was fired because he was constantly missing shows and when he did show up, he was drunk. So he went back to the Louisiana Hayride and started touring with them, but his addictions were powerful. His band and friends tried to get him to shows sober, but he often didn't show up or he performed poorly. Even though he was only 29, Hank started having serious heart issues. He did his last recording session with Acuff-Rose Music in September of 1952 and this included the song "Your Cheatin' Heart." Fred Rose cut him loose after that. Hank was touring in Oklahoma when he met Toby Marshall who was posing as a doctor with a fake diploma. He was actually a convict on Parole from Oklahoma State Penitentiary. With the fake title, Marshall prescribed Williams morphine and amphetamines, which made the heart issues worse. Hank performed in his last concert on December 19, 1952.

Williams was being driven to Charleston, West Virginia in a “North Carolina blue” Cadillac convertible with whitewall tires and a “Flying Goddess” hood ornament when his driver, high school student Charles Carr, stopped in Knoxville, Tennessee to get help from a doctor. Williams had combined chloral hydrate and alcohol, which had heavily sedated him. A doctor gave him a Vitamin B12 shot with morphine and porters at a hotel carried him to the car. Carr and Williams continued their trip and arrived in Bristol, Virginia around midnight on January 1, 1953. Carr stopped at a diner and asked if Hank wanted anything and he said he didn't and that would be the last thing he said. Apparently, Carr didn't realize that Hank had died until he stopped at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia and noticed that Hank's body curled beneath a navy-blue overcoat wasn't stirring at all. Rigor mortis had already set in and the police were called. The coroner did an autopsy and found hemorrhaging in Hank's neck and heart and some injuries that looked like he had been in a fight recently, including a welt on his head. He ruled the death as heart failure. Hank was transported to Montgomery and buried in a silver casket at the Oakwood Annex in Montgomery. Hank Williams, Jr. had his father's grave rebuilt after his mother Audrey passed away and he had her interred next to his father. The monument is made from Vermont granite and has carvings of Hanks boots and guitar and his greatest hits and also has a sculptured hat.

Williams fame skyrocketed after his death and his image and music were in heavy demand. He would go on to be declared the "King of Country Music." He had been signed to start making motion pictures, but obviously he didn't live for that to happen. A movie about his life starring George Hamilton, "Your Cheatin' Heart," came out in 1964. Hank would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. The Williams family carried on the music tradition with every generation having musicians and Hank's final contribution to music was completed in 2011 with the release of the album "The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams." There were unfinished lyrics with Hank in the back seat of the car when he died. These were later found in a dumpster by a janitor at Sony/ATV Music Publishing in 2006. She sold them to the Honky-Tonk Hall of Fame and the Rock-N-Roll Roadshow, but was later accused of theft. A judge sided with her, but the lyrics were returned to Sony/ATV and they asked Bob Dylan to complete an album with them. Artists who recorded for the album included Alan Jackson, Norah Jones, Jack White, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, Levon Helm, Jakob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, and Merle Haggard.

But that hasn't been the end for Hank Williams. His spirit still seems to be here in the afterlife. One of Williams favorite cities was Nashville and that makes sense since this is basically like country's capital. The Ryman Auditorium is a place where every great act from country has played at one point. This location is a favorite haunt of Patsy Cline and it is for Hank as well. An employee claims to have seen Williams materialize in a white mist. She saw the white mist onstage and as she continued to get closer to it, it started to take a more defined shape and when she got as close as she dared, she could see the unmistakable thin, lanky form of Williams leaning over a microphone as though he were singing. A construction worker also claimed to see a white misty thin form during renovations in the 1990s. Hank's spirit wanders all over the Ryman, being seen in hallways, on the stage and backstage.

Songwriter Gary Gentry had an interesting tale about the spirit of Hank. Gentry was working with J.B. Detterline on a Hank Williams tribute film in 1982 called "The Ride." The men decided to write a song as a tribute to Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell and they called it “Wherever Hank and Lefty Are, That’s Where I Want to Go.” Gentry went home and felt restless. He was living a life similar to Hank, doing drugs and drinking a lot and he felt like the song didn't do justice to the country legend. He decided to conduct a seance to contact Hank. He said, "I wanted to write a masterpiece about Hank. And I was mad, and I was drunk. So I said, ‘Hank! Why were you so big? Just because you died young? Show yourself! Help me write this song.” And according to Gentry, he did. Hank appeared sitting on the couch without a shirt on and Gentry said, "Hank, we’re gonna take a ride. I wanna write about you. I think you’re the greatest songwriter and entertainer that ever lived." Gentry hopped in his car at 4am and drove around. When he got home, he called J.B. Detterline and they completed the song. David Allan Coe eventually recorded the song now called "The Ride" and released it as a single in 1983. Shortly after that, Gentry performed the song at the Grand Ole Opry House for a television show and when he got to the word “Hank” in the big payoff line, the lights and electricity went out at the Ryman and also the entire Opryland complex.

The last place Hank performed publicly before his death was The Elite Lounge Casino Cafe in Montgomery. This place eventually became a restaurant known as Nobles and now we think it is Club 50/50. The location has been haunted for decades and Williams is believed to be one of the spirits here. People claim to see a man in a suit and that is what they have nicknamed him. Hank always wore a suit on stage. This spirit is feisty like Hank and likes to rap on tables make loud noises. Tables and chairs have even been witnessed moving on their own. Another Montgomery haunt for Hank is his gravesite at Oakwood Cemetery. Alan Jackson's song "Midnight in Montgomery" is about his experience of visiting Williams grave on New Year's Eve before a show and having the spirit appear and thank him for his tribute. A mist like the one seen at the Ryman is seen here as well and people sometimes hear a Hank Williams tune in the air, especially if the start off singing a song and then stop. Williams also played on the streets near city hall and some people claim to see his spirit down by the building occasionally as well.

The Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville was a place that Williams stayed on his road trip to death. This was once the tallest building in the city and is today government offices. The spirit that haunts this building is very fast, so it is hard for witnesses to be sure that it belongs to Hank, but singing tends to accompany this ghost and it sounds a lot like Williams. There was also a sighting of Williams in Oak Hill, West Virginia. A man was walking past the gas station where he was found dead and the Old Tyree Funeral Home where the body was taken and he heard music on the air. He then saw a thin figure standing on the street who was wearing a white suit and a cowboy hat. The figure was puffing on a cigarette and tipped his hat at the witness. There was no doubt to the man that this was Hank Williams. The minute he realized that, the figure disappeared. 

Matt Swayne in his book "Ghosts of Country Music" shares a story that was shared with psychic-medium Mary Lynn Stevenson by a family from Mississippi. The story is set in Autumn and the daughter Deborah is headed to the high school Homecoming Dance. She was carpooling all of her friends and the group of girls had a great time. Deborah dropped everyone off after the dance and headed home. She ended up on an unfamiliar road and was soon lost. Her gas was running low and she didn't have much when she spotted a store over the hill. She tried the pay phone, but it didn't work. She drove further on to a gas station with another dead pay phone. Deborah fumbled with the paper in her pocket to see how much money she had for gas and discovered she actually had no money. She started to weep in the car. Before long, a man in a brown suit with gold stitching and sporting a cowboy hat, walked up to her car. He asked, "What's wrong, Little Lady?" She told him her troubles and he gave her money for gas and phone calls and told her to go straight home. Deborah decided to go into the store to thank the man and get directions. No employees knew what she was talking about. They hadn't seen any cowboy. Deborah made it home and her mom asked how things had gone. Deborah said fine at first, but then told her mom of her troubles. Her mother revealed that she had a premonition and it made her very concerned, so she prayed that a guardian angel would be sent to help Deborah. Both women decided that the cowboy was the guardian angel. A few days later, they were both in a store and flipping through a magazine. When the page opened to a certain page, Deborah called out, "That's the man who helped me!" Deborah's mother looked at the name in the caption and it was Hank Williams. She told Deborah that wasn't possible, but Deborah was absolutely positive that Hank Williams had been her guardian angel.

Hank Williams lived a big life in a very short amount of time. His legacy has spanned decades. Has his spirit continued on in this plane of existence. Are these places haunted by Hank Williams? That is for you to decide!