It's a cool fall evening and I am walking through a graveyard. I'm in Jonesboro, Tennessee, and I am here, I'm here, I guess I'm here gathering stories.

Just about every brick in alleyway has a story to it.

There was an 1873 collar epidemic that nearly took Jonesboro out.

People were dying so fast that they were being buried into Trenchgrave.

No one has found the trench grave all together.

Oh, you don't know where it is.

I'm here with an informal graveyard guide

and expert ghost story teller.

And a lot of people say at certain times it's almost like a mist rises up.

Somewhere in this cemetery there are these unaccounted for spirits. Her name is Linda Poland. Actually,

Poland Poland because I married my third cousin, but that's another story. Down here, everyone has a story.

I mean, everyone everywhere has a story.

It's just that here in Jonesboro,

people are very, very good at telling them.

I'm Doolan Thras and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

This episode was produced in partnership with Go USA TV based on a video series we do with them called

Small Town Big Story. Go to different places I usually make some kind of fool

of myself and learn about what makes the place special. It's on YouTube, check it out. It's pretty good.

So today, we are not just haunting graveyards and talking ghost stories.

We are talking about all kinds of stories told by all kinds of people.

Because here in Jonesboro, in this 6,000 person town, you find the National Storytelling Festival,

where every October, amateurs and professionals come together in this beautiful little town in the Appalachian Mountains

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