Deep in the foothills of Northern California's Sierra Nevada range, where our friends in the

Donner party once became stranded, was once a scenic vacation spot known as the Kettie

Resort. Founded in 1901 along Spanish Creek, the secluded resort was reached by most early

guests thanks to a railway line that ran between Salt Lake City and Oakland, California. Of course

times would change and so would the resort. By the 1980s, the residents who lived their year-round

were not the wealthy vacationers who first put the spot on the map. They were transients, vagabonds,

and down on their lift drifters and single parents who just had no place else to go. Then on

April 11, 1981, strangers came to Kettie and they claimed the lives of four people, a mother,

her daughter, her teenage son, and a family friend. They were beaten to death by their assailants

while other children slept in the next room. No one knows why the murders took place, but maybe,

just baby. It was simply because they were home.

Welcome to American hauntings, the podcast dedicated to the history, hauntings, and the dark side

of American history. And welcome to the last act of this season, Woodson Field, Stark and Wicked,

which is Austin and produced by Cody Beck and written and performed by Troy Taylor. That's me.

This has been a strange and twisted season so far, filled with witchcraft,

hexes, curses, mysterious disappearances, and the many spirits and sins of America's past,

but this last act has definitely become the bloodiest and most curious, as we delve into some of

the murders that have occurred in our country's forests, farms, and fields. This is episode 19,

a true story that inspired one of the most terrifying films in the last two decades.

Usually, when you're watching a horror film, you're supposed to keep telling yourself that

what you're seeing on screen is only a movie. But in this episode, you'll find out that truth

is much stranger and much scarier than fiction.

...