Deadfall Hollow: The Wraiths in the Well

A forgotten well. A whispered warning. And a secret not buried deep enough to stay hidden.

Pulaski County, Kentucky—summer, 1880. The days were hot, the air thick, and the past wasn’t quite as buried as the townspeople believed.

Image: Downtown Somerset, Kentucky, 1896. Public domain. Courtesy of Pulaski County Public Library Historical Society, via Flickr (uploaded December 2023). https://www.flickr.com/photos/pcplphotos/53396396527

When a group of children tossed stones into an old overgrown well just east of Somerset, they were hoping for the echo of treasure. What they heard instead would open the door to one of the most chilling mysteries the region has ever known. Inside the long-abandoned well were not coins or crystals—but bones. Human bones.

As word spread, the whispers began. Who had been cast into the dark, narrow shaft? And why? The questions led investigators back fifteen years, to the quiet arrival—and sudden disappearance—of a stranger known only as James Willis. A drifter with money. A secret friendship with a local Black laborer named Sam Woods. And a check worth hundreds, entrusted to the wrong man.

Woods had spoken once—quietly, cautiously—of what he saw that night in 1866: the blows, the body, the burden carried on a pole through the woods. His silence afterward had been survival. His story, when finally told, was a spark in a powder keg of accusation, perjury charges, and dueling confessions. But when a man claiming to be James Willis returned—years after his supposed murder—truth itself unraveled.

Was Woods a witness to a killing or a killer, masking guilt with truth? Was the man who walked into Somerset truly the one who’d vanished in 1866—or an imposter summoned to rewrite history?

And what of the bones? Were they Willis? Woods? Or someone else entirely—another name swallowed what we tagged as the Deadfall Hollow?

In a place where sinkholes and stone wells double as graves and justice moves with the weight of rumor, this is more than a murder tale—it’s a ghost story written in depositions and dirt.

🎧 Listen to the full audiobook of  Deadfall Hollow: The Wraiths in the Well and uncover the case that still echoes beneath Pulaski County’s soil.

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LedylLensArt. (n.d.). Abandoned well and apple tree [Stock photo]. Adobe Stock. https://stock.adobe.com/images/abandoned-well-apple-tree/1072519006