Radford’s Alfreda Peel: noted Appalachian folklorist and ballad collector

Cover of Alfreda Peel’s “Witch in the Mill,” with paper-cut illustrations by the author.

Music and folklore have been intertwined in Appalachia for centuries. Ballads and folk tunes traveled with the first settlers across the Atlantic and found root in the hills and hollows of the Appalachian Mountains. These musical traditions passed from […]

A few Radford ghost stories for All Hallows Eve

Stories of haunted buildings and ghostly sightings have been part of Radford University’s folklore for decades. In 1995, Dean of Students Bonnie Hurlburt described “a tradition, so to speak, to initiate and expose new co-eds to stories of ghosts.” Orientation, it seems, just might involve more than meets the eye.

From the October […]