This story explores my mother's first cousin three times removed, Ira "Bad Ira" Mullins and the Pound Gap Massacre. This story was handed down to my mother who enlightened me, as I have done with my children. This story is one of the wildest stories ever told to me as well as one of my absolute favorites. The Mullins families were early settlers to Letcher County, Kentucky, Wise County, Virginia, and parts of southern West Virginia.

This is a family non-fiction story about a business that my father purchased in 1975 that had unusual occurrences, unexplained phenomena, death, injuries, thriller mysteries, and strange happenings. After high school my wife and I purchased the business from my father and owned it for eighteen months. It was a long, very long, eighteen months and the stories are true and actual happenings. With all the strange events and happenings, all the mayhem with accidents, injuries, deaths, suicide, and robbery. Over the years we always wondered if the gas station ground was haunted, on Devils ground,...

With the development of the coal rich territories and the large need for coal, progress was coming to Mingo County. Men of all nationalities and ethnic origins headed to the hills seeking the work opportunities the coal mines had to offer. It was a mixed bag of both employers and employees. You might say it was a collage of the good, the bad, and the ugly of humanity. The events leading up to the Matewan massacre caused the largest war on U.S. soil since the Civil War (1861-1865). It was known as the Blair Mountain War. You may not have heard much about this war, but "it actually happened."