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In this episode, local storyteller, historian, and author Heather Leah shares how she began writing online more than a decade ago, grew a large following by blending deep research with engaging “hidden history,” and why preserving local stories matters as places vanish. She discusses mysteries like the Village Subway beneath Cameron Village, underwater communities beneath Jordan Lake such as Seaforth, and how towns can be erased from maps and memory. Heather explains balancing fun, shocking history with heavier subjects, her approach to ghost stories as cultural history, and why the Dorothea Dix property feels especially haunted. She also describes her research process, how followers contribute leads, and how she turned her work into her first book, “Lost Towns of North Carolina,” built through travel, photos, and interviews with people connected to lost communities.
00:00 Meet Heather Leah
03:15 How It All Started
04:56 From Community to History
06:21 Vanishing Places
09:03 Jordan Lake Ghost Towns
13:00 Towns Wiped Off Maps
14:00 Balancing Light and Heavy
16:29 Ghost Stories as Culture
18:18 Dorothy Dix Haunted History
20:11 Crybaby Lane Investigation
21:49 Paranormal Tours
24:13 Story Idea System
25:15 Follower Submitted History
27:50 From Posts to Book
31:37 Researching Lost Towns
35:19 Book Launch Emotions
37:47 Time Travel Raleigh
40:41 Where to Find Heather
41:35 Final Thanks
Creators and Guests
What is What’s Up, Wake?
What’s Up, Wake covers the people, places, restaurants, and events of Wake County, North Carolina. Through conversations with local personalities from business owners to town staff and influencers to volunteers, we’ll take a closer look at what makes Wake County an outstanding place to live. Presented by Cherokee Media Group, the publishers of local lifestyle magazines Cary Magazine, Wake Living, and Main & Broad, What’s Up, Wake covers news and happenings in Raleigh, Cary, Morrisville, Apex, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina, and Wake Forest.
64 - Whats Up Wake - Heather Leah
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[00:00:00] North Carolina has no shortage of history, but few people bring it to life the way today's guest does. Heather. Leah is a local storyteller, historian, and author whose work has helped her more than 80,000 Facebook followers See the triangle through a richer, more curious lens.
Melissa: If you've ever fallen down a rabbit hole, reading about hidden tunnels, or gotten [00:01:00] landmarks, or the stories behind the places we pass every day, there's a good chance you've come across Heather's work. Her post about local history blends deep research with a gift for making the past feel personal and alive.
She also has a new book out called Lost Towns of North Carolina, exploring abandoned communities throughout our state with stories that remind us that history isn't just something locked in a museum. It's right under our feet. Today we're talking about her journey as a storyteller, the mysteries she's uncovered around the triangle, and why preserving local history matters more than ever.
Heather, welcome. I am so excited to meet you. I have personally been one of those 80,000 followers on Facebook.
I had no idea it was that many until I was looking yesterday in preparation for our interview today. But I have followed you for year. I mean, I can't even imagine. When did you get started?
Heather: Gosh, so I've got started. Honestly around my 30th birthday. Mm-hmm. So it's about 13 years
Melissa: I [00:02:00] was about to say. And as you're only 31, so that,
Heather: that's right.
It's only a year. Yes. No, it's, it's been a little over a decade. Um, it started just. With my dad retired and he wanted to build me a website where my writing could live. Um, I was, I was doing a lot of nonprofit work at the time. I was a preschool teacher and I was co-founding a nonprofit called Activate Good with my best friend Amber.
Um,
Melissa: I didn't know you started that.
Heather: Yeah, we did this. No
Melissa: idea.
Heather: We did this whole like, cross country road trip doing volunteer work. Okay. Acts to kindness. I do storytelling through all that too. Right.
Melissa: I've, I've written about activate Good before.
Heather: Oh, how could that, yes. So that was my twenties.
Melissa: I might've met you and didn't even realize I was meeting you.
That would be
Heather: why. It's very possible I met a lot of the events. Yes. So, but I was in my twenties and so then I was like, I'm not sure. You know, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I really wasn't. I don't get to be a writer. Like that's one of those dream jobs. No one gets to actually do that job and get paid for
Melissa: it
Heather: anyway.
Yeah. And get paid for it. And my dad was [00:03:00] like. Lemme build you a website and you can write for it. He goes, you'll be surprised how much, like just a professional looking website, how far that will get you. And I honestly didn't really believe him, but I just thought, well, it'll be a fun project to do with my dad and.
I started writing about just things I thought was interesting and history is one of those things, and the stories started going viral. Um, one of my stories pretty early on got more than a million views just on my own website, and I kind of realized, wow, I could, I could do something with this.
Melissa: Yeah. So has it mostly always been about.
Hidden history?
Heather: Yeah. Well, originally, gosh, originally I wrote about a lot of different things. Um, anything I found interesting. Originally in my twenties, my focus was all on using storytelling to bring the community together. Mm-hmm. And it's really, it's still about that, right? But with a focus that slants towards history now, but it's still always about using storytelling to build community.
And I'm a fifth generation rite. [00:04:00] So writing about my hometown, my city, um, just kind of came naturally. But originally I wrote about all kinds of things in Raleigh, ways to volunteer, ways to get kids active and kindness and um, you know, but history was one of the things that I was always interested in. I loved ghost stories and exploring forgotten places, and.
My grandmother lived in Raleigh for 92 years, so her whole life, and she would point at things when I was a little girl, and she'd go, well, you know that Harris Teeter over there? There used to be a church on that corner, and it's gone. And then she'd go, well, that pile of rocks over there. That was a castle in the 1960s.
And I realized even though we were growing up in the same city. We did not grow up in the same city. Right.
Melissa: Very true.
Heather: The, the Raleigh she was a little girl in is so different than the Raleigh I grew
Melissa: up in. Even the Raleigh that you and I grew up in different is totally different now.
Heather: It's totally different.
Yes. It changes so much.
Melissa: Yeah.
Heather: Even it's drastic. It's it, and that's, and this became more important to me because I [00:05:00] started realizing not only am I telling stories about just cool, forgotten places, it's kind of fun, but these are places that are starting to vanish and. The stories, if they're not told and the place is gone, you just lose it forever.
And, and there's several places that really, like for example, the Village Subway, um, which is a, I called it at the time an underground mall, but it, it was like a, it's like a music scene slash shopping area that was underneath modern day. It's called the Village District back then Cameron Village. And I wrote about that.
I couldn't believe that something like that had been there in the seventies. The Ramones played down there. Pat Benatar played down there, like these huge names played down there. Jimmy Buffet played down there, and then a lot of local bands played alongside these big national bands. It was the hot spot for 20 somethings in the seventies and early eighties, and yet my generation didn't even know it was down there, had no idea.
I realized through [00:06:00] writing a story about it that went really viral. All of these stories started coming out from people who were like, I remember that, and I realized. This is history that was just stored in people's basements. You know, they weren't really talking about it, and it would've just been forgotten by the next generation college kids.
Today I went to speak at a, at NC State, and the students, most of them did not realize that Dick's Park used to be Dorothy Dix Hospital. They had no idea. And that's just one generation.
Melissa: Yeah. And we just assume that that's common knowledge.
Heather: Right.
Melissa: But to, to your point about the, the subway, um. What'd you call it?
Subway something?
Heather: The village subway.
Melissa: Village Subway. Mm-hmm. When, I remember when that story came out that you wrote that story and it opened up a conversation with my mom who was like, yeah, you didn't know that that was there. You know, so it's opening up conversations amongst generations that I wouldn't have known to ask her about that.
Heather: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that. That's when I kind of realized that writing about history did [00:07:00] bring community together. Mm-hmm. In a way that I hadn't originally realized. I just thought it was interesting and fun and I focused a lot on nonprofit work, which is still extremely meaningful to me. Um, but I realized that these are stories that'll be lost if we don't get the generations to keep telling those stories and talk about them with each other, you know?
Melissa: Yeah. Um, okay. So you've uncovered countless. Stories overlooked pieces of Raleigh's past. Is there something that when you think about it today, even if you've already written about it, that still gives you goosebumps?
Heather: I mean, there's a lot of them. Um, oh, let me think about my favorite. I mean, the village subway was a big one for me, but I'd say in more recent years, um, I really love the story of Jordan Lake.
Um. And it was part of this book originally, but it's actually been moved to a second book, underwater, ghost Town of North Carolina. Oh good. But Jordan Lake, um, I grew up [00:08:00] going to Jordan Lake. I went out on the boats, I went fishing, I went hiking. Right. I think a lot of people go to Jordan Lake and. Having no idea that there's an entire community, multiple communities underneath that lake and,
Melissa: oh, wait.
Heather: Oh, okay. I
Melissa: wait. Okay. I don't know anything about this.
Heather: Oh, okay. Well, yeah, here you go. Yeah. And that's, that's perfect. Um, that's always sort of my hope that I let people know about something that they didn't know about. Well, actually, most North Carolina Lakes have communities underneath them. Um, and every community that's under a lake has like a really different and interesting story.
Um, but Jordan Lake. So, like I said, I grew up going there. I had no idea, and then I found out that there were. Communities, towns that were flooded to make that lake right.
Melissa: Ah.
Heather: Um, in fact, if you go back in time to the 17 hundreds, the tuska Aurora lived there. It was called the New Hope River Valley. And it was not a lake at all.
It was a valley and it was very the land was very fertile because of. [00:09:00] It was in a river valley and it was flooding all the time, but it made the land really rich. And so the tus Aurora lived there, and then English settlers came in and, and pushed the tus aurora out. And then the English settlers formed generational farms that were there, um, up until, you know, I mean, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s.
Right. Um. And when they built the lake, when they flooded that land, all of the people that had been living there, some for generations were forced out. Um, the state basically said, we're it's imminent domain.
Melissa: Wow.
Heather: Yeah, we're gonna buy your property. They were paid for it. There's a lot of discussion about whether they paid enough.
Were they not paid enough? Did it even matter how much they were paid? There were a lot of lawsuits as the farmers tried to keep their land. So there's multiple communities under that. Lake Seaforth really sticks out to me because I've seen Seaforth. Because a few years ago, the water level lowered during a drought and you could actually walk on the bottom of the lake and [00:10:00] you could see the remains of the community.
That was once there. No way you could see,
Melissa: wow,
Heather: the original Highway 64. Under the lake. So if you're driving over Highway 64 on mm-hmm. Bridge right under you is the original 64 and you could see it just running down the bottom of the lake. Wow. You could walk on it and you could see on each side of the old highway crumbling foundations of like the old general store, a farmer's old house.
That's incredible. It was amazing getting to see it for the first time and for my book, I interviewed people who grew up. In Seaforth, which was one of those communities. Um, and they told me like what it was like to grow up in this underwater ghost town, right? And what it was like, this is what gives me chills to watch your childhood home disappear under the water.
Melissa: Can't I? Yeah, I can't imagine that.
Heather: Yeah. So that's definitely one that still just strikes me and honestly, every story [00:11:00] in my new book, which mm-hmm. Not to self-promote, but
Melissa: No, please. That's why we're here.
Heather: Every story in it. I mean, it's about entire towns that were once thriving, people lived in 'em. Just like you live in Raleigh right now.
Mm-hmm. Or carry. And, um. Their entire home is just gone, and they're,
Melissa: because we, because we're from Raleigh and Cary and Apex and these towns that are continuously growing up, instead of disappearing and getting smaller, I think it's so hard for us to even imagine that that is possible.
Heather: Yeah.
Melissa: It's, that's, it is a wild concept.
Heather: It, it is. And in, in my book, one of the questions that I sort of wanted to, to, you know, struggle with, right? Mm-hmm. To grapple with, I guess, is. How do you go from having a town that is a thriving community with families, jobs, churches, schools? Right. It's just like an everyday town to not only is it gone, but it's forgotten.
It's [00:12:00] wiped off the map. Right. That's, to me, what really blows my mind is I understand that. Sometimes towns go under, developers, take over growth annex. We annex a town and it kind of vanishes, right? But to have it erased from the map, not even in any of the mainstream history books, that's how you end up just completely losing that history forever.
And that's, that's one of those things I wanted to kind of talk about in the book is how does that happen? How do you go from being a thriving, living, breathing town to being completely forgotten, wiped off the map completely.
Melissa: Well, that, that's actually a perfect segue for my next question, which is a lot of your stories are fun and whimsical, but some are, are heavy and quite frankly, a little upsetting.
How do you balance telling those two totally different types of stories?
Heather: Yeah, it's, it, you know, that's a really good point. Um, [00:13:00] history can be really fun, right? Yeah. And, and especially when I'm, I do a lot of speaking. I go talk to like. Ary students. Mm-hmm. And middle school students. And I try to make sure that the stories I'm telling are.
I don't wanna be a, a dry historian. A dry, boring historian. The
Melissa: Debbie Downer too. Yeah. Yeah. Where it's all just nothing but sad,
Heather: right. For sure. Mm-hmm. I want to tell stories that are really engaging and interesting, what I call hidden history. It's not just any history. Um, we have a lot of amazing historians who cover just kind of all history, and that's wonderful.
We need that. I need them. Mm-hmm. Do they give me the facts I need, but I wanna tell stories of. Oh my goodness. Did you know that you're driving over a ghost town that's underwater? Or did you know there's a secret tunnel underneath your feet right now? Or did you know that abandoned building over there?
That was a hospital, right? Did you know that in the middle of downtown Raleigh, we used to have this beautiful castle, right? And now it's gone. [00:14:00] So. For one, hidden History has a very specific meaning to me, which is telling stories of places that are not in mainstream history books, but also that you would kind of be shocked to hear about.
Melissa: Yeah.
Heather: I don't just wanna tell you like, well, history, you know, Raleigh was founded in this time period and here's what happened next. I wanna tell you like something, you would be like, what?
Melissa: Like you did with me, with Jordan Lake.
Heather: Yeah. Right. That's the facial expression I want. Yes. Yeah. I want people to be like, what?
And then because we're starting with something that's really engaging and interesting, I can bring the story to make it inspiring and say, look what we've learned from this. Or I can tell you here's like a lesson we really need to learn. Mm-hmm. But it started with something that was really interesting and engaging.
Yeah. So I think that's where I balance it. It starts here with. What? Mm-hmm. Interesting and engaging, visually striking, maybe something crumbling or abandoned. And then I can either take it up or I can take it down depending on the story I'm trying to tell. [00:15:00] Um, but it always is gonna start with. You're gonna just be shocked to hear this.
Hopefully.
Melissa: You mentioned earlier your love of ghost stories, and I also grew up loving ghost stories, and I can imagine that as you are encountering the, the, the history all around town and around the state, that you gotta have some little prickly going up your spine at times with, with perhaps, um. Maybe a little ghost or something watching you.
Do you have any stories that are of the creepy type?
Heather: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, ghost stories and history, I, I offer a ghost tour every October, right, for through the whole month. I offer these ghost tours of, of Raleigh and. I always talk about this in the tour. I say, you know, a lot of people ask me as a historian, how do you deal with the fact that like ghost stories, like aren't real, and how do you mix ghost stories with history and make sure that it's [00:16:00] factual?
So first of all, I wanna say that. To me, ghost stories are, they are history. What they are is a history of Raleigh's culture or Carrie's culture. For example, Carey has this really cool story of the high house, right? High house road is named after this actual house that was called the High House. It's older than the town of Cary.
It was built in the 17 hundreds before America was even founded as the United States. And it has a whole story around it where, um, there's a legend of buried treasure and a legend of haunted woods. Um. The legend is almost as important as the history, right? Because that legend is what's keeping it talked about.
Every single year we talk about the high house. So I think ghost stories are an important part of history and our town's culture and what makes us who we are. And
Melissa: it keeps people interested and intrigued because everybody loves a good ghost story.
Heather: Yes? Mm-hmm. Yes. Now, I would say the most, the area of.
[00:17:00] North Carolina that I would consider to be the most haunted would be, um, the area around Dorothy Dix. Um, because that land has it, it's basically like it's a place with just generations of. People who have been maybe forgotten by society or outcast by society, right. It starts with, it starts with the indigenous tribes that lived in the area and then of course they're moved out.
Um, then it's a plantation Spring Hill plantation, and there are actually, like the oldest marked grave in Wake County is out there, um, behind the Spring Hill house, which is now Centennial Campus, but it was originally part of. Dorothy Dick's property. And so there are unmarked graves out there, there were people who were enslaved on that land.
And then you go forward to, it's now, you know, a, a hospital for patients struggling with mental health. Um, and there are 900 graves out there of people who were buried more than 900 [00:18:00] graves who were buried, who their families did not want to claim them after they died, while they were at Dorothy Dix Hospital.
And then you have an orphanage out there on that property as well. And there's a whole missing cemetery from the orphans who passed away while in their care. And we don't know what happened to that cemetery. Um, it's. There are likely people buried out there and we just don't know where they are,
Melissa: where they, okay.
Heather: So I think that's a very haunted property. And I grew up hearing the story of, um, crybaby Lane, which is the orphanage. Um, and that there were remains of the old orphanage out there right off Western Boulevard. Right. Um, kind of where Dorothy Dix hospital meets or do, well, Dix Park meets, um, kind of that big chapel that's there now today.
Mm-hmm. The, the Catholic, um. Chapel and, um, anyways, I went out there on my 30th birthday. It was the first story I ever wrote for my new website. And we did like a little ghost hunt, right? We were [00:19:00] looking for this, the cry baby lane. The um, the legend is that, um, you can hear the cries of, um. The people who died when the orphanage burned down.
Um, which that's a whole other story about whether or not that's even true. But we went out there and,
Melissa: yeah. Because it is hard to, to separate, um, legends from true history. Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm assuming
Heather: it Yeah. You have to do some research and figure out what is real, what is not real. Mm-hmm. And there's, I tell the whole story of it, the, the true part and the not true parts.
Yeah. And how they came together. But when we went out there, um, we definitely had some. Can, its eerie. Things happen to us. Um, we took a picture and there were just, it was a dark field and there were just orbs everywhere in the picture. Like, like spirits just floating above the land. Um, it was very creepy.
We were out there with a group and we heard different, like [00:20:00] screeches in the night. It was just in the middle of a field and we were looking at this kind of the remains of the orphanage. Mm-hmm. Um.
Melissa: My spirit would've joined them.
Heather: Yeah, it was, it was, it was eerie. Um, but nothing's ever been so terrifying that I wouldn't like go back and, yeah.
Right. I mean it's, you know, a lot of times it's sounds, it's feelings, but
Melissa: mm-hmm.
Heather: It's, I'm so interested in what's happening and I just wanna tell the story. So kinda whatever happens is the story
Melissa: and you, and you know, the history of what has happened there. So it's the, the mix of knowing what has happened, the terrible things that have happened there, and, and having that, that feeling that's like,
Heather: ooh.
Melissa: Yeah. Yeah.
Heather: Yeah. And we bring groups out there and do, do tours sometimes. And they will have experiences too. Mm-hmm. Like, I'll let them use like actual, like gear, like paranormal investigation gear on the tour and they'll. Find like a cold spot where the temperature drops from 70 to, you know, 30 for no explainable reason.
Um, or they'll tell me they heard a sound. So I like to bring [00:21:00] people out there. I don't really toy with are the ghost real or not. It's, it's the experience and it's the story that comes from it. So,
[00:22:00] so do you keep a running list of story ideas? I'm, I'm wondering how, what your research process is like. Um, you know, if you just kind of check off your running list.
Heather: Yes. So it's, I do have a running list. Um. But also I'm very chaotic. Um, if you can, as
Melissa: most writers are,
Heather: I'm gonna say, if you couldn't tell from my energy, um, so I do have a list because that helps. If I've got just no other ideas, I can be like, what do I have on my list? Mm-hmm. But I also have all these sub lists.
So like I have one main list and then I have like a list of like, these are good March ideas, these are good May ideas, these are good June ideas. Gotcha.
Melissa: Yeah.
Heather: Right. Because we've got Women's History month in March. Mm-hmm. So maybe I try to angle more towards that. Um, we've got Mother's Day coming up and one of the co-founders of Mother's Day is buried here in Raleigh.
Mm-hmm. So like, [00:23:00] I kind of separated like Halloween stories, Christmas stories. So I have one main list and then some sub lists, and then I even have a shorter list of people send me stuff all the time.
Melissa: That's what I was wondering if you get ideas on, on with your Facebook followers.
Heather: Yes, I am so grateful.
Um, I've had people recently sending me photos from inside some of the Dick's buildings, something that I wouldn't have access to. Mm-hmm. And then they'll let me share those and you can. It's about showing people like, this is an interesting history that has been closed off. People don't get to see it. Um, and it's about some of it's gonna get torn down soon.
Some of the buildings are slated for demolition, like imminently.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
Heather: Um, so yes, my followers send me pictures of things that maybe I haven't been able to access. Sometimes they'll tell me about something I didn't know about. Usually further outside of Raleigh, there's a cemetery recently. I had a woman who, and I want more people to do this by the way, um, she sent me like.[00:24:00]
A picture of her grandmother, and I guess her, her grandmother and her grandfather, and, um, told me about how they had won a free house back in the 1950s at the state fair, and they lived in this lost community called Ramcat, which is not really. I don't wanna say it's not there, but it's mostly been kind of just swallowed up by Raleigh and mostly forgotten by anyone outside of Ramcat.
Um, and so she was like, here's their story. Here's a newspaper clipping. Here's some photos. Can you help just tell my grandmother's story? It's important to me. She became matriarch for the community. So I do love to tell the weird stories. The creepy stories, but I also, the shocking stories, but I also really love to tell the meaningful stories people, the individual stories.
Individual people. The people, yeah. Right. I've told stories about my grandmother, um, you know, my, my great grandparents and these are very like. I don't wanna say they're boring stories 'cause they're [00:25:00] actually interesting stories, but they are not the stories that would go into a history book. Mm-hmm.
They're the stories of the everyday people, but what their lives were like here in Raleigh or here in Cary in the 1920s. Right. And, and I. If you can tell me a little bit of that story, I can kind of find the story hidden in the story and make it interesting and make it do well on, on the post that people will engage with it.
Um, so I, I love it when people send me their, their personal stories of like their memories or their grandparents. Um, that's the other side of history, right? There's the sad part. There's the interesting part and exciting part, and then there's just like. Stories of the people. Right. And that's, that's very meaningful to me.
Melissa: And speaking of stories that are worthy of going into a book, you have recently come out with your, is this your first book?
Heather: It's my first book.
Melissa: Okay. Lost Towns of North Carolina. How, how did you go [00:26:00] from writing stories online to writing a book, and what made you choose these stories to tell?
Heather: Yeah. Wow. So, um, you know, I had been writing stories online for more than a decade, but I've always wanted to have a book.
Um, and I almost had a book several years back, um, on the village Subway and. And, and it ended up falling through in the last minute. Um, the photographer who was, he had most of the photos, um, he decided that he didn't wanna do a book and without his photos, I really didn't have enough to do this book.
Right. So, unfortunately, that book fell through, but I was like, well, I, I still really wanna do a book someday. And, you know, I'd been working full time and it's hard to find time to write a book when you're working full time. And I finally found myself with the time to focus fully on. Hidden History, just hidden history.
And actually now my job is just hidden history. I'm [00:27:00] able to go do talks and tours, presentations, events. Um, I even do some like marketing, consulting, um, and of course selling my book and, and my tours and some, I'm able to just make a living just doing Hidden History and I'm really hoping to just that.
That's amazing. Grow that. It is amazing. Yeah.
Melissa: Congratulations.
Heather: Thank you. That's a
Melissa: big deal.
Heather: Thank you. It is. I'm very excited about it. Yeah. And I realized like that's what I wanted to do next. I wanted to. Just do Hidden History full time. And the first step I took when I made that decision was to reach out to publishers.
And I was like, look, I have an idea for a book. Um, and it, I knew that I would very likely be picked up for a book because I had a big following and I had a ton of writing behind me. Mm-hmm. And all the hidden history segment stuff I'd done had always done really well. So. Um, I started working with publisher the History Press slash Arcadia Publishing.
They're kind of like the same one bought out the other, um, but it's the largest publisher of history books in America. So I decided [00:28:00] that's the one I wanted to go with. And, um, I began to just focus for about a year on this book. And I will tell you I learned. It's harder to write a book than it is to write online stories.
I thought it would be, oh, I'm just gonna write like a lot of online stories or longer online stories. Mm-hmm. Just put 'em in a book. But when you're doing a book, there's so much more like research and it carries so much more weight. Right. A post on Facebook, or even on my website. I can edit it if I need to.
If I, oops, I got something wrong, I can change it real quick. I can, you know, very easily maneuver around. But a book that is, that is set in stone. Right. But
Melissa: yeah. And you're also on, on social media. You're getting the instant comments and remarks and Yes. You know, almost instant gratification of
Heather: Oh, yes.
Melissa: Seeing how your story is being perceived.
Heather: You're right, you're right. That's a great point. Mm-hmm. And it was so hard with this, 'cause I would write a [00:29:00] chapter and I'd be like. I wanna post it and see what people think. Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah.
Default_2026-04-09_4: I
Heather: can't,
Melissa: is this interesting? Interesting. Are people gonna even like this?
Heather: Yeah.
Yeah, you're right. No, you're totally right. That's such a great point. When I post on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, um, instantly I find out, oh, maybe I should change the angle a little bit. Mm-hmm. This isn't connecting with people. Mm-hmm. Maybe I need to do it from this angle. Right. Um, or it's connecting with people.
Great. They love it. Some of them will share their own memories and I can add to the post and make it even richer. Yeah. But a book, I just don't have that live. 80,000 person audience mm-hmm. To like, help me. Um, so with lost Towns, I started traveling around the state. I knew I wanted, I didn't wanna just sit at home and do research.
I wanted to be, I wanted it to be on brand with me and on brand with me is I go see these places, right? So. I'm gonna travel, I'm gonna visit these towns, I'm gonna take pictures of these towns. The book is full of photos, um, that I, that I took, that I travel around and took [00:30:00] pictures. And, um, I also realized that I didn't just wanna do some research and write about it.
I wanted to talk to the people that this is their history, right? And it, that didn't occur to me at first. Right? At first, I found myself just writing and researching and saying, okay, I, I can, I know enough about this? And a lot of these towns I had written about before.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
Heather: Um, you know, with my hidden history segment.
So I was just kind of expanding on what I knew and I realized I'm putting my own, like, I don't know, and I'm not from these places and I'm putting my own. Historian brain over top of the history rather than letting the history tell itself. Right? So I knew I wanted to hear from the people who grew up in these towns, right?
Not just do some research and then write what I think life was like there, right? Mm-hmm. Based on what I read, I wanna talk to the people. And actually use their voices to tell the stories of their towns. Otherwise, these lost communities are even stay, gonna stay lost, even if I have [00:31:00] a book about them, because it's really about getting the voices out there of the people who don't have a platform.
Yeah, most of these communities were lost because they didn't have enough money or influence or power to protect themselves from whatever happened. Who am I if I don't give a platform to the people? You know? And people want to tell their
Melissa: stories. They do. And to tell their, their, their history, they and their family's history.
They
Heather: do, they do. And it's way more interesting. I also figured out as soon as I interviewed someone and wrote a chapter based on that, it was a way more interesting chapter. Mm. And I said, okay, I need, so I started setting up interviews and that was probably one of the harder parts was. Finding people who lived in some of these towns, like for example, Seaforth underneath, you know Jordan Lake.
I was like, how do I find someone who lived there doesn't even exist anymore. It's not like I can look up Seaforth and go there and knock on someone's door. Right? Um, so some of them were harder to find, um, people than others. [00:32:00] Um, you know, and some of them were so old, right? That no one. They were disappeared so long ago that no one who lived there was still alive anymore.
Hmm. And in that case, I found historians who. Either were maybe ancestor or descendants, and their ancestors were the ones who lived there. So for example, Umstead Park is in the book. Umstead Park has a whole lost community out there in those woods. If you've ever been hiking in Umstead, if you go off trail, not even that far, you'll find ruins of like old farmhouses and the old mill that was out there and it was called the Crabtree Creek community.
So I, the people who lived there are. Gone. But there are descendants of the families that live there. So I talked to their descendants and they could tell me like, oh, well my great grandpa told my grandpa who passed it down to me, and these are the stories that I heard. Right? So in some cases it's people who remember it directly, and it's some cases it's someone's.
You know, far off [00:33:00] ancestor and they can speak to what they've heard, their family lore and their family legend. And, um, yeah. So it was, um, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be, but it was
Melissa: I'm
Heather: sure rewarding though. So rewarding. Mm-hmm. And. I've tried to, for like my book events, have some of the people I interviewed for the book come out and like maybe they can speak to
Melissa: Oh, that's smart.
Heather: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For my book release party. Mm-hmm. I had several people who I called the stars of my book and they got to speak to the crowds on my book release party. Oh. I cried like, and I don't normally cry, but I cried because I just did not expect hundreds of people showed up and I was just. Not prepared for that.
Like, I thought if I'd be really lucky if 50 people showed up. Yeah. You know, and hundreds showed up. My husband was out directing traffic because like the cars were wrapping around the street and like blocking traffic.
Melissa: Well, with so many social media followers, I'm, I'm really not surprised.
Heather: [00:34:00] That's, I guess that's
Melissa: fair.
People do start to feel like they know you personally too, you know, because you have been doing this so long.
Heather: Yeah. And, and that's. What ended up happening is all of these, I was like just signing books. I didn't get to see, I knew there were a lot of people, but I couldn't see them. And then, um, my, my parents were there too, and my mom and dad were like, Heather, you need to sign faster 'cause there's a line.
Ah. And I was like, I was like, I can't be that bad. And then I stood up to go look and the line was like, stretching across the parking lot.
Melissa: Wow. What a good problem to have. It
Heather: was. But I saw everybody and I was just like, and then they all were like smiling at me and like. Like they were all happy.
Melissa: They were proud of you?
Heather: Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah, yeah.
Heather: And I couldn't believe it. That's amazing. I was like, all these like people that I don't necessarily know them in person are all here and they're like, they're here to be like supportive of me. As if they know me.
Melissa: Yeah.
Heather: Oh. So it was, and then I stood up on that stage and they were just like, oh, these, the room is just completely full of people standing room only.
And, [00:35:00] and I, and they're all just smiling at me. Mm-hmm. Like, like, like beaming,
Melissa: like proud parents.
Heather: That's it. And I was like, I was like, oh, I didn't expect
Melissa: this. People like me, they really
Heather: like me. Really? So touched by that. Um, so yeah, it's, it's been so rewarding to get to. Talk to the people who, this was their memories and have, I mean, and these people, their memories are now in a book, you know?
Yeah. And some of those people that I interviewed for the book, they've shared the book and they've said like, they're like, oh yeah, my great-grandfather would be so proud to see that his legacy is still being written about today. You know? So I just,
Melissa: I love that.
Heather: I was happy that I could, had the ability to do that for somebody, you know?
Melissa: One thing that I want to get to before we call it a day, um, I, I feel like I could, I could talk to you for four straight episodes. One thing I wanna know though, is if you could time travel to any time in Raleigh's history, gosh, and spend one day in that [00:36:00] that time period, where would you want to go?
Heather: Oh my goodness.
Wow. That's a great question. So I haven't like, thought about that, but let me, let me just quickly, I, I definitely would wanna go. Honestly, I, I think probably, I think probably the 18 hundreds. Um, and I think it's because one, Raleigh was really small in the 18 hundreds. Um, we were a very small capital, and so I would get to see like how we're growing and like what that looked like.
But I think also because. So many important pieces of history were lost in the 18 hundreds, and specifically I'm talking about Civil War and right after the Civil War. There's a lot of history there and specifically black history. And we talk about hidden,
Default_2026-04-09_4: that's
Melissa: a good point. Yeah.
Heather: When we talk, I'm gonna be honest, when we talk about lost history, I started realizing with Hidden History.
There was a lot of times it was a history of a marginalized community that, because those are the people that [00:37:00] either didn't have the ability to get their history stories told in books. Mm-hmm. Or maybe the people who did have the ability to put that history in books didn't wanna talk about that history or
Melissa: changed it, changed the facts about it
Heather: a hundred percent.
Melissa: Yeah.
Heather: Um. And so there's a lot of not only black history, but women's history mm-hmm. That wasn't being told back then. 'cause women definitely didn't have the power to, you know, get their stories and opinions put in books in the 18 hundreds in Raleigh. And then there's also, um, the history of the, the farmers.
Right now, I'm not talking about like the plantations closer to what we think of as Raleigh, but further out like Millbrook Village, right. Or yeah. Historic Millbrook. Um. There were like just small family farms and, and their stories aren't told either, right? Because many of them either couldn't write right and they couldn't read, um, and they weren't quote important enough to have their stories told.
So if I, as a historian could go back to [00:38:00] sometime around, I dunno, 1850s, 1860s, maybe the 1880s, somewhere in there, um, to get to see for myself. Firsthand the history of these communities that has not been put into books, specifically what was happening with the black community women and these kind of more impoverished farmers, right?
These, um, I would really love
Melissa: That would be fascinating to
Heather: see that and then be to write about it and go, here's what actually happened. I saw it.
Melissa: I promise. I went back for one day and. Saw it myself.
Heather: I took a vid, I took a video of it.
Melissa: Oh yeah. That, now that would be amazing if we could bring our phones and take the videos.
Okay. Tell everybody where we can find you on social media and where we can find your book.
Heather: Yeah. Okay. So, um, on social media, I am Heather, Leah, um, you can find my website is hidden historian.com. Um, and if you go there, it's got a list of all my social media places. Oh, great. It's also where you can book me if you want me to come speak at one of your events.
I [00:39:00] also speak at a lot of like, like rotary clubs, churches. I've been speaking at a lot of mm-hmm. Um, retirement communities. Um, it's also where you can find out about my. Tours 'cause I actually take people to see some of these hidden places firsthand in Raleigh.
Melissa: I would love that.
Heather: I, so it could do that.
And then my book is available, it's on Amazon, it's at Barnes and Noble. And then I have several events coming up where I'll be selling my book and signing it in person. Um, and those are listed all over my website and my Facebook as well. So
Melissa: I cannot thank you enough. For being here today. I've been wanting to meet you for years.
The first time I ever saw you. I'll just say real briefly, I, I saw you walking around the OK Nichi Speedway telling your story and, and and filming it all, and I was like, I know her. And then I saw it later that day, that same day on Facebook. Yes.
Heather: That makes me so
Melissa: happy. That's funny. Well, thank you so much for being here and I look forward to hopefully chatting again one day.
I would love that. Thank you. [00:40:00]