![]() ![]() While researching that one, Tennis came across several ghost stories, which ultimately led to Haunts of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Highlands. 58, spawned another book - Along Virginia’s Route 58: True Tales From Beach to Bluegrass. “I put all of those together in this 105,000-word book that came out,” he says of that first publication. Throughout his time at the Herald-Courier, he came across offbeat stories, from an annual race of outhouses rolling down Main Street in Independence, Virginia to a flea market that draws tens of thousands to the small town of Hillsville. ![]() ”I was just always very interested in how towns took their names, very interested in all of the great things to see, the waterfalls, legends of the towns, what makes a town unique,” he said recently of his motivation for the first book. Tennis, who still writes for the Herald-Courier, combined a reporter’s curiosity with a story teller’s soul in penning that first book. Among the histories and tales in that book is a recounting of the infamous Hillsville courthouse shooting of 1912 and a bit on the Devil’s Den in Fancy Gap. ![]() Working among those communities, uncovering more tales than he could write for his newspaper, Tennis eventually put together his first book - Southwest Virginia Crossroads - a sprawling guide to 17 counties and four cities in western Virginia. ![]() While a fat wallet didn’t quite pan out, it did start him on a journey that landed him a post at the Herald Courier a year later, in 1992, and started him on a lifetime of meandering through the mountains of western Virginia, North Carolina, and eastern Tennessee, uncovering stories of the people who populate those areas. Given the notoriously low paychecks for community newspapers in those days, Tennis says he thought the extra forty bucks meant he’d be rolling in money. Before he could accept, another paper, The Kingsport Times-News, in Kingsports, Tennessee, offered him a similar post, coming in with an offer that paid about $40 more per week. That Tennis would be here this month, signing his books, is a result of the meandering path he’s taken in his career, dating back to that early decision over $40.Ī native of Virginia Beach, Tennis had been offered a position at a daily newspaper in Martinsville, Virginia. until noon, before heading to Galax, Virginia, where he will be signing books at Food City beginning at 1:30 p.m. 21, at Pages Bookstore, signing copies of Haunted Highlands: Ghosts & Legends of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, from 9:30 a.m. Tennis will be in the Granite City on Sept. One of his more recent works, Haunted Highlands: Ghosts & Legends of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, could almost be considered a winding trail of the preternatural, a map one could follow from community to community through and near the mountainous region where North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee converge.Īnd the first stop in that otherworldly trip begins in Mount Airy. Tennis also is the author of two novels and eight other books - none of which may have happened had he not made that $40 decision those many years ago. Tennis is a long-time reporter for the Bristol Herald Courier, a job he might not have had except for one of those decisions made decades ago, nudged in one direction by a chance to earn an extra $40. Such could be said about journalist and author Joe Tennis.Īnd now, he’s hoping to take others down an equally twisting, shadowy, spooky trail of tales throughout North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. Sometimes, life takes one down an unexpected path, one simple decision after another lighting the way along a winding, twisting trail. ![]()
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