Long before Lancaster, Ohio spread its limbs into tidy roads and brick storefronts, a rugged path twisted beside a stream called Fetters Run. It cut through the old farms—Foglesong, Spangler, Fetters—and trailed behind the Poor House Farm, finally ending near what is now Rising Park. Its path now roughly follows…

What the Children Found at Lake Shawnee There are places in the world where joy leaves stains. Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in Rock, West Virginia, is one of them. The kind of place where laughter echoes wrong. Where swings creak in the wind when the air is still. Where every…

They built it on bones. Bethel Methodist Church still stands, slumped on its old stone foundation—white boards weathered to gray, windows dimmed by decades of grime. It backs against the woods now, hemmed in by brambles and silence, a forgotten corner of East Fork State Park in Ohio where even…