It Takes Husbands and Leaves Widows

When lifelong West Virginia ginseng hunter Jimmy Shepard finds his secret honey hole stripped bare just weeks before the season opens, desperation pushes him toward a place locals refuse to enter—a deep, forgotten forest below a sheer bluff known only as Widow’s Bottom. Despite warnings passed down through generations, Jimmy lowers himself into the bottom, convinced untouched ginseng still waits below.  

What he finds instead is a place that doesn’t behave like normal woods. Sounds disappear. The ground feels watched. And something begins to follow him—patiently, deliberately—cutting off escape and herding him deeper into the forest.  

As daylight fades and the bottom closes in, Jimmy realizes the stories weren’t superstition at all. Some places don’t just take lives. They keep them.