West Virginia is not subtle about what it holds. The mountains are among the oldest on the planet. The hollows run deep. The haints — and in Appalachia, a haint is something more specific than a ghost, something that stayed on purpose — have been here considerably longer than anyone thought to ask them about it.

FrankiVerse Cafe investigators Franki and Franny Lynn arrive in the Mountain State with an open booking, Franny Lynn's interdimensional pharmaceutical kit, and a working theory that the entities of West Virginia have been waiting a very long time for someone to show up with good questions and a genuine interest in the answers. The theory proves correct. It usually does.

Across eleven investigations and one location that does not appear on any standard map, they sit across from Mothman — who finds the name imprecise and the statue's proportions inaccurate — and Zona Heaster Shue, who solved her own murder with the composure of someone who simply had things to do. They meet Jacob at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, who stayed because the building knows him. They meet a miner at Kaymoor who is definitely still on shift and finds the ghost framing frankly offensive. They meet a Confederate soldier at Droop Mountain who has forgotten which side he was on and has spent a hundred and sixty years watching the stars from a very good tree. They meet the Flatwoods Monster, who is maintenance personnel, who finds the name rude, and who is unexpectedly moved by the chairs.

They also meet Cecil, the ghost cat of Shepherdstown, who declines to be interviewed, cleans his ear, and leaves. FrannyLynn calls it an editorial. She is not wrong.

Conducted with Franny Lynn's pharmaceutical assists, documented in three ink colors across forty-seven pages of field notes, and fueled throughout by pepperoni rolls and BooBerry K Muffins, this is the West Virginia edition of the FrankiVerse Cafe Haunted Travel Guide series — and the origin point of something new. What began as an investigation became a conversation. What became a conversation became the first season of Coffee and Cryptids, in which the entities of this world and several adjacent ones finally get to give their side of the story.

The mountains are old. They hold things. Both have always been true at the same time.

Haints in the Holler is Book 5 of the FrankiVerse Cafe Haunted Travel Guide series.