About the Film

While the narrative story presented in CHEST is fictional, it is based on legends and stories from the East Tennessee area where I grew up, most notably the story of the titular "chest". As a kid I was always obsessed with legends and folklore. Where I grew up the stories were just...special. And moving away and going to college and meeting people from all over the world I never realized how special they were until I would tell stories to people who just could not believe the things I was telling them. Some I experienced myself, some were told to me by various people but there is something unique about the stories from the Appalachian south and they are as unique as the people who tell them. My goal with making this film was to try and capture some of these stories and the people and really put a spotlight on how verbal storytelling is a truly unique artform. It is the one form of art that continuously changes over time. We can listen to music, watch films, look at paintings, read books and they always remain the same, no matter how many times we consume them. Verbal storytelling is unique and you never know where the story will go by the time it reaches you, and I find that to be very special and very exciting. Below are a few of the stories mentioned in the movie and their history. Originally there were lots of other, even more disturbing stories that didn't make the cut (don't get me started on "rabies kid"), but maybe those will work into a sequel?

The Story of the CHEST

This story was told to me by an eccentric uncle named Shag who used to tell all of us wild stories ranging from mummified "hell princesses" in the hull of the Titanic to the mysterious box that was found by some hunters back during a drought in the 1980s in Monroe County, TN. The story goes that these hunters were out doing their thing during an unprecedented dry season, and they came upon a spot in the river where normally there would be a large waterfall. Upon inspection they noticed there was a hole in the rock where the water would normally flow. The went back into it several hundred feet where they discovered a large wooden box, or a "chest" as he described it. It was said to be wrapped in large, heavy chains that were attached and secured with large and very old, rusty locks. Having only their rifles, they decided to go back home and come back later with tools in order to open the box and see what was inside. Now, as to why they never went back is unknown, but supposedly the night after it was found the drought ended and brought about massive flooding to the area, and the waterfall that had kept the secret so many years returned, blocking the entrance. As a kid and teenager growing up there, I was intrigued by this story and me and my friends used to go out into the mountains and search for this waterfall and the cave where the mysterious box was said to have been found, but we never found anything and usually just ended up spending the night camping and drinking beer, telling our own stories and making up new ones. This journey stuck with me for years until nearly 20 years later I sat down and wrote this movie, and was my way of bringing the mystery into the light through film. But there is a box out there somewhere, and the idea of that still excites and terrifies me all the same.

Jeffrey's Hell

The story of Ebenezer Jeffrey is one story that is well documented in the Tellico Plains areas of East TN, but the details can vary from person to person. Basically, there is an area of the Citico Wilderness Area—adjacent to the Cherokee National Forest—called "Jeffrey's Hell" that gets its name from a man named Ebenezer Jeffrey who went missing in the area nearly 200 years ago. He was said to have been searching for his hunting dogs and told people who warned him not to go out there alone that he would "go into hell after those dogs". The details here are what change depending on who you talk to. Most people will tell you he just got lost in the thick forest and never found his way out, but the story I was told by my family was he was out with a friend who was a Cherokee native, and the dogs took off after something and disappeared into a nearby cave. The Cherokee friend warned him that it was a cave with an evil history, and his people spoke that it would change and alter as you went through it and present "false bottoms", as if it was trying to deceive and confuse anyone who came within its walls in order to consume them. Here Ebenezer spoke his famous "go into hell after those dogs" line and disappeared into the cave, never to be seen again, seemingly finding hell in the process. This version of the story was of course the most alluring to blend with the story of the Chest. This cave, too, was another landmark we would search for as kids, also never turning up anything to write home about.

Tellico Ironworks Roundhouse and Mine

One other aspect of the film that was blending with the story of the chest and Ebenzer's Cave is the Tellico Ironworks Mine, which operated shortly after the Civil War. Here is a brief history of this landmark, which can still be visited today and where we filmed a lot of the movie:

The Monroe County Panther

I had to include this story because it is one that I can actually verify. In the movie the eccentric drunk at the bar keeps mentioning a big black panther that nearly "ran me off the road". And you might not believe it but this story, too, is another true story and one I witnessed myself.

I was around 10 years old and I was staying with my cousin, who lived adjacent to a very large forest and open wilderness area. One night we were all in the house watching TV when outside the sound of a cat broke us out of our television daze, screaming the way only a cat who was about to die could. My uncle opened the back door of the house, which opened out into the forest, and on the screen door there were three cats, all hanging for dear life onto the screen door, trying to climb as high as they could. On the deck outside, a large animal leapt off (nearly 7 feet down) the deck and stopped and turned back to us and let out the weirdest, mostly blood curdling cry I have ever heard. My uncle shined a flashlight at it and its eyes were massive and yellow, and its body was jet black. We watched as it looked at us, paced back and forth for a moment and then retreated into the woods.

That was the only experience I ever had with the panther (or whatever it was) but many people in the area have reported similar sightings over the years. As we grew up my cousin actually became rather obsessed with trying to find the panther and when I wrote the movie I had to include this obsession in the character of Stan Belcher, the drunk at the bar who no one believes.