
So far I’ve got three podcast episodes out in the wild, and four more scheduled for publication. There are about four more in production, along with some bonus episodes. It’s moving along quite well.
I think I’ve finally gotten into a production pattern. I’m not an audio engineer by any stretch of imagination, so I’m sure my process has lots of gaps and bad practices. Even so, I thought I’d write down the process, if for no other reason than to remind myself.
Step 1 – Research
If anything, this is the most important step. It can also be the most time consuming, but the most rewarding step. I use lots of resources to find out about these ghost towns.
Maps
First, there are maps, especially old ones. I scan old maps looking for names that don’t appear on modern maps. One of the best is Robert Mills’s 1825 Atlas of South Carolina. I haven’t found an analogous collection for other states, but if you want to see early American towns in SC, this is your source.

ESRI and USGS have an excellent collection of historical topographic maps. You select your location on a present-day map, then select a historical map overlay from the available maps. Sliders let you move back and forth to compare various maps. You can download the topo quadrants for offline use. The cool thing about the downloaded files is that they are geo-referenced, so you can use them as overlays for Google Earth.

There are other excellent collections of historical maps. The Library of Congress website has an extensive collection online. Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina have digital libraries that also contain map collections.
One of the best collections is the David Rumsey Map Collection. Rumsey is president of Cartography Associates, a California mapping company. The physical collection is housed at Stanford University, but Rumsey has made most of his maps available online. Like the ESRI collection, these are geo-referenced so that you can overlay them onto Google Earth, including old maps like the Robert Mills collection.

While not a map, the USGS Geographic Names Information Service (GNIS) or Geonames works hand in hand with available maps. GNIS data includes location names for nature features such as river, lakes, mountains, hills, etc. More importantly, it has a category for populated places. Some of these include non-extant locations and towns, and are designated as “historical”. That’s one of the best resources for finding ghost towns.

When you have the name of a town, the Sanborn Insurance Maps from the 1920s will let you know how viable that town was. These show individual buildings in the towns within the collection. Those maps are available from several of the sources listed above, including the Rumsey Collection and the Library of Congress.

Online Histories
Once you’ve found your ghost town, it’s time to start digging further. Google is not necessarily your friend, in this case. It tends to turn up click-bait sites like Only In Your State, which only has information of dubious veracity or, at best, plagiarized content from other sites. These type of sites copy from each other. The content is inconsequential. It’s the ad content that they are pushing.
That being said, there are some excellent resources besides just Wikipedia. As mentioned before, there are excellent digital archives for states in our region. SC Memory is a clearinghouse for institutional libraries in South Carolina. There are similar collections for for other states. You can also go to the institution’s website directly. The South Carolina State Library, University of Georgia, University of South Carolina, and local county websites have excellent collections of online materials. Information in these collections include primary documents such as letters and other ephemera, as well as photographs, maps and oral histories.
One of my go-to sites is the Carolana website. This excellent collection has information for North and South Carolina. One of the best resources here is its table of towns in the states. It shows the dates that post offices were active in that town, which is usually a good indicator of when the town was active.

There are several commercial companies that do archeological research. Sometimes they are contracted by institutions and sometimes they are hired to conduct archeological surveys prior to construction in sensitive areas. The Chicora Foundation is just one of these, but there are others. They often post their reports on their own websites, or you might find them on official state archival websites.
Two other notable resources are the National Register of Historic Places and the Library of Congress. I’m more familiar with the South Carolina version of NRHP, which includes nomination forms for the sites. This often has historical information not available from other websites.

Digital Newspapers
When I’m doing research I probably spend most of my time digging through online archival newspapers. The quantity of articles about the town give a good indication of its prominence. I also try to find the earliest reference to that town. Often you can find more modern articles about the history of an area.
The things I search for in these archives are announcements about postal routes, news or advertisements for businesses in the town, or just general news from that area. Local papers were the social media of the time, and the society columns often mentioned when someone was visiting. These can also provide clues as to how active that town might have been.
I have a subscription to Newspapers.com, which is my go-to resource. Some libraries, such as the Greenville County Library, provide free access to this resource with a library card. The Library of Congress’s Chronicling America is another free archival news collection, though not quite as extensive as Newspapers.com
Don’t neglect local news archives. Local news for the nearest city or for the county in which your town is located might have some valuable information about your site. Some of these don’t appear in the collections mentioned above, and some might require a subscription for access.
Finally, there are local and state historical societies across the region. These are usually independent of government agencies, and the information they offer online various from organization to organization.
Libraries and Museums
You can’t find everything online. Sometimes you have to dig into good old-fashioned books. I’m a frequent visitor to the South Carolina Room at the Greenville County Library. Spartanburg and Pickens Counties also have good resources. Lots of these resources can only be accessed within the libraries. I’ve also found library staff extremely helpful in finding pamphlets, old records, and other ephemera related to my research topic.
It also helps to visit local museums. Just about every town or county seat I’ve been to has one of these. Again, resources may vary, but you might just find that one missing nugget of information. Local docents can also be quite helpful.
Cemeteries
This deserves its own section. Often the only thing that remains of a ghost town is a church. Sometimes only a cemetery. The names on the headstones become more valuable clues about life in the town. Using the newspaper resources listed above you can search for the names in the town’s cemetery and learn more about the people that actually lived there.
GNIS data contains location information for cemeteries and I refer to that often. However, my go-to site is Find-a-Grave. As a community-created service, it can contain faulty information and is sometimes incomplete, but it’s the best comprehensive resource.
Site Visits
Once I’ve done some initial research, I love to do a site visit if possible. I want to see and photograph what’s left of the town. I’ll often bring along a small Tascam DR-05 field recorder to get ambient sounds from that location.
Some of these towns are accessible only by kayak, and that always makes for a fun trip. Some are remote, and some are surprisingly right in the middle of things.
It’s important to do at least a little bit of research before a visit. Otherwise you might miss some important things. After the visit I always find more things I need to look up.
Step 2 – Scripts
One I’ve gotten all of my ducks in a row I start working on the script. In some cases I’ve already done a blog post here about the town, so I can do a bit of copy and paste. Sometimes, though, text written for reading doesn’t translate well into text that works well for narration. I have to do a good bit of re-writing.
I try to follow this format when writing my scripts:
Section 1 – Prologue
This section is usually a teaser. Sometimes it isn’t about the town in question, but a subject related to how I found that town, or something tangentially related.
Section 2 – History
In this section I like to describe how the town got started and what was there at its peak. As best as I can, I like to try to describe what life was like in that town.
Section 3 – Demise
I always try to find out why that town died out. Sometimes it’s because of a natural disaster such as flooding. Sometimes the town’s main industry declines. Most often its because of changing transportation patterns.
Section 4 – What Remains
Finally, I like to document what’s left of the town. I include any information from my site visit. I’ve learned not to get too specific with this, though. Too many times I’ve written about a place with specific location details, only to see the site vandalized, or access revoked because it’s being “loved to death” by the Instagram generation.
One I’m satisfied with script, it’s time to start recording.
Step 3 – Record Narration
I’ve gotten some new podcasting gear, so my setup for recording has change in the last few months. I use a Zoom Podtrack P4 for recording, with a Zoom dynamic microphone. I do this separate from my computer, because the fan on my Mac ads noise to the background. I like the clean vocals I get from this combination of Zoom products.
I took a small storage box and lined it with acoustic foam panels. I put my microphone in there to isolate it from any other ambient noises. It helps, but I don’t have a true recording studio. The pumps from our radiator heating system come on at inopportune times. We’re also in the flight path of the Greenville Downtown Airport, so jet noise can be a problem. I just press pause, then continue.

I record each section as a separate file. Sometimes I’ll even break that down into separate paragraphs. I always start by announcing the section at the beginning of the file – “Episode X, name of episode, Section X.” This helps me keep files straight, especially if I have to do multiple takes. I’ve learned not to speak to fast and to pause when needed to catch my breath. I also don’t mind repeating a sentence if I’ve mangled things or if I’m not happy with phrasing. I can always clean things up while editing.
Step 4 – Narration Processing
One I have all the files recorded on my Podtrack, I transfer them to my Mac. I keep the files on the SD card as a backup, as well as moving them to an external SSD drive. I’ve learned the hard way to keep backups.
My first step is to open each file in Audacity. There are better editors out there, I’m sure, but I just love the simplicity of editing this software offers. I first run some compression and preliminary noise reduction on the file before editing.

I make two passes when using Audacity. The first pass deletes the extraneous stuff such as the title announcement, stutters, and retakes. The second pass is much more detailed. I close up gaps to make the narration flow more smoothly. I add silence between phrases in cause I’ve taken an audible breath or made some other noise. I can even do a “vowelectomy” and take out part of a word if I’ve hung onto a syllable too long. I’ve gotten pretty good at audio surgery.


Once I’m happy with the sound I export the processed file as a WAV file to my SSD.
Step 5 – Music and Sound Effects
Music is an important part of my podcast. It shouldn’t overpower the show, but should complement it. I’ve learned that if you’ve got a good music soundtrack, allow space in the narration for the music to breath.
I like writing and recording my own music and I’ve got the gear to do it. However, with Carolina Ghost Towns I’ve just been using royalty free music from Pixabay. There are lots of quality clips there and I’ve been able to find enough suitable music to keep the show interesting.
Pixabay also has a great collection of sound effects. These can be very effective, but should be used sparingly. Archive.org and BBC Sounds also have great collections. As with the music, my preference is to use sounds that I’ve recorded myself, usually on a site visit.
Lately I’ve been wanting to include voices other than my own. If I’ve got a pull quote from a newspaper or website, I’ll use an AI voice for that quote. I really like ElevenLabs.IO for their variety of voices and the fact that you get so much with the free version, as long as you credit them.
Step 6 – Composition
Once I’ve got the narration clips and decided on sound effects and music, it’s time to put everything together. I use Logic Pro on my Mac. I usually have six tracks on my podcast. Track 1 is my pre-recorded intro and outtro that are on every episode. Track 2 is the narration. I use Waves Clarity VX Pro to add more compression and to clear up any additional noise on the track. I’ll split the sound clips further to tweak the pacing of the narration.

Tracks 3 and 4 are the music tracks. I like to use two tracks so that I can fade one music clip into another, or overlap them, if necessary. I’ll raise and lower the volume levels of these tracks so that they don’t obliterate my narration.
Track 5 is for the sound effects. Like the music tracks, I can fine tune the volume. I might even use an additional track to build up sounds, if necessary. I use Track 6 for the AI voices or for additional sound effects.
When I’m happy with everything I export the file twice, once as a WAV file for archival purposes and once as an MP3 file for upload to my podcast host.
Step 7 – Show Notes
I try to keep my show notes brief. In most cases I’ve already written a blog post about the subject. I don’t want to replicate that post, so in the notes I’ll just add a link to it. I will add photos, a brief description of the episode, and I’ll add any additional credits that didn’t get into the audio portion.
Step 8 – Publication
I started out hosting my podcast here. However, I ran into issues with the plugin I was using to keep everything organized. I decided to go with Podbean for my host. Podbean makes it easy to push the show out to venues like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, and others. I upload the MP3 file and copy the show notes into the description. I try to get ahead of the game, so I post several episodes to come online every other week each Tuesday as a scheduled episode.
So that’s it. That’s how I create podcasts. It’s time consuming, but I love it.
Thanks for posting about your process. Very interesting and informative.
David Fridy