In the Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky, the past is not ready to rest.
Why is the ghost of a lady in white haunting a lonely Kentucky graveyard?
When twelve-year-old Lillia Pameroy arrives at Kentucky Lake to stay on a borrowed houseboat with Grauntie Nora, strange happenings begin almost at once. In the darkness, bluegrass music seems to drift through the night air. A figure appears high on a boulder near the shore.
Before long, Lillia is drawn into a mystery tied to the Land Between the Lakes, where the past still lingers in heartbreaking ways.With the help of her new friend Zoe, Lillia begins to uncover the story of a woman whose family was torn apart when people were moved off the land. Clues lead to an overgrown family graveyard, long-buried records, and a treasured old doll that appears in Lillia’s imaginings.
As the mystery deepens, Lillia must use her unusual gift to piece together a story of love, loss, and family. Can she uncover the truth and help reunite what was broken so long ago?
The Setting for Unsettled Things…
The National Recreation Area known as Land Between the Lakes, which stretches across both Kentucky and Tennessee, is the setting for Unsettled Things. Years ago, the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers were dammed to help control flooding, and the lakes formed by those projects became Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley.
As the land changed, entire villages were moved, disrupting lives, homes, and long-established communities. The area that remained was set aside as a beautiful recreational destination for everyone to enjoy. That is how Land Between the Lakes came to be.
Visitors today can stop at the Golden Pond Visitor Center, where Lillia gets her map of the small family cemeteries that still remain scattered throughout the area. She also visits the Homeplace, a living history farm and museum that recreates life in the 1850s, where even more strange imaginings begin to unfold.
If you travel to Land Between the Lakes, you can stay in Kentucky State Park lodges, cabins, or campgrounds. Or, like Lillia, you can rent a houseboat and explore the lakes from the water.
Elia Locardi (photographer)
Scroll down to explore photographs that inspired Unsettled Things and discover how the history and landscape of Kentucky’s Land Between the Lakes helped shape Lillia’s first mystery.
The Golden Pond Visitor Center, where Lillia and Zoe meet the spirit guide Emily, takes its name from the former town of Golden Pond. This historic marker tells the story of one of the communities that once stood in the Land Between the Lakes before families were moved from the land. For Unsettled Things, places like this helped shape the feeling that the past has never fully disappeared. It still lingers in quiet corners, waiting for someone to listen.
During their bike ride through Land Between the Lakes, Lillia and Zoe stop to watch a herd of buffalo grazing peacefully in the distance. Scenes like this helped bring a sense of adventure and discovery to their journey. Even in the middle of mystery, the landscape around them is filled with beauty, surprise, and the feeling that anything might be waiting just ahead.
When Lillia visits the Homeplace, she walks up this path toward the dogtrot style house. It is such a simple scene, and yet it carries that quiet feeling that something unusual is about to happen. In Unsettled Things, places like this are where history begins to feel less distant and Lillia’s imaginings start to pull her closer to the lives that came before.
On the porch at the Homeplace, Zoe waits beside this cat for Lillia to come up the path. It is a small, still moment, but one filled with the sense that something unusual is about to unfold. From the beginning, the quiet atmosphere of the Homeplace suggests that this journey through the past is only just beginning.
While looking at a photograph like this one, Lillia experiences one of her unsettling imaginings. The figure of the lady in white seems to step out of the picture, cross the room, and slip away through the window. It is a vivid and haunting moment, one that blurs the line between what is seen, what is remembered, and what still longs to be found.
Lillia and Zoe explore this attic bedroom in the dogtrot style farmhouse during their visit to the Homeplace. Quiet and shadowed, it feels like the kind of place where old memories might still be tucked away in the corners. In Unsettled Things, spaces like this helped create the sense that the past was never truly gone, only waiting to be uncovered.
This photograph looks from the parlor across the dogtrot to the farmhouse kitchen. It captures the simple beauty of daily life in another time, but also the closeness of the spaces where families once lived, worked, and loved. For Lillia, walking through the Homeplace is more than a visit to history. It is like stepping into the edges of another world.
After one of her imaginings, Lillia finds a bonnet hanging on this split-rail fence. It is the kind of detail that feels both ordinary and deeply unsettling, as though someone from the past has only just stepped away. Moments like this deepen the mystery in Unsettled Things, making Lillia wonder what is real and what is reaching toward her across time.
While peering into this barn, Lillia hears voices that seem to drift from another time. The sound is unsettling, as though the past itself is stirring just out of sight. In Unsettled Things, the Homeplace becomes one of the places where Lillia feels most strongly that history is not only remembered here. It is still alive.
These photographs helped inspire the setting, history, and haunting atmosphere of Unsettled Things, where Lillia’s journey through Land Between the Lakes brings her face to face with both the beauty of the present and the mysteries of the past.