Unraveling Secrets: Benjamin Hale on the Mysterious Disappearance That Haunts the Ozarks
LL: Ironically, Cave Mountain began with a disappearance, but in the end, it revealed everything, unraveling the prior 1978 religious cult, a murder, secrets, lies, and more. Was there a moment in researching or writing in which you felt personally conflicted? And what emotional toll did the story take on you?
BH: Yes, there were a couple of them. One I just described in my answer to your last question: the fact that I knew from the outset that the juiciest narrative morsel at the heart of the story was something I adamantly do not believe in, but that teasing people’s desire to believe it was exactly what would sell the story. That made me feel a little bit of the moral ickiness that I presume a drug dealer feels (or should feel), but this one is even worse: Haley’s story became connected to the cult murder story only because my Aunt Joyce (Haley’s grandmother) reached out to Lucy Clark (a pseudonym), the mother of the girl who was murdered in 1978 and one of the people convicted of her murder, and became long-distance friends with her; my connection to Lucy via Joyce is the reason why I was able to have a few long phone conversations with her, which proved absolutely invaluable to the project.
