Appalachia's Snake Handling Churches Explained By A Local

My book, The Appalachian Book of the Living and the Lost: https://www.otisboone.com A 15-year-old boy watched his father die from a rattlesnake bite at church, and 29 years later he took up a snake of his own and died the same way. This video traces that story back to a verse in the King James Bible, a moonshiner on White Oak Mountain who started the practice in 1910, and the laws, trials and deaths that followed it through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and West Virginia. You'll hear why so few handlers actually die, what the anointing feels like by their own account, and how one family after another, the Hensleys, Elkinses, Browns, Wolfords and Cootses, has buried someone to a snakebite and kept handling anyway. It closes with what changed after preacher Jamie Coots died in 2014, and why his son made a different choice than his father did. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:09 The Bible Verses 3:21 George Hensley's Origins 5:29 Laws Against Handling 6:56 Hensley's Death 7:34 Courts and Deaths 9:00 Why Few Die 15:53 Mack Wolford's Story #SnakeHandling #AppalachianFolklore #ChurchOfGodWithSignsFollowing #JamieCoots #AppalachianHistory