Explore every episode of the podcast Astonishing Legends
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 3 | 25 Oct 2026 | 02:26:57 | |
Our Halloween tradition continues with three more listeners sharing encounters they still can’t explain. And this time we’re lucky enough to have paranormal investigator, researcher and author Michelle Belanger join us to help answer the question connecting these stories: does this phenomenon have a name? At a Southern California shopping mall, Amy gets in line for food when two young women behind her suddenly fill her with an intense feeling of dread. In Los Angeles, Zee picks up two young women from an unlikely spot near a freeway overpass, and before long, an ordinary ride begins to feel anything but. Lastly, Mike takes us back to a Chicago suburb in 1988, where a routine walk near a cemetery leads to a passing encounter with two women he has never forgotten. Turn down the lights and join us for the final set of this year’s true Halloween mysteries. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep39: Above the Top Floor | 20 Oct 2026 | 00:42:45 | |
In tonight's dead letter, we're in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania in the 1990s, a few years after the revolution, where our listener Nadina, six at the time, had the run of a Soviet-era apartment block with her older sister and their best friend while their nanny visited a friend upstairs. They climbed past the last floor of apartments to the metal door at the top, and before anyone could touch it, something huge, aggressive and feral sounding on the other side began attacking it so hard they fled. Nadina still doesn't know what was up there. Relevant Prior Episodes Ep 49: Monsters Among Us Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 116: Small Town Monsters Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 183: Sam the Sandown Clown Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 203: The Beast of Gévaudan Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further Reading Hoia Baciu Forest (Astonishing Legends) History of Cluj-Napoca Systematization in Romania Transylvanian Superstitions, Emily Gerard, 1885 (Project Gutenberg) Pricolici Strigoi Tracing the Roots of Lycanthropy (Astonishing Legends) The Beast of Bray Road (Astonishing Legends) Blonde Venus (1932) Classic Sideshow Acts: The Girl into the Gorilla (Museum of the Weird) Pepper's Ghost We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 2 | 18 Oct 2026 | 02:09:18 | |
Our Halloween tradition continues with three more listeners sharing encounters they still can’t explain. At a church summer camp in the mountains above Southern California, Ray and two fellow counselors spot a girl standing alone in the parking lot after lights-out. She silently returns to the bunkhouse when they call to her… but that won’t be the last time they see her. In San Luis Obispo, Brian and his wife move into a guest house with a long history and a curious warning from their elderly landlady: most tenants don’t stay very long. Soon they begin to understand why. And Terry takes us back to the night shift of a hospital coronary care unit, where a dying patient starts asking every nurse the same unsettling question: “Who’s that behind you?” Turn down the lights and settle in for Part Two of our Halloween listener stories. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep38: Hello, James. | 13 Oct 2026 | 00:50:44 | |
In tonight's dead letter, our listener TM was the office manager at a Catholic parish in the upper Mississippi river area, and part of her job was digitizing the cemetery's paper records, so she'd walk the rows with a camera, say hello to everyone, and tell them what she was there to do. One marker sat outside the cemetery’s plot map entirely: a boy who drowned in the river in 1936, with fresh flowers by his stone and no file in the office. One July afternoon, someone or something unseen let her know it was there. Relevant Prior Episodes Ep 247: Massacre at Duffy's Cut Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 317: The Screaming Skulls Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 123: The Sallie House: Ghost in the Machine Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 4: Amelia Earhart Vanishes Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further Reading Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1032 (Vatican.va) St. John Chrysostom (Britannica) All Souls' Day (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent) Columbarium (Merriam-Webster) Duffy's Cut (Wikipedia) Historic Bell Witch Cave, Adams, Tennessee Electronic Voice Phenomena: An Overview (Astonishing Legends blog) Stahl House, Case Study House #22 (LA Conservancy) Scared All The Time (podcast) We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 1 | 11 Oct 2026 | 03:04:34 | |
In 1933, a Scottish botanist watched a seemingly abandoned steamship drift past the Alaskan coast on an ice floe. It appeared upside down in a strange mirage, with no crew and no one at the wheel. This ship was the Baychimo, which was abandoned two years earlier, but refused to disappear. Having repeatedly resurfaced across the Arctic, it earning a reputation as one of history’s great ghost ships. In this episode, we explore the strange history of ghost ships from the the Baychimo, to the frozen Octavius, and the Ourang Medan, whose crew was reportedly found mysteriously dead shortly before the ship itself exploded and sank. Three ships, three enduring legends, and at least one vessel whose final resting place remains unknown. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep37: The Old Man on the Gravestone | 06 Oct 2026 | 00:51:45 | |
In tonight's dead letter, Corey takes us back to Omaha, Nebraska in the year 2000, when he was the overnight host on a Top 40 station and a call-in topic about haunted places kept circling back to one private family cemetery. He sent a carload of listeners out there on a Friday night to report back live on the air. A few days later his boss got a phone call from the cemetery's caretakers. And, to paraphrase a Dateline episode…things got weirder from there. We mentioned a TON of old eps in this one! Relevant Prior Episodes Ep 48: Choose Your Own Adventure Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 71: Pere Cheney: The Town that Disappeared Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 87: Black Eyed Kids Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 50: Mothman Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 14: What's Gotten Into You? Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 209: The Phantom Horse of Greensboro Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 120: The Grim Reaper Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 154: Lockdown at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 156: The Ax Murder House in Villisca Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 49: Monsters Among Us Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 310: The Rhine Research Center: Extraordinary Evidence Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further Reading Church Grims, by Tess Pfeifle (Astonishing Legends blog) Strange Intruders, by David Weatherly G.N.M. Tyrrell (Psi Encyclopedia, Society for Psychical Research) Ghosts and Apparitions in Psi Research (Psi Encyclopedia) Phantasms of the Living, Volume 1 (1886), free at the Internet Archive Phantasms of the Living, Volume 2 (1886), free at the Internet Archive Jim Harold's Campfire The Mothman of Point Pleasant (Small Town Monsters, 2017) The Ankou The Case Against Reality, by Donald Hoffman A Game of Pool, The Twilight Zone (1961) On a Pale Horse, by Piers Anthony The Villisca Axe Murder House Live and Let Die (1973) Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| A Tale of Ghost Ships Three! | 27 Sep 2026 | 02:16:59 | |
In 1933, a Scottish botanist watched a seemingly abandoned steamship drift past the Alaskan coast on an ice floe. It appeared upside down in a strange mirage, with no crew and no one at the wheel. This ship was the Baychimo, which was abandoned two years earlier, but refused to disappear. Having repeatedly resurfaced across the Arctic, it earning a reputation as one of history’s great ghost ships. In this episode, we explore the strange history of ghost ships from the the Baychimo, to the frozen Octavius, and the Ourang Medan, whose crew was reportedly found mysteriously dead shortly before the ship itself exploded and sank. Three ships, three enduring legends, and at least one vessel whose final resting place remains unknown. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep36: The Mimic | 22 Sep 2026 | 00:32:07 | |
In tonight's dead letter, our listener Ed and his wife are newlyweds, sharing the apartment he's lived in for about two years in Clay Center, Nebraska. One morning in early 2020, he hits snooze on his alarm and sees a figure walking out of their bedroom, silhouetted by the living room lights he'd set on a timer, and it looks just like his wife, but it’s not. Relevant Prior Episodes Ep 26: Shadow People Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 64: Electronic Fog Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 226: Boundless Remote Viewing with Lori Williams Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further Reading Ed's Floor Plan of the Apartment Clay Center, Nebraska, Wikipedia World's Largest Ball of Twine, Kansas Tourism Note: We call it the world's biggest ball of yarn in the episode. It's actually a ball of sisal twine. I always mess that up! (Scott) Doppelganger, Britannica Hypnagogic Hallucinations, Cleveland Clinic A-Yokai-A-Day: Ikiryo, Matthew Meyer Alexander Cannon (psychiatrist), Wikipedia STAR GATE [Controlled Remote Viewing], Federation of American Scientists Astral Projection Hypnosis by Dr. Steve G. Jones Journeys Out of the Body by Robert A. Monroe Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf Beyond the Bermuda Triangle by Bruce Gernon and Rob MacGregor We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| S2 Ep35: The Benevolent Warning | 15 Sep 2026 | 00:40:31 | |
In tonight's dead letter, our listener named Mark is driving through western Michigan at two in the morning in 1978, working off a paper map and handwritten directions to a house he's never been to. He comes up a hill and into a curve on US 131, and there are four people standing in his lane. Two of them are waving him over to the right, and the other two have their arms raised above their heads in an X. Had they not been there he may have had a fatal collision, and when he went to find them shortly after, they had vanished. Relevant Prior Episodes Ep 102: Resurrection Mary Part 1 Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 116: Small Town Monsters Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further Reading Lydia: The Ghost of Jamestown Bridge, NCpedia A History of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, Beardsley and Hankey, 1943 The Bray Road Beast, Small Town Monsters Jim Harold's Campfire: True Ghost Stories, Books 1 through 6 Note: We call it the National Highway Transportation Safety Association in the episode. The ‘A’ is actually for Administration. We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| S2 Ep34: The Lady in the Rocking Chair | 08 Sep 2026 | 00:46:55 | |
In tonight's dead letter, listener Mothmaiden remembers a time when she was four years old and an only child in a neighborhood with no other kids, and she had an imaginary friend named Cindy Cora who looked exactly like Betty Rubble from The Flintstones. Then on a sunny afternoon, in her own bedroom with the light coming through the window, she saw an elderly woman with white and gray hair piled high on her head, sitting in a rocking chair, calm and gentle and completely solid. Were these things connected? Relevant Prior Episodes Abduction at Devil's Den Devil's Den: The Reckoning Part 1 Chris McKinnell and the Warren Legacy Dan, Susan, Micah Hanks and Missing Time Links and Further Reading Two-thirds of school-age children have an imaginary companion by age 7, University of Washington Note: We say about one in three for the invisible-only friends. In the study, about two thirds of kids have had an imaginary companion by age seven, and about one in three have one at the time they are asked. The psychological significance of play with imaginary companions in early childhood, Learning & Behavior Childhood amnesia, Wikipedia Ghosts and Apparitions in Psi Research, the Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia Phantasms of the Living (1886) by Gurney, Myers and Podmore, Internet Archive Strange Intruders by David Weatherly Devils Den: The Reckoning by Terry Lovelace Contact (1997), Wikipedia Note: We say David Morse was one of the doctors on ER. He played Dr. Jack Morrison on St. Elsewhere. Sesame Street debuts, November 10, 1969, HISTORY Wall Street crash of 1929, Wikipedia The History of Bettys in Pop Culture, Refinery29 Natalie and Tara on YouTube We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| Special: Richard Hatem's Light in the Dark Tour 2026 | 04 Sep 2026 | 00:52:05 | |
Hey folks! We're gearing up to go to the Wet Hot Bad Magic Summercamp next week but after that we're back on our regular schedule! In the meanwhile here's a chat Scott and Richard had just a week ago about his new tour which is also CLOSE ABOARD! >>>>>>>>>> A special episode from our friend Richard Hatem. Richard is the screenwriter behind The Mothman Prophecies and a longtime friend of the show, and he hosts Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf. He invited Scott onto his podcast to talk about his upcoming Light in the Dark Tour 2026, a 10-day, six-city run of live shows in September that wraps up at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. We liked the conversation enough that we're sharing it here on the main feed. Along the way, Scott and Richard get to such never-before-asked questions as: What scares our dogs? Where will Scott and Forrest be appearing live in September? Did Abbott and Costello get along? Can anyone find Scott's legendary "lost" appearance on Portlandia? Did Richard schedule too many shows on this tour, and will Susan ever forgive him? Find out the answers to these and many more questions on this episode. If you can make it to one of the tour stops, go. Tickets and dates are at the link below. Links | |||
| S2 Ep33: The Inn at Folck's Mill | 01 Sep 2026 | 00:53:19 | |
In tonight's dead letter, listener Chris takes us back to the early 2000s, when he was the head brewer at a restaurant on the east side of Cumberland, Maryland, in a building so old it served as a Civil War field hospital. One night after close, he and three coworkers were having a beer in the basement bar when the loudest sound he'd ever heard slammed into the floorboards right above their heads, shaking dust from the ceiling and rattling every bottle behind the bar. Relevant Prior Episodes Nightmarchers of Hawaii Links and Further Reading The Battle of Folck's Mill: Maryland Historical Trust Battlefield Documentation (PDF) Battle of Folck's Mill, Wikipedia Folck's Mill (National Register of Historic Places site), Wikipedia The Battle of Folck's Mill, Western Maryland's Historical Library The Invasion, Aug 1864: The Cumberland Alleganian's Original Account, Western Maryland's Historical Library Folck's Mill Marker, Historical Marker Database The History of Puccini Restaurant, Cumberland, Maryland The Phantom Battle of Edgehill, Historic UK The Spectral Army of Souther Fell, Mysterious Britain and Ireland The Dieppe Raid Case, Mysterious Britain and Ireland The Drummer of Tedworth, Wikipedia Phantom Armies of the Night by Claude Lecouteux The Rosenheim Poltergeist, by Tess Pfeifle at Astonishing Legends We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| Richard Hatem's Light in the Dark Tour 2026! | 29 Aug 2026 | 00:02:07 | |
Our friend Richard Hatem is taking his Paranormal Bookshelf on the road! The Light in the Dark Tour 2026 is an all new live show playing six cities in seven days, September 13th through 19th, and it winds up at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Richard and Susan Lambert will be at the festival both days selling Mothman and podcast merch, and on Saturday night, September 19th, he's performing an episode of the podcast picked especially for Point Pleasant. Hear Scott and Rich talk about the tour in his most recent post on the RHPB feed: Tour Dates and Tickets Sunday, September 13: Storm Crow Manor, Toronto, ON Monday, September 14: Padraigs Brewing, Minneapolis, MN Tuesday, September 15: The Red Lion Pub, Chicago, IL Wednesday, September 16: B Side Lounge, Cleveland Heights, OH Thursday, September 17: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (FREE SHOW!) Saturday, September 19: Trinity UMC Community Center, Point Pleasant, WV (The Mothman Festival) More from Richard All Tour Dates and Tickets Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf on Apple Podcasts Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf on Spotify Paranormal Bookshelf Merch The Mothman Festival Tickets for every show but Carnegie Mellon (which MAY not require them, TBD) are at richardhatemsparanormalbookshelf.com/events, or search Richard Hatem on Eventbrite. Come out and see Richard do his thing! | |||
| S2 Ep32: But We didn't Break the Glass | 25 Aug 2026 | 00:52:22 | |
In tonight's dead letter, a teenager in rural Arkansas in the late 2000s goes poking around an abandoned schoolhouse and comes home with a mirror she likes the look of. Years later it's hanging in her first Los Angeles apartment, and one evening while she's in the bath she catches the towel on the back of the door swinging wildly but the moment she turns to look, it stops dead. But that’s only part of the story. Relevant Prior Episodes The Bell Witch Part 1 The Scrying Game Mel's Hole Part 1 Abduction at Devil's Den Nightmarchers of Hawaii The Ghosts of Flight 401 Links and Further Reading American Hauntings — Troy Taylor's books, podcast, and live events Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones by Raymond Moody Note: We say 1933 in the episode — Reunions was published in 1993. Oculus (2013), dir. Mike Flanagan What is a "dybbuk" in the prologue of the Coen brothers' A Serious Man? Ghosts On A Plane? The Story Of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| S2 Ep31: DLO-231: The Kids in the Parking Lot | 20 Aug 2026 | 00:59:10 | |
In tonight's dead letter, in the summer of 1996, two college kids from New Jersey were road-tripping to Gen Con when they got off I-80 near Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, looking for food and a place to stay. Around 11:30 PM, at a gas station that turned out to be closed for the night, three blonde kids in bathing suits were standing under a light, saying something to them that neither of them could make out. Relevant Prior Episodes Black Eyed Kids Part 1 Strange Intruders with David Weatherly Part 1 Sam the Sandown Clown Dan, Susan, Micah Hanks and Missing Time Abduction at Devil's Den Skinwalker Ranch Part 1 Links and Further Reading Strange Intruders by David Weatherly The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker Death as a Child: The Modern Legend of the Black-Eyed Children (Atlas Obscura) 8 local spots you didn't know were haunted (northcentralpa.com — the "Otzinachson"/Demon's Den lore) We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| S2 Ep30: DLO-230: A Finger Down the spine | 11 Aug 2026 | 00:50:54 | |
In tonight's dead letter, listener John is nineteen, home from his freshman year and a few shifts into a summer dishwashing job at a grand old house on Michigan's Old Mission Peninsula that has been a restaurant since the 1950s. The staff there blame anything strange in the building on a ghost they call Genevieve, and John doesn't believe in any of that. One warm night he goes upstairs to change out of his kitchen clothes, and the bulb pops the second he flips the switch. Strange enough on its own, but what happens next is why this particular night stuck with him. Note: The room referenced at Waverly in the Episode is 503. It should have been 502. | |||
| Amy Bruni’s Cuisine to Kill For | 09 Aug 2026 | 01:27:40 | |
In 1673, Rebecca Cornell was found dead beside the hearth in her Rhode Island home. Afterward, her ghost allegedly appeared to accuse someone of murder and her son was tried and hanged. Her story is just one of nearly sixty strange intersections of true crime, hauntings, history, and food collected in Cuisine to Kill For, the new cookbook from veteran paranormal investigator and television personality Amy Bruni. This week, Amy joins us to talk about the haunted restaurants, infamous deaths, cocktails, dinners, desserts, and recipes that reveal just how naturally the paranormal and the culinary can share a table. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep29: The Boy Who Wanted her Hand | 04 Aug 2026 | 00:48:15 | |
In tonight's dead letter, listener Mary is on a ghost tour in Key West when the guide stands her group under an old, unmarked movie marquee and asks them what happened there. Before he says another word, Mary smells smoke. The story he tells the group involves a church fire, and more strange events unfold from there. Relevant Prior Episodes Conjuring Philip Part 1 Links and Further Reading Great Fire of Key West (1886) — Wikipedia | |||
| S2 Ep28: Milo | 28 Jul 2026 | 00:43:56 | |
In tonight's dead letter, a truck-riding barn cat named Milo becomes the witness our listener Amy needs to affirm that she’s not seeing and hearing things. The old stone house they occupy seems to have some very strange and unusual visitors. One defying any conventional explanation or even paranormal categorization. Related Astonishing Legends Episodes Background & Further Reading Infrasound and the Paranormal — Vic Tandy's "fear frequency" research | |||
| S2 Ep27: The Light Beneath the Boats | 21 Jul 2026 | 00:50:50 | |
In tonight's dead letter, Eric, a longtime listener on active duty in the Navy, pulls into Juneau, Alaska for a port call in the summer of 2009 and hikes up the Mount Roberts trail for the view over the harbor. Around eleven in the morning, in full daylight, he watches a perfectly round patch of light — a little bigger than a manhole cover, a shade lighter than the water — glide from boat to boat, slip under the cruise-ship dock, and circle a small float out in the middle of the channel. It never changes shape, never touches anything but the water, and as best he can tell, he's the only one who sees it. Then he hikes all the way down to that dock to find out what it was. REFERENCE LINKS Related Astonishing Legends Episodes | |||
| S2 Ep26: The Ghost with No Nose | 14 Jul 2026 | 00:31:49 | |
In tonight's dead letter, our listener Kayla takes her two-and-a-half-year-old son to a private family viewing for his great-grandmother and keeps him in a back room so his last memory won't be the casket. All night, unprompted, he pulls relatives into that room to show them a ghost sitting in the corner with an unusual facial feature…or lack of one. As they leave, his mother — who'll tell you straight out she's a skeptic — stops at the chair and quietly tells whatever's there it's not welcome to follow them home. What happens over the next few weeks is why she finally wrote to us. REFERENCE LINKS Related Astonishing Legends Episodes Background & Further Reading The Bell Witch — Wikipedia We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| Chris McKinnell and the Warren Legacy | 12 Jul 2026 | 02:35:16 | |
Chris McKinnell grew up as the grandson of Ed and Lorraine Warren, surrounded by haunted objects and terrifying investigations that left him afraid of the dark until one unforgettable night changed everything. In this special interview, he shares firsthand stories from inside the Warren family, including the infamous Lee, Massachusetts haunting, and why, after a lifetime chasing the paranormal, he's convinced the answers are far stranger than demons. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep25: Old Man Dayton | 07 Jul 2026 | 00:37:54 | |
In tonight's dead letter… three families lived in the same old house across the years, none of them knowing each other, and each one wound up sharing the place with the same two ghostly visitors. As kids, our listener Heather and her sister kept seeing a little boy who was never actually there when they looked closer. The adults saw someone different — an old man, solid enough that Heather's stepmother screamed for her father, certain a stranger had walked in. The corroboration of everything shows up in the form of a psychic. REFERENCE LINKS Related Astonishing Legends Episodes Astonishing Legends — The Sallie House: Ghost in the Machine, Part 1 (Spotify) Pareidolia: why we see faces and figures in random shapes (Britannica) This week's episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile — get premium wireless for $15 a month at mintmobile.com/dlo. | |||
| S2 Ep24: Pitched in Blue | 30 Jun 2026 | 00:42:04 | |
In tonight's dead letter… our listener Daniel moves into a freshly built ranch house in the Salt Lake Valley back in 2011 — a house barely five years old, no tragic past, nothing "old and storied" about it. The first odd thing he notices is that every doorknob in the basement is on backwards, rigged to lock someone in from the outside. He's sixteen, he's got the whole basement to himself, and from the very first night down there he can't shake the feeling that he's being watched. Then one night around eleven, three sharp knocks land on the wall right behind his head — and that's only the start. REFERENCE LINKS | |||
| S2 Ep23: Pop's Cat | 23 Jun 2026 | 00:33:50 | |
In tonight's dead letter, we head about as far from the Office as you can get — the Hutt Valley near Wellington, New Zealand — for a story from Billy, a working artist who'd call himself a cautious skeptic. His wife was deep into a spiritualist church and her own psychic abilities, and he mostly kept his distance from all of it. Then something started visiting their bed at night, something that felt exactly like a cat walking up the covers, even though their actual cat was nowhere near the room. Weeks later, a message about it came back to the family through his wife that no one was expecting. Windy Wellington — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/diagram/13182/windy-wellington Cook Strait — Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand: https://www.linz.govt.nz/our-work/new-zealand-geographic-board/place-name-stories/place-names-cooks-voyages/cook-strait Kupe — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/first-peoples-in-maori-tradition/page-6 Hutt Valley — Wellington places — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/wellington-places/page-8 Capital city: Wellington since 1865 — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/capital-city Can Our Dead Pets Come Back to Visit Us? — Rupert Sheldrake: https://www.sheldrake.org/essays/can-our-dead-pets-come-back-to-visit-us Kaitiaki — guardians — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/kaitiakitanga-guardianship-and-conservation/page-4 Sleep Paralysis, the "Bedroom Intruder," and the Sensed Presence — NIH / NCBI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5329044/ Wellington Paranormal — Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Paranormal We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! Thanks to Mint Mobile for sponsoring tonight's episode. Ditch the overpriced wireless bill, bring your own phone and number, and get premium coverage on the nation's largest 5G network for $15 a month — three months at that price at mintmobile.com/dlo. | |||
| S2 Ep22: The Mechanic and Mr. Machine | 19 Jun 2026 | 00:51:54 | |
In tonight's dead letter, listener Dean takes us to his grandmother's old Victorian house in a region of Scott’s home state of North Carolina known as the Sandhills. His family has traded strange stories about the family home for generations, from slamming doors in an empty house to a lady in white under the apple tree. He spent years as the family skeptic, right up until he started helping his aunt sort through the massive Americana collection left behind by her late husband we’ll simply call ‘D’, a mechanic with a passion for old gas pumps, slot cars, and vintage toys. A series of events that were too strange to chalk up to coincidence finally convinced Dean that something unexplained was going on, and frankly…we agree. Reference Links Mr. Machine — Wikipedia We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! This episode is sponsored by Firstleaf. Take a quick quiz, and Firstleaf matches premium, award-winning wines to your taste and delivers them right to your door — with tasting notes and pairing tips in every box. You control the schedule, skip shipments anytime, and every bottle is backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Go to TryFirstleaf.com/dlo for 50% off your first box PLUS free shipping for a whole year. | |||
| The Uninvited: The Ripperston Farm Invasion | 14 Jun 2026 | 02:09:53 | |
In 1977, a remote dairy farm on the cliffs of southwest Wales became the center of one of the strangest and most enduring UFO cases in British history. What began with a glowing object hovering over Ripperston Farm escalated into months of unexplained phenomena: failing electronics, mysterious figures at the windows, silent visitors in a silver car, missing cattle that appeared miles away, and an encounter Pauline Coombs believed took place aboard an otherworldly craft. As sightings spread across the region — including the famous Broad Haven school incident witnessed by fourteen children — the area became known as the Welsh Triangle. With declassified government investigations, admitted hoaxes, and a mystery that remains unresolved nearly fifty years later, we ask: what really happened over St Brides Bay? Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep21: The Emerald Valley | 09 Jun 2026 | 00:45:20 | |
In tonight's dead letter, Daniel, a self-described skeptic writes in about the one thing he's never been able to explain away. He was a third-grader in northeast Washington in 1985, riding home one evening, when an intense green light blinded him and his mom in their car. For years he figured he'd made it up, or pulled it from some movie. Then it came up years later over lunch with his sister, and he found out he wasn't the only one in the car who never forgot it. REFERENCE LINKS We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| S2 Ep20: What Does a House Remember? | 02 Jun 2026 | 00:46:07 | |
In tonight's dead letter, our listener’s family trades a rented place for an old Victorian villa tucked into the quiet border country between England and Wales. The previous owner had loved the house for more than half a century, and the neighbors were quick to say she'd have approved of the new arrivals. But the littlest member of the family keeps mentioning an old woman with white hair. We’ll get into faceless figures, formidable women who hold a home together, and an old plaque that quietly says exactly what this whole story is about. REFERENCE LINKS William Morris's Bed and the Kelmscott Manor Poem — Society of Antiquaries of London Lucy M. Boston, the Green Knowe Books, and Memory in a House — Britannica The Manor at Hemingford Grey (the real Green Knowe) Folklore of the Stiperstones and the Devil's Chair The Devil's Chair: The Story Behind the Shropshire Landmark — Shropshire Star The White Lady of Ludlow Castle (Marion de la Bruyère) — Shropshire Star The Phantom Funeral of Ratlinghope and Shropshire Ghost Stories — The History Press Shropshire Folklore, Wild Edric, and the Long Mynd Black Dog — Shropshire Star We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| S2 Ep19: The House on 109 | 26 May 2026 | 00:44:24 | |
In tonight's dead letter, we head into Grafton, West Virginia — a small railroad town built on a B&O junction, Civil War supply lines, and two national cemeteries. The house at the center of this story sat right in the middle of all that history. When a listener named Jonathan moved in with his family as a kid, it was, as he puts it, just off — and the footsteps upstairs were the easy part. Small things kept stacking up, the kind you could maybe almost explain away one at a time but never all together. Decades later he's still working through what happened in that house, and what stayed there. REFERENCE LINKS | |||
| The Ghost Bomber of the Monongahela | 23 May 2026 | 02:09:02 | |
In January 1956, rush-hour drivers crossing Pittsburgh’s icy Homestead High Level Bridge watched a nightmare descend from the sky: a silent B-25 bomber gliding just feet above the roadway with both engines dead. Veteran Air Force pilot Major William Dotson pulled off a flawless emergency landing on the freezing Monongahela River, saving all six men from the crash itself. But within minutes, two crew members vanished into the current, and the bomber sank beneath only 25 feet of water… never to be seen again. How does an entire military aircraft disappear in shallow water, in front of hundreds of witnesses, and stay missing for nearly seventy years? Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| The Case Files History Left Unsolved | Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat | 21 May 2026 | 00:08:54 | |
Scott and Forrest present a preview of a new podcast called Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat! Dr. Harini Bhat is a clinical pharmacist and storyteller obsessed with the moments in history that still can't be fully explained. Every week she investigates real events that defy easy explanation. Mass hysterias. Vanished civilizations. Medical oddities. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating across centuries, as if history is trying to tell us something. Hidden History doesn't dismiss ancient events as myth or superstition. It treats them as open case files, shaped by the limits of knowledge, technology, and record-keeping. Because the unknown isn't a failure of explanation. It's a constant in human experience, one that evolves, repeats, and sometimes deepens the more we learn. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube @hiddenhistorypod. Listen here: https://play.megaphone.fm/65qgwrg-sq-mmvg7tpqgfa | |||
| S2 Ep18: Mom is Still Here | 20 May 2026 | 00:56:26 | |
In tonight's dead letter, listener Andrew writes in from a quiet little back house in Monterey Park, California — a place that during the early pandemic felt even quieter than usual. He's a self-described skeptic, he disabled the motion sensor on his own bathroom light because it kept tripping on him, or so he thought. But on the worst night of his life, something happened in that house he still can't quite explain. Scott and Forrest also share a few of their own recent stories — alarm clocks, flickering nightlights, dying batteries that turned out to be just dying batteries — about what's mundane and what isn't when grief is fresh. REFERENCE LINKS | |||
| The Strange Death of Gloria Ramirez | 10 May 2026 | 01:54:16 | |
In 1994, Gloria Ramirez, a 31-year-old mother of two dying from cancer, arrived at a Riverside ER with strange odors, an oily sheen on her skin, and crystalline particles in her blood — then doctors and nurses around her began collapsing, vomiting, burning, and struggling to breathe. The ER was evacuated and HAZMAT suits came out. Gloria died in the chaos, and the official explanation still leaves troubling questions. Behind the nickname “The Toxic Lady” is a human being whose final night remains one of the most haunting medical mysteries of our time. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep17: The Sealed Room | 05 May 2026 | 00:43:39 | |
In tonight's dead letter, we're across the harbor from Boston, in the densely layered city of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Our listener grew up in a building that began its life as a 19th-century clinic, served as a surgery, and ended its years as a hospice before becoming a multi-generational family home. But the house already had a few residents. Different presences on every floor, each with their own habits and rules. What's harder to explain is the room someone worked very hard to make sure no one would ever find. | |||
| S2 Ep16: The Mennonite Girl | 29 Apr 2026 | 00:46:44 | |
In tonight’s dead letter, a peaceful retreat at a friend's historic property in the country yields a brush with something that defies explanation. The old homes in these rural communities are steeped in generations of human memory, and sometimes, those overlaid paths from the past seem to bleed right through the present day. We unpack an incredibly vivid, solid sighting that leaves us questioning the true nature of time, space, and the boundaries of our own backyards. REFERENCE LINKS | |||
| UFO Insiders Iced? | 26 Apr 2026 | 02:06:54 | |
A retired Air Force major general walks out of his Albuquerque home in 2026 and vanishes with a revolver. But William Neil McCaslind wasn’t just anyone. He once commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory and carried deep knowledge of America’s most advanced defense systems. His disappearance soon becomes part of a much darker pattern online. From Los Alamos to NASA JPL to Caltech, nuclear scientists and defense experts seem to have been erased from the grid. Is someone quietly removing high-value scientific minds from the board? Are brilliant people cracking under unbearable pressure? Or could this be a pattern of our own design? Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep15: The Fog, The Man, and The Golden Gate Bridge | 21 Apr 2026 | 00:37:16 | |
In tonight’s dead letter, listener Jeannette shares a deeply atmospheric story from a bike commute across one of the most famous bridges in the world. Enveloped in the freezing, thick San Francisco fog, what starts as a quiet ride she’s done a million times turns into an inexplicable encounter with a solitary figure standing near the edge. After a strangely profound exchange of words, she looks back to find the massive walkway entirely empty. She is convinced that he couldn’t have had time to have taken his life in that brief moment. It opens up a conversation about crisis apparitions, liminal spaces, and the heavy emotional toll anchored to such a monumental location. REFERENCE LINKS Golden Gate Bridge Suicide Deterrent Net Project: https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicide-deterrent-net/ Bridge Rail Foundation: http://www.bridgerail.net/ "Unsolved Mysteries"- Tsunami Spirits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11107472/ KCRW Unfictional Podcast: https://www.kcrw.com/shows/unfictional/latest Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry: https://bookshop.org/p/books/ghosts-of-the-tsunami-death-and-life-in-japan-s-disaster-zone-richard-lloyd-parry/4c115c39e1094566?ean=9781250192813&next=t We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| The Lead Masks of Vintem Hill Part 2 | 19 Apr 2026 | 02:06:46 | |
What if the infamous Lead Masks Case wasn’t a one-off tragedy, but the final step in a years-long chain of dangerous experiments? In part 2, we pull back from the image of two dead electronics technicians on Vintém Hill to uncover a much bigger world of underground spiritist circles, secret ham radio messages, strange explosions near the beach, homemade electrical devices, and an earlier death that seems to mirror the case almost exactly. As the pattern widens, the story becomes far darker and more unsettling: not just a mystery about what happened that night in 1966, but whether the clues that could have explained everything were ruined by the investigation itself. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep14: The Elephant Slides of Sofia | 14 Apr 2026 | 00:39:43 | |
In tonight’s dead letter, we’ll take you through the brutalist monuments and ancient layers of Sofia, Bulgaria looking for what may have been the scene of a localized timeslip. After giving up the search for a playground that made a pronounced childhood impression, our listener Vili, stumbles right into a beautifully preserved version of it. We’ll discuss the folklore of missing time, and how our own memories might just be powerful enough to physically manifest things we wish to recover that don’t exist anymore. REFERENCE LINKS | |||
| The Lead Masks of Vintém Hill Part 1 | 12 Apr 2026 | 01:33:27 | |
In one of Brazil’s strangest unsolved mysteries, two electronics technicians travel to Niterói in 1966, buy matching raincoats, hike up a remote hill with cash, water, towels, and a handwritten set of bizarre instructions, then turn up dead days later lying side by side on palm leaves, wearing homemade lead eye masks and showing no clear cause of death. What follows is a case that spirals far beyond a simple true-crime puzzle, with every answer leading to a bigger question: were these men victims of a bizarre accident, participants in something occult, or did they believe they were about to witness something not of this world? Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep13: No Human Could Throw Books Like This | 08 Apr 2026 | 00:42:35 | |
In tonight’s dead letter, we hear from a librarian who works the desk at a fairly new building down in the Southeast. But the ground it sits on has a much heavier history: the library was built right over the exact footprint of four demolished hospitals, with the old medical cornerstones still cemented into the walkway outside. When a freshly upgraded security system triggers overnight and catches something moving in the dark, the staff is forced to wonder if the property's busy past is finally bleeding into the present. REFERENCE LINKS The Bray Road Beast Documentary on Prime Video | |||
| S2 Ep12: The Carousel in the Ravine (Reposted) | 01 Apr 2026 | 00:41:54 | |
In tonight’s dead letter, we hear a story from a listener who along with her husband encountered something bizarre hovering low near their land down in the southernmost part of the Australian mainland. They struggle to understand what they’re looking at and how it could even exist. Somehow it seems to control the outcome of their day in ways that they can’t quite remember. The guys branch out to explore similar phenomena throughout the episode, touching on the famous Frederick Valentich disappearance over the nearby Bass Strait, the mechanics of space-time warp bubbles, and the strange nature of screen memories. NOTE: File needed a revision so this is the 2nd posting to replace the first deleted one. REFERENCE LINKS We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| S2 Ep11: The Nightshift Protocol | 24 Mar 2026 | 00:40:01 | |
In tonight’s dead letter, a routine room cleaning following a patient's passing turns into a puzzling technological glitch. A sensor alarm designed to protect patients from hurting themselves keeps going off. The solution to silencing the machine isn't found in a manual, but in a centuries-old tradition regarding the departure of the human soul. REFERENCE LINKS Appalachian Superstitions About Death Why Do Nurses Hear Phantom Call Bells? | |||
| The Disappearance of Jim Sullivan | 22 Mar 2026 | 02:19:22 | |
In the lonely New Mexico desert, police discover an abandoned Volkswagen Beetle containing a 12-string guitar, a wallet, clothes, and a box of unsold records. Things a working musician would never willingly leave behind. The car belongs to Jim Sullivan, a talented singer-songwriter who had just made a strange call to his wife saying he’d been pulled over and that she “wouldn’t believe” what happened, before promising to call again from Nashville. He never did. What makes the story unforgettable is that those unsold records were his album called U.F.O., filled with songs about driving into the desert, leaving his life behind, and encountering something in the sky. In this episode, we dive into the eerie disappearance of a man who may have unknowingly written the soundtrack to his own vanishing. Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep10: Stranger Danger | 17 Mar 2026 | 00:40:56 | |
In tonight’s Dead Letter, Forrest and Scott read a submission from Stacey, which delves into the "Uncanny Valley" phenomenon in a true-life scenario. In a coastal town already known for its dark past and unusual coastal events, a silent, out-of-place stranger pays an unexpected visit to a college apartment. Sometimes the most chilling stories are those where the door remains locked and whatever was on the other side…is still out there somewhere. REFERENCE LINKS History of Bellingham, Washington | |||
| Live Junk Drawer Tonight on Patreon! | 15 Mar 2026 | 00:01:45 | |
Tonight, Forrest and I are sitting down with Jeremiah Byron for an exclusive live video interview about the unprecedented, real-time flap of Bigfoot sightings currently moving through Northeast Ohio. This special broadcast is completely private and only available to Astonishing Legends Patreon members and Bigfoot Society Supercast subscribers. Grab your drinks and join us in the chat tonight at 9:30 PM Eastern, 8:30 PM Central, and 6:30 PM Pacific for all the breaking updates! | |||
| S2 Ep9: Another Bunny | 10 Mar 2026 | 00:44:41 | |
In tonight’s dead letter from listener Amanda, the boundary between an adorable trusted holiday icon and nocturnal terror is tested in the deep woods near the Allegheny National Forest. A massive silhouette of something that shouldn’t exist peering over the hood of a car sparks a lifelong mystery. Amanda may have been a child when she saw this, but her mom and grandmother were both also eyewitnesses. References and Links: We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||
| Through a Laser Darkly | 08 Mar 2026 | 02:18:47 | |
This episode dives into one of the strangest modern consciousness experiments ever proposed. Starting with cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman’s provocative idea that reality may function like a computer desktop interface — an evolutionary illusion designed for survival rather than truth. We’ll explore a bizarre experiment popularized by Danny Goler in which participants under the influence of DMT have claimed that lasers can help random patterns resolve into stable, angular symbols under the right conditions — as if making the hidden code behind reality visible. Are these visions simply the brain’s hyper-connected visual cortex generating patterns, or could they represent the possibility that our everyday reality may be a carefully rendered illusion? Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode. | |||
| S2 Ep8: The Camden High Street Haunting | 03 Mar 2026 | 00:41:19 | |
In tonight’s dead letter… we travel back to 2010 to a hotel in the heart of Camden in the UK. Two brothers looking to soak up some local punk history find themselves sharing a room with something entirely unexpected. Sometimes the most mundane late-night activities—like eating pizza and watching TV—are the perfect backdrop for the impossible to slip through. Historical Hauntings of North London We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com! | |||