Astonishing Legends

In tonight's dead letter, Keith takes us back to the spring of 1997, when he was a freshman at Rutgers living on the third floor of Clothier Hall, a brick dorm in downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey. Early one Saturday morning, with the first light coming in around the curtain, he opened his eyes and someone was sitting on the floor against his roommate's bed, six feet away, in a room he had locked the night before. Someone, or some…thing…that shouldn’t have been there.

Relevant Prior Episodes
Ep 26: Shadow People
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

Ep 338: Your True Halloween Stories IV, Part 3
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

Ep 87: Black Eyed Kids Part 1
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts

Links and Further Reading
Clothier Hall (Rutgers Residence Life)

Weird NJ

Shadow person (Wikipedia)
Note: We call Benadryl's active ingredient pseudoephedrine in the episode. It's diphenhydramine.

Hypnagogia and the hypnopompic state (Wikipedia)

Hypnic jerk (Wikipedia)

Jim Harold's Campfire

Miyamoto Musashi (Wikipedia)

Wild Talents, by Charles Fort (1932), free to read at sacred-texts.com

We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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!

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

Get tickets to Richard Hatem's Light in the Dark Tour 2026 LIVE: https://www.richardhatemsparanormalbookshelf.com/events
Listen to Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf: https://www.richardhatemsparanormalbookshelf.com/
Support RHPB on Patreon: https://patreon.com/RichardHatem
Celebrate 2026 with 26% off all RHPB merch with offer code RHPB26. The discount is pre-applied at this link: https://richardhatem-shop.fourthwall.com/promo/RHPB26
Need help with your personal writing projects? Richard is here to help. Get 20% off when you mention RHPB: https://www.richardhatem.com/
Notes

Get the answer to ALL of your Abbott and Costello questions here: Abbott and Costello Meet the Podcast
Is your dog afraid of hiccups, just like Luna? Learn about your dog's weird fears here: Understanding Your Dog's Fear

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!

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:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts

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 https://www.richardhatemsparanormalbookshelf.com/events, or search Richard Hatem on Eventbrite. Come out and see Richard do his thing!

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!

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!

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.

Relevant Prior Episodes

Greyfriar's Kirkyard Halloween Special
The Sallie House – Ghost in the Machine Part 1
Lockdown at Waverly Sanatorium
The True Story behind the Conjuring Part 1
A Live Reading with Jim Hunt - Psychic Medium
Links and Further Reading

The Mission Table Restaurant of Bowers Harbor: A Splendid Building, But Not a Residence for a Ghost — Julie Schopieray, Grand Traverse Journal
Would the Real Mrs. Stickney Please Stand Up? Setting the Old Mission Ghost Story Straight — Northern Express
The Haunting of Bowers Harbor Inn – Is It Genevieve Stickney's Ghost? — Old Mission Gazette
Bowers Harbor Inn — Wikipedia, on the 1927 fire and the house built around the old farmhouse
Mission Point Lighthouse — History, the light at the tip of Old Mission Peninsula near the 45th parallel
Occupational Folklife — American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
Meet the Mackenzie Poltergeist of Greyfriars Kirkyard — Icy Sedgwick, on the grabs and marks reported on the tours
Waverly Hills Sanatorium — American Hauntings, on Room 502 and the nurse story
The Buxton Inn — Wikipedia, the Granville, Ohio inn Forrest visited
We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

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.

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
The True Story behind the Conjuring Part 1
Resurrection Mary Part 1
The Count of St Germain Part 1

Links and Further Reading

Great Fire of Key West (1886) — Wikipedia
Our History — St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Key West
Strand Theater, 527 Duval Street — Cinema Treasures
San Carlos Institute — Wikipedia
Chicago Hauntings: The Horrors of the Iroquois Theater Fire That Killed 602 People Downtown in 1903 — CBS Chicago
American Ghost Walks — the ghost tour company the hosts recommend
Dowsing — Britannica
The Philip Experiment — Wikipedia
We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

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

Dyatlov Pass Part 1

Monsters Among Us

Background & Further Reading

Infrasound and the Paranormal — Vic Tandy's "fear frequency" research
That Ghostly Presence May Just Be Bad Plumbing — Popular Science, on infrasound and haunted-house perception
Beast of Bray Road — Wikipedia background on the Linda Godfrey dog-man case Forrest references
Ghosts of the Kent Stage — KentStater, on the haunted Kent, Ohio venue Scott
We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!