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 [email protected]!

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 [email protected]!

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 [email protected]!

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 [email protected]!

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 [email protected]!

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

The Edgar Cayce Story Part 1

The Sallie House – Ghost in the Machine Part 1

The Sludge Entity Part 1

Background & Topics

Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs) — Wikipedia

Investigation Alien (George Knapp) — Netflix

The "Plasmoids" Paper — Journal of Modern Physics (2024)

Foo Fighters (WWII) — Wikipedia

Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower — Wikipedia

Lake Pend Oreille Acoustic Research Detachment (U.S. Navy)

Mount Roberts Trail, Juneau — Alaska.org

American Ghost Walks: Ketchikan Ghost Tour

We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!

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

Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1 

Background & Further Reading

The Bell Witch — Wikipedia

Adams, Tennessee (the Bell Witch's Red River community) — Wikipedia

Shadow Person — Wikipedia

Discussing Death With Young Children — ZERO TO THREE

We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!

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.

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)

Astonishing Legends — The True Story Behind the Conjuring, Part 1 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — Sam the Sandown Clown, Ep 183 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — The Fermi Paradox, Ep 022 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — Battle at Cisco Grove, Ep 246 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — Mantis Men, Ep 258 (episode page)

Topic & Background References

Pareidolia: why we see faces and figures in random shapes (Britannica)

The doppelgänger, the living double of folklore (Britannica)

Vic Tandy and the 19 Hz "haunted" frequency of infrasound (Wikipedia)

The Sallie House of Atchison, Kansas (Wikipedia)

The Perron family haunting, the true story behind "The Conjuring" (All That's Interesting)

Sam the Sandown Clown: the 1973 Isle of Wight encounter (OnTheWight)

The Cisco Grove alien encounter of 1964 (UFO Casebook)

John Keel and the "ultraterrestrials" (Wikipedia)

The Fermi paradox: "Where is everybody?" (Britannica)

Wormholes and the Einstein–Rosen bridge (Wikipedia)

Natalie and Tara, "doers of things" on YouTube (Natalie and Tara)

We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!

This week's episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile — get premium wireless for $15 a month at .

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

Lake Bonneville – Wikipedia

Kanashibari (Japanese sleep paralysis) – Yokai.com

Sleep Paralysis and the Hag Phenomenon – Neurolaunch

Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome – The Order of the Good Death

Bell Witch – Wikipedia

Skinwalker Ranch – Wikipedia

Skinwalker Ranch of Uintah County, Utah (the locks the Shermans found) – Legends of America

Baba Yaga – Wikipedia

Astonishing Legends: Skinwalker Ranch Part 1

We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!