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Astonishing Legends: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Astonishing Legends Productions
The world is more mysterious than most people are comfortable imagining. We cross paths with the mystical from time to time and may not even notice it. If we do, we quickly return to our usually mundane daily existence. But what if we not only acknowledged the unknown, we investigated it and spoke with those in the know? That's what co-hosts Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess, and co-executive producer Tess Pfeifle do at Astonishing Legends. Over 100 million downloads and hundreds of thousands of listeners have discovered the thrill of exploring the mysteries of our world, showing that the unknown can be both captivating and intriguing.
Latest Episodes
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- 2 days ago34 min
S2 Ep40: The Visitor in Clothier Hall
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 EpisodesEp 26: Shadow PeopleAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 338: Your True Halloween Stories IV, Part 3Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 87: Black Eyed Kids Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further ReadingClothier 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 CampfireMiyamoto Musashi (Wikipedia)Wild Talents, by Charles Fort (1932), free to read at sacred-texts.comWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!
- 5 days ago2h 26m
Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 3
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.
- 1 weeks ago42 min
S2 Ep39: Above the Top Floor
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 EpisodesEp 49: Monsters Among UsAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 116: Small Town MonstersAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 183: Sam the Sandown ClownAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 203: The Beast of GévaudanAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further ReadingHoia Baciu Forest (Astonishing Legends)History of Cluj-NapocaSystematization in RomaniaTransylvanian Superstitions, Emily Gerard, 1885 (Project Gutenberg)PricoliciStrigoiTracing 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 GhostWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!
- 1 weeks ago2h 9m
Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 2
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.
- 2 weeks ago50 min
S2 Ep38: Hello, James.
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 EpisodesEp 247: Massacre at Duffy's Cut Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 317: The Screaming SkullsAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 123: The Sallie House: Ghost in the Machine Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 4: Amelia Earhart Vanishes Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further ReadingCatechism 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, TennesseeElectronic 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!
- 2 weeks ago3h 4m
Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 1
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.
- 3 weeks ago51 min
S2 Ep37: The Old Man on the Gravestone
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 EpisodesEp 48: Choose Your Own AdventureAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 71: Pere Cheney: The Town that DisappearedAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 87: Black Eyed Kids Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 50: Mothman Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 14: What's Gotten Into You?Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 209: The Phantom Horse of GreensboroAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 120: The Grim ReaperAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 154: Lockdown at the Waverly Hills SanatoriumAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 156: The Ax Murder House in Villisca Part 1Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 49: Monsters Among UsAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Ep 310: The Rhine Research Center: Extraordinary EvidenceAstonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts Links and Further ReadingChurch Grims, by Tess Pfeifle (Astonishing Legends blog) <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/Strange-Intruders-David-Weatherly-Leprechaun-Pr
- Sep 27, 20262h 16m
A Tale of Ghost Ships Three!
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.
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About Astonishing Legends
The world is more mysterious than most people are comfortable imagining. We cross paths with the mystical from time to time and may not even notice it. If we do, we quickly return to our usually mundane daily existence. But what if we not only acknowledged the unknown, we investigated it and spoke with those in the know? That's what co-hosts Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess, and co-executive producer Tess Pfeifle do at Astonishing Legends. Over 100 million downloads and hundreds of thousands of listeners have discovered the thrill of exploring the mysteries of our world, showing that the unknown can be both captivating and intriguing.
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