Astonishing Legends

S2 Ep26: The Ghost with No Nose

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 LINKSRelated Astonishing Legends EpisodesEp 85: The Bell Witch Part 1 Background & Further ReadingThe Bell Witch — WikipediaAdams, Tennessee (the Bell Witch's Red River community) — WikipediaShadow Person — WikipediaDiscussing Death With Young Children — ZERO TO THREEWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

Chris McKinnell and the Warren Legacy

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

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 LINKSRelated Astonishing Legends EpisodesAstonishing 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 ReferencesPareidolia: 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 deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!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

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 LINKSLake Bonneville – WikipediaKanashibari (Japanese sleep paralysis) – Yokai.comSleep Paralysis and the Hag Phenomenon – NeurolaunchSudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome – The Order of the Good DeathBell Witch – WikipediaSkinwalker Ranch – WikipediaSkinwalker Ranch of Uintah County, Utah (the locks the Shermans found) – Legends of AmericaBaba Yaga – WikipediaAstonishing Legends: Skinwalker Ranch Part 1We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

S2 Ep23: Pop's Cat

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-wellingtonCook 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-straitKupe — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/first-peoples-in-maori-tradition/page-6Hutt Valley — Wellington places — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/wellington-places/page-8Capital city: Wellington since 1865 — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/capital-cityCan Our Dead Pets Come Back to Visit Us? — Rupert Sheldrake: https://www.sheldrake.org/essays/can-our-dead-pets-come-back-to-visit-usKaitiaki — guardians — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/kaitiakitanga-guardianship-and-conservation/page-4Sleep 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_ParanormalWe'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.