Astonishing Legends

Latest Episodes:

Amy Bruni’s Cuisine to Kill For Aug 09, 2026

Show notes

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 Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

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!

S2 Ep28: Milo Jul 28, 2026

Show notes

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!

S2 Ep27: The Light Beneath the Boats Jul 21, 2026

Show notes

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

S2 Ep26: The Ghost with No Nose Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

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 deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

Chris McKinnell and the Warren Legacy Jul 12, 2026

Show notes

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 Jul 07, 2026

Show notes

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 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 Jun 30, 2026

Show notes

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 deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

S2 Ep23: Pop's Cat Jun 23, 2026

Show notes

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 Jun 19, 2026

Show notes

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 from Ideal (1960) — Toy Tales

Mr. Machine — Wikipedia

Horikawa Robots and the Space Explorer "TV Robot" — Fab Tin Toys

House in the Horseshoe — NC Historic Sites

The Coastal Plain and Sandhills — NCpedia

"Haint Blue" — Historic New England

Black Shuck — Wikipedia

The Beast of Bladenboro — North Carolina Ghosts

What a Hospice Physician Can Tell Us About End-of-Life Visions — Discover Magazine

Ep 209: The Phantom Horse of Greensboro — Astonishing Legends

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

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