Astonishing Legends

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Your True Halloween Stories Part 2 Oct 24, 2022

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As we continue with Part Two of our Halloween series featuring our listeners' true accounts, tonight's episode presents another three eerie tales of the supernatural. The first story tells of a haunted college rooming house with a spirit fond of movie catchphrases. And it may have the power to compel humans to deliver poignant messages. Our second interview details a forceful presence with the ability to invade your dreams and physically send you to a dark portal of a waking nightmare. Our final story is about a random encounter with... well, let's just say, one of the most terrifying entities the audience hopes they never meet. The twist here is that whatever this thing is, it wasn't content to let you merely run away.
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Your True Halloween Stories Part 1 Oct 15, 2022

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Astonishing Legends is all about fascinating and mysterious topics. And within that category, the details we cover can be unsettling or downright terrifying. But you may not realize that some of the most chilling and creepy accounts we've ever encountered have come from our listeners! We've received thousands of emails over our eight years of podcasting, and we appreciate and value every one of them. We realize that it takes no small amount of courage to send such personal anecdotes to strangers out in the world, becoming vulnerable to ridicule or scorn. So to honor that conviction and trust and show our tremendous gratitude to our audience, we're proud to present your scariest true stories in three parts. Also, because the Spooky Season is upon us, and most of us enjoy a frightening Halloween tale, what better time to hear about the weirdness of our world? So we invite you to settle in, lock your doors and windows, suspend any disbelief you might have, and enjoy these narratives as entertainment, evidence, or cautionary tales. However you choose to consume them, if the urge to publicly debunk strikes you, please respect that our storytellers insist these reports are genuine. They really did happen to someone. Remember that sometimes the most chilling thing you can see at the beginning of any work of horror fiction are the words, "Based on a true story."
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The Missing 411 Part 2 Sep 26, 2022

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In Part Two of our series on the Missing 411 phenomenon, we'll first examine a study conducted to determine which National Parks are the most dangerous in the United States. The numbers and causes may surprise you. We then take a closer look at a few more puzzling cases and, with a critical eye, examine the data presented by David Paulides and the CanAm Project vs. what's been reported by the news media. Discrepancies raise questions when ascertaining the objective facts and judging if the evidence is remarkable. There are plenty of errors and omissions from all parties, but what are the causes and intentions behind them? With hundreds, perhaps thousands of incidents, it's understandable when a news outlet rushing to report under a deadline makes mistakes, but can the same leeway be given to Paulides? Are they honest mistakes or the handy claim that details are "cherry-picked," overlooked, or embellished to prop up a narrative and sell content? Will later discoveries change the investigations, are we being told everything, and what are the motivations of those doing the telling or omitting? Are blunders in the reporting, whatever the intent, proof that nothing extraordinary is going on? As we conclude the episode with an overall skeptical analysis and finish with our personal assessments, it's clear that what is deemed either a mundane tragedy or a mysterious phenomenon is in the eye of the beholder. As far as any alarming pattern to these cases is concerned, if strange yet commonplace coincidences do occur,
how many coincidences are too many?
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The Missing 411 Part 1 Sep 11, 2022

Show notes

A former police officer turned writer David Paulides was taken aside by a National Park Ranger and told about a disturbing trend he'd realized. This Ranger asserted that some people were going missing in the woods under mysterious circumstances leaving only puzzling evidence of their fate. Of course, people often go missing in the wilderness in tragic yet explainable events but what was troubling to these Rangers in the field was the apparent pattern of the occurrences and the subsequent investigation efforts. This Ranger stated that during the first seven to ten days of a disappearance, an all-out Search and Rescue effort ensued with plenty of press coverage. However, after the first week of a rescue mission, it seemed to them that the media stopped reporting, the search for the missing was called off, and no further explanation from the authorities was provided. An additionally alarming trend was that there seemed to be a reluctance or inability on behalf of the National Park Service administration to collect and provide statistics on these disappearances to the public, either through inefficiency or secrecy. If this is true, perhaps it could be from a concerted effort to diminish negative publicity and undue fear about park visitation, or maybe there is something dreadful the officials don't want the public to know. Whatever the reason, this conversation launched Paulides on a now decade-long quest for answers. Initially, after over three years and 9000 hours of investigation, utilizing his 20 years of experience with law enforcement and the resulting connections, Paulides had gathered enough information to compile two books. Missing 411 – Western U.S. was released on March 1, 2012, documenting the stories of people who have vanished in seemingly bizarre instances in the western half of the United States. The second book, Missing 411 – Eastern U.S., was published later that month and contains special sections on unusual outdoor activities that seem related and a master list of all missing persons. Currently, ten books have been published, with more on the way, two documentaries have been produced, and Paulides' ongoing popular YouTube channel continues to highlight cases. In addition, retired police officers, Search and Rescue experts, and other professionals are dedicated to continuing researching and investigating these cases with their CanAm Missing project. One worrisome aspect they've found is that in many situations, parents, relatives, and friends of the missing believe that their loved one was kidnapped or abducted, sometimes with them nearby. No matter the causal connections or whether you think these disappearances are sad but commonplace, a conspiracy lurks or is nonexistent; the fact is that these cases are real, and the victims' stories deserve and need to be told. The question remains, however – what is really going on out in the wilds, and is it something sinister we should all be worried about?
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Numbers Stations Aug 28, 2022

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Since antiquity, espionage and deceit have always been crucial weapons of warfare. As technology and strategy have advanced over the centuries, methods for governments to deliver information and orders to their secret agents in the field have become more sophisticated. Yet, one form of cryptic communication implemented in the early 20th century has proven ever effective and relatively simple. With the advent of wireless telegraphy combined with a cipher technique called a "One-time Pad," militaries have been sending coded messages to their undercover operatives abroad since World War I. It wasn't until shortwave and HAM radio enthusiasts started noticing eerie and enigmatic broadcasts of spoken series of numbers or strange electronic sounds that these coded communiqués aroused widespread curiosity during the height of the Cold War. Although the use of public airwaves for clandestine messaging seems to have declined in recent years, listeners can still hear these top-secret instructions delivered to unknown spies, perhaps even your neighbor. One can only wonder how these spooky transmissions saved or cost lives or what world-changing actions they triggered. Join us as we delve into the mysterious world of spycraft and Numbers Stations.
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The Somerton Man - Mystery Solved? Aug 14, 2022

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On December 1, 1948, an unknown man was found lying dead on the sand on Somerton Beach next to the neighborhood of Glenelg, about 7 miles (11 km) southwest of Adelaide, South Australia. He had no money or identification on him, the labels in his clothing were cut off, and his minimal possessions yielded no clues. Further adding to the mystery, a rolled-up scrap of paper with the Persian phrase "tamám shud," translating to "is over" or "is finished," was found in the man's watch pocket around the time of his autopsy. The scrap was later discovered torn from a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a circa 11th-century collection of poems by Khayyam, known as "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia." The book found tossed into a car after a public appeal by the police appeared to have previous writing indentations on a page adjacent to the torn-out one, revealing a local phone number and text speculated to be a coded message. With no further clues as to the Somerton Man's identity other than an abandoned suitcase left at the Adelaide railway station, a plaster cast was made of the man's bust following the coroner's inquest, and the body was embalmed nine days after its discovery and buried. For almost 74 years, the mystery of the Somerton has intrigued authorities, amateur sleuths, and the general public, including physicist, Electrical and Electronic Engineering professor Dr. Derek Abbott. For over a decade, Dr. Abbott and his team of grad students at the University of Adelaide worked on cracking the code found in the Rubaiyat and attempting to arrange a genetic DNA analysis. In partnership with internationally recognized forensic genealogist Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick, Abbott and Fitzpatrick announced on July 26, 2022, that they have finally uncovered the identity of Australia's most famous "John Doe." Extracting DNA from chest hairs found in the Somerton Man's plaster cast has led them to a name and an occupation. But will this name lead to solving the remaining puzzle pieces? Pathologists at the time believed he was likely poisoned, but why, and by whom? Was there a Cold War connection, and why did he spend his last day in Adelaide? Circling back to the alternate name for this case, tamám shud, is this mystery really over, is it finished?
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Mystery Solved! The Somerton Man TRAILER Jul 29, 2022

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Did we hear about the Somerton Man case being solved? Yes. And now you will, too, on August 13th, 2022.

I Think Therefore AI Part 2 Jul 25, 2022

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As we continue our discussion based on Blake Lemoine’s assertion that the Large Language Model chatbot LaMDA had become sentient, we relay the rest of his conversation with the program and then some questions and answers with Lemoine himself. But as Lemoine has said, machine sentience and personhood are just some of many questions to be considered. His greater issue is how an omnipresent AI, trained on an insufficient data set, will affect how different people and cultures interact and who will be dominated or excluded. The fear is that the ultimate result of protecting corporate profits will outweigh global human interests. In light of these questions about AI’s ethical and efficient development, we highlight the positions and insights of experts on the state and future of AI, such as Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Gary Marcus. The directives of responsible technology development and the right track to Deep Learning are more grounded than the fantastical thoughts of killer robots. Yet hovering over all of the mechanics are the philosophies of what constitutes sentience, comprehending and feeling as a person does, and being human enough. The reality of Artificial Intelligence matching humans may be fifty years in the future, or five hundred, but if that day ever comes, let’s hope it’s an egalitarian future where we are the masters and not the servants.
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I Think Therefore AI Part 1 Jul 10, 2022

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On June 11, 2022, The Washington Post published an article by their San Francisco-based tech culture reporter Nitasha Tiku titled, "The Google engineer who thinks the company's AI has come to life." The piece focused on the claims of a Google software engineer named Blake Lemoine, who said he believed the company's artificially intelligent chatbot generator LaMDA had shown him signs that it had become sentient. In addition to identifying itself as an AI-powered dialogue agent, it also said it felt like a person. Last fall, Lemoine was working for Google's Responsible AI division and was tasked with talking to LaMDA, testing it to determine if the program was exhibiting bias or using discriminatory or hate speech. LaMDA stands for "Language Model for Dialogue Applications" and is designed to mimic speech by processing trillions of words sourced from the internet, a system known as a "large language model." Over a week, Lemoine had five conversations with LaMDA via a text interface, while his co-worker collaborator conducted four interviews with the chatbot. They then combined the transcripts and edited them for length, making it an enjoyable narrative while keeping the original intention of the statements. Lemoine then presented the transcript and their conclusions in a paper to Google executives as evidence of the program's sentience. After they dismissed the claims, he went public with the internal memo, also classified as "Privileged & Confidential, Need to Know," which resulted in Lemoine being placed on paid administrative leave. Blake Lemoine contends that Artificial Intelligence technology will be amazing, but others may disagree, and he and Google shouldn't make all the choices. If you believe that LaMDA became aware, deserves the rights and fair treatment of personhood, and even legal representation or this reality is for a distant future, or merely SciFi, the debate is relevant and will need addressing one day. If machine sentience is impossible, we only have to worry about human failings. If robots become conscious, should we hope they don't grow to resent us?
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Your True Stories Volume 1 Jun 26, 2022

Show notes

We're marvelously fortunate and extraordinarily grateful that so many listeners have sent us their personal stories of mysterious experiences over the years. While it's not possible to respond to all of them, we can and should present some for the entertainment and edification of all. So as thanks to those who've shared, and a treat for us that love to hear them, we're featuring three stories from a recent call for submissions. Our first account comes from Terra Greenleaf, who managed to capture audio of strange animal sounds while at a facility in a deeply wooded area. Those familiar with Bigfoot research might classify them as typical "calls." However, this encounter is incredibly eerie because there appears to be a large semi-circle of the creatures and they might be hunting prey. Our next anecdote comes from Dr. Dominic Boyer, whose family occupied a house in Chicago once lived in by eminent physicist Enrico Fermi, known as the "architect of the nuclear age." Having died in the home, the Boyers believe his spirit haunted them while they lived there, as what they saw looked an awful lot like him, perhaps to Fermi's consternation. Our final interview is with Tom Delaney, who recalls several unnerving encounters with a mysterious force while hunting in the hills of central Pennsylvania. It seemed to stalk him and his hunting buddy, taunting with mimicry and snapping mid-sized tree trunks. Whatever this thing or things were, perhaps it was toying with them or delivering a stern warning.
We all know it takes no small amount of courage and confidence to publicly share a testimony that often leads to criticism and ridicule. We tend not to believe what we see on the internet because we're unsure of the source. On the other hand, we may doubt the narratives we hear from our family and friends. So in light of this losing proposition, we'd again like to thank our listeners for their bravery and generosity and let them know that they are not alone in their experiences. We all welcome them with open arms to our society of the strange.
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