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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. Welcome to Astonishing Legends!

Copyright: © Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC

Latest Episodes:

S2 Ep42: Beneath the Haunted Dorm Nov 12, 2026

Show notes

In tonight's dead letter, we're back in Athens, Ohio, with our listener Evan, who was a sophomore engineering student at Ohio University around 2015. He was thrilled to get room 328 in Wilson Hall, directly below room 428, the "haunted room" we asked about at the end of Dead Letter Office episode 52. He thought bunking below that haunted room would be fun. Maybe it was, but there was a price to pay.
Relevant Prior Episodes
Ep 338: Your True Halloween Stories IV, Part 3
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Ep 50: Mothman Part 1
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Ep 3: Greyfriars Kirkyard Halloween Special
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Ep 117: The Black Monk of Pontefract Part 1
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Ep 123: The Sallie House: Ghost in the Machine Part 1
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Ep 2: Queen Mary & The Haunted Valentine
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Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1
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Links and Further Reading
Dead Letter Office S1 Ep 52: The Little Old Man (Audioboom)
Histories of hOUme: A skeptical vacancy in Wilson Hall room 428, by Bri Shaniuk (The Post, October 2015)
Note: We call the paper the Athens Post in the episode. It's The Post, in Athens, Ohio.
Ghost stories, urban legends haunt college campuses (The Columbus Dispatch, via PressReader)
Five Athens cemeteries form lopsided square (The Post)
History of The Ridges (Ohio University)
Kennedy Museum of Art, 100 Ridges Circle (Ohio University)
More than 1,900 unidentified people are buried in Athens, Ohio (WOUB Public Media, October 2025)
Jim Harold's Campfire
Hotel Monte Vista, Flagstaff, Arizona
Tesseract (Wikipedia)
Sleep Paralysis and Anomalous Experience (Psi Encyclopedia)
Night hag (Wikipedia)
Benedictine College
The Shining, the 1980 film (Wikipedia)
Ring, the 1998 film released in North America as Ringu (Wikipedia)
New Orleans murder-suicide rivets city; couple had met amid Katrina (Associated Press, via The Seattle Times, October 2006)
Bloody Mary's Tours and Haunted Museum, New Orleans

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

S2 Ep41: The Dog Saw it First Nov 06, 2026

Show notes

In tonight's dead letter, Patrick writes to us from Northcote, a suburb on the north side of Melbourne, Australia, where his son James, thirteen at the time, took Cookie, the family's Boston terrier, out before dawn one morning in the autumn of 2024, through a reserve that used to be part of a golf course. Cookie never barks at anyone, but at the top of the hill, beside a stand of gum trees, he stopped, stared, and started to growl at something James couldn't see. Forrest is away this week, so Richard Hatem, screenwriter of The Mothman Prophecies, sits in and reads the letter.
Relevant Prior Episodes
Ep 72: Richard Hatem - Screenwriter of The Mothman Prophecies
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Ep 50: Mothman Part 1
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Ep 37: The Delphos Ring Part 1
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Ep 45: Skinwalker Ranch Part 1
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Links and Further Reading
Last week's Dead Letter Office, DLO-240: The Visitor in Clothier Hall (Apple Podcasts)
Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf (Apple Podcasts)
The Mothman Prophecies, by John A. Keel (Bookshop.org)
Hunt for the Skinwalker, by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp (Bookshop.org)
Leaked "jellyfish" UFO video leaves the internet enthralled and baffled (Global News, January 2024)
Slender Man (Wikipedia)
Northcote, Victoria (Wikipedia)
Merri Creek (Wikipedia)
Whatever Remains Podcast, with Marie Mayhew (Apple Podcasts)
Loud pack of coyotes takes over abandoned West Hollywood construction site (ABC7 Los Angeles, July 2026)

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

S2 Ep40: The Visitor in Clothier Hall Oct 28, 2026

Show notes

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 Episodes
Ep 26: Shadow People
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Ep 338: Your True Halloween Stories IV, Part 3
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Ep 87: Black Eyed Kids Part 1
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Links and Further Reading
Clothier 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 Campfire
Miyamoto Musashi (Wikipedia)
Wild Talents, by Charles Fort (1932), free to read at sacred-texts.com
We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 3 Oct 25, 2026

Show notes

We're back, and this time we’re lucky enough to have paranormal investigator, researcher and author Michelle Belanger join us to help answer the question connecting this week's 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.

S2 Ep39: Above the Top Floor Oct 20, 2026

Show notes

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 Episodes
Ep 49: Monsters Among Us
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Ep 116: Small Town Monsters
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Ep 183: Sam the Sandown Clown
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Ep 203: The Beast of Gévaudan
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Links and Further Reading
Hoia Baciu Forest (Astonishing Legends)
History of Cluj-Napoca
Systematization in Romania
Transylvanian Superstitions, Emily Gerard, 1885 (Project Gutenberg)
Pricolici
Strigoi
Tracing 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 Ghost
We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 2 Oct 18, 2026

Show notes

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.

S2 Ep38: Hello, James. Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

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 Episodes
Ep 247: Massacre at Duffy's Cut Part 1
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Ep 317: The Screaming Skulls
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Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Ep 123: The Sallie House: Ghost in the Machine Part 1
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Ep 4: Amelia Earhart Vanishes Part 1
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Links and Further Reading
Catechism 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, Tennessee
Electronic 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!

Your True Halloween Stories IV Part 1 Oct 11, 2026

Show notes

Once more, our favorite Halloween tradition rises from the grave, as three listeners join us to personally share encounters they still can’t explain.

In the North of England, district nurse Luke and a trainee see someone inside the home of a patient who lives alone. In Idaho Falls, Krystina tells us about small dark figures lurking at the edge of a woman’s vision and their attempt to get answers. Then, Jennifer takes us to 1980s Southern Oregon, where a childhood encounter with a blinding figure rushing into her bedroom became only the first of many visits.

Turn down the lights and join us for three true stories, told by the people who experienced them.

Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode.

S2 Ep37: The Old Man on the Gravestone Oct 06, 2026

Show notes

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 Episodes
Ep 48: Choose Your Own Adventure
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Ep 71: Pere Cheney: The Town that Disappeared
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Ep 87: Black Eyed Kids Part 1
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Ep 50: Mothman Part 1
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Ep 14: What's Gotten Into You?
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Ep 209: The Phantom Horse of Greensboro
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Ep 120: The Grim Reaper
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Ep 154: Lockdown at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium
Astonishing Legends · Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Ep 156: The Ax Murder House in Villisca Part 1
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Ep 49: Monsters Among Us
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Ep 310: The Rhine Research Center: Extraordinary Evidence
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Links and Further Reading
Church Grims, by Tess Pfeifle (Astonishing Legends blog)
Strange Intruders, by David Weatherly
G.N.M. Tyrrell (Psi Encyclopedia, Society for Psychical Research)
Ghosts and Apparitions in Psi Research (Psi Encyclopedia)
Phantasms of the Living, Volume 1 (1886), free at the Internet Archive
Phantasms of the Living, Volume 2 (1886), free at the Internet Archive
Jim Harold's Campfire
The Mothman of Point Pleasant (Small Town Monsters, 2017)
The Ankou
The Case Against Reality, by Donald Hoffman
A Game of Pool, The Twilight Zone (1961)
On a Pale Horse, by Piers Anthony
The Villisca Axe Murder House
Live and Let Die (1973)
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

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

A Tale of Ghost Ships Three! Sep 27, 2026

Show notes

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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