Astonishing Legends

<div>In tonight's dead letter, our listener’s family trades a rented place for an old Victorian villa tucked into the quiet border country between England and Wales. The previous owner had loved the house for more than half a century, and the neighbors were quick to say she'd have approved of the new arrivals. But the littlest member of the family keeps mentioning an old woman with white hair. We’ll get into faceless figures, formidable women who hold a home together, and an old plaque that quietly says exactly what this whole story is about.<br><strong><br>REFERENCE LINKS</strong><br><a href="https://www.sal.org.uk/collections/explore-our-collections/collections-highlights/william-morriss-bed/"><br>William Morris's Bed and the Kelmscott Manor Poem — Society of Antiquaries of London<br></a><br><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucy-Boston">Lucy M. Boston, the Green Knowe Books, and <em>Memory in a House</em> — Britannica<br></a><br><a href="https://www.greenknowe.co.uk/">The Manor at Hemingford Grey (the real Green Knowe)<br></a><br><a href="https://stiperstones.co.uk/folklore/">Folklore of the Stiperstones and the Devil's Chair<br></a><br><a href="https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/shrewsbury/minsterley/2022/09/29/the-devils-chair-the-unsettling-story-behind-an-eye-catching-shropshire-landmark/">The Devil's Chair: The Story Behind the Shropshire Landmark — Shropshire Star<br></a><br><a href="https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2009/09/28/castle-ghost-part-of-25-year-study/">The White Lady of Ludlow Castle (Marion de la Bruyère) — Shropshire Star<br></a><br><a href="https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/shropshire-ghost-stories/">The Phantom Funeral of Ratlinghope and Shropshire Ghost Stories — The History Press<br></a><br><a href="https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/south-shropshire/2022/10/31/shropshire-storyteller-tells-of-the-countys-eerie-folklore-dating-back-to-the-norman-conquest/">Shropshire Folklore, Wild Edric, and the Long Mynd Black Dog — Shropshire Star<br></a><br>We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!</div>

<div> <p>In tonight's dead letter, we head into Grafton, West Virginia — a small railroad town built on a B&amp;O junction, Civil War supply lines, and two national cemeteries. The house at the center of this story sat right in the middle of all that history. When a listener named Jonathan moved in with his family as a kid, it was, as he puts it, just off — and the footsteps upstairs were the easy part. Small things kept stacking up, the kind you could maybe almost explain away one at a time but never all together. Decades later he's still working through what happened in that house, and what stayed there.</p><p><strong>REFERENCE LINKS</strong><br><a href="https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/2078"><br>Grafton, West Virginia — e-WV Encyclopedia<br></a><br><a href="https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=175612">B&amp;O Railroad Historical Marker in Grafton<br></a><br><a href="https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=175609">Grafton Civil War Supply Depot Historical Marker<br></a><br><a href="https://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/grafton.asp">Grafton National Cemetery — National Cemetery Administration<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornsbury_Bailey_Brown">Thornsbury Bailey Brown — First Union Soldier Killed in the Civil War<br></a><br><a href="https://www.internationalmothersdayshrine.org/">International Mother's Day Shrine<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Jarvis">Anna Jarvis, Founder of Mother's Day<br></a><br><a href="https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/2435">The Grafton Monster — e-WV Encyclopedia<br></a><br><a href="https://www.visitmountaineercountry.com/event/grafton-monster-festival-2/">The Grafton Monster Festival</a><br><a href="https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Grafton_Monster"><br>The Grafton Monster in Fallout 76<br></a><br><a href="https://www.graftonwv.org/about-3">George Washington's Surveying of Grafton — City of Grafton<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ann_Musick">Ruth Ann Musick, West Virginia Folklorist<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telltale_Lilac_Bush">The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales<br></a><br><a href="https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2017/10/08/ep-85-the-bell-witch-part-1">Astonishing Legends Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1<br></a><br><a href="https://astonishinglegends.com/archived-episodes">Astonishing Legends Archived Episodes — The Bell Witch Series<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_poltergeist">The Enfield Poltergeist (1977)<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurl_haunting">The Smurl Haunting (West Pittston, PA)<br></a><br><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Skinwalkers-Pentagon-Insiders-Account-Government/dp/B09HR54GQF">Skinwalkers at the Pentagon — Lacatski, Kelleher, Knapp<br></a><br><a href="https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/hypnopompic-hallucinations">Hypnopompic Hallucinations — Sleep Foundation<br></a><br><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep/old-hag-syndrome">The Old Hag Phenomenon and Sleep Paralysis<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blemmyes">The Blemmyes — Headless Men with Faces in Their Chests<br></a><br><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WVPara/">West Virginia Paranormal Investigations<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Moon_(film)">Paper Moon (1973)<br></a><br>We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!</p></div>

<div> <p>In January 1956, rush-hour drivers crossing Pittsburgh’s icy Homestead High Level Bridge watched a nightmare descend from the sky: a silent B-25 bomber gliding just feet above the roadway with both engines dead. Veteran Air Force pilot Major William Dotson pulled off a flawless emergency landing on the freezing Monongahela River, saving all six men from the crash itself. But within minutes, two crew members vanished into the current, and the bomber sank beneath only 25 feet of water… never to be seen again. How does an entire military aircraft disappear in shallow water, in front of hundreds of witnesses, and stay missing for nearly seventy years?</p><p>Visit our <a href="https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2026/05/23/ep-331-the-ghost-bomber-of-the-monongahela">website</a> for a lot more information on this episode.</p></div>

<div> <p>Scott and Forrest present a preview of a new podcast called Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat!</p><p>Dr. Harini Bhat is a clinical pharmacist and storyteller obsessed with the moments in history that still can't be fully explained. Every week she investigates real events that defy easy explanation. Mass hysterias. Vanished civilizations. Medical oddities. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating across centuries, as if history is trying to tell us something.</p></div><br><div>Hidden History doesn't dismiss ancient events as myth or superstition. It treats them as open case files, shaped by the limits of knowledge, technology, and record-keeping. Because the unknown isn't a failure of explanation. It's a constant in human experience, one that evolves, repeats, and sometimes deepens the more we learn.</div><br><div>New episodes drop every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube @hiddenhistorypod. Listen here: <a href="https://play.megaphone.fm/65qgwrg-sq-mmvg7tpqgfa">https://play.megaphone.fm/65qgwrg-sq-mmvg7tpqgfa</a> </div>

<div> <p>In tonight's dead letter, listener Andrew writes in from a quiet little back house in Monterey Park, California — a place that during the early pandemic felt even quieter than usual. He's a self-described skeptic, he disabled the motion sensor on his own bathroom light because it kept tripping on him, or so he thought. But on the worst night of his life, something happened in that house he still can't quite explain. Scott and Forrest also share a few of their own recent stories — alarm clocks, flickering nightlights, dying batteries that turned out to be just dying batteries — about what's mundane and what isn't when grief is fresh.</p><p>REFERENCE LINKS<br><a href="https://www.montereypark.ca.gov/721/History-of-Monterey-Park"><br>History of Monterey Park — Official City Website<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongva">The Tongva (Gabrielino) People — Wikipedia<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_Park,_California">Monterey Park, California — Wikipedia<br></a><br><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/72696/hello-from-heaven-by-bill-guggenheim-and-judy-guggenheim/">Hello From Heaven by Bill and Judy Guggenheim<br></a><br><a href="http://www.after-death.com/">The ADC Project — After-Death Communication Research<br></a><br><a href="https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2018/03/10/ep-101-arcapalooza-part-2">Astonishing Legends Ep 101: ARCapalooza! Part 2<br></a><br><a href="https://www.richardhatemsparanormalbookshelf.com/">Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf — Official Site<br></a><br><a href="https://www.anomaly.co.uk/">Anomaly: Paranormal Podcast by Paul Gledhill<br></a><br><a href="https://www.monroeinstitute.org/">The Monroe Institute — Founded by Robert Monroe<br></a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)">Black Mirror: "White Christmas" — Wikipedia<br></a><br>We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!</p></div>