Astonishing Legends

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 LINKSRelated Astonishing Legends EpisodesThe Edgar Cayce Story Part 1The Sallie House – Ghost in the Machine Part 1The Sludge Entity Part 1Background & TopicsUnidentified Submerged Objects (USOs) — WikipediaInvestigation Alien (George Knapp) — NetflixThe "Plasmoids" Paper — Journal of Modern Physics (2024)Foo Fighters (WWII) — WikipediaNikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower — WikipediaLake Pend Oreille Acoustic Research Detachment (U.S. Navy)Mount Roberts Trail, Juneau — Alaska.orgAmerican Ghost Walks: Ketchikan Ghost TourWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!

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 [email protected]!This week's episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile — get premium wireless for $15 a month at .

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 [email protected]!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.

In 1994, Gloria Ramirez, a 31-year-old mother of two dying from cancer, arrived at a Riverside ER with strange odors, an oily sheen on her skin, and crystalline particles in her blood — then doctors and nurses around her began collapsing, vomiting, burning, and struggling to breathe. The ER was evacuated and HAZMAT suits came out. Gloria died in the chaos, and the official explanation still leaves troubling questions. Behind the nickname “The Toxic Lady” is a human being whose final night remains one of the most haunting medical mysteries of our time.Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode.

In tonight's dead letter, we're across the harbor from Boston, in the densely layered city of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Our listener grew up in a building that began its life as a 19th-century clinic, served as a surgery, and ended its years as a hospice before becoming a multi-generational family home. But the house already had a few residents. Different presences on every floor, each with their own habits and rules. What's harder to explain is the room someone worked very hard to make sure no one would ever find.REFERENCE LINKSGreat Chelsea Fire of 1908 — WikipediaChelsea Conflagration 1973: The Biggest Fire You've Never Heard Of — Fire Rescue 1Chelsea on Fire: 1908 —Chelsea conflagration: The biggest fire you’ve never heard of GBH/WGBH BostonDomovoy: Slavic Household Spirit — WikipediaDomovoy: The Guardian Spirit of the Home and the Family — Slavic LoreDomovoy — BritannicaModern Spolia: Harvesting Building Materials from Demolition Sites — ArchDailyElectronic Voice Phenomenon — WikipediaGhosts in the Machine: The Truth About EVP — Homespun HaintsSensing What Others Cannot: Anomalous Experiences and Autism — Psychology TodayAdults with Autism Spectrum Conditions Experience Increased Levels of Anomalous Perception — PLOS ONE / PMCIs There a Connection Between Autism and the Paranormal? — Association of Paranormal StudyWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!

In tonight’s dead letter, a peaceful retreat at a friend's historic property in the country yields a brush with something that defies explanation. The old homes in these rural communities are steeped in generations of human memory, and sometimes, those overlaid paths from the past seem to bleed right through the present day. We unpack an incredibly vivid, solid sighting that leaves us questioning the true nature of time, space, and the boundaries of our own backyards.REFERENCE LINKSThe Finger Lakes RegionHistory of the Amish and Mennonite SchismSpolia in ArchitectureBelhurst Castle and the Lady in WhiteAl Jaffee and the Mad Magazine Fold-InWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!

A retired Air Force major general walks out of his Albuquerque home in 2026 and vanishes with a revolver. But William Neil McCaslind wasn’t just anyone. He once commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory and carried deep knowledge of America’s most advanced defense systems. His disappearance soon becomes part of a much darker pattern online. From Los Alamos to NASA JPL to Caltech, nuclear scientists and defense experts seem to have been erased from the grid. Is someone quietly removing high-value scientific minds from the board? Are brilliant people cracking under unbearable pressure? Or could this be a pattern of our own design?Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode.

In tonight’s dead letter, listener Jeannette shares a deeply atmospheric story from a bike commute across one of the most famous bridges in the world. Enveloped in the freezing, thick San Francisco fog, what starts as a quiet ride she’s done a million times turns into an inexplicable encounter with a solitary figure standing near the edge. After a strangely profound exchange of words, she looks back to find the massive walkway entirely empty. She is convinced that he couldn’t have had time to have taken his life in that brief moment. It opens up a conversation about crisis apparitions, liminal spaces, and the heavy emotional toll anchored to such a monumental location.REFERENCE LINKSSFGate: Japanese Taxi Drivers Claim Ghost Passengers Hail Cabs at Site of 2011 Tsunami: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Japanese-taxi-drivers-claim-ghost-passengers-6806980.phpGolden Gate Bridge Suicide Deterrent Net Project: https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicide-deterrent-net/Bridge Rail Foundation: http://www.bridgerail.net/"Unsolved Mysteries"- Tsunami Spirits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11107472/KCRW Unfictional Podcast: https://www.kcrw.com/shows/unfictional/latestGhosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry: https://bookshop.org/p/books/ghosts-of-the-tsunami-death-and-life-in-japan-s-disaster-zone-richard-lloyd-parry/4c115c39e1094566?ean=9781250192813&next=tWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to [email protected]!

For our 2nd anniversary, we bring you the “Miracles MEGA-MIX!” We’ve combined all 3-parts of the Season 1 Miracles series into one easy-to-play episode.  Perfect listening for long road trips, recovering from knee surgery and endless lines at the DMV! Now YOU don’t have to decide if you want to hear “Part 2’s” anymore – we’ve decided for you!  You’re going to!  You’re welcome!  And Happy Anniversary!LINKS:Support RHPB on Patreon here! https://patreon.com/RichardHatem?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkGet the ALL NEW RHPB Spiral Bound Notebook Journal! Celebrate 2026 with 26% off all RHPB merch with offer code RHPB26! CLICK HERE and the discount is pre-applied! https://richardhatem-shop.fourthwall.com/promo/RHPB26Need help with your personal writing projects?  Richard is here to help!  Get 20% off when you mention RHPB!   https://www.richardhatem.com/The Cumin Club – delicious, easy, authentic Indian cuisine delivered right to your door.  Use offer code RHPB to get 30% off on EVERY ORDER! https://www.thecuminclub.com/Buy Miracles by D. Scott Rogo here https://bookshop.org/p/books/miracles-a-parascientific-inquiry-into-wondrous-phenomena-d-scott-rogo/96cfee5389668dd9?ean=9781933665092&next=t