S2 Ep22: The Mechanic and Mr. Machine

S2 Ep22: The Mechanic and Mr. Machine

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 [https://toytales.ca/mr-machine-from-ideal-1960/]Mr. Machine — Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Machine] Horikawa Robots and the Space Explorer "TV Robot" — Fab Tin Toys [https://www.fabtintoys.com/horikawa/] House in the Horseshoe — NC Historic Sites [https://historicsites.nc.gov/all-sites/house-horseshoe] The Coastal Plain and Sandhills — NCpedia [https://www.ncpedia.org/geography-part-2-cradle-north] "Haint Blue" — Historic New England [https://www.historicnewengland.org/haint-blue/] Black Shuck — Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Shuck] The Beast of Bladenboro — North Carolina Ghosts [https://northcarolinaghosts.com/piedmont/the-beast-of-bladenboro/] What a Hospice Physician Can Tell Us About End-of-Life Visions — Discover Magazine [https://www.discovermagazine.com/what-a-hospice-physician-who-interviewed-1-400-patients-can-tell-us-about-42464] Ep 209: The Phantom Horse of Greensboro — Astonishing Legends [https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2021/5/22/ep-209-the-phantom-horse-of-greensboro]We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!This episode is sponsored by Firstleaf. Take a quick quiz, and Firstleaf matches premium, award-winning wines to your taste and delivers them right to your door — with tasting notes and pairing tips in every box. You control the schedule, skip shipments anytime, and every bottle is backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Go to TryFirstleaf.com/dlo [http://TryFirstleaf.com/dlo] for 50% off your first box PLUS free shipping for a whole year.

The Uninvited: The Ripperston Farm Invasion

In 1977, a remote dairy farm on the cliffs of southwest Wales became the center of one of the strangest and most enduring UFO cases in British history. What began with a glowing object hovering over Ripperston Farm escalated into months of unexplained phenomena: failing electronics, mysterious figures at the windows, silent visitors in a silver car, missing cattle that appeared miles away, and an encounter Pauline Coombs believed took place aboard an otherworldly craft. As sightings spread across the region — including the famous Broad Haven school incident witnessed by fourteen children — the area became known as the Welsh Triangle. With declassified government investigations, admitted hoaxes, and a mystery that remains unresolved nearly fifty years later, we ask: what really happened over St Brides Bay?Visit our website [https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2026/06/12/ep-332-the-uninvited-the-ripperston-farm-invasion] for a lot more information on this episode.

S2 Ep21: The Emerald Valley

In tonight's dead letter, Daniel, a self-described skeptic writes in about the one thing he's never been able to explain away. He was a third-grader in northeast Washington in 1985, riding home one evening, when an intense green light blinded him and his mom in their car. For years he figured he'd made it up, or pulled it from some movie. Then it came up years later over lunch with his sister, and he found out he wasn't the only one in the car who never forgot it.REFERENCE LINKS When Mysterious Green Fireballs Worried the U.S. Government — HISTORY [https://www.history.com/articles/ufos-green-fireballs-nuclear-facilities-new-mexico] Project Twinkle and the Green Fireball Investigation [https://www.ufocasebook.com/twinkle.html] The Green Flash: What Causes the Rare Sunset Phenomenon — EarthSky [https://earthsky.org/earth/can-i-see-a-green-flash/] Fairchild Air Force Base History — HistoryLink.org [https://www.historylink.org/File/20112] Faded Giant by Robert Salas and James Klotz [https://www.amazon.com/Faded-Giant-Robert-Salas/dp/1419603418] The 1967 Malmstrom Missile Shutdown — CUFON Archive [https://www.cufon.org/cufon/malmstrom/malm1.htm] Robert Hastings — UFOs and Nukes [https://www.ufohastings.com/] Astonishing Legends Ep. 155: Abduction at Devil's Den (Terry Lovelace) [https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2019/10/13/ep-155-abduction-at-devils-den]We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

S2 Ep20: What Does a House Remember?

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. REFERENCE LINKS William Morris's Bed and the Kelmscott Manor Poem — Society of Antiquaries of London [https://www.sal.org.uk/collections/explore-our-collections/collections-highlights/william-morriss-bed/] Lucy M. Boston, the Green Knowe Books, and Memory in a House — Britannica [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucy-Boston] The Manor at Hemingford Grey (the real Green Knowe) [https://www.greenknowe.co.uk/] Folklore of the Stiperstones and the Devil's Chair [https://stiperstones.co.uk/folklore/] The Devil's Chair: The Story Behind the Shropshire Landmark — Shropshire Star [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 White Lady of Ludlow Castle (Marion de la Bruyère) — Shropshire Star [https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2009/09/28/castle-ghost-part-of-25-year-study/] The Phantom Funeral of Ratlinghope and Shropshire Ghost Stories — The History Press [https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/shropshire-ghost-stories/] Shropshire Folklore, Wild Edric, and the Long Mynd Black Dog — Shropshire Star [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/] We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

S2 Ep19: The House on 109

In tonight's dead letter, we head into Grafton, West Virginia — a small railroad town built on a B&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.REFERENCE LINKS Grafton, West Virginia — e-WV Encyclopedia [https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/2078] B&O Railroad Historical Marker in Grafton [https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=175612] Grafton Civil War Supply Depot Historical Marker [https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=175609] Grafton National Cemetery — National Cemetery Administration [https://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/grafton.asp] Thornsbury Bailey Brown — First Union Soldier Killed in the Civil War [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornsbury_Bailey_Brown] International Mother's Day Shrine [https://www.internationalmothersdayshrine.org/] Anna Jarvis, Founder of Mother's Day [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Jarvis] The Grafton Monster — e-WV Encyclopedia [https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/2435] The Grafton Monster Festival [https://www.visitmountaineercountry.com/event/grafton-monster-festival-2/] The Grafton Monster in Fallout 76 [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Grafton_Monster] George Washington's Surveying of Grafton — City of Grafton [https://www.graftonwv.org/about-3] Ruth Ann Musick, West Virginia Folklorist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ann_Musick] The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telltale_Lilac_Bush] Astonishing Legends Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1 [https://astonishinglegends.com/al-podcasts/2017/10/08/ep-85-the-bell-witch-part-1] Astonishing Legends Archived Episodes — The Bell Witch Series [https://astonishinglegends.com/archived-episodes] The Enfield Poltergeist (1977) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_poltergeist] The Smurl Haunting (West Pittston, PA) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurl_haunting] Skinwalkers at the Pentagon — Lacatski, Kelleher, Knapp [https://www.amazon.com/Skinwalkers-Pentagon-Insiders-Account-Government/dp/B09HR54GQF] Hypnopompic Hallucinations — Sleep Foundation [https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/hypnopompic-hallucinations] The Old Hag Phenomenon and Sleep Paralysis [https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep/old-hag-syndrome] The Blemmyes — Headless Men with Faces in Their Chests [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blemmyes] West Virginia Paranormal Investigations [https://www.facebook.com/WVPara/] Paper Moon (1973) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Moon_(film)] We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!