Podcast
Astonishing Legends
Hosted by Astonishing Legends Productions · EN
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!
64episodes
Episodes
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S2 Ep23: Pop's Cat
Yesterday00:33:50Tap to summarizeIn 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 deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!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.
Transcribe →S2 Ep22: The Mechanic and Mr. Machine
6d ago00:51:54Tap to summarizeIn 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 LinksMr. Machine from Ideal (1960) — Toy TalesMr. Machine — WikipediaHorikawa Robots and the Space Explorer "TV Robot" — Fab Tin ToysHouse in the Horseshoe — NC Historic SitesThe Coastal Plain and Sandhills — NCpedia"Haint Blue" — Historic New EnglandBlack Shuck — WikipediaThe Beast of Bladenboro — North Carolina GhostsWhat a Hospice Physician Can Tell Us About End-of-Life Visions — Discover MagazineEp 209: The Phantom Horse of Greensboro — Astonishing LegendsWe'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 for 50% off your first box PLUS free shipping for a whole year.
Transcribe →The Uninvited: The Ripperston Farm Invasion
2w ago02:23:11Tap to summarizeIn 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 for a lot more information on this episode.
Transcribe →S2 Ep21: The Emerald Valley
2w ago00:45:20Tap to summarizeIn 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 LINKSWhen Mysterious Green Fireballs Worried the U.S. Government — HISTORYProject Twinkle and the Green Fireball InvestigationThe Green Flash: What Causes the Rare Sunset Phenomenon — EarthSkyFairchild Air Force Base History — HistoryLink.orgFaded Giant by Robert Salas and James KlotzThe 1967 Malmstrom Missile Shutdown — CUFON ArchiveRobert Hastings — UFOs and NukesAstonishing Legends Ep. 155: Abduction at Devil's Den (Terry Lovelace)We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!
Transcribe →S2 Ep20: What Does a House Remember?
3w ago00:46:07Tap to summarizeIn 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 LINKSWilliam Morris's Bed and the Kelmscott Manor Poem — Society of Antiquaries of LondonLucy M. Boston, the Green Knowe Books, and Memory in a House — BritannicaThe Manor at Hemingford Grey (the real Green Knowe)Folklore of the Stiperstones and the Devil's ChairThe Devil's Chair: The Story Behind the Shropshire Landmark — Shropshire StarThe White Lady of Ludlow Castle (Marion de la Bruyère) — Shropshire StarThe Phantom Funeral of Ratlinghope and Shropshire Ghost Stories — The History PressShropshire Folklore, Wild Edric, and the Long Mynd Black Dog — Shropshire StarWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!
Transcribe →S2 Ep19: The House on 109
4w ago00:44:24Tap to summarizeIn 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 LINKSGrafton, West Virginia — e-WV EncyclopediaB&O Railroad Historical Marker in GraftonGrafton Civil War Supply Depot Historical MarkerGrafton National Cemetery — National Cemetery AdministrationThornsbury Bailey Brown — First Union Soldier Killed in the Civil WarInternational Mother's Day ShrineAnna Jarvis, Founder of Mother's DayThe Grafton Monster — e-WV EncyclopediaThe Grafton Monster FestivalThe Grafton Monster in Fallout 76George Washington's Surveying of Grafton — City of GraftonRuth Ann Musick, West Virginia FolkloristThe Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost TalesAstonishing Legends Ep 85: The Bell Witch Part 1Astonishing Legends Archived Episodes — The Bell Witch SeriesThe Enfield Poltergeist (1977)The Smurl Haunting (West Pittston, PA)Skinwalkers at the Pentagon — Lacatski, Kelleher, KnappHypnopompic Hallucinations — Sleep FoundationThe Old Hag Phenomenon and Sleep ParalysisThe Blemmyes — Headless Men with Faces in Their ChestsWest Virginia Paranormal InvestigationsPaper Moon (1973)We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!
Transcribe →The Ghost Bomber of the Monongahela
May 2302:23:08Tap to summarizeIn 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?Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode.
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The Case Files History Left Unsolved | Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat
May 2100:08:54Tap to summarizeScott and Forrest present a preview of a new podcast called Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat!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.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.New episodes drop every Monday. Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube @hiddenhistorypod. Listen here: https://play.megaphone.fm/65qgwrg-sq-mmvg7tpqgfa
Transcribe →S2 Ep18: Mom is Still Here
May 2000:56:26Tap to summarizeIn 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.REFERENCE LINKSHistory of Monterey Park — Official City WebsiteThe Tongva (Gabrielino) People — WikipediaMonterey Park, California — WikipediaHello From Heaven by Bill and Judy GuggenheimThe ADC Project — After-Death Communication ResearchAstonishing Legends Ep 101: ARCapalooza! Part 2Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf — Official SiteAnomaly: Paranormal Podcast by Paul GledhillThe Monroe Institute — Founded by Robert MonroeBlack Mirror: "White Christmas" — WikipediaWe're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!
Transcribe →The Strange Death of Gloria Ramirez
May 1002:03:56Tap to summarizeIn 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.
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