Astonishing Legends

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-wellington
Cook 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-strait
Kupe — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/first-peoples-in-maori-tradition/page-6
Hutt Valley — Wellington places — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/wellington-places/page-8
Capital city: Wellington since 1865 — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/capital-city
Can Our Dead Pets Come Back to Visit Us? — Rupert Sheldrake: https://www.sheldrake.org/essays/can-our-dead-pets-come-back-to-visit-us
Kaitiaki — guardians — Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand: https://teara.govt.nz/en/kaitiakitanga-guardianship-and-conservation/page-4
Sleep 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_Paranormal
We'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.

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
Mr. Machine — Wikipedia

Horikawa Robots and the Space Explorer "TV Robot" — Fab Tin Toys

House in the Horseshoe — NC Historic Sites

The Coastal Plain and Sandhills — NCpedia

"Haint Blue" — Historic New England

Black Shuck — Wikipedia

The Beast of Bladenboro — North Carolina Ghosts

What a Hospice Physician Can Tell Us About End-of-Life Visions — Discover Magazine

Ep 209: The Phantom Horse of Greensboro — Astonishing Legends
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 for 50% off your first box PLUS free shipping for a whole year.

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 for a lot more information on this episode.

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

Project Twinkle and the Green Fireball Investigation

The Green Flash: What Causes the Rare Sunset Phenomenon — EarthSky

Fairchild Air Force Base History — HistoryLink.org

Faded Giant by Robert Salas and James Klotz

The 1967 Malmstrom Missile Shutdown — CUFON Archive

Robert Hastings — UFOs and Nukes

Astonishing Legends Ep. 155: Abduction at Devil's Den (Terry Lovelace)
We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!

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

Lucy M. Boston, the Green Knowe Books, and Memory in a House — Britannica

The Manor at Hemingford Grey (the real Green Knowe)

Folklore of the Stiperstones and the Devil's Chair

The Devil's Chair: The Story Behind the Shropshire Landmark — Shropshire Star

The White Lady of Ludlow Castle (Marion de la Bruyère) — Shropshire Star

The Phantom Funeral of Ratlinghope and Shropshire Ghost Stories — The History Press

Shropshire Folklore, Wild Edric, and the Long Mynd Black Dog — Shropshire Star

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