Astonishing Legends

In tonight's dead letter, listener Chris takes us back to the early 2000s, when he was the head brewer at a restaurant on the east side of Cumberland, Maryland, in a building so old it served as a Civil War field hospital. One night after close, he and three coworkers were having a beer in the basement bar when the loudest sound he'd ever heard slammed into the floorboards right above their heads, shaking dust from the ceiling and rattling every bottle behind the bar.

Relevant Prior Episodes

Nightmarchers of Hawaii

Links and Further Reading

The Battle of Folck's Mill: Maryland Historical Trust Battlefield Documentation (PDF)

Battle of Folck's Mill, Wikipedia

Folck's Mill (National Register of Historic Places site), Wikipedia

The Battle of Folck's Mill, Western Maryland's Historical Library

The Invasion, Aug 1864: The Cumberland Alleganian's Original Account, Western Maryland's Historical Library

Folck's Mill Marker, Historical Marker Database

The History of Puccini Restaurant, Cumberland, Maryland

The Phantom Battle of Edgehill, Historic UK

The Spectral Army of Souther Fell, Mysterious Britain and Ireland

The Dieppe Raid Case, Mysterious Britain and Ireland

The Drummer of Tedworth, Wikipedia

Phantom Armies of the Night by Claude Lecouteux

The Rosenheim Poltergeist, by Tess Pfeifle at Astonishing Legends

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

Our friend Richard Hatem is taking his Paranormal Bookshelf on the road! The Light in the Dark Tour 2026 is an all new live show playing six cities in seven days, September 13th through 19th, and it winds up at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Richard and Susan Lambert will be at the festival both days selling Mothman and podcast merch, and on Saturday night, September 19th, he's performing an episode of the podcast picked especially for Point Pleasant.
Hear Scott and Rich talk about the tour in his most recent post on the RHPB feed:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts

Tour Dates and Tickets

Sunday, September 13: Storm Crow Manor, Toronto, ON

Monday, September 14: Padraigs Brewing, Minneapolis, MN

Tuesday, September 15: The Red Lion Pub, Chicago, IL

Wednesday, September 16: B Side Lounge, Cleveland Heights, OH

Thursday, September 17: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (FREE SHOW!)

Saturday, September 19: Trinity UMC Community Center, Point Pleasant, WV (The Mothman Festival)

More from Richard

All Tour Dates and Tickets

Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf on Apple Podcasts

Richard Hatem's Paranormal Bookshelf on Spotify

Paranormal Bookshelf Merch

The Mothman Festival

Tickets for every show but Carnegie Mellon (which MAY not require them, TBD)  are at richardhatemsparanormalbookshelf.com/events, or search Richard Hatem on Eventbrite. Come out and see Richard do his thing!

In tonight's dead letter, a teenager in rural Arkansas in the late 2000s goes poking around an abandoned schoolhouse and comes home with a mirror she likes the look of. Years later it's hanging in her first Los Angeles apartment, and one evening while she's in the bath she catches the towel on the back of the door swinging wildly but the moment she turns to look, it stops dead. But that’s only part of the story.

Relevant Prior Episodes
The Bell Witch Part 1
The Scrying Game
Mel's Hole Part 1
Abduction at Devil's Den
Nightmarchers of Hawaii
The Ghosts of Flight 401

Links and Further Reading
American Hauntings — Troy Taylor's books, podcast, and live events
Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones by Raymond Moody
Note: We say 1933 in the episode — Reunions was published in 1993.
Oculus (2013), dir. Mike Flanagan
What is a "dybbuk" in the prologue of the Coen brothers' A Serious Man?
Ghosts On A Plane? The Story Of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401

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

In tonight's dead letter, in the summer of 1996, two college kids from New Jersey were road-tripping to Gen Con when they got off I-80 near Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, looking for food and a place to stay. Around 11:30 PM, at a gas station that turned out to be closed for the night, three blonde kids in bathing suits were standing under a light, saying something to them that neither of them could make out.

Relevant Prior Episodes
Black Eyed Kids Part 1
Strange Intruders with David Weatherly Part 1
Sam the Sandown Clown
Dan, Susan, Micah Hanks and Missing Time
Abduction at Devil's Den
Skinwalker Ranch Part 1

Links and Further Reading
Strange Intruders by David Weatherly
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
Death as a Child: The Modern Legend of the Black-Eyed Children (Atlas Obscura)
8 local spots you didn't know were haunted (northcentralpa.com — the "Otzinachson"/Demon's Den lore)

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

In tonight's dead letter, listener John is nineteen, home from his freshman year and a few shifts into a summer dishwashing job at a grand old house on Michigan's Old Mission Peninsula that has been a restaurant since the 1950s. The staff there blame anything strange in the building on a ghost they call Genevieve, and John doesn't believe in any of that. One warm night he goes upstairs to change out of his kitchen clothes, and the bulb pops the second he flips the switch. Strange enough on its own, but what happens next is why this particular night stuck with him.
Note: The room referenced at Waverly in the Episode is 503. It should have been 502.

Relevant Prior Episodes

Greyfriar's Kirkyard Halloween Special

The Sallie House – Ghost in the Machine Part 1

Lockdown at Waverly Sanatorium

The True Story behind the Conjuring Part 1

A Live Reading with Jim Hunt - Psychic Medium

Links and Further Reading

The Mission Table Restaurant of Bowers Harbor: A Splendid Building, But Not a Residence for a Ghost — Julie Schopieray, Grand Traverse Journal

Would the Real Mrs. Stickney Please Stand Up? Setting the Old Mission Ghost Story Straight — Northern Express

The Haunting of Bowers Harbor Inn – Is It Genevieve Stickney's Ghost? — Old Mission Gazette

Bowers Harbor Inn — Wikipedia, on the 1927 fire and the house built around the old farmhouse

Mission Point Lighthouse — History, the light at the tip of Old Mission Peninsula near the 45th parallel

Occupational Folklife — American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Meet the Mackenzie Poltergeist of Greyfriars Kirkyard — Icy Sedgwick, on the grabs and marks reported on the tours

Waverly Hills Sanatorium — American Hauntings, on Room 502 and the nurse story

The Buxton Inn — Wikipedia, the Granville, Ohio inn Forrest visited

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