In tonight's dead letter… our listener Daniel moves into a freshly built ranch house in the Salt Lake Valley back in 2011 — a house barely five years old, no tragic past, nothing "old and storied" about it. The first odd thing he notices is that every doorknob in the basement is on backwards, rigged to lock someone in from the outside. He's sixteen, he's got the whole basement to himself, and from the very first night down there he can't shake the feeling that he's being watched. Then one night around eleven, three sharp knocks land on the wall right behind his head — and that's only the start.

REFERENCE LINKS

Lake Bonneville – Wikipedia

Kanashibari (Japanese sleep paralysis) – Yokai.com

Sleep Paralysis and the Hag Phenomenon – Neurolaunch

Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome – The Order of the Good Death

Bell Witch – Wikipedia

Skinwalker Ranch – Wikipedia

Skinwalker Ranch of Uintah County, Utah (the locks the Shermans found) – Legends of America

Baba Yaga – Wikipedia

Astonishing Legends: Skinwalker Ranch Part 1

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

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!

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