In tonight's dead letter… three families lived in the same old house across the years, none of them knowing each other, and each one wound up sharing the place with the same two ghostly visitors. As kids, our listener Heather and her sister kept seeing a little boy who was never actually there when they looked closer. The adults saw someone different — an old man, solid enough that Heather's stepmother screamed for her father, certain a stranger had walked in. The corroboration of everything shows up in the form of a psychic.

REFERENCE LINKS

Related Astonishing Legends Episodes

Astonishing Legends — The Sallie House: Ghost in the Machine, Part 1 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — The True Story Behind the Conjuring, Part 1 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — Sam the Sandown Clown, Ep 183 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — The Fermi Paradox, Ep 022 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — Battle at Cisco Grove, Ep 246 (Spotify)

Astonishing Legends — Mantis Men, Ep 258 (episode page)

Topic & Background References

Pareidolia: why we see faces and figures in random shapes (Britannica)

The doppelgänger, the living double of folklore (Britannica)

Vic Tandy and the 19 Hz "haunted" frequency of infrasound (Wikipedia)

The Sallie House of Atchison, Kansas (Wikipedia)

The Perron family haunting, the true story behind "The Conjuring" (All That's Interesting)

Sam the Sandown Clown: the 1973 Isle of Wight encounter (OnTheWight)

The Cisco Grove alien encounter of 1964 (UFO Casebook)

John Keel and the "ultraterrestrials" (Wikipedia)

The Fermi paradox: "Where is everybody?" (Britannica)

Wormholes and the Einstein–Rosen bridge (Wikipedia)

Natalie and Tara, "doers of things" on YouTube (Natalie and Tara)

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

This week's episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile — get premium wireless for $15 a month at mintmobile.com/dlo.

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.