The Uncanny Coffee Hour with Dr Kitsune and Odd Bob
From Yokai and Bigfoot sightings to spirits, other-worldly beings and UFO encounters, we share stories and interviews; exploring evidence, theories, and philosophical implications. Always respectful with a touch of impish irreverence, we gather stories with wit and wisdom encouraging a strong look at Indigenous perspectives.
This project has been brewing in our minds for years and now with the help of our community (including the uncanny world) we are making it a reality.
The Uncanny Coffee Hour with Dr Kitsune and Odd Bob
Old West Ghosts
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Ever notice how a building breathes differently after a fresh coat of paint—and how the air seems to carry older voices when the lights dim? We lean into spooky season with a trip through Baker City’s restored Geyser Grand Hotel and along the wind-bitten cliffs below the Heceta Head Lighthouse, weaving jokes, folklore, and lived experience into a single thread: when you revive a place, you often wake the stories sleeping inside it.
Our path starts in a boomtown where stained glass and mahogany came back to life—and so did the whispers. Room 302 has its gentle guardian who loves rose perfume and “borrows” shiny things, while the kitchen still belongs to a headless chef who won’t surrender his line. In the saloon, the clink of glasses and the shuffle of cards suggest a poker game that refuses to fold. Each account turns the hotel from a museum into a conversation partner, proof that preservation isn’t just woodwork; it’s memory work.
Then we trade prairie dust for sea spray. At Heceta Head, the haunting feels personal, almost domestic. Locals call her Rue—a keeper’s wife whose loss lingers in tidy gestures and midnight humming. Books find shelves. Glasses migrate to the sink. A window seems to clean itself in a corner with no floor. This isn’t spectacle; it’s a ritual of care against the largest graveyard on earth: the ocean. We talk about why these stories endure, how grief and routine shape space, and where we’re headed next—East Coast battlefields, Día de los Muertos collaborations, and a careful dive into yūrei and yokai.
If you love haunted hotels, lighthouse legends, and the tender hush of good folklore, brew a cup and press play. Tell a friend who believes, a skeptic who laughs, and someone who’s stayed up late in an old house hearing more than wind. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help more curious listeners find the show. Where should we go ghost-hunting next?
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Coming to you live from the cavernous Odba Recording Studio east of Springfield. Welcome to the Dr.
SPEAKER_07:Kitsune Adba on Candy Coffee Hour. Hi to y'all! We're always trying to be respectful around these parts. We got a little bit of that there, uh, impush here reverence, and uh, you know, we try to tell our stories with wit and wisdom. Taking a look at that there, uh, indigenous uh perspective where we can. Now uh you just pull up a hay bell over there and sit on down, you hear?
SPEAKER_04:Ah, Jesus, no. I'm not doing an old West accent. Hello all, I'm Sersha, and I change shapes and voices for the stories. See, I'm a puka and we do that. Now, as far as the funny accent, I'll do anything for love, but I won't do that.
SPEAKER_08:Brought to you this week by Dr. Kitsune's Marvelous Miracle Hair Tonic. One million and one uses. Frizzy flyaway hair? Balding? Cot dander like a shedding snake in the sun? Never fear. Dr. Kitsune's Marvelous Miracle Hair Tonic will do the trick. Guaranteed to do absolutely nothing for your looks. But sure will boost your confidence. Makes your hair shiny and strong. While I use it, try some marvelous miracle hair tonic today. Get some. I use the hair tonic.
SPEAKER_09:It's a hairy baby.
SPEAKER_08:Get some.
SPEAKER_06:Oh my god. Sorry, Gracie. Where did you come from?
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, you scared the dog, not me. Oh, we just thought we'd drop by. Yeah, good to see you guys. How are you doing? I'm good.
unknown:Good.
SPEAKER_04:I'm sucking diesel today.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, it's a nice day out, isn't it? So very freaking awesome. Yeah. I love the fall.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Welcome, welcome.
SPEAKER_08:I want to clarify that. I'm not talking about the fall of society. I'm talking about the fall of the year.
SPEAKER_06:Just in case anybody was wondering, because well, they're both happening, and you can't really do much about either, can you?
SPEAKER_08:That's right. Anyway, so what are we talking about today?
SPEAKER_06:Well, okay, so this is the deal. I was thinking because we're getting close to Halloween and spooky season, maybe we could have an episode or two that's talking about spooky spirits. Spooky spirits.
SPEAKER_08:I am kind of a Halloween-y. I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I love Halloween too.
SPEAKER_08:It's become really big. Maybe if we had some of our uh Latinx, Latino, Latina friends give us a call, we could also do a Dia de los Muertos special.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, that would be so cool. Yeah, do you know anybody?
SPEAKER_08:I do know a few people. I'll ask them. If it doesn't come out this year, then we'll do one for next season. I think that'd be cool. I mean, we still have to do like La Llorona. Yeah. I did have some volunteers that wanted to do that story.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:So I think that'd be cool. Yeah, let's do it.
SPEAKER_01:Time for story submission breakdown. The Sashax Touch Free.
SPEAKER_06:If you have a story that you would like to share with us or are interested in coming on the podcast, just drop us an email at uncanny.coffee.story at gmail.com. Or go on to our website at uncannycoffeepodcast.com. And there's instructions right there. You can just click the link and that should do it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_08:We'll figure it out. Just go on the website. You'll figure it out. Uh you know, you were also saying something about doing a two-parter, maybe doing a spooky stories from the wild west, and then spooky stories from Japan from the East.
SPEAKER_06:I say we do old West spooky and old east spooky.
SPEAKER_08:Well, Japan, you know, is actually the far west. It's not the far east anymore.
SPEAKER_06:Okay. My opinion. No, I'm okay with that. Let's do I'm just saying, like, I was going for like an east-west cool, like, you know.
SPEAKER_08:We could do west and far west.
SPEAKER_06:West, far west, sure. So what's east now? What's far east then?
SPEAKER_08:I don't know.
SPEAKER_06:Is there east anymore? Europe?
SPEAKER_08:I mean. Jim Morrison said the best.
SPEAKER_06:We could do East Coast. We know we have a good amount of friends on the East Coast that have seen uh yeah, maybe we'll do Gettysburg or something like that. Oh, yeah, that'd be good. Didn't your brother just go to Gettysburg? Yeah, he did. He watched a baseball game there.
SPEAKER_05:I dare say, Union H. John Reynolds, this is much more fun than scary tourists.
SPEAKER_08:He didn't check out ghosts?
SPEAKER_06:No. He's just he watched baseball games and then he bought himself a convertible. What's your brother's name? Mike. He's not odd Mike. He is odd Mike, but he's amazing too. So uh he's amazing, Mike. Shout out to You're Odd Bob.
SPEAKER_08:He's amazing, Mike.
SPEAKER_04:Is that like a discount magic Mike?
SPEAKER_08:So, you know. What are you drinking? Speaking about drinking.
SPEAKER_07:I'm having cowboy coffee. But pumpkin spice cowboy coffee. We were now that sounds like bellywash to me.
SPEAKER_08:I don't think that's a thing.
SPEAKER_06:I saved that for you. I say I saved the reveal just for this moment. I really don't think that's a thing. It is, and here's why. So I can't afford to go buy coffee right now. So I had this bag of coffee given to me that was pumpkin spice something, and I just made cowboy coffee for the grounds in the hot water.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Well, I did a pour over.
SPEAKER_08:Do you see her face? I'm gonna be honest. Yeah, I do. She can't even speak right now. Do you see her face?
SPEAKER_06:Okay, to be honest, I did a pour over. Look like you swallowed a bug.
SPEAKER_04:You are a sick man.
SPEAKER_06:Not real cowboy coffee where you just throw the grounds into the hot water, but I I did a pour over because I didn't want coffee grounds in my teeth and whatnot. Would you use a paper towel? No. I used an actual filter.
SPEAKER_04:You're all hat and all cattle, as they say.
SPEAKER_06:Okay. This is sounding less and less cowboy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_08:So you had urban cowboy coffee. That's right. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. What are you drinking, Sergei? What are you drinking, Sertia? Without milk.
SPEAKER_04:Oh no, don't forget the hippie milk.
SPEAKER_08:What's that?
SPEAKER_04:Well then, I'm drinking absinthe with a splash of laudenum and feeling just splendiferous.
SPEAKER_06:Okay, as long as you're happy.
SPEAKER_04:Yeeha.
SPEAKER_06:Now that you made fun of what I'm drinking, which is delicious, by the way, what are you drinking?
SPEAKER_08:Well, I'm drinking some sarsaparilli tea. Saspirilli? Sasparilla tea. Really? Did you did you know? Although sarsparilla was an old west drink, it's actually a tropical plant that uh grows in Jamaica. It has been used throughout history. It's also it also grows in parts of uh Asia. Yeah. And it's been used throughout history to treat conditions like arthritis, psoriasis, and even syphilis. Interesting.
SPEAKER_06:So it was brought to the Old West.
SPEAKER_08:What's that?
SPEAKER_06:It was brought to the Old West. Yeah. Like like tumbleweeds. Like they're not really familiar. They're just, yeah. People associate it with Old West.
SPEAKER_08:Like blackberries now in Oregon. Yeah. Him the bastard brought Himmelian blackberries here and Oh, really?
SPEAKER_06:Is that why they suck so bad? Oh yeah. They're awful. And those stupid little weeds that like I call them the Spock weeds because there was that episode of Star Trek where they tried to like go up to a plant and it just poofed its seeds all over them. Spock. You've been sexually assaulted by a plant. Spock. They we have those weeds here where you try to pull them and it's like all the seeds just instantly go.
SPEAKER_08:Well, you know, blackberries like concertina wire. And uh I like it when people move here from some other place and like, oh, I love blackberries. Then after two seasons of it, they're like, God damn blackberries.
SPEAKER_04:I love a good blackberry jam.
SPEAKER_06:I still like blackberries. I love I love eating blackberries, but I don't like it. But I also uh yeah, I also cut them back with extreme prejudice.
SPEAKER_08:Well, I use them as uh kind of a security barrier on my place. Yeah. And I I did actually invent some tools to get rid of blackberries. I'm trying to get them patented. Maybe we can throw them in the merch section when I do get them patented. Yeah, absolutely. But it's called they're called the the F and Blackberry Tools. Dr. Kitsune's. Dr. Kitsune's F and Blackberry Tools. There you go. And you know, it's F, capital F, capital N, Blackberry Tools. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Nice. Are you going to keep flapping your gums or do I need to hobble your lips? Jingle your spurs and let's talk about ghosts.
SPEAKER_06:Donkadunk. Yeah, donk a donk, badonkadonk. All right. So I've got some old west to tell you about. You know I'm from the old west. What part of the old west are you from? Not the old west, but the 70s west. 70s west. That's old now for some people.
SPEAKER_08:What west are you from? I am from Eastern Oregon originally. Eastern Oregon? That is West. Yeah. And you know, there was I mean the Oregon Trail. Yeah. You can't get any more West than that. Nope.
SPEAKER_06:I grew up right next to the ruts of the Oregon Trail.
SPEAKER_08:What what town?
SPEAKER_06:Well, it's this little town called North Powder. And it is a suburb of Baker City. Isn't that near Baker City? Yeah, which is hilarious because there's you know, Baker City is so small anyway. There's not really suburbs. There was one light in town when I was growing up.
SPEAKER_08:You know, that's where my brother Andy Lee's family's from. Oh, I did not know that. They're like uh sixth generation, seventh generation Chinese Americans that oh yeah, there's there's a big um Chinese cemetery out there.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. Historic Chinese cemetery.
SPEAKER_08:It's kind of sad. There's also stories about like gold mining out there, like the blue bucket mine, and and uh his family had a story about the the golden chickens.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:They they owned a Chinese restaurant and they would feed the whole chicken to to other people, but they would eat the gizzards and the hearts and the livers because you know, Americans and especially Western people didn't want to eat those parts. Yeah. And when they'd cut the gizzard open, sometimes they'd find a gold nugget. When they'd do that, they'd throw it in a mayonnaise jar. And there was enough gold there to send Andy's dad to college when he uh left home.
SPEAKER_06:So all we need to do is get some property in eastern Oregon and raise chickens. Raise chickens. So my first haunted story, it comes from Baker City, and I've actually been to this place. I've stayed there twice. So let me just give you a rundown, actually. Let me back up a little bit. So in the Old West, for any of our listeners that don't know, Baker City was really born out of the gold rush. Uh, it's in the plains of the Powder River. Gold was discovered in 1860, and that's what made it start to really boom. Gold!
SPEAKER_02:Gold, I tell ya! Gold.
SPEAKER_06:Um, it got much bigger after uh a railroad was added. Um I forget I had the I thought I had the date written down here. But there was a railroad added, and of course, then it shot up. Yeah, 1884.
SPEAKER_04:Snooze. I've heard better tales from a prairie dog. Let me tell it. I'll just get into cowboy form here.
SPEAKER_01:There, that's much better. Now, it's better to keep your mouth shut and look stupid than open it and prove it. I'll take it from here. Baker City. Known as the Queen City of the Inland Empire by the late 19th century, the town had everything a cowboy could want, and the citizens felt like a fat man just handed a sandwich. Times were good. Gold, rail, even a city street railway company that provided horse-drawn streetcar service, connecting train depots to downtown hotels and fancy big city living on the Powder River. This was when the subject of our story came to be. The Geyser Grand Hotel. A hotel of stone and mahogany. Erected? No. That ain't right. It wasn't just erected, it was raised, like a monument. Some fellas named Geyser, flush with gold dust and big ideas, decided this Queen City needed a palace, and by golly, they built one. Had a clock tower so high you could see clear to next Tuesday, and a stained glass ceiling in the lobby that'd make a preacher weep with joy. Thing is, booms don't last forever. The gold thinned out, the world kept spinning, and after a while, the old geyser, she got tired. Now me, I'd rather have a full belly than a full barn, but I'll settle for both if I can get 'em. But the old geyser grand, well, paint started peeling like a sunburn after a long cattle drive. The fine carpets got worn thin is a gambler's promise. For decades she was just a ghost of herself, a flop house mostly. Most folks figured she was done for. But then, back in the nineties, some folks with more vision than sense decided she was worth savin'. They didn't just slap on a coat of paint, no sir. They dug in deep, bringing her back to life piece by piece. Took 'em years, but when you wake up a place that's been sleeping that long, you don't just wake up the wood and the stone. You wake up the stories, and the folks who never quite checked out. They say if you stay in room three oh two, you might get a visit from the lady in blue. One second while I bend the elbow. Apologies. I'll continue. Some folks say the most famous spirit is the occupant of room 302. The former owner, Maybelle Geyser. Well, she uses that room in life and beyond. Now she's got an eye for jewelry, so don't be shocked if a new watch or a shiny ring isn't where you left it. You'll get it back. Probably. She's just borrowing it for a while. You'll know she's near if you catch a whiff of rose perfume on the air, or see a flash of her blue dress out the corner of your eye. She ain't mean, just still around. She's a gentle one, though. Can't say the same for the fella down in the kitchen. They say way back when the chef had a real bad run in with the old dumb waiter. Seems he lost his head over it. Literally. And it seems he's still fit to be tied about it. The kitchen staff will tell you stories that'll curl your bacon. Pots and pans flying off the racks, heavy pantry doors slamming shut so hard they shake the floorboards. Then told that not so long ago, one of the chefs was in the kitchen alone, prepping for the dinner rush, swears on the stack of Bibles that a whole flat of clean glasses just lifted up off the counter, hung there in the air for a second, plain as day. Then bam, dropped and shattered all over the gob dang floor. Seems that old cook is still trying to run his kitchen, and he don't take kindly to new folks in his space. Then there's that young lady who's been seen roaming around the hotel. They say she lost her love. A cowboy who found himself on the wrong side of a cult single action. Now she just wanders, a part of the hotel itself. You might find her on the grand staircase, or down in the basement, the smell of her rose perfume hanging still in the air. The Wild West never smelled so good. And they ain't the only ones holding on. Down in the old saloon, late at night, when the whole town is asleep, folks have heard things. The low murmur of voices, the clink of whiskey glasses, the soft shuffle of cards. A poker game that's been going on for a hundred years, I reckon. Just a bunch of old miners and cowboys who ain't ready to fold their hand just yet. So you see, when they brought that hotel back, they brought it all back. The mahogany, the stained glass, and the echoes. They say every old building has stories. The guys are grand? Oh, her stories ain't just in the history books. That's the witch away you can still find them walking the halls. Now, most folks think hauntins are an inland thing. You know, dusty old hotels in gold rush towns, saloons with bullet holes in the walls, stories you can tell around a campfire, but you get out to the Oregon coast, and that's a different kind of lonesome. That ocean. Well, it'd be the biggest, meanest graveyard there is. And sometimes, sometimes it gives back. Ride the shore north from Florence. You'll come to a bluff in the distance with a bone white finger pointing up at a gray sky. That, my friends, is the Hesita Head Lighthouse. She was built her way back in the 1890s. Weren't no highway then, no, sir. Just cliffs and angry water. They had to haul every last brick, every piece of that big old lens up the cliff face from boats bobbin in the surf, and in danger of being smashed to smithereens on the rocks. Yes, sir, it'd be a place built on pure grit and stubbornness. Now, for near 70 years, fellas lived out there with their families. The lightkeepers, they call them. A lightkeeper's life is just you, your family, maybe a couple other folks, and nothing else but that big moanin' ocean. Do your job. Keep the fire lit again the dark. Pay no mind to the bone-chillin' wet clothes in the storms. Get up the next day and do it again. Yeah. Cold, dark, lonely. And it seems one of those brave souls that lived and worked up at the lighthouse. Well, they just never seemed to be able to leave. Her name was excuse me. Her name is Rue. The story goes she was the wife of one of the assistant keepers. She had a little girl who. Well, she met a bad end. Legend is she walked into the fog, then some say she fell from the cliffs. Others say that the scookum had some weary plot of vengeance against the man and his wife. Either way, the loss broke something inside Rue that never healed. A pain that strong, sometimes it just don't fade. It soaks into the wood and rock. It stains the air. Now she ain't a mean spirit, not like some. She has no drive to make pots and pans rattle, or throw your best comb across the room. She's more of a well, what I would call a presence. A real stickler for keeping the house proper. Just ask some of the folks who stay in the old keeper's house and they'll tell you. You see, it's a bed and breakfast now. If you're brave enough, you can stay the night. You leave a book out, you might find it back on the shelf. That shot glass you left on the table might just find its own way to the kitchen sink. She just wants things kept right. The real uncanny things, now that happens up in the attic. One of the caretakers years back swore he saw the attic window getting cleaned, saw the streaks disappearing one by one. Problem is, he was standing outside, and there ain't no floor in that part of the attic to stand on. But it's hardly the cleaning that'll bother you the most. No, sir, it's the sounds that'll get you. Late at night, you can hear the scrape of her dress on the floorboards overhead. Or the sound of soft humming, and then, as you're drifting off, the soft, mournful sound of a woman crying. Sometimes in the dead quiet, and before you've had your whiskey, you'll see a flicker in the corner of your eye, a smoky grey shape in a doorway, just for a second before it melts back into the shadows. No, no angry she ain't. She's just looking. Still looking for her little one and a place that lonely with a spirit that lost. Well, that's a kind of cold that ain't got nothin' to do with the wind off the water.
SPEAKER_08:Wowby. That was a good story. There we go. I like it when Sertia spins a yarn. That's right.
SPEAKER_06:Them old West Cowboys are now new West cows.
SPEAKER_04:Feckin' idiots. You got a better one.
SPEAKER_07:Watch out for one-eyed Pete.
SPEAKER_04:One eye to say.
SPEAKER_08:I'm cutting one-eyed Pete off. He's about had about too much to drink.
SPEAKER_06:Uh so we did Old West Ghosts. Those are some good stories. I like that. Next time we can do Ghosts of the Old East.
SPEAKER_08:The Far West. Far West. That's right. No, the old east. I like that. Ghosts of the Old East. Is that Yokai also? Yokai aren't really ghosts, though. Ghosts are Yurei.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah. Yure.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah. So but there are some uh store spooky stories that might be kind of cool.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, so we'll be back again next time with more spooky stories, some scary brews.
SPEAKER_08:So pull up a rice bale, have yourself seat and listen in for more uncanny chat.
SPEAKER_05:We do not know how to end a podcast.
SPEAKER_06:No, we don't. We just want to do this all the time, you guys. Like just we'll just talk 24 hours a day. Tune into us. We are having fun. I hope you're having fun too. Yeah. Yeah. I hope everybody's having fun. We're not even asking for money. I mean, look at how relaxed Gracie looks.
SPEAKER_04:Let them have their coffee and tea.
SPEAKER_06:I think so.
SPEAKER_04:Their little routines in their lighted rooms. They think the stories are finished, packed away until next time.
SPEAKER_06:We will have a merch sex.
SPEAKER_04:All this talk of places with stains, echoes that won't fade. A heartbroken woman by the sea. A gambler who won't leave his table. A chef still angry in his kitchen. They're just tales of places far away. But every old house has its whispers. Every dark road has its shape in the mist. The stories aren't over. They're waiting. In the quiet corners of your house, your car, the woods, the desert. Go on. Be still for just a moment after the music stops. That little sound you'll hear. It wasn't the wind. One last sad note. We here at the uncanny coffee hour are heartbroken by the loss of Dr. Jane Goodall. We understand that a great silence has fallen over the forests of the world. For they have lost their most patient listener. A scientific pioneer and tireless conservationist. She showed us every day what it means to keep an open mind. Even when it seems uncanny.
SPEAKER_00:Let's let the children know, you know, that there is hope if they get together. And even if it becomes impossible for anybody, it's better to go on fighting to the end than just to give up and say, okay.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for listening. Join us next time for more uncanny chats and coffee and tea. You can find out more about us, read show notes, and get your uncanny merch at www wdah.uncannycoffeepodcast.com. Until next time, remember. Never whistle at night.
SPEAKER_08:And above all else, remember We are not all monsters. Thanks to all of our listeners out there. Uncanny Coffee Hour is produced by Bob Messon and Mitch Kyote Kitsune. Executive producer Gracie the Wonder Dog. Uncanny Coffee Hour is copyright protected by all laws, foreign domestic, and ubernatural by the Unseally Court. What? I have dark nipples, Sersha.
SPEAKER_04:You know, well I didn't ask.
SPEAKER_08:People like looking at women's nipples. People do not like looking at men's nipples. At least I don't think they do. Which people?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I don't know. I that's that's a pretty blanket statement there. I'm sure there's some people out there that like looking at men's nipples.
SPEAKER_08:My wife always says no one wants to see that.
SPEAKER_06:Well, I think that's because we're older and and maybe a little overweight.
SPEAKER_08:Oh. Always respect the local ways.
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