Episode 185 - Listener Lore #1

Today we are bringing you 6 hometown urban legends straight from our listeners.

Follow Madz on Instagram @madzsmiled and @sonrisalibrary. And consider supporting BeLoved Asheville. 

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Email us at filmsaboutlunatics@gmail.com with your listener lore. 

Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.

Transcript

Tarot Snail Mail Club Update

Send Us Your Weird Stories

Appalachian Black Dog Dream

SPEAKER_04 0:17

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Branker, and today I am here solo to present to you some really fascinating urban legends from our friends and listeners. Last week we ended up talking a lot about urban legends as we covered the babysitter and the man upstairs lore, which was really, really fun and kind of reminded me of the Bloody Mary episode that we did a long time ago. But this one was a little bit more horror-focused and the other one was way more history focused. So I think kind of having that focus on urban legends inspired us to get to talking about urban legends that we all heard growing up. So we decided to put out this call for submissions this week to our friends and listeners to have them send us recordings about legends from their childhood. We ended up with a delightful mix of scary, unnerving, and very charming stories. I'm really so thrilled with how all these stories came out on such short notice. So thank you, first of all, to everybody who sent us a recording and did the work to share your story with us. It also was so fun because it inspired me to talk this whole week to a lot of my friends about the urban legends in our neighborhoods growing up and our schools, and there was some fun detective work we did to kind of paint the picture now as an adult about, you know, this house we thought was this creepy murder house, you know, which was really just like this lovely, quaint farmhouse in our neighborhood. So it was fun to kind of revisit that. And I encourage all of you actually to go and speak to your childhood friends or siblings or family members about kind of legends and folklore that are hyper-specific to your life experience because I found it to be joyous in a way. But two things I want to say before we get into the legends. The first is that it's almost time for the spring edition of the Lunatics Tarot Snail Mail Club, which has truly been a really, really fun and fulfilling project for me as part of this. So if you want to join us, you just need to join our Patreon at the$5 tier or above. And joining the Tarot Snail Mail Club gets you a personalized tarot reading every season, so four times a year, from a themed deck. So I buy one themed deck and then I pull a card for everybody that's part of it. I also really like this idea of having a community deck that we all have a little piece of. A little bit of a sneak preview. The spring deck is carnival themed, kind of like a pagan carnival festival. I'm really excited about it. It's been a deck that I've been eyeing for a long time. So I think is going to fit the theme really well. I pull a card for everybody. You all get your card in the mail along with a mailer from us. And then on Patreon, I release a video with everybody's readings. It's kind of like this fun collective tarot reading that that has a personalized message for everybody. So if you would like to join us, you can head to patreon.com and look for Lunatics Project. And of course, that's linked in the description of this episode as well. So you can find us very easily. The other thing that I want to say before we get into the stories is that this is, again, truly has been such a fun week. So if you have an urban legend or anything, right? A strange family story, hidden treasure, anything that feels like it's worth sharing and people would get a kick out of or it's spooky or it's charming or anything, you can write that up and send it to films about lunatics at gmail.com. And I'd love to do more of these in the future where Alan and I read off your stories because it just feels like there's so much oddity all around us all the time. And everybody has a story like this. I just think it's such a common experience. So please send us an email, films about lunatics at gmail.com, and we would love to keep doing these in the future. But without further ado, let's get into some spooky, unnerving urban legends. The first story comes to us from our friend John C. Cook, who is the wonderful host of the Fido podcast and a really dear close friend. So let us listen to John's words.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

We hear tales from family and friends. And they travel and live and grow among us much like those same people that pass them on. In that dream, I play alone on the hillside in the evening summer shade of our gigantic poplar in front of the cabin where I was raised. Thirteen miles outside of the nearest small town in the foothills of Appalachia. I don't remember what I'm doing exactly. A boy of about five years of age is quite at home in the dirt, and that's where the dream takes shape. It's right there in your mind if you let yourself see it. The gentle rattling breeze through the boughs, the flickering mottled sunlight as it dances through those wind kissed leaves, the smell of soil and flowers and someone's recently cut lawn. It isn't long in this dream before the perfect halcyon setting begins to still to darken. Not nightfall. It's not as simple as the setting of the sun or as obvious as day turning into night, but something changes. The wind dies a little. The clouds above slow and thicken, and the day seems to cower. It's then that I see him. A colossal black dog. Too big too fast, limbs blending at the edges of my perception, and eyes burning amber with a malevolent will. He thunders down the one lane road, pounding and frothing, and I panic, unable to do anything more than whine at the oncoming behemoth. But he's not coming for me. Not yet. In the way of dreams, I know his intention without being told. He travels that road between the old Aetna iron furnace and the small bend in the road they call Waterloo, Ohio. He is maddeningly fast. And he's even faster when you can't see him. When he reaches the end, he'll turn around and come back. And if he finds you still on that hill, young man, he's going to get you. And so as soon as that great hound is gone from my sight, I try to run. It's no more than fifty yards to my front door, to safety. But you know how this goes. The harder I run, the slower I go. The hill is steeper, the door farther. I can't scream, I can't hide, and despite my best efforts, all I can manage is an impotent moan of terror until at last I managed to wake from the terrible nightmare. I told my parents about that horrifying beast, and they did their best to assure me that nightmares couldn't hurt you. Not really. And that it was okay to be scared, but there was no such thing as the black dog. But he showed up again in a movie in 1984, two years after the dreams began. It was one of the movies that made me who I am and created an interest in the fantastic and the folkloric. I would go on to read stories of the black dog, ancient and distant tales from across the world of a beast, just like the one that had manifested in the mind of a young boy in rural Ohio. Indeed, if you ask around the hills and mountains of my home, they'll tell you about the black dog. Large, shadowy eyes that glow like hellfire. You will find him on lonely roads or deep in the hollers. Some will tell you they've seen him. All will tell you he has an omen. But no one told me about him. No, he came to me himself.

Tommyknockers In Colorado Mines

SPEAKER_04 9:05

There's so many reasons that I love this story. I love anything Appalachian horror, and we all know it's certainly having a moment right now. But the recurring dream part of it is really cool because I also have a recurring dream for my childhood that really scared me. And so I can understand how that imprints in your memory in a way. And I'm not gonna tell you mine because I'm actually working on a little project right now that is inspired by it, so I don't want to give it away. But it's it just feels, I don't know, if recurring dreams also. If you grew up or still have recurring dreams, please write in and tell us about them because I find it to be really fascinating and I'd love to better understand the psychology around why our brain sort of repeats these patterns while we're dreaming so often. I also talked to John, I offlined with John about what the movie was because my first thought was it can't be Cujo, and it's not Cujo, but Cujo came out in '83, so kind of around the time he's talking about. But it was actually the never-ending story. And I love that because it's such a unique fantasy movie, and to see, like, I don't know, to have a dream about it and then have that translated into a movie later on is again, it feels like the essence of this podcast, right? Like exploring the intersection of history and folklore and horror. And sometimes that goes the other way around. Next up, we have a really fun story that is also ripe with folklore from our friend Mads O'Brien.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

So I grew up in central Colorado, and my childhood was filled with urban legend. Not only did I live in a haunted house, which is its own story, but part of my education was traveling the state and learning about Colorado's unique makeup. The middle of the state is dominated by the Rocky Mountains, and I grew up in the shadow of Pike's Peak. Mining was Colorado's major draw when the state was first incorporated, so of course we toured a lot of mines. If you travel about 90 minutes into the mountains, you'll find Cripple Creek, known for its mining history as well as its casinos, and my personal favorite, Burrow Days, where domesticated burrows are allowed to roam free. Just north of town lies the Molly Kathleen Gold Mine. When I was in elementary school, we were bust up to the mountain to go to my least favorite activity, cave exploration and mining tours. I'm not fond of caves. So a group of ten-year-olds and our teachers traveled 1,000 feet down a creaky mine shaft into the mine museum at Molly Kathleen. It was freezing, and we huddled together for warmth as we walked past mannequins of miners at work. I can also mention I don't like mannequins. But as we were walking the length of the old mine, our tour guides told us a story that was strangely comforting. The legend of the Tommy Knockers. Tommy Knockers, or knockers, are not unique to Colorado. They were actually stories brought over by Cornish miners. Knockers were described as two-foot-tall men with giant heads, long arms, wrinkly skin, and white whiskers or beards. They were relatively harmless beings, stealing miners' unattended tools and food, and sometimes blowing out candles. But Tommy knockers also served as an early warning system of mind collapse. You have to imagine wooden beams holding up tons and tons of dirt and rock above your head. The air was stale and sometimes poisonous. So as the wood creaked and strained, miners had to listen carefully for any breaks. And some claimed that they heard something knocking in the dark of the mines. The knocking would grow more insistent until the miners either left or the mine itself would collapse around them. Miners considered them valuable members of the crew, often leaving food or small trinkets behind to thank the knockers for their service. That story made me feel a whole lot safer, imagining little elves keeping an eye out for our well-being. The Molly Kathleen gold mine is now closed for the foreseeable future, after an accident left one tour guide dead and dozens injured in the mineshaft. But the legend lives on throughout the Rocky Mountains and in Cripple Creek, a friendly spirit amongst the many more familiar hauntings. If you haven't been to Colorado, I'd highly recommend looking into our strange history. From celebrating the Emma Crawford coffin races in Manitou Springs to commemorating a weekend for frozen dead guy days. There's a lot of spooky traditions that make me proud to be from the Centennial State.

When An Urban Legend Is Real

SPEAKER_04 13:37

I love this. I think we talked briefly about Tommy Knocker's On the Goblin episode that we did or the series we did a few years ago, which was really, really fun. But it was so, it's so interesting to hear from somebody's first hand perspective growing up in this space. And also I just love her pride for growing up in Colorado, but growing up in a place that has such specific folklore and how that was kind of you know presented to her. You can follow Mads at Mads Smiled and Sown Risa Library on Instagram, and we will link those in the description of this podcast. Mads is truly such an anchor part of the Lunatics community. She's very active on our Discord and on social media. She's part of our horror book club, and she herself runs many cool book clubs and is such an expert. So following her book account is highly recommended because I will read and like anything that she that she recommends. Next up, we have a proxy story from Denise in Connecticut. And this one, I will warn you, is a little bit more intense than the two that we've listened to so far. It's short, um, but it is disturbing and it is based in reality, so I'm just gonna give you a little bit of a warning.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

When my mom and her friends were in their late teens, early twenties, there was a serial killer on the loose. Her brother was a state trooper, and he kept warning them to take this more seriously. He had a friend working the case, and they were anticipating it to get worse. But to my mom and her friends, it just felt like an urban legend. Don't go out late at night alone. The boogeyman might get you. Then a girl went missing in the next town over. Wendy was the babysitter for my mom's nieces. And the mom also worked with Wendy's sister. Suddenly everything felt real. My mom was terrified to be out during broad daylight, even with her group of friends. She started asking her parents to drive her to and from work because she didn't know who or what she was looking out for. They unfortunately found Wendy's body in a field along with other victims. Thankfully, the serial killer was caught. And my mom found out that not only was she working with the victim's sister, she was also working alongside the serial killer's girlfriend.

The Hidden Ice Cream Scoop Fortune

SPEAKER_04 15:57

So this story actually comes from my hometown in Connecticut, and this is totally true. Like I said, this is a real-life serial killer named Michael Ross that was caught and actually held at the middle school before I was born or before I was there at least, but was held at the middle school because there wasn't a jail in the town. And even though this happened before I lived there, there was still this sense of him sort of haunting the community for a long time. And it wasn't just the one town where I grew up, it was all over the area of Connecticut. This one is is definitely heavy, but also I think gives us a lot of color. It's important to include here because it gives us a lot of color around why folklore and urban legends and mythology come to be. And I think a lot of times they're based in reality, right? And then they turn into this idea of a boogeyman. I have a really fun story. This is from Abby, a different Abby in Brooklyn, and she sent in a really fun family story that's a little bit of a palate cleanser from the last one we listened to.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

So one of my favorite family stories is about my grandfather Roger, who grew up in this tiny town called Church's Ferry, North Dakota, um, during and right after the Great Depression era. His dad, my great-grandfather Roy, was kind of a big deal in their little town. Um, he started as a farmer and then ended up becoming a really successful businessman, and they were like the the richest family in town. Their house was the only house um that had electricity and indoor plumbing, which gives you a sense of how different things were. Um and since they were living through the Great Depression, great-grandpa Roy had a really deep distrust of banks, and he also instilled that in his children. So he invested in tangible assets. And when he passed away, um my grandfather Roger and his brother Gordy went to the bank to open their father's safety deposit box, thinking they were gonna find like just like gold or silver or some some kind of tangible small fortune. They opened the box, and inside is um just a collection of dozens of unique ice cream scoops. Um honey, not gold, no jewelry, nothing, just a very specific collection of ice cream scoopers. Uh, and I'm pretty upset that those have not been passed down because I would love to have some of these ice cream scoops, but it was a total surprise to Grandpa Roger and Gordy. No one in the family knows why. Was it a hobby, a secret obsession? We have no idea. Um, yeah, but that that's the the family legend of the hidden ice cream scoops.

The Dollhouse Window Stare

SPEAKER_04 19:00

I just think the ending of this is so delightful and charming. I mean, it feels like just so zany to have your whole collection, first of all, to collect ice cream scoops, which I'm not judging. People collect things, I collect things certainly. I know people collect thimbles and all kinds of things. Ice cream scoops are not small, I would say. Um, but I think it's charming and delightful, and then to like keep them in this, you know, deposit box, keep them sort of sealed up and safe. And I uh to Abby's point, like it would be so cool to see in this collection to see how many different styles of ice cream scoops there. I have some friends in food, I feel like that would flip their lid for something like this. So anyway, I just love it. I think it's it's so it tickles my senses in such a fun way. We have another proxy story, this one from Kylie in Connecticut. And this one I'm going to say is, I don't know, I think personally the most unnerving, spookiest of all the the legends that we're gonna share today. So let's roll the tape.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

I went to elementary school in a small town in Connecticut. There was a house along my bus route that the kids nicknamed the dollhouse. It sat a little far back, hidden by trees. No one knew who lived there, but in the window were dolls, dozens of them, all different sizes, pressed against the glass, just staring, waiting for something. At first the kids just thought it was creepy and we would dare each other to look. I don't remember who the first kid was that noticed the dolls until one day someone said, Did you see the movie? After that, people just kept waiting and looking, wanting to see something until we did. It seemed like their little faces were turning with the bus. Eventually no one wanted to sit on that side of the bus anymore. It was too weird. I don't know if I can blame the dog for me. A little bit of a fear. Of course, I don't know. But I didn't want to have a birthday present for my dad. And then they kept coming until I had this small collection on the shelf in my bedroom. They always creep me out and I didn't like them. I would try to put stuffed animals in front of them. One of them looked like a little jester, and I had a hat on it with little bells, and I remember hearing the little bells jingle at night. And my mom would try to convince me that it was just movement in the house that would make them go off. Until one night I looked and I got brave enough to peek, and I swear I saw the head moving, and it was a big jingle. There was no way it was just a footstep in the house. Everyone was asleep that next day. I packed up my dolls and I told my mom I didn't want them in my room anymore. I wanted them out of the house. They creeped me out way too much.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

It's just so this is like the perfect example of an urban legend, right? It's probably the case that there was a weird house in the neighborhood that had dolls in the windows, and the eyes sort of, you know, would shift or Would you would feel like they were shifting and watching you the way that a painting does. That feels totally believable and funny and real to me, but it's kind of how that story has evolved. It just, you know, it's like I don't necessarily believe it, but it gives you the creeps, and that's exactly what an urban legend is. Like you're not sure if you should believe it. You're not sure if it's correct, but part of you wonders. And I feel like that's what this leaves me with. And finally, we have a really, really fun one. So this is more of an interview style. It's our friend Michael Crossa. Shout out to longtime friend of the pod, Michael Crossa, interviewing Rob, his stepfather, about his experiences in Asheville, North Carolina. And it is, again, hyper local. Love that so much. It's spooky. It's a ghost story. And I'm really excited about this one.

SPEAKER_06 22:56

Okay. So you and I both grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. We did. You much earlier than I did. Uh so I I know that growing up I heard stories about uh Helen and I think it was the Pink Lady, and you had a story about that as well, too, right?

SPEAKER_05 23:21

Yeah, I don't know much about Helen or the Pink Lady. This this story's a bit amazing, and uh I don't question the veracity of the guy that that actually saw this happen, but at all. And for several years after it it kind of raised the hair on the back of my head to think about it. But um uh back in the early 1980s, I was an engineer at a television station in Asheville. And this uh station was uh was uh built inside of a uh uh a residence that was it was a castle-like structure. It's probably ten eight, ten thousand square feet. It was built um in the late uh eighteen nineties. About the same time the Grove Park Inn was, as a matter of fact, it was right beside the Grow Park Inn in the Eagle.

SPEAKER_06 24:23

Does that building have a name?

SPEAKER_05 24:25

Yeah, it was the Battle House. It's since been torn down. I think um um Grow Park Inn um uh bought it and made a parking lot out of it. Tore the building down. But anyway, so I was an engineer at a that television station that had built itself inside that building. This is the early 1980s. The uh building was three stories tall, um, very ornate, and uh it's a beautiful building. And anyway, I had to get up to the at the television station probably anywhere between 5 and 5 15 a.m. in the morning to sign the station on. I did that two or three times a week. Anyway, um in the television station there was an FM station, FM radio station on the third floor, very top, um, of the uh the building. And there was a disc jockey. I won't use his full name. Um he's probably gone on uh by this time, but his name was John first name was John. Really nice guy, like I said, question him at all with what he saw, but he um he usually came in the station probably about 15 minutes after I did in the morning, so he was there probably around 5.30 or so. And I was I had already set the equipment up to sign the station on in the morning and a television station. John was there to sign the FM station on at about 6.30. We both both signed on at about 6.30 in the evening. And um I I'd got the equipment set up and went into a break room that was kind of incentive located on the on the second floor of the building. And was in there drinking a cup of coffee or getting a cup of coffee or something, I can't remember. But anyway, John comes running down the stairs, full flank, uh, from the third floor all the way down, tripping over himself, and ran through the front door and crossed the parking lot and and and got in his car. And and call it family emergency or something. I didn't know what it was. But anyway, I'd I'd finished my coffee or got a pack of donuts or something. Anyway, passed by the window to look out over the parking lot again, and John's still sitting in the car. So I said, I need to go out there and find out, you know, what's going on. So kind of walked out the front door. It was just he and I in the building. And um anyway, um, we uh uh went out and tapped on the window. I said, John, everything okay? He didn't he left the window up for a while and he looked over at me like he's kind of in shock or something. Yeah. And uh so I kind of tapped on his window again, and he rolled the window down maybe two or three inches, and he says, I'm not going back up there. And I'm going, what's going on? He said, I just saw Alice. Alice Alice, Alice, and um so I I go, who's Alice? And he says, It's Alice. And he was just really stuttering and whatever. And so it turns out that after talking with her for for a few minutes, he said she stood up in front of my console. Really his console, his console is kind of a big desk with you know controls on it that you said volumes for different sources and whatever, and set up your tapes and everything. He was sitting there setting his tapes up for his commercials and everything. And just beyond the console was this window that looked out over the parking lot that we're we were in at the time. And he said this this this woman stood up, just stood up in front of the console between the console and the window and just smiled at him and kind of cocked her head. And and and and John fell backwards. And then he, like I say, he just ran screaming out of the out of the FM studio, out into the parking lot. So, you know, and and I again I can't I just I even now I it just kind of like sends kind of chill chills down my spine thinking about it, because I mean John was a straight up guy. He would have never, you know, he certainly wouldn't have abandoned his post. I I do remember there were they'd called the police. John had called the police, and you know, at that time cell phones, he went back in the building on the second floor. Never did go back up in FM for like a week. And but yeah, and he um he called the police. Police came out and interviewed John and then just came up to me and said, Did you see this? No, I was down television station, uh, you know, and John came around and passed me. So anyway, um that's the station was on full automation for a week until they talked John into coming back up there.

SPEAKER_06 30:02

Man, did you how about you? Did you did you finish out your shift?

SPEAKER_05 30:09

Yeah, by that time it was probably 6 30 or so when other people had started coming in doing the news and stuff like that. So, you know, I wasn't uh exactly alone. As I remember, I I stayed out in the parking lot uh pretty much until about 6 30 or 6 20 when everybody started filtering in, you know, for the for the all the activities at the television station. But John never went back up in FM. As far as I know, uh the station was on full automation, you know, running just tapes for like a week. And and they had to talk. There was only two guys in FM, and the other guy ran John's shift starting at about eight o'clock. He was afraid to go back up there. So but it turns out creepy that after I found out who Alice was, Alice apparently was a resident in that building in the 1930s who had fallen down the steps, the same steps that John came flying down back in the 1930s and killed herself.

unknown 31:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 31:14

And I don't know, you know, again, I I assume John knew what Alice looked like. There were a few photographs of the old residents in the place. Yeah, but yeah, no, that's that's the that's what I've seen. Yeah, yeah. It was uh it was an exciting time back in those days. So, you know, again, if you maybe she haunts the Grove Park Inn now in that parking lot that they made the building out. Yeah, the haunted parking lot, yeah. Yeah, but the battle house and apparently it's still in the historic records in Asheville, is the Battle B-A-T-T-L-E house. And um, it probably describes the television station was there, and probably even goes into some depth about Alice and and you know the former residents. So the house was built about the same time the the um Biltmore house was built. Biltmore house was built just before the battle house. So that's my story. Cool. Stick it to it.

SPEAKER_06 32:16

Well, thanks for sharing.

SPEAKER_05 32:18

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_06 32:20

Well, anyway, uh happy Halloween. Yeah, and also with you. Okay, that's it. Cool.

Final Thoughts And More Submissions

SPEAKER_04 32:37

They also want to shout out Beloved Asheville, which is a mutual aid organization that has and continues to do a lot of needed relief work from Hurricane Helene. So definitely check out Beloved Asheville. We'll leave a link in the description of this podcast if you want to support them, if you want to donate to them, and of course, if you want to reshare anything on social media that just goes such a long, far way for mutual aid organizations. The thing about this story that just stays with me, like so much of it is great and their banter and their conversation back and forth is so nice. The cocking of the head, you know, when Alice cocks her head, like in the story, it's represented that she's kind of like taking in the guy that she's observing. But I don't know, there's something about it that kind of haunts me. It feels like such an iconic horror movie maneuver to have the ghost or the monster sort of like cock their head in realization that there's somebody there and it's terrifying. I was also texting a little bit with Michael about this after he sent it in because during the pandemic, he and I and a bunch of other people made a radio drama for Lunatics Radio Hour. It's still live, you can go listen to it, called Hello Listener that takes place in a radio station. And so it felt very fitting for Michael to present us with an urban legend that takes place there. Thank you guys so much. And again, thank you to everybody who submitted these stories. This was really, really fun. And I feel like a lot of us had fun weeks, a lot of us uh in the lunatics community, like thinking about our urban legends and the stories that we grew up with. Again, please type up your legends, type up your family stories, your recurring dreams, send them to filmswitlunatics at gmail.com and we would love to do this again. It's it's just I like you can't see me, obviously, but I'm smiling so broadly because I just feel like I don't know, for me, I guess there's a lot of rhetoric out there about horror people are not horror people and blah, blah, blah. And I feel like everybody, though, is an urban legend person. Like, even if it scared you, or even if it was charming versus really deeply horrifying, or even if it was based on a real life tragedy, like every town has this personality. Every town has their legends and their hauntings and their stories, and people might not always agree on them. It just feels like a very communal experience, and I love sharing that. Thank you guys so much for listening. Stay spooky, stay safe, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.