S1E5: See for Yourself (Urban Legends, Ghost Tours, & Legend Tripping)

Mar 13

GennaRose Nethercott:
A teenage couple are driving down the road, and maybe they're coming from a party, maybe they're coming from the prom. Maybe she's wearing a yellow dress. Maybe it's blue. I can't quite remember. In every telling, it changes. They're listening to the radio, and they're flipping through the channels. "Oh, here's a lovely song, but it's not quite lovely enough," so they flip the channel again, and the news is on. On the news, they hear that, "Oh, no. An escaped mental patient, homicidal maniac, has fled from the institution and is on the loose.
[transition to the sound of a local radio news report]
Radio announcer:
He's described as being six-feet tall, wearing a long patient's gown, and has a hook in place of his right hand. The patient is known to be violent and should be avoided.
[transition back to GennaRose]
GennaRose Nethercott:
A hook for a hand. That sounds terrible, but this is no concern of ours. We're simply driving along the road, having a lovely date in my beautiful pink chiffon dress. The car comes to a stop. They either run out of gas, or perhaps the tire pops, or perhaps they just pull over to the side of the road for a bit of a youthful canoodling. Usually there's something wrong with the car, because the boyfriend has to go get help, either go walk down the road to the gas station and get some gas, or walk to try and get a phone to call and get a tire change. He tells the girlfriend, "Here. Just wait in the car. I'll be back soon. We'll get the car up and running. Things will be fine."
And so she sits in the car, and she waits, and she waits, and she waits, and she waits. Meanwhile, as she's in the car, there's this scratching on the roof, sort of the sound of branches of a tree, scratching, scratching, scratching on the roof of the car. Eventually, she wanders where her boyfriend is. She gets out to go looking for him, and when she turns around, she sees that the scratching on the roof was not a branch at all, but it was the tip of her boyfriend's nice, shiny dress shoes. Scratch, scratch, scratching along the roof of the car. As he has been hung from the tree above his head, there is left just a single hook lodged in the handle of the door.
Perry Carpenter:
Hi. I'm Perry Carpenter.
Mason Amadeus:
And I'm Mason Amadeus.
Perry Carpenter:
On today's episode: urban Legends, ghost tours, and legend tripping.
Mason Amadeus:
Content warnings for this episode include claustrophobia and a story involving racially-motivated violence in the 1940s. Details are in the show notes on how to avoid these sections.
Perry Carpenter:
This is Digital folklore.

[ Sounds of pebbles hitting Mason’s window as a phone rings. ]
Mason Amadeus (sleepy, exhausted…):
What the? Hello?
Perry Carpenter (Overly dramatic… like he’s trying to be mysterious, menacing, and a bit like a meditation recording all at the same time…. it’s not working…):
The moon's crescent path drags low across the sky, dreams harvest pulled out by the roots, overturned the radiant soil of a new day.
Mason Amadeus:
Perry!!??!
Perry Carpenter:
Fertile on the cusp of the horizon.
Mason Amadeus:
Perry!!??!
Perry Carpenter:
Untold-
Mason Amadeus:
Perry!!??!! Why are you like this? What are you doing?
Perry Carpenter:
Adventure awaits us.
Mason Amadeus:
Can it await like a couple of hours, dude? It's like four in the morning.
Perry Carpenter:
Don't ignore the call of adventure, Mason.
Mason Amadeus:
What adventure?
Perry Carpenter: (Snaps to normal tone. Perry is let down and annoyed)
Just come downstairs.
Mason Amadeus:
I don't want to,
Perry Carpenter:
Five minutes, or I'll start throwing rocks again.
Mason Amadeus:
Fine, fine.
Perry Carpenter:
I'll write it down.
Mason Amadeus:
Oh, Perry. What is this?
Perry Carpenter (a bit like an overly enthusiastic scout master):
Get in loser. We're going legend tripping.
Mason Amadeus:
You rented a panel van?
Perry Carpenter:
No, I bought a panel van.
Mason Amadeus:
Oh.
Perry Carpenter:
We're going to get it painted. It's going to be our podcast van, and I'm going to call it “The Folk-Mobile.”
Mason Amadeus:
I don't think that's a good name.
Perry Carpenter:
If the van is rockin’, the spirits are knocking.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay. Yeah, no. You know why it's not a good name.
Perry Carpenter:
Wait. Maybe we call it “The Folkswagen.”
Mason Amadeus:
I went to sleep almost literally three hours ago. These episodes take forever to edit.
Perry Carpenter:
Well, if you were more organized, I bet you could get through them faster. It's not that hard.
Mason Amadeus:
Thanks. I hadn't thought of that.
Perry Carpenter:
No problem.
Mason Amadeus:
What are we doing? You said we're going legend tripping.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, legend tripping. Today is a field trip day.
Mason Amadeus:
Every day. All of these have been field trip days.
Perry Carpenter:
We're going to the graveside of Elijah Bond.
Mason Amadeus:
I don't know who that is.
Perry Carpenter:
He's the guy that invented the Ouija board.
Mason Amadeus:
I thought that was William Fuld. That's the guy whose name was on all of the boxes.
Perry Carpenter:
No, William didn't really invent it. He's the one that took over the company and marketed the final version, but Elijah was the one that first created it, patented it, and started the company originally.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay, whatever. Sure. But why are we going to his grave? Is there an urban legend that he died in a suspicious Ouija board accident or something?
Perry Carpenter:
Well, no, but funny enough, actually, William did. A railing gave out, and he fell off the roof of one of his own factories, and died.
Mason Amadeus:
Oh.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Ouch.
Perry Carpenter:
Painful. Died. No, but we're going to Elijah's grave instead, because his tombstone has a Ouija board on it, and I thought it would be fun to take some pictures out there for the podcast. You know, PR stuff.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay.
Perry Carpenter:
And I bought costumes, props, and a whole box of stuff back there. I think it'd be cool.
Mason Amadeus:
Doesn't that kind of make the whole legend tripping bit feel a little disingenuous though?
Perry Carpenter:
No. I mean, we're going to be in a cemetery in the middle of the night, playing with somewhat legendary Ouija board gravestones.
Mason Amadeus:
Did you say middle of the night, Perry? How far away is this?
Perry Carpenter:
It's just like 15 hours. That's nothing.
Mason Amadeus (reevaluating all the life choices that lead him to this moment):
15 hours. Great.
Perry Carpenter:
Just wrap your head around it. I got beef jerky.
Mason Amadeus:
Cool.
Perry Carpenter:
And other fragrant snacks. Corn nuts, some Fritos, got some bean dip.
Mason Amadeus:
Great.
Perry Carpenter:
You ever done a legend trip before?
Mason Amadeus:
Well, actually, kind of. I didn't know that's what it would be called at the time, but have you ever heard of the Hoosac Tunnel in Massachusetts?
Perry Carpenter:
Is that hollowed out by John Cusack?
Mason Amadeus:
No, no. It was on an episode of Ghost Adventures, and my friend Caitlin was obsessed with that show. And so we watched it, and I was living in Southern New Hampshire at the time, so it was like a little quick road trip to zip down to North Adams, Mass and see if we could find it. It was a wicked haunted tunnel. This was somehow over 10 years ago. Holy cow.
Perry Carpenter:
Wow.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I remember it was really hard to find it, because it's not the kind of thing that was actually open to the public to go walking around in.
Perry Carpenter:
Cool. So what's the story? I mean, normally I might not be that interested, but we do have 15 hours.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. It actually is pretty interesting.

[Transition to Hoosac Tunnel background story narration]
The Hoosac Tunnel is an almost five-mile long railroad tunnel that barrels its way through the base of the Hoosac Mountain In Massachusetts. Five miles might not seem like a lot, but it was constructed in the mid-1800s, and every inch of it was grueling in new and exciting ways. The Hoosac Mountain was, on one side, rich with hard materials, like quartz, that would break drills and be almost impossible to blast through.
And on the other side, composed mostly of what workers called porridge stone, which was crumbly, wet, and prone to collapse. You'd take a shovel full out, turn around, and it would've filled itself back in. The original plan was to dig the whole tunnel in just over four years using Wilson's patented stone cutting machine, a phenomenally expensive technological marvel designed to chew through mountains at an unparalleled rate, but it broke after digging almost exactly 12 feet, so then it was back to shovels, drills, and dynamite.
Perry Carpenter:
Did they ever finish it?
Mason Amadeus:
The tunnel? Oh, yeah. They finished it 22 years after they started.
Perry Carpenter:
22 years?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. They started in 1851 and didn't finish until 1873. Over the course of construction, almost 200 people lost their lives in gruesome accidents, and the Hoosac Tunnel earned the nickname "The Bloody Pit." Explosions, falling rock, scaffolding collapses. Conditions were so dangerous that workers went on strike in 1865 and burned down buildings in protest, but the worst accident on record was an explosion in the central shaft. The central shaft is a 1000-foot vertical shaft board straight down from the top of the mountain to create an exhaust for the train tunnel below.
On October 17th of 1867, workers were lowered into the shaft to continue digging their way straight down. They were working by candle and gas light to the thrumming sound of distant pumps, siphoning water from the oversaturated porridge stone lining the dig, a candle in the hoist building above ignited fumes that had leaked from a gas lamp. The explosion erupted outwards, destroying the pumps that were desperately working to keep groundwater from flooding the shaft as the men dug, and catching the entire hoist mechanism on fire.
Four workers near the top of the shaft managed to scramble to safety, but there was no time to evacuate the 13 men working nearly 600-feet down before the whole building collapsed in a shower of jagged debris and flaming naphtha. They were trapped in a narrow stone pit, water seeping slowly from the walls around them and pooling gently around their feet. The only light, the flickering flaming wreckage that had fallen in above them, marking their one impossible exit.
Perry Carpenter:
Did anyone go in after them?
Mason Amadeus:
They did. A worker was lowered into the shaft to search for survivors, but he returned to the surface nearly unconscious, because there wasn't enough oxygen. He said there was no hope of anyone surviving, and no further rescue attempts were made. The central shaft was abandoned, and all works ceased for almost a year to the day. When workers returned, reached the bottom, and made a heartbreaking discovery, among the bodies of the trapped mins was a makeshift raft. Several of the victims of that accident had indeed survived. They survived just long enough to try and stay above the slowly encroaching water before they, too, were overcome by asphyxiation.
Perry Carpenter:
Wow.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Really grim stuff.
Perry Carpenter:
No doubt, then, that there are probably a lot of ghost stories and local legends around a place like that.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. A lot of them. Probably the most famous one is the haunting of Ringo Kelley, and his death was one that may not have been an accident. The story goes that he was part of an explosives team with two other workers, and accidentally discharged an explosive early before his coworkers were at a safe distance, and they both died, buried alive under tons of rock. Soon after the accident, Ringo Kelley disappeared. He wasn't seen again until 10 days later when his body was discovered two miles into the tunnel in the exact spot his coworkers had died.
He had been strangled to death. An investigation was carried out, but the murder was never solved. There weren't even any suspects, but some of the tunnel workers came to their own conclusion that Kelly had been killed by the vengeful spirits of his two colleagues. Rumors started spreading that the tunnel was cursed, and some even refused to enter it. People would report hearing pained moans or desperate wailing, echoing down the tunnel's damp walls at night. Some say they even saw dim lights, like work lamps, bobbing towards them. Other stories go even farther, claiming full body apparitions or disembodied voices. There are loads of them.
Perry Carpenter:
And I assume that that's what you went there to see?
Mason Amadeus:
Oh, yeah. Of course.
Perry Carpenter:
And did you?
Mason Amadeus:
Well, we did see a couple scary things, but not what we expected.
Perry Carpenter:
What happened?
Mason Amadeus:
The tunnel, itself, is hard to find. Like I said, it's not exactly a walking park, and the entrance was this little overgrown dirt path that we barely fit the car down. But we did get to the opening of the tunnel, and we did go inside of it, but we didn't get far before we heard a faint, low rumbling echoing down the tunnel. We felt the ground start to tremble, and we saw, not an apparition, not a bobbing light, not a ghost at all, but something that none of us were ready for. A train.
Perry Carpenter:
Oh!
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Turns out it's still an active railway, or at least it was at the time, so we absolutely sprinted out of there. I mean, luckily the train was one of those wicked long ones, and it had slowed way down on the way through the tunnel, or else we probably would've died.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. That would've been a scary experience.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I mean, there's no way we could outrun a full speed train, but other than that, it was pretty cool, and it was definitely a legend trip.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, and teenagers driving out to involve themselves and local urban legends, that's a real pastime. It's a rite of passage. It's going through these liminal spaces.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Hey, you know what? I haven't done in a long time?
Perry Carpenter:
What's that?
Mason Amadeus:
I haven't listened to the radio in forever.
Perry Carpenter:
I brought a ton of podcasts, too.
Mason Amadeus:
I would rather, I'm feeling the radio. It's been a long time, and maybe let's just give it a shot.
Perry Carpenter:
I've also got some 8-tracks and some cassettes.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I think I remember why I don't listen to the radio anymore. It's just ads, nonstop ads.
Perry Carpenter:
Just band-shift. AM is where it's at.
Mason Amadeus:
AM radio?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, especially these weird times of the morning. There's probably something strange on there.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Why not?
Moon Kid:
I think my dad is a Moon Man. And the Moon Men are these race beings that are trying to come to earth, clean our water supply, turn it into this beautiful, geometric pattern, and take over the world. It's going to be rad.
Bart Chime:
Fascinating. Really fascinating stuff. Thank you for taking the time to share your story with us.
Moon Kid:
I just think it's very important that we-

This is Most to Ghost. I'm your host, Bart Chime, and as we round the top of the hour, I have another caller patiently holding on the line who has some more fascinating stories to share with us. Hello, caller. Welcome to Most to Ghost. What's your name, and what do you do?
Mark Muncy:
I'm Mark Muncy. I am the author of the bestselling Eerie Florida book series from History Press. I also have written, recently, Erie Appalachia. I've been on numerous TV shows, documentaries, mostly famous for about a minute and thirty seconds of Ancient Aliens and about three-and-a-half minutes of Finding Bigfoot.
Bart Chime:
Excellent. That's great. Hey, thanks for calling in, Mark. I'm curious though, as someone who's made a profession out of investigating the paranormal, how'd you get started? What sent you down that path?
Mark Muncy:
I was six or seven years old. My family grew up in Midwest Ohio, but our home was Kentucky, and so we would go to this little rural farm on the West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio border. Grew up there, going there weekends, and learning about the local lore, ghost stories, and the local monster, which was the dumbest thing ever. It was this legendary beast with the head of a man, the body of a cow or a big cat, and a wooden leg. Because nobody can have nice things, we called it the bench leg… the bench leg of Gobel Ridge. I know it sounds like something out of South Park, right?
He would jump from tree to tree, so this cow thing would jump from tree to tree. If you were a bad person, it would knock you off your horse with its wooden leg. As I grew up, every single family member had some story of when they saw the thing or something weird had happened with it. Then, one day, I'm out in the woods late at night, the family is up at the big trailer, and I'm down looking for stars. Something unusual happened. One of the horses in the field ran by, something spooked it, and then the other horse ran by, and I'm like, "Okay, so that's both horses." Then, I hear more hoofs and more noise, and I'm like, "What is going on? There's nobody else here." And I saw this strange thing. I'm not going to say it had a wooden leg, but it had a weird head.
Bart Chime:
So you saw a thing with a weird head that scared your horses, and that started you down this lifelong path of investigating the paranormal. Is that what you're saying?
Mark Muncy:
I don't know what I saw. I can't explain it, but I had a story to tell, and that drew me in and, of course, from there led to the lifelong fascination.
Bart Chime:
Okay.
Mark Muncy:
But the bench leg, I found the origin story, which I had never known. It was a man walking along that ridge in the late 1700s, early 1800s, so early days of Kentucky. He was a panhandler. He was like a tinkerer. He'd fix your pans, fix your plates, sell stuff, and trade you stuff. Well, a group of bandits decided to rob him because they figured he'd have some money. He fought back with a big stick, and they murdered him. Then, to hide the crime, they killed his cow and buried him under the cow, and so thus, this spirit of vengeance with the mix of the cow, the wooden stick, and the man's head, is that the origin story of this? It's definitely the comic book version, if I was going to write one.
Bart Chime:
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. All the elements were there. If they dug up those bones, saw it was a mixture of cow and human, probably heard of those bandits. I can easily see how that turned into a legend, probably to try and warn people about bandits being on the roads or something like that, right?
Mark Muncy:
That's what we find with a lot of these folktales is like, "Don't go down that road. Bad thing happened there. Don't go into that creepy old building. Somebody was murdered there." It was, protect us from the dark, and that's what this story was.
Bart Chime:
So the tale of this bench leg sparked your lifelong interest in the paranormal, and now you've turned it into a career. I'm curious, what was the first local legend outside of your hometown? Like the first place that drew you away to go in search of more of these small town mysteries?
Mark Muncy:
What started it all for us was the devil's chair in Cassadaga, which is this place you're supposed to go visit. Cassadaga is an amazing town, anyway, in Florida. There's a reason Tom Petty wrote a song about it. It's where the Twilight Zone meets Mayberry. The town was founded by psychics. This guy was drawn there by his spirit guide, who told him to build this town and invite only psychics there, and he did.
But there's this legendary chair there in the cemetery, and if you go there and sit at this chair at midnight, the devil himself will come for you. Now, if you do go there at midnight, you will be visited by a dark presence. That dark presence is called the police because it is private property, and it is closed after sunset, because so many people go there to do this legend tripping. But you do the research on it, and you find out, "Okay. The devil didn't build the chair. It's a morning chair." They were common in the 1800s, especially in Florida because it's hot, and we want to have a chair to go visit your family, and you build this little brick chair.
Bart Chime:
I'm noticing a trend here, Mark, and it's that you seem to get to the bottom of these local legends and research where they originated from. I want to know if there's one that was the most surprising to you? You know, as you peeled back the layers and figured out where it came from?
Mark Muncy:
Yeah, there was one called Minnie Lights, and it was in Tampa Bay. If you said "Minnie Lights" three times, strange little lights would come and chase you, and if they touched you, it would send your flesh but not do anything terrible. I started asking people, and on the north side of town, people would be like, "Oh. You say it three times, these little lights will chase you," but on the south side of town, it turned into a completely different version of the legend.
First off, it was very much a, "Don't go messing with Minnie Lights. Minnie Lights will get you," and then you find out, "Oh. Her name's not Minnie Lights. It's Minnie Lightning, and she's the voodoo queen of St. Petersburg, and she summons the lightning, and that's why we have so much thunderstorms, and she hates Marie Laveau in New Orleans, so she sends all the hurricanes to New Orleans. That's why they steer away from Tampa Bay, and it's one of the many legends of why storms dodge Tampa Bay. But it was cool, and I'm like, "All right, that's neat," but then it was a dark side to it. She will send her gator boys to steal your children.
Bart Chime:
She'll send her gator boys to steal your children.
Mark Muncy:
So she has little gator men that will come out and steal your children. They'll come out, alligators in the sewers.
Bart Chime:
Ah, okay.
Mark Muncy:
So now it's this other, what a layered story. Where does that come from? So we start digging. I thought Minnie Lights sounds an awful light like Mennonite, and there was a strong Mennonite community, particularly in Gibsonton, across the bay, which became the circus town. I'm like, "Hmm, maybe," and I read about a Mennonite boarding house that burned down that had circus folk in it. Well, maybe they had alligator skin or something. Maybe that's where this legend comes from, and it just migrated across the bay, like we were thinking, but really couldn't figure it out. We, sadly, had a due date, so we went to press with the various versions, saying, "Hey, if anybody has an idea, we'd love to hear it."
Then, we were working on our next book, and I was in the St. Pete Museum of History. I was in their archives, and I was looking up something else on a completely different story, and the answer literally fell in my lap, on Minnie Lights.
I opened a book. I was looking for other photos, and this fan fell out into my lap, one of those fans you hold to cool yourself off at a tourist attraction in the 1930s. The fan was for an alligator farm in St. Petersburg that is no longer there, because alligator farms were big tourist attractions in Florida, early days, and St. Pete had one. One of the things on it was two small African-American children being chased by alligators, and it said "gator bait," and then it all fell into place. The real history is so much darker.
Bart Chime:
Wow. That is truly reprehensible.
Mark Muncy:
This alligator farm would kidnap children from the south side and put them in to entertain tourists to be chased by alligators. They actually did that, and so, "Beware of Minnie Lights. The Gator boys will steal your children," it's "Beware of the men with lights. The Gator Boys, they'll steal your children."
Bart Chime:
And that really happened.
Mark Muncy:
It really happened. Then, so 1930s, this was still going on until they shut down sometime in the early 40s. It's terrible. Like I said, sometimes these legends, the truth is so much worse.
Bart Chime:
Yeah. That is extremely dark.
Mark Muncy:
That was so terrible, and now the city of St. Pete Museum of History has a display of that, because we discovered it, and you wonder how many more are out there, like that, little things like that, that somebody just needs to connect the dots on. It goes back to folklore. "Don't go in the dark forest. There's wolves, Little Red Riding Hood." It's the same stuff. It's just this is a modern version of that.
Bart Chime:
But you can see how it's important to investigate and recognize where stories like this come from, because without that kind of context, for all anyone knew, it was just a silly story, but the reality is so much more dark. Really appreciate you taking the time to join us and share some of your stories with us and our listeners. Hopefully we'll hear from you again.
Mark Muncy:
I'm happy to jump back on anytime
Bart Chime:
Now, dear listeners, we're going to take a break, but next hour we have some exciting sightings and paranormal news with another caller, who claims that their dentist's office is haunted by a large spectral.
Mason Amadeus:
Hey, that was wild. That Mark dude actually had some really compelling stuff.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. I've heard that show before. It can sometimes be a bit of a mixed bag.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah.
Perry Carpenter:
There's a fair amount of your standard tinfoil hat type stuff, but then sometimes you get these people, like Mark, who really know their stuff, and they give these genuinely interesting and thought-provoking things to share.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I mean, like that Mini Light story. It's devastating, right? But it's also really important.
Perry Carpenter:
It's really, really interesting when we start to hear these stories and get back to the origins of them, to see how local legends start. I'm sure a lot of people didn't even think twice about that.
Mason Amadeus:
Right?
Perry Carpenter:
But it has this dark and this real specific historical significance.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, and to be so localized too, like I've never heard of Mini Lights until just now.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, me neither.
Mason Amadeus:
It's interesting how many small urban legends there are, I think.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, but a lot of them follow similar structures or have these similar purposes too they continue to fall into.
Mason Amadeus:
There's a phenomenon, migratory legends, right? Same-ish story, but with different names and locations.
Perry Carpenter:
Exactly. That's it. Migratory legends are like the basic plot, and the structure is identical, but then they turn up in these different regions with different regional variations, with things like place names or topographical details that have been altered to fit that particular area.
[Sound of car stopping and shutting off. Perry sets the parking break.]
Mason Amadeus:
Right, like a lot of cautionary tales stuff.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. You ready?
Mason Amadeus:
What?
Perry Carpenter:
We're here.
Mason Amadeus:
That wasn't 15 hours.
Perry Carpenter (in overly dramatic voice):
I lied.
Mason Amadeus:
Why? Why did you lie about that?
Perry Carpenter:
Come on. You've done photography before. Low light conditions suck. It would be a nightmare for what we want to do. We're just going to do it, fix it, and post.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I get that. I get that, but why did you lie to me about it?
Perry Carpenter:
I wanted you to be invested.
Mason Amadeus:
I really don't understand you sometimes.
Perry Carpenter:
I don't understand you, and you’re…
Mason Amadeus:
At least I tell the truth. Holy smokes. We need to have a bigger discussion at some point. Perry, come on.
Perry Carpenter:
Come on. This way. The grave's not too far. It's in Section P, and according to the GPS, we parked pretty darn close to that.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. I mean, it's a Ouija board tombstone, which should be pretty easy to spot.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, it should be. It's a pretty big graveyard though, and we might need-
Paul Prater:
Boo.
Mason Amadeus:
Gah, geez.
Paul Prater:
What are you guys doing in a graveyard?
Mason Amadeus:
Jeez.
Paul Prater:
It's an odd place to just hang out.
Mason Amadeus:
What are you doing talking to two people hanging out in a graveyard?
Paul Prater:
Well, I like all people -- the living and the dead -- but I'm here to do research for my ghost tours.
Perry Carpenter:
Ah, that's interesting. We're doing research for a podcast on legend tripping.
Paul Prater:
Well, I would love to talk to you about it, if you guys have an interest.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Paul Prater:
My name is Paul Prater. I am a mentalist. I am an attorney. I'm an author. I'm a creator. I'm a ghost tour guide. Usually when people say, "What do you do?" my answer is "Fun." That's what I do, is have fun.
Mason Amadeus:
So that's awesome, and that's also pretty wide-ranging. How do you do all of that as a career? What does that look like?
Paul Prater:
I have kind of a few different branches of the mentalism that I do. The first one is corporate work, and obviously, for that, you have to be conscious of what you're putting out there. I have to talk to my clients and make sure that they're okay with certain presentational angles. But for that, I typically just play up more of the attorney side of me, and I weave that into the shows because, as corporations are hiring me, I'm relating to them professional to professional. Now, on the other side, I'll also do things like bizarre magic, which I'll explain. It's taking darker elements, sometimes having to do with the occult, sometimes having to do with just ghost stories, or just the creepiness in general, and putting a story and a presentation to that.
Perry Carpenter:
Right, so bizarre magic, from your perspective, probably utilizes a lot of the same mechanical methods as traditional magic, but has a different presentational frame?
Paul Prater:
Yes. Even my shows, my corporate shows, largely, use the same methods and have the same basic structures. The framework's different. Obviously, you don't use things like tarot cards, creepy image cards, or what have you. You just change that, but I always ask my corporate clients too, what their level of comfort is. Every corporation has a different culture. Some are very straight laced, and some say, "No. I think that's awesome," and I also ask them, "Do I need to be G, PG, or R?"
I've had some say, "You can be X."
I'm like, "I don't do those kind of shows," or "I will if the price is right," but anyway.
Perry Carpenter:
Right.
Mason Amadeus:
Exactly.
Paul Prater:
No, I don't tend to do anything aside from maybe PG-13 at worst, but I clarify that with clients too, and that helps me decide what I'm going to present. Obviously, it's what the client wants if they're paying. Now, if it's my show, I do what I want, and people are paying to come see me, and that's a whole different thing. All of my performances that I do, that I put on are absolutely in the bizarre magic realm, but they're still fun. There is still humor in them. It's very audience engaged. Members participate in every routine I do, literally every one. The very first full stage show I presented was a mix of magic and sideshow.
So in that show, I would lift an anvil with my teeth and swing it around. I would do the human blockhead, hammering the nail into the nose. I did bed of nails, built my own, and lay on that, have someone stand on me. Then, I also did hand an animal trap, which is another one of those old sideshow bits. I did it, partially, just because it interests me. I thought it was fascinating as a kid. I still remember, it was crazy. There was an empty field, and they set up a canvas, old style circus, and there were carney's, and Tiny Tim played Tiptoe Through the Tulips. It was so weird. It just left a really strong impression on me, and I wanted to learn how those people did those things.
Perry Carpenter:
Let's talk about the ghost tours. I want to talk about the mindset of somebody that decides to go to a ghost tour. In folklore, there's this concept called legend tripping, which is you've heard about interesting stories or phenomena and, almost as a rite of passage, you decide to go participate in it, maybe because somebody dared you…

You know, those things that we used to do in high school. Somebody would say, "There's an abandoned asylum on this hill, and if anybody goes in at 3:00 AM on a third Tuesday of the month, they're going to die. They never return." Then, everybody turns it into a dare type of thing. I think that haunted tours kind of serve that function for grown adults in a lot of ways, as you get to still participate in some of those things. As you've seen the types of people that come on these, year after year, are there any things that they've shared with you about what they're hoping to see, what they want to experience with other people, or just with the environment?
Paul Prater:
Yeah. It's pretty clear. There's basically two groups that come on the tours. You have the ghost people, who are the believers, who hope to see something, and you have the people who are there, just like, "Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. We understand this is all just in good fun." And so I specifically cater to both of those groups on the tour. It's built that way, so we make it fun right off the bat. I cater to them, and I say that, right at the beginning, I'm an attorney. I don't say that for the purpose of getting business though, "Look me up if you need a good lawyer." I say that, because it means I'm a skeptic, and it means, "I've dug in and learned the history behind these stories, and I'm going to share that history with you tonight. This is not made up. These are the true stories. This is the real history."
Mason Amadeus:
So what is a typical ghost tour like? What's the balance between ghost stories versus history? How does it all come together?
Paul Prater:
I'll start by saying, I started the tours because a friend of mine, Ed Underwood, had started tours in Jonesboro, ghost tours in Jonesboro. He had asked me to take over, this was 15 years ago, and I told him I just had no interest. He was a performer as well. That's how we met, and he pretty much talked me into it, and I loved it.
The way it started, actually, and I tell this story on the tour, is one of the stops, we were sitting at this bar, me and the owner, and he looks up at this window and goes, "People say they see a ghost up there," and it hit me, if there's one story, there has to be more stories. There's not just one ghost, so I went to the History Commission, and they were super helpful.
The historian there already had an interest in this, so he had ghost stories for me already. He had histories for me. He had photos for me. So he was really, really helpful. One of my favorite stories, they're not all ghost stories, and to answer that question about the split, it's much more history than it is ghost stories. One of the reviews I got this year said, it was still a five-star review, so I'm happy, he goes, "The stories might not be as creepy as you want, but I sure learned a lot." The history component is very big, and I say at the beginning, we're going to talk about the history, but you can't talk about the history without talking about the ghosts, because those stories are wrapped up in history. They're part of it.
I think, though, maybe my favorite story on the tour is the one I end with, and I don't want to give too much of it away. It's a place called Four Quarter, and it's very well written about. I mean, any listener could actually Google Four Quarter Bar and haunted in Arkansas, and they're going to find the stories. The part I'm not going to give away, but I'll hint at is I tear apart that story, and people are like, "Oh, man. Really? That doesn't hold water," but then I tell them about all of the unexplainable stuff that's happened there, and I am a skeptic, and I've experienced unexplainable stuff in that building. One of the best stories about it is one of the bartenders was there at 10 o'clock in the morning. He was just putting in a water heater.
They weren't even open yet, and he heard this crash and he went out to the bar. The bar top, the very top of it's probably 12 foot high, and there's a pot still behind beer cans, and that pot still is at the front edge of the bar in the ice bin, so it didn't just fall. It flew forward, and it didn't disturb any of the beer cans. Then, I tell this story, and people are like, "Wow, that's weird," and the best part of it is they have a video camera pointing down the bar. The bar owner pulled the video, and I show that to everyone on the tour. It is totally unexplainable. That's my favorite story, because I tell the story that everyone knows, and then tear it apart and then go, "But something's going on here. I don't know what," and I really love that because, again, that plays to both the believers and the non-believers.
Perry Carpenter:
I love that. Have you gone on the Haunted tour at the Crescent Hotel or any other ones?
Paul Prater:
I have.
Perry Carpenter:
What do you experience, as somebody who has done these yourself and then goes on other ones? What's the compare and contrast in your mind?
Paul Prater:
The biggest one is just the guide. I mean, you're a personality, and you're a storyteller. If you're not a good storyteller, then the tour just isn't that great. That's part of the fun, to me, with this. That is the illusion part, if there is one on the tour, is that I'm having people look at these buildings, and I have a flip book of what they looked like in the past. So I'm really trying to get people to be present in a place and time, and be able to envision what it was like. Now, in the Crescent, for instance, it's a little bit easier because it looks like what it always looked like. It's a creepy, old. Victorian hotel, so you're present in that place and time automatically, but I also know the guy who started those, and he's a theater guy. He always has theatrical people or theater people, and that, to me, is the key to having a good ghost tour.
Perry Carpenter:
As you think about just the topic of legend, is there a favorite legend or urban legend that really resonated with you?
Paul Prater:
There is, but it's something more recent, and I'll explain why. It came about through the ghost tours when I was doing the research for them, because I wrote a book too. I've got a Haunted Argenta book that has all the stories, but I did my research through archives and old newspapers, and I found this legend that there was a werewolf in North Little Rock, not far from where we do the ghost tours. Now, when I read more about it and found what I could, people claimed, on multiple occasions, to see this shaggy, hairy man walking kind of wolf-like down into the swamps.
There used to be swamps at the base of Park Hill area of North Little Rock. They would tell their kids not to go down there, because the werewolf might get them, but in reality, I think it's probably because the swamps are inherently dangerous. So by using the werewolf story, you keep the kids out of danger, but where it got super interesting to me is I found another story where they said the werewolf had murdered someone. I started going down this path, and I found, within a period of about 15 years, three people were murdered in the same way, and their bodies dumped at almost the same location.
I took that to the History Commission and said, "Have you guys ever found this or recognized this?"
The answer was, "No. We think you probably found a serial killer."
Perry Carpenter:
Wow.
Paul Prater:
And that was really exciting that that tied in, that the werewolf story is what set me down that path. And totally coincidentally, one of my best friends, I was talking to him about this, about the book while I was writing it, and I was telling him this story, and I said, "Yeah. Well, this is the first girl that was killed, was named Florence Shillcutt
He went, "That's my family." He goes, "That's my mom's side of the family."
Perry Carpenter:
Oh.
Mason Amadeus:
That is wild.
Paul Prater:
Yeah. I love the whole story, first of all, about just the werewolf and trying to keep the kids out of the swamps, but then when it tied into the murders and I found the three different murders.
Perry Carpenter:
Has there been any follow up after that?
Paul Prater:
I wrote it all up in the book, as the Werewolf of Cherry Hill, and wrote about those murders, but they were so long ago. I don't really know how they would tie anybody for sure. It was very hard to find much information about them, aside from the newspapers back then loved to report like, "Oh. The neck was cut open, and the body was ravaged," or whatever. But as far as follow up, arrest, or anyone tried, they didn't write about that. It wasn't sensationalist, so it's often hard to find the follow-ups to stories, like what happened at the end after this horrible thing.
Perry Carpenter:
All right, so this is a call-out to anybody that wants to start the next true crime podcast.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, right?
Paul Prater:
There you go.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. The next Bear Brook.
Perry Carpenter:
The Werewolf of Cherry Hill. Somebody should do a series on that and investigate it.
Paul Prater:
Yeah. I've got the start of it.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
So you've really dug up the root of this legend, and I'm always fascinated how these stories change as they get told, and also just storytelling in general, like oral tradition is fascinating. I got to speak once to someone who's a professional storyteller. We didn't get to talk shop much, but that's pretty close to what you are doing, right? There's a lot of ties to oral tradition. Do you sort of think of your work that way?
Paul Prater:
Oh, yeah. I love it, and I think part of that is, growing up, my dad's family lived in a place called Greasy Creek, Kentucky, and you didn't really have good TV signal. There was really nothing to do out there. We would sit on the front porch and listen to the old folks tell stories. I think that really just hit me. That was awesome. That was so foreign. This was the 80s, but yet they still had an outhouse, and you'd have to draw water out of the well to take a bath. It was so primitive and weird, and I loved it, but the storytelling was a big part of that. Stories are hugely important. I think that's our most primitive form of entertainment, and it's still a valid form of entertainment even today, and that's awesome. With all of our technology, nothing can replace a good story.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, and one of the things that we're really enjoy seeing is how people take that legacy of storytelling, and then apply technology to that, or let technology transform that into new patterns of storytelling.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. It's all the same stuff, just a different way of getting the stories out.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, and at scale, internet scale.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah.
Paul Prater:
Wow. Look at the time. Well, fellas, I've had a good time talking, but I have another engagement I have to go to. There are folks a-waiting for a tour, so come out and see me sometime, if you can make it.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for chatting with us. That was really cool.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, thanks.
Paul Prater:
You bet.
Perry Carpenter:
That was super cool. Paul's a really cool guy.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, right? And he had some wicked, fascinating stories, like that urban legend ultimately turning up the evidence of a serial killer?
Perry Carpenter:
I know, right? That's super, super wild. I think it's really interesting to see how much history dovetails into these ghost tours. It's a mini legend trip in and of itself. It's like this way of engaging with the past of a place.
Mason Amadeus:
Hey! Ouija board!
Perry Carpenter:
Excellent.
Mason Amadeus:
That's the grave.
Perry Carpenter:
I'm going to get the tripod set up, and I got a really, really, really big planchette that I'm going to try to set up too.
Mason Amadeus:
Awesome. I think these four shots came out great. These ones?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, those are probably good. Yeah, I think once we put them through a little bit of post-processing, make them look even spookier. They're going to be pretty awesome,
Mason Amadeus:
Man, I wish I brought Digby. He loves walking around cemeteries. Well, I got him one of those little cat harnesses and, weirdly, he loves it. The little guy's great on walks.
[Sounds of Perry and Mason getting back in the van to drive home]
Perry Carpenter:
We seem to attract enough attention from interesting strangers without you walking around with a raccoon on a leash.
Mason Amadeus:
I think maybe it's because I have the vibe of someone who would do that?
Perry Carpenter:
Maybe. No, I'm not complaining. Meeting Paul was great. Oh, that reminds me. There was somebody that I wanted to interview for the podcast.

[Van starts]
Mason Amadeus:
Oh?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. I mean, I thought maybe we could do it while we're on the road?
Mason Amadeus:
With what equipment? I didn't bring anything.
Perry Carpenter:
You've not seen, you've not noticed? The van is rigged for sound.
Mason Amadeus:
Excuse me?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. This whole thing is mic'd up all over with primo mics.
Mason Amadeus:
What? Dude, I'm a little bit concerned about the origins of this van. Where did you find this?
Perry Carpenter:
Craigslist. And don't ask about the origins. The less you know, the better.
Mason Amadeus:
Sounds right.
Perry Carpenter:
Anyways, while I was researching folklore programs, I found this one at George Mason University, and I met a student there named Betty Aquino, and so…
(Perry clears his throat and begins speaking in ‘broadcast voice’)

And so I wanted to reach out to her and interview her for this show. She recently won an award from the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research for documenting an urban legend as it literally unfolded around her.
But right now, I want to talk to her about some of the ghost tours that she's run, because she's very into that as well, and she also has this really cool story about The Bunny Man.
Mason Amadeus:
Why are you full podcast mode all of a sudden? You're being weird.
Perry Carpenter:
The mics. Remember, there's mics everywhere in this, and so I figure we record-
Mason Amadeus:
Oh, you're already rolling.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. We're rolling while we're rolling. That's the way that this van works.
Mason Amadeus:
Okay. That's really dumb.
Perry Carpenter:
It's not dumb. It's productivity-
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, but saying that is dumb, the way that sounds is dumb.
[Sound of phone ringing]
Perry Carpenter:
Shut up. I'm calling her now. Hey, Betty. It's Perry.
Mason Amadeus:
And Mason.
Perry Carpenter:
And Mason, and this is the Digital Folklore Podcast.
Betty Aquino:
Oh, cool.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. Is now a good time?
Betty Aquino:
Yeah, that sounds good.
Perry Carpenter:
Excellent. Why don't we give you a really clean introduction and get your name, who you are, and then we'll dive in?
Betty Aquino:
Yeah, absolutely! My name is Betty Aquino. I am a graduate student in the George Mason University Folklore Program, which is in Fairfax, Virginia. Next semester, I'll be wrapping up the thesis, but we've been very busy at Mason, coming out of a pandemic and trying to get back into our community. We hosted our very first Legends & Lore Walking Tour of campus. We've done a lot of great online and in-person events to try and welcome more people to our folklore community, let them know that we have folklore classes at Mason, and you can even get a degree in folklore at Mason. We're really connected with the larger community here in DC as well.
Perry Carpenter:
For you, what makes folklore significant, and what was your journey into it?
Betty Aquino:
My journey into folklore was really accidental. I actually have an undergraduate degree in theater and arts management. I spent a number of years doing theater in Michigan and kind of live entertainment, so I did some work with the Michigan Shakespeare Festival. I was really involved in a haunted house attraction while I was up there as well. Then, from there, I kind of transitioned into marketing because I needed something that was a little more nine to five. I worked from home pre-pandemic, and I remember I would just put the TV on in the background while I worked, just to have some white noise.
And I just happened to look up one day, and they were interviewing a folklorist. I didn't know that that could be your title, so I went down this Google search hole of, "Okay. Folklorist. What do I do? How do I do that?" And I, lo and behold, live 10 minutes from George Mason University; however, ironically, it was during peak pandemic. Everybody was online, so I was so close, yet so far away from the program. I sent some emails to the program. I looked online, and I saw what their alumni were doing, and decided, "You know what? I think this could be a really good fit for me," so I was able to apply from there. I was accepted. I quit my job.
Perry Carpenter:
Wow.
Betty Aquino:
... And started the program in January of 2021, so I'm still pretty new to this program, pretty new to folklore, but it feels like the right place to be, for me.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. So when you talk about the interdisciplinary nature of folklore, which intersections do you like to explore?
Betty Aquino:
Yeah, so I would definitely argue that my background in theater influences a lot of how I look at folklore. I definitely have an interest in performance, and also understanding that performance is not merely putting on a character to perform. It's how we perform in different roles, in different folk groups, how we perform online, how we perform in these different spaces. While I'm not someone who dabbles at a lot of material culture, I think I have an interest for the way we use objects, as I mostly worked in props.
So I did a lot of design work with props, and it was something that I really put a lot of work into. It was something that I felt was really important to give actors objects that they could create kind of emotional connections to, and that's something that we do as people in our everyday lives. We have a favorite coffee cup, a favorite blanket, a favorite pair of sneakers that we wear. There's a lot of really interesting stuff out there with material culture, with folk art that just really resonates me with me when I see it. Maybe I'll, one day, be able to explore those two worlds together a little bit more, and I hope to one day as well, but right now, I'm mostly working on a lot of narrative things, as a graduate student.
Perry Carpenter:
You mentioned, and I've seen this too, as I follow the GMU social media, kind of the love for all things contemporary legend, to the point where you're also leading or working on haunted tours, doing legend trips, and all of that kind of stuff. Can you talk about what the tour experience is like and what you're hoping to get out of that? What are you wanting to impart? What's the experience like?
Betty Aquino:
Yeah, absolutely. With our Legends & Lore Tour, to my knowledge, there's a couple of other universities out there that kind of have their folklore departments kind of do something very similar. I wanted to set up a Legends & Lore Tour. I wanted to engage a larger part of our university community that might not know who we are, but have an interest in folklore, and maybe from that kind of supernatural angle. We did one last spring to the Bunny Man bridge, and it was great fun, but it was a smaller group.
This semester, we actually visited the Exorcist stairs in DC and a couple of other haunted spots in DC, so kind of talking about belief, curses, and how that all kind of ties together with the supernatural. We've also done some hiking with our outdoor adventures program here as well, visiting a spot that is supposedly home to a vanishing hitchhiker ghost. So really just, not only being interdisciplinary as folklore, but being kind of interdisciplinary within our university as well. Not only was it about urban legends and campus legends, but also looking at the rituals and traditions of a college campus, and college campuses are just rife with these kinds of things.
Perry Carpenter:
Before we get too lost in the weeds, I would love to have you talk about the Bunny Man, because I think that'll be fun to hear your perspective on.
Betty Aquino:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I grew up between Virginia and Michigan, so I've got a lot of places I call home between these two states. Really, I think the first big contemporary legend that I remember hearing as a kid was the Bunny Man. The version that I heard was that there was an old mental institution in Northern Virginia somewhere. They didn't provide an exact location, and there was some schools being built in the area, some neighborhoods being built up in the area. The people coming in decided, "We don't want to live near this. We don't feel safe here," so they decided that they were going to move all of the inhabitants of the mental institution elsewhere. One of the last buses to leave the institution to go wherever else, and they never say where it's going to, the bus crashed and three men escaped.
Weeks and weeks and weeks go by, and in one week, they end up finding one guy, and he's been killed. It kind of looks like maybe he's been attacked by something. The next week, they end up finding the other guy. Again, it's the same situation. He looks like he's been attacked by something, maybe bitten. So they realize, "Okay. Now we're only missing one," and again, weeks go by, and they kind of think, "Okay. Maybe this guy is just succumbed to the elements at this point. It's not our problem anymore." A year later, they start to find all of these bunny carcasses in this area near a train overpass, so they keep finding all these bunny carcasses that look like they've been eaten by something, and they don't know what it is. Maybe it's a bear. Maybe it's some sort of mountain lion. They don't know what it is, but they keep finding all of these carcasses.
Around Halloween that year, a bunch of teenagers went out to that bridge, because they're like, "You know what? It's that escaped patient from the mental asylum. That's the guy who's eating all of the bunnies," rumors that he lives out here. They go out in search for this Bunny Man, as he's known. Those teenagers who went out searching November 1st, they're all found dead at Bunny Man Bridge. A pretty interesting urban legend, legend trip for teenagers for a long time. Actually, a Fairfax County librarian, he did this really great deep dive into the possibilities of how Bunny Man came to be. He found a bunch of different news stories, cited like, "Okay, so here's a murder from 1896," and he kind of puzzle pieced all of these different stories together that might have created the tapestry that's known as the Bunny Man.
Perry Carpenter:
I love that. From a folklorist perspective, when you encounter things like ghost stories or urban legends, how do you maybe disengage a certain part of your personality, where you may want to go into debunking mode, and just appreciate the piece of lore for what it is? How do you balance that? I know that there are some things where I would want to jump in and go, "Well, the origin of that is this," but that's not really the point, right?
Betty Aquino:
I think it's an interesting question to ask, and I think, as a folklorist, there's been a number of times where I've kind of ruined my own favorite ghost stories, but it's important to contextualize these things, especially if we understand that the legend might be rooted in some kind of harmful tropes or being used to create a cultural other. I think there are plenty of fun ghost stories out there that aren't essentially harmful, but I think, unfortunately, a lot of our ghost stories and a lot of our contemporary legends are kind of rooted in these isms, this racism, sexism, transphobia, things of that nature.
I think, without this curiosity, without this enjoyment of these legends, we wouldn't have folklorists. We wouldn't have people interested in studying the discipline, and once that person gets into the discipline, and they can understand how to contextualize it, my hope would be that they continue with it and continue to understand that, while this legend was something that might have scared me and a legend that I told constantly, as a kid or as an adult, because I thought it was so creepy, understanding that there is sometimes a context there that can be harmful to other people.

[Betty’s last line ends in trailing reverb… it’s obvious that time has passed]
[Sound of van pulling in, stopping, and shutting off at Mason’s house]
Perry Carpenter:
Well, here you are.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Thanks, man. This was fun.
Perry Carpenter:
See, I knew it would be, even though you were a little bit cranky at the end.
Mason Amadeus:
Never wake me up at 4:00 AM again.
Perry Carpenter:
But wasn't it worth it in the end?
Mason Amadeus:
Perry, Perry. What time is it?
Perry Carpenter:
When?
Mason Amadeus:
Right now?
Perry Carpenter:
10:31.
Mason Amadeus:
10:31, what?
Perry Carpenter:
AM?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. See, this whole thing did not need to start at four in the freaking morning.
Perry Carpenter:
But you have to agree, it doesn't feel like a real adventure unless it's dark when you leave.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Okay, fine. I'm going back to bed.
Perry Carpenter:
What?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, dude. I'm exhausted.
Perry Carpenter:
Look at it this way. It's early enough that you can go crash out for a couple of hours, and then wake up and you've still got a big chunk of the day ahead.
Mason Amadeus:
I'm not saying that it wasn't worth it, okay. It was fun, but I'm tired, okay? What are you going to go do?
Perry Carpenter:
I've got an appointment to get the van painted and wrapped. It's like in an hour.
Mason Amadeus:
What? When did you make that appointment?
Perry Carpenter:
Last night, like right after I got the van. It's the only slot that they had open.
Mason Amadeus:
You have the weirdest sense of timing of anybody I've ever met.
Perry Carpenter:
Ah, thanks!
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, okay. Have a good one, Perry. Thanks for driving.
Perry Carpenter:
No problem. Yeah.

[sounds of Mason walking to his front door… muttering]
Mason Amadeus:
I wonder how bad Digby messed the place up while I was gone…
Oh my God!! Oh my God!!
[Sound of phone ringing]
(urgently)

Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on.
Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up.
Perry Carpenter (voicemail box):
Hello. You've reached the voice mailbox of Perry Carpenter. Leave me a message, and I'll get back to you.
Mason Amadeus:
Oh, come on.

[Ringing as Perry calls Mason back]
Oh. Oh. Hello?
Perry Carpenter:
Hey, Mason. Did you just call me?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, Perry. Okay.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Don't freak out. Don't do anything. Keep driving normal. There is a person on the roof of your van.
Perry Carpenter:
What?
Mason Amadeus:
I can see them right now. As you're driving away, there's a person on the roof of your van, and I know everything we just said. I swear to God, they have a hook for a hand.
Perry Carpenter (calm, yet frustrated):
Ah, jeez. Not again. Hang on.
Mason Amadeus:
Did you say again?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. Hang on.

[sounds of van making evasive maneuvers… thuds]
[sound of van backing up… more thuds]
Mason Amadeus:
What? Oh. Oh my God. Dude.
Ooooh!!!
Perry Carpenter:
Problem solved.
Mason Amadeus:
Dude.
Perry Carpenter:
Close your blinds. People will be by soon.

[Sound of the van driving away]
[Transition to ending credits – theme song plays]
Perry Carpenter:
Thanks for listening to Digital Folklore. If you’d like to come hang out with us, check out our Discord server. We’ve got a link for you in the show notes.
Mason Amadeus:
A special thanks to our voice actors for this episode. Eric Gray was the voice of Art Chime on the Radio.
Eric is the host of the podcast Dumb People with Terrible Ideas, which is phenomenal. It’s like if the movie trailer guy got a PhD in economics and then went to open mic night at The Comedy Store. It’s great. And you can find it at EricExplains.com.
Perry Carpenter:
Ruben Basulto was the voice of the Moon Man Dad caller. Ruben is a voice actor who you can hire for your own projects. Find Ruben at https://www.tiktok.com/@hike.knight.
Mason Amadeus:
And thank you to our interview guests for this episode. Mark Muncy is the bestselling author of Eerie Florida and other fantastic books on local legends and stories. Find more of Mark's work at EerieFlorida.com.
Perry Carpenter:
Paul Prater is a professional entertainer, for a wide variety of clients from small personal evenings to corporate events. Find more about Paul at PaulPrater.com.
Mason Amadeus:
And Betty Aquino is a graduate student at George Mason university, which has an amazing folklore program. If you're interested in studying folklore, you should check out what they have to offer at GMU.edu.
Perry Carpenter:
Also, if you like Digital Folklore, you should consider joining our Patreon at patreon.com/digitalfolklore. Digital Folklore is a production of 8th Layer Media, and distributed by Realm.
Thanks for listening.

[Theme song ends – transition to post credits scene]
Perry Carpenter
Yeah. Put me through to Carl
Oops-a-knife Services Customer Rep:
[inaudible].
Perry Carpenter
We've got a cleanup situation. Mason's house.
Oops-a-knife Services Customer Rep:
[inaudible].
Perry Carpenter
Yeah. Make it quick.
Click to download a fully formatted PDF version of this episode’s transcript.

See for Yourself

Perry picks up Mason from his house at 4:00am (yes... four in the freaking morning) for a road trip out to the gravesite of Elijah Bond - inventor of the Ouija Board. On the way, they encounter quite a few remarkable folks with stories to tell...

Content Warnings:

Because of dynamically inserted ads, timestamps would be inaccurate. Here's how to avoid potentially triggering content:

Suffocation: in the Hoosac Tunnel story, when you hear us talk about the "Central Shaft", skip ahead ~4 minutes.
Racially motivated violence: When you hear the phrase "Mini Lights", skip ahead ~3 minutes.

In this episode:

An opening retelling of the classic "Hook Hand Man" urban legend.
A short retelling of the history of the Hoosac Tunnel, and how Mason paid it a visit.
What it means to get to the origin of local legends, and exploration of how they change over time and the purposes they serve.
A discussion with a professional ghost tour guide.
Discussion around the importance of studying urban legends, and a retelling of the Bunny Man legend.

Guests:

Mark Muncy, author of the bestselling book Eerie Florida and other compilations of local legends.
Paul Prater, multifaceted entertainer and ghost tour guide.
Betty Aquino, a graduate student in the folklore program at George Mason University.

Featuring voice acting from:

GennaRose Nethercott told our opening story of the Hook Hand Man. GennaRose is a an author, poet, folklorist, and an associate producer and researcher for the highly acclaimed Lore podcast.
Eric Gray was the voice of AM radio host Bart Chime. Eric creates the podcast "Dumb People with Terrible Ideas" which is a hilarious, pun-filled teardown of hubris - all delivered in his iconic voice. Mason's personal favorite episode is this one about FM radio.
Ruben Basalto was the "Moon Man Dad Caller" at the beginning of the AM radio show. Ruben is a voice actor who you can hire for your next project!