The Monster Missive: Sn. 21 Ep. 3 & Sn. 21 Ep. 4 (Patreon)

Our weekly newsletter, brought to you by MAU team members, Delainey Bowers and Conor Ryan, every Friday.

-Show Notes Spotlight-

A more in-depth look at some of the research covered in this week's Tuesday and Thursday episodes.

It’s once again Friday, the single day each week where Derek lets us out of HQ to remember what sunlight feels like before calling us back to work with that ancient death whistle he picked up on his last trip south across the border. And it’s also the day we get another chance to share a deeper dive into our research for the episodes each week!

Now, before everyone on the team was pulled from our old bodies through a mysterious wizard’s curse and settled into our new roles as part of the MAU crew, one of us owned a record store. While we won’t disclose who that was (you’ll have to ask the old wizard himself about it), we can tell you they sure were excited to hear Hannah’s call on Thursday’s episode about a haunted record player!

As it turns out, Hannah isn’t the only one who has had a secret ghost roommate that finally demanded the aux cord. First, as told by NPR, there’s the case of Layman Brewing in Milwaukee, a century-old bar in Milwaukee that’s home to a Sears Zenith model radio which is supposedly haunted by a former owner, Joe Sarich. According to legend, Joe and his wife, Sarah, would end the night by dancing to the same slow song on the radio. Workers at the bar claimed to have experienced cold spots, flickering lights, and the radio turning on by itself only to play Joe and Sarah’s song. 

Then, Springfield News-Leader covered the story of a haunted Jukebox. In 2018, Richard Loban, an avid electronics collector from Arkansas, purchased a 1954 Seeburg Model HF100R jukebox. According to the jukebox’s previous owner, the piece of equipment was used on a TV mini-series produced by Rod Serling. In one of the episodes, the jukebox plays the same song over and over again. Loban claims the jukebox has done the exact same thing, only in real life. The jukebox starts on its own, plays the same song featured in the television series on repeat, and continues until Loban has to turn it off manually. What’s even eerier is that Loban had been unaware of the provenance of the jukebox. When he finally watched the episode, he realized that he placed the song, ‘If You Leave Me Tonight I Will Cry’ in the same exact slot (G-5) on the jukebox that the character in the show tried to punch in to play that same exact song! So maybe Mr. Serling really was tapped into the twilight zone while writing that script…

Now this isn’t close to the only haunted jukebox. Another famous example is a jukebox located at Earnestine and Hazel’s, a bar in Memphis, Tennessee. It’s known for cutting on at peculiar times, especially to play a song about the current topic of conversation amongst patrons. Per Southern Spirit Guide, 

“Another time a group of friends celebrating a woman’s divorce were greeted by the jukebox blaring Tammy Wynette’s ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’. Some time later a paranormal investigator was discussing exorcisms and the jukebox cheekily piped up from the corner with the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’”

In fact, it seems as though spirits have been fascinated with recorded music for as long as it’s existed. In the May 16, 1891 edition of The Morning Star (Washington, D.C.) there’s an article about mediums who conducted intimate seances around town at the time used wax cylinders and phonographs to record and share messages from the departed. 

“Some of the voices are recorded with marvellous distinctness. The messages are all on about the same level as the usual spirit message. One spirit said it was like talking into an empty barrel to speak into the phonograph horn. The phonograph experiment was tried because the spirits themselves, according to the statements made to The Star reporter, clamored for it.”

Then, there’s the case of a Victrola record where the songs that were originally on it apparently switched sides. You can read about that more below from this article in the August 29, 1937 edition of The Johnson City Chronicle (Johnson City, TN). Some might read the article below and say it was just a slow news day, but we here at MAU absolutely believe old Ferry Chatman.

Before we close out our “spooky sounds” section, we have to turn our attention to Carla’s call from Thursday’s episode in which she experienced disembodied child’s laughter outside the bedroom door of a home in Germany she was staying at. If you’re looking for something lighthearted and totally not terrifying to listen to right before bed, we’ve gathered this list of a few EVPs of disembodied laughter for you!

“Child's laughter heard during EVP session at historic SA home” (KSAT12 – San Antonio)

“LOUD Disembodied Laugh Caught On Both Cameras” (Mein Haunted) From a March 1, 2019 home security camera recording. 

“EVP: Old Miner Laugh” (FullTechParanormal) From an investigation conducted by the Full Tech Paranormal team based out of Riverside, California at a former mining property in Wine Valley. Laugh at [00:23].

“Flinderation Tunnel: disembodied laughter” (Valarie Myers) According to the video, this EVP was captured halfway through Flinderation Tunnel near Salem, West Virginia.

“Beattie Mansion Best Disembodied Laugh” (Restless Spirits Para Research) From a 2024 investigation by the Restless Spirits Paranormal Research team at the Beattie Mansion in St. Joseph Missouri. Laugh at [00:21].

“Old Geelong Gaol disembodied laugh” (Damian Fraser) From a former maximum security prison in Victoria, Australia that operated from 1853 until 1991. Laughter at [00:28].

Huh, all the ghost at our HQ does when we tell jokes is slam the door. Now that we’re thinking about it…maybe that was just Derek wandering around in his casual wear again.

On Thursday’s show we also got to hear a call from an area of the country that - as we touched on in the episode - is most famous for The Flatwoods Monster. Nate from Braxton County, WV told of mysterious lights on a ridge that his grandfather told him about as a kid, as well as some otherworldly classical music that would sometimes filter into his grandparent’s home. 

Possibly because of the fame of Braxie flooding the search results, we had a hard time digging up any local lore relating to disembodied music or lights along a ridge. However, we did stumble upon this post by the photographer Samuel Taylor, who wrote about some recent hikes he has been on in West Virginia, 

“Lately, it’s been lights. Strange lights, green lights, in places with no roads or houses.  Lights that don’t look like campfires or headlamps, but have a hue to them that is so compelling that I’ve felt compelled to try to walk to them, through the dark even though it makes no sense. 

This image [below] from a recent trip that took us along that old-old Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike, and past a long-forgotten Civil War Battlefield on our way to camp. These lights were not as bright to the naked eye, but a long exposure in the dark revealed this.”

The Turnpike is about two hours from where our caller’s grandfather’s sighting took place. To our eyes, this long exposure photo looks just like foxfire. If you’re unfamiliar with this phenomenon, according to Wikipedia,“Foxfire is the bioluminescence created by some species of fungi present in decaying wood. It occurs in a number of species, including Panellus stipticus, Omphalotus olearius and Omphalotus nidiformis. The bluish-green glow is attributed to luciferin, which emits light after oxidation catalyzed by the enzyme luciferase. Some believe that the light attracts insects to spread spores, or acts as a warning to hungry animals, like the bright colors exhibited by some poisonous or unpalatable animal species. Although generally very dim, in some cases foxfire is bright enough to read by.”

So although the foxfire isn’t paranormal per-se, it’s still pretty darn cool!

Moving our attention to the southwest, a caller in Arizona on Thursday’s show reported a run-in with an entity that had a skinny neck that was seen waving its long arms outside the caller’s window. They seem to be popping up more and more on the show, but the first thing that came to our minds was that this was yet another sighting of a pale crawler. We referenced one of our favorite resources, the Crawler Sightings map, and there was one sighting in Phoenix, AZ but unfortunately there was no story accompanying the data point. And that’s when we stumbled across the case of The Sitgreaves Humanoids. According to this article from Headcount Media,

“Sitgreaves National Forest, a dense stretch of pine, canyon, and volcanic plateau in eastern Arizona, has long been associated with strange lights and unexplained events. But among the most enduring and unnerving reports in the region are sightings of tall, thin humanoid figures moving silently through the trees. These encounters, many from hunters, campers, and Forest Service employees, share enough detail and consistency to form a pattern that has persisted for decades.

The earliest widely cited account dates to the late 1970s, when a pair of elk hunters near Heber reported seeing a ‘man-shaped figure’ step out from behind a ponderosa pine at dusk. The hunters estimated the figure to be over seven feet tall, extremely thin, and moving with what they described as “perfectly smooth” strides. It walked upright but with an unusual gait, its arms hanging unnaturally long. When the hunters shouted toward it, the figure turned its head, but the face…had no distinguishable features. The figure vanished into the trees…

Perhaps the most disturbing accounts come from drivers along Highway 260. Multiple motorists reported seeing a tall, pale humanoid run across the road late at night — not in a staggered, animal-like movement, but in long, swift strides that covered distance far faster than any person could. One truck driver described it as ‘a silhouette stretched tall, like someone pulled vertically.’

In one of the most detailed encounters, a group of friends camping near Willow Springs Lake in the early 2010s reported waking to the sound of footsteps circling their tent…When one witness peeked out, he saw a tall figure standing between two trees, its body narrow and motionless except for slight head movements. The witness described the torso as too long, the limbs too thin, ‘like someone who had never eaten a meal.’”

Full disclosure here, the sources cited at the bottom of that article are pretty vague, so although that story is compelling you might do well to be a bit skeptical of it. Another Arizona sighting we were able to dig up comes from Phantoms and Monsters,

“In 2015 I took a trip through northern Arizona (I live in Phoenix) hiking, taking photos, and enjoying nature. At one location it was late so I decided to park for a few hours or spend the night in my truck. I had the truck turned off, with the window down. There was a huge full moon in the sky behind me, I was looking at it in my outside rearview mirror.

Then this 'being' walked from my left to my right, about 4-6 feet behind the tail of my truck. It stopped and looked at me. It was about 8 feet tall, very skinny, with long arms with the elbow lower than ours would be. The neck was about a foot long, pointing forward a bit, oval head, and what looked like a 4-foot tube extending from the jaw down forward, almost like a very long beard coming to a point. The moon was behind it so I saw it in silhouette. It walked very slowly like it was struggling to move. I tried to roll up my window but the truck was off. Slowly it slightly turned its shoulders and that long freakish neck [toward me]. The face looking right at me. It looked so skinny I figured it was hungry. I had my hand on the keys, if it came towards me I'd turn the truck on, roll up the window and take off.  The head turned back forward and it walked on. I waited a minute then started the truck and took off.”

So next time you’re driving through the desert at night, it might be a good idea to keep your eyes on a swivel. After all, you don’t want to be the one to find out a pale crawler’s favorite food is people.

One of the more unusual calls that we aired this week was Josh’s story from Thursday’s episode about a patient of his who one day had a gaping hole in his ear, only for it to be completely healed the very next day. While it may sound like a complete impossibility, we stumbled upon a few published scientific studies that seem to document just this kind of rapid wound healing. The first one was published in the Summer 2001 issue of a journal titled Advances in Mind Body Medicine. In summary, 

“This paper examines in a Western medical setting the claim made by a Middle Eastern school of Sufism that its members can attain unusually rapid wound healing from deliberately caused bodily damage. The demonstration involved a Sufi practitioner inserting an unsterilized metal skewer through one side of the cheek area of the face (lateral buccal) and out through the other side. The insertion was observed by Western scientists. The left facial puncture healed within 2 minutes; the right facial puncture was three-quarters healed after 8 hours. According to the practitioner, the piercing was not associated with subjective pain.”

Then, there’s this manuscript published in 2011, which includes a chapter titled “Sufism and Healing.” The fact that it’s repeatable is bananas. Here’s some more info, 

“Some spiritual traditions, such as a particular school of Sufism, maintain that through immediate contact with the Divine bodily damage may not do harm and any wounds can heal rapidly. During such rituals the body is pierced and wounded by various objects, such as daggers, skewers, glass or razor blades. To investigate this claim extensive field documentations were conducted and a series of well controlled demonstrations under laboratory conditions. The observations and measurements seem to suggest the following: the rapid wound healing phenomenon after deliberate bodily damage is repeatable, even under laboratory conditions and outside the context of the religious ritual; there is clear evidence of penetration of tissue, but no evidence of pain, infection or other lasting damage; and the phenomenology do not seem to suggest that this phenomenon is a consequence of hypnosis.”

However, we’re not saying every instance of miracle healing is unquestionably real. In fact, there’s a long line of con artists who have tried to cash in on this very phenomenon. One of the more famous instances is the case of Gary and Terry Magno. According to the October 5th, 1993 edition of The Arizona Republic,

“A former Phoenix woman who fled Arizona after she and her husband were charged in 1986 with running a “psychic surgery” hoax on ill people pleaded guilty Monday to practicing medicine without a license. In entering the plea, Terry Lynn Magno, 37, admitted that her husband, Gary George Magno, used “sleight-of-hand tricks” to fool people into believing that he had removed tumors, kidney stones or other noxious body tissues…Gary Magno used vials of red fluid and packets of meat as props to make it appear that he had used his hands to remove the parts without making an incision.”

If you want to learn more about the scheme these fraudsters were running, or the wide world of psychic surgery in general, this segment from Unsolved Mysteries is a great place to start. And next time you meet with a doctor to prep for surgery, please make sure there aren’t any ketchup packets stashed around the room!

-Here There Be Headlines-

A round-up of bizarre, curious, head-scratching news stories that leave you saying "huh."

Well, we’re off to our maggot therapy session for this week! All this pesky decaying flesh isn’t going to remove itself…But until next week, here are a few strange stories to keep you scratching your head! Or is that just more dead skin?

“The Baffling Cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion”

“Paging Dr. Maggot!”

Mail order magic, you say?

“Open wide!

Haunted Historical Headline