S1 Ep27: The Scented Ghost

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The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter Office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter Office. Tonight's episode, The Scented Ghost. Well, this week's story takes us to Buffalo, New York, and listener Cheryl, who sent in a story of an experience in a seemingly ordinary apartment building. I should have let you read that for us like Rod Serling. But it involves a persistent, intensely localized floral scent and something far more unsettling. Yeah, I remember this story from the batch of Halloween submissions we got. Yeah, it came in in 2023. Yeah, and unfortunately it came in after the deadline. But we did read them all and we categorized them and we said like, this is pretty good. We're going to use this one day and here we are. But what I love is the description about it. And yeah, I remember the bullet points of the story and especially the little button at the end, as we like to call it. But we often hear about phantom scents in haunted locations and even not haunted locations or just it was grandma and her perfume. It's very distinctive. It's white shoulders or one of the classic older lady perfumes or something like that. I personally at Waverly, talked about this before, of course, smelled a scent of roses in a dank, water dripping kind of location there at Waverly, which was a part of that building is gutted. And so there's a there's a damp smell. Actually, it was in the morgue area. So not someplace you'd actually expect to smell something like roses, but somebody just said like, hey, can you smell that? And then it came my way. So it was kind of drifting through our group there. And I said, yes, roses. And they said, yes. So it was confirmed. Yeah. I don't think I was led to believe that or as people would say, it's like, well, you were, you know, you're in a hot location. You're expecting to smell something. It's like, I wasn't honestly thinking about roses. The scent of roses in the morgue area where it was just kind of a dank, not mildew, but there is a wet concrete, like an abandoned house kind of smell to it. So but here with the description, it's very, let's say, localized. I love that part of the description. Yeah. And it also reminds me of an episode we did a while back on the main show called The Flirting Ghosts of Norway that my friend Mark Brignone told a story about a scented ghost encounter that he had a hotel in Norway. Oh, yes. Mark's story is a favorite among our listeners. We still get comments about The Laughing Indian and The Flirting Ghosts of Norway. So that's one of my favorites. Also, one of the shortest main shows we ever did. I think The Laughing Indian is like 45 minutes. That's right. But it's a great story. In our early days, though, when we weren't out of control as much and now two hours long shows. Well, here, sir, I think it's your turn to read. This is my ghost story. It happened when I was 20, but made an encore a few decades later. It starts in Buffalo, New York. At the time, my boyfriend, Brian, lived in an apartment that sat over a block of commercial spaces on Elmwood Avenue. He was in the Coast Guard. I was taking time off from college. He asked me to move in. We were young and better drinking buddies than boyfriend-girlfriend, so I said sure. The apartment was a small, dated one-bedroom. It had multi-layers of paint over the tin walls, slightly warped floors, and a tiny galley kitchen with a pool chain to yank on the obscenely bright overhead light. The building had been built probably in the early 1900s, and the apartments reconfigured multiple times throughout the decades. But it worked for him, and I squeezed myself into it. I don't remember when it started. Maybe Brian half-jokingly told me his apartment was haunted, or maybe I started noticing things myself. What I do remember vividly was the perfume. It would happen in the living room when we were watching TV. He would be on one end of the long leather couch. I would be on the other. Then one of us would say, Oh, I smell it. Where? Wait a sec. It's coming. What I can describe only as a ball of floral fragrance would hit you. The scent was so thick that you could taste it. It was so specifically localized that even though we were only a few feet away from each other, we couldn't smell it at the same time. Then it would move off. Sometimes back the way it came from. Sometimes just dissipate. But it never evaporated like a normal scent. To me, it felt like a woman walking past us. We would laugh and say hello to the lady. Never made us feel scared or nervous. I was never frightened living there until one night. Being in the Coast Guard, Brian worked 12-hour shifts. Many times there were overnights, so I would be in the apartment alone with the cats. I slept with the bedroom door open so they could come in and out and not wake me up. This night, though, something did wake me up. Not a sound or a physical touch. I just woke up to a figure of a tall man standing in the bedroom doorway looking at me. The only light was that of the streetlights seeping in through the window blinds. The figure was blurry since I wear contacts or glasses and I was just out of a dead sleep. But there was a man standing in the doorway. I sat up in bed. Brian? The figure turned towards the living room and walked away. I called Brian's name a few more times with no response. Suddenly, I was awake enough to realize he was at work. He wouldn't be home until 6 a.m. It wasn't 6 a.m. If it was a person, a real person, I would hear them moving around, right? I didn't hear any noise from the other rooms. Then I realized the phone was in the living room. I couldn't even call for help if I wanted to without confronting whoever or whatever was out there. That's when the panic set in. I was trapped. There were windows in our bedroom, but we were on the second story. I could scream for help, but we were in downtown Buffalo in the middle of the night, and that would alert whoever was in the living room. So I did the only other thing I could think of, the cliché of all clichés. I pulled my comforter over my head as tight as I could while still being able to breathe, laid as still as possible, and started reciting every prayer I could conjure up from my Catholic upbringing. And one of those things worked because I made it through the night. I don't remember the details after. I know I told my boyfriend about it when he came home, but I forget his reaction. The relationship was one of those intense, volatile ones, so a lot of that time has been blocked out. I wish I remembered more besides the thick floral scent and the tall man, because I'm pretty sure more happened. But like I said in the beginning, this haunting has a fun postscript. I was at a wine tasting at Bellhurst Castle, another haunted location in the Finger Lakes of New York. Obviously, I was asking the woman giving us the tasting about the hauntings at Bellhurst, and in general. I mentioned how I had once lived in a haunted apartment in Buffalo, New York. She said she had moved here from Buffalo, New York, and lived in a creepy apartment there, too. So I had to ask, where? She said, well, I was on Elmwood. I lived on Elmwood. I used to work at Ambrosia's and lived across the street, kind of above Faherty's. Yeah, I was kind of above Faherty's. Now we were getting excited. I wanted to make sure it was the same place, so I asked. If you're looking at Faherty's, the door to the apartments is to the right? She replied, um, yeah, and you walk up the stairs, and there's a long, creepy green hallway. Yes, it was the same apartment building. So I guess the ghosts of Elmwood Avenue decided on one last hurrah and sent a crazy synchronicity into my life. As you boys say, everything is connected. Well, I'll tell you my favorite aspect of this story was the description. As I said before, you read this, that it was a localized ball of scent. Yeah. And so that's pretty unusual. Or was it like the Star Trek, you know, the transporter, where it was actually the scent was in the outline of the being or the lady. And, but you were smelling it. It had an edge to it. It has an envelope that you're actually getting. So it just comes on right away, goes away right away. And a person standing a few feet from you won't smell it at all. I love those descriptors. That is unusual. And it just adds a lot to the story, I think. So, like I said, my experience as we started talking about in the introduction was it just kind of drifted. It was like a cane that came on. It was a nebulous, amorphous. Wait, did someone else smell it? Or just you? Yeah. So when we were at, with our ghost hunting group at Waverly, somebody right next to me just said, hey, can you smell that? And then, like I said, it was just all damp and basement smelling. And it just kind of faded on and then faded away. So localized in a sense in that it kind of, like I said, it felt like it kind of drifted by us. So it's like suddenly it started to increase, like somebody turning up a knob of like scent. And it's like, oh yeah, I can't smell that. It's roses. And they're like, yeah, it is. Yeah, right, right. And then the rheostat just got dialed down again and it just kind of dissipated. So here it just sounded like, whoa, this is a distinct shape of smell, which I love. How do you know it was a rheostat and not a potentiometer? Because of the, I heard the clicking, yeah, as the numbers were going up. That's the difference between a slider and a rotating knob, folks. Yeah. The point being is that it went up to 11. I mean, it wasn't that strong. Actually, I was joking around there, but it was, let's say on the scale, like about a five, this sounds like an 11 and we once had a Christmas story that somebody sent in from Australia, the land down under, where they talked about smelling grandma's perfume after she had passed. And it was a, you know, they love grandma, but it was like a strong scent, but it was her scent and characteristic of her. And so that's a very pleasant kind of feeling, but I'm also fascinated by the aspect of just scents going along with the spirit and that sometimes people will smell cigars or cigarettes if the person was a heavy smoker. Well, the other tie in here, remember when we were at the Kent Paranormal Weekend and we're at the Kent stage, two things about that. One, remember the very first live EVP I heard was one of the Hounded Housewives, Kathy and Teresa, and I can't remember who were with, which group we were with. They split off and they were doing catching EVPs with the DR-60 Panasonic recorder. And the question though was to Mel, who was the resident caretaker, volunteer. He was an older gentleman who volunteered a lot, was there with every show. That was his retirement and it was a lovable fixture there. And people would say like, yeah, you could smell coffee because he always had a large coffee with them. Yeah. And so the question was, Mel, do you like a dark roast or a light roast with your coffee? And we heard dark roast. Yeah. Or what sounded like that. Right there on the recorder. That goes again, I've said this before, but when you get a specific answer, like you say, did you like a dark roast or a light roast? And somebody says, Pontiac. Yeah. That's a car. Okay. That's not really about, you know, the type of car we asked you liked. But here, the other thing that reminded me of is there's apartments above that theater or often adjacent and there's a creepy dim hallway. Yeah. And I think there's some green to it. Either the doors are painted a dark green or there's something about that. And so that, that kind of made a connection for me in my mind about this story. Well, the other thing that's interesting to me too, I mean, of course, one of the most fascinating things comes down to the apartment, which we'll talk about here in a minute. But the other thing was that these two were talking at the Bellhurst Castle, right? Which is not connected to what they're hearing, but that's the place where these, where these two folks came together and had that shared experience. And I'm taking this from a website called the Haunted History Trail, which has a lot of history about it. But I just want to read this one paragraph. Belhurst's most well-known ghost is Isabella, whom the Belhurst Spa and Salon is named after. The beautiful opera singer often seen dressed in white. According to local stories, Isabella fled with her forbidden lover, Spanish Don, to America, where they built a house with a secret tunnel. When the authorities came looking for them, they tried to escape through the underground passage to their awaiting boat, only for the tunnel to collapse on Isabella. To this day, the white lady is said to walk the shores of Seneca Lake, grieving her lost lover. She has been seen standing at night in the middle of the front lawn or as an apparition flying in through windows. So that's thehauntedhistorytrail.com slash explore slash Bellhurst Castle. We'll have a link to it in the show notes. There's all kinds of other activities been witnessed at this place. Showers turning on and off, things flying around, glass breaking, tablecloths been tied to chandeliers, lullabies being sung. So whatever's going on at Bellhurst Castle, that appears to be some kind of focal point, which is interesting to me. And it makes you think about the traffic, these areas. Like, why did these two meet in this place that both lived in the same haunted apartment all the way in Buffalo? It's hard not to think, if you believe any of this at all, that they were drawn there by an outside force that was making a very calculated move in terms of their life experience. So are you saying this is a bus stop on the haunted highway here or that there's some kind of connection that there's a, we'll travel between the ghosts. We've heard this from the mediums and the spirits themselves sometimes that, you know, people often think, and I think from TVs and movies that, you know, you're, if hauntings do exist, spirits do exist, ghosts and such, that they're tied to the place where they died. And I think sometimes that is the case. They're kind of trapped there for whatever reason, like in the show, the TV show Ghosts, which is delightful, both British and American versions, that there's some thing that's keeping them localized there. And then mediums have said, well, yeah, and there's a specific case, but there's no rule that they can't travel around and they hitch a ride on people sometimes. That's if you believe psychic mediums. Yeah. They are talking specifically about the Conjuring House and people saying like, well, that's ridiculous, you know, that woman died down the street and I can't remember who was the, it was one of the famous ladies who supposedly haunted the Conjuring House. Right. Like, you know, all the rules for how that stuff works. How do you know the rules that they can't travel or that this couldn't be hers, that they, they can, like I said, depending on the specific condition. Well, yeah. And the other thing we always say is you don't have any idea who you're talking to either. Like it may be saying that it's this person that died a block away or the person that died in the house or whatever, as we know from the Siren Call, the Hungry Ghost, there appears to be some kind of impersonators working behind the scenes sometimes. Right. Well, here's the thing is though, it's the woman giving them the tasting that had the connection there that she started talking to about Belhurst Castle. So it wasn't like they both got a mysterious invitation and showed up. No, that's true. Yeah. And they crossed paths. It just happened to be that, you know, she was there. So it's just an amazing coincidence in the least. And at the most, there is some kind of connection that made our author here ask the woman about Belhurst Castle. I mean, it's something I do too, especially if it's a historic location and I sense that somebody is willing to talk about it. But like I said, if she hadn't asked her about the place being haunted, you wouldn't have that aspect of the story. She would never know. So something kind of compelled her to like perhaps ask, but, and I don't do it to everybody. Like I said, if I go into a historic location, you know, sometimes it's a conversation starter and I find more often than not, if it is a historical place, I can remember there was a converted old Victorian style house in Canton, Ohio, when I was working on a, on an event there and it was converted into a, a restaurant and similar to what you described, which I think is probably common in all these things, but you know, it was a historical house owned by a wealthy doctor at one point who suffered a little bit of tragedy, I think with his wife and, and perhaps family. But, you know, the waitress was just chatting us up, talking about the, the specials and this, that, and then I was with a group of business people, which were not really into this kind of thing, but I just happened to say, is this place haunted? She goes, oh yeah, yeah. It's, yeah. And it's, it's obvious. Like I said, if you don't, you go to a Subway sandwich shop and you don't usually ask that unless it's a, you know, an older building perhaps, but she goes, oh yeah. And I said, well, what, what kind of things happen? She goes, well, upstairs in the living quarters in the bedrooms, same kind of things where that's of course, where they store a lot of the glassware and the, the plates and, and, and there will be things like chairs have moved around or now a chair is on top of the table and nobody's, you know, it's locked. Nobody's up there to disturb it where glasses have been moved around. Nothing too damaging, just that no one's been up there. They know, and then things have been moved around. So, you know, pretty common for haunted places. If you believe that, uh, otherwise then you're believing that it's a prankster-ish, a coworker who's slipped out and is, uh, just doing that for fun. But in this case, the other thing that was, uh, I wanted to say the smell, the scent was so strong, you could taste it that there's some gravity to it. You know what I'm saying? Like some substance to the actual smell more so than just, uh, whatever olfactory process is happening. There's, it's like, it's part of the entity here. I would love to know more from, uh, from a ghost researcher about ideas. I'm like, is that, how is that incorporated? Obviously, or maybe not. There's some kind of molecules that are happening. They're entering your nose and your olfactory processes to get you to smell that. Or is it just happening in the brain? Is it something that's triggering? Like I said, uh, we talked about this before in the, in, uh, one of the other DLOs, your brain is really what sees, not so much your eyes. Your eyes are just the lenses here. Your brain is also just kind of smelling. You have receptors in your nose and also with the taste, you know, like I said, taste is a lot of, uh, a great deal of, uh, has to do with smell as well. And, uh, it's like eating something while plugging your nose, something awful to get it down. It lessens the taste, but I do wonder if something's affecting your brain, is that what's happening here? Or is it just a ball of molecules of this scent and where does that come and go? And, uh, you know, how's that form and travel around? And that obviously, uh, you know, that's part of the lady. The other thing I liked about the story was that there's another entity there. We often hear about that. It's not just one thing. There could be several specters there that are different. Well, I love that too. And that it is weird. It's like another place where a lot of things are happening. I was just going to show you, and, um, obviously this is a audio only medium right now, but I, uh, was looking at the address of the restaurant that they said they lived across from called, uh, Faraday's in Buffalo. And I'm showing this to you right now. We can see this structure here. This is Faraday's at 490 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. And then right across from it, which I think it must be one of these two buildings, there are two very old looking buildings that look like they might've been built in the early 1900s that both have apartments upstairs. Yeah. It's fun. I love looking and doing like, oh, this is where this happened. You know, we're finding it online. If folks are interested, you go onto Google Earth and, uh, you put in 490 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, and then go to the Google street view and check out the camera and then flip your camera around to the other side and you'll see two old buildings. One of these buildings must be the one where this story takes place, which I think is really cool. Well, I know if I went there, nothing would happen. You always say that, but you've had some very strange stuff happen to you. Well, like I said, it's small, strange stuff. It's not small. It's like a person that wasn't there. Right. But I just told you about a, uh, smelling a scent that shouldn't have been there. And there's no reason for that. I mean, that's what a paranormal experience it is. It's not always like, you know, the opening, the Ark of the Covenant or whatever. Well, it's like nothing so strong or present as I've had to pull the covers over my head to get rid of it, you know what I'm saying? So it's just one of those things like, did I see that? I was thinking about this also in thinking back on Waverly is that- For listeners who don't know, again, tell them what Waverly is for just- Well, Waverly Sanatorium in Kentucky is very famous for being haunted. Mostly you were talking about going to a place like that where something happened. It's very cool. It's like, yeah, that would be cool. It's like, wait a second. And I have been to a bunch of places that were notoriously haunted. Yes, yeah. You've done paranormal lockdowns. You've spent the night at these places, right? Yeah, not a sleepover, but yeah, you have to leave like by, you know, three or four in the morning, something like that, depending on the rules. But yeah, spent overnight in a lockdown. And I think people, well, a lot of folks who listen to the show just think I believe everything. And that might be fair in some cases, or I'm open to every proposed kind of thing, but it's not like I believe everything that happens to me. And like I said, I think like everybody else or most people, you'll see something or experience something. It's like, did I really just see that? Or maybe it's like the guy that passed in front of me in the hallway while we were there with James Willis. And it's like, that's what I felt in the moment that somebody was there. That was my reaction. And then you start to question yourself later. Did I really see that? Or was I just imagining it? And so this story here, where, like I said, it's very distinct. It's repeatable. That's the other thing. They lived there for a long time. In a lockdown, you're only there for one night. So people doing investigations, investigators, you want repeatability, like scientists do. You want to be able to repeat the experience. So I haven't had that. It's just odd things that like, that was weird, but not so obvious, I would say, or on the nose that I couldn't deny it or have another reason in my head for that happening. Unless you count the guy in the hallway. And then I did. Well, yeah, I do. I definitely do. I either think of one of two things. Either it wasn't a real person. I don't think it was somebody from the group. Like I said, I walked right into the empty room where they would have been and no one was there. Or I was just mistaken. It was just my imagination. So one of those two things. But here in this case, yeah, the coincidence is, like I said, that's a nice button to the story where it's just like a really odd little thing and quite a coincidence that you run into somebody who lived in the same place or the same exact building in a distant or more distant location than that place. So it's a bit of a coincidence. And also just, yeah, the two different types of entities there, a combination. So like a lot of places, I think there's also an expectation by a lot of people. And from, well, I wouldn't say maybe that's fair, but you think there's just one ghost in a lot of cases, or there can only be just one thing there. And then, of course, you see other movies where like, no, then it's Disney's Haunted Mansion and there's a ton of specters there. You know, so you can either have one of the two things, but I do wonder about the connection between the two. Were they connected some way? Did the spirits know each other? How do they interact on the other side? Are they crowding each other? Does one want the other one to leave? Well, Cheryl, thank you so much for sending your story into the dead letter office at astonishinglegends.com, which is coincidentally the email address. Everyone should send their stories too. Thank you. I guess we just have to wonder if maybe this entity you saw was simply seeking attention or maybe companionship in its own otherworldly way. Either way, we're glad that you and your boyfriend made it through these strange experiences. And thank you so much for listening to The Astonishing Dead Letter Office. The Astonishing Dead Letter Office is hosted by Scott Philbrick and Forrest Burgess and is executive produced by Tess Feifel. The show is edited and mixed by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. The theme is based on The Astonishing Legends theme by Judson Crane at Founder Music, arranged by Alan Carissia, who composes all the other music in the show. Tommy Beaver Design created the logo. The announcer is John Bolton. That's me. Stories are lightly edited for length, content, and readability, but otherwise presented as they're sent to us. We're always looking for more Dead Letters, so if you have a story of your own you'd like to share, email it to deadletteroffice at astonishinglegends.com. Please include how you would like to be credited. First name only? First name last initial? Anonymous? A pseudonym? Let us know. Due to the number of emails coming in, we often cannot respond, but we do read them all. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright, Astonishing Legends Productions. Astonishing Legends is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally Responsible, Financial Geniuses, Monetary Magicians. These are things that people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. Or artificial sweeteners are doing all the heavy lifting. It's basically dessert in disguise. You shouldn't have to choose between tasty and nutritious. And that's what makes Aloha stand out. Aloha protein bars nail the delicious and nutritious. 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