S1 Ep43: Tracked

It used to be that if you needed therapy of some kind, finding a therapist who was a good fit was like, as Forrest says, catching a ghost in a jar. Proof of the impossible. Yeah, but now we've finally got some proof that the impossible may exist, because now you can find high-quality mental health care from a licensed professional easily and affordably online, thanks to Rula. See, the internet is good for something. It is, for a few things, anyway. You know, I have loved ones that in the past have sought out therapy, but only after a long period of fear and doubt. They had to wait six months to get in with someone they ultimately didn't connect with. My thing is, if you're already feeling vulnerable, you need that barrier to finding high-quality help to be as minimal as possible, and that's why Rula is a great option. Yeah, six months is a lifetime when you're looking for a professional to talk to, and on top of that, when you do get in, the sessions can cost a fortune out of pocket. Rula takes most major insurance plans, and the average co-pay is only $15 per session, and depending on your benefits, your co-pay could be as little as $0 per session. So, you can now get the quality care you need, when you need it, at a price you can afford. Check it out yourself at Rula.com slash D-L-O to get started today. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash D-L-O for convenient therapy that's covered by insurance. Rula partners with a network of over 15,000 therapists and psychiatrists nationwide, so you can find a personalized solution and the right therapist for you, based on your needs, preferences, and the state requirements. That's for in-network, covered care for most major insurance plans. Rula isn't just affordable. They stick with you throughout your journey, making sure you get the best therapy, and that you're making progress. Each provider is carefully vetted and chosen for their expertise. You'll always know you're in the hands of quality providers who are dedicated to making real progress in your care. And Rula is committed to supporting you and staying with you every step of the way on your mental health journey. And the first step is easy. Rula starts by asking you a few questions about what's important to you, and then provides a list of licensed in-network providers who match your preferences. You can schedule your preferred time and meet with your therapist as soon as the next day. Whoa, that's a lot sooner than six months. Indeed it is. Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey toward improved mental health and overall well-being. Head on over to Rula.com slash D-L-O to get started today. After you sign up, they ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them the Astonishing Dead Letter Office sent you. Go to R-U-L-A dot com slash D-L-O, as in Dead Letter Office, and take the first step towards better mental health today. You deserve quality care from someone who cares. Astonishing Legends Network. 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, Tracked. This is a fascinating story, not only of an unexplained auditory encounter, but something far more frightening. But you and I have friends, close ones, that have had auditory-only experiences. That's right. We do, my friend. And this story comes from our listener, Scott P. Oh, it's you. No, it's not me. Oh, it's not me. Okay. I'm sorry. It does. I was like, wait, did I send this in? No, this progresses to a point most folks don't want to experience when they're walking alone in the woods. The other thing is, it comes to us from a geographical area that I don't feel like we've gotten a lot of stories from in the past. And that's northern Alabama, which I thought was pretty fascinating. I wound up getting onto Google Earth, as I love to do, and figuring out exactly where this was. I have driven all over the country, as of you, sir, but I've never been there, so I'm not positive what it's like. But this particular region is just south of Middle Tennessee, which is an area I do know well, so I'm thinking it's probably similar. Yes, the TriStar State, which we love so much. But yes, our friend Bradley, Netherton, might know that area very well, so we'll have to see what he has to say about it. Well, anyway, it's apparently a hotbed of activity for one of our favorite cryptids, as you're about to hear. All right, sir. I believe it's your turn to read tonight. Ever since I've discovered this podcast, I've considered sharing this story. The only people who really know about it are the people who were present when it happened. And I've never shared it with anyone else. All of this began sometime in the summer of 2009. Given that we're past the 15-year anniversary of that first summer, I feel like it may be time to talk about it. About a year prior, myself, my mom, and my sister had been, more or less, left with no option to move in with a friend of the family. We had lived, up to that point, with my grandpa in Plovna, Alabama. When he passed away, we could no longer afford to keep paying for our house, so, having nowhere else to go, a family friend with more room than she needed offered us a place to stay until we got back on our feet. Her home was in a then-small subdivision. Now it's expanded a lot, quite a bit outside of Huntsville, Alabama. To be a little more exact, we lived at the foot of Montesano. Montesano plays host to a fairly large nature preserve. Although it does have its fair share of trails and visitors, the mountain has quite a few remote areas that see little to no hikers. This mountain, and the nearby Green Mountain, have been hotspots for local Bigfoot sightings. Life there was fairly normal for a very long time. We lived right at the edge of a nature preserve, so, as a teenager, I had plenty of room to explore and wander, which I spent most of my time doing. We often, that summer, would spend nights sitting on the front porch, reminiscing. One night, however, we stayed up particularly late. It was around three in the morning. My sister and I had long since gone inside, but not yet gone to bed, when my mom and the friend we were living with suddenly ran inside. They were terrified by some noise they had heard. They described as, sounding to them, like howling, but not from any creature they had ever heard. My mind went immediately to Bigfoot, as I'd heard many descriptions of the many sounds reported. I pulled up recordings I'd gotten off a now long-defunct website, alabamabigfoot.com. You can still see it in the Wayback Machine, but the links to their recordings no longer work. I ran outside with them, wanting to hear it for myself, but it seemed to have stopped. The following night, however, I heard it. I was enthralled, instantly. I was so much more heavily caught up in the idea of Bigfoot. We would sit out every night we could that summer, listening for it. Most of the time, we would hear it, and always about three or so in the morning, although sometimes a little earlier or a little later. Interestingly, although I remember hearing the occasional whistle, I never noticed knocking, or at least I don't remember it anymore if I did. We heard it so often that it got to where we noticed patterns. For example, we never heard it on the night before a storm, and following a storm, it always took a day or two to come back. Sometimes, if we were lucky, it would sound like a creature further away would answer the one or the ones that we would stay up to listen to. We heard it all summer. It was, in a word, incredible. It was something undeniably weird. Some creature that shouldn't exist was making that sound, and there we were, witnesses to it. Unless you've heard it for yourself, I can't describe how it feels to hear something like that. Like I said, we heard it all that summer. Eventually, though, it left. The noises just stopped for a while. I remember, however, speaking to my aunt about it one day that fall. She still lives in a very rural area of the state, though not too far south of us, on Ridley Mountain. And how we stopped hearing it. She suddenly got incredibly excited. She had heard something the night before speaking to me. That sounded like the howls we would hear. After that, we started to wonder if perhaps they were, or at least this particular creature was, migratory. During the summer of 2010, we seemed to get our answer. We started to hear it again, and clearer replies to its calls, too. I, for whatever reason, was emboldened by its return. I had decided that I was going to go into the woods to try and see it. Daily, I would explore the preserve, hoping to have a sighting. For months, I went up and down trails, even inadvertently making a few of my own with how much I frequented certain areas. For the most part, nothing of no ever happened. That is, however, until that September. It had started as an uneventful day. I entered the woods through my normal means. At the time, a road in the area led to a dead end where they cleared a lot or two to build new houses. Since then, the houses have never been built, and the aforementioned lots remain empty, though overgrown. Make of that what you will. I would normally use this road as my way into the preserve. A particularly long trail from the preserve ran vaguely parallel to the road, and I would often hike up through the woods to join it. This day, however, I had decided to stay by the lots. I stuck to the road, noticing that I didn't really hear any birds, or, for that matter, any other wildlife. I kept on, reaching an area where the woods were thick with growth. As I came to a stop to look around, I noticed the unmistakable slush of someone or something coming to a sudden stop in dead leaves. The road didn't have any leaves on it. I looked to where it sounded like the noise came from, but I couldn't see anything through the growth. I started walking again, a little faster this time, and stopped very suddenly. There, again, was the sound of someone or something following me, walking as I walked, coming from the woods. Whatever it was sounded big, too, not knowing what to do, and too surprised by this turn of events to walk into the woods, to face whatever was on the other side of these tangles of trees and kudzu. I stood there, frozen, standing in the direction of the sound. Whatever was there, for a while, didn't move either. I remember hearing a deep sound, a kind of rattling grumble, and I started to hear something big walking away, deeper into the woods. I never got a good look at it. I never definitely was able to say it was Bigfoot, but still, I always kind of felt like it was. I ran home and told everyone, so excited to share what had happened. That night, we waited up to hear it, but we didn't hear it. I would never hear it again. The following month, we moved into the city. I've since spoken to the friend we lived with, and she said that, before she moved out of that house, nearly two years following our leaving, she would still occasionally hear it at night. But having no one to sit outside with, she never felt brave enough to stay and listen for it like we used to. I really like this story because, in a lot of ways, it symbolizes what we do. We're faced with, in the course of these encounters, trying to convince other people that we've crossed paths with something unusual or weird or that fits into category X or Y or an unnamed category. And more often than not, we don't have any kind of hard proof. We try to get proof. It doesn't work. There's nothing you can say here. Now, on the very mundane, sort of simple side of things, this is real classic stalking behavior from a wild animal, right? So then you think, well, what kind of things might have been stalking? I mean, I've heard of myself on Radiolab, the stories of the guy being stalked by a wildcat in the valleys in the Amazon. And the wildcat, in his case, I think, was all the way, it was a valley with a river in the bottom of it or a creek or something, and the cat was on the other side. But it was doing this exact thing. He would walk, it would stop. He would walk, it would stop. But he didn't know it was there until he had learned the sounds that the monkeys in the region would make. And he had learned that they were trying to warn him and warn each other. Right. And that's the only reason he thought to look for it. That's a great Radiolab, by the way. It's a short from many years ago. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I remember now. Yes. Yeah. But that was the first time I was like, oh, yeah, people are probably getting stalked all the time. I mean, you're a potential prey. But I did look up the predators in this area, and you might have a bear maybe, but it's not, this isn't the typical kind of behavior for them. Especially the walking and freezing and walking and freezing. That's actually more a human or, I would say, feline. It's in that category. Yep. A bear doesn't give a crap whether you stop walking. Well, no, they smell bacon. It's not trying to hide from you at all. Well, no, they're going to come crashing through. But also, look, they're all wild animals, especially apex predators. They got their skills honed. They got strong game with that because it's about survival. And for millennia, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, these creatures have fine-tuned these skills. In a human, I think of Charles Fort's wild talents. Yes. And when you started talking about that, getting that sense, that's exactly now what I think of. I didn't think about that before, but just the fact that you feel like you're being watched, the fact that you have that sixth sense, that there is danger close. Right. Just to be aware, that comes from our ancient ancestors for preservation and not getting eaten by something, and that you just know that. So that trigger can happen, I think, when there's something physical or non-physical, you know what I'm saying? In a supernatural sense, that can be triggered. And it's even more disturbing because it's not a bear or a creature. I've been out in the woods, and I've heard stuff kind of like, I wouldn't say I was stalked, but stuff nearby. Big game. And once or twice a bear, I think. But yeah, it's a distinct thing, and you're just cautious, and you respect your place in the space, and you're wary. Before I forget, also, from one of my favorite films, and one I've gotten you to like as well, is David Mamet's Spartan with the wonderful Val Kilmer in that. Rest in peace. Yes, rest in peace. He's a former Marine scout, now training a cadre of elite special forces operators, and he's training a guy he's taken under his wing who's made it to the team. They're in a city, kind of on a stakeout, and he says, in the city, there's always a reflection. In the woods, there's always a sound. And I've come to learn that something always makes a sound, and that's how you know. Wait, you've got to do the last one. You've got to do the last one. The desert, right? Sorry, yes, I'm forgetting. The guy goes, what about the desert? And he says, you don't want to go in the desert. And I get that because, yeah, in that place, you're out in the wild open, and like a house cat, they don't like open spaces. Yeah. Big cats don't, because even though they're predators, they're also stealthy, and they hide, and they get scared too. You know, bears get scared, and any creature can get scared. And they don't like being out in the open because you're vulnerable. And in this case, where you have woods, you are being stuck. You are vulnerable. And all you have is your ears to guide you in that sixth sense. Our smell and hearing is not as good as most other animals. You know, dogs, I've heard, bloodhounds can smell something six inches, 12 inches under the ground, under the dirt. That's been there two weeks prior. It's amazing what they can sense. And so as humans, we still have that, but we tend to ignore it. Our CEO brain says, nah, you didn't hear anything. That's ridiculous. You don't have those senses. And you ignore it. And that's when you get in trouble. But here, there's something going on. There are bobcats in Alabama. Lots and lots and lots of them. They're in North Carolina, too. They're all around out here. That could have been a feline tracking him or pacing him or whatever, and he's just so excited about the idea of Bigfoot because of the other things that have happened that aren't necessarily related that that encounter was what that was. Right. And I want to be clear that it's like, yeah, that could be that. I understand that. I'm not saying that it definitely was a Bigfoot pacing him or whatever, but it's a nice cherry on the Sunday of this story, though, that event that's happening at the end. And maybe he's leaning into that, Mr. Scott P., if that is your real name. Maybe he's leaning into that. But let's reel it back, though. Let's reel it back to the sounds that these folks were hearing. Now, I'm going to say this. I haven't done a lot of hunting. Actually, I haven't done any hunting. And I would like to. I'd like to try it. I had a friend that I was expecting to take me out and teach me how to hunt a little bit, but he passed away suddenly, and I didn't get the chance to do that. That's right. I have spent some time in very rural areas, late at night, drinking in lawn chairs, out in the middle of the fields of nowhere. With the same guy, Don? No. Well, sometimes, yeah, same area. It was a place that we lived that my wife and I had in Pennsylvania, Bucks County, some time ago. I've told stories about it before, but you would sit out there at night, and we would sit out there talking, and midnight, 1, 2 in the morning. By the way, this is Bigfoot country. There's a lot of sightings in Bucks County and eastern Pennsylvania. You would hear some crazy, crazy sounds. Now, I never heard the howls or the sounds that I've heard many recordings from Small Town Monsters, and Micah has played some of these recordings. I've never heard anything like that. But I've heard things I couldn't identify, for sure. And I've also never heard a conversation between one strange sound and another strange sound further away that's like a call and response type of thing, which is another thing that people describe with these, what they think are Bigfoot sounds. That's true, yes. But I mean, the other thing that's interesting is, you know, when we talk about this particular story was that Scott, he was so freaked out by these series of events, he actually didn't talk about it for years. He decided to write in to the dead letter office. You know, it's interesting that it was that much of a trauma. I don't think it's the right word, but enough of a thing where he was nervous to share it. Oh, yeah, well, no, because again, most people who would mock you are not people who have spent a lot of time in the woods, who don't know a lot of animal sounds, because to them, there's got to be a rational explanation. And it's like, oh, it's a fennec fox. Really? Oh, well, are they around here? It's a harpy eagle, whatever it is. You know what I'm saying? Like they're throwing out what they think are possibilities and likely solutions, but not being all that familiar with the local wildlife and what actually makes sounds out there. And so if you're from that area and you hear something that, okay, maybe that was the first time in 25 years of your experience being there, that something different came in and made a sound like that. And then there's two of them. Maybe that's possible, but look, everybody who's been in a suburban, even or rural setting growing up, spending years there, I would say after a few years, you probably heard everything that makes noise out there. Yeah, that's true. And so something that doesn't, that's outside of your realm of experience or even knowledge or logic is going to have a great impact on you. And then do you tell other people? Well, no, they're going to kind of make fun of you. Like, dude, you didn't hear anything and it's going to be this or that. And it's like, it's coyotes. It's something rational, but that's the thing in LA, I've heard more coyotes than I have anywhere else I've lived. That's been rural just because they come off the hills in Griffith park and they run down the streets in Los Feliz. So they're all around. I've heard them all night. They've kept me up. They've woken me up. They've lulled me to sleep. And owls, lots of owls in a strange setting. But like I said, that's LA of all places. You wouldn't think so. But there's a lot of wildlife there, especially close to Griffith park, like I said. So I've heard a lot of different things. And then some things, like I said, that are just kind of out of the ordinary. And this is not biological, but I told you, I spoke about that one very strange night that I look back on. And it wasn't all that strange. It was all kind of mundane in a way. But when we talked about the Phantom Horse of Greensboro. Yes. And I think it happened the night before we recorded or very soon around that, a few nights before. And, you know, it's a hot summer in LA. My windows are open. I'm right next to, in my bed next to the window open. And I'm not asleep, I'm not even that sleepy, but, you know, kind of trying to lull myself to sleep. And I hear what sounds like four shopping carts being dragged by a rope. Just that clatter. That kind of metallic, like, you know, like the sound of shopping carts. You know, when people, when the attendant gathers up a chain of 20 of them, but not that orderly, not on wheels. Just being dragged, that kind of metal clatter. It's like, what is going on? Well, of course, there are unhoused people pushing shopping carts all night long, occasionally, but just one. And I'm not dragging them. Like, I know what that sounds like. I guess this is my clumsy point, is that I know what it sounds like to push a shopping cart. This sounds different, but it's that same kind of metallic kind of weird clatter. So I sit up in bed. I can see directly out into the street. And I don't see anything. That's weird thing number two. Like, what is making that sound? I don't see anything. And then racing around the corner is a very large, white, it's like an albino German shepherd, but a king strain, a giant white dog come skittering around the corner, around the street and just runs down my street. Where there's no other cars there. To the point where like, I'm not dreaming. I can hear his nails on the asphalt. That kind of, you know exactly what that sounds like. Those are all common sounds. He didn't make a sound, but he ran very fast just around the corner. Like, what the hell is going on here? So I actually got up and I looked outside. No shopping carts. I still don't know what made that sound or what chased him. I walked down the block. There's nothing there. Like, what is that? But I never forgot that. And to this day, of course, we'll not. And I'm mentioning it now. But the point is that when you hear something that's really out of the ordinary like that, it has an impact on you. And I would bet that it was out of the ordinary. That's something, of course, I lean that way and I entertain those kind of outside of the box kind of scenarios. If you're speaking of Bigfoot, we often talk about the two main camps. And people who are versed in Squatch know this pretty well is that there's the great American North wood ape theory in that these are just extant or just thriving in small groups, very shy. But just some kind of missing link of ape, of the five ape families, of which we are one. And so this is just something different. And we should study it. But essentially, it's like an animal, an evolved one, close to humans, not quite human, but very close. And it's just something to be studied. On the other hand, there are the people that believe that there is some kind of perhaps UFO, spiritual, supernatural aspect of the Bigfoot phenomena. And that's a big no-no to the other folks because that sounds ridiculous. Okay. Yeah. There are degrees of this. Yeah. It's like, okay, just there's an ape out there. I know that sounds wild, but it's possible. And it's just nature. And then you take that a step further. It's like, no, these things don't disappear in our portals. They're not miniature ones that show up with UFOs. It's like, that's probably a cock. But the more I think about it and take into account the Native American aspect of it, which I respect greatly and throw a lot of weight to, is that there is something more than worldly, otherworldly about the hairy man of the woods. And what it made me think of is that great series I'm going to plug once again, Alaskan Killer Bigfoot. So, but I loved it because, yeah, there is a strange aspect of the town and this creature out there. And maybe it's okay. So, you can say it's just a large Bigfoot and people have been scared or there's nothing at all. It's just their imaginations. These Native folks are off their rockers. But the Native peoples believe that this is a being that they call Nantinuk and that it draws people out with its sounds and its behaviors and that it is pissed off and it is not all nice. And you do not go out in the woods looking for it. If you hear something like that, you feel something like that, you get back inside, you stay away. You do not question, you do not talk about it. And that might be the most safe thing. People have gone missing up there, but then you say, like, a lot of people go missing in Alaska and that's true. But here, I just love, I mean, I love natural lore and Native lore. And there's something about this Nantinuk legend that speaks to me in a way that, okay, is it possible that it is got a physical and a supernatural spiritual aspect to it at once? And it traverses both realms. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's physical, it's around there, but there is something very strange and ancient and spiritual and supernatural along with paranormal and along with being mundane in a way. That's just part of the territory. And it does not like people there. It's not nice. And being there and taking the natural resources, if you're Native or otherwise, it does not care for you or in its territory, and it will mess with you and scare the cramp out of you. And one of the most compelling shots, before I stop blabbering about this, is that, of course, the show, it's a Discovery Channel, Discovery Plus production, I believe. They have a drone up that's got FLIR, infrared, and there is something large giving off heat all alone, out in the middle of nowhere, just walking along from the top. And they're like, okay, that's unmistakable. That's not, I mean, it's massive. Right. From high above, you can see the shape that's humanoid and the arms swinging. Yeah. As if looking straight down. It's like, well, where did that come from? They don't see it entering the area. It just suddenly appears. And then it just suddenly goes away. Like, what the heck was that? So maybe there is something about that. Anyway, back to the story. I love this tale because it's just the sound and it's so unusual. And let me ask you about this. What about this migratory aspect of this? Do you think it's different beings? Obviously, if there's a call and response, maybe there's more of them. Or is it the same thing? And is that same thing just a phenomenon, as we know, that follows people? Because speaking of sounds, I'm blanking on the story. And it may have been from a good friend of ours who heard something strange, had a very scary encounter. They were out in a camping area, which was developed, right? There's a parking lot, I believe. Nice port-a-potties that the parks department puts up. I think either it was locked, but something, yes, I think they tried to use the restroom there. The door was locked. And then something really big, like something, like the thing, was shaking and rattling and making noises inside, like it was going to knock the thing down from the inside. Not human, not a person like, hey, I'm trapped in here, help me. Someone's playing a joke on me. This thing was like, all of a sudden they got close to it. It sensed them being close by and just started going ape poop crazy. Just scared the crap out of them. Yeah. Well, at least they were already in the right place for that. I thought that too, except the door was locked. That was the way they were. Yeah, yeah. That's why I think they were walking up to it to begin with. Oh, right, right. It was one of at least two strange encounters, I think, in either that same trip or close together. But that was a very scary one because what they said they felt like is that it was supernatural. It's spiritual, like there wasn't a large being creature inside trapped in the port-a-john that it was something was shaking the whole thing, making it seem like that. That was the impression that they got because something else happened along that same trailhead or, and this was like a follow-up. And that's what I'm talking about, the migratory or being in several places at once, but directed at the same person. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I think too, the other thing that's really important here for people, again, who have heard strange sounds in the night out in the woods or being out by yourself, the other thing that's interesting is how far these sounds are carrying. Because even if you don't know, you know an owl, you know a bobcat or even a bear, the sounds that they make are not sounds that sound necessarily like they're going miles and miles. And if you ever listen to any of these, what people say or Bigfoot calls, these are sounds that you can hear from what feels like a mile away. Right, right. And it's not a bird call. It's a guttural kind of yelling. It seems very human. But if it's not humans, then what is it? What kind of thing is it? Because those smaller animals, their sound just isn't going to carry that far. The other interesting aspect, please chime in on this, is there's times when they wouldn't hear it before or after a storm. It would take a while for the thing to come back, whatever was making the sound. You would think like any animal, it's like, it's not going to like pause down for a couple of days because there was a lightning storm or something. Right, right. But at the same time, we know that storms generate a lot of, if you believe in ghosts and such, electrical storms, especially lightning, generate a lot of spiritual activity because they take the charge from the atmosphere and use it for their own doings. And so what does this mean? It's like, like I said, reading again, we heard it so often that it got to where we noticed patterns. I love that. I love people taking notice of the patterns. For example, we never heard it on the night before a storm. So it's not like, you know, nothing's happened yet. It's the night before, but something sensed a storm coming, it seems, following a storm. And then it always took a day or two to come back. Like, what a great and scary thing to look back on, on the fond, warm, hot summer nights that happened. That's also shared by several people and confirmed by them. And so it's not just you hearing things. At least you have some people you can share that with, if not the rest of our fan base here. So yeah, it's just, I, I, man, I w I would love to hear that. But I wish there was a recording. Well, folks, this is a great example of a dead letter that is as much about the actual personal experience that Scott had as it was what it was, because there's not hard evidence here to be shared, just multiple experiences. So whatever you heard, Scott, we will all have to continue to wonder what it was. Let us know if you go back there and hear it again. And if you do, as Forrest just said, record it. We'd love to hear it. Thank you for sending your story into the dead letter office. And folks, if you were out in the woods or in some area where you're hearing these kinds of sounds and you can go back many, many times and document them, keep a little journal. Go ahead and make yourself a little field journal of dates and times and do like Scott did. Take note of what kinds of patterns you might be hearing and share that with us or somebody else that might be interested in this kind of research. Everyone send your dead letters into deadletterofficeatastonishinglegends.com and we'll see you next week. The Astonishing Dead Letter Office is hosted by Scott Philbrook 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 deadletterofficeatastonishinglegends.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. This is Sarah Spain from Good Game with Sarah Spain, brought to you in part by Vital Farms. Let's talk eggs. Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs, to be exact. My favorites. The only kind I've got in my fridge. No joke. And here's why. These aren't your average eggs. The hens live on open pastures with fresh air and sunshine all year long. They forage on local grasses and stretch their wings. They're living their best life. That care really shows in the taste. I love mine scrambled with a little butter or whipped up into a fancy frittata. And here's something most people don't know. You can trace your eggs back to the farm they came from. Seriously. Side of the carton, you'll find the farm name. Type it in at vitalfarms.com slash farm, and you'll get a 360-degree peek at the pasture. Plus, Vital Farms is a certified B corporation, which means they're committed to improving the lives of people, animals, and the planet through food. Eggs you could feel good about. So next time you're in the store, look for the black carton in the egg aisle and visit vitalfarms.com to learn more. Vital Farms. Good eggs. No shortcuts. Ever notice that feeling your worst also seems to happen at the worst time in the worst places? Like sudden nausea at 9 p.m. when you're out of town. Really? Now? 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Learn more or request a prescription at Cologuard.com slash podcast. Cologuard.com slash podcast. I'll be right back.