S2 Ep4: Something's Watching

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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, Something's Watching. You know, Forrest, there's a specific kind of silence during the early 70s. Not just the absence of noise. It was like a, I don't know. If you remember, I'm presuming you do, but it was like an analog sort of quietness. When you were out in the woods, the world was a different place. Before the internet, before 24-hour cable, there was like three channels in the woods behind your house. That wasn't just nature. It was a frontier, you know, to be explored, a playground, a thin place. It's spooky. It's exciting. It's fun. It's all of that stuff all at once. Look who's opened up a giant bag of philosophical worms here. It can. Well, the things you just mentioned are fascinating in that you had to be there. You had to live through it because you'll never get that back. And I feel sad for the youth of today. For today's youth. Because they'll never know that. It depends. You have to purposely get away from it and tune up. But that's all they know. And so the things I read about, they never know about this, the small pleasures, the duet of pleasures, that we just embrace because we had nothing else. So you're talking about nature. And I think that's the difference is that we were just outside more because we were inside a lot. And it depends on where you grew up. You know, that old hypothesis why Seattle has produced such great music is because the weather's crummy. It's constantly raining. All winter, it's a 40-degree drizzle. And so kids are inside. They're watching TV. The idea, though, is that you got out and saw the world. You stomped on the Terra. And you weren't looking at a screen the whole time. So there is a different kind of noise that happens digitally that's constantly in your head now. But the silence you're talking about is, yeah, just the sounds of nature and getting out. And so when you think about a kid in that era, you know, the world is massive. And it's massive in a different way than it is now. Now you can look up anything from any corner of the world. You can interact and talk to people from halfway around the world, which was harder to do back then. It was possible when we were growing up, but much harder to do. And now you're flooded with everything on the planet. And does that make it better? Well, it depends on how you use it. So there's no Google Maps to look at everything. In fact, I think people now are still just as ignorant about geography as they were then. But if you lived in a town like Magador, Ohio, which has an interesting naming history behind it, we're going to talk about later, your universe was basically your yard and the fields and whatever streets you rode your bike down. And that was it. That's your universe. Again, folks, here we are talking about Ohio in the 70s. That is a lightning rod for the paranormal when you think about it. The 1973 Ohio Valley UFO flap happening around this time period. Cryptids. We've talked about the Minerva monster with Seth Breedlove. But people forget how many of these smaller personal encounters were happening at the same time. And these weren't all monsters and aliens on the 6 o'clock news. Sometimes they were just eyes in the dark. That's right. It always comes down to the eyes and not to be facetious, but yeah, it's the window to some soul or something soulless. And that's the thing. So when you're five years old, like our listener Michael was in the story, you don't have a category for cryptid. That's the other thing. So we didn't have the wheelhouse of knowledge back then. And we talked about this quite a bit, even if you watch Twilight Zone. They had the concepts because this stuff's always been happening, but it's how you think about it and how you define it. And so when you have something that's supposed to be your safest place, your safest space, your bedroom, and that feeling of safety is breached, it changes how you see the world. And so what we're talking about here is worldview from a perspective. And yes, a small town monster indeed. So Michael, the listener we're hearing from today, is a database administrator now. He spends his life in numbers and medical science. He's a Fox Mulder skeptic, like I used to be before I went to Kansas. But the math of his childhood bedroom in Mogador doesn't make sense to his logical mind. It doesn't. But also, children live in the, they're still in the world of fantastical possibilities. That's right. But this story isn't about a mere sighting of just some glowing eyes. It's about a five-year-old boy performing a feat of strength that shouldn't be possible. Now, he doesn't really mention that too much. So listen carefully to the description because it's, it's got what I would say when we do some readings, it's thrown away a bit. All right. Tonight, we're looking through a window in the Ohio corridor. Whenever you're ready, Forrest. I listened to your most recent episode of Astonishing Legends, episode 303, Seth Breedlove, Small Town Monster, and am compelled to reach out to you both and relate an experience I had as a small child living in the greater Akron area during the early 1970s. I don't think my experience is any more or less unique than other stories that have been related over the years in the paranormal realm. But I do feel like it synchronizes with similar experiences that have been reported by those that lived in this area of Ohio during the 1970s. I don't know the exact year nor the exact season, but this incident happened when I was five years of age, probably slightly younger. As a reference point, I was born late in the year during 1970. Although we lived in many places while we lived in Ohio, at this time, we lived in a place called Mogador. The house we resided in was in a rural area of the town as there were many trees or woods surrounding it. As I recall, it was a single-level ranch-style home positioned on a slight incline. If I were to stand in front of the house, the incline would start on the left side of the house while there was more exposure of the brick foundation and where the windows of the house would have been higher to get to because of the incline making it, in effect, taller. This is an important detail to remember. The night of the incident, it was time for bed, and both my younger sister and I shared a bedroom. So we were both in the room that night. Our bedroom was adjacent to our parents' bedroom and, as I said, was situated on the left side of the house where the incline was and there was a single window in the bedroom. My sister's bed was against the wall near the window while I was parallel to her on the wall opposite near the door with a better view of the window. The bedroom had a chest of drawers that was taller than me resting against the wall opposite the ends of our beds. At some point during the night, I woke up with a feeling of fear and dread with an intense feeling that I was being watched. When I looked over to the single window in the room, I saw a pair of red eyes moving back and forth, looking in the room for something or someone. I started to scream and jumped out of my bed and instead of running out of the room, I locked the door. I was still screaming, help, help! And then my sister woke up and she started screaming. While still positioned near the locked door, looking at the red eyes that were now staring at me, I grabbed the chest of drawers, which was larger and much heavier than me, and moved it in front of me so that I was sandwiched between the locked door and the dresser drawer. At this point, my parents woke up because of all the commotion and tried to get to our bedroom but could not because I had locked the door. My mom and dad started calling my name as they tried to get into the room. Bang! Bang! Bang! The sound of my dad's hands slapped against the door. I and my sister continued screaming with me peeking out from behind the chest of drawers to see if the red eyes were still there. They were. Bang! Bang! Bang! The sound of my dad's hands again hitting the door. A few seconds later, I heard the doorknob being handled from the outside and my dad had gone to get a screwdriver to open the door. It had one of those simple pop locks that if you pushed a solid piece of metal through the hole from the outside, the lock would unlock. My parents entered the room and wondered what all the commotion was about. I told them about the red eyes staring at us through the window and they were shocked that I had moved the dresser in front of the door. They took both of us out of the room and we went to my parents' bedroom. My dad went outside with a gun and a flashlight going to the side of the house where the window to our bedroom was and found nothing. The next morning, we all went outside around the house to where the window was at. My dad had a stepladder in tow. He opened up the stepladder under the window and climbed up. The stepladder was not very tall and neither was my dad. He got up to about the third step and that is where someone or something would have had to have been in order to stare into the window. I can only guess at this point, but it would have been approximately 24 hours inches taller than my dad in order to look into the window from the ground outside. Years later, we would all as a family recount this incident, often during autumn in what is traditionally considered the spooky season here in the United States. The story would always be recounted as a simple statement of fact with the conclusion that we never knew what it was that stared into the window that night. my dad was a solid science guy and he had no room for the paranormal in his life despite suffering extreme trauma as a child. Both my parents are dead now, my mom passing away in 2011 and my dad in 2013. There are times that I lament that I can no longer recall this story with them, perhaps to get additional details that I may have forgotten over the years. It is one of two strange incidents that happened to us when we lived in Ohio. We left Ohio for Michigan in the summer of 1980 but Ohio has remained in my memory all these years later as someplace where weird things happened. How ironic is it that in 2025 the word Ohio is used as Gen Z slang for weird? What prompted me to author this story and send it to astonishing legends after hearing the Seth Freedlove episode is that Seth mentioned growing up and having a strange experience in Minerva, Ohio. Having never heard of Minerva, Ohio I googled it and discovered that it was a mere 33 miles from Magador where I had the strange experience of the glowing red eyes. Are they related? It's impossible to tell but the proximity of the towns and the sighting of some kind of beast makes me wonder if there was something going on in that part of Ohio. Before signing off a little bit about myself to give context to the story. I work in the healthcare industry as a non-clinician at a large non-profit healthcare organization as a database administrator. I interact with clinicians like nurses and doctors on medical data used in making decisions for the entire organization. I deal with numbers and medical science daily. I would consider myself sometimes an atheist sometimes a Buddhist but never a believer in any Abrahamic religion. I have, however, had a fascination with the paranormal my entire life. I do not believe in Bigfoot, however, and I often tell people who pose that question that I take a Fox Mulder approach to that subject. I want to believe. I am skeptical but open to the fact that things happen to us during our lives that sometimes escape the realm of provable science and at times impact our lives. Our journey into the shadows continues after this break. Have you ever had one of those friends that still insists on doing things the hard way? I am sure we both know someone and every friend circle has one. But I used to work at a film stage with this one friend and every morning she would try to make toast but it always ended up on fire. So I was getting tired of this happening every morning. So I told her, you know, the toaster has settings for how dark you want your toast. And she says, yeah, but I like my toast really dark. And I say, then just turn this dial and you can get your toast as dark brown as you want but the toaster will pop up before the bread starts to burn. To which she replies, nah, I like my toast really dark. It was a real spinal tap, these go to 11 situation. Yeah, those people are out there. We all have friends like that. We all know somebody like that and especially our friends that still insist on overpaying for wireless in 2026. But thank goodness Mint Mobile is here to help with that. I think those friends don't want to switch just because they're afraid the quality won't be as good or it'll be a hassle or they really won't be saving much so why bother? 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Yeah, we are never going back because we're enjoying all the same quality, if not better, and we're definitely saving a ton of dough and with much better customer service. So if you're ready to change your money-losing mindset and stop paying more than you have to, new customers can make the switch today and for a limited time, get unlimited premium wireless for just 15 bucks a month. Switch now at mintmobile.com slash D-L-O. That's mintmobile.com slash D-L-O. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required, $15 a month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only. Over 50 gigabytes, may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. Additional terms apply. See mintmobile.com. And now, back to the show. All right, so let's start off at looking at this part of Ohio. Magador and Minerva are about 33 miles apart, and for people who have not heard of Minerva, or maybe this is the first episode of our show you've ever heard, just look up the Minerva Monster. We did an episode with Seth Breedlove where he talks about it. He, of course, is a really good repository for that, is his company, Small Town Monsters. They have produced many, many documentaries, but that's a good way to get familiar with the Minerva Monster. And Small Town Monsters is based in Ohio, of course, so. But 33 miles between these two towns where the Minerva Monster was and where this took place, Magador, that's not that far apart if you think of like a migratory apex predator, right, or whatever this thing was. It could have been out for an afternoon walk. Kind of a long one, but you never know. No, I was about to say there are animals that we know of in suburban settings that can cover that amount of territory in a day foraging for food. So it's certainly doable in my view for a cryptid, an apex cryptid. But yes, Ohio, round on the ends and high strangeness in the middle. Well, from 1970 to 80, you could, I think, make a great argument for it being a high strangeness hotspot. So you had the Cuyahoga Valley sightings. Then you had the Minerva incidents in 1978. And it wasn't just Bigfoot. So again, yeah, check out Small Town Monsters back catalog and start with the classic original Small Town Monsters productions. It's so much fun to go through for me, also chronologically. Yes. And also very inspiring and a terrific thing that they've grown so much and has evolved. But yeah, check out the back catalog of investigative documentaries because this time for some reason we can talk about why the kids think, as he says in the story, why the kids say, oh, that's so Ohio for something being weird. Are they tapping into some kind of zeitgeist? Well, it's a perfect place to do it because it's a cryptid, rich environment. Indeed, it is. And the other thing that Michael mentions and the rural ranch style house, these kinds of houses, a lot of times they were built right up against second growth forests that are reclaiming old farmland. And so you have this intersection of suburban safety and primeval woods. And when you get near those woods where it's been replanted but it's also kind of old, it's sort of a perfect vibe for strangeness. It's like how you see when you look at TV shows or streaming shows where they're trying to have spooky woods, that's exactly what you're talking about there. Well, that's interesting. Could you expound on that because your place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania was a little bit like that? Yeah, it was and it wasn't. I mean, it had the Delaware River in the front, which was amazing and there was a road too. We were on the river but there was a very busy road between our house and then getting down to the river. Folks in the West, like myself from the West, may not be able to picture this but you had a barge canal carved out behind you. In the back. So explain that a little bit. So that was a canal that was left over from times when they would move coal and other things up and down on this canal that was man-made. It came all the way from, I think originally from Jersey City, which is 80 or more miles away. And it went up along the Delaware, and I might be wrong about that. It might be that this one just went down to Philadelphia and up north, but I seem to remember that the whole thing connected. But the canal was still back there and there was a towpath which was so it wasn't really deep enough to do anything fun in. It used to be people would canoe or tube down the river and then come back up in the canal which had locks. And there was a working lock behind our house. But the whole thing was very spooky. And then at the very back of the property on the other side of the canal was a cliff with rocks that was probably at least 200 feet tall. The trees growing on it. Like you could die if you were out traipsing around. Yeah, if you fell off of it. Yeah, very spooky. And then of course up at the top where it leveled off there would be more homes back in the distance. So there's a bit of a gorge, a bit of a ravine. Yeah, and it was spooky. And there were a lot of woods around there like what Michael's talking about here. And at night it was creepy. And I used to love it to sit outside but never too far from the house because invariably you would hear something or it just didn't feel right or you just felt like you were being watched. And it's a big foot siding area. That was Bucks County. Bucks County and Ohio in my mind have very similar vibes. Yeah, it's all really old areas. All of the earth is old. But I mean as far as human population and settling and people experiencing things because like I said we have always said this we may never know of all the paranormal things going on if you're not there to see it. So there is a major connection in my view to human beings and all this and the quote unquote the larger phenomenon. It has to do with us. We are part of it. We are connected to it. So the longer people have been living in an area I think the well certainly obviously the more stories and lore you're going to get but also there is a human interaction element to that. So which is what the story is about because you have something peeking in to see what the heck's going on in here and so much to frighten things but or people but that's what's happening is that you're seeing a willful interaction for whatever reason but a little bit about the history of the name I'm just going to quickly read this paragraph. Oh yeah I'm interested I did not look into this. What a great name. There's a reason it's a little strange but it just yeah very L-O-T-R like Morgador the depths of Mordor. So it's got some lore Morgador does. Is that your new podcast Morgador lore? That'd be a great one if you're really into it. So from the official website for the village of Morgador Morgador village dot O-R-G a little brief history here it says Morgador's first settler Ariel Bradley was only nine years old when he was a spy for George Washington during the American Revolution. Born in Salisbury Connecticut Bradley came to the western reserve of Ohio and eventually settled in a small crescent shaped valley with good timber and plenty of springs. That's the point I was getting at for you. You were surrounded by water sir. Another element here. Plenty of springs plenty of water. Yeah. And there in 1807 he built a log cabin. Let's see he must be older than nine. Anyway he built a log cabin there in 1807 on a tract of land costing $335. Wow that's a bargain. I'll take two. And it contained about 146 acres. That's a good swatch. The town eventually became known as Bradleyville and then in 1825 the name of the town would be changed through the unintentional act of a celebrating sailor. Magador is an Arabic word meaning beautiful and the name of a town in Morocco. In 1825 a large home was built by Martin Kent Jr. Reportedly when the rafters were all in place one of the workers a former sailor climbed to the top of the structure removed a flask of whiskey from his pocket and christened the home Magador. Magador and there's always been a debate on why he chose the name Magador. Some say the sailor had fond memories of trips to North Africa. Some have said that he had a good friend that had been captured by the Barbary pirates and was imprisoned in old Magador and others have speculated that popular literature of that era was the Arabian Nights and the mysterious markets on the North African coast. So there you go. Wow. While you were sharing that I looked up Magador it's now called Esseria and I'm not even going to try E-S-S-A-O-U-I it has literally every vowel in it almost. Esseria, Esseria, Esseria, Esseria. I think it's Esseria. That's what I'm going to go with. You're talking about the town in Morocco. Yeah, it used to be Magador until the 60s and then the name changed but it's just beautiful. It looks like something out of an Errol Flynn movie or some other movie about colonialism but it looks amazing. In both anecdotes here we have a young boy. One, Ariel Bradley. Imagine being nine years old and spying for George Washington. It's weird. That ties back to Bucks County for me because when we were in Bucks County there was a little town in New Jersey just on the other side of the river called Lambertville which was about 25 minutes from our house there that we had. And there's one of Washington's spies who's buried at a church there along with one of his commanders, Coriel. The spy's named Sam Holcomb so he was one of the first spies for. So I love that. You think about that early spy network? That's amazing. Yeah. Amazing, fascinating history. A really, really rough event and period in history here. Check out the Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution now playing. Oh God, you know I never saw that one. I need to watch that. Check it out. Yeah, it's really well done. Of course, it's Ken Burns. But let's talk about his home base now, his place to feel safe. You know, ideally that's what every kid's childhood bedroom is to them, but that lasts in adulthood because how many stories have we come across where, okay, that shrinks down. It's kind of like you're falling back, retreating, retiring in sections, as Michael Kyan might say, when something's frightening you. So we're going to talk about the actions here in a little bit, but the threat is outside. You have this, the ramparts, the defensive barriers of the house itself and the window. Then you have your bedroom inside that, the inner sanctum, and then to protect that as whatever is outside might be encroaching. Then you have the dresser as the last defense. That's right. And then what I was going to say before that is that what's the last place of defense? Your bed with the covers over your head. Under the covers, yes, exactly. How many stories have we come across where adults are still doing that? Like I threw the covers over my head hoping it would go away and usually it does, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it gets closer while you're not looking like a cat. That's right. You pop open and it's like, surprise, I'm still here. So imagine Michael, he's five years old here. He's terrified. And so usually the flight or fight response would take him to his parents' bedroom, not the fight response. That was usually my thing. It's like, I'm going to get out a bat or I'm going to my Boy Scout knife. And so that's my last offense. Like I'm going down swinging and stabbing. Yeah. So he locks the door and then you can kind of say maybe he traps himself with this thing at the window, but there's two ways to look at it. So I was going to say there's a little bit of not what they call a hysterical strength, but that adrenaline pumping. It's not like he lifted a car up, but that's a big heavy dresser. Right. It's a big dresser. It's bigger than he is. There is definitely a little bit of Rorschach from the Watchmen when he goes to jail. It's like, I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me. Like I wonder if something paranormal was happening to you, like what happened to Michael here. And you went as a five-year-old over to your door and just slowly locked it and then turned around like, I'm going to get you. Like I wonder what would happen if you just took all the fear away and been like, let's go, let's go, come on in here, whatever you are, let's settle this like man encrypted or whatever. We've come across some stories for years and I'll mention it here again because it has been a few years since I have mentioned it, but it's apropos, if you believe the story, which I tend to do, and that's just a gut thing when you read a lot of stories like these, and that comes from Jim Harrell's Campfire. And I always point to this because sometimes fear mode not activated, fear mode unlocked or not unlocked, and so the fascination is more greater than the fear, and the one is that parade of shadow beings, not men in black, or there might be some connection, but the shadow beings coming out of the wall and traipsing through the kid's bedroom, and he was sleeping on the floor, and he was just like, what is this? And he was so fascinated, he reached up and touched one. And there's other little elements about the story that makes me tend to believe it, or this person's just a great horror writer, is that the reaction was that, you know, these are blacker than black, typical shadow figures, hat men, whatever crossing through, and there's several of them, and there may have been a female one that he recognized, but they're crossing his room and stepping right by him, he reaches up and grabs one, which they are not prepared for, so to answer your question, it's like, what are you supposed to touch us? You're supposed to be afraid of us. We're supposed to observe you. And so when you take that away, what happened was he said it felt very heavy and like thick, blacker than black, soft velvet. It was like a velvety touch. And this thing was kind of shocked, and it slowly rocked back like those old toy punching bags. They were blown up vinyl. On the bottom was a pouch of sand, usually, to wade it. Yeah, it was like a weeble. Not that no one is going to know what a weeble is, but I know you do, my friend. Oh, sure. But also, I don't know if kids play with these things anymore, but their fun is that you could just take your aggression out, you punch it, and it just pops right back. It pops back. He said this thing kind of slowly rocked back like, whoa, what are you doing, kid? And then it righted itself and then continued on its way and disappeared into the wall. So, that's a good question. I think a lot of times people just follow their gut, and this gut here of this five-year-old is like, I have a very intense feeling of fear, and so I'm going to lock myself in the room with my sister, also to protect her, to keep this thing from coming inside. So, it's outside staring in, but it still is that barrier of an uninvited being. Another thing I want to say before we move on here, too, that I think is interesting is, you know, you and I, having done the show for so long now, we have friends who see things on the regular. Right. And they're psychics, they're mediums, they're remote viewers and stuff like that, and, you know, I always say, based on all the people we've met over the years, of the people who say that they have a gift like that, I truly believe, I think, about 20% of them really have something going on, and I think other ones, not necessarily are nefariously deceptive, but I think that there's a, they maybe think they're seeing things when they're not, but there's a few people we know that there's just, there's no question that weird crap is happening to them all the time, and they're seeing stuff, and with those people, when something like this happens, of course, not as a five-year-old child, but like as adults, I know that we have two or three stories where our friends have said to us, ugh, not now, I'm not in the mood, I'm trying to sleep, things like that, and just, the thing just goes away. Whatever it is, it just goes away. Well, no, my favorite of that ilk, uh, with an adult, my favorite story is, uh, told to me by, uh, a very good friend of ours, who is a, uh, a season of veteran ghost hunter and, uh, paranormal researcher on the side, and had another friend who was also the same, uh, just loved going into famous haunted places, and may have even been part of a television production. Right. There was an old place, I think it was a hotel, perhaps, because this happened in her room, where they'd had some kind of celebration party the night before, or maybe the night after their, their investigation, and lots of libations, a bit of drinking, and she goes back to her room very late, not feeling well. So she's in the bathroom, huddled down by the porcelain throne. Yes. The bathroom's spinning, and out of the corner of her eye, she can see this black misty mass starting to form, and a corner up near the ceiling, and it started to materialize, and she just kind of looks up and is like, not now, not now. Right, right. Exactly. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't, oh yeah, oh, that's bad. Sorry about this, I'll come back later, and it just, I'll come back. It dissolved and went away. The thing is like, take a shower, get a nap, drink lots of water, I'll be back tomorrow. Didn't even offer to hold her hair while she was watching, but yeah, no, that is, and there might be some power to that, all facetiousness aside. I do think there is, honestly. I believe that there is, because I do have, I mean, it's very Monsters, Inc., but I do believe there's power in the fear, and that it does seem like, and it's something we've come across allegorically, and in terms of these stories, a lot of times over the years, was that there is power in your fear that helps darker things thrive. Yeah, there's that energy, right? There's that intense periods of emotional energy, which now, of course, is being tied into the UFO phenomenon as something to be harvested. So, very psychological. Now, so let's do the math a little bit here. Michael says the house was on an incline, right? He didn't specifically say that it had a walkout basement, but there's definitely enough of an incline behind it that his window is pretty high up off the ground. So, his dad, with a stepladder, has to be on the third rung, I think he said, to see in now. So, if we assume his father, who he said was not tall, but he didn't specify, but let's say he's around 5'10", and the stepladder, a step, each step is maybe a foot, then the windowsill is seven or eight feet off the ground at that point. Yeah, that would be my estimation here, because let's say it's a typical six-foot ladder, you're 5'9", 5'10", and you're on the third rung, and yeah, it's tall. Whatever that thing is, wasn't hopping up and down or had, wasn't standing on a milk crate left outside. So, Michael says this entity was staring down, or at least level, into the room, and if the eyes are, let's say, 24 inches above the father's head, you're looking at a creature that can be up to eight feet tall. And I know that sounds crazy, but then how else do you explain this perspective? And then there's always, I love that, that's another typical trope to these stories, or an element. We just talked about another DLO, I believe. One of my favorite stories that have come in for the Halloween submissions years ago, about two kids being at home, and sometimes it's kids, I think, to present themselves, and there's an element to that, too, in that whatever this force is, is easier seen by kids, or they're more helpless, in a way. Maybe a softer target, let's say. It was a really heavy snowstorm, and they saw some figure, humanoid, male, looking through those old, a lot of the doors in the 70s had the dimpled glass that was usually amber-colored a lot. Yeah, sure, Pizza Hut. Yeah. Right, so you look through, they saw somebody looking through, and then they realized, like, wow, you'd have to be really tall to be looking down through those small portal windows in the door. You know, that's a good way to gauge height, but here, let's say this window sill is about seven or eight feet off the ground at that point. Yeah, the other thing, other super important thing here, red eyes. I mean, it's practically a trope at this point, but it's something that comes up for a lot of people in a lot of different encounters, and he doesn't say eyeshine. He says they were moving, looking for something. Now, eyeshine requires an external light source because it's a reflection, you know, like a flashlight or something, but these were visible before his dad went outside with the light. Right. So, here we are back at the Mothman, and in fact, it sounds a lot like some of the Mothman sightings, almost verbatim. Mogador is about 200 miles north of Point Pleasant. I don't know how populated the area is. Yeah, but a short direct flight. I think it's close enough to Cleveland that it's, you know. Right. So, it could be part of the suburbs for Cleveland, aren't we thinking? We'd have to talk to somebody, whether that's considered, because like I said, you know, there's some debate when we talked about upstate New York and where does upstate actually begin, and there's a lot of debate by locals of what the definition of that is. Yonkers. Okay. Sorry, that's my New York joke. I'm kidding. Are we dealing with some kind of urban or suburban sighting of something like a Mothman? Yeah. And again, this is the perfect time for it. So, this was, you know, based on what we know, about 1974 or early 1975, and the Silver Bridge collapse was seven or eight years just prior to this. The Ohio Valley UFO flap had either just happened or could have still been going on, which begs a ton of interesting questions. Well, I mean, I'm thinking too with like with the flap going on, and that's its whole thing. In fact, people have been asking us to cover that on the main show, that flap itself, which our friend Rob Kay has covered extensively when he was still producing and as have other people pretty well. But there's this idea in my mind anyway, and it's a little bit of a Spielberg-esque idea, but like during the flap, is that just a bunch of tourists? They're all coming down and they're peeking in kids' bedroom windows and wandering around in the woods and all kinds of like ET type crap is happening. It's weird because it's also strange to think, all right, well, let's go with all the prevailing theories. It's like, well, is this interdimensional travel? Right. They're reducing inertial mass and doing all this sophisticated kind of traveling, coming from under the ocean, as we have implied in recent episodes and all that stuff, all just to go and peek in a kid's bedroom. Well, yeah, I know. It's us from the future, and we're somehow we're just creepy voyeurs in the future, even more so. Right, so it's a pervy dude from the future. Or is it, is this boy an ancestor of these beings somehow? Right. Is he important? Right. Or like the abduction phenomenon. John Connor. Yeah, well, is there a reason, you know, there are speculations about when you filter the data and you start seeing like things and making your Venn diagrams, there are some correlations between people who are abducted or claim to be and why them? You know what I'm saying? Like it's a whole range of people. It's not just farmers out in the middle of nowhere or cows or this and that. It could be anybody. People from all walks of life have reported this in every part of the world. So what's the commonalities here? Why them? Why are these sightings appearing to certain people? Is it just the location or was that boy and possibly his sister or just children in general, human children, important or interesting to these things? Because I do believe that there is, there's a fascination. Maybe it's their form of TV or entertainment. These are like little streaming clips and they can just pop in and take a look at us because we're so unusual. I mean, would you want to safely, if you had that kind of power, would you pop in and peer into another dimension just to see what it's left? Well, not if I'm looking in a child's bedroom. Well, but here's the, I know, but here's the, of course, yes. You don't want to, yeah, you want an interdimensional. I might look in the living room and try to see what they're watching on TV. Right. I don't know. No, you don't want an interdimensional restraining order. Retreat to the nearest convenient parallel dimension. Right. Dan Aykroyd. My point is that why is this happening? What's, what do you want? What is this? What are they, why are they doing this? Well, I think, again, I think it's just curiosity. Why do you, he says, Michael here says he doesn't believe in Bigfoot, but there's tons of stories of Bigfoots and Sasquatch eye peering into people's homes. They're curious. And I think if you had a house, you had a split level house or a walk in basement house, and there's a bunch of Sasquatches living in there, a family, you might peek in too. You know what I'm saying? They don't completely hang around, but like again, why is this happening? And give us a reason that we can understand. Right. And here's the other thing, which people aren't going to know if they're not familiar with the Minerva monster, but it famously looked in the kitchen window. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In Minerva, Ohio. So we're outside. Right. So I think it's, there is some observational thing. I mean, it may be on their end some scientific possibility. I think with the phenomenon that is the driving point, there is their science behind this, and this is just possibly just mere curiosity. Or they're just there unknowingly in a weird way. You know what I'm saying? Like they look surprised that I just came across another story where the person got the sense this, whatever was there, this creature cryptid or being was very surprised it was there. And very surprised the person could see it. Yeah. And so, uh, again, it's like the, uh, the shadow person walking by like, whoa, you're not supposed to touch us, kid. Hands off. And now you got it all sticky. You've been eating candy in bed. Now my robes, I'm going to have to get it cleaned. But I like the fact that, you know, it's speaking of science and what's the purpose here. He mentions his dad was a science guy, no room for the paranormal yet. He went out there with a gun, but here's the thing. Now you might say like, oh, so he had some room to believe in that. Or he was just saying that it's like, well, no, there's a threat outside. That's what you just don't want to go empty handed. Yeah. Yeah. You never go into the woods generally into the deep woods without something your side are because yeah. And people say, well, that's not necessary. So yeah, most of the time it isn't, but then sometimes it is. And you just don't want to be out there with a pocket knife. So the unasked question here, if there is any, did this dad believe in monsters? Did he think, you know, what was he going to shoot? And, you know, was it just an eight foot tall peeping Tom where I would say as a parent, and I am not one, but I certainly can empathize. I've had parents. I was a child also. And I remember that what that's like. You've been, you've been in, I've been in some of the adjacent relationships. Yeah, no, look at people's, you know, no, it's like, no, I understand that, that urge. Now I can't feel it, but I certainly understand that where, yeah, my dad, if there was a threat, would go outside with a gun. And, uh, my grandfather actually did that, but it was a human threat. There was some crazed dude wandering around on the property and they did have a house with a, uh, with a basement exit, a daylight basement. And, uh, he did one out there with a gun and he chased the guy off, but look, he went through World War II. He was not afraid of any man or beast. Yeah. But anyway, that's the urge I think is that no matter what it is, you're going to go check it out. Like why I would be really upset if I, as a child described this or hearing another child describe this and the parents like, ah, go to bed. Right. It's like, you should at least check it out. If there's somebody's, whatever that is and talking about eye shine, this thing's radiating light. The eyes are radiating light, not reflecting it back. So something, because they were so frightened, I would say it's not their imagination. Uh, but I also like, I would also want to hear if the, what the sisters POV is, we didn't get that much in the story. No, there's not, there's a, not a lot there. There is some discussion about the family talking about this. And I think that's, what's interesting because like, it seems like they, it's a statement of fact that this happened with the dad, with Michael, with everybody. I, it, that tells you that ultimately they accepted that it was a reality. Something happened, even if they couldn't categorize it. Yeah. I love that part of it. I, I, I love it when, uh, parents at least consider the possibilities, no matter what your, you know, your science minded background, whatever it is, is that you're taken seriously, even as children. Yeah. And it kind of bugs me when, uh, and I think it's their own fear. I mean, look, it depends on the child too. If they're always making up stories like this, like, okay, maybe it's, you know, you have to view it from that, uh, personal experience perspective. But I think there's also some deep seated fear when you have these fantastical stories that are told by the parents and they get, they get a smack. You know, it's like, yeah, put your lion. And so I just don't, I don't want to think about this. That's what it is. Well, so the question is, where do we land on this one? We have, we have an eight foot tall entity with, uh, self-luminous red eyes in a high activity corridor of strangeness during a decade of peak anomalies in Ohio, which, and again, that plays itself into a whole thing of just like, it's something bigger than a flap, you know, a flap, it's a bunch of UFOs. People are seeing lots of UFOs over a period of time, like a high inordinate number of them, but maybe there's more that goes along with that stuff happening on the ground, stuff happening in the woods, close encounters. Like it's a general amp up of the paranormal zeitgeist. It's their world is intersecting with ours in a more major way at this moment in time for some strange reason. And maybe this was just something cast off from that. Yeah. You know, it's a great intersection here, a, a rogue wave, a sine wave of being in the right place at the right time in the right decade and the right age. And the kids always see the stuff too. Well, that's what I'm saying is that, I mean, another thing that's obvious is that, you know, kids are paying much more attention. We're talking at the beginning of this about their world and their world is all of outdoors. You want to go outside. They're not as distracted. They're not with their nose down in a screen. That's maybe why adults don't see as many things. I'd be curious to know what's, uh, nobody's done the data as far as I, maybe they have, but where there's a demographic breakdown of, do kids see more things like this than adults, what types of kids, urban or suburban or rural, all these different categories of, uh, social science that can be applied to these sightings. I'd be curious to know, do kids see more things than adults? I would bet that the answer is yes. You don't want to see stuff. You don't have time for that. You got to go to work. You got, dinners are almost ready on the table. So give me a few quick thoughts on the mundane explanations. Are we going to go to owl? Is it just perched on the windowsill? Well, I don't know if there's enough windowsill for it to be perched. Certainly we've seen that. You've seen that clip now where an owl flies through some guy's window and is perched on the curtain rod. It's just mining. It's hanging. It's not, it didn't feel threatened. Owls, they have that chill that is just supernatural in a way too. It's like, it's not phased, you know, other birds be like, whoa, there's a human here. And so he doesn't know how to get it out of his house and he takes us like a Swiffer mop and he gets it to perch and walk onto the mop and then he gently lowers it and then he puts it out the window and finally the owl flies off. So we have owl and it's like, I just, I don't want to go to owl. So what do you think about the mundane explanations? What do you think your reaction would be? What are your quick summations here? Well, I think that something was definitely there. I don't think that Michael and his sister were imagining things. I think it's a pretty intense level of fear to block your door with a big piece of furniture. What it was, I can't say, but I think in terms of the mundane, I would lean more towards an owl than any other kind of thing like that. But it feels different to me. This feels different. And because of the time and the place, I believe it's different. And the thing that I would say to listeners of our show, if you have kids, when they tell you they've seen or experienced something strange, start with believing them. 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-Wendel 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? 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