- 16 minutes ago
This is Halloween weekend, and here on Something Offbeat, our theme today is campfire stories. Sit back, relax imagine toasting some marshmallows and listen in to a story about a famous inventor working in laboratory housed on a moving train and twist on the goldilocks tale that ended with an arrest... and yes, these are true stories. Then, we’ll hear about some researchers who have looked into stories that might be more fantastical than they are real. One is an author who looked into a UFO story from the 1940s and podcasters trying to get to see if there’s any truth to folk tales about creatures supposedly lurking in American forests.
Special thanks Own the Road with Kelli and Bob out of KRLD 1080 in Dallas, The Dana & Parks Show out of KMBZ in Kansas City, Paranormal 360 out of WCCO News Talk in the Twin Cities and the Dave Glover Show out of KMOX in St. Louis.
Special thanks Own the Road with Kelli and Bob out of KRLD 1080 in Dallas, The Dana & Parks Show out of KMBZ in Kansas City, Paranormal 360 out of WCCO News Talk in the Twin Cities and the Dave Glover Show out of KMOX in St. Louis.
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NewsTranscript
00:11Welcome to a Weird News Roundup presented by Odyssey's Something Offbeat podcast.
00:18We explore strange tales reported on by Odyssey's radio newsrooms from coast to coast.
00:26I'm your Roundup host, Lauren Berry.
00:30This is Halloween Weekend, and here on Something Offbeat, our theme today is campfire stories.
00:38Sit back, relax, imagine toasting some marshmallows, and listen in to a story about a famous inventor
00:47working in a laboratory housed on a moving train, and a twist on the Goldilocks tale that ends with an
00:55arrest.
00:56And yes, these are true stories.
01:00Then, we'll hear about researchers who are looking into stories that might be a bit more fantastical than they are
01:08real.
01:08One is an author who looked into a UFO story from the 1940s, and podcasters trying to get
01:17to see if there is any truth to folktales about creatures supposedly lurking in American forests.
01:26We'll start with our not-so-mad scientist.
01:30First biography, I believe, and it was called The Wizard of Memo Park.
01:35That wizard is Thomas Edison, known as the inventor of the light bulb, among other things.
01:43Recently, Kelly and Bob Phillips of Own the Road out of Odyssey Station KRLD 1080 in Dallas
01:51visited the Thomas Edison Center in Edison, New Jersey.
01:56There, they talked to museum director Kathleen Carlucci, who you just heard.
02:02He was fascinated by chemicals.
02:04He created his own little chem shop in his mother's basement until she heard some explosions happening.
02:11Uh-oh.
02:11Yeah, and also bad smells were coming up, so she moved him out to the barn, which he promptly burnt
02:17to the ground.
02:29He decides again, I'm not working for anyone.
02:32I'm going to be my own boss.
02:34I'm going to be an inventor.
02:36So he rents a shop in Newark, New Jersey, and he's making improved stock tickers.
02:42He's making telegraph machines.
02:44He's making fire alarms.
02:46They had a lot of fun in the workshop.
02:48Edison, though, doesn't own the building in Newark.
02:51It's very expensive because it is a big city.
02:53He wants to move out of there.
02:54It's just so much going on there.
02:57He wants a quiet area.
02:59One of his workers tells him about a failed housing development called Menlo Park, located right on what was then
03:06the Pennsylvania Railroad.
03:08And the railroad's still at the end of our street and our northeast corridor.
03:12And so he comes down by train with his father and some of his workers to look over the area.
03:18The only thing really here is, we would say model home today, but it was like the business office for
03:24the Menlo Park Company.
03:25He buys the whole thing, 36 acres, for $5,200.
03:31And he asked his father, Samuel, to oversee the construction of the first building, the main laboratory, which was 100
03:38foot long, 25 foot wide, two stories, and it faced the lab.
03:43And it's built to be a laboratory.
03:45It's built to be a laboratory.
03:47And it will wind up being the largest laboratory in the world at that time.
03:52Wow.
03:53He will then add extra buildings.
03:55He needed a machine shop.
03:56He moved it out of the bottom of the lab into another building, which our current museum is on the
04:01site of.
04:02And then he needed a glass house where we had a glass roof where blueprints could be made later on
04:07that would serve as the place where the light bulbs were blown.
04:11He had a blacksmith on the area.
04:13He had a carpenter-slash-pattern shop.
04:16And then after he invents a machine that will make him world famous, he named it the Phono Graph.
04:22He will become known as the Wizard of Menlo Park.
04:26And so, but he's selling these newspapers and he learns a valuable lesson.
04:30One day, there's a big battle of Shiloh and people were clamoring for the news.
04:36He knew what the current news was because he heard the telegraph office people talking about it.
04:41But the paper he's selling is quite old.
04:44And so he said, you know what?
04:46I'm going to buy my own little proofer's press, a little printing device, and make my own newspaper.
04:52And he sold subscriptions.
04:54And he did really well.
04:55So he's basically known as the first person to create a newspaper on a moving train.
05:00He was making more money than some adult men and hired some of his friends to work with him because
05:07he was always looking for that potential.
05:10He was granted permission to conduct some science experiments on the back of the train.
05:15With the caveat, though, put everything away before the train takes off.
05:19Well, one day, maybe his phosphorus wasn't tied down properly.
05:24And, you know, when the train bucked, it spilled on the mailbag, setting it on fire.
05:30The train had to be stopped.
05:31Everything was thrown off, including young Edison.
05:35And he lost his job.
05:36And then the station master, Mr. McKenzie, comes out.
05:40He's like, what can I do for you, young man?
05:42Well, of course, we know now Edison was a quick thinker.
05:45And so he said, I would really love to learn the telegraph, you know, to really become, you know, learn
05:51tricks and a trade and all of that.
05:53How old are you?
05:54She's asked.
05:55Edison said, well, I'm 15, sir.
05:57You go home.
05:58You ask your parents, if they approve, I will train you.
06:02I will apprentice you as a telegrapher.
06:04And so he becomes quite good at it.
06:07For one year, he's trained.
06:08And at 16, he is a trained telegrapher.
06:13You can hear more about Edison's road to becoming the inventor we now know him as in that full On
06:21the Road episode.
06:22Now, most of us know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
06:26How she entered their house, tried out their beds, ate their porridge.
06:33Now, imagine that, but Goldilocks goes for cereal instead of porridge.
06:39And she's got a pack of cigarettes.
06:42And the homeowner is actually there.
06:45The Dana and Parks Show, out of Odyssey Station, KMBZ in Kansas City, is up with our next campfire tale.
06:57A Joplin woman has been charged in what they are calling a rural home invasion.
07:05And I suppose if you look at the true definition of home invasion, this is what this woman did.
07:13However, 39-year-old ****** has put sort of a new spin, if you will, on the home invasion.
07:21Berry County detectives have been alerted to a rural Monat, Missouri home after a female, unknown to the homeowner, walked
07:32in with the owner inside.
07:35He asked 39-year-old Jennifer Hagan to leave multiple times.
07:40She refused.
07:42Sat at the kitchen table, began eating food, and lit up a cigarette.
07:48Meth anyone?
07:50She has been arrested and charged with first-degree burglary and a $50,000 cash-only bond.
07:58Before law enforcement got there, multiple neighbors responded to help the homeowner and try to contain her inside the residence.
08:08They didn't want her leaving after they called 911.
08:09They wanted her caught.
08:11Wouldn't you want them to leave?
08:12Scott, I said the same thing.
08:14Let's un-home invade now.
08:16Okay?
08:17You home invaded.
08:18Let's un-home invade.
08:19You're free to go.
08:20Just get out.
08:21Sheriff Danny Boyd would like to thank the neighbors for their quick response.
08:24Police response, as response in a rural area can be lengthy at times.
08:29Police response, right?
08:30Yeah.
08:30This is a great example, he writes, of the wonderful county that we live in and, quote,
08:36neighbors helping neighbors.
08:37And we only have the first page of the probable cause statement.
08:41It says, I, Deputy So-and-So with the Berry County Sheriff's Office, upon my oath and penalty of perjury,
08:48state as follows.
08:49I have probable cause to believe that this woman entered the residence, did not know the victim, who's the homeowner.
08:58When the victim told her to leave, she refused and then started eating his food.
09:04The victim called for help, went outside until help arrived.
09:08Suspect was located in the residence by law enforcement and was taken into custody.
09:12Again, the suspect and victim did not know each other, and the suspect did not have permission to be inside
09:20the home.
09:22Wouldn't you, again, to, oh, she's a keeper.
09:26That line forms to the left, gentlemen.
09:29Drugs are bad, kids.
09:30Drugs are very bad.
09:32Um, I would just want her to go.
09:35I mean, there's, there's crazy in this world, and she's clearly crazy.
09:40Yeah.
09:40She lit up a cigarette in a stranger's home.
09:43Yeah.
09:44She ate a stranger's food in his house.
09:47While smoking, and I'm pretty sure it was a non-smoking residence, Scott.
09:50I'm pretty sure it was, too.
09:51Would you please extinguish your camel lights, ma'am?
09:56Those are camel no filter.
09:58Come on.
09:58Look at that.
09:59There ain't no filter on those cigarettes.
10:00Look at that face.
10:02There's definitely no filter.
10:03God.
10:04Do they even sell camel no filter, Sam, anymore?
10:07Oh, yeah, certainly.
10:08Really?
10:09Even the, uh, they still sell the camel whys, which I never understood.
10:13Camel what?
10:14Whys, and why are you smoking these?
10:16Oh, wide, right?
10:17Wide.
10:17W-I-D-E.
10:18Basically a small cigar with a cigarette filter.
10:20I thought you said why.
10:22But yeah, why applies to.
10:23I just, I will say this for, who can't be listening today because she's incarcerated.
10:28While that technically is a burglary, without question, you entered someone's residence,
10:33you don't belong there, they, she's eating Cheerios, whatever.
10:36I don't, home invasion seems a little strong to me.
10:41After a quick break, we're going to hear about an alleged incident from 1941 that's been linked
10:49to UFOs.
10:51And about researchers looking for folk legends in the American wilderness.
10:56All on this Weird News Roundup from Odyssey's Something Offbeat.
11:08Thank you for listening to this special presentation of Weird News from Odyssey's Something Offbeat.
11:14In honor of Halloween, we've got some spooky dispatches this week.
11:21Just this year, the U.S. government honored decades of speculation about unidentified flying
11:28object, or UFO, sightings with a website full of government accounts.
11:34One released this month even mentions a mysterious black triangle that federal agents spotted in
11:42the sky.
11:43A much older story, not one shared by the government, but one that circulated for decades,
11:51caught the attention of Paul Blake Smith, who decided to write about it.
11:56He joined Dave Schrader of the Paranormal 360 podcast from Odyssey Station WCCO News and Talk
12:04in the Twin Cities to discuss his work.
12:08Six years before Roswell became the most famous alien craft case in history, a Missouri crash
12:15allegedly left the United States government holding wreckage and bodies that it could never explain
12:21to the public.
12:22Cape Girardeau, 1941.
12:24The initial report sounds familiar enough.
12:27An airplane has gone down, a terrible accident, and people need help.
12:30But according to the account our guest has investigated, what lay at that crash site bore little resemblance
12:36to an airplane, and the bodies raised a far more disturbing possibility.
12:41Something had reached the ground that wasn't supposed to exist.
12:46Then came the silence.
12:49An alleged military recovery, evidence carried away, witnesses left with a story so extraordinary
12:55that telling it could put everything they knew and everyone they trusted at risk.
13:00Author Paul Blake Smith has followed that story beyond the crash site into claims of government
13:05secrecy, reaching President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a Missouri Senator named Harry
13:11S. Truman.
13:11His research raises an even more explosive question.
13:15Could material recovered from an alleged alien craft have entered the scientific effort that
13:21gave humanity the atomic bomb?
13:23Why is this story not so popular?
13:26How did you come to first know about this, Paul?
13:28I began to hear about it around the year 2000, and Linda Moulton Howell would talk about it
13:35on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, and I thought, well, I recognize all of these places and some
13:41of the names they're talking about because I grew up in Cape Girardeau.
13:45I spent my first 36 years there, and my father was five years old at the time of the accident,
13:52and my grandfather was a judge in Cape Girardeau.
13:56So I asked a few relatives, and my stepmom says, oh, yes, I remember hearing about this UFO crash back
14:03in the 1960s when she was going to high school in Cape Girardeau.
14:07And I said, oh, what did you hear?
14:08And she said, nothing more than it was just a spaceship with little spacemen that crashed outside of town.
14:13And so, you know, that came out long before Linda Moulton Howell's story around 1999,
14:21talking about what Charlotte Huffman Mann, a granddaughter of a Cape Girardeau minister, went into detail.
14:28And I'm told, and I have no idea if this is true, that Cape Girardeau native Rush Limbaugh told fans
14:35and friends privately
14:36that he also was told of the Cape Girardeau crash when he was in high school in the 1960s.
14:42Let's go back to 1941 and talk to me a little bit about the area, the town before the crash,
14:48and then the fateful night.
14:50Very well.
14:51Cape Girardeau was a fairly small town of about 20,000 people, very religious, Christian church-going community.
14:59And that's why a Christian minister got a phone call maybe around 8.30 or 9 o'clock at night
15:07from someone who said there's been a plane crash just outside of town.
15:12And we need all hands on deck.
15:14Can you come along and give spiritual comfort?
15:16So it was natural in those days in conservative Cape Girardeau to call in a Christian pastor to say prayers,
15:23not only what they thought would be victims of a plane crash,
15:27but any of their relatives or friends who would show up in grief, you know.
15:30They were expecting a pretty gruesome scene.
15:32So they were driven about 12 or 13 miles outside of town to this farm where they could see from
15:40a distance,
15:40here's a fire with flames and smoke, and there's the fire department and the police.
15:45So when they arrived, they had to walk about a fourth of a mile across this field to get to
15:51this crash site.
15:52And there were onlookers there.
15:54I'm sure the farmer and his family and some kids and maybe a doctor had showed up.
15:59And a couple of journalists and the police and the sheriff were all there and along with the firemen,
16:05and they couldn't find any plane.
16:08There was no cylindrical airplane whatsoever.
16:10There was a circular disc, a metal disc that had just crashed and was laying there in the soil,
16:18and it was cracked open.
16:19So this Reverend William Guy Huffman, who was called in, looked around for human bodies,
16:26and he couldn't find any of those.
16:28People had flashlights, car headlights, and lanterns, you know,
16:32and the flames were illuminating the scene pretty good.
16:35What they did find were three strange childlike bodies of gray beings laying on the ground,
16:40and one of them was still barely moving, still barely breathing.
16:45So this was the scene.
16:46It had to have been absolutely bizarre for people, you know, like, what in the world is this?
16:52I spoke to one woman before she passed away.
16:55She says, I was 11 years old at the time of the crash.
16:58I didn't go to the crash site, but these adults were all standing around talking near me,
17:03and she said, oh, there's been a crash with little spacemen in their little spaceship.
17:08And she said, we didn't have any term like UFO or flying saucer.
17:12They just called them little spacemen.
17:13So it was accepted by, you know, the local farm people that it was something from out of this world
17:20that they got to witness.
17:22We're going to leave the UFO speculation for now and move to an area of the country known as the
17:29Land Between the Lakes.
17:31That's where Krista and Brandy of the Blondes and Booze and Woo podcast have been searching for legendary creatures called
17:41dogmen and other cryptids.
17:44They joined the Dave Glover show out of Odyssey Station KMOX in St. Louis to share some of their experiences.
17:54People have heard about Land Between the Lakes over.
17:57It's Kentucky, Tennessee, right there on the border.
18:00And it's two lakes.
18:01It's Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake that come together.
18:04And there's the peninsula.
18:06And we started going out there.
18:08Oh, gosh, Brandy and I years ago.
18:10It's been probably six years ago from our first time out there.
18:14But we've heard all the stories of it.
18:16We wanted to investigate that area ourself.
18:19So one of the main stories that comes out of Land Between the Lakes on the cryptid side of things
18:23is that they call it the 1982 Dogman Massacre.
18:29And supposedly in 1982, there, you know, Land Between the Lakes, there's campgrounds and stuff out there.
18:35But back then there was a campground and a family of four went camping out there.
18:41And they were setting up their camper and dad and son were outside, like getting things ready, getting, you know,
18:50firewood, that kind of thing.
18:51Mom and daughter was in the camper.
18:55And supposedly a pack of Dogman came up and massacred the whole family.
19:04And, you know, it's not out there.
19:06You can Google it and you can watch a lot of different stories on it.
19:09However, the only reason I believe that part of it is true is because I know some credible people who,
19:16you know, have connections, who have connections type thing that say it really did happen.
19:21However, I don't agree with the area, the exact location that happened since investigating out there myself.
19:29But they, they, it started where a lady named Jan Thompson, she's now deceased.
19:35She worked at a gas station in Grand Rivers, which is right outside of Land Between the Lakes.
19:41I used to go there all the time.
19:42Yep.
19:42Yeah.
19:42And, um, two police officers came in the middle of the night and they were really, really upset.
19:48And they told her, you know, something awful happened out at this area, which is, uh, uh, we know is
19:57Land Between the Lakes.
19:58And, um, they started telling her, like, I don't know how, I don't want to get too graphic, but, you
20:04know, there, there was, you know, people hanging from the trees and things like that, that, you know, just your
20:11normal bear or something isn't going to do.
20:15And that the camper was ripped to shreds, you know, and, and so there's, there's different things that go on
20:23out there that, um, make me believe that I think it did happen.
20:28I just don't agree with that exact location.
20:30I think it was down, um, what they, they, what's known as Demumber's Bay.
20:35I think that's actually where it happened.
20:38Reminds me of, uh, Ape Canyon.
20:40Oh yeah.
20:41Oh, that's a great story.
20:42I do not.
20:43What year is that from?
20:44Oh, like the gold rush kind of guys.
20:48Oh, okay.
20:48It was like, uh, well for, was it 1849?
20:52But after that, I don't exactly remember the dates.
20:54I don't want to misquote, but that was a, quite a crazy story too.
20:58Yeah.
20:58Yeah.
20:59Where basically a bunch of guys were hunting, I think.
21:02And, uh, they saw something.
21:05And then that night, a bunch of somethings, uh, attacked them and attacked their cabin.
21:12And we're walking across the roof and throwing rocks and the whole bit.
21:15Well, one of the guys apparently, um, I did a show on this.
21:18Shot him, right?
21:18We did a show on this.
21:19You can hear more about their adventures on the full Dave Glover Show episode.
21:25And I'll tell you in a moment how to find it.
21:28Thank you so much for listening to this Weird News Roundup presented by Odyssey's Something Offbeat podcast.
21:36This episode was written and produced by me, Lauren Berry.
21:42Special thanks to Own the Road with Kelly and Bob out of KRLD 1080 in Dallas.
21:49The Dana and Parks Show out of KMBZ in Kansas City.
21:54Paranormal 360 out of WCCO News and Talk in the Twin Cities.
21:59Paranormal 360 out of WCCO News and Talk in the Twin Cities.
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