Astonishing Legends

Introducing Scared All The Time, the newest show on the Astonishing Legends Network.

Well well, dear friends, Spooky Season is upon us once again, so it's time to regale and chill you with true Halloween tales from within our ranks!  Our first story, which we're calling "She is Ours," comes from Andy, whose recurring nightmare leads to a standoff with higher powers.  Later, a study of palmistry plunges her into a shared vision with a stranger.  The following frightening account comes from Maryann, who gets an unwelcome response when you "Speak of the Devil."  And finally, Persephone endures a harrowing encounter that may be a puzzle piece to a lifelong mystery that seemed to come from "No Place at All."  Light the candles, prepare the beverages, and settle in for an evening of eerie testimony from some Legenders.  May all your dreams be pleasant tonight!

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Enjoy episode number 5 of the Patreon-exclusive Astonishing Junk Drawer! 

We took a survey a while back, and sweatpants were far and away the number one most requested new merch item, so here’s our first batch with a glow-in-the-dark Astonishing Al on the hip! They are available for pre-order as of right now! We will start printing them over the next few weeks for them to get to you by Halloween with any luck!

We need your scariest stories! Send them in! Like…now!

For whatever reason, 1952, the year of Truman Bethurum's encounters with saucer Captain Aura Rhanes and her crew, was a watershed year for UFO interactions and the Contactee movement.  The period is mainly known for marking an era of peaceable and friendly exchanges with aliens, deAL266: Bethurum Part 2 – UFOs and the Occult spite the predictable fears of the "other" depicted in 1950s Science Fiction and fueled by Cold War tensions.  Sometimes colloquially referred to as "Space Brothers" (which could include Bethurum's "Space Sister" Rhanes) or occasionally an alien race of "Nordics," these benevolent otherworldly visitors often urged humans to live in harmony, to care for our planet, and warned us of the dangers of the atomic age.  The overall message is they were here to protect us from ourselves.  But as welcoming and comforting as that sounds, there is a much-overlooked aspect of some of the personalities involved in this generation of heralds – a fair number of them had ties to occult beliefs and practices.  From Aleister Crowley's magick and Jack Parsons to the wackier exploits of George Hunt Williamson, MIB threats to Albert K. Bender, William Dudley Pelley's fondness for Nazism, to the more modern cult of Marshall Applewhite and the current belief by some officials that aliens are demonic, the themes grow darker and more sinister.  There is no doubt that a throughline has existed with the "Saucer Seers" from hopeful communions to the Dark Arts because it requires a belief in access to the mystical.  We're joined once again by Rob Kristoffersen and Rich Hatem for part two of our discussion as we explore the connection between UFOs and the occult.

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On Sunday night, July 27, 1952, Cement Batch Plant Operator Truman Bethurum took a little snooze during his break while working the swing shift on an Asphalt Mixing Plant project near Mormon Mesa, Nevada.  He awoke to hear unintelligible murmuring from eight to ten small-sized men who had surrounded his truck.  Initially startled by the diminutive beings who all seemed to be wearing uniforms, what would really make Truman's heart pound with excitement was that they appeared to be the crew of an enormous flying saucer that had landed just a few yards away.  He described the ship as about 300 feet in diameter and six yards deep at its center, with something akin to a burnished stainless steel finish.  Bethurum went aboard to meet the female captain of the ship and was able to ask her questions, to which he often received cryptic yet intriguing answers.  One visitation like this would be enough to question one's reality and sanity, but Bethurum was able to meet and converse with these interplanetary visitors on ten more occasions.  Unable to keep this earth-shattering secret to himself, Bethurum would end up talking about his close encounters with his coworkers and his bewildered and soon-to-be long-suffering wife, correctly suspecting there would be derision and concern for his mental well-being.  But even imagining how his life would turn upside down from his claims, he felt these exchanges were too important and wonderful to keep to himself.  So if this was all just a made-up story in the style of 1950s era SciFi to gain some notoriety and maybe sell some books, why would a seemingly clear-headed, hardworking man with a good job and family risk losing everything to become viewed by most as a "Saucer Seer" kook?  Was there something about Bethurum's personality that was unsound or foolish and unknown to his closest associates?  Perhaps he became an unwitting target of a government operation or a contactee of a broader metaphysical phenomenon that tailored his experience to his comprehension.  Join us for part one of a roundtable discussion with a couple of our closest associates, Rob Kristoffersen and Rich Hatem, as we follow Truman Bethurum aboard a flying saucer.

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In the second part of our series on the mysterious visitor to Van Meter, Iowa, it’s time to wonder how so many credible people could see a creature so incredible and what that creature could be.  An extant pterosaur, your run-of-the-mill cryptid, a Keel-like “uttraterrestrial,” something like a tulpa or an egregore, or simply a transdimensional interloper from the sacred and mystical bowels of the earth?  Does a hoax that a whole town would have to be in on even make sense?  Could the gestalt be a little from all of these things?  We may never know precisely what the Van Meter Monster was, but we can learn how something clinically described as an unusual sensory experience affects the people who see it.  Something else we can bet on is that, like it or not, we must share our reality with the surreal, and as rare as it is, people will continue to see the impossible.

Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode.

In the second part of our series on the mysterious visitor to Van Meter, Iowa, it’s time to wonder how so many credible people could see a creature so incredible and what that creature could be.  An extant pterosaur, your run-of-the-mill cryptid, a Keel-like “uttraterrestrial,” something like a tulpa or an egregore, or simply a transdimensional interloper from the sacred and mystical bowels of the earth?  Does a hoax that a whole town would have to be in on even make sense?  Could the gestalt be a little from all of these things?  We may never know precisely what the Van Meter Monster was, but we can learn how something clinically described as an unusual sensory experience affects the people who see it.  Something else we can bet on is that, like it or not, we must share our reality with the surreal, and as rare as it is, people will continue to see the impossible.

Visit our website for a lot more information on this episode.

When most folks hear about a fantastical cryptid sighting, they just assume it was a dubious, one-off, misinterpreted encounter by the town drunk, or overimaginative prankster kids, if they believe any of it at all.  But none of this applies to the incident where a mystical creature terrorized the small farming town of Van Meter, Iowa, in 1903.  For five nights starting September 29, an impossible visitor made its presence known to the townsfolk.  Upon returning at 1:00 am from a job out of town, implement dealer U.G. Griffith spotted a dark figure on a downtown rooftop, which seemed to be shining a bright spotlight around.  Thinking it may be a burglar, Griffith approached to inspect when suddenly, the large shadow leaped to another rooftop across the street and disappeared.  The following night, around the same time, the town’s doctor, Dr. Alcott, was also alerted to a bright light shining through his window and ran outside to investigate.  Dr. Alcott, though, got a better view of the intruder.  The figure was described by him and others as standing eight to nine feet tall, half-human, half-animal, with enormous, smooth, leathery wings, a beak, and most curiously, a blunt horn in its forehead from where this bright light was said to have shown.  Most disturbingly, the creature appeared immune to the bullets fired at it on multiple occasions.  Far from the town’s undesirables, these encounters happened to merchants, a doctor, and a bank manager – some of the community’s most prominent and well-respected members who didn’t care for the notoriety this story brought.  Having had their fill of fearsome appearances, a heavily armed posse confronted the antediluvian monster at its lair in a mine on the edge of town, intending to rid the earth of its existence.  Grab a pitchfork and a torch, and join us as we hunt down the Van Meter monster.

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