Hi all, Happy Holidays! This year I’ve got a ghost story for you all. Today we travel to Greenbrier County, West Virginia in 1897. 

Sources Include:

Again this week I’ve gone from a handful of online articles, a few online genealogy pages - and a couple of podcast episodes. 

Including…

‘How The ‘Greenbrier Ghost’ Helped Convict a West Virginia Murderer in 1897’ by Joey Rather. 

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Tales of History and Imagination has made our ‘X-it’ from Musk’s hellsite (and will be deleting my profile in the new year,) but I’m still on

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This week we travel to Tana Island, Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) in the midst of World War Two. God has returned - and not a moment too soon. Having abandoned them decades earlier, just as bad men with awful intentions arrived to steal their land - and send their people off to far away locales to be worked to death - he was back, as an American soldier named John Frum.  

This week a lot of articles (which I had saved in tabs - when my iPad crashed and needed a restore…This is as best I remember it.)

In John They Trust by Paul Raffaele

There were a handful more, including pages of old newspaper clippings on the Daphne Slave-ship bust, and a couple of articles specific to Blackbirding in Peru - I apologise for not backing these sources up somewhere as I went… 

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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This week, how do I sum this up? I was freewheeling a little today, but have I got a tale of resistance, and a weird little man for you all. Anthony Comstock was a weird, joyless guy - and his ‘Comstockery’ ruined many ordinary lives - but hell hath no fury like Margaret Sanger and Katharine Dexter McCormick - our heroines this week. 

I was free associating things I knew this week, rather than going off a script - but Andrew Marr’s A History of the World was where I first came across this tale.

Tyler Mahan Coe’s episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones on Loretta Lynn’s The Pill is definitely in the mix on this one too…

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Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

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Come over and follow me there - it’s better than hanging out on X with Elon… I’ll be deleting my profile over there in the coming days. 

Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. 

Hi there all, just dropping a quick note, before I return to the writing desk… USA I’m aghast… and worried, and saddened by recent turns of events. 

This week, it’s Halloween! So, naturally I’ve got a tale of… well, historic hotel rooms in Kansas City, Missouri… And a notorious murder carried out in Room 1046 of the Hotel President.. 

Sources Include:

This fantastic article by John Horner, which appears the font of a dozen or so other articles I read through.

And a handful of things found in online newspaper archives and genealogy sites. 

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This week we return to Cuba to conclude our miniseries on the Cuban Missile Crisis. This week we discuss arctic explorers, nuclear test sites, saboteurs, spy planes gone awry, submarines and why I think having such power out there in an age where a ‘mad king’ could come to power is still very disconcerting.  

Sources Include:

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Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly. 

On 16th October 1962, American President John F Kennedy was presented with three indistinct photos taken of several tubes laid out in a field in Cuba. Kennedy at first took the scene for a football field. His brother Robert, on viewing the scene, wondered if it depicted a farm house in mid construction. 

It was, of course, a nuclear missile site in mid construction, and the following thirteen days brought humanity closer to nuclear war than any time before of since. 

One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs

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Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel. 

Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today, after visiting the set of the Donohue Show, we ask the question… Is a Nude Horse a Rude Horse? 

Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month 

(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit the first stretch target.) 

As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going. This includes occasionally putting down a month’s membership on some paywalled newspaper or other. This episode was penned a long time ago, and I’ve since lost the bibliography - but am pretty sure it grew out of something paywalled I found in the Washington Post. 

Unsure if you want to join up yet? Try a 7 day free trial. 

*Dollars quoted in USD…

Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel. 

Monday through Thursday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we’re going to meet a now obscure, but terrifying General named Uqba Ibn Nafi. 

(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit my first stretch target.) 

As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going, in my case Patreon money helps me buy books to research these tales, like the main source in this tale 

Francois-Xavier Fauvelle’s ‘The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages

Unsure if you want to join up? Try a 7 day free trial. 

*Dollars quoted in USD. 

Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel. 

Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we’re discussing one of history’s stranger What if’s. Thomas Johnson was a renowned smuggler, a talented escape artist - and it is rumoured he had a submarine - in 1820. Was he hired to bust Napoleon Bonaparte out of St Helena?

(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit my first stretch target.) 

As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going, in my case Patreon money helps me with the rental costs of the blog page - Speaking of blog pages, though I used half a dozen texts for this Tale - I first read this tale on the incomparable

Emilio Ocampo’s The Emperor’s Last Campaign

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*Dollars quoted in USD.