Gather 'round the campfire: Endless Dread 2026

Every year, the Endless Thread team convenes around a campfire to freak each other out with the scariest stories they can find on the web. This Halloweekend, Ben Brock Johnson, Amory Sivertson, and producer Frannie Monahan present tales of strange canine-like creatures, mysterious Appalachian sandwiches, and legal-minded ghosts. Show notes: "What is the scariest thing you’ve ever seen in your life that you can’t explain?" https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1gh30zr/comment/luuysjf/?share_id=bNF7YmE_lPivLruDRQVwJ&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1 (r/AskReddit) @ChurchofChelsea's story https://www.tiktok.com/@churchofchelsea/video/7531538141937700109 (TikTok) "The Only Case in American History Where a "Ghost" Solved a Murder" https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghoststories/comments/1vqbpds/the_only_case_in_american_history_where_a_ghost/ (r/GhostStories) The Greenbrier Ghost is an odd West Virginia tale https://wvmetronews.com/2026/07/21/the-greenbrier-ghost-is-an-odd-west-virginia-tale/ (MetroNews) Greenbrier Ghost, Zona Heaster Shue https://greenbrierwv.com/editorials/the-greenbrier-ghost (Greenbrier Valley) The Greenbrier Ghost https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2018/01/greenbrier-ghost.html (Appalachian History) Everlasting Faint https://www.madisonopera.org/everlastingfaint/ (Madison Opera) This episode was produced by Grace Tatter, Frannie Monahan, Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson, and co-hosted by Frannie, Amory and Ben. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:32Speaker 02

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 0:41Speaker 03

  Make them remember you.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Weeping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  Every BUAR Podcasts, Boston.

• 0:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Here we are. It's Endless Dread, but it's the final installment of this year.

• 1:03Amory Sivertson?

  That doesn't sound very spooky.

• 1:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sorry.

• 1:05Amory Sivertson?

  You've got to sound spookier.

• 1:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  What do you want from me, man?

• 1:15Amory Sivertson?

  On this night in October, we three, Benjamin, Franciscus, and Emery, are gathered around a fire.

• 1:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Huddled.

• 1:29Amory Sivertson?

  Huddled for warmth and comfort from the terrors of the night.

• 1:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 1:35Amory Sivertson?

  In my backyard, like we've been doing for the past however many years.

• 1:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40Amory Sivertson?

  To tell each other some spooky stories and, you know, try to freak each other out.

• 1:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  So this story involves a house that is on the edge of town.

• 2:07Amory Sivertson?

  Where does this come from?

• 2:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  This comes from the AskReddit community.

• 2:12Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, an unusual one for spooky stories, I feel like.

• 2:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Exactly.

• 2:17Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 2:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  And the question, the post, asked, "What is the scariest thing you've ever seen in your life that you can't explain?"

• 2:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  So this story comes from a Reddit user named Malarkey Bandini.

• 2:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which already sets us off, yeah, into the Malarkey zone.

• 2:50Amory Sivertson?

  So you know it's true.

• 2:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know it's true. It's absolutely true.

• 2:55Amory Sivertson?

  Cannot explain.

• 2:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Exactly.

• 3:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  "I've seen some pretty wild stuff in my life, but most of it is explainable. The one event that comes to mind was witnessed by my dad, brother, and myself, and it's a two-part encounter, but I still consider it one event." That's how the story starts.

• 3:17Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 3:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is around 1998.

• 3:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Malarkey and Malarkey's family moved to an old clapboard house on the edge of town.

• 3:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  This house has a huge backyard, and it's interesting, it has two different kinds of fences around the backyard. It's a six-foot wooden privacy fence on one side, and then the other three sides of the backyard have a metal chain-link fence about four and a half feet high.

• 3:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  The kids' bedroom was in an old converted sunroom on the back of the house that faces the backyard, and this room is full of floor-to-ceiling windows.

• 4:02Amory Sivertson?

  I hate this already.

• 4:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  So the kids ended up in the room that gets a very big, broad view of the backyard.

• 4:09Amory Sivertson?

  No, and no curtains, just big windows.

• 4:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Amory Sivertson?

  Nope.

• 4:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  So Malarkey's bed, headboard, was against the windows.

• 4:22Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, that's bad.

• 4:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  And the brother's bed was about eight feet away with his headboard against the opposite wall, with the foot of the bed facing the windows.

• 4:31Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 4:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  So one night, the two brothers are up pretty late, they're hanging out, they're talking, and then suddenly, Malarkey's brother gets really quiet.

• 4:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  "I figured he fell asleep, but then I heard him whispering in a shaky breath." So I'm like, "What?" And he says it in a forced whisper, but I, thinking he's messing with me, I'm like, "Bitch, why?"

• 5:04Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, Malarkey. Taylor's all this time.

• 5:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I'm looking at him. As I'm looking at him, my head is to the windows, and he's pointing into the backyard behind my bed. So I quickly sit up and turn around and see a huge dog head staring almost nose to glass through the window right behind my bed.

• 5:27Amory Sivertson?

  Ooh. Huh.

• 5:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm almost nose to nose with this thing. Just a single pane of glass and about 10 inches of empty air separate us.

• 5:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  When I say I screamed, I mean I screamed. Not my proudest moment, but hey, I was like 10 years old.

• 5:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  The thing quickly ducks under the window, and then it runs to the side of the yard and jumps the four-foot, four-and-a-half-foot chain-link fence and runs off into the darkness.

• 6:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right as this happens, the kid's dad runs into the room with the mom right on the dad's heels.

• 6:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  We were able to get out that something was looking through our windows, so dad ran back to his room, grabbed his shotgun, and then headed out the side door of the house and into the backyard.

• 6:22Amory Sivertson?

  Do we know anything more about what the dog looks like? It's just a big dog head.

• 6:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Giant head of a dog.

• 6:28Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, they didn't see the rest of the body, though?

• 6:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, this is where it gets a little weird. So the first time, the dad doesn't find anything with the shotgun. He writes it off as a nightmare that the two brothers have, or something, or one of the brothers have.

• 6:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  "So I took the blame," says Malarkey, "and was told to quit messing around, go back to bed." Typical parent response, et cetera.

• 6:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  So again, my brother and I are in our room with these floor-to-ceiling windows. We are just completely rattled, huddled in his bed, staring out the windows, when we see the thing come walking along the chain-link fence on all fours. And the fence only comes up to its mid-shoulder, so this thing is huge.

• 7:16Amory Sivertson?

  Wow.

• 7:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  It sniffs the ground, does a few circles, and then hops the fence into the backyard like it's nothing.

• 7:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  It walks over to the window and again gets its nose to the glass like it's trying to see in. We're panicking the whole time. My brother is like, "Fuck this," and as soon as he steps off the bed, we hear this loud bang, and there's a flash of light.

• 7:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  The thing at the windows gets knocked sideways, and without even missing a beat, it turns and runs across the full length of the backyard, jumps the back chain-link fence, it cleared the fence, the alleyway, and then landed in the back neighbor's yard. This is easily a 15-to-20-foot jump minimum, clearing the fence like it was nothing, and it was gone at a dead run.

• 8:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  So his dad comes back, tearing around the side of the house with the shotgun in hand, and makes a mad dash for the side door and slams it shut behind him.

• 8:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  He's screaming and hollering, "We gotta go." We pack up and head to the hotel that night.

• 8:23Amory Sivertson?

  Whoa, wait, so dad shot the thing?

• 8:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dad shot the thing, but the thing didn't, you know, the thing gets knocked over, but then it seems kind of fine and makes this massive jump, and that freaks out the dad.

• 8:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  They only lived there about six months. Rattled my dad so much, he didn't even want to come back. He told my mom that we were just going to move the next day, but she wouldn't allow it.

• 8:50Amory Sivertson?

  Wow.

• 8:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mind you, this is the coastal plains region of Texas. You have no large wild canines there. It's not a thing. They have stray dogs.

• 9:07Amory Sivertson?

  That's a thing somewhere else? I mean, we have coyotes here.

• 9:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, they have stray dogs and coyotes, but nothing that would be how big this thing was.

• 9:15Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 07

  Like a dire wolf?

• 9:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  The dad said that the thing that freaked him out the most was that when he saw the thing jump the fence, it walked towards our window, crouched, but still on its hind legs. So it wasn't on all fours. It was on its hind legs. It wasn't walking on all fours. And then when it got to our window, it stood up straighter. And he could tell that while it looked like a dog, its body was shaped wrong. He said it looked like a really stocky person wearing a dog suit, but he couldn't tell it wasn't a suit.

• 9:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Also, when it was walking in circles, sniffing the ground before coming into our yard the second time, it wasn't actually sniffing the ground like for a scent. It was staring at our window with its face to the ground, like it was acting like it was sniffing the ground, almost as if it was playing a part to see if anyone would notice it.

• 10:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  He said he's had dogs his whole life and everything about what it was doing was wrong.

• 10:19Amory Sivertson?

  So we've got maybe a giant dog of some sort, maybe a person in a giant dog suit.

• 10:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which is almost scarier to me.

• 10:28Amory Sivertson?

  It is definitely scarier to me. Like as soon as you were like, "Don't move," and before the reveal of what is behind the kid's bed in the window.

• 10:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Amory Sivertson?

  My heart immediately is like, "Oh, my God, it's a person," or it's a person-like figure, you know? It's like, you think it's like a creepy person in a dog suit versus like a werewolf or something. Oh, Freddie, I had not considered werewolves.

• 11:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  You didn't consider werewolves?

• 11:04Speaker 07

  That's obviously where my mind, I don't know. I thought that was like...

• 11:09Amory Sivertson?

  Was there a full moon? We don't know.

• 11:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is interesting. Someone says, "I grew up in Texas City slash Clear Lake area, so this especially gave me the heebie-jeebies. My brother claims he saw something similar in our grandma's backyard as a kid, but I didn't see it."

• 11:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  And then he says werewolves in Texas, apparently.

• 11:32Amory Sivertson?

  Oh.

• 11:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 11:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Interestingly, this is apparently something that is known in Texas called Dog Man.

• 11:47Speaker 07

  Dog Man.

• 11:48Amory Sivertson?

  Dog Man!

• 11:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  There's a famous video of a person livestreaming on Facebook about the creepy thing they've been seeing behind their house. And as they're filming, you see the figure of a large creature, almost as tall as the flight pole, pass under the street lamp. Chilling footage.

• 12:03Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, my God, you have the footage?

• 12:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Looks like there's a video.

• 12:07Amory Sivertson?

  Show me.

• 12:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Slowed down. Ooh.

• 12:10Amory Sivertson?

  We've got like, it's just like a whisper. Yeah, it's very spindly.

• 12:14Speaker 07

  It's just out of the light. It's like...

• 12:16Amory Sivertson?

  It's got a big hunched back. I mean, I would never say that this was Dog Man. I don't see the dog in this creature. But

• 12:26Amory Sivertson?

  yeah, it's very hard to make out, but just like a spindly, creepily moving thing

• 12:33Amory Sivertson?

  that, there's no scale, but are those the leaves of a tree?

• 12:36Speaker 07

  It looks like it might be like eight or nine people.

• 12:39Amory Sivertson?

  It looks like one of those, I was gonna say like one of those 12-foot skeletons on people's floors.

• 12:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  And it's moving with purpose.

• 12:48Amory Sivertson?

  I don't like it.

• 12:49Speaker 07

  Nope. No, thank you. No, thank you.

• 13:05Speaker 07

  So, do you guys know that feeling when you're like walking in the dark and you like really want to run? Like, there's like a prickly feeling in your neck?

• 13:16Amory Sivertson?

  You feel something behind you?

• 13:18Speaker 07

  Well, no, like when you're a kid, if you're, like, I don't know, I used to get this feeling, like when I'd take out the trash and then I'd be like, "I'm not gonna run back to the house. I'm not gonna run back to the house." Like...

• 13:27Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, at night?

• 13:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, like at night, like creeped out, like

• 13:30Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, totally.

• 13:31Speaker 07

  Trying to stay on, like I still get it now.

• 13:33Amory Sivertson?

  I do too.

• 13:33Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Generally speaking, I don't get scared in that way, but I know the feeling you're talking about. I've had it before as a kid and every once in a while, I'll get a little creeped out.

• 13:43Speaker 07

  Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to like make sure that you guys like know that feeling. But I got this story off of TikTok. There's this woman I follow. I really love her stories and her storytelling. Her name is Chelsea. Her account is Church of Chelsea.

• 14:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  Church of Chelsea?

• 14:04Speaker 07

  Church of Chelsea. She is a traveling nurse. A lot of traveling nurses are home health care. And so that means you're like, you're going to people's houses. A lot of times people are, you know, underserved, underserved areas. You know, they gotta like make sure like the place is like good for someone to live and recover in as well. They work a lot with social workers on that end, but you know, they go in and they do like wound care and administering medications and helping people out, along with like taking their vitals and stuff. So like my mom did this for a long time, but Chelsea still does it. And for a long time, she did it in Appalachia.

• 14:48Speaker 07

  So she has this whole series of videos like talking about all of these experiences she had as a home health traveling nurse in Appalachia. And this one that I want to tell you guys about is she went out to one patient's house one day. And wherever she worked, it was really, really remote. Like she didn't have GPS on her phone. So she like literally had to use like a map and a compass to travel around like all these backroads and get to people's houses. Like people were like living really far out there.

• 15:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  No service?

• 15:27Speaker 07

  No service, no service. So no GPS. And because of this too, she had become really good at, you know, like kind of taking stock of like what the surrounding landmarks are. So she could like find her way back to the main road after a visit. But anyway, this one day, she's driving on the main road and she gets off on a smaller dirt road, you know, to go to this patient's house. She remembers crossing a bridge, a small, like one-car bridge, and then going up a gravel driveway to this house, a long driveway. And she parks at the end of the driveway and you know, there's a house and there's a barn and there's a field. And she hears kids playing and she sees

• 16:10Speaker 07

  kind of a broken down car in the field in front of the barn, you know? And like there's a guy working on it. He's wearing like overalls, denim overalls.

• 16:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Heavens, overalls. Terrifying.

• 16:21Amory Sivertson?

  What?

• 16:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Just kidding.

• 16:24Amory Sivertson?

  They're so wholesome.

• 16:26Speaker 07

  But anyway, you know, she's gathering her stuff and she hears someone calling out to her. She's like, "Yep, I'm coming." You know, getting her her bag together and she goes up to the house. And patient greets her at the door and just like, "Oh, hey, you know, wasn't expecting you quite yet." Chelsea is like, "Okay, weird. I thought, I totally thought I heard someone like call out to me." And I figured that she was like waiting for me, but anyway, it must be my imagination. And so she goes in and she's doing the visit. It's going well. And then, you know, there's these questions that they have to ask all the patients, like, "Who do you live with?" You know, just to like see what their situation is. And this woman's saying that she lives alone. And this is her property. She has a hundred and whatever acres, you know?

• 17:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  What about the dude with the car?

• 17:10Speaker 07

  What about the dude with the car? Because that's what Chelsea's thinking. She's like, "Oh, weird, because like I totally heard like kids outside." And there's like a guy outside just now, like working, working on the car. Like, "Does he work for you?" And then the woman that she is visiting says, "Oh, it's out there."

• 17:32Speaker 07

  And then this woman is like, "You need to leave."

• 17:36Speaker 07

  And Chelsea's like, "Okay, but I haven't quite finished my visit yet. I still have a few more questions." And the woman's like, "I'm gonna make you a sandwich." And so she like goes into the kitchen. Chelsea's trying to like finish up the visit.

• 17:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Tempting.

• 17:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's how Ben dies.

• 17:58Speaker 07

  Scampy as face up. Tempting. But yeah, so this woman is like making Chelsea a sandwich, saying that she needs to leave because it's going to rain, which is weird because it is a... Pan is losing it.

• 18:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  I just, I'm, I wanna know more about the sandwich.

• 18:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  I know that's not relevant, but...

• 18:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, so, so the woman is saying, "You need to leave because it's going to rain, and if it rains, you're gonna get stuck." Like, "The road is unpassable when it rains, you're gonna get stuck." But Chelsea is like, "That's so weird because it's like a beautiful day outside." Like, "I did not think that it looked like it was gonna rain, but whatever." This woman throws the sandwich in a bag, hands it to Chelsea. I'm sorry, there's not a lot of detail about it.

• 18:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, alright, alright. Alright, that's tough, but I'll, I'll live with it.

• 18:56Speaker 07

  She basically like pushes Chelsea out of the house, she's on the porch, and it is dark outside.

• 19:03Amory Sivertson?

  Was she expecting that?

• 19:04Speaker 07

  No.

• 19:05Amory Sivertson?

  If this is in the middle of the day?

• 19:07Speaker 07

  This is in the middle of a beautiful afternoon. And Chelsea describes it as not like storm dark, like, it's like night dark. It's like dark, dark, pitch black. And there is like no sound. Like, there's no birds, there's no bugs, um...

• 19:23Amory Sivertson?

  There's no planes flying overhead.

• 19:25Speaker 07

  There's no planes flying overhead. She is alone. It's just her on the porch in a big field and her car at the end of the field. And Chelsea, who has seen a lot of crap up until this point, as a home health traveling nurse in Appalachia, is like, "Okay, just gonna walk to my car and I'm gonna pretend that I'm walking out of Target. I'm just gonna look straight ahead and it's gonna be fine."

• 19:58Speaker 07

  She starts walking to her car in the quiet, in the dark, with the sandwich. And she's like, "What am I supposed to do with the sandwich? Is the sandwich like, am I supposed to like barter with the sandwich?

• 20:09Speaker 07

  Whatever it is, the it that is out here?"

• 20:14Amory Sivertson?

  Or this woman's like, "You're going to be out there a long time and you're gonna need a sandwich."

• 20:21Speaker 07

  But anyway, Chelsea is walking to her car and it is quiet except for the sound of denim rubbing against itself.

• 20:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Like, "That's gonna be overalls, that's overalls."

• 20:36Speaker 07

  But like walking, someone's walking in jeans.

• 20:39Amory Sivertson?

  Wait, I've got denim on, I can create that sound.

• 20:41Speaker 07

  Let's create the sound.

• 20:46Speaker 07

  Pretty fast skate.

• 20:54Amory Sivertson?

  That's pretty slow.

• 20:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's it. She, and she has, she hears that and she just has this distinct feeling that somebody is walking alongside her in the field. And she said that it, it felt like she was being hunted. Like, that feeling, like she had the hair standing on, on the back of her neck and just was fighting the impulse to run, just like, "Don't run, don't run, walk. She can hear this thing coming." She's walking. At some point, she drops the sandwich.

• 21:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's the real tragedy of this story.

• 21:32Speaker 07

  She drops the sandwich, she makes it to her car and she's out of there. But I said earlier that, you know, she takes into account landmarks as she's driving to find her way out. She is not seeing any of them. It's dark, she's going down this little road that she feels like should have connected already, she can't find the bridge that she went over. She's going and she's going and she's going and it's dark and she doesn't, she doesn't recognize where she is. At some point, she makes it to like, like an underpass, like culvert thing, right? Where she goes through there, pitch black inside, she gets to the other side. It's daytime.

• 22:12Amory Sivertson?

  Whoa.

• 22:14Speaker 07

  Afternoon.

• 22:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 22:20Speaker 07

  So she never like ended up going back to that property, but...

• 22:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Why would you?

• 22:26Speaker 07

  In the meantime...

• 22:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  I never got the chance to go back.

• 22:28Speaker 07

  Get another sandwich! She never got to taste the sandwich!

• 22:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  I wanted to pick that sandwich up.

• 22:32Speaker 07

  To visit the woman and administer her care. Um, but she had other clients in the area and like on the main road and she just never was able to locate the off-road that took her to that property again.

• 22:47Amory Sivertson?

  Dog man.

• 22:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dog man.

• 22:52Speaker 07

  Dog man wearing overalls.

• 22:55Amory Sivertson?

  They're all coming together.

• 22:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Franny, thank you for that extremely creepy story.

• 23:02Speaker 07

  Anytime.

• 23:04Amory Sivertson?

  I too have a creepy story and it too takes place in Appalachia. And I will tell it to you after a break.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI? Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Make them remember you.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 24:25Amory Sivertson?

  We have one more story tonight.

• 24:28Amory Sivertson?

  I found it, at least, in the Ghost Stories subreddit. Which is funny because like, there's so many subreddits that are spooky and I don't think I've actually ever perused the Ghost Stories subreddit. But anyway, um, we're going back to the year 1897.

• 24:45Speaker 07

  I love it already, yes!

• 24:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Same.

• 24:48Amory Sivertson?

  In Greenbrier County, West Virginia. So I'm gonna be reading snippets of the post with interjections from other sources because I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and also these other sources have a little bit more information, no offense to this redditor. The post starts, "In January 1897, a young 21-year-old woman named Elva Zona Heaster Schu..."

• 25:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 25:18Speaker 07

  They don't name them like they used to.

• 25:21Amory Sivertson?

  "Elva Zona Heaster Schu was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in her West Virginia home. Her husband, Edward Schu, was the first to find her." That's what the post says. According to the Monroe Watchman, a different publication, Edward Schu was not the first to find her. On the morning of Elva's, she's better known as Zona, I'm gonna switch to Zona, "On the morning of Zona's death in 1897, Schu, he's a blacksmith, he leaves his blacksmith's shop and he goes to a nearby house asking if the son at that house, the young boy, wants to see if his wife needs anything from the store."

• 26:03Amory Sivertson?

  You know, presumably on his way home, the way that Mike called me and is like, "Do we need any more blueberries?"

• 26:10Amory Sivertson?

  The boy finds Zona lying on the floor, dead. So Edward, presumably at the shop, Zona, dead, boy scared.

• 26:22Speaker 07

  Good alibi.

• 26:23Amory Sivertson?

  That's right.

• 26:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 26:25Amory Sivertson?

  Um, according to the site Appalachian History, when Edward is told of this situation, he appears to be in total, you know, anguish. He runs home. He, you know, like gathers his wife into his arms and he says, you know, "I need, I need the doctor." The local doctor is also the coroner in this, in this town in West Virginia. "After a brief examination, the doctor concludes that Zona, quote, 'died of an everlasting faint.'" You guys familiar with this term?

• 27:01Speaker 07

  Uh, no.

• 27:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 27:03Amory Sivertson?

  It's a heart attack. But in 1897 in Appalachia, it's an everlasting faint. Now, the Greenbrier Independent, lots of coverage for this.

• 27:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  This town's got a lot of papers.

• 27:18Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, they got a lot of papers. So the doctor, uh, according to them, the doctor is unable to resuscitate Zona. He tries. And Edward requests that the doctor, quote, "Make no further examination of the body."

• 27:36Amory Sivertson?

  Then Edward is, wants to help, uh, dress the body, prepare it for burial. And so he puts his deceased wife into, um, this high collar burgundy dress, which is apparently what Zona was wearing when she...

• 27:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  Franny's just shaking her head.

• 27:56Speaker 07

  I don't like it, I don't like it.

• 27:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  She's like, "Nope, nope."

• 27:58Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 27:58Speaker 07

  I got a thing about heads, I don't like it.

• 28:05Amory Sivertson?

  Heads are to Franny what eyeballs are to me. Okay.

• 28:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  They're part of the same, you know, they're in the same zone. You guys are really just...

• 28:12Amory Sivertson?

  That's right.

• 28:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Amory Sivertson?

  So, he puts her in this high collar burgundy dress, which is apparently what she was wearing when she and Edward eloped. Because

• 28:22Speaker 07

  Romantic?

• 28:22Amory Sivertson?

  Zona was young. She was 21. But the Greenbrier Independent goes on, quote, "The head was observed by a number of witnesses to be very loose upon the neck."

• 28:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

• 28:36Amory Sivertson?

  And would drop from side to side when not supported. Now, according to the Greenbrier Valley website, Zona's mother, Mary Jane Heaster, does not like Edward. Edward actually has a criminal record. He had done a couple of years in prison for stealing a horse.

• 28:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Classic 1897 crime right there. Stealing a horse.

• 29:01Amory Sivertson?

  Zona was actually his third wife. I don't know if she knew that. The first wife divorced him after he abandoned her and their child. But the second wife died when he claimed to have accidentally dropped a brick on her head while he was making repairs on the roof.

• 29:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  As they said in 1897, "Bruh."

• 29:24Amory Sivertson?

  Back to the Reddit post. Zona was buried and the case was officially closed. However, four weeks later, Zona's mother, Mary Jane Heaster, went to the local prosecutor with a bizarre claim. She stated that Zona's spirit had appeared at her bedside for four consecutive nights. According to Mary Jane, the entity revealed that her death wasn't natural. Zona claimed her husband had flown into a violent rage over dinner and brutally snapped her neck. Skeptical but intrigued by the mother's unwavering detail, the prosecutor ordered an exhumation of the body for a proper autopsy.

• 30:07Amory Sivertson?

  Now, this is where the Greenbrier Valley website fills in a little more of the details here. So, he exhumes Zona's body. He has that autopsy performed. And indeed, they found Zona's neck was broken, her windpipe was crushed, and this was evidence of murder by strangulation.

• 30:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, boy.

• 30:28Amory Sivertson?

  According to the Greenbrier Valley site, Shu had a reputation for having a hot temper and at least one account claims he had abused a previous wife, leading to the theory that Zona's murder was potentially an act of unplanned violence, that he really did fly into some sort of rage. Back to the Reddit post. Edward Shu was immediately arrested. During the trial, the defense team tried to embarrass the mother, Zona's mother, by questioning her about the ghost, hoping the jury would think she was insane. But Mary Jane stood her ground, detailing the exact words of her daughter's spirit. And those exact words, according to her testimony, was, "It was no dream. She came back and told me that he was mad that she didn't have no meat cooked for supper.

• 31:14Amory Sivertson?

  But the second night, she told me that her neck was squeezed off at the first joint, and it was just as she told me."

• 31:22Amory Sivertson?

  So, when the trial of Edward Shu finally starts, about five months later, the prosecution doesn't want Mary Jane to talk about these visits from Zona's ghost because they're like, eh, that's not a good look. We exhumed the body. We think we can do this.

• 31:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  We've got other evidence now.

• 31:42Amory Sivertson?

  We've got other evidence. We don't think we need your ghost story. But the defense ends up putting Mary Jane on the stand, thinking, yeah, we can totally embarrass her, like the Reddit post said. But her story up on the stand is really detailed and convincing. And what's especially interesting is that the judge can't tell the jury to ignore Mary Jane's ghost story, like they would sometimes, just throwing out circumstantial evidence, because it was brought up by the defense, not the prosecution. So if the prosecution is trying to say like, this is our evidence, this is our case, that's one thing. But if the defense brings it up, nothing you can do. The jury gets to take it all into consideration. And so Edward is convicted on Mary Jane's testimony.

• 32:27Amory Sivertson?

  And to this day, as the Reddit post reads, "A historical marker stands in West Virginia, calling this story, quote, 'The only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.'"

• 32:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 32:42Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 32:44Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Amory Sivertson?

  What's more fun is the wrong word. But it just so happens that this year, an opera about the so-called Greenbrier ghost had its world premiere in Madison, Wisconsin, of all places, not in Appalachia. And the opera is called Everlasting Faint.

• 33:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 33:11Amory Sivertson?

  So I thought we could listen to a little excerpt of a song from the opera called, "What an odd stain that devil killed her." The first voice you hear is the ghost of Zona calling out to her mother, Mary.

• 33:51Amory Sivertson?

  I love contemporary opera.

• 33:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's kind of a, and a mall and the night visitors kind of vibe.

• 33:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Distant, almost, in a weird way. Creepy.

• 34:01Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Amory Sivertson?

  All right. Well, thanks. Thank you both, Franny and Ben, for your spooky stories and for coming and hanging out at the campfire.

• 34:16Speaker 07

  Thank you, Amory. And Ben?

• 34:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, thank you, Franny and Amory. I'm just hoping none of us has nightmares about not knowing what's in the sandwich tonight.

• 34:42Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and me, Amory Sivertson, and...

• 34:51Speaker 07

  Me, Franny Monahan. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by our production manager, Paul Vikes.

• 34:58Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our senior managing producer, Sumit Adhosh.

• 35:03Speaker 07

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between dogs and men who can jump real high and real far.

• 35:11Amory Sivertson?

  If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. [email protected].

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, executive director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education. I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 36:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  And just to claim why you're excited about it.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. Individualized support, right? Personalization. And to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities. For example, speakers of different languages. There are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different, depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Hey, Mitch. You've been trying to take down these games from Star.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Make them remember you.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, made in PG-13.

• 37:06Amory Sivertson?

  LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.

• 37:15Amory Sivertson?

  We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you be in three places at once. And while we can't help you organize your calendar, LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/smallbusiness.