Legends 80: He Said, She Said

Sometimes the thing that gives a story its authenticity is the frequency with which it has been shared, regardless of the truth. And many of them turn out to be utterly terrifying. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing and research by GennaRose Nethercott and Alex Robinson. ————————— PRE-ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed https://www.aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources: Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support https://www.lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music https://www.lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources https://www.lorepodcast.com/sources Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop https://www.lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: Gusto: Online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. Try Gusto today at Gusto.com/LORE https://www.gusto.com/lore, and get 3 months free when you run your first payroll. Bilt: Membership that rewards you with points on every housing payment, wherever you live. Join the membership for where you live at JoinBilt.com/Lore https://www.joinbilt.com/lore. Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Visit Quince.com/LORE http://www.quince.com/lore for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Boll & Branch: Upgrade your sleep with Boll & Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at BollAndBranch.com/lore https://www.bollandbranch.com/lore with code LORE. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [email protected]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

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

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• 1:08Aaron Mahnke?

  They weren't the usual suspects. To be fair, there were a lot of weird targets during the height of the Satanic Panic in the 1980s. Most of them, in some way or another, resembled Eddie Munson from Stranger Things. These folks, though, did not fit that mold. The Fortune 100 company, Procter & Gamble. You see, they were accused of supporting Satanism, and it was all because of their logo. It looked innocent enough. On one side, there was a crescent moon with a man's face. Think man in the moon, right? On the other side, there were 13 stars, and to the average person, it honestly just looked like a stylized depiction of the night sky.

• 1:50Aaron Mahnke?

  But paranoid pearl clutchers claimed that the image contained Satanic imagery. The curls in the moon's hair, for example, were actually supposed to be subtle devil's horns, and the stars, when connected like a constellation, could form the number 666, the mark of the beast. The company denied the claims, of course. They'd had that logo since 1851, and the 13 stars were meant to represent the 13 original colonies. But it was too late. The panic had fully set in, and no amount of reasoning would dissuade the true believers. The company was forced to change their logo in the 1990s, and thankfully, that seemed to do the trick.

• 2:31Aaron Mahnke?

  The rumors died down, and today, Procter & Gamble is known less for their potential ties to the powers of hell, and more for their monopoly over consumer goods. The lesson, though, is clear: it doesn't take much for a rumor to spiral out of control. A sneaking suspicion, a scary story, even a little joke, all of them can be sucked into the cultural zeitgeist faster than you can say "mark of the beast." So be careful what you believe, because you never know when a bit of fantasy could actually become... ...an urban legend. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore Legends.

• 3:20Aaron Mahnke?

  Sailors, of course, have ghost ships. Road trippers have phantom semi-trucks, charging at traffic before vanishing into thin air. There are even legends of spectral airplanes, hovering out of time. And in 1934, London, England, had... ...the Number 7 bus. According to the popular story, it all started one dark night in June. A young man was driving through Ladbrook Grove in the area of North Kensington. Perhaps he was coming home from a long day at work. I imagine he was tired and looking forward to getting back to rest his feet. It was late, and the roads were empty. But as he turned onto a dim intersection, the man's heart leapt into his throat. There, out of nowhere, appeared... ...a bus.

• 4:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Now, if you're imagining one of those classic red, double-decker London buses, you would be right on the mark. And this one bore the Number 7 on its side, along with the word "General," which was odd, given that the London General Omnibus Company had folded a year prior, in 1933. Oh, and also, this bus happened to be charging right for him. The man swerved to avoid it, running off the road, and smashed into the wall of a building. Just as he did, the bus vanished into thin air. Now, the story- branches in two different directions from here. Some say that the man died on impact and that it was a pedestrian witness who ran to the police to report the strange encounter. Others say that the man miraculously survived the crash, living to tell the tale himself.

• 4:49Aaron Mahnke?

  Either way, a legend was born. Ladbrook Grove had a ghost bus. Word spread like wildfire, and so did the sightings. In the summer of 1934, talk of the number seven was on everyone's lips. And the summer of 35, for that matter, and 36, and 37. In the words of one modern witness, "I saw this bus in November 1967. It was number seven and was parked halfway between the station and the bend at the other end. Two minutes past the bus, I joked, 'Let's go a ride in the bus.' We turned around, it was gone, disappeared. It was only 20 years later, visiting London from Canada, that I heard of this phantom bus on the radio."

• 5:30Aaron Mahnke?

  It seems that the phantom bus of Ladbrook Grove had become a full-blown urban legend. Now, maybe it's a flaw of mine, but I just can't take a story at face value. I'm always hungry to dig deeper, especially when it comes to something like this, where so much hearsay is involved. So, my team dug a little deeper and found something pretty wild. Because, see, while it has all the markings of pure fiction, this story can actually be traced back to a real-life incident, and a real-life death. It turns out that there was indeed a car accident in that spot on June 12th of 1934. The driver was a man named Ian James Stephen Beaton, a 25-year-old metallurgical engineer. But he wasn't the only driver involved.

• 6:12Aaron Mahnke?

  Beaton's car collided with another, driven by a chauffeur named George Pink. Pink was unscathed, but unfortunately, not so for poor Ian Beaton. He died there, in the middle of the road. Just a few days later, on June 15th, an inquest followed to determine whether or not Mr. Pink was guilty of vehicular manslaughter. Witnesses were called to the stand. One, Mr. Frank Robinson, was in the middle of describing the wet, slippery roads, when he was interrupted and asked a rather strange question. "What about the phantom bus?" And Mr. Robinson admitted that he did indeed know about the legend. In fact, everyone did. Contrary to most modern reports about the urban legend, rumors of a ghost bus didn't start with Beaton's death.

• 6:56Aaron Mahnke?

  Oh, no, it had been whispered about for ages. And it seems either the defense or some sensationalizing journalists were trying to use this phantom bus rumor to get Mr. Pink off the hook. After all, if there had been a ghost, well, the accident wouldn't have been George Pink's fault, now would it? In a July 1934 newspaper article, one local resident described the legend in detail. "It's been going on strong for years," she said. "I have never met anybody who has seen the bus, but the version I heard was that on certain nights, long after the regular bus service has stopped, people have been awakened by the roar of a bus coming down the street. When they have gone to their windows, they have seen a brilliantly lighted double-decker bus approaching with neither driver nor passengers."

• 7:41Aaron Mahnke?

  According to this story, the bus goes careening to the corner of Cambridge Gardens and St. Mark's Road, and then vanishes. A number of accidents have happened at this corner, and it has been suggested that the phantom bus has been the cause. By the time the inquest ended, countless people had come forward with their own stories about the phantom bus. And Mr. Pink? Well, he was found innocent. So, what exactly was going on here? Was there really an evil ghost bus cannonballing through the streets of London, mowing people down? Or was something else at play? Perhaps a clue can be found in a tiny 13-line article published just a few months later, in December of 1934. Well, it's less of an article, and more of a complaint sent in by Counselor W. Jarrett.

• 8:26Aaron Mahnke?

  "Ladbrooke Grove is a very busy road with two bus services," he wrote. "Yet the committee have selected the very worst lighting for this thoroughfare. Other roads with no buses are to have much better illumination." At the end of the day, I'll let you be the judge. Otherworldly automobile? Or simply a case of poor city planning resulting in too many fatal accidents? Accidents that left a grieving community begging for an answer? Grand enough to fit the loved ones they lost.

• 9:08Aaron Mahnke?

  Just a stone's throw from our nation's capital, in Fairfax, Virginia, there is a small, nondescript, one-lane tunnel on Colchester Road. Made of plain white concrete, it just looks like your average underpass. But it's home to one of the most absurd urban legends in the country. Because locals claim that if you go there on Halloween night, you may be visited by the Bunny Man. There are multiple versions of this legend. One says that if you speak his name three times on Halloween night, then a man bedecked in a full-body rabbit costume will appear, and he'll slash your throats and hang you from the underpass. Another legend claims that this bunny-suited man was once a mental ward escapee from the early 20th century. He survived by killing rabbits and wearing their skins for clothing.

• 9:53Aaron Mahnke?

  Eventually, his bloodthirst became uncontrollable, and he killed two children, hanging their bodies from the trees on Colchester Road. And now his crazed ghost haunts the tunnel. If you come too close on Halloween, he will throw an axe at you. Or maybe he'll hack you to death like he did to those children all those years ago. And of course, all of this is complete nonsense. There was never a murderous escapee from a mental institution wandering the woods of Fairfax. And a ghost in a bunny suit will absolutely not appear if you try to summon him like Beetlejuice. But there once was an axe-wielding man in a bunny suit, and he is the origin of the Bunny Man. It can all be traced back to 1970. On October 18th of that year, The Washington Post reported shortly after midnight

• 10:38Aaron Mahnke?

  that a couple was sitting in their car on Guinea Road and chatting. But their quiet evening was disrupted, and the man in the car, Robert Bennett, was forced to go to the police. His claim? I quote here: "A man dressed in a white suit with long bunny ears ran from the nearby bushes and shouted, 'You're on private property and I have your tag number.' The rabbit threw a wooden-handled hatchet through the right front car window, the first-year cadet told the police. As soon as he threw the hatchet, the rabbit skipped off into the night, police said. Bennett and his fiancee were not injured." Bennett was able to give the hatchet to the police, but they could garner very little evidence from it. It's possible that they thought that the whole thing was an elaborate prank,

• 11:22Aaron Mahnke?

  but they would think again when the bunny man showed up two weeks later. On Halloween of 1970, The Washington News reported that two nights prior, the bunny man had been spotted a second time. Other newspapers soon picked up the story as well, and it spread like wildfire around the DC area. Another article read, "Now the 5'8" man in rabbit's clothing has struck again. A guard in a housing project under construction told police he came upon a figure in a white bunny suit with floppy ears chopping away with a hatchet at the porch of an unfinished house. When the guard approached, the bunny man said, "You are trespassing. If you come any closer, I'll chop off your head." The strange figure then turned and hippity hopped off into the woods.

• 12:07Aaron Mahnke?

  And yes, folks, that is a newspaper using the actual verb hippity hopped in their article. My have we fallen from such lofty heights. Fairfax Police never filed a police report for the earlier car incident, but they did file a report for the October 29th vandalism. The Washington Post even wrote on that very night, "Six police officers responded to a call for a 'subject dressed as a rabbit with an axe.'" On Halloween night, Fairfax Police received over 20 calls from people claiming to see the bunny man in their neighborhood. Then, over the following weeks, police received dozens of tips from people claiming to know who the bunny man was or where he could be found. But every allegation led to a dead end, and the bunny man made no more reappearances.

• 12:53Aaron Mahnke?

  Local newspapers followed the story with bated breath, waiting for someone to quite literally unmask the bunny man. Children started telling spooky stories about him on the playground. Psychologists weighed in on his mental state, garnering fun headlines like, "Doctors Say Bunny Man's Mind Is 'Hopping'." But the man behind the mask would never be found. As the weeks passed by, people began to lose hope. December headlines morosely announced, "Bunny Man Hunt Ends," and "Bunny Man Hops Away." On March 14th of 1971, the police marked the case as inactive. But just because the police stopped searching for the Bunny Man, doesn't mean that the locals had lost interest. You see, the Bunny Man quickly morphed into an urban Halloween legend, and I mean quickly too.

• 13:37Aaron Mahnke?

  By 1973, the Bunny Man was showing up in Virginia college students' folklore essays as "local urban legend." Within the span of just three years, he had gone from a possible mentally disturbed individual to a bloodthirsty ghost, ready to execute anyone who approached his domain on Halloween. There is no Bunny Man ghost, but there was a Bunny Man. So if you want to try your luck with the real deal, make your way to the Colchester Road Tunnel on Halloween night, and keep an eye out for flying hatchets and cotton-tipped tails. And if things get dicey, you can always hippity-hop away.

• 14:24Aaron Mahnke?

  No one can deny it. Cannon Beach is beautiful. An oceanside city in Clatsup County, Oregon, National Geographic even named the stunning coastline as "one of the 100 most beautiful places" back in 2013. And yet, if the legends are true, lurking along this postcard-perfect coastline is a hideous monster. And his name is Bandage Man. The stories are said to stretch back to the 1950s, although some sources say it's older, others more recent. Regardless of its start, though, the tale remains the same. It all began with a terrible accident. Oregon, you see, is logging country, and there was always work to be done at the local lumber mill. Trees to mill, sawdust to sweep, wood to chip.

• 15:07Aaron Mahnke?

  It's backbreaking labor, involving a lot of pretty dangerous machinery, the kind of machinery that could easily suck you in if you weren't careful. They say that one night, a logger was hard at work when something went very wrong, and he was maimed beyond recognition. An ambulance sped to the scene and haphazardly wrapped the man in bandages before rushing him toward the hospital. Tragically, though, they would never arrive. As the ambulance sped alongside the winding coastline of Highway 101, a rockslide poured into the road, burying the ambulance in the rubble. Emergency workers fought tirelessly to dig it out, but when they finally did, they found the ambulance driver dead, and the poor logger, all wrapped in bandages? Well, he had vanished without a trace.

• 15:52Aaron Mahnke?

  But not for long, because soon, the sightings began. In one story, a young couple had parked off the 101 for a little...alone time, so to speak, which, look, if you've ever heard an urban legend or seen a horror movie, you already know it's a bad idea. Soon, the couple peeked out the back window and were terrified to see a looming man banging on the glass. Oh, and his most notable feature? He was entirely wrapped in bloody bandages. In another story, a man was driving down 101 on a long, lonely night, when he caught a glimpse of something in the corner of his eye. Turning to look over his shoulder, he saw a figure hunched in the back of his pickup bed, all wrapped in bandages like a mummy. In the words of Mike Helm, who published the most thorough account of this story in his

• 16:37Aaron Mahnke?

  book, Oregon Ghosts and Legends, "His eyes were just little holes in the bandages with nothing inside, and his mouth was punctuated by red lips dripping with something, saliva, or rain, or blood." Startled though he was, the driver figured that he would be safe enough. After all, the mummy was outside the cab and he was inside, with a hearty piece of safety glass between them. Which, of course, is when Bandage Man began to punch through the back windshield. With horror, the driver realized that the attacker was going to make his way inside. The man drove faster, hoping to shake the interloper loose, and eventually, as he neared town, Bandage Man dropped off, vanishing into the dark.

• 17:17Aaron Mahnke?

  In yet another account, also from Mike Helm's book, Bandage Man snatches up a hitchhiker, folding him under his arm like, and I quote, "a loaf of bread," and then vanishes into the woods. In another, he starts snacking on neighborhood dogs. And yet another, he shatters the windows of a local pub and preys on the patrons inside. And, okay, a lot of these reports are just fanciful enough that they do sound like someone made them up. In fact, my researchers weren't able to find any written accounts of Bandage Man at all that dated prior to 1983. What I can say is that my team is thorough, but even if they were all made up, those stories have fully taken their place in the

• 17:56Aaron Mahnke?

  pantheon of Oregon lore. Now, no-good serial killer/mummy/zombie/ghost is complete without a proper calling card. Hookhand has his hook left dangling from teenagers' cars, Bigfoot leaves those classic giant footprints, and Bandage Man, well, he has his bandages, of course. In almost all of the stories, Bandage Man leaves a little something of himself behind when he flees. That is a filthy, bloodied piece of bandage. Oh, and we mustn't forget the smell, either. It's said that Bandage Man leaves the stench of rotting flesh in his wake clinging to any lingering scraps of gauze. Which sounds lovely, right?

• 18:37Aaron Mahnke?

  And I always love a cautionary folk tale, the kind of story designed to keep children from straying into the woods, or teenagers from making out in secret parking lots. And what kills the mood more than the perfume of rotting meat dripping from a mangled corpse, am I right? And yet, fictional as it may seem, it never hurts to be wary. If you find yourself driving down that long stretch of Highway 101 near Cannon Beach in Oregon, you might just want to keep an eye on your rearview mirror. And a can of mummy-proof spray. In the glovebox.

• 19:19Aaron Mahnke?

  Sometimes folklore works like an opposite version of the telephone game. Rather than a true message being broken down and warped into fiction by repeating it over and over again, sometimes fiction can be passed along for so long that it feels exactly like the truth. It's a process that has happened countless times in the past, and in this digital age, I doubt it's going to stop. Urban legends, though, are almost always a reflection of the fears of the time. Of course, that doesn't mean people were once quite literally worried about a mummy coming into their suburb. It is, as it always has been, a bit more nuanced than that. Bandaged lumberjacks shuffled onto the scene of a small logging town when the newest

• 20:01Aaron Mahnke?

  generation wanted to look further afield for employment. Phantom buses showed up at a time when technology was developing too quickly to keep up. And bunny men? Well, there's no real explanation for that one. It's just a story about a guy in a bunny suit. At the end of the day, though, most urban legends can act as little time capsules, each one preserving the fears of a prior generation, fears that they then pass on to their children and grandchildren. Yes, they might tell a story about where we once were, but maybe, just maybe, they also tell a tale about where we're going.

• 20:54Aaron Mahnke?

  From bandaged men to bunny men, there sure are some weird characters out there. In fact, most urban legends involve some sort of mythological figurehead. Maybe in your town, it's the old man who killed those teenagers out in the woods, or perhaps it's the ghostly hitchhiker who leaves behind a scarf or a sweater. But as one last story will show us, urban legends can also feature real people. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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• 22:55Speaker 07

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce, fresh meat. Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

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• 23:34Aaron Mahnke?

  On February 15th of 1992, the residents of Kay'sville, Utah, heard an earth-shattering boom. It was an explosion, right there at the old Boynton Farm. When authorities went to investigate the scene, they found the remains of a large stone structure called Kay's Cross. What had once been a towering cross sculpture had been blown to smithereens by 80 pounds of dynamite. No one had any idea who could have done it. It was a real head-scratcher, and I'm sorry to say, no one would end up having a satisfying answer. They never found the perpetrator, and no arrests were ever made for the crime. Oddly enough, the cross's fiery end is one of the least weird parts of its story. You see, it had been the subject of local speculation and urban legends for years,

• 24:19Aaron Mahnke?

  and the truth may actually be stranger than fiction. Standing at 20 feet high and 13 feet wide, K's Cross was a mammoth of a monument. No one actually knows for sure when it was built, because it stood on privately-owned farmland that was closed off to the public. It could have been there for decades, or even a century, no one really knew. But of course, there were plenty of theories. And the most widely accepted theory was that it was built by a cult. Back in 1935, you see, an extremist sect broke off from the Church of Latter-day Saints to form their own denomination. This group called themselves the Latter-day Church of Christ, or the Davis County Cooperative Society. But since those are both a mouthful for sure, they are more commonly known as the Co-op.

• 25:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Now, the Co-op quickly became a controversial organization, and they adopted many of the hallmark telltales of a cult. They strove to provide for themselves and be as self-sufficient as possible, cutting themselves off from the rest of society. They remained separate from the secular world for decades too, and leaving the group was discouraged. There's evidence that if you wanted out, then you had to physically run away, and if escapees were caught, then they were punished violently. One of the fundamental beliefs of the Co-op was that of polygamy. Men were expected to take several wives. But the group was so small that eventually they started dabbling in incest. They also forced underage girls into polygamous marriages with much older men, and encouraged

• 25:47Aaron Mahnke?

  them to have as many children as possible. And they're still around today. They're facing serious lawsuits for everything from sex trafficking minors to committing tax fraud. But before the details of their lifestyle got out to the public, the Co-op kept most of their criminal activity under wraps for as long as possible. Even so, their secretive nature still engendered distrust and suspicion from their Utah neighbors, including those in Caseville. The Co-op was founded by a guy named Eldon Kingston, who led the group from 1935 to 1948. And according to some Caseville locals, he is the one who built K's Cross. But Eldon didn't do it alone. He partnered with another cult leader to make it happen.

• 26:28Aaron Mahnke?

  Recently, an old member of the co-op alleged that in 1946, Eldon Kingston was approached by a man named Krishna Vetna. Now Krishna Vetna was the leader of a cult in California called Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith and Love, or WKFL, which is not a radio station, by the way. And his major claim to fame was that he claimed to be "Christ reincarnated." Well, as the story goes, Krishna Vetna told Eldon that he wanted to build a huge cross in Kaysville, Utah to honor Christ, which was meant to honor him, since he was apparently the second coming of Christ. Eldon allegedly saw no problems with this and agreed to help. So Eldon enlisted a group of volunteers from his church, and they built K's cross on the co-op's private farmland.

• 27:12Aaron Mahnke?

  And the man who came forward with this story actually claimed to be a member of the construction crew. He said they even carved the letter K into the center of the cross, the K standing for Krishna Vetna. Meanwhile, Jesus 2.0 actually returned to California before the cross was finished, but once it was done, it stood for decades, a lasting tribute to the two men who believed that they could play God. Now, this story hasn't been proven, but the cross really was built on a farm that had been owned by the co-op, and Krishna Vetna's cult actually used a very similar-looking cross as their official symbol. So it is entirely possible that this story is the truth behind K's cross, and the mystery has been solved. But then again, there have always been rumors floating around about K's cross, turning

• 27:57Aaron Mahnke?

  it into something of a local legend. Many people did connect it with polygamy, since it was standing on the co-op's farm. Before this new story had come out, the most popular theory about its construction had been that a polygamist had murdered his seven wives and buried them underneath the cross, and then hanged himself there. Another version of the story claims that the polygamist entombed his favorite wife's heart into the cross itself. And there are more urban legends about K's cross than you could shake a stick at. Some people believe that it was erected by Satanists. Others said that it was built by witches who sacrificed animals at the foot of the cross. Still, others claim that it was haunted, or that it glowed under a full moon. And we may never know the truth.

• 28:40Aaron Mahnke?

  K's cross has been put through an odd game of urban legend telephone, and its history keeps coming out on the other side all twisted up. The best guess we have now is that it was a sort of brainchild between Krishna Vetna and Eldon Kingston. And even then, we can't be sure. But there is one thing we can be sure of: They found no evidence of a human heart, or human remains of any kind, anywhere in the rubble.

• 29:19Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing and research by Generose Nethercot and Alex Robinson. Today's episode was a carefully crafted collection of members-only stories. Think of it as a treat, no trick, from me to you. And also a reminder that we run a paid version of Lore on Patreon and Apple Podcasts, where members get stories like these every single week. Our members also get ad-free versions of all the normal episodes, and Patreon folks specifically get discounts on Lore merch and access to my inbox. Not too shabby for the price of a cup of coffee. Join our premium community today. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com/support. And while you're at it, you can also follow us on various social media platforms like

• 30:04Aaron Mahnke?

  Blue Sky, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

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• 30:58Speaker 07

  What's that? My fresh detector. Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce? Fresh meat? Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 31:12Speaker 07

  Apparently, we celebrate. At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.