Aaron and Samantha travel back to the nineteenth century to explore the mystery airships that were spotted throughout the country in 1896/97. What started as a trio of lights above Sacramento, California, grew to reported sightings of actual ships that moved from the west coast to the Great Plains and into the Great Lakes States. Samantha and Aaron look at various sightings, possible explanations, and touch on the history of aviation. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s a wild ride.
Time Stamps
The Gilded Age- 1:10
California-8:25
Wisconsin- 12:34
Midway Break- 22:08
Michigan- 29:35
Lanark, Illinois- 39:10
Aurora, Texas- 49:42
The History of Aviation- 53:30
Wrap-Up and Outro- 56:30
Maritime disasters, adolescent fascination with the paranormal, the importance of citations, regional variations in precipitation terms, and more! Join Samantha and Aaron as they respond to listener comments on The Witches’ Castle of Utica.
Audio version (which also goes out in the regular podcast feed) below!
In this episode, Samantha and Aaron step back from examining actual pieces of lore in order to share their own personal paranormal experiences. They examine the reasons why eye-witness testimonies of supernatural phenomena need to be handled with care, the ways their own experiences influence the way they interpret those from others, and how their training as historians has prepared them to analyze sources.
Time Stamps History of Paranormal Research- 2:20 Analyzing Sources- 13:46 Personal Stories- 15:55 Legend or Lie- 39:47 Interpreting the Paranormal- 44:06 The Desire to Have an Encounter- 54:07
Sources For this episode we relied on a lot of articles to help us explain some of the thoughts we had about why people believe in the paranormal, what can influence that belief, and the power of biases. In case you’d like to look at these, we’ve divided them into helpful categories.
Great Lakes Lore 