Pere Cheney: The Town that Disappeared

Astonishing Legends

Scott Philbrook

History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 9.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2017

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

BACKGROUND:

The logging town of Pere Cheney, Michigan once showed a lot of promise as a place where hardworking men and women of the late 19th century could raise a family — that is until two epidemics of diphtheria and devastating fires reduced it to a ghost town. And if you believe the accounts of some visitors to the nearby cemetery, Pere Cheney's tragic fate doomed it to be an actual town of ghosts; the playful ghosts of the children who fell victim to the disease. But who's to blame for the sad ending of this once thriving village? Surely something, or someone, must be the cause of the town's bad luck, and if you believe the local legends, that someone was a witch who cursed it right before she was hanged and buried in that very cemetery. Or maybe she was burned? Or maybe it wasn't a witch at all, but a banished unwed mother who cursed the lot of it just the same? Whatever legend you choose to believe, whether the cemetery of Pere Cheney is a playground of the damned or no more spooky than your average graveyard, those that have felt its chill can tell you that it only takes a little bit of haunting to put the fear in you.

For more information on this episode visit our website!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This week's episode of astonishing legends is brought to you in part by Squarespace,
0:03.4	Harrys.com, and the Great Courses Plus.
0:06.8	And we're back. Oh yeah, that's your, you still working on that mission?
0:09.7	Yeah, still got it. Came with me.
0:11.6	Yeah, came back with me.
0:12.6	We are back and we owe a debt of gratitude to every single one of you that's listening to this show
0:17.2	right now. On October 2nd of 2014, we posted our first episode of this show, having no idea if
0:23.1	anyone would find that things that we found interesting were listening to us Prattalon about.
0:27.8	Well, two and a half years and 71 episodes later, we've passed 20 million total downloads,
0:33.6	and frankly, we're amazed we've gotten this far.
0:35.9	Yeah, by the way, whatever you do, please don't go back to the first episode.
0:39.2	No, that's fine. You can go back to the early ones. There's just a lot more of what
0:42.6	probably would have noise you about our show. Well, we'd like to think that we've evolved some
0:46.4	since those early shows. And the funny thing is, is that the first episode wasn't even really
0:51.8	technically our first show. Oh, here comes some astonishing.
0:54.2	Exactly. Our eighth show was actually the first recording session we ever had.
0:58.8	That's right. And it's one of the more polarizing topics because it's a story that people either
1:03.5	will say either you got it and you liked it or you didn't get it and you didn't care for it.
1:09.0	Yeah. Well, it's called the Devil in the Diner.
1:11.2	Yeah, and that show, even though some people didn't get it, it actually had a lot of legs because
1:14.8	the Fireside Mystery Theater, which is a podcast that has been supporting us a long time and we've
1:18.5	been supporting them in turn. They do a radio drama performances. Great performers on stage.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scott Philbrook, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scott Philbrook and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.