S2 Ep14: The Elephant Slides of Sofia
Astonishing Legends
Scott Philbrook
4.6 • 10K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In tonight’s dead letter, we’ll take you through the brutalist monuments and ancient layers of Sofia, Bulgaria looking for what may have been the scene of a localized timeslip. After giving up the search for a playground that made a pronounced childhood impression, our listener Vili, stumbles right into a beautifully preserved version of it. We’ll discuss the folklore of missing time, and how our own memories might just be powerful enough to physically manifest things we wish to recover that don’t exist anymore.
REFERENCE LINKS
National Palace of Culture (NDK) in Sofia
Samodiva - Bulgarian Woodland Spirits
The Moberly–Jourdain Incident (Versailles Time Slip)
Ed Debevic's Retro Diner
Alpine Gardens (Alpinarium)
The Ghosts of Versailles Part 1 (Astonishing Legends)
We're looking for more stories! Send your Dead Letter to deadletteroffice@astonishinglegends.com!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Astonishing Legends Network |
| 0:03.7 | The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the astonishing dead letter office are their own |
| 0:11.9 | and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, |
| 0:16.5 | or any affiliated entities or guests. |
| 0:37.2 | Thank you. any affiliated entities or guests. When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. |
| 0:43.3 | But trust us, you're not. |
| 0:46.3 | For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to astonishing legends. |
| 0:51.3 | And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too. |
| 0:55.8 | Join us weekly in Blanket Fortiana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the |
| 1:00.4 | astonishing Dead Letter Office. |
| 1:14.9 | Tonight's episode, The elephant slides of Sophia. |
| 1:21.5 | Tonight we're headed to the heart of the Balkans, a place where ancient antiquity and mid-century modernism sits side by side, sometimes literally stacked on top of each other. |
| 1:26.1 | Well, I think most of us that have walked through a very old city, have that feeling |
| 1:30.4 | where you can feel the inhabitation that's been going on for maybe thousands of years in this case. |
| 1:37.8 | Literally today, I was thinking I would love to visit Quebec. |
| 1:40.7 | Just because for North America and the Americas, it's a very old city, older than people here in |
| 1:46.7 | the States, kind of realize. And just to get that sense of gravitas. And so when we first read |
| 1:52.2 | over the story, I loved how the author here described things because I got a real sense for |
| 1:58.1 | the place. Yeah. The sense of the city. |
| 2:01.4 | And again, it's not like a bad heaviness. |
| 2:04.2 | It's more of a gravitas of, you know, when you meet somebody who's like super smart or |
| 2:09.6 | renowned, if you ever got the, the privilege to and just how they have an aura of years of |
... |
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