Skeptoid #426: The Baldoon Mystery

Skeptoid

Brian Dunning

Skeptic, Social Sciences, Skepticism, Paranormal, Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, Science, History

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2014

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The surprising truth behind Canada's most famous ghost story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	How does a ghost story become one of the famous immortal ones?
0:07.6	Canada has one of their own called the Baldun mystery.
0:11.5	The facts of the story by themselves are not all that impressive, nowhere near deserving
0:16.0	of the longevity it's found.
0:18.1	Well, it turns out there is one key ingredient guaranteed to make any ghost story popular
0:24.1	forever, and it comes in the form of an imaginative author.
0:29.4	The Baldun mystery is today on Skeptoid.
0:36.4	You're listening to Skeptoid.
0:39.5	I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
0:42.8	The Baldun mystery.
0:45.9	Today we're going to go back in time nearly two centuries to the Great Lakes region of
0:49.8	Canada.
0:51.2	What is today an expansive flat rectangular agricultural fields cleft by winding rivers
0:57.2	was then a land of wild green abundance, and the white settlers were blending in with
1:02.6	the native Ojibwe peoples.
1:05.3	In 1829 the family of John Mcdonald had a picturesque two-story frame house in a Scottish
1:11.3	settlement named Baldun near the town of Wallaceburg, Ontario.
1:16.3	The story goes that the family suffered an extraordinary series of poltergeist attacks,
1:21.0	culminating in their house being burned to the ground, whereupon they moved in with
1:25.3	their father nearby only to have the attacks continue unabated.
1:30.2	While many Canadians today still consider the Baldun mystery to be their greatest ghost
1:35.1	story, it leaves skeptical researchers an interesting problem on how to regard stories
	...

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