Just a note before we begin, this episode is best suited to our older strangers.

I'm Lauren Norton, and this is one strange thing, the show where we search the nation's news archives, for stories that can't quite be explained.

Thank you. can't quite be explained. Strangers, don't we all enjoy a nice vacation?

Now the particulars might vary from one person to the next.

You'll never find your intrepid narrator on a beach, for instance, unless something has gone terribly

wrong. Or it's a nice seaside in Norway, and it's say always nighttime. But there is something

out there for everyone. Mountains to climb, cabins to cozy up in, new cities to explore,

deserts to admire. We could go on.

Now, are we particularly interested in vacations that come with a side of weird tourism?

Yes. Has that led us to roadside museums full of displays of deer teeth labeled Bigfoot specimen and plaster alien corpses?

Also, yes.

But we persist, because in 2025, we are doing it for the plot and for you.

One of our very favorite types of destinations, though, is a hotel with some history. The spookier and the

fancier, the better. We want turndown service. We want gilt elevators and grand staircases.

We want restaurants with tablecloths and candlelight. And we want ghosts, plural.

Our budgets do tend more toward Holiday Inn Express

and free breakfast bars and dinner by DoorDash,

but this is a fantasy.

And in our dreams,

we're staying at the kind of sprawling historical properties

that have been around long

enough to develop some really spooky legends, and is somewhere that's nice enough to leave

...