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. Strangers, we have to admit, while we generally focus on more contemporary mysteries,

we do have a soft spot for history. There's just something about digging through those really old newspapers.

You know the ones with the snaking, skinny columns written by, well, who knows,

and seeing the stories about stolen horses right next to funeral announcements and land sales

and local elections.

Because it's there, buried between a breathless account of the local fairs prize-winning pig

and a report on a foreign war, that you'll often find it.

A tantalizing article about strange lights in the hills, or a flying saucer seen over a barn,

or a beast lurking in the woods behind someone's mercantile.

Now sometimes, that story is barely a blip, a curiosity, presented as importantly as the extra-large

cabbage, grown by a proud farmer.

But sometimes, well, an event can take over a small town and its news.

It can creep out in all directions until an entire region is holding its breath, waiting for the next report. And that is our favorite kind of mystery to discover,

one that unfurls slowly, without the aid of internet or social media,

told by the people who lived it, and the reporters who had to follow it by any means necessary.

This is why we've brought you back to Iowa for a second episode in a row. No corn jokes from us, thank you, though you are free to offer your own,

because back in 1903, just such a saga unspooled in the tiny town of Van Meter. It's an unusual name, reminds us of

outer space, if we're honest, but the place was named for one of the earliest Dutch settlers

that came to the Midwest. According to the official town website, Little Van Meter, even now

home to a scant 1500 or so, sits along the Raccoon River.

It's only about 20 miles from Des Moines, and we're lucky that Des Moines was close by,

because its news media was there to follow the September and early October 1903 happenings

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