Hey, everybody, join us as we delve into our favorite dark tales and paranormal mysteries.

Venture with us beyond the safe places that exist in daylight.

As we go Beyond the Shadows, true crime, paranormal hauntings, UFOs, cryptids and unsolved mysteries, conspiracy theories, past lives, reincarnation and all the like are.

Just a few of the topics that we will tackle.

If it haunts your fucking dreams, then it will be on our show.

Do you know what the most in the world is?

Beyond the shuttles where you found me at you can't see me in the deepest blacks when your heart starbusts and then you see their cracks, all these creepy things that you why at track well, the defense be where the actions act.

So this enough you want it, UFOs.

All the ghosts.

We got everything that you want.

It won't do you know what the thing in the world is?

Hey, guys, and welcome back to episode one fifty four Beyond the Shadows.

Welcome back Shadow Army.

So before actually we get started and jumping the news, we've got a few new ratings and a new review.

Yeah, we made one hundred hundred and one hundred and one.

Here, and then we get another one in Australia and thank you very much.

Gain Yes, and that one came with the review and that's from Christine two seven five.

We appreciate that so much, absolutely, and we get another one over on Spotify too, So, guys, we appreciate that.

If any of you guys have not had a chance to get over there and give us a rating review, if you please could, it makes a huge difference.

Ninety nine of you guys could do it.

Next week we'll be.

Saying, why haven't we hit two hundred yet?

Things are rolling.

We appreciate you, guys, but come on right around the corner.

We're never happy.

We really are.

We really really aren't.

And before we get into the news, uh, one of our podcast friends, Rachel is actually producing a new podcast.

What's the name of the shoot?

I'm gonna have it for you By the end of the end of the podcast, I blew it.

Great plug, buddy, that was really nice.

I know I had just pulled it up.

It's new.

I haven't even got to see it, but I seen this he's doing it.

Uh, sorry, Rachel, I would have memorized it.

Yeah, he would have he didn't any first I've heard of it.

If you get online every now and then.

Also, that's it shows handsled Scott's.

Being a dick.

That's not new.

Also, our friend Joe over at Tails, Trails and Tavern wrote a book.

Yeah, and he's got a book out Haunted New England.

Nice.

Yeah, his podcast took a small hiatus that coming back September first, I believe, and he's actually our he is gonna be our fire pit this week.

He sent it in a while ago.

Nice and now we're gonna get that out tonight.

But check out that book.

That's amazing.

Anyone who can put that kind of effort into something like that, that's just awesome.

Yeah, Joe's a great dude.

Podcast is really good.

Real nice dude, real nice dude.

Yeah.

Absolutely, and they put on a good show.

Yeah, they really do him and Rob.

So I'm gonna have to check out that book.

I know, I keep meaning to order it and I haven't yet because I'm a horrible friend.

I'm gonna plagiarize the shit out of it.

I probably do an episode on it, claim it as my.

Just finish my research and going to read it right.

Off the.

Absolutely and I'm going to give you the name of that.

Nope, not yet.

I'm the worst friend ever.

Go ahead, start to do.

He's definitely doing research right now.

In case you don't know.

All right, it's ah.

So first up, we get a group of guys in Florida.

They were fishing, and I have no idea.

I'm going to say this right Kyo Costa.

Last Saturday, when one of them wielded in a lemon shark.

Sean Muse wasn't the one to catch the shark, or so he says, maybe because he didn't have a permit.

In fact, he says he wasn't even fishing, but that didn't stop him from picking up the shark's head while a buddy picked up the tail so they could all post some selfies.

And that's when disaster struck you.

Disaster for Sean, not the shark.

The shark.

The shark whipped around and bid him pretty good in the leg.

The injury.

Injuries were not life threatening, and he was scheduled for surgery this past Tuesday.

I don't how we turned out.

The shark is fine.

And if you read the that's true.

That's what people worried about it.

If you read the comments onto the article, Sean is getting zero sympathy.

It's all pro shark all the way.

Well, you know, Scott, and I am never pro shark.

Fuck that shark a lemon shark.

It's a lemon shark.

Let me fruity sharks.

Lemon sharks are protected in Florida.

So not only did he get bit, he's now being investigated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.

So this is the shark's fault.

I don't care what anyway.

Of course, the video starts after the shark was caught, so the guy is saying he wasn't fishing because he's not allowed to be.

But you know, damn well, he was the one who caught the shark.

Hold the hold the pole and we'll pretend that you caught it and I'll just take a picture with it and the sharks who caught him.

That's a good bit exactly.

Yeah.

I guess you know, have you seen all the videos?

I don't know, you're not online.

Watch all the videos.

Are the sharks around here?

Oh yeah, they're everywhere we are.

I've talked about this a million times, but they are great white after great white after great white and they're off of the short they picked him up in Wells Beach.

They picked him up and all the way up they just closed bitter for the other day.

I mean, they're all around us.

Wow, I'm wondering, really though it is technology.

Are they just now noticing them?

I mean, has it changed that much?

They've always been here.

The temperatures changed, things have changed, but the Gulf of Maine is actually warming faster than any other part of the ocean on the planet.

Yeah.

Well, I've seen some experts I think they're new here, relatively new, and then other experts think they've always been here and we're just now finding out.

So I'm not sure, but I'm sure they've been here, But I don't think in the numbers, no way, no way, they're everywhere.

Someone's gonna get hit.

Yeah, yeah, again, it just you know, it's two years ago, that woman from New York.

A lot of times it's surfers, and obviously the waves in New England are pathetic.

I mean, people still out there, people still serve, but they need to hell of a lot of action out there.

They're generally not deep because there's.

You know what I was just I haven't been on Facebook forever.

And I went on Facebook and I saw somebody that I went to high school with just swam near Nuble Light and that's a light lighthouse near where we live.

And they're out there swimming like it.

It was a whole group of people all like, I think, is no fucking mind, zero chance?

Man, how did they not get eaten?

It's gonna happen.

I'm just sure it's gonna happen.

It's fucking scary.

I hate sharks.

Gosh, that is Scott still looking for.

The Scott's on the zone today.

Fortunately it's my week to do the story because this could be ugly.

Yeah.

Really, it'll be looking for a story while you guys are listening.

Next up, we got Marwa Risky, a member of the National Assembly of Quebec.

So she recently announced that she is leaving office in twenty twenty six and she wanted to celebrate her time in office by breaking a world record.

So she set her sights on the record for the most neckties worn at one time.

I don't fucking I was reading this.

I was like, are you serious?

Which so the record was three point thirty, which was set two years ago.

So she strapped on three hundred and sixty neckties.

Oh she didn't just beat that, right, pissy fucking pista, So she said, other guys flooded.

What a joke.

I think I own eight.

Next time, I get a new one every time I need one because I have no because you can't find them, I can't find it.

I wear them, So we.

Get another one and another one, so she's now a world record holder.

To me, this is one of those records that's just so stupid.

You're a world record holder because nobody else has thought to fucking do it.

It's so stupid, and they ever hear in your neck.

People just come up with this random shit like I'm just gonna gam nineteen marbles in my ass.

Oh shit, it's a record.

Oh no, it's not twenty seven.

That would be such a small number.

You know someone else.

Oh there's been a lot more than that, but you know what I mean, just the most random show.

Oh yeah, how many skittles can I fit in my mouth at a time?

And then they'll look it up and it's like eleven, we'll go twelve them do a record all the week because it's fucking stupid and nobody else has done it.

A kindness, right, not taking away from you.

Marwood's really really expressive.

It is.

We'd love to have you on the show.

You're you're a champion for life.

Absolutely, we can get you out to tens of people.

If you come, your voter base will not grow.

Walmart has issued a recall for frozen shrimp sold in thirteen states because they might be contaminated with a radioactive isotope.

Radioactive shrimp.

I eat those shrimp one's from Walmart eaten.

They might be radioactive, but they can offer you a really good pace.

They are cheap, and that's I don't know, is it worth it?

Is it not fresh from Chernobyl.

They're really good deal.

I mean, worst case scenario, you get a second nose, right fucking.

Deal, but you've got heat.

They take shrimp.

They're delicious.

They're really delicious.

My kid likes some.

He glows that night.

Don't have to look for the money.

We're saving in electricity not having to use the lights around the house.

Fucking Walmart, you can always count on something like that.

Absolutely, that's why they can offer good prices.

All right.

So the name of the podcast that Rachel's producing is Voices against Philocide, So it's a serious one.

I want to joke about it, but we're proud of her.

She's actually she's doing well.

She's out there producing.

She's the host of Like Mother, Like Murder, and she's got some other projects going on.

But uh, check this one out for sure.

Good for you, Rachel, and get anything else in the news.

Is that it?

No, that's it all right, bud.

So this is a surprise to me too.

What are you doing tonight?

So we get an email from Tye a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, he wanted so this is not exactly what Ty was asking for, but uh, I had mentioned Guns n' Roses and Charles Manson a couple of weeks ago, and he wrote in and he was basically saying, you know, there's so many mysteries and music, uh predominantly heavy metal.

I just went with music mysteries.

But it's it's based on Tye's idea for sure.

So uh yeah, Tie has been awesome fans forever.

So uh, Ty gets.

What I wants.

You only asked two weeks ago and it's coming out.

Look at that.

That's something.

It's good to be Tie.

All right, guys, sounds great.

We will catch you over there.

Do you know what the world is.

Actually do before you start?

I wanted to.

We haven't given the people update on where we're at, like for the podcast.

Yeah, yeah, uh, there's a way that we can actually see where we're at now.

Ye And thanks to you guys, there are I think they say three point five million podcasts active podcast and right now we are sitting somewhere in the thirty one thousand range at a three point five million.

That's global, that's in the world.

Yeah, that's unreal.

Yeah, I can't believe this's fucking thirty thousand in front of us.

That's appalling, it's ridiculous.

But no, that's all thanks to you guys.

We appreciate it.

If you abso can help us out, share with your friends, you know, maybe more ratings and.

Reviews, read the word, read the word.

Tons of room in the Shadow Family.

Absolutely all right, So we're going to start our musical mystery tour with Robert Johnson in the Legend of the Devil at the Crossroads.

Now, Robert Johnson is the og member of the infamous twenty seven Club.

I think everybody's heard of that, but if you haven't, if you haven't in music, I think there's summon acting, but generally it's music celebrities, musicians that have died at the age of twenty seven.

You've got Jim Morrison, Janis job When, Jimmy Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Brian Jones.

Just recently, Mac Miller, Mattia, Matt Miller, Brian Jones was rolling stones.

But there's just a ton of them.

So they call it the twenty seventh Club, but Robert Johnson was the inaugural member.

Do they count actors in that too?

I think some people do count him.

Yeah, I don't know the actors off the thought my head.

So much of Robert Johnson's life and death remain a mystery.

He has no birth certificate, and his death certificate was missing for thirty years after he died.

We do know that he was born in nineteen eleven to a sharecropper family in Hazelwood, Mississippi.

Though this was a generation removed from slavery, things were hardly vastly improved for black families in the South.

Robert's stepfather, Charles Dawes, had moved the family to the Delta to escape a lynch mob.

He was known to have a passion for music from an early age, but he had little interest in working in the fields.

It's said that his stepfather would beat him due to this lack of work ethic.

Not a lot is known about his early years, but we do know that when he was eighteen, he met fifteen year old Virginia Travis.

They lied about their ages so they could get married, and Robert promised to be a good husband and get a proper job.

Eventually, Virginia became pregnant when she was about eight months a long.

She went out of town to her grandmother's home to give birth.

Robert stayed behind to continue working.

When the dode got closer, he decided it was time to go to them, but he stopped a few times to play gigs at juke joints along the way and earn a little bit of extra cash.

When he got to the Travis family home, he was told that Virginia and the baby had died during childbirth and they had already been buried.

Her family made no secret the fact that they blamed him for her death.

He and that damned devil music that he played.

That's been going on for a long time.

Huh, Yeah, every generation thinks the next generation's music is devil music.

Yeah, that's true, really true.

Going back, this is close to one hundred years now.

So he poured his energy, pain and passion into playing guitar and trying to become a star.

The problem is that he wasn't very good.

He liked to follow his idols, Sonhouse in Willie Brown around the roadhouses and juke joints, and when they had finished a set and put their guitars down to take a break, he would pick them up and begin to play.

The crowds were not impressed with his playing, and he was described as both busy and noisy.

These are their words.

His idols didn't want him fiddling around to their guitars because he might break a string.

The juke owners didn't want him around because he was bad for business, and the crowds didn't want him around because they just didn't like his music.

So he decided he would show them all, and just like that, one day, Robert Johnson was gone.

The numbers differ, but it was about twelve to eighteen months later Robert Johnson resurfaced at a juke joint where both Sunhouse and Willy Brown were playing.

This is in Banks Mississippi.

Sonhows saw him walk in with a guitar on his back, and he said, boy, where you going with that thing?

You gon annoys everybody to death?

Again, Robert replied, no, just give me a trye.

And this is where the myth was born, because when he hopped on stage this time, it wasn't the same guy who used to annoy and disappoint audiences.

He was now a guitar master who left even the men he idolized in awe.

He'd added a seventh string to his six string guitar, something no one else had ever seen before.

He played fast, and he was using techniques that no one had ever seen before.

Where could he have gone to go from being a mediocre guitar player to a guitar master?

And at max eighteen months dude sold his soul to the devil.

It's exactly the legend I'm about to get to.

That's exactly what the legend is.

The legend was that he had met the devil at the crossroads and he had handed over his guitar.

The devil had tuned it for him before handing it back, and he had told him, once you take this guitar, your soul is mine, and so the deal was made.

Robert was well aware of the stories about how he came about his newfound musical gifts, and while he never came out and confirmed the legend, he certainly didn't try and debunk it either.

His lyrics were loaded with references about whodoo and walking alongside the devil.

He even has a song called crossroads or Bob, this isn't the lyrics Bob obviously himself.

He falls down to his knees knowing that the dark is gonna catch me here.

That's the lyric.

That's ballsy back in this day.

Yeah, so he this is probably about nineteen thirty.

When you think about it.

This not only is that music risky, he's also black in the South at this time.

You know, Yeah, Mississippi, which would have been the worst state to be.

Yeah, yeah, deep south there.

Johnson's family disagrees with the story about him selling his soul.

They say that mysterious eighteen months was spent returning to Hazelhurt Hazelhurst.

I think I wrote it wrong.

Hazelhurst.

That's ridiculous.

Come on, man, what.

Rachel show again?

So he so they say he was there to find his biological father, Noah Johnson.

He didn't find his dad, but he did find blues legend Ike Zimmerman.

Zimmerman was widely known to be the best of all guitarists in Mississippi at the time.

The two would meet every night in borg you Regard Cemetery, where Zimmermann would teach him guitar.

Here there was no angry crowd yelling, yelling for him to shut up and get off stage.

Ike assured Robert that no one was going to complain.

Ike believe the only real way to play the blues was to sit on a gravestone playing at midnight when the Haints Southern word for ghosts or ghosts would come along and teach you how to play the blues.

And so according to the family, these midnight graveyard sessions and hard work with a real reason for Robert's newfound guitar mastery.

Doesn't sound all that different to the devil.

Really, he didn't sell it to the devil, just some ghost.

And even the family doesn't know because he wasn't with him at this time.

So all of this is guesswork.

The devil with the crossroads, this exammer, this is all guesswork.

Nobody knows where he went during these eighteen months and how you went from being a pretty much piss poor guitar player to one of the best the world was ever seen.

Eighteen months is not a long time.

Now you can improve, but his level of improvement is astronomically.

I'm curious if the songs that he did mentioning the dark stuff, if he wrote that before or after people were saying.

It's a good question.

He very well could have been doing like the Marilyn Manson thing, as in, like you know, shocking right brings attention.

Right and there.

If they're saying it all right now, I'm go now lead into it, you know, lean into that show.

That's a good question.

I don't know that.

It's not really covered anywhere.

So even if Ike Zimmerman was the one to teach him, before long he was doing things that Ike Zimmerman could not do.

So it wasn't long before the pupil surpassed the master.

Robert Johnson had an extremely unique technique in a style that he was very protective of.

If people watched his playing too closely, he would turn his back on the crowd.

If that didn't work, he'd stop playing.

All together.

In total, he recorded twenty nine songs from November twenty third to November twenty fifth, nineteen thirty six, at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.

Twenty nine songs in two days.

No, this is total.

So in those three days, and then again another session between June nineteenth and twentieth, nineteen thirty seven, in Dallas.

So he recorded twenty nine songs over a five day period spread out over a year.

Damn man, But that's it.

That's all we have of his recording career.

That's a lot of songs you recorded in that amount of time.

Yeah, but back then, there was no splicing any of that shit.

Everything was a live take.

If you fucked it up, you did the whole song again.

You couldn't mix, you couldn't edit, It didn't exist.

It had to be one good take start to finish.

Can you imagine this podcast?

No, the horrible shit you hear is with a little bit at it.

It.

It's the best we can do.

It's not much.

That's why my computer shit the bed.

Even the computer doesn't want anything to do with this podcast.

So.

He would later meet Vergie Kane, a schoolgirl around nineteen thirty.

She becomes pregnant.

He tries to convince her to come away with him, but her upbringing was a strict religious family, and there was no way they were allowing their daughter to go off with someone who plays the devil's music.

He was reported to have gone to see his son on at least two occasions, but he was turned away by the boy's grandparents, who didn't want him having anything to do with their grandson.

His son does remember his dad coming on those two occasions, but he had no contact with him as a little boy.

He just saw him through the window.

I don't think he even realized it was his dad at the time.

Being accused so many times of being connected with the devil in his music did little to change Robert's ways.

His lyrics showed more and more devil references.

He devoted himself fully to womanizing, whiskey and playing guitar.

On August sixteenth, nineteen thirty eight, at the Three Forks juke outside Greenwood, Mississippi, Robert ordered a bottle of whiskey, which was delivered with a broken seal.

One of his friends tried to slap the bottle out of his hand, saying, you don't ever drink from a bottle with a broken seal.

Robert rebuked his friend, drank the bottle anyway, and then slumped over in his chair, unable to continue his set.

He was up in agonizing pain all night before dying almost two days later.

The rumor was that Robert had been running around with the wife of a local man and that his whiskey had been poisoned as a result.

No one was ever arrested as a result of this possible poisoning, if that is in fact what happened.

Most people just took it that a bill had come to and the devil would come to collect, and with that Robert Johnson was largely forgotten for the next twenty five to thirty years.

The album The King of the Delta Blues Singers was a reissue of his twenty nine recordings that was released in nineteen sixty one, and it reignited interest in his life and music.

There were only those twenty nine songs, two photographs, and no video of the man who went from a terrible player to one of the best the world has ever seen.

A little over a year.

Since there is no video, we have only the recordings and the eyewitness reports to wonder what made him so unique.

They say that his hands were so big that he could work two different parts of the fret board, playing a rhythm and a lead heart at the same time.

And his thumb was so long that he could wrap it all the way around and he would use that too.

So if you imagine a rhythm guitar and a lead guitar, most bands that's what they had, right, They say, Robert Johnson could play both at the same time.

His hand was so big he'd be stretched out playing two different, entirely different parts.

Wow.

Yeah, but no, but the recordings are a single man.

And if you hear the recordings, most people will swear the three four different instruments going on at the same time and there's not music.

They're out there.

Yeah, just look up Robert Johnson.

There's only one and uh, the quality isn't awesome, but it's not.

Obviously from back then.

Yeah, his style inspired Muddy Waters, Keith Richards, Bonnie Raid, Eric Clapton, and countless others.

His greatness still inspires all today.

You know, like I just said, if you listen to one of his recordings, it's easy to hear three or four musicians playing when in fact, there is one one man, one instrument, one take, and one soul and that's the story.

Right, that's awesome.

I like that story a lot.

I mean, shit, what do you think?

So?

Like you said, regardless, even if the family's explanation is what happened, it's still creepy.

Yeah, it's still not creepy as shit.

He mastered guitar in the middle of a cemetery, night after night, sitting on gravestones.

Yeah, that's definitely.

I don't know.

I don't know what I believe that The Devil's story is a bit of a stretch.

I guess it's possible.

Who knows, but the fact that he went from being just regarded as horrendous to something the world has never seen, like Keith Richards is an r of the guy, you know, basically the best that he's ever seen.

How do you do that in eighteen months unless he's a was a prodigy.

Yeah, but if he's a prodigy to begin with, he wanted to suck for all those years, So I don't know, Yeah, that's the light bulb went on for him.

I don't know.

That's awesome story, though, I like that.

Yeah, hopefully you guys like that too, and definitely check out Robert Johnson.

He is I'm gonna it's definitely as.

I won't remember the name because I can't seem to remember anything.

Robert Johnson's a tough enough.

I've forgotten it four times since you started this story.

Next up, we have the story of Connie Converse.

She was born Elizabeth Eaton Converse on August third, nineteen twenty four, in Laconia, New Hampshire, the second of three children to a father that was a minister and a mother that was an accomplished pianist.

In their house, only classical music and religious music were allowed.

No dancing, drinking, card playing, or any mention of sex were allowed.

When was this?

This is all?

She was born in twenty four?

So now because Laconia, who no sex in Laconia is a great place to have sex.

That's where they have That's where they have bike week.

E.

There's never any sexy bike week.

Everybody said sex in Laconia.

Pretty much everything out outside of the sex.

Everything they just eliminated was basically our Thanksgiving.

Yeah, no card playing, drinking, only classical music, yeah, oh go to the holidays.

Yeah.

She was an extremely gifted student who was valedictorian of her high school class.

She was awarded a full scholarship to Mount Holyoke College, where both her grandmother and mother had gone.

After college, she largely disappeared for about five years before resurfacing in New York City.

She had always been drawn to Greenwich Village, which was home to some of her idols like Margaret Meade and E.

E.

Cummings.

She moved into a four hundred square foot home in June of nineteen forty nine and began writing poetry, painting, and teaching herself to play the guitar.

She began calling herself by her college nickname Connie, and became enthralled with her new found creative outlets.

She wrote her own love song set her favorite poems to music, and greatly improved her guitar playing.

She began hanging out with other young Greenwich Village musicians.

Her friend Gene Deach began recording her inside her tiny kitchen and inside his own home as well, sometimes during small live performances in front of friends.

Deech would later say there were many better singers than Connie, but fewer as intelligent or literate and beautiful her songs still haunt me.

The folk scene at the time consisted entirely of male acts.

The idea of a female singer songwriter did not exist at the time.

She didn't perform many live gigs, but Deech had a few connections, and he got her a spot on Walter Cronkite's CBS Morning show in nineteen fifty four to play a few of her songs.

So that had been huge, Yeah, you would think.

Sadly, no copies of this performance are known to exist today.

That should have been her big break, playing in front of such a large audience, But sadly it wasn't.

They desperately that's crazy.

Yeah, that is very surprising.

They desperately tried to bring her to the attention of talent agents, managers, producers, or anyone who might provide her the big break she needed, but she never get a single offer for a recording contract.

By nineteen sixty one, the same year that Bob Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village, Connie Converse gave up on her musical dreams and frustration.

She left New York behind and moved to ann Arboro, Michigan, where she took a job for the University of Michigan doing secretarial work.

Anne writing for the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

She was organizing rallies against racism and the war in Vietnam during this period, but it seems like she had stopped writing music altogether.

In early August of nineteen seventy four, she was approaching her fiftieth birthday and seemed to be taking stock of her life, and it was clear she was not in a happy place.

Her health wasn't good, and she had requested a six month unpaid leave from her job.

She sent a series of handwritten letters to her family and closest friends, telling them that she intended to move away and start over.

They need not worry about her, and they should not come looking for her.

Some of them are on hand.

I watch her walk out to her Volkswagen Beetle, which was already loaded with her belongings and her beloved guitar.

She hopped in and drove away into history.

She has never been seen nor heard from again by anyone.

Her Volkswagon has never been found either.

Wow.

Her brother said that every worldly possession she left behind was contained in a filing cabinet that he wasn't able to bring himself to open.

Until the nineteen nineties, so this is twenty years after she's been gone.

Inside he found the only recordings that exist of her music, hundreds of handwritten notes in a letter dated the very day she disappeared.

It read eight ten seventy four.

This is just one of several efforts, non adequate, just a sample.

That's her rating.

This is the thin, hard sub layer under all the parting messages I'm likely to have sent.

Let me go, let me be if I can, let me not be if I can.

For a number of years now, I've been the object of affectionate concern to my real relatives and my many friends in Arbor, have received not just financial but spiritual support from them, have made a number of efforts in this benign situation to get a toe hold on this lively world have failed.

Human society fascinates me and awes me and fills me with grief and joy.

I just can't find my place to plug into it.

So let me go, please, and please accept my thanks for those happy times that each of you has given me over the years.

And please know that I would have preferred to give you more than I ever did or could.

I am in everyone's debt.

She left behind a letter to her brother requesting that he pay for her health insurance up until a specified date, and included a check that covered that amount.

He was instructed to let it lapse after that point.

Her family hired a private investigator to find her about a decade after her appearance disappearance, but he informed them that even if he did locate her, that he couldn't force her to go home, as she left of her own volition and they never searched for her again.

That almost sounds like a suicide.

Note it does.

It certainly sounds to me like suicide was on the table.

Maybe she hadn't made up her mind.

But I mean, you expand the extending your healthcare, you know.

That's why I think maybe it was on the table.

She didn't know what she was gonna do yet.

I think she left depressed, maybe a start over, maybe a suicide, so she hedged her bets, had him cover the insurance, knowing that you know, if she wasn't back by that day, she wasn't coming back, right, That's my that's my guess.

It's just there's someone's thinking about killing themselves.

That usually on their mind.

On their mind is I better make sure I got insurance the case this doesn't go right.

I don't want to be in debt.

It sounds like she was in a funk for a while and hadn't made up her mind on what she was gonna do, so she probably left just unsure.

I'm going to disappear for a while and we'll see what happens.

I mean, you think about it.

She had a dream and then she goes on the Walter Cronkite.

She's gonna make it.

This is a bit, and then it doesn't fucking happen.

Yeah, that's gonna be a huge letdown, but.

It's I'll get to it.

But it's you know again, a lot of these people find there, they find their audience too late, you know what I mean, People come and recognize them after they're gone.

Yeah.

Absolutely so.

It was only after her brother opened the file Cabinet that she began to get any recognition at all, let alone the recognition she deserved.

In two thousand and four, her music was played on the NPR program Spinning on Air, and in two thousand and nine, a compilation album of her songs titled How Sad, How Lovely was released.

Today, she is regarded as one of the first female songwriters and has been called the female Bob Dylan, which to me is a little bit bullshit since her career literally ended before his started.

So if you're gonna call anybody anything, right, he should be the male converse.

But it is very much this time was a very much male dominated world.

So it's just kind of funny how she predates everything he did.

But she's the male, she's the female Dylan.

I mean, it's a nice comparison, but at the same time it's shitty.

Yeah, she did not get the recognition she deserved.

During the day, I listen to a couple of things.

It isn't really my speed, but you can see the talent there.

She's very good with words for sure.

So again, if you guys want to check her out, that album is definitely online.

It's what I just say was how sad, how lovely?

Is her album?

So awesome?

So this next one isn't really a story, but more of an interesting note.

Back when Elvis Presley was nineteen and newly signed a Sun Records owner and producer Sam Phillips knew he had a superstar in the making.

Elvis didn't do his own writing, so they were acquiring songs for him to record just about everywhere they thought they could get a hit.

One of the earliest tracks Elvis recorded was a song called Without You that Phillips thought would be perfect for Elvis in his voice.

He purchased the track with the vocals already recorded, and then Elvis redid it in his own voice.

Elvis liked the song but hated the fact that he couldn't sing it as well as the original guy, saying I hate him.

Why can't I sing like that?

And who was this original guy with the silky smooth voice?

No one knows.

Phillips was sure he had purchased a track from a company called Nashville Piers Southern Music, but they said that was not the case.

It wasn't one of theirs.

It turns out that Phillips had also done some recording with inmates at the Nashville State Penitentiary, and the mystery voice was likely one of them.

You know this, So to me, it's just kind of funny that Elvis, who was about to become the most famous musician in the world, was jealous of the voice.

For a man that the world will never know.

There's so many songwriters out there that write these songs that for famous people and then they sing them and they get all the glory.

I don't know how you feel about it, but to me, I when they're not writing their own stuff, that really bothers me.

Yeah, you know, it's like, yeah, you're a great singer, but the whole talent is the whole thing, the whole pack.

You know.

If you can't write your own lyrics and do a lot of other stuff yourself, I don't know why.

I don't know why that bothers me.

But because they have no talent.

I've always loved Elvis.

It's hard to knock Elvis, but if there is one knock on him, that's it that he's you know, his songs were written by other people, but the guy was such a showman.

There's a lot like that.

But I mean the ones that I think, the ones that are the biggest write their own stuff.

Yeah, for the most part.

I mean, look at Taylor Swift.

She writes everything overr on.

Not a Swiftie, but jesus, look how huge she is.

You know.

Get the guy Die is probably the most famous musician in the world will ever know, and he's jealous of a guy that nobody will ever know.

Just how ironic is that I hate him?

Don't you think?

Yeah?

That little too ironic, isn't it.

Lastly, we have Bobby Fuller, who was born October twenty second, nineteen forty two, in Baytown, Texas.

His family ended up moving to the El Paso area around the same time that Elvis was taking the world by storm, and he became obsessed.

But when he started playing music, he more closely modeled his style on fellow Texan Buddy Hawley.

With Bobby playing guitar and his younger brother Randy on bass, they began playing all around El Paso with a revolving door of other musicians, as well as recording at several independent studios.

He ended up building an impressive echo chamber in his backyard using several mics and a second hand mixing board.

He would encourage other acts to come and record for free, just so he could improve his production skills.

By nineteen sixty four, he had relocated to Los Angeles with his band, the Bobby Fuller Four, and he had signed a Delphi Records under Bob Keene, the same man who had discovered Richie Vallin's only six years earlier.

The band recorded both covers and originals, showing the influence of many prominent acts of the era.

Their first hit was an original called let Her Dance In.

I did quite well, cracking the top forty, but it was their second single that made them stars.

I Fought the Law, which peaked at number nine.

As the one peaked at number nine and marched nineteen sixty six, Fuller's style and sound were in stark contrast to much of the other stuff that was on the radio at the time, as the country was in the midst of the nineteen sixties British British Invasion.

I love that song.

It's a good song.

It is.

He didn't write that.

I didn't write it down, but I believe that well, I don't like it anymore.

I believe it was a Dylan.

I might be talking out of my ass.

It wasn't their song, but they're the ones who made it.

Hits another one of those.

But he did write a ton of his own stuff, and a lot of it is quite good.

So Keene pushed the band to sound more like Richie Vallence, which upset Bobby and it pissed off the rest of the band.

They wanted to go back into the studio, but Keen kept them on a brutal tour schedule, headlining around the country, which made recording impossible.

He also came up with a series of marketing gimmicks that pissed off the band and began to slow sales.

He had themselves called excuse Me.

He had them call themselves the Shindigs, just to get a spot on the TV shows Music show Shindig.

And he had them make an embarrassing cameo in the beach movie The Ghost and the Invisible Bikini.

Basically, they just stood behind Nancy Sinatra and lip synced a bunch of songs.

They weren't happy about this he forced them to do, and it slowed down their momentum for sure.

Remember all those beach movies you ever.

See, They're terrible.

And this is at the tail end of the beach movies.

At this point, beach movies.

At this point, nobody was watching them anymore.

What was it, Frankie or net Frankie avalon And that's.

The Mickey Mouse Club the band played there.

We weren't.

We weren't watching those live.

My parents watched it.

I've never seen any of them, but I'm aware of them.

I've seen a couple that my parents were watching like way after them.

It's not alive.

I am not seventy.

Those movies were part of your Saturday Night Struck material.

Regular Friday night for Scott, I'm gonna stay home watch beach blank and bingo did He's get some lotion for me?

So The band played their last gig in July of nineteen sixty six.

In the late night early morning hours of July eighteenth, Bobby received a late night phone call that caused him to leave in his mother's oldsmobile for a meeting with persons unknown.

In the morning, Bobby's mother woke to find that he had not returned.

Later that day, at about five pm, fourteen hours after he left, Bobby's mother found him dead inside the oldsmobile in a vacant law next to his apartment building.

He was twenty three.

The car was unlocked.

He had a plastic hose in his hand that led to a one third full gasoline can sitting on the seat next to him.

He was drenched in gasoline.

He had blought on both his face and the seat next to him, and one of his.

Fingers was broken.

The state of Rigormortis indicated he'd been dead for at least three hours, but the car had not been wor excuse me, the car had not been where his mother found it only thirty minutes beforehand.

The initial scene indicated a possible suicide, which the police accepted without even a cursory investigation.

Some would later attribute this to the sudden death of the police chief only days earlier, but still as pathetic.

They didn't do any investigation whatsoever.

This is pretty much par for the course for every story we've done.

Huh, despite the many upcoming holes in the suicide theory, plus the fact the car wasn't there thirty minutes earlier.

He has a guy who's been dead for over three hours move a car.

Very slowly.

Yeah.

So.

At first, the police assumed that he'd died by drinking the gasoline, but there was none in the stomach.

The coroner indicated he had died from asphyxia due to inhalation of gasoline, but the coroner himself didn't seem too certain on anything, as he checked both the boxes for accidental as well as suicide, and he'd handwritten in question marks next to both.

Despite the blood, the bruising and his broken finger.

The car was not even dusted for fingerprints.

Bob Keene witnessed an investigator tossing the gasoline can into the trash.

When he questioned the detective about why this was being done, he was told that Bobby was quote just a rock and roll punk who killed himself.

His mother had told investigators that he was upset at the time of his death, and his family have felt like this was one of the reasons they were so quickly latched and the police so quickly latched onto the suicide theory.

But she literally meant upset, not unstable, not depressed, and not suicidal.

Keene stated that he and Bobby had recently had an argument about the band sounding much too much like Buddy Hawk, and that Bobby had been upset, but not upset enough to have killed himself.

On July twenty second, he was laid to rest in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills.

The suicide explanation didn't sit right with people, as Fuller was riding high on his recent breakthrough in success.

Many theories have been put forth for his death.

Maybe it was a bad LSD trip, Maybe he was killed by the Manson family, or maybe he was killed by Bob Kean himself.

Keen had already had two of his biggest acts die tragically and Richie Vallen's and Sam Cook.

Richievallens died in a plane clan.

Bob Keane wasn't there.

How could he possibly a bad a hand in that?

How did he did they determine how he died?

I mean there was gas all over him.

No, the police ruled a suicide.

They didn't do an investigation.

That's it.

Case closed, poor man.

I spoke gas on myself the other day.

I didn't know.

It's that close to the edge.

You were on the brink.

I was from merely.

I know he's stunk for a long time.

Shortly before Bobby's death, Keen had signed an exclusive distribution deal with Roulette Records, which was owned by Maurice Levy, a man whose business partners included a who's who of East Coast mafia figures.

Brother Randy always believed that Bobby's dissatisfaction with Keene may have caused him to back out of some sort of business deal and that that is what got him killed.

But Bobby had a girlfriend named Melody and many of his family and friends believe his death was related to her.

Their relationship was largely a secret, and none of them really knew her at all or even knew much about her.

She supposedly had an ex or possibly still current boyfriend who had connections to the Mob.

Perhaps this is why Bobby kept his relationship with her so secretive.

Bobby's brother said that the night Bobby and Melody excuse me, that night, the night Bobby died, Bobby and Melody planned on going to a beach party.

Melody he is said to have driven him to the party, where there was a lot of drinking and drugs.

The possibility that Bobby had died of a drug overdose at the party and that this had been covered up has been put forth, but Bobby had no drugs in his system at the time of his adopsy.

Dude, if you found out the woman that you're dating was connected to the mob, bounce right away.

Dude.

If that was the case, he didn't bounce, and he didn't tell anybody about it.

Nobody to this day knows much about this Melody.

They just know he had a girlfriend he wouldn't talk about, so that's a little strange.

Well, if she if she was did have a boyfriend in the mob, that's the stupidest thing you could ever do, absolutely.

Especially and the guy's riding high across the country on his success.

I mean, he probably had girls all over the place and.

He chooses the one he definitely that's it, though, That's exactly what it is.

That's just stupid.

He's conquered ninety nine, she's exhausted, exactly.

So.

The case was covered on a nineteen ninety six episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and the night of the broadcast, Melody herself called in.

She confirmed that she had been dating Bobby, but she denied that she had been with him the night he died.

She also denied having dated anyone with ties to the MOBB, either while she was dating Bobby or previously.

She says that was just bullshit.

She stated that she too, though did not believe that Bobby had committed suicide, amazingly or not amazingly.

Not long after this show aired and the public response became known, the cause of death was officially changed from suicide to accidental hmm.

But to this day, we still don't know what happened to Bobby before.

I don't think there's any chance in hell he killed himself.

No chance in hell.

No, it doesn't sound like it, but buck.

Off all the.

Ways to do it.

So they basically said, he breathed too much gasoline.

That's not the way anybody would in the right mind would do it.

You don't dolls yourself in gasoline like that.

No, unless it was an accident.

Why is his finger broken?

Yeah, no explanation.

He didn't bruise his own face, bruising on his body, blood on his face, a broken finger, How does that play into him killing himself with gasoline?

And who the hell would think of that.

I'm gonna fill a gas can, put a tube into my hand, just sniff the ship.

Then sounds like they didn't The cops obviously didn't care for him.

No, probably not, ye know.

Punk whatever, and then they uh up suicide.

How many?

How many?

I mean, it's a lot of these cases that we covered from this era with a police investigation was just beyond inapt just beyond that.

They just don't care.

No, we think that's gone away, but it hasn't.

No, it has.

It's just probably closest batter, if not worse.

Well today they just have better tools at their disposal to not use.

Right, you can just not care a lot more.

You can not care a lot more accurate, right, Yeah, no joke.

So that's it, dude.

I really like that, which is really weird because they usually hate your eyes you usually they're trashed.

I really like this.

You were awake for this whole I know, I didn't even doze off one time.

You didn't pop up.

Oh that's grat.

Wow, No, that was great.

I really like that.

I appreciate that.

But all right, guys, we're going to head over to the firepit.

We will catch you over there.

I guess you know what song it is.

I can't try to.

Fire several times.

All right, guys before we get started.

Like we tell you every time, if you have a story that you want to submit, send it to Beyond the Shadows.

What the fuck is our email again?

We were just talking about we couldn't.

Remember anything beyond the Shadows two of seven at Gmail.

Wow, that was a huge brain fart.

You're welcome, Hall of Performance.

And if you guys have sent uh sent fire pits in, we will.

We will get to them.

I try to keep them in order, you know, as they come.

Sometimes we're forced to jump around on the length and stuff like that.

But uh, if you've sent them in, we will we will air them.

This one, like I said, comes to us from Joe.

Joe is uh one of the guys over at Tails, Trails and Tavern podcast.

Fantastic podcast.

Joe's a great dude.

And yeah, he sent us a few, so you'll be hearing a couple others from him.

So and check that podcast out.

And I fucked it up.

You're right, I'm on it right.

I think this is a it's okay k ish.

All right, I'm sorry, Joe.

I'm gonna try this again.

Firepit story for you guys, for your shadow Army shadow people, Scott Ryan, I think this is a it's an okay ish ghost story.

So when I first moved to North Carolina after the first year, I moved into what I had dug me and my friends had dub at the time the Pink Nightmare.

So it was a single wide gray trailer that was sitting on it about an acre and a half of land on this corner of like old School Road or something like that.

And and I didn't really put two and two together for a long time, Like I've lived in.

This little with this little trailer.

It was a little two bedroom, two bath trailer, you know which that's time.

I mean, two beds, two bats.

It was five hundred bucks.

I think it was my own place.

It was great, you know.

Anyways, So every time I was in that back bedroom and the master bathroom, I always not always, but sometimes I had this really weird feeling, like I had this feeling with the hair in the back of my head, you know, the hair in the back of my neck would stand up, and I kind of feel like I wasn't alone in this trailer, but obviously I was.

And so this kind of happened a bunch of times, and it usually happened like when I was getting in another shower, or when I was in the bathroom, or I was in the bedroom near the near the door of the bathroom, and I didn't really think about it too one.

It was actually there was sometimes when I was like, you know, if there is a ghost in here, you need to fuck pay rent or get the fuck out because I can't do this, like I can't have a second person there or second enemy in here, and you're not pitching in you know what I mean.

But another thing that used to happen a lot is I'd be laying on the bed and I would feel like i'd feel the sensation of somebody sitting on the to the bed, like near like the side of the bed, but down near my feet.

I'd feel the sensation.

And what's weird is like I look back on it now and I used to just think, like, well, that's a weird sensation, you know what I mean.

But like that shit doesn't happen anymore, you know, like that happened.

That happened in that house, It happened all the five Like it happened often enough in that house where I was just like I got used to it, and you know, maybe there were a few times when I just thought, how I had to watch a drink, you know, whatever.

I was young.

I can drink more often back then, but uh, you know, maybe there was sometimes when I was like, oh, it's just a weird feeling.

Maybe it's just maybe I had to bunch a drink tonight.

Maybe maybe anything.

But like I lived alone in that place.

You know, I didn't share the trailer with anybody, so it was nobody else in there.

I didn't have a dog or it was nothing else was literally nothing else in that trailer except me.

And I used to feel that more times than I can, more times than I care to, uh to say, you know what I mean, Like, it happened a lot.

It happened enough where I remember only in that house where it felt like something was sitting on the edge.

Of my bed.

And so while I was living there, I started dating this girl, this girl and her name was kat.

I don't know if you it doesn't matter anyways, I was dating this girl, and after we got a little comfortable, she told me, hey, I can see spirits.

Like so, she was a medium, but she didn't really hone her skills.

She just knew that she could see.

Things, you know.

And so we obviously talked a lot about that, because even you know, even twenty five years ago, I was into the parent of all, I didn't and so I remember asking her about it.

I remember bringing her into the house at one point being like, do you feel anything?

Do you see anything in the trailer?

In the Pink Nightmare?

In the ss pink Nightmare?

She was like, Yeah, there's something that hangs around your bathroom.

There's like a guy or something that hangs around in that area, and it's like I had never told her that I was feeling something in that area.

I just asked her she felt something, and she pointed that area out as something specific.

And then what's also weird is that I was telling her, you know, we got into like dream stuff because I have I think I brought it up on you know, some fire pits before with you guys.

I have dreams where something comes into the dream.

Sometimes it's relative, sometimes it's a past friend.

Other times it's something darker.

And you know, at those times, usually when something dark comes into my dream and I wake up, I go back to my Roman Catholic, my Roman Catholic brooms and I pray and it goes away.

But anyways, I remember telling her about that, and her advice to me was, well, if you think about it, when you're in the dream, is something comes into the dream, you don't know what it is, asking are you good or evil or good or bad?

I can't remember if she said evil or not.

Are you good or are you evil?

Are you good?

Or are you bad?

And so I remember later having a dream in that house and something dark was in the dream and it was like moving around.

It was coming towards me, and I remember stopping and thinking, Okay, I gotta ask it right, And that was loose enough in a dream where I could ask it, and I was like, are you good or evil?

And when I tell you like, my dream went from being not great to a complete shit showed nightmare all of a sudden, like whatever that thing was split into three dark entities that came at me and the hole like it just went.

The fucking dream went crazy until I woke up in a cold, sweat, super super weird.

So I have no idea what the history of the house was.

All I know was, you know, the area that it was in.

I rented in for a couple of years from a very nice couple who uh who didn't think that a young man should be renting a single white trailer that was that had pink countertops and pink curtains and pink pink car a bit and think window dressings with all this stuff.

But that's why it was called the ping Nightmare.

But anyways, interesting, interesting something happened.

Thank you guys for having me on the fire pit, Thanks for doing this, Thanks for being you chattow army, Thanks for listening to my story.

Guys, Scott Ryan, keep the good work.

First off, a great story.

That was right.

I love it when he oh cat, I know cat, well whatever, yeah, right, yeah, that's sitting on the side of the bed.

That that's I felt that before.

Yeah, oh yeah, And that happened to my dad and your brother in the house that I grew up.

My dad felt something sit like right next he thought between his you know, like right between his legs.

He thought was a dog, and he reached down to petit and there was no dog there.

And then your brother was I told this story.

He was laying on one of those fold out mattresses on the floor and something on it and his head rolled into the spot where someone's foot should be.

So, I mean, that's it's it happens.

For sure.

It's spooky as fuck, but yeah, over.

And over again.

I don't know.

It sounds like I would scare the piss out of me.

When Joe asked, did he get an answer?

You know?

Yeah, And that's not the first time I've heard that.

I've heard I've heard multiple occasions where somebody said, what you're supposed to do is ask getting a dream, and apparently it's they have to answer truthfully or whatever.

I don't know if that's just a rumor, but it's not the first time I've heard that.

I don't remember any of my dreams.

I so wish I did.

I wish I remember my.

Dream dreams like that you probably wouldn't want to remember, man, Yeah, I.

Just wish i'd remember anything about a dream.

I know, I dream, I know, but you know, but I don't remember.

Any of them ever X rated creepy shit.

Yeah, nothing, I remember nothing, but guys, Like I said, Joe is tails, trails and taverns and he's got the book Hanted New England, and uh, I'll try to link that in the show notes.

And uh, that's going to wrap it for this one.

We will catch you and the next one later.

Guys,