But We didn't Break the Glass

**John Bogle** (0:02)
Astonishing Legends Network The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Deadletter Office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests.

**Forrest Burgess** (0:40)
Thank you. People isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not. For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too.
Join us weekly in Blanket Forteana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter Office.

**John Bogle** (1:11)
Tonight's episode, but we didn't break the glass.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:16)
So tonight's Dead Letter takes us to rural Arkansas in the late 2000s. If you grew up out there or really anywhere in the rural South, and yes, even us North Carolinians call Arkansas the South, you know the back roads are dotted with these old, very small towns and school houses that closed decades ago.
The buildings just sit, doors unlocked, windows going, chalk still on the boards, and a few of them, and for a certain kind of teenager, that's a Saturday.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:45)
Wait, so y'all don't call it Arkansas?

**Scott Philbrook** (1:48)
No, we don't call it Arkansas. Here's the thing, I'm gonna say it took me a minute to wrap my head around Arkansas being in the South because it's so far west. That's right. But the bottom line is, here's the interesting thing about it, the accents from Arkansas are in some cases almost indistinguishable from North Carolina. You will meet somebody and be like, oh my God, are you from Raleigh or whatever? They're like, no, Arkansas, which is very fascinating to me. Regionally, there's these pockets of very similar accents between these states.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:14)
I love that diaspora anthropology and it's interesting to me. But wherever you're from, wherever you are, that kind of attraction is irresistible. Or I guess in legal terms, it's also called an attractive nuisance.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:30)
Yes, an abandoned building, absolutely.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:32)
Or just like Mel's Hole. Or do you remember the pond from one of those Terry Lovelace stories where readers had sent in stories and he published 50 of them, I think, in the back of his second book?
There's a pond there where I think it's the two girls with the carousel. It may have been that, the UFO carousel story.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:50)
That's one of my favorite stories ever. Right.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:52)
So that levee or whatever the water is called an attractive nuisance, so people want to go check it out, but it could be dangerous, much like an abandoned building. But here's the thing, there's a whole culture built up around exploring abandoned places and buildings. Urban exploration or urbex as it's called now, where people are documenting these buildings before they collapse, which I think is a good thing, but it also can be dangerous and illegal if you're trespassing. So be careful. On the safer side of that, it's also called legend tripping. So Jeff Ballanger, I think, also was a guest on Jim Harreld's podcast where he talked all about legend tripping and how to do it safely and legally, and some people will call it that. But it's an activity for the adventurous and the curious long before we named our show. So that's where we got it.
But yeah, there's some legends involved with it, and I'll say there's a real line you cross when you stop documenting and start carrying things home.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:52)
Yeah.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:52)
Right? Or the Brady Bunch, an artifact they carried home from Hawaii.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:57)
One of the Tiki. Yes, do not take things from Hawaii.

**Forrest Burgess** (4:00)
Or anything from the Bellwitch property, or really any place that has a history or anything natural.

**Scott Philbrook** (4:05)
Well yeah, and there's a reason for that. There's a reason, you know, the park rangers and the wardens and the people in charge of tourism for these spots, they say that for a reason.
You know, one of them is like, well, if a thousand people come and each one of them takes something, then eventually there's nothing left for everybody else to look at. On the other hand, it's also the idea of the curse, that's something that you might believe. And I'll just say, you know, I took a piece of the Silver Bridge with me back to my office in New York City a long time ago, back in a former career, and things did not go well for me until I got rid of it. So I'm just going to say, a lot of people are going to say, well, that's because you were a crappy editor. And it's like, I don't know. I don't know. I felt weird about it. I got so, I felt so weird about it. The office building I worked in when I was editing TV commercials, it was a classic New York like thing down in Soho, where we had that shaft in the middle, you know, that's closed in on all four sides with fire escapes and stuff like that. And eventually, I moved that piece, the Silver Bridge from my edit bay out back there to the stairwell. Because I was like, this thing is bringing me bad luck.