Pitched in Blue

**SPEAKER_1** (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** (0:37)
When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel 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.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:11)
Tonight's episode, Pitched in Blue.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:16)
Tonight, we're headed out to the Salt Lake Valley, and not to the older part of town, which I've been to and is amazing, but to a part of town with a home, in this case anyway, that was built just 20 years ago, 2006

**Forrest Burgess** (1:28)
When were you in Salt Lake City, sir?

**Scott Philbrook** (1:32)
Back when I, in my former career in advertising, I went there frequently because I had some clients in the area, and also a very good friend who lived there at the time, and lives there once again now.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:42)
Was there anything odd about it?

**Scott Philbrook** (1:44)
I don't know. It's just everything feels new and clean, and it's like the version of purgatory that you see in the movie, Defending Your Life.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:53)
Well, that's lovely.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:54)
Very nice malls, and yes, unfortunately, you do have to have money, and defending your life, you don't need any money.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:59)
Right. That's right. You could eat as many pies as you wanted. But this is what's interesting to me about the story from the start.
Everybody has the assumption that, oh, it has to be an old story, old town, Charleston.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:12)
Yes.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:13)
And an old jailer, an infirmary there, or someplace where there was trauma, a Civil War battlefield. But you really don't. As I always say, the assumption is that, that, oh, you know, I always go to my friend who said, you know, my Honda's not haunted. You know, when I got a couple of EBPs there, it's like, well, it doesn't matter. They're floating around everywhere. If you were a spirit, why wouldn't you be just floating around wherever you're pleased?
I think that's the same, but here there are some towns, I do believe, that are more hospitable to these types of activities, spirit-wise, or maybe even thin places or portals. And in this case, we're going to talk about a specific place in a house. But yeah, just in Salt Lake City itself, has it earned that reputation? It's like, well, I don't think it needs to. It doesn't have to be steeped in spooky history.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:03)
Yeah, people just, they see something old-fashioned with a big porch and gothic columns or whatever. That's not always how it goes, yeah.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:10)
Right, it could just be the land, as I've come to learn too, that a brand new house or structure has been on. And also you have to realize, native folks have been around stomping on the terra for tens of thousands of years, perhaps, long before you got there and thought it was all nice, clean and squeaky and free of any kind of spiritual shenanigans.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:31)
Yes.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:31)
But in terms of houses, yeah, our storyteller's house is practically brand new. So that doesn't really apply to this, right? Because the house has no past, then where's this stuff coming from? Well, like I said, it could just be the land, it could be the air, it could be the people bringing stuff with them.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:51)
That's right. You could have hitchhikers. That's the question that hangs over this whole dead letter. Let's set the stage a little bit. The Salt Lake Valley sits in a kind of bowl, the Wasatch Range, walling it off to the east and the Ochre Mountains to the west. And the Great Salt Lake is spread out off to the northwest. It's amazing, especially when you fly into it now. The whole valley floor is the bed of an ancient lake, Lake Bonneville, which drained away thousands of years ago and there's a bunch of sediment there, which you'll see in some water, but that's receding very, very quickly. And the Wasatch Fault runs right along the foot of these mountains and then in the mid 2000s, there was a building boom and subdivisions got thrown up all across that valley, big what they call Rambler Homes or as we say in the Southeast Ranch style houses.