The Old Man on the Gravestone

Forrest Burgess (0:02)

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Scott Philbrook (0:37)

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Forrest Burgess (1:11)

Tonight's episode, The Old Man on the Gravestone.

Scott Philbrook (1:17)

Tonight, we're headed to eastern Nebraska, just out past Omaha a little bit, right around the turn of the millennium. You know what that means?

Forrest Burgess (1:24)

Yes, I do. Of course, I do. I'm not.

Scott Philbrook (1:26)

Well, I think some folks don't.

Forrest Burgess (1:28)

Some don't. Maybe.

Scott Philbrook (1:29)

Well, you can explain it then if you want to.

Scott Philbrook (1:31)

Yes, the turn of the last century, the 21st century we're talking about here, and the listener who sent this one in had what I guessed is probably the best job available for a 22-year-old in the year 2000 It's a really... I wish I would have had this job then.

Forrest Burgess (1:47)

Yeah.

Scott Philbrook (1:47)

But he was the night guy on a Top 40 radio station.

Scott Philbrook (1:50)

Yeah. Overnights on Top 40 in 2000, as he says in his letter with his story. That's in sync, that's ludicrous, who's now doing insurance commercials, pretty funny ones, actually.

Forrest Burgess (2:01)

Oh, yes. And a phone line.

Scott Philbrook (2:02)

Nutrition commercials, too.

Scott Philbrook (2:03)

Nutrition. Oh, that's right. But anyway, he also had, as you'll hear in the story, a phone line where he gets to do his own version of like Art Bell call-ins, which is... That's really a fantasy.

Scott Philbrook (2:13)

I know. It's like, that's so cool. But also the setup or premise of a low-budget indie horror film.

Scott Philbrook (2:21)

That's right.

Scott Philbrook (2:22)

Which is kind of what we may be hearing about tonight. Well, anyway, that format has undergone a lot of changes. Some say it was dead by now, but I think it's still out there in some form. It worked back then because there was nowhere else to go if you wanted to hear late night radio. Nobody's posting anything or not much of it. Nobody's on a headset playing Halo yet. If you were 16 in Omaha on a Friday night and you had a car, gas had about $1.50, remember that? Yeah. Then whoever was on the radio and they became like a trusted friend or a friendly voice.

Scott Philbrook (2:55)

That's right. The radio was the group chat.

Scott Philbrook (2:57)

Yeah.

Scott Philbrook (2:57)

So, hello chat, should I go to the cemetery? Anyway, Omaha sits up on the bluffs on the west bank of the Missouri River. At this time, about three quarters of a million people in the metro area. It's a real city, but when you get a half hour out of town, it's homesteaded land, gravel roads and a very thin population spread out.

Scott Philbrook (3:15)

All the good stuff happens, and every one of those roads looks identical at night.

Scott Philbrook (3:20)

Yeah, corn on both sides, no shoulder, and your headlights are the only thing for a mile in any direction. It's lost highway territory.

All right, well, tonight's letter comes to us from Corey, and he's cleared us to use his name. So, Corey, thank you for that and for sending it in. Forrest, let those dulcet tones flow.

Scott Philbrook (3:40)

Hello, Scott and Forrest. I'm a relatively new listener to your podcast, and I've really been enjoying it. What follows is my strange story. Destination, Dead Letter Office. Submitted for your approval, The Case of the Old Man on the Gravestone.

25 years ago, I was the nighttime host on a Top 40 radio station in Omaha, Nebraska. Each night, I would introduce a topic and encourage my listeners to call in for commentary on the topic. On the night that I introduced the topic, Haunted Places in the Omaha Area, I had no idea that I had just introduced a topic that would generate several nights worth of phone calls and ultimately result in an apology and a cemetery cleanup.

One of the locations that I got the most amount of calls for was a private family cemetery that sits about 25 miles or so outside of Omaha city limits. Having grown up in Iowa and having been relatively new to Omaha, I had never heard of this cemetery before. But the way my listeners would tell it, it was a legendary haunted cemetery that was the place to visit if you're looking for ghosts. After being local art belle for a few nights and doing it between NSYNC and Ludacris songs, I decided to do an on-air recruitment of listeners to visit four or five of the haunted places that were mentioned the most for my callers. The idea was that on a Friday night, each group was designated a location, and they were to visit the location, call in once they got there, and report their findings on air.