Our story comes from returning contributor and friend of the podcast Akunna Musa. This is the third story he has submitted, but the first time he is using his real name. Akunna hails from New York and is an Uber driver there. His story should remind us all to always listen to grandma.

Hello Ron.  Once again, this is a story my dad told me from when he was younger. He was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. One night he was walking home. The sun was just starting to set and in Lagos at the time there weren’t many street lights. So when it got dark out it got DARK out. My dad had been told by my Abue (Grandma) many times to not stay out too late and be home before the sun goes down. He was a very stubborn boy (according to his sister) and always blew off everything my grandma would say. On this night he definitely should’ve listened to her, and if I’m not mistaken after this he did. I am using americanized slang in this story, but try to keep in mind that Yerba is the language that he would have spoken at the time. 

As he walked he saw a man standing on a street corner. The man looked at my dad and said, “You should get home, kid, it’s getting late.” 

My dad, being the jerk that he was, said, “Screw you old man don’t tell me what to do!”, and went about his leisurely walk home. 

After a couple of blocks he saw the same man standing on a different street corner. The man said the same thing he said before. My dad didn’t think much of it, told him to go bleep himself and continued walking. After a few blocks he saw the same man, but this time he had a big snarling dog with him. The old man said the same thing, this time with the dog growling and baring its teeth. Dad was a little more bothered this time, understandably so, but still told the old man to shove it and kept walking. 

He was nearly home at this point. The sun was gone, the moon bright in the sky, and yes he saw him again. This time he was just laughing maniacally. Not only is he laughing, but he has two dogs now. According to my dad, the dog’s and man’s eyes were red, and as soon as he walked past them the man let the dogs go. 

My dad took off running as fast as he possibly could, the dogs barking, snarling, and giving chase. As soon as he reached grandma’s house he started pounding on the door furiously begging her to open up. Once the door was opened he flew inside and told her to shut it fast. She was trying to figure out what was happening so my dad told her about the man and the dogs. My grandma said he was being ridiculous and said there’s nothing out there. She opened the door and saw nothing. However, my dad swore that he could still see the dogs pacing outside back and forth. Teeth sharp, eyes red, fur black, and waiting for him. – Akunna Musa

This Week’s Podcast: On the show this week we present a story that should shock you. A Brave New World was written by English author Aldous Huxley in 1931. It took the world by storm, but not everyone was happy about it. In fact it is one of the most banned novels on record. In the 1956 CBS Radio Workshop decided to adapt the tale to radio and that is what we will play this week. You can listen to this podcast on Thursday at Ron’s Amazing Stories, download it from Apple Podcasts, stream it on Stitcher Radio or on the mobile version of Spotify. Do you prefer the radio? We are heard every Thursday at 10:00 pm and Sunday Night at 11:00 PM (EST) on AMFM247.COM. Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this link

Your Stories: Do you have a story that you would like to share on the podcast or the blog? Head to the main website, click on Story Submission, leave your story, give it a title, and please tell me where you’re from. I will read it if I can.

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One of the most often asked questions I get is, “Where do I get my old time radio shows?” I have answered this on the show a couple of times, but have never formally addressed the question. Today I am going to do that: 

I first became interested in the golden age of radio in the early 1980s. However, even before that I was listening to CBS Radio Mystery Theater which aired on the radio from 1974 to 1982. In the 80s to get the shows you had to know a guy. All of that changed with the propagation of the internet. Telnet became a thing and there were newsgroups dedicated to the hobby. People would share their collections. You had to have some special archival software to unlock them and to download a single episode could take several hours (even though the files are only a few kilobytes). As the internet grew so did the hobby and I bought my first full collection of Gunsmoke on Ebay in 1996 on 5 CDs. I loved this and at the time I had one heck of a commute to work. These stories were my entertainment.

The next big change also came in 1996. The Internet Archive was born. They began archiving the Internet itself. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was temporary – but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today they have 25+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine. But that was not the end of it. They also began to allow collections to be stored on their servers. This included everything from famous art to radio recordings. It was from here that getting OTR shows became as simple as a couple of mouse clicks. 

Here is a quote from their about page: https://archive.org/about/

The Internet Archive serves millions of people each day and is one of the top 300 websites in the world. A single copy of the Internet Archive library collection occupies 99+ Petabytes of server space (and we store at least 2 copies of everything). We are funded through donations, grants, and by providing web archiving and book digitization services for our partners.

So, now you know where I get all of the programs you hear on the show. Everything OTR is there and all you have to know is the name. Just open the Google machine and type the name of the show followed by the word archive and the world of OTR is open to you. (example: “ron’s amazing stories archive” will get you the first 100 episodes of my podcast.)

Here are some example OTR links on The Internet Archive:

Gunsmoke – A 1950’s western drama.
X-Minus One – A 1950’s science fiction drama
The Mysterious Traveler – A 1950’s horror anthology series.

This Week’s Podcast:

On the podcast this week we have something special. We are going to take a close look at the old time radio series The Columbia Workshop. This was a unique show that was one of the major drivers of modern radio. You can listen to this podcast on Thursday at Ron’s Amazing Stories, download it from Apple Podcasts, stream it on Stitcher Radio or on the mobile version of Spotify. Do you prefer the radio? We are heard every Thursday at 10:00 pm and Sunday Night at 11:00 PM (EST) on AMFM247.COM. Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this link

Your Stories:

Do you have a story that you would like to share on the podcast or the blog? Head to the main website, click on Story Submission, leave your story, give it a title, and please tell me where you’re from. I will read it on the show if I can.

Social Links:
Main Podcast Site by LibSyn
The Blog Site by WordPress
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Contact Links:
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Story Submissions
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Our story for this time has to be one of the most amazing guardian angel adventures to date. Some might argue that this is not an angel story at all. However, I have found sometimes our protectors don’t have to be spirits to do the job. Take this case from Agnes Oliver who resides in Manchester, England. Agnes writes:

Hello Ron, greetings from England. I heard your request for stories and I’ve  experienced quite a few. Manchester is a very old city and is full of its ghost lore.  I’ve never been one who traipses about looking for ghosts, but they always seem to find me. Some might not call this a ghost story but I tend to lump all spirituality together. The spirit world is what it is and when the veil is thin it tends to spill over. 

This story occurred when I was around the age of 12. We  were living in the northern part of Manchester at that time in a house that was nearly 200 years old.  The house was actually a sublet  of the church in the area.  Originally they used it for aspiring nuns. It was a place for them to decide if the nuns’ life was the life for them.  I always felt at home in this place, warm, safe, and secure. 

One evening my girlfriend Gretchen came over with her brand new Ouija board.  She wanted to show me how it worked and so we decided to make the evening of it.  We set it up in the basement thinking that this would be the one place that had ghosts if the house had ghosts. Try as we might we could not get any response from the board, absolute silence. We both thought that it was a total sham and that anyone who said different was probably just making it up.  

We were about to give up when all of a sudden things started falling off the walls and shelves by themselves. Cans, lamp shades, pictures, even a bag of nails split out onto the floor.  It was total chaos. We were amazed by what we saw, but not at all frightened. That peace and protection I spoke about earlier prevailed.  

Everything went quiet and we both felt a shiver go through our bodies at the same moment. Then we both heard a woman’s voice. It was disembodied and seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. It simply said, “I’ve protected you this round, but don’t play with what you don’t understand.”

Quicky we packed up the Ouija Board and placed it in the nearby furness. As it burned we both heard a sickly scream that died away as quickly as it came. We never told anyone of that experience, but a few weeks later I was attending mass at our local church.  Sister Martha, one of my teachers, called me over after the service.  She said, “I hope you learned a valuable lesson dear.” I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then I realized that the voice I heard in our basement was that of Sister Martha. She just smiled and I could tell she knew the whole story. I never played with a Ouija Board again.

Agnes Oliver – Manchester, England

I get chills whenever I read this story. My thanks to Agnes for sharing it with us.

-Ron

This Week’s Podcast:

On the program this week I tell the story of The Radium Girls. Who were they? Well you could google it or just tune in and find out. Also, on the show we have a story from Rattlesnake Road and a UFO story from Nevada. You can listen to this podcast on Thursday at Ron’s Amazing Stories, download it from Apple Podcasts, stream it on Stitcher Radio or on the mobile version of Spotify. Do you prefer the radio? We are heard every Thursday at 10:00 pm and Sunday Night at 11:00 PM (EST) on AMFM247.COM. Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this link

Social Links:
Main Podcast Site by LibSyn
The Blog Site by WordPress
Facebook Link
Twitter Link

Contact Links:
Email
Story Submissions
Contact Ron