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
Facebook Link
Twitter Link

Contact Links:
Email
Story Submissions
Contact Ron

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

Our story today is not a ghost story, but I’m sure it will go down as one of the strangest tales you have heard in RAS history. At least it is for me. Why? This is true and it happened to me. Before I tell my story there is a fact that you should know. WE don’t get much snow in the Pacific Northwest. Not during the winter and most certainly NOT in April. 

Sunday was like any other day. I went to church, met my nephew Chad for dinner at the local mall, and watched some sports on TV. It was, generally, a good day. However, I did catch some of the local news and they said that it would snow that night. I laughed and said, “Yeah Right!” Little did I know that my life was about to be turned upside down.

I went to bed thinking of the absurdity of a snowstorm. During the night there arose such a clatter that I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Snow! And not just any snow, but at the end of it, we had at least six inches of the stuff. What was the matter? Well, a tree fell in my backyard. It struck a second tree and it also came down with a crack and a thud.  Both landed on a shed. It took out the power line to the shed and that caused the whole house to go dark.  I killed the breaker to the shed and reset the power it came back up.  (See the photo!) – Ron 

That was not to be the end of my story. You see a lot of trees came down in Vancouver taking out power lines, cars, and buildings. Not a good day for our fair city. Our neighbor, Portland, Ore, reported over 400 trees taken out by this storm. There were periodic power outages all day. So, I didn’t power up any of my computers and this has put this week’s podcast in jeopardy. 

This Week’s Podcast:

Honestly, I don’t know what I am going to do this week. But, you can listen to whatever this podcast will be 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

Our story for this week comes from our old friend Ray Peyton from Urania, Louisiana. Urania is a small town in the La Salle Parish of Louisiana. Ray is a writer and has submitted other stories to the show. He was a guest on Episode #201 in 2015 and told us what it is like to be a contractor in Iraq. He also shared his short story called Toy Soldiers. Here is another story of Ray’s from his series: Adventures of an Oilman and it is called, An Owl Attack. You can listen to his story in Episode #341.

In the mid-80s I worked as a dispatcher for Frank’s Casing Crew, which is an oilfield service company in Alvin, Texas. We had three dispatchers on staff. We worked 12-Hour shifts and rotated from days to nights, to off. The story I’m about to tell you happened to me and is forever emblazoned into my memory. The time frame of the entire story is about 5 minutes.

I was often alone there at night, and I didn’t see a living soul until 6:00 AM when my relief arrived to take over. Sometimes, if the business was slow, it would be so boring that at least once a shift I would take my cordless phone and my .22 caliber Ruger Pistol for a walk around the entire facility – you might call it a “Security Check”. In reality, I was just screwing off and taking a smoke break.

Now, there was this forty-foot flagpole sitting outside in front of the office by the parking lot. Most nights you could walk outside, look up, and see an old white owl perched at the very top of that pole. On this particular night I looked straight up that flag-less pole, and sure enough there sat the owl and she was looking down at me. We made “Eye Contact” I swear.  At forty feet away the owl didn’t look all that big or even threatening. It was at that moment “it happened”. 

I must admit I briefly considered shooting that owl. I know it was an evil thought – call it temptation – I wouldn’t have done it. I knew better. You just don’t kill a bird for the sake of killing – and especially not an endangered federally protected species like the owl. You could end up in the penitentiary. Also, no taxidermist would stuff it, so you couldn’t hang it on your wall. Federal game wardens love to use rule breakers to set an example for others and I knew it. It’s kind of like coveting your neighbor’s property and doing nothing. The bible says you’re still just as guilty. So anyway, at the very moment when I looked up at that owl and that evil thought passed quickly through my head. 

The owl must have read my mind. It left its perch, dove headfirst straight down that pole towards me like a guided missile or a torpedo headed for an enemy ship – with its wings tucked close up to its body for less wind resistance and speed. It happened so fast and this brave white hunter was paralyzed with fear!

When it got about ten feet from me it folded out its wings, flipped from headfirst to feet first in a millisecond – like Batman! Those damn birds have “Talons”! It grabbed on to me everywhere – my shoulders, my ears, the hair of my head, and beat the living daylights out of me. I’m serious! That white owl had a five-foot wingspan. I swung my arms around in the air trying to get that damn bird off me. I think my eyes were closed half the time so they wouldn’t get clawed out!

Finally, I guess she beat me up to her satisfaction and let me go. Not because I won the battle or she was scared of me, that much I am sure of. I figure she flew away to check on her little baby owls. I put the pistol back in my car immediately, headed straight for a first-aid kit, and never went near that flagpole again – owl or no owl, flag or no flag. I believe smart people refer to it as “behavioral modification”.

The moral of this story is? Don’t ever think an owl is only wise and non-threatening. They are also very tough and extremely vicious! It’s just another lesson I had to learn the hard way – something they don’t teach you in books. – Ray Peyton – Louisiana.

This Week’s Podcast:

On the show this week we will ponder the question, What would it be like to meet an alien race? We listen to a story called First Contact from the Sci-Fi series Dimension X. This is a good one! 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

Our story comes from Kihei, Hawaii. It was sent in by Kahale Mahelona and this was our first story from the islands. It appeared in Episode #339 – Backyard UFO and I received a number of emails from folks that confirmed this UFO sighting.

Hello Ron. I am a UFO junkie and if I had one wish for your show it would be that more people sent in their stories about UFOs. Since I was a child I have wanted to see one and finally, it happened. I am both excited by it and bewildered. While not too exciting, it is true. 

It was around 12:15 AM. I was scanning the night sky in the direction of Kaupo. I do this often because my theory is that if you’re not watching then you are missing. I noticed an unusually bright light and was pretty high in the sky. It was brighter than any star or planet, too bright to be a satellite, not in the typical flight pattern of an airplane, and too high to be a helicopter or drone. I decided to watch it for a while to see what would happen. 

After about 5 minutes it split into two lights and then proceeded to fly apart in diagonal trajectories for another 5 minutes. The lights then reversed direction, became one again, and remained that way for the next 10 minutes. I was tired and went to bed, though I had difficulty sleeping. My thoughts were, what are they doing? Why would they separate and then rejoin? 

I will be watching that part of the sky whenever I get a chance, hoping I will see them again and hoping to receive more information about why they are here and what they are doing. I would love to hear about other people’s UFO experiences. It feels good to know that we are definitely not alone.

Thank you for the show and mahalo.  

Kahale Mahelona – Hawaii

Thank you Kahale for your story. I did some research and there have been a number of sightings similar to yours reported on MUFON and other sites. Also, I think more people must be watching the skies like yourself because UFO reports in Hawaii have been on the increase since 2016. I often wonder why we don’t get more UFO stories on the show. We do have a pretty amazing one on this week’s podcast. Also, on the show, we feature a Sci-Fi story from X-Minus One, and a brand new Johnny Is True on Area 51.

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