On this episode, we delve into the legend surrounding the 19th-century New England Vampire Panic. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/lwtlo_ep_020_vampires_web-1.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

Ever wonder what lives in the cavernous storage rooms of a museum? Crates of artifacts, mixed with mummified remains and taxidermy? Or is there something even spookier? We visit the “Something Scary” exhibit at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield Massachusetts in this episode of Listen with the Lights On to unearth a few creepy delights. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/lwtlo_ep_19.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or...

What lurks in the shadows in Griffintown, Montreal? https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/LWTLO-Ep-018-Griffentown.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

In the late 1600s, a group of French protestant families—Huguenots, as they were known—settled in New York’s Hudson Valley. Looking for religious freedom—they were heavily persecuted in their French Catholic homeland—they built small stone houses and formed a community in and around what is now the town of New Paltz. More than 200 years later, the descendants of those Huguenot families worked to preserve the homes and legends, which are still toured and told on the street today. The modern...

While there are common threads in lore throughout the world, nearly every country and culture has its own distinct tales. In the United Kingdom for example, many stories revolve around mystical creatures in the rolling hills and mists that are characteristic of the landscape. In the United States, we talk a lot about Bigfoot, who allegedly roams our forests and mountains. In Canada, snow and winter imagery play a large role in legends there. On this episode of Listen with the Lights On, we...

Are UFOs and alien encounters the stuff of science fiction, or are we really not alone out there in the universe? On this episode of Listen with the Lights On, we visit a UFO Conference in Kingston, New York, where a few dedicated individuals are devoted to unearthing the truth behind this popular modern lore. Unidentified flying objects have fascinated humans for centuries. We didn’t have an official name for them until about 1953, when the US Air Force coined the term UFO. By the Air...

Symbols of nature takes various forms in the myths and legends around the world. But some of them… have common themes. Today Master storyteller Jonathan Kruk joins us as we explore one of the most common ones in a tale from the Catskills in New York’s Hudson Valley. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/LWTLOepkrukcherrytreedeer.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

A moonlit garden on the grounds of Union College in Schenectady plays host to one of the oldest ghost tales in the country. Forbidden love. Blind, murderous rage. And a lost soul. We explore the tragic tale of Alice Van Der Veer in this episode of Listen with the Lights On. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/lwtloepisode13unionghost.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

Visit any college or university campus in the world, and you’re likely to find at least one tale of a ghostly presence amid the hallowed halls. West Hall is the oldest building at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. And it’s also the most haunted. West Hall was built in 1869, as the Troy Hospital. Operated by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, the hospital would take in anyone in need of care. In 1923 it became a Catholic high school. And in 1953, it was...

In this episode, we bring you another terrifying tale from the heart of New York’s Hudson Valley. Master Storyteller Jonathan Kruk joins us again with a story of ghosts, a haunting and the horrors of indentured servitude in Colonial times. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/lwtlo_horseman_of_leeds_web-1.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

Mt. Greylock is the tallest natural point in Massachusetts. At 3,491 feet above sea level, it rises above the Berkshire county town of Adams, bisected by a portion of the Appalachian trail. The peak and its historic monument are constantly shrouded in mist and fog, and often beset by unpredictable weather. And the quiet summit possesses mystical qualities that have inspired great American writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Well now, it seems, it has inspired a very famous...

An urban legend is a popular story passed around that’s allegedly true, but can’t quite be confirmed. It’s the kid who ate PopRocks and drank soda and his stomach exploded. It’s the unfortunate tweeners who turned the lights out at their sleepover and called into the mirror for Bloody Mary. Or the poor sap who woke up sans kidneys in a bathtub full of ice. We’ve all heard them, and probably even told a few ourselves. They’re modern folklore. Contemporary legends. In this episode of Listen...

If you’ve ever taken a trip down the shores of the Hudson River, no doubt at one point you’ve witnessed its hallmark mists rising from the waters. They have a ghostly quality about them, and not surprisingly there is an abundance of lore based on apparitions witnessed within them. We bring back Master Storyteller Jonathan Kruk, who will tell us one such tale—the tale of the ghostly rower. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/lwtloep2jonathankruk.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen...

Is the devil in the details? On this episode of Listen With The Lights On, we explore how to capitalize on basic human fear to compose a creepy narrative, examine scary tropes, share our favorite spooky reads and try to come up with a spine-tingling tale of our own…in two sentences or less. Novelist and writing instructor Barbara Chepaitis, author of “The Amber,” joins us. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/lwtloep007scarystories.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The...

On the last episode of Listen with the Lights On, Maeve McEneny of the Albany County Convention & Visitors Bureau was giving us a tour of Albany’s Ten Broeck Mansion. We ended in the foyer in Part I, looking out the imposing front doors. Now we’re going upstairs, where many a psychic and ghost hunter has claimed lies the epicenter of supernatural activity in the almost 230-year-old house. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/lwtloep6tenbroeckupstairs.mp3 You can subscribe...

Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany sits just north of the city’s downtown. Views from the historic home’s gardens and from its elegant windows look out over row houses, industrial buildings and US Route 787. But it wasn’t always this way. In 1789, when it was built by Abraham Ten Broeck, it was farmland as far as the eye could see, and a casual glance from the window would produce an unimpeded view of the Hudson River. There’s a lot of history here, and a lot spirit–literally. On this episode of...

A mansion. A portrait. A haunting? Dive into this week’s edition of Listen With The Lights On, where we talk to Albany County Convention & Visitors Bureau Education Coordinator Maeve McEneny about lore in Albany, New York, and the mysterious happenings at the colonial estate at Ten Broeck Place. https://wamcpodcasts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/lwtloep4maevemceny-2.mp3 You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

President Abraham Lincoln’s connection to Capital Region is more than just fairy tale, in fact, he has quite a few. One of which is the story of New York Senator Ira Harris’ daughter Clara, and her husband, Union Army Officer Henry Rathbone. On the night of April 14th in Ford’s theater, the two were the esteemed guests of Abraham Lincoln… You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

We delve into the story of the Heer of Donder-Berg, a story from Jonathan Kruk, loreteller from the Hudson Valley. You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or myth? Seth Breedlove and his new film, Beast of Whitehall, premiers in Whitehall, New York on April 2nd. We explore the idea of the mythical creature in the pilot episode of our soon-to-launch podcast, Listen With The Lights On. You can subscribe to Listen With The Lights On via wamcpodcasts.org or via iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play store.