Speaker 1: And that's when he heard someone screaming for rescue from
Speaker 1: the fire inside. He ran up the stairs to tell someone,
Speaker 1: and they said when he entered the control room, he
Speaker 1: was the first person to open that door in three years.
Speaker 2: Get ready for a campfire story.
Speaker 1: I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky stories with
Speaker 1: playful banter that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker 2: So throw some wood on the fire and put a
Speaker 2: wiener on a stick. We're telling you a campfire story tonight.
Speaker 2: So a little while back, I listened to this one show.
Speaker 2: I already told you about it, Celebrity Go Story.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to explain the Office to me.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the other show I guess that I watch,
Speaker 2: like aside from the Office, it's this one. Anyway, he
Speaker 2: really got me thinking about how all these stories develop
Speaker 2: a haunted mansion, Like all these plays are so like
Speaker 2: rich people, and you know that I'm not really into
Speaker 2: celebrity stuff, right, Like I'm.
Speaker 3: Not into you don't know who anyone is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't identify them. I think I can identify
Speaker 2: Jennifer Lopez most of the time. Shakira, Shakira, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But anyway, like Basically the show is this person sits
Speaker 2: in front of a camera and just tells a story
Speaker 2: that they had, like a ghost story, and they do
Speaker 2: you know, they get actors and they do the whole re.
Speaker 1: When you cite celebrity, I mean, what level are we
Speaker 1: talking about. It's not j Low on this show.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: For example, this one's from Daniel Stern. You know who
Speaker 2: that is.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's the He's one of the robbers in
Speaker 1: Home Alone. He also did the grown up voice on
Speaker 1: The Wonder Ears.
Speaker 2: I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Have you watched The Wonder Years? No, then it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter to you.
Speaker 2: So anyway, this guy begins his story of a trip
Speaker 2: through the English moors with his wife. This is in
Speaker 2: the eighties. Sometimes they rented a car and they were
Speaker 2: gonna dry through the countryside. They wanted to go to
Speaker 2: a town called Tavistock to stay at a bed and breakfast,
Speaker 2: and they end up at this town called Whittacombe to
Speaker 2: see a church there. They get there, there's nothing much around.
Speaker 2: They pull in and then they see a church. So
Speaker 2: they were excited about it. They're like, wow, cool, let's
Speaker 2: go check it out. Whatever, right, so they start walking
Speaker 2: around they're exploring and they suddenly begin to notice that
Speaker 2: people are walking around, but they're walking very like awkwardly
Speaker 2: looking straight ahead like zombies. That's what he said. Nobody
Speaker 2: was talking and they were being completely ignored, like they
Speaker 2: were just walking past them. Everybody's slow and everyone dressed
Speaker 2: in black. Of course, they decided to get the heck
Speaker 2: out of there, like we need to find out how
Speaker 2: do we get to Tavistock to the bed and breakfast.
Speaker 2: And that's when they see a woman that she's standing
Speaker 2: kind of by the church and they want to ask
Speaker 2: you for directions, and she's turning away from them. She
Speaker 2: turns around and she stares at them with white eyes
Speaker 2: like no color in the circley part of the high
Speaker 2: and she begins to speak in tongues. They both stand there.
Speaker 2: They're just like like they're kind of freaking out, but
Speaker 2: she's still talking, so like they're kind of there. You
Speaker 2: don't want to be rude because they're in England. And
Speaker 2: then they take off straight to the car. They start
Speaker 2: driving away and just a few minutes later, like they're
Speaker 2: driving like if they're about a mile away, probably a
Speaker 2: tire pox the guy this straight up movie scene, right
Speaker 2: like the guy says, hey, we should probably head back
Speaker 2: and get it fixed, and the wife is like, no,
Speaker 2: we're driving like that right, So they keep driving like
Speaker 2: they drive on the rim, like they're not stopping. So
Speaker 2: they finally make it Tavis Stock and they late to
Speaker 2: the reservation and then it tells them, yeah, we were
Speaker 2: at this place called Whittocomb, and the attendant it's like, Whittocomb,
Speaker 2: you say, that place is a ghost town. Don't go there.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of dead people walk around. And then
Speaker 2: he tells the story of a church, the actual church
Speaker 2: that they wanted to see. Turns out that one night,
Speaker 2: this is back in like a long time ago, on
Speaker 2: a Sunday, there was a lot of thunder lightning and
Speaker 2: there was service at the church. There was a terrible storm.
Speaker 2: Lightning suddenly struck like the roof and the steeple felt
Speaker 2: it was burning. Four people died, and it was like
Speaker 2: the story of the town. It was kind of like,
Speaker 2: we'll put it on the map. They have artist depictions
Speaker 2: of what happened the burning of the church, but since
Speaker 2: then they say that place is haunted. Celebrity Gold Stories
Speaker 2: had runs and reruns and I just kept playing because
Speaker 2: it was a really popular episode. Of course I looked
Speaker 2: it up to see what about whocomb is it haunted?
Speaker 2: It turns out that the local town historian was overwhelmed
Speaker 2: with these requests. They're like, you know, who are you
Speaker 2: or whatever? They kept replying. So instead what he did
Speaker 2: to all these replies, all these people reaching out to him,
Speaker 2: He replied in this like blog post and in his
Speaker 2: repply he put hello America, like basically talking to America.
Speaker 2: On Sunday, twenty first October sixteen thirty eight, when the
Speaker 2: church was full for a service, the terrible thunderstorm threatened
Speaker 2: the valley. One of the four pinnacles of the church
Speaker 2: tower was struck by lightning, with a result that it
Speaker 2: came crashing through the roof of the church and killed
Speaker 2: four people, one an ancestor of mine, Susannah Beard. Parts
Speaker 2: of the tower were found in the manor house garden
Speaker 2: four hundred yards away to the north, and considerable damage
Speaker 2: was done. The schoolmaster at the time was a Richard Hill,
Speaker 2: and he wrote a detailed summary of the event. We
Speaker 2: understand that his manuscripts in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University,
Speaker 2: regarding the people dressed in black. In rural areas of Devon,
Speaker 2: when there is a funeral of someone local or well known,
Speaker 2: most of the local people turned out to pay their
Speaker 2: last respects to the departed. It is possible that when
Speaker 2: the TV presenter was in the village an event of
Speaker 2: this kind was taking place and we would all have
Speaker 2: been in solemn or somber mood. Our church is dedicated
Speaker 2: to Saint Pancras, and due to its large size, it
Speaker 2: is affectionately known as the Cathedral of the Moor. In
Speaker 2: its present form it dates from the fourteenth century, but
Speaker 2: there is little doubt in my mind that there has
Speaker 2: been a church here for much longer, even to the
Speaker 2: point that it was a religious significance in pre Christian days.
Speaker 2: There is a great deal of prehistoric evidence here in Dartmoor.
Speaker 2: I personally collect prehistoric implements and tools. In the earliest
Speaker 2: that I have dates from eight thousand BC. There is
Speaker 2: no Roman evidence here, but there was Roman activity within
Speaker 2: eight miles of here, and of course in Exeter, our
Speaker 2: county town. On the second Tuesday of September each year
Speaker 2: we hold the annual Whittacombe Fair. People come from all
Speaker 2: over the world to this special day when animals are shown,
Speaker 2: sporting events take place, and the history of the area
Speaker 2: is on display. Whittacombe Fair was anupperty for farmers to
Speaker 2: sell stock when it was begun several hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: but now it is more of a fun gathering on
Speaker 2: dark murth. There are many ghost stories, the Harry Hans,
Speaker 2: Black Dogs, specters, all mixed up with the legends. As
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, our History group has written a small
Speaker 2: book about Whittocombe and other about Whitcomb Fair, and these
Speaker 2: are obtainable through our website. There are several more of
Speaker 2: you that have written to us, and I hope that
Speaker 2: I have answered most of your queries in this letter.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your interest in the Whittocomb and we
Speaker 2: would like to send you all seasons greetings in all
Speaker 2: the best for twenty eleven. Yours, sincerely, AE Beard, Honorary Secretary,
Speaker 2: Whittocomb History Group. So he was defending his town. It's
Speaker 2: not a ghost town.
Speaker 1: No, there was just a funeral, which I kind of
Speaker 1: thought from that story you said it was a funeral,
Speaker 1: and then like them talking to that woman, she probably
Speaker 1: just had a thick British accent and they.
Speaker 2: Just probably.
Speaker 1: You know, the accents get a little weird in the country.
Speaker 2: It's speaking in talk and the eyes probably the old people,
Speaker 2: you know, you get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Cateractionlind.
Speaker 2: What this told me is that, Yeah, sometimes we can
Speaker 2: hear you know, ghost story, an abandoned town or a
Speaker 2: ghost town. In reality, it might just you know, you
Speaker 2: might get there on the wrong day, like when you
Speaker 2: get to Seattle most of the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone's just not talking or acknowledging you.
Speaker 3: But they're not dead. You're not dead. That's just the
Speaker 3: way it is there.
Speaker 2: So don't always believe what you hear. Sometimes people just
Speaker 2: get there on the wrong day.
Speaker 1: Now, we're going to a real abandoned ghost town, abandoned
Speaker 1: for a very good reason, and it has a very
Speaker 1: dark history and will stay abandoned. I think they'll probably
Speaker 1: start to clean up in two thousand and sixty five.
Speaker 2: We might be alive.
Speaker 1: We might be alive when they start to clean up.
Speaker 3: We'll update, we'll update if we're still alive.
Speaker 1: Then picture this doors banging open and shut in the wind.
Speaker 1: Hastily abandoned amusement park rides creak noisily. Snowy boulevards are
Speaker 1: dotted with wolf boar and fox tracks outside decaying apartment
Speaker 1: high rises. Nature has begun to creep through the gaps
Speaker 1: in the concrete, but at night, that's when the animals
Speaker 1: come and any sound echoes all over the city. These
Speaker 1: are the ruins caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that
Speaker 1: left the city of Pipya and the surrounding farms and
Speaker 1: pine forests a ghost town.
Speaker 3: Scarier still is.
Speaker 1: That the streets are stalked by an invisible killer radiation
Speaker 1: sickness and cancer that will kill a person slowly and
Speaker 1: you never.
Speaker 3: Know when it'll strike. So here's what happened.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty six, the Chernobyl nuclear plant went into meltdown,
Speaker 1: located in the Soviet Union at the time, which is
Speaker 1: modern day Ukraine. So during this meltdown at least twenty
Speaker 1: eight people were killed in the original disaster, but thousands
Speaker 1: more have died from cancer as a result from the
Speaker 1: radiation that's spread after the explosion and the fire that
Speaker 1: leaked radiation into the air.
Speaker 3: WHOA isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1: WHOA? Yeah, The abandoned area is now called the exclusion zone.
Speaker 1: It's frozen in time and in panic.
Speaker 2: I never understood radiation, honestly, like I remember learning about
Speaker 2: it in school, but like never really got it, got
Speaker 2: it right.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's kind of hard to grasp because
Speaker 1: it's invisible, right, but like it's an invisible thing melting
Speaker 1: your skin off depending on or it's the other kind
Speaker 1: where you just get a weird.
Speaker 2: Cancer emissions of like little waves that are like they
Speaker 2: can get waves.
Speaker 1: And they can can daminate everything. Like the animals are
Speaker 1: so interesting they don't allow people back in. So the
Speaker 1: first ten years after the accident, the animals were all
Speaker 1: being deformed and weird and like not living a long time.
Speaker 1: Stuff was happening. But now all the animals that are
Speaker 1: still there, like rats, cats, dogs, cows.
Speaker 3: There's wolves.
Speaker 1: There's a lynx that's come back, like nature's actually healing itself.
Speaker 1: But they're all radioactive. So there's radioactive wolves.
Speaker 2: That's a cool name for a band.
Speaker 1: So now animals are more normal looking, but they're still contaminated,
Speaker 1: Like there's still a bunch of cows that have contaminated
Speaker 1: milk in the area because it was farmland. Like there's
Speaker 1: still a threat of contamination. If you just do the
Speaker 1: wrong thing, go to the wrong place or lean against
Speaker 1: the wrong object, it could kill you like, there's still
Speaker 1: that going on in this town. As with all eerie
Speaker 1: sites where a number of people have lost their lives,
Speaker 1: Yah is rife with ghost stories and strange folklore. And
Speaker 1: there's this guy named Andre Karsov, a nuclear physicist from
Speaker 1: New York, basically told one of these stories because he
Speaker 1: was visiting the area in nineteen ninety seven. He went
Speaker 1: to the power station at seven thirty am and went
Speaker 1: into reactor number four. Also, the reactors weren't fully shut down.
Speaker 1: They sarcophagus the one that had the meltdown, but they
Speaker 1: didn't fully shut down the Chernobyl site until two thousand,
Speaker 1: So FYI, that's pretty crazy. But anyway, so this guy,
Speaker 1: he's a scientist, he's going to do research. So he
Speaker 1: went to the number four reactor sarcophagus, which is where the.
Speaker 3: Explosion had occurred.
Speaker 1: You can't go in due to radiation, but he took
Speaker 1: radiation readings and that's when he heard someone screaming for
Speaker 1: rescue from the fire inside, and he ran up the
Speaker 1: stairs to tell someone, and they said when he.
Speaker 3: Entered the control room, he was the first to open.
Speaker 1: That door in three years, and that the only way
Speaker 1: someone could get inside the old reactor was through the
Speaker 1: doors he had come through, and you know, the reactor
Speaker 1: door requires a password to handprint. Yet someone or something
Speaker 1: was inside.
Speaker 2: Yelling, uh uh, that's a ghost.
Speaker 1: So later that evening they were eating dinner. The scientists
Speaker 1: were all eating dinner and outside the building by the
Speaker 1: river next to the plant, a flood light turned on
Speaker 1: in the room of the installation. There was no way
Speaker 1: anyone could be inside. They figured it was a power
Speaker 1: surge or something. And one of the colleagues said that
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, it must be a power surge.
Speaker 1: And then the second they said that, the light turned off.
Speaker 1: That's terrifying. Yeah, but even more than that. In the
Speaker 1: days leading up to the Chernobyl disaster, several workers in
Speaker 1: the control room of the nuclear power plant claimed to
Speaker 1: have seen a creature that became known as the Blackbird
Speaker 1: of Chernobyl.
Speaker 2: These are the coolest names, I.
Speaker 1: Know, right, They really did it. They really did it
Speaker 1: with the naming. Those unlucky enough to see the creature
Speaker 1: were said to be plagued with terrifying dreams and threatening
Speaker 1: phone calls, which I'm like, how did this thing called them? Hello?
Speaker 2: It's being radiation.
Speaker 1: The terrifying creature rose above the horizon of Chernobyl and Pipya,
Speaker 1: a hideous humanoid with giant wings, a black, headless body,
Speaker 1: red glowing eyes, sending a message of doom to all
Speaker 1: those who gazed upon it. Sound familiar, Yes, people have
Speaker 1: come to believe that the Blackbird of Chernobyl is actually
Speaker 1: a form of a creature we all know and love,
Speaker 1: the moths Man. But also the presence of the moth
Speaker 1: Man only means one thing disaster. Disaster, Although these days
Speaker 1: the Blackbird of Chernobyl is something more of an Internet legend,
Speaker 1: similar to under Man. And also some people believe that
Speaker 1: the authorities and Pipya actually invented the story to prevent
Speaker 1: people from entering the radioactive areas, as looters are still
Speaker 1: a security problem, which is horrifying.
Speaker 2: They're still trying to get in there, yes.
Speaker 1: But anyway, weirdly enough, before the Ukrainian War they open
Speaker 1: it up as a tourist location, so you can go,
Speaker 1: you go visit and you know, let us know how
Speaker 1: it goes. If you're already and you know you're late
Speaker 1: in your lifetime, you'll probably be dead before cancer gets you.
Speaker 2: If you're going to go explore it, I can swim
Speaker 2: with sharks. Go cat, Yeah, nalligator, let's go for it.
Speaker 1: You know, I saw this thing Life After People. Did
Speaker 1: you ever watch that documentary?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I think you'd really like it because it just shows
Speaker 1: you environments and how they're going to like decay after people.
Speaker 1: But they use Chernobyl, like there's this great footage of
Speaker 1: Chernobyl because nature is really reclaiming it. And so it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a study of how nature can heal itself after
Speaker 1: a huge disaster. I don't think I need to see that,
Speaker 1: but I loved watching it on the TV. I don't
Speaker 1: need to go there. But once again, all this was
Speaker 1: before the war. We'll see what happens after the war.
Speaker 1: Fan corner, Fan fan corner.
Speaker 2: This is from night Guard.
Speaker 3: Yeah high night Guard.
Speaker 2: Nightguard says, from what I can remember, there is a
Speaker 2: railroad where I live that said that what looks like
Speaker 2: a lantern goes down the track without anyone holding on
Speaker 2: to it. Can you imagine that.
Speaker 1: That'd be spooky to see and also a great story
Speaker 1: for tell me a ghost story. So please call in
Speaker 1: or leave a voice message somewhere.
Speaker 3: And so did to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, says my Bible teacher. Said he saw not one
Speaker 2: but two lights at once, which no one has seen
Speaker 2: before and from what he could gather and even get
Speaker 2: a picture of it in the acron of a picture
Speaker 2: with his youth group. Thanks a lot, Nightguard, and for
Speaker 2: also your other comments in the other episodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. You're a frequent commenter and we love it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for your comments. Send in your comments, questions, suggestions, ideas,
Speaker 2: anything you got for us so we can talk about
Speaker 2: it in the next Campfire Story episode.
Speaker 3: Okay, we gotta put out that fire that never goes out.
Speaker 1: Campfire Story is hosted by Michelle Newman.
Speaker 2: And Edwin Komarubias. This podcast was edited and sound designed
Speaker 2: by Sarah Worhez Wendel, a VW sound
Speaker 1: Make sure you follow us wherever you get your pod