77: Terrifying True Urban Legends: Summertime Edition // Dark Summer Series
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The humid summer night enveloped three girls as they spilled out of a local convenience store and into their car. That night, the moon cast an eerie glow on the deserted road as they set off, headlights cutting through the oppressive darkness.

It was nearly midnight when they turned onto the narrow, sandy trail of Carranza Road. Back in the convenience store, three older boys had told them that if they wanted to get scared that night, there was a statue at the end of Carranza Road they should check out. Legend has it, it's the site of a plane crash, and the ghost of the pilot still hangs around the monument at night. If you flash your brights,

and call out the pilot's name, Emilio, you'll see him. The girls were out that night looking for places to scare each other. So that was all they needed to hear to jump in their car and head deep within the New Jersey Pinelands. There was a lot to be afraid of in the Pinelands. Aside from this haunted monument they had never heard of, there were legends of creatures that lurked deep in the forest.

Most famously, the Jersey Devil, a demonic creature with the head of a dog, but facial features more similar to a horse. It also has a kangaroo-like stature,

Legend says it has bat-like wings, horns, and a tail. And stories of this creature have spread around New Jersey communities for 250 years. And as the girls made their way down the long road, they looked deep into the woods for any signs of it, hoping they'd see something that could scare the others.

Eventually, far down Carranza Road, their headlights illuminated a monument. This must be it. The monument was a sturdy pillar made out of tan stone blocks like a tiny piece of an Aztec temple surrounded by spiky yucca plants at its feet.

Through the darkness, they could see a falling eagle engraved in Aztec stylings on its front, with strange footprints imprinted upwards along the pillar and an arrow carved into the back. It looked odd sitting in the middle of a New Jersey forest. And as they approached it, they killed the engine and sat in silence, the quiet only broken by the distant rustle of leaves in the midnight breeze.

The girls dared each other to flash their bright lights and call out the name of the pilot the boys had told them about. With a deep breath, the driver flicked the headlights three times and they all shouted, Emilio. The silence that followed was suffocating. The girls all laughed to themselves. You're scared. No, I'm not. You're scared. They teased. Well, if you're not scared, why don't you go out and touch the monument?

Just then, one of them caught something in the corner of her eye. She whipped her head around. Um, guys? Suddenly, a shadow emerged from behind the monument. It was too large, too dark, and moved too unnaturally to be a human. Panic set in as the girls scrambled to start their car, but it wouldn't turn over.

Their breath quickened, eyes wide in terror. Then out of nowhere, three ghostly faces appeared in the darkness surrounding their car. Their pale, expressionless visages seemed to float in the night. Without waiting to find out what would happen next, the driver put it in reverse and hit the gas. The group sped off, never to return to the crash sites of the ghost plane again.

The legend of Carranza Road and the pilot who haunts the monument has spread throughout New Jersey and daring teens tempt fate and try to visit it. What they may not know though, is that the legend is much more real than they could have imagined. I wanna tell you the truth today behind the Carranza Road legend, as well as two other summertime urban legends that ended up being true.

But first, we're going to take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. I have a few non-negotiables when it comes to self-care. I have to listen to my spooky little podcasts while I do my nighttime routine, and I have to carve out time in my schedule to go to the movie theater, especially if there's a new horror movie out that everyone's talking about.

But the thing is, even when we know something is good for us, it can be really hard to make time for it. Even when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. I've personally really benefited from therapy in my adult life. It's helped me work through my anxiety and feel more like myself.

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Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. As always, I'm your host, Kaylin Moore. If you are new to Heart Starts Pounding, these Urban Legends episode hold a special place in my heart. I did

I did the first one last October, episode 34, where I talked about the Funhouse mannequin that was a real mummified body. Then we went down under and talked about Australian urban legends like the Button Man, and then into the Canadian wilderness with terrifying tales of bloodthirsty men and monsters. If you haven't heard those episodes, definitely check them out. I'll list them in the show notes.

Like I said, they're special to me, and that's why I wanted to end our dark summer series with summer urban legends. But this episode also marks a sort of beginning for Heart Starts Pounding. It's the beginning of Patreon merch rewards starting to get shipped out. Remember, we launched this program back in May, where once you hit your third monthly payment, or just third month if you're an annual subscriber...

The system will send you your reward. You just need to make sure you have your correct address updated in Patreon. To do that, you can go into the settings on the Patreon website. Weirdly, I don't think you can update it on the mobile app, so you'll have to use the website. So make sure you have your correct current address. If you're a member of the $5 tier, you'll be getting your Rogue Detecting Society Jinx sticker. And at the $10 tier, the High Council, you'll also be getting a special Rogue Detecting Society mug.

If you want to see what it all looks like, you can check it out at heartstartspounding.com backslash stickers. So if you've been considering joining, please do. Your support is why I'm able to make this show in the first place. Seriously, I love telling these stories and there's a lot of research and sound design and other things that go into making these episodes that's only possible because of your support and the support of our sponsors.

So thank you. And if you're an Apple subscriber, I'm inserting a secret message for you right here. And if you've been considering doing a free trial subscription on Patreon or Apple, why not now? You get ad-free listening, an exclusive monthly bonus episode, and access to the archives for just $5 a month. Let's get back into it.

We've all been told urban legends since childhood. They're fun, little two-sentence horror stories often meant to scare us, like a plane crashed in the woods and now the ghost of the dead pilot haunts the area. But behind every legend is a kernel of truth. I mean, they have to come from somewhere, right? Today, we're gonna look into the truth that lies underneath a couple. But first, I wanna take you back into the New Jersey Pinelands.

As the girls sped off from the Ghost Plane Memorial deep within the forest, they thought the three older boys from the convenience store had followed them into the Pinelands with the intention of scaring them. They figured the story of the Ghost Plane wasn't even real. It was just part of an elaborate prank. The girls had no clue that the boys had all gone home for the night and were nowhere in the area and that the story they had told them was in fact true.

The strange Aztec-style monument is a tribute to the tragic end of a young pilot from Mexico, Emilio Carranza-Rodriguez.

By 22 years old, Emilio was a national treasure in Mexico. In the new age of aviation, Emilio was unafraid of flying, conquering the skies as a skilled pilot. His childhood during the Mexican Revolution was turbulent, and his family was forced to leave Mexico multiple times, the first time being in 1911, when he was just six years old.

But once tensions calmed down a bit in 1917, his uncle, a general, brought him to work at Balbuena Airport where he worked on planes. When Emilio first saw a plane, everything in his life started making sense. He could finally see order amongst the chaos of the revolution. He became obsessed with the idea of flying and he counted down the days until he could join the military aviation school in 1923.

Emilio wanted to show Mexico that long distance travel in a plane was possible. That they could one day be used to get the people of Mexico from Mexico City all the way to Ciudad Juarez. Hell, they could even get them all over the world.

When he first flew from Mexico City to San Diego and back, thousands of people waited at the airport for his return, cheering and waving bandanas as he touched down in his plane. He was a national hero. And a few months later, he was invited to fly to Washington, D.C. and dine at the White House with Calvin Coolidge himself.

In July of 1928, at just 22 years old, Emilio embarked on a goodwill mission from Mexico to New York City, hoping to strengthen ties between the two nations. He wasn't just a celebrated aviator now. His inspiring story was making him sort of a diplomat. He was helping repair relations.

He scheduled his flight back to Mexico on July 2nd, but soon, reports of a bad storm rolling in were being delivered to his dinner table. "Don't risk it," his advisors all told him. So he canceled the flight and intended to fly out just a few days later. But days came and went, and the storm raged on. Emilio wanted to get home, so on July 11th, he asked that his plane be prepared for him.

The mechanics that helped him get ready for the flight looked nervously at the angry gray clouds in the sky. But soon, his plane, the Mexico Excelsior, was ascending into the heart of the storm. Its single engine and small propeller at the front was no match for the roaring storm clouds.

The headlines the next morning read, "Captain Emilio Carranza left New York en route to Mexico and walked straight into a raging storm." As he flew south, the storm continued to grow in size.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the dark clouds, and the rain battered his fragile aircraft. Emilio struggled to keep the plane level, and eventually the power went out, plunging him into darkness. He gripped a flashlight in one hand as the storm's fury increased. Residents of Tabernacle, New Jersey, heard the sound of the plane's engine sputtering overhead, a sound that was quickly drowned out by the storm.

Emilio was desperately searching for a place to land when the engine finally gave out. The Mexico Excelsior plummeted into the dense forest of Wharton State Park. Emilio was ejected from the plane and his body was discovered the next day when a family picking berries in the forest found the wing.

News of Emilio's death sent shockwaves throughout Mexico and the United States alike. The young hero's life had been tragically cut short. How could he have been so stupid?

Well, found tucked into the pocket of his jacket was a telegram that he had received from a superior in the military the night before. It read, quote, "'Leave immediately. Without excuse or pretext, the quality of your manhood will be called into question.'" His superior was afraid that watching out for his own safety would cause Emilio to be seen as less of a man.

And at the heart of the trailblazer was a young kid raised in the middle of a revolution, used to doing what his parents asked of him, even if it meant moving in the middle of the night. A monument now marks the spot where Emilio's body was found. Made of sturdy tan stone blocks, it resembles a piece of an ancient Aztec temple. Surrounded by spiky yucca plants, an homage to Emilio's heritage.

Legends of his ghost have spread far and wide, but with the increasing number of people who have reported seeing the same large shadowy figure emerge from behind the monument, it seems like that part of the legend holds some truth as well. One group of friends, separate from the group I described at the beginning, dismissed the tale as mere superstition and ventured to the monument late one night.

After calling out Emilio's name and flashing their lights, their car inexplicably stalled. The engine refused to start and it left them stranded in the darkness. Just as panic began to set in, the car finally roared to life and they sped away. But as they glanced in the rear view mirror, they saw lights following them. Lights too high to be another car, but too low to be an airplane.

and they never did figure out where they came from. These mysterious lights have been reported by others as well, and it's always described the same. Too low to be a plane, too high to be a car. Is it Emilio searching for a place to land? Are you brave enough to visit and figure it out for yourself? More after the break. This episode is brought to you by Fume.

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In the summer of 1997, a woman who has remained anonymous, so for the purpose of this story, we'll call her Wendy, drove up to her cabin in Maine with her husband. The couple's cabin sat on a beautiful pond surrounded by pine and maple trees. This was gonna be their first summer in the cabin and they were so excited.

The first thing they did to get ready for the summer season was stock the refrigerator and cupboards with fresh food. After setting everything up, they left, planning to return just a few days later with their family to celebrate the new cabin. Wendy and her husband eventually returned with their family. But as soon as they stepped inside, something felt off. The house seemed too empty, too quiet. And it had the overwhelming feeling that someone had been there.

Wendy went over to the fridge to start cooking, and to her surprise, it was completely empty. Her husband still talks about how she repeatedly opened and closed the freezer door in disbelief. Each time she looked, the food was gone. "'I must have opened it three times,' she recalled, shaking her head at the memory. Eventually, she mentioned what had happened to some neighbors, who gave her an all-knowing smile."

"Oh, I see you've encountered the local hermit." And that's how Wendy was introduced to the urban legend of the area. No one had ever seen this person, but everyone in the neighborhood had stories of coming home to food missing from their fridge and pantries. Some thought it was funny, but Wendy and others found it creepy.

The legend that someone was out there lurking in the woods and breaking into homes changed the community. Nights by the Fire became filled with stories and speculations about the hermit. Tales of a man with a crooked spine, at least 70 years old. He had a furrowed brow and a long gray beard. His glazed over eyes went in different directions, but you could still feel his stare boring into your soul.

These legends had floated around for years, a mixture of hearsay, folklore, and myth. But now, to Wendy, it felt all too real. So she did what any new and terrified homeowner would do. She set up cameras in her cabin. She was determined to get to the bottom of this. One Thursday morning, she arrived at the cabin and immediately noticed the Rice Krispie treats in her pantry were gone.

Oh God, he's been here, she thought. She ran straight to the cameras and pulled the cassette tapes out to review the footage. Maybe she caught the first ever image of the terrifying man. Reviewing the surveillance tape, her expression dropped in horror. She watched as the back door opened and the hermit slipped in, moving quietly around the house.

He rifled through the cupboards, eating chips and putting them back, an act both bizarre and gross. He even opened the refrigerator where they kept worms for fishing, inspecting them and closing the container. But most shocking of all, as she reviewed the footage, she realized this was not at all who she was expecting. It wasn't the deranged psychopath they had all described. No.

The man wore nice pants, a clean golf jacket, and a baseball cap. He even had wire-framed glasses. The footage showed a man who could easily blend into society, someone who didn't match the wild, ragged stereotype of a hermit.

She finally had proof of the man's existence. But despite the clear images captured on the tape, no one came forward to identify him. His picture was disseminated throughout Central Maine, appearing in newspapers and community bulletins, but he remained a ghost. People would speculate, pointing out resemblances to acquaintances or strangers, but his true identity remained a mystery.

Though there was footage of him, he still remained somewhat of a legend. And still, every summer, like clockwork, the hermit would emerge from his forest refuge to harvest supplies in the area. Neighbors would awake to find chip bags mysteriously opened in the night, flashlights silently ripped from a utility drawer, even their gas tanks mysteriously emptied.

People began to feel paranoid, constantly on edge, knowing that someone could slip into their homes at any moment, no matter how well they locked their doors or set their security systems. The man's stealth was legendary. He never left a trace other than empty chip bags and stolen goods. He never shattered a window or forced a door.

Instead, he would slip in through unlocked doors and windows, moving silently in the dead of night. He also had an almost superhuman ability to disable security alarms. And in a community where people rented summer homes, leaving them unattended for sometimes weeks on end, he had his pick of basically whatever home he wanted.

Occasionally, security cameras captured grainy images of a man in hiking clothes, but his face was always obscured. Over the years, the few photos that did emerge captured a man growing more and more into the gaunt figure with a wild beard and rotted teeth.

A stark contrast to the folks he stole from. Locals tried to find him, trekking through the woods, hoping to find a breadcrumb trail of their belongings, but no one knew where he was. This all came to a tipping point in April of 2013. That night, a neighbor got an alert on a motion detector he had set up in his walk-in freezer.

Assuming it was a thief, he called a state trooper friend who had been tracking the situation for years. When the trooper arrived, he found a man, almost 50 years old, with a receding hairline and thick, scraggly gray hair protruding from his face and head. He wore the wire-rimmed glasses that had been caught on camera over 15 years ago and had tattered clothes.

His name, as they would come to eventually find out, was Christopher Knight. And he was a hermit living in the Maine wilderness for the last 27 years. When Christopher was just 20 years old, his car broke down on a dirt road in Maine and he walked into the wilderness with just a tent and never walked out. His family eventually assumed he had died.

What was even stranger was Chris's life up until that point had been relatively normal, healthy even. He had two loving, though stoic parents. He had a vocational degree and a job as an alarm technician, which, as a side note, was why he was so good at disabling alarms. And yet, he abandoned all of that to live a life in the woods, surviving largely on mac and cheese, Mountain Dew, and whatever other summery snack foods he could find.

He averaged around 40 break-ins a year, totaling over 1,000 in his career. But life in the woods was far from idyllic. He described the harsh Maine winters when he would meditate to stave off hunger and freezing temperatures. He never lit fires, fearing the smoke would give away his location.

He cooked on small camping stoves and every item in his camp was meticulously camouflaged. He avoided walking into the snow to prevent leaving footprints and he never slept inside a building or used a toilet in all of his years as a hermit. Christopher was arrested by the sheriff and spent seven months in custody. And in that time, public opinion on him seemed to change.

Now that people knew his intentions, they almost felt bad for him. He wasn't trying to scare them or steal their valuables. He was just taking what he needed. No more. People started referring to him as a legend, not in the mythological sense, but as a hero.

He was freed from police custody and went back to live with his family, but struggled to readapt into society. He preferred to live in the forest using only what he needed and not interacting with any other people. As the years passed, the legend of the North Pond Hermit will likely grow, blending facts and myth. But for those who lived through his reign of quiet terror,

The memory of missing batteries and empty propane tanks will always be tied to the mysterious figure who lurked in the shadows, living a life few could imagine, but many will never forget. More after the break. I'm Victoria Cash. Thanks for calling the Lucky Land Hotline. If you feel like you do the same thing every day, press one. If you're ready to have some serious fun for the chance to redeem some serious prizes, press two.

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Each summer, thousands of vacationers head to Lake Placid in New York. With scenic hiking trails, miles of lake and rivers to paddle down, and lower temperatures than New York City, it's a perfect getaway.

Nestled on one end of the lake are cliffs that adventurers can jump off of. The cliffs themselves are part of a larger rock structure called Pulpit Rock. And for nearly 100 years, legends about this rock in particular have made their way through campsites of vacationers staying in the area. "There's a ghost that haunts the rock." Kids would warn each other on their way up the cliffside to jump into the water.

they'd nervously look over their shoulders as they'd make the plunge. Though the legend has persisted for decades that there is a haunting on the rock, no one knew exactly where it came from. And as kids repeatedly plunged from the top of the cliffs into the 105-foot depths of the lake, they didn't realize that the truth behind the legend lay underneath their treading legs.

In 1963, two scuba divers, Richard Niffenager and Jimmy Rogers, were exploring Lake Placid. For fun, they swam over to Pulpit Rock, and there they dove down into the murky depths of the lake, down to where the sun's rays weren't as strong, where the muck from the bottom of the lake fought its way towards the surface, obscuring everything below it. And there, one of the divers saw something.

It looked waxy and pale, almost glowing in the bits of sunlight that reflected off of it. He signaled to the other diver to come over, and as they slowly approached, a face appeared. It was a woman, around 50 years old, with short hair flowing back and forth with the water's movement. Around her neck was a rope with an anchor attached to it.

Even more shocking, she looked as if she had just been submerged in the water moments ago. The divers jumped into action. One swam towards the surface to mark the area while the other reached out to pull her to the surface. That was a struggle. The anchor holding her down was at least 50 pounds. And as he pulled her up, the rope slipped from around her neck and sank back down to the lake's bottom, disappearing below the murky depths.

As the diver swam with her towards the surface, he noticed how waxy her skin looked. Though she was in perfect condition, he started to get the sense that she had been down there for quite some time.

When the woman was brought to the coroner's office, that hunch was confirmed. The body was that of Mabel Smith Douglas, an academic who had gone missing in the area 30 years prior in 1933. Her identity was confirmed by a mark on her arm from a break she had suffered close to the end of her life. Mabel Smith Douglas was born in 1877, and though she accomplished a great deal in her life,

She was also subject to much tragedy. In 1916, her husband William passed away and in 1923, her son took his own life. She was left with a daughter, Edith, as she worked on her academic career despite her hardship. And by the 1930s, she was the Dean of a woman's college.

But a year before her death, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to a sanitarium. Her breakdown was attributed to burnout, and she went away mostly to rest and recover from her grueling hours as an educator. On September 22nd, 1933, Mabel and her daughter Edith were planning on leaving Lake Placid to head to New Jersey.

The two waited for Alfred Henderson, one of Mabel's colleagues, to join them. And as they were collecting their things and getting ready for their journey, Mabel was seen going down to the rowboats near the dock around 1.30 p.m. She was never seen again. Police assumed she had drowned in the lake, but they never imagined the condition she'd be found in. What with the rope and anchor tied to her neck.

But 30 years later, as the coroners looked at her body, they couldn't concretely say if Mabel's drowning had been self-inflicted or not. It was strange to find someone with an anchor tied around their neck that had done it to themselves. But because the rope and anchor were at the bottom of the lake, they couldn't be sure how it was tied. Was it an expert fishing knot suggesting it had been done by someone else? Or did it look like she had quickly done it herself?

If it was foul play, no one was ever suspected in her death. She didn't have any enemies. And in fact, she was well regarded at her university and in the world of academics. Her death was officially ruled an accident. It's important to note here that when her body was found, she had no surviving relatives to inform. Her daughter Edith had tragically taken her own life in 1948.

Over the years, locals have seen the ghost of Mabel walking out on the rock. Campers have caught glimpses of a woman in an old-timey dress pacing back and forth near where the dock once was. The kids in Lake Placid may not know the true story behind the haunting they tell each other about, or even that as they told each other the story, Mabel was just below their feet under the water.

But they say that even today, her ghost still haunts Pulpit Rock, roaming around endlessly, trying to close up her home for the end of the summer season before heading back south for the school year.

The last time I wrote an episode on true urban legends, I asked you all what were some urban legends you grew up with, and I got answers that really ran the gamut. Everything from the Alaskan Triangle to a road that collapsed when a bus full of children were on it, and some of you even told me about ghost trains that whistle through the night. It seems like every place truly has a story. Or maybe you guys are just from some really creepy places, I honestly wouldn't doubt it. But

But remember, as someone is telling you those tales to scare you, there may be a kernel of truth behind it. And it may be even scarier than the legend itself. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaylin Moore.

Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research by Marissa Dow. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. And until next time, stay curious.

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