Send us Fan Mail

The script tells the chilling story of a 1958 archival discovery at Fort Hays State University, where a graduate assistant listening to a reel-to-reel tape recorded by local resident Mary C. Highland uncovers a dark, hidden secret from the Kansas frontier. Prompted by a cryptic note left in the tape box, the narrative flashes back to 1888 Bucklin, Kansas, where investigator Jack Sterling looks into the legend of the "Sod-House Spectre". He learns that the haunting ghost is Eleanor Vance, a mother who froze to death with her child during the Great Blizzard of 1886 after being cruelly denied shelter and coal by a ruthless railroad official named Elias Corbin.

The tale culminates in a fiery act of vengeance at the Bucklin City Opera House, where Corbin is confronted by Jack Sterling and ultimately dragged into the flames by the spectral figure of Eleanor Vance. Back in 1958, the young archivist preserves the haunting history, realizing that true historical memory often lives on through local folklore and unspoken truths rather than official documents alone.

Support the show

If you'd like to buy one or more of our fully illustrated dime novel publications, you can click the link I've included.

Send us Fan Mail

This special Halloween episode of the Wild West Podcast, hosted by Brad Smalley, explores the dark history and haunting of Soule's Eureka Canal in Cimarron, Kansas. The story centers on Asa T. Soule, a wealthy New York tycoon who made his fortune selling Hop Bitters and sought to carve a massive irrigation ditch across the plains to build an agricultural empire. The venture ultimately failed due to unpredictable river flows and porous soil, earning it the bitter local moniker "Soule's Folly". Beneath the economic failure lay a much darker human cost, rooted in the ruthless displacement and ruin of ordinary men who crossed Soule's path.

The narrative follows a visiting New York journalist, Frank Hopper, who teams up with Cimarron local Eleanor Vance to investigate whispers of the supernatural. Hopper experiences a terrifying encounter with a phosphorescent, wailing specter in the dry canal bed—the restless ghost of Silas Croft, a former New York farmer whose life and livelihood were destroyed by Soule's early speculations before perishing alone in a brutal Kansas blizzard. Understanding that the haunting was an unsettled ledger demanding truth rather than vengeance, Hopper writes a searing exposé detailing Croft's tragic fate and Soule's exploitation. Once the story is published and the debt of memory is paid, the phantom vanishes into peace, inspiring Hopper to leave his eastern career behind and plant his roots in Kansas as a small-town journalist alongside Eleanor.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

Support the show

If you'd like to buy one or more of our fully illustrated dime novel publications, you can click the link I've included.

Send us Fan Mail

In the summer of 1867, a terrifying cholera epidemic swept through Fort Dodge, Kansas, striking down healthy men by dusk and leaving a young eastern private named Walter "Walt" Hall among the fallen. Amidst a raging prairie thunderstorm, soldiers heard frantic scratching coming from the stone "Dead House," but the exhausted post surgeon dismissed the terrifying sounds as the wind. Decades later, in the spring of 1890, a hardened U.S. Cavalry veteran named Sergeant Elias Thorne arrived at the post—now the Kansas Soldiers' Home—and began hearing rumors of a "cholera ghost" haunting the abandoned hospital. Driven by sleepless nights and a smudged post-mortality ledger bearing a damning question mark, Thorne forced his way into the locked outbuilding, where he discovered deep scratch marks and a single tarnished Union brass button before being grabbed by an emaciated, cyanotic blue specter and pulled into the living nightmare of being buried alive.

Listeners should tune in to this episode of the Wild West Podcast for a masterclass in atmospheric frontier storytelling that brilliantly bridges historical atmosphere with bone-chilling supernatural dread. The narrative vividly brings to life the stark, brutal realities of 19th-century military life at Fort Dodge while building a gripping, suspenseful mystery around forgotten archival ledgers and a tragic historical secret. It is an unforgettable listening experience that will leave you double-checking your locks as the autumn winds howl across the plains.

Support the show

If you'd like to buy one or more of our fully illustrated dime novel publications, you can click the link I've included.