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The Phantom Blue Horse: America's Warning from the Dark · Ghost stories and the Unusual Paranormal podcast

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: When the lights go out, some stories refuse to stay buried.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Ghost Stories and the Unusual Paranormal Podcast. Where
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: whispers become warnings. Where shadows remember. And where the things
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that follow you home were never just your imagination. So tonight,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: lock your doors. Turn up the volume. And whatever you do,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: try not to listen alone.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: And the unusual paranormal podcast with your host, Joe, the
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Ghost Guy.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Previously.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: On Ghost Stories and the Unusual Paranormal Podcast, Joe the
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: Ghost Guy took us to the Goldfield Hotel, the scariest
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: hotel in Nevada, where we meet Elizabeth, a chained and
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: tortured woman who is crying for her lost baby, and
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: an evil ghost called the Stabber, an evil spirit who
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: slashes at the guests. and the other spooky ghosts that
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: haunt the hotel. If you find yourself at the hotel,
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: don't go looking inside it. Maybe the last thing you
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: ever do. Where is he going to tell us next?
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Let's go and see.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Tune in.
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  Speaker 4: To a brand new episode of Ghost Stories and the
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  Speaker 4: Unusual Paranormal Podcast with your spooky paranormal investigator, Joe the
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  Speaker 4: Ghost Guy.
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: There are stories about ghosts. And then there are stories
• 2:49
  Speaker 5: about things that were never supposed to be seen. Across
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  Speaker 5: the American frontier, Travelers once told stories of strange lights
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  Speaker 5: in the wilderness, riders who appeared from nowhere, abandoned trails
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  Speaker 5: where horses suddenly refused to move, and figures that vanished
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  Speaker 5: before anyone could reach them. But among the darkest legends,
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  Speaker 5: Is the one that seems almost impossible to explain. A horse.
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  Speaker 5: But not just a horse. It's not a black horse. No.
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  Speaker 5: It's not a white horse. But it's a blue horse.
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  Speaker 5: A phantom animal. Said to emerge from the darkness. appearing
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: slightly along lonely roads and forgotten trails. Those who claimed
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: to see it described something unnatural about the animal. Its
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: coat seemed to glow beneath the moon. Its eyes appeared
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  Speaker 5: unnaturally bright, and sometimes there was a rider. Sometimes there wasn't.
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  Speaker 5: The strangest part of the legend is what happens afterwards.
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  Speaker 5: People claim the horse wasn't simply haunting them. It was
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  Speaker 5: warning them. Warning them to turn around. Warning them not
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  Speaker 5: to continue down the road. And according to some versions
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: of the story, Those who ignored the warnings were never
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  Speaker 5: quite the same again. So tonight, we're stepping into the
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: darkness to explore the legend of the Phantom Blue Horse.
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  Speaker 5: A story where American's folklore, frontier history, superstitious, and supernatural collide.
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  Speaker 5: And remember, sometimes the most frightening warning is the one
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: you don't understand until it's too late. Imagine America before highways,
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: before streetlights, even before cell phones, before every road had
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: a name. There were stretches of wilderness where a traveler
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: could ride for hours without seeing another human being. At night,
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: those places became almost completely silent. No traffic, no electric lights,
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  Speaker 5: only the wind and the trees. And the occasional sound
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: of an animal moving somewhere beyond the darkness. A horse.
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  Speaker 5: It was more than transportation in those days. It was
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: a companion. A source of survival. And for many travelers,
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  Speaker 5: the sound of hooves meant safety. So imagine. I didn't
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: alone late at night when you suddenly hear clop, clop, clop, clop, clop.
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  Speaker 5: You turn around.
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  Speaker 4: Nothing.
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  Speaker 5: You continue. And again, clop, clop, clop, clop. The sound
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: is getting closer. You stop your horse. The other animal
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: stops to turn. And there, beneath the moonlight, stands a
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  Speaker 5: horse unlike anything you've ever seen before. Its body appears
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  Speaker 5: almost blue. Not painted blue. Not brightly colored. But strangely illuminated.
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  Speaker 5: as if the moonlight is shining from underneath its skin.
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  Speaker 5: Your horse begins trembling. The phantom horse takes one step
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  Speaker 5: towards you, then another. You reach for your weapon, but
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: the animal doesn't attack. Instead, it looks directly at you.
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: And then, It turns towards the road ahead as if
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  Speaker 5: it's telling you, don't go down that road or you
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: may be in trouble. Why blue, though? That's one of
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: the mysteries surrounding this legend. In folklore, Unusual colors often
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: carry symbolic meaning. Blue can represent the supernatural, the unknown, death, sorrow, moonlight,
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  Speaker 5: or something existing between the two worlds. A blue animal
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  Speaker 5: would have been especially disturbing to someone traveling through the wilderness.
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  Speaker 5: before modern lighting. Moonlight reflected off a horse's coat could
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  Speaker 5: produce strange effects. Mist could distort these appearances as well.
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  Speaker 5: Distance could transform our ordinary colors to something completely different.
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  Speaker 5: And fear itself can change what a Witness believes they
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  Speaker 5: are seen. but folklore doesn't acquire an explanation that's what
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  Speaker 5: makes it powerful the story survives because the people continue
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  Speaker 5: to tell it and every generation adds another shadow, another rope,
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  Speaker 5: possibly another witness, or other warnings. Some versions of the
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  Speaker 5: legend describes the phantom blue horse as riderless. It's important
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  Speaker 5: because a riderless horse has always carried a strange symbolism
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  Speaker 5: in American history. A horse without his rider can represent
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  Speaker 5: someone who never came home. A soldier far away from
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  Speaker 5: home has been killed. A cowboy lost on the trail
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  Speaker 5: a traveler who had disappeared, a horse that survived its master.
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  Speaker 5: And in ghost stories, a riderless horse can become something
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  Speaker 5: else totally entirely. A messenger? Also a warning? A memory
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  Speaker 5: that refuses to disappear. The phantom blue horse is sometimes
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  Speaker 5: said to appear shortly before tragedy. A traveler sees it.
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  Speaker 5: The horse watches. Then it disappears. Hours later, something terrible happens.
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  Speaker 5: A wagon overturns. A storm destroys the trip. A storm
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  Speaker 5: destroys a trail. A traveler becomes lost. A bridge collapses.
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  Speaker 5: Or someone disappears into the wilderness and never to be found.
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  Speaker 5: Was the horse responsible? There's no reliable evidence proving that.
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  Speaker 5: But that's not how legends work. The question isn't always,
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  Speaker 5: did it happen? Sometimes the question is, why did people
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: believe it happened? Then there are some stories involving the writer.
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  Speaker 5: According to some retellings, a blue horse carries a mysterious figure.
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  Speaker 5: A man wearing an old-fashioned clothing. Sometimes a cowboy. Sometimes
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  Speaker 5: a soldier. Sometimes a figure whose face cannot be seen.
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  Speaker 5: The writer doesn't speak. He doesn't chase the witness. He
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  Speaker 5: simply appears, watches, then disappears. Some witnesses supposedly described hearing
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  Speaker 5: a whisper. No words. Just his breath. A sound carried
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: by the wind. The traveler continues and the phantom vanishes.
• 14:12
  Speaker 5: To understand why stories like this become so powerful, We
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: have to understand the American frontier. The frontier wasn't simply
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: a beautiful wilderness. It could be brutally dangerous. Some people
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: died from accidents, disease, violence, exposures, animal attacks, flash floods,
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  Speaker 5: fires or just simply became lost and never returned. A
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: person could disappear into the wilderness and never have been
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: found or families left behind. There was often no explanation,
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: no graves, no final goodbyes, only questions. And sometimes a
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: ghost story filled with empty space where the answer should
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: have been perhaps. Imagine seeing a rider, perhaps a traveler,
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: heard hooves, perhaps an ordinary horse wandered across the moonlit
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  Speaker 5: trail and slowly the story became something darker. The horse
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  Speaker 5: wasn't ordinary. It was a ghost. And yet, it isn't wandering.
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  Speaker 5: It was searching. There is where the legend becomes truly frightening.
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  Speaker 5: The Phantom Blue Horse isn't necessarily portrayed as evil. Instead,
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  Speaker 5: it may be trying to save people. Let's imagine that,
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  Speaker 5: shall we? The terrifying creature in the darkness might actually
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: be the thing that's trying to protect you. A traveler
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  Speaker 5: sees a horse blocking the road. The animal refuses to move.
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  Speaker 5: The traveler tries to go around. The horse moves with
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: him again and again. And finally, the traveler gives up
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  Speaker 5: and turns back. The next morning, he discovers that the
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: section of the road ahead had been destroyed by a
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: flash flood or a rock slide, possibly a fallen tree.
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  Speaker 5: He had survived. But he didn't know why, except he
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  Speaker 5: remembers the horse, the blue horse, standing in the darkness, waiting.
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  Speaker 5: But not every warning legend needs someone to ignore the warnings.
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  Speaker 5: And in the darkest versions, There are always someone to continue.
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  Speaker 5: A traveler sees the horse. He laughs. He believes it's
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: someone's escaped animal. He rides forward. The horse disappears. The
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: road becomes darker. The wind stops. And suddenly, his own
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  Speaker 5: horse refuses to continue. The traveler kicks the animal. Nothing.
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  Speaker 5: He tries again. Still nothing. Then he hears something behind him. Clop. Clop. Clop. Clop.
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  Speaker 5: He slowly turns. The blue horse is standing directly behind him.
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  Speaker 5: Close enough to touch. His eyes are fixed upon his.
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  Speaker 5: And then the horse opens his mouth. But instead of
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  Speaker 5: a neigh, the traveler hears a human's voice. The traveler turns.
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  Speaker 5: Then he turns his horse around and rides. He never
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  Speaker 5: looks back. Perhaps the strongest and strangest part of the
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  Speaker 5: Phantom Blue Horse legend is that it doesn't belong to
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  Speaker 5: just one period of American history. Stories of ghostly horses
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  Speaker 5: appear throughout folklore, Native American traditions, frontier legends, cowboy ghost stories.
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  Speaker 5: civil war stories, mining camp tales, Modern paranormal accounts. All
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  Speaker 5: contain versions evolving mysterious animals. The details are strange. Strange
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  Speaker 5: and they do change. The meanings change. The basic images remain.
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  Speaker 5: A horse appearing where it should be. A horse behaving
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  Speaker 5: as though he knows something that humans don't. A horse
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  Speaker 5: appearing before danger. A horse that disappears without explanation. And
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  Speaker 5: perhaps a horse carrying the memory of someone who never returned.
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  Speaker 5: There's another way to look at the Phantom Blue Horse.
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  Speaker 5: Maybe it was never a ghost. Maybe the witness encountered
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  Speaker 5: ordinary horse beneath the unusual lighting. Maybe fog transformed An
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: animal's appearance. Maybe exhaustion caused travelers to misinterpret the shadows.
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  Speaker 5: Maybe loneliness emptied every sound. And maybe the human mind
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  Speaker 5: did what it has always done. It created a story
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  Speaker 5: to explain something. very frightening. That doesn't make the legend meaningless.
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  Speaker 5: Quite the opposite. It tells us something about the people
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  Speaker 5: who lived these stories. They lived in the places where
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: danger could arrive without warning. So perhaps they needed a guardian,
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  Speaker 5: a supernatural figure that appeared when would come too dangerous.
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  Speaker 5: A creature that could see what a human can't. A
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  Speaker 5: messenger from the darkness. Now imagine you're all alone. You're
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  Speaker 5: driving down the empty road. It's after midnight. There's no
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  Speaker 5: houses nearby. No streetlights. No other vehicles. Then you hear it. Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.
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  Speaker 5: You look into your rearview mirror. Nothing. Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.
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  Speaker 5: You slow down. Still nothing. Then, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop.
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  Speaker 5: You see something standing beside the road. A horse. But
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  Speaker 5: something is wrong. You can't quite determine its color. It's
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: too dark. You stop. The horse looks at you. You
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  Speaker 5: roll down the window. The animal doesn't move. Turn on
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  Speaker 5: your headlights and suddenly it's gone. No running footsteps. No movement. Nothing.
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  Speaker 5: Just an empty road. You drive away. But a few
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  Speaker 5: seconds later, you notice something. Your radio has stopped working.
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  Speaker 5: Your phone. Has no signal. And in the distance. You hear.
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  Speaker 5: Hook beats. They're following you. Maybe the blue. Phantom horse.
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  Speaker 5: Is nothing more than a legend. Maybe it's an old
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  Speaker 5: frontier story. That changed with every person who told it.
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: Maybe the witnesses. saw ordinary horses. Maybe moonlight created this
• 24:39
  Speaker 5: strange blue glow. Maybe fear filled in the rest. Or
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: just maybe, somewhere in the forgotten corners of America, there
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: really is a horse that appears when someone is about
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  Speaker 5: to make a terrible and unforgivable mistake. A horse that
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  Speaker 5: doesn't attack. A horse that doesn't chase. A horse that
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  Speaker 5: simply waits and watches and warns because perhaps the darkest
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: place aren't always haunted by things that want to hurt us.
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: Sometimes they may be haunted by things that are trying
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  Speaker 5: to tell us something. So, if you're ever traveling alone
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: at night and you hear footbeats behind you, don't immediately
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: assume you're imagining them. And if you look back into
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: the darkness and you see a strange, Blue horse standing
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  Speaker 5: beside the road. Watch carefully. Because if it turns. Towards you.
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: And then turns towards. To the road ahead. Perhaps it's
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: trying to tell you something. Don't keep going. Because the
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: ghost isn't in danger. Sometimes. the ghost is the warning.
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: This has been the episode of the Blue Horse. I
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: hope everyone enjoyed this wonderful story. I sure have. And
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: I'm hoping you guys liked it too. And If you
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: ever want to tell me a story that you've heard,
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: or if you want to share it with us on
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: the air, please do. You can reach me at theparanormalghoststories
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: at gmail.com. And we have other places as well.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And....
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: Until next time, my friends. Keep it spooky.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: If tonight's story got under your skin....
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: Good.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: That's what we do here. You can find every episode
• 27:55
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• 28:35
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• 28:38
  Speaker 3: the fans who make this show work. Got a story
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: of your own? Email us at theparanormalghoststories at gmail.com. We
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: read every single one of your emails. Until next time,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: as Joe the Ghost Guy says, Stay spooky, friends.