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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.
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: On Ghost Stories and the Unusual Paranormal Podcast. Joe the
• 1:40
  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
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: tortured woman who is crying for her lost baby, and
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: an evil ghost called the Stabber, an evil spirit who
• 2:00
  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,
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: don't go looking inside it. Maybe the last thing you
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: ever do. Where is he going to tell us next?
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: Let's go and see. Tune in to a brand new
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: episode of Ghost Stories and the Unusual Paranormal Podcast. With
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  Speaker 4: your spooky paranormal investigator, Joe the Ghost Guy.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: There are stories about ghosts. And then there are stories
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: about things that were never supposed to be seen. Across
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: the American frontier, travelers once told stories of strange lights
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  Speaker 3: in the wilderness. Riders who appeared from nowhere. Abandoned trails
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  Speaker 3: where horses suddenly refused to move. And figures that vanished
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  Speaker 3: before anyone could reach them. But among the darkest legends
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  Speaker 3: is the one that seems almost impossible to explain. A horse.
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  Speaker 3: Not just a horse. It's not a black horse. No,
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  Speaker 3: it's not a white horse. But it's a blue horse.
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  Speaker 3: A phantom animal said to emerge from the darkness, appearing
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  Speaker 3: slightly along lonely roads and forgotten trails. Those who claimed
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: to see it described something unnatural about the animal. Its
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: coat seemed to glow beneath the moon. Its eyes appeared
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  Speaker 3: unnaturally bright. And sometimes there was a writer. Sometimes there wasn't.
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  Speaker 3: The strangest part of the legend is what happens afterwards.
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  Speaker 3: People claim the horse wasn't simply haunting them. It was
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  Speaker 3: warning them. Warning them to turn around. Warning them not
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  Speaker 3: to continue down the road. And according to some versions
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: of the story, those who ignored the warnings were never
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: quite the same again. So tonight, we're stepping into the
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  Speaker 3: darkness to explore the legend of the Phantom Blue Horse.
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  Speaker 3: A story where American's folklore, frontier history, superstitious, and supernatural collide.
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  Speaker 3: And remember, Sometimes the most frightening warning is the one
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: you don't understand until it's too late. Imagine America before highways,
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: before streetlights, even before cell phones, before every road had
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: a name. There were stretches of wilderness where a traveler
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  Speaker 3: could ride for hours. without seeing another human being. At night,
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  Speaker 3: those places became almost completely silent. No traffic, no electric lights,
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  Speaker 3: only the wind and the trees and the occasional sound
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: of an animal moving somewhere beyond the darkness. A horse
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  Speaker 3: is more than transportation in those days. It was a companion,
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: a source of survival. And for many travelers, the sound
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: of hooves meant safety. So imagine riding alone late at
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: night when you suddenly hear Clop, clop, clop, clop, clop.
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  Speaker 3: You turn around. Nothing. You continue. And again. Clop, clop, clop, clop.
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  Speaker 3: The sound is getting closer. You stop your horse. The
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  Speaker 3: other animal stops too. Turn. And there. Beneath the moonlight
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  Speaker 3: stands a horse unlike anything you've ever seen before. Its
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: body appears almost blue. Not painted blue. Not brightly colored.
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  Speaker 3: But strangely illuminated. As if the moonlight is shining from
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  Speaker 3: underneath its skin. Your horse begins trembling. The phantom horse
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: takes one step towards you, then another. You reach for
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  Speaker 3: your weapon, but the animal doesn't attack. Instead, it looks
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  Speaker 3: directly at you, and then it turns towards the road
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  Speaker 3: ahead as if it's telling you, don't go. down that road,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: or you may be in trouble. Why blue, though? That's
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: one of the mysteries surrounding this legend. In folklore, unusual
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  Speaker 3: colors often carry symbolic meaning. Blue can represent the supernatural,
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  Speaker 3: the unknown, death sorrow, moonlight, or something existing between the
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  Speaker 3: two worlds. A blue animal would have been especially disturbing
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  Speaker 3: to someone traveling through the wilderness before modern lighting. Moonlight
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  Speaker 3: reflected off a horse's coat could produce strange effects. Mist
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  Speaker 3: could distort these appearances as well. Distance could transform our
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  Speaker 3: ordinary colors to something completely different. And fear itself can
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: change what a witness believes they are seeing. But folklore
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  Speaker 3: doesn't acquire an explanation. That's what makes it powerful. The
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  Speaker 3: story survives because the people continue to tell it. And
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  Speaker 3: every generation adds another shadow, another road, possibly another witness.
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  Speaker 4: Or.
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  Speaker 3: Other warnings. Some versions of the legend describes the phantom
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  Speaker 3: blue horse as riderless. It's important because a riderless horse
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  Speaker 3: has always carried a strange symbolism in American history. A
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  Speaker 3: horse without his rider can represent someone who never came home.
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  Speaker 3: A soldier far away from home has been killed. A
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  Speaker 3: cowboy lost on the trail. A traveler who had disappeared.
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  Speaker 3: A horse that survived its master. And in ghost stories,
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  Speaker 3: a riderless horse can become something else totally entirely. A messenger?
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  Speaker 3: Also a warning? A memory that refuses to disappear. The
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  Speaker 3: phantom blue horse is sometimes said to appear shortly before tragedy.
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  Speaker 3: A traveler sees it. The horse watches. Then it disappears.
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  Speaker 3: Hours later, something terrible happens. A wagon overturns. A storm
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  Speaker 3: destroys the trail. A traveler becomes lost. A bridge collapses. Or,
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  Speaker 3: someone disappears into the wilderness and never to be found.
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  Speaker 3: Was the horse responsible? There's no reliable evidence proving that,
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  Speaker 3: but that's not how legends work. The question isn't always,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: did it happen? Sometimes the question is, why did people
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  Speaker 3: believe it happened? Then there are some stories involving the writer.
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  Speaker 3: According to some retellings, the blue horse carries a mysterious figure,
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  Speaker 3: a man wearing an old-fashioned clothing, sometimes a cowboy, sometimes
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  Speaker 3: a soldier, sometimes a figure whose face cannot be seen.
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  Speaker 3: The writer doesn't speak. He doesn't chase the witness. He
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  Speaker 3: simply appears, watches, then disappears. Some witnesses supposedly described hearing
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  Speaker 3: a whisper, no words, just his breath, a sound carried
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  Speaker 3: by the wind. The traveler continues, and the phantom vanishes.
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  Speaker 3: To understand why stories like this become so powerful, we
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: have to understand the American frontier. The frontier wasn't simply
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  Speaker 3: a beautiful wilderness. It could be brutally dangerous. Some people
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: died from accidents, disease, violence, exposures, animal attacks, flash floods, fires,
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  Speaker 3: or just simply became lost and never returned. A person
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: could disappear into the wilderness and never have been found
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  Speaker 3: or families left behind. There was often no explanation, no graves,
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  Speaker 3: no final goodbyes, only questions, and sometimes a ghost story
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  Speaker 3: filled with empty space where the answer should have been, perhaps.
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  Speaker 3: Imagine seeing a writer, perhaps a traveler, heard hoods, Perhaps
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  Speaker 3: an ordinary horse wandered across the moonlit trail. And slowly,
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  Speaker 3: the story became something darker. The horse wasn't ordinary. It
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: was a ghost. And yet, it isn't wandering. It was searching.
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  Speaker 3: There is where the legend becomes truly frightening. The phantom
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  Speaker 3: blue horse isn't necessarily portrayed as evil. Instead, it may
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  Speaker 3: be trying to save people. Let's imagine that, shall we?
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  Speaker 3: The terrifying creature in the darkness might actually be the
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  Speaker 3: thing that's trying to protect you. A traveler sees a
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  Speaker 3: horse blocking the road. The animal refuses to move. The
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  Speaker 3: traveler tries to go around. The horse moves with him. Again.
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  Speaker 3: And again. And finally, the traveler gives up and turns back.
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  Speaker 3: The next morning, he discovers that the section of the
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  Speaker 3: road ahead had been destroyed. By a flash flood. Or
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: a rock slide. Possibly a fallen tree. He had survived.
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  Speaker 3: But he didn't know why. Except. He remembers. The horse.
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  Speaker 3: The blue horse. Standing in the darkness. Waiting. Not every warning.
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  Speaker 2: Not.
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  Speaker 3: But not every warning legend needs someone to ignore the warnings.
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  Speaker 3: And in the darkest versions, there are always someone to continue.
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  Speaker 3: A traveler sees the horse. He laughs. He believes it's
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: someone's escaped animal. He rides forward. The horse disappears. The
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: road becomes darker. The wind stops, and suddenly his own
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  Speaker 3: horse refuses to continue. The traveler kicks the animal. Nothing.
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  Speaker 3: He tries again. Still nothing. Then he hears something behind him. Clop.
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  Speaker 1: Clop.
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  Speaker 3: Clop. Clop. He slowly turns. The blue horse is standing
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  Speaker 3: directly behind him, close enough to touch. His eyes are
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  Speaker 3: fixed upon his. And then the horse opens his mouth.
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  Speaker 3: But instead of a neigh, the traveler hears a human's voice.
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  Speaker 3: The traveler turns. Then he turns his horse around and rides.
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  Speaker 3: He never looks back. Perhaps the strongest and strangest part
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  Speaker 3: of the Phantom Blue Horse legend is that it doesn't
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  Speaker 3: belong to just one period of American history. Stories of
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  Speaker 3: ghostly horses appear throughout folklore. Native American traditions, frontier legends,
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  Speaker 3: cowboy ghost stories, civil war stories, mining camp tales, and
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  Speaker 3: modern paranormal accounts all contain versions of evolving mysterious animals.
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  Speaker 3: The details are strange, and they do change. The meanings, change.
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  Speaker 3: The basic images remain. A horse appearing where it should be.
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  Speaker 3: A horse appearing behaving as though he knows something that
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  Speaker 3: humans don't. A horse appearing before danger. A horse that
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  Speaker 3: disappears without explanation and perhaps A horse carrying the memory
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  Speaker 3: of someone who never returned. There's another way to look
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  Speaker 3: at the Phantom Blue Horse. Maybe it was never a ghost.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe the witness encountered ordinary horse beneath the unusual lighting.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe fog transformed An animal's appearance. Maybe exhaustion caused travelers
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  Speaker 3: to misinterpret the shadows. Maybe loneliness emptied every sound. And
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  Speaker 3: maybe the human mind did what it has always done.
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  Speaker 3: It created a story to explain something. very frightening. That
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  Speaker 3: doesn't make the legend meaningless. Quite the opposite. It tells
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  Speaker 3: us something about the people who lived these stories. They
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  Speaker 3: lived in the places where danger could arrive without warning.
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  Speaker 3: So perhaps they needed a guardian, a supernatural figure that
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  Speaker 3: appeared when would come too dangerous. A creature that could
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  Speaker 3: see what a human can't. A messenger from the darkness.
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  Speaker 3: Now imagine you're all alone. You're driving down the empty road.
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  Speaker 3: It's after midnight. There's no houses nearby. No streetlights. No
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  Speaker 3: other vehicles. Then you hear it. Cluck, cluck. You look
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  Speaker 3: into your rearview mirror. Nothing. Cluck, cluck. You slow down.
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  Speaker 3: Still nothing. Then, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop, clop.
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  Speaker 3: You see something standing beside the road. A horse. But
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  Speaker 3: something is wrong. You can't quite determine its color. It's
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  Speaker 3: too dark. You stop. The horse looks at you. You
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  Speaker 3: roll down the window. The animal doesn't move. You turn
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  Speaker 3: on your headlights and suddenly it's gone. No running footsteps.
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  Speaker 3: No movement. Nothing. Just an empty road. You drive away.
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  Speaker 3: But a few seconds later, you notice something. Your radio
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  Speaker 3: has stopped working. Your phone. Has no signal. And in
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: the distance. You hear. Hoofbeats. They're following you. Maybe the blue.
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  Speaker 3: Phantom horse. Is nothing more than a legend. Maybe it's
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  Speaker 3: an old frontier story. That changed with every person who
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: told it. Maybe the witnesses. saw ordinary horses. Maybe moonlight
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  Speaker 3: created this strange blue glow. Maybe fear filled in the rest.
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  Speaker 3: Or just maybe, somewhere in the forgotten corners of America,
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  Speaker 3: there really is a horse that appears when someone is
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  Speaker 3: about to make a terrible and unforgivable mistake. A horse
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  Speaker 3: that doesn't attack. A horse that doesn't chase. A horse
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  Speaker 3: that simply waits and watches and warns because perhaps the
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: darkest place aren't always haunted by things that want to
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  Speaker 3: hurt us. Sometimes they may be haunted by things that
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: are trying to tell us something. So, if you're ever
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: traveling alone at night and you hear footbeats behind you,
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: don't immediately assume you're imagining them. And if you look
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  Speaker 3: back into the darkness and you see a strange, blue
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  Speaker 3: horse standing beside the road. Watch carefully because if it
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: turns towards you and then turns towards to the road ahead,
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  Speaker 3: perhaps it's trying to tell you something. Don't keep going
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  Speaker 3: because the ghost isn't in danger. Sometimes the ghost Is
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  Speaker 3: a warning. This has been the episode. Of the blue horse.
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  Speaker 3: I hope everyone enjoyed. This wonderful. Story. I sure have.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: And I'm hoping you guys liked it too.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: And.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: If you ever want to. tell me a story that
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: you've heard or if you want to share it with
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: us on the air please do you can reach me
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: at the paranormal ghost stories at gmail.com and we have
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: other places as well and until next time my friends
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: keep it spooky.
• 26:57
  Speaker 5: If tonight's story got under your skin....
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: Good.
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: That's what we do here. You can find every episode
• 27:10
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• 27:45
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• 27:51
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• 27:55
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• 28:00
  Speaker 5: Email us at theparanormalghoststories at gmail.com. We read every single
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: one of your emails. Until next time, as Joe the
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: Ghost Guy says, stay spooky, friends.