Haunted American History

For generations, San Antonio teenagers have driven to an old bridge after dark, killed their headlights, and honked into the trees. According to legend, something eventually answers: pounding hooves, a woman's scream, the bray of an animal—and sometimes hoof-shaped dents discovered on the car when they finally make it home. They call her the Donkey Lady. But ask who she was and the story begins to change. A murdered farm wife. An abused mother. A woman drowned beside her donkey. A victim of Satanists.

Different decades created different monsters, but every version preserved the same basic story: a woman suffers a catastrophe she didn't cause, and somehow she becomes the thing everyone fears.

Tonight, we cross the Donkey Lady Bridge and explore one of San Antonio's strangest and most enduring urban legends.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
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Two hundred feet from the Alamo stands a hotel that has never closed its doors. Presidents slept there. Theodore Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders from its bar. Gunmen died beside its mahogany counters. And for more than a century, guests and employees have reported that some of the Menger Hotel's former occupants never actually left. A murdered chambermaid still carries towels through the third floor. A cattle baron walks through a wall where his bedroom door once stood. Roosevelt apparently still enjoys the occasional drink. And a man in buckskin has one question for guests unfortunate enough to encounter him alone: Are you gonna stay, or are you gonna go? T

onight, we check into the Menger Hotel...where somewhere between thirty and forty-five ghosts are said to have already answered.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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On November 22, 1987, Chicago sportscaster Dan Roan was recapping a Bears game when WGN suddenly went black. Fifteen seconds later, millions of viewers were staring at a man wearing a rubber Max Headroom mask. Twenty-eight seconds later, he vanished. Then, two hours later, he did it again—this time hijacking a Doctor Who broadcast for ninety bizarre seconds of distorted jokes, obscure WGN references, and a woman with a flyswatter. The FCC and FBI investigated, but nearly forty years later, nobody knows who did it.

Tonight, we investigate the Max Headroom signal intrusion: one of the strangest unsolved crimes in television history, committed by someone who may have known far more about WGN than he should have.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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In the 1920s, workers clearing a hidden dungeon beneath an Irish castle discovered so many human bones they needed horse carts to remove them. An estimated 150 skeletons had been thrown into the pit—some onto spikes waiting below. Then, near the bottom, they found something that shouldn't have been there: a pocket watch manufactured in the 1800s. Someone had apparently still been using the medieval oubliette centuries after the Middle Ages ended. And that's only the beginning. Murdered priests, poisoned mercenaries, ghostly children, a woman in red, and a grotesque entity whose arrival is supposedly announced by the smell of a rotting corpse all belong to the history and folklore of Leap Castle.

Tonight, we enter the fortress often called Ireland's most haunted castle... and meet the family that decided to make it their home.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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On the morning of April 29, 2003, thirteen-year-old Tabitha Tuders left her East Nashville home carrying a report card filled with straight A's. Her bus stop was only three blocks away. Neighbors watched her walking there, slowly reading the paper she couldn't wait to show her friends. Then, somewhere along a single residential block, she vanished. A young witness reported seeing Tabitha get into a red car. Bloodhounds later followed her scent to almost exactly the same spot—and stopped.

Twenty-three years later, the car has never been identified, the driver has never been found, and neither has Tabitha. Tonight, we examine the disappearance of Tabitha Tuders, the nine-and-a-half-hour delay before police knew she was missing, and the terrifying possibility that the person she got into that car with wasn't a stranger at all.

MNPD Cold Case Unit: 615-862-7803

Nashville Crime Stoppers (anonymous): 615-742-7463

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedAmericanHistory
TikTok - @hah_podcast
hauntedamericanhistory.com
Patreon- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/hauntedamericanhistory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
HAH DISCORD - https://discord.com/invite/bJdbpH3hQm

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