SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
What if the same stranger arrives before tragedy—and never leaves a face behind?
A banker’s offhand confession cracked open a door we couldn’t close. One moment we’re swapping small talk over hacked accounts, and the next we’re standing at Joyland in 1977, watching a boy who finally measured up take the back car of a roller coaster—and never make it home. Witnesses remember a tall man in a long coat and a short hat. They remember the push. They remember the gates slamming shut. They don’t remember his face.
From Wichita to Detroit to London, we track a repeating silhouette that seems to appear at the lip of disaster and then slip out of reach: the bowler, the chimney sweeper, the man who stands just where the air goes strange. Is he a warning or a cause? An omen like the Mothman, or a human mask for something older? We compare eyewitness details across cities and decades, follow how folklore travels through communities, and share how unscripted moments on the mic trigger memories—and sometimes, unexplainable echoes.
Along the way we talk about keeping the “firelight” alive: telling stories clearly, listening closely, and passing patterns forward so they can actually help. You’ll hear practical ways to notice repeating signs, handle sensitive details, and decide when a legend should guide a real-world choice—like skipping a ride, checking a shaft, or staying with someone who shouldn’t be alone. If your culture has a name for this figure, we want to learn it. If you’ve seen him, we want to hear when, where, and what you felt in your bones.
Press play and step into Doctober’s first chapter. Then share the episode with a friend, leave a review, and send us your story—warning angel or something darker? Your voice keeps the firelight burning.
Good morning everybody. It's Dr. G and welcome to the 4th October. It's about a quarter of nine in sunny Phoenix. We're gonna get a reprieve today. It's only gonna be 98 degrees. Yay! There's usually a large amount of research that goes into some of the Docktober material. And sometimes we just wing it. Sometimes it's more fun to just come in to the studio, turn everything on, sit in front of the mic for 10 or 12 seconds, and off we go. Very seldom do we find that research meets the wing it part of the show. This talk cover is going to be a little different. You're still going to hear a lot of stories. Some are connected and some are not. You're going to most likely get some over-the-air magic that you can do at home. As our audience expands, and today I believe we're in 25 countries and 182 cities. And I deeply thank each and every one of you for listening. I am very glad to have you. And I'm surprised. So keep telling folks about us, give us likes, shares, follow us, all those things that you can do, especially on Facebook. The algorithm things from Facebook are kind of a pain in the rump. So we're going to have some flashbacks in this October, and it all makes sense on Halloween night because we're going to recap some things and tell the rest of the story. This one begins when Cassandra and I go to a bank to close some of our Spirit Tales and Magic accounts. We're going to leave the bank nameless. They were frequently hacked accounts. Six, seven, eight times in the last year. So we're going to close them because you send us all the new cards in the world and we're still going to get attacked. I'm sure some of you have experienced that. So we meet a man named Philip. Philip works as a banker, and he's very personable, and he's a very interesting man. And I don't say that very easily because it kind of takes a lot for me to say that about a person. Now, usually in any place that Cassandra and I go, when we meet new people, we give them a business card. I give them a Spirit Tales and Magic card, which has the magic website and the podcast. You scan either one, it takes you to either place. And Cassandra, who makes some really fantastic custom-made jewelry, gives them one of her cards. And there's always some small talk. And you know that you make it every day. Hey, how's the weather? How's your you know, how's your grandkids? How you doing? So ours is a little different. It's do you have a ghost story? So Philip was no different. We make some small talk, and I said, uh, tell me your ghost story. And he has a funny look on his face for just a split second. But it's a completely out of character, like, hmm, kind of a thing. Well, I uh I have a ghost story. So it's great. Can I can I hear it? Well, um, it's hard to put down. So we don't have to write it. I can either remember it or you can zoom in, or you know, you can email it. No, it's not long. It's just um it gets in you. So having my first paranormal experience at eight years old, and so much time has passed between, you can't tell me something like that and then think that I'm gonna drop it because that's not gonna happen. Phillips' story takes place in an amusement park in 1977, specifically the Joyland Amusement Park in Wichita, Kansas. Monty Stovel loved riding the roller coasters. He wanted so bad to be alone in his own car, but he didn't meet the height requirement to ride without an adult. Became an obsession. You know, gonna measure myself. I can't wait, I can't wait. Finally, the day comes. He goes with his grandmother and says, I can ride alone today. I either want the first coaster or the last coaster in the first train. Now he's a frequent flyer, and everybody at the amusement park knows him. So grandma gets in the next to the last car, but he can't get in the last car because he's about a quarter of an inch too short. And he is angry, he's frustrated. But then a man who was gonna have to skip the ride says, I would like to ride in the last car with you. So he's only seven and he's you know, doesn't have a lot of tactical skills, let's say. And he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go, come on. And grandma says, you know, I can just jump back there with you in the car. And he said, No, no, no, come on, you know, we'll do this, and you know, we'll come back next month, and I'll be tall enough when I go by myself. So his grandmother, who always insisted that he never ride alone, allowed the tall man to sit next to the boy. Monty would be killed that day. He fell from the roller coaster. His family said that sometimes he liked to stand up on the drops, and that there was nobody from the family watching him to make sure that he didn't. But then came the eyewitnesses, who report that the man riding with him shoved him from the coaster on the first drop, and the second group of cars ran over him. The man who pushed him was tall, with a long overcoat, and what they described as either a bowler hat or perhaps a top hat, a short one. When the coaster came to a stall, the platform was filled with people waiting to apprehend the man. The entrances to the park were closed and searches were done. But the man was nowhere to be found. Instantly, when I heard that story, I realized that I had seen the same man speaking with a maintenance tech in a building that I lived in in Detroit. The next day I heard the maintenance man had jumped down the elevator shaft to his death. Witnesses other than myself say that they saw him talking with a tall man in a long coat and a hat. But they could never get a decent look at his face. So that's one to put in your memory because you're gonna hear a little more about that man throughout the month of October. Every once in a while, when we get into the story, and we start finding more and more and more about the story. Just like in the show, unscripted things happen. The podcast really doesn't have the script. I write the stories down, I do my best to memorize them, and off we go. But they trigger memories. They also sometimes trigger things that are unexplainable. Keep that in your mind because that's important from the last episode. Do you have a story of a man like that? Now every culture and every generation has something. Go back to our friend the Mothman, you know. He appears and disasters happen. Is he causing them or is he a warning against them? What's your mysterious story? Our most listened to story, the man, the girl, and the tiger, talks about a man in the basement of Woodrow III that could very well fit the description of the man at the amusement park. One of our friends from London who wants to remain nameless sent me an email. And they have one they call the chimney sweeper. Who meets that description? You're gonna hear about the sweeper too. So we kick off this October unleashing uh an urban legend, if you will, with much more to follow, of course. Again, thank you to everyone who listens and shares and helps us push this thing along. Please keep telling stories. One of the goals of this entire thing is to save firelight, and you'll hear about that throughout the podcast. The firelight is dying, and we don't want that. Then you don't want that. And I think our ghostly brothers and sisters also don't want that. So tell a ghost story. It's good for you. And remember, there is indeed a world unseen. It's a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. Welcome to Doctober, my friends. Have a great day.
