You're in your garden on a fine sunny day. A thorny weed has overtaken much of the soil. You go to rip it from the earth but prick your

finger. After which you hear all the flowers whispering, murmuring and conspiring,

and conspiring against you.

You need my help. This is a voice from darkness. Hello, this is Dr Malcolm Ryder, parapsycologist, here tonight to delve into the strange, surreal and mysterious history of our country.

Now let's stop right there for a moment.

You may have noticed my greeting is different this evening, where I would normally promise to help you with your supernatural,

paranormal, and otherworldly problems. I'm sorry to say that we won't be doing that tonight.

Going forward, we're planning to divide episodes

into those with call-in segments,

where I help you over the phone, as I normally would and some nights like tonight we intend to

devote completely to today in art America the purpose of the divide is to give these two mainstays of our show more breathing room,

to allow us to share longer stories from history,

and to give callers more time to go into details

about their problems or give us more time to possibly take multiple calls. I hope that change proves to be enjoyable for you. But before

we get to any of that, let's move on to National Alerts, which we have only one of this evening,

after which we'll go right into today in Odd America,

where we'll look at an encounter a librarian in Rhode Island had in the 1890s with a familiar figure.

But first, here's national alerts.

Our only National Alert for tonight is for Glacier National Park in Montana.

A Boy Scout Troop, staying the night near Hidden Lake reported something odd two nights ago.

Over their radio, they heard a ship calling out for help.

They were confused as there were no boats on the lake. The sky then turned black, lightning struck, and a crew ship appeared from nowhere, drifting through the sky as if traveling across the water.

...