HBM155: Ghosts Aliens Burritos

August 24, 2022·32 min·3 clips

Alex Greenfield recalls seeing a pale face in a church window during a late-night ghost hunt with his dad.

The question starts plainly. The host asks what the guest's father did for work, and the answer lands somewhere between researcher, system-worker, and traveler in a shadow world. Alan Greenfield is hard to pin down. Grifter feels too harsh, the guest says, because the life was less about stealing than scraping together a living through systems, books, and belief. Childhood shows up as dust and bare feet. The parents split when the guest was six, after an argument spilled outside and the mother drove away in a van while the father chased her. Somehow, it felt normal. That is the sore spot in the story. The father could turn instability into road adventure and spiritual searching, even when a child needed firmer ground. Then the memory goes swamp-dark. George suggests renting a canoe in the Okefenokee, maybe looking for a cryptid, and the guest remembers off season water with sleepy alligators in it. At dusk, the father talks about will-o'-the-wisps, lights said to lure sailors and bog-crossers toward danger. Then a real flare appears through the trees. He rows toward it fast. To the child, the light needs a name. To the father, it is already the spirit of the Okefenokee. Later, the explanation gets smaller. It was swamp gas. Still, the memory keeps the sulfur, the rotting vegetation, the reflected fire, and the feeling of reaching the center of the place. The trick still matters, but not neatly. The father is unreliable, and also gifted at making the world feel charged. The episode closes by pointing listeners to Another Russia, asking for Berlin-area story ideas, and sending out the show's little blessing to anyone wonderful and strange.

As heard by us

A swamp-lit family story about a father, a split, and the folklore that grows between them.

The episode plays as a family story about a father who worked the system, cobbled together a living, and sold adventure and spiritual searching as a way of life.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a father story that turns a swamp trip into folklore, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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