Lore · Aaron Mahnke

Legends 76: Unfamiliar Waters

March 30, 2026·27 min·1 clip

Lead musket balls flew through the MacDonalds' windows, then stopped mid-air and clattered to the floor — repeatedly, for three years.

1. Lore Legends host Aaron Manke presents two historical Canadian haunting cases under the theme of migration and unfamiliar territory. 2. The episode is narrated solo by Aaron Manke, creator of the Lore franchise, with writing credited to Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas and Alex Robinson. 3. The core thesis is that migrating to new places carries hidden dangers, and that legends reflect deep human anxieties about venturing beyond the familiar. 4. In 1804, Scottish nobleman Lord Selkirk sponsored 15 Highland families to settle at Baldoon in modern Kent County, Ontario, naming the colony after his father's Baldoon Castle. 5. The settlers arrived in September 1804 to find no shelter, as the advance carpenters had fled due to proximity to First Nations territory, forcing families to winter in tents. 6. Within two months, 16 settlers had died; by year's end, the death toll reached 42, with causes including malaria, dysentery, flooding, and food shortages after 300 sheep were killed by snakes and bears. 7. Daniel MacDonald was among the few survivors who stayed, and his son John MacDonald built a farm adjoining his father's property, establishing a close-knit family enclave. 8. In 1829, inexplicable events began at John MacDonald's house: lead musket balls flew through windows and froze mid-air before falling, persisting for three years and witnessed by 12 people who gave sworn statements. 9. James Johnson testified that he would collect the bullets, throw them in a river, and find the same marked balls back in the house the next day, while a skeptic who taunted the entity was struck in the chest by a flying rock. 10. Other phenomena included invisible men marching through the kitchen at midnight, furniture piling itself into heaps, a gun flying out of a traveler's hands and firing celebratory shots, and dozens of small fires daily — one inside a closet wall. 11. The MacDonalds' attempts at resolution included a Catholic priest who declared the entity too strong for him, a Native American medicine man who promised to die in the effort but never appeared, and a school headmaster named Robert Barker who was later jailed for pretending to practice witchcraft. 12. A Methodist minister directed John to the witch doctor John Troyer, whose unnamed 15-year-old daughter used a moonstone over three hours to identify John's neighbors as the source of the haunting. 13. The daughter revealed that an old woman in the neighboring family had transformed herself into a black-headed goose that had been seen wandering John's property, and prescribed shooting it with a silver bullet. 14. John melted silver, fashioned bullets, hunted the goose, and shot it; the goose screamed almost humanly and fled into the reeds, leading John to his neighbor's property where an old woman sat outside with a freshly broken arm. 15. The backstory was a property dispute: the woman had tried to buy John's land, been refused, and began the campaign of terror to drive the family away. 16. A further historical layer reveals that neither the MacDonalds nor the old woman had rightful claim to the land, which had originally been an Anishinaabe burial ground that the MacDonalds disturbed when building their farm outside Baldoon's sanctioned boundaries. 17. The second story follows Georgina Penny, who moved into Binstead Manor on Prince Edward Island in 1856 with her husband Arthur and heard persistent rumbling noises and nocturnal shrieks for months before witnessing a glowing woman carrying a baby cross the staircase and vanish into a wall. 18. Georgina's 1877 return investigation uncovered a local rumor about a farmer named Braddock whose two servant sisters each gave birth, after which one sister and one baby disappeared; the remaining sister told her mother the boy she kept was her nephew, not her son, then vanished herself. 19. The episode blends narrative storytelling with dry wit, maintaining a measured pace that suits the slow accumulation of strange detail in each case. 20. Listeners who enjoy folklore-grounded horror and historical mystery will engage most; those wanting fast-paced true crime or contemporary topics may find the pace slow.

As heard by us

Shark migration opens into human movement and the McDonalds' search for help, with a slow folkloric pace that fits the material.

The episode starts with shark migration, and the opening works because it stays concrete: as the oceans warm, sharks leave familiar summer waters later, reach winter hunting grounds later, and end up in places that do not fit the old pattern.

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Why you'd press play

You want a shark story that starts with changing migration patterns and drifts into witchcraft, second sight, and a moonstone reading.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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