"What do you charge to haunt a podcast?" "How many gigabytes?"

[captainsblog]

As the true NPR geeks here already know, the podcast offered up this past weekend for This American Life was a rerun- from 2005, as it turned out.  (This will be important later.) Still, that puts it before my time of regularly downloading such things, and while the subject matter definitely involved some depressing aspects, it wasn't a total bummer as some of their fare is, so I chose it as the soundtrack to my workout today. (And yew kin, too, if you care to download it from this link.)

Act Two is titled "Where's Walter?" and begins at 21:25 of the podcast. It's the story of a Ramada Inn in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, which was built by and originally named, sort-of, after one Walter Schroeder, a philanthropist of some note in such parts. Walter has a reputation- and not just at the former Hotel Retlaw^* but at other places associated with his legacy- of kinda hangin' around long after his demise and playing little tricks on the currently living. Nothing particularly Ghostbustery, no slime or Messrs. Stay-Puft, just little things. Like robbing the occasional pile of small change from the hotel till; or playing the piano in the otherwise-empty Walter Schroeder Lounge at a Masonic Lodge he once belonged to when he wasn't currently dead; or, in the only incident actually witnessed by the NPR reporter, changing the channels on the in-room televisions. Walter prefers C-SPAN, she was told, although in her case he switched it to the Bible Channel.

This story was unfolding without incident on my .mp3 player through a bit over ten minutes, when the reporting came to an appropriate pause in the text and the story switched over to, it seemed, another incident of ghostly haunting. There was a segment being re-broadcast from NPR's Talk of the Nation, beginning right on cue with host Neal Conan going into an interview with some guests discussing the Obama Administration's change in Cuban travel policy. He greeted one of them with something like, "Before we start, I do have to ask you something else," which I figured would be the hook into the ghost story.

Their talk, though, went on a good minute or so without any discussion of ghosts in Wisconsin, Florida, Cuba or anywhere. Then it started getting  REALLY puzzling. I knew this was a rerun. A fairly old one, since I've heard most of the 2009 episodes. WHAT Obama administration would somebody be talking about, even in early 2008 or (as it turned out) 2005?

At last it dawned on me.  Walter had changed the station on my player. With a single click, he switched it from the .mp3 of the This American Life podcast to the live broadcast of Talk of the Nation- synching it so perfectly that I didn't even realize it had happened.  I never even knew such on-the-fly switching from "music" to "fm" was possible (Eleanor has the same player, and showed me how just now). But he did.

Now I just need to check my wallet and see if I'm missing any small change.

----

^* The trekkiest of Trekkies will recognize that name, and also know its derivation. Anyone remember? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?


ETA. And now Eleanor reports another possible Walter sighting- or at least hearing.

One of the sinks in the locker room at the gym she goes to- the women-only cousin of mine- had been making an annoying moaning sound when you turned the water on for months. She passed on the many opportunities for "Moaning Myrtle" jokes until this week, when she noticed that the moaning had stopped. She asked the cleaning person if she noticed it too. "Oh, yeah," she replied. "That thing's been moaning forever!"

I hope this has nothing to do with the new brand of faucets installed in OUR locker room over on Transit:



Oh, and the title of this entry? A play on this (slide to 5:50 or so in the Stooges video under the cut):

ETA2, or, Mulder? Why I Hardly....

Duh, forgot to mention that the ghost story on the podcast mentioned a "Buffalo Holiday Inn" as one of the others in the nation with a history of hauntage. Turns out, it's on Grand Island, and its story can be seen in this much less Stoogy piece of You-Tubage:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Fine. Enough spookies for one day, eh?

Comments

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

Is it to do with the Mirror Universe from Trek? Retlaw being Walter backwards?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Not the Mirror U, although the Walter connection is the obvious one.

It's not quite canon, although there is an IMDB entry that mentions it.

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

Right-- the plant from the TAS ep he wrote. I really ought to buy the boxset one of these years...

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

"The Animated Series," for those scratching their heads going huh?

(Do go back for the Youtubes I've added, btw.)

[headbanger118.livejournal.com]

You have reminded me of the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, VA. I've eaten there and attended a college formal there, but no ghosties came out to play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Washington_Inn