Epic Magazine

Most kids would be terrified of growing up in a haunted Victorian Mansion down the road from a graveyard, but not Helen. She didn’t mind the ghosts she encountered daily—the quiet little boy who lived in her basement, the tattered Civil War soldiers who stood outside her front door, the spectral infants who drifted from their unmarked graves to her room to say hello. In fact, she loved them. They were her friends. More importantly, they were her partners in a pact: she would look after their home, and in return, the dead promised to protect her from a living danger, a figure who had been tracking Helen and her brother, Simon, since they were toddlers. Their mother called him the Bogeyman.

The Bogeyman had found Helen and Simon before and he had taken them thousands of miles away. It was months until they were rescued. Safely back in their mother’s care, they lived like prey behind locked doors, ever vigilant, always ready to move. The Bogeyman was still out there. And, to Helen, it seemed like no earthly force could stop him from returning. Co-published with Literary Hub, co-edited by Joshuah Bearman and Gina Mei and featuring art by Ruben Hiraga, Helen Vogelsong-Donahue’s heartbreaking, bone-chilling tale unveils the horrors of being hunted as well as the unexpected pleasures of being haunted.

https://lithub.com/good-ghosts-and-bad-fathers-the-story-of-a-haunting-a-kidnapping-and-an-international-incident/

A 3,000-degree inferno at nearly 4 a.m. melted the freeway interchange known as the MacArthur Maze. It was 2007, and by the time the sun rose on Oakland, the double decker interchange had collapsed, blocking traffic in multiple directions. The state of California had a $5-million-dollar-a-day economic disaster on its hands.

Repairing it would be a gargantuan challenge, and Governor Schwarzenegger wanted it done in record time.

Enter C.C. Myers. A 6’ 6”, ostrich-boot-wearing construction legend, Myers pulled together a motley crew to do the job. Mitch Moxley’s feature in Popular Mechanics, published in glossy print for the April/May 2024 issue, recounts how he and his team pushed past setback after setback to pull off a seemingly impossible feat.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/preview/technology/infrastructure/a60433142/macarthur-maze-reconstruction-cc-myers/

There's a new Epic article in the issue of Popular Mechanics that hit newsstands this week. Mitch Moxley's feature tells the tale of how an unconventional crew fixed a catastrophic bridge breakdown in record time. It's a treat to have a story in good old-fashioned print!

This morning, episode eight of Varnamtown was released, which completes the wild saga of this quirky and co***ne-saturated coastal town. You can listen now from the idyllic-seeming start to the dramatic finish.

Along the way, you’ll encounter REO Speedwagon, President Ronald Reagan, a shootout in a Miami mall, Pl***oy bunnies, and clam cops. You’ll venture with us through the corridors of Dale Varnum’s carnivalesque Fort Apache, where a toilet—or an attack turkey—waits around every corner. And you’ll be in good company: Other listeners have called this town’s tale “absolutely kooky,” “hilarious,” and “the wildest story I’ve heard in a long time.”

Check it out:

Varnamtown Listen to Varnamtown on Spotify. Two years ago, Kyle MacLachlan, the star of Twin Peaks, called investigative journalist Joshua Davis with a strange story. Kyle had heard a rumor that Pablo Escobar did a deal in the early 1980s with a remote, coastal Southern town of 300 people. In exchange for vast...