In hopes of raising the professor’s spirits, Sam and Geoff leave Oklahoma City to travel east along Route 66 to collect ghost stories. Along the way, they make pit stops, like in Arcadia to find why the Round Barn isn’t haunted. In Chandler, they learn about Route 66 from artist and author Jerry McClanahan and hear ghost stories at Route 66 Interpretive Center with Susan Pordos and the Manvel Avenue Coffee Co with Steven Conway. On the way back, they visit with Dawn Shelton of the Luther Register News for some hometown spooky stories.

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Tales Unveiled is a production of The Show Starts Now Studios and is produced by me, Dennis Spielman. The voice of Sam Saxton is Dennis Spielman. The voice of Professor Geoff DeRoot is Jeff Provine.

We would like to thank our guests for sharing their stories with us: Steven Conway, Susan Pordos, Jerry McClanahan, and Dawn Shelton.

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Behind the Scenes Commentary (Spoilers)

I’ve been wanting to hit up Route 66 to just find whatever stories we could uncover. We’ve had mixed luck with asking people on the spot for ghost stories in the past, but more often than not, we would find stories we wouldn’t have been able to find otherwise such as we did in Medicine Park.

We managed to get some great seldom–told stories in Chandler and I’m super happy with how well our day went. It took a while before we hit that jackpot. As a back-up, I did reach out to Dawn Shelton, who I had recently meet at a restaurant opening in Oklahoma City. We worked all this into the story.

I liked the use of the Professor’s logs in this episode. To me, it was a great story telling device to make the episode different from other in the series. I enjoy breaking up the episode formula to keep the show fresh. Jeff and I are thinking we’ll do it again next season, but instead of log numbers, we’ll do log times so it’s easier to keep track of our progress.

The first draft of the episode had no Sam narrations. I was going back and forth on including some. I sent Jeff the draft and he suggested I put some in to explain what was going on with the professor logs, the back story with Luther, and a comment on the professor’s mood. I included the teaser about El Reno since we had recorded that episode and knew our story plans.

In our El Reno episode, we do continue the Route 66 theme since the road does run through the town. We plan to do more about the highway.