11-year-old Jesse Morgan and his friends were playing a\nharmless game of hide and seek at Bear Brook State Park in their trailer park\ncommunity of Allenstown, New Hampshire. Jesse was \u201cit\u201d, and in the midst of\nsearching for his friends, Keith, one of the friends, gave himself away when he\ndiscovered a barrel and called out. Trying to pry open the barrel, they\npresumed it to have contained rotting milk, thus leaving the area, unknown to\nthem that inside the barrel was actually the remains of a woman and a little\ngirl. Months later, the barrel was discovered once again, sparking an\ninvestigation. The murderer \u2013 unknown. The motive \u2013 unknown. The murderer\u2019s\nwhereabouts \u2013 unknown. The victims\u2019 identities \u2013 unknown. Important clues went without answers; thus,\nthe case went cold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a dark and grim story such as this, one would expect the\nnarrator, Jason Moon, to introduce it in a grim tone as well. However, this was\nnot the case, and instead, he introduces it in a light-hearted way, such as playing\nthe song \u201cDon\u2019t You\u201d by Simple Minds from the Breakfast Club in the background.\nHe also brings us into a flashback to 1985 about a group of young boys playing\nhide and seek, giving the listeners a sense of nostalgia and sets the scene similar\nto an 80\u2019s movie. Once the barrel had been found, the narrative takes a sharp\ntwist with the music stopping, clearly trying to tell the listener that this is\nthe point where it is no longer similar to an 80\u2019s movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moon provides us interviews with several citizens of Allenstown\nduring the time that this story got out there. It is clearly obvious that one\nof the interviewees would be Jesse Morgan; he gives his testimony of that day when\nhe and his friends came across the barrel. Morgan\u2019s parents were also interviewed,\nin which they describe the kind of life the citizens of Allenstown led. We\nlearn that the community is close with one another and \u201cpeople helped each other\nout\u201d often. Ron Montplaisir, the officer who found the barrel after the boys,\nwas also one of the interviewees. With his interview, we learn that in\nAllenstown, there is only one cop for every 20 square miles, and Bear Brook\nState Park is probably the least patrolled area. This gives us a feel that perhaps\nAllenstown was not as safe as it seemed, even though the community was so close\nto each other. Oftentimes between the interviews, Moon provides the listener\nbackground information on who the interviewee is and tries to help the listener\nconnect the dots based off of their statements. An interesting statement in\nthis story was \u201cin order to know who the victim knew, we have to know who the\nvictim is\u201d. This statement seems to be explaining the main idea of the first\nepisode \u2013 it is to introduce the people who might have been associated with the\nvictims or murderer, and letting the listeners learn about who they are. At the\nend of the episode, it is announced to us that a second barrel has been found.\nThis keeps the listener interested to continue listening for the next episode.\nThe pacing of the podcast is very easy to follow, and Moon\u2019s narrations paired\nup with the interviews provide insight that will help the listeners try to put\nthe clues together on their own along with Moon as he goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Word Count: 570<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
11-year-old Jesse Morgan and his friends were playing a harmless game of hide and seek at Bear Brook State Park in their trailer park community of Allenstown, New Hampshire. Jesse was \u201cit\u201d, and in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-engl200c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}