What do cattle mutilations, a grave robber and a good Samaritan have in common? They are all featured on Dean Petersen’s Wyoming-based podcast, “That Doesn’t Happen Everyday.”
Petersen of Cheyenne has been fascinated since an early age by the out-of-the-ordinary and downright bizarre stories that happen to everyday people. He has channeled that curiosity about the odd into his Wyoming-based podcast where he interviews a wide array of people in his efforts to dig up the strange.
“I would hear my parents talking about things that had happened when they were kids,” Petersen said. “Usually, it was kind of the mundane stuff about growing up on ranches in the Bridger Valley between Evanston and Green River. But once in a while, something weird would happen that they would bring up like cattle mutilations or the camp up in the mountains where lumberjacks supposedly had killed themselves.”
When Petersen moved back to Wyoming in 1999 to attend the University of Wyoming in Laramie, he began hearing these same stories from others. That was when he said he really started paying attention.
“A real driving influence for the podcast was hearing from other people all these legends I had heard as a kid,” Petersen said. “I was able to interview people and ask, did that really happen? In many cases, there's more truth than fiction with these stories.”
Seeking Out The Weird
Petersen aired his first episode in April 2022, and it was, appropriately, a story from his parents, his original muses.
“My parents had mentioned renting a house from Bob Ross, the painter on PBS,” Petersen said. “When you're a kid, you're like, ‘Oh, of course, everyone does that.’ As I got older, I saw that he's on magnets and on calendars. I did an episode about it.
“At the time, Bob Ross wasn't known for painting. He was just an everyday guy who liked to paint. He had a bunch of paintings in his basement and asked my parents if they would put them in donut boxes and ship them to his new location in Virginia. So, it was a fun story.”
Petersen’s tagline on his podcast is “where we interview everyday people about things that don't normally happen every day.”
“The truth is, some of some of these people aren't exactly everyday people,” Petersen admitted. “For instance, we've had an Oscar winner from Wyoming, but what's interesting about the show is how many people will share these down-to-earth or straightforward stories of interesting things happening.”
Whether he is exploring his family stories or chasing down obscure leads, Petersen is always on the lookout for interesting stories that he can share.
“It's become kind of a license where if I'm curious about something or interested in something, I go full force in trying to find out as much as I can about it,” he said. “I usually do that by either trying to interview someone who has experience with something or perhaps they've written a novel about it. I try to maybe dig a little bit deeper than a lot of the podcasts that are out there.”
His stories are very eclectic and go beyond the borders of Wyoming. They contain the one common theme, they are outside the ordinary and many have fun twists that surprise both the viewer and Petersen himself.
“Hopefully it's something weird and not always paranormal,” he said. “I take the most interesting thing you can find and try to get as close to the truth as you can, and then cut it and edit it into a listenable format. My show doesn't generally have a lot of banter. It tends to be more like someone telling you a story.”
The Wyoming Twist
When possible, Petersen visits the actual locations in Wyoming that are featured in his stories.
“It's fun because if you go to visit the site of some of these legends, it's not all roped off and behind glass here in Wyoming,” he said.
The areas that Petersen explores are not always marked on a map, and he has to rely on locals to point him in the right direction.
“There were these lumberjacks killing themselves south of where my parents live,” he said. “Up in the Uinta mountains, there's a place called Suicide Park, and with a name like that, I asked them, ‘Hey, you know what happened?’”
His parents knew the story and Petersen learned that several lumberjacks had died at this particular spot, and at least one or two were suicides.
“There wasn't really much of a map or anything,” he said. “We got in my dad's truck and drove and drove through the mountains. Finally, we found the site, and there's one marker there.
“By and large, it's your adventure. It's not something that's been paved and explained away. It's kind of fresh history for you to check out personally.”
Petersen stresses the importance of getting out to experience the history for yourself in remote Wyoming areas rather than just reading or listening to the story itself.
“It has a special value when you are willing to get out of the office and go see something personally,” he said. “Even if there's not a lot there, to me, there's just that feeling of wanting to stand where someone else stood, of hearing the same sounds they might have heard, especially in Wyoming, where so much of it is undeveloped.
“If you go to a site where something happened 150 years ago out in the middle of nowhere, it probably hasn't changed much as opposed to if you lived in a more developed or built up area.”
If it’s wacky, wild or weird in Wyoming, Dean Peterson of Cheyenne is talking about it. Even the paranormal is fair game for his “That Doesn’t Happen Everyday” podcast. (Courtesy Dean Petersen) 
If it’s wacky, wild or weird in Wyoming, Dean Peterson of Cheyenne is talking about it. Even the paranormal is fair game for his “That Doesn’t Happen Everyday” podcast. Here he's working on a project with artist Robert Martinez. (Courtesy Dean Petersen) 
If it’s wacky, wild or weird in Wyoming, Dean Peterson of Cheyenne is talking about it. Even the paranormal is fair game for his “That Doesn’t Happen Everyday” podcast. (Courtesy Dean Petersen)
Finding The Stories
Petersen’s stories range from the modern to the historic. He relies on oral histories from the Wyoming State Archives and the American Heritage Center in Laramie for much of his unique, first-hand accounts.
“It’s amazing that someone had the foresight to sit down with someone and get a story from them, from people who recovered bodies from airplane crashes to a parapsychologist who worked at the University of Wyoming,” he said. “I have started to research interviews from UFO witnesses, and the guy who recorded them had a PhD but he was willing to go out on a limb as a psychologist and start to interview these people and found out many of their stories were credible.”
Petersen is constantly surprised — and delighted — by the stories he has managed to find and the people willing to talk to him.
“The most recent show was about a guy who had been a recon Marine, but now is an artist,” he said. “I just think it's funny because in the world of stereotypes and generalities, we don't usually think of Marines as artists or artists as Marines. It's not always about history, but it's almost always from Wyoming.”
Another advantage to exploring Wyoming stories is that Petersen has found people in the Cowboy State to be approachable and willing to talk about the strange.
“One time I emailed a Cheyenne gallery owner, Harvey Deselms, on Facebook,” he said. “Just out of the blue, I sent him a message on Facebook saying, ‘Hey, I heard the legend about dead bodies in the basement there. Could I interview you for my podcast?’”
The answer was yes.
“He was very matter of fact about what happened with the body,” Petersen said. “I want to make it clear that what happened there occurred before Harvey ever moved his art gallery into the building. In fact, I learned there were two different murders in his building, and one of the victims had been buried in the basement.”
As Petersen continues to dig around for stories, he has noticed that those in Wyoming tend to be pretty close to their history.
“History and culture are important to people in Wyoming, and it's not in an abstract way. I hear from people that my grandfather built that ranch or my grandmother taught at that one room schoolhouse, these kind of stories. It's very immediate and very close.”
A Family Adventure
Petersen is also creating his own Wyoming memories with his kids in tow.
“I've made them come on some of the adventures, and sometimes they're really not that into it, honestly,” he said. “What's fun, though, is that they do pay attention even when I don’t think they are. They know where one of their favorite podcasts took place and like to talk about it.”
Petersen took his kids to a ranch by Fort Fred Steele State Historic Site where a friend had told him about two really strange incidents.
“They had a bison that was mutilated,” he said. “There’s not a footprint or a tire track or anything around and they've also had some paranormal things that are just spooky happen there. Whenever I take the kids by there, they get excited and point it out.”
It’s this excitement for Wyoming’s odd stories that keeps Petersen searching for material for the next episode of “That Doesn’t Happen Everyday.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
