Troy Taylor: There’s a story about a phantom riverboat that I always liked, about how if you heard the riverboat whistle blow on a foggy morning but you never saw the boat, that meant that someone who worked down on the docks was going to die within the next seven days.

Amanda McGowan: A lot of old waterfront towns really play up the quaint and cutesy factor, you know, with a brunch cruise on a steamboat or something like that. But in Alton, Illinois, the vibe is a little bit more Widow’s Bay.

Troy: Now, I don’t know how this story got started. There are rumors that it got started because of a riverboat that disappeared one year, but nobody knows for sure.

Amanda: It makes sense. Alton is on the Mississippi River, which was the lifeblood of the city for much of its history. But the Mississippi is pretty unpredictable and it was often dangerous. Shipwrecks were really common.…