Have you ever left your body, willingly or not? Astral projection has a long history, stretching from ancient religious texts and up through our current, quarantined imaginations. We humans desire to get out of ourselves from time to time, but when we do…where do we go? In this episode, we’ll head into the astral realm with the fascinating practice of accessing it.
Mind control –as a conspiracy and fear– has its long, questionable history in the United States. Starting in the 1950s in response to the Korean War and up through the LSD tests of the 1960s, the American government cooked up some experiments for the purpose of psychological manipulation. The top-secret CIA program MK Ultra spawned suspicion… as well as ideas that twisted themselves into a new conspiracy: The Monarch Project.
We're taking a break this week so here's an episode from our first season you may not have heard yet. There she lay face down on a beach towel, naked in the sand: handless, dead and with a mouth full of expensive dental work. In 1974, when a kid and her dog discovered the body of a young woman in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a mystery took off. Who was she? Well, she’s the Lady of the Dunes.
In the early hours of a June morning in 1997, 26-year-old Lori Ceci Bova stepped outside for a smoke break and never came back. She forgot her cigarettes, for one, and as the search for Lori unfolded more questions than answers emerged. Loved ones, police and bystanders took turns being cagey, and the abundance of psychic input on the case led everyone astray. When someone disappears truly without a trace –not a clue, suspect or body identified– how can the truth unearth itself?
Welcome to the magical world of Disney theme parks, where the huggable characters, glistening turkey legs and all around sparkle are a sheen over some dark secrets –which makes sense. Any place touting a policy of zero death on its grounds has to have some skeletons hidden away.
We're taking a break this week so here's an episode from our first season you may not have heard yet. We'll be back with a new episode next week! This is the story of a cook who refused to wash her hands and the health department that chased her around New York City in search of a stool sample. She’d end up alone on an island, but everyone knew her name. Here’s how Mary Mallon became Typhoid Mary.
Imagine surviving a freak accident and coming out the other side unrecognizable – not on the exterior, but inside. Where do our personalities live, and how can they shift drastically? In season one, we covered miraculous talents resulting from traumatic brain injury. On this episode, we’ll head to the dark side of personality change with the stories of Phineas Gage, Eadweard Muybridge and someone whose identity became the personae of whoever they were nearest.
Can you hear that? It’s like a car –idling in the distance– or a plane on a tarmac, with a tinge of oil crackling in a pan. Since the 1970s a mysterious sound has tormented communities across the globe and confounded those curious to find its source. With no recording of it in existence, and only 2 to 10 percent of affected area populations able to hear it, this hum is a sonic mystery for the ages that we’ll try to get to the bottom of in this episode.
In 1974, an article in a local paper turned the sleepy town of Stull, Kansas upside down. It was about an abandoned church and its surrounding cemetery. Accounts of cold brushes with spirits and theories on a stairway to hell drew the likes of rowdy college students and celebrities alike, including Kurt Cobain and Ariana Grande. But what’s more haunted: the places that fascinate us or the stories we spin about them?
The possibility of parallel universes has long been considered in science fiction, pop culture and even plain, old physics. Accounts of interdimensional travel stretch back to the 12th century and forward to the annals of reddit today. On this episode, we’ll parse through some of these stories about slipping out the other side.
Jack and Janet Smurl were your typical, civically engaged, small-town couple. That is, until they –and their four kids– moved into a haunted house in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Exploding appliances, strange sounds, violent events and a foul odor tortured the family inside while drawing onlookers and media outside. But was this craze the work of a demon or something more morally sinister?
The trial of teenage murderer Alice Mitchell was an all out spectacle. After killing her former lover Freda Ward in a crime of passion, no one seemed to believe her motivation –least of all her own defense team. She’d end up pleading present insanity under the counsel of men who couldn’t even begin to comprehend any deviation from the sexual and gendered norms of the late 19th century. In the second half of our pride series on Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward, we’ll cover what happened to Alice in ...
When 19-year-old Alice Mitchell jumped from a carriage and slit the throat of 17-year-old Freda Ward one fateful day in 1892, a rampant fascination over the drama soon followed. Alice loved Freda and killed her accordingly –to the crazed confusion of nearly everyone in Memphis, Tennessee and beyond. In the first half of our pride series, we’ll go over the story of their sapphic relationship, how it functioned in the American South during the Victorian era and how it unraveled to the point of tra...
The mythic metropolis of Atlantis has long been an object of our curiosity, but the search for where it was and who lived there has left its origin story underwater. On this episode, we’ll explore how this thought experiment about a fallen empire from the mind of Plato turn into a justification for grand projects of bigotry from eugenicists, pseudo-archeologists and –you guessed it– Nazis.
We're taking a break for the holiday so we wanted to feature an episode from our first season you may not have heard yet. We'll be back with a new episode next week! Columbus Ohio 2006, 1:15 am: 27-year-old medical student Brian Shaffer is seen on a surveillance camera walking into a bar with two friends. But he never comes back out. Somehow, in a bar packed with potential witnesses, Brian vanished into thin air seemingly INSIDE the bar. Then in New York city in 2011, 22-year-old Ian Burnet, vis...
When Neil Armstrong touched down and said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” he meant it, right? The 1969 moon landing was a long-awaited event that brought the world together and the United States across the Space Race finish line. But, as with any historic victory for powerful people in powerful governments, doubters soon followed. To this day, many still believe the Apollo 11 mission was a Hollywood hoax.
We left off in the ill-fated Dryden, NY with two high school cheerleaders missing and a town in mourning for years of tragedy under its belt. In the second half of this series on the “Village of the Damned,” we’ll go over the hunt for a murderer and the unfortunate string of deaths that followed. How did this decade of terror come to a conclusion? The end would be more bitter than sweet.
Dryden, New York is your typical, small town nestled among forestry, ponds and plains. But in the 1990s, that peace was disrupted by a string of events so tragic it was hard not to suspect a site-specific curse. Dryden would come to be known for a time as the “Village of the Damned,” and in Part 1 of this series we’ll trace the first half of this ominous decade there.
After former president Abraham Lincoln was shot dead at Ford’s Theatre, a manhunt for John Wilkes Booth ensued immediately. History tells us Booth was captured by Union soldiers on a farm in Virginia 12 days after the assassination, but contrarians to this story have been begging to differ even since. Did John Wilkes Booth escape after all? On this episode, we’ll explore alternative fates for the famed killer and the theories behind them.
The dream world is a mysterious place of delights, nightmares and lots and lots of memories. But what if we could control it? Many do by harnessing the skill and cultural fascination that is lucid dreaming. On this episode, we’ll explore the origins, possibilities and dangers of the practice.
What started as mysterious letters to a UFOlogist turned into a rumor straight out of science fiction. The USS Eldridge –a naval destroyer– undoubtedly existed, but how did it become the subject of alleged teleportation in a top secret government experiment? On this episode, we’ll traverse the murky waters of the story that brought The Philadelphia Experiment to life.
History’s most infamous serial killers had calling cards, from names and symbols to systems and strategies of predation. But the only thing tying together the story of Edward Wayne Edwards was his ability to resist definition. He was a robber and a self-proclaimed “reformed man.” He was a father and a Zodiac Killer enthusiast. He was a vocal opponent of crime while murderously slipping under the radar. To this day, it’s unclear all that he got away with.
The Berenstain Bears, Tony the Tiger’s blue nose and a ‘90s movie starring Sinbad as a genie have all come back to haunt us. What started off as confusion over Nelson Mandela’s death date has exploded over the years into mass mixups concerning the big and small. On this episode, we’ll dive head first into this global phenomenon that is the Mandela Effect.
Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... a humanoid, moth-like creature? The Mothman entered the scene of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966 and has fascinated our imaginations since. Here’s how an anomaly with glowing red eyes flew straight into the heart of this small town’s identity.
One of Georgia’s most popular tourist attractions is also the site of some dark history. From the bottom up, the manmade Lake Lanier holds everything from ghost town remnants, to bodies to monstrous catfish. The legends along its shores only add to that lore. On this episode, we’ll dive into one of the deadliest lakes in the United States.
This is the story of a cook who refused to wash her hands and the health department that chased her around New York City in search of a stool sample. She’d end up alone on an island, but everyone knew her name. Here’s how Mary Mallon became Typhoid Mary.
From their esoteric symbols to their elusive rituals & doings, secret societies control our curiosity. If we can’t join them, we can still poke around their stories. On this episode we’ll explore the origins of two of the most talked about groups in modern history and where they are today. What happens behind the curtain? Are you wary to find out? Welcome to the club.
There she lay facedown on a beach towel, naked in the sand: handless, dead and with a mouth full of expensive dental work. In 1974, when a kid and her dog discovered the body of a young woman in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a mystery took off. Who was she? Well, she’s The Lady of the Dunes.
In Part 2 of this series on the Stayners, we turn to Cary: the brother left to live through Steven’s disappearance and eventual return. After tragedy strikes Cary’s family multiple times, he heads down a dark and deadly road into the forests of Yosemite.
When 7-yr-old Steven Stayner was kidnapped, his family was shaken. And when 14-yr-old Steven returned home, life was still far from normal. How does trauma travel through a family? And what would come next? In these next two episodes, we’ll follow a pair of brothers on their diverging paths, starting with Steven.
