Episodes

The Axeman of New Orleans broke into homes, attacked families with their own tools, and sent a letter promising to spare anyone playing jazz on a designated night. From 1918 into 1919, a series of brutal assaults spread fear through New Orleans and nearby Gretna. Many victims were Italian grocers or members of their households, including Joseph and Catherine Maggio, Louis Besumer and Harriet Lowe, Joseph Romano, the Cortimiglia family, Steve Boca, Sarah Laumann, and Mike Pepitone. Entry was oft...

Captain MacWhirr drives the steamer Nan-Shan directly into a catastrophic China Seas typhoon, trapping crew and human cargo inside the storm. MacWhirr is a stubborn, literal-minded commander who trusts his ship and refuses to dramatize the weather. As pressure falls and warnings mount, he chooses not to alter course. The sea soon overwhelms the decks, cargo breaks loose, and the vessel becomes almost impossible to control. Below, frightened passengers and their possessions are thrown together i...

Edgar Allan Poe’s Never Bet the Devil Your Head turns Toby Dammit’s favorite expression into a literal bargain in a grotesque satire of moral storytelling. Toby Dammit is argumentative, impulsive, and constitutionally unable to resist a wager. While crossing a gloomy covered bridge with the narrator, he accepts a challenge from a mysterious old man and attempts an impossible leap. What begins as comic bravado becomes a grotesque lesson in literal consequences, with a hidden obstacle, a missing ...

Arial Mirren and Carter Cross’s first date leads them into the haunted Carnovasch Estate, where a child ghost asks them to uncover a sealed tomb. Their relationship has changed after Arial’s break with her mother and move into the Donnerly home. Carter no longer reacts to her provocations the way he once did, and the longtime rivals finally acknowledge the attraction beneath their arguments. An evening together should let them discover whether that connection can survive outside a crisis. Inst...

The Poltergeist film series became surrounded by stories of a curse after real-life deaths, production accidents, and the revelation that human skeletons were used on screen. Terrifying & True begins with the 1982 haunted-house classic directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Steven Spielberg, then follows the tragedies most often cited by believers. Dominique Dunne, who played Dana Freeling, was killed by her former boyfriend shortly after the first film’s release. Heather O’Rourke, the young a...

Ella murders her controlling mother-in-law and hides the body beneath the basement, but the dead woman refuses to stop knocking. Newly married to Jay, Ella enters a house where everything still belongs to “Ma”—the property, car, garden, money, and emotional claim on her son. Resentment grows until Ella lures the older woman into the basement, points her toward an uncovered well beneath the building, and pushes her into the darkness. When Jay returns, Ella calmly claims his mother went out and n...

Five horror stories awaken an ancient forest monster, a plague god, living scripture, a child-eating witch, and a cruel wish-granting ifrit. Joe Solmo’s “Ol’ Bones” follows a northern New York hunting family that leaves its first kill beyond the creek for the enormous creature guarding forbidden woods. David O’Hanlon’s “The Last Days of Jimmy Flavor” gives broke addict Flavio Jimenez a criminal persona and a Vatican-backed heist targeting a grimoire stolen by a cult devoted to Jarri, an ancient...

Four teenagers sneak into Richardson’s Lake after sundown, where a seven-foot aquatic creature hunts anyone who breaks the swimming hole’s only rule. The Warrenville, South Carolina attraction has been run by the Richardson family since the 1950s. Sally Richardson collects cash by day and strictly forbids swimming after sunset. Cecil Dalton, Billy Frost, Angie Renew, and Mandy Hudson ignore the warning, slip through a broken fence, and bring beer and floats to the dark water under a full moon. ...

Bigfoot murder, ghostly intruders, and the legend of the Lake Champlain Monster lead this Monthly Spooky crypt conversation. A reported attempt to feed a friend to Bigfoot turns cryptid belief into an alleged human crime. Ghostly intruders bring the fear inside the home, eating insects supplies a more physical challenge, and the Lake Champlain segment follows Champ through the sightings and regional identity that keep the lake-monster legend alive. Those subjects give the episode an unusually ...

In 1830s England, resurrection men rob fresh graves for medical schools—and discover that murder can supply bodies faster than digging. Before the Anatomy Act of 1832, British surgeons had far fewer legal cadavers than teaching demanded. Reputable doctors purchased corpses and avoided questions, creating a criminal market for body snatchers. The real Burke and Hare scandal demonstrated how quickly grave robbery could become serial murder when sixteen victims were sold to Dr. Robert Knox in Edin...

A Dark Web gamer enters Hellweaver, a virtual-reality death match where every kill earns cryptocurrency and losing means dying outside the game. Known online as HornyBabe-6969, the unnamed beta tester has spent two years building her character in a ruined virtual Strickfield. Developer and boyfriend Ajaxis supplied hardware far beyond commercial VR and confirmed the game’s defining rule: when an avatar dies, so does the player’s physical body. She embraces the risk, defeats high-level opponents...

The Somerton Man now has a probable name—Carl “Charles” Webb—but the Tamám Shud code, his death, and his reason for being on an Adelaide beach remain unsettled. On December 1, 1948, a well-dressed man was found dead against the seawall at Somerton Beach. He carried no identification, labels had been removed from his clothing, and his fingerprints and dental records produced no match. Investigators later found a suitcase at the railway station and a tiny scrap torn from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khay...

Career criminal Gus Miller steals a dead man’s identity to reach a blind uncle’s safe and the half-million-dollar inheritance inside. Tom Reed meets Miller on the road and offers him an audacious proposition. Reed must collect money from his estranged uncle Walter at White Oaks, the family’s gloomy Pacific Coast estate, but a bad heart may prevent him from completing the trip. When Reed dies in the car, Miller changes clothes with the corpse and arrives during an electrical storm pretending to ...

Henrique and David are back with an 80s Slasher classic that isn't what you expect at all! This week, we find our hosts in British Columbia where nine college students staying at a friend's remote island mansion begin to fall victim to an unseen murderer over the April Fool's Day weekend, but nothing is as it seems in 1986's "April Fool's Day" ! Directed by Fred Walton and starring Deborah Foreman, Griffin O'Neal, and Tom Wilson. Hear our hosts discuss what makes this a cozy Horror film, how th...

Two lifelong friends climb and camp deep in the woods, only to discover that an enormous dog-snouted creature is stalking their fire from just beyond the trees. Adrian and the narrator expect a quiet backwoods adventure near a cliff. Instead, an eight-foot, hair-covered beast begins circling the campsite, testing their defenses, and forcing them into a fight neither understands. When Adrian is injured and later disappears from a climbing rope, the search leads halfway down the cliff to a hidden...

A murdered man, cryptic notes, and a fictional victim called “Liquid Matthew” collided in Hialeah, Florida, creating a true-crime mystery stranger than its nickname. On December 6, 1983, two joggers found Francisco Patiño Gutiérrez dead in a parking area. Heavy rain complicated the scene and threatened to wash away evidence. Then investigators discovered a sealed note attached to a nearby “No Dumping” sign. Its rhyming instructions appeared to promise a trail of clues, another victim, and a hor...

A writer hiding at a Chesapeake Bay lighthouse sees a gigantic smile in the sky—and believes the impossible face is draining away his life. Bill Fenchurch has separated from his wife Grace and retreated to Lighthouse Point, where his retired sea-captain uncle Wilbur tends the light. Bill’s letter asks Grace to come quickly because he believes he is dying. When she arrives by boat, she is shocked by his physical decline and by his insistence that a vast, bodiless smile is watching from beyond th...

The snow is falling & it’s cold outside, so join Henrique & Dave who are kicking off their Winter Watching Favorites List with an undiscovered film that Hitchcock never directed but it sure feels like he did. A struggling actress accepts an audition...

Sheila Baker meets elderly Otis Thornton aboard Delta Flight 752, where his tragic family story leads toward a plane crash that refuses to end. Flying from Atlanta to Seattle, Sheila expects little more than an uncomfortable economy seat. Instead, the kind stranger beside her recounts his life with his beloved wife Ella, their daughter Marilyn, and their lost son, little Otis. His memories of grief, guilt, and choices made to protect his family become increasingly vivid as the Boeing 757 encoun...

Six members of the Robison family were murdered inside a Lake Michigan cottage in 1968, leaving Good Hart with a case many investigators believed they solved—but never proved in court. Richard and Shirley Robison had brought their four children—Richie, Gary, Randy, and Susan—to Summerset, their seasonal cottage at Blisswood Resort. They were killed on June 25, but the secluded home was not entered until July 22, after neighbors reported a terrible odor. Investigators found evidence of a .22-cal...

A young woman rebuilds the same sandcastle every day on the beach where her two-year-old brother drowned ten years earlier. Jeremy Denham is a retired teacher and recent widower who turns to birdwatching after losing his wife. At an island sanctuary, he meets Maureen Hart building an elaborate castle with turrets, battlements, and a moat. She returns to the same place day after day but never adds a flag. Her ritual intrigues both Jeremy and Ralph Poole, the sanctuary’s poet caretaker. Maureen’...

Five journeys into the 1880s combine the Ashland Massacre, Calamity Jane battling Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe, and an undead gunslinger. The opening nonfiction account examines Kentucky’s 1881 Ashland Tragedy: the murders of children Fanny and Robert Gibbons and Emma Thomas, the prosecution of George Ellis, Ellis Craft, and William Neal, and the mob violence and disputed evidence that followed. The episode treats the case as a historical crime with contested guilt, not a solved legend. John Oak D...

Bullied teenager Richie Horton receives a mysterious diary that makes whatever he writes come true—but every fulfilled wish arrives warped and dangerous. The journal from Tinker’s first seems like a private place for Richie to imagine a better life without school bully Irving “Bull” Hitzigger. Then his hopes begin reshaping reality. Bailey Downs becomes violently obsessed with him, people around Richie change without understanding why, and an ordinary teenage fantasy escalates toward a knife at...

Two Houston-area women named Mary Morris were murdered four days apart in October 2000, creating a true-crime mystery built around coincidence, possible mistaken identity, and two families without answers. Mary Lou Morris, a 48-year-old bank employee, disappeared on her way to work. Her burned vehicle and remains were found near her home, while her purse and wedding ring were missing. Investigators could establish little about how she was killed or why someone with no known enemies would be tar...