The White House: In all it’s glory, from the immaculately-kept gardens to the walls hung with priceless art, is an icon of American history and power. Home to every President since 1800, the White House is seen as a safe haven for the President and their family.
Not even the heavy iron fence that borders the grounds of the White House can keep dark magic from harming its inhabitants. A curse muttered on a bloodied battlefield in 1812 has left over a hundred years of President’s scared for their lives, but has the debt finally been paid?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
The History Goes Bump Podcast, Episode 162: The White House
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Deep within the heart of New Jersey lies an untamed swath of trees and brush, long believed to be the home of the Jersey Devil itself. A horrifying creature with the head of a goat and the wings of a bat, the legend of the Jersey Devil has haunted the Pine Barrens for generations.
Yet the Jersey Devil might not be the only degenerate creature lurking within the shadows of the Pines. What dark secrets does the Devil guard?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
Dogma and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Levi
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Who can forget the classic tale of the mad scientist who creates a gorgeously gruesome Creature, only to become frightened and disgusted by his own creation? Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is one of the most widely taught examples of Gothic literature, yet most readers don’t know the true story behind Shelley’s most famous work. Was Frankenstein really the product of a writing competition between friends while on summer vacation, as most people believe it to be, or was the story of the scientist and his Monster born out of a much darker mindset?
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Fairy tales often teach an important moral lesson, hidden within the entertaining twists and turns of the story. The tale of Bluebeard, the rich man who keeps the bodies of his murdered wives locked behind the forbidden doors of the dungeon in his castle, doomed to have his wrongdoing exposed by his newest wife, serves as a reminder to young women that curiosity can sometimes be your downfall -- or your savior. In real life there are rarely happy endings to tragedies and moral lessons must be learned the hard way.
For Zona Shue, choked to death in her own home, life was certainly no fairytale. Yet the strange events that led to a murder conviction were as fantastical as any tale written up in a storybook. The moral lesson in her twisted fairy tale?
Mothers are always right.
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
The Man Who Wanted Seven Wives by Katie Letcher Lyle, Quarrier Press 1999
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The time between three and four in the morning is said to be the hour when evil is at the height of it’s power -- the time when the Devil ascends from Hell and ghosts haunt the land of the living. In part two of my experience of the Devil’s hour inside Charleston’s Old City Jail, I receive a message from Hell itself, and discover the truth about one of the jail’s most famous prisoners -- Lavinia Fisher herself.
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
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Nestled inside Charleston, South Carolina lives a menacing stone monstrosity, often called the most haunted building in America -- The Old City Jail. The square upon which the Jail sits has been home to untold amounts of suffering and torture, making it the perfect breeding ground for the supernatural to take hold.
As part of my training and experience as a storyteller and tour guide, I have been visiting haunted locations for the past 19 years. There have been many times that I’ve been in the presence of people having a paranormal encounter, but I had never felt anything myself until the night I decided to enter the Old City Jail. This is part one of my experience, the story of a night that shook me to my very core.
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Resources:
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The railroad tracks over the Tsavo river are flanked on either side with lush grasses. A picturesque river runs below, providing a calming base for the trains that rush from Uganda to Kenya and back again. During it’s construction, men from all over India and far parts of Africa gathered at the Tsavo river, working for months on end. At first, the men were oblivious to the twin pairs of golden eyes stalking them from the grasses… until half-devoured bodies and screams in the night became commonplace.
From a distance, from a viewpoint high above the clouds, the Kenya-Uganda Railway snakes its way across deserts and through forests of thorns, trailing bloodshed and pain in its wake.
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Throughout history, disasters of astronomical proportions have taken place on one auspicious day -- Friday the Thirteenth. Shipwrecks, tsunamis, raging forest fires, brutal murderers, and horrifying accidents have all claimed victims on a day that many believe has been cursed since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The same serpent who tested the pair has become the dark figurehead of Friday the Thirteenth, feared by ancient cultures for centuries.
The fear of 13 seems like old suspicions that were born and died in ancient times, but as an asteroid headed straight for the Earth threatens to destroy civilization as we know it, the due date of Friday the Thirteenth might be more relevant than ever.
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
Friday the Thirteenth by Thomas William Lawson
“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe
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Underneath our world lies a twisting and complicated maze, a dark mass of underground caves, passageways, and secrets. In part two of our Labyrinth series, we delve into the explorations of Greg Newkirk into the heart of the Kentucky goblin mystery.
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
Secret Cipher of the UFONAUTS by Allen Greenfield
“As Above, So Below” Episode of Euphomet Podcast
Was 1950’s Hopkinsville, Kentucky, really home to a colony of extraterrestrial beings? And if so… have they finally made their return?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
Movies:
Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and the Occult
“Have the Kentucky Goblins Returned?” Article by Greg Newkirk
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The stories of Charleston, South Carolina are composed of a tangled web of dreams and memories. They’ve been passed through historians, artists, writers, and tour guides, twisting into a new shape with each retelling.
Deep within the historic city lies a graveyard. Cloaked in ivy and wildflowers, the cemetery is a tranquil spot for a walk and a popular sightseeing destination… as long as the sun is shining. In the dark of night, the graveyard belonging to the Unitarian Church of Charleston transforms from peaceful to terrifying, leaving late-night tour participants shrieking in fear at the ghostly woman lurking behind tombstones. Are the stories surrounding the graveyard’s mistress a true account of a pair of star-crossed lovers still searching for each other beyond the grave, or are they nothing but a spooky story to tell in the dark?
Where does fact begin and fiction end?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
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The city of dreams, the city that never sleeps, the city with streets paved with opportunities… for many of us, New York represents a glittering place where absolutely anything is possible. Yet for all its glamour and sparkle, there are dark secrets lurking within its shadows, and history has done little to wash away the blood that once soaked New York’s prosperous streets.
They say the population of New York City reaches nearly 8.5 million people. Does that count the haunted souls whose ghosts still roam the streets?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
“Beautiful Suicide” photograph of Evelyn McHale
Haunted Greenwich Village: Bohemian Banshee, Spooky Sites and Gonzalez Ghost Walks by Tom Ogden, published by Globe Pequot Press, 2012
“Gang of Ghosts Ready to Rumble” by William Grimes, New York Times article, published October 29, 1993
“Terror on 10th Street” by Tim Donnelly, New York Post article, October 28, 2012
Spindrift: Spray from a Psychic Sea by Jan Bryant Bartell
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The idyllic Fox Hollow Farm boasts of a basement-level swimming pool and sprawling acres of land. But all is not as it seems. A man creeps through the woods nearby, his legs transparent in the flashlight’s beam. There is an incessant knocking at the front door by hands unseen. Night swims in the pool end with ghostly fingers clenched tight around a throat.
For Joe Leblanc, Fox Hollow Farm was meant to be an escape from a long commute and skyrocketing rent. For the dozens of men buried on its grounds, Fox Hollow Farm had come to represent something much more sinister.
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Mysteries are a rarity in our world. What used to be unexplainable is now quickly answered by the modern marvels of technology and science. So when a new mystery appears, we drive ourselves crazy searching for an explanation, haunted by what we can’t explain.
One modern mystery is reasoning behind the strange events that took place on a Siberian mountain in 1959, in which a group of experienced hikers were found dead in bizarre circumstances. Since the day of the discovery, many have been tormented by one simple question: What happened on Dyatlov Pass?
Was it a Yeti, an avalanche, a top secret military test gone horribly wrong that killed the group? Or was it something simply incomprehensible to modern listeners– an ill-fated encounter with goddesses and myths of old?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
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Werewolves have been portrayed in folklore, books, movies and television for centuries. Rageful howls under the full moon. Fangs, claws, fur, muscle and legend. Is it a monster? A ghost or a demon? Is it real? Historic folk tales about werewolves often evoke images of crisp nights in dark ages of Europe. Yet in the United States, the state of Georgia has one of the longest histories of werewolf encounters in the country. This is the story of the Georgia Werewolf.
Personal accounts and anecdotes in modern times give us a glimpse of this creature, not yet verified by science. Small-town legends passed down since the 1800s led ghost-hunters to the local cemetery. Rumors swirled around a well-known farm and the unusual behavior of a young family member. What if the monster was not in the woods, but amongst us?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
Hunting the American Werewolf by Linda S. Godfrey - Amazon
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A haunted house should loom out of the darkness, its windows boarded up, ghosts and dust as the only occupants. But horror dwells inside two beautifully decorated homes in the Benedict Canyon of Beverly Hills. While its name means “heaven” in Spanish, 10050 Cielo Drive was nothing but Hell for the five victims brutally murdered by Charles Manson’s “Family” within its walls. Some say their spirits still haunt the area, having taken up residence in the nearby Oman House.
Two men, film director David Oman and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, have turned the blood-soaked history of Cielo Drive into a booming source of revenue. Both men show signs of struggling with their own inner demons – are the spirits still trapped within their homes disturbed and vengeful at the business created around their murders, or is it the morality of the situation haunting the living?
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Resources:
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Wear garlic around your neck. Carry a wooden stake. Hang a crucifix on the wall, and never, ever, open the door for Dracula.
The superstitions that were meant to protect our ancestors from vampires taught them the most important lesson of all: never invite a monster inside. Yet with the birth of Spiritualism in the 19th century came a rise in the belief that the dead harbor secret knowledge from the living, and inviting a monstrous spirit into your home became easier than ever.
The Ouija board, printed with letters and numbers, has entranced generations as a gateway between this world and the next. Groups gather around the board, hands touching the planchette, and hope to make contact with lost loved ones or benevolent guides with insight that only comes from beyond the grave.
But when you open the door into the darkness, you can’t control what may come slinking through. Murder, madness, and possession have haunted Ouija board users since its inception, but where does this evil really come from?
The spirit world? Or our own minds?
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Resources:
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Early 19th-century America was a time for the pioneer, the robust adventurer who leaves the familiarity of home in search of fortune and success. One such man was John Bell, a farmer who settled in Adams, Tennessee with his family and slaves. Their idyllic country life was soon disturbed after the youngest Bell child, Elizabeth, drew the attention of a sinister spirit. Strange creatures stalked the property as the sounds of clawing, choking, and banging haunted the Bell household, whose inhabitants demanded answers from the spirit who tormented them - “Who are you? What do you want?” Answers whispered from the walls around them as the spirit claimed to be a tormented soul, the resident of a disturbed grave, an immigrant, and finally -- a Witch.
John Bell died gasping in the night, the disembodied voice of the Bell Witch cackling as it told his horrified family that he had been poisoned by the spirit. As the centuries passed, the legend of the Bell family haunting has become twisted with age, leaving modern listeners with these final questions: Who killed John Bell? Was it a Witch?
Or someone much closer to home?
Episode Highlights:
Resources:
Enigmatic Anomalies Episode 5: The Bell Witch Haunting
An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch by M.V. Ingram
The Bell Witch: An American Haunting by Brent Monahan
Quotes/Tweets:
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“Women who lived on the margins of society, especially older women, had always lived with the possibility of being cast in the role of the witch”
“Whoever this was, whatever this was, it wanted John Bell dead”
“It is killing me by slow tortures and I fear the end is nigh”
“Like any good mystery, the killer may be the person you would least suspect”
“We know that there was a voice whispering in the dark, but the question remains - whose voice?”
Everyone knows the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The young child in her bright red cloak who gets lost in the forest, only to be preyed upon and devoured by the big bad wolf. Red Riding Hood is freed from her fate by a passing Huntsman, who slaughters the In the time when fairy tales served more to caution than to entertain, Little Red Riding Hood was a warning to always follow the marked path, listen to your elders, and never talk to strangers.
The sad, strange story of Elisa Lam mirrors the familiar fairy tale -- except in this version, the lost little girl has no Huntsman to come to her rescue and perishes in the belly of the beast of Los Angeles. But who, exactly, is the beast? Is it the ill-fated hotel? A murderous stranger?
Elisa herself?
Episode Highlights: