Do you believe in ghosts? How about demons? Join us to learn how many believe and who they are.
Episode 176 - The Great Amherst Haunting
Canada’s most famous ghost story centers on a traumatized teen and the malevolent spirits that haunted her. For Esther Cox, strange noises would escalate to burning skin, a swollen body, mysterious fires, thunderous booming sounds, and the occasional flying knife.
Episode 175 - Slender Man
He is tall, he is slender, he is dark, and, for two teenage girls in Wisconsin, he was an inspiration for evil. He is Slender Man.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/us/milwaukee-suburb-tries-to-cope-with-slender-man-stabbing.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/movies/slender-man-timeline.html
A documentary film on the incident called Beware the Slenderman, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, HBO Films 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_Man
Weird Bit 26 - The Island of Lost Dolls
In the urban jungle of Mexico City is a quiet lake with an unspoiled island. There a man found a girl drowned on the shore. When he found her doll in the lake days later, he honored her in the spookiest way imaginable.
Episode 174 - Beware the Bunny Man
If you see a dim light in the forest near the bridge over Colchester Road, it’s already too late. The Bunny Man Killer, axe in hand, has been dispatching the curious since 1904 and he almost never leaves survivors. Almost…
Episode 173 - Mowgli's Palace - The Scariest Place on Earth
Spooky 2020 Halloween Episode #1
Mowgli’s Palace was going to be the next great Disney theme park - until they abandoned it at the last minute. Years later, an intrepid urban explorer who didn’t think to bring a flashlight, cell phone or common sense found out why…
Weird Bit 25 - Cry Baby Bridges
They dot the landscape of America - lonely bridges where unspeakable things happened and the only reminder of them is the cry of a ghostly child.
Sources:
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/crybaby bridge
www.theoccultmuseum.com
www.ranker.com/list/crybabybridgebackstory/christopherschultz
www.blairwitch.fandom.com/crybaby bridge
Episode 172 - Mokele-Mbembe: The Dinosaur That Won't Die
Is there a living dinosaur hidden in the wilds of Central Africa? One that stops rivers and kills unwary canoeists for sport? Meet the mokele-mbembe, sole exhibit of a real life Jurassic Park.
Episode 171 - Lost in Knoxville: The Blair Adams Murder Mystery
Blair Adams fled Canada with a ticket to Germany, rerouted to Washington, D.C. and drove to Knoxville, Tennessee, a city he had never seen. He said someone was chasing him. His friends and family thought he was having a breakdown. Then they found Blair in a parking lot, murdered.
Sources:
Episode 170 - Satanic Panic - When the Devil Made You Do It and You Didn't Even Know It
The Devil made Paul Ingram do it and he didn’t even know it. Terrible things, wicked things, and he took the rap and went to prison on his own confession. But did Paul Ingram really do any of those terrible things?
DISCLAIMER for descriptions of sexual and satanic ritual abuse. This episode is not for young listeners.
Sources:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_ingra.htm
https://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2015/05/24/an-historic-exaggeration-in-the-new-yorker/
https://www.newsweek.com/speaking-devil-186852
http://justicedenied.org/paul.htm
https://peoplepill.com/people/paul-ingram-1/
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-debate-over-recovered-memories-2330516
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/12_1/mcnally.cfm
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/sep/23/inside-case-of-repressed-memory-nicole-kluemper
Episode 169 - The Absurd Search for the Lost City of Timbuktu
Alexander Gordon Laing had that confident swagger of every European colonialist who went stomping into some new land to civilize and bleed it. So why shouldn’t he cross the entire Sahara Desert to find a lost city in the middle of Africa?
Sources:
The Mammoth Book of Losers by Karl Shaw
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alexander_Gordon_Laing
http://greatbritishnutters.blogspot.com/2008/08/alexander-gordon-laing-mission-to.html
https://www.thenational.scot/news/17316509.a-scottish-explorer-who-made-his-mark-on-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Timbuktu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gordon_Laing
Stupid Questions Coming Soon
Coming soon to a podcast app near you, Stupid Questions, brought to you by the people behind the Weird World podcast (us). This is just a little announcement and some info about the new podcast. We hope you'll listen to it and keep listening to us on Weird World.
Episode 168 - The Patterson-Gimlin Film: 60 Seconds of Swinging Sasquatch Part 2
In Part 2 of the Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot film we explore what may have been the origin and intent of the film. It may have been a n idea so crazy it actually worked.
Weird Bit 24 - The Wayfair Conspiracy
Was Wayfair selling young girls in high priced, ugly cabinets? Or young boys stuffed into $9,999 Zodiac pillows? Doesn’t sound possible, yet many people came across the products listed on the website and leapt to those logical conclusions, and found all the evidence online they needed to back it up.
Sources:
Kids Shipped in Armoires? The Person Who Started the Wayfair Conspiracy Speaks
By Andrew Whalen On 7/10/20 at 12:37 PM ED
https://www.newsweek.com/wayfair-child-trafficking-conspiracy-theory-cabinets-scandal-1517013
Wayfair: The false conspiracy about a furniture firm and child trafficking
By Marianna Spring Specialist disinformation reporter, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53416247
Is Wayfair Trafficking Children Via Overpriced Items? By Dan Evon Published 10 July 2020 Updated 15 July 2020
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wayfair-trafficking-children/
Episode 167 - The Patterson-Gimlin Film: 60 Seconds of Swinging Sasquatch Part 1
It is at least the second most famous amateur film ever taken. That iconic look back from a massive hairy bi-ped in the California forest. Was it incontrovertible proof of a living Bigfoot? Or was it a man in a monkey suit? Let’s decide.
Episode 166 - The Weird World About A Weird World
Ruth kept her kids in suspense all their lives. There were the sudden moves across the country, the surprise camping trips, the strange demands. Then one day she told them the truth. The very weird truth.
Sources:
“The Story of a Weird World I Was Warned Never To Tell,” by Sarah McDermott, BBC World Service https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-42951788
“Childhood on the Run”, by Tim Lewis
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/may/13/my-childhood-on-the-run-memoir-run-hide-repeat
Run, Hide, Repeat by Pauline Dakin
Episode 165 - The Swamp Sisters
It was Grey Gardens meets Crocodile Dundee. It was two aging sisters enduing an increasingly awful existence amid decaying splendor - until one of them died and the other disappeared.
Sources:
The Peculiar World of Margaret Clement, by Annie O'Riley, April 28, 2014
https://www.oddhistory.com.au/gippsland/the-peculiar-world-of-margaret-clement/
https://www.historicmysteries.com/lady-of-the-swamp/
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/from-riches-to-rags-then-death-the-mystery-of-gippslands-lady-of-the-swamp-margaret-clement-and-the-footballer-suspected-of-her-murder/news-story/1f5a96486e3834124dc65187984da2d1
Episode 164 - The Alien Autopsy Film
There may be more recent pretenders, but there is only one real alien autopsy film, and when Fox TV aired it in 1995 it caused a sensation. We bring you the wild ride of how the film came to be, what people thought about it, and why Fox kept blurring out those alien naughty bits.
Episode 163 - Phineas Gage: The Man With Too Many Holes In His Head
Three feet seven inches. That’s 1.09 meters. That was the size of the iron rod that pierced Phineas Gage’s head. But why take our word for it? Take his. Because, massive hole in his head or not, Phineas lived to tell.
Episode 162 - What Happened to Brittany?
Brittany Murphy was the bright young star of Hollywood - until she met Simon Monjack. A few years later Brittany was dead at 32 of… pneumonia and anemia? That was odd. But when Simon died a few months later - of pneumonia and anemia - that was weird.