The Strange and Unusual Podcast

From Bloody Mary to the Midnight Game, we explore the eerie histories, unsettling rules, and reported experiences behind games best left unplayed after dark. Turn down the lights, just don’t invite anything in.

Sources

• Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board: Samuel Pepys’s diary entry for July 31, 1665⁠, recording Mr. Brisband’s account of a similar lifting demonstration.
• Bloody Mary: Alan Dundes, “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety”⁠, Western Folklore (1998).
• Mirror illusions: Giovanni B. Caputo, “Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion”⁠, Perception (2010).
• One Hundred Ghost Stories: Zack Davisson’s translation of “On Cutting a Spider’s Leg During a Game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai,”⁠ from Tonoigusa.
• Ouija and The Exorcist: Saint Louis University, “SLU Legends and Lore: The 1949 St. Louis Exorcism.”⁠
• Ouija and unconscious movement: Hélène Gauchou, Ronald Rensink, and Sidney Fels, “Expression of nonconscious knowledge via ideomotor actions”⁠, Consciousness and Cognition (2012).
• Charlie Charlie: Lucia Peters, “The Most Dangerous Games: Charlie Charlie,”⁠ The Ghost in My Machine.
• The Elevator Game: Lucia Peters, “On the Elevator Game: The History of a Modern Urban Legend and Its Real-Life Connections & Consequences.”⁠
• Hide-and-Seek Alone: Lucia Peters, “One-Man Hide and Seek (Hitori Kakurenbo).”⁠
• Three Kings: FableForge’s original Reddit post, “Please don’t actually try this.”⁠
• The Midnight Game: Lucia Peters, “The Most Dangerous Games: The Midnight Game,”⁠ including discussion of its traceable online history.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For centuries, Britain's dead traveled ancient paths to reach their final resting places. In this episode, we follow the forgotten corpse roads and the eerie folklore they left behind.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For 300 years, Europeans ate human beings as medicine, with mummy powder, skull, the fat of the executed, and bought it over the counter from licensed apothecaries. During those same centuries, they were building an empire on the argument that the people they conquered were savages, because savages eat other people

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This summer's woods tradition continues, in this episode we're heading into the Pacific Northwest. You'll learn about a mountain that grew a monster after it erupted, a lake that gave up its dead, a giant with a basket on her back, and the same rule they have three thousand miles away in Appalachia: if the woods call your name, don’t answer.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A companion to the Appalachian woods episode: ten strange, eerie, and true things lurking in the forests of New England.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There’s an old rule in the Appalachian Mountains, if you hear your name called from the woods, don’t answer. This week, we’re delving into the hills to find out why. We cover folklore from a 200-year-old Tennessee haunting that killed a man, to a 10-foot creature that emerged in West Virginia in 1952, to the thing in the trees that learns your voice.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Join Alyson for a work of folk horror fiction she wrote in honor of the new spring season. In this episode, we follow Fiona, who has gone to the village of Eldergrove after the death of her aunt, to claim her inheritance of Aunt Erin's cottage. However, this inheritance came with an obligation that Fiona never saw coming.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In 1895 Ireland, Bridget Cleary was killed by those who believed she had been replaced by a fairy changeling. In this episode we explore the eerie folklore of the Aos Sí, the fear that fueled her murder, and how superstition turned deadly in modern Ireland.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
for information about our collection and use of personal data for
advertising.

In this episode, we examine the haunting true story of the Radium Girls, the young women in the early 20th century hired to paint luminous watch dials with radium-laced paint. Believing their employers' assurances that their work was safe , these dial painters were unknowingly exposed to toxic radiation. We'll go through their devastating health consequences, including a condition later called “radium jaw” .

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the monstrous Yule Cat of Iceland to the cannibal Wendigo of North America, in this episode I explore seven eerie winter legends from around the world. You’ll meet Japan’s ghostly Yuki-Onna, China’s New Year beast Nian, Greece’s chaotic Kallikantzaroi, the rhyming ghost-horse Mari Lwyd of Wales, and the shape-shifting Ijiraq of the Arctic. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
for information about our collection and use of personal data for
advertising.

Between garlands of garlic on doorways, wolves finding their voice in the dark, and the undead rising from their graves, Romania’s celebration of St. Andrew’s Eve (November 29th-30th) blurs the line between the living and the dead. Join Alyson in exploring this magical and uncanny Romanian holiday.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On All Hallows’ Eve, the veil thins and the folklore gets...fun. In this episode, I count down 10 strange superstitions, from turnip jack-o’-lanterns and mirror magic to dumb suppers, bat omens, and haunted crossroads. Light a candle and let's begin!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From whispered charms and buried witch bottles to torture chambers and Salem’s gallows, this episode of The Strange and Unusual Podcast traces the haunting story of the witch as healer, heretic, and scapegoat. I explore the folklore, the fear, and the witch hunts of Pendle, Würzburg, Bamberg, and Salem. Through historical accounts and chilling firsthand testimonies, in this episode I go into how ordinary people became legends, monsters, and martyrs, including my own ancestor, Elizabeth Howe.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode we trace the vampire’s long, shadowy journey, from 18th-century graveyard panics and Slavic strigoi to the seductive aristocrats of Gothic fiction and the conflicted immortals of modern pop culture. We also will go into how the myth evolves on screen, from Nosferatu and Bela Lugosi to Anne Rice, Buffy, and beyond. We explore why the vampire keeps returning to embody everything we fear (and secretly crave): mortality, contagion, seduction, power, and immortality.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we head back to school, but not the way you remember it. From abandoned high schools and haunted classrooms to urban legends whispered in bathrooms and tragedies that linger in lecture halls, autumn brings with it eerie campus lore.

We’ll uncover chilling, and often sad, tragic tales from New Jersey, Texas, Africa, Cambodia, and Mexico. These are the stories that blur the line between history and folklore, fact and nightmare.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For this episode we're exploring harvest folklore throughout the world, and how it connects to the genre of folk horror. From the sunlit dread of Lady Midday stalking the fields of Eastern Europe to the vengeful rice paddy ghosts of Japan, nearly every farming culture told tales of spirits among the grain. We’ll wander those stubbled fields and deserted farms, listening for the whispers of harvest-time spirits: the Harvest Watchers and Field Spirits that people once believed lurked within the furrows.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we'll explore the folklore of the night, from the Sandman to Sleep Paralysis demons, and more. We'll get into the history of the lore, the scientific studies, and how these creatures manifest around the world.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we dig into the topic of urban legends come to life, These are legends that either others have actually brought to life and urban legends that are surprisingly based on fact. These legends include: The Bunny Man, Cropsey, Hook man, Slender Man, Polybius, The Babysitter Murder, Body in the Bed, Charlie No Face, and Laced Halloween Candy.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Join me on this summer road trip to some of the world's creepiest abandoned amusement parks. Our stops include: Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, Pripyat, Ukraine, Land of Oz, Gulliver’s Kingdom. And Honorable Mentions: Berlin’s Spreepark, Diversiones Grano de Oro, Western Village.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode in the Haunted Waters series, we explore ghost ships from around the world, which include The Carroll A. Deering, The Mary Celeste, The Flying Dutchman, El Caleuche, S.S. Valencia, The Baychimo, Eliza Battle, and MV Joyita

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.