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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.