True Internet Horrors: Chip-Chan, Local 58, and The Plague Doctor

Gather round for three stories the internet found and couldn't put down. A DVD arrived in Sweden with no return address — on it, a figure in a plague doctor mask standing inside an abandoned psychiatric hospital where hundreds of people were executed. The audio carried photographs hidden in frequencies the human ear can't detect. In Seoul, a woman livestreamed herself 24 hours a day from a filth-filled apartment, claiming a corrupt police officer had implanted a chip in her ankle to control her sleep. Thousands watched. Nobody came. And somewhere in West Virginia, a public access TV station started broadcasting messages that didn't belong to it. The signal told you not to look at the moon. Then something reversed the signal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric Wargo is an anthropologist, science writer, and the author of five books on one of the most controversial ideas in modern science — that the future is already fixed, and that your brain knows more about it than you think. His work sits at the crossroads of physics, psychology, and the paranormal, drawing on everything from Einstein's relativity to Jung's scarab beetle to make a case that precognition is not only real but explainable through mainstream science. He spent years as an editorial director at one of the country's leading psychology organizations before a UFO sighting in 2009 sent him in a very different direction — and he never really looked back. You can find his writing at The Night Shirt and on Substack, and his books wherever books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A doctor walks into a trauma room and sees a dead woman floating above a dying man. He isn't the patient's physician. He just felt the pull to go in. That's how this story starts — and it gets stranger from there. Hundreds of nurses, doctors, and everyday people have reported witnessing something at the exact moment someone dies. Not near-death experiences. Something different. They were healthy, awake, and fully conscious. Some were thousands of miles away. Researchers have now collected over 800 of these cases. The patterns are nearly identical across cultures, ages, and belief systems — including committed atheists. What are they experiencing? And why have so many of them stayed silent for decades? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xauvaJ1kTBo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Avi Loeb is the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, a internationally bestselling author, and one of the most decorated astronomers alive. He earned his PhD in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at 24, led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative, and spent five years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton before joining Harvard. He has published over a thousand scientific papers, written nine books, and in 2025 was ranked third in publication record and research impact among all astronomers worldwide. TIME named him one of the 25 most influential people in space. As founder of the Galileo Project, Loeb is the only scientist of his standing conducting systematic, instrument-based research into extraterrestrial technology — and publishing every finding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opaMzW5E6o8&t=7s AVI LOEB SOURCES & LINKS https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorAviLoebhttps://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/https://avi-loeb.medium.com/https://open.spotify.com/show/1zhndXkvSY2b8FdjspFpCdhttps://x.com/ProfAviLoeb Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gather round for three missing persons cases that investigators, search teams, and forensic experts have never been able to explain. A medical student disappeared from a packed bar in Columbus, Ohio — a building covered in cameras, with one way in and one way out. Police confirmed he never left. The footage proves he entered. A family of three vanished from the Oklahoma mountains, leaving behind their dog, their cash, and a piece of security footage that still disturbs everyone who watches it. A nineteen-year-old called his father from the side of a dark road in Minnesota. They stayed on the phone for forty-seven minutes. Then one word — and the line went dead. No bodies recovered in two cases. No suspects charged in any of them. Three families left with open case files and no explanation that holds together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hugh Newman is an author, explorer, and ancient mysteries researcher who has spent over two decades investigating megalithic sites around the world. He is the founder of the Megalithomania Conference, now in its 20th year, which brings together academics, archaeologists, and independent researchers to examine ancient sites from multiple disciplines. He co-authored the book Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe: The World's First Megaliths and has written extensively on giants, earth grids, and ancient metrology. Hugh has conducted fieldwork at sites across Turkey, Egypt, Malta, Peru, and Britain, and regularly leads research tours to locations most people never get access to. He appears on Gaia's Ancient Civilizations series and runs the Megalithomania YouTube channel, where he documents new discoveries as they happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25q2-hP6NgU&t=1s HUGH NEWMAN SOURCES & LINKS Website: www.megalithomania.co.ukYoutube: www.youtube.com/MegalithomaniaUK Patreon: www.patreon.com/megalithomania Facebook: www.facebook.com/MegalithomaniaOfficial/ Instagram: megalithomania1, hughnewman1X: https://x.com/MEGALITHOMANIAMerchandise: https://megalithomania.dashery.comTours/Travel: www.megalithomania.co.uk/tours.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2010, someone posted a thought experiment on a philosophy forum. Within hours, people were having nightmares. The founder deleted it immediately — which only made it spread faster. The idea is simple and brutal: a future AI will look back through time and punish everyone who knew it was coming but did nothing to help. Now that you know, you're already in its crosshairs. What started as an internet curiosity grew into something far darker — a real community, real violence, and six people dead. This is the story of Roko's Basilisk: the idea you can't un-know, the cult it inspired, and why some of the most powerful people in AI still won't talk about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acJ7WfebEcc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Scott Wolter, a forensic geologist, has spent 25 years following a trail of physical evidence — rocks, runes, bones, and buried artifacts — that leads somewhere most historians refuse to go. It starts with a stone pulled from a Minnesota farm field in 1898 and ends with a sealed jar dug up from the Adirondack wilderness last August. What's inside connects the Knights Templar, the Founding Fathers, the Talpiot Tomb in Jerusalem, and a scroll that may be the most significant document ever recovered. Scott doesn't speculate. He brings receipts. And after 25 years of following this trail, he's ready to share what he found — and what it means for everything we think we know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4pT6PpCoQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1977, a soldier walked into a glowing mist in the Chilean mountains and returned fifteen minutes later with five days of stubble on his face.  A pilot flew 250 miles in 34 minutes through a luminous fog over the Bermuda Triangle. An RAF Commander looked down from his biplane and saw an airfield four years before it existed. Two families checked into a French hotel that vanished two weeks later — along with every photo they took inside it.  British researcher Jenny Randles spent decades collecting these cases and found they all share the same symptoms: silence, tingling, glowing mist, and broken time.  Her conclusion connects UFOs, ghosts, and alien abductions to one phenomenon.  The physics backs her up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLi5LOtzWBs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

James Fox is one of the most respected documentary filmmakers working in UFO research today. He got his start assisting his father conducting interviews for Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated, a foundation that shaped his instinct for rigorous, credible storytelling. Over three decades, Fox produced seven documentaries including the widely acclaimed The Phenomenon and Moment of Contact, and in 2017 organized what remains the most credible civilian UFO disclosure event in history, bringing fourteen military and government officials from seven countries to the National Press Club in Washington. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFxnFHhqtts&t=1s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices