DAY 13: Vlad the Impaler - The Real Dracula (ShortHand’s 13 Days of Halloween)

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--To round off our month of spooky eps, our Halloween ShortHand covers the life and afterlife of one of the most sinister, blood-thirstiest bastards in all of human history: Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Vlad Dracula.We dig into the legends surrounding the savage ruler – including an al fresco lunch among hundreds of thousands of twitching, impaled enemies – and see how they tie into the modern, blood-sucking vampire legend. Happy Halloween…Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For our second Halloween special we’ve teamed up with I Could Murder A Podcast for a super-spooky fancy dress edition of RedHaunted recorded in a magician’s house. So, join us by the hearth for tales of faceless ghosts, disappearing babies, and “wet maps of Africa” on the front of a man’s trousers.For the full spooktacular experience, head to youtube.com/@redhandedthepod from the 30th of October.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--The dead live among us: walking, talking corpses who appear normal, but are rotting from the inside out. Or at least, that’s what sufferers of Cotard’s syndrome will have you believe.Cotard’s is a rare condition in which the affected (and very much alive) person is certain that they are already dead and decaying, with their blood frozen in their veins. The delusion is so great that some stop eating, and starve to death. Here’s the ShortHand.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--With great esoteric power, comes great esoteric responsibility.Aleister Crowley was considered many things, a poet, an artist, a master of the dark arts, and a prophet of Thelma. But who was the man behind the mask? And how did he go from being a leading figure and social commentator to dying in relative obscurity?Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The great literary pantheon of horror would be nothing without the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. His life was every bit as dark and melancholy as all his best writing. And as for his death? Fittingly for the inventor of the mystery novel, it’s shrouded in secrets…Found in a Baltimore pub, wearing someone else’s clothes, Poe was rushed to hospital – where he hallucinated and screamed incoherently for days, then died before he could say a word of explanation. We take a look at Poe’s greatest mystery of all.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--In 2013, horror blockbuster The Conjuring packed out cinemas worldwide, terrifying moviegoers with its alleged ‘true story’ of a house haunted by malevolent demons. But the real truth behind the tale is far sketchier than we might think – with marital discord, pissed-off neighbours, and a ghost-busting power couple spearheading a very unfair smear campaign against a 19th century farmer’s wife. This is the ShortHand.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--A fire has been raging under the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, for more than 60 years – and it’s nowhere near done.After the vast underground coal deposits under the former mining town caught alight, sinkholes in the road opened up into flaming pits, billowing thick smoke through town. Toxic fumes seeped up through the floorboards and poisoned people in their homes. And in the town’s cemeteries, the flames even reached up from below and swallowed up the dead themselves…Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--For almost as long as we’ve made films, we’ve made horror films – but what happens when the terror isn’t just on screen? Movie-making lore is riddled with stories of bizarre accidents on set, creepy coincidences and even murders, all of which can give rise to cult followings and, in some cases, rumours of a curse over the whole production. From Indian ghosts to demonic hauntings, we run through a ShortHanded historical horror archive and investigate whether these sinister events were the result of supernatural curses, coincidence or just bloody good PR. Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.--For over a thousand years, witches were believed to be local soothsayers who used their powers for everyday charms and spells. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe was suddenly gripped by a new idea: that witches were part of an organised demonic network, plotting with the devil himself to cloud the whole world in evil.And to stop the armies of darkness, more than 200,000 people were executed across Europe for the crime of witchcraft.In the first half of our two-parter on Europe's witch hunters, H&S look at how it grew into a state-sanctioned frenzy, why it lasted for over 200 years, and some of the more gruesome torture methods they used to extract confessions...In part two, we take a look at how the insanity spread to the UK thanks to a paranoid new king and a 19-year-old, self-styled Witchfinder General. Plus: what really goes down at a witches’ sabbath, and why did women make up 90% of the thousands killed?Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For our first of two Halloween specials we set off on a spooky adventure ghost hunting with Ghost Huns at Clophill, allegedly the one of the most haunted and evil locations in the UK. Today we’re going to tell you the dark history of Britain’s most horrifying church, including satanic rituals, and the local priest driving around with a dead woman’s bones in the back of his car. Watch the full video of our freaky frolics here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJhcUcFOCLMExclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.