Pleasing Terrors (Mike Brown)

This a story about the Titanic, Victorian sex trafficking and a mummy's curse.

The stories of Charleston, South Carolina are composed of a tangled web of dreams and memories. They’ve been passed through historians, artists, writers, and tour guides, twisting into a new shape with each retelling.

Deep within the historic city lies a graveyard. Cloaked in ivy and wildflowers, the cemetery is a tranquil spot for a walk and a popular sightseeing destination… as long as the sun is shining. In the dark of night, the graveyard belonging to the Unitarian Church of Charleston transforms from peaceful to terrifying, leaving late-night tour participants shrieking in fear at the ghostly woman lurking behind tombstones. Are the stories surrounding the graveyard’s mistress a true account of a pair of star-crossed lovers still searching for each other beyond the grave, or are they nothing but a spooky story to tell in the dark?

Where does fact begin and fiction end?

Episode Highlights:

• Mike Brown’s graveyard
• The history of Charleston, South Carolina
• Ghostly residents of King and Queens Street
• The curse of King’s Street Gate at the Unitarian Church of South Carolina
• A scream in the graveyard
• What is folklore?
• Life and times of Edgar Perry
• Star-crossed lovers
• Annabel Lee
• Folklore, facts, and fiction

Resources:

• Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston by John Bennett
• The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe
• Kingdom By the Sea, Mark Robert. Jones, East Atlantic Publishing, 2013
• The Journal of English and Germanic Philoligy. Vol 21, No. 2 (April, 1922) Robert Adger Law
• Southern Cultures Vol. 22, No. 2 Summerville 2016 Scott Peeples and Michelle Van Parys

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

The railroad tracks over the Tsavo river are flanked on either side with lush grasses. A picturesque river runs below, providing a calming base for the trains that rush from Uganda to Kenya and back again. During it’s construction, men from all over India and far parts of Africa gathered at the Tsavo river, working for months on end. At first, the men were oblivious to the twin pairs of golden eyes stalking them from the grasses… until half-devoured bodies and screams in the night became commonplace.

From a distance, from a viewpoint high above the clouds, the Kenya-Uganda Railway snakes its way across deserts and through forests of thorns, trailing bloodshed and pain in its wake.

Episode Highlights:

• Demons in the Forest of Thorns
• Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson and the Tsavo River
• Devoured men and lion prints: A campsite surrounded
• Patterson’s hunt for a pride of unordinary lions
• The figure on the platform
• Blood on the desert sand
• The price of the railroad

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Underneath our world lies a twisting and complicated maze, a dark mass of underground caves, passageways, and secrets. In part two of our Labyrinth series, we delve into the explorations of Greg Newkirk into the heart of the Kentucky goblin mystery.

Episode Highlights:

• The m-cave mystery in the desert
• The “other grandma”
• Return of the Kentucky goblins
• Secret missions and underground battles
• Amazing Stories
• Brown Mountain: Finding a way into the Labyrinth
• Mummified remains
• Following the numbers
• The Mammoth

Resources:

Secret Cipher of the UFONAUTS by Allen Greenfield

“As Above, So Below” Episode of Euphomet Podcast

Episode 30: Resurrection delves into the history of Chicago's most famous ghost: Resurrection Mary!

Alyson Horrocks from the Strange and Unusual Podcast took me on a tour of a historical site with a dark past. The site sits in a town called Danvers, but it was once Salem Village. This site was the culmination of a strange mix of religion, superstition, folklore, slavery, patriarchy, truth, and lies.

A place where people’s imagination or secret motives ran wild and story or lie or desperate attempt at redemption led to the basis for one of the darkest times in colonial American History. What started as a search for freedom to pursue religion and all things good, and ended in a nondescript historical site and archaeological dig, has a sinister history with a story that is hard to tell and even harder to understand.

• Salem Village was settled in the late 1600s
• In 1970, Richard B. Trask started excavating the “Danvers Dig”
• 1688 Samuel Parris moved into the house that once stood at the dig.
• Parris brought an enslaved South American couple named John and Tituba.
• In 1692, the invisible world began to close around the Parris family.
• Using Venus Glass and taking a peek into the invisible world.
• How it’s human nature to be drawn to what is forbidden
• In January of 1693, Betty Parris daughter of Samuel, and cousin Abigail were stricken with mysterious illnesses.
• Sarah Good and her daughter visit the Parris home.
• Dr. Griggs determines the affliction of Betty and Abigail is supernatural in nature.
• Thomas Putnam goes to the Salem Town magistrates to file claims of witchcraft.
• A woman's final plea for freedom opens the floodgates of imagination and evil to begin a dark era of lies and persecution.

Resources:

The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege

The Strange and Unusual Podcast

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Count Dracula’s story is one of many pieces; a story of a man and the secrets that are hidden inside his castle. Bram Stoker, the story’s author, is also a man of many secrets who constructed his own castle and built a fortress around his heart. The puzzle of Count Dracula is not complete until the intertwining pieces are put together.

When put together what do the pieces reveal about the story and the man behind it?

Episode Highlights:

• A young lawyer encounters strange experiences inside the Count’s castle
• The captain of a Russian ship that has run aground is found lashed to the ship’s wheel
• A beautiful lady who hunts children in the night
• The tragic death of a woman about to be married
• Dracula is forced to flee to his castle
• The search for the real Dracula
• The literary origin of Count Dracula
• Who is Bram Stoker and his ties to prominent men of the time
• The love that dare not speak its name
• Stoker’s own castle built to conceal his secrets
• What the secrets reveal

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Haunted houses, midnight witchcraft and famous murder in historic Savannah, Georgia.

Throughout history, disasters of astronomical proportions have taken place on one auspicious day -- Friday the Thirteenth. Shipwrecks, tsunamis, raging forest fires, brutal murderers, and horrifying accidents have all claimed victims on a day that many believe has been cursed since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The same serpent who tested the pair has become the dark figurehead of Friday the Thirteenth, feared by ancient cultures for centuries.

The fear of 13 seems like old suspicions that were born and died in ancient times, but as an asteroid headed straight for the Earth threatens to destroy civilization as we know it, the due date of Friday the Thirteenth might be more relevant than ever.

Episode Highlights:

• Shipwrecks, gruesome murders, natural disasters, and cannibalism: A trail of death through history
• The fear of Friday the 13th
• Numerology and mysticism
• Adam, Eve, the Serpent, and 13
• Symbolism in the works of Edgar Allan Poe
• Sinister snakes and dark evil in Ancient Egypt
• Flying asteroids to strike the Earth

Resources:

Friday the Thirteenth by Thomas William Lawson

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

In Austin, Texas in 1884 a female servant was killed in a gruesome ax murder. Feeble attempts were made to find the murderer, but to no avail. Soon a series of gruesome ax murders and attacks followed. Each one more horrific than the other, and the murders spread beyond the black servant population to the white community.

What originally was considered a black problem in the South twenty years after the Civil War became society's problem. This was a birth. The birth of legions of Demons cast out by Jesus. The birth referred to in the occult addicted mind of William Butler Yeats in his poem The Second Coming. The birth of something much more sinister.

Episode Highlights:

• The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
• Yeats obsession with the occult and marriage to medium Georgie Hyde-Lees
• The murder of Molly Smith
• Many believed a demon had come to Austin
• The Gospel of Mark and Jesus casting out demons in the Gerasenes
• The legend of the boogeyman can be found in all cultures
• The attack of Susan Hancock and murder of Jimmy and Eula Phillips
• Christmas Day, 1885 the day “Hell Broke Loose”

Resources:

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Who can forget the classic tale of the mad scientist who creates a gorgeously gruesome Creature, only to become frightened and disgusted by his own creation? Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is one of the most widely taught examples of Gothic literature, yet most readers don’t know the true story behind Shelley’s most famous work. Was Frankenstein really the product of a writing competition between friends while on summer vacation, as most people believe it to be, or was the story of the scientist and his Monster born out of a much darker mindset?

Episode Highlights:

• June 1816: The year without a summer
• The feminists daughter
• The twisted love life of Percy Shelley
• An empty crib in the nursery
• Vacations in the villa with Lord Byron
• A ghostly competition between friends
• Reviving the dead with electricity
• The waking dream of Mary Shelley
• Giving birth to Frankenstein's monster
• Who was the mad scientist? Who was the Monster?

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

I am with Alyson Horrocks of The Strange and Unusual Podcast. It’s the evening of August 20th, 2017. We are in Danvers, MA which was previously known as Salem Village. We are visiting the Samuel Parris archeological site. Surrounded by a rail fence there are two stone lined cellars marking the location of the house that once stood here. Next to this location is a grassy path that leads to the back of a house with a wolves head door knocker.

A wolf can be a monster of many faces and a bad omen. This is one of the hidden places of American history. A place where the horrors of yesterday have cast a long shadow. The bright memory of a day spent walking the sunny streets of Salem have suddenly grown dim. Even though the sun has not yet set, we are surrounded by darkness.

• This is the birthplace of the evil that enveloped Salem in the year 1692 and claimed the lives of over 20 people.
• This place is of particular significance to Alyson, because one of the people killed was her direct ancestor Elizabeth Howe.
• This was the home of Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village in 1692.
• In 1692, it was believed that the devil took possession of many of the people in Salem Village.
• Cotton Mather believed that there was a war going on with spirits trying to steal souls and witches roaming free and trying to set up Satan’s kingdom.
• The story of Martha Goodwin and Cotton Mather’s observation.
• Witchcraft and Ann Glover sentenced to death and hanged on Boston Common in 1688.
• Her children were in the front row.
• The Goodwin children suffered seizures which were likely caused by witchcraft.
• The curse followed the Parris house from Boston, and the Parris children began to have the seizures.
• Evil hands and supernatural afflictions.
• A visit by Sarah Good and her daughter.
• The Parris children accused their servant Tituba, Sarah Osborne, and Sarah Good of being witches.
• The shattered mind of an imprisoned four-year old and Mercy.
• Elizabeth Howe the wife of James Howe and mother of six children.
• In 1682, Elizabeth was accused of being a witch by feuding neighbors.
• As accusations spread, she realized the last 10 years had only been a reprieve.
• She was arrested and her trial began in 1692.
• She was found guilty and sentenced to death.
• The testimony of Ann Putnam and the trial of George Burroughs.
• There were really no witches in Salem, but there was a conspiracy that was Satanic in nature.

Resources:

Point Mystic

The Strange and Unusual Podcast

A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials

Cotton Mather

Horror Never Sleeps

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

This is the first in a three part series about one of Charleston, South Carolina's lost stories. It combines history, ghosts, true crime,  amd fairytales.

The Heriot House in Georgetown, South Carolina was built in 1765. It is now the Harbor House Inn and there are many stories by visitors and Georgetown residents alike of seeing an image of a woman that looks like she doesn’t belong there. Is this woman the ghost of a forlorn lover or does she represent something more sinister?

 Something that ties in with the four circles of Dante’s Inferno and stretches all the way from the old Heriot House to a Greenwich Village neighborhood located on Jane Street. A story that crosses the founding of America and the early days of New York, featuring such notable founders as Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and even George Washington.

Episode Highlights:

• Dante Alighieri’s Inferno The Divine Comedy
• Are ghosts fragments of energy left behind
• A lantern in the window of The Heriot House
• Jane Street hauntings and ghost sightings
• The ghost of Alexander Hamilton
• The home of Eliza Jumel
• The story of Gulielma Sands and the Well of Malebolgia
• The Ambition of Aaron Burr
• Tragic life and death of Theodosia Burr Alston

Resources:

Divine Comedy

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Nestled inside Charleston, South Carolina lives a menacing stone monstrosity, often called the most haunted building in America -- The Old City Jail. The square upon which the Jail sits has been home to untold amounts of suffering and torture, making it the perfect breeding ground for the supernatural to take hold.

As part of my training and experience as a storyteller and tour guide, I have been visiting haunted locations for the past 19 years. There have been many times that I’ve been in the presence of people having a paranormal encounter, but I had never felt anything myself until the night I decided to enter the Old City Jail. This is part one of my experience, the story of a night that shook me to my very core.

Episode Highlights:

• My journey into Charleston’s Old City Jail, the most haunted building in America
• A blood-soaked address
• Walking through Hell in the Old City Jail -- three terrifying tour experiences
• The woman in the white dress
• Horror in the Six Mile Wayfarer House
• Paranormal investigations inside Old City Jail
• The Devil’s Hour

Resources:

• Abode of Misery, David C. Scott, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010
• BullDog Tours
• The Haunted Jail Tours
• Paranormal Investigations by BullDog Tours
• Stephen J. Beard’s books

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Everyone knows the story of Little Red Riding Hood. The young child in her bright red cloak who gets lost in the forest, only to be preyed upon and devoured by the big bad wolf.  Red Riding Hood is freed from her fate by a passing Huntsman, who slaughters the In the time when fairy tales served more to caution than to entertain, Little Red Riding Hood was a warning to always follow the marked path, listen to your elders, and never talk to strangers.

The sad, strange story of Elisa Lam mirrors the familiar fairy tale -- except in this version, the lost little girl has no Huntsman to come to her rescue and perishes in the belly of the beast of Los Angeles. But who, exactly, is the beast? Is it the ill-fated hotel? A murderous stranger?

Elisa herself?

Episode Highlights:

• The story of Red Riding Hood
• The deadly history of the Cecil Hotel
• Elisa Lam’s peculiar behavior and death
• Conspiracies & suspicions
• Supernatural experiences in the Cecil Hotel

An unexpected return to a very creepy place to do a very foolish thing.

The time between three and four in the morning is said to be the hour when evil is at the height of it’s power -- the time when the Devil ascends from Hell and ghosts haunt the land of the living. In part two of my experience of the Devil’s hour inside Charleston’s Old City Jail, I receive a message from Hell itself, and discover the truth about one of the jail’s most famous prisoners -- Lavinia Fisher herself.

Episode Highlights:

• 3 AM inside the Old City Jail
• Torture chambers, the crane of pain, and the hangman’s lair
• Lorraine Warren visits the Old City Jail
• Footsteps in an empty corridor
• A child behind bars
• Lavinia Fisher and Daniel Duncan: Old City Jail’s famous residents
• An exploration to the third floor
• My conversation with Bruce Orr: The truth about Lavinia Fisher

Resources:

• Abode of Misery by David C. Scott, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010
• Six Miles to Charleston by Bruce Orr. The History Press, 2010

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

In Native American folklore, there was a dark creature that possessed the mind and body of men, instilling within them a great hunger for human flesh. The Wendigo was feared by tribes throughout what is now North America and Canada as stories of bloodshed and terror spread across the continent. Picture it: Your best friend, your husband, your sister -- crouched down and feasting upon the flesh of someone you love.

It’s been many, many years since a Wendigo was rumoured to be wreaking havoc, but are they truly gone for good? 

Episode Highlights:

• Origins of the Wendigo
• Fear and blood at the Hungry Hall outpost
• Tales from Native American folklore
• Swift Runner: A man possessed
• What lurks beneath the surface of the lake
• Hunting a monster
• Psychosis or a wendigo? 

Resources: 

Dangerous Spirits: The Wendigo in Myth and History by Shawn Smallman

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

The city of dreams, the city that never sleeps, the city with streets paved with opportunities… for many of us, New York represents a glittering place where absolutely anything is possible. Yet for all its glamour and sparkle, there are dark secrets lurking within its shadows, and history has done little to wash away the blood that once soaked New York’s prosperous streets.

They say the population of New York City reaches nearly 8.5 million people. Does that count the haunted souls whose ghosts still roam the streets?

Episode Highlights:

• Bloody history of the Empire State Building
• A Beautiful Suicide: Evelyn McHale
• Visiting the House of Death in Washington Square
• The Hangman’s Elm
• Walking with Edgar Allan Poe
• Charred bodies in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
• A beating heart in 14th West 10th Street
• The Bartell Experience
• Mediums and paranormal researchers
• The tragedy continues

Resources:

“Beautiful Suicide” photograph of Evelyn McHale

Haunted Greenwich Village: Bohemian Banshee, Spooky Sites and Gonzalez Ghost Walks by Tom Ogden, published by Globe Pequot Press, 2012

“Gang of Ghosts Ready to Rumble” by William Grimes, New York Times article, published October 29, 1993

“Terror on 10th Street” by Tim Donnelly, New York Post article, October 28, 2012

Spindrift: Spray from a Psychic Sea by Jan Bryant Bartell

Enjoyed this episode? Please support Pleasing Terrors by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on Itunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Early 19th-century America was a time for the pioneer, the robust adventurer who leaves the familiarity of home in search of fortune and success. One such man was John Bell, a farmer who settled in Adams, Tennessee with his family and slaves. Their idyllic country life was soon disturbed after the youngest Bell child, Elizabeth, drew the attention of a sinister spirit. Strange creatures stalked the property as the sounds of clawing, choking, and banging haunted the Bell household, whose inhabitants demanded answers from the spirit who tormented them - “Who are you? What do you want?” Answers whispered from the walls around them as the spirit claimed to be a tormented soul, the resident of a disturbed grave, an immigrant, and finally -- a Witch.

John Bell died gasping in the night, the disembodied voice of the Bell Witch cackling as it told his horrified family that he had been poisoned by the spirit. As the centuries passed, the legend of the Bell family haunting has become twisted with age, leaving modern listeners with these final questions: Who killed John Bell? Was it a Witch?

Or someone much closer to home?

Episode Highlights:

• The antique shop owner, the Bell chair, and the Cave
• The haunting of the Bell family
• Jawbones beneath the floor: questioning the Paranormal
• Attacks on Elizabeth Bell
• Discovering the true identity of the Witch
• John Bell’s demise
• The connection between Witches and caves
• Poltergeists and psychokinesis: alternate Bell theories

Resources:

Enigmatic Anomalies Episode 5: The Bell Witch Haunting

An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch by M.V. Ingram

The Bell Witch: An American Haunting by Brent Monahan

Quotes/Tweets:

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Women who lived on the margins of society, especially older women, had always lived with the possibility of being cast in the role of the witch”

“Whoever this was, whatever this was, it wanted John Bell dead”

“It is killing me by slow tortures and I fear the end is nigh”

“Like any good mystery, the killer may be the person you would least suspect”

“We know that there was a voice whispering in the dark, but the question remains - whose voice?”

The conclusion of the three part series which combines history, ghosts, true crime and fairytales.

This episode features the untold story of the origin of King Kong.

The second episode in a three part series about one of Charleston's lost stories. It is a true story that combines history, true crime, ghosts and fairy tales. 

The history of the Navajo goes back in time to the Four Corners region in Arizona. Where the spider grandmother spun a giant web and threw it into the night sky to create the stars. This area known as Canyon de Chelly is also known as the Canyon of the Dead after a misguided weaver’s warning resulted in a cruel cave massacre.

Like the art and designs of the Navajo weaver’s blanket, the Navajo legends are intertwined with a ranch purchased by a Utah couple. The Sherman ranch seemed like an idyllic place to raise premium cattle, but strange things started happening almost immediately upon the family's arrival. This ranch is now known as the Skinwalker Ranch and the legends continue.

Episode Highlights:

• Spider rock and the legend of the weaver and Navajo blankets.
• Terry and Gwen Sherman purchase a Utah ranch in 1994.
• The Sherman’s experienced strange phenomena and decided to sell.
• Robert T. Bigelow purchases the ranch and dispatches the National Institute for Discovery Science to investigate.
• A terrifying dark force grabs one of the observers before fading away.
• Night vision goggles expose a tunnel through the light used by the black creature.
• The Ute Tribe and the legend of the Navajo Tribe in New Mexico.
• New Mexico, 1863 Kit Carson and his troops round up the Navajo for transport.
• Canyon de Chelly and “The Long Walk” of the Navajo.
• The legend of the skinwalker.

Resources:

Battle of Canyon de Chelly

Kit Carson’s Campaign Against the Indians

Skinwalker Ranch

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

The idyllic Fox Hollow Farm boasts of a basement-level swimming pool and sprawling acres of land. But all is not as it seems. A man creeps through the woods nearby, his legs transparent in the flashlight’s beam. There is an incessant knocking at the front door by hands unseen. Night swims in the pool end with ghostly fingers clenched tight around a throat.

For Joe Leblanc, Fox Hollow Farm was meant to be an escape from a long commute and skyrocketing rent. For the dozens of men buried on its grounds, Fox Hollow Farm had come to represent something much more sinister.

Episode Highlights:

• Joe Leblanc
• Fox Hollow Farm and the Graves family
• The man with no legs
• Herb and Julie Baumeister
• A knock in the night
• Herb’s dark history
• Bones in the yard
• Twisted games
• An altar in the woods

Resources:

• “While Julie Was Away” People Magazine Article, 1996
• Where the Bodies are Buried by Frannie Weinstein and Melinda Wilson
• “Fox Hollow Farm” Paranormal Witness, Season 2, Episode 8

Enjoyed this episode? Please support Pleasing Terrors by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on Itunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Deep within the heart of New Jersey lies an untamed swath of trees and brush, long believed to be the home of the Jersey Devil itself. A horrifying creature with the head of a goat and the wings of a bat, the legend of the Jersey Devil has haunted the Pine Barrens for generations.

Yet the Jersey Devil might not be the only degenerate creature lurking within the shadows of the Pines. What dark secrets does the Devil guard?

Episode Highlights:

• The many forms of dragons
• What secrets does the dragon’s lair hold?
• The dwellers amongst the Pines
• Ghostly apparitions in the trees
• The many faces of the Jersey Devil
• Hoofprints in the snow: A sinister creature stalks through the night
• The 13th child of Deborah Leeds
• Demonic symbols hidden in the Leeds Almanac
• Dismembered bodies within the trees: Satanic murder in the Pines

Resources:

Dogma and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Levi

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Was 1950’s Hopkinsville, Kentucky, really home to a colony of extraterrestrial beings? And if so… have they finally made their return?

Episode Highlights:

• The Greeks and the Minotaur
• The mystical Edgar Cayce
• Flying saucers in Kentucky
• A sighting in Roswell, New Mexico
• Shots fired in Hopkinsville, Kentucky
• Owls or little green men?
• Greg Newkirk and the Week in Weird
• The return of the Kentucky Goblins

Resources:

Movies: 

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

• Poltergeist

• Gremlins

• Critters

• Signs

• The Bigfoot Hunter:Still Searching 

Week in Weird

Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and the Occult

“Have the Kentucky Goblins Returned?” Article by Greg Newkirk

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

In this episode I visit some of Savanah's most haunted locations. 

Suggested Reading:

Haunted Savanah: America's Most Spectral City by James Caskey

Haunted Savannah by Georgia R. Byrd

The White House: In all it’s glory, from the immaculately-kept gardens to the walls hung with priceless art, is an icon of American history and power. Home to every President since 1800, the White House is seen as a safe haven for the President and their family.

Not even the heavy iron fence that borders the grounds of the White House can keep dark magic from harming its inhabitants. A curse muttered on a bloodied battlefield in 1812 has left over a hundred years of President’s scared for their lives, but has the debt finally been paid?

Episode Highlights:

• Strange sights in the Lincoln Bedroom
• The tall tales and magical powers of Tenskwatawa
• A dark prophecy
• Lincoln’s bloody presidency
• Tainted water in the President’s glass
• Mediums and séances in the White House
• Dreams of an ominous voyage
• A row of white headstones in the Presidential cemetery
• A debt is paid

Resources:

The History Goes Bump Podcast, Episode 162: The White House

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

In this episode, we take a look at Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold Bug," a story about an encrypted map that leads to a buried pirate treasure. We will visit a haunted theater and discuss a play a play about the death of Poe that was first performed there in 1994. The story, the ghosts, and the play are all clues that lead to a hidden treasure that Poe was attempting to find in Charleston in 1828.  This is the first installment of a two-part story.

Works Cited:

Buxton, Julian T., The Ghosts of Charleston , Beaufort Books, 2001

Caskey, James, Charleston’s Ghosts: Hauntings in the Holy City, Manta Ray Books LLC., 2014

Dawidziak, Mark, A Mystery of Mysteries,  St. Martin's Press, 2023

Downey, Christopher Byrd, Edgar Allan Poe’s Charleston, History Press, 2020

Downey, Christopher Byrd, A History Lover’s Guide To Charleston, The History Press, 2023

Hecker, William F., Private Perry and Mister Poe: The West Point Poems, 1831 Louisiana State University Press, 2005

Jacobi, Jolande, Complex/Archtype/sSymbol in the Psychology of C.G. Jung, Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1959

Main, Roderick Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, Princeton University Press, 1997

Pitser, Sarah.  Haunted Charleston, Morris Book Publishing, LLC., 2013

Poe, Edgar Allan,  Complete Tales and Poems, Maplewood Books, 2013

Wiles, Julian, Nevermore, The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1998

Jacobi, Jolande, Complex/Archtype/sSymbol in the Psychology of C.G. Jung, Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1959

Main, Roderick Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, Princeton University Press, 1997

Mysteries are a rarity in our world. What used to be unexplainable is now quickly answered by the modern marvels of technology and science. So when a new mystery appears, we drive ourselves crazy searching for an explanation, haunted by what we can’t explain.

One modern mystery is reasoning behind the strange events that took place on a Siberian mountain in 1959, in which a group of experienced hikers were found dead in bizarre circumstances. Since the day of the discovery, many have been tormented by one simple question: What happened on Dyatlov Pass?

Was it a Yeti, an avalanche, a top secret military test gone horribly wrong that killed the group? Or was it something simply incomprehensible to modern listeners– an ill-fated encounter with goddesses and myths of old?

Episode Highlights:

• Dyatlov Pass Incident: Ski Tourists in Siberia
• The search begins
• First disturbing discoveries
• Nine sets of footprints in the snow
• Charred and frozen bodies
• Conflicting and confusing evidence
• Timeline of events: What went wrong?
• Theories and speculations
• Spheres of light in ancient lands

Resources:

• Mountain of the Dead by Keith McCloskey

• Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar

Enjoyed this episode? Please support Pleasing Terrors by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on Itunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

This is a story about a German fairytale and a brutal murder in northwestern Georgia. 

Suggested reading:

The Corpsewood Manor Murders In North Georgia by Amy Petulla

Werewolves have been portrayed in folklore, books, movies and television for centuries. Rageful howls under the full moon. Fangs, claws, fur, muscle and legend. Is it a monster? A ghost or a demon? Is it real? Historic folk tales about werewolves often evoke images of crisp nights in dark ages of Europe. Yet in the United States, the state of Georgia has one of the longest histories of werewolf encounters in the country. This is the story of the Georgia Werewolf.

Personal accounts and anecdotes in modern times give us a glimpse of this creature, not yet verified by science. Small-town legends passed down since the 1800s led ghost-hunters to the local cemetery. Rumors swirled around a well-known farm and the unusual behavior of a young family member. What if the monster was not in the woods, but amongst us?

Episode Highlights:

• Personal accounts of close encounters with werewolves in Georgia
• Author Linda S. Godfrey’s research on the American Werewolf
• Ghost-hunters investigate the cemetery linked to the monster
• Livestock slaughters and oral history in rural Georgia
• Hunting parties searching for a killer wolf
• The troubling story of Isabella Burt
• Theories on the origins of a werewolf

Resources:

Hunting the American Werewolf by Linda S. Godfrey - Amazon

Enjoyed this episode? Please support Pleasing Terrors by rating, reviewing, and subscribing.
Please visit Pleasing Terrors, Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

The Salisbury Plain is the name for the 300 miles of grasslands located in Wiltshire, England. Home to Stonehenge, a rich history, and a wide variety of plants and animals, the Salisbury Plain is one of the most famous locations in England. For the residents of Wiltshire, however, the area is notorious for more than its archaeological features and mystical energy. The great grassy plains of Salisbury border the mansions of Wiltshire, whose walls are painted in blood and sorrow.  In these great houses, the dead refuse to rest.

Episode Highlights:

• The Monuments of Wiltshire County
• The beautiful maiden in Avebury Manor and the Grey Lady: Ghosts searching for lost loves
• Midwife of death
• Spiders, cats, and the Spanish Lady
• Goody Orchard’s curse
• The legend of the Salisbury hare
• Murder in the Road Hill House

Resources:

Haunted Wiltshire by Sonia Smith

@2PodsADay 

If you are looking for podcasts that are similar to Pleasing Terrors, check out:

The Strange and Unusual Podcast

The Not Alone Podcast

Quid Pro Quo Podcast, episode 10 “Double Trouble”

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Harry Houdini and the Halloween Séance. 

Chicago’s West 63rd Street Post Office was built in 1938 over the site of what its creator referred to as “The Castle”, and in 1902 an Ohio Daily News article called it Chicago’s Ghost Castle. Whatever you want to call it, this site was once or possibly still is the home to a notorious killer.

A figure who built a home that included a 2nd floor full of secret passages, trap doors, and hidden staircases. The basement so notorious that a crowd would lay on the sidewalk and try to peer through the cracks as it was excavated.

The creator of “The Castle” claimed to be under an evil influence. An influence that seemed to continue to claim victims after his death. An influence that is still felt today

• Moyamensing Prison was finished in 1835
• Chicago Police Detective Frank Geyer interviews his nemesis in 1895
• A crowd gathers for the excavation of “The Castle” basement excavation
• Another crowd gathers outside “The Castle” to see if the owner returns after his execution
• In 2012 a tunnel that leads to “The Castle” basement is discovered
• The story of Herman Webster Mudgett
• Christmas Day, 1891 Julia Smythe and her daughter Pearl disappear
• The investigation into the Pitezel case
• H.H. Holmes wrote Holmes’ Own Story while incarcerated at Moyamensing
• Mysterious deaths of anyone connected to the case or “The Castle”

Resources:

Herman Webster Mudgett or H. H. Holmes

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

Fairy tales often teach an important moral lesson, hidden within the entertaining twists and turns of the story. The tale of Bluebeard, the rich man who keeps the bodies of his murdered wives locked behind the forbidden doors of the dungeon in his castle, doomed to have his wrongdoing exposed by his newest wife, serves as a reminder to young women that curiosity can sometimes be your downfall -- or your savior. In real life there are rarely happy endings to tragedies and moral lessons must be learned the hard way.

For Zona Shue, choked to death in her own home, life was certainly no fairytale. Yet the strange events that led to a murder conviction were as fantastical as any tale written up in a storybook. The moral lesson in her twisted fairy tale?

Mothers are always right.

Episode Highlights:

• The horrifying fairy tale of Bluebeard and his wives
• The trial of the Greenbrier Ghost
• Zona and Trout: A love story gone sour
• A grisly discovery
• Witnesses on the stand
• Mary Jane Hester’s otherworldly visitor
• Confessions from beyond the grave
• Broken vertebrae and bruised skin: Autopsy discoveries
• Trout Shue’s troubled life
• A mother’s vengeance -- fact or fairytale?

Resources:

The Man Who Wanted Seven Wives by Katie Letcher Lyle, Quarrier Press 1999

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

A haunted house should loom out of the darkness, its windows boarded up, ghosts and dust as the only occupants. But horror dwells inside two beautifully decorated homes in the Benedict Canyon of Beverly Hills. While its name means “heaven” in Spanish, 10050 Cielo Drive was nothing but Hell for the five victims brutally murdered by Charles Manson’s “Family” within its walls. Some say their spirits still haunt the area, having taken up residence in the nearby Oman House.

Two men, film director David Oman and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, have turned the blood-soaked history of Cielo Drive into a booming source of revenue. Both men show signs of struggling with their own inner demons – are the spirits still trapped within their homes disturbed and vengeful at the business created around their murders, or is it the morality of the situation haunting the living?

Episode Highlights:

• History of the Oman House
• David Oman: homeowner, movie director, and tour guide
• Dr. Barry Taff investigates
• Trapped spirits in the Oman House
• Charles Manson & The Family
• The Tate Murders on Cielo Drive
• Trent Reznor on 10050 Cielo Drive

Resources:

• The House at the End of the Drive (2014 Film)

• The Oman House website for tour tickets, seances, and merchandise
• Listen to Dr. Taff’s radio interview with Dark Matter: “The Entity Hauntings, Poltergeists, & the Manson Murders”
• “Gave Up” Nine Inch Nails music video
• The Long Hard Road Out of Hell by Marilyn Manson

Enjoyed this episode? Please support Pleasing Terrors by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on Itunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

This episode tells a story about pirates and a haunted dungeon.

On November 20th, 1850 night watchman George Pollard Jr. makes his nightly rounds on the foggy Island of Nantucket, MA. An island once inhabited by proud tribes of Native Americans before the addition of the colonists. An island that was the whaling capital of the world for over a century.

The inhabitants and the whalers themselves were haunted with superstition and legends about the dark underworld of the sea and the evil that lied beneath the depths. The dangers were all too real, yet it wasn’t a sea monster or a devil ascended from Davy Jones’ Locker that posed the threat. It was an invisible threat that lurked in the hearts of men like the night watchman.

• George Pollard Jr. Nantucket Nightwatchman
• Davy Jones Locker and the dark underworld of the sea
• The story of Jonah and being cursed by god
• Pliny the Elder, sea monsters, the merman, and the Krakken
• Sightings of mermaids, sirens, and mermen
• WWI German U-boat surrenders to British patrol ship after sea monster attack
• The legend of the black demon of the sea or megalodon
• The story of Moby Dick based on a Nantucket whaling ship voyage
• Mocha Dick the albino sperm whale and the voyage of the Ann Alexander
• Captain George Pollard Jr. and the last voyage the whaling ship Essex
• Owen Coffin and becoming what you fear most
• November 20th, the anniversary of the destruction of the Essex

Resources:

Nantucket

How Nantucket Came to Be the Whaling Capital of the World

George Pollard Jr.
The True-Life Horror That Inspired Moby-Dick

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Book of Jonah

Pliny the Elder

Megalodon

Mocha Dick

Enjoyed this episode? Please support the show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing on iTunes.

Please visit Pleasing Terrors, the podcast behind Old Charleston’s best ghost tour, on Facebook and Twitter!

This episode features The Wizard of Oz, Greek mythology and a famous unsolved murder.

This episode tells the story of the Charleston mermaid.