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Haunted American History

Bloody FM

A daily campfire-style podcast blending American history, folklore, and true crime.
What scares you? Let’s find out.

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84 episodes
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English

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#252
Today · 20 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 13: The Hook — America's Most Famous Urban Legend
In November of 1960, a teenage girl wrote a letter to Dear Abby warning other teenagers about something she'd heard. A young couple had been parked on a deserted road when their radio interrupted the music with a frightening announcement. A dangerous man had escaped from custody. And where his right hand should have been, he had a hook. The couple fled, but when they reached home, they discovered something hanging from the passenger-side door handle. For generations, Americans have told som
#251
Yesterday · 25 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 12: The History of Haunted Houses
In 1888, a woman named Maggie Fox stood before two thousand people in a New York theater, removed her shoe, and demonstrated how she had spent decades convincing Americans she could communicate with the dead. She cracked her toe joints. Forty years of séances, spirit messages, and mysterious knocking sounds had helped create a nationwide obsession with the supernatural. But the story didn't end when the trick was exposed. Instead, Americans found increasingly elaborate ways to pay for the ex
#250
Sunday · 22 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 11: The Woman Who Tamed Halloween
In 1899, Halloween was so destructive in parts of America that grown men sat outside their homes with shotguns, waiting for the pranksters to arrive. People stole gates, overturned outhouses, tore up sidewalks, and sometimes set property on fire. Halloween wasn't the family-friendly celebration we recognize today. And in Hiawatha, Kansas, one woman had finally had enough. Her name was Elizabeth Krebs. She was a Swiss immigrant, a gardener, and a mother who had buried three of her four childr
#249
Saturday · 23 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 10: American Werewolves in America
On Halloween night in 1991, eighteen-year-old Doris Gipson was driving along a rural road outside Elkhorn, Wisconsin, when she struck something with her car. She stopped to investigate. There was nothing in the road. Then she saw something running toward her on two legs. Within months, reports of a strange, upright, wolf-like creature had turned an ordinary Wisconsin farm road into the center of one of America's most famous cryptid mysteries. They called it the Beast of Bray Road. But Amer
#248
Friday · 20 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 9: The Witches of Pendle Hill
In 1612, a young woman named Alizon Device asked a traveling peddler for some pins. He refused. A short distance down the road, the man collapsed. Today, a doctor would probably call it a stroke. Alizon believed she'd done it with witchcraft. And she confessed. Within months, accusations had spread through two feuding families living beneath Pendle Hill. Elderly women described spirits that appeared as dogs and hares. Neighbors accused neighbors. Family members turned on one another. And w
#247
Thursday · 23 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 8: The Jersey Devil
In January of 1909, strange tracks began appearing in the snow across New Jersey. They crossed yards. Climbed fences. Appeared on rooftops. Witnesses reported hearing wings outside their homes and seeing something with hooves, glowing eyes, feathers, fur—and occasionally a head like a horse. Schools reportedly closed. Armed posses went looking for it. Newspapers put it on the front page. And suddenly, everyone was talking about an old story from deep inside the Pine Barrens. According to the
#246
Wednesday · 23 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 7: The Real Legend of Sleepy Hollow
In 1776, somewhere in the hills of Westchester County, an American cannonball took the head off a Hessian soldier. His name was never recorded. His grave has never been found. And about twenty years later, a young writer named Washington Irving arrived in the Hudson Valley and eventually gave that forgotten soldier a horse. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow would become one of America's great ghost stories. But beneath the Headless Horseman are real battlefields, real graves, a captured British sp
#245
October 6 · 24 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 6: The Vampires of New England
In March of 1892, a group of men entered a cemetery in rural Rhode Island and opened the coffin of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown. Then they cut out her heart. Her family had been dying from tuberculosis, one after another, and some of Mercy's neighbors believed they knew why. Something inside one of the graves was still feeding on the living. So they burned Mercy's heart and liver beside a rock in the cemetery and prepared the ashes as a cure for her dying brother. And Mercy Brown wasn't the
#244
October 5 · 24 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 5: The Bell Witch — America's Most Famous Haunting
In 1820, John Bell died on his farm in northern Tennessee. According to the legend, a ghost killed him. For years, the Bell family had supposedly been tormented by something they couldn't see. It knocked on walls, pulled blankets from beds, attacked young Betsy Bell, sang hymns, quoted scripture, answered questions from visitors—and eventually learned to speak. It called itself Kate. The story would become one of America's most famous hauntings, complete with a mysterious vial of poison, a v
#243
October 4 · 18 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 4: Black Shuck — The Devil's Hound
On August 4, 1577, a violent storm descended on the English countryside. Then something entered the church. Witnesses described an enormous black dog tearing through the congregation, allegedly killing two people before disappearing into the storm. At another church twelve miles away, a remarkably similar story was unfolding. The creature would become known as Black Shuck—a massive phantom hound said to stalk the lonely roads, marshes, and coastlines of East Anglia. Seeing it could mean death
#242
October 3 · 22 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 3: Stingy Jack and the Jack-O'-Lantern
Before the jack-o'-lantern was a grinning pumpkin on an American porch, it was something else entirely. A light over a bog. For centuries, people in Ireland and Britain told stories about strange flames that appeared in the darkness, drifting just far enough ahead to tempt travelers off the road. In Ireland, one explanation had a name: Jack. He tricked the Devil. He was rejected by Heaven. Hell wanted nothing to do with him. And according to the legend, Jack was condemned to wander the earth
#241
October 2 · 24 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 2: How America Invented Halloween
Before Halloween meant costumes, candy, and smiling jack-o'-lanterns, it meant something considerably more dangerous. When Irish and Scottish Halloween traditions crossed the Atlantic, they collided with American harvest parties, fortune-telling games, pumpkins, Victorian entertainment—and a growing tradition of October vandalism. Kids blocked railroad tracks. Wagons ended up on barn roofs. Windows were smashed. False fire alarms were pulled. People were shot. And by the 1930s, some American c
#240
October 1 · 27 min
31 Days of Halloween | Day 1: When the Gates Open — Samhain
Before Halloween had pumpkins, candy, costumes, or trick-or-treating, there was Samhain. At the edge of winter, the cattle came home, the fires burned, and old stories warned that the boundaries between worlds had opened. The dead could return. Fairies came out of the earth. Headless riders crossed the countryside. And sometimes, something followed you home. From a warrior who carried a talking corpse into the night to spectral black sows, fairy armies, divination rituals, sacred fires, and th
#239
September 30 · 24 min
The Disappearance of the Sodder Children (West Virginia)
On Christmas Eve 1945, the Sodder family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, burned to the ground. George and Jennie Sodder escaped with four of their children, but five others were supposedly trapped upstairs. When the ashes cooled, however, investigators found something the family couldn't understand: no identifiable remains of the missing children. Then came the questions. A missing ladder. Trucks that mysteriously wouldn't start. A telephone line that had apparently been cut. Strange threat
#238
September 29 · 26 min
John Brown and the Ghosts of Harpers Ferry (West Virginia)
In October 1859, John Brown and eighteen men descended on Harpers Ferry with a plan to seize the federal arsenal, arm enslaved people, and ignite a war against slavery. Thirty-six hours later, sixteen people were dead, Brown was captured, and Harpers Ferry had begun its transformation into one of America's most mythologized towns. Today, its streets are filled with ghosts: John Brown wandering the lower town, a burning woman beside the railroad tracks, soldiers haunting a church, and Dangerfield
#237
September 28 · 19 min
The Mothman of Point Pleasant (West Virginia)
In November 1966, two young couples driving through an abandoned World War II explosives facility outside Point Pleasant, West Virginia, encountered something they couldn't explain: a towering humanoid figure with enormous wings and glowing red eyes. Within days, others claimed to see it. Then came strange electrical disturbances, UFO reports, mysterious visitors, and a traveling salesman who said he'd spoken telepathically with a man from another world. The phenomenon became known as Mothman. T
#236
September 27 · 22 min
The Haunted Amusement Park: Lake Shawnee (West Virginia)
Deep in Mercer County, West Virginia, the rusting remains of Lake Shawnee Amusement Park are slowly being reclaimed by the forest. Long before the rides arrived, the land was the site of frontier violence and an Indigenous settlement stretching back centuries. Then came the amusement park, where a series of accidents—including the deaths of two children—became part of its dark reputation. Decades later, a new owner attempting to resurrect Lake Shawnee discovered something extraordinary beneath t
#235
September 26 · 19 min
The Ghosts of Moundsville: West Virginia Penitentiary (West Virginia)
For more than a century, the West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville held thousands of prisoners behind the walls of a Gothic stone fortress. Ninety-four men were executed there. Riots left inmates dead. Conditions became so brutal that West Virginia's highest court eventually ordered the prison closed. Today, Moundsville is better known for something else: ghosts. Visitors report shadowy figures following them through cellblocks and basements, while one famous apparition has been linked to
#234
September 25 · 23 min
The Mount Rainier Murders: The Tube Sock Killer (Washington)
In 1985, two couples were murdered months apart in the forests surrounding Mount Rainier. In both cases, a woman was found with a white athletic tube sock tied around her neck using the same distinctive knot. For twenty-five years, investigators believed one of the victims, trapper Mike Riemer, may actually have been the killer. Then, in 2011, a hiker found his remains less than a mile from where his girlfriend had been discovered. Suddenly, investigators weren't looking for three victims and a
#233
September 24 · 23 min
The Winged Cryptid On The Wrong Mountain: Batsquatch (Washington)
In 1994, eighteen-year-old Brian Canfield was driving along a dark road in the foothills of Washington when his pickup suddenly died. Then something dropped out of the sky. He described a nine-foot creature covered in blue fur, with yellow eyes, a wolf-like face, clawed feet, and enormous leathery wings. For several minutes, the two simply stared at each other before the creature took flight—and Brian's truck inexplicably started again. The encounter would give the Pacific Northwest a new cryp

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