Paranormia

On Christmas Eve 1945, a fire tore through a family home in the hills of West Virginia. Four children escaped. Five never came out. When the smoke cleared, there were no bodies in the ashes, no bones, and no clear explanation. In the years that followed, the Sodder family rejected the official story. They spoke of cut phone lines, a missing ladder, warnings from strangers, and a photograph mailed decades later that seemed to show one of the lost children alive. For eighty years, the case has hovered between accident and conspiracy, grief and obsession.This episode explores the disappearance of the Sodder children and the questions that refuse to fade. It asks what happens when tragedy leaves no physical proof, when mourning turns into investigation, and when a Christmas night becomes a mystery that will not let a family, or a nation, move on.If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected] is an Audio Always production.Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1972, a small group of ordinary Canadians set out to test a radical idea: that belief alone might be powerful enough to move the physical world. They invented a man named Philip, his face, his history, even his tragic death, and gathered each week around a table to see if imagination could be made to answer back. What followed was filmed under bright lights and careful observation. Knocks echoed from inside the wood. Furniture tilted and moved. The ghost they had designed seemed to respond, not as a spirit from the past, but as something shaped by the minds in the room.This episode explores the Philip Experiment and the uneasy space where psychology, ritual, and expectation collide. It asks what happens when belief becomes behaviour, when an experiment slips into performance, and when a ghost that never lived begins to feel disturbingly present.If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected] is an Audio Always production.Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early 1994, the murder of Harry and Nicola Fuller brought twelve jurors to a Brighton hotel, locked away from the world with nothing but silence, photographs, and each other. As the pressure mounted, four of them reached for a Ouija board, half a joke, half a plea for clarity, and asked the dead for answers. The verdict that followed would crumble under the weight of its own strangeness. This episode explores how isolation bends the mind, how belief can slip through the cracks of law, and how a single night in a seaside hotel became one of the most unsettling chapters in British justice.If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected] is an Audio Always production.Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In March 1989, Spring Break in South Texas was alive with crowds and music, until 21-year-old Mark Kilroy vanished somewhere between the bars of Matamoros and the quiet roads beyond the border. What began as a missing-person search soon led investigators to Santa Elena Ranch, a remote compound tied to a group calling themselves a religious society, a place where superstition, ritual, and violence appeared to intersect. As the investigation unfolded, rumours of black magic, sacrifice and folk-religious practices spread rapidly, blurring the line between fact and folklore. This episode explores how fear, belief, and cartel mythmaking shaped one of the strangest cases of its era, and why, in the borderlands, the truth often shifts with the shadows.If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected] is an Audio Always production.Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In May 2014, the quiet suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, became the setting for one of the strangest and most unsettling crimes in modern history. Two twelve-year-old girls lured their best friend into the woods and stabbed her nineteen times, leaving her for dead. When police found them hours later, walking calmly down a highway, they said they’d done it for Slender Man, a faceless figure born from an internet forum, a digital myth that somehow took root in their minds. Journalist Elizabeth McCafferty explores how an online story turned into shared delusion, how imagination became belief, and how belief became violence. Was it mental illness, manipulation, or something more elusive? Because in a world where fiction spreads faster than fact, Slender Man isn’t just a monster made online. He’s what happens when fear finds Wi-Fi.If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected] is an Audio Always production.Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.