Pleasing Terrors

A wax figurine forgotten in museum storage. A book of poems that prophesied a ghost. A woman on a beach who found something she wasn't looking for. In the final episode of the Charleston Gothic series, the investigation returns to where it began — the Dock Street Theatre — and follows the last of three trails through Charleston's tangled relationship with Edgar Allan Poe. Along the way, a century-...

Episode 51: The Unfortunate Pirate For over a century, "Annabel Lee" has been read as Edgar Allan Poe's final love poem—a haunting elegy to his child bride Virginia, written months before his death. But what if we've been wrong about the poem's true subject all along? In this episode, Mike follows a trail of evidence from a forgotten 1827 tale about a murderous pirate to the windswept shores of Su...

CHARLESTON GOTHIC Episode 4: Tekeli   The Charleston Library Society has survived fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and war—emerging each time with its treasures intact. Among those treasures: the world's most complete archive of Charleston newspapers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.   In this episode, we enter the stacks where a ghost named Hinson is said to wander, where Henry Timrod'...

Find the grave of Annabel Lee and you find the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe!   In this episode, a hand-drawn map pulls us through a locked iron gate into Charleston's most overgrown churchyard, where legends gather like mist and names disappear into leaves. A lady in white wanders the paths. Sixty-four people have collapsed before this very gate.   We follow the trail of Annabel Lee—the girl Poe loved...

In this episode, we follow the Annabel Lee legend backward: from modern ghost tours to nineteenth-century poetry, from pirate treasure maps to academic footnotes, from Sullivan's Island beaches to a forgotten corner of a graveyard. What emerges is not a simple ghost story, but an obsession—shared by scholars, storytellers, and an entire city convinced that something precious was buried in the Sout...

  The Descent has led us to Charleston, and to a haunted historic theatre where we uncover a clue that may bring us closer to finding the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. Sources:   The Ghosts of Charleston by Julian Buxton   Charleston Ghosts: Hauntings in the Holy City by James Caskey   Complex, archetype and symbol in the psychology of C.G. Jung by Jolande Jacobi   The Mad Booths of Maryland By Presto...

In this episode we visit the most haunted house of Edgar Allan Poe and then retrace his path to the threshold of a secret world. Sources that were either referenced directly or consulted during the writing of this episode:     Ghosts of Philadelphia by Charles J. Adams III   A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak   The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe: Nevermo...

In this episode we continue our search for the ghost  of Edgar Allan Poe and retrace his path through the final, ill-fated months of his life.    Sources that were either referenced directly or consulted during the writing of this episode:   Ghosts of Philadelphia by Charles J. Adams III A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak True Tales of the Unknown: The...

In this episode we embark on a search for the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, guided by Henry David Thoreau and the mystery of the Hollow Earth. Our quest begins with a visit to a haunted saloon and an apartment building that is hiding a dark past.

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

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. 

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.

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

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

This episode tells the story of the Charleston mermaid.

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

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

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

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

Harry Houdini and the Halloween Séance. 

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

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

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

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...

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 attem...