Folklore Forensics

A young man disappears from a riverboat after dark. His lantern is still warm. His coat remains folded on the bench. And in the bottom of the boat, investigators discover a woman's carved horn comb. The villagers already know who took him. The Rusalka. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Across Slavic folklore, she is the restless spirit of a young woman who died an unnatural deat...

A servant boy stole three drops of divine wisdom from a Welsh sorceress. She hunted him across land, water, and sky and when she finally caught him, she swallowed him whole. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. His name is Gwion Bach. And according to Welsh folklore, he has accidentally swallowed three drops of divine wisdom, knowledge intended for the son of the powerful sorceress Cerr...

Morgan le Fay poisoned kings, kidnapped knights, stole Excalibur's scabbard, and plotted the destruction of Camelot. At least, that's what the prosecution says. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Arthurian legend remembers Morgan as Camelot's great villain—a sorceress who poisoned kings, trapped knights, stole magical weapons, and conspired to destroy her own brother&ap...

A farmer dies beside an unidentified bottle of poison and the ghost haunting his family claims responsibility. Was the Bell Witch America's strangest unsolved murder? You've heard the story. Now hear the case. This week on Folklore Forensics , we reopen one of the most famous supernatural mysteries in American folklore and investigate the Bell Witch as a possible crime. Was the haunting...

For more than two thousand years, grieving families blamed the same woman for the deaths of their children. Her name was Lilith. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Across ancient Mesopotamia, Jewish folklore, medieval Europe, and generations of household tradition, Lilith became an immortal woman of the night: an enemy of childbirth, a killer of infants, and one of folklore's mos...

Two starving children walked out of a forest carrying a dead woman's food, money, and wedding ring. The story says they escaped a witch. The evidence is much less certain. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. This week, Folklore Forensics reopens one of the most famous cases in European folklore. Two children are abandoned in a German forest. Days later, they emerge barefoot and bu...

Forty-seven pairs of children's shoes hanging from a tree led investigators into the Bryansk Forest. What they found transformed a fairy tale into a homicide investigation. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. For centuries, parents warned their children not to wander into the forest. An old woman lived there. She had iron teeth. She lived in a strange hut. And if children crossed...

Witches. Hags. Sorceresses. Child-stealers. Monsters. This season, Folklore Forensics reopens the case files of history's most infamous wicked women. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Coming in September, Season 3 of Folklore Forensics reopens the Wicked Women Docket. Across folklore, mythology, fairy tales, and history, certain women are remembered in remarkably similar ways: t...

History remembers Lamia as the monster who stole children. But before she became every parent's nightmare, she was a mother who lost her own. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. For centuries, Lamia has been remembered as one of the most terrifying monsters in Greek mythology, a creature who steals children in the night and leaves grieving families behind. But the oldest versions...

The Odyssey remembers Scylla as one of Greek mythology's most terrifying monsters. But before the legend, there was a young woman whose life was stolen by someone else's obsession and revenge. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Ancient storytelling—and Christopher Nolan’s new film—recount Scylla as a creature lurking between Italy and Sicily, devouring sailors who passed too...

What if the real crime in Antigone wasn't burying the dead, but making burial a crime in the first place? You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Antigone is one of the defining figures of Greek mythology: a young woman who defies King Creon's decree, buries her brother, and accepts the death sentence that follows. But beneath the familiar story of civil disobedience lies a very...

The greatest hero in Greek mythology survived monsters, wars, and impossible labors. In the end, the thing that killed him arrived as a gift from his wife. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. The evidence appears straightforward. Deianira sends Heracles a robe soaked in what she believes is a powerful love charm. Instead, it becomes a deadly poison that burns through his flesh, leaving...

A young woman disappears while visiting her sister. When Philomela is finally found, she has been assaulted, imprisoned, and mutilated, her tongue removed to ensure she can never tell the truth. But silence doesn't end the investigation. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. In this episode of Folklore Forensics, we reopen one of the most disturbing cases in Greek mythology. We foll...

After the murder of King Agamemnon, his son is sent into exile while the killers remain in power. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. In this episode of Folklore Forensics, we reopen one of the most famous trials in Greek mythology. We investigate the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, reconstruct the chain of violence that began with Agamemnon's death, and examine the case th...

After the fall of Troy, Queen Hecuba discovers that her youngest son has been murdered by the man entrusted with his protection. You've heard the story. Now hear the case. In this episode of Folklore Forensics, we reopen one of the most disturbing cases in Greek mythology. We investigate the murder of Prince Polydorus, reconstruct the betrayal that followed the fall of Troy, and examine the v...

What if Greek mythology remembered Medusa as a monster because it forgot what happened to her first? You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Medusa is one of the most recognizable figures in Greek mythology: a monster with snakes for hair whose gaze could turn men to stone. But the oldest versions of the myth tell a very different story. Before she became a monster, Medusa was a priestess...

You've heard the story. Now hear the case. Season 2 of Folklore Forensics investigates the crimes hidden inside Greek mythology. From murders and disappearances to betrayals, conspiracies, and acts of revenge, we reopen the ancient cases that became myths, legends, and folklore. This season, we'll examine the stories of Medusa, Cassandra, Persephone, Philomela, Hecuba, Orestes, Lamia, an...

A king returned home from war expecting celebration. Instead, he walked into a murder ten years in the making. This week, we reopen one of the most infamous domestic killings in classical mythology: the murder of King Agamemnon by his wife, Queen Clytemnestra. After sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to launch the Trojan War, Agamemnon returned home victorious, bringing with him a mistress &quot...

A desperate bargain inside a locked spinning room should have saved a miller’s daughter from execution . Instead, it ends years later in a nursery, when a strange man arrives to collect payment for a debt the young queen thought she’d escaped: her firstborn child. This week, we reopen the case of Rumpelstiltskin: a mysterious broker who appears in moments of economic desperation, transforming wort...

Three hunters vanished into the winter wilderness. And the man who returned with their remains claimed he was no longer human. In the winter of 1879, a hunting party returned to Rat Portage, Ontario, reduced to three survivors and carrying the story of a man who had killed and preserved his companions in the deep snow. Similar deaths would follow across the Great Lakes region, isolated camps disco...

Three Roman cities burned. Tens of thousands died. And the woman who led the attack had once been publicly flogged by the empire she destroyed. Entire settlements were destroyed as Roman forces struggled to contain a rebellion led by a widowed queen whose lands had been seized, whose daughters had been assaulted, and whose authority had been stripped under imperial law. Today, we reopen the case o...

A teenage queen collapsed beside a half-eaten apple—no pulse, no breath, and yet her body refused to decay. Witnesses reported multiple prior attacks: laces drawn tight enough to suffocate, a poisoned comb pressed into her hair, and a final act of deception carried out under the appearance of kindness. Each attempt grew more deliberate, more intimate, and more lethal. Today, we reopen the case of...

For over a thousand years, rulers, generals, and empires trusted a single voice: the Oracle of Delphi. Kings crossed borders because of her words. Wars were launched. Dynasties fell. From King Croesus of Lydia to the legend of Oedipus and the sacrifice of Leonidas at Thermopylae, the prophecies of Delphi shaped the ancient world. Today, we reopen the case of the Pythia of Delphi—examining whether...

Ireland’s ‘changeling’ killings: when fairy folklore justified child murder and torture. In 19th-century Ireland, some families believed that illness or disability wasn’t sickness at all. Instead, the fairies had stolen the real child (or spouse) and left a changeling behind: an imposter wearing a familiar face. And if the victim wasn’t “truly human,” then violence could be reframed as salvation....

In the Black Forest of medieval Europe, young women begin vanishing on the forest paths between village and cottage —always on errands of care, always near dusk. Their bodies are found days later in the underbrush. Their grandmothers are found strangled in their beds. And one detail repeats like a signature: missing baskets, missing red hoods, missing scarves—taken as trophies. Through pattern ana...