Deceptive Reality

The Smurl family believed something was inside their home… but what started small quickly escalated into something much more serious. This episode breaks down the real events, the claims, and the details that still havent been explained.

There are rules in the woods, and people in Appalachia rarely explain them unless they think you need to know. In this episode of Deceptive Reality, Bert and Nick dig into the rise of the Not Deer, a modern cryptid said to look almost like a deer, but never quite right. From early sightings in the 1950s to recent reports of eerie mimicry, unnatural movement, dead-silent forests, and voices calling...

Ohios Bigfoot flap looked finished, until Ashland brought in wood knocks, giant barefoot style tracks, and a corridor theory that changed the whole case. Then a South Carolina roadside sighting near bridges and swamp cover made the pattern even harder to ignore. This episode asks whether we are hearing random noise, or glimpsing the outline of something that moves the same way every time.

Fireballs over Ohio and Texas have people looking up, just as NASA is talking more openly about planetary defense, asteroid detection, and a permanent future on the Moon. In this episode, the hosts break down the recent fireball events, DART, NEO Surveyor, Chelyabinsk, Tunguska, and the Moon-plan shift to ask one unsettling question, is this normal preparation, or something much bigger?

The U.S. government quietly registered alien.gov and aliens.gov, but the stranger part may be what was already happening behind the scenes. This episode traces the real UAP records pipeline at the National Archives, the growing Record Group 615 collection, agency transfers, AARO limits, and the uneasy possibility that disclosure may arrive not as a confession, but as bureaucracy.

In August 1993, Lyudmila Korovinas hiking group entered the Khamar-Daban mountains near Lake Baikal, and only Valentina Utochenko came back alive. This episode breaks down the official hypothermia ruling, the survivors disturbing account, and why the sudden deaths of six hikers still feel like one of the strangest mountain cases ever recorded.

This episode breaks down the real haunting case that inspired The Conjuring, and why the true story is more complicated than the movie ever showed. We follow the Perron familys claims, the Harrisville farmhouse history, Bathsheba Sherman lore, the Warrens involvement, and the skeptical arguments that still surround the case.

A signal on 4625 kHz has been buzzing for decades, like a lighthouse that never turns off. Then, without warning, a Russian voice breaks through with call signs, codewords, and number groups that feel like they are aimed at someone specific. In this case file, we lock in a clean timeline, audit the evidence we can actually verify, and stress-test the biggest theories, from military channel marker...

A missing mom vanished on a quick Christmas shopping trip in 2001. Now, Michelle Hundley Smith has been found alive after 24 years, and shes asking for privacy. In this episode, we break down the case that feels like a classic Unsolved Mysteries opener, Eden, North Carolina, a short drive to a Kmart in Martinsville, Virginia, then nothing for decades. Her husband reported her missing on December 3...

Nikola Tesla was years ahead of everyone, and it might have cost him everything. In this episode, Bert and Nick trace Teslas rise, his strangest ideas, the inventions people still argue about, and the mystery of what happened after his death, including the rapid scramble around his personal papers and notebooks. They also detour into modern creativity and the AI content wave, why fake real videos...

If youve ever scanned shortwave radio at night and heard a calm voice reading numbers, you already know how unsettling it feels. And the creepiest part is, its not an urban legend. Its real, and its still happening. In this episode, Bert and Nick dive into the mystery of numbers stations, strange shortwave broadcasts that repeat tones, numbers, and phrases with no station ID and no explanation. Th...

A funeral home. A silent 911 call. No break-in. No people. And yet the call is logged and responded to. This episode goes deep into the strange category of paranormal communication, where the signal becomes the doorway. Bert and Nick break down a creepy case in southern Colorado where a late-night abandoned 911 call leads police to a locked funeral home on cemetery property, with no sign anyone wa...

This episode is a perfect storm of history, mystery, and how did that happen moments. Bert and Nick open with real-life talk about winter storms and how brutal snow can be, then jump into a doomsday clock update thats closer to midnight than ever before. The conversation turns into how fast things have shifted, and why people feel like the world is sliding the wrong direction. Then Nick drops a wi...

Magic mushrooms, little people sightings, and a repeatable laser experiment that claims to show hidden code, this episode goes full high-strangeness. Bert and Nick kick off with a hilarious behind-the-scenes moment and then jump into a real-world oddity, Bert finds unreleased horror blind boxes at Target, tries to buy them, and the employee refuses because they are not even in the system yet. That...

Why do so many people report seeing the same shadow figure, a tall man in a wide brim hat, just standing there watching? And why does it show up in stories across decades, families, and locations? In this episode, Bert and Nick dive into the Hat Man phenomenon and the broader world of shadow people. Nick shares his own experience from a basement apartment in New York, plus the strange patterns tha...

This episode goes from pop culture conspiracy to genuinely chilling real-world stories, and it all somehow ties back to the same question, where does consciousness go when time stops making sense? Bert and Nick start with Stranger Things and a fan conspiracy that refuses to die. The theory claims the finale was not the real finale, and that a secret episode could drop later. They break down the cl...

Cursed objects, hidden treasure, and one of the strangest books in history. This episode takes a sharp turn into the kind of mysteries that feel too specific to be coincidence. Bert and Nick start with quick reactions to Stranger Things chatter and the chaos of modern fandom, then dive into a story about cursed items and how something dark could attach itself to everyday objects. The discussion co...

A wild Boxing Day episode with two stories that pull in completely different directions. Nick opens with breaking news that feels like a modern cautionary tale. A researcher working toward a major fusion breakthrough is found dead in Brookline, Massachusetts, a place Nick points out is known for being extremely safe. The conversation spirals into questions about progress, money, and why so many wo...

Some of the best UFO videos on the internet look completely undeniable, until you hear one explanation that flips everything. In this episode, Bert and Nick go deep into the race car UFO phenomenon and why certain footage looks like a rotating craft, even when it isnt. From there the conversation gets cosmic fast. They break down mind-bending space scale facts, including the claim that you could l...

This episode is packed with bizarre discoveries, strange coincidences, and deep paranormal lore. Bert and Nick kick things off with a discussion about misprints, cameras, color issues, and holiday traditions before falling straight into a rabbit hole involving Stephen Kings connected universe. From It to The Dark Tower, the guys explore how Kings stories intertwine with ideas about other realms, p...

This episode goes everywhere. From caffeine withdrawals to psychic cases to orbs that behave like theyre alive. Bert and Nick open the show with some humor and chaos before diving into one of the strangest true stories involving a spirit speaking through a living person to name its attacker. Then the conversation shifts to the orb phenomenon, including softball-sized orbs seen at Skinwalker Ranch,...

This episode might be the strangest twist in Berts life yet. After 47 years of barely remembering dreams, everything changed the moment a bloodstone ring showed up. The data from his sleep tracker told a story that wasnt subtle at all. Dream recall spiked. Awareness increased. And something shifted in a way that even the charts couldnt ignore. Bert and Nick break down the entire experiment, from t...

Time to buckle up. This episode takes a turn into the strange, the personal, and the flat out unexplainable. Bert and Nick kick things off with a debate about the Wildwood Sanitarium that somehow feels like a glitch in the universe. Two memories of the same place that don’t line up. One camera. One answer. And maybe more dimensional weirdness than either expected. From there, Nick dives into a sto...

UFOs, ghosts, and a revolution in paranormal investigation—all in one episode. Bert and Nick kick things off with a new Nova Scotia UFO sighting—filmed from a freight vessel just off the Halifax coast. The glowing object hovered above the water before vanishing at impossible speed. Is it authentic footage, or an AI-generated fake? Then Nick shares a chilling true story from Canadas past—a gas stat...

Ghosts in the walls, comets that act alive, and cat toys that might be smarter than we think. This week, Bert and Nick dig into the eerie true story of The Bowen Family, where strange knocks and ghostly whispers turned out to be something horrifyingly human — a man living in their walls for years. Then the discussion turns to the bizarre 3I Atlas comet, which some scientists believe is moving in w...