Off the Path

Most people think of the Men in Black as the cool, stylish heroes of the movie franchise. They kept the world safe from aliens. But among the UFO subculture, the Men in Black are entirely different. They’re shadowy figures who come after people who claim to experience paranormal activity. The idea of these Men in Black started in the 1950s – and one of the most notorious encounters happened in Bri...

Annabelle is an ordinary Raggedy Ann doll. But some people believe she’s possessed by a demon, and terrorized a bunch of college students in the 1970s. Movies like Annabelle and The Conjuring tell this story.

Stephen King’s novels usually take place in small town Maine. But one of King’s most famous novels might contain a call-back to his childhood in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

The first circus elephant in America didn’t start with Barnum & Bailey. It was more than a generation earlier. And it ended in bloodshed – not once, but twice. The saga began in the early 1800s with a man who came from the town of Somers, New York.

You probably know about the phenomenon of Stonehenge – an ancient alignment of giant slabs that acts as a cosmic calendar. There’s something like that here in the U.S. too. It’s called MIThenge. And yes, it’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT – in Cambridge.

The city of Providence, Rhode Island, mostly celebrates the legacy of author H. P. Lovecraft – one of the fathers of horror fiction and, increasingly, a pop culture icon. But there’s a lot to grapple with – and his bleak, wordy prose about incomprehensible interstellar monsters is far from the most difficult thing about Lovecraft.

In the early 1820s, a pair of Native American students fell in love with two white women in the hills of northwest Connecticut. Their parallel lives ended in personal and national tragedy. In this episode, WSHU reporter Davis Dunavin travels to Cornwall, Connecticut, for the story of the Foreign Mission School.

Matt Farley may be one of the most prolific recording artists of all time – that you have never heard of. He has produced hundreds of albums you can stream on iTunes and Spotify, all from his basement in Danvers, Massachusetts.

There’s a tiny island off the coast of Connecticut. Its residents are more than ten thousand little white seabirds called terns. They have long orange beaks and sometimes ominous black tufts on their heads. There might be more terns on this island than anywhere on earth. And for fifty years, one woman has served as steward and caretaker.

A grisly construction accident in New England in 1848 left railroad worker Phineas Gage with severe brain damage – but gave scientists valuable clues about how the brain functions. Gage survived the metal spike that went clear through his head and has since become an icon of both science and pop culture. His skull is on display at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

There are questions that might stump even the most dedicated country music fan: Who kickstarted the country music industry in the 1920s, even before big names like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family? And why is this Texas musician buried in Bridgeport, Connecticut?