Ain't It Scary? with Sean & Carrie

We're going back to ancient Rome for a two-part look at the most notoriously evil emperors the empire ever had! This week, Sean gets us warmed up with Caligula, the man whose name has become a byword for madness and sexual depravity. Rome's third emperor ruled for less than four years, so what could this guy have done to get this kind of reputation? Was Caligula assassinated for being a violent ma...

Have you ever heard anything that you couldn't explain? The most mysterious sounds in the world vary from impossibly loud deep sea groans to possibly Biblical trumpets calling in the sky. And many, chillingly enough, still have no real scientific explanations. The stories of mysterious sounds we're exploring today include: ...The Bloop, the loudest undersea noise ever recorded, ...The Sky Trumpets...

Between 1911 and 1912, at least 11 Black families were murdered with an axe in their beds, in towns along the Southern Pacific railway line in Louisiana and Texas. The only person ever punished for any of these crimes was a teen girl named Clementine Barnabet.  In this week's episode, Sean caps off Axe Murder March with a gruesome sidecar to last year's "Man From the Train" series, as families kee...

In this 4th and final part of the Lizzie Borden story, we round out the rest of the sensational Borden Murders trial, hear the final verdict, and learn what Lizzie Borden did with the rest of her life after her (spoiler alert) acquittal in June 1893. Meet the witnesses that added quite a bit of color to the case, including skull-boiling doctors, confusing and contradictory policemen, a lollygaggin...

Screw it, we're doing 4 parts! The tea is too scorching and the drama too intense to not give Lizzie's case room to breathe, so we're dedicating all of Axe Murder March to Miss Borden herself. This week: Lizzie is charged, arrested, and brought to trial. The press continues their field day with Lizzie's story, hounding her at every turn, insulting her looks, and even falsely reporting a pregnancy....

Axe Murder March plunges on, Part 2 is coming in hot, and we're making it a 3-parter for the story of the Borden Murders and the accusations levied against Lizzie Borden, she of "40 whacks" fame. This week, we explore the pre-forensic era investigation into who could have killed Andrew and Abby Borden, and the official inquest into the crime itself. Witness a cavalcade of Fall River locals, Borden...

Axe Murder March is back, and this time, the ladies are doing it for themselves! That's right, after our fan-favorite series last year covering the Axeman of New Orleans, the Villisca Axe Murders, and the Man from the Train, we're heading back to the chopping block with stories of women who, well...took matters into their own hands. First up is one of the biggies in American history: the story of...

On October 13, 1972, a chartered Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying 40 passengers, including a local amateur rugby team on its way to an exhibition match in Chile, collided with a mountain and crashed into a glacier, losing both wings and its whole flight crew in the process. For the mostly young, inexperienced travelers who survived the crash, it was only the beginning of a 10 week fight for surv...

On February 19th, 1994, 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez was rushed to Riverside General Hospital after suffering severe heart palpitations, possibly caused by her advanced cervical cancer. In the ER, hospital staff began to work to try and save Gloria's life - and that's where the strangeness started. Nurses, residents, and technicians alike began to complain of severe symptoms after Gloria's blood was...

On November 1, 1909, in the small UK mill town of Staleybridge, construction magnate George Harry Storrs was stabbed to death in his kitchen. Four eyewitnesses, including George Harry's wife, saw the attack and got a good luck at the murderer - yet over a century later and despite several trials, the crime remains unsolved. In the thrilling conclusion to our two-parter on the case, we meet Corneli...

On November 1, 1909, in the small UK mill town of Staleybridge, construction magnate George Harry Storrs was stabbed to death in his kitchen. Four eyewitnesses, including George Harry's wife, saw the attack and got a good luck at the murderer - yet over a century later and despite several trials, the crime remains unsolved. This week, in the first of two episodes on the crime and investigation, Se...

At the end of our series exploring the Titanic tragedy, we "dive" into the immediate aftermath of the sinking - including legal inquiries and lawsuits - the search for the wreck on the bottom of the ocean, and the remaining theories and mysteries still surrounding the Titanic to this day. Take a seat at the US Senate hearings on the disaster, which ended in changes to maritime regulations and one...

We've made it to April 14th, 1912, and the RMS Titanic is midway through its maiden voyage from England to New York. All is calm, all is normal. Until - "Iceberg, right ahead!" But the warning would come too late. The Titanic would scrape across an iceberg far from its destination in America, and within 3 hours, she would be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. By dawn the morning of April 15th, o...

In 1907, English businessman J Bruce Ismay sat down with his partners at the shipping company White Star Line to dream up the newest three ships in the White Star Line's fleet, destined to be bigger, more luxurious, and possibly even faster than anything White Star Line or any of their competitors had managed to build to that time. By 1912, two of the ships had been constructed: the Olympic, and t...

Hey Scary Squad! We're still wrapping up important family obligations this week, so in lieu of a full episode - but still wanting to get some new 'tent out to ya - we wanted to include a sample Patreon minisode here to be accessible by all (and hopefully get more of you beautiful people over to our Patreon page)! The CURSE OF THE BAMBINO is the alleged baseball curse that befell the Red Sox after...

Hello Scary Squad! We apologize for not getting a new episode out this week - due to a death in our family, we've been tied up, understandably, with quite important matters. Sean wanted to hop on and give this little update, so you wouldn't think we'd left you in the dust of Christmas past! We hope you've had a lovely holiday, and can't wait to get back to it next week (don't worry - this isn't an...

It's been a hell of a week over at the Crypt, so this episode Sean & Carrie take a break from the bleak with a little holiday fun! Inspired by Fantasy Football drafts, Sean & Carrie recast an entire 10-character Christmas movie (featuring such Christmastime archetypes as Santa Claus, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Krampus) with figures from their over-100-episodes of weirdness. Does the head of the House o...

In 1985, a gang of mail-order assassins staged a string of murders-for-hire across the country - but this hitman story is less "John Wick" and more "Fargo by way of The Three Stooges."  Sean introduces the sordid tale of Richard "Doc" Savage, a Vietnam veteran and strip club owner who arranged paid killings through an ad placed in Soldier of Fortune magazine. What followed was a whirlwind of slaps...

After a few weeks of brutality, Carrie returns with a slightly silly tale from pre-WW2 Britain: the story of Gef, a trickster entity (or spirit? or poltergeist? or cryptid? or...) who presented himself as a talking mongoose to the Irving family, and both harassed and cozied up with the Irvings until the end of World War II. Gef, as he preferred to be called, allegedly told the Irvings - father Jam...

Listener beware: beheadings and heart-rippings abound in this week's tour through the history of human sacrifice! Ritual murder to please the gods or stave off disaster may stretch back as far as human civilization. Every civilization that sacrificed people put its own special spin on the ball, from babies left on mountain tops to warriors chosen by ritual combat and bled to death. This ep, Sean t...

New Orleans, one year post Hurricane Katrina. A man is found dead after jumping from the roof of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel. In his pocket is a note directing police to go back to his apartment. There, the note says, they'll find the dismembered body of Addie Hall. The police had no idea the kind of scene they were about to find. The inside of 826 North Rampart Street on October 17th, 2006 was n...

Can you imagine a hunger so deep it can never be filled, no matter how you try or what you eat? Cravings wracking your whole existence, pushing you past the limits of biology, decency and morality? That was the constant condition of Tarrare, the hungriest man who ever lived. This week, Sean tells the fascinating, morbid and entirely disgusting story of the eighteenth century French peasant, street...

Could America's most famous house also be its most haunted? That's what many think of the White House, the United States' office, residence, and seat of the Presidency. Inhabited by the most powerful men in the world since 1800, the White House boasts centuries of history, some of the biggest names of all time...and a whole cadre of ghosts. On Carrie's after-hours tour of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,...

What would your last words be, if you knew you were about to die? Would you go out with a joke, a last "I love you"...or an expression of regret? This week, Sean takes us on a tour of his favorite last words throughout the ages, from Pythagoras to Groucho Marx. Assassins, revolutionaries, kings and criminals - everyone has to reach the finish line sometime, and some do with such grace, dignity and...

We're all familiar with the trappings of Halloween that we know and love today: trick or treating, jack o' lantern carving, costume parades, witches and skeletons and ghosts and black cats...but why are those Halloween traditions? Why do we go from house to house asking for candy? Why do we dress up as ghouls and celebrities? Why do we believe the veil between our world and the afterlife is thinne...