Altar Ego

In 1989, a drug cult operating out of Matamoros, Mexico, was exposed when a member blew through a border checkpoint — believing himself invisible — and was followed straight back to Santa Elena Ranch. What investigators found was confusing and deeply disturbing. What the media told the world about it brought deep harm and stigma to one of the oldest continuously practiced African diasporic religio...

In the second episode of Heather's Mormonism in Utah series, we pick up after the death of Joseph Smith, when the future of the Mormon movement was uncertain. Into leadership stepped a carpenter-turned-apostle who would lead thousands of followers across the American frontier and transform the desert of Utah Territory into the center of a new religious empire. Brigham Young was more than a pioneer...

This is the final installment of Jeri's LSD series, and we're ending it in Detroit. A group of kids from Lincoln Park start playing guitar after school in 1963, and by 1968, they are living in a commune run by their manager, getting surveilled by the FBI, and sharing a roof with someone on the bureau's ten most wanted list. MC5 was performing punk rock before anyone had a name for it. This episode...

Content Warning: This episode discusses polygamy, coercion, and religious control within a historical context. Joseph Smith is known as the founder of Mormonism, a prophet to millions and a figure surrounded by faith, devotion, and controversy. But the story of how the religion began is far more complex than many realize. In this episode, we step into early 1800s America to trace Smith’s rise from...

Founded in 1968 as a radical response to systemic racism and state power, the group openly aligned themselves with the Black Panther Party as supporters. Once referred to by the FBI as one of the most dangerous and threatening groups in America. Their message was simple and controversial: white Americans had a responsibility to dismantle oppressive systems from within. How? Through altering relati...

At a quiet crossroads in the Mississippi Delta, a legend was born. Robert Johnson is one of the most influential blues musicians of all time. His music shaped generations, yet his story is wrapped in something far darker. According to folklore, Johnson disappeared as an unremarkable guitarist and returned with a talent so extraordinary that people struggled to explain it. The answer, some believed...

Five children vanish in a house fire… and no bodies are ever found. On Christmas Eve 1945, the Sodder family fire should have been a tragic accident. A home goes up in flames. Parents survive. Five of their children are presumed dead. Except there’s one problem; there were no remains. No bones. No evidence they were ever in the fire at all. What follows is decades of unanswered questions, strange...

In this episode of Altar Ego, Heather takes us to Jamaica’s Rose Hall to explore the legend of Annie Palmer, known as the White Witch. Said to have practiced dark magic and ruled her plantation with fear, her story lives at the crossroads of modern paranormal beliefs, folklore, violence, and exploitation. Was Annie Palmer even real? Was she a practitioner of the occult? Or has her legacy been shap...

The second installation in our LSD series... This week, we're diving into one of history's most fascinating fungi: ergot. From the sacred rituals of the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece, through the terrifying plagues that swept medieval Europe, to its profound cultural significance throughout indigenous practices and its role in shaping modern medicine and psychedelic history.

In this special bonus episode, Heather shares her personal take on Heated Rivalry and how it hits surprisingly close to home. More reflective and intimate than our usual episodes, join us for a gentle review of Heather's experience watching the series that we've all fallen in love with.

CW: violence involving minors, themes of mental illness, delusion, and psychiatric hospitalization. Listener discretion advised. In this episode, Heather takes us back to 2014, when two twelve-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, lured a friend into the woods and attacked her after becoming convinced they needed to prove themselves to the fictional internet figure known as Slender Man. We walk t...

In 1938, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann synthesized LSD by accident and experienced the first-ever LSD trip. By the mid-1960s the U.S. government had funded over 1,000 clinical studies on it, secretly tested it on soldiers without their consent, and then criminalized it entirely... all within the same two decades. In the first of a several-part series, this episode covers the discovery and history o...

CW: This episode discusses suicide, attempted suicide, depression, substance use, and themes of self-harm. Listener discretion advised. In 1990, Judas Priest stood trial in a Nevada courtroom. Not for drugs. Not for violence. Not for anything they physically did. But for what their music supposedly said. Two young men attempted suicide after spending hours listening to the band’s song “Better by Y...

CW: This episode discusses adult themes, including sexuality and coercion, sexual and labor trafficking, and sexual abuse. Not appropriate for children. Listener discretion advised. OneTaste was marketed as a path to awakening, empowerment, and liberation, but in actuality was sexual coercion and exploitation that led the founders to federal court. This episode examines a notable shift in accounta...

In 1930s Key West, a man calling himself Dr. Carl Tanzler believed fate had promised him a woman he'd seen in childhood visions. When he met Elena Milagro de Hoyos, she was alive... and battling tuberculosis. After her death, he did not accept the loss. What happened next went far beyond mourning. In this episode, Heather explores obsession disguised as devotion, the shocking lengths Tanzler went...

CW: Brief mentions of child abuse and SA. In this follow-up episode, we discuss the case of a man now known as “The Rain Boy,” Donnie Decker, who became the center of an odd 1983 case in which witnesses claimed water appeared inside with no clear source. Rather than asking only what happened , this episode, Jeri walks us through a different curiosity: what can happen when the body's survival respo...

Ed and Lorraine Warren are two of the most recognizable names in paranormal history. Demonologists, ghost hunters, and the couple behind some of the most famous haunting cases of the 20th century. But before the movies, the mythology, and the merch, they were just two people who found each other and built something much bigger than themselves. In this episode, Heather traces how the Warrens met, h...

What... or who is the Hat Man, and why do so many people describe the same figure? In Part 1 of this two-part series, Jeri explores the Hat Man phenomenon: a shadowy “watcher” reported across cultures and decades. We look at what people consistently report, why these encounters often happen in liminal states like sleep paralysis, half-awake moments, exhaustion, and high fear, and how stress may sh...

CW: This episode includes discussion of child death, addiction (alcoholism and drug use), and mental health crisis, as well as death, grief, and occult themes. Listener discretion advised. Led Zeppelin didn’t just reshape rock music; they became wrapped in something far darker. Tragedy, strange coincidences, and enduring rumors have fueled the legend of the so-called Curse of Led Zeppelin for deca...

CW: This episode includes discussion of suicide, mental health crises, emotional abuse, and coercive or controlling dynamics in spiritual spaces. Listen with care. In this episode, we take a deep look at Teal Swan; her rise as a spiritual influencer, the community that formed around her, and the serious concerns raised by former followers, journalists, and mental-health professionals. Drawing from...

CW: This episode includes discussion of postpartum psychosis, suicidality, psychiatric hospitalization, and child death. No graphic details are included. Listener discretion is advised. This episode examines the case of Andrea Yates, a mother whose dismissed postpartum psychosis led to the deaths of her five children in 2001. Jeri guides Heather and listeners through how severe mental illness, ign...

CW: Discussion of historical violence and murder (without graphic detail), fear and moral panic, and the impact of violence on communities. It also references religious and spiritual beliefs and historical racial tension. Listener discretion is advised. In the early hours of New Orleans’ Jazz Age, a killer stalked the city with no clear motive, no consistent victims, and no face anyone could agree...

CW: This episode discusses racism, white-supremacist violence, and systemic oppression , including the assassination of civil-rights organizers . There are no graphic descriptions, but the themes may be heavy, especially for Black listeners, Indigenous listeners, and other people of color who live with the ongoing impacts of this history. Listener discretion is encouraged. In this first episode of...

CW: Discussion of racism, white supremacy, organized hate groups, and historical violence. There are no graphic descriptions, but the themes may be heavy, especially for Black listeners, Indigenous listeners, and other people of color who live with the ongoing impacts of this history. Listener discretion is encouraged. In part two of this series, we explore the history of the Ku Klux Klan and the...

CW: References to invasive medical exams (not graphic), alcohol use and alcoholism, death and child loss (not detailed), spiritualism and séance practices, accusations of fraud and public humiliation, and gender-based scrutiny and mistreatment. In this episode, Heather explores the surprising overlap between Harry Houdini’s mission to expose fraudulent séances and the legends surrounding Sarah Win...