Autumn's Oddities

Jane Marie Prichard went into Blackbird State Forest early on the morning of September 20, 1986. She was collecting the final data she needed for her thesis in botany when an unknown assailant attacked and killed her. The killer left evidence, but the DNA didn't match up to the only suspect's. With no leads and no motive, her case went cold. SOURCES https://www.newcastlede.gov/1308/Jane-Prichard h...

Just as spirits are known to attach themselves to places that held meaning during their lives, they’re also known to attach to their favorite objects, unwilling to let them go even in death. From haunted bunk beds to Valentino's ring to James Dean's Little Bastard, these objects have brought only pain and suffering to those who possess them. SOURCES https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/austr...

Richard and Shirley Robison decided to spend the summer with their four children at their vacation home near Good Hart park, as they typically did. Their log cabin was located in the north woods on the shore of Lake Michigan. Secluded among the dense forest, the cabin was nearly impossible to see from the road. This peaceful area provided the setting for a gruesome massacre that remains unsolved m...

Hey hey my friends, Autumn's Oddities is taking a short break before kicking off Season 2. Feel free to check out my Patreon for a little cache of unreleased episodes if you miss me and remember, if it's creepy and weird, you'll find it here. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/autumn-s-oddities--5307439/support .

In October of 1984, unemployed German food engineer Gunther Stoll stood up from his chair and exclaimed "I get it!", he wrote the word "YOG'TZE" on a scrap of paper, scribbled it out, and left his house for a pub. Hours later, he was found naked inside his car that had crashed into a ditch. Stoll had been hit by another vehicle elsewhere. Stoll did not survive his injuries, but he managed to tell...

While flying his small plane in June of 1947, businessman and civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects moving at high speeds through the skies over Washington’s Mount Rainier. Widely publicized reports of Arnold’s experience, followed by an increasing number of reported UFO sightings, led the U.S. Air Force to begin investigating the incidents with Operation Sign in 1948. The ini...

In this special episode, CJ from Beyond the Rainbow Podcast and I are covering two "angels of death", nurses Donald Harvey and Richard Rogers. While Harvey murdered the very patients he was supposed to be nursing back to health, Rogers targeted gay men at bars, dismembering them and disposing of their bodies in trash cans along the highway. SOURCES https://www.wcpo.com/news/crime/inmate-charged-in...

On June 9, 1979, a fire broke out on the ghost train ride at Sydney’s Luna Park. The fire killed 7 people, 6 of them children. It’s still considered one of Sydney’s greatest unsolved mysteries even after more than 40 years, as authorities have never conclusively found the cause of the fire. There’s an official explanation, but there are also theories that won’t go away, including one involving a d...

In January of 2005, San Angelo, Texas veterinarian Wendi Mae Davidson called Dyess Air Force Base and reported her husband Staff Sgt. Michael Severance missing. Wendi claimed that she'd taken her sons to visit her parents and when she returned, Michael was nowhere to be found, and he'd supposedly left without his truck or cell phone. Severance wasn't yet AWOL, but after his leave time was up, the...

The story of Penn State University graduate student Betsy Aardsma’s unsolved murder has haunted the campus as a kind of urban legend for more than five decades. Although told as a ghost story, those who investigated fear that her very real murder is being forgotten. On Thanksgiving weekend 1969, 22-year-old Betsy was murdered by a single stab wound to the chest in the stacks of the Pattee Library....

Between 1986 and 1989, the Colonial Parkway thoroughfare in Virginia served as a suspected serial killer’s hunting grounds. The killer or killers responsible for the Colonial Parkway murders targeted couples as they sat in their vehicles, each incident taking two lives at a time. Six people are confirmed dead and another couple remains missing and presumed killed. SOURCES Predators on the Parkway:...

I'm taking you on a trip around the world to investigate some of the most bizarre and frightening (in some cases funny) cryptids, creatures, monsters, ghosts, and demons. Some of the featured creatures include the Acheri, Shirime, Anansi the spider, Rompo, Dijiang, Doppelgänger, Bokknerijders, Bunyip, and Leyak. SOURCES http://www.flutopedia.com/refs/Rink_1889_EskimoTalesAndSongs_FP.pdf https://ma...

H. H. Holmes was possibly America’s “first” serial killer. Underneath the sensational stories of Holmes’ killings is a con man who spent his entire life lying, scheming, and tricking people, in particular, women. While Holmes admitted to killing 27 people, the real number is somewhere between 9 and more than 200. Aside from the fact that he killed an unknown amount of victims while holding court i...

Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old Philadelphia teacher, was found by her fiance with a knife protruding from her chest sitting upright against their kitchen cabinets. She had 20 stab wounds to her head, chest, and the back of her neck. Her fiance had allegedly been at the gym when her death occurred, and he returned to the apartment to find the door locked from the inside and the security bar in plac...

James “Bluebeard” Watson was a Southern-born chameleon and lothario who married at least 25 women and killed a third of them. He had so many aliases that he sometimes lost track of who he was at any given time. His real name and his true birthdate were unknown even to him. From the turn of the century until 1920, Watson eluded law enforcement officials, leaving a bloodstained trail of dead wives i...

Experts can’t seem to agree on exactly what happened in the case of Florence Unger's drowning death. It’s another accident, murder, or suicide case that looks pretty cut and dry until you find out what was happening behind the scenes and when forensics come into play. Luckily, this isn’t one of those cases without a definitive answer. SOURCES https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.2003.10.31...

You probably know all of the myths and lore. But are vampires just fictional characters derived from Bram Stoker's Dracula? Or, are they rooted in reality? Are vampires real? The tales of the allegedly real vampires of New Orleans, the Count St. Germain, The Casket Girls, and The Carter Brothers may convince you that they are. SOURCES https://pelicanstateofmind.com/louisiana-love/jacques-st-germai...

Although there is plenty of information about Marie Laveau in the legends of New Orleans, separating the fact from the myth has always been a challenge. Nearly everything that is known about her originates in the oral traditions, which were embellished, making an already larger-than-life persona practically immortal in the tales that exist today. Promo: And Then They Were Gone SOURCES The Magic of...

Madame LaLaurie holds a horrific place in the history and lore of New Orleans. If ever a house was haunted, it would be the Lalaurie Mansion and it’s attic used for the sole purpose of torturing and murdering enslaved people in the most grotesque ways you could possibly imagine. The wealthy socialite is estimated to have killed between 50 and 100 people. SOURCES Madame Lalaurie, Mistress of the Ha...

Little more than a year Addie Hall and Zack Bowen found love and gained national attention in the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina, Zack jumped to his death from a French Quarter hotel with a suicide note in his pocket confessing that Addie was in their home. But she wasn't alive. Parts of her dismembered body were in the fridge, on the stove, and in the oven. This is one of New Orleans' most gruesom...

Robert Johnson was the inaugural member of the 27 Club. He has been called the greatest blues musician of all time and many argue he laid the foundation for what would become rock and roll. His death is contested and his life is infamous because, as rumor has it, Robert Johnson traded his soul to the devil for the ability to play the guitar. Promo: Horrifying History SOURCES Up Jumped the Devil: T...

Mia Zapata was the singer and frontwoman of The Gits, a Seattle punk band, at the time she was found brutally murdered on July 7, 1993. Since she was 27 years old at the time of her death, she is part of the infamous 27 Club. With no viable suspects, her case went cold for nearly a decade before an arrest was made. SOURCES The Gits; 2005; Documentary by Kerri O’Kane https://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-...

On a cold Scottish December morning, a man was walking his dog along Prestwick Beach when he made a terrible discovery. On the beach, he found the body of a deceased woman, covered in sand and seaweed. It appeared that she’d washed up with the tide. Later identified as 30-year-old Swedish national Annie Börjesson, her death was deemed a tragic suicide. However, there’s much more to the story and y...

Images of witches have appeared in various forms throughout history—from evil, wart-nosed women gathered over a cauldron to green-faced, cackling women riding through the sky on brooms wearing pointy hats and melting when water is thrown on them. In pop culture, the witch has been portrayed as everything from a nose-twitching suburban housewife, to a teenage witch learning to control her powers an...

In the early 1990’s, Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, Indiana was bought by Herb Baumeister, a local business owner, and family man. Although never brought to trial, he was the prime suspect in the disappearance of a number of men from the Midwest over two decades. Investigators recovered more than 5,000 human bone fragments on the property from as many as 17 different victims. Only five of those vic...