Campfire: Tales of the Strange and Unsettling

This week, we have another favorite guest of the show; new father, author, podcaster, and editor-in-chief at Paranormality Magazine, Aaron Deese. We talk Dogman, authorship, the future of Paranormality Magazine, and the joys of fatherhood. This was a fantastic chat with an old friend. Please go and support him in everything that he does, but first sit back and enjoy this Fireside Chat with Aaron D...

Just twenty years after the founding of our nation, General David Bradford, also known as "Whiskey Dave" of the Whiskey Rebellion, fled the United States to avoid arrest and imprisonment. Bradford arrived at Bayou Sara, then a Spanish Colony, and obtained a land grant of 650 acres from the Baron de Corondelet to begin a new life. This was the beginning of a century of institutional impriso...

This week, we have a returning guest; one of our favorite people to have around the campfire, Lady Ann Selene. She is the author of Aperture In the Veil: Born In a Preternatural World, the owner and operator of KPNL Radio, and the host of Caravan: Library of Lore podcast. We pick up where we left off last time, and spend a lot of time discussing her healing group. We also got to hear all about her...

In June of 2011, Peter Lindberg, Dennis Åberg and their Swedish OceanX diving team discovered a feature visible on an indistinct sonar image while treasure hunting on the floor of the northern Baltic Sea at the center of the  Gulf of Bothnia. The seemingly remarkable circular shape of the object led to tremendous amounts of speculation. Everything from the ruins of an ancient civilization to a dow...

This week, we are beyond blessed to have Joy Johns, Bizzy Blank, and Karly Latham sitting down to discuss all things divination! We go deep on tarot, Oracle, rune casting, the Akashic records, bibliomancy, and something that Joy has taken to calling chaos readings! We also take a dive into the ladies’ personal histories with divination and discuss what the process entails for each of them and the...

This week, we discuss another piece of grade A choice Americana. The Gowrow is a twenty foot long reptilian monstrosity with ten-inch claws, giant tusks, and a spine lined with bony spikes leading to a razor sharp tail! According to Arkansas legend, these beasts roam the forest of the Ozarks looking for cattle to eat, men to smash, and flat bars to maim. Is these tales simply leftover Lumberwood l...

Tonight’s first tale is a spin on one of the most popular creepy pastas of all time. A group of young friends find themselves in a remote cabin for the weekend and our leading man wakes from a drunken slumber to find something that no one would ever have expected.  Our second story dives into the psychological trauma of experienced by a set of twins set always at odds. Will the unpredictable psych...

This week, we discuss the Aswang; a shapeshifting monster usually possessing a combination of the traits of either a vampire, ghoul, or witch, in Filipino folklore. Many accounts describe a being possessing an amalgamation of some or all of them. We get into some shockingly modern accounts that include events that involved missing children, monster-hunting posses, and horrifying moments of vigilan...

This week, we’re sitting down with fellow podcaster and hot new star on the voice acting scene, James Alexander. This guy has a wealth of incredible paranormal stories from his life and the life of his immediate family. It was an honor to get a tour of just the tip of the iceberg this time. I hope that this will be the first of many appearances to come. For now, enjoy getting to know this hilariou...

This week, we revisit and rework a classic story from way back in August of 2021. Sit back and let updated sound design and a new approach to mastering transport you… …deep in the craggy bluffs of the Mendips in Southwest England, to the isolated hamlet of Charterhouse. Standing in stark contrast to this area’s serene natural beauty is it’s penchant for some very strange secrets. It’s 1900 year hi...

This week, we had the distinct honor of sitting down with podcaster and Fortean enthusiast Kenzie Gleason. She is the host of the Cryptochats Podcast and one of the minds behind the Manic Pixie Dream Ghouls. We discuss her remarkable background, 20 years of ghost hunting, and the remarkable social changes that have taken place within the Fortean community in the last decade.  Campfire: Tales of th...

In this, the much anticipated conclusion of the Mothman Phenomenon, we discuss the madness that took over in 1967 culminating in the largest bridge disaster in West Virginia history. Take this ride with us through UFO sightings, Mothman encounters, Men in Black encounters, poltergeist activity, and prophetic dreams all amounting to far more questions than answers.  MEET GOTH BIGFOOT! Campfire: Tal...

This week, we’re beginning a new and exciting tradition. We have an honest to goodness round table prepared for your listening pleasure! Our guests? None other than beloved folk artist Christina Baker, or as you know her the Crescent Hare, Podcaster, Comic Book Artist, and actual human ray of sunshine Todd Purse, and the enigmatic eastern block mystic. The thinking man’s Fortean, the man who never...

Beginning in mid-November of 1966, a series of rapid fire encounters with the Mothman lit West Virginia on fire with speculation and controversy. From Marcella Bennet’s parental nightmare to Connie Joe Carpenter’s full body trance, this week, we explore some of the strangest and most compelling encounters with everyone’s favorite mothy horror.  DON’T WORRY! HE’S JUST MOTHIN’ AROUND!  Campfire: Tal...

We are celebrating Halloween in style with six of our favorite Spooky Story Submissions! Some fictional! Some true! All terrifying! Get cozy and settle in for a murderer’s row of terrifying tales, and a rather lengthy discussion of our favorite Halloween treats! Campfire: Tales of the Strange and Unsettling is created for adult audiences only. The content and discussion in this show will necessari...

For this week’s addition to the Campfire Classics Collection, we are returning to the mind of the undisputed master of horror. In this, the shortest of his short stories, he guides us through the final days of a forlorn bride. The neglected wife of an artist lost in his passions. The passions that filled his mind, blinding him to the terrible truth before him.  Campfire: Tales of the Strange and U...

This evening’s first tale gives us a rare window into the life of the world beyond our own. One lonely girl, trapped in a world in between. Will she find the companionship she so greatly desires, or will her attempts be confused with a poltergeist terror? Our second story follows two young boys as they make an otherworldly discovery. The only problem is…they follow them home.  These stories are wo...

On 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukranian SSR in the Soviet Union, one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at seven, the maximum severity, on the International Nuclear Event Scale took place when, while running a test, the operators accidentally dropped power output to near-zero, due partially to xenon pois...

This week’s addition to the Campfire Classics Collection was made though the brilliant works of renowned French author, Guy De Maupassant. Known for his intricate wording, Naturalist writing style, and focus on the middle and lower class alike, Maupassant is able to weave a terrifying tale that is beautifully told. Today, we will be telling you his story, Fear. Campfire: Tales of the Strange and U...

First up, we have a tale of the eerie happenings that go on after hours at a 24 hour gas station. Demons. Ghost children. Find out. Our second story is a terrifying story centered on the works of AI in the modern world. A series of trials focused on re-writing DNA goes horribly wrong; leading to an AI takeover. These stories are works of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, even...

In this, we have for you a very important community project. Strange Semantics is an in-depth look at the language that we use to describe this incredible field that we find ourselves in. Terms like paranormal, supernatural, otherworldly, supranatural, supernormal, paraweird, and Fortean are examined through the input of 30 of the most fascinating people in the Fortean community. Podcasters, autho...

This week, we’re focusing solely on the universally agreed upon encounter with the Mothman. On November 15, 1966, quite possibly one of the most important encounters with anomalous phenomena took place when two young couples from Point Pleasant, Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette, told police they saw a large grey creature whose eyes "glowed red" when the car's head...

This week we have a seminal piece from one of the most important authors of the 19th century. Edgar Allen Poe initiated the modern detective story. He was the first to truly develop the gothic horror story. He was, quite possibly, the most significant early forerunner of the science fiction form. There is a reason that the vast majority of you, regardless of your general interest in classic litera...

First up, we have a tale of entrepreneurship gone wrong when a group of ambitious teens start a haunted house in what turns out to be a….HAUNTED HOUSE! They’re getting much much more than they bargained for.  Our second story is a terrifying exercise is unrequited love. What happens when a very lonely man discovers a resource beyond imagination? Nothing good.  These stories are works of fiction. A...

In early November of 1966, amid a flurry of UFO activity, a sewing machine salesman from West Virginia named Woodrow Derenberger was returning from a business trip to Marietta, Ohio, when he encountered one of the most bizarre and fascinating characters in Fortean history. Indrid Cold would not only come to be what Woody was known for. He would become a fixture in the life of the Derenberger famil...