Haunted Talks

In the summer of 2026, an island covered in trees appeared in the middle of a remote reservoir in British Columbia.  Then it vanished. It wasn't the first. For centuries, sailors have reported phantom islands that rise from the sea, drift across the water, or linger on maps even when no one can find them. Some have natural explanations. Others have inspired legends of Atlantis, strange creatures,...

After more than 25 years with The Haunted Walk, Margo MacDonald has heard countless ghost stories, explored haunted places, and experienced things she still can't explain. Yet all that time spent exploring the paranormal has left her with more questions, and an even greater sense of wonder. In her new book, A Curious Presence: An Exploration of Ghosts and the People Who Haunt Them , Margo travels...

In December 1926, famed mystery writer Agatha Christie vanished. Nearly a century later, we're revisiting the mystery with the help of one of her most famous fictional detectives: Miss Marple. Christie disappeared from her home after a troubled evening, and her abandoned car was soon discovered in the English countryside. A massive search followed. Police chased leads, newspapers fuelled speculati...

Some of history's most famous people had remarkably eventful afterlives. Charlie Chaplin's corpse was stolen from his grave and held for ransom.  Thomas Paine was dug up and carried across the Atlantic. Pieces of Beethoven and Schubert disappeared in the name of science. And René Descartes somehow ended up buried without his head. In this episode, we uncover  the bizarre true history of famous cor...

In the conclusion to our haunted road trip across North America, we travel north to the infamous Valley of the Headless Men, listen for an invisible gathering deep in the Great Smoky Mountains, cross the strange emptiness of the Badlands, and enter the haunted halls of the Banff Springs Hotel. Along the way, we explore how unanswered questions become legends, and why some mysteries only grow stran...

Summer is the season for open roads, quiet trails, dark lakes, and nights under the stars. But we never enter the wilderness empty-handed.  We bring our oldest fears with us. In Part 1 of our two-part journey, Haunted Talks sets out on a road trip through some of North America's most beautiful parks and wild places.  Along the way, we find restless spirits, strange lights in the sky, ghostly figur...

In 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911 from her apartment with a terrifying story: someone was trying to break in through her bathroom mirror. To the dispatcher, it sounded impossible. Maybe even delusional. Ruthie Mae's call was treated as low priority. Officers came, knocked, and left. Two days later, they forced the door and found her dead inside.  The mirrored medicine cabinet had been pulled fr...

Was Denver International Airport built for the end of the world? Since opening in 1995, the airport has become the centre of endless conspiracy theories.  Secret tunnels. Apocalyptic artwork. Underground bunkers. A mysterious time capsule linked to an organization that seemingly never existed. For decades, these and other oddities have fueled rumours of hidden agendas, secret societies, and plans...

Before Houdini became the name history remembered, another illusionist drew enormous crowds and commanded extraordinary fees. He called himself the  Great Lafayette , and his performances were part magic show, part circus, part theatre of death. Then, one night in Edinburgh, his grand finale set the theatre on fire. Lafayette was seen rushing back inside, through the flames, to save the animals he...

What if a ghost is not only something we encounter in the dark, but something we may, in some mysterious way, participate in? In this special episode of Haunted Talks, Jim presents a manifesto for reimagining the paranormal. Moving beyond the familiar debate between "spirits of the dead" and "tricks of the mind," he explores a third possibility: that hauntings may emerge from a stranger relationsh...

Off the coast of Venice sits an island no one will approach.  Poveglia  carries centuries of dark history, and  the scale of what happened there is nearly impossible to comprehend. Today, it sits abandoned, overgrown, and rarely visited.  But that does not mean it is empty.  Boat captains refuse to moor there, even in storms. Plans to reclaim it have come and gone. Still, its reputation endures, s...

Most fairy tale monsters keep their distance. They wait in towers. They haunt the edge of the forest. You can, in theory, avoid them.  The one in this story sits at the dinner table.  The Juniper Tree  is widely considered the most disturbing tale the Brothers Grimm ever published. Not the most violent. Not the most fantastical. The most disturbing, because the danger lives inside the house, wears...

You know these stories.  A lost girl in the woods. A puppet who lies. A chicken convinced the sky is falling. You've known them since childhood. What you don't know is what those stories were before someone decided they belonged in the nursery. What we found is not charming. A puppet hanged from an oak tree. Stepsisters carving off their own toes. Children led into the woods to starve.  It is bloo...

On the morning of February 9th, 1855, the residents of Devon  woke to a nightmare  pressed into the snow. A single-file line of cloven hoof-prints, stretching over miles of frozen English countryside.  Across thirty towns. In six hours.  Made by something walking upright, one foot precisely in front of the other. The prints didn't go around obstacles. They went through them. Over fourteen-foot wal...

Jim steps out from behind the microphone to share a talk he gave at the Modern Language Association conference in Toronto, where he was invited to speak on a panel about Gothic scholarship, podcasting, and public humanities. It's a conversation about what we're really doing when we tell ghost stories. Not just entertaining, but shaping how people think about the past, life, death, and what may lie...

Journalist and researcher  Brian Baker , founder of  The Superstitious Times , joins Haunted Talks to discuss his new book,  Eerie Whispers: Exploring Canada's Reluctant Relationship with Its Ghostly Lore . Why is Canada, a country overflowing with ghost stories, so hesitant to talk about them? Brian shares a chilling childhood encounter he has never quite shaken, unpacks his idea of Canada as "th...

She was the quiet churchgoer. The dutiful daughter. The last person anyone expected to wield a hatchet. But on an August morning in 1892, the Borden home in Fall River, Massachusetts, became the scene of one of the most savage double murders in American history. And the name  Lizzie Borden  became synonymous with murder itself. In this episode, we step inside the Borden home to uncover what really...

Happy Halloween to all the ghosts and ghoulies! 🖤🎃👻 Jim's love letter to Halloween. Walk with us through fog-lit childhood streets, pause beside ancient fires for the dead, and feel again the quiet magic of the night when the veil grows thin. This is a night for stories, for spirits, and for those who still believe in a little mystery. Settle in, press play, and celebrate Halloween with us. If...

December 29, 1972. A routine flight becomes an unspeakable tragedy when  Eastern Airlines Flight 401  crashes into the Florida Everglades. Ninety-six souls perish in the dark swampland, their final moments a desperate struggle against fire, water, and alligators. But for some of the crew, death wasn't the end of their duties. Weeks later, Captain Bob Loft and Flight Engineer Don Repo  began appear...

They were the most famous ghost hunters in the world.  A husband and wife who claimed to battle demons, investigate possessions, and protect families from the darkness beyond. But every haunting has two sides. In this special episode, we peel back the legend to uncover who  Ed and Lorraine Warren  really were. From their humble beginnings to their most infamous cases,  we explore the uneasy space...

In 1794, a stranger died in a farmhouse on the edge of the Virginia frontier. What followed became one of the most chilling, bizarre, and well-documented hauntings in early America. Phantom horses galloped through the night. Objects flew across rooms. Fires sparked without cause. Clothing was clipped by unseen scissors into crescents, sometimes while still being worn. And then the voice arrived. T...

Most shipwrecks leave behind ghosts. This one left behind something stranger. In 1912, the Mayflower , a wooden steamer built for the quiet lakes of eastern Ontario, set out on one final trip before winter . Aboard were a small crew, nine passengers, and a coffin carrying the body of a young man named Herman Brown, on his way home to be buried. As a sudden snowstorm swept across Lake Kamaniskeg, t...

Deep in the wilderness of northwestern Ontario, where the forest swallows sound and the lakes stretch toward the horizon, stands a log castle. Not the ruin of a forgotten community, or the relic of a wealthy eccentric. This towering mansion of timber was built by one man. Working alone. In this episode, we journey to White Otter Lake and step inside the haunting legacy of Jimmy McOuat. A man drive...

At 9:04 a.m., Halifax was torn apart in an instant. One moment it was a thriving wartime city, the next, it was fire, thunder, and ruin. A fireball as hot as the surface of the sun ignited the harbour. Shockwaves ripped through homes and streets. A wall of water followed, drowning what the flames had spared. In this second part of our two-part series, we return to the stories of Francis Mackey, Vi...

On a crisp  December morning in 1917 , Halifax woke to calm skies and the quiet hum of a wartime city at work. Children hurried to school. Workers streamed into factories. Families went about their routines. Out in the harbour, two ships moved slowly toward one another. One carried deadly cargo, volatile enough to erase a city. When they collided, a fuse was lit. At 9:04 a.m., Halifax was ripped a...