Hold My Sweet Tea

Send us Fan Mail A cemetery that doesn’t exist on any map should be easy to avoid. The problem is Saint Lazarus Cemetery doesn’t wait for you to find it. It finds you, right when the Mississippi fog rolls in and the church bell dares to ring thirteen times.  We’re Pearl and Holly, and we’re serving a fresh piece of original horror fiction set in New Orleans, the perfect city for a supernatural urb...

Send us Fan Mail You can tell a lot about a true crime show by how it handles laughter. We start by addressing listener feedback about our humor and why we refuse to confuse coping with disrespect. We take victims seriously, we treat families carefully, and we do not extend courtesy to convicted killers just because they exist in a courtroom transcript. That boundary matters before we step into a...

Send us Fan Mail You probably know the images even if you’ve never learned the name. The Rider-Waite tarot deck is the visual backbone of modern tarot, and it didn’t become iconic because people memorized esoteric theory. It became iconic because the art tells the story at a glance. We’re diving into the life and legacy of Pamela Colman Smith, the illustrator who drew all 78 cards by hand and some...

Send us Fan Mail New Orleans loves a legend, but we’re not interested in the souvenir version. We’re talking about Marie Laveau as a real woman in 1800s Louisiana: a free woman of color navigating slavery, racism, class power, and public fear while building influence that people still whisper about today. If you’ve only heard “voodoo queen” and pictured Hollywood witchcraft, we pull that apart and...

Send us Fan Mail A house stuffed with leaves sounds like a joke until SWAT opens the door and realizes the piles aren’t just weird, they’re dangerous. We travel to Mount Vernon, Ohio to unpack the Matthew Hoffman “Leaf Killer” case, a true crime story where a missing persons call turns into one of the strangest crime scenes we’ve ever covered. Bags of leaves stacked floor to ceiling, dead squirrel...

Send us Fan Mail 🚨 WARNING: This episode contains discussion of grave desecration, human remains, and disturbing crime scene details. Listener discretion is advised. When volunteers at Pennsylvania's historic Mount Moriah Cemetery began discovering broken mausoleums and disturbed burial vaults, they had no idea they were uncovering one of the most bizarre criminal investigations in recent me...

Send us Fan Mail Something about Honey Island Swamp makes a good story feel dangerously believable. Maybe it’s the miles of protected Louisiana marshland north of Lake Pontchartrain, maybe it’s the Pearl River cutting through cypress and shadow, or maybe it’s the simple fact that the bayou can hide you fast. We’re Pearl and Holly, and we’re going full cryptid today with the Honey Island Swamp Mons...

Send us Fan Mail A champion athlete with a clear sense of purpose shouldn’t become a headline, but Moriah “Mo” Wilson did and the details are as heartbreaking as they are infuriating. We start where Mo wanted the story to start: with the legacy. Her journal captures a young woman asking rare, grown-up questions about values, meaning, and the mark she wants to leave, and we talk about how her paren...

Send us Fan Mail A car doesn’t just “sit there” for two days without someone noticing, especially not a white Jaguar in a busy Austin hotel parking lot. When police finally open the trunk, they find 45-year-old Betty Thomas bound with duct tape, blindfolded, gagged, wrapped in bedding from her own home, and killed with an execution-style shot to the back of the head. That single discovery turns a...

Send us Fan Mail He doesn’t come off charming. He doesn’t look like trouble. He just seems normal, and that’s exactly why this story hits so hard. We’re Holly and Pearl, and we’re sharing an anonymous listener submission that takes us to Idaho, where Kara works nights at a truck stop diner outside Twin Falls. She’s a caring single mom, and when a quiet guy from a local feed store asks her out, she...

Send us Fan Mail Two young people in Alabama are gone, and the silence around their cases is the part we can’t accept. We’re sharing two separate cold cases that don’t have a lot of public detail, which is exactly why they can slip out of the spotlight. Christian Boyle was 18 when he disappeared along with his car in Blount County. Days pass with no calls, no social media activity, and no sign of...

Send us Fan Mail Two beloved members of a small Louisiana community are gone, and the path from a quiet neighborhood to a brutal double homicide is almost impossible to wrap your head around. We’re talking about Covington, Louisiana, where Ruth Pratt and Reverend Otis Young were known for service, faith, and the kind of warmth that makes a town feel like home. Their deaths didn’t just make news, t...

Send us Fan Mail A little kid looks past her mom’s shoulder, smiles at the dim hallway, and says, “There’s a light man.” That’s how Eleanor’s listener submission starts, and it’s the kind of paranormal story that can go two ways fast. Pearl and Holly brace for something creepy, but what unfolds is softer, sadder, and weirdly comforting: a shining visitor who seems to know Eleanor’s private childho...

Send us Fan Mail A normal morning jog should not come with a survival plan, but that’s exactly where our minds go when we talk through the murder of Laken Riley. We start with the heartbreaking basics: Laken is a 22-year-old nursing student who texts her mom before a run on the University of Georgia campus. Within minutes, a 911 SOS call is triggered from her phone, the call drops, and she never a...

Send us Fan Mail A quiet back road at night doesn’t look like danger, but sometimes it’s the most frightening setting of all. We’re Holly and Pearl, and we’re unpacking the Mackenzie Shirilla case out of Strongsville, Ohio, where a late-night drive ends with a car accelerating past 100 miles per hour and slamming head-on into a brick wall. Two teenagers, Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan, die at t...

Send us Fan Mail A small town in Arkansas builds a big legend, and the details are too strange to forget: dark hair head to toe, red eyes catching headlights, and three toed footprints stamped into swamp mud. We’re Holly and Pearl, and we’re taking Sweet Tea After Dark to Fouke, Arkansas to talk about the Fouke Monster, also known as the Boggy Creek Monster, with all the giggles and side comments...

Send us Fan Mail Las Vegas hits different when the headline isn’t a party, it’s a predator hiding behind “healing.” We’re Pearl and Holly, and we’re breaking down the Nathan Chasing Horse case: a man prosecutors say used a Lakota medicine man persona, public appearances, and a tight inner circle to exploit Indigenous women and girls for years. We talk through what the Nevada jury conviction actual...

Send us Fan Mail A final early morning text about the dogs and an open back door becomes the last breadcrumb before pro wrestling’s most haunting headline. We walk through the Chris Benoit case with care for the victims and clarity about what the public record shows, from the three day timeline inside the home to the unanswered question everyone still wrestles with: how does a celebrated performer...

Send us Fan Mail Louisiana is taking a hard-line approach to crimes against children, and the details are more complicated than the headlines. We read through the core language of the state’s surgical castration law for certain sex offenses involving victims under 13, then talk honestly about what it means in practice: medical eligibility, court orders, and what happens when an offender refuses to...

Send us Fan Mail Witches at Easter sounds like a joke until you hear the Swedish folklore behind it. We’re taking you to Sweden’s Holy Week, where people once believed witches flew through the night to Blåkulla, a mythical hill tied to the devil, feasts, and an upside-down world where normal rules collapse. What starts as eerie legend quickly turns into something more human: a snapshot of how comm...

Send us Fan Mail A cozy women’s circle in the Oregon woods sounds like the cure for loneliness until the “healing” starts to feel like control. Sarah writes in with a story that begins with tea, candles, journaling, and a leader who takes her hand and says, “I see you.” It feels warm, safe, and validating in exactly the way you crave when you’ve spent your life taking care of everyone else. Then t...

Send us Fan Mail A stretch of River Road in Ponchatoula doesn’t look like the setting for a homicide investigation, but that’s where the disappearance of James “Jimmy” Wood leads. One moment he’s on camera near Highway 22 and Lee’s Landing. Then he’s gone, with his keys and belongings still at home and no clear trail to follow. We talk through what’s been released publicly and why we’re careful ab...

Send us Fan Mail 📣 Connect With Us Got a story? 👀 Send it to:  holdmysweetteapodcast@gmail.com Sweet Tea After Dark — we might feature it in a future episode. Follow along for more Southern true crime, folklore, and late-night storytelling. New Orleans has no shortage of loud legends, but Carlos Marcello is the kind of true crime story that gets under your skin because it’s built on silence. He...

Send us Fan Mail Something about a quiet house outside a small town in southern Louisiana feels like it should be peaceful, but the woods have their own soundtrack and it does not stop at the tree line. We’re reading an anonymous listener submission from “Stella,” who moves into a cheap rental surrounded by pines, cypress, and Spanish moss, only to discover that the landlord’s vague warning about...

Send us Fan Mail A principal running hypnosis sessions for kids sounds like a quirky school story until the timeline turns grim. We’re Pearl and Holly, and we’re unpacking the George Kenney case out of Northport High School in Florida, where hypnosis meant for test anxiety, confidence, and athletic performance collides with tragedy and unanswered questions. We walk through what’s known about Kenne...