Last Seen in the Twilight Zone

In July of 1991, 48-year-old Diane L. Hoppert left her home in Owego, New York, planning to travel east on Interstate 88 toward Albany. She was headed to New York’s capital city to attend a work-related seminar. The route would take her through quiet rural stretches of upstate New York—past towns like Oneonta, Cobleskill, and areas near Howes Cavern and Schenectady. At the time, Interstate 88 was...

I lost Robert in 2003, but I never really lost him. I’m sharing my story because I know so many others out there are grieving someone they love. I also that someone out there has been feeling crazy because they can still sense their loved ones with them, long after they’ve passed.  To this day, my guardian angels still find a way to have my jaw dropping to the floor. I know others out there have s...

Welcome to Season 2 of Last Seen In The Twilight Zone. We’re starting off this season with an incredible and very clarifying conversation we got to have with Bethanie Dougherty’s brother, John.  We’re deeply appreciative of John and the story he shared with us about his sister who’s been missing from Killawog, NY since April 2nd 2008. 

First and foremost we just wanted to give a huge THANK YOU to all of our listeners and Patreon supporters. Having your support truly means the world to us. We're going to batch our episodes into seasons, with this episode being the last for season 1. We will be back releasing episodes on Monday June 1st and we'll be back even sooner, here on Patreon recording those episodes live. We love the live...

Today, we go to a small rural town in upstate New York.  Tucked into the rolling hills of Dryden, the town was founded in 1797 on land that was once part of the Central New York Military Tract — territory taken from the Onondaga and Cayuga Nations and later granted to veterans of the Revolutionary War. Some people like to frame that kind of history as the beginning of a curse, taking land from the...

On the morning of Tuesday, March 6th, 1962, Binghamton General Hospital felt like any other maternity ward in America. Dozens of newborns lined up behind glass. Nurses moving quickly. Parents resting upstairs, believing their babies were safe in the nursery. It was admittedly busy, but nothing about that morning suggested that anything was amiss. The earliest signs were subtle. A baby refusing a b...

March 22nd, 2013. A quiet residential street in Binghamton. Lisi Lane. Inside one home on that street, police would discover a crime scene so brutal that even seasoned investigators were shaken. This is the story of betrayal, domestic violence, obsession, and a case that would take six years — and two trials — to bring justice.

By the summer of 1913, Binghamton, NY was booming. It was the fastest-growing city in New York State. Fifteen thousand people had arrived in just three years. New neighborhoods appeared almost overnight. Factories lined the rivers. The local economy was boosted. Downtown hummed with streetcars, storefronts, the sound of industry and the sidewalks were packed with people. On Tuesday morning, July 2...

On September 29th, 2015, a 40-year-old woman named Kelley Clayton was found brutally murdered in her own home in Elmira, New York. She was stabbed more than a dozen times while her children slept upstairs. At first glance, it looked like a nightmare scenario: an unknown intruder, a violent home invasion, a family torn apart. But as investigators would soon discover, the truth wasn’t hiding in the...

It’s been difficult for me to write about this case because it seems like each time I've sat down to write, I pull up my sources and I’m hoping to find something that simply isn’t there. I want to know more about Keisha but there is so little information out there about her or about her death that it’s been frustrating trying to figure out how to tell her story–because there isn’t a story here. Th...

Some disappearances don’t fade. They linger — because they are unresolved. In small towns, especially, when a missing child becomes part of the landscape. A name whispered. A memory that refuses to settle. This is the story of two teenage girls who vanished within a year of each other — in towns just miles apart — along the New York–Pennsylvania border. One girl was never found. The other was foun...

In the early morning hours of April 2nd, 2008 police received a call that a woman’s screams were heard near the 500 Block of Jennings Creek in Killawog, NY. Killawog is located just north of Whitney Point, NY and only about 15 minutes north of Binghamton. When the police arrived at the location they did their due diligence, but found nothing out of the ordinary. What the police were unaware of, at...

In the quiet hours before dawn on March 17th, 2011 — St. Patrick’s Day — the city of Binghamton was asleep. Then, at 3:30 a.m., flames erupted on the front porch of a home at 20 Milford Street. Inside were seven members of the Aissa family. Six would escape. One would not. Seventeen-year-old Jeffrey Aissa — a twin, a brother, a son — never made it out. And for nearly fifteen years, the truth about...

It was January 11th, 2006. Binghamton was cold that night, quiet in the way only a small town can be when it’s hoping to keep its secrets. Bambi Madden left her house just before 11 PM. This should have just been a quick walk to the gas station. She had told her mother she was “going to get a drink”. But Bambi was never seen again. She never made it to the store. And nearly 20 years later, this co...

She was the kind of kid who did everything right. Cheri Lindsey — just 12 years old — was known throughout her Binghamton, New York neighborhood as the girl next door. Friendly. Athletic. Dependable. She was a seventh grader at East Middle School. Bright, kind, and always lending a hand, especially to her dad, a Binghamton police officer. During Little League games, you could find her behind the s...

April 21st, 2022 was a day that was cool but seasonable, typical of upstate New York in April. Temperatures hovered in the 50s (°F) during the day and dipped into the 40s or upper 30s by night. People were starting to get outside again, walking, biking, preparing gardens. Sunset occurred around 7:50 PM. The East Side of Binghamton was a quiet, largely residential neighborhood with modest homes and...

When Nicole Marranca stopped calling her family in the summer of 2017, they knew something was wrong. Nicole had struggled, yes—but she was very open about her struggle with addiction. At the time she was without stable housing, engaging in sex work to get her basic needs met. But she always stayed in touch. She saw her mother regularly and called her father regularly, no matter what. Until she di...

Today’s story is one of hate, heartbreak, and horror. But it's also a call to remember those we lost. Today, we go to Buffalo, New York—a proud Rust Belt city known for its snowstorms, football team, and the blue-collar resilience of its people. But on May 14, 2022, something happened that would fracture this community... a hate-fueled act of domestic terrorism. An 18-year-old man from the quiet t...

A few weeks ago, I was in the car with my husband, driving through downtown Binghamton. We passed a small greenspace; it’s easy to miss & nestled in a busy intersection. It’s the Memorial Park in honor of the American Civic Association. At its center, there’s a broken column, surrounded by thirteen glass birds in flight. Each bird represents a life lost in one of the most devastating events in...

Who is Stacy Stewart, Christopher Thomason, and Brian Early? Today, we will go down the next rabbit hole of another man, or men, who could also be responsible for her disappearance. We're not going to talk about the entire case again like we did in Part 1 and 2 go give those a listen first. Fasten your seatbelts because we are about to DIVE in hard. Almost all of the information from this episode...

f you haven’t listened to part one of this series, you should definitely go back and listen to that one first. Part 1 gave a general overview of this case. In Part 2, we are going to dig into Who was Cal Harris? What evidence made him appear guilty, what evidence might be missing? We'll go over both sides of the story. Then in Part 3 we will go down the next rabbit hole of another man, or men, who...

This is Part 1 of a 3 Part story. September 11, 2001 | While the nation reeled from terror, in Owego, NY, a different kind of panic took hold. Michele Anne Harris 35, mother of four, awaiting finalization of a divorce disappeared without a trace. In this episode, we trace the last known moments of her life, the controversial investigation, the legal battles against her husband Cal Harris, and the...

On November 4th, 1983 Bessie P. Williams took her regular bus route to pick up her paycheck from work. The 19 year old made the short trip from her apartment on Main St in Johnson City, NY to the suburb of Endicott–where she worked at the Quality Inn Lodge & Convention center. She got her paycheck and intended to head home but she never made it. What happened to Bessie P. Williams on that Frid...

At 12:36 in the afternoon on Friday, December 19th, 2014 a 911 call came in to the Broome County Emergency dispatch. The caller on the other end simply asked for an ambulance to be sent & hung up promptly. A sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the Nanticoke Valley Trailer Park, in the town of Maine, just outside of Binghamton, New York. The residence belonged to Michael Fiocco and Shannon Laska...

The stories that Allie is sharing today come from the real patients that sought treatment at the Binghamton State Hospital, which opened in 1879. It is important to acknowledge that while the Greater Binghamton Health Center is currently still functional on the State Hospital campus, these stories are specifically from the patients of the inebriate asylum. Perched above the Susquehanna River at 42...