Mysteries and Histories

During the Second World War, Scottish medium Helen Duncan claimed to pull the dead out of the dark, until the British state decided her séances were dangerous. After she appeared to reveal a naval disaster that was still officially secret, she was dragged into court under the centuries‑old Witchcraft Act, branded a fraud, and locked up as Britain’s so‑called “last witch”, turning one woman’s ghost...

Henry Lee Lucas built a reputation as America’s most prolific serial killer, then the truth started to fall apart. He confessed to hundreds of murders across the United States, closing cold case after cold case, while sheriffs and rangers lined up to hand him files and take credit for “solving” them. But as timelines clashed, details didn’t match, and impossible alibis emerged, Lucas’s story warpe...

A wagon train chasing the promise of a better life, a shortcut that became a death sentence, and a winter no one was ready for. The Donner Party set out for California in 1846 and ended up snowbound in the Sierra Nevada, trapped for months with dwindling food, rising panic, and an unthinkable choice: starve together, or survive by consuming the dead. By the time rescuers finally broke through the...

Paul Logan was just doing his job, dropping off a takeaway order like countless nights before, until the address on his delivery route turned out to be a trap. Lured by a fake order, he walked straight into an ambush that would cost him his life, leaving behind a crime scene with more questions than answers and a family trying to understand how a simple shift ended in horror. His story turns an ev...

Thousands of children, one empire, and a promise that was a lie. For decades, “British Home Children” were shipped overseas from the UK to Canada, Australia and beyond, sold the dream of fresh starts and loving homes, but too often met with hard labour, neglect, and abuse instead. Their childhoods were packed into suitcases and stamped with a destination, turning poverty and vulnerability into a o...

In 1996, hiking partners Julie Williams and Lollie Winans set out into Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park for a quiet camping trip and were found days later, murdered at their secluded campsite. Their throats had been cut, their dog was left alive, and there was no clear sign of who had slipped into the forest to kill them or why. Decades on, the case remains officially unsolved, haunted by quest...

In the middle of the American Revolution, there was a spy so secret we still don’t know her name, only her code: Agent 355. Moving through British‑occupied New York as a well‑placed “lady,” she is said to have charmed information out of officers, slipped secrets to the Culper Ring, and helped expose Benedict Arnold’s treason, then vanished into history with no confirmed face, no confirmed grave, a...

In 1936, a group of English schoolboys set off on what was meant to be a scenic hike through Germany’s Black Forest and walked straight into a blizzard they were never prepared for. Ignoring local warnings, their teacher pushed them higher into the mountains as snow deepened, temperatures crashed, and the boys began to collapse from exhaustion and cold. By the time rescuers fought their way up the...

Willowbrook State School was supposed to be a “school” for children with intellectual disabilities but behind its doors, it became a warehouse of human suffering. Overcrowded, filthy wards held thousands of neglected children and adults, many left naked, restrained, or lying in their own waste, while disease, abuse, and even unethical medical experiments spread through the corridors. For years, fa...

On a September night in 1973, 40‑year‑old Barbara Gibbons was found brutally murdered in her Connecticut home, her body so savagely attacked that the crime scene shocked even seasoned investigators. Her teenage son was quickly pulled into the centre of the storm, and what followed was a tangle of rushed assumptions, pressured statements, and courtroom drama that would hang over the case for decade...

Imagine getting sick and then slipping into a sleep you can’t wake up from, not for days, not for months, sometimes not for years. In the early 1900s, a mysterious “sleeping sickness” known as encephalitis lethargica swept across the world, leaving people frozen between life and death: eyes closed, bodies still, but often aware of everything happening around them. Doctors watched as some patients...

In July 2014, 28‑year‑old German tourist Lars Mittank vanished after a series of strange, paranoid behaviours at a Bulgarian airport, caught on CCTV running into the woods, never to be seen again. He’d left his luggage behind, seemed terrified of people who weren’t there, and was acting like someone who desperately believed he was in danger. Years later, his disappearance has become one of the int...

Imagine waking up convinced you’re dead. Walking Corpse Syndrome, or Cotard’s Syndrome, is a rare condition where people genuinely believe they have no organs, no blood, or no life left inside them. They might insist they’re a walking corpse, deny the need to eat or sleep, and move through the world like a ghost in their own story, physically alive, but utterly certain they no longer exist.

On the morning of January 25, 2019, 29-year-old Liz Barraza was shot and killed in front of her own home while setting up a garage sale. The suspect waited for her husband to leave for work, then opened fire with a revolver before fleeing in a dark-colored Nissan Frontier. Nothing was stolen. No clear motive has ever been established. The murder was captured on home security cameras, and the suspe...

On a June afternoon in 1980, coal miner Zigmund Adamski vanished after popping out for a quick trip to the shops and was found days later on top of a coal heap, miles from home, with no clear explanation of how he got there. His clothes were oddly neat, there were strange marks on his body, and parts of the timeline simply refused to make sense. Between talk of botched foul play, mysterious medica...

On a July morning in 1992, 23‑year‑old Rachel Nickell took her young son and their dog for a walk on Wimbledon Common and never came home. She was brutally attacked in broad daylight, a crime so shocking it gripped the UK and terrified women across London. What followed was a deeply flawed investigation that fixated on the wrong man, a media frenzy that turned grief into spectacle, and years of le...

Two schoolgirls, one quiet English village, and a killer who thought he’d gotten away with murder, until science caught up with him. In the 1980s, the brutal killings of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth left Narborough living in fear and police desperate for a lead. What followed would change criminal investigations forever: the world’s first use of DNA profiling to crack a murder case, expose a false...

On a summer weekend in 2015, 21‑year‑old Lauren Agee headed to a cliff‑side campsite at Center Hill Lake for a party, by Sunday morning, her body was found in the water below. Friends claimed it was a tragic accident, but strange injuries, shifting stories, and missing pieces quickly turned a simple drowning into a storm of rumours and suspicion. To this day, the case sits in a tense space between...

For centuries, Britain watched its king slowly unravel. George III, once seen as a dutiful, steady ruler, began to speak in torrents, pace through the night, and drift in and out of terrifying, incoherent episodes that baffled his doctors and horrified his court. Whispers of “madness” crept through the palaces and into Parliament, as ministers juggled a crumbling royal mind with the need to keep a...

32 years ago, much-loved mum Vera Anderson received a phone call that resulted in her leaving her home at 10pm on a Saturday night and driving to a quiet, deserted area. Hours later, she would be found murdered in her car, in what appeared to be a hit. Despite extensive investigation, authorities have never found any motive, any reason as to why someone might want Vera dead.

Hidden away in suburbs, small towns, and rented halls, some of the strangest cults in history never made the headlines but their stories are wilder than anything you’ve seen in a documentary. From doomsday prophets with bizarre end‑of‑the‑world plans, to self‑styled messiahs controlling every second of their followers’ lives, these groups operated on the fringes, quietly ruining lives under a cloa...

In 1982, a steamer trunk abandoned near a quiet Maryland roadside was opened to reveal the decomposed body of a young woman, nicknamed the “Cheerleader in the Trunk,” also known as the “Woman in the Trunk” and “Lady in the Trunk.” She was likely a teenager or young adult, and to this day, no one knows her name, where she came from, or who put her in that footlocker. All that’s left is a Jane Doe,...

Just how gay  was  Ancient Rome? To answer that, you have to step into a world where desire wasn’t neatly labelled, and power mattered more than gender. Roman writers joked, bragged, and gossiped about sex with men and women, yet what really raised eyebrows wasn’t who you slept with but whether you were in control. From emperors with male lovers to graffiti that left nothing to the imagination, Ro...

In December 1989, 22‑year‑old pizza delivery girl Julie Hogg vanished from her home in Billingham, Teesside, leaving behind a locked house, an unfinished bath, and a family who knew instantly that something was wrong. For months, her disappearance hung over the town like a fog, no clear crime scene, no confession, just rumours and a chilling sense that the danger was closer than anyone wanted to b...

Long before the pill became a symbol of choice and freedom, birth control was built on secrets, lies, and experiments done on bodies that never truly got to say “yes.” From dangerous early trials on poor and marginalized women to forced sterilisation laws and eugenics‑driven policies, the fight to control pregnancy has often gone hand in hand with attempts to control entire groups of people. Behin...