Phenomena City Limits

Slightly late, but here we are with what will be our last episode until Hellier 3 drops. And this time we take a look at the mysterious Castle Peterhof in late 19th century Oakland, CA wherein its owner led quite the life before his castle on the hill (albeit a small hill) caught fire and burnt down. There's all sorts of esoterica, mysticism, and occult discussion in this one. Very bizarre!

March is Time Traveler Awareness Month and we swear that wasn't already in mind when we decided to finally review the copy of The Treacherous Time Machine that Seb acquired last year. Written by Maj. Donald G Carpenter (under the fantastic pseudonym Merlin Mesmer Merlino), the book comes across as one part fan-fiction, one part pilot for a 60s era family comedy. It's interesting, to say the least!...

New Year! New Season! New weird topics! We start 2026 by looking at the history (and mysteries) surrounding an unusual house built in the 1940s in Santa Cruz, California. We look into the stories surrounding Kenneth Kitchen who built this structure (which you can drive by and see even today!) and the legends that quickly built up around this incredible home.

Friends and listeners, we're back! Now in our every other month format, we're here with what we're calling out last episode of Season 2 (it'll make more sense in January when we kick off season 3) and an absolutely bizarre tale of a complete cornucopia of high strangeness with the Santa Cruz Humanoids! Not one, not two, but nearly a half dozen different types of oddball uprights in this woman's ne...

Everyone loves Gumby, right? That adorable though oddly shaped clay scamp who's always getting up to adventures with his friends? So what happened one episode in 1988 when Gumby encountered the grays!? Yes, this month we're looking at 7 minutes of UFO and alien lore expertly crammed into a single Gumby story. Did Clokey have an encounter of his own? Could Communion have influenced this story? And...

August is here and, with that, our Summer of John comes to a conclusion with the return of co-host John Pingel and our topic: John Titor! From his early faxes to Art Bell in 1998 to his online postings of the early 2000s, we take a look at Titor's claims, his possible motives, his manner of travel, and potentially the reality that it was all just cooked up by a couple of Florida boys! Regardless,...

This month it appears we ask the question that no one else really has: what if John Frum were an actual person? Yes, we're looking at the John Frum Movement on the island of Tanna in the South Pacific. This cargo cult is legendary, but then we start to research who John Frum could have been and things get really interesting from there!

We have two big things happening this month, friends! First, we have our first guest host as Seb is out on assignment. And we tackle the massive, wild, utterly bonkers story that is the Stardust Ranch in Buckeye, Arizona! From the original desire to have horse and dog rescue to the grays to the Brillomen to abductions, doppelgangers, the legendary katana, and the freakin' Galactic Council...Stardu...

What happens when good carbohydrates go bad? Well, this month we look at the unusual tale of a haunting in England during the early 20th century that ate a family out of its bread stores! Yes, bread disappearing right before their eyes! We get it, fresh baked bread is THE BEST! Apparently this family's bread was so good that even the dead couldn't get enough of it!

Friends and fellow free thinkers, it's time to turn on, tune in, and drop a bit of whatever these guys are on! Yes, this month we're looking at a very very weird 1971 film called Rainbow Bridge. We think of it as something like a living, breathing self-help book. Sure there's some surfing, gorgeous views of Maui, but there's also drugs and rambling and some bonkers visuals! Oh, did we mention that...

This month we take a look at the work and research of one Terry Mitchell. He may not be known widely, but his fascination with Bigfoot led him to the Pacific Northwest where he claims to not only have made contact with Bigfoot, but was made their ambassador to humanity! Seb's amazing research on Mitchell includes many very interesting newspaper articles along with some interesting other angles Mit...

Season Two is here, friends!! And we start this new season with Seb having sourced a 1996 video called The Face in the Window that documents the experience of a rural Missouri family who happen to be playing with their new camcorder (remember when VHS ruled the roost?) when something strange peeks in their window to see how the wrestling match is going. Was it an alien? Was it possibly a mascot he...

Happy New Year, friends and listeners! It's 2025 and maybe you're just taking it easy this first day of the new year. Need something to keep you entertained? Well, this month we end our first season with a fascinating tale that had been at the fringes of our awareness for some time: The Toynbee Tiles! What are these weird little messages that have been showing up since the 1980s?! With the help of...

Friends, this month we take a look at the interesting life of one Riley Hansard Crabb. From his years in Hawaii and the Akualele Research Group to his time with the Borderland Science Research Association and into some of the stranger talks/books/booklets he's published. And yes, there are some Keel-ian almost Hellier-esque connections to be made. We weren't able to cover every aspect of his vast...

This month we're taking a look at the Rosicrucians! Not the AMORC order itself, but recounting what it was like to grow up essentially in the shadow of their museum and headquarters in San Jose, California! Yep, your hosts lived a small handful of blocks from this unusual property in the heart of Silicon Valley! Perhaps we'll discover just how much influence it held in our paranormal development.

October is here and, with it, spooky season has arrived in full force (despite the very not fall-like temperatures here in California)! So what better month for us to do our very first vampire story and it's a corker!! Seb brings us the tale of David Farrant and his efforts to rid London of the vampire in Highgate Cemetery. Mind you, he doesn't kick butt quite as well as Buffy did, but this story...

Happy September, everyone! Just because it's the start of meteorological Fall that doesn't mean that we're not pining for a tropical escape before the weather here starts turning cool(er). So this month PCL goes Hawaiian as we take a look at an unusual CEIII case from the mid-1940s on Oahu and make potential connections to an early 19th century case from the other side of the Pacific!

August is here and with it we take a look at two different Merlins! Two Merlins, however, who both have interesting ties to UFOlogy. First seen in our second episode as All Night with the Living Geeks, Ambassador Merlyn Merlin II was a mutton-chopped feature of the Alien Highway movie. Frankly, without his efforts we wouldn't have that stretch of Highway 375 named The Alien Highway. Then, we take...

Friends summer is here and that means one thing: reruns! Wait, you don't watch regular old broadcast TV anymore? Well, then how do you get your reruns?! Ah, yes, streaming. This month, we've grabbed hold of our Paramount+ subscriptions, fired up the old boob tube, and watched an episode of the original Star Trek series in which the crew of the Enterprise accidentally abduct two humans from Earth 1...

Our fellow humans, Disclosure is Imminent!! At least, that's what people have been saying for...well, for far longer than anyone has really realized! This month, we take a look at some of the more humorous and bizarre instances of people claiming that Disclosure is just around the bend. Oddly, history (especially with respect to Disclosure) has been very very bendy!

This month on Phenomena City Limits... Sure! We could talk about Mothman and Bigfoot and, um, Sheep...squatch. But you've had a dozen other podcasts cover these guys. They get the limelight and all the attention and the slightly in appropriate bumper stickers on Etsy. But what about the Counter-Culture Cryptids? All the wild bugged-out-eyed crazies and tongue-waggin' weird-ohs with a penchant for...

No joke, friends! The April edition of Phenomena City Limits is here!! This month, Seb leads us on an interesting look at both tropical and sidereal astrology! He also shares what got him on this path and then we do a double-blind taste test between Pep...wait, no...that was something else. We do a double-blind test to see which astrology chart (tropical or sidereal) we identify with most!

After a slight delay, episode two of Phenomena City Limits is here! This month, Seb takes the helm and leads us down an interesting path as he investigates The Orion Cube! Whether it's a bit of disinformation popping up across multiple stories or a piece of actual alien tech, the tale of the Orion Cube is definitely a wild ride!

Friends, welcome to Season 1, Episode 1 of Phenomena City Limits! Yes, we're back with an all new look and feel...new music, same great hosts, and a fantastically creepy topic for our first trip out! In February of 1993, Gary Sudbrink was visiting his family on Long Island, NY when he received four very strange calls over the course of two nights. Was it just someone goofing around or was this tru...

Well, folks, it's a new year and we're getting ready to shed our original skin and come back next month as Phenomena City Limits! But before we do all that, we're going to wrap up our year by getting to all those advertisements we never make you sit through. Just kidding, we'll never have commercials. But we have seen many very strange and laughable ads in our last year of grabbing stories from ne...