Spooky B*tch Walk

In October 1984, Angie Samota was a junior at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. She had gone out with friends one Friday night and had gotten home safely when she heard a knock on the door. She answered the door to find a man she didn’t know asking to use her phone and bathroom. Because she was kind, she let him in. While he was in the bathroom, she called her boyfriend to let him know...

In December 1988, the body of a young man was found at the base of the North Head cliffs in Manly, Australia. This was 27 year old Scott Johnson. Police ruled this a suicide almost immediately. Scott had moved to Australia to be with his partner, Michael. Michael told police that Scott had had suicidal thoughts in the past but had been in good spirits lately as he was finishing his PhD in Mathemat...

In the early 1970s, there was a gay bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans called the Upstairs Lounge. At the time, there weren’t many safe spaces for the LGBT+ community so the owners of the Upstairs Lounge created a refuge. On June 24, 1973, the Upstairs Lounge buzzer sounded and Buddy the bartender sent someone to answer the door. As this man opened the door, a fireball burst into the bar and...

On this week’s episode, Hannah finishes telling Jessica about Gwen Shamblin and the weight loss cult. In June 2018, Gwen divorced her husband of 40 years; and in August 2018, she married Joe Lara, an actor, pilot, and aspiring country music singer. Joe already had a daughter with Natasha Pavlovich, fellow actor and pilot and all around badass. Natasha worried about the influence Joe and Gwen were...

In the early 90s, Gwen Shamblin created the Weigh Down Workshop, a faith-based weightloss program. Her “revolutionary” idea was to eat less and pray more. This spread like wildfire. Gwen was putting out curriculum nonstop and churches all over the world were buying into this idea and hosting their own Weigh Down Workshops. This was relatively harmless…at first. Eventually, Gwen created her own chu...

In August 1990, five college students were brutally murdered in their apartments in Gainesville, Florida. They had been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and then their bodies were posed in ways to shock whoever discovered them. Investigators in Shreveport, Louisiana, heard about these murders and thought they sounded awfully similar to an unsolved triple homicide in Shreveport. They found that the per...

In this episode, we’re going to Hannah and Bob’s favorite place: the Hook Peninsula. The Hook Peninsula is located in County Wexford, Ireland, and is home to the oldest working lighthouse in the whole world and the most haunted house in the whole country. The Hook Lighthouse was built in the 13th century and that lighthouse is the same one that operates today.  Loftus Hall is said to be the most h...

In 2009, a young woman in Perth, Australia, was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer and told she had 4 months to live. She started doing conventional treatment which made her very sick. During this time, she found out she was pregnant. She stopped all treatments at this time and completely changed her diet. Three years later, she was still alive and thriving. She created an Instagram account where...

Over a 6 month period of 1992 in Seattle, WA, a serial arsonist was on the loose. He started by burning down churches and then moved on to businesses and homes. He was quick and sneaky, and police couldn’t catch him. Eventually, with the help of a forensic hypnotist and sketch artist, police received a tip from a man who believed his son, Paul Keller, was the arsonist. After surveilling Paul for t...

Today is the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. In honor of this day, today’s episode is about just one of these missing and murdered women.  Hanna Harris was born on May 5, 1992 in Montana. She was raised in Lame Deer, MT on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. On July 3, 2013, Hannah left her 10 month old son in the care of her uncle while she went out with family...

In 2015, Dr. Teresa Sievers was brutally murdered in her home in Florida. She had left a family trip early because she had a medical practice to run. Her husband and two daughters were thousands of miles away at the time of the murder, but investigators still suspected her husband almost immediately. Mark Sievers was over the top dramatic during his initial interview with police. Unfortunately, in...

During the fall of 1989 in a small Minnesota town, three young boys rode their bikes to the video store to rent a movie. On their way home, they were confronted by a man in a mask who ordered them to lay in a ditch. The man told two of the boys to run away and not to look back or else he would shoot them. The boy that was left with the man was Jacob Wetterling. It would be 27 years before his rema...

Tourists had been visiting White Island in New Zealand for over 30 years. Despite it being an active volcano, no one had ever been injured by it erupting before. On December 9, 2019, there were multiple tour groups visiting the island when it started to erupt. Because White Island is a stratovolcano, it isn’t lava that erupts out of it, but steam. There were forty-seven people on the island when i...

On July 6, 1988, 12-year-old Sarah Cherry was babysitting for the first time. Mr. and Mrs. Henkel had hired Sarah to watch their 10-month-old baby, Monica. When Mrs. Henkel arrived home around 3pm, baby Monica was sound asleep in her crib, but Sarah was nowhere to be found. Her glasses, shoes, and jacket were still in the home so Mrs. Henkel knew something was horribly wrong. She called 911.  When...

In part two of this two part series, Hannah tells Bob all about Ian Bailey and his multiple arrests for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Ian had given a statement to police early on in the investigation just because he was a neighbor and journalist. After Marie Farrell identified Ian as the man she saw on the bridge the night of Sophie’s murder, police closed in on him. Ian was arrested tw...

On December 23, 1996, in the picturesque countryside of Schull, County Cork, Ireland, a woman’s body was found brutally murdered near her holiday home. This was Sophie Toscan du Plantier who was staying on her own at her holiday house for Christmas. She usually came to Ireland on her own so this wasn’t out of the ordinary for her. Her friends and family couldn’t think of anyone who would want to h...

In the summer of 1895, brothers Robert and Nattie Coombes were having the time of their lives. The boys had been left home alone to do as they please. Their dad was away at sea and their mom had gone to visit an aunt out of town. Or at least, that’s what they told anyone who inquired as to their mother’s whereabouts. After ten days of freedom, their mother’s severely decayed body was found in the...

In 1876 in Kentucky and 1994 in Washington, citizens experienced the skies raining down mysterious substances. In Kentucky, the blobs appeared to be meat, while in Washington, the blobs were translucent, gelatinous goo. In both instances, samples were collected, tests were performed, and scientists made conclusions.  In the case of the blobs in Washington, scientists never could agree on what the...

Keith and Elaine Dardeen were a well liked and respected couple in their community of Ina, IL. In November 1987, they had a 2 year old son, Peter, and Elaine was seven months pregnant with a baby girl. On November 18, police were sent to the Dardeen family home for a wellness check after Keith hadn’t shown up for work. They found three bodies all tucked into the same bed: Elaine, Peter, and a bran...

In the summer of 1987, Harrison “Marty” Graham was evicted due to his failure to fix the horrific smell coming from his apartment. When he left, he brought a water bottle, some clothes, and his Cookie Monster puppet that he had had since childhood.  When the landlord’s son and nephew went to the apartment to make sure Marty had gone, they found that a door to one of the rooms was nailed shut. They...

In late August of 1977, the Hodgson family started experiencing paranormal occurrences in their home including strange knocking sounds, furniture moving on its own, and Lego bricks being thrown across the room by an invisible force. The matriarch of the family, Peggy, had contacted the police for help but when they couldn’t help her, she went to the media. This led to the home being investigated b...

From 1991 to 2002, there was a series of random sexual assaults in Utah and Wyoming. DNA was left at the scene of 11 attacks. Unfortunately, this DNA didn’t match any identified person in CODIS and eventually, the cases went cold. In 2017, investigators approached Dr. Barbara Rae-Venter to help solve this case through the use of familial DNA. The science had come a long way since 2002, and Dr. Rae...

Lauren Giddings spent the summer of 2011 studying to take the bar exam. She had just graduated from law school in May and was planning to move in with her boyfriend soon. When her sister hadn’t heard from Lauren in a couple of days, she sent one of Lauren’s friends over to check on her, but nobody answered. The friend used a spare key to get into the apartment. Lauren’s keys, wallet, and purse wer...

On December 28, 1956, sisters Barbara Grimes, 15, and Patricia Grimes, 12, left their home to go see Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” at the Brighton Theater in Chicago. When they didn’t arrive home by midnight, their mother alerted the authorities. Police officers and hundreds of volunteers searched for them for days, but the weather was brutal and searches eventually came to a halt. On January 2...

On today’s episode of Spooky B*tch Walk, Hannah tells Bob about the mysterious disappearance of the Sodder children. On Christmas Eve 1945, the Sodder family was gathered in their home spending a cozy night together. Six of the ten Sodder children asked their parents, George and Jennie, if they could stay up late because they were having such a good time together. Jennie and George allowed this; i...