Strange Country

Would you like some gravestones with your potato salad? In the late 19th century, many people did opting, to picnic in the cemetery at the foot of a loved one's gravesite. Unlike today, America did not have many parks designed for recreational purposes so cemeteries were the thing. Strange Country co-hosts Kelly and Beth explore the past's connection to death and talk about general connections we...

The Lutz family spent 28 days at 112 Ocean Drive before fleeing in terror. Was it evil spirits or a money-making opportunity? Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly get in the Halloween spirit by discussing two famous haunted houses--Amityville and the Phelps mansion. This episode will definitely leave you asking: Do you smell what I'm cooking? Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands ....

Those considered insane, poor, sick, and criminal were committed to Blackwell Island. It was designed to help, to be a safe haven, but became a nightmare. Strange Country co-hosts Kelly and Beth dive into the conditions at Blackwell and talk about gratitude. While things are bleak now at least we don't have to bathe in other people's syphilis sores. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousan...

Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles believed they were heavenly messengers sent from outer space to Earth to recruit humans and help them reach the next Evolutionary Level. For two decades, a handful of converts followed the teachings and worked on shedding their humannesses until they eventually shed their "containers" in a mass suicide in March 1997. Theme music: Resting Place by  A...

Strange Country's second-ever live show features Mormon founder Joseph Smith and his seer stone and many wives. Learn about Missouri's hidden secret and Smith's last moments before being murdered by an angry mob. Thanks to Auburn Public Theater for hosting us. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite your sources Green, Emma. "Mormons Once Aspired to Be a 'White and Delightsome' P...

Edmund Creffield was the second coming of Christ or at least that's what he told his followers in 1903. He would whip them into such a frenzy that they would roll for hours on the floor. They left their families. They burned their furniture. They annoyed their neighbors. What was Creffield's draw? Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly explore this odd cult from the west coast. Theme music: Resti...

The Osage people were stripped of their homes and land and relocated to a stamp of untillable land in Oklahoma. There they struck black gold, making them extremely wealthy. They seemed to have it all until many went missing or turned up dead. Strange Country co-hosts Kelly and Beth explore the Reign of Terror that befell the Osage people in the early 1920s. Cite Source:   http://usdakotawar.org/hi...

The murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 became the story of urban apathy, but did 38 neighbors really standby and watch the young woman get brutally murdered? In ep. 58 of Strange Country, co-hosts Beth and Kelly explore this horrific crime and Kelly considers becoming a police officer. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite your sources: Gansberg, Martin. "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't...

The American Plan sounds super American like apple pie and wealth inequality, but it's really about locking up women suspected of having STDs. Without due process. And with forcible gynecological exams. Strange Country explores the phenomenal story unearthed by Scott Stern in his book The Trials of Nina McCall. Get ready to get angry. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite Your...

The story of Greenbrier Ghost may put you in an everlasting faint, but that's way better than worm fever. Elva Zona Heaster married a bad man, but got her justice in the end thanks to the tenacity of her mother. Tune into Strange Country Ep. 56 to hear the story of the only time a ghost helped convict a murderer. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite Your sources dude: https://...

Are we defined by the social roles we assume and the circumstances we find ourselves in? Stanford Psychologist Philip Zimbardo thinks so after witnessing college students degrade other students in a prison simulation in August. 1971. The Stanford Prison Experiment is not without its controversy, which Strange Country discusses in Ep. 55. Co-host Beth also admits a dark secret from her past. Theme...

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker formed PTL in the 1970s. They were beamed into millions of homes telling viewers that they could pray their way to materialistic paradise and double their money by donating to PTL. Then it all started to crumble like the powder foundation shellacked onto Tammy Faye's face. Join Strange Country on its one-year anniversary and donate if you love Jesus. Theme music: Resting...

The Bohemian Grove is where the rich, powerful, mainly white dudes go to unwind, drink and pee on the glorious Redwoods that they would likely chop down just cuz they can. This has been happening every summer for nearly 150 years. Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly speculate what these masters of the universe may be up to since no women are allowed, and make plans to bring their DEFT truck th...

Is it a bird? A demon? An alien? Most likely a bird. Definitely looks more like a bird than a moth. The Mothman haunted the small town of Point Pleasant, West Va., for a year in 1966. It's got a little of everything in it--UFOs, mythical, stuff, Native-American history, campy tales, a fallen bridge, death, and mystery all tied into one. Tune into Strange Country Ep. 52. Theme music: Resting Place...

Dr. Linda Hazzard was the only licensed fasting specialist in the state of Washington. Her methods caught the eye of two English sisters Claire and Dora Williamson. They decided to give Dr. Hazzard's cure a try. By May 1911 Claire will be dead and Dora very near to following her to the grave. Strange Country Ep. 51 dives into the strange world of Starvation Heights. Theme music: Resting Place by ...

Strange Country's first-ever live show features the War of the Currents, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse's fight for electric domination. One of its major battles took place in Auburn, NY over which current would power the first electrocution. Thanks to Auburn Public Theater for hosting us. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite Your Sources: Barry, Dan. "A Specter of Past...

Ever get the creeps from someone? Trust that instinct because sometimes that guy is the one who sets a ship on fire, makes a bomb and murders. In Ep. 49 Strange Country explores the life of George White Rogers, a radio operator who was deemed a hero in the Morro Castle disaster. But was he really? More a zero than a hero. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite your sources: Blak...

Spiritualism meets photography in episode 48 of Strange Country. William Mumler found a way to connect people with their loved ones by staging live/dead photoshoots. Some skeptics cried fraud while others lined up for the spirit camera. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite Your Sources Man… Manseau, Peter. The Aparitionists. Fabrizio, Doug. Interview with Peter Manseau. http:/...

Are you ready for the zombie apocalypse? The United States is. CONPLAN 8888-11 has all the know-how for defeating eight different type of zombies. Strange Country explores this plan and various scenarios of "what would you do" if you and some repulsive man were the last people on Earth. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite your sou--BRAIINNSSSSSSSSSS Brown, Jennings. "Florida...

Elmer McCurdy died in 1911 but wasn't put to rest until 1977. What was he doing all that time? In our shortest episode to date, Strange Country co-hosts Beth and Kelly talk about this outlaw's after life all the while trying to prepare the best mac and cheese ever. Theme music: Resting Place by  A Cast of Thousands . Cite your sources: Engel, Matthew. "More than 100 Bodies Found as US Crematorium...

There's really no telling when you will learn the next disturbing thing about love, life, or one of the cohosts of Strange Country when you listen in each week. This week we look into the world that surrounds Robert The Doll, a fixture in Key West, FL lore that still haunts drunken tourists, and accident-prone women. But Robert isn't all we talk about in this episode. In fact, we brought our own s...

If there's something strange in your seance room. Who you gonna call? No, not ghostbusters. Harry Houdini. Houdini, the great escape artist, made it his mission to unmask fake mediums, and his abilities were put to the ultimate test in a WWE-style showdown with America's most famous medium. Have any idea who that might be? You probably figured out who won then. Strange Country Ep. 44 is all about...

May Otis Blackburn and her daughter Ruth were going to write the book that would knock the world's socks off in the 1920s. The Angel Gabriel dictated it to them and in return, he would give them the lost measurements to gold, diamond and oil deposits. Did it matter that their book made no sense or that it never was a book, but more of a scam? Not to their followers who willingly signed over deeds...

Springtime is in full bloom and we feel it is time for a lov...a glove story. On this episode of Strange Country, join Kelly and Beth down a path of discovery on what truly is real love and what is just plain messed up. Count Carl von Cosol was a radiologist in Key West Florida in the 1930's when he met what he thought was his true love, a beautiful young married Cuban woman named Maria Elena Mila...

Before the book Sybil, there were only a handful of cases of Multiple Personality Disorder. After the book, the number exploded. But was Sybil's story all it was said to be? Her mother's orgies in the woods with teenage girls, her mother defecating on the lawns of neighbors, giving Sybil ice-water enemas? Or was it all suggested by a therapist while the patient was hopped up on a variety of barbit...