The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things

A body on an Adelaide beach. A hidden scrap of paper. A mystery that seemed to end with a name, yet still refuses to feel solved. The Somerton Man case is one of Australia’s most enduring real life mysteries: an unidentified man found dead on Somerton Beach in 1948, no ID in his pockets, and a tiny hidden clue reading “Tamám Shud”. This episode follows the Somerton Man mystery through The Rubaiyat...

Bob Lazar, Area 51, S-4 and Element 115 are concepts that all sit at the centre of one of the most famous UFO stories ever told — a claim that helped drag alien cover-up lore into the mainstream and turned Area 51 into modern conspiracy culture. Sounds wild, and the actual story will leave you questioning everything you know. Because in 1989, renowned investigative journalist George Knapp introduc...

A respected historian. A flat full of dolls. And a discovery that turned a cemetery investigation into something far darker. This bonus feed-swap episode is a special cross-promotion with our friends over at Fringe Beyond Limits, who bring us their take on Anatoly Moskvin, the Russian historian and linguist better known as the Doll Maker. In 2011, police investigating grave desecrations in Nizhny...

DashCon 2014 was supposed to be Tumblr’s great real-world fandom convention. Instead, it became one of the internet’s most infamous event disasters: a chaotic weekend of guest cancellations, volunteer confusion, a sudden $17,000 hotel panic, the Welcome to Night Vale fallout, and one tiny ball pit that became a meme so powerful it practically achieved sentience. Today we unpack how DashCon went fr...

Taylor Parker had already been caught in one impossible lie: she claimed she had given birth on the side of a highway, but doctors quickly realised she had not been pregnant at all.  In Part 2 of the Taylor Parker case, we go behind the fake pregnancy and into the years of deception prosecutors said led to the murder of Reagan Hancock and the death of Braxlynn Sage. This is the part of the story w...

A woman is pulled over on a Texas highway with a newborn baby in her lap, covered in blood, claiming she has just given birth behind the wheel. But when Taylor Parker reaches hospital, the story begins to fall apart.  In part one of the Taylor Parker case, we follow the strange and escalating trail of fake pregnancy claims, inheritance lies, family sabotage, burner phones, alleged threats, arson,...

Marilyn Monroe is one of the most recognisable women who has ever lived, but the version the world fell in love with was, in many ways, built in a studio.  Today, we trace how Marilyn Monroe emerged from Norma Jean’s unstable and abusive childhood to become the Hollywood icon everyone thinks they know. We follow her early modelling career, her studio-made voice, and the blonde bombshell image she...

The Zodiac Killer did not just murder people; he turned the case into a public game of fear, symbols, letters and unsolved ciphers. This episode follows the Zodiac Killer from the first lovers’ lane attacks in Northern California to the murder of taxi driver Paul Stine, tracing how a string of true crime cases became one of America’s most enduring unsolved mysteries. We unpack the Zodiac Killer mu...

John Wayne Gacy was never just the killer clown; he was a trusted local man hiding sexual violence, murder, and years of missed warnings in plain sight. Today we explore the real story of John Wayne Gacy, starting with 15-year-old Robert Piest’s disappearance and the police work that finally broke the case open. We trace Gacy’s public image as a contractor, community figure, and Pogo the Clown, th...

A man checks into the President Hotel under a false name — and Room 1046 becomes a locked-door nightmare. The death of the man known as Roland T. Owen remains one of the strangest true crime stories of 1930s Kansas City. Behind the name was a deeper mystery: Artemis Ogletree, a false identity, a hotel room filled with unanswered questions, and a cast of names that still feel like pieces from a puz...

A royal dinner becomes a bloodbath, a prince lies in a coma, and the Nepal Royal Massacre turns a dynasty into one of modern history’s most disturbing mysteries. This dark history episode follows the Nepal Royal Massacre from the Shah dynasty prophecy and the “tenth generation” curse to Crown Prince Dipendra’s blocked relationship with Devyani Rana, royal astrology, status, and the marriage politi...

Fame, money, media frenzy and courtroom drama collide in the Michael Jackson allegations — a story still argued over decades later. The Michael Jackson allegations remain among pop culture’s most disputed true crime stories: a tangled history of accusations, denial, civil settlement, tabloid obsession and legal uncertainty. This episode follows Jordan Chandler and the first allegations, the 1993 c...

Michael Jackson became the King of Pop before he was ever allowed to be ordinary. This episode traces Michael Jackson from the Jackson 5 and Motown to Off the Wall, Thriller, MTV, the moonwalk and Neverland, following the talent, pressure and isolation behind one of music’s most famous lives. We begin with Joe Jackson, childhood pressure and the Jackson family home, then follow the breakout voice...

A flooded Caribbean lab, a NASA-funded dolphin experiment, and a researcher living side by side with a dolphin named Peter. Peter the Dolphin is one of the strangest true stories in science history: a bizarre attempt to understand dolphin communication that became infamous for reasons far beyond animal language research. This episode explores Dolphin House, the unconventional lab where Margaret Ho...

Julia Child had one of the strangest second acts in American cultural history: before she became the towering voice of French cooking, she worked for wartime intelligence, handled classified files, helped with OSS shark repellent research and fell in love with Paul Child. This episode follows Julia Child from a late-blooming outsider with no professional kitchen background to the woman behind Mast...

America’s most infamous Murder Castle still looms over the H. H. Holmes story: a Chicago hotel of rumours, hidden rooms, insurance schemes and a serial killer legend built in the shadow of the 1893 World’s Fair. But how much of the Murder Castle true story is fact, and how much is dark history polished into myth? This historical true crime episode follows H. H. Holmes, born Herman Webster Mudgett,...

A sealed world in the Arizona desert was meant to prove humans could live beyond Earth — then the oxygen began to vanish. Biosphere 2 promised a future of Mars habitats, closed ecosystems and self-sustaining life support systems. Instead, the experiment became one of science’s strangest true stories: eight biospherians locked inside a glass-and-steel dome, falling oxygen levels, food shortages, cr...

Morgan Metzer survived a terrifying New Year’s Eve attack that first looked like a violent home invasion. But the truth behind the Morgan Metzer case, and the real story behind Gaslit by My Husband , was far more disturbing than a stranger in the house. This true crime podcast episode follows what really happened when a staged rescue, years of gaslighting and a pattern of coercive control began to...

A young reporter walks into an asylum and changes journalism forever. Nellie Bly became one of the most daring historical figures of the Gilded Age by getting herself committed to Blackwell’s Island asylum, then exposing the cruelty, neglect and institutional horror she found inside. But Ten Days in a Mad-House was only one chapter in a life built on risk, spectacle and rule-breaking. This episode...

A newsletter criticised eBay. Then came dead insects, sinister messages, fake accounts and masked surveillance outside a couple’s home. The eBay Stalking Scandal is one of the strangest true crime stories to come out of Silicon Valley: a corporate harassment campaign aimed at Ina and David Steiner, the married couple behind EcommerceBytes, after their reporting angered powerful people inside eBay....

Three children were murdered in West Memphis, and three teenagers were blamed in a case where fear seemed to outrun evidence. The West Memphis Three case became one of the most argued-over true crime cases in America: a brutal Robin Hood Hills child murder investigation, a Satanic Panic narrative, Jessie Misskelley’s disputed confession, and trials that turned Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Miss...

The McDonald’s Monopoly game promised instant riches, but behind the golden arches was a fraud so bold it sounds invented. McMillions tells the strange true story of how one of America’s biggest fast-food promotions was secretly rigged for years, with stolen winning game pieces, fake winners, quiet payoffs and an insider known as “Uncle Jerry” at the centre of it all. This episode follows McMillio...

Twenty-six children climbed onto a school bus in California. Hours later, they had vanished — and by nightfall, they were buried alive underground. The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping is one of the largest child abduction cases in American history. In 1976, children from Dairyland Elementary and their bus driver, Ed Ray, were taken from a school bus near Chowchilla, California, before being forced into...

Five women were murdered in Ipswich, and a city already used to being ignored suddenly found itself at the centre of a national manhunt. The Suffolk Strangler case follows Steve Wright, Operation Sumac and the 2006 Ipswich murders, a sequence of killings that exposed both the terror of a serial killer investigation and the everyday risks faced by vulnerable women in the red light district. This ep...

A 14-year-old girl was taken from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, and the case became one of America’s most closely watched true crime stories. Elizabeth Smart follows the kidnapping by Brian David Mitchell, the role of Wanda Barzee, the search that unfolded in public, and the disturbing religious delusions used to justify control, fear and captivity. This episode explains what really happened in t...