Weird World Podcast

When 12 boys and their soccer coach went into a cave near their home in Thailand, they figured they would be inside an hour at most. It turned out to be more like 17 days. Water rising, no food, probably inbred subhuman cave monsters waiting to feast on human flesh, and the only way out was a torturous tunnel completely submerged.

Southwestern Idaho had too many beavers in 1948. They needed to go. But how? That’s easy - by parachute. Genius.

Someone slaughtered four people at the Booher farm in Alberta, Canada in 1928. The police were stumped. Lucky for them, they had one of the foremost psychologists in the world visiting from Austria at the time. Even more fortunate, Maximilian Langsner could not just heal minds, he could read them. Langsner would find their murderer.

No, they didn’t poison us. They actually tried to prevent companies from poisoning us. But they did this by poisoning people. Confusing, yes, but fascinating. Sources: https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a23169/poison-squad/ The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, by Deborah Blum https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/books/review...

Linda Cortile was sleeping soundly in her 12th floor Manhattan apartment when three aliens came and beamed her onto their spaceship at 3:15 in the morning. What made her story different was this: people had actually witnessed the event. And not just two government agents named Richard and Dan, but a whole bunch of freaked out people watching from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Was it the Jenglot? Or the Baby Cages? The Jersey Devil Tree? The Moroccan Moonstone? Or the Man-eating Tree of Madagascar? Finally, we’ll find out…

Something was terrorizing the countryside around Bedburg in Germany in the late 1500s. First cattle, then children, then women. Disappeared, dismembered, devoured. Was it wolves? Was it the devil? Or was it a little bit of both? Disclaimer: There are descriptions of attacks / murders and of old-timey torture and execution methods in this episode.

It started with a monk and nun executed for their illicit affair in 1362. The nun came back to haunt the scene of her demise. Then came a headless coachman. Then a poltergeist started tossing around candlesticks and scrawling messages on walls. Harry Price went ghost hunting. But only fire could expunge the evil from this place. Or did it?

El Cucuy hides in your closet or under your bed. In the dark. And he does not just do mean things to you if you are bad. He eats you. Oh, and El Cucuy sometimes attacks grandmothers. He is just all around bad.

When 13-year old Eleonore Zugun found a coin on the ground and spent it, her grandmother told her Dracu the Devil would make sure bad things happened to her. Bad things did.

Halloween is the perfect time for a fact or fiction episode. This one centers on strange things: tiny little vampires, moonstones, a demonic tree, man-eating trees and, worst of all, baby cages. Listen, then vote for the weird thing you think is B.S. We’ll reveal the fake strange thing on Halloween.

How powerful is belief? Powerful enough to kill? To some indigenous Australians, the mere pointing of a bone can seal a terrible fate.

For almost seven years Cindy James was harassed, attacked, and terrorized. Did Cindy have a vicious enemy who would not rest until she was broken or dead? Or was Cindy’s enemy much closer to home?

Jack Wheeler was a stridently conventional man. West Point grad, military veteran, White House aide. Everything about Jack Wheeler was normal - until two days of strange behavior that culminated in his body being found at a landfill in Delaware, beaten to death.

Over 30 years, Alan Smithee directed more than 25 feature films. He was praised by Roger Ebert. He directed such stars as Richard Widmark, Burt Reynolds, Robert Duvall, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster and Keanu Reeves. Alan Smithee was a major Hollywood player. It turns out, though, that Alan Smithee did not exist.

Robert Pakington was a wealthy English reformer during the reign of Henry VIII. Who knew that what happened to him on a walk to church in 1536 would change the world forever in a very ugly way.

As law enforcement gave up on ever catching the only successful hijacker in the nation’s history, the question became - who was DB Cooper? Was it the smoke jumper? The terrible skydiving instructor? The transgender woman? The mass murderer? Let’s find out.

The moment Flight 305 touches down in Reno, the authorities swarm. But DB Cooper had already leapt into the rainy night somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Where did he jump? Did he survive? And, if so, where did he go?

An aggressively normal man bought a one-way ticket on Flight 305 to Seattle, ordered a bourbon and soda, then told the flight attendant he had a bomb in his briefcase. And so started one of the most remarkable mysteries ever.

Jetpack Jerry (not his real name) has been spotted 6,000 feet up in the air around LAX. Alien? Angel? Psychotic? Eccentric billionaire? Awesome dude? That guy who invented the Segway (oh, wait, he’s dead)? Jetpack Jerry joins Lawnchair Larry and the Balloon Boy in the Weird World aviation hall of fame.

Callback updates: Japanese brown bears wreaking havoc in Hokkaido and Murder Hornets coming back to America. Oh, and we forgot to tell you we are taking a little summer break, but we will be back soon.

For one unnamed family in Italy, weirdly copious sweating, high blood pressure, dilated eyes, stiff limbs and impotence were more ominous than they might be for most people. For this family, they signaled the onset of not days of sleeplessness, not weeks, but months, maybe even years. That never ends well.

When Ed Bielek saw the movie, The Philadelphia Experiment, something sparked in his primal memory. Something from his past in Montauk on Long Island, New York. In a flash, Bielek realized he could add to the lore of time travel, telepathy, and government conspiracies with his own remarkable experiences. Be forewarned, this episode goes to 11.

It was an astounding event that crossed paranormal fields - aliens, teleportation, time travel, secret government conspiracies. It was the Philadelphia Experiment. It was also a fantastic movie in 1984 starring the unforgettable Michael Pare. Remember him? Also in Streets of Fire, Eddie and the Cruisers? Nothing? Well, it is still a remarkable story, so tune in. Sources: https://www.military.com/o...

Carl McCunn looked forward to another summer in the rugged Alaskan interior photographing wildlife. But what exactly did he say to the bush pilot he thought was going to pick him up when winter loomed? And Atsumi Yoshikubo wanted so badly to see the Northern Lights she walked into the wilds of Canada’s frozen north — to vanish off the face of the earth. The stories of Carl and Atsumi demonstrate t...