Weird World Podcast

Did an armada of alien craft light up Lake Michigan in 1994? 300 people thought so. National Weather Service radar thought so. With no obvious explanation, this may be one of the best arguments for visitation in U.S. history.

Did an armada of alien craft light up Lake Michigan in 1994? 300 people thought so. National Weather Service radar thought so. With no obvious explanation, this may be one of the best arguments for visitation in U.S. history.

In 1997, the Valley of the Sun was set upon by an array of floating lights bright in the night sky. Was this the mother ship? And what was that giant five-light triangle soaring across northern Arizona just before the mysterious lights appeared above Phoenix? It didn't help that the airport and the Air Force said they had no idea what was going on.

We have stories - the psychics who saved a woman's daughter by taking millions of dollars worth of art and jewelry from her. Cocaine Cat and a $63,000 iPhone. A pine nut farmer who took an unexpeced balloon flight. And two cities in Mexico that haven't been hit by a hurricane for over half of a century because they have an alien base just off shore. Lucky.

If we had to pick one cryptid that has the best case for being an actual thing itmight be the buru. Did a 12+ foot aquatic lizard once inhabit a few isolated swampy valleys in India’s isolated northeast? That is a defnite maybe.

Imagine if a terrible accident turned you into an overnight genius. For those who experience Acquired Savant Syndrome (ASS, seriously) this "gift" can sometimes come with a cost. Also naked tennis. We'll explain.

Maybe even weirder than mega movie flops are prominent movies and television shows with major talent and money behind them that were literally buried. Two seasons of an animated Star Wars series? Never happened. Jerry Lewis playing a clown in a concentration camp? Nope. Dudes telling their guy friends they're gay? Okay, that one was probably a good call.

This is in episode about Heaven's Gate, but not the suicide cult. About Cats but not the animal, Sahara but not the desert, and Battleship but not the game. This is about the biggest movie flops ever, movies that rational people thought they should spend hundreds of millions of dollars on. That's weird, right?

We are all familiar with the placebo effect - how medicinal mind over matter can make the pain go away. But the placebo effect might either be so much more - or a lot less - than we think.

What happened to the nine Dyatlov Pass hikers found dead in the Russian wilderness in 1959 is a classic mystery. But 20 years later what killed five hikers in the Ural Mountains is stranger still since one of them lived and we still don't know what happened.

More weird news - anthropology edition! In this episode we bring you skulls washing ashore in Florida, ancient amputations, Polish vampires, a six-inch "alien" skeleton from Chile, and the intriguing possibility that the so-called Hobbit hominid may still be roaming the forested mountains of the island of Indonesia.

Sure China is sending balloons to spy on the United States, but during WWII Japan sent thousands of balloons over the U.S. mainland to start fires and  wreak havoc. There were some close calls, but one time they worked with  horrific results.

Introducing Quick Cryptid Corner! - brief takes on unexplained creatures from across the globe. We start with the Kappa, a Japanese  beast of lakes and rivers with a turtle shell, a water-filled dish that forms the top of its skull, and, some say, a taste for children who stray too close to its lair.

Frank Olson was there at the inception of MK Ultra. He worked hard at developing mind control drugs, but eventually something got in the way - a conscience. Olson tried to free himself from the awful world he had stumbled into. But "they" would not let him go...

In Part 2 of the MK Ultra saga we work through the lowlights of the worst things researchers did in their quest for mind control. Finally, it would all come crashing down and eventually exposed, but is it possible we still don't know what we don't know?

After WWII ended the CIA thought the West was in imminent danger of succumbing to a red tide sweeping the world. They would do anything to win. Anything - including trying to control minds and turn people into potentially murderous slaves.

It was a lovely autumn day in Sydney's Coogee Bay Aquarium in April of 1935. Kids squealed at the newest attraction - a 14-foot tiger shark circling its tank. Squeals turned to screams, though, when the shark vomited up a mass of foul-smelling muck that included a bird, a rat - and a human arm. Shark attack victim? Not so fast...

Celebrating the start of a new year is global. Some of us do so in weird and wonderful ways. Here is a taste of strange new year traditions from around the world.

Before there was Walmart telling their greeters to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" there were the Puritans. Those guys followed their anti-Christmas bias all the way to banning observance of the holiday in public and private in England and America. Now that's a war.

The premise of horror hit Nightmare on Elm Street was that you could die in your dreams. That can't really happen, can it? For over 100 new immigrants to the U.S. in the 1980s, it could. This is the story that inspired a classic horror franchise.

Before there was Jimmy Hoffa, there was Judge Joseph Crater. How could a well-known New York Supreme Court judge vanish without even a suggestion of a trace? And when Judge Crater disappeared, he stayed disappeared.

We will soon know the identity of the mysterious Boy in the Box, but another unknown murder victim remains a mystery. Who was the well-dressed woman found with her throat slit in Rahway, New Jersey in 1887? No one knows because, despite her obvious wealth, no one ever came forward to claim her.

This time we bring you killer whales and kangaroos, a real life Winnie the Pooh who gets high on honey, splooting squirrels, cloning a thylacine, and sleepy chicken that is not what you think. And yes, we realize this has become pretty animal-centric so we promise noanimals next time. Maybe.

The “Pony Boys” wanted to take their Shetland pony to the Montreal Expo, 350 miles from home. Sure, said their mom, knowing her kids were ages 9 and 11. And shouldn’t little Lennie ride his horse Ginger Mick to Sydney on a 2,500 kilometer round trip alone? He was 9 years old after all. Heartwarming or horrifying? You decide.

Did a serial killer stalk Irish women through the 1990s? If so, no one ever found their remains or the monster who did it. Or was there never any connection at all?