First came the scratches in the wall of the farmhouse on the Isle of Man. Then growls and hisses and screeches. Then Gef the mongoose told the Irving family all about himself. Because he was a talking mongoose. And soon the world wanted to hear what Gef had to say.
Weird Bit 45 - Monsters of the Philippines
The Aswang of the Philippines can be a witch that curses, a shape-shifter, and a vampire-like creature that sucks your blood and viscera. And then there are the actual monsters…
Episode 232 - The (Possibly Zombie) Leatherman
Who was that mysterious leather-clad stranger who each month tramped through the same small towns in New York and Connecticut - for over 30 years? Was he an old French fur trader? A zombie? A lonely man who just— wait, did you say zombie? We vote for zombie.
Episode 231 - Fun With Animals, Part 2
Why shouldn’t we text each other by tapping on telepathic snails? Why shouldn’t we use bats to drop bombs and dolphins to do - well, all sorts of things? No one can say we haven’t tried, because we have, and this episode tells us how.
Episode 230 - Fun With Animals, Part 1
We’ve always had fun with animals. Playing frisbee with dogs. Chatting with parrots. Using canaries to tell us if a coal mine will kill us. Turning pigeons into bombs. Using leeches to predict the weather. The usual stuff.
Episode 229 - Free Range Kids: The Remarkable Travels of the Abernathy Boys
In early 1900s Oklahoma, the Abernathy brothers decided they wanted to go see the new governor’s mansion in Santa Fe, NM. 1,300 miles away. On horseback. Alone. They had to ask their dad for permission first - since they were nine and five years old. He said go for it.
Sources
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/10/19/ultimate-free-range-kids-two-boys-rode-horses-new-york-oklahoma/ By Eliza McGraw
https://www.405magazine.com/the-astounding-adventures-of-the-abernathy-boys/ by M.J. Alexander
Weird Bit 44 - Jack Lohrke - Baseball Legend
We don’t want to give it away, but Jack Lohrke led a charmed life on his travels from minor league baseball to World War II and back again.
Episode 228 - Finding the Lost Colony of Roanoke - Part 3
So what did happen to those unlucky Roanoke colonists? Were they absorbed into the native population? Were they massacred? Enslaved by the Spanish? Lost at sea? Victims of a nefarious plot? Let’s follow the breadcrumbs.
Weird Bit 43 - Oscars So Weird
It’s Oscar night so we bring some strangeness from the annals of the Academy Awards. And we’re not even counting Will Smith’s slap-down of Chris Rock.
Episode 227 - Finding the Lost Colony of Roanoke - Part 2
When John White finally got back to Roanoke he found nothing - no daughter, no granddaughter, and none of the other 100+ colonists. The Lost Colony quickly became legend as every search brought no sign of where they had gone.
Episode 226 - Finding the Lost Colony of Roanoke - Part 1
The legendary lost colony. 140 people disappear from an island off the North Carolina coast, never seen again. We start at the beginning with the rarely told story behind how the Roanoke Colony came to be before it got lost.
Special Update Episode: Sherri Papini Kidnapping
We are releasing this week’s episode early to update everyone on the Sherri Papini “kidnapping” case (Episode 72). Karma just might actually be a thing…
Episode 224 - Flight to Nowhere: The Mull Air Mystery
With nothing more than a girlfriend and a flashlight to guide him back, it is not surprising that Peter Gibbs disappeared when he soared his little plane into the dark Scottish night. That was mystery enough, but then they found his nearly pristine body four months later lying in plain sight on previously searched ground. Where had he gone? Why had he gone? Where was his plane? And how did his body end up on that hillside?
Weird Bit 42 - Unluckiest (Or Luckiest?) Baseball Fan Ever
Alice Roth loved baseball. She loved her hometown Phillies and especially star center fielder Richie Ashburn. So when he came to bat against the New York Giants on a hot August night in 1957 you would think she would have been paying close attention. You would think.
Episode 223 - Ishi, The Last Californian
In 1911, the man who would be known as Ishi walked into a slaughterhouse near Oroville, California. He had given up. His people had been wiped out. He could no longer live the ways his ancestors had for millennia. He was the last of his kind, but he was not done yet.
Weird Bit 41 - Nevada City's Haunted Hospital
Mental institution, murder, and creepy rotting buildings being slowly reclaimed by the forest. We took a Weird World road trip to visit a possibly haunted abandoned hospital in Gold Rush Country California.
Episode 222 - The Mystery in Room 348
The coroner in Beaumont, Texas said Greg Fleniken has been beaten so badly on September 15, 2010 that his innards were a bloody, ruptured mess. But Room 348 was pristine. No one suspicious had gone in or out of the room the entire night. He had a thousand dollars in his wallet and a cigarette still in his hand. What really happened to Greg Fleniken?
Episode 221 - Ta-ra-ra-Bomb-de-ay: The Story of the Fabulous Cherry Sisters
They sang. They danced. They did comedy. They did tragedy. They read moralistic essays. They also dodged fruits and vegetables and pulled shotguns on their audience. They were The Fabulous Cherry Sisters and they were nothing if not entertaining, intentional or otherwise.
Episode 220 - The Dangers of Working for Horrible People: The McDonald's Strip Search Scam
In 2004, a high school student working at a McDonald’s in Kentucky was pulled into the manager’s office. There was a police officer on the phone. He said someone had accused her of theft. He asked her manager to detain her. She did. Then things got very out of hand.
Episode 219 - The Disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370, Part 2
Following some electronic bread crumbs, investigators were able to trace the last mysterious hours of Flight 370. But the biggest questions remained - what exactly happened, why, and perhaps most compelling, who?