Episodes

ETs are back on Ain't It Scary in a two-part primer on one of the most prominent UFO religions on Earth - the Raëlian Movement! In this first installment, Sean introduces Claude Vorilhon - the man who would be renamed Raël - as the erstwhile pop singer-turned-racing journalist meets an ancient alien master and learns the secret origins in the human race. Raël's received wisdom would be recorded in the simply-named The Book That Tells the Truth in 1974 - and inspire a movement that attracts follo...

This week, we explore how a crime story can inform pop culture with the true tale of Grace Brown's murder at the hands of Chester Gillette in 1906. In a collaboration with the You're Missing Out podcast, we took a (virtual) trip to Upstate New York to investigate the famous "Murder in the Adirondacks": the likely drowning death of Grace Brown caused by her sometime-boyfriend and factory superior, Chester Gillette. Brown had just discovered she was pregnant, and due to societal restrictions at th...

In second of a two-parter on the Roman Empire's most hated rulers, Sean illustrates the *colorful* life and times of Nero, Rome's fifth emperor, who got up to a lot more than just fireside fiddling. Join us for a twisted tale of matricide, fratricide, parricide, arson, plain ol' torture murders and more forced suicides than you can shake a centurion at. But above all the violence, Nero considered himself something much scarier than a mad emperor...he considered himself an artist . Come for the m...

We're going back to ancient Rome for a two-part look at the most notoriously evil emperors the empire ever had! This week, Sean gets us warmed up with Caligula, the man whose name has become a byword for madness and sexual depravity. Rome's third emperor ruled for less than four years, so what could this guy have done to get this kind of reputation? Was Caligula assassinated for being a violent madman, or was he just sleeping with the wrong guys' wives? And did he really try to make his horse a ...

Have you ever heard anything that you couldn't explain? The most mysterious sounds in the world vary from impossibly loud deep sea groans to possibly Biblical trumpets calling in the sky. And many, chillingly enough, still have no real scientific explanations. The stories of mysterious sounds we're exploring today include: ...The Bloop, the loudest undersea noise ever recorded, ...The Sky Trumpets and Well to Hell, two completely opposite sides of the maybe-Biblical coin, ...And assorted sound p...

Between 1911 and 1912, at least 11 Black families were murdered with an axe in their beds, in towns along the Southern Pacific railway line in Louisiana and Texas. The only person ever punished for any of these crimes was a teen girl named Clementine Barnabet. In this week's episode, Sean caps off Axe Murder March with a gruesome sidecar to last year's "Man From the Train" series, as families keep turning up dead in the Louisiana countryside and one Lafayette girl keeps confessing... And confess...

In this 4th and final part of the Lizzie Borden story, we round out the rest of the sensational Borden Murders trial, hear the final verdict, and learn what Lizzie Borden did with the rest of her life after her (spoiler alert) acquittal in June 1893. Meet the witnesses that added quite a bit of color to the case, including skull-boiling doctors, confusing and contradictory policemen, a lollygagging ice cream salesman, and more; see the defense's star witness Emma Bordan take the stand against a ...

Screw it, we're doing 4 parts! The tea is too scorching and the drama too intense to not give Lizzie's case room to breathe, so we're dedicating all of Axe Murder March to Miss Borden herself. This week: Lizzie is charged, arrested, and brought to trial. The press continues their field day with Lizzie's story, hounding her at every turn, insulting her looks, and even falsely reporting a pregnancy. Multiple important witnesses take the stand, including housemaid Bridget Sullivan, Doctor Seabury B...

Axe Murder March plunges on, Part 2 is coming in hot, and we're making it a 3-parter for the story of the Borden Murders and the accusations levied against Lizzie Borden, she of "40 whacks" fame. This week, we explore the pre-forensic era investigation into who could have killed Andrew and Abby Borden, and the official inquest into the crime itself. Witness a cavalcade of Fall River locals, Borden family members, and frustrated District Attorneys go back and forth attempting to establish a factu...

Axe Murder March is back, and this time, the ladies are doing it for themselves! That's right, after our fan-favorite series last year covering the Axeman of New Orleans, the Villisca Axe Murders, and the Man from the Train, we're heading back to the chopping block with stories of women who, well...took matters into their own hands. First up is one of the biggies in American history: the story of Lizzie Borden, who may or may not have taken an axe, given her mother 40 whacks, and when she saw wh...

On October 13, 1972, a chartered Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying 40 passengers, including a local amateur rugby team on its way to an exhibition match in Chile, collided with a mountain and crashed into a glacier, losing both wings and its whole flight crew in the process. For the mostly young, inexperienced travelers who survived the crash, it was only the beginning of a 10 week fight for survival in the most inhospitable conditions imaginable. This week, Sean apologizes for his Spanish lang...

On February 19th, 1994, 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez was rushed to Riverside General Hospital after suffering severe heart palpitations, possibly caused by her advanced cervical cancer. In the ER, hospital staff began to work to try and save Gloria's life - and that's where the strangeness started. Nurses, residents, and technicians alike began to complain of severe symptoms after Gloria's blood was taken, noting a strange chemical-like smell coming from her body. Then, these very same seasoned me...

On November 1, 1909, in the small UK mill town of Staleybridge, construction magnate George Harry Storrs was stabbed to death in his kitchen. Four eyewitnesses, including George Harry's wife, saw the attack and got a good luck at the murderer - yet over a century later and despite several trials, the crime remains unsolved. In the thrilling conclusion to our two-parter on the case, we meet Cornelius "Cornie" Howard and Mark Wilde, the two unfortunate ne'er-do-wells who were tried in Storrs' deat...

On November 1, 1909, in the small UK mill town of Staleybridge, construction magnate George Harry Storrs was stabbed to death in his kitchen. Four eyewitnesses, including George Harry's wife, saw the attack and got a good luck at the murderer - yet over a century later and despite several trials, the crime remains unsolved. This week, in the first of two episodes on the crime and investigation, Sean introduces us to George Harry Storrs and the town of Stalybridge, and catches us up with the esca...

At the end of our series exploring the Titanic tragedy, we "dive" into the immediate aftermath of the sinking - including legal inquiries and lawsuits - the search for the wreck on the bottom of the ocean, and the remaining theories and mysteries still surrounding the Titanic to this day. Take a seat at the US Senate hearings on the disaster, which ended in changes to maritime regulations and one thoroughly mocked senator; on the deep-sea vehicle Argo, developed by Dr. Robert Ballard to try and ...

We've made it to April 14th, 1912, and the RMS Titanic is midway through its maiden voyage from England to New York. All is calm, all is normal. Until - "Iceberg, right ahead!" But the warning would come too late. The Titanic would scrape across an iceberg far from its destination in America, and within 3 hours, she would be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. By dawn the morning of April 15th, over 1,500 souls on the Titanic would perish in the frigid sea, with the ship being lost forever to t...

In 1907, English businessman J Bruce Ismay sat down with his partners at the shipping company White Star Line to dream up the newest three ships in the White Star Line's fleet, destined to be bigger, more luxurious, and possibly even faster than anything White Star Line or any of their competitors had managed to build to that time. By 1912, two of the ships had been constructed: the Olympic, and the bigger, heavier Titanic. The latter especially would draw fascination from the world over, with t...

Hey Scary Squad! We're still wrapping up important family obligations this week, so in lieu of a full episode - but still wanting to get some new 'tent out to ya - we wanted to include a sample Patreon minisode here to be accessible by all (and hopefully get more of you beautiful people over to our Patreon page)! The CURSE OF THE BAMBINO is the alleged baseball curse that befell the Red Sox after they sold "Sultan of Swat" Babe Ruth away to the Yankees to fund a Broadway flop. Was there really a...

Hello Scary Squad! We apologize for not getting a new episode out this week - due to a death in our family, we've been tied up, understandably, with quite important matters. Sean wanted to hop on and give this little update, so you wouldn't think we'd left you in the dust of Christmas past! We hope you've had a lovely holiday, and can't wait to get back to it next week (don't worry - this isn't an extended hiatus!). Til then, deck those halls, ring in the New Year, and keep it Scary! ___________...

It's been a hell of a week over at the Crypt, so this episode Sean & Carrie take a break from the bleak with a little holiday fun! Inspired by Fantasy Football drafts, Sean & Carrie recast an entire 10-character Christmas movie (featuring such Christmastime archetypes as Santa Claus, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Krampus) with figures from their over-100-episodes of weirdness. Does the head of the House of Mouse make the perfect step-in for jolly old St. Nick? Does Cotton Mather deserve a character arc?...

In 1985, a gang of mail-order assassins staged a string of murders-for-hire across the country - but this hitman story is less " John Wick " and more " Fargo by way of The Three Stooges." Sean introduces the sordid tale of Richard "Doc" Savage, a Vietnam veteran and strip club owner who arranged paid killings through an ad placed in Soldier of Fortune magazine. What followed was a whirlwind of slapstick misadventure and murder - and plenty of failure - with a team of miscreants who make Home Alo...

After a few weeks of brutality, Carrie returns with a slightly silly tale from pre-WW2 Britain: the story of Gef, a trickster entity (or spirit? or poltergeist? or cryptid? or...) who presented himself as a talking mongoose to the Irving family, and both harassed and cozied up with the Irvings until the end of World War II. Gef, as he preferred to be called, allegedly told the Irvings - father James, mother Margaret, and 13-year-old daughter Voirrey - that he was the spirit of an Indian mongoose...

Listener beware: beheadings and heart-rippings abound in this week's tour through the history of human sacrifice! Ritual murder to please the gods or stave off disaster may stretch back as far as human civilization. Every civilization that sacrificed people put its own special spin on the ball, from babies left on mountain tops to warriors chosen by ritual combat and bled to death. This ep, Sean takes the reins as we visit the horrifying custom in all its grisly - and surprisingly varied - forms...

New Orleans, one year post Hurricane Katrina. A man is found dead after jumping from the roof of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel. In his pocket is a note directing police to go back to his apartment. There, the note says, they'll find the dismembered body of Addie Hall. The police had no idea the kind of scene they were about to find. The inside of 826 North Rampart Street on October 17th, 2006 was nothing short of nightmares. But what drove the man, identified as Zackery "Zack" Bowen, to kill the ...