Archived Episodes
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In Singapore, there’s a park known as the Haw Par Villa, an expansive theme park filled with over 1,000 statues, and hundreds of detailed three-dimensional dioramas. Of course, lots of parks have statues and memorials of people from history. But these dioramas set Haw Par Villa apart; and make it a much wilder, much stranger place. At the epicenter of the park is the Ten Courts of Hell. It’s a self-guided tour through the experiences one would expect from hell. Or at least, the Hell imagined by the multicultural mythology that makes Singapore so unique. While the purpose of the park was to show children the consequences of their bad behavior, the implementation created something rather dark and foreboding. And now, the park has gained a reputation as haunted.
So, perhaps it’s not a surprise that some of these spooky statues and dioramas are thought to be haunted. But what about haunted dolls? How does something created for a sweet and innocent purpose, something that provides comfort and safety to so many, come to get such an evil reputation? In a world with so many dolls, how does one single doll become infamous?
Learn more about the history of three famous haunted dolls; Peggy (who inspired the story of Annebelle), Robert & the girl-doll of the Yesterdays’ Museum.
Skyline view of Shanghai.
Adi Constantin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Once upon a time, I was in Shanghai, and I needed a birthday present for a friend.
Shanghai is a captivating city; one I love to visit. I always enjoy my time there. It’s vibrantly alive with culture, history, and commerce. For many years it was called “The Paris of the East,” due to its cosmopolitanism, and its sophistication. I love it so much that my next novel, Like Clockwork, is based in this incredible city. On this particular day on this particular trip, I went to the shopping district around Nanjing Road. There are so many little shops and stalls mixed with western brands crowding the marketplace that you can easily lose your bearings if you’re not careful.
…I picked up a so-called “Rolex” that I thought my friend would love, and examined it while the shopkeeper promised to make me a good price.
“Is it real?” I asked, jokingly.
“If you cannot tell the difference,” she asked, “does it matter?”
The empty space left behind when the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre Museum in 1911.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Luis Ribeiro was dumped on the side of a road, his body filled with bullets. John Tillman’s high-flying, globe-trotting adventure ended with him dying alone after years in a prison cell. Leonardo Notarbartolo barely had a moment to celebrate his success before his diamond district apartment was traded for a cold, dark cage.
Their heists practically stand as works of art in themselves – the product of intense discipline, creative thinking, and strokes of brilliance; they show a sort of daring that captivates, even inspires.
But there’s always the aftermath. The paranoia. The punishment. The violence of the world you wanted to escape coming to claim you. It seems like the money is never the reward.
Yuri Gagarin prior to launch of the Vostok I.
Mil.ru, Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
John Glenn. Alan Shepard. Scott Carpenter. Gordon Cooper. Gus Grissom. Deke Slayton. Wally Schirra. These are the names of the members of the Mercury Seven— America’s first astronauts, charged with the task of being the human faces of a massive collective effort to beat the Soviet Union in a race to space. And, of course, charged with the task of actually manning the rockets that could take them higher than man had ever flown before.
The Soviets Union had their own astronauts, or more accurately, cosmonauts. Their story, especially the most famous among them, Yuri Gargarin, is fascinating, in part, because their story has many parallels to our own American astronaut program, but also because of the differences. Some subtle, some glaring. The differences make their story poignant, something to be understood and appreciated, if only to understand what is true about the human condition.
The site of Gebo, Wyoming—location of the first known Fu-go balloon sighting—the land showing the scars of contemporary fires and the skies filled with smoke from California’s worst fire season on record.
Amid the astonishing destruction of World War II in Europe and Asia, the mainland of the United States had been spared from the ravages of this global conflict. While several isolated attacks took place on the coasts, the dictators in Berlin & Tokyo sought super weapons to use against the US.
For Japan, one of these super weapons came in the form of the Fu-go balloon project that involved launching 9,000 explosive laden balloons from Japan to the US.
The 1977 Ford LTD with preserved damage as the only physical evidence of Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson’s UFO sighting.
The desire to know if Unidentified Flying Objects are real continues to grow in the USA and world-wide, especially with recent releases of previously classified video from the Department of Defense.
One encounter yet to be explained was that of Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson, whose UFO sighting left his patrol car damaged and his memory blank. The Fort LTD still sits in a museum today in northern Minnesota, a tangible reminder that UFOs remain an unknown and unidentified source of mystery to this day.
The dark ride where Elmer’s body was used as a prop prior to the rediscovery that he was not just a mannequin.
Laff in the Dark, The Pike postcards and photos, Long Beach Heritage Museum.
How does someone’s corpse get so exploited and degraded that, decades later, everyone mistakes him for a prop?
After Elmer McCurdy’s death, his embalmed body was exploited as a sideshow attraction, a movie prop, and ultimately a decoration in an amusement park’s haunted house.
Entrance to the Grand Hyatt Taipei, 2012.
Nagono, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How did a luxury international hotel brand in Taipei earn the reputation as one of the most haunted hotels in the world?
Peenemünde power plant, now the Peenemünde Historical Technical Museum.
Today Peenemünde is a small German town that borders the Baltic Sea. It sits amid a beautiful patchwork of farmland and national parks but the peaceful environment belies its role in the Nazi government’s development of V1 flying bomb and V2 rocket.
What did it feel like to see an airship at the dawn of the 20th century?
To see an airship in the early 1900s was to see the dawn of a new age of technology but the experience also changed how one saw the world and its future.