When a movie introduces itself as “based on a true story,” everything that follows is subject to scrutiny. What true story, and according to whom? The Conjuring (2013) is perhaps the quintessential haunted house movie of today, but it all began with an imperfect book. On this episode, we’ll square up that story with what appears on screen.

Bubble, bubble, toil and lots of trouble. The puritanical witch hunt of Salem, Massachusetts took the lives of 19 innocent people as one of the most dramatic instances of scapegoating in American history. Was there something in the rye? Evil in the water? Sexism in the air? Well, that goes without saying.

Steven Spielberg’s 1982 horror hit scared audiences silly with its story of a suburban family cursed by demonic ghosts. Off-screen, there were deaths of actors, accidents on set and an eerily targeted lightning strike. On this episode: a look inside the supposed curse of The Poltergeist franchise.

A chain-mail letter warns of an organ-harvesting cabal. A supposed mountain gremlin appears in a video. A hitchhiker in an evening gown vanishes into thin air, and people appear to live under New York City. But is any of it true? You decide on this episode, where we’ll explore the ins and outs of four urban legends.

One summer night in 1912, eight people were axe murdered in their sleep under the same roof. Over a hundred years later, the house remains in its rural farming town of Villisca, Iowa, open to the public. The case remains unsolved. The details of that night? Unsettling. One visitor even felt compelled to stab himself in the chest while there. On this episode, how a bloodbath from a century ago haunts our imaginations today.

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you discover other rooms in your apartment? Like, suddenly there’s a door you never noticed before, and beyond it is all the extra space you always wish you had? Or maybe you’ve had the nightmare version where you open your closet door and instead of your clothes, you’re looking at some kind of medieval torture dungeon. What would you do if you actually found a hole in your home leading to somewhere else....

"Lizzie Borden had an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." Or did she? There are lots of theories surrounding what happened in the Borden home that night. If Lizzie did kill her parents, did she do it alone or did she have help? Listen as we discuss all of the theories including Lizzie's alleged affair with the maid or even the possibility of....aliens?!

When The Exorcist movie was released in theaters, people claimed that it was one of the scariest films they had ever seen. However this movie may never have happened if it wasn't for Roland Doe, also known as the Haunted Boy. Listen to how this 14-year-old boy’s story and his saga of possession by the devil and how it inspired it all. 

It's the most infamous haunted house story of all time. But what really happened to the Lutz family when they moved into 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York? With an entire family gunned down in the home just a year before, did ghosts and demons really torment the home's new residents? Or did the Lutz family make it all up in an attempt to gain fame and fortune? We explore all the options.   

It’s totally normal to run into a packed bar to announce that your family’s been killed, right? Like, that’s a logical choice. On this week's episode we take a look at the DeFeo family murders of 1974, their lasting effects, and how they kicked off the Amityville Horror franchise.

What do you believe in? How much do you believe in it? Do you have faith? Do you think it's possible for someone to have *so much* faith that the divine would mark them--make them bleed from their hands and feet as a reward for their devoutness? On this week's episode we look at Stigmata: The blessed miracle, religious hoax, or the result of an impressionable mind?

On July 16, 1989, 18-year-old Kaitlyn Arquette was found murdered--shot to death--in her car near her home  in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When it was learned that Kaitlyn was the daughter of famous teen-horror novelist Lois Duncan--famous for her books like “I Know What You Did Last Summer”,-- the murder seemed like it could be the plot of one of Duncan’s books. With few clues and a bungled investigation, it would take 32 years for the case to be solved...WHICH JUST HAPPENED LAST WEEK.

Is our existence a reality, or are we the product of someone else's imagination? The chances that we are all just avatars in someone else's video game are better than you think.  This week, we explain what the simulation theory is, share stories of those who have experienced a "glitch" in the Matrix, and offer proof that none of this--or us--are real.  COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Strangers! We're taking a break this week, but we wanted to share the fascinating story of "Doris Duke's Dark Secret" from another Obsessed Network podcast: "Crimes of the Centuries". Tobacco heiress Doris Duke got upsetting news on Oct. 7, 1966. Her longtime friend and art curator, Eduardo Tirella wanted to end their work relationship. Within hours, Tirella was dead, having been hit by a car driven by Duke.  Though the crash was quickly dismissed by police as an accident, Tirella's family always believed that the volatile billionaire had killed Tirella on purpose. If so, Duke managed to buy her way out of this crime of the century. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find and subscribe to "Crimes of the Centuries" wherever you get your podcasts.

Stories of encounters with the Loch Ness Monster date back centuries, but is she real? And in the world’s deepest lake, scientists encounter 10-foot tall humanoid creatures. Who--or what--are they? This week we explore the mysteries of the deep. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Crop circles - we’ve all seen them. The beautiful, often perfectly symmetrical, patterns that seem to appear out of nowhere in rural crop fields in the United States and the United Kingdom. But what ARE they? Messages from aliens? Communications from humans of the future? Or elaborate man-made hoaxes? This week we explore all the theories. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

A 31-year-old woman is rushed to the emergency room, but instead of helping her, the doctors and nurses start to collapse around her.  Is it possible that you can be so toxic that you can make people sick just by being near them... or was something more sinister happening at this hospital? COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Do you believe time travel is possible? That it's possible for people from the future can slip back into our time either on purpose or by accident? This week we bring you two stores of people who did just that. A man hands over his travel documents at a busy international airport only to be told his country doesn't exist. And another man in the early 2000s who started posting on message boards that he was from the near future. Nobody believed him, until his predictions started coming true. 

Where do we go when we die? Do you think it's possible to cross over to the other side and come back? Today, three stories of people who have died but then lived to tell the tale aboout what happened.. Two of them went to heaven, one went....someplace else. 

On January 11, 2013, the body of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was found inside a vertical rolled up gym mat in the gymnasium of his high school in Valdosta, Georgia. A preliminary investigation and autopsy concluded that the death was accidental. But a second autopsy determined that he died from blunt force trauma. So which was it - a tragic accidental death? Or was it murder? COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

You've heard a lot of the stories from the Cecil Hotel--the serial killers who called it home, the tragic case of Elisa Lam who vanished and was found dead there--but you haven't heard them all. This week we revisit a few of these stories and tell you a few other terrifying true stories from The Cecil Hotel that you haven't heard before. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

In the early morning hours of December 6, 1959, the residents of a wealthy section of Los Feliz, Los Angeles, woke up to the sound of a blood curdling scream. Their 18-year-old neighbor, Judye Perelson, was begging for her life from inside her home. "Don't kill me" she shouted at her father, the esteemed doctor, Harold Perelson, who had attacked her with a ball-peen hammer. Judye survived, though other members of the family weren't so lucky. And though the surviving Perelsons moved out of the home where this tragedy took place, the echo of the murders remained, and the once great Los Angeles mansion turned into an infamous house of horrors. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Strangers! We're taking a break this week, but we wanted to share the FASCINATING AND TERRIFYING TALE of the "The Tylenol Murders" from another Obsessed Network podcast: "Crimes of the Centuries" When 52-year-old Bruce Nickell suddenly dropped dead in Washington state, investigators at first thought he'd died of a heart attack. But then a second person collapsed, and police realized that the two victims had both taken the painkiller Excedrin. Suddenly, they realized they were dealing with a copycat of a case that had haunted federal investigators for nearly 15 years.  In that earlier case, seven people died when someone randomly tampered with the over-the-counter painkiller to replace some of the powder inside capsules with enough cyanide to kill an entire family. Those deaths changed how medication is packaged nationwide and made it a federal crime to tamper with such products -- a legal change that years later came back to bite Nickell's killer. If you enjoyed this episode, you can find and subscribe to "Crimes of the Centuries" wherever you get your podcasts. 

Have you ever had a secret? Have you ever known something important - something other people really want to know - and just kept it to yourself? Now imagine that secret was about yourself, and if anyone found out about it, it would completely change your life - maybe for the worse. It might even get you killed. This week: two stories, almost a century apart, about important secrets that are completely unrelated, except for their queerness. HAPPY PRIDE, STRANGERS! COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

For decades, Naval officers and Airforce pilots have reported strange--but very very real--encounters with UFOs. These encounters are up close and very personal. Since the Pentagon's inceptions, the government has denied ever looking into these encounters, but that was a lie. And in July of last year, classified documents detailing these encounters and the top-level investigations into them were finally declassified. The stories are amazing and terrifying and tell us what we've always known: UFOs are real...probably. 

How does a 200-ton passenger plane - carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew - vanish into thin air mid-flight? And how is it possible that even after six years, neither the plane nor the people on board have ever been found? This is the story of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, headed for Beijing, but never arrived there... or anywhere. So what happened? Where did it go? And how? COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Columbus Ohio 2006, 1:15 am: 27-year-old medical student Brian Shaffer is seen on a surveillance camera walking into a bar with two friends. But he never comes back out. Somehow, in a bar packed with potential witnesses, Brian vanished into thin air seemingly INSIDE the bar. Then, in New York city in 2011, 22-year-old Ian Burnet, visiting friends to celebrate New Year's Eve gets onto a crowded subway car and is never seen again. How is it possible for someone to vanish without a trace from places packed with people and security cameras? What happened? Where did they go? COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Hey, Strangers! We're so excited to bring you the new show from the Obsessed Network, "Murder in Alliance." We've got the first episode here for you in this feed, and four more available right now wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the first five episodes and follow "Murder in Alliance" on your favorite podcast player HERE (https://lnk.to/98BXWuip). In the podcast, investigative journalist Maggie Freleng reinvestigates the 1999 murder of Yvonne Layne. Though her ex-boyfriend David Thorne was convicted of the murder, evidence points to his innocence. Now, twenty years later, Maggie travels to Ohio to talk with people involved in the case, explore new leads, and try to identify who killed Yvonne. Follow "Murder in Alliance" on Twitter and Instagram: @Murder_Alliance

Would you believe that, off that record, 8 in 11 cops admit to working with psychics to solve murders and find missing people? This is a real thing. Today we try to figure out if they're really helping, or are full of shit. A 9 year old girl is kidnapped in broad daylight. An11 year old boy is thrown into a van. A husband and wife are searching for her mother. A man leaves his Manhattan office and is never seen again. In each case, a psychic gets involved., but do they know what happened?  COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!! And find all shows from the Obsessed Network here! 

So... we still don't know what happened, you guys.  BUT 420ish years ago, a bunch of white people tried to form a colony in present-day North Carolina.  It didn't go great. The dude whose idea it was LEFT, and when he came back, everyone was gone.  We have no idea what happened to them... but it won't stop us from guessing.  You're welcome. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Three men enter the forest decades apart and claim to encounter Bigfoot. Their stories are haunting and harrowing. So Is it possible that Bigfoot really exists? The answer is yes, it is possible. And just maybe the evidence has been right in front of us for years.    COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!! And find all shows from the Obsessed Network here! 

How does a man disappear from a group of friends and show up dead two months later, in a river, 15 miles away from where he was last seen? And what if the body shows no evidence of having been in the water for more than a few days. What if this happens dozens or even hundreds of times all across the country over a period of years. People claim it's a serial killer? Or a network of serial killers? We don't necessarily agree.    COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!! And find all shows from the Obsessed Network here! 

A toddler who remembers dying in a fire, a boy who remembers a fancy life in Hollywood, a kid who remembers being crushed by a tractor, and a man who remembers being a Civil War soldier. Do you believe in reincarnation? You might once you hear these stories and the evidence these four people have to back up their claims. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!! And find all shows from the Obsessed Network here! 

Famed aviator and icon, Amelia Earhart, vanished while trying to fly around the world. Evidence suggests she was alive for days, maybe weeks, after she lost radio contact with land. So what happened to her? On this episode, we examine all the theories. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Broadway’s St. James and Belasco Theatres are said to be two of the most haunted theatres in the country, and Daisy has worked at both of them. This week, she’ll share the haunted history of each, tell you what she experienced there, and share the terrifying ghostly encounters of others that have become theatre - and paranormal -legend. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!

Elevators: they’re a modern convenience that we take for granted. But maybe we shouldn’t. This week we bring you two stories about terror and death in a 6 by 6 foot elevator car. COME HANG WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA! Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Join the Facebook Group to meet your fellow weirdos!!