The Devil Within
Cavalry Audio | Wondery
The Devil Within is a cinematic podcast about the stories that refuse to die — the legends, disappearances, curses, and supernatural encounters that linger long after the world moves on. Each episode blends history, folklore, and investigation to explore what really happened… and why these stories still haunt us. From mythical creatures and haunted places, to strange crimes and unexplained phenomena, The Devil Within starts where the facts end — and the unanswered questions begin. New episodes weekly. Bring a light. You may need it. BINGE THE FIRST FOUR SEASONS NOW! Season 1: The Jersey Devil - The brutal slaying of BETTY ANN SULLIVAN shocked the small town of Jefferson Township, New Jersey. The violence of that evening shocked the nation for the perpetrator... was her own son, a boy of fourteen who would take his own life only hours later. What the investigation revealed left a community in tatters, unwilling to believe the evil that had befallen them. Season 2: The Demons of Yorkshire - In 1974 after experiencing financial hardship, Michael Taylor joined a local church in the rolling hills of Northern England. After falling in love with a young, beautiful preacher, Michael’s personality began to change. The mild-mannered family man became abusive and unhinged. His new church believed he was possessed by no fewer than 48 demons and would require an exorcism to save his soul and protect his family from evil. But the supposed remedy would come at a very steep price... Season 3: A Season in Hell - In the late 1970's New York City had it all: Hip Hop, Punk Rock... and the Son of Sam. The third season of The Devil Within takes listeners into the belly of the beast and explores the wicked origins, reign of terror and ultimate capture of one of the most feared serial killers in history. With exclusive interviews from journalists, FBI agents, historians and mental health experts this season promises to be the most comprehensive - and most terrifying - account of how one man brought New York City to a standstill. Season 4: Satan's Shadow - In the 1980s, California learned that fear doesn’t always lurk in the dark. Sometimes, it walks right through the door. SATAN’S SHADOW follows the terrifying rise of Richard Ramirez — the Night Stalker — while tracing his crimes alongside Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. As Ramirez descends deeper into violence, we descend with him through Dante’s circles of hell, asking what happens to a city — and a soul — when darkness becomes a spectacle. Across nine episodes, each chapter pairs the facts of the case with a brief lesson from Dante: desire twisted into obsession, cruelty masquerading as power, betrayal, violence, and the chilling fascination that draws us closer instead of pushing us away. Because Ramirez didn’t just kill. He captivated. He made the world watch — and forced us to confront the part of ourselves that can’t look away. Bonus episodes explore the trial, aftermath, and the myths that followed — along with glimpses into Purgatorio and Paradiso, and whether redemption or meaning is possible after horror. SATAN’S SHADOW isn’t only about a murderer. It’s about a culture slowly walking toward darkness… and what it costs to climb back out.
The Devil Within is a cinematic podcast about the stories that refuse to die — the legends, disappearances, curses, and supernatural encounters that linger long after the world moves on. Each episode blends history, folklore, and investigation to explore what really happened… and why these stories still haunt us. From mythical creatures and haunted places, to strange crimes and unexplained phenomena, The Devil Within starts where the facts end — and the unanswered questions begin. New episodes weekly. Bring a light. You may need it. BINGE THE FIRST FOUR SEASONS NOW! Season 1: The Jersey Devil - The brutal slaying of BETTY ANN SULLIVAN shocked the small town of Jefferson Township, New Jersey. The violence of that evening shocked the nation for the perpetrator... was her own son, a boy of fourteen who would take his own life only hours later. What the investigation revealed left a community in tatters, unwilling to believe the evil that had befallen them. Season 2: The Demons of Yorkshire - In 1974 after experiencing financial hardship, Michael Taylor joined a local church in the rolling hills of Northern England. After falling in love with a young, beautiful preacher, Michael’s personality began to change. The mild-mannered family man became abusive and unhinged. His new church believed he was possessed by no fewer than 48 demons and would require an exorcism to save his soul and protect his family from evil. But the supposed remedy would come at a very steep price... Season 3: A Season in Hell - In the late 1970's New York City had it all: Hip Hop, Punk Rock... and the Son of Sam. The third season of The Devil Within takes listeners into the belly of the beast and explores the wicked origins, reign of terror and ultimate capture of one of the most feared serial killers in history. With exclusive interviews from journalists, FBI agents, historians and mental health experts this season promises to be the most comprehensive - and most terrifying - account of how one man brought New York City to a standstill. Season 4: Satan's Shadow - In the 1980s, California learned that fear doesn’t always lurk in the dark. Sometimes, it walks right through the door. SATAN’S SHADOW follows the terrifying rise of Richard Ramirez — the Night Stalker — while tracing his crimes alongside Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. As Ramirez descends deeper into violence, we descend with him through Dante’s circles of hell, asking what happens to a city — and a soul — when darkness becomes a spectacle. Across nine episodes, each chapter pairs the facts of the case with a brief lesson from Dante: desire twisted into obsession, cruelty masquerading as power, betrayal, violence, and the chilling fascination that draws us closer instead of pushing us away. Because Ramirez didn’t just kill. He captivated. He made the world watch — and forced us to confront the part of ourselves that can’t look away. Bonus episodes explore the trial, aftermath, and the myths that followed — along with glimpses into Purgatorio and Paradiso, and whether redemption or meaning is possible after horror. SATAN’S SHADOW isn’t only about a murderer. It’s about a culture slowly walking toward darkness… and what it costs to climb back out.
HAUNTED HALLOWEEN! The Ship That Never Reached Port
Episodios
THE DEVIL WITHIN HAUNTED HALLOWEEN Episode Five: The Ship That Never Reached Port The RMS Queen Mary — A Haunted Ocean Liner, a Wartime Tragedy, and the Ghosts Who Never Disembarked Once the most glamorous ocean liner in the world, the RMS Queen Mary carried Hollywood royalty, international celebrities, and wealthy travelers across the Atlantic in extraordinary luxury. Then came World War II, and the floating palace became something altogether different. On October 2, 1942, while transporting thousands of American soldiers toward Britain, the Queen Mary collided with the British warship HMS Curacoa. The smaller vessel broke apart and sank within minutes, leaving hundreds of sailors struggling in the freezing Atlantic. More than 300 men died. And the Queen Mary never stopped. Under wartime orders and the threat of German submarines, the enormous liner continued toward Scotland, leaving other vessels to rescue the survivors. It was one of the most devastating maritime accidents of the war, and only one chapter in the extraordinary history of a ship that would eventually acquire a reputation as one of the most haunted vessels in the world. In this installment of Haunted Halloween, The Devil Within travels to Long Beach, California, where the Queen Mary has remained permanently moored since 1967. Behind her elegant Art Deco interiors, grand staircases, and luxurious passenger cabins lies a collection of supernatural legends that have fascinated visitors and paranormal investigators for decades. We'll investigate the ghostly little girl known as Jackie, whose laughter and footsteps are allegedly heard near the ship's abandoned first-class swimming pool; the mysterious crewman said to haunt the machinery spaces near watertight Door 13; and the disturbing reputation of Room B340, where guests have reported unexplained knocking, strange disturbances, and the unmistakable sensation that someone—or something—is sharing their accommodations. But how much of the Queen Mary's haunted reputation can be traced to genuine historical tragedy, and how much belongs to the mythology that has accumulated around an aging ship? From her magnificent beginnings in 1930s Britain to her dangerous wartime service and eventual retirement on the California coast, we separate documented history from supernatural speculation to explore a vessel whose most terrifying stories may have nothing to do with ghosts. The Queen Mary completed her final voyage in 1967. But according to those who believe her stories, some of her passengers are still waiting to disembark. LISTEN, WATCH & JOIN THE CONVERSATION LISTEN & FOLLOW: Subscribe to The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow the show so you never miss another investigation into the darker corners of history. RATE & REVIEW: Enjoying Haunted Halloween? Leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps new listeners discover the show and keeps these stories coming. WATCH & SUBSCRIBE: Experience The Devil Within through cinematic imagery, historical photographs, and original visual storytelling on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes and exclusive content. JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for haunting historical imagery, episode updates, and more mysteries from the darker side of American history. HAVE A STORY TO SHARE? Have you encountered something unexplained, visited a haunted location, or uncovered a mystery you think deserves investigating? Send your stories, experiences, and tips to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. COMING NEXT: THE QUEEN OF THE DEAD Our Haunted Halloween journey concludes in New Orleans, Louisiana, where elaborate aboveground tombs form the legendary Cities of the Dead, and one woman's extraordinary reputation has survived for more than a century. Her name was Marie Laveau. Known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, Laveau became one of the most influential and mysterious spiritual figures in nineteenth-century Louisiana. Revered by some, feared by others, and rumored to possess extraordinary powers, her legend continued growing long after her death in 1881. Today, visitors still seek her assistance at a tomb traditionally associated with her remains in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Was Marie Laveau a supernatural practitioner whose influence survived the grave, or a remarkable woman whose life became something far greater than history could contain? The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan. An Evio Creative production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN HAUNTED HALLOWEEN The Horseman Who Never Died Sleepy Hollow, New York — The True History Behind America's Most Famous Ghost A headless soldier. A midnight pursuit. A shattered pumpkin. And a legend that has haunted the Hudson Valley for more than two centuries. In this installment of Haunted Halloween, The Devil Within travels to Sleepy Hollow, New York, where the bloody history of the American Revolution collided with centuries of European folklore to create one of the most enduring supernatural legends in American history. According to local tradition, a Hessian soldier was decapitated by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War and buried without his head in the churchyard of the Old Dutch Church. Condemned to search for his missing remains, the spectral horseman supposedly rises from the grave each night, galloping through the surrounding countryside before disappearing at dawn. But was there ever a real Headless Horseman? In 1820, Washington Irving immortalized the legend in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, introducing readers to the superstitious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane, the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, and the mischievous Brom Bones. Their romantic rivalry culminates in one of literature's most famous midnight encounters—and a disappearance that Irving deliberately left unresolved. This episode explores the genuine Revolutionary War violence that shaped the Hudson Valley, the history of the Old Dutch Church, and the literary genius who transformed a regional ghost story into an American cultural phenomenon. We'll investigate the mysterious Hessian soldier, the origins of Irving's supernatural imagination, and the tantalizing possibility that Ichabod Crane's terrifying encounter had a perfectly human explanation. Was the Headless Horseman a restless spirit searching for his severed head, or the creation of a clever storyteller who understood that the most terrifying monsters are sometimes the ones we invent ourselves? More than 200 years later, Sleepy Hollow is still searching for an answer. LISTEN, WATCH & JOIN THE CONVERSATION LISTEN & FOLLOW: Subscribe to The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Follow the show so you never miss another journey into the darker corners of history. RATE & REVIEW: Enjoying Haunted Halloween? Leave us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps new listeners discover the show and makes these investigations possible. WATCH & SUBSCRIBE: Experience The Devil Within through cinematic imagery, historical photographs, and original visual storytelling on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes and exclusive content. JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for episode updates, haunting historical images, and more stories from the darker side of American history. HAVE A STORY TO SHARE? Have you encountered something unexplained, visited a haunted location, or uncovered a mystery you think deserves investigating? Email us at mailto:info@eviocreative.com. COMING NEXT: THE SHIP THAT NEVER REACHED PORT Our Haunted Halloween journey continues aboard the legendary RMS Queen Mary, the magnificent ocean liner permanently moored in Long Beach, California. Once the floating palace of Hollywood royalty and international celebrities, the Queen Mary became a wartime troopship whose history includes a catastrophic collision that claimed hundreds of lives. Today, visitors report ghostly children, mysterious footsteps, and apparitions wandering her abandoned corridors. The Queen Mary completed her final voyage in 1967. But some believe not everyone aboard ever disembarked. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan. An Evio Creative production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of November 2, 2026 Halloween Is Over. The Hauntings Aren't. Halloween may be behind us, but we're not quite ready to put the ghosts back in their graves. This week on The Devil's Ledger, we're keeping the spooky season alive with haunted destinations, a bizarre cemetery delivery, a disturbing investigation into alleged deception, and a new Japanese horror film guaranteed to make you reconsider turning out the lights. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK — DEATH FROM ABOVE… WITH DOORDASH At Hollywood Forever Cemetery, moviegoers enjoying an outdoor screening of Jennifer's Body received an unexpected visitor from above: a ghost-themed DoorDash drone delivery. Because apparently even the dearly departed aren't safe from the gig economy. We explore the bizarre Halloween stunt that brought airborne takeout to one of Hollywood's most famous cemeteries. THE DEVIL WITHIN — HAUNTED HALLOWEEN CONTINUES We're extending Halloween for one more week with three legendary haunted destinations: • Sleepy Hollow, New York: Washington Irving's immortal Headless Horseman and the folklore that transformed a small Hudson Valley community into an American horror landmark. • The Queen Mary, Long Beach: The magnificent ocean liner whose storied past has inspired decades of ghost sightings and supernatural encounters. • The Cities of the Dead, New Orleans: Explore the extraordinary aboveground cemeteries where centuries of history, death, and supernatural folklore intersect. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF — SOMETHING SINISTER IS COMING Carolyn has another terrifying story waiting in the wings. What is it? She hasn't told us yet. But knowing Carolyn, whatever she's uncovered will be worth the wait. Stay tuned for an all-new episode of Criminal Mischief. THE SLIPPERY — THE LEXICON Scott and Nancy continue The LexiCON, their investigative limited series examining the Lexi Thomas story and allegations of fabricated illness, religious manipulation, and financial exploitation. It's a disturbing exploration of faith, public sympathy, deception, and what happens when trust becomes a commodity. THIS WEEK IN HORROR — NEVER AFTER DARK Director Dave Boyle brings us Never After Dark, a Japanese supernatural horror film starring Moeka Hoshi (Shōgun) as Airi, a wandering medium accompanied by the spirit of her deceased sister. When she's summoned to an isolated country house to perform an exorcism, she encounters something far more terrifying than anything she's faced before. AND FINALLY… The holiday season has officially arrived, whether we're emotionally prepared for it or not. Before we begin the mad sprint toward 2027, we've got one important question: What did you call the night BEFORE Halloween growing up? Mischief Night? Goosey Night? Hell Night? Demon Night? Tell us where you're from and what you called it in the comments. Regional rivalries are strongly encouraged. And don't forget: Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. Get out and vote! LISTEN, WATCH & JOIN THE EVIO UNIVERSE Listen & Follow: Subscribe to The Devil's Ledger, The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, and The Slippery on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Never miss a new episode from the Evio Creative Network. Rate & Review: Enjoying the shows? Leave us a five-star rating and a written review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps introduce our stories to new listeners. Watch & Subscribe: Visit the Evio Creative YouTube channel for video episodes, original content, and more. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a release. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for episode updates, behind-the-scenes content, and discussions about the stories that keep us awake at night. Have a Story? Send your paranormal experiences, true crime tips, and suggestions to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. Your story might become part of a future episode. Produced by Evio Creative. Stay curious. Stay skeptical. And we'll see you somewhere across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN HAUNTED HALLOWEEN Episode Three: Twenty-Eight Days in Hell The Amityville Horror — Six Murders, One Haunted House, and America's Most Infamous Paranormal Mystery On November 13, 1974, six members of the DeFeo family were discovered murdered inside their beautiful waterfront home in Amityville, Long Island. Each had been shot while apparently sleeping in their bed. The killer was one of their own: twenty-three-year-old Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr. But the murders were only the beginning of a story that would become one of the most controversial supernatural mysteries in American history. Thirteen months later, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the house at 112 Ocean Avenue with their three young children. They knew about the murders. They knew about the property's disturbing reputation. What they couldn't have anticipated, according to their subsequent accounts, was the nightmare that awaited them. Twenty-eight days later, they fled the house in terror. In this chilling installment of The Devil Within: Haunted Halloween, we investigate the true story behind The Amityville Horror, from the brutal DeFeo family murders to the extraordinary paranormal claims that transformed an ordinary Long Island residence into America's most notorious haunted house. We'll examine Ronald DeFeo Jr.'s conflicting confessions and allegations of mysterious voices, the disturbing circumstances surrounding the six murders, and the unanswered questions that have fueled speculation for more than half a century. Then we'll enter the house with the Lutz family. The unexplained noises. The swarms of flies in the dead of winter. The mysterious green substance reportedly appearing on the walls. George Lutz's unsettling habit of awakening at precisely 3:15 a.m. And perhaps most disturbing of all, the family's account of Jodie, an enormous, red-eyed pig-like creature allegedly befriending their youngest daughter. We'll also revisit the investigation conducted by Ed and Lorraine Warren, the infamous photograph purportedly showing a ghostly child peering from a doorway, and the explosive allegations that the entire haunting was an elaborate fabrication. Was Amityville genuinely possessed by something malevolent? Were the Lutzes victims of psychological suggestion, sensationalism, or something far more sinister? Or did a horrific but entirely human crime become the foundation of one of the most profitable supernatural legends ever told? The murders were real. The haunting remains unproven. And the house at 112 Ocean Avenue will forever be haunted by what happened there. Because sometimes the most terrifying explanation isn't that a demon committed an atrocity. It's that no demon was necessary. LISTEN, FOLLOW & SUPPORT THE DEVIL WITHIN Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Don't miss a single installment of our Haunted Halloween series as we investigate America's darkest histories, infamous hauntings, and enduring supernatural mysteries. Rate & Review: If you're enjoying the show, leave us a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps introduce The Devil Within to new listeners and keeps these extraordinary stories coming. Watch & Subscribe: Experience The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes, haunting imagery, historical investigations, and original true crime and paranormal storytelling. Join the Conversation: Follow us on Instagram @thedevilwithinpod for episode updates, behind-the-scenes content, archival imagery, and more from the darker corners of history. Share Your Story: Have you experienced something you can't explain? Know of a haunted house, mysterious disappearance, or disturbing historical event we should investigate? Send your stories, suggestions, and tips to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. COMING NEXT ON HAUNTED HALLOWEEN Our journey through America's most haunted places continues with three legendary destinations: Sleepy Hollow, New York: The colonial village where Washington Irving's Headless Horseman continues to ride through centuries of American folklore. The Queen Mary, Long Beach: The magnificent ocean liner whose decks, staterooms, and passageways are said to harbor the spirits of passengers and crew who never completed their final voyage. New Orleans, Louisiana: A journey into the city's famous Cities of the Dead, where aboveground tombs, centuries of burial traditions, and the legends surrounding voodoo priestess Marie Laveau have created an extraordinary landscape of supernatural mythology. Three more places where history and haunting have become inseparable. The Devil Within is an Evio Creative production. Some houses are haunted by ghosts. Others are haunted by the terrible things human beings have done inside them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN HAUNTED HALLOWEEN Episode Two: The Hotel That Remembered Everything The Stanley Hotel, Room 217, and the Terrifying Inspiration Behind The Shining In October 1974, a young novelist named Stephen King checked into Room 217 of a nearly deserted hotel in the Colorado Rockies. That night, he experienced a nightmare so terrifying that it would inspire one of the most celebrated horror novels ever written. But the Stanley Hotel had been collecting ghost stories long before Stephen King arrived. In this installment of The Devil Within: Haunted Halloween, we travel to Estes Park, Colorado, to explore the extraordinary history of the Stanley Hotel, the magnificent mountain resort that inspired The Shining, and the unsettling legends that continue to haunt its corridors more than a century after it first opened its doors. Built in 1909 by wealthy inventor Freelan Oscar Stanley, the hotel was intended to be a monument to luxury, innovation, and American ambition. But in 1911, a devastating gas explosion nearly killed a housekeeper named Elizabeth Wilson, whose alleged spirit would eventually become one of the hotel's most notorious supernatural residents. Guests in Room 217 have reported mysteriously rearranged belongings, lights switching on without explanation, and the unsettling sensation that someone is attending to their room while they sleep. Elsewhere in the hotel, visitors claim to hear the phantom piano playing of Flora Stanley, the laughter of invisible children on the fourth floor, and footsteps echoing through corridors that should be empty. Then came Stephen King. We'll revisit his fateful stay in Room 217, the nightmare that inspired The Shining, and Stanley Kubrick's transformation of King's fictional Overlook Hotel into one of cinema's most terrifying creations. We'll also explore how Room 217 became Room 237 on screen, and how decades of storytelling have blurred the boundaries between documented history, paranormal folklore, and Hollywood mythology. Is the Stanley Hotel genuinely haunted? Or has one extraordinary story become so deeply embedded in its walls that visitors now arrive carrying the very ghosts they hope to encounter? Because sometimes a building doesn't need to be haunted by the dead. Sometimes it's haunted by the stories we tell about it. LISTEN, FOLLOW & SUPPORT THE DEVIL WITHIN Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Our Haunted Halloween series explores the terrifying histories, unexplained phenomena, and enduring legends behind America's most infamous haunted places. Rate & Review: Enjoying the show? Leave us a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps new listeners discover The Devil Within and allows us to continue bringing these extraordinary stories to life. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes, haunting historical imagery, paranormal investigations, and more from the Evio Creative network. Join the Conversation: Follow us on Instagram @thedevilwithinpod for episode updates, behind-the-scenes content, and more stories from the darker corners of history. Share Your Story: Have you stayed at the Stanley Hotel? Experienced something unexplained in a supposedly haunted location? We'd love to hear from you. Send your experiences, story suggestions, and tips to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. COMING NEXT ON HAUNTED HALLOWEEN The Amityville Horror: Twenty-Eight Days of Terror In November 1974, six members of the DeFeo family were murdered inside their Long Island home. Just over a year later, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the same house and claimed that something malevolent had remained behind. What followed would inspire one of the most controversial haunting stories in American history. The murders were real. The haunting remains disputed. And the house at 112 Ocean Avenue would become one of the most infamous addresses in America. The Devil Within is an Evio Creative production. The past is never truly gone. And some places, it seems, never forget. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To her tight-knit Maryland community, Lexi Thomas was the picture of devout resilience. She was a courageous young woman facing a sudden medical crisis in 2012. Anchored by her blog—where every post opened with Romans 8:28—Lexi shaped a story of suffering, divine trust, and cutting-edge treatments that inspired an entire community to rally around her and donate thousands of dollars. In the premiere of this multi-part investigative series, hosts Nancy Moscatiello and Scott Eldridge trace how a deeply trusted backstory was built layer by layer. From her initial mystery hospitalization to the launch of her online updates, Episode 1 reveals how genuine community faith was weaponized to mask a growing web of fabrications—including plagiarized cancer memoirs and a world-renowned Duke specialist who claims he never even knew her name. The LexiCON is a production of The Slippery. Search for The Slippery or The LexiCON wherever you get your podcasts. https://linktr.ee/TheSlippery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN HAUNTED HALLOWEEN The Village That Invited the Devil Salem, Massachusetts — 1692 In the winter of 1692, the Devil arrived in Salem Village. Or so the good Christian people of Massachusetts were led to believe. It began with two young girls suffering mysterious fits, terrifying visions, and accusations of invisible tormentors. Within months, an entire community had descended into religious hysteria, neighbors were turning against neighbors, and the courts were condemning innocent people on the testimony of children who claimed to see the Devil's handiwork. By the time the madness ended, nineteen people had been hanged, one elderly farmer had been crushed beneath heavy stones, and several others had died in prison. But Salem's story didn't end at the gallows. In the premiere of our Haunted Halloween series, The Devil Within travels back to colonial Massachusetts to explore the terrifying origins of the Salem witch trials and the supernatural legends that have haunted the region for more than three centuries. We'll uncover the bizarre ritual of the witch cake, the accusations that condemned seventy-one-year-old Rebecca Nurse, the horrifying death of Giles Corey, and the chilling stories of apparitions said to linger around the old Nurse homestead and the streets of Salem. From the ruins of Reverend Samuel Parris's parsonage to the execution site at Proctor's Ledge, we'll separate historical fact from paranormal folklore and confront a disturbing possibility: What if the Devil never came to Salem at all? What if the real evil was already living among its people? Because sometimes the most terrifying monsters are the ones who believe they're doing God's work. LISTEN, FOLLOW & SUPPORT THE DEVIL WITHIN Listen & Follow: Subscribe to The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't miss a single installment of Haunted Halloween as we explore America's most disturbing histories and supernatural mysteries. Rate & Review: Enjoying the show? Leave us a 5-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps new listeners discover The Devil Within and keeps these stories coming. Watch & Subscribe: Experience The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe, turn on notifications, and explore our growing collection of true crime, paranormal investigations, and historical mysteries. Join the Conversation: Follow us on Instagram @thedevilwithinpod for episode updates, behind-the-scenes content, historical photographs, and more. Share Your Story: Have you experienced something unexplained? Know of a haunted location or disturbing historical mystery we should investigate? Send your stories, suggestions, and tips to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. COMING NEXT ON HAUNTED HALLOWEEN The Stanley Hotel: The Haunting That Inspired The Shining High in the Colorado Rockies stands a magnificent hotel whose haunted reputation helped inspire one of the most terrifying novels ever written. We'll explore Stephen King's fateful stay in Room 217, the hotel's mysterious history, and the ghostly residents who allegedly never checked out. The Devil Within is an Evio Creative production. History is never truly dead. And neither, it seems, are some of its darkest secrets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Halloween Edition | Week of October 26, 2026 Poisoned Mushrooms, Haunted Hotels, Edgar Allan Poe, and a Hollywood Monster Happy Halloween from the Evio Creative Universe! This week on The Devil's Ledger, Branden Morgan welcomes the season of costumes, candy, and questionable judgment with a few reminders about Goosey Night, Mischief Night, and the legendary razor blades supposedly lurking inside Halloween candy. But beyond the seasonal mischief, we've got a particularly sinister lineup of true crime, supernatural history, literary horror, and Hollywood nightmares. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE MUSHROOM MURDERER A family lunch. A homemade beef Wellington. Three people dead. Australia's notorious mushroom murder case returns to the headlines as convicted killer Erin Patterson appeals her triple-murder conviction, while prosecutors seek to ensure she never becomes eligible for parole. At the center of the controversy is a bizarre jury accommodation mistake, disputed cellphone evidence, and a deadly meal containing some of the world's most poisonous mushrooms. Sometimes the most terrifying thing at the dinner table isn't the conversation. It's what's for lunch. THE DEVIL WITHIN: HAUNTED HALLOWEEN Our supernatural journey continues with three of America's most infamous haunted destinations. Salem, Massachusetts: The witch trials of 1692, where religious hysteria and paranoia condemned innocent people to death. The Stanley Hotel, Colorado: The magnificent mountain resort whose mysterious atmosphere inspired Stephen King's The Shining. Amityville, New York: The horrifying DeFeo family murders, the Lutz family's alleged haunting, and the house that became an international supernatural phenomenon. Three locations. Three disturbing histories. And three very good reasons to leave the lights on. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: A HALLOWEEN CLASSIC Carolyn Ossorio celebrates Halloween with a chilling selection from Edgar Allan Poe, the master of psychological terror, obsession, madness, and murder. Experience a literary horror classic brought to life on Criminal Mischief. ON THE SLIPPERY: THE LEXI CON Scot and Nancy continue their gripping new true-con limited series, The Lexi Con, from the producers of Scamanda. Catch up on the latest installment, available exclusively through the Evio Creative Network. FINALLY THIS WEEK IN HORROR: CLAYFACE DC Studios ventures into body-horror territory with Clayface, directed by James Watkins and co-written by Mike Flanagan. When a disfiguring accident transforms a Hollywood actor into a shape-shifting monster, the line between human ambition and physical horror becomes disturbingly thin. After all, Hollywood has been encouraging people to change their faces for decades. LISTEN, WATCH & JOIN THE EVIO UNIVERSE LISTEN & FOLLOW: Find The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, On the Slippery, and The Devil's Ledger on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your favorite podcast platforms. Follow your favorites so you never miss an episode. RATE & REVIEW: Leave a five-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the Evio Creative Network and support independent storytelling. WATCH & SUBSCRIBE: Visit the Evio Creative YouTube channel for video episodes, original visual storytelling, and exclusive content. Subscribe and turn on notifications. JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for haunting stories, episode announcements, and updates from the Evio Universe. GET IN TOUCH: Have a story, a tip, or something particularly creepy we should investigate? Email mailto:info@eviocreative.com. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! From everyone at Evio Creative, have a safe, happy, thoroughly sugar-fueled Halloween. Enjoy the costumes, the candy, and the opportunity to terrify your neighbors without attracting unnecessary police attention. And remember: You're never too old to dress up like Bruce Springsteen. No matter what your kids tell you. We'll see you this week across the Evio Universe. The Devil's Ledger is written and hosted by Branden Morgan. An Evio Creative production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN The Winchester Mystery House: The Gun That Built a Ghost Story Theme: Guilt | True Crime, Haunted History & the Paranormal In San Jose, California, there stands a Victorian mansion unlike any other in America. Staircases climb into ceilings. Doors open onto empty space. Windows look into other rooms, and corridors twist through an architectural labyrinth containing approximately 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, and 10,000 windows. For thirty-six years, a wealthy widow named Sarah Winchester transformed an ordinary eight-room farmhouse into one of the strangest residences ever constructed. And according to legend, she did it because she was terrified of the dead. Sarah was the widow of William Wirt Winchester, heir to the firearms fortune built upon the legendary Winchester repeating rifle, including the Model 1873, famously marketed as “The Gun That Won the West.” After losing her infant daughter and then her husband, Sarah inherited an enormous fortune and moved west, where she began a construction project that would continue until her death in 1922. But why did she never seem to stop building? The legend claims Sarah consulted a medium who warned that the spirits of people killed by Winchester rifles were pursuing her. Her only hope of survival was to construct a house that would never be finished, a maze of rooms and passageways intended to confuse the restless dead. There's just one problem: no convincing historical evidence establishes that Sarah Winchester ever believed the story. In this episode of The Devil Within, Branden Morgan investigates the extraordinary history of the Winchester family, the rifle that helped shape the American frontier, and the eccentric mansion that became one of the country's most famous haunted attractions. We'll explore the mysterious Séance Room, the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and reports of unexplained footsteps, shadowy apparitions, and a ghostly workman known as Clyde, who supposedly continues his duties long after the mansion's construction ended. And we'll consider a darker possibility: perhaps Sarah Winchester wasn't haunted by the victims of her family's rifles at all. Perhaps generations of Americans needed her to be, transforming an uncomfortable history of violence and extraordinary wealth into a ghost story. Sometimes a house isn't haunted because somebody died inside it. Sometimes it's haunted because the living cannot stop imagining who ought to be there. IN THIS EPISODE • The Gun That Won the West: Oliver Winchester, the Model 1866, the Model 1873, and the fortune behind the mansion. • Sarah Winchester's Tragedy: The deaths of her infant daughter and husband, and her move to California. • The House That Wouldn't Stop: Thirty-six years of construction, architectural oddities, and the legends surrounding Sarah's motivations. • The Séance Room: The mysterious chamber where Sarah supposedly communicated with spirits. • The Earthquake of 1906: How a natural disaster reshaped the mansion and contributed to its peculiar architecture. • The Ghosts of Winchester House: The phantom workman Clyde, unexplained footsteps, mysterious photographs, and reported paranormal encounters. • History Versus Legend: What we can establish about Sarah Winchester's life, and what remains speculation. LISTEN, FOLLOW & JOIN THE CONVERSATION Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us for new investigations into true crime, paranormal phenomena, occult history, and the mysteries that continue to haunt us. Rate & Review: Enjoying the show? Leave us a five-star rating and a written review. Your support helps introduce The Devil Within to new listeners and keeps these stories alive. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes, original videos, and more from across the Evio Universe. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for episode updates, historical mysteries, and behind-the-scenes content. Have a Story to Tell? Send your paranormal experiences, true crime tips, and story suggestions to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan. An Evio Creative production. EPISODE KEYWORDS Winchester Mystery House, Sarah Winchester, Winchester House haunting, haunted California, San Jose ghosts, Winchester rifle, Winchester Model 1873, The Gun That Won the West, Oliver Winchester, William Wirt Winchester, Winchester fortune, Séance Room, Clyde ghost, 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Victorian mansions, haunted houses, paranormal investigations, American history, true ghost stories, The Devil Within, Branden Morgan, Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN The Ghost of Edgar Allan Poe: Baltimore's Most Famous Haunting Episode Two | Edgar Allan Poe Series Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. Nearly two centuries later, some people insist he never really left. Along the rain-soaked cobblestone streets of Fell's Point, stories persist of a pale, dark-haired figure wandering beneath streetlights before vanishing into the night. Inside an old Baltimore tavern, employees and patrons have reported unexplained disturbances attributed to a spirit they call Edgar. And at a modest brick house on North Amity Street, where Poe once struggled to survive as a young writer, visitors encounter a building whose history may be more haunting than any ghost story. In this episode of The Devil Within, Branden Morgan returns to Baltimore to investigate the supernatural legends surrounding America's greatest master of the macabre, exploring the extraordinary ways a writer who spent his life contemplating death became one of the country's most enduring ghosts. Our investigation begins at the Edgar Allan Poe House, where poverty, ambition, family tragedy, and literary genius converged during the 1830s. We then travel to Westminster Burying Ground, where a mysterious visitor dressed in black appeared for decades on Poe's birthday, leaving three red roses and a bottle of cognac beside his grave. Known only as the Poe Toaster, the stranger became one of Baltimore's most beloved unsolved mysteries. From there, we venture into Fell's Point and the legendary Horse You Came In On Saloon, where local folklore claims Poe enjoyed one of his final drinks before his mysterious death. Today, the establishment is associated with reports of moving objects, unexplained activity, and the possibility that its most famous patron has never checked out. But how much of Baltimore's haunted history can actually be verified? Are these genuine encounters with the supernatural, elaborate traditions passed down through generations, or the inevitable consequence of a city that refuses to let its most famous literary resident rest in peace? Edgar Allan Poe spent his life writing about the dead refusing to remain dead. Perhaps his greatest trick was becoming one of them. IN THIS EPISODE • The House on Amity Street: Poe's early years in Baltimore, his family, his literary breakthrough, and the ghost stories surrounding his former home. • The Poe Toaster: The mysterious stranger who visited Poe's grave every January 19th, leaving cognac and three red roses. • The Ghosts of Fell's Point: Reports of a nineteenth-century figure wandering Baltimore's historic waterfront streets. • The Horse You Came In On Saloon: The legendary tavern associated with Poe's final days and an alleged resident spirit named Edgar. • History Versus Haunting: Why Poe's supernatural legacy continues to flourish nearly two centuries after his death. COMING NEXT: THE WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE Our journey into America's haunted history continues in San Jose, California, where Sarah Winchester, widow of firearms heir William Wirt Winchester, spent decades transforming a modest farmhouse into an architectural labyrinth. Staircases leading nowhere. Doors opening onto empty space. Rooms within rooms. And a persistent legend that Sarah Winchester believed herself haunted by the spirits of people killed by the rifle that made her family wealthy. Was the Winchester Mystery House built to confuse the dead, or is the truth behind its construction even more fascinating than the ghost stories? Find out next time on The Devil Within. LISTEN, FOLLOW & JOIN THE CONVERSATION Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us for new investigations into true crime, paranormal phenomena, occult history, and the mysteries that continue to haunt us. Rate & Review: Enjoying the show? Leave a five-star rating and a written review. Your support helps introduce The Devil Within to new listeners and keeps these stories alive. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes, original videos, and exclusive content from across the Evio Universe. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for episode updates, historical mysteries, and behind-the-scenes content. Have a Story to Tell? Send your paranormal experiences, true crime tips, and story suggestions to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan. An Evio Creative production. EPISODE KEYWORDS Edgar Allan Poe, The Ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, Poe haunting, Edgar Allan Poe House, Baltimore ghosts, haunted Baltimore, Fell's Point, Poe Toaster, Poe's grave, Westminster Burying Ground, The Horse You Came In On Saloon, haunted taverns, paranormal investigations, American Gothic, literary ghosts, true ghost stories, The Devil Within, Branden Morgan, Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN The Five Lost Days: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe Episode One | Edgar Allan Poe Series On September 27, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe boarded a steamship in Richmond, Virginia, with plans for the future and a woman he hoped to marry. Five days later, one of America's most celebrated masters of the macabre had seemingly vanished from the historical record. When Poe resurfaced in Baltimore on October 3, he was delirious, gravely ill, and reportedly wearing clothes that weren't his own. He had been discovered outside a tavern serving as an election polling place, unable to explain where he'd been or what had happened to him. Four days later, at just forty years old, Edgar Allan Poe was dead. Nearly two centuries later, the circumstances remain a mystery. In this episode of The Devil Within, Branden Morgan investigates the strange final days of Edgar Allan Poe, exploring theories involving alcoholism, disease, robbery, and a sinister nineteenth-century election fraud scheme known as cooping, in which unsuspecting men were allegedly kidnapped, drugged, disguised, and forced to vote repeatedly. But Poe's story doesn't end with his death. Twenty-six years after his burial, his remains were exhumed and relocated to a more prominent grave in Baltimore. What followed was a particularly disturbing legend: that scratches had been discovered inside his coffin, suggesting the man who famously wrote about the horrors of premature burial had himself been buried alive. Is there any truth to the story, or did generations of admirers simply invent the perfect ending for America's greatest Gothic storyteller? From Poe's unexplained disappearance to the macabre folklore surrounding his grave, The Five Lost Days explores the uncomfortable territory where documented history ends and legend begins. Some mysteries remain unsolved. Others become immortal. IN THIS EPISODE • Poe's final departure from Richmond and his plans to marry Elmira Royster Shelton. • The five missing days between September 27 and October 3, 1849. • His mysterious discovery at a Baltimore polling place. • The competing medical and criminal theories surrounding his death. • The terrifying nineteenth-century practice of premature burial and the invention of safety coffins. • Poe's 1875 exhumation and the legend of the scratches inside his coffin. COMING NEXT: THE GHOST OF EDGAR ALLAN POE Our investigation continues in Baltimore, where Poe's presence supposedly lingers nearly two centuries after his death. From his former home on Amity Street and the cemetery where he rests to the haunted taverns of Fell's Point, we explore the ghost stories, strange encounters, and enduring legends surrounding the man who made the macabre an American art form. LISTEN, FOLLOW & JOIN THE CONVERSATION Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. New episodes explore true crime, paranormal mysteries, occult history, and the darkest corners of the human experience. Rate & Review: Enjoying the show? Leave us a five-star rating and a written review. Your support helps introduce The Devil Within to new listeners. Watch & Subscribe: Visit the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for video episodes, original investigations, and more from across the Evio Universe. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for episode updates, historical mysteries, and behind-the-scenes content. Have a Story to Tell? Send your paranormal encounters, true crime tips, and story suggestions to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan. An Evio Creative production. EPISODE KEYWORDS Edgar Allan Poe, The Five Lost Days, Edgar Allan Poe death, Edgar Allan Poe mystery, Baltimore 1849, Poe's final days, premature burial, buried alive, Poe's grave, Poe exhumation, cooping, election fraud, Gothic literature, historical mysteries, true crime history, paranormal history, The Devil Within, Branden Morgan, Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of October 19, 2026 | Evio Creative A Haunted Halloween, the Murdaugh Retrial, The Lexi CON & Crystal Lake This week on The Devil's Ledger, we begin on a somber note, acknowledging the victims and families affected by the reported elementary school shooting in Bend, Oregon, and confronting America's ongoing epidemic of gun violence. Then, in The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, a horrifying accident during a livestreamed church service in Ecuador raises unsettling questions about faith, fate, and one of the most improbable tragedies imaginable. THIS WEEK ACROSS THE EVIO UNIVERSE: THE DEVIL WITHIN | HAUNTED HALLOWEEN October gets considerably darker as we investigate the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe and the five missing days before his final appearance in Baltimore. Then we travel to California's legendary Winchester Mystery House, where an eccentric heiress, an architectural labyrinth, and more than a century of ghost stories have created one of America's most fascinating haunted landmarks. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF | THE MURDAUGH RETRIAL New developments in the Alex Murdaugh murder case raise questions about missing weapons, unrecovered clothing, a possible secret grand jury proceeding, and unidentified male DNA found beneath Maggie Murdaugh's fingernails. Could additional forensic testing change the course of the upcoming retrial? THE SLIPPERY | INTRODUCING THE LEXI CON From the creators of Scamanda, Nancy Moscatiello and Scott Eldridge introduce The Lexi CON, a multipart investigation into a Maryland woman's extraordinary medical claims, a community united by faith, and allegations of an elaborate deception that inspired thousands of dollars in donations. Listen to The Slippery and The Lexi CON: https://linktr.ee/TheSlippery THIS WEEK IN HORROR | CRYSTAL LAKE We're returning to Camp Crystal Lake for Peacock's Friday the 13th origin series, starring Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees. Before Jason became horror royalty, his mother had a story of her own, and it wasn't particularly conducive to a pleasant summer vacation. LISTEN, FOLLOW & JOIN THE EVIO UNIVERSE • Listen & Follow: Subscribe to The Devil's Ledger, The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, and The Slippery wherever you get your podcasts. • Rate & Review: Leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps independent storytelling reach new audiences. • Watch & Subscribe: Visit the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes, videos, and exclusive content. • Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram. • Have a Story or Tip? Email mailto:info@eviocreative.com. Stay safe out there, protect the ones you love, and we'll see you this week across the Evio Universe. The Devil's Ledger | An Evio Creative Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S AUDITION Episode Three: The Body by the River For more than twenty years, Valerie McDonald’s family lived without an answer. Valerie disappeared from San Francisco in November 1980 after Michael Hennessey offered the aspiring actress a small role in a Dustin Hoffman movie—a movie that did not exist. Hennessey and John Gordon Abbott subsequently fled north toward Canada, where Hennessey was killed in a shootout with police. Valerie’s identification was reportedly found among the fugitives’ belongings, but Valerie herself seemed to have vanished. Then came the discovery nobody initially understood. On October 3, 1991, hunters found partial human remains near the Kettle River in Ferry County, Washington, roughly a mile from the Canadian border. The woman could not be identified and became a Jane Doe. For nearly another decade, two investigations continued independently: Valerie remained a missing woman in California while her unidentified remains waited in Washington. In January 2001, dental records finally connected them. The Kettle River Jane Doe was Valerie McDonald. In the final episode of The Devil’s Audition, we follow Valerie home and confront the tantalizing geography of her case. Her remains were discovered near the Canadian border—the same general direction Hennessey and Abbott traveled after she vanished—but geography is not proof. No one has ever been convicted of Valerie’s murder. We also return to Phillip Arthur Thompson, whose later conviction for the murder of twenty-one-year-old Betty Cloer established just how dangerous at least one man in Valerie’s orbit truly was, while still providing no legal answer to what happened to Valerie. TDW_Devil Audition_3 And finally, we reconsider the Satanic-cult theory that has followed this case for decades. Valerie reportedly described some activity around the Tower Apartments as Satanic, but there is no reliable evidence establishing that she was murdered in a Satanic ritual or sacrificed by a cult. The documented story may be considerably simpler—and considerably more frightening. TDW_Devil Audition_3 Valerie knew she was in danger. She was already leaving. Then someone offered the aspiring actress exactly what she wanted: an audition. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave a five-star rating and review. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, with notifications turned on so you never miss a new story. This is the conclusion of The Devil’s Audition. Thank you for spending these three episodes with Valerie McDonald and with us. We’ll have an entirely new story next week. Stay tuned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S AUDITION Episode Two: The Demons in North Beach Seventeen days after Valerie McDonald disappeared from San Francisco, Michael Hennessey—the man who had lured her away with the promise of a role in a Dustin Hoffman movie—was dead. Hennessey and fellow ex-convict John Gordon Abbott had fled north to British Columbia, where a confrontation with the RCMP ended in gunfire. Abbott was captured, Hennessey was killed, and investigators reportedly found Valerie’s voter-registration and unemployment-benefit cards among their belongings. TDW_Devil Audition_2 This week on The Devil Within, we return to the Tower Apartments and the dangerous world Valerie had been trying to escape. Before she vanished, Valerie told friends about large quantities of cocaine and what contemporary reports called “Satanistic” activities inside her building. In San Francisco—the birthplace of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan—the allegation carried particular weight. But there is no reliable evidence establishing that an organized Satanic cult operated from the Tower Apartments. What is documented is arguably more disturbing: Valerie was surrounded by men with serious criminal histories, including Phillip Arthur Thompson, who decades later would be convicted of the 1971 murder of Betty Cloer. TDW_Devil Audition_2 TDW_Devil Audition_2 Investigators also suspected Abbott, Hennessey and Thompson of participating in an ambitious criminal enterprise involving robbery, automatic weapons and cocaine trafficking. Valerie’s parents came to believe their daughter may have disappeared because she learned something about that operation, although that theory has never been proven. TDW_Devil Audition_2 Valerie had reportedly been threatened. She was frightened enough to move out. Then Hennessey arrived with the irresistible promise of a movie audition, and Valerie disappeared. For eleven years, her family waited. Then, on October 3, 1991, hunters discovered partial human remains near the Kettle River in Ferry County, Washington, hundreds of miles north of San Francisco and near the Canadian border. Nobody knew who she was. It would take another ten years before anyone realized whom they had found. TDW_Devil Audition_2 LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave a five-star rating and review. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, with notifications turned on, and follow @thedevilwithinpod for more from the Evio Universe. The Devil’s Audition: The Devils in North Beach, on The Devil Within. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Devil's Ledger | October 12, 2026 A Human-Skin Teddy Bear, a Hollywood Disappearance, a Surgeon on Trial, and a Reality TV Fraudster Welcome back to The Devil's Ledger, your weekly journey through the darker corners of the Evio Universe. As wild weather continues to make headlines, we're hoping everyone is staying safe, staying dry, and finding a little time to escape into a good book, a great movie, or one of our latest podcasts. This week, we're serving up a particularly unsettling collection of stories involving a grotesque discovery in the California desert, an aspiring actress who vanished in San Francisco, a plastic surgeon facing murder charges, a reality television star's multimillion-dollar fraud scheme, and a Nevada motel where the hospitality is positively murderous. THE CREEPIEST THING: The Human-Skin Teddy Bear In Victorville, California, a horrifying discovery outside a convenience store sent investigators scrambling: a teddy bear that appeared to be stitched together from human skin. The county coroner was called, police launched an investigation, and the truth turned out to be almost as bizarre as the original discovery. Was it evidence of something monstrous, or simply the world's most ill-advised practical joke? THE DEVIL WITHIN: The Devil's Audition San Francisco, 1980. Aspiring actress Valerie McDonald disappears after being lured by the promise of an audition for a nonexistent Dustin Hoffman film. What follows is an investigation involving dangerous criminals, alleged international drug trafficking, and disturbing reports of Satanic activity. In this three-part investigation, The Devil Within explores the circumstances surrounding Valerie's disappearance and the troubling intersection of ambition, deception, and the occult. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: Tomasz Kosowski, Part Two After last week's special conversation with COLD creator Dave Cawley, Carolyn Ossorio returns to the disappearance and alleged murder of Florida attorney Steven Cozzi. This week, the investigation moves into the courtroom, where accused murderer and plastic surgeon Tomasz Kosowski makes the extraordinary decision to represent himself. Carolyn examines the evidence, the legal proceedings, and the unanswered questions surrounding a case in which the victim's body has never been recovered. THE SLIPPERY: Jen Shah She was a reality television celebrity, a self-proclaimed business mogul, and the face of a lavish lifestyle. Behind the designer clothes and extravagant parties, however, Jen Shah was helping operate a nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme that devastated financially vulnerable Americans. Scott and Nancy investigate the mechanics of the operation, the victims who lost their savings, and the federal investigation that ultimately brought Shah down. She's already out of prison, but has justice really been served? THIS WEEK IN HORROR: Last Chance Motel A newlywed couple's dream wedding becomes a nightmare when they encounter a remote Nevada motel operated by a bloodthirsty family. Starring Heather Langenkamp and Sierra McCormick, Last Chance Motel offers a gruesome reminder that sometimes the best travel advice is simply to keep driving. JOIN US ACROSS THE EVIO UNIVERSE There's always another mystery to investigate, another criminal to expose, and another nightmare waiting just around the corner. Listen & Follow: Subscribe to The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, The Slippery, and The Devil's Ledger wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a new episode. Rate & Review: If you enjoy our shows, please leave a five-star rating and a written review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps introduce the Evio Universe to new listeners. Watch & Subscribe: Visit the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new videos, original content, and updates from across our network. Stay Connected: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram, and send your stories, tips, and suggestions to mailto:info@eviocreative.com. Until next time, stay safe, have a calm and productive week, and we'll catch up again across the Evio Universe. An Evio Creative Production. Suggested episode keywords: The Devil's Ledger, Evio Creative, The Devil Within, Valerie McDonald, The Devil's Audition, Satanism, occult mysteries, Criminal Mischief, Tomasz Kosowski, Steven Cozzi, Carolyn Ossorio, Dave Cawley, COLD podcast, The Slippery, Jen Shah, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, true crime, fraud, human skin teddy bear, Victorville, Last Chance Motel, Heather Langenkamp, horror movies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S AUDITION Episode One: Temptation On November 9, 1980, twenty-six-year-old Valerie McDonald was doing something remarkably sensible: she was getting out. The aspiring filmmaker, actress, model and cocktail waitress had become frightened by the men managing her apartment building in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. She reportedly told friends and family about drugs, threatening behavior and activity she considered Satanic. With friends helping her move, Valerie appeared ready to put the Tower Apartments—and the people surrounding it—behind her. TDW_Devil Audition_1 Then Michael Hennessey arrived with an offer almost perfectly designed for an ambitious young actress. There was a movie shooting in town, he said, starring Dustin Hoffman, who was then at the absolute height of his career after winning the Academy Award for Kramer vs. Kramer. The production supposedly needed an attractive blonde woman for a small role playing the victim of a serial killer. The job paid $200 and, more importantly, offered Valerie the possibility of appearing opposite one of the biggest movie stars in America. TDW_Devil Audition_1 Valerie agreed to go. Her family would never see her alive again. The movie did not exist. A private investigator hired by Valerie’s parents later contacted the production company and Hoffman’s representatives and found no evidence of the film or the role Valerie had been promised. Someone appears to have constructed an elaborate fiction around Valerie’s ambitions and used it to lure her away. TDW_Devil Audition_1 Then the story became considerably stranger. Within days, Hennessey and convicted criminal John Gordon Abbott were fleeing north. On November 26, Canadian authorities caught up with them in British Columbia. A confrontation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police erupted into gunfire. Abbott was captured. Hennessey was killed. TDW_Devil Audition_1 Among the fugitives’ belongings, authorities reportedly discovered Valerie’s voter-registration and unemployment-benefit cards. The missing woman in San Francisco was now physically connected to the men who had fled hundreds of miles toward Canada. TDW_Devil Audition_1 But Valerie herself was nowhere to be found. In Episode One of The Devil’s Audition, we return to San Francisco at the dawn of the 1980s—a city emerging from Jonestown, the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, and the fading glow of the counterculture—to reconstruct Valerie’s final days. We enter the Tower Apartments, meet the dangerous men who surrounded her and follow the irresistible promise of a Hollywood audition that appears to have been created specifically for her. TDW_Devil Audition_1 Because Valerie recognized that she was in danger. She was already leaving. Then somebody offered her exactly what she wanted. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. Rate & Review: Leave us a five-star rating and review—it remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for every new episode. TDW_Devil Audition_1 Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod for episode clips, imagery, updates and more from the Evio Universe. Stories & Tips: Have a story you think belongs on The Devil Within? Send it to info@eviocreative.com. The Devil’s Audition — Episode One: Temptation, on The Devil Within. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL ON DEATH ROW Episode Three: Twice Condemned For nearly thirty years, Christa Pike waited to die. She entered Tennessee’s death row at nineteen under a sentence of electrocution, but remained there long enough to watch the machinery of capital punishment change around her. The electric chair gave way to lethal injection, the teenager associated with pentagrams became a fifty-year-old practicing Buddhist, and Tennessee eventually set September 30, 2026, as the day her sentence would finally be carried out. TDW_Pike_3 In the final episode of The Devil on Death Row, we follow Pike through decades of appeals, challenges to her original sentencing, arguments over childhood trauma and adolescent brain development, and her attorneys’ final attempts to obtain clemency. Then September 30 arrives. A federal appeals court temporarily stops the execution, Tennessee appeals, and the United States Supreme Court clears the way for the state to proceed. TDW_Pike_3 At 7:27 p.m., the curtains open at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution and Pike is strapped to a gurney. Pentobarbital is administered—but Pike remains alive and complains that her arm is burning. Tennessee tries again. After a second administration of the execution drug, witnesses can still hear her breathing. Eventually the witnesses are removed, Pike is transported to a hospital, and the state acknowledges an extraordinary fact: Christa Pike survived her execution. TDW_Pike_3 Governor Bill Lee subsequently halts Tennessee’s remaining 2026 execution and orders an independent review. Thirty-one years after Colleen Slemmer was murdered, the story that began with pentagrams, Satanic imagery and the fading embers of the Satanic Panic is suddenly unfinished again. TDW_Pike_3 The Devil may have been everywhere in this story, but perhaps he was never required. Human beings did all of it themselves. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a 5-star rating and review. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, turn on notifications, and join the conversation at @thedevilwithinpod. Stories and tips: mailto:info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL ON DEATH ROW Episode Two: The Devil in the Woods Hours after nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer was tortured and murdered in the woods outside Knoxville, Christa Pike went to breakfast. According to trial testimony, she was carrying something almost impossible to comprehend: a fragment of Colleen’s skull, taken from the murder scene as a souvenir. Pike reportedly showed the bone to other students, pointed to blood on her shoes and openly described what had happened the night before. TDW_Pike_2 In Episode Two of The Devil on Death Row, we return to the woods to reconstruct Colleen’s final hour and examine the Satanic imagery that became inseparable from the crime. The attack lasted somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour, and when Colleen’s body was examined, investigators found a pentagram carved into her chest. But the occult connection went deeper: at Tadaryl Shipp’s later trial, another student testified that days before the murder Shipp had spoken about the need for a human sacrifice because the celestial bodies were in alignment. TDW_Pike_2 As Christa goes on trial, psychiatrists attempt to answer the question that had haunted the case from the beginning. Was this a Satanic murder, or were troubled teenagers borrowing the imagery of Satanism to give jealousy, rage and violence a darker mythology? The jury ultimately finds Pike guilty of premeditated first-degree murder and conspiracy, and Tennessee chooses the ultimate punishment: death by electrocution. TDW_Pike_2 The Satanic Panic taught America to believe extraordinary evil required an extraordinary explanation. Christa Pike offered something considerably more disturbing: perhaps people don't need the Devil to commit monstrous acts. Sometimes they simply borrow his language. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a 5-star rating and review. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, turn on notifications, and join the conversation at @thedevilwithinpod. Stories and tips: mailto:info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL ON DEATH ROW Episode One: The Pentagram In January 1995, nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer walked away from the Knoxville Job Corps Center with three other students. The following morning, her body was discovered on the University of Tennessee agricultural campus. She had been subjected to a prolonged attack, and carved into her chest was a symbol America had spent more than a decade learning to fear: a pentagram. TDW_Pike_1 In Episode One of The Devil on Death Row, we return to the fading years of the Satanic Panic, when allegations of secret cults, ritual abuse and devil worship had moved from horror movies into police departments, courtrooms and American living rooms. By 1995, much of that panic was beginning to collapse beneath the weight of its own extraordinary claims. Then Colleen Slemmer was murdered, and the crime contained genuinely documented Satanic imagery: Christa Pike and her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp were observed wearing pentagram necklaces, Pike had experimented with occult imagery before the murder, and a forensic psychiatrist would later testify that the crime contained “satanic elements,” while characterizing what he saw as adolescent dabbling rather than evidence of an organized cult. TDW_Pike_1 But behind the pentagrams was something considerably more human. Eighteen-year-old Christa Gail Pike had endured an unstable adolescence before arriving at Job Corps, where she became intensely attached to Shipp and convinced herself that Colleen wanted to take him away from her. The day before the murder, Pike reportedly told another student that she intended to kill Colleen. On January 12, four young people walked into the woods together, with Colleen believing they were going to smoke marijuana and settle their differences. TDW_Pike_1 The Satanic Panic taught America to search for elaborate explanations for evil. The Christa Pike story asks a more unsettling question: what happens when the symbols a culture creates to represent evil become part of the language young people use to commit it? Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a 5-star rating and review. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, turn on notifications, and join the conversation at @thedevilwithinpod. Have a story or tip for the show? Email mailto:info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S LEDGER Week of October 5, 2026 October has arrived across the Evio Universe, and before we get to the murder, monsters, fraud and assorted demonic activity, we have one request: vote. The midterms are approaching, and regardless of party, voting is how we hold elected officials accountable—or throw them out. Our longstanding policy remains simple: if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain about shit. Ledger Oct 5 This week’s Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week investigates the strange online mythology forming around the upcoming supernatural horror film You Can’t Leave. Social media claims insist the filmmakers employed real occult experts to create authentic demonic rituals capable of exposing audiences to something genuinely dangerous. There’s just one problem: we couldn’t find credible evidence that any of it is true. Which raises an even better question—are we watching a modern urban legend being created in real time? Ledger Oct 5 On The Devil Within, our new three-part series The Devil on Death Row examines Christa Pike, the brutal 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, its documented Satanic imagery and its place at the dying edge of the Satanic Panic. Then we follow Pike through thirty years on death row to the extraordinary events of September 30, when Tennessee attempted to execute her with pentobarbital—and she survived. Twice. Ledger Oct 5 On Criminal Mischief, Part Two of the Tomasz Kosowski case enters the courtroom, where the plastic surgeon accused of murdering attorney Steven Cozzi makes the extraordinary decision to represent himself in a capital murder trial. Over on The Slippery, we meet former Bellum Entertainment CEO Mary Carole McDonnell and the alleged $30 million fraud built around a decidedly inconvenient detail: the enormous aerospace-family fortune she claimed to possess apparently didn't exist. Ledger Oct 5 Ledger Oct 5 Finally, This Week in Horror heads deep into the Amazon for Beware Boiuna, a good old-fashioned monster movie about a humanitarian mission that awakens a colossal serpent from Amazonian folklore—and one that has a special connection to the Evio family. Ledger Oct 5 Halloween is getting closer. The monsters are stirring. Let’s open the books. Listen & Follow: Follow the Evio shows wherever you get your podcasts, leave a 5-star rating and review, and watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel with notifications turned on. Join us at @thedevilwithinpod, and we’ll see you this week across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN GUSTAVE — Episode Three: The Hunt For years, Patrice Faye had followed the evidence left behind by one of Africa's most notorious predators. He interviewed witnesses, mapped attacks around Lake Tanganyika, studied movements along the Rusizi River and learned the scars that distinguished one enormous Nile crocodile from every other animal in the water. By 2002, studying Gustave was no longer enough. Faye wanted to capture him alive. In the final installment of our three-part investigation, The Hunt, the naturalist's obsession becomes an extraordinary field expedition. Gustave's legend has now escaped Burundi and entered the international press, bringing increasingly spectacular claims with it: hundreds of victims, gunshot wounds, attacks on massive animals and a crocodile that supposedly killed without eating. Faye himself offered a considerably more cautious estimate, saying he had documented roughly sixty deaths attributable to Gustave, perhaps fewer—a number that still could never be scientifically confirmed. But Gustave himself was real. His extraordinary size and distinctive scars allowed Faye to identify an individual animal moving through the enormous interconnected ecosystem of Lake Tanganyika and the Rusizi River. Capturing him alive could finally replace estimates with measurements: his true length, weight, age, physical condition and injuries could all be studied for the first time. So Faye built a jail. Nearly thirty feet long and weighing roughly a ton, the enormous steel cage looked more like industrial machinery than an animal trap. Cameras monitored it. Bait was placed inside. Crocodile specialist Alison Leslie joined the expedition, while filmmaker Jean-Michel Corillion documented the hunt for what would become Capturing the Killer Croc. Eventually, something enormous approached the cage. Then everything went wrong. A violent storm struck. The infrared camera failed. By morning, the trap had been damaged and partially submerged—and the live goat being used as bait had vanished. Whatever happened during those missing hours was never captured on film. The cage intended to settle the mystery of Gustave had somehow produced another one. Faye's expedition ended without its prisoner. But Gustave didn't disappear from the story. Reports continued for years, including another reported sighting in 2009. What remained were ultimately two Gustaves: the documented animal—an exceptionally large, heavily scarred Nile crocodile photographed and filmed in the Lake Tanganyika region—and the nearly supernatural creature built around him by decades of rumor and repetition. And then there is the final mystery. Did Gustave ever die? Rumors say yes. Evidence says we don't know. No verified carcass was recovered. No skull was conclusively identified. No scientific examination established when or where Gustave's life ended. That doesn't make him immortal. It simply means that the final chapter of his biological life was never documented. Perhaps that's appropriate. Because after three episodes spent asking what transformed Gustave into a monster, we arrive at a more uncomfortable possibility: Maybe nothing did. Maybe Gustave remained exactly what millions of years of evolution had designed him to be—patient, opportunistic, adaptable and capable of learning from the world around him. Perhaps it was the world around him that changed. LISTEN, WATCH & FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. It remains one of the simplest and most effective ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, archival material, episode imagery and more from the stories we investigate. Have a story, mystery or case you think belongs on The Devil Within? Send it to info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN GUSTAVE — Episode Two: Built to Kill What makes a predator perfect? In Episode Two of our three-part investigation into Gustave, we leave Lake Tanganyika behind for a moment and travel to Tsavo, Kenya, in 1898, where two maneless male lions began pulling railway workers from their camps. The animals that became known as the Ghost and the Darkness terrorized the Uganda Railway project for months before Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson finally killed them. More than a century later, their preserved remains would give scientists something Patrice Faye never had with Gustave: a killer they could actually examine. Then we go inside the Nile crocodile. Calling Gustave a dinosaur isn't scientifically accurate, but crocodilians belong to an evolutionary lineage whose basic predatory strategy has survived for an extraordinary span of time. Eyes and nostrils positioned above the water allow the animal to disappear almost completely beneath the surface. A muscular tail provides explosive acceleration. Armored osteoderms protect the body. Conical teeth seize rather than chew. And when prey is too large to swallow, the infamous death roll can tear it into manageable pieces. Everything about the design is built around one principle: Don't waste energy. That principle makes Gustave's story considerably stranger. Crocodiles are ectothermic ambush predators capable of waiting extraordinary periods between meals. They don't need prolonged pursuit. They wait until an animal enters the narrow strip of geography where water meets land—and then patience becomes explosive violence. For people who depend upon Lake Tanganyika for fishing, bathing, washing and drinking water, that kill zone is also an unavoidable part of everyday life. But Patrice Faye encountered reports of victims attributed to Gustave whose bodies were recovered or only partially consumed. That helped create the sensational legend that Gustave killed for pleasure. The biology tells a more complicated story. Crocodile ecologist Alison Leslie rejected the idea of a crocodilian psychopath. Attacks can be interrupted. Crocodiles can behave territorially. Large prey may be consumed over several days. And some of the deaths attributed to one famous crocodile may have belonged to entirely different animals. Faye nevertheless wondered whether decades of conflict in Burundi and neighboring Congo had provided Gustave with opportunities to scavenge human remains—and thereby learn that humans were simply another available food source. It remains a hypothesis, not an established scientific explanation. Finally, we meet the Old Man of the Lake. Faye estimated Gustave at approaching twenty feet long and perhaps a ton in weight. His enormous body carried distinctive scars, including wounds Faye believed came from gunfire, allowing him to distinguish Gustave from other crocodiles. After decades of survival, this wasn't simply a giant animal. It was an experienced predator capable of learning the repetitive patterns of the people living along its territory. Perhaps Gustave wasn't terrifying because he broke the rules of nature. Perhaps he was terrifying because he followed them perfectly. And Patrice Faye had finally decided that understanding Gustave wasn't enough. He was going to catch him. LISTEN, WATCH & FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show. Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Follow @thedevilwithinpod for episode clips, archival material and more from the stories we investigate. Have a story or case you think belongs on the show? Send it to info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of September 28, 2026 Fall has officially arrived, playoff baseball is back, and apparently Mother Nature decided the Northeast needed to celebrate with a violent nor'easter. This week on The Devil's Ledger, Branden sends some love to everyone currently getting battered by wind, rain and coastal flooding—and finally answers a question some of us have somehow avoided asking our entire lives: What the hell actually is a nor'easter? Then we head into considerably darker territory. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE MOSQUITO Brazilian authorities say they've captured Jorlan Lopes da Silva, a suspected serial killer nicknamed “Mosquito” because of his thin, frail build. Police accuse da Silva of involvement in sixteen murders around Mulungu in northeastern Brazil. Investigators say he evaded capture by disappearing into dense vegetation and living in makeshift camps hidden in the wilderness. But it's the bizarre circumstances of his arrest that elevate this one into Creepiest Thing territory: when police finally cornered him after a two-day pursuit, da Silva was reportedly wearing a dress, wig and painted fingernails—and carrying an unrelated baby in his arms. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN: GUSTAVE The New Monsters has come to an end, which means we're returning to something considerably more familiar: Serial killers. Sort of. Our new three-part series travels to Burundi and the shores of Lake Tanganyika for the extraordinary story of Gustave, the enormous, heavily scarred Nile crocodile blamed in legend for more than 300 human deaths. That number has never been verified—and naturalist Patrice Faye offered far more conservative estimates—but behind the mythology was a very real, exceptionally large crocodile that Faye spent years tracking. How do you hunt a serial killer with no motive, fingerprints or confession—one who can simply disappear beneath the surface of one of Africa's great lakes? Meet Gustave: The Killer of Lake Tanganyika. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: TOMASZ KOSOWSKI Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn investigates the extraordinary case of plastic surgeon Tomasz Kosowski, recently found guilty of murdering attorney Steven Cozzi. Cozzi vanished from his Largo, Florida, law office in March 2023. His wallet, phone and keys were left behind, while investigators discovered blood inside the men's restroom. His body has never been recovered. Then Kosowski made the already extraordinary case even stranger: facing first-degree murder and the possibility of a death sentence, he represented himself. Carolyn breaks down the evidence, the disappearance and one of the stranger murder trials we've encountered in quite some time. THE SLIPPERY: THE PONZI KILLER MOM Scott and Nancy bring us the rise and spectacular collapse of Natalie Cochran. Natalie and Michael Cochran appeared to have everything: high-school sweethearts turned successful suburban family, with Natalie working as a pharmacist and Michael as a popular baseball coach and businessman. Behind that success was a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme involving supposedly lucrative government and defense contracts. As the money poured in, so did the lies—and when Michael began asking questions, prosecutors said Natalie chose murder over exposure. A jury ultimately convicted her of killing her husband with insulin. Money. Marriage. Fraud. Defense contracts. Murder. This week, The Slippery takes on The Ponzi Killer Mom. THIS WEEK IN HORROR: VICTORIAN PSYCHO Finally, we're going Gothic. Maika Monroe stars as Winifred Notty, an eccentric young governess who arrives at a remote English manor in 1858 to educate the children of a wealthy family. Then people begin disappearing. Also starring Jason Isaacs, Thomasin McKenzie and Ruth Wilson, Victorian Psycho gives us a remote manor, Victorian repression, disappearing servants and a governess who may have considerably more on her mind than afternoon lessons. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, The Slippery and The Devil's Ledger wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a five-star rating and review to help more listeners discover the Evio Universe. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, episode imagery, stories and updates. Have a story or tip for us? mailto:info@eviocreative.com Fall is here. The sweaters are coming out. The leaves are changing. Playoff baseball has arrived. Nature is healing. We'll see you this week across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN GUSTAVE: THE KILLER OF LAKE TANGANYIKA Episode One — Pattern For years, people living along the shores of Lake Tanganyika told stories about something enormous moving beneath the water. Fishermen disappeared. Bodies were recovered bearing catastrophic injuries. Survivors described attacks that happened with terrifying speed, often in places where generations of Burundians had fished, washed clothes and collected water. Then French naturalist Patrice Faye began looking for a pattern. Faye was an unlikely investigator: a self-taught naturalist and herpetologist from Lyon who had worked as a plumber and lumberjack, traveled through Africa and eventually made Burundi his home. During some of the country's darkest years, he developed an extraordinary knowledge of its wildlife—and became increasingly troubled by the stories emerging from Lake Tanganyika. In Episode One of our three-part investigation into Gustave, we travel deep into the history of Burundi, a breathtaking country scarred by colonialism, political assassination and a civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 people between 1993 and 2005. Against that backdrop, Faye developed a disturbing theory: could years of human bodies entering the region's waterways during the violence have taught an opportunistic predator that human beings were food? It was a theory he could never prove, but one that connected Burundi's human tragedy to the mystery developing along its shoreline. Faye collected eyewitness accounts, compared locations and studied descriptions until he became convinced that many of the attacks were connected. Witnesses repeatedly described extraordinary size and distinctive scars, including an injury on the animal's head. Eventually, Faye saw his suspect himself and gave him a name: Gustave. Gustave wasn't a man. He was an enormous Nile crocodile—estimated by Faye at roughly twenty feet long, perhaps a ton in weight and around sixty years old, although the animal was never captured and scientifically measured. And while the sensational claims that Gustave killed two or three hundred people belong more comfortably to legend than established fact, something very real remained beneath the mythology: an exceptionally large, scarred crocodile that Faye would spend years trying to understand. This is the story of a naturalist, a country haunted by war, and a predator that became a legend. This is Gustave: The Killer of Lake Tanganyika. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode, and leave us a five-star rating and review to help more listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes and original video content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, images, archival material and more from the stories we investigate. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Episode Three: The Monster Loveland Kept By the summer of 2016, hunting monsters had changed. Armed with smartphones and Pokémon Go, two teenagers wandered near Ohio's Little Miami River and reportedly encountered something that wasn't supposed to be part of the game. Their footage was ambiguous, but the name attached to it was unmistakable: the Loveland Frogman. The alleged sighting resurrected a legend stretching back decades—mysterious humanoid figures beside an Ohio road in 1955, police encounters in 1972, and the wonderfully bizarre story of a frog-like creature carrying a wand that produced sparks. But the renewed attention also brought former Loveland police officer Mark Mathews back into the story. Mathews had encountered and shot the animal associated with the legend in 1972, and his explanation was considerably less supernatural: according to him, it was a large, tailless iguana, probably an escaped or abandoned exotic pet. That should have killed the legend. Instead, Loveland kept the Frogman. In the conclusion of our three-part investigation, we explore what happens when a monster outlives the eyewitnesses who created it. From the arrival of the internet and the 2016 Pokémon Go encounter to the transformation of regional cryptids into hometown mascots, merchandise and cultural identities, the Frogman reveals something important about the way modern folklore survives. Evidence may weaken a legend, but once enough people inherit the story, evidence isn't the only thing keeping it alive. We also bring The New Monsters full circle, from alligators beneath Manhattan and the Bunny Man of Northern Virginia to the strange amphibious resident of the Little Miami River. Cameras, smartphones and instant communication were supposed to make monsters obsolete. Instead, technology gave folklore a distribution system. Maybe the Loveland Frogman really was an iguana. If so, the iguana lost. The monster survived. LISTEN, FOLLOW & REVIEW Listen to The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you're following the show so you never miss a new episode. If you enjoy the series, please leave us a five-star rating and review—it remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. WATCH & SUBSCRIBE Watch The Devil Within and more from the Evio Creative network on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you know whenever a new episode drops. JOIN THE CONVERSATION Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, stories, archival material and more from The Devil Within. Have a strange story, unexplained encounter, case or legend you think we should investigate? Send it to info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Episode Two — The Creature Gets a Name Before the Loveland Frogman became one of America's strangest regional cryptids, it may have been something else entirely. The story takes us back to Loveland, Ohio, in 1955, where a businessman or traveling salesman supposedly encountered three small humanoid figures beside a country road near the Little Miami River. Later versions describe creatures standing three or four feet tall, with leathery skin, deeply wrinkled heads and vaguely frog-like faces. Then one of them reportedly raised a strange metal rod above its head—and sparks began shooting from it. A Frogman is strange enough. A Frogman with a magic wand requires considerably more explanation. In Episode Two of The New Monsters, we investigate how a handful of separate encounters gradually became the mythology of the Loveland Frogman—and why the creature's bizarre origins may have more in common with America's flying-saucer obsession than traditional cryptozoology. The problem begins with the 1955 encounter itself. Unlike the better-documented police sightings that followed seventeen years later, there is no readily available contemporary police report establishing the version of the story we know today. Its famous details reach us largely through later researchers, paranormal literature and decades of retelling, meaning the Frogman's origin story belongs much more securely to folklore than verified history. And then there's that wand. America in 1955 was deep in the first great age of flying-saucer fascination. UFO reports were multiplying, science-fiction theaters were filled with extraterrestrial visitors, and stories of strange humanoids carrying mysterious technology occupied a very different corner of the American imagination. Three small beings beside a road carrying a sparking device don't necessarily sound like unknown amphibians at all. They sound suspiciously like visitors. The documentary trail is too weak to conclude that the Frogman began as a UFO story, but the possibility reveals just how dramatically a story can change depending upon the name we eventually give its creature. Then came 1972. Loveland police officers Ray Shockey and Mark Mathews encountered unusual animals near the Little Miami River seventeen years after the alleged 1955 incident. Suddenly, the older story had something it had previously lacked: recognizable witnesses and the authority of a police uniform. Three mysterious humanoids from 1955 could become earlier examples of the same creature encountered by police in 1972, while those later encounters appeared to prove that something had been returning to the river for decades. Separate stories became sightings. Sightings became a pattern. And eventually, the pattern became a monster. Once the name Loveland Frogman took hold, the transformation accelerated. Paranormal books, cryptozoology collections and eventually the internet standardized a creature that eyewitness testimony had left frustratingly incomplete. Artists supplied enormous eyes, long limbs, webbed hands and unmistakably amphibian features until generations of people who had never seen the creature nevertheless knew exactly what a Loveland Frogman was supposed to look like. And somehow, through every transformation, the sparking wand survived. This week on The Devil Within, we follow one of America's strangest cryptids from an uncertain roadside encounter through police reports, paranormal publishing and the internet, examining how folklore can create a coherent history from stories that may never have belonged together in the first place. Because the Loveland Frogman wasn't simply discovered. It was assembled. Next time, the Frogman enters the smartphone age when teenagers playing Pokémon Go near Loveland encounter something strange beside the water. We'll also meet the police officer who publicly tried to kill his own legend by insisting that the Frogman he encountered in 1972 was actually a tailless iguana—and discover why Loveland kept its monster anyway. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and send your stories, sightings and tips to info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Episode One — Encounter There are places where the modern world seems to thin after dark. Outside Loveland, Ohio, the Little Miami River winds through wooded banks, bridges and stretches of road where everything beyond the headlights can disappear into darkness. It was along this landscape in March 1972 that Loveland police officer Ray Shockey reportedly encountered something strange near the roadway—an unusual creature that moved toward the guardrail and vanished in the direction of the river. Then another Loveland police officer encountered something in roughly the same area. This week, The New Monsters investigates the legend of the Loveland Frogman, one of Ohio's strangest and most beloved cryptids. But beneath the stories of upright amphibious creatures and mysterious encounters is something even more interesting: a collection of separate incidents that gradually became the history of a single monster. We begin with the landscape itself and the Little Miami River, the waterway that helped shape Loveland long before anyone imagined a Frogman living beside it. From Indigenous history and early settlement to farms, mills, railroads and the growth of Cincinnati, the river became both an economic corridor and a natural boundary between civilization and the remaining woods. Even as modern development spread outward, the river preserved precisely the sort of places where folklore thrives: dark water, wooded banks, blind curves and roads that surrender to the landscape after sunset. Then we travel back to 1955, when the earliest and most mysterious chapter of the Frogman legend supposedly occurred. Later versions describe a motorist encountering several short, upright creatures with leathery, frog-like bodies—and even claim that one carried a bizarre rod or wand capable of producing sparks. The problem is that the original encounter is difficult to document cleanly, and many of its most famous details reach us through later retellings. Seventeen years later, the story becomes considerably harder to ignore. In March 1972, Officer Shockey reported encountering an unusual animal while driving near the Little Miami. Fellow officer Mark Mathews subsequently encountered something in the same area and fired at it. Years later, Mathews would insist there was nothing supernatural about what he saw: according to him, the creature was a large iguana missing its tail, probably an escaped or abandoned exotic pet. That should have killed the legend. Instead, it helped create one. Because once the name Frogman entered the story, separate encounters began fitting together. The mysterious creatures of 1955 became earlier sightings of the animal encountered by police in 1972, while the credibility of the later police encounters reached backward and gave the older story an authority it had never possessed on its own. Loveland no longer had an unexplained animal sighting; it had a history. And that's where our investigation begins. IN THIS EPISODE The Little Miami River and the history that shaped Loveland; the mysterious and difficult-to-document 1955 encounter; Ray Shockey's 1972 roadside sighting; Mark Mathews and the alleged tailless iguana; the exotic-pet explanation; and the strange process by which separate stories became the mythology of the Loveland Frogman. Next time on The New Monsters, we'll go deeper into the bizarre 1955 encounter, investigate the Frogman's infamous sparking wand, and discover how paranormal books, local storytelling and eventually the internet transformed a handful of uncertain encounters into one of America's most recognizable regional cryptids. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review to help more listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for every new episode. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and send your stories, sightings and tips to info@eviocreative.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S LEDGER Week of September 21, 2026 Football is back, fall is finally arriving, and the Evio Universe has assembled a particularly strange collection of stories this week. We begin with The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, where an unsettling internet trend has transformed one of Dr. Seuss’s most beloved characters into nightmare fuel. AI-generated images of a sinister Cat in the Hat lurking outside homes and schools have prompted police investigations across the country, juvenile arrests—and, in Canada, a bizarre real-world incident involving someone in costume allegedly chasing a teenage girl through a neighborhood. Then, on The Devil Within, we head to Ohio for the conclusion of our investigation into the Loveland Frogman. From a murky 1955 encounter involving strange humanoid figures and a supposedly sparking wand to two police encounters in 1972 and a wonderfully appropriate Pokémon Go sighting decades later, we examine how separate stories became the biography of a single monster—and why even a police officer’s decidedly unromantic explanation involving a tailless iguana couldn’t kill the legend. On Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio investigates the developing case surrounding Philadelphia’s so-called “House of Horrors.” Authorities are investigating an Olney home in connection with at least seven missing women, as police and the FBI work through disturbing physical and digital evidence recovered during the investigation. With no remains yet confirmed at the property, Carolyn separates what investigators actually know from the speculation surrounding a case that is still unfolding. Over on The Slippery, Scott and Nancy enter the heavily filtered world of Adva Lavie, the Israeli-born former flight attendant and social-media personality accused of using dating apps and aliases to enter the lives of wealthy older men and steal luxury property. Then the story acquires a billionaire, an engagement and an even stranger investigation. Lavie has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges against her, and the latest allegations remain under investigation. Finally, This Week in Horror takes us onto the highway with Passenger, the new supernatural road-trip nightmare from director André Øvredal. A young couple leaves New York for life on the road, only to discover that something demonic may have joined them for the ride. And with that, we say farewell to summer and welcome back pumpkin spice, football weekends, open sweater cabinets, earlier sunsets, changing leaves and—hopefully—a slight slowing of the relentless pace of life. Listen and follow the shows of the Evio Creative network wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoy what we’re doing, leave us a five-star rating and review and help other listeners discover the Evio Universe. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Until next week, we’ll see you across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Episode Three: Midnight at the Overpass By the 1990s, everybody in Northern Virginia seemed to know the rules. Drive out to Bunny Man Bridge after dark. Wait until midnight. Turn off the headlights. Say his name three times. Maybe get out of the car. Maybe come on Halloween. Nobody could agree on exactly how you summoned the Bunny Man, but that hardly mattered. Because everybody agreed that if you stayed beneath that railroad bridge long enough, something would happen. In the final chapter of our three-part investigation into The Bunny Man, we follow one of America's strangest urban legends through its most important transformation. What began with two reported encounters with a rabbit-costumed stranger in Fairfax County in October 1970 eventually became something teenagers could actually participate in. This week, we head back beneath the railroad tracks outside Clifton, Virginia, during an era when American suburbia was developing some very particular nightmares of its own. Stranger danger was reshaping childhood. Parents inspected Halloween candy for razor blades and poison. The Satanic Panic warned that secret cults might be hiding behind otherwise ordinary American life, while a new generation of slasher movies discovered that the safest-looking suburbs made particularly effective places for monsters. The Bunny Man fit right in. His rabbit costume corrupted something associated with childhood innocence. His axe gave him the silhouette of a horror villain. Better still, you didn't need to travel into some remote wilderness to find him. You needed a car, a few friends and enough nerve to drive into the woods. Folklorists call it legend tripping: traveling to a supposedly haunted place specifically to test the story. Haunted railroad crossings, Crybaby Bridges, cemeteries, abandoned houses and mirrors capable of summoning Bloody Mary all operate on variations of the same brilliant idea. They don't merely give you a monster to believe in. They give you something to do. Bunny Man Bridge became one of those places. Every group of teenagers who drove beneath the tracks created another opportunity for reality to misbehave. A deer moving through the woods became a person. A branch became a weapon. A reflection became a pair of eyes. Then a freight train thundered overhead, somebody screamed, and by Monday morning four people remembered the same ten seconds four different ways. Then the internet arrived. The Bunny Man had spent decades traveling through newspapers, playgrounds, school buses, parties and word of mouth. Home computers and dial-up connections suddenly removed geography from the equation. The abandoned asylum could be repeated from website to website. An escaped inmate could acquire a name, a biography and a body count. Eventually, repetition itself began impersonating evidence. That makes the Bunny Man an important creature in the evolution of The New Monsters. He wasn't born online like Slender Man, and he wasn't collaboratively constructed on the internet like the Backrooms. The internet didn't create the Bunny Man. It inherited him. But before we leave Fairfax County, we return to the question buried beneath more than half a century of mythology: Who was actually inside the bunny suit? Strip away the asylum. Strip away the escaped inmates, mutilated rabbits, murders and supernatural bridge rituals, and two reported incidents remain. In October 1970, witnesses described a rabbit-costumed figure carrying weapons and angrily complaining about trespassing. During the first encounter, a hatchet reportedly came through the window of a car. Ten days later, a similarly dressed person was reportedly encountered near an unfinished house, again armed and again furious about trespassers. Was it an elaborate Halloween prank that escalated? An attempt to frighten people away from private property? Someone angry about the relentless development transforming Fairfax County around him? All are possibilities. None is an answer. More than half a century later, the person beneath those rabbit ears remains unidentified. And perhaps that's why the Bunny Man survives so well. Remove the supernatural mythology and the story doesn't become ordinary. The strange part was there from the beginning. A newspaper story became a playground story. The playground story acquired a bridge. The bridge acquired an asylum. The asylum acquired escaped inmates and murders. Teenagers turned the bridge into a pilgrimage site, and eventually the internet gathered every version into a sprawling digital mythology. No single person created the Bunny Man we know today. Thousands of people did. NEXT TIME ON THE NEW MONSTERS THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Next time, we're heading west to Loveland, Ohio, where another distinctly American monster emerged along the Little Miami River. The story begins with a murky 1955 account involving several short, upright creatures reportedly encountered near the river—one of them, wonderfully, supposedly holding something resembling a wand or metal rod that produced sparks. Then, in March 1972, a Loveland police officer reported encountering a strange leathery animal near the roadway. Another officer would soon encounter something as well. And this time, he shot it. Decades later, that officer would insist the famous Frogman wasn't a monster at all. According to him, he'd encountered a large, tailless iguana, probably someone's escaped exotic pet. That should have killed the legend. It didn't. Next time on The New Monsters: The Loveland Frogman. LISTEN • FOLLOW • WATCH Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a 5-star rating and review. It remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes and videos. And join us on Instagram at @thedevilwithinpod. The Bunny Man: Episode Three — Midnight at the Overpass. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Episode Two: The Bridge There is a railroad bridge outside Clifton, Virginia, where Colchester Road narrows into a single lane and disappears beneath the tracks. For generations of Northern Virginia teenagers, it has been known by another name: Bunny Man Bridge. According to the legend, this is where the Bunny Man lived, killed and perhaps died. Some versions claim he was an escaped asylum patient who vanished into the surrounding woods after a transport bus crashed. Others add mutilated rabbits hanging from trees, murdered children, bodies suspended from the railroad tracks and a killer who eventually returned from the dead. It's a spectacular horror story. There's just one problem: almost none of it appears to have happened. In Episode Two of our three-part investigation, we follow the Bunny Man away from the documented encounters on Guinea Road and into the place that transformed him from a bizarre local mystery into a full-fledged American monster. Research by Fairfax County historian and archivist Brian Conley found no evidence of the asylum, the escaped inmates or the Bunny Man massacre supposedly connected to the bridge. The two documented incidents from October 1970 happened miles away. So how did the Bunny Man get to Clifton? We travel back through the history of the village itself, from the arrival of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in 1858 to its importance during the Civil War, when the tracks became part of the military infrastructure connecting a country tearing itself apart. After the war, a railroad village grew here, preserving a pocket of older Northern Virginia even as suburban Washington expanded around it. That landscape gave the legend something Guinea Road eventually couldn't: permanence. Construction sites become houses. Woods are cleared. Empty lots acquire addresses. But a secluded railroad overpass surrounded by trees can remain unsettling for generations. Better still, it gave teenagers somewhere they could actually visit. The Bunny Man stopped being merely something people heard about and became something they could go looking for. From there, the mythology began building backward. An asylum appeared where historical research has found none. A bus crashed. Patients escaped. Rabbits were slaughtered. One fugitive supposedly died while another became the Bunny Man. Eventually murders, Halloween rituals and supernatural encounters were attached to the bridge, creating an elaborate origin story for a monster whose real identity had never been established. We'll explore why those additions were so effective, how the abandoned asylum became one of American horror's favorite shortcuts for hidden evil, and why the Bunny Man's axe survived the transformation from reported weapon to unmistakable horror icon. Most importantly, we'll see the moment when folklore becomes interactive. Teenagers began driving beneath the bridge after dark, turning off their engines and waiting for something to happen. Every movement in the woods, unexpected car or freight train thundering overhead offered another opportunity for the story to reproduce itself. Because the Bunny Man didn't become immortal when somebody died beneath those railroad tracks. He became immortal when people started going there to find him. NEXT TIME In the final chapter of our Bunny Man story, Midnight at the Overpass, we follow the legend through the 1980s and 1990s and into the early internet, when a regional Virginia ghost story suddenly gained access to a global audience. We'll explore Halloween pilgrimages, stranger danger, Satanic Panic and the peculiar rituals that taught generations of teenagers how to summon a monster. Then we'll return to October 1970 and the question that none of the mythology has ever answered: Who was actually inside the rabbit suit? LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss the final chapter of The Bunny Man. Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review. It remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes and videos. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us: Would you spend midnight beneath Bunny Man Bridge? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Episode One: The Man on Guinea Road In October 1970, along a dark stretch of Guinea Road in Fairfax County, Virginia, a young couple sitting inside their car saw someone emerge from the woods. The stranger appeared to be wearing a white suit with long rabbit ears. He began shouting about private property, claimed to have their license plate number—and then hurled a hatchet through the passenger window. The couple escaped. Police recovered the weapon. The man in the rabbit costume vanished. If that were the end of the story, the Bunny Man might have survived as little more than a spectacularly bizarre newspaper clipping. But ten days later, another encounter was reported nearby. This time, security guard Paul Phillips discovered a rabbit-costumed figure at an unfinished house, carrying a long-handled axe and reportedly chopping at the structure while complaining about trespassers. Two incidents had given Northern Virginia something much harder to dismiss: a pattern. In Episode One of our three-part journey into The Bunny Man, we go beneath the legend to the landscape that created it. Long before suburban Washington pushed into Fairfax County, this was a place shaped by Indigenous history, colonial Virginia, George Washington and George Mason, the American Revolution and the Civil War. By 1970, another invasion was underway as farms and forests disappeared beneath subdivisions, highways and construction sites. That transformation provides an irresistible backdrop for what happened on Guinea Road. The original Bunny Man emerged from woods being consumed by development, repeatedly complained about trespassing and carried the very tools traditionally used to clear the landscape around him. Whether any of that symbolism was intentional is impossible to know, but the timing helped create an almost perfect American monster: something lurking along the uneasy boundary where countryside was becoming suburbia. We'll also trace how two documented encounters began mutating almost immediately through newspapers, telephones, school buses and playgrounds. Before the internet could make legends viral, children and teenagers were already remarkably efficient distribution networks, repeating stories, changing details and filling unanswered questions with increasingly elaborate explanations. And somewhere along the way, the Bunny Man moved. The famous Bunny Man Bridge near Clifton was not the location of either documented 1970 encounter. Yet as the original construction sites disappeared and unfinished houses became ordinary homes, the secluded railroad overpass remained beneath the trees. Eventually the legend acquired the bridge, an asylum, escaped killers, mutilated rabbits and murder—transforming an unidentified man in a bizarre costume into something supernatural. But before we get to the ghost stories, we begin with the part that remains considerably stranger because it appears to have actually happened. Someone wore the rabbit costume. Someone carried the weapons. And more than half a century later, nobody has conclusively established who was inside it. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss Episode Two: The Bridge. Rate & Review: If you're enjoying The New Monsters, leave us a 5-star rating and review. It helps new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes and videos. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us: What do you think was really happening on Guinea Road in October 1970? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S LEDGER Week of September 14, 2026 — Twenty-Five Years Later This week on The Devil’s Ledger, we mark the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001 and remember the 2,977 people whose lives were taken that day, along with the first responders and rescue workers who ran toward unimaginable danger while thousands were desperately trying to escape. We also honor those who have died in the years since from illnesses connected to their work at Ground Zero. Twenty-five years later, “Never Forget” remains more than a phrase; it is an obligation to remember the victims, teach the history and honor the extraordinary courage witnessed that morning. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE CURSE OF DUDLEYTOWN Deep in the forests of northwestern Connecticut lie the remains of Dudleytown, an eighteenth-century settlement that eventually became one of New England’s most enduring haunted legends. Stories of a centuries-old family curse, insanity, mysterious deaths and strange creatures transformed an abandoned settlement into the so-called “Village of the Damned.” Historians have challenged much of the mythology, offering far more ordinary explanations for Dudleytown’s disappearance, but the legend proved harder to kill. Ghost hunters still seek it out despite the former settlement being privately owned and closed to the public. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN: THE BUNNY MAN The New Monsters heads to Northern Virginia for the story of The Bunny Man, a legend that began with genuine 1970 reports involving a mysterious man in a rabbit costume carrying a hatchet or axe. From those strange encounters grew Bunny Man Bridge, tales of escaped lunatics and an abandoned asylum, alleged murders and a midnight summoning ritual. Across three episodes, we separate the documented incidents from the mythology and follow the Bunny Man from newspaper reports and playground whispers into teenage legend-tripping and eventually the internet. THIS WEEK ON CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: JAYCEE DUGARD Carolyn Ossorio examines the devastating 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, who was just eleven years old when she was abducted near her South Lake Tahoe home and held captive for more than eighteen years. Joining Carolyn is legendary investigator Paul Holes for a conversation about the investigation, the evidence, the opportunities authorities missed and, most importantly, Jaycee’s extraordinary survival and reclamation of the life that was stolen from her. THIS WEEK ON THE SLIPPERY: THE DEADLY SECRET BEHIND WELCOME TO SWEETIE PIE’S Behind the family drama of the hit OWN reality series Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s was a crime more shocking than anything television producers could have manufactured. The Slippery examines how Tim Norman became the architect of a murder-for-hire plot targeting his own 21-year-old nephew, Andre Montgomery. Investigators from the FBI, ATF and local law enforcement eventually unraveled a trail of life-insurance policies, burner phones, cell-tower records, financial transactions and accomplices that exposed the machinery behind Andre’s murder. THIS WEEK IN HORROR: BLACK ZOMBIE Director Maya Annik Bedward’s documentary BLACK ZOMBIE travels beyond Hollywood’s flesh-eating undead to explore the zombie’s origins in Haitian history and spiritual tradition. Moving through films including White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead and The Serpent and the Rainbow, the documentary examines how a figure rooted in enslavement, stolen agency, resistance and survival was transformed into one of modern horror’s most recognizable monsters. Featuring historians, artists and horror figures including Tananarive Due and Tom Savini, BLACK ZOMBIE asks what was lost when Hollywood took the zombie out of Haiti—and what can be reclaimed by putting that history back. We close this week where we began: September 11, 2001. Remember the people who went to work and never came home, the passengers and flight crews, the firefighters climbing the stairs, the police officers and paramedics running toward danger, the passengers who fought back aboard Flight 93, and the families whose lives were forever divided into before and after. Life is short. Call somebody you love, take the trip, have the dinner, laugh too loudly, make something, and tell people what they mean to you while they are still here to hear it. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil’s Ledger and the entire Evio Creative lineup wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star rating and review. It remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover us. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief and more on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram, and send stories, tips and feedback to info@eviocreative.com. Never forget. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN The New Monsters: Alligators in the Sewers — Episode Three: The Monster Under Manhattan By 1980, the alligator had escaped. The legend that began with misplaced reptiles, a very real 1935 newspaper story and Teddy May’s extraordinary tales of an underground colony had finally crawled out of the sewers and into American popular culture. Hollywood was waiting. In the wonderfully excessive 1980 creature feature Alligator, a little girl brings home a baby alligator named Ramon. Her father eventually decides reptile ownership has run its course and flushes the animal down the toilet. Twelve years later, Ramon has survived beneath the city by eating discarded laboratory animals pumped full of experimental growth hormones. The adorable souvenir has become an enormous, man-eating monster. And the remarkable thing is that audiences barely needed the premise explained. By then, everybody knew the story. Baby alligator. Toilet. Sewer. Darkness. Monster. In the final episode of Alligators in the Sewers, we explore how one of America’s greatest urban legends escaped New York and became part of our shared cultural imagination. Robert Daley’s 1959 book The World Beneath the City gave Teddy May’s stories a permanent home. Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel V. populated Manhattan’s sewers with albino alligators. Books, newspapers and word of mouth continued adding details until ordinary abandoned pets had evolved into enormous, pale, blind creatures supposedly feeding on New York’s endless population of rats. By the 1970s, the city itself had become the perfect setting. Aging infrastructure, graffiti-covered subway cars, crime, disinvestment and the fiscal crisis transformed New York’s underground from a symbol of nineteenth-century engineering triumph into something darker. The tunnels beneath Manhattan became a place where anything might be hiding. Then Alligator gave the legend its monster movie. But reality has an irritating habit of occasionally helping folklore along. In 2001, a caiman appeared in Central Park’s Harlem Meer. In 2010, police found a young alligator beneath a parked car near a storm drain in Queens. And in 2023, workers discovered an emaciated four-foot alligator in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. None were evidence of some secret breeding colony beneath New York. They were almost certainly abandoned or escaped exotic pets. Which, of course, was exactly how the legend supposedly began. Nearly ninety years after East 123rd Street, New Yorkers were still finding alligators where alligators had absolutely no business being. And perhaps that is why this particular monster refuses to die. The sewer alligator was assembled from pieces of reality. Americans really did buy baby alligators. People really did abandon exotic pets. Crocodilians really have appeared in New York. Beneath the streets really does exist an enormous hidden geography of sewers, subway tunnels, utility corridors, buried waterways and infrastructure most of us will never see. Folklore simply connected those facts and populated the darkness between them. Today, New York has gone one step further and embraced the creature. In 2023, artist Alexander Klingspor’s NYC Legend placed an enormous bronze alligator atop a manhole cover in Union Square. The monster supposedly hunted beneath the city had finally returned to the surface as public art. First New York feared the alligator. Then it laughed at it. Eventually, it made the thing a mascot. And that may make the sewer alligator one of the prototypes for everything we’ve been exploring in The New Monsters. Long before Slender Man spread through internet forums, before the Backrooms became a collaboratively constructed online universe, and before millions of people analyzed pixels searching for the Fresno Nightcrawler, New Yorkers were already creating folklore in real time. They simply did it with newspapers, books, schoolyards and stories passed from one person to another. New York built an extraordinary artificial wilderness beneath itself. And every wilderness eventually gets a monster. NEXT TIME ON THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Next time, we leave Manhattan behind and head for the rapidly expanding suburbs of Northern Virginia, where another distinctly American monster emerged from an entirely different landscape. Our backdrop this time isn't the sewer. It's the suburb. In October 1970, police began receiving reports of a strange man wearing a rabbit costume who allegedly threatened people with an axe. Newspapers picked up the story. Then came another encounter. Over the decades, those incidents accumulated escaped mental patients, mutilated animals, murdered children and a lonely railroad overpass that generations of teenagers would eventually visit after dark. The strangest part of the Bunny Man legend isn't that much of what people believe about him never happened. It's that something really did happen first. Next time on The New Monsters: The Bunny Man. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode of The New Monsters. Rate & Review: Leave a five-star rating and review. It remains one of the most effective ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for full episodes, videos and exclusive content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us which modern monster you want us to investigate next. Stories, tips and strange encounters: info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN The New Monsters: Alligators in the Sewers — Episode Two: The Man Who Saw Them They kept seeing alligators. Sometime in the 1930s, New York sewer inspectors began returning from beneath the city with an increasingly ridiculous claim: there were alligators living beneath Manhattan. Their boss, Theodore “Teddy” May, had a more reasonable explanation. Whiskey. According to Robert Daley's 1959 book The World Beneath the City, May became convinced his workers had discovered somewhere underground to hide booze. He sent men to investigate. Nobody found the whiskey. But the alligator sightings continued. Eventually, Teddy May decided to descend into the sewers himself—and according to the story he later told, his flashlight swept across the water and revealed something he hadn't expected to see. Several alligators. In Episode Two of Alligators in the Sewers, The Devil Within heads back beneath 1930s New York to meet the men whose jobs took them into a hidden world most New Yorkers would never see. We explore what it was actually like to work inside Manhattan's enormous underground infrastructure, where sewer inspectors navigated brick tunnels by flashlight during the lowest-flow hours of the night. The dangers were very real: rapidly rising wastewater, powerful currents, blockages and deadly gases. And the things moving through those tunnels could be bizarre—barrels, Christmas trees, jewelry, false teeth, weapons and practically anything else New York managed to lose down a drain. Then we meet Teddy May. Part sewer worker, part foreman and apparently one hell of a storyteller, May would become the central figure in the sewer-alligator legend. His claims transformed the documented discovery of a single reptile beneath East Harlem into something much larger: an entire population living beneath Manhattan. And then, according to the legend, New York fought back. Daley's account describes an extraordinary extermination campaign in which sewer crews supposedly used poisoned food, powerful trunk-sewer currents and, in some versions, .22-caliber rifles to eliminate the animals. It's an irresistible image: Depression-era municipal workers disappearing through Manhattan manholes carrying flashlights and guns to hunt alligators beneath New York City. There's just one problem. The evidence for a citywide infestation—and the war supposedly waged against it—is considerably thinner than the story. No substantial contemporary municipal paper trail has emerged documenting an organized extermination campaign. What survives largely depends upon testimony recorded more than twenty years later. But folklore was already taking over. The ordinary reptiles of the earliest stories became pale, blind subterranean monsters, supposedly transformed by generations without sunlight and sustained by Manhattan's endless supply of rats. The biology doesn't work, but the mythology is perfect. An ordinary alligator beneath New York could simply be lost. A pale, blind alligator belonged there. This is the story of the men beneath the manholes, the raconteur who gave their stories life, and the moment an escaped exotic pet became something uniquely New York. This is The Man Who Saw Them. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: Leave a five-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for full episodes and exclusive video content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us what you think Teddy May really saw beneath Manhattan. Stories, tips and strange encounters: info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S LEDGER Week of September 8, 2026 MISTRIAL. After seven weeks of testimony and roughly 36 hours of deliberations, the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has ended with a hung jury in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Eleven jurors reportedly favored finding Clancy not criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children. One juror disagreed, and Judge William Sullivan ultimately declared a mistrial. So what happens now? Potentially, we do the whole thing again. A deadlocked jury generally does not trigger the double-jeopardy protection that would prevent prosecutors from retrying the case, leaving open the possibility of another trial, a negotiated resolution, or whatever comes next in a case that has already generated an extraordinary amount of public attention. We'll keep following it. In the meantime, I suppose we'll have to wait for whichever juror signs the first book deal. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK THE MASKED MENACE — CAUGHT Remember our masked friend from Philadelphia? A few weeks ago, we told you about a man roaming Center City Philadelphia in a disturbing white doll mask, approaching and chasing strangers and generally turning the morning commute into the opening ten minutes of a slasher movie. Now we have an ending. Authorities identified the suspect as 22-year-old Zymire Hughes, who police say harassed or terrorized more than fifteen people on August 12. In one particularly disturbing encounter, he allegedly approached a woman near JFK Boulevard and repeatedly asked her, “Are you ready to die?” Hughes subsequently traveled from the Philadelphia area to Orlando and then Las Vegas. Newly released body-camera footage shows Las Vegas police and U.S. Marshals closing in on an apartment where authorities believed he was hiding. On August 25, the Nevada Violent Offender Task Force surrounded the complex. Hughes came out. The mask did not. And perhaps the strangest detail of all is that investigators have suggested at least some of this behavior may have been intended for social-media content. Which raises the possibility that the mask wasn't worn because someone didn't want to be recognized. Maybe it was worn because he wanted to be watched. A generation ago, if somebody put on a horrifying mask and started chasing strangers through downtown Philadelphia, we'd ask: What the hell is wrong with this guy? In 2026, apparently we have to ask another question: Was he doing it for the algorithm? That's the Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: ALLIGATORS IN THE SEWERS This week's installment of The New Monsters deals with one of my favorite urban myths of all time. Growing up in Northern New Jersey, Manhattan was right across the river, and for a kid in the 1980s it represented both sides of the cultural coin. It was the stuff of dreams—hip-hop, graffiti, Basquiat, clubs and the feeling that practically everything interesting in America was happening over there. It was also the stuff of nightmares. This was the New York of Son of Sam, abandoned buildings, graffiti-covered subway cars and an underground world that seemed to begin at the bottom of every subway staircase and continue forever beneath Manhattan. And somewhere down there were the alligators. At least where I grew up, nobody presented this as folklore. Somebody bought a baby alligator in Florida, brought it back to New York, discovered that baby alligators have the annoying habit of becoming adult alligators, and flushed it down the toilet. Then it grew to twelve feet long beneath Manhattan and lived on rats. Obviously. The adults told us this stuff. We didn't invent it. This week on The New Monsters, we're breaking down where the legend came from, the real alligators discovered in New York, the bizarre trade in baby alligators as Florida souvenirs and the stories of legendary sewer superintendent Teddy May that helped turn an isolated reptile into an entire subterranean population. And here's the surprising part: It's not as crazy as you might think. The giant albino colonies are another matter. THIS WEEK ON CRIMINAL MISCHIEF BAD BLOOD: THE HATFIELDS AND THE McCOYS Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio rolls up her sleeves and heads into one of the most famous family feuds in American history: the Hatfields and the McCoys. Long before reality television discovered that Americans would happily spend an hour watching two families scream at one another, the Hatfields and McCoys were doing it with considerably higher stakes. The feud unfolded along the Kentucky–West Virginia border in the decades following the Civil War and became so deeply embedded in American folklore that the family names themselves became shorthand for any argument that has gone on so long nobody can quite remember why everyone is still angry. But beneath the mythology were real people, real politics, property disputes, murder and revenge. Carolyn separates the history from the caricature this week in Bad Blood, on Criminal Mischief. THIS WEEK ON THE SLIPPERY Scott and Nancy are taking the Labor Day holiday off this week, no doubt researching another scammer, fraudster or human-shaped warning label whose story will eventually have you stopping halfway through the episode to Google: “Wait... is this actually real?” They'll be back next week. Hang in there. THIS WEEK IN HORROR ONSLAUGHT This week in horror, ONSLAUGHT, the new R-rated action-horror movie from director Adam Wingard, gives us an Army sniper veteran forced to unleash everything she knows when a rogue squad of genetically engineered super-soldiers threatens her young daughter. And if that sounds gloriously like somebody discovered an unproduced screenplay behind a Blockbuster Video in 1989 and decided to spend actual money making it nearly four decades later, you understand why it made this week's Ledger. Genetically engineered super-soldiers. Army sniper mom. Dan Stevens. Michael freaking Biehn. I'm not sure what else you people want from me. Onslaught is in theaters now. ACROSS THE EVIO UNIVERSE That's it for this week's Devil's Ledger. Happy September, everybody. We survived August, Labor Day is behind us, football is back, playoff baseball is approaching, and somewhere out there somebody has already ordered a pumpkin-spice latte while it's still ninety-four degrees outside. Hang in there. Fall is coming. Follow your favorite Evio shows wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a 5-star rating and review, and subscribe to the Evio Creative YouTube channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss what's coming next. We'll see you on The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, The Slippery and everywhere else we're telling stories this week. We'll see you across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL WITHIN The New Monsters: Alligators in the Sewers — Episode One: Beneath the City On February 9, 1935, three teenagers shoveling snow into an open manhole on East 123rd Street reportedly discovered something moving beneath the ice. An alligator. The following morning, The New York Times carried the headline “ALLIGATOR FOUND IN UPTOWN SEWER.” The animal was reportedly seven to eight feet long, weighed roughly 125 pounds and had been dragged from beneath East Harlem using a makeshift noose fashioned from clothesline. Whatever happened on that winter afternoon, the story gave one of America's greatest urban legends something most legends can only dream of: a date, an address and witnesses. But before we can hunt alligators beneath Manhattan, we have to understand how an entire hidden world came to exist beneath New York in the first place. In Episode One of our latest New Monsters investigation, we descend into the history of the city beneath the city—from Manhattan's vanished streams and polluted Collect Pond to overflowing cesspools, cholera epidemics and the massive nineteenth-century engineering projects that transformed New York. The arrival of Croton water in 1842 helped create a new problem on an enormous scale: all that water eventually had to go somewhere. The solution was a vast network of brick-lined sewers constructed beneath a rapidly expanding metropolis. Then we head south to the Sunshine State, where Florida's booming tourist industry once offered visitors a souvenir that would be almost unimaginable today: living baby alligators. They were cute, exotic and small enough to bring home. Unfortunately, alligators possess the irritating habit of becoming considerably larger alligators. And that's where the legend gives us the image that has survived for generations: the unwanted pet disappearing down the toilet and into the sewers below. The plumbing makes that particular scenario considerably more complicated than folklore suggests. The biology is even less cooperative; New York's cold underground environment is a miserable place for an alligator to establish a permanent home. Yet the reptile reportedly discovered in 1935 was real enough to make headlines—and that was all the story needed. Finally, we meet Teddy May, the New York sewer worker whose stories would transform one misplaced reptile into something much larger. More than twenty years later, writer Robert Daley recorded May's extraordinary claims in The World Beneath the City: according to May, there hadn't been just one alligator beneath Manhattan. There were dozens. Was there really a colony living beneath New York? Were unwanted Florida souvenirs somehow surviving underground? And how did ordinary reptiles eventually become the enormous, pale, blind sewer monsters generations of Americans grew up hearing about? Welcome to Alligators in the Sewers. Welcome back to The New Monsters. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode of The New Monsters. Rate & Review: Leave us a five-star rating and review. It remains one of the most important ways you can help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for full episodes, videos and exclusive content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us which modern monster we should investigate next. Stories, tips and strange encounters: info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Fresno Nightcrawler: Proof of Something There was a brief period when we thought cameras were going to solve everything. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Fresno Nightcrawler: The Internet Gives It Legs One unexplained video can be dismissed as an anomaly. A second changes the equation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Fresno Nightcrawler: Something Walked Across the Lawn Something strange crossed a Fresno lawn after dark, and a security camera was there to see it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S LEDGER Week of August 30, 2026 Mother Nature reminds us who's in charge, a Colombian “sorcerer” faces the horrifying consequences of a healing ritual, The Fresno Nightcrawler walks into The New Monsters, Carolyn Ossorio investigates the murder of Dee Warner, and The Slippery opens the mailbag and reveals what they're working on next. Then, in This Week in Horror, we enter the deeply deranged children's television nightmare of Buddy. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE SORCERER OF LIBORINA This week's story takes us back to 2021 and rural Antioquia, Colombia, where a 31-year-old mother of four sought spiritual healing from a man known as the Sorcerer of Liborina. According to prosecutors, Martín Rangel Londoño Jaramillo covered the woman with a homemade mixture containing alcohol, sulfur and camphor before setting fire to the substance as part of the ritual. The woman suffered burns across approximately 70 percent of her body. Investigators allege that instead of immediately seeking emergency treatment, the Sorcerer sent her home with an herbal remedy. She eventually reached a hospital in Medellín but died about a week later. Authorities subsequently arrested Londoño Jaramillo on a murder charge; he denied the accusations. It's a disturbing reminder of an ancient human vulnerability: when we're suffering, we'll sometimes place extraordinary trust in anyone who promises they can make the suffering stop. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN Our journey through The New Monsters continues with one of the internet age's strangest cryptids: The Fresno Nightcrawler. It begins with grainy security footage from Fresno, California, showing a pale, impossibly thin figure seemingly composed almost entirely of legs walking across a lawn in the middle of the night. The footage raised far more questions than it answered—and then the Nightcrawler received the one thing every aspiring cryptid needs if it hopes to become genuine folklore: A second sighting. Hear the incredible story of the Fresno Nightcrawler this week on The Devil Within. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF Carolyn Ossorio investigates the disappearance and murder of Dee Warner, a Michigan mother of five who vanished from her property in 2021 following an argument with her husband, Dale. Years of searching ultimately led investigators back to the property, where Dee's remains were discovered concealed inside a fertilizer tank. Dale Warner was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence. Carolyn takes us through the disappearance, the investigation and the breakthrough that finally revealed what happened to Dee. THE SLIPPERY Scott and Nancy revisit several stories they've covered so far, bringing us new developments, unanswered questions and cases that weren't nearly as finished as they appeared. They'll also take us behind the scenes to reveal what's currently being investigated—including a new cancer scammer series coming this fall—before opening the mailbag to respond to your comments, questions and observations about the show. THIS WEEK IN HORROR: BUDDY Director Casper Kelly, the wonderfully warped mind behind Too Many Cooks, brings us Buddy, a supernatural black comedy starring Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace and Michael Shannon, with Patton Oswalt and Keegan-Michael Key joining the madness. The premise? A group of children become trapped inside an aggressively cheerful 1990s-style television show hosted by a giant bright-orange unicorn named Buddy. The songs are catchy, the colors are bright, the life lessons are plentiful—and then Buddy decides his young friends aren't leaving. It's childhood nostalgia fed through a wood chipper, and frankly, we're in. Listen & Follow: Follow all of the shows in the Evio Creative universe wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: If you love what you're hearing, leave a five-star rating and review. It makes a real difference in helping new listeners discover the shows. Watch & Subscribe: Watch episodes and clips on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss what's coming next. Goodbye, August. September, please behave yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Eyes of Fear The New Monsters – Story Five, Episode Three Why do monsters survive in an age of science? Why do ancient fears continue to evolve in a world filled with smartphones, surveillance cameras, artificial intelligence, and instant access to information? And why, after nearly thirty years, do people still report encounters with the Black-Eyed Children? In the concluding chapter of this three-part investigation, The Devil Within moves beyond eyewitness accounts and paranormal speculation to explore a more fascinating question: why do stories like this refuse to die? This week, Branden Morgan examines the remarkable science behind memory, intuition, and eyewitness testimony, revealing why the human brain is far more sophisticated—and far less reliable—than most of us realize. Are the Black-Eyed Children evidence of something supernatural? Could they be the product of suggestion, folklore, and the extraordinary way our minds reconstruct emotionally charged experiences? Or does the truth lie somewhere between those two possibilities? As the investigation unfolds, we discover that the legend's greatest strength may have nothing to do with black eyes at all. Instead, it lies in a deeply familiar human experience: the unsettling feeling that something is wrong long before we can explain why. It is a sensation nearly everyone has experienced at some point in life—a warning whispered by instinct before conscious thought has assembled the evidence. The episode then widens its lens to examine the evolution of modern mythology itself. From the changelings of Celtic folklore to vampires, fairies, ghost children, and finally the Black-Eyed Children, every civilization has created stories about strangers who appear almost human while violating some deeply rooted expectation of what it means to be safe. These legends are less about proving the supernatural than preserving emotional truths that transcend generations. As The Black-Eyed Children comes to its haunting conclusion, the series also completes the first chapter of The New Monsters. Together, these stories have explored the fears that define our age. The Frogman reflected our growing anxiety over environmental collapse. The Montauk Monster embodied our suspicion of powerful institutions. Slender Man demonstrated that mythology can now be created collaboratively by millions of strangers. The Backrooms transformed the architecture of modern life into the haunted houses of the twenty-first century. And now, The Black-Eyed Children ask perhaps the oldest question of all: Can we still trust what appears familiar? Because every generation creates its own monsters. But the greatest monsters have never been the creatures lurking in the darkness. They've always been the ones standing in the light. Next time on The New Monsters, we investigate one of the strangest pieces of modern cryptid folklore ever captured on camera. A grainy security video from Fresno, California appears to show an impossible figure walking calmly across a suburban lawn. No arms. No visible torso. Just two impossibly long white legs gliding effortlessly through the darkness. Could it be a camera hoax? An elaborate costume? Or the birth of another modern monster? Join us as we investigate The Fresno Nightcrawler. 🎧 Listen & Follow Listen to The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow so you never miss an episode. ⭐ Rate & Review If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please leave a 5-star rating and review. It helps more listeners discover the show and supports independent storytelling. 📺 Watch on YouTube Watch full episodes, companion visuals, exclusive documentaries, and behind-the-scenes content on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. 📱 Join the Conversation Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, and tell us what you think. Have you experienced something strange? Is there a modern monster or urban legend you'd like us to investigate? We'd love to hear from you. 📧 Share Your Story Have an unexplained encounter, local legend, or mysterious experience? Email us anytime at info@eviocreative.com. Your story could inspire a future episode of The Devil Within. 👹 New Episodes Every Week Because folklore never dies... it simply finds a new generation to believe in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The New Monsters: The Black-Eyed Children - Part Two The Children at the Door They never break in. They never force the door. They simply ask. In the second chapter of The Black-Eyed Children, Branden Morgan investigates one of the most unsettling patterns in modern paranormal folklore. Following journalist Brian Bethel's now- famous encounter in Texas, reports of eerily similar experiences began surfacing across NorthAmerica. Different witnesses. Different cities. Different decades. Yet the stories shared an astonishing number of details. Two children. Late at night. Perfectly polite. An overwhelming sense that something is terribly wrong. And one simple request. "May we come inside?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The New Monsters: The Black-Eyed Children - Part One Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
THE DEVIL’S LEDGER Week of August 24, 2026 It is still freakin’ August. This week on The Devil’s Ledger, we surrender to the heat and turn our attention toward masked lunatics, black-eyed children, Victorian blackmail, spectacular fraud, and another trip into a supernatural dimension that desperately needs better lighting. We begin with The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week: The Chucky Mask Spree. Philadelphia police say a masked man targeted at least half a dozen people during a bizarre early-morning spree, including a 40-year-old jogger whom he allegedly chased after asking whether she was ready to die. Surveillance cameras captured the suspect wearing a Chucky-style doll mask—and investigators noticed that beneath it he appeared to be wearing another black face covering. Fictional monsters are considerably less entertaining when someone decides to wear their face in the real world. 👹 THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN The New Monsters continues with The Black-Eyed Children, one of the internet age’s most unsettling urban legends. They appear outside homes, beside cars and on lonely streets asking for help—and eventually asking to be allowed inside. Then their victims notice the eyes: completely black. We trace the origins of the legend, how the stories spread across the internet, and the much older piece of folklore hiding beneath them: the idea that evil sometimes requires an invitation. This week on The Devil Within: The New Monsters — The Black-Eyed Children. 🔎 THIS WEEK ON CRIMINAL MISCHIEF Carolyn Ossorio trades true crime for the original master detective with a special reading of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia.” First published in 1891, the story introduces Irene Adler, the extraordinary woman who manages to do what remarkably few characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon ever accomplish: outmaneuver Holmes himself. Royalty, romance, blackmail, disguises and one dangerously important photograph send Holmes and Watson into one of Doyle’s cleverest adventures. Pour yourself something appropriate, settle in and prepare for a trip to 221B Baker Street. And yes, we’re allowing Carolyn to attempt the accents. We may regret this. 💰 THIS WEEK ON THE SLIPPERY Meet Lacy Johnson, a woman accused of approaching fraud less like a specialty and more like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Her alleged schemes ranged from faking a life-threatening cancer diagnosis and operating a bogus charity purportedly supporting American troops to identity theft, financial manipulation and even burglarizing and vandalizing the home of a former employer. Her most devastating alleged cons, however, were reserved for the people who believed they were closest to her: romantic partners who discovered that intimacy itself could become another tool for extracting money. It’s The Relentless Hustle of Lyin’ Lacy Johnson, this week on The Slippery. 🎬 THIS WEEK IN HORROR We’re heading back into The Further with Insidious: Out of the Further, the sixth installment in the Insidious franchise. This time, Gemma discovers she possesses the ability to enter The Further—and, considerably less conveniently, bring things back with her. Naturally, the inhabitants of that purgatorial nightmare eventually realize what she can do. Lin Shaye also returns as Elise Rainier, continuing her admirable refusal to allow something as trivial as death to interfere with steady employment. Sometimes you want elevated horror examining grief, trauma and the existential uncertainty of human existence. Sometimes you want demons. This week, we’re going with demons. 🎧 LISTEN & FOLLOW Listen to The Devil’s Ledger and your favorite shows from Evio Creative wherever you get your podcasts. Hit Follow so every new episode lands automatically in your feed—and you never miss what’s happening across the Evio Universe. ⭐ RATE & REVIEW If you’re enjoying the shows, leave us a 5-star rating and review. It takes less than a minute, costs absolutely nothing, and remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover Evio Creative. 📺 WATCH & SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE Watch full episodes, original video, clips, visual evidence and more from across the network on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you know the moment something new drops. 👹 JOIN THE EVIO UNIVERSE Follow @eviocreative and @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for new episodes, clips, behind-the-scenes material and everything happening across the Evio Universe. 📧 STORIES, TIPS & FEEDBACK Have a creepy story? A criminal case we should investigate? A con artist we somehow missed? Send your stories, tips, case suggestions and feedback to info@eviocreative.com. August continues. Apparently forever. Stay cool, drink some water, don’t invite any black-eyed children into your house, and we’ll see you somewhere this week across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Haunted Houses We Built The New Monsters – Story Four, Episode Three Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Things That Wait Between the Walls The New Monsters – Backrooms, Part Two Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
You Have Been Here Before The New Monsters – Story Four, Episode One What if the most terrifying place you've ever imagined isn't a haunted mansion, an abandoned asylum, or a forgotten cemetery? What if it's an office building? This week on The Devil Within, Branden Morgan begins a new three-part investigation into one of the internet's most extraordinary pieces of modern folklore: The Backrooms. What started as a single anonymous photograph posted online in 2019 quickly became a global phenomenon, inspiring millions of people to ask an unsettling question: "Why does this place feel so familiar?" Unlike the monsters we've explored throughout The New Monsters, the Backrooms have no ancient legend, no centuries of oral tradition, and no historical eyewitness accounts stretching back through time. Instead, they represent something entirely new—a mythology born from architecture itself. In this first chapter, we trace the mysterious origins of the now-famous photograph and examine the surprising psychology behind liminal spaces. Why do empty airports after midnight, deserted shopping malls, abandoned school hallways, and silent office buildings evoke such powerful feelings of unease? Why do so many people insist they've experienced the Backrooms long before they ever heard the name? Along the way, we explore the concept of "no-clipping," the language of modern video games that gave birth to one of the internet's most enduring horror concepts, and discover why the Backrooms resonate so deeply with a generation raised in a world of fluorescent lights, endless hallways, and anonymous commercial spaces. This isn't merely the story of an internet meme. It's the story of how an ordinary photograph revealed something extraordinary about the human mind—and how the buildings we constructed for efficiency may have accidentally become the haunted houses of the twenty-first century. Next week, the empty hallways won't remain empty for long. Thousands of strangers begin expanding the mythology, creating new levels, impossible creatures, explorer journals, survival guides, and one of the richest collaborative horror universes ever assembled online. We'll explore how the internet transformed a single unsettling image into an entire ecosystem of modern folklore, and why every civilization eventually feels compelled to populate its nightmares. 🎧 Listen & Follow Listen to The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow so you never miss an episode. ⭐ Rate & Review If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please leave a 5-star rating and review. It helps more listeners discover the show and supports independent storytelling. 📺 Watch on YouTube Watch full episodes, companion visuals, and exclusive content on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. 📱 Join the Conversation Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube @thedevilwithinpod, and tell us what you think. Have you experienced something strange? Have a local legend you'd like us to investigate? We'd love to hear from you. 📧 Share Your Story Email us anytime at info@eviocreative.com. Your story could inspire a future episode of The Devil Within. 👹 New Episodes Every Week Because every civilization invents monsters... and we're still creating ours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Devil's Ledger — Week of August 17, 2026 The universe put on one hell of a show this week. We begin with Spain's spectacular August 12 solar eclipse and humanity's long, occasionally unhinged relationship with watching the sun disappear. For The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, we travel from ancient Greece—where an eclipse could signal that the gods had essentially abandoned humanity—to Choctaw stories of a giant black squirrel attempting to devour the sun and Vietnamese legends of a celestial frog swallowing it whole. And apparently scientific literacy hasn't completely saved us. Modern eclipse superstitions warn of poisoned food, birthday curses and even the possibility that washing your hair during an eclipse could somehow affect your sanity. Three thousand years ago we feared an angry god had extinguished the sun. Today we're worried about the potato salad. Progress remains uneven. Then, across the Evio Universe this week: On The Devil Within, The New Monsters continues with The Backrooms, the internet-born nightmare built around the idea that reality itself has seams. Slip through the wrong one and you could find yourself trapped inside an apparently endless maze of yellow wallpaper, stained carpeting, fluorescent lights and empty rooms. What began as an unsettling image evolved into an enormous collaborative mythology of levels, entities, rules and stories—and ultimately escaped the internet into games, movies and mainstream popular culture. On Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio breaks down the extraordinary new developments surrounding Luigi Mangione. Following his federal guilty plea in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, attention now turns toward New York's pending murder case and an increasingly important question: double jeopardy. Federal and state governments are generally treated as separate sovereigns under federal constitutional law, while New York provides additional statutory protections against successive prosecutions. Carolyn examines what Mangione's plea means, what it doesn't mean, and why the next major battle may happen before another jury ever hears the case. On The Slippery, we meet Olga Rutterschmidt and Helen Golay, the elderly Los Angeles women whose apparent efforts to help unhoused men concealed an astonishing insurance scheme. Prosecutors established that the pair befriended vulnerable men, obtained numerous life-insurance policies on them and eventually murdered Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid in staged hit-and-run incidents before collecting millions in insurance proceeds. The scheme began unraveling when one detective overheard another discussing a suspicious death and remembered an eerily similar case. The same two women appeared in both files. From there came insurance investigators, undercover operations and the slow dismantling of an extraordinary criminal enterprise. And This Week in Horror, we're talking Ice Cream Man, Eli Roth's gleefully deranged throwback to the excesses of 1980s horror: an idyllic summer town, a mysterious ice cream man and frozen treats capable of turning children into homicidal killers. It's bloody, ridiculous and precisely the sort of movie that understands sometimes the best horror premise begins by taking something completely innocent and ruining it forever. So keep looking toward the stars, enjoy these final weeks of summer, and we'll see you somewhere this week across the Evio Universe. 🎧 LISTEN & FOLLOW Follow The Devil's Ledger and the entire Evio Creative lineup wherever you get your podcasts. Hit Follow on the shows you love so new episodes land automatically in your feed. ⭐ RATE & REVIEW Enjoying what we're doing? Leave your favorite Evio shows a 5-star rating and review. Ratings and reviews remain one of the most powerful ways to help independent podcasts reach new listeners—and they take less than a minute. 📺 WATCH & SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE Go deeper into the stories with full episodes, video podcasts, clips, original imagery and more on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss what's coming next across the network. 👹 JOIN THE EVIO UNIVERSE Follow @eviocreative and @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram for new episodes, clips, behind-the-scenes material, upcoming stories and everything happening across the network. 📧 STORIES, TIPS & FEEDBACK Have a story we should investigate? A case we somehow missed? Something creepy, criminal, inexplicable or simply too strange to ignore? Send your stories, tips and suggestions to info@eviocreative.com. Until next week, stay curious, keep looking toward the stars, and we'll see you somewhere across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
When the Story Drew Blood The New Monsters : Slender Man - Part Three Some stories entertain us. Others change us. This week's episode of The Devil Within explores the moment when one of the internet's most famous legends collided with the real world, forever changing how we think about digital folklore, childhood, and the stories we tell ourselves. In May of 2014, two twelve-year-old girls led their best friend into the woods outside Waukesha, Wisconsin, believing they were acting on behalf of Slender Man. The shocking attack dominated headlines around the world and immediately sparked fears that an internet horror story had somehow escaped the screen. But as investigators, psychologists, and psychiatrists began examining the case, a far more complicated picture emerged. This episode follows that investigation—not to sensationalize a tragedy, but to understand it. We separate documented psychiatric evidence from public speculation, exploring how mythology, mental illness, childhood development, and the digital world intersected in ways that defied the simple explanations so many desperately wanted. From courtroom testimony and psychological evaluations to the broader cultural aftermath, we examine why Slender Man became much more than an internet character. He became a case study in how modern folklore spreads, how vulnerable minds can incorporate cultural symbols into delusional beliefs, and why stories have always reflected the fears of the societies that create them. The journey doesn't end in Waukesha. We follow Slender Man's transformation from internet horror icon into a subject of academic research, documentaries, and popular culture, asking what historians may one day conclude about the first monster humanity watched being born in real time. Ultimately, this isn't a story about whether Slender Man was real. It's about the very real power of stories, the responsibility we carry as storytellers, and the timeless human instinct to search for meaning in places where certainty is impossible. Next week, The New Monsters turns away from creatures entirely and steps into a place that has never existed—and yet somehow feels hauntingly familiar. It begins with a single photograph of an empty office hallway. No blood. No ghost. No monster. Just fluorescent lights, stained carpeting, and the unsettling feeling that you've been there before. Welcome to The Backrooms, where the internet didn't create a monster... It created a memory. 🎧 Listen & Follow Listen to The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow so you never miss an episode. ⭐ Rate & Review If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please leave a 5-star rating and review. It helps more listeners discover the show and supports independent storytelling. 📺 Watch on YouTube Watch full episodes, companion visuals, and exclusive content on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. 📱 Join the Conversation Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube @thedevilwithinpod, and tell us what you think. Have you experienced something strange? Have a local legend you'd like us to investigate? We'd love to hear from you. 📧 Share Your Story Email us anytime at info@eviocreative.com. Your story could inspire a future episode of The Devil Within. 👹 New Episodes Every Week Because every civilization invents monsters... and we're still creating ours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
When Fiction Escaped the Screen The New Monsters – Story Three, Episode Two Every legend eventually reaches a moment when it no longer belongs to the person who created it. King Arthur escaped the poets who first imagined Camelot. Dracula grew far beyond Bram Stoker's novel. Frankenstein's creature became more famous than Victor Frankenstein himself. Stories survive because generations of strangers decide they're worth retelling. In this week's episode of The Devil Within, Branden Morgan explores the extraordinary moment when that same process unfolded before our eyes. Just days after Eric Knudsen introduced Slender Man to the internet, thousands of artists, writers, filmmakers, gamers, and ordinary people began adding pieces to the mythology. No studio coordinated the effort. No publisher managed the continuity. Instead, millions of strangers unknowingly collaborated on what became history's first truly open-source monster. The journey takes us from the Something Awful forums to Marble Hornets, the groundbreaking YouTube series that transformed viewers into investigators and proved that horror could thrive not through expensive special effects, but through participation. Along the way, we examine why the internet accelerated folklore in ways no civilization had ever experienced before, compressing a process that once required centuries into only a few months. But beneath the story of Slender Man lies a much larger question. What happens when technology allows millions of people to create the same myth together? Perhaps the internet didn't change human nature at all. Perhaps it simply became the newest campfire around which we gather to tell stories. Next week, the series reaches its devastating conclusion as fiction collides with reality in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Two twelve-year-old girls commit one of the most shocking crimes of the digital age after convincing themselves they must prove their loyalty to Slender Man. The case horrified the world and forced psychologists, investigators, journalists, and parents to confront a question that remains deeply unsettling: Can a fictional monster bear responsibility for real-world violence, or does the answer reveal something far more disturbing about ourselves? The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. 🎧 Listen & Follow Listen to The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to follow so you never miss an episode. ⭐ Rate & Review If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please leave a 5-star rating and review. It helps more listeners discover the show and supports independent storytelling. 📺 Watch on YouTube Watch full episodes, companion visuals, and exclusive content on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. 📱 Join the Conversation Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube @thedevilwithinpod, and tell us what you think. Have you experienced something strange? Have a local legend you'd like us to investigate? We'd love to hear from you. 📧 Share Your Story Email us anytime at info@eviocreative.com. Your story could inspire a future episode of The Devil Within. 👹 New Episodes Every Week Because every civilization invents monsters... and we're still creating ours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices