Paranormal Episodes

In the early 1800s, the Bell farm in Adams, Tennessee became ground zero for one of America’s most famous hauntings. The family reported phantom knocks, strange animals on the property, disembodied voices that argued theology, and physical attacks focused on young Betsy Bell. Some said the entity called itself Kate, and that it hated John Bell enough to claim his death as its own work. This episode of 50 States of Folklore walks through the Bell Witch case using first person accounts, neighbor ...

In February 1855, villagers in Devon, England woke to find a continuous trail of cloven hoof marks stamped into fresh snow. The prints marched across fields and rivers, climbed walls and rooftops, and stretched for miles with no sign of an animal that could have made them. Newspapers dubbed the phenomenon the Devil’s Footprints, and the mystery has never fully melted away. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit m...

On a remote Afghan mountainside, a US military unit enters a cave and, according to the story, meets something that does not belong in the twenty first century at all. This episode digs into the modern legend of the Giant of Kandahar, a red haired, man eating giant said to stand more than twelve feet tall, wielding a spear and moving with impossible strength before being brought down in a firefight. We set the tale in the wider history of giant stories from the region, examine the details of th...

The kraken is the sea monster that refuses to stay in storybooks. Sailors once spoke of a creature so vast it could be mistaken for an island, with tentacles long enough to drag entire ships under. In this episode, Midnight Signals traces the evolution of the kraken from early Scandinavian lore and ship logs to modern science that has finally confirmed giant squid hunting in the dark zones of the ocean. We look at classic reports of vanished vessels, sailors who claimed to see living storms ris...