In 1692, an enslaved woman named Tituba told a Salem courtroom that the Devil had come to her and bid her serve him. Her confession lit the fuse that would become known as the infamous Salem witch trials, the deadliest witch hunt in American history. 

Within months, more than a third of Salem Village had been accused, imprisoned and were awaiting trial. Nineteen people were hanged. One man was pressed to death under stones for refusing to plead. And a four-year-old girl sat in custom-made shackles while her accusers watched.

But this is not really a story about witches. It is a story about mass hysteria, and how a Puritan community primed by centuries of European witch hunting, religious paranoia and moral surveillance convinced itself to kill its own neighbours on the strength of spectral evidence: testimony that someone's ghost attacked you in the night.

We trace the strange true story from Cotton Mather's witchcraft playbook to the witch cake, the Devil's book, the confessions that saved lives, and the moment the accusations reached the governor's wife and the whole thing collapsed. Plus the surprising link between Salem and our home town of Norwich.

• what caused the Salem witch trials

• Tituba's confession and why it changed everything

• spectral evidence and why no alibi could save you

• the witch cake ritual and the first three accused

• the arrest of four-year-old Dorothy Good

• Giles Corey's death by pressing and his final strategy

• how the accusations reached the governor's wife and ended the trials

• the 330-year fight to clear every victim's name

• the Norwich connection to Bridget Bishop

A cartel, burner phones, hundreds of shoeboxes stuffed with cash, and barrels secretly refilled with pond water. The Great Canadian Maple Syrup heist that hit Quebec across 2011 and 2012 remains the biggest theft in Canadian history, and it all came undone when an inspector climbed a stack of barrels and felt one wobble beneath his feet.

What he uncovered was unbelievable,  more than 10,000 barrels' worth of fine grade Cadian Maple Syrup had been siphoned from the FPAQ's strategic maple syrup reserve.  Just like that $18 million just disapeard from under the nose of the legal cartel that controled most of the world's delicious sticky supply. 

Today we follow how a insider tip became the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, how a crew of barrel rollers, truckers and exporters kept it running for ten months, and how, as it always does, greed and sloppiness unravelled everything, dragging the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. 

Along the way we explore how amazingly Big Syrup in Canada is nothing more than a cartel1? who knew! From manufactured scarcity, black-market syrup dealers, a Mafia defence that spectacularly backfired, and stolen syrup that may well have ended up on your pancakes. 

A strange true story where true crime meets breakfast.

• what happened in the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

• how the FPAQ became Quebec's legal maple syrup cartel

• the wobbling barrel that exposed the theft

• how the gang siphoned syrup and refilled barrels with pond water

• the crew behind the heist, from the insider to the barrel rollers

• how greed and sloppiness unravelled the operation

• the trials, the Mafia defence, and the Supreme Court appeal

• where the stolen syrup ended up

In 2016, five members of the Tromp family fled their farm in a single car, leaving behind their passports, credit cards and mobile phones. Why they fled remains one of Australia's greatest modern mysteries—a mystery that not even the Tromp family can fully explain.

Over the following week, the family scattered across two states. One son, Mitchell, abandoned the journey and caught a train home. Two daughters, Riana and Ella, stole a car near the Jenolan Caves before reporting their own parents missing more than 100 miles away. Riana was later found catatonic in the back of a stranger's pickup truck. Their mother, Jacoba, turned up wandering the streets of Yass, while their father, Mark, disappeared into bushland.

Today, we retrace the family's bizarre road trip, examine the many theories—from contaminated water and cults to supernatural cave spirits—and explore the explanation psychologists keep returning to: “folie à deux”, the rare condition in which one person's delusions spread to those closest to them. It's a remarkable true story about just how fragile—and contagious—the human mind can be.

• what happened in the Tromp family disappearance

• the empty farm, the abandoned passports and the missing Peugeot

• the frantic drive north and the phone thrown from the window

• the Jenolan Caves and the folklore surrounding them

• why the family scattered one by one across two states

• Riana found catatonic in a stranger's pickup

• the theories, from farm chemicals to cults to cave spirits

• folie à deux and the science of shared psychosis

• the Eriksson twins and other real cases of shared delusion

• how the Tromps were found and what they said afterwards

Taylor Parker had already been caught in one impossible lie: she claimed she had given birth on the side of a highway, but doctors quickly realised she had not been pregnant at all.

In Part 2 of the Taylor Parker case, we go behind the fake pregnancy and into the years of deception prosecutors said led to the murder of Reagan Hancock and the death of Braxlynn Sage. This is the part of the story where the scattered lies start to form a pattern: invented illnesses, fake inheritances, forged paperwork, spoofed phone calls, false identities, and a relationship with Wade Griffin built inside a world Taylor had manufactured around him.

Then the story moves into the crime scene, the investigation, and the Taylor Parker trial, where prosecutors argued this was not confusion, panic, or a tragic misunderstanding, but calculated deception carried to its most horrific conclusion.

A restrained but deeply unsettling true crime story about fantasy, control, and the moment a lie becomes too dangerous to survive.

Topics Included

• the Taylor Parker case part two

• the fake pregnancy and Wade Griffin deception

• forged paperwork, fake identities, and invented inheritances

• Reagan Hancock and the final escalation

• the foetal abduction of Braxlynn Sage

• Jessica Brookes’ discovery of the crime scene

• Taylor Parker’s changing explanations after arrest

• the trial evidence and death sentence

• jailhouse schemes and fake confession letters

• why Reagan and Braxlynn remain the centre of the story

Resources and Further Reading

• Parker v. State of Texas - Justia 

• Taylor-Parker-Probable-Cause-Affidavit - Document Cloud 

• Texas woman sentenced - CNN 

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox

• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts

• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast

• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com

• Support us: Sign up to Patreon

• We’re Hiring: Find the perfect job at the circus

A woman is pulled over on a Texas highway with a newborn baby in her lap, covered in blood, claiming she has just given birth behind the wheel. But when Taylor Parker reaches hospital, the story begins to fall apart.

In part one of the Taylor Parker case, we follow the strange and escalating trail of fake pregnancy claims, inheritance lies, family sabotage, burner phones, alleged threats, arson, a multimillion-dollar ranch deal and a relationship with Wade Gryphon that becomes tangled in one impossible story after another. At the centre of it all is Parker’s need to keep the people around her believing that her fantasy life is real.

But while Taylor and Wade are counting down to the arrival of “Clancy Gale”, another young woman, Reagan Hancock, is preparing for her own baby. And by the time the truth emerges, this true crime story has already crossed into something far darker: a foetal abduction case that no one around Parker saw coming.

Topics Included

• Taylor Parker and the fake pregnancy claim

• Wade Gryphon and the relationship at the centre of the story

• The alleged Blackburn Syrup inheritance

• Shona Prior and the mother-daughter sabotage narrative

• Fake documents, messages, phone calls and threats

• The Pecan Point ranch deal

• Pregnancy doubts, ultrasounds and the gender reveal

• Reagan Hancock and her connection to Taylor

• The roadside birth claim on Highway 82

• The discovery that the baby was not Taylor’s

Resources and Further Reading

• Parker v. State of Texas - Justia 

• Taylor-Parker-Probable-Cause-Affidavit - Document Cloud 

• Texas woman sentenced - CNN 

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox

• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts

• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast

• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com

• Support us: Sign up to Patreon

• We’re Hiring: Find the perfect job at the circus

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

Two sisters made a pact to stop speaking to the world, together they build a private language, wrote strange fiction, and ventured out into a life crime spree that ended with them being locked inside Broadmoor, Britains most notorious psychiatric hospital.

Now to the world as The Silent Twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, became one of Britain’s strangest and saddest true stories. Born to Barbadian parents and raised in Wales, the girls withdrew after years of speech difficulties, bullying, racism, and a bond so intense it became impossible to escape. They spoke only to each other, moved almost as one. Isolated from the world the twins poured their real personalities into plays, diaries, poems and novels, including June’s cult outsider book The Pepsi-Cola Addict.

But the world outside their bedroom eventually came calling. Alcohol, boys, vandalism and arson led to court, psychiatric evaluation, and a sentence to Broadmoor Hospital that the twins badly misunderstood. What followed was more than a strange true story. It was a dark history of selective mutism, institutional failure, media sensationalism, and a final pact that seemed to end only when Jennifer Gibbons died.

Topics Included

• June and Jennifer Gibbons

• why the Silent Twins stopped speaking

• selective mutism and twin language

• bullying, racism and isolation in Wales

• Kathy Arthur and the attempt to separate the twins

• The Pepsi-Cola Addict and the twins’ writing

• the 1981 crime spree and arson charges

• Broadmoor Hospital and institutional failure

• Marjorie Wallace and the campaign to help them

• Jennifer Gibbons’ death and June’s life afterwards

Genie Wiley was locked away for thirteen years, but rescue was only the beginning of one of psychology’s most haunting cases.

This episode follows the story of Genie Wiley, a child kept in near-total isolation, deprived of language, movement, comfort and the outside world until she was discovered at thirteen. Her case became a landmark in debates around language acquisition, childhood development and the critical period hypothesis — but behind the research papers was a vulnerable girl who needed care, safety and time.

We trace Genie Wiley’s childhood isolation and abuse, the Los Angeles welfare office discovery, and the scientists, linguists, psychologists and caregivers who became involved after her rescue. The case raises a deeply uncomfortable question: when does helping a child become studying her? And when does science start taking more than it gives?

This is dark history, hidden histories and one of those strange true stories where the facts are already devastating enough. For listeners interested in psychology case studies, child neglect, developmental psychology, scientific ethics and what really happened after the headlines, Genie Wiley’s story remains as heartbreaking as it is important.

Topics Include

• Genie Wiley’s childhood isolation and abuse

• The Los Angeles welfare office discovery

• The critical period hypothesis

• Language acquisition after childhood deprivation

• The scientists and caregivers who studied Genie

• The ethical line between care and research

Bob Lazar, Area 51, S-4 and Element 115 are concepts that all sit at the centre of one of the most famous UFO stories ever told — a claim that helped drag alien cover-up lore into the mainstream and turned Area 51 into modern conspiracy culture. 

Sounds wild, and the actual story will leave you questioning everything you know. Because in 1989, renowned investigative journalist George Knapp introduced America to a man claiming the US military was hiding alien spacecraft near Groom Lake. That man would later reveal himself as Bob Lazar.

Today, we unpack Bob Lazar’s extraordinary claim that he worked at S-4 reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology, inside one of the most secretive military sites in America. He says had seen alien craft, watched test flights, and even encountered the mysterious Element 115 — the supposed fuel source behind the technology.

But today we proof test his claims, we’ll trace the missing credentials, the FBI raids, the shifting evidence, and the question that still divides UFO culture decades later: was Bob Lazar telling the truth or was he selling a myth.

• Bob Lazar and the 1989 George Knapp broadcast

• Area 51, Groom Lake and the secret S-4 facility

• Element 115 and alien propulsion claims

• The alleged flying saucers and “sport model” craft

• Lazar’s missing credentials and credibility questions

• UFO lore, government secrecy and public belief

• Bob Lazar’s 1989 interview - 8 News Now 

• Out There - Desert Companion / KNPR 

• The Secret History of the U-2 - National Security Archive 

• Area 51 and the Accidental Test Flight - CIA 

• Moscovium - Royal Society of Chemistry

• Bob Lazar & Jeremy Corbell - The Joe Rogan Experience 

• Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers - Netflix documentary page 

• S4: The Bob Lazar Story - WANA Channel documentary page 

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox

• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts

• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast

• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com

• Support us: Sign up to Patreon

• We’re Hiring: Find the perfect job at the circus

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

Somerton Man is one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries: an unidentified body found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide in 1948, a hidden scrap of paper reading “Tamám Shud”, and a trail of clues that only got stranger.

In this episode, we unravel the dead man with no ID, the copy of The Rubaiyat, the mysterious nurse, the alleged code, the Cold War spy theories, and the DNA breakthrough that may have finally identified him as Carl Webb. But if the Somerton Man now has a name, why does the case still feel so deeply unfinished?

• the body found on Somerton Beach in 1948

• the Tamám Shud clue and The Rubaiyat

• the Somerton Man code

• Jessica Thomson and the nurse connection

• Cold War spy theories and poison rumours

• Derek Abbott and the Carl Webb DNA breakthrough

MKUltra was not a fringe conspiracy theory. It was a real CIA programme built to test whether drugs, fear, interrogation and psychological pressure could break the human mind.

In this episode, we follow MKUltra from Cold War panic to one of the darkest hidden histories in American intelligence: Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, Sidney Gottlieb, CIA LSD experiments, Operation Midnight Climax, Donald Ewen Cameron and the death of Frank Olson. What began as a fear of communist brainwashing became dark history on a government budget, with unwitting civilians, prisoners, patients and students pulled into experiments they often did not understand and could not consent to.

We look at what really happened inside the programme, why so many MKUltra files were destroyed, and how national security became the phrase used to bury the evidence. Along the way, we separate the documented scandal from the conspiracy theories, asking why this weird history still feels unfinished today. MKUltra was not the clean mind-control weapon the CIA wanted, but the damage it caused was real — and the questions around Frank Olson still refuse to go quietly.

Topics Include

• MKUltra and CIA mind control

• Frank Olson’s death

• LSD experiments on unwitting subjects

• Operation Midnight Climax

• Donald Ewen Cameron and psychic driving

• Destroyed CIA files and modern transparency claims

Resources and Further Reading

1. Project MKULTRA, Research in Behavioral Modification - U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence  

2. MKUltra - Wikipedia

3. Operation Paperclip - Wikipedia

4. Sidney Gottlieb Testimony - National Security Archive

5. DNI Denies CIA Raided Tulsi Gabbard’s Office - Newsweek 

6. James E. Erdman III Testimony - Homeland security

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox

• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts

• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast

• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com

• Support us: Sign up to Patreon

• We’re Hiring: Find the perfect job at the circus

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.