Joshua McCabe Bailey was more than a name in a murder case. He was a friend, a brother, a son, and someone whose life mattered deeply to the people who knew him.

In this episode of Chasing the Dark: Where True Crime Meets the Paranormal, I sit down with Whitney, who was a friend of Josh and knew him personally before his tragic death. Whitney’s brother was also one of Josh’s close friends, giving her a unique perspective on the person Josh was and the impact his death had on those around him.

We talk about who Joshua McCabe Bailey was in life, the circumstances surrounding his murder, what happened after his death, and the lasting impact on the people who knew and loved him.

Josh’s case was later featured on the true-crime television series Twisted Killings, bringing his story to a wider audience. But this conversation goes beyond the television episode and the details of the case.

Whitney shares her memories of Josh and helps us look beyond the murder to remember the person he was before his name became associated with a tragedy.

Because behind every true-crime case is a real person.

This is Joshua McCabe Bailey’s story, his life, his murder, and the people left behind.

Continuing Josh’s Legacy

In Josh’s memory, Josh’s Hope Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping young adults living with mental illness, like Joshua.

If Josh’s story has touched you and you would like to support the work being done in his memory, donations can be made through Josh’s Hope Foundation:

joshshopefoundation.org

🎙️ Chasing the Dark: Where True Crime Meets the Paranormal

Content Warning: This episode discusses murder, death, grief, mental illness, and violent crime. Listener discretion is advised.

The Boys Who Vanished: The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders | Chasing the Dark

You’ve seen The Changeling. You think you know what happened during the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders.

You don’t.

In 1928, on a remote stretch of California desert, children disappeared and Gordon Stewart Northcott built a world of lies around the Wineville Ranch. When Walter Collins vanished, his mother Christine Collins fought a system that refused to believe her — a fight that became one of the most infamous true crime stories in California history.

The film tells her story.

Chasing the Dark tells everything else.

Host Renee takes you from Northcott’s childhood in Canada to the ranch where investigators uncovered the truth, following Sanford Clark’s testimony, Jessie Clark’s courage, the investigation, Northcott’s trial, and his execution in 1930.

But even after the verdict, questions remained.

How many victims were there really?

What happened to Walter Collins?

And how much truth did Gordon Northcott take with him?

This is a true crime and paranormal storytelling podcast built for listeners who need the story told right: dark, detailed, and completely in the room with it. If you’ve been searching for the true story behind The Changeling, the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, or historical true crime with real atmosphere — Chasing the Dark is where you stop searching.

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This episode is proudly sponsored by Pharaon.com.

Built for Nursing Students.

Pharaon. Study smarter today. Save lives tomorrow.

Thank you to Pharaon.com for supporting independent storytelling and helping make Chasing the Dark possible.

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of child abduction, child abuse, sexual assault, incest, and murder. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

Listener Takeaways

* Sanford Clark’s testimony and Jessie Clark’s courage helped expose the crimes hidden at Wineville Ranch.

* Gordon Northcott’s changing confessions left the true number of victims unknown.

* Christine Collins never received a definitive answer about what happened to Walter Collins.

* The real haunting of Wineville is not a ghost story, but the absence left behind by children who were never brought home.

Sources & References

Case & Historical Records

* Gordon Stewart Northcott — convicted of murder, sentenced to death, executed at San Quentin Prison on October 2, 1930.

* Sarah Louise Northcott — pleaded guilty to the murder of Walter Collins and received a life sentence.

* Sanford Clark — key witness whose testimony exposed the crimes at Wineville Ranch.

* Jessie Clark — Sanford’s sister whose 1928 visit helped uncover the truth.

* Walter Collins — missing March 10, 1928, age 9, from Los Angeles.

* Lewis Winslow (12) and Nelson Winslow (10) — missing May 16, 1928, from Pomona, California.

* Unidentified victims connected to the Wineville case records.

Location History

* Wineville, California — renamed Mira Loma in 1930 following the murders.

* Original Northcott ranch property — chicken coops removed; original house remains standing as a private residence.

Film

* Changeling (2008), directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins.

🎵 Music & Sound Credits

Music featured in this episode:

* “Darkest Child” — Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

* Additional music by Universfield

Licensed through Pixabay under the Pixabay Content License.

Sound effects:

* Sound effects sourced from Pixabay and used under the Pixabay Content License.

Special thanks to the composers and sound designers whose work helped bring Chasing the Dark to life.

Follow Chasing the Dark on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Until next time… stay aware of the quiet… because sometimes it’s not the silence… it’s what you start noticing in it.

The Villisca axe murders remain one of America’s most chilling unsolved crimes. On the night of June 9th, 1912, eight people — the Moore family and two young houseguests — were killed in their sleep in a quiet home in Villisca, Iowa. More than a hundred years later, the case is still unsolved, and the Villisca axe murder house is now considered one of the most haunted locations in the Midwest. This episode of Chasing the Dark covers the full true crime story and the paranormal activity people report inside the house today.

We sit with both threads of that night: the 1912 crime that was never solved, and the darkness people say never left the house on East Second Street. We walk through the town as it was, the family as they were, and the unbearable, deliberate calm of what was done after midnight — the covered faces, the sealed windows, the locked doors. We follow the contaminated crime scene and the investigation that was lost before it began, the suspects whose names never went away — state senator Frank F. Jones, William Mansfield, and the Reverend George Kelly — and the traveling-killer theory that links Villisca to a cluster of railroad-adjacent family murders around 1912.

Then we cross into the paranormal: the EVP recordings, the cold spots, the footsteps, and the reports from inside the Villisca axe murder house — alongside the honest, skeptical counter-explanations. And we sit with the detail that unsettles people most: why the haunting, if it is one, seems to retrace the exact path the killer walked.

This is a story about a family. Josiah and Sarah Moore. Their children — Herman, Mary Katherine, Arthur Boyd, and Paul Vernon. And two girls who only meant to stay the night, Lena and Ina Stillinger. We tell it the way we tell every story here: carefully, honestly, and with their names kept attached to who they actually were.

⚠️ Listener Discretion Advised: This episode discusses the murders of children and contains descriptions of violent crime.

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Show Notes

Case: The Villisca Axe Murders

Location: Villisca, Iowa

Date: June 9–10, 1912

Victims:

* Josiah Moore (43)

* Sarah Moore (39)

* Herman Moore (11)

* Mary Katherine Moore (10)

* Arthur Boyd Moore (7)

* Paul Vernon Moore (5)

* Lena Stillinger (11)

* Ina May Stillinger (8) (Wikipedia⁠)

In This Episode:

* The final hours before the murders

* Discovery of the crime scene

* The bizarre clues left behind

* Why the mirrors were covered

* The mystery of the dimmed oil lamp

* Reverend George Kelly and his shocking confession

* The theory of a traveling serial killer

* Connections to other axe murders across the Midwest

* Why the case remains unsolved

* The haunting legacy of the Villisca Axe Murder House (Wikipedia⁠)

Sources & Further Reading:

* Contemporary newspaper reports

* Historical court records

* Research by Edgar V. Epperly

* The Villisca Axe Murder House historical archives

* Case analyses and historical investigations (Wikipedia⁠)

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MUSIC & SOUND CREDITS

All music and sound effects used under the Pixabay Content License unless otherwise noted. With thanks to the artists whose work shaped the sound of this episode:

Music

• AtlasAudio — atmospheric drones and tension beds

• Universfield — dark crime, melancholic, and dark ambient backgrounds; “Dark Music Box Tension”

• leberch — “Psychological Horror”

• Denis Pavlov — mournful lament / grief score

• SenorMusica81 — “Cinematic Dark Ambient – Guarded Stillness”

Sound design

• AberrantRealities — deep whoosh / atmospheric effects

• DRAGON-STUDIO — wind and nature textures

• freesound_community contributors — various foley and atmospheric effects

Giving credit keeps this work freely available to independent creators.

If you’re a creator, please support these artists.

Subscribe to Chasing the Dark

Where True Crime Meets the Paranormal.

Follow, rate, and share the podcast to help more listeners discover the darkness lurking beneath history’s most chilling mysteries.

Do demons actually exist — or are we filling the dark with something we can't name?

In this 70-minute episode of *Chasing the Dark*, two guests — Rikki Rockett and Tracy — sat down with me to share personal paranormal experiences so unsettling, neither one can explain them away. Their encounters happened at different times, on different days, with zero overlap. And yet the questions they're left with are almost identical.

This episode moves through the full spectrum of belief — from residual hauntings that replay trauma like a broken record, to the heated debate around haunted artifacts and whether objects can carry something dark inside them. Are spirits real? Are demons real? Do they exist in the way religion and folklore have always insisted — or is something else entirely happening in those moments when the air shifts and the room goes wrong? Rikki and Tracy don't claim to have all the answers. What they have are experiences that science hasn't closed the door on yet.

If you've ever questioned what you saw, what you felt, or what followed you home — this one is for you. The paranormal isn't always loud. Sometimes it lives in the details you can't stop thinking about. Press play, and decide for yourself.

*Follow Chasing the Dark on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts so you never miss an episode — until next time… stay aware of the quiet… because sometimes it's not the silence… it's what you start noticing in it.*

Step into the dark with this chilling bonus episode of Chasing the Dark. In this deeply personal interview, my dad shares his firsthand experiences living in a home where a man was brutally murdered… long before he ever moved in.

What started as subtle unease quickly turned into something far more disturbing.

He heard footsteps echoing through the hallway when no one else was home. He saw a figure, an apparition walking back and forth as if it still belonged there. But the most terrifying moment didn’t happen inside the house…

It happened outside.

One night, alone in a trailer in the backyard, he heard it: a knock at the door. Not once. Not imagined. Something deliberate. Something that felt like it knew he was inside… and wanted in.

This episode dives into real paranormal experiences, true ghost encounters, and unexplained phenomena that blur the line between the living and the dead. These aren’t stories passed down or embellished over time—this is raw, firsthand testimony from someone who lived through it.

If you’re drawn to true scary stories, haunted houses, and psychological horror rooted in reality, this is an episode you won’t forget.

Follow, rate, and leave a review, it’s the best way to help more listeners find the darkness.

Keywords: true paranormal story, real ghost encounter, haunted house true story, knocking at the door paranormal, real life haunting, apparition sighting, unexplained knocking, psychological horror, true scary stories podcast, whispers after dark, chasing the dark podcast

Darkness doesn’t always look the way you expect… sometimes, it wears a smile.

In this episode of Chasing the Dark, we step into the chilling case of Wade Wilson—a man whose outward charm masked something far more dangerous beneath the surface. What began as a night out in Fort Myers, Florida, quickly unraveled into a series of violent and devastating events that left multiple lives shattered.

From the final hours of Kristine Melton to the tragic encounter with Diane Ruiz, this story follows a timeline that moves fast… but leaves a lasting impact. It’s a case that forces you to ask how someone can seem so normal on the outside—while carrying something so dark within.

This isn’t just a story about what happened. It’s about the warning signs, the moments that feel small at first… and the way everything can shift in an instant.

⚠️ This episode contains descriptions of violence, assault, and murder. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

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🗂️ Sources & Research

This episode was researched using publicly available information, including reporting from local Florida news outlets such as WBBH-TV, WINK News, and Fox 4 Now, as well as national coverage from NBC News and People.

Additional details were gathered from arrest records, court documents, and publicly released information from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, along with other publicly available timelines, legal filings, and investigative summaries related to the case.

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⚠️ Disclaimer

All information presented in this episode is based on publicly available records and reporting available at the time of production. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, some details may change as new information becomes available.

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If you’re drawn to dark, immersive true crime storytelling, make sure you’re following Chasing the Dark—and don’t forget to leave a rating and review. It helps others find the

Welcome to the very first installment of my new bonus interview series, Whispers After Dark… where the stories get a little more personal—and a lot more unsettling.

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Cameron as he shares what it was like living in an apartment he believes was haunted. What started as small, unexplainable moments slowly turned into something much more intense… the kind of experience that sticks with you long after the lights go out.

This isn’t just a ghost story—it’s what happens when the paranormal stops feeling distant… and starts becoming real.

🔊 Follow & Support

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you’re following Chasing the Dark so you don’t miss what’s coming next.

Leave a rating and review—it really helps the show grow and reach more listeners.

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⚠️ Disclaimer

The story shared in this episode reflects the personal experience and perspective of the guest. Some content may be unsettling. Listener discretion is advised.

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🎧 Music Credit

Music: “Breathe” by Shane Ivers

https://www.silvermansound.com

What happened to Emily Pike—and why does this case still not make sense?

Darkness doesn’t always arrive with warning. Sometimes it slips in quietly—into ordinary lives, familiar places, moments that should have been safe. And by the time it’s noticed… it’s already too late.

In this episode of Chasing the Dark, we explore the haunting Emily Pike case—a chilling true crime story marked by unanswered questions, a disturbing timeline, and an investigation that left more uncertainty than closure.

We follow the events leading up to her disappearance, examine the key details of the murder investigation, and break down the theories that continue to surround this case. Each layer reveals something deeper. Something darker.

If you’re drawn to true crime podcasts, unsolved mysteries, and dark, atmospheric storytelling, this is a case that will stay with you long after the episode ends.

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SHOW NOTES

• Who Emily Pike was

• Timeline of her disappearance

• Key investigation details and evidence

• Theories and unanswered questions

Listener Discretion Advised:

This episode contains discussions of violence and sensitive content.

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SOURCES

• News coverage and case reports

• Public records and available documentation

• Archived research and compiled case materials

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Follow Chasing the Dark

New episodes weekly exploring true crime cases, unsolved mysteries, and the darkest stories.

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Emily Pike case | true crime podcast | unsolved mystery | murder investigation | dark true crime stories

The Mothman is one of the most famous cryptids in paranormal history. In 1966, a terrifying winged humanoid with glowing red eyes was spotted stalking the skies above Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Witnesses described a towering creature with massive wings, piercing red eyes, and an unnatural presence that seemed to follow them through the darkness.

But the sightings didn’t stop there.

Over the next year, dozens of witnesses reported encounters with the mysterious creature now known as the Mothman. Many believed the entity was not just a cryptid… but a warning — a harbinger of something terrible about to happen.

Then on December 15, 1967, tragedy struck.

The Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Gallipolis, Ohio suddenly collapsed during rush hour, killing 46 people. In the aftermath, rumors spread that the Mothman sightings had been an omen predicting the disaster.

Coincidence… or something far darker?

In this episode of Chasing the Dark, we dive deep into the chilling eyewitness accounts, the strange paranormal patterns surrounding the sightings, and the theories that still haunt investigators decades later.

Was the Mothman a cryptid creature lurking in the Appalachian wilderness?

A supernatural harbinger of disaster?

An extraterrestrial observer?

Or an interdimensional entity crossing briefly into our world?

Turn down the lights and listen closely… because sometimes the things we see in the dark are watching us too.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode we explore:

• The first Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant, West Virginia (1966)

• Eyewitness encounters with a winged humanoid with glowing red eyes

• The mysterious connection between Mothman sightings and the Silver Bridge collapse

• Reports of UFO activity and unexplained phenomena surrounding the sightings

• The strange Men in Black encounters reported by witnesses

• Paranormal patterns surrounding Point Pleasant during the Mothman sightings

• Theories about what Mothman could really be: cryptid, supernatural omen, extraterrestrial visitor, or interdimensional being

• Why the legend of the Mothman continues to haunt paranormal investigators today

FOLLOW & SUPPORT THE SHOW

Follow Chasing the Dark so you never miss a new episode exploring the world’s most chilling paranormal mysteries, cryptids, folklore, and unexplained encounters.

For exclusive content, early episode access, behind-the-scenes material, and bonus interviews with real people sharing their true paranormal or true crime experiences, join Chasing the Dark’s “The Raven” tier on Patreon.

Your support helps the show grow and keeps the darkness calling.

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He confessed to murder, necrophilia, and cannibalism and then walked free. Discover the horrifying true story of Issei Sagawa and the Paris crime that shocked the world.

In 1981, Paris became the backdrop for one of the most infamous true crime cases in history.

Issei Sagawa, a Japanese graduate student at the Sorbonne, murdered and cannibalized his classmate, Renée Hartevelt, a 25-year-old Dutch student. Over several days, he consumed portions of her body before attempting to dispose of her remains in the Bois de Boulogne.

But the horror didn’t end there. Despite confessing in detail to murder, necrophilia, and cannibalism, Sagawa was declared legally insane in France and later released in Japan, never serving a day in prison.

In this episode of Chasing the Dark, we explore:

• The obsessive mind of Issei Sagawa

• How he stalked and murdered his victim

• The gruesome act of cannibalism that shocked the world

• And the international legal failures that let a confessed killer walk free

This is a story of obsession, darkness, and injustice, and a reminder that sometimes, the monster doesn’t hide.

Listener discretion is strongly advised.

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Show Notes & Sources

Sources for this episode include:

• French police investigation and court records (1981–1983)

• Psychiatric evaluations in France and Japan

• Contemporary reporting: Le Monde, The New York Times, The Japan Times

• Interviews with Issei Sagawa (1985–2013)

• Memoir: In the Fog (霧の中) by Issei Sagawa

• Sorbonne University enrollment and academic records

• Legal analysis of international jurisdiction and extradition limitations

• Biographical records of Renée Hartevelt from archives and news reporting

• Criminal psychology and forensic studies on paraphilic and cannibalistic offenders