So Random & Weird Podcast

It's almost Halloween, and Sarah and Sheena are getting into the season with one of folklore's most feared creatures: the Wendigo. Sarah leads a researched deep dive into the winter spirit of Algonquian-speaking peoples. It's a gaunt, ice-hearted being that grows hungrier the more it eats.In this episode:

• Where the story comes from. The boreal forest, the harsh winters, and why the name carries the meaning of greed and taking too much. The Wendigo works as a warning about isolation and excess.
• The fear of becoming one. How communities understood and responded to someone believed to be turning, from healing ceremonies to satire and humor.
• Two true cases that reached the courtroom. The 1907 trial of Jack and Joseph Fiddler, and the 1879 case of Swift Runner, and what happens when a legal system meets a worldview it can't understand.
• "Wendigo psychosis." The famous and heavily debated diagnosis, and why many scholars now reject it.
• The Wendigo in pop culture. From Algernon Blackwood's 1910 novella to Marvel Comics, Pet Sematary, Supernatural, Until Dawn and Antlers. Along the way the monster loses its moral meaning, until Indigenous writers and consultants bring it back.
• What the story is really about. Greed, sharing, and the "common pot" as the antidote to the monster, and why Sarah sees it as timely.

Along the way you'll get cohost banter, a few mangled pronunciations, a Hansel and Gretel comparison, and a Supernatural debate. Sarah also shares a plug for the new podcast Holy Feral, Sheena spins the wheel to pick next week's topic (history), and they invite listeners to send in their own stories at the show's email, Facebook and Instagram.Stay weird, stay curious.

A haunted museum, a vanished follow-up, and a ghost story tied to one of New England’s most tragic shipwrecks. Sheena and Sarah unpack the season two finale of The Holzer Files and the case that still refuses to sit quietly.At the center is Hans Holzer, the prolific paranormal investigator whose methods helped shape modern ghost-hunting long before TV made it a genre. Sheena explores his background, his interest in historical records, and the controversial casework that made him famous—and damaged his credibility. Sarah brings a skeptic’s perspective, questioning the theatrical feel of paranormal TV and why some ghost shows don’t quite feel real.The conversation dives into “Devil in the Rock,” the Bates Ship Chandlery in Cohasset, Massachusetts, and the claim that the haunting intensified after Holzer’s 1964 visit. Sheena also explores Holzer’s legacy, the controversy surrounding his connection to Amityville, and the tragic wreck of the Brig Saint John—history that gives this haunting a weight beyond a simple jump scare.If you love paranormal history, skeptical takes, old-school ghost hunting, and the strange intersection of folklore, tragedy, and television, this one is for you. It’s spooky, smart, and full of details that may leave you wanting to look up the building yourself.

A playful, history-rich Halloween episode tracing how the holiday evolved from Celtic Samhain through Roman and Christian influences into modern trick-or-treating.Sarah and Sheena explore bonfires, spirits, soul cakes, witches, masks, ghosts, Irish folklore, jack-o’-lanterns, mischievous pranks, candy, costumes, and Halloween in pop culture. Along the way, they connect the holiday’s darker origins—death, winter, fear, and superstition—to the way people now turn those fears into costumes, decorations, jokes, and community rituals.The episode closes on the idea that Halloween endures because it makes the scary parts of life feel a little more manageable: light a fire, put on a mask, share candy, and make it through the dark together.

coffin-shaped trunks, a shipload of pale young women, and one New Orleans legend that turned real history into vampire folklore. If you love haunted history, colonial-era mysteries, or the weird origins of famous ghost stories, this episode is for you.Sheena and Sarah unpack the Casket Girls, the French women sent to New Orleans in 1728 to help populate a rough colonial outpost, and trace how a practical immigration story mutated into one of the city’s stickiest supernatural myths. What started as a shipment of brides, orphans, and dowries became a rumor mill fueled by coffin-shaped luggage, a shuttered convent attic, and centuries of vampire panic.You'll discover how the Ursuline Convent entered the legend, why the attic story became such a perfect fit for New Orleans folklore, and how modern vampire tourism keeps the myth alive today. They also separate the documented history from the embellished tales, including the infamous claim that two journalists were found drained of blood after an overnight stakeout, and compare the Casket Girls myth with another famous New Orleans vampire figure, Jacques Saint Germain.We break down the historical context behind why these women were sent across the ocean in the first place, what the Ursuline sisters were actually doing in the colony, and why the city’s mix of Catholic tradition, superstition, and gothic atmosphere made it the perfect breeding ground for legends. Along the way, the conversation touches on Anne Rice, vampire subculture, and how real places become permanent stops on haunted history tours.This is a perfect listen if you’re drawn to creepy true stories, New Orleans lore, or the moment when fact gets spooky enough to become legend. By the end, you’ll never look at an old trunk, a convent attic, or a vampire tour the same way again.

A Louisiana boogeyman with a moss-covered body, glowing amber eyes, and one bizarre weakness might not be as ancient as everyone thinks. This episode peels back the legend of

to ask the question that changes everything: is he a real folk warning that grew into a monster, or a monster invented by television that the internet later turned into folklore?Sarah and Sheena take you from the swamps of South Louisiana to a 1974 episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker that may have done more to shape the legend than any oral tradition ever did. Along the way, they unpack the eerie details that made Pierre Malfey stick—the crushing hug, the Spanish moss, the swamp gum stake, the amber lights in the dark—and why those details feel so convincing.

• How Acadian history, Cajun culture, and French boogeyman traditions feed the story
• Why the name “Pierre Malfey” raises more questions than answers
• The strange overlap between folklore, pop culture, and “legend laundering”
• How a TV monster can get absorbed into the very myth it may have invented
• Why swamp safety, parental warnings, and horror folklore are closer than you think

Sarah brings the deep-dive research and a sharp eye for the contradictions, while Sheena keeps the conversation grounded, funny, and skeptical in all the right ways. Together they trace the line between real regional fear and a story that may have been born in a writer’s room, then lived long enough to become a legend.Perfect for spooky-season listeners, folklore fans, cryptid obsessives, and anyone who loves a good “what came first, the warning or the monster?” mystery. If you’ve ever heard a strange name whispered as a child and wondered where it came from, this one will stay with you.

Old buildings might be doing more than standing there. If you have ever walked into a room and felt the air change, this episode gives you the eerie vocabulary for that feeling—and the case for why some places may be replaying trauma instead of simply being haunted.Sheena and Sarah take on the Stone Tape Theory, the idea that stone, brick, quartz-rich materials, and even water can hold onto emotional events like a recording and play them back later as a residual haunting.

They trace the concept from a 1972 BBC horror play to Cambridge academic T. C. Lethbridge, then break down why paranormal investigators keep coming back to it. You’ll discover:

• Why residual hauntings behave like loops instead of intelligent spirits
• How quartz, piezoelectricity, and the idea of “recorded” energy get woven into ghost lore
• The skeptic’s case, including pareidolia, confirmation bias, and infrasound
• The real-world lab case that made a “haunting” disappear after a fan was fixed
• Famous stone tape-style stories

Sarah brings a lived, intuitive take rooted in witchcraft, psychometry, and the belief that homes and objects can hold residue from the past. Sheena threads in the history, the science, and the pop-culture origins of the theory, making the conversation both eerie and surprisingly grounded.If you love haunted history, paranormal theories, or the feeling that old places remember what happened inside them, this one is for you. It’s a conversation that sits right on the edge of folklore and physics—and leaves you wondering whether the walls around you are really as silent as they seem.Perfect for spooky season, ghost-story skeptics, believers, and anyone who has ever stepped into a place and felt something they couldn’t explain.

Eastern State Penitentiary was built to heal broken people through silence and isolation - instead, it became one of the most notorious soul-breaking machines in American history. If you think this is just another haunted prison story, Sarah and Sheena trace the real horror first: the Quaker reformers, Benjamin Rush's radical theory, the wagon-wheel design, the black hoods, the punishment cells, and the decades of torture that turned a "humane" experiment into a nightmare.Then the ghosts start to make sense.

Medieval Europe did not just punish people for crimes - it put animals on trial. A pig in men’s clothing. Rats served with a legal summons. Cats executed as agents of Satan. If you think history is boring, this episode will change your mind fast.Sheena and Sarah unpack the bizarre, surprisingly structured world of animal trials across France, Switzerland, Italy, and beyond - where courts treated pigs, rats, roosters, and even insects as if they could be legally responsible for murder, crop destruction, witchcraft, and plague. Along the way, they reveal the strange logic behind these cases and why a defense attorney for rats was not as absurd to medieval minds as it sounds today.

This episode is a fog-drenched ride through werewolf history—part folklore, part true crime, part Hollywood myth-making. It starts with ancient wolf legends, dives into horrifying witch-trial-era scapegoats, and ends with the 1941 Wolf Man movie that basically invented the werewolf rules everyone thinks are ancient. It’s spooky, smart, and weirdly heartfelt.

A quiet small town, a trusted babysitting favor, and two classmates with a plan so cold it still chills Pocatello nearly two decades later. This case is a devastating reminder that the people who seem most ordinary can be hiding something horrific.