Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Eagan

We're taking a break this week so here's a listen back to our very first episode, based on the same story as the new series "The Watcher" out today on Netflix.

In June 2014, Derek and Maria Broaddus bought their dream home in Westfield, New Jersey - a 6-bedroom, 3.5-bath mansion at 657 Boulevard. Just days later, before the family even moved in, they received their first letter from "The Watcher."

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In the early 1800s, a Tennessee farm-dwelling family began hearing suspicious noises around their home, seeing strange apparitions along their property and believing a wicked force had befallen them. The Bell Witch would go on to become a legendary haunting, complete with ghostly dialogue, violent scares in the night and even a cowardly visit from Andrew Jackson himself. And when the spirit finally left… it wasn’t for good.

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In the late 1960s, the Zodiac Killer terrorized Northern California not necessarily via his body count –only five confirmed victims over the course of a year– but through his ability to manipulate fear into notoriety. Letters to newspapers, codes to crack and mysterious phone calls to police baited many into tormenting themselves with the question: who is the Zodiac? In this episode, we’ll go over the killer’s string of crimes and one particular suspect with a lot of suspicion still surrounding him.

An estimated one million people flock to the enigma that is Stonehenge every year, yet the origin of this circle of stones remains unknown. Who built it? How? And, of course, why? In this episode, we’ll cover the facts, debates and theories concerning this mysterious landmark and its five thousand-year history on Salisbury Plain.

Have you ever left your body, willingly or not? Astral projection has a long history, stretching from ancient religious texts and up through our current, quarantined imaginations. We humans desire to get out of ourselves from time to time, but when we do…where do we go? In this episode, we’ll head into the astral realm with the fascinating practice of accessing it.

Mind control –as a conspiracy and fear– has its long, questionable history in the United States. Starting in the 1950s in response to the Korean War and up through the LSD tests of the 1960s, the American government cooked up some experiments for the purpose of psychological manipulation. The top-secret CIA program MK Ultra spawned suspicion… as well as ideas that twisted themselves into a new conspiracy: The Monarch Project.

We're taking a break this week so here's an episode from our first season you may not have heard yet.

There she lay face down on a beach towel, naked in the sand: handless, dead and with a mouth full of expensive dental work. In 1974, when a kid and her dog discovered the body of a young woman in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a mystery took off. Who was she? Well, she’s the Lady of the Dunes. 

In the early hours of a June morning in 1997, 26-year-old Lori Ceci Bova stepped outside for a smoke break and never came back. She forgot her cigarettes, for one, and as the search for Lori unfolded more questions than answers emerged. Loved ones, police and bystanders took turns being cagey, and the abundance of psychic input on the case led everyone astray. When someone disappears truly without a trace –not a clue, suspect or body identified– how can the truth unearth itself?

Welcome to the magical world of Disney theme parks, where the huggable characters, glistening turkey legs and all around sparkle are a sheen over some dark secrets –which makes sense. Any place touting a policy of zero death on its grounds has to have some skeletons hidden away. 

We're taking a break this week so here's an episode from our first season you may not have heard yet. We'll be back with a new episode next week!

This is the story of a cook who refused to wash her hands and the health department that chased her around New York City in search of a stool sample. She’d end up alone on an island, but everyone knew her name. Here’s how Mary Mallon became Typhoid Mary.