Dead Air is what happens between Fear Archive episodes — no research, no structure, no plan. Just Amanda and Mike talking until something disturbing comes up. It always does.

This week: Mike took magnesium because he read on Reddit that writers use it to have vivid dreams. It worked. He dreamed he was urinating. He was not dreaming. He woke up, slipped on dog vomit on the way to the bathroom, and started the day covered in both. This is how the episode opens. It does not get more dignified from there.

Amanda watched twelve Amityville films back to back while her house filled with actual flies. Not metaphorically. Every time flies appeared on screen she had to pause the movie because there were real flies buzzing around her. The electric fly racket was broken. It was a situation.

Also: the original Amityville Horror manuscript was reportedly cursed, the spirits follow anyone who thinks about them, and the only protection is crossing running water. Mike moved upstate and crossed a river. He thinks he is probably fine.

Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production.

LISTENER WARNING: This program contains strong language and discussion of bodily functions, horror content, and mild chaos.

Popular Topics Include: Fear Archive podcast, Dead Air podcast, horror podcast bonus episode, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, magnesium vivid dreams, Amityville horror, Amityville flies, ghosts can't cross running water, horror podcast behind the scenes, Violet Hour Media, bed wetting adults, horror film recommendations, sleep study, nightmare magnesium, Amityville curse

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Six men walked into the Colorado mountains in February 1874. One walked out. He was not starving. He had more money than he left with. And when they found the bodies, they had been butchered and consumed.

The judge at Alfred Packer's sentencing delivered one of the most extraordinary lines in American courtroom history: there were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, sir, and you ate five of them. Packer's story changed four times. Every version conveniently made him the last man standing.

Before South Park. Before Team America. Before any of it — Trey Parker was a film student at the University of Colorado who made a musical about Alfred Packer. Cannibal the Musical is funny. Genuinely, surprisingly, disturbingly funny. Which raises the question this episode of The Fear Archive cannot stop asking: why does this story make us laugh when it should make us sick?

Amanda and Mike dig into the real case in full — the Gold Rush setting, the impossible winter crossing, the bodies, the escapes, the conviction, the folklore — and into the specific cultural mechanism that turns the most disturbing human acts into legend. The Donner Party. The Essex. The 1972 Andes plane crash. America has always been obsessed with the line survival forces us to cross. Alfred Packer crossed it. And then he smiled about it.

Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production.

LISTENER WARNING: This program includes discussion of cannibalism, survival horror, and graphic real-world details. Please proceed with caution.

Popular Topics Include: Alfred Packer cannibal, Cannibal the Musical, Trey Parker film, Trey Parker before South Park, South Park creator student film, Colorado Gold Rush 1874, San Juan Mountains cannibalism, survival cannibalism true story, Donner Party comparison, Alfred Packer true story, black winter Colorado, Colorado cannibal, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, real stories behind horror films, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, Violet Hour Media, survival horror true crime, 1874 Colorado murders, he ate five of them

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Dead Air is what happens between Fear Archive episodes — no research, no structure, no plan. Just Amanda and Mike talking until something disturbing comes up. It always does.

This week: Amanda's old 1988 Nissan 240SX — yeast infection colored, beloved, sold to a stranger in Florida — turned up in the news when a dead body was found inside it. She tried to look it up and found nothing, because apparently dead bodies in Florida cars are too common to index.

Mike's school has no running water because students have been flushing vapes down the toilets since 2021. Half a decade of vapes. The city had to bring tanker trucks.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, they end up on black holes, simulation theory, and whether you would enter a black hole if you could — knowing the current scientific consensus is that you would be stretched into spaghetti. The answer involves a self-destructive part of the human brain that neither of them can fully explain.

Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production.

LISTENER WARNING: This program contains strong language and discussion of death, crime, and topics that may be upsetting for some listeners.

Popular Topics Include: Fear Archive podcast, Dead Air podcast, horror podcast bonus episode, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, dead body found in car, Florida true crime, black holes simulation theory, are we living in a simulation, horror podcast behind the scenes, Violet Hour Media, Obsession 2025 film, Curry Barker horror film, horror film recommendations, black hole theory, simulation hypothesis

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It is a normal day. A manager is checking receipts. Teenagers are laughing in the back. Grease pops, ice melts, orders come in. Then the phone rings.

A man says he is a police officer. He sounds calm, professional, certain. He says an employee has stolen money. And over the next few hours, people will strip someone, search someone, and humiliate someone — not because they want to, but because they were told to.

Starting in the 1990s and continuing into the early 2000s, a man called fast food restaurants across the United States — McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell — claiming to be a law enforcement officer. Over 70 incidents were reported. The most infamous happened in 2004 in Mount Washington, Kentucky, where a teenage employee was detained, stripped, and assaulted over four hours by people following instructions from a voice on the phone. No badge. No proof. Just authority.

In this episode of The Fear Archive, Amanda and Mike pair Craig Zobel's 2012 film Compliance with the real strip search phone call scam — and connect both to Stanley Milgram's landmark obedience experiments, which proved in 1961 that 65% of ordinary people would administer what they believed to be a potentially lethal electric shock to a stranger if an authority figure told them to.

The question this episode asks is not why the perpetrator made the calls. The question is why nobody hung up.

Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production.

LISTENER WARNING: This program includes discussion of sexual coercion, psychological manipulation, and abuse. Please proceed with caution.

Popular Topics Include: Compliance 2012 film, strip search phone call scam, David Stewart strip search scam, Mount Washington Kentucky McDonald's, fast food strip search true story, Milgram obedience experiment, Stanley Milgram shock experiments, psychology of obedience, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, real stories behind horror movies, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, Violet Hour Media, why do people obey authority, Craig Zobel film, obedience to authority

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There is a registered Omaha sex offender named Cookie Monster who allegedly walked into a stranger's home through an unlocked door, removed his clothes, got into a sleeping child's bed, and brought a bottle of water and a bottle of lotion. Mike read about it. Mike has thoughts. This is Dead Air — the Fear Archive companion show where nothing stays on topic and everything is somehow worse than you expect.

This episode: Amanda gets golden-showered by aphids in her backyard, which somehow becomes the natural setup for the Cookie Monster case — Terry Lee Scott, arrested in Omaha, compared by Mike to Richard Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento. From there it spirals into John Titor, the anonymous internet poster from 2000 who claimed to be a time traveler from 2036, named the IBM 5100 by hidden capability, and disappeared in March 2001. Then Tartaria — the Reddit theory that the US Capitol, Penn Station, and the pyramids were built by a lost civilization wiped out by a global mud flood. Amanda is teasing the deep dive for next episode. Plus 200,000 plays on the Black Christmas episode, a Mandela effect involving three identical hand towels, the Epstein note that may or may not exist, and a brand new closing segment called Shout Outs.

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The Fear Archive investigates the Hmong sleep deaths — a series of unexplained nocturnal deaths among Southeast Asian refugees in the early 1980s that Wes Craven has cited as direct source material for A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Between 1981 and 1983, healthy young Hmong men living in the United States began dying in their sleep. No warning. No medical explanation. The Los Angeles Times covered the cases. Wes Craven read the coverage and asked: what if the thing killing them was inside their dreams?

Tonight Amanda and Mike use the same source material Craven used — the actual 1981 and 1983 articles — to trace the line from real unexplained death to one of the most iconic horror films ever made.

Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production.

LISTENER WARNING: This program includes discussion of real-world violence and other subject matter that may be upsetting for some listeners. Please proceed with caution.

Popular Topics Include: A Nightmare on Elm Street true story, Hmong sleep deaths, SUNDS, sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome, Wes Craven, Freddy Krueger, Hmong refugees, sleep death horror, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, real nightmare deaths

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Amanda has a dead rat in her wall and has been marinating in the smell for weeks. Mike has a baby garter snake in his foundation and is convinced mama snake is behind him right now. This is Dead Air — the Fear Archive companion show where nothing stays on topic and everything connects back to true crime anyway.

This episode: the rat in the wall becomes a conversation about frogging and things hiding in domestic spaces, which leads to the CERN Large Hadron Collider, Mandela effects, and whether a particle collider in Switzerland is throwing us into new timelines. Then Rex Heuermann pleads guilty to strangling eight women at Gilgo Beach — a case both hosts grew up near on Long Island. Plus The Killing Season documentary, the West Mesa Bone Collector, and Amanda's report from the LA premiere of the new A24 Faces of Death remake. Also: Forbidden Fruits, They Will Kill You, and a very strong pitch for why you should watch Cropsy immediately.

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The Fear Archive investigates Faces of Death — the 1978 shock documentary that was not quite a documentary, not quite fiction, and was deliberately designed to keep you from knowing the difference — and the 2026 remake that asks the harder question: why are you still watching?

Faces of Death was released in 1978, directed by John Alan Schwartz under the pseudonym Conan LeCilaire. It presented itself as a documentary about death across cultures. In reality it was a carefully engineered hybrid: some footage real, some staged, all of it designed to manufacture one question — is this real? As long as you were asking, you kept watching. That was the entire mechanism.

The 2026 remake, directed by Daniel Goldhaber and Isam Mazhi and starring Barbie Ferreira and Charli XCX, does not try to shock you with death. It makes you watch yourself watching. Which, as Amanda and Mike argue tonight, is the more disturbing film.

Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production.

LISTENER WARNING: This program includes discussion of real-world violence and other subject matter that may be upsetting for some listeners. Please proceed with caution.

Popular Topics Include: Faces of Death 1978, Faces of Death 2026, John Alan Schwartz, Mondo films, shock cinema, black humor, morbid curiosity, snuff mythology, Barbie Ferreira, Charli XCX, Daniel Goldhaber, LiveLeak, rotten.com, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, why do we look

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What if the CIA didn't just experiment on human minds — what if they also shaped the movies inside them?

In this episode, Amanda and Mike break down the real history of Project MK-Ultra — the CIA's declassified program of forced LSD experiments, psychological torture, and memory erasure — and trace its fingerprints across some of Hollywood's most iconic films.

From The Manchurian Candidate to Stranger Things. From Operation Midnight Climax to The Parallax View. From declassified documents to your Netflix queue.

Did MK-Ultra end in 1973… or did it just go cinematic?

🔍 IN THIS EPISODE:

The real history of Project MK-Ultra

Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA's obsession with LSD

Frank Olson — the man who fell from a window

Operation Midnight Climax (yes, it was real)

Donald Ewen Cameron and psychic driving

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The Parallax View (1974)

Altered States (1980)

Stranger Things and the Montauk mythology

The CIA's official Hollywood Entertainment Liaison office

Confirmed vs. unconfirmed: what MK-Ultra actually proved

Did MK-Ultra end — or did it just go cinematic?

Content warning: This episode includes discussion of graphic violence, sexual assault, suicide, child abuse, torture, non-consensual drugging, and psychological experimentation.

🎙️ The Fear Archive is part of the Violet Hour Media network — home of Long Night in Egypt, Hollow, The Gloom, and more.

🔔 Subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss an episode.

📲 Listen everywhere: https://linktr.ee/feararchivepod

If this episode made you think, subscribe, leave a comment, or share it with the friend who says everything is a conspiracy theory.

Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada & Michael Ryan Assip Produced by Cassie Jozefov A production of Violet Hour Media / Realm Media

Popular Topics Include: MK-Ultra, CIA mind control, Project ARTICHOKE, LSD experiments, human experimentation Cold War, The Manchurian Candidate 1962, The Parallax View 1974, Conspiracy Theory 1997, Altered States 1980, government conspiracy film, Sidney Gottlieb, Frank Olson death, Donald Ewen Cameron, Alan Memorial Institute Montreal, sleeper agents, hypnosis CIA, psy-ops, CIA Hollywood consulting, paranoia cinema, 70s political thrillers, declassified documents, Sirhan Sirhan mind control theory

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Dead Air is the show between the shows. No scripts. No research. Just Amanda Kagiwada and Mike Assip talking about whatever broke their brains this week — and somehow ending up in weirder places than the Fear Archive ever goes.

Episode 1: A potentially cursed Pakistani coin appears on Mike's dresser and nearly ends his marriage. Amanda joins the moon community and cannot explain what she saw. A doctor allegedly brought a syringe full of mystery drugs on a hike in Hawaii. Twenty camels were disqualified from a beauty pageant for filler injections. Mike was an extra in The Dark Knight Rises. And somehow it all connects back to simulation theory.

00:00 No Signal — the cursed necklace story

12:45 The Watch Log — Elizabeth Smart doc, Network, Project Hail Mary22:13 The Current — Hawaii hiking murder trial

39:48 The Spiral — Cheshire Cat moon, Mandela effect, Killing for Culture

1:04:45 Rent Free — camel beauty pageant fillers & King Tuff

Dead Air drops on the off weeks between Fear Archive episodes. New episodes of The Fear Archive every other Wednesday.

Subscribe to The Fear Archive: https://linktr.ee/feararchivepod

Dead Air is part of The Fear Archive universe — a Violet Hour Media production

Popular Topics Include: Fear Archive podcast, horror podcast, true crime podcast, podcast discussion, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, horror film recommendations, true crime recommendations, horror community, podcast behind the scenes, horror culture, true crime culture

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