The Fear Archive

The Fear Archive examines the DeFeo murders — one of the most disturbing family annihilations in American true crime history — and the exploitation film that tried to explain them with demons and incest.

On November 13, 1974, six members of the DeFeo family were found shot dead in their beds at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. The only survivor was Ronald 'Butch' DeFeo Jr., who would later claim he heard voices. What followed was one of the most contested criminal cases and haunted house myths in American history.

Tonight Amanda and Mike separate what actually happened from what Hollywood invented — and ask the harder question: when a movie tries to explain real horror with the supernatural, who does it protect?

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: Amityville horror true story, DeFeo murders, Ronald DeFeo Jr, 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville II The Possession, Amityville true crime, family annihilation, Butch DeFeo, horror film true story, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fear Archive investigates Joseph Kallinger — a Philadelphia shoemaker, father of seven, and serial killer who claimed God ordered him to murder every human being on earth — and the Bill Paxton film that channeled his darkness.

Kallinger did not fit the profile. He was quiet, unremarkable, a craftsman who fixed shoes and raised children. And then he began recruiting his own son into a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and murder that terrorized the East Coast in the mid-1970s.

The film Frailty imagines a father who receives divine orders to destroy demons. Kallinger lived something far worse: a man who believed his delusions completely, and made his child a witness to them.

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: Joseph Kallinger, Frailty 2001, Bill Paxton, shoemaker serial killer, God told me to kill, religious delusion murder, father son serial killers, Michael Kallinger, Philadelphia serial killer, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fear Archive examines the Keddie Cabin murders — one of the most disturbing unsolved cases in California history — and how that atmosphere of random, senseless violence found its way into The Strangers.

On the night of April 11, 1981, three people were murdered inside Cabin 28 in the small Sierra Nevada community of Keddie, California. Sue Sharp, her teenage son John, and his friend Dana Wingate were killed with knives, a hammer, and rope. Sue's 12-year-old daughter Tina was abducted and never found alive. No arrests. No convictions. No answers.

The Strangers is a film about random violence — strangers who choose a house and will not stop. Tonight Amanda and Mike examine what the film understands about terror, and what the Keddie case understood first.

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: Keddie Cabin murders, Cabin 28 murders, Keddie California 1981, Sue Sharp murder, unsolved cabin murders, The Strangers 2008, home invasion horror, unsolved murder cold case, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, random violence horror

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fear Archive investigates the haunting of Doris Bither — the real paranormal case that UCLA researchers took seriously enough to document — and the 1982 film The Entity that dramatized it.

Doris Bither was a single mother living in Culver City, California, who reported being physically attacked by an unseen entity. She was bruised. Her children witnessed the disturbances. And when parapsychology researchers Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor investigated, they documented phenomena they could not explain — including a luminous form that appeared in her living room.

Whether you believe in the paranormal or not, this case resists easy dismissal. Tonight Amanda and Mike examine why.

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: Doris Bither, The Entity 1982, Barbara Hershey, paranormal assault case, UCLA parapsychology, Barry Taff, Culver City haunting, supernatural assault true story, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, real paranormal investigation

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ed Gein is the most influential killer in horror film history — and most people do not know the half of it. The Fear Archive examines the Butcher of Plainfield and the full scope of his cinematic legacy.

In 1957, police entered Ed Gein's farmhouse in Plainfield, Wisconsin, and found something that defied description. Masks made of human skin. Bowls carved from skulls. Furniture upholstered in flesh. Gein was not a prolific killer — but what he did to his victims' remains became the template for Norman Bates, Leatherface, and Buffalo Bill.

Tonight Amanda and Mike ask the question this legacy demands: what does it mean that our most beloved horror villains are all one man's nightmare reassembled?

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: Ed Gein, Psycho 1960, Norman Bates, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Leatherface, Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill, Butcher of Plainfield, Plainfield Wisconsin, horror film true story, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, real killer behind horror movies

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fear Archive investigates Ray and Faye Copeland — a Missouri farming couple convicted of serial murder in their seventies — and the Ti West horror film X, which excavates the darkness lurking beneath rural American surfaces. We interview Peter Phok, executive producer on X.

Ray and Faye Copeland looked exactly like what they were: an aging farm couple in Ozark County, Missouri. They were not. Between 1986 and 1989, they lured transient workers to their farm, used them for fraudulent cattle deals, and murdered them when they became liabilities. When investigators found the remains, Faye Copeland had been making a quilt from the victims' clothing.

Ti West's X understands this specific American darkness. Tonight Amanda and Mike examine how well.

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: Copeland murders, Ray Copeland, Faye Copeland, oldest serial killers America, farm murders Missouri, X 2022, Ti West, Mia Goth, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, rural serial killers, geriatric killers

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fear Archive investigates Paul Bateson — a radiology technician, Exorcist film extra, and convicted killer — and William Friedkin's Cruising, the film that documented the exact world Bateson moved through while bodies were disappearing into the Hudson River.

Between 1975 and 1977, at least six men were murdered, dismembered, and dumped into the Hudson in plastic bags. Paul Bateson was convicted of one killing. Friedkin believed he was responsible for more — and made a film about it. The result was one of the most controversial movies ever produced: a portrait of New York's leather bar underground that the community it depicted rejected, that critics could not classify, and that law enforcement found uncomfortably accurate.

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: Paul Bateson, Cruising 1980, William Friedkin, Al Pacino, Hudson River bag murders, Exorcist film extra, LGBTQ true crime, New York City serial killer, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, gay bar murders 1970s

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fear Archive investigates Danny Rolling — the Gainesville Ripper — and the murders that Kevin Williamson turned into Scream.

In August 1990, five University of Florida students were murdered in four days. Rolling slipped through locked doors, left posed bodies for investigators to find, and vanished back into the tree line. Gainesville shut down. Students barricaded doors with furniture. Hardware stores sold out of deadbolts.

Six years later, a screenwriter named Kevin Williamson wrote a horror film about a killer who knew the rules. The shadow of Gainesville is present in every frame. Tonight Amanda and Mike examine how the panic of a real event became the architecture of one of the most successful horror franchises 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: Gainesville Ripper, Danny Rolling, Gainesville murders 1990, Scream 1996, Kevin Williamson, Wes Craven, University of Florida murders, slasher film true story, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, Scream true story

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fear Archive is a darkly funny deep-dive into the real stories hiding under horror’s blood-soaked floorboards. Blending gallows humor with obsessive research, we uncover the never-before-discussed connections between reality and the films that terrified us. For fans of Last Podcast on the Left’s chaotic energy and Unspooled’s cinephile deep cuts, this is where true crime meets cult cinema and the bodies are always real.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices