From Charles Williams (Prisoner #1) entering blind and hooded in 1829, to Al Capone screaming "Jimmy, leave me alone!" in his luxury cell, to Willie Sutton's legendary tunnel escape, Eastern State's 142-year history is soaked in suffering, innovation, and impossibility.

We'll take you inside:

✓ The architectural revolution that influenced 300+ prisons worldwide

✓ The brutal reality of the Pennsylvania System's 24/7 isolation

✓ Horrific punishments: the Iron Gag, the Mad Chair, and the Hole

✓ Cellblock 3's medical horrors—tuberculosis treatments and psychiatric observation cells

✓ Decades of documented paranormal activity across all seven cellblocks

✓ Why 60+ paranormal investigation teams visit annually

Featuring evidence from Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and firsthand accounts from staff who refuse to enter certain areas alone. Charles Dickens called it "immeasurably worse than any torture of the body." Modern investigators call it one of the most haunted places in the world.

This is the complete story of how America's most progressive prison reform became its most notorious paranormal hotspot—where good intentions created hell on earth, and the ghosts still haven't left.

🕯️ Come Curious. Stay Strange. 🕯️

Hosts: Lee, Josh, and Jen

Edited by: Jeremy Schroeder (Schroeder Audio)

Find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you listen.

#EasternStatePenitentiary #HauntedPrison #AlCapone #TrueCrime #ParanormalInvestigation #PrisonHistory #PhiladelphiaHistory #GhostStories #SolitaryConfinement #DarkHistory #HistoricalMysteries #SSOSPodcast

March 1997. A mansion in Rancho Santa Fe. 39 bodies in matching Nike sneakers and purple shrouds. The largest mass suicide on U.S. soil.

This is the finale of our Heaven's Gate series - the story of how Marshall Applewhite convinced 38 people that a comet was their spaceship home.

⚠️ Content Warning: Suicide, cult manipulation, death. Call 988 if you're struggling.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988

IN THIS EPISODE:

THE SHOCKING TRUTH: Before they were a death cult, Heaven's Gate was a cutting-edge web design company. Their clients included Hollywood production companies and the San Diego Polo Club. They used Java, VRML, streaming video, and advanced HTML in 1996 - years before most corporations.

Marshall Applewhite didn't just see the internet as a tool. He saw it as theological proof that humanity had completed its experiment. Time to graduate.

Series Conclusion: 25 years. Two leaders. 39 deaths. One comet.

This is what happens when the search for meaning meets a broken teacher with absolute certainty.

Previous episodes: Part I (The Two), Part II (The Cult), Part III (The Castration)

Research sources include FBI files, medical examiner reports, survivor interviews, documentary footage, and archived Heaven's Gate materials.

Hosted by Lee, Josh, and Jen.

🕯️ Come Curious. Stay Strange.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988

⚠️ CONTENT WARNING: Suicide, cult manipulation, graphic medical content. Crisis support: 988

What happens when your co-messiah dies? Marshall Applewhite faced total theological collapse in 1985 when Bonnie Nettles died of cancer—after years of teaching they were immortal extraterrestrial beings.

This is the moment Heaven's Gate became a death cult.

In this episode, we explore the psychological crisis that led to one of the most disturbing chapters in cult history: eight men, including Applewhite himself, underwent voluntary castration. One nearly died when a former nurse botched the procedure in a makeshift operation.

Discover how Applewhite's forbidden feelings for male follower Dick Joslyn, his devastating rejection, and his followers' validation created a feedback loop of increasingly extreme acts—transforming personal trauma into theological requirement.

This wasn't calculated evil. It was something more human and more dangerous: a broken man so dependent on his followers' approval that he followed them into mutilation, preparing them to follow him into death.

Topics: Marshall Applewhite psychology, theological manipulation, cult castration, Heaven's Gate history, cult recruitment, psychological control

Sources: FBI files, medical examiner reports, former member interviews, academic research

Next time: How Heaven's Gate weaponized the internet and recruited through the World Wide Web.

Hosts: Lee, Jen & Josh | Secret Society of Strangers

 Part 2: The Classroom | When Evolution Becomes Erasure

September 1975. Waldport, Oregon. Population: 2,000.

A poster appears on telephone poles: "UFO'S - Why they are here. Who they have come for. When they will leave."

That night, 200 curious people walked into a community center. Twenty walked out and never looked back—leaving jobs, families, entire lives behind to become "students" in Ti and Do's cosmic classroom.

In Part 2 of our Heaven's Gate investigation, we enter The Classroom.

This isn't the story of broken people joining a cult. This is the story of:

This episode covers:

We profile the computer programmers, the nurses, the ranch owners, the mothers—educated, successful people who voluntarily gave up everything for a promise of physical evolution into extraterrestrial beings.

This wasn't Jonestown's armed guards. This was something more insidious: voluntary imprisonment through belief.

Next episode: Ti's death shatters everything, and Do rebuilds the group into something far more dangerous.

🔍 KEYWORDS: Heaven's Gate cult, Marshall Applewhite, Bonnie Nettles, Ti and Do, Waldport Oregon 1975, cult psychology, Human Individual Metamorphosis, UFO cults, cult indoctrination, true crime podcast, paranormal history, Nichelle Nichols brother, 1970s cults, voluntary isolation, psychological manipulation

⚠️ CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses cult manipulation, family abandonment, and psychological coercion. If you're struggling, call 988.

🕯️ Come Curious. Stay Strange.

Subscribe to SSOS wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow us: @SSOSPodcast

#HeavensGate #TrueCrime #CultPodcast #TiAndDo #UFOCult #HighStrangeness #SSOSPodcast #ParanormalPodcast #WaldportOregon #CultPsychology #TrueStory #1970s

There's a website that's been running for 27 years. HeavensGate.com. Still maintained. Still recruiting.

March 1997: Thirty-nine people died believing they were boarding a spaceship. But this story starts twenty-five years earlier—in a Houston hospital, with two broken people who turned their shared delusion into cosmic destiny.

This is Part 1 of our 4-part Heaven's Gate deep dive.

Marshall Applewhite: Texas preacher's son. Perfect pitch. Perfect shame. A man carrying a secret that 1930s Christianity called "abomination." Lost his marriage. Lost his career. Lost himself. Then a nurse told him he wasn't broken—he was chosen.

Bonnie Nettles: Spiritual seeker. Believer in signs. The woman who told Marshall his breakdown was actually his calling. Together they became Ti and Do—The Two.

Here's what makes Heaven's Gate different: No violence. No sexual abuse. No money schemes. They promised physical transformation—evolution while alive. NO DEATH REQUIRED.

That's what made it so seductive. That's why intelligent people followed.

In this episode: Marshall's haunted childhood. His sci-fi obsession. The hospital "resurrection." How two seekers in a van started building a cosmic classroom. And the original promise that would take 25 years to betray.

This is the foundation. The beginning of the end.

🕯️ Content Warning: Cult manipulation and suicide discussed. Need help? Call 988.

COMING SOON: Parts 2-4 of this deep dive

Primary Sources:

Secondary Sources:

Media Integration Points:

Some murders are solved quickly. Others linger for decades, their answers buried with the victims. And then there are cases like Turtle Lake—where the truth seems to have been swallowed by the North Dakota prairie itself.

        Every summer, the most powerful men in America disappear into the California redwoods for two weeks. Presidents, CEOs, Supreme Court justices—they all gather at a private club called Bohemian Grove. And what they do there has been kept secret for over 150 years.   They wear robes. They perform rituals. They worship a 40-foot stone owl.

    This isn't conspiracy theory—it's documented history. In this episode, we're diving deep into Bohemian Grove: who's been a member, what actually happens during their ceremonies, the leaked footage that exposed their rituals, and why the world's elite have gathered in these woods since 1872.

   From the Cremation of Care ceremony to the Manhattan Project's origins, from Richard Nixon's leaked comments to Alex Jones's infiltration—this is the complete story of America's strangest and most exclusive secret society.

What's really happening in those 2,700 acres?

Let's find out. 🕯️ Come curious. Stay strange.

---  Follow Secret Society of Strangers for weekly episodes exploring history's strangest mysteries, unsolved cases, and unexplained phenomena.

Hosts: Lee, Josh, and Jen

Edited by: Jeremy Schroeder (Schroeder Audio)

Find us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you listen.

New York, 1900-1907. Wealthy families are falling ill with a deadly fever. No clear source. No obvious pattern. Just death following an invisible killer through the city's most exclusive neighborhoods.

When investigators finally traced the outbreak, they found something terrifying: a woman who carried typhoid fever but never got sick herself. Mary Mallon—a cook, an Irish immigrant, and America's first known healthy carrier of a deadly disease.

But was Mary really the villain history made her out to be? Or was she a scapegoat—targeted because of her class, her gender, and her refusal to disappear quietly?

In this episode, Lee, Josh, and Jen dig into the strange case of Typhoid Mary: the science that condemned her, the authorities who imprisoned her twice, and the conspiracy theories that still swirl around her story over a century later. Was she a public health menace? A victim of medical discrimination? Or something far more calculating?

From the mansions of Manhattan to a lonely island quarantine, we uncover the truth behind the woman who became synonymous with disease—and ask whether she deserved it.

🦠 The fever may have faded, but the questions remain.

#TyphoidMary #MaryMallon #TrueCrime #MedicalMystery #HistoricalConspiracy #PublicHealth #NewYorkHistory #SSOSPodcast #SecretSocietyOfStrangers #DarkHistory #UnsolvedMysteries

All Video & Audio Edited By Jeremy of Schroeder Audio

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🕯️ Come Curious. Stay Strange. 🕯️

Josh explores the dark secrets lurking beneath Switzerland's particle accelerator. Scientists claim they're searching for "God particles," but leaked reports suggest they're dealing with something far more dangerous.

From unexplained phenomena during experiments to researchers joking about "summoning demons," the evidence points to CERN tearing holes in reality itself. Major experiments coincide with global shifts that millions notice but can't explain.

What's really happening 300 feet underground? The rabbit hole goes deeper than you think.

An SSOS investigation into the world's most mysterious scientific facility.

Like what you heard? Subscribe, share, and tell your fellow conspiracy theorists!

All Video & Audio Edited By Jeremy of Schroeder Audio

Come Curious. Stay Strange.

The legendary Philosophers' Stone - capable of turning base metals into gold and granting eternal life. Myth? Magic? Or misunderstood science?

Join us as Jen leads us deep into the shadowy world of alchemy, drawing on her extensive knowledge of ancient practices and esoteric traditions. From medieval laboratories shrouded in secrecy to the cryptic pages of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, we'll explore how these ancient seekers of transformation laid the groundwork for modern chemistry and medicine.

🕯️ What secrets lie hidden in alchemical symbols?

Discover how the mystical art of alchemy bridges the gap between ancient wisdom and contemporary scientific breakthroughs. Under Jen's expert guidance, we'll uncover the truth behind the transmutation of matter, the quest for the elixir of life, and the alchemists who dared to unlock the universe's deepest mysteries.

Some transformations change more than just metal into gold...

Like what you heard? Subscribe, share, and tell your fellow conspiracy theorists!

All Video & Audio Edited By Jeremy of Schroeder Audio

Come Curious. Stay Strange.

#Alchemy #PhilosophersStone #VoynichManuscript #AncientMysteries #SSOSPodcast #SecretSocietyOfStrangers