Every Halloween, Rhode Island’s most infamous institution stirs with ghost stories — chilling true accounts of hauntings, poltergeists, and unexplained encounters at the Ladd School. Former staff, urban explorers, and locals recount phantom footsteps, voices in the dark, and vanishing lights, all pulled from the viral Facebook thread that resurfaces each October.

But not everyone is convinced. Through a tangle of belief and skepticism, we follow those who swear they’ve felt the cold grip of the unknown, and those who insist nothing ever haunted these halls.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

Urban legends swirled for decades around the abandoned Ladd School in Exeter, Rhode Island — secret tunnels, hidden experiments, wild farm plots, and stories of people still living deep inside the ruins. But where did these rumors come from? And how close were they to the truth?

This episode follows the strange overlap between myth and fact, as history reveals something even more unsettling: a real discovery inside a long-abandoned building in 2001, so bizarre it defies explanation... and still hasn’t been forgotten.

Based on original research from the Ladd School Historical Society and Archives.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

In early 20th-century Rhode Island, love could be a crime inside the walls of state institutions. This episode unravels three real stories of relationships that turned volatile behind locked doors — where longing was pathologized, intimacy was policed, and the consequences were severe. Drawing from rare case files, newspaper archives, and institutional records, we explore how the state criminalized desire and turned heartbreak into violence.

Based on original research from the Ladd School Historical Society and Archives.
Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

Beneath moss and cracked stone on the edge of Exeter, ninety-one lives lie hidden — silent, unclaimed, and nearly erased. Historic Cemetery No. 35 isn’t just a graveyard. It’s a ledger of vanished names, lost families, and secrets the state tried to bury for good.

Who were they? Why did no one come? And what does the earth remember when everyone else has forgotten?

Journey inside the Ladd School’s shadowy past — where records whisper, graves sink, and Rhode Island’s most vulnerable simply disappeared.

Based on original research from the Ladd School Historical Society and Archives.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

In 19th-century Rhode Island, tuberculosis was a relentless killer — and desperation gave rise to vampire folklore. Families exhumed loved ones, cut out hearts, and burned them in hopes of stopping the disease, while the state built almshouses and asylums that only spread the contagion further. From the famous case of Mercy Brown to hidden deaths inside Exeter and Howard, this episode traces how fear, folklore, and failed institutions blurred the line between medicine and superstition. Based on original research from the Ladd School Historical Society and Archives.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array

In 1940s Rhode Island, accusations of witchcraft weren’t confined to the distant past—they were used as evidence in modern courtrooms. This episode uncovers the true story of Concetta DeSanto, a woman whose poverty, immigrant background, and belief in curses collided with state power and psychiatric authority. Drawing from rare archival records and forgotten case files, we explore how folk beliefs, social judgment, and generational poverty shaped one family’s fate—and how the shadow of the Salem witch trials lingered long after the last colonial execution.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

When the state labeled Marina Couture “feeble-minded,” it was the start of a decades-long sentence — poverty, family rejection, and a brutal system that refused to let go. In this episode, we pull back the curtain on a hidden chapter of Rhode Island’s institutional history, tracing Marina’s journey from mill worker to “streetwalker” to a life defined by judgment and survival inside the almshouse and asylum. Her rare 1922 confession — recorded in her own words — reveals the realities of sex work, scandal, accusations of abuse, and a system designed to keep the vulnerable forgotten.

Based on original archival records and a lost clinical interview, this is a raw, unvarnished portrait of life inside Rhode Island's State Farm.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

In 1952, a nine-year-old boy disappeared from the Exeter School — later known as the Ladd School — and what followed became the largest manhunt in Rhode Island history. Bloodhounds, helicopters, and hundreds of searchers scoured the countryside, yet the trail only grew stranger. This episode revisits the disappearance, the search, and the unsettling questions that remain.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

In 1955, lawmakers toured the Ladd School — and what they found shocked Rhode Island. Overcrowded dorms, understaffed wards, and human suffering described in chilling detail led one legislator to call it “the home of the eternally doomed.” This episode takes you inside that visit, and into the shadows of an institution on the brink of collapse.

Music: “Endless Nightmare” by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.

At the turn of the 20th century, Rhode Island's State Farm at Howard housed the almshouse, asylum, prison, and reformatory. Through the rare firsthand account of Dr. Henry Aaron Jones, a physician who spent decades inside, we uncover shackled arrivals, the doctrine of force in the prison, exploitation of asylum patients, and the degradation of the almshouse. Yet Jones also pushed for reform—better sanitation, education, and dignity. His 1943 book, The Dark Days of Social Welfare, captures Howard's transformation from a 'castle of despair' toward a city of healing.

Music: "Endless Nightmare" by Oliver Garcia, licensed via Motion Array.