Today's True Weird Stuff - A Real Stiff

Elmer McCurdy was an American outlaw who couldn't pull off a smooth heist to save his life. He tried to use his Army training with nitroglycerin to rob banks and trains, often to no avail. After accidentally robbing the wrong train in 1911, a drunken McCurdy met his demise after firing at the deputy sheriffs searching for him. And for the next 65 years, McCurdy's mummified corpse wound up being used as a traveling sideshow attraction known as "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up."

Today's True Weird Stuff - Human Cloning

In the previous episode of True Weird Stuff, we told the story of Raëlism, the religious UFO cult led by Claude Vorilhon. We're now diving into one of their core beliefs: that Jesus was resurrected through cloning and humans need to perfect human cloning to achieve immortality. That would lead to a claim made in 2002 by a scientific company created by Raëlians that the first human clone had been born. 

Today's True Weird Stuff - The Messenger

This is the story of a man who created a religion around UFO's. Claude Vorilhon was a journalist who claimed he was abducted by aliens in 1973. He said they told him humans were created by extraterrestrial species using advanced technology, and then they renamed him Raël and sent him back to Earth to serve as ambassador to their faith. And thus, Raëlism was born.

Coconut Cult

In the early 1900s, a German author named August Engelhardt packed up his library of books, moved to the South Pacific island of Kabakon, and started a sun-worshipping coconut cult. He believed the way to become closer to God and gain immortality was by consuming coconuts and nothing else. Engelhardt convinced dozens of people to join him on the island, but many of them died from illness or malnutrition. And the ones who didn't perish fled, having realized the lunacy of a man who was cuckoo for coconuts.

Today's True Weird Stuff - A Curse on You

Alchemist. Astrologer. Magician. Georg Faust was considered a heretic in medieval Europe, primarily because he practiced black magic and summoned the spirits of the dead. Through legend and literature, Faust was hated by many, not just because of his fraudulent ways, but because of his pact with the devil for knowledge and power; a debt the devil would quickly collect.

Today's True Weird Stuff - Once Upon A Shroom

R. Gordon Wasson was an author, and worked in banking for J.P. Morgan. He was also responsible for popularizing shrooms in America...you know, the ones with psychedelic properties. Even the CIA got in on the action, covertly funding Wasson's expedition to study and collect hallucinogenic species of mushrooms for MK-Ultra's subproject 58.

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Today's True Weird Stuff - Asylum Ladies

In the 1800s, women could be placed in mental institutions simply for not behaving the way society believed they should. Mental diagnoses at the time were simple: you were either deemed a lunatic, a moron, an imbecile, or feeble-minded. Like many others, a woman named Josephine Shaw Lowell believed poor women who lived in almshouses were promiscuous and prone to having illegitimate children. That's why in 1878 she created a place to house those women called the New York State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-Minded Women.

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Today's True Weird Stuff - Forbidden Island

In the early 1900s, a woman known as Typhoid Mary was identified as patient zero for a series of typhoid outbreaks in New York. As a result, she was forced into quarantine on North Brother Island and lived the rest of her life in exile. Not only was the island a quarantine zone, it was the location of the General Slocum steamboat disaster, the deadliest event to happen in New York before 9/11. Today, North Brother Island has been abandoned for over 60 years, and travel to the island is strictly forbidden.

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Today's True Weird Stuff - Dark Twinning

Stewart and Cyril Marcus were identical twin gynecologists. Though regarded as brilliant men in their profession, the Marcus twins' personal lives were shrouded in darkness. In 1975, the 45-year-old brothers' partially-decayed bodies were found inside a locked apartment littered with garbage and pharmaceuticals. An investigation led to the discovery of lives that had been just as mysterious and tragic as their deaths.

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Today's True Weird Stuff - Hammersmith Ghost (Airdate 11/15/2024)

In 1803, residents of the Hammersmith district of London reported being terrorized by a ghost. The hysteria was so intense that a man named Francis Smith did the unthinkable: he shot and killed a man wearing white clothing, having mistaken the man for the Hammersmith Ghost. Can a man be found guilty of trying to kill a ghost? It's a decision that would take English courts 180 years to figure out.

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