Paranormia – Details, episodes & analysis

In March 1989, Spring Break in South Texas was alive with crowds and music, until 21-year-old Mark Kilroy vanished somewhere between the bars of Matamoros and the quiet roads beyond the border. What began as a missing-person search soon led investigators to Santa Elena Ranch, a remote compound tied to a group calling themselves a religious society, a place where superstition, ritual, and violence appeared to intersect. As the investigation unfolded, rumours of black magic, sacrifice and folk-religious practices spread rapidly, blurring the line between fact and folklore. This episode explores how fear, belief, and cartel mythmaking shaped one of the strangest cases of its era, and why, in the borderlands, the truth often shifts with the shadows.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

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In May 2014, the quiet suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, became the setting for one of the strangest and most unsettling crimes in modern history. Two twelve-year-old girls lured their best friend into the woods and stabbed her nineteen times, leaving her for dead. When police found them hours later, walking calmly down a highway, they said they’d done it for Slender Man, a faceless figure born from an internet forum, a digital myth that somehow took root in their minds. Journalist Elizabeth McCafferty explores how an online story turned into shared delusion, how imagination became belief, and how belief became violence. Was it mental illness, manipulation, or something more elusive? Because in a world where fiction spreads faster than fact, Slender Man isn’t just a monster made online. He’s what happens when fear finds Wi-Fi.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you ever awake in the cruellest hours of the night, when the world is quiet but your mind isn’t? That’s where Paranormia begins, a weekly podcast where true crime collides with the supernatural. Journalist and parapsychologist Elizabeth McCafferty uncovers real cases where belief turns deadly and fear becomes evidence. In this opening episode, she traces her fascination with the unexplained and reveals the idea behind the series: stories from the thin space between psychology and the paranormal, where reason falters, fear takes hold, and belief turns dangerous.

Because sometimes the haunting isn’t out there… it’s in here. Paranormia: where paranoia meets the paranormal.

Subscribe, and stay awake with us.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early 1994, the murder of Harry and Nicola Fuller brought twelve jurors to a Brighton hotel, locked away from the world with nothing but silence, photographs, and each other. As the pressure mounted, four of them reached for a Ouija board, half a joke, half a plea for clarity, and asked the dead for answers. The verdict that followed would crumble under the weight of its own strangeness. This episode explores how isolation bends the mind, how belief can slip through the cracks of law, and how a single night in a seaside hotel became one of the most unsettling chapters in British justice.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1972, a group of Canadians invented a fictional ghost named Philip to test whether belief alone could make him appear. Each week, they gathered around a table, and soon knocks and moving furniture seemed to respond to them. This episode explores the Philip Experiment and the uneasy space where psychology, ritual, and expectation collide, showing how belief can shape reality, or at least how it feels like it does.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Christmas Eve 1945, a fire tore through a family home in the hills of West Virginia. Four children escaped, but five never came out. When the smoke cleared, there were no bodies in the ashes and no bones.In the years that followed, the Sodder family rejected the official story. They spoke of cut phone lines, a missing ladder, warnings from strangers, and a photograph mailed decades later that seemed to show one of the lost children alive. For eighty years, the case has hovered between accident and conspiracy. This episode explores the disappearance of the Sodder children and the questions that refuse to fade.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was a city stripped bare. Zack Bowen, a former soldier, and Addie Hall, a poet and bartender, stayed behind, scavenging and living in the streets while photographed as symbols of defiance. A year later, Addie was killed, and Zack took his own life, leaving behind a shocking crime scene. This episode explores how disaster, trauma, and addiction turned a brief romance into tragedy, and why the story became mythologised as a “voodoo murder.”

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

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Support & Resources:

This episode discusses suicide, domestic abuse, addiction, and trauma. If you or someone you love needs support, help is available:

United Kingdom:

Samaritans - Call 116 123 (24/7) or visit samaritans.org 

National Domestic Abuse Helpline - Call 0808 2000 247 (24/7) or visit nationaldahelpline.org.uk 

United States:

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline - Call or text 988 (24/7) or visit 988lifeline.org 

Veterans Crisis Line - Call 988, then press 1, or text 838255

National Domestic Violence Hotline - Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or visit thehotline.org 

Australia:

Lifeline Australia - Call 13 11 14 (24/7) or visit lifeline.org.au 

1800RESPECT - Call 1800 737 732 or visit 1800respect.org.au 

Global:

International Association for Suicide Prevention

Find local helplines at findahelpline.com 

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In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Michael and Suzan Carson drifted through the American West, moving between communes, shared apartments, and marijuana farms. They changed their names, adopted a patchwork belief system of mysticism and religion, and came to see themselves as warriors in a hidden war. Between 1981 and 1983, they killed three people and insisted their victims were witches. This episode traces how an ordinary couple built a shared delusion powerful enough to justify killing, and why the story has been remembered as something occult rather than what it was: a case study in belief, control, and the human capacity to turn ideology into violence.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2001, a small wooden wine cabinet appeared in an eBay listing from Portland. Its seller claimed it had belonged to a 103 year old Holocaust survivor and that it contained a dybbuk, a restless spirit from Jewish folklore. He warned that opening it had brought illness, nightmares, and a sense of being watched. Over the years, the cabinet passed through multiple owners, each reporting disturbing experiences. But as the legend grew, investigators began to question where it came from, and whether the story attached to the box matched the traditions it claimed to draw from. This episode traces how an ordinary object became a modern haunting, and what the Dybbuk Box reveals about belief.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.