Paranormia

For decades, children on Staten Island grew up hearing the same warning. Don’t go near the abandoned buildings. Don’t cut through the woods. Because Cropsey was waiting. Cropsey was a boogeyman said to have escaped from the ruins of the Willowbrook State School, a story parents used to keep children away from a place they didn’t know how to explain. For years, it was just folklore, a cautionary tale meant to turn geography into safety.

Then children began to disappear for real. In the 1970s and 1980s, several young people vanished during ordinary routines, sent on short errands, leaving apartment buildings, walking home. When one child’s body was later found on the grounds of Willowbrook, attention turned to a former employee who had slept in camps nearby and would later be convicted of kidnapping.

As fear spread, the boundary between myth and reality collapsed. Cropsey stopped being just a story told to children and became a way a community tried to make sense of loss and danger. This episode examines the real cases behind the legend, the history of Willowbrook, and what happens when folklore collides with true crime. revealing how easily fear can turn tragedy into myth.

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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 [email protected].

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.
Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.
Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.
Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In January 2013, a 21-year-old Canadian student named Elisa Lam checked into a budget hotel in downtown Los Angeles. She was travelling alone, documenting her journey online, and calling her parents every day. Then the calls stopped.

Weeks later, her body was discovered in a rooftop water tank above the hotel where she’d been staying, after guests complained that the water pressure was low, and the tap water tasted strange. Days earlier, police had released surveillance footage of Elisa behaving erratically in a hotel elevator. The video went viral, transforming a missing person investigation into a global obsession. The building was the Cecil Hotel, a place with a long history of violence, suicide, and notoriety, sitting at the edge of Skid Row. As the internet rushed to fill the gaps with theories of ghosts, conspiracies, and foul play, the facts of the case became harder to hear.

This episode examines what actually happened, how a tragic death became mythologised, and what the story reveals about mental illness, internet culture, and our collective hunger for mystery. It’s a story about how fear distorts understanding, and how easily a real person can be lost inside a legend.

Support note:
This episode discusses mental illness, suicide, and distressing themes. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available.
UK & ROI: Samaritans — call 116 123 or visit samaritans.org
US: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988
Canada: Talk Suicide — call 1-833-456-4566
Australia: Lifeline — 13 11 14
Or visit findahelpline.com for local support worldwide

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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 [email protected].

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.
Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.
Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.
Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In February 1959, nine experienced hikers disappeared in the northern Ural Mountains. When searchers found their tent weeks later, it was cut open from the inside. Boots were left neatly behind. Food sat untouched. Footprints, some barefoot, led into the snow.

Over the months that followed, the bodies were recovered in stages. Some had died of exposure. Others suffered catastrophic internal injuries with almost no external wounds. Two were missing their eyes. One was missing her tongue. The Soviet investigation closed the case with a single, unsettling phrase: “an insurmountable force of nature.” In the decades since, the Dyatlov Pass Incident has become one of the most debated wilderness tragedies in modern history. Theories have ranged from avalanches and extreme weather to military testing, folklore, and outright conspiracy. Each explanation reflects not only the evidence, but the era, and the fears that produced it.

This episode traces what is known, what remains disputed, and how a remote mountain became a canvas for grief, secrecy, science, and myth. It’s a story about limits: of survival, of certainty, and of how easily unanswered questions harden into legend.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected].

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.
Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.
Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.
Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

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: unexplained rashes, recurring dreams, malfunctioning electronics, panic attacks, and people fainting in its presence. The story inspired books, a Hollywood horror film, and eventually a permanent display in a Las Vegas haunted museum. 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, why fear persisted even as the narrative began to unravel, and what the Dybbuk Box reveals about belief, suggestion, and the uneasy space where stories begin to feel real.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected].

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.
Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.
Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.
Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, three people were killed. A young woman found stabbed and bludgeoned in a San Francisco basement. A co-worker shot and buried in the woods of Humboldt County. And a man who stopped to help two hitchhikers, shot on the side of a California highway. The Carsons insisted their victims were witches. They held a five-hour jailhouse press conference, spoke of visions and holy missions, and framed murder as religious duty. Decades later, they have never renounced those beliefs.

This episode traces how an ordinary couple built a shared delusion powerful enough to justify killing, the damage it inflicted on children and families left behind, 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.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at [email protected].

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.
Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.
Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.
Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.