Episodes

1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced the world to Freddy Krueger, the besweatered slasher who kills teenagers in their dreams. But Wes Craven says he based his most iconic creation on a real-life horror: a plague of yo...

As Ain't It Scary 's spooky season tour comes to a close, we're giving you a sneak peek of what we've been talking about all October with this episode chock full of colonial-era ghost stories! Join us for an hour …

To mark the 150th episode of the podcast (OMG), we're going back to one of our earliest subjects! At the very start of the pod we investigated the Halloween urban legend of the stranger poisoning trick or treat candy, and …

First published in 1897, Bram Stoker's Dracula laid the foundations for what would become horror fiction, and set up most of the vampire tropes you know on one fell swoop. Crosses and sunlight? That's a Stoker. Bat transforma...

The second week of this spooky season's vampire series stars Erzsebet AKA Elizabeth Bathory, the famed Blood Countess of Hungary! Born in 1560 to one of Hungary's wealthiest families, Elizabeth made herself even more powerful...

We're more than halfway through September, and in this house that means it's basically Halloween! Sean kicks off our spooky series on vampires with a look at the man who gave his name to the most famous vampire of all: …

Here we are: the end of the line for the Manson Family. This week, we bring our epic series on the Manson Family Murders to an explosive conclusion with the August 9th killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, the retaliation …

And here we are. The infamous murders of August 8th, 1969, where 5 people - some famous - would meet horrific ends at the hands of the Manson Family, directed by Charlie to create "copycat murders" to lessen the heat …

This week, the horror of Helter Skelter begins on part 4 of our Manson Family deep-dive with the lesser-known murder of the Family's first official victim, former friend Gary Hinman. We explore the circumstances leading to th...

In week 3 of our Manson saga we travel with the Family to the worn-down Western movie set of Spahn Ranch, where Charlie and co set up shop and begin their descent further into shared cult madness - separated from …

"Cease to exist, just come and say you love me Give up your world, come on you can be, I'm your kind, I'm your kind, and I see..." This week, we take a tour through the epicenter of the hippie …

The innocence of the Summer of Love and the hippie counterculture movement came to an abrupt end in August 1969, when a string of brutal murders in the Los Angeles area rocked Hollywood, the country, and the world. The perpet...

In the summer of 1974, a body was discovered among the dunes of Cape Cod by a young girl chasing her dog. Despite the efforts of local and state police, the so-named "Lady of the Dunes" would go unidentified for …

We kept it fairly loose this week with a midsummer (midsommar??) catch-up featuring Sean & Carrie gathering round the spooky campfire and talking their recently-consumed horror content ( Bones and All , Diablo 4, True Blood ,...

In late July 1945, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis had just conducted a top-secret mission, delivering a sealed metal box to a small island in the Pacific. Unbeknownst to the crew aboard, that box held the final pieces of ...

The American Revolutionary War spanned 8 bloody years of war, brutality, and conflict. When the America of today looks back on it now, we tend to look back with reverence and even idolization - but we don't think about the …

In the 1920s and 30s, colonial Kenya was playground to a social clique of wealthy British expats called the "Happy Valley Set," famed for their excessive tastes and drug-fueled sex parties. One of the foremost members of the ...

In this episode, Carrie leads a deep dive into the secretive world of Bohemian Grove. Join us as we explore the enigmatic rituals and hidden history surrounding the elusive private Bohemian Club, whose encampment sits nestled...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had a penchant for achieving milestones early: he composed his first pieces by age 5, his first symphony by age 8, and tragically, even died young at the age of 35. Since immediately after the seminal ...

This week, we're teaming up with the New York Mystery Machine podcast to bring you the best Bigfoots the Northeast has to offer! After Adam and Christina gave us the lowdown on the Sasquatches of New York over at their …

We're back at it after a 2-week break to travel abroad and move house! And we're chatting another house...of worship, that is. Catholicism is a mysterious religion based in millennia of faith and worship, and of course in tho...

This week we finish our quick tour through the purported adventures of the UFO prophet Raël, whose Raëlian Movement once claimed nearly a hundred thousand followers worldwide. While Raël was spreading his message here on Eart...

ETs are back on Ain't It Scary in a two-part primer on one of the most prominent UFO religions on Earth - the Raëlian Movement! In this first installment, Sean introduces Claude Vorilhon - the man who would be renamed …

This week, we explore how a crime story can inform pop culture with the true tale of Grace Brown's murder at the hands of Chester Gillette in 1906. In a collaboration with the You're Missing Out podcast, we took a …