Occultor

With 160 rooms tangled into a four-story eclectic mess, the Winchester manor is a sight to behold. And, thanks to the historical significance of the company, it's also a good topic to cover - even before you mix in a healthy dose of uncountable angry spirits.

Beast? Innocent victim? Somewhere in between? This listener-chosen episode talks about Medusa and goes through the evolution of this popular myth through the centuries.

We're starting off season 2 with a fun cryptidish episode, one about the little beasties who plagued WWII pilots and inspired a famous children's book author in one of his first books.

One of the most contradicting people, Jim Jones, lead this group from 1954 to 1978. It all ended as one of the most infamous cults in history, with the death of 900 people in a mass murder-suicide after the abuse and illegal activity was found out.

The Jackalope: a creature that just seems like it really should exist, shouldn't it? And maybe it does! Jackalopes topple the gentle symbolism of their tamer, antlerless cousins and instead are highly dangerous creatures of the most remote deserts.

Another chance for me to do voices as I read old, delightfully disturbing fairy tales! This episode features Death's Messengers by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, The Story of Blue Beard by Charles Perrault, and The Tinder-Box by Hans Christian Andersen.

As a recent reappearant into modern culture, Rasputin is almost a legend. There was a real dude behind the myths, yes, but honestly, the truth isn't much saner. It's definitely not boring!

Bit of a lengthy title, but that's the topic for this episode! Founded around 2001 and ended around 2007, this little-known doomsday cult has a very interesting story.

Part two is here! Animals L to Z with myths, lore, and legends about all of them. Yes, even for Q, U, and X!

Occultors first two-parter! This episode goes through an animal for every letter of the alphabet and some of the myths, stories, lore, and associations that the animal has.

Not much is better than a good tale about a ghost ship, so here are three! There are possible pirates, the Devil, true love, horrified corpses, potential axe murders, and up-n-vanished people. All elements of a wonderful story perfect for sending shivers down your spine.

This is the return of both Occultor and the Mythology miniseries from their breaks!

In this episode, we explore a few death and death-related deities. We talk about their history, associations, and mythology, and a little about the afterlife they're associated with.

Marie Laveau was the Vodou queen, an incredibly charitable lady, and a cultural icon. If this isn't cool enough for you, wait until you find out the mystery and magic that surrounded the last parts of her life...

I've been putting this episode off for a while because of the mixture of history and legend, but we're halfway to 50 so now's an occasion for it!

This week is all about UFOs and sightings surrounding them. There are far too many to stick them all in one episode, but I got just enough in to hopefully touch on important and cool historical sightings in a timeline from ancient Egypt all the way to about 1990. Even with a speedrun, this episode really is a monster!

Well, it's been hectic recently, and we're still in the kind of weather where you can cuddle up with a sweater, a blanket, and a cup of tea. So what better point in time to have some good ol' fashioned fairy tales? This episode has some classics and some lesser-known ones, and because I felt in the mood for it you even get some voices. Sort of. I'm sorry.

It would be bad enough if you were just paralyzed for a few minutes, but most of us know that's not usually the case. Strange sounds, sensations, floating......it's all bad enough. But then come the "sleep paralysis demons" as so many of us have heard about. Old hags with a penchant for strangling, and lurking, unnaturally tall and thin shadow men are the most common but definitely not the limit of the horror. And the worst of all? We still don't know why we see what we do...

This week's episode is white, flavorless, and can kill you within 20 minutes...well, okay, it might be two of those things. 

Episode 21 is on poisons, their origins, and what exactly they do to the human body when taken. You can't pretend that you haven't been curious! I did the research so you don't have to have it on your search history. This week, we cover arsenic, cyanide, deadly nightshade, strychnine, and hemlock.

Apotropaic symbols are any marking or symbolic charm used to protect from misfortune, harmful entities, or evil in general. This episode covers a few different kinds, the reasoning behind them, and how they have evolved over the centuries.

This mouthful of a title means the start of a new series! In the first installment, I tell about a few of my favorite lesser-known Greek deities and the mythology surrounding them. Hestia, Tyche, Hypnos, Thanatos, and Melinoe are all featured in this episode. Because of the holidays, I got my schedule mixed around. This really is episode 19, don't let the intro fool you!

While Christmas is a Christian holiday, it's rooted in many much older practices. This episode goes over some of the history surrounding Christmas traditions and how & why they were carried over from Pagan celebrations. 

Mummies, fossils, and casts, oh my! This episode covers some of the various ways the human body can be preserved, both intentionally and unintentionally. From Egyptian mummies to modern science exhibits, we'll explore some of the weird science that can keep us around for longer than usual.

Whew, prepare for a ranty episode! Ley lines are a truly fascinating theory about the way energy, electricity, and gravitational forces travel through the earth. There's a lot of different ideas for how they work, why they exist, and how best to find them. This ramble of an episode covers that, some alien theories, and thoughts about those giant corkboards with maps, newspaper clippings, pins, and string.

Weeping women are one of the storytelling archetypes that seem to appear in legends, folk tales, and mythologies across cultures all over the world. The similarities between the different stories are shocking, but there's enough of a difference to show the nature of the region and the environment the myth developed in. This episode explores some different versions of the weeping women.

The Malleus Maleficarum, or the 'Hammer of Witches', was a book from which much of the chaos and hysteria during the witch trials stemmed. To understand what lead up to its publication, this episode looks into attitudes towards witches and magic through history. We then get into this nasty piece of work and the witch-killing craze it helped spur on.

Superstitions exist everywhere, in every time and culture. Even the most reasonable of us seem to have a lucky number or a shirt that we wear when we need an extra boost of fate. Walking under ladders, the number thirteen, broken mirrors, horseshoes, four-leaf clovers...they all have a superstitious association and a history as to why.

Way back in Victorian London, before Jack the Ripper made his reputation, mysterious and pervy Spring-Heeled Jack was lurking. He was a slap-happy (literally), overly handsy guy with a weird sense of humor. This episode covers some of his attacks and a few theories on who or what he is.

This episode is short one because of audio issues, but its a really interesting, sciencey, conspiracy-theory-style topic so hopefully it's still juicy enough. 

Dicyanin dye, supposedly used to see auras, is the center of a pretty massive hoax. Auras, however, go beyond that, and this episode covers a bit of both.

This episode covers lore and history about a spirit that pops up in many different cultures under many different names: black dogs. It's debated whether they're cryptids, spirits, or demons, but many myths report they are Good Boys who guard crossroads and spirits of the dead.

One of my very favorite cryptids stars in this episode! And no, I'm not talking about the surprise guest who I invited on the show for this week. Mothman and his scare-spree at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, is a wild story with so much to it. There are as many theories as there were sightings in the mid 1960s (over a hundred!) and in this episode we cover a few.

Michael Malloy is a real-life Irish tank, a man that defied all the rules when it comes to mortality. Was he just lucky? Was it that good ole Irish durability? Who knows, but it's a great story!

This episode is the beginning (and maybe the end, if listeners decree) of a looser notes structure. Let us know what you think compared to the ones before on Instagram @occultorpodcast or email occultorpodcast@gmail.com. 

39 people lost their lives to Heaven's Gate and its teachings. In this episode, we explore the birth, growth, and finals days of the cult that caused such a strange and shocking tragedy.

All around the world, spread across centuries, are cases where human beings have apparently burned themselves up from the inside. What do we know, and how can we explain these victims' deaths?

The Necronomicon is a staple of occult sections in bookstores worldwide, but how much do we really know about its history?

A brief introduction to Occultor