Episodios

  • An Empty Morgue Isn’t Always Empty

    An Empty Morgue Isn’t Always Empty
    Feb 25 2026
    What happens when a body arrives at a hospital morgue without any record of how it got there? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro examine a disturbing class of real-world cases involving unidentified bodies that appear in hospital morgues with no paperwork, no chain of custody, and no clear explanation. The episode begins with a firsthand email from a night-shift worker who briefly stepped away from an empty morgue—only to return to find a body placed neatly in the room, as if it had always belonged there. From that moment, the discussion expands into documented incidents across U.S. hospitals and medical examiner offices, where decedents entered official custody before they technically existed in the system. Drawing on acknowledged cases in California and Illinois, professional standards from the National Association of Medical Examiners, and historical precedent, Kat and Jethro explore how modern medical systems quietly normalize these unexplained arrivals by assigning case numbers and moving forward—without ever addressing the moment something appeared where nothing had been before. The episode then shifts to a seemingly unrelated but deeply connected subject: how human societies remember lives at all. Long before databases and paperwork, entire civilizations relied on living memory. Kat and Jethro explore the tradition of griots and other oral historians across West Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Asia—individuals entrusted with preserving genealogies, histories, and identities entirely through story, music, and performance. Backed by neuroscience research, the episode examines why rhythm and narrative are so effective at preserving memory, even when written records fail. Together, these two topics form a quiet, unsettling question at the heart of the episode: what happens when systems designed to document human existence fall short—and who remembers us when they do? Grounded in documented cases, historical tradition, and modern science, this episode blends true mystery with cultural insight, revealing how bodies can arrive without histories, and histories can survive without bodies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    34 m
  • Mothman Wasn’t Alone

    Mothman Wasn’t Alone
    Feb 23 2026
    This episode of The Box of Oddities drifts from quiet museum news into deeply unsettling territory, beginning with an update on the International Cryptozoology Museum and sliding straight into one of America’s most enduring paranormal mysteries. In Point Pleasant, West Virginia—forever linked to the legend of Mothman—the hosts revisit the famous sightings that turned a small river town into ground zero for strange phenomena in the 1960s. But this time, the story doesn’t stop with glowing red eyes and winged silhouettes. Digging through old police blotters uncovers something far quieter and, in some ways, far more disturbing: decades of reports describing the same unidentified man walking the streets at night. Long before and during the height of the Mothman flap, officers documented encounters with a figure who never aged, never spoke, and never quite seemed human. The overlap raises uncomfortable questions about observation, surveillance, and whether Point Pleasant was being watched—by something else—long before the town knew it was strange. From paranormal folklore, the episode pivots sharply into real-world secrecy, exploring espionage during World War I, where ordinary people became invisible spies. In occupied Europe, women used knitting not just as cover, but as a potential method of steganography—encoding military intelligence into stitches, patterns, and yarn, right under the noses of enemy soldiers. These stories blur the line between domestic routine and covert resistance, revealing how underestimated skills became powerful tools of war. Blending cryptids, coded yarn, historical intrigue, and listener-driven discoveries, this episode captures what The Box of Oddities does best: connecting the paranormal with the overlooked corners of history and inviting listener engagement along the way. From Mothman to men who don’t belong, from quiet streets to quiet stitches, this is a journey through mysteries that hide in plain sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    31 m
  • Inbox Of Oddities #76

    Inbox Of Oddities #76
    Feb 20 2026
    The Inbox of Oddities returns with a collection of listener stories that blur the line between coincidence, comfort, and the quietly unexplained. In this episode, Kat and JG open the mailbag to explore moments that refuse to be neatly categorized—voices heard from empty hallways, familiar smells that return after death, voicemails that play when no tape exists, and encounters that arrive at exactly the moment they’re needed. Listeners share experiences with phantom sounds, uncanny timing, and the strange intimacy of grief—like a parent’s voice calling from another room, a mattress dipping under unseen weight, or a watch alarm sounding years later on the exact right day. These aren’t stories that demand belief or skepticism. They simply sit there, unresolved, asking to be remembered as they were felt. Along the way, the episode drifts into lighter oddities too: bizarre coincidences, accidental “boo effects,” strange dreams, unexpected connections sparked by the show itself, and a few moments of humor that keep the strange from tipping into the unbearable. From animal mischief and international pronunciation corrections to eerie synchronicities and deeply personal listener reflections, this Inbox episode captures what happens when strange things brush past ordinary lives. If you love listener stories, paranormal ambiguity, unexplained experiences, synchronicities, and moments that feel meaningful without ever explaining why, this episode of Inbox of Oddities is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    22 m
  • Awake on the Autopsy Table

    Awake on the Autopsy Table
    Feb 18 2026
    What if death isn’t a clean switch—off, then on—but something messier? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dig into a deeply unsettling early-20th-century medical case involving a European woman who was pronounced dead… and then woke up during her own autopsy. Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Literally on the table. Declared clinically dead by the standards of the time, her body was wheeled from the ward, stripped, positioned, and cut open by doctors who had no reason to believe anyone was listening. But when she revived, she didn’t describe darkness, tunnels, or visions of light. Instead, she calmly and accurately recounted what the doctors had done and said after she was declared dead—details she could not have seen, overheard, or reasonably guessed. The case appeared quietly in early medical journals, written in careful, restrained language, and then largely disappeared from discussion. Long before near-death experiences entered popular culture, this account suggested something far more uncomfortable: that awareness may linger longer than we think, and that consciousness doesn’t always follow the tidy rules we assign to it. From there, the conversation widens into the blurry boundaries of clinical death, historical accounts of awareness during catastrophic injury, and why medicine—especially in its early modern years—may have preferred to quietly file away cases that didn’t fit the model. Then, because this is The Box of Oddities, things take a turn. The episode also explores unlucky days across cultures—Friday the 13th, Tuesday the 13th, Friday the 17th, and other calendar dates humans have decided are cursed—and why we seem so determined to assign meaning to randomness. And finally, the story of Vincent Coleman and the Halifax Explosion: a railway dispatcher who knowingly stayed at his post to send a final warning that saved hundreds of lives, moments before one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history leveled much of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s an episode about presence where none was expected, warnings sent too late—or just in time—and the uncomfortable possibility that the line between being here and being gone isn’t as sharp as we’d like to believe. Fly it proudly, you beautiful freak. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    36 m
  • The Thing Under the Pyramids

    The Thing Under the Pyramids
    Feb 16 2026
    In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro begin exactly where all great mysteries begin: with a frozen burrito and a deeply personal kitchen ritual that absolutely does not need to exist—but does anyway. From there, things escalate quickly. What starts as a discussion of oddly satisfying micro-rituals (the kind everyone has but no one can justify) turns into a deep dive beneath the sands of Egypt, where recent radar imaging claims suggest something massive and geometric may exist far below the Pyramid of Khafre. We’re not talking about a hidden chamber or a forgotten hallway. We’re talking about enormous cylindrical shafts, spiraling downward hundreds of meters, arranged with unsettling precision. Are these structures real? Are they geological accidents? Or are they deliberately engineered spaces—older than the pyramids themselves—designed for purposes we no longer understand? Kat and Jethro explore theories ranging from ancient engineering marvels to acoustic resonance chambers capable of inducing altered states of consciousness. Chanting, vibration, infrasonic frequencies, and architecture as a mechanism for transcendence all enter the chat. Along the way, the conversation veers (as it always does) into related oddities: Stonehenge acoustics, the Dyatlov Pass mystery, binaural beats, and the idea that sound itself may have been one of humanity’s earliest tools for altering perception and brushing up against the unknown. Then, just when you think you’re safe, we go underwater. Meet the Bobbit worm—also known as the bearded fireworm—a real, very ancient, nightmare-fuel marine predator that hides in sand, senses vibrations, and snaps prey in half with terrifying speed. Equal parts fascinating and horrifying, this ten-foot ambush worm becomes an unexpected mirror to the episode’s earlier themes: ancient design, patience, hidden systems, and things that wait quietly beneath the surface until the moment they strike. This episode blends humor, history, speculative science, biology, and the deeply human urge to find meaning in rituals, structures, and creatures that predate us by millions—or even billions—of years. From kitchen counters to subterranean spirals to venomous sea monsters, The Box of Oddities asks the question it always asks best: not just what might be down there—but why the idea of it makes us so uncomfortable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 m
  • Inbox Of Oddities #75

    Inbox Of Oddities #75
    Feb 13 2026
    On this Friday the 13th edition of Inbox of Oddities, Kat and Jethro open the mailbag and let the Freak Fam take the microphone. From Ohio to Australia, Wisconsin to Vermont, listeners share experiences they can’t quite explain—and aren’t sure they want to. A woman who lives alone wakes up to find coins appearing on her nightstand… even after setting up a camera to prove nothing happened. A listener describes hearing her beloved dog—gone just hours before—return one last time, warm and unmistakably real. A cemetery worker receives a phone call from someone insisting they were just called first. And a disconnected phone number delivers a voicemail years later… in a mother’s voice. Other stories drift into stranger territory: a dying grandfather who insists the room is “breathing,” deathbed visions of unseen visitors, the unsettling sense of a space suddenly feeling busy, and the lingering question of whether some voices are meant to be heard—but not answered. There’s also a look at extravagant funerals, eerie coincidences, and the quiet comfort of knowing you’re not alone when you file something under unexplained and keep going. These are the kind of things you think about later, when the house is quiet. Welcome to the Inbox. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    22 m
  • Unexplained Human Presence Detected

    Unexplained Human Presence Detected
    Feb 11 2026
    In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro wander into one of the strangest phrases ever to appear in official U.S. government records: “Unexplained human presence detected.” Buried inside real Freedom of Information Act documents, this calm, clinical line appears again and again across decades of federal incident reports—acknowledging signs of human movement, interaction, and intention… without ever finding a human being. What does it mean when trained professionals confirm a presence, rule out mechanical causes, and then simply stop writing? The conversation drifts through surveillance systems, human perception, AI pattern recognition, and that deeply familiar feeling that someone was just there—close enough to leave a trace—before vanishing. From there, the episode plunges (sometimes literally) into Devil’s Hole, Nevada: a narrow limestone fissure hiding a warm surface pool, a bottomless-seeming abyss, and the only natural habitat of the critically endangered Devil’s Hole pupfish. The hosts explore how this unassuming opening drops more than 1,200 feet into darkness, has claimed multiple divers, reacts to earthquakes thousands of miles away, and even attracted the obsessive attention of Charles Manson. With stories of vanished bodies, seismic sloshing, baffling depths, and fragile life clinging to a single rocky shelf, this episode blends government mystery, geological terror, and existential unease—plus a brief, emotional detour involving a rescued monarch butterfly named Crumplewing. As always, it’s strange, funny, unsettling, and just grounded enough in real documentation to make it linger long after the episode ends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    32 m
  • Ancient Rome, Quantum Time, and the Dead Next Door

    Ancient Rome, Quantum Time, and the Dead Next Door
    Feb 9 2026
    Could ancient Romans really talk to the dead—and did they build a device to help them do it? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro tumble headfirst into one of archaeology’s strangest unsolved mysteries: the Roman dodecahedron. These small bronze objects—covered in holes, studded with knobs, and found almost exclusively in frontier regions of the Roman Empire—have baffled historians for centuries. No instructions. No records. No explanation. Just geometry… and silence. We explore a growing theory that these objects weren’t tools or toys at all, but ritual devices used for necromancy. Drawing from documented Roman practices—curse tablets, grave rituals, offerings to the dead—we examine how light, fire, human remains, and sacred geometry may have combined to create controlled states of altered perception. Not summoning ghosts exactly… but thinning the veil just enough. From Plato’s cosmic geometry to the eerie absence of these artifacts in Rome itself, the clues point toward forbidden practices quietly carried out on the edges of empire—where Roman order collided with older Celtic beliefs about the dead being nearby, accessible, and occasionally helpful. Along the way, the episode drifts (as it always does) into unexpected territory: midnight peanut-butter trauma, the strange comfort of reincarnated pets, and a surprisingly deep dive into how humans have measured time—from candle clocks and cow milkings to Planck time and absurdly large cosmic units. Because when you start talking about death, you inevitably end up talking about time… and how little of it we feel we have. It’s a conversation about ancient fears, forbidden knowledge, and the unsettling possibility that some things were never written down because they worked just well enough to scare people into silence. Fly your freak flag proudly—and maybe don’t peer too deeply into glowing bronze objects near a grave. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    37 m