Ain't It Scary? with Sean & Carrie

This week we tackle the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, one of the most notorious and high-value art heists of all time. One March night in Boston, 1990, two men donned police disguises to enter the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Once inside, they subdued security and walked off with a collection of art potentially valued at over $1 billion in 2024. Vermeers, Rembrandts and more were lost to the world that night, never to be seen again...

This week, we're celebrating all kinds of mums - but no, that isn't in observance of America's Mother's Day holiday this upcoming Sunday! No, the collection of mums we're discussing are of a decidedly drier type: mummified human remains. And these aren't the millennia-old corpses of ancient Egyptian Pharoahs; no, all the mummies we're discussing come from the last century (and change) and all across the world...

This week we're tackling the "ancient astronaut" hypothesis: the idea that ancient humans had repeated contact with extraterrestrials that is borne out in their myths, art, and monumental achievements...

Last week we shared the first half of the dramatic tale of one of America's so-called "Crimes of the Century" - the kidnapping, and tragic murder, of Charles Lindbergh Jr., toddler son to one of the most famous men in the world: aviator Charles Lindbergh. In this, our 2nd and final part, we detail the painstaking investigation that eventually led to the arrest of German immigrant Richard "Bruno" Hauptmann for the murder of little Charles...

On the night of March 1st, 1932, little Charles Lindbergh Jr. was tucked into his crib for a good night's sleep. Mere hours later, the family nurse discovered that Charles Jr. was no longer in his bed...nor was he anywhere else to be found. The disappearance kicked off the beginning of one of America's so-called "crimes of the century", and one of the world's earliest international true crime sensations. Because Charles Jr...

It's an old school ghost story this week - and we mean *way* old school, as we jump back to the early 19th century to explore the Bell Witch Haunting. From 1817 to 1821 John Bell Sr. and his family were harassed by an invisible presence with a clear, distinct voice and a penchant for slapping people around. This week Sean introduces us to the Bell family, the mischievous spectral gossip known as Kate, and the series of events on this Tennessee farm that would eventually turn deadly...

[Obvious TW this week for discussion of suicide.] Over the years, certain songs have attracted dark reputations. Reputations like that the songs might drive you made enough to end your own life... or make others made enough to end another's. This week, we discuss 3 famous examples of these "suicide songs": the morosely melancholic "Gloomy Sunday", the sinister legend of the Lavender Town Syndrome, and the very real rash of "My Way" murders, centered within Philippines karaoke culture...

Born in small-town Italy in 1893, Leonarda Cianciulli had led a hard and tragic life - but her friends and neighbors in Correggio, Reggio Emilia knew her as a kindly woman and a good neighbor. Naturally, they were all shocked when she was arrested for luring three local women to their violent deaths...

This week, we finish our two-parter on the rise of the Norwegian black metal scene and the leaders of the pack, Mayhem, as the culture descends into edgelord-on-edgelord crime - first with a series of arsons across Norway, and eventually spinning into the inevitable end of chaos and murder...

In the early 1990s, a series of crimes rocked the historically peaceful country of Norway. Churches were burned, home-grown terrorist plots were revealed, and arrests were made. Then, the murders came. This rash of crime all stemmed from one seemingly-innocuous source: Norwegian black metal bands and their fans...