Ain't It Scary? with Sean & Carrie

Our two-part jaunt into murder, madness and 19th century elections continues (and ends) this week, as Sean finishes the heartbreaking tragic story of the death of James Garfield — followed by the slapstick comedy romp that was the trial of Charles Guiteau. Convinced he was destined to play a role in history and spurned in his several half-assed attempts to earn it, Guiteau turned his efforts toward eliminating the man most emblematic of the system that rejected him.....

James Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, just a few months into his tenure as 20th President of the United States. The man who shot him, Charles Guiteau, was a lifelong loser who had previously tried his hand at (manic) street preaching, lawyering and insurance sales - and who had made James Garfield a sworn enemy without the President ever giving him a second thought...

Inspired by a viral video on TikTok, Carrie takes us on a journey underground this week into the spooky history and unsolved mysteries of the Paris Catacombs, the world's most famous ossuary - or final resting place - of human skeletal remains...

After 50 more episodes since our 100th celebration (and over 150 episodes of the show total!), it's time for another clip show — this time with favorites submitted by you, our wonderful listeners! From the Gaslight Queen herself, Lizzie Borden, to the tawdriest of Jack the Ripper suspects, we revisit some of the silliest and/or most show-encapsulating moments of our giggly & gruesome last 50 episodes!  ________________________________________ Connect with us on social media: Facebook: www...

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 young men dying in their sleep, seemingly during nightmares, that hit the U.S. in the late '70s and early '80s...

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 of ghost ships, George Washington's sexy (?) phantom-about-town, and a big oopsie regarding some lost bones. Trick or treat, everyone! ________________________________________ Connect with us on social media: Facebook: www.facebook...

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 how the tale actually originated in the true-life crime of Ronald Clark O'Bryan, the "Real Candy Man" who killed his son with a poisoned Pixy Stick for insurance money. This time around, we're looking into another Halloween-related urban legend: Bloody Mary...

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 transformation? That's a Stoker. Sleeping in dirt from your homeland? You know that's our guy Bram...

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 through marriage and soon was soon owner of a personal estate the size of a small country...

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: Vlad Tepes Dracula, AKA Vlad the Impaler. While the 15th century Wallachian noble wasn't an undead monster, he was certainly...bloodthirsty, to say the least...