The Strange and Unusual Podcast

From Bloody Mary to the Midnight Game, we explore the eerie histories, unsettling rules, and reported experiences behind games best left unplayed after dark. Turn down the lights, just don’t invite anything in.
Sources

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board: Samuel Pepys’s diary entry for July 31, 1665⁠, recording Mr. Brisband’s account of a similar lifting demonstration.
Bloody Mary: Alan Dundes, “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety”⁠, Western Folklore (1998).
Mirror illusions: Giovanni B. Caputo, “Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion”⁠, Perception (2010).
One Hundred Ghost Stories: Zack Davisson’s translation of “On Cutting a Spider’s Leg During a Game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai,”⁠ from Tonoigusa.
Ouija and The Exorcist: Saint Louis University, “SLU Legends and Lore: The 1949 St. Louis Exorcism.”⁠
Ouija and unconscious movement: Hélène Gauchou, Ronald Rensink, and Sidney Fels, “Expression of nonconscious knowledge via ideomotor actions”⁠, Consciousness and Cognition (2012).
Charlie Charlie: Lucia Peters, “The Most Dangerous Games: Charlie Charlie,”⁠ The Ghost in My Machine.
The Elevator Game: Lucia Peters, “On the Elevator Game: The History of a Modern Urban Legend and Its Real-Life Connections & Consequences.”⁠
Hide-and-Seek Alone: Lucia Peters, “One-Man Hide and Seek (Hitori Kakurenbo).”⁠
Three Kings: FableForge’s original Reddit post, “Please don’t actually try this.”⁠
The Midnight Game: Lucia Peters, “The Most Dangerous Games: The Midnight Game,”⁠ including discussion of its traceable online history.



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For centuries, Britain's dead traveled ancient paths to reach their final resting places. In this episode, we follow the forgotten corpse roads and the eerie folklore they left behind.

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For 300 years, Europeans ate human beings as medicine, with mummy powder, skull, the fat of the executed, and bought it over the counter from licensed apothecaries. During those same centuries, they were building an empire on the argument that the people they conquered were savages, because savages eat other people

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This summer's woods tradition continues, in this episode we're heading  into the Pacific Northwest. You'll learn about a mountain that grew a monster after it erupted, a lake that gave up its dead, a giant with a basket on her back, and the same rule they have three thousand miles away in Appalachia: if the woods call your name, don’t answer.

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A companion to the Appalachian woods episode: ten strange, eerie, and true things lurking in the forests of New England.

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