The Secret Society of Strangers Podcast
This is the Secret Society of Strangers — the podcast where we explore history's strange and unexplained events. The dark, often misunderstood rituals, beliefs, and people behind them. From ancient occult practices to murders and disappearances that leave witnesses and officials baffled. Ever found yourself at 3am researching the Hex Hollow Murder? Wondered why the Dyatlov Pass evidence doesn't add up? Questioned what really happened at Flannan Isles Lighthouse? You've found your tribe. Join Lee, Josh, and Jen as we investigate documented cases where Dark Reality meets High Strangeness — real crimes with supernatural elements, disappearances that defy logic, and historical mysteries where every explanation fails. We focus on cases where something fundamentally wrong happened. Where the evidence suggests the impossible. Murder cases with occult connections. Vanishings where the physics don't work. Ancient rituals that left modern crime scenes. This isn't Hollywood horror or internet folklore. These are police reports that include the unexplained. Documented events from ancient times through the 1990s that resist rational explanation. With meticulous research, dark humor, and forensic curiosity, SSOS serves the professionally curious and academically strange. Got a high strangeness experience? Witnessed something that violated reality? We're listening. New episodes weekly. Side Quests for lighter paranormal fare. 🕯️ Come Curious. Stay Strange.
Episodes
The man who invented the modern world died alone in a New York hotel room.
By the next morning, federal agents had seized everything.
80 trunks of research. A legendary safe deposit box. Decades of documents. All of it taken by the Office of Alien Property — despite Tesla being an American citizen for over 50 years.
The man who evaluated his papers? Dr. John G. Trump — Donald Trump's uncle.
His verdict: nothing of value.
But only 6...
Nikola Tesla invented the modern world — but the textbooks leave out the mystic.
At three years old, he stroked a cat and watched blue fire erupt from its fur. By adulthood, he could design complete machines entirely in his mind, run them for weeks, check for wear — then b...
John Dee built the greatest library in England. He advised the most powerful queen in Europe. He coined the phrase "British Empire."
Then Edward Kelley knocked on his door.
In Part 2, the angels go quiet, the library gets looted, and a covenant signed in Třeboň changes everything. What happened in that room in 1587 — and what it cost Dee to...
In 2016, researchers X-rayed a famous painting of Dr. John Dee standing before Queen Elizabeth I. Underneath the surface — painted over, deliberately hidden — he was standing in a circle of human skulls.
Someone decid...
Somewhere right now, someone is sitting in a windowless building holding two metal cans connected to a machine, telling a stranger their deepest secrets. Everything they say is being written down. And kept. They don't know that yet.
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A man lies in a naval hospital bed in 1945, claiming war injuries nobody can verify. He's been relieved of command — twice. One time for fighting enemy submarines that didn't exist. But by the time he tells the story himself? He's a decorated combat veteran who healed his own wounds through sheer willpower.
Part 1 ended in Cairo. A man in an apartment. Three days. A voice speaking over his left shoulder.
Part 2 is everything that followed — and it's stranger than anything he claimed to have conjured.
His mother called him "the Beast." She meant it as an insult. He spent seventy-two years turning it into a legacy.
Born into a deeply religious Victorian household in 1875, Edward Alexander Crowley became one of the most controversial figures in modern hist...
In Part 1, Jack Parsons built the future. He co-founded JPL, invented solid rocket fuel, and proved that getting to space wasn't science fiction — it was chemistry.
In Part 2, a con man walks through his door and takes everything.
He helped invent the fuel that would take us to the Moon. He co-founded what became NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And he also tried to summon a goddess in the Mojave Desert.
This week on Secret Society of Strangers, we kick off March Madman Madness with the unbelievable rise of Jack Parsons — rocket pioneer, occult leader, and one of the most quietly erased figures in American space history.
In Part 1, we trace Parsons from Pas...
On February 18, 1988, in a quiet township outside Rochester, Minnesota, a 16-year-old walked into school and calmly told his friends:
“I killed my family last night.”
They laughed.
He wasn’t joking.
In the early morning hours, David Brom murdered his father Bernard “Bernie” Brom (41), his mother Paulette Brom (41), his sister Diane (13), and his little brother Ricky (9) with a tim...
In 1919, a killer sent a letter from "Hell" demanding an entire city play jazz — or die. New Orleans obeyed.
Between 1918 and 1919, someone terrorized the Crescent City. They entered homes through impossibly small openings. They used the victims' own axes. They targeted It...
On June 10, 1912, the small town of Villisca, Iowa woke up to its worst nightmare. Eight people—two entire families—were found brutally murdered in the Moore family home. Parents Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children, and two young overnight guests were killed with an axe while they slept.
Welcome to THE AXE FILES — a month-long series tracking one of humanity's oldest tools through some of its most violent crimes. Four cases. One weapon. No romance. Lots of blood.
🪓 File #1 is open.
February 1978. Five men. A basketball game. A snack run. And then—a 70-mile drive in the wrong direction into a frozen mountain wilderness.
It's been called "The American Dyatlov Pass." A case so baffling that nearly 50 years later, investigators still can't explain what h...
Marie Laveau. The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. A name whispered in French Quarter alleys for nearly 150 years.
Was she a compassionate healer who nursed yellow fever victims and prayed with condemned prisoners? Or a ruthless sorceress who cursed bloodlines into extinction ...
🚨 NEW CASE ALERT: We're introducing a story we'll be following as it develops—and this one's already horrific. Jonathan Gerlach, 34, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania now faces 500+ criminal charges after authorities discovered over 100 human skulls, mummified hands and feet, decomposing torsos, and EIGHT full human corpses stored in his basement and storage u...
A child signed death warrants. A teenager ordered executions. A 15-year-old died screaming while his body rotted from the inside.
Edward VI became King of England at 9 years old. By 15, he was dead—leaving behind over 10,000 corpses and a religious reformation built on blood and fire.
History remembers his sister Mary as "Bloody Mary." But Edward's six-year reign produced a body count that dwarfs hers. He watched heretics burn with...
In 1959, nine experienced Soviet hikers died in the Ural Mountains under circumstances so bizarre that even the official cause of death was listed as "an unknown compelling force."
They cut through their tent from the inside. Fled barefoot into -25°F temperatures. Some had...
Was Elizabeth Báthory history's most prolific female serial killer—or the victim of a political hit job?
In 1610, a raid on Cachtice Castle uncovered bodies, dying victims, and evidence of unspeakable torture. The accusations? That Countess Elizabeth Báthory murdered up to...
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