American Hauntings Podcast

In the early 1980s, Springfield, Illinois learned there was no safe hour.

On this episode of American Dread, we examine two unconnected crimes that unfolded just one year apart — one in broad daylight, the other in the dead of night — and how both shattered a city’s sense of safety.

In 1981, an axe attack inside Lauterbach Cottage Hardware left one man dead and a killer who vanished without a trace.

In 1982, a brutal double murder ins...

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Nineteenth century America was awash with diabolical imagery. It was everywhere. It was used to link the Devil to everything from immigrants to abortion, the Catholic Church, Native Americans, and even outspoken women, so it can’t be a surprise to learn that it was also used to describe some of the most bloodthirsty killers of the day. 

For anyone who might think that deviant sex murderers and serial killers are monsters of modern t...

Young Brooklyn thug Al Capone took a cab to Coney Island. As he traveled down Ocean Parkway, he wasn’t surprised to see people practically living on the sidewalks, trying to get a breath of fresh air. He sat in the back seat, enjoying the light breeze from the open windows, on his way to the Harvard Inn, a club that belonged to Capone’s employer, gangster Frankie Yale. It wasn’t much of a job – just a glorified bouncer – but he saw...

When the headless body of a pregnant young woman was found across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in 1896, the shock of the discovery was felt far beyond the region. As the story of the young woman was revealed, it became a crime that was tailor-made for the popular culture of the era. The horror of the crime, its characters, and its cause created a melodrama that could only be found in pulp novels -– a villain deflowers a pretty yo...

Season 10- Murder City, is here.

In this season, we'll be taking a trip back in time, to the years of prohibition and telling the story of a city where the streets ran red with blood, accompanied by the clink of liquor bottles, jazz music and rattling machine guns. And we will take you behind the scenes of the world of some of the most notorious gangsters to ever hit the mean streets of the Windy City. These episodes will be fil...

The nineteenth century marked a great change in American history – it was the age of the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, and a time when science and reason were supposed to erase the myths and fears of the past. And yet, the Devil still managed to rear his ugly head, continuing to serve as a symbol of all the things that Americans hated and feared the most. 

Social reformers used the Devil to discourage the evils of alcohol an...

America’s first settlers were afraid of a lot of things and when they were afraid of something they reflexively connected it to the Devil – whether it was places like forests and woods or people, like the Native Americans who had predated their arrival on these shores by hundreds of years. In other words, whatever they didn’t understand, they feared, and whatever they feared, it must be the work of the Devil. 

But it wasn’t just the...

The Puritans and the early colonists found more monsters in America than just witches. The Devil had birthed a variety of what were often called “monstrous births” and they became signs and omens for the believers in an angry god. Spectral, shape-shifting dogs, along with demonic, giant black bears, haunted the woods around the settlements. They believed they were surrounded by evil spirits in the sea, the rivers, lakes, forests, a...

A special “Very Scary Christmas” Episode! 

Traditional Christmas celebrations in colonial American were much different than they are today. It was a public celebration in the streets and the pubs. Few people celebrated in church and even fewer celebrated with family at home.

And for good reason. The winter nights were cold and dark. It was a time of snow, ice, and being trapped indoors with that family. The coming days – and weeks – ...

It's that time of year again! Join us as we attempt to avoid going off on wil tangents while we discuss our favorite Horror films of the year.

The Devil didn’t confine his shenanigans to Salem Village or even the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1600s. A penchant for hanging and persecuting those believed to be in league with him swept through the colonies in those days, leading to many tragedies and deaths. But the madness the Puritans introduced in that period drained America of its lust for religions mania and fanaticism for many years to come. 

The hardship, brutality, ...

The terrible incident at Salem was not the last American witch hunt. It was also not the end of Puritan oppression in the region. They would leave a last impact on both New England and American history.

And no aspect of the Puritan experience remains as vivid in American memory as their fear of monsters, specifically the fear of witches that led to the trials of hundreds of settlers during the 1600s. For most of us today, the witch ...

In the past on this podcast, we have often asked the question of whether a monster is born or are they made? This might be the episode that finally answers that question. The story that follows suggests that monsters are NOT born; they’re made – often by the very people who should protect them.

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The fires of the witchcraft allegations burned through the towns and villages of New England during the 1600s, leading to accusations, trials, and even hangings. Many communities regretted the belief that the Devil was at work in their own until it was too late and near the end of the century, the fires that had burned so hot began to cool.

But not before the events at Salem Village occurred in 1692, spawning the most infamous witch...

In 1987, ten-year-old Amy Rachel Schulz vanished from the quiet town of Kell, Illinois. By morning, her body was found in a rural oilfield — brutally murdered. The investigation that followed tore through southern Illinois, led to a death sentence, and decades later unraveled into one of the most controversial cases in the state’s history. This is the story of innocence lost, forensic failure, and the haunting legacy Amy left behin...

A war raged in the Puritan New England of the 1600s with both the indigenous people who first settled the land and against the “Spirits of the Invisible World” who used “horrid sorcerers and hellish conjurers who conversed with demons” to torment and persecute the faithful. 

It was a time of sin, suspicion, wild accusations – and witchcraft. Those who had made pacts with the Devil were intent on the destruction of the “purified” wor...

Riders on the Storm” turned out to be the last song Jim Morrison ever recorded. When the album was finished, he left L.A. for Paris and either died on July 3, 1971, or he went permanently off the grid – whichever you’d like to believe.

But it’s the lyrics behind the song that is the most unsettling of all – it was inspired by one of the most sinister spree-killers in history. His reign of terror began in the last days of 1950, and o...

American Nightmares begins with the horror at the root of the stories that kept the early settlers huddled around the fire late into the night – the Devil himself.

Understanding the Devil in America is the key to understanding our undeniable taste for the evil and the monstrous in all their many forms. The pages of our history can be read as a tale of horror -- with the Devil as one of the main characters. The Devil, like the first ...