From The Void Podcast

Episode Overview

In this episode, we travel back to London’s Whitehall district—a place infamous for political intrigue, shadowy alleyways, and, in the autumn of 1888, a mystery so disturbing it was almost forgotten beneath the thunder of the Jack the Ripper murders happening at the same time.

This is the story of The Whitehall Women—a case involving multiple unidentified female remains discovered in and around White...

Episode Overview

On April 1st, 2006, Ohio State medical student Brian Shaffer went out for drinks with friends at the Ugly Tuna Saloona in Columbus, Ohio. Surveillance cameras captured him entering the bar… and then, somehow, not leaving.

Despite being surrounded by cameras, witnesses, and the heartbeat of a busy college nightlife district, Brian Shaffer simply vanished.

Tonight, we walk through the full timeline of B...

Episode Overview

In this episode, we step out of the world of ghosts, time slips, disappearances, and strange creatures — and venture into a mystery far closer to home:

Your own brain.

For decades, scientists believed memory worked like a filing cabinet: one idea, one location. But a few unexpected experiments — severed neural pathways, maze-running rats, shattered holograms, and neurological oddities that shouldn...

In this episode, we travel back to the summer of 1942 in Pascagoula, Mississippi — a warm coastal town where people slept with their windows open to catch the night breeze. But that summer, something else moved in the dark.

A figure slipped into homes while families slept.

Not to steal valuables.

Not to leave a message.

But to quietly cut a single lock of hair from the heads of sleeping residents.

Newspapers called him The Phant...

In this episode, John dives into one of the most astonishing mass UFO sighting and close-encounter cases in modern history — The Ariel School Encounter.

On September 16, 1994, in a small rural schoolyard outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe, more than 60 children claimed to witness a mysterious craft land nearby and strange, humanoid beings emerge. What followed were eerily consistent eyewitness reports that still baffle investigators and psychol...

Long before The Exorcist terrified moviegoers, a quiet middle-class family in 1940s Maryland claimed something unholy had taken hold of their son. In this episode, we revisit the chilling, real-life case that inspired William Peter Blatty’s novel — the 1949 exorcism of a boy known only by the pseudonym Roland Doe.

We’ll retrace the case from its first strange knocks and flying objects in the family’s home, to the desperate searc...

In this episode, we dive into the strange mystery of the Hexham Heads — two small carved stone heads unearthed in 1971 (or ’72) in a suburban garden in the town of Hexham in Northumberland, England.  The discovery was followed by reports of poltergeist-type phenomena: objects moving, bottles flying, a bizarre half-man/half-animal creature appearing, and a scholar who claimed to be haunted after taking the heads for study.  

...

In the 3rd installment of our Possession Series, we turn to one of the most controversial figures to bridge psychology and the paranormal: Dr. M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist, best-selling author of The Road Less Traveled, and—later in life—a reluctant believer in demonic possession.

This episode explores how Peck’s clinical background shaped his approach to exorcism, the patients who challenged his skepticism, and the ways he sough...

In this episode, we explore one of the most infamous poltergeist cases in North America: the so-called Great Amherst Mystery, which occurred in Amherst, Nova Scotia in 1878-79. Centering on 18-year-old Esther Cox, her sister’s household and the investigator Walter Hubbell, we walk through the bewildering phenomena of objects flying, knocks on the wall, unexplained fires, swelling seizures, and the question: was this supernatural, p...

In 1976, a 23-year-old German woman named Anneliese Michel died after undergoing 67 Catholic exorcisms over 10 months.

Her death would spark one of Europe’s most controversial legal battles — pitting faith against medicine, and belief against responsibility.

Was Anneliese a victim of possession? Or of a system that failed to recognize mental illness as something sacred, not demonic?

In this haunting episode, John Williamson takes...

In the spring of 1990, families across Britain began reporting visits from strangers claiming to be social workers.  They spoke with authority, carried clipboards, even asked to photograph or examine children — and then vanished.

Police launched Operation Childcare, a nationwide manhunt involving more than twenty forces, but no arrests were ever made.

Were these criminals, insiders, or the product of a moral panic born from fear an...

From The Void: The Ammons Family Exorcism

In 2011, in a small house in Gary, Indiana, something terrifying took hold of a family. The Ammons household became the site of strange noises, violent possessions, and chilling encounters that drew in police, social workers, and eventually the Catholic Church.

This case would come to be known as the “House of 200 Demons”—a story so unsettling that seasoned professionals walked away sha...

In this episode, we dig into one of Brazil’s most baffling unsolved mysteries: the 1966 deaths of two electronics technicians, found wearing lead masks on Vintém Hill. What were they trying to do? What clues did they leave behind? And why has this strange case captivated investigators, UFO hunters, spiritualists, and conspiracy theorists for decades?

• The timeline and discovery: how the bodies were found, w...

This week, I’m not sitting by the fire alone. Joining me is my old podcast partner and good friend, Adam, for a special conversation about something near and dear to both of us: horror movies.

Together, we dig into:

• Why horror has such a grip on us

• The movies that first hooked us as fans

• The films that still give us chills (and laughs) today

• A few deep-cut recommendations you might not expect

Adam's Top 1...

In Part 2 of Echoes Over Sandia, we move from the facts of the case into the deeper shadows surrounding it. Why were key documents altered or redacted? Why was the incident never fully addressed in official Air Force investigations? And how does this case intersect with larger questions about secrecy, nuclear oversight, and aerial phenomena during the Cold War?

We also examine the classified memo trail, testim...

On the night of November 4th, 1957, something tore across the New Mexico sky—something that would never be fully explained. In Part 1 of Echoes Over Sandia, we examine the mysterious object spotted near Kirtland Air Force Base, a sighting that sparked classified reports, conflicting testimonies, and decades of speculation.

Drawing on declassified military documents, expert analysis, and witness accounts, we pi...

Episode Summary:

In Part 2 of our investigation into the Zodiac Killer, we turn our focus to the victims—who they were, what happened to them, and how their stories helped shape one of the most haunting unsolved cases in American history. We take you to Lake Berryessa, where a disturbing attack was carried out in broad daylight, and to the streets of San Francisco, where a cab driver was murdered in cold blood.

We explore how pol...

Episode Summary:

In this chilling episode, we dive deep into the origins of the Zodiac Killer—one of the most infamous unsolved serial murder cases in American history. From the brutal Lake Herman Road murders in 1968 to the terrifying Blue Rock Springs attack, we retrace the early crimes that launched a wave of fear across Northern California. We explore the killer’s encrypted letters sent to newspapers, the public hysteria that f...