Unexplained History

Unexplained History

Unexplained History delivers unexplained events analysis and deep dives into the history of the unexplained. Join host Tom McKenzie weekly as we uncover the secrets behind history’s greatest cold cases and cover-ups. If you’re fascinated by true crime, ancient mysteries, paranormal activity, and government conspiracies, this podcast is for you. Each episode creates a gripping audio landscape exploring events that defy explanation — from baffling disappearances and cryptid sightings to the dark realities of the Cold War and the occult. The Team Narrative & Direction: Rob Davenport Lead Researcher: Mike Sherwin Sound Design & Score: Smoking Man Studios New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen in — and decide what you believe. Visit us: https://www.unexplained.co Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/unexplained-history--6429156/support.

Episodes

October 27, 2026 • 50 mins
Urbain Grandier is dead, but the possessions at Loudun continue. The Jesuit Jean-Joseph Surin takes up the work and describes a struggle that seems to cross from the woman he is treating into his own body.

The fourth chapter of our Halloween special follows Jeanne des Anges through exorcism, reported sacred marks, a miraculous garment and a journey into royal circles. The final segment weighs the testimony, its later publica...
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In seventeenth-century Loudun, reports of possession inside an Ursuline convent became a public confrontation between exorcists, magistrates and an accused priest. Urbain Grandier had survived one prosecution. The next would place alleged demonic testimony before a royal commission.

The third episode of our six-part Halloween special follows the accusations, the tests, the alleged pacts and the execution. Its final segment e...
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John Dee leaves England seeking divine knowledge. In continental Europe, his work with Edward Kelley brings him before rulers, draws religious scrutiny, and eventually produces an instruction that threatens the boundaries of both men's marriages.

The second chapter of our six-episode Halloween special follows the surviving accounts through patronage, conflict and the demand Dee called a hard and impure doctrine. Its final se...
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A little girl seems to pass between the books in an Elizabethan scholar's study. That is the vision Edward Kelley reports, and John Dee preserves it alongside prayers, questions, and instructions he believes come from angels.

The first of our six Halloween episodes follows Dee's early experiments, the ritual apparatus built around them, and the voices that begin reaching into ordinary life. This first half of his story ends ...
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On January 7, 1948, witnesses at Godman Field near Fort Knox watched a bright object they could not identify. A passing flight of Kentucky Air National Guard Mustangs was asked to investigate. Captain Thomas Mantell continued climbing after the other pilots turned back. His aircraft crashed near Franklin, Kentucky.

This episode reconstructs the tower statements, follows the pursuit and accident investigation, and examines th...
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In late nineteen forty-eight, pilots, security personnel, and scientists reported brilliant green fireballs over New Mexico. The reports reached officials responsible for some of America's most sensitive atomic installations. Meteor expert Lincoln LaPaz investigated, witnessed a fireball himself, and brought his findings to a secret conference at Los Alamos.

The Air Force eventually built Project Twinkle to obtain photograph...
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This special Unexplained History broadcast follows biological warfare from its disputed Bronze Age beginnings through medieval sieges, colonial smallpox, Japan's Unit 731, Western programs, and the treaty intended to end them. The second half investigates the Soviet biological weapons system, the Aralsk smallpox outbreak, the Sverdlovsk anthrax disaster, defectors, inspections, and accidents at Russian research facilities.

W...
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On a July afternoon in nineteen forty-seven, the Army air field at Roswell announced possession of a flying disc. Within hours, officers at Fort Worth presented wreckage they identified as a balloon and radar target. The reversal became one of the most durable mysteries of the twentieth century.

This episode reconstructs the first day's surviving record before following the people, interviews, books, and disputed papers tha...
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A new claim says the Zodiac Killer's shortest name cipher points to a man once investigated in the murder of Elizabeth Short. The proposal joins two notorious unsolved cases, a cipher, a possible alias, and a set of newly published technical arguments.

This episode follows the original letters, the two Zodiac ciphers that really were solved, and the thirteen symbols that still invite competing readings. It examines what the...
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In March nineteen sixty-two, the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff sent Defense Secretary Robert McNamara a memorandum about pretexts for military intervention in Cuba. Its annex proposed a manufactured attack on a ship, a campaign of terror blamed on Cuba, and a simulated civilian-airliner shootdown. These were preliminary proposals, not operations carried out.

This episode follows the paper from Operation Mongoose to th...
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October 1, 2026 • 54 mins
A stained shawl has been presented as the object that finally reveals Jack the Ripper. A published forensic study found mitochondrial DNA profiles compatible with descendants of Catherine Eddowes and Aaron Kosminski. The finding is real enough to examine. The leap from a textile to a named murderer is much harder.

This episode follows Eddowes through the surviving inquest, traces the shawl's claimed journey, and asks what th...
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In September twenty twenty-six, a team studying Tutankhamun's tomb reported new geophysical anomalies north of its known rooms. Their proposed plan revives a remarkable idea: the famous royal burial may occupy only the outer part of a larger tomb made for Nefertiti.

The search has already produced hopeful scans, conflicting scans and a published negative radar study. We follow the images and measurements back to their sourc...
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In September nineteen fifty, the United States military carried out six simulated biological attacks on the San Francisco Bay Area. A Navy vessel released Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii from offshore while military teams measured how the living aerosol moved through the city.

Days later, Stanford Hospital recorded an extraordinary cluster of Serratia infections. One patient, Edward Nevin, died. This episode recon...
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In two thousand twenty-four, a Norwegian government scientist reportedly tested a secret microwave-emitting apparatus on himself. He was said to have developed neurological symptoms resembling some anomalous health incidents, the official name for the experiences widely known as Havana Syndrome.

The story sounds like a decisive experiment. It is not. This episode places the Norwegian report beside the original cases in Cuba,...
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In 1942, a Pennsylvania dentist proposed attacking Japan with bats carrying tiny incendiaries. His idea reached the White House and became a real military research program, complete with refrigerated bats, experimental carriers and tests at American airfields.

The project produced one unforgettable accident. But the fire at Carlsbad was only part of the story. Unexplained History follows the proposal from cave entrances to ...
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On September 16, 1994, dozens of children at Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, said they had seen something extraordinary beyond their playground. Silver objects. Small figures. Eyes they struggled to describe. Their teachers had been inside.

Before Harvard psychiatrist John Mack arrived, the story had already passed through parents, a headmaster, a television camera, and a collection of drawings. Unexplained History follows ...
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Majestic Twelve is the most durable alleged UFO cover-up in modern American history. Its papers describe a secret committee formed after a crash in nineteen forty-seven and briefed to President-elect Eisenhower.

We follow the files from an anonymous roll of film to the National Archives, FBI, and a congressional inquiry. For most of the journey, the documents appear to form a hidden record. Then the paper trail becomes the ...
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September 8, 2026 • 60 mins
MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people aboard. Its final radio message sounded routine. Then its identifying radar signal disappeared, a second track led back across Malaysia, and a satellite continued recording exchanges long after anyone heard from the cockpit.

Twelve years later, Ocean Infinity has completed another phase of seabed searching. Malaysia has extended the agreement through June 2027, with 7,428.5...
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September 3, 2026 • 76 mins
John Bell died on a Tennessee farm in eighteen twenty after months of illness. According to America's most famous haunting story, his family found a mysterious vial beside his medicine, tested its contents on a cat, and heard an invisible voice confess to poisoning him.

But the detailed accusation did not appear in a surviving full account until decades after Bell was buried. Earlier records describe a talking voice, crowds ...
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September 1, 2026 • 63 mins
In nineteen thirty, archaeologists uncovered the lower half of a colossal statue of Ramesses II at Hermopolis Magna. The king's head and torso were gone. Ninety-four years later, an Egyptian-American team found them buried upside down only metres away, with traces of ancient blue and yellow paint still visible.

But finding the missing half was only the beginning. The monument had been repaired, altered, quarried, and possibl...
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