RedHanded

For our second Halloween special we’ve teamed up with I Could Murder A Podcast for a super-spooky fancy dress edition of RedHaunted recorded in a magician’s house. So, join us by the hearth for tales of faceless ghosts, disappearing babies, and “wet maps of Africa” on the front of a man’s trousers.

For the full spooktacular experience, head to youtube.com/@redhandedthepod from the 30th of October.

Exclusive bonus c...

In the last 13 days before Halloween, a different ShortHand will rise from the archives for 24 hours only – before disappearing back into the vault. Get exclusive access to every ShortHand episode ad free only on Amazon Music Unlimited.

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The great literary pantheon of horror would be nothing without the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. His life was every bit as dark and melancholy as all his best writing. And as for...

For our first of two Halloween specials we set off on a spooky adventure ghost hunting with Ghost Huns at Clophill, allegedly the one of the most haunted and evil locations in the UK. Today we’re going to tell you the dark history of Britain’s most horrifying church, including satanic rituals, and the local priest driving around with a dead woman’s bones in the back of his car. 

Watch the full video of our freaky froli...

The police knew their suspect was a sexual sadist – one who had trapped a young boy for days and took great pleasure in slowly, methodically, snapping every bone in his legs. What they didn’t expect was that this ghastly resident of Baraboo, Wisconsin was still just 17 years old. And it wasn’t his first time.

H&S spin the sinister tale of a twisted young psychopath, hiding in plain sight in an unassuming Midwestern town...

*Update* Ian Watkins has been stabbed to death in Wakefield Prison by two fellow inmates, on Saturday 11th October 2025. He was previously stabbed in 2023, when he was taken hostage for six hours by a group of inmates. Here is our full episode from 2019.

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Ian Watkins was the lead singer of Welsh rock band Lostprophets. He toured all over the world, playing to sold out stadiums of adoring fans - so in 2012 when he was arres...

One of WWII’s lesser-known horrors, Japan’s secret biological warfare testing program is so brutal and inhumane that it’s hard to believe it could ever happen. And at its helm was a twisted microbiologist Shiro Ishi. 

Victims, known inside as “logs”, were injected and exposed to countless pathogens including typhoid, cholera, and the plague, then watched like lab rats as they were gripped by the diseases. Even in their...

In 1981, nineteen-year-old Arne Cheyenne Johnson stabbed his landlord to death – but claimed he wasn’t guilty. Why? Because he was possessed by the literal Devil.

With a wild alibi starring a possessed tween, budget exorcisms and even a cameo from America’s most notorious spooky grifters Ed and Lorraine Warren, Satan was going on trial...

But would a judge believe that the horned guy himself was roaming small-town Connecticu...

Almost immediately after 13-year-old Madeline Soto was reported missing in February 2024, something didn’t seem quite right.

Her mother Jennifer Soto – and Jennifer’s boyfriend Stephan Sterns – gave a series of strange interviews in the press. And over the next five days, as investigators picked apart the lives (and sleeping arrangements) of those who lived in the Soto home, bombshells kept on rocking the people of Osceola ...

We’re finally diving into the case of infamous bodysnatcher, human-skin-furniture-maker, and OG mummy’s boy...Ed Gein. 

A shy bachelor who terrorised a tiny Wisconsin town with his nightmarish farmhouse of horrors in the 1950s, Ed Gein inspired some of the creepiest characters in scary-movie history: from Psycho’s Norman Bates to Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs. 

And with the third season of Ryan Murphy’...

Due to a huge number of requests following a new Netflix doc on Thabo Bester, we're re-releasing our 2023 episode on the shocking, shameless, madder-than-fiction South African saga.

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At 2am, on the 3rd of May 2022 – inmates at Mangaung prison in Bloemfontein, South Africa, were woken up by an explosion. Word spread that Thabo Bester, the infamous “Facebook Rapist”, had set himself and his cell on fire. And all that remaine...

With cyberbullying and catfishing stories back in the news it felt like the perfect time to revisit this early episode from back in 2019.

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Someone was cyberbullying Jenelle Potter: hurling online abuse and threatening her life with claims that she was "too pretty to live". As things escalated, inexplicably, the CIA seemed to become involved and Jenelle's parents felt the only way to save their vulnerable daughter was to ta...

Being in the World Trade Centre when the second plane hit the South Tower; watching her assistant be decapitated; crawling over the bodies of her dead and injured co-workers; and becoming one of only nineteen people to survive being at or above the point of impact: these are all things Tania Head did not experience. 

Yet for six years, Tania (real name Alicia) was the 9/11 survivor. She inspired others, worked tireless...

What do you do with a prisoner so unhinged that he’s been kicked out of 120 prisons to date? How have Britain’s most secure facilities dealt with a man who could explode in a frenzy of brutal violence and destruction at any moment? What happens to a man who spends more than 25 years in solitary confinement? And most importantly: now that Britain’s most infamous inmate has rebranded as an artist, poet, and man of peace, wil...

In 2006, the body of Polish student Angelika Kluk was found hidden in the most unthinkable place: stuffed beneath the floorboards of a Glasgow church.

The man who put her there – greyhaired handyman Peter Tobin – was about to have his own sins laid bare. And what police found would reveal a predator whose impact stretched far beyond the church walls: with vanished girls, broken families, and a raft of missed opportunities t...

Recorded LIVE in New York’s Town Hall in front of a sold-out crowd, RedHanded’s Confessions Tour show takes in everything from Mormon sex scandals to intergalactic baby-making missions to save the planet. Plus: more than we ever wanted to know about our lovely audience…

For the full experience, watch the slideshow on our YouTube channel:

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Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHand

Patreon - Ad-free &am...

Sold into slavery at just four years old, Iqbal Masih’s future was not bright. He was set to be one of the millions of children and adults across Asia trapped in bonded labour. 

But Iqbal was no ordinary child: he would escape slavery, campaign tirelessly to free fellow children, be recognised on the global stage – and then tragically be assassinated by the “Carpet Mafia” – all before his thirteenth birthday. Here is h...

In 2016, ex-footballer Andy Woodward revealed on live TV that he and countless other boys were sexually abused by their former youth coach, Barry Bennell, whilst training in Manchester City and Crewe Alexandra’s acclaimed “football factories” as youngsters in the 1980s and 90s. 

In doing so, he blew the whistle on one of the UK’s most prolific child abusers – and triggered a scandal that went deeper than anyone could’v...

In our second and final part on Erin Patterson’s deadly beef Wellington dinner, we focus on the jaw-dropping trial.

So: did she purposefully forage for death cap mushrooms, then cook and serve them to her extended family with the express purpose of giving them a slow and painful death? Did she really lie about having cancer? Or was it all just an innocent mistake?

The video version of this episode will be on our YouTube chan...

Jeffrey Epstein – the billionaire financier-turned-serial-sex-trafficker – is back in the news, in another new guise that no one saw coming: political football.

So let's take a look at what we know (and, more pertinently, what we will never know) about the so-called “Epstein files”.

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