Ain't It Scary? with Sean & Carrie
He’s skeptical. She’s spooky. Together they explore the unknown, unsolved, unbelievable, and just plain weird. With a shared passion for history and the truth, Sean & Carrie realized they could bring their different perspectives to the world of crime, the paranormal, and the inexplicable. Sean’s sharp eye on the logical and Carrie’s open mind to the unexplainable combine in every episode for an informative hour with a lighter touch.
Episodes
July 18, 2024 • 72 mins
#HotMothSummer presses on this week with part 2 of our primer on the Men in Black!
Sean takes us back to 1953 Bridgeport, Connecticut, as we hear in Albert Bender's own words what he says he experienced that fateful summer. What sounded from the outside like an intimidating visit from government officials quickly spins into a sci-fi thriller full of telepathic messages, astral projection, and the occasional sexy alien rubdown.
Grab...
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July 11, 2024 • 59 mins
Best known today for diminishing cinematic returns, the Men In Black have been one of the creepiest boogymen of the UFO community for nearly 80 years. This week, Sean takes us all the way back to 1947 and the first reported incident of someone being approached by a black-suited government agent after a UFO sighting and told to keep quiet.
Next we jump ahead to the early '50s to meet Albert Bender, whose own encounters with so-calle...
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June 27, 2024 • 74 mins
As an Independence Day treat, we hop into the time machine for a little "Ain't it Sneaky" here on the show with the twisting tale of the Culper Spy Ring, America's first foray into espionage during the Revolutionary War.
Formed after the tragic execution of newbie colonial spy and forever Connecticut hero Nathan Hale, the Culper Spy Ring was the brainchild of none other than George Washington, who realized a more sophisticated syst...
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June 20, 2024 • 60 mins
This week it's a summertime holiday story for the summertime holiday season as Sean introduces us to the creature fondly remembered as the Sandown Clown.
This C-team cryptid (maybe) is reported to have chatted with two vacationing children on the Isle of Wight one warm day in 1973, introducing itself, "Hello and I am all colors, Sam." The "clown's" eye-catching appearance and inescapable high strangeness have made it a favorite of ...
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June 13, 2024 • 60 mins
Lighthouses have stood on the Northeastern coast of America for centuries, beacons of hope in dark night or a desperate storm...and, sometimes, silent witnesses to the many tragedies that can befall seafarers and their loved ones in the course of their sometimes dangerous work.
This week, we take a trip through the past 300 years of American history to visit some of the most haunted lighthouses in New England (and, uh, one in New J...
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June 6, 2024 • 87 mins
We take a trip back to '40s and '50s London this week to cover the grimy and gruesome story of serial killer John Reginald Christie, who gassed and strangled 8 women to death and stowed their bodies in and around his London flat.
Sean takes us through the case that helped get the death penalty abolished in the UK, and we tackle all the most important unanswered questions - like how this guy stayed married as long as he did.
_______...
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May 31, 2024 • 66 mins
For our 175th episode, we're going back to our spooky roots to investigate another internet-popularized urban legend: Black Eyed Kids.
In 1998, journalist Brian Bethel took to the fledgling interwebs to share a strange tale. Sitting in his car alone one night in 1996, he'd been approached by two strange children - children who insisted he let them in the car and acquiesce to their demands. The encounter made Brian uneasy...especial...
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May 23, 2024 • 77 mins
This week we tackle the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, one of the most notorious and high-value art heists of all time. One March night in Boston, 1990, two men donned police disguises to enter the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Once inside, they subdued security and walked off with a collection of art potentially valued at over $1 billion in 2024.
Vermeers, Rembrandts and more were lost to the world that night,...
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May 9, 2024 • 66 mins
This week, we're celebrating all kinds of mums - but no, that isn't in observance of America's Mother's Day holiday this upcoming Sunday! No, the collection of mums we're discussing are of a decidedly drier type: mummified human remains.
And these aren't the millennia-old corpses of ancient Egyptian Pharoahs; no, all the mummies we're discussing come from the last century (and change) and all across the world.
From a drag queen's c...
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May 2, 2024 • 81 mins
This week we're tackling the "ancient astronaut" hypothesis: the idea that ancient humans had repeated contact with extraterrestrials that is borne out in their myths, art, and monumental achievements.
How were the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Moai of Easter Island erected without modern technology? Could the Bible, the myths of the Babylonians and Mayan religion all be cultural memories of heavenly beings from another planet? Are...
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April 25, 2024 • 80 mins
Last week we shared the first half of the dramatic tale of one of America's so-called "Crimes of the Century" - the kidnapping, and tragic murder, of Charles Lindbergh Jr., toddler son to one of the most famous men in the world: aviator Charles Lindbergh.
In this, our 2nd and final part, we detail the painstaking investigation that eventually led to the arrest of German immigrant Richard "Bruno" Hauptmann for the murder of little C...
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April 19, 2024 • 70 mins
On the night of March 1st, 1932, little Charles Lindbergh Jr. was tucked into his crib for a good night's sleep. Mere hours later, the family nurse discovered that Charles Jr. was no longer in his bed...nor was he anywhere else to be found. The disappearance kicked off the beginning of one of America's so-called "crimes of the century", and one of the world's earliest international true crime sensations.
Because Charles Jr. wasn't ...
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April 11, 2024 • 78 mins
It's an old school ghost story this week - and we mean *way* old school, as we jump back to the early 19th century to explore the Bell Witch Haunting.
From 1817 to 1821 John Bell Sr. and his family were harassed by an invisible presence with a clear, distinct voice and a penchant for slapping people around. This week Sean introduces us to the Bell family, the mischievous spectral gossip known as Kate, and the series of events on th...
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April 4, 2024 • 67 mins
[Obvious TW this week for discussion of suicide.]
Over the years, certain songs have attracted dark reputations. Reputations like that the songs might drive you mad enough to end your own life... or make others mad enough to end another's. This week, we discuss 3 famous examples of these "suicide songs": the morosely melancholic "Gloomy Sunday", the sinister legend of the Lavender Town Syndrome, and the very real rash of "My Way" m...
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March 28, 2024 • 63 mins
Born in small-town Italy in 1893, Leonarda Cianciulli had led a hard and tragic life - but her friends and neighbors in Correggio, Reggio Emilia knew her as a kindly woman and a good neighbor. Naturally, they were all shocked when she was arrested for luring three local women to their violent deaths.
Axe Murder March finishes with a bang (a whack?) as we find out why Cianciulli is known as the Soap-Maker of Correggio, and explore ...
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March 21, 2024 • 82 mins
This week, we finish our two-parter on the rise of the Norwegian black metal scene and the leaders of the pack, Mayhem, as the culture descends into edgelord-on-edgelord crime - first with a series of arsons across Norway, and eventually spinning into the inevitable end of chaos and murder.
Experience such real-life characters as Varg Vikernes, black metal musician and out-and-proud white supremacist-turned murderer; Euronymous, th...
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March 14, 2024 • 71 mins
In the early 1990s, a series of crimes rocked the historically peaceful country of Norway. Churches were burned, home-grown terrorist plots were revealed, and arrests were made.
Then, the murders came.
This rash of crime all stemmed from one seemingly-innocuous source: Norwegian black metal bands and their fans. It seemed like these musicians were trying to out-edgelord each other, and no band pushed harder for the title of "Most E...
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February 22, 2024 • 75 mins
The raison d'etre for our whole series on Hannibal and the Punic Wars is here this week, and that's very bad news for 50,000 Roman soldiers.
After being beaten and humiliated by Hannibal for two years straight, the Romans came out swinging in 216 BC with the largest army the Republic had ever raised. Nearly 100,000 men chased the Carthaginian army to the small town of Cannae, which would become the site of the greatest military dis...
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February 15, 2024 • 62 mins
Welcome back to the dusty horrors of ancient warfare, in part 2 of our rapidly expanding series (well, to 3 episodes, anyway) on Hannibal and the Second Punic War!
It's 218 BC, and Hannibal just marched a whole army across the Alps to surprise the Romans in Italy. The next move is Rome's, and they've got all the wrong ones. We step into the shoes of Roman infantry as tens of thousands of our buddies are slaughtered on the field at ...
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February 8, 2024 • 84 mins
Sean has the podcast reins for two weeks of HANNIBAL. No, not the cannibal - the Carthaginian general who made himself the worst nightmare of the Roman legions.
Take a trip with us back to the third century B.C., where new horrors wait around every corner - from children sacrificed to ancient gods, to sieged cities starving behind their walls, to armored men tumbling off high alpine peaks. Oh, and a crapload of elephants.
Settle in...
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