Highway to Hell

Support the show and get bonus content at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcastOn the top floor of a hotel in Sydney, on ground that was a convict hospital in 1788, two women on two different nights woke up to a sailor standing at the foot of the bed, looking at them. In a castle on the coast of Northern Ireland, a receptionist sent up the tower stair to sweep up a broken glass was shoved from behind on the top step and went down the whole flight. In Room 217 of the Stanley Hotel, a man hid under the covers at three in the morning while his wife whispered that something was bent over the bed with its mouth at her ear, and that she could still feel its breath. In a ground-floor suite in the Ozarks that used to be a cancer quack's office, four friends propped a vodka bottle against the inside of their door, came back at eleven, and found a row of cards laid out on the carpet in front of it with the two jokers turned face up. On a ship in Long Beach, a mother woke to a man made of darkness sitting on the other twin bed, and he sat there until dawn.Today we're counting down the ten most haunted hotels in the world, from number ten to number one. We're going from Sydney to the Scottish Highlands, the Antrim coast, London, the Canadian Rockies, the French Quarter, a California beach, a Cunard liner, an Arkansas mountaintop, and Estes Park, Colorado.Sources: 24 Hours in Sydney. "Room 8 in the Russell Hotel… Sleep There If You Dare." 24hoursinsydney.com.au.Abandoned NI. "The Haunted Ballygally Castle Hotel." abandonedni.com.Archer, Bella. "Haunted Tulloch Castle in Dingwall: Castles, Ghost Stories and Scottish Mornings." Buckle Up, Boo!, buckleupboo.com.Atteberry, Todd. "Ballygally Castle Hotel: The Knock at the Door Isn't Room Service." Witchery Art / Gothic Horror Stories, February 19, 2024. gothichorrorstories.com.Avenue Calgary. "The Ghosts of Fairmont Banff Springs." avenuecalgary.com.Ballygally Castle Hotel. "Ballygally Castle Hotel and Its Ghost Room" and "The History of Ballygally Castle." ballygallycastlehotel.com.Bauer, Ellen. "A Ghostly Maid on the Queen Mary." Ghostvillage.com. Encounter dated June 1, 1973.Brody, Mike. "Confessions of a Novice Ghost Investigator: Surviving the Stanley Hotel." Ghostvillage.com, January 2010.Cappy. "The Beautiful Lady in White." Your Ghost Stories, April 1, 2020. yourghoststories.com, story 27186.Crescent Hotel and Spa. "Haunting Ghost Experiences Revealed." crescent-hotel.com.Crescenta Valley Weekly. "The Legend of B340." crescentavalleyweekly.com.Cricket Australia. "Boo! Ghosts Have England Jumping." cricket.com.au, July 2014.Cushman, Paige, and Kristen Belue. "'This Isn't a Horror Film': A Night at Arkansas' Haunted 1886 Crescent Hotel." KATV, Little Rock, October 2020.Deccan Chronicle. "Haunted London Hotel Frightens England Cricketers." July 21, 2014.East Durham Paranormal Research Group. "Tulloch Castle: Ghost Sightings." eastdurhamparanormalrg.co.uk.Fiorito, Teddy. "My Wife and I Stayed at the Stanley Hotel and Experienced Something Out of This Realm." Thought Catalog, September 2015.Ghost City Tours. "The Ghosts of Haunted Hotel Monteleone." ghostcitytours.com.Ghost5034. "What an Experience – Ghost Included!" Review of Tulloch Castle Hotel, Dingwall. TripAdvisor, June 2009.Graham, Seanín. "'There's a Darkness to That Place': A Night in Northern Ireland's Most Haunted Castle." The Irish Times, October 31, 2025.Haunted Hotels UK. "The Langham – Haunted Hotel in London," including guest review by Deborah Newton, November 6, 2023. hauntedhotels.uk.Haunted India. "Ghosts of the Langham Hotel, London, Haunting English Cricketers." hauntedindia.blogspot.com, July 2014.Haunted Rooms. "The Langham Hotel – London." hauntedrooms.co.uk.Haunt Jaunts. "Researching London's Most Haunted Hotel Room." hauntjaunts.net.

Support the show, get ad free and bonus content patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcastCarl Tanzler was a German-born radiology technician who emigrated to the United States and by 1927 was working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida. He claimed that as a young man he had been visited by the spirit of an ancestor who showed him the face of his destined true love, and in 1930 he became convinced he had found her in Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, a 21-year-old Cuban-American patient dying of tuberculosis. Tanzler showered her with gifts and attempted to treat her with homemade tonics and X-ray equipment, but she died in 1931. He paid for an elaborate mausoleum, visited it nightly, and in 1933 removed her body and brought it home. Over the next seven years he reconstructed her decaying corpse with wire, plaster, wax, glass eyes, and her own hair fashioned into a wig, dressed it in a wedding gown, and kept it in his bed while dousing it in perfume to mask the odor. In 1940 Elena's sister heard rumors, confronted him, and found the body, leading to his arrest for grave robbing. The charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, and much of the public, swept up by the press coverage, viewed him as a tragic romantic rather than a criminal. Elena was reburied in an unmarked grave, and Tanzler died in 1952, reportedly with a life-sized effigy of her by his side. ICKSourcesHarrison, Ben. Undying Love: The True Story of a Passion That Defied Death. Key West, 1997; expanded edition 2001. Swicegood, Tom. Von Cosel. iUniverse, 2003. Source of the body-switch theory.Sloan, David L. Ghosts of Key West. Phantom Press, 1998. Sloan also discussed the 1982 Michelfelder article on the NightMerica podcast, February 3, 2021.Peričić, Marija. Exquisite Corpse. Ultimo Press, 2023. Novel; ABC News (Australia) profile of the book and the Trial Bay internment, November 18, 2023.Tanzler von Cosel, Karl. "The Secret of Elena's Tomb." Fantastic Adventures, vol. 9 no. 5, September 1947, Ziff-Davis, Chicago. Full scan at archive.org (Fantastic_Adventures_v09n05_Ziff-Davis_Sep_1947). Von Cosel's journal, final entry ("Human jealousy has robbed me of the body of my Elena"), as quoted in Harrison and in later retellings.Miami Herald, October 1940. Source of Nana Medina's statements: "She never loved him… She looked upon von Cosel as a grandfather" and the "wedding… or a funeral" warning.Key West Citizen, October 1940. Hearing coverage before Justice of the Peace Enrique Esquinaldo, October 8–9, 1940; $1,000 bond; charge wording. The Tennessean (Nashville), October 1940. Cousin's statement that Elena "finally died hating her rescuer."Death certificate of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, October 25, 1931, as reported by Michelfelder (below); no autopsy performed.DePoo, Dr. Julio, and Dr. Foraker. Recollection of the 1940 examination, first stated 1972; DePoo interviewed on HBO's Autopsy series, 1999 ("I found a tube wide enough to permit sexual intercourse…").Perez, Bienvenido (Key West chief of police, 1940). Statement to Men True Adventure magazine, undated ("I'll kill her, if necessary, to fulfil my destiny").Michelfelder, William. Article in Detective Cases, 1982. Source of the unverified "wolfsbane… aconite" note and the "dormant epilepsy" death-certificate wording.Wikipedia, "Carl Tanzler" (with its cited sources: Harrison, Swicegood, Sloan, HBO Autopsy). Dates of birth, marriage, emigration (Rotterdam, February 6, 1926), Hoyos family dates, hearing, viewing, citizenship 1950, death July 3, 1952.WLRN, "A Love That Would Not Die: Key West Tells Its Most Macabre Legend," February 11, 2018. HistoryHub.info, "Twists in a Twisted Tale: The Exploitation, Defilement and Murder of Elena Hoyos."

TW: SuicideFirst ever true crossover episode! Flippers meet the Hellions, Hellions meet the Flippers. This case included so much of our mutual subject matter we decided to post it on both shows. Mica Francis Miller, 30, died on April 27, 2024, at Lumber River State Park in North Carolina, roughly an hour from her home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She had bought a handgun that afternoon and called 911 minutes before shooting herself; the Robeson County Sheriff's Office and North Carolina medical examiners ruled her death a suicide. Days earlier she had filed for divorce from her husband, John-Paul Miller, pastor of Solid Rock Church in Market Common, and police records show she contacted law enforcement at least 14 times between February and mid-April 2024.Court filings and family statements alleged years of abuse, surveillance, financial control, and nonconsensual distribution of intimate images; a December 2024 filing added strangulation allegations. Miller denied wrongdoing.On December 17, 2025, a federal grand jury in South Carolina indicted Miller on two counts, cyberstalking and making false statements to investigators, alleging he used tracking devices and unwanted communications to harass Mica from November 2022 until her death. Netflix's documentary series "Death of a Pastor's Wife" premiered August 27, 2026, renewing attention on the case and on South Carolina's protective-order law.Sources: Full list on patreonABC News 4 (WCIV). (2026, January 12). JP Miller pleads not guilty to federal charges of cyberstalking, false statements. ⁠https://abcnews4.com/news/local/dozens-show-up-outside-florence-federal-courthouse-for-arraignment-of-jp-miller-mica-cyberstalking-lying-authorities-fbi-solid-rock-church-pastor⁠Burroughs Funeral Home & Cremation Services. (2024). Obituary for Mica Acacia Miller. ⁠https://www.burroughsfh.com/obituary/Mica-Miller⁠Christianity Today. (2022, September). What happens when you ask thousands of evangelical women about sex. ⁠https://www.christianitytoday.com/2022/09/sheila-gregoire-great-sex-rescue-survey-evangelical-women/⁠Condo-World. (n.d.). History of the Sea Captain's House Myrtle Beach. ⁠https://blog.condo-world.com/history-of-the-sea-captains-house/⁠Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (1987). The Danvers Statement.Creepy Catalog. (2026). Death of the Pastor's Wife: John-Paul Miller's first wife says Mica's account matched her own. ⁠https://creepycatalog.com/death-of-the-pastors-wife-john-paul-millers-first-wife-says-micas-account-matched-her-own/⁠Crime and Cask News Network. (2026, August). Father of former Solid Rock pastor John Paul Miller pleads guilty. ⁠https://crimeandcask.com/father-of-pastor-john-paul-miller-pleads-guilty/⁠FITSNews. (2024, December 20). Mica Miller saga: Police reports fill in blanks, raise more questions. ⁠https://www.fitsnews.com/2024/12/20/mica-miller-saga-police-reports-fill-in-blanks-raise-more-questions/⁠FITSNews. (2025, June 2). Embattled South Carolina pastor John-Paul Miller marries girlfriend. ⁠https://www.fitsnews.com/2025/06/02/embattled-south-carolina-pastor-john-paul-miller-marries-girlfriend/⁠Gregoire, S. W. (2023, September). 10 things to know about obligation sex. Bare Marriage. ⁠https://baremarriage.com/2023/09/10-things-obligation-sex/⁠Gregoire, S. W., Lindenbach, R. G., & Sawatsky, J. (2021). The great sex rescue: The lies you've been taught and how to recover what God intended. Baker Books.Guidepost Solutions. (2022, May 15). Report of the independent investigation: The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee's response to sexual abuse allegations and an audit of the procedures and actions of the Credentials Committee.Jane Doe v. John-Paul Miller, Reginald Wayne Miller, et al. (2025). Complaint, Horry County Court of Common Pleas. ⁠https://www.wbtw.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2025/03/JP-lawsuit-2.pdf⁠

We're so used to serial killers having a compulsion, a need, an insatiable craving that often makes them sloppy and leads to an arrest. Israel Keyes did not suffer from that reckless compulsion and may be the most calculated killer we have ever covered. On unrelated trips Israel Keyes would get a five gallon bucket and fill it with a gun, rope, plastic sheeting, anything he needed for a kill trip and would bury that bucket YEARS in advance. When he decided it was time to kill he would fly to a major airport, rent a car and drive sometimes a thousand miles, pick up his kill kit, and hunt for a random person he never met. The victim was never connected to him and neither was the location, until Keyes on a drunken night hunted too close to home. SourcesABC News. (2012, December). Alaska serial killer committed suicide with hidden razor and bedding. abcnews.comAdirondack Daily Enterprise. (2013, November). FBI thinks Keyes buried a body near Tupper Lake. adirondackdailyenterprise.comAlaska Public Media. (2012, April 19). U.S. Attorney's Office files charges against Keyes in Koenig case. alaskapublic.orgAlaska Public Media. (2012, May 24). Israel Keyes attempts to flee courtroom. alaskapublic.orgAlaska Public Media / KTOO. (2012, December 3–5). Keyes autopsy underway, investigations continue. alaskapublic.orgAnchorage Daily News. (2012, May 24). Courtroom erupts as defendant tries to flee Alaska barista trial. adn.comAnchorage Daily News. (2012, May 26). In a more subdued hearing, Israel Keyes gets a March trial date. adn.comAnchorage Daily News. (2012, December 2). Israel Keyes dead in apparent suicide; suspected in Lower 48 deaths. adn.comAnchorage Daily News. (2012, December 3). Vermont authorities point to suspected serial killer Israel Keyes in 2011 double murder. adn.comAnchorage Daily News. (2013, November 13). FBI looks for clues linking confessed serial killer Israel Keyes to missing New Jersey woman. adn.comAnchorage Daily News. (2014, July 15). The untold story behind Israel Keyes' jailhouse suicide. adn.comAnchorage Daily News. (2018, May 18). Unsealed interviews detail two lives of Alaska serial killer Israel Keyes. adn.comCallahan, M. (2019). American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century. Viking.Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI Records: The Vault — Israel Keyes (Parts 1–8). vault.fbi.gov/israel-keyesFederal Bureau of Investigation. Israel Keyes interview recordings, video repository, including the session of May 24, 2012. fbi.gov/video-repository/Federal Bureau of Investigation. Seeking information regarding serial killer case [video], and the Israel Keyes travel timeline. fbi.govFederal Bureau of Investigation. (2013). New information released in serial killer case. fbi.gov/news/stories/new-information-released-in-serial-killer-caseFederal Bureau of Investigation, Anchorage Field Office. (2012, April 18). Anchorage man indicted for kidnapping and killing Samantha Koenig. archives.fbi.gov/archives/anchorage/press-releases/2012/Federal Bureau of Investigation, Portland Field Office. (2013). FBI requests the public's assistance in case of serial killer Israel Keyes. archives.fbi.gov/archives/portland/press-releases/2013/Miller, T. C. (2015, July 30). The FBI built a database that can catch rapists — almost nobody uses it. ProPublica. propublica.orgMurder Accountability Project. Unsolved homicide data and clearance rates. murderdata.orgNBC News. (2012, May). Alleged barista killer tries to escape court. nbcnews.comRosay, A. B. (2011). 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey: Report to the Alaska State Legislature. University of Alaska Anchorage Justice Center. scholarworks.alaska.edu/handle/11122/7227Southern Poverty Law Center. Extremist files: Aryan Nations; Christian Identity; Richard Butler. splcenter.orgUnited States v. Keyes, No. 3:12-cr-00041 (D. Alaska 2012). courtlistener.com/docket/6823228/united-states-v-keyes/

Our longest episode EVER. The ultimate deep dive on The Warrens, their history and their conjuring Empire! Ed and Lorraine were born in a factory town in Conneticut just 19 weeks apart. For both of them, a significant moment at 5 would help shape the course of their future. A chance meeting at a movie theater led to their marriage and the occult awakening and the Satanic Panic in the US would enable them to release books, cases, work a lecture circuit and become some of the most famous figures in the paranormal world. But how much of it was true? Was it God or was it money? How do you reconcile the devoted catholic couple with an alleged 40 year affair and a contract clause that said they cannot be depicted having affairs or sexual contact with minors? Thats oddly specific. SOURCES: Books and First-Person AccountsAnson, Jay. The Amityville Horror: A True Story. Prentice Hall, 1977.Brittle, Gerald. The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Prentice Hall, 1980. — the authorized biography; the core text of the mythology.Brittle, Gerald. The Devil in Connecticut. Bantam, 1983. — the Glatzel/Arne Johnson case; pulled from print after the 2007 lawsuit.Curran, Robert, with Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Haunted. St. Martin's, 1988. — the Smurl case.Garton, Ray, with Ed and Lorraine Warren. In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting. Villard, 1992. — the Snedeker case. Read alongside Garton's later public statements about how it was written.Hall, William J. The World's Most Haunted House: The True Story of the Bridgeport Poltergeist on Lindley Street. New Page, 2014. Lasalandra, Michael, and Mark Merenda. Satan's Harvest. Dell, 1990. — Maurice Theriault, by two Boston Herald reporters.Perron, Andrea. House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story, Vols. 1–3. AuthorHouse, 2011–2014.Playfair, Guy Lyon. This House Is Haunted: The True Story of the Enfield Poltergeist. Souvenir Press, 1980. Sawyer, J.F. Deliver Us From Evil. 1973. — the first book about the Warrens. Notably contains no mention of Annabelle.Warren, Ed and Lorraine. Ghost Hunters (1989), Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession (1991, with Robert David Chase and William Ramsey), Graveyard (1992), Ghost Tracks (2004).State of Connecticut v. Arne Cheyenne Johnson, Danbury Superior Court, 1981. Judge Robert Callahan presiding. Trial opened Oct. 28, 1981; manslaughter conviction Nov. 24; sentenced Dec. 18. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Arne_Cheyenne_JohnsonDengrove courtroom sketch collection, Arne Cheyenne Johnson — University of Virginia Law Library — https://archives.law.virginia.edu/dengrove/writeup/arne-cheyenne-johnsonGlatzel v. Warren, Brittle, iUniverse, and William Morris Agency, 2007 (dismissed) — https://www.religionnewsblog.com/19687/devil-in-connecticutAdams County (PA) Coroner's ruling on the death of Dan Rivera, July 2025 — cardiac, natural — https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dan-rivera-paranormal-investigator-died-tour-anabelle-doll-suffered-he-rcna229144WPC Carolyn Heeps's signed statement, Enfield, 1977 — reproduced in Playfair; summary of police involvement at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/07/police-officers-involved-in-enfield-case.htmlLanning, Kenneth V. Investigator's Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse. FBI Behavioral Science Unit, 1992. — for the Satanic Panic context.Wilmer, William H. "Effects of Carbon Monoxide upon the Eye." American Journal of Ophthalmology, 1921. — the 1921 haunted-house/CO case.Vardy, Tom, et al. "The Warrens." World Religions and Spirituality Project, Jan. 19, 2023. — https://wrldrels.org/2023/01/19/the-warrens/ — the single best scholarly overview."The Demonologist and the Clairvoyant: Ed and Lorraine Warren, Paranormal Investigation, and Exorcism in the Modern World." DIG: A History Podcast, Oct. 3, 2021. — https://digpodcast.org/2021/10/03/demonologist-and-the-clairvoyant/ — source for the gender analysis.

Get episodes ad free and support the show at patreon.com/highwaytohell The Spiritualist movement swept America, enticing people to entertain the question, "can we truly talk to the dead?". The Fox Sisters in 1848 entranced interest with their rapping phenomena in Hydesville, NY. Beleivers in contact were already using talking boards, alphabet cards, taple tipping and planchette writing by putting a heart shape platform on casters that held a pencil and wrote form the spirit guides. The Civil Wars mass casualties increased the demand for any way for people to talk to their lost loved ones. "Can they hear me?". Soon the planchette would be combined with an alphabet board to make translating the writing more efficient and meet the increased demand. In 1890, a group of Baltimore investors: businessman Elijah Bond, attorney Charles Kennard, and others, with employee William Fuld would soon file a patent for a "talking board." Legend holds the Patent Office demanded a demonstration, and the board correctly spelled out the skeptical examiner's name; the patent was granted in February 1891. The name's origin is disputed. The company claimed it was Egyptian for "good luck"; the likelier story is that Bond's sister-in-law Helen Peters, a medium, asked the board what it wished to be called, and it answered "Ouija." A name similar to the author's name and likeness she wore in a locket. Fuld would eventually take control of production, and through aggressive manufacturing and litigation against rivals became synonymous with the board. He died in 1927 after falling from the roof of his Baltimore factory — a building he said the board had told him to construct. His family ran the business until selling to Parker Brothers in 1966; Hasbro acquired it in 1991. For decades the board was harmless parlor entertainment, spiking in popularity during wartime and the 1960s occult revival. In 1973, The Exorcist recast it as a portal for demonic possession, and evangelical anxiety hardened that reputation permanently.Science attributes its operation to the ideomotor effect, described by physiologist William Carpenter in 1852: unconscious micro-movements by participants who genuinely believe they aren't pushing. Blindfold experiments reliably reduce the board to gibberish.But then there are stories of unexplainable things, terrifying things, things the board shouldnt... couldnt know. Is it real?Sources: Condensed for Character spaceDeep history & belief — E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1871, animism); archaeology of Sungir, Paviland, Göbekli Tepe; the Epic of Gilgamesh; Egyptian Book of the Dead & "Letters to the Dead"; 1 Samuel 28 & Deuteronomy 18; Homer's Odyssey Bk. 11. The bridge & Spiritualism — Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell (1758); Mesmer; Andrew Jackson Davis; the Fox sisters & Maggie's 1888 confession; Blavatsky & Theosophy; Conan Doyle vs. Houdini; Society for Psychical Research. Tarot — Court de Gébelin's Le Monde primitif (1781); Etteilla; Éliphas Lévi; the Golden Dawn; the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck & Pamela Colman Smith. Ouija — Smithsonian Magazine (Linda Rodriguez McRobbie) · historian Robert Murch · The Strong National Museum of Play · Baltimore Magazine · Time · The Conversation · Atlas Obscura (Pearl Curran) · UBC ideomotor study (Rensink, Gauchou & Fels, 2012) · The Lineup & True Ghost Tales (Zozo) · Wikipedia & Skeptical Inquirer (Roland Doe / Ronald Hunkeler). Dates and figures are drawn from secondary sources — double-check anything you quote on air.

Herbert Baumeister was born in Indiana in 1947 and grew up in a middle-class family near Indianapolis. Even as a young man he showed troubling signs, and he spent time in a mental institution as an adult. Still, he built what looked like an ordinary life. He married Julie Saiter in 1971, raised three children, and ran a chain of successful thrift stores called Sav-A-Lot. To neighbors and customers, he seemed like a respectable businessman and family man.Behind that image was a double life. In the early 1990s, Baumeister began visiting gay bars in Indianapolis under the name "Brian Smart." He lured men back to Fox Hollow Farm, his large estate in Westfield, Indiana, while his wife and children were away. There he strangled them, and he buried and scattered their remains across his wooded property.The first hint of trouble came in 1994, when one of his sons found a human bone in the yard. Baumeister brushed it off as a medical skeleton. The truth surfaced through a survivor. A man who had escaped went to police and helped them connect the disappearances to "Brian Smart," who was eventually identified as Baumeister. In 1996, while he was away, his wife allowed investigators to search the farm. They uncovered thousands of charred bone fragments, the remains of at least eleven men.Baumeister did not stay to face the case. He fled to Canada and, on July 3, 1996, shot himself at a provincial park in Ontario. He left a suicide note that mentioned his failing marriage and business but never confessed to the killings.Investigators later suspected he may also have been responsible for a series of unsolved murders in which bodies were dumped along highways in Indiana and Ohio. Because he died before any trial, much about his crimes remains uncertain. Efforts to identify his victims from the recovered remains have continued for decades, giving names back to some of the men lost at Fox Hollow Farm.Sources Full list on patreonJenny Labalme, "Suicide note mentions marriage, business but not bones," The Indianapolis Star, July 6, 1996 (pp. 1–2). — The three-page suicide note's contents. (Anchor contemporary source for the death.)The New York Times, July 1996 — Quoting Hamilton County Sheriff's Sgt. Kenneth C. Whisman that the note "did not mention the deaths or remains." (Exact headline/date/URL not independently verified — fetch blocked; attribution confirmed second-hand.)Associated Press wire, early July 1996 — Breaking discovery / body-count coverage ("bodies found on Westfield estate").People, "While Julie Was Away," Dec. 23, 1996 (Richard Jerome & Fannie Weinstein) Indianapolis Monthly, Dec. 1996 — Julie Baumeister's own first-person essay.Reuters / Indianapolis Star-News wire (c. 1996–1999) — Dr. Stephen Nawrocki, "Our minimum number at the site is 11. There could be more."; Det. Bill Clifford on the DNA signatures.Detective Mary Wilson's 12-page handwritten memo, dated June 27, 1996 — Obtained via public records and published by WRTV (Vic Ryckaert), "Forgotten at Fox Hollow," 2023.WRTV / WCPO, "Forgotten at Fox Hollow" (Vic Ryckaert), 2023 — the memo and case documents from the Hamilton County SheriffFannie Weinstein & Melinda Wilson, Where the Bodies Are Buried (St. Martin's, 1998) Rob Graves & Richard Estep, The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm (2019) Stephen Nawrocki et al., "A Taphonomic Analysis of Human Cremains from the Fox Hollow Farm Serial Homicide Site" University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center (Dr. Krista Latham) — remains curation/analysis; Latham's "marginalized in life… in death" quotes.Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Herbert R. Baumeister" (indyencyclopedia.org) — timeline, the Sept. 12, 1996 first-four IDs, "concluded he was responsible."Indianapolis Monthly, "Unburying the Truth," Eve Batey (Dec. 2024; updated Nov. 4, 2025) — Jellison's "eight gay men from Indianapolis, what do we care?" and "blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls from Carmel or Fishers" quotes; the Livingston landline detail.

As always special thanks to our hellions supporting us on patreon! patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcastThis episode closes the two-part countdown of the most haunted places on earth, covering the top five. We open in Edinburgh, Scotland — a city that sealed off its medieval streets and built a new city on top of them, leaving the original closes and vaults intact beneath the surface. The South Bridge Vaults, rediscovered in 1985, have been the subject of one of the most rigorous paranormal studies ever conducted.From Scotland we go to Bohemia, Czech Republic, and Houska Castle — a 13th-century structure with no water source, no town to protect, and no trade route to control, built in the middle of dense forest with outer walls that face inward. It was built over a hole in the ground that medieval sources describe as a gateway to the underworld. The chapel sits directly above the sealed pit and contains a fresco of St. Michael painted deliberately left-handed — in medieval Catholic iconography, the hand of the Devil. In County Offaly, Ireland, Leap Castle earns the third spot. It is the site of a massacre carried out in the castle's own chapel during a feast, and the murder of a Catholic priest at the altar by his own brother during Mass. In 1900, renovation workers discovered a concealed oubliette off the Bloody Chapel — a spiked pit containing the remains of an estimated 150 people. An elemental is also present: a creature the size of a sheep, moving on all fours in a human manner, with a human face, black empty eye sockets, and a smell of sulfur and decay that arrives before it appears and lingers after it's gone. Number two, Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania — 51,000 casualties in 72 hours across six square miles of farmland in July 1863. The most paranormally documented site in the United States. At dusk in the Wheatfield, where 6,000 men fell in a single afternoon, figures in period clothing have been reported walking in opposite directions.We close at number one: Poveglia Island where plague victims were quarantined and burned across three centuries of epidemic — 1348, 1630, and the waves between. The soil is documented at approximately fifty percent human ash and bone fragments. An estimated 160,000 people died there. The bell that was removed from the hospital tower, still ringsSOURCESWiseman, Richard. "Hauntings and Psychology." University of Hertfordshire study, Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There. Macmillan, 2011.Historic Environment Scotland. Edinburgh Castle site documentation and architectural history. Edinburgh: HESBurke and Hare: Bailey, Brian. Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2002.Ottokar II of Bohemia and Houska Castle construction: Žemlička, Josef. Království v pohybu (The Kingdom in Motion). Prague: NLN, 2014.SS Ahnenerbe occult research division: Pringle, Heather. The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust. New York: Hyperion, 2006.O'Carroll clan history and Leap Castle: Simms, Katharine. From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987.The oubliette at Leap Castle: Ryan, Sean. Personal accounts and estate documentation. See also: Costello, Con. A Most Delightful Station: The British Army on the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland. Collins Press, 1996.Chamberlain and Little Round Top: Trulock, Alice Rains. In the Hands of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain and the American Civil War. University of North Carolina Press, 1992.Venice plague epidemics and the lazaretto system: Cohn, Samuel K. Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of the Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 2010.Poveglia Island quarantine history: Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice. New York: Knopf, 1982.Psychiatric care in early 20th-century Italy: Foot, John. The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care. Verso, 2015.

TRIGGER WARNING: We typically don't have trigger warnings since it is a crime podcast, but this episode is ESPECIALLY graphic in topics of kidnapping, torture, and sexual assault. Not appropriate for young listeners. NEW: Fireside behind the scenes fireside chats available now at patreon.com/highwaytohell podcast with EVERY episode. Get ad free episodes 5 days early and then bonus chats on release day. In November 1988, 17-year-old Junko Furuta, a high school student in Misato, Saitama, Japan, was abducted by a group of teenage boys led by Hiroshi Miyano, a youth with yakuza connections. She was held captive for roughly 40 days in a house in the Adachi ward of Tokyo in the home of one of her captors, whose own parents were living in the same building and reportedly did not intervene. During her captivity, Junko was subjected to relentless and brutal abuse by four primary perpetrators and others who came and went. She died in January 1989 from her injuries. Her body was concealed in a concrete-filled drum and abandoned, which gave the crime its common name in Japan: the "concrete-encased high school girl murder case."The legal fallout drew lasting outrage. Because all four main offenders were minors under Japanese law, their identities were initially protected and they were shielded by the juvenile justice system, which prioritized rehabilitation over punishment. The sentences struck many as shockingly lenient given the severity of the crime. Ringleader Hiroshi Miyano received the harshest term at around 20 years, while the others received far shorter sentences... roughly five to ten years, five to nine years, and five to seven years respectively. Prosecutors and the public viewed the outcomes as wholly inadequate, and all four were eventually released back into society.The aftermath deepened public anger. At least one offender reoffended, including a conviction tied to a violent attack years after his release. Some married and built ordinary lives, reportedly disclosing their pasts to their spouses; one died in 2021 after years of illness and isolation. The case became a touchstone in Japanese debates over juvenile sentencing, victims' rights, and whether protections afforded to young offenders can fail to deliver justice for catastrophic crimes. Decades later, Junko Furuta's name remains a symbol of those unresolved tensions, and her case is still cited whenever Japan revisits how it treats minors who commit grave offenses.Sources:Murder of Junko Furuta — WikipediaJunko Furuta: Examining the Light Sentences of Her Killers — HowStuffWorksWhere Are Junko Furuta's Killers Now? — ComingSoonThe Junko Furuta Murder Case: Justice Revisited — Tokyo WeekenderJunko Furuta Killer Again on Trial — Tokyo ReporterThe UK's Grooming Gangs and the Lessons Never Learned — Al JazeeraRotherham Grooming Gang Scandal — Al JazeeraBrock Turner Sentence — CNNEthan Couch Sentencing — BBCHeisei Yakuza: Burst Bubble — ResearchGateStreet Youths, Bosozoku and Yakuza — Office of Justice ProgramsJapanese Juvenile Law — WikipediaCriminal Majority in Japan — European Journal of Contemporary Japanese StudiesTokyo Ghost Hunting — Metropolis JapanHaunted Places in Japan — TripXL7-Day Tokyo Itinerary — Rakuten Travel

In 1952, a devout Catholic girl was born in a small Bavarian town. By 1976, she was dead at 23, weighing 66 pounds, after 67 exorcism sessions conducted by two Catholic priests while a medical diagnosis went untreated. Her name was Anneliese Michel. You probably know her as Emily Rose. At 16, Anneliese began experiencing seizures and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and depression. She was hospitalized multiple times. But the psychiatric medications weren't working, or she believed they weren't, and she began to experience visions of demonic faces during her prayers. She grew convinced she was possessed. Her deeply Catholic family agreed.In 1975, Bishop Josef Stangl of Würzburg granted permission for a formal exorcism under the Roman Ritual. Father Arnold Renz and Father Ernst Alt began conducting sessions at the Michel family home in Klingenberg am Main. One to two sessions per week, each lasting up to four hours. They recorded everything on cassette tape. Forty-three tapes survive. On them you can hear Anneliese screaming, growling, barking like a dog, and speaking in voices that identified themselves as Lucifer, Cain, Judas Iscariot, Nero, Adolf Hitler, who argued in Bavarian dialect, and a disgraced 16th-century priest named Fleischmann. Her parents stopped consulting doctors at her request. On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel died of malnutrition and dehydration. The priests and her parents were tried and convicted of negligent homicide in 1978 and sentenced to six months suspended. The court was clear: she was mentally ill, not possessed. Her grave in Klingenberg am Main has become a Catholic pilgrimage site. Buses come from across Europe. People leave notes requesting her intercession.She was 23 years old.SOURCES — Anneliese MichelWikipedia — Anneliese Michel — comprehensive overview with primary source citationsAll That's Interesting — The Real Story Behind Emily Rose — detailed narrative accountGoodman, Felicitas D. — The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (Doubleday, 1981) — the only full-length scholarly book on the case; Goodman was an anthropologist who analyzed the tapesFortea, Fr. José Antonio — Catholic theological perspective on the caseFind a Grave — Anneliese Michel Memorial — grave location and documentationThe Local Germany — "Fire Resurrects Devil Talk in Exorcism Town" — reporting from Klingenberg am MainMedium / History Retold — "The 67 Exorcisms of Anneliese Michel" — detailed timeline of sessionsEBSCO Research Starters — Anneliese Michel — academic summaryTranscript of Exorcism Sessions — partial transcripts available via Scribd (translated from German)German court records — Landgericht Aschaffenburg, Case No. 1 Ks 4/77, verdict April 21, 1978 — conviction of Josef Michel, Anna Michel, Fr. Arnold Renz, and Fr. Ernst Alt for negligent homicideRTD — "How a Girl Believed to Be Possessed Underwent 67 Exorcisms" — biographical detailDark Holme Publishing — The Exorcism That Ended in Death — medical and legal analysis

Apologies this episode is late! We had a major tech issue that showed our podcast no longer existed on our dashboard but all is well and recovered! Thanks for your patienceThank you to our supporters on patreon.com/highwaytohellBetween 1982 and 1998, Gary Leon Ridgway murdered at least 49 women in and around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. Most of his victims were young women, many of them sex workers or runaways, whom he picked up along the Pacific Highway South corridor. He strangled them, dumped their bodies in wooded areas, and for nearly two decades, walked free.The investigation was hampered from the start by institutional indifference. Law enforcement operated under an unofficial but widely understood attitude known as NHI — "No Humans Involved" — a designation applied to cases involving sex workers, homeless individuals, or drug users. Victims in these categories were deprioritized, their cases worked less aggressively, their families given fewer resources. Detectives who did push for more attention were often met with bureaucratic resistance. The assumption that these women had placed themselves in danger, that their deaths were somehow less urgent , allowed Ridgway to keep killing for sixteen years.He was finally arrested in 2001 after DNA technology linked him to several victims. In 2003, Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 murders in a deal that spared him the death penalty in exchange for helping locate the remains of still-missing victims. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.Sources:Sources: Green River Killer ResearchRule, Ann. Green River, Running Red. Free Press, 2004.Smith, Carlton & Guillen, Tomas. The Search for the Green River Killer. Penguin, 1991.Prothero, Mark & Smith, Carlton. Defending Gary. Union Square Press, 2006.King County Superior Court, Case No. 03-1-00175-9. Guilty Plea & Sentencing Documents, 2003.King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. Statement of Defendant on Plea of Guilty, 2003.Washington State Attorney General's Office. Green River Task Force Investigative Records. Washington State Archives.Federal Bureau of Investigation. Gary Ridgway Case Files. FBI Vault, vault.fbi.gov.King County Medical Examiner's Office. Victim Autopsy & Identification Records. King County Public Records.The Seattle Times. Green River Killer Archive, 1982–2003. seattletimes.com.The Tacoma News Tribune. Green River Killer Coverage Archive.Seattle Weekly. "The List" Investigative Series on NHI Classification and Victim Deprioritization.FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators. U.S. Department of Justice, 2008.Criminology & Public Policy Journal. "Policing Sex Work." Various authors.Violence Against Women Journal. "Vulnerability and Victimization: Street Sex Workers and Violence." Various authors.Green River Killer: Mind of a Monster. Investigation Discovery, 2019.

Between roughly 1980 and 1995, the United States experienced one of the largest collective delusions in its modern history. A significant share of the public, along with police departments, prosecutors, social workers, and clergy, came to believe that an organized network of Satanic cults was ritually abusing children, sacrificing infants, and operating in plain sight through churches, daycares, and rock-and-roll records. No credible evidence for such a network has ever been found. The trials, convictions, and shattered lives, however, were entirely real.The era was shaped by the lingering shadow of the Manson Family and the Jonestown massacre, the rapid expansion of televangelism, the political ascent of the Christian Right, and an unprecedented entry of mothers into the workforce that placed millions of American children, for the first time, into institutional daycare. Into this anxious moment came the therapeutic vogue of recovered memory, Geraldo Rivera's 1988 NBC special Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground, and a daytime talk-show ecosystem that elevated occult conspiracy to the status of public health crisis.We then turn to the role of popular music. Heavy metal became the panic's most visible scapegoat. Ozzy Osbourne was sued over the lyrics of "Suicide Solution." Judas Priest was tried in a Reno courtroom over allegations of subliminal backmasking. The acronym "Knights in Satan's Service" was retroactively imposed on KISS. In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore, led Senate hearings that produced the Parental Advisory label still in use today.We trace the panic's intellectual foundation to three books. Michelle Remembers (1980), co-authored by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient and future wife Michelle Smith, introduced the template of recovered Satanic ritual abuse and has since been thoroughly discredited. Satan's Underground by Lauren Stratford was exposed as fabrication by the evangelical magazine Cornerstone in 1989. Mike Warnke's The Satan Seller, marketed for nearly two decades as the testimony of a former Satanic high priest, was similarly debunked. Each was promoted by churches, sold through Christian bookstores, and circulated to law enforcement as reference material.Finally, we examine the cases. The McMartin Preschool trial, which ran from 1984 to 1990, remains the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history and produced no convictions. Kern County, Fells Acres, Little Rascals, Wenatchee, and the 1994 conviction of the West Memphis Three followed similar patterns: coached child testimony, suggestive interview techniques, and prosecutions driven by belief rather than evidence. Witch trials anyone?Further Reading & SourcesStanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)Lawrence Wright, Remembering Satan (1994) — the Paul Ingram caseDebbie Nathan & Michael Snedeker, Satan's Silence (1995)Richard Beck, We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s (2015)Richard Ofshe & Ethan Watters, Making Monsters (1994)Jon Trott & Mike Hertenstein, "Selling Satan," Cornerstone (1992)Mara Leveritt, Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (2002)Damien Echols, Life After Death (2012)Jack & Janet Smurl with Robert Curran, The Haunting (1988)Indianapolis Star, "The Exorcisms of Latoya Ammons" (2014) — official DCS recordsNoreen Gosch, Why Johnny Can't Come Home (2000)David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (2006)Timothy Leary, The Politics of Ecstasy (1968)Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970)Jimmy McDonough, Shakey: Neil Young's Biography (2002) — Altamont contextHoward Sounes, 27: A History of the 27 Club (2013)Martin Wall, Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin (2016) — Page/Crowley connectionPeter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998) — counterculture context

Warren Jeffs was the self-declared prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the FLDS) a polygamist offshoot of mainstream Mormonism. He inherited leadership from his father Rulon Jeffs in 2002, even marrying some of his father's wives after his passing. At its peak, Jeffs controlled an estimated ten thousand followers, primarily concentrated in the twin border towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. Local law enforcement, local government, local businesses answered to Jeffs, not the federal authorities. People who left, or were expelled, often lost everything: their homes, their families, their entire social world, overnight.The crimes Jeffs committed and enabled were extensive, systemic, and in many cases, as so many cults do, perpetrated against children.Jeffs arranged and performed marriages between adult men and underage girls, some as young as twelve and thirteen years old. He taught his followers that these arrangements were divine commandments, that questioning them was questioning God. Women and girls within the sect had no autonomy. They were assigned husbands by Jeffs himself, reassigned when he saw fit, and had children taken from them as punishment.He also wielded excommunication as a weapon. Men who challenged him or fell out of favor were cast out, stripped of their families, their property, and their standing, in a practice followers called "reassignment," in which their wives and children were simply handed to other men in the community.When the kingdom began to crumble Warren Jeffs was put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List in 2006 but was able to elude capture until a fateful traffic stop in NevadaSourcesState of Utah v. Warren Steed Jeffs (2007) — rape as accomplice convictionUtah Supreme Court appeal — reversal on jury instruction grounds (2010)Texas v. Warren Jeffs (2011) — sexual assault of a child; aggravated sexual assault of a childTexas v. Merril Jessop et al. (2009–2011) — related FLDS prosecutionsTexas Supreme Court, In re: Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (2008) — ruling on mass child removalU.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division v. Town of Colorado City, Arizona et al. (2012–2016) — law enforcement capture case; 2016 consent decreeUtah court receivership of the United Effort Plan (UEP) trust (2005 onward)Warren Jeffs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives file (May 6, 2006)Nevada state trooper arrest report, Clark County, August 28, 2006Utah Attorney General's Office, Safety Net Committee Reports (2004–2012)Arizona Attorney General's FLDS investigation recordsTexas Department of Family and Protective Services, YFZ Ranch operational reports (2008)Elissa Wall with Lisa Pulitzer — Stolen Innocence (2008, William Morrow)Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer — Escape (2007, Broadway Books)Flora Jessop with Paul T. Brown — Church of Lies (2009, Jossey-Bass)Rebecca Musser with M. Bridget Cook — The Witness Wore Red (2013, Grand Central Publishing)Jon Krakauer — Under the Banner of Heaven (2003, Doubleday)Benjamin Bistline — The Polygamists: A History of Colorado City, Arizona (2004)Andrea Moore-Emmett — God's Brothel (2004)Rachel Dretzin (director) — Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey, Netflix (2022)Salt Lake Tribune — sustained FLDS coverage 2000–2024; reporters Ben Winslow, Brooke Adams, Lindsay Whitehurst (fasting directive reporting, Lost Boys documentation, UEP trust coverage)Arizona Republic — FLDS investigation series (2005–2011)San Angelo Standard-Times — Deb McCullough's YFZ Ranch reporting (2004–2011), earliest press coverage of the compoundThe New Yorker — Lawrence Wright, "Lives of the Saints" (2005)Associated Press wire reporting on arrest, trial, and sentencingLaurie Allen — "Lost Boys" field research, St. George, Utah (2004)Eric Nichols (lead Texas prosecutor) — post-verdict remarks, reported in San Angelo Standard-Times (August 2011)