The Box of Oddities

This episode of The Box of Oddities drifts from quiet museum news into deeply unsettling territory, beginning with an update on the International Cryptozoology Museum and sliding straight into one of America’s most enduring paranormal mysteries. In Point Pleasant, West Virginia—forever linked to the legend of Mothman—the hosts revisit the famous sightings that turned a small river town into ground zero for strange phenomena in the 1960s. But this time, the story doesn’t stop with glowing red eyes and winged silhouettes. Digging through old police blotters uncovers something far quieter and, in some ways, far more disturbing: decades of reports describing the same unidentified man walking the streets at night. Long before and during the height of the Mothman flap, officers documented encounters with a figure who never aged, never spoke, and never quite seemed human. The overlap raises uncomfortable questions about observation, surveillance, and whether Point Pleasant was being watched—by something else—long before the town knew it was strange. From paranormal folklore, the episode pivots sharply into real-world secrecy, exploring espionage during World War I, where ordinary people became invisible spies. In occupied Europe, women used knitting not just as cover, but as a potential method of steganography—encoding military intelligence into stitches, patterns, and yarn, right under the noses of enemy soldiers. These stories blur the line between domestic routine and covert resistance, revealing how underestimated skills became powerful tools of war. Blending cryptids, coded yarn, historical intrigue, and listener-driven discoveries, this episode captures what The Box of Oddities does best: connecting the paranormal with the overlooked corners of history and inviting listener engagement along the way. From Mothman to men who don’t belong, from quiet streets to quiet stitches, this is a journey through mysteries that hide in plain sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Inbox of Oddities returns with a collection of listener stories that blur the line between coincidence, comfort, and the quietly unexplained. In this episode, Kat and JG open the mailbag to explore moments that refuse to be neatly categorized—voices heard from empty hallways, familiar smells that return after death, voicemails that play when no tape exists, and encounters that arrive at exactly the moment they’re needed. Listeners share experiences with phantom sounds, uncanny timing, and the strange intimacy of grief—like a parent’s voice calling from another room, a mattress dipping under unseen weight, or a watch alarm sounding years later on the exact right day. These aren’t stories that demand belief or skepticism. They simply sit there, unresolved, asking to be remembered as they were felt. Along the way, the episode drifts into lighter oddities too: bizarre coincidences, accidental “boo effects,” strange dreams, unexpected connections sparked by the show itself, and a few moments of humor that keep the strange from tipping into the unbearable. From animal mischief and international pronunciation corrections to eerie synchronicities and deeply personal listener reflections, this Inbox episode captures what happens when strange things brush past ordinary lives. If you love listener stories, paranormal ambiguity, unexplained experiences, synchronicities, and moments that feel meaningful without ever explaining why, this episode of Inbox of Oddities is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if death isn’t a clean switch—off, then on—but something messier? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dig into a deeply unsettling early-20th-century medical case involving a European woman who was pronounced dead… and then woke up during her own autopsy. Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Literally on the table. Declared clinically dead by the standards of the time, her body was wheeled from the ward, stripped, positioned, and cut open by doctors who had no reason to believe anyone was listening. But when she revived, she didn’t describe darkness, tunnels, or visions of light. Instead, she calmly and accurately recounted what the doctors had done and said after she was declared dead—details she could not have seen, overheard, or reasonably guessed. The case appeared quietly in early medical journals, written in careful, restrained language, and then largely disappeared from discussion. Long before near-death experiences entered popular culture, this account suggested something far more uncomfortable: that awareness may linger longer than we think, and that consciousness doesn’t always follow the tidy rules we assign to it. From there, the conversation widens into the blurry boundaries of clinical death, historical accounts of awareness during catastrophic injury, and why medicine—especially in its early modern years—may have preferred to quietly file away cases that didn’t fit the model. Then, because this is The Box of Oddities, things take a turn. The episode also explores unlucky days across cultures—Friday the 13th, Tuesday the 13th, Friday the 17th, and other calendar dates humans have decided are cursed—and why we seem so determined to assign meaning to randomness. And finally, the story of Vincent Coleman and the Halifax Explosion: a railway dispatcher who knowingly stayed at his post to send a final warning that saved hundreds of lives, moments before one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history leveled much of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It’s an episode about presence where none was expected, warnings sent too late—or just in time—and the uncomfortable possibility that the line between being here and being gone isn’t as sharp as we’d like to believe. Fly it proudly, you beautiful freak. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro begin exactly where all great mysteries begin: with a frozen burrito and a deeply personal kitchen ritual that absolutely does not need to exist—but does anyway. From there, things escalate quickly. What starts as a discussion of oddly satisfying micro-rituals (the kind everyone has but no one can justify) turns into a deep dive beneath the sands of Egypt, where recent radar imaging claims suggest something massive and geometric may exist far below the Pyramid of Khafre. We’re not talking about a hidden chamber or a forgotten hallway. We’re talking about enormous cylindrical shafts, spiraling downward hundreds of meters, arranged with unsettling precision. Are these structures real? Are they geological accidents? Or are they deliberately engineered spaces—older than the pyramids themselves—designed for purposes we no longer understand? Kat and Jethro explore theories ranging from ancient engineering marvels to acoustic resonance chambers capable of inducing altered states of consciousness. Chanting, vibration, infrasonic frequencies, and architecture as a mechanism for transcendence all enter the chat. Along the way, the conversation veers (as it always does) into related oddities: Stonehenge acoustics, the Dyatlov Pass mystery, binaural beats, and the idea that sound itself may have been one of humanity’s earliest tools for altering perception and brushing up against the unknown. Then, just when you think you’re safe, we go underwater. Meet the Bobbit worm—also known as the bearded fireworm—a real, very ancient, nightmare-fuel marine predator that hides in sand, senses vibrations, and snaps prey in half with terrifying speed. Equal parts fascinating and horrifying, this ten-foot ambush worm becomes an unexpected mirror to the episode’s earlier themes: ancient design, patience, hidden systems, and things that wait quietly beneath the surface until the moment they strike. This episode blends humor, history, speculative science, biology, and the deeply human urge to find meaning in rituals, structures, and creatures that predate us by millions—or even billions—of years. From kitchen counters to subterranean spirals to venomous sea monsters, The Box of Oddities asks the question it always asks best: not just what might be down there—but why the idea of it makes us so uncomfortable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this Friday the 13th edition of Inbox of Oddities, Kat and Jethro open the mailbag and let the Freak Fam take the microphone. From Ohio to Australia, Wisconsin to Vermont, listeners share experiences they can’t quite explain—and aren’t sure they want to. A woman who lives alone wakes up to find coins appearing on her nightstand… even after setting up a camera to prove nothing happened. A listener describes hearing her beloved dog—gone just hours before—return one last time, warm and unmistakably real. A cemetery worker receives a phone call from someone insisting they were just called first. And a disconnected phone number delivers a voicemail years later… in a mother’s voice. Other stories drift into stranger territory: a dying grandfather who insists the room is “breathing,” deathbed visions of unseen visitors, the unsettling sense of a space suddenly feeling busy, and the lingering question of whether some voices are meant to be heard—but not answered. There’s also a look at extravagant funerals, eerie coincidences, and the quiet comfort of knowing you’re not alone when you file something under unexplained and keep going. These are the kind of things you think about later, when the house is quiet. Welcome to the Inbox. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro wander into one of the strangest phrases ever to appear in official U.S. government records: “Unexplained human presence detected.” Buried inside real Freedom of Information Act documents, this calm, clinical line appears again and again across decades of federal incident reports—acknowledging signs of human movement, interaction, and intention… without ever finding a human being. What does it mean when trained professionals confirm a presence, rule out mechanical causes, and then simply stop writing? The conversation drifts through surveillance systems, human perception, AI pattern recognition, and that deeply familiar feeling that someone was just there—close enough to leave a trace—before vanishing. From there, the episode plunges (sometimes literally) into Devil’s Hole, Nevada: a narrow limestone fissure hiding a warm surface pool, a bottomless-seeming abyss, and the only natural habitat of the critically endangered Devil’s Hole pupfish. The hosts explore how this unassuming opening drops more than 1,200 feet into darkness, has claimed multiple divers, reacts to earthquakes thousands of miles away, and even attracted the obsessive attention of Charles Manson. With stories of vanished bodies, seismic sloshing, baffling depths, and fragile life clinging to a single rocky shelf, this episode blends government mystery, geological terror, and existential unease—plus a brief, emotional detour involving a rescued monarch butterfly named Crumplewing. As always, it’s strange, funny, unsettling, and just grounded enough in real documentation to make it linger long after the episode ends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could ancient Romans really talk to the dead—and did they build a device to help them do it? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro tumble headfirst into one of archaeology’s strangest unsolved mysteries: the Roman dodecahedron. These small bronze objects—covered in holes, studded with knobs, and found almost exclusively in frontier regions of the Roman Empire—have baffled historians for centuries. No instructions. No records. No explanation. Just geometry… and silence. We explore a growing theory that these objects weren’t tools or toys at all, but ritual devices used for necromancy. Drawing from documented Roman practices—curse tablets, grave rituals, offerings to the dead—we examine how light, fire, human remains, and sacred geometry may have combined to create controlled states of altered perception. Not summoning ghosts exactly… but thinning the veil just enough. From Plato’s cosmic geometry to the eerie absence of these artifacts in Rome itself, the clues point toward forbidden practices quietly carried out on the edges of empire—where Roman order collided with older Celtic beliefs about the dead being nearby, accessible, and occasionally helpful. Along the way, the episode drifts (as it always does) into unexpected territory: midnight peanut-butter trauma, the strange comfort of reincarnated pets, and a surprisingly deep dive into how humans have measured time—from candle clocks and cow milkings to Planck time and absurdly large cosmic units. Because when you start talking about death, you inevitably end up talking about time… and how little of it we feel we have. It’s a conversation about ancient fears, forbidden knowledge, and the unsettling possibility that some things were never written down because they worked just well enough to scare people into silence. Fly your freak flag proudly—and maybe don’t peer too deeply into glowing bronze objects near a grave. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Inbox of Oddities is where the strange, the personal, and the unexplained land when listeners finally decide, “Okay… I should probably tell someone about this.” This episode —stories of disconnected intercoms that answer anyway, phone numbers that refuse to stay in the past, quiet paranormal moments, accidental synchronicities, emotional confessions, and deeply human encounters with the bizarre. Some messages are funny. Some are tender. Some sit uncomfortably in that space where coincidence starts to feel like something more. From subtle “boo effects” and lifelong oddities to moments of connection, curiosity, and unease, Inbox of Oddities captures the voices of listeners who aren’t claiming answers—just sharing what happened. This is not loud paranormal storytelling. These are believable accounts, told plainly, often without conclusions. Just the kind of stories that linger after you turn the lights off. If you’ve ever hesitated before pressing a button, answering a call, or admitting something strange happened to you—this inbox is already familiar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Bureaucracy Kills You on Paper and the 1906 exorcism of Clara Germana Cele. What if you woke up one morning and discovered the government had already buried you—on paper? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore the quietly terrifying phenomenon of bureaucratic death: real cases in which living people were officially declared dead due to clerical errors, missing-person rulings, or database failures—and then found it nearly impossible to prove they were alive again. Bank accounts frozen. Benefits canceled. Identities erased. All because a system designed for finality has no process for resurrection. From Social Security records that spread like digital wildfire to court rulings that insist you missed the deadline to object to your own death, this story exposes the absurd and Kafkaesque consequences of modern bureaucracy. We look at documented cases including men who stood in court, breathing and speaking, while judges acknowledged their physical existence—yet refused to reverse their legal death. Then, just when you think reality has regained its footing, we pivot into one of the most chilling possession cases on record: the 1906 exorcism of Clara Germana Cele, a young orphan raised in a South African mission school. Accounts describe violent behavior, alleged levitation, sudden fluency in multiple languages, and a prolonged exorcism sanctioned by the Catholic Church. But viewed through a modern lens, the story raises unsettling questions about trauma, power, colonialism, and what happens when fear becomes doctrine. Is possession supernatural—or is it what happens when vulnerable people are given no language for their suffering? As always, we separate documented facts from speculation, explore credible historical sources, and sit comfortably in the discomfort where certainty breaks down. Also included: dangerously compassionate lizard-warming strategies, the unexpected poetry of snowplow names, and the reminder that sometimes the scariest thing in the room isn’t a demon—it’s a system that refuses to see you. Because being alive, it turns out, is not always enough. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why did Henry David Thoreau care so much about pencils—and why did some phone numbers keep ringing long after they were disconnected? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro wander into two stories that shouldn’t be connected… but somehow are. First, we look at the surprising industrial legacy of Henry David Thoreau, long before Walden Pond. As a young man working in his family’s pencil business, Thoreau applied chemistry, precision, and quiet rebellion to fix America’s worst pencils—changing how graphite was processed, how pencils were graded, and why most pencils are still yellow today. It’s a story about innovation, independence, and how financial stability made room for deep thinking… and eventually, deliberate living. Then, the episode takes a darker turn. During the 1960s and 70s, people across the U.S. reported receiving phone calls from businesses that had been closed—sometimes for decades. Funeral homes. Pharmacies. Local shops. Callers insisted they had just spoken to someone on the line. Engineers found nothing. Phone companies found no active service. The FCC investigated. No explanation stuck. What emerged instead was something stranger: the idea of telecom afterimages—echoes of human habit lingering in old copper wire. Conversations without ghosts. Voices without intent. Systems that didn’t quite know how to forget. This episode explores how infrastructure remembers, how absence isn’t always clean, and why the most unsettling stories are often the quietest ones—ordinary conversations that shouldn’t exist, but somehow do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Inbox of Oddities is back, and this one is packed wall-to-wall with listener stories that refuse to sit quietly in the corner. From strange family rules that outlive their original reasons, to rooms that seem to rearrange themselves when no one is looking, this episode drifts through the liminal spaces where memory, coincidence, and something else overlap. You’ll hear about a sealed bedroom no one ever used, estate-sale finds that may have come with unexpected passengers, familiar landscapes that suddenly no longer exist, and the unsettling moment when reality feels just slightly… misaligned. There are haunted ashes, unexplained footsteps, missing trees, objects found hidden inside walls, and those deeply unnerving childhood moments when kids say things they absolutely should not know. Along the way, we also share stories of medically fragile rescue animals, odd family traditions, and the quiet, human instinct to notice when the world doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to. These aren’t big, flashy hauntings. They’re the subtle ones—the kind that linger. The kind that make you pause in a doorway and wonder if something shifted while you weren’t paying attention. All stories are shared by listeners, in their own words, because sometimes the strangest things happen to perfectly ordinary people. Welcome to the Inbox.Fly that freak flag proudly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when a military base shuts down… but the signals don’t? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dig into a strange, documented mystery tied to Camp Hero in Montauk, New York—a Cold War radar installation officially decommissioned in the early 1980s. Years after the gates were locked and the radar went dark, amateur ham radio operators began logging unexplained voice transmissions seemingly originating from the abandoned site. These weren’t bursts of static or pirate radio chatter. Operators reported calm, procedural phrases—short, clipped, emotionally neutral language consistent with military communications. Even more unsettling: some transmissions appeared to echo Cold War–era radar terminology that had been out of use for decades. The reports were consistent, carefully logged, and compelling enough that they were forwarded to the FCC, which investigated and acknowledged the anomalies… but never provided a public explanation. Kat and Jethro walk through what we know for certain about Camp Hero, the documented reports from experienced radio operators, and why Montauk’s long history of high strangeness makes this case especially unsettling. From theories involving atmospheric conditions and signal propagation to more speculative ideas about residual transmissions, time displacement, and non-intelligent “hauntings” of technology itself, this episode explores how systems built to listen may sometimes keep doing so long after we think they’ve stopped. Along the way, the conversation veers—delightfully—into unexpected territory, including bizarre animal adoption names, Denmark’s most aggressively tasteless amusement park, and the thin line between serious investigation and the absurd places curiosity can take you. As always, the story stays rooted in documented accounts, official records, and firsthand reports—leaving you to decide whether these voices were nothing more than interference… or echoes from something that never fully powered down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when a wall hides more than it should? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore two unsettling, very real stories where history was quietly sealed away—literally and figuratively. First, we descend into the forgotten basement of Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, where renovation crews in the 1990s uncovered a bricked-over corridor that didn’t exist on any blueprints. Inside were intact treatment rooms, restraint fixtures, and medical equipment from an era psychiatric institutions would rather forget. No records. No documentation. And once discovered, the space was quietly sealed again. Then we shift to a powerful and often overlooked chapter in American medical history: Freedom House Ambulance Service in Pittsburgh. In the 1960s, a group of Black paramedics—trained at an unprecedented level—quietly invented modern emergency medical care. They saved hundreds of lives, revolutionized on-scene treatment, and laid the foundation for today’s EMS systems… before being erased from history when the city took over the program. Along the way, we talk about institutional amnesia, medical ethics, abandoned practices, historical erasure, and why the scariest stories are often the ones that actually happened. Because sometimes the question isn’t what’s haunting a place—It’s what was deliberately forgotten. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inbox of Oddities returns with a collection of listener stories that live in the unsettling space between coincidence and something more. A clock that refuses to keep proper time after changing hands. An apartment with footsteps, furniture sounds, and faint classical music—despite being officially unoccupied. A sleep paralysis experience involving a towering shadow figure with blinding white eyes. A lone dress shoe appearing in a hospital elevator with no explanation. From strange childhood remarks about “dead people” in the yard to soft, familiar knocks heard years after a loved one’s passing, these stories aren’t about monsters or jump scares—they’re about the quiet moments that linger, the things people notice and then carry with them. This episode weaves listener emails, reflections on memory, grief, lucid dreaming, and the odd comfort found in unexplained experiences that don’t demand belief—only attention. Perfect listening for anyone who’s ever paused mid-dishwashing and wondered if the world is just a little stranger than we admit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore how some mysteries don’t announce themselves with screaming headlines or dramatic hauntings—but instead settle in quietly and refuse to leave. The episode slips into dark territory with the true and well-documented case of the Hexham Heads—two crude stone carvings unearthed by children in a backyard in 1970s England. What followed were subtle but persistent disturbances: unexplained knocking, moving objects, and a growing sense that the house itself was reacting to something that should never have been brought inside. Investigated by members of the Society for Psychical Research, the case raises an unsettling possibility—that some hauntings are tied not to places but to objects that carry history badly. In the second half, the episode turns from the paranormal to forensic science with the decades-long mystery of Little Miss Lake Panasoffkee. Discovered murdered in Florida in 1971, she remained unidentified for over fifty years despite repeated exhumations, reconstructions, and scientific analysis. Advances in forensic technology finally restored her name—Maureen Lou Rowan—while also revealing how earlier scientific conclusions were quietly skewed by embalming practices of the era. The story becomes a sobering reminder that science evolves, truth is fragile, and identity can be lost far too easily. Along the way, Kat and Jethro weave in observations about human behavior, survival instincts, and the strange overlap between curiosity, caution, and consequence. No jump scares. No neat endings. Just a lingering sense that some things—objects, histories, and unresolved lives—leave marks long after they’re buried. If you’re fascinated by haunted objects, unsolved mysteries, forensic breakthroughs, and the quieter side of the unexplained, this episode delivers stories that stay with you well after the final sign-off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when a town disappears—but the dead are left behind? This episode begins with a familiar American disaster: Centralia, Pennsylvania, the coal town that has been burning underground since 1962. Most people know the story of the smoke, the buckling roads, and the evacuation. Far fewer know what happened after the living left—when the cemeteries remained, sitting directly above an active underground fire. We explore how burial grounds like the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cemetery slowly began to shift. Headstones tilted. Graves rotated. Steam vented from the soil. Over decades, officials were forced to make an unthinkable series of decisions: which graves to exhume, which to leave behind, and how to negotiate with families when the ground itself could no longer be trusted to stay still. Some remains were relocated. Many were not. And today, the fire still burns beneath them—possibly for centuries to come. It’s not a ghost story. There are no apparitions or legends. And somehow, that makes it worse. In the second half of the episode, we turn to a very different kind of quiet revolution: Florence Nightingale, the woman often reduced to a single image—the “Lady with the Lamp.” We dig past the myth to uncover her real legacy as a pioneer of sanitation, hospital reform, and statistical analysis. From filthy Crimean War hospitals to the invention of the coxcomb chart, Nightingale used data, discipline, and relentless attention to detail to save lives—and permanently change modern medicine. Along the way: strange facts about snow, burning earth, shifting assumptions about permanence, and the unsettling realization that even the most basic promises—like the ground holding still—can fail. Because sometimes the oddest stories aren’t about what rises from the grave…They’re about what refuses to stay buried. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes the strangest stories aren’t dramatic. They’re subtle. Ordinary. And impossible to shake. In this episode of Inbox of Oddities, Kat and Jethro share listener stories that live in the uncomfortable space between coincidence, memory, and something quietly off. These are not tales of screaming ghosts or shadow figures—but moments where reality seems to hesitate, update itself, or fail to line up the way it used to. Listeners write in about objects reappearing exactly where they were already searched for, buildings that forget which lights should be on, paintings that appear to change over time, and memories that don’t match the physical evidence left behind. One message describes a calm, reassuring voice coming through a baby monitor. Another recalls a grandmother’s unsettling phrase: “Not everyone comes back the same way.” Along the way, Kat and Jethro reflect on anxiety, aging memory, and the thin line between perception and certainty—mixing empathy, humor, and curiosity in the way only The Box of Oddities can. There are also moments of levity from the Freak Family: accidental near-microwaved laptops, quicksand metaphors, Australian heatwaves, rescued kookaburras, haunted municipal buildings, and the strange bond that forms when thousands of people start noticing the same small weird things. This episode isn’t about answers.It’s about the feeling you get when nothing is wrong… but nothing is entirely right either. If you’ve ever had the sense that the world quietly shifted when you weren’t looking—this one’s for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if two of America’s most infamous unsolved murders were never separate at all? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Jethro explores a startling new claim that uses artificial intelligence, cryptography, and old-fashioned detective work to suggest a single suspect may link the Zodiac Killer and the Black Dahlia—two crimes long thought to belong to different eras and different monsters. At the center of the theory is the Zodiac’s infamous Z13 cipher, a short, taunting code that promised to reveal the killer’s name and resisted decryption for more than 50 years. A self-taught cold-case researcher applied AI-driven computation to generate and eliminate more than 70 million possible name combinations, cross-referencing them against military records, census data, timelines, and geographic constraints. The result? A single identity with chilling connections to Elizabeth Short, the victim known as the Black Dahlia. Retired detectives and former intelligence cryptography specialists weigh in on why this approach is different—and why it may be the closest anyone has come to a real answer. But that’s only part of the journey. Kat and Jethro also dive into a collection of real human facts that sound completely fake—from the faint light emitted by the human body, to phantom limbs that can feel wet, to why eyewitness memories are far less reliable than we want to believe. Along the way, a Freak Family email reveals how deeply The Box of Oddities can rewire your brain (sometimes permanently). Finally, Kat closes the episode with one of history’s most unsettling books: the Codex Gigas, the largest medieval manuscript ever created. Said to contain the entire Bible, medical texts, exorcisms, and forbidden knowledge—and famously featuring a full-page illustration of the devil—the manuscript’s uniform handwriting and impossible scale raise an ancient question: was this the work of a single monk… or something else entirely? True crime, forbidden manuscripts, unsettling science, and the quiet moment when coincidences stop feeling accidental—this is The Box of Oddities doing what it does best. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do carnival sideshows, government paperwork, and half-billion-year-old nightmare creatures have in common? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore three very different corners of history where certainty was offered in place of understanding—and where things were far stranger than advertised. First, they step into the vanished world of early 20th-century hygiene exhibits: traveling carnival attractions that promised education but delivered fear. Set up alongside Ferris wheels and midway games, these sterile tents used wax models, shock imagery, and moral absolutism to teach the public what would happen if they failed to behave “correctly.” Disease was framed as punishment. Fear wasn’t a side effect—it was the lesson. Then, in a Thing in the Middle, the focus shifts from bodies to paperwork. Kat and Jethro examine bizarre bureaucratic oddities: citizens declared dead while still alive, laws that regulate technologies no longer in use, records preserved on media that can no longer be read. It’s a reminder that systems meant to create order can quietly lose track of reality. Finally, the episode dives deep into the Cambrian Explosion, a brief moment in geological time when life experimented wildly with form. From five-eyed predators to spined worms reconstructed upside-down for decades, these ancient creatures reveal a world where evolution hadn’t settled on any final draft yet—and where “normal” hadn’t been invented. Across carnivals, governments, and deep time, a pattern emerges: confidence without nuance, spectacle over explanation, and the human desire to make complicated worlds feel simple. The tents are gone.The paperwork remains.The creatures are fossilized. But the urge to replace understanding with certainty is still very much alive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inbox of Oddities is back with another lovingly chaotic collection of listener stories, strange coincidences, quiet creepiness, and accidental comedy. In this episode, Kat and Jethro share a perfectly timed real-life oddity involving a disappearing blood bus, because sometimes the universe has a sense of humor—and it’s not always kind. From there, the Freak Fam delivers. A childhood bedroom that made everyone feel watched—but never threatened. A night security guard who hears a humming tune no one else should know. A smart speaker that apologizes unprompted at 3:14 a.m. A Nevada rest stop that leaves footprints where no one was standing. And a Maine hunting trip that ends with three missing days, clean boots, and a man who never went into the woods again. There’s also talk of misheard song lyrics, imaginary dream logic, family phrases that make no sense to outsiders, mysterious radio cutouts in hospital parking lots, and the oddly comforting ways this show has woven itself into listeners’ daily lives—from late-night drives to chemo appointments. No monsters. No jump scares. Just rooms that don’t want company, places that feel… aware, and moments that refuse to be explained. Exactly the way we like it. If you enjoy subtle paranormal experiences, uncanny coincidences, listener mail, strange comfort, and humor that sneaks up on you, this one’s for you. Fly that freak flag proudly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices