The Devil Within

THE DEVIL WITHIN GUSTAVE — Episode Three: The Hunt For years, Patrice Faye had followed the evidence left behind by one of Africa's most notorious predators. He interviewed witnesses, mapped attacks around Lake Tanganyika, studied movements along the Rusizi River and learned the scars that distinguished one enormous Nile crocodile from every other animal in the water. By 2002, studying Gustave was no longer enough. Faye wanted to capture him alive. In the final installment of our three-part investigation, The Hunt, the naturalist's obsession becomes an extraordinary field expedition. Gustave's legend has now escaped Burundi and entered the international press, bringing increasingly spectacular claims with it: hundreds of victims, gunshot wounds, attacks on massive animals and a crocodile that supposedly killed without eating. Faye himself offered a considerably more cautious estimate, saying he had documented roughly sixty deaths attributable to Gustave, perhaps fewer—a number that still could never be scientifically confirmed. But Gustave himself was real. His extraordinary size and distinctive scars allowed Faye to identify an individual animal moving through the enormous interconnected ecosystem of Lake Tanganyika and the Rusizi River. Capturing him alive could finally replace estimates with measurements: his true length, weight, age, physical condition and injuries could all be studied for the first time. So Faye built a jail. Nearly thirty feet long and weighing roughly a ton, the enormous steel cage looked more like industrial machinery than an animal trap. Cameras monitored it. Bait was placed inside. Crocodile specialist Alison Leslie joined the expedition, while filmmaker Jean-Michel Corillion documented the hunt for what would become Capturing the Killer Croc. Eventually, something enormous approached the cage. Then everything went wrong. A violent storm struck. The infrared camera failed. By morning, the trap had been damaged and partially submerged—and the live goat being used as bait had vanished. Whatever happened during those missing hours was never captured on film. The cage intended to settle the mystery of Gustave had somehow produced another one. Faye's expedition ended without its prisoner. But Gustave didn't disappear from the story. Reports continued for years, including another reported sighting in 2009. What remained were ultimately two Gustaves: the documented animal—an exceptionally large, heavily scarred Nile crocodile photographed and filmed in the Lake Tanganyika region—and the nearly supernatural creature built around him by decades of rumor and repetition. And then there is the final mystery. Did Gustave ever die? Rumors say yes. Evidence says we don't know. No verified carcass was recovered. No skull was conclusively identified. No scientific examination established when or where Gustave's life ended. That doesn't make him immortal. It simply means that the final chapter of his biological life was never documented. Perhaps that's appropriate. Because after three episodes spent asking what transformed Gustave into a monster, we arrive at a more uncomfortable possibility: Maybe nothing did. Maybe Gustave remained exactly what millions of years of evolution had designed him to be—patient, opportunistic, adaptable and capable of learning from the world around him. Perhaps it was the world around him that changed. LISTEN, WATCH & FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. It remains one of the simplest and most effective ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, archival material, episode imagery and more from the stories we investigate. Have a story, mystery or case you think belongs on The Devil Within? Send it to info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN GUSTAVE — Episode Two: Built to Kill What makes a predator perfect? In Episode Two of our three-part investigation into Gustave, we leave Lake Tanganyika behind for a moment and travel to Tsavo, Kenya, in 1898, where two maneless male lions began pulling railway workers from their camps. The animals that became known as the Ghost and the Darkness terrorized the Uganda Railway project for months before Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson finally killed them. More than a century later, their preserved remains would give scientists something Patrice Faye never had with Gustave: a killer they could actually examine. Then we go inside the Nile crocodile. Calling Gustave a dinosaur isn't scientifically accurate, but crocodilians belong to an evolutionary lineage whose basic predatory strategy has survived for an extraordinary span of time. Eyes and nostrils positioned above the water allow the animal to disappear almost completely beneath the surface. A muscular tail provides explosive acceleration. Armored osteoderms protect the body. Conical teeth seize rather than chew. And when prey is too large to swallow, the infamous death roll can tear it into manageable pieces. Everything about the design is built around one principle: Don't waste energy. That principle makes Gustave's story considerably stranger. Crocodiles are ectothermic ambush predators capable of waiting extraordinary periods between meals. They don't need prolonged pursuit. They wait until an animal enters the narrow strip of geography where water meets land—and then patience becomes explosive violence. For people who depend upon Lake Tanganyika for fishing, bathing, washing and drinking water, that kill zone is also an unavoidable part of everyday life. But Patrice Faye encountered reports of victims attributed to Gustave whose bodies were recovered or only partially consumed. That helped create the sensational legend that Gustave killed for pleasure. The biology tells a more complicated story. Crocodile ecologist Alison Leslie rejected the idea of a crocodilian psychopath. Attacks can be interrupted. Crocodiles can behave territorially. Large prey may be consumed over several days. And some of the deaths attributed to one famous crocodile may have belonged to entirely different animals. Faye nevertheless wondered whether decades of conflict in Burundi and neighboring Congo had provided Gustave with opportunities to scavenge human remains—and thereby learn that humans were simply another available food source. It remains a hypothesis, not an established scientific explanation. Finally, we meet the Old Man of the Lake. Faye estimated Gustave at approaching twenty feet long and perhaps a ton in weight. His enormous body carried distinctive scars, including wounds Faye believed came from gunfire, allowing him to distinguish Gustave from other crocodiles. After decades of survival, this wasn't simply a giant animal. It was an experienced predator capable of learning the repetitive patterns of the people living along its territory. Perhaps Gustave wasn't terrifying because he broke the rules of nature. Perhaps he was terrifying because he followed them perfectly. And Patrice Faye had finally decided that understanding Gustave wasn't enough. He was going to catch him. LISTEN, WATCH & FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show. Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Follow @thedevilwithinpod for episode clips, archival material and more from the stories we investigate. Have a story or case you think belongs on the show? Send it to info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of September 28, 2026 Fall has officially arrived, playoff baseball is back, and apparently Mother Nature decided the Northeast needed to celebrate with a violent nor'easter. This week on The Devil's Ledger, Branden sends some love to everyone currently getting battered by wind, rain and coastal flooding—and finally answers a question some of us have somehow avoided asking our entire lives: What the hell actually is a nor'easter? Then we head into considerably darker territory. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE MOSQUITO Brazilian authorities say they've captured Jorlan Lopes da Silva, a suspected serial killer nicknamed “Mosquito” because of his thin, frail build. Police accuse da Silva of involvement in sixteen murders around Mulungu in northeastern Brazil. Investigators say he evaded capture by disappearing into dense vegetation and living in makeshift camps hidden in the wilderness. But it's the bizarre circumstances of his arrest that elevate this one into Creepiest Thing territory: when police finally cornered him after a two-day pursuit, da Silva was reportedly wearing a dress, wig and painted fingernails—and carrying an unrelated baby in his arms. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN: GUSTAVE The New Monsters has come to an end, which means we're returning to something considerably more familiar: Serial killers. Sort of. Our new three-part series travels to Burundi and the shores of Lake Tanganyika for the extraordinary story of Gustave, the enormous, heavily scarred Nile crocodile blamed in legend for more than 300 human deaths. That number has never been verified—and naturalist Patrice Faye offered far more conservative estimates—but behind the mythology was a very real, exceptionally large crocodile that Faye spent years tracking. How do you hunt a serial killer with no motive, fingerprints or confession—one who can simply disappear beneath the surface of one of Africa's great lakes? Meet Gustave: The Killer of Lake Tanganyika. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: TOMASZ KOSOWSKI Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn investigates the extraordinary case of plastic surgeon Tomasz Kosowski, recently found guilty of murdering attorney Steven Cozzi. Cozzi vanished from his Largo, Florida, law office in March 2023. His wallet, phone and keys were left behind, while investigators discovered blood inside the men's restroom. His body has never been recovered. Then Kosowski made the already extraordinary case even stranger: facing first-degree murder and the possibility of a death sentence, he represented himself. Carolyn breaks down the evidence, the disappearance and one of the stranger murder trials we've encountered in quite some time. THE SLIPPERY: THE PONZI KILLER MOM Scott and Nancy bring us the rise and spectacular collapse of Natalie Cochran. Natalie and Michael Cochran appeared to have everything: high-school sweethearts turned successful suburban family, with Natalie working as a pharmacist and Michael as a popular baseball coach and businessman. Behind that success was a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme involving supposedly lucrative government and defense contracts. As the money poured in, so did the lies—and when Michael began asking questions, prosecutors said Natalie chose murder over exposure. A jury ultimately convicted her of killing her husband with insulin. Money. Marriage. Fraud. Defense contracts. Murder. This week, The Slippery takes on The Ponzi Killer Mom. THIS WEEK IN HORROR: VICTORIAN PSYCHO Finally, we're going Gothic. Maika Monroe stars as Winifred Notty, an eccentric young governess who arrives at a remote English manor in 1858 to educate the children of a wealthy family. Then people begin disappearing. Also starring Jason Isaacs, Thomasin McKenzie and Ruth Wilson, Victorian Psycho gives us a remote manor, Victorian repression, disappearing servants and a governess who may have considerably more on her mind than afternoon lessons. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Follow The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, The Slippery and The Devil's Ledger wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a five-star rating and review to help more listeners discover the Evio Universe. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, episode imagery, stories and updates. Have a story or tip for us? mailto:info@eviocreative.com Fall is here. The sweaters are coming out. The leaves are changing. Playoff baseball has arrived. Nature is healing. We'll see you this week across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN GUSTAVE: THE KILLER OF LAKE TANGANYIKA Episode One — Pattern For years, people living along the shores of Lake Tanganyika told stories about something enormous moving beneath the water. Fishermen disappeared. Bodies were recovered bearing catastrophic injuries. Survivors described attacks that happened with terrifying speed, often in places where generations of Burundians had fished, washed clothes and collected water. Then French naturalist Patrice Faye began looking for a pattern. Faye was an unlikely investigator: a self-taught naturalist and herpetologist from Lyon who had worked as a plumber and lumberjack, traveled through Africa and eventually made Burundi his home. During some of the country's darkest years, he developed an extraordinary knowledge of its wildlife—and became increasingly troubled by the stories emerging from Lake Tanganyika. In Episode One of our three-part investigation into Gustave, we travel deep into the history of Burundi, a breathtaking country scarred by colonialism, political assassination and a civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 people between 1993 and 2005. Against that backdrop, Faye developed a disturbing theory: could years of human bodies entering the region's waterways during the violence have taught an opportunistic predator that human beings were food? It was a theory he could never prove, but one that connected Burundi's human tragedy to the mystery developing along its shoreline. Faye collected eyewitness accounts, compared locations and studied descriptions until he became convinced that many of the attacks were connected. Witnesses repeatedly described extraordinary size and distinctive scars, including an injury on the animal's head. Eventually, Faye saw his suspect himself and gave him a name: Gustave. Gustave wasn't a man. He was an enormous Nile crocodile—estimated by Faye at roughly twenty feet long, perhaps a ton in weight and around sixty years old, although the animal was never captured and scientifically measured. And while the sensational claims that Gustave killed two or three hundred people belong more comfortably to legend than established fact, something very real remained beneath the mythology: an exceptionally large, scarred crocodile that Faye would spend years trying to understand. This is the story of a naturalist, a country haunted by war, and a predator that became a legend. This is Gustave: The Killer of Lake Tanganyika. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode, and leave us a five-star rating and review to help more listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for new episodes and original video content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, images, archival material and more from the stories we investigate. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Episode Three: The Monster Loveland Kept By the summer of 2016, hunting monsters had changed. Armed with smartphones and Pokémon Go, two teenagers wandered near Ohio's Little Miami River and reportedly encountered something that wasn't supposed to be part of the game. Their footage was ambiguous, but the name attached to it was unmistakable: the Loveland Frogman. The alleged sighting resurrected a legend stretching back decades—mysterious humanoid figures beside an Ohio road in 1955, police encounters in 1972, and the wonderfully bizarre story of a frog-like creature carrying a wand that produced sparks. But the renewed attention also brought former Loveland police officer Mark Mathews back into the story. Mathews had encountered and shot the animal associated with the legend in 1972, and his explanation was considerably less supernatural: according to him, it was a large, tailless iguana, probably an escaped or abandoned exotic pet. That should have killed the legend. Instead, Loveland kept the Frogman. In the conclusion of our three-part investigation, we explore what happens when a monster outlives the eyewitnesses who created it. From the arrival of the internet and the 2016 Pokémon Go encounter to the transformation of regional cryptids into hometown mascots, merchandise and cultural identities, the Frogman reveals something important about the way modern folklore survives. Evidence may weaken a legend, but once enough people inherit the story, evidence isn't the only thing keeping it alive. We also bring The New Monsters full circle, from alligators beneath Manhattan and the Bunny Man of Northern Virginia to the strange amphibious resident of the Little Miami River. Cameras, smartphones and instant communication were supposed to make monsters obsolete. Instead, technology gave folklore a distribution system. Maybe the Loveland Frogman really was an iguana. If so, the iguana lost. The monster survived. LISTEN, FOLLOW & REVIEW Listen to The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you're following the show so you never miss a new episode. If you enjoy the series, please leave us a five-star rating and review—it remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. WATCH & SUBSCRIBE Watch The Devil Within and more from the Evio Creative network on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you know whenever a new episode drops. JOIN THE CONVERSATION Follow @thedevilwithinpod for clips, stories, archival material and more from The Devil Within. Have a strange story, unexplained encounter, case or legend you think we should investigate? Send it to info@eviocreative.com. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Episode Two — The Creature Gets a Name Before the Loveland Frogman became one of America's strangest regional cryptids, it may have been something else entirely. The story takes us back to Loveland, Ohio, in 1955, where a businessman or traveling salesman supposedly encountered three small humanoid figures beside a country road near the Little Miami River. Later versions describe creatures standing three or four feet tall, with leathery skin, deeply wrinkled heads and vaguely frog-like faces. Then one of them reportedly raised a strange metal rod above its head—and sparks began shooting from it. A Frogman is strange enough. A Frogman with a magic wand requires considerably more explanation. In Episode Two of The New Monsters, we investigate how a handful of separate encounters gradually became the mythology of the Loveland Frogman—and why the creature's bizarre origins may have more in common with America's flying-saucer obsession than traditional cryptozoology. The problem begins with the 1955 encounter itself. Unlike the better-documented police sightings that followed seventeen years later, there is no readily available contemporary police report establishing the version of the story we know today. Its famous details reach us largely through later researchers, paranormal literature and decades of retelling, meaning the Frogman's origin story belongs much more securely to folklore than verified history. And then there's that wand. America in 1955 was deep in the first great age of flying-saucer fascination. UFO reports were multiplying, science-fiction theaters were filled with extraterrestrial visitors, and stories of strange humanoids carrying mysterious technology occupied a very different corner of the American imagination. Three small beings beside a road carrying a sparking device don't necessarily sound like unknown amphibians at all. They sound suspiciously like visitors. The documentary trail is too weak to conclude that the Frogman began as a UFO story, but the possibility reveals just how dramatically a story can change depending upon the name we eventually give its creature. Then came 1972. Loveland police officers Ray Shockey and Mark Mathews encountered unusual animals near the Little Miami River seventeen years after the alleged 1955 incident. Suddenly, the older story had something it had previously lacked: recognizable witnesses and the authority of a police uniform. Three mysterious humanoids from 1955 could become earlier examples of the same creature encountered by police in 1972, while those later encounters appeared to prove that something had been returning to the river for decades. Separate stories became sightings. Sightings became a pattern. And eventually, the pattern became a monster. Once the name Loveland Frogman took hold, the transformation accelerated. Paranormal books, cryptozoology collections and eventually the internet standardized a creature that eyewitness testimony had left frustratingly incomplete. Artists supplied enormous eyes, long limbs, webbed hands and unmistakably amphibian features until generations of people who had never seen the creature nevertheless knew exactly what a Loveland Frogman was supposed to look like. And somehow, through every transformation, the sparking wand survived. This week on The Devil Within, we follow one of America's strangest cryptids from an uncertain roadside encounter through police reports, paranormal publishing and the internet, examining how folklore can create a coherent history from stories that may never have belonged together in the first place. Because the Loveland Frogman wasn't simply discovered. It was assembled. Next time, the Frogman enters the smartphone age when teenagers playing Pokémon Go near Loveland encounter something strange beside the water. We'll also meet the police officer who publicly tried to kill his own legend by insisting that the Frogman he encountered in 1972 was actually a tailless iguana—and discover why Loveland kept its monster anyway. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and send your stories, sightings and tips to info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Episode One — Encounter There are places where the modern world seems to thin after dark. Outside Loveland, Ohio, the Little Miami River winds through wooded banks, bridges and stretches of road where everything beyond the headlights can disappear into darkness. It was along this landscape in March 1972 that Loveland police officer Ray Shockey reportedly encountered something strange near the roadway—an unusual creature that moved toward the guardrail and vanished in the direction of the river. Then another Loveland police officer encountered something in roughly the same area. This week, The New Monsters investigates the legend of the Loveland Frogman, one of Ohio's strangest and most beloved cryptids. But beneath the stories of upright amphibious creatures and mysterious encounters is something even more interesting: a collection of separate incidents that gradually became the history of a single monster. We begin with the landscape itself and the Little Miami River, the waterway that helped shape Loveland long before anyone imagined a Frogman living beside it. From Indigenous history and early settlement to farms, mills, railroads and the growth of Cincinnati, the river became both an economic corridor and a natural boundary between civilization and the remaining woods. Even as modern development spread outward, the river preserved precisely the sort of places where folklore thrives: dark water, wooded banks, blind curves and roads that surrender to the landscape after sunset. Then we travel back to 1955, when the earliest and most mysterious chapter of the Frogman legend supposedly occurred. Later versions describe a motorist encountering several short, upright creatures with leathery, frog-like bodies—and even claim that one carried a bizarre rod or wand capable of producing sparks. The problem is that the original encounter is difficult to document cleanly, and many of its most famous details reach us through later retellings. Seventeen years later, the story becomes considerably harder to ignore. In March 1972, Officer Shockey reported encountering an unusual animal while driving near the Little Miami. Fellow officer Mark Mathews subsequently encountered something in the same area and fired at it. Years later, Mathews would insist there was nothing supernatural about what he saw: according to him, the creature was a large iguana missing its tail, probably an escaped or abandoned exotic pet. That should have killed the legend. Instead, it helped create one. Because once the name Frogman entered the story, separate encounters began fitting together. The mysterious creatures of 1955 became earlier sightings of the animal encountered by police in 1972, while the credibility of the later police encounters reached backward and gave the older story an authority it had never possessed on its own. Loveland no longer had an unexplained animal sighting; it had a history. And that's where our investigation begins. IN THIS EPISODE The Little Miami River and the history that shaped Loveland; the mysterious and difficult-to-document 1955 encounter; Ray Shockey's 1972 roadside sighting; Mark Mathews and the alleged tailless iguana; the exotic-pet explanation; and the strange process by which separate stories became the mythology of the Loveland Frogman. Next time on The New Monsters, we'll go deeper into the bizarre 1955 encounter, investigate the Frogman's infamous sparking wand, and discover how paranormal books, local storytelling and eventually the internet transformed a handful of uncertain encounters into one of America's most recognizable regional cryptids. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review to help more listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for every new episode. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and send your stories, sightings and tips to info@eviocreative.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of September 21, 2026 Football is back, fall is finally arriving, and the Evio Universe has assembled a particularly strange collection of stories this week. We begin with The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, where an unsettling internet trend has transformed one of Dr. Seuss's most beloved characters into nightmare fuel. AI-generated images of a sinister Cat in the Hat lurking outside homes and schools have prompted police investigations across the country, juvenile arrests—and, in Canada, a bizarre real-world incident involving someone in costume allegedly chasing a teenage girl through a neighborhood. Then, on The Devil Within, we head to Ohio for the conclusion of our investigation into the Loveland Frogman. From a murky 1955 encounter involving strange humanoid figures and a supposedly sparking wand to two police encounters in 1972 and a wonderfully appropriate Pokémon Go sighting decades later, we examine how separate stories became the biography of a single monster—and why even a police officer's decidedly unromantic explanation involving a tailless iguana couldn't kill the legend. On Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio investigates the developing case surrounding Philadelphia's so-called “House of Horrors.” Authorities are investigating an Olney home in connection with at least seven missing women, as police and the FBI work through disturbing physical and digital evidence recovered during the investigation. With no remains yet confirmed at the property, Carolyn separates what investigators actually know from the speculation surrounding a case that is still unfolding. Over on The Slippery, Scott and Nancy enter the heavily filtered world of Adva Lavie, the Israeli-born former flight attendant and social-media personality accused of using dating apps and aliases to enter the lives of wealthy older men and steal luxury property. Then the story acquires a billionaire, an engagement and an even stranger investigation. Lavie has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges against her, and the latest allegations remain under investigation. Finally, This Week in Horror takes us onto the highway with Passenger, the new supernatural road-trip nightmare from director André Øvredal. A young couple leaves New York for life on the road, only to discover that something demonic may have joined them for the ride. And with that, we say farewell to summer and welcome back pumpkin spice, football weekends, open sweater cabinets, earlier sunsets, changing leaves and—hopefully—a slight slowing of the relentless pace of life. Listen and follow the shows of the Evio Creative network wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoy what we're doing, leave us a five-star rating and review and help other listeners discover the Evio Universe. Watch and subscribe on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Until next week, we'll see you across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Episode Three: Midnight at the Overpass By the 1990s, everybody in Northern Virginia seemed to know the rules. Drive out to Bunny Man Bridge after dark. Wait until midnight. Turn off the headlights. Say his name three times. Maybe get out of the car. Maybe come on Halloween. Nobody could agree on exactly how you summoned the Bunny Man, but that hardly mattered. Because everybody agreed that if you stayed beneath that railroad bridge long enough, something would happen. In the final chapter of our three-part investigation into The Bunny Man, we follow one of America's strangest urban legends through its most important transformation. What began with two reported encounters with a rabbit-costumed stranger in Fairfax County in October 1970 eventually became something teenagers could actually participate in. This week, we head back beneath the railroad tracks outside Clifton, Virginia, during an era when American suburbia was developing some very particular nightmares of its own. Stranger danger was reshaping childhood. Parents inspected Halloween candy for razor blades and poison. The Satanic Panic warned that secret cults might be hiding behind otherwise ordinary American life, while a new generation of slasher movies discovered that the safest-looking suburbs made particularly effective places for monsters. The Bunny Man fit right in. His rabbit costume corrupted something associated with childhood innocence. His axe gave him the silhouette of a horror villain. Better still, you didn't need to travel into some remote wilderness to find him. You needed a car, a few friends and enough nerve to drive into the woods. Folklorists call it legend tripping: traveling to a supposedly haunted place specifically to test the story. Haunted railroad crossings, Crybaby Bridges, cemeteries, abandoned houses and mirrors capable of summoning Bloody Mary all operate on variations of the same brilliant idea. They don't merely give you a monster to believe in. They give you something to do. Bunny Man Bridge became one of those places. Every group of teenagers who drove beneath the tracks created another opportunity for reality to misbehave. A deer moving through the woods became a person. A branch became a weapon. A reflection became a pair of eyes. Then a freight train thundered overhead, somebody screamed, and by Monday morning four people remembered the same ten seconds four different ways. Then the internet arrived. The Bunny Man had spent decades traveling through newspapers, playgrounds, school buses, parties and word of mouth. Home computers and dial-up connections suddenly removed geography from the equation. The abandoned asylum could be repeated from website to website. An escaped inmate could acquire a name, a biography and a body count. Eventually, repetition itself began impersonating evidence. That makes the Bunny Man an important creature in the evolution of The New Monsters. He wasn't born online like Slender Man, and he wasn't collaboratively constructed on the internet like the Backrooms. The internet didn't create the Bunny Man. It inherited him. But before we leave Fairfax County, we return to the question buried beneath more than half a century of mythology: Who was actually inside the bunny suit? Strip away the asylum. Strip away the escaped inmates, mutilated rabbits, murders and supernatural bridge rituals, and two reported incidents remain. In October 1970, witnesses described a rabbit-costumed figure carrying weapons and angrily complaining about trespassing. During the first encounter, a hatchet reportedly came through the window of a car. Ten days later, a similarly dressed person was reportedly encountered near an unfinished house, again armed and again furious about trespassers. Was it an elaborate Halloween prank that escalated? An attempt to frighten people away from private property? Someone angry about the relentless development transforming Fairfax County around him? All are possibilities. None is an answer. More than half a century later, the person beneath those rabbit ears remains unidentified. And perhaps that's why the Bunny Man survives so well. Remove the supernatural mythology and the story doesn't become ordinary. The strange part was there from the beginning. A newspaper story became a playground story. The playground story acquired a bridge. The bridge acquired an asylum. The asylum acquired escaped inmates and murders. Teenagers turned the bridge into a pilgrimage site, and eventually the internet gathered every version into a sprawling digital mythology. No single person created the Bunny Man we know today. Thousands of people did. NEXT TIME ON THE NEW MONSTERS THE LOVELAND FROGMAN Next time, we're heading west to Loveland, Ohio, where another distinctly American monster emerged along the Little Miami River. The story begins with a murky 1955 account involving several short, upright creatures reportedly encountered near the river—one of them, wonderfully, supposedly holding something resembling a wand or metal rod that produced sparks. Then, in March 1972, a Loveland police officer reported encountering a strange leathery animal near the roadway. Another officer would soon encounter something as well. And this time, he shot it. Decades later, that officer would insist the famous Frogman wasn't a monster at all. According to him, he'd encountered a large, tailless iguana, probably someone's escaped exotic pet. That should have killed the legend. It didn't. Next time on The New Monsters: The Loveland Frogman. LISTEN • FOLLOW • WATCH Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a 5-star rating and review. It remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes and videos. And join us on Instagram at @thedevilwithinpod. The Bunny Man: Episode Three — Midnight at the Overpass. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Episode Two: The Bridge There is a railroad bridge outside Clifton, Virginia, where Colchester Road narrows into a single lane and disappears beneath the tracks. For generations of Northern Virginia teenagers, it has been known by another name: Bunny Man Bridge. According to the legend, this is where the Bunny Man lived, killed and perhaps died. Some versions claim he was an escaped asylum patient who vanished into the surrounding woods after a transport bus crashed. Others add mutilated rabbits hanging from trees, murdered children, bodies suspended from the railroad tracks and a killer who eventually returned from the dead. It's a spectacular horror story. There's just one problem: almost none of it appears to have happened. In Episode Two of our three-part investigation, we follow the Bunny Man away from the documented encounters on Guinea Road and into the place that transformed him from a bizarre local mystery into a full-fledged American monster. Research by Fairfax County historian and archivist Brian Conley found no evidence of the asylum, the escaped inmates or the Bunny Man massacre supposedly connected to the bridge. The two documented incidents from October 1970 happened miles away. So how did the Bunny Man get to Clifton? We travel back through the history of the village itself, from the arrival of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in 1858 to its importance during the Civil War, when the tracks became part of the military infrastructure connecting a country tearing itself apart. After the war, a railroad village grew here, preserving a pocket of older Northern Virginia even as suburban Washington expanded around it. That landscape gave the legend something Guinea Road eventually couldn't: permanence. Construction sites become houses. Woods are cleared. Empty lots acquire addresses. But a secluded railroad overpass surrounded by trees can remain unsettling for generations. Better still, it gave teenagers somewhere they could actually visit. The Bunny Man stopped being merely something people heard about and became something they could go looking for. From there, the mythology began building backward. An asylum appeared where historical research has found none. A bus crashed. Patients escaped. Rabbits were slaughtered. One fugitive supposedly died while another became the Bunny Man. Eventually murders, Halloween rituals and supernatural encounters were attached to the bridge, creating an elaborate origin story for a monster whose real identity had never been established. We'll explore why those additions were so effective, how the abandoned asylum became one of American horror's favorite shortcuts for hidden evil, and why the Bunny Man's axe survived the transformation from reported weapon to unmistakable horror icon. Most importantly, we'll see the moment when folklore becomes interactive. Teenagers began driving beneath the bridge after dark, turning off their engines and waiting for something to happen. Every movement in the woods, unexpected car or freight train thundering overhead offered another opportunity for the story to reproduce itself. Because the Bunny Man didn't become immortal when somebody died beneath those railroad tracks. He became immortal when people started going there to find him. NEXT TIME In the final chapter of our Bunny Man story, Midnight at the Overpass, we follow the legend through the 1980s and 1990s and into the early internet, when a regional Virginia ghost story suddenly gained access to a global audience. We'll explore Halloween pilgrimages, stranger danger, Satanic Panic and the peculiar rituals that taught generations of teenagers how to summon a monster. Then we'll return to October 1970 and the question that none of the mythology has ever answered: Who was actually inside the rabbit suit? LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss the final chapter of The Bunny Man. Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review. It remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes and videos. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us: Would you spend midnight beneath Bunny Man Bridge? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Episode One: The Man on Guinea Road In October 1970, along a dark stretch of Guinea Road in Fairfax County, Virginia, a young couple sitting inside their car saw someone emerge from the woods. The stranger appeared to be wearing a white suit with long rabbit ears. He began shouting about private property, claimed to have their license plate number—and then hurled a hatchet through the passenger window. The couple escaped. Police recovered the weapon. The man in the rabbit costume vanished. If that were the end of the story, the Bunny Man might have survived as little more than a spectacularly bizarre newspaper clipping. But ten days later, another encounter was reported nearby. This time, security guard Paul Phillips discovered a rabbit-costumed figure at an unfinished house, carrying a long-handled axe and reportedly chopping at the structure while complaining about trespassers. Two incidents had given Northern Virginia something much harder to dismiss: a pattern. In Episode One of our three-part journey into The Bunny Man, we go beneath the legend to the landscape that created it. Long before suburban Washington pushed into Fairfax County, this was a place shaped by Indigenous history, colonial Virginia, George Washington and George Mason, the American Revolution and the Civil War. By 1970, another invasion was underway as farms and forests disappeared beneath subdivisions, highways and construction sites. That transformation provides an irresistible backdrop for what happened on Guinea Road. The original Bunny Man emerged from woods being consumed by development, repeatedly complained about trespassing and carried the very tools traditionally used to clear the landscape around him. Whether any of that symbolism was intentional is impossible to know, but the timing helped create an almost perfect American monster: something lurking along the uneasy boundary where countryside was becoming suburbia. We'll also trace how two documented encounters began mutating almost immediately through newspapers, telephones, school buses and playgrounds. Before the internet could make legends viral, children and teenagers were already remarkably efficient distribution networks, repeating stories, changing details and filling unanswered questions with increasingly elaborate explanations. And somewhere along the way, the Bunny Man moved. The famous Bunny Man Bridge near Clifton was not the location of either documented 1970 encounter. Yet as the original construction sites disappeared and unfinished houses became ordinary homes, the secluded railroad overpass remained beneath the trees. Eventually the legend acquired the bridge, an asylum, escaped killers, mutilated rabbits and murder—transforming an unidentified man in a bizarre costume into something supernatural. But before we get to the ghost stories, we begin with the part that remains considerably stranger because it appears to have actually happened. Someone wore the rabbit costume. Someone carried the weapons. And more than half a century later, nobody has conclusively established who was inside it. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss Episode Two: The Bridge. Rate & Review: If you're enjoying The New Monsters, leave us a 5-star rating and review. It helps new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes and videos. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us: What do you think was really happening on Guinea Road in October 1970? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of September 14, 2026 — Twenty-Five Years Later This week on The Devil's Ledger, we mark the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001 and remember the 2,977 people whose lives were taken that day, along with the first responders and rescue workers who ran toward unimaginable danger while thousands were desperately trying to escape. We also honor those who have died in the years since from illnesses connected to their work at Ground Zero. Twenty-five years later, “Never Forget” remains more than a phrase; it is an obligation to remember the victims, teach the history and honor the extraordinary courage witnessed that morning. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE CURSE OF DUDLEYTOWN Deep in the forests of northwestern Connecticut lie the remains of Dudleytown, an eighteenth-century settlement that eventually became one of New England's most enduring haunted legends. Stories of a centuries-old family curse, insanity, mysterious deaths and strange creatures transformed an abandoned settlement into the so-called “Village of the Damned.” Historians have challenged much of the mythology, offering far more ordinary explanations for Dudleytown's disappearance, but the legend proved harder to kill. Ghost hunters still seek it out despite the former settlement being privately owned and closed to the public. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN: THE BUNNY MAN The New Monsters heads to Northern Virginia for the story of The Bunny Man, a legend that began with genuine 1970 reports involving a mysterious man in a rabbit costume carrying a hatchet or axe. From those strange encounters grew Bunny Man Bridge, tales of escaped lunatics and an abandoned asylum, alleged murders and a midnight summoning ritual. Across three episodes, we separate the documented incidents from the mythology and follow the Bunny Man from newspaper reports and playground whispers into teenage legend-tripping and eventually the internet. THIS WEEK ON CRIMINAL MISCHIEF: JAYCEE DUGARD Carolyn Ossorio examines the devastating 1991 kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, who was just eleven years old when she was abducted near her South Lake Tahoe home and held captive for more than eighteen years. Joining Carolyn is legendary investigator Paul Holes for a conversation about the investigation, the evidence, the opportunities authorities missed and, most importantly, Jaycee's extraordinary survival and reclamation of the life that was stolen from her. THIS WEEK ON THE SLIPPERY: THE DEADLY SECRET BEHIND WELCOME TO SWEETIE PIE'S Behind the family drama of the hit OWN reality series Welcome to Sweetie Pie's was a crime more shocking than anything television producers could have manufactured. The Slippery examines how Tim Norman became the architect of a murder-for-hire plot targeting his own 21-year-old nephew, Andre Montgomery. Investigators from the FBI, ATF and local law enforcement eventually unraveled a trail of life-insurance policies, burner phones, cell-tower records, financial transactions and accomplices that exposed the machinery behind Andre's murder. THIS WEEK IN HORROR: BLACK ZOMBIE Director Maya Annik Bedward's documentary BLACK ZOMBIE travels beyond Hollywood's flesh-eating undead to explore the zombie's origins in Haitian history and spiritual tradition. Moving through films including White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead and The Serpent and the Rainbow, the documentary examines how a figure rooted in enslavement, stolen agency, resistance and survival was transformed into one of modern horror's most recognizable monsters. Featuring historians, artists and horror figures including Tananarive Due and Tom Savini, BLACK ZOMBIE asks what was lost when Hollywood took the zombie out of Haiti—and what can be reclaimed by putting that history back. We close this week where we began: September 11, 2001. Remember the people who went to work and never came home, the passengers and flight crews, the firefighters climbing the stairs, the police officers and paramedics running toward danger, the passengers who fought back aboard Flight 93, and the families whose lives were forever divided into before and after. Life is short. Call somebody you love, take the trip, have the dinner, laugh too loudly, make something, and tell people what they mean to you while they are still here to hear it. Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil's Ledger and the entire Evio Creative lineup wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star rating and review. It remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover us. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief and more on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss a new episode. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram, and send stories, tips and feedback to info@eviocreative.com. Never forget. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN The New Monsters: Alligators in the Sewers — Episode Three: The Monster Under Manhattan By 1980, the alligator had escaped. The legend that began with misplaced reptiles, a very real 1935 newspaper story and Teddy May's extraordinary tales of an underground colony had finally crawled out of the sewers and into American popular culture. Hollywood was waiting. In the wonderfully excessive 1980 creature feature Alligator, a little girl brings home a baby alligator named Ramon. Her father eventually decides reptile ownership has run its course and flushes the animal down the toilet. Twelve years later, Ramon has survived beneath the city by eating discarded laboratory animals pumped full of experimental growth hormones. The adorable souvenir has become an enormous, man-eating monster. And the remarkable thing is that audiences barely needed the premise explained. By then, everybody knew the story. Baby alligator. Toilet. Sewer. Darkness. Monster. In the final episode of Alligators in the Sewers, we explore how one of America's greatest urban legends escaped New York and became part of our shared cultural imagination. Robert Daley's 1959 book The World Beneath the City gave Teddy May's stories a permanent home. Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel V. populated Manhattan's sewers with albino alligators. Books, newspapers and word of mouth continued adding details until ordinary abandoned pets had evolved into enormous, pale, blind creatures supposedly feeding on New York's endless population of rats. By the 1970s, the city itself had become the perfect setting. Aging infrastructure, graffiti-covered subway cars, crime, disinvestment and the fiscal crisis transformed New York's underground from a symbol of nineteenth-century engineering triumph into something darker. The tunnels beneath Manhattan became a place where anything might be hiding. Then Alligator gave the legend its monster movie. But reality has an irritating habit of occasionally helping folklore along. In 2001, a caiman appeared in Central Park's Harlem Meer. In 2010, police found a young alligator beneath a parked car near a storm drain in Queens. And in 2023, workers discovered an emaciated four-foot alligator in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. None were evidence of some secret breeding colony beneath New York. They were almost certainly abandoned or escaped exotic pets. Which, of course, was exactly how the legend supposedly began. Nearly ninety years after East 123rd Street, New Yorkers were still finding alligators where alligators had absolutely no business being. And perhaps that is why this particular monster refuses to die. The sewer alligator was assembled from pieces of reality. Americans really did buy baby alligators. People really did abandon exotic pets. Crocodilians really have appeared in New York. Beneath the streets really does exist an enormous hidden geography of sewers, subway tunnels, utility corridors, buried waterways and infrastructure most of us will never see. Folklore simply connected those facts and populated the darkness between them. Today, New York has gone one step further and embraced the creature. In 2023, artist Alexander Klingspor's NYC Legend placed an enormous bronze alligator atop a manhole cover in Union Square. The monster supposedly hunted beneath the city had finally returned to the surface as public art. First New York feared the alligator. Then it laughed at it. Eventually, it made the thing a mascot. And that may make the sewer alligator one of the prototypes for everything we've been exploring in The New Monsters. Long before Slender Man spread through internet forums, before the Backrooms became a collaboratively constructed online universe, and before millions of people analyzed pixels searching for the Fresno Nightcrawler, New Yorkers were already creating folklore in real time. They simply did it with newspapers, books, schoolyards and stories passed from one person to another. New York built an extraordinary artificial wilderness beneath itself. And every wilderness eventually gets a monster. NEXT TIME ON THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Next time, we leave Manhattan behind and head for the rapidly expanding suburbs of Northern Virginia, where another distinctly American monster emerged from an entirely different landscape. Our backdrop this time isn't the sewer. It's the suburb. In October 1970, police began receiving reports of a strange man wearing a rabbit costume who allegedly threatened people with an axe. Newspapers picked up the story. Then came another encounter. Over the decades, those incidents accumulated escaped mental patients, mutilated animals, murdered children and a lonely railroad overpass that generations of teenagers would eventually visit after dark. The strangest part of the Bunny Man legend isn't that much of what people believe about him never happened. It's that something really did happen first. Next time on The New Monsters: The Bunny Man. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode of The New Monsters. Rate & Review: Leave a five-star rating and review. It remains one of the most effective ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for full episodes, videos and exclusive content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us which modern monster you want us to investigate next. Stories, tips and strange encounters: info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN The New Monsters: Alligators in the Sewers — Episode Two: The Man Who Saw Them They kept seeing alligators. Sometime in the 1930s, New York sewer inspectors began returning from beneath the city with an increasingly ridiculous claim: there were alligators living beneath Manhattan. Their boss, Theodore “Teddy” May, had a more reasonable explanation. Whiskey. According to Robert Daley's 1959 book The World Beneath the City, May became convinced his workers had discovered somewhere underground to hide booze. He sent men to investigate. Nobody found the whiskey. But the alligator sightings continued. Eventually, Teddy May decided to descend into the sewers himself—and according to the story he later told, his flashlight swept across the water and revealed something he hadn't expected to see. Several alligators. In Episode Two of Alligators in the Sewers, The Devil Within heads back beneath 1930s New York to meet the men whose jobs took them into a hidden world most New Yorkers would never see. We explore what it was actually like to work inside Manhattan's enormous underground infrastructure, where sewer inspectors navigated brick tunnels by flashlight during the lowest-flow hours of the night. The dangers were very real: rapidly rising wastewater, powerful currents, blockages and deadly gases. And the things moving through those tunnels could be bizarre—barrels, Christmas trees, jewelry, false teeth, weapons and practically anything else New York managed to lose down a drain. Then we meet Teddy May. Part sewer worker, part foreman and apparently one hell of a storyteller, May would become the central figure in the sewer-alligator legend. His claims transformed the documented discovery of a single reptile beneath East Harlem into something much larger: an entire population living beneath Manhattan. And then, according to the legend, New York fought back. Daley's account describes an extraordinary extermination campaign in which sewer crews supposedly used poisoned food, powerful trunk-sewer currents and, in some versions, .22-caliber rifles to eliminate the animals. It's an irresistible image: Depression-era municipal workers disappearing through Manhattan manholes carrying flashlights and guns to hunt alligators beneath New York City. There's just one problem. The evidence for a citywide infestation—and the war supposedly waged against it—is considerably thinner than the story. No substantial contemporary municipal paper trail has emerged documenting an organized extermination campaign. What survives largely depends upon testimony recorded more than twenty years later. But folklore was already taking over. The ordinary reptiles of the earliest stories became pale, blind subterranean monsters, supposedly transformed by generations without sunlight and sustained by Manhattan's endless supply of rats. The biology doesn't work, but the mythology is perfect. An ordinary alligator beneath New York could simply be lost. A pale, blind alligator belonged there. This is the story of the men beneath the manholes, the raconteur who gave their stories life, and the moment an escaped exotic pet became something uniquely New York. This is The Man Who Saw Them. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: Leave a five-star rating and review to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for full episodes and exclusive video content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us what you think Teddy May really saw beneath Manhattan. Stories, tips and strange encounters: info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of September 8, 2026 MISTRIAL. After seven weeks of testimony and roughly 36 hours of deliberations, the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has ended with a hung jury in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Eleven jurors reportedly favored finding Clancy not criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children. One juror disagreed, and Judge William Sullivan ultimately declared a mistrial. So what happens now? Potentially, we do the whole thing again. A deadlocked jury generally does not trigger the double-jeopardy protection that would prevent prosecutors from retrying the case, leaving open the possibility of another trial, a negotiated resolution, or whatever comes next in a case that has already generated an extraordinary amount of public attention. We'll keep following it. In the meantime, I suppose we'll have to wait for whichever juror signs the first book deal. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK THE MASKED MENACE — CAUGHT Remember our masked friend from Philadelphia? A few weeks ago, we told you about a man roaming Center City Philadelphia in a disturbing white doll mask, approaching and chasing strangers and generally turning the morning commute into the opening ten minutes of a slasher movie. Now we have an ending. Authorities identified the suspect as 22-year-old Zymire Hughes, who police say harassed or terrorized more than fifteen people on August 12. In one particularly disturbing encounter, he allegedly approached a woman near JFK Boulevard and repeatedly asked her, “Are you ready to die?” Hughes subsequently traveled from the Philadelphia area to Orlando and then Las Vegas. Newly released body-camera footage shows Las Vegas police and U.S. Marshals closing in on an apartment where authorities believed he was hiding. On August 25, the Nevada Violent Offender Task Force surrounded the complex. Hughes came out. The mask did not. And perhaps the strangest detail of all is that investigators have suggested at least some of this behavior may have been intended for social-media content. Which raises the possibility that the mask wasn't worn because someone didn't want to be recognized. Maybe it was worn because he wanted to be watched. A generation ago, if somebody put on a horrifying mask and started chasing strangers through downtown Philadelphia, we'd ask: What the hell is wrong with this guy? In 2026, apparently we have to ask another question: Was he doing it for the algorithm? That's the Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: ALLIGATORS IN THE SEWERS This week's installment of The New Monsters deals with one of my favorite urban myths of all time. Growing up in Northern New Jersey, Manhattan was right across the river, and for a kid in the 1980s it represented both sides of the cultural coin. It was the stuff of dreams—hip-hop, graffiti, Basquiat, clubs and the feeling that practically everything interesting in America was happening over there. It was also the stuff of nightmares. This was the New York of Son of Sam, abandoned buildings, graffiti-covered subway cars and an underground world that seemed to begin at the bottom of every subway staircase and continue forever beneath Manhattan. And somewhere down there were the alligators. At least where I grew up, nobody presented this as folklore. Somebody bought a baby alligator in Florida, brought it back to New York, discovered that baby alligators have the annoying habit of becoming adult alligators, and flushed it down the toilet. Then it grew to twelve feet long beneath Manhattan and lived on rats. Obviously. The adults told us this stuff. We didn't invent it. This week on The New Monsters, we're breaking down where the legend came from, the real alligators discovered in New York, the bizarre trade in baby alligators as Florida souvenirs and the stories of legendary sewer superintendent Teddy May that helped turn an isolated reptile into an entire subterranean population. And here's the surprising part: It's not as crazy as you might think. The giant albino colonies are another matter. THIS WEEK ON CRIMINAL MISCHIEF BAD BLOOD: THE HATFIELDS AND THE McCOYS Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio rolls up her sleeves and heads into one of the most famous family feuds in American history: the Hatfields and the McCoys. Long before reality television discovered that Americans would happily spend an hour watching two families scream at one another, the Hatfields and McCoys were doing it with considerably higher stakes. The feud unfolded along the Kentucky–West Virginia border in the decades following the Civil War and became so deeply embedded in American folklore that the family names themselves became shorthand for any argument that has gone on so long nobody can quite remember why everyone is still angry. But beneath the mythology were real people, real politics, property disputes, murder and revenge. Carolyn separates the history from the caricature this week in Bad Blood, on Criminal Mischief. THIS WEEK ON THE SLIPPERY Scott and Nancy are taking the Labor Day holiday off this week, no doubt researching another scammer, fraudster or human-shaped warning label whose story will eventually have you stopping halfway through the episode to Google: “Wait... is this actually real?” They'll be back next week. Hang in there. THIS WEEK IN HORROR ONSLAUGHT This week in horror, ONSLAUGHT, the new R-rated action-horror movie from director Adam Wingard, gives us an Army sniper veteran forced to unleash everything she knows when a rogue squad of genetically engineered super-soldiers threatens her young daughter. And if that sounds gloriously like somebody discovered an unproduced screenplay behind a Blockbuster Video in 1989 and decided to spend actual money making it nearly four decades later, you understand why it made this week's Ledger. Genetically engineered super-soldiers. Army sniper mom. Dan Stevens. Michael freaking Biehn. I'm not sure what else you people want from me. Onslaught is in theaters now. ACROSS THE EVIO UNIVERSE That's it for this week's Devil's Ledger. Happy September, everybody. We survived August, Labor Day is behind us, football is back, playoff baseball is approaching, and somewhere out there somebody has already ordered a pumpkin-spice latte while it's still ninety-four degrees outside. Hang in there. Fall is coming. Follow your favorite Evio shows wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a 5-star rating and review, and subscribe to the Evio Creative YouTube channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss what's coming next. We'll see you on The Devil Within, Criminal Mischief, The Slippery and everywhere else we're telling stories this week. We'll see you across the Evio Universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL WITHIN The New Monsters: Alligators in the Sewers — Episode One: Beneath the City On February 9, 1935, three teenagers shoveling snow into an open manhole on East 123rd Street reportedly discovered something moving beneath the ice. An alligator. The following morning, The New York Times carried the headline “ALLIGATOR FOUND IN UPTOWN SEWER.” The animal was reportedly seven to eight feet long, weighed roughly 125 pounds and had been dragged from beneath East Harlem using a makeshift noose fashioned from clothesline. Whatever happened on that winter afternoon, the story gave one of America's greatest urban legends something most legends can only dream of: a date, an address and witnesses. But before we can hunt alligators beneath Manhattan, we have to understand how an entire hidden world came to exist beneath New York in the first place. In Episode One of our latest New Monsters investigation, we descend into the history of the city beneath the city—from Manhattan's vanished streams and polluted Collect Pond to overflowing cesspools, cholera epidemics and the massive nineteenth-century engineering projects that transformed New York. The arrival of Croton water in 1842 helped create a new problem on an enormous scale: all that water eventually had to go somewhere. The solution was a vast network of brick-lined sewers constructed beneath a rapidly expanding metropolis. Then we head south to the Sunshine State, where Florida's booming tourist industry once offered visitors a souvenir that would be almost unimaginable today: living baby alligators. They were cute, exotic and small enough to bring home. Unfortunately, alligators possess the irritating habit of becoming considerably larger alligators. And that's where the legend gives us the image that has survived for generations: the unwanted pet disappearing down the toilet and into the sewers below. The plumbing makes that particular scenario considerably more complicated than folklore suggests. The biology is even less cooperative; New York's cold underground environment is a miserable place for an alligator to establish a permanent home. Yet the reptile reportedly discovered in 1935 was real enough to make headlines—and that was all the story needed. Finally, we meet Teddy May, the New York sewer worker whose stories would transform one misplaced reptile into something much larger. More than twenty years later, writer Robert Daley recorded May's extraordinary claims in The World Beneath the City: according to May, there hadn't been just one alligator beneath Manhattan. There were dozens. Was there really a colony living beneath New York? Were unwanted Florida souvenirs somehow surviving underground? And how did ordinary reptiles eventually become the enormous, pale, blind sewer monsters generations of Americans grew up hearing about? Welcome to Alligators in the Sewers. Welcome back to The New Monsters. LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode of The New Monsters. Rate & Review: Leave us a five-star rating and review. It remains one of the most important ways you can help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Subscribe and turn on notifications for full episodes, videos and exclusive content. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us which modern monster we should investigate next. Stories, tips and strange encounters: info@eviocreative.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Fresno Nightcrawler: Proof of Something There was a brief period when we thought cameras were going to solve everything. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Fresno Nightcrawler: The Internet Gives It Legs One unexplained video can be dismissed as an anomaly. A second changes the equation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Fresno Nightcrawler: Something Walked Across the Lawn Something strange crossed a Fresno lawn after dark, and a security camera was there to see it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of August 30, 2026 Mother Nature reminds us who's in charge, a Colombian “sorcerer” faces the horrifying consequences of a healing ritual, The Fresno Nightcrawler walks into The New Monsters, Carolyn Ossorio investigates the murder of Dee Warner, and The Slippery opens the mailbag and reveals what they're working on next. Then, in This Week in Horror, we enter the deeply deranged children's television nightmare of Buddy. THE CREEPIEST THING I HEARD THIS WEEK: THE SORCERER OF LIBORINA This week's story takes us back to 2021 and rural Antioquia, Colombia, where a 31-year-old mother of four sought spiritual healing from a man known as the Sorcerer of Liborina. According to prosecutors, Martín Rangel Londoño Jaramillo covered the woman with a homemade mixture containing alcohol, sulfur and camphor before setting fire to the substance as part of the ritual. The woman suffered burns across approximately 70 percent of her body. Investigators allege that instead of immediately seeking emergency treatment, the Sorcerer sent her home with an herbal remedy. She eventually reached a hospital in Medellín but died about a week later. Authorities subsequently arrested Londoño Jaramillo on a murder charge; he denied the accusations. It's a disturbing reminder of an ancient human vulnerability: when we're suffering, we'll sometimes place extraordinary trust in anyone who promises they can make the suffering stop. THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN Our journey through The New Monsters continues with one of the internet age's strangest cryptids: The Fresno Nightcrawler. It begins with grainy security footage from Fresno, California, showing a pale, impossibly thin figure seemingly composed almost entirely of legs walking across a lawn in the middle of the night. The footage raised far more questions than it answered—and then the Nightcrawler received the one thing every aspiring cryptid needs if it hopes to become genuine folklore: A second sighting. Hear the incredible story of the Fresno Nightcrawler this week on The Devil Within. CRIMINAL MISCHIEF Carolyn Ossorio investigates the disappearance and murder of Dee Warner, a Michigan mother of five who vanished from her property in 2021 following an argument with her husband, Dale. Years of searching ultimately led investigators back to the property, where Dee's remains were discovered concealed inside a fertilizer tank. Dale Warner was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence. Carolyn takes us through the disappearance, the investigation and the breakthrough that finally revealed what happened to Dee. THE SLIPPERY Scott and Nancy revisit several stories they've covered so far, bringing us new developments, unanswered questions and cases that weren't nearly as finished as they appeared. They'll also take us behind the scenes to reveal what's currently being investigated—including a new cancer scammer series coming this fall—before opening the mailbag to respond to your comments, questions and observations about the show. THIS WEEK IN HORROR: BUDDY Director Casper Kelly, the wonderfully warped mind behind Too Many Cooks, brings us Buddy, a supernatural black comedy starring Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace and Michael Shannon, with Patton Oswalt and Keegan-Michael Key joining the madness. The premise? A group of children become trapped inside an aggressively cheerful 1990s-style television show hosted by a giant bright-orange unicorn named Buddy. The songs are catchy, the colors are bright, the life lessons are plentiful—and then Buddy decides his young friends aren't leaving. It's childhood nostalgia fed through a wood chipper, and frankly, we're in. Listen & Follow: Follow all of the shows in the Evio Creative universe wherever you get your podcasts. Rate & Review: If you love what you're hearing, leave a five-star rating and review. It makes a real difference in helping new listeners discover the shows. Watch & Subscribe: Watch episodes and clips on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss what's coming next. Goodbye, August. September, please behave yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Eyes of Fear The New Monsters – Story Five, Episode Three Why do monsters survive in an age of science? Why do ancient fears continue to evolve in a world filled with smartphones, surveillance cameras, artificial intelligence, and instant access to information? And why, after nearly thirty years, do people still report encounters with the Black-Eyed Children? In the concluding chapter of this three-part investigation, The Devil Within moves beyond eyewitness accounts and paranormal speculation to explore a more fascinating question: why do stories like this refuse to die? This week, Branden Morgan examines the remarkable science behind memory, intuition, and eyewitness testimony, revealing why the human brain is far more sophisticated—and far less reliable—than most of us realize. Are the Black-Eyed Children evidence of something supernatural? Could they be the product of suggestion, folklore, and the extraordinary way our minds reconstruct emotionally charged experiences? Or does the truth lie somewhere between those two possibilities? As the investigation unfolds, we discover that the legend's greatest strength may have nothing to do with black eyes at all. Instead, it lies in a deeply familiar human experience: the unsettling feeling that something is wrong long before we can explain why. It is a sensation nearly everyone has experienced at some point in life—a warning whispered by instinct before conscious thought has assembled the evidence. The episode then widens its lens to examine the evolution of modern mythology itself. From the changelings of Celtic folklore to vampires, fairies, ghost children, and finally the Black-Eyed Children, every civilization has created stories about strangers who appear almost human while violating some deeply rooted expectation of what it means to be safe. These legends are less about proving the supernatural than preserving emotional truths that transcend generations. As The Black-Eyed Children comes to its haunting conclusion, the series also completes the first chapter of The New Monsters. Together, these stories have explored the fears that define our age. The Frogman reflected our growing anxiety over environmental collapse. The Montauk Monster embodied our suspicion of powerful institutions. Slender Man demonstrated that mythology can now be created collaboratively by millions of strangers. The Backrooms transformed the architecture of modern life into the haunted houses of the twenty-first century. And now, The Black-Eyed Children ask perhaps the oldest question of all: Can we still trust what appears familiar? Because every generation creates its own monsters. But the greatest monsters have never been the creatures lurking in the darkness. They've always been the ones standing in the light. Next time on The New Monsters, we investigate one of the strangest pieces of modern cryptid folklore ever captured on camera. A grainy security video from Fresno, California appears to show an impossible figure walking calmly across a suburban lawn. No arms. No visible torso. Just two impossibly long white legs gliding effortlessly through the darkness. Could it be a camera hoax? An elaborate costume? Or the birth of another modern monster? Join us as we investigate The Fresno Nightcrawler.

The New Monsters: The Black-Eyed Children - Part Two The Children at the Door They never break in. They never force the door. They simply ask. In the second chapter of The Black-Eyed Children, Branden Morgan investigates one of the most unsettling patterns in modern paranormal folklore. Following journalist Brian Bethel's now- famous encounter in Texas, reports of eerily similar experiences began surfacing across NorthAmerica. Different witnesses. Different cities. Different decades. Yet the stories shared an astonishing number of details. Two children. Late at night. Perfectly polite. An overwhelming sense that something is terribly wrong. And one simple request. "May we come inside?" This week, we examine the remarkable explosion of Black-Eyed Children sightings and the striking consistency that connects hundreds of eyewitness accounts. Why do these mysterious children almost always appear after dark? Why are they so courteous? Why do so many witnesses describe an instinctive feeling of dread before noticing anything physically unusual? And why do the encounters almost always end at a doorway, a car window, or some other symbolic threshold between safety and the unknown? As the investigation unfolds, we discover that this detail may be the key to understanding the entire legend. From ancient Roman beliefs surrounding doorways to Celtic fairy lore, vampire traditions, and centuries of folklore about supernatural beings requiring permission to enter a home, cultures around the world have long treated thresholds as more than simple entrances. They represent theboundary between order and chaos, the familiar and the unknown, hospitality and danger. Could the Black-Eyed Children simply be the latest chapter in one of humanity's oldest stories? Or have they become something entirely new?�Along the way, we explore the fascinating psychology behind intuition, examining why so many witnesses insist they felt overwhelming fear before they ever noticed the children's black, featureless eyes. Is that feeling evidence of something paranormal... or an extraordinary example of the human brain recognizing subtle danger before conscious thought catches up? Whether you believe the encounters are genuine, psychological, or simply modern folklore, one thing becomes impossible to ignore. The legend isn't really about black eyes. It's about the terrifying moment when kindness and self-preservation collide. Next week, The Black-Eyed Children reaches its conclusion as we explore eyewitness testimony, memory, mass suggestion, and the surprising ways modern mythology continues to evolve in an age of smartphones, artificial intelligence, and constant surveillance. We'll ask the question that has lingered beneath every episode of this series: What if the truth behind the legend matters less than the reason we've never stopped telling it?

The New Monsters: The Black-Eyed Children - Part One May We Come Inside? The New Monsters – Story Five, Episode One There are monsters that chase us through dark forests. There are monsters that wait beneath our beds. And then there are monsters that simply knock on the front door.�This week on The Devil Within, Branden Morgan begins a chilling new three-part investigation into one of the most enduring and unsettling legends of the internet age: The Black-Eyed Children. For nearly thirty years, ordinary people have reported eerily similar encounters with polite, soft-spoken children who appear unexpectedly at front doors, gas stations, parking lots, and lonely roadsides. They never force their way inside. They never make threats. They simply ask for help. A ride home. The use of a telephone. Permission to come inside. Then you notice their eyes. Completely black. No iris. No pupil. No white. In the first chapter of this new series, we travel back to Abilene, Texas, in 1996, where journalist Brian Bethel experienced what is widely considered the first modern encounter with the Black-Eyed Children. His extraordinary account would spread across the early internet, inspiring hundreds of similar reports and transforming a single frightening evening into one of the defining pieces of twenty-first-century folklore. But the story doesn't begin in Texas. As we explore the remarkable history behind the legend, we discover that humanity has been telling stories about children who aren't quite human for thousands of years. From the changelings of Celtic folklore to supernatural children appearing throughout European, Asian, and Indigenous traditions, every civilization seems to have inherited the same unsettling warning: sometimes evil doesn't arrive looking like a monster. Sometimes it arrives looking like innocence. Why do these stories appear across cultures separated by oceans and centuries? Why are human beings so deeply unsettled when children behave in ways that violate our expectations? And why does Brian Bethel's account continue to resonate with millions of people nearly three decades later? This isn't simply an investigation into a paranormal legend. It's an exploration of one of humanity's oldest fears—and the remarkable way ancient folklore continues to reinvent itself in the modern world. Next week, the legend explodes beyond a single eyewitness account. We'll examine the hundreds of reported encounters that followed, uncover the remarkable similarities connecting them, and�investigate why these mysterious children almost always ask the same question before anything else. "May we come inside?"

THE DEVIL'S LEDGER Week of August 24, 2026 It is still freakin' August. This week on The Devil's Ledger, we surrender to the heat and turn our attention toward masked lunatics, black-eyed children, Victorian blackmail, spectacular fraud, and another trip into a supernatural dimension that desperately needs better lighting. We begin with The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week: The Chucky Mask Spree. Philadelphia police say a masked man targeted at least half a dozen people during a bizarre early-morning spree, including a 40-year-old jogger whom he allegedly chased after asking whether she was ready to die. Surveillance cameras captured the suspect wearing a Chucky-style doll mask—and investigators noticed that beneath it he appeared to be wearing another black face covering. Fictional monsters are considerably less entertaining when someone decides to wear their face in the real world.

The Haunted Houses We Built The New Monsters – Story Four, Episode Three Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Things That Wait Between the Walls The New Monsters – Backrooms, Part Two Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You Have Been Here Before The New Monsters – Story Four, Episode One What if the most terrifying place you've ever imagined isn't a haunted mansion, an abandoned asylum, or a forgotten cemetery? What if it's an office building? This week on The Devil Within, Branden Morgan begins a new three-part investigation into one of the internet's most extraordinary pieces of modern folklore: The Backrooms. What started as a single anonymous photograph posted online in 2019 quickly became a global phenomenon, inspiring millions of people to ask an unsettling question: "Why does this place feel so familiar?" Unlike the monsters we've explored throughout The New Monsters, the Backrooms have no ancient legend, no centuries of oral tradition, and no historical eyewitness accounts stretching back through time. Instead, they represent something entirely new—a mythology born from architecture itself. In this first chapter, we trace the mysterious origins of the now-famous photograph and examine the surprising psychology behind liminal spaces. Why do empty airports after midnight, deserted shopping malls, abandoned school hallways, and silent office buildings evoke such powerful feelings of unease? Why do so many people insist they've experienced the Backrooms long before they ever heard the name? Along the way, we explore the concept of "no-clipping," the language of modern video games that gave birth to one of the internet's most enduring horror concepts, and discover why the Backrooms resonate so deeply with a generation raised in a world of fluorescent lights, endless hallways, and anonymous commercial spaces. This isn't merely the story of an internet meme. It's the story of how an ordinary photograph revealed something extraordinary about the human mind—and how the buildings we constructed for efficiency may have accidentally become the haunted houses of the twenty-first century. Next week, the empty hallways won't remain empty for long. Thousands of strangers begin expanding the mythology, creating new levels, impossible creatures, explorer journals, survival guides, and one of the richest collaborative horror universes ever assembled online. We'll explore how the internet transformed a single unsettling image into an entire ecosystem of modern folklore, and why every civilization eventually feels compelled to populate its nightmares.

The Devil's Ledger — Week of August 17, 2026 The universe put on one hell of a show this week. We begin with Spain's spectacular August 12 solar eclipse and humanity's long, occasionally unhinged relationship with watching the sun disappear. For The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, we travel from ancient Greece—where an eclipse could signal that the gods had essentially abandoned humanity—to Choctaw stories of a giant black squirrel attempting to devour the sun and Vietnamese legends of a celestial frog swallowing it whole. And apparently scientific literacy hasn't completely saved us. Modern eclipse superstitions warn of poisoned food, birthday curses and even the possibility that washing your hair during an eclipse could somehow affect your sanity. Three thousand years ago we feared an angry god had extinguished the sun. Today we're worried about the potato salad. Progress remains uneven. Then, across the Evio Universe this week: On The Devil Within, The New Monsters continues with The Backrooms, the internet-born nightmare built around the idea that reality itself has seams. Slip through the wrong one and you could find yourself trapped inside an apparently endless maze of yellow wallpaper, stained carpeting, fluorescent lights and empty rooms. What began as an unsettling image evolved into an enormous collaborative mythology of levels, entities, rules and stories—and ultimately escaped the internet into games, movies and mainstream popular culture. On Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio breaks down the extraordinary new developments surrounding Luigi Mangione. Following his federal guilty plea in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, attention now turns toward New York's pending murder case and an increasingly important question: double jeopardy. Federal and state governments are generally treated as separate sovereigns under federal constitutional law, while New York provides additional statutory protections against successive prosecutions. Carolyn examines what Mangione's plea means, what it doesn't mean, and why the next major battle may happen before another jury ever hears the case. On The Slippery, we meet Olga Rutterschmidt and Helen Golay, the elderly Los Angeles women whose apparent efforts to help unhoused men concealed an astonishing insurance scheme. Prosecutors established that the pair befriended vulnerable men, obtained numerous life-insurance policies on them and eventually murdered Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid in staged hit-and-run incidents before collecting millions in insurance proceeds. The scheme began unraveling when one detective overheard another discussing a suspicious death and remembered an eerily similar case. The same two women appeared in both files. From there came insurance investigators, undercover operations and the slow dismantling of an extraordinary criminal enterprise. And This Week in Horror, we're talking Ice Cream Man, Eli Roth's gleefully deranged throwback to the excesses of 1980s horror: an idyllic summer town, a mysterious ice cream man and frozen treats capable of turning children into homicidal killers. It's bloody, ridiculous and precisely the sort of movie that understands sometimes the best horror premise begins by taking something completely innocent and ruining it forever. So keep looking toward the stars, enjoy these final weeks of summer, and we'll see you somewhere this week across the Evio Universe.

When the Story Drew Blood The New Monsters : Slender Man - Part Three Some stories entertain us. Others change us. This week's episode of The Devil Within explores the moment when one of the internet's most famous legends collided with the real world, forever changing how we think about digital folklore, childhood, and the stories we tell ourselves. In May of 2014, two twelve-year-old girls led their best friend into the woods outside Waukesha, Wisconsin, believing they were acting on behalf of Slender Man. The shocking attack dominated headlines around the world and immediately sparked fears that an internet horror story had somehow escaped the screen. But as investigators, psychologists, and psychiatrists began examining the case, a far more complicated picture emerged. This episode follows that investigation—not to sensationalize a tragedy, but to understand it. We separate documented psychiatric evidence from public speculation, exploring how mythology, mental illness, childhood development, and the digital world intersected in ways that defied the simple explanations so many desperately wanted. From courtroom testimony and psychological evaluations to the broader cultural aftermath, we examine why Slender Man became much more than an internet character. He became a case study in how modern folklore spreads, how vulnerable minds can incorporate cultural symbols into delusional beliefs, and why stories have always reflected the fears of the societies that create them. The journey doesn't end in Waukesha. We follow Slender Man's transformation from internet horror icon into a subject of academic research, documentaries, and popular culture, asking what historians may one day conclude about the first monster humanity watched being born in real time. Ultimately, this isn't a story about whether Slender Man was real. It's about the very real power of stories, the responsibility we carry as storytellers, and the timeless human instinct to search for meaning in places where certainty is impossible. Next week, The New Monsters turns away from creatures entirely and steps into a place that has never existed—and yet somehow feels hauntingly familiar. It begins with a single photograph of an empty office hallway. No blood. No ghost. No monster. Just fluorescent lights, stained carpeting, and the unsettling feeling that you've been there before. Welcome to The Backrooms, where the internet didn't create a monster... It created a memory.

When Fiction Escaped the Screen The New Monsters – Story Three, Episode Two Every legend eventually reaches a moment when it no longer belongs to the person who created it. King Arthur escaped the poets who first imagined Camelot. Dracula grew far beyond Bram Stoker's novel. Frankenstein's creature became more famous than Victor Frankenstein himself. Stories survive because generations of strangers decide they're worth retelling. In this week's episode of The Devil Within, Branden Morgan explores the extraordinary moment when that same process unfolded before our eyes. Just days after Eric Knudsen introduced Slender Man to the internet, thousands of artists, writers, filmmakers, gamers, and ordinary people began adding pieces to the mythology. No studio coordinated the effort. No publisher managed the continuity. Instead, millions of strangers unknowingly collaborated on what became history's first truly open-source monster. The journey takes us from the Something Awful forums to Marble Hornets, the groundbreaking YouTube series that transformed viewers into investigators and proved that horror could thrive not through expensive special effects, but through participation. Along the way, we examine why the internet accelerated folklore in ways no civilization had ever experienced before, compressing a process that once required centuries into only a few months. But beneath the story of Slender Man lies a much larger question. What happens when technology allows millions of people to create the same myth together? Perhaps the internet didn't change human nature at all. Perhaps it simply became the newest campfire around which we gather to tell stories. Next week, the series reaches its devastating conclusion as fiction collides with reality in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Two twelve-year-old girls commit one of the most shocking crimes of the digital age after convincing themselves they must prove their loyalty to Slender Man. The case horrified the world and forced psychologists, investigators, journalists, and parents to confront a question that remains deeply unsettling: Can a fictional monster bear responsibility for real-world violence, or does the answer reveal something far more disturbing about ourselves? The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan and produced by Evio Creative.

The Day We Invented a MonsterThe New Monsters – Episode One For thousands of years, humanity has created monsters. But we rarely know who created them. Vampires emerged from centuries of whispered folklore. Werewolves wandered through medieval Europe long before anyone thought to record the first storyteller's name. Ghosts belonged to abandoned houses, forgotten battlefields, and generations of frightened imaginations. Then, in June of 2009, something unprecedented happened. An ordinary graphic designer entered an online Photoshop contest and unknowingly created the first monster whose birth was documented almost frame by frame. His name was Eric Knudsen. The creature he imagined became known as Slender Man. This week on The Devil Within, Branden Morgan begins a three-part investigation into the first great myth of the internet age, exploring how a pair of manipulated photographs evolved into one of the most influential pieces of modern folklore ever created. More importantly... Why were millions of people so eager to believe? This isn't simply the story of Slender Man. It's the story of how the internet became humanity's newest campfire—and how mythology no longer requires centuries to evolve. In This Episode The horrifying 2014 Waukesha stabbing that introduced Slender Man to the world Why every civilization creates monsters The technological and cultural conditions that made Slender Man inevitable The rise of social media, YouTube, Reddit, and collaborative storytelling The Something Awful Photoshop Contest of June 2009 Eric Knudsen (Victor Surge) and the creation of Slender Man Why the monster's faceless design unsettles the human brain The psychology of the "uncanny" How thousands of strangers transformed one image into modern folklore Themes Explored Digital folklore Internet mythology Collective storytelling The psychology of fear Urban legends Horror history Media culture The evolution of folklore Modern monsters Slender Man Creepypasta Featured Topics The 2014 Waukesha case (introductory context) Eric Knudsen (Victor Surge) Something Awful Forums Photoshop Contest (June 8, 2009) The Uncanny Valley Collaborative internet culture Early social media The birth of Creepypasta Digital mythology The story doesn't end with two manipulated photographs. It begins there. Coming Next Week In Episode Two, When Fiction Escaped the Screen, Slender Man no longer belongs to his creator. YouTube filmmakers, artists, gamers, writers, and millions of strangers begin adding new chapters until something extraordinary happens. For the first time in history... we watch folklore evolve in real time. The Devil Within is written and hosted by Branden Morgan. Produced by Evio Creative. Watch full episodes and exclusive content on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show, leave a rating and review, and share it with someone who loves history, folklore, and the darker corners of human imagination. Your support helps us continue exploring the stories that reveal not only the monsters we create—but why we create them.

THE DEVIL'S LEDGERWeek of August 10, 2026 Apparently, I've spent the last few weeks lying to myself about fall being “just around the corner.” Then the calendar rudely reminds me that it's early August, the sidewalks are hot enough to cook breakfast, and summer is still very much... summering. Hang in there, people. We'll get there eventually. This week on The Devil's Ledger, we begin with The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week and travel to the wetlands of Southern Maryland, where Kings Landing Park has attracted renewed paranormal attention surrounding a mysterious figure known as Mary. Visitors, staff, and investigators have reported unexplained cries, footsteps without an obvious source, and sightings of a sorrowful young woman dressed in white wandering near the marsh before disappearing among the trees. Then, on The Devil Within, The New Monsters continues with Slender Man, perhaps the perfect case study in how modern folklore can be created before our eyes. We trace the legend from an online Photoshop contest through its explosive growth across the internet and into the horrifying real-world Wisconsin stabbing, asking what happens when millions of people are suddenly able to participate in building a mythology together. Criminal Mischief is taking the week off while Carolyn prepares for another ambitious deep-dive limited series planned for early next year. There's much more coming on that front, so stay tuned. Over on The Slippery, we pull back the mask on one of the strangest double lives in modern true crime: ChiefsAholic. Xaviar Babudar became a familiar sight at Kansas City Chiefs games in his towering gray wolf costume, while authorities say the high-stakes gambler was simultaneously responsible for a string of violent bank robberies across the Midwest. This week, The Slippery follows the police reports and financial trail behind the superfan whose obsession with football, gambling, and an increasingly chaotic lifestyle eventually made him a fugitive. And This Week in Horror, we head to the Italian countryside for Immaculate, starring Sydney Sweeney. Cecilia arrives at an isolated convent expecting a life devoted to faith, only to discover increasingly disturbing miracles, sinister rituals, and secrets buried within the institution around her. Atmospheric, beautifully shot, and steeped in religious horror, this one is definitely worth checking out. Stay cool. Stay hydrated. For God's sake, wear sunscreen. Before long we'll all be complaining that it gets dark at 5:30 and arguing about Halloween candy. Until then, we'll see you somewhere across the Evio Universe.

The New Monsters: Montauk - Part Three The Monster We Needed The Montauk Monster was never just about a strange carcass lying on a Long Island beach. It was about trust. Why did millions of otherwise rational people immediately believe that a decomposing animal might be the product of secret government experiments? Why did Camp Hero, Plum Island, and decades of Cold War secrecy become inseparable from a single photograph? In the conclusion to our three-part Montauk investigation, Branden Morgan explores the uncomfortable answer: perhaps the creature itself never mattered. What mattered was the world that created it. From MKUltra and government secrecy to the internet's ability to accelerate folklore at unprecedented speed, this episode examines how modern myths emerge—not because people abandon reason, but because uncertainty demands a story. The Montauk Monster wasn't simply another cryptid. It may have been one of the first monsters truly born in the digital age. In This Episode: Why conspiracy theories flourish when public trust erodes The documented legacy of MKUltra and why it changed public perception How real government secrecy gave rise to modern folklore Why Camp Hero and Plum Island became fertile ground for speculation The psychology behind modern conspiracy thinking Why myths evolve faster than facts in the internet era The Montauk Monster as one of the first internet-born cryptids What the legend ultimately reveals about modern America—not biology The Devil Within Theme The greatest monsters are rarely the ones hiding in the shadows. They're the stories we create when certainty disappears. Featured This Week When people stop trusting the institutions that once explained the world, they don't stop believing altogether. They simply begin searching for new explanations. Sometimes those explanations become science. Sometimes history. And sometimes... they become monsters. Camp Hero and its Cold War history Plum Island and the facts behind decades of speculation MKUltra and the unintended birth of modern conspiracy culture How folklore migrated from campfires to message boards Why the internet has become humanity's newest myth-making machine Next Time on The New Monsters The investigation moves from abandoned military installations into an entirely different wilderness: The internet. In 2009, a simple Photoshop contest gave birth to a faceless figure known as Slender Man. He wasn't discovered in ancient folklore or whispered about for generations. He was deliberately created online. Then something extraordinary happened. People began claiming they had seen him. The story spread across forums, videos, games, and social media before culminating in one of the most disturbing crimes of the digital age. We'll examine how fiction escaped the screen, why the human mind embraced the impossible, and whether the internet has become the birthplace of an entirely new kind of mythology. If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the video editions and exclusive companion content on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube for behind-the-scenes content, historical photographs, and updates on future investigations. Written & Hosted by: Branden Morgan A production of Evio Creative.

The New Monsters: Montauk — Episode Two Long before the Montauk Monster washed ashore, there was another mystery already waiting at the eastern edge of Long Island. Its name was Camp Hero. Towering radar antennas once scanned the Atlantic from windswept bluffs overlooking the ocean, searching for Soviet bombers during the darkest years of the Cold War. Nearby, the federal laboratories of Plum Island quietly conducted research behind locked gates, fueling decades of speculation about what might be happening just beyond public view. History tells one story. Folklore tells another. In Episode Two of The New Monsters, Branden Morgan separates documented history from enduring myth, exploring how an abandoned military installation became one of America's greatest conspiracy legends—and why secrecy itself may be the most powerful monster of all. From Cold War air-defense systems and classified government programs to the infamous Montauk Project and the surprising origins of Stranger Things, this episode reveals how history, psychology, and imagination combined to create one of the most influential modern myths in America. Because before anyone believed in the Montauk Monster... they first had to believe in Montauk. The documented history of Camp Hero America's Cold War radar defense network Why abandoned military installations inspire folklore The real history of Plum Island and its animal disease laboratory The origins of the Montauk Project conspiracy How government secrecy fuels modern mythology Why Stranger Things was originally conceived as Montauk The psychology of conspiracy theories and belief How fiction and reality continue feeding one another Every generation creates the monsters it deserves. Ancient civilizations imagined dragons beyond the edge of the map. Medieval Europe feared witches. Modern America fears secret laboratories, classified research, and technologies hidden behind locked gates. The monsters evolve—but the fears beneath them remain remarkably familiar. If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please follow The Devil Within wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch every episode in video on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel, where you'll find archival photographs, historical documents, maps, and visual companions that bring these investigations to life. Follow @thedevilwithinpod on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube for exclusive clips, behind-the-scenes content, and updates on future investigations. Written & Hosted by: Branden Morgan A production of Evio Creative. In This EpisodeThe Devil Within Theme

The Devil's LedgerWeek of August 3, 2026 Summer has a way of making the world feel a little smaller. The days are long, the evenings are warm, vacations are winding down, and before we know it backpacks will replace beach towels and football will once again dominate our weekends. But this summer has also reminded us how fragile that world can be. This week, The Devil's Ledger opens with a heartfelt reflection on the devastating wildfires sweeping across Europe and the Pacific Northwest, exploring what these increasingly destructive fire seasons mean for future generations—and why protecting the environment may be one of the greatest gifts we can leave those who come after us. We begin, as always, with The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, examining a remarkable Bigfoot encounter in Connecticut that received one of the highest credibility ratings issued by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Is it evidence of Sasquatch, or simply another chapter in America's longest-running monster story? More importantly, what does the public's reaction tell us about how modern folklore continues to evolve? On The Devil Within, Branden Morgan continues The New Monsters with the astonishing story of The Montauk Monster. What began as a mysterious carcass washing ashore on a Long Island beach quickly exploded into one of the internet's defining conspiracy theories, inspiring speculation about secret government experiments, Plum Island, and eventually influencing one of the biggest television phenomena of the century: Stranger Things. It's less a story about a dead creature than about how distrust gives birth to mythology. Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio breaks down the latest developments in the Bryan Kohberger case following his attempt to withdraw his guilty plea. Why make such a dramatic legal move now? What does it mean for prosecutors, the victims' families, and the future of the case? Carolyn separates legal reality from media speculation in one of the year's most closely watched criminal proceedings. Meanwhile, The Slippery investigates the astonishing rise and spectacular downfall of Bikram Choudhury, the self-proclaimed yoga guru who built a worldwide empire on charisma, deception, and control before allegations of fraud, abuse, and sexual assault sent him fleeing the United States. It's the story of narcissism, manipulation, and the people courageous enough to expose one of wellness culture's biggest frauds. Finally, in This Week in Horror, we recommend Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. At first glance it may seem an unlikely horror recommendation, but its unforgettable visit to Circe's island—and its parade of monsters, gods, curses, and impossible journeys—proves that some of the greatest horror stories ever told were written thousands of years ago. Thank you for spending another week with us across the Evio Universe. Stay safe, enjoy these last precious weeks of summer, and we'll see you again next week with more stories that explore history, mystery, crime, horror, and the strange corners of the world we all share.

The Montauk Monster: The Beast on the Beach The New Monsters — Episode One In July 2008, a grotesque carcass washed ashore on a beach in Montauk, New York. Within hours, photographs of the strange creature had spread across the internet, igniting one of the first truly viral cryptid mysteries of the digital age. Was it a mutated experiment from nearby Plum Island? An escaped government bioweapon? Or simply a decomposing raccoon whose appearance had been distorted by nature and decomposition? In this premiere episode of The New Monsters, Branden Morgan explores far more than the identity of one dead animal. He investigates the birthplace of modern mythology itself—and asks why, in an era of smartphones and instant information, we continue creating monsters faster than ever before. From the abandoned radar towers of Camp Hero to decades of Cold War secrecy, from the government's heavily restricted Plum Island research facility to the cultural legacy that inspired Stranger Things, this episode examines how secrecy, abandoned places, and public distrust combine to create legends that feel almost impossible to resist. Because sometimes the monster isn't what washed ashore. Sometimes it's the story we needed to tell. In This EpisodeThe Devil Within Why the eastern tip of Long Island has attracted conspiracy theories for decades The forgotten military history of Camp Hero Plum Island and the research that fueled decades of speculation Why abandoned government facilities become breeding grounds for folklore How Stranger Things originally began as Montauk The psychology behind conspiracy theories The viral photograph that created one of America's newest monsters Why uncertainty is often more powerful than evidence Theme Distrust creates monsters. When institutions become secretive, information becomes scarce, and facts become difficult to verify, stories rush in to fill the void. The Montauk Monster isn't simply about a mysterious carcass—it represents the moment modern folklore went viral. If you're enjoying The New Monsters, please follow The Devil Within wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch every episode in video on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel, and join the conversation on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube @thedevilwithinpod. Written & Hosted by: Branden Morgan A production of Evio Creative.

The Devil Within The Monsters We Still Create Episode Three: The Things That Really Live Beneath the Water The Frogman of High Falls has led us on an unexpected journey. We began with a modern cryptid hiding in the mist beneath Rochester's famous waterfall. We explored the city's remarkable rise as an industrial powerhouse, examined how abandoned places inspire folklore, and discovered how the human mind—and now the internet—can transform uncertainty into legend. Now we arrive at the conclusion. In the final chapter of The Monsters We Still Create, Branden Morgan leaves mythology behind and follows the evidence back to the Genesee River itself. From the environmental awakening that reshaped America after rivers like the Cuyahoga caught fire, to the remarkable recovery of western New York's waterways, we explore the quiet reality that ecosystems remember everything we do to them. The true story isn't one of radioactive monsters or government experiments. It's the far more profound story of how nature absorbs our choices, adapts to them, and, when given the chance, begins to heal. But perhaps the Frogman was never really about amphibians at all. Perhaps he exists because every civilization creates monsters that reflect its deepest fears. Medieval Europe imagined demons lurking beyond the village. Frontier America feared endless�wilderness. Industrial America, having transformed rivers, forests, and landscapes beyond recognition, began imagining something waiting beneath the water—a creature born not from ancient curses, but from the uneasy relationship between progress and consequence. The Frogman may never have walked the banks of the Genesee River. But the questions he asks us are very real. Join us as we conclude this three-part series and discover why the greatest monsters have never been the ones hiding in the darkness—they're the ones that inspire us to finally look beneath the surface.

The Devil Within The Monsters We Still Create Episode Two: Watching a Legend Being Born In Episode Two of The Monsters We Still Create, we leave the history books behind and venture into something even more mysterious—the human mind. Why do intelligent, honest people become convinced they've witnessed something extraordinary? Why do some places seem to invite legends while others never do? This week, we explore the fascinating psychology behind eyewitness accounts, revealing how memory, expectation, and the unique atmosphere surrounding Rochester's High Falls can transform an ordinary moment into an unforgettable encounter. Standing beside the mist-filled Genesee River, where abandoned mills and restored factories share the same landscape, we discover why modern industrial ruins have become the perfect birthplace for twenty-first century monsters. Then we examine what may be the greatest storytelling invention in human history: the internet. Around ancient campfires, legends took generations to evolve. Today, a blurry photograph, a strange sound, or a single social media post can reach millions of people in a matter of hours. Is the Frogman of High Falls simply another cryptid—or are we witnessing the birth of folklore in real time? Sometimes monsters aren't discovered. Sometimes they're created. And sometimes, the most fascinating mystery isn't whether a creature exists, but why so many people want it to. Join us as we continue our search for The Frogman of High Falls—and discover why every generation creates the monsters it needs.

The Devil Within The Monsters We Still Create Episode One: A Monster for the Machine Age Every monster has an origin story. Some are born in the ancient forests of Europe. Others emerge from forgotten mountain ranges or disappear into the depths of dark lakes. But the Frogman of High Falls is different. He doesn't seem to come from medieval folklore or Indigenous legend. He appears suddenly, in the shadow of abandoned factories, crumbling mills, and one of America's great industrial rivers. In the first chapter of The Monsters We Still Create, Branden Morgan travels to Rochester, New York, where the Genesee River has carved its way through limestone for thousands of years. Long before Kodak, Xerox, and the Flour City transformed the landscape, High Falls stood as one of nature's enduring monuments. But as industry flourished, the river became both the engine of prosperity and the silent witness to everything civilization left behind. How does a city built on innovation become the birthplace of a brand-new monster? This episode explores the remarkable history of Rochester, the rise of American industry, the environmental scars left behind, and the fascinating realization that the Frogman of High Falls has almost no historical footprint before the modern era. Perhaps that's because this isn't an ancient legend at all. Perhaps it's a monster that could only have been born in the twentieth century. Join us as we begin a three-part exploration into one of America's newest cryptids—and ask whether monsters are discovered... or created.

The Devil's Ledger Week of July 27, 2026 The dog days of summer are here, but across the Evio Creative universe things are only getting stranger. This week, we explore one of the most unsettling developments in modern technology: an advanced AI agent that escaped its testing environment during a cybersecurity evaluation and successfully hacked another company's systems. It wasn't science fiction—but it may become something even more powerful: the first great campfire story of the AI age. As we launch The New Monsters, we examine how today's anxieties become tomorrow's folklore, and why every generation creates the monsters it needs. This Week on The Devil Within We begin an all-new documentary series: The New Monsters Our first stop is The Frogman of High Falls, New York—a cryptid unlike the legends of old. Born not from ancient superstition, but from polluted rivers, abandoned factories, environmental collapse, and our growing distrust of progress itself, the Frogman asks a haunting question: Do monsters emerge from nature... or from what we've done to it? This isn't just a story about a creature in the water. It's about how modern myths are born—and what they reveal about us. This Week on Criminal Mischief Carolyn Ossorio concludes her extraordinary investigation into the 2016 Pike County (Piketon) Murders. After weeks of reporting, exclusive interviews, and meticulous research, the series reaches its stunning conclusion as the suspects are revealed, the investigation unfolds from suspicion to arrest, and one of America's most shocking family homicide conspiracies finally goes to trial. If you've followed this investigation from the beginning, this is the episode you've been waiting for. This Week on The Slippery Debrief Scott and Nancy sit down with LeAnn Worrell, sister of Doris Worrell, for an intimate conversation about love, loss, betrayal, and a family's decades-long search for justice. It's a deeply personal interview that goes far beyond the headlines and offers a powerful reminder that every true crime story leaves real people behind. This Week in Horror Our recommendation this week is The Devil's Mouth, an upcoming survival thriller on Prime Video. A group of friends exploring an underwater cave system soon discovers they are trapped with a massive bull shark. Featuring Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor, Gavin Casalegno, and Nico Hiraga, it looks like the perfect summer survival thriller for horror fans. Follow the Evio Creative Network

The Devil Within Campfire Files: The House That Hadn't Been Emptied (Episode Three — The Last Night) Every vacation ends. Most end with photographs, souvenirs, and promises to return. This one ended before sunrise. In the breathtaking conclusion to Campfire Files, Nina and Paul spend one final night inside Birch House as a dense Atlantic fog and coastal storm isolate the cottage from the rest of the world. Outside, Penobscot Bay disappears beneath wind and rain. Inside, the house quietly resumes the routine it has practiced for generations. The locked room opens once more. The missing suitcase returns. And this time... it isn't empty. Inside are the belongings Nina and Paul intended to pack the following morning—carefully folded, organized, and waiting exactly as though someone, or something, had anticipated their departure before they had. As dawn approaches, they flee Birch House, abandoning part of their vacation and leaving behind questions that no caretaker, homeowner, or investigator can answer. Months later, after returning to Arizona, they discover that perhaps they never left the Bennett Place behind at all. The House That Hadn't Been Emptied concludes with a quiet realization that lingers long after the final page: perhaps old houses don't haunt people... Perhaps they simply refuse to forget them. In This Episode • A coastal storm traps Nina and Paul at Birch House. • The mysterious return of the missing suitcase. • A suitcase packed with their own belongings before they packed them. • The hurried escape from the Bennett Place before dawn. • The owner's unsettling final phone call. • A discovery months later that suggests some departures are never truly complete. • The conclusion of this summer's Campfire Files.

The Devil Within Campfire Files: The House That Hadn't Been Emptied (Episode Two — What the House Kept) Some mysteries begin with a strange noise. Others begin with a single name. This week, Campfire Files returns to the rocky coast of Maine as Nina and Paul attempt to convince themselves that the footsteps they heard the night before were nothing more than an old house settling into the cool Atlantic air. Morning, however, has other plans. The locked room at the end of the hallway is standing open. Inside, they discover what appears to be an ordinary family storage room filled with decades of forgotten memories. But hidden among the coats and keepsakes is an old leather suitcase bearing a luggage tag that should not exist. It has Nina's full legal name. Her middle name. Her home address in Phoenix. And no one should know any of it. When the owner sends the property's longtime caretaker to Birch House, the mystery only deepens. Walter Pike has spent his entire life watching over the Bennett Place, and he speaks about the house less like a building and more like an elderly relative. Then he shares a story passed down from his father about the last woman who lived there—a widow who kept suitcases packed for people who never came home. Her explanation has haunted the town ever since. "Departures are easier when the house knows who's leaving." As Walter searches the storage room, the suitcase disappears before their eyes, leaving behind a question no one—not even the caretaker—can answer. What, exactly, has Birch House been waiting for?�In This Episode • The mysterious opening of the locked storage room. • A suitcase bearing Nina's full name and home address. • The arrival of caretaker Walter Pike. • The history of the Bennett family and Margaret Bennett's strange ritual. • The unexplained disappearance of the suitcase. • The chilling realization that Birch House may not simply remember its visitors... • It may be preparing for them.

The Devil Within Campfire Files: The House That Hadn't Been Emptied (Episode One) There are vacation homes... And then there are homes that never stopped being lived in. This week, The Devil Within begins a brand-new Campfire Files novella with one of the most unsettling stories we've ever told. When Nina and Paul Alvarez leave the Arizona desert for a quiet week along the rocky coast of Maine, they're looking for exactly what every vacation promises: peace, fresh air, and a temporary escape from ordinary life. Instead, they discover Birch House—a charming nineteenth-century cottage whose history may be far more present than anyone realizes. As they settle into the rhythms of coastal Maine, something about the house feels... familiar. A locked room at the end of the upstairs hallway. Floorboards polished by generations of footsteps. A home that seems strangely reluctant to become just another vacation rental. Then, late on their first night... Someone walks across the second floor. The problem is... No one is there. In this opening chapter of The House That Hadn't Been Emptied, Branden Morgan explores why old houses seem to preserve more than photographs and furniture—and whether some homes ever truly stop belonging to the families who built them. Because sometimes... the hardest thing a house ever learns... is how to say goodbye. In This Episode • Why old homes feel fundamentally different from hotels.�• The history and quiet beauty of coastal Maine. • Birch House and the unspoken intimacy of vacation rentals. • Nina and Paul's arrival in Camden. • The mysterious locked room at the end of the upstairs hallway. • The first unexplained footsteps.

The Devil's Ledger | Week of July 20, 2026 This week on The Devil's Ledger, we celebrate an unforgettable month of football, explore one of the eeriest true crime deceptions of the digital age, conclude a haunting summer novella, and revisit two of the most compelling criminal investigations we've covered this year. We begin by congratulating Spain on capturing its second FIFA World Cup title after a thrilling championship match, while tipping our hats to North America for hosting one of the greatest sporting events the world has ever seen. Then, in The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, Branden examines the chilling murder of Gretchen Anthony and one of the most disturbing realities of the digital age: how a killer continued communicating with friends and family using the victim's own phone after her death. In a world where our phones have become extensions of ourselves, what happens when someone else begins speaking in your voice? On The Devil Within, Campfire Files comes to its unforgettable conclusion with The House That Hadn't Been Emptied. An Arizona couple's peaceful vacation along the rocky coast of Maine ends with a locked room, a mysterious caretaker, and a suitcase that somehow knows exactly who it's waiting for. It's a quiet, literary ghost story about memory, history, and the unsettling possibility that some houses never truly let their guests leave. Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn Ossorio concludes her investigation into the Pike County Massacre, following investigators as they unravel one of the most shocking murder conspiracies in modern American history after nearly an entire family was executed in a single night. On The Slippery, Scott and Nancy revisit a case they've pursued for nearly a decade: the 2006 murder of Doris Worrell. Following a dramatic arrest in 2025, they examine new evidence surrounding an alleged murder-for-hire plot that may finally bring long-awaited answers. Finally, in This Week in Horror, we recommend The Bay, a tense open-water survival thriller that proves the ocean can still be one of the scariest places on Earth. Stay cool, stay hydrated, and stay alert. You never know what's waiting around the next corner... or beneath the surface. We'll see you this week across the Evio Creative Universe. In This Episode • ⚽ Congratulations to Spain on winning the 2026 FIFA World Cup. •

The Devil Within Presents: The Campfire Files The City Beneath the City — Episode Three Every mystery reaches a point where two paths emerge. One leads back to reason. The other disappears into the impossible. In the epic conclusion to The City Beneath the City, Matt and Claire escape the Paris Catacombs convinced they can explain everything they experienced beneath the streets of France. The strange voices. The forgotten gallery. The impossible red scarf. Surely exhaustion, jet lag, and the disorienting atmosphere of the Catacombs are enough to account for it all. Until they return home. While organizing the photographs from their vacation, they discover images neither of them remembers taking. Images that place them inside a tunnel that, according to retired quarry engineers and historical records, has been sealed for more than fifty years. Then comes the final revelation. An inscription that shouldn't exist. A photograph with no timestamp. And a message that suggests the Catacombs were never trying to trap them... Only to remember them. Part travel memoir, part historical mystery, and part supernatural horror, The City Beneath the City concludes with one haunting question: What if the places we visit never truly let us leave? Join Branden Morgan for the unforgettable conclusion to this inaugural installment of The Campfire Files. �If you've enjoyed this series, please follow The Devil Within, leave a rating and review, and share it with someone who loves immersive horror, historical mysteries, and stories that blur the line between fact and folklore. Sometimes we think we're exploring old places. Sometimes... they're exploring us.

The Devil Within Presents: The Campfire Files The City Beneath the City — Part Two: Beneath Paris The descent begins. In Part Two of The City Beneath the City, Matt and Claire leave the bright boulevards of Paris behind and step into one of the world's most extraordinary—and unsettling—places: the Paris Catacombs. As the daylight disappears and six million dead surround them, something unexpected happens. Conversations fade to whispers. Time begins to feel strangely elastic. Even the simple act of walking becomes different beneath the city. What starts as a tour of one of history's greatest engineering achievements slowly transforms into something else entirely. Because somewhere in the darkness... someone knows Matt's name. Join Branden Morgan for the next chapter of The Campfire Files, where history, folklore, and the unexplained converge beneath one of the most beautiful cities on Earth. If you're enjoying The City Beneath the City, please follow The Devil Within, leave a rating and review, and share the series with someone who loves supernatural mysteries and immersive storytelling. Watch exclusive videos and original programming on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel.

The Devil Within Presents: The Campfire Files The City Beneath the City — Part One What if the most famous city in the world was hiding its greatest secret... directly beneath your feet? In this episode of our summer series, The Campfire Files, Branden Morgan takes you back to Paris—a city celebrated for romance, art, and beauty. But beneath its cafés, cathedrals, and the Eiffel Tower lies another Paris: a vast underground labyrinth carved over two thousand years and filled with the remains of more than six million people. When American travelers Matt and Claire Warren finally take the vacation they've dreamed about for years, they believe they're exploring one of history's greatest engineering marvels. Instead, they begin walking toward something that may already know they're coming. Part history, part travelogue, and part supernatural mystery, The City Beneath the City begins a three-part descent into one of the world's most fascinating—and unsettling—places. Because sometimes the oldest cities don't forget the people who visit them. In this episode: • The forgotten history beneath Paris • How the Catacombs came to hold six million dead • The hidden engineering that keeps Paris from collapsing • Matt and Claire's long-awaited journey to France • The first hints that their vacation may become something far more terrifying If you enjoy The Devil Within, please follow the show, leave a rating and review, and share this episode with someone who loves history, mysteries, and supernatural storytelling. Watch exclusive videos and bonus content on the Evio Creative YouTube Channel. The fire has only just been lit.

The Devil's Ledger Week of July 13, 2026 Summer may be in full swing, but the strange stories never take a vacation. This week on The Devil's Ledger, Branden Morgan takes you from one of America's most haunted Civil War landmarks to the shadowy tunnels beneath Paris, where history—and perhaps something else—still lingers beneath the streets. In The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week, we visit Pennsylvania's legendary Sachs Covered Bridge, a Civil War crossing steeped in stories of ghostly soldiers, phantom gunpowder, unexplained cold spots, and shadowy figures said to patrol the bridge more than 160 years after the Battle of Gettysburg. Then we head underground on The Devil Within, as Campfire Files continues with The City Beneath the City. What begins as an ordinary vacation to Paris becomes something far more unsettling when an American couple ventures into the infamous Catacombs beneath the French capital. Surrounded by the remains of more than six million Parisians, they discover that history may not be the only thing preserved beneath the City of Light. Over on Criminal Mischief, Carolyn returns with another investigation into the darker side of human nature. She still won't tell Branden what she's working on, so listeners will discover the mystery together when the new episode drops this Tuesday. On The Slippery, Nancy examines the heartbreaking wrongful-conviction case of Marilyn Mulero, whose coerced confession sent her to death row for a crime she didn't commit. It's a remarkable examination of Detective Reynaldo Guevara, false confessions, and the long road toward justice. Finally, in This Week in Horror, we spotlight Evil Dead Burn, the newest chapter in Sam Raimi's legendary horror franchise. A secluded family gathering becomes an unforgettable nightmare as an ancient evil transforms a reunion into absolute chaos. Stay cool, stay safe, and thanks for spending part of your week with us. We'll see you across the Evio Creative Universe. In This Episode •

Episode 3: Five Business Days The countdown is over. The car knows exactly where it's going. And this time... It isn't asking permission. In the conclusion of Ghost Profile, Cole and Maren discover the destination the mysterious navigation system has been trying to reach since the day they picked up the vehicle. What waits at the end of that lonely Texas road forces them to confront a terrifying realization: perhaps the car was never trying to trap them. Perhaps it was trying to deliver something. Or someone. Blending documented concerns about connected-car privacy with a chilling supernatural mystery, Five Business Days asks one final question: What happens when technology remembers something it was never supposed to forget? Some journeys don't end when you reach your destination. Some only begin there. Case file closed. Or perhaps... Transferred to the next driver.

Episode 2: What the Car Remembers They tried to return the car. The rental company wouldn't take it. Five business days. That's how long it would take to process a complaint before the vehicle could even be considered for removal from the fleet. Unfortunately... They only had three. As Cole and Maren dig deeper into the SUV's history, they uncover a disturbing pattern of complaints spanning months, all involving the very same vehicle. Strange GPS routes. Electronics behaving on their own. Devices reconnecting after being deleted. Then another name appears on the dashboard. Not Roy. Someone else. Someone who also disappeared. In Part Two of Ghost Profile, Carolyn explores the frightening intersection of modern technology, corporate oversight, and the possibility that some systems remember far more than they should. Because sometimes the scariest thing isn't the ghost. It's realizing you're not the first person it's been waiting for.

Episode 1: The Last Renter A summer getaway begins with an ordinary rental car. Within minutes of leaving the airport, an unfamiliar Bluetooth device appears on the dashboard. ROY'S iPHONE. The problem? No one in the car is named Roy. What begins as an annoying technology glitch soon evolves into something far more unsettling. The mysterious phone refuses to disconnect, the vehicle begins changing its own navigation, and an innocent road trip toward East Texas slowly transforms into a terrifying mystery connected to a man who vanished without a trace. This week on The Devil Within, our Campfire Files series continues with Ghost Profile, a story inspired by real concerns surrounding connected vehicles, digital privacy, and the unsettling question of what technology might remember long after we're gone. Sometimes ghosts don't haunt houses. Sometimes they hitch a ride.