Paranormia
Paranormia is a weekly storytelling podcast where true crime collides with the supernatural, the psychological, and the macabre. Hosted by journalist and parapsychologist Elizabeth McCafferty, each episode explores real cases where belief in something unseen becomes dangerous, cursed objects drive people to violence, psychic visions predict tragedy, cults where worship turns deadly, and hauntings blur into guilt, obsession, or faith. The show blends rigorous research with cinematic storytelling to uncover what happens when reason falters and fear takes hold.
Episodes
Ghosts: The "Guardian Angel" of Flight 401
After Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed in the Florida Everglades in 1972, some of the aircraft's undamaged equipment was salvaged and installed on other planes. Not long after, flight attendants and pilots began reporting sightings of two familiar faces… the deceased captain and flight engineer from the doomed flight. In this episode, Elizabeth looks into one of aviation's most enduring ghost
Cursed Object: The Busby Stoop Inn chair
An ordinary wooden chair hanging in a museum in North Yorkshire is said to carry a deadly curse. In this episode, Elizabeth explores the legend of the Busby Stoop Chair, tracing its origins back to a brutal murder in 1702 and following the stories of those who allegedly paid the price for sitting in it. She uncovers how a real historical crime became a lasting piece of local legend and parano
Spirits: The God Helmet
Elizabeth takes us into the remote mining country of northern Ontario, where a neuroscientist named Michael Persinger has spent decades trying to understand how the brain constructs some of our most powerful experiences. At the centre of his work is a modified motorcycle helmet, fitted with coils that deliver weak, patterned magnetic fields to the temporal lobes. The idea is unsettlingly simple… c
Serial Killer: Monster of Florence
Elizabeth takes us to the wooded outskirts of Florence, where between 1968 and 1985 a killer known as the “Monster of Florence” stalked young couples parked in secluded cars. Sixteen people were murdered across eight attacks in rural lovers’ lanes. But as the investigation dragged on for decades, suspects multiplied, confessions unraveled, and the truth only became more elusive. So was this a sing
Possessed: The Inukun Shooting
Paranormia is back for season two! In this episode Elizabeth takes us to the remote Alaskan village where former Marine and actor Teddy Kyle Smith claimed he was being followed through the wilderness by the Inukins, mysterious little people from Inuit folklore said to live beyond the edges of civilisation. Days later, two brothers on a hunting trip stumbled across Smith hiding in an isolated
An Update from Paranormia
Elizabeth checks in as Paranormia wraps its first season, with a quick look back at CrimeCon Birmingham and a glimpse into what’s coming next… From the science that might explain ghosts, including a device that can trigger the feeling of a presence in the room, to unsettling encounters linked to a real life plane crash where crew members reported sightings of those who didn’t survive… and a court
Witches: Killing of Charles Walton
In February 1945 Charles Walton, a farm labourer in his seventies was found brutally murdered in a field in Warwickshire. The scene was shocking… his throat cut with his own tool and his body pinned to the ground with a pitchfork.As the investigation unfolded, rumours began to spread of witchcraft, ancient rituals, and something darker beneath the surface of rural life. Over time, the case became
Cursed Objects: The Crying Boy Painting
In the 1980s a kitsch mass-produced painting of a tearful child was linked to a spate of unexplained house fires across the UK in the 1980s. Firefighters noticed that when they attended house fires there was often one object left intact, the big blue eyes of a little crying boy, its edges singed, the frame sooty. But surviving seemingly countless fires. So how did the legend of the crying boy pain
Missing: The Piano Man
In 2005, on the Isle of Sheppey, a young man was found wandering near a beach soaked through and unable to explain who he was or where he came from. As weeks passed with no answers his case captured global attention, and with no identity to anchor the story, speculation began to take over. Known only as “The Piano Man,” he became the centre of a mystery shaped as much by imagination as by fact. Th
Serial Killer: The Zodiac
Between 1968 and 1969, a mysterious killer haunted Northern California, murdering at least five people and sending cryptic letters and ciphers to local newspapers. Calling himself the 'Zodiac,' he taunted police and the public, but his true identity has never been revealed. This episode explores the crimes, the chilling letters, and the lasting mystery of the Zodiac Killer.***If you have a story w
Cult: Heaven’s Gate
In March 1997, a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California became the site of one of the most unsettling mass deaths in modern history. 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate group were found arranged in identical clothing, their deaths carefully planned and documented. Led by Marshall Applewhite, the group had spent decades developing a belief system that blended religion, science fiction, and extraterrest
Serial Killer: The Vampire of Sacramento
In the late 1970s, Sacramento was shaken by a series of brutal killings carried out by Richard Trenton Chase, a man later labelled the “Vampire Killer.” Convinced that his blood was being poisoned and that he needed to survive by taking blood from others, his behaviour escalated from harming animals to attacking people. In just one month, six lives were taken. This episode explores who Richard Cha
Hoax: The Fairies of Cottingley
The Cottingley Fairies might not seem like the kind of story you’d expect on Paranormia. In 1917, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright produced photographs that appeared to show tiny winged figures, ‘fairies’, dancing beside Cottingley Beck. What could have stayed a family joke quickly spread far beyond the Yorkshire village. The images reached Theosophists who believed they were proof of hidden wor
Cult: Final Fantasy House
In the early 2000s, a small group of teens and young adults found each other online through Final Fantasy VII fandom, where they felt understood. But survivor accounts describe a household in State College, Pennsylvania, where a leader turned fantasy and roleplay into a system of control. This episode traces how a fandom became a closed world, and why its aftermath became an internet legend. Some
Ghosts: The Ghost Who Pulled the Trigger
In January 1804, a man was shot dead on a dark lane in West London after residents of Hammersmith became convinced a ghost was haunting their streets. When Francis Smith fired at what he thought was the figure, he killed Thomas Millwood, a bricklayer walking home in his white work clothes. This episode retraces how fear spread through the community, leading to that moment, and follows the case int
Cult: The Long Way to Jonestown
In November 1978, more than 900 people died in Jonestown, Guyana, an event often reduced to a warning about blind obedience. This episode looks at what led up to it, from the early days of the Peoples Temple offering support and community, to the slow loss of choice and control that made leaving feel impossible. It also explores daily life in Jonestown and the final days, showing how a place meant
Urban Legend: Cropsey, The Boogeyman of Staten Island
For years, children on Staten Island were warned about Cropsey, a boogeyman said to haunt the abandoned Willowbrook buildings. It began as a way to keep kids away, but in the 1970s and 80s, children started going missing. This episode looks at the real cases behind the legend, and how fear and tragedy became blurred into myth.***If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, some
Haunted: The Cecil Hotel
In January 2013, a 21 year old Canadian student named Elisa Lam checked into The Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. She was travelling alone, documenting her journey online, and calling her parents every day. Then the calls stopped. Weeks later, her body was discovered in a rooftop water tank above the hotel. Police released surveillance footage of Elisa behaving erratically in a hotel elevator.
Unsolved: The Case at Dyatlov Pass
In February 1959, nine experienced hikers disappeared in the northern Ural Mountains. When searchers found their tent weeks later, it was cut open from the inside. Boots were left neatly behind, food sat untouched, and footprints, some barefoot, led into the snow. Over the months that followed, the bodies were recovered in stages. Some had died of exposure and others suffered catastrophic internal
Cursed Object: The Dybbuk Box
In 2001, a small wooden wine cabinet appeared in an eBay listing from Portland. Its seller claimed it had belonged to a 103 year old Holocaust survivor and that it contained a dybbuk, a restless spirit from Jewish folklore. He warned that opening it had brought illness, nightmares, and a sense of being watched. Over the years, the cabinet passed through multiple owners, each reporting disturbing e
Witches: The San Francisco Killers
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Michael and Suzan Carson drifted through the American West, moving between communes, shared apartments, and marijuana farms. They changed their names, adopted a patchwork belief system of mysticism and religion, and came to see themselves as warriors in a hidden war. Between 1981 and 1983, they killed three people and insisted their victims were witches. This epi
Voodoo Murder: The Hurricane Lovers
After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was a city stripped bare. Zack Bowen, a former soldier, and Addie Hall, a poet and bartender, stayed behind, scavenging and living in the streets while photographed as symbols of defiance. A year later, Addie was killed, and Zack took his own life, leaving behind a shocking crime scene. This episode explores how disaster, trauma, and addiction turned a brief ro
Missing: The Sodder Christmas Mystery
On Christmas Eve 1945, a fire tore through a family home in the hills of West Virginia. Four children escaped, but five never came out. When the smoke cleared, there were no bodies in the ashes and no bones.In the years that followed, the Sodder family rejected the official story. They spoke of cut phone lines, a missing ladder, warnings from strangers, and a photograph mailed decades later that s
Ghost: The Philip Experiment
In 1972, a group of Canadians invented a fictional ghost named Philip to test whether belief alone could make him appear. Each week, they gathered around a table, and soon knocks and moving furniture seemed to respond to them. This episode explores the Philip Experiment and the uneasy space where psychology, ritual, and expectation collide, showing how belief can shape reality, or at least how it
Spirits: The Ouija board jury
In early 1994, the murder of Harry and Nicola Fuller brought twelve jurors to a Brighton hotel, locked away from the world with nothing but silence, photographs, and each other. As the pressure mounted, four of them reached for a Ouija board, half a joke, half a plea for clarity, and asked the dead for answers. The verdict that followed would crumble under the weight of its own strangeness. This e
Cult Murder: The Disappearance of Mark Kilroy
In March 1989, Spring Break in South Texas was alive with crowds and music, until 21-year-old Mark Kilroy vanished somewhere between the bars of Matamoros and the quiet roads beyond the border. What began as a missing-person search soon led investigators to Santa Elena Ranch, a remote compound tied to a group calling themselves a religious society, a place where superstition, ritual, and violence
Urban Legend: Slender Man,The Internet's Monster
In May 2014, the quiet suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, became the setting for one of the strangest and most unsettling crimes in modern history. Two twelve-year-old girls lured their best friend into the woods and stabbed her nineteen times, leaving her for dead. When police found them hours later, walking calmly down a highway, they said they’d done it for Slender Man, a faceless figure born from
Introducing Paranormia
Are you ever awake in the cruellest hours of the night, when the world is quiet but your mind isn’t? That’s where Paranormia begins, a weekly podcast where true crime collides with the supernatural. Journalist and parapsychologist Elizabeth McCafferty uncovers real cases where belief turns deadly and fear becomes evidence. In this opening episode, she traces her fascination with the unexplain
Paranormia
Journalist and parapsychologist Elizabeth McCafferty introduces Paranormia, a podcast exploring crimes touched by the supernatural. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
