After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
This is After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. The podcast that takes you to the shadiest corners of the past, unpicking history’s spookiest, strangest, and most sinister stories.Join historians Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling, every Monday and Thursday to take a look at the darker side o...
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The Man Who Ate Everything
Listener warning: this episode contains a description of cruelty to animals
One of the strangest tales to emerge from Napoleonic France was that...
Britain's First Ghost Hunt
It was the original modern ghost hunt, the one that set the template for all the haunted houses to come. When a wealthy plantation family moves into a...
Dark Side of the Celts: Whicker Men and trophy heads
The Ancient Celts: feared in battle, guided by Druids, and bound together by ritual.
Long before Rome pushed north, Celtic peoples ruled forests...
Were the Princes in the Tower murdered?
It's one of history's greatest mysteries - 'what happened to the Princes in the Tower?' In 1483, young Edward V and his brother Richard were awaiting...
The Human Cost of Fame
You might think the idea of “celebrity” is a modern invention. In reality, its roots stretch back centuries... perhaps even millennia. People have alw...
The Black Death As It Happened
Eyewitness accounts of life during the Black Death are surprising. Sure, there's horror. But there's also d*ck jokes, complicated scientific theories,...
Who Killed Julius Caesar?
In 44 BCE, Roman senators assassinated Julius Caesar to stop his ascent towards becoming a king. Dr Jess Venner takes Anthony blow-by-blow through the...
The Medieval Murder of Thomas Becket
Anthony is joined by the iconic Eleanor Janega from our sister podcast 'Gone Medieval' to tell the story of the most famous murder of the medieval wor...
Mysterious History of Tarot Cards
Maddy and Anthony get their Tarot cards read by Melissa Mercury! As well as reading their cards, Melissa tells us about the history of Tarot cards and...
Origins of Victorian Murder Detectives
We have an image in our heads of Victorian Homicide Detectives, but what was the reality? Who were they? What murder cases shaped their history? What...
Who Was the Man In The Iron Mask?
For decades a mysterious figure was held prisoner by Louis XIV. His face was covered, his identity was a secret beyond all others. Why? Who was this f...
The Dark Truth about the Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution is the only successful, permanent slave revolt in history, resulting in the creation of an independent state.
Haiti is al...
The French Revolution's Reign of Terror
The French Revolution was famously inspired by ideals such as republicanism and individual liberty. Yet, for all its promises of freedom, the Revoluti...
The Dark Truth about Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Brontë in 1847, depicts a gothic world full of violence and passion, set against the wild Yorkshire Moors.
S...
Bloody Beginning of the French Revolution
The Storming of the Bastille in 1789 marked the beginning of the French Revolution... the day a Parisian crowd stormed the royal fortress-prison that...
Al Capone and the Valentine's Day Massacre
Bootleg liquor. Tommy guns. Gangs ruling the city with crooked cops.
The Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 Chicago sounds cinematic, but the fear...
Dark Truth About Victorian 'Freak Shows'
Julia Pastrana was a Mexican woman exploited as a sideshow attraction in life and grotesquely exhibited even after her death because of her appearance...
Essex's Darkest Witch Hunt
This is the story of a 16th century cunning woman, a folk healer, who was found guilty of being a witch. Accusations spiralled until more than a dozen...
Who Was the Witchfinder General?
Mathew Hopkins, also known as the ‘Witchfinder General,’ was responsible for a campaign of terror across 17th-century England. In just a few short fev...
Inside A Medieval Leper Colony
Come back with us to a Medieval leper colony.
What was life really like for patients inside the gates? What did it mean when the 'leper bell' ra...
The Victorian's Dark Obsession with Ancient Egypt
The Victorians had a lot of twisted fascinations, but their fixation on Ancient Egypt might be the darkest of the lot.
From 'mummy unwrapping pa...
The Deadly Arctic Witch Trials
It all started when a huge storm drowned 40 men on Christmas Eve, 1617.
The people of Vardø, northern Norway, needed someone to blame.
Wha...
Great Fire of London As It Happened
The Fire that struck London in 1666 was one of the city's darkest chapters. In this episode, Anthony and Maddy examine the accounts of people who witn...
Day in the Life of a Salem Puritan
What did it feel like to wake up Salem Village during the darkest days of the witch trials? Would you be able to swallow down your beer and pottage br...
Inside the Victorian Asylum
One of the dark symbols of the Victorian age is the asylum. It struck fear into the mind but what was the reality of life inside its walls? Maddy Pell...
The Truth about the Conjuring's Ghost Hunters
Ghost hunting couple Ed and Lorraine Warren transformed twentieth century America into an enchanted land dotted with haunted houses, cursed objects, a...
Banshees: Herald of Death
Today we're delving back into the After Dark vaults to revisit our episode on Banshees...
Siobhan McSweeney (Derry Girls) joins Anthony Delaney...
Ghosts of Henry VIII's Palace
We’re re-running this episode because it’s one of our favourites — and it’s worth another listen!
The ghost of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of H...
Dark Truth About Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd - the demon barber of Fleet Street who beheads people and then sends their bodies through a trapdoor to be made into pies. It's just a st...
The Most Notorious Viking Raid
The Viking attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne, a remote tidal island in North East England, sent psychological and cultural shockwaves through the...
Oscar Wilde's Very Victorian Scandal
In 1895, the world witnessed its first true celebrity trial when Oscar Wilde was charged with “Gross Indecency". To tell the powerful story of Wilde's...
Does Every Family Hold A Dark Past?
Maddy and Anthony dig into their own family history in collaboration with Ancestry! They find stories from the darker side of the past in their own fa...
What Happened The Day Pompeii was Destroyed?
We all know the story of Pompeii: the Roman town reduced to ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Roughly two-thousand years later, archaeologists have bee...
The Dark Side of the Vikings
How dark really were the Vikings? How much of a part did human sacrifice play in their world? And what was their relationship with magic?
Joinin...
The Only Prime Minister Ever Assassinated
Was this moment the closest Britain came to revolution? When Prime Minister Spencer Perceval lay dying on the floor of the Parliament, many feared it...
Who Was Medieval Europe's Most Evil Monarch?
Who was the very worst of all the Medieval monarchs? No spoilers but we've got monarchs driven psychopathic by love, terrible sadists, and egos that s...
Who was the Last Witch of Scotland?
With the nights closing in, what better time to re-visit a favourite episode of ours.
In 1727, Janet Horne of the Highland community of Dornoch...
Could you Survive the Medieval Apocalypse?
For Medieval Europe, the Apocalypse wasn’t just a metaphor - it was very real and very imminent.
We are talking about the four horsemen, locusts...
Why Did Henry VIII Kill Catherine Howard?
In 1540 Henry VIII was getting old, and his eyes turned to teenager Catherine Howard.
He fell hard and fast for Catherine - his "rose without a...
Who Was Nostradamus?
Did Nostradamus really predict everything from the Great Fire of London to the rise of Hitler?
We predict that you'll find out in this episode.....