Terrifying & True Episodes

Jimmy Hoffa, the powerful former president of the Teamsters union, disappeared before a planned meeting outside Detroit on July 30, 1975. His body has never been found. Terrifying & True follows James Riddle Hoffa from his rise through the American labor movement to the corruption cases, prison sentence, organized-crime associations, and bitter struggle to regain influence over the Teamsters. Hoffa was expected to meet Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone at the Machus Red Fox re...

RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912, killing more than 1,500 people—but the disaster still attracts mysteries, disputed explanations, and conspiracy theories. Terrifying & True examines the documented sinking alongside claims that have grown around it. Could a coal fire have weakened the ship before departure? Did brittle steel or faulty rivets make the collision more destructive? What happened to the final ice warning from the nearby Californian, and could unusual atmosphe...

The Lost Colony of Roanoke is a documented historical mystery from Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, where an English settlement established in 1587 disappeared before Governor John White returned. The colony included women and children, among them White’s daughter Eleanor Dare and his newborn granddaughter Virginia Dare. England’s earlier Roanoke attempt had already failed amid shortages and violent conflict with Indigenous communities. When the later settlers needed supplies, Whit...

Teenager Danny LaPlante hid inside a Massachusetts family’s walls, imitated their dead mother, and later murdered a neighboring mother and two children. In 1986, LaPlante targeted sisters Annie and Jessica Andrews after a brief date with Annie. He broke into their home, moved through a concealed crawlspace, stole food, watched the family, and made noises the grieving girls initially interpreted as supernatural contact. Police eventually discovered him behind a bedroom wall, turning an apparent ...

Pale children with completely black eyes appear at doors and car windows, asking for help—and insisting that they cannot enter until someone gives permission. Terrifying & True explores the Black-Eyed Children, a modern paranormal legend that began spreading through a Texas ghost-story mailing list in 1996. The encounters follow a repeating pattern: ordinary-looking children approach at night, avoid eye contact, and request a ride, a phone, money, shelter, or access to a home. Only when the wit...

Three lighthouse keepers vanished from Eilean Mòr in Scotland’s remote Flannan Isles in December 1900, leaving no bodies and no surviving witness. James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald MacArthur maintained the island light until a relief crew found the station abandoned. The enduring practical theory holds that the men went outside to secure equipment near the landing and were swept away by a powerful sea. Isolation, dangerous cliffs, severe weather, and a missing safety rail made an acciden...

A wounded hotel guest using the name Roland T. Owen insisted that “nobody” attacked him in Kansas City’s Room 1046. His real identity deepened the mystery. The young man checked into the President Hotel on January 2, 1935, without luggage and spent much of his stay in darkness. Staff saw a note addressed to “Don,” heard suspicious phone calls, and repeatedly found the door locked from outside. Owen was eventually discovered bound, beaten, stabbed, and barely conscious. He denied suicide and die...

The Curse of King Tutankhamun, also known as the "Curse of the Pharaohs," is a legendary belief surrounding the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. It is said that those who entered the tomb would suffer terrible consequences and even...

More than 100 Southeast Asian refugees died suddenly in their sleep after resettling in the United States, confronting doctors and Hmong communities with a frightening medical mystery. The deaths drew attention in the late 1970s and early 1980s as seemingly healthy adults—predominantly Hmong men—went to bed and could not be revived. Some family members heard gasping or cries before death. Investigators considered infectious disease, chemical exposure, stress, and cardiac abnormalities before th...

The 1920 Wall Street bombing turned New York’s financial district into a field of shattered glass and iron shrapnel—and the people responsible were never identified. At noon on September 16, a horse-drawn wagon stopped outside the U.S. Assay Office, across from J.P. Morgan & Co. The vehicle carried roughly 100 pounds of dynamite and hundreds of pounds of cast-iron sash weights. When it exploded during the lunch rush, 38 people were killed and hundreds were injured, most of them clerks, messenge...

Four-year-old Bobby Dunbar disappeared during a 1912 Louisiana fishing trip—but DNA later showed that the boy returned to his family was not biologically a Dunbar. Bobby vanished from Swayze Lake on August 23, prompting an enormous search involving police, volunteers, bloodhounds, and desperate efforts to examine the water. Eight months later, authorities in Mississippi found an itinerant handyman, William Cantwell Walters, traveling with a boy called Bruce Anderson. Percy and Lessie Dunbar ide...

Los Angeles opened fire on an unseen target in February 1942, launching more than 1,400 anti-aircraft shells even though no enemy plane was confirmed. Only weeks after Pearl Harbor—and one day after a Japanese submarine shelled the Ellwood oil field—air-raid sirens ordered a countywide blackout. Searchlights swept the sky while the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade fired from approximately 3:16 to 4:14 a.m. Falling fragments damaged buildings and vehicles; three people died in traffic accidents and ...

Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in Las Vegas in 1996; nearly thirty years later, Duane “Keffe D” Davis became the first person tried in connection with the rap icon’s murder. On September 7, Tupac attended the Mike Tyson–Bruce Seldon fight at the MGM Grand and later rode with Death Row Records cofounder Marion “Suge” Knight. At a stoplight near the Las Vegas Strip, a white Cadillac pulled alongside their BMW and someone opened fire. Tupac was struck multiple times and died on September 13 at age ...

Nineteen-year-old David Hadaway was found murdered near the Ohio State University campus in 1986, leaving Columbus investigators without a publicly identified suspect or motive. Known to friends as “Diamond Dave,” Hadaway was a Mifflin High School student with no known connection to serious crime. His body was discovered on July 21 near the university area after he had attended a weekend gathering on North High Street. The condition of the scene suggested a violent attack, but investigators cou...

A tiger shark vomited a tattooed human arm at a Sydney aquarium in 1935, opening one of Australia’s strangest and most tangled murder investigations. The shark had been captured and displayed at the Coogee Aquarium and Swimming Baths. On April 25, it regurgitated a man’s forearm in front of visitors. Investigators determined that the limb had not been bitten away by the animal; it had been cut from a body. Fingerprints and a distinctive tattoo identified the victim as James Smith, a former boxe...

Railroad workers in Defiance, Ohio, reported a towering wolf-like figure stalking the tracks in 1972, creating one of the state’s most enduring cryptid legends. The encounters centered on the Norfolk & Western rail yard near downtown. Workers Ted Davis and Tom Jones described a large, hairy creature with an animal-like head and a powerful build. In one account, the figure approached with a wooden board before disappearing into the darkness. Other reports soon followed, drawing newspaper attenti...

The Lake Michigan Triangle gathers real maritime disasters, an aviation mystery, strange disappearances, and paranormal folklore inside one stretch of Great Lakes water. This episode maps the legendary triangle between Ludington, Benton Harbor, and Manitowoc before following the incidents that built its reputation. They include the 1679 disappearance of Le Griffon, Captain George Donner’s vanishing from a locked cabin aboard the O.M. McFarland, and the overturned Rosa Belle, whose crew was nowh...

Natalie Wood’s 1981 death off Catalina Island began as an accidental-drowning case, but conflicting accounts and later evidence kept the mystery alive for decades. The acclaimed actress was aboard the yacht Splendour over Thanksgiving weekend with her husband Robert Wagner, her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern. After dinner ashore and drinking aboard the yacht, Wood disappeared during the night. Her body was found the next morning, and investigators initially con...

Sixteen-year-old Karlie Lain Gusé vanished from California’s Chalfant Valley on October 13, 2018, leaving her phone behind and a trail that ended beside Highway 6. The previous evening, Karlie attended a gathering and called her stepmother for help while frightened and disoriented. Her family brought her home and stayed with her through the night. By morning, the front door was open and Karlie was gone. Multiple witnesses later reported seeing a girl matching her description walking south near ...

Anthony and Nathaniel Cook terrorized Toledo, Ohio, through murder, abduction, rape, and attempted murder—then DNA helped expose crimes that had remained unresolved for nearly two decades. Beginning in 1980, the brothers attacked couples and young people across Lucas County. Their victims included Thomas Gordon, Connie Sue Thompson, Dawn Rene Backes, Scott Moulton, Denise Siotkowski, Daryl Cole, Stacy Lynn Balonek, and Peter Sawicki. A surviving victim’s account and fingerprints led to Anthony ...

Anonymous letters turned Circleville, Ohio, into a maze of accusations, surveillance, death, and attempted murder—and the writer’s identity was never conclusively established. The campaign began in 1976 when school-bus driver Mary Gillispie received letters accusing her of an affair with superintendent Gordon Massie. Her husband Ron was threatened as well. After Ron died in a 1977 vehicle crash following a mysterious phone call, the letters returned with allegations of a cover-up and signs appe...

Kimberly Dowell and Ethan Dixon were found shot inside a parked Volkswagen at Muncie’s Westside Park, beginning a cold-case investigation that has lasted more than 40 years. Late on September 28, 1985, a police officer clearing the Indiana park discovered the Northside High School students in Ethan’s still-running car. Ethan, 16, had been shot in the chest; Kimberly, 15, had been shot in the head. A third bullet shattered a window. Investigators recovered a knife and an empty gun holster, while...

The Keddie Cabin murders left three people dead inside Cabin 28, a child missing, and a California mountain community haunted by questions the first investigation failed to answer. On the morning of April 12, 1981, Sheila Sharp returned to her family’s cabin at the Keddie resort and found her mother, Glenna “Sue” Sharp; her brother John; and John’s friend Dana Wingate murdered. Three younger boys had survived elsewhere in the cabin, but 12-year-old Tina Sharp was gone. Her remains were discover...

The Texas Killing Fields are not one tidy serial-killer story, but a corridor of disappearances, murders, investigative failures, and families still seeking answers. Along Interstate 45 between Houston and Galveston, women and girls vanished or were found dead across several decades. This episode begins with early victims including Colette Wilson, Brenda Jones, Rhonda Johnson, and Sharon Shaw, then follows the cases connected to the remote Calder Road field near League City. The geography made ...