When 20-year-old Carl Lawson took a job helping renovate Bobby Mackey’s Music World, a country nightclub in Wilder, Kentucky, he had no idea he was stepping into what would become one of America’s most infamous paranormal haunting cases. What began with footsteps echoing through an empty dance hall ...

Two listeners pointed me toward Franklin Castle, one of Ohio’s most famous haunted houses and the center of decades of ghost stories and paranormal claims. I expected to find another ghost story. Instead, I found something far stranger. In 1980, a woman living inside Franklin Castle claimed the spir...

In November 1718, the pirate known as Blackbeard was killed in the waters near Ocracoke Island. His head was carried away as proof of his death, while his body disappeared beneath the surface. But around the Outer Banks, people believed the story didn't end there. Join host Robert Barber for a short...

Join host Robert Barber as he examines one of America’s most enduring cryptid and unexplained creature encounters. In the summer of 1988, seventeen-year-old Christopher Davis stopped along a quiet road outside Bishopville, South Carolina, to change a flat tire. Minutes later, he reported being chase...

Welcome to State of the Unknown: Fragments. Every other Tuesday, alongside our full documentary episodes, I’ll be sharing a shorter story—forgotten newspaper accounts, enduring folklore, strange witness reports, and historical mysteries that deserve another telling. They’re not documentaries. They’r...

Something new is coming to State of the Unknown. Every story doesn’t need thirty minutes. Some are too strange to ignore… too fascinating to forget… and too small to become full documentaries. Beginning next week, I’m introducing State of the Unknown: Fragments—a brand-new storytelling series featur...