- 28 minutes 5 secondsBloodsuckers and Budget Busters | 528
This week on Hysteria 51, we’ve got vampires, missing people, Minecraft, and a nine-year-old with the advertising budget of a midsize corporation.
First, we sink our teeth into the bizarre disappearance of George Phillip Gall, an Ohio man whose case became tangled in claims involving a Dayton vampire coven, occult rituals, and alleged human sacrifice. Netflix even produced a documentary about the story, Vampires of Gem City, only for the project itself to seemingly vanish into the darkness.
Then, we meet a nine-year-old aspiring YouTube mogul who allegedly spent $118,000 on his dad’s company credit card buying ads for his Minecraft and Roblox videos. His strategy was brutally simple: more money equals more views. Somewhere, an MBA program just spontaneously combusted.
From alleged bloodsucking cults to a kid speedrunning his father’s unemployment, it’s another week where the weirdest part of the news is that everyone involved apparently lives on the same planet we do.
Grab your garlic, change your Google password, and join us for another wonderfully questionable episode of Hysteria 51.
Links & Resources
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Leave Us A Voicemail:
773-669-7277
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
23 September 2026, 5:00 am - 43 minutes 56 secondsLeave a Message After the Conspiracy | 527
This week on Hysteria 51, we hand the show over to the most dangerous force in paranormal podcasting: you people.
It’s our listener voicemail episode, which means we’re cracking open the inbox and playing your questions, comments, theories, insults, corrections, questionable life choices, and whatever else you decided was important enough to leave on our voicemail. Will we learn something? Possibly. Will we regret giving everyone our number? Almost certainly.
But there’s actual business to handle too. We’re finally announcing the winners of our Choose a Topic and Host the Show With Us Contest! We’ll reveal which listener-submitted ideas survived the gauntlet, who earned a seat at the Hysteria 51 table, and what wonderfully bizarre subjects we’ll be diving into together.
So grab your headphones and join us for listener chaos, contest winners, paranormal nonsense, and the uncomfortable realization that somehow you may be even weirder than we are.
It’s voicemails, winners, weirdness, and absolutely no guarantee that anyone involved should be trusted with a microphone.
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Leave Us A Voicemail:
773-669-7277
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
21 September 2026, 5:00 am - 23 minutes 30 secondsHot Tubs, Hard Choices, and Rubber Ducks | 526
This week on Hysteria 51, medical enhancement and poolside romance collide in ways absolutely nobody requested except for Kevin Crispin who joins us for some Beautiful Blurry Hysteria!
First, we head to Thailand, where authorities are investigating a Bangkok cosmetic clinic after influencer Igho “Tiny” Ubiribo died following a penis enlargement procedure involving hyaluronic acid filler injections. It’s a tragic story involving cosmetic enhancement, questionable decisions, and yet another reminder that sometimes “bigger” should probably remain a marketing slogan.
Then we travel to Georgia, where police are searching for a mysterious trespasser who allegedly broke into a private pool area, enjoyed the hot tub, spent more than 10 intensely intimate minutes with a rubber duck, stole around $1,200 worth of towels, and escaped on a bicycle.
Yes. That is the entire sentence.
From penis injections and cosmetic surgery gone wrong to hot tub trespassing, stolen towels, and forbidden rubber-duck passion, this week proves that humanity remains the weirdest cryptid we’ve ever investigated.
Grab your floaties. Maybe leave the duck at home.
Links & Resources
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
16 September 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 30 minutesHANGAR 18-ISH: WHAT THE HECK IS THE WRIGHT-PATTERSON BLUE ROOM? PART TWO: INSIDE THE BLUE ROOM | 525
Last week, Hysteria 51 went knocking on one of the most infamous locked doors in UFO history.
This week, somebody finally opens the darn thing.
We’re heading back to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and picking up the alleged story of a technical specialist who claimed he was secretly transported to a restricted facility filled with technology nobody could identify, machinery scientists were supposedly ordered to reverse-engineer, and a second room containing something considerably harder to explain.
Bodies.
Small ones.
Floating in tanks.
From there, things somehow get weirder.
We dig into allegations of an alien morgue, crashed UFO wreckage, underground storage facilities, complete flying saucers, the claim that recovered extraterrestrial technology helped create everything from transistors to fiber optics, and the theory that once everybody figured out Wright-Patterson was supposedly America's alien warehouse... the government simply moved the good shit somewhere else.
But there’s another possibility. Maybe the Blue Room was completely real. Maybe strange technology really was being studied there. Maybe Barry Goldwater really did stumble onto something Curtis LeMay desperately wanted kept secret. And maybe none of it had anything to do with aliens… Maybe…
We’re putting the Wright-Patterson Blue Room, Hangar 18, UFO crash retrievals, alien bodies, reverse-engineering programs, government secrecy and eighty years of extraterrestrial rumors on trial. Last week we reached the door. This week we go inside on Hysteria 51.
Sources:
- National Archives – Project BLUE BOOK: Unidentified Flying Objects
- https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos
- U.S. Air Force – The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert
- https://www.af.mil/The-Roswell-Report/
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) – Historical Record Report, Volume I
- https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Vol_1_2024.pdf
- AARO – Congressional and Press Products
- https://www.aaro.mil/Congressional-Press-Products/
- U.S. Department of Defense – DOD Report Discounts Sightings of Extraterrestrial Technology
- https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3701297/dod-report-discounts-sightings-of-extraterrestrial-technology/
- U.S. Department of Defense – Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
- https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/Unidentified-Anomalous-Phenomena/
- HISTORY – Hangar 18, UFOs and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
- https://www.history.com/articles/hangar-18-ufos-aliens-wright-patterson
- Air & Space Forces Magazine – USAF and the UFOs
- https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0611ufo/
- NICAP – Barry Goldwater UFO Correspondence / Wright-Patterson and Curtis LeMay
- https://www.nicap.org/people/goldwater.htm
- Barry Goldwater – 1975 Wright-Patterson/UFO Correspondence
- https://rense.com/general35/ufodat.htm
- Barry Goldwater – Larry King Radio Interview, 1988
- https://www.ufocasebook.com/blueroom.html
- Leonard H. Stringfield – Retrievals of the Third Kind
- https://www.earthfiles.com/2005/09/30/part-3-retrievals-of-the-third-kind-a-case-study-of-alleged-ufos-and-occupants-in-military-custody/
- James Clarkson – June Crain Interview Transcript
- https://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/crain_clarksoninterview.pdf
- Thomas J. Carey & Donald R. Schmitt – UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson: Eyewitness Accounts from the Real Area 51
- https://www.loc.gov/item/2020715969/
- Thomas J. Carey & Donald R. Schmitt – UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson – Google Books
- https://books.google.com/books/about/UFO_Secrets_Inside_Wright_Patterson.html?id=eZpyDwAAQBAJ
- National Archives – UAP Records: Textual and Microfilm Records
- https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/textual-and-microfilm
- National Archives – UAP Records Bulk Downloads
- https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/catalog-bulk-downloads/uap-bulk-download
- FBI Vault – UFO Files
- https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO
- Wikipedia – Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright-Patterson_Air_Force_Base
- Wikipedia – Hangar 18
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(conspiracy_theory)
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show:
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop:
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
14 September 2026, 5:00 am - 22 minutes 8 secondsCyborg Roaches and Superglued Hoses | 524
Science has finally answered the question nobody was brave enough to ask: what if the cockroach crawling toward you was actually a paramedic? Researchers are developing remote-controlled cyborg roaches capable of crawling through disaster rubble, locating survivors, and even delivering lifesaving injections. It’s innovative. It’s brilliant. And it guarantees you’ll never confidently swat another bug again.
Then we move from cutting-edge medicine to medicine that should absolutely never have been attempted. A man suffering from incontinence decided to solve the problem himself by putting superglue into his urethra. Repeatedly. Shockingly, the story does not end with him winning a Nobel Prize.
This week on Hysteria 51: cyborg cockroaches, robotic rescue insects, horrifying DIY medical treatments, superglue in places God never intended, and another reminder that humanity is simultaneously capable of astonishing scientific achievement and decisions that make emergency-room doctors reconsider their career choices.
Links & Resources
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
9 September 2026, 5:00 am - 20 minutes 40 secondsThe Island That Wandered and the Carrot That Shouldn’t Have | 523
This week on Hysteria 51, Mother Nature is acting strange... and one guy is acting much, much stranger.
First, a massive floating island covered in trees suddenly appears in British Columbia’s Williston Reservoir, drifts around like it forgot where it parked, disappears, and then turns up miles away. Scientists have explanations involving debris, rising water, and vegetation, but we prefer to believe Canada has finally developed migratory land.
Then we head to England, where a peaceful dog walk through a nature reserve takes a horrifying turn when a man decides to demonstrate a use for a carrot that definitely isn’t in the recipe book. Police get involved, court dates are scheduled, and somewhere a rabbit loses its appetite forever.
From mysterious floating islands and disappearing landmasses to bizarre crime, public indecency, and produce abuse, this episode has everything you expect from weird news... plus at least one thing you absolutely did not.
Links & Resources
Email us your Contest Topics:
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
2 September 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 19 minutesHANGAR 18-ISH: WHAT THE HECK IS THE WRIGHT-PATTERSON BLUE ROOM? PART ONE: THE LEGEND BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR | 522
Forget Area 51. It’s time to head to Ohio, where the UFO lore is colder, the security clearances are higher, and allegedly somebody forgot to clean the aliens out of the fridge.
This week, we’re investigating the mysterious Blue Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the legendary top-secret facility supposedly used to store and study crashed UFO wreckage, Roswell debris, exotic technology, strange “memory metal,” and possibly even extraterrestrial bodies.
Was Wright-Patterson actually America’s original alien warehouse?
Before we can answer that, we have to figure out whether the damn room even existed.
And that's considerably harder than it sounds.
Because Wright-Patterson really did house some of America's earliest official UFO investigations. It really was one of the country's most important centers for analyzing captured and unidentified foreign aerospace technology. And some surprisingly credible people later claimed something extraordinary was hidden there.
We’re digging into the origins of Hangar 18, Robert Spencer Carr, Barry Goldwater’s infamous attempt to gain access, General Curtis LeMay’s less-than-welcoming response, the alleged connection between Roswell and Wright Field, former Wright-Patterson commander Arthur Exon, Oliver “Pappy” Henderson, Marion “Black Mac” Magruder, June Crain and her alleged piece of impossible memory metal, and finally Leonard Stringfield, the UFO researcher who found someone claiming he actually made it through the door.
Grab your clearance badge. Leave your camera in the car. And if Curtis LeMay asks what we're doing here, tell him we're looking for the bathroom this week on Hysteria 51.
Sources:
- National Archives – Project BLUE BOOK: Unidentified Flying Objects
- https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos
- U.S. Air Force – The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert
- https://www.af.mil/The-Roswell-Report/
- All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) – Historical Record Report, Volume I
- https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Vol_1_2024.pdf
- AARO – Congressional and Press Products
- https://www.aaro.mil/Congressional-Press-Products/
- U.S. Department of Defense – DOD Report Discounts Sightings of Extraterrestrial Technology
- https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3701297/dod-report-discounts-sightings-of-extraterrestrial-technology/
- U.S. Department of Defense – Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena
- https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/Unidentified-Anomalous-Phenomena/
- HISTORY – Hangar 18, UFOs and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
- https://www.history.com/articles/hangar-18-ufos-aliens-wright-patterson
- Air & Space Forces Magazine – USAF and the UFOs
- https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0611ufo/
- NICAP – Barry Goldwater UFO Correspondence / Wright-Patterson and Curtis LeMay
- https://www.nicap.org/people/goldwater.htm
- Barry Goldwater – 1975 Wright-Patterson/UFO Correspondence
- https://rense.com/general35/ufodat.htm
- Barry Goldwater – Larry King Radio Interview, 1988
- https://www.ufocasebook.com/blueroom.html
- Leonard H. Stringfield – Retrievals of the Third Kind
- https://www.earthfiles.com/2005/09/30/part-3-retrievals-of-the-third-kind-a-case-study-of-alleged-ufos-and-occupants-in-military-custody/
- James Clarkson – June Crain Interview Transcript
- https://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/crain_clarksoninterview.pdf
- Thomas J. Carey & Donald R. Schmitt – UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson: Eyewitness Accounts from the Real Area 51
- https://www.loc.gov/item/2020715969/
- Thomas J. Carey & Donald R. Schmitt – UFO Secrets Inside Wright-Patterson – Google Books
- https://books.google.com/books/about/UFO_Secrets_Inside_Wright_Patterson.html?id=eZpyDwAAQBAJ
- National Archives – UAP Records: Textual and Microfilm Records
- https://www.archives.gov/research/topics/uaps/textual-and-microfilm
- National Archives – UAP Records Bulk Downloads
- https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/catalog-bulk-downloads/uap-bulk-download
- FBI Vault – UFO Files
- https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO
- Wikipedia – Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright-Patterson_Air_Force_Base
- Wikipedia – Hangar 18
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(conspiracy_theory)
Email your Contest Entries to:
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show:
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop:
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
31 August 2026, 5:00 am - 20 minutes 34 secondsSkulls, Stallions, and Seriously Bad Decisions | 521
This week on Hysteria 51, we’re asking the important questions: What exactly can’t you donate to Goodwill, and how convincing does your fake horse semen laboratory need to be before the government stops asking questions?
First, a human skull mysteriously turns up at a Michigan Goodwill. And no, it wasn’t an old medical specimen gathering dust in somebody’s attic. The FBI is now involved, DNA testing is underway, and somewhere a thrift-store employee has officially won “Worst Donation to Unpack.”
Then we gallop across the pond to England, where a couple received permission to build a stallion semen laboratory and instead built themselves a lovely two-story house. Because apparently “equine reproductive science facility” is the British planning-permission version of wearing a fake mustache.
Human remains, FBI investigators, zoning shenanigans, demolished dream homes, and more horse semen than anyone expected to discuss this week. Saddle up. Things are about to get weird.
Links & Resources
Email us your Contest Topics:
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
26 August 2026, 5:00 am - 47 minutes 30 secondsAlpine Aliens: The UFO Photos That Won’t Die | 520
A landed flying saucer. A mysterious humanoid pilot. A frozen Italian glacier. Multiple photographs. And a 1952 UFO encounter that still gets passed around social media today as some of the clearest evidence of extraterrestrial visitation ever captured. Sounds pretty darn convincing, right?
Head to the Bernina Alps with us as we investigate the bizarre case of Giampiero Monguzzi, the Italian photographer who claimed he and his wife witnessed a metallic UFO land near the Scerscen Glacier, watched a strange suited figure inspect the craft, and snapped a series of incredible photos before the saucer lifted off and disappeared toward Switzerland.
It has everything you could want from a classic UFO encounter: eerie silence, a landed spacecraft, an apparent alien occupant, multiple photographs, and a mystery that continues bouncing around Facebook, TikTok, and the darker corners of the internet more than 70 years later.
But there’s a reason you probably aren’t seeing the whole story in those viral posts. And once you start digging beyond the photographs, things take a very interesting turn.
So did Monguzzi capture one of the greatest pieces of UFO evidence in history? Or is there something hiding just outside the frame? We dig into the encounter, the famous photographs, the strange little visitor, the worldwide press frenzy, and the part of the story social media conveniently tends to leave out. All that and more this week on Hysteria 51.
Sources
- Corriere della Sera – Mistero bUFO: “Ufo, falsi o veri? La storia del caso Monguzzi”
- https://misterobufo.corriere.it/2013/10/06/ufo-falsi-o-veri-la-storia-del-caso-monguzzi/
- Ufopedia – “1952/07/31 9:15, Ghiacciaio Scerscen, Lanzada, Lombardia, Italia”
- https://ufopedia.it/1952/07/31_9%3A15%2C_Ghiacciaio_Scerscen%2C_Lanzada%2C_Lombardia%2C_Italia%2C_UE.html
- University of Warwick – Fantascienza e ufologia nell’opera di Inisero Cremaschi, Gilda Musa e Giuseppe Pederiali
- https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/167606/1/WRAP-Fantascienza-e-ufologia-nell-opera-di-Inisero-Cremaschi-Gilda-Musa-e-Giuseppe-Pederiali-1967-1978-Camilletti-22.pdf
- Alfredo Panicucci – “Ha fotografato il marziano per diventare giornalista,” Epoca, Vol. III, No. 109, November 8, 1952
- Saturday Night Uforia – “In the News 1952, Part Fifty-One”
- https://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/articles/articlehtml/itn52part51.html
- INTCAT – 1952 Humanoid Encounter Catalogue
- https://intcat.blogspot.com/2012/08/intcat-1952.html
- Flying Saucer Review – Lou Zinsstag, “Monguzzi Takes Saucer Photos of the Century,” Vol. 4, No. 5, September–October 1958
- Podcast UFO – “A UFO Photographed in the Italian Alps”
- https://podcastufo.com/a-ufo-photographed-in-the-italian-alps/
- Italiador – “UFO: Lo straordinario caso Monguzzi”
- https://www.italiador.com/ufo-lo-straordinario-caso-monguzzi/
- Think AboutIt UFO/UAP Archive – “1952 Bernina ‘Saucer Photos’: The Monguzzi Hoax Exposed”
- https://thinkaboutitdocs.com/1952-bernina-mountains-italy/
Email your Contest Entries to:
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
24 August 2026, 5:00 am - 19 minutes 17 secondsOld Beer, Mad Beavers, Bad Decisions | 519
This week on Hysteria 51, we’re cracking open the weirdest six-pack history ever forgot and then running for our lives from nature’s angriest lumberjacks.
First, divers recover a 162-year-old bottle of Guinness from an 1864 shipwreck, and scientists hope its remarkably preserved contents could help recreate the stout as it tasted in the 19th century. Because apparently archaeology has finally stopped wasting time on pottery fragments and started focusing on what matters: ancient beer.
Then we head to Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland, where two teenagers were attacked in separate incidents by rabid beavers, one severe enough to require an airlift to the hospital. The animals later tested positive for rabies, portions of the park were closed, and humanity was reminded that the adorable little dam engineers have teeth capable of choosing violence.
So grab a pint, avoid suspiciously aggressive woodland rodents, and join us for shipwrecked Guinness, historic beer recipes, rabid beaver attacks, weird news, and enough poor decision-making by man and nature to fill a podcast.
Links & Resources
Email us your Contest Topics:
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
19 August 2026, 5:00 am - 1 hour 45 minutesClairvius Narcisse and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Zombie Life | 518
What if you died, got pronounced dead by doctors, buried by your family, and then showed up 18 years later with one hell of an excuse for missing Thanksgiving? Enter the bizarre true story of Clairvius Narcisse, the Haitian man who allegedly became a real-life zombie after being poisoned, buried alive, dug back up, drugged, and forced into labor.
We explore the terrifying history of Haitian zombies and Vodou, Wade Davis and his controversial search for zombie powder, and the surprisingly real science behind pufferfish toxin, tetrodotoxin, Datura, paralysis, and premature burial.
Could ancient knowledge of neurotoxins actually turn someone into a living zombie, or did science take a fascinating Haitian tradition and run a little too far with it? Plus, we examine the skeptics and competing explanations that make the answer considerably messier than "dead people don't walk."
Poison fish, stolen souls, questionable pharmacology, family land disputes, zombie plantations, and perhaps the worst return-to-work story in human history... All that and more this week on Hysteria 51.
Sources
- Wade Davis – The Serpent and the Rainbow
- https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Serpent-and-the-Rainbow/Wade-Davis/9780684839295
- Wade Davis – Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie
- https://books.google.com/books?id=tVxZAAAAMAAJ
- Wade Davis – “The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombi” – Journal of Ethnopharmacology
- https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-8741(83)90029-6
- William Booth – “Voodoo Science” – Science
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3353722
- Wade Davis – “Zombification” – Science
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.3381089
- Roland Littlewood & Chavannes Douyon – “Clinical Findings in Three Cases of Zombification” – The Lancet
- https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(97)04449-8
- Harvard Magazine – “The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead”
- https://www.harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/zombie_1986_small.pdf
- TIME – “Zombies: Do They Exist?”
- https://time.com/archive/6697896/medicine-zombies-do-they-exist/
- PBS American Experience – “What Happened When Zora Neale Hurston Studied Voodoo in Haiti?”
- https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/claiming-space-when-happened-when-zora-neale-hurston-studied-voodoo-haiti/
- Zora Neale Hurston – Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
- https://www.harpercollins.com/products/tell-my-horse-zora-neale-hurston
- Library of Congress – “Does the Haitian Criminal Code Outlaw Making Zombies?”
- https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/10/does-the-haitian-criminal-code-outlaw-making-zombies/
- Chen-Yuan Kao & Takeshi Yasumoto – “Tetrodotoxin Intoxication: A Worldwide Problem” – Toxicon
- https://doi.org/10.1016/0041-0101(86)90067-8
- Jean Price-Mars – “The Story of Zombi in Haiti”
- https://sites.duke.edu/haitilab/files/2014/11/Mars-1945-The-story-of-zombie-in-haiti.pdf
Email your Contest Entries to:
Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:
Support the Show
Get exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1
Shop
Be the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!
https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
17 August 2026, 5:00 am - More Episodes? Get the App