In the summer of 2016, children at a South Carolina apartment complex ran out of the woods screaming. They said there were clowns in the trees. No one believed them. Within weeks, the sightings had spread across the country, school lockdowns, armed mobs, arrests, and a panic so intense that McDonald’s benched Ronald McDonald. But where did it actually start? The answer is stranger than the legend.

Then: Halloween night, 1974. An eight-year-old boy in Pasadena, Texas eats a piece of candy from his trick-or-treat bag. He’s dead within the hour. For fifty years, parents have checked their children’s candy because of what happened that night but the real story is darker than the urban legend it created.

TW: Child death

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

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Halloween and Spooky Season bring many haunted attractions and events for people to attend and have a little fun, get a little scared. But what if I told you some of those scares aren’t props and dummies after all? In fact, it is way more common than you’d think for real corpses to be mistaken for Halloween decorations. Today we’re digging into some real deadly haunted attractions, from a High School production gone wrong to Disney Paris and a Queens basement the fire department called a death trap; these are the haunted attractions where the horror stopped being part of the show.

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet.

Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding 

Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order.

Open your SoFi Checking & Savings account today - head to https://sofi.com/HeartStarts to get started.

They were warned: make a movie about the Devil, and the Devil will try to stop you. What followed were plane crashes, bombings of film locations, animal attacks, and a real-life decapitation that mirrored a scene from the film itself. From The Omen to Nosferatu, these are the horror movies where the curse might have been real, and the truth behind it is even stranger than the legend.

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet.

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TW: Suicide

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Today I’m telling you some true scary stories of people living in haunted houses, including my own! These are stories that will make you question: is your house cursed, or are you? Please join me, cozy up, and get a little scare for the start of Spooky Season! (Although for most of us, it’s a year-round affair 👻) If you have some of your own spooky stories, submit them at: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/stories and maybe I will tell your tale next!

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet.

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Nick and Mindi Kassotis believed they were being hunted. According to friends and family, Nick's classified military work had put them both in danger, so much so that Mindi rarely left the house. But the couple also shared they were expecting a child. Then, just after Thanksgiving, Mindi died suddenly in the hospital. Soon after, Nick died too. That's what everyone who loved them believed, that is until a woman's dismembered remains turned up in a wooded area. Stories started to unravel and a mysterious new figure emerged. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty separates fact from fiction in a case built upon unimaginable layers of deception. Available now.

link.pscrb.fm/f0281/witwfeeddropinhsp-dfaf6

To Catch a Predator was the biggest franchise in true crime television until a sting in Murphy, Texas spiraled into one of reality TV's darkest disasters. This is the story behind the show's most unexpected catch, and how it ultimately ended the show’s long-standing reputation as “the good guys” on TV. These are the facts of the story that inspired “Primetime,” A24’s movie starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen. 

TW: Child Abuse, SA, Suicide

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet.

Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook "Kaelyn's Cookbook" and get 40% off your first order plus a free item in every box for life at https://hungryroot.com/HSP Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order

Today, we’re revisiting the details of the Lizzie Borden trial. In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked to death in their locked Fall River home while their 32-year-old daughter Lizzie was the only other person inside. Over 130 years later, the case is still officially unsolved and now serves as the inspiration for Ryan Murphy’s latest installment of the "Monster" series. Let’s dive into mounting family resentment, the evidence the jury never heard, and Lizzie’s lavish lifestyle after the murders. 

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet.

Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

In Canada's Northwest Territories, Nahanni Valley stretches across eleven thousand square miles of pristine wilderness, and it's been swallowing people whole for over a century. From the headless remains of prospectors Willie and Frank McLeod in 1908 to filmmaker Angus MacKenzie, who survived a plane crash and then vanished without his supplies, the valley's death toll has never stopped growing. The Dene people have always known to stay away but, the question is what keeps claiming the men who don't.

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet.

Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

Today I’m sharing a special bonus episode from Clues, where we dig into the infamous d4vd case and the murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez.
In April 2024, 13-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez vanished from Lake Elsinore, California. Seventeen months later, her remains turned up in the trunk of an impounded Tesla at a Hollywood tow yard. The car was registered to rising R&B star named David Burke, known to millions as d4vd. We unpack the case that's been dominating the headlines all summer. 
Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Follow wherever you get your podcasts or listen here

TW: Child Abuse, SA of a minor, Grooming

A creepy neighbor ruins cousin sleepovers forever when he takes it too far. A blind date turns into a fertility ritual!? An online stranger messages a private photo to an OP that was never posted previously, and a boyfriend discovers that his partner is hoarding every single thing he disposes of…yes, everything…it gets gross. Today we’re getting into some of the craziest stories from the internet with Angela from Smosh and Morgan from Two Hot Takes. 

TW: Stalking 

Find Angela here! https://www.instagram.com/angelagiovanagiarratana/?hl=en 

Find Morgan here! https://www.instagram.com/twohottakes/?hl=en 

Listen to mentioned episodes here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01d0Km1IHcg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS_6HxCb0kQ

https://youtu.be/9To4Mxnam7A?si=lkSbhMfwHq9rIm09&

Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon.

Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet.

Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding 

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About Heart Starts Pounding

Hosted by Kaelyn Moore, Heart Starts Pounding explores the terrifying, the mysterious, and the downright spooky. Kaelyn brings you chilling true crime, unexplained phenomena, and haunting stories from across the globe and submitted by listeners like you.

Have a heart-pounding story to tell or a case request? Submit your story at https://www.heartstartspounding.com/stories

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From the Maldives Cave System, where five divers entered with no proper permit or certification, of which none survived, to Norway's deepest cave passage, where friends launched an illegal recovery for two men sealed underground, to a flooded Laos gold mine where trapped miners waited 10 days to see the light. Today, we’re covering the disasters connected by the rescue teams determined to recover everyone.

TW: Drowning

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