In March 1997, a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California became the site of one of the most unsettling mass deaths in modern history. 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate group were found arranged in identical clothing, their deaths carefully planned and documented. Led by Marshall Applewhite, the group had spent decades developing a belief system that blended religion, science fiction, and extraterrestrial salvation, teaching that Earth was temporary and that a spacecraft from the “Next Level” would come to take them home. As comet Hale-Bopp comet appeared in the 1990s, their beliefs crystallised into a final act they described not as suicide, but as “graduation.” This episode explores how the group formed and how belief created one of the most haunting cult cases in American history.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the late 1970s, Sacramento was shaken by a series of brutal killings carried out by Richard Trenton Chase, a man later labelled the “Vampire Killer.” Convinced that his blood was being poisoned and that he needed to survive by taking blood from others, his behaviour escalated from harming animals to attacking people. In just one month, six lives were taken. This episode explores who Richard Chase was, how his beliefs developed, and how a suburban city became the backdrop for one of the most disturbing true crime cases in American history.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Cottingley Fairies might not seem like the kind of story you’d expect on Paranormia. There’s no crime scene and no shadowy figure in the woods. Instead, it begins with two cousins in a small Yorkshire village, a stream behind their house, and a borrowed camera meant to prove a simple claim… that they had been visiting fairies.

In 1917, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright produced photographs that appeared to show tiny winged figures dancing beside Cottingley Beck. What could have stayed a family joke quickly spread far beyond the village. The images reached Theosophists who believed they were proof of hidden worlds, and eventually Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who published them in The Strand magazine and argued they might change how people think about reality.

This episode explores how a childhood hoax became an international story, and why so many people, in a world still recovering from war and loss, wanted to believe it.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.