A respected historian. A flat full of dolls. And a discovery that turned a cemetery investigation into something far darker.

This bonus feed-swap episode is a special cross-promotion with our friends over at Fringe Beyond Limits, who bring us their take on Anatoly Moskvin, the Russian historian and linguist better known as the Doll Maker. In 2011, police investigating grave desecrations in Nizhny Novgorod searched Moskvin’s apartment and found what appeared to be life-sized dolls. They were, in fact, mummified remains taken from local cemeteries, dressed, arranged, and treated as if they were still alive.

Topics Included

• Anatoly Moskvin and the Doll Maker case
• the 2011 Nizhny Novgorod grave desecration investigation
• the mummified bodies found inside Moskvin’s apartment
• Moskvin’s fascination with cemeteries and burial rituals
• the childhood story linked to his fixation on death
• the use of clothing, wigs, glass eyes, and music boxes
• the psychiatric evaluation and paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis
• the impact on victims’ families
• debates around justice, mental illness, and cemetery security

• Hosts:  Frank, Brie and Lynette
• Website: https://fringebeyondlimits.com/
• Listen on Spotify: Fringe Beyone Limits
• Listen on Apple: Fringe Beyons Limits

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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DashCon 2014 was supposed to be Tumblr’s great real-world fandom convention. Instead, it became one of the internet’s most infamous event disasters: a chaotic weekend of guest cancellations, volunteer confusion, a sudden $17,000 hotel panic, the Welcome to Night Vale fallout, and one tiny ball pit that became a meme so powerful it practically achieved sentience.

Today we unpack how DashCon went from sincere community dream to public internet humiliation. We’ll trace the Tumblr culture that made the convention possible, the amateur planning and budget fantasy that made it unstable, and the disastrous decisions that turned a fandom gathering into a cautionary tale about what happens when online enthusiasm meets real-world logistics.

Was DashCon a scam, a failure of good intentions, or simply catastrophic incompetence with a ball pit attached? Today, we dive into the failed Tumblr convention that became internet history.

Topics Include

• tumblr culture before it spilled across the wider internet
• how dashcon went from fandom fantasy to real convention
• the $17,000 hotel panic and the welcome to night vale fallout
• why the ball pit became the meme that outlived the event
• the difference between bad intentions and catastrophic incompetence

Resources and Further Reading

• DisasterCon: how a fan convention’s big dream became a nightmare - The Verge
• The inaugural DashCon 2014 did not go as planned - The Daily Dot
• DashCon organizers tell their side of the con disaster story - The Daily Dot
• DashCon - Fanlore
• The Story of Dashcon - Youtube (Sarah Z)
• The Failure of Dashcon - Youtube

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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Taylor Parker had already been caught in one impossible lie: she claimed she had given birth on the side of a highway, but doctors quickly realised she had not been pregnant at all.

In Part 2 of the Taylor Parker case, we go behind the fake pregnancy and into the years of deception prosecutors said led to the murder of Reagan Hancock and the death of Braxlynn Sage. This is the part of the story where the scattered lies start to form a pattern: invented illnesses, fake inheritances, forged paperwork, spoofed phone calls, false identities, and a relationship with Wade Griffin built inside a world Taylor had manufactured around him.

Then the story moves into the crime scene, the investigation, and the Taylor Parker trial, where prosecutors argued this was not confusion, panic, or a tragic misunderstanding, but calculated deception carried to its most horrific conclusion. A restrained but deeply unsettling true crime story about fantasy, control, and the moment a lie becomes too dangerous to survive.

Topics Include

• the Taylor Parker case part two
• the fake pregnancy and Wade Griffin deception
• forged paperwork, fake identities, and invented inheritances
• Reagan Hancock and the final escalation
• the foetal abduction of Braxlynn Sage
• Jessica Brookes’ discovery of the crime scene
• Taylor Parker’s changing explanations after arrest
• the trial evidence and death sentence
• jailhouse schemes and fake confession letters
• why Reagan and Braxlynn remain the centre of the story

Resources and Further Reading

• Parker v. State of Texas - Justia
• Taylor-Parker-Probable-Cause-Affidavit - Document Cloud
• Texas woman sentenced - CNN

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon

Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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