Monthly Spooky Premiere: Centralia Mine Fire, Sharks and Strange News

This 2022 crossover preserves the handoff from This Show is Awkward to Monthly Spooky. Henrique Couto and Michelle thank the Awkward listeners, settle into the crypt and introduce a longer mix of bizarre headlines, horror talk and dark history. It is the first Monthly Spooky episode shared on this feed, not a newly launched show today.The strange-news round begins with a monster-hunting kit assembled by a six-year-old, complete with defenses against vampires, werewolves and witches. Michelle and Henrique also investigate whether spiders fear other spiders, revisit a cluster of sand tiger shark encounters near Long Island, descend into the story of an ancient forest found inside a giant sinkhole in China and meet Nala, the lost dog who slipped into a Tennessee couple’s house and climbed into bed during a storm. These stories are discussed as headlines from the original recording.Centralia, Pennsylvania, supplies the main event. The hosts trace the underground coal-mine fire, competing accounts of how it began, evacuations and eminent-domain battles that emptied most of the town. They remember their own visit to Centralia several years earlier, its cemeteries and the abandoned stretch of Route 61 known as the Graffiti Highway. The episode also explores Centralia’s popular association with Silent Hill without treating that familiar comparison as a settled statement about the game’s single real-world inspiration.There is even more tucked inside: Michelle introduces her WEBTOON Canvas zombie comic At the End of Everything; the hosts react to Rob Zombie’s The Munsters trailer and Jordan Peele’s Nope; and a Reddit "glitch in the matrix" story about a strangely groomed feral cat opens questions about memory, carbon monoxide and parallel worlds. Sharks, vampires, spiders, a town burning belowground and two friends making each other laugh—this is Monthly Spooky finding its voice.LinksWeekly Spooky Email Monthly Spooky: [email protected]