True Crimes Behind The Costumes: Murders, Myth, And The Dark Side Of October 31

Send us Fan MailFear feels different when the mask is human. We open the door on Halloween’s darkest corridors: the father who poisoned his son with a cyanide Pixy Stix, the Toolbox Killers’ taped cruelty on a night meant for candy, and the times real corpses were dismissed as decorations under porch lights. From Detroit’s Devil’s Night arsons to a wolf mask at a front door and the Napa murders linked to a friend, the stories unfold like a horror anthology with one recurring villain: us.We also trace how panic distorts truth. The Angela Palmer case sits inside the fog of the 1980s Satanic Panic—one crime rooted in delusion, many others wrongly imagined. Then the chill shifts from blood to signal: a radio call from a woman describing her own fatal crash, and the 35 phone calls family received after Charles Peck died in a train collision. Static, grief, and meaning collide, raising the question of what lingers after the body stops.Amid the dread, we reconnect with older roots. Samhain reminds us that masks were once protection, not performance. Some listeners feel a 2012–2025 cycle closing, a collective pressure building toward change rather than doom. We end on home ground, wandering Michigan’s haunted lighthouses, silent roads, and deep lakes where legends wait just beyond the tree line. Come for the true crime, stay for the folklore, and leave with sharper eyes for the night. If the veil is thin, let’s walk it together. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves dark history, and leave a review telling us which story will haunt you tonight.Support the show