Arcanum Obscura

Well, this is it, it's been 6 years, we've laughed, we've cried, we've... talked a shit ton about death and murder and monsters. To be serious, we did this because we enjoyed doing it, we never chased numbers or followed analytics yet somehow for a short time we became a #1 True Crime podcast in some country I can't even remember AND got ourselves banned in Singapore (which is even cooler). We joked a lot about the 2 fans we had, and we were shocked when we found out we had so many, I don't recall the number because it was years ago but it was shocking to see. To sum it up, we thank you all for listening to us, we hope we brought you interesting stories and hope we made you laugh at times as well, after all, our goal was to make this not a deep drive but to feel like just hanging out with friends and talking. Thank you once again to all of our listeners, the world is scary right now, especially our own country, stay safe, be kind and farewell.

This week we go back a bit to darker crime, David Parker Ray aka The Toybox Killer. And a huge trigger warning for this episode. We've probably all heard this horrid story and all about this monster, I myself have seen a few documentaries and crime shows about him only recently did I actually find and hear the infamous cassettes he would play. So this week, instead of how we normally do true crime we talk a little then in his own words via the cassette audio the monster describes the atrocities he commit. The way he talks and describes things in a tone like its normal feels more impactful and shows what a true monster he was then if we just talked about the atrocities.

Nate brings an interesting story this week, a relatively local cryptid I hadn't heard of yet, a strange humanoid like creature, a slaughter of a settlement, then a slaughter of the killers, and the cryptid perhaps something akin to a spirit or entity of vengeance, pretty cool little story.

This week, since the extended delay we get into a bit of a soup episode, just a little soup, then a little crime mixed in. After we ramble I cover a little of the serial killer Isreal Keyes.

Nate brings us this story this week and I personally enjoyed this one. In 1980 men in disquise deliver a bamob to Harvey's Resort Hotel and Casino with ransom demands as well as the claim they didn't wish to hurt anyone and told the authorities involved exactly how much explosives there were and how far of a radius to clear people to keep them safe, what follows though is interesting and then ridiculous.

We're closing in on the end, and how else to end other than by talking about a doomsday cult, a cult who believed the world would end on December 31st, 1999, and then another date when the first time didn't work out as expected. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, who were undecided on when the world would end, then decided to take matters into the own hands with a death toll they believe to be over 900.

We're getting close to the end and wanted to squeeze in one more episode of r/nosleep stories. We each have a story we liked and have brought them to you today, crediting the author as always of course, we hope you enjoy them.

We're getting close to the end and wanted to squeeze in one more episode of r/nosleep stories. We each have a story we liked and have brought them to you today, crediting the author as always of course, we hope you enjoy them.

Nates story on the last episode had me curious about other notable executions that didn't go as planned. So this week we have six short stories about other cases where this happened and what followed.

This week after are usual ramblings we talk about the unhangable man, John “Babbacombe” Lee. Nate brings us this story which is rather interesting. A story of a man, the gallows, and fate denied. Or possibly not denied as he may have been innocent.

Nate has an interesting story this week about a remote tribe that seems to have knowledge about space and specific celestial bodies they should not have, as well as their beliefs based around this knowledge.

We finally were able to get back together to record, and as per usual that means a bunch of talking. So this week is half soup episode and half conspiracies. Tackling two small conspiracies, one involving immortality of the mind and secret societies and the other is about how aliens caused the bubonic plague.

Nate comes at us with a conspiracy theory/creepy story thats new to me. A story about Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a Maltese Catacomb that has some interesting history as well as a few interesting and rather creepy stories.

Last episode I had mentioned during our short hiatus that three bodies had been found in my area. All within a week or so during October, and one was found in the area I work. On Thursday I heard more info on one of the "human remains", the victim was a woman from the UK, it's a sad a strange story and we talk about it this week.

We haven't left, life has been busy and we haven't been able to record lately. And as our listeners know if we don't record for a couple weeks we ramble and catch up a lot more, since we haven't recorded in several weeks we opted for a soup episode.

A horrid true crime this week, The Vampire of Sacramento. This week we talk about this monster, his descent into madness and mental issues leading up to horrible crimes that escalate to a murderous climax. Within the span of a few days Richard Chase leaves a wake of excessively gruesome and horrific murders.

This week Nate talks about a possible incident of a time slip. When Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, a principal and her assistant respectively, head to travel around Paris they have an unexpected incident at the Palace of Versailles.

As always a bit of rambling, a theory about a book series we tend to talk about often and a look at two fairy folklore, this episodes a bit shorter then usual due to some time constraints

A young woman, Amy Lynn Bradley, goes missing while on a cruise with family. What follows is a series of sightings each showing he desperation to be saved. Each sighting also adding to the tragedy and darkness of what may have happened and what became of Amy.

Back with another r/nosleep episode. I pop into NoSleep on and off to read stories and see if there's any good or interesting ones to enjoy. I bring two stories that I thought were pretty good this week.

This is an interesting story due to it crossing genres. After our standard rambling we talk a bit about the Watts Family murders, the horrible crime Chris Watts brought upon his wife and daughters, this then leads into the Watts Family home where a few police body camera footage files have been released containing plenty of strange occurrences including several EVP's seemingly directly from or tied to the Watts family.

Hello hello hello, this week we have an Appalachian Cryptid, the Not-Deer. It's an interesting deer not-deer type creature, I find the Appalachian stories rather interesting because they tend to not be too far out there, at least the ones I've read and heard to this date. After that I (Chris) talk about a night terror I recently had, the first I've ever had, it was a short and unpleasant event.

We start off with a few cryptids and move into some small interesting philosophy theories and thought experiments. Nate has some rather... interesting cryptids this week, like the globster and the walking table.

We have a soup episode this week, which means we talk about anything and everything and jump all over the place, and for a portion we talk a little about missing white woman syndrome which came about from a docuseries I watched and I know we've talked about it before

Hello hello hello, Nate did have plans for a paranormal episode but as we've found with paranormal stories they tend to be hard to find good ones. Lots of great stories but most are brief incidents and little to no legend of backstory, when we do find more we like to cover them. So sticking to the scary story idea he revisits r\NoSleep, and as you all know we love NoSleep and tend to read through them in our free time and bring some of the ones we find interesting here.

A few episodes back we talked about the unsolved case of Jeannette DePalma who is thought to have possibly been a victim of the man we cover today, Richard Cottingham aka The Torso Killer aka The Times Square Ripper.

We have a couple horrible cases this week, brought to you by Nate. The first case, most of you have probably heard of, is horrendous these usually tend to be my realm but now Nate has brought us one. There is a pretty in depth docu on this case you can find on streaming services and I would recommend it if you won't to learn more of this poor child's ordeal. The second case involves a family with thirteen children and is awful as well, but we end on a more positive note with this one.

We love NoSleep so we're venturing back to some stories from there today, partly because our personal schedules have been so busy as of late, as well as working on our finale episode little by little and getting things in place for our new cast. We hope you enjoy these stories and we'll be back with a new episode as soon as we can.

So the show is all Nate on this one. We start in St. Petersburgh Florida with a case of a murder suicide pact that doesn't go as planned, this case only happened last month, Feb 2025, not even a month yet. After this case Nate moves on to two cases that confused him when he was looking into them and confused me as well as he tells the story, the confusion sets in with both suspects having the same name, Nathan Brooks, so two kids, the same name, one case in 1995 in Ohio dubbed The Dark Prince of Bellaire, the other in 2013 in Washington, having the same name it makes it confusing when you find articles and don't note the date since the two kids both tried and one succeeded with murdering their parents.

This week we do our usual catching up with some of Nates academy stories and then he brings us this interesting story. A girl with seemingly everything, a second girl, the victim, with perfect grades and possibly a bright future. One party, one incident that changes everyone's lives around them.

Back to a little true crime, this was an odd case since there isn't much info and it stills remains unsolved today. There were plenty of rumors but not much evidence to work with, then the disappearing and reappearing case files. This case is possibly tied to a serial killer but after nearly 50 years it's still unsolved.

Due to job schedules and holidays we haven't been able to get together to record, and if your a listener you tend to know what that means. We ramble on and talk way too much to get to a story, so... that's what happened.

This week, UAP’s, this week is less about sightings and more about the gov’t acknowledging UAP’s, their definition of what constitutes a UAP and the federal site where we can go to view casefiles and conclusions investigations.

We are back, and as you know if we miss a week we tend to banter more then usual, now we've missed a month due to holidays and vacations and we did have a plan for the episode but decided we're going to ramble way too much so lets just do a soup episode. So, soup episode number three is here for your ears to devour.

We have some updates this week on previous episodes. First we have the Missouri Dungeon case, this is the case of the woman who escaped the homemade dungeon of Timothy M. Haslett. This case is still underway and during her captivity Haslet had threatened her by saying he had two other victims hat hadn't made it out. We know this wasn't just empty threats anymore and one earlier victim has been identified as well as murder charges being added to his current list of charges. We hope the police continue the investigation to find if there was another victim as well so they may all have justice. The Delphi Murder trial has currently been going for just over a week. Some new information has come out as evidence, mainly images of the scene and sadly Abby and Libby. This case isn't going to be an open and shut case as everyone had hoped. The defense is currently focusing on the "poor quality" images of the bullet used as evidence to tie Richard Allen to the scene, and also the lack of any DNA evidence of his. Hopefully justice will be served for Abby and Libby, their families as well as friends.

This week we have some strange deaths to talk about. Nate comes with the always unusual spontaneous human combustion. Most of us have heard about the woman he talks about; images of the scene are pretty prevalent when you look into this strange phenomenon. After that, and too not get into too much detail here, I go into some hospitals in South Africa that seem to have a probably with bodies in ceilings.

We are back, the hurricane prevented recording last week but here we be. This week we are going with the idea Nate had a few weeks back, talking about strange stories that were reported by people in the military.

We had an idea for this weeks episode, we had intended to talk about strange paranormal or supernatural occurrences reported during wartime, or within the military. At the last minute I changed the plan, I wanted to talk about my sister and her murder. Its not a crazy story nor is it very long with tons of characters and wild strange twists, it's just what happened. I believe I have mentioned it before in some episodes and I felt like talking about it this week, maybe for personal closure or just felt it was right to talk about it.

Nate had an idea for looking at some supernatural and paranormal incidents during wartime. We have all heard of the common ones like foo fighters and gremlins though we may still delve into them. As he was looking for some he came across this reddit story and decided to share it. Honestly after hearing it and learning this is only the 1st part of 5 I'm going to go read the rest because it was interesting and left too many questions still.

We've talked about skinwalkers before but this week I thought it may be interesting to dig through some subreddits and find personal encounters with skinwalkers, so we come with a few stories of different peoples experiences with possible skinwalkers. I read through several and decided on a few that felt pretty interesting.

This is a pretty rough case like some others I have done, while reading and researching the case I found that thankfully a lot of the explicit details weren't presented in the sources I read from, this doesn't in anyway lessen how horrible this case was and what was done to these individuals but what I can only describe as monsters. I apologize for how I'm talking in this episode, due to getting over covid again I'm a bit short of breath still.

Nate takes control this week and brings some stories of crimes committed through. We've all heard some of these stories, not necessarily the ones Nate brings today, but warnings and unfortunate events that happen due to people either giving out too much information on the internet and social media or being lured through chat to real life locations. One of the stories Nate has in this episode is a familiar one to most of you, the craigslist murders.

This was a tough episode, not as in hard to talk about, but hard to write anything for so we take a different approach this week. I have a list of strange possibly morbid traditions from around the world and tell them to Nate then we talk a little about each one.

After a two week hiatus we are back with some Florida man stories. It is a crazy place down here and I'm sure you've all heard some crazy stories about this state so we decided to share a few crazy ones we found. The main one I cover is actually really close to where I live and I heard nothing of it until specifically looking for Florida man stories.

First up the story of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese group. Was she a willing or unwilling participant? Did she have Stockholm syndrome? It's a tricky one to tell given some of the things that happened. After that I have a short snippet about the great Wisconsin cheese heist.

If you've listened to a good amount of our episodes you may know I tend to bring the horrific stories compared to what Nate brings to the table. This week is no exception, I start us of with The Hi-Fi Murders, what is initially believed to be a robbery in 1974 takes a much darker turn, sadly leaving three dead and two scarred for life. Following that up Nate talks a little about the Geezer Bandit, a bank robber who appears to be in his 70's but there may be more to it.

True crime this week. Nate talks about something he found on reddit, the story of Tom Justice, a bank robber who was known as the Choir Boy and later the Bicycle Bank Robber, I do prefer the first name do to why they called him that and I also feel what he did with what he stole also fit that name. Then I talk about the murder David Auchterlonie. It's a sad tale of a pointless murder, or a thrill kill as a judge described it since there was no reason for what happened to happen.

Another true crime episode. This week I have The Kurim Case which is a pretty horrific case involving children, though not much for details on that part of the case. The was more focus on the perpetrators and the bizarre twist. Nate follows that up the the case of Mr. DuBoise, to be honest, this case pissed me off, not to give anything away but the evidence was ridiculous as well as all those involved in prosecuting this case.

For anyone who doesn't know, a soup episode is where we just talk and joke and ramble on about anything. No stories, no creepy games, nor any true crime. Just us rambling about whatever. I explain the soup episode origins in the episode, but if the talking part of our podcast is your least favorite part I'd skip soup episodes.

This week we have another creepypasta game. This time around it's The Devil Game, a little game/ritual to someone the devil in order to talk to him, asks questions, and possibly play some mind games. This one is a bit longer then the other "games" ones we've done but I enjoyed reading it and thought our listeners may as well. We recently missed a couple weeks of episodes and now Nate has gone on vacation so we may miss next week and possibly the week after, but we will be back in a couple weeks tops and as always we hope you enjoy this episode.