Thinking Sideways Podcast

In 1933, Hungarian pianist Rezső Seress composed a song titled Gloomy Sunday, but is now known as the Hungarian Suicide Song due to the reportedly high number of people who commit suicide while listening to it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For nine months in 1898 two Tsavo lions hunted and killed men working on the railroad being built in across the Tsavo river. But what drove them to view humans as food? Lack of their normal prey, injuries, or just a taste for human blood? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In an incident suspiciously similar to the Ken McElroy episode--except that there was no bullying redneck, no pickup truck and no gunfire--hundreds of residents of Pont St. Esprit in France found themselves hallucinating wildly. 7 died and many were institutionalized, and speculation is that it could have been ergot poisoning... or a CIA plot. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 16th century, Spanish cartographers mapped an islet off the Yucatan peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. However, in a 1997 survey, the island had disappeared. Were the Spanish wrong? Or did the USA blow up the island for personal gain? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On August 21st, 1955, unidentified creatures came to a farmhouse in Kentucky. The people in the house were so frightened that they opened fire and for 3 hours the creatures kept popping their heads up in front of the doors and windows until finally the family headed to town for reinforcements. No evidence of the creatures was ever found so did they really exist or was the whole thing made up? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

20-yr-old Morgan Ingram was stalked and tormented for 4 months until December 2011, when she was found dead of an apparent drug overdose. Police ruled it a suicide, but Morgan's parents say she was murdered. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On March 22nd, 2011, Disney Wonder crew member Rebecca Coriam went missing. Disney's handling of the case has been anything but perfect and speculation still swirls around the mysteriously upsetting phone call she had when she was last seen on CCTV. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On August 11th 2005 Lana Stempien and Chuck Rutherford disappeared from their 27' boat several hours travel time from their intended destination. The US Coast Guard found the boat deserted, two weeks later Lana's body washed ashore. Chuck's body has never been found and nobody knows what happened to them. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Following up on our episode about Atlantis, we’re releasing the rest of our conversation with Mark Adams, author of Meet Me In Atlantis, who knows a lot more about the subject than we do. Where did the story come from? Why are there so many potential sites? Whats the deal with the math? Mark gives us his take on these and other questions. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato revealed the existence of a lost continent called Atlantis. Was Plato's tale true? Or did he just make it up? A lot of people have been trying to figure that out for a long time now. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When police responded to the suicide of Joseph Newton Chandler III, they figured it would be pretty routine. He'd shot himself in the head in his apartment, case closed. However, when probate lawyers took hold of the case, they found out that the real Joseph Newton Chandler III had died 57 years prior in a car accident with his parents. This now John Doe has never been identified, but clues into his life are nothing if not intriguing. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On May 16, 1984 comedian Andy Kaufman died from cancer. Or did he? Kaufman, the king of taking a joke so far that no one knew when it would end, or if it was even a joke, apparently told his friends that he wanted to stage his own death. Almost immediatly after his funeral people started seeing Andy everywhere. Was the dead man really him? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In May 1941 Rudolf Hess, the 3rd most powerful man in Nazi Germany and a close friend of Hitler, climbed into a Messerschmidt Bf 110 fighter and flew solo to Scotland, with the avowed intent of single-handedly brokering a peace deal with Britain. Hitler was reportedly furious and felt betrayed, and issued an order for Hess to be shot on sight if he returned to Germany. Why did Hess fly to Scotland? And was Hitler really totally in the dark? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When a DA goes missing, the world takes notice. Ray Gricar was sitting DA in Centre Country, Pennsylvania when one day he simply did not return home. Theories at the time ranged from suicide to walk-off, but years later, a high profile case made people wonder if something more sinister had taken place. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On March 22nd, 2009, the body of luchador Abismo Negro was found drown under a bridge near El Rosario Mexico. Appearing to be in an unusually agitated state he had demanded that the driver of the bus he was on pull over in seemingly the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. No one knows what happened to him between the time he exited the bus and when his body was found the next day. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Following up on our episode about Queen Elizabeth I, we’re releasing the rest of our conversation with Seth Margolis, author of The Semper Sonnet, who knows a lot more about Elizabeth and Elizabethan England than we do. Did Elizabeth secretly have a child? Or was she actually a guy? Seth gives us his take on these and other questions. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Queen Elizabeth I of England died in 1603, the Tudor line of monarchs ended. Though a lot of people have speculated that maybe it didn't quite... Did Elizabeth I have a child? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On August 18th 2010 Ben McDaniel dove into the cave in Vortex Spring in Ponce de Leon Florida. He was never seen again and after years of searching the cave no diver has ever found his body. Is his body in the cave... or somewhere else? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan left Papua New Guinea in a twin-engine Lockheed airplane, bound for Howland Island, a tiny island 2,550 miles to the east. They were never seen again, and speculation as to their fate continues to this day. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this special short, we discuss what happened in April 1990: four men set off in the boat Casie Nicole for a seven day fishing trip. Five days later, one of them was picked up floating, alive, in a wooden bait-box, but with no sign of the other three men. To this day their fate is unknown. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.