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Disturbing History

Disturbing History-True Stories

The past isn’t always dead. Sometimes, it’s just been buried... and it’s time to dig it up. Disturbing History is a weekly podcast that dives headfirst into the strange, spooky, and little-known stories that history tried to forget. From secret societies and sinister folklore to lost colonies, unsolved mysteries, and events too dark for your high school textbook — this is where the shadowy corners of the past finally get their time in the spotlight. Hosted by author, investigator, and storyteller Brian King-Sharp, each episode is a deep, immersive journey into the stories that disturb us — and the ones we have to disturb to uncover the truth. So if you're drawn to the uncomfortable, obsessed with the unexplained, or just can’t shake the feeling that some things never should’ve been buried… You’re not alone. Follow. Subscribe. Turn on auto-downloads. And get ready to disturb history.

  1. DH Ep:66 Shadows Over the White House

    10H AGO

    DH Ep:66 Shadows Over the White House

    Tonight's episode takes you inside the most famous house on the planet for two stories that are equally strange and equally disturbing. The first is about a ghost that won't leave. Abraham Lincoln is the most frequently reported spirit in the history of the White House, seen by presidents, first ladies, prime ministers, and queens over the span of more than a hundred and fifty years. But this isn't just a ghost story. It's a deep dive into Lincoln's own fascination with the supernatural, the séances held inside the White House after the death of his son Willie, and the explosive Spiritualism movement that swept across Civil War-era America as a nation drowning in grief searched desperately for a way to talk to its dead. Winston Churchill saw him. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands fainted at the sight of him. Eleanor Roosevelt felt him standing behind her. And the sightings have never stopped. The second story is a murder mystery that took a hundred and forty-one years to investigate. President Zachary Taylor dropped dead in eighteen fifty, just five days after a Fourth of July celebration, and his death handed the presidency to a man who immediately reversed everything Taylor had fought for. Taylor was a slaveholder who'd turned against slavery's expansion, and his death was the single most convenient thing that could've happened for the pro-slavery forces trying to pass the Compromise of eighteen fifty. In nineteen ninety-one, a university professor convinced the state of Kentucky to dig him up and test his remains for arsenic. What they found, and what they didn't find, is a story that raises as many questions as it answers.Two presidents. One who never left the building, and one who left it far too soon.

    1h 20m
  2. DH Ep:66 Shadows Over the White House-Vault Access

    18H AGO • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    DH Ep:66 Shadows Over the White House-Vault Access

    Tonight's episode takes you inside the most famous house on the planet for two stories that are equally strange and equally disturbing. The first is about a ghost that won't leave. Abraham Lincoln is the most frequently reported spirit in the history of the White House, seen by presidents, first ladies, prime ministers, and queens over the span of more than a hundred and fifty years. But this isn't just a ghost story. It's a deep dive into Lincoln's own fascination with the supernatural, the séances held inside the White House after the death of his son Willie, and the explosive Spiritualism movement that swept across Civil War-era America as a nation drowning in grief searched desperately for a way to talk to its dead. Winston Churchill saw him. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands fainted at the sight of him. Eleanor Roosevelt felt him standing behind her. And the sightings have never stopped. The second story is a murder mystery that took a hundred and forty-one years to investigate. President Zachary Taylor dropped dead in eighteen fifty, just five days after a Fourth of July celebration, and his death handed the presidency to a man who immediately reversed everything Taylor had fought for. Taylor was a slaveholder who'd turned against slavery's expansion, and his death was the single most convenient thing that could've happened for the pro-slavery forces trying to pass the Compromise of eighteen fifty. In nineteen ninety-one, a university professor convinced the state of Kentucky to dig him up and test his remains for arsenic. What they found, and what they didn't find, is a story that raises as many questions as it answers.Two presidents. One who never left the building, and one who left it far too soon.

    1h 20m
  3. DH Ep:65 The Curse Of Oak Island

    FEB 11

    DH Ep:65 The Curse Of Oak Island

    In this episode, we travel to a tiny, hundred-and-forty-acre island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, where a mystery first uncovered by three teenagers in 1795 has consumed fortunes, destroyed lives, and killed six men over the course of more than two hundred and thirty years. We start with sixteen-year-old Daniel McGinnis and his discovery of a mysterious depression on Oak Island, complete with oak log platforms buried every ten feet underground. From there, we trace the full history of the Money Pit — the Onslow Company's excavation and the catastrophic flooding at ninety feet, the Truro Company's discovery of the ingenious flood tunnel system at Smith's Cove, and the parade of treasure hunters who followed, from Frederick Blair's sixty-year obsession to a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt's involvement as an investor in 1909.We cover the darkest chapter in Oak Island's history — the Restall Tragedy of August 17, 1965, when former daredevil Robert Restall, his twenty-four-year-old son Bobby, and two coworkers were killed by toxic gas in a shaft on the island.  We talk about Robert Dunfield's destructive brute-force excavation, Dan Blankenship's fifty-year obsession and his terrifying near-death experience inside Borehole 10-X, and the decades of legal battles that nearly killed the treasure hunt entirely.Then we bring it into the modern era with Rick and Marty Lagina, two brothers from Michigan who purchased most of the island in 2006 and turned the search into a global phenomenon through the History Channel's The Curse of Oak Island, now in its thirteenth season. We examine the key artifacts recovered over the years — a medieval lead cross, human bones with Middle Eastern DNA, a five-hundred-year-old gemstone, coconut fiber that has no business being in Canada, and stone pathways in the swamp dating back centuries. We also break down the major theories about what's buried on the island, from pirate treasure and the French Crown Jewels to Knights Templar relics and the skeptic's argument that the whole thing is a natural sinkhole.  And we talk about the curse — the legend that seven men must die before the treasure can be found. Six have. The seventh hasn't. Yet. As of February 2026, the treasure has not been found. The digging continues.This is Disturbing History.

    1h 17m
  4. DH Ep:65 The Curse Of Oak Island-Vault Access

    FEB 11 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    DH Ep:65 The Curse Of Oak Island-Vault Access

    In this episode, we travel to a tiny, hundred-and-forty-acre island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, where a mystery first uncovered by three teenagers in 1795 has consumed fortunes, destroyed lives, and killed six men over the course of more than two hundred and thirty years. We start with sixteen-year-old Daniel McGinnis and his discovery of a mysterious depression on Oak Island, complete with oak log platforms buried every ten feet underground. From there, we trace the full history of the Money Pit — the Onslow Company's excavation and the catastrophic flooding at ninety feet, the Truro Company's discovery of the ingenious flood tunnel system at Smith's Cove, and the parade of treasure hunters who followed, from Frederick Blair's sixty-year obsession to a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt's involvement as an investor in 1909.We cover the darkest chapter in Oak Island's history — the Restall Tragedy of August 17, 1965, when former daredevil Robert Restall, his twenty-four-year-old son Bobby, and two coworkers were killed by toxic gas in a shaft on the island.  We talk about Robert Dunfield's destructive brute-force excavation, Dan Blankenship's fifty-year obsession and his terrifying near-death experience inside Borehole 10-X, and the decades of legal battles that nearly killed the treasure hunt entirely.Then we bring it into the modern era with Rick and Marty Lagina, two brothers from Michigan who purchased most of the island in 2006 and turned the search into a global phenomenon through the History Channel's The Curse of Oak Island, now in its thirteenth season. We examine the key artifacts recovered over the years — a medieval lead cross, human bones with Middle Eastern DNA, a five-hundred-year-old gemstone, coconut fiber that has no business being in Canada, and stone pathways in the swamp dating back centuries. We also break down the major theories about what's buried on the island, from pirate treasure and the French Crown Jewels to Knights Templar relics and the skeptic's argument that the whole thing is a natural sinkhole.  And we talk about the curse — the legend that seven men must die before the treasure can be found. Six have. The seventh hasn't. Yet. As of February 2026, the treasure has not been found. The digging continues.This is Disturbing History.

    1h 17m
  5. DH Ep:64 "In Event of Moon Disaster"

    FEB 8

    DH Ep:64 "In Event of Moon Disaster"

    In July of 1969, while the world watched Apollo 11 head for the Moon, a speech sat folded in a White House desk drawer. Written by Nixon speechwriter William Safire, the memo titled "In Event of Moon Disaster" was a contingency address prepared for the very real possibility that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would never leave the lunar surface.  The ascent engine that had to fire to bring them home had no backup and had never been tested under actual lunar conditions. If it failed, two men would die on the Moon while the world listened. This episode breaks down Safire's memo line by line, examining the rhetoric, the political strategy, and the emotional weight behind every word. We explore the grim contingency planning happening simultaneously in Houston, where young flight controllers faced the unbearable question of how long to maintain communication with a stranded crew.  We talk about the Cold War stakes that made failure not just a tragedy but a potential strategic defeat for the United States, and how Nixon's political survival was tangled up in the outcome of a single rocket engine. We also dig into the moments that nearly made the speech necessary, from the computer alarms during descent to the broken circuit breaker switch that Aldrin fixed with a felt-tip pen. We discuss Michael Collins, the often-forgotten third astronaut who would have had to fly home alone, and what that journey would have meant for the rest of his life. The episode covers the memo's discovery in 1999 by journalist James Mann in the National Archives, the way it reframed the Apollo 11 story for a generation that had only known the triumph, and the unsettling 2020 MIT deepfake project that used AI to show Nixon delivering the speech that was never given. This is the story of the speech that was written to never be read, and what it reveals about courage, fear, and the impossibly thin line between humanity's greatest achievement and its greatest disaster.

    1h 16m
  6. DH Ep:64 "In Event of Moon Disaster"-Vault Access

    FEB 8 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    DH Ep:64 "In Event of Moon Disaster"-Vault Access

    In July of 1969, while the world watched Apollo 11 head for the Moon, a speech sat folded in a White House desk drawer. Written by Nixon speechwriter William Safire, the memo titled "In Event of Moon Disaster" was a contingency address prepared for the very real possibility that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would never leave the lunar surface.  The ascent engine that had to fire to bring them home had no backup and had never been tested under actual lunar conditions. If it failed, two men would die on the Moon while the world listened. This episode breaks down Safire's memo line by line, examining the rhetoric, the political strategy, and the emotional weight behind every word. We explore the grim contingency planning happening simultaneously in Houston, where young flight controllers faced the unbearable question of how long to maintain communication with a stranded crew.  We talk about the Cold War stakes that made failure not just a tragedy but a potential strategic defeat for the United States, and how Nixon's political survival was tangled up in the outcome of a single rocket engine. We also dig into the moments that nearly made the speech necessary, from the computer alarms during descent to the broken circuit breaker switch that Aldrin fixed with a felt-tip pen. We discuss Michael Collins, the often-forgotten third astronaut who would have had to fly home alone, and what that journey would have meant for the rest of his life. The episode covers the memo's discovery in 1999 by journalist James Mann in the National Archives, the way it reframed the Apollo 11 story for a generation that had only known the triumph, and the unsettling 2020 MIT deepfake project that used AI to show Nixon delivering the speech that was never given. This is the story of the speech that was written to never be read, and what it reveals about courage, fear, and the impossibly thin line between humanity's greatest achievement and its greatest disaster.

    1h 15m
  7. DH Ep:63 The Night I Turned Off the Grammys

    FEB 4

    DH Ep:63 The Night I Turned Off the Grammys

    Something happened the other night that got me thinking. I sat down to watch the Grammy Awards, expecting a celebration of music. What I got instead felt more like a political rally than an awards show. And it made me ask a question I think a lot of us have been asking quietly. When did everything become political? When did we lose the ability to just enjoy things together? This episode is different from our usual content. No serial killers. No mass graves. No presidents with dark secrets. But the most disturbing changes in history aren't always the obvious ones. Sometimes they're the ones that seep in slowly, so gradually you don't notice until you wake up one day and the world doesn't feel like the world you remember.I want to be clear from the start. This isn't a political rant. I'm not trying to change your mind or tell you how to vote. I'm not saying the issues people care about don't matter. They do. What I am saying is that something has shifted in our culture over the past two decades, and I think it's worth talking about honestly. The way entertainment became activism. The way corporations discovered that appearing virtuous was good for business. The way social media algorithms learned that outrage keeps us engaged. The way we lost the shared spaces that used to bring us together despite our differences. This is a conversation I've been wanting to have for a long time. I hope you'll stick with me through it.

    1h 17m
  8. DH Ep:63 The Night I Turned Off the Grammys-Vault Access

    FEB 4 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    DH Ep:63 The Night I Turned Off the Grammys-Vault Access

    Something happened the other night that got me thinking. I sat down to watch the Grammy Awards, expecting a celebration of music. What I got instead felt more like a political rally than an awards show. And it made me ask a question I think a lot of us have been asking quietly. When did everything become political? When did we lose the ability to just enjoy things together? This episode is different from our usual content. No serial killers. No mass graves. No presidents with dark secrets. But the most disturbing changes in history aren't always the obvious ones. Sometimes they're the ones that seep in slowly, so gradually you don't notice until you wake up one day and the world doesn't feel like the world you remember.I want to be clear from the start. This isn't a political rant. I'm not trying to change your mind or tell you how to vote. I'm not saying the issues people care about don't matter. They do. What I am saying is that something has shifted in our culture over the past two decades, and I think it's worth talking about honestly. The way entertainment became activism. The way corporations discovered that appearing virtuous was good for business. The way social media algorithms learned that outrage keeps us engaged. The way we lost the shared spaces that used to bring us together despite our differences. This is a conversation I've been wanting to have for a long time. I hope you'll stick with me through it.

    1h 16m
See All (130)

4.8
out of 5
28 Ratings

About

The past isn’t always dead. Sometimes, it’s just been buried... and it’s time to dig it up. Disturbing History is a weekly podcast that dives headfirst into the strange, spooky, and little-known stories that history tried to forget. From secret societies and sinister folklore to lost colonies, unsolved mysteries, and events too dark for your high school textbook — this is where the shadowy corners of the past finally get their time in the spotlight. Hosted by author, investigator, and storyteller Brian King-Sharp, each episode is a deep, immersive journey into the stories that disturb us — and the ones we have to disturb to uncover the truth. So if you're drawn to the uncomfortable, obsessed with the unexplained, or just can’t shake the feeling that some things never should’ve been buried… You’re not alone. Follow. Subscribe. Turn on auto-downloads. And get ready to disturb history.

Information

  • Creator
    Disturbing History-True Stories
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    130
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Paranormal World Productions LLC
  • Show Website
    Disturbing History
  • Provider
    Brian King-Sharp

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