Terror Talk: True Crime, Serial Killers and Horror

Shannon & Cathy | Terror Talk
  • 4.5 (35)
  • True Crime
  • Updated Daily

Terror Talk is a true crime and horror podcast hosted by two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, dissecting serial killers, psychopaths, and the dark minds behind true crime and horror cinema. Shannon (PhD, LMFT) and Cathy (PhD, forensic psychology). 600+ episodes on serial killer psychology, criminal profiling, cold cases, unsolved murders, cults, coercive control, narcissism, and the horror movies two therapists review every week. Expert clinical insight. Genuine dark humor. New episodes every week. Follow now and join us on Patreon. Lock your doors. 🔒

  1. 09/21/2022

    PROFILE: Jim Jones Part 3 The Indiana KKK, Prohibition & Jonestown

    How does a boy raised in Klan country grow up to build a movement preaching racial equality using the Klan's own playbook? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode discusses the Ku Klux Klan, racism, mental illness, and the origins of the Jonestown cult. Listener discretion is advised. Part three of a five-part series on Jim Jones. He's three years old, and the family has just moved from Crete, Indiana — population 28 — to Lynn, Indiana, population 950, where his father's family finally steps in to help. This is the episode about the world outside the house, and it holds the most striking argument in the series. In a single year, from 1922 to 1923, registered Ku Klux Klan membership in Indiana went from 445 people to almost 118,000 — the largest organisation of any kind in the state. But the Indiana Klan barely bothered with racial hatred, because the state was under 3% Black. Instead it ran on better public schools and prohibition, and it got into small towns by sponsoring community picnics and parades, paying for everything, and leaving the impression that these were decent people with familiar Christian values. Therapists Shannon and Cathy lay that agenda out — then point at what Jim Jones did with it decades later. He built a community by infiltrating one, offering what people already wanted, and running a political programme under a moral cover. Same method, pointed instead at racial equality, integration and socialism. Whether he knew he was doing it is an open question. In this episode: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana — 445 members to 118,000 in one year, and how they actually recruitedWhy the Indiana Klan pushed schools and prohibition instead of racial hatredJim Jones's inversion of that playbook into integration and socialismThe lie Jones preached from the pulpit — that he was biracial, his father part Cherokee. There wasn't an ounce of it.The abuse story that doesn't add up: his father could barely breatheProhibition in a town of 900 — proudly dry, where locals still apologise for liquor stores nearbyLynetta Jones alienating a whole community, leaving Jimmy as her only audience — and a town that decided he was a victimThe first two lessons his mother taught him: reality is whatever you make it, and someone is always out to get you Clinical concepts: the narcissistic mother and the child as sole audience · mirroring as a condition of love · early environmental shaping · how ideology is absorbed before it can be evaluated · victim identity as a learned strategy Sources: Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown · Lynetta Jones's own writings · the FBI's confiscated Jim Jones recordings, archived at San Diego State University The Jim Jones series — all five parts: ⁠Part 1 ⁠— Jonestown's cult leader and his parentsPart 2 — birth, breakdown, and the move to Lynn, Indiana (this episode)Part 3 — the cultural influences that shaped him⁠Part 4⁠ — narcissism, deeply ingrained⁠Part 5⁠ — the making of a cult leader and mass murdererAlso on cults: our Season 9 premiere, CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1. Two licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.🌐 terrortalkpodcast.com | 💜 patreon.com/terrortalk📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising Search terms: Jim Jones KKK · Ku Klux Klan Indiana · Indiana Klan 1920s · Lynn Indiana Jim Jones · Lynetta Jones · prohibition Indiana · Jim Jones childhood · Jeff Guinn Road to Jonestown · narcissistic mother #JimJones #KuKluxKlan #KlanIndiana #LynnIndiana #Jonestown #PeoplesTemple #Prohibition #NarcissisticMother #TrueCrimePsychology #TerrorTalkPodcast

    PROFILE: Jim Jones Part 3 The Indiana KKK, Prohibition & Jonestown

  2. 09/14/2022

    PROFILE: Jim Jones Part 2 Lynetta Jones, Lynn, Indiana & Jonestown

    What was happening in the house on the day the man who would orchestrate Jonestown was born? ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode discusses mental illness and the origins of the Jonestown cult, including references to mass death. Listener discretion is advised. Part two of a five-part series on Jim Jones. This one covers his birth, why Lynetta Jones became pregnant in the first place, James Jones's mental breakdown, and the family's move to Lynn, Indiana — the small town where Jim Jones actually grew up. Therapists Shannon and Cathy keep building the psychological picture from reported behavior and historical record: what a father's collapse does to a household, what a mother's reasons for having a child can set in motion, and how a move to a town of a few hundred people shapes a boy who would later need thousands of them to follow him. Still hypothetical analysis, and still explicit about where the evidence ends. In this episode: Why Lynetta Jones became pregnant — and what she wanted from itThe birth of Jim JonesJames Jones's mental breakdown and what it cost the familyThe move to Lynn, IndianaHow early instability shows up decades later Clinical concepts discussed: parental mental illness and its effect on children · family systems under collapse · maternal expectation and the assigned role · small-town isolation · the limits of retrospective analysis The Jim Jones series — all five parts: Part 1 — Jonestown's cult leader and his parentsPart 2 — birth, breakdown, and the move to Lynn, Indiana (this episode)Part 3 — the cultural influences that shaped himPart 4 — narcissism, deeply ingrainedPart 5 — the making of a cult leader and mass murderer Also on cults: our Season 9 premiere, CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1, on how a group turns ordinary people into killers. Two licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.🌐 terrortalkpodcast.com | 💜 patreon.com/terrortalk📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising Search terms: Jim Jones birth · Lynetta Jones pregnancy · James Jones mental breakdown · Lynn IndianaJim Jones · Jim Jones childhood · Jonestown cult leader origins · true crime psychology podcast #JimJones #LynettaJones #JamesJones #LynnIndiana #JonestownAnalysis #CultLeaderOrigins #TrueCrimePsychology

    PROFILE: Jim Jones Part 2 Lynetta Jones, Lynn, Indiana & Jonestown

  3. 4d ago

    SHRINK CHAT: Disclosure Day, Obsession, Evil Dead Burn, The Shards

    What does horror actually do to the person watching it and do this season's releases earn the reaction they're going for? Season 9 of Shrink Chat opens with Evil Dead Burn, the series Silo and The Shards, and a run through the rest of what's landed lately: Disclosure, Obsession, They Will Kill You and Passenger. Therapists Shannon and Cathy review them the way nobody else does, not on scares per minute, but on whether the psychology holds up: what the films get right about fear, grief, control and the way people actually behave under threat, and where they reach for a cheap shortcut instead. Reviewed in this episode: Evil Dead BurnSilo (series)The Shards (series)They Will Kill YouDisclosureObsessionPassengerForbidden FruitWhistlePlus, horror trivia and games with Cathy More from Season 9: S9E1 CULTS Part 1: how a group turns ordinary people into killersTwo licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

  4. Sep 2

    CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1

    How does a nurse, a teacher, a software engineer end up participating in mass death? Shannon walks Cathy through the clinical pathway that turns ordinary people into killers using Heaven's Gate, the Zizians, and Jonestown to prove the same mechanism runs every single time. ⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode includes discussions of mass suicide, murder, death by poisoning including the deaths of children, cult coercion and coercive control. Listener discretion is advised. Season 9 opens with the question that sits underneath every cult story ever told: how does a group turn ordinary people into killers? Not people who were always dangerous. A nurse. A teacher. A college student. A software engineer. Someone whose neighbors would describe them as quiet and kind. Shannon takes the lead on this one, and the argument is deliberately uncomfortable; the pathway from ordinary person to cult member to participant in mass death is not about weakness, mental illness, or stupidity. It's about psychology. And it runs the same way every single time, whether you're looking at a California mansion in 1997, a Silicon Valley rationalist community in 2025, or a settlement in the Guyanese jungle in 1978. Same process. Different costume. Three cases, deliberately chosen because they have nothing in common but the mechanism. Heaven's Gate believed human bodies were containers for extraterrestrial souls. The Zizians organized around AI existential risk and analytic philosophy. Peoples Temple organized around socialism and racial justice. Cosmic, rationalist, political; three completely incompatible belief systems, one identical psychological structure underneath. That structure is what Shannon and Cathy spend the episode taking apart. Robert Jay Lifton's eight criteria of thought reform. Margaret Singer's self-dissolution process. Erich Fromm on why freedom is psychologically expensive enough that people will trade it away. Jung's Mana Personality, which explains why a leader's word can override what you can see with your own eyes. And running through all of it, Albert Bandura's moral disengagement — the four specific mechanisms by which a person with an intact conscience does something monstrous and does not experience themselves as monstrous while doing it. The core argument, and where the episode lands: The most dangerous thing about a cult isn't the leader. It's the moment when the group becomes more real to you than your own perception. That isn't weakness. That's how human psychology works. And knowing that is the only protection. Heaven's Gate · Marshall Applewhite · Bonnie Nettles · Rancho Santa Fe, California · March 26, 1997 · 39 dead · the Next Level · "the Demonstration" The Zizians · Ziz LaSota · rationalist and effective altruism communities · AI existential risk · "undead" and "p-zombie" ideology · six deaths, 2025–2026 Peoples Temple · Jim Jones · Jonestown, Guyana · November 18, 1978 · 918 dead, 304 of them children · White Night rehearsals · the largest mass death of American civilians before 9/11 Clinical terms: thought reform · coercive control · moral disengagement · self-dissolution · cognitive dissonance · milieu control · dehumanization · DDD syndrome · the Mana Personality · the ShadowThis is Part 1 of a three-part Cults series. Part 2 goes into ritual violence. Part 3 goes deeper into contemporary cases Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound. 📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

    CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1

  5. Aug 26

    SHRINK CHAT: Iron Lung, The Backrooms, Spider Noir - Horror Reviews 2026

    What does it mean to be scared in 2026? Horror Facts with Cath is back — and so is the watch list that somehow kept growing. This month Shannon and Cathy work through thirteen titles across film and series, from a claustrophobic submarine nightmare and a wedding week that was never going to end well, to a spider in a 1930s trench coat and a medical examiner who doesn't know when to quit. This episode covers: Film: Iron Lung — claustrophobic, gorgeous, more blood than any horror film in historyThe Backrooms — A24's liminal space debut from the youngest director to ever hit number one at the box officeHokum — Damian McCarthy's follow-up to Oddity, atmospheric Irish horrorLee Cronin's The Mummy — demon possession, practical gore, and a Blumhouse/Atomic Monster collaborationWhistle — teen slasher meets cursed artifact meets Final Destination logicThrash — hurricane sharks, Netflix, Tommy Wirkola, exactly what it sounds likeUndertone — audio-driven A24 horror built almost entirely on sound designReturn to Silent Hill — the third attempt to adapt the greatest horror game ever madeSend Help — 2026's genre wildcardScream 7 — Sidney Prescott returns. Ghostface returns. Shannon and Cathy have thoughts.Series: Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — Netflix, Duffer Brothers produced, wedding horror, 8 episodes of dreadScarpetta — Nicole Kidman as Kay Scarpetta, Prime Video, forensic thrillerSpider-Noir — Nicolas Cage as a 1930s New York superhero-turned-private investigator, Prime VideoTwo licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical marriage and family therapist — reviewing horror so you know what's worth your time and what's worth avoiding entirely. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

  6. Jul 1

    FEMALE PSYCHOPATH: Jodi Arias, Gypsy Rose & Villanelle - Real & Fictional Women of the 2010s

    Who gets called a psychopath and who just refused to perform grief the right way? Part 4 of Shannon and Cathy's decade-by-decade Female Psychopath Series lands in the 2010s; a decade that gave us some of the most psychologically complex and culturally fascinating dangerous women in both true crime history and popular culture. This episode covers: True crime: Jodi Arias — the courtroom theatrics, the manipulation, the clinical picture behind one of the most watched murder trials in American historyJoanna Dennehy — Britain's rare female serial killer and what her case tells us about female violenceGypsy Rose Blanchard — Munchausen by proxy, coercive control, and an almost impossible story of survival and culpabilityKatherine Knight — Australia's most notorious female killer and the psychology behind decades of escalating violenceFiction: Villanelle (Killing Eve) — making psychopathy look like the most interesting personality on televisionAmy Dunne (Gone Girl) — redefining what a female villain could beCersei Lannister (Game of Thrones) — weaponizing every system around herRose Armitage (Get Out) — the smile that hid everythingTherapists Shannon and Cathy bring their clinical lens to the real and the fictional — unpacking what these women have in common, where they diverge, and what the 2010s' cultural obsession with dangerous women tells us about female psychology, female rage, and female power. Part 4 of 4. The Female Psychopath Series concludes here. Previously in the series: Part 1: Female Psychopaths of the 1980s (S8E4)Part 2: Female Psychopaths of the 1990s (S8E9)Part 3: Female Psychopaths of the 2000s (S8E18)Two licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical marriage and family therapist — analyzing the psychology of real killers and fictional villains so you don't have to wonder what's actually going on. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

  7. May 29

    PROFILE: Gary Ridgway, The Green River Killer Part 2

    In Part 1 we followed the investigation. Now Shannon and Cathy go somewhere far more unsettling, inside Gary Ridgway's head. What does it actually take to live a double life for nearly two decades? To hold down a job, get married, attend church, and kill without remorse? In Part 2, our two therapists unpack the psychological machinery behind one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. Ridgway's profile wasn't that of a thrill-seeking sadist, it was something arguably more chilling: a methodical, compulsive need to kill driven by psychopathy and paraphilic disorders. Shannon and Cathy dig into the cognitive dissonance that allowed him to rationalize his crimes, the narcissism that ultimately helped investigators break him, and what his case reveals about the darkest intersections of psychology and violence. If Part 1 asked how he wasn't caught sooner. Part 2 asks who he really was. Buckle up. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound. 📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising.

  8. Apr 22

    PROFILE: Gary Ridgway, The Green River Killer Part 1

    How does a predator this prolific go undetected for so long? He held the same job for 30 years, married three times, and attended church on Sundays. Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, was hiding in plain sight for nearly two decades while methodically strangling scores of women across King County, Washington. In Part 1 of this two-part true crime deep dive, therapists Shannon and Cathy apply their criminal psychology expertise to one of the most baffling serial killer investigations in American history. From the bodies first discovered along the Green River in 1982 to the failed polygraph that pushed Ridgway down the suspect list for years, this episode traces the jaw-dropping failures and near-misses of one of the longest unsolved serial killer cases in American history, and what they reveal about the limits of criminal profiling and forensic investigation. Shannon and Cathy bring their clinical lens to what made Ridgway so psychologically elusive, so dangerous, and so disturbingly easy to overlook. If you think you know this case, think again. Part 2 drops next and it goes somewhere darker. Until then... sleep safe. 😴 🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound. 📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls 🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

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About

Terror Talk is a true crime and horror podcast hosted by two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, dissecting serial killers, psychopaths, and the dark minds behind true crime and horror cinema. Shannon (PhD, LMFT) and Cathy (PhD, forensic psychology). 600+ episodes on serial killer psychology, criminal profiling, cold cases, unsolved murders, cults, coercive control, narcissism, and the horror movies two therapists review every week. Expert clinical insight. Genuine dark humor. New episodes every week. Follow now and join us on Patreon. Lock your doors. 🔒

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