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The Haunted Bunker: Paranormal Mysteries & the Unexplained

Black Label
  • 4.2 (138)
  • History
  • Updated Weekly

Paranormal encounters. Cryptid sightings. UFO reports. Unsolved mysteries that defy explanation. Welcome to The Haunted Bunker—where mysteries hide. Each week, brothers Shane and Josh Waters take turns presenting the unexplained to each other. One brother researches the mystery, one reacts fresh—and the gang explores alongside us. This isn't a debate show. We don't debunk. We don't prove. We PRESERVE mysteries with wonder and respect for the witnesses who experienced them. From Bigfoot and Mothman to haunted locations and phenomena that science can't explain—if it makes you wonder "what if?"—we're diving in. 🗓️ New episodes every Tuesday  ⭐ Premium members: Early access Fridays + exclusive Unmasked episodes on Patreon and Apple Podcasts Join the gang. The bunker door is open. Where Mysteries Hide.       

  1. CrimeCon Las Vegas: Survivors, Stings & the Sphere

    Jun 16 • Subscriber Early Access

    CrimeCon Las Vegas: Survivors, Stings & the Sphere

    Shane and Kim are back from Las Vegas, and the bunker has some catching up to do. Josh spent the week working twelve-hour shifts, so the gang skips the mystery, pulls up chairs, and settles in for a full CrimeCon debrief instead. No Unmasked this week. It all got folded into one long hangout, exactly the way these conversations want to go. The trip got off to a rocky start. Caesars Palace, home base for CrimeCon this year, hid its elevators, parked Shane and Kim a half-mile hike from the front desk, and kept the minibar fridge locked unless they paid thirty dollars a night to open it. Shane tried to outsmart the system and scored a free fridge. Jinkies, what a victory, until a maid arrived carrying a cooler barely big enough for eight cans. Then there was the TUMI store in the fancy mall next door, where Shane walked in to browse and walked out with a confession he swore he would never make, least of all into a live microphone. The CrimeCon sessions themselves were some of the most powerful the gang has ever sat through. Detectives who worked the 2017 Las Vegas shooting walked the audience through what happened inside Mandalay Bay. Epstein survivors sat down with Chris Hansen, and one of them described being warned that holding everyone in the files accountable could topple governments. Her answer: let it fall. At the Clue Awards, the survivors were honored with the Crime Fighter of the Year award. And in a backstage hallway, Shane gave directions to a friendly stranger, then walked into the survivors session the next day and realized exactly who he had been chatting with. Hansen even invited Shane to join an upcoming sting operation in Michigan, an offer he is still grinning about. Then Las Vegas itself took over. The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere came with wind effects, seats that rattled through the tornado, and drones standing in for flying monkeys. The gift shop nearly did more damage than the twister, with one shirt priced at a hundred dollars. There was Fremont Street at five in the evening, despite an Uber driver's warning that nothing gets going before eleven. And there was the gentlest driver in all of Nevada, whose calm, precise "Yes, ma'am" became the trip's unofficial catchphrase. Mix in Kim's neighbor saga, the great tipping-screen debate, and a postcard from Greenville, South Carolina, and you have a proper night in the bunker. CrimeCon heads to Orlando next year. Shane's mystery returns next week. What you'll hear in this episode: The CrimeCon sessions that stuck with the gang: the Las Vegas shooting detectives, Epstein survivors with Chris Hansen, and the Clue Awards Chris Hansen inviting Shane on a sting operation in Michigan The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere, complete with wind, rumbling seats, and flying monkey drones The locked fridge standoff at Caesars Palace and the tiniest free fridge in Nevada A tipping-screen showdown and the Uber driver the gang will never forget

    1h 3m
  2. Lovelock Cave and the Si-Te-Cah

    5d ago

    Lovelock Cave and the Si-Te-Cah

    The gang investigates a mystery where the legend came first and the archaeology came second. In 1883, Northern Paiute author Sarah Winnemucca published something extraordinary. In "Life Among the Piutes," she described an ancient enemy her people called the Si-Te-Cah. Red-haired. Cannibals. According to Paiute oral tradition, the tribes united against them, cornered them in a cave, and set it on fire. Winnemucca wrote that she personally possessed their hair, handed down through her family for generations. Twenty-nine years later, two guano miners cracked open a cave eighteen miles south of Lovelock, Nevada. Under six feet of bat droppings, they found thousands of artifacts, mummified human remains, and something that stopped researchers in their tracks: some of the mummies had red hair. The oral tradition was on paper before anyone touched the cave. Tonight, Shane brings this mystery to the gang. They walk through the full timeline: Winnemucca's 1883 account, the 1911 guano mining discovery, the formal excavation that recovered ten thousand artifacts from a single cave, and the 1924 discovery of eleven duck decoys now recognized as the oldest waterfowl decoys in the world. Nevada made them the official state artifact in 1995. The originals sit at the Smithsonian. Then the story takes a turn. A 1931 newspaper claimed skeletons measuring eight and ten feet tall had been found near Lovelock. The "red-haired giants" narrative exploded across fringe media, YouTube, and at least two History Channel segments. But when physical anthropologist Dr. Sheilagh Brooks examined the so-called giant bones in the 1970s, she found people about six feet tall. Some of the bones labeled "giant" turned out to be from cows. Jinkies. So the giants were debunked. The 2018 DNA analysis confirmed the Lovelock Cave people carried Native American haplogroups. The science explains the red hair as a chemical reaction: dark hair changes color in dry, alkaline cave environments over centuries. But the science does not explain everything. The Paiute described the Si-Te-Cah as people who used spear-throwers instead of bows. The archaeological record at Lovelock Cave shows a documented weapons transition from atlatls to bows in the tool layers. The legend matches a detail in the dirt. And Winnemucca said they had reddish hair before anyone pulled a mummy out of that cave. The mystery stays open. The gang explores it all. What you'll hear in this episode: The full Sarah Winnemucca quote about the Si-Te-Cah and the mourning dress How two guano miners accidentally uncovered four thousand years of history The world's oldest duck decoys and why they matter What Dr. Sheilagh Brooks actually found when she measured the "giant" bones The atlatl-to-bow detail that nobody can fully explain Two Shit Fire stories from Nevada that have to be heard to be believed Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    58 min
  3. The Lady in Red | Tonopah's Mizpah Hotel

    Jun 2

    The Lady in Red | Tonopah's Mizpah Hotel

    There's a five-story hotel in the Nevada desert where guests wake up to find a single pearl on their pillow. Nobody brought it. Housekeeping didn't put it there. The staff keeps a guest ghost story book at the front desk. The pearls keep filling it. The gang investigates the Lady in Red — the ghost of the Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada. USA Today named it the #1 Most Haunted Hotel in America in 2018. Shane flew to Vegas early for CrimeCon, Jennifer joined them, and he brought a Lady in Red mystery worth the trip. The legend says a woman named Rose, working out of the hotel in the early 1920s, was strangled on the fifth floor by a jealous lover. Her pearl necklace broke in the attack. Pearls scattered. For years, across multiple ownership groups, guests have reported waking up to a single pearl on their pillow — same floor, same hallway outside Room 502. The Lady in Red's official room is 504, red curtains and a canopy bed. But the activity isn't in 504. Zoinks! Here's the problem. Shane went looking for Rose and couldn't find her. No contemporary newspaper coverage of a murder at the Mizpah in that period. A name attached to the legend, Evelyn Mae Johnson, born Baltimore 1879, doesn't match any of the fifty-two Baltimore birth records from that year. The hotel built its entire identity around a woman the historical record cannot confirm ever existed.  And yet the Lady in Red keeps leaving pearls. When Ghost Adventures filmed at the Mizpah for Season 5, Episode 2, broadcast September 30, 2011 — about a month after the hotel reopened from a twelve-year shutdown — cameras caught elevator doors opening on their own, a shadow blocking light from under a closed door, and an EVP of a female voice saying "I'm Evil. " THB rule: we report what cameras recorded. We don't tell you what it means. Like, what if a town of eighteen hundred people, with the darkest sky in the lower forty-eight, a 117-year-old operating elevator, a cemetery next to a clown motel with six thousand clown figures, ends up haunted not because of Rose, but because the place outlived its purpose and the building didn't know how to stop? This is the special Vegas drop. Recorded the night before CrimeCon. Three voices in a hotel room with Nevada laws that sound made up, a bar that built a rooftop to watch nuclear weapons detonate at sixty-five miles, and three Mirage dolphins relocated to SeaWorld San Diego before the casino shut its doors in July 2024. What you'll hear in this episode: The pearl that keeps appearing on the pillow across multiple ownership groups The Lady in Red legend and the historical hole at the center of it What Ghost Adventures caught at the Mizpah in 2011 The other Mizpah ghosts — children, miners, a soldier — none of whom get the marketing Why Tonopah itself might be the haunting Shit Fire storie: the Yellow-billed Loon, one of the rarest mainland-breeding birds in North America, that shut down the Bellagio fountains,. Join the gang. The mystery stays open. The pearl stays on the pillow. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    48 min
  4. Le Nain Rouge | Detroit's Cursed Red Dwarf

    May 26

    Le Nain Rouge | Detroit's Cursed Red Dwarf

    Le Nain Rouge has cursed Detroit for three hundred years. Antoine Laumet made up the name "Cadillac, " stole a coat of arms off a gate in France, and founded the city under a lie. Three weeks after he arrived, something small and red stepped out of the riverbank fog, and he swung his cane at it. The fortune teller in Quebec had warned him. His wife recognized it. He hit it anyway. Tonight is a special. Our friend Jennifer brought this one from Detroit. She's sharing the mystery of Le Nain Rouge — the Red Dwarf — while Shane and Kim get to listen. The gang investigates a creature reported in Detroit for over three hundred years. Every time the city has fallen, somebody reported seeing the little red man again. The 1763 Battle of Bloody Run. The Great Fire of June 11, 1805, the one that gave Detroit its motto, Speramus Meliora — we hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes. The 1812 surrender, when General Hull gave up the city without firing a shot. The 1872 sighting by Jane Dacy in the Detroit Free Press. The 1884 newspaper account of a woman attacked by something she called "a baboon with a horned head, brilliant restless eyes, and a devilish leer. " The 1967 Riots. The 1976 ice storm. Like, what if Detroit's whole identity, from its founding to its bankruptcy to its rebirth, is wrapped around a creature it can't actually find? Jinkies! Here's where it gets stranger. The first written record of the Nain Rouge doesn't appear until 1884, one hundred and eighty-three years after Cadillac's encounter. Marie Caroline Watson Hamlin, a descendant of Detroit's earliest French families, gathered the oral tradition into Legends of le Détroit that same year. Either Hamlin influenced the sightings, or the sightings influenced Hamlin, or both responded to the same Detroit anxiety. Plus: the Marche du Nain Rouge, founded 2010 by Wayne State law students Francis Grunow and Joe Uhl, modeled after New Orleans' post-Katrina Mardi Gras revival. The annual parade banishes Le Nain Rouge in effigy on the steps of the Masonic Temple at 500 Temple Street. Indigenous scholars have argued since the parade began that the Nain Rouge has roots in Anishinaabe protector-spirit traditions, and a mostly-non-Indigenous parade banishing it enacts colonial logic. That debate hasn't gone away. Neither has the curse. What you'll hear in this episode: The con man who founded Detroit — Antoine Laumet and the noble identity he invented Marie-Thérèse Guyon, Cadillac's wife, called the "First Lady of Detroit" by the Detroit Historical Society The fortune teller's warning Cadillac ignored Every documented sighting from 1701 to 1976, including the 1872 and 1884 Detroit Free Press accounts Father Gabriel Richard — the priest who gave Detroit its motto, then died September 13, 1832, treating cholera patients Three competing theories: French lutin vs. Anishinaabe spirit vs. literary creation The Marche du Nain Rouge, the Masonic Temple, and the Indigenous protest Two Shit Fire stories: Officer Matthew Jackson at Zoom court without pants, and a Michigan bear who wore a plastic drum lid for two years Join the gang. The cane stays raised. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1h 25m
  5. The Axeman of New Orleans | Jazz or Die, 1919

    May 19

    The Axeman of New Orleans | Jazz or Die, 1919

    Dave brings this mystery to the bunker with Kim and Josh this week, and the gang explores a case where an entire city's survival may have depended on keeping the music playing. The Axeman was never identified, never caught, and left behind only questions. Some researchers believe the letter wasn't written by the killer at all, but by a musician hoping to sell copies of a song called "Don't Scare Me Papa, " inspired by the events. The Axeman's attacks resumed briefly afterward, with possible additional murders as late as 1920, before the killer simply vanished from history. Theories about his identity range from a lone drunk who turned violent to mafia enforcers targeting grocers who may have been laundering money or refusing to cooperate.  That Tuesday happened to be St. Joseph's Day. The city erupted in music. Jazz poured from every window, every open door, every club. Those without instruments or records rushed to any establishment playing music. The streets were alive with sound. And nobody was killed that night. Then came the letter. On March 13, 1919, the Times-Picayune newspaper published a letter from someone claiming to be the Axeman himself. Written with theatrical flair, the author declared himself "a spirit and a demon from the hottest hell" and made a demand: at 12:15 AM on the following Tuesday, every home must have a jazz band playing in full swing. Anyone without jazz would "get the ax." The first known attack claimed the lives of Joseph and Catherine Maggio in May 1918. Joseph's brothers discovered them after hearing strange groaning through the walls. Catherine was nearly decapitated. A straight razor had been used alongside the axe. The back door panel had been knocked out. And in the months that followed, the same pattern repeated across the city. Italian grocers, doors chiseled open, the household axe turned against its owners, nothing taken. Between 1918 and 1919, a mysterious figure terrorized the Italian grocers of New Orleans. The attacker's method was consistent and chilling: chisel through a panel in the back door, enter the home behind the grocery store, pick up the family's own axe, and attack. Nothing was ever stolen. The victims, who somehow survived more often than not, could never remember what happened. And the city had no idea who was responsible. Jinkies! The gang travels to early 1900s New Orleans for a mystery that demanded an entire city play jazz music or face the consequences. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1h 2m
  6. Moon Pies, Mustache Rides & Some Deep Thoughts | Unmasked

    May 15 ·  Bonus • Subscribers Only

    Moon Pies, Mustache Rides & Some Deep Thoughts | Unmasked

    What's up, gang! Kim's heading to CrimeCon soon, Josh is staying home (Vegas once was enough), and the gang wraps up with the kind of goodbye that could only come from this crew. The crew also gets into some real talk about anxiety, therapy, COVID isolation, and the meaning behind Dave's "Look for the Evidence" tattoo. It's one of those Unmasked conversations that starts with snack reviews and lands somewhere surprisingly honest. From Moon Pies, the conversation spirals into candy bar rankings, the correct way to pronounce Reese's Pieces (fight us), and whether dirty sodas are worth the hype. Then Dave drops the full story behind a workplace incident so ridiculous it required an entire department meeting about ageism. Kim has never had a Moon Pie. Let that sink in. This week on Unmasked, Kim brought four flavors for the crew to sample while Dave provides live commentary on Kim's questionable taste preferences. Spoiler: the banana one is not a hit, the salted caramel holds its own, and apparently the proper pairing is a Yoo-hoo, which Kim also has feelings about. Thanks for being part of the Inner Circle, gang. Your support keeps the bunker lights on.

    38 min
  7. The Perfect Disappearance

    May 12

    The Perfect Disappearance

    Zoinks! The trail leads from a Cleveland bank vault to a quiet Massachusetts life, and the only person who ever knew the full truth took most of it to his grave. Josh brings this mystery to the bunker this week while Kim and buddy Dave join him, asking the questions that remain: How did a man who supposedly couldn't find his own socks maintain a double identity for five decades? How did he explain away his missing family, his absent past? And perhaps most intriguing of all, did he really do it just because of a movie? The case remained open for over half a century. Tragically, the original detective who worked the case died just two years before its resolution. In 2021, on his deathbed, Thomas Randall finally confessed to his wife and adult daughters that he was really Theodore Conrad, the bank teller who vanished with nearly $1.9 million in today's money. From Cleveland, Conrad fled to Washington D.C., then Los Angeles, before finally settling in a small Massachusetts town where he reinvented himself as Thomas Randall. He worked as a golf pro at a country club and sold high-end cars. He married in 1982, raised two daughters, and became well-liked by his neighbors and local police. For fifty-two years, he lived an entirely fabricated life while his case appeared on both America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. What makes Conrad's story so captivating isn't just the robbery itself. It's everything that came after. The all-American boy, popular student council member with a high IQ, simply evaporated. He left behind a note to his girlfriend confessing what he'd done, and his buddies told police he'd been obsessed with the 1967 film The Thomas Crown Affair, often joking about how easy it would be to steal from the bank. They never took him seriously. Why would they? On July 11, 1969, twenty-year-old Theodore Conrad walked into the vault at Society National Bank's Cleveland headquarters, stuffed $215,000 in cash into a brown paper bag, and walked right out the front door. Nobody stopped him. Nobody questioned the bag. And because he left on a Friday evening, the theft wasn't discovered until Monday, giving him a two-and-a-half-day head start that turned into a lifetime. The gang investigates one of the most audacious bank heists in American history, and the five decades of silence that followed. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    55 min
  8. Polish Snacks, Nicknames & Kim's Prom Date

    May 8 ·  Bonus • Subscribers Only

    Polish Snacks, Nicknames & Kim's Prom Date

    This week on Unmasked, Kim, Josh, and buddy Dave are hanging out in the bunker while Shane soaks up the Florida sun. The gang gets interrupted by a FaceTime call for some urgent fashion advice, digs into a box of international snacks from Poland, and somehow ends up discussing everything from concert venues that keep changing their names to the proper pronunciation of certain candy brands. The conversation bounces from Straight No Chaser concerts to Clue the Musical, from paprika potato sticks to the great Deer Creek vs. Ruoff debate that reveals exactly how old you are based on what you call it. Plus, a FaceTime interruption for some critical jean jacket opinions and a Dolly Parton spoon rest that makes everybody jealous. It's exactly the kind of chaotic, snack-fueled hangout that makes Unmasked feel like pulling up a chair in the bunker with your friends. Dave finally reveals the origin of his workplace nickname that stuck for years, and the crew takes a trip down memory lane with some truly creative Kim-is-ancient jokes that once required their entire department to attend a meeting about ageism in the workplace. If you've ever wondered what George Washington's prom looked like, apparently Kim was there. Thanks for being part of the Inner Circle, gang. Your support keeps the bunker lights on.

    40 min
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About

Paranormal encounters. Cryptid sightings. UFO reports. Unsolved mysteries that defy explanation. Welcome to The Haunted Bunker—where mysteries hide. Each week, brothers Shane and Josh Waters take turns presenting the unexplained to each other. One brother researches the mystery, one reacts fresh—and the gang explores alongside us. This isn't a debate show. We don't debunk. We don't prove. We PRESERVE mysteries with wonder and respect for the witnesses who experienced them. From Bigfoot and Mothman to haunted locations and phenomena that science can't explain—if it makes you wonder "what if?"—we're diving in. 🗓️ New episodes every Tuesday  ⭐ Premium members: Early access Fridays + exclusive Unmasked episodes on Patreon and Apple Podcasts Join the gang. The bunker door is open. Where Mysteries Hide.       

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