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Disturbing History

Disturbing History-True Stories

Disturbing History is a dark history podcast uncovering the strange, sinister, and little-known stories the past tried to bury. Each week, we explore unsolved mysteries, secret societies, forgotten crimes, eerie folklore, lost civilizations, historical conspiracies, and disturbing events that never made it into your high school textbook .Hosted by author, investigator, and storyteller Brian King-Sharp, Disturbing History dives deep into: Unsolved historical mysteriesSecret societies and hidden power structuresDark folklore and urban legendsLost colonies and vanished civilizationsTrue crime cases buried by timeHistorical conspiracies and cover-upsParanormal events rooted in real historyThrough immersive storytelling and investigative research, we uncover the shadowy corners of the past — the uncomfortable truths, forgotten tragedies, and disturbing secrets that shaped our world.If you’re fascinated by dark history, obsessed with unexplained events, or drawn to stories that blur the line between fact and legend, this podcast is for you. Because the past isn’t always dead. Sometimes it’s just been buried. Follow Disturbing History and turn on automatic downloads for weekly deep dives into history’s most unsettling stories.

  1. The Corpsewood Manor Murders

    3h ago

    The Corpsewood Manor Murders

    This week we step away from the corridors of presidential power and head into the North Georgia mountains, to a hand-built stone castle on Taylor's Ridge and one of the most misunderstood crimes in the state's history. On December 12, 1982, Dr. Charles Scudder, a brilliant former Loyola University pharmacology professor, and his partner Joseph "Joey" Odom were robbed and shot to death inside Corpsewood Manor, the off-grid medieval-style home they had built brick by brick after leaving Chicago behind. Their killers, 17-year-old Kenneth Avery Brock and 30-year-old Samuel Tony West, had convinced themselves the eccentric couple was hiding a fortune, and that two openly gay men, one of them a documented member of the atheistic Church of Satan, were the kind of victims nobody would mourn. They were wrong about the money, and history has proven them wrong about the men. This episode hits especially close to home, Brian grew up just a few miles away and was only eight years old the winter the murders happened, and who has spent a career learning to tell the difference between rumor and evidence.  We trace the whole arc, from Scudder and Odom's search for a simpler life and the truth about what the Church of Satan actually believed, through the rumors and the Satanic Panic that turned two kind hosts into the county's boogeymen, to the night of the killings, the murder of Navy Lieutenant Kirby Key Phelps during the fugitives' flight through Mississippi, the manhunt, the confessions, and a trial where a defense attorney argued in open court that a murdered man had bewitched his killer with a glowing golden harp. Brock remains incarcerated to this day; West died in prison. Listener discretion is strongly advised, as this episode contains descriptions of violence, murder, and the bigotry of the era. More than a true crime story, this is a study in how a frightened culture decides who deserves to be called a victim, and how easily fear becomes permission. Have a forgotten historical mystery, disturbing event, unsolved crime, or hidden conspiracy you think deserves investigation? Send your suggestions to brian@paranormalworldproductions.com. Disturbing History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past. Follow the show and enable automatic downloads so you never miss a deep dive into history’s most unsettling secrets. Because sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.

    1 hr
  2. The Fourteen Men Before George Washington

    2d ago

    The Fourteen Men Before George Washington

    Everyone knows George Washington was the first President of the United States. Technically true. But it's also a sleight of hand, because fourteen men held the title of President before him, and almost no American today can name a single one. Tonight on Disturbing History, we walk through all fourteen, the men who chaired the Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress during the years the country was being fought into existence. This is not the marble version. This is slave traders and Tower of London prisoners. This is the general who walked an American army into the worst slaughter the United States ever suffered at the hands of Native warriors. This is the plot to throw George Washington out of command in the middle of the Revolution. This is the merchant who tried to invite a Prussian prince across the ocean to come be king. This is a major general accepting Washington's resignation after once helping scheme against him, then dying so broke the state had to bury him. These are the men the textbooks left out, and the reasons they got left out say almost as much about America as the founding itself.  Have a forgotten historical mystery, disturbing event, unsolved crime, or hidden conspiracy you think deserves investigation? Send your suggestions to brian@paranormalworldproductions.com. Disturbing History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past. Follow the show and enable automatic downloads so you never miss a deep dive into history’s most unsettling secrets. Because sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.

    1h 5m
  3. The Corpsewood Manor Murders-Vault Access

    2d ago • Subscribers Only

    The Corpsewood Manor Murders-Vault Access

    This week we step away from the corridors of presidential power and head into the North Georgia mountains, to a hand-built stone castle on Taylor's Ridge and one of the most misunderstood crimes in the state's history. On December 12, 1982, Dr. Charles Scudder, a brilliant former Loyola University pharmacology professor, and his partner Joseph "Joey" Odom were robbed and shot to death inside Corpsewood Manor, the off-grid medieval-style home they had built brick by brick after leaving Chicago behind. Their killers, 17-year-old Kenneth Avery Brock and 30-year-old Samuel Tony West, had convinced themselves the eccentric couple was hiding a fortune, and that two openly gay men, one of them a documented member of the atheistic Church of Satan, were the kind of victims nobody would mourn. They were wrong about the money, and history has proven them wrong about the men. This episode hits especially close to home, Brian grew up just a few miles away and was only eight years old the winter the murders happened, and who has spent a career learning to tell the difference between rumor and evidence.  We trace the whole arc, from Scudder and Odom's search for a simpler life and the truth about what the Church of Satan actually believed, through the rumors and the Satanic Panic that turned two kind hosts into the county's boogeymen, to the night of the killings, the murder of Navy Lieutenant Kirby Key Phelps during the fugitives' flight through Mississippi, the manhunt, the confessions, and a trial where a defense attorney argued in open court that a murdered man had bewitched his killer with a glowing golden harp. Brock remains incarcerated to this day; West died in prison. Listener discretion is strongly advised, as this episode contains descriptions of violence, murder, and the bigotry of the era. More than a true crime story, this is a study in how a frightened culture decides who deserves to be called a victim, and how easily fear becomes permission.

    1 hr
  4. Dwight Eisenhower: The Secret Coup Machine

    4d ago

    Dwight Eisenhower: The Secret Coup Machine

    Dwight Eisenhower is the president most Americans remember as the calm grandfather of the nineteen fifties. The general who beat Hitler. The man who built the interstate highways. The smile under the bald head. But underneath that famous reassurance, his administration ran something most Americans were never told about. A young intelligence agency, a brand-new doctrine called plausible deniability, and a willingness to overthrow elected governments halfway around the world if Washington decided they were a problem. This episode takes you inside two of the operations that built the template. Iran in nineteen fifty-three, where a CIA officer named Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of a president, ran an unauthorized coup with a million dollars in cash and a network of paid mobs in the streets of Tehran. And Guatemala in nineteen fifty-four, where a fake army, a fake radio station, and a real corporate giant called the United Fruit Company combined to take down a reform-minded president named Jacobo Árbenz. Both operations succeeded. Both were sold to the public as spontaneous popular uprisings. Neither was anything of the kind.You'll meet Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Iranian prime minister buried under his own dining room floor so the regime that hated him could never control his grave. You'll meet Árbenz, the soldier-reformer stripped to his underwear on the steps of the Mexican embassy and forced into seventeen years of wandering exile that ended in a bathtub in Mexico City. You'll meet the Dulles brothers, the two men running American foreign policy at the same time, one in daylight and one in shadow, both with corporate ties to the very interests they were defending overseas. And you'll see how a doctrine designed to win the Cold War quietly became something else entirely, a machine that kept running long after Eisenhower left office and is, in many ways, still running today. The disturbing part of this story isn't that Eisenhower was a monster. He wasn't.  The disturbing part is that he was exactly what he looked like. A decent, well-meaning man who signed off on operations that ended in dead bodies and broken countries, quietly, repeatedly, year after year. And the bill for those choices came due decades later, in the Iran hostage crisis, in the Guatemalan civil war that killed two hundred thousand people, in refugees at the southern border, in the long generational recognition that you cannot take a country apart in secret and expect the wreckage to stay buried. This is the hidden side of the smile on the postage stamp.  The shadow behind the grandfather. The story your high school history class skipped.  Have a forgotten historical mystery, disturbing event, unsolved crime, or hidden conspiracy you think deserves investigation? Send your suggestions to brian@paranormalworldproductions.com. Disturbing History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past. Follow the show and enable automatic downloads so you never miss a deep dive into history’s most unsettling secrets. Because sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.

    1h 7m
  5. The Fourteen Men Before George Washington-Vault Access

    4d ago • Subscribers Only

    The Fourteen Men Before George Washington-Vault Access

    Everyone knows George Washington was the first President of the United States. Technically true. But it's also a sleight of hand, because fourteen men held the title of President before him, and almost no American today can name a single one. Tonight on Disturbing History, we walk through all fourteen, the men who chaired the Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress during the years the country was being fought into existence. This is not the marble version. This is slave traders and Tower of London prisoners. This is the general who walked an American army into the worst slaughter the United States ever suffered at the hands of Native warriors. This is the plot to throw George Washington out of command in the middle of the Revolution. This is the merchant who tried to invite a Prussian prince across the ocean to come be king. This is a major general accepting Washington's resignation after once helping scheme against him, then dying so broke the state had to bury him. These are the men the textbooks left out, and the reasons they got left out say almost as much about America as the founding itself.

    1h 5m
  6. Dwight Eisenhower: The Secret Coup Machine-Vault Access

    5d ago • Subscribers Only

    Dwight Eisenhower: The Secret Coup Machine-Vault Access

    Dwight Eisenhower is the president most Americans remember as the calm grandfather of the nineteen fifties. The general who beat Hitler. The man who built the interstate highways. The smile under the bald head. But underneath that famous reassurance, his administration ran something most Americans were never told about. A young intelligence agency, a brand-new doctrine called plausible deniability, and a willingness to overthrow elected governments halfway around the world if Washington decided they were a problem. This episode takes you inside two of the operations that built the template. Iran in nineteen fifty-three, where a CIA officer named Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of a president, ran an unauthorized coup with a million dollars in cash and a network of paid mobs in the streets of Tehran. And Guatemala in nineteen fifty-four, where a fake army, a fake radio station, and a real corporate giant called the United Fruit Company combined to take down a reform-minded president named Jacobo Árbenz. Both operations succeeded. Both were sold to the public as spontaneous popular uprisings. Neither was anything of the kind.You'll meet Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Iranian prime minister buried under his own dining room floor so the regime that hated him could never control his grave. You'll meet Árbenz, the soldier-reformer stripped to his underwear on the steps of the Mexican embassy and forced into seventeen years of wandering exile that ended in a bathtub in Mexico City. You'll meet the Dulles brothers, the two men running American foreign policy at the same time, one in daylight and one in shadow, both with corporate ties to the very interests they were defending overseas. And you'll see how a doctrine designed to win the Cold War quietly became something else entirely, a machine that kept running long after Eisenhower left office and is, in many ways, still running today. The disturbing part of this story isn't that Eisenhower was a monster. He wasn't.  The disturbing part is that he was exactly what he looked like. A decent, well-meaning man who signed off on operations that ended in dead bodies and broken countries, quietly, repeatedly, year after year. And the bill for those choices came due decades later, in the Iran hostage crisis, in the Guatemalan civil war that killed two hundred thousand people, in refugees at the southern border, in the long generational recognition that you cannot take a country apart in secret and expect the wreckage to stay buried. This is the hidden side of the smile on the postage stamp.  The shadow behind the grandfather. The story your high school history class skipped.

    1h 6m
  7. The Foo Fighters of World War Two

    6d ago

    The Foo Fighters of World War Two

    The story of the Foo Fighters of World War Two is one of the strangest, best-documented, and least-resolved cases in the history of military aviation. In the late autumn of nineteen forty-four, pilots of the United States Army Air Forces, flying night fighter and bomber missions over Europe, began returning to their bases with reports of glowing objects that paced their aircraft, performed seemingly impossible maneuvers, and then vanished into the dark. The reports were taken seriously by intelligence officers. They were corroborated by multiple witnesses across multiple squadrons. They reached the press in early nineteen forty-five, when Time magazine ran a feature on the phenomenon. And they continued through the end of the war, in both the European and Pacific theaters, with no satisfactory official explanation. This episode follows the story from its earliest documented appearances over the Rhine Valley, with the Four Hundred Fifteenth Night Fighter Squadron and pilots like Lieutenant Edward Schlueter, through the coining of the term foo fighter by radar observer Donald Meiers, who borrowed the word from the cult-favorite Smokey Stover comic strip by Bill Holman. From there, the episode traces the spread of the phenomenon to Pacific theater bomber crews, examines the postwar theories offered to explain it, and follows its tangled relationship to the modern UFO era, including its treatment by Project Blue Book and the Robertson Panel. The candidate explanations are examined honestly and at length. Natural atmospheric phenomena like St. Elmo's fire and ball lightning are considered and weighed against the actual content of the witness reports. Theories about Nazi secret weapons, including Renato Vesco's controversial claims about the Feuerball program, are discussed and contextualized. The psychological strain of combat aviation, including the role of Benzedrine and chronic fatigue, is given serious treatment. And the awkward, persistent residue of unexplained cases is examined for what it tells us about the limits of historical knowledge and the gaps in our collective record. The episode closes by drawing a careful, non-sensational line between the wartime foo fighter cases and the modern Unidentified Aerial Phenomena conversation, noting the similarities in witness language across more than eighty years, and the implications that has for how we treat phenomena that resist neat explanation. The men of the Four Hundred Fifteenth, and the bomber crews of the Pacific, and even the Luftwaffe pilots who reported the same kinds of objects over their own skies, deserve to have their experience taken seriously. This episode is one small contribution to that ongoing effort. For listeners following along with the Disturbing History series on presidential politics, regular programming on that subject will resume in the next episode. Tonight's installment is a deliberate detour into one of the most haunting, well-witnessed, and least-explained chapters of twentieth-century history.  Sometimes the disturbing thing isn't a man in a suit making a terrible decision. Sometimes it's a question that history hands us and then walks away from, leaving us to live with the silence. Have a forgotten historical mystery, disturbing event, unsolved crime, or hidden conspiracy you think deserves investigation? Send your suggestions to brian@paranormalworldproductions.com. Disturbing History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past. Follow the show and enable automatic downloads so you never miss a deep dive into history’s most unsettling secrets. Because sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.

    1h 1m
  8. The Foo Fighters of World War Two- Vault Access Exclusive

    May 23 • Subscribers Only

    The Foo Fighters of World War Two- Vault Access Exclusive

    The story of the Foo Fighters of World War Two is one of the strangest, best-documented, and least-resolved cases in the history of military aviation. In the late autumn of nineteen forty-four, pilots of the United States Army Air Forces, flying night fighter and bomber missions over Europe, began returning to their bases with reports of glowing objects that paced their aircraft, performed seemingly impossible maneuvers, and then vanished into the dark. The reports were taken seriously by intelligence officers. They were corroborated by multiple witnesses across multiple squadrons. They reached the press in early nineteen forty-five, when Time magazine ran a feature on the phenomenon. And they continued through the end of the war, in both the European and Pacific theaters, with no satisfactory official explanation. This episode follows the story from its earliest documented appearances over the Rhine Valley, with the Four Hundred Fifteenth Night Fighter Squadron and pilots like Lieutenant Edward Schlueter, through the coining of the term foo fighter by radar observer Donald Meiers, who borrowed the word from the cult-favorite Smokey Stover comic strip by Bill Holman. From there, the episode traces the spread of the phenomenon to Pacific theater bomber crews, examines the postwar theories offered to explain it, and follows its tangled relationship to the modern UFO era, including its treatment by Project Blue Book and the Robertson Panel. The candidate explanations are examined honestly and at length. Natural atmospheric phenomena like St. Elmo's fire and ball lightning are considered and weighed against the actual content of the witness reports. Theories about Nazi secret weapons, including Renato Vesco's controversial claims about the Feuerball program, are discussed and contextualized. The psychological strain of combat aviation, including the role of Benzedrine and chronic fatigue, is given serious treatment. And the awkward, persistent residue of unexplained cases is examined for what it tells us about the limits of historical knowledge and the gaps in our collective record. The episode closes by drawing a careful, non-sensational line between the wartime foo fighter cases and the modern Unidentified Aerial Phenomena conversation, noting the similarities in witness language across more than eighty years, and the implications that has for how we treat phenomena that resist neat explanation. The men of the Four Hundred Fifteenth, and the bomber crews of the Pacific, and even the Luftwaffe pilots who reported the same kinds of objects over their own skies, deserve to have their experience taken seriously. This episode is one small contribution to that ongoing effort. For listeners following along with the Disturbing History series on presidential politics, regular programming on that subject will resume in the next episode. Tonight's installment is a deliberate detour into one of the most haunting, well-witnessed, and least-explained chapters of twentieth-century history.  Sometimes the disturbing thing isn't a man in a suit making a terrible decision. Sometimes it's a question that history hands us and then walks away from, leaving us to live with the silence.

    1h 1m
See All (206)

4.9
out of 5
35 Ratings

About

Disturbing History is a dark history podcast uncovering the strange, sinister, and little-known stories the past tried to bury. Each week, we explore unsolved mysteries, secret societies, forgotten crimes, eerie folklore, lost civilizations, historical conspiracies, and disturbing events that never made it into your high school textbook .Hosted by author, investigator, and storyteller Brian King-Sharp, Disturbing History dives deep into: Unsolved historical mysteriesSecret societies and hidden power structuresDark folklore and urban legendsLost colonies and vanished civilizationsTrue crime cases buried by timeHistorical conspiracies and cover-upsParanormal events rooted in real historyThrough immersive storytelling and investigative research, we uncover the shadowy corners of the past — the uncomfortable truths, forgotten tragedies, and disturbing secrets that shaped our world.If you’re fascinated by dark history, obsessed with unexplained events, or drawn to stories that blur the line between fact and legend, this podcast is for you. Because the past isn’t always dead. Sometimes it’s just been buried. Follow Disturbing History and turn on automatic downloads for weekly deep dives into history’s most unsettling stories.

Information

  • Creator
    Disturbing History-True Stories
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    206
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Paranormal World Productions LLC
  • Show Website
    Disturbing History
  • Provider
    Brian King-Sharp

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