The Fear Archive

Realm
Realm
  • 4.8 (15)
  • True Crime
  • Updated Weekly

The Fear Archive investigates the real stories behind horror films. Every episode, hosts Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip dig into the actual cases, killers, hauntings, and conspiracies that Hollywood turned into your favorite scary movies — and ask whether the film or the truth is more disturbing. From Ed Gein and Psycho to the Gainesville Ripper and Scream, from MK-Ultra and The Manchurian Candidate to Faces of Death and the internet gore ecosystem — if a horror film has a real story behind it, the Fear Archive will find it. New episodes every other Wednesday. A Violet Hour Media production.

  1. 1d ago

    Dead Air | Ep. 12 | The Mole People Are Back and a Man Flew 200 Lizards in His Socks

    At 4:19 in the morning on August 18th, three people in headlamps and overalls pulled themselves out of a sanitation manhole about 150 feet from the main entrance to Penn Station and walked away fast. There is video. An Arizona tourist watched it and said, out loud, "reconnaissance, 9/11." The NYPD is running facial recognition and has arrested nobody. Mike has been following the mole people since the very first episode of this show, back when they were surfacing in Williamsburg and Gravesend, and he would like everyone to understand that Penn Station is an escalation. Dead Air is what happens between Fear Archive episodes — no research, no structure, no plan. Just Amanda and Mike talking until something disturbing comes up. It always does. Then Amanda opens the World's Fair. Between 1850 and the early 1900s, dozens of them went up around the world. Grand palaces, domed halls, ornate facades, built in almost no time and then torn down within a year or two. Roughly 1,500 buildings, gone. She has questions about the attendance numbers, and she turns out to be right about them: the famous 27 million figure for Chicago in 1893 counts the same people over and over again. From there it is a short walk to the Tartarian Empire, to the Great Chicago Fire taking out nearly everything the fair had built, and to H. H. Holmes running a murder castle in the shadow of the White City while millions of strangers moved through a city that had no way of noticing anyone was gone. Mike counters with a woman in a grave. In 2022, archaeologists in northern Poland opened a 400-year-old burial and found a young woman with a rusted sickle laid across her throat and a padlock fastened to her foot. DNA work published this month found something the first reports missed: they had also forced a copper object into her mouth. It is the first burial ever documented with all three. She is one of several dozen strange graves in the same field, which includes a child buried face down and a body arranged as if crucified, and the documentary about the site is called Field of Vampires. Amanda's position is that you do not open it. Amanda also dug a rusted sickle out of her own flower bed this spring and hung it on the wall. Also: fifty driverless Jaguars parked across Nashville with twenty-nine cameras apiece and the microphones running; a new horror movie hiding an analogue horror ARG somewhere on YouTube; a shout-out to Cloud Nothings at Tubbies in Kingston; and the man who boarded a flight to Tokyo with two hundred live lizards zipped into twenty-two pairs of socks. Everything we make is on Patreon for $5 a month. Every episode ad-free with no mid-rolls, a bonus Dead Air every month, The Watchlist breakdowns, the mailbag, case files, and you vote on what we cover next. The summer movie list drops there soon. https://www.patreon.com/c/FearArchivePod A new season of The Fear Archive is in production. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: unsolved disappearances, serial murder, a 17th-century burial, mass shootings, surveillance, animal smuggling, strong language, and one dad joke Amanda knew was bad while she was still saying it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. Aug 27

    Dead Air | Ep. 11 | William Shatner Started a Hardcore Band and the Son of Sam Didn't Act Alone

    Dead Air is what happens between Fear Archive episodes — no research, no structure, no plan. Just Amanda and Mike talking until something disturbing comes up. It always does. They're back — and prepping. For the collapse of the power grid, allegedly, but mostly for Season 3 of The Fear Archive, which is officially in the works. This week: Amanda and Mike both watched Blood Shine, the new film from friends of the show Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks — Martyrs by way of First Reformed with a little Misery in its bones — and somebody at the LA premiere passed out from the gore. They pay tribute to two losses: Screaming Mad George, the legendary special effects artist behind Society, who fronted a punk band called The Mad that headlined over the Misfits before he ever touched a makeup kit. And Hayden Panettiere — Amanda's husband Peter worked closely with her on the Until Dawn motion capture, a game whose script holds the Guinness World Record at over ten thousand pages. Also this week: Chris Hansen refused to sign A24's NDA before a screening of Primetime, the Robert Pattinson film about his life, and Mike has a theory that the movie is really about the moment journalism crossed into reality television. Mars Attacks turns thirty with a 4K remaster and prompts the essential question: Mars Attacks or Independence Day? Star Trek: Strange New Worlds aired what is essentially a full horror movie, in which Spock cuts off his own ears. William Shatner, at 95, is in a hardcore band called The F*****s, playing Riot Fest and — according to Shatner — booked for Coachella. Norway is building the world's longest road tunnel with roundabouts carved from solid rock 820 feet under the sea, which raises the question: where are you roundabouting to? And finally: the Son of Sam conspiracy. Mike walks through Maury Terry's Ultimate Evil theory, the Process Church, its alleged ties to Charles Manson, and why people inside the criminal justice system still believe David Berkowitz was too stupid to have done it alone. A future Fear Archive episode is officially teased. Season 3 is coming. The Watchlist continues on Patreon, with the summer movie list dropping soon. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: This program contains strong language, discussion of true crime, and William Shatner's opinions on heavy metal. Popular Topics Include: Fear Archive podcast, Dead Air podcast, horror podcast bonus episode, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, Fear Archive Season 3, Blood Shine film, Emily Bennett Justin Brooks, Screaming Mad George Society, Hayden Panettiere Until Dawn, Until Dawn motion capture, Primetime Robert Pattinson, Chris Hansen A24 NDA, Predators documentary, Mars Attacks 4K 30th anniversary, Mars Attacks vs Independence Day, Star Trek Strange New Worlds horror episode, Griffin Incident, William Shatner hardcore band, The F*****s Riot Fest, Norway underwater roundabout, Faroe Islands jellyfish roundabout, Son of Sam conspiracy, Sons of Sam Maury Terry, The Ultimate Evil, Process Church, David Berkowitz, Joshua Zeman, horror podcast, true crime horror, Violet Hour Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. Aug 13

    Dead Air | Ep. 10 | This Is Giving Scott Peterson

    Dead Air is what happens between Fear Archive episodes — no research, no structure, no plan. Just Amanda and Mike talking until something disturbing comes up. It always does. This week Amanda walks Mike through the Lindsay Clancy case minute by minute — the timeline, the security footage, the husband who appears in different outfits at the CVS and the restaurant fifty-four minutes apart, the sailor's knots, the temperature discrepancy the medical community can't stop talking about, and the theory currently spreading across TikTok that none of it adds up the way it was supposed to. Halfway through, Mike makes a connection live on air that neither of them saw coming, and it changes the entire conversation. Also this week: Amanda discovered BingeBuster.net, a free website that turns your actual streaming libraries into a fully walkable 3D Blockbuster Video store, and it sends both of them into a long, sincere conversation about the specific smell of video stores that no candle has ever successfully replicated. Mike watched the first six Friday the 13th films back to back and has a controversial opinion about Part 6. They get into the new Neuromancer adaptation, the ensemble cast thriller The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and the atmospheric Italian horror film The Spiral. And they cover Flock Safety's automated license plate readers, now active in over five thousand municipalities across the country, and the growing surveillance conversation nobody asked for. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: This program contains strong language and an extended discussion of the Lindsay Clancy case, including details some listeners may find distressing. Popular Topics Include: Fear Archive podcast, Dead Air podcast, horror podcast bonus episode, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, Lindsay Clancy case, Patrick Clancy, Scott Peterson Lacey Peterson case, family annihilator true crime, BingeBuster virtual video store, video store nostalgia, Neuromancer Apple TV, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, The Spiral horror film, River horror film TIFF, Friday the 13th franchise, Flock Safety surveillance cameras, UFO declassified files, horror podcast, true crime horror, Violet Hour Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. Aug 6

    Dead Air | Ep. 09 | We Need to Talk About The Howler

    Dead Air is what happens between Fear Archive episodes — no research, no structure, no plan. Just Amanda and Mike talking until something disturbing comes up. It always does. This week: an Ohio man camping alone on a remote beach in Puerto Rico was shot execution-style after complaining to friends about a man he called The Howler — someone setting off fireworks near his campsite and howling like a wolf. The killer has not been identified. Mike has stayed near that exact stretch of coastline before, which does not make it feel any less unsettling. Also this week: Brian Kohlberger, who pleaded guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students, has publicly retracted his guilty plea and is now demanding a full trial, calling the prosecution's case a myopic work of fiction. Amanda watched the new Netflix documentary on the case and has thoughts about what it actually means to sit with victims instead of just consuming the crime. Also: the Circleville Letter Writer, a still-unsolved decade-long anonymous harassment campaign that terrorized a small Ohio town starting in 1976. TikTok's collective conviction that the zombie apocalypse has quietly started. Mike's two personal chupacabra-adjacent Puerto Rico stories, one involving a small humanoid creature and one involving a literal handful of human teeth pulled out of the ocean. Bat Boy, the Weekly World News tabloid legend who somehow got his own off-Broadway musical. And the return of physical media, one flyer at a time. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: This program contains strong language, discussion of murder, and a genuinely unsettling amount of ocean debris. Popular Topics Include: Fear Archive podcast, Dead Air podcast, horror podcast bonus episode, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, The Howler Puerto Rico murder, Tyler Wilken murder, Circleville Letter Writer, Brian Kohlberger retracts plea, Idaho student murders Netflix documentary, Bryan Kohlberger news, El Chupacabra Puerto Rico, zombie apocalypse TikTok panic, Bat Boy Weekly World News, Batboy the Musical, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun film, horror podcast, true crime horror, Violet Hour Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. Aug 5

    Faces of Death (1978) vs. Faces of Death (2026): The True Story Behind the Most Notorious Shock Film Ever Made

    The Fear Archive investigates Faces of Death — the 1978 shock documentary that was not quite a documentary, not quite fiction, and was deliberately designed to keep you from knowing the difference — and the 2026 remake that asks the harder question: why are you still watching? Faces of Death was released in 1978, directed by John Alan Schwartz under the pseudonym Conan LeCilaire. It presented itself as a documentary about death across cultures. In reality it was a carefully engineered hybrid: some footage real, some staged, all of it designed to manufacture one question — is this real? As long as you were asking, you kept watching. That was the entire mechanism. The 2026 remake, directed by Daniel Goldhaber and Isam Mazhi and starring Barbie Ferreira and Charli XCX, does not try to shock you with death. It makes you watch yourself watching. Which, as Amanda and Mike argue tonight, is the more disturbing film. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: This program includes discussion of real-world violence and other subject matter that may be upsetting for some listeners. Please proceed with caution. Popular Topics Include: Faces of Death 1978, Faces of Death 2026, John Alan Schwartz, Mondo films, shock cinema, black humor, morbid curiosity, snuff mythology, Barbie Ferreira, Charli XCX, Daniel Goldhaber, LiveLeak, rotten.com, true crime horror podcast, Fear Archive, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media, why do we look Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Faces of Death (1978) vs. Faces of Death (2026): The True Story Behind the Most Notorious Shock Film Ever Made

  6. Jul 29

    Dead Air | Ep. 08 | We Launched Patreon and Mike Met a Serial Killer at a Lobster Shack

    Dead Air is what happens between Fear Archive episodes — no research, no structure, no plan. Just Amanda and Mike talking until something disturbing comes up. It always does. Big news first: The Fear Archive is officially on Patreon. Five dollars a month gets you every episode ad-free with zero mid-rolls, a bonus Dead Air every month that nobody else hears, full Watch List breakdowns and archive ratings, bonus mailbag episodes where Amanda and Mike read your theories and sleep paralysis stories on the record, complete case files with all the research and sources that do not make it into the episode, and a vote on what gets covered next. Link is in the bio. The first thing on Patreon is The Watch List — Amanda and Mike's new ongoing horror movie club — starting with No Return Flight, a summer-long series covering international horror outside the American canon. First slate: Aswang (Philippines, 1992), Martyrs (France, 2008), Tigers Are Not Afraid (Mexico, 2017), Rec (Spain, 2007), Lake Mungo (Australia, 2008), and Marquis (Belgium/France, 1989) — which Mike picked, and which Amanda has not forgiven him for yet. Also this week: Mike went to Maine on vacation and sat down to a lobster roll next to a drunk stranger in a Grateful Dead Hawaiian shirt who seemed friendly right up until he did not. The guy was waiting outside when they left, and Mike spent the walk back to the hotel armed with brass knuckles and a knife, fully convinced he was being followed. Amanda finally saw The Odyssey and loved it. Mike watched Evil Dead Burn and has thoughts, then found what may be an actual underground speakeasy operating inside an abandoned Sears in a dead mall in Kingston, New York. They get into the discourse around Her Private Hell, Nicolas Winding Refn's new film, and whether arthouse cinema playing at AMC is doing audiences a disservice. They cover the ongoing David case, including the four chainsaws and the burn cage entered into evidence this week. And they cover the story of a film crew that tore open a motel wall in Los Angeles and found blood evidence connected to the Black Dahlia murder — eighty years after Elizabeth Short's body was found completely drained of blood in a vacant lot. Also: the deaths of Brenda Fricker and director Chuck Russell, the new Crystal Lake series premiering on Peacock, CERN's Large Hadron Collider shutdown feeding an entire online conspiracy ecosystem, and a typhoon in southern China that freed between 800 and 900 snakes, including venomous cobras, into flooded neighborhoods. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: This program contains strong language, discussion of true crime including crimes against children, and a genuinely upsetting number of snakes. Popular Topics Include: Fear Archive Patreon, Fear Archive podcast, Dead Air podcast, horror podcast bonus episode, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, The Watch List horror club, No Return Flight international horror, Aswang Filipino horror, Martyrs French horror, Tigers Are Not Afraid, Rec Spanish horror, Lake Mungo Australian horror, Marquis 1989 film, Her Private Hell Nicolas Winding Refn, Sophie Thatcher, arthouse cinema AMC, Evil Dead Burn review, Black Dahlia case update, Elizabeth Short murder, David case chainsaws, Celeste Rivas, Crystal Lake Peacock series, Chuck Russell director, Brenda Fricker, Schumann resonance CERN conspiracy, Large Hadron Collider shutdown, snake breeding farm typhoon China, horror podcast, Violet Hour Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. Jul 15

    The Amityville Horror vs. The Lutz Family | Twenty-Eight Days, Ten Million Books, and a Demon in the Turkey

    Twenty-eight days. That is how long George and Kathy Lutz lasted inside 112 Ocean Avenue before they ran out in the middle of the night, barefoot, with their children and their dog and almost nothing else. They left the furniture. They left the food on the table. They left everything. The story they told afterward would sell ten million books, spawn one of the most profitable haunted house franchises in cinema history, generate lawsuits, congressional scrutiny, and decades of debate about what is real, what is manufactured, and what happens when grief and trauma and a very good publicist collide. This is the Fear Archive Amityville mega episode — Part Two of the full story. If you have not listened to the DeFeo murders episode from Season Two, go back and start there. This episode picks up thirteen months after the murders, when the Lutz family moves into 112 Ocean Avenue and the mythology machine kicks into high gear. Amanda and Mike cover the full Lutz story — the twenty-eight days, the 1979 film, the book written by Jay Anson who never visited the location, the defense attorney who helped shape the story over a bottle of wine, and the question the episode keeps returning to: when does a story stop belonging to the people who lived it and start belonging to everyone else? They also watch every single Amityville sequel — every one — including Amityville II: The Possession, Amityville 3D, Amityville: The Evil Escapes (the demon lamp), Amityville Dollhouse, Amityville in Space, and the one with the haunted turkey. They also cover My Amityville Horror, the documentary in which Danny Lutz, grown up and deeply complicated, sits in front of a camera and tries to sort through what was real and what was imposed on him and finds after forty years that he genuinely cannot fully do it. The DeFeo family — Ronald Sr., Louise, Dawn, Allison, Mark, and nine-year-old John Matthew — are the actual story. They always were. Everything else is just the house settling. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: This episode contains discussion of family annihilation, childhood trauma, alleged psychological abuse, financial fraud, and a demon that apparently moved into a turkey. Popular Topics Include: Amityville Horror, Amityville Horror true story, Lutz family Amityville, 112 Ocean Avenue, George Lutz, Kathy Lutz, Danny Lutz My Amityville Horror documentary, Jay Anson Amityville book, Amityville sequels, Amityville demon lamp, Amityville in Space, Amityville Dollhouse, Amityville haunted turkey, DeFeo murders, Ronald DeFeo, haunted house horror, Long Island true crime, Conjuring Universe origin, Ryan Reynolds Amityville, based on true events horror, The Amityville Horror 1979 film, The Amityville Horror 2005 remake, Fear Archive podcast, true crime horror, horror podcast, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, Violet Hour Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. Jul 8

    Zodiac vs. Zodiac | The Most Famous Killer in American History Whose Name We Still Don't Know

    A note arrives at the San Francisco Chronicle in August 1969. It begins: This is the Zodiac speaking. He did not wait for the press to invent a nickname. He named himself. He branded himself. He was doing personal marketing before personal marketing was a concept — and he did it while murdering people and daring the public to catch him. The Zodiac killed five confirmed victims, possibly seven. He claimed 37. He was never identified, never arrested, never charged. He encoded his communications in ciphers that took the public 51 years to fully crack. He threatened to shoot children off school buses. He taunted detectives by name. He called radio stations. He wrote to celebrities. He turned the city of San Francisco into a stage and the San Francisco Chronicle into his personal broadcast network. In this episode of The Fear Archive, Amanda and Mike go deep into the full Zodiac case — the confirmed murders from Lake Herman Road in December 1968 through the killing of cab driver Paul Stine in October 1969, the 408-symbol cipher solved in a week by a high school teacher in Salinas, the 340-character cipher that remained unsolved for 51 years, the suspects, the letters, the phone calls, and the detective whose entire career was consumed by a case that never closed. They also cover the Zebra murders — a parallel series of killings happening on the same San Francisco streets at almost the same time, solved, largely forgotten, and in certain ways more disturbing precisely because there are answers. And they go deep on David Fincher's Zodiac, one of the greatest films of the 21st century and one of the most meticulous portraits of obsession ever committed to film. Also: the man who made an exploitation film to catch the Zodiac using a motorcycle raffle and an ice cream truck full of cops. Robert Graysmith, who started as a political cartoonist and ended as the most famous amateur investigator in American true crime history without ever being able to close the case. The New York Zodiac copycat who terrorized the city 20 years later from a room in his mother's apartment in Brooklyn using homemade zip guns. And the question this case refuses to let go of — what does uncaught evil do to a culture? What does the refusal of resolution produce? The names of the confirmed dead: David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Darlene Ferrin, Cecilia Sheppard, Paul Stine. They were not ciphers. They were not mythology. They were people on ordinary nights in ordinary places. Hosted by Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip. Executive produced by Cassie Jozefov. A Violet Hour Media production. LISTENER WARNING: This episode contains graphic violence, descriptions of murder, discussion of threats against children, and a significant quantity of what Amanda calls epistemological horror — the specific terror of not knowing and never knowing. Popular Topics Include: Zodiac Killer, Zodiac Killer unsolved, David Fincher Zodiac film, Zodiac 2007 film, Robert Graysmith Zodiac, Zodiac ciphers, 408 cipher solved, 340 cipher solved, Lake Herman Road murders, Blue Rock Springs murders, Lake Berryessa attack, Paul Stine murder, Darlene Ferrin, Betty Lou Jensen, David Faraday, Zebra murders San Francisco, San Francisco Chronicle Zodiac letters, Zodiac suspects, Arthur Leigh Allen suspect, New York Zodiac copycat, Heriberto Seda, Sleep My Little Dead, unsolved serial killers, San Francisco 1960s, counterculture San Francisco, Fear Archive podcast, true crime horror, horror podcast, Amanda Kagiwada, Michael Ryan Assip, Violet Hour Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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4.8
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

The Fear Archive investigates the real stories behind horror films. Every episode, hosts Amanda Kagiwada and Michael Ryan Assip dig into the actual cases, killers, hauntings, and conspiracies that Hollywood turned into your favorite scary movies — and ask whether the film or the truth is more disturbing. From Ed Gein and Psycho to the Gainesville Ripper and Scream, from MK-Ultra and The Manchurian Candidate to Faces of Death and the internet gore ecosystem — if a horror film has a real story behind it, the Fear Archive will find it. New episodes every other Wednesday. A Violet Hour Media production.

Information

  • Channel
    Realm
  • Creator
    Violet Hour Media
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Show Website
    The Fear Archive
  • Provider
    Realm of Possibility, Inc.

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