Loreplay

Dayna Pereira

Dayna Pereira is the sarcastic solo host of Loreplay, serving up paranormal stories, haunted history, creepy folklore, and weird legends with a playful twist. Equal parts storyteller and skeptic, she blends dark humor, spooky vibes, and a love for the bizarre into binge-worthy episodes for fans of ghost stories, urban legends, and true crime with a paranormal twist.

  1. Bárbara of The Pleasures: Rio's Myth, Murder, and Folklore

    2D AGO

    Bárbara of The Pleasures: Rio's Myth, Murder, and Folklore

    In the shadow of colonial Rio de Janeiro, beneath the historic Arco do Teles, lives the legend of Bárbara dos Prazeres—a woman remembered as beautiful, powerful… and possibly monstrous. Said to have lived between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Bárbara’s story blends documented history with chilling folklore. Some versions claim she murdered her husband and lover, escaped justice through wealth and influence, and later became the center of horrifying rumors involving missing children and blood rituals tied to youth and beauty. But here’s the truth: very little of this is firmly documented. What survives is a story shaped by:  colonial power structures  gender expectations  religious fear  and a city built on both wealth and exploitation Today, the Arco do Teles remains a real historical site—by day, a bustling corridor; by night, a place many claim still carries echoes of the past. So was Bárbara a killer… a scapegoat… or something much harder to define? Let’s step under the arch and find out. Sources:  Ribeiro, Fernando Barata. Crônicas da Polícia e da Vida do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Departamento de Imprensa Nacional, 1958. (the foundational primary source — directly quoted in most modern accounts)Rezzutti, Paulo. Mulheres do Brasil: A história não contada. Rio de Janeiro: Leya, 2018.Flores, Fernanda. "A lenda de Bárbara dos Prazeres, a prostituta que aterrorizou o Rio de Janeiro." Saiba História, February 12, 2020. saibahistoria.blogspot.com"Arco do Teles." Rio Memórias (virtual museum). riomemorias.com.br"A lenda de Bárbara dos Prazeres, a temida 'Bruxa do Arco do Teles.'" Brazilian Times, November 11, 2025. braziliantimes.comSerqueira, Carlos. "A Bruxa do Arco do Teles." Mapas Antigos, Histórias Curiosas. Referenced via diariodorio.com"Roda dos Expostos da Santa Casa de Misericórdia do Rio de Janeiro." História Hoje. historiahoje.com"Arco do Teles." FreeWalker Tours Rio. freewalkertours.com"Uma história de terror no centro do Rio de Janeiro." Instituto de Longevidade. institutodelongevidade.org"Bárbara dos Prazeres: a bruxa que aterrorizou o Arco do Teles." Iconografia da História, February 1, 2021. iconografiadahistoria.com.br NXNPWBny51NDXRIArKi3

    29 min
  2. The Witch of Yazoo: She Said What She Said

    MAR 16

    The Witch of Yazoo: She Said What She Said

    This week we're going fully unhinged in the Mississippi Delta, and I need you to be prepared for that emotionally. We're covering the Witch of Yazoo — a nameless woman, a swamp shack, a very unfortunate boy on a raft, and a dying curse so specific it included a date, a year, a time of day, and somehow still got dismissed by an entire town. We'll get into the legend itself (fishermen, arsenic, skeletons on the ceiling, yes really), the fire of 1904 that happened on the exact date she said it would, the chained grave in Glenwood Cemetery that someone is literally employed to maintain to this day, and what this legend is actually about underneath all the chaos. Also Willie Morris, who chose to be buried thirteen paces from her grave and is an icon for it. Spooky? Yes. Funny? Absolutely. A little bit sad if you think about it too hard? Unfortunately also yes. Sources:Morris, Willie. Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. — This is the one. The book that put the Witch of Yazoo on the map. Semi-autobiographical, beautifully written, and the primary source for the version of the legend most people know. Worth reading in full. Morris, Willie. Good Old Boy and the Witch of Yazoo. Oxford, MS: Yoknapatawpha Press, 1989. — The sequel, in which Willie and his friends get tangled up with a woman rumored to be the witch's granddaughter and chaos ensues. A delight. McElreath, Leisa S. and Lindsley, Ashley McElreath. "1904 Destruction of Yazoo City: A Case Study of Community Resilience." 2018. — A genuinely fascinating academic paper about the fire itself and how the town recovered. Available via ResearchGate. If you want the non-supernatural account of what happened, start here. Yazoo County Convention and Visitors Bureau — The Legend of the Witch of Yazoo. visityazoo.org — The official tourism page, which is somehow both completely earnest and deeply charming. Also has a downloadable map to the grave. Yes, really. The Clarion-Ledger — "Great fire in Yazoo City." May 25, 1904. — The contemporary newspaper account of the fire. Available digitized via various Mississippi newspaper archives. The Clarion-Ledger — "The Witch of Yazoo still haunts the town she burned." Therese Apel. October 28, 2014. — A lovely modern piece on how the legend lives in Yazoo City today. The Yazoo Herald — "It's Time To Bury the Witch of Yazoo for Good." April 4, 1998. — The editorial that prompted Willie Morris to write a letter to the editor at age 63 defending the witch. Iconic behavior. The Yazoo Herald — "Chained Grave Holds Jealous Wife, Says Longtime Yazoo City Resident." July 5, 1978. — The alternate theory that the grave is actually a woman buried by a controlling husband. Somehow more disturbing than the witch. Hinds Community College LibGuide — Paranormal Mississippi Case Files: The Witch of Yazoo. libguides.hindscc.edu — A well-sourced academic overview of the legend with the Willie Morris short story text. Great starting point for research. Country Roads Magazine — "The Witch of Yazoo." September 2025. — A recent retelling with good detail on the oral tradition and the grave itself. Mississippi Folklore (msfolklore.wordpress.com) — "The Witch of Yazoo." August 2022. — Thorough overview with good historical context on Yazoo City before the legend. Only in Your State — "The Witch of Yazoo City Is a Mississippi Legend." — Accessible overview with details on the grave's current state. OTIS (Odd Things I've Seen) — "Deadknobs and Broomsticks: The Witch Grave of Yazoo City." September 2014. — A firsthand account of visiting the grave. I read this one at midnight and do not recommend that. WANT MORE? Subscribe to Loreplay wherever you get your podcasts. Rate and review if you're feeling generous — it helps more than you know and costs you nothing except thirty seconds and a little love, which I will accept gratefully and without shame. Follow along on socials for episode updates, behind-the-scenes chaos, and me spiraling at 1am about whatever legend I'm currently researching. And if you've ever been to the Witch of Yazoo's grave — if you've rattled those chains or stood in that cemetery at night — I want to hear about it. Slide into my DMs. Tell me everything.

    32 min
  3. The Werewolf Trials

    MAR 9

    The Werewolf Trials

    Hey hey, lore-loving weirdos — before Salem, before witch trials became a cultural shorthand for mass hysteria, Europe spent roughly two hundred years putting people on trial for turning into wolves. And executing them. Tens of thousands of them. In this episode of Loreplay, host Dayna Pereira dives into the real, documented, court-certified history of the European werewolf trials — the paranoia, the pamphlets, the torture, the confessions, and the people ground up inside the machinery. We're talking official government decrees authorizing citizens to hunt werewolves (yes, that was a real legal document), the most sensationalized and brutal execution of the sixteenth century, and — the story Dayna cannot stop thinking about — the eighty-year-old man who showed up to his own werewolf trial, admitted everything cheerfully, and walked away with twenty lashes because he was simply too chaotic for the court to deal with. Primary Sources: Anonymous. A True Discourse Declaring the Damnable Life and Death of One Stubbe Peeter. London, 1590. [The only surviving record of the Peter Stumpp case — two copies exist, held at the British Museum and Lambeth Library]Trial transcript of Thiess of Kaltenbrun, Provincial Court of Venden, April 28, 1691. Hofger-Archiv Kriminalakte n. 30 v. J. 1692. First published by Hermann von Bruiningk in Mitteilungen aus der livländischen Geschichte 22 (1924–28): 203–20. English translation by Bruce Lincoln available via University of Chicago Press: press.uchicago.eduBoguet, Henri. Discours des sorciers. Lyon, 1602. [Legal treatise by the Grand Judge who presided over the Gandillon case]Fründ, Johannes. Chronicle of the Valais witch trials, c. 1428–1430. [Earliest documented lycanthropy accusations]Modern Scholarly Works: de Blécourt, Willem, ed. Werewolf Histories. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. — The definitive modern academic collection on European werewolf trialsGinzburg, Carlo and Bruce Lincoln. Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf: A Classic Case in Comparative Perspective. University of Chicago Press, 2020. — Includes first full English translation of the Thiess trial transcript: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo46813477.htmlGinzburg, Carlo. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. 1584Accessible Articles & Further Reading: "Before America Had Witch Trials, Europe Had Werewolf Trials" — History.com: history.com/articles/werewolf-trials-europe-witches"Werewolf Witch Trials" — Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf_witch_trials"Gilles Garnier" — Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Garnier"Peter Stumpp" — Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Stumpp"Thiess of Kaltenbrun" — Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiess_of_Kaltenbrun"Beasts and Believers: A History of Werewolf Trials in Early Modern Europe" — DIG History Podcast, October 2025: digpodcast.org/2025/10/26/werewolves/"Gandillon Family" — Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology via Encyclopedia.com"Jacques Roulet" — Monstrous.com: monstrous.com/jacques-roulet/🎙️ ABOUT LOREPLAY Loreplay is the comedy-paranormal podcast where haunted history meets hot takes. Host Dayna Pereira is equal parts storyteller and skeptic — blending dark humor, spooky vibes, and genuine historical research into binge-worthy deep dives on ghost stories, folklore, paranormal history, and the weird, dark corners of the past.New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.📲 TikTok & Instagram: @LoreplayPod 📧 loreplaypod@gmail.com#werewolftrials #paranormalhistory #darkhistory #loreplay #daynaPereira #werewolf #witchtrials #folklore #hauntedhistory #truecrime #medievalhistory #lycanthropy #spookyhistory #historypodcast #paranormalpodcast

    42 min
  4. The Dancing Plague of 1518

    MAR 2

    The Dancing Plague of 1518

    In July of 1518, one woman in Strasbourg walked into the street and began to dance. She didn’t stop. Within days, dozens joined her. Within weeks, hundreds were convulsing, leaping, and collapsing in the streets. And instead of stopping it… local authorities encouraged it. They hired musicians. They built stages. They prescribed more dancing. By the end of the summer, people were reportedly dying from exhaustion, heart attacks, and strokes. Was it ergot poisoning? Religious hysteria? A psychological contagion? A trauma response to famine and disease? Or something darker moving through a population already stretched to its breaking point? In this episode of Loreplay, Dayna dives into the Dancing Plague of 1518 — the bizarre historical event where 400 people allegedly danced for weeks, and no one knew how to stop it. We unpack the timeline, the death peak, the cultural panic, the failed “treatment,” and the modern psychological theories that might explain it. Because if there’s one thing history has taught us… it’s that humans will absolutely panic in groups. Sources:John Waller, A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 (2008) Robert Bartholomew & Erich Goode, Mass Hysteria in Schools and Workplaces (2000) Hecker, Justus Friedrich Karl, The Epidemics of the Middle Ages (1832) BBC Future – “The Dancing Plague of 1518” History.com – “Dancing Plague of 1518” University of Michigan Medical History Center – archival analysis of medieval epidemics

    23 min
  5. The Dark Origins of Fairy Tales

    FEB 23

    The Dark Origins of Fairy Tales

    Think fairy tales were written for children? Think again. In this episode of Loreplay, Dayna Pereira dives deep into the dark, disturbing, and wildly misunderstood origins of classic fairy tales like Cinderella, Snow White, and The Juniper Tree. Long before Disney softened the edges, these stories were filled with mutilation, cannibalism, eye-pecking birds, and stepmothers who absolutely chose violence. We explore how fairy tales began as oral folklore told among adults, and how these stories functioned as psychological survival manuals in a brutal pre-modern world. From blood-soaked slippers to baked-into-a-pie revenge plots, this episode unpacks the historical, psychological, and cultural roots of the stories we thought we knew. Spoiler: They were never about the prince. They were about survival. If you love folklore, dark history, fairy tale origins, mythology, cultural psychology, and the real stories behind Disney classics — this one’s for you. Sources:Zipes, Jack. The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre. Princeton University Press, 2012. Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. Routledge, 1988. Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. Princeton University Press, 1987. Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 1976. Jung, Carl. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 1959. Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Fairy Tales: A New History. SUNY Press, 2009. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Kinder- und Hausmärchen. 1812–1857 editions. Perrault, Charles. Histoires ou contes du temps passé. 1697.

    22 min
  6. The Hinterkaifeck Murders

    FEB 16

    The Hinterkaifeck Murders

    In 1922, six people were brutally murdered on a remote German farm known as Hinterkaifeck. There were no witnesses. No arrests. No clear motive. But what makes this case one of the creepiest unsolved murders in history isn’t just the violence — it’s what happened after. Neighbors reported footsteps in the attic before the murders. Footprints appeared in the snow leading to the farmhouse… but never away. And after the family was killed, someone stayed behind — feeding the livestock, eating the food, and living in the house with the bodies for days. In this episode of Loreplay, we dive into the timeline, suspects, disturbing clues, and the enduring mystery of the Hinterkaifeck Murders — the case where the killer may never have truly left. Primary historical / investigative Bavarian State Police archival investigation files (1922 case records)Contemporary German newspaper reports (April 1922 regional coverage)Books Peter Leuschner — Hinterkaifeck: Germany’s Most Mysterious Murder Case (considered the definitive investigative reconstruction)Reliable modern summaries Historic Mysteries — Hinterkaifeck case analysisCrimeReads historical crime featuresAll That’s Interesting — Hinterkaifeck overviewSmithsonian Magazine (crime history features referencing the case)BBC historical crime features (general European unsolved cases)Academic / criminology discussion German criminology retrospective analyses of unresolved 20th-century casesCold case forensic review conducted by the Fürstenfeldbruck Police Academy (2007 student review project)

    38 min
  7. The LaLaurie Mansion: True Horror on Royal Street

    FEB 9

    The LaLaurie Mansion: True Horror on Royal Street

    New Orleans is known for jazz, ghosts, cocktails, and bad decisions made after midnight—but one house on Royal Street manages to out-traumatize them all. In this episode of Loreplay, Dayna Pereira dives into the chilling true history and twisted folklore surrounding the infamous LaLaurie Mansion and its most notorious resident, Delphine LaLaurie. What began as whispers of cruelty turned into full-blown horror after an 1834 fire exposed something so disturbing it sent an entire city into a violent frenzy. We’ll walk through the confirmed history, the rumors that grew in the shadows, the alleged medical experimentation, the mob destruction, and the long list of owners who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—stay. From enslaved victims whose voices were erased, to reports of screaming walls, shadow figures, and restless spirits, this episode asks the uncomfortable question: When a house witnesses evil… does it remember? Listener discretion advised—this one’s dark, historical, and not for the faint of heart. The Times-Picayune (1834 fire reports and court records)Harriet Martineau – Retrospect of Western Travel (1838)George Washington Cable – historical essays on New Orleans societyHenry Castellanos – New Orleans As It WasJeanne deLavigne – Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans (1946)Louisiana State Archives – court documents regarding Delphine LaLaurieSmithsonian Magazine – historical context on slavery in New OrleansNew Orleans Historic Collection (HNOC)Library of Congress archives on 19th-century Louisiana newspapersWikepedia- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphine_LaLaurie

    46 min
  8. The Curse of The Pharaoh

    FEB 2

    The Curse of The Pharaoh

    In 1922, archaeologists opened the tomb of Tutankhamun, and almost immediately, people started dying. Coincidence? Bad luck? Or did they anger something ancient, royal, and deeply petty? In this episode of Loreplay, Dayna Pereira cracks open the legend of The Curse of the Pharaoh—the supposed supernatural punishment that followed those who disturbed King Tut’s tomb. We trace how the curse myth began, who actually died (and who absolutely did not), and why the media latched onto the story like it was the original clickbait headline. Was this divine revenge from beyond the grave—or just a perfect storm of bad timing, poor medical care, and dramatic storytelling? Grab your emotional support scarab and join us as we separate myth from mummy dust in one of history’s most enduring spooky legends. Sources & Further Reading British Museum – King Tut Collection & Tomb HistoryNational Geographic – Articles on the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the curse mythSmithsonian Institution – Scientific explanations for the so-called curseBBC – Historical coverage on Howard Carter and Lord CarnarvonJournal of the American Medical Association – Research on tomb bacteria and fungal sporesThe Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard CarterOxford University Press – Egyptology and funerary belief researchHistory – Overviews of the curse legend and excavation aftermath

    28 min
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4.8
out of 5
21 Ratings

About

Dayna Pereira is the sarcastic solo host of Loreplay, serving up paranormal stories, haunted history, creepy folklore, and weird legends with a playful twist. Equal parts storyteller and skeptic, she blends dark humor, spooky vibes, and a love for the bizarre into binge-worthy episodes for fans of ghost stories, urban legends, and true crime with a paranormal twist.

Information

  • Creator
    Dayna Pereira
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    30
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Dayna Pereira
  • Show Website
    Loreplay

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