The Strange and Unusual Podcast Wondery

In this week's episode, Alyson explores the phenomenon of being scared to death through real life examples, folklore, pop culture, and medical mysteries.

Hysterical investigates a mysterious illness that spreads among a group of high school girls in upstate New York. What is causing their sudden, often violent symptoms? Is there something in the water or inside the school? Or is it “all in their head?” The series examines the outbreak in LeRoy, NY, believed by some to be the most severe case of mass hysteria since the Salem Witch Trials. In his search for answers, Dan Taberski (9/12, Missing Richard Simmons, Running from Cops) explores other seemingly inexplicable events of the last few years – CIA officers being crippled with nausea and vertigo; cops OD'ing from exposure to fentanyl – and discovers they’re far more connected than we realize.

From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, this 7-part series forces us to grapple with the mysteries of our own minds, and reckon with a contagion that we thought was long dead, but may be the defining disorder of our time. 

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+ at Wondery.fm/Hysterical_Morbid.

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In this episode, we cover chapters 17 through 19, when the creature confronts and begs his maker to build him a new companion. Victor then goes on a journey to perform his dreaded task.

On this week's episode we delve into the superstition of the evil eye and a case of witchcraft murder in Kalamazoo in 1929

This week's headline comes from St. Louis Post Dispatch, published on December 23, 1900

Barbara Newhall Follett was considered a child prodigy when her first novel "The House Without Windows" was published at age 12 in 1927, and then she had vanished forever when she was 25 in 1939. What happened to Barbara? And what does her disappearance possibly have to do with another woman who vanished in New Hampshire in 1936, Elsie Whittemore?