Yore Town

The Axeman of New Orleans: Play Jazz or Die

New Orleans, 1919.

A city famous for its music, nightlife, and vibrant culture was living under the shadow of a mysterious killer.

Families had been attacked in their own homes. Investigators struggled to identify the person responsible. Fear spread through neighborhoods as residents wondered whether they might be next.

Then something extraordinary happened.

A letter published in a New Orleans newspaper claimed to come from the Axeman. Its author warned of another visit but suggested that anyone listening to jazz music...

A young woman is found dead. Her husband insists nothing suspicious happened. Her mother says her daughter came back from the grave to tell a very different story.

And then the body is dug up.

In January 1897, Elva Zona Heaster Shue was found dead in her home in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Her husband, Erasmus "Trout" Shue, reportedly interfered with the doctor's examination, and Zona was buried.

But her mother, Mary Jane Heaster, refused to accept that her daughter's death was natural.

Mary claimed Zona's ghost appeared to her four times...

THE ALIEN BURIED IN TEXAS: THE AURORA UFO CRASH OF 1897

Welcome to creepy season on the Yore Town Podcast!

More than 125 years ago, something extraordinary supposedly happened in the little town of Aurora, Texas.

On April 17, 1897, a mysterious flying machine reportedly appeared above the community, lost altitude, and crashed into a local judge's windmill.

According to a newspaper report published two days later, the wreckage contained strange metal, mysterious documents, and the remains of a pilot who was believed to have come from Mars.

And what did the people...

On October 17, 1814, a 700-pound iron hoop fell from a massive wooden vat inside London’s Horse Shoe Brewery.

The vat held more than one million pints of porter.
The workers noticed the problem. They reported it. But hoops had slipped before, and nothing catastrophic had happened.

About an hour later, the vat exploded.
The resulting flood tore through the brewery, brought down a wall, and poured into the neighboring St. Giles area, where families lived in cramped homes and basement rooms directly in its path. Eight people were killed, including children and a 14-y...

Virginius Island was built because of the river.

Factories harnessed the power of the Shenandoah. Workers followed the factories. Homes, roads, gardens and a school followed the workers. Before long, a tiny island beside Harpers Ferry, West Virginia had become a thriving industrial community.

Then, on September 30, 1870, the river rose.

Fast.

Reports preserved by the National Park Service describe water rising six feet in just four minutes. Bridges connecting Virginius Island to higher ground were destroyed. Around 70 houses were swept away, industries were devastated, and 42 people died around Harpers Ferry.

THE GREAT DIAMOND HOAX OF 1872

What if you traveled hundreds of miles into the American West, discovered genuine diamonds with your own hands, and still got scammed?

In 1872, Philip Arnold and John Slack convinced some of California's wealthiest businessmen that they had discovered an enormous diamond field. Their evidence was convincing. They had real gemstones, a secret location, and a mining engineer who personally inspected the site.

But the entire discovery was a carefully constructed fraud.

The two prospectors had purchased genuine diamonds and other gemstones, buried them in remote Western...

On Sunday night, September 5, 1926, the people of Dromcollogher, County Limerick, gathered for something special: a night at the movies.

There was no cinema in the village, so roughly 150 people climbed into a wooden loft above a hardware store where a traveling film show had been set up. The room had a narrow staircase, barred windows, highly flammable nitrate film and candles being used near the projector.

Then one of those candles fell.

Within moments, the nitrate film ignited. Fire spread through the loft, the main staircase became impassable, and desperate moviegoers turned toward...

In 1901, Buffalo, New York, built a city that wasn't supposed to last.

The Pan-American Exposition was a spectacular World's Fair designed to show millions of visitors what the new century could become. Enormous buildings surrounded illuminated fountains, hundreds of thousands of electric lights transformed the grounds after dark, and the power of nearby Niagara Falls helped create a spectacle unlike anything many Americans had ever experienced.

Then the President of the United States walked into the Temple of Music.

On September 6, 1901, William McKinley stood inside the exposition greeting members of the public. One...

On September 1, 1894, Hinckley, Minnesota was a booming lumber town surrounded by forests dried by months of drought and littered with highly combustible logging debris.

By the next morning, much of the town was gone.

In this episode of Yore Town, Matt and Megh revisit the Great Hinckley Fire and the terrifying hours when an ordinary Saturday became a fight for survival.

As the firestorm closed in, residents had almost no warning and no reliable way of knowing which direction offered safety. Some climbed into wells and root cellars. Others fled toward rivers, swamps...

On the afternoon of August 26, 1926, 57 men were working underground at the Clymer No. 1 coal mine near the small Pennsylvania community of Clymer.

At exactly 1:00 PM, the mine exploded.

Five or six minutes later, it exploded again.

The second blast ripped through the already-damaged underground workings, destroyed parts of the ventilation system and sent flame and coal dust more than 100 feet into the air.

Outside, families ran toward the mine while rescue crews headed underground. Smoke, debris and poisonous gases repeatedly forced rescuers back, but amid the destruction came incredible stories of...

On the night of August 21, 1986, families living beneath Lake Nyos in Cameroon went to sleep with no reason to believe they were in danger.

By morning, roughly 1,700 people were dead.

There was no massive fire. No flood had swept through the villages. No lava had destroyed their homes. In many places, almost everything was still standing.

The killer was the air itself.

Lake Nyos had suddenly released an enormous amount of carbon dioxide stored deep beneath its surface. Invisible and heavier than the surrounding air, the gas traveled downhill into valleys...

On August 14, 1936, thousands of people arrived in Owensboro, Kentucky before sunrise.

They came to watch a man die.

Rainey Bethea's hanging would become known as the last fully public execution in American history. Estimates placed the crowd between 10,000 and 20,000 people, nearly the size of Owensboro itself at the beginning of the decade.

But what happened that morning, and what America remembers happening, may not be exactly the same thing.

In this episode of Yore Town, Matt and Megh uncover the murder of Lashia Edwards, the evidence that led authorities to Rainey...

In July 1976, thousands of American Legion veterans gathered at Philadelphia’s luxurious Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. They came to celebrate America’s bicentennial, reconnect with old friends, and attend their annual convention.

Then they went home.

Within days, previously healthy men began developing high fevers, confusion, breathing problems, and a severe form of pneumonia. Some died shortly after reaching the hospital. Others became sick despite never staying inside the hotel.

As the death toll climbed, investigators searched for a connection. Was it contaminated food? Swine flu? Poisoning? Sabotage? Biological warfare? Or was something inside the Bell...

Ottawa, Illinois Told Women to Lick Radioactive Paint

At first glance, Ottawa, Illinois is a quiet river town with historic streets and small-town charm. But beneath that peaceful image lies the story of one of the most shocking industrial disasters in American history.

In this episode of Yore Town, Matt and Megh explore the rise of the radium dial industry, the young women who were instructed to "lip, dip, paint" glowing watch dials, and the devastating health effects they unknowingly suffered after being exposed to radioactive paint.

You'll hear the remarkable story of...

New London, Texas changed America forever—and most people have never heard why.

New London: Why Gas Smells Like Rotten Eggs tells the true story behind the deadliest school disaster in American history. On March 18, 1937, nearly 300 students and teachers were killed when the London Consolidated School exploded without warning. There was no smell. No alarm. No chance to escape.

Today, every time you smell natural gas in your home, you're experiencing a safety measure born from this tragedy.

This episode explores how one routine decision, one invisible danger, and one devastating afternoon forever ch...

Bath, Michigan: The First Explosion Wasn't the End. The true crime history of the Bath School Disaster becomes even more disturbing after investigators uncover what really happened on May 18, 1927.

Most people know the explosion.

Almost nobody knows what happened next.

As the people of Bath rushed to rescue children trapped beneath the collapsed school, the man responsible drove directly into the disaster scene. Then another explosion ripped through the rescuers. Even worse, investigators soon discovered hundreds of pounds of additional explosives beneath the remaining school building that never detonated.

This is...

Bath, Michigan: The Bomb Beneath the Children. The true crime history of the Bath School Disaster begins with an almost impossible fact: for months, children attended class directly above explosives hidden beneath their school.

On May 18, 1927, the small farming community of Bath Township, Michigan became the site of the deadliest mass murder at a school in American history. Nearly a century later, the Bath School Disaster remains one of America’s most disturbing pieces of forgotten history.

But this story did not begin with an explosion.

It began with a town trying to bu...

Love Canal: The American Dream That Poisoned America is one of the most shocking true crime history and environmental disaster stories in American history. What began as a quiet neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York became one of the nation's darkest examples of government failure, buried toxic waste, and families fighting to save their children.

Thousands of Americans believed they had found the perfect place to raise a family. Tree-lined streets. A brand-new school. Friendly neighbors. But hidden beneath their homes were more than 21,000 tons of hazardous chemical waste. What happened next would forever change environmental law...

Lily Dale's Forgotten Mystery | Yore Town

Lily Dale's Forgotten Mystery takes us to a tiny community in western New York where thousands of people still travel hoping to hear from loved ones who have died. This is the true crime history, spiritual history, and unsolved mystery of one of America's most unusual small towns.

Tucked away among lakes and old-growth trees, Lily Dale looks like any quiet New York village. But for nearly 150 years, it has been known as the world's most famous Spiritualist community. People don't come here for haunted houses or ghost tours...

Dryden Mystery: Inside the Village of the Damned explores one of the most disturbing chapters in New York true crime history. For nearly a decade, the small town of Dryden, New York became the center of a string of murders, disappearances, suspicious deaths, and tragedies that left residents wondering if their community had somehow become cursed.

Nestled in the Finger Lakes region, Dryden looked like the perfect small town. Quiet streets. Friday night football. Families who had known each other for generations. But beginning in 1989, a series of shocking crimes and heartbreaking losses transformed the town forever...

Black Donnellys: The Family Nobody Would Save is the chilling true crime history of a family whose name became synonymous with fear, violence, and controversy in rural Ontario. This forgotten mystery explores how decades of feuds, rumors, and small-town resentment culminated in one of the most infamous acts of vigilante justice in Canadian history.

On a freezing February night in 1880, a mob descended upon the Donnelly farmhouse near Lucan, Ontario. Before sunrise, multiple members of the Donnelly family were dead, their home reduced to ashes, and an entire community was left to grapple with questions that remain...

Port Chatham: Why Did Everyone Leave? | Yore Town

Port Chatham: Why Did Everyone Leave? That's the question that has haunted this abandoned Alaskan settlement for decades. In this true crime history and unsolved mystery deep dive, we investigate the legend of the Nantiinaq, the mysterious creature some locals believed drove an entire town away.

Nestled on the remote coast of Alaska, Port Chatham was once a thriving fishing community. Today it sits abandoned, reclaimed by wilderness and surrounded by stories of strange encounters, disappearances, unexplained sightings, and a creature said to roam the forests beyond...

Deep in rural Quebec, the Burnt River Horror became one of the most disturbing true crime history cases Canada has ever seen. The Ant Hill Kids cult began as a peaceful back-to-the-land commune before transforming into a nightmare filled with manipulation, isolation, abuse, and horrifying amateur surgeries performed deep in the wilderness.

The Ant Hill Kids case remains one of the most shocking forgotten mysteries in Canadian dark history because the crimes escalated slowly over years inside an isolated small-town commune. Led by cult leader Roch Thériault, followers believed they were escaping modern society and building a...

Elisa Lam Mystery That Broke the Internet | Yore Town

The Elisa Lam mystery became one of the most disturbing true crime history cases the internet has ever seen. What began as a missing person case inside Los Angeles’ infamous Cecil Hotel quickly spiraled into an unsolved mystery filled with conspiracy theories, disturbing footage, internet obsession, and heartbreaking reality.

In this episode of Yore Town Podcast, Matt and Megh continue their deep dive into the strange disappearance and tragic death of Elisa Lam inside the Hotel Cecil. From the viral elevator footage to the internet detectives wh...

Elisa Lam Mystery: The Hotel That Hides Secrets | Yore Town

The Elisa Lam mystery is one of the most haunting unsolved mystery cases in modern true crime history—and it all leads back to a hotel with a past as dark as the story itself. In 2013, Elisa Lam vanished inside the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, leaving behind an eerie elevator video that still confuses investigators and viewers to this day.

What started as a missing person case quickly became one of the internet’s most debated mysteries. But before the theories… before the viral...

Hydesville NY Mystery Explained | Yore Town dives into one of the most chilling pieces of true crime history tied to an unsolved mystery that blurred the line between belief and deception. This Hydesville, New York case didn’t just scare a small town—it reshaped how people across the country viewed death, the unknown, and what might be hiding in plain sight.

In 1848, a quiet farmhouse in Hydesville became the center of a phenomenon that would spark a national movement. Strange knocking sounds, alleged communication with a murdered peddler, and growing crowds of witnesses turned a small-town myst...

Silent Twins Mystery: A Deadly Pact | Yore Town explores one of the most disturbing true crime history cases ever documented—an unsolved mystery involving two sisters whose bond ended in death. The Silent Twins mystery remains one of the strangest small-town crime stories, where psychology, isolation, and obsession collide.

In a quiet corner of Wales, identical twins June Gibbons and Jennifer Gibbons became known for something deeply unsettling—they refused to speak to anyone but each other. What started as silence turned into a life of isolation, crime, and ultimately a chilling belief: that only one of them...

Pearl Bryan The Missing Head Mystery | Yore Town

Pearl Bryan The Missing Head Mystery is one of the most disturbing pieces of true crime history in small-town America. This unsolved mystery from 1896 still haunts investigators, historians, and anyone who dares to look deeper into what really happened.

In this episode of Yore Town, we take you deep into the chilling story of Pearl Bryan—a young woman from Indiana whose life ended in one of the most infamous and brutal crimes of the 19th century. Found in a quiet Kentucky field, her body told a ho...

Camp Scott Murders Explained | Yore Town Podcast dives into one of the most chilling unsolved mysteries in true crime history. The Camp Scott Murders remain a haunting example of small-town crime where warning signs were missed—and justice may have slipped away.

In June 1977, three young girls attending Girl Scout Camp Scott near Locust Grove, Oklahoma were taken from their tent and murdered just feet away from safety. Nearly 50 years later, the case still raises disturbing questions about evidence, suspects, and whether the truth was ever fully uncovered.

Inside This Mystery:
The dark history of...

Thomas Fitzpatrick stole a plane and landed it on a New York City street—and unbelievably, he did it twice. This true story sounds impossible, but the real events are even more unbelievable than the legend.

In this episode, we dive into one of the wildest real-life stories in American history. A trained pilot, a late-night bar bet, and a decision that would leave New York City stunned—this is the story of Thomas Fitzpatrick, the man who flew a stolen plane into Manhattan not once, but twice, just to prove a point.

What makes this...

The Circleville Letters weren’t the first… and they weren’t the last. Long before Ohio’s most infamous mystery, small towns across America were already being torn apart by anonymous poison pen letters exposing secrets, destroying reputations, and leaving lives in ruins.

In this episode of the Yore Town Podcast, we uncover the chilling true story behind anonymous letters that devastated entire communities. These weren’t harmless messages… they revealed real secrets, triggered fear, and in some cases led to death. From early 1900s poison pen cases to the infamous Circleville Letters, this story shows how information...

Jamison Family Mystery: A family disappears in Oklahoma, leaving behind $32,000, their phones, and even their dog. The Jamison family disappearance is one of the most bizarre and unsettling true crime cases in modern history.

In 2009, the Jamison family vanished after driving into the mountains of rural Oklahoma. Days later, their truck was found abandoned deep in the woods—wallets, IDs, cell phones, and a large sum of cash still inside. There were no signs of struggle. No clear clues. And no explanation for why they would leave everything behind.

This true crime story quickly became on...

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon terrified a small Illinois town in 1944, and no one was ever caught. In this episode of the Yorktown Podcast, we dig into one of the strangest small town mysteries in American history: a phantom attacker who may or may not have existed, a town gripped by wartime fear, and a story that still has no clean answer.

What you'll learn in this episode:
• The original Mad Gasser of Mattoon incident reports from August–September 1944
• Why wartime paranoia and mass hysteria may have fueled the Mattoon gas attacks
• The real symptoms...

The Donora Smog Disaster of 1948 remains one of the deadliest air pollution disasters in American history. In the small steel town of Donora, Pennsylvania, a deadly cloud of industrial pollution became trapped in the valley for five days, leaving thousands sick and over twenty people dead.

In this episode of Yore Town: Small Towns, Big Stories, we dive deep into the shocking true story of the Donora Smog Disaster — a forgotten tragedy that changed environmental laws in the United States forever. What started as a normal autumn week in a hardworking steel town quickly turned into a pu...

The Auburn cyanide murders shocked a quiet Washington suburb and changed how America seals its medicine bottles. In 1986, Stella Nickell poisoned Excedrin capsules with potassium cyanide, killing her husband and an innocent neighbor in one of the most chilling product tampering cases in U.S. history.

This episode of Yore Town Podcast dives deep into the true story of the Auburn cyanide murders, examining how a small-town crime triggered national panic just four years after the Chicago Tylenol murders. What started as a sudden death in a suburban home quickly became a federal case that reshaped consumer...

Times Beach, Missouri became the largest civilian environmental buyout in U.S. history. In 1983, the federal government ordered residents to leave after discovering dangerous dioxin contamination beneath their homes.

This is the full story of how a quiet Route 66 town turned into a national environmental scandal.

In this episode of Yore Town, we dive deep into the Times Beach disaster — from the origins of the contamination to the Superfund buyout, the demolition of the town, and the lasting impact on environmental regulation in America.

What began as a dust control solution on unpaved ro...

Joseph Force Crater’s disappearance remains one of the most baffling unsolved mysteries in American history. In 1930, a sitting New York Supreme Court judge stepped into a taxi in Manhattan — and was never seen again.

What happened to Joseph Force Crater? Was it political corruption, organized crime, or something far simpler hiding in plain sight?

In this episode, we take a deep dive into the confirmed facts behind the Judge Crater case — separating historical record from conspiracy theory. From his ties to Tammany Hall and Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to the mysterious phone call that pulled...

Before Jack the Ripper, America’s first serial killer was already hunting.
The Servant Girl Annihilator terrorized Austin, Texas in the 1880s—one of the most forgotten true crime stories in U.S. history.

In the 1880s, long before “serial killer” became a term, a wave of brutal nighttime murders terrorized Austin, Texas. The victims were mostly Black women working as domestic servants. The killer was never caught. And over time, the story quietly disappeared from history.

They called him The Servant Girl Annihilator.

In this episode of Yore Town, we dive deep int...

In January 1998, one of the worst ice storms in North American history brought St. Lawrence County, New York to a complete standstill.
For days, freezing rain coated trees, power lines, and roads with inches of solid ice, causing widespread power outages, collapsed infrastructure, and a humanitarian emergency across the North Country.

This episode tells the true story of the Ice Storm of 1998, focusing specifically on St. Lawrence County, where tens of thousands of residents lost electricity for days—and in some cases, weeks. Entire towns went dark. Homes dropped below freezing. Emergency shelters filled. Utility crews an...

The Texas City Disaster of 1947 remains the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history. In this episode of the Yore Town Podcast on the Beard Laws Network, we investigate the catastrophic SS Grand Camp explosion—a tragedy caused by 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate that changed Texas history and safety regulations forever.

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If you are looking for US history facts or an industrial disasters documentary, this episode breaks down exactly how the largest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded actually happened. We explore the timeline of...