Canadian Creepies

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Welcome, 

Tonight we come to you from an abandoned radio station for a very special Halloween two part series to broadcast some of the scariest stories, urban legends and real events live on air. 

Five friends have broken in with the plan to create something spectacularly and unforgettably spooky but their night is about to take a twisted turn when something sinister that was lurking within the confines of the building begins to take the forms of the stories they tell… 

They are o...

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In the 1870s, the Acadian fishing village of Chéticamp, Nova Scotia, was a place where faith, folklore, and superstition ran deep. With the local fishing industry dominated by merchants from the island of Jersey, tensions between outsiders and the Acadian community created fertile ground for some very strange stories.

Enter Charlie Romeril, a young Jersey clerk whose reputation for sorcery would become the stuff of local legend.

Whispers of curses, a servant girl driven mad, mysterious disturbances at the priest's home, and an e...

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Eight men. One remote Ontario farmhouse. And a betrayal that would become one of the darkest chapters in Canadian organized crime history.

In the second half of The Shedden Massacre, Valerie and Amanda pick up where the violence left off, following the investigation, the shocking revelations, and the lengthy trial that would expose what happened behind closed doors.

As investigators pieced together the final hours of eight members and associates of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, a story of shifting loyalties, internal power struggles, and...

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In a small Ontario community in 1919, a woman named Maggie Pollock found herself at the centre of a controversy that seemed better suited to the 1600s than the 20th century.

Maggie was known around Huron County for her unusual abilities. She claimed to receive visions, communicate with the dead, and help neighbours locate things that had gone missing. To some, she possessed an extraordinary gift. To others, her abilities were something far more suspicious.

But when a farmer paid Maggie to help locate stolen...

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On April 8, 2006, eight men were found dead inside four vehicles in a farmer’s field near Shedden, Ontario.

What followed became one of the most notorious biker-related murder cases in Canadian history.

In this episode of Canadian Creepies, Valerie and Amanda dig into the events surrounding the Shedden massacre, the fractured world of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in Ontario, the role of Wayne Kellestine, and the investigation and trials that followed.

A huge thank you to Christine Young for researching this episode an...

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On Halloween night in 1930, four teenagers driving between Richibucto and Rexton, New Brunswick, claimed they encountered something terrifying on the road.

A white-robed figure.

A ghost.

The story spread quickly, drawing crowds, armed locals and plenty of attention to one dark stretch of Maritime road.

But the Spectre of Rexton may have been hiding something far more earthly.

In this episode of Down the Crooked Path, we follow the strange story from roadside apparition to media frenzy and...

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This week, Canadian Creepies is heading into the courtroom for a case that proves truth really can be stranger than fiction.

Bruni v. Bruni began as a bitter Ontario family court dispute, but what unfolded became one of the most memorable decisions in Canadian legal history. Allegations, escalating hostility, family drama and years of conflict eventually landed in front of a judge who had clearly seen enough — and wrote an opinion that has been quoted, shared and discussed ever since.

Researched by Christine Young, Va...

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In the summer of 1989, an ordinary apartment building in Beauport, Québec became the centre of one of the province’s strangest paranormal cases.

It began with unexplained knocking inside the walls. Soon, residents were reporting violent blows strong enough to shake the partitions, mysterious damage appearing in the plaster, and disturbances that no one seemed able to explain. Police, city inspectors, journalists and other investigators were eventually drawn to the building, searching for everything from structural problems to gas, plumbing and geological causes.

The...

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In April 2006, three members of the Richardson family were found murdered inside their Medicine Hat, Alberta home.

Marc Richardson, his wife Debra, and their eight-year-old son Jacob had all been killed. Missing from the house was the couple’s 12-year-old daughter, who we will refer to as J.R. because of protections under Canada’s Youth Criminal Justice Act.

What initially appeared to be a terrifying abduction quickly became something much darker.

Investigators uncovered a relationship between J.R. and 23-year-old Jeremy Stei...

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Long before Bigfoot became a pop culture phenomenon, stories of strange, human-like creatures were already circulating across Canada.

Hidden in Indigenous oral traditions, frontier accounts, newspaper archives and regional folklore are tales of wildmen said to inhabit remote forests, mountain ranges and northern wilderness. Beings described as hairy, elusive, powerful and sometimes frighteningly human.

In this episode of Down the Crooked Path, Amanda digs into some of Canada’s lesser-known wildman legends, including stories that have largely faded from modern paranormal culture. From the no...

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In Part Two of Jason Porter: The Man Who Wasn’t, Valerie and Amanda continue the story as the carefully constructed identity Heather Rovet knew as “Jace” begins to collapse.

After years together, Heather starts uncovering dating profiles, aliases, financial records, pawn receipts and the name Jason Porter, leading her to a history she never knew existed. We follow the confrontation that came next, the financial aftermath, Heather’s determination to document what happened, and the court proceedings that eventually resulted in Jason’s 2024 conviction and 2025 sentencing...

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What happens when a beautiful historic mansion carries more than a century of stories within its walls?

At 515 Jarvis Street in Toronto stands one of the city’s most famous haunted landmarks: The Keg Mansion. Built in 1868, the grand Gothic-style home later became the residence of industrialist Hart Massey and his family before taking on several very different lives as a veterans’ hospital, art gallery, radio station, and eventually a restaurant.

But the history of the mansion comes with something darker. Over the years, staf...

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Season 3 of Canadian Creepies starts here.

Jason Porter built relationships, identities, and entire versions of himself around lies. In Part One, we begin unraveling the story behind the deception, tracing his early life, relationships, reinventions, and the beginnings of a long con that would leave people questioning who Jason Porter really was.

All research for this episode was completed by Christine Young, who dug deep into the complicated history behind the case.

This episode also features the first half of our interview...

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What happens when grief, science, and the supernatural all meet inside one Winnipeg home?

From the 1920s through the 1940s, physician Dr. T.G. Hamilton and his wife, nurse Lillian Hamilton, transformed their home at 185 Kelvin Street into a laboratory for investigating psychic phenomena. With cameras rolling, mediums in trances, and séances underway, the Hamiltons attempted to document everything from floating objects to ghostly figures and the strange, gauzy substance known as ectoplasm.

Their experiments attracted some seriously notable visitors, including Sir Arthur C...

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This bonus episode corrects an important error from Episode 052, Dangerous Offender, Dangerous System.

Lisa Neve did not murder anyone.

In 1991, Rhodora Nicholas was severely beaten, robbed, and abandoned in a field by Neve and an accomplice. She survived the attack, but her survival does not diminish the seriousness of the violence or the lasting harm she endured.

In our original episode, we focused heavily on Lisa Neve’s trauma, systemic failures, and Canada’s Dangerous Offender designation. In doing so, we did not...

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There’s a stretch of Lake Ontario where ships have vanished, planes have gone down, and strange stories have lingered beneath the waves for generations.

This week, we’re heading Down the Crooked Path into the Marysburgh Vortex, a mysterious triangle said to be responsible for more shipwrecks and downed aircraft than the Bermuda Triangle.

We’ll dive into the legend of the ghost ship Bavaria, reports of UFO encounters, and the strange meteorite site said to be resting beneath the waters.

Is the...

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Season 3 of Canadian Creepies is stepping onto the game show floor, where every door hides something strange, unsettling, mysterious or downright creepy.

From true crime and dark Canadian history to paranormal stories, bizarre mysteries and the cases that refuse to stay buried, you never quite know what’s waiting on the other side.

Canadian Creepies was created by Valerie Catharine & Ali Overholt, co-hosted by Valerie & Amanda Joy, researched by Christine Young and edited by Kyle McDonnell.

🎙️ Season 3 begins September 10th.

Pick a...

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On a rainy night near University Boulevard, a driver picks up a quiet young woman wearing a light coat.

She says little, handing over a piece of paper with the address of UBC’s Main Library written on it.

But before the car ever reaches its destination, the passenger is gone.

In this episode of Down the Crooked Path, Amanda Joy explores the legend of the vanishing hitchhiker said to haunt the roads around the University of British Columbia.

The st...

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For decades, Indigenous families were expected to endure the removal of their children in silence. Eventually, survivors, parents, communities, and Indigenous leaders began forcing Canada to listen.

In the final part of our Sixties Scoop series, we begin with the 1980 Indian Child Caravan, when approximately one thousand people gathered in British Columbia to protest the continued removal of Indigenous children from their families and placement in non-Indigenous foster homes.

We follow that resistance into the courtroom, where survivors fought for recognition of what had...

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Behind the walls of Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute, respected psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron was conducting experiments intended to break down the human mind and rebuild it from the ground up.

Patients were subjected to powerful combinations of drugs, prolonged isolation, repeated audio messages, and electroshock administered at levels far beyond conventional treatment, all while many had little understanding of what was actually being done to them.

But Cameron was not working without financial support.

Canadian public money helped fund research at th...

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The closing of residential schools did not mean the end of Canada’s attempts to separate Indigenous children from their families, communities, and cultures. The system changed. The goal of assimilation remained.

In Part 03 of our series on the Sixties Scoop, we examine how changes to the Indian Act opened the door for provincial child welfare authorities to intervene on reserves, and how poverty created and perpetuated by colonial policies was frequently treated as evidence of parental neglect.

We look at the experience from bo...

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White supremacy doesn’t always announce itself with obvious symbols, slogans, or declarations. Sometimes it enters a relationship quietly: through jokes, conspiracy theories, changing language, increasingly extreme media, and a pattern of comments that becomes harder to ignore.

In this special solo bonus episode of Canadian Creepies, Valerie looks at some of the warning signs that a partner may be involved with or becoming influenced by white supremacist and extremist ideology, how radicalization can become normalized within relationships, and the manipulation tactics that can make those be...

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In the 1850s, Georgina Pennee moved with her husband to Binstead Manor in Prince Edward Island, expecting to begin a new chapter of their lives. Instead, she found herself confronting something far more unsettling: the apparition of a woman carrying an infant through the halls of the manor.

Determined to understand what she was witnessing, Georgina began investigating the haunting, conducting what would become an unusually early paranormal investigation led by a woman. What she uncovered about the mysterious woman and child would reveal a disturbing...

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In Part 2 of our four-part series on the Sixties Scoop, Valerie and Amanda examine the devastating conditions inside Canada's Residential School system and the decisions that allowed generations of Indigenous children to suffer.

We explore how overcrowded, poorly ventilated schools became breeding grounds for diseases like tuberculosis and the 1918 Spanish Flu, transforming institutions that claimed to educate children into places where illness spread unchecked. We also examine Dr. Peter Bryce's groundbreaking 1907 report, which warned the federal government that children were dying in staggering numbers, and the...

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The frozen wilderness of Canada's North has long been the setting for stories of survival, isolation, and mystery.

In this episode of Down the Crooked Path, Amanda Joy explores the legend of The Mad Trapper of Rat River. What began as a remote trapping dispute quickly escalated into one of the largest and most extraordinary manhunts in Canadian history, drawing law enforcement, Indigenous trackers, and determined search parties deep into the unforgiving northern wilderness.

As the pursuit unfolded, so did the mystery...

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Part 01 of our four-part series on the Sixties Scoop begins by examining the policies and ideology that made the mass removal of Indigenous children possible.

In this episode of Canadian Creepies, Valerie and Amanda trace how Canada's Residential School system evolved from policy into practice. We explore the laws that gave the government the power to forcibly remove children from their families, the role of Duncan Campbell Scott in making attendance compulsory, and the devastating reality faced by parents who could be fined or...

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Gold has a way of drawing people into the wilderness... but some treasures are said to demand far more than determination.

In this episode of Down the Crooked Path, Amanda Joy follows the enduring legend of The Lost Lemon Mine, a mysterious gold discovery believed to be hidden somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. According to the story, two prospectors stumbled upon an incredibly rich deposit before betrayal turned their remarkable find into a tale of murder, disappearance, and mystery.

For more than...

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Is Bigfoot a legend told around campfires... or something more? "The Silence of the Woods: Bigfoot Beyond Myth" explores the shadowy line between ancient stories and unexplained encounters in the North American wild. From First Nations oral histories to modern-day sightings, we follow the footprints that stretch across centuries.

Join me as we unpack cryptid lore, skeptical science, chilling testimonials—and the eerie silence that falls just before something steps between the trees.

Featuring:

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A hidden face. A national panic. A banknote that became one of Canada's strangest urban legends.

In 1954, the Bank of Canada released a new series of banknotes featuring a redesigned portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. It didn't take long for Canadians to notice something unsettling hidden within the curls of the Queen's hair—a shadowy face that many believed resembled the Devil.

Rumours spread quickly. Some refused to accept the bills. Others claimed the image was evidence of occult influence, political sabotage, or a se...

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The opioid crisis in Canada didn't end with fentanyl—it evolved.

In the final installment of this series, we examine how fentanyl transformed the illicit drug supply, why substances like xylazine and benzo-dope have made overdoses even more dangerous, and what the latest national data reveals about the crisis today. We also discuss practical ways to protect yourself and your loved ones, from carrying naloxone to recognizing the signs that someone may be struggling.

Finally, we turn to the people demanding accountability. From cl...

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On a quiet stretch of abandoned railway near St. Louis, Saskatchewan, a mysterious light has puzzled witnesses for generations.

Some believe it's nothing more than distant vehicle headlights bending through the landscape. Others see it as something far stranger—a modern example of the mysterious lights that have appeared in folklore around the world for centuries. Local legend tells of a headless railway conductor, forever searching the tracks with a lantern in hand.

Is the St. Louis Light a trick of the eye, a na...

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Pain for Profit: Canada's Opioid Crisis – Part Two

Who pays the price when healthcare fails the people it's supposed to protect?

In the second half of our investigation into Canada's opioid crisis, we examine the human cost of a system that too often mistakes treatment for a prescription pad. We explore the gender bias that leaves women's pain dismissed, the patients abandoned as prescribing practices suddenly changed, and the lasting trauma created when healthcare turned its back on those it once encouraged to...

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For centuries, something has been reported moving through the waters of the St. Lawrence River.

From Jacques Cartier's 1535 account of a strange white creature near Tadoussac to the famous Lake Ontario serpent, lighthouse keepers, bridge workers, and modern-day witnesses have all described seeing long, serpentine animals gliding through the river's currents. Could these encounters be misidentified wildlife, forgotten folklore, or evidence of something that has remained hidden in the depths for generations?

In Part Two of Beneath the St. Lawrence, we trace nearly 500 years...

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This week on Canadian Creepies, we examine one of the deadliest public health disasters in Canadian history: the opioid crisis.

For years, the public narrative focused on addiction, personal responsibility, and the visible consequences on our streets. But behind that story lies another one—of pharmaceutical marketing campaigns, regulatory failures, corporate profits, and a healthcare system that left thousands of Canadians vulnerable.

From the rise of OxyContin and the marketing tactics used to convince doctors that opioids were safe, to the fentanyl-driven overdose crisis th...

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In this first installment of a multi-part series, Down the Crooked Path wades into the deep waters of Indigenous stories about powerful river serpents, mysterious underwater beings, and the dangers that lurk beneath seemingly calm waters.

Across generations, stories have been told of Thunder Beings battling enormous water serpents, of a woman lured beneath the surface by a being wearing a human face, of travelers rescued only to be abandoned to the mercy of a storm, and of fishermen who came face to face with creatures...

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On a busy Saturday afternoon in June 2012, Toronto's Eaton Centre was packed with shoppers, families, tourists, and teenagers grabbing lunch. In just 15 seconds, one of Canada's busiest public spaces became the scene of a mass shooting.

When Christopher Husbands opened fire in the crowded food court, two young men were killed, several bystanders were injured, and thousands fled in panic. But the story didn't begin at the Eaton Centre. Months earlier, Husbands had survived a brutal attack that left him stabbed 36 times, setting in motion a...

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Welcome to Down the Crooked Path.

Long before modern doomsday preppers and internet conspiracy movements, a self-proclaimed prophet was building his own kingdom on Vancouver Island.

Edward Wilson, founder of the Aquarian Foundation, promised his followers spiritual enlightenment, secret knowledge, and survival through the catastrophes he claimed were coming. As the years passed, the movement became increasingly isolated. Followers devoted their lives, labour, and resources to Wilson's vision while stockpiles of gold, weapons, and supplies grew behind the scenes.

To some, Wilson...

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In this episode, we examine Canada's response to the ongoing crisis in Palestine, from military export loopholes and refugee policies to the human cost borne by families both overseas and here at home. We explore the origins of the conflict, the realities of life in Gaza and the West Bank, and the growing gap between Canada's international reputation and its actions.

Through survivor accounts, government policy, and the experiences of Palestinian-Canadians fighting to bring loved ones to safety, we ask a difficult question: what responsibility does...

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Welcome to Down the Crooked Path.

In 1878, a young woman named Esther Cox became the center of one of Canada's most famous paranormal mysteries. What began after a traumatic event soon escalated into violent disturbances that terrified family, neighbours, and investigators alike.

Strange knocks echoed through the walls. Objects moved on their own. Fires broke out without explanation. Wherever Esther went, the phenomena seemed to follow.

As news of the case spread, investigators attempted to communicate with unseen forces, while actor and...

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Canada is often portrayed as a nation of peacekeepers, diplomats, and honest brokers on the world stage. But how much of that image reflects reality?

In this episode, researched by Christine, we examine Canada's historical and modern relationship to Palestine, from the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the legacy of Lester B. Pearson's peacekeeping myth to military exports, refugee policy, and the ongoing debate surrounding Canada's role in one of the most consequential humanitarian crises of our time.

We explore the origins of the conflict...