Fear & Wine

The Exorcist. In the winter of 1974, people stood in freezing sleet for hours to see a movie that was making audiences faint and vomit. In this spooky season bonus episode, Kristin starts with The Exorcist itself: its chaotic release, fainting crowds, the demon's uncredited voice, and the controversy that may have been partly a marketing plan. Then she follows the paper trail back to 1949, when a 14-year-old boy in Maryland, a Ouija board, a Lutheran minister, a team of Jesuit priests, and one very surprised designated driver became the case that inspired William Peter Blatty. What did the priest’s...

AHS season 13 finale...We made it to the end of American Horror Story: 13, and we have feelings. Kelli, Kristin, Leah, and Alisan break down the finale, “Devil of a Good Time”: a deadly batch of cookies, a satanic midlife crisis, a very fast pregnancy, Mallory's trip to Salem, and a new face in the Last Supper. Then we get into what went wrong: the dug-up dictators who never mattered, the storylines left hanging, and how a season with this cast ended up like this.

Before all that, we share the worst series and season finales we've ever sat...

American Horror Story 13: the penultimate episode. One episode left, and American Horror Story just went off the rails. Kristin takes us through episodes 11 and 12 of Season 13, “Madison’s Happy Ending” and “Sisters in Arms.” Ben switches sides and pulls Myrtle Snow out of her JCPenney hell. Madison narrates her own rom-com with the devil’s son. Fiona meets a sister she never knew she had, Queenie gets out of the chicken shack, and the coven tries a heist on Satan that goes about as well as you’d expect.

We also dig into why these episodes...

American Horror Story 13 continues. The two storylines finally collide. Kelli takes us through episodes 9 and 10 of American Horror Story Season 13, “The Devil Is in the Details” and “The Prodigal Son.” Constance makes her demands of Satan, and he answers by unrolling a very long scroll of her sins. Ben finally learns what his 616 tattoo means. Papa Legba reveals the bet between God and the devil, Mallory confesses, and the coven gets an unexpected visitor at the door. We also get into Ben’s not-so-great plans for killing Satan, the many theories about the AI storyline, and the very real pope whose...

We're back with American Horror Story 13 (AHS). Devil’s Night comes to Miss Robichaux’s. Kristin takes us through episodes 7 and 8 of American Horror Story Season 13, “The Baddest Witch of Them All” and “Hell No.” With Cordelia down and James March playing piano through the chaos, Madison, Queenie, Mallory, and Coco take on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Zodiac Killer, and Richard Ramirez. Then Fiona makes the entrance of the season. Papa Legba strikes a deal, Queenie goes back to Chubby’s, and Marie Laveau joins the coven against Satan.

Before the recap, everyone shares what they’re watching this fall, inclu...

Vampire Folklore, Rabies, and the Milwaukee Protocol...

In 1725, the Austrian government sent an official to watch a village dig up a corpse.

He wrote down what he saw: no decomposition. Hair and beard grown. New skin. New nails. Fresh blood in the mouth. They staked it. They burned it. His report ran in a Vienna newspaper, and Europe got a new word for it. Vampire.

This bonus episode is the real history of vampires. The 1725 panics. Mercy Brown, the nineteen-year-old in Rhode Island whose heart was burned in 1892 because her family had tuberculosis...

American Horror Story: 13 is cramming its final season into October, and this week Kelli, Leah, and Alisan cover episodes 4–6. The Jezebel Ball goes down beneath the Apollyon: Elsa Mars MCs, Tate does the pushing, and thirteen of Mr. Nas's “favorite bad girls” head into a lava pit. It does not go to plan.

Constance comes clean about her deal with the devil. Ben has a date night with fellow crash survivor Ashley, and she brings a lot of red flags. Then James Patrick March gets the Devil's Night crew back together, with Jeffrey Dahmer on group-text duty, and th...

Part 1 of a 2-part episode...

It's spooky season, and American Horror Story is back for what's billed as its final season. Kelli, Kristin, Leah, and Alisan dig into the first three episodes of American Horror Story: 13. A birthday flight that goes very wrong, a hospice nurse with triskaidekaphobia, and a luxury high-rise with a thirteenth floor that shouldn't exist. Plus a very old man named Mr. Nas who throws up in the worst possible way. Constance is back, and so are Twisty, Tate, Addie, Kai, Winter, and the Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short. John Waters shows up with...

Part 2 of a 2-part episode...

It's spooky season, and American Horror Story is back for what it bills as its final season. Kelli, Kristin, Leah, and Alisan dig into the first three episodes of American Horror Story 13. A birthday flight that goes very wrong, a hospice nurse with triskaidekaphobia, and a luxury high-rise with a thirteenth floor that shouldn't exist. Plus a very old man named Mr. Nas who throws up in the worst possible way. Constance is back, and so are Twisty, Tate, Addie, Kai, Winter, and the Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short. John Waters shows up...

The Mothman didn't stay in Point Pleasant. In Part 2 of our deep dive, Kristin follows the winged humanoid known as The Mothman out of West Virginia and into the modern world. A 1948 sighting in Chehalis, Washington, that predates Point Pleasant by nearly two decades; a disputed 1957 case in Braidwood, Illinois, and then Chicago, where paranormal investigator Lon Strickler mapped over 160 reports between 2011 and 2020, from O'Hare Airport to Lincoln Park's Oz Park. We dig into the skeptical case from a University of Chicago memory researcher, cross the border into Mexico's El Hombre Pájaro and reports from Argentina and Brazil, a...

A spooky-season strange-phenomena episode of Fear & Wine. The Mothman of Point Pleasant. Before the movie, there was Point Pleasant, West Virginia: a small Appalachian town built on an abandoned WWII TNT plant, ancient burial mounds, and Cold War nerves. In Part 1 of our two-part Mothman deep dive, Kristin traces the seven-foot, red-eyed figure back through 48,000-year-old cave paintings, Mesopotamian demons, Welsh death omens, and Shawnee tradition, before landing on November 1966, when two young couples reported a winged creature outside the old North Power Plant. From there, the story widens: John Keel, the Men in Black, sewing-machine salesman Woodrow Derenberger...

Part Two of our investigation into the disappearance of Ingrid Lane. On October 15th, 2023, Ingrid Lane, a violinist, scholar, and quantum computing researcher affiliated with Sandia National Laboratories, left her home outside Albuquerque and was never seen again. In this episode, Kristin walks through the last documented day, hour by hour, built entirely from original body-cam and witness recordings obtained through a public records request that have never been played publicly before. It includes an eyewitness account of two unidentified people with Ingrid on a remote mountain road that's never been reported anywhere, and a contradiction in the official...

Season 4 Episode 3 of Black Mirror: Crocodile. We're back with another Black Mirror deep dive; this time it's Season 4's “Crocodile.” One reckless night in the Icelandic mountains, one hit-and-run, and one very bad decision to cover it up together set

off a spiral that follows two people for years. Kelli walks Kristin, Leah, and Alisan through Mia and Rob's unraveling. From panicked twenty-somethings to a successful architect and a recovering alcoholic who can't let the past go — plus the memory-recall technology that turns a routine insurance investigation into something much worse. We also get into the Black Mirror...

Havana Syndrome and the Physics of Silence: How Microwave Weapons Damage the Brain. The Physics, The Biology, and The Cover-Up

This is a Fear & Wine Uncorked Coven Patreon episode we felt was important for more people to know.

Fear & Wine dives deep into Havana Syndrome, the mysterious illness that has affected hundreds of U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers since 2016. What the government once dismissed as stress, overwork, or even crickets has now been confirmed by independent scientists and government officials in 2025–2026 to be the result of a real, portable, directed-energy weapon that uses pulsed mi...

The Witch Recap Part 2. This week we're deep in 1630s New England for The Witch (2015). Robert Eggers' slow-burn folk horror about a Puritan family exiled to the edge of the wilderness, and what starts picking them off once they're alone in it. Kelli walks Kristin, Leah, and Alisan through a recap of The Witch. The disappearance of baby Samuel, the family's unraveling faith, and the goat who steals the entire movie. Plus, our usual sidebar: could any of us actually survive alone in the woods? This one came recommended by Kristin's daughter as a certified Gen Z cult classic...

This week we're deep in 1630s New England for The Witch (2015). Robert Eggers' slow-burn folk horror about a Puritan family exiled to the edge of the wilderness, and what starts picking them off once they're alone in it. Kelli walks Kristin, Leah, and Alisan through a recap of The Witch. The disappearance of baby Samuel, the family's unraveling faith, and the goat who steals the entire movie. Plus, our usual sidebar: could any of us actually survive alone in the woods? This one came recommended by Kristin's daughter as a certified Gen Z cult classic, and it more than...

Kristin covers one of Florida's coldest cases and the story of serial killer Billy Mansfield Jr.

In late June 2026, federal agents and cadaver dogs turned up on a ranch road in Hernando County, Florida —and a case most people have never heard of resurfaced. This episode traces the full story of Billy Mansfield Jr., convicted of murdering six women and girls across Florida and California in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including a 15-year-old on a family camping trip and a young Tampa woman last seen leaving a bar. We walk the timeline from the first ex...

The Tate & LaBianca Murders. Part Two of our Strangers companion series turns from fiction to fact. Over two nights in August 1969, eight people were murdered in Los Angeles — a case that decades later helped inspire the horror film The Strangers. This solo episode spends most of its time with the people who died: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Steven Parent, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca — who they were before that August, and what we actually know about their final hours. Then we cover Charles Manson, the “Family” he built through manipulation and isolation, the contested “Helter Skelter” t...

The Strangers (2008) the home-invasion horror that turned a simple knock at the door into pure dread. Kelli, Kristin, Leah, and Alisan break down Bryan Bertino's slow-burn nightmare: The Strangers. Masked strangers, a couple's night gone terribly wrong, and the question we can't stop asking each other — what would you actually do if someone knocked after midnight?

Part 1 is a recap of the movie The Strangers, and in Part 2 we trace the film's real-crime roots. Part Two unpacks the Tate-LaBianca murders that helped inspire the film.

We argue over IMDb's stingy 6.1 rating, have a Glenn Howerton ap...

Three stories. One museum. A twist ending we did not see coming.

This is a remastered audio version of the first Black Mirror episode that we ever covered.

Black Mirror’s “Black Museum”. (Season 4, ep. 6) The one with the pain-addicted doctor, the wife uploaded into her husband’s brain, the man whose digital self becomes a museum exhibit, and the young woman who shows up with a plan and a surprise of her own. We get into the neuroscience horror, the racial layers, the Black Mirror Easter eggs hidden throughout, and what we’d actually do if cons...

Black Mirror: "Be Right Back." What if you could keep talking to someone after they were gone? Not through memory or ritual, but through an AI trained on everything they ever posted, texted, and said online? This week we cover an emotional and complex Black Mirror episode, and the conversation it sparks is one of

the most personal the show has had. Martha and Ash are a young couple who have just moved into his late parents' farmhouse in the English countryside when Ash is killed in a car accident. At the repass, a well-meaning friend named...

Unveiling The Human Mind. This week, Fear & Wine steps outside the usual horror recap to ask a bigger question: why are we drawn to fear in the first place? Kelli and Kristin sit down with Binyamin Klempner, founder of InsightBridge, an AI-guided behavioral reflection platform, for a conversation that's as personal as it is fascinating.

Binyamin opens up about his own complicated relationship with horror, stemming from a childhood scare from The Shining, a lifelong aversion to supernatural fright paired with an unexpected comfort with war films, and a wild, mostly true story about the making of...

The Mandela Effect & the CERN Connection: Are We Living in a Glitched Reality?

Kristin takes the reins for a deep dive into the Mandela Effect, that eerie phenomenon where large groups of people share the exact same "wrong" memory of something that never actually happened. We kick things off by trading our own personal favorite Mandela Effect examples; (the Fruit of the Loom cornucopia and the Berenstain Bears spelling are non-negotiable), before Kristin unpacks the strange true origin story: a 2009 conversation at Dragon Con between paranormal researcher Fiona Broom and a security guard named Shadow, which led...

Fear & Wine covers a listener-requested Black Mirror deep dive into one of the most voted-for

episodes in their Reddit poll and, by Kelli’s own ranking, her second favorite Black Mirror episode of all

time. This week: Season 2, Episode 3, “White Bear.” We analyze the complex and disturbing episode 'White Bear' from Black Mirror, exploring themes of punishment, memory, and justice. Join us as we unravel the story's twists and the moral questions it raises. We discuss moral dilemmas, societal implications, and the role of technology in desensitizing us to violence.

Wine Pairing: Tapestry Red Bl...

In the summer of 1916, twelve days of terror along the New Jersey shore changed America forever. In this deep-dive, Fear & Wine traces every shark attack from the death of Charles Vansant in Beach Haven on July 1st to the catastrophic events at Matawan Creek on July 12th, and unpacks the history, science, panic, and enduring mystery that made these twelve days the inspiration for one of cinema's greatest horror films, Jaws. Pour something good and dive in. A special bonus episode about the true shark attack stories that inspired Jaws.

For bonus episodes, sneak...

FROM Season 4 Finale. Kelli and Kristin reunite for a just-the-two-of-them finale recap, fresh off their FROM Season 4 watch party the day before, complete with FROM-themed food, a costume contest, a FROM trivia game, and a TikTok live stream that was accidentally sideways. With the party vibes still in the air, we dive into a finale packed with chaos, sacrifice, and a twist ending that leaves the whole town more vulnerable than ever.

Wine Pairing: Santa Margherita Prosecco DOCG

For bonus episodes, sneak peeks, and group chats, join our Patreon!

<...

Who Is Ingrid Lade? On October 15, 2023, Ingrid Colleen Lane vanished after a hike in the Jemez Mountains outside Albuquerque. Every news report described her the same way: 37, married, bipolar, Buddhist, musician. All true.

This episode opens Fear & Wine's new investigative series with Ingrid's full story: a Peabody-trained

classical violinist turned bluegrass fiddler, a St. John's College great-books scholar, and a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering. Ingrid Lane is professionally a neuroscientist and quantum computing researcher with documented ties to Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Seven months before she disappeared, her name appeared...

FROM Season 4 Episodes 8 & 9 Recaps. Kristin walks through Episode 8 "Heavy Is The Head" as Boyd spirals deeper into hallucinations tied to Abby, Fatima's body starts changing into something not quite alive and not quite dead, and Victor opens up to Ethan and Tabitha about the loneliness of growing up alone in Fromville Meanwhile, the Man in Yellow (wearing Sophia) goes full creeper-mode, breaking into homes uninvited and cornering Tabitha in the woods with a half-threat, half-love-letter about the bone ritual to come.

Kelli then takes Episode 9, "The Calm Before," where the group preps to dig up the children's...

New Edit w/ Fixed Audio!

A Father's Day episode. In this episode of Fear & Wine, we celebrate Father's Day with an interview with Kelli and Alisan's dad, Oscar. He shares his unique experiences with horror, his background growing up in the segregated South, and insights into black history and legacy building. Kristin remembers her dad and his influence on her life. A special tribute episode for our dads. Happy Father's Day!

For bonus episodes, sneak peeks, and group chats, join our Patreon!

If you...

Fear and Wine is back to break down Episode 7 of FROM Season 4, and things in Fromville

are getting deeply and deliciously unhinged. We've got reanimated corpses, a bag of suspicious teeth, and a psyop theory that just might change everything. Plus: Love Island discourse, and the tooth fairy ranked as a dinner guest. You're welcome.

Wine Pairing: Andronicus Cabernet Blend

*Production Note:

The FROM episode will be a combined recap of FROM Episodes 8 and 9, followed by a live finale party on TikTok and YouTube, complete with...

The Villisca Axe Murders. In the early morning hours of June 10th, 1912, eight people were bludgeoned to death in their beds in the small town of Villisca, Iowa. The killer used an axe from inside the family's own home. They covered the victims' faces. They covered the mirrors. They walked out the door, disappeared into the night, and were never caught. 

Kelli examines the complete history of the Villisca Axe Murders: the victims and their last evening, and the parade of suspects that includes a powerful state senator, a cocaine-addicted hitman, a mentally ill traveling preacher, and a...

FROM season 4, episode 6 recap. Join us as we chat with TikTok sensation JT, aka HoodPolitician, about horror movies, supernatural beliefs, and his rise to social media fame. We explore his favorite horror films, beliefs in cryptids, and insights into the mysterious town in FROM. A fun, insightful conversation for FROM fans and horror fans alike. In this episode, we explore theories and insights about the mysterious events in From, including the man in yellow, time travel, and character motivations. Join us as we analyze clues, share theories, and speculate on the show's future twists.

Wine Pairing:<...