In January 2013, a 21-year-old Canadian student named Elisa Lam checked into a budget hotel in downtown Los Angeles. She was travelling alone, documenting her journey online, and calling her parents every day. Then the calls stopped.

Weeks later, her body was discovered in a rooftop water tank above the hotel where she’d been staying, after guests complained that the water pressure was low, and the tap water tasted strange. Days earlier, police had released surveillance footage of Elisa behaving erratically in a hotel elevator. The video went viral, transforming a missing person investigation into a global obsession. The building was the Cecil Hotel, a place with a long history of violence, suicide, and notoriety, sitting at the edge of Skid Row. As the internet rushed to fill the gaps with theories of ghosts, conspiracies, and foul play, the facts of the case became harder to hear.

This episode examines what actually happened, how a tragic death became mythologised, and what the story reveals about mental illness, internet culture, and our collective hunger for mystery. It’s a story about how fear distorts understanding, and how easily a real person can be lost inside a legend.

Support note:

This episode discusses mental illness, suicide, and distressing themes. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available.

UK & ROI: Samaritans — call 116 123 or visit samaritans.org

US: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988

Canada: Talk Suicide — call 1-833-456-4566

Australia: Lifeline — 13 11 14

Or visit findahelpline.com for local support worldwide

***

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In February 1959, nine experienced hikers disappeared in the northern Ural Mountains. When searchers found their tent weeks later, it was cut open from the inside. Boots were left neatly behind. Food sat untouched. Footprints, some barefoot, led into the snow.

Over the months that followed, the bodies were recovered in stages. Some had died of exposure. Others suffered catastrophic internal injuries with almost no external wounds. Two were missing their eyes. One was missing her tongue. The Soviet investigation closed the case with a single, unsettling phrase: “an insurmountable force of nature.” In the decades since, the Dyatlov Pass Incident has become one of the most debated wilderness tragedies in modern history. Theories have ranged from avalanches and extreme weather to military testing, folklore, and outright conspiracy. Each explanation reflects not only the evidence, but the era, and the fears that produced it.

This episode traces what is known, what remains disputed, and how a remote mountain became a canvas for grief, secrecy, science, and myth. It’s a story about limits: of survival, of certainty, and of how easily unanswered questions harden into legend.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2001, a small wooden wine cabinet appeared in an eBay listing from Portland. Its seller claimed it had belonged to a 103-year-old Holocaust survivor and that it contained a dybbuk, a restless spirit from Jewish folklore. He warned that opening it had brought illness, nightmares, and a sense of being watched.

Over the years, the cabinet passed through multiple owners, each reporting disturbing experiences: unexplained rashes, recurring dreams, malfunctioning electronics, panic attacks, and people fainting in its presence. The story inspired books, a Hollywood horror film, and eventually a permanent display in a Las Vegas haunted museum. But as the legend grew, investigators began to question where it came from, and whether the story attached to the box matched the traditions it claimed to draw from.

This episode traces how an ordinary object became a modern haunting, why fear persisted even as the narrative began to unravel, and what the Dybbuk Box reveals about belief, suggestion, and the uneasy space where stories begin to feel real.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Michael and Suzan Carson drifted through the American West, moving between communes, shared apartments, and marijuana farms. They changed their names, adopted a patchwork belief system of mysticism and religion, and came to see themselves as warriors in a hidden war. Between 1981 and 1983, three people were killed. A young woman found stabbed and bludgeoned in a San Francisco basement. A co-worker shot and buried in the woods of Humboldt County. And a man who stopped to help two hitchhikers, shot on the side of a California highway. The Carsons insisted their victims were witches. They held a five-hour jailhouse press conference, spoke of visions and holy missions, and framed murder as religious duty. Decades later, they have never renounced those beliefs.

This episode traces how an ordinary couple built a shared delusion powerful enough to justify killing, the damage it inflicted on children and families left behind, and why the story has been remembered as something occult rather than what it was: a case study in belief, control, and the human capacity to turn ideology into violence.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans became a city stripped to its bones. Power was gone. Tourists vanished. And for a brief moment, life in the French Quarter felt suspended outside of time. Zack Bowen, a former soldier, and Addie Hall, a poet and bartender, chose to stay. They scavenged food, cooked in the streets, drank beneath darkened skies, and were photographed by national media as symbols of defiance; young lovers riding out the end of the world together.

A year later, Addie was dead. Dismembered in an apartment above a voodoo temple. Zack would take his own life days later, leaving behind a confession and one of the most disturbing crime scenes New Orleans has ever seen.

This episode traces the arc from disaster romance to domestic horror, from Katrina’s strange, intoxicating aftermath to addiction, untreated trauma, and a relationship collapsing under the return of ordinary life. It asks why this story became framed as a “voodoo murder,” what we miss when we reach for supernatural explanations, and how catastrophe can amplify the quiet damage already living inside people.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

***

Support & Resources:

This episode discusses suicide, domestic abuse, addiction, and trauma. If you or someone you love needs support, help is available:

United Kingdom:

Samaritans - Call 116 123 (24/7) or visit samaritans.org

National Domestic Abuse Helpline - Call 0808 2000 247 (24/7) or visit nationaldahelpline.org.uk

United States:

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline - Call or text 988 (24/7) or visit 988lifeline.org

Veterans Crisis Line - Call 988, then press 1, or text 838255

National Domestic Violence Hotline - Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or visit thehotline.org

Australia:

Lifeline Australia - Call 13 11 14 (24/7) or visit lifeline.org.au

1800RESPECT - Call 1800 737 732 or visit 1800respect.org.au

Global:

International Association for Suicide Prevention

Find local helplines at findahelpline.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Christmas Eve 1945, a fire tore through a family home in the hills of West Virginia. Four children escaped. Five never came out. When the smoke cleared, there were no bodies in the ashes, no bones, and no clear explanation. In the years that followed, the Sodder family rejected the official story. They spoke of cut phone lines, a missing ladder, warnings from strangers, and a photograph mailed decades later that seemed to show one of the lost children alive. For eighty years, the case has hovered between accident and conspiracy, grief and obsession.

This episode explores the disappearance of the Sodder children and the questions that refuse to fade. It asks what happens when tragedy leaves no physical proof, when mourning turns into investigation, and when a Christmas night becomes a mystery that will not let a family, or a nation, move on.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1972, a small group of ordinary Canadians set out to test a radical idea: that belief alone might be powerful enough to move the physical world. They invented a man named Philip, his face, his history, even his tragic death, and gathered each week around a table to see if imagination could be made to answer back. What followed was filmed under bright lights and careful observation. Knocks echoed from inside the wood. Furniture tilted and moved. The ghost they had designed seemed to respond, not as a spirit from the past, but as something shaped by the minds in the room.

This episode explores the Philip Experiment and the uneasy space where psychology, ritual, and expectation collide. It asks what happens when belief becomes behaviour, when an experiment slips into performance, and when a ghost that never lived begins to feel disturbingly present.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In early 1994, the murder of Harry and Nicola Fuller brought twelve jurors to a Brighton hotel, locked away from the world with nothing but silence, photographs, and each other. As the pressure mounted, four of them reached for a Ouija board, half a joke, half a plea for clarity, and asked the dead for answers. The verdict that followed would crumble under the weight of its own strangeness. This episode explores how isolation bends the mind, how belief can slip through the cracks of law, and how a single night in a seaside hotel became one of the most unsettling chapters in British justice.

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.