In 1921, an Anglo-Irish explorer leading a reconnaissance expedition on Mount Everest reported seeing strange footprints on the slopes of that mighty peak. Newspapers around the world went into a frenzy, speculating on the existence of a race of strange creatures in the high snowy peaks of the Himalayas. It was to be the beginning…

Cian takes another trip into the realms of folklore. A stray Reddit tale introduces our host to the Native American legends of disembodied voices that mimic humans to trick and trap travellers in the wild. Always a fan of campfire lore, Cian investigates this idea as it turns up in contemporary legends, the original mythology…

In the summer of 1985, a strange phenomenon broke out all over Ireland. Statues of the Virgin Mary were seen to move, hover and speak. Whether this was an example of mass hysteria or a manifestation of the country’s discomfort with modernization, it’s a story that straddles the worlds of the religious and the Fortean….

It sometimes seems the human need to believe in unspoiled wildernesses full of large, overlooked creatures knows no bounds! And it feels like there’s hardly an ‘impossible’ animal that doesn’t have some folkloric core of supposed ‘real life’ sightings. And so it is with the woolly mammoth. At the cabin in the woods, Cian nurses…

Things get a little serious at the cabin in the woods this week as Cian and Dónal talk about problematic podcast hosts Chris Jericho and Joe Rogan. Both have a tendency to showcase fringe beliefs and bad-faith actors without any critical context. Both regularly expose their huge audiences to conspiracy thinking without pushback. And neither…

THIS IS PART 2 OF A MINI-SERIES, MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT PART 1 FIRST! WE PROMISE IT’S GREAT. REALLY! On this episode, enter the Wide Atlantic Weird cabin-in-the-woods to find the place stuffed with mummified cats, cursed relics and forbidden idols as we delve into THE JEWEL OF SEVEN STARS! This 1903 book from…

An empty, apocalyptic London, survivors proposing radical utopias – and all while 9-foot, monstrous carnivorous plants roam the streets? It must be THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, the most famous novel by John Wyndham, the mid-century British author famous for penning so-called ‘cozy catastrophes.’ Cian is joined at the Cabin In The Woods by Mr…

Like arch-conspiracy fiend Alex Jones, wrestler Hulk Hogan has had to claim in court that his real self is seperate from his in-ring persona – and that’s just the beginning of his self-fictionalisation. Join Cian and his BROTHER Donal at the Cabin In The Woods for a somewhat off-topic episode of Wide Atlantic Weird where…

Since we were in the area – a very brief ghost story/urban legend for you from County Cork.

Every town has that one spooky abandoned building, the one that seems to naturally gather scary stories and urban legends. On the west side of Cork City, the great Victorian redbrick section of the Our Lady’s complex, St Kevin’s, has a real-life history of scandal and tragedy. In this episode, Cian takes a trip to…