Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Happy Veteran's Day! On D-Day, June 6th, 1944, over 150,000 Allied troops stormed Nazi-defended beaches in northern France in the largest military amphibious assault operation the world had ever seen. D-Day led directly to Allied forces pushing the Nazis back into Germany and winning the war. And D-Day would have never worked without the troop and supply transport boats designed by a colorful boat builder in New Orleans named Andrew Higgins.

Today I'm sharing the little known Servant Girl Annihilator murders. A series of crimes just as shocking as the crimes of London's Jack the Ripper murders, but occurred three years earlier, in Austin, Texas. Who kept dragging woman after woman from their beds and killing them with an ax?

Back in the 1950s, America was very afraid of Soviet spies and communist sympathizers infiltrating the government and destroying the United States from within. And there were actual spies sharing secrets with the Soviets. But concern soon gave way to paranoia, and a political witch-hunt began, with a self-serving senator from Wisconsin leading a very misguided and ultimately anti-American and embarrassing Red Scare that destroyed the lives of many.

In the early 1980s, Suzan and Michael Carson were very worried about witches. They thought there witches all over America, even the President, Ronald Regan, was a witch. And sometimes, in order to defend themselves from the dark magic of witches, they had to kill them. They had to! It was self-defense. This is what they and there defense attorney would actually claim, in court, when they were finally caught and charged with multiple murders.

Today I’ll be sharing the strange and spooky story of Olivia Mabel. It's a story presented as a true story, centered around the unsettling concept of a “tulpa.” A thought form and sentient being willed into existence by, essentially, the power of one's imagination. Is that possible? And if not, aren't characters akin to tulpas created all the time by the power of vivid, immersive, fictional worldbuilding?