The Box of Oddities

What happens when a town disappears—but the dead are left behind? This episode begins with a familiar American disaster: Centralia, Pennsylvania, the coal town that has been burning underground since 1962. Most people know the story of the smoke, the buckling roads, and the evacuation. Far fewer know what happened after the living left—when the cemeteries remained, sitting directly above an active underground fire. We explore how burial grounds like the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cemetery slowly began to shift. Headstones tilted. Graves rotated. Steam vented from the soil. Over decades, officials were forced to make an unthinkable series of decisions: which graves to exhume, which to leave behind, and how to negotiate with families when the ground itself could no longer be trusted to stay still. Some remains were relocated. Many were not. And today, the fire still burns beneath them—possibly for centuries to come. It’s not a ghost story. There are no apparitions or legends. And somehow, that makes it worse. In the second half of the episode, we turn to a very different kind of quiet revolution: Florence Nightingale, the woman often reduced to a single image—the “Lady with the Lamp.” We dig past the myth to uncover her real legacy as a pioneer of sanitation, hospital reform, and statistical analysis. From filthy Crimean War hospitals to the invention of the coxcomb chart, Nightingale used data, discipline, and relentless attention to detail to save lives—and permanently change modern medicine. Along the way: strange facts about snow, burning earth, shifting assumptions about permanence, and the unsettling realization that even the most basic promises—like the ground holding still—can fail. Because sometimes the oddest stories aren’t about what rises from the grave…They’re about what refuses to stay buried. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes the strangest stories aren’t dramatic. They’re subtle. Ordinary. And impossible to shake. In this episode of Inbox of Oddities, Kat and Jethro share listener stories that live in the uncomfortable space between coincidence, memory, and something quietly off. These are not tales of screaming ghosts or shadow figures—but moments where reality seems to hesitate, update itself, or fail to line up the way it used to. Listeners write in about objects reappearing exactly where they were already searched for, buildings that forget which lights should be on, paintings that appear to change over time, and memories that don’t match the physical evidence left behind. One message describes a calm, reassuring voice coming through a baby monitor. Another recalls a grandmother’s unsettling phrase: “Not everyone comes back the same way.” Along the way, Kat and Jethro reflect on anxiety, aging memory, and the thin line between perception and certainty—mixing empathy, humor, and curiosity in the way only The Box of Oddities can. There are also moments of levity from the Freak Family: accidental near-microwaved laptops, quicksand metaphors, Australian heatwaves, rescued kookaburras, haunted municipal buildings, and the strange bond that forms when thousands of people start noticing the same small weird things. This episode isn’t about answers.It’s about the feeling you get when nothing is wrong… but nothing is entirely right either. If you’ve ever had the sense that the world quietly shifted when you weren’t looking—this one’s for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if two of America’s most infamous unsolved murders were never separate at all? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Jethro explores a startling new claim that uses artificial intelligence, cryptography, and old-fashioned detective work to suggest a single suspect may link the Zodiac Killer and the Black Dahlia—two crimes long thought to belong to different eras and different monsters. At the center of the theory is the Zodiac’s infamous Z13 cipher, a short, taunting code that promised to reveal the killer’s name and resisted decryption for more than 50 years. A self-taught cold-case researcher applied AI-driven computation to generate and eliminate more than 70 million possible name combinations, cross-referencing them against military records, census data, timelines, and geographic constraints. The result? A single identity with chilling connections to Elizabeth Short, the victim known as the Black Dahlia. Retired detectives and former intelligence cryptography specialists weigh in on why this approach is different—and why it may be the closest anyone has come to a real answer. But that’s only part of the journey. Kat and Jethro also dive into a collection of real human facts that sound completely fake—from the faint light emitted by the human body, to phantom limbs that can feel wet, to why eyewitness memories are far less reliable than we want to believe. Along the way, a Freak Family email reveals how deeply The Box of Oddities can rewire your brain (sometimes permanently). Finally, Kat closes the episode with one of history’s most unsettling books: the Codex Gigas, the largest medieval manuscript ever created. Said to contain the entire Bible, medical texts, exorcisms, and forbidden knowledge—and famously featuring a full-page illustration of the devil—the manuscript’s uniform handwriting and impossible scale raise an ancient question: was this the work of a single monk… or something else entirely? True crime, forbidden manuscripts, unsettling science, and the quiet moment when coincidences stop feeling accidental—this is The Box of Oddities doing what it does best. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do carnival sideshows, government paperwork, and half-billion-year-old nightmare creatures have in common? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore three very different corners of history where certainty was offered in place of understanding—and where things were far stranger than advertised. First, they step into the vanished world of early 20th-century hygiene exhibits: traveling carnival attractions that promised education but delivered fear. Set up alongside Ferris wheels and midway games, these sterile tents used wax models, shock imagery, and moral absolutism to teach the public what would happen if they failed to behave “correctly.” Disease was framed as punishment. Fear wasn’t a side effect—it was the lesson. Then, in a Thing in the Middle, the focus shifts from bodies to paperwork. Kat and Jethro examine bizarre bureaucratic oddities: citizens declared dead while still alive, laws that regulate technologies no longer in use, records preserved on media that can no longer be read. It’s a reminder that systems meant to create order can quietly lose track of reality. Finally, the episode dives deep into the Cambrian Explosion, a brief moment in geological time when life experimented wildly with form. From five-eyed predators to spined worms reconstructed upside-down for decades, these ancient creatures reveal a world where evolution hadn’t settled on any final draft yet—and where “normal” hadn’t been invented. Across carnivals, governments, and deep time, a pattern emerges: confidence without nuance, spectacle over explanation, and the human desire to make complicated worlds feel simple. The tents are gone.The paperwork remains.The creatures are fossilized. But the urge to replace understanding with certainty is still very much alive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inbox of Oddities is back with another lovingly chaotic collection of listener stories, strange coincidences, quiet creepiness, and accidental comedy. In this episode, Kat and Jethro share a perfectly timed real-life oddity involving a disappearing blood bus, because sometimes the universe has a sense of humor—and it’s not always kind. From there, the Freak Fam delivers. A childhood bedroom that made everyone feel watched—but never threatened. A night security guard who hears a humming tune no one else should know. A smart speaker that apologizes unprompted at 3:14 a.m. A Nevada rest stop that leaves footprints where no one was standing. And a Maine hunting trip that ends with three missing days, clean boots, and a man who never went into the woods again. There’s also talk of misheard song lyrics, imaginary dream logic, family phrases that make no sense to outsiders, mysterious radio cutouts in hospital parking lots, and the oddly comforting ways this show has woven itself into listeners’ daily lives—from late-night drives to chemo appointments. No monsters. No jump scares. Just rooms that don’t want company, places that feel… aware, and moments that refuse to be explained. Exactly the way we like it. If you enjoy subtle paranormal experiences, uncanny coincidences, listener mail, strange comfort, and humor that sneaks up on you, this one’s for you. Fly that freak flag proudly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices