Loreplay

Last week was heavy, so this week we’re lightening the mood with… centuries of people poisoning themselves to look hot. Seeee? FUN. Dayna digs into the long, gorgeous, deeply unhinged history of beauty and fashion that tried to kill the people wearing it. There’s lead foundation in shades of Corpse and Slightly More Expensive Ghost, arsenic pills sold as “absolutely safe and harmless,” eye drops made from deadly nightshade, and X-ray salons that zapped women’s upper lips. There’s French face cream made with radium. And the men don’t get off easy: mercury-poisoned hatters, collars that strangled grown men, shaving brushes that carried anthrax, and a Pittsburgh millionaire who drank radium water until his jaw came off. Along the way we meet the women who paid the real price: a 19-year-old flower-maker poisoned by the green dye on the flowers she made, and the Radium Girls who fought back while they were dying. Dark, funny and fact-checked. Read your ingredient labels, lore lovers. Sources Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Dr. James P. Campbell’s Safe Arsenic Complexion Wafers: https://www.si.edu/object/nmah_1339217 Smithsonian Magazine, “Three Horrifying Pre-FDA Cosmetics”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/three-horrifying-pre-fda-cosmetics-180963775/ The Quack Doctor, Dr MacKenzie’s Arsenic Complexion Wafers: https://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/dr-mackenzies-improved-harmless-arsenic-complexion-wafers Cosmetics and Skin, Lash Lure: https://cosmeticsandskin.com/bcb/lash-lure.php Museum of Quackery, The Tricho System: https://www.museumofquackery.com/ephemera/tricho.htm IMSS, X-Ray Hair Removal: https://imss.org/?p=9439 Wikipedia, Tho-Radia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tho-Radia Ripley’s, The Radium Girls: https://www.ripleys.com/stories/radium-girls Wikipedia, Eben Byers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Byers Wikipedia, Radithor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases, “Anthrax Cases Associated with Animal-Hair Shaving Brushes” (2017): https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/23/5/16-1554 Live Science, “The Strange History of Anthrax Cases Tied to Men’s Shaving Brushes”: https://www.livescience.com/58667-shaving-brushes-anthrax.html Friends of Newport & Carisbrooke Cemeteries, Robert P. W. Atkins (1909 inquest): https://www.foncc.org.uk/burials/research/mj_atkins_d1425.pdf London Museum, “Pointy shoes and sexuality in medieval London”: https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/london-stories/pointy-shoes-sexuality-medieval-london Wikipedia, Battle of Sempach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sempach Wikipedia, Spana Prosecution (Aqua Tofana): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spana_Prosecution Further reading Alison Matthews David, Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present (2015) Rebecca Herzig, Plucked: A History of Hair Removal (2015) Kate Moore, The Radium Girls (2017) From Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, Loreplay explores true crime, haunted history, paranormal mysteries, and the people behind the legends. Join host Dayna Pereira for ghost stories, witch trials, urban legends, cryptids, and dark history told with researched storytelling, sharp sarcasm, and absolutely no patience for historical bullshit. Follow Loreplay wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on Instagram at @loreplaypod. Come play. 📲 Come hang out with me outside the void: Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod Website: https://loreplaypod.com Prefer to Watch 👀 Find us on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w 👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…) If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable.. send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode. 📩 Submit here: [email protected] ⚠️ Listener Discretion: We talk about dark stuff here.. death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤 💀 If you liked this episode: Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow, and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

In 1985, Dorothy Lou Thompson vanished from her home at a Louisiana pet cemetery. Nearly three weeks later, her body surfaced in the Mississippi River, wrapped in chains. Decades later, witnesses came forward with information about her death and a disturbing explanation for finally talking: they said Dorothy’s ghost wouldn’t leave them alone. This week on Loreplay, Dayna Pereira explores the true crime case featured in HBO’s The Pet Cemetery Murders: A Ghost Story. From her mother Grace’s murder trial to Dorothy’s troubled marriages, a bitter property dispute, and rumored buried treasure, this story had enough secrets to fill the cemetery. Apparently, someone forgot to tell Dorothy that dead women were supposed to stay quiet. We also discuss the 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre and why its victims deserve to be remembered beyond the region’s ghost stories, with a full episode to follow. A Louisiana cold case, a haunted pet cemetery, and a woman with unfinished business. • HBO. The Pet Cemetery Murders: A Ghost Story. Documentary directed by Philip Cairney. • St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office. Guilty plea, investigation details, and sentencing in Dorothy Thompson’s case. July 11, 2014. • Reuters, Jonathan Kaminsky. “Louisiana man pleads guilty in 1985 pet cemetery slaying.” July 17, 2014. • Gone South. “The Pet Cemetery Murders, Part 1” transcript and “The Pet Cemetery Murders, Part 2.” • Supreme Court of Missouri. State v. Wynne (1944). Court opinion concerning Grace Wynne’s murder conviction and its reversal. • Chris Dier. “A Forgotten Massacre in Southeast Louisiana.” January 12, 2014. • Vanity Fair, Savannah Walsh. Interview with documentary director Philip Cairney about Dorothy Thompson and The Pet Cemetery Murders. • Autopsy of Architecture, David Bulit. “Azalea Original Pet Cemetery.” June 12, 2020. • U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Louisiana. James Tregler arrest announcement. November 9, 2011. • WDSU. Coverage of the 2012 arrest and original investigation. • WDSU. Coverage of Nodier’s 2014 plea and sentence. From Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, Loreplay explores true crime, haunted history, paranormal mysteries, and the people behind the legends. Join host Dayna Pereira for ghost stories, witch trials, urban legends, cryptids, and dark history told with researched storytelling, sharp sarcasm, and absolutely no patience for historical bullshit. Follow Loreplay wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on Instagram at @loreplaypod. Come play. 📲 Come hang out with me outside the void: Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod Website: https://loreplaypod.com Prefer to Watch 👀 Find us on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w 👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…) If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable.. send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode. 📩 Submit here: [email protected] ⚠️ Listener Discretion: We talk about dark stuff here.. death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤 💀 If you liked this episode: Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow, and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

In the woods outside Clifton, Virginia, there’s a railroad overpass locals call Bunny Man Bridge. Legend says an escaped asylum inmate, a man who murdered his family on Easter Sunday, hid there and lived on rabbits. He left their mutilated bodies hanging in the trees, and every Halloween since, teenagers who stay under the bridge past midnight have turned up hanging there too. It’s a fantastic story. It’s also built on an asylum that never existed, a prison that hadn’t opened yet, and a library you can’t visit because nobody ever built it. But in October 1970, someone really did put on a bunny suit and throw a hatchet through a parked car’s window in Fairfax County. Eleven days later, he was back with a long-handled ax. This week on Loreplay, Dayna follows the Bunny Man from campfire legend into the newspaper archives and an actual police file. Along the way, she finds out how one very angry man in rabbit ears turned into a 32-victim folk monster, and why nobody ever caught him. Lock your car doors. Sources Brian A. Conley, "The Bunny Man Unmasked: The Real Life Origins of an Urban Legend," Fairfax County Public Library, Virginia Room. research.fairfaxcounty.gov/local-history/bunnyman. The backbone of this episode; includes excerpts from the 1970 Washington Post articles, the Fairfax County Police investigation report, and the 1973 folklore paper. "Man in Bunny Suit Sought in Fairfax," Washington Post, Oct. 22, 1970, B2 (via Conley). "The 'Rabbit' Reappears," Washington Post, Oct. 31, 1970, B1 (via Conley). Fairfax County Police Dept., Investigation Report 858-748 (Officer J.S. Brown, Oct. 29, 1970; Investigator William L. Johnson, Mar. 14, 1971), redacted copy cited by Conley. Patricia C. Johnson, "The Bunny Man" (May 12, 1973), Maryland Folklore Archive, Box 32, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries. Timothy C. Forbes, "The Clifton Bunny Man," Castle of Spirits website, c. 1999 (the source of the asylum / Grifon / Wallster version). Scariest Places on Earth, Fox Family Channel, 2001 ("Terror on Bunnyman's Bridge"). Washingtonian, "The Scary, Weird, Somewhat True Story of the Fairfax 'Bunny Man'" (Oct. 23, 2015) — Conley interview; notes he tracked down the still-married couple and his view of the bridge as a teen party spot. Connection Newspapers, "Legend Lives on at Bunnyman Bridge" (Nov. 4, 2003) — Halloween road closures near the bridge. From Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, Loreplay explores true crime, haunted history, paranormal mysteries, and the people behind the legends. Join host Dayna Pereira for ghost stories, witch trials, urban legends, cryptids, and dark history told with researched storytelling, sharp sarcasm, and absolutely no patience for historical bullshit. Follow Loreplay wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on Instagram at @loreplaypod. Come play. 📲 Come hang out with me outside the void: Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod Website: https://loreplaypod.com Prefer to Watch 👀 Find us on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w 👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…) If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable.. send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode. 📩 Submit here: [email protected] ⚠️ Listener Discretion: We talk about dark stuff here.. death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤 💀 If you liked this episode: Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow, and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

Six hundred dead husbands. One infamous poison. And a little bottle with a saint on it. Apparently, marriage counseling in seventeenth century Italy could get extremely fucking dark. In this episode of Loreplay, Dayna Pereira explores the legend of Giulia Tofana and Aqua Tofana, the notorious arsenic poison said to have helped women escape dangerous marriages by becoming widows. From Palermo and Naples to Rome, the story features secret poison sellers, a suspiciously helpful priest, holy remedies, and husbands who allegedly never realized what was happening. But how much of this infamous tale is folklore, and what do the historical records actually reveal? After telling the legend, we examine the Roman poisoning investigation of 1659, Gironima Spana, Giovanna de Grandis, and the women whose lives became tangled in a scandal involving murder, domestic abuse, money, and unequal justice. Was Giulia Tofana a serial killer, a feminist folk hero, or a woman whose reputation grew far beyond the evidence? Expect dark history, true crime, Italian folklore, female rage, and some deeply unfortunate branding involving Saint Nicholas. Grandma’s holy little bottle has questions to answer. Follow Loreplay for strange history, chilling legends, paranormal mysteries, and dark storytelling with humor. Listen, share, and tell us what you think: does the truth make this story less frightening, or even worse? From Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, Loreplay explores true crime, haunted history, paranormal mysteries, and the people behind the legends. Join host Dayna Pereira for ghost stories, witch trials, urban legends, cryptids, and dark history told with researched storytelling, sharp sarcasm, and absolutely no patience for historical bullshit. Follow Loreplay wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on Instagram at @loreplaypod. Come play. 📲 Come hang out with me outside the void: Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod Website: https://loreplaypod.com Prefer to Watch 👀 Find us on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w 👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…) If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable.. send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode. 📩 Submit here: [email protected] ⚠️ Listener Discretion: We talk about dark stuff here.. death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤 💀 If you liked this episode: Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow, and keeps me emotionally stable (barely).

The Beautiful Stranger: Kate Morgan & the Hotel del Coronado On Thanksgiving 1892, a young woman checked into the Hotel del Coronado alone, under a fake married name, with one small handbag and no luggage. For five days she told the staff she was dying and that her brother, a doctor, was on his way. He never came. On the morning of November 29th, the hotel electrician found her dead on the beach stairs, a newly bought revolver by her hand. The papers called her "the Beautiful Stranger," because of course her face was the headline. Then a coroner ruled it suicide in record time, an anonymous doctor told reporters she'd tried to end a pregnancy, and her grandfather wired from Iowa: bury her and send me the bill. The San Diego Union's headline? "He Owns Her." This week, we follow Kate Farmer Morgan from Iowa orphan to Los Angeles housemaid to the Del's most bankable ghost. Along the way we look at the lawyer who decided she was his great-great-grandmother, the theory that she was really someone else entirely, and a haunted room that can't settle on its own number. Underneath all of it is a question nobody in 1892 asked: what does a woman alone do when she runs out of options? From Lizzie Borden to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess, Loreplay explores true crime, haunted history, paranormal mysteries, and the people behind the legends. Join host Dayna Pereira for ghost stories, witch trials, urban legends, cryptids, and dark history told with researched storytelling, sharp sarcasm, and absolutely no patience for historical bullshit. Follow Loreplay wherever you listen to podcasts and find us on Instagram at @loreplaypod. Come play. 📲 Come hang out with me outside the void: Instagram and TikTok: @loreplaypod Website: https://loreplaypod.com Prefer to Watch 👀 Find us on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP49XVyr_raHi3VVxXr91_w 👀 GOT A STORY? (I know you do…) If you’ve experienced something weird, spooky, glitchy, or straight-up unexplainable.. send it in. Your story might be featured in a future episode. 📩 Submit here: [email protected] ⚠️ Listener Discretion: We talk about dark stuff here.. death, violence, and the occasional deeply cursed human behavior. If that’s not your vibe, totally fair… but if it is? Welcome home. 🖤 💀 If you liked this episode: Follow, rate, review, share it with a friend who also loves questionable life choices and spooky stories. It helps the show grow, and keeps me emotionally stable (barely). Sources Kate Morgan, Wikipedia: birth, family, marriage, son's death, burial, May overview Randy Dotinga, "At the Hotel Del, a Deadly Obsession," Voice of San Diego (2011): anonymous physician, "He Owns Her" headline, Bush agent story, 1992 straw-slurping report, May's ancestor claim, gravestone text Jennifer Jones, "Kate Morgan: The Tragic Mystery of the Hotel del Coronado," The Dead History (2024): day-by-day timeline from 1892 papers, Harry West, R. Gomer, David Cone, trunk contents, telegrams, $16.50, women at the viewing, 1983 Eagle and Journal quote; comments include Elizabeth McGovern's corrections Terry Girardot, "The Ghost of the Hotel Del Coronado," Fremont County IAGenWeb (2001): Alan May's research path, Room 3312, headstone date, critique of May "I Tried It: Room 3327 at Hotel Del Coronado," San Diego Magazine (2021): hotel historian Gina Petrone on Kate's shifting stories "Coronado's Haunted Hotel Del Still Won't Let Kate Morgan's Mystery Rest," Hoodline (2026): May's 1990 book and caliber claim, Cullen's 2007 theory, hotel book by Christine Donovan Beautiful Stranger, Hotel del Coronado Heritage Department: official account summary Ghost City Tours, "The Haunted Hotel del Coronado": Wyllie misidentification and Toronto detail (secondary, tour-company source) John T. Cullen, Dead Move listing: Lizzie Wyllie and Spreckels theory All That's Interesting, "Kate Morgan": $3.80 room rate, ghost phenomena San Diego History Center, Hotel del Coronado Collection: rabbit-hunting founding story, 1885 purchase Historic Hotels of America, Hotel del Coronado history and Famous Hotels: 1888 opening, 1,440 guests, land-boom collapse, Spreckels PCAD, Hotel del Coronado: February 19, 1888 opening date, Spreckels buyout timing