Loreplay

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

The Flatwoods Monster: the 1952 West Virginia cryptid and UFO encounter, told campfire-style and then ripped apart. On September 12, 1952, a fireball streaked across the sky over Flatwoods, West Virginia. A group of boys, a mom named Kathleen May, a teenage National Guardsman, and one very smart dog went up a hill to find where it landed. What they found was a ten-foot creature with a blood-red face, a spade-shaped hood, and a glowing green body that hissed and glided toward them. Within a week, the Braxton County Monster was national news. In this episode of Loreplay, we tell the legend the way it scared a whole country, then dig into what actually happened. That includes the meteor logged in the Air Force's Project Blue Book, the red aircraft beacon, a guy named Max and his pickup truck, Joe Nickell's barn owl theory, and the lesser-known sightings from Audra Harper and George Snitowsky. We also follow the story's afterlife, from Gray Barker and the birth of the Men in Black legend to Kathleen May's claims of a government visit and Frank Feschino's theory of a secret alien dogfight over the East Coast. Was it an alien, a monster, or a very angry owl? Either way, Flatwoods leaned all the way in, with a Flatwoods Monster Museum, giant monster chairs, and a spot in Fallout 76 right next to Mothman. Which brings us to the big question: which West Virginia sky daddy wins Best Loreplay Cryptid? Paranormal history, folklore, cryptids, UFOs, and weird legends, with a skeptic's eye and a believer's heart. Sources Charleston Gazette coverage, September 1952 Project Blue Book case file on the Flatwoods sighting (U.S. Air Force). We the People (NBC, 1952). Kathleen May and Eugene Lemon's national TV appearance. George Snitowsky's account in Male magazine, July 1955. Gray Barker, "The Monster and the Saucer," Fate magazine, January 1953. Gray Barker, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956). Frank Feschino Jr., The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed (2004). Joe Nickell, "The Flatwoods UFO Monster," Skeptical Inquirer, November 2000: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2000/11/the-flatwoods-ufo-monster/ This covers the barn owl theory, the beacon, "saw, heard and smelled nothing," and Eugene throwing up. Snopes, "What Was the Flatwoods Monster?": https://www.snopes.com/articles/383097/flatwoods-monster-mothman-owl/ HISTORY, "In 1952, the Flatwoods Monster Terrified 6 Kids, a Mom, a Dog—and the Nation": https://www.history.com/articles/flatwoods-monster-west-virginia This has the John Gibson quotes about Rickie and a boy peeing his pants, Gray Barker's background, and the May brothers standing by their story. All That's Interesting, "Inside the Legend of the Flatwoods Monster": https://allthatsinteresting.com/flatwoods-monster This covers Audra Harper's sighting. Magonia magazine's critical re-examination of the case. It's the source for Max Lockard's timing and the plant-sap explanation for the residue. I don't have the exact link, so search "Magonia Flatwoods monster" to grab it. Visit Braxton, "The Flatwoods Monster": https://braxtonwv.org/the-flatwoods-monster/ The Flatwoods Monster Museum, Sutton, WV. It holds the Audra Harper typewritten account and the original New York sketch. Wikipedia, "Flatwoods monster": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatwoods_monster Wikipedia, "Gray Barker": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Barker 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).

Everyone knows the rhyme. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. The problem is that almost every word of it is bullshit. In this episode, Dayna heads to Fall River, Massachusetts, to uncover the actual story behind one of America’s most infamous unsolved murders. We’re talking family resentment, inheritance drama, a mysterious note, an alleged attempt to buy poison, a suspiciously burned dress, a spectacularly messy investigation, and the courtroom decision to bring Andrew and Abby Borden’s actual skulls to trial. Because apparently cyanide testimony was too prejudicial, but placing Daddy’s skull on the prosecution table was perfectly reasonable. We’ll separate documented history from folklore, fact-check Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, examine the evidence against Lizzie, and explore how gender, wealth, class, and Christian respectability shaped her acquittal. Was Lizzie an innocent woman destroyed by suspicion, a calculating murderer who got away with it, or something history can no longer prove? 📲 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).