The Box of Oddities

A listener dreams that Mothman shows up at her patio door—and refuses to let him inside because of his dust. Aerial arts may have accidentally cured another Freak’s lifelong motion sickness. And a woman dreams of playing with her late grandfather in an old hot rod, only to discover it may be a memory from infancy—and that her father dreamed about him on the very same night. Plus, the modern medical condition still treated with bloodletting, a breathtaking encounter in Norway, and a desperate plea for the return of “What You Got for Me?” It’s another strange, funny, and unexpectedly moving journey through the Inbox of Oddities. Fly your Freak Flag proudly!

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He Vanished at 14. DNA Found Him 246 Years Later—and Why So Many Towns End in “Kill”

A teenage soldier vanished during one of the American Revolution’s most devastating defeats. Nearly 250 years later, DNA recovered from a tiny piece of bone may have finally given him back his name. The remarkable story of Private John Pumphrey begins beneath the soil of a South Carolina battlefield—and ends with a family hearing the name history had forgotten.

Then, Kat turns a 3,000-mile road trip into a linguistic excavation. Why do so many towns end in kill, ville, burg, ton, and ford? America’s highway signs are filled with language fossils revealing who settled the land, what they found, and occasionally, which important dude owned it.

From the unknown soldiers of the Battle of Camden to the hidden histories embedded in American place names—history is everywhere. Sometimes it’s buried beneath your feet. Sometimes you pass it at 70 miles an hour.

Keep flying that freak flag, beautiful freaks.
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A glowing faceless figure stalks the lonely roads of western Pennsylvania—or so the legend goes. But behind the terrifying tale of Charlie No-Face was Ray Robinson, a real man whose tragic childhood accident transformed him into the infamous Green Man of Pennsylvania.

Then, Kat and Jethro explore the bizarre, darkly funny, and sometimes completely unhinged final words of executed criminals—including baked-apple jokes, complaints about SpaghettiOs, one killer’s suggested newspaper headline, and Aileen Wuornos’ promise to return with Jesus aboard a giant mothership.

Urban legends, death-row one-liners, and a Rolex rescued from the sewer after 18 months. Just another perfectly normal episode of The Box of Oddities.
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HORSE MANURE CRISIS! And Victorians Crawl Inside Dead Whales for a Bizarre Cure!

A Freak Family Favorite returns! First, the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894—and the very real fear that cities would eventually disappear beneath nine feet of horse poop. Then, the spectacularly revolting Victorian “whale cure” for rheumatoid arthritis, which involved spending hours inside a warm, decomposing whale carcass. Two historical problems. Two deeply questionable solutions. One unusually fragrant episode of The Box of Oddities.

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What if the world didn’t move smoothly—but jumped from moment to moment like a broken film reel? Meet LM, the woman who could see colors, faces, and objects clearly but couldn’t see them move. Her rare neurological condition, akinetopsia, revealed something astonishing about how the brain constructs reality.

Then, an adopted man searching for his biological mother discovers that she had spent nearly 50 years at the center of one of Massachusetts’ most haunting unsolved mysteries. The Lady of the Dunes finally had a name—but identifying Ruth Marie Terry was only the beginning.

Along the way, Kat accidentally crosses into Canada, gets caught with a stun gun, and briefly becomes an international weapons smuggler while looking for a thrift store.

Motion blindness, a cold case solved through genetic genealogy, and the most stressful grouse sighting in recorded history. It’s The Box of Oddities!
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