On April 1st, 2006, Ohio State medical student Brian Shaffer went out for drinks with friends at the Ugly Tuna Saloona in Columbus, Ohio. Surveillance cameras captured him entering the bar… and then, somehow, not leaving.

Despite being surrounded by cameras, witnesses, and the heartbeat of a busy college nightlife district, Brian Shaffer simply vanished.

Tonight, we walk through the full timeline of Brian’s final known hours, break down the surveillance footage frame-by-frame, explore the strange architectural quirks of the bar and surrounding construction that may hold clues, and sift through the theories that have kept this case alive for nearly two decades.

It remains one of the most haunting unsolved disappearances in modern American history — a true locked-room mystery without the room.

👉 Brian’s final night out — the bar crawl, the conversations, and the last confirmed sighting

👉 Surveillance footage and why investigators are so puzzled by its gaps

👉 Who Brian was: his personality, relationships, grief, and aspirations

👉 The Ugly Tuna’s layout and how construction zones fueled hidden-exit theories

👉 Why many investigators believe Brian never left the building alive

👉 The 2020 phone “ping” rumor and why experts remain skeptical

👉 Theories including:

• Accident or misadventure

• Voluntary disappearance

• Foul play

• Misidentification on the footage

👉 Why the lack of evidence may be the most telling clue of all

Brian’s disappearance sits at the crossroads of tragedy and impossibility.

A crowded bar, multiple cameras, friends yards away, and a young man who loved music, medicine, and the people in his life — gone without a single confirmed trace.

The case remains open.

And Brian’s family continues to live in hope of answers.

Any piece of information, no matter how small, may help solve this case.

If you know anything related to the disappearance of Brian Shaffer, please contact:

📞 (614) 645-4545

(Ask for the detective assigned to the Brian Shaffer case.)

📞 1-800-634-4097

📞 (614) 461-8477 (TIPS)

You may remain anonymous and could be eligible for a reward.

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In this episode, we step out of the world of ghosts, time slips, disappearances, and strange creatures — and venture into a mystery far closer to home:

Your own brain.

For decades, scientists believed memory worked like a filing cabinet: one idea, one location. But a few unexpected experiments — severed neural pathways, maze-running rats, shattered holograms, and neurological oddities that shouldn’t have been possible — began pointing to something far stranger.

The result was a radical proposal now known as the Holographic Brain Theory — the idea that memories may not be stored in one spot at all, but are distributed throughout the brain, much like how every fragment of a hologram contains the entire image.

And if that’s true… it could fundamentally reshape how we understand memory, trauma, consciousness, and even the nature of reality itself.

Tonight, we explore the scientists who made this discovery, the experiments that shouldn’t have worked, and the strange implications of a mind that behaves more like a hologram than a hard drive.

👉 Karl Pribram and the neuroscientific puzzle that led him to the holographic model

👉 Why removing large portions of rats’ brains didn’t erase their memories

👉 The eerie parallels between holograms and how the brain distributes information

👉 What this model might say about trauma, dreams, and altered states of consciousness

👉 How the theory overlaps with physicist David Bohm’s holographic model of the universe

👉 The criticisms, limitations, and ongoing research around holographic memory storage

👉 What this theory could mean for identity, emotion, and the mystery of consciousness

👉 Why some scientists think the holographic brain may help explain paranormal experiences, near-death accounts, or the sense of “expanded consciousness”

The Holographic Brain Theory isn’t just about neuroscience — it’s about how we understand ourselves.

If memory is distributed throughout the brain…

If consciousness isn’t confined to a single location…

If the mind processes reality holographically…

Then the boundary between brain, self, and world may be far blurrier than we think.

This model challenges:

• traditional neuroscience
• metaphysics
• our assumptions about the limits of human perception
• and even aspects of spiritual and paranormal experiences

It’s a scientific theory with implications that stretch into philosophy, psychology, and the edges of the unknown.

In this episode, we travel back to the summer of 1942 in Pascagoula, Mississippi — a warm coastal town where people slept with their windows open to catch the night breeze. But that summer, something else moved in the dark.

A figure slipped into homes while families slept.

Not to steal valuables.

Not to leave a message.

But to quietly cut a single lock of hair from the heads of sleeping residents.

Newspapers called him The Phantom Barber.

What began as a disturbing curiosity soon escalated into fear, panic, and eventually violence — leaving behind a trail of rumors, false arrests, and unanswered questions that still haunt Pascagoula’s history.

In this episode, we explore:

• The eerily calm early intrusions that first brought attention to the case
• How wartime anxiety and rumor fueled public paranoia
• The escalation from hair-cutting intrusions to physical assault
• The controversial trial that may have convicted the wrong man
• Why the case remains unsolved to this day
• And what this story reveals about fear, community, and the shadows we create when answers are out of reach

This is one of the strangest unsolved cases in American true crime — part folklore, part noir mystery, part haunting.

• Local Pascagoula newspaper archives (1942–1943)
• “The Phantom Barber” coverage in The Jackson Clarion-Ledger
• City of Pascagoula historical crime registry
• WPA and wartime civilian fear research notes

• Instagram: @fromthevoidpod
• X / Twitter: @fromthevoidpod
• Website: fromthevoidpod.com

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Season 9 is coming one week from today with all new true stories, interviews, and more!

In this episode, John dives into one of the most astonishing mass UFO sighting and close-encounter cases in modern history — The Ariel School Encounter.

On September 16, 1994, in a small rural schoolyard outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe, more than 60 children claimed to witness a mysterious craft land nearby and strange, humanoid beings emerge. What followed were eerily consistent eyewitness reports that still baffle investigators and psychologists alike.

Through firsthand testimonies, archival footage, and expert analysis, this episode explores what really happened that morning — and why the story of the Ariel School has endured for nearly three decades.

🎧 Available wherever you get your podcasts.

🔗 Link in bio or visit FromTheVoidPodcast.com

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Long before The Exorcist terrified moviegoers, a quiet middle-class family in 1940s Maryland claimed something unholy had taken hold of their son. In this episode, we revisit the chilling, real-life case that inspired William Peter Blatty’s novel — the 1949 exorcism of a boy known only by the pseudonym Roland Doe.

We’ll retrace the case from its first strange knocks and flying objects in the family’s home, to the desperate search for help that led Jesuit priests to St. Louis, Missouri — where one of the most documented exorcisms in modern history unfolded.

Drawing on eyewitness diaries, press coverage, and later Church records, we’ll separate fact from folklore and ask: what really happened in that room? Was Roland’s possession spiritual, psychological, or something science still can’t explain?

• Thomas B. Allen, Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism (1993)
• William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist (1971)
• The 1949 Exorcism Diary (transcripts archived by St. Louis University)
• “Diary of an Exorcist” – article, Washington Post Magazine (1998)
• American Psychological Association Journal: studies on dissociative disorders and possession-like states.

In this episode, we dive into the strange mystery of the Hexham Heads — two small carved stone heads unearthed in 1971 (or ’72) in a suburban garden in the town of Hexham in Northumberland, England. The discovery was followed by reports of poltergeist-type phenomena: objects moving, bottles flying, a bizarre half-man/half-animal creature appearing, and a scholar who claimed to be haunted after taking the heads for study.

• Screeton, Paul. Quest for the Hexham Heads. CFZ Press. (2010) — deep dive into the case.
• The Urban Prehistorian blog: “The Hexham Heads — discovery & contested testing” series.
• “1976: Lost Hexham Heads Werewolf Report Rediscovered” — BBC Archive clip covering the story on the TV programme Nationwide.
• Articles on the Hexham Heads in the context of hauntings and folk horror: e.g., “The Horrifying Hexham Heads” by A.C. Luke.

Thanks for tuning in to this exploration of the Hexham Heads. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate & review From the Void, share it with anyone who loves eerie mysteries, and follow us on all the socials!

Until then — keep your curiosity open, your mind skeptical, and your headphones ready.

In the 3rd installment of our Possession Series, we turn to one of the most controversial figures to bridge psychology and the paranormal: Dr. M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist, best-selling author of The Road Less Traveled, and—later in life—a reluctant believer in demonic possession.

This episode explores how Peck’s clinical background shaped his approach to exorcism, the patients who challenged his skepticism, and the ways he sought to reconcile science, faith, and evil. We’ll look at his case studies, his insistence that genuine possession is rare, and his cautionary stance toward both blind belief and total disbelief. Then we’ll ask what his work means for modern discussions of mental health, spirituality, and the human shadow.

• Peck, M. Scott. People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (1983)
• Peck, M. Scott. Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist’s Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (2005)
• Interviews with Dr. Peck on PBS and in Psychology Today discussing the intersection of psychiatry and spirituality.
• American Psychiatric Association position papers on religion and mental health.
• Scholarly critiques of Glimpses of the Devil in The Journal of Religion and Health.