Christmas Eve, 1945: a family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia goes up in flames, and five Sodder children are declared dead before the ash is even cold. But there are no bones in the ruins, the power line and trucks look sabotaged, a prank call and a thump on the roof don’t fit the official story, and a bulldozer wipes out the crime scene two days later. For decades their parents chase diner sightings, strange witnesses, and a cryptic photo of a grown man who might be their missing son, while a billboard on Route 19 screams the question no one in power wants answered: what really happened?

What do CIA honey traps in the 1950s and a Christmas Eve Grindr murder in rural Michigan have in common? Weaponized intimacy. In this episode, we dive into Operation Midnight Climax, the government’s LSD-soaked brothel experiment, then follow the trail to the killing of Kevin Bacon, a young hairstylist who walked into a farmhouse on Christmas Eve and never came home. From psyops to dating apps, we’re pulling apart how trust gets twisted into a tool… and how a basement can feel more terrifying than any black site.

Jack Frost is supposed to be the playful face of winter: a cartoon on cereal boxes, a harmless line in a Christmas song. In this episode, Phreak peels that mascot skin off and digs into the older, uglier version: an amoral frost spirit that doesn’t roar or chase, just quietly rewrites the temperature around you until your body gives up.From Slavic and Nordic legends to a modern Alaskan homestead where ice formed inside warm rooms and a child saw “the man in the white suit” inviting him to the window, this case file explores Jack Frost as an elemental predator that paints on your glass, whispers in storms, and only needs one mistake from you to finish the job.

On a frozen stretch of Archer Avenue outside Chicago, a young woman in a thin dress waits on the side of the road, thumbing rides she doesn’t need and breathing air she no longer requires. For decades, truckers, cabbies, and late-night drivers have told the same story:they let her into the car, feel the temperature drop, pass the iron gates of Resurrection Cemetery… and watch her vanish from the locked passenger seat.

This week the Heroes head to South London to dig into Aravindan “Comrade Bala” Balakrishnan, the Maoist cult leader who kept women under “invisible handcuffs” for decades and turned an ordinary flat into a prison ruled by an all-seeing entity. Then they break down the Elevator Game, the viral ritual that claims you can “dial” yourself out of reality with a sequence of buttons and a woman on the fifth floor who is absolutely not human, and ask why elevators make such perfect breeding grounds for modern demons.

Forgot to say the word of the week in episode: lampchop

Deep in the forests, on the borders of fields, in the quiet places people shouldn’t linger — something watches. Phreak dives into the terrifying real-world lore of the Hidden Ones: the ancient fae folk blamed for vanishings, rewritings, and voices that call your name from the wrong direction. From Icelandic construction crews to Celtic fairy mounds to modern disappearances, this episode explores the old rules, the true encounters, and the things that notice you long before you notice them.

Kamen breaks down the truth behind America’s most famous “tiny cryptid.” From frontier myths to a real virus that grows horn-like tumors on rabbits, the Jackalope turns out to be less folklore and more pathology. A blend of biology, history, and hard skepticism.

A kid’s bedroom is supposed to be the safest room in the house… so why are the toys moving on their own? In Toy Room from Hell, Phreak digs into the infamous South Shields Poltergeist case: a young family in a normal English home, a child found wrapped and stashed like cargo, toys posed as threats, vicious messages appearing on chalkboards and phones, and a shadow figure watching from the hall.

Was it a hoax, a psychic meltdown, or something intelligent learning how to hurt people where it counts most?