Heart Starts Pounding Season 5, Episode 21: How Reddit Shut Down the Worst Troubled Teen School in America

1

The Mystery of The Setagaya Family Murders

One of my most terrifying fears is the idea that someone is watching me without me knowing about it. Or worse, that someone is inside my home watching me without me knowing about it. If that freaks you out as well, this might be a tough episode for you. Because today we are going to tell you about one of Japan's most horrifying mysteries, but at its core was a family who got a really bad feeling that someone was watching them.

41 min

2

Lost Media: Tapes Too Dark For The Public

Today, I want to look at two pieces of "lost media" with you all. One piece is lost because it was deemed too dark for the public to ever hear, and the other was lost when it was intentionally destroyed by the US government. That's right, we're going over the case of Timothy Treadwell aka Grizzly Man, and the Cavalese Tapes. So roll up your sleeves and let's dive into the darkness together.

36 min

3

The Mysterious Murder of An Aspen Socialite

In February 2014, Aspen socialite Nancy Pfister was discovered murdered in the closet of her mountainside home, sending shockwaves through one of America's most exclusive communities. This is a case of wealth, betrayal, a shocking confession, and lingering questions that remain unanswered to this day. Three people were arrested, but were any of them telling the truth about what happened that night?

38 min

4

How Reddit Solved a Cold Case // Lyle Stevik

In September 2001, a housekeeper discovered an unidentified man's body in a remote Washington motel room, no ID, no belongings, and a fake name scrawled in the guest book. For 17 years, detectives hit dead ends while an obsessive online community became consumed by one haunting question: who was the man in room five? This is the story of how thousands of strangers refused to let him be forgotten.

36 min

5

Reddit Scary Stories: Djinn, Doppelgängers, and Imaginary Friends (feat. Two Girls One Ghost)

A face drawn in the fog of a bathroom mirror that looks exactly like you. A husband standing in the doorway who doesn't speak, doesn't move-- and swears he was never there. From djinn that fall in love through reflections to entities that mimic the people you trust most, these Reddit stories blur the line between what's familiar and what's something else entirely.

70 min

6

Backwoods Horror: The Mysterious Disappearances of Amy Bechtel & Polly Melton

One summer, a 24-year-old runner parker her car on a remote Wyoming road, left behind a to-do list with one uncrossed item "run" and was never seen again. Across the country, another woman was walking with friends on a well-traveled trail in the Great Smoky Mountains, went off ahead of her friends, and vanished without a trace. Today, we're diving into two backwoods disappearances, where the search parties found almost nothing, and the questions still go unanswered.

40 min

7

Terrifying True Urban Legends: A Haunted Forest, The Elevator Game, Britain's Hannibal Lecter

When villagers in a remote Thai forest heard screams echoing from the woods every hour for three straight days, they were convinced the legends of ancient spirits haunting those trees had come to life. In Taiwan, a woman and her young daughter walked into an elevator, rode to the top floor of an 11-story building, and seemingly vanished, feeding into the internet's most haunting urban legends, "The Elevator Game". And in England, a prisoner they call "Hannibal the Cannibal" has been locked in a glass cell underground for over 40 years, but how much of his legend is actually true?

35 min

8

Feral Children: The Wolf Girl of Devils River, The Ukrainian Dog Girl, and The Kellogg Experiment

Feral Children used to be the stuff of legends, but their stories are shocking, devastating, and real. Today, we're diving into multiple stories of feral children: the girl who was raised by her dog when her parents forgot about her, the legend of the wolf girl of Devils River, and the human experiment where a scientist tried to raise his son alongside a chimpanzee to unforeseen consequences.

40 min

9

Something's Lurking In The Woods: Terrifying Tales of Crawlers

Why have so many people described seeing the same scary entity in the backwoods of Appalachia? Something that looks human, but not quite? Today, we're talking about the terrifying entity people have been seeing in the woods for generations. "Crawlers".

37 min

10

The Scariest Reddit Stories We've Heard (feat. Kris & Celina from Can't Sleep)

Today, we're reading Reddit's scariest stories with KallMeKris and CelinaSpookyBoo. From glitches in the Matrix that defy all sense of logic, haunted houses full of vengeful ghosts, and a man showing up at someone's door at 2am knowing way too many intimate details about them. Some of these have explanations. Some of them don't. And honestly? The ones with answers are scarier.

67 min

11

Real Scary Stories: A Cursed Church Camp, An Eerie Ranch, and The Deep Woods

Your terrifying stories are back, and they did not disappoint! From deep inside the Michigan woods, to a haunted church camp, to the backroads of Argentina, and a 2am parking lot encounter. Morgan from Two Hot Takes is joining us to read through tales that range from something inhuman in the trees to a dream that may have saved someone's life, as we try to figure out what is going on with you guys!!

66 min

12

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leah Roberts

In March 2000, 23-year-old Leah Roberts left a note for her roommate and took off on a solo cross-country trip. Nine days later, her wrecked Jeep was found by hikers at the bottom of a ravine in upstate Washington and Leah was not inside. What initially looked like a car crash started to feel more sinister as the investigation continued. More than 25 years later the questions surrounding what happened only grow darker.

44 min

13

Three Real Imposter Nightmares: Fake Uber Drivers, The Tourist From Hell, and more

A college student gets into what she thinks is her rideshare. A speech therapist spends years pretending to be someone's mother. And a backpacker in Singapore accepts a stranger's offer to split a hotel room...then never calls home. Three stories about people who slipped through the cracks. By the time anyone realized something was wrong, it was already too late.

43 min

14

Dark Mysteries of the Florida Everglades: The Flat Tire Murder, Missing Planes, and The Skunk Ape

In the summer of 1975, the bodies of young women began surfacing in canals along the edge of the Florida Everglades. To make matters worse, investigators blamed the victims for their own deaths. Today, we will cover many things the Everglades have swallowed. From serial killers to a doomed jetliner pulled from the sky, to a creature with over 600 documented sightings. The deeper you go, the stranger it gets.

48 min

15

The College Students That Cracked A 34 Year Old Case

In September 1991, a young mother in Arlington, Texas, Cynthia Gonzalez, left for a late-night appointment and never came home. Her car was found 40 miles away, and the investigation that followed would consume a legendary detective's career through serial killer suspects, failed polygraphs, and confessions that went nowhere. Thirty-four years later, a college classroom full of students at the University of Texas at Arlington, who weren't even born when she was killed, would find what everyone else missed.

43 min

16

Reddit Scary Stories: Stalkers, Setups, and a Serial Killer (feat. Psychopedia)

Today, Slater and I are reading Reddit scary stories about close encounters with people who were not who they said they were. A man offers a woman her dream job, but the company doesn't exist!? A friendly neighbor starts knowing things he was never told. A first date takes a deliberate detour. And a hitchhiker carrying a small child through a Montana blizzard may have been one of the most dangerous predators in American history.

63 min

17

Terrifying True Urban Legends: A Toilet Stalker, a Demon Camel, and a Cursed Mansion

Today, we're covering three terrifying true urban legends: a South African schoolyard legend called Pinky Pinky with an unnerving connection to a real case in Japan, the history of Summerwind Mansion, which reveals more about its owners than the house itself...and the true origins behind the Red Ghost.

43 min

18

Backwoods Horror: Why Do People Keep Disappearing in Nome, Alaska?

In 2003, 19-year-old Sonya Ivanoff was walking home from a friend's house in Nome, Alaska when a witness saw her get into a vehicle marked 'Nome Police Department'. Her body was found the next day. But Sonya's murder is just one piece of a much larger pattern. Since 1960, at least 25 people have gone missing or died under suspicious circumstances in this isolated town of fewer than 4,000 people, and the community has been fighting for answers that local authorities seem determined not to give.

40 min

19

Backrooms Horror: The Creepiest Levels and Darkest Lore

In 2019, an anonymous photo of a yellow hallway turned into one of the biggest creepypastas of a generation. Millions of people have since built out the Backrooms. Hundreds of levels, from an infinite black ocean hiding a planet-sized creature to a children's birthday party run by entities that wear your skin. With a new A24 film brining the Backrooms to the big screen, we're going no-clipping into the most terrifying levels, the strange mythology of almond water and Greasy Marshmallows, and the chilling stories of people who tried to escape.

44 min

20

The Crash: The Mackenzie Shirilla Case (Going Beyond The Netflix Doc)

In July 2022, 18-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla drove her car into a brick wall at nearly 100 miles per hour, killing her boyfriend Dominic Russo and his best friend Davion Flanagan. What looked like a drug-fueled accident unraveled fast, and the Netflix documentary only tells part of the story. This week, we go deeper: the details left on the cutting room floor, the recorded prison call that changed everything, and the question that still doesn't have a straight answer.

48 min

21

How Reddit Shut Down the Worst Troubled Teen School in America

In 1970, a man with no clinical training opened a "therapeutic boarding school" in the Maine woods. For forty-one years, students inside were subjected to organized beatings, forced fight rings, and psychological torture while journalists, state investigators, and even Congress failed to shut it down. Then, in 2010, one anonymous Reddit post did what none of them could.

44 min

22

Two Cold Cases Police Thought Would Never Be Solved (And How They Were Cracked This Year)

They call it the golden age of DNA testing, and this year, two cases that police thought would never be solved finally cracked open. But the answers were nothing anyone expected. August 1990, Houston. A white Honda Civic sits abandoned at the end of a cul-de-sac on the city's edge. The keys are in the ignition, a woman's purse is on the floorboard, and blood is smeared down both doors. What detectives find in the woods beyond that car would become known as the Lovers' Lane murders, and the case would go cold for over three decades, broken only by a DNA hit decades later. November 1991, Placer County, California. A devoted young mother vanishes mid-morning while cleaning her sister's house, leaving her infant daughter crying in a high chair and her purse the only thing missing. There's no sign of struggle. No witnesses. Just a single cigarette butt on the walkway. When her body is finally found weeks later, the medical examiner makes a discovery more chilling than the murder itself.

52 min

23

Mount Everest Horror: The Khumbu Icefall Avalanche

On April 18th, 2014, a 14,000-tonne block of ice broke free above the Khumbu Icefall and killed sixteen Sherpa guides. It was the deadliest single disaster in Mount Everest's history. What followed wasn't just a rescue. It was a reckoning: a fight over $400 funeral payments, a historic strike, and the first time in ninety years that the world's most famous mountain went silent.

41 min

24

Backwoods Horror: The Creatures Appalachians Still Fear

Across Appalachia, thousands of people keep reporting the same thing: a massive black cat in the woods that screams like a woman being murdered. The government says it doesn't exist, there are NO official reports of big black cats in the area. But the Cherokee had a name for what lives in those mountains, and its story is far older, and far more wicked, than a misidentified panther. Today, we’re diving into the stories of The Wampus Cat and Spearfinger.

35 min

25

Honeymoon Cruise Disappearance: George Smith

A newlywed couple boarded a Mediterranean cruise for their honeymoon. Five days later, a teenager photographed blood splattered across a lifeboat canopy, and the groom was gone. His bride says she blacked out. Four men were the last to see him alive. What happened to George Smith puzzled his family for years until they finally started pulling at the threads.

37 min

26

Alpine Divorce Horror: Husbands Who Leave Their Wives To Die On Hikes

Today we’re exploring the term that has been circulating online for the last few months, Alpine Divorce, and two cases where these “divorces” of sorts were life-threatening. In 2012, Toni Henthorn fell from an off-trail ledge in Rocky Mountain National Park. Her husband Harold said she slipped, but a ranger found a map that indicated otherwise. Thirteen years later, Arielle Konig was attacked by her husband, Gerhardt, on a cliffside trail in Hawaii on her birthday, but against all odds, she made it out alive.

40 min

27

Shipwreck: A Tale Of Survival and Cannibalism

In 1864, two ships wrecked on opposite ends of Auckland Island. A frozen, abandoned archipelago south of New Zealand. The Grafton's five-man crew built a cabin, held elections, and taught each other languages for eighteen months. Twenty miles away, the Invercauld's twenty-five-man crew collapsed into starvation and cannibalism, and the one sailor who fought to keep them alive was erased from every published account.

36 min

28

Summer Camp Horror, Scary Camping, and Time Slips: Campfire Scary Stories with Sylas Dean

A rock taken from a ritual site while at summer camp finds its way home… even after being thrown into the ocean. A smiling man in a suit beckons two girls hiking toward a dark treeline. And a voice outside a tent whispers, "Are you inside, girls?" Kaelyn and Sylas read your creepiest true campfire stories: haunted camps, mimics, time slips, and the things waiting in the woods that none of you have been able to explain since.

63 min

29

Amelia Earhart Survived: The Theories Behind The Crash and Newly Discovered Evidence

On the morning of July 2nd, 1937, Amelia Earhart lifted off from Lae, Papua New Guinea, and flew into the most famous disappearance of the 20th century. The official story says she crashed into the Pacific and sank. And yet, evidence now shows the distress calls kept coming for days, the castaway campsite was discovered on a remote atoll, and a strange shape was spotted on Apple Maps in 2020. Now, with an expedition setting out to finally identify the object buried off Nikumaroro, the mystery of what really happened to Amelia may be about to break wide open.

40 min