Dark History: Where The Darkness See’s The Light29 Des 2025

S4E24 Hearth & Home Horrors

In this first-ever Hearth & Home Horrors, we step away from grand events and turn instead to the darker histories hidden in the places we grow up, walk through, and call home. These are the stories that don’t make national headlines — the ones carried quietly in local memory, passed down in families, spoken of in pubs, whispered across generations.

In this special post-Christmas bonus episode, Rob shares three true tragedies rooted in three very different hometowns:

• Wigan, UK (1908): A coal mine explosion that tore through the Maypole Colliery, killing 75 miners and boys, and leaving a permanent scar on a northern community built on hard labour and harder lives.

• York, UK (1800s): The chilling story of Mary Bateman, the “Yorkshire Witch,” whose manipulation, fraud, and eventual murder of Rebecca Perigo reveal how fear and superstition can be twisted into something far more dangerous than folklore.

• Portland, Maine, USA (1866): A firestorm that swept through the city on Independence Day, destroying nearly 2,000 buildings and leaving 10,000 people homeless — a disaster that forced Portland to rebuild itself from the ashes.

These are small places with enormous shadows — ordinary towns shaped by extraordinary events. Stories from hearth, home, and the edges of memory.

Settle in by the fire. Pour a drink. This is a bonus tale told between holidays, where the world slows down and history feels close enough to touch.

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Episoder(129)

Exhibit XIII: The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe

The museum doors open once more, traveller, and tonight I invite you into a room where the sky itself became the killer. On an ordinary Sunday afternoon in 1638, the people of Widecombe-in-the-Moor ga...

8 Jul 11min

S5 E13 The Paraguayan War — The Nation That Bled to Death

The Paraguayan War | When an Entire Nation Was Destroyed The Paraguayan War (1864–1870) remains one of the deadliest and most devastating conflicts in modern history, yet few people have ever heard of...

1 Jul 44min

Exhibit XII: The Skin That Walked Away

The museum doors open once more, traveller, and tonight I invite you into a room filled with old warnings and older fears. Long before newspapers, police reports, and history books, stories were passe...

24 Jun 8min

S5 E12 Albert Fish — The Boogeyman

Albert Fish — The Boogeyman How does a human being become a monster? In this disturbing episode of The Dark History Podcast, Rob explores the life and crimes of Albert Fish, one of the most infamous s...

17 Jun 32min

Exhibit XI: The Little People

The museum doors creak open once more, traveller, and tonight I invite you into one of the strangest rooms in my collection. High above the city of Edinburgh, hidden within the slopes of Arthur's Seat...

10 Jun 13min

S5 E11: Gloomy Sunday — The Hungarian Suicide Song

Gloomy Sunday — The Hungarian Suicide Song Could a song really drive people to take their own lives? In 1933, a struggling Hungarian pianist named Rezső Seress composed a melancholy melody that would ...

3 Jun 23min

Exhibit X: The Servants' Annihilation

Step quietly, traveller, and enter one of the darkest chambers of the Dark's Travelling Emporium. Behind the glass of Exhibit X lies a single brass earring, recovered from the yard of Eula Phillips in...

27 Mai 11min

S5 E10: Mysteries of the Sumerians — The Cradle of Civilization

Mysteries of the Sumerians — The Cradle of Civilization Who were the Sumerians, and how did a people living more than 5,000 years ago create the foundations of the modern world? In this fascinating ep...

20 Mai 40min