The Box of Oddities31 Des 2025

Bodies Left Behind: The True Story of Alabama’s Memorial Mound

In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro Gilligan-Toth begin the new year by pulling apart something we all use but rarely question: the calendar. From Julius Caesar’s ego-driven timekeeping decisions to the leap year, misplaced months, and how entire civilizations quietly agreed on when the year should begin, it’s a surprisingly strange history of how humans try — and often fail — to organize time itself. But once the clock runs out, the episode takes a much darker turn. Jethro dives into the true story of the Memorial Mound in Bessemer, Alabama — an underground burial mausoleum inspired by ancient Roman catacombs and Indigenous burial traditions, designed to last for centuries. Instead, it became one of the most disturbing cases of abandonment in modern funeral history. After the site quietly closed, human remains were left behind for years. Caskets stacked like warehouse inventory. Bodies decomposing in sealed darkness. An infant among them. When urban explorers finally entered the structure in 2014, what they found triggered a federal investigation and raised troubling questions about oversight, neglect, and how easily the dead can be forgotten. Along the way, you’ll hear:• The strange origins of month names and New Year’s Day• How calendars slowly drifted out of reality• A “Thing in the Middle” packed with bizarre machine and technology facts• And a documented case of human remains abandoned inside an American mausoleum It’s a story about time, memory, and what happens when systems fail — quietly, slowly, and out of sight. Keep flying that freak flag. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(951)

The Corpse In The Lighthouse

What happens when the most isolated lighthouse in the world becomes a floating prison with a corpse... and what if one of history's strangest duels was fought over flower arrangements? In this episod...

8 Jul 36min

The X-Files Mystery That Actually Happened

The Village Where People Slept for Days and How a DNA Test Solved a 73-Year-Old Missing Child Case. What would you do if people in your town simply... fell asleep without warning? In this editio...

6 Jul 31min

Founding Fathers Gone Wild

What do Benjamin Franklin's naked "air baths," George Washington's near-zombie resurrection, and Lyndon B. Johnson's infamous pants phone call have in common? They're all absolutely true... and they'...

3 Jul 39min

Ghosts Beneath the Basement

Beneath an ancient house in York, England, an apprentice heating engineer wasn't searching for ghosts—he was installing a boiler. Instead, he claimed to witness a column of weary Roman soldiers marchi...

1 Jul 34min

Lost Bodies & Fake Nutmeg

There was a time in America when shipping a dead body by railroad was as routine as sending a trunk of luggage... until somebody misplaced the coffin. In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat a...

29 Jun 34min

Inbox Of Oddities #91

Welcome back to the Inbox of Oddities, where the strangest stories often come from the most fascinating people—our listeners. In this episode, Kat and JG dive into a collection of eerie coincidences, ...

26 Jun 24min

The Great Piano Migration & Ancient Romans In Brazil?

What do a piano frozen in the Yukon wilderness and a possible Roman shipwreck off the coast of Brazil have in common? In this episode of Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro uncover two historical mysteri...

24 Jun 33min

The Acid Bath Killer & The Science of Dying

What happens in the final moments before death? For generations, people who survived near-death experiences have described the same astonishing phenomenon: a vivid, panoramic replay of their lives—com...

22 Jun 35min