198. Reddit Scary Stories: Terrifying Ring Camera Footage, a Crawling Stalker, and Other Mommy (feat. Sylas Dean)

In the summer of 2016, children at a South Carolina apartment complex ran out of the woods screaming. They said there were clowns in the trees. No one believed them. Within weeks, the sightings had spread across the country, school lockdowns, armed mobs, arrests, and a panic so intense that McDonald’s benched Ronald McDonald. But where did it actually start? The answer is stranger than the legend. Then: Halloween night, 1974. An eight-year-old boy in Pasadena, Texas eats a piece of candy from his trick-or-treat bag. He’s dead within the hour. For fifty years, parents have checked their children’s candy because of what happened that night but the real story is darker than the urban legend it created. TW: Child death Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

Explore my Hungryroot Digital Cookbook Kaelyn's Cookbook and get 40% off your first order plus a free item in every box for life at https://hungryroot.com/HSP Open your SoFi Checking & Savings account today - head to https://sofi.com/HeartStarts to get started Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order. Halloween and Spooky Season bring many haunted attractions and events for people to attend and have a little fun, get a little scared. But what if I told you some of those scares aren’t props and dummies after all? In fact, it is way more common than you’d think for real corpses to be mistaken for Halloween decorations. Today we’re digging into some real deadly haunted attractions, from a High School production gone wrong to Disney Paris and a Queens basement the fire department called a death trap; these are the haunted attractions where the horror stopped being part of the show. Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order. Open your SoFi Checking & Savings account today - head to https://sofi.com/HeartStarts to get started. They were warned: make a movie about the Devil, and the Devil will try to stop you. What followed were plane crashes, bombings of film locations, animal attacks, and a real-life decapitation that mirrored a scene from the film itself. From The Omen to Nosferatu, these are the horror movies where the curse might have been real, and the truth behind it is even stranger than the legend. Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding TW: Suicide

Open your SoFi Checking & Savings account today - head to https://sofi.com/HeartStarts to get started. Today I’m telling you some true scary stories of people living in haunted houses, including my own! These are stories that will make you question: is your house cursed, or are you? Please join me, cozy up, and get a little scare for the start of Spooky Season! (Although for most of us, it’s a year-round affair 👻) If you have some of your own spooky stories, submit them at: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/stories and maybe I will tell your tale next! Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

Nick and Mindi Kassotis believed they were being hunted. According to friends and family, Nick's classified military work had put them both in danger, so much so that Mindi rarely left the house. But the couple also shared they were expecting a child. Then, just after Thanksgiving, Mindi died suddenly in the hospital. Soon after, Nick died too. That's what everyone who loved them believed, that is until a woman's dismembered remains turned up in a wooded area. Stories started to unravel and a mysterious new figure emerged. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty separates fact from fiction in a case built upon unimaginable layers of deception. Available now. link.pscrb.fm/f0281/witwfeeddropinhsp-dfaf6