Ep 196 - Spiritualism in Canada, Eh? Part 1 "Ghosts, God & The Great Divide"
Release Date: 01/31/2025
Ep 224 - The Magician Whose Body Was Found Twice
Haunted Talks
Before Houdini became the name history remembered, another illusionist drew enormous crowds and commanded extraordinary fees. He called himself the , and his performances were part magic show, part circus, part theatre of death. Then, one night in Edinburgh, his grand finale set the theatre on fire. Lafayette was seen rushing back inside, through the flames, to save the animals he loved. By morning, investigators believed they had found his body. Then they found him again. Was it a tragic mistake, a final escape gone wrong, or the last great illusion of a man who spent his life making...
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Ep 223 - What is a Ghost? The Case for a New Paranormal
Haunted Talks
What if a ghost is not only something we encounter in the dark, but something we may, in some mysterious way, participate in? In this special episode of Haunted Talks, Jim presents a manifesto for reimagining the paranormal. Moving beyond the familiar debate between “spirits of the dead” and “tricks of the mind,” he explores a third possibility: that hauntings may emerge from a stranger relationship between memory, consciousness, place, intention, and attention. Drawing on the Stone Tape theory, quantum physics as a provocative analogy, years of Alone in the Dark investigations, and a...
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Ep 222 - Poveglia: Italy’s Island of the Dead
Haunted Talks
Off the coast of Venice sits an island no one will approach. carries centuries of dark history, and the scale of what happened there is nearly impossible to comprehend. Today, it sits abandoned, overgrown, and rarely visited. But that does not mean it is empty. Boat captains refuse to moor there, even in storms. Plans to reclaim it have come and gone. Still, its reputation endures, shaped by grief, silence, and soil that is more ash than earth. We navigate the mist of the Venetian Lagoon to uncover why Poveglia remains one of Italy’s most feared and forbidden...
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Ep 221 - The Juniper Tree: The Darkest Fairy Tale You’ve Never Heard
Haunted Talks
Most fairy tale monsters keep their distance. They wait in towers. They haunt the edge of the forest. You can, in theory, avoid them. The one in this story sits at the dinner table. is widely considered the most disturbing tale the Brothers Grimm ever published. Not the most violent. Not the most fantastical. The most disturbing, because the danger lives inside the house, wears a familiar face, and commits its crime in an ordinary room on an ordinary afternoon. In , we promised you a dark fairy tale about revenge, murder, and a voice calling out from beyond the...
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Ep 220 – Once Upon a Nightmare: The Horror of Fairy Tales
Haunted Talks
You know these stories. A lost girl in the woods. A puppet who lies. A chicken convinced the sky is falling. You’ve known them since childhood. What you don’t know is what those stories were before someone decided they belonged in the nursery. What we found is not charming. A puppet hanged from an oak tree. Stepsisters carving off their own toes. Children led into the woods to starve. It is bloody, strange, and much harder to forget than the version your parents read to you. In this episode of Haunted Talks, we step into the true history of , tracing their...
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Ep 219 - Mystery of the Devil's Footprints 👣
Haunted Talks
On the morning of February 9th, 1855, the residents of Devon woke to a nightmare pressed into the snow. A single-file line of cloven hoof-prints, stretching over miles of frozen English countryside. Across thirty towns. In six hours. Made by something walking upright, one foot precisely in front of the other. The prints didn’t go around obstacles. They went through them. Over fourteen-foot walls without disturbing the snow at the base. Across a two-mile river with no mark at either shore. Across rooftops while families slept below. The explanations that followed were...
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Ep 218 - Why Ghost Stories Matter
Haunted Talks
Jim steps out from behind the microphone to share a talk he gave at the Modern Language Association conference in Toronto, where he was invited to speak on a panel about Gothic scholarship, podcasting, and public humanities. It's a conversation about what we're really doing when we tell ghost stories. Not just entertaining, but shaping how people think about the past, life, death, and what may lie between. It's about butterflies that remember past lives, Titanic folklore that won't die, and why a zombie apocalypse in a Cold War bunker became one of our most beloved projects. Thanks to from...
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Ep 217 - Eerie Whispers: Brian Baker on Canada’s Reluctant Ghost Culture
Haunted Talks
Journalist and researcher Brian Baker, founder of , joins Haunted Talks to discuss his new book, . Why is Canada, a country overflowing with ghost stories, so hesitant to talk about them? Brian shares a chilling childhood encounter he has never quite shaken, unpacks his idea of Canada as “the introvert on the global stage,” and takes us across the country to explore why some regions embrace the paranormal while others keep it at arm’s length. We also dive into Toronto’s legendary Philip Experiment, where a group of researchers appeared to summon a ghost they...
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Ep 216 - Lizzie Borden: Inside the Murder House 🪓
Haunted Talks
She was the quiet churchgoer. The dutiful daughter. The last person anyone expected to wield a hatchet. But on an August morning in 1892, the Borden home in Fall River, Massachusetts, became the scene of one of the most savage double murders in American history. And the name became synonymous with murder itself. In this episode, we step inside the Borden home to uncover what really happened—the brutal killings, the family tensions no one talked about, the trial that transfixed a nation, and the enigmatic woman at the centre of it all. Was Lizzie a cold-blooded killer? A victim...
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Ep 215 - Why We Love Halloween 🖤🎃
Haunted Talks
Happy Halloween to all the ghosts and ghoulies! 🖤🎃👻 Jim’s love letter to Halloween. Walk with us through fog-lit childhood streets, pause beside ancient fires for the dead, and feel again the quiet magic of the night when the veil grows thin. This is a night for stories, for spirits, and for those who still believe in a little mystery. Settle in, press play, and celebrate Halloween with us. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like: Episode 191 – Episode 94 – For information or to get tickets for our ghost tours or paranormal adventures, please visit .
info_outlineIn the early 20th century, Canada was swept up in a wave of Spiritualism, where séances promised answers, and the line between faith, fraud, and fear blurred. In this two-part series, we explore how Spiritualism became more than a curiosity—it divided families, enchanted elites, and outraged religious leaders. From fiery sermons and public scandals to exclusive séances held in the lavish parlours of the wealthy and powerful, discover how this controversial movement captured the nation’s imagination and sparked a cultural clash over life, death, and the unknown.
If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like:
Episode 170 – Strange Reports of Vampires, Dwarves & Witches in Wilno, Ontario
Episode 163 – Canada’s Ghost Towns
Episode 134 – Canadian Poltergeists – Part 1
Host: Jim Dean
Audio Editor: Michelle Dennis
Episode Researched & Written: Brittney Bos