In August 1869, John Wesley Powell’s first Colorado River expedition hits its hardest day: a violent rapid, battered boats, sour rations—and a split at Separation Canyon, where three men choose to climb out of the gorge and walk toward settlements instead of facing more whitewater.

In the Time and Tales Podcast Season 1 finale,, we follow the river from Green River Station to the mouth of the Virgin, then trace what little evidence we have for William Dunn, Oramel Howland, and Seneca Howland after they leave the boats—sorting surviving diaries, later testimony, and local rumor into what’s plausible, what’s likely propaganda, and why their disappearance still feels like an American fable: three men who walked out of the canyon alive and were never seen again.

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Sources:

• John Wesley Powell – Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1875).
• John Wesley Powell – The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (Flood & Vincent, 1895).
• Frederick S. Dellenbaugh – A Canyon Voyage: The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908).
• Henry F. Dobyns & Robert C. Euler – “The Dunn-Howland Killings: Additional Insights,” Journal of Arizona History (Spring 1980).
• A. Scott – “The 150th Anniversary of the 1869 Powell Expedition,” U.S. Geological Survey (2020).

In May 1993, three eight-year-old boys vanished in West Memphis, Arkansas. Their bodies were found the next day in a drainage ditch at Robin Hood Hills—naked, bound with their own shoelaces. Within days, a town already steeped in Satanic Panic turned away from careful investigation and toward a story it already believed: that three local teens who liked metal, black clothes, and occult books must have carried out a ritual killing.

This Time and Tales dark history episode walks through how Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley Jr. became the West Memphis Three: from a contaminated crime scene and a coerced confession to “occult experts,” trials built on vibes instead of evidence, and the 2011 Alford pleas that freed them without clearing their names. It’s a case study about what moral panic does to policing, courts, and anyone who looks like an easy villain.

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Special Guest Host: Horror author Tristan Zelden

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Sources: – Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “West Memphis Three” (case overview, key dates, legal outcomes) – UMKC “Famous Trials” archive on the West Memphis Three (trial materials, testimony excerpts, legal chronology) – Mara Leveritt – Devil’s Knot and related feature writing on the case and prosecution strategy – 1990 Census of Population and Housing profile for West Memphis, Arkansas (poverty data) – NCES Digest of Education Statistics – NAEP reading results, early 1990s (Arkansas/Tennessee vs. U.S. baseline)

In the summer of 1518, a woman stepped into a Strasbourg street and began to dance—and didn’t stop. Within days, dozens of people were staggering and convulsing beside her in the heat, some dancing until they collapsed from exhaustion. City leaders watched a crowded market square turn into one of Europe’s strangest public-health crises.

This Time and Tales Podcast episode walks through Strasbourg’s Dancing Plague from the first recorded dancer to the city’s escalating response—physicians, bans on public dancing, appeals to St. Vitus—and into the modern debates over what really happened: ergot poisoning, mass psychogenic illness, or some mix of fear, famine, faith, and imitation that spiraled out of control.

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Links:

Email-timeandtalespodcast@gmail.com

Website- timeandtalespodcast.com

Patreon- patreon.com/timeandtalespodcast

Instagram: instagram.com/timeandtalespod

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Sources:

• John Waller – A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 – John Waller – scholarly work on the 1518 Strasbourg outbreak (journal articles/abstracts)
• Public Domain Review – “The Dancing Plague of 1518”
• The Guardian – feature coverage of the Strasbourg dancing mania
• History.com – “The Dancing Plague of 1518”
• Wikipedia – “Dancing Plague of 1518”; “Strasbourg”

In June 1912, someone entered the Moore home in Villisca, Iowa, took the family’s own axe, and killed Josiah and Sarah, their four children, and two visiting Stillinger sisters as they slept. The doors were locked from the inside, faces and mirrors were covered, a lamp was turned low—and before investigators could secure the house, the town had already trampled through the scene.

In this Time and Tales episode walks through the Moores’ last Sunday, the chaotic investigation, and the main suspects before widening the frame to The Man from the Train, where Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James argue Villisca was part of a rail-linked series of family axe murders—and name a likely offender: a German immigrant named Paul Mueller, who may have killed dozens across North America.

**This one was a quick one! Look forward to a return to our usual format next week.

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Links

• Intro Music by Randy Lee Riviere
• Time and Tales Pod IG
• Patreon

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Sources

• “Villisca Axe Murders,” Iowa legislative brief; Villisca Axe Murder House historical overview.
• Mike Dash, “The Ax Murderer Who Got Away,” Smithsonian Magazine (2012).
• The Man from the Train (2017), Bill James & Rachel McCarthy James; “The Man from the Train” and “Billy the Axeman” entries (overview of the pattern, Paul Mueller theory, estimated victim count).

A king who helped write the script for Salem. In this Time & Tales dark history episode, we go back to 1590s Scotland, where James VI—later James I of England—personally questioned accused “witch” Agnes Sampson, convinced that storms against his marriage voyage were assassination attempts raised by the Devil. From the North Berwick witch trials to his demonological handbook Daemonologie and the 1604 Witchcraft Act, we trace how one monarch’s fear turned into statute, culture, and a theological blueprint that framed witch-hunting as godly duty.

*This episode may supply a few controversial opinions-- to clarify, James' historically agreed-upon sexuality is not a crime. His treatment of individuals of similar sexuality, however, we find to be egregiously unjust. Additionally, we are not aiming to offend anyone's religion. Our views are not reflective of any group, merely a reflection on the actions of a few during this time period. Sources are listed for your further reading and ultimate judgment.

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Sources & Further Reading

Primary & Contemporary Texts

• James VI/I — Daemonologie (1597)
• Newes from Scotland (1591) — pamphlet on the North Berwick trials
• Thomas Potts — The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster (1613)
• Matthew Hopkins — The Discovery of Witches (1647)
• Cotton Mather — Wonders of the Invisible World (1693)
• Increase Mather — Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693)

Statutes & Legal Context

• Witchcraft Act of 1604 (1 Jac. I c.12)
• Records of Scottish witchcraft prosecutions (North Berwick and beyond)
• Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641) — witchcraft / “familiar spirit” clause
• Library of Congress — Salem legal framework and the end of spectral evidence

James’s Court & Sexuality (Context)

• G. P. V. Akrigg (ed.) — Letters of King James VI & I
• David M. Bergeron — King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire
• Michael B. Young — “James VI and I: Time for a Reconsideration?” Journal of British Studies

Secondary & Synthesis

• National Archives (UK) — Hopkins and Pendle trial materials
• National Library of Scotland — facsimiles of Newes from Scotland
• Encyclopaedia Britannica — entries on Daemonologie, Matthew Hopkins, and the King James Bible
• Stuart Clark — Thinking with Demons
• Lyndal Roper — Witch Craze
• Malcolm Gaskill — Witchfinders
• Marion Gibson — Witchcraft: The Evidence

A “shortcut” that turned into a death sentence. In this Time & Tales dark history episode, we follow the Donner Party into the Sierra Nevada winter of 1846–47: from hopeful departure on the California Trail to the fatal choice to take Lansford Hastings’ cutoff, ignoring Shoshone and Paiute warnings about the Wasatch and the Great Salt Lake Desert—lost weeks that became lost lives once early snows sealed the pass and families at Truckee Lake and Alder Creek turned from boiled hides to cannibalism to survive.

Joined by author K.M. West, we strip away the textbook version and look at what the record actually shows about hunger, choice, and how this story was told.

* KM West Socials

*KM West Book Link

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Sources & Further Reading

• William O. Fallon — April 1847 diary (Fourth Relief; Keseberg encounter). Donner Party Diary
• Forlorn Hope survivor accounts — diaries, statements, and early interviews compiled in Donner Party document collections. Wikipedia
• Daniel James Brown — The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride. Amazon
• Michael Wallis — The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny. National Geographic
• An Archaeology of Desperation: Exploring the Donner Party’s Alder Creek Camp; Truckee / Donner Summit historical & archaeological reports Truckee-Donner Historical Society

Edgar Allan Poe— the writer who invented the detective story— also left behind one of America’s strangest unsolved deaths. In this Time & Tales dark history episode, we follow Edgar Allan Poe’s final week in 1849: from his disappearance in Richmond to his sudden reappearance in Baltimore outside Gunner’s Hall on election day, delirious and dressed in another man’s clothes.

We walk through the scant hospital records and all the main theories, to discover what the evidence really supports—and why no single explanation can close the case.

If you’re drawn to Edgar Allan Poe, 19th-century true crime, and historical mysteries, this episode is for you.

**We had a few sound issues with this episode. Our apologies! We had to use our backup mics and their gain is factory set to broadcast to Mars.

Sources & Further Reading

• Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore — “The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe”; site materials on Gunner’s Hall, Washington College Hospital, and Poe’s grave. Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore
• National Park Service — “The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death”; “Edgar Allan Poe” biography. National Park Service
• Smithsonian Magazine — “The (Still) Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe.” Smithsonian Magazine
• Maryland Center for History & Culture — “Here at Last He is Happy: The Death and Burial of Edgar Allan Poe.” Maryland History
• R. Michael Benitez, “A Diagnosis of Rabies in Edgar Allan Poe,” Maryland Medical Journal (1996) + contemporary coverage. The Washington Post
• “Death of Edgar Allan Poe” – Wikipedia (overview of events, theories, and burial/reburial). Wikipedia

Further Reading (Books) Kevin J. Hayes, Edgar Allan Poe; John Evangelist Walsh, Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe; Jeffrey A. Savoye, Poe Society papers; Mary Newton Stanard, Edgar Allan Poe: A Biography.

A missing climber’s boot has reopened one of mountaineering’s oldest cold cases. In this Time & Tales dark history episode, we journey to Mount Everest through the story of George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, the 1924 British climbers who vanished high on the north side and may—or may not—have reached the summit decades before Hillary and Norgay. We trace the original expedition, Noel Odell’s last sighting in the storm, Conrad Anker’s 1999 discovery of Mallory’s body, and the recent boot find linked to Irvine that has revived the question: did they stand on the top of the world first, and what exactly happened up there?

If you’re drawn to Everest history, unsolved mountaineering mysteries, and the thin line between evidence and legend, this episode lives right on that ridge.

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Sources & Further Reading

• Wade Davis, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
• Walt Unsworth, Everest: The Mountaineering History
• Conrad Anker & David Roberts, The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest
• Jake Norton, reports and analyses on the 1924 Mallory & Irvine searches and recent Irvine-boot discovery
• Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (for later Everest context)
• “George Mallory” and “1924 British Mount Everest expedition” – Wikipedia
• “Mount Everest” – Encyclopaedia Britannica