The Fire that struck London in 1666 was one of the city's darkest chapters. In this episode, Anthony and Maddy examine the accounts of people who witnessed the disaster at the time, tracing the sto...
What did it feel like to wake up Salem Village during the darkest days of the witch trials? Would you be able to swallow down your beer and pottage breakfast? As you walked towards the simple woode...
One of the dark symbols of the Victorian age is the asylum. It struck fear into the mind but what was the reality of life inside its walls? Maddy Pelling tells Anthony Delaney the story today.Edite...
Ghost hunting couple Ed and Lorraine Warren transformed twentieth century America into an enchanted land dotted with haunted houses, cursed objects, and portals to hell. Their exploits are the basi...
Today we're delving back into the After Dark vaults to revisit our episode on Banshees...Siobhan McSweeney (Derry Girls) joins Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling for the story of the Banshee.The Ban...
We’re re-running this episode because it’s one of our favourites — and it’s worth another listen!The ghost of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, screaming down a corridor. A nursemaid's sp...
Sweeney Todd - the demon barber of Fleet Street who beheads people and then sends their bodies through a trapdoor to be made into pies. It's just a story right? Right? There's not any real history ...
The Viking attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne, a remote tidal island in North East England, sent psychological and cultural shockwaves through the history. It's a story of blood and terror, but...
In 1895, the world witnessed its first true celebrity trial when Oscar Wilde was charged with “Gross Indecency". To tell the powerful story of Wilde's life in its fullness, Anthony and Maddy are jo...
Maddy and Anthony dig into their own family history in collaboration with Ancestry! They find stories from the darker side of the past in their own family trees. Huge thanks to Ancestry's genealogi...
We all know the story of Pompeii: the Roman town reduced to ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Roughly two-thousand years later, archaeologists have been able to uncover the stories of its victims. W...
How dark really were the Vikings? How much of a part did human sacrifice play in their world? And what was their relationship with magic?Joining Anthony and Maddy in today's episode is historian, a...
Was this moment the closest Britain came to revolution? When Prime Minister Spencer Perceval lay dying on the floor of the Parliament, many feared it was the start of bloody revolt. We discover the...
Who was the very worst of all the Medieval monarchs? No spoilers but we've got monarchs driven psychopathic by love, terrible sadists, and egos that straddled a continent. They were the worst of th...
With the nights closing in, what better time to re-visit a favourite episode of ours.In 1727, Janet Horne of the Highland community of Dornoch became the last person in Britain to be tried and exec...
For Medieval Europe, the Apocalypse wasn’t just a metaphor - it was very real and very imminent.We are talking about the four horsemen, locusts the size of horses, the beast of the abyss, the Whore...
In 1540 Henry VIII was getting old, and his eyes turned to teenager Catherine Howard.He fell hard and fast for Catherine - his "rose without a thorn" - but when he found out about her past, all hel...
Did Nostradamus really predict everything from the Great Fire of London to the rise of Hitler?We predict that you'll find out in this episode...Join Anthony and Maddy as they explore the life of 16...
Did they wear black hoods? Whose axe did they use? How did you get the job in the first place? Today Anthony Delaney takes Maddy Pelling inside the world of the Tudor Executioner.Research by Phoebe...
Henry VIII was a monarch everyone was excited for, and turned into someone who weaponised his powers for murder.What happened in his life that caused the death toll to suddenly rise?In this episode...
