One Strange Thing: Paranormal & True-...
Paranormal, unexplainable, and uncanny stories aren't just in the fiction section. They happen every day, to people just like you.
One Strange Thing brings you family-friendly stories from America's newspaper archives. And they all have something in common: an element that can't be explained by logic alone.
Join us on our trek through small town U.S.A.'s oddities — and prepare to wonder what oddities are hiding in your hometown, too.
51
Special: The Elves
Arizona might not seem like the typical setting for holiday magic, but for decades, some mysterious local “elves” have turned a spherical, scrubby-looking desert juniper out on I-17 into what has to have been one of America’s more unlikely Christmas spectacle.
24 min
52
The Moth
West Virginia isn’t the only region to boast its very own Mothman; since the mid-20 century, Chicago and the Lake Michigan area has had reports of flying humanoids, and those sightings have only picked up since 2011.
28 min
53
The Horse
Denver International Airport has its fair share of the bizarre, the unsettling, the mysterious, and the downright inexplicable — but, if you ask us, the giant, neon blue, potentially-cursed horse really takes the cake.
20 min
54
The Incident
In a frightening rural Texas encounter that would come to be known as the Cash-Landrum incident, two middle-aged women and a young boy claimed they were confronted by a strange, shining diamond in the sky: a UFO that left them with long-lasting and serious physical effects.
26 min
55
The Box
Post Malone, a curse that follows the owners of a mysterious cabinet, and an uneasy spirit known as a Dybbuk (or Dibbuk)—yes, we’ve got the full deck for you this Halloween week.
23 min
56
The Visitation
During the swell of the Satanic Panic, New England’s premiere paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, headed to the Pennsylvania home of Jack and Janet Smurl, who believed they were beset by unwelcome visitors: demonic ones.
27 min
57
The Vortex
A roadside tourist attraction on the outskirts of Montana’s wilderness claims to showcase the laws of physics gone berserk.
22 min
58
The Letters
A New Jersey family purchases their dream home, complete with Victorian charm, new appliances… and a very creepy stalker.
19 min
59
The Flatwoods
This story has everything: alien activity, a green phantom and/or creature, Project Blue Book — even West Virginia.
22 min
60
The Mine
The promise of striking it rich at the Lost Dutchman Mine has drawn many adventurers to the outskirts of Phoenix.
22 min
61
The Dog
The Black Dog of Hanging Hills is a spectral beast with a fascinating backstory that makes us question the line between fact and and fiction—and sightings of it seem to go back more than a century in Connecticut, making it one of the more fascinating paranormal creatures of the Northeast.
26 min
62
The Saucer
In April of 1964, a Socorro, New Mexico police officer, Lonnie Zamora, experienced one of the most famous UFO sightings in US history—one often overshadowed by the more famous Roswell incident some years before.
26 min
63
The Triangle
he “Bermuda Triangle” of the United States, The Bennington Triangle in Vermont, has been shrouded in mystery since the 1940s, when a series of disappearances occurred in the area.
23 min
64
The Frogman
In Loveland, Ohio, the 2016 phenomenon of Pokémon Go led to a sighting of the legendary cryptid, the Loveland Frog, or reawakened decades-old stories of anthropomorphic frogmen roaming the waterways—and streets—of this small town.
24 min
65
Introducing Persona: The French Deception
Introducing Persona: The French Deception
4 min
66
The Choir
Perhaps some people are born lucky. . . and then there are others, who have singular experiences that can be described as, well, miracles.
26 min
67
The Metal Man
In 1973, a Falkville, Alabama police chief went out to answer a mysterious call about an otherworldly sighting—a figure, a metal man running down the rural roads outside of town—and began an encounter of third kind that would turn his life upside down.
27 min
68
The Highway
The U.S. has many purportedly haunted highways; one is Florida’s I-4, sometimes known as the most dangerous in the country.
22 min
69
The Turtle
Indiana’s Beast of Busco set the tiny town of Churubusco abuzz way back in 1949—and set one farmer on the relentless pursuit of his personal ‘white whale’. . . an enormous, lake-dwelling turtle.
29 min
70
The Hunger
A boy’s unknown illness leaves him without the capability to feel hunger or thirst—and in a quest to find updates on his possible cure, information is unearthed on a very different kind of medical mystery.
21 min
71
Wondery Presents: Call Me Curious
Wondery Presents: Call Me Curious
4 min
72
The Genius
A Washington man named Jason Padgett loved partying, muscle cars, and getting buff at the local gym, and would have been content to live his life singing karaoke and chasing girls--until a fateful attack changed his worldview. . . quite literally.
25 min
73
The Lizardman
A rural South Carolina town is struck by cryptid fever in the form of a seven-foot-tall lizard with a taste for cars. . . specifically, for chewing on them.
28 min
74
The Doll
A Florida museum has trouble with one of its more disturbing displays.
20 min
75
Introducing Twin Flames
Introducing Twin Flames
7 min