For the readers long ago who embarked on the journey through Dante Alighieri’s vision of the darkest steps of Hell, they found themselves guided by the poet Virgil. For listeners in the classic Golden Age of radio, it was Raymond who led them behind the creaking door of the Inner Sanctum, and for the watchers of late-night television in the ’60s through the ’80s—in some lucky cases, even later—their trip into the dark often began and ended with their local horror host. Our tr

As we all know, Florida occupies that peculiar borderland where the unusual settles down, raises a family, and retires. It seems fitting that America’s strangest fictional newspaper was born and raised here. Weekly World News began in Lantana, Palm Beach County, Florida, in 1979 for an entirely ordinary reason. When the National Enquirer switched to color printing, its black-andwhite presses suddenly became available. Rather than retire them, publisher Generoso Pope Jr.’s com

“I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts.” Evers laughs at himself. In part because of how absurd it is to say that out loud. To feel compelled to remind himself he’s a rational person. Mostly though, he laughs because it calls to mind the Cowardly Lion’s timorous refrain: I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks. “I don’t believe in spooks,” he says, trying on the impression. Then—as if to convince himself—he

“Dear Art, had to fax when I heard other time travelers calling in from any time past the year 2500 AD. Please let me explain. Time travel was invented in 2034. Off-shoots of certain successful fusion reactor research allowed scientists at CERN to produce the world’s first contained singularity engine. The basic design involves rotating singularities inside a magnetic field. By altering the speed and direction of rotation, you can travel both forward and backward in time. Tim

Sometime in March 1974, the Betz family discovered a metal sphere on their property on Fort George Island in Jacksonville while investigating the aftermath of a small brush fire. Partially exposed in the scorched earth was a smooth metallic sphere, roughly the size of a bowling ball. It had no seams, no markings, no visible openings—nothing to indicate how it had been made or what it had once been used for. The family, Antoine, Jerri, and their son Terry, turned it over in th

In the 1970s, the unexplained was never absent from the table — especially in Florida, where strange weather and stranger claims sometimes met. Psychokinesis, or “psi,” the ability to alter either the internal or external environment by mental effort alone, or “mind over matter” was discussed on television, tested in laboratories, and debated in newspapers. Cold War anxieties quietly fueled interest and created government-funded research programs to study whether consciousnes