On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1895, parishioners at the Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco were shocked when a closet was opened that contained the mutilated body of a young woman. Police detectives who were summoned to the church expected the corpse to belong to a 20-year-old woman named Blanche Lamont, a member of the church’s congregation who had gone missing 10 days earlier.

But it wasn’t her. Instead, the dead woman was 21-year-old Minnie Williams, who was also a member of the church.

And that wasn’t all the two young women had in common. Both had last been seen with the church’s handsome and well-liked Sunday School Superintendent, a man named Theo Durrant – who soon earned a nickname from the press. They called him “The Demon in the Belfry,” because it was almost impossible for anyone to believe that the brutal murders could be the work of an ordinary man.

He had to be one of the Devil’s minions, escaped from the fiery pits of Hell.

How well do you really know your neighbor?

In Decatur, Illinois, 1964, evil didn’t break in—it lived inside the house. On a cold February night, a family argument ended with a hatchet, a triple killing, and a manhunt that stretched from Illinois to Florida.

This is The Hatchet House—a story of blood, silence, and a terrifying truth: sometimes the monster isn’t out there…

…it’s already home.

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James “Big Jim” Colosimo ruled the Chicago underworld longer than any man in the city's history. The money he raked in from the many enterprises that he controlled was conservatively estimated at $50,000 a month for about eight years. Colosimo was a strange character and a man who helped usher in Chicago's organized crime era – although he’d never actually live to see it.

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Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859

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This episode was written by Troy Taylor

Produced and edited by Cody Beck

In 1908, a Pentecostal minister announced to his followers that the Devil was alive and well and interfered with every aspect of human life. And he wasn’t alone in this belief. Others described demons as swarming around the human soul and living off them “like ticks on cattle.”

The Pentecostal belief about the Devil interfering with our everyday lives was just one example of how the twentieth century became the “Satanic Century” for both American religion and popular culture. More than at any other time since the seventeenth century, American religion became obsessed with the Devil and all his works. The was largely due to the rise of two powerful religious movements at the time – Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism. Each gave the Devil a special role in both their view of the world and their personal spiritual experience.

But they were not the only ones – Roman Catholicism remained convinced of how the Devil’s influence continued to represent a threat to the lives and souls of its followers. In fact, it was during this same time that the Catholic Church revealed the horrors of a demonic possession that would shock the nation.

The exorcism that followed would become known as one of the first to make national news in modern American history.

In the early 1980s, Springfield, Illinois learned there was no safe hour.

On this episode of American Dread, we examine two unconnected crimes that unfolded just one year apart — one in broad daylight, the other in the dead of night — and how both shattered a city’s sense of safety.

In 1981, an axe attack inside Lauterbach Cottage Hardware left one man dead and a killer who vanished without a trace.

In 1982, a brutal double murder inside a family home was solved — but its consequences would resurface decades later in a devastating way.

These cases aren’t linked by suspects or motive.

They’re linked by place, time, and a chilling truth: violence doesn’t wait for darkness.

American Dread is part of the American Hauntings Podcast Network.

Check out our new American Hauntings Podcast Network for even more spooky shows.

Check out our new American Hauntings Podcast Network for even more spooky shows.

Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859

New Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/troytayloroddities

Check out our updated website and sign up for our newsletter at AmericanHauntingsPodcast.com

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Follow us on Twitter @AmerHauntsPod, @TroyTaylor13, @CodyBeckSTL

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This episode was written by Troy Taylor

Produced and edited by Cody Beck

Nineteenth century America was awash with diabolical imagery. It was everywhere. It was used to link the Devil to everything from immigrants to abortion, the Catholic Church, Native Americans, and even outspoken women, so it can’t be a surprise to learn that it was also used to describe some of the most bloodthirsty killers of the day.

For anyone who might think that deviant sex murderers and serial killers are monsters of modern times, then let me introduce you to the Joseph Lapage, one of the most depraved killers that you’ve likely never heard of.

Lapage was a sexual psychopath and fit the modern definition of the classic lust killer, but his contemporaries described him in less clinical terms. They called him a “fiend incarnate” and more commonly, a “demon of the bottomless pit.”

For the people of the era, it was nearly impossible to believe that a human being could be capable of the things that Lapage did. Such acts, they insisted, could only be carried out by a servant of the Devil -- a monster that could have come only from hell.

And perhaps they were right.

Young Brooklyn thug Al Capone took a cab to Coney Island. As he traveled down Ocean Parkway, he wasn’t surprised to see people practically living on the sidewalks, trying to get a breath of fresh air. He sat in the back seat, enjoying the light breeze from the open windows, on his way to the Harvard Inn, a club that belonged to Capone’s employer, gangster Frankie Yale. It wasn’t much of a job – just a glorified bouncer – but he saw it as a way to work himself up to someday making dough for himself. “SCARFACE” they called him, but they never used the moniker in front of him. No matter who you were, if Capone heard it, there was a good chance that you’d end up dead.

Check out our new American Hauntings Podcast Network for even more spooky shows.

Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859

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Check out our updated website and sign up for our newsletter at AmericanHauntingsPodcast.com

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Follow us on Twitter @AmerHauntsPod, @TroyTaylor13, @CodyBeckSTL

Follow us on Instagram @AmericanHauntingsPodcast, @TroyTaylorgram, @CodyBeckSTL

This episode was written by Troy Taylor

Produced and edited by Cody Beck