In November 1978, more than nine hundred people died in a clearing in the Guyanese rainforest. For decades, the story of Jonestown has been reduced to a phrase, a cautionary shorthand for blind obedience. But that language skips the part that matters most.

This episode traces the long, ordinary road that led there. From the early years of the Peoples Temple in the American Midwest, where food, housing, and dignity were offered to people the state routinely failed… to the slow narrowing of belief, the erosion of choice, and the creation of a world where leaving no longer felt possible.

We follow the movement south, not as exile, but as promise. We examine daily life inside Jonestown, the routines, the labour, the loudspeakers, the rehearsals, and the way fear was organised long before it was acted upon. And we reconstruct the final days, using court records, testimony, and the forty-four-minute tape that captured the end of the settlement’s logic.

This is not a story about madness. It is a story about how belief becomes an environment, and how a place built to protect people can quietly turn into one that will not let them go.

Content warning: This episode contains discussion of mass death, psychological coercion, and harm involving children. Listener discretion is advised.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For decades, children on Staten Island grew up hearing the same warning. Don’t go near the abandoned buildings. Don’t cut through the woods. Because Cropsey was waiting. Cropsey was a boogeyman said to have escaped from the ruins of the Willowbrook State School, a story parents used to keep children away from a place they didn’t know how to explain. For years, it was just folklore, a cautionary tale meant to turn geography into safety.

Then children began to disappear for real. In the 1970s and 1980s, several young people vanished during ordinary routines, sent on short errands, leaving apartment buildings, walking home. When one child’s body was later found on the grounds of Willowbrook, attention turned to a former employee who had slept in camps nearby and would later be convicted of kidnapping.

As fear spread, the boundary between myth and reality collapsed. Cropsey stopped being just a story told to children and became a way a community tried to make sense of loss and danger. This episode examines the real cases behind the legend, the history of Willowbrook, and what happens when folklore collides with true crime. revealing how easily fear can turn tragedy into myth.

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If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In January 2013, a 21-year-old Canadian student named Elisa Lam checked into a budget hotel in downtown Los Angeles. She was travelling alone, documenting her journey online, and calling her parents every day. Then the calls stopped.

Weeks later, her body was discovered in a rooftop water tank above the hotel where she’d been staying, after guests complained that the water pressure was low, and the tap water tasted strange. Days earlier, police had released surveillance footage of Elisa behaving erratically in a hotel elevator. The video went viral, transforming a missing person investigation into a global obsession. The building was the Cecil Hotel, a place with a long history of violence, suicide, and notoriety, sitting at the edge of Skid Row. As the internet rushed to fill the gaps with theories of ghosts, conspiracies, and foul play, the facts of the case became harder to hear.

This episode examines what actually happened, how a tragic death became mythologised, and what the story reveals about mental illness, internet culture, and our collective hunger for mystery. It’s a story about how fear distorts understanding, and how easily a real person can be lost inside a legend.

Support note:

This episode discusses mental illness, suicide, and distressing themes. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available.

UK & ROI: Samaritans — call 116 123 or visit samaritans.org

US: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988

Canada: Talk Suicide — call 1-833-456-4566

Australia: Lifeline — 13 11 14

Or visit findahelpline.com for local support worldwide

***

If you have a story where crime and the otherworldly intertwine, something strange, unexplained or just plain haunted, get in touch at paranormia@alwaystruecrime.com.

Paranormia is an Audio Always production.

Presented by Elizabeth McCafferty.

Written and produced by Mansi Vithlani.

Executive produced by Ailsa Rochester.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.