Welcome to part two of our annual Halloween story-swap, where we take turns to try and freak each other out... with the very worst stories we can unearth.

This week, Hannah has the horrific true story of Tsutomu Miyazaki, Japan’s infamous ‘Little Girl Killer’ whose incel-adjacent muder spree took the lives of four young girls. Then, Suruthi tells us the terrible true tale of Vilma Trujillo, a 25-year-old mother of two, who was burned at the stake after telling her church she was about to birth a serpent.

--

Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes
YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes
TikTok / Instagram

At first, stories of European witch-panics were nothing more than idle gossip to the settlers of New England. But soon – faced with inexplicable blights, punishing winters, and stories of people carried off into the night by indigenous tribes – suspicions of black magic became very real indeed...

Picking up where we left off in Europe, H&S explore how the madness of the witch-hunting craze made its way to the New World. So strap in for sinister rituals, lots of piss-based magic, and how it all came to a head in the little village of Salem, Massachusetts.

--

Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes
YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes
TikTok / Instagram

In Part 2 of our special spooky series on all things witchy, we take a look at how the hag-hunting insanity spread to the British Isles: thanks to a paranoid new king and a 19-year-old, self-styled Witchfinder General.

Plus: what really goes down at a witches’ sabbath, and why did women make up 90% of the thousands killed?

--

Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes
YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes
TikTok / Instagram

With Halloween fast approaching, it’s time for our annual tradition at RedHanded: a classic spooky story swap.

In this first spine-tingling episode, Suruthi takes us into the forest of Ibadan, Nigeria, to a real-life house of horrors where black magic rituals and sinister government secrets collide. Meanwhile, Hannah tells the terrifying story of Ruthie Mae McCoy and the real life Candyman – proving that dark forces really can lurk just beyond the bathroom mirror…

--

Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes
YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes
TikTok / Instagram

Believed for over a thousand years to be local soothsayers who used their powers for everyday charms and spells, European witches' PR machine finally turned against them in the 16th and 17th centuries: when the continent suddenly became gripped by the idea that they weren't so wholesome after all...

In fact, they might just be part of a demonic army on a mission to cloud the whole world in evil.

For spooky season, we're treating our listeners to a redux of our epic two-parter ShortHand exploring the witch-hunting mania that gripped Europe for a huge chunk of its history – and led to the state-sanctioned executions of over 200,000 people.

--

Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes
YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes
TikTok / Instagram

Since it's October, we're revisiting one of the most sickening, spine-chilling cases we've ever covered on RedHanded...

The horrifying case of David Fuller: the so-called Monster in the Morgue.

At first, police thought they were only looking for a double murderer.

Nicknamed the ‘Bedsit Killer’ in the press, the suspect’s reputation for savage violence already loomed large in the town of Tunbridge Wells in the late 80s. But it was only when they caught David Fuller – more than 30 years later – that they learnt the blood-curdling truth: that for years, the mortuary worker had been acting out his sick fantasies with the bodies of the dead.

Boiled in blood, hacked at by knives, torn apart by iron dogs… the world’s religions differ on what exactly might await sinners in the afterlife. But one thing they can all agree on is that if you were naughty on Earth, you are in for one hell of a horrible time.

We take a quick tour of history’s grimmest netherzones: from freezing poison rain in the Norse Helheim, to a river of excrement, where monstrous aquatic beings eat your flesh, down in the Hindu Narakas. Welcome to Hell.

--

Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes
YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes
TikTok / Instagram

Cursing the courtroom and then slashing his own throat with a contraband shiv, Aubrey Trail had lived up to his promise, turning the trial of Bailey Boswell and himself into a complete circus. Although the pair’s bizarre relationship, full of kinks, vampires and witches, had already seen to that.

Boswell and Trail had murdered 24-year-old Sydney Loofe six months previously before dismembering her and draining her body entirely of its blood. Why? According to Boswell, her partner in crime, Trail, was an ageless vampire who controlled a coven of witches. Killing Loofe and “breathing in her last breath” was all Boswell needed to do to become the sacred 13th witch, before being granted the magical ability to turn into a cat.

--

Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus Episodes
YouTube - Full-length Video Episodes
TikTok / Instagram