There is no shortage of famous names associated with the Golden Age of Piracy. Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Henry Morgan or Jack Rackham hold such levels of fame, they have become household names, legends with largely fictional tales still told of their lives at sea. There is, however, one man who managed to outdo them all. His largest, most audacious crime is one of the most successful pirate raids in history and one that nearly brought down one of the richest, most powerful empires the world has ever known. Captain Henry Every, the pirate that shook the colonies from the Red Sea to the Caribbean and then disappeared without a trace.
The Balham Mystery: The Death of Charles Bravo
In April, 1876, Charles Bravo took to his bedroom, rubbed a dose of laudanum into his gums and poured himself a glass of water from the jug on his nightstand. Within minutes of retiring to bed, Charles Bravo fell desperately ill. Within two days, he would be pronounced dead, the victim of Antimony poisoning. Suicide, manslaughter and murder have been cast forward by amateur historians and famous crime writers alike. 145 years on, some have claimed to have solved the mystery of the death of Charles Bravo, but in reality, the truth lies as buried as the characters themselves. Two inquests to the good, the question remains, who killed Charles Bravo?
The Disappearance of Lord Lucan
Lord Lucan, a name of considerable infamy, not as a member of the aristocracy, but for the murder of his children’s nanny in a house in the elitist district of Belgravia, London in 1973 and his subsequent disappearance. It was a story that the press went to town on, a classic us vs them tale of Class superiority and those that would seek to protect the hierarchy at all costs, but how much of it was based on truth and how much just a convenient narrative for the journalists that covered the case? It was a case that was launched into mythical status after the Lord himself vanished without trace, leaving a question that runs until today. Where in the world is Lord Lucan? This is Dark Histories, where the facts are worse than fiction.
Room 1046
The tale of room 1046 of the President Hotel in Kansas City is a strange one. A murder mystery with almost no clues and no evidence at the crime scene, but a victim with three names, left beaten, possibly tortured and a trail of several peculiar phone calls.
Demons & Witches: Ann Glover & The Goodwin Children
This week, we have a tale of Devilry and witchcraft, demonic possessions and a good dose of Persecution on all fronts! Pre-dating Salem by 3 years, Ann Glover was an Irish immigrant living in Boston in 1688, hung for witchcraft, an event which laid the groundwork for what would happen up the road a few years later.
Phantom: The Texarkana Moonlight Murders
In 1946, The American twin city of Texarkana was plunged into the depths of panic and fear. The population of the postwar suburb was subjected to a series of murders that shook the dual cities to their core, prompting curfews, rumours and unease to spread through the area like the rail tracks that crept from it’s central hub. Nights of midnight movies, drive-in cafes, the songs of Duke Ellington and big band orchestras were perforated with tales of a man with a white sheet over his head, holes cut out for eyes, performing brutal executions upon the vulnerable and unexpecting.
Americas First Documented Ghost: The Nelly Butler Haunting
Half a century before the Fox Sisters showed up on the scene to propel mainstream spiritualism onto the populace of America, there was a much lesser known haunting taking place in the cellar of a small frontier settlement, named Sullivan in Maine. Though it was extensively documented at the time, the many eye-witness testimonies fell to the back pages of history. Despite its relatively unknown status, it remains as one of, if not the very first documented cases of a haunting in North America and is a story that culminates in an event that was utterly bizarre.
A Topper and a Beaver: Thomas Briggs & Franz Muller
All aboard, we’re going back to the Victorian era to shed some light on the first ever murder on a train in Britain at a time when people were already terrified on this crazy new technology. It’s not all high speed steam trains though, we’ve even got a super slow-mo police chase across the Atlantic!
The Murder of Julia Wallace
After the last couple of episodes, we’re crashing back to earth this week with the lesser known story of William Herbert Wallace and his wife Julia. This is a case named over and over again as the quintessential murder mystery, despite its relatively unknown status.
Transmission from Nowhere: Numbers Stations
Starting off in 1890, we take a look back at the history of secret radio transmissions, leading up until today and unravel some of the mystery, whilst uncovering some new oddities, of what are known as ‘Numbers Stations’.










