Spooktober continues with a strange and mysterious tale this week. But how strange and mysterious is it really? I’m talking, of course, about the infamous Bermuda Triangle, a loosely defined area off the southeastern coast of the United States where countless ships and even airplanes have experienced strange anomalies, many even vanishing without a trace. In this episode, I’ll seek to answer the question: is the Bermuda Triangle really all that dangerous? And, if not, where did its notorious reputation come from? Let’s fix that.

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Sources:

• Encyclopedia Britannica “What is known and not known about the Bermuda Triangle”
• History.com “What Is the Bermuda Triangle?
• National Geographic “The mystery behind the Bermuda Triangle”
• EBSCO “Bermuda Triangle”
• Encyclopedia Virginia “Sea Venture”
• NOAA “What is a rogue wave?”
• Boater Exam “6 Prevailing Bermuda Triangle Theories”

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Last week's episode on the zombies of Haitian Vodou naturally led me to New Orleans. This week I'll fill you in on the gruesome acts of infamous female enslaver Delphine LaLaurie, who notoriously tortured and abused the people she enslaved at her French Quarter mansion in the 1830s. But this story has been quite twisted and sensationalized through the years as New Orleans tour guides scramble to sell historical ghost tour tickets. So how much of Delphine LaLaurie's story is true and how much was fabricated to meet the desires of an ever more desensitized audience... and at what cost? Let's fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• “Retrospect of Western Travel” by Harriet Martineau
• “Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans” by Jeanne DeLavigne
• “Journey Into Darkness: Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans” by Kalila Katherina Smith
• “Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era” by Tiya Miles
• History.com “Arson uncovers torture chamber in mansion of New Orleans enslaver
• New Orleans Historical “The LaLaurie Mansion”
• Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans “What really happened at the LaLaurie House?”
• Wikipedia “Delphine LaLaurie”
• Wikipedia “Harriet Martineau”

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It’s finally Spooktober! All October long I’ll be telling spooky, mysterious true stories from history, starting with zombies. Zombies are a big deal. They are all over pop culture in movies and TV shows, even video games. People love a good zombie apocalypse story. But the pop culture zombies of today are quite different than how zombies started out. They’re almost a different beast entirely. So where did the idea of a zombie come from? How did they get so twisted? And could zombies possibly be real? Let’s fix all that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Harvard Magazine “The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead”
• The Atlantic “The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies”
• History.com “History of Zombies”
• Ohio State University “The History of the Zombie in Popular Culture”
• NPR “Zoinks! Tracing the History of “Zombie” From Haiti to the CDC”
• New York Times “A Zombie Is a Slave Forever”
• (Im)possibilities “The History of Zombies”
• Encyclopedia Britannica “Vodou”
• University of Delaware “The Roots of Haitian Vodou”

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