🎄 He sees you when you’re sleeping.

But Santa was never the only one watching.

Long before Christmas became soft and sparkly, winter was brutal — and obedience was enforced with fear.

In this special Christmas episode of You’re Killing Me, Shawnee dives into the dark, blood-soaked origins of Krampus — the horned enforcer who followed Saint Nicholas, dragging bad children away in sacks, beating them with birch rods, and reminding entire villages what happened when rules were broken.

We trace Krampus from ancient pagan winter gods and the goddess Perchta, through the Church’s weaponisation of fear, to modern-day Krampusnacht — where masked figures still roam Alpine streets, chains rattling, bells screaming, leaving bruises, broken bones, and silence behind.

This isn’t a festive fairy tale.

It’s a story about punishment, control, conditional love — and why some monsters survive because we keep giving them a body.

Listener discretion advised.

Brisbane, 2014. A young couple move into a Teneriffe apartment for what’s meant to be a fresh start: new city, new lease, same old money problems. Three weeks later, one of them is dead and the other is about to become a headline.

In this episode we meet 27-year-old Indonesian woman Mayang Prasetyo and her husband, chef Marcus Volke. We follow them through Melbourne’s adult industry, a quick marriage in Denmark, years of drifting between Europe and Asia, and finally into a riverside unit where migration stress, sex work stigma and domestic tension quietly build.

This episode focuses on who they were before the crime — Mayang as a daughter and breadwinner, Marcus as a drifting chef and sex worker — and the hidden dynamics of domestic violence in LGBTI relationships. We end the story on the night neighbours hear a violent argument and a woman’s screams… and then silence.

Content note: Domestic and family violence, transphobia, sex work stigma, dismemberment and suicide.

For support on domestic violence, we have listed some helpful links below:

https://www.dvconnect.org/

https://fullstop.org.au/

https://www.vic.gov.au/family-violence-statewide-support-services?

https://whiteribbon.org.au/helplines/?

In 1822, eight convicts escaped from Sarah Island — the most brutal prison in Van Diemen’s Land. Only one came back alive.
His name was Alexander Pearce… and he’d eaten the rest.

In this episode, Shawnee dives deep into one of Australia’s most disturbing true stories — the brutal escapes, the descent into madness, and the hunger that turned a man into a legend.
From starvation in the Tasmanian wilderness to murder, confession, and execution — this is the true story of the Cannibal Convict.

Dark, atmospheric, and laced with understated humour — this is survival stripped bare.