Cody Beck and Troy Taylor
344 episodes listed below
American history with the lights turned low.
American Hauntings Podcast turns American darkness into narrated history: gangland Chicago, occult celebrity, sinister music, haunted film, and local crimes that refuse to sit quietly. It favors scene, paper trail, and aftermath over quick shocks.
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American Hauntings Podcast works the borderland between documented American history and the stories that keep turning rancid after the official record closes. It is not satisfied with a ghost story floating loose in the dark. The show gives the darkness a street address, a year, a family name, a newspaper mood, a police question, or a room that should have been ordinary. Recent episodes show that range clearly. In Murder City, Prohibition is less a textbook era than a machine for making money, silence, and bodies. John Torrio, Big Jim Colosimo, and Al Capone appear inside a Chicago of speakeasies, gambling joints, brothels, corrupt police, and gang territories drawn like business plans with bullets waiting underneath. The show also wanders into the cultural occult. Aleister Crowley becomes not just a notorious figure, but a trail of disciples, rituals, failed relationships, drugs, self-invention, and damage around the people pulled close to him. Music gets the same shadowed treatment. The Devil’s Interval, Gregorian chant, Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday,” Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt are framed as evidence that dread can be composed, repeated, and recognized long before anyone explains why it works. Film becomes another haunted room. Early twentieth-century movie culture is presented as a place where Americans projected identity, anxiety, devils, demons, and the pleasures of watching fear in a crowd. Then the show can turn hard into true crime. The Hendricks family murders and the Lisa Cutler case are told through quiet neighborhoods, still houses, forensic doubt, and questions that become worse the longer they are asked. The result is measured, ominous, and often mournful. It has dry asides, but it does not treat violence as a joke. It is strongest when a single incident opens into a whole weather system: Prohibition lawlessness, occult celebrity, popular fear, local silence, or the ordinary American home as a false promise of safety. American Hauntings Podcast suits listeners who want history with dirt under its fingernails. It favors consequence over spectacle. The scares come from the pattern, not just the scream.
Made for: For listeners drawn to haunted history, Prohibition crime, occult culture, and true-crime storytelling with a slower, darker cadence. It fits people who prefer context, atmosphere, and historical consequence over quick paranormal thrills.
What sets it apart: The show ties folklore and fear to concrete American settings: Chicago gang territories, Illinois crime scenes, early movie houses, occult circles, and musical traditions of dread. Its edge comes from the way it lets facts, rumors, and cultural panic accumulate until the pattern feels unavoidable.
History, hauntings, legends, lore, true crime, and the dark side of American History. Hosted by Cody Beck and Troy Taylor, Season 10, "Murder City" is now live.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It connects American crime, occult belief, and eerie folklore through detailed narration, then lets Troy Taylor and Cody Beck loosen the mood.
American Hauntings Podcast turns dark American history into patient, chronological storytelling, with Troy Taylor writing and narrating and Cody Beck producing and co-hosting.
Capone's brothels meet margin-note book chat, if your darkness needs a decompression chamber.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A dark music-history piece that braids legend, theory, and scandal into one uneasy listen.
It opens with Billie Holiday and Gloomy Sunday, then widens into the tritone, the Dies Irae, and Berlioz without losing the thread. The best part is how it keeps pulling the eerie sounds back to stories, not just mood.
A fake antique shop becomes the front door to Capone's Chicago business arrangement.
The episode works best as a study of how a criminal enterprise tries to look ordinary. John Torrio divides Chicago into bootlegging territories while Al Capone sets up a respectable front beside the Four Deuces: an antique shop with business cards, dusty odds and ends, dirty…
A dark, detailed portrait of occult celebrity, private ruin, and the rituals behind Crowley's legend.
Aleister Crowley comes through as a figure made of spectacle, appetite, and damage that kept spreading outward. His shaven head and piercing stare helped draw disciples and, later, rock musicians, while books, relics, artifacts, and paid rituals turned his occult persona into…
A prophet story that moves from revival heat to courtroom reckoning.
American Hauntings follows Franz Edmund Crefield, who became Joshua II in 1903 in Corvallis, Oregon, and tracks the rise of a man who drew attention as a prophet before the trouble around him took over.
Chicago's vice world tightens as Prohibition arrives.
John Torrio's arrival in Chicago gives the episode a clear line to follow: Big Jim Colosimo, Black Hand threats, reform pressure, and Prohibition all fold into the same story.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Curious facts, kid-sized and quiz-ready.
The episode begins with Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday" and the legend built around it.
American Hauntings' "Murder City" season, narrated by Troy Taylor and produced with co-host Cody Back, opens by tracing Al Capone's rise under mentor John Torrio in Prohibition-era Chicago, including the fake antique shop Capone used as cover next to the Four Deuces brothel.
American Nightmares host and writer Troy Taylor profiles Aleister Crowley, the self-styled "Great Beast 666" whose bald, piercing image later appeared on the Beatles' Sgt.
This episode explores the 1983 Hendricks family murders in Bloomington, Illinois, where a mother and her three children were brutally killed in their seemingly safe suburban home with no signs of struggle.
This episode explores the depiction of the devil in movies, focusing on how American pop culture in the 1920s and 30s used film to project societal fears and anxieties.
This episode begins the story of Al Capone's rise to power in 1920s Chicago, starting with John Torrio's plan to divide the city's gang territories.
This episode investigates the suspicious drowning death of Lisa Cutler in Mount Zion, Illinois, and the subsequent police investigation.
This episode explores how Prohibition led to the rise of organized crime and corruption in 1920s America.
This episode explores the story of James Jesse Strang, the only man crowned king in the continental United States, and his rise and fall as a religious leader.
Franz Edmund Crefield is transformed in 1903 in Corvallis, Oregon, and starts calling himself Joshua II.
John Torrio arrives in Chicago with a job to do.
This episode details the rise of organized crime in Chicago, focusing on James Colosimo's empire and Al Capone's arrival.
This episode explores early 20th-century Pentecostal beliefs about the devil and demons, framing them within the broader context of American religious history.
A live recording of the American Hauntings podcast discussing history, hauntings, and legends, with banter between hosts.
This episode recounts the 1896 murder of a pregnant woman in Kentucky, exploring how the crime became a cautionary folk legend.
The hosts present their annual list of the best horror films of the year, sharing personal recommendations and casual commentary.
This episode discusses the historical context of witch hunts and persecutions in colonial America, linking them to broader American history.
A historical account of a sea monster sighting off Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1817.
The episode provides a detailed plot summary and analysis of the 2001 horror-thriller film Frailty, focusing on its themes of religious fanaticism and serial murder.
This episode explores the historical pattern of witchcraft accusations in New England, focusing on the Salem witch trials and a lesser-known concurrent outbreak.
The episode recounts the brutal 1982 murder of 10-year-old Amy Schultz in Cahill, Illinois, exploring the crime, investigation, and decades-long pursuit of justice.
This episode explores the supernatural beliefs of early English colonists in America, focusing on a witch trial aboard a ship in 1654.
This episode explores the real-life inspiration behind Jim Morrison's song 'Riders on the Storm' and its connection to a chilling true crime story.
The hosts discuss their favorite guilty pleasure horror films that they are not supposed to like but enjoy anyway.
A detailed account of a 4-year-old boy's disappearance in Decatur, Illinois in 1985, exploring the impact on the town and family.
This episode introduces the American Dread podcast and its focus on uncovering true stories of tragedy and terror, specifically the Dardeen Family homicides, in the American heartland.
This episode recounts the mysterious disappearance of 21-year-old pre-med student Mark Kilroy during a spring break trip to Matamoros, Mexico in 1989, sparking a cross-border investigation.
This episode introduces the new podcast American Dread, which explores true stories of tragedy and terror in the American heartland, focusing on the Penny Timmons story in Decatur, Illinois.
This episode introduces the new podcast American Dread, which explores true stories of tragedy and terror in the American heartland, focusing on two shotgun murders in Decatur, Illinois in 1942 and 1960.