After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Today we're delving back into the After Dark vaults to revisit our classic episode on the death of the short-lived Tudor queen.In 1540 Henry VIII was getting old, and his eyes turned to teenager Cathe...

The Chevalier d’Éon was one of France’s most daring spies... until they began making headlines for all the wrong reasons.Armed with explosive state secrets and at the centre of a very public scandal o...

She was the only person during World War Two to parachute from Britain behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied Germany, all while wearing a dress.Who was Agent Zo? And what were the incredible missions ...

Ruth Ellis made history in 1955 when she was the last woman hanged in Britain.She shot and killed her abusive lover, the racing driver David Blakely, at point blank range on a spring evening outside a...

Look closely at the Bayeux Tapestry and you will see a medieval spy.But far from the world of James Bond gadgetry, what was medieval spycraft like? Why were they referred to as 'little birds'? And why...

The world of Viking death rituals and their beliefs surrounding the afterlife is truly fascinating... What happened when a Viking died? What ceremonies and practices did they partake in? And what awai...

When a whaling ship sank in 1820, her crew were cast adrift thousands of miles from land, and faced starvation, madness, and death. Their ordeal would become one of the most extraordinary survival sto...

The captain of the HMS Hermione was a sadist even by the not-very-high standards of the British Royal Navy in the 1700's. He was a prolific flogger, subjecting his crew to the cat-of-nine-tails. It wa...

In Medici Florence there were two ways of maintaining power - one was money and the other was murder. Isabella de’ Medici was the believed daughter of the Medici patriarch, a patron of the arts and a ...

It's hard to wrap your head around all the disasters that befell Captain Anson's Royal Navy voyage around the world in the 1740s. Rampant scurvy, horrendous storms, marooning and mutiny to name but a ...

"It's like the Titanic, except you've never heard of it. And in a way, it's even weirder."So says today's guest, Cautionary Tales' host, Tim Harford, about the disastrous story he's taking Anthony and...

Sound the trumpets! The day has finally arrived: Maddy Pelling is back on After Dark!To welcome her back into the coven, we're playing a game of historical 'Would You Rather?'. Listen on to hear Antho...

Born John Cooper, "Princess Seraphina" was one of the first English Drag Queens. Princess Seraphina was an 18th-century gentleman’s servant who openly embraced her feminine drag persona. But in M...

Ida Craddock is a name that should be much, much better known. She was a maverick sex educator who fought violent censorship in turn of the century America. She also loudly announced to the world that...

In 1856, Martha Brown was led to the scaffold and hanged for the murder of her abusive husband. Her execution was clearly an injustice, even at the time. While Martha was condemned, multiple other fem...

When we think of the great witch trials of history, we usually picture innocent women accused of impossible crimes... but that wasn't always the case.In the frozen, windswept landscapes of 17th-centur...

16th century Scotland was a hard time to be a woman, far harder if you happened to be a woman who loved women. Yet from this dark time a dazzling lightness has survived - the secret lesbian love poetr...

In 17th century France, Louis XIV's court sparkled with luxury. It also teemed with poison, occult rituals and aristocrats trying to murder their way up the social ladder.What started with one poisone...

In this special episode of After Dark. Anthony and Uncanny’s Danny Robins delve into historical ghost stories and explore why our obsession with death and the paranormal remains an integral part of th...

Millenia ago, a plot was hatched within the highest echelons of Egyptian society which ended with royal blood being spilt. This assassination, known as the Harem Conspiracy, and the following trial wo...

17th century England was a world turned upside down.A civil war resulted in King Charles I being executed, and from this moment a religious movement called the Quakers grew rapidly.Far from the pacifi...

*Warning: this episode contains discussions of child death*Deep beneath the sunny streets of Palermo Sicily, the Capuchin Catacombs are home to over a thousand people, most of them still standing in t...

Ancient Britain was occupied by the Romans, and tension was building with local tribes.Their brutal occupation reached a breaking point.So what happened when Queen Boudica stood up to the might of the...

*Warning: this episode contains discussions of puss*Gonorrhea and syphilis are no laughing matter, especially in a time before antibiotics.How were symptoms first recorded and what were the disturbing...

Queen Victorian was an icon of Britain at the zenith of its power... but that didn't mean she was invulnerable to attack. In today’s episode, we’ll be exploring some of the many assassination attempts...

What did Ancient Egyptians discover while dissecting bodies? What did the first medieval dissecting manual say? Who were the serial killers who supplied 19th century surgeons with bodies in Edinburgh?...

Today we're delving back to an early episode of After Dark, where Anthony and Maddy explore the goriest murders of Ancient Rome.From flesh-eating fish and humiliating deaths inside sacks, to a deadly ...

What lurks behind the door of Dr. Kahn's Grand Anatomical Museum in Victorian London?Step inside and find out what shocked the public (and medical establishment) of the 19th century Britain so much, t...

For the Ancient Egyptians, death marked the beginning of a new chapter: a journey through a shadowy realm of trials, monsters, and divine judgment, ruled by the God Osiris. What does the Ancient Egypt...

Artemisia Gentileschi's paintings personify female rage against men. She paints women beheading men, hammering nails into their skulls, brandishing their dead faces. In her personal life, Artemisia wa...

Hear a chapter of Maddy's new book, "Hoax: Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment". It's out now! It's the story of three women and their hoaxes in the age of Enlightenment. One saw ghosts, the ot...

When you think of the Aztec Empire, what do you picture? Human sacrifice?In today's episode, Anthony is joined by Aztec expert Dr. Caroline Dodds Pennock, to unpack why we fetishise the Aztecs in this...

Today we are celebrating the upcoming publication of Maddy's new book 'Hoax: Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment' by sharing one of the stories from it. This is the story of a fake Princess fro...

Today we are celebrating the upcoming publication of Maddy's new book 'Hoax: Truth and Lies in the Age of Enlightenment' by sharing one of the stories from it. The haunting of Cock Lane is the most ic...

In Ancient Mesopotamia, the boundary between the living and the dead was not always fixed... some even believed it could be crossed. But why would the living seek counsel from the dead? How common wer...

Across prehistoric Britain people raised vast stone circles, buried their dead in monumental tombs, and left offerings in rivers and bogs. Archaeologists have uncovered skeletons bearing signs of viol...

On a summer day in Sarajevo in 1914, a young man fired two rounds of his pistol in the middle of the street, killing a Royal couple... He didn't know it then, but his actions would cause a chain react...

Is it true that third-class passengers were locked below decks? Or that more lifeboats would have saved more lives? Did the band really play as the Titanic went down? Anthony is joined once again by t...

On the night of Saturday the 9th of March, 1566, a pregnant Mary Queen of Scots was having a dinner party.It was a night that ended in the brutal murder of one of her closest friends, David Rizzio, le...

The Victorians are seen as the ultimate guardians of rigid gender boundaries.When Fanny Park and Stella Boulton transgressed those imagined lines, they triggered a scandal that reached the length and ...

He's known as one of history's most murderous kings, but was he always a monster? Or was he acting in ways expected of a king during his time.Joining Anthony as special guest co-host is author and his...

It was one of the most gruesome crimes of the Victorian era... and it ended up in David Attenborough's garden! Kate Webster, a servant, killed and dismembered her mistress, Julia Martha Thomas in 1879...

The book and TV series "Outlander" has introduced millions of fans to Scottish history and the story of the Jacobites.One of those fans is Maddy Pelling! Maddy is back (in a pre-recorded episode) to d...

Listener warning: this episode contains a description of cruelty to animalsOne of the strangest tales to emerge from Napoleonic France was that of Tarrare - the man who ate everything. The stories go ...

It was the original modern ghost hunt, the one that set the template for all the haunted houses to come. When a wealthy plantation family moves into a crumbling Georgian mansion in the 1760's the haun...

The Ancient Celts: feared in battle, guided by Druids, and bound together by ritual.Long before Rome pushed north, Celtic peoples ruled forests, hilltops, and river valleys. But in this episode we'll ...

It's one of history's greatest mysteries - 'what happened to the Princes in the Tower?' In 1483, young Edward V and his brother Richard were awaiting Edward's coronation. But next thing we know, they ...

You might think the idea of “celebrity” is a modern invention. In reality, its roots stretch back centuries... perhaps even millennia. People have always been fascinated by the rare individuals who ri...

Eyewitness accounts of life during the Black Death are surprising. Sure, there's horror. But there's also d*ck jokes, complicated scientific theories, and buttock-obsessed priests. Taking Anthony thro...

In 44 BCE, Roman senators assassinated Julius Caesar to stop his ascent towards becoming a king. Dr Jess Venner takes Anthony blow-by-blow through the deadly events of the Ides of March.Dr Jess Venner...