Oddball Guests: Jeff Belanger On Lore and Life Lessons
Oddball Guests: Jeff Belanger On Lore and Life Lessons
Welcome to a Very Special Episode of The Oddity Shop! In The Shop This Week we have a special guest: Adventurer, Author, Speaker, And So Much More - Jeff Belanger!
What if the ghost’s unfinished business isn’t theirs at all, but ours? We sit down with author, researcher, and longtime Ghost Adventures writer Jeff Belanger for a fast, funny, and deeply humane tour of the paranormal that treats legends like cultural sermons. Jeff traces his path from teenage encounters near the Warrens’ Connecticut home to crafting TV stories that ask the only question that matters: why here?
We wander into folklore’s global rhyme scheme: puckwudgies matching fae and Inuit little people before descending into winter with Grýla, Krampus, and Jeff’s Fright Before Christmas, where fear becomes the lever that shifts us back toward redemption. Then we tilt our eyes to the sky: if “aliens” look and breathe like us, maybe they’re future humans: time travelers with a vested interest in our better choices.
Whether you come for Ghost Adventures secrets, New England legends, or a smarter way to think about hauntings, you’ll leave with more than goosebumps. Subscribe, share this with your favorite oddball, and tell us: which legend still won’t let you go?
Check Out His Website:
Madison Seminary: Ohio's Most Haunted Spirit Hub
Madison Seminary: Ohio's Most Haunted Spirit Hub
Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale. This week, your Curator Zach has a Tale of Madison Ohios Haunted Seminary.
Step into the seminary’s timeline: a mid-1800s school that became a Civil War refuge, a home for veterans and nurses under the Ohio Women’s Relief Corps, and later a patchwork of care facilities, government offices, and a work-release site. Each era left a distinct emotional charge, from classrooms buzzing with youthful focus to rooms filled with grief, comfort, and end-of-life care.
The stories are personal and palpable. We follow the remarkable life of Elizabeth Stiles, a teacher turned Union spy recruited by Abraham Lincoln who spent her last years at Madison. We explore the reported spirits so many investigators talk about: Sarah, the childlike presence who collects dollar bills; Steven, the boy often seen in the main building; the watchful “Colonel”; and the basement’s territorial male energy.
Why does Madison seem so active? We consider the stone tape theory, the idea of egregores, and how more than 10,000 visitors might seed an evolving social energy. Along the way, we celebrate the people preserving the site, from owner Adam Kimmel to Jeff Fent, Lauren Hellekson, and so many more who share their finding!
The Fox Sisters: From Tiny Knocks To A Global Movement
The Fox Sisters: From Tiny Knocks To A Global Movement
Two sisters who turned raps in the dark into a movement that rewrote how we grieve. We follow Maggie and Kate Fox from Hydesville’s tiny room to roaring theaters, where audiences asked questions and the walls answered back. As their older sister Leah took the reins, seances spread across America and Europe, offering something people craved: a way to keep love alive with tangible signs, moving tables, and messages you could feel and hear. Spiritualism.
Then came the bombshell: Maggie’s 1888 confession that the raps were toe and joint snaps, performed on cue before a stunned crowd. We walk through the contradictions with care: comfort versus deceit, belief versus proof, and what it costs to be the face of a phenomenon.
You’ll hear why spiritualism exploded when it did, how it gave people hope, and why the Fox sisters’ complicated legacy still shapes ghost hunting, mediumship, and the way we talk about death.
Miracle Of The Andes: 72 Days of Horrific Survival
Miracle Of The Andes: 72 Days of Horrific Survival
A bad day can spiral fast. Were heading to 1972 and a chartered flight over the Andes that never made its landing. The crash of Flight 571 left a rugby team, family, and friends in brutal cold with little food, less shelter, and a strong will to survive. What follows is a stark, deeply human account of ingenuity and ethics under pressure.
We don’t sensationalize the hardest part. The group confronts cannibalism with consent, ritual, and faith, reframing a taboo as a last-resort act of respect to preserve life. An avalanche buries more hope. A radio announces the search is over. And then two men decide to walk over 40 miles to get help.
The Corn Husk Witch: Brooding Hag or Harvest Queen?!?
The Corn Husk Witch: Brooding Hag or Harvest Queen?!?
The fields get quiet first. Then the air thins, the leaves rasp, and every step seems to wake something older than the rows. We follow that feeling straight into the legend of the Corn Husk Witch—a figure braided from European harvest rites, Native American teachings, and the American habit of turning warnings into campfire shadows. What began as the Corn Mother, a sacred spirit kept safe in the final sheaf, evolves across time into a crackling guardian who walks the edges at dusk, reminding us that gratitude is not optional when you live by the land.
If folklore, harvest history, and a little seasonal dread are your thing, hit play and join us in the rows. Then tell us: is she a protector, a monster, or a mirror? Subscribe, leave a review, and share this one with a friend who loves spooky season and old-world lore.
Halloween Special: Haunted House Showdown!!
Halloween Special: Haunted House Showdown!!
Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale. Today, We have for you, our Annual Halloween Special Episode!!!
Its our favorite day of the year. The Oddity Shop door creaks open and you get to choose what’s waiting on the other side. We turned Halloween into a haunted house showdown, pitting three legendary locations against each other and asking you to crown the scariest: The Myrtles Plantation with its Southern Gothic lore, the Stanley Hotel and its Shining-fueled chills, and the Villisca Axe Murder House where an unsolved crime still echoes in the walls.
We kick things off with a full video experience—costumes, set dressing, and a game-show format that keeps the tension fun and the stakes high. Be sure to check this one out on YouTube for the full video experience!
Cast your vote for the champion of terror and tell us where you’d actually spend the night. Watch the full video on YouTube, subscribe to catch more spooky stories, and leave a review with your pick—Myrtles, Stanley, or Villisca?
Oddball Guests: Jeff Fent and His Haunted Hardware
Oddball Guests: Jeff Fent and His Haunted Hardware
Welcome to a Very Special Episode of The Oddity Shop! In The Shop This Week we have a special guest: Investigator And Haunted Hardware Creator - Jeff Fent!
Jeff Fent is a respected paranormal investigator, preservationist, and caretaker known for his dedicated work maintaining and restoring historic haunted locations such as Madison Seminary, The Enchanted Church, and several other reportedly haunted properties.
Beyond caretaking, he’s also recognized for his craftsmanship in creating specialized paranormal investigation equipment, like custom ghost boxes, and for his appearances in documentaries and TV programs including Portals to Hell and Fairfield County Infirmary: The Forgotten.
We have a lovely conversation from the start of his interest in the paranormal, to working with The Haunted collector. Jeff shares how we came to start making his Ghost Boxes, and shares plenty of spine chilling stories of the properties he investigates and deeply cares for
Ouija Come From? : Haunted Origins of Talking Boards
Ouija Come From? : Haunted Origins of Talking Boards
A century ago, a simple board promised something enormous: a chance to keep talking after goodbye. We follow that promise from candlelit parlors to factory floors, then through a single film that rewired an entire culture’s imagination. Along the way we meet the Fox sisters, watch automatic writing become a planchette, and see how Charles Kennard and Elijah Bond turned a parlor method into a mass‑market icon—only to have William Fuld claim the credit and build an empire that outlived him. The history is twisty, but it’s also deeply human: people searching for answers when life doesn’t give them one.est.
The Demon House: A Possession In Gary Indiana
The Demon House: A Possession In Gary Indiana
A boy “walked” up a hospital wall, nurses took notes, and a police captain left a rental house convinced something was terribly wrong. We trace the Gary, Indiana Demon House case from its first oddities—swarms of black flies in midwinter, booted steps from a dark basement—to the terrifying crescendo of levitation claims, guttural voices, and a DCS worker’s report that still sparks debate.
The Leshy: Vodka-Loving Protector of The Woods
The Leshy: Vodka-Loving Protector of The Woods
The Leshy is a powerful woodland spirit from Slavic folklore who protects the forest and punishes those who disrespect nature. This shapeshifting entity exists in a state of duality, neither wholly good nor evil, embodying the wild and unpredictable essence of the forest itself.
He can control forest animals, manipulate weather, and mimic familiar voices to lure travelers deeper into the woods. Also known to have a particular fondness for vodka, tobacco, and bread as offerings.
No only does he form pacts with hunters, guiding them to game as long as they continue making offerings and take only what they need, he sometimes takes children who are mistreated, unbaptized, or lost into the forest.