The Strange and Unusual
Pirates on the Great Lakes
When we think of pirates, we picture the tropics. Rum. Cannonballs. Eye patches and parrots. But not all piracy came with a flag. And some of it happened much closer to home.
In this episode, we dive into the eerie and violent history of piracy on the Great Lakes and inland waterways-- from the Harpe Brothers and the bloody bluffs of Cave-In-Rock to the Apostle Islands bandits and a timber thief turned government informant. These are stories without palm trees. Without treasure maps. Just cold water, easy targets, and men who vanished into the fog.
Haunted Michigan: The Stories Behind the Ghosts
Across Michigan, old buildings whisper their stories. The Linden Hotel in Genesee County. A grand home in Fenton. A quiet farmhouse in Maybee. Each has its own ghosts-- and its own history to explain them.
Through archival records, family documents, and forgotten local accounts, the legends begin to align with fact. Ghost stories meet documented history, revealing the real lives behind Michigan's most mysterious hauntings. And how memory lingers long after the living are gone.
Talking to the Dead: The History of Spiritualism in Michigan
Long before ghost tour tickets were sold and Ouija boards became party games, Michigan was at the center of a national movement-- one that believed the dead were still speaking, and the living could learn to listen. This is the strange and powerful world of Spiritualism: seances in pine groves, table rappings by candlelight, and the people who built communities around messages from the other side.
The Greatest Race on Earth: New York to Paris, 1908
In 1908, six teams stood in Times Square, pointed their automobiles west, and decided to drive to Paris, France.
There were no highways. No GPS. No reliable maps.
Only blizzards, nonexistent roads, engines rebuilt in the cold, and entire regions where automobiles were still closer to rumor than reality.
This wasn’t a race in the modern sense. It was an endurance experiment—fueled by ambition, national pride, and a dangerous lack of planning. Teams followed railroad tracks across America, attempted to cross Siberia along telegraph lines, and at one point fully expected to drive across the not-so-frozen Bering Strait.
Through mud, near-duels, and impossible terrain, one battered American car refused to quit.