Not Today

Actress Eva LaRue and her daughter, Kaya Callahan, were terrorized for nearly 12 years by a stalker who sent violent, threatening letters detailing every horrific fantasy he had. For over a decade both Eva and Kaya were terrified to go anywhere in public since they had no idea who their stalker could be. He promised not only to make their lives a living hell, but also that he was always watching and he'd be there soon. The ordeal, which forced them to move multiple times, was finally solved using the same technology used to identify the Golden State Killer.

Janie Lynn Ridd and her roommate Rachel Booth had been best friends for 25 years, but when Rachel began getting mysteriously sick leading to multiple hospitalizations, she discovered that Janie allegedly tried to purchase an extremely dangerous strain of anti-biotic resistant bacteria to poison her with. And even worse, that wouldn’t have been Janie’s first attempt at Rachel’s life over the past year. 

In March of 2011, David Cicotello and his brother Louis began what should have been a week-long climbing adventure through No Man's Canyon in southwest Utah. Their journey took an unexpected and tragic turn as a rappelling accident claimed Louis’ life, leaving David stranded on a narrow ledge for 6 days.

On January 6, 1994, U.S. Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked at the Cobo Arena in Detroit, just before the national championships. An unknown assailant attacked Kerrigan as she left skating practice, hitting her with a metal pipe, targeting the knee on her landing leg in an apparent attempt to knock her out of the upcoming Winter Olympics. The event turned into a massive scandal when Nancy’s attacker was linked back to her biggest competitor, Tonya Harding. 

In July of 2013, 19-year-old musician, Jessie Blodgett, was found strangled in her own bed, with no signs of forced entry. Jessie was loved by everyone who knew her, so friends and family had no idea who could have committed this intimate crime. The case took a surprising turn when, soon after Jessie’s murder, detectives got a call from a neighboring town that a man wielding a knife attacked a young woman walking her dog in a park, and a clue found at that scene connected both victims to the same killer.

In this episode we'll be discussing some terrifying phrogging stories including a man hiding in a young girls closet and weird occurrences in a college house that lead the guys living there to believe it may be haunted!

In September of 2015, Isabel Eriksson was drugged, kidnapped, and locked in an inescapable bunker. When she woke up, she found her date, Martin Trenneborg, sitting in the room with her. His plan was to keep her and several other women there for years.

On July 30, 1945, The USS Indianapolis was struck by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, which took down the ship in only minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen, ~900 entered the water, facing sharks, painful dehydration, and exposure for nearly five days before they were finally rescued. It was the U.S. Navy's single worst loss of life at sea.

Joanne Lees and her boyfriend Peter Falconio thought they were taking the trip of their dreams but it would sadly end in a tragedy so massive the whole world would know their names. While driving down an isolated road in Australia's outback in 2001, Peter was flagged down by a mysterious driver and was shot and killed on the side of the road. The man attempted to abduct Joanne but she managed to escape and later provided a description that led to the capture of their attacker.

After attempting to take a leisurely self-guided tour of the ancient Mayan ruins in the jungle on Cozumel island, Ken Wilson became hopelessly lost when he split up from his group and lost track of the trail. By the time Ken had realized he didn't recognize his surroundings he was already deep in the jungle and too far away for anyone to hear his calls for help. Every step he took brought him deeper into the jungle maze, further from rescue as darkness approached.

Let's close out 2025 with some bone chilling survivor stories that our listeners wrote in, including a close call with a famous serial killer, a terrifying encounter at an empty gas station, a run-in with an escaped convict, a nasty electric scooter accident, and more! 

In 1992 Levon Brooks was arrested for murdering a three-year-old girl and sentenced to life in prison. Only a few months later Kennedy Brewer was arrested for a nearly identical murder and was sentenced to death. Both cases were based almost entirely on faulty bite mark evidence and both men spent almost two decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. However in 2000, Kennedy Brewer wrote a letter to the Innocence Project asking for their help with his case which was when the fight for the truth began and the real story came to light. 

Donna Cooper, her daughter Gina, and Jenny Leung took a drive into Death Valley for a day of exploring. After deciding to take a detour they realized too late that their GPS was leading them further into the desert with no real direction. Two hundred miles later they were out of gas and almost out of hope that they would get out of there alive.

Let's talk about some terrifying Reddit Let's Not Meet stories!

The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California along the Oregon Trail in a wagon train from the Midwest. After taking a new and dangerous shortcut, the party became trapped by an exceptionally heavy snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When their food supply ran out the group resorted to cannibalism of those already dead.

On November 14, 1974, Barbara Mabee Abel returned home from work with her 6-year-old son to find the Casanova Killer, Paul John Knowles, waiting in her kitchen with a double barrel sawed-off shotgun. To protect her son and sister, she convinced Knowles to take only her, begging him to kidnap her instead of harming her family. During her captivity, she employed a survival strategy of charming him and attempting to make him fall in love with her to keep him from killing her. By this time, Paul John Knowles, had already been on a 4 month killing spree and claimed to kill more than 35 people.

On July 22nd 2010, Dave Akers and Gary Nall decided to take a sight seeing trip in Gary’s small plane. What should have been a short flight before sunset turned into a fight for their lives after the plane got caught in a powerful down draft that caused them to crash almost 4,000 feet up a remote mountain side in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite their injuries, the men quickly discovered their only option was to attempt to hike off the mountain.

The night before Thanksgiving 2021, Leslie Reeves and Chris Smith went on their first date after hitting it off online. The next day, friends and family became increasingly anxious when they couldn’t reach either one of the pair. Leslie’s best friend Nanette Stuiber was so worried she showed up to Chris Smith’s home, which was when she and one of Chris’s concerned loved ones discovered something was very wrong inside the house. When authorities arrived they found the glass on the back door had been shattered, there had been a struggle, and both Chris and Leslie had been shot. Leslie had been murdered and Chris was clinging to life. Investigators needed to piece together what could have happened in the hours leading up to the discovery of this grizzly crime scene.

In 1949, 13-year-old 'Roland Doe' became the victim of alleged demonic possession which lead to a harrowing series of exorcisms by a team of catholic priests. Roland's exorcism became the chilling real-life inspiration for famous horror film, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.

In December 1968, 20-year-old Barbara Jane Mackle was kidnapped from her motel room and buried underground in a ventilated box that was designed to keep alive for a full week while she was held for ransom. Her kidnappers, Gary Steven Krist and Ruth Eisman Schier, demanded $500,000 from Barbra’s father Robert Mackle, who was a very famous and wealthy Florida businessman. Over the course of 83 hours Robert, along with the help of Richard Nixon, Jay Edgar Hoover, and the FBI, did exactly what the kidnappers demanded to get Barbra out of the box alive.