This is the story of a 16th century cunning woman, a folk healer, who was accused and found guilty of being a witch. The St Osyth witch trials became a landmark case, setting a dark precedent for the witch hunts that would explode across the country in the century that followed.

Our guest today ...

Medieval leprosy history, leper colonies, and the King of Jerusalem are explored in this deep dive into the Middle Ages' most feared disease.

What was life really like for patients inside the gates? What did it mean when the 'leper bell' rang? And what happened at a 'living funeral'?

Join Anth...

It all started when a huge storm drowned 40 men on Christmas Eve, 1617. The people of Vardø, northern Norway, needed someone to blame.

What followed were devastating witch trials, which featured one of the highest execution rates in Europe, and implicated the town's women and the surrounding in...

Eugene Aram was an 18th-century schoolmaster who got away with murder for fourteen years. Then a skeleton was unearthed, and a case that had been forgotten burst into life & created a legend.

The Viking attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne, a remote tidal island in North East England, sent psychological and cultural shockwaves through history. It's a story of blood and terror, but there's more subtlety to it as well, as Maddy and Anthony learn today with returning guest Dr Eleanor B...

Maddy and Anthony dig into their own family history in collaboration with Ancestry! They find stories from the darker side of the past in their own family trees. Huge thanks to Ancestry's genealogists and family historians Jenn Utley, Joe Buggy and Christina Copland.

How dark really were the Vikings? How much of a part did human sacrifice play in their world? And what was their relationship with magic?

Joining Anthony and Maddy in today's episode is historian, author and all-round Viking expert Dr Eleanor Barraclough, to take us back to darkest corners of th...

Who was the very worst of all the Medieval monarchs? No spoilers but we've got monarchs driven psychopathic by love, terrible sadists, and egos that straddled a continent. They were the worst of the worst, but who was the worst of all?

Our guest today is Dr Eleanor Janega, co-host of Gone Mediev...

Eleanor Janega explains everything you need to know about the Medieval Apocalypse. For Medieval Europe, the Apocalypse wasn’t just a metaphor - it was very real and very imminent. We are talking about the four horsemen, locusts the size of horses, the beast of the abyss, the Whore of Babylon, and...

Did Nostradamus really predict everything from the Great Fire of London to the rise of Hitler?

We predict that you'll find out in this episode...

Join Anthony and Maddy as they explore the life of 16th century astrologer and so-called seer, Nostradamus, to find out if he really had the abilit...

Henry VIII was a monarch everyone was excited for, and turned into someone who weaponised his powers for murder.

What happened in his life that caused the death toll to suddenly rise?

In this episode, Anthony and Maddy are joined by historian and author, Gareth Russell, to unpack the warning ...

Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling where they chat about ancient Irish burial traditions, keening, Irish wakes, and funerary rites. Joined by special guest historian Dan Snow, they explore the lost Gaelic ritual of "keening" — a powerful, thousand-year-ol...

Ann Jeffries's story of faeries and witchcraft in Cornwall is explored in this After Dark episode. Watch the full chat with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling where they talk to Bodmin Jail manager Jess Marlton about this unbelievable 17th-century case of prophecy, imprisonment, and the English Ci...

What did Medieval people think about rats? Did they have any idea that they were the cause of the Black Death? How did they use charms and poisons to try to get rid of them? Today we explore the world of the Black Death Rat with Kathleen Walker-Meikle, historian of Medieval pets and animals whose...

Joining Anthony and Maddy today is the fantastic Philippa Gregory, historian and author of Boleyn Traitor. The Tudor court was dangerous and high-stakes at the best of times, where survival could often mean betraying others. Enter: Jane Boleyn, thrust into the Tudor limelight when her sister-in-...

Dan Snow joins After Dark to reveal the brutal reality of life of sailors during the golden age of sail. From the cat o' nine tails, to the pressgang, from scurvy to mutineers. How did people survive the most extreme conditions imaginable?

The Ancient Egyptians had a very different idea about death than most people do today.

And the idea of mummification is (excuse the pun) wrapped up in so many modern ideas, that we can lose its real purpose.

Joining Anthony and Maddy today to take us through the gory details of mummifying a b...

Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling where they chat with historian Alex Medings about the dark side of Rome's famous gladiators.

Discover the truth about the gladiators – from their low social status as slaves and criminals to their surprising sex appeal...

Watch this full episode about the Bermondsey Horror, the shocking Victorian murder by Marie Manning. Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling delve into the grisly 1849 killing of Patrick O'Conor, a wealthy moneylender lured to a house in a notorious London slum. The married couple, Frederick and Marie ...

Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling where they chat about the horrendous Batavia shipwreck, the violent mutiny led by Jeronimus Cornelisz, and Anthony's new favourite fact.

The Batavia shipwreck of 1629, a tale of Dutch East India Company mutiny and terr...

Today we’re going behind the foreboding doors of the Victorian workhouse to ask - ‘Could we survive it?’. From Oliver Twist's gruel to songs about flogging, from lice-ridden clothing to soul destroying isolation. Our guest is Oskar Jensen, author of "Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth C...

Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling where they chat about Napoleon's final days and the wild myths that surround his death.

Conspiracy theories swirl about the final days of Napoleon. Was he poisoned by a friend? By the British? By his wallpaper? Did he c...

Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling, where they chat about Ned Ludd, the fires, and the violence exerted during the Industrial Revolution in England.

Would you have joined the OG Luddites? In 1811 and 1812 across the midlands and north of England which w...

In this episode of Ater Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling, they chat about 19-year-old Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein in a Swiss villa surrounded by other brilliant young minds.

During a time of radical change, a gothic masterpiece was written by the teenage Mary Shelley. Publishe...