After Dark Video Podcasts
This is After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. The podcast that takes you to the shadiest corners of the past, unpicking history’s spookiest, strangest, and most sinister stories.
Join historians Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling to take a look at the darker side of history. From haunted pubs and Houdini, to witch trials and weird UFO sightings.
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Anna Anderson: The Anastasia Romanov Impostor | After Dark
Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling where they chat about Anna Anderson, the impostor who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia.
In the aftermath of the bloody Russian revolution, the Romanovs went from being a glittering royal family to vulnera...
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Tower Of London’s Lion Keeper Poisoned By Man He Enslaved | After Dark
Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling, where they chat about Edward Francis, the young enslaved man who poisoned his slave owner with rat poison in an attempt at freedom.
Today’s story is one that takes us to a very familiar setting - the Tower of London - ...
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The Deadliest Victorian Surgeon | After Dark
This full episode is not for the squeamish as Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney delve into the dark medical history of surgeries in Victorian England, where people would pay to watch the bloody operating table.
Historian Sara Yorath from the Old Operating Theatre museum in London speaks about th...
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1800 BCE: True Crime Stories From Ancient Mesopotamia | After Dark
Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling, where they chat about the dark side of Ancient Mesopotamia, including true crime from 1800 BCE.
A four thousand(ish) year old murder trial. A procession of the dead. Kings who believed they could escape the gods by dre...
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The Shocking History Of The Paris Catacombs | After Dark
Beneath the streets of the French capitol lurks a city of the dead: the Paris Catacombs.
Why they were piled up there is a dark and fascinating story, that includes everything from the bloody days of the French Revolution, to the making of 'corpse candles' and a mystery man found amongst its pa...
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Did Mary Queen of Scots Become A Ghost? | After Dark
Watch this full episode of After Dark with Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling, where they chat about the history of Mary Queen of Scots and her alleged ghost, possibly in cahoots with the Scottish tourist board.
Mary Queen of Scots' life was filled with dead husbands, violence, betrayal and a fi...
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The Final Days of Abraham Lincoln | After Dark
John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the night of 14th April 1865.
What were the final days leading up to this huge moment like? How did the nation, and the future of enslaved African Americans, hang in the balance? And how did that long night after the gun was ...
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Ancient Egypt's Pyramids, Black Magic, And Execution Rituals | After Dark
Ancient Egypt had amazing pyramids, mummies, and an advanced civilisation, but did they have any dark secrets?
At After Dark, we love to explore the grim reality of all of this: what was life like for the people who built those pyramids? What happened if you stole from the Valley of the Kings? A...
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The Murder That Shocked Edwardian Britain | After Dark
It was a murder that shook Edwardian Britain, and became a media sensation around the world.
Joining Maddy and Anthony today is the best-selling historian and author, Hallie Rubehold, to explore one of the most infamous murders of the 20th century, and the rapidly changing world it took place in.
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Spring-Heeled Jack: Terror of Victorian London | After Dark
The grimy streets of Victorian London were stalked by a shadowy menace: Spring-Heeled Jack! He had glowing eyes and blue flames came out his mouth. He had claws, wings. He had a tail. He had smart boots. He had literal springs in his heels. Confusing...who was Spring-Heeled Jack?
Maddy Pelling a...
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Irving Finkel On The First Ghosts | After Dark
Watch this full podcast episode where Anthony Delany and Maddy Pelling talk with Irving Finkel about the first ghost, going all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest evidence of human belief in ghosts comes from 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Who were these first ghosts? What was the...
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Witch Trial: The Last Witches in England | After Dark
This is the dark history of the last people to be executed for witchcraft in England. In 1682, Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards, from the town of Bideford in the South-West of England, were tried and hanged as witches. They were convicted on the flimsiest of evidence under the...
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Sweating Sickness: Deadly Tudor Plague | After Dark
It's a medical-history-mystery today as we explore the Sweating Sickness. Things get clammy as Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling ask what was this deadly disease? What happened when Anne Boleyn got it? And why were sufferers sewn into their bedsheets?
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The Medieval Dancing Plague with Eleanor Janega
When people think of Medieval diseases, hysterical dancing is not usually what first comes to mind. Yet in 14th and 15th century Germany, dozens of ordinary people claimed to be infected by the ‘dancing plague’. What was this mysterious phenomenon? What caused it? And was it even a real disease?
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The Real Story Behind Anne Boleyn's Ghost
Get ready for carriages pulled by headless horses, spooky palaces, a weird floating cylinder thing...and a single moment in history that has haunted England, and now Britain's, imagination for hundreds of years.
In this episode of After Dark, Anthony and Maddy talk the ghost of Anne Boleyn, Quee...