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...

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...

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 - ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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?

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?
...

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...