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Pretty Wicked

Pretty Wicked | Southern Gothic Media
Pretty Wicked
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  • Pretty Wicked

    Proxies: The Faceless Man

    10/06/2026 | 58 mins.
    A birthday sleepover. Three best friends. A game of hide and seek in the woods. By the time it was over, one girl was crawling toward a road with nineteen stab wounds, and the other two were walking toward something they swore was real. That was 2014. Eleven years later, one of them cut off her ankle monitor and ran.

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    Pretty Wicked is hosted by Megan Alda.

    🖤 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

    Here is everything used to research this episode.

    🔗 WEB SOURCES

    ABC News - Slender Man Stabbing Survivor's Parents: 'She's Meant to Do Something Special'

    ABC News - 'Slender Man' Interrogation Tapes Reveal Shocking New Details About Alleged Stabbing Plot

    ABC News - Mothers of teens who pleaded guilty in 'Slender Man' stabbing case say there were no warning signs of violence

    ABC News - 'Slender Man' teen to be released, survivor's family wishes she served longer sentence

    ABC News - Slender Man Stabbing Timeline: Out of the Woods

    ABC News - Slender Man stabbing victim speaks publicly for first time: 'Without the whole situation, I wouldn't be who I am'

    Newsweek - The Girls Who Tried to Kill for Slender Man

    Newsweek - How Slenderman, the Internet's Horror Star, Crawled out of Creepypasta

    New York Magazine via Harvard Center for Law, Brain & Behavior - Slender Man Is Watching

    NBC News - 911 Call Released in Waukesha 'Slender Man' Stabbings

    NBC News - 'Slender Man' Victim's Family Thankful for Special Day

    NBC News - The 'Slender Man' stabber made a close new friend — then ran away so they could be together

    CNN - What we know about Morgan Geyser's 24-hours on the run more than a decade after the 'Slender Man' stabbing took place

    Courthouse News Service - Slender Man stabber loses conditional release after escape

    WBAY/AP - Conditional release of Morgan Geyser upheld by judge

    WTMJ - Conditional release plan moves forward for accused "Slenderman" stabber Morgan Geyser

    WTMJ - Conditional release finally approved for Slenderman stabber Morgan Geyser

    TMJ4 News - Judge approves conditional release plan for woman convicted in Slender Man stabbing

    TMJ4 News - Morgan Geyser arrested in Illinois after cutting off ankle bracelet, fleeing group home

    TMJ4 News - Slender Man trial: Jury finds Anissa Weier mentally ill, won't face prison

    FOX6 Milwaukee - Slenderman stabbing case: Court learns what private investigator found in Morgan Geyser's bedroom

    FOX6 Milwaukee - Slender Man stabbing: Morgan Geyser escapes, group home neighbors react

    ABC7 Chicago - Morgan Geyser 911 calls detail Slender Man attacker's escape from Madison group home

    ABC7 Chicago - Where is Morgan Geyser now? Wisconsin judge sends suspect in Slender Man stabbing back to mental health institution

    ABC7 Chicago - Morgan Geyser waives extradition after escape from Wisconsin group home

    WKOW - DOC places three staff on leave during investigation into Morgan Geyser's escape from group home

    WMTV - Despite escape, state finds no supervision violations at Morgan Geyser's group home

    CBS 58 - The Latest: Jury finds Anissa Weier not criminally responsible for stabbing classmate due to mental illness

    CBS News Minnesota/AP - Wisconsin Judge Orders Release Of Anissa Weier In Slender Man Stabbing

    Court TV - Judge approves conditional release plan for Morgan Geyser

    Patch.com - Slenderman Trial: Anissa Weier Sentence Is 25 Years

    Inverse - Mr. CreepyPasta Explains the Problem with 'Slenderman'

    Biography.com - Slender Man Attacker Morgan Geyser Is Back in Custody After Sparking a Brief Manhunt

    A&E - The Slender-Man Inspired Attempted Murder of a Sixth Grader

    Heavy - Payton Leutner's Injuries in the Slender Man Stabbing

    Heavy - Morgan Geyser's Parents: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

    Crime + Investigation UK - The Slender Man stabbing: Attempted murder inspired by an urban legend

    All That's Interesting - Who Is Payton Leutner, The Girl Who Nearly Died In The Infamous Slender Man Stabbing?

    Jezebel - There's More Than One Boogeyman in the Slender Man Doc

    Inside Edition - Slender Man Fan Who Tried to Kill Friend at 12 Gets Release Hearing

    Good Morning America - Cyclist Recalls Finding Slender Man Stabbing Victim

    LegalClarity - Anissa and Morgan Case: Charges, Mental Health, and Release

    📚 BOOKS

    Slenderman: A Tragic Story of Online Obsession and Mental Illness - Kathleen Hale, 2022

    Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology - Shira Chess and Eric Newsom, 2014

    Slender Man Is Coming: Creepypasta and Contemporary Legends on the Internet - edited by Trevor J. Blank and Lynne S. McNeill, 2018

    🎬 DOCUMENTARY & FURTHER LISTENING

    Beware the Slenderman - HBO, 2016, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky

    20/20: Out of the Woods - ABC News, September 2014, with David Muir

    20/20: 'Out of the Woods' - ABC News, October 2019, Payton Leutner's first interview, with David Muir
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  • Pretty Wicked

    Into the Triangle: The Devil's Sea

    03/06/2026 | 1h 9 mins.
    Some stretches of ocean don't give people back, and the Bermuda Triangle is the most famous one. Navy squadrons. Cargo giants. A cabin cruiser that called for a tow on a calm December night and was gone before the Coast Guard could get there. This week we're going into the lore. The famous cases. The ghost ships. And what science actually thinks is happening out there, because the real answers might be stranger than the myth.

    SHOW NOTES

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    New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

    Instagram: @prettywicked.thepodcast

    If you loved this episode, leaving a review means the world and helps other listeners find the show.

    Pretty Wicked is hosted by Megan Alda.

    🖤 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

    Here is everything used to research this episode.

    🔗 WEB SOURCES

    Naval History and Heritage Command - H-057-4: The Disappearance of Flight 19

    National Archives - The Official Record and the Loss of Flight 19

    History.com - The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19

    Naval History Magazine (USNI) - USS Cyclops, The Deadliest Unsolved Mystery in the Navy

    History.com - Bermuda Triangle Mystery: What Happened to the USS Cyclops?

    Naval Historical Foundation - The Unanswered Loss of USS Cyclops

    Library of Congress - The Mysterious Disappearance of Ghost Ship Carroll A. Deering's Crew

    NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources - The Carroll A. Deering, Ghost Ship

    National Park Service - The Ghost Ship of the Outer Banks

    PlaneHistoria - BSAA Star Tiger coverage and inquiry summary

    PlaneHistoria - BSAA Star Ariel coverage

    Bernews - Plausible Solutions To Bermuda Triangle Mysteries (Tom Mangold reporting)

    Civil Aeronautics Board / USDeadlyEvents - Report on DC-3 NC16002

    Coast Guard Inquiry Findings, summarized - USDeadlyEvents on Marine Sulphur Queen

    Porchlight International - Burack and Father Horgan / Witchcraft case file

    NOAA Ocean Service - What is the Bermuda Triangle?

    National Geographic - Gas Craters Off Norway Linked to Bermuda Triangle Theory

    Live Science - Could Gas Explosions Explain Bermuda Triangle Mystery?

    Fox News - Bermuda Triangle Rogue Wave Theory (Dr. Simon Boxall, Channel 5 documentary)

    Britannica - What Is Known (and Not Known) About the Bermuda Triangle

    Smithsonian Magazine - How the Disappearance of Flight 19 Fueled the Legend

    ElectronicFog.com - Bruce Gernon's account of his 1970 flight

    📚 BOOKS

    The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved - Lawrence David Kusche, 1975

    The Bermuda Triangle - Charles Berlitz, 1974

    Invisible Horizons: True Mysteries of the Sea - Vincent Gaddis, 1965

    Beyond the Bermuda Triangle: True Encounters with Electronic Fog, Missing Aircraft, and Time Warps - Bruce Gernon and Rob MacGregor, 2017

    Sailing Alone Around the World - Joshua Slocum, 1900

    Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering - Bland Simpson, UNC Press, 2005

    🎬 DOCS

    The Bermuda Triangle Enigma - Channel 5 documentary featuring Dr. Simon Boxall of the University of Southampton

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  • Pretty Wicked

    The Recipe: Blood and Lye

    27/05/2026 | 28 mins.
    In a quiet Italian town, there was a woman everyone trusted. She baked. She welcomed people in. She was the kind of person no one questioned. And then people started disappearing. When she finally confessed, it wasn’t just what she had done… it was why.

    SHOW NOTES

    🖤 FOLLOW PRETTY WICKED

    New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

    Instagram: @prettywickedthepodcast

    If you loved this episode, leaving a review means the world and helps other listeners find the show.

    Pretty Wicked is hosted by Megan Alda.

    🖤 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

    Here is everything used to research this episode.

    🔗 WEB SOURCES

    Weird Italy - Leonarda Cianciulli, the Soapmaker of Correggio https://weirditaly.com/2013/04/25/leonarda-cianciulli-the-soapmaker-of-correggio/

    All That's Interesting - The Chilling Story of Leonarda Cianciulli https://allthatsinteresting.com/leonarda-cianciulli

    Utterly Interesting - The Crimes of Leonarda Cianciulli https://www.utterlyinteresting.com/post/the-crimes-of-leonarda-cianciulli-the-soap-maker-of-correggio

    Cardinal Points Online - Soap Maker of Correggio https://cardinalpointsonline.com/cardinal-sins-soap-maker-of-correggio-murders-three-women/

    Medium - Mother Dearest: The Crimes of Leonarda Cianciulli https://medium.com/@rocknrollgeek1975/mother-dearest-the-crimes-of-leonarda-cianciulli

    Museo Criminologico, Rome - The Correggio Soap-Maker http://www.museocriminologico.it/correggio_uk.htm

    Life in Italy - Italy During the Second World War https://lifeinitaly.com/italy-second-world-war/

    History Rise - Italy Under Mussolini https://historyrise.com/italy-under-mussolini-fascism-propaganda-and-world-war-ii/

    Chapman University - Italian Society During World War II https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=history_books

    Working Class History - Italian Resistance https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e77-80-italian-resistance/

    Baltimore Sun - "Rendered Her Friends to Wax, She Says" (April 28, 1946) Referenced in multiple secondary sources above - original print archive only.

    📚 BOOKS

    The Curse: A Shocking True Story of Superstition, Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism - Ryan Green (2019)

    Confessioni di Un'Anima Amareggiata (Confessions of a Bitter Soul) - Leonarda Cianciulli
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  • Pretty Wicked

    Boogeyman: The Hook-Handed Stranger

    27/05/2026 | 37 mins.
    What if the boogeyman you grew up hearing about wasn't just a story? On Staten Island, there was a figure parents whispered about to keep their kids close to home. Bedtime warnings, campfire dares, everyone thought it was just make-believe. But then children started to vanish. And suddenly, it wasn't just scary anymore. It was real.

    SHOW NOTES

    🖤 FOLLOW PRETTY WICKED

    New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

    Instagram: @prettywickedthepodcast

    If you loved this episode, leaving a review means the world and helps other listeners find the show.

    Pretty Wicked is hosted by Megan Alda.

    🖤 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

    Here is everything used to research this episode.

    Quick corrections: Ethel Atwell disappeared October 1978, Rand legally changed his name in 1972, and Tiahease Jackson was sent to the supermarket by another motel resident while her mother was napping, not on an errand from home. Sources in the show notes

    🔗 WEB SOURCES

    The Charley Project - Holly Ann Hughes

    The Charley Project - Alice Pereira

    The Doe Network - 136DFNY Holly Ann Hughes

    The Doe Network - 134DFNY Alice Pereira

    NCMEC - Have you seen this child? Alice Pereira

    UPI Archives - Jennifer mourned as loveable child who comforted all

    All That's Interesting - The Haunting Story of Andre Rand, the Real-Life Cropsey Killer Who Stalked Staten Island in the 1980s

    The Line-Up - Cropsey: The Terrifying Urban Legend Brought to Life

    Historic Mysteries - Cropsey: New York's Terrifying Urban Legend

    Disability Justice - The Closing of Willowbrook

    NYU Undercover Reporting - Willowbrook: The Last Disgrace - Geraldo Rivera, WABC-TV

    The New York Review of Books - The Horrors of Hepatitis Research

    Our Black Girls - Tiahease Jackson, 11: May Have Fallen Victim to Serial Killer in 1983

    Whereabouts Still Unknown - Ethel Atwell

    Find a Grave - Holly Ann Hughes Memorial

    🎬 DOCUMENTARY & FURTHER LISTENING

    Cropsey (2009), directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio

    Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace (1972), Geraldo Rivera for WABC-TV

    Killer Psyche Daily episode on Staten Island's "Cropsey" Killer

    Production notes: Specific quotes from Andre Rand have been attributed broadly to prison staff and fellow inmates rather than named individuals where the named source could not be independently verified. Some details about the missing victims, particularly the adult cases, are circumstantial and Rand was never charged in connection with them.
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  • Pretty Wicked

    England's Most Haunted: What the Stones Don't Tell

    22/05/2026 | 44 mins.
    Today Megan is revisiting a medieval building in a quiet Cotswolds village. A 900-year legend that doesn't quite hold up under the tree rings. A pagan burial ground nobody can find in the archaeological record. And the man who spent fifty years inside it, telling stories nobody could verify and experiencing things he couldn't explain.

    The Ancient Ram Inn calls itself the most haunted building in England. The reality is stranger, and more layered, than the marketing.

    SHOW NOTES

    🖤 FOLLOW PRETTY WICKED

    New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

    Instagram: @prettywickedthepodcast

    If you loved this episode, leaving a review means the world and helps other listeners find the show.

    Pretty Wicked is hosted by Megan Alda.

    🖤 SOURCES & FURTHER READING

    Here is everything used to research this episode.

    🔗 WEB SOURCES

    Triskele Heritage - Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog #26: The Ancient Ram Inn

    Historic England - The Ancient Ram Inn, List Entry 1088885

    Historic England - Educational Resource: The Ancient Ram Inn

    The Ancient Ram Inn - Official Website

    Higgypop Paranormal - The Former Gloucestershire Inn Where History and the Paranormal Collide

    Higgypop Paranormal - Ancient Ram Inn Ghost Hunt Review

    Find a Grave - John Humphries Memorial

    Stroud Times - Owner of Ancient Ram Inn Speaks of Plans for the Iconic Former Pub

    Ex Utopia - The Ancient Ram Inn: A Visit to England's Most Haunted House

    Travel Channel - Ancient Ram Inn's Haunted History

    Astonishing Legends - The Ancient Ram Inn

    From Tiny Pennies - The Ancient Ram Inn, Wotton-Under-Edge

    Visit Herefordshire - Introducing Alfred Watkins, a Fascinating Man

    Woolhope Club - Alfred Watkins

    English Heritage - Witchcraft: Eight Myths and Misconceptions

    English Heritage - Building Stonehenge

    University of Reading - New Research Reveals Origin of Stonehenge's Great Sarsen Stones

    University College London - Stonehenge Bluestone Quarries Confirmed 140 Miles Away in Wales

    Birmingham Museums Trust - Sarehole's Inspiration for Tolkien's Middle-earth

    Wotton Heritage - Wotton-Under-Edge Local History

    British History Online - Wotton-under-Edge (RCHME 1976)

    Gloucestershire Archives - Deeds D1193/16/1 (1350-1724)

    IMDB - Most Haunted: The Ancient Ram Inn (Season 5, 2005)

    📚 BOOKS

    Historic Building Mythbusting: Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology - James Wright, The History Press, 2024

    The Old Straight Track - Alfred Watkins, 1925

    Early British Trackways - Alfred Watkins, 1922

    Vernacular Architecture Group Spring Conference 2014 - Gloucestershire - Linda Hall, Vernacular Architecture Group, 2014

    Tree-ring Dates from the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory List 263 - Daniel Miles and Martin Bridge, in Vernacular Architecture Volume 45, 2014

    🎬 DOCUMENTARY & FURTHER LISTENING

    Ghost Adventures (Travel Channel) - The Ancient Ram Inn episode

    Most Haunted, Series 5 - The Ancient Ram Inn (originally broadcast 29 January 2005)
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About Pretty Wicked
If you've ever gone down a rabbit hole at 2am and couldn't find your way back out, you're right at home! Pretty Wicked shares the stories you can't stop thinking about: murder, scandal, obsession, cults, and the cases that are just too wild to let go of. New episodes every Wednesday. 🖤 Subscribe so you never miss an episode. 📩 prettywickedthepodcast@gmail.com ✨ Instagram @prettywickedthepodcast If you're enjoying Pretty Wicked, consider leaving a rating and review. It makes a huge difference and helps other people find the show. It genuinely means the world!
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