PODCAST

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults

Explorations of the paranormal with your paranormal investigator Sylvia Shults.

All Episodes

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/14

Merry Saturkwanzukah, everyone! It’s the most wonderful time of the year — time for this year’s installment of The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, brought to you by this blog and by Darren Marlar of Weird Darkness. Ahead lie twelve days of holiday fun — ghost stories, fun Christmas monsters, links to shows, and all sorts … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas

Today I Learned…

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/09

In an effort to create a new holiday tradition, Dutch artist Leon de Bruljne and designer Willem van Doorn built a cannon that shoots Christmas trees. The Kerstboomkanon, or Christmas Tree Cannon, uses air pressure to fire the festive firs through the air in a flurry of green needles, much to the delight of onlookers. … Continue reading Today I Learned…

Today I Learned…

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/02

After a peacock named Snowbank escaped from Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, Massachusetts, he was recaptured with the help of an electronic mating call. A quick-thinking police officer searched for a peacock mating call on his cell phone, and when he played it, the bird was lured into a secure area until zookeepers arrived. (from … Continue reading Today I Learned…

Today I Learned…

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/11/25

One of the longest words in the English dictionary is hippopotomonstrosequippedaliophobia, and in an exquisite irony, means “the fear of long words.” Specifically, it refers to the embarassment that comes with having to pronounce long, unfamiliar words aloud. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Escape the Ordinary)

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/11/18

Roosters tilt their heads back when they crow in order to stop themselves going deaf from their own voices. The action covers their ear canal and acts like an ear plug. A rooster’s crow typically reaches 100 decibels, making it as loud as a chainsaw. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Escape the Ordinary)

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/11/11

When Star Trek first became a hit on TV in the 1960s, Leonard Nimoy’s father Max worked as a barber in Boston, Massachusetts. Customers would come into his barbershop and ask for a “Spock cut”, not knowing that the guy giving them that cut was Spock’s dad. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/11/04

During the 2019 Twin Cities 10-Mile race in Minneapolis, MN, Tyler Moon, a runner wearing “Jesus Saves” on his racing bib, suffered a heart attack — and one of the people who helped revive him was another competitor named Jesus Bueno. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)

Halloween 2024: A Lights Out Extra!

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/11/01

Here’s something fun — let’s wander through a haunted cemetery! https://youtu.be/pwP2qETQSmg Happy Halloween!

Today I Learned…

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/10/28

Charles Dickens was a member of London’s Ghost Club, which hunted ghosts and investigated reports of paranormal happenings and hauntings (and still does). Edgar Allan Poe like to write with his Siamese cat perched on his shoulder. He would place the cat there before he started writing to make him feel more relaxed and draw … Continue reading Today I Learned…

Today I Learned…

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/10/21

Pirates wore eye patches not to cover a missing eye, but to help them see in the dark. It takes the average human eye about 25 minutes to adjust from bright sunlight to being able to see in total darkness. When going belowdecks, pirates would swap the patch from one eye to the other in … Continue reading Today I Learned…

Today I Learned…

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/10/14

Johnny Cash claimed to be the first American to know about the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953. Cash’s job as a radio operator in the US military was to intercept Soviet messages, one of which reported Stalin’s death. If his claim is true, he may have known about it before President Eisenhower … Continue reading Today I Learned…

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/10/07

A draft of The Fellowship of the Ring was rejected by J.R.R. Tolkien’s editor, who cited the reason that the plural of “dwarf” was dwarfs, not dwarves, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. “Dwarves” was a word that didn’t exist. Tolkien’s response? “I wrote the Oxford English Dictionary. Don’t correct me.” (He was, indeed, the … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Lights Out: Dr. Crippen, The London Cellar Murderer

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/10/03

Gather ’round for another creepy UK episode of Lights Out! 39 Hilldrop Crescent. It sounds like a pleasant English address, maybe a small cottage off a cobblestone street, with flowers in the windowboxes. But this building sits in the heart of a busy London neighborhood. And in 1910, it was the scene of one of … Continue reading Lights Out: Dr. Crippen, The London Cellar Murderer

International Podcast Day is here … let’s celebrate!

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/09/30

Today is International Podcast Day! I’m working on another UK episode of Lights Out, which will be up for your enjoyment soon. But I have more news! Wonderful news! I’ve been beavering away behind the scenes on a brand-new podcast, and I’m happy to announce it today. Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, the true crime … Continue reading International Podcast Day is here … let’s celebrate!

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/09/30

George Washington once vowed that he would never set foot on English soil again. Therefore, in the 1920s, when the state of Virginia gifted a statue of Washington to the United Kingdom, they added some American soil to go beneath the plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square so that his wish could be honored. (from Ripley’s … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/09/23

H.G. Wells, who wrote the sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds, once worked as a math teacher at Henley House School in London, England. One of his brightest students was A.A. Milne, the future author of Winnie the Pooh. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/09/16

As a struggling actor, Sylvester Stallone was so poor that he sold his bull mastiff dog, Butkus, for $40 to a stranger outside a 7-11 store. When Stallone became rich by selling the script for Rocky, he waited outside the same store for three days for Butkus’ new owner to show up again, and bought … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/09/09

Actor Steve Buscemi was a New York City firefighter from 1980 to 1984. The day after the 9/11 attacks in New York, he returned to his old firehouse to volunteer; he worked 12-hour shifts for several days along other firefighters, searching for survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center. (from Weird-Facts.org via Bored … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/09/02

In the course of the 12 novels and 20 short stories that feature English writer Agatha Christie’s amateur detective Miss Marple, the characters drink 143 cups of tea. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box)

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/08/26

Pluto is still officially recognized as a planet in Illinois. Three years after it was controversially downgraded to a dwarf planet, the state decreed that Pluto should be restored to its former status to mark its discovery in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, who was born on a farm in Streator, Illinois. (from Ripley’s Believe It … Continue reading Today I Learned …

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