Loading...

PODCAST

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real Unexplained Encounters

Strange things happen. Sometimes they leave records.State of the Unknown is a documentary paranormal podcast about real people who encountered something they couldn"t explain.It is a host-narrated documentary series, not an interview show.From ghosts and documented hauntings to UFO encounters, cryptid sightings, strange creatures, and other unexplained events, each episode follows the people at the center of the story—what happened, what evidence remains, and what explanations came later.These

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

13:00

Fragments | Zozo: When a Ouija Board Gives You the...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/10/06

Some Ouija board stories disappear as soon as the planchette stops moving. Others keep returning, attached to the same strange name. In this episode of State of the Unknown: Fragments, Robert Barber explores the Zozo demon legend, a modern paranormal story involving Ouija boards, alleged demonic encounters, and people who believed they had contacted something they couldn’t explain. Where did the name come from? Why has it appeared in so many accounts? And what is really happening when people ...

en-us

12:37

Fragments | The Eliza Battle: The Ghost Ship on the...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/09/29

The Eliza Battle ghost ship legend is one of the most enduring paranormal stories connected to the American South. Along Alabama’s Tombigbee River, people have passed down a story about a steamboat, a terrible night, and something that may still appear on the water. In this episode of State of the Unknown: Fragments, host Robert Barber explores the history and folklore surrounding the Eliza Battle. As the story moves from a documented river tragedy into the realm of ghost stories and unexplai...

en-us

14:03

Fragments | Ryan Hammons: The Boy Who Remembered a...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/09/22

The Ryan Hammons reincarnation case is one of the most compelling paranormal stories involving a child who claimed to remember a past life. Beginning in Oklahoma around 2008, four-year-old Ryan started asking his mother to take him home. But he didn’t mean the house where they lived. He meant Hollywood—a place he claimed to remember from another life. In this episode of State of the Unknown: Fragments, host Robert Barber explores Ryan’s reported past-life memories and the investigation conduc...

en-us

28:40

Creature Encounter: The Pender County 911 Call |...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/09/15

On July 31, 2021, a driver traveling along Highway 210 in Pender County, North Carolina, spotted what appeared to be an injured man standing beside the road. There seemed to be blood running down from his head. Concerned that the man needed help, the driver called 911 and continued down the highway while giving the dispatcher his location. Then, in the middle of the call, something hit his truck. The dispatcher heard it. Seconds later, the driver screamed four words that would eventually turn...

en-us

19:32

Fragments | Jonathan Reed: The Man Who Says He...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/09/08

In 1996, Jonathan Reed said he went hiking in Washington’s Cascade Mountains with his golden retriever, Susie. What he claimed happened in those woods would eventually become one of the strangest UFO stories of the 1990s. Reed said he encountered a small humanoid creature, discovered a mysterious black object hovering nearby, and came away with something most extraordinary encounter stories never have: photographs and video. But that was only the beginning. Two years later, Reed’s story reach...

en-us

11:50

Fragments | Ok, So Who the Heck Was Philip K. Dick? —...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/09/05

Philip K. Dick spent his career writing about unreliable memories, artificial people, altered realities, surveillance, and the uneasy question of whether the world around us is really what we think it is. After finishing the full Philip K. Dick episode of State of the Unknown, host Robert Barber kept researching. What he found only made Dick more fascinating: a writer whose ideas spread far beyond the page and whose work became deeply woven into modern popular culture. In this episode of Stat...

en-us

28:41

Fringe Theories: Philip K. Dick | “We Are Living in a...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/09/01

Philip K. Dick spent his career writing about false memories, alternate worlds, and people discovering that reality wasn’t quite what they thought it was. Then, in 1974, something happened to him. Join host Robert Barber as we follow Philip K. Dick’s 2-3-74 experiences — a series of strange events that left him questioning memory, time, and the nature of reality itself. Three years later, at a science-fiction festival in Metz, France, Dick would tell an audience: “We are living in a computer-...

en-us

10:14

Fragments | The Kentucky Meat Shower: When Flesh Fell...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/08/25

In March 1876, residents near Olympia Springs in Bath County, Kentucky, reported one of the strangest events ever recorded in the state: pieces of what appeared to be raw meat falling from a perfectly clear sky. Join host Robert Barber as he revisits the bizarre event that became known as the Kentucky Meat Shower—a case that drew attention from newspapers, doctors, scientists, and curious onlookers trying to understand what had happened. The material was found scattered across the Crouch prop...

en-us

9:23

Fragments | The Leadville Ghost: The Tenants Who...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/08/22

In April 1907, two miners in Leadville, Colorado, rented a small house and paid three weeks in advance. Four nights later, they were done. Join host Robert Barber as he follows a strange newspaper account of a paranormal encounter that frightened two working miners badly enough to abandon the house—and the money they'd already paid—rather than spend another night inside. Their story soon spread through the neighborhood, where residents connected what the men reported to an older story about t...

en-us

29:55

Creature Encounter: The Lake Worth Monster | The 1969...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/08/18

In July 1969, six people were parked near Greer Island on Lake Worth, just outside Fort Worth, Texas, when something came down from a tree and landed on their car. John Reichert would later describe a strange creature covered in fur and scales, with long, claw-like hands. Within days, his report had drawn police, reporters, curiosity seekers, and armed monster hunters to the shores of Lake Worth. Then other people began reporting encounters of their own. What followed became one of Texas's st...

en-us

25:31

Paranormal Encounter: Bobby Mackey's Music World |...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/08/11

When 20-year-old Carl Lawson took a job helping renovate Bobby Mackey’s Music World, a country nightclub in Wilder, Kentucky, he had no idea he was stepping into what would become one of America’s most infamous paranormal haunting cases. What began with footsteps echoing through an empty dance hall after closing and the feeling that he wasn’t alone would eventually help build a ghost story that has followed the nightclub for decades. Over the decades, Bobby Mackey’s Music World has become syn...

en-us

9:18

Fragments | Franklin Castle: The Ghost Who Confessed...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/08/04

Two listeners pointed me toward one of Ohio’s most famous haunted houses. I expected to find another ghost story. Instead, I found something far stranger. In 1980, a woman living inside Franklin Castle claimed the spirit of the home’s original owner confessed to murder. The story spread across books, television, ghost tours, and the internet until it became part of the castle’s history. But where did that story actually come from? This is the strange tale of one newspaper interview… and how a...

en-us

9:37

Fragments | Blackbeard’s Ghost: The Light That Never...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/07/28

In November 1718, the pirate known as Blackbeard was killed in the waters near Ocracoke Island. His head was carried away as proof of his death, while his body disappeared beneath the surface. But around the Outer Banks, people believed the story didn't end there. Join host Robert Barber for a short journey into one of North Carolina's oldest ghost legends. Support the show State of the Unknown is a documentary-style podcast exploring America’s unexplained stories, including reported haunting...

en-us

30:45

Creature Encounter: The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/07/21

Join host Robert Barber as he examines one of America's most enduring cryptid encounters. In the summer of 1988, seventeen-year-old Christopher Davis stopped along a quiet road outside Bishopville, South Carolina, to change a flat tire. Minutes later, he reported being chased by something unlike anything he had ever seen. His account would draw the attention of local law enforcement, reporters, curious visitors, and eventually the entire country. Before long, the area around Scape Ore Swamp h...

en-us

11:12

Fragments | The Devil’s Footprints: The Tracks That...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/07/14

Welcome to State of the Unknown: Fragments. Every other Tuesday, alongside our full documentary episodes, I’ll be sharing a shorter story—forgotten newspaper accounts, enduring folklore, strange witness reports, and historical mysteries that deserve another telling. They’re not documentaries. They’re simply remarkable stories that have stayed with me, and now I’m passing them on to you. In this very first Fragment, we travel to southwest England in the winter of 1855, where people across seve...

en-us

1:29

Introducing State of the Unknown: Fragments

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/07/11

Something new is coming to State of the Unknown. Every story doesn’t need thirty minutes. Some are too strange to ignore… too fascinating to forget… and too small to become full documentaries. Beginning next week, I’m introducing State of the Unknown: Fragments—a brand-new storytelling series featuring the forgotten newspaper accounts, old legends, eerie folklore, and remarkable historical oddities that have stayed with me long after the research was over. Just me. A microphone. And a story I...

en-us

30:14

Creature Encounter: The 1909 Jersey Devil Panic | The...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/07/07

For one remarkable week in January 1909, communities across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were gripped by a wave of reports unlike anything the region had experienced before. Police officers claimed to see something moving over rooftops. Families awoke to strange sounds outside their homes. Residents discovered unusual hoofprints in fresh snow. Newspapers printed new eyewitness accounts almost every day as sightings spread from town to town, transforming an old Pine Barrens legend in...

en-us

30:36

Men in Black: Albert Bender | The Visit That Silenced...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/06/30

Join host Robert Barber as he explores the case that gave rise to one of the most enduring legends in UFO history—the Men in Black. In the early 1950s, Albert K. Bender founded the International Flying Saucer Bureau, one of America's first civilian organizations devoted to investigating reports of unidentified flying objects. Through its newsletter, Space Review, the Bureau quickly attracted members from across the country who shared sightings, theories, and unexplained encounters. Then, almo...

en-us

29:23

Alien Abduction: Travis Walton | Inside the Abduction...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/06/23

Join host Robert Barber as he explores the second half of the Travis Walton case, one of the most discussed alien abduction stories in American history. Five days after disappearing in the Arizona wilderness, Travis Walton returned alive. His coworkers had spent nearly a week under suspicion. Search crews had searched the forest. Investigators had tried to determine what happened on the night Walton vanished near a reported blue-white light in the woods. But the mystery was far from over. Aft...

en-us

31:44

Alien Abduction: Travis Walton | The...

State of the Unknown | Documentary Stories of Real... ·

2026/06/16

Join host Robert Barber as he explores the disappearance of Travis Walton, one of the most discussed alien abduction cases in American history. On November 5, 1975, Travis Walton and six fellow loggers were driving home through the Apache–Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona when they reported seeing a strange blue-white light in the woods. According to the witnesses, Walton left the truck and walked toward it. Moments later, something happened that sent the crew fleeing down the road. When ...

en-us

89 results

Similar Podcasts

وجوه من الـظل

Medi1 Podcast

Classic Philosophy Book Collection

The Podcast Network

It"s Been a Minute

NPR

New Books in American Studies

New Books Network

National Day Spotlight | Presented By National Day Calendar

National Day Calendar