In the fall of 1903, the small town of Van Meter, Iowa, was gripped by fear as a winged creature with glowing light pouring from its forehead terrorized the community for five consecutive nights. Witnesses described a beast that defied nature as impervious to bullets, reeking of rot, and capable of vanishing into the sky. Over a century later, the Van Meter Visitor remains one of America’s most bizarre and chilling cryptid encounters.

Fearful is a podcast produced by Media Forge Studios, and releases a new episode here every Wednesday.

In 1971, two boys digging in their garden in Hexham, England, unearthed a pair of crudely carved stone heads that were small, unsettling, and unlike anything they'd seen before. What followed was a wave of bizarre poltergeist activity, werewolf like sightings, and a chilling string of events that would plague every home the heads touched. To this day, no one knows if they were ancient Celtic relics, an elaborate hoax, or something far more sinister.

Fearful is a podcast produced by Media Forge Studios, and releases a new episode here every Wednesday.

In 2003, researchers tracking a nine foot great white shark off the coast of Bremer Bay, Australia made a chilling discovery when the shark’s tracking device washed ashore without the shark. The data revealed a sudden deep dive to 1,900 feet and a sharp temperature spike, suggesting the shark had been swallowed whole by an unknown predator. What followed became one of the ocean’s most unsettling mysteries: What could possibly hunt and devour one of the world’s most fearsome predators?

Fearful is a podcast produced by Media Forge Studios, and releases a new episode here every Wednesday.