The Secret Society of Strangers

A man vanishes from a moving bus in December 1949 — his bags still overhead, the other passengers none the wiser until his seat turns up empty. He was never found.
That's where Part Two begins. Lee, Josh, and Jen return to Glastenbury Mountain for the cases that built the legend of the Bennington Triangle: James Tedford, gone from that bus; eight-year-old Buddy Jepson, gone in the length of a single chore; and Frieda Langer, the only one of the missing whose body ever came back — found in ground the searchers had already crossed.
Then we sort the theories, honestly and without a tidy answer: the stone, the creature, the thin place, abduction, a killer on the trail, and the strange pattern hiding in the dates.
This is Part Two of two. If you haven't heard Part One, start there.
⚠️ Contains discussion of a child's disappearance and presumed death, plus speculative theory. Listener discretion advised.
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🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange
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A Strange Static Media Production.
Sources: Joseph A. Citro, "Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries" (1994) & "Passing Strange" (1996); Bennington Triangle and Glastenbury Mountain (Wikipedia); Vermont Country Magazine (2023); U.S. Forest Service.

Some places you can only reach on purpose. The Bennington Triangle isn't one of them — you can see it from a college campus, a gas station, a kitchen window. And it's been taking people for a very long time. In Part One, Lee leads Josh and Jen up Glastenbury Mountain: the Abenaki who knew it was inhabited, the settlers who couldn't hold it, the town that dissolved off the map, and the first souls to vanish — a hunter moved after death, a guide who knew every trail and walked into the dark anyway, and 18-year-old Paula Jean Welden in her red parka. Part one of two.
🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange.
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She co-founded the order that gave Dracula his name. She was accused of drinking blood, running an alchemy lab, and cutting a deal with the devil. Six hundred years later, Croatian kids still play a schoolyard game named after her.
Her name was Barbara of Cilli — Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Hungary, Bohemia, and Germany, and one of the most powerful women of the 15th century. History turned her into a monster. Tonight we find out who did it, and why.
Stay Curious. Stay Strange.
🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Podbean · YouTube Hit subscribe so the next one finds you.
 
🛒 Wear the Society: ssos-shop.fourthwall.com — code SSOSPOD takes 5% off.
 
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🕯️ Stay Curious. Stay Strange.
A Strange Static Media Production.
 
Lee — Writer, Researcher, Editor, Producer
Josh & Jen — Co-Host, Assistant, Creative, Co-Producer
SOURCES & FACT-CHECK NOTES
Dvořáková, Daniela — Barbara of Cilli (1392–1451) — primary modern biography.
Wikipedia — Barbara of Cilli; Order of the Dragon; Counts of Celje; Veronika of Desenice; Ulrich II, Count of Celje; Carmilla. (Wikipedia confirms Carmilla is ‘likely based on the legendary image of Barbara as a vampire.’)
Journal of Dracula Studies (Kutztown University) — Carmilla / Order of the Dragon academic connection.
Paušek-Baždar, Snježana (2008) — ‘Queen Barbara of Cilli as Alchemist in Samobor’ — supports the alchemy lab.
Secret Zagreb / Love Zagreb — Medvedgrad and Black Queen folklore (flag as folklore, not record).
FACT-CHECK — the €2 coin is 2014 (600th anniversary of her 1414 coronation as Queen of Germany), designed by Matej Ramšak — NOT 2008. Script corrected.
FACT-CHECK — 2022 Konstanz event/exhibition title: ‘Barbara von Cilli – Kaiserin, Alchemistin, Vampir’ (Empress, Alchemist, Vampire). Verified via Wikipedia.
FLAG — devil’s-pact, snake-in-the-tunnels, raven-was-a-cursed-lover, lovers-off-the-battlements: all folklore. Delivered as legend in-script; keep it framed that way.
 

In 1941, a quiet Denver neighborhood became convinced one house was haunted. Lights switched on in empty rooms. Footsteps echoed behind locked doors. A widow fled her own home; her housekeeper quit, certain the place was cursed. They were all closer to the truth than the police — because something WAS in that house. Not a ghost. A man. This week, Lee leads Josh and Jen through the case of Theodore Coneys, the “Denver Spider Man,” who murdered 73-year-old Philip Peters and then lived in the victim’s attic crawlspace for nine months — freezing, starving, three feet above the people hunting for a phantom. It’s the most famous case of “phrogging” in American history, and the realest ghost story Denver ever told.
Stay Curious. Stay Strange.
CTA + LINKS
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Email: ssospodcast@gmail.com  —  or DM us on socials. We're listening.
 
CREDITS
A Strange Static Media Production.
Lee — Writer, Researcher, Editor, Producer
Josh & Jen — Co-Host, Assistant, Creative, Co-Producer
SOURCES
Primary / Archival
Lowall, Gene. "1942: The Spider Man." In Denver Murders, edited by Lee Casey. Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946.
Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. Facts on File, 1982.
Denver Public Library Special Collections and Archives — "The Tale of the Denver Spider Man" (2019).
Trial records, Denver County Court, October 1942.
Detective James E. Childers interview, Denver Post Empire, February 7, 1960.
Period News Coverage
The Paducah Sun, July 4, 1954 — "Here's Spine Chilling Story of The Spider Murder and a Ghost."
Contemporary Denver newspapers, 1941–1942 (Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News).
Modern Coverage / Secondary
9News Denver — "Stranger than fiction: the 'Denver Spiderman' and his Moncrieff Place murder" (2019).
Law Week Colorado — "Denver's Spider Man, 'The Ghost House of Denver'" (June 2022).
Morbidology — "Theodore Edward Coneys, The Denver Spiderman" (Emily G. Thompson).
Colorado Public Radio / Colorado Postcards — "Denver Spider-Man" (September 2023).
HistoricalCrimeDetective.com — "Mug Shot Monday! Theodore Coneys, the Spiderman of Denver, 1941."
Revisit Denver — "Denver Legends: The Spider-Man" (July 2025).
Find A Grave Memorial #43200386 — Theodore Edward Coneys.
Wikipedia — Theodore Edward Coneys (cross-referenced against primary sources above).
 

In the summer of 1980, an eleven-year-old boy in Brookfield, Connecticut saw something in an empty bedroom — a withered figure with black eyes and cloven hooves. Over the next seven months, what started as a child's nightmare consumed an entire family, brought Ed and Lorraine Warren to their door, and ended with a nineteen-year-old stabbing his landlord to death outside a dog kennel.
Arne Johnson's defense attorney attempted something unprecedented: a plea of not guilty by reason of demonic possession. But behind the trial that inspired The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It lies a darker story — celebrity demonologists who profited from a family's pain, a mother who may have been secretly drugging her own children, and a brother who spent decades trying to tell the truth.
Join Lee, Josh, and Jen as they follow this case from the bedroom on Oak Grove Road to the courtroom in Danbury — and uncover what the Conjuring franchise doesn't want you to know.
Stay Curious. Stay Strange.
🎧 Listen & Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube: @SSOSPodcast | Podbean☕ Support the Show: Buy Me a Coffee📱 Follow Us: Instagram | TikTok📧 Got a High Strangeness Story? Email ssospodcast@gmail.com or DM us on socials — we're listening.
CREDITSLee — Writer, Researcher, Editor, ProducerJosh & Jen — Co-Host, Assistant, Creative, Co-ProducerA Strange Static Media Production
SOURCES- The Devil on Trial (2023) — Netflix documentary, dir. Chris Holt- The Devil in Connecticut by Gerald Brittle (1983, withdrawn from print)- People Magazine — "A Connecticut Teen Claims the Devil Made Him a Killer" (1981)- The Washington Post — Johnson trial coverage (1981)- Associated Press — trial and verdict reporting (1981)- Glatzel v. Warren — Superior Court of Connecticut, complaint filed September 2007- The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), Warner Bros. Pictures- William Weber — 1979 interview on the creation of the Amityville story- Judge Jack Weinstein — litigation statements on the Amityville case- Diocese of Rockville Centre — official statement on the Amityville haunting- Ray Garton — statements to Benjamin Radford on the Snedeker case- National Institute of Justice — 1995 report on satanic ritual abuse claims- Medical examiner testimony — Connecticut Superior Court, Danbury (1981)- Sominex formulation history — scopolamine to diphenhydramine reformulation, late 1980s

She inherited a fortune built on a rifle.
The story goes that a medium told her every soul ever killed by that gun was coming for her — and the only way to stay alive was to keep building. Never let the hammers stop. Never let the house be finished.
Sarah Winchester built. For thirty-six years, in a house in San Jose, California, the construction never stopped — until the day she died.
160 rooms. Staircases that climb into ceilings. Doors that open onto open air. The most famous haunted house in America — and the widow who, by some accounts, is still inside it.
But the story they sell at the gate is not the story of who actually lived there.
This week on Secret Society of Strangers, we walk the legend in full. And then we tell you who Sarah Winchester really was. Because they buried her twice — and the second burial is the one we should be angry about.
 
Hosts: Lee, Josh, Jen
Edited by: William Bertschinger  
 
Primary historical source
Ignoffo, Mary Jo. Captive of the Labyrinth: Sarah L. Winchester, Heiress to the Rifle Fortune. University of Missouri Press, 2010 (rev. 2022). First full-length archival biography. Twenty years of research in Sarah’s personal letters, Winchester financial records, building records, contemporary news coverage.
🕯️  Stay Curious. Stay Strange.