Two sisters trading family hauntings and true crime cases.
Dead Curious is a sister-hosted show in which Roxanne and Jessica trade ghost stories, family hauntings and true crime cases with each other. Personal encounters, like a bed cushion that seemed to move in a room one sister had filmed after choosing it, sit beside researched cases such as the Red Ripper.
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Dead Curious is two sisters, Roxanne and Jessica, trading strange stories with each other. The shape is easy to follow: one sister brings a story, the other reacts, cuts in and asks what happened next, and then they swap. Jessica introduces herself at one point as the younger, 'interrupty' sister, and that is a fair guide to the rhythm. What sets the material apart is how much of it comes from the hosts' own lives. One episode carries an update on a trip to the Owl House, which the sisters had covered in an earlier episode. In the same episode, one sister reveals she filmed her room when she first chose it, which let her later show that a bed cushion appeared to have been turned around and set back in exactly the same spot. She kept that detail back to surprise her sister on the recording. Elsewhere, a member of the household describes a small, animal-sized shadow by the back door into the workshop. One sister says the scariest thing to happen after they moved in was not paranormal at all: their dad waking her over sounds in the back garden. Jess's experiences in a murder house come up, as does their grandmother's creepy encounter. Then there is the true crime. The Red Ripper case reaches back to a childhood in famine-era Ukraine, and the sister telling it warns that her social work background makes her focus on the person rather than on the gruesome deaths. That is useful to know going in. The tone swings. A story of an elderly widow who kept making food for her late husband, and grew upset if anyone took his plate away, is met with plain sorrow. A childhood memory of imaginary friends in ballet leotards and rollerblades, who flew spaceships, draws the reaction 'That's so cute. That's so sad.' The loose ends stay in: a phone left off silent, a threatened restart of the recording, a closing riff on horse idioms that neither sister can land. At least one session is recorded at one sister's place, home to four very noisy cats. The third season is framed as a revival after a long gap. The sisters explain that the show began during lockdown, when research fit into lunch breaks at home, and that life got hectic afterward. Titles such as 'S3E3: Shadow Figures and Hotel Hangings', 'S2E7: Having a Kiki with the Leshy' and 'S2E9: Found Frozen in Siberia and The Red Ripper!' show the range between the spectral and the criminal. After one sister's episode with Brad from the KMH podcast, the other said she got to feel like a listener. The show calls itself independent and thanks its Patreon supporters by name. The family-haunting episodes are the most personal way in, and the Red Ripper episode shows how the pair handle a researched case.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys ghost stories and true crime told conversationally, likes hearing hosts share their own family encounters, and is happy to follow tangents and sibling teasing between the scares.
What sets it apart: Much of its material comes from the sisters' own lives and family, told next to researched crime cases. The back-and-forth between the two, with its interruptions and tangents, matters as much as the stories.
Podcast | True Crime | Paranormal Strange sister hosts Roxanne and Jessica delve deep into ghosts, true crime, creepypasta, and other macabre (usually death-related) stories. www.deadcurious.co.za
A ghost that tidies your room? Roxanne and Jessica want to know if you'd let it stay.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A playful Owl House return turns a shifted cushion and a stubborn doorway mat into oddly persuasive uncanny evidence.
Dead Curious returns from a long break with sister hosts Roxanne and Jessica revisiting their October 2021 trip to the Owl House in Grafrenet.
A loose, personal sibling episode where haunted rooms, guitar strums, and an imaginary family share the same uneasy air.
Dead Curious makes the familiar feel just a little unsafe, keeping its unease close to home. Roxanne talks about landing in places where former tenants have died, touches on a sad story tied to her unit or the one next door, and remembers Jax strumming guitar while the dogs…
Dead Curious returns with family warmth, a long absence, shadow sightings, and a frightening report from the garden.
Dead Curious eases back in by making the break part of the episode itself. Roxanne and Jess fold the long gap, the brief return, another stretch away, pregnancy, a young daughter, and the search for a workable routine into the same space as the podcast's usual taste for the…
A haunted-house return where strange sounds lead into a sad story about the home's former residents.
Roxanne and Jessica return after a long break with a family haunting rooted in their mother's former home. JJ's encounters grow stranger once the family asks neighbors about a swing that was not there, and the neighbors' story gives the case its ache: after her husband's death,…
Spooky stories with sharp best-friend energy.
UFO lore for the metaphysically restless.
Skeptical field notes from strange belief systems.
Raw radio from the Bigfoot search.
Dead Curious revisits the Owl House in New Bethesda, where Helen Martins’s sculptures include owls, mermaids, a rooster in pants, and the "little devil" figure from the green room.
Roxanne describes a colleague who saw a shadow figure move from the kitchen into a friend’s room, then ran in to ask who had entered.
Dead Curious returns with Roxanne and Jess describing a house they rent where a family member was killed in a robbery gone wrong.
Dead Curious returns after a long hiatus with Roxanne and Jessica revisiting their mother’s haunted house and a follow-up from JJ’s bathroom encounters.
Dead Curious pairs a list of Siberian finds with a long-form profile of Andre Chikatilo, the Soviet serial killer dubbed the Red Ripper.
Sisters Roxanne and Jessica cover Soviet-area folklore in Dead Curious Season 2, Episode 8, beginning with Jessica's profile of the Domovoy, a small, hairy household guardian who can take the shape of a dog or cat.
Dead Curious hosts Roxanne and Jessica cover Slavic folklore in S2E7, with Roxanne presenting the Leshy, a forest deity said to shape-shift into trees, animals, or "a single blade of grass." Roxanne lists his tells (no shadow, shoes on the wrong feet, caftan crossed left over right) and the defenses against him, including an offering of bread and salt on a tree stump and making him laugh.
On March 23, 1997, 17-year-old Mark Anthony Duke recruited three older friends to kill his father Randy Duke in Shelby County, Alabama, over a pickup truck, and three other people died in the house.
Sister hosts Roxanne and Jessica chat about their week before diving into macabre and paranormal stories.
Sister hosts Roxanne and Jessica thank listeners for reaching 2k downloads and invite spooky story submissions.
The hosts promote another podcast and discuss their own show's focus on true crime and paranormal stories.