Every town has a strange file.
Small Town Secrets works town by town, pairing place names with cases of high strangeness: Mattoon and Pascagoula, Eagle River and High Bridge, Carlisle and Palos Verdes. The show favors old newspaper weirdness, contactee lore, exorcism-linked crime, and cryptid-adjacent puzzles with a plainspoken, late-night curiosity.
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Small Town Secrets makes geography feel suspicious. Each episode anchors itself in a town or paired towns, then follows the case that made the place feel stranger than its size suggests. The recent run moves from Mattoon, Illinois and Pascagoula, Mississippi to Granite Falls, Washington and Kapahulu, Hawaii, then on to Eagle River, High Bridge, Rollingstone, La Fria, Ossett, Brookfield, Carlisle, Palos Verdes, and Adams. The subjects shift sharply, but the organizing instinct stays consistent. Local history becomes the entry point for paranormal claims, violent crime, odd photographs, cryptid lore, and stories that sit awkwardly between testimony and legend. The Mad Gasser and Phantom Barber share space with contactee cases, alien encounters, exorcisms, the Bellwitch Farm, the Minnesota Iceman, and a disputed ape story. It is not a cleanly divided true crime show or a straight paranormal show. It is more like a file box where the labels have started to overlap. The host often sounds amused by the absurdity without dismissing the pull of the case. A hoax can still be interesting. A bad explanation can still reveal why a town remembers something. The show is at its best when it lets competing possibilities sit together: prank, panic, trauma, folklore, misidentification, and something harder to explain. The language is conversational and unvarnished, with digressions about recording late, noisy shirts, social media handles, and upcoming Backroads stories. That looseness gives the stranger material a lived-in quality. The stories are researched enough to carry dates, names, locations, and competing interpretations, but the delivery stays closer to a late-night desk full of clippings than a polished documentary voiceover. It suits listeners who want small-town weirdness with true crime weight, paranormal curiosity, and enough dry humor to keep the room from getting too solemn.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes paranormal cases, true crime detours, and local legends told with curiosity rather than certainty. It is a fit for someone comfortable with eerie material, loose conversational pacing, and unresolved endings.
What sets it apart: Small Town Secrets stands out by keeping the town itself at the center, letting place names guide the jump from crime to cryptids to contactee lore. The show’s appeal comes from that overlap: a case can be grim, ridiculous, doubtful, and still memorable.
Small Town Secrets is a podcast that explores the secrets and strangenss of small towns across the globe. Be it Paranormal, True Crime or just plain weird. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/small-town-secrets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Alien pancakes meet a suspect ape photo; you can keep your skepticism while enjoying the weirdness.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Two small-town legends get an offbeat, skeptical look at what may have happened.
Small Town Secrets pairs the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, Illinois, with the Phantom Barber of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and treats both legends as odd, stubborn pieces of local folklore.
A bad-neighbour story about suspicion turning a Hawaii street into a surveillance zone.
Small Town Secret treats bad-neighbour tension as something that can make ordinary blocks feel watched, judged, and unsafe. It moves between Granite Falls, Washington, and Kapahulu, Hawaii, but the sharper thread is Jerry Hanel's fixation on supposed KGB spies.
A Wisconsin contactee story where photos, pancakes, and unexplained disruptions keep the mystery close at hand.
Small Town Secrets treats UFO lore as a local mystery built from stubborn details: pictures, dates, names, an outside witness, and objects sent off for analysis.
A lively late-night look at two disputed cryptid images and how a cruel joke may have grown into a stranger, lasting story.
Two disputed cryptid images give this late-night pairing its shape: the Minnesota Iceman from Rolling Stone, Minnesota, and Deloitte's Ape from La Freya, Venezuela.
Two exorcism cases turn eerie household details into a grim study of belief, fear, and violence.
Small Town Secrets lines up two exorcism cases with grim aftershocks: Osset, England, where the Michael Taylor exorcism turns horrific, and Brookfield, Connecticut, where the Arnie Johnson case later fed into the third Conjuring film.
Paranormal claims, pressure-tested over drinks.
Canadian murders, ghosts and cryptids, with the swearing left in.
ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.
Small Town Secrets pairs the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, Illinois with the Phantom Barber of Pascagoula, Mississippi, then closes with two Reddit stories about a voice outside a window and a black cow with neon green eyes.
["A Kapahulu, Hawaii, resident starts seeing tourists as KGB spies, while Granite Falls, Washington, turns a neighbor dispute over new construction into a shooting.", "The Granite Falls segment follows Martin Frank, Gaia Frank, Kenneth Jensen, and land developer Jay as arguments over the next-door property move through court delays and a 2001 death.", "The Kapahulu segment tracks Yoroslav Jerry Pinnell, later called Jaroslav Hanel, as he racks up restraining orders against Warren Daniel and Rebecca Atkinson and spirals after Butch the dog dies.", "The episode closes with a black-mist account, a 1974 prescription bottle found in a kitchen cabinet, and the host's Transformers story."]
Small Town Secrets pairs Joe Simonton's April 18, 1961 Eagle River, Wisconsin space-pancake story with Howard Menger's High Bridge, New Jersey contactee claims.
Jack Hanson’s July 1970 Saga Magazine article, “I Killed the Ape Man of White Face,” places the Minnesota Iceman’s origin in a November 1960 deer hunt.
Small Town Secrets season 7, episode 3 centers on the Minnesota Iceman from Rolling Stone, Minnesota, and Deloitte's Ape from La Freya, Venezuela, with the host calling both stories "Bigfoot-adjacent." Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T.
["Small Town Secrets opens with Michael Taylor in Ossett, England, where chronic back pain, depression, and a neighbor-led Christian fellowship set up the episode's first exorcism story.", "The host says the Ossett deliverance ran for eight hours and claims 40 demons were involved, then uses the case to question how much ritual and group belief can reshape a person.", "The Brookfield, Connecticut half follows Arnie Johnson, Debbie Glatzel, David Glatzel, and the Warrens through a rental house, an old man vision, a shaking home, and a later court fight over the story.", "After that, the episode jumps to a Kentucky hotel shooting blamed on aliens, a Loch Ness sonar report, and a Reddit account of missing time in Calaveras Big Trees National Park."]
Small Town Secrets opens Season 7 with alleged alien encounters involving Jim Templeton's 1964 Solway Firth photograph and John Hodges's 1971 Palos Verdes account of floating blue brains.
Small Town Secrets: Adams, TN Part 2 examines modern reports connected to Bell Witch Cave and the former Bell farm in Adams, Tennessee.
This episode explores the Gulf Breeze UFO sightings in Florida, part of a series on small town secrets and high strangeness.
This episode covers the Yuba County Five missing persons case and the disappearance of Aaron Hedges in Big Timber, Montana.
A podcast exploring secrets, paranormal events, and true crime stories from small towns around the world.
The episode explores strange secrets and mysteries of small towns like Celebration, Florida and Ong's Hat, New Jersey.
This episode explores classic tales of wrongfully convicted individuals from Patterson, New Jersey and Bay Village, Ohio.
This episode explores strange and tragic schoolyard tales from Farrar, Iowa and New London, Texas.
This episode compares two famous cryptids: the Beast of Bray Road and the Beast of Gévaudan.
This episode explores spooky hotels in Estes Park, Colorado and Austin, Texas, delving into their strange and mysterious histories.