Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat

For nearly three hundred years, something strange has been stalking the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey: a winged, hooved, horse-headed creature first reported in 1735 and seen by hundreds in a single terrifying week in January 1909. Schools closed, police fired their revolvers, and a Philadelphia dime museum cashed in on the chaos with a painted kangaroo. But beneath the hoaxes and newspaper hysteria, witnesses with nothing to gain kept coming out of those woods with the same description. This episode examines the historical, scientific, and supernatural theories behind America's oldest cryptid legend. Episode Sponsor: If you’ve been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don’t have insurance or don't live in the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit https://www.BetterHelp.com/HIDDENHISTORY to explore your payment options.

For most of human history, we thought we knew who our closest relatives were. Then a fragment of pinky bone in a Siberian cave, a skull hidden in a well for decades, and a chamber full of bones deep in a South African cave system rewrote the story entirely. New discoveries in 2025 and 2026 have finally given the mysterious Denisovans a face... and raised the possibility that a small-brained relative may have buried its dead 100,000 years before we did. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod Episode Sponsors: Find the fall pieces you’ll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to https://www.Quince.com . Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. Right now, Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their Signature Makeup Bag – which if you’ve seen it, it’s not just a make-up bag but really an accessory – free with your first order at https://www.MeritBeauty.com .

Fun fact: Did you know Jaws almost never existed because the shark kept sinking while filming? That is Connor Tomlinson just getting started. If that sounds fascinating, you are going to love Rewind Studios’ new podcast out now called WHAT THE FACT hosted by Connor Tomlinson and Carter Roy. It’s produced by the same team that brings you Hidden History. Connor and co-host Carter Roy pull three unbelievable true facts every week and tell you the full story behind each one. Nothing is off limits. Myths and monsters. Forgotten scandals. Accidental discoveries. Untold stories behind the songs everyone knows. Disasters that sound made up but absolutely happened. Carter sets the scene and Connor makes you fall in love with history. The wildest stuff is real, and the real stuff is wilder than you think. New episodes every Wednesday. What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson and Carter Roy is a Rewind Original, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen and Follow: https://pod.link/6811124906

As we kick off Spooky Season, Harini is joined by Bobbie Curtis Lee of Oddities on Elm Street to talk about one of America's most haunted items. For over a century, a 40-inch doll named Robert has sat at the center of Key West's strangest story: blamed for car crashes, divorces, and streaks of bad luck that only end with a written apology. He belonged to artist Gene Otto, who gave the doll his own name, his own clothes, and eventually his own room... while his wife Anne quietly unraveled beside him. The haunting may be real, but the doll might not be where it lives. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod Episode Sponsor: If you’ve been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don’t have insurance or don't live in the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit https://www.BetterHelp.com/HIDDENHISTORY to explore your payment options.

Locked in Yale's Beinecke Library sits a 600-year-old book written in an alphabet that exists nowhere else on Earth: roughly 38,000 words across 240 pages of calfskin, and not one sentence has ever been verified as translated. Emperors paid fortunes for it, the codebreaker who cracked Japan's WWII cipher gave up on it, and supercomputers have made no progress. The evidence is complete and fully photographed... so why can't anyone read it? Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

In November 1966, four witnesses driving through an abandoned munitions plant outside Point Pleasant, West Virginia reported a towering winged figure with glowing red eyes... and sightings continued for thirteen months. Then, on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River during rush hour, killing 46 people. The creature was never seen again. This episode examines the scientific, historical, and supernatural explanations for what people saw, and how a real community tragedy became one of America's most enduring cryptid legends. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod Episode Sponsor: Head to https://www.FactorMeals.com/HiddenHistory50Off and use code hiddenhistory50off to get 50 percent off and 1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year, while supplies last until 10/31/2026.

On the night of March 13th, 1997, thousands of Arizonans watched a massive, silent V-shaped formation of lights drift slowly across the entire state, from Nevada to the Mexican border, with no official explanation for hours. The event split into two distinct incidents, each with its own evidence, its own witnesses, and its own stubborn questions that remain unresolved nearly thirty years later. From a governor who changed his story to the one amateur astronomer who put a telescope on the lights, every clue points somewhere different. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

In February 1959, nine experienced Soviet hikers set out across the frozen Ural Mountains...and never came back. Searchers found their tent slashed open from the inside, footprints walking calmly into lethal cold, and bodies with catastrophic internal injuries that left no marks on the skin. Nearly seventy years later, the case remains officially unsolved, with theories ranging from a slab avalanche and Cold War weapons testing to espionage and forces the investigators themselves couldn't name. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

On History Daily, we do history, daily. Every weekday, host Lindsay Graham (American Scandal, American History Tellers) takes you back in time to explore a momentous event that happened ‘on this day’ in history. Whether it’s to remember the tragedy of December 7th, 1941, the day “that will live in infamy,” or to celebrate that 20th day in July, 1969, when mankind reached the moon, History Daily is there to tell you the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world—one day at a time. So if you’re stuck in traffic, bored at work—wherever you are, listen to History Daily to remind yourself that something incredible happened to make that day historic. A co-production from award-winning podcasters Airship and Noiser.

For over 1,500 years, people have reported a massive creature lurking in the depths of Loch Ness, a 23-mile-long Scottish lake so dark and deep that it swallows light entirely. The legend exploded in 1933, fueled by newspaper editors, a faked photograph, and a public desperate for wonder during the Great Depression. From DNA sweeps and sonar surveys to a toy submarine and a big-game hunter's revenge plot, the evidence has been tested...and the mystery somehow survives. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

In August of 1966, two Brazilian electronics technicians were found dead on a hillside outside Niterói, dressed in suits and handmade lead masks, with a cryptic schedule and no clear cause of death. They had told their wives they were going one place and quietly went somewhere else entirely...and whatever they swallowed that evening was never identified. Sixty years later, the case remains officially unsolved, with theories ranging from a self-administered ritual gone wrong to robbery, espionage, and contact with the unexplained. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

For nearly three hundred years, people have been found burned almost to ash in rooms that barely show a scorch mark: from Countess Cornelia di Bandi in 1731 to Michael Faherty in 2010, whose death an Irish coroner officially attributed to spontaneous human combustion. The pattern is always the same: torso gone, extremities intact, surroundings untouched, and no obvious source of flame. Modern fire science offers a compelling explanation, but a handful of cases still resist easy answers. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

Reddit is an endless archive of humanity’s most disturbing, bizarre, and deeply human stories. If you love going down internet rabbit holes, you are going to love CRIMES OF REDDIT with Alexis Linkletter and Sabrina Deana-Roga. Every Tuesday, one host brings a set of true-crime stories while the other reacts in real time with no prep, no spoilers asking the questions on everyone’s mind. They pull at every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view. It’s dark, it’s messy, and the scariest part is simple: THESE ARE STORIES POSTED BY REAL PEOPLE. Follow CRIMES OF REDDIT for a new episode every Tuesday. https://pod.link/1838511303 CRIMES OF REDDIT is a Crime House original powered by PAVE Studios.

In 30 BCE, Cleopatra VII died on her own terms rather than face humiliation in Rome, and was buried beside her lover Mark Antony in a tomb described as surpassingly beautiful. Two thousand years later, that tomb has never been found... and rival archaeologists are still hunting for it in two very different places. This episode examines the real evidence behind Cleopatra's death, the underwater ruins of ancient Alexandria, and the controversial excavation at the Temple of Osiris thirty miles away. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Within days, the government named Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman... but more than sixty years later, most Americans still don't accept that verdict. This episode walks through the physical evidence, the major conspiracy theories, and what the newly released classified files actually reveal. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod Episode Sponsor: Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to https://www.Quince.com/hidden . Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too.

When Richmond fell in April 1865, the Confederate government fled south with its entire treasury: gold bars, silver coins, and pieces of eight. And by the time Jefferson Davis was captured weeks later, almost all of it was gone. Did it vanish into soldiers' pockets and wartime chaos, or did a secret society bury it for a future uprising? Some treasure hunters say millions in gold still sit in a railroad boxcar at the bottom of Lake Michigan. This episode traces every dollar from the burning capital to the cold dark of the Great Lakes... and separates the ledger from the legend. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

On the night before Thanksgiving 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Boeing 727, collected $200,000 in ransom, parachuted into a stormy Washington wilderness... and was never seen again. Fifty years of investigation, over a thousand suspects, and a single bundle of rotting bills are all that remain. This episode examines the science, the suspects, and the enduring question of whether D.B. Cooper beat the system entirely. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

On October 3, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious outside a Baltimore polling place, wearing a stranger's clothes, with no memory of the previous five days. Four days later, he was dead at 40... and no autopsy was ever performed. Over 26 theories have been proposed, from rabies and tuberculosis to political cooping and targeted violence. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

In 1587, around 115 English men, women, and children were left on a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina... and three years later, every single one of them had vanished without a trace. The only clue was a single word carved into a wooden post: CROATOAN. And to this day, nobody knows where they went. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod

A fourteen-foot strip of linen in Turin, Italy bears the ghostly image of a crucified man... and has divided scientists, historians, and believers for nearly seven hundred years. From the Black Death relic trade to radiocarbon dating and cutting-edge X-ray analysis, this episode examines every angle of one of history's most enduring unsolved mysteries. Head over to our Hidden History YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenHistoryPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Hidden History to never miss an episode! Hidden History is a Rewind Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios TikTok: @RewindStudios YouTube: @HiddenHistoryPod