Conspiracy Theories

BEST OF 2025: Three Men Escaped Alcatraz, Evaded the FBI, and Lived Secret Lives

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Every December we step back and reflect on some favorite episodes from the year…today we're declassifying our best of 2025 picks. This episode actua...

My Roman Empire: The Death of Nero

03 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

They say Roman Emperor Nero played his fiddle while watching his own empire burn. He neglected all leadership duties, and killed his own family. Then,...

The Rothko Scam

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Manhattan’s Knoedler Gallery made about $80 million selling art by Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwel...

Tesla's Death Ray

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nikola Tesla patented over 300 inventions. When he died, the US government confiscated 80 trunks of his notes and blueprints… and only returned 60 t...

Was the Lindbergh Kidnapping an Inside Job?

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Several murders have been dubbed “the crime of the century," but the Lindbergh kidnapping case of 1932 might actually deserve the title. According t...

Travis Walton's Alien Abduction

05 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

November 5th, 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the events that inspired the 1993 film, Fire in the Sky. Seven lumberjacks saw a UFO… and one was pull...

Spring-Heeled Jack: Cryptid or Conspiracy?

29 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Supernaturally-high leaps. Glowing red eyes. Fire breath. This monster violently assaulted young women, and terrorized others across London. Was he a ...

Is An Alien Probe Really Coming in November?

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In July 2025, researchers discovered an interstellar object entering our solar system. It’s only the third we’ve detected – ever – and it’s ...

Shakespeare’s Encrypted Map to Freemason Treasure

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Shakespeare’s First Folio is an incredible historical treasure. It also might be an encrypted treasure map. According to the theories, the First Fol...

Candy Jones, the Brainwashed Fashion Model

08 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Candy Jones had an impressive résumé: Miss Atlantic City, Model of the Year, highest-paid cover model of the 1940s, entrepreneur, radio personality,...

Fake News and Forgeries: How MI6 Manipulated Americans

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As Germany conquered Europe in 1940, the UK desperately needed foreign reinforcements. When the American people hesitated to help, MI6 conspired to se...

Helena Blavatsky: The Most Interesting Woman in the World?

24 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most of what we know about Helena Blavatsky’s life seems improbable. In her 59 years on Earth, she was a young Russian aristocrat. A Parisian circus...

The Gerry Irwin Incident

17 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Driving through the remote Utah desert on the way back to his military base, 23-year-old Private Gerry Irwin witnessed what he thought was a plane cra...

The Smurl Family Haunting

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1973, Jack and Janet Smurl move into a modest duplex in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, hoping for a fresh start. What follows is more than a decade o...

The 600 Lives of Fidel Castro

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba’s dictator in 1959, the Communist leader and provocateur quickly became a threat to the U.S. government. The CIA ha...

TWA Flight 800: The Plane That Exploded Mid-Air

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On July 17th, 1996, about 13 minutes into a direct flight from New York to Paris, TWA Flight 800 exploded in mid-air, killing all 230 people on board....

Australia’s Area 51

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

First, they said Pine Gap was for space research. Then, it was a weather station. It’s now called a defense base, but Australians often refer to it ...

Was the “Pirate King” also the King’s Spy?

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1695, “The Pirate King” Henry Every pulled off a heist, evaded a global manhunt, and vanished with his newfound treasure. He was never found…...

Japan’s Evaporated People

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and the person you depend upon most in this world is gone. No trace, no goodbyes, just vanished. Then, you find out they ...

What’s Under the Pyramids of Giza?

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this year, Dr. Corrado Malanga and Dr. Filippo Biondi claimed they’d made a massive discovery at the Giza Complex in Egypt. Using Synthetic ...

Time-Slipping Through Europe

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We can’t hop in a time machine and set it to a specific year…yet. But what if we can unwittingly slip through time, briefly, to another year – w...

Secret Nazi Bases in Antarctica

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Did Germany secretly establish a base in Antarctica prior to World War II? In 1947, the U.S. Navy launched the largest expedition to the southernmost ...

The (Faked?) Death of an Argentine Tycoon

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“Power is having impunity.” In January 1997, a photojournalist is found murdered on the side of the road in General Madariaga, Argentina. The inve...

Who Shot Vincent Van Gogh?

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For over a century, common belief was that Vincent Van Gogh died by suicide. But in 2011, two Pulitzer Prize-winning biographers suggested the art wor...

Untraceable Poison? The Bogle-Chandler Mystery

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On New Year’s Day in Sydney, Australia, two dead bodies are discovered near a river. Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler are married – but not...

Fluoride + Communism = Mind Control?

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fluoride and its presence in public water has become a hot-button issue in the United States. More and more communities and government officials are r...

Are Octopuses Aliens??

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2018, a peer-reviewed article published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology suggested the theory that octopuses could have extraterrest...

New Age Conspirituality

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

American New Age culture isn’t all crystals and Tarot cards. A New World Order? The Aryan race? Alien-human hybrids? Throughout history, New Age bel...

Three Men Escaped Alcatraz, Evaded the FBI, and Lived Secret Lives

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Alcatraz was designed to be inescapable. But in 1962, three men broke out. The FBI concluded the inmates died in the San Francisco Bay. But some famil...

The Kinross Incident: Did a UFO Abduct an Entire Jet?

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1953, an Air Force jet took off from Michigan’s Kinross Air Force Base in pursuit of an unknown aircraft, or bogey. As the jet approached the mys...

Buried Gold: How the FBI Got Involved In a Treasure Hunt

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A legend tells of a cache of Civil War-era gold buried somewhere in the hills of Elk County, Pennsylvania. Over the past few decades, treasure hunters...

The Short Reign and Mysterious Death of Pope John Paul I

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1970s, when he was still an Archbishop, Albino Luciani caught wind of a shady banking scheme involving Italian banker Roberto Calvi and t...

The Assassination of Malcolm X Pt. 2

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After Malcolm X was assassinated, three men were arrested. Despite holes in the investigation and the prosecution’s case, all three went to prison. ...

The Assassination of Malcolm X Pt. 1

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Malcolm X’s radical ideas about racial justice won him many followers, and spawned just as many enemies. When Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, th...

UFOS, Occultists, Murder Schemes: The Deaths of Miguel and Manuel

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Brazil, 1966. Two men in suits were found dead on a hill, surrounded by odd notes, and wearing lead eye masks. With no sign of violence, police were b...

The Dark Truth Behind Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1973, author and activist Oscar Zeta Acosta told his son he was getting on a boat, and would see him soon. But Acosta was never seen again. Theorie...

Murder in Antarctica?

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In May 2000, 32-year-old Australian astrophysicist Rodney Marks died suddenly on an Antarctica base after falling ill just 36 hours earlier. The Natio...

"My Lady Jane" and the Real Conspiracy to Take the English Throne

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Teenager Jane Grey was never supposed to be Queen of England. But in 1553, a complex conspiracy put her on the throne. A year later, another conspirac...

Argentina's Death Flights

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1976, a military coup led to an authoritarian regime in Argentina. The military and its new leader, Lieutenant General Jorge Rafaél Videla, then l...

The Great Hunger of Ireland: Natural Disaster or Man-Made Genocide?

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the mid-19th century, British-occupied Ireland lost roughly one-third of its population during a years-long catastrophe known as “The Great Hunge...

JFK Revisited: FBI Finds 2,000 More Documents

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In early 2025, the FBI announced that they had found more than 2,000 new records related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. What do they include? W...

The Dead Minister Who Lived

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When youth minister, husband, and new father Wesley Barrett Cox goes missing in rural Texas in 1984, authorities and his family assume he’s the vict...

The Fall of the Georgia Guidestones

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 2022, an explosion destroyed the granite monument known as The Georgia Guidestones. Modeled after Stonehenge, the structure was built...

The Colossal Reach of the Tartarian Empire

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An alternative-history conspiracy theory has been taking root on YouTube and Reddit forums. It alleges that a long-enduring, advanced society called T...

I Fought the Law: The Death of Bobby Fuller

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1966, Bobby Fuller was a rising rockstar. His eponymous band and their song "I Fought the Law" was climbing the charts when he suddenly died. As is...

Roswell of Texas: The Aurora UFO

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1897, locals of Aurora, Texas reported a UFO had crashed in their town. They supposedly discovered the body of an extraterrestrial, buried it in th...

The Mysterious Death of the Manson Family Lawyer

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1969, the Manson Family disrupted the “Summer of Love” when they murdered multiple people across a two-night span in Los Angeles. After Charles...

Curse of the Crying Boy

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On September 4, 1985, a British tabloid published a story attributing dozens of fires to a painting of a crying boy that had been mass produced in the...

The Death of Ned Doheny

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ned Doheny, the only heir to one of the world's richest oil baron was found shot to death next to his childhood friend and secretary Hugh Plunkett in ...

Death on Aconcagua

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1973, eight Americans attempted to summit Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the western and southern hemispheres. Only six returned. Sounds like t...

The Redpath Family Murders

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1901 Montreal, two members of the elite Redpath family were found dead from gunshot wounds in their luxurious mansion. The family’s intense secre...

Best of 2024: The Death of Harry Houdini [VIDEO]

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Carter's second Best of 2024 pick, we're returning to explore the remarkable life of legendary magician Harry Houdini and the mysterious circumstan...

Best of 2024: Where Are All the Aliens?

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Continuing our holiday break, we're bringing you some of Carter's favorite episodes from this year! His first Best of 2024 pick re-examines the questi...

Carter’s Holiday Pick: Otherworld

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is the second week of our four-week holiday break. Today we’re featuring another one of Carter’s favorite shows: Otherworld.  In this episo...

Carter’s Holiday Pick: Truthless

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is the first week of our four-week holiday break. Today we’re featuring one of Carter’s favorite shows: Truthless. In this episode of Truth...

A Dictator, a Commune, and the U.S. Embassy: The Disappearance of Boris Weisfeiler

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1984, Boris Weisfeiler went on a backpacking trip in Chile and never returned. Chilean investigators insist he drowned, but his family and the U.S....

The Lost City of Atlantis... Found?

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Yonaguni Monument is a large underwater stone complex off the coast of a tiny Japanese island. After their discovery in 1987, divers and local aca...

The Piri Reis Map

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 20th century, a Turkish historian discovered a map made in 1513 by famed cartographer Piri Reis. The map was incredibly detailed and even...

Werewolf or Royal Cover-up? The Beast of Gévaudan Pt. 2

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

War veterans, wolf-hunters, and the king’s own men hunted the bloodthirsty beast for three years before it was caught. Some called the beast a “we...

Werewolf or Royal Cover-up? The Beast of Gévaudan Pt. 1

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the 18th century, an unidentifiable monster preyed on French villagers. The carnage was so bad, one bishop claimed the beast was a punishment from ...

The Haitian Zombie Potion

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Long before they graced our screens as mindless, brain-eating monsters, zombies were rooted in Haitian folklore. Rumors of a zombie potion made their ...

Vampires Feed on Fear

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dubbed “The Last Vampire of New England,” Mercy Lena Brown allegedly feasted on her own family. But she wasn’t the first vampire, or the last. S...

Mummy Murder Cover-Up

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Before becoming the world’s most famous mummy, King Tut was a teen pharaoh. When he suddenly died at age 19, it changed Egyptian history. But it was...

D.B. Cooper Pt. 2

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the course of their decades-long investigation, the FBI interviewed thousands of potential D.B. Cooper suspects. All leads ran cold. But in 2011,...

D.B. Cooper Pt. 1

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971, a man operating under the pseudonym "Dan Cooper" hijacked a plane, stole $200,000, strapped the money to his body, and then parachuted into t...

Fallout: The Unabomber’s Crimes and Manifesto (with Candice DeLong)

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ted Kaczynski, the man better known to the world as the Unabomber, died in 2023. But his manifesto and the ideas he presented as justifications for hi...

The Voynich Manuscript Pt. 2

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With little explanation as to the meaning of the content of the Voynich manuscript, questions of a hoax arose. Conspiracy Theories is now on Instagram...

The Voynich Manuscript Pt. 1

28 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Discovered by book dealer Wilfred Voynich in 1912, the centuries-old “Voynich Manuscript” is written in a strange text that no one has been able t...

What Are "Feral Children," and Do They Really Exist? (with Michael Newton)

21 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A “wild” boy in 18th-century Germany meets the King of England. 100 years later, a child is raised in isolation by a man whose name he never knew....

“The Iceman” Richard Kuklinski Pt. 2

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After 13 years as a Mafia hit man, he found himself in the crosshairs of the New Jersey Police. There was only one thing left to do: slaughter every l...

“The Iceman” Richard Kuklinski Pt. 1

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

He killed over a hundred people before the police had even heard his name. So when the Mafia needed a body to drop without getting their hands dirty, ...

The Bennington Triangle

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Author Joseph A. Citro claims the Bennington Triangle has been haunted by stories of, quote, “mysterious lights, untraceable sounds, and unidentifia...

Did Edison Kill the Father of Cinema? [VIDEO]

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you had to guess, I bet you’d say Thomas Edison was the inventor of motion picture cameras. But what if we told you…that’s wrong? Louis Le Pr...

Have We Found Amelia Earhart's Missing Plane? [VIDEO]

17 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The disappearance of Amelia Earhart is one of the most popular unsolved mysteries of all time. Since Conspiracy Theories last covered the topic in 201...

The Man Who Flooded San Diego [VIDEO]

10 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In January 1916, San Diego, California was hit by a deadly flood. Nobody had foreseen just how catastrophic the storms would be… including the City ...

Tammany Hall Pt. 2: "The Missingest Man in New York"

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The political machinations of Tammany Hall extended to the buying and selling of political positions, including judgeships. New York State Supreme Cou...

Tammany Hall Pt. 1: “Boss” Tweed

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tammany Hall was the executive committee of the Democratic Party in New York City during the 1800s formed with the intention of aiding the city’s im...

The Enron Scandal Pt. 2

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Enron scandal shook Americans’ faith in their institutions. It also inspired a few different conspiracy theories. With the help of journalist Be...

The Enron Scandal Pt. 1

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Whether you know the full story or not, you’ve probably heard the name Enron before. In the summer of 2000, the energy company, renowned for their i...

Where Are All the Aliens?

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1950 Enrico Fermi sat down to have lunch with his friends and colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. While discussing UFOs, En...

Phoenix Lights Pt. 2

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In July 1997 the National Guard announced their explanation for the Phoenix Lights. But we’re not convinced...if the lights weren’t military in or...

Phoenix Lights Pt. 1

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Between 7:30 pm and 10:30 pm MST, in a space of about 300 miles from the Nevada state line, thousands of people across three states witnessed bizarre ...

The Death of Harry Houdini [VIDEO]

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Harry Houdini was one of the greatest entertainers of his time. He was constantly reinventing himself to stay on top. In the last few years of his car...

The Stasi: East Germany's Secret Police

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Benno Ohnesorg was shot in 1967. Uwe Barschel was poisoned in 1987. Despite the twenty-year gap, these two mysterious deaths could be murders with the...

UFO Disclosure and NHI Threat Analysis (with Bryce Zabel)

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Where do we stand with UFO disclosure in 2024? Does NHI contact represent a looming threat? On this episode of Conspiracy Theories, we look to the ski...

Killdozer

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Granby, Colorado, a petty feud with neighbors and the town council left Marvin Heemeyer feeling backed into a corner. Little did they know that he ...

The Sunset Limited Train Derailment

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

October 9th, 1995, Amtrak's 12-car Sunset Limited train was powering through the Arizona desert with 258 passengers on board when it suddenly separate...

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In September 1944, as World War II raged overseas, the small town of Mattoon, Illinois felt under attack. Dozens of people reported smelling a sickeni...

The Circleville Letters

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

“You have been watched: Failure to comply and you shall suffer: no one can help: no one can protect you: Obey: Obey:” In 1976, anonymous letters ...

Disappearance at the Vatican: The Orlandi Case

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a teenager goes missing in the world’s smallest, and supposedly safest, country? Emanuela Orlandi’s sudden disappearance remains...

Solved: The Somerton Man Mystery

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1948, an unknown man died on Somerton Beach near Adelaide, Australia. He carried only the clothes on his body, cigarettes, and a hidden cipher. For...

The Yuba County Five

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the winter of 1978, a group of friends caught a college basketball game about an hour north of where they lived. That night, none of the men return...

Kryptos: The CIA’s Unsolvable Cipher

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows the CIA headquarters holds many secrets... But their most public secret might be the riddle encoded in Kryptos, a giant outdoor sculptu...

Julian Assange

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most controversial figures of the 2010s, Julian Assange is either a criminal, a hero, or both. Carter dives into Assange’s story, examini...

The 2001 Anthrax Attacks

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, someone began mailing envelopes containing a deadly form of anthrax, reigniting a national panic. The FBI s...

Mel's Hole

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A man identifying himself as Mel Waters called into the nationally syndicated talk show, Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, claiming a hole on his prope...

The Disappearance of Glenn Miller (with Dennis Spragg)

07 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How does the Taylor Swift of the swing era just... disappear? That’s the question Carter tries to answer in this episode alongside Dennis Spragg, on...

The Rendlesham UFO Incident Pt. 2

31 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Carter examines alternative explanations for the famous alien sighting, including a government experiment gone wrong, a cold war conspiracy, and time ...

The Rendlesham UFO Incident Pt. 1

24 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nicknamed “The British Roswell,” it’s one of the most controversial UFO sightings. Carter presents the accounts of US Air Force Officers from De...

The Silk Road Pt. 2

17 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By 2012, undercover DEA agents had cracked holes in an underground criminal conspiracy. It was the “Amazon.com of Drugs” – the Silk Road. But to...