Pandemonium and the Fugitive Governor 

By the end of the Civil War, Texas was impoverished, lawless, and had experienced suicide in the governor’s mansion. Wartime turmoil ensnared the state, especially its last Confederate governor, Pendleton Murrah. Orphaned by his mother as an infant, Murrah was raised by a charitable organization, which saw to his education. Despite having tuberculosis, he moved to Texas and became a lawyer and politician. He was elected governor in November 1863 and served until the end of the Civil War. The war brought on multiple hardships, culminating in chaos. Former soldiers robbed the state treasury in a violent shoot-out while Murrah and other Confederates exiled themselves to Mexico. Murrah died south of the border, where his remains are still lost.

Author Lori Duran exhumes a treacherous and tumultuous time in Texas’s early statehood. 

A buffalo ranch, banana stand wars, and the world’s largest surfboard. 

Since its founding in 1889, Orange County has captured the world's attention with its iconic attractions, stunning beaches, and vibrant communities. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find a treasure trove of hidden gems. From lion safaris and an alligator farm to roaming buffalo, the theme parks of Orange County once offered a wide variety of thrills before fading into obscurity. The county is also the site of one of the most infamous UFO sightings in history, documented by Rex Heflin’s Polaroid camera in 1965. A plethora of famous rock stars, athletes, and actors have left their mark, though many of their local haunts have long since disappeared. Social justice movements and dramatic showdowns are woven into the tapestry of the county’s history alongside tales of aviation, agriculture, and the innovative businesses that took root here.

Join author and historian Chris Epting as he shines a light on offbeat and exotic tales of the O.C.

From fond memories to lasting legacies. 

The streets of Fairfield have played host to a multitude of businesses over the years. Some have come and gone without much fanfare, but others have left a lasting impression on the community. 

Many locals started their lives as “Bunney babies” delivered by Dr. Gordon Bunney at the Empire Street hospital bearing his name and grew up playing Donkey Kong and Pac-Man at the Gold Mine arcade in the Solano Mall. People shopped at Freitas Toggery, Pinkerton Hardware or Napadashery and then met up with friends at places like the Solano Theatre and Pepperbelly's Comedy Club. If you were looking to buy a car, there was no better place to go than Woodard Chevrolet or Chet Monez Ford.

Fairfield also welcomed innovative companies like Explosive Technology, which was founded in 1965 and helped put the first men on the moon. 

Join Accidental Historian Tony Wade as he shares mercantile memories from Fairfield's past.

A vivid portrait of power, privilege, and peril in colonial Charleston.

Eighteenth-century Charleston was a city built on water, wealth, and whispers—where the harbor brimmed with merchant ships and war vessels and status was measured in wharves, wine cellars, imported porcelain, and family names that could open every door. This is colonial Charleston at its peak: a thriving Atlantic port fueled by rice and indigo, shaped by transatlantic trade, and held together by tightly woven kinship networks that blurred the line between commerce and political power.

At the center is Rebecca Brewton Motte—born into privilege, married into influence, and forced by fire, disease, and revolution to become far more than a genteel figure in a drawing room. Through the interconnected worlds of the Brewtons, Mottes, Pinckneys, and their allies, the story reveals how South Carolina’s elite built fortunes, constructed iconic townhouses, navigated epidemics and natural disasters, and managed sprawling plantations with enslaved labor powering every “luxury” detail.

But this is not a postcard version of the past. Alongside elegant architecture and consumer culture sits the raw reality of colonial life: malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, hurricanes, legal constraints on women, and the destabilizing pressure of war and British occupation. Moving from Charleston’s grand streets to backcountry plantations, this biography-driven history shows how one woman’s life illuminates the larger machinery of colonial South Carolina, the American Revolution, and the fragile world that made—and nearly unmade—an Atlantic empire. Historian and author Alexia Helsley details this remarkable history. 

Containing stories from the historical record and interviews with today's practitioners, Maryland Witchcraft has a little something for the history buff, the modern wiccan, and the merely curious alike.

In the dark history of witchcraft in America, other states dominate the popular mind, but Maryland, too, has blood on its hands.

Found guilty of witchcraft, Rebecca Fowler met her death by hanging. If she had been accused in a different colony, the end would perhaps have been different, but in Maryland, witchcraft meant death. The end was not so quick for Moll Dyer. Chased out of her house by fearful neighbors, she fled into the bitter winter night. Facing similar accusations, Hannah Edwards and Virtue Violl stood trial but escaped such a dire fate.

Drawing on stories of ancient witchcraft and shamanism and accounts of European witch trials, author Trish Hoffman unfolds the history of Maryland witches from the colonial era to the present day.

The Rock River Valley is best known for its beautiful scenery and recreational opportunities. But like the Rock River itself, there is a darkness that lies just under the surface.

This region’s history is filled with eerie tales of ghostly encounters that suggest that the line between the living and dead is thinner here. The river starts near Waupun, Wisconsin where the nearby Wisconsin State Prison Cemetery contains a dark entity that haunts the grave of the man that killed her. Then travels southward through towns with veiled stories of things that go bump in the night. Towns like Beloit, Wisconsin where the students at the local college have shared stories of the entities that linger in the halls.

Crossing the state line, the city of Rockford, Illinois has its own claims of ghostly encounters. The river finally joins the Mississippi in Rock Island, Illinois. Ghosts of the gangsters that once called this area home still reign at the Rock Island Roadhouse.

Author Kathi Kresol weaves together the legends, history, and personal encounters with the spirits of the dead all along the route of this historic river.