The Clearwater Monster

When Angelo Quinto died, his family said police were responsible for his death. But a lawyer told them his official cause of death would likely be something called “excited delirium.” You can read more of Renu Rayasam's reporting on "excited delirium" at KFF Health News. Arjun By ...  Show more

After a gang leader was murdered in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the only witnesses who would talk with the police were tourists. They looked through so-called “mug books” filled with photographs of Asian men - and pointed out a man named Chol Soo Lee. Years later, a journalist dec ...  Show more

Early one morning in 1948, a phone call woke up the police chief in the small town of Clearwater, Florida. The caller said he’d seen something strange at the beach. Residents woke up that morning to find an odd set of footprints in the sand, and a rumor began circulating that Cle ...  Show more

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 property was unfathomably deep and had supernatural attributes. To this day, neither the hole nor the real “Mel Waters” have ever been ...  Show more

On the morning of May 15th, 1979, three boys were playing by the Wyken Basin when they noticed something floating in the water. Curious, they went to take a closer look. They approached the reeds on the water's edge, and the object came into focus. It dawned on them ...

The ill-fated whale-ship The Essex, was rammed by an 85-foot sperm whale on 20th November, 1820. The incident inspired Herman Melville’s sea-faring novel, Moby Dick. Left to fend for themselves in tiny whaling boats, the young crew had to make terrible choices in order to preserv ...  Show more