During the last four decades, the Crusades have become one of the most dynamic areas of historical enquiry, which points to an increasing curiosity to understand and interpret these extraordinary events. What persuaded people in the Christian West to want to recapture Jerusalem? What impact did the success of the First Crusade (1099) have on the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean? What was the effect of crusading on the people and institutions of western Europe? How did people record the Crusades and, finally, what is their legacy?Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Episode 5 wow this season is moving fast. Episodes 5 and possibly 6 will be about the crusades it’s far to cast a topic for just one episode, and nobody wants to listen to me drone on for hours in one sitting. I did speak briefly about the crusades in episode 1 but as I said I feel we need to go into more depth. As we all know this was a time of around 200 years were religions were at loggerheads over the holy land. These differences would lead to some bloody wars and terrible acts of humanity So without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Twitter: @darkhistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

There is something graphic and Gorey when it comes to axe murders, Unfortunately for mankind, history has seen a lot of psychotic ax murderers in its time. You have probably heard of some of these ruthless slayers, like the infamous Lizzie Borden, but other stories you may have not.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hopes everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. In episode 4 were going to talk about axe murders, if you hadn’t guessed, there will be some famous murders some obscure but unfortunately all blood thirsty and manic So without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Twitter: @darkhistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Hell on Earth, the nightmare depicted by Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel in his mid-16th-century "The Triumph of Death" reflects the social upheaval and terror that followed the plague that devastated medieval Europe. Thought by most to be a scourge of the past, the bacteria of the plague still appears from time to time and has even been researched as a biological weapon by some countries.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hopes everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. In episode 3 were going to talk about the Black Death, this topic seems like it was aeons ago but the emergents of Covid-19 and the quarantines it brought with it. Plunge us back in time with the same methods of containing such an outbreak. So without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Twitter: @darkhistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Yugoslavia is a name that to some of the framkenstien creation and the death of two empires. To some it hold find memory of sun sea and sand, the younger among us may never had heard of this once Baltic country but to some it brings memorys of war, death, destruction and genocide.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. In episode 2 were going to look at the former country of Yugoslavia, up until recently the war that was fought here was the last fought in Europe. This is going to be another in a long line of grim tales from Europe, but it is up there with some of the most despicable and deplorable stories that have come out of this much civilized continent. Please don't judge me on my pronunciations in this I am going to murder quite a few. So without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Twitter: @darkhistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

The Middle East, is a land of mystique, wonder and is the cradle of civilization. A land where people have flourished for thousands of years in the backdrop of a harsh and arid landscape, but unfortunately just like many places on this earth the ground is soaked in blood. This once prosperous and technologically advanced part of the world has decayed into a land of pain torture and misery.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Well, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a happy new year, I hope everyone is over their hangovers and ready to get back to it. I thought I would start season two with something similar to season one but this time, if you hadn't guessed, we’ll be looking at the middle east. As you will hear this place has been the centre of the world on numerous occasions throughout history whether it be through empires or technological advances but has always had this sort of destabilising undertone that in modern times has ripped a lot of it apart. so without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Twitter: @darkhistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Hi everyone I want to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. Thank you for all your support through this first year of the podcast. I really hope you enjoy the Christmas special Christmas is a time for cozying up in front of a roaring fire with family and friends, with gifts for giving and receiving, a time to eat drink and be merry and over indulgence. For those who are more religious amount us it’s a spiritual time of year, a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. How ever you spend your time our contemporary Christmas has changed dramatically over the century’s, it’s be morphed, polished and censored into a commercial wonderland of craziness. Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. So we are here episode 23 and the last of this season and this year. I’m going to start with a couple of apologies before we continue so first of all this episode is late as I have just got over Covid, I was unwell for the first week then the second week my voice just wasn’t right so I decided to delay this episode for a week so I could give it my all. Second I’ve had a bit of a mix up with my podcast distributor seem I put some episodes for subscription only. When I realised my mistake they were unpublished so I had to re publish them and now the sequencing is all out of whack. So yah am sorry about those two things. For episode 23 I though I would change it up a little, being the time of year and all I didn’t really want to spread doom and gloom, but I also didn’t want to go too far off topic so I decided to have a look at some of the Christmas folklore from around the world. There is still a modicum of death a distraction but this week it’s tied in a bow. so without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Twitter: @darkhistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Hi everyone and welcome to the m dark history podcast hope everyone is well. Thank you everyone for the massive support everyone has shown, I can’t believe how quickly this show is growing. So in episode 7 well were gunna go back to the good old Soviet Union and another one of stalins experiments. We spoke about the holodomor about a month a go now and if you haven’t listen to that episode what you doing go listen to it first, I’m only joking that episode isn’t connected to this episode, but I did talk about the kulaks and how they were arrested and taken to the gulag system unfortunate for those people the lucky ones were killed, so today we will be talking about the gulag system but one ordeal in particular the real hunger games or Nazino island, as a warning this does get very dark so listen with caution, with that out the way we will begin.Sources Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag by Nicholas Werth and Jan Tomasz Grosshttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazino_tragedyGulag: A History of the Soviet Camps by Anne ApplebaumOne Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsynhttps://www.rferl.org/a/cannibal-island-in-1933-nearly-5-000-died-in-one-of-stalin-s-most-horrific-labor-camps/29341167.htmlhttps://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/horrors-unearthed-in-the-unknown-gulag-and-cannibal-island/Links Email: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well.as always Thank you again for the massive support shown on the previous episode, all the support given is appreciated greatly.I can’t believe we’re at the podcasts 10th episode already. So yah episode 10 I will talk about a mystery that has endured the test of time, a mystery that refuses to be solved, one of history’s biggest mystery’s, sorry I couldn’t help rhyming that sentence, and that is the colony of Roanoke, so with out further a do please sit back and relax for more dark history. Sources Disputed Land by Tim pearsRoanoke island by Dave StickRoanoke by Lee millerhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colonyhttps://www.history.com/.amp/news/what-happened-to-the-lost-colony-of-roanokehttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/131208-roanoke-lost-colony-discovery-history-raleighLinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. In episode 11 I’m going to talk about some that I alluded to way back in the first episode and that is Germany in Africa and the genocide of the nama and herero people, now if you’ve listen to the episode you will have heard about some of the imperialism in Africa by European power and if not then maybe go a listen to that first as I will be skimming certain points that I have spoken about previously like the Berlin conference and the scramble for Africa, yes that was a shameless plug. Now I know the title will drum up visions of the Holocaust or ww2 and believe topics of that scale will come up on this channel in the future, but I would like to talk about Germanys exploits in Africa and yes kettle calling the pot burnt arse a British man on his soap box about Germans killing people when Britain were the worst for it, the hypocrisy isn’t lost on me and again I will talk all about that in future episodes but this story up to a few years ago was never acknowledged by Germany and it sort of had an air of obscurity around it. This listen could be distressing to some people so please listen with caution there are description of death, mutilation, rape and racism so with out further ado sit back and relax for more dark history. Sourceshttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocidehttps://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/herero-and-nama-genocideThe Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third ReichElizabeth Roberts Baer,The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of NazismDavid Olusoga,LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Botched executions occur when there is a breakdown in, or departure from, the 'protocol' for a particular method of execution. The protocol can be established by the norms, expectations, and advertised virtues of each method or by the government’s officially adopted execution guidelines. Botched executions are 'those involving unanticipated problems or delays that caused, at least arguably, unnecessary agony for the prisoner or that reflect gross incompetence of the executioner.'Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. For episode 22, we’re going to look at some of history's botched executions. We will look at 3 individual cases through out history and hopefully you enjoy. Listeners' discretion is advised for this one as the descriptions are quite graphic. so without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Twitter: @darkhistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

King Leopold II ruled over Belgium from 1865 to 1909. Today, the memory of his reign still lives on, and he is glorified with golden statues of his likeness in every major city in Belgium. In history classes, each generation is taught that he was a humanitarian who brought Christianity and the wonders of civilization to The Congo Free State. However, the truth has been kept away from the Belgian people. The reality is that King Leopold II is responsible for the murder and mutilation of 10 million Congolese people. This just may be the biggest cover-up in European history.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. For episode 21 as you may have guessed is the dark biography of king Leopold the 2nd of Belgium we’ve not looked at an evil person for a while so I though who better to do then the person I spoke briefly about way back in episode one. now I will warn you this will get dark and there will be descriptions of death and mutilation in this episode, but if your a long time listener you know that pretty much all we talk about here . so without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

In the 16th and 17th centuries suspicion of witchcraft was at its height. In England and other nations across Europe there were trials and executions of suspected witches, Hundreds died in England as a result. Perhaps the most notorious witch trial of the 17th century, the legend of the Pendle witches is one of the many dark tales of imprisonment and execution at Lancaster Castle. just over three centuries saw witch trials held in England but fewer than 500 people were executed for this crime. This one series of trials in the summer of 1612 therefore accounts for 2% of all witches executed.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. For episode 20 and the Halloween special we're going to look at something that happened a mere 40 miles from my house and that it the pendle witch trials. The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. so without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

In the United States National Park System alone there are more than 84 million acres (35 million hectares) of preserved woods, deserts, mountains and other wilderness, so it's no surprise that in the past 100 years there have been a number of cases of hikers going missing. Many of those who vanished were young children and inexperienced hikers, but some were healthy and seasoned outdoorspeople. But is there more to these disappearances than just kids wandering off, or hikers becoming disoriented?Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. For episode 19, we're going to look at some of the stranger cases of missing people in American national parks, some of these are anomalously mind-bending and I'm excited to share them. Yes, I know the missing 411 is a thing, and some you may have heard these before but I'll go through a couple of separate stories and maybe we will do a couple of part of this. so without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

It was the transatlantic steamer Archtor that first noticed something was wrong. On its voyage to the port of Leith from Philadelphia, the Archtor passed the lighthouse on the Flannan Isles on the night of the 15th of December 1900 and the crew saw that its light was off. After docking in Leith three days later, the news was passed on to the Northern Lighthouse Board that something was amiss on Flannan. The question of what happened to the lighthouse keepers would become one of Scotland’s most intriguing mysteries.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. For episode 18, I'm going to talk about the flannan island mystery, as you would have guessed, a strange tale of three lighthouse keepers who disappear in one of the world's most hostile and inhospitable places in the world so without further ado please sit back and relax for more dark history. Sources The Lighthouse: The Mystery of the Eilean Mor Lighthouse Keepers by Keith MccloskeyAll the Light We Cannot SeeBy Anthony Doerrhttps://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17639867.mystery-vanished-flannan-lighthouse-keepers-probed-new-book/https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannan_Isles_LighthouseLinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler took his life in his subterranean Berlin bunker. The impact of Hitler's suicide on the war was more emotional than strategic. He killed himself because he understood that surrender and capture were inevitable. Still, in the aftermath of Hitler's suicide, there were many consequences and reactions on an individual and a collective level. Individual German government figures and the German people had radical and diverse reactions to the news of Hitler's demise. Some officials rightfully anticipated that it was time to vanish to avoid arrest and responsibility for the unspeakable crimes of the Third Reich.Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. For episode 17 ,as you may have guess, we are going to look into the timeline of event immediately after Adolf Hitlers death. As we know After Hitler died brought the subsequent end of World War II in Europe, Germany was divided into four zones by the victorious Allies, who occupied the country. This led to the start of the Cold War between the Western Bloc, supported by the US, and the Eastern Bloc, supported by the Soviet Union, but I don’t want to look at the years and decades after I want to look at the seconds, minutes and hours, I want to look at the major players in the terrible web of death and hatred and tell their despicable stories . Before we start If it isn’t painfully obvious by now,this podcast is going to be talking about hitler and everything that comes with talking about hitler. I am not trying to glorify or condone any action or atrocity committed by the nazis, if any of my dear listeners get offended by what I’m about to talk about please feel free to sit this one out, for those of you who are staying with us, with out further a do please sit back and relax for more dark history. Sources The Last Days of Hitler. by Hugh Trevor Roper.Inside Hitler's Bunker. by Joachim FestThe Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives by ana Petrovahttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Adolf_Hitlerhttps://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2017-11-15/ty-article/what-happened-to-nazi-germany-after-hitlers-suicide/0000017f-e891-dc7e-adff-f8bd117d0000?_amp=truehttps://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/nazi-germanys-leader-admiral-karl-donitzLinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

At 10 AM. January 15, 1947. Betty Bersinger, a local housewife, was walking down Norton Avenue in Los Angeles when she saw something disturbing in an empty lot on the street. When she first saw the corpse, Bersinger said that the body was so white that at first she assumed it had to be a mannequin. But when she realized that what she was actually looking at was a severed corpse, she ran to contact the authorities.The body Bersigner found was Elizabeth Short, known posthumously as the Black Dahlia. Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. For episode 16 as you may have guess we are going to look into the strange and mysterious death of Elizabeth short or know more commonly as the black dahlia. The murder that has grown in infamy as the decades have fell away, a cold case and mystery that has plagued law enforcement and ultimately will never be solved.So with out further a do please sit back and relax for more dark history. Sources Black Dahlia, Red Rose, Piu Marie EatwellSevered: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder, John GilmoreThe Black Dahlia Files, Donald WolfeBlack Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, Steve Hodelhttps://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/the-black-dahliahttps://www.biography.com/.amp/news/black-dahlia-murder-mysteryLinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Episode 15 I can’t believe it, it seem a lifetime ago i published my first episode way back in January scary how time flies. Since then The show is so close to have 10 thousand individual plays which is insane and also the show has had its first episode to reach a thousand plays which is unreal so I’m so grateful to you all thank you so much. Episode 15 is something that up until a few months ago I’d never heard of, I don’t think I’ve seen to much of it on you tube or any podcast either. Just before we start a couple of things to warn or mention I will be talking about nazi, hitler, the SS and the holocaust, it can be a sore subject and I am in no way trying to glorify or condone their actions, they are a big part of this story and anytime they are mentioned is for the purposes of context. The next is to do with talking about Jewish people and what, in my experience, generally comes with that and that is the free Palestine agenda, honestly I can’t see what this story and that agenda have in common. I covered this on TikTok a month or two ago and I couldn’t believe the amount of anti sermetacism there is. now I have my own views on the Israel Palestine debate but I find that hole subject very flammable, so please keep the two separate. With all that out the way please enjoy episode 15. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a phase we have all heard, it’s use stretches back some 4000 years when it was coined in ancient Babylon by king Hammurabi, well our tale revolves around this moral conundrum, our tale sees a wildly ambitious plot, our tale see revenge On a giant scale, retribution for an event that saw millions die and permanently spread a blackness over this era in human history. This is the tale of Nakam the Jews avengers, So with out further a do please sit back and relax for more dark history. Sources Robert KaplanNakam (Vengeance)Nakam: The Holocaust Survivors Who Sought Full-Scale RevengeDina Porathttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NakamThe Jewish Plot To Kill Millions of Germans As Revenge For the HolocaustGrant piperLinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. in the mid 1840 an un wanted visitor came to the Irish shores , this visitor brought the country to its knees and their overlord did absolutely nothing to help. The visitor caused so many people to die and even more to leave. A visitor which would bring one of the worse famines of the 19th century and change the destinies of London and Dublin a like, today in episode 14 we will talk about phytophthora infestans or in English the blight and how it wiped so many people off of Irelands census. So with out further a do sit back and relax for more dark history. Sources The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy by Tim Pat CooganBlack Potatos The Story of the Great Irish Famine By Susan Campbell BartolettiHourly HistoryThe Great Famine: A History from Beginning to End (History of Ireland)https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)https://www.history.com/.amp/topics/immigration/irish-potato-faminehttps://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-historyLinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Today we’re going to talk about the life of a man that to some is the very embodiment of evil, the very incarnation of the devil himself. but to l many Romanians he’s viewed as a national hero. He was one of the most respected rulers of Wallachia, a true defender of Christianity, a great warrior, and a brilliant politician who stood up agains the tyranny and cruelty of Ottoman Empire. In his time, he was know as Vlad the impaler thanks to his favourite form of execution. Today we remember him as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. So For today episode we will look at the bloody life of Vlad Tepes, So with out further a do sit back and relax for more dark history. Sources Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times by Radu R Florescu and Raymond T McNally Vlad the Impaler: In Search of the Real Dracula, by M.J. TrowVlad the Impaler: A Life From Beginning to End (Medieval History)https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impalerhttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Vlad-the-ImpalerLinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21

Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. In This episode it though I’d change the pace a little and bring you a collection of stories, some you may have heard some you may have not but I guarantee they will be bone chilling. First story takes us to Europe in the 60s and the Alexander family pretty unremarkable I know but when you hear this story, un remarkable it is not my dear listeners and I warn you that there are some very unsettling things to come so please listen with caution. So with out further a do sit back and relax for more dark history. Sourceshttps://queeniesdailysnippets.wordpress.com/2020/12/18/50-years-since-the-crime-of-the-century-in-tenerife/https://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f237/harald-frank-alexander-223779/https://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/disturbing-tales-ibadan-forest-horror/amp/https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibadan_forest_of_horrorhttps://tribuneonlineng.com/soka-metamorphosis-kidnappers-den-community-transformed-new-haven/LinksEmail: darkhistory2021@outlook.comTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLSvwJJV/YouTube :https://youtube.com/c/DarkHistory2021Instagram: @dark_history21