Spooky stories with skeptical teeth.
Ghoulish Tendencies follows Gabby and Kim through ghost stories, legends, movie curses, and true-crime cases with a debunking streak. The tone is chatty and irreverent, but the strongest episodes linger on evidence, power, trauma, and the gaps between certainty and truth.
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Ghoulish Tendencies is built around the friction between a good spooky story and the need to question it. Gabby and Kim identify themselves as paranormal investigators, and that background gives the show its appetite for ghosts, legends, lore, haunted places, and movie curses. Recent episodes, though, show how far the format can stretch into true crime and legal history. The Ronald Cotton two-parter is not just a case recap; it tracks how memory, police procedure, courtroom limits, and eyewitness confidence can converge into a wrongful conviction. Those episodes fit the show’s debunking instinct in a different register. The target is not a ghost claim, but certainty itself. The Juana Barraza coverage takes another route, following theft, targeting of older women, wrestling, imprisonment, and the complicated discussion around female serial killers. The hosts talk openly about anger, repression, gender expectations, and why research on violence has so often treated men as the default subject. They also let the room breathe. Jokes, interruptions, side remarks, and exhaustion from real life remain part of the texture. That informality does not erase the darker subjects; it makes the show feel like a long conversation between people trying to stay curious without becoming detached. The Boston Strangler and Henri Landru episodes lean into true-crime territory, with room for uncertainty, debate, and deep case trails. Cursed Movies: Rebel Without a Cause shifts into Hollywood folklore, covering deaths, accidents, strange aftermaths, and the appeal of finding patterns in tragedy. Ask Ghoulish episodes reveal the editorial process behind the show. Gabby and Kim talk about haunted spaces, audience questions, over-covered current cases, the Warrens, Amityville, and the ethics of discussing living or recently living figures. That self-awareness matters. The show is irreverent, but it is not careless by design. Its best lane is the messy middle: eerie enough for paranormal fans, researched enough for true-crime listeners, and skeptical enough to resist the easiest version of a story. Ghoulish Tendencies works for people who want spooky material with jokes, tangents, discomfort, and follow-through.
Made for: For listeners who like paranormal lore, true crime, movie curses, and wrongful-conviction cases delivered with candid banter and visible research. It especially suits people who enjoy dark subjects handled with humor, skepticism, and ethical second thoughts.
What sets it apart: The show’s paranormal-investigator lens is paired with a recurring habit of debunking, questioning sources, and slowing down when a case is too current or too contested. It can move from ghosts to forensic psychology without losing its conversational rhythm.
A podcast that blends worldly creepy historic places, ghost stories, legends, lore and true crime together for the spookiest neopolitan content you've ever heard.
This is where your debunking donut comes glazed with wrongful-conviction outrage and paranormal-investigator banter.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Barraza's prison account opens into a thoughtful conversation about anger, gender, and how female serial killers are studied.
Juana Barraza: The Little Old Lady Killer, Part 2 follows Barraza into prison, where her account of anger toward women she saw as "uppity" or humiliating with money becomes the starting point for a broader look at motive and repression.
A conversational first part on Juana Barraza's path toward targeting older women living alone, with uncertainty kept in view.
Juana Barraza's path from small thefts to attacks on older women living alone gives this first episode a grim, focused shape. It follows her domestic work, the scheme with Arceli Tapia Martinez to enter homes while posing as nurses or social workers, and the killing later…
A candid Ask Ghoulish return about choosing paranormal stories when attention moves faster than the facts.
Ghoulish Tendencies slips back into Ask Ghoulish mode with listener questions that start playfully and settle into the harder question of which current cases are worth covering.
A confident identification meets a courtroom where complicating evidence is kept out of reach.
Ronald Cotton's first trial rests on Jennifer Thompson's certainty, while evidence that could have complicated that certainty never reaches the jury. Thompson said she memorized her attacker's face, identified Cotton twice in police lineups, and pointed to him under oath.
A forensic-psychology angle follows Jennifer's case through an early investigation marked by serious gaps in her care.
Jennifer's report of rape anchors an opening episode about the first steps of an investigation and the ways procedure can fail the person at its center.
Fast true crime with sharp case logic.
Morning drama, real-life receipts, quick laughs.
Human stories inside broken cases.
A wrongful-conviction case file in motion.
One grim case, one face mask, one grade.
["Ghoulish Tendencies returns to Juana Barraza, Ana Maria de los Reyes Alfaro, and the January 25, 2006 arrest that ended the search for the killer the hosts call Mataviejitas.", "Gabby and Kim say Barraza approached Alfaro as a social worker, wore a red jacket and black pants, and was chased down by two police officers after a tenant screamed for help.", "The episode tracks the spring 2008 trial, the 11 murder convictions, and the 759-year sentence that made Barraza eligible for parole in 2058.", "Gabby and Kim also use the case to examine media bias, older women as victims, and why other arrests such as Raul Osiel Marroquin Reyes, Aracely Vasquez Garcia, and Jorge Mario Tablas complicated the story."]
Juana Barraza, the Mexican wrestler known as La Mata Viejitas, is the focus of this Ghoulish Tendencies episode about elderly women killed in Mexico.
Ask Ghoulish returns on Ghoulish Tendencies after a 2024 gap, with Gabby and Kim framing the episode as listener Q&A and joking that their brains are "crispy." Gabby says graduate school has changed how she picks cases, pushing her toward forensic-psychology angles, stronger sources, and topics like Ronald Cotton, movie curses, killer animals, and the New Jersey shark attacks.
["Ghoulish Tendencies' \"The Ronald Cotton Case, Part 2: Trials & Exoneration\" follows Ronald Cotton's trial after Jennifer Thompson's identification and the legal fallout around it.
Ghoulish Tendencies' "The Ronald Cotton Case, Part 1: The Crime" centers on Jennifer Thompson's 1984 assault in Burlington, North Carolina and the eyewitness-memory problem around it.
Two paranormal investigators introduce a series on the Boston Strangler, discussing their approach to true crime with debate and speculation.
Two paranormal investigators discuss the true crime case of French serial killer Henri Landru, known as the Bluebeard of Gambais.
Kim and Gabby of Ghoulish Tendencies examine the alleged curse on the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, whose three leads, James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood, all died young.