Folklore Forensics
You've heard the story. Now hear the case.
Every culture tells stories about violence, betrayal, revenge, disappearance, obsession, grief, and power. Over time, those stories become myths, legends, and folklore, passed from generation to generation long after the original events have been forgotten.
Humanity's oldest stories preserve humanity's oldest crimes.
Folklore Forensics reopens humanity's oldest cases, investigating myths and legends from around the world as if they were real crimes. We reconstruct timelines, examine evidence, question witnesses, and follow the trail wherever it leads. Along the way, we ask not only what happened, but why cultures chose stories as the way to remember it.
Because folklore is more than entertainment. It is a record of the fears, desires, anxieties, and transgressions that societies could not stop talking about. A way of preserving difficult truths. A way of making sense of the unthinkable.
What details were exaggerated? What facts were lost to time? Why did certain crimes become monsters, curses, prophecies, and ghost stories? And what do humanity's oldest stories still reveal about us today?
New cases every week. Hosted and written by Danielle Christmas.
Folklore Forensics
Season 3: The Wicked Women Docket
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Witches. Hags. Sorceresses. Child-stealers. Monsters. This season, Folklore Forensics reopens the case files of history's most infamous wicked women.
You've heard the story. Now hear the case.
Coming in September, Season 3 of Folklore Forensics reopens the Wicked Women Docket.
Across folklore, mythology, fairy tales, and history, certain women are remembered in remarkably similar ways: they're dangerous, disruptive, supernatural, and impossible to control. They're witches, hags, sorceresses, monsters, and cautionary tales.
This season, we'll investigate the women behind the legends.
From Baba Yaga and Morgan le Fay to the Pendle witches and Isobel Gowdie, each episode treats a familiar story as a historical case file, reconstructing the evidence and asking what these enduring narratives might actually preserve.
Because sometimes the most frightening stories aren't about monsters. They're about women.
Folklore Forensics reopens myths, legends, and folklore as historical criminal cases. Listener discretion is advised.
Written and hosted by Danielle Christmas and produced by Audio Ellis.
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Follow the show on Instagram @folkloreforensics
Case suggestions and research inquiries: folkloreforensicspod@gmail.com
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