American Hauntings Podcast

John Torrio was finally exactly where he wanted to be. 
With his uncle, Big Jim Colosimo out of the way, his business expanding across the South Side of the city and into the suburbs, and his trustworthy young right-hand man, Al Capone, at his side, he was ready to start dividing up the Chicago into territories. With all the various gangs that already existed in the city eager to jump into the liquor business, Torrio knew that it would be impossible to keep the peace without a plan...
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Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859
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This episode was written by Troy Taylor
Produced and edited by Cody Beck

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A mother. A bathtub. A death ruled suspicious.
In 2012, Lisa Cutler was found drowned in her Mount Zion, Illinois home while her children slept upstairs.
At first, it looked like an accident.
But more than 20 bruises… a failing marriage… and over a million dollars in life insurance told a different story.
Was it a tragic fall— or something far more deliberate?
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Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859
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American pop culture in the 1920s and 1930s was on the verge of a new sort of entertainment. Cultural shifts and breakthroughs in technology had led to a steady stream of new kinds of books, comics, music, and magazines, but it would be film that transformed popular culture forever. The ghostly images watched with strangers in the dark proved powerful enough to incite as well as to entertain. Soon after films gained popularity, Americans began to use them to frame their history and their identity, as well as to literally project their fears and anxieties.
And among those fears were the fears of the Devil.
When the Devil first began to appear in early American movies, his story was part of a heavily Christianized moral lesson. European filmmakers tended to take a far less religious approach to the Devil, using satanic lore as material for fantastic and uncanny imagery, but in America, silent films tended to avoid explicitly supernatural subjects, preferring to use the theater as a fire and brimstone pulpit – at first anyway.
But darker days for the cinema were on the way. 

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John Torrio was ready when the new Prohibition law went into effect, but he seemed to be the only one. He was waiting impatiently for everyone else to catch up. He’d been predicting Prohibition to his friends and business associates for months and knew it would be how organized crime could amass untold amounts of wealth. To take something that had always been legal, and make it illegal, especially a vice like alcohol, and then expect Americans to adhere to the letter of the law was incredibly naïve. Torrio knew that by taking advantage of Prohibition, it was a way for people like himself to become millionaires. 
Check out our new American Hauntings Podcast Network for even more spooky shows.
Have a question or comment? Text us on the Haunt Line @ 217-791-7859
New Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/troytayloroddities
Check out our updated website and sign up for our newsletter at AmericanHauntingsPodcast.com
Want an episode every week, plus other awesome perks and discounts? Check out our Patreon page
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Follow us on Twitter @AmerHauntsPod, @TroyTaylor13, @CodyBeckSTL
Follow us on Instagram @AmericanHauntingsPodcast, @TroyTaylorgram, @CodyBeckSTL
This episode was written by Troy Taylor
Produced and edited by Cody Beck

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The strange and sometimes sinister world of America’s homegrown religions, faith movements, and cults is filled with bizarre characters. There are many that most listeners have undoubtedly heard of, but what about the cult leader who actually became a king?
In 1847, the only man ever crowned king within the continental United States began his rule from a secluded island in Lake Michigan. James Jesse Strang was a religious leader, politician, attorney, teacher, writer, and newspaper editor, who attracted more than 2,500 followers to a place that he ruled with an iron hand.
After being ejected from the Mormon Church, he created his own sect, for which he served as prophet, seer, and revelator and built an organization that he hoped would rival the church of Brigham Young in Utah.
But his strange adventures as a church leader and king would eventually lead to his assassination and the fall of the only kingdom that’s ever existed within the United States.

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