Highway to Hell

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On the top floor of a hotel in Sydney, on ground that was a convict hospital in 1788, two women on two different nights woke up to a sailor standing at the foot of the bed, looking at them. In a castle on the coast of Northern Ireland, a receptionist sent up the tower stair to sweep up a broken glass was shoved from behind on the top step and went down the whole flight. In Room 217 of the Stanley Hotel, a man hid under the covers at three in the morning while his wife whispered that something was bent over the bed with its mouth at her ear, and that she could still feel its breath. In a ground-floor suite in the Ozarks that used to be a cancer quack's office, four friends propped a vodka bottle against the inside of their door, came back at eleven, and found a row of cards laid out on the carpet in front of it with the two jokers turned face up. On a ship in Long Beach, a mother woke to a man made of darkness sitting on the other twin bed, and he sat there until dawn.
Today we're counting down the ten most haunted hotels in the world, from number ten to number one. We're going from Sydney to the Scottish Highlands, the Antrim coast, London, the Canadian Rockies, the French Quarter, a California beach, a Cunard liner, an Arkansas mountaintop, and Estes Park, Colorado.

Sources:
24 Hours in Sydney. "Room 8 in the Russell Hotel… Sleep There If You Dare." 24hoursinsydney.com.au.
Abandoned NI. "The Haunted Ballygally Castle Hotel." abandonedni.com.
Archer, Bella. "Haunted Tulloch Castle in Dingwall: Castles, Ghost Stories and Scottish Mornings." Buckle Up, Boo!, buckleupboo.com.
Atteberry, Todd. "Ballygally Castle Hotel: The Knock at the Door Isn't Room Service." Witchery Art / Gothic Horror Stories, February 19, 2024. gothichorrorstories.com.
Avenue Calgary. "The Ghosts of Fairmont Banff Springs." avenuecalgary.com.
Ballygally Castle Hotel. "Ballygally Castle Hotel and Its Ghost Room" and "The History of Ballygally Castle." ballygallycastlehotel.com.
Bauer, Ellen. "A Ghostly Maid on the Queen Mary." Ghostvillage.com. Encounter dated June 1, 1973.
Brody, Mike. "Confessions of a Novice Ghost Investigator: Surviving the Stanley Hotel." Ghostvillage.com, January 2010.
Cappy. "The Beautiful Lady in White." Your Ghost Stories, April 1, 2020. yourghoststories.com, story 27186.
Crescent Hotel and Spa. "Haunting Ghost Experiences Revealed." crescent-hotel.com.
Crescenta Valley Weekly. "The Legend of B340." crescentavalleyweekly.com.
Cricket Australia. "Boo! Ghosts Have England Jumping." cricket.com.au, July 2014.
Cushman, Paige, and Kristen Belue. "'This Isn't a Horror Film': A Night at Arkansas' Haunted 1886 Crescent Hotel." KATV, Little Rock, October 2020.
Deccan Chronicle. "Haunted London Hotel Frightens England Cricketers." July 21, 2014.
East Durham Paranormal Research Group. "Tulloch Castle: Ghost Sightings." eastdurhamparanormalrg.co.uk.
Fiorito, Teddy. "My Wife and I Stayed at the Stanley Hotel and Experienced Something Out of This Realm." Thought Catalog, September 2015.
Ghost City Tours. "The Ghosts of Haunted Hotel Monteleone." ghostcitytours.com.
Ghost5034. "What an Experience – Ghost Included!" Review of Tulloch Castle Hotel, Dingwall. TripAdvisor, June 2009.
Graham, Seanín. "'There's a Darkness to That Place': A Night in Northern Ireland's Most Haunted Castle." The Irish Times, October 31, 2025.
Haunted Hotels UK. "The Langham – Haunted Hotel in London," including guest review by Deborah Newton, November 6, 2023. hauntedhotels.uk.
Haunted India. "Ghosts of the Langham Hotel, London, Haunting English Cricketers." hauntedindia.blogspot.com, July 2014.
Haunted Rooms. "The Langham Hotel – London." hauntedrooms.co.uk.
Haunt Jaunts. "Researching London's Most Haunted Hotel Room." hauntjaunts.net.

In 1977, a charismatic former Seventh-day Adventist named Roch Thériault led a small group of followers into the woods of Quebec’s Gaspé region to await the end of the world. He renamed himself Moïse, after Moses, and told his followers God would end the world in February of 1979. When the apocalypse never came, he kept them anyway. The group lived in handmade cabins, cut off from their families, working so relentlessly that outsiders called them the Ant Hill Kids. Thériault took nearly all of the women as his wives and fathered more than twenty children with them. In 1984, after a brief prison stint, he moved the commune to a remote property near Burnt River, Ontario, where almost no one was watching.
What happened there over the next five years is among the most horrific abuse ever documented in a Canadian cult. Thériault drank heavily and ruled through torture, forcing members to break their own limbs, pull out their own teeth, and sit naked in the snow. He performed brutal “surgeries” with kitchen tools. In 1988 one of his wives, Solange Boilard, died after he cut open her abdomen. The end came in 1989, when another follower, Gabrielle Lavallée, had her arm hacked off with a cleaver after years of mutilation. She escaped, walked into a hospital, and told police everything. Thériault pleaded guilty to murder and received a life sentence. In 2011 he was killed by his cellmate in a New Brunswick prison.

Sources:
Here's the bibliography, alphabetized, no headers, ready to paste. It's also saved as [Ant_Hill_Kids_Bibliography.txt](Ant_Hill_Kids_Bibliography.txt) in your home folder, and the script's Sources section at **https://claude.ai/artifact/DMtQSJp2AhK117SuJRjqkZ** and in the PDF now matches it.

Adventist News Network. "J. Wayne McFarland" (obituary). March 24, 2011.
Beeby, Dean. "Flowers and Pastels: Notorious Cult Killer's Artwork, Poetry for Sale." Canadian Press / Globe and Mail, March 10, 2008.
Bibliothèque de l'Assemblée nationale du Québec. "Union des électeurs, 1939–1948."
Cameron, Daphné. "Roch Thériault assassiné." La Presse, February 27, 2011.
Canadian Encyclopedia. "Asbestos Strike of 1949"; "Quiet Revolution."
CBC News. Reports of July 11, 2002; April 6, 2009; February 27, 2011; May 6, 2011; March 5, 2012.
Cloutier family genealogy. Entry for Solange Boilard.
Dimmock, Gary. "Inside the Prison Killing of Roch Thériault." Ottawa Citizen, November 14, 2011.
Fenelon Falls Gazette. December 12, 1984.
Ferron, Madeleine, and Robert Cliche. Les Beaucerons, ces insoumis. Montreal, 1974.
Fortin, Denis. "Above and Beyond: Adventism in Québec." Adventist Review, April 28, 2005.
Gagné, Gilles. "Le spectre de Moïse." Le Nouvelliste, October 5, 2018.
Gagnon, Karine. "Trois femmes suivent toujours leur maître." Le Journal de Québec, 2002.
Gélinas, Geneviève. "Sectes: la responsabilité partagée." Le Soleil, October 5, 2018.
Geneanet. Raymond Dallaire family tree (Thériault–Tremblay marriage, 1943).
Global News / Canadian Press. February 28, 2011; May 13, 2011.
Hassan, Steven. Combating Cult Mind Control. Park Street Press, 1988.
Kaihla, Paul, and Ross Laver. "The Ant Hill Kids." Maclean's, February 8, 1993.
Kaihla, Paul, and Ross Laver. Savage Messiah: The Shocking Story of Cult Leader Rock Thériault and the Women Who Loved Him. Doubleday Canada, 1993.
Kaihla, Paul, and Ross Laver. "Under the Spell of a Madman." Maclean's, September 27, 1993.
Kropveld, Mike, and Marie-Andrée Pelland. "Le groupe de Roch 'Moïse' Thériault." Info-Secte / Info-Cult, Montreal, 2003.
Laflamme, Francine. Roch Thériault dit Moïse. Stanké, 1997.
Lalich, Janja. Bounded Choice. University of California Press, 2004.
Lavallée, Gabrielle. L'alliance de la brebis: Rescapée de la secte de Moïse. Éditions JCL, 1993; revised 2009; 2023.
Le Journal de Québec. Archives feature on the Thériault case. October 13, 2019.

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Carl Tanzler was a German-born radiology technician who emigrated to the United States and by 1927 was working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida. He claimed that as a young man he had been visited by the spirit of an ancestor who showed him the face of his destined true love, and in 1930 he became convinced he had found her in Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, a 21-year-old Cuban-American patient dying of tuberculosis. Tanzler showered her with gifts and attempted to treat her with homemade tonics and X-ray equipment, but she died in 1931. He paid for an elaborate mausoleum, visited it nightly, and in 1933 removed her body and brought it home. Over the next seven years he reconstructed her decaying corpse with wire, plaster, wax, glass eyes, and her own hair fashioned into a wig, dressed it in a wedding gown, and kept it in his bed while dousing it in perfume to mask the odor. In 1940 Elena's sister heard rumors, confronted him, and found the body, leading to his arrest for grave robbing. The charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, and much of the public, swept up by the press coverage, viewed him as a tragic romantic rather than a criminal. Elena was reburied in an unmarked grave, and Tanzler died in 1952, reportedly with a life-sized effigy of her by his side. ICK
Sources
Harrison, Ben. Undying Love: The True Story of a Passion That Defied Death. Key West, 1997; expanded edition 2001.
Swicegood, Tom. Von Cosel. iUniverse, 2003. Source of the body-switch theory.
Sloan, David L. Ghosts of Key West. Phantom Press, 1998. Sloan also discussed the 1982 Michelfelder article on the NightMerica podcast, February 3, 2021.
Peričić, Marija. Exquisite Corpse. Ultimo Press, 2023. Novel; ABC News (Australia) profile of the book and the Trial Bay internment, November 18, 2023.
Tanzler von Cosel, Karl. "The Secret of Elena's Tomb." Fantastic Adventures, vol. 9 no. 5, September 1947, Ziff-Davis, Chicago. Full scan at archive.org (Fantastic_Adventures_v09n05_Ziff-Davis_Sep_1947).
Von Cosel's journal, final entry ("Human jealousy has robbed me of the body of my Elena"), as quoted in Harrison and in later retellings.
Miami Herald, October 1940. Source of Nana Medina's statements: "She never loved him… She looked upon von Cosel as a grandfather" and the "wedding… or a funeral" warning.
Key West Citizen, October 1940. Hearing coverage before Justice of the Peace Enrique Esquinaldo, October 8–9, 1940; $1,000 bond; charge wording.
The Tennessean (Nashville), October 1940. Cousin's statement that Elena "finally died hating her rescuer."
Death certificate of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, October 25, 1931, as reported by Michelfelder (below); no autopsy performed.
DePoo, Dr. Julio, and Dr. Foraker. Recollection of the 1940 examination, first stated 1972; DePoo interviewed on HBO's Autopsy series, 1999 ("I found a tube wide enough to permit sexual intercourse…").
Perez, Bienvenido (Key West chief of police, 1940). Statement to Men True Adventure magazine, undated ("I'll kill her, if necessary, to fulfil my destiny").
Michelfelder, William. Article in Detective Cases, 1982. Source of the unverified "wolfsbane… aconite" note and the "dormant epilepsy" death-certificate wording.
Wikipedia, "Carl Tanzler" (with its cited sources: Harrison, Swicegood, Sloan, HBO Autopsy). Dates of birth, marriage, emigration (Rotterdam, February 6, 1926), Hoyos family dates, hearing, viewing, citizenship 1950, death July 3, 1952.
WLRN, "A Love That Would Not Die: Key West Tells Its Most Macabre Legend," February 11, 2018.
HistoryHub.info, "Twists in a Twisted Tale: The Exploitation, Defilement and Murder of Elena Hoyos."

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Does evil run in the family? Cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. murdered at least 10 women and girls in the Los Angeles area between October 1977 and February 1978.
They would use the "cop ruse" posing as plainclothes police officers, pull women over or approach them on the street, and take them to Buono's upholstery shop in Glendale. There they raped, tortured, and strangled their victims, then dumped the bodies on hillsides around the city. Their victims ranged in age from 12 to 28.
Bianchi would eventually be arrested in washington after two more kills, tried to fake multiple personality disorder to escape before agreeing to plead guilty and testify against Buono. Buono's trial was one of the longest criminal trials in American history, running from 1981 to 1983. He was convicted of nine of the ten LA murders and sentenced to life without parole. He died in prison in 2002. Bianchi is still alive and incarcerated in Washington State.
Sources: - full list on patreon
ABC News. (2021). ‘City of Angels, City of Death’: Inside the hunt for Los Angeles’ string of serial killers. https://abcnews.com/US/city-angels-city-death-inside-hunt-los-angeles/story?id=81231947
Balagtas, T. (2026, July 16). All about Hillside Stranglers Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, and the victim they spared because of her famous father. A&E. https://www.aetv.com/articles/all-about-the-hillside-stranglers-angelo-buono-kenneth-bianchi-victim-they-spared-because-of-her-famous-father
Bardsley, M. (2015). Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Stranglers [19-chapter feature]. Crime Library, TruTV. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/2015/http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/stranglers/rampage_1.html
Barnes, M. (Producer & Director). (1984). The mind of a murderer, Parts I and II [Television documentary transcript]. Frontline, WGBH/PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/206.html
Board denies parole for Hillside Strangler. (2010, August 18). Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/hillside-strangler-denied-parole.html
Boren, R. W. (2000). The Hillside Strangler trial. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 33(2), 707–725. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol33/iss2/
Chavez, S., & Gorman, A. (2002, September 22). ‘Hillside Strangler’ dies at 67. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-sep-22-me-hillside22-story.html
Chavez, S., & Gorman, A. (2002, September 23). Angelo Buono Jr. dies at 67. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2002/09/23/angelo-buono-jr-dies-at-67/5e2b4952-bb96-47a2-af4f-9cc744ffb281/
Convicted ‘Hillside Strangler’ serial killer is denied parole, will be eligible in a decade. (2025, July 10). Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-10/hillside-strangler-a-convicted-serial-killer-gets-denied-parole-will-be-eligible-in-a-decade
Crabtree, M. (2026, July 4). The disturbing story of Angelo Buono, the ‘Hillside Strangler’ who tormented 1970s Los Angeles. All That’s Interesting. https://allthatsinteresting.com/angelo-buono
Dismissal of Buono murder counts asked. (1981, July 14). Los Angeles Times, p. 1.
Edwards, M. (2025, July). ‘Hillside Strangler’ Kenneth Bianchi, convicted in 1970s serial killings, is denied parole. CBS News Los Angeles. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/hillside-strangler-kenneth-bianchi-denied-parole/
Farr, B. (1981, July 26). Prosecution memos list holes in Strangler case. Los Angeles Times, pp. 1, 3, 24–25.
Find a Grave. (n.d.). Memorial pages for Dolores Ann “Dolly” Cepeda, Cindy Lee Hudspeth, Sonja Marie Johnson, Elissa Teresa “Lissa” Kastin, Evelyn Jane King, Kimberley Dianne “Kim” Martin, Judith Lynn “Judy” Miller, Beulah Mae Stofer, Lauren Rae Wagner, and Kristina Weckler. https://www.findagrave.com

TW: Suicide
First ever true crossover episode! Flippers meet the Hellions, Hellions meet the Flippers. This case included so much of our mutual subject matter we decided to post it on both shows.
Mica Francis Miller, 30, died on April 27, 2024, at Lumber River State Park in North Carolina, roughly an hour from her home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She had bought a handgun that afternoon and called 911 minutes before shooting herself; the Robeson County Sheriff's Office and North Carolina medical examiners ruled her death a suicide. Days earlier she had filed for divorce from her husband, John-Paul Miller, pastor of Solid Rock Church in Market Common, and police records show she contacted law enforcement at least 14 times between February and mid-April 2024.Court filings and family statements alleged years of abuse, surveillance, financial control, and nonconsensual distribution of intimate images; a December 2024 filing added strangulation allegations. Miller denied wrongdoing.
On December 17, 2025, a federal grand jury in South Carolina indicted Miller on two counts, cyberstalking and making false statements to investigators, alleging he used tracking devices and unwanted communications to harass Mica from November 2022 until her death. Netflix's documentary series "Death of a Pastor's Wife" premiered August 27, 2026, renewing attention on the case and on South Carolina's protective-order law.
Sources: Full list on patreon
ABC News 4 (WCIV). (2026, January 12). JP Miller pleads not guilty to federal charges of cyberstalking, false statements. ⁠https://abcnews4.com/news/local/dozens-show-up-outside-florence-federal-courthouse-for-arraignment-of-jp-miller-mica-cyberstalking-lying-authorities-fbi-solid-rock-church-pastor⁠
Burroughs Funeral Home & Cremation Services. (2024). Obituary for Mica Acacia Miller. ⁠https://www.burroughsfh.com/obituary/Mica-Miller⁠
Christianity Today. (2022, September). What happens when you ask thousands of evangelical women about sex. ⁠https://www.christianitytoday.com/2022/09/sheila-gregoire-great-sex-rescue-survey-evangelical-women/⁠
Condo-World. (n.d.). History of the Sea Captain's House Myrtle Beach. ⁠https://blog.condo-world.com/history-of-the-sea-captains-house/⁠
Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (1987). The Danvers Statement.
Creepy Catalog. (2026). Death of the Pastor's Wife: John-Paul Miller's first wife says Mica's account matched her own. ⁠https://creepycatalog.com/death-of-the-pastors-wife-john-paul-millers-first-wife-says-micas-account-matched-her-own/⁠
Crime and Cask News Network. (2026, August). Father of former Solid Rock pastor John Paul Miller pleads guilty. ⁠https://crimeandcask.com/father-of-pastor-john-paul-miller-pleads-guilty/⁠
FITSNews. (2024, December 20). Mica Miller saga: Police reports fill in blanks, raise more questions. ⁠https://www.fitsnews.com/2024/12/20/mica-miller-saga-police-reports-fill-in-blanks-raise-more-questions/⁠
FITSNews. (2025, June 2). Embattled South Carolina pastor John-Paul Miller marries girlfriend. ⁠https://www.fitsnews.com/2025/06/02/embattled-south-carolina-pastor-john-paul-miller-marries-girlfriend/⁠
Gregoire, S. W. (2023, September). 10 things to know about obligation sex. Bare Marriage. ⁠https://baremarriage.com/2023/09/10-things-obligation-sex/⁠
Gregoire, S. W., Lindenbach, R. G., & Sawatsky, J. (2021). The great sex rescue: The lies you've been taught and how to recover what God intended. Baker Books.
Guidepost Solutions. (2022, May 15). Report of the independent investigation: The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee's response to sexual abuse allegations and an audit of the procedures and actions of the Credentials Committee.
Jane Doe v. John-Paul Miller, Reginald Wayne Miller, et al. (2025). Complaint, Horry County Court of Common Pleas. ⁠https://www.wbtw.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2025/03/JP-lawsuit-2.pdf⁠