NATIONAL PARK AFTER DARK
You may have noticed that the truecrime podcasting world is becoming increasingly niche as more are released. One such example is National Park After Dark, an American pod about the tragedies that have occurred in 4,000 national parks globally. You’d think there wouldn’t be much content out there on such a topic, but with 60 episodes and counting, boy, would you be wrong. According to the National Park Service, an average of six people die every week in US parks alone and this podcast is keen to cover as many as possible. Some episodes focus on historical events, such as the discovery of 17 miniature coffins in Holyrood Royal Park in Scotland in 1863, which sparked a massive investigation as to where they could have come from and who created them. Did they represent the victims of the famed serial killers William Burke and William Hare, who murdered individuals for anatomist Dr Robert Knox to study? Or were they mere emblems of a centuries-old German superstition, in which sailors took dolls in tiny coffins onboard their ships as lucky charms? Other episodes focus on more recent cases, including the death of Toni Henthorn, who fell to her death off a cliff while hiking with her husband Harold in the Rocky Mountain National Park in 2012. Was her death really an accident as Harold claimed, or did something more sinister occur? Hosted by the outdoorsy and true-crime obsessed Cassie and Danielle, National Park After Dark is a great example of a weirdly specific podcast that will keep you coming back each week for the next episode without really knowing why.