The Paranormal Lens on Crime Stories

Alexandra Orton, the brilliant mind behind "Out There Crimes of the Paranormal," takes center stage as she delves into the intriguing world where true crime meets the supernatural. Inspired by Hulu's "Sasquatch," Alexandra unveils her journey from documentary filmmaking to crafting narratives that blend real-life mysteries with otherworldly possibilities. We explore the process behind her innovative series, uncovering how thorough research and cultural context breathe new life into unsolved cases. Alexandra's passion for storytelling shines through, especially when discussing standout episodes like "Interstellar Voyager," which captivates with the mysterious disappearance of Granger Taylor.

Our exploration doesn't stop there. Through Alexandra's eyes, we traverse haunting landscapes from the Smoky Mountains to Canada, each episode unraveling unsolved mysteries with a supernatural twist. The mysterious disappearance of a young boy and the chilling murder of Jeanette DePalma are just some of the dark tales that beckon you to question the unknown. This series is a testament to the power of storytelling, inviting listeners to engage and contribute through social media under the handle "Murder and Mimosas." Join us as we delve into these enigmatic stories, and don't forget to share your thoughts or suggest new cases for future exploration.

Chapters

• 0:01 Exploring True Crime and the Paranormal
• 8:18 Unsolved Mysteries and Dark History
• 19:05 Exploring Supernatural Stories Across America

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

DarkCast Network. Welcome to the dark side of podcasting. Welcome to Murder and Mimosas a true crime podcast brought to you by a mother and daughter duo.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Bringing you murder stories with a mimosa in hand. With a mimosa in hand, murder Mimosas is a true crime podcast, meaning we talk about adult matters such as murder, sexual assaults and other horrendous crimes. Listener discretion is advised. We do tell our stories with the victims and the victims families in mind. However, some information is more verifiable than others. However, you can find all of our information linked in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do there with the Out there Crimes of the Paranormal?

Speaker 3: 1:01

Sure. Well, my name is Alexandra Orton. I am a showrunner on Out there Crimes of the Paranormal, and basically I've been working in documentary for a while now almost a couple decades and typically what you do as a showrunner is you're a producer, so you come on board and you just try to find the most interesting stories you can for whatever the topic is, and then you assemble a crack team of amazing talent directors, other producers and you get to go out there in the field and meet really interesting people you would have never been able to meet in your normal life and you work with phenomenal editors and you know you figure out how you tell the story once you shot it. Phenomenal editors, and you know you figure out how you tell the story once you shot it.

Speaker 1: 1:47

So, um, how did y'all decide to to do this? I've never seen one like it, but we have done a few episodes kind of like this during october yeah, well, you know, I would say it all started before I came on board.

Speaker 3: 2:02

Uh, really, the catalyst was in 2021, hulu aired a really fantastic series called Sasquatch. It was made by the Duplass brothers and number 19, a team of really amazing people the director, josh Raffae, steven Berger and M Elizabeth Hughes and they just told this fascinating story about a man who remembered hearing this tale, this crazy tale, while he was in. He was working on a weed farm that some men had been murdered by a Sasquatch and he thought could this be real? And so, through the story, he goes and he investigates this and the question becomes you know, who is really the monster of this story? Is it Sasquatch or is it us? Is it men? And you meet this.

Speaker 3: 2:55

You know wild cast of characters, of drug dealers and federal agencies, and I actually was just a fan. First I saw it on Hulu and I thought, wow, I can't believe this is so entertaining and so smart at the same time, and I just kept it in the back of my brain. And then, independent to that, the Duplass Brothers team and I had been talking about doing something together for a while, and so when they mentioned that Sasquatch was such a hit that they thought there was more room for stories like that. I really just jumped at the chance and we were lucky enough to get eight episodes of these really incredible stories that blend real crimes, which can be very, very devastating to the families and the communities involved, with these more supernatural elements with. You know, when the mystery is unsolved, a group of people decide that the explanation it's just too inexplicable and the explanation must be paranormal. There must be something beyond humans that led to this horrible thing happening.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Yeah, I have watched some of the episodes. They're really entertaining. I love them. They're just things that pique my interest also. So do you know if you will have another season or do you hope to have another season? We?

Speaker 3: 4:24

don know yet, I'd say it's early days, um, but we certainly would love to, because when we were researching these stories, we found so many more um that you know were either cases that really ought to be reinvestigated and explored, or they just sparked something in us. They made us think brand new things about what it means to be a human in this world full of mystery, and so we would love it. If the audience is there, we're there.

Speaker 1: 4:54

So yeah, that was another question I was thinking of, because I'd seen these and I was like I've never heard of some of these. So how did you find the stories?

Speaker 3: 5:03

Well, they came to us a bunch of different ways. I mean, we had a really strong team of researchers who started digging in. So one of the ways we look for stories is we'd go through old newspaper records and we just read a whole bunch of old newspapers looking for keywords. You know what were the unsolved crimes in a specific area, but also, you know, were there unexplained mysteries that weren't necessarily correlated to a crime? But we might do a little digging and then find that there was a crime there.

Speaker 3: 5:37

So that's things like you know, a couple of episodes touch on UFOs or aliens. So you know you're looking for any kind of sightings and then through that you start to learn about other things that are going on that may or may not be connected. So that's one way. And then another way is really when we started hiring our directors, we heard we met with a couple of people who we loved right from the start and we knew we wanted them to come on board. But each of the directors would bring their own experiences on board, whether it's, you know, ghost stories from there that they grew up with in their cultural or religious tradition, or you know wherever they grew up in America or Canada in the case of one director, stories that they heard, unsolved mysteries or crimes that they always wondered about, and so it was really a team effort in finding the strongest stories.

Speaker 1: 6:31

Yeah, I didn't think about that. So is there one that you happen to love the most, or researching the most?

Speaker 3: 6:58

for different reasons. Sometimes I think that Interstellar Voyager, which is about Granger Taylor, the sort of special, unique guy who disappears and leaves a note saying he's going to be on an interstellar voyage on a spaceship. Sometimes I feel the most attached to that one because I just think it's such a beautiful, touching story. And other times I feel really proud of the work that the team put into the shape-shifting defense, which is about a Navajo woman who's brutally murdered and there's great injustice that occurs in the ensuing investigation to catch her killer. And that's when where people's beliefs really get twisted against them in a way that I think needed to be exposed. And then you know I love aliens, so they all have something that's so interesting and that makes you think. That just makes you think whole new things you never thought of before. That's true. And so this dropped on Friday the 13th, Is that correct? That just makes you think whole new things you never thought of before.

Speaker 1: 7:55

That's true, and so this dropped on Friday the 13th. Is that correct?

Speaker 3: 8:01

It dropped on the 24th actually, but that would have been amazing.

Speaker 1: 8:05

I was thinking it was the 13th for some reason. I mean, that's a great day, it is, so all of them dropped at the same time. Is that correct? That is correct.

Speaker 3: 8:18

So you can read the titles and you can watch them in order, or you can pick what draws you the most. Maybe you're really into the Goatman outside of Louisville, Kentucky, or maybe you're an alien person, or maybe you love Chinatown in San Francisco and you want to know more about that history.

Speaker 1: 8:35

You can skip around, yes, which is what I did. I started with the first, but then I skipped around because they were all interesting, but I was like, oh, I need to see this one really quick though. Yeah, I haven't watched all of them, I have made it through half half of them, but I really enjoy what I have looked at, so I know a lot of these go back pretty far, so was it hard finding people to talk to, since some of them happened years ago?

Speaker 3: 9:05

Yeah, in a couple cases. There was one that took place in the 60s that one's called Smoky Mountain Nightmare and it's about a little boy who was camping in the Smoky Mountains with his family on Father's Day weekend and literally within seconds they were all together. They were playing hide-and-go-seek and within two seconds this kid just disappeared without a trace and the family immediately started looking for him. It ended up being the largest search in national park history. Still to this day it is taught in all of the search and rescue courses. It is basically the foundation of the search and rescue program.

Speaker 3: 9:50

Uh, it is an absolutely unbelievable mystery. It's it's the worst thing you can imagine happening. You know, losing your kid, and so out of that there are these different theories that emerge. That one was tough, obviously, because a lot of the people have either passed away or they're quite elderly.

Speaker 3: 10:09

But we were really honored to meet the park ranger who put so much time into trying to find Dennis, who put so much time into trying to find Dennis Dwight McCarter, and he is just a real life hero. He has saved so many kids. He's like I said this to someone else, but it's like meeting Jimmy Stewart in real life. He's just the sweetest person and he's such a gentleman. So sometimes we got lucky and people are still around. But you know, you piece together what you can. I think they're unsolved cases because there were always gaps, right, even when all the family members were alive and the best friends were there to give witness testimonies, there's something that happened that we just can't answer and, as one of the characters says in one of the episodes, humans, just we can't handle not knowing the answer Right.

Speaker 1: 11:02

So after that, these stories are spun yeah, so the last one you were just mentioning. I have not watched that yet, but that'll be the next one I watch when I get off here. I haven't heard about that one yet. That is sad and scary all at the same time. Yeah, just a little boy disappearing and never found again.

Speaker 3: 11:22

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy and it really is the worst thing I could think of ever happening. I mean, your heart goes out to them still.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Yes. So the one, that which is still also not solved, but the one where the lady was, or the teenager was supposed to be a witch, and I'm listening to it and all they're saying about how the body was found and all these crosses, and then there's an actual picture on there and I'm like, oh my gosh, where did they? How did they come up with that? I forgot the name of that one, but that one was my favorite, but it had me on the, on the edge of my seat, like, oh my gosh, this is like really witchcraft out here, cause I remember the whole satanic panic era and I was like, oh my gosh, there's actually crosses and everything out there, until you post the crime scene photo yeah, I mean I, it's interesting, I've had so many people reach out and tell me that that was one of their favorites or their favorite, that one's called Jersey Witch Hunt, and I think you just hit the nail on the head, right, it's 1972, I think, and this teenager, jeanette DePalma, goes missing for a while and then her body turns up.

Speaker 3: 12:37

The family is obviously devastated, and very much still devastated obviously to this day, and so this search ensues to try to figure out what happened to her.

Speaker 3: 12:48

But very quickly the newspapers start reporting that cops, that a reverend, that a bunch of different people are sure that it's witchcraft. And you know, without spoiling it too much for listeners, we treat that really seriously, we investigate it, we ask questions and then we also kind of look at the time period and it is like it's sort of a little bit into the early days of satanic panic, right, it's like it's after the hippie era, but Rosemary's baby's coming out. People are thinking about things like possession or demonic possession or witchcraft in society. And you see, the way that you know we make our monsters. Um, and obviously a lot of people today identify with witchcraft in a totally different way, right, um, there's a huge, a huge movement of people identifying as witches, um online people you meet in your life. In that town, springfield, there's some great stores, so it's become this really different thing and I think it's just shocking to go back and listen to the story that happened in the 70s and realize how different the time was.

Speaker 1: 14:05

Yeah, and that was the first one. I was thinking how did they find all these people so long after the fact? But yeah, that was amazing.

Speaker 3: 14:15

Yeah, well, that family has never stopped trying to figure out what happened to her, and so a lot of the close friends they have, whether people who they knew through their church because they're very religious they knew through their church because they're very religious or who people who came into the church afterward the man we interviewed, pastor Brennan, who was their reverend for a while, you know they took it upon themselves to say all right, it's wrong that this is still a cold case, we need to figure this out, and hopefully they'll get those answers.

Speaker 1: 14:47

I hope so too. Yeah, that one really got me the most, for whatever reason, but I love that one, yeah, and oh, there's Sparkle Farts, my trusty unicorn.

Speaker 4: 15:10

I've got to tell these good people about our show. Hey there, I'm CJ host of Beyond the Rainbow true crimes of the LGBTQ+. While I do have episodes on some of the more well-known cases from the LGBTQ community, such as Matthew Shepard, brandon Tina and the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre, I cover world cases like the London nail bombing murders, australia's Snowtown murders in South Africa's corrective rape and murder of lesbians. I cover lesser known cases like the murder of 21-year-old trans man, alex Van Dolsen in Indiana. Police called his death a suicide. Spoiler alert it wasn't. I tell you about wrongful conviction cases, serial killers and school shooters. My unicorn and I cover all sorts of crimes against the LGBTQ and crimes by members of the LGBTQ. You don't have to be members of the LGBTQ. You don't have to be part of the community to listen. All walks of life are welcome to become Rainbow Warriors because you matter and remember it's not a crime to be gay unless you're a murderer?

Speaker 1: 16:30

I was, I guess I thought more. I guess paranormal can be a lot of different things. I was thinking like ghosts and things, but you do have UFOs. The goat man, is it? The lizard man? Yeah, there's all kinds of things on there that I was just like oh my gosh, this is so fascinating. Yeah, thank you. So I really hope that you do more episodes. I was even thinking of so many things I've heard of that would be great in these episodes. So I hope that you get more. And is there a way, like for viewers to send you cases if you happen to do more?

Speaker 3: 17:11

Oh, that's so great. You know we talked about that and we should get something going so that viewers could send in cases, because I know so many of these stories are local, right, it's things you remember growing up with, like with the Goatman the Popelik Goatman one of our producers actually is from Louisville and she was like I remember going to see the goat man when I was a young woman. I think she was like late teens or maybe 20. And so it really does take that local knowledge right.

Speaker 1: 17:44

Yes, yeah, that's what I was thinking of, like I've heard of local ones, but I had not heard of any of these that I'd seen on there and I was like, oh, wow, but I'm thinking of the ones I have or would know of. I wonder if they have them where you could send in, because I'm sure there are so many that most of us haven't heard of.

Speaker 3: 18:03

Yeah, we should put our heads together about that, hear, we want to hear all those stories and we also, you know, separate to that there's a. There are many, many people out there on the the crime front that have lost loved ones who they care about very deeply and they feel that the investigations have either been, you know, poorly done or that they bear a second look or a third look. And those people we want to honor them too, because we can all only imagine what it's like to lose someone. You know.

Speaker 1: 18:40

Whatever the explanation is, that is the thing that haunts you the most, right right, yeah, just wanting those questions answered, which I guess is why Unsolved Mystery was so prevalent that people loved it but still wanted the answers at the end. But yeah, there's a lot of those. So I think that's all the questions I have for you. Is there anything else you want to tell us about the shows?

Speaker 3: 19:11

Well, it's eight different episodes. It's on Hulu, they're all available to stream, as we discussed, and I would just say that they're all completely different. So they go all over America and also Canada. They dip into all different types of, as you said, supernatural or paranormal stories. They dip into different myths, local myths, different beliefs, so you touch on different cultures. I mean, it's a really interesting, unique way to not just hear about some stories that need to be solved, but to meet all these different pockets of America and I hope people like it.

Speaker 1: 19:51

I feel like they will. I feel like it's something that will carry on, because I know I loved it. Not that everybody loves what I love, but I loved it.

Speaker 5: 20:08

We always recommend more bubbly and less oj cheers if you'd like to see pictures from today's episode, you can find us at murdermimosas on instagram. You can also find us at murdermimosas on tiktok twitter and if you have a case you would like us to do, you can send that to murdermimosas at gmailcom. And lastly, we are on Facebook at Murder and Mimosas Podcast, where you can interact with us there. We love any type of feedback you can give us, so please rate and review us on Spotify, itunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts.