Fourth of July Mysteries | Vanished at the Lake

The gang investigates three mysteries stitched together by one date on the calendar: the Fourth of July. This week Josh brings the holiday and everything strange hiding inside it. What starts as hot dogs and bottle rockets turns into a night sky that changed forever, a coincidence that still makes historians shiver, and a cold case that has gone unanswered for more than three decades.

First, look up. On July 4th in the year 1054, Chinese and Japanese sky watchers recorded a brilliant "guest star" that flared in the constellation Taurus. It burned so bright it was visible in broad daylight for weeks, then faded into the glowing cloud we now call the Crab Nebula. Josh brings word of its modern echo too, a recurrent nova called T Coronae Borealis that astronomers keep predicting could blaze into view any night now. Like, what if the greatest Fourth of July fireworks show comes from deep space?

Then, a coincidence that reads like fiction. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, rivals, founders, the second and third presidents, both signed the Declaration of Independence and then both died on the very same day, July 4th, 1826, exactly fifty years later, within hours of each other. Adams reportedly slipped away believing his old rival had outlived him. Jefferson had already been gone since that morning.

And then the mystery that still has no ending. On the Fourth of July in 1988, two teenagers, Sally McNelly and Shane Stewart, drove out to Lake Nasworthy in San Angelo, Texas, to watch the fireworks. They were seen on the shoreline late that night, and then they were simply gone. Months later their remains were found miles away near the Twin Buttes Reservoir. The trail leads into the strange heart of 1980s Satanic panic, through rumors of a cult the two had been trying to escape and a person of interest named decades after the fact, and it stops cold. The San Angelo murders remain unsolved to this day.

Three mysteries, one holiday, and the hosts pulling every thread they can find while keeping things gloriously off the rails in between. Grab a cold drink, settle in, and stay a little bit spooked.

What you'll hear in this episode:

The Fourth of July "guest star" of 1054 and the supernova that could still light up our sky

The eerie same-day deaths of two founding fathers, fifty years to the day

The unsolved 1988 San Angelo murders and the cult rumors that surround Sally and Shane's case

Got a theory, a mystery of your own, or just want to send the gang some snacks? Find us and join the conversation, and come back next week when the bunker door opens again.

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