Louisiana: Axe Murders, Outlaws & Legends (ft. National Park After Dark) | #465

**Suruthi Pinnamaneni** (0:09)
I'm Saruti, I'm Hanna, and we're RedHanded.

**Cassie Werber** (0:12)
I'm Cassie, I'm Danielle, and we're National Park After Dark.

**Hanna Hanna McGuire** (0:17)
And this is the creepy transatlantic crossover that you have all been waiting for, but you didn't want to admit it, but it's too late now because it's happening.

**Suruthi Pinnamaneni** (0:26)
And this has been a long time in the works, and we are very, very excited to be doing this episode with you guys. Thank you guys so much for joining us. This is, of course, as they just introduced themselves, listeners, National Park After Dark. And basically a combination of all of my favourite things, because it's creepy disappearances, horrible murders, yes, I know I'm gross, folklore and grueling survival stories. It's kind of like all of the various different things I would listen to in podcasts put into one, and then even better because obviously, as the name suggests, it's all of these things going down in national parks, which perfect because the more remote, isolated and scary, as you guys know, for me, the better. It's just delicious.
How did you guys come up with this idea other than it being perfect?

**Cassie Werber** (1:10)
Well, thank you for quite the intro. We are flattered. I'm blushing a little bit. We started this, when did we start? 2021?
Yeah, and we started the podcast because both of us were kind of our outdoor friends with each other and it morphed into this podcast because we would go out into the outdoors and we would always look up these stories to the places we were actually visiting before we got there and we found that it made our experience a lot different. If we were heading up into these places, I can remember one time Danielle and I were heading into the mountains and I literally read her an affidavit of a true crime case the whole way to the drive which was about two hours. So it was natural that it would become a podcast at some point.

**Hanna Hanna McGuire** (1:57)
We do exactly the same thing.

**Suruthi Pinnamaneni** (1:59)
It doesn't help that we're massive cowards though because then I would tell you all these horrible things. And then we stayed in Sigishawari, which is where Dracula was born, Vlad the Impaler was born. Romania is beautiful, but I'm not going to lie, kind of creepy, lots of abandoned buildings, a bit creepy. And we stayed in this Airbnb, lots of dark wood. Definitely not a fan of the overhead light there, which I'm not usually, but there I would have appreciated it if I'm perfectly honest, it was fucking terrifying. And then Anna was just sort of unpacking things and I was standing next to her. I was like, shall I make some tea? And then she was like, yeah, that'd be great. And then I just carried on standing there and she looked at me and I was like, should we go down to make tea together?

**Cassie Werber** (2:35)
Because I can't go down into the kitchen on my own.

**Suruthi Pinnamaneni** (2:37)
And that night I did turn up in her room and I was like, we need to share a bed because I can't sleep in that room on my own. So yes, that is the biggest thing holding me back from doing something even more scary with my life than a true crime podcast.

**Cassie Werber** (2:48)
I am definitely in the same boat as you. I have forced Danielle to sleep in the same room as me in creepy places. So we're on the same page with that for sure.

**Hanna Hanna McGuire** (2:57)
I'm a terrible sleep talker though and that doesn't really help.

**Danielle Document** (3:00)
Oh no.

**Suruthi Pinnamaneni** (3:01)
Like that time we were in Cuba and you sat up and screamed, he's got a knife. And I was like, oh my God, somebody help me. We're getting well off tangent. Do you guys want to tell your listeners who we are?

**Danielle Document** (3:10)
Of course. Well, for anyone who is unfamiliar, which may be hard because you have the true crime genre on lockdown, you're kind of like crowned true crime princesses in the UK. You guys launched back in 2017 when National Park After Dark was not even a twinkle in our eye. You were already well on your way of creating one of the most successful true crime podcasts out there. You've expanded so far beyond the audio waves, you have been on international tours, you wrote a book, you've done some other stand-alone shows, you've kind of done it all, and your episodes, I think I speak for both Cassie and I. When I say I think the historical mysteries are probably a favorite topic that you guys do, but serial killers, cults, you kind of just do it all. But instead of a trail conversation, you guys had a drunk conversation at a party.