History remembers the names of men first. It carves them into buildings, headlines, and verdicts, while the women caught between them become footnotes. They were called muses, temptresses, excuses. In tonight’s episode, we follow two love triangles separated by circumstance but bound by pattern: one played out beneath the electric lights of Gilded Age New York, the other behind closed doors where jealousy and control went unnoticed until it was too late. At the center of both is not romance, but power masqueraded as love, and violence justified as passion. The real story lived in the silence history left behind.

In this episode, we shine light on two stories involving arsenic poisoning. First is the true story of the Watkins family of Manchester, Michigan, whose children were slowly poisoned by arsenic-laced wallpaper in their Victorian home. As well as the infamous tale of Belle Gunness, who had a habit of collecting insurance payouts from fires and the deaths of her husbands.

In this episode of Shadows from the Tree, we discuss the 19th century fear of being buried alive, taphophobia. This wasn't an abstract of irrational fear for people of the era, but a response to genuine medical uncertainty. Listen in to hear more about the tales of Essie Williams Dunbar, a South Carolina woman with 2 funerals. As well as the interesting lengths the Pursel family of Pennsylvania, went to avoid such a fate.