Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast

For over 130 years, mysterious glowing orbs have haunted Australia's remote Channel Country, following travelers for kilometres, splitting into multiple lights, and moving with apparent intelligence. First Nations peoples knew about them for millennia before Europeans arrived. Scientists have studied them. Thousands have witnessed them. Yet the Min Min Lights remain one of Australia's most enduring mysteries.

In this episode, we journey into the vast emptiness of outback Queensland to explore a phenomenon that exists at the intersection of science and the unexplained. From drovers frozen in terror as lights pace their horses through the darkness, to modern researchers capturing footage on smartphones, the Min Min Lights continue to puzzle and fascinate.

We hear from witnesses whose encounters left them genuinely frightened, or strangely privileged. We examine the groundbreaking scientific research that claimed to solve the mystery through atmospheric refraction. And we discover why even the scientist who explained the phenomenon admitted it was "literally hair raising" and that some aspects remained genuinely mysterious.

Whether atmospheric mirage, ancestral spirits, or something else entirely, the Min Min Lights remind us that even in our technological age, some mysteries persist in the remote places where darkness still holds secrets.

Sources:

• Pettigrew, J.D. (2003). "The Min Min light and the Fata Morgana: An optical account of a mysterious Australian phenomenon." Clinical and Experimental Optometry, March 2003.
• Research by Dr. Curtis Roman (Larrakia man, Senior Lecturer in Aboriginal Studies, Charles Darwin University)
• Dreamtime stories collected in "Gadi Mirrabooka" by June Barker
• D.B. O'Connor, "Light of the Min Min" (poem, December 20, 1934)
• Michael (December 2022, near Noorindoo - video documented and verified by journalist Ross Coulthart)

Title Music - by Jesse Frank from Pixabay

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A wildlife photographer wakes up at home, downloads his photos, and finds something impossible: a picture of himself sleeping in his tent, taken at midnight with his own camera. Someone entered while he slept, stood inches away in the darkness, and photographed him. Then they vanished into the Victorian High Country without a trace.

Between 2008 and 2020, six people disappeared from Victoria's Alpine wilderness, all within sixty kilometers of each other. Two were found in 2024 when an airline pilot was convicted of murder. But four remain missing, their bodies never recovered despite massive searches using helicopters, drones, and cadaver dogs.

Throughout every investigation, one name kept appearing: the Button Man. A hermit in his seventies who lives alone in the mountains for months at a time, hunting with spears, wearing buttons carved from deer antlers, appearing silently at campfires without invitation. He camps at The Crossroads, a high point where he can watch everyone entering his territory. He was the last person to see one victim alive. He knows every hiding place in thousands of square kilometers of wilderness.

Hunters describe him materialising from morning mist without making a sound. Campers wake to find him sitting at their fire, uninvited, watching with a penetrating stare that makes experienced bushmen uncomfortable. Hikers report the persistent sensation of being observed from ridgelines they can't see. Hidden firewood supplies vanish, taken by someone who was watching when they were cached. Boot prints circle tents in patterns that appear and disappear without continuing.

Is he a harmless eccentric transformed into a monster by fear and speculation? Or does he know exactly what happened to four people who walked into his wilderness and never came home?

Title Music - by Jesse Frank from Pixabay

Sources - Life and Crimes with Andrew Rule Podcast

February 2025. Excavators dig three meters into the former Castalloy factory site in North Plympton, Adelaide. They're searching for three children who vanished sixty years ago, based on testimony from the factory owner's son who claims he saw them enter his father's property and never leave, and two brothers who say they were paid to dig a grave-sized hole here days after the disappearance.

Professor Maciej Henneberg works with archaeological precision. The soil reveals disturbed earth, a pit matching the exact dimensions describes. Evidence that something was buried here. After decades of searching, perhaps the Beaumont children will finally be found.

But the excavation ends with no remains. Only questions.

This is Part Two of our investigation into Australia's most haunting missing persons case. We examine three major suspects including millionaire Harry Phipps, who lived 300 meters from where the children were last seen. We explore why three excavations using cutting-edge technology found grave-like anomalies but no bodies. And we uncover a disturbing pattern: seven years after the Beaumont children vanished, two more girls disappeared from Adelaide Oval under strikingly similar circumstances.

Sixty years of searching. Over one hundred suspects. Three children still waiting to be found. And uncomfortable questions about who was protected and why.

Content warning: This episode discusses the disappearance and presumed murder of young children, and examines systemic failures in their protection.

Sources - The Beaumont Children (Parts One & Two)

• Whiticker, Alan. Searching for the Beaumont Children (2006)
• Whiticker, Alan and Stuart Mullins. The Satin Man (2013)
• Mullins, Stuart and Bill Hayes. Unmasking the Killer of the Missing Beaumont Children (2024 edition)
• The Beaumont Children: What Really Happened (Channel Seven, 2018)

Title Music - by Jesse Frank from Pixabay