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Scotland, 1696.

In the small community of Bargarran, near Paisley, an eleven-year-old girl named Christian Shaw began suffering from terrifying and unexplained episodes.

She claimed she was being tormented by witches.

What followed would become one of the most notorious witchcraft cases in Scottish history.

Christian named people she believed were responsible for her suffering, and accusations began to spread. Reports described violent fits, strange behaviour and disturbing things supposedly emerging from the girl's mouth. Ministers, doctors and local authorities became involved, and what might once have been dismissed as illness or hysteria developed into a full-scale investigation into witchcraft.

Eventually, seven people were put on trial in Paisley.

All seven were found guilty.

On 10 June 1697, they were executed on Gallow Green.

But the story doesn't end there.

There were accusations of meetings with the Devil, claims of supernatural torment, questions about the reliability of the evidence and, hanging over everything, the disturbing possibility that fear, belief and human behaviour had created a tragedy that could never be undone.

In this episode of The Eclectic, we travel back to Paisley in 1696 and 1697 to uncover what happened during the Bargarran witch hunt, examine the evidence surrounding Christian Shaw, and look at the people whose lives ended because a community believed that witches were among them.

Were they witches?

Were they victims of fear and superstition?

Or was something else happening to Christian Shaw?

The truth may be impossible to recover.

But the consequences were very real.

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Halloween: Where Did It All Begin?

Every October, we carve pumpkins, dress as ghosts and witches, tell frightening stories and fill our homes with things that are supposed to scare us.

But Halloween didn't begin with pumpkins and costumes.

Its history reaches back centuries — through Celtic traditions, Christian observances, folklore, bonfires, the belief that the boundary between the living and the dead could become thinner, and some genuinely strange customs that have almost disappeared from memory.

And then there's the Jack-o'-lantern.

Why do we carve faces into vegetables? Where did the story of Stingy Jack come from? And how did a turnip, a wandering soul and a rather unfortunate bargain with the Devil eventually become the pumpkin sitting in your window every October?

In this special Halloween episode of The Eclectic, we go back to the beginning and trace the strange history behind one of the world's most recognisable celebrations.

From Samhain and All Hallows' Eve to ghosts, disguises, bonfires, fortune-telling and the transformation of turnips into pumpkins, this is the story of how Halloween became Halloween.

Because beneath the costumes and sweets is something much older.

A fascination with death, the dead — and what might happen when the two worlds get a little too close.

🎃 Happy Halloween from The Eclectic.

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On 22 June 1983, fifteen-year-old Emanuela Orlandi left her home in Vatican City to attend a music lesson in Rome.

She never came home.

What followed became one of Italy's most enduring mysteries — a disappearance that would eventually draw in the Vatican, Italian intelligence agencies, organised crime, international politics and decades of speculation.

Emanuela was a Vatican citizen and the daughter of a lay employee who worked inside the Vatican. Her disappearance therefore immediately placed an extraordinary case at the heart of one of the world's most secretive institutions.

There were phone calls. Witnesses. Conflicting accounts. Alleged sightings. Claims that Emanuela had been kidnapped as part of a political bargain. Connections were suggested to the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, the mysterious Banco Ambrosiano scandal and organised crime.

But very little has ever been proven.

Decades later, Emanuela's fate remains unknown.

In this episode of The Eclectic, we follow the events surrounding Emanuela Orlandi's disappearance, examine the major leads and theories, and look at why this case became so deeply entangled with the Vatican itself.

Because this isn't simply the story of a girl who disappeared.

It's a mystery that has spent more than four decades refusing to stay buried.

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