In November 1996, a brutal double murder in the quiet Florida town of Eustis would expose one of the strangest criminal cases of the decade.

At the center was sixteen-year-old Rod Ferrell, a troubled teenager from Kentucky who called himself Vesago, claimed to be a centuries-old vampire, and surrounded himself with a group of teenagers immersed in blood rituals, cemeteries, and a dark world of supernatural fantasy.

But when Richard Wendorf and Ruth Queen were found murdered in their own home, investigators began unraveling a story far more disturbing than the sensational headlines suggested.

What began as a teenage fascination with vampires had become entangled with manipulation, violence, family dysfunction, and a desperate journey across state lines. And as investigators pieced together what happened, questions emerged about the people surrounding Rod, particularly fifteen-year-old Heather Wendorf, whose parents had been killed.

In this episode of The Southern Blueprint Podcast, we travel from western Kentucky to the small town of Eustis, Florida, and even the local Hardees, examining the troubled Rod Ferrell, and the Vampire Clan.

Was this a murder driven by occult beliefs, or did the vampire mythology conceal something much more human?

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For decades, people across Florida have reported seeing something large, hairy and foul-smelling moving through the swamps, mangroves and forests of the state.

They call it the Skunk Ape.

In this episode of The Southern Blueprint, we head into the Florida wilderness to trace the strange history of one of the South’s most famous cryptids. We’ll look at the terrifying 1977 encounters that drove the Stoeckman family from their home in Key Largo, a bizarre 1974 incident along U.S. 27, police encounters, the Florida legislator who actually tried to protect the creature, and the man who has spent most of his life searching Big Cypress for it.

We’ll also dig into the 1997 wave of sightings, Dave Shealy and the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters, the mysterious Myakka photographs, possible escaped primates, black bears, modern videos and the question that has followed the legend for more than fifty years:

Is the Skunk Ape simply one of Florida’s greatest pieces of folklore?

Or is there really something out there in the swamp?

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Few names are as deeply woven into the history and folklore of New Orleans as Marie Laveau.

She was a real woman who became something much larger: a Voudou leader, healer, devout Catholic, confidante, and eventually the legendary Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Nearly 150 years after her death, stories still surround her—secret ceremonies, gris-gris, Grand Zombi, courtroom magic, mysterious disappearances, ghostly encounters, and a tomb where generations of people have gone to ask Marie for help.

But where does the real Marie Laveau end and the legend begin?

In this Spooky Season episode of The Southern Blueprint Podcast, we go back to nineteenth-century New Orleans to follow Marie’s life, the rise of New Orleans Voudou, the strange stories that followed her while she was alive, and the even stranger ones that began after she died.

And maybe the biggest question of all: What if at least some of the stories about Marie Laveau were true?

🎃 Spooky Season has officially begun at The Southern Blueprint.

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