Stories of people who are haunted, not by ghosts or phantoms, but by other people.
Prologue
Ira reads an excerpt from James Ellroy's memoir My Dark Places. (4 minutes)
Hearing Voices
Ira with Lynnette Nyman, who, as a girl, recorded her parents fighting with a cassette recorder she got for Christmas. (15 minutes)
Act Two
Binjamin Wilkomirski and New York writer Blake Eskin try and figure out if they are related.
NOTE: A few years after this interview aired, Binjamin Wilkomirski and his Holocaust memoir Fragments were shown to be fabrications. Blake Eskin chronicled this story in his 2002 book A Life In Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski. (20 minutes)
Ghost Story
An excerpt from Heather Woodbury's epic eight-hour solo show WhatEver: An American Odyssey in Eight Acts. (7 minutes)
Related
If you enjoyed this episode, you may like these
Act One: Nra Vs Nea
Sarah Vowell goes home to Montana to try and understand her gunsmith dad a little better.
Act Three: On A Quiet Street in Richmond
We bring you this very matter-of-fact article from 1853, about something profoundly troubling: a slave auction in Virginia.
Act Three: President's Vice
This American Life Senior Producer Julie Snyder talks to Ira about her rather alarming theory regarding the new president's smoking habits.
Staff Recommendations
Arms Trader (2009)
The U.S. government spent two years on a sting operation trapping an Indian man suspected of being an illegal arms dealer.
Amusement Park
We head to some of the happiest places on Earth: amusement parks!