Over the past five years, Sean Scally has quietly built a legacy in podcasting, producing three very different series that continue to find listeners online. Each project reflects his deep curiosity, his love of research, and his instinct for personal storytelling.
Scally began with Strange Stories of the Bay of Quinte, a series of 11 episodes that unearth the folklore, oddities, and hidden tales of our own region. “While researching many of the local history documentaries I have made, I kept coming across short anecdotal stories and folktales that were too short or too difficult to film for a video, but were nonetheless really interesting. So the podcast seemed like a good option,” he explains. The result was a selection of eerie tales and overlooked histories, offering listeners a glimpse into our historical past.
One particularly memorable episode explored the famous Fox Sisters, whose séances in the mid-19th century sparked the global Spiritualist movement. Scally recalls, “I came across the story of the Fox Sisters during my research on a film about the Murray Canal and Carrying Place. It is fascinating when you dig around in this region’s past—you come to realize that over the course of history many people have come from here and gone on to make and participate in some of the greatest stories of North American lore. Some went on to become famous and others infamous, the Fox Sisters included.” He notes that author Susanna Moodie, Belleville’s own literary figure, once attended a séance and later hosted a few at the Moodie cottage. For Scally, the story resonates far beyond Quinte: “The Spiritualist movement was huge in its time and still resonates today … all derived from the mind of mischievous bored young girls from Consecon.”
His second project, Dead Wax 78’s, reveals another side of his passions: early music and the charm of gramophones. “This all came about through my love of old-time music and the preservation of old 78 records and my hobby of repairing and tuning old wind-up gramophones and phonographs, mostly saving them from the landfill and bringing them back to life,” he says. The series—three seasons, about 20 episodes each—celebrates not only the crackle and hiss of vintage records but also the history of a revolutionary invention. “It made me feel like sharing all the lost knowledge on the mechanics and development of one of the world’s most influential pieces of technology—the flat disc record—and also the music and musicians of the past,” says Scally.
Perhaps his boldest leap was Confessions of a Hangman. Here, Scally adopted the persona of Ratcliff, Canada’s first licensed executioner, to tell the stories behind the country’s executions since Confederation. “This was a COVID-era project that I made using a pseudonym, which allowed me to do a little acting by altering my voice to portray the character,” he recalls. The series spans 40 episodes and balances historical detail with haunting narrative. “Again the long-forgotten stories of some of the most notorious crimes in Canada were very interesting, although a little creepy. Many times I was able to find write-ups and stories written about these crimes online, put together by ordinary people who themselves are preserving the stories of their own small regions.”
What unites all three series is Scally’s belief in the power of story to preserve, provoke, and connect. Whether through the folklore of the Bay, the music of forgotten artists, or the voices of history’s darkest chapters, he approaches each project with respect for the material and empathy for his audience.
Today, though the series have concluded, they remain online—a testament to one man’s dedication to bringing the past to life. In every episode, Sean Scally reminds us that stories are not just entertainment; they are echoes, waiting to be heard.
