Tales of the Unexpected: A Grab Bag of Odd Stories

True Crime Campfire

True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People can be pretty strange. And not just people—as we’ll see in one story of this week’s episode, you can add all our extended family of primates to that. If you have a big brain and opposable thumbs, there’s a good chance you’ll be getting up to shenanigans. But as we’ll see in our other story, human beings still wear the crown for weird, ridiculously confident nonsense. Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit ⁠badmagicproductions.com⁠ for more info and to buy tickets. Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027. Sources, Monkey Invasion case: Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-170-wild-monkeys-escaped-from-a-jungle-camp-and-terrorized-new-york-180985537/ NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1935/08/23/archives/monkey-runaways-still-number-111-32-simian-flagpole-sitters-are.html https://www.nytimes.com/1935/08/22/archives/150-monkeys-flee-camp-stop-train-simians-escape-from-frank-bucks.html Farmingdale Local History Blog: https://farmingdalelocalhistory.blogspot.com/2018/07/frank-bucks-jungle-campmassapequa-zoo.html https://omeka.hofstra.edu/exhibits/show/long-island-business-and-indus/frank-buck-collection--1935-19 https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1935/08/30/issue.html https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-news-174-monkeys-skip-jail/159743530/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026749/1935-08-24/ed-1/?sp=1&q=MASSAPEQUA&r=0.241,0.976,0.311,0.229,0 Sources, Alison Gu case: U.S. Court of Appeals filings: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/2140129.html https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/6943f1bbcfa51735e29ca3b7 Bennington Banner: https://www.benningtonbanner.com/local-news/former-winhall-woman-back-in-court-more-fraud-charges/article_f37d8ad2-dd24-11ec-94e0-4f8b05aedbae.html "Lowering the Bar," Kevin Underhill: https://www.loweringthebar.net/2025/07/defendant-recruited-seven-actors-to-testify-in-fraud-trial.html Manchester Journal: https://www.manchesterjournal.com/local-news/former-winhall-woman-headed-back-to-prison/article_63203790-1e66-11ed-ba8a-77d4d5eff5ee.html Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: truecrimecampfirepod@gmail.comMERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. People can be pretty strange, and not just people. As we'll see in one story of this week's episode,
0:25.9	you can add all our extended family of primates to that. If you have a big brain and opposable thumbs,
0:32.3	there's a good chance you'll be getting up to some shenanigans. But as we'll see in our other story,
0:38.6	human beings still wear the crown for weird, ridiculously confident nonsense. This is Tales of the Unexpected,
0:45.3	a grab bag of odd stories. Case 1. Not My Circus. The Great Monkey Invasion of Long Island.
1:01.8	So, campers, for this one, we're on Long Island, New York, on the short stretch of highway between Massapiqua and Amityville. August 21, 1935. Nowadays, the area is home to the Westfield
1:14.6	Sunrise Mall, recently closed and slated for demolition and grim and spooky like all closed
1:20.5	malls are, but in 1935, it was a lot livelier because it was the location of Frank Buck's
1:26.7	jungle camp, a 40-acre zoo that
1:29.2	housed lions, tigers, elephants, birds, reptiles, and monkeys. Lots and lots of monkeys.
1:37.4	To set the scene for where this story's going, here's the start of a 1935 New York Times story.
1:43.5	The Chattery-reis monkey colony at Frank
1:46.0	Buck's jungle camp gave no warning during the past week that it was a quiver with impending
1:51.1	revolution. But the storm broke shortly before noon today, and tonight homeowners and fruit
1:57.0	stand operators in two counties fidgeted uncomfortably in the advancing shadow of a simian invasion.
2:06.2	Frank Buck was born in 1884 in Gainesville, Texas, but grew up in Dallas, still a pretty small and dusty city.
2:15.1	As a kid, he loved catching and keeping small animals and birds. Frank left school
2:20.4	after the seventh grade to work as a cow puncher, which is not quite as weird as it sounds. It's just an
2:26.0	old-timey term for cowboy. I hope they weren't punching those poor cows in the face. They were
2:31.6	suffering enough, I'm sure. In his mid-teens, he rode the rails
2:36.6	north to Chicago to seek his fortune, first of all, through a very old-fashioned route. In Chicago,
2:43.3	Frank got a job as a bellhop and caught the eye of one of the hotel guests, a drama critic
	...

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