The Radioactive Boy Scout

The Box of Oddities

John Elliott and Kat Walls

Society & Culture, True Crime, Comedy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when a funeral home discovers the “dead” man in the body bag is breathing? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat’s bizarre colon tattoo sparks a conversation that spirals into one of history’s oldest fears: being buried alive. Jethro dives into the chilling true story of Walter Williams, the Ohio hospice patient who was declared dead… only to begin breathing again inside a funeral home body bag hours later. Along the way, the duo explores the terrifying history of premature burial, the strange medical phenomenon known as Lazarus Syndrome, Victorian “safety coffins,” and the unsettling gray area between life and death. Then, things get radioactive. Kat tells the unbelievable true story of David Hahn, better known as “The Radioactive Boy Scout,” the Michigan teenager who became obsessed with nuclear science and secretly attempted to build a homemade breeder reactor in his backyard shed using materials scavenged from smoke detectors, lantern mantles, and old clock dials. His dangerous experiments eventually triggered a federal hazmat response and turned his suburban property into a Superfund cleanup site. It’s a story of genius, obsession, government intervention, and the terrifying reality of what can happen when curiosity goes unchecked. Also in this episode: * The creepy origins of “dead ringers” * Why some corpses make noises after death * Spider facts you absolutely did not ask for * The horrifying side effects of Brazilian wandering spider venom * Why there are spiders living on Mount Everest If you love strange history, bizarre science, dark humor, medical mysteries, paranormal-adjacent stories, and unbelievable true events, this episode of The Box of Oddities is exactly the kind of nightmare fuel your brain ordered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:57.4	T's and Clusions apply. 18 plus scumannaware. Dotter.
1:01.4	The Box of Oddities.
1:04.7	Well, here's something I didn't expect to have to say.
1:07.7	Somebody at Disney recognized Kat's colon.
1:17.4	Yeah, we were at the coffee place standing there waiting for our order to be announced. And a woman was wearing a really cute Jim Henson t-shirt.
1:24.1	And I said, oh, I like your t-shirt. And she said, thanks. And she looked at me,
1:29.0	and she looked at my arm. And she went, is that a colon? Yeah. Now, you don't, to be clear,
1:33.6	you don't have a colon on your arm. It's a tattoo of a colon. Well, I feel like that's implied.
1:41.3	Well, you just can't take anything for granted these days. I suppose that's
1:45.1	true. Could have been a horrible genetic mix-up. And I was so pleased, because she's only the second person
1:50.9	to recognize this as a colon on my arm. And I was just so thrilled. And I was like, yes, it is. She asked me,
1:59.3	is this like some sort of IBS representation?
2:03.6	And for those of you who are playing the home version of our game, Cat, often will, she'll get a tattoo to represent a significant milestone in her life.
	...

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