Impossible Choices: Short Stories by Raj Shankar is a podcast of original fiction about the moments when there is no easy answer.
Written and narrated by author Raj Shankar, each episode explores people caught between competing truths: family and freedom, justice and mercy, culture and change, love and obligation, who we inherit and who we choose to become.
Some stories are speculative. Some are unsettling. Some are rooted in immigration, heritage, identity, and the complicated experience of belonging to more than one world. Others begin with a single impossible premise and follow it to the question hiding underneath.
The genres may change, but the question remains: What would you choose?
From quiet family stories to dark moral dilemmas, Impossible Choices is fiction for anyone who likes stories that continue working on them after the final sentence.
Written and narrated by Raj Shankar, author of Kem Cho? (How Are You?), The Ninth Life of Missy, and other works of fiction.
Read more at https://www.threecatspress.com (https://www.threecatspress.com/).
New here? Start anywhere. Just remember: Choose carefully.
Every choice closes a door.
Most of the time, we never think about the life waiting on the other side.
But sometimes...
the choice is impossible.
Welcome to Impossible Choices.
I’m Raj Shankar.
Each episode, I’ll tell you a story about an ordinary person facing a decision with no easy answer.
Some stories will take us into strange futures.
Some will explore love, family, identity, immigration, culture, and the things we inherit from the people who came before us.
Some may feel impossible.
Others may feel uncomfortably familiar.
But every story eventually arrives at the same place:
a moment when someone has to choose.
And when the story ends, the choice becomes yours.
What would you have done?
Would you make the same decision?
And if you knew what that decision would cost...
would you still make it?
These are stories about who we become when there is no perfect answer.
This is Impossible Choices.
Subscribe now.
The first choice is waiting.
18 Dec 2025
Three Stories of the Strange Dark and Mysterious
The provided text is a transcript from a YouTube video on the "MrBallen" channel, presenting three separate narrative accounts that explore unusual, true stories often characterized as strange or mysterious. The first story details the sudden death of a man in India following an extreme, ill-fated fertility ritual involving swallowing a live chick. The second story recounts the suicide of a recluse who jumped off a cliff, inadvertently stopping a younger man from taking his own life. The final and longest story describes a deadly train disaster in World War II Italy where hundreds of stowaways and crew members suffocated inside a tunnel due to massive amounts of carbon monoxide from the low-quality coal used to power the struggling train.
16 Dec 2025
The Abduction of Samantha Koenig
This source presents a narrative recounting the chilling case of Samantha Koenig's disappearance and murder, delivered by the YouTube channel MrBallen. The video transcript details how Samantha, a barista in Anchorage, Alaska, vanished from her coffee kiosk after closing on February 1, 2012, leading to a missing person report and a subsequent robbery investigation. Authorities initially suspected Samantha until security footage revealed she was abducted by an unknown male figure during a robbery, which soon became a national headline-grabbing case involving the FBI. The text describes how a series of ransom demands and ATM withdrawals across multiple states eventually led police to Israel Keyes, a 34-year-old Anchorage man and serial killer, who confessed to kidnapping and killing Samantha before taking a pre-planned cruise. The confession details how Keyes held Samantha in his shed, performed a cruel ruse of setting her free before raping and murdering her, and later used her body to create a proof-of-life photograph before dismembering and disposing of her remains.
11 Dec 2025
The Savage Harvest of Michael Rockefeller
The text provides an extensive narrative, sourced from a MrBallen video transcript, detailing the 1961 disappearance of Michael Rockefeller off the coast of New Guinea. It explains that Rockefeller, an heir to a wealthy American family and an art enthusiast, was traveling by catamaran to trade for Asmat tribal art when his boat sank, forcing him to attempt a long swim to shore for help. The story contrasts the initial widely accepted belief that Michael drowned with persistent rumors and later evidence, including found footage and an investigation by a National Geographic journalist, suggesting a more sinister fate. The core of the narrative focuses on the shocking account, revealed decades later by the Asmat tribe, that they ritualistically killed and cannibalized Rockefeller to avenge past attacks by white men.
11 Dec 2025
The Dancing Plague of 1518: Etiology and Theories
The provided texts offer a comprehensive overview of the Dancing Plague of 1518 in Strasbourg, an event where hundreds of people danced uncontrollably until some died from exhaustion. Sources widely discuss the dominant and competing historical explanations for this phenomenon, primarily focusing on Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI), or mass hysteria, and Ergotism, which is poisoning from a fungus found on rye grain. The MPI theory is favored by many modern scholars, as the afflicted individuals’ behavior was culturally "scripted" by the fear of divine punishment from St. Vitus and was triggered by extreme socio-economic stress from famine and disease. Conversely, Ergotism, or "Saint Anthony's Fire," is largely discounted as the sole cause because its painful, convulsive symptoms are incompatible with the sustained, rhythmic dancing described in historical records. Ultimately, the sources agree that the plague was a complex public health conundrum resulting from a convergence of cultural beliefs, severe adversity, and social contagion.
10 Dec 2025
Pied Piper Legend and the Eastward Migration
We examine the enduring mystery of the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend, which describes the disappearance of 130 children from the German town in 1284, after the town reneged on a debt to the Piper for removing rats. The texts highlight historical evidence from town records and plaques that confirm the event's date and the number of missing children, while noting that the element of rats was a later addition to the folklore. A significant portion of the material focuses on the migration theory, suggesting the Piper was a recruiter, or Lokator, luring Hamelin's youth to settle new lands in Eastern Europe during the medieval Ostsiedlung expansion. This theory is supported by linguistic evidence linking family and place names from Hamelin to regions near Berlin and Brandenburg. Other explanations for the children's disappearance are also discussed, including theories involving a massacre, a Children's Crusade, or an outbreak of disease such as murine typhus or dance mania.
9 Dec 2025
Villisca: Unsolved Crime and Dark Tourism
The sources analyze the brutal and unsolved 1912 Villisca axe murders in Iowa, focusing on the historical crime where eight people, including six children, were bludgeoned to death in the Moore family home. They review several theories regarding the killer, noting that prominent suspects included local rivals and a transient serial killer, while traveling minister Reverend George Kelly was tried twice and ultimately acquitted. The property, historically the Josiah B. and Sara Moore House, was later meticulously restored to its authentic 1912 historical condition and rebranded as the Villisca Axe Murder House to attract tourists. Now managed by companies like US Ghost Adventures, the house operates as a major dark tourism destination offering expensive overnight stays that are heavily marketed around claims of intense paranormal activity. The texts further critically examine the risks of this model, highlighting a significant incident in 2014 when a visitor, Robert Steven Laursen, Jr., stabbed himself while attempting to provoke spirits, showcasing the profound psychological effect the location can have on guests.
8 Dec 2025
Tequendama's Haunted Hotel and Ecological Rebirth
The sources primarily document the complex and tragic history of the Hotel del Salto, located on a cliff overlooking the Tequendama Falls southwest of Bogotá, Colombia. Initially built in 1923 as an opulent mansion for the country’s elite, the French-style structure soon converted into a hotel that gained a morbid reputation as a notorious suicide hotspot and was widely regarded as a haunted site. This somber history is layered upon ancient Muisca legends that describe indigenous people transforming into eagles when they leaped from the sacred falls to escape Spanish colonization. Ultimately, the hotel was forced to close in the early 1990s, not due to its hauntings, but because severe pollution of the Bogotá River ruined the natural beauty and drove away tourism. Following years of abandonment, the building was restored and now functions as the Tequendama Falls Museum of Biodiversity and Culture, emphasizing cultural heritage and environmental renewal. In contrast to these detailed accounts, one outlier source briefly outlines a extensive 1992 paranormal investigation conducted at the separate, U.S.-based Hotel del Coronado.
8 Dec 2025
Enfield Horror: The Three-Legged Illinois Cryptid
The sources detail the notorious 1973 Enfield Monster sightings in Illinois, focusing on the horrifying reports from resident Henry McDaniel, who claimed the creature was a four-and-a-half-foot-tall, three-legged entity with short arms and large, glowing red eyes. Although McDaniel fired at the beast, which he believed was extraterrestrial in origin, the bullets were ineffective, and the monster fled by covering remarkable distances in just a few bounds. The incidents quickly drew a media frenzy and an influx of amateur monster hunters, leading local police to make arrests for hunting violations, despite officers confirming physical evidence like unusual, six-toed footprints and scratches. Investigators and cryptozoologists like Loren Coleman noted that this event was part of a broader flap of monster reports in Southern Illinois, citing similar cases such as the Big Muddy Monster. Conversely, skeptical analyses suggest the widespread panic was a classic example of social contagion, where fear and local gossip amplified what may have been a simple misidentification or an initial hoax. Ultimately, the Enfield Horror remains an inconclusive case, highlighting the persistent tension between eyewitness testimony and mundane explanations for mysterious paranormal phenomena.
3 Nov 2025
What the Walls Repeated — A Night of Two.
Tonight’s entry: What the Walls Repeated — A Night of Two. Two stories that are guaranteed to keep you up at night.
18 Sept 2025
Murder at Sea: The Tragic Case Of Thomas And Jackie Hawks
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