These standards apply to Dark History, Documented: our five history series, their companion articles, the case pages and the Macabre Chronicle Shorts on YouTube. Our buying guides follow the general Editorial Policy and the Affiliate Disclosure.

The short version: we tell what really happened, we show where we found it, and we treat the people involved as people.

What we cover

  • Documented history. Medicine, death and burial, disasters, survival and justice: events we can trace in records, objects, excavations or contemporary accounts.
  • No supernatural explanations. Curses, hauntings and monsters are not part of this area. Where a legend grew around a real event, we describe the legend as a legend and keep it apart from the record.
  • Distance in time. We prefer events that lie roughly 75 years or more in the past. More recent cases with living relatives are covered only after a separate editorial decision, and never while an investigation or trial is open.

How we research

  • Every factual claim has a source. Each article ends with a source list: primary sources (laws, patents, court and parish records, contemporary newspapers, museum objects, excavation reports) and secondary sources (scholarly books and peer-reviewed articles, museum and archive publications). We link them wherever a free copy or a catalogue entry exists.
  • Documented or disputed. Each article has a “Documented / Disputed” box. “Documented” means the claim is supported by the sources we cite. “Disputed” covers popular claims that the evidence does not support, estimates that vary widely, and questions historians still argue about.
  • Numbers carry their origin. Where a figure is an estimate (for example, how many people are buried in an ossuary), we say who estimated it, or we say that no reliable count exists.
  • Popular stories are checked, not repeated. Many “dark history” facts online are recycled myths. If we cannot find the claim in a source we trust, it goes in the disputed column or does not appear at all.

How we use AI

  • AI tools help us work. We use AI tools for research summaries, drafting and narration. They are not a source: a claim is only as good as the document behind it, and that document is listed under the article.
  • No AI “photos” of real events. We do not use AI to create photographs or photo-realistic pictures of real people, real places or real events. A generated image presented as a historical photograph would be a fabrication.
  • Illustrations are labelled. If we use an AI-made illustration at all, it is clearly non-photographic, shows no real person, and its caption says that it was made with AI. On YouTube we use the platform’s disclosure for altered or synthetic content where it applies.

Images and licences

  • We use archival images that are in the public domain or published under a free licence (for example Creative Commons), from sources such as Wikimedia Commons, museum open-access collections and national libraries.
  • Every image is credited under the article with its creator (where known), its source and its licence. Images under licences that require attribution or share-alike are used on those terms.
  • No gore. We do not show wounds, mutilated bodies or photographs of victims’ remains. Bones displayed in public ossuaries and museum objects may appear where they are part of the story.

Victims and dignity

  • People who suffered or died are named where the record names them, and they are never the punchline. We avoid shock framing such as “you won’t believe” or “chilling truth”.
  • Accused is not convicted. We report verdicts as the record states them and say when a verdict is contested.
  • Histories of racism and colonialism are told with the people affected at the centre, not as spectacle.
  • Articles about distressing subjects begin with a short content note.

Not medical or legal advice

Dark Medicine and Strange Justice describe historical practices. Nothing in them is medical or legal advice, and many of the treatments described were harmful.

Money and independence

Macabre Chronicle earns money through affiliate links in its buying guides. In Dark History articles, the only links that may earn a commission are links to books we actually cite as sources. Commissions never decide what we cover or what we conclude. Details are in our Affiliate Disclosure.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it in the article, add a dated note there, and list the change on our public Corrections page. If the error was in a Short, we also correct it in the video’s pinned comment. To report an error, email contact@macabrechronicle.com and include the page and, if you can, a source.

Last updated: 30 October 2026.