Las Vegas: Area 51 Flights, Ted Binion, and Giant Space Clams | Creeps, Crimes & Cryptids

Las Vegas is built on spectacle, but the desert has a way of making secrets surface. This episode opens with the Creeps: unmarked planes spotted at Harry Reid International and the long-whispered commute to Area 51, followed by Lake Mead’s receding shoreline revealing rusted cars, human remains, and mob-era timelines once thought buried for good. From there, we step beneath the Strip into the city’s flood-control tunnels—an underground world shaped by survival, sudden floods, and the human cost of a city engineered for excess. We also explore a classic Vegas haunt: rumors of cremation urns beneath the El Cortez, where Fremont Street’s neon hum may be just the kind of noise spirits like to linger in.

The Crime at the center of the episode is pure Vegas mythmaking turned real: the rise and fall of Ted Binion. A charismatic casino heir, a buried fortune in silver, a strip-club romance, a staged overdose, and a midnight excavation that unraveled everything—convictions collapse, motives blur, and the truth feels as rehearsed as a casino floor show. We close with a Cryptid curveball worthy of Nevada’s wide skies: the legend of giant space clams, a strange blend of UFO lore and biological fever dream that captures the state’s talent for turning big horizons into bigger questions.

*******

Creeps, Crimes & Cryptids is a podcast by Ghost City Tours, exploring the strange, sinister, and unexplained history lurking beneath America’s most haunted cities. If you'd like to take a ghost tour in this episode's featured city, or to find tours in a city nearest you, visit www.ghostcitytours.com!