Mysterious Universe

Mysterious Universe (or MU) was a popular podcast from the SOH Radio Network recorded weekly in Sydney, Australia. The podcast typically discussed the paranormal and other topics outside the popular news media. Some of the most common topics covered were Bigfoot, alien abductions, shadow people and Old Hag Syndrome. Mysterious Universe had been regularly in the top 25 most popular podcasts as ranked by PodcastAlley.com and had been as high as 4th most popular. Mysterious Universe was also notable as the host, Benjamin Grundy, resigned from his day job in January 2007 and declared that he would become a professional podcaster, producing Mysterious Universe as well as other related podcasts fulltime. On May 13, 2008, Grundy announced that he would end his association with Mysterious Universe as of episode 100 and is actively soliciting candidates to take over the podcast.

As of February 2007, Mysterious Universe had a listenership of over 16,000, the majority of whom lived in the United States. Around the same time, the Mysterious Universe social networking site on Ning was taken offline by its owner. In the weeks following the shutdown there was no communication from the host to his web site volunteers, listeners or paying customers. Despite this, premium subscribers were still charged monthly subscription fees. Before and during the March outage, several subscribers had raised concerns over the lack of content produced by Grundy as well as the level of customer service he provided to his customers. Numerous complaints were posted in the Mysterious Universe website forums and comments sections, as well as on Podcast Alley and the EERIE Radio forums. Allegations ranged from failure to provide the amount of premium content as promised and delays in the issuing of refunds to premium subscribers in keeping with the MU Premium guarantee. Further, multiple complaints regarding the business practices of Grundy and Mysterious Universe were registered with the online consumer watchdog site Ripoff Report to which Grundy responded but failed to adequately explain.
On March 23, 2008 a revamped Mysterious Universe web site reappeared and Episode 91 was released. In this episode, Grundy explained the disappearance of the website and podcast by stating: … I have been going through some personal stuff for the last couple of weeks - I won’t go into details on the show - but, essentially I was at a point where I had to decide whether to keep Mysterious Universe going or call it a day and wrap it up. So what I have decided to do is to make some big changes and of course keep the show going; it is here to stay.

Grundy also stated in Episode 91 that a new support ticketing system had been implemented to overcome current support delays.

The newly redesigned website contained a greatly expanded terms and conditions section which no longer included a money-back guarantee for premium subscribers and stricter rules controlling user-posted material.

During the March 2008 site redesign the forums were taken offline and were never replaced.

Planned Departure
On May 15, 2008 host Benjamin Grundy announced that he would be leaving Mysterious Universe after episode 100 to pursue other things. Since then he has made no effort to fulfill his claim that he would finish the remaining episodes. No word has been given regarding attempts to find a new host, and Grundy has ignored attempts at communication from subscribers and fans. The web site appears to be abandoned, and is not accepting any comments.

On June 4, 2008 the site was again pulled down, marked as "Maintenance Mode. Mysterious Universe is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. Sorry for the inconvenience."

On June 6th, email cancellations were sent from Paypal stating, "Your subscription to Mysterious Universe PREMIUM Subscription - Monthly has been cancelled by MU Productions.You will not be billed for this subscription again," indicating Mysterious Universe as hosted by Benjamin Grundy is gone.

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