The ancients didn’t just fear death — they weaponized it, leaving behind curses in hieroglyphics meant to haunt anyone brave enough to look.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/CursesCarvedInStoneREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3cfn27cpFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: They say grief lingers in the house where children were murdered… but so does something colder, crueler — and far more dangerous. (The Horror of Waupun, Wisconsin) *** In the haunted heart of Edinburgh, there’s a pub where the drinks are strong and the screams are stronger. (The Spirits of Banshee Labyrinth) *** The last person to see Virginia alive passed a polygraph — but his wife said he didn’t come home until hours later. (The Vanishing of Virginia Carpenter) *** Asteroids, alien civilizations, even cosmic plagues — the real terror isn’t what we can see in the sky… it’s what we can’t. (Space Threats to Earth) *** It started with flirtation, turned into an affair, and ended with a gunshot echoing through the cold night air in a Walgreen’s parking lot. (Three Shots In The Night) *** They carved their warnings into stone 4,000 years ago — and now, after centuries of silence, the hieroglyphic curses of the dead are being read aloud once again. But in doing so, are we inviting doom and destruction? (Hieroglyphic Curses)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Short Fictional Story, “Breath of Anubis”00:11:21.779 = Show Open00:13:18.068 = Hieroglyphic Curses00:25:27.966 = The Vanishing of Virginia Carpenter ***00:32:11.146 = Space Threats To Earth00:36:45.704 = Spirits of the Banshee Labyrinth00:42:07.498 = Three Shots In The Night ***00:47:55.685 = Horror of Waupun, Wisconsin00:58:32.140 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:Haunted Rockford YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@HauntedRockfordEventsBOOK: “Dark Skies” by Daniel Deudney: https://amzn.to/3XFWUF6Fictional story at the beginning of this episode, “Breath of Anubis” by ChatterGhost“Space Threats to Earth”: https://anomalien.com/threats-from-outer-space-might-be-fueling-conspiracy-theories/“Three Shots In The Night”: https://the-line-up.com/murder-of-emmett-corrigan“Hieroglyphic Curses”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000520,https://ng.opera.news/ng/en/culture/6aaa5bcd19c53ffa60ffc337d5742fce, https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/ancient-egypt-tomb-saqqara-priest-16826821, https://www.rom.on.ca/en/learning/activities-resources/online-activities/ancient-egypt/religion/tomb-inscriptions-curses, https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/tomb-curses-ancient-egypt-magical-incantations-dead-003228, https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2020/08/06/debunking-the-curse-of-the-pharaohs/, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Execration-Texts, https://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-saqqara-tombs-mummy-curses-2020-11, https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-curse-of-the-curse-of-the-pharaoh,https://blog.nms.ac.uk/2017/06/23/ancient-egyptian-tomb-warnings-curses-and-ghosts/,https://listverse.com/2023/06/08/10-creepy-curses-hidden-in-hieroglyphics“The Horror of Waupun, Wisconsin: https://www.hauntedrockford.com/shadows-of-a-murder/“Spirits of the Banshee Labyrinth”: https://moonmausoleum.com/haunted-spirits-at-the-banshee-labyrinth-pub/“The Vanishing of Virginia Carpenter” by Troy Taylor (used with permission): https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdzcaez9(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 01, 2025Weird Darkness explores ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic curses, the 1948 disappearance of Virginia Carpenter, asteroid and alien threats from space, Edinburgh’s haunted Banshee Labyrinth, the Walgreens murder of Emmett Corrigan, and the 1865 Wisconsin ax killings linked to the restless dead of Waupun.It opens with curses carved into ancient Egyptian tombs, from the 4,000-year-old Execration Texts to warnings left by Harkhuf, Ankhtifi, Khentika Ikhekhi, Hezi, Sarenput I, Ankhmahor, Senenmut, and Pharaoh Amenhotep. These hieroglyphic threats promised strangulation, mutilation, divine judgment, destroyed families, and even attacks by crocodiles and serpents against anyone who violated the dead.From there, 21-year-old Virginia Carpenter vanishes after arriving in Denton, Texas, on June 1, 1948, to attend the Texas State College for Women. Taxi driver Edgar Ray “Jack” Zachary said he left her outside Brackenridge Hall with two unidentified men beside a cream-colored convertible, but Carpenter never checked in, and later leads—including a possible Arkansas sighting and a 1998 burial-site tip—failed to solve the case.Next, the danger moves into space with asteroid 2024 YR4, theories about weaponized asteroid-deflection technology, Cixin Liu’s “dark forest” view of hostile alien civilizations, and Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe’s idea that viruses could arrive from space. The episode also traces fears of catastrophe from the sky back to the ancient Cosmic Hunt tradition and the Sámi story of an arrow striking the pole star.The episode then descends beneath Edinburgh’s Old Town into The Banshee Labyrinth, a rock and metal pub built partly inside the South Bridge vaults. Reports include a screaming banshee in a gray dress, the ghost of a child named Molly who disappeared in 1814, the mischievous Ole Jock in the women’s restroom, and unexplained cold spots, moving glasses, and shadows inside the historic underground chambers.From Edinburgh, the story shifts to Meridian, Idaho, where attorney Emmett Corrigan’s affair with paralegal Kandi Hall ended in three gunshots outside a Walgreens on March 11, 2011. Kandi’s husband, Rob Hall, survived a gunshot wound to the head, Corrigan died from wounds to the heart and skull, and Hall was convicted of second-degree murder in 2012 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.The episode closes with the December 3, 1865 murders of three children at Anton and Amelia Koch’s farm near Burlington, Wisconsin, where hired man Peter Frahm was convicted after bloody footprints, blood on his boots, and a stolen coin pouch tied him to the ax killings. Frahm died by hanging in the Wisconsin State Penitentiary in Waupun on March 21, 1871, and reports of whispers, cold presences, apparitions of children, and a darker shadow have since attached themselves to both the old Koch property and the unmarked graves of the State Prison Cemetery.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://weirddarkness.com/OFFICIAL

In a fog-bound London mansion emptied of its furniture and its servants, a young man lives alone beneath a wax-sealed black door at the top of the stairs that his father's instructions forbid him to open until his twenty-first birthday.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Black Door” (June 23, 1978) ***WD00:46:40.716 = Hollywood Mystery Time, “Murder By Coincidence” (August 19, 1945) ***WD01:16:35.766 = Sam Spade, “The Bail Bond Caper” (June 27, 1948) ***WD01:48:13.618 = The Sealed Book, “I’ll Die Laughing” (May 27, 1945) 02:17:42.604 = The Shadow, “The Juggernaut” (December 26, 1943) ***WD02:46:11.413 = Sleep No More, “Passengers To Bali” (April 10, 1957) ***WD03:13:40.831 = BBC Spine Chillers’ Fresh Blood, “Absolute Silence” (March 28, 2006)03:27:38.003 = Stay Tuned For Terror, “The Bogey Man Will Get You” (October 01, 1945) ***WD03:42:10.420 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Two Faces of Death” (March 13, 1945) ***WD03:54:15.205 = Suspense, “Marvelous Barastro” (April 13, 1944)04:23:48.161 = Tales of Tomorrow, “The Other Now” (January 22, 1953)04:53:42.470 = Incredible But True, “Mr. Watt’s Awakening” (1950-1951)04:57:14.439 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0746

Nothing will grow in his fields — but the old man next door drives home at midnight with his headlights off, and whatever he unloads makes his crops thrive.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-fertilizerSOURCES and RESOURCES: “Fertilizer” by RehnWriter: https://www.creepypasta.com/fertilizer/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 16, 2026LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

Something lifted out of Horseshoe Lagoon on a north Queensland banana farm in January 1966, and what it left floating on the surface was still there days later when the reporters, the air force, and ufologists arrived to investigate it.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/TullyNestAffairREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2tuf57reFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Something strange happened in 1966 Australia. Lights in the skies, sightings of saucer shaped objects, and the start of what eventually came to be known as crop circles. It’s a mystery that still lingers today, and it appears to be a kind of catalyst for so many similar oddities to follow. (The Tully Nests Affair) *** When you think of the most deadly, man-killing animals in existence, you might think of the big cats, or alligators, or sharks… but don’t be too quick to dismiss birds as dealers of death. (Death-Dealing Fowl) *** It’s one of the world’s most haunted places… it is a ship that you can now book a room in as a hotel. We’ll look at the very haunted Queen Mary. (The Haunted Queen Mary) *** The result of an accidental pregnancy finds out later in life he might be the son of a demon. (Son of the Demon) *** Most every item I bring to you here in Weird Darkness is going to have taken place in history – and most all of them you hear are going to be unnerving, or even horrifying… but there are some particularly macabre moments in history that stand out among the others. Most of which you’ve probably never heard of. (Macabre Moments in History)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:36.609 = Show Open00:03:39.710 = The Tully Nest Affair00:25:34.561 = Death Dealing Fowl00:37:53.394 = The Haunted Queen Mary00:46:17.396 = Macabre Moments in History01:02:36.511 = Son Of The Demon01:06:32.900 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:Book a room on the Queen Mary: https://queenmary.com/tours/tours-exhibits/“Delphine LaLaurie” episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8vr5wj“Mellification” episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4km5fa57“The Tully Nests Affair” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2jm2bujx“Death-Dealing Fowl” by Darci Heikkinen for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckrdrea“The Haunted Queen Mary” from The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p98rr3z“Son of the Demon” by HauntedJurist, posted at YourGhostStories.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5n954sur“Macabre Moments in History” by Lauren Glen for Ranker: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y69r65ft(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March, 2022

Speciality of the House: Sbirro's has no menu, no sign and no interest in new customers, and the handful of men who eat there have taken a solemn oath never to speak of the one dish that keeps them coming back.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “A Matter of Faith” (June 21, 1978) ***WD00:45:51.326 = Obsession, “Ebb Tide” (October 01, 1951) ***WD01:14:46.759 = Origin of Superstition, “Black Cat” (1935) ***WD01:28:25.308 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Father Leahy Joe Feldman” (April 02, 1949)01:57:11.365 = Peril, “Mask of Hate” (1953) ***WD02:21:19.624 = Mystery Playhouse, “Letter” (December 26, 1944) ***WD(LQ)02:43:57.936 = Philip Morris Playhouse, “Four Hours to Kill” (May 13, 1949) ***WD(LQ)03:12:47.766 = The Price of Fear, “Speciality Of The House” (April 13, 1974) ***WD03:41:18.848 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “One Diamond” (May 06, 1948)04:10:28.639 = Quiet Please, “Dialogue For A Tragedy” (April 10, 1949) ***WD04:40:22.415 = Radio City Playhouse, “Sibling” (December 11, 1949) ***WD05:08:43.222 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0745

A three-year-old Curiosity frame from Gale Crater went viral this week after a space enthusiast flagged a small dark shape standing on the horizon, one that does not appear in the images shot moments before it, and NASA has not commented on it publicly.BOOK: “They Told Me My Newborn Died – They Lied”: https://amzn.to/4xyPmn1SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/MarsJellyfish (INCLUDES PHOTOS)Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

Harry and Sarah Kemp paid ten thousand dollars for a ten-month-old baby and never once asked what they were buying.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Unholy Miracle” (June 16, 1978) ***WD00:45:19.298 = MindWebs, “The Show Must Go On” (April 09, 1983)01:08:33.906 = Dark Destiny, “Masquerade” (October 31, 1942) ***WD (LQ)01:36:44.100 = Mystery In The Air, “Crime And Punishment” (September 25, 1947) ***WD02:02:12.536 = Molle Mystery Theater, “St. Louis Lady” (August 23, 1946)02:31:53.304 = Mr Keen, “The Frightened Child” (November 16, 1944) ***WD03:01:30.283 = Murder at Midnight, “The Line is Dead” (May 22, 1950) ***WD03:27:36.848 = The Black Museum, “The Trunk” (1952) ***WD (LQ)03:51:48.450 = Mysterious Traveler, “House of Death “(January 30, 1944) ***WD04:19:27.772 = CBC Nightfall, “Late Special” (August 08, 1980) ***WD04:45:45.237 = It’s Murder, “Picture Wire Murder” (August 10, 1944)05:00:24.414 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0744

A cubicle crush turns dangerous when an office worker starts hearing a voice that isn't his own, and it wants him to reach Claira by any means necessary.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-ifollowedherhomeSOURCES and RESOURCES: “I Followed Her Home” by Christopher Maxim:  https://www.reddit.com/r/ChristopherMaxim/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 15, 2026

Scout Brooks just wanted to survive his first day of seventh grade. Instead, he found himself recruited into a mysterious after-school club, named 'The Chosen One' by the strange Professor Nog, and handed a box of secrets he's not allowed to talk about. Meanwhile, somewhere far beyond the stars, a man named Farrow remains a prisoner of creatures no one back on Earth even knows exist.https://weirddarkness.com/scoutbrooks003Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrorsOther stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaUOther narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.com= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness©, 2026Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

They wore caps and gowns to celebrate the future — but before the night was over, some would lie dead in pools of blood, their dreams buried with them.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/capsgownscasketsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4d8r6tb9FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Graduation is a special time in just about everyone’s life when they make their way from childhood, to adulthood. And while that step might be a bit scary for some, we all get past it – we have to. But what if there is something truly to be afraid of at your graduation? Like the possibility of being murdered? (Murdered During Graduation) *** Joseph McKinnon strangled his girlfriend Patricia Dent, then died while trying to bury her body in their garden. (Killed By Karma) *** When you die, do you know that you are dead? A new study says that maybe… yes. You might still be conscious enough to know you are dead even after your body ceases to live. But for how long? (When You Die, You Are Conscious Long Enough To Know It) *** The term Zodiac in true crime circles invokes images of serial murder, cryptograms and bragging letters in and around San Francisco. But the California Zodiac is not the only Zodiac out there. (A Tale of Two Zodiacs)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00.00.000 = Show Open00:01:54.162 = Murdered During Graduation00:13:33.644 = A Tale Of Two Zodiacs ***00:35:21.731 = When You Die You Are Conscious Long Enough To Know It ***00:44:27.121 = Killed By Karma00:48:08.338 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“A Tale of Two Zodiacs” by Paul Drexler for Crime Traveller: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycknuxfd“Killed By Karma” by Kaleena Fraga for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/pzrdsmsy“When You Die, You Are Conscious Long Enough To Know It” by Matthew Lavelle for Ranker’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4kkcc9m7“Murdered During Graduation” by Mary Fetzer for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p92rn29(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: May, 2022This episode of Weird Darkness, hosted by Darren Marlar, moves from a string of graduation celebrations that ended in murder to a comparison of the Korean and California Zodiac killers, a scientific claim that human consciousness lingers briefly after death, and the case of a South Carolina man who died burying the girlfriend he had just strangled.It opens with a survey of graduation celebrations turned deadly, beginning with the May 2020 party in southwest Indiana where 47-year-old William Baker carried a .30-06 rifle into a shed and shot 18-year-old South Dearborn High School graduate Paycin Kritlow in the back, claiming his daughter had been raped even though she and her friends denied any assault occurred, a killing that earned Baker a 55-year sentence in November 2021. The segment moves through Menhaz Zaman, a 24-year-old outside Toronto who murdered his father, mother, sister, and grandmother with a crowbar-like weapon and a knife the day before a York University graduation he had faked after failing out of Seneca College; the June 2020 shooting of 19-year-old Tyana Johnson in a Bronx park while her friend Ahamad Branch worked as the DJ; and the June 2017 ambush of Maryland teenagers Shadi Adi Najjar and Artem Ziberov, shot thirty times between them by a group who had searched online for a song called "I Kill for My Family" and killed over a stolen handful of marijuana. Other cases stretch across Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, and Louisiana, including 18-year-old Hailey Deickman, who died days before her high school graduation after Franklin Senfles sold her fentanyl she believed was oxycodone.From there, the show sets two very different Zodiac cases side by side. The first is the Korean "Zodiac Killer," the Hwaseong murders that began on September 15th, 1986 with the rape and strangling of 71-year-old Lee Wan-im and continued as women were strangled with their own clothing on dark rural roads, a case that drew a manhunt of more than 21,000 suspects and sent a disabled man named Yoon Sung-yeo to prison on a coerced confession, until DNA identified Lee Choon-jae in 2019, a man already jailed since 1995 who confessed to 14 murders and 30 rapes and had escaped suspicion because police wrongly believed the killer's blood was type B rather than his actual type O. Darren places that against the California Zodiac, who killed at least five people around San Francisco between 1968 and 1971, taunted newspapers with cryptograms and threats against schoolchildren, and drew suspicion onto former schoolteacher Arthur Leigh Allen without ever being caught. The segment weighs how each case reached the screen, contrasting Bong Joon-ho's 2003 film Memories of Murder, made while the Korean killer was still unknown, with David Fincher's 2007 Zodiac, built on Robert Graysmith's books, and argues that a competent investigation on either continent might have swapped the outcomes.Next, the episode turns to research suggesting that human consciousness may briefly outlast the body. Dr. Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone in New York City, describes cardiac-arrest patients who were revived and could recall specific conversations and the actions of the doctors and nurses working to save them, and his work points to conscious awareness continuing for as long as three minutes after the heart stops even though the brain's electrical activity typically flatlines within twenty to thirty seconds. The segment adds microbiologist Peter Noble of the University of Washington, whose studies on mice and zebrafish found certain genes increasing in activity in the hours after death, and it frames both findings as evidence that cells shut down gradually rather than switching instantly from living to dead.The episode closes with the death of Joseph McKinnon in Trenton, South Carolina, whom deputies first found lying unresponsive in his yard, dead of a heart attack he suffered while filling in a pit a neighbor believed was meant for a new water feature. When investigators could not locate McKinnon's girlfriend, 65-year-old Patricia Dent, and learned she had missed her shift at the Mount Vintage Golf Club, they dug into the pit and uncovered black garbage bags holding her bound, bruised, and strangled body. Edgefield County Sheriff Jody Rowland and Coroner David Burnett concluded that McKinnon had attacked and choked Dent inside their home, wrapped her, and collapsed from cardiac arrest as he covered her over, and her twin sister Pamela Briggs spoke of her grief while police noted the couple had no known history of domestic violence, meaning that had McKinnon lived, Dent might simply have vanished.

Orange County deputies have linked three people from the Indianapolis area to roughly twenty break-ins at Central Florida cemetery niches, where the jewelry families left beside their loved ones' ashes was taken, and all three are still at large.BOOK: "They Told Me My Newborn Died - They Lied": https://amzn.to/4i0XVT1SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/CemeteryNicheTheftsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

A two-inch, eyeless fish with no color and a broken sight gene turned up in a single pool under the Army base locals call Alabama's Area 51 – inside a cave scientists had been watching for thirty years.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/demoncavefishLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

“Sub-Basement”: Down in the black tunnels beneath the store, the doors have sealed shut, the watchman is lying with his throat torn open, and whatever did it is dragging itself toward them through the dark — blind, patient, and hungry after a wait of ten thousand years.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Alias Mr. Aladdin” (June 12, 1978) ***WD00:45:00.815 = Jeff Regan, “The Man In The Door” (August 28, 1948)01:15:53.217 = The Key, “One Hundreds Fifty Thousand Dollars Embezzled” (1956) ***WD01:40:41.805 = Lights Out, “Sub-Basement” (August 24, 1943) ***WD02:09:56.858 = Macabre, “Edge of Evil” (January 08, 1962) ***WD02:39:56.460 = Philip Marlowe, “Sword of Cebu” (March 28, 1950)03:09:26.831 = Blackstone The Magician, “Ghost That Wasn’t” (November 28, 1948) ***WD03:22:07.674 = The Black Mass, “A Predicament” / “Tell-Tale Heart” (June 20, 1954) ***WD03:51:06.861 = Michael Shayne, “Investment In An Invention” (June 18, 1945)04:20:43.109 = Beyond Midnight, “The House, aka The Visits” (June 27, 1969) (LQ)04:49:34.636 = Tales of the Frightened, “Story of Wood” (December 18, 1957)04:53:54.293 = Tales From The Tomb, “Ghost of a Vampire” (1960s)04:59:20.864 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0743

In 1957, three teenage naval cadets were sent to map a Suffolk village they had never seen, and came back describing a place that didn't belong to its own century. It's remembered now as the Kersey Time Slip – and decades on, no one can agree on what those three boys actually walked into.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/KerseyTimeslipREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yeyty99kFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Sandra Hughes was the kind of outdoorswoman who could disappear into the Sierra National Forest for weeks on purpose and walk back out just fine, so when she drove in to wait out the pandemic in the summer of 2020 and didn't come back at all, she left behind a case that still has no answer. (Disappearance of Sandra Hughes) *** Ken McElroy was shot to death on a small-town main street in front of dozens of neighbors, and more than forty years later, every one of them still says the same thing: they saw nothing. (The Town Bully of Skidmore) *** Three Royal Navy cadets walked into a Suffolk village in October 1957 and found a butcher’s shop full of rotting oxen, no wires, no people, and no church. (The Kersey Timeslip)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:41.359 = Show Open00:03:11.460 = Kersey Timeslip, Part One00:16:32.343 = Kersey Timeslip, Part Two ***00:28:18.744 = Disappearance of Sandra Hughes ***00:46:13.169 = Ken McElroy, The Town Bully of Skidmore ***01:09:17.968 = SONG: “Nobody Saw A Thing” by Maggie Cross (based on the Ken McElroy story)01:14:43.961 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:The Disappearance and Ghost Sighting of Sandra Johnsen Hughes: https://weirddarkness.com/sandra-hughes/The Kersey Timeslip: Three Cadets and a Village Out of Time: https://weirddarkness.com/kersey-timeslip/Ken McElroy – The Town Bully of Skimore: https://weirddarkness.com/ken-mcelroySONG: “Nobody Saw A Thing” by Maggie Cross: https://weirddarkness.com/music(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 14, 2026

Six months after Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home, the same agents who caught the case are back on the strip of open desert behind it – and a retired FBI agent says the ground they are working was compromised on the very first day.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/guthrie20260813Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

Five Navy bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale in December 1945 on a three-hour training flight, and the search for what happened to them has now run for eighty years.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/Flight19READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2cwkje7zFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: In 1945, “Flight 19” vanished in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida – and the mystery of what happened still terrifies aviators to this day. (The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19) *** Without any detectable history, how Septic Tank Sam wound up dead in Tofield, Canada, is a mystery. Till this day, the case has never been solved and Sam has never been identified. (Septic Tank Sam) *** The Cherokee recall a white-skinned race that lived on their lands before they arrived. This group of very unusual beings were known as the Moon-Eyed people. (Moon-Eyed People of the Cherokee) *** A mother discovers she has missed a call… from her dead son. (Call From a Ghost) *** Would you dare to drive the haunted Devon highway? (Where Hairy Hands Grab At Your Steering Wheel) *** What would you do if you moved into a serial killer’s home and couldn’t break your lease once you found out? (House of Horrors) *** On April 3, 1882, outlaw Jesse James was shot to death in St. Joseph, Missouri – or was he? (The Man Who Would Be Jesse James) *** A young girl’s quiet night of reading in bed is turned upside down when she is attacked by an unseen phantom! (The Summer I Didn’t Sleep) *** A convicted killer is hung on the gallows… twice. (A Moment of Agony)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:41.227 = Show Open00:03:03.309 = The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 1900:12:10.723 = Septic Tank Sam00:19:07.164 = House of Horrors ***00:22:31.350 = The Summer I Didn’t Sleep00:27:28.625 = Moon-Eyed People Of The Cherokee00:31:14.364 = Call From A Ghost00:33:31.662 = A Moment of Agony00:40:15.464 = Where Hairy Hands Grab At Your Steering Wheel ***00:49:08.158 = The Man Who Would Be Jesse James01:06:54.863 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakSOURCES and RESOURCES:“Moon-Eyed People of the Cherokee” by Ellen Lloyd for AncientPages.com: http://bit.ly/2VcDc5H“Call From a Ghost”: (unknown author, link no longer exists)“Septic Tank Sam” by Les Hewitt for HistoricMysteries.com: http://bit.ly/2ZYmqpJ“Where Hairy Hands Grab At Your Steering Wheel” by Guy Henderson for DevonLive.com: http://bit.ly/2LqghiH“The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19” by Evan Andrews for History.com: http://bit.ly/2Lqgtyr“House of Horrors” by Jessica Ferri for TheLineUp.com: http://bit.ly/2ZYoi1u“The Man Who Would Be Jesse James” by Troy Taylor for AmericanHauntingsInk.com: http://bit.ly/2DP4Rii“The Summer I Didn’t Sleep” from YourGhostStories.com: http://bit.ly/2GUVkaa“A Moment of Agony” by Robert Wilhelm for MurderByGaslight.com: http://bit.ly/2JiF3ie(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: May 04, 2019

There is a man not yet sixty with the face of someone eighty, who sleeps only by daylight and spends every night awake with a buckhorn knife within his reach, ever since a woman came to him in a dream.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “A Long Way From Home” (June 09, 1978) ***WD00:45:43.568 = Theater Five, “A Little Knowledge” (November 25, 1964)01:09:03.546 = Big Town, “Fatal Joke” (March 01, 1949) ***WD01:38:29.576 = Harry Lime, “Operation Music Box” (October 05, 1951)02:03:50.732 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “The Dream Woman” (July 19, 1980) ***WD02:31:08.192 = The Haunting Hour, “Uptown Express” (June 17, 1945)02:55:58.095 = Hermit’s Cave, “Notebook On Murder” (September 15, 1940)03:20:26.062 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “King Murdered” (1945-1950) ***WD03:44:39.315 = Sherlock Holmes, “Queue For Murder” (March 04, 1947) ***WD04:14:18.238 = Mystery House, “Murder Hires a Hall” (June 07, 1946) ***WD04:38:24.888 = Inner Sanctum, “Death In Depths” (February 06, 1945)05:08:02.259 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0742

A team of researchers went looking at what gets bought and sold under the heading of "mummified remains", and what they found sitting on ordinary shopping and social media sites turned into a peer-reviewed warning about what those centuries-old body parts can still do to the living.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/mummytradecurseLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

A woman who worked at one of the most secure laboratories in the country walked away down a rural New Mexico highway on a summer afternoon, and the questions that opened that day have only multiplied since.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/casiasLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit WeirdDarkness.com • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

“Death Spell” – A wealthy man swears his beautiful wife is quietly working a spell to kill him, every doctor insists he's in perfect health, and the struggling artist who moves onto his estate is about to learn what a person's own belief can do to them.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Death Spell” (June 08, 1978) ***WD00:44:39.155 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Case of Darkened Face” (September 22, 1946) ***WD01:09:46.058 = The Devil And Mr. O, “Chest” (January 28, 1972)01:38:01.666 = Diary of Fate, “John Haynes” (July 13, 1948) ***WD02:04:38.792 = Dimension X, “And The Moon Be Still As Bright” (September 29, 1950) ***WD02:34:03.364 = The Eleventh Hour, “Death And Understanding” (ADU)02:58:52.083 = Escape, “Night In Havana” (October 22, 1949)03:27:44.423 = Everyman Theater, ‘This Precious Freedom” (October 04, 1940) ***WD03:55:00.211 = Exploring Tomorrow, “The Gift” (February 08, 1958)04:13:23.936 = Dark Fantasy, “Sleeping Death” (June 12, 1942) ***WD04:29:07.558 = BBC Fear on 4, “Dead Man’s Boots” (February 01, 1991)04:58:16.638 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0741

A three-year-old girl's imaginary friend turned out to be a real man – one who had been dead for fifteen years before she was born.BOOK: “They Told Me My Newborn Died – They Lied: A Global History of Stolen Babies” by Darren Marlar: https://amzn.to/45fNXptEPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/heidiwyrickREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5a4fwj7tFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Deep in the Balsam Mountains of North Carolina, a shaggy eight-foot creature has been stealing gems and watching women bathe since the early 1900s — and the word used to name him came from a Lewis Carroll poem written the moment after a sleepless night at a dying man's bedside. (The Boojum) *** In 1980, a group of artists in Baltimore took out an ad in a major international magazine — not to sell anything, and not to promote a show. They were sending an invitation. The guests they were hoping to attract just hadn't been born yet. (Krononauts Party) *** A three-year-old girl in rural Georgia started playing with an imaginary friend — and then her family found out he was real, and had been dead for fifteen years. The question that nobody has been able to answer isn't whether she knew him. It's how. (The Heidi Wyrick Haunting)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:23.333 = Show Open00:03:14.569 = The Heidi Wyrick Haunting, Part 100:13:30.069 = The Heidi Wyrick Haunting, Part 2 ***00:32:01.091 = The Boojum ***00:53:27.330 = Krononauts Party ***01:01:57.222 = SONG: “Krononauts Party” by Dark Weirdness (https://weirddarkness.com/music)01:06:24.212 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:The Heidi Wyrick Haunting: https://weirddarkness.com/heidi-wyrick/The Boojum: https://weirddarkness.com/boojum/Krononauts Party: https://weirddarkness.com/krononauts-party/(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 11, 2026Weird Darkness moves through three cases this episode: a decade-long haunting in rural Georgia that a university parapsychologist wired with scientific instruments, an eight-foot gem-hoarding creature that Appalachian locals have hunted for over a century, and a 1980 Baltimore art stunt that advertised a party for time travelers.It opens with the Wyrick haunting, which began in March of 1989 when three-year-old Heidi Wyrick walked in from the backyard of her family's new home on Swint Loop in Ellerslie, Georgia, and asked to keep swinging with an old man her mother couldn't see. The friend Heidi called Mr. Gordy matched James Gordy, a former caretaker of the property who had died in 1974, down to his silver hair, dark suit, and top hat; a second, wounded visitor she named Con matched Lon Batchelor, a man who lost his hand in a cotton gin accident and died in 1957. Before she could read, Heidi ran straight to Gordy's headstone in a cemetery of hundreds and later picked his face from a blind photo lineup. By 1993 the activity had turned violent, with a faceless dark figure, claw marks appearing on Heidi and her father Andy across consecutive nights, and a ribbon found wound around the throat of infant daughter Jordan, and the family brought in Dr. William Roll, a parapsychologist known from Unsolved Mysteries, who recorded an electromagnetic spike past 40 milligauss, elevated positive ions, and nearby seismic activity, then admitted he could not explain the scratches. Medium Amy Allan, later of The Dead Files, and a second psychic working separately placed the same entities in the same rooms, and the Wyricks finally left the house after Andy and Lisa found Heidi suspended upside down above her bed. The case appears in the Discovery Channel's 2002 film A Haunting in Georgia and the 2013 movie The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia, and in The Veil: The Heidi Wyrick Story, the firsthand account written by Heidi's aunt Joyce.From there the episode climbs into the Balsam Mountains of western North Carolina for the legend of the Boojum, a creature said to stand six to eight feet tall, covered in shaggy gray hair, with a disturbingly human face. According to Haywood County lore, the Boojum hoards the region's real gemstones – North Carolina is the only state that holds all four major precious gems, and the 1,869-carat uncut emerald pulled from the North American Emerald Mine in Hiddenite in 2003 is a matter of record – stashing them in moonshine jugs buried in hidden caves. The first written accounts cluster around the Eagle Nest Hotel, a forty-room hay-fever resort that opened on Eagle Nest Mountain in 1900 and burned in 1918, where guests were warned that the Boojum hid in the mountain laurel to watch women bathing in the forest pools. At the center of the legend is a woman named Annie, who chose to live with him as his wife and whose calls across the ridges are said, in local folk etymology, to have given the word "hootenanny" its name. The segment traces the creature's name back to Lewis Carroll's 1876 nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark, sets the story against the Cherokee removal along the Trail of Tears and the eviction of Appalachian families to create Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and lands in present-day Waynesville, where Boojum Brewing carries the legend's name.The episode closes with the Krononauts, a group from Baltimore's avant-garde art scene who, in January of 1980, ran an advertisement on page 90 of Artforum magazine inviting time travelers to a party in Baltimore on March 9th, 1982, a date chosen because all nine planets would line up more closely than they had in nearly two hundred years, an alignment popularized by the 1974 book The Jupiter Effect. Hundreds of people came, the New York Times covered it and described the scene as an epidemic of temporary lunacy, and no one produced any evidence of time travel, since the organizers' real aim was the permanent paper trail, built on the logic that a documented invitation could be found and answered from any point in the future. The segment follows the same experiment forward through MIT graduate student Amal Dorai's 2005 Time Traveler Convention and physicist Stephen Hawking's 2009 reception at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where Hawking mailed the invitations only after the party had ended and took the empty room as evidence for his chronology protection conjecture, and it ends with an original song, "Krononauts Party," by Dark Weirdness.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? Get the daily WEIRD DARKNESS podcast (seven days per week) at WeirdDarkness.com • Paranormal, true crime, UFO, cryptid, ghost, and unexplained stories every day • Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts • My “OFFICIAL WEIRDOS” at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL get the commercial-free version, along with at least two bonus episodes each week, live chats every weeknight, free audiobooks I narrate, and more!

“The Kitchen Table” – A young couple pays a suspiciously low price for a neglected old farmhouse and lovingly begins restoring the home’s long-buried kitchen — never guessing that the house has been waiting a very long time for someone willing to listen to what it needs to say.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Undying Heart” (June 05, 1978)00:45:25.646 = The Black Book, “On Schedule” (February 17, 1952) ***WD00:59:54.814 = Front Page Drama, “Ghost of the Catacombs” (September 28, 1933) ***WD01:14:48.366 = Box 13, “The Philanthropist” (January 30, 1949)01:41:26.286 = Calling All Cars, “The Smashed Windshield” (February 07, 1934) ***WD02:10:53.679 = Casey, Crime Photographer, “Duke of Skid Row” (September 19, 1946)02:40:09.682 = CBC Mystery Theater, “The Kitchen Table” (May 26, 1967) ***WD03:06:10.931 = Chet Chetter’s, “Peace To The Frifalites” (1989)03:33:38.814 = The Clock, “The Double Cross” (June 24, 1956)03:57:42.053 = The Crime Club, “Epitaph For Lydia” (May 01, 1947) ***WD04:26:56.841 = Crime Classics, “Final Day of General Ketchum, How He Died” (July 27, 1953)04:55:59.262 = Calling All Detectives, “Jerry Stumbles Into a Pickpocket Convention” (July 09, 1948) ***Wda05:01:40.662 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0740

On a quiet ER night shift, a badly burned stranger in a strange metallic suit is wheeled in, gasps a warning about a catastrophe that's coming, and then vanishes from the gurney — leaving behind a device counting down to a disaster only one nurse knows is on its way.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-sixteenhoursSOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Time Traveler” by Keith Conrad for Auditory Anthology (https://www.auditoryanthology.com)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 11, 2026

What happens when self-declared prophets, alien messengers, and doomsday fanatics build secret empires in plain sight — and convince others to follow them to the end of the world?EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/cultsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/utz5hrfdSOURCES and RESOURCES:New York Post - “Inside Manhattan’s secret ‘cult’”. *** News.com.au - “Congregation for the Light: Inside New York’s ‘cult next door’” *** Sinisterhood Podcast - Episode 16: “Congregation for the Light” *** The Commentator - “The Cult Around the Corner” *** Brooklyn Magazine - “Murray Hill Has A Secret Homophobic Aryan Doomsday Cult” *** https://yucommentator.org/2018/10/cult-stern-35th-the-light *** https://nypost.com/2014/11/02/the-secret-society-cult-that-operates-out-of-murray-hill/ ***https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381978851_Raelism_An_Unconventional_Religious_Pathway_to_Transhumanism*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism *** https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/religion-and-philosophy/raelism *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonaid *** https://www.bota.org/ ***https://www.botaineurope.org/ *** https://articles.skeptics.nz/2023/04/24/builders-of-the-adytum-the-tarot-cards-and-qabalah-in-naenae *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builders_of_the_Adytum *** https://ilovehistory.utah.gov/1847-1904-lds-practice-of-polygamy/ *** https://www.watchman.org/profiles/pdf/fldsprofile.pdf ***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-Day_Saints *** https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Hai ***https://www.godsdirectcontact.org/spiritualpractice/Master_Ching_Hai.htm *** https://suprememastertv.com/en1/v/211271952624.html *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Hai *** https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Hai *** https://nypost.com/2018/01/11/the-cult-leader-behind-the-worlds-fast-growing-vegan-chain/ ***https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubccommunityandpartnerspublicati/52387/items/1.0385823 *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Science *** https://eng.the-liberty.com/2016/6323/ *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_Realization_Party *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryuho_Okawa *** https://www.cdamm.org/articles/cut-tsl *** https://summitlighthouse.org/aboutus/church-universal-and-triumphant/ *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Universal_and_Triumphant ***https://articles1.icsahome.com/articles/denouement-of-the-prophets--cult-the-church-universal-and-triumphant-in-decline *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Clare_Prophet *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tribes_communities *** https://people.com/adam-arthur-rosenthal-twelve-tribes-religious-sect-accused-murder-8753907 *** https://nypost.com/2018/06/05/religious-cult-probed-for-child-labor-after-factory-expose/ *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles_of_Infinite_Love *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Gaston_Tremblay *** https://ktxs.com/news/big-country/ktxs-special-report-mystery-still-surrounds-house-of-yahweh-*** https://www.watchman.org/profiles/pdf/houseofyahwehprofile.pdf ***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfulfilled_Watch_Tower_Society_predictions *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Yahweh *** https://www.apologeticsindex.org/316-house-of-yahweh *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuwaubian_Nation *** https://people.com/crime/story-behind-united-nuwaubian-nation-moors-georgia-cult *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_York *** https://www.adl.org/resources/news/leader-anti-government-sect-sentenced-135-years *** https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/nuwaubian-nation-moors/ *** https://billygraham.org/answers/how-is-christianity-different-from-other-religions(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 28, 2025Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar pulls back the curtain on modern cults hiding in plain sight, from city apartments to desert compounds to Montana doomsday bunkers. This episode profiles more than a dozen secretive groups, including Manhattan's Congregation for the Light, the alien-worshipping Raëlian Movement and its Clonaid cloning claims, the polygamist FLDS led by imprisoned prophet Warren Jeffs, Supreme Master Ching Hai, Japan's Happy Science, Eckankar, Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant, the Twelve Tribes, the House of Yahweh, and the pyramid-building Nuwaubian Nation of Malachi Z. York. Along the way, Darren digs into why people get drawn in, the warning signs of a dangerous group, and what sets biblical Christianity apart from them all.

A lifelong night owl pushes their sleepless habit a few nights too far, and what starts happening once he finally closes his eyes is the reason he’s now sworn off sleep for the rest of his life.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-coffeeaddictionSOURCES and RESOURCES: “I Have a Coffee Addiction” by Ashley IngrahamWeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 10, 2026

Madame Delphine LaLaurie was one of the most admired socialites in New Orleans, and the Royal Street mansion she left behind is still called the most haunted address in the French Quarter.==========HOUR ONE: 
Winnie had two trunks when she arrived at the train station – trunks that contained the severed body parts of her two best friends. She had murdered them, it seems, all in the name of love. (Winnie Ruth Judd: Trunk Murderess) *** Was British government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly murdered? (Many Dark Actors: Dr. David Kelly) *** Madame Delphine LaLaurie, made popular by Kathy Bates in American Horror Story: Coven, was a first class monster. A figure of high society, she was well known for her mistreatment of slaves. But no one knew just how sick she truly was. (The Monster of Royal Street)==========HOUR TWO: Reddit users share some of the strangest, creepiest, most terrifying phone calls they’ve ever received – many that left the recipient with no explanation as to what just happened. (Creepy Phone Calls) *** Elizabeth Bathory was beautiful – and wanted to stay that way. So determined was her desire for a youthful appearance that she would bathe in the blood of young girls, thinking of it as a macabre fountain of youth. But how much truth is there to this story? And are there ghosts today, haunting their residences thanks to the Blood Countess? 
(Ghosts of the Blood Countess)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: A former schoolhouse has accrued a sinister reputation as one of the most haunted, weirdest places in Japan. (Haunted Schoolhouse In Japan) *** The gold rush brought many to North Carolina – men looking to get rich, and rich men looking to get richer. But the greed also brought cruelty to some mine owners… and that cruelty sometimes brought death… and hauntings. (The Skinflint Mine Entity) *** Was a certain female reporter murdered because she knew too much about the death of John F. Kennedy? (The Dorothy Killgallen Murder) *** Something bizarre and terrifying is living below the streets of London – and there are many theories as to what it might be. (Strange Things Below London)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“The Monster of Royal Street: Delphine LaLaurie”: https://tinyurl.com/ssf9lm3“Many Dark Actors: Dr. David Kelly”: https://tinyurl.com/uf4jv5m“Winnie Ruth Judd: Trunk Murderess” by Troy Taylor: http://ow.ly/kpFb30nhABS“Creepy Phone Calls” by Aaron Edwards for Graveyard Shift: https://tinyurl.com/spnqq2s“Ghosts of the Blood Countess” by Amy’s Crypt for Paranormal Scholar: https://tinyurl.com/r4lh7rn“Strange Things Below London” by Nick Redfern for Mysterious Universe: https://tinyurl.com/ulutgp7“The Murder of Dorothy Kilgallen” by Jessika M. Thomas for Ranker: https://tinyurl.com/tjzpaz7“The Skinflint Mine Entity” from North Carolina Ghosts: https://tinyurl.com/w6ofq7g“Haunted Schoolhouse In Japan” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://tinyurl.com/w4n98c6==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2025==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

America’s roads may look empty at night — but behind the headlights and mile markers, restless spirits are still trying to find their way home.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/DontStopTheCarREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y5pypsk7FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Spooks are known to haunt houses, castles, cemeteries, abandoned hospitals, and even toys or other objects… but somehow, it’s haunted roads that seem the darkest for many. (America’s Haunted Roads) *** A heating engineer working in the Treasurer’s House in York, England is disturbed by music… and then the ghostly presence of at least twenty Roman soldiers walking right past him through the walls! (The Roman Ghosts of York) *** The last man hanged at Bodmin Jail not only still lingers at the location – he has even been caught on camera. (The Haunting of Bodmin Jail) *** We’ll share the true and tragic story of a teenaged girl who’s abnormality landed her on the freak show circuit, with people paying to gawk at “The Camel Girl”. (Ella Harper: The Freak Show Camel Girl)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:02.590 = Show Open00:02:50.575 = America’s Haunted Roads00:26:45.310 = The Haunting of Bodmin Jail ***00:35:22.933 = The Roman Ghosts of York00:39:56.546 = Ella Harper, The Freak Show Camel Girl ***00:45:55.801 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“America’s Haunted Roads” sources: RealParanormalExperiences.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ywk5atas, Insider.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8mez23, TravelAndLeisure.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5d8hmyd5, TravelChannel.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8v2d9f, WitteBros.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/598v39hb“The Haunting of Bodmin Jail” by Melissa Brinks for Ranker’s Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yer4wbnt“The Roman Ghosts of York” from Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mrye36fn“Ella Harper: The Freak Show Camel Girl” by Bipin Dimri for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8hj3sj(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March, 2022

“The Speaking Clock”: In a Bond Street antique shop where a hundred clocks tick out of time and one of them speaks with a dead man's voice.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Diamond Cut Diamond” (June 02, 1978) ***WD00:44:33.474 = X-Minus-One, “The Girls From Earth” (June 16, 1957)01:06:50.118 = Zero Hour, “There’s a Man in 211” (May 23, 1945) ***WD01:24:07.577 = ABC Mystery Time, “Picture of Dorian Gray” (1957) ***WD (LQ)01:48:07.812 = Appointment With Fear, “The Speaking Clock” (April 13, 1944)02:15:31.324 = Arch Oboler’s Play, “Nobody Died” (December 16, 1939)02:43:13.809 = Barry Craig, “Murder In Wax” (November 21, 1951)03:11:18.272 = BBC Radio 4, Radio 7, Ghost Story, “The Ghost Train” (January 24, 1988)04:36:25.323 = Night Beat, “Gusher James” (March 07, 1952)05:05:29.865 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0739

The Pentagon's fifth batch of declassified UAP files arrived in early August, forty-one newly released records reaching as far back as 1950. Among them is gun-camera footage of four-foot "cold orbs" hovering over the Gulf of Oman, and video of a black sphere that blinks out over the Pacific before drifting back into frame.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/UFOTranche05Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

In a town where nothing interesting ever happens, there's one grave marker the locals won't let their children near on Halloween night.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-stoneangelSOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Angel Statue Stole my Soul” by Kat HallWeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 09, 2026

A young scientist's growth-ray experiment leaves his terrified wife and a delivery boy trapped in a locked laboratory with a monstrous, six-foot creature they're certain will devour them — while the truth about what they're facing waits until the very last moment.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Bittersweet Honeymoon” (May 30, 1978) ***WD00:45:31.847 = Suspense, “Woman In Red” (April 06, 1944)01:14:40.954 = The Creaking Door, “Alive In Grave” (November 30, 1964)01:43:42.720 = The Saint, “The Case of the Blond Who Lost Her Head” (May 26, 1948)02:07:42.877 = 2000 Plus, “Insect” (May 17, 1950) ***WD02:37:06.492 = Unexpected, “Career Woman” (1947-1948)02:49:12.644 = Dark Venture, “Eclipse” (August 07, 1945)03:18:58.652 = The Weird Circle, “Ghost’s Touch” (September 17, 1944)03:44:40.822 = The Whistler, ‘Meet Mr. Death” (April 23, 1945)04:14:13.335 = Strange Wills, “The Girl In Cell 13” (September 21, 1946)04:43:53.292 = Witch’s Tale, “Wedding Gift” (March 29, 1938) ***WD05:07:35.233 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0738

They look like lost children… until you see their eyes — and realize you’ve just opened the door to something inhuman.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/dontlettheminREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yath5y6wFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Described as childlike beings with eerie coal black eyes, no iris or pupils, and pale, white skin, a scourge of mysterious black-eyed children have been reported all over the world. There are hundreds of reports of black-eyed children, often seen in groups of two or more, who ask for permission to enter the person’s home or vehicle. Witnesses often report an overwhelming feeling of dread and despair in their presence. What the black-eyed children seek is not known… nor is it known exactly what they are. (Invasion Of The Black Eyed Kids) *** In October of 1943, a U.S. Navy destroyer was supposedly turned invisible and teleported from Philadelphia to Norfolk. But did it really happen? (The Truth Behind The Philadelphia Experiment) *** The Witchcraft Act of 1735 ended the gruesome practice of burning witches at the stake, making it illegal to accuse anyone of having magical powers. Yet in 1944, Helen Duncan was convicted under this very law for fraudulent spiritual activities. Despite her claims of contacting spirits through ectoplasm and even revealing classified naval secrets, she was sentenced to prison. Her trial was one of the last times the Witchcraft Act was used before being replaced in 1951, but her supporters continue to campaign for her pardon. (Britain’s Last Witch) *** Once a powerful festival, Dies Sanguinis, or "Day of Blood," honored the Roman goddess of war, Bellona, with animal sacrifices and martial rituals. The festival showcased Rome's military strength and dedication to victory. Although the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire eventually ended the festival, its legacy still sheds light on the fascinating nature of ancient Roman culture. (Rome’s Day of the Bloody Sacrifice) *** The Dardeen family was found brutally murdered in their home near Ina, Illinois, leaving residents and investigators stumped. Yet even after a confession by Tommy Lynn Sells, the truth is still a mystery. (Demise of the Dardeen Family)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding00:03:33.089 = Show Open00:06:34.068 = Invasion of the Black Eyed Kids (Part 1)00:15:22.343 = Invasion of the Black Eyed Kids (Part 2) ***00:35:26.768 = Demise of the Dardeen Family ***00:53:33.895 = The Truth Behind The Philadelphia Experiment ***00:59:05.177 = Britain’s Last Witch01:06:50.721 = Rome’s Day of Bloody Sacrifice ***01:10:26.990 = Show Close01:11:54.153 = SONG: “Flee The Eyes As Black As Night” by Dark Weirdness: https://weirddarkness.com/music*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:BOOK: “The Black-Eyed Kids” by G. Michael Vasey, https://amzn.to/3Tniri9BOOK: “The Chilling True Terror of the Black Eyed Kids Monster Compilation” by G. Michael Vasey, https://amzn.to/3R8eTi7BOOK: “The Case For The UFO” by M.K. Jessup: https://amzn.to/3JRDwxzMORE BEK EPISODES: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/8kn9fpe9, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2tcs3p3n,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2tcs3p3n, https://weirddarkness.com/let-us-in/“Invasion Of The Black-Eyed Kids” sources: Anomalien, https://bit.ly/3WszSln, https://bit.ly/3WtCGhV,https://bit.ly/3Ww4ySw, https://bit.ly/44uJb6j; The Business Standard, https://bit.ly/3yhWESI“Demise of the Dardeen Family” source: Wikipedia, https://bit.ly/3WqgHbQ“The Truth Behind The Philadelphia Experiment” source: Katie Serena at AllThatsInteresting.com, https://bit.ly/3JRDi9H“Britain’s Last Witch” source: AmusingPlanet.com, https://bit.ly/3UzX7Hk; History Extra, https://bit.ly/3JQez5x: The National, https://bit.ly/3UzgDUs“Rome’s Day of the Bloody Sacrifice” source: Ancient Origins, https://bit.ly/3WtCzTx; Tales Beyond Belief, https://bit.ly/3URoQ6T; Journal Of Cognitive Historiography, https://doi.org/10.1558/jch.39915; Roger Pearse, https://bit.ly/3wrydBS; Academia.edu, https://bit.ly/3JREmKJ(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: May 08, 2024

State regulators arrived at South Chicago Chapel for a routine license check and walked out having ordered the removal of more than fifty unrefrigerated human remains, some infested with rodents and maggots, from a funeral home whose director had already been shut down once before.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/SouthChicagoChapelLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Orange County deputies say a 71-year-old man reported missing near Orlando turned up dismembered inside three suitcases dumped along White Road, and that the man now charged with his murder was his own stepson.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/WhiteRoadSuitcasesLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Two enemy fighter pilots—one American, one Soviet—crash side by side in the frozen Arctic, drained of all power by something that fell from the stars and is patiently waiting for them to freeze.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneInRadio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Arctic Encounter” (May 26, 1978) ***WD00:44:08.465 = Quiet Please, “A Time To Be Born” (March 27, 1949)01:13:26.009 = Radio City Playhouse, “Local Storm” (December 04, 1949)01:37:38.711 = Hollywood Mystery Time, “Case of the Glowing Eyes” (May 20, 1943) ***WD02:06:19.867 = Sam Spade, “Death Bed Caper” (June 20, 1948)02:35:47.495 = The Sealed Book, “Out of the Past” (May1 3, 1945) ***WD03:05:17.187 = The Shadow, “The Club of Doom” (December 19, 1943)03:29:21.706 = Sleep No More, “The Bet Clerks Quest” (April 03, 1957)03:58:42.609 = BBC Spine Chillers, “Ghosting” (January 22, 2004)04:26:40.026 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “The Voice of Death” (March 06, 1945) ***WD (LQ)04:39:07.050 = Tales From The Tomb, “The Raven” (1960s)04:48:33.312 = Incredible But True, “The Man Who Walked Behind” (1950-1951)04:51:44.006 = Strange Adventure, “Death Rides The Desert” (1945)04:55:01.207 = Beyond The Green Door, “New Hebridos Fisherman” (1966)04:58:48.586 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0737

A driver who never stops on the long haul home pulls off a Massachusetts highway at midnight for a burrito, and finds a spotless chrome diner whose sign promises it's open twenty-five hours a day.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-diner25hoursSOURCES and RESOURCES:“A Diner Open 25 Hours a Day” by Christopher Maxim: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChristopherMaxim/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 08, 2026

Scout Brooks just wanted to survive his first day of seventh grade. Instead, he found himself recruited into a mysterious after-school club, named 'The Chosen One' by the strange Professor Nog, and handed a box of secrets he's not allowed to talk about. Meanwhile, somewhere far beyond the stars, a man named Farrow remains a prisoner of creatures no one back on Earth even knows exist.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrorsOther stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaUOther narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.com= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness©, 2026Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

A murdered woman still haunts her room, a drunken boarder bursts from the shadows, and something in the basement wants to be found — welcome to the S.K. Pierce Mansion.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/SKPierceMansionSOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Many Hauntings of the S.K. Pierce Mansion” from SlightlyOddFitchburg.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p85u74e, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p88ef7h(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March, 2022

In an upscale Seoul district, a fortune-teller deals a custom tarot deck to greyhounds, turtles, and anxious owners who pay 20,000 won a session to find out what their pets have been secretly worried about.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/pettarotLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

For six months, slaughtered lambs and severed deer heads kept turning up on the doorsteps of New Forest churches, always with an inverted cross set close by, and some of the people who found them stopped going to worship altogether. When police finally caught the man behind it, he gave the court his name as Count Dracula. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/NewForestVampireLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

In 2016, a first-time director captured something on film he never intended to, and the people who've heard about what's buried in that footage tend to wish they hadn't.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-cominghomeSOURCES and RESOURCES:“Coming Home” by JRT McMahon: https://www.creepypasta.com/coming-home/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 07, 2026

Thousands have stepped off marked trails and into America's wilderness never to be seen again, and the retired lawman who spent years cataloguing them found the same strange details surfacing case after case.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/Missing411READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/34vb6kexFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Thousands of people have vanished without a trace from America's wilderness areas, leaving behind baffling clues that defy conventional explanation. From children who disappear within seconds while picking berries to hikers in bright clothing who seem to evaporate from marked trails, these cases share disturbing patterns that suggest something beyond ordinary misadventure. What is happening in our national parks? And what strange forces might be responsible for those who seemingly step off the face of the earth?SOURCES and RESOURCES:David Paulides' "Missing 411" Book Series (Missing 411: Western United States & Canada * Missing 411: Eastern United States * Missing 411: North America and Beyond * Missing 411: The Devil's in the Detail)https://www.canammissing.com/missing-411.htmlCanAm Missing Project Website: https://www.canammissing.comGeorge Knapp's Interview with David Paulides for Mystery Wire: https://www.mysterywire.com/ufo/david-paulides-missing-411/National Park Service Missing Persons Database: https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/foia/foia-reading-room.htmDocumentaries on Missing 411: "Missing 411" (2016), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5864680; "Missing 411: The Hunted" (2019), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10524262Coast to Coast AM Interviews with David Paulides: https://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/paulides-david/49441/Mysterious Universe: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2024/08/Don-t-Want-to-Mysteriously-Vanish-Don-t-Do-These-Things-/The Charley Project: https://charleyproject.org/National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs): https://www.namus.gov/Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Dennis_Martin,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Alfred_Beilhartz,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jaryd_Atadero, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kecksburg_UFO_incident(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 26, 2025Across North America, more than two thousand people have vanished in and around national parks under circumstances that resist every ordinary explanation. Former law enforcement officer David Paulides has spent years documenting these cases in his Missing 411 series, isolating the ones that can't be written off as voluntary disappearances, accidents, or animal predation — and finding that what remains follows a disturbing set of recurring patterns he calls profile points.This episode of Weird Darkness walks through those patterns one by one. It opens with the national park clusters and the failure of search and rescue dogs — trained trackers that lose the scent at a dead stop, panic, or never catch it at all — then moves to the berry-picking connection, with more than a century of cases: Lillian Carney in 1897 Maine, Alice Rachel Peck and her account of "The Black Man" who carried her, Eddie Hamilton, Wesley Piatote, Jack Pike, Simon Skogan, Gary Bailey, and the strange 1965 Kuninga family encounter in Finland. From there it examines the bright-clothing factor through the best-known cases in the catalog — Dennis Martin's 1969 vanishing in the Great Smoky Mountains, Alfred Beilhartz in Rocky Mountain National Park, and Jaryd Atadero in Colorado's Poudre Canyon — followed by the recurring role of granite boulder fields, nearby water, sudden weather, and victims who step out of sight around a bend and are gone.The episode also weighs what happens when bodies are recovered, often in previously searched areas or terrain the victim could not have reached, and lays out the range of proposed explanations — from unreported crimes and disorientation to cryptids, folklore entities, and Indigenous traditions of places where the veil between worlds runs thin — without landing on any of them. It closes with practical wilderness-safety guidance for anyone who'd rather not become a Missing 411 case themselves.

A Marine pilot vanished over the Atlantic in 1945 with no wreckage, no body, and no explanation — and more than thirty years later, forty people would swear he was still alive.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Window to Oblivion” (May 23, 1978) 00:44:05.587 = Mysterious Traveler, “The Visiting Corpse” (January 09, 1944)01:12:38.749 = CBC Nightfall, “The Telltale Heart” (August 01, 1980)01:40:47.122 = Obsession, “Solitary Genius” (July 30, 1951) ***WD (LQ)02:04:08.135 = Origin of Superstition, “Knock On Wood” (1935) ***WD02:17:51.431 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Joe Candono Blackmail Pictures” (March 27, 1949)02:49:57.789 = Peril, “Man Against The City/Purple Death” (1953) ***WD03:11:08.909 = Mystery Playhouse, “Man In Velvet Hat” (December 19, 1944) ***WD03:39:06.839 = Philip Morris Playhouse, “Leona’s Room” (February 25, 1949)04:07:58.182 = Price of Fear, “Soul Music” (October 27, 1973) ***WD04:36:05.849 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Three Frogs” (April 29, 1948) ***WD05:04:54.373 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0736

I swear, I could start a whole new podcast called "They Shouldn't Be Parents" with these stories coming from all directions. So sad. A follow-up welfare visit to a six-week-old in Florahome, Florida ended with the baby in intensive care and four adults from the same household in jail, after deputies described the conditions inside as among the worst child neglect they had ever encountered.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/CannonCase20260806Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Elizabeth Siders' attorney tells a national television audience that the photos and video claiming to show inside the house may not be genuine. The judge in her case still has not ruled on whether she will be evaluated at all.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/SidersCase20260806Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

“The Girl He Left Behind”: A young nurse turns down her soldier sweetheart's marriage proposal but keeps the ring he insists she hold onto, and when word arrives that he was killed on the drive back to base, she discovers that the dead do not always accept being refused.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Girl He Left Behind” (May 22, 1978)00:44:53.033 = Michael Shayne, “Mary Noble Suspects Uncle Briggs” (June 11, 1945) ***WD01:14:29.830 = Beyond Midnight, “The Thing in Cabin 105” (February 28, 1969) ***WD01:45:19.270 = MindWebs, “Gas Mask” (April 02, 1983)02:08:37.602 = Chamber of Horrors, “The Waxwork” (ADU) ***WD02:34:53.987 = Mystery In The Air, “Black Cat” (September 18, 1947) ***WD03:00:40.112 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Hands of Mr. Ottermole” (June 21, 1946)03:30:03.061 = Mr. Keen, “The Woman In Blue” (June 15, 1944)03:59:15.197 = Murder At Midnight, “Creeper” (May 15, 1950) ***WD04:24:31.631 = The Black Museum, “The Telegram” (February 26, 1951) ***WD04:48:07.485 = Calling All Detectives, “Jerry Witnesses a Murder” (July 08, 1948) ***WD (LQ)04:56:12.567 = Tales of the Frightened, “Shakespeare’s Hometown” (December 17, 1957)05:00:30.682 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0735

A TV studio worker wakes up to the same day he already lived — and he's the only person in the building who knows it.IN THIS EPISODE: “Frame By Frame” by Keith ConradMORE Stories Like This: https://www.auditoryanthology.comLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736Originally aired: August 06, 2026EPISODE PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/framebyframe

A Stillwater high school student who pleaded no contest to raping and strangling two of his ex-girlfriends finished his youthful offender probation this week without a single day in prison, and a newly sworn district attorney is now asking the federal government to take the case Oklahoma no longer can.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/jessebutler20260805Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

In 1909, all eyes turned to Worcester, Massachusetts, as a well-dressed businessman claimed he’d built a flying machine — and the world wanted to believe him so badly, they saw it in the sky whether it was there or not.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/airshiphoaxREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ye27xce4FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: We’ll look at the crazy story of the Great Worcester Airship Hoax of 1909! *** We’ll meet a cat that must have more than nine lives, as it survived three World War Two shipwrecks and lived to meow about it! (Unsinkable Sam) *** UFO crash stories are somewhat ubiquitous, with most immediately pointing to Roswell, New Mexico… or Aurora, Texas… or even the so-called “Battle Over Los Angeles”. But there are many other stories of flying saucers crashing to Earth – and we’ll look at one that took place in Bolivia, in 1978. (The Bolivia UFO Crash) *** A hidden artifact found in a mysterious hill in Oklahoma reveals a terrifying story! (Oklahoma’s Mysterious Hollow Hill)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:53.694 = Show Open 00:02:30.154 = The Great Worcester Airship Hoax of 1909, Part 100:13:35.660 = The Great Worcester Airship Hoax of 1909, Part 2 ***00:23:58.982 = Unsinkable Sam00:31:02.011 = Oklahoma’s Mysterious Hollow Hill ***00:44:45.651 = The Bolivia UFO Crash ***00:50:06.348 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Oklahoma’s Mysterious Hollow Hill” by Ellen Lloyd for AncientPages.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/44s54rmp,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p86uyt7“Unsinkable Sam” by Natasha Ishak for AllThatsInteresting.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8j9nkz“The Bolivia UFO Crash” posted at Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3f4b2rr7“The Great Worcester Airship Hoax of 1909” from SlightlyOddFitchburg.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2adehevb,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckp2hh9(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March, 2022On this episode of Weird Darkness, host Darren Marlar follows a flying machine that may never have flown, a cat credited with surviving three warships in a single year, a silver cylinder buried under a haunted Oklahoma mound, and a cylindrical object that tore into a Bolivian mountain in broad daylight.It opens in Worcester, Massachusetts, in December of 1909, where Wallace E. Tillinghast, vice-president of the Sure Seal Manufacturing Company, told the Boston Herald he had invented a heavier-than-air flying machine that could carry three passengers some three hundred miles at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, only a few years after the Wright brothers had struggled to keep a powered aircraft aloft for a few hundred feet. Wallace never produced the machine, yet crowds across Massachusetts and out into Arkansas, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island reported a mysterious airship moving silently through the night sky, with one witness in Revere describing seventy-foot wings and an engine he claimed he could hear rumbling from the ground. In Providence, a young H.P. Lovecraft cut through the excitement by identifying the light everyone was pointing at as the planet Venus. The New England Skeptical Society would later attribute the whole affair to collective wish-fulfillment, while the UFOlogist John A. Keel traced it back to an unnamed inventor who had been working his way east since the great California airship sightings of 1896, recruiting well-liked local men like Wallace to serve as the public face of a flying machine that never quite worked.From there the show crosses to the North Atlantic and the tale of Unsinkable Sam, a black-and-white tuxedo cat said to have survived three shipwrecks during a single stretch of the Second World War. As the legend runs, he began the war aboard the German battleship Bismarck, was pulled from a floating plank by the crew of the British destroyer HMSCossack after the Bismarck went down on May 27th, 1941, and was renamed Oscar. When the Cossack was torpedoed months later, the cat was said to have been rescued again, this time by the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, which is where the nickname Unsinkable Sam took hold; after the Ark Royal itself was torpedoed on November 14th, 1941, he reportedly turned up unharmed once more and was carried off by the HMS Legion. Darren measures the story against the record, noting that Bismarck survivors recalled no cat aboard, that a well-known photograph tied to Sam actually shows a different ship's cat named Simon of the HMS Amethyst, and that the seagoing cat was a genuine naval tradition even if this particular survivor may have been assembled from several.Next comes a haunted mound outside Binger, in Caddo County, Oklahoma, and a silver cylinder said to hold the reason the local people would not go near it. The account reaches print through a 1930s newspaper clipping rediscovered by Mrs. Cossette Willoughby of San Jose, California, in which a traveling reporter digs at dawn beside a mound her friends Pat and Louis warned was watched by two phantoms, a woman by day and a headless man by night. Inside the cylinder are papers written in Castilian Spanish, describing how a soldier named Alfonzo, separated from Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's 1541 hunt for the Seven Cities of Gold, wandered into a cave and down into a hidden underground country called Kenyan, ruled by long-headed people and guarded by hairless, dog-like beasts that gave off a musty animal odor. Drawing on Timothy Green Beckley's book Subterranean Worlds Inside Earth, the segment lays out Alfonzo's account of his wife Teen, their failed escape on the back of one of those beasts, and the sentence that supposedly set their preserved bodies walking the mound to frighten off anyone who might find the passage.The episode closes on the afternoon of May 6th, 1978, when something cylindrical slammed into the El Taire mountain along the Bermejo River, on the border between the Bolivian province of Tarija and Argentina, with a supersonic blast heard 150 miles away and windowpanes cracked 30 miles out in every direction. Border policemen described a metallic object trailing white smoke; Corporal Natalio Farfan Ruiz felt the ground tremble as it fell, and Policeman Juan Hurtado said the thing passed directly over his head before it struck the slope. The Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín reported that a police chief in Tarija had located a dented metal cylinder roughly twelve feet long, and while a promised NASA expert never arrived, two United States Air Force officers, Colonel Robert Simmons and Major John Heise, did, later confirmed through released State Department documents to have flown in under a program called Project Moon Dust. Darren ends on the stranger thread running through those files, the 1127th field activities group's interest in HUMINT, the gathering of UFO information from human sources through what the documents themselves describe as a game of deceit.

An aging millionaire’s fixation on a battered toy car draws his family into a tense mystery rooted in a tragedy from the past.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Hundred Dollar Difference” (May 19, 1978) ***WD00:44:49.646 = Sherlock Holmes, “Horseless Carriage” (February 24, 1947) ***WD01:13:45.557 = Mystery House, “A Killing In Market” (May 31, 1946)01:39:11.056 = Inner Sanctum, “Death Is An Artist” (January 23, 1945)02:08:47.121 = Jeff Regan, “The Man Who Came Back” (August 21, 1948) ***WD02:37:47.050 = The Key, “Ninety-Three-Year-Old Man” (1956) ***WD03:03:15.060 = Lights Out, “The Story of Mr. Maggs” (December 01, 1942) ***WD03:29:48.621 = Macabre, “Crystalline Man” (January 01, 1962) ***WD03:58:09.534 = Philip Marlowe, “Deep Shadow” (March 21, 1950)04:27:44.319 = Blackstone The Magic Magician, “The Ghost That Trapped a Killer” (October 03, 1948) ***WD04:39:26.334 = The Black Mass, “Death of Halpin Fraser” (May 20, 1964) ***WD05:10:33.358 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0734

It started with dust instead of smoke over an empty stretch of Colorado in the summer of 1973, and by the time anyone understood what the land was actually doing, the middle of the country had already begun to drop.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-nebraskaseaSOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Great Nebraska Sea” by Allan Danzig (Galaxy Magazine August 1963)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 05, 2026

One Siders defendant walks free on a signature bond. The last of the four asks a judge whether she's fit to stand trial at all.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/SidersCase20260804Siders Case: Vinton County Child Endangerment Case, July 15 Coverage – Weird DarkNEWSThe Siders Family's Other House and Their Years Off the Grid – Weird DarkNEWS, July 22The 16 Siders Children: Vinton County Seeks Permanent Custody – Weird DarkNEWS, July 29Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A commercial crew descending into Gatwick watched a dark-rimmed disc pass within a few hundred feet of the right wing, and the radar recorded nothing there at all.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/gatwicksaucer/Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Dressed like a 17th-century priest and armed with a library of ancient texts, Montague Summers devoted his life to proving that witches, vampires, and werewolves weren’t just folklore — they were terrifyingly real.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/montaguesummersREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/montague20260803FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Can a priest believe in witches, werewolves, and vampires? The answer is yes – and his name was Montague Summers. Was he a kook, or was he seeing the truth that others ignored? (Montague Summers Believed in Monsters) *** He smiled without speaking, appeared alongside UFOs, and promised to return – who, or what, was the mysterious Indrid Cold? (The Grinning Man – The Legend of Indrid Cold) *** Somewhere out there, another version of you made a different choice – that’s the multiverse theory. And the key to proving it could lie in changing someone else’s history. (Visiting Our Neighbors in a Parallel Universe) *** Anatoli Bugorski accidentally stuck his head in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator in 1978; he saw a flash brighter than a thousand suns, and somehow lived to tell about it. (The Man Who Survived An Atomic Blast Through His Skull) *** In 1971, a massive glowing sphere hovered silently over a U.S. Navy carrier — and for twenty minutes, the entire ship went dark. (Code Black: The USS Kennedy UFO Incident) *** She was a Houston socialite raised like royalty, but Joan Robinson Hill’s glittering life came to a mysterious end – followed by affairs, secret autopsies, a sensational trial, and a murder that still raises more questions than answers. (Murder in Texas: The Strange Death of Joan Robinson Hill) *** Imagine calling 911 because a perfectly healthy and alive loved one insists they’re dead – and wants to be taken to the morgue to join the other corpses! (Walking Dead: The Syndrome That Makes You Think You Are Deceased) *** Locals whisper about witches and shadows at Blood’s Point Cemetery, but the real horror lies in a forgotten tragedy no ghost story could match. (The Witch, The Shadow, and the Secrets of Bloods Point)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:19.350 = Show Open00:04:01.662 = Montague Summers Believed In Monsters00:12:33.941 = Visiting Our Next Door Neighbors in a Parallel Universe ***00:16:55.866 = Code Black: The USS Kennedy UFO Incident00:27:48.566 = Murder in Texas: The Strange Death of Joan Robinson Hill ***00:36:51.664 = The Man Who Survived An Atomic Blast Through His Skull00:40:06.356 = Walking Dead: The Syndrome That Makes You Think You Are Deceased00:46:04.042 = The Witch, The Shadow, and the Secrets of Bloods Point ***00:51:53.221 = The Grinning Man: The Legend of Indrid Cold01:05:38.345 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Code Black: The USS Kennedy UFO Incident”: https://rense.com/ufo/kennedy.htm,https://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/cover-ups/the-1971-bermuda-triangle-ufo-incident“Visiting our Next Door Neighbors in a Parallel Universe”: https://weirddarkness.com/visiting-our-next-door-neighbors-in-a-parallel-universe/, https://www.space.com/the-universe/could-we-travel-to-parallel-universes“The Man Who Survived An Atomic Blast Through His Skull”: https://weirddarkness.com/the-man-who-survived-an-atomic-blast-through-his-skull/“Montague Summers Believed In Monsters”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montague_Summers,https://libraryblog.lbrut.org.uk/2017/10/montague-summers/,https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8955270/montague-summers, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Montague-Summers, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/32006.Montague_Summers,https://www.bloodynews.ro/article/the-controversial-life-of-montague-summers-a-priest-who-believed-in-vampires-and-witches/“Murder in Texas: The Strange Death of Joan Robinson Hill”: https://the-line-up.com/murder-in-texas-the-strange-death-of-joan-robinson-hill“Walking Dead: The Syndrome That Makes You Think You’re Deceased”: https://the-line-up.com/cotards-syndrome-the-living-dead“The Witch, The Shadow, and the Secrets of Bloods Point”: https://www.hauntedrockford.com/hidden-in-the-shadows/“The Grinning Man: The Legend of Indrid Cold”: https://believingthebizarre.com/indrid-cold-the-grinning-man/(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 25, 2025

Around three in the morning on July 31st, a naked man drove his car through the front doors of a Baptist church on Detroit's west side, rolled to a stop inside the vestibule, and told the people who arrived that he was Jesus Christ; nobody was hurt, and Detroit police say any charges wait on the results of a mental health evaluation.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/NakedJesusCrashLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Six members of one family were found dead in a Mechanicville, New York apartment in June; by August, investigators had ruled the four children's deaths homicides and the mother's and grandmother's deaths suicides, and said the two women planned the killings by text in the days before the kids were to leave for a court-ordered summer with their father.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/HarmonChildren20260804Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Two men carried spades and a telephone line into an ancient swamp cemetery after midnight, and only one of them stayed above ground.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-randolphcarterSOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Statement of Randolph Carter” by H.P. Lovecraft: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-statement-of-randolph-carter/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: August 04, 2026

Alien abductions, cryptid creatures, secret government programs, portals to other worlds, cattle mutilations – the San Luis Valley may be the strangest and most terrifying place you’ve never heard of.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/CattleMutilationsFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: We’ve had several episodes before about mysterious locations that are host to strange, paranormal activity. Skinwalker Ranch, for example, or The Bennington Triangle, or even the harsh terrain of Alaska. Perhaps one of the locations that appears to persistently slip under the radar is the San Luis Valley in Colorado. The region is home to very much the same variety of paranormal activity as other apparent hot spots. UFO sightings here are in abundance, for example. As are cases of cattle mutilation, sightings of strange creatures, and even alien abduction. In short, the San Luis Valley could be one of the most interesting locations in the world.LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Paranormal, Extraterrestrial, and Otherworldly Explanations for Cattle Mutilations” by Marcus Lowth for UFOInsight.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/66a64hu5, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/vhykeezp(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 2022Weird Darkness devotes a full episode to Colorado's San Luis Valley, moving from Native American creation myths through the 1967 mutilation of a horse named Lady, decades of Bigfoot encounters, and a global run of cattle mutilation cases tied to UFO sightings, secret government programs, and alien abduction.It opens with the valley's own history: the region passed from Mexican to American territory after the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War, and archaeological evidence places human habitation there for roughly 7,000 years across close to a dozen Native American tribes. Several of those tribes describe the surrounding peaks as the Sipapu, a place of creation and emergence, and the Navajo specifically name the Blanca Massif as the point where "star people" enter this world aboard what their oral tradition calls flying seed pods, a phrase researchers have since compared to modern disc-shaped UFO reports. The same traditions include legends of shapeshifting beasts roaming the valley, stories some investigators now link to the Bigfoot sightings still reported there.From there the episode turns to the case that first brought cattle mutilation into national headlines: the September 27, 1967 death of a three-year-old Appaloosa mare named Lady, discovered by Harry King and his mother, Agnes, on land belonging to his sister, Nellie Lewis. The horse's head had been stripped completely to the bone with surgically precise cuts, no blood was found anywhere at the scene despite the wounds, and a strong chemical odor hung in the air near the body. Investigators also noted that the horse's own tracks stopped abruptly about 100 feet from where she was found, that scorch marks including a distinct circular pattern marked the ground nearby, and that Agnes King recalled an unidentified object flying over her house in the days before the discovery. The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization investigated, and pathologist Dr. John Altshuler, examining the remains, found the heart, lungs, thyroid, and abdominal organs removed with medical precision and the body completely drained of blood. Alamosa County Sheriff Ben Phillips attributed the death to a lightning strike without visiting the site, and the Condon Committee later reported no evidence of abnormal causes, addressing neither the missing blood nor the burns. Press coverage mistakenly named the horse Snippy, after her sire, and the name stuck permanently. Researcher Christopher O'Brien would go on to document more than 200 further mutilation reports in the San Luis Valley alone, estimating the true, unreported total closer to 1,000.Next comes a survey of the valley's stranger residents, starting with a 1992 sighting known regionally as the Woman in Red, in which a driver picked up a hitchhiking woman who vanished after he noticed she had goat-like legs and hooves. The same stretch of the episode covers a wave of Bigfoot encounters that struck a seven-square-mile radius between late December 1993 and early January 1994, including a December 31 sighting with footprint tracks clear enough to show toenail impressions and partially captured on police video, plus a 2000 report from two ATV riders near Blanca Peak who tracked a seven-foot, brown-haired creature before losing it in the trees. Christopher O'Brien's files also record a white buffalo that appeared and then vanished without a trace near Winchell Lake in the early 1980s, a 1993 wave of legless, slug-like creatures locals call prairie dragons, and a report of an out-of-place platypus. The segment also revisits the Old Scratch legend, a century-old story of a well-dressed stranger who appears in a cantina during Lent and reveals claws, cloven hooves, and a tail before fleeing when confronted, last reported in 1984, then covers mid-1960s witness Robert Whitting, who claimed a craft pulled alongside his car and telepathically warned him of a dead black dog in the road ahead. It closes at the modern UFO Watchtower, a platform built for its 360-degree view of the valley that still draws UFO sightings and researchers year-round.The episode then widens its scope to cattle mutilation as a global phenomenon, opening with a 1606 case recorded in the court records of England's King James I describing sheep found with only their tallow and inner organs removed, and a Texas horse whose entire nervous system was surgically extracted in the same territory that saw a wave of sheep mutilations in 2013. It cites an FBI report from the late 1970s tallying roughly 8,000 mutilations in Colorado alone and lays out the pattern researchers keep finding: animals drained completely of blood, organs removed with surgical precision, unusual chemical readings in tissue samples, and a consistent absence of scavengers at the scene. From there it crosses to Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, England, where in 1985 a father and son watched a silent, triangular craft with three underside lights hover over a field, followed two days later by a duck hunter who saw a similar object stop over grazing cattle and fire light beams in his direction as he approached.A string of British cases follows, beginning with the 2010 mutilations of sheep near Shrewsbury, England, where animals were found with faces skillfully stripped of flesh and drilled holes where their brains had been removed, witnessed in part by a 16-person investigative team who reported both UFOs and apparent laser-style attacks on the flock in March of that year. It moves next to a 2011-2012 wave of mutilated horses across the United Kingdom, tentatively tied by some researchers to an equine herpesvirus type 1 outbreak rather than to ritual dates such as St. Winebald Day, then to Wales, where the Animal Pathology Field Unit spent twelve years, from 2001 to 2013, investigating sheep mutilations and, through investigator Phil Hoyle, concluded extraterrestrial involvement was the most likely explanation. The segment also returns to the 1977 discovery of 15 mutilated wild ponies in Cherry Brook Valley, Dartmoor, found by Alan Hicks, a case later investigated by Jonathan Downes of the Center for Fortean Zoology, who reported suspicious interference and elaborate hoax calls resembling Men in Black activity. It ends with Rob Lea's account, given to researcher Nick Redfern, of a Bristol-based group he called the Cult of the Moon Beast, allegedly performing animal sacrifices in Newport, England since the late 1980s to summon entities from a coexisting dimension on behalf of wealthy patrons.Back in North America, the episode covers Manuel Sanchez's discovery of a fourth mutilated calf on his Colorado ranch in December 2009 and Tom Miller's similar March 2009 find near Trinidad, Colorado, both missing tongues, udders, and eyes with no blood or tracks at the scene. It continues with Kit Metzger's decades of mutilations at the Flying M Ranch in Arizona, dating back to the late 1970s and clustering between June and October, and with the 1978 case of Manuel Gomez's bull in Dulce, New Mexico, examined by officer Gabriel Valdez, whose lab tests found the heart and liver reduced to a mushy, peanut-butter texture with abnormal zinc, phosphorus, and potassium levels and no copper at all. The segment covers a summer of 1990 mutilations on Richard Fazio's land in Vancouver, Washington, which Oregon State University matched to laser-type electrosurgical injury, alongside Christopher O'Brien's own assessment that mutilations are "more complicated than aliens" and more likely tied to covert environmental monitoring. It closes with 2013 sheep mutilations in Texas tha

There is a story about a man who knew everything the world would ever know because he claimed to be born ten thousand years too soon — a man who could foresee every future but his own, and who spent his life searching for the one person alive who could tell him how he would die.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Time Out of Mind” (May 18, 1978) ***WD00: 45:49.141 = Dark Fantasy, “I Am Your Brother” (June 05, 1942) ***WD01:14:15.433 = BBC Fear on 4, “The Journey Home” (February 26, 1989)01:42:40.384 = Theater Five, “Talkers” (November 24, 1964) ***WD02:03:44.997 = Ave Maria Hour, “St Benedict of Nursia VS Poison And Witchcraft” (1939)02:27:27.651 = The Hall of Fantasy, “The Shadow People” (September 21, 1953) ***WD02:51:43.918 = Harry Lime, “Work of Art” (September 28, 1951)03:16:46.504 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “Walk On The Water” (July 12, 1980)03:42:17.928 = The Haunting Hour, “Thought” (June 10, 1945) ***WD04:07:12.210 = Hermit’s Cave, “Hanson’s Ghost” (October 29, 1944)04:35:22.568 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “Death is a Grain of Sand, aka Murder At a Magic Show” (November 26, 1947) ***WD04:57:45.862 = Beyond The Green Door, “Tom Dunlevy Wasts’ Abandoned Cabin” (1966)05:01:59.177 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0733

In 1982, an 18-year-old dropped dead after playing the arcade game Berzerk — and decades of half-truths, copycat rumors, and a real murder at the same machine turned it into legend. We separate fact from fiction on the Berzerk curse and its shadowy cousin, Polybius, the government mind-control game that may or may not have ever existed.==========HOUR ONE: It’s rumored that an arcade game from 1980 might lead to the real death of its players. We’ll look at the death curse of Berzerk. (The Berzerk Death Curse, And The Polybius Urban Legend) *** And another arcade game in the early 80s was surrounded by controversy – because the game never existed, despite so many saying it did. Or did it exist? We’ll look at the urban legend of Polybius. (The Urban Legend of Polybius)==========HOUR TWO: Was Stanley Stiers the real-life inspiration for Michael Myers in 1978’s John Carpenter film, “Halloween?” (The Real Michael Myers) *** The last known words of Peter Rugg were “Let the storm increase! I will see home tonight in spite of the last tempest, or I may never see home!" Over two-hundred years later and he has yet to make it home – but that hasn’t stopped his tempest! (The Eternal Ride of Peter Rugg) *** Imagine attending college for several years, only to find out that the whole time you’ve been studying on top of the corpses of thousands of mental patients. That’s exactly what happened in 2013 when The University of Mississippi made plans to expand parking for their students and staff. (The Corpses Under The University of Mississippi) *** Dealing with a ghost or two is awful enough – but what if you’re attacked by a whole gang of ghouls? It was reported as real news in 1889’s Chicago Tribune! (A Whole Gang O’ Ghosts) *** People With Super Powers!==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: Michael Bryson disappeared on August 5th, 2020 from Hobo Campground at Umpqua National Forest. He has yet to be found. (The Disappearance of Michael Bryson) *** When it comes to cryptids, you have many to choose from – Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the chupacabra, the list goes on and on. But I’m willing to bet nowhere on the list of your favorite cryptids, or even the cryptids you’ve ever heard of, do you have an entry for “The Belled Buzzard” of Texas. (The Belled Buzzard Legend) *** When the Black Plague arrived at Eyam's doorstep in the 17th century, its villagers were forced to choose between life or certain doom. It’s the tragic tale of England’s Plague Village. (The Black Plague Comes to Eyam)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“People with Super Powers” from Paranormality Magazine: https://weirddarkness.com/magazine“The Berzerk Death Curse” by Cat DeSpira: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckk96tv“The Polybius Conspiracy” by Ryan Houlihan for InputMag.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8h6v8z“The Real Michael Myers” from Casper McFadden at TheMorbidLibrary.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yvj6ueze, and from TheScareChamber.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/vmew9uvb; “Halloween” theme piano solo by Noud van Harskamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T9m-fj8K9c, “Halloween Kills | Epic Orchestral Theme” by Mike Chibante: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E82MEfQiffk“The Disappearance of Michael Bryson” posted at Strange Outdoors: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mwvb3am8 (If you know anything that could help solve Michael Bryson’s disappearance, or if you were at the Hobo Campground around August 3rd, 4th, or 5th of 2020, please reach out to the sheriff’s office at (541) 682-4150, option 1, and reference case No. 20-5286.)“The Eternal Ride of Peter Rugg” posted at SlightlyOddFitchburg.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3z7pdtzn“The Corpses Under The University of Mississippi” by Erin Wisti for Ranker.com’s “Graveyard Shift”:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8tdu6k“A Whole Gang O’ Ghosts” posted from Strange Company: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9ynpev“The Belled Buzzard Legend” from Texas Cryptid Hunter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p875fxv“The Black Plague Comes to Eyam” by Stephanie Almazan for TheLineUp.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1aptirxk==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

Every time David Delano tries to propose to the beautiful Charlotte Marsden, a figure in old-fashioned evening dress appears in the room — visible only to him and to Charlotte's mother — and neither of them will explain who he is or why he keeps coming back.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Edmund Orme” (May 15, 1978) ***WD00:46:57.073 = The Crime Club, “Topaz Flower” (April 24, 1947)01:16:53.148 = Crime Classics, “Death Picture Hanger” (July 20, 1953)01:46:38.330 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Nola Jerrold Wants To Kill Her Husband” (September 15, 1946)02:10:54.934 = The Devil and Mr. O, “Three Thousand Dollars” (January 21, 1972) ***WD02:36:19.806 = Diary of Fate, “Victor Wakeman” (June 29, 1948) ***WD03:03:06.121 = Dimension X, “Dr. Grimshaw’s Sanitorium” (September 22, 1950) ***WD03:32:38.297 = The Eleventh Hour, “Country Road” (ADU)03:58:20.749 = Escape, “The Sure Thing” (October 15, 1949)04:26:55.837 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Sourdough” (February 05, 1958)04:46:02.408 = Tales of the Frightened, “Chung Ling Soo” (December 16, 1957) ***WD04:50:22.457 = Tales From the Tomb, “The Lick” (1960s)04:53:51.912 = Incredible But True, “Naked Man of Newbury” (1950-1951)04:57:38.785 = Strange Adventure, “Crossroads” (1945) ***WD05:00:55.441 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0732

From a New Mexico ranch in 1947 to a Navy fighter jet in 2004, we trace ten of history's most famous UFO encounters — the eyewitnesses who saw them, the governments who denied them, and the questions that still won't go away."EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/skiesarewatchingREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4hfn747dCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:06:39.225 = Show Open00:07:58.582 = The Roswell UFO Incident00:12:38.079 = The Westall UFO Encounter00:15:33.497 = The Pascagoula Abduction00:19:27.674 = The Allagash Abductions ***00:22:35.165 = The Tehran UFO Incident00:25:46.548 = The Cash-Landrum Incident00:29:03.352 = The Rendlesham Forest Incident00:32:19.175 = The Belgian UFO Wave00:36:28.126 = The Phoenix Lights ***00:40:52.495 = The Nimitz UFO Encounter00:44:15.325 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:- Paranormality Magazine article; (link no longer valid)- Halt, Charles. "Halt Memo," January 1981, archived by the UK National Archives.- Penniston, Jim, and John Burroughs. "Encounter in Rendlesham Forest." Thomas & Mercer, 2014.- BBC News. "Rendlesham Forest: 'Britain's Roswell' UFO spotted off Suffolk coast," September 2011.- Pope, Nick. "You Can't Tell the People." Pan Books, 2001 – A book by a former MoD UFO investigator discussing the cover-ups and inside stories of the British government's responses to UFO sightings, including the Rendlesham Forest incident.- Bruni, Georgina. "You Can't Tell the People: The Definitive Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Mystery." Sidgwick & Jackson, 2000.- SOBEPS Reports on the Belgian UFO Wave- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdEALPvl_4Q- "Belgium in UFO Fever" - Brussels Times- "The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident," by John F. Schuessler, provides an extensive analysis of the event, including medical records and witness testimonies.- "UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry," a comprehensive study by Michael Swords and others, details the government's response to UFO sightings, including the Cash-Landrum case.- "Fire in the Sky: The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident," an article in the MUFON UFO Journal that revisits the incident, detailing the investigation and subsequent legal battle.- "Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery," a documentary by Shane Ryan, explores the events through witness testimonies and expert interviews.- "The Westall UFO: A Suburban Mystery," a book by Keith Basterfield, provides a detailed account of the sighting, including the social and governmental context.- Articles and interviews archived by the Victorian UFO Action group, which has collected and analyzed first-hand accounts from witnesses and former students of Westall High School.- U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Report: This declassified document provides a detailed account of the Tehran UFO Incident, including descriptions from the pilots and ground control.- "Iranian Jet Chased UFO, Got Light Show": This article in the New York Times archives covers the public's reaction and the international reporting following the incident.- Interview with Lt. Parviz Jafari: Several interviews with Jafari provide first-hand accounts of the encounter, including technical details of the aircraft's malfunctions.- CIA Document on the Tehran UFO Incident: A collection of declassified CIA documents that discuss the implications of the encounter and its analysis by various intelligence agencies.- The New York Times: Articles from December 2017 that first revealed the Nimitz encounter to the public.- Department of Defense Releases: Official statements and declassified videos of the encounters.- Interviews with Commander David Fravor: His firsthand accounts provide detailed observations of the encounter.- "Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation" on History Channel: This television series features interviews with the pilots and analysis of the encounters.- Raymond E. Fowler, the investigator and author of "The Allagash Abductions: Undeniable Evidence of Alien Intervention," which details the incident and the hypnosis sessions.- Interviews and Appearances: The men involved have given numerous interviews and appeared on various television programs to recount their experiences.- "Unsolved Mysteries" Television Series: Featured the Allagash abductions, providing a dramatized account and interviews with the witnesses.- Skeptical Analysis by Robert Sheaffer and others, who critique the method of hypnosis used and the financial aspects related to the publicity of the case.- "The Pascagoula UFO Incident" by Charles Hickson – Hickson wrote a detailed account of his experience.- "UFOs: Past, Present, and Future" by Robert Emenegger – Includes interviews and analysis of the Pascagoula incident.- Interviews and documentaries – Multiple television programs and documentaries have featured interviews with the witnesses and analyses by UFO researchers.- Articles in major newspapers – Numerous articles were written at the time in publications like the Washington Post and New York Times, providing contemporary accounts of the events and follow-ups.(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: May 06, 2024This episode of Weird Darkness moves chronologically through ten of history's most frequently cited UFO encounters, opening with a 1947 debris field on a New Mexico ranch and closing with a 2004 Navy radar encounter off the California coast.In July 1947, rancher William "Mac" Brazel discovers unusual metallic debris scattered across the Foster homestead north of Roswell, New Mexico, and reports it to Sheriff George Wilcox, who alerts the Roswell Army Air Field. Intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel collects the material, and on July 8th the RAAF issues a press release announcing the recovery of a "flying disc." The story runs in newspapers nationwide before General Roger Ramey holds a press conference the next day identifying the debris as a weather balloon. The retraction does little to end the speculation; decades later, ufologists raise claims of recovered alien bodies and a government cover-up, and in 1994 the Air Force publishes "Case Closed: Final Report on the Roswell Crash," attributing the debris to the classified high-altitude balloon program Project Mogul.From there, the episode moves to April 6th, 1966, when more than two hundred students, teachers, and residents near Westall High School in the Melbourne suburb of Westall, Australia, watch a gray, saucer-shaped craft descend, hover for roughly twenty minutes, and shoot skyward at high speed after a second object appears to intercept it. Students who walk into the nearby field known as The Grange afterward find circular patches of flattened grass. Australian authorities attribute the sighting to a weather balloon, an explanation many witnesses reject, and researcher Shane Ryan later interviews dozens of them for the documentary "Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery."Next comes the Pascagoula Abduction: shipyard coworkers Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker are fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi on the night of October 11th, 1973, when a whirring oval craft with flashing lights hovers roughly forty feet above them and three robotic, wrinkled-skinned beings pull them aboard for what they describe as a twenty-minute physical examination. The men report the encounter to the local sheriff's office, which secretly records their conversation while leaving them alone in a room, capturing Hickson's visible distress rather than any hint of a hoax. Both men pass polygraph tests and undergo hypnosis, and UFO researchers J. Allen Hynek and James Harder investigate the case and find no evidence of fabrication.A similar pattern surfaces three years later in Maine, where twin brothers Jack and Jim Weiner and fellow art students Chuck Rak and Charlie Foltz are camping on Eagle Lake in the Allagash wilderness in August 1976 when a glowing orb appears to follow their canoe. After Charlie Foltz signals it with a flashlight, the light expands and engulfs the group, and the men find themselves back at a campsite fire that has burned down to embers with no memory of the intervening time. Years later, recurring nightmares send the four men to psychiatrist and UFO researcher Dr. Raymond Fowler, whose hypnotic regression sessions produce matching accounts of grey-alien medical examinations aboard a craft, a story that eventually reaches national audiences through "Unsolved Mysteries" and multiple books.Military personnel take center

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://pod.link/1651062114Two doctored photographs posted to a comedy forum in 2009 spread, through thousands of anonymous contributors, into a mythology detailed enough that two eleven-year-old girls stabbed a friend nineteen times to prove their worth to it. Six years later, a South Dakota reservation would recognize pieces of the same figure inside a legend of its own, one that predated the internet by generations.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and print version): https://weirddarkness.com/cotu-slendermanWeird Darkness® and Church Of The Undead™ are trademarked. Copyright © 2026.

A young bride's uncanny knowledge of history's deadliest catastrophes convinces her husband she's hiding something — but the truth behind her secret is older than he could ever imagine.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Secret of Shen-Si” (May 22, 1978) ***WD00:45:23.731 = BBC Radio 4 / Radio 7 GhostStory, “The Crowd” (December 30, 1986)00:59:43.519 = Night Beat, “Expectant Father” (December 28, 1951) ***WD01:27:08.605 = The Black Book, “Different Readings, Parts 1 & 2” (November 21, 1951) ***WD01:52:20.091 = Challenge of the Yukon, “Magnanimous Ghost” (August 28, 1945)02:06:45.867 = Box 13, “Three To Die” (January 23, 1949)02:33:16.175 = Calling All Cars, “Missing Mexican Sheiks” (January 03, 1934) ***WD (LQ)03:05:07.603 = Casey Crime Photographer, “Handkerchief” (September 05, 1946)03:34:32.775 = CBC Mystery Theater, “The Hitch Hiker” (June 02, 1967) ***WD04:00:52.848 = Chet Chetters, “If You Can’t Stand The Heat” (1992)04:29:31.575 = The Clock, “Time In Reverse” (January 17, 1956)04:53:57.175 = Beyond The Green Door, “Edgar Hayes – Amazon Trip Seek” (1966)04:57:50.162 = Calling All Detectives, “Jerry Is Framed for the Murder of Mrs. Mayner” (July 07, 1948) ***WD (LQ)05:05:52.977 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0731

The Slender Man began as two photographs and a caption, submitted to an internet forum in 2009 as nothing more than a creepy image contest. Within five years, people across the country were treating him as real – and some proved just how far that belief could go.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/SlendermanREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8ka2reFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: In 2009, a photograph appeared on an internet forum, submitted as an entry in a contest to create convincing fake paranormal images. The figure in it had no face, arms too long for its body, and a caption written like a piece of found history. Within a few years, that figure had a name recognized across the internet, a following that treated the images as more than fiction, and a reputation for turning up in places far stranger than a photo contest ever intended.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:02:02.673 = Show Open00:03:13.025 = Slenderman: Blurring The Lines of Reality, Part 100:09:24.860 = Slenderman: Blurring The Lines of Reality, Part 2 ***00:22:48.484 = Slenderman: Blurring The Lines of Reality, Part 3 ***00:34:59.166 = Slenderman: Blurring The Lines of Reality, Part 4 ***00:41:57.606 = Slenderman: Blurring The Lines of Reality, Part 5 ***00:54:09.889 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Slenderman: Blurring The Lines Of Reality” by Marcus Lowth for UFOInsight.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9e9srj(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March, 2022This episode of Weird Darkness traces the Slender Man from an internet photo contest into real-world stabbings, arson, and a wave of suicides on a South Dakota reservation, then weighs whether an invented internet legend can, in some sense, become real.It opens with the character's exact origin: on June 10th, 2009, Eric Knudsen, posting under the name Victor Surge on the forum Something Awful, submitted two doctored photographs as part of a contest to create convincing paranormal images. Each carried a caption inventing a backstory, one referencing a photographer "presumed dead" in 1983 and another tying the figure to a fire at the Stirling City Library and the disappearance of a photographer named Mary Thomas in 1986. The figure in both images, faceless and unnaturally tall with elongated arms, spread across the internet within days and took on the name Slender Man, along with a folklore of his own: a preference for woods and abandoned buildings, the ability to travel at will, and warning signs that included nosebleeds, nightmares, and sudden paranoia.From there, the episode turns to the Waukesha stabbing of May 31st, 2014, in Wisconsin, when twelve-year-old Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser led their friend Payton Leutner into nearby woods and stabbed her nineteen times, telling investigators the attack was meant to prove Slender Man's existence and make them his "proxies." Leutner survived and crawled to a roadside where a cyclist found her. Geyser was sentenced to forty years to life and remains held in a psychiatric facility; Weier, sentenced to twenty-five years to life, was released from institutional care in the summer of 2021 and placed under supervision.Next, the episode covers the string of incidents that followed within months: a thirteen-year-old girl's knife attack on her mother in Hamilton County, Ohio, in June 2014; a Las Vegas shooting in which the gunman, who reportedly dressed as Slender Man, killed two police officers and a bystander before killing his wife and himself; and a house fire set by a fourteen-year-old girl in Port Richey, Florida, in September 2014, who told police she had "been reading a lot" about the character online. It also details a separate wave of youth suicides on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation between late 2014 and mid-2015, which the New York Times reported topped one hundred in six months, some tied by officials to the Slender Man and to a local legend of a "suicide spirit" known as Walking Sam or the Tall Man, and a mass hanging attempt in nearby woods that a local pastor, John Two Bulls, intervened to stop.The episode also relays an account researcher Nick Redfern collected from a Pennsylvania flight attendant trainee named Lacy, who said her laptop began displaying Slender Man's face and, on one occasion, a voice, after she read Robin Swope's book Slenderman: From Fiction to Fact in 2016.The episode closes by comparing Slender Man to Spring-Heeled Jack, a figure reported across Victorian England from the 1830s onward and long suspected of being one person's stunt copied by others in later decades, before turning to researcher Peter McCue's Psychic Internet Theory and the ancient Egyptian god Ptah, weighing whether shared belief circulated across the internet might account for why so many people came to treat a fictional character as something they could encounter.

Scout Brooks just wants to survive his first day of seventh grade — but a mysterious after-school astronomy club, run by an even stranger professor, has him wondering exactly what he's signed up for.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrorsOther stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaUOther narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.comBlLOG POST URL: https://weirddarkness.com/scoutbrooks001= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness©, 2026Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

Two best friends sneak out on the first night of summer break and find a working elevator standing alone in the middle of the woods — and the moment they step inside, the way home stops making sense.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-ElevatorInTheWoodsSOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Elevator In The Woods” by Adrian Johnson: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-elevator-in-the-woods/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 01, 2026

Records that surfaced in the weeks after the Siders children were found also describe a set of conjoined twins who died in 2022, two more underage marriages inside the extended family, and a stalled Ohio bill that would have raised the marriage age before any of it happened.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/siderscase20260731Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

From bathing in girls’ blood to making homemade conjoined twins, we’ll look at a few famous psychopaths who are truly some of the most terrifying people in the history of the world. Plus, whether flamboyant, miserly, or paranoid, some of history’s oddest individuals put modern-day eccentricities to shame.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/oddindividualsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdeejyx2CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:04.405 = Show Open00:02:00.371 = Diogenes : A Crazy, Homeless Philosopher00:04:07.881 = Tarrare: the Man Who Man Have Eaten a Baby00:06:39.397 = Lucky Lord Byron00:09:42.507 = Hetty Green: Taking Miserly To a New Level ***00:12:37.752 = Henry Cyril Paget: Married His Cousin And Lived Life Luxuriously00:15:47.020 = Carl Tanzler: He Couldn’t Live Without His Love, Even After Her Death00:18:31.186 = Gloria Ramirez: The Toxic Woman00:21:15.035 = Anneliese Michel: She Endured 67 Exorcisms ***00:23:44.494 = Sawney Bean: The Scottish Cannibal00:25:45.378 = Margaret Howe Lovatt: Intimate Relations With a Dolphin00:28:52.014 = King Leopold II: Slaves And Slaughter For Rubber And Ivory ***00:30:38.976 = Pol Pot: Created a Nation of Peasants, Poverty and Punishments00:32:17.167 = Ivan IV of Russia: Better Known as Ivan The Terrible00:33:54.318 = Elizabeth Bathory: Eternal Youth Through Murder00:35:15.113 = Heinrich Himmler: The Second Worst Nazi00:36:23.100 = Adolph Eichmann: Claimed He Did His Duty By Killing Millions00:38:05.830 = Tomás de Torquemada: Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition! ***00:39:30.531 = Josef Mengele: The Angel of Death00:40:31.984 = Vlad Tepes: The Impaler That Inspired Dracula00:42:03.511 = Jim Jones: The Kool-Aid Serial Killer Cult Leader00:43:43.399 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*

This episode covers real-life horror far more extreme than usual, including a Russian professor arrested in 2011 for keeping the mummified corpses of 29 women and girls in his apartment, each one fitted with a hidden music box. It also includes the story of a 19th-century whiskey heir who paid six handkerchiefs for a 10-year-old girl so he could watch cannibals kill and eat her, and the theory that Alexander the Great was declared dead nearly a week before he actually died. Content is more graphic than usual, so listener discretion is advised.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/necropolystREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8e5emeCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:47.354 = Show Open00:01:58.356 = Alexander the Great00:05:52.710 = The Ravenous Beast of Gévaudan00:09:41.943 = The Rape and Burial of Jessica Lunsford ***00:11:55.911 = The Dyatlov Pass Incident00:15:29.080 = The Torture Dungeon of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng00:19:10.197 = Robert The Doll00:23:08.785 = The Disappearance and Eerie Return of Bobby Dunbar ***00:26:33.271 = Albert Fish – The Brooklyn Vampire00:30:06.498 = The Strange Disappearance of the Sodder Children00:34:28.570 = Anatoly Moskvin, The Russian Who Mummified Dead Girls00:38:41.505 = The Jameson Whiskey Cannibal ***00:42:29.572 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Real-Life Horror Stories More Freaky Than Fiction” by Marco Margaritoff for AllThatsInteresting.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8p9c72(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 2022Weird Darkness this episode gathers real-life horror too extreme for scripted television, spanning from ancient Macedonia to the Congo basin and landing, along the way, in a Russian apartment stacked with mummified girls.It opens with Alexander the Great, who collapsed in Babylon in 323 B.C. after a 24-hour drinking binge triggered a sudden fever, a stabbing pain in his back, and creeping paralysis that eventually left him speechless; doctors pronounced him dead at 32. His body reportedly stayed "pure and fresh" for six days afterward, evidence ancient Greeks took as proof of his divinity. In 2019, Dr. Katherine Hall of New Zealand's University of Otago proposed in the Ancient History Bulletin that Alexander actually suffered from Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that paralyzes the body while leaving the mind fully intact; since fourth-century-B.C. doctors checked for breath rather than a pulse, Hall's theory suggests Alexander may have been declared dead nearly a week before he actually died, and was buried alive.From there, the story moves to 18th-century France, where a wolf-like creature killed or mauled close to 300 people across three years in the Gévaudan region, most of them women and children. Fourteen-year-old shepherdess Jeanne Boulet was the first confirmed victim in 1764; a fifteen-year-old girl killed a month later survived long enough to describe her attacker as "a horrible beast". Militia leader Jean-Baptiste Duhamel organized a 30,000-strong hunting party, and King Louis XV eventually dispatched his own bodyguard, François Antoine, who killed a large wolf in September 1765; the attacks resumed within months regardless. A farmer named Jean Chastel is credited with killing the actual beast using silver bullets, reportedly after finding human remains inside its stomach.Next, the episode turns to the 2005 murder of nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Homosassa, Florida. Convicted sex offender John Evander Couey broke into her family's home, took her to his trailer, raped her over three days, sealed her inside garbage bags, and buried her alive in his yard while she still clutched a stuffed dolphin her father had won her at a state fair. Prosecutors later determined Jessica may have still been alive in the house during Couey's first police interview. Couey was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping in March 2007 and died on death row of natural causes in 2009.From Florida, the episode jumps to the Ural Mountains and the Dyatlov Pass incident of January 1959, when hiking leader Igor Dyatlov and eight fellow students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute died during an expedition toward Otorten Mountain. Investigators found their tent slashed open from the inside and shoeless footprints leading nearly a mile into the forest; the first bodies recovered, dressed only in underwear despite temperatures near negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, were ruled hypothermia deaths. Two of the last four bodies found, Lyudmila Dubinina and Semyon Zolotaryov, were missing their eyeballs, Lyudmila was also missing her tongue, and both had clothing that tested positive for radioactivity. More than sixty years later, no single explanation, from avalanche to secret Soviet weapons testing, has been confirmed.The episode then moves to a cabin in California's Sierra Nevada foothills, where Leonard Lake and Charles Ng tortured and killed as many as 25 people between 1983 and 1985. Lake, a Vietnam veteran discharged for psychological reasons, built a cinderblock bunker behind a one-way mirror where he and Ng held women as sex slaves before killing them, dismembering the bodies, and dissolving the remains in acid; investigators eventually recovered twelve victims' remains along with roughly 40 pounds of charred bone. The pair was caught in June 1985 after Ng tried to shoplift a bench vise; Lake swallowed a cyanide capsule sewn into his jacket lining and died in custody before trial, while Ng was convicted of eleven murders in 1999 and remains on death row at San Quentin.Next comes Robert the Doll, manufactured by Germany's Steiff Company in 1904 and given to a Key West boy named Robert Eugene "Gene" Otto, who reportedly carried the doll everywhere and spoke of it in the first person. After Gene died in 1974, new owner Myrtle Reuter said the doll continued moving through her house with no explanation and eventually donated it to the Fort East Martello Museum, where curator Cori Convertito now oversees a steady stream of visitors who claim their cameras stop working in Robert's presence.From there, the episode circles back to 1912 Louisiana and the disappearance of four-year-old Bobby Dunbar from Swayze Lake. Eight months later, authorities found a boy matching his description traveling with a man named William Cantwell Walters, who insisted the child was Bruce Anderson, son of field hand Julia Anderson; the Dunbar family claimed the boy as their own anyway. It took until 2004, after years of research by Bobby's granddaughter Margaret Dunbar Cutwright, for a DNA test to prove the man raised as Bobby Dunbar shared no blood relation to the Dunbar family, meaning the real Bobby likely died in 1912 and the family had unknowingly raised Julia's son instead.The story turns next to Albert Fish, born in 1870 and later known as the Brooklyn Vampire, who spent decades torturing, killing, and cannibalizing children after enduring severe abuse in a New York orphanage as a boy. In 1928, posing as a farmer named Frank Howard, Fish lured ten-year-old Grace Budd away from her family and killed her; he wasn't identified until November 1934, when a letter he sent to Grace's mother describing the murder in graphic detail was traced back to him. Fish was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison on January 16th, 1936.Following that, the episode covers the unresolved 1945 Sodder children case in Fayetteville, West Virginia, where a Christmas Eve house fire killed, or apparently killed, five of George and Jennie Sodder's nine children. No bones were ever recovered from the wreckage despite a coroner attributing the deaths to the blaze, and the family spent decades chasing tips and alleged sightings after strangers had made ominous threats about the house burning down in the months before the fire. George and Jennie erected a billboard along Route 16 asking for information and died in 1968 and 1989, respectively, without ever learning their children's fate.From there, the story turns to Anatoly Moskvin, a Russian journalist and college professor fluent in thirteen languages who dubbed himself a "necropolyst" and visited 752 cemeteries around his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod. Moskvin was arrested in 2011 after police investigating the desecration of Muslim graves found him painting over photographs of the dead; a search of the apartment he shared with his parents turned up the mummified remains of 29 women and girls, dressed, made up with buttons for eyes, and fitted with music boxes inside their chests. Moskvin told investigators he dug up the bodies because he was lonely and confessed to 44 counts of abusing graves and corpses.The episode clos

A killer holes up in a snowbound hotel room with a dead woman in the closet — and finds he can't stop talking to her.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Room 418” (May 09, 1978) ***WD00:46:24.291 = SONG: “You Can’t Kill Me Twice” by Static Wax, inspired by ‘Room 418’ (July 30, 2026) *** https://weirddarkness.com/music00:51:41.227 = The Whistler, “To Rent Danger” (April 16, 1945)01:20:51.876 = Strange Wills, “They Met in Monte Carlo” (September 14, 1946)01:50:12.816 = Witch’s Tale, “Violin” (May 03, 1934)02:15:44.521 = X Minus One, “A Saucer of Loneliness” (January 09, 1957)02:44:29.640 = Zero Hour, “Driving Sally Insane” (May 22, 1974) ***WD03:01:45.934 = ABC Mystery Time, “Noe One Will Ever Know” (1956) ***WD03:25:46.822 = Appointment With Fear, “Pit And The Pendulum” (September 18, 1943) ***WD03:52:54.256 = Arch Oboloer’s Plays, “Bathysphere” (November 18, 1939)04:22:18.566 = Barry Craig, “Dead On Arrival” (November 14, 1951)04:50:29.917 = Tales From The Tomb, “The Girl Of His Dreams” (1960s)04:54:03.798 = Incredible But True, “Premonition” (1950-1951)04:57:39.831 = Strange Adventure, “John Friday Keeps Out” (1945) ***WD05:00:56.402 = SONG: “Can’t Kill Me Twice” by Maggie Cross, inspired by ‘Room 418’ (July 30, 2026) *** https://weirddarkness.com05:05:51.662 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0730

A phony spiritualist who fakes contact with the dead to swindle grieving clients gets more than she bargained for when the voices calling back from Summerland might not be fake after all.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Death And Desire” (May 08, 1978) ***WD00:45:30.201 = Sleep No More, “Woman in Grey” and “Suspicious Gift” (March 20, 1957)01:14:18.462 = BBC Radio 4 Spine Chillers, “Fresh Blood Series: A Fare To Remember” (March 2006)01:27:08.082 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Murder Will Out” (February 27, 1945) ***WD01:39:45.502 = Suspense, “Cat And Mouse” (March 30, 1944)02:09:03.700 = The Creaking Door, “Isle of Lost Souls” (November 23, 1964) ***WD02:37:51.669 = The Saint, “Case of Unhappy Homicide” (March 03, 1948) ***WD03:01:54.083 = 2000 Plus, “When Worlds Met” (May 03, 1950) ***WD03:30:56.223 = The Unexpected, “Heard But Not Seen” (1947-1948)03:43:03.263 = Unsolved Mysteries, “The Witch Doctor” (1936) ***WD03:57:59.514 = Dark Venture, “Pursuit” (July 31, 1945) ***WD04:27:44.521 = The Weird Circle, “Black Parchment” (1945)04:55:17.899 = Tales of the Frightened, “The Vampire Sleeps” (1963)05:00:07.048 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0729

A man who claims he can see invisible Martians controlling humanity finds an unlikely ally in a stranger at a bar who has photographed something impossible with infrared film. But in a world where the watchers are always watching, proving the truth might be the most dangerous thing of all.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-dontlooknowSOURCES and RESOURCES: “Don’t Look Now” by Henry Kuttner, originally published in Startling Stories, March 1948WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 30, 2026

In a single week, Vinton County told the world it does not intend to give the Siders children back. Three of the four adults charged with harming them have now asked the court to decide whether they are fit to stand trial at all. And two reporters who went looking for the family's past came back with the same address from different directions.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/siderscase20260729Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

When a beautiful cigar shop girl is found dead under mysterious circumstances, a troubled Edgar Allan Poe becomes obsessed with solving the real-life crime—turning tragedy into fiction in a desperate search for truth.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/PoeCigarGirlFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: I’m sharing a chapter from the book “Nevermore: The Haunted Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe” by Troy Taylor, which I narrated the audiobook for. But this chapter by itself was so interesting to me that I thought it would make a great episode of Weird Darkness – plus, it gives you a little peek into what you might get if you purchase the book itself. I’ve left a link to the book in the show notes below. This is the true story about the murder of a girl who worked in a cigar shop, the investigation of it by law enforcement, how Edgar Allan Poe saw it as an opportunity to escalate his career and name… and how it all almost blew up in his face, even with some claiming Poe was the murderer of the poor girl! LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Nevermore: The Haunted Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe” by Troy Taylor: https://amzn.to/41e7BxJ(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 2022Weird Darkness devotes this episode to the unsolved 1841 murder of New York shopgirl Mary Cecilia Rogers and its strange collision with the unraveling life of Edgar Allan Poe. It opens with the July 28, 1841 discovery of Rogers's body floating in the Hudson River near Hoboken's Sybil's Cave, tracing her path from a Connecticut-born clerk at John Anderson's Tobacco Emporium on Manhattan's Nassau Street to the local celebrity known as "the beautiful cigar girl," then following the search led by her fiancé, cork-cutter Daniel Payne, and former suitor Alfred Crommelin, through the police suspicion cast on Payne and on Anderson, the September discovery of her bloodied clothing in a Weehawken thicket, and Payne's own laudanum suicide at that same spot that October.From there, the episode moves to Philadelphia, where Poe was following the case from a distance while his household came apart around him: his wife Virginia's sudden pulmonary hemorrhage during a parlor performance on January 20, 1842, the day after Poe turned thirty-three, marked the onset of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill her, and the strain bled directly into stories like "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Eleonora." It follows Poe's collapse at Graham's Magazine, including his refused request for a salary advance on an $800-a-year wage, his failed bid for a Philadelphia Custom House post that ended with a fumbled meeting tied to President John Tyler, and his abrupt exit from the magazine after being passed over for associate editor Charles Peterson.Next comes Poe's attempt to solve the Rogers case through fiction, recreating how he pitched a sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" to Baltimore editor Joseph Evans Snodgrass and Boston's George Roberts before selling it to William Snowden's The Ladies' Companion as "The Mystery of Marie Roget," transplanting the murder to Paris and casting the sleuth C. Auguste Dupin as the man who would name the killer. It details the disastrous timing by which Weehawken tavern keeper Frederica Loss, shot by her own son on November 1, 1842, gave a deathbed account claiming Rogers died during a botched abortion, undercutting Poe's carefully built naval-officer theory just as his final installment was headed to press.The episode closes with the suspects who have circulated around the case ever since, from the hanged Somers mutineer Philip Spencer, floated by biographer John Ingram, to Daniel Payne and Alfred Crommelin, to tobacco magnate John Anderson, who lived out his final years in a Tarrytown mansion behind steel-lined shutters, convinced his cook was poisoning his roast beef and claiming to speak with Mary Rogers's spirit, and it ends on the long-running question of whether Poe himself carried knowledge of, or any personal connection to, the murder he spent his career trying to solve on paper.

A bored twenty-one-year-old in New Orleans got an anonymous email inviting him to a bar with no name, and it gave him three separate chances to turn around before the elevator stopped going down.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-secretbarSOURCES and RESOURCES: “Secret Bar” by K. Banning Kellum: https://www.creepypasta.com/secret-bar/ (find more creepiness in K. Banning Kellum’s book “Gris Gris and Ju Ju, A New Orleans Horror” https://amzn.to/2EaYeH6)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 29, 2026

For over a century, witnesses across Michigan and Wisconsin have described the same impossible figure – upright, wolf-headed, and aware of being watched. Some walked away with scars, others with a story they were afraid to tell for decades.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/dogmanREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckpcp8sFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Across Michigan and Wisconsin, encounters with an upright, wolf-headed figure span more than a century – from nineteenth-century logging camps to farm roads, deer stands, and suburban backyards. Witnesses describe a creature with human-like hands, glowing eyes, and an unsettling awareness of being watched, several of them staying silent about what they saw for years rather than risk being disbelieved. Hunters, drivers, and at least one retired sheriff's deputy all report the same detail – something that watches back, and in more than one account, something that speaks.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:06:13.435 = Show Open00:08:57.805 = Part One00:18:33.555 = Part Two ***00:46:24.349 = Part Three ***01:00:02.576 = Part Four ***01:14:17.255 = Part Five ***01:27:28.423 = Part Six ***01:34:00.844 = Part Seven ***01:46:18.276 = Show Close01:47:34.794 = SONG: “Dogman of Silver Creek” by Dark Weirdness*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:PHOTO: 1961 photo of Dogman (at Strangeology.com): https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/muajp2myBOOK: “The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf” by Linda Godfrey: https://amzn.to/43xNkroThe InBetween with Carol Ann (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@TheInBetweenTalesMichigansThumb.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p98vf2cTetZoo.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4maj49wkHangar1Publishing.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc29e65aMythFolks.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8wdd24DiscoveryUK.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p88uxkjCreepyEncounters.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckncywhListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mtybyttw(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 22, 2025Weird Darkness devotes a full episode to the Dogman, the upright, wolf-headed cryptid reported across Michigan and Wisconsin for more than a century, moving through firsthand encounters, a claimed government cover-up, a witnessed fight between a Dogman and two Sasquatch, and a side-by-side comparison of Dogman folklore against traditional werewolf mythology.It opens with the creature's documented history, tracing the first alleged sighting to 1887, when a group of lumberjacks in Wexford County, Michigan described a being with the body of a man and the head of a dog during the state's great logging era. Similar reports followed in Allegan County in the 1950s and in Cross Village, Big Rapids, and Manistee County during the 1960s, while Elkhorn, Wisconsin became the center of activity in the early 1990s. The segment also catalogs standalone incidents tied to the legend: four horses found dead with their eyes open in 1917, seven-foot-four claw marks reported on a church door in 1957, a farmer found dead at his plow surrounded by oversized canine tracks in 1997, a 2006 backyard sighting in Shelby Township, Michigan, and an army veteran's account of a wolf-headed creature pacing his truck through Manistee National Forest. Odawa oral tradition describing a two-legged, wolf-like being near Lake Michigan predates all of it, and the episode raises the theory that Dogman sightings cluster in years ending in seven.From there, the episode turns to the case that gave the cryptid one of its best-known names: the Beast of Bray Road. Lori Endrizzi's fall 1989 sighting on Bray Road outside Elkhorn, Wisconsin, first documented by researcher Linda Godfrey in the 2003 book "The Beast of Bray Road," describes a kneeling, brownish-gray figure with long claws that turned to meet her headlights. Two years later, on Halloween night 1991, Doris Gipson struck the same stretch of road and was chased by a clawed, upright creature that clung to her car's rear bumper as she fled. Walworth County Animal Control officer Jon Fredrikson began compiling reports in a manila folder marked "Werewolf," which grew to include a December 1990 sighting by a child witness, clawed tracks near Potter's Road that led locals to nickname the creature "Pottsy," a 1990 roadside sighting by Mike Etten, and two separate encounters reported by high school student Tom Brichta. The same story traces the legend back further still, to 1936, when night watchman Mark Shackleman encountered a six-foot, black-furred creature scratching at an Indigenous burial ground outside Racine, Wisconsin's St. Coletta Convent, a creature that reportedly spoke a single word, "Gadarah," a name tied to the biblical account of Jesus casting out demons at Gadara.Next, the episode moves to a February 2012 case from rural Chenango, New York, where Brandon Close and his neighbor Gene pursued the source of a scream that had left Close's cattle huddled against an electric fence, only to be chased through the woods by an eight-foot creature that kept pace with their all-terrain vehicle at highway speed. The account continues with an unmarked black van and armed personnel arriving at Close's property the following day, ultimately removing the memory cards from his trail cameras.A separate account follows a Big Rapids, Michigan night watchman's 1961 encounter with a six-foot, grayish-brown creature outside his home near the Haymarsh State Game Area, an incident the witness says he photographed under a streetlight.The episode then recounts an anonymous 1992 camping trip in which the witness watched a black, long-armed creature stalk him along a dry creek bed before a Sasquatch intervened, leading to a violent fight that ended when a second, larger Sasquatch killed the Dogman and dragged its body into the woods.Hunting-season encounters follow, beginning with Peter's October 16, 2012 experience in Pontiac, Illinois, where a wolf-sized creature bit his arm during a chase near his family's deer stand before inexplicably retreating. A separate witness describes two Dogman sightings twenty years apart, the first in Alto, Michigan in 1988 and the second in nearby Lowell, Michigan in 2008, when a blue-eyed creature that had followed him since childhood appeared on his roof and spoke a single word, "Don't."Another segment follows Derek, an Ohio mycology enthusiast, to a 2016 night-fishing trip along the Mahoning River in Niles, Trumbull County, Ohio, where he encountered a crouching creature near an old train trestle that stood to meet his gaze before retreating into the brush.A Fitchburg, Wisconsin case follows college student Matt, who in 2006 heard a scream during a minor earthquake and glimpsed a wolf-headed, humanoid figure in a passing car's headlights. A separate story follows a man identified as Mark to his late grandfather's cabin in Sierra County, Ohio, where he discovered why his grandfather had banned the family from the property for years, after an unseen creature chased him back to the cabin and reappeared at the tree line with two others.A Reed City, Michigan hunting party's four-day encounter in November 2007 follows, in which Sam and his companions repeatedly crossed paths with a yellow-eyed, hunchbacked creature that left claw marks on a rifle stock and a cabin door. The episode then follows Gabe to a rural Montana property, where lightning revealed a broad-shouldered, upright creature in his yard, followed weeks later by a closer encounter near his satellite dish that prompted him to move.Retired law enforcement officer Laura Love's account follows, describing a nearly seven-and-a-half-foot, dark-furred creature that struck a truck near the West Weber Road overpass on U.S. Highway 31 before vanishing into roadside brush. A separate story follows Janet, who for years believed she had seen a deformed bear near Danbury, Wisconsin's Long Lake before her son's own Dogman sighting prompted her to reconsider what she and her sister-in-law Amy witnessed on Rustic Road.A November 7, 2016 account from Duluth, Minnesota follows, describing an anonymous graphic designer's sighting of a hunched, wolf-faced cr

A man wakes up convinced he murdered someone in his sleep, and the marks on his own body say the dream might not have been a dream at all.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Cool Killer Carl” (May 05, 1978) ***WD00:46:18.874 = Mystery Playhouse, “Nightmare” (November 28, 1944)01:15:15.928 = Price of Fear, “Remains To Be Seen” (September 01, 1973) ***WD01:42:19.483 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Terrified Man” (January 15, 1948) ***WD (LQ)a02:06:01.040 = Quiet Please, “The Smell of High Wines” (March 20, 1949) ***WD02:35:22.653 = Radio City Playhouse, “Interval” (November 27, 1949) ***WD03:03:46.860 = Half Hour To Kill, “Blackout Never Aired” (October 29, 1946) ***WD03:32:04.765 = Sam Spade, “Adam Figg Caper” (October 05, 1947) ***WD03:55:50.400 = The Sealed Book, “Stranger In The House” (May 06, 1945) ***WD04:25:19.830 = The Shadow, “Bubbling Death” (December 05, 1943) ***WD04:50:39.793 = Strange Adventure, “Title Unknown – Episode 69” (1945) ***WD04:53:57.077 = Calling All Detectives, “Jerry Investigates a Mysterious Increase in Hospital Deaths” (July 06, 1948) ***WD (LQ)05:01:43.438 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0728

Six strangers board a night train crawling through the worst winter in years — a divorced businessman, a runaway couple, a wealthy man running out of time, and an elderly woman being shipped off by her own family — each quietly hoping this trip might be the one that changes everything, for better or worse.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Journey To Somewhere” (May 04, 1978) ***WD00:44:26.457 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Killer Come Back To Me” (May 17, 1946)01:13:35.047 = Mr. Keen, “The Leaping Dog” (April 13, 1944) ***WD01:42:41.788 = Murder at Midnight, “The Man With The Black Beard” (May 08, 1950) ***WD02:08:37.327 = The Black Museum, “The Tan Shoe” (January 15, 1952)02:33:18.183 = Mysterious Traveler, “The Green Plague” (June 17, 1952)03:00:29.228 = CBC Nightfall, “Hands Off” (July 25, 1980)03:27:14.184 = Obsession, “Clinging Hate” (May 14, 1951) ***WD03:49:55.235 = Origin of Superstition, “Kissing Under Mistletoe” (1935) ***WD04:04:07.297 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Rory Malone” (March 20, 1949)04:33:03.187 = Peril, “Lucky Lady” (1953) ***WD04:58:54.597 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0727

Four friends went into the Massachusetts woods looking for a paved road that starts in the middle of nowhere, and they found what was waiting at the end of it.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-asyluminthewoodsSOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Asylum In The Woods” by Redditor R.L. Rogers: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-asylum-in-the-woods/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 28, 2026

In 1947, the Army announced it had recovered a crashed "flying disc" near Roswell, then reversed itself within a day — a contradiction the Air Force didn't explain until 1994, when it revealed a classified spy program called Project Mogul. Roswell wasn't even the first: unidentified wreckage and bodies had been turning up for decades before it.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RoswellWasntFirstFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: When you hear the words “UFO crash” you likely think of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. And while that is the most famous of supposed extraterrestrial spaceship crashes, it is by no means the first. In fact, there were several taking place before Roswell became a household name. (UFO Crashes Before Roswell) *** But first – we’ll take a look at Roswell itself… and what might have been behind the crash, the UFOs, and the aliens! (Behind Roswell’s Aliens) *** Numerous travelers have gone missing in Nahanni Valley… and many whose bodies have been found, have been decapitated. It’s no wonder it has been nicknamed “The Valley of Headless Men”. (The Valley of Headless Men) *** In 2016, construction in a San Francisco family’s backyard unearthed a terrifying find… a glass coffin. And the history behind it tells a morbid history of the city. (The Karner’s Backyard Glass Coffin) *** Former Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald claimed that a gang of acid-crazed Manson Family copycats brutally murdered his pregnant wife and two daughters in 1970, but then he was found guilty. Did he commit the crime, or did the law convict the wrong man? (The Evil Deeds of Jeffrey MacDonald) *** It’s understood that scientifically, alchemy – attempting to turn a substance or element into gold – is impossible. But then, there is that one incident that took place in the early seventeenth century that has some people wondering if that’s wrong. (The Alchemy Master)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:27.594 = Show Open00:03:47.621 = Behind Roswell’s Aliens / UFO Crashes Before Roswell00:19:45.640 = The Valley of Headless Men ***00:33:18.357 = The Karner’s Backyard Glass Coffin00:44:54.640 = The Evil Deeds of Jeffrey MacDonald ***00:55:31.498 = The Alchemy Master01:02:26.698 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Behind Roswell’s Aliens” by Adam Janos for History.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yd5fhudu“UFO Crashes Before Roswell” from Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2w6d76yh“The Valley of Headless Men” by Aleksa Vuckovic for Ancient-Origins.net: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9c6zf4“The Evil Deeds of Jeffrey MacDonald” by Marco Margaritoff for AllThatsInteresting.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8eant7“The Alchemy Master” by Ellen Lloyd for AncientPages.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4xzysbwc“The Karner’s Backyard Glass Coffin” by Trilby Beresford for Ranker.com’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3mpvk9jh(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January 2021This episode of Weird Darkness moves from a classified Cold War balloon program in the New Mexico desert to a Canadian valley littered with decapitated bodies, a Victorian child's glass coffin dug up in a San Francisco backyard, a Green Beret convicted of butchering his own family, and a seventeenth-century alchemist tortured for the secret of turning lead into gold.It opens with the 1947 Roswell crash, tracing how rancher W.W. "Mac" Brazel's discovery of wreckage on his Lincoln County property led Colonel William Blanchard's Roswell Army Air Field to announce the capture of a "flying disc," only for the Army to reverse itself within days and blame a weather balloon, complete with staged photos of Major Jesse Marcel posing with the debris. The story follows the account through the U.S. Air Force's 1994 admission that the wreckage actually came from Project Mogul, a secret high-altitude balloon array built to detect Soviet atomic tests, and its 1997 explanation that reported alien bodies were fallen parachute test dummies, then weighs those official conclusions against UFO researcher Donald Schmitt's objections and journalist Annie Jacobsen's competing claim that the crash involved deformed children deployed by Joseph Stalin and designed by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.From there, the episode moves through six UFO crash reports that predate Roswell by decades, including an 1897 cigar-shaped craft said to have destroyed Judge Proctor's windmill in Aurora, Texas, and left a small humanoid body buried in the local cemetery; an 1862 wreck witnessed by shipwrecked sailors from the vessel Christine on a deserted Indian Ocean island, where they found twelve-foot-tall bodies with bronze beards; a UFO crash near Stavropol, Russia, whose three survivors reportedly died from being unable to breathe Earth's atmosphere; a 1941 crash in the Carolinas recovered by the U.S. Army during a military exercise involving soldier Guy Simeone; an 1884 debris field of gear-like metal fragments found by rancher John Ellis in Dundy County, Nebraska; and a wartime British crash investigated by journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, who died shortly after publishing claims that the recovered craft's crew stood under four feet tall.Next, the story shifts to Canada's Nahanni Valley, where at least 44 people have died or vanished since 1908, beginning with prospector brothers Willie and Frank McLeod, whose headless skeletons were found at their camp two years after they disappeared, and continuing through the decapitations of Swiss prospector Martin Jorgenson and outlaw "Yukon" Fisher, the mysterious cabin fire that killed Phil Powers, and the vanishing of Annie Laferte, who was later spotted wandering naked and disoriented near the Flat River — deaths locals attribute variously to the legendary Naha tribe, the valley's hot sulphur springs, or predators, while Dene oral history holds that the warlike Naha people simply disappeared without explanation.The episode then turns to 2016, when a construction crew remodeling John and Ericka Karner's San Francisco home unearthed a 19th-century glass-and-cast-iron coffin containing the preserved body of a toddler, later identified through DNA testing led by genealogist Elissa Davey as Edith Howard Cook, who died of malnutrition in 1876 and was accidentally left behind when San Francisco's Odd Fellows Cemetery was relocated to Colma in the 1930s — a discovery the Karner family says ended years of unexplained footsteps they'd heard from a toddler no longer in the house.From there, the story follows former Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted of stabbing his pregnant wife Colette and daughters Kimberly and Kristen to death at Fort Bragg in 1970 after claiming a blonde intruder chanting about acid and "pigs" oversaw the killings, an account investigators concluded was staged using details from the recent Manson Family murders; the case follows his decades of appeals, including the 1983 bestseller "A Fatal Vision" that branded him a psychopath and filmmaker Errol Morris's later book arguing the evidence against him was mishandled.The episode closes with the story of Alexander Seton, a secretive Scottish alchemist known as the Cosmopolitan, who in 1602 convinced skeptical Swiss professor Wolfgang Drenheim that he had transmuted lead into gold using nothing but a wrapped powder and a goldsmith's crucible in Fribourg. Seton's success drew the attention of Emperor Rudolf II and later trapped him in the custody of Christian II, Elector of Saxony, who had him pierced with iron spikes and burned with molten lead in an attempt to force him to reveal his formula; Seton escaped in 1603 with the help of his friend Michael Sendivogius but died a broken man soon after, and the alchemical text he was said to have written, the Book of Twelve Chapters, was destroyed, leaving his method lost.

This isn’t one of my usual stories or episodes – but it is still terrifying (to me, at least). Over the weekend, a devastating cyberattack locked me out of my Google account, YouTube channels, Dropbox, and many of the tools I rely on to produce Weird Darkness. For several days, I genuinely didn’t know if the show would survive.In this special emergency update, I explain what happened, why new episodes suddenly stopped, what became of the YouTube channels, where things stand now, and why this has been one of the darkest weeks of my life—both professionally and personally.The good news? Weird Darkness is still here.Thank you for your patience, your encouragement, and your prayers. It means more than you know.Listen and subscribe at: https://WeirdDarkness.com

A young scholar’s visit to his reclusive uncle on a lonely Shetland island leads him into a nightmare of black rituals, impossible memories, and a mystery that defies time itself.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Figure in the Moonlight” (May 02, 1978) ***WD00:45:48.366 = Macabre, “The Avenger” (December 18, 1961) ***WD01:14:37.183 = Philip Marlowe, “Vital Statistic” (March 14, 1950)01:44:11.159 = Boson Blackie, Ghost of Flo Newton” (May 28, 1947)02:09:18.137 = The Black Mass, “O Mirror Mirror” (February 12, 1964) ***WD02:24:19.861 = Michael Shayne, “Judge Stanton Murdered” (June 04, 1945) ***WD02:54:00.924 = Beyond Midnight, “Tangled Way” (ADU) ***WD (LQ)03:19:56.143 = MindWebs, “Eurema’s Dam” (1975-1984) ***WD03:49:08.226 = CBS Radio Workshop, “The Case of the White Kitten” (July 13, 1956) ***WD04:18:13.876 = Mystery in the Air, “Queen of Spades” (September 1, 1947)04:45:13.199 = Strange Adventure “The Imposter” (1945) ***WD04:48:29.470 = Calling All Detectives, “The Ship Julia Louise” (July 05, 1948) ***WD (LQ)04:56:29.725 = Incredible But True, “Dragon of Buren County” (1950-1951)04:59:59.123 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0726

A blues legend, a saint, a haunted squire, and a possessed tailor — five people who, across four centuries, were each said to have come face to face with the Devil himself.==========HOUR ONE: Many tales describe encounters with the devil himself. Yet not all are the same. Sometimes Satan approaches his prey… other times, the lost soul goes seeking Lucifer to make a deal. Either way, the results are never favorable. (Diabolical Dealings With The Devil) *** It wasn’t until recently that I’d even heard of the cryptid, Ahool. In case it’s new to you as well, it’s a winged cryptid that some portray as a giant bat, others claim it’s a flying primate. Personally, I think it looks like a werewolf with bat wings. Whatever it is, we’ll learn a bit more about the Ahool. (The Cry Of The Ahool)==========HOUR TWO: 

Of course a lot of people likely don’t believe in heaven or hell and many will dismiss such things as mythical tales or folklore. However there are places on Earth that could be considered hell – no not Detroit or Wichita. We’re talking about actual places that look like the entrances to purgatory. And perhaps they really are. (Secret Doors to the Underworld) *** A king, a gossoon and a bear walked into a bar. No, this is not the first line of a joke, but a common occurrence in Potrero Hill in San Francisco, California, during the 1880s. The king was Frank McManus, the gossoon was Frank’s baseball-playing brother, Cornelius, and the bear was a large inebriated ursine. (King of the Irish Hill) *** Why are some people suddenly vigorous, alert, and feeling much better shortly before they pass away? It is something that has happened since time began, but medical experts are still baffled by it. (Terminal Lucidity Phenomenon) *** While many say the most haunted hotel is the one in Colorado that was used in the film “The Shining” - there is evidence that one in Eureka Springs, Arkansas deals with even more paranormal activity. (The Crescent Hotel)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: Two men were found dead in the bushes, beheaded… and emasculated. But that was just the beginning of the Mad Butcher’s killing spree. (The Cleveland Torso Murders) *** Seeing reptiles in Oklahoma isn’t all that uncommon – even dinosaur fossils are found in the state. But there have also been reports of something much stranger – a snake/human hybrid creature more terrifying than it sounds. (Oklahoma Snake Man)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“Baba Vanga” from Paranormality Magazine: https://weirddarkness.com/magazine“Diabolical Dealings With The Devil” by Laura for Paranormal Scholar: https://tinyurl.com/y94czoxt,https://tinyurl.com/yc5uy7mj“The Cry of the Ahool” by Gary Brandt from Paranormality Magazine: https://weirddarkness.com/magazine“Secret Doors To The Underworld”, by Facts Verse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU6-lfWk3Zo“King of the Irish Hill” by Paul Drexler for Crime Traveller: https://tinyurl.com/y7tmp6lz“Terminal Lucidity Phenomenon” by Cynthia McKanzie for Message to Eagle: http://ow.ly/5G8W30ocL0Q“The Cleveland Torso Murders” by Doug MacGowan for Historic Mysteries: https://tinyurl.com/ycwha94c“The Crescent Hotel” by Amanda Penn for Vocal Media Horror: https://tinyurl.com/ycvral8j“Oklahoma Snake Man” by Bab Salam (link to story no longer exists)==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

On their third date she told him her face was removable, that she had to clean it every night behind a locked door, and that he must never look at what was underneath.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-wiferemovablefaceSOURCES and RESOURCES: “My Wife Has a Removable Face” by Redditor N.S. Lewis: https://www.reddit.com/user/nslewis, https://www.creepypasta.com/my-wife-has-a-removable-face/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 27, 2026

An insomniac walking a Massachusetts cemetery after midnight spots a light in the groundskeeper's shack, and finds nine men in blue shrouds beside a freshly dug pit.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-bloodkeeperSOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Blood Keeper” by Christopher Maxim at https://www.reddit.com/r/ChristopherMaxim/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 26, 2026

A Broadway couple buys the vacant Connecticut house no agent in town will touch, covers the den wall with a floor-to-ceiling photograph of an African jungle, and begins to notice that the lion in the picture doesn't always hold the same pose.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The House on Chimney Pot Lane” (April 28, 1978) ***WD00:45:28.916 = The Haunting Hour, “Date In The Dark” (June 03, 1945) ***WD01:10:28.151 = The Hermit’s Cave, “The House With a Past” (June 27, 1937)01:34:32.198 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “Millionaire Threatened” (1945)01:59:10.650 = Sherlock Holmes, “The Haunted Bagpipes” (February 17, 1947)02:28:37.363 = Mystery House, “Bury Me Not” (May 26, 1946) ***WD02:54:24.361 = Inner Sanctum, “Desert Death” (January 09, 1945)03:23:44.926 = Jeff Regan, “The Diamond Quartet” (August 14, 1948)03:52:43.766 = The Key, “Night Prowler” (1956)04:16:47.055 = Lights Out, “Uninhabited” (December 22, 1937) ***WD (LQ)04:45:34.772 = Strange Adventure, “The Five Tickets” (1945) ***WD04:48:49.470 = Calling All Detectives, “A Man Admits To Murder” (June 15, 1948) ***WD (LQ)04:56:47.879 = Incredible But True, “The Face of Death” (1950-1951)05:00:28.938 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0725

Mikka thinks space is boring and aliens are a punchline, and by the end of fifth period she has said so out loud to exactly the wrong person.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrorsOther stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaUOther narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.com= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness©, 2026Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

A beautiful young woman knocks on an old soldier's door one summer evening asking to use his phone — and the six-year-old hiding in the back bedroom knows, before anyone says a word, that something is terribly wrong.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-NeverTrustAPrettyFaceSOURCES and RESOURCES: “Never Trust a Pretty Face” by Weirdo family member Angie Trafford: https://www.facebook.com/AngieTraffordauthor/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 24, 2026

A Louisiana woman vanished from her home in pink pajamas, a K9 search went cold, and a medium she'd never met told her daughters exactly where to find the body in the woods — and now, after a private forensic review, the sheriff's office has reopened the case it once closed as an accidental drowning.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/TheresaDawnJonesLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 24, 2026This episode of Weird Darkness follows the disappearance and death of Theresa Dawn Jones near Bernice, Louisiana, a case that ran from a missing persons report to an accidental-drowning ruling to a homicide reinvestigation — and the phone call from a psychic medium a thousand miles away that pointed her family straight to the body.On the night of February 2nd, 2023, fifty-six-year-old Theresa Jones walked out of her home in the Evergreen community on Lake D'Arbonne wearing pink pajamas, leaving behind her phone, her wallet, her car keys, and the eyeglasses she needed to see, and by the time her boyfriend returned from a work trip in Lake Charles he found the house torn apart and Theresa gone. The Union Parish Sheriff's Office searched with a Lincoln Parish K9 unit that tracked her scent out to Highway 2 before losing it, chased sightings of a woman carrying gas cans and a stop at a Circle K in West Monroe, then stalled. Her daughters Ashley Deese and Brittany turned to Carolyn Clapper, a Wisconsin medium who took their call at 10:48 at night and, over forty-five minutes, described a fallen log at a tree line, a creek, and a sickness that would come over whoever went looking — directions that led Ashley to her mother's body in Edmonds Creek the next morning, found nude from the waist down with the water still shallow around her. Dr. Frank Peretti's autopsy in Little Rock ruled the death an accidental drowning with methamphetamine intoxication as a contributing factor, and the sheriff's office closed the case in August 2023, but Ashley never accepted it, and a retired Texas aquatic-death investigator named Greg Lawson publicly questioned why no rape kit or fingernail scraping was ever done. More than a year later, private forensic consultant John Oliveira of Applied Forensic Solutions reviewed the file and found only 150 milliliters of water in the lungs, livor mortis fixed in the legs rather than the face-down position she was found in, a clean upper jacket above the waterline, and bruising the autopsy never recorded — evidence pointing away from drowning and toward a body staged in the water after death. At the end of October 2025, Oliveira presented those findings to Union Parish detectives, and the sheriff's office reopened Theresa Jones's death as a possible homicide, more than two years after the paperwork first called it an accident.

In the summer of 1958, phantom fires struck the Tuck family's Talladega, Alabama home more than fifty times — bread igniting on its own, single garments bursting into flame, sulfur-smelling fires that followed the family across three homes before a nine-year-old confessed to a scheme that never explained the blaze witnessed by police in the yard, or the fires that started when the boy was gone.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/paranormalflamesREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc4nrtujFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: In the late 1950s, the Tuck family of Alabama found themselves at the center of a terrifying ordeal as mysterious fires spontaneously erupted in their home. Despite their best efforts to escape the flames, the fiery phenomenon followed them from one residence to another, consuming their possessions and leaving them homeless. We’ll look at this case and other similar ones where the seeming explanation is nothing short of paranormal. (Paranormal Flames) *** In the sleepy Kentish hamlet of Charing, a centuries-old mystery unfolds every May Day. As the clock strikes midnight, ghostly children emerge from their moss-encrusted graves, their ethereal feet dancing to the silent fiddle's tune. It’s all part of the "Night of the Dancing Feet." (Dancing After Death) *** Before his wife's murder in June 2009, Eli Weaver had numerous affairs with women he met through online dating sites, where he called himself an "Amish Stud." But only one mistress was willing to kill for him. (Eli Weaver, Amish Stud and Murderer) *** The American West evokes iconic images often seen in movies: bold adventures, noon shootouts, resolute sheriffs and marshals maintaining order, and the cavalry arriving just in time. However, the history of the Wild West, replete with myths and stereotypes, presents a more complex and sometimes disturbing reality about justice in that era. (Wild West Justice) *** On the morning of July 13, 1997, the body of Denise Johnson was discovered inside her burning childhood home in Kill Devil Hills, NC. Emergency responders quickly realized they weren't dealing with a simple arson, but a murder as well.  Now, more than two decades later, the case remains unsolved. (The Unsolved Murder of Denise Johnson) *** Hachishakusama, often referred to as the "Japanese Slender Man," is a haunting figure from Japanese urban legends that rivals the terror of her American counterpart. While the Slender Man has gained a cult-like following and has even inspired real-life horror stories, Hachishakusama's tale is equally spine-chilling and capable of keeping you up at night. (The Japanese Slender Man)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:21.690 = Show Open00:04:30.483 = Paranormal Flames00:23:29.009 = The Unsolved Murder of Denise Johnson ***00:37:06.405 = Dancing After Death (Night of the Dancing Feet)00:44:39.904 = Wild West Justice ***00:54:40.356 = Eli Weaver, Amish Stud and Murderer01:03:17.535 = The Japanese Slender Man ***01:08:47.360 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:BOOK: “Ablaze – The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion” by Larry E. Arnold:https://amzn.to/3UqdhmzBOOK: “A Killing In Amish Country” by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris: https://amzn.to/44wghmb“Paranormal Flames” source: Marcus Lowth at UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4eb8xht2“The Unsolved Murder of Denise Johnson” source: Jacob Shelton at Ranker: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8t3b7p“Dancing After Death” by Ken DaSilva-Hill submitted directly to Weird Darkness and used with permission“Wild West Justice” source: Christy Box at Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8db9vj“Eli Weaver, Amish Stud and Murderer” source: Hannah Reilly Holtz at AllThatsInteresting.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4jfmybjh“The Japanese Slender Man” source: Curry L Mitchell at ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdd7fthz(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: May 01, 2024

Fourteen years after Irasema Chavez was stabbed more than a hundred times in her Arlington apartment, a single drop of blood on her bedroom television stand and two plastic forks left on a restaurant table have led police to charge one of her former close friends with capital murder.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/IrasemaChavezLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Two sisters flying to Puerto Rico to clear out their grandmother's house find a shoebox of bloodied feathers in the kitchen cupboard, and thirty handwritten journals hidden under a loose tile in the garage.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-grandmothergrimoireSOURCES and RESOURCES: “My Grandmother Left Behind Some Really Dark Secrets” by Evelyn Bertrand: https://tinyurl.com/yy8gx627WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 24, 2026

In an update to the Caroline Peña murder case, the lead detective has testified that while Kitty Diaz drove the car and threw punches during the assault, she never stabbed anyone — and a judge has dropped her bond from five million dollars to two million, which she still cannot afford to post.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/diazsisters20260723GO FUND ME: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-caroline-penas-childrenLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

From the vengeful Bell Witch to the lingering spirits of Gettysburg, America is packed with haunted spots that refuse to let go of their ghosts – whether it’s eerie voices in old asylums, shadowy figures in historic mansions, or phantom footsteps in forgotten graveyards. If you’re looking for a brush with the supernatural, these legendary (and lesser-known) locations won’t disappoint.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HauntedAmericaREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36de8fpnLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“America’s Most Haunted Places” by Troy Taylor and April Slaughter for AmericanHauntingsInk.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/582mh58k (used with permission)“America’s Not-So-Famous Haunted Houses” by Troy Taylor for AmericanHauntingsInk.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p979tsv (used with permission)(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022Weird Darkness tours fifteen haunted American locations, starting with the ones every ghost hunter already knows. The Bell Witch Cave in Adams, Tennessee, where a spirit claiming to be the witch of Kate Batts tormented the Bell family for years and, some say, retreated into a cave near the Red River. Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, where tuberculosis patients died in numbers large enough to require a body chute running down the hill and out of sight. The Myrtles Plantation, whose most famous ghost stories turn out to be false, though the apparitions on the grounds keep getting reported anyway. The Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, where four members of one brewing family took their own lives across five decades. Gettysburg's Devil's Den, the Stanley Hotel that inspired Stephen King, the Winchester Mystery House with its staircases to nowhere, Bachelor's Grove Cemetery outside Chicago, Yorktown Memorial Hospital in Texas, and the Villisca Ax Murder House in Iowa, where eight people were killed in their beds in June of 1912 and no one was ever convicted.Then the show turns to the houses that never made the lists. Nemacolin Castle in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, built on the site of a French and Indian War garrison and later a stop on the Underground Railroad. Tinker Swiss Cottage in Rockford, Illinois, a twenty-seven-room Swiss-style home on a limestone bluff where children's laughter is heard by staff who came in as skeptics. The McCune Mansion in Salt Lake City, where a little girl walks in and out of a mirror. Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, where a fired servant locked seven people in Frank Lloyd Wright's home in August of 1914, set it on fire, and killed them with a hatchet as they tried to escape. And Prospect Place in Trinway, Ohio, built by an abolitionist who used a cupola signal light to tell escaping slaves that food and shelter waited inside — some of whom never left.

“Adventure of the Beauty Queen”: A woman wakes to a voice from a thousand years in the future, telling her a machine has searched all of history for beauty and found her.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Queen of Palmyra” (April 27, 1978) ***WD00:45:45.877 = The Eleventh Hour, “Codeword Silver” (ADU)01:11:24.672 = Escape, “The Fortune of Vargas” (September 21, 1949)01:40:04.624 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Adventure of the Beauty Queen” (June 25, 1958) ***WD01:59:42.274 = Dark Fantasy, “Rendezvous With Satan” (May 29, 1942)02:28:27.595 = Fear on 4, “Fat Andy” (March 06, 1988)02:57:32.941 = Theater Five, “Dark Appointment” (November 23, 1964) ***WD03:18:08.219 = Adventures of Superman, “Mystery of the Walking Dead” (November 05, 1949)03:47:56.562 = Hall of Fantasy, “The Judge’s House” (April 03, 1947) ***WD04:14:35.484 = Harry Lime, “Rogues Holiday” (September 21, 1951)04:39:24.955 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “The Family” (July 05, 1980) ***WD05:07:30.568 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0724

A coroner's inquest convenes over a mutilated body in a lonely California cabin, where the only witness swears the thing that killed his friend was standing in plain sight the whole time. (Originally published in the magazine “Town Topics” on December 7th in 1893… a magazine, interestingly enough, not known for horror at all, but more for art, music, and society.)EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-thedamnedthingSOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce: https://tinyurl.com/y6amz952WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 23, 2026

A lifelong friend's death leaves Jason Clark hearing that friend's voice picking winners at the track, an unbroken streak that draws the attention of the bookmakers he's bleeding dry — and when they demand his system at knifepoint, what proof can he offer?Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Bet With The Angels” (April 21, 1978) ***WD00:46:18.058 = Chet Chetter, “Elmer And The Book of Absolute Truth” (1991)01:16:14.133 = The Clock, “The Hitchhiker” (January 03, 1956) ***WD01:40:44.592 = The Crime Club, “Grey Mist Murders” (April 10, 1947)02:10:32.203 = Crime Classics, “The Terrible Deed of John White Webster” (July 13, 1953)02:40:14.956 = Danger Dr Danfield, “Norman Miles” (September 08, 1946) ***WD03:05:54.976 = Calling All Detectives, “Casebook of J. Browning” (June 14, 1948)03:14:16.749 = The Devil and Mr. O, “Hungry One” (January 14, 1972)03:42:57.931 = Diary of Fate, “Nelson Walker” (June 15, 1948) ***WD04:10:44.961 = Dimension X, “Hello Tomorrow” (September 15, 1950) ***WD04:39:05.898 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Knife of Death” (February 20, 1945) ***WD (LQ)04:51:32.354 = Strange Adventure, “The Island of Mystery” (1945) ***WD04:54:56.292 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0723

Before sixteen children were found in a single room in Hamden, the Siders family left behind another house in Gallia County — and a renovator says he found it in the same condition.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/siderscase20260722Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Al Capone begged his way into the prison band, Robert Stroud spent eleven years in the hospital, and every inmate at Alcatraz learned fast that on the Rock, almost everything beyond a meal and a cot had to be earned... and a single broken rule could send you into total silence and darkness in the hole.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/alcatrazREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y7sjc7zwCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:23.422 = Show Open00:02:30.901 = Being An Alcatraz Inmate00:19:49.953 = The Impossibility of Escaping Alcatraz ***00:40:10.152 = Prisons More terrifying Than Alcatraz ***00:52:59.621 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Being An Alcatraz Inmate” by Melissa Sartore for Ranker.com’s Weird History:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/535vhu7n“The Impossibility of Escaping Alcatraz” by Melissa Sartore for Ranker.com’s Weird History:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdfj2ypt“More Terrifying Than Alcatraz” by Michelle Nati for Ranker.com’s Unspeakable Times: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3jwhh268(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: February, 2021Weird Darkness takes listeners inside the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island — what daily life was actually like behind its walls, the fourteen escape attempts that mostly ended in the San Francisco Bay, and a tour of American prisons whose conditions make the Rock look mild by comparison.It opens with the texture of everyday survival at Alcatraz, where the prison held roughly 330 men in cells measuring five feet by nine, and where food, clothing, shelter, and medical care were the only four rights an inmate had — everything else, from library access to a spot in the prison band, had to be earned. Warden James A. Johnston enforced a code of silence that lasted until 1937, so inmates like Jim Quillen talked through the pipes between cells, and Quillen described nineteen days in solitary as total silence and darkness. Al Capone begged his way into the Rock Islanders band and learned tenor guitar, tenor banjo, and mandola; Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, spent eleven of his seventeen years there in the hospital, studying law and languages. Prisoners were counted thirteen times a day, allowed a single two-page letter each week to a blood relative, and served food widely regarded as the best in the federal system — and still, by inmate Bryan Conway's account, fourteen of three hundred seventeen men went violently insane during his last year, one dock worker chopping off the fingers of his own left hand with an ax.From there, the episode turns to the men who tried to leave. Joseph "Dutch" Bowers became the first, shot off a fence on April 27th, 1936, while working the incinerator detail. Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe sawed through a window in the Model Industries Building and vanished into a storm-driven current in December 1937, their bodies never found. The 1938 breakout by James Limerick, Jimmy Lucas, and Rufus "Whitey" Franklin killed guard Royal C. Cline with a hammer; Arthur "Doc" Barker, son of Ma Barker, was shot in the head near the shoreline in January 1939. The May 1946 "Battle of Alcatraz" pulled in the Coast Guard and the Marines over two days and left guards William Miller and Harold Stites dead. And the most famous attempt of all came in June 1962, when Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin chipped through their cell walls with spoons, left dummy heads made of soap and hair in their beds, and disappeared on a raft stitched from raincoats — three men the FBI never found.The episode closes by leaving Alcatraz behind for prisons still standing. ADX Florence in Colorado, the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," holds inmates like Ted Kaczynski and Ramzi Yousef in seventy-five-square-foot concrete cells for twenty-three hours a day. At the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, an inmate named Andre Thomas removed his own eye. Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County Tent City Jail in Phoenix housed people outdoors in the Arizona heat until it was dismantled in 2017. Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans has stood on the same ground for three hundred years, first used to hold enslaved people who tried to escape. San Quentin, built in 1852 and once home to Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez, drew a court-appointed report describing a facility so old, dirty, and overcrowded that housing people there was called dangerous.

A 2023 book collects accounts of shapeshifting strangers, reptilian visitors, and living doubles, arguing the aliens John Carpenter put on screen may have been walking among us all along.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/TheyLiveREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycktrfu5FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Have you ever felt like something was off about someone you met? What if the truth was more bizarre than you could imagine - that aliens walk secretly among us, perfectly disguised? (Mimic In The Mirror) *** The short story “Eight O’Clock In The Morning” by Ray Nelson – the inspiration for the movie “They Live!” *** Left-handedness: once a mark of the devil, now a unique trait celebrated across the globe. From the Salem Witch Trials to modern-day challenges with spiral notebooks, left-handers have been forced to navigate a world designed for righties, despite the historical stigmas, surprising advantages, and the evolving recognition of left-handers in combat, culture, and commerce. (Left-Handers Are In League With The Devil) *** In the shadow of Switzerland's majestic Eiger mountain, 29-year-old Aidan Roche vanished without a trace during a solo hiking trip. Despite an unlocked camper-van and one last eerie messages sent from the trail, his disappearance remained shrouded in mystery. Months later, a grim discovery brought more questions than answers. (The Disappearance of Aidan Roche) *** In the summer of 1948, a series of inexplicable fires ravaged the Willey farm near Macomb, Illinois, destroying the family's home and barns. Despite the efforts of local authorities and the U.S. Air Force, no logical explanation could be found for the hundreds of mysterious blazes that seemed to start spontaneously. At the center of this baffling case was 13-year-old Wanet McNeil, whose alleged confession to arson left many unconvinced. Was Wanet truly responsible? Could she have been starting the fires with her mind? (The Macomb Firestarter) *** In 1991, 63-year-old Vasile Gorgos left his home in Romania to visit a cattle market and never returned, leaving his family to believe he had met a tragic fate. But 30 years later, Vasile shocked everyone when he mysteriously reappeared, wearing the same clothes as the day he vanished and carrying an unused train ticket from 1991 in his pocket. With no memory of where he'd been for three decades, Vasile's strange case has left people wondering if his disappearance could be tied to supernatural phenomena like portals, alien abduction, or shifts in time and space itself. (The Mysterious Vanishing of Vasile Gorgos)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = “Eight O’Clock In The Morning” (short fiction)00:12:38.092 = Show Open00:15:46.852 = Mimic In The Mirror: Are Aliens Among Us? ***00:26:13.246 = Left-Handers Are In League With The Devil00:32:35.305 = The Disappearance of Aidan Roche ***00:38:57.889 = The Macomb Firestarter00:48:20.167 = The Mysterious Vanishing of Vasile Gorgos ***00:55:50.605 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Eight O’Clock In The Morning” by Ray Nelson: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mu7tmynm“Mimic In The Mirror” source: Sean Casteel at Spectral Vision: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckjpyz8BOOK: “Mimics – The Others Among Us” by Sean Casteel and Tim R. Swartz: https://amzn.to/3Ws07IJBOOK: “Sky Crash Throughout Time (A Cosmic Conspiracy)” by Philip Kinsella and Brenda Butler: https://amzn.to/3WlE2v2“Left-Handers Are In League With The Devil” source: Baiily Benningfield at Ranker’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8acbdh“The Disappearance of Aidan Roche” source: Strange Outdoors: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mrxvj87r“The Macomb Firestarter” by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5n7dbzmh (used with permission)“The Mysterious Vanishing of Vasile Gorgos” source: Marcus Lowth at UFO Insight:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/jxztu8nd(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 30, 2024In this episode of Weird Darkness, listeners move through alien impostors, the long history of left-handed stigma, a hiker who vanished in the Swiss Alps, a farm besieged by fires no one could explain, and a Romanian cattle trader who came home after thirty years.It opens with the mimics. Ray Nelson's 1963 story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" — the basis for John Carpenter's 1988 film "They Live" — imagined reptilian aliens ruling Earth from behind human faces, and the 2023 book "Mimics: The Others Among Us" argues that scenario may not be fiction. The book collects accounts like that of Brenda Butler, co-author of a book on the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, who in 1984 met a tall, blue-eyed man calling himself David Daniels and claiming to be from the Pleiades star cluster, then watched his skin turn scaly and reptilian before he shifted back to human. It recounts author Chris Holly's memory of a strikingly similar white-haired, blue-eyed family she later connected to the extraterrestrial "Tall Whites," alongside cases of living ghosts, doppelgangers, and a 1970s poltergeist blamed on a mimic wearing a teenage girl's face.From there the episode traces why left-handedness was treated as sinister for centuries. During the Salem Witch Trials, favoring the left hand could bring an accusation of witchcraft, and as late as the 1970s schools still forced left-handed children to write with their right. The Book of Matthew places the righteous on the right and the cursed on the left, the Zulu scalded children's left hands to stop their use, and communities along the Niger River tied left-handed cooking to witchcraft — while the ancient Celts prized left-handed warriors, Rome read left-side omens as favorable, and the Inca chief Lloque Yupanqui was admired for his left-handedness. The stigma softened by the late 1960s, when William Gruby opened Anything Left-Handed, Ltd. to sell scissors, kitchen tools, and watches built for lefties.Next comes the disappearance of Aidan Roche, a 29-year-old chemical engineer from Middlesbrough who vanished on June 22nd, 2023, while hiking the Eiger Trail in Switzerland's Bernese Oberland. His campervan sat unlocked and abandoned near the trailhead with everything inside intact, and his final messages placed him two hours from Grindelwald in clear weather on a well-traveled path. Swiss police, mountain rescue teams, dogs, and drones searched for five days, and his brothers Connor and Niall raised over £30,000 for helicopter surveillance and screen advertisements in twenty-four locations, yet found nothing until September 24th, 2023, when Aidan's body was discovered near the trail with the cause of death still unreleased.The episode then settles on the Willey farm outside Macomb, Illinois, where hundreds of fires broke out in the summer of 1948. They started on August 7th as small brown spots that appeared on the living room wallpaper, spread, smoldered, and burst into flame — more than 200 of them in one week, igniting curtains, an ironing board, and newspapers sealed inside a closed cupboard, often erupting on walls and ceilings while witnesses watched. The blazes consumed the farmhouse on August 14th and both barns soon after, drew over 1,000 spectators on August 22nd, and even brought in the U.S. Air Force, which floated directed radiation from the Russians as a possible cause. Officials declared the case solved on August 30th by pinning it on 13-year-old Wanet McNeil, who confessed to using kitchen matches after hours of questioning despite never being seen holding any; psychiatrist Dr. Sophie Schroeder found her mentally normal, researcher Vincent Gaddis called it poltergeist activity, and Fire Chief Fred Wilson retired still convinced something unexplainable had happened.The episode closes with Vasile Gorgos, a 63-year-old cattle trader from Bacău, Romania, who left for a market in 1991 and disappeared for three decades. His wife reported him missing, an extensive police search turned up no trace, and his family eventually held a ceremony and accepted that he was dead. On a Sunday afternoon in August 2021, a car pulled up outside his old house and drove off before anyone could read the plate, leaving behind a 93-year-old Vasile in the same clothes he had worn in 1991, carrying an unused train ticket from that year and an old identity card listing an address in another part of Romania. Doctor

A waterlogged model boat that keeps appearing wherever Professor Anders goes — dripping, shivering, impossible to be rid of — carries a name, a drowning, and a debt that refuses to stay buried.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Avocado Jungle” (April 20, 1978) ***WD00:46:14.846 = BBC Radio 4 / Radio 7, “The Boat Hook” (April 15, 1992)01:30:17.027 = Night Beat, “Five Days Off For Christmas” (December 21, 1951) ***WD01:58:08.526 = Beyond The Green Door, “Mr. Fritz-Hugh And Poisoned Knife Blade” (1966)02:02:01.418 = Campbell Playhouse, “A Christmas Carol” (December 24, 1939) ***WD03:00:24.073 = Box 13, “The Dowager And Dan Holiday” (November 16, 1949)03:27:06.293 = Calling All Cars, “Cookie Vejar Killing” (December 27, 1933)03:56:51.245 = Casey Crime Photographer, “Red Raincoat” (August 29, 1946)04:26:26.709 = CBC Mystery Theater, “The Ghost Town Hermit” (May 19, 1967) ***WD04:57:04.004 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0722

A 2-year-old in Chambers County was found bound at the wrists, legs, and ankles and left face-down on a bed for more than half a day, and one of the two suspects was dead by his own hand before the arrest ever came.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/bound-toddler-alabamaLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A man climbed into the waste tank beneath a portable toilet to fish out a dropped bottle of Mountain Dew, and stayed there long enough to require power tools and a fire hose.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/portadewLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A murderer insists he is perfectly sane, even as he explains in careful detail how he killed the old man and hid the body beneath the floorboards.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-telltaleheartWeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 21, 2026

When Martian invaders armed with deadly alien weapons arrive in the Kentucky hills to test their arsenal on unsuspecting humans, they make the fatal mistake of choosing Lem Coy—the local moonshiner's 'simple' son who's too dumb to die and strong enough to make extraterrestrials wish they'd stayed home.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-martiansandthecoysSOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Martians And The Coys” by Mark Reynolds, originally published in “Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy,” June 1951WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 21, 2026

A Christmas Eve margin call sends a rich man's nephew scrambling for six thousand dollars he doesn't have, with a voice in his head whispering that theft and worse would be so easy.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Murder at Troyte’s Hill” (April 17, 1978) ***WD00:45:26.180 = Weird Circle, “Markheim” (May 20, 1945)01:13:15.849 = The Whistler, “Return of Innocent” (April 02, 1945)01:42:35.169 = Strange Wills, “Margin For Love” (September 07, 1946)02:12:13.142 = Witch’s Tale, “Suicide” (January 22, 1937) ***WD02:35:32.097 = X-Minus-1, “The Moon Is Green” (January 02, 1957)03:03:54.289 = Zero Hour, “Mind of the Beholder” (May 21, 1974) ***WD03:21:09.669 = ABC Mystery Time, “My Adventure in Norfolk” (1957) ***WD (LQ)03:45:10.191 = Strange Adventure, “The Friendly Ghost” (1945) ***WD03:48:27.530 = Arch Obeler’s Plays, “Another World” (July 29, 1939) ***WD (LQ)04:17:11.933 = Barrie Craig, “The Case of the Borrowed Knife” (November 07, 1951)04:45:37.476 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0721

A serial killer who kept his victims' heads, a woman held under a waterbed for seven years, and a phantom passenger who vanishes from the back seat — the open road has taken more than its share.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HitchhikingHorrorsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/29xmnbkaFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The open road is a beautiful place where you can make friends that you’d otherwise never meet and have adventures that will change your life. But there are also extreme dangers to traveling with strangers on highways and backroads. No matter how trustworthy or well-intentioned a driver might seem, it's nearly impossible to tell if they are actually a predator or murderer, preying upon innocent hitchhikers. Creepy, true hitchhiker stories can make you think twice before picking up that stranger at the side of the road - or trying to "thumb it" yourself.LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Hitchhiker” original story at the beginning of this episode was written by HoneyBunny00:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8b53e2“Hitchhiking Horror Stories” by Isadora Teich for Ranker.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3yj8t3ka, by Jacob Shelton for Ranker.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2s4a2wkz, Eric Redding for ThoughtCatalog.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/hk8pn8rf, and from ScaryCarries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2aead59t“Phantom Hitchhikers” posted at Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y4dxkv7m, Kelly Agan for Medium.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36wucpzm, Paul Adams for The History Press:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8z538u, and Krystal DeCosta for ScientificAmerican.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr29nkpa(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2021Weird Darkness gathers the true horrors of the open road and the ghosts said to haunt it, moving from real hitchhiker murders across the United States and abroad to the phantom passengers who vanish from the back seat before the ride is over.It opens with the account of a newly married couple driving through a rainstorm who stop for a soaked hitchhiker, drop him at a crossroads, and later break down on a dark stretch of highway, only for the wife to wake to police floodlights and the sight of the same man atop their car with a machete over her husband's dismembered body, an escaped prison inmate cut down by gunfire moments after she runs.From there the show turns to a long run of documented and reported cases. Jacci Ansell-Lamb was last seen hitchhiking from London toward Manchester in May 1970 and found sexually assaulted and strangled with electrical wire outside Knutsford, England, a killing police have linked to serial murderer Peter Tobin though no suspect was ever charged. A German traveler on foot near Timaru, New Zealand had all his belongings stolen by a man in a white Honda in February 2016. Along Australia's outback near the cattle town of Hughenden, as many as twelve hitchhikers including eighteen-year-old Catherine Graham and thirty-two-year-old Tony Jones turned up dead over roughly two decades on a stretch dubbed the Highway of Death, the murders still unsolved. On May 19, 1977, twenty-year-old Colleen Stan was hitchhiking to a friend's birthday in California when Cameron Hooker picked her up and held her as a sex slave for seven years, keeping her in a box beneath his waterbed until his wife helped her escape in 1984 and Hooker drew a 104-year sentence.Next comes the case of Edmund Kemper, the six-foot-nine "Co-ed Killer" born December 18, 1948, who shot his grandmother and grandfather at fifteen, was released from a psychiatric hospital into his mother's care, and between May 1972 and February 1973 picked up hitchhiking female students, killed and decapitated them, and had sex with the corpses before murdering his mother with a claw hammer on Good Friday 1973 and phoning the same local police he drank with to confess. Woven among these are firsthand accounts shared online, among them a driver whose kindness reportedly talked a would-be killer out of his plan, a New Zealand couple who vanished in 1989 near Thames leading to the disputed conviction of David Tamihere, and a backpacker in Austria who fled a trucker's advances barefoot at a gas station.From there the episode moves deeper into unsolved and predatory cases. Between 1972 and 1973 the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders claimed at least seven women in Sonoma County, California, beginning with nineteen-year-old Kim Wendy Allen found bound and strangled in a creek bed on March 5, 1972, and including twelve-year-olds Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber, thirteen-year-old Lori Lee Kursa, fourteen-year-old Carolyn Davis, and twenty-three-year-old Theresa Walsh, the case never closed. The segment also gathers the crimes of clown-costumed killer John Wayne Gacy, trucker Keith Hunter Jesperson who dragged one victim beneath his rig, photographer Joseph Naso the "Alphabet Killer," the spree killers Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman, and sadistic trucker Ben Rhoades, caught when an Arizona trooper found a shackled woman inside his cab.The episode closes on the phantom hitchhiker, tracing the folk formula of the vanishing passenger before laying out the strongest real-world cases. One belongs to Maria Roux, killed on the N9 near Uniondale, South Africa on Good Friday 1968, whose specter was reported by driver Anton Le Grange in 1976 and motorcyclist Dawie Van Jaarsveld in 1978, her rear door seen opening and closing by a following officer. Another is "Lydia" of Jamestown, North Carolina, the white-gowned figure sighted at a railroad underpass since the 1920s and possibly rooted in the 1920 traffic death of Annie Jackson on the High Point Road. The final account belongs to carpet fitter Roy Fulton of Dunstable, England, who picked up a silent young man on Station Road near Stanbridge on October 12, 1979, turned to offer him a cigarette, and found the seat empty, a story he repeated without change on Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers in 1985.

A Baldwin County 911 call brought deputies to a Daphne family's front yard, where a mother lay dead and a father had run house to house leaving bloody handprints on the doors.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/bakerstabbingLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A Pennsylvania man came home to an opened bottle of wine, a bedroom light he swore he'd left off, and the woman he'd stopped dating months earlier shouting his name through the glass.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/match-date-stalkerLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

You can rent a bedroom where a little girl in a yellow dress still hums lullabies, a miner's casita in a Texas ghost town, or a schoolhouse tucked inside a working cemetery — and every one of these haunted Airbnbs is bookable tonight.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/AirBNBREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3s9xb4btFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Spending the night in a haunted house is always unnerving, but would you pay for the experience? If you’re looking for a spooky escape, maybe you could try a haunted AirBNB! You might not rest in peace in these haunted homes, but you're bound to have a memorable night preparing for paranormal activity, seeking the supernatural, and greeting ghosts. (Book A Stay At a Haunted AirBNB) *** Sawney Bean, said to be the leader of a 45-member clan in Scotland, is infamously accused of murdering and cannibalizing over 1,000 people in the early 16th century. His story inspired the horror film, ‘The Hills Have Eyes.’ But did Sawney Bean ever truly exist? (The Man Who Inspired ‘The Hills Have Eyes’) *** Nestled in the Kentish Weald, the quaint village of Stalisfield boasts a thousand-year-old church and timeless tranquility. But beneath its serene surface, whispers of ancient pagan rites and dark ceremonies linger. Could the chilling past of sacrificial rituals still echo through the village today? (The Stalisfield Blade) *** As dusk fell, a pickup truck pulled up to a motel outside Tarzana. Inside, Brother Elzibah and his monks prepared for a perilous mission, recording martyr statements and arming themselves with explosives. Their target on December 10, 1958: Krishna Venta, a self-styled prophet in Box Canyon. This night promised a dramatic showdown that would mark a violent chapter in the history of American spiritual communes, and the country’s cults. (The Bizarre Story Behind The Suicide Bombing Of A Southern California Cult)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:41.053 = Show Open00:04:08.300 = Book A Stay At a Haunted AirBNB00:27:56.736 = The Man Who Inspired ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ ***00:32:42.960 = The Stalisfield Blade00:40:06.667 = The Bizarre Story Behind the Suicide Bombing of a Southern California Cult ***00:51:40.417 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Stalisfield Blade” by Ken DaSilva-Hill (used with permission)“The Bizarre Story Behind The Suicide Bombing Of A SoCal Cult” by Mattew Duersten, LAist, December 10, 2018: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4s27xpf7“The Man Who Inspired ‘The Hills Have Eyes’” source: Leah Silverman at AllThatsInteresting.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8zy3ec“Book A Stay At a Haunted AirBNB” sources: Lauren Mack at TimeOut.com, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4h75fc6c; Daily Barringer and Caitlin Morton at Thrillest.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8eubbj; Jersey Griggs at TheDiscoverer.com, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yttxryn6; Marissa Laliberte at Reader’s Digest:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p86y2em; Julie Pennell at Today.com, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2kwzmdfs; Alexa Erickson at FamilyHandyman.com, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8w39nh(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 29, 2024This episode of Weird Darkness roams from haunted rental homes you can book for the night to a Scottish cannibal legend, a Kentish village's whispered sacrifice rites, and the dynamite that ended a Southern California cult.It opens with a tour of haunted Airbnbs scattered across the United States and beyond, from Hobo Hill House in Jefferson City, Missouri — a 1910 American Foursquare where sightings of a man in a top hat drove the Clark family out and onto "The Dead Files" — to the Parks-Bowman Mansion in New Orleans, where guests booking the dead girl's bedroom report a young spirit in a yellow dress who hums lullabies and paces with a limp. The Kahn Hotel in Jefferson, Texas has logged over 300 paranormal investigations and one recording of a woman's scream followed by a gunshot; Farnam Manor in Richfield, Ohio traces its haunting to the owner's daughter drowning in a well in 1834; and a converted 1900 schoolhouse sits inside Cedar Park Cemetery in Hudson, New York, complete with an 18th-century opium wedding bed. The Creole Mansion in New Orleans, built in 1855 for Louise Vitry, and the Terlingua ghost-town casita overlooking Big Bend round out a list that stretches from Salem, Massachusetts to York, England.From there the episode turns to Sawney Bean, the legendary patriarch of a 45-member clan said to have lived in Bennane Cave along the Scottish coast, robbing, murdering, and cannibalizing more than 1,000 travelers across roughly 25 years before King James VI led a manhunt that ended in the men being executed and the women burned at the stake. Historical records first mention Bean in 1755, a century after he supposedly lived, and Scottish historian Dr. Louise Yeoman argues the tale may have started as English propaganda, with the name "Sawney" serving as a period slur against Scots. Wes Craven credited the Bean legend as the direct inspiration for his film The Hills Have Eyes.Next comes Stalisfield, a tiny hamlet in the Kentish Weald with a thousand-year-old church and The Plough Inn, where old villagers speak of pagan harvest rites tied to a flint sacrifice knife hewn from Kentish stone. The stories describe animals slaughtered on a sarsen stone and, in the darkest tellings, a golden-haired virgin tied to a stake, dismembered with the flint blade, her blood collected in a golden vessel and her ashes mixed with seed and scattered into the corners of the fields — corners locals still avoid after dark, marked by their overgrowth.The episode closes with Krishna Venta, born Francis Herman Pencovic in San Francisco in 1911, a barefoot self-styled prophet who claimed to have been born half a million years earlier on a planet called Neophrates and founded the WKFL Foundation on a 23-acre glen in Box Canyon. Two disaffected monks, Ralph Muller and Peter Kamenoff — who had taken the names Elzibah and Jeroham and accused Venta of sleeping with their wives — recorded martyr statements at a Tarzana motel and drove to the commune on December 10, 1958 with twenty sticks of dynamite in a musette bag. The blast lifted the top off the stone monastery, was heard more than 20 miles away, and killed ten people, including Venta, Cardinal Gene, and two children from the dormitories, seven-year-old Keela Baker and eleven-year-old Elwyn; survivors later scattered into other movements, among them members who died in Jonestown alongside Jim Jones' Peoples Temple in 1978.

Two crossed pencils, a sheet of paper marked yes and no, and a name spoken twice — and by the time an Italian priest was called into a Calabrian primary school, the children had already asked Charlie their questions. | July 19, 2026==========HOUR ONE: Just because the Ouija board is made by a board game manufacturer does not mean it should be treated like a toy – as many have discovered. *** The similar game, Charlie Charlie seems more innocent – but is so dangerous that in one school where children were playing it, they had to call in an exorcist. *** And you never know when playing any of these types of games what kind of spirit you might be inviting into our realm – but I can tell you this…. It’s never good. They might pretend to be good, but that’s far from the truth. And one particular demon has found notoriety through the Ouija board community, a demon you don’t want to risk opening a door for. It’s name is Zozo.==========HOUR TWO: Did lost cosmonauts make it into space before Yuri Gagarin? (The Tombs in Space) *** Don't take a gift from Gracie Watson's grave... or her life-like statue might cry tears of blood. (Gracie’s Ghost) *** Did Bonnie Scott run away? Was she kidnapped? Murdered perhaps? All anyone knew was that no one had a clue where she was. She had simply disappeared without a trace. (The Murder of Bonnie Leigh Scott) *** A latchkey kid comes home to an empty house… or so they thought until they heard footsteps in another room. (The Laundry Room)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: People often encounter strange and frightening things when they experience sleep paralysis – but in one particular story, the horrors began well before going to bed. (Sleep Paralysis in Bangkok) *** Samuel Joselyn was buried in 1810 in a North Carolina cemetery.  Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that Samuel was actually DEAD at the time of his burial! (Buried Alive in Wilmington) *** in 1894 Rosa Lochner was a witness to murder, but she had been deaf since birth and her spoken vocabulary was limited. So how could she testify against the accused? (Murder In Pantomime) *** A boy wakes to find his previously closed curtains now open – and the only explanation involves a previous resident of the house he’s now living in. (Strange Manifestations) *** Mention the word “Chupacabra” and most people will think of a strange, hairless dog-like animal. They are never described as having the ability to fly… until now. (Winged Chupacabras) *** These UFOs aren’t shiny metallic discs or cigar-shaped spaceships. They are humanoid – and they fly without the help of a jetpack, wings, cape or even a broom to sit on. And the sightings are still coming in all throughout Mexico. (The Flying Humanoids of Mexico) *** The North Carolina Cherokee have a story about how dangerous it can be even near a calm river – where the waters can suddenly foam and a giant beast can appear on the rocks. (James and the Giant Leech) *** Supernatural women, shadowy men, odd animal sightings, and more… they can all be found at late-night truck stops if you’re not careful. (Truck Stop Horror Stories)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“Charlie Charlie” https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ydpwych9, and “Ouija Boards” https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mzyfmweeby Jacob Shelton for Graveyard Shift“ZoZo the Ouija Board Demon” by Maggie Clendenin for Ranker: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/xtc8x9pe“The Tombs in Space” posted at The Unredacted: http://ow.ly/nW5U30mwbWw“Gracie’s Ghost” by Gary Sweeney for The Line Up: http://ow.ly/arFz30mwaLc“The Murder of Bonnie Leigh Scott” by Troy Taylor for American Hauntings Ink: http://ow.ly/v6wX30mwbwW“The Laundry Room” submitted anonymously to Weird Darkness“Sleep Paralysis in Bangkok” by MarkiO for YourGhostStories.com: http://ow.ly/FUOD30mwc0C“Truckstop Horror Stories” by Erin McCann for Ranker: https://tinyurl.com/wldxxnl“Buried Alive in Wilmington” by TheresaHPIR for Theresa’s Haunted History of the Tri-State: https://tinyurl.com/rr4cvoh“Murder in Pantomime” by Robert Wilhelm for Murder By Gaslight: https://tinyurl.com/y97rswf5“Strange Manifestation” by Brian Abraham posted at My Haunted Life Too: https://tinyurl.com/wmlzd22“Winged Chupacabras” by Nick Redfern for Mysterious Universe: https://tinyurl.com/th8p7ox“The Flying Humanoids of Mexico” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://tinyurl.com/urxujoc“James and the Giant Leech” by James Mooney from the book “Myths of the Cherokee”: https://amzn.to/2JHpUFo==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).==========

A fortune-teller's crystal globe shows his clients a single vision of their own deaths — and one by one, they begin to make it come true.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Chapter of Errors” (April 14, 1978) ***WD00:46:44.968 = The Shadow, “The Crystal Globe” (October 03, 1943) ***WD01:15:25.364 = Sleep No More, “Escape of Mr. Trimm” (March 13, 1957) ***WD01:44:07.395 = BBC SpineChillers, “Rituals” (1984)02:10:33.653 = Strange, “The Ghost Train” (September 18, 1955)02:24:07.878 = Suspense, “Sneak Preview” (March 23, 1944)02:53:48.488 = Tales of the Frightened, “Voice From The Grave’ (1957)02:58:36.645 = The Creaking Door, “Don’t Take My Blood” (January 05, 1965) ***WD03:29:31.418 = The Saint, “The Saint Goes Underground” (December 17, 1947) ***WD03:53:55.525 = Tales From The Tomb, “Spirits of the Dead” (1960s)03:56:08.118 = 2000 Plus, “Rocket And Skull” (October 10, 1951) ***WD04:24:16.114 = The Unexpected, “Twilight Meeting” (1948) ***WD04:36:22.835 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Rue Morgue Mystery” (June 17, 1942) ***WD04:51:16.528 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0720

A film crew arrives at Wicklow Manor to shoot on location, where a centuries-old legend says a mandrake's shriek lures the heartbroken to their deaths from the tower — and within a day of filming, two men fall.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, ”Shriek of the Mandrake” (April 13, 1978) ***WDZ00:46:51.627 = Peril, “Last Man” (1953) ***WD01:13:31.419= Mystery Playhouse, “Fifty Candles” (July 25, 1944) ***WD (LQ)01:43:17.831 = Price of Fear, “Out of the Mouths” (June 20, 1983)02:10:43.064 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Man In The Street” (December 04, 1947) ***WD02:39:53.920 = Quiet Please, “Dark Rosaleen” (March 13, 1949)03:09:16.689 = Radio City Playhouse, “Deception” (November 20, 1949) ***WD03:37:20.995 = Suspense, “Cat – Audition Episode” (October 21, 1946) ***WD03:53:18.121 = Sam Spade, “Convertible Caper” (June 15, 1947) ***WD04:16:34.427 = The Sealed Book, “Accusing Corpse” (April 29, 1945)04:46:03.073 = The Shadow, “The Gibbering Thing” (September 26, 1943)05:14:27.773 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0719

Everyone hears "bottomless pit" and braces for a sermon about hell — this one goes somewhere stranger, to the only hole in all of Scripture that keeps what you throw in.Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://pod.link/1651062114EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and print version): https://weirddarkness.com/cotu-melsholeREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/m3k2ae6wWeird Darkness® and Church Of The Undead™ are trademarked. Copyright © 2026.

A chemist, lost on a lonely country road at nightfall, keeps glimpsing a laughing little girl no one else in the isolated mansion will admit exists.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Childish Laughter” (April 10, 1978)00:44:45.782 = Mystery In The Air, “Mask of Medusa” (September 04, 1947) ***WD01:13:44.235 = Molle Mystery Theater, “”Further Adventures of Kenny Andrews” (May 10, 1946) ***WD01:43:04.502 = Mr. Keen, “The Strange Display” (March 16, 1944) ***WD02:11:54.148 = Murder at Midnight, “Dead Hand” (May 01, 1950) ***WD02:35:49.001 = The Black Museum, “The Straight Razor” (November 11, 1952) ***WD03:01:04.966 = Mysterious Traveler, “The Haunted Trailer” (June 03, 1952) 03:33:30.017 = CBC Nightfall, “Love And The Lonely One” (July 04, 1980) ***WD03:56:45.698 = Obsession, “Tailored For Murder” (February 26, 1951) ***WD04:24:03.027 = Origin of Superstition, “Boogey Man” (1935)04:38:19.922 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Rubin Callaways Pictures” (March 13, 1949)05:06:43.866 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0718

A nervous first visit to his girlfriend's rural Alberta home turns into a late-night hunting trip with her father, and something in the pines is watching them both.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-thepackSOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Pack” by MisterNailBrain75: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-pack/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 19, 2026

A child's mutilated torso surfaced from the Thames near Shakespeare's Globe in 2001, and more than two decades later no one has been convicted of killing the boy investigators could only call Adam.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/TorsoInTheThamesREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3h6yrmk5FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Most people, when they think of the end of their lives, want to feel that they have accomplished something of significance. To leave a lasting legacy. But it is much more rare for someone to accomplish something significant – after they are dead! (Done By The Dead) *** Mrs. Elizabeth G. Wharton was a pillar of society in Baltimore, Maryland in the late 1800s. That is, until she was accused of murdering General William Scott Ketchum. (The Baltimore Borgia) *** For every legitimate and fascinating find by geologists, there seems to be a fraudulent find somewhere else trying to fool the masses. This has been a problem since geology became a thing – and one of the most fascinating of these true tales is the one about Baringer’s Lying Stones. (The Lying Stones) *** A strange, ape-like creature with glowing eyes in England might really be, as some believe, a specter of the night. (Man-Monkey of the Night) *** It’s hard to understand how human sacrifice has ever been a reality in any point in history – but what if you were to learn that evidence of it showed up in London, England… in 2001? (Torso In The River) *** A would-be geisha murders her lover… but the events leading up to and during the death make for a fascinatingly dark story. (The Murderess Geisha) *** When it comes to spectral animals, we’re more than familiar with black dogs or hell hounds, ghostly cats, horses carrying a headed or headless phantom, even a ghost bear rumored to haunt the Tower of London… but have you ever heard of the American Southwest’s ghost camels? (America’s Ghost Camels)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:24.699 = America’s Ghost Camels00:09:18.422 = Done By The Dead ***00:22:00.457 = The Baltimore Borgia ***00:27:35.655 = The Lying Stones00:36:08.415 = Torso In The River ***00:42:13.573 = The Murderess Geisha00:54:03.666 = Man-Monkey of the Night ***00:58:48.550 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Man-Monkey Of The Night” by Nick Redfern for MysteriousUniverse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdhdevrr“Done By The Dead” by Kyle D. Walter for ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y62afnj6“America’s Ghost Camels” by Kathy Weiser-Alexander for LegendsOfAmerica.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p979beb“The Baltimore Borgia” by Robert Wilhelm for MurderByGaslight.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y2whacb9“Torso In The River” by Richard Hoskins for MysteryConfidential.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdd5u543“The Murderess Geisha” by Dr. Romeo Vitelli for Providentia: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yzy4v3wy“The Lying Stones” by Brent Swancer for MysteriousUniverse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p854d9e(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness moves from ghost camels haunting the Arizona desert to corpses that kept making history after death, a Baltimore poisoning that gripped a courtroom for weeks, a professor fooled by carved stones, a child's murder in the Thames that London police have never solved, a Tokyo geisha who killed the man she loved, and a glowing-eyed creature on an English canal bridge.It opens in the American southwest, where the U.S. War Department imported some seventy-two camels in 1857 to haul supplies, only to turn the animals loose in the desert when the Civil War broke out and the soldiers tired of their foul temper and habit of spooking horses. Wild camels roamed Arizona for decades afterward, and one became legend as the Red Ghost — a beast blamed for trampling a woman to death in 1883 and later seen carrying a dead man lashed to its back, a rider who eventually decayed until a human skull dropped from the saddle in front of a group of startled prospectors. An Arizona farmer finally shot the animal in 1893, still wearing the leather straps that had held its corpse rider in place.From there the episode turns to figures who kept shaping the world after they died. A gang of Chicago counterfeiters led by "Big Jim" Kennally plotted in 1876 to steal Abraham Lincoln's body from his Springfield tomb and ransom it for a jailed engraver, foiled by a Secret Service informant working for the very agency Lincoln himself had signed into existence. A grave robber broke into George Washington's crypt at Mount Vernon in 1830 hunting the president's skull and made off with the wrong one. The British philosopher Jeremy Bentham left instructions to have his body dissected and mummified, and it sits on display at University College London to this day. And in the ninth century Pope Stephen VI dug up his predecessor Formosus, dressed the rotting corpse in papal vestments, propped it up for trial, found it guilty, and had it thrown into the Tiber.Next comes Baltimore in 1871, where Elizabeth Wharton, a respected society widow, hosted General William Scott Ketchum in her home on Hamilton Place until he fell suddenly ill and died with twenty grains of tartar emetic in his stomach — fifteen is enough to kill. Police discovered she had bought sixty grains days earlier, and a financial advisor named Eugene Van Ness nearly died the same way after she served him a drink. Her forty-two-day poison trial in Annapolis exhausted the medical and chemical experts of the day, and after deliberating through the night the jury acquitted her of murder.The episode then crosses to Germany, where Johann Beringer, a celebrated professor at the University of Würzburg, spent 1725 collecting strange carved stones dug up on Mount Eibelstadt by teenage boys he had hired — figures of birds, lizards, comets, and the name of God rendered in Hebrew. Convinced they were the handiwork of God himself, he published a book on them called the Lithographiae Wirceburgensis, only to learn the nearly two thousand stones had been planted by two envious colleagues, J. Ignatz Roderick and Johann Georg von Eckhart, who thought him an arrogant know-it-all and wanted to humble him.From an academic hoax the episode moves to an unsolved horror. On September 21st, 2001, a child's headless, limbless torso surfaced from the Thames near the Globe Theatre, wrapped in orange cloth, and London's Metropolitan Police could give the boy no name but Adam. Forensic analysis of poison and minerals in his remains traced him to the Benin region of Nigeria and showed he had been paralyzed and drained of blood in what investigators believed was a muti ritual killing. Nelson Mandela made an international appeal for information, and traffickers including Kingsley Ojo and a caregiver named Joyce Osagiede were investigated, but no one has ever been convicted and the boy's true identity has never been confirmed.The episode carries that darkness into 1936 Tokyo, where Sada Abe strangled her lover Kichizo Ishida in an inn after a days-long affair, then took a kitchen knife to his body and carried a severed part of him away in her handbag. Her capture two days later set off a national obsession the papers called "Sada mania," and her testimony about killing the man she refused to share became a bestseller in a country where such candor was scandalous. She was sentenced to six years, served her time as a model prisoner, and vanished from public life sometime after 1970.The episode closes on a cold English night in January 1879, when a furniture hauler crossing Bridge 39 over the Shropshire Union Canal near the village of Ranton was charged by a shaggy, ape-like creature with glowing eyes that leapt onto his cart and terrified his horse. When he swung his whip at the thing, the lash passed straight through its body, and the creature bolted down toward the canal and vanished. The folklorist Charlotte Burne later learned from the village constable that the sightings had begun only days after a man drowned in that same canal, in a place where people believed a violent death could send someone back in the shape of a beast.

Max spends his Friday nights broadcasting homemade radio signals toward the Kuiper Belt hoping to reach alien life, and one summer evening, something finally answers back.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrorsOther stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaUOther narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.com= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness©, 2026Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

A late-shift barista alone in a small-town cafe finds himself watched by a bald, mud-smeared stranger in a spotless black suit — a man who leaks something dark from his mouth and refuses to leave.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-blacksludgeSOURCES and RESOURCES: “Black Sludge” by Time Freak: https://www.creepypasta.com/black-sludge/WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 17, 2026

Travelers on the Kansas trail stopped at a lonely inn run by a family of Spiritualists — and the ones who sat in the seat nearest the curtain were never seen leaving it.🎵 Stick around to the end of the episode for a CROSSROADS HAINT song about the Benders!READ A DEEP-DIVE ARTICLE ABOUT THE BENDERS: https://weirddarkness.com/bloody-bendersEPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/bloodybendersREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckuftrvFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: When you think of monsters in America, you probably think of Bigfoot in the American Northwest – or perhaps the Chupacabra in the South. Maybe you think of Dogman in the upper Midwest. But people don’t typically think of the American lakes and shores, where we have our own collection of monsters and sea serpents. (American Sea Monsters) *** As the saying goes – don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. But once in a while the punishment goes far beyond what the crime calls for. (Cruel and Unusual Punishments) *** Marilyn Monroe was found dead of a drug overdose on August 5, 1962. And while the facts of her death are shocking, her troubling childhood wasn’t pretty either. We’ll look at the life and death of this Hollywood bombshell. (The Troubled Life And Shocking Death of Marilyn Monroe) *** We’ll take a look at, not the very first serial killer - but the first serial killer FAMILY in America! The bloody Benders! (America’s First Serial Killer Family)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:45.702 = American Sea Monsters00:15:00.217 = The Troubled Life and Shocking Death of Marilyn Monroe ***00:36:04.254 = Cruel and Unusual Punishments ***00:46:15.542 = America’s First Serial Killer Family00:54:12.123 = Show Close= Song: “Don’t Stay at the Benders” by Crossroads Haint (https://weirddarkness.com/music)*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“American Sea Monsters” by Charles M. Skinner, posted at LegendsOfAmerica.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycy9tdes“Cruel and Unusual Punishments” by Jonathan Hastad for ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y994jmsf“The Troubled Life And Shocking Death of Marilyn Monroe” by Margarita Hirapetian: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/55bv7naw, and Kelly Kreiss: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/432bykfc for Ranker.com“America’s First Serial Killer Family” by Miss Celania for MentalFloss.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yz7mbn7v(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness travels from the sea serpents and lake monsters lurking in American waters to the drug overdose that killed Marilyn Monroe, through history's most gruesome execution methods, and out to a lonely Kansas inn run by the country's first family of serial killers.It opens with a survey of American sea monsters drawn from Charles Skinner's 1896 writings, cataloguing the hundred-foot serpent sighted off Cape Ann and Nahant, Massachusetts as far back as 1638, the fifty-foot finned snakes two men reported battling in Devil's Lake, Wisconsin in 1892, the leonine-skulled creature three women watched churn the Wabash River at Huntington, Indiana, and the Native legends behind them — the Huron horned serpent Okniont, the child-drowning Amhuluk of Oregon, and the water-devils of Crater Lake who hurled a Klamath man from a two-thousand-foot cliff.From there it turns to the troubled life and death of Marilyn Monroe, found dead of a barbiturate overdose on August 5th, 1962 at her home on Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood — a death coroner Thomas Noguchi complicated when he found no pills in her stomach and learned her organ samples had been destroyed before toxicology testing. The episode traces the conspiracy theories that grew from her final phone calls to Peter Lawford and Joe DiMaggio Jr., the strange gap between when housekeeper Eunice Murray found her and when police were called at 4:25 am, and the 1982 review by District Attorney John Van de Kamp that ruled out foul play, before reaching back into the childhood of Norma Jeane Baker — the schizophrenic mother, the orphanage, the string of foster homes, and the marriage at sixteen that pulled her out of the system.Next comes a tour of cruel and unusual punishments across history, from the Norse Blood Eagle carved into a father's murderer to the Chinese lingchi or death by a thousand cuts, execution by elephant in India and Thailand, being blown from the mouth of a cannon in British-controlled Punjab, boiling alive under Henry VIII, the Roman poena cullei that sewed a parricide into a sack with a rooster, snake, monkey, and dog, and scaphism — the horror of being force-fed milk and honey, smeared with the rest, and left between two boats to be eaten alive.The episode closes with the Bloody Benders, the Spiritualist family who settled near the Osage Trail outside Cherryvale, Kansas in 1870 and turned their one-room inn into a slaughterhouse, seating travelers against a canvas curtain and crushing their skulls with a hammer from behind it before dropping the bodies through a trap door to a blood-soaked cellar. When the prominent Dr. William York vanished off the trail in March 1873 and his brothers — a colonel and a Kansas senator — came looking, the Benders fled, leaving behind a garden of buried corpses that may have numbered as many as twenty-one, and though real names later surfaced (Pa was John Flickinger, Kate was Eliza Griffith), no one ever learned where the family went or brought back proof of their fate.

Something new is coming to Weird Darkness. Starting this Friday night, horror fiction gets its own identity — a dedicated series called Midnight in the Macabre, airing primarily Friday nights at the stroke of twelve. Classic horror stories, creepypastas, and modern horror fiction, plus a little horror-tinged science fiction, all under one clearly-marked banner. In this episode, Darren explains why he's making the change, what it means for listeners who love the fiction, and what it means for those who come to Weird Darkness strictly for the true crime, real hauntings, and dark history. The regular Weird Darkness episodes stay purely non-fiction — every one a true story — while Midnight in the Macabre carries all the fiction. Each series has its own cover art and its own look, so one glance at the thumbnail tells you exactly what you're about to hear before you ever press play. The first Midnight in the Macabre drops this Friday night at midnight.

Los Angeles hides an almost overwhelming number of ghosts behind its glamour, from the piano-playing spirit at Hollywood's Magic Castle and the body found in the Cecil Hotel's water tank to the sex-magick rocket scientist, Father Yod's robed disciples, and the cults that made the City of Angels a capital of the occult.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/hauntedlaREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p98dtw7CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:24.727 = Hollywood’s Haunted Magic Castle00:09:13.905 = Los Angeles’ Haunted Hotels ***00:27:05.636 = Los Angeles: City of the Occult ***00:51:50.907 = L.A. Ghosts ***01:01:24.337 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Hollywood’s Haunted Magic Castle” by Christina Sanza for Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/nhdf2f29“Los Angeles’ Haunted Hotels” by Andy Miller from Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mvbdcwac“L.A. Ghosts” by Jen Lennon for Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/39xypc6c“Los Angeles: City Of The Occult” by Christine Aprile for Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4y9rj77r(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness turns to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, and the almost overwhelming number of ghosts, haunted hotels, and occult history hiding behind its glamour, from the Magic Castle and the Cecil Hotel to the sex-magick rocket scientist Jack Parsons, cult leader Father Yod, and the ghosts of Griffith Park.It opens inside Hollywood's Magic Castle at 7001 Franklin Avenue, the private clubhouse of the Academy of Magical Arts, where the Houdini Séance Room honors a magician who spent his career trying to debunk spiritualism and left his wife Bess the code phrase "Rosabelle, believe" for contact from the afterlife. The castle carries the story of Irma, the piano-playing ghost said to have died in 1932 and returned to the mansion built in 1909 by Rollin B. Lane, along with the ghost of magician Dai Vernon near his favorite seat in the Palace of Prestidigitation, the unidentified girl in the Haunted Cellar, and a Halloween 2011 fire that started at the exact time of Houdini's 1926 death and gutted the Dante Room while sparing the Houdini Room.From there the episode checks into the haunted hotels of Los Angeles, beginning with the Knickerbocker, which opened in Hollywood in July of 1929, hosted Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio on their honeymoon, and staged Bess Houdini's tenth and final rooftop séance the night an isolated thunderstorm struck the building alone. It moves through the Ambassador on Wilshire Boulevard, where Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan in the kitchen on June 4, 1968, the Rosslyn Annex with its forgotten Prohibition speakeasy, the Alexandria and its bricked-off phantom wing, the Biltmore where Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, was last seen before her 1947 murder, and the Cecil Hotel, home to serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger and the site where guest Elisa Lam was found dead in the rooftop water tank in 2013 after guests complained the water tasted strange.Next the episode traces L.A.'s long history of the occult, running from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and his early Pasadena partnership with rocket scientist Jack Parsons, who performed the "Babalon Working" ritual and later died at 37 in a home laboratory explosion, to Charles Manson and the Family murders of August 1969 that killed Sharon Tate and six others, Carlos Castaneda and the Yaqui shaman Don Juan Matus who launched the New Age movement, and Jim Baker, the marine turned messiah Father Yod, who took fourteen wives and led the Source Family from a Hollywood Hills mansion. It covers avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger and the witch Marjorie Cameron, the 1920 LAPD raid on the Mazdaznan sun-worshipers, the love-cult of Edith Maida Lessing at Mount Helios, the Devil's Gate Dam in Pasadena, and the curse Petronilla Feliz laid on the land that became Griffith Park.The episode closes with a tour of famous L.A. ghosts: the more than one hundred jumpers off Pasadena's Colorado Street "suicide bridge," including Myrtle Ward, whose daughter survived the fall; the body parts Marines found in a freezer at the abandoned Rancho Los Amigos hospital in 2006; picnic table number 29 in Griffith Park, where a couple was crushed by a falling tree in 1976; Bela Lugosi's hearse drifting past his favorite cigar shop; the many spirits of the Queen Mary docked in Long Beach; the unsolved 1929 deaths of Ned Doheny and Hugh Plunkett at Greystone Mansion; the ghost of Superman actor George Reeves; and Bob Baker, still haunting his marionette theater alongside the dead puppeteers who worked there.

A skeptical London professor sets out to expose a plain, lame hypnotist as a fraud, never suspecting that the woman he dismisses has already decided he belongs to her.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Parasite” (April 07, 1978) ***WD00:46:20.039 = Lux Radio Theater, “Ghost And Mrs. Muir” (December 01, 1947) ***WD01:43:56.937 = Philip Marlowe, “Monkey’s Uncle” (March 07, 1950)02:13:33.368 = Boston Blackie, “The Worthington Ghost” (March 19, 1946) ***WD02:40:01.156 = The Black Mass, “Boarded Window” (February 12, 1964) ***WD03:12:59.922 = Michael Shayne, “Recreate A Murder” (May 28, 1945)03:42:41.656 = Beyond Midnight, “Something On His Mind” (May 30, 1969)04:11:54.838 = MindWebs, “The Last Question” (March 05, 1983) ***WD04:41:25.495 = Adventures In The Supernatural, “The Mysterious Carriage” (1932) ***WD05:05:51.277 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0717

An unknown gunman murders the last of the wealthy Van Cleek line, and when two reporters break into the family's boarded-up mansion to photograph it before demolition, they find two people living inside as though it were still the 1890s.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Shark Bait” (March 31, 1978) ***WD00:46:07.462 = Haunting Hour, “Homicide House” (May 27, 1945) ***WD01:10:57.188 = Hermit’s Cave, “Buried Alive” (October 06, 1940)01:35:16.710 = Mystery is My Hobby, “Kid Brown Is KO’d” (1945-1950)01:59:17.833 = Sherlock Holmes, “Strange Case of the Persecuted Millionaire” (February 10, 1947)02:28:34.256 = Mystery House, “Murder Me Gently” (May 12, 1946)02:54:20.575 = Incredible But True, “The Temple of Beal” (1950-1951) ***WD02:58:04.060 = Inner Sanctum, “Color Blind Formula” (December 06, 1944) ***WD03:24:45.575 = Jeff Regan, “The Man Who Liked The Mountains” (August 07, 1948) ***WD (LQ)03:54:30.797 = The Key, “Lost In The Amazon” (1956) ***WD04:19:43.987 = Lights Out, “Baby” (March 28, 1941) ***WD04:44:12.185 = Macabre, “Midnight Horseman” (December 11, 1961) ***WD (LQ)05:11:20.993 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0716

A Soho painter can't stop painting the same 19th-century woman — until she starts talking back, insisting she was murdered and thrown down a Manhattan well, and demanding he hear the truth the courtroom refused to believe.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Ghost In The Well” (March 28, 1978) ***WD00:46:05.307 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Secret Room” (February 13, 1945) ***WD00:57:55.158 = Eleventh Hour, “Cast Giant Shadow” (ADU)01:21:29.218 = Escape, “Evening Primrose” (August 25, 1949)01:49:36.901 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Space Baby / aka First Baby in Space” (June 18, 1958) ***WD02:09:35.315 = Dark Fantasy, “Dead Hands Reaching” (May 22, 1942) ***WD02:33:49.707 = BBC Fear on 4, “The Monkey’s Revenge” (January 10, 1991)03:03:18.954 = Theater Five, “A Nothin’ Place” (November 20, 1964)03:26:01.748 = Guests of Doom, “Program 11 & 12” (1930s) ***WD03:51:44.458 = The Hall of Fantasy, “He Who Follows” (March 11, 1950)04:16:11.455 = Harry Lime, “Love Affair” (September 14, 1951)04:40:16.602 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “What Was It” (June 28, 1980) ***WD05:07:37.608 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0715

Sixteen children were found in a single room on Ohmer Street, and their mother had been delivering them in hospitals for seventeen years.READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.com/siders-caseWeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 15, 2026

In 1912, an axe killed all eight people sleeping in a Villisca, Iowa farmhouse, and the two men suspected of it — a traveling preacher and a business rival — both walked free.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/VilliscaReverendRivalREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p84usw4FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Conspiracy theories, while often dark, can also be kind of humorous due to being so outlandishly unbelievable. For example… is the Earth’s moon artificial, and actually an extraterrestrial spaceship? We’ll look at the strange theory. (Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?) *** In 1912 one of the most brutal slayings in America took place in the small town of Villisca, Iowa… a murder so brutal that numerous documentaries have been made about it, books have been written, and amateur detectives have poured over the facts and suspects still trying to find out who the murderer was that swung the bloody axe. (The Unsolved Villisca Ax Murders) *** The President of the United States, no matter who is in the position at the time, is always in danger from those who would like to see someone else in office. We’ll hear on the news of the assassination attempts that came close, but we more often than not are completely unaware of the attempts and plans that have been thwarted – and some of those attempts to kill a sitting U.S. President have been extremely bizarre. (Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents) *** Some Biblical accounts seem unbelievable and we tend to dismiss them as fantasies, or dreams of the person writing the events down. But what if some of the strange creatures described in the bible are actually real – but come from another dimension, or even outer space? (Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible?) *** If you are told there is a city that has been built specifically for the dead, you probably think of some ancient culture that worshipped their ancestors. Personally, I think of pyramids in Egypt… but I never would’ve thought of the suburbs in California, USA. (California’s City of the Dead)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:33.183 = Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?00:08:21.362 = The Unsolved Villisca Axe Murders ***00:20:59.742 = California’s City of the Dead00:31:12.990 = Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible? ***00:39:47.780 = Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents00:48:06.915 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?” posted at Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdhz5563“The Unsolved Villisca Ax Murders” by Joe Turner for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8mnfp6, and from HauntedRoom.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36b6k2h4“California’s City of the Dead” by Hugh Landman for Ranker.com’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckrxjzd“Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible?” by Ellen Lloyd for AncientPages.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr3d8dpk“Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents” by Richard Stockton for AllThatsInteresting.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/26avtuhr(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022This episode of Weird Darkness runs from a Cold War theory that the Moon is a hollow alien spacecraft, through the 1912 Villisca ax murders that left eight people dead in a single Iowa night, into the California cemetery city of Colma where the dead outnumber the living a thousand to one, on to a former NASA engineer's claim that the prophet Ezekiel witnessed a UFO, and closing with some of the strangest attempts ever made on the lives of sitting U.S. presidents.It opens with the Spaceship Moon Theory, proposed in July of 1970 by Soviet Academy of Sciences members Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, who argued the Moon is a hollowed-out planetoid engineered by unknown beings and steered into Earth's orbit. Darren walks through the claims stacked behind the idea — the Moon ringing like a bell for more than an hour after the Apollo 12 crew crashed their lunar module into it on November 20th, 1969, craters of wildly different widths that all share the same shallow depth, moon rocks dated older than the Earth itself, and the near-perfect circular orbit that lets the Moon exactly cover the Sun during an eclipse.From there the episode turns to Villisca, Iowa, and the night of June 9th, 1912, when someone entered the home of Josiah and Sarah Moore and killed all six members of the family along with two young house guests, Lena and Ina Stillinger, striking each victim with an axe as they slept. Darren lays out the crime scene that neighbor Mary Peckham and Josiah's brother Ross discovered the next morning — cloth draped over the mirrors, two cigarette butts in the attic, a slab of bacon left beside the Stillinger girls, and a bloody basin in the kitchen — and the suspects who never brought closure, from traveling minister Reverend George Kelly, who spoke of eight dead bodies before the news broke and later gave a confession the court dismissed, to Josiah's embittered business rival Frank Jones. More than a century on, the boarded-up house survives as a museum where investigators report a heaviness on the stairs, drifting fog, and the sound of dripping blood after the 2 a.m. train whistle.Next the show travels to Colma, California, the suburb built for the dead, where roughly 1,600 living residents share the ground with more than 1.5 million graves across 17 cemeteries. Darren traces how San Francisco banned burials in 1900 and evicted its dead, triggering the largest grave relocation in history after the 1906 earthquake, with more than 150,000 bodies hauled south and tens of thousands reburied in mass graves when families wouldn't pay the ten-dollar transfer fee. He points out the famous names resting there — Wyatt Earp, Levi Strauss, William Randolph Hearst, Joe DiMaggio, brain-injury case Phineas Gage, and self-declared Emperor of the United States Joshua Norton — alongside the darker footnotes of looted skeletons, discarded headstones repurposed as gutters and seawalls, and the town's own gallows-humor slogan, "it's great to be alive in Colma."The episode then examines whether extraterrestrials appear in the Bible, centering on the vision of the prophet Ezekiel by the river Chebar and the four winged creatures with human hands, calf-shaped feet, and four faces that rose out of a fiery whirlwind. Darren details how former NASA chief engineer Joseph F. Blumrich, honored in 1972 for his work on the Saturn and Apollo programs, set out to disprove Erich von Däniken's ancient-astronaut claims and instead became convinced, arguing in his book The Spaceships of Ezekiel that the prophet had described a landing spacecraft — rotor blades, fairing housings, landing legs with round footpads, and remote mechanical arms rendered in the only words an ancient man had for them.The episode closes with a run of bizarre presidential assassination attempts, from John Hinckley's 1981 shooting of Ronald Reagan over an obsession with actress Jodie Foster, to the 2013 ricin letters mailed to the Obama White House by a man framing an Elvis impersonator over an online feud, to truck driver Samuel Byck's 1974 plot to hijack a DC-9 and crash it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon. Darren ends on the two women who tried to kill Gerald Ford seventeen days apart in September of 1974 — Manson follower Lynette Fromme, who never chambered a round, and Sarah Jane Moore, whose shot missed by six inches because her replacement revolver's sights were misaligned.

Read an even deeper-dive into the werewolf trials here: https://weirddarkness.com/wolves-on-trial/Across four centuries of European court records, dozens of men, women, and children confessed to shedding their skins for wolf-hides and hunting under the moon — and the magistrates who heard them believed every word.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RealWerewolfTrialsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/43rjhjvpFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: We’re all familiar with the concept of werewolves – they are all over pop culture, movies, television, comic books, novels, and every other medium you could possibly imagine. And while they are considered fictional, or at least in the realm of cryptids, that doesn’t mean there aren’t true stories of reported werewolves in history. (Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves) *** Just the idea of going to prison is enough to scare people into living a squeaky-clean life, but if you’re one of the most dangerous prisoners known to exist, ordinary prison would look like a vacation as compared to life in the Florence ADX Supermax Prison. (Life In The Supermax) *** What was supposed to be a two day trip turned into a maritime mystery when the ship, the MV Joyita was discovered floating with no crew on board. What happened? (The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:37.814 = Show Open00:03:32.506 = Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves, Part 100:28:44.978 = Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves, Part 2 ***00:42:51.099 = The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita ***01:02:49.562 = Life In The Supermax ***01:15:37.977 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves” by Miss Celania for MentalFloss.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p84ut66, Nick Redfern for Mysterious Universe: http://bit.ly/2MFFx5p, WolvesRox on Playbuzz.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9bjcht, and Tim Flight for HistoricCollection.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p87s85sThe short fable, “The Werewolf” was written by Angela Carter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckt8fn6“The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita” by Marcus Lowth for UFOInsight.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8sux2j“Life In The Supermax” by Jacob Shelton for Ranker.com’s Unspeakable Times: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8u82p9(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022Weird Darkness digs into three dark corners this time out — the real men and women who were tried and executed as werewolves across Early Modern Europe, the South Pacific ghost ship MV Joyita found drifting with all 25 aboard vanished, and daily life inside America's most locked-down prison, the ADX Supermax in Florence, Colorado.It opens with the documented history of lycanthropy trials, tracing the term back through the Old English werwulf and the Greek myth of King Lycaon, whom Ovid recorded being turned into a wolf by Zeus. From there the episode walks through the real cases: the Gandillon family, burned in France in 1598 after the witch hunter Henri Boguet arranged their arrest; Thiess of Livonia, an eighty-year-old man tried in 1692 who claimed to be a benevolent werewolf who fought the Devil for the year's harvest; Peter Stubbe, the "Werewolf of Bedburg," broken on the wheel and beheaded on October 31st, 1589; Gilles Garnier, the "Hermit of Dole," burned alive in 1573 for killing and eating children; the Werewolves of Poligny; the Wolf of Ansbach, an ordinary wolf hanged from a gibbet in a wig and beard in 1685; teenaged Hans the Werewolf, executed in Estonia in 1651; fourteen-year-old Jean Grenier of Gascony, spared the stake and sent to a friary; the "Demon Tailor" of Chalons; and the more modern Spanish serial killer Manuel Blanco Romasanta, the "Werewolf of Allariz," who used lycanthropy as his legal defense, alongside the Ludwigslust and Angers cases and the cannibal beggar Swiatek of Poland.From there the show turns to the MV Joyita, the yacht built in 1931 in Los Angeles for director Roland West and named for his wife, Jewel Carmen. On October 3rd, 1955, she left Apia, Samoa, for the Tokelau Islands carrying 16 crew and nine passengers, and vanished; found over a month later on November 10th by the merchant captain Gerald Douglas, she was drifting more than 600 miles off course, partially submerged but afloat thanks to her cork-lined refrigerated hold. Investigators found the cabin lights on, the clocks stopped at 10:25, the radio tuned to the distress frequency, a doctor's bag holding a scalpel and blood-stained bandages, mattresses stacked over the engine, and all four escape craft gone — with the cargo, and all 25 people, never recovered. Captain Thomas Miller took the blame for sailing on one engine, but the theories that followed ran from mutiny to Japanese fishermen, Soviet submarines, pirates, and insurance fraud, with researcher Robin Maugham laying out the mutiny case in his book The Joyita Mystery.The episode closes inside the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, the ADX Supermax that has held Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Robert Hanssen, Ramzi Yousef, and Zacarias Moussaoui since 1994. Inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in 7-by-12-foot concrete cells with a single 4-inch window angled so the sky and the surrounding mountains stay out of view, communicating through drained toilet pipes and "finger handshakes" through recreation-cage fencing. Former inmates and staff — including warden Robert Hood, who called the architecture itself the control, and prisoner Travis Dusenbury — describe a facility that strips away nearly every trace of ordinary life, the suicide of mentally ill inmate Jose Vega in 2010, and the ongoing lawsuits over medical and mental-health treatment that forced ADX to reevaluate its practices in the mid-2010s.

The man who invented solid rocket fuel and helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory spent his nights performing sex rituals in a Pasadena mansion with a struggling science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard, trying to incarnate a goddess who would give birth to the Antichrist.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RocketMagicREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/9enkrtn5FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The creator of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, was so fascinated by the occult, he believed he was the actual devil himself… and was even upset when his own son turned out to not be the antichrist. (The Devil L. Ron Hubbard) *** Scientology is already scary and mysterious – which may not be surprising once you learn how much black magic had to do with its creation. (Scientology and the Occult) *** A house in the Altamaha River Swamp in Georgia becomes darker and more dangerous than the swamp itself. (A Terrifying Haunting in Georgia) *** Was a well known UFOlogist murdered shortly before a scheduled speech he was about to give? (The Bleached Computer of a UFO Researcher) *** Some believe we all have a guardian angel watching over us. One infamous yet respected witch hunter many years ago wrote that we all – each one of us – have a personal demon. And many people believed him. (The Demon Witch Hunter) *** For some time now, Area 51 has been seen as ground zero for conspiracies and government coverups. However, a plot of land in Utah has started to attract much of the same kind of attention. Welcome to Dugway – also known as Area 52. (Welcome to Area 52)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:37.371 = Show Open00:03:45.021 = Rocket Fuel, Sex Magic, and the Birth of Scientology00:25:54.957 = A Terrifying Haunting In Georgia ***00:34:49.445 = The Demon Witch Hunter00:46:33.406 = The Bleached Computer of a UFO Researcher ***00:50:09.122 = Area 5201:00:20.603 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Scientology and the Occult” by Annalee Newitz: http://bit.ly/31KIGnA“The Devil L. Ron Hubbard” by Jacob Shelton: http://bit.ly/2ISSjIy“A Terrifying Haunting In Georgia” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2Ip9m5Y“The Bleached Computer of a UFO Researcher” by Paul Seaburn: http://bit.ly/2KpSyhm“The Demon Witch Hunter” by Melissa Brinks: http://bit.ly/2MXHdaf“Welcome to Area 52” by Hannah Collins: http://bit.ly/2WNDFY1(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2019Weird Darkness moves through black magic, hauntings, demonology, unsolved death, and government secrecy in this episode, running from the occult roots of Scientology to a Utah military base that has earned the nickname Area 52.It opens with L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction novelist who founded Scientology, and the claim from his own eldest son — Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Jr., who left the church in 1959 and renamed himself Ronald DeWolf — that black magic sat at the inner core of the religion. In a 1983 Penthouse interview, DeWolf described a father deeply involved in the occult who did not worship Satan so much as believe he was Satan, the Beast 666 incarnate. The story runs through Hubbard's obsession with Aleister Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientis, the "moonchild" ritual he and rocket scientist Jack Parsons attempted in Pasadena to conceive an astral child and bring the goddess Babalon into the world, the poltergeist activity that followed at the Parsons house, the alleged OT Level VIII passage in which Hubbard claimed the Antichrist mantle for himself, the numerology hidden in the New Era logo's two sixty-degree triangles, and the shared contempt both Hubbard and Crowley held for psychoanalysis even as both leaned on hypnosis and past-life regression to control their followers.From there the episode digs into Jack Parsons himself — the college-dropout chemist who invented solid rocket fuel, helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and claimed to have summoned Satan at thirteen. Drawing on John Carter's Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons and Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, the story follows Parsons through the Pasadena mansion he filled with pagans, artists, and writers; the bonfires that drew police reports from the neighbors; the arrival of Hubbard, who slept with Parsons' girlfriend Betty; the red-headed artist Marjorie Cameron, whom both men decided was Babalon made flesh; Crowley's own disgust at the pair, whom he dismissed as goats in a letter; and the boat-buying scheme in Florida that cost Parsons his last twenty thousand dollars. Parsons died in 1952 handling explosives on his front porch, two years after Dianetics made Hubbard famous.Next comes the Surrency haunting, one of the most heavily witnessed poltergeist cases on record. In October of 1872, sawmill operator Allen Surrency returned to his two-story farmhouse on the edge of the Altamaha River Swamp in Georgia to find tumblers sliding off the slab, crockery shattering on the floor, and bricks, irons, and potatoes falling through the rooms of his own house. The activity never let up: clocks spinning backward, mirrors exploding, utensils bending in the family's hands, a pan of biscuits levitating out of the oven and flying out the back door, hot bricks raining down on his daughter Clementine, an andiron chasing his son across the room and then returning itself to the fireplace. Hundreds of visitors — reporters and a minister among them — watched objects fly in plain view. The haunting followed the family when they moved away, stopped abruptly with Allen's death in 1877, and the house burned down in 1925, leaving nothing behind but the orb of light still reported along the town's railway tracks.The episode then turns to Peter Binsfeld, the sixteenth-century German witch hunter whose enthusiasm for torture was matched by his taste for taxonomy. His De confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum laid out the Seven Princes of Hell — Lucifer for pride, Beelzebub for gluttony, Satan for wrath, Belphegor for sloth, Mammon for greed, Asmodeus for lust, and Leviathan for envy — and argued that each living person is shadowed by a personal demon who knows their habits intimately, the dark counterpart to a guardian angel. Binsfeld held that women were more prone to witchcraft, that girls under twelve and boys under fourteen were usually too young to be guilty, and that anyone who claimed to have seen a witch shapeshift had been deceived by the Devil.The unsolved death of British ufologist Max Spiers follows. Spiers died in Poland on July 16, 2016, days before a scheduled conspiracy conference appearance and shortly after reportedly vomiting two liters of black liquid, having texted his mother that he was in trouble and to investigate if anything happened to him. His death was ruled natural causes. At a pre-inquest review at Guildhall in Sandwich, Kent, in August of 2018, lawyers for his mother Vanessa Bates revealed that his laptop had been wiped clean and his phone's SIM card erased or removed before being returned to the family, with Spiers found dead on the couch of his girlfriend Monika Duval and the four-day inquest set for the Archbishops Palace in Maidstone.The episode closes at Dugway Proving Ground, the 800,000-acre Utah military installation that UFO researchers call Area 52. Founded during the second World War for biological and chemical weapons work, Dugway is best known for the 1968 VX nerve agent test that drifted into Skull Valley and killed thousands of sheep, an incident the Army compensated farmers for without accepting blame. Freedom of Information requests filed by MuckRock founder Michael Morisy surfaced records of entomological munitions — mosquitoes loaded with what the Army called inert pathogens and released over American civilian populations — and of soldiers used as test subjects. The story takes in the 2011 disappearance of Joseph Bushling, whose empty car, hat, and shoes turned up sixty-five miles from the main gate with no body ever found; the runway in the base's southern expansion that never appears on Dugway's own maps; Lockheed engineer Don Phillips and former CEO Ben Rich on flying saucer technology; and Steven Greer's claim in The Sirius Project that trillions in defense funding has been siphoned into a shadow government beyond the reach of the Department of Defense.

The Master Constipator discovers another galaxy ripe for conquest and sets out to bring it under his rule, placing him on a collision course with Lord Primasludge. The story is a deliberately ridiculous space-opera adventure built around galactic tyrants, extravagant threats, absurd character names, and broad science-fiction parody.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Pretend Person” (March 27, 1978) ***WD00:46:23.028 = CBC Mystery Theater, “The Duel” (September 18, 1967) ***WD01:15:59.465 = Chet Chetters, “Conquest of the Master Constipator” (1993)01:46:42.173 = The Clock, “The Bank Vault” (December 27, 1955)02:12:13.607 = The Crime Club, “Sun Is a Witness” (April 03, 1947)02:42:07.075 = Crime Classics, “Shrapnelled Body Charles Drew Sr.” (July 06, 1953)03:11:50.167 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Murder of Cora Rogers” (September 01, 1946) ***WD03:36:00.066 = Calling All Detectives, “Mr. Frobish Pays to Have Himself Killed” (September 11, 1947) ***WD03:49:54.181 = The Devil and Mr. O, “Official Killer” (January 07, 1972)04:18:43.513 = Diary of Fate, “Marvin Thomas Entry” (June 08, 1948) ***WD04:47:48.773 = Dimension X, “The Outer Limit” (June 08, 1950)05:15:46.853 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0714

A discontented Long Island housewife and the forgettable corset salesman she seduced hatch a clumsy plot to murder her sleeping husband — a scheme so poorly executed that one famous newsman couldn't resist giving it a name.==========HOUR ONE: Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray devised a scheme to get rid of Ruth’s husband – and they planned it so well that, okay… actually no. They were so inept they were caught immediately, and even the police publicly called them incompetent. (The Dumb-Bell Murder) *** For over 2,000 years across South and Southeast Asia, trained elephants served as living instruments of execution, crushing condemned prisoners with calculated brutality under the control of their handlers. (Execution By Elephant) *** Before he became a Civil War general, Congressman Dan E. Sickles' scandalous murder trial changed our legal system forever. He said outright that he had killed his wife’s lover. So how did he avoid being found guilty of the crime he admitted to committing? (How A Congressman Got Away With Murder) *** In 1150, two children were found near Woolpit in England – they wore strange clothes, spoke oddly, but the most identifiable characteristic for both children was their skin was green. The children themselves were a mystery – but what happened when they grew up? Did they marry? Did they have children? Could there be decedents of the green children of Woolpit living among us today? (Great Grandkids of Green Children) *** In the summer of 1518, a mysterious dancing plague seized the French town of Strasbourg, compelling hundreds to dance without rest for months—some until they collapsed and died—in a frenzy that baffled authorities and remains unexplained to this day. (Dancing Plague)==========HOUR TWO: When it comes to receiving the death sentence, history has given us several ways to go about the execution. Hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, being stoned to death or burned at the stake… but you have to be some whole new level of “hated” by the people if your death blow comes by way of molten gold being poured down your throat. (Death By Golden Throat) *** Typically, when you hear the phrase “high speed chase”, you think of law enforcement trying to catch the bad guys who are in a getaway vehicle. Perhaps after a bank robbery, or after blowing a stop sign and simply refusing to pull over. But have you heard about the time that the police were involved in a high-speed chase up to 100-miles-per hour, trying to catch up to a flying saucer? (The 100mph UFO Chase) *** When the Black Plague arrived at their doorsteps, the villagers were forced to choose between life or certain doom. It’s the tragic tale of England’s Plague Village – the village of Eyam. (The Black Death Comes to Eyam) *** In the 1800s, women finding themselves “with child” but unmarried, were treated like second-class citizens or worse. And during a time when birth control was limited or even unavailable outside of the rhythm method, what was a girl to do if she found herself in such dire circumstances? Fortunately, there was a woman there ready to help – to take the baby off their hands and give it a good home. Or so everyone thought. (Minnie, The Baby Farmer) *** On frozen lakes near Manitowish Waters, a hooded figure appears to ice fishermen, silently guiding them to the best spots for a catch before vanishing into the winter air. (The Ice Fisherman Ghost)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: “Tom" and "Lena" are in a loving relationship and have a young child together. It sounds like the perfect family – except for one tiny detail about their relationship. Tom and Lena are biological brother and sister. (I Fell In Love With My Sister) *** In Norfolk, England the village of Eccles was slowly gobbled by the rising waters of the sea in the early 1600s. But even today, sometimes during a particularly heavy story, you can see St. Mary’s Church mysteriously reappear… bringing with it, the dead buried in the church graveyard who cannot find rest. (The Disappearing And Reappearing Village of Eccles) *** Lory Price and his wife Ethel mysteriously disappeared from Marion, Illinois. But then, sometimes that happens when you are mixed up with the mob or may have learned something you weren’t supposed to. (The Vanishing of Lory Price) *** The Catacombs of St. Callixtus in Rome, Italy, hold the remains of sixteen popes, several martyrs, and around half a million Christians, and according to on author, a not-of-this world entity. (The Callixtus Catacombs Entity)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“Death By Golden Throat” by Genevieve Carlton for Weird History https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3586qeqk, Rachel Nuwer for Smithsonian Magazine https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/18pu2d9b, and Laurie L. Dove for History https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3vy6r2a9“The Black Death Comes to Eyam” by Stephanie Almazan for The Line Up: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1aptirxk“Minnie, The Baby Farmer” from The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2eqd77xa“The 100MPH UFO Chase” from The Parajournal for The Times Online: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ntcaqk3y“The Ice Fisherman Ghost” by Charlie Hinz: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8nzemt“The Dumb-Bell Murder” by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/jsut4w93 (includes photo)“I Fell In Love With My Sister” by Jennifer Tillman for Vice: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y2dmtp2e“Execution by Elephant” by Joanna Gillan for Ancient Origins: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8jj255“The Cursing of Christopher Case” by Gurnoor Kaur for Conspiracy Theories: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/145d147q“The Disappearing And Reappearing Village of Eccles” by Stacia Briggs for Eastern Daily Press:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5fopg2hq“The Vanishing of Lory Price” by Troy Taylor from his book “Bloody Illinois”: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/lsi06qet“How A Congressman Got Away With Murder” by Genevieve Carlton for All That’s Interesting:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2jantfjj“Great Grandkids of Green Children” from Ancient Code: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4u4xdypk“The Callixtus Catacombs Entity” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/aqhlme0r“Dancing Plague” by Cassandra Yorgey at HubPages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycke4fwe==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).The podcast version of the syndicated weekend radio show posts Sunday night/Monday morning at midnight after the show has aired nationally on radio stations Sunday evening.

Something tall and black is standing on the mountain above the Arctic outpost, it hasn't moved in days, and every man who sees it is a man who has something to answer for.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/shapeinthesnowFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: A machinist ships out to an Arctic research outpost for a one-month government contract, keeping a journal at his wife's insistence to pass the time. The work is dull and the crew gets along. Then he sees something standing on the mountainside — tall, black, motionless, miles off — and finds he isn't the only man in camp who can see it. His roommate has heard of it before, from a grandfather who spent his life being watched by it, and who left behind a single line copied from an asylum patient's journal: “All of our mistakes are never forgotten.” Day by day, the thing on the mountain is closer.LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:https://www.creepypasta.com/forgotten_mistakes/(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: February 01, 2024

In the quiet village of Maxley, where shadows stretch long and the dead refuse to rest, an unsuspecting community is about to uncover a horror that has slept for centuries.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mrsamworthREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr2n9c8mFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: “Mrs. Amworth” by E.F. Benson *** “The White Death” by Christina Skelton *** “My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived” by Richard SaxonCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:28.161 = “The White Death” by Christina Skelton00:06:24.330 = “My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived” by Richard Saxon ***00:26:30.035 = “Mrs. Amworth” by E.F. Benson ***01:03:48.287 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Mrs. Amworth” by E.F. Benson: https://tinyurl.com/yyvqdwub“The White Death” by Christina Skelton: https://tinyurl.com/yxjcujwx“My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived” by Richard Saxon: https://tinyurl.com/y4l9zzgq(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 20, 2020Weird Darkness returns with a night of urban legend, found-footage horror, and classic vampire fiction, moving from a South American death-spirit to a stack of home videos that shouldn't exist to an English village with a very sociable widow.It opens with "The White Death" by Christina Skelton, told by a narrator sitting at his computer waiting to die. A friend's aunt, drunk the night before, finally explained how the boy's parents had died: they were doing mission work in a small South American country when a terrified man burst into the mission hospital claiming a Muerta blanca — the White Death, the White Devil Girl — had killed his sister and was coming for him. She was a girl with dead black eyes that wept bile, who moved without moving her legs, and who knocked on the doors and mirrors between her and her victim: once for the skin she uses to patch her own rotting flesh, twice for the muscle, three times for bones she carves into knives, four for the heart she wears around her neck, and on through the teeth, the eyes, and finally the soul. She can only find you if you saw her kill someone, or if someone tells you about her. The missionaries phoned the aunt about it that same night, and were found in the morning skinned and dismembered, their bodies covered in small, child-like handprints. The aunt was murdered the night she told the story, the friend died on the phone while the narrator listened to the door come off its hinges, and now the knocking has started on the narrator's own door — twenty-eight times on the front door, twenty-eight on the hall mirror, twenty-eight on the bedroom door.From there the episode turns to "My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived" by Richard Saxon, from Creepypasta.com. Adam Davies, thirty-something and unremarkable, digs a box of VHS tapes out of his parents' basement hoping nostalgia will shake loose whatever ambition he lost. The first tape looks like his childhood exactly as he remembers it, except for a dog named Doug he never owned and cannot recall, and except for the ending: a stranger with a camera follows him out of a bar on October 7th, 2006, and films him burning alive in a car wreck. Every tape after it does the same thing. His grandfather dies in 1999 instead of 1993, his first car changes from black to red, and the film always closes on Adam dying while an unspeaking cameraman watches — shot in the throat in an alley in 2002, drowned in a submerged car in 2004, bleeding out at the bottom of a cliff in 2005. His parents deny the tapes exist; their own footage, digitized and locked in a fireproof safe, ends with no deaths at all. Then Adam finds one labeled 1985 to 2021, watches his mother die in a hospital bed on December 17th, 2020, and watches himself open his own arm with a pocket knife in a motel room a month later while the cameraman films. He hands everything to the police, locks his doors, covers his windows — and an hour later his father calls to say his mother has collapsed in the bathroom.The episode closes with Darren narrating E.F. Benson's 1922 vampire tale "Mrs. Amworth", set in the Sussex village of Maxley. Mrs. Amworth, the widow of an Indian civil servant who died at Peshawar, arrives to enliven a sleepy street of Georgian houses with luncheons, piano playing, and games of piquet — charming everyone except Francis Urcombe, a former Cambridge physiology professor who abandoned his chair to study vampirism and the other borderland subjects his colleagues had filed away as superstition. A plague of night-flying gnats bites the villagers on the throat, a gardener's son wastes away with two small punctures on his neck and no inflammation, and Urcombe keeps watch at a twenty-foot-high window where Mrs. Amworth's face appears in the dark. Her maiden name was Chaston — the name on the gravestones in Maxley's disused churchyard, and the name of the woman blamed for an outbreak of vampirism there three centuries earlier. Death does not end her, and the story finishes at dawn in the cemetery with a pick, a shovel, a coil of rope, and a coffin lid slid aside.

A man who has feared death every day of his life wakes among strangers who cannot die — and finds that to them, he is something called an “atavus” — drawn by lot into what they have waited five hundred years to do.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Wise Child” (March 24, 1978) ***WD00:45:57.515 = Arch Oboler’s Plays, “Immortal Gentleman” (June 17, 1939) ***WD01:14:01.420 = Barry Craig, “Corpse On Delivery” (November 31, 1951)01:41:53.419 = BBC Radio 4/Radio 7, “Mortmain” (April 22, 1992)02:26:10.177 = Night Beat, “Lost Souls” (November 16, 1951) ***WD02:55:47.576 = Beyond The Green Door, “Mk. Arkady Bradian, Bolder and TNT” (1966)02:58:57.644 = Man In Black (The Black Book), “The Price of the Head” (February 02, 1952) ***WD03:13:42.390 = Blackstone The Magic Detective, “The Ghost That Wasn’t” (November 28, 1948) ***WD03:26:24.838 = Box 13, “The Professor And The Puzzle” (January 09, 1949)03:52:53.344 = Calling All Cars, “The Human Bomb” (December 20, 1933) ***WD04:22:42.424 = Casey Crime Photographer, “A Tooth For a Tooth” (July 15, 1946) ***WD04:48:33.183 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0713Weird Darkness presents Retro Radio: Old Time Radio in the Dark, a collection of vintage broadcasts spanning psychological horror, hard-boiled detective work, ghost stories, and the strange corners where the two overlap.It opens with the CBS Radio Mystery Theater and E.G. Marshall's presentation of "Wise Child," written by Sam Dann and starring Ralph Bell. Joyce and Calvin Spurlock argue their way off a turnpike into a storm near a place called Kiowa Flats, sleep the night in their stalled car, and wake to find a newborn baby lying naked on a hillside — alive, unharmed, and abandoned. Joyce insists the child is a miracle and claims him as her own, inventing a birth story to secure a certificate. Calvin Junior never grows, not an ounce, not a fraction of an inch, while doctors find him perfectly healthy. Then a newspaper report reveals that the wilderness north of Kiowa Flats had been used as a secret dumping ground for atomic waste — and Calvin begins to sense something in the air, a force, a light, a power that lets him read the minds of his boss, his sister, and his customers, reshaping his entire life around whatever entered that child during the storm.From there, Arch Oboler's "Immortal Gentleman" arrives with Edmund O'Brien and Anne Shepherd, in which a man terrified of death his entire life screams aloud in a crowded auditorium and then explains why to the woman beside him. Sitting through a political speech, he found himself displaced into a future where science has abolished death entirely — a world of young people conditioned for fifty years, filled with all human knowledge, living two hundred, three hundred, five hundred years with nothing to do because "the old ones" never die and never surrender their positions. They call him an atavus, a throwback that surfaces once in every two thousand embryos. Twenty-four of them draw lots in a darkened room, and he is handed a black box and told to throw it at a woman who has lived five thousand years.Next, William Gargan stars as Barry Craig, confidential investigator, in "Corpse On Delivery." Bail bondsman Sam Solloway hires Craig to find Joey Florio, a racketeer who jumped a fifty-thousand-dollar bond, and offers ten percent to get him back. A merchant seaman named Stacy Crocker is stabbed four separate times outside Craig's office door before he can deliver whatever he came to sell. A blonde in ballerina sweaters frisks the corpse for its papers, a rifle shot grazes Craig's skull along West Street, and monogrammed pillows in a room at the Hotel Mohansic spell out the answer in two letters.The episode continues with John Metcalfe's "Mortmain," dramatized for radio by Rebecca Wilmshurst, set in the south of England before the war. Salome Clare marries Humphrey Ramsden Child, a man obsessed with moths, boats, and his dead mother Harriet, who vows at the altar that marriage binds souls beyond death throughout eternity. At an anniversary dinner deliberately set for thirteen guests aboard his houseboat, a woman is attacked by a swarm of moths in an upstairs bathroom, and a decomposing dog is dragged from the linen closet. Humphrey is committed as criminally insane, dresses in his mother's clothing, and promises from inside a straitjacket that death shall not part them. After his death, Salome marries John Temple — and on their honeymoon, a rotting pink boat begins rising out of the water behind them.Frank Lovejoy follows as Randy Stone in "Lost Souls," walking South State Street on Chicago's Skid Row, where a woman named Ruth Martin has spent eight hundred dollars buying steaks, clean sheets, and champagne for every derelict on the block. She refuses to answer a ringing telephone. Her purse holds a hotel key and a brand-new loaded .32. Twenty years earlier, watching police drag a screaming thirty-year-old woman into a wagon, Ruth made her friend Vivian Clark promise to kill her if she ever turned out the same way. Vivian Clark died at eleven years old — and every night for three weeks, the phone has rung wherever Ruth runs, from St. Louis to Kansas City to Duluth to Chicago.Basil Rathbone then delivers a short piece from Beyond the Green Door about a magician turned bank robber who kills two guards in Croesus, Maine, and hides in an abandoned granite quarry by disguising himself as a boulder — until a truck from the Eastern Maine Gravel Corporation pulls in to set the dynamite charges. The Man in Black, starring Paul Frees, presents John Russell's South Seas story "The Price of the Head," in which Christopher Pellet, a red-whiskered drunk with a bad name in the islands, murders a bartender at Fufuti and is saved by a Bougainville native named Karaki, who steals a canoe, sails eight hundred miles, nurses him through withdrawal, kills two white men in a cutter, gives him the last of the water, and combs his red hair and whiskers twice every day.Blackstone the Magic Detective investigates "The Ghost That Wasn't" at the Weldon mansion, where Mortimer Weldon's brother Clarence accepted a dare to spend the night in the tower room and was found in the courtyard with a broken neck behind a door locked from the inside — and where a grandfather clock that has always kept excellent time is suddenly two minutes slow. Alan Ladd stars as Dan Holliday in "The Professor And The Puzzle," a Box 13 adventure in which a college crystallographer named Martin Gardner is found shot through the heart with his own gun, his niece abruptly breaks her engagement to marry her uncle's lab assistant Ed Macklin, and Macklin turns up stabbed with his own knife. Registered mail receipts and a bank book under the name Samuel Stoner lead Holliday to an office building and a case of illicit diamond cutting.Calling All Cars reaches back into the records for "The Human Bomb," the true story of Carl Weiss, who walked into police headquarters wearing a sheepskin hood, green goggles, and a soldier's campaign hat, carrying a blood-red box packed with sixty-six sticks of dynamite and holding a spring-loaded trigger that would fire the moment he let go. He demanded to see Paul Shoup, president of the Pacific Electric Railway, and threatened to level the building unless the railroad workers got a raise. Two hundred and sixty prisoners were evacuated by streetcar while Chief Sebastian stalled him, and Officer Sam Brown eventually thrust his bare hand through the glass top of the box to smother the lit fuse.The episode closes with Staats Cotsworth as Casey, Crime Photographer, in "A Tooth For a Tooth" by Charles Holden. Rewrite man Henry Brower confesses a premonition of his own death and admits that a man named Renat — no licensed dentist, but a self-described research scientist on River Road — filled his teeth for free to test a new metal. Brower vanishes that night, and Lieutenant Logan writes him off as a debtor who skipped town. Casey recognizes the shape of a Colorado cattleman's case from 1931, and a bartender's habit of spelling words backward hands him the name he needs.

“Judas Kiss: The Traveling Clairvoyant of Tipton Mountain” — A hermit who claims he can watch distant events from inside a hollow pine tree becomes convinced the woman renting the cabin above his is a murderer — and only he knows what she's done.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Judas Kiss” (March 23, 1978) ***WD00:45:48.210 = Tales From The Tomb, “Spirit Calling” (1960s)00:50:20.385 = Two Thousand Plus, “World’s Apart” (November 29, 1950) ***WD01:19:02.978 = The Unexpected, “Heat Wave” (1947-1948)01:31:11.637 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Indian Fakir” (February 17, 1944) ***WD01:44:47.860 = Dark Venture, “Elizabeth Is Frightened” (July 22, 1947)02:14:43.934 = The Weird Circle, “Haunted Hotel” (May 13, 1945)02:42:15.220 = The Whistler, “Murder Will Shout” (March 19, 1945)03:11:41.385 = Strange Wills, “Emily” (August 31, 1946)03:41:20.826 = Witch’s Tale, “Statue of Thor” (May 22, 1933)04:04:13.136 = X Minus One, “Honeymoon In Hell” (December 26, 1956)04:33:07.327 = ABC Mystery Time, “Murder In Haste” (1957) ***WD04:56:48.877 = Strange Adventure, “Death Rides The Carousel” (1945) ***WD05:00:05.724 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0712Weird Darkness presents Retro Radio, a night of classic dark radio drama spanning three decades of murder, madness, and the supernatural.It opens with the CBS Radio Mystery Theater's "The Judas Kiss," in which Oscar Absecker, a solitary handyman living on a dying mountain outside the village of Tipton, believes a big black dog barks three times whenever someone dies — and believes he can watch distant events unfold by standing inside a lightning-struck, hollow pine tree. When Deputy Luke Marbury rents the cabin above his to a woman named Enid Grant, Oscar becomes convinced that she is destroying the much younger man who joins her there, and his visions show him one killing after another. Fred Gwynne stars, with E.G. Marshall hosting.From there comes "Spirit Calling" from Tales From The Tomb, a short piece about a nine-year-old girl named Amy, alone in the house during a violent summer storm after her uncle Stanley's death, and the telephone call that comes through on a dead line.Next is Two Thousand Plus and "World's Apart," in which rocket engineer Jim Granger talks his way onto Flight 17, the first crewed voyage to Neptune, only for the spaceship Phoenix to be dragged off course by an uncharted comet. Crippled and lost, the ship limps to a landing at a place called Green Valley, where Commander Dijkstra can hear heartbeats across a room, the milk is green, and gravity does not behave the way it should.The Unexpected follows with "Heat Wave," starring Barry Sullivan as Whitey Malone, a fugitive sweating out a 110-degree heat wave in a fifth-floor garret while the police close in — and burning to settle accounts with the woman he thinks tipped them off.Then Unsolved Mysteries brings "Indian Fakir," a story told at the United Services Club in Simla, where a colonel recounts what happened when his young English bride, alone in their Bangalore bungalow, tried to outsmart a fakir who demanded a strand of her hair — and handed him threads pulled from a Chinese rug instead.Dark Venture presents "Elizabeth Is Frightened," with Joan Banks as a wealthy woman who marries Philip Bailey, a widower fascinated by the power of one mind to dominate another. As the whole town starts believing Elizabeth is ill and suicidal, only her housekeeper Flora and Dr. Davis suspect what her husband is really doing.The Weird Circle offers "Haunted Hotel," in which Henry Westwick travels to Venice and takes room fourteen at a converted castle to learn how his brother Philip died weeks after marrying the mysterious Countess Narona — and finds the answers coming to him in dreams.The Whistler tells "Murder Will Shout," the story of garage owner George Kramer, buried in debt to a man named Albion, and the small-time racketeer Peanut Marola who offers a black-market car racket, a partnership, and a solution to the Albion problem that goes very wrong on Miller Highway.Strange Wills, starring Warren William, tells "Emily," tracing a violin built by Antonio Stradivarius in Cremona in 1732 through the hands of gypsies, Niccolò Paganini, and the Heller family of Vienna, until it turns up at a barn dance in the Tennessee hills as a GI's war souvenir.The Witch's Tale delivers "Statue of Thor," in which sculptor Neil Redding, bored and cruel, mocks his enormous Swedish model Olaf, seduces Olaf's fiancée Hedwig, and takes the big man to the foundry to watch the statue of Thor cast in bronze — a casting that comes out of the mold wearing a face Redding never sculpted.X Minus One presents "Honeymoon In Hell," set in the late 1960s, when male births stop worldwide and the cybernetics machine known as Junior recommends sending a married couple to the moon. Rocket pilot Ray Carmody is wed to Eastern Alliance pilot Anya Borisovna hours before launch, and on the lunar surface they find an unidentified craft that does not belong to either alliance.ABC Mystery Time offers "Murder In Haste," in which Elbert Taylor kills his wife Ellen, flees Miami by train under an assumed name, and — after a derailment in Georgia — steals the identity of a dead mystery writer named Leslie Jameson, only to have Jameson's wife walk into his New York hotel room.The episode closes with Strange Adventure and "Death Rides The Carousel," where a lawyer named Jeffrey Ford is found stabbed through the heart on a merry-go-round chariot at a village carnival in Merrimack, and Inspector Jonathan Hawke spots the flaw in the ticket taker's account.

Three kids track down a forgotten swimming hole behind the abandoned Duncan Quarry, rediscover it for the summer — and find out why everyone stopped coming.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrorsOther stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaUOther narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.comhttps://weirddarkness.com/mt-sludge= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness©, 2026Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

Between 1997 and 2006, an overweight pizza delivery man named Ronald Dominique strangled 23 men across rural Louisiana, and almost no one has ever heard his name.A deep-dive article on all of the obscure legends featured in the first section of tonight's podcast: https://weirddarkness.com/obscure-legends/EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BayouStranglerREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3fyw74cjFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Spine-tingling ghost stories and eerie myths... come to life! Are any of them actually true? We’ll explore the more obscure side of folklore with ghosts and legends that don’t get the same amount of attention others do – but are certainly not to be ignored! (Myths And Ghosts You May Never Have Heard Of) *** In the quiet town of Essex, Maryland, the disappearance of nine-year-old Alva Jean Parris shattered the peace of summer 1960. Walking just three blocks to her aunt's house, she vanished without a trace, only for her body to be found days later, hidden beneath a makeshift grave. Decades have passed, but the mystery of who took Alva Jean and why remains unsolved. (Who Killed Alva Jean?) *** He’s a little-known serial killer. Ronald J. Dominique, dubbed the Bayou Strangler, went on a decade-long murder spree in rural Louisiana, killing 23 men. (The Bayou Strangler)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:49.323 = Myths And Ghosts You May Never Have Heard Of00:33:02.110 = The Bayou Strangler ***00:49:50.242 = Who Killed Alva Jean?00:54:23.489 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Myths And Ghosts You May Never Have Heard Of” sources: Cara Duke at ListVerse.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bddryv6h; Mysteries of Canada: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckwn5y5; Brendan-Noble.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8audhk; Factschology.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycxzdhwa,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/v7rdp57c, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdfcswwk; InuitMyths.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/puzuc272, TheIrishRoadTrip.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/vj824vwb; DallasTerrors.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8s8crn; NewEnglandHistoricalSociety.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/8r4zmkpt“The Bayou Strangler” by Oliver Mason for The-Line-Up.com, used with permission: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mt8tnyh4 (BOOK: “The Bayou Strangler” by Fred Rosen: https://amzn.to/49RIiWj) “Who Killed Alva Jean?” source: Robert A. Waters at KidnappingMurderAndMayhem.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8ab932(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 23, 2024This episode of Weird Darkness travels from obscure folklore across four continents to a little-known Louisiana serial killer and a Maryland child murder that has gone unsolved for more than sixty years.It opens with a tour through the ghosts and monsters that rarely make the usual lists: the Dungarvon Whooper, the murdered lumber-camp cook named Ryan whose whoops still echo along New Brunswick's Dungarvon River; the strzyga of Slavic myth, a two-hearted, twin-souled demon that takes the form of a barn owl before it feeds; Lady Koi Koi, the red-heeled teacher whose clicking footsteps haunt boarding schools across Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa; the banshee of North Carolina's Tar River, tied to a flour miller named Dave Warner and the Revolutionary War redcoats who drowned him in 1781; the Headless Nun of Miramichi, the murdered Sister Marie who wanders French Fort Cove asking where her head has gone; the Kludde, a chain-rattling shapeshifting dog from Belgian and Dutch folklore; the Inupasugjuk, the rarely-seen giants of Inuit tradition; the Dearg Due of County Waterford, an abused Irish bride who rose from her grave near the Tree of Strongbow to drain the blood of her father and husband; the Goatman of Old Alton Bridge near Denton, Texas, an 1884 iron truss bridge also tied to the lynching of black goat farmer Oscar Washburn; and the Stratford Knockings of 1850, the poltergeist that draped Reverend Eliakim Phelps's Connecticut mansion in funeral crepe and centered on his eleven-year-old stepson Harry.From there the episode turns to Ronald Joseph Dominique, the Louisiana pizza delivery man dubbed the Bayou Strangler, who raped and strangled twenty-three men between 1997 and 2006 while evading police for nearly a decade. Drawing on Fred Rosen's book The Bayou Strangler, the segment follows the killing of Oliver LeBanks, beaten with a tire iron and dumped beneath a highway overpass near Metairie, and traces Dominique's earlier victims across St. Charles Parish, from nineteen-year-old David Mitchell in July 1997 to twenty-year-old Gary Pierre and thirty-eight-year-old Larry Ranson, most of them gay African American men lured with the promise of paid sex. It introduces Detective Lieutenant Dennis Thornton of the Jefferson Parish sheriff's office, who worked the LeBanks scene and set himself the task of linking the killings that DNA evidence would finally tie to Dominique.The episode closes with the June 10, 1960 disappearance of nine-year-old Alva Jean Parris, who vanished walking three blocks to her aunt's house from the Riverdale Apartments in Essex, Maryland. Five days later, searchers found her shoes in a marsh and her body in a shallow grave concealed with linoleum, sod, and twigs beside an abandoned farmhouse, her abdomen and pelvis coated in lye. Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. William Lovitt found decomposition too advanced to confirm a cause of death, though strangulation was suspected, and despite polygraph tests, a solid alibi clearing her mother Fredonia, and tips about a man seen in a sailor's hat, no suspect was ever charged in a case that remains open today.

Two researchers built a mathematical model of human cannibalism and discovered, after considerable effort, that the answer is no.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/average-mealLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Flying jackets, faces frozen mid-scream, a coven convinced they needed David Bowie's blood, and a demon that crashed a text at exactly 666 megabytes — these are the paranormal encounters the famous swear actually happened to them.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/CelebrityGhostEncountersREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ff82f8yuFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Don't try and tell some celebrities that ghosts don't exist, because they've seen all the paranormal proof they need to believe. (Celebrity Encounters With The Paranormal) *** A prayer for food resulted in fish raining down from the sky in Yoro, Honduras. And now it happens regularly – sometimes twice a year – with still no definitive explanation. (Cloudy With a Chance of Sardines) *** Is it possible that UFO sightings and sightings of the Chupacabra are somehow related? Even stranger – is it possible the strange dog-lizard-like creatures came from crashed spaceships? (UFOs And The Chupacabra) *** Weirdo family member Laura tells a strange story about a candy store – and its resident ghost. (Haunted Candy Store)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:13.649 = Show Open00:02:50.627 = Celebrity Encounters With The Paranormal00:31:59.645 = UFOs And The Chupacabras ***00:39:37.674 = Cloudy With a Chance of Sardines00:46:26.106 = Haunted Candy Store ***00:50:58.248 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Celebrity Encounters With The Paranormal” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2ZAzYGX“Celebs Who Have Had Ghost Encounters by Lydia Price: http://bit.ly/2Iq0bCm“UFOs And The Chupacabra” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/2XS41cy“Cloudy With a Chance of Sardines” by Panchali Dey: http://bit.ly/2IQ9p9Y“Haunted Candy Store” by Weirdo family member, Laura(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness gathers famous names who swear the paranormal found them, a Puerto Rican legend that ties dead Chupacabras to a crashed UFO, a Honduran town where fish fall from the sky, and a Wisconsin candy store with a listener's uneasy childhood dream folded in.It opens with celebrities who came away convinced. Carrie Fisher described lights and electronics switching on and off in her Beverly Hills home after her friend R. Gregory Stevens died there; Matthew McConaughey named the blue-dressed spirit he confronted in his house Madame Blu; and a young Keanu Reeves watched an empty jacket drift through a doorway in his New York apartment, the reality of it confirmed only by his nanny's face. Patrick Stewart saw a man in a beige coat vanish in the wings of the Theatre Royal Haymarket during Waiting for Godot, later matched to the ghost of 19th-century actor-manager Baldwin Buckstone, who died in 1879. Peter Jackson woke to a woman with a screaming face at the foot of his bed near London's St. James Theatre, a ghost his wife had seen two years earlier. Miley Cyrus fled a London flat over a boy she kept seeing on the bathroom sink; Ariana Grande photographed what she called textbook demon faces at Kansas's Stull Cemetery and found the file measured 666 megabytes; and David Bowie spent much of the 1970s certain a coven of witches wanted his semen, lighting black candles and hiring white magician Walli Elmlark to exorcise his swimming pool. John Lennon, by Uri Geller's account, described bug-like beings outside his apartment and an alien metal egg left in his hands, while Sammy Hagar claimed aliens plugged his sleeping brain into a machine and uploaded numerical code in 1967. Shorter accounts follow from Megan Mullally, Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, Chloe Sevigny at the Lizzie Borden house, NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Lucy Hale, Laura Linney at Broadway's Belasco Theater, Claudia Schiffer, Emma Stone, Selena Gomez, Alyson Hannigan, Demi Lovato, Jenna Bush-Hager in the White House, and Megan Fox.From there the episode travels to Puerto Rico, where writer Nick Redfern chases the claim that the shuttered Roosevelt Roads Naval Station once held the bodies of dead Chupacabras the way Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is rumored to hold dead aliens. On visits between 2004 and 2015, Redfern and monster-hunter Jon Downes collect accounts of a 1957 UFO crash in the hills of Canovanas, sealed off by the military for roughly three weeks, and a second reported crash in the El Yunque rain forest in February 1984 — both said to have left dead Chupacabras in the wreckage, though the creature angle only attached itself to the older case after the Chupacabra panic began in 1995.Next comes Yoro, Honduras, and the Lluvia de Peces, the Rain of Fish that residents trace to Father Jose Manuel Subirana, a Spanish missionary who prayed three days and nights over the region's hunger in the 1850s or '60s. Once or twice a year after a heavy May or June storm, live sardine-like fish cover the streets of a town more than 100 miles from the ocean, and a National Geographic team in the 1970s found the stranded fish were completely blind, hypothesizing underground rivers forced above ground by flooding rather than the waterspouts others propose. The town of roughly 93,000 celebrates with a festival, a parade, and a Miss Fish Rain crowned to ride a float dressed as a mermaid, and locals refuse to sell the catch, sharing it instead as a blessing.The episode closes with Weirdo family member Laura, who worked summers at a haunted candy store in a Wisconsin tourist town, a converted house where a ceramic jar once flew across a room at a coworker. That coworker, a Canadian tribeswoman from a family with the 'sight,' listened to Laura describe a dream that returned every Christmas Eve until she was six or seven — a black, pulsing void of indistinct voices that rose to screams and a pressure closing on her chest, replaced in its final occurrence by an overhead view of a storage yard before it stopped for good. When Laura finished, the coworker told her it was a good thing she never listened to the voices, and suggested Laura had unconsciously sealed off her own ability to sense the spiritual after something that was not benevolent kept trying to reach her.

Christa Pike carried a piece of Colleen Slemmer’s skull back to the Job Corps dorm as a souvenir, and on September 30th, 2026, Tennessee is scheduled to execute her for the murder that produced it.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/christa-pikeMusic by Shadows Symphony. Weird Darkness theme music by Alibi Music.LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 09, 2026Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar traces the 1995 Job Corps murder of Colleen Slemmer, the jealousy and Satanism behind it, and the three decades of appeals, prison violence, and stalled executions that have brought Christa Pike to a September 2026 death date in Tennessee.It opens on the morning of January 13th, 1995, when a groundskeeper at the University of Tennessee Agricultural Institute outside Knoxville found a body so badly beaten he mistook it for an animal carcass — nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a Florida girl who loved computers and had taken a bus to Knoxville on Halloween of 1994 for a six-month course at the Knoxville Job Corps Center. The night before, four students had signed out together, and only three signed back in. Eighteen-year-old Christa Gail Pike, her seventeen-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and eighteen-year-old Shadolla Peterson had lured Slemmer to a wooded stretch near an abandoned steam plant with the promise of marijuana in Tyson Park, and over roughly half an hour Pike and Shipp beat and cut her while Peterson held a flashlight. Pike carved a pentagram into Slemmer's chest while she was alive, cut her throat six times with a box cutter after pausing to check that no one was watching, threw asphalt at her head, and afterward pried loose a fragment of her skull to keep. Pike had come to believe Slemmer wanted Shipp, a jealousy Slemmer denied, and she and Shipp had bonded over Satanism and the occult; Pike wore a small devil tattoo on her chest, and searches later turned up satanic altars and occult literature in both their rooms.From there the episode follows what Pike did with the bone. She returned to campus around 11 p.m., went to her friend Kim Iloilo's room dancing and singing, and produced the skull fragment as a souvenir, warning Iloilo she would be killed too if she talked. Pike carried the piece in a napkin in her leather jacket, bragged at breakfast that she was eating with it, and showed it around class along with the blood still on her shoes and clothing — behavior that turned investigator Randy York toward her within forty-eight hours. Pike confessed in a forty-six-page recorded statement, and York described her as giddy, acting out how Slemmer had begged for her life. The episode also lays out the childhood documented in her later post-conviction filings: parents who struggled with alcohol, sexual and physical abuse by multiple people, a mother's suicide attempt she witnessed, and neurological evaluations finding structural brain abnormalities alongside later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and PTSD, none of which the jury ever heard.Next comes the trial and the long aftermath. In March 1996, before Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz in Knox County Criminal Court, Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy, and on March 30th, weeks after her twentieth birthday, sentenced to death by electrocution, making her the youngest woman on death row in the modern era. Within hours she wrote Shipp an unrepentant letter framing the killing as a kindness because she had ended it quickly. Shipp, ineligible for death because he was seventeen, drew a life sentence and was denied parole in October 2025; Peterson received six years of probation. In 2001 Pike choked fellow inmate Patricia Jones with a shoestring until officers revived her, earning another twenty-five years, and around 2011 a New Jersey personal trainer named Donald Kohut and a correctional officer named Justin Heflin were caught in a plot to trace and duplicate a prison key to free her. Her appeals failed through the federal courts, an execution set for August 27th, 2020 was postponed by COVID-19, and on September 30th, 2025 the Tennessee Supreme Court reset her death for September 30th, 2026.The episode closes on what remains unresolved as that date approaches. Tennessee's 2026 execution schedule has already faltered — Governor Bill Lee granted Tony Carruthers a last-minute reprieve on May 21st after medical staff couldn't establish a backup IV line, media witnesses reported signs of pain in the 2025 executions of Byron Black and Harold Nichols, and Senate Republicans led by Tom Hatcher have asked Lee to pause executions pending review. Pike has filed suit over the pentobarbital protocol, arguing it excludes her Buddhist spiritual advisor and risks a torturous death, while advocates gather signatures asking Lee to commute her sentence over her age, abuse, and mental illness. If carried out, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two hundred years. The last piece belongs to Slemmer's mother, Mae Martinez, who for more than twenty years has asked the state to return the skull fragment still held in evidence so she can bury her daughter whole — a nineteen-year-old who liked bowling and shrimping on the river back home in Florida and had gone to Tennessee to build a life around computers.

Stranded in the Nicaraguan jungle beside an ancient temple, three adventurers and their companions discover its priests serve a horror that's all too real — man-sized vampire bats with an appetite for human blood."Temple of Vampires," an installment of Carlton E. Morse's I Love a Mystery (originally aired January 02-27, 1950), follows adventurers Jack, Doc, and Reggie as they fly toward Central America with heiress Sonny Richards and a mysterious stowaway boy named Hermie. Water-tainted gasoline forces their plane down on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, near an ancient jungle temple. Exploring it, they find a blood-drained Indian corpse and a pit of human bones, then encounter the temple's inhabitants — a beautiful priestess named Angelina and a priest named Manuel — who claim to be servants of "sacred vampires," giant man-sized bats bred over generations for human sacrifice. Angelina fixates on carrying off Hermie for his pale skin, while Manuel abducts Sonny with designs of his own. Trapped by nightfall and a tropical storm, the comrades face a harrowing ordeal of rope-swings between dizzying high ledges, captures, and near-sacrifices as they fight to get everyone out of the temple alive.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 01”00:18:09.039 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 02”00:30:24.993 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 03”00:42:29.450 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 04”00:54:51.162 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 05” 01:08:25.386 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 06”01:20:09.836 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 07”01:32:02.555 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 08”01:46:00.195 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 09”01:59:57.396 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 10”02:12:07.077 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 11”02:23:02.698 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 12”02:35:06.736 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 13”02:48:27.963 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 14”03:01:52.639 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 15”03:14:12.994 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 16”03:32:42.168 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 17”03:38:57.971 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 18”03:51:41.050 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 19”04:05:39.729 = I Love a Mystery, “Temple of Vampires – Part 20”04:19:53.687 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0711

A young samurai's forbidden love for a warlord's daughter follows him past the grave, when her returning ghost lures him into a fatal embrace no sacred charm can prevent.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Golden Amulet” (March 21, 1978) ***WD00:45:50.420 = Sam Spade, “The Calcutta Trunk Caper” (June 08, 1947)01:10:25.646 = The Sealed Book, “Devil Island” (April 0, 1945) ***WD01:39:45.947 = The Shadow, “Death Prowls At Night” (March 23, 1941)02:05:40.407 = Sleep No More, “Thus I Refute Beezly” and “The Bookshop” (March 06, 1957) ***WD02:34:17.055 = BBC Spinechillers, “Kappa” (1984)02:59:07.403 = Strange, “Flying Dutchman” (1955) ***WD03:12:02.153 = Suspense, “Narrative About Clarence” (March 16, 1944)03:41:27.199 = Tales of the Frightened, “Never Kick a Black Cat” (1963)03:46:04.004 = The Creaking Door, “White Scarf Strangler” (March 01, 1965) ***WD (LQ)04:13:55.896 = The Saint, “Mr. Richie’s Loss” (October 29, 1947) ***WD04:38:20.419 = Theater 1030, “Two Little Punctures” (July 12, 1953) ***WD05:05:20.921 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0710

A mother of five bled out on a Del Rio street on a Thursday afternoon, and by that evening the two sisters accused of killing her were caught on camera grinning in handcuffs.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/caropenaLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

When the Pritchard family moved into 30 East Drive, they thought a broken pipe was flooding the kitchen. But the hooded thing they came to call the Black Monk would flood their home with water, drag their daughter up the stairs, and become one of the most violent hauntings England has ever recorded.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/blackmonkREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p88xknwFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: A family moves into a home and almost immediately begins to experience escalating supernatural activity – which then introduces a sinister, dark menacing entity. (The Black Monk) *** Urban legends are typically dark, strange stories which for the most part are only that – legend. Harmless tales meant to frighten the listener with no more repercussions than some goose bumps and perhaps a restless night of trying to sleep. But some legends are based on truth – and those are the ones that truly make our skin crawl and our faces turn white. (Urban Legends Which Are Actually True) *** Why would a U.S. state vote to have an official state demon? It really happened – and stories about the Jersey Devil continue to this day. We’ll look at the history and horrors of this bizarre cryptid and see if it’s more than urban legend. (Legend of the Jersey Devil) *** Delano, California is a small, uninteresting town that many may think twice before visiting. East of this town is an equally dreary road known as Browning Road. If you’re a paranormal enthusiast, you know that this is one road you shouldn’t dare travel alone. (Hitchhiking Ghost of Delano) *** A woman shares her horrifying true story of an evil entity she encountered on Browning Road in Delano, California. (Evil Walks Browning Road) *** In the summer of 2014 a series of UFOs were being reported by Navy pilots – the most elite of our airborne military. Not only were the sightings becoming more frequent – they would last up to 12-hours at a time. (Navy Pilots Report UFOs)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:55.732 = Show Open00:03:16.616 = The Black Monk00:19:05.635 = Navy Pilot Reports UFOs ***00:24:26.222 = Urban Legends Which Are Actually True00:31:27.802 = Legend of the Jersey Devil ***00:40:09.038 = Hitchhiking Ghost in Delano / Evil Walks Browning Road00:45:37.698 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:The Black Monk” by Brent Swancer”: http://bit.ly/2Fg0QUV“Navy Pilots Report UFOs” by Helene Cooper: http://bit.ly/2ImqbhP“Urban Legends Which Are Actually True” by DeAnna Janes: http://bit.ly/2WIlbId“The Legend of the Jersey Devil” by Carolyn Cox: http://bit.ly/2Im39rq“Hitchhiking Ghost in Delano” posted at Backpackerverse.com: http://bit.ly/2IkU6XM“Evil Walks Browning Road” by Amy S.: http://bit.ly/2N7inoL(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022This episode of Weird Darkness moves from a violent English poltergeist to Navy encounters with unexplained aircraft, a run of urban legends with real-world roots, the New Jersey cryptid born of a colonial grudge, and a haunted California roadway. It opens at 30 East Drive in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England, where in 1966 Jean and Joe Pritchard and their children Phillip and Diane began living alongside an entity the family first nicknamed "Fred" and later called the Black Monk. Cold gusts, pooling water, rattling crockery, slashed portraits, and inverted crosses scrawled in red and black ink escalated over years, with Diane singled out for choking, scratches, and being dragged up the stairs in front of witnesses. Investigator Tom Cuniff tied the site to a former gallows and to a Cluniac monk hanged for raping and killing a girl, and decades later Nick Groff and Katrina Weidman of Paranormal Lockdown spent 100 hours locked inside, recording a Latin EVP, a rolling ball, a knife left on the stairs, and Katrina being scratched.From there the episode turns to the skies off the East Coast, where from the summer of 2014 into March 2015 Navy pilots including Lieutenant Ryan Graves of the VFA-11 "Red Rippers" reported objects with no visible engines that reached 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds and stayed aloft for up to twelve hours. A Super Hornet nearly collided with one in late 2014, footage captured an object skimming the ocean off the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and the sightings reached the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, whose former head Luis Elizondo called them a striking series of incidents while Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Leon Golub pointed toward mundane explanations.Next comes a set of urban legends that turned out to have true counterparts, from the 1997 organ-theft chain email set against a 2008 ABC News account of Indian men drugged and cut open near Delhi, to the body-in-the-bed frame tale debunked by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand yet echoed by killer Richard Kuklinski, to Halloween hanging-stunt deaths of teenagers Brian Jewell, William Anthony Odom, and Caleb Rebh, to intruders like 1941 Denver attic-dweller Theodore Coneys, to explorer John Hanning Speke and British traveler Rochelle Harris and the creatures found inside human ears.The show then digs into the Jersey Devil, the winged Pine Barrens beast the 1939 WPA guide dubbed New Jersey's official state demon, and traces its origin to almanac maker Daniel Leeds, his son Titan's feud with Benjamin Franklin, and the family crest's wyverns, alongside a claimed sighting by Joseph Bonaparte and the January 1909 panic that closed schools and mills across the Delaware Valley.The episode closes on Browning Road in Delano, California, where locals say a young woman struck and killed decades ago haunts the lonely stretch marked by a roadside memorial, appearing in backseats and on the yellow divider lines, followed by the first-person account of a driver named Amy who saw pale gray eyes in her rearview mirror before the figure screamed, vanished, and reappeared standing in the middle of the road.

A man who searched his estranged father's name once a year for closure instead found a 1998 arrest record naming himself as the victim.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/cody-jacob/Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A nightgown-clad stranger in a flying saucer repeats two nonsense words to everyone who'll listen—but only a lonely hospital cleaner can understand what he's really saying, and the warning is one no one wants to believe.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Identified Flying Objects” (March 17, 1978) ***WD00:45:34.637 = Obsession, “Amnesia” (February 19, 1951) ***WD01:08:44.909 = Origin of Superstition, “Throwing Salt” (1935)01:23:20.108 = Pat Novak, “Fleet Lady” (March 06, 1949) ***WD01:53:23.239 = Peril, “Killer” (1953) ***WD02:16:39.256 = Mystery Playhouse, “Criminal At Large” (April 11, 1944) ***WD (LQ)02:46:09.318 = Price of Fear, “Not Wanted On This Voyage” (1973-1983) ***WD03:14:05.007 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Saga of Ruffy Rux” (November 27, 1947) (LQ)03:42:57.592 = Quiet Please, “The Man Who Knew Everything” (March 06, 1949)04:11:53.022 = Radio City Playhouse, “Problem Child” (November 13, 1949)04:37:02.732 = Adventures In The Supernatural, “The Mysterious Carriage” (1932) ***WD05:01:28.304 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0709

The most evil among us are sometimes sentenced to death — but by cutting their lives short, are we unknowingly creating malevolent entities that haunt us forever?EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/DeathRowGhostsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr3vu756FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The most evil of lawbreakers in our society – the murderers and rapists – are usually confined to life in prison. The most evil of the evil are sometimes sentenced to death. But is it possible that by cutting short the lives of the horrific individuals on Death Row, we are unknowingly creating new malevolent entities that continue to torment us from the grave? (The Ghosts of Death Row) *** From beatings to murders to a handful of escape attempts made by Alcatraz's prisoners, the terrifying history of Alcatraz prison contains plenty of ghosts. (The Hauntings of Alcatraz) *** What if UFOs aren’t from another planet – or even another dimension? What if they are actually machines built right here on Earth, piloted by human time travelers? (Time Machine Flying Saucers) *** Weirdo family member Amber Harris shares a true story called “Darkness Was My Neighbor”. (Darkness Was My Neighbor)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:51.953 = Show Open00:02:45.176 = Ghosts of Death Row00:23:40.720 = Hauntings of Alcatraz ***00:40:46.307 = Time Machine Flying Saucers ***00:47:37.172 = Darkness Was My Neighbor00:53:53.392 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Ghosts of Death Row” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2KzEFw9“The Hauntings of Alcatraz” by Erin McCann: http://bit.ly/2QSsuM6“Time Machine Flying Saucers” posted at UFO Digest (link no longer available)“Darkness Was My Neighbor” by Amber Harris – submitted directly to Weird Darkness(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2022Weird Darkness journeys into haunted prisons, botched executions, secret time-travel technology, and a neighbor's death that seemed to linger after the funeral, spanning true crime, the paranormal, and a firsthand ghost story from a listener.It opens with the ghosts of Death Row, where condemned killers appear to keep terrorizing long after execution. German immigrant Frederick Hollman, one of America's earliest serial killers, was hanged at the Ford County Jail in Paxton, Illinois, on May 14, 1897, after promising to return and rap on the windows of the witnesses and jurors who convicted him — and the jail is now a paranormal hotspot where his face has been photographed glaring into his old cell. Lavinia Fisher and her husband John ran the Six Mile House near Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1820s, allegedly poisoning and dropping wealthy travelers through a trapdoor before their hanging for highway robbery, and her aggressive spirit is still blamed for choking sensations and foul stenches at the Old Charleston Jail. Raymond Snowden, dubbed Idaho's Jack the Ripper for the 1956 stabbing of Cora Dean, endured a botched twenty-minute hanging at the Old Idaho Penitentiary in Boise in 1957 and reportedly haunts the gallows site alongside inmate Douglas Van Vlack, who leaped to his death from the cell block rafters. Ted Bundy, executed in Florida's electric chair on January 24, 1989, has supposedly been seen grinning atop the chair and telling guards he beat them all, while Willie Lloyd Turner — executed by lethal injection in 1995 after fifteen years and five aborted trips to the chamber — appeared so lifelike after death that inmates mistook him for the living. The segment closes across the Atlantic with executioner John Ellis, who hanged more than a hundred people at Manchester's Strangeways Jail before killing himself in 1932 and is said to still patrol B Wing to keep the prison's other ghosts, including poisoner Mrs. Merrifield, in line.From there the episode moves to Alcatraz, the federal penitentiary that operated on its fog-bound San Francisco Bay island from 1934 to 1963 and earned a reputation as one of America's most haunted sites. The solitary cells of D-Block known as "the hole" are tied to the 1940s strangulation death of a screaming inmate in cell 14D, possibly the work of former occupant Rufus McCain, and visitors report icy fingers and unnatural cold there. The 1946 Battle of Alcatraz left two guards and three escapees dead in a utility corridor where clanging noises still echo, psychic Sylvia Browne sensed murdered hitman Abie "Butcher" Maldowitz in the laundry room, and the catacomb "dungeon" beneath A-Block preserves the screams of prisoners once chained naked to its walls. Al Capone spent part of his 1934 sentence strumming a banjo to hold off insanity, and that banjo music is still reportedly heard in the halls, while "Birdman" Robert Stroud haunts the hospital wing where he was confined among his canary research. The island carried dark associations long before the prison, from Ohlone tribal beliefs that it gathered evil spirits to the Civil War soldiers who died chained in its guardhouse basement, and even the 1969 to 1971 Native American occupation ended in fire and loss before the ghosts reportedly stayed behind.Next the episode turns to a fringe theory that reframes flying saucers as human technology rather than alien craft, arguing that a secretive commercial group used patent-law secrecy to build working time machines in twentieth-century laboratories. The account claims these machines can move an ion through time in both directions, that short-range "trans-burst" devices let a person leap across nearby distances, and that the UFOs people photograph are previews of future mankind rather than extraterrestrial visitors. It ties the idea to Einstein's 1901 work as a patent clerk and to E=mc², and recasts Area 51 as cover not for alien bodies but for a commercial experiment involving four trained monkeys linked to a 1961 interstellar flight.The episode closes with a listener account from Amber Harris, who lived at the end of a cul-de-sac in Williamsburg, Virginia, in a house set down in a ditch so the second floor sat level with the street. After her next-door neighbor died suddenly in his home and his widow moved away, the house sat unsold for months, and one night past midnight the hallway light outside Amber's bedroom switched on without the telltale sound of anyone climbing the loud staircase, casting the shadow of a male figure beneath her door before it went dark. Weeks later her sister woke her by text to watch the dead neighbor's dog standing beneath the orange street light, barking at the empty house before turning its head directly toward the two of them at the window and then vanishing, an image that stayed with the family until a job moved them to Indiana, with the neighbor's house still unsold when they drove past it the following May.

When a corporate jet is torn through a fold in space and time, its passengers find themselves offered a second chance a thousand years from home — if they're willing to leave everything behind.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Time Fold” (March 16, 1978)00:45:45.739 = Beyond Midnight, “Signalman” (March 28, 1969)01:14:36.277 = MindWebs, “Sword Game” (February 26, 1983)01:37:43.928 = Mystery In The Air, “Beyond Good And Evil” (August 28, 1947) ***WD02:06:30.486 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Murder Without Crime” (May 03, 1946)02:35:54.321 = Mr. Keen, “Murder In The Air” (February 24, 1944) ***WD03:04:51.982 = Murder at Midnight, “Murder Out of Mind” (September 15, 1947 – Never Aired)03:31:07.980 = Black Museum, “The Spotted Bedsheet” (October 21, 1952)03:57:04.381 = Mysterious Traveler, “Murder In 2952” (April 29, 1952)04:27:01.192 = CBC Nightfall, “The Appetite of Mr Lucraft” (December 26, 1980)04:58:34.157 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0708

Eleven federal agencies spent sixty days working Chicago and Rockford under one flag, and when it ended they had 305 fugitives in custody and 24 children — many of them kidnapped — back home.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/OperationNewDawnLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A house built on a history of war, death, and dark magic—what lurks within the walls of 63 Maple Street may be more than just restless spirits.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/63MapleStreetREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yck2wx6xLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:Book: “The Haunting of 63 Maple Street” by Jordan Quinn Farkas: https://amzn.to/3w2XimyBlog post: “Our Humble Haunted Home” from ParanormalHauntings.blog: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5x4y29w4(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 22, 2024Weird Darkness digs into the decades-long haunting of a single working-class home in Belišće, Croatia, tracing how war, buried cemeteries, black magick, and strange lights in the sky converge on one address. The account comes from Jordan Quinn Farkas, who moved to Belišće in 2017 and settled into a house his wife had owned since 2010 on a street locals still call Maple Street, a corner of Slavonia near the Hungarian border founded by the wealthy Jewish Gutmann family around their massive Slavonian Oak sawmill. The ground itself carries a grim record: Communist party members captured and killed the Jewish factory owner in 1945, a Yugoslav "working camp" operated on the town's edge for a single year of killings and starvation, and the Homeland War of the early 1990s drove residents into basements and bomb shelters. Farkas counts more than a dozen deaths on the street since 2017, including two suicides and a neighbor who vanished near the Drava river around Halloween and surfaced miles downstream, a landfill dumped over both an old Jewish cemetery and an even older Celtic one within a few hundred yards, and Roman and Celtic coins dating to roughly 300 AD dug from his own yard. Inside the house, the activity sorts room by room: a lobby where a wardrobe bangs from within and a strawberry-blonde female apparition — believed to be a deceased teenage friend of his wife — walks past the window until a welcoming ritual quiets her; a living room where a bathroom light switch flips itself on despite rewiring done twice, doors open and slam, and a voice recorder captured EVPs of footsteps and toggling switches; a kitchen where he and his wife heard a dragon-like screech and two heavy wingbeats overhead one night around 2 a.m., which they connect to the Croatian Zmaj or Pozoj of regional folklore; a master bedroom where a phantom smoker's residual haunting appeared as swirling smoke and laughing voices over an overnight video call, tied to the original owners' chain-smoking daughter Iva; a kid's room where his son Ivan babbles and laughs at an unseen presence an old man's ghost once shown to a girl named Stella occupied; and an attic where sounds of two creatures wrestling gave way to running "cement boots" footsteps too small to be an adult. Outside, the haunting takes on the shape of a deliberate campaign, with witch's eggs — light and hollow, a Balkan curse object — rolling from an old drainpipe more than once, black roosters and chickens left dead and scattered in feathers, three crow wings severed as cleanly as by a laser, a knotted cord of knot magick hidden in an oak cabinet, and a leather satchel of dust, a small bone, and adult teeth, all of it unfolding alongside a UFO sighting in which a solid cream-colored light outran three fighter jets over the Drava the night after Farkas dreamed of a shuttle landing in his side yard.

In 1872, the children of a Newburyport schoolhouse watched a bloodless child's hand press against the window glass — and then the dead boy it belonged to began walking their halls. | #WDRadio JULY 05, 2026HOUR ONE: What caused complete darkness to engulf the New England town of Newburyport in 1871 – and what were the strange lights seen by dozens of students and their teacher? *** Engineers working to link Scotland and England with cables on the floor of the ocean have stumbled across an amazing find from Word War 1… a submarine that was sunk due to a sea monster! (The Submarine Sunk by a Sea Monster) *** “The Mira Theater Haunting” by Bili White ==========HOUR TWO: “MJ12: JFK and UFOs” *** No one likes uninvited guests – and it appears, neither do those in the afterlife. (Dead Village) *** Ask Pedro Rodrigues Filho and he’ll tell you he’s a nice guy. After all, he may be a serial killer – but he only kills bad guys. (The Real-Life Dexter) *** What caused the sky to go dark in the middle of the day back in 1780? (New England’s Dark Day)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: Paul Bernardo, with the help of his wife Karla Homolka, stalked a Canadian suburb with a number of terrible rapes that were only the beginning of their life of cruelty. They would come to be known as the Ken and Barbie Killers. (The True Horror of the Ken and Barbie Killers) *** When you think of a con artist, you think of slick players like Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorf from “The Sting”, masters of disguise and ID like Frank Abagnale from “Catch Me If You Can”, or even the mysterious Keyser Söze from “The Usual Suspects”. But I’m guessing what you never picture in your head is a Victorian woman named Madame Rachel. She never got her own movie, but she was the real deal. (The Con Woman Madame Rachel) *** A forest in beautiful West Sussex, UK is only beautiful from the outside – for within, witnesses have seen mysterious things… including UFOs, mysterious deaths, and unexplained vanishings. (Danger Lurking In The Woods)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“The Mira Theater Haunting” by Bili White from Paranormality Magazine“The Shadow Over Newburyport” posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y62cmsun“The Submarine Sunk by a Sea Monster” from Earth-Chronicles.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ve7bwnvh“The True Horror of the Ken and Barbie Killers” by Frankie Stein for FilmDaily.co: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5ddyr25y“The Con Woman Madame Rachel” by Geri Walton: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/f5jnwjwz“New England’s Dark Day” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2OEuVTl“Dead Village” by Dreyk: http://bit.ly/33lz1Eg“The Real Life Dexter” by Kara Goldfarb: http://bit.ly/2IUuQaP“Danger Lurking In The Woods” by Ellen Lloyd: (link no longer available)“JFK And UFOs” from Paranormality Magazine==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

Real animals have grown to draconic sizes, taken to the skies on thirty-foot wings, and even weaponized explosions from inside their own bodies—but could nature ever assemble all three into a living, fire-breathing dragon?EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/realdragonsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2kepzd3uFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Is it possible dragons are… or at least were… real? Science takes a look at the possibility. (Are Dragons Real?) *** In a thick, dark forest in Colorado is a foreboding house which is considered one of the most haunted places in the U.S. (Haunted House In The Black Forest) *** A woman has the gift of speaking with and interacting with those who have passed on… but what began as a gift, evolved into a curse. (The Man Is Back) *** Weirdo family member Ezra tells us of his personal encounter with a black-eyed child. (An Angel Saved Me From a Black Eyed Kid) *** Pukwudgies were known to Native Americans, who gave them a wide berth. And if you see one, it’s best to stay away. (What is a Pukwudgie?) *** What began as a practical joke soon became one of the greatest hoaxes in American history – it’s the true story of the Cardiff Giant. (The Petrified Man) *** Jody smiled at the children playing in her backyard. She didn’t know them, they were probably the neighbors’ kids. At least that’s what she thought at first until she began to notice something disturbing about those children. (Phantom Children of Guilford) *** Dealing with the paranormal is already unsettling. What if you were to learn that the supernatural has actually been feeding on you? (Supernatural Feedings) *** Newlywed couples planning a trip to Venice envision romantic walkways and Renaissance art. What they don’t expect to find is an island that is illegal to set foot on… and for good reason. (Black Plague Island) *** Weirdo family member Ber Bella shares an experience her grandmother had on an icy road. (Angel On Black Ice) *** Sometimes a prisoner is let free, with experts of the opinion he has been completely rehabilitated. Sometimes they are right. Often they are wrong. And in the case of Jack Unterweger – releasing him was the worst thing that could ever have been done. (Poet of Death)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = “The Dragon” by Ray Bradbury (short fiction story)00:07:30.018 = Show Open00:10:13.041 = Are Dragons Real?00:20:11.728 = Haunted House in Black Forest ***00:34:02.034 = What Is a Pukwudgie?00:40:21.466 = The Petrified Man ***00:48:12.375 = The Man Is Back00:52:49.488 = An Angel Saved Me From a Black-Eyed Kid00:54:29.177 \ 00:55:52.250 = The Phantom Children of Gilford ***00:59:58.589 = Supernatural Feedings01:07:31.225 = Black Plague Island ***01:17:23.478 = Angel on Black Ice01:21:03.162 = Poet of Death01:27:33.935 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:BOOK: “Haunted Places, The National Directory” by Dennis William Hauck: https://amzn.to/4iDKvJNThe short fiction story “The Dragon” written by Ray Bradbury: http://bit.ly/2WHbtKp“Are Dragons Real?” by L.W. Martin: http://bit.ly/2IqEX5Q“An Angel Saved Me From a Black Eyed Kid” by Weirdo family member Ezra“What is a Pukwudgie?” by John Freund: http://bit.ly/319JD8R“The Petrified Man” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2MvPlif“The Man is Back” by E6bee: http://bit.ly/2IjyklT“Haunted House In The Black Forest” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2IeVZUo“The Phantom Children of Gilford” posted at FarShores (link no longer available) “Supernatural Feedings” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/2Mquz3p“Black Plague Island” by Cheryl Adams Richkoff (link no longer available)“Angel On Black Ice” by Weirdo family member Ber Bella“Poet of Death” by Shannon Rafael: http://bit.ly/2WEGaQn(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January 2022

A mild-mannered chemistry teacher weighing a lucrative job offer against the quiet life he loves finds his decision complicated when a woman claiming to be from the Pleiades strolls into his house and refuses to leave, insisting to move in.“A Matter of Ethics” by Russ Winterbotham, originally published by Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy, April 1955EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/amatterofethicsWeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 05, 2026

A locked-room death, a fragile heiress convinced her dead mother is beckoning her from the top of the marble stairs, and three witnesses who all swear they've seen the ghost as well.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Impossible Is True” (March 14, 1978)00:46:17.985 = Jeff Regan, “Lady With The Golden Hair” (July 31, 1948) ***WD01:15:49.025 = The Key, “Gentleman Companion” (1956)01:40:02.178 = Lights Out, “The Author And The Thing” (September 28, 1943)02:03:11.287 = Lux Radio Theater, “The Canterville Ghost” (June 18, 1945)03:02:19.887 = Macabre, “House In The Garden” (December 04, 1961) ***WD03:29:59.456 = Philip Marlowe, “Big Step” (February 28, 1950)03:59:32.488 = Black Mass, “Squaw” (January 24, 1964) ***WD04:29:14.551 = Michael Shayne, “Murder Trial of Jack Holmes” (May 21, 1945) ***WD04:58:07.194 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0707

An old villager's tale about a beautiful, undead noblewoman feels like harmless folklore to two visiting American brothers — right up until the night one of them meets her.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Wheel of Life” (March 13, 1978) ***WD00:46:42.838 = Crime And Peter Chambers, “Cemetery Attack” (April 20, 1954)01:09:59.902 = Hall of Fantasy, “Marquis of Death” (June 22, 1953)01:33:32.517 = Harry Lime, “Bohemian Star” (September 07, 1951)01:57:55.866 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “Little Girl Lost” (June 21, 1980)02:24:28.027 = The Haunting Hour, “Hands of Mr. Smith” (May 19, 1945) ***WD02:49:17.057 = Hermit’s Cave, “Spirit Vengeance” (December 08, 1946) ***WD03:13:37.434 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “Death of an Old Prospector” (1945-1950)03:37:36.810 = Sherlock Holmes, “The Dying Detective” (February 03, 1947)04:06:49.592 = Mystery House, “Composite Killer” (May 05, 1946) ***WD04:31:37.992 = Incredible But True, “Death Notice” (1950-1951)04:35:19.365 = Inner Sanctum, “Voice On Wire” (November 29, 1944) ***WD05:04:58.539 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0706

Every state in the Union has its own creepy collection of urban legends — haunted playgrounds and vampires, cryptids and cursed roads, black-eyed children and shape-shifting monsters — and we're crossing all fifty to find the eeriest tale each one has to tell.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/StateLegendsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/StateLegendsLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mv357ex6, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckpd7md,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3k9anyn3, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3ahdkmkc,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3kmnpahx, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckpebp7,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8s3eny, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2bz4zr7b,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5e9whsm4, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p83tczx(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 29, 2023Every state in America is hiding something. Cross the country from Alabama to Wyoming and you'll find a haunted playground where swings move on their own, a vampire buried in a Colorado cemetery, a goat-headed man lurking under a Kentucky railroad trestle, and black-eyed children knocking on car windows in Texas. Some of these urban legends are pure fiction. Others have a disturbing amount of truth buried underneath them — which is exactly what makes them stick.This episode of Weird Darkness travels through all fifty states to uncover the eeriest tale each one has to tell. There's the Alaskan Triangle, where thousands have vanished without a trace, and the shape-shifting otter people the Tlingit say are responsible. There's Resurrection Mary, the ghostly hitchhiker still searching for a dance partner outside Chicago. There's the Villisca ax murders, an unsolved 1912 slaughter that turned a family home into a haunted museum. There's Mothman over Point Pleasant, the skunk ape in the Everglades, the Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens, and Bigfoot stalking the forests of the Pacific Northwest.Cryptids and creepy clowns. Cursed roads and phantom trains. Witches, wendigos, and vampires. Alien crash sites and portals to hell. You'll meet the "watcher" who terrorized a New Jersey family through the mail, the Bunny Man of Virginia, Walking Sam on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and the Candy Lady of rural Texas. Whether these stories were born around a campfire or dragged out of something that really happened, they've survived because nobody can quite prove they're not true.So bolt your doors, lock your windows, and find out what's whispered about in your own backyard — because every state in the Union has its own creepy collection of urban legends, and some of them might be closer than you think.

The 1975 film that emptied the beaches was built on real horror — the 1916 Jersey Shore attacks that killed four, the unsolved disappearance of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, and the science of why great whites bite at all.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/jawsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/jawsFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: In June of 1975 we were exposed to one of the scariest movies ever made. For this podcaster, it’s just not Independence Day until I watch it – and you still can’t get me to swim in the ocean. We’ll look at what made ‘Jaws’ so successful… and so frightening. We’ll also look at the true story of a string of shark attacks in 1916 that inspired the novel and the film. And while 1975’s ‘Jaws’ was inspired by a series of shark attacks but greatly fictionalized, the film ‘Open Water’ from 2003 is based on a very real and terrifying story. But the truth behind the movie is a dark mystery that goes way beyond the horror of what you see in the film. We’ll look at several other real shark attacks that are almost too incredible to believe, and also try to answer the question as to why shark attacks don’t happen more often as you would expect them to, seeing as humans should be easy pickings.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding (My First Experience With a Horror Movie)00:02:16.983 = Show Open00:05:28.642 = The Real-Life Inspiration for “Jaws”00:15:01.913 = The Horror of “Jaws” ***00:40:05.165 = The True Darkness of “Open Water” ***00:52:06.811 = Real Shark Attacks01:04:18.086 = Why Sharks Attack Humans ***01:23:44.579 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The True Darkness of Open Water” by Erin McCann for Ranker: https://tinyurl.com/y8vaqgra“The Real-Life Inspiration for ‘Jaws’” by Christopher Klein for History: https://tinyurl.com/yb5s35xc“The Horror of ‘Jaws’” by Jackie Flynn Mogensen for Mother Jones: https://tinyurl.com/y2mxf8us, Andrew Housman for ScreenRant: https://tinyurl.com/yae8ohh6, Meagan Navarro for Bloody Disgusting: https://tinyurl.com/y7p8q9lw, Tim Donnelly for the New York Post: https://tinyurl.com/y9twrcc7, and Rachel Paige for Hello Giggles:https://tinyurl.com/ycdlb6je“Real Shark Attacks” by Charles W. Bryant for How Stuff Works: https://tinyurl.com/y9scmg9x, and Lou Boyd for Mpora: https://tinyurl.com/y9e55t4u“Why Sharks Attack Humans” by Richard Gray for BBC: https://tinyurl.com/ycf563up(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 03, 2020This episode of Weird Darkness dives into the world of sharks — the 1975 film that made a generation afraid of the water, the 1916 New Jersey attacks that shaped America's fear of the sea, the unsolved disappearance behind a 2003 horror movie, a catalog of real maulings, and the science of why sharks bite people at all.It opens with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, the 1975 blockbuster that grossed $7 million its first weekend and ranked sixth on IMDb's list of the ten best horror films. The mechanical shark, three models all nicknamed "Bruce," sank on first submersion and corroded in the saltwater of Nantucket Sound, forcing Spielberg to keep the animal off-screen for all but roughly four minutes and to build terror through John Williams' two-note score instead. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, who now calls it "the fish movie," predicted audiences would fear the ocean the way they feared showers after Psycho. Clinical psychologists Ali Mattu and James Hambrick, both trained to talk people out of irrational fears, admit the film gave them their own galeophobia, with Mattu once showering while standing on the edge of the tub to avoid a drain-based attack. Author Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel, spent his final years advocating for shark conservation after fishermen killed sharks by the thousands in the film's wake, cutting large shark populations along the eastern seaboard by an estimated fifty percent.From there the episode turns to the real attacks that preceded the fiction, the deadly summer of 1916 along the Jersey Shore. Charles Vansant, a 25-year-old from Philadelphia, bled to death in the lobby of the Engleside Hotel in Beach Haven on July 1 after a shark clamped his left leg in three-and-a-half feet of water. Five days later Charles Bruder, a 27-year-old Swiss bellboy captain, lost both legs off Spring Lake, and on July 12 the killing moved more than a mile inland up Matawan Creek, taking 11-year-old Lester Stillwell and Stanley Fisher, the 24-year-old tailor who dove in to recover the boy's body. President Woodrow Wilson convened a cabinet meeting over "the shark horror," and shark hunter Michael Schleisser later killed a shark in Raritan Bay with human bones reportedly found inside, after which the attacks stopped.Next the episode examines Open Water, the 2003 film built on the disappearance of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, experienced divers left behind by the Outer Edge dive boat at St. Crispin Reef on the Great Barrier Reef on January 25, 1998. No one noticed them missing for roughly forty-eight hours. A dive slate later recovered miles away bore the date January 26 and a plea for help, their diaries revealed unhappiness and Tom's stated readiness to die, and their wetsuits and air tanks washed ashore without a single bite mark or trace of blood. Australian diver Ben Cropp argued tiger sharks took them within two days, while boat owner Jack Nairn faced a manslaughter acquittal and a civil negligence conviction that shuttered his company, and more than twenty people claimed to have seen the couple alive afterward, leaving the truth unresolved.Next comes a run of documented real-life attacks stretching across centuries. The USS Indianapolis sank near Guam on July 30, 1945, dropping roughly 900 sailors into the water where sharks reduced the survivors to 317. Barry Wilson, a 17-year-old tuba player, became the first person killed by a shark in California history, and free-diving abalone hunters Omar Conger and Randall Fry were both taken by great whites, Fry's body recovered with his head separated from it. Bethany Hamilton lost her left arm at thirteen and returned to competitive surfing, spearfisherman Rodney Fox survived a torso bite by gouging the shark's eyes and now educates the public about the animals, and Brook Watson lost a leg to a shark in Havana Harbour in 1749 at the age of fourteen.The episode closes with the science of why sharks bite people, drawn from researchers including Gavin Naylor of the Florida Program for Shark Research and marine biologist Blake Chapman. Attacks correlate with the overlap of people and sharks in the same water, which is why rising seal populations off Cape Cod — rebounding under the 1972 Marine Mammal Act — drew great whites that delivered Massachusetts its first fatal attack in eighty-two years in 2018. Most bites appear to be cases of mistaken identity, the flash of a foot resembling bait fish, and the three species most often responsible are the great white, tiger, and bull sharks, the last hunting murky water by smell and electroreception rather than sight. The odds of dying in a shark attack sit near one in 3.7 million, yet Hannah Mighall, mauled by a five-metre great white in Tasmania's Bay of Fires at thirteen, still carries the toothy bite scar on her leg and the nightmares that came with it, alongside her refusal to see the animals culled for what they did to her.

A bored kid trapped in a powerless, sweltering house sneaks into his father's off-limits basement lab, where a machine that turns AI drawings into living creatures is about to make his worst summer unforgettable.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrorsOther stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaUOther narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.com= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =Weird Darkness©, 2026Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

You ever get that feeling like you’re being watched when you’re out in the woods? Turns out, some people know they were — and what they saw was anything but normal.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ParanormalWildernessREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/zyutdd7jFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: There are numerous bizarre and creepy tales of people who have ventured into the woods to find not only the natural world, but perhaps the supernatural as well. (Weirdness In The Wilderness) *** Is it true that the Pentagon has been investigating bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, and other strangeness at the Skinwalker Ranch? (UFOs, The Paranormal, and the Pentagon) *** Dino Bravo is a name that only a die-hard wrestling fan would know, as he never achieved stardom. So when Bravo was murdered, it did not receive much publicity.  Which might be part of the reason his murder has never been solved. (The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo) *** Locking the doors in your home is usually a good idea – unless it’s an invisible entity locking you out of the house! Weirdo family member Brenda McDonald talks about the strange experiences she and her family dealt with when moving into a new home. (The Move)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:52.894 = Show Open00:02:33.875 = Weirdness In The Wilderness00:25:28.664 = UFOs, The Paranormal, And The Pentagon ***00:37:11.014 = The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo00:45:20.077 = The Move ***00:47:58.646 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Weirdness In The Wilderness” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/310woY9“UFOs, The Paranormal, and the Pentagon” by Alejandro Rojas: http://bit.ly/2KtWpsK (more episodes with stories of the Skinwalker Ranch: http://weirddarkness.com/?s=skinwalker+ranch)“The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo” by Josh Raibick :http://bit.ly/2WqJoaZ“The Move” by Weirdo family member, Brenda McDonald(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2021Weird Darkness runs from shapeshifters in the American backcountry to a Pentagon program built around a Utah ranch, then to the unsolved execution of a professional wrestler and a spirit that locked a family out of its own home.It opens in the wilderness, where a wildland firefighter working as an assistant superintendent in Idaho's Hell's Canyon in 2004 met a bobcat that stared him down, screamed, and climbed a tree, then found a boarded-and-chained cabin on federal land before a barefoot Native American woman in a tattered nightgown appeared on the same spot, screamed with the identical cry, and scaled the trunk faster than a person should; a local named the thing a pumawha, a skin changer. A Montana park ranger described a similar abandoned cabin beside a shed whose reinforced steel door had been forced open from the inside, a dazed man who fled into the trees twice, and a full-grown bear that bolted from the house moments after the man vanished. On Mount Sterling in North Carolina, a climber six miles from the nearest road watched a figure with no headlamp arrive at his camp under a full moon and sit motionless facing the tents from roughly 10:30 at night until 3:30 in the morning. Reddit user tytrim89 recounted an abandoned Army training town in North Carolina where two people heard girls laughing in the woods and came back to find the locked jeep's dome light on and a door cracked, followed by a thud that shook the century-old main house. A former summer-camp counselor posting as fleetw16 and a friend followed the sound of running water that grew louder and softer with no creek anywhere on the map, drawn on by a presence that turned sinister the instant they chose to turn back. The segment ends at Yellowstone's Lamar Valley, where a ranger eleven miles from the nearest road found a doe's head severed cleanly and set in the middle of the trail, no blood, no scavenging, the eyes and tongue intact and the body gone.From there the episode turns to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the $22 million Pentagon UFO effort that Luis Elizondo helped expose in the New York Times in December 2017, and to the fuller account that its original name was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program and its real focus was Skinwalker Ranch in Utah's Uintah Basin. Robert Bigelow bought that ranch in 1996 after founding the National Institute for Discovery Science in 1995, and what happened there fills the 2005 book Hunt for the Skinwalker by journalist George Knapp and biochemist Colm Kelleher. The family who sold it, pseudonymed the Gormans, reported a wolf-like creature that shrugged off point-blank gunshots and orbs of light that lured their dogs into the trees for good. Funding ran through Senator Harry Reid and the Defense Intelligence Agency until fundamentalist Christians inside the intelligence community, convinced the phenomena were demonic, lobbied the program shut; retired Army intelligence colonel John Alexander called what they studied precognitive sentient phenomena. Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell's documentary and the History Channel series Unidentified, premiering May 31, carried the material to a wider audience.Next comes the killing of Dino Bravo, born Adolfo Bresciano, a Montreal wrestling star who held a WWWF tag title, benched a claimed 655 pounds as a heel at the 1988 Royal Rumble, and was let go by the company in 1992. Rather than relocate his family to join WCW, he moved into Canada's booming illegal cigarette trade and built a local monopoly, then partnered with a cocaine dealer whose $400,000 shipment was seized by police after sitting three days in a warehouse. A week later, on March 10, 1993, his wife came home to find him shot seven times in the head and ten times in the torso, seated in a chair with the television remote still in his hand and no sign of forced entry. Investigators recovered .380 and .22 caliber rounds and suspect a silencer, since no neighbor reported seventeen gunshots; the execution bore the marks of a Canadian mob hit, and at 44 Bravo left a wife and young daughter behind. The case remains unsolved.The episode closes with Brenda McDonald, who rented a suburban rambler while home on mid-tour leave and watched the back sliding door lock her family out again and again on moving day, its latch not spring-loaded, while her grandson's bedroom door kept shutting and locking until she removed the knob. Home later from deployment, she heard loud snoring beside her on the couch and then in her bed, and during a backyard barbecue a dark shape shot down the hall as a metal candle holder and several pairs of socks flew off a ledge and struck the far wall. A psychic medium told her a frustrated male spirit who wanted a family had followed her daughter home, then coaxed it toward the light, though McDonald came to believe that wherever her daughter goes, spirits follow.

A routine trip to claim an inheritance becomes a waking nightmare when a young couple discovers their own coffins waiting for them at a lonely, decaying estate.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Red Scarf” (March 07, 1978) ***WD00:45:52.916 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Dark Wings of Death” (February 06, 1945) ***WD00:57:09.764 = The Eleventh Hour, “The Box” (ADU)01:23:41.065 = Escape, “Snake Doctor” (August 18, 1949)01:52:53.283 = Murder By Experts, “Dig Your Own Grave” (August 15, 1949)02:22:47.621 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Stranger With Roses” (June 11, 1958)02:40:30.113 = Dark Fantasy, “Funeral Arrangements Completed” (May 15, 1942)03:04:28.637 = Fear on 4, “The Face” (February 21, 1988)03:33:43.361 = Theater Five, “To Be Or No To Be, Maybe!” November 19, 1964) ***WD03:53:12.113 = Future Tense, “Saucer of Loneliness” (May 30, 1974) ***WD04:22:21.894 = BBC Ghosts From The Past, “A Warden For All Saints” (April 29, 1992)05:05:59.571 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0705

For a few terrifying hours in the summer of 1955, two Kentucky families emptied their guns into small, glowing creatures that swarmed their farmhouse and simply would not die — and to this day, no one agrees on whether they fought off aliens, owls, or something the mind conjured out of the dark.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/kellyhopkinsvilleREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p86wb4mFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: It’s considered one of the most bizarre and convincing extraterrestrial events ever reported… we’ll look at the alien encounter in 1955’s Hopkinsville, Kentucky that was experienced by two terrified families. (The Hopkinsville Encounter) *** In the deep jungles of the Congo, natives tell of a giant creature that, once described, sounds exactly like a long-necked dinosaur. But how could this be? And is it pure legend? Perhaps not, as one noted biologist from the area saw it with his own eyes and reported it. We’ll look at the supposed real sighting of Mokele-Mbembe, the living dinosaur of the Congo! (Dinosaur Observed In The Congo) *** Running a club during prohibition was extremely lucrative… and extremely dangerous, as one Theodore Lakoff would’ve learned… had he been awake when he was murdered. (The Mysterious Death of Theodore Lakoff) *** Benjamin Franklin was known not just as one of the father’s of the United States of America, but also as an inventor, a womanizer, and a man with a bit of an ornery streak in him – as is evidenced by a series of letters he wrote to the New England Courant, where he pretended to be a woman. (Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?) *** The internet is a vital part of modern life. Without web access, all kinds of businesses and jobs would be unable to function. So, as you can imagine, there are plenty of people who would love to see the internet crumble. And many have tried. (Taking Down The World Wide Web) *** In 1983 sightings poured in from people on the California coast who claim they saw a sea monster. (The California Sea Monster)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:10.244 = Show Open00:03:40.994 = The Hopkinsville Encounter00:13:15.837 = Dinosaur Observed in the Congo ***00:27:07.561 = Taking Down The World Wide Web ***00:36:42.752 = The Mysterious Death of Theodor Lakoff00:43:15.319 = Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?00:49:11.286 = The California Sea Monster00:55:29.517 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Hopkinsville Encounter” by Hannah Collins for Ranker.com’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yp8pnfx7“Dinosaur Observed in the Congo” by Richard Greenwell for the ISC Newsletter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc3r3mpp“The Mysterious Death of Theodore Lakoff” by Kathi Kresol for HauntedRockford.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ku5x3cat“Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?” by Bipin Dimri for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p868eac“Taking Down the World Wide Web” by Benjamin Thomas for ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/c85j5cau“The California Sea Monster” by Malcom Smith for Malcom’s Cryptids: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc2wts7h(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December, 2021Weird Darkness pulls together a farmhouse siege by little gray creatures in Kentucky, a biologist's claimed sighting of a living dinosaur in the Congo, decades of attempts to knock the internet offline, an unsolved Prohibition murder in Illinois, a teenage Benjamin Franklin's literary hoax, and a hundred-foot sea serpent sighted off the California coast.It opens on August 21, 1955, when Billy Ray Taylor stepped out to the well at Glennie Lankford's farmhouse in Kelly, outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and watched a bright object drop behind the trees. Two families spent the night barricaded indoors, firing a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle at short gray creatures with spindly legs and glowing eyes that peered through windows and swiped at Taylor from the roof, yet the buckshot rang off them like sheet metal before they floated away unharmed. Skeptics later blamed an aggressive great horned owl or a green glow of bioluminescent foxfire, while the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book dismissed the case as a hoax and filed it under C.P., for crackpot.From there the episode reaches the Likouala swamps of the People's Republic of the Congo, where in 1983 biologist Marcellin Agnagna became the first trained scientist to claim he had seen Mokele-Mbembe, the long-necked animal described as a surviving dinosaur for over two centuries. At remote Lake Télé on May 1, 1983, he watched a creature with a long neck, small head, and broad back rising some fifteen feet above the water, judged it a Mesozoic sauropod, and waded out to film it — only to find he had left the lens cap on, and his last roll of film later developed black.Next comes a survey of attempts to knock the internet offline since Tim Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web. A man named Liu in Weifang, China tore apart four China Telecom junction boxes in 2016 to bury footage of himself joining a public "granny dance," while the Mirai botnet's 2016 assault on the firm Dyn took down Twitter, Netflix, and CNN, and Cornell student Robert Tappan Morris had loosed the first such attack by accident in 1988. It ends on Seth Aaron Pendley, a Texas man arrested in 2021 for plotting to blow up a Virginia data center with C-4 in hopes of crippling most of the web.The show then drops back to January 1931, when roadhouse owner Theodore Lakoff was shot once through the top of the head as he slept in his own Rockford, Illinois resort, a Prohibition den of liquor, gambling, and women he ran under the alias Tony Evanoff. His wallet lay emptied while far more cash sat untouched, and suspicion fell on twenty-year-old Viola Hunsficker, said to be extorting him, until ballistics cleared the pistol found in her apartment. Investigators then turned up five other women who each believed she was his only sweetheart, and the killing was never solved.Then it reaches back to 1722 Boston, where a witty widow named Silence Dogood published letters in the New England Courant skewering religious hypocrisy, Harvard, and fashion, charming readers so thoroughly that several men wrote in offering to marry her. She was the invention of sixteen-year-old Benjamin Franklin, an apprentice in his brother James's print shop who slipped the letters under the door at night for six months before revealing himself, then carried his taste for hoaxes to Philadelphia and a fabricated 1730 account of a Mount Holly witch trial.The episode closes off the California coast, where on October 31, 1983 a highway crew above Stinson Beach watched a dark, slender animal roughly a hundred feet long swim toward shore, trailed by about a hundred birds and two dozen sea lions. Crew member Matt Ratto described three humps rising straight from the water before a head lifted to look around, and days later, near Costa Mesa, a surfer named Young Hutchinson reported a long black eel-like animal with no dorsal fins surfacing ten feet from his board — though a Caltech spokesman offered that the witnesses might have seen a whale or a line of porpoises.

“The House And The Brain”: A skeptical scientist who swears the supernatural is nonsense spends one night in a house no tenant will stay in—and discovers a terror that follows him out the door.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The House And The Brain” (March 06, 1978) ***WD00:46:38.363 = Chet Chetter, “The Fall And Rise of the Master Constipator” (1992)01:16:02.363 = The Clock, “The Other Woman” (December 20, 1955) ***WD01:42:32.020 = The Crime Club, “Silent Witnesses” (March 27, 1947) ***WD02:11:44.891 = Crime Classics, “Checkered Life and Death of Colonel James Fisk” (June 29, 1953)02:41:17.429 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Ghost of Murdock’s Swamp” (February 09, 1947) ***WD03:07:17.959 = CBC Deep Night, “Bonehouse” (August 12, 2005)03:40:27.784 = Calling All Detectives, “Taxi Protection Racket” (April 15, 1947)03:48:33.620 = The Devil and Mr. O, “The House is Haunted’ (August 16, 1952) ***WD04:17:14.199 = Diary of Fate, “Philip Vale” (June 01, 1948) ***WD (LQ)04:46:34.156 = Dimension X, “The Roads Must Roll” (September 09, 1950) ***WD05:15:47.287 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0704

The astronomer who says an alien light sail may have passed Earth in 2017 now leads a government team asked to figure out what the military's mystery orbs really are.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/loeb-ufo-councilLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Called to a shuttered Queens elementary school over a foul smell, an exterminator opened the ash dump and found a shoe, then a foot — a man's body wedged in the chimney, still unidentified.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/school-chimney-bodyLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

“Crazy Town”: Two bomber pilots who rain death on defenseless villages crash behind the walls of a hidden asylum, where a soft-spoken madman insists they've finally come home to the only community where killers like them belong.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Assassin” (March 03, 1978) ***WD00:46:37.892 = Strange Adventure, “The Wind Wagon” (1945) ***WD00:49:51.994 = Arch Oboler’s Plays, “Crazy Town” (May 20, 1939) ***WD01:17:18.050 = Barrie Craig, “Microfilm in the Fishtank” (October 24, 1951) ***WD01:46:38.936 = BBC Radio 4/Radio7 GhostStory, “Lifeline” (2006) ***WD02:15:47.965 = Night Beat, “Mr. And Mrs. Carothers” (October 26, 1951) ***WD02:45:58.499 = Beyond The Green Door, “John Otis-Mr. Dunn, Disposer” (1966) ***WD02:49:49.627 = The Black Book, “Vagabond Murder” (March 02, 1952) ***WD03:04:18.025 = Blackstone, “Ghost That Trapped a Killer” (October 03, 1948) ***WD (LQ)03:16:00.352 = Box 13, “The Better Man” (January 02, 1949)03:43:04.360 = Calling All Cars, “York Gang Holdup” (December 13, 1933) ***WD04:11:50.697 = Casey Crime Photographer, “Reunion” (June 03, 1946) ***WD04:35:49.460 = CBC Mystery Theater, “The Dream Woman” (May 01, 1968)05:04:49.273 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0703

In 1917, a dead Mark Twain "wrote" a novel through a Ouija board — and the lawsuit that followed forced everyone to ask who really owns a book authored from the afterlife.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ghostwritingREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/366f2snyFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Did Mark Twain write a new novel after he was dead? If so, how? *** Though David Parker Ray's girlfriend Cindy Hendy helped him commit numerous rapes and murders in the 1990s, she was released in 2019 and walks free today. *** Louis Le Prince vanished under mysterious circumstances, but did he willingly decide to hide from the outside world, or was he murdered? *** A man has a dream so disturbing that he’s deeply affected by it well after he dreamt it. And the reason it stuck with him could be that it wasn’t a dream after all – but a premonition of something horrible to come. *** Shortly after finishing her junior year of high school, Alissa Turner disappeared, never to be seen alive again. Her murder would’ve gone unsolved if not for the social media platform, TikTok. *** Humans have been fascinated with Mars ever since we learned it was a planet. But why are we so obsessed with it? Is it simply our next step towards deep-space travel, or are we drawn to it for a more basic reason… because our ancestors originated from there? *** There are many UFO sightings on record, but ones that are accompanied by missing time are particularly interesting. Perhaps not least as they might suggest something more akin to alien abduction than just a mere sighting. We’ll look at one particular incident that took place in Nebraska in 1966.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:26.278 = Do Copyright Laws Apply To Spirit Writing?00:13:54.317 = The Murder Solved Through TikTok ***00:19:27.188 = The Nebraska Time Affair00:35:44.438 = The Strange Dreams of Mr. Moir ***00:40:33.850 = Did Our Ancestors Live On Mars?00:52:06.275 = The Toy Box Killer’s Girlfriend ***01:01:04.695 = The Strange Disappearance of Louis Le Prince01:06:58.396 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Nebraska Missing Time Affair” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckjf4xe“The Toy Box Killer’s Girlfriend” by Marco Margaritoff for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8k8j79“The Strange Disappearance of Louis Le Prince” by Jan Bartek for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9f5zdd“The Strange Dreams of Mr. Moir” posted at Anomalien: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/33za3tej“The Murder Solved Through TikTok” by Olivia McCormack for Bust.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/42s9je2z“Did Our Ancestors Live On Mars?” posted at Earth-Chronicles.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4j8pcrwe“Do Copyright Laws Apply to Spirit Writing?” posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/nzsen4v5(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December, 2022This episode of Weird Darkness moves through posthumous authorship, serial murder, a vanished film pioneer, a TikTok-cracked cold case, alien abduction, Martian origins, and a premonition dug out of the ground.It opens in 1990s New Mexico, where Cindy Hendy helped David Parker Ray abduct, rape, and torture as many as sixty women inside the trailer he called his "Toy Box," a space fitted with ceiling mirrors that forced victims to watch their own suffering. Hendy tracked down targets and stood by while Ray tormented them with electric shocks and medical instruments, until Cynthia Vigil escaped on March 22, 1999, running naked into traffic in Elephant Butte with a dog collar around her neck after stabbing Hendy in the neck with an icepick. Sentenced in 2000 to thirty-six years, Hendy was released on July 15, 2019, because her plea deal predated a law requiring violent offenders to serve eighty-five percent of their terms, and she walks free today.From there the episode crosses to France and the case of Louis Le Prince, born in Metz in 1841 and credited as the forgotten father of motion pictures for building a sixteen-lens camera in 1888. He boarded a train from Dijon to Paris on September 16, 1890, waved off by his brother, and was gone when the train arrived, luggage and all. Thomas Edison spent years asserting sole ownership of cinematography, and Le Prince's son Adolphe, who testified against him, was found shot dead on Fire Island in 1902; a diary entry attributed to Edison and dated September 20, 1890, reportedly records that a man named Eric called from Dijon to say "Prince is no more."Next comes the disappearance of Alissa Turney, a Phoenix teenager last seen on May 17, 2001, after finishing her junior year and arguing with her stepfather, Michael Turney, who claimed she ran away to California. A 2008 search of his home turned up twenty-six homemade explosive devices and a ninety-eight-page manifesto, and he served time on federal bomb charges before his release in 2017. Alissa's younger sister, Sarah Turney, built a TikTok following past one million people around the hashtag campaign for her sister, and in August 2020 Michael Turney was charged with the murder.The episode then turns to a lonely road outside Columbus, Nebraska, on September 5, 1966, where a seventeen-year-old riding his motorcycle to meet his girlfriend's parents saw a completely circular object hovering roughly a hundred feet overhead, ringed with green, red, and yellow lights and emitting a low hum he felt resonate through his body. His engine raged and his wheels spun, but the bike held frozen in place; a five-minute trip took over thirty minutes, and he could never account for the missing time. The same night, radar at Finland Air Force Station in Minnesota tracked an oval craft with the same colored underside, prompting two F-89 jets to scramble from Duluth before it vanished.The Mars segment follows, examining why NASA, SpaceX, and Elon Musk remain fixed on a cold desert planet, and the fringe claim that human life may have originated there billions of years ago before Mars lost its magnetic field and its atmosphere was stripped away by solar wind. The piece leans on the detail that astronauts in space drift toward a 24.9-hour circadian rhythm matching the Martian day, and cites Haim Eshed, former head of Israel's space program, who claimed a secret underground base on Mars where American astronauts and aliens work together, alongside NASA scientist Jim Green's proposal to shield the planet with an artificial magnetic field placed at the Sun-Mars L1 point.Mark Twain surfaces next, seven years after Samuel Clemens died in 1910, when a novel called "The Coming of Jap Herron" appeared in 1917, purportedly dictated by his spirit through a Ouija board to Emily Grant Hutchings and Lola V. Hays. Hutchings, a Hannibal-born writer who had corresponded with Twain in life, had earlier channeled a supposed seventeenth-century spirit named Patience Worth, and psychical researcher James Hyslop tested the Twain claim by asking the ghost to relay the line "Hyslop is a cabbage head," a message that never arrived. Because Harper and Brothers held exclusive rights to Twain's work, his daughter Clara Clemens moved to block publication, and the resulting suit against publisher Mitchell Kennerley ended with every copy pulled from shelves.The episode closes in June 1870 near Boyndie, Scotland, where farm bailiff William Moir dreamed of a bloodied corpse lying on sloping ground near the shore, and weeks later helped carry a drowned asylum inmate over that exact spot, watching blood appear on the dead man's face when the body slipped from its board. The vision returned relentlessly through 1871 until, in January 1872, Moir took a spade to a place called Stakeness and unearthed a human skull and skeleton estimated to be at least fifty years old, in ground where villagers recalled a man named Elder had vanished decades earlier, reportedly murdered in the very room where Moir later slept. The discovery did not free him; he sank into a religious depression and died in October 1873.

The man appointed to lead one of FEMA's most important disaster-response offices had told podcast audiences he was once physically teleported roughly fifty miles to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/fema-teleportRELATED ARTICLE FROM APRIL 2026: https://weirddarkness.com/fema-teleportation/Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Five months after Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home, the FBI now believes none of the ransom notes tied to her disappearance are genuine — including the two her family thought were real.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/guthrie20260701Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A search of a Budapest apartment turned up skulls, a severed hand, a lower leg, and a heart in a jar — and the hospital orderly who lived there told police he had prepared and eaten human body parts.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/BudapestCannibalLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A man who met a woman through online video gaming flew from Canada to Salinas, hid a set of knives and restraints inside a fake Amazon box, and knocked on her door just before ten at night.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/salinas-amazon-attackLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A tough-talking builder tells his psychiatrist that a man he's never met keeps killing him in his dreams — and then she starts having the same dream.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “You Tell Me Your Dreams” (March 02, 1978)00:46:35.785 = 2000 Plus, “Alone” (January 15, 1950)01:17:02.267 = The Unexpected, “Handle With Care” (November 19, 1948)01:29:00.817 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Toll Bridge” (1936) ***WD01:43:27.147 = Dark Venture, “Coverup” (February 24, 1947)02:13:12.987 = The Weird Circle, “Red Hand” (May 06, 1945)02:40:35.083 = The Whistler, “Death Marks The Double Cross” (March 12, 1945)03:04:49.517 = Strange Wills, “Emeralds Come High” (August 24, 1946) ***WD03:34:32.610 = Witch’s Tale, “Rats In a Trap” (May 16, 1932)03:57:52.622 = X Minus One, “Reluctant Heroes” (December 19, 1956)04:26:25.428 = Zero Hour, “White Flame Burning Bright” (May 20, 1974) ***WD04:43:23.629 = ABC Mystery Time, “Four Time Loser” (1957) ***WD05:07:22.865 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0702

A roadside stop near Independence Mall led Philadelphia police and the FBI into an Olney basement stacked with chemicals, a 55-gallon drum plumbed into the ground, and an unsigned letter that name-checks Ted Bundy — inside a house tied to two women who vanished years apart.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/horschLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

When the supernatural seeps into our world, it doesn’t just leave behind fear—it can also leave sickness. From shadowy visitors to ominous dreams, some eerie paranormal encounters suggest that the price of witnessing the unknown may be paid in flesh and blood.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/SupernaturalSicknessREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/hp3ua63cFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: When the supernatural intrudes into our lives, it's not just our minds that are affected. We’ll delve into a few bizarre cases where individuals fell gravely ill after brushes with the paranormal. Is it coincidence? Or something more sinister? And could these illnesses be due to the paranormal literally draining us of life? (Supernaturally Sick, Paranormally Poisoned) *** Helen Duncan made a living from conducting séances—until her uncanny knowledge of classified World War II tragedies spooked British authorities. (Britain’s Last Witch) *** Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher whose ideas about mortality and utility extended beyond death. Bentham's wish for his body to be preserved and displayed as an "auto-icon" – so it could be seen publicly by all. And while his wishes were granted, it came with a few hiccups along the way… mostly with his poor head. (The Strange Story of Mr. Bentham’s Corpse) *** Annie Dorman was discovered lifeless with a gunshot wound, sending shockwaves through her tight-knit community. Suicide seemed improbable, leaving detectives baffled and family perplexed. Was it a crime of passion, an accident, murder… or truly suicide? In a similar case, just a few years later, in the serene countryside of Greenwich, New York, the lifeless form of Maggie Hourigan is found, floating in a tranquil pool, speculation runs rampant. Were these cases suicide, as hastily concluded, horrible accidents… or sinister murders? (The Mysterious Deaths of Annie Dorman and Maggie Hourigan) *** AND MORE!CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:02:11.442 = Show Open00:04:40.830 = Supernaturally Sick, Paranormally Poisoned00:21:39.741 = The Mysterious Deaths of Annie Dorman and Maggie Hourigan ***00:34:55.265 = Britain’s Last Witch ***00:43:19.651 = The Strange Story of Mr. Bentham’s Corpse00:54:21.727 = Eccentric Habits of History’s Elite ***01:04:25.454 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Supernaturally Sick, Paranormally Poisoned” by Nick Redfern for Mysterious Universe:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/6bu93dju“The Mysterious Deaths of Annie Dorman and Maggie Hourigan” by Robert Wilhelm for Murder By Gaslight:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/meu37k4m; https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4y9mn9a4“The Strange Story of Mr. Bentham’s Corpse” by Melissa Sartore for Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yt6uetju“Britain’s Last Witch” by Parissa Djangi for National Geographic: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8by87t“Eccentric Habits of History’s Elite” by John Munoz for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdh2dw3x(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 17, 2024Weird Darkness gathers five accounts in this episode: people who fell gravely ill within days of a paranormal encounter, two unsolved deaths of young women in the late nineteenth century, a wartime medium jailed for witchcraft, a philosopher who arranged to have his own corpse put on permanent display, and the private oddities of history's most famous figures.It opens with the argument that anemia and anorexia-like wasting can follow a paranormal encounter within hours or days. The Franciscan monk Joseph McCabe, who died in 1955, catalogued dozens of people who developed anemia soon after nighttime visits he blamed on the Mesopotamian demons Lilu and Lilitu. Albert Bender, the Bridgeport, Connecticut man who launched the Men in Black mystery in the early 1950s, endured migraines, stomach pain, memory lapses, and sharp weight loss after three phantom figures ordered him to drop his UFO research, then recovered, married, and lived to 94. In 1982, a fourteen-year-old named Robbie watched a flat black shadow crawl across his bedroom ceiling in Beckenham, Kent, was hospitalized with meningitis, and months later collapsed from acute anemia. Jim Harpur opened his door to two black-eyed children outside Orlando, Florida in March 2008 and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes three weeks afterward. In Nova Scotia, Michelle came down with severe ulcerative colitis two days after a vivid Slenderman dream in January 2017. The longest case belongs to Alison, a seventeen-year-old in Texas who shed roughly twenty pounds in six weeks in 1998 while a tall, pale Woman in Black appeared at her bedside each night, starting days after she and two friends used a Ouija board; sea salt and sage spread through the house ended the visits, and she recovered.From there, the episode turns to two deaths that juries could not explain. Maggie Hourigan, a 19-year-old servant in Greenwich, New York, was found floating face-down in a roadside pool on October 20, 1889; a first autopsy by Dr. S. Walter Scott ruled drowning and suicide, but a second team found a head wound inflicted before she entered the water, and Dr. Scott later sued the New York Sun for libel over its coverage and won a $6,000 settlement. Eight years later and a state away, 18-year-old Annie Dorman was found shot dead in her half-brother John Dorman's farmhouse near Cobb's Creek, Philadelphia, on September 1, 1897; the rusty pistol that killed her sat unused on a high shelf the five-foot-tall victim could not reach without standing on furniture that had not been moved, it had been fired five times, and the coroner ruled she was shot by a person unknown.Next comes Helen Duncan, the Scottish medium nicknamed Hellish Nell, who produced ectoplasm and channeled spirit guides named Peggy and Albert at séances across wartime Britain. In May 1941 she announced the loss of the H.M.S. Hood before the public knew, and that November she described the sinking of the H.M.S. Barham, which the government withheld until January 1942. Authorities arrested her at a Portsmouth sitting and tried her at London's Old Bailey beginning March 23, 1944 under the 1735 Witchcraft Act; a jury convicted her on April 3, and she became the last person imprisoned under that law, serving her sentence at Holloway Prison while Winston Churchill dismissed the case as obsolete tomfoolery.After that, the episode examines Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher born in 1748 who asked that his body be dissected, preserved, and displayed as what he called an auto-icon. Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith carried out the dissection three days after Bentham died on June 6, 1832, but his attempt to preserve the head with sulfuric acid and an air pump left it leathery and discolored, so a wax replacement by the French artist Jacques Talrich was fitted to the seated skeleton. The figure went on display at University College London, where students stole the real, shriveled head in 1975 and returned it after the university paid £10 against their £100 charity demand; the head later served as a soccer ball before being moved to a climate-controlled storeroom in 2002.The episode closes with ten eccentric routines of the wealthy and famous. Howard Hughes wore tissue boxes over his feet and wrote a manual instructing employees how to prepare and serve a can of peaches; Nikola Tesla fed pigeons in New York parks and called one white pigeon his muse; Salvador Dalí napped in a chair holding a key over a metal plate so its clatter would wake him; Marlon Brando dropped ice into hot coffee to drink it at once; Queen Elizabeth I whitened her skin with a mix of white lead and vinegar; Andy Warhol ate McDonald's nearly every day for two decades; Benjamin Franklin sat naked by open windows for what he called air baths; Michael Jackson traveled with a pet elephant named Gypsy on his Bad tour; Charles Dickens walked miles through London at night to feed his writing; and Albert Einstein gave up socks because his shoes already covered his feet.

A gigantic cigar-shaped craft shadowed a NATO airliner over the Atlantic in 1963, the same year similar motherships appeared over Australia, Canada, and the skies of a Britain overrun by headless creatures and desecrated churches.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/1963DarkForcesREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p87kmstFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: A “gigantic cigar-shaped UFO” is spotted over the Atlantic in 1963, but the witness is so terrified by her experiences that it takes her twenty years to come forward to tell her story. And in that same year, elsewhere in the United Kingdom, people were dealing with dark, paranormal, even satanic forces - with numerous events that still remain unexplained.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:18.783 = Show Open00:02:35.157 = The 1963 Atlantic UFO – Part 100:16:32.034 = The 1963 Atlantic UFO – Part 2 ***00:32:15.933 = 1963: Dark Paranormal Forces Invade The UK – Part 1 ***00:50:26.206 = 1963: Dark Paranormal Forces Invade The UK – Part 2 ***00:56:44.362 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The 1963 Atlantic UFO Encounter” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/z2j2zp88“Dark Paranormal Forces Invade The United Kingdom” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p93a79s(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January 05, 2022This episode of Weird Darkness opens over the north Atlantic in May 1963, where a NATO English-language secretary based in Paris, flying on a near-empty DC-8 carrying fifty staff from Orly Airport to ministerial meetings in Ottawa, looked from her window and saw a dark grey, torpedo-shaped object six to seven thousand feet below the plane — its rear cut off sharply and squarely, with no wings, windows, or visible propulsion — before it vanished into cloud and the aircraft dropped into violent turbulence. Terrified and certain no one else aboard had noticed, she said nothing for almost twenty years, until a 1980 letter to Flying Saucer Review brought the account to light and the magazine published it the following year. The segment threads her sighting into a longer record of cigar-shaped craft: Melvin Vagle Jr. and his wife spotting a windowed object hovering over a plowed field near Grafton, Nebraska on November 22, 1961; Miss Footner tracking a silver, hundred-foot craft over Saanich Mountain near Victoria, British Columbia in early 1960; Reverend Lionel Browning and his wife photographing a grey mothership over Cressy, Tasmania on October 4, 1960 as smaller discs darted out of the clouds and explosions later shook nearby houses; RCMP Constable James Blackwood watching a cigar-shaped object near Clarenville, Newfoundland on November 26, 1978 mirror his patrol car's flashing lights for nearly two hours; a couple camping at Hexham, New South Wales in late December 1984 seeing discs swarm a lit craft that seemed to carry a helmeted figure; and an anonymous Swedish driver on Route 55 near Orsundsbro in June 1985 stepping out of her car to study a windowed craft she first mistook for a police helicopter.From there the episode crosses to England, where the night of November 16, 1963 brought four teenagers walking home from a dance past Sandling Park near Hythe, Kent face to face with a human-sized, headless creature with wings on its back; seventeen-year-old John Flaxton and eighteen-year-old Mervyn Hutchinson had first watched a bright gold oval descend behind the trees, and Flaxton felt a sudden, unexplained cold as the thing came at them through the woodland. The same evening in Saltwood, Tony Harrison and three companions saw a glowing oval and a figure in a scarlet cloak holding a flickering lantern, and within days John McGoldrick discovered three giant footprints, each roughly two feet long, near the spot where Keith Croucher had reported an identical object over a football field. The story then opens out into a year-long British wave: a flying saucer interfering with a woman's car headlights near Bluebell Hill in Kent; two men setting up a tripod that fired colored lights into the sky over the Britannia Barracks in Norwich; a market researcher named Joelle in Castleton encountering men who claimed to be extraterrestrials with bases on two of Jupiter's moons; and a dome-shaped craft that reportedly landed at RAF Cosford on December 10, washing the base in green light before vanishing. Stranger creatures shared the year — the Surrey Puma and other big cats stalking Shooter's Hill in London from July 18, a half-man, half-horse centaur seen in Sefton Park by witnesses including a police officer, a bulldog-headed monster rising beside two fishermen on Loch Ness, and a dinosaur-like animal that scattered seals along Cardigan Bay and left a half-eaten carcass behind. The episode closes on a darker thread of occult activity: two children found playing with a human skull taken from the ruined St. Mary's Church at Clophill in Bedfordshire, where Maltese crosses, cockerel feathers, and six tampered women's graves were uncovered; six decapitated horse heads and a cow, their jaws wrenched apart, discovered in Bluebell Woods at Caddington; clay effigies pierced with thorns and a sheep's head studded with thirteen thorns nailed up at Castle Rising in Norfolk; and a group of self-styled Devil worshippers interrupted mid-ritual at an active church in Westham, Sussex on December 7 — all set against a 1963 that began with one of the worst winters on record, claimed Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell and the poet Sylvia Plath, saw Ian Brady and Myra Hindley begin the Moors murders, and ended weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy.

Short-staffed and well past midnight, a young nurse accepts an overnight shift in the one hospital room everyone else refuses to enter — and she experiences something unlike she has before.IN THIS EPISODE: “Silent Ward” by Keith ConradMORE Stories Like This: https://www.auditoryanthology.comOriginally aired: June 29, 2026EPISODE PAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/SilentWard

Decades of alien encounters may not point to other worlds at all, but to a ruined future Earth — where the last survivors of humanity travel back to our present, disguised as the aliens we expect, to harvest the DNA that might save their dying species.==========HOUR ONE: A Virginia pilot encounters a mysterious golden orb during a skydive flight! *** For those who claim to have spoken with extraterrestrials, they are told the aliens arrive here from other worlds. But what if the so-called aliens aren’t really aliens at all – what if they are humans, visiting from the future? We begin with that story! (Aliens: Us From a Future Time?) *** Horror and Sci-Fi author and Weird Darkness fan J.D. Buffington doesn’t believe in such things as ghosts. If Houdini couldn't reach his wife from the other side, then certainly no one else could, either, right? But that being said, J.D. has had some weird stuff take place in his life. (My Many Ghostly Encounters) *** Soon after moving into a sprawling Denver mansion, Russell Hunter sensed he wasn't alone. I’ll share true events that inspired the film, “The Changeling”. (The Real Life Haunting That Inspired “The Changeling”)==========HOUR TWO: Colorado’s best urban legends! *** A pitch black room at an inn, yields to a strange glow. (Comfort At The Comet Inn) *** Each year, hundreds of people simply disappear from parks and forests. What happened to them – and where are they? (People Are Vanishing Into Thin Air In Our National Parks) *** A series of unexplained incidents took place in the early 19th century at the Chase Vault, in the cemetery of the Christ Church in Oistins, Barbados. Each time the vault was opened to bury a family member, all coffins but one had changed position. (The Chase Vault)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: Known as California's Freeway Killer, William Bonin used a Ford van to lure in teenage hitchhikers to rape and ruthlessly murder. (California’s Freeway Prowler) *** A couple is haunted by a slain rooster! (Cock-a-Doodle BOO!)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“Virginia Pilot Encounters Mysterious Golden Orb During Skydive Flight” by Brandon Grimes for Paranormality Magazine: https://paranormalitymag.com/?ref=5714“Aliens: Us From a Future Time?” by Nick Redfern for Mysterious Universe: http://bit.ly/2JptCDF“My Many Ghostly Encounters” by J.D. Buffington from his Circus Sized blog: http://bit.ly/2YvapqF“The Real Life Events That Inspired ‘The Changeling’” by Orrin Grey for The Line Up: http://bit.ly/2xwnMLa“The Forgotten Epidemic” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2RUIA8M“Comfort At The Comet Inn” by Jubelee from YourGhostStories.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/93sauh8b“California’s Freeway Prowler” by Giselle Ruiz from All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3hrvrs8z“The Chase Vault” from Ghost-Story.co.uk: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2dzwvsjk“Cock-a-Doodle BOO!” by James McGuinness: (link no longer available)“People Are Vanishing Into Thin Air In Our National Parks” by an unknown author: (link no longer available)“Colorado’s Best Urban Legends” from Paranormality Magazine: https://paranormalitymag.com/?ref=5714==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

A skeptical reporter is sent to debunk England's most famous UFO hotspot — but the more nights he spends on Star Hill, the harder it becomes to dismiss what he sees, and the woman who keeps appearing there may be asking him to believe in far more than he ever bargained for.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “A Message From Space” (February 28, 1978) ***WD00:46:14.309 = The Sealed Book, “Death Spins a Web” (April 01, 1945) ***WD01:15:36.156 = The Shadow, “The Ghost Walks Again” (March 16, 1941) ***WD01:40:19.756 = Sleep No More, “To Build a Fire” and “Three Skeleton Key” (February 20, 1957) ***WD02:09:17.703 = BBC Radio 4 Spine Chillers, “Doppelganger” (January 01, 1977)02:34:22.138 = Strange, “Greenwood Acres” (October 10, 1955) ***WD02:46:54.981 = Suspense, “Defense Rests” (March 09, 1944) ***WD03:16:42.462 = Tales of the Frightened, “Mirror of Death” (November 27, 1957)03:21:37.453 = The Creaking Door, “Cards” (1964-1965) ***WD03:49:11.172 = The Saint, “Mr. Important” (October 15, 1947) ***WD04:17:00.318 = Theater 1030, “Trespassers Will be Experimented Upon” (1968-1971) ***WD04:45:47.834 = Tales From The Tomb, “Hooked” (1960s)04:50:01.149 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0701Tonight's #RetroRadio — Old Time Radio in the Dark brings together a full night of vintage horror, mystery, and supernatural suspense, from a UFO sighting on an English hillside to a steel hook left dangling from a car door.The CBS Radio Mystery Theater opens the night with "A Message From Space," written by Ian Martin and starring Tony Roberts, in which a skeptical American feature writer named Pete Heron is sent by his editor uncle to debunk the wave of UFO sightings around Warminster, England — an ancient stretch of Wiltshire ringed by 45,000-year-old burial mounds, or barrows, and crossed by invisible electromagnetic ley lines. Guided by a strange radio man called Bryce Bond up to Star Hill, Pete watches a glowing craft settle into a wheat field and leave behind a scorched, counterclockwise depression no wind could explain. But it's the violet-eyed woman named Maru who keeps appearing there — claiming to be a reporter, smelling of roses and lily of the valley, and seeming, somehow, entirely out of this world — who tests everything Pete thought he knew.From The Sealed Book comes "Death Spins a Web," a tale narrated from the pages of the keeper's ponderous volume about the dying Mrs. Oliver Drake, who summons her three worthless grandchildren — Blanche, Vivian, and the charming polo-playing scoundrel Chris — to her mansion and announces that her entire fortune will go to just one of them. As Chris courts both beautiful cousins at once to hedge his bets, a canoe trip across a deserted lake sets a deadly scheme in motion, and the old woman proves to be playing a far stranger game than anyone suspects.The Shadow presents "The Ghost Walks Again," with Lamont Cranston and Margot Lane traveling to a small New England town terrified by the apparition of Sir Roger Mathis, the village's stern Puritan founder, dead more than two hundred years. Townsfolk who favor opening the ancient meeting hall to the public keep turning up dead inside its torture stocks and presses, each victim clutching a death warrant signed in Sir Roger's own hand, and Cranston must determine whether a real ghost or a very human killer haunts the old colonial hall.Sleep No More, hosted by Nelson Olmstead with Ben Grauer, offers two literary terrors. First is Jack London's "To Build a Fire," the unforgettable Yukon tale of a confident, imaginationless newcomer — a chechaquo — who sets out alone across the frozen trail at seventy-five below zero with only a husky for company, ignoring an old-timer's warning never to travel alone in such cold. Second is George G. Toudouze's "Three Skeleton Key," the story of a lighthouse keeper stationed on a tiny rock twenty miles off the coast of Guiana, who watches a derelict three-master sail straight toward the light carrying a writhing, starving army of ship's rats that soon lay siege to the tower with three men trapped inside.BBC Radio 4's Spine Chillers delivers "Doppelganger," a modern psychological horror about Noah, a frazzled young assistant who keeps waking at exactly 3:44 a.m., drowning in FOMO and social-media envy as she frantically tries to be everywhere at once — her mother's birthday dinner, a girls' trip, an exclusive private members' club. When her doorbell camera records her leaving the apartment one night but never coming back, and a voice on the phone that sounds exactly like her own begins narrating her every move, the question becomes whether she's sleepwalking or being replaced.Strange, hosted by author and supernatural expert Walter Gibson, presents "Greenwood Acres," the account of Army Lieutenant Seth Proctor, who, on leave in a small backwater Georgia town in 1952, goes fishing among the water lilies and discovers a gleaming white plantation house that his landlady insists has been a crumbling ruin since a Civil War tragedy in 1865. There he meets a beautiful blonde woman named Laura swimming in the river, who somehow already knows his name — and whose own story is bound up with a jealous uncle named Cassius and a renegade Northern soldier.Suspense brings "Defense Rests," starring Alan Ladd as Robert Tasker, a young ex-convict and aspiring writer paroled into the law office of Max Krager, the only friend he's ever had, played by John McIntyre. When Krager's partner Arthur Hines — the very district attorney who once sent Tasker to San Quentin — turns up dead in his own office with Tasker's fingerprints on the paperweight beside him, the case looks open and shut, until a missing $50,000 and a switchboard girl named Peggy complicate everything.Tales of the Frightened tells "Mirror of Death," the brief, eerie story of Celeste Collins, a pretty Irish girl of twenty-one whose hand mirror shatters on the floor on the morning of her birthday — and who, despite dismissing the broken-mirror superstition as nonsense, receives a tall, gift-wrapped delivery that evening with a reflection waiting inside it.The Creaking Door, sponsored by State Express 555 cigarettes, presents "Cards," set at a charming English village fete where a devout vicar reluctantly agrees to have his fortune told with a pack of tarot cards by Mrs. Heyman. When she falls into a trance and warns him to fear death by fire, fear that which flies in the air but is not a bird, and fear the things of night — the bat, the wolf, and the leopard — the vicar plans to fly to Tanzania anyway to tour the mission stations funded by the fabulous Shelby Diamond fortune.The Saint stars Vincent Price as Simon Templar, the Robin Hood of Modern Crime, who refuses a five-thousand-dollar bribe to leave a corrupt town and instead hunts the unknown crime boss who gunned down his childhood friend, Treasury agent John Daniels. Following a trail of frightened informants — undertakers, a doomed dame named Rose Taylor, a bookkeeper named Al Boston, and a terrifying insect-obsessed killer called the Professor — Templar closes in on the one man whose name nobody dares speak.Theater 1030, a CBC Toronto production, offers "Trespassers Will Be Experimented Upon," a darkly comic supernatural tale by Anthony Lee Flanders about Nigel Hurdstrom, a winner of five Nobel Prizes, who drives his glamorous wife Vanessa across the Saskatchewan prairie toward a long-dreaded reunion. A storm strands them at the misty castle of the wicked Baron von Schenck — the mysterious figure who once taught a lonely farm boy everything the wind had to teach — and the pupil has come back to challenge his master, with a monstrous transplant machine waiting in the dungeon.Tales From The Tomb closes the night with "Hooked," the classic campfire legend of Ronnie and Cindy, two Jefferson High teenagers parked on a deserted road by the woods, who hear a radio bulletin about an escaped killer with a steel hook for a right hand just moments before a loud thud strikes the passenger side of the truck.

In a world that has finally outlawed war, every boy must still report for combat at fifteen — and Tom is about to learn exactly what that means.TRANSCRIPT: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8scp4f“The Invisible Enemy” by Arnold Castle, originally published in “Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy” October 1954https://weirddarkness.com/invisibleenemy

A bumbling, newly dead ghost can't remember the gestures that would let it leave — so a kindly skeptic offers to help, never guessing what the way out would cost.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/inexperiencedghostREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2x3w7t7vFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: A classic from H.G. Wells entitled “The Inexperienced Ghost”. It’s a short story that blends humor with the supernatural. It was first published in 1902 in the collection “Twelve Stories and a Dream.” The story centers around a man named Clayton who, during a gathering with friends at a London club, tells them an unusual tale about his recent encounter with a ghost. This ghost, however, is unlike typical spectral beings; it is inexperienced and rather inept at haunting. Clayton explains that he encountered the ghost at a house and discovered that it was struggling to perform its ghostly duties. The ghost, which had died only recently, was still getting accustomed to its new existence and was having trouble with the basic mechanics of haunting, such as passing through walls. Clayton, with a mix of curiosity and amusement, decides to help the ghost by giving it advice on how to properly haunt. But things begin to twist in the story, but I’ll refrain from spoilers so those of you who’ve not yet heard the story can enjoy it all the more. “The Inexperienced Ghost” is notable for its witty dialogue, playful exploration of ghostly themes, and its blend of the humorous with the eerie. Wells uses the story to subtly critique the conventions of ghost stories while also providing a unique take on the concept of the afterlife and what it might be like for those unaccustomed to it.LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Inexperienced Ghost” by H.G. Wells, from the book “Alfred Hitchcock Presents: My Favorites In Suspense”:https://amzn.to/4crM3TM(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 15, 2024

A broke private eye rides south to explain away a little girl's imaginary friend, and walks out of a pine-country farmhouse convinced the old man pushing her on the swing has been dead for years.EPISODE PAGE (includes list of sources): https://weirddarkness.com/noir-oldmanonsutterlaneTRANSCRIPT: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p84f78kTHE REAL CASE BEHIND THIS STORY: In February 1989, Andy and Lisa Wyrick moved into a brick ranch house on Swint Loop in Ellerslie, Georgia, a small town in Harris County about a hundred miles south of Atlanta. The land had once been an antebellum plantation, and the previous owners had walked off and left the house abandoned long enough for it to go to auction. The following month, the Wyricks' three-year-old daughter Heidi began describing visits from an elderly man she called Mr. Gordy — silver-gray hair, dark suit, top hat, shiny black shoes — who pushed her on the backyard swing. Not long after, a wounded man she called Con appeared at the front door, a bloody bandage on his arm and blood soaking his shirt.Both were eventually tied to deceased local figures. James S. Gordy had run a real estate company in Columbus, Georgia, served for years as Sunday school superintendent at Ellison Methodist Church, and was connected to the Swint Loop property as executor and caretaker before his death. (His death year appears inconsistently across sources, with some citing 1972 and most citing 1974; either way, he died well over a decade before Heidi was born.) Lon "Con" Batchelor had lost his hand in a cotton gin accident as a teenager, returned home in bloodied clothing with his arm in bandages, and died of cancer in 1957. Heidi, who could not yet read, picked Gordy out of a blind photo lineup and walked directly to his grave among hundreds of headstones in a local cemetery. She identified Batchelor — whose name she'd heard as "Con" — from a family photograph brought to the house by Catherine Ledford, who had previously owned the adjacent property and knew the family history.Beginning in 1993, the activity escalated sharply. Heidi and other family members began seeing a black, hooded, faceless figure that moved through the house, stood in Heidi's closet, and appeared at the foot of her bed. Objects moved on their own; a kitchen chair pulled itself from the table in front of two witnesses; scratches appeared on Heidi and her father Andy across consecutive nights. The Wyricks' second daughter, Jordan, born February 3, 1994, later began reporting interactions with an unseen child. Parapsychologist Dr. William Roll — an Oxford-educated psychologist who had spent eight years researching at Oxford before building a scientific reputation studying haunting phenomena — investigated the case. He recorded an electromagnetic field spike to over forty milligauss in the parents' bedroom against a residential baseline near one-tenth of a milligauss, found elevated positive ion concentrations near Heidi's room, and tied her perceptions to environmental sensitivity and documented seismic activity in the Columbus region. He could not explain the scratches. Roll also traced a reported family history of psychic sensitivity across several generations, extending back to Lisa's mother and to land in north Georgia along the Trail of Tears route.Roll brought in medium Amy Allan — later known to television audiences through The Dead Files — who walked the property under blind conditions and identified three entities in the back rooms: two older men and a faceless dark presence. A second psychic, brought in separately by the family, named the same three entities in the same locations and identified the fireplace as a portal. Years of mounting medical bills kept the Wyricks in the house long after they wanted to leave. After Heidi was found suspended upside down above her bed by an unseen force, they sold the property when she reached her mid-teens. She reported seeing apparitions in the homes that followed.Andy Wyrick died in 2012 at age 45; no cause of death has been widely reported. Dr. William Roll died the same year, in February 2012. Heidi Wyrick married a man named Aaron, relocated to Columbus, and built a career in the medical field. She stopped seeing Mr. Gordy around age eight but still reports seeing the dark figure, and has said in interviews across many years that not a day passes when she doesn't wish the events had never happened. The case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries in 1994, profiled in the Discovery Channel's 2002 documentary A Haunting in Georgia, and served as source material for the 2013 film The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia. Heidi's aunt Joyce Cathey published a firsthand account in The Veil: Heidi Wyrick's Story.WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: June 28, 2026

A drifter set to die in the gas chamber for a murder he didn't commit offers one last gift to the man who framed him — never imagining what that gift might carry.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Second Sight” (February 27, 1978) ***WD00:46:14.838 = Origin of Superstition, “Three On A Match” (December 16, 1932) ***WD01:00:44.894 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Don’t Tell Hilda” (February 27, 1949)01:29:14.739 = Peril, “Darkness Within” (1953) ***WD (LQ)01:58:15.099 = Mystery Playhouse, “Death is a Joker” (May 25, 1941) ***WD02:28:27.475 = Price of Fear, “Meeting In Athens” (July 07, 1973) ***WD02:55:48.036 = Ellery Queen, “Number Thirty-One” (September 07, 1947) ***WD03:24:14.186 = Quiet Please, “If I Should Die Before I Wake” (February 27, 1949)03:53:27.551 = Radio City Playhouse, “The Wind” (October 30, 1949) ***WD04:22:21.175 = Sam Spade, “Death of Dr. Denhoff Caper” (August 09, 1946) ***WD04:51:19.818 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.This episode of #RetroRadio — Old Time Radio in the Dark, hosted by Darren Marlar at WeirdDarkness.com, runs ten classic mystery, crime, and horror broadcasts back to back, from a condemned man who donates his eyes to the very person who framed him to Ray Bradbury's tale of a living, intelligent wind that hunts a man across the globe.CBS Radio Mystery Theater opens the night with "Second Sight," a February 27, 1978 drama hosted by E.G. Marshall in which drifter Larry Millard, condemned to die in the gas chamber for the shotgun murder of farmer Jason Hadley, volunteers his own eyes for an anonymous corneal transplant — handing his sight to Glen Plaxton, the businessman who actually pulled the trigger and framed him to protect a secret reservoir land-grab. After the surgery, Plaxton and his partner Tip Foster begin to suspect that the dead man's eyes may have carried more than vision.Next, Origin of Superstition traces the famous taboo against lighting three cigarettes from a single flame in "Three On A Match," a December 16, 1932 sketch that carries listeners back to 1899 and the Boer War in South Africa, where British officer Captain Frank Mattox laughs off the fire-reading warning of a Zulu medicine man named Grumbo, who reads ruin in the ashes and cautions of "danger in three."In "Don't Tell Hilda," the hard-boiled Pat Novak For Hire (February 27, 1949, starring Jack Webb) finds the San Francisco waterfront boat-for-hire man tangled in murder when a beautiful blonde claiming amnesia collapses dead in a coffee joint after a fatal dose of sleeping pills. Hounded by Inspector Hellman and helped by boozy ex-doctor Jocko Madigan, Novak traces her to a long-vanished heiress named Marcia Halpern and a fortune up on Pacific Heights.Peril offers the 1953 psychological case "Darkness Within," where Mrs. Diana Carson walks into the office of psychiatrist Dr. James Bancroft insisting that her mild-mannered stockbroker husband, Lionel Carson, seized the fireplace tongs and tried to murder her — then woke with no memory of the attack, much like the family cat she found poisoned in the basement. Bancroft must decide whether Lionel suffers a blackout-driven split personality or something far more deliberate.Mystery Playhouse, hosted by Peter Lorre, stages "Death is a Joker" (May 25, 1941), the courtroom confession of Charles Luther, a homely stage comedian on trial for his life who recounts strangling his friend Robert Langwell in a fit of jealousy over the beautiful Julie Wenthoff — and then, hour by terrible hour, is forced to think and act like the cunning criminal he never meant to become.The Price of Fear sends Vincent Price into the August heat of Athens for "Meeting In Athens," a July 7, 1973 chiller in which he befriends young English couple Mark Haxton and Gillian Gilroy on the Acropolis. When Mark vanishes after a late-night seaside villa party arranged by a heavyset stranger named Yannis, Price and Greek police officer Costas Polides uncover a black-market horror in which a man's rarest possession — his AB Rhesus-negative blood, recorded in the diary he kept on everything — can be worth killing for.Ellery Queen investigates "Number Thirty-One" (September 7, 1947), in which suspected international diamond smuggler George Arcaris always books Cabin 31 aboard the steamship Aegea, and a Park Avenue butler from Harlem named Arthur Prine — who liked to play the number 31 in the numbers game — turns up dead in the East River. Ellery and Inspector Queen connect the recurring number to a smuggling ring involving wealthy socialites Pip Istram and Susu Mounting, with guest armchair detective Kent Smith invited to solve it first.Quiet Please turns apocalyptic with "If I Should Wake Before I Die" (February 27, 1949), Wyllis Cooper's parable of Dr. Anderson, a coldly rational scientist who cares only for pure knowledge and never for its uses — even after his own brother Edward dies alone in an orbiting satellite rocket, and even as Project Phaeton, an atomic-fission projectile fired at the moon, sets loose consequences no equation predicted.Radio City Playhouse adapts Ray Bradbury's "The Wind" (October 30, 1949), in which Allen Henderson telephones his friend Herb Thompson again and again, convinced that a living, intelligent wind — one that has stalked him from a crash in the Himalayas across every typhoon and hurricane he survived — has finally surrounded his lonely stone house to claim him, while Herb's wife Jane dismisses the whole thing as madness.Sam Spade closes the night with the "Death of Dr. Denhoff Caper" (August 9, 1946), as Howard Duff's wisecracking detective is hired by psychoanalyst Dr. Gregory Denhoff to fend off a blackmailer named Nicolaitis — only for Denhoff to plunge from his penthouse window, the police to rule it suicide, and a stolen, microfilmed case history on actress Constance Brent to throw suspicion across the grieving widow, a Vienna-trained rival named Dr. Zoya, and Brent's hot-tempered husband.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0700

Five prisoners are kept awake for fifteen days in a sealed chamber — and what the researchers find when they open the door no longer wants to be set free. A blockbuster film series trails a string of real-life deaths its cast can't explain. On the back roads of Maryland, a half-goat figure waits for teenagers who wander too far. And one ordinary night in El Paso, a couple walks out of their home — dishes still in the sink, cat unfed — and is never seen again.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/russiansleepexperiment/READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3rr9mhjxFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The Russian Sleep Experiment *** The Poltergeist Film Curse *** The Goat-Man of Maryland *** The Patterson Family Disappearance *** The Legend of the LeprechaunCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:06.939 = Show Open00:01:55.409 = The Poltergeist Curse00:06:21.074 = The Goatman of Prince George’s County00:14:07.417 = The Lore of the Leprechaun ***00:16:55.345 = Vanishing of the Pattersons00:27:39.437 = The Russian Sleep Experiment ***00:43:05.653 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Russian Sleep Experiment”: http://bit.ly/36mHCc9"Leprechaun: One Of The Most Famous And Powerful Creatures Of The Irish Faerie Folk" (link no longer available)“The El Paso Vanishing (What Happened To The Pattersons?)”: http://bit.ly/2JHq3cW“Maryland’s Goat-Man Is Half Man, Half Goat, and Out For Blood”: http://bit.ly/2pEciVw“The Poltergeist Curse?”: http://bit.ly/36oH857(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 22, 2018Weird Darkness travels from a cursed Hollywood film set to a Maryland goat-monster, the cobbler-fairies of Irish legend, a vanished El Paso couple, and a blood-soaked Soviet sleep laboratory where the test subjects no longer wanted to be set free.It opens with the deaths that shadow the Poltergeist films, beginning with Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne Freeling from the original 1982 release through both sequels and died at twelve in San Diego in February 1986 during surgery for a bowel obstruction later traced to a congenital intestinal flaw. Dominique Dunne, who played older sister Dana Freeling, was strangled in 1982 by John Sweeney outside her Hollywood home, and Sweeney served just three years and seven months. Julian Beck, the gaunt preacher Kane of Poltergeist II, died of stomach cancer in 1983, and Will Sampson, who played the shaman Taylor, died after a heart-lung transplant — four deaths that fed a curse legend later thickened by JoBeth Williams' claim that Steven Spielberg used real human skeletons as cheaper props and by Sampson's own ritual cleansing of the set.From there the episode crosses into Prince George's County, Maryland, where the Goatman has stalked local legend for decades. One origin story sets him at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, a half-man, half-goat creature born from a USDA experiment gone wrong; another makes him a herdsman driven mad after teenagers slaughtered his flock. University of Maryland folklorist Barry Pearson traces his heyday to the 1970s and the 1971 decapitation of a puppy named Ginger in Bowie, an incident the Washington Post covered and locals pinned on the creature haunting Fletchertown and Lottsford roads, while Beltsville spokesperson Kim Kaplan dryly wonders whether a goatman that old would be collecting Social Security by now.Next the show turns to Irish folklore and the leprechaun, the solitary fairy whose name traces to a Gaelic root for a small body or a shoemaker. Standing two to three feet tall in a green or red coat and buckled shoes, he works as a fairy cobbler who stitches only a single shoe and never a pair, guards a hidden pot of gold, and trades three wishes for his freedom when a human manages to catch him. He lives in cave networks reached through rabbit holes and the hollow trunks of fairy trees, and damaging one of those trees is said to draw a lifetime of bad luck.From the green hills of Ireland the episode moves to El Paso, Texas, where William and Margaret Patterson left their home at 3000 Piedmont Drive on March 5, 1957 and were never seen again, dinner dishes still in the sink and their cat Tommy left without food. The owners of Patterson Photo Supply vanished without packing a suitcase, their associate Doyle Kirkland turned up driving William's Cadillac with a thin story about a vacation, and a telegram from Dallas signed with the wrong middle initial named Kirkland as William's replacement at the store. Decades on, caretaker Reinaldo Nangre claimed he had cleaned blood from the garage and found a piece of scalp on the boat propeller before dying in a car crash, and Sheriff Leo Samaniego floated the theory that the couple were Soviet spies photographing Fort Bliss, leaving a disappearance that was declared a death in 1964 and has never been solved.The episode closes in the late 1940s, when Soviet researchers sealed five political prisoners in a chamber and kept them awake for fifteen days with an experimental gas-based stimulant, promising freedom in exchange for thirty sleepless days. Paranoia set in after five days, screaming after nine, and when the chamber was opened on the fifteenth the soldiers found four men still alive amid their own torn-out organs, having eaten their own flesh and blocked the floor drain with it, fighting any attempt to remove them and begging for the gas rather than sleep. One subject, pinned for surgery without anesthetic, wrote only the words "keep cutting," and as the last of them was shot through the heart he claimed to be the madness that lurks in every sleeping mind, choking out that he was so nearly free.

A writer obsessed with the occult and forbidden knowledge uncovers a nightmarish secret lurking within a long-abandoned church—one that watches, waits, and is drawn to the dark.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/haunterofthedarkREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9ecf8yFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: I’m back with a classic horror story, requested by one of you, my Weirdo family members. “The Haunter in the Dark” written by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:00:59.102 = About The Story00:03:15.896 = The Haunter of the Dark ***01:05:59.476 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:POEM: “Nemesis” by H.P. Lovecraft: https://tinyurl.com/y466z69vThe Cthulhu Mythos: https://tinyurl.com/y22oe79f“The Haunter of the Dark” by H.P. Lovecraft: https://tinyurl.com/y33eprua(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 30, 2020On this listener-requested episode of Weird Darkness, Darren Marlar narrates H.P. Lovecraft's last known story, "The Haunter in the Dark," the centerpiece of a three-part collaboration with fellow horror writer Robert Bloch.The episode opens with how the story came to be written. Robert Bloch, then a young admirer of Lovecraft, published "The Shambler From the Stars" in the September 1935 issue of Weird Tales, setting his tale inside Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Two months later, in early November 1935, Lovecraft answered the homage by writing "The Haunter in the Dark" and dedicating it to Bloch; the story ran in Weird Tales in December 1936 (Volume 28, Number 5). It was the last story Lovecraft is known to have written before he died on March 15, 1937, and Bloch eventually closed the trilogy in 1950 with "The Shadow of the Steeple." The story's epigraph comes from the second stanza of Lovecraft's own 1917 poem "Nemesis."From there, the narration follows Robert Harrison Blake, a writer and painter of weird fiction who leaves 620 East Knapp Street in Milwaukee and takes the upper floor of an old house on College Hill in Providence during the winter of 1934–35. Blake grows obsessed with a black, abandoned church across the city on Federal Hill — a steeple shunned by birds and feared by the Italian neighborhood around it — and eventually breaks in, finding the moldering relics of the Starry Wisdom sect, a cult that took root after Professor Enoch Bowen returned from Egypt in 1844 carrying an artifact called the Shining Trapezohedron. In the windowless tower he uncovers the stone itself, a four-inch red-striated polyhedron that opens like a window onto other worlds, resting beside the charred skeleton of Edwin M. Lillibridge, a Providence Telegram reporter who vanished inside the same building in 1893. Gazing into the crystal rouses the Haunter of the Dark — an avatar of Nyarlathotep that can move only in blackness and is driven back by light — and the rest of the tale tracks Blake's collapse into sleepwalking, scorched hair, and frantic diary entries as a violent August thunderstorm threatens the streetlights keeping the entity penned in. When the power fails over Providence at 2:12 in the morning, the thing leaves its steeple, and Blake is found dead at his desk the next day with bulging eyes and a face frozen in terror, his final scrawled line describing a three-lobed burning eye — after which the physician Dr. Dexter hurls the box and the glowing stone into the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay.

A New York teenager lit a piece of paper, threw it at a sleeping homeless man on a Manhattan subway, and stepped back onto the platform as the doors closed behind him. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/carrero-subway-fireLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Investigators now believe the two February ransom notes sent to the Guthrie family came from the person who took Nancy — and one of them said she was already dead. *** ANYONE WITH INFORMATION CAN CONTACT THE FBI AT 1-800-CALL-FBI, OR THE PIMA COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT AT 520-351-4900.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/guthrie20260627Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Pulled out of Iran after his Strike Eagle went down, an American fighter pilot told intelligence officers he had watched a cluster of drones hover and move together as one body, like a jellyfish, in the seconds before he ejected.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/f15-jellyfishLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Dublin, Ohio spent $67,548 on a five-foot, four-hundred-pound robot that patrolled a parking garage for nearly ten months and never made an arrest, wrote a ticket, or flagged a single incident.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/dubbotREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

The circus came overnight, but when it left, three boys were dead—and I was no longer human. *** There are contestants from TV’s reality show “Alone” whom you’ve never seen—because they never made it back.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/CircusCameToTownCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:29.387 = When The Circus Came To Town00:13:52.485 = Alone ***00:51:09.612 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“When The Circus Came to Town” by Stephanie Scissom: https://tinyurl.com/y7slhth9“Alone” by 5yn: https://tinyurl.com/ybcllfpn(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: June 25, 2020

A grieving farmer's seance vow and a healer's vision of buried iron built the world's only school for talking to the dead — and left the town of Whitewater steeped in legends of witches, haunted cemeteries, and things that crawl out of the lake.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HauntedWhitewaterREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/WD20260626B-HauntedWhitewater-transcript.txtFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Whitewater legend says that the bizarre experiments conducted at the Morris Pratt Institute of Spiritualism in Wisconsin, to communicate with the dead, have left the town cursed by witches and haunted by restless spirits. It’s no wonder it has garnered the nickname of “Second Salem.” (Whitewater: The Second Salem) *** The Wild West had many drifters with troubled pasts. One found himself at the heart of one of the most infamous crimes in American history. Ben Kuhl went from horse theft, to stagecoach robbery, to murder – from notoriety to infamy – all in pursuit of elusive riches. Finally arrested and convicted due to a bloody handprint (The Last Stagecoach Robbery) *** Fred West was just a regular boy, or so it seemed. But behind closed doors, in reality, he was becoming evil incarnate. And upon meeting his future wife Rose, it only expanded his predatory predilections. Fred and Rose descended from petty crimes to unspeakable horrors of rape and murder – even of the most young and innocent. From their "House of Horrors" the depths of their depravity was acted out — hidden from site. But as the walls closed in and the truth emerged, the true horror of their crimes was laid bare. (The Evils of Fred And Rose West) *** AND MORE!CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:02:20.946 = Show Open00:04:34.008 = Whitewater: The Second Salem00:24:07.841 = The Evils of Fred And Rose West ***00:40:14.638 = The Last Stagecoach Robbery ***00:53:46.205 = Bygone Gluttons ***01:06:32.360 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Whitewater: The Second Salem” by Charlie Hintz for Wisconsin Frights: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9bktup“Bygone Gluttons” by Ben Gazur for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p99hjxj“The Evils of Fred and Rose West” from Biography: https://www.biography.com/crime/fred-west“The Last Stagecoach Robbery” from Creative History Stories: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdh3h8h5(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 16, 2024This episode of Weird Darkness travels from a Wisconsin school built to teach the living how to speak with the dead, through the cellar of one of Britain's most notorious murder houses, to the last stagecoach robbery in American history and a gallery of history's most ravenous eaters.It opens in Whitewater, Wisconsin, where farmer Morris Pratt vowed during an 1880s seance to build a temple to the spirit world if he ever grew rich. A trance medium named Mary Hayes-Chynoweth steered him toward a barren tract on Michigan's Upper Peninsula that turned out to sit atop the Gogebic iron range, and the fortune that followed funded the Morris Pratt Institute, the world's only school dedicated to spiritualism, which locals nicknamed the "Spook Temple." Students studied clairvoyance, levitation, and psychic surgery in a three-story building whose white-painted top floor was closed to non-believers, and even agnostic Chicago attorney Clarence Darrow left it admitting he was mystified. The school later relocated to Milwaukee and still operates, but Whitewater kept its reputation, earning the name "Second Salem" for its tales of the axe-murdering witch Mary Worth in Oak Grove Cemetery, the inward-pointing spikes on the Starin Park water tower, the haunted Witches Triangle formed by its three cemeteries, and a tentacled creature said to have overturned a fishing boat on Whitewater Lake in 1923.From there the episode moves to Gloucester, England, and the crimes of Fred and Rose West, who tortured, raped, and murdered young women and girls across roughly two decades. Fred, born in 1941 and shaped in part by head injuries from a teenage motorcycle crash, killed his pregnant lover Anna McFall in 1967 and removed her fingers and toes, a mutilation he repeated on later victims including his first wife Rena Costello and his own daughter Heather. He and Rose buried nine victims beneath 25 Cromwell Street, the address the press called the "House of Horrors," and added Heather to the back garden. Detective Constable Hazel Savage's investigation finally exposed them; Fred hanged himself in his cell on January 1, 1995, and Rose was convicted of ten murders that November and handed a whole life order.Next the show heads to the snowbound mountains around Jarbidge, Nevada, where on December 5, 1916, drifter Ben Kuhl ambushed the Rogerson-Jarbidge mail stage, shot driver Fred Searcy in the back of the head with a .44 revolver, and made off with a mailbag holding four thousand dollars in cash. A stray dog led searchers to the buried money, and Kuhl's ivory-handled pistol marked him as a suspect, but the conviction turned on a bloody palm print found on an envelope from the coach, the first time such forensic evidence sent a man to prison for murder in the United States. Kuhl drew a death sentence later commuted to life, served nearly twenty-eight years, and died of tuberculosis in San Francisco in 1946 without ever revealing where the loot was hidden.The episode closes with a parade of history's most extreme eaters, from Georgian London's Edward Dando, who downed hundreds of oysters at a sitting and walked out without paying until cholera killed him in prison in 1832, to seventeenth-century Kentishman Nicholas Wood, who ate raw sheep wool and horns included. It runs through Roman emperor Vitellius, who vomited between courses to keep feasting and invented a dish of flamingo tongues and lamprey entrails; the corpulent King George IV, lampooned as the "Prince of Whales"; the geologist William Buckland, who tasted moles, panthers, and a preserved fragment of a king's heart; and Elvis Presley and his pound-of-bacon Fool's Gold Sandwich. It ends with the most disturbing case of all, the eighteenth-century Frenchman Tarrare, whose bottomless hunger drove him to eat stones, live animals, and raw offal, and who was expelled from a hospital after he was suspected of devouring a fourteen-month-old child.

Two downed pilots wash up on a deserted Pacific island and discover that the atomic bomb tests there have bred something monstrous in the lagoon — and it's coming ashore. | Mysterious Traveler: “Strange New World”Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Loser Take it All” (February 24, 1978) ***WD00:46:58.849 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Doctor And Lunatic” (April 26, 1946)01:16:08.715 = Mr. Keen, “Mr. Trevor’s Secret” (February 17, 1944)01:46:10.329 = Murder at Midnight, “Death Across The Board” (September 18, 1946)02:12:35.073 = The Black Museum, “A Silencer” (1951-1952) ***WD02:39:11.673 = Mysterious Traveler, “Strange New World” (February 19, 1952) ***WD03:09:18.423 = CBC Nightfall, “The Chrysalids, Part 1” (June 10, 1983)03:39:33.359 = CBC Nightfall, “The Chrysalids, Part 2” (June 17, 1983) ***WD (LQ)04:07:01.729 = CBC Nightfall, “The Chrysalids, Part 3” (June 24, 1983)04:37:59.139 = Obsession, “Wind Song” (1950-1951)05:07:42.417 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0699

His fiancée disappears without a trace the night they were supposed to set their wedding date, and the deeper Peter digs, the closer he gets to a secret the government would rather keep buried.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Vanishing Lady” (February 23, 1978) ***WD00:47:12.759 = Lux Radio Theater, “Strangers On a Train” (December 03, 1951)01:42:29.027 = Macabre, “Man In The Mirror” (November 27, 1961) ***WD02:11:29.529 = Philip Marlowe, “Ladies Night” (February 21, 1950)02:42:27.542 = The Black Mass, “Nightmare” (January 18, 1964) ***WD03:09:50.427 = Michael Shayne, “Date With a Wedding” (May 14, 1945) ***WD03:39:01.077 = Beyond Midnight, “Sheriff’s Wife” (1969) ***WD (LQ)04:07:02.485 = Mindwebs, “When It Changed” (1976-1984) ***WD04:34:02.016 = Mystery In The Air, “Horla” (August 21, 1947) ***WD05:03:52.064 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0698

A mysterious gentleman who never aged, never ate, and never seemed to die charmed the high society of two centuries — until police found his wine bottles filled with blood.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/stgermainREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/WD20260625-StGermain.txtFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The mystery surrounding Count St. Germain is more than a little strange. Some think him to be a centuries old vampire. Others believe him to be a time traveler. And still others believe the whole thing to be a complete fraud. (The Vampire Time-Traveler) *** Escaping jail isn't easy, but we’ll look at some who did the impossible – escaping the most secure prisons, in the most daring of ways. (History’s Most Daring Prison Breaks) *** What would you do if you discovered that the church you attend every Sunday has a dark past that involves hauntings and supernatural phenomena? We’ll look at some of the most haunted churches in the United States – perhaps you attend one of them and don’t even realize it! (Most Haunted Churches in America) *** Benny Binion was one of the friendliest mobsters in Las Vegas… unless, of course, you made him mad. (Benny Binion, The Nice Guy Brute)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:46.615 = Show Open00:03:35.546 = St. Germain: The Vampire Time Traveler00:15:55.827 = Daring Prison Breaks ***00:35:47.335 = Benny Binion, The Nice Guy Brute ***00:52:51.426 = Most Haunted Churches in America ***01:00:52.327 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Vampire Time-Traveler” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2f2psdnm“History’s Most Daring Prison Breaks” by Mike Rothschild for Ranker’s Unspeakable Times:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p948z5e“Most Haunted Churches in America” by Rain-Screaming-For-Horror, posted at Vocal.Media:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8we2se“Benny Binion, The Nice Guy Brute” by Melissa Sartore for Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4rczaf27(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness moves from an immortal vampire said to haunt two centuries of high society, through history's most audacious prison escapes, into the bloody rise of a Las Vegas gambling kingpin, and ends among the haunted pews of America's churches.It opens in London in the early 1740s, where a man known as the Count of St. Germain charmed the upper classes with flawless violin playing, fluency in several languages, and a habit of handing out diamonds, prompting Horace Walpole — son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole — to describe him in a letter as odd and mad before the Count was arrested on suspicion of spying and released without charge. He surfaced next in Paris as a regular guest of Louis XV, working in a commissioned laboratory on fabric dyes and carrying out discreet missions, while gossip held that he could turn ordinary stones into jewels and had lived for hundreds or thousands of years, even claiming presence at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. After reported appearances aiding Catherine the Great in Russia and a friendship with Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel in Germany, where he was said to die in 1784, the story jumps to early-1900s New Orleans and a wealthy newcomer named Jacques St. Germain, who threw lavish parties yet never ate or drank, claimed descent from the Count, and bore an uncanny resemblance to him. The account turns dark when a woman leapt from his balcony into the street, telling police he had bitten her neck; St. Germain vanished overnight, leaving his belongings behind and several open bottles that proved to hold a mixture of wine and blood.From there the episode trades immortality for ingenuity, walking through the boldest jailbreaks on record. It runs from the 2016 Orange County escape, where Jonathan Tieu, Bac Duong, and Hossein Nayeri cut through walls and rappelled to a sixteen-hour head start, to Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán slipping out of Altiplano through a mile-long lighted tunnel in 2015, and Clinton Correctional inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt crawling through a steam pipe with tools handed over by prison worker Joyce Mitchell. Ted Bundy jumped from a Colorado courthouse library window, John Dillinger bluffed his way out of an Indiana jail with a wooden pistol painted in shoe polish, and yoga master Choi Gap Bok greased himself and squeezed through a six-by-eighteen-inch food slot in thirty-four seconds. The larger breakouts carry heavier counts: three men vanished from Alcatraz in 1962 on a raft of raincoats, more than 480 Taliban prisoners filed out of Kandahar's Sarpoza Prison through a thousand-foot tunnel in 2011, over a thousand Japanese prisoners stormed the wire at Australia's Cowra camp in 1944, and inmates at the Nazi death camp Sobibor killed eleven SS guards with homemade knives before running for the treeline.Next the episode settles in Dallas and then Las Vegas with Lester Ben "Benny" Binion, the cowboy-hatted racketeer who founded the World Series of Poker and shot rival bootlegger Frank Bolding in the neck in 1931, walking away with a two-year suspended sentence and the nickname the Cowboy. He killed gambling competitor Ben Frieden in 1936 and beat the charge after witnesses vanished, ran dice games and bookies out of Dallas hotels for high rollers like Howard Hughes and H.L. Hunt, then moved to Las Vegas in 1946 and turned the Eldorado into the no-limit Horseshoe, laying down the first carpet in a Vegas casino. His feud with Dallas gambler Herbert "the Cat" Noble ran through eleven attempts on Noble's life and killed Noble's wife Mildred with a car bomb before a mailbox blast ended Noble in 1951. Binion died on Christmas Day 1989 and was carried to the cemetery behind six black horses, while his son Ted was found dead in 1998 in a case that convicted Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish of burglary but acquitted them of the slaying, with the missing silver bullion never recovered.The episode closes inside America's churches, where worship shares the building with the dead. At Most Holy Trinity in Brooklyn, built over a former cemetery, parishioners report the spirit of clerk George Stelz, murdered in 1897, alongside bells that ring on their own and a bloody handprint in the bell tower stairway. The Washington National Cathedral carries the echo of Woodrow Wilson's cane and charred figures from a 1946 fire, while New Orleans' St. Louis Cathedral is tied to voodoo queen Marie Laveau, socialite Delphine Lalaurie, and six men executed on its grounds. At St. Mark's Episcopal in Cheyenne, a Swedish immigrant is said to have sealed his dead coworker inside the unfinished bell tower wall to avoid deportation, and at St. Paul's Chapel in New York — where George Washington prayed on his inauguration day — the spirit of actor George Frederick Cooke is said to wander still, his actual skull having traveled from a Philadelphia medical library and, by lore, onto the stage as a prop in Hamlet.

A woman screamed inside a Serra apartment for the better part of an hour, and the man with her told police he beat her to drive out the demons he believed had taken hold.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/marceli-gottardoLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Stephen Chavez got his eighteen-year-old daughter drunk and had sex with her two days after she moved across the country to live with him; she died by suicide five months later, and a Ventura County judge gave him one year in jail.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/makayla-settlesLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Police reached a home in Meerstad at 2:45 in the morning and found a married couple stabbed to death, the family dog wounded, and the couple's 15-year-old daughter in custody a short distance away.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/meerstad-murdersLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A Gold Coast illusionist drove into the rainforest before dawn, switched off his phone, and was found ten days later in the bushland he loved.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/magician-hidden-foundLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

The spirit had vowed to put John Bell in his grave, and on a December morning in 1820 a coma, a smoky vial of black poison, and a dead barn cat proved she meant every word.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/bellwitchfinallaughREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yfpsnbfwFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Did a malevolent spirit cause the death of John Bell, or was it something else that brought his demise? (The Death of John Bell) *** A man is awoken in the middle of the night by a piano – being played by no one. (Rock Isn’t Dead) *** Is it possible that ancient human skulls are conscious? (Cult of Human Skulls) *** Did the Watergate scandal hide a secret agenda? (Watergate: Wilderness of Mirrors)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:51.735 = Show Open00:02:11.866 = The Death of John Bell00:09:41.045 = Rock Isn’t Dead ***00:13:58.971 = Cult of Human Skulls00:20:31.984 = Watergate: Wilderness of Mirrors ***00:43:34.192 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Watergate: Wilderness of Mirrors” posted at The Unredacted: http://bit.ly/2JjZ0pr“Rock Isn’t Dead” by UnQuiet: http://bit.ly/2HfOZax“The Death of John Bell” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2HgkJwq“Cult of Human Skulls” by A. Sutherland: http://bit.ly/2Q1WbtT(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December, 2021Weird Darkness gathers four accounts of the inexplicable across this episode — a frontier farmer poisoned by a spirit, a midnight keyboard played by no one, the worldwide superstitions surrounding human skulls, and a hidden reading of the Watergate burglary.It opens with the death of John Bell, the Tennessee gentleman farmer remembered as the only man ever murdered by a spirit. For nearly four years the entity known as the Bell Witch had tormented his household with attacks, flying objects, and a disembodied voice, singling out Bell and his daughter Elizabeth, called Betsy, for the worst of it. On the morning of December 19, 1820, Bell could not be roused from a deep stupor, and his son John Jr. found the cupboard of prescribed medicines emptied and replaced by a smoky-looking vial holding a dark, nearly black liquid. The witch laughed over his bed and admitted she had dosed "Old Jack" the night before; when Alex Gunn brought in a barn cat and a straw of the liquid was drawn across its tongue, the animal screeched, whirled, and dropped dead. Dr. Hopson confirmed Bell had swallowed the contents, Frank Miles hurled the vial into the fire where it flared blue up the chimney, and Bell died early on December 20, 1820, never having woken.From there the episode turns to a quieter haunting, recounted by a father awakened at 1:14 a.m. on March 9, 2018 by a few composed notes from his twelve-year-old son's electronic keyboard. He found the boy sound asleep and the cat sitting upright on the bed, staring at the instrument, and when he pressed the keys himself no sound came because the power was switched off. The next morning he woke his son for school and recognized the boy's shirt, worn for the first time, as one that had belonged to his late brother, who died suddenly in 2015 and whose lifelong dream had been to play in his band, called Ghost Of. The shirt read "Rock Isn't Dead… it's just played by Ghost Of," and the brothers had shared a love of ghost stories and a standing joke that he would return to visit after death.Next comes a survey of the human skull as an object of dread and reverence stretching back through cultures on every continent, rooted in the old belief that the head housed the soul and offered a channel to the Other World. The segment weighs the disputed Celtic "Cult of the Head," with historian Ronald Hutton arguing the recurring head motif on Celtic metalwork reflects artistic fashion rather than worship, and moves through the 1612 trial of Lancashire witch Anne Chattox, hanged after she was accused of robbing graves for skulls and teeth. It gathers the screaming-skull legends of England, including Anne Griffiths of Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire, whose exhumed head was bricked into a staircase wall to quiet the slamming and crashing, and the skull at Bettiscombe Manor in Dorset, said to belong to an enslaved man brought from Nevis by the Pinney family and denied his promised burial in the Caribbean.The episode closes with a long, skeptical reexamination of Watergate that treats the official account as a fabrication. It returns to the June 17, 1972 arrest of five burglars inside the Democratic National Committee offices and the address book linking E. Howard Hunt to Nixon's White House, then argues, following journalist Jim Hougan's 1984 book Secret Agenda, that the men never actually bugged the building at all. James McCord, a senior figure in the CIA's Office of Security rather than the low-level technician he claimed, rented a line-of-sight surveillance room facing the wrong side of the complex, paid an employee to transcribe conversations from nonexistent wiretaps, and twice taped the stairwell locks horizontally across the door face so guards could not miss them. A key found on burglar Eugenio Martinez fit the desk of DNC secretary Ida Wells and pointed toward a suspected call-girl ring run out of the adjacent Columbia Plaza apartments, raising the possibility that Hunt and McCord, both career CIA men who lied about a decade-long association, sabotaged the break-in to shield a clandestine operation, to topple a president who had sidelined the agency, or both, taking the full truth with them to their graves.

David and Jane Francis come home from a European holiday to find the wealthy widow who'd sublet their country house dead of fright — and the rooms left behind tell of melted mirrors, scorched floors, and a circle burned into the wood that no living tenant should have known how to draw.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Church of Hell” (February 17, 1978) ***WD00:44:41.163 = The Haunting Hour, “Case of the Lonesome Corpse” (May 12, 1945) ***WD00:58:44.462 = The Hermit’s Cave, “The Nameless Day” (ADU)01:23:36.914 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “Faithless Wife” (ADU)01:46:32.934 = Sherlock Holmes, “Babbling Butler” (January 27, 1947) ***WD02:15:53.849 = Mystery House, “Death With a Punch” (April 28, 1946) ***WD02:41:53.489 = House of Mystery, “Gift From The Dead” (August 03, 1947) ***WD03:11:32.618 = Incredible But True, “Appointment Stockholm” (1950-51)03:15:09.461 = Inner Sanctum, “Dead Man’s Vengeance” (October 07, 1944) ***WD (LQ)03:35:40.413 = Jeff Regan Investigator, “The Lonesome Lady” (July 24, 1948)04:06:15.379 = The Key, “Extension of Time” (1956) ***WD04:31:17.317 = Lights Out, “The Signalman” (August 24, 1946)05:00:40.818 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0697

Step right up, Weirdos! Got a strange idea rattling around in your skull — a haunting nobody believes, a cryptid your uncle swears he saw, some true-crime case that still keeps you up at night? Jukebox Weirdo turns it into a real, honest-to-goodness song. You bring the weird, you pick the band off the Weird Darkness Records roster, and I write it and produce it — with your name on the idea. And if it's a keeper, I'll send it out to Spotify, iHeart Radio, YouTube Music, and everywhere else, so you can crank it for everybody you know and holler, "THAT'S my song!" Want in? Become an Official Weirdo at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL and send me your idea. Let's make something strange together!

Two young Parisians dreaming of artistic greatness stumble upon a squalid countryside farm, where one becomes fatally transfixed by a strange, silent girl the family keeps like livestock — and the price of his masterpiece may be more than either of them can imagine.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Nighteyes” (February 13, 1978) ***WD00:44:52.381 = Faces In The Window, “Pit And the Pendulum” January 24, 1953) ***WD01:16:57.706 = Dark Fantasy, “Cup of Gold” (May 08, 1942) ***WD01:41:08.547 = BBC Fear on 4, “By The River, Fountainebleau” (February 14, 1988)02:11:47.932 = Future Tense, “Protection” (May 29, 1974) ***WD (LQ)02:35:01.801 = BBC Ghosts From The Past, “Mortmain” (April 22, 1992)03:20:24.273 = Columbia Workshop, “Half Pint Flask” (July 06, 1939)03:49:41.327 = Hall of Fantasy, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (June 01, 1953) ***WD04:13:19.188 = Harry Lime, “Voodoo” (August 31, 1951) ***WD04:37:18.634 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “The Grey Ones” (August 11, 1984)05:03:59.833 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0696

A Phoenix musician snapped two clear photos of a flying saucer in 1947 — then government agents with hidden names showed up, took his negatives, and made the evidence vanish into federal archives forever.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RhodesMIBREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8z656hFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Natalie Bollinger seemed to have her whole life ahead of her, but beneath the surface was a dark and tragic story that would end in obsession, danger, and a horrifying Craigslist ad that no one saw coming. (Natalie Bollinger – Stalked, Betrayed, and Forgotten) *** Oregon’s scenic beauty hides a darker side, where ghostly encounters and eerie legends bring the state’s haunted history to life. We’ll look at five of the most haunted places in The Union State. (Five Haunted Locations in Oregon) *** Andrew Keegan went from ’90s heartthrob to the charismatic leader of a crystal-charged spiritual group, where eerie rituals and strange coincidences blur the line between community and cult. (Teen Heartthrob to Cult Leader) *** The Dakota is more than just a historic NYC landmark—its dark history of ghostly encounters, untimely celebrity deaths, and eerie connections will leave you with chills. (Famous Phantoms of the Dark Dakota Building) *** A wild night in 1979 – Chicago’s Comiskey Park turned into a chaotic battlefield as tens of thousands of disco-hating fans lit records on fire, sparked a riot, and may have sealed the fate of an entire music genre. It’s the night “Disco Inferno” turned literal. (The Night Disco Burned) *** When a man in 1947 captured stunning photos of a UFO over Phoenix, he unknowingly invited the shadowy Men in Black into his life, sparking one of the earliest and most chilling accounts of government secrecy and dark intimidation. (First Documented Encounter With The Men In Black) *** The U.S. has a seven-step plan for meeting aliens, and it’s a mix of science fiction, strategy, and some downright unsettling steps you won’t believe. (First Contact or Planetary Catastrophe?)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:56.144 = Show Open00:04:35.317 = The First Documented Encounter With The Men In Black00:18:57.349 = First Contact, Or Planetary Catastrophe ***00:26:17.432 = Natalie Bollinger – Stalked, Betrayed, and Forgotten00:35:41.483 = Five Haunted Locations in Oregon ***00:48:27.369 = The Night Disco Burned00:55:11.587 = Teen Heartthrob to Cult Leader01:03:27.692 = Famous Phantoms of the Dark Dakota Building ***01:07:45.841 = Facing Fear For Fun01:10:30.883 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The First Documented Encounter With The Men In Black”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_UFO_photographs,https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-original-men-in-black-3849054,https://www.history.com/news/men-in-black-real-origins, https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2024/08/Are-Men-in-Black-Real-At-Least-One-Was/“Natalie Bollinger – Stalked, Betrayed, and Forgotten”: https://cattstruecrimecorner.com/the-case-of-natalie-bollinger/,https://genwhypod.com/blogs/the-generation-why-podcast-blog/the-murder-of-natalie-bollinger,https://lauthmissingpersons.com/murder-natalie-bollinger/, https://klakstrom.medium.com/the-strange-murder-of-natalie-bollinger-16110ddaefb7, https://www.truecasefiles.com/2019/12/the-murder-of-natalie-bollinger.html,https://bekah302.medium.com/of-stalking-craigslist-and-social-media-the-case-of-natalie-bollinger-6846c98a8cc5“Five Haunted Locations In Oregon”: https://the-line-up.com/haunted-places-in-oregon (used verbatim with permission)“Facing Fear For Fun”: https://www.southernfriedtruecrime.com/annalisa-netherly,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Read_House_Hotel, https://www.clthomas.org/post/the-read-house-hauntings-and-legends, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thoughts-thinking/201810/5-reasons-we-enjoy-being-scared,https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-do-we-like-to-get-scared, https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-we-like-to-be-scared, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-fear-feels-good“Teen Heartthrob To Cult Leader”: https://people.com/andrew-keegan-looks-back-insane-spirituality-venture-cost-tens-of-thousands-sparked-cult-rumors-8576493, https://ew.com/andrew-keegan-responds-rumors-he-started-cult-8576464,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Keegan, https://www.ranker.com/list/andrew-keegan-cult-facts/carly-silver“Famous Phantoms of the Dark Dakota Building”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_John_Lennon,https://jessicajewettonline.com/ghosts-of-the-dakota-building, https://the-line-up.com/the-dakota-building,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dakota, https://www.ranker.com/list/dakota-building-curse/april-a-taylor,“First Contact or Planetary Catastrophe”: https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/communications_with_extraterrestrial.pdf, https://www.livescience.com/19360-humans-discover-aliens.html, https://listverse.com/2017/03/12/10-laws-rules-and-regulations-for-extraterrestrial-contact/, https://www.livescience.com/alien-contact-protocol.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-detection_policy,https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-the-seven-steps-to-contact/laura-allan“The Night Disco Burned”: https://www.britannica.com/event/Disco-Demolition-Night,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night, https://edm.com/features/remembering-disco-demolition-night-1979, https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-disco-demolition-night/melissa-sartore; Audio Clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAJfOcnYYEQ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWCRu-yVEFU(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included

A pickup driver who told troopers he had just seen the anti-Christ ran past every first responder on a closed stretch of I-75 and yanked open the pilot's door of the helicopter sent to airlift the two people he had badly injured.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/antichrist-helicopter-heistLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Jamie Varley told police his adopted son drowned in the bath, but the baby's hair was dry, his nappy was still on, and a post-mortem found forty injuries.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/babyprestonLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A 21-year-old Plymouth State student was shot in the head inside her own family's home, and the person charged with pulling the trigger is her teenage brother.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/leah-andersonLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Three men walked into Kyle Bevan's cell at one of England's most secure prisons, stabbed him more than 25 times, tucked his body into bed to look asleep, and walked out four minutes and 39 seconds later.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/three-inmates-wakefieldLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.PHOTO INFO:Top Left: Mark Fellows, known as “The Iceman,” was already serving a whole-life term for two gangland murders. West Yorkshire Police / SWNSTop Center: David Taylor was also serving time for murder and awaiting trial over a separate killing when the prison attack took place. West Yorkshire Police / SWNSTop Right: Lee Newell was previously convicted of killing another child killer inside his prison cell in 2013. West Yorkshire Police / SWNSBottom Center: Kyle Bevan, who was serving a life sentence for killing his partner’s toddler, was stabbed to death by three inmates. Dyfed-Powys Police / SWNS

A ransom note sent five days after 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home opened with an apology for her death — and offered to return her body for a price.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/Guthrie20260622Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Across four decades on Heswall's Dawstone Road, drivers and a motorcyclist reported a seven-foot horned figure that seized their vehicles and threw them into the sandstone wall.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/DawstoneDemonREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2en5ubwwFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Dawstone Road is where some say the veil between our reality and the unknown is thin. A motorist's brush with death in 1961 sparked a chain of inexplicable events. From encounters with horned entities to unexplained accidents, the road holds secrets that seem to defy rational explanation. (The Demon of Dawstone Road) *** There is a dark history and supernatural secrets at the Manila Film Center. Built as a symbol of power and prestige during the Marcos regime, its construction was rushed, resulting in a catastrophic collapse that claimed numerous lives. But the horror didn't end there. Stories of hauntings, spectral hands reaching out, and cries for help still echo through its halls. (Horrors At Manila Film Center) *** When 19-year-old Kenneka Jenkins vanished during a hotel party, it sparked a viral whirlwind of speculation and suspicion. Despite authorities ruling her death an accident, questions lingered – as they should, seeing as her body was found in the hotel freezer. (Frozen Corpse at Crown Plaza) *** For over a century, these ghostly orbs have captivated and spooked travelers in Queensland, Australia. Are they supernatural spirits or mere mirages? (The Ghostly Orbs of Min Min) *** AND MORE!CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:07.004 = Demon of Dawstone Road00:11:30.917 = Horrors at Manila Film Center ***00:31:46.055 = Frozen Corpse at Crown Plaza ***00:40:24.583 = Ghostly Orbs of Min Min00:50:15.674 = Blowing Smoke Up Your Enema ***00:56:56.461 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Blowing Smoke Up Your Enema” by Bipin Dimri for Historic Mysteries: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckujv2n“The Demon of Dawstone Road” by Tom Slemen for Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/muvz6wbv“Horrors At Manila Film Center” by Lucia for TheGhostInMyMachine.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/9es3ka3j“Frozen Corpse at Crown Plaza” by Amanda Sedlak-Hevener for Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8drf6j“The Ghostly Orbs of Min Min” by Kimberly Lin for Historic Mysteries: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ea9zway9(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 15, 2024This episode of Weird Darkness travels from a haunted stretch of English road and a tower built on dead workers to a teenager found frozen in a hotel kitchen, a century of phantom lights in the Australian Outback, and an 18th-century medical practice involving tobacco and a part of the body it had no business near.It opens on Dawstone Road in Heswall, where a Neston motorist crashed through a six-foot sandstone wall in the winter of 1961 and later told a surgeon at Clatterbridge Hospital that a horrible devil had pushed his car sideways, despite no alcohol in his blood. That March, a 23-year-old Wallasey man named Rory was thrown from his motorbike at the Baskervyle Road junction by a seven-foot horned figure that seized his handlebars, and he woke to a face with pointed ears and luminous eyes muttering about the pit. The road's reputation reaches back to November 1934, when a posse hunted a demonic creature that a wealthy mansion owner blamed on his escaped bulldog, an explanation a local policeman rejected by asking how a broad bulldog squeezed through iron gate bars. The pattern continued through a stalled Hillman Imp shoved backwards in 1969 and a nurse's 1978 sighting of a horned man in black standing beside a ten-foot hole that glowed red and echoed with screaming.From there the episode moves to the Manila Film Center, the cinema palace Imelda Marcos rushed to completion for the first Manila International Film Festival in January 1982, where part of the structure collapsed on November 17, 1981 and buried workers in wet cement during a 24-hour construction schedule. Eyewitness Nena Benigno described seeing men carried out frozen in cement that had not fully hardened, while official counts from the Marcos regime claimed only a handful of deaths against outside estimates ranging as high as 169. Architect Froilan Hong put the toll at seven and denied the burial stories, yet legends persisted that the dead were entombed in the walls, and a medium reportedly brought in by Imelda Marcos to exorcise the building announced during a trance that the spirits now numbered 169 after the road death of project supervisor Betty Benitez.Next comes the death of 19-year-old Kenneka Jenkins, found face-down in a walk-in freezer at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare in Rosemont on the morning of September 11, 2017, nearly a full day after security footage caught her stumbling through the hotel and entering an unused kitchen. The Cook County Medical Examiner ruled the death an accident from hypothermia, with a blood-alcohol level of 0.112 and epilepsy medication cited as contributing factors, but her mother Teresa Martin questioned how a teenager could open the freezer's heavy steel doors and filed a $50 million lawsuit against the hotel. Viral speculation drew comparisons to the 2013 death of Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel, fueled by footage in which background music was mistaken for a cry of help and an anonymous tip claiming a gang had killed her for $200.The episode then crosses to the Outback near Boulia in Queensland, where Min Min lights have trailed travelers since Europeans first documented them in 1838, hovering about three feet off the ground, changing color, and following people on foot, on horseback, and in cars. A stockman riding past the burned ruins of the Min Min Hotel reported a glow the size of a watermelon that chased him to the edge of town, and Arrernte elder Mavis Malbunka tied the lights to a Dreamtime story of a mother searching for a child fallen from the Milky Way. University of Queensland physiologist Jack Pettigrew traced the phenomenon to a Fata Morgana, an optical illusion in which warm air over cold bends light from sources hundreds of kilometers beyond the horizon, a finding he published in 2003 after recreating the effect with car headlights ten kilometers away.The episode closes on the tobacco enema, the 18th-century practice of blowing smoke into a patient's rectum to revive the drowned, with resuscitation kits hung near English waterways for emergency use. Nicholas Culpeper adapted the method from Native American medicine and Richard Mead carried it forward, and an early 1746 account credits a husband with reviving his apparently drowned wife by inserting a pipe stem and puffing smoke through it. Nicotine absorbed this way could raise a patient's heart rate, which gave the treatment a plausible mechanism, and the 1774 Institution for Affording Immediate Relief to Persons Apparently Dead from Drowning built its work around it before being renamed the Royal Humane Society, which still operates in England today.

A young woman hired to care for an invalid widow in a crumbling Hudson River mansion soon learns why her brooding employer forbids every mirror in the house—and why the dogs are always watching.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Reflected Terror” (February 10, 1978) ***WD00:46:05.827 = Deep Night CBC, “Ice Screams” (August 05, 2005)01:20:02.229 = Calling All Detectives, “The Necktie” (1947)01:29:12.083 = The Devil and Mr. O, “Balance Sheet” (December 24, 1971(01:59:18.938 = Diary of Fate, “Walter Vincent” (May 25, 1948) ***WD02:28:14.559 = Dimension X, “The Parade” (August 25, 1950) ***WD02:55:28.216 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “The Man Who Lived Twice” (January 30, 1945) ***WD03:08:09.231 = The Eleventh Hour, “Bomb” (ADU)03:34:51.891 = Escape, “Action” (July 21, 1949)04:04:04.818 = Murder By Experts, “The Big Money” (July 25, 1949)04:33:28.472 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Diamond Mountain of Venus / aka Inferiority” (June 04, 1958)04:53:28.724 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0695

A 36-year-old bartender came home from her overnight shift in Brooklyn, and within hours her teenage son and her sister found her dead on the floor with her neck cut.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/santos-floresLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A three-year-old visiting Johnson's of Old Hurst ended up inside the crocodile enclosure, was pulled out by a member of the family that runs the zoo, and the stranger arrested over it was assessed as unfit for police interview.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/croc-enclosure-boyLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Five drivers were shot along Interstate 70 the evening Kansas City opened its World Cup, and the man police are hunting has not been found.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/kc-world-cup-shootingsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

On a bright July afternoon in 1986, twenty-five-year-old London estate agent Suzy Lamplugh left her office to show a house to a client her diary noted only as "Mr Kipper," and she was never seen again.==========HOUR ONE: It is considered by many, Britain’s most well-known disappearing person case. Even now, over three decades later, people in the UK are still fascinated and intrigued by the unexplained vanishing of Suzy Lamplugh. (The Suzy Lamplugh Mystery) *** John List planned the murders of his own family so carefully, he almost got away with it. In fact, it took 18 years to catch him. (The Family Man Who Murdered His Family) *** We’ll look at what it was like to be a woman in the 17th Century… and accused of witchcraft. (Witchly Accusations) *** If you drink whiskey, or even if you don’t, you’re likely familiar with “Jameson Irish Whiskey.” But did you know that cannibalism played a part in its history? (Whiskey and Cannibalism) *** A strange phenomenon takes place in Arkansas, and despite the numerous sightings and investigations, there is still no explanation for it. (Unexplained In Arkansas)==========HOUR TWO: Seeing a lifelike human skeleton in a doctor’s office, especially in the past couple of centuries, was – and in many cases still is - commonplace. But where did one go to get such lifelike skeletons if you were a doctor in the 1800s? Why, a skeleton factory, of course! (The Skeleton Factory) *** The story of Kate Watson is a grim one – living as a prostitute in the Old West, and when that wasn’t enough she took up cattle rustling. Her husband wasn’t any better. So it’s probably no surprise that she was strung up until dead. But maybe you should wait to pass judgement until you hear the whole story. (The Lynching of Cattle Kate) *** In March of 2004, teenager Brianna Maitland left work in the late evening hours and was never seen again. To this day it is still one of Vermont’s most infamous mysteries. (The Vanishing of Brianna Maitland) *** Plus, “The Haunted Adirondack Mountains”==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: Parents always feel their child is special in some way – something that makes their child better in some way than other children. Parents of indigo children are no different, with some parents thinking their children have psychic abilities. Doctors say that these children have ADD or ADHD, but one parapsychologist says indigo children have something even more special – possibly even paranormal - inside them. (Supernatural Indigo Children) *** When you think of a mad scientist you most likely think of Victor Frankenstein – but it’s rumored Mary Shelley took inspiration for the character from a real mad scientist by the name of Andrew Ure. (Andrew Ure: A Real Life Mad Scientist) *** The story of Kate Watson is a grim one – living as a prostitute in the Old West, and when that wasn’t enough she took up cattle rustling. Her husband wasn’t any better. So it’s probably no surprise that she was strung up until dead. But maybe you should wait to pass judgement until you hear the whole story. (The Lynching of Cattle Kate)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:"The Suzy Lamplugh Mystery” by Amelia Gentleman for The Guardian: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2v2z6tp6“The Family Man Who Murdered His Family” from The Line Up: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/392yt322“Witchly Accusations” by Jessica Nelson for the UK’s National Archives: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/j7nnd3ax“Whiskey and Cannibalism” posted at The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/9rx24777“Supernatural Indigo Children” by Gina Dimuro for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/apk85b29“Unexplained in Arkansas” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/27zaptdb“Haunted Adirondack Mountains” by Molly Briggs for Paranormality Magazine: http://weirddarkness.com/magazine“The Skeleton Factory” from Strange Ago: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2j8reje3“Andrew Ure: A Real Life Mad Scientist” posted at The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3n5tfpeh“The Murder of Nurse Cindy” posted the The Trouble With Justice: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2kfah7mv“The Lynching of Cattle Kate” posted at Strange Company: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/utdy2sh6“The Vanishing of Brianna Maitland” by Orrin Grey for The Line Up: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/je9s98ru==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

Centuries before Hollywood dressed it in a nun's habit, the demon Valak prowled the pages of forbidden grimoires as a winged boy astride a two-headed dragon, commanding legions of serpents to do his bidding.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources):https://weirddarkness.com/valekREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/24s8nzb9FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Although Valak is depicted in the films "The Nun" and in “The Conjuring 2” as a habit-wearing spirit, the real demon appears as a child riding a two-headed dragon — at least according to a 17th-century demon-hunting manual. (The Reality Behind The Demon, Valak) *** The Vatican is one of the most well-guarded areas in the world. But if rumors are to be believed, all that security isn’t only to protect the pontiff… but some dark, disturbing secrets… and a machine that could change everything we know to be true. (The Vatican’s Secret Machine) *** We’ll look at that time a force field was accidentally created at a 3M plant. (3M’s Accidental Force Field) *** In 1872 George Wheeler met and married May Tillson in Boston. He made a home for May and her younger sister Della, first in New York, then in California. Along the way, George fell in love with young Della and when she planned to marry someone else he was faced with a dilemma: he could not marry her himself and he could not bear to see her wed to another. The solution he chose pleased no one. (Thus She Passed Away) *** In the 1800s scientists and doctors needed cadavers to study human anatomy and practice their skills. To help accommodate the need, it was made legal to sell dead bodies. What could possibly go wrong? (The Unsettling Anatomy Act)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:16.547 = Show Open00:03:31.777 = The Reality Behind The Demon Valak00:11:37.807 = The Unsettling Anatomy Act ***00:24:33.689 = 3M’s Accidental Force Field00:34:11.149 = Thus She Passed Away ***00:44:01.086 = The Vatican’s Secret Machine00:53:13.339 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Reality Behind The Demon, Valak” by Gina Dimuro for All That’s Interesting:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/43vu356n“3M’s Accidental Force Field” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3vvnwbpv“Thus She Passed Away” by Robert Wilhelm for Murder By Gaslight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yyztmnat“The Unsettling Anatomy Act” by SM for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8vdns9“The Vatican’s Secret Machine” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8kxxz8(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness moves from a centuries-old demon mistaken for a nun, through the Victorian trade in stolen corpses and a force field that appeared inside a 1980 factory, to a San Francisco trunk murder and a Catholic priest who claimed to have built a machine that could film the past.It opens with the demon Valak, who reaches modern audiences through The Nun and The Conjuring 2 as a pale, nun-robed figure but appears in the 17th-century grimoire Clavicula Salomonis Regis, or The Key of Solomon, as the 62nd spirit: a boy with angel's wings riding a two-headed dragon, commanding a legion of serpents and an army of thirty demons while hunting snakes and hidden treasure. The nun costume was the invention of director James Wan, who reshaped a vision the medium Lorraine Warren described to him — a swirling hooded figure carrying female energy — into a holy icon turned against her Catholic faith. Warren and her husband Ed, the demonologists who rose to fame after the 1976 Amityville investigation, reportedly met a spectral hooded figure at the Borley church in southern England, where lore held that a nun had been bricked alive in the convent walls after an affair with a monk. The Key of Solomon, which lists the seventy-two demons King Solomon was said to have vanquished, sat on the Vatican's Index librorum prohibitorum until the Church abandoned that list of prohibited books in 1966, though copies kept turning up in the hands of Catholic priests.From there the episode turns to the Anatomy Act of 1832, the British law that legalized dissecting unclaimed bodies from workhouses and hospitals to end the grave-robbing of the resurrectionists, yet instead built an organized corpse trade across Victorian England. The twelfth-century St. Bartholomew's left wicker baskets beneath its King Henry VIII gate for body dealers to fill, while a Liverpool Street express known as the "dead train" carried sealed funeral wagons of stacked corpses toward Cambridge. Deepening the trade, the New Poor Law of 1834 confined the destitute to workhouses whose officials profited from selling the dead, and in 1858 the master of St. Mary Newington workhouse, Alfred Feist, was caught funneling pauper bodies to Guy's Hospital through the undertaker Robert Hogg, who staged fake funerals and collected double payment. Anatomists prized the bodies of fetuses and children, keeping their skulls intact — only one of fifty-four specimens in a Cambridge collection had received a craniotomy — and the public's dread boiled over in Manchester in 1832, when a grandfather opened the coffin of a three-year-old who had died at the Swan Street Cholera Hospital and found a brick where the boy's head should have been.Next comes a stranger kind of dread, set in the summer of 1980 at a 3M plant in South Carolina, where workers slitting twenty-foot-wide polypropylene film at a thousand feet per minute walked into an invisible wall they could not push through. The static-charged field, which one worker measured past the limit of a 200-kilovolt handheld electrometer, pulled people toward it so strongly they had to back away on foot, swallowed a passing fly, and by one account could have held a bird in its grip before vanishing as abruptly as it formed. Managers reproduced the effect the next morning under lower humidity, and the plant production manager reportedly said he didn't know whether to fix it or sell tickets; later accounts claim a researcher who published on the phenomenon was contacted by NASA and federal agencies before the grounding fault was corrected and the field never returned.The episode then moves to a true-crime case in San Francisco, where around midnight on October 20, 1880, George A. Wheeler walked into a police station and confessed to strangling his sister-in-law Della Tillson and packing her body into a trunk in their room at 23 Kearney Street. Wheeler had fathered two children with Della, both of whom died, while her sister — his deaf wife, May — lived across the hall posing as his sister-in-law, and the arrival of the miner George Peckham, who hoped to marry Della and take her to Sacramento, drove Wheeler to kill rather than let the two leave together. He told reporters that Della sat in his lap and asked him to end her life, that she died with her head on his shoulder, and his defense of hereditary insanity failed across two trials, the second forced by a California Supreme Court ruling over improperly admitted testimony from a book on medical jurisprudence. On January 23, 1884, five thousand people gathered outside the jail, entrance tickets sold for ten dollars apiece, and Wheeler — newly drawn toward Catholic conversion under Father Cottle — kissed a crucifix, commended his spirit, and dropped to a broken neck.The episode closes inside the Vatican with Father Pellegrino Ernetti, an Italian priest, exorcist, and musical scholar who claimed in the 1950s to have helped build a device called the Chronovisor that could see and hear the past. Ernetti said a team of twelve anonymous scientists, among them the physicist Enrico Fermi and the rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, tuned the machine to a speech by Mussolini, then Napoleon, a Roman market under Emperor Trajan, a Cicero oration, and a 169 B.C. performance of Quintus Ennius's lost tragedy Thyestes, which he said let him publish its full text. When the magazine La Domenica del Corriere printed a Chronovisor image of Christ's face on the cross on May 2, 1972, it was soon matched to a mirrored photograph of a wood carving by the sculptor Cullot Valera, and Ernetti — who said the machine was too dangerous to exist and had been dismantled and hidden — left behind no device, no named living witnesses, and a 1993 presentation to four cardinals whose contents were never disclosed.

A young doctor returns to her childhood slum to open a free clinic, but when a dying patient vanishes from her examination room and his grieving cousin swears the boy has simply gone home, she begins to wonder what kind of people she's really been treating.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “All Unregistered Aliens” (February 09, 1978) ***WD00:45:43.486 = Calling All Cars, “Burma White Case” (December 06, 1933) ***WD (LQ)01:14:27.499 = Casey Crime Photographer, “Clue In The Clouds” (February 26, 1944) ***WD01:45:06.776 = CBC Mystery Theater, “The Cable Car Incident” (1967) ***WD (LQ)02:11:42.746 = Chet Chetter’s, “Biloxi And the Bogus Beavers From Bornac” (1990-1992) ***WD02:40:43.122 = The Clock, “Ghost Story” (December 13, 1955)03:07:11.394 = Creeps By Night, “Strange Burial of Alexander Jordan03:36:40.775 = SONG: Static Wax, “The Dead Man’s Bell” (based on the Strange Burial of Alexander Jordan): https://weirddarkness.com/music03:43:07.328 = The Crime Club, “Dead Man Control” (March 20, 1947) ***WD04:11:24.922 = Crime Classics, “Peaceful Pass T. Edwin Bartlett Grocer” (June 22, 1953)04:40:59.478 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Little Meteorite Wanted To Be a Star” (February 02, 1947)05:07:17.930 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0694

Introducing: JUKEBOX WEIRDO!Official Weirdos, you've got a new perk — and it's yours alone. (https://weirddarkness.com/official) JUKEBOX WEIRDO is a members-only music feature, and it works just like the name suggests: you punch in the request, you pick who plays it. Send me a topic — anything you'd want a song about — and tell me which act from the Weird Darkness Records roster should perform it.Static Wax? Dark Weirdness? Crossroads Haint? Incorruption,? Monster Flakes? Alena Ingram? You send me the song topic and the artist you want to perform it! It's your call!Here's what makes these special: they never leave the building. Unlike the rest of the Weird Darkness Records catalog (https://weirddarkness.com/music), JUKEBOX WEIRDO tracks won't go to Spotify, Apple Music, iHeart Radio, Pandora, YouTube Music, or anywhere else. They live only behind the Patreon wall, for Official Weirdos only. And the topic doesn't have to come from an episode or a story. Any fun, strange, dark, or downright weird idea that fits the Weird Darkness mold works — that's the whole point. It's YOUR choice!To request a song, if you are a Patreon member (https://weirddarkness.com/official), send me a private message there with two things: your song idea, and the artist you want singing it.The first few tracks are coming straight from my own weirdo brain to get the ball rolling — so watch for posts on Patreon marked "JUKEBOX WEIRDO," followed by the artist and the song title! Then start sending me your song ideas and requests!

Four aged friends gather in an eccentric doctor's shadowed study, where he offers each of them a single glass of water he swears was drawn from the Fountain of Youth.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” (February 07, 1978) ***WD00:47:39.915 = Arch Oboler’s Plays, “Engulfed Cathedral” (May 06, 1939) ***WD01:17:52.594 = BBC Radio 4/Radio 7 Ghost Story, “Jonas” (mid 1970s)02:46:16.760 = Night Beat, “They” (August 17, 1951)03:15:39.186 = Beyond The Green Door, “Mrs Curlew — Poisoner Marries Major” (1966) ***WD03:19:27.495 = The Black Book, “My Favorite Corpse” (February 24, 1952) ***WD03:35:06.168 = *SHOW NAME UNKNOWN*, “Black Ghost” (1930) ***WD04:01:09.186 = Barry Craig, “The Judge And The Champ” (October 17, 1951) ***WD04:31:00.486 = Box 13, “The Hot Box” (December 26, 1948)04:57:42.628 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0693

A burglar, a car thief, a pickpocket, and a roof full of teenagers all heard the same thing in the dark — a voice that wasn't there, telling them to get out before it was too late.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/somethingunseenREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y7mzj4apFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Creepy, paranormal encounters sometimes cause people to stop short of committing an action they might regret. (Supernatural Intervention) *** Weird family member Atreada tells of a horrifying series of nights when she and her sister encountered a demon under one of their beds. (Man Beneath The Bed) *** In York County, Pennsylvania a suspected witch is murdered – and thus began the dark story of the Hex House. (Dark Magic in Hex Hollow) *** Was there a conspiracy to murder Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe? We’ll look at the theories and evidence for and against the idea. (Killing Marilyn)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:36.259 = Show Open00:01:59.484 = Supernatural Intervention00:28:49.825 = Man Beneath The Bed ***00:33:42.600 = Dark Magic of Hex Hollow00:39:33.099 = Killing Marilyn ***00:59:36.847 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Supernatural Intervention” by Anna Lindwasser: http://bit.ly/2IHZl58“Man Beneath the Bed” by Weirdo family member Atreadia, submitted directly to WeirdDarkness.com“Dark Magic in Hex Hollow” by Orrin Grey: http://bit.ly/2GD8860“Killing Marilyn” posted at The Unredacted: http://bit.ly/2GGF7GS(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December 06, 2021Weird Darkness moves through four shades of the unexplained in this episode: the unseen voices and strangers that talk people out of crimes and catastrophes, the demon that lived under two sisters' bed in Texas, the 1928 witch-killing that gave a Pennsylvania hollow its name, and the still-contested death of Marilyn Monroe.It opens with a run of first-person accounts pulled from Reddit, each describing the moment something unseen stepped in to stop a crime or a catastrophe. A burglar hiding in the closet of an elderly woman's house watches a ghostly old man pat a departing paramedic on the back, then feels breath on the neck and a voice ordering the intruder out. Middle-schoolers creeping through their darkened school are warned off by a voice none of them claims, and they avoid a library that proved to be wired with a silent alarm and motion detectors. In California, a fourteen-year-old abandons a car-theft job a mile from the pickup, spooked by a rising sense of dread, and later learns the vehicle was bait in a police sting that swept up everyone else sent after it. A pickpocket lifts a wallet clean off a stranger, only for the man — blind, sunglasses raised — to calmly ask for it back. Threaded among them are a blown tire that derails a despairing teenager's suicide plan, church doors that lock the instant two thieves reach for them, and a Hobby Lobby shopper whose five stolen pieces of balsa wood seem to trail straight to a table saw and a flesh-eating MRSA infection.From there the episode turns to a listener named Atreada, who shared a room and a bed with her older sister in SunRay, Texas. For a week the bed shook hard enough to slam against the wall and wake the whole house, blamed each night on two children supposedly roughhousing. On the fourth night a hand rose from the gap between bed and wall as an evil laugh filled the room, and on the last night the sisters aimed a flashlight and saw the thing climb out and bolt — an old man in rags, barefoot, with glowing eyes, talon-like fingers, broken teeth, ears jutting at odd angles, and thin transparent strands hanging from an otherwise bald, corpse-like head.Next comes the true story behind Spring Valley County Park in York County, Pennsylvania, a place once called Hex Hollow. In 1928 a Powwow folk-magic practitioner named John Blymire became convinced he was cursed, and a witch called Nellie Noll — the Marietta River Witch — named Nelson Rehmeyer as the source. To break the hex, Blymire needed a lock of Rehmeyer's hair and his copy of The Long Lost Friend, an 1820 spellbook by John George Hohman. On November 26, 1928, Blymire and two accomplices, John Curry and Wilbert Hess, beat Rehmeyer to death in his home and tried to burn it down; the house refused to burn, which locals took as proof of his power. Blymire and Curry drew life sentences and Hess ten to twenty years, and the surviving hex house opened as a museum in 2007 — its story helping to inspire horror novelist Brian Keene and Shane Free's 2015 documentary on the killing.The episode closes with the death of Marilyn Monroe, found nude and lifeless in her Brentwood home in the early hours of August 5, 1962, a telephone in her hand and empty pill bottles on the nightstand. The official verdict was probable suicide by barbiturate overdose, but Sergeant Jack Clemmons, the first officer on the scene, found no glass or water for swallowing some sixty pills, no vomit, and housekeeper Eunice Murray running laundry while the body lay cooling. Thomas Noguchi's autopsy turned up lethal levels of Nembutal and chloral hydrate in her blood and liver, yet not a trace in her stomach. Witnesses placed Attorney General Robert Kennedy at the house that day and again near 10 p.m., tied to rumors of a red diary detailing her affairs with Robert and President John F. Kennedy and referencing a plot against Castro. A competing account, advanced years later by a Court TV investigation, holds that her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson gave her a chloral hydrate enema to wean her off Nembutal, unaware that her internist Hyman Engelberg was still prescribing it, and that the fatal drug interaction — not the Kennedys, and not her own hand — is what killed her.

A Turkish team has government clearance to drill, scan, and lower a drone beneath a boat-shaped mound near Mount Ararat that some believe is the wreck of Noah's Ark.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/NoahsArk2026Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

On a Saturday morning in São Paulo, three instructors hoisted Maria Eduarda over the edge of an abandoned bridge — and her safety rope never left the platform.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/MariaEduardaRodriguesLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A federal judge ordered sixteen-year-old Timothy Hudson jailed until trial for the killing of his stepsister Anna Kepner aboard a Carnival cruise ship, finding that no monitor could be trusted to contain him.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/AnnaKepner20260619Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A 12-year-old in southern Brazil told her family kidnappers had beaten her and would kill her unless they paid — and police spent sixteen hours hunting captors who never existed.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/12-year-old-fake-kidnappingLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

From the Texas Killing Fields and Gilgo Beach to a corpse left decomposing in a hotel water tank and three infants found frozen in a family freezer, these are the notorious dump sites where killers hide their victims — and the strangest places human remains have ever turned up.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BodyDumpSitesREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckm2tkwFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Where are bodies dumped most often? What are some of the strangest places bodies have been found, and what odd situations ended up in death? We’ll look at some weird stories of dead bodies being found. (Strange Dumping Grounds) *** A man is found dead – obviously murdered. But even after a positive identification, some believed the body was not of the man authorities thought it was – and an even larger mystery was, whose monogrammed handkerchief was stuffed in the corpse’s mouth? (The Ruttinger Mystery) *** In Florida, there is a short stretch of freeway that is so full of incidents of danger, death, and the paranormal, that many consider it cursed – and most definitely haunted. Locals have deemed it, the Dead Zone. (Hauntings On Highway I-4)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:02:23.979 = Show Open00:04:03.422 = Strange Dumping Grounds00:24:34.042 = Oddest Places Bodies Found ***00:35:56.964 = Hauntings On Highway I-400:49:22.317 = The Ruttinger Mystery ***00:59:26.329 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Strange Dumping Grounds” by Jessika M. Thomas (http://bit.ly/2XwwVyc), Mariel Loveland (http://bit.ly/2XzEog1), and Rachel Stewart “The Ruttinger Mystery” by Robert Wilhelm: http://bit.ly/2IAzhJh“Hauntings On Highway I-4” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2XB62JG(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December 06, 2021Weird Darkness maps the ground where the dead are hidden, traveling from America's most notorious body-dumping fields to a cursed quarter-mile of Florida interstate and a strangled German lace salesman pulled from the Staten Island mud in 1891.It opens with the dump sites scattered across the United States, where unidentified victims are still pulled from soil and water decades after they were left. In the New York Central Pine Barrens of Long Island, as many as eleven bodies have surfaced, four of them between 2000 and 2003 and two decapitated, in killings attributed to the Butcher of Manorville. Lake Tahoe keeps its secrets through physics rather than concealment, its thousand-foot depths holding a near-constant 39 degrees that stops bodies—rumored to date to Mafia disposals in the 1950s—from decomposing enough to float. Sugar planter Edgar Watson terrorized the Florida Everglades in the early 1900s, allegedly killing laborers each harvest to dodge their wages, and in 2016 two alligators were found feeding on a corpse in the same swamp. Leakin Park in Baltimore has given up roughly 70 bodies since 1946, while the Texas Killing Fields along I-45 between Houston and Galveston have yielded 30 since 13-year-old Colette Wilson vanished in 1971—among them Krystal Jean Baker, whose 1986 murder was tied to Kevin Edison Smith by DNA in 2012. Over 100 bodies have come out of the Mojave Desert, sending photographer William Bradford and William Floyd Zamastil to prison, and the still-unidentified Gilgo Beach killer dumped as many as 17 victims along Ocean Parkway, three of them strangled, bagged in burlap, and linked to the Long Island Serial Killer. Pelham Bay Park concealed at least 65 bodies between 1986 and 1995, the East River surrendered 26 in the spring of 2010 alone, and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, confessed to ending at least 49 women's lives.From there the episode turns to bodies found where no one thinks to look. Canadian student Elisa Lam decomposed for as long as 19 days inside a rooftop water cistern at Downtown Los Angeles's Cecil Hotel while guests drank and bathed from the same supply and complained the water tasted off. In Xi'an, China, a woman starved to death trapped in an elevator over the Chinese New Year, her hands mangled from a month of clawing at the doors after workers skipped a required inspection. Elmer McCurdy, killed by police in 1911 after robbing a train of $46 and two jugs of whiskey, was embalmed with arsenic and toured carnivals as a sideshow attraction until a film crew for The Six Million Dollar Man snapped his arm off at a Long Beach amusement park in 1976 and found bone beneath the wax; he was finally buried in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1977. A Disneyland Paris worker was electrocuted behind the scenes of the Phantom Manor ride in 2016, a German mother kept three of her infants in freezer wrapping for some 30 years until her grown children uncovered them while digging for frozen pizza, and Joshua Maddox, missing since 2008, was discovered seven years later wedged in the chimney of his parents' Colorado cabin with no sign of injury.Next comes a quarter-mile of Interstate 4 near Lake Monroe, Florida, that locals call the Dead Zone. The asphalt covers four unmarked graves of Dutch immigrants who died in the Yellow Fever epidemic that erased the 1870s settlement of St. Joseph's, graves that landowner Albert Hawkins fenced and protected after stumbling on them in 1905, and which earned a reputation for lightning strikes, house fires, and a fatal hit-and-run befalling anyone who disturbed them. The state promised to relocate the remains before construction but paved over them, and as work began in 1960 Hurricane Donna changed course to follow the road's path; the highway opened in 1963 with a deadly truck crash at that exact spot. Somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 accidents have clustered along the short stretch since, Hurricane Charley retraced Donna's route over it in 2004, and drivers report their radios filling with growls, children's laughter, and disembodied voices in a place with no nearby transmitters.The episode closes with the 1891 murder of Karl Emanuel Ruttinger, a German lace salesman from Dresden whose body watchman Samuel Mortin found half-floating in the mud below Tottenville, Staten Island, his arms bound behind his back and a linen handkerchief monogrammed "W.W." rammed down his throat with a stick. Suspicion fell on his brother-in-law, William Wright, who had sailed with him from Liverpool and shared his boarding-house room, yet Wright stood only five-foot-four at 120 pounds, far too slight to overpower a six-foot, 200-pound man alone. The trail twisted through a throat-cutting suicide at the Astor House by a man calling himself Fred Evans, a string of conflicting witness identifications, and the discovery that Ruttinger's life had been insured for more than $20,000 just a month before the voyage—raising the possibility that the corpse was not Ruttinger at all. A Tottenville inquest ruled that it was indeed Ruttinger, suffocated by persons unknown, and in 1892 the Equitable Life Assurance Society paid his mother Therese roughly $22,000, conceding privately that settling was cheaper than proving the fraud they suspected.

A lonely Massachusetts crossroads has been claiming the lives of lawmen for over two hundred years—each one stabbed in the back in a spot so open no killer could possibly reach him, while the only sound in the dark is a woman's cold laughter.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Talking Women” (February 06, 1978) ***WD00:47:04.966 = 2000 Plus, “The Giant Walks” (November 08, 1950) ***WD01:15:57.050 = The Unexpected, “Nightmare” (October 31, 1948)01:29:30.334 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Writing On The Wall” (October 05, 1949) ***WD01:44:12.246 = Dark Venture, “Hideout” (January 07, 1947) ***WD02:09:03.788 = The Weird Circle, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1945)02:36:35.446 = The Whistler, “Danger Is a Beautiful Blonde” (March 05, 1945)03:07:19.667 = Strange Wills, “Madman’s Diary” (August 17, 1946)03:37:02.993 = Witch’s Tale, “Haunted Crossroads” (October 17, 1932) ***WD04:01:39.046 = X Minus One, “Hostess” (December 12, 1956)04:29:47.425 = ABC Mystery Time, “Four Fatal Jugglers” (1957) ***WD04:53:37.561 = Strange Adventure, “Diamonds In The Desert” 04:56:54.720 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0692This installment of #RetroRadio — old-time radio in the dark — gathers twelve vintage broadcasts spanning crime, science fiction, the supernatural, and the just plain strange, drawn from CBS Radio Mystery Theater, 2000 Plus, The Unexpected, Unsolved Mysteries, Dark Venture, The Weird Circle, The Whistler, Strange Wills, The Witch's Tale, X Minus One, Masters of Mystery, and Strange Adventure.CBS Radio Mystery Theater opens the night with "The Talking Women," written by Sam Dan and starring Ed Ames, as host E.G. Marshall introduces wealthy executive Robert Bayswell, a man whose endless "business trips" to New York have quietly covered a five-year affair with his mistress, Lolly "Dolores" Harbison. When Bayswell decides to end the relationship and return to his wife Martha, a struggle over a loaded .38 revolver sets a chain of events in motion — one that draws in nightclub photographer Julie Palmer and homicide detective Sergeant DeLuca, both circling a death no one can quite explain.2000 Plus delivers the science-gone-wrong terror of "The Giant Walks," in which the obsessed Dr. Ellsworth, having used a pituitary revitalizer to breed giant rats four feet long, sets his sights on the next logical subject — a human being. His powerfully built test subject Barstow is grown to thirty feet of muscle and bone, while uneasy assistant Weston watches the experiment spiral past anything Ellsworth can hope to control.The Unexpected stars radio's Lurene Tuttle in "Nightmare," the tale of understudy actress Jenny, who answers her door to a hideous, dwarf-like old peddler selling two dolls — one that cries and one that laughs. Against the peddler's strange warning, she chooses the laughing doll, and its contagious, mocking laughter begins to follow her everywhere she goes, into the theater, the subway, and her sleepless nights.Unsolved Mysteries presents a true-style ghost story told by foreign correspondent Jackson, who recalls a visit to a centuries-old medieval castle in Northumberland, England, complete with drawbridge, moat, and turrets — and its resident phantom, the Lady Evelyn, said to warn the family of any impending disaster. Sleeping in the haunted wing, Jackson is roused by a figure who writes a message in letters of fire across the stone wall, a warning tied to the RMS Titanic.Dark Venture stars William Conrad in "Hideout," the confession of small-time gambler Sam, who sits in on one of Phil Collins's famous high-stakes poker games, wins and loses a fortune, and ends the night shooting political big shot Mike Barnes. Fleeing to Chicago and a rooming house run by Dave Jordan, Sam stumbles into a carnival fortune teller, Madame Zara, who reads the cards and tells him he will die within three days at the hands of a man with white hair — just as hired killer Whitey Burke begins closing in.The Weird Circle summons its bellkeeper for the immortal Robert Louis Stevenson tale "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," in which Dr. Henry Jekyll brews a potion meant to separate the good and evil halves of a single man. The draught gives life to the stooped, deformed, and wholly malevolent Edward Hyde, who terrorizes the streets of London while lawyer Mr. Utterson, Dr. Lanyon, and the faithful butler Poole try to understand what their friend has unleashed.The Whistler brings the Signal-sponsored noir "Danger Is a Beautiful Blonde," as bored construction engineer Van Stevens, killing time in a small coast city on a Saturday night, is picked up on the street by a beautiful young blonde in a slick convertible. She drives him to a seaside mansion full of priceless art, and the flirtation turns to ice the moment she asks him to look under her bed — where a dead man lies hidden.Strange Wills stars distinguished Hollywood actor Warren William as attorney John Francis O'Connell in "Madman's Diary," a probate-court reading of the last testament of the late Professor Lucifer Nicolai. The diary records the professor's decade-long obsession: an electromagnetic experiment to separate the human mind from the body and hurl it backward along light waves into the past. His subject, a young orphan named Alice, is sent first to the age of King Arthur and Guinevere, then far deeper — a quarter-million years before Christ.The Witch's Tale, narrated by 122-year-old Nancy, the Witch of Salem, and her wise black cat Satan, tells "The Haunted Crossroads," where state troopers keep dying at a barren Massachusetts intersection — each one stabbed in the back in a spot so open no killer could possibly reach him and flee unseen. After young Trooper Tom Fallon falls beside his uncle Sergeant Pat McGee and friend Gene Hardy, the only clue is a woman's cold laughter in the dark and a curse reaching back to 1721 and a hanged woman named Goody Fairfax.X Minus One, hosted by Isaac Asimov, presents "Hostess," the story of biologist Rose Smollett, who brings home a guest from another world — the Hawkinsite physician Dr. Harg Tolan, a six-limbed being who breathes cyanide from a cylinder at his mouth. Tolan has come to Earth to study the dreaded "inhibition death," the wasting illness that kills his people, and his quiet questions about the missing persons bureau begin to unsettle Rose's policeman husband, Drake.Masters of Mystery offers the island thriller "Four Fatal Jugglers," in which business partners Gordon Penrose and Dave Copeland — tangled together by Gordon's wife Lydia and her demands for a divorce — head off for a weekend of duck hunting on a tiny, isolated island in the middle of a lake. Lydia's protective brother Bob is drawn in too, and with old grudges, suspicions of murder-by-hunting-accident, and a hunting knife in play, the trip becomes a deadly game of who can be trusted.Strange Adventure closes the night with a desert tale of two weather-beaten prospectors, gangling Slim Sandstone and his stocky partner Geordie Gaines, who walk into the bank of George Alden and deposit a canvas sack half-filled with uncut diamonds. Their secret field out on the desert is rich beyond belief, and the greedy banker schemes to maneuver the pair out of their claim — never suspecting what a salted diamond strike can teach a smart financial tycoon.

In 1954, hundreds of Glasgow schoolchildren armed with makeshift weapons stormed the Southern Necropolis, hunting a towering, iron-toothed vampire they believed had already claimed two victims.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/GorbalsVampireREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4xtvswmmFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: What caused hundreds of Scottish children in the 1950s to suddenly become vampire hunters? (The Gorbals Vampire) *** Over the years, from ancient to more modern times there have been a number of incredible cases of mass hysteria. Some are so unbelievable it’s difficult to understand how they happened at all. (Ancient Cases of Mass Hysteria) *** Zachary Davis had a history of mental disturbance, but no one could have predicted the horrors he was truly capable of. (The Disturbing Story of Zachary Davis) *** When poor travelers are found dead in the frozen winter, could it be that there is something more to their story? Could they have been killed not by the cold, but by a demon of the snow? (Demon of the Snow) *** Southwest of Tombstone, Arizona are the remains of a simple adobe cabin nicknamed ‘the bloodiest cabin in Arizona’. (Brunkow’s Cabin) *** Oscar Beckwith was a hermit who lived in the woods, in a small, squalid shack with no furnishings but a bunk, two stools, and a stove… on which he cooked human flesh. (The Cannibal of Austerlitz)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:02.525 = Show Open00:03:13.218 = The Gorbals Vampire00:07:54.447 = Ancient Cases of Mass Hysteria00:23:57.158 = The Disturbing Story of Zachary Davis ***00:32:13.121 = Demon of the Snow00:38:22.972 = Brunkow’s Cabin ***00:43:01.745 = The Cannibal of Austerlitz00:48:36.810 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Gorbals Vampire” by Cynthia McKanzie for Message to Eagle: (link no longer valid)“Ancient Cases of Mass Hysteria” posted at Ancient Pages: http://bit.ly/2Iw12SX“The Disturbing Story of Zachary Davis” by William DeLong for All That’s Interesting: http://bit.ly/2UOxLd6“Demon of the Snow” by A. Sutherland for Ancient Pages: http://bit.ly/2UlTX97“Brunkow’s Cabin” by Amanda Penn: http://bit.ly/2GojnOB“The Cannibal of Austerlitz” by Robert Wilhelm for Murder By Gaslight: http://bit.ly/2ZjADwV(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: January, 2019Weird Darkness moves from a 1950s Scottish vampire panic and centuries of mass hysteria through a Tennessee teenager's matricide, the vengeful Japanese snow demon Yuki-Onna, the bloodiest cabin in the Arizona desert, and a New York hermit who cooked the man he murdered.It opens on the evening of September 23, 1954, when hundreds of schoolchildren poured into the Southern Necropolis cemetery in the Gorbals district of Glasgow, Scotland, armed with sharpened stakes and knives to hunt a creature they called the vampire with iron teeth, blamed for abducting and killing two missing boys. Police could not clear the children from among the headstones, and only the rain finally drove them home, though the hunt resumed over the next two days. Although no children were actually missing, newspapers and Parliament blamed American horror comics such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, a panic that drew in Labour MP Alice Cullen and led to the 1955 Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act, while others traced the iron-toothed monster to the Book of Daniel or to the Glasgow Green bogeywoman Jenny Wee. From the Gorbals the episode widens into centuries of mass hysteria: the first recorded case on an Egyptian papyrus dated to 1990 BC, children in a 1676 Dutch orphanage who barked and crawled like dogs, the 1374 dancing plague known as choreomania that seized the German town of Aachen, the Swedish witch panic of 1664 to 1676 and its children flown to the devil's meadow of Blakula, and French convent nuns who meowed in unison until soldiers threatened them with rods. The same survey takes in the 1630 poisoning terror of Milan that sent the barber Mora to torture and execution, the 1771 Okage Mairi pilgrimage that drew five million Japanese to the Ise Grand Shrine of Amaterasu Omikami, Richard A. Locke's 1835 Great Moon Hoax describing winged bat-men called Vespertilio-homo in the New York Sun, the Salem witch trials of 1692 that hanged nineteen people after the slave Tituba's confession, and the Hammersmith ghost of 1804 that ended when Francis Smith shot the plasterer Thomas Millwood dead in the dark.From there the focus shifts to Sumner County, Tennessee, where on August 10, 2012, fifteen-year-old Zachary Davis killed his sleeping mother, Melanie, striking her nearly twenty times with a sledgehammer he had carried up from the basement, acting on what he believed was the voice of his dead father. His father, Chris, had died of ALS in 2007, after which Vanderbilt psychiatrist Dr. Bradley Freeman diagnosed the boy with schizophrenia and depression before Melanie pulled him out of therapy. After the killing Davis doused the family game room in whiskey and gasoline and set it ablaze to kill his sixteen-year-old brother Josh, who woke to a smoke alarm and escaped while Davis fled on foot and was found roughly ten miles away. He told investigators he felt nothing when he killed her, laughed during a televised interview with Dr. Phil McGraw as he described the weapon and the wet sound it made, and was sentenced to life in prison after Judge D. David Gay told him he had gone to the dark side, with parole possible only after fifty-one years.Next the episode crosses into Japanese folklore and Yuki-Onna, the Lady of the Snow, a vengeful Onryo spirit said to have begun as a pregnant woman left to freeze in a mountain storm and to return on snowy nights as a tall, pale figure with blue lips and long black hair who floats over the drifts without leaving footprints. Her most famous tale follows two woodcutters, the old Mosaku and the young Minokichi, who shelter in a mountain hut where Yuki-Onna breathes a killing cold over Mosaku but spares Minokichi on the condition that he never speak of her. Years later Minokichi marries a woman named Oyuki who never seems to age, and when he finally recounts his strange night in the hut, Oyuki reveals that she is the snow demon herself and vanishes, sparing his life only for the sake of their children.After that the episode turns to the desert of Cochise County, southwest of Tombstone, Arizona, where the ruined adobe Brunckow Cabin earned its reputation as the bloodiest cabin in Arizona through at least twenty-one deaths. The German miner Frederick Brunckow built it in 1858 to work a San Pedro silver claim and was murdered there by his own laborers, killed with a rock drill driven into his abdomen alongside the chemist John Moss and the miner James Williams. The owners who followed met similar ends: Milton Duffield, the first U.S. Marshal of Arizona Territory, was shot dead at the cabin by James T. Holmes during an eviction, N.M. Rogers was killed by Apaches, and five thieves who hid there gunned one another down in a quarrel over stolen loot. Ed Scheifelin used the cabin as a base camp in 1877 before he founded and named nearby Tombstone, and visitors today report an apparition that fades when approached and the phantom sound of mining machinery drifting through the ruins.The episode closes with Oscar Beckwith, a seventy-two-year-old hermit living in a squalid shack in Austerlitz, New York, who on January 10, 1882, killed his mining partner Simon Vanderkoek over a soured gold claim near Alford, Massachusetts, then dismembered and cooked the body. A neighbor named Harrison Calkins smelled burning flesh at the shack and was told Beckwith was only frying pork rinds, but he returned the next day to find the mutilated remains, a blood-stained axe, and charred bones in the stove. Beckwith fled to Canada and evaded capture until the detective J.B. Gildersleeve tracked him to Bracebridge, Ontario, in 1885, by which time rumor had branded him the Cannibal of Austerlitz. Six trials sent him to the gallows in Hudson, New York, on March 1, 1888, where at seventy-eight he became both the oldest man and the last person hanged in the state, struggling at the end of the rope for eighteen minutes before he died.

A fragile young mother, alone with her infant daughter in a remote old mill, becomes certain that something is moving in the deep black pool behind her bedroom wall, and that the villagers fighting to keep it filled know exactly what it wants.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Ice Palace” (January 31, 1978) ***WD00:46:31.886 = BBC Radio 4 Spinechillers, “Witch Water Green” (1984) ***WD01:43:45.218 = Strange Wills, “Girl From Shadowland” (August 10, 1946)02:13:05.441 = Strange, “Phantom Wagoneer” (March 21, 1955) ***WD02:26:39.689 = Suspense, “Portrait Without a Face” (March 02, 1944) ***WD02:57:22.906 = Tales of the Frightened, “Man in a Raincoat” (1957)03:02:18.144 = The Creaking Door, “A Day of Truce” (October 12, 1964) ***WD (LQ)03:32:29.501 = The Saint, “Murder On The High Seas” (October 01, 1947)03:56:44.596 = Theater Five, “A Little Piece of Candle” (November 18, 1964)04:16:57.180 = Theater 1030, “The Thing In The Hall” (1968-1971) ***WD04:46:19.007 = Tales From The Tomb, “Don’t Drink With Strangers (1960s)04:49:56.396 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0691

Two Green Squad officers pulled on the foam heads of Clutch the Bald Eagle and Maple the Moose, hefted a battering ram, and went hunting for a drug dealer who loved football a little too much.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/mascot-raidLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Elena Katherine Moore left her Lexington gym on foot the night of June 11th, and six days later searchers found a body in the woods wearing the same olive-green hoodie.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/elena-katherine-mooreLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Six gay men were stabbed to death near San Francisco's Ocean Beach in the mid-1970s, and the detective working the case today believes their killer is still alive in the East Bay.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/doodler-sfLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A new CBS News poll shows that most Americans believe intelligent life exists beyond Earth, and one in five think contact with extraterrestrials has already happened.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/alien-contact-pollLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A nuclear test deep beneath the Nevada desert stirs something that should have died out two hundred thousand years ago, and when two old colleagues climb into the mountains to find it, only one of them grasps what it will cost to bring a living giant back down.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Feature, “Yesterday’s Giant” (January 30, 1978) ***WD00:46:59.714 = Peril, “Curse of Ramses” (1953) ***WD01:08:50.479 = Price of Fear, “Lot 132” (October 06, 1973) ***WD01:36:58.947 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Green Gorilla” (February 12, 1947) ***WD02:03:05.560 = Quiet Please, “Where Do You Get Your Ideas” (February 20, 1949)02:31:39.004 = Radio City Playhouse, “Ground Floor Window” (October 23, 1949)03:00:46.400 = Sam Spade, “Sam And Psyche” (August 02, 1946) ***WD03:30:35.617 = The Sealed Book, “King of the World” (March 25, 1945)04:00:32.188 = The Shadow, “The Murder Underground” (March 09, 1941)04:27:34.089 = Sleep No More, “Banquos Chair Coward” (February 06, 1957) ***WD04:55:56.262 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0690

Because the canvas roof had been waterproofed with gasoline, the small flame that touched it on July 6, 1944 swept across the Hartford circus big top in seconds, and most of the 167 people it killed were children.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HartfordCircusFireREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/39d8nfwhFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Three boys fishing in the middle of the night hear a blood-curdling scream. But it wasn’t a human making all that noise – it was an extraterrestrial. And thus began a series of meetings with alien beings! (What Do You Say When Meeting An Extraterrestrial?) *** A day of hilarity turns into a day of horror as an uncontrollable fire breaks out at the Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circus – resulting in the most deadly circus disaster in history. (The Day The Clowns Cried) *** Most ghosts and specters do a great job of scaring the pants off you – and some can get creative with how they do it, with stacking chairs, making toys talk, slamming doors, etc. But apparently not all spooks are worried about their reputation – and when it comes to haunting, they just phone it in, doing the bare minimum. (Lazy Phantasms)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:39.923 = Lazy Phantasms00:12:35.047 = What Do You Say When Meeting An Extraterrestrial? ***00:42:41.671 = The Day The Clowns Cried ***00:52:38.951 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“What Do You Say When Meeting An Extraterrestrial?” from Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/44h5ykk9“Lazy Phantasms” posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2y69m7hu“The Day The Clowns Cried” by Rachel Souerby for Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4ek5rsup(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November, 2021Weird Darkness ranges from a shapeless apparition that appeared inside the Tower of London in 1817, to a string of close-range UFO and humanoid encounters reported across North America, to the Hartford circus fire of 1944 that killed 167 people in under ten minutes.It opens inside the Tower of London in October 1817, where a cylinder of dense, white and pale-azure fluid about the thickness of a man's arm materialized over the supper table of Edmund Lenthal Swifte, the Keeper of the Crown Jewels. Swifte was holding a glass of wine and water to his wife's lips in the Jewel House, with her sister and his young son present, when the shape hovered for roughly two minutes, drifted around the room, and settled over his wife's right shoulder, at which she cried out that it had seized her. He struck at the wood paneling behind her with his chair, but the figure left no mark, and a scientific friend who afterward examined the sealed, curtained, candle-lit room could account for none of it. The thing wore no period costume and delivered no message, and forty-three years later Swifte set the encounter down in the journal Notes and Queries, insisting at eighty-three that he had neither amplified nor abridged a word of it.From there it moves to a wave of close-range encounters, beginning on a cold January night in 1972 when sixteen-year-old John Yeries and three companions, fishing near Battle Creek Bridge east of Anderson, California, saw a seven-foot, greenish-brown humanoid with a large teardrop-shaped ear on one side of its head and heard it loose a scream that sent them sprinting for their car. Darrell Rich's father Dean returned to the bridge with a pistol, only to back away when a deep growl rose from the brush, and a police search of the area turned up nothing. The following year, on October 4, 1973, insurance agent Gary Chase pulled over at the Santa Susana Pass near Simi Valley, California and watched an elliptical craft roughly seventy feet long, marked with a nested V insignia, hover above a creek while a figure in a wetsuit-like suit crawled across its hull toward a protruding hose. Other witnesses report the same intrusions: patrolman Lonnie Zamora saw two small, white-clad figures beside a landed craft in New Mexico in 1964, and Mrs. Wallace Bowers found fifteen-inch footprints in the snow and watched an orange disk hover over the power lines outside her home in Vader, Washington. Bernice Niblett spent the winter of 1967 alone on Keats Island in British Columbia, where she watched lights maneuver over the water night after night and became convinced that the two stiff, oddly formal Hydro men who appeared at her cabin were not the utility workers they claimed to be — a year-long ordeal documented by Canadian UFO researcher John Magor that eventually drove her off the island.The episode closes with the Hartford circus fire of July 6, 1944, when the canvas big top of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus, waterproofed with a mixture of white gasoline and paraffin wax, caught at the edge and was consumed in under ten minutes, killing 167 of the roughly 7,000 people inside, most of them children. As the flames climbed the roof, the bandleader struck up 'Stars and Stripes Forever,' the circus's coded signal for an emergency, while the Great Wallendas scrambled down from their high wire unhurt. Ringmaster Fred Bradna called for a calm exit, but the crowd ignored him as burning canvas and hot wax fell from above. Two of the exits were blocked by the steel chutes used to move animals in and out, so many of the dead were trampled there rather than burned, and a photograph of the clown Emmett Kelly carrying a single bucket of water toward the blaze fixed the catastrophe in memory as the day the clowns cried. Investigators never settled the cause, though the state fire marshal leaned toward a carelessly dropped cigarette. A fifteen-year-old circus hand named Robert Dale Segee confessed to setting the fire years later and then recanted. And one young victim, her face barely touched by the flames, was never claimed — buried under the name Little Miss 1565 and identified only decades afterward, and only disputably, as Eleanor Cook.

A Newport Beach physician who ran a Riverside skin-care clinic pleaded guilty to the sexual battery of three patients during their exams, and he will never hold a medical license again.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/SannoufiLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

A Paris auction house expected half a million dollars for the world's first lab-grown Tyrannosaurus rex handbag, and the bidding gave out at a hundred and fifty thousand for a purse paleontologists say is mostly chicken.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/trexpurseLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

At her own party, a wealthy widow watches her trusted investment counselor's fingers close around a small copper idol — the Queen of Thieves — as if the little goddess had reached out of the shadows and chosen him for her own.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Ranee of Rajputana” (January 24, 1978) ***WD00:47:42.858 = Mr. Keen, “the Boy Who Used Big Words” (February 10, 1944) ***WD01:16:48.935 = Murder at Midnight, “Black Swan” (August 18, 1947)01:44:05.862 = The Black Museum, “Shilling” (1952) ***WD02:09:13.868 = Mysterious Traveler, “Stranger In The House” (January 29, 1952)02:40:26.038 = Mystery House, “Murder Takes Practice” (April 21, 1946) ***WD03:07:28.614 = Night Beat, “Antonio’s Return” (July 13, 1951) ***WD03:36:51.555 = Nightfall, “After Sunset” (April 29, 1983)04:03:47.330 = Obsession, “Dynamite” (October 09, 1950) ***WD04:34:36.912 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Jack of Clubs” (February 20, 1949) ***WD05:04:05.819 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0689

Sometime before dawn on July 2, 1951, a 67-year-old St. Petersburg widow was reduced to ash in her own armchair while the room around her sat almost untouched, leaving behind little more than a shrunken skull, a piece of spine, and a single foot still resting in its slipper.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/MaryHardyReeserREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p88de8vFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: When police found her in 1951, she was almost entirely ash. But mysteriously, the rest of her apartment remained almost perfectly intact. We’ll look at the death of Mary Reeser – which became known as “The Cinder Woman Case”. (Did Mary Hardy Reeser Spontaneously Combust?) *** Most crimes are pretty ordinary – assault, robbery, the occasional murder, but once in a while a crime is committed in a strange, shocking way – to the point it’s almost hard to believe what you are hearing is a true story. I’ll share a few of those strange crimes. (Creepy Crimes and Crazy Criminals) *** One of the reasons we find chimpanzees so interesting is because they are so much like humans – in body shape, the way they express themselves, it’s eerie sometimes. But still, we know they are just apes. Then there is the strange case of Oliver – a chimpanzee that also appeared to be human. Or was he a human that appeared to be a chimpanzee? Or, is it possible, that Oliver was a genuine genetic hybrid of the two? We’ll look at his incredibly strange story. (Oliver, The Humanzee) *** Some hauntings are more terrifying than others – and some are stranger than others. What happened to the Palzon family in Zaragoza, Spain possibly qualifies for both. They didn’t have a typical haunting – this was no poltergeist or spirit of a recently passed person… they were terrorized by a horrifying goblin. (The Zaragoza Goblin) *** Most haunted paintings are hundreds of years old – but one in particular was painted in the late 20th Century, and to many, it is the most disturbing painting they’ve ever laid eyes on. (The Hands Resist Him)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:14.404 = Show Open00:03:53.182 = Did Mary Hardy Reeser Spontaneously Combust?00:14:39.389 = The Hands Resist Him ***00:29:00.706 = Oliver, the Humanzee ***00:44:04.298 = Creepy Crimes and Crazy Criminals ***00:59:07.540 = The Zaragoza Goblin ***01:09:16.862 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:““The Hands Resist Him” by Jenne Gentry for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mtmj2ysr“Oliver, The Humanzee” by Bipin Dimri for Historic Mysteries: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2ttc3p8s“The Zaragoza Goblin” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2jxxdd6b“Did Mary Hardy Reeser Spontaneously Combust?” by Tommy Thompson for Talk Murder: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p937wec“Creepy Crimes and Crazy Criminals” by C.J. Phillips for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8b3dyw(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness ranges from a 1951 Florida death that investigators could not explain, to a painting blamed for three deaths, a chimpanzee long mistaken for a human hybrid, a catalog of bizarre real-world crimes, and a disembodied voice that terrorized a Spanish apartment building in 1934.It opens with the morning of July 2, 1951, when landlady Pansy Carpenter found the doorknob to apartment 1200 Cherry Street in St. Petersburg, Florida hot to the touch and called police, who discovered that 67-year-old widow Mary Hardy Reeser had been reduced almost entirely to ash. Only her skull, shrunken to roughly the size of a teacup, a section of spine, and a left foot still in its slipper remained, while the apartment around her showed little more than soot on the ceiling and a recliner burned down to its springs. A greasy film coating the walls and floor was later identified by the FBI, which devoted a 115-page report to the case, as melted human fat. Her son, Dr. Richard Reeser, had left her around 8 p.m. the night before, resting in her favorite recliner in a Van Raalte rayon-acetate nightgown with a freshly lit cigarette. Investigators ruled out lightning, accelerants, and any motive for murder, which left two explanations in contention — a dropped cigarette that set her flammable nightgown alight and rendered her body into a slow-burning wick, or spontaneous human combustion — for the death that came to be known as the Cinder Woman case.From there the episode turns to William Stoneham's 1972 oil painting The Hands Resist Him, a 36-by-24-inch canvas showing a young boy beside a hollow-eyed, life-size doll while disembodied hands press against a glass door behind them. Stoneham based the boy on a photograph of himself at age five at his grandmother's Chicago apartment and drew the title from a 1971 poem by his first wife, Rhoann Ponseti. The work gained its reputation in February 2000, when a couple listed it on eBay as a haunted painting, claiming their four-and-a-half-year-old daughter saw the figures leave the canvas at night and that a motion-sensor camera caught the boy crawling out and the doll holding a gun; the listing drew more than 30,000 views and sold for $1,050. Its lore also ties three deaths to the painting — art critic Henry Seldis in 1978, gallery owner Charles Feingarten in 1981, and Godfather actor John Marley in 1984 — and the canvas now sits in the back room of Kim Smith's Perception Fine Art Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Next comes the story of Oliver, a chimpanzee captured in the Congo around 1957 who walked upright by nature, had a flatter and more human-looking face, light-colored eyes, pattern baldness, and a soft voice, and was marketed as a humanzee, a supposed human-chimpanzee hybrid and missing link. Owned by animal trainers Frank and Janet Berger, who featured him on The Ed Sullivan Show, Oliver drank morning coffee, mixed his own evening cocktails, and moved loads with a wheelbarrow, and early claims that he carried 47 chromosomes fed the hybrid theory. After being passed among several owners and confined for years in a small cage at the Buckshire Company laboratory, where he developed arthritis and muscular atrophy, he was rescued in 1996 to a chimpanzee sanctuary, where University of Chicago testing established that he had the ordinary chimpanzee count of 48 chromosomes and belonged to a Central African subspecies already known for human-like features. Oliver died in his sleep on June 2, 2012, beside a companion named Raisin, and his ashes were spread on the sanctuary grounds.After that, the episode collects a series of strange real-world crimes, starting with California inmate Jaime Osuna, already serving a life sentence for the 2011 murder of Yvette Pena, who killed his cellmate Luis Romero in 2019 and fashioned parts of the body into a necklace. It then moves to Michigan and the 2019 murder of 25-year-old Kevin Bacon by Mark Latunski, a man Bacon had met through a Christmas Eve date on Grindr, and to Scotland, where a crew of thieves made off with roughly £280,000 in blue WKD alcopops from Caledonian Bottlers. Other cases include a Chennai airport smuggling ring caught in March 2021 with gold paste hidden beneath hairpieces, a Cleveland man named Michael Harrel who handed a bank teller a robbery note for $206 with his own name and contact details written on the back, and a Florida man, Matthew Leatham, arrested after dialing 911 twice to ask for a ride home, his forehead tattooed with the outline of the state. The grimmest case belongs to Shabaz Khan of Burnley, England, who blamed two djinn he called Robert and Rita for driving him to murder Dr. Saman Mir Sacharvi and her 14-year-old daughter Vian Mangrio before setting their home on fire.The episode closes with the Goblin of Zaragoza, which began on September 27, 1934, when a maid named Pascuala Alcocer, alone in the kitchen of the Palazon family's second-floor apartment on Gascón de Gotor street in Zaragoza, Spain, heard a child-like male voice rise from the stove complaining that she was hurting it. Over the following weeks the disembodied voice spoke from the stove, the chimney, and the walls, by turns playful and menacing, and grew into laughter, growls, and screaming that at one point seemed to shake the entire building. Spanish police, a psychiatrist named Joaquin Jimen Orriera, and an architect all investigated, and the voice continued even after Pascuala was led

Thirteen years after The Empire Strikes Back, the long-delayed finale arrived in 1996 — six episodes that brought the original trilogy to a close. Funding cuts had stalled production for more than a decade, but the conclusion was completed at last, with Anthony Daniels returning one final time as C-3PO, joined by Brock Peters as Darth Vader, John Lithgow's Yoda, and Ed Asner as Jabba the Hutt. Still carried by John Williams' score and the original sound effects, it's Return of the Jedi as you've never heard it. | #RRStarWarsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:37.835 = Episode 01: Tatooine Haunts00:34:52.858 = Episode 02: Fast Friends01:04:58.749 = Episode 03: Prophecies And Destinies 01:38:38.890 = Episode 04: Pattern And Web02:06:06.595 = Episode 05: So Turns a Galaxy, So Turns a Wheel02:40:27.908 = Episode 06: Blood of a Jedi03:14:07.134 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRRSW03

A dying woman swears there's a prowler downstairs, but what her husband finds in the dark kitchen is a timid little ghost who can't remember why he's come.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Forgetful Ghost” (January 23, 1978) ***WD00:46:42.148 = Philip Marlowe, “Grim Echo” (February 14, 1950)01:16:14.347 = Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, “The Ghost To Ghost Matter” (May 18, 1958) ***WD01:41:29.916 = The Black Mass, “Ash Tree” (December 18, 1963) ***WD02:11:43.744 = Michael Shayne, “Big Voice Means a Big Body” (May 07, 1945)02:42:36.427 = Beyond Midnight, “The Yellow Room” (June 06, 1969) ***WD03:13:43.776 = MindWebs, “Desertion” (February 18, 1982)03:44:37.897 = Mystery In The Air, “The Marvelous Barastro” (August 07, 1947)04:13:52.519 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Follow That Cab” (April 19, 1946)04:43:19.587 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0688This #RetroRadio episode, "A Ghost Who Forgot Why He Came, a Dying Wife, a Final Anniversary," gathers nine vintage old-time-radio broadcasts of mystery, horror, and the supernatural — from a haunted ash tree in 17th-century England to a converted man walking the crushing surface of Jupiter.The CBS Radio Mystery Theater opens the night with "The Forgetful Ghost," in which a dying Eve Gordon wakes her husband Sam in the small hours, certain a prowler is moving through their locked-up house — but when Sam creeps down to the dark kitchen with his hickory walking stick raised, the intruder turns out to be a meek, see-through little man named Peter Pruitt, a ghost who can't recall why he was sent or whom he came to fetch, even as the couple's fortieth wedding anniversary draws closer by the hour. Host E.G. Marshall, a script by Ian Martin, and Mandel Kramer in the lead carry this January 23, 1978 tale of a haunting that proves gentler, and far stranger, than it first appears.Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe takes the wheel in "The Grim Echo," skidding off a blizzard-blind mountain road and into a snow-filled culvert directly in front of Echo Lodge — the one place on earth where the name Philip Marlowe is pure poison. Six months earlier Marlowe shot and killed Virgil Barucki in a Los Angeles alley, and now the storm has trapped him with Barucki's grieving widow Helen, his sister Donna, his mother, and the handyman Ralph Tolman, while an "accidental" cabin explosion and a stolen .38 revolver make it clear that someone inside Echo Lodge wants him frozen, or dead. Gerald Mohr stars in this February 14, 1950 chiller.Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar sends the freelance insurance investigator with the action-packed expense account into "The Ghost To Ghost Matter," after a frantic Oscar Trimley telephones from the sleepy mill town of Lake City, New Jersey, swearing that Ian McAndrews — the town's founder, dead five years and already paid out at $55,000 on his life policy — has come back to haunt the streets. Every midnight the old clock tower strikes thirteen, bats pour from the belfry, and a wail rises over the lake, so Dollar brings along old flame Nancy Turner to size up a town that insists its founder's ghost simply won't rest. Bob Bailey stars in this May 18, 1958 mystery out of Hartford, Connecticut.The Black Mass adapts M.R. James's classic "The Ash Tree," set at Castringham Hall in Suffolk, England, where the witch trials of 1690 brought the hanging of Mrs. Mothersole — condemned largely on the testimony of Sir Matthew Fell, who swore he watched her climb the great ash tree beside the house at the full of the moon to cut twigs with a peculiarly curved knife. When Sir Matthew is found dead and black in his bed beneath that same tree, the curse the witch promised begins working its way down through the generations of the Fell family and through whatever still lives inside the hollow trunk of the ash. A December 18, 1963 telling of one of the most quietly horrifying ghost stories ever written.The Adventures of Michael Shayne brings private detective Mike Shayne and his secretary Phyllis Knight into "Big Voice Means a Big Body," when 230-pound opera star Madame Jolene Toulot sweeps into the office waving an anonymous letter that threatens her life if she publishes her scandalous tell-all memoirs. With a roster of suspects who'd all rather stay out of the book — old suitor Roderick MacKenzie of the Newport MacKenzies, ex-husband and aspiring congressman Edwin Buck, rival soprano Leonora Baril, and the maestro Savadel — Shayne heads to the Figaro Theatre for a double bill of Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana, where the diva's fifth farewell performance takes a fatal turn. Wally Maher and Cathy Lewis star in this May 7, 1945 case.Beyond Midnight, the eerie South African series, presents "The Yellow Room," in which the avowed atheist Ronald Todd accepts a wager from the elderly Mrs. Watts: one thousand pounds to spend a single night, entirely alone, in the haunted north wing of Chancellors — the very room where the ghost-hunting sixth Duke of Wallingford lost his sanity and a captain of the Hussars leapt to his death. Over Father Doyle's warnings, Todd is locked in with seven candles for company and a copy of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and as the clock passes midnight the candles begin going out one by one. Michael McCabe produced this June 6, 1969 broadcast.MindWebs turns to science fiction with Clifford Simak's "Desertion," set in Dome Number Three of the Jovian Survey Commission on the surface of Jupiter, where the planet's crushing fifteen thousand pounds per square inch of pressure and its ammonia rains make unprotected human life impossible. To conquer it, Kent Fowler has been converting his men into "lopers," the planet's native life form — but four men have already loped out into the howling gale two by two and never come back, and now young Harold Allen is next through Miss Stanley's converter. When Fowler at last sends out his own aging dog, Towser, the truth about why no one returns finally begins to surface. A February 18, 1982 reading hosted by Michael Hansen.Mystery in the Air stars Peter Lorre in Ben Hecht's "The Marvelous Barastro," opening as the magician and hypnotist Barastro walks into the office of criminal lawyer Amos G. Hall and calmly announces that he intends to commit a murder before the night is out. His target is Rico Sansoni, a rival hypnotist who once stole away the affections of Barastro's blind wife Anna by studying and mastering the magician's own voice — close enough to deceive even her in the dark. As Barastro recounts hunting his enemy from country to country and city to city, the line between the two illusionists grows harder and harder to draw. An August 7, 1947 broadcast sponsored by Camel cigarettes.Molle Mystery Theater closes the night on a lighter note with the comedy "Follow That Cab," starring two New York City cabbies, Mo and Julius, who have read so many issues of Absolutely Authentic True Crime Fiction — and idolized its hero, detective Daniel Daremore — that they're convinced they can crack any case. When a fare leaps from the cab without paying and a song publisher named Larkin turns up shot dead in his apartment, the pair wipe away the fingerprints to make the murder "more baffling," let their prime suspect walk, and bumble their way toward a stolen song called "Joan," a desperate songwriter named Boynton, and a mysterious redhead. Written by Sid and Larry Sloan, this April 19, 1946 farce sends up the whole hardboiled detective genre with host Jeffrey Barnes presiding.

When the Hale-Bopp comet swung past Earth in 1997, thirty-nine people put on matching black shirts and brand-new Nikes, swallowed a lethal mix of barbiturates and vodka, and lay down beneath purple shrouds to die — certain their souls were about to board the alien ship they believed was hiding in the comet's tail.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/heavensgateREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/343j2ju2FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Following an anonymous tip, police enter a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, an exclusive suburb of San Diego, California, and discover 39 victims of a mass suicide. The deceased–21 women and 18 men of varying ages–were all found lying peaceably in matching dark clothes and Nike sneakers and had no noticeable signs of blood or trauma. It was later revealed that the men and women were members of the “Heaven’s Gate” religious cult, whose leaders preached that suicide would allow them to leave their bodily “containers” and enter an alien spacecraft hidden behind the Hale-Bopp comet. *** PLUS, the creepy true-crime story of two men who were caught trying to steal the body of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. But that is by no means the end of this story full of twists, turns, myths, and conspiracies.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Heaven’s Gate, Part 1 00:00:53.808 = Show Open00:02:37.373 = Heaven’s Gate, Part 200:04:59.269 = Heaven’s Gate, Part 300:09:37.695 = Heaven’s Gate, Part 4 ***00:23:22.776 = Stealing Lincoln’s Bones, Part 1 ***00:44:45.437 = Stealing Lincoln’s Bones, Part 2 ***00:57:58.687 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Heavens Gate” by Rolling Stone: http://bit.ly/WeirdDarkness2D7tbeZ, Ranker: http://bit.ly/weirddarkness2UIsK4O, and History.com: http://bit.ly/WeirdDarkness2G3uqfN“Stealing Lincoln’s Bones” by Troy Taylor: https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/stealing-lincolns-bones(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November 28, 2021Weird Darkness runs from the 1997 mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate UFO cult outside San Diego to an 1876 counterfeiting gang's attempt to steal Abraham Lincoln's corpse from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois.It opens with the discovery, on March 26, 1997, of thirty-nine members of Heaven's Gate inside a rented mansion in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe — twenty-one women and eighteen men lying beneath purple shrouds in matching black shirts and new black-and-white Nike sneakers, plastic bags over their heads, after swallowing phenobarbital and vodka. They believed the deaths would free their souls to board an alien spacecraft trailing the Hale-Bopp comet, which was making its closest approach to Earth that month. Former music professor Marshall Applewhite had started the group in 1975 with his nurse Bonnie Lu Nettles, the two of them renaming themselves Bo and Peep and later Do and Ti before persuading about twenty people in Oregon to leave their families and wait in eastern Colorado for a ship that never arrived. Applewhite preached that human bodies were disposable containers, that he was the second coming of Jesus, and that God was an alien. Nettles died in 1985, but he held the group together, and by the 1990s it had become the first well-known internet-era cult, paying its bills by building web pages under the business name Higher Source. The members watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, sewed Heaven's Gate Away Team patches onto their uniforms, severed contact with relatives through a practice Applewhite called breaking away, and submitted to a ban on sex that several of the men, Applewhite among them, enforced on themselves through castration.The episode closes with the 1876 plot to steal Abraham Lincoln's body from his tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. A Chicago counterfeiting ring run by James "Big Jim" Kneally had lost its master engraver, Benjamin Boyd, to a ten-year term in Joliet Penitentiary, so the gang resolved to seize the president's corpse and ransom it for Boyd's freedom. On election night, November 7, 1876, gang members Terence Mullen and Jack Hughes filed through the lock and split the marble sarcophagus with an ax, unaware that the grave robber they knew as Jim Morrissey was Secret Service operative Lewis Swegles, and that Captain Patrick Tyrell's agents and Pinkerton detectives hired by Robert Lincoln were hidden elsewhere in the monument. The trap fell apart when the lawmen fired on one another in the dark and the two robbers wandered off and escaped, though both were captured on November 18 and, with grave robbery barely a crime in Illinois at the time, served only a year in Joliet. What the public would not learn for years was that custodian John C. Power and a secret brotherhood calling itself the Lincoln Guard of Honor had already dragged the five-hundred-pound coffin into a damp labyrinth beneath the monument and buried it under loose boards and dirt, leaving visitors to grieve over an empty sarcophagus. The body was shifted from hiding place to hiding place until 1901, when Robert Lincoln ordered his father's casket lowered ten feet, locked inside a steel cage, and sealed under two tons of concrete, following one last viewing in which Leon P. Hopkins, the plumber who had closed the coffin back in 1865, studied a chalk-whitened but recognizable face and soldered the lead shut for good.

A newly declassified FBI form describes a meter-wide red sphere with a white plasma core hovering in a backyard one evening, among dozens of glowing-orb sightings in the Pentagon's third batch of UFO files.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/UFO-Batch-3Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

After her 24-year-old daughter died by suicide in Montreal, Kristie Carrier read the months of ChatGPT conversations on Alice's phone — and filed suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/openai-suicide-lawsuitLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

When the luxury liner SS Morro Castle erupted in flames off the New Jersey coast in 1934, it left behind 137 dead, a captain's corpse that vanished before it could be examined, and a heroic radio operator whose criminal past suggested he may have started the fire himself. | #WDRadio June 14, 2026==========HOUR ONE: Jeannie Saffin already had a tough life, being born with a birth defect that stunted her mental growth, leaving her with the mind of a child, never getting married and having kids, never dating… but that all pales in comparison to how she died: bursting into flames for no apparent reason. Was Jeannie Saffin the victim of spontaneous human combustion? (The Spontaneous Combustion of Jeannie Saffin) *** Sometimes it’s easy to get a girl to go out with you – just be polite and ask. Some men resort to cheesy pickup lines thinking it will help their chances. But one man chose to call upon a woman in a very unusual way… by purchasing a gravestone. (Pitching Woo With a Tombstone) *** If a man demands his girlfriend give up the baby they conceived, otherwise he would no longer be with the woman – what is that newborn’s mother to do? Sadly, Emily Dunn made the wrong decision – with tragic results. (The Durbin Baby Murder) *** The transplanting of an organ is almost a routine procedure now in the 21st century – even doing a transplant of an arm or a leg isn’t uncommon. But when you talk about transplanting a living head onto a dead body – that’s when things get tricky. But Robert White thought it could be done – and even tried doing it. (The Man Who Wanted To Do a Head Transplant) *** Imagine getting onto a plane and once in the air finding out that the pilot wasn’t qualified to fly that kind of plane – and that he was only there because the original pilot wasn’t available due to being dead. That’s what happened in 1934 on the boat, the SS Morro Castle. And it was the beginning of tragedy after tragedy. (Mystery, Mismanagement, and Mayhem on the SS Morro Castle)==========HOUR TWO: In June of 2009 a man calling himself Peter Bergmann checked in to a hotel in Sligo Town. Five days later his body was found on Rosses Point Beach. But Peter Bergmann was not Peter Bergmann – so who was he? (The Peter Bergmann Mystery) *** Sharing stories from people who are frightened by a bump in the night or a strange shadow on the wall in their bedroom is one thing, but when you get professional ghost hunters telling of the scariest experiences they’ve had, you know it has to be some freaky stuff. (Scariest Experiences of Ghost Hunters) ==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: More of the scariest experiences of ghost hunters! *** I’ll tell you about that time when a dam failed – and because of it, people were legally allowed to marry the dead. And still do to this day. (That Time A Failed Dam Led to Marrying Corpses) *** Personal experiences of those who have stayed at the Wolf Creek Inn, plus some hard evidence, seems to indicate that spirits who haunt the place are not only benign in nature, but even protect the guests and owners from other malevolent spirits which roam there as well. (Haunts at Wolf Creek Inn)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“Mystery, Mismanagement, and Mayhem on the SS Morro Castle” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/56jb9c7j“The Man Who Wanted To Do a Head Transplant” by Gary Krist for the Washington Post: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/39d2k9pw“The Durbin Baby Murder” posted at Murders In History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/c96z9kst“Pitching Woo With a Tombstone” from the New York Journal, posted at The Victorian Book of the Dead website:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/utw6vh45“The Spontaneous Combustion of Jeannie Saffin” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/e6as67fn“That Time A Failed Dam Led to Marrying Corpses” by Kaushik Patowary for Amusing Planet: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/zyrxx43k“Scariest Experiences of Ghost Hunters” by Amanda Ashley for Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y7tx3a2t“Haunts at Wolf Creek Inn” posted at HauntedHouses.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yadzm4ae“The Peter Bergmann Mystery” by Rosita Boland for Irish Times: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/9b44kfs==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at mailto:affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).==========https://weirddarkness.com/WDR20260614This episode of Weird Darkness moves from a burning luxury liner off the New Jersey coast to a fire-scarred kitchen in London, a body on an Irish beach, a drowned infant in Illinois, a collapsed French dam that legalized marrying the dead, and a haunted stagecoach inn in Oregon — with a head-transplant surgeon and a tombstone-shopping widower along the way.It opens with the SS Morro Castle, the 508-foot American ocean liner that ferried wealthy passengers between New York and Havana during Prohibition until September 8, 1934, when its captain, Robert Wilmott, dropped dead the night before departure and a fire of unknown origin erupted in a B Deck storage locker on the voyage home. Replacement captain William Warms steered into gale-force winds and waited 38 minutes to send a distress call, paint-gummed lifeboats refused to lower, untrained passengers broke their necks jumping in faulty life jackets, and at least 137 of the 549 aboard died before the charred hulk ran aground at Asbury Park, New Jersey, where souvenir stands sprang up around the wreck. Suspicion later fell on chief radio operator George White Rogers, the disaster's celebrated hero, whose hidden history of arson convictions, an aquarium-heater bomb built to maim a police lieutenant asking too many questions, and a double murder ended with his sudden death in Trenton State Prison — and the disappearance of his prison records.From there the episode lightens briefly with a pair of newspaper accounts of courtship by gravestone: an 1896 story from the Cincinnati Enquirer about a widower who finally bought a $50 monument for his wife of five years past — not out of grief, but to impress a wealthy widow who had called him too cheap to mark the grave — and a 1924 item from the Kansas City Star about a Kansas woman who married a widower precisely because he kept his first wife's grave so well.Next comes Dr. Robert J. White, the Cleveland neurosurgeon who watched the first successful human kidney transplant in Boston in 1954 and spent the rest of his life pursuing something far stranger: transplanting a living human head onto a donor body. In March 1970 he performed the operation on monkeys, moving one animal's head onto another's decapitated body in an 18-hour surgery; the hybrid lived nine days. White, a devout Catholic who sparred publicly with journalist Oriana Fallaci and animal rights activist Ingrid Newkirk, came close to attempting the procedure on a quadriplegic human volunteer through Russia's medical system before he died in 2010, leaving behind questions about consciousness, identity, and death that medicine has yet to answer.The hour then turns to Jeannie Saffin, a 61-year-old London woman with the mental capacity of a child who, on September 15, 1982, burst into flames while sitting calmly at her father's kitchen table in Edmonton with her hands in her lap. Her father Jack and brother-in-law Don Carroll doused the fire, but Jeannie — burned to the subcutaneous fat on her face, hands, and abdomen — never screamed, slipped into a coma, and died eight days later. The chair she sat in was unmarked, the nearest flame was a shielded pilot light five feet away, and a police constable concluded it was spontaneous human combustion, a verdict the coroner rejected. Skeptic Joe Nickell's pipe-ember theory accounts for some details, but not how a human body ignited so completely in under two minutes while burning nothing around it.Then the mystery of Peter Bergmann: the tall, gray-haired man with an Austrian accent who arrived in Sligo, Ireland by bus on June 12, 2009, checked into the Sligo City Hotel under a false name and a fabricated Vienna address, and over three days left the hotel thirteen times carrying a full purple plastic bag — returning empty-handed each time, never once caught by CCTV disposing of anything. He bought ten international stamps, cut the labels from his clothes, folded them neatly on a rock at Rosses Point Beach, and was found dead at the water's edge the next morning near Dead Man's Point. The autopsy revealed terminal prostate cancer he could not have been unaware of, yet he died of cardiac arrest, not dr

In Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day, a former nun clutches a crucifix, prays the words Jesus prayed the night before the cross, and then lets it fall to the floor.EPISODE PAGE (Includes Sources and Transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/cotu-disclosuredayLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here for Weird Darkness: https://pod.link/1078714736. For Church of the Undead episodes specifically, you can find a list of apps here: https://pod.link/1651062114.*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: June 14, 2026

Three nine-year-old boys in a Massachusetts port town go looking for the schoolyard ghost called Skeleton Jack and instead find a tree that should not exist — black and leafless, cold enough to seem to drink the life out of the air — a tree one of them is dared to carve his name into, while something he can't see breathes in the dark just behind him.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BlackTreeFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: "The Abandoned Drive-In Theater" — A newcomer to North Carolina, biking past the ruins of a drive-in theater that's been dead for decades, hears an engine roar and turns to see a film flickering across the filthy, torn screen — then finds every speaker smashed and every wire long since severed, with no way the movie could have been playing at all. *** "He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral" — Six days before Christmas, a security guard helps lower his coworker Jake into the ground after a fatal heart attack — and two mornings later, arriving alone at the snowed-in, empty worksite, he finds Jake's car already parked in the lot. *** "The Black Tree in the Woods" — In a Massachusetts port town haunted by the schoolyard legend of a flayed pirate ghost, three nine-year-old boys push deep into a forbidden forest and find a short, withered tree that grows no leaves and seems to drink the life out of the air — and when one of them is dared to carve his name into its strangely soft bark, something he cannot see begins breathing in his ear.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:17.025 = The Abandoned Drive-In Theater00:07:35.119 = He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral ***00:17:39.759 = The Black Tree In The Woods ***00:58:35.975 = Show Close *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Abandoned Drive-In Theater” by January Nelson, from Thought Catalog: https://tinyurl.com/ybwbdgev“He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral” by Thomas J. Sotvedt: https://tinyurl.com/yckfue5w“The Black Tree In The Woods” submitted anonymously to Thought Catalog: https://tinyurl.com/y7rocj8v(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: June 10, 2020

Thirteen years after The Empire Strikes Back, the long-delayed finale arrived in 1996 — six episodes that brought the original trilogy to a close. Funding cuts had stalled production for more than a decade, but the conclusion was completed at last, with Anthony Daniels returning one final time as C-3PO, joined by Brock Peters as Darth Vader, John Lithgow's Yoda, and Ed Asner as Jabba the Hutt. Still carried by John Williams' score and the original sound effects, it's Return of the Jedi as you've never heard it. | #RRStarWarsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:37.835 = Episode 01: Tatooine Haunts00:34:52.858 = Episode 02: Fast Friends01:04:58.749 = Episode 03: Prophecies And Destinies 01:38:38.890 = Episode 04: Pattern And Web02:06:06.595 = Episode 05: So Turns a Galaxy, So Turns a Wheel02:40:27.908 = Episode 06: Blood of a Jedi03:14:07.134 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRRSW03

A mother tracking her daughter's phone led police to a New Hampshire Olive Garden, where the daughter ran out in tears with cigarette burns on her legs and a story about a forced marriage and a satanic ritual.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/DanielOuelletLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A bored New York commuter who passes the time on the A train by quietly sorting his fellow riders into types becomes fixated on one unremarkable man whose blank stillness never breaks — a man who takes the same seat in the same car to ride to the end of the line and right back again — until the need to know what he really is pulls the commuter off his own route and down into the tunnels after him.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/StrangersOnTheSubwayFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: "The Statues" — Forced to babysit his toddler cousin in his aunt's house full of religious statues, a teenager finds a black gargoyle crouched in the baby's room that his aunt swears she never owned — right before she starts screaming at him to get the child out. *** "The Strangers" — A bored subway commuter who passes the time sorting strangers into types becomes obsessed with one blank, silent man who rides to the end of the line and back for no reason — until learning what he really is pulls him down into the tunnels after him.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:00:58.163 = The Statues00:14:23.981 = The Strangers (On The Subway) ***00:50:09.127 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Statues” by Sammy Ruiz: https://tinyurl.com/ydxzvtfm“The Strangers” submitted anonymously to Creepypasta.com: https://tinyurl.com/ycv86sfs(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: July 02, 2020

The official story has Lee Harvey Oswald firing three shots from a sixth-floor window, yet the witnesses on the stairs never saw him flee, the paraffin test on his cheek came back clean, and J. Edgar Hoover himself admitted the voice on the Oswald tape from Mexico City belonged to another man.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ConspiracyInDallasREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8hjttrFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Was there a conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza in 1963? (Conspiracy In Dallas) *** A Weirdo family member tells of his own personal experience with what might’ve been a hell hound. (The Dog That Wasn’t There) *** One island, one couple, one murder. We’ll look at the strange life and death of Rolf Neslund. (The Rolf Neslund Murder) *** She was murdered in November of 1901. Her lover spent more than a dozen years in prison, proclaiming his innocence, before being pardoned by the governor. So why did he commit suicide soon after getting out of prison? We’ll look at the strange murder of – and eventual haunting by - Nell Cropsey. (The Lingering Ghost of Nell Cropsey)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:09.039 = Show Open00:02:46.404 = Conspiracy In Dallas00:20:59.391 = The Dog That Wasn’t There ***00:22:36.375 = The Rolf Neslund Murder 00:31:41.043 = Lingering Ghost of Nell Cropsey ***00:40:08.752 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Conspiracy In Dallas” posted at The Unredacted: http://bit.ly/weirddarkness2YVxMdq“The Dog That Wasn’t There” by Weirdo family member Daniel Mulberry“The Rolf Neslund Murder” by Elizabeth Tilsa: http://bit.ly/weirddarkness2KywOAX“The Lingering Ghost of Nell Cropsey” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/weirddarkness2UnJ2Rb(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November 28, 2021Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar moves from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas to a phantom black dog in the English county of Dorset, the murder and dismemberment of a retired sea captain on a quiet island in Washington's San Juan archipelago, and the 1901 killing of a young woman in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, whose spirit is said to still walk her family home.It opens in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, where President John F. Kennedy was shot and the Warren Commission, headed by Judge Earl Warren, concluded in 1964 that ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots alone from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Eyewitnesses undercut that account from the start: Arnold Rowland saw two men at the window minutes earlier, one holding a rifle and neither matching Oswald, while secretaries Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles and caretaker Jack Dougherty never saw Oswald flee down the only staircase he could have used. The episode dismantles Arlen Specter's single-bullet theory — the claim that Commission Exhibit 399 passed through Kennedy's neck and inflicted five separate wounds on Governor John Connally before turning up nearly pristine on a Parkland Hospital stretcher — a conclusion Connally and his wife Nellie both rejected and Abraham Zapruder's home film contradicts on timing. Oswald's negative paraffin test, his suspicious 1959 defection to the Soviet Union and fluent Russian, his leafleting against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee alongside FBI-linked investigator Guy Banister, and a Mexico City impersonation so plain that J. Edgar Hoover told President Lyndon Johnson the recorded voice and surveillance photograph did not match the man in custody all steer the evidence away from a lone gunman. The thread ends with Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, whose out-of-state mob contacts spiked twenty-fivefold before he shot Oswald on live television and whose 1965 hint that the truth would never surface still shadows the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that remains the strongest piece against the accused.From there the tone turns to folklore and a listener's firsthand sighting of Black Shuck, the spectral black dog reported for centuries across Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and East Anglia and long treated as an omen of coming disaster. Camping alone beside a medieval moat near Raoul Castle in East Dorset, he watched the dark shape of a large dog settle on the far embankment and stare back at him, then rise and dissolve into nothing as every nearby sound of wildlife cut out, leaving him zipped inside his tent until morning.Next comes the disappearance of Rolf Neslund, an 83-year-old retired sea captain who in 1978 drove a 550-foot freighter into the West Seattle Bridge before retreating into a drink-soaked marriage on Lopez Island in Washington's San Juan Islands. When Rolf vanished in August 1980, his wife Ruth insisted he had flown home to Norway, yet his prescriptions went unfilled, his American and Norwegian bank accounts went untouched, and no Christmas card reached his relatives that December. In 1982 Ruth's brother told police she had confessed that on August 8, 1980, a second brother held Rolf down while she shot him twice in the head, after which the body was dismembered in the bathtub, burned in a backyard barrel, and scattered on the manure pile. A search turned up replaced carpet over bloodstains, spatter on the ceiling, and a bloodstained .38-caliber Smith & Wesson hidden in Ruth's dresser, tying her to a killing that began as a fight over the roughly $80,000 she had quietly moved into an account bearing only her name; convicted in 1985 and sentenced to twenty years, she maintained her innocence until her death at seventy-three.The episode closes with nineteen-year-old Nell Cropsey, who walked onto the front porch of her family's Elizabeth City, North Carolina home with her suitor Jim Wilcox on the night of November 20, 1901, and was never seen alive again. Her body surfaced in the Pasquotank River on December 27, her death caused by a violent blow to the left temple, and Wilcox — the son of the local sheriff, known for a fierce temper — was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to thirty years before Governor Thomas Walter Bickett pardoned him in 1918. Once freed, Wilcox sought out newspaper editor W.O. Saunders to reveal something so startling that Saunders began planning a book, but Wilcox killed himself with a shotgun before he could tell it, Saunders died soon afterward in a car wreck, and whatever he knew went with them. More than a century on, the former Cropsey home still answers with lights that switch on and off, doors that open by themselves, faucets that run with no hand on the tap, and a pale young woman glimpsed crossing empty rooms and gazing from an upstairs window — recognized by more than one resident as Nell, her killing never truly solved.

In 1983, the team behind NPR's record-breaking Star Wars returned for the darker, colder middle chapter — The Empire Strikes Back, told across ten episodes. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels were back as Luke and C-3PO, Billy Dee Williams reprised Lando Calrissian from the film, and a young John Lithgow voiced Yoda, all set to the original sound effects and John Williams' score. From the frozen wastes of Hoth to the clouds of Bespin, it's the Star Wars sequel as you've never heard it. | #RRStarWarsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:18.293 = Episode 01: Freedom’s Winter00:27:42.852 = Episode 02: The Coming Storm00:53:25.863 = Episode 03: A Question of Survival01:17:59.498 = Episode 04: Fire And Ice01:44:01.903 = Episode 05: The Millennium Falcon Pursuit02:09:29.038 = Episode 06: Way of the Jedi02:36:34.560 = Episode 07: New Allies, New Enemies03:03:42.954 = Episode 08: Dark Lord’s Fury03:28:52.899 = Episode 09: Gambler’s Choice03:52:56.581 = Episode 10: The Clash of Lightsabers04:20:16.969 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRRSW02

In 1981, National Public Radio turned the biggest movie in the world into a thirteen-episode radio epic that went on to break the network's listening records. George Lucas sold the rights for a single dollar and handed over the original sound effects and John Williams' score, letting a full cast bring the galaxy to life in sound alone. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels reprised Luke Skywalker and C-3PO in a sweeping retelling that expands well beyond the film — the original Star Wars as you've never heard it.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:26.702 = Episode 01: A Wind To Shake The Stars00:29:28.616 = Episode 02: Points of Origin00:57:12.772 = Episode 03: Black Knight, White Princess and Pawns01:24:56.510 = Episode 04: While Giants Mark Time01:52:19.601 = Episode 05: Jedi That Was, Jedi To Be02:19:58.041 = Episode 06: The Millennium Falcon Deal02:46:11.104 = Episode 07: The Han Solo Solution03:11:18.777 = Episode 08: Death Star’s Transit03:39:30.428 = Episode 09: Rogues, Rebels and Robots04:07:04.628 = Episode 10: The Luke Skywalker Initiative04:31:53.682 = Episode 11: The Jedi Nexus04:58:33.511 = Episode 12: The Case For Rebellion05:26:28.922 = Episode 13: Force And Counter Force05:54:27.266 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRRSW01

Louisiana troopers stopped a banged-up Toyota Supra on Interstate 310 on June 7th, and the driver's escape attempt ran through two swamps, one alligator, and a sheriff's drone.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/gator-getawayLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A terrifying vision, a terrifying UFO encounter, and evidence of the encounter buried in his arm – if true, Tim Cullen’s story could change everything we think we know about extraterrestrials.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/timcullenREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/433fftc2FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Tim Cullen’s life changed forever after a chilling dream in 1978. It wasn’t long after that he had bizarre encounters with UFOs, was abducted by aliens, and found a strange piece of metal embedded in his arm. Were these encounters real? If so, what secrets lie within the alien implant removed from his body? (The Alien Abduction of Tim Cullen) *** The life of Martha Place took a dark turn in 1899. Convicted of a brutal murder, Martha faced a horrifying punishment… she was about to become the first woman to be executed by the electric chair. (The First Woman in the Electric Chair) *** We’ll look at a double-murder case where real crime collides with reality TV, resulting in real-life horror. (The Wife-Swap Murders) *** Steve’s childhood was marked by inexplicable and spine-chilling encounters. Eerie breathing sounds, a manifestation at his bedside, being pushed down the stairs… all without a rational explanation. Even moving away wouldn’t bring his paranormal tormenting to an end. (The Entity That Follows) *** The urban legend of "The Licked Hand” is a chilling tale that has been whispered around campfires and shared at sleepovers for generations, tapping into our deepest fears of invasion and vulnerability. But this isn't just any ghost story; it's a timeless warning about the dangers lurking in the darkness, waiting to infiltrate our homes and lives… and it even has a bit of truth to it. (Licking The ‘Humans Can Lick Too’ Urban Legend)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:22.108 = Show Open00:03:49.182 = Alien Abduction of Tim Cullen00:15:23.331 = The First Woman in the Electric Chair ***00:20:45.119 = Licking The “Humans Can Lick Too’ Urban Legend00:32:36.414 = Wife-Swap Murders00:40:47.468 = The Entity That Follows ***00:57:00.607 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Alien Abduction of Tim Cullen” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9xv3u2“The Wife-Swap Murders” by Rayven Crawford for Unspeakable Crimes: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5n93fc8e“Licking The ‘Humans Can Lick Too’ Urban Legend” by Jacob Shelton for Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8bbakk, and UrbanLegendsAndHorror.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y39ytjpk“The First Woman in the Electric Chair” by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ydbd6ae8“The Entity That Follows” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ykycurch(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: April 10, 2024This episode of Weird Darkness moves from a recovered alien implant in a Colorado man's forearm to the first woman ever sent to the electric chair, through the campfire legend of the licked hand, a Wife Swap family destroyed by one son's gunfire, and a breathing entity that stalked a boy from one English city to another.It opens with Tim Cullen, who dreamed on April 2nd, 1978 that he would be in a violent traffic accident, then lived it a week later on April 9th when his friend Ken Ruberg's car rolled over multiple times and left Cullen with a broken neck. Recovering in the hospital, he had a second vivid dream, this one of a UFO, and on May 30th of that year, while driving Highway 59 home from a checkup with his pregnant wife Janet, the couple watched a silent, glowing craft roughly 100 feet long hover over a pasture with two diffused lights — one yellow, one red — glowing at its rear. Cullen reported two more sightings along the same Yuma, Colorado stretch of road, one in 1980 and another in 1994 witnessed by his wife and three daughters, but the encounters faded from his mind until 1998, when he hit his thumb with a hammer and Dr. Mark Hubner at the Yuma Clinic spotted a piece of metal lodged in his forearm on the X-ray. Convinced the object was an alien implant, Cullen contacted Roger K. Leir, who surgically removed it on February 5th, 2000 in Thousand Oaks, California — a melon-seed-shaped fragment about 7 centimeters long, wrapped in a reddish-brown membrane, with a magnetic core that leapt half an inch off the table toward a magnet.From there the episode turns to March 20th, 1899, when Martha Place became the first woman executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York, a procedure so unfamiliar with a female prisoner that her executioners cut a slit in the black dress she had sewn herself to reach her ankles. Born Martha Garrettson in Millstone, New Jersey in 1849, she had been struck in the head by a sleigh at 23 and, her brother believed, never fully recovered. After marrying widower William Place and coming to hate her teenage stepdaughter Ida, she threw acid into the 17-year-old girl's face on February 7th, 1898, smothered her with bedding, and waited with an ax for William, whom she wounded as he stepped through the door. Governor Theodore Roosevelt refused to commute her sentence, and after the words "God help me," 1,760 volts ended her life at the age of 49.Next comes the urban legend of the licked hand, in which a girl left home alone with her German Shepherd reaches down through the night to feel a reassuring lick, only to wake and find her dog skinned in the shower and the words "Humans can lick too" scrawled on the mirror. The legend's roots reach back to an 1871 entry in The Diary of a Victorian Squire by Dearman Birchall, run through M.R. James's 1919 story "The Diary of Mr. Poynter," and surface in the film Urban Legend with its "aren't you glad you didn't turn on the lights" variant. Folklorists including Trevor Blank of SUNY Potsdam account for the tale's endurance, and its dread finds a real-world echo in Dennis Rader, the BTK strangler, who cut the phone lines at Marine Hedge's home on April 27th, 1985 and hid in her closet for hours before she returned.The episode then examines a double murder rooted in reality television, the case of the Stockdale family, who appeared on an April 23rd, 2008 episode of Wife Swap trading mothers with the easygoing Tonkovic household. Raised under a strict religious regime that banned video games, dating, and most contact with the outside world, Jacob Stockdale fatally shot his mother Kathy and his brother James in the head on June 15th, 2017 in Beach City, Ohio, then survived a self-inflicted gunshot. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and tried more than once to flee the mental institution holding him, including a plan to hide behind stacks of books being carted out, but Dr. Arcangela Wood judged him sane at the time of the killings. Jacob ultimately pleaded guilty and received two consecutive 15-year terms, 30 years for the deaths of his mother and brother.The episode closes with an account written by UFO Insight's Marcus Lowth and told to him by a man he calls Steve, who first heard breathing beside his face at age three or four in 1970s Newcastle, England. The encounters escalated over the following years — an invisible finger shoving his cheek, the manifestation of a grey-haired man around 50 in an old-fashioned suit at his bedside, and a push that sent him tumbling down a full flight of stairs in daylight. When the family moved to a semi-detached house near Sheffield in Yorkshire, the presence followed, culminating one night around midnight when Steve, then eight or nine, felt invisible knees pin him to the mattress and unseen hands tighten around his throat until the grip suddenly released and the breathing drained away into the distance. It never returned, leaving unresolved whether the entity was a poltergeist drawn to a child, the lingering ghost of an old man, or something demonic that fixed on a person rather than a place.

A three-year-old who could not sit up, walk, or speak arrived at a Rockford hospital with a brain bleed in July of 2023, and Loves Park detectives would spend nearly three years trying to learn how it happened.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/lovespark2023Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A candlemaker guards one dying flame through the night while ravenous things in the dark demand the soul of a frozen stranger. An old woman stares through a second-floor window with no ledge to stand on, and the shadow man behind her inches closer with every passing night. And a small-town officer commits a man to a psychiatric hold for claiming a five-year-old suicide was really a murder — until the same vision starts playing out in front of his own eyes.FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: I have three stories in this episode for you! Andrew Pendragon pens the tale, “Candles” to start things off. Weirdo Family member Randy Hogan shares a fictional tale called “Old Woman in the Window”. And then our final story is from S.F. Barkley called “I’m a Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy”.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:10.223 = Chandler’s Candles00:19:35.808 = The Old Woman in the Window00:24:35.615 = I’m A Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy, Part 1 ***01:03:09.029 = I’m A Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy, Part 2 ***01:29:19.732 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“I’m a Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy” by S.F. Barkley: https://sfbarkley.com/,https://www.reddit.com/user/Barkles52/“Candles” by Andrew Pendragon: https://www.creepypasta.com/candles/“The Old Woman in the Window” by Weird family member, Randy Hogan(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: September 10, 2020Weird Darkness gathers three works of horror fiction for Creepypasta Thursday, moving from a candlemaker's nightly bargain with the dark, to a watcher at an upstairs window, to a small-town murder reopened by a vision no evidence could explain.It opens with a candlemaker in the small town of Clovetown, the last practitioner of an inherited art he calls Chandler's candles, passed to him from his father and grandmother and kept alive mostly through monthly orders from the Catholic church down the road. His after-hours visitors come only once, telling him sad stories before they go, and on a freezing Tuesday a muddy, shivering man named Basim arrives — a wanderer whose family left Israel before settling in a Midwestern state he refuses to name. The candlemaker warms Basim with tea, tends a bruise left when local children pelted him with a rock, and sends him off with a vanilla-scented sculpted candle and a box of matches. That night the shop window shatters under another volley of stones, and Basim is found frozen to death on a bench outside. As the power fails and darkness floods the shop, ravenous shadow-creatures his family has sheltered against for centuries surround him and demand Basim's marked soul, and he survives the night only by shielding the dying flame of that single candle with his own body until dawn.From there the episode turns to a teenage boy who finds an old woman staring through his second-floor bedroom window, her face blank and dead, though no ledge or balcony exists for anyone to stand on. She returns each night after 10:30 for eight months, and the pattern eventually breaks — she appears in the living room window in daylight, then inside the house, and finally seated beside him with the same lifeless expression. A second figure joins her, a shadow man with masculine features who edges closer with each appearance, and his presence twists the old woman's blank stare into one of horror and terror. By the end, both stand within inches of the boy, and he does not know whether he will live to see another night.The episode closes with Sean Barkley, a Crisis Intervention Team officer working the night shift in rural Pennsylvania, dispatched on a freezing-rain night to a farmhouse where a man named Kevin claims to have witnessed a murder. Kevin's sister, Melissa Watson, died in that house five years earlier in a death ruled a suicide, but he now sees a recurring vision in the upstairs bedroom — Melissa pleading for her life as her husband Andrew fires a gun — and Barkley glimpses the same muzzle flash in the window. Rather than let Kevin hunt Andrew down, Barkley commits him on an involuntary hold and quietly reopens the case with fellow officer Tim, uncovering an autopsy that recorded old bruises and a broken rib never investigated, a handgun bullet buried in the mattress, and a shotgun shell hidden in an air duct. The trail leads to Virginia Beach, where a search warrant turns up Melissa's missing .380 and a destroyed external hard drive holding child exploitation material, some of it filmed in the basement of the farmhouse. Andrew is arrested and then released on bail before he is found dead in a motel room, an apparent suicide with a note only Barkley can see, and a final vision of Melissa's spirit reveals that she had drawn the investigation toward exposing her husband so that she could claim her own revenge.

In one of Ontario's least forested regions, a witness reported two creatures scavenging garbage at dawn — and when they knocked on wood to scare them off, something knocked back.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/ontariobigfootLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A coffin lid scratched from the inside, a stalker hiding in the basement, and a plate of "fresh venison" served by a man who was never a hunter — Redditors share the true moments that still keep them up at night.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RedditHorrorsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4ywsvu9vLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Creepy True Occurrences From Redditors” posted at Factinate.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/h9zz8vka(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November, 2021Here's the blog synopsis in plain text, ready for your review pass before HTML conversion.Weird Darkness gathers dozens of true creepy stories submitted by Redditors, ranging from a grandmother buried alive in a backyard coffin to phantom police officers, a haunted hotel painter, a 1980s kidnapping attempt, and a dinner of "fresh venison" served by a cannibal.It opens with a coworker's family story about exhuming a grandmother who had been buried in a wooden box in the backyard, as was once customary. When the family lifted the lid to move her to a cemetery plot years later, they found claw marks covering the inside of the coffin — she had been buried alive.From there, a babysitter hears pans falling in the basement after putting the children to bed and calls the police expecting a single patrol officer. A full SWAT team arrives at the door instead, because the dispatcher heard a second phone on the line hang up after the call ended. A man wanted for multiple assaults had been listening from the basement extension.A secluded spring campground follows, where a father and his friends befriended a quiet neighbor living out of a makeshift truck camper. Days later, driving out, they spotted him hanging from a tree beside his untouched campsite, a note pinned to the trunk with a buck knife — the suicide had happened at the father's favorite camping spot, the same one where he finally told his children the story years later.Next comes a twelve-year-old girl living in a backyard trailer who heard footsteps crossing the metal roof at night, always when she was alone. Months later she woke to find the trailer sweltering, the heater cranked to full blast, and fled on instinct; investigators later found the door lock tampered with and a kitchen knife hidden behind a chair beside the heating controls, where the staring neighbor had apparently crouched in wait.After the first break, a traveler in Taiwan steps into an elevator near a night market and stops on a pitch-dark, abandoned floor that shouldn't exist. The building's fourth floor — omitted from the panel entirely, in keeping with Chinese numerical superstition — had been sealed after a hair salon employee died by suicide there, and the elevator had been professionally reprogrammed to never stop on it. It sometimes does anyway, and riders report a figure in a gown moving toward the doors.Then a 2 a.m. street fight ends with a stabbing, a daughter catching her bleeding stepfather on the porch, and an answering machine message recorded at the exact time of the attack: a school friend across town, crying, describing a dream of screaming, a fight, and her friend covered in blood — in the late 1980s, long before cell phones could have carried the news.A college student renting a basement room recounts his dog growling at one corner of the room, followed by the small dirt-floored closet under the stairs creaking open on its own with deliberate slowness, leaving him frozen in the dark hallway for five full minutes.A seven-year-old girl visiting her mother's best friend watches a burned family — a mother, a teenage boy, and two younger girls — walk the house and beckon her to come with them. Years later the friend admitted the family had moved out over hauntings: baby toys scattered overnight, blankets and pillows arranged on the floor as if people had slept there.A smashed flower pot follows, found twenty feet from its shelf in the middle of a family room floor with no dirt trail, as if it had been carried and dropped straight down. Then two brothers named Jack and Tom each spend a night silently furious at the other's loud guests, only to meet in the hallway and discover the living room full of chattering old people belonged to neither of them — the room stood empty, smelling of musk.A college party flips from paranormal dread to absurdity when a bleeding, pantsless man with wild hair forces his way through the door screaming "please"; the supposed intruder turned out to be a friend of a friend on a catastrophic acid trip who had lost his pants running through a field.The block closes with a runner who caught a prospective neighbor — a man who had complimented his physique two days earlier — standing at his bedroom window at midnight, having entered the house earlier to adjust the blinds for a better view. The chase across gravel driveways ended with a written confession, a photographed license plate, and, a full year later, a knock on the door from the same man, apologizing.Out of the second break comes a Hollywood Hills doorstep in the early 1980s: a distraught woman babbling about blood, two LAPD officers who collect her within ten minutes, and then two more officers thirty minutes later — the ones actually dispatched to the call, with no record of who the first pair were or where they took her.The night crew of a 24-hour Subway describes their resident "SubGhost," blamed for disembodied conversations, crashing noises, items sliding off counters, and a new automatic paper towel dispenser that unspooled an entire roll, sheet by sheet, in an empty room.Three children watch a white figure of a man sit atop a telephone pole, grinning at them, before he stands, jumps, and vanishes before reaching the ground. Then a basement-apartment tenant describes a man watching him through the window for ten minutes, followed weeks later by an air conditioner cover pried off in the night — and a police department that could do nothing until someone actually broke in.A newspaper carrier on a rural route in 2000 describes a drenched man in a white shirt charging out of a rain-filled ditch at 2 a.m. with what looked like a hatchet in his hand; the man took his own life within the hour, and the carrier had to pound on a farmhouse door to report it because his Motorola flip phone had no signal.A bus rider chats with an oddly unsettling woman at the stop, boards an empty bus, and hears "Hey! Remember me?" from a little girl who resembles the woman exactly — on a bus the rider is certain was empty.The episode then travels to South Africa's Eastern Cape in July 2010, where a humanitarian worker and a missionary named Piet arrive at a Xhosa village to find it deserted. A naked woman covered in cuts, missing an ear, and running on all fours charged their truck, screeching and clawing at the windows as they fled. The villagers later said only that "a bad presence" had been in the village and was now gone.Gentler hauntings follow: a clock radio scraping across a desk to face a grandson and playing opera — the late grandfather's wake-up music of choice — two weeks after the funeral; a glass bowl that shattered downstairs during a sleepover and was found already swept up, its pieces gathered into another bowl on the table; and a dying grandfather whose eyes opened wide on his final breath as he smiled, looking happier than he had in years.The dread returns with a woman home alone who hears something working at her front door lock and sees two silhouettes — one at the door, one at the living room window — standing motionless, watching her watch them. They vanished before help arrived, and she found the basement window partially kicked in the next morning.A Sacramento man recounts surviving an attempted kidnapping around age nine or ten: a white van stopped beside a late-night Frisbee game, the sliding door opened, and a man in black flew out on a rigged telescoping harness operated from inside, missing his grab by inches. The three boys hid on a school roof for nearly an hour while the van circled, searching.A small-town yard sale yields a dented silver cigarette case for two dollars; months later the same elderly seller has the identical case — same dent, same brand of cigarette inside — while the original has vanished from the buyer's nightstand drawer. A man recalls childhood dreams of gripping toys hard enough to wake up holding them, including the Skeletor figure his family swore they never bought.Then a sixteen-year-old new driver and her four-year-old half-sister are stalked across town by a purple-faced man in a white pickup truck who blocked intersections, revealed a gun under his shirt, rammed their car toward oncoming traffic, and drew a finger across his throat. The older sister's gas station escape plan — coaching the four-year-old to jump out and run to the counter — ended the pursuit, though polic

“The Enchanted Child”: A polite little boy keeps pushing away his favorite dessert at Sunday dinner — and every time he does, somebody in the family doesn't live to see Monday.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Enchanted Child” (January 20, 1978) ***WD00:47:10.132 = House of Mystery, “The Ghost Who Forgot Halloween” (October 27, 1945) ***WD01:18:31.060 = Incredible But True, “The Stowaway” (1950-1951)01:22:03.585 = Inner Sanctum, “Death Is a Joker” (June 10, 1944) ***WD01:52:21.712 = Jeff Regan, “The Prodigal Daughter” (July 17, 1948) ***WD02:22:26.847 = The Key, “Escape Artist” (1956) ***WD02:48:46.905 = Lights Out, “Death Robbery” (June 16, 1947) ***WD03:17:47.487 = Lux Radio Theater, “The Big Clock” (November 22, 1948)04:18:09.933 = Macabre, “Weekend” (November 20, 1961) ***WD04:45:27.936 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0687

A tiny tagging system nobody had ever studied in the brain turned out to be hard at work locking in fear — and only in the females in the lab.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/Fear-StudyLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A Florida man heading to court for a burglary charge stopped to attempt another burglary along the way, telling police he just wanted a shirt to wear in front of the judge.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/burglary-commute/Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

Behind the walls of H.H. Holmes' "World's Fair Hotel" waited trap doors, gas chambers, and a basement of acid vats — and more than a century after the Murder Castle burned, something still lingers at 63rd and Wallace.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HHHolmesHotelREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/57djvd7fFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: It’s one of the most infamous and macabre subjects of Chicago history – it even served as inspiration for TV’s “American Horror Story: Hotel”. It’s what has become known as “The Murder Castle” where serial killer H.H. Holmes committed his monstrous crimes. But even today, Holmes continues to terrify… in spectral form. (H.H. Holmes’ Hellish Hotel And Lingering Haunting) *** A woman tries to save the soul of her daughter, believing her to be possessed… but her solution to drive out the demon was to murder her daughter using a holy crucifix. (Murder By Crucifix) *** What’s worse than proclaiming yourself to be a supernatural being and starting your own cult? How about telling your followers you are God so you could do drugs and have sex with teenage girls? It’s the disturbing true story of the cult called “The Group”. (Theodore Rinaldo – The Drug Cult Rapist) *** Shrunken heads – believe it or not, they are real. And some tribal peoples create them even today – from real human heads. But why do it at all? We’ll look at the reality behind shrunken heads, the reason they are created… and even how they are created. (The History and How of Shrunken Heads) *** A terrifying series of paranormal activities invade a family’s home in Wales. (The Swansea Entity) *** Tenome is a Japanese Urban Legend about a blind man who was robbed and murdered. His dying wish? To have eyes on his hands so he could see. (The Seeing Hands of Tenome) *** Unsolved mysteries are intriguing simply because they are unsolved. That’s why we are so fascinated by stories of people disappearing without a trace. But one man’s disappearance is so bizarre, so weird, that upon hearing the story you’ll be scratching your head wondering what the heck you just heard. (The Strangest Disappearance at Sea in History) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:27.539 = Show Open00:04:09.416 = H.H. Holmes’ Hellish Hotel and Lingering Haunting00:22:02.613 = The Seeing Hands of Tenome ***00:25:29.843 = The Strangest Disappearance at Sea In History00:36:31.904 = Murder By Crucifix ***00:42:31.316 = The Swansea Entity00:52:22.872 = The History and How of Shrunken Heads ***00:58:56.160 = Theodore Rinaldo: The Drug Cult Rapist01:05:34.000 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Swansea Entity” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3pt262t4“Murder By Crucifix” by Inigo Gonzalez for Ranker’s Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4h6mjabw“The Strangest Disappearance at Sea in History” from Strange Company: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/nsrhjdew“Theodore Rinaldo – The Drug Cult Rapist” by Matthew Lavelle for Ranker’s Unspeakable Times:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yx2hmzus“The Seeing Hands of Tenome” from The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y4dnxee6“The History and How of Shrunken Heads” by Bipin Dimri for Historic Mysteries: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4wdznwwc“H.H. Holmes’ Hellish Hotel and Lingering Haunting” from Chicago Hauntings: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/pvthp98(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness moves from the haunted ground of H.H. Holmes' Chicago Murder Castle to a flesh-eating Japanese yokai, a millionaire's impossible vanishing at sea, an Oklahoma exorcism that ended in murder, a violent Welsh poltergeist, the real-world practice of shrinking human heads, and the Washington State drug cult led by a man who claimed to be God.It opens in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, where Herman W. Mudgett — better known as H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer and the inspiration for the Hotel Cortez in American Horror Story: Hotel — built his three-story "World's Fair Hotel" at 63rd and Wallace to prey on visitors to the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The building held sixty rooms riddled with trap doors, hidden staircases, gas chambers, and a basement furnished with a dissecting table and vats of acid and lime. Holmes confessed to 27 murders before his hanging in Philadelphia on May 7, 1896, though some historians put his victim count at 200 or more, and the strange deaths that followed his execution — a poisoned forensics expert, a suicidal prison superintendent, a priest beaten to death in his own churchyard — fed talk of a Holmes curse for decades. The site was never excavated, and employees at the Englewood post office built beside the old Castle property still report stacking chairs, a singing woman no one can find, and apparitions on the grass where the hotel once stood. Even Holmes' own descendant, Jeff Mudgett, author of Bloodstains and the figure behind the History Channel's American Ripper, walked out of that basement a changed man.From there the episode crosses to Japan and the legend of Tenome, a blind old man robbed and beaten to death in a field who returned as a vengeful yokai with eyes on the palms of his hands. First recorded in the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, the creature hunts graveyards and open fields by scent, feeds on fresh human bones, and inspired the Pale Man of Pan's Labyrinth. The segment ends with the Kyoto tale of a young man who hid from the Tenome inside a locked temple chest — and was found afterward as an empty sack of skin, his bones sucked out through his flesh.Next comes the 1931 disappearance of Hisashi Fujimura, the Japanese-born silk millionaire who vanished from the Red Star liner Belgenland somewhere between Halifax and New York on the night of August 13. Fujimura had told a friend he feared gamblers would follow him aboard, his mistress Mary Reissner was registered under a false name as a governess, and his bank account had dropped from over $333,000 to $2.65 in five months. The ship's captain saw him talking to an unseen person at 2:45 a.m.; by morning his bed was unslept-in and his seven-year-old daughter was alone in the stateroom. Federal investigators closed the case without answers, a dust-free wallet bearing his name later surfaced in an empty Manhattan flat, and Fujimura was declared legally dead in 1938 — leaving murder, suicide, accident, and a staged escape all equally possible.The darkness turns domestic with the 2016 killing of 33-year-old Geneva Gomez in Oklahoma City, beaten to death by her own mother, Juanita Gomez, who claimed she was performing an exorcism to drive Satan from her daughter. Juanita punched Geneva repeatedly, forced a crucifix and religious medallion down her throat, then arranged the body in the shape of a cross with a wooden crucifix on her chest. A forensic psychologist concluded she was feigning incompetence, the insanity plea collapsed, and in January 2018 a jury needed only 20 minutes to convict her of first-degree murder and recommend life without parole.The episode then travels to Rhondda Street in Swansea, Wales, where in 1965 Marcia and David Howells, their two small children, and Marcia's grandmother endured a poltergeist that began with choking sensations in the night and escalated to bottles flying off mantelpieces, rooms ransacked in minutes, the gas stove turning itself on, and a double bed found hurled on top of the baby's empty cot behind a barred door. Police, reporters, and a priest all came to the little house; the only room ever left untouched was the grandmother's. The family finally moved out, the activity stopped, and no tragedy in the home's history was ever found to explain it — leaving psychokinesis, spirit attachment, and Marcia's own verdict, a demon, on the table.From haunted houses the show turns to a practice that is grimly real: the shrunken heads, or tsantsas, of the Jivaro people of northern Peru and southern Ecuador. Warriors severed the heads of slain enemies in the belief that shrinking them enslaved the victim's vengeful spirit, then boiled the skin free of the skull, packed it with hot stones and sand, blackened it with charcoal ash, and sewed the lips shut to seal the spirit inside — reducing a human head to a third of its size. Genu

A skeptical census taker's idle curiosity about a mystic who can summon the dead draws his old friend's beautiful, restless daughter into the stranger's orbit — and she may never come back.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneInRadio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Sophia And The Pilgrim” (June 19, 1978) ***WD00:46:22.976 = BBC Ghosts From The Past, “The Boat Hook” (April 15, 1992)01:29:50.477 = Calling All Cars, “Triple Cross” (May 22, 1936) ***WD02:00:23.302 = Hall of Fantasy, “Man-Size in Marble” (April 10, 1947)02:26:39.527 = Harry Lime, “Ticket To Tangier” (August 24, 1951)02:53:34.654 = Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “The Dead Man of Varley Grange” (July 28, 1984)03:20:37.249 = The Haunting Hour, “Breakdown” (May 05, 1945) ***WD03:34:56.875 = Hermit’s Cave, “Author of Murder” (May 02, 1937)04:02:13.875 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “Faithless Life” (1945-1950)04:25:11.416 = Sherlock Holmes, “The Devil’s Foot” (January 11, 1947)04:54:23.916 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0686

Two months after walking away from the Tombstone feud a free man, Johnny Ringo was found dead against a tree with a Colt in his hand. He had survived the Hoodoo War, jail breaks, and a showdown with Doc Holliday — but no one can agree on what finally killed him.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/JohnnyRingoREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/24j5xybkFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: A gentleman gunslinger who could quote Shakespeare, Johnny Ringo was a mythic gunslinger who died a mysterious death befitting his legend. (The Mysterious Death of Outlaw Johnny Ringo) *** To his family and neighbors, Richard Kuklinski was the all-American man. To the mafia and his victims, he was the "devil himself" known as the Iceman killer. (The Mafia’s Most Prolific Hitman) *** Wherever tragedies happen, urban legends settle. And for almost every urban legend, there is a road to take you there… a road often just as terrifying as the urban legend it takes you to. (Roads that Lead to Urban Legends) *** We’ll look at the true story of a bar bouncer accused of killing his wife… which is odd, seeing as the incident took place before he killed a man while defending her honor. (A Broad-Shouldered Bully Was Wiener) *** Extraterrestrials come in all shapes and sizes if you believe what you see on television, film, and even online in the fringe conversations of UFO enthusiasts. The most famous of the aliens are usually depicted in the very realistic, humanoid form… the Greys. But what exactly are the Greys? And is it possible they aren’t extraterrestrial at all? (What Are The Greys) *** We’ll meet a man who has an amazing superpower. He is especially proficient at passing gas. (Mister Methane: The Gas Man)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:59.394 = Show Open00:03:16.488 = The Mysterious Death of Outlaw Johnny Ringo00:15:42.451 = A Broad-Shouldered Bully Was Wiener ***00:19:08.842 = Roads That Lead To Urban Legends00:30:46.873 = The Mafia’s Most Prolific Hitman ***00:39:46.230 = Mister Methane: The Gas Man00:45:59.461 = What Are The Greys? ***00:52:15.959 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Mysterious Death of Outlaw Johnny Ringo” by Kuroski for All That’s Interesting:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/n4d9yce6“Roads that Lead to Urban Legends” by Estelle for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2fkp8nkt“The Mafia’s Most Prolific Hitman” by Katie Serena for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5xe6xx4s“What Are The Greys” from Anomalien: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5u5cknde“Mister Methane: The Gas Man” by Spooky for Oddity Central: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2hje4vs9 (VIDEO: https://youtu.be/kaRZeuZDAVI)“A Broad-Shouldered Bully Was Wiener” by Robert Wilhelm for Murder By Gaslight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/34rnu2y9=====(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness travels from a gunfighter's unexplained death under an Arizona oak tree to a mafia hitman's freezer, a tour of the world's most haunted highways, a St. Louis hanging, a British flatulence performer, and the enduring question of what the Grey aliens actually are.It opens with Johnny Ringo, the Shakespeare-quoting outlaw and cousin to the Younger and James brothers, who survived the Hoodoo War of Mason County, Texas, a jailbreak, multiple murder charges, and a near-shootout with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday on the streets of Tombstone — only to be found dead on July 13, 1882, slumped against a tree with a .45 caliber Colt in his right hand. The coroner called it suicide. Others pointed to the cartridges in his gun, the absence of powder burns, the odd position of his hat, and later confessions attributed to Earp himself, and called it murder. Biographers Jack Burrows and David Johnson weighed the same evidence a century later and sided with suicide, a quiet end for a man newspapers once misspelled into legend as "Ringgold."From there the episode moves to St. Louis in 1877, where Billy Wieners — a hulking bouncer at the Theatre Comique saloon, already out on bond for trying to kill his wife — shot assistant barkeeper A.V. Lawrence dead for insulting that same wife. The Missouri Supreme Court found nothing in the record to soften a verdict of deliberate murder, and after his sister Annie's commutation campaign failed to move Governor Phelps, Wieners hanged in the St. Louis jail yard on February 1, 1878, using his last words to warn other men away from whiskey.Next comes a road trip through the world's haunted highways: Zombie Road in Wildwood, Missouri; India's cursed Ranchi-Jamshedpur NH33, where 245 people died in three years and a woman in a white saree patrols the asphalt; South Africa's N9 with the hitchhiking ghost of Maria Roux; Australia's "Street With No Name" in Annandale; the werewolf sightings on Yorkshire's B1249; Malaysia's Karak Highway, where a creature was seen battering a husband's head against his own car roof; Scotland's A75 Kinmount Straight and its phantom animals; Long Island's Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow roads; the unearthed Hawaiian warrior bones beneath Oahu's H-1; Thailand's temple-haunting murdered wife on Chak Phra Road; and the ghosts scattered along old Route 66.The darkness deepens with Richard Kuklinski, the Gambino-affiliated contract killer known as the Iceman, who froze his victims' bodies in industrial freezers so the time of death could never be fixed. Convicted of six murders, he claimed hundreds, killing with cyanide nasal spray, ice picks, hand grenades, and his bare hands while coaching his children's barbecues and ushering Sunday Mass in suburban New Jersey. An ATF sting through his only friend, Phil Solimene, ended the run in 1986, and Kuklinski spent his remaining years giving prison interviews until his death in 2006 — a week after his wife Barbara declined, one last time, to lift the do-not-resuscitate order she had signed.The mood lifts with Paul Oldfield of Macclesfield, England, the performer called Mr. Methane, who discovered during a teenage yoga session that he could draw air into his colon at will and built a stage career on controlled flatulence — playing Phil Collins parodies, alarming Howard Stern, and logging 86 farts in a single minute for a 2018 Guinness World Records attempt, a talent the record book had refused to touch back in 1990.The episode closes among the Greys, the large-eyed, gray-skinned beings that dominate alien abduction reports from Betty and Barney Hill onward. Ufologists describe two castes — tall telepathic leaders and smaller cloned workers — originating in the Zeta Reticuli binary star system 38 light years away, harvesting human sperm and eggs to repair DNA ruined by generations of cloning. A rival theory holds that the Greys are not extraterrestrials at all but human beings from a distant future: taller, thinner, larger-brained time travelers returning to collect healthy genetic material from before whatever catastrophe awaits us.

Twenty years after she was locked away for taking a hatchet to her own sister, fragile Ann Pettigrew comes home obsessed with one desire — and on a storm-lit night, with candles burning and a circle drawn on the floor, she works a forbidden rite to summon back the only man she ever loved, no matter what comes walking up the veranda steps to answer.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “A Model Murderer” (January 17, 1978) ***WD00:47:24.875 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Survival Of The Fittest” (January 23, 1945) ***WD00:59:08.508 = The Eleventh Hour, “Black Magic” (ADU)01:23:55.381 = Escape, “The Drums of the Fore And Aft” (July 14, 1949)01:53:55.440 = Everyman’s Theater, “Cat Wife” (January 18, 1940)02:22:54.327 = Murder By Experts, “Murder By Prescription” (July 11, 1949)02:53:20.176 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Hunting Lodge, aka Trouble With Robots” (May 28, 1958) ***WD03:12:48.537 = Faces In The Window, “Lightning Rod Man” (January 17, 1953) ***WD (LQ)03:37:34.837 = Dark Fantasy, “Letter From Yesterday” (May 01, 1942) ***WD04:01:41.360 = BBC Fear on 4, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (December 27, 1990) ***WD04:31:41.320 = Future Tense, “The Defenders” (May 28, 1974) ***WD04:57:56.341 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0685

A scheming wife and her spineless lover pull off the perfect murder of her wealthy husband — until the dead man starts turning up in the snow, at the bar, waiting in the shadows, and refuses to stay buried.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “In Another Place” (January 16, 1978) ***WD00:47:10.460 = The Clock, “Ghost Story” (December 13, 1955) ***WD01:13:55.372 = Creeps By Night, “The Final Reckoning” (July 12, 1944) ***WD01:43:11.958 = The Crime Club, “Fear Came First” (March 13, 1947) ***WD02:13:07.451 = Crime Classics, “The Crime of Bathsheba Spooner” (December 03, 1952)02:41:09.611 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “The Tunnel Smelled of Death” (January 26, 1947) ***WD03:05:39.762 = CBC Deep Night, “Man Radio” (July 29, 2005)03:40:38.324 = The Devil and Mr. O, “Going Down” (December 17, 1971)04:09:19.922 = Diary of Fate, “David Dexter” (May 04, 1948) ***WD04:40:36.758 = Dimension X, “The Martian Chronicles” (August 18, 1950) ***WD05:09:57.556 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0684

In 1977, a calm, otherworldly voice broke into the British evening news across five transmitters at once, identified itself as an alien envoy, and warned humanity to abandon nuclear weapons before time ran out. Was it a hoax, or first contact?EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/AlienVoicesOnTVAndRadioREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mrxcfak4FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: While scientists at SETI are continually monitoring for extraterrestrial contact from the cosmos, ordinary people are already hearing from them – via radio and television. (Aliens Voices Over Radio and Television) *** 
The death of a Hollywood movie producer is still unsolved – and his spirit on the lot is still at unrest. (The Mysterious Death of Thomas Ince) *** A family moves into a new home, and it’s not long before they begin hearing strange sounds coming from the home bar in their living room. (Something In That Part of the House) *** In years past, baby boys were dressed in pink. So why the change to the color blue for boys? The answer is a dark one. (Baby Blues) *** In just 30 seconds, 30 rounds were fired when the tension between a crew of thieving cowboys and vigilante lawmen came to an explosive head in the frontier town of Tombstone, Arizona. (The True Story Behind the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Klaatu’s speech from “The Day The Earth Stood Still” (1951)00:02:45.959 = Show Open00:04:39.005 = Alien Voices Over Radio And Television00:16:13.874 = The Mysterious Death of Thomas Ince and the Haunting of Culver Studios00:33:04.222 = Something in That Part of the House ***00:39:31.873 = Baby Blues00:45:22.653 = The True Story Behind the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral ***00:54:32.710 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The True Story Behind the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” by Mark Oliver: http://ow.ly/RmAm30oaHWt“The Mysterious Death of Thomas Ince” by Troy Taylor: http://ow.ly/WVUu30oaHvS“Something In That Part of the House” by Haven: http://ow.ly/qMeU30oaHxn“Baby Blues” by Conny Waters: http://ow.ly/zcGj30oaI32“Alien Voices Over Radio and Television” posted at the Conspiracy Journal: https://tinyurl.com/y2ht47pt“Klaatu’s Speech From ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’”: (link no longer available)(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November, 2021Weird Darkness moves across five unsettling true tales — alleged alien voices breaking into broadcast signals, the unexplained death of a Hollywood pioneer, a possessed home bar in Mexico, the superstitious roots of dressing infant boys in blue, and the bloody thirty seconds behind the O.K. Corral.It opens with the alleged extraterrestrial transmissions that have arrived through ordinary radios and televisions rather than from deep space. On November 26, 1977, at 5:12 PM, a deep, water-logged voice overrode five Southern Television transmitters across southern England, speaking over news reader Ivor Mills for five and a half minutes; the voice named itself Gramaha — also transcribed as Vrillon, Gillon, or Glon — a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, and warned humanity to abandon nuclear energy before the dawning New Age of Aquarius. The Independent Broadcasting Authority never logged the interruption and could not explain how its instant switch-off monitoring was bypassed. Years earlier, in July 1961, an eighteen-year-old ham radio operator named Robert P. Renaud had picked up a soft feminine voice high in the 25-meter band claiming to broadcast from a planet called Korendor, eventually trading images on his television's vidicon tube with a contact named Lin-Erri, an episode investigator Allen Griese found oddly free of showmanship or profit. A decade after Renaud, in January 1971, British UFO researcher Rex Dutta took a call on a radio talk show from a voice that registered no echo, no feedback, and no movement on the station's VU meter.From there the episode crosses to November 1924 and the death of Thomas Ince, the producer who founded Culver Studios in 1918 and earned the title Father of the Western. Ince died days after celebrating his birthday aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht, the Oneida, on a weekend cruise to San Diego that also carried actress Marion Davies and, by rumor, Charlie Chaplin. The official account blamed acute indigestion, but Hollywood whispered that Hearst, jealous over Davies, fired a diamond-studded revolver in the dark and put a bullet meant for Chaplin into Ince's head instead. The body was cremated, no inquest was held, San Diego district attorney Chester Kemply closed the case after a single session, and gossip columnist Louella Parsons soon received a lifetime Hearst contract. Decades later, workers at Culver Studios reported a man in a bowler-type hat watching them from the catwalks during 1988 renovations, frowning, declaring that he disliked what they were doing to his studio, and walking through a wall.Next comes a listener's account of a house in Mexico, bought by the family about twenty years earlier, where a heavy tavern-style wooden bar in the living room became the source of growling, clinking glassware, and slamming cabinet doors that sounded like two animals fighting inside an empty cupboard. The housekeeper, Letty, threw the cabinet open to find nothing disturbed. Weeks later the mother and Letty dug up jars in the front yard containing rag dolls pierced with pins, buried directly on the other side of the wall behind the bar. A framed mirror reading BAR shattered at three in the morning during a housewarming party, a barred window slid open on its own after being latched, and a photograph of a single bar stool showed a clear horned, devil-like face the family begged to have deleted. Letty, it turned out, was a bruja — a witch.Color superstition drives the next story: infant boys, dressed in blue today, were once dressed in pink, and a June 1918 article in the trade journal Earnshaw's Infants' Department called pink the stronger, more decided color suited to boys and blue the daintier choice for girls. The return to blue revived a far older practice, since the ancient Egyptians and Greeks regarded blue as divine and used it to repel evil spirits, dressing pharaohs in it and, as author Douglas B. Smith recounts, painting nurseries to keep satanic spirits from slipping into young children's bodies. Boys received that protection because they were valued above girls, who were thought too unimportant for evil spirits to trouble. The same fear survives in the Evil Eye and in protective amulets like the Hamsa and the Turkish Nazar, hung in homes and cars and worked into jewelry across the Balkans and the Middle East.The episode closes behind the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, where thirty rounds were fired in roughly thirty seconds. Tombstone, Arizona had been founded in 1877 by prospector Ed Schieffelin, who struck a silver vein worth more than thirty-seven million dollars after being warned that all he would find out there was his own tombstone. Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and James Earp, joined by the gun-slinging ex-dentist Doc Holliday, clashed with the Cochise County Cowboys, a feud that hardened after Curly Bill Brocius accidentally killed city marshal Fred White in 1880 and Virgil took the post. The gunfight left Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, and nineteen-year-old Billy Clanton dead while Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne fled, and Judge Wells Spicer afterward released the Earps as having committed an unwise but not criminal act. The reckoning continued past the verdict, with Virgil shotgunned in the back, Morgan assassinated over a game of pool in a plot tied to Ike Clanton, and Wyatt Earp drifting west until his death in California in 1929 at the age of eighty.

Security cameras filmed a live goat led into a black-and-red room in a Hackney office block — the working shrine of an Afro-Brazilian religion that feeds its spirits in blood.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/hackney-goat-shrineLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWSNOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

A girl named Gabriela walked into a church in Joinville, Brazil, claiming she had fled an abusive home. Fourteen months later a family was preparing to adopt her until the truth was revealed about who Gabriela really was.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/gabriela-joinvilleLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

Some monsters don't lurk in the dark — they wear a familiar face and sit down at your table. | June 07, 2026 #WDRadio==========HOUR ONE: In the 1960s, Brian Leathley-Andrew investigated and reported on numerous cases of strange objects in the sky, trying to get to the truth of what people were seeing. But when sinister events began happening to him, he knew he had to walk away from his career in Ufology – or the government might make him go away. (UFO Hunter Becomes The Hunted) *** Saying the disappearance of David Glenn Lewis is bizarre doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. What started out as a strange missing person’s case would eventually be resolved. But the answer that would come would pose even more questions, proving the adage that “truth is stranger than fiction”. (The Disappearance of David Glenn Lewis) *** The idea of a person changing into a wolf, or shape-shifting into some type of animal or cryptid is mostly confined to the authors of fictional horror. But not all societies and cultures are so quick to label shape-shifting as make-believe. (Shapeshifters And Therianthropes)==========HOUR TWO: “The Gadsden Hotel in Cochise County, Arizona” *** When you hear the name “Transylvania” the immediate image in your mind is probably that of Dracula. But this Romanian town has more creepiness than just the Count’s castle – it is also a hot spot for UFO activity and mysterious unexplained happenings. Some even think it could be the location of a portal to another dimension. (Is There A Dimensional Portal in Transylvania?) *** Sightings of unidentified flying objects might seem like a recent phenomena, with most reports occurring in the 20th and 21stcenturies. But UFO sightings go a lot further back in human history – and our ancient ancestors were just as shocked, confused and sometimes terrified, as we are today. (Ancient UFO Sightings)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: A man goes off for supplies, leaving his wife behind to tend to the home in his absence – but not only did he never come home with the groceries, but a ghost story grew out of it. (The Ghosts of Hunger Valley) *** A UFO incident which we have covered before, but is worth looking at again, is an incident in 1952. This was one of the first admitted entity sightings and probably also one of the earliest close encounters of the third kind investigated officially at the time it took place.==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:“The Gadsden Hotel in Cochise County, Arizona” from Paranormality Magazine“Is There A Dimensional Portal in Transylvania?” by A. Sutherland for the Message to Eagle: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ghvx2jxy“Ancient UFO Sightings” by A. Sutherland for Message to Eagle https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/8y3dlh5c,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1rucr7et, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3sxyfr93, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/swo6sglh,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/17o2c3i5“UFO Hunter Becomes The Hunted“ by Mike Lockley for Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1fxu6h8y“The Ghosts of Hunger Valley” by Charles Skinner, edited by Kathy Weiser, posted at LegendsOfAmerica.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/111pegi3“Shapeshifters And Therianthropes” by James Fenner for List Verse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1qqh0ult“The Disappearance of David Glenn Lewis” by CrystalDawn for Lost N Found Blogs: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1shqwhrt==========Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. Background music provided by Alibi Music Library, EpidemicSound and/or StoryBlocks with paid license. Music from Shadows Symphony (https://tinyurl.com/yyrv987t), Midnight Syndicate (http://amzn.to/2BYCoXZ) Kevin MacLeod (https://tinyurl.com/y2v7fgbu), Tony Longworth (https://tinyurl.com/y2nhnbt7), and Nicolas Gasparini (https://tinyurl.com/lnqpfs8) is used with permission of the artists.==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).==========

An Alabama prosecutor called the murder of a mother and her two children one of the most demonic crimes he had ever seen, and for fifty years other killers have gone a step further and told police a demon made them do it.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/cotu-devilmademedoit/READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckk9bhjLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: June 07, 2026

For over a century, Pennsylvania has been a hotspot for UFO encounters that baffle experts and leave witnesses questioning reality. From glowing discs in remote lakes to crafts that defy physics, the Keystone State’s skies are filled with the mysterious, paranormal, and extraterrestrial.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources):  https://weirddarkness.com/PennsylvaniaUFOsREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ye247nxkFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Pennsylvania has always been a land of mysteries in the skies. It has become one of the most intriguing destinations for UFO sightings throughout the years, with tales that date back long before the term “flying saucer” was even coined. From glowing discs hovering over fields, to objects that break the laws of physics, the state’s history is filled with encounters that leave you wondering what might actually be out there. And these are not mere passing glimpses; these are encounters that can leave a witness profoundly shaken – altered for life. There’s the Carbondale incident, where strange lights in a lake sent people into a panic. There’s the experienced aviator who encountered something that decades in the cockpit could not explain. There are numerous accounts of silent craft and disc-shaped objects, eerie lights in the sky — occasions when the stars were blotted out. There are reports of the stopping of time, an encounter that had state troopers speechless, and even an extraterrestrial werewolf-like entity. From the earliest sightings in 1917 through more modern accounts, Pennsylvania’s connection to the UFO phenomenon is undeniable, if not unbelievable. What’s going on in the skies over the Keystone State? And why is it happening there in particular?CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:37.162 = Show Open00:02:45.008 = Chapter 01: Lanterns and Lies: The Carbondale UFO Mystery00:11:48.101 = Chapter 02: Eerie Lights in Erie ***00:15:12.728 = Chapter 03: The Oil City Light Show00:16:46.996 = Chapter 04: Saylor’s Lake, Silent Lights, and a Stunned State Trooper00:18:09.833 = Chapter 05: A Tent, A Grandmother, And A Silent Visitor Overhead00:20:02.281 = Chapter 06: The Wainwright’s Werewolf00:25:33.631 = Chapter 07: The Black Circle In The Sky ***00:27:55.349 = Chapter 08: Friday Night Lights In The Sky00:30:36.853 = Chapter 09: Playing Chicken With An Experienced Pilot00:32:40.481 = Chapter 10: Mind Probing and Time Stopping00:35:41.135 = Chapter 11: The First Saucers00:41:31.466 = Chapter 12: Why Pennsylvania? ***00:44:16.924 = Show Close & Bloopers*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:UFOs in Pennsylvania: Encounters with Extraterrestrials in the Keystone State, Patty A. Wilson, ISBN 9780811 706483The Carbondale UFO Crash, 11-11-1974, The Reality, the Hoaxes and the Legend, M.J. Graeber https://www.ufocasebook.com/carbondalecrash1974.htmlHovered- Colored lights went out- sped away -left trail, National UFO Reporting Centerhttp://www.nuforc.org/webreports/068/S68976.htmlUFO Over Westline, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/032/S32964.htmlUFO Over Erie, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/019/S19817.htmlBright lights in the sky seperated by several miles, National UFO Reporting Centerhttp://www.nuforc.org/webreports/043/S43145.htmlWar of the Worlds Sighting, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/054/S54491.htmlVery large circular craft with engine problem, descends, stabilizes, restores engines and tests them, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/016/S16875.htmlOne larger white object & 2 smaller round white objects, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/048/S48591.htmlUFO Sighting Johnstown 1951, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/132/S132897.htmlBright Blue Object Sighting, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/035/S35223.htmlSix craft observed that brought people out of their homes to look up, National UFO Reporting Center http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/043/S43006.htmlThe Discreetly Intriguing Carbondale Case – A Downed UFO In Pennsylvania, Marcus Lowth, UFO Insighthttps://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/cover-ups/carbondale-case-downed-ufo-pennsylvania(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: February 24, 2025Weird Darkness traces more than a century of unexplained encounters in the skies over Pennsylvania, from a glowing disc submerged in a Carbondale lake to a werewolf-faced figure tied to a silent craft, the apparent stopping of time outside New Kensington, and the geography researchers believe may explain why the Keystone State draws so many sightings.It opens with the Carbondale incident of November 1974, when teenagers Bill Lloyd, John Lloyd, and Bob Gillette watched a golden-white light streak from the direction of Salem Mountain and drop near the lake outside Russell Park. A disc-shaped glow moved beneath the water, the surface fizzed and turned a sickly green-yellow, and when Officers Barbero and Jacobina fired their weapons at it, the object appeared to dodge the shots. The boys overheard a police radio order to hold off the news media, watched a scuba diver surface screaming, and saw a crane and delivery truck brought to the water's edge under the eye of Police Chief Francis Dottle — only for divers to later produce a single old railroad worker's lantern and declare the whole thing a hoax. Matt Graeber of the UFO Report and Information Center in Philadelphia arrived at five in the morning to find a crowd of between fifteen hundred and three thousand people ringing the lake.From there the episode moves to February 1975 in Simpson, where a driver on Route 171 joined other motorists pulled over to watch red and green lights hover before a white beam appeared and the object shot off faster than a fighter jet. That June, two friends fishing at Red Bank near the Allegheny Reservoir tracked a craft that stopped dead in midair and hovered for roughly an hour, then heard KDKA radio report at six-thirty that morning that a UFO had crashed into an eastern Pennsylvania lake and the National Guard had it surrounded, before the story disappeared from every outlet. Near Erie around the same stretch, two motorists stopped to study a silent disc about eighty feet across hanging a thousand feet up, ringed with red, yellow, blue, and green lights, and afterward never spoke of it to each other again.Next comes Oil City on November 1, 1974, where CB radio chatter about lights near the Vocational Technical Center across from Oil City High School drew a group of brothers out to look. They found three or four bright lights spread miles apart, moving in geometric formations no aircraft could manage, performing for nearly two hours in front of hundreds of onlookers.The account then shifts to Saylor's Lake in Monroe County on the evening of March 1, 1973, where lights began darting fifteen hundred feet above the water around seven-thirty, shifting between white, red, and blue. State Trooper Jeffrey Hontz, sent to investigate, later told the press the display looked like Christmas trees flying in the air. Witnesses counted roughly forty separate lights, all of them silent at an altitude where planes or helicopters would have roared, and the spectacle lasted until just before eleven.That summer of 1973 in Erie, a teenager sleeping in a backyard tent to escape the heat saw a red, star-like object cross the sky with apparent purpose and ran inside to fetch his grandmother. By the time the two returned, the sky had filled with colored star-like objects moving at impossible angles and near-collisions before they winked out of existence rather than flying away, and the grandmother, though she had watched the whole half-hour, afterward refused to discuss any of it.The most frightening encounter belongs to Bensalem on August 27, 1973, when Alan and Elsie Wainwright saw a boomerang-shaped craft glide silently over their home, halt overhead, and d

Two wealthy couples settle in for a lavish Christmas dinner at a lovingly restored country cottage, until the lights die, the wine turns to blood, and the house itself seals them inside with something that remembers what once happened within its walls.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Laughing Maiden” (January 13, 1978)00:45:48.046 = BBC Radio 4/Radio 7 Ghost Story, “Exorcism” (December 28, 1992)02:11:59.037 = Beyond the Green Door, “Ogden Family” (1966) ***WD02:15:59.632 = The Black Book, “On Schedule” (February 17, 1952) ***WD02:31:30.285 = Boston Blackie, “Lighthouse Ghost” (September 10, 1947)02:55:56.212 = Box 13, “The Sad Night” (December 19, 1948)03:23:36.223 = Casey Crime Photographer, “Case of the Switched Plates” (July 07, 1943)03:52:57.163 = CBC Mystery Theater, ‘The Breaking Strain” (1968) ***WD04:21:52.588 = Chet Chetter’s Tales From The Morgue, “1-800-Big-Bang” (1990-1992) ***WD05:17:51.890 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0683

A betrothal feast turns to terror when the man who comes courting Lady Margaret may be the same Earl of Dunbar who was stabbed to death on the road to claim her — and a Highland prophecy that the last of her line would be the bride of death seems to be coming true.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater” (January 02, 1978) ***WD00:47:10.839 = Nick Carter Master Detective, “Death After Dark” (February 19, 1944) ***WD01:16:26.535 = Dark Venture, “Miser” (December 09, 1946)01:46:44.791 = Weird Circle, ‘Bride of Death” (1945)02:14:12.621 = The Whistler, “Dead Man Laughed” (February 19, 1945)02:44:38.214 = Witch’s Tale, “Firing Squad” (August 31, 1931) ***WD (LQ)03:10:47.939 = X Minus One, “The Castaways” (November 28, 1956)03:33:51.090 = Zero Hour, “The Strange Odyssey” (May 17, 1945) (LQ)03:51:09.995 = ABC Mystery Time, “Death Walked In” (1956-1957) ***WD04:15:57.703 = Strange Adventure, “Damage Below” (1945)04:19:33.278 = Appointment With Fear, “My Fate Cries Out” (December 04, 1976) ***WD04:47:07.133 = Arch Oboler’s Plays, “Cliff” (April 29, 1939) ***WD05:16:13.771 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0682

A regular nineteen-year-old with no criminal record stabbed his landlord to death with a pocketknife, then later claimed the demon he'd taunted into possessing him — instead of his fiancée's eleven-year-old brother — had crawled out of a well and into his body to commit the murder.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/arnejohnsonREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8n97s9FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The third Conjuring film is based on the true story of Arne Cheyenne Johnson who claimed he committed murder because a demon made him do it. But how much truth is there to that story? (The Devil Made Him Do It) *** A tribe living in the Amazon Jungle tells about a strange encounter they had with an extraterrestrial and a strange beam of light. (That Time An Alien Visited the Kayapo People) *** An elderly man decides he needs to hire someone to help him care for his property… but who he chose would bring only death and a mystery that still goes unsolved. (The Wonnangatta Station Murders) *** Lizard people. Reptilians. It’s one of the strangest and most controversial conspiracy theories in existence – and we’ll look at some of the history behind the idea, as well as what science says about the possibility of it being a reality. (The Myths and Modern Science of Reptilians) *** A nun who wasn’t very good at being a nun ended up being a nun without a head. (The Headless Nun of Watton Priory) *** We’ve all been asked the question, “How do you want to die when it comes your time?” Aside from the boring but realistic answer of “quietly in my sleep” some would prefer to go out in a blaze of glory, doing something heroic to save a person or persons from imminent doom. But of course that does not happen for most of us. In fact, there are probably more people going out in a blaze of stupidity! (Dumbest Deaths) *** In 1995 Mike Marcum got it in his head to build a time machine. Did he succeed? We may never know – because he disappeared without a trace. (The Mike Marcum Time Machine)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:16.342 = Show Open00:02:43.182 = The Devil Made Him Do It00:13:06.595 = The Wonnangatta Station Murders ***00:21:13.768 = That Time An Alien Visited The Kayapo People00:31:32.636 = Myths and Modern Science of Reptilians ***00:36:18.232 = Headless Nun of Watton Priory00:50:09.790 = Dumbest Deaths ***01:02:12.268 = The Mike Marcum Time Machine ***01:06:33.695 = Show Close & Bloopers*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Myths and Modern Science of Reptilians” from Anomalien: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/b7m27fbr“The Devil Made Him Do It” by Marco Margaritoff for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/pxfxa423“That Time An Alien Visited The Kayapo People” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/sauzjxp2“The Wonnangatta Station Murders” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ceycy3k“The Headless Nun of Watton Priory” from Esoterx: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/x4sknt6r“Dumbest Deaths” by Katie Chilton for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/sm6mwmj7“The Mike Marcum Time Machine” from Earth Chronicles: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/hytc7552(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November 17, 2021Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar leads listeners through seven dark tales spanning a courtroom plea of demonic possession, an unsolved double murder on a remote Australian cattle station, an Amazon tribe's memory of a sky visitor, the serpent-race conspiracy of reptilians, a centuries-old English haunting, history's most absurd deaths, and a Missouri man who vanished after trying to build a time machine.It opens with the 1981 killing of forty-year-old landlord Alan Bono in Brookfield, Connecticut, the first murder in the town's 193-year history, committed by his nineteen-year-old tenant Arne Cheyenne Johnson with a five-inch pocket knife. Johnson's attorney Martin Minnella attempted a plea of not guilty by reason of demonic possession, tracing the violence to months of torment suffered by eleven-year-old David Glatzel, the brother of Johnson's fiancée Debbie, who described a tormentor with black eyes, animal features, and hooves. Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren declared it a genuine possession and claimed David levitated and stopped breathing across three exorcisms overseen by priests, while psychiatrists countered that the boy had a learning disability. Judge Robert Callahan rejected the supernatural defense as unprovable, Johnson was convicted of first-degree manslaughter on November 24, 1981, and the case later inspired the film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.From there the episode travels to the remote Wonnangatta Station in Australia's Victorian Alps, where caretaker James Barclay hired English handyman John Bamford in 1917, a man rumored to have killed his own wife. After the two rode to Talbotville to vote on the Reinforcement Referendum in December 1917, mailman Harry Smith found the homestead empty but for the words "Home Tonight" chalked on the kitchen door, and weeks later he and Jack Jebb uncovered Barclay's decomposed body in a shallow creekside grave, dead from a shotgun blast to the back. The following November, Bamford's body surfaced in a log pile on the Howitt Plains with a bullet in the head, leaving investigators with a recently fired shotgun, traces of strychnine in the kitchen pepper, and no answer as to who killed the second man.Next comes the legend of the Kayapo people of the Brazilian Amazon, who tell of a sky visitor named Bep Kororoti who descended from the mountains of Pukato-Ti amid thunder, wielding a weapon that reduced trees and stones to dust and a beam of light that paralyzed anyone who fled his lessons. The being neither ate nor drank, taught the villagers practical skills, and eventually ascended back into the sky, and the account drew international attention when young Kayapo men touring Rio de Janeiro reportedly pointed at an Apollo 11 astronaut display and shouted that he had returned. Erich von Däniken cited photographs of Kayapo men in straw ritual costumes resembling spacesuits, taken by Joao Americo Peret in 1952, nearly a decade before Yuri Gagarin's 1961 spaceflight, as supposed support for the ancient astronaut theory.The discussion then turns to reptilians, tracing serpent-race myths found across Sumeria, Babylonia, India, China, and Mesoamerica, alongside the modern claims of David Icke that some humans are disguised lizard people. Set against the folklore, researcher Bjarke Jensen of Aarhus University lays out the actual biology: the human reptilian brain that governs heart rate and breathing, eyes structured much like a reptile's, and conductive heart tissue whose molecular building blocks Jensen's team located hidden in the spongy hearts of lizards, frogs, and zebrafish.The episode then visits Watton Priory in East Riding of Yorkshire, a Gilbertine community where, according to the twelfth-century account of Saint Aelred of Rievaulx, an orphaned girl named Elfleda fell in love with a young lay brother, was beaten and chained in a dungeon by the nuns, and was forced to watch as the man was mutilated. A second tragedy fastened itself to the same site after the 1644 Battle of Marston Moor, when Parliamentarian soldiers beheaded the Catholic Lady of Watton and killed her child, and over the centuries the two women blurred into a single spectral figure remembered as the Headless Nun, said to stand at the foot of the bed in blood-stained garments before vanishing.From there the show catalogs history's most absurd deaths, beginning with English Channel swimmer Matthew Webb, who drowned in the Niagara rapids in 1883, and the Spartan general Pausanias, sealed inside a temple of Athena and starved until he died moments after his release. The roll continues with Draco of Athens, smothered around 600 BC beneath cloaks and hats thrown in tribute; Sir Arthur Aston, beaten to death with his own wooden leg; the philosopher Heraclitus, who buried himself in cow dung hoping to cure his dropsy; lawyer Clement Vallandigham, who fatally shot himself in 1871 while demonstrating how a victim might have shot himself by accident; the Viking Sigurd the Mighty, killed by an infection from the sev

A missing-child call about a six-year-old girl led Aberdeen detectives to her four-year-old brother, dead and buried in a tote beneath the house for nearly a year.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/jacob-bevinsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWSNOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

Nineteen years as the Archdiocese of Washington's exorcist ended within a week of Monsignor Stephen Rossetti posting a video that called most UFO sightings demonic.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/exorcist-ufosLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWSNOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

A 46-year-old Myrtle Beach detective drew his department-issued handgun on a patrolman over the smell of microwaved fish, and a felony charge and the end of his career followed within days.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/fish-felon-debiaseLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWSNOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

Pennsylvania authorities say a 29-year-old volunteer firefighter set three fires in roughly thirty hours, then responded to two of them alongside the company he served.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/justin-shollyLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWSNOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

A 71-year-old Baltimore traffic investigator stopped to tell a driver another car was waiting for her parking spot, and the favor cost him his life six weeks later.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/parking-spot-killingLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWSNOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

A young geologist drilling four miles into a Rocky Mountain ridge breaks through into a sealed chamber and finds something impossible: a fully furnished modern house, twelve billion years old, holding a library that has already written the history of a world exactly like ours — including the volume that tells how it ends.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Ninth Volume” (December 30, 1977)00:46:54.045 = Strange Wills, “Seven Flights to Glory” (August 03, 1946)01:16:39.826 = Strange, “Hillbilly Feud” (1955) ***WD01:30:56.519 = Suspense, “Sorry Wrong Number” (February 24, 1944)02:01:42.070 = Tales of the Frightened, “Ladder” (November 28, 1957)02:06:44.881 = Tales of Tomorrow, “The Old Die Rich” (March 26, 1953) ***WD02:38:30.884 = The Creaking Door, “Girl, Gold, Getaway (1960s-1970s) ***WD03:08:23.441 = Theater Five, “Contract Maker” (November 17, 1964)03:28:37.136 = Theater 1030, “The Sandman” (October 31, 1954) ***WD (LQ)03:55:35.978 = Tales From The Tomb, “Do You Know Where The Children Are” (1960s)04:00:46.397 = 2000 Plus, “The Giant Walk” (November 05, 1950) ***WD (LQ)04:29:46.536 = The Unexpected, “Mirage” (October 24, 1948)04:41:54.647 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Mystery of the Zombie” (1936) ***WD04:56:22.751 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0681

For more than a year, a seven-foot creature with glowing red eyes and folded wings terrorized Point Pleasant, West Virginia—and just weeks after the sightings stopped, the Silver Bridge collapsed and killed 46 people, leaving the town to wonder whether the Mothman had been a monster, a warning, or something far worse.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/RedEyesOfMothmanREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8s2fxtFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Most everyone is familiar with the King James Bible, but did you know that King James also wrote a book on demonology during the witch hunts and trials? (The King James Book of Demonology) *** Her gravestone, decorated with a cross and flowers, reads “Jerrilynn S. Mullins — Beloved wife and best friend.” It could also be added, “a victim of a crime that will likely never be solved.” (The Unsolved Mystery of Jerrilyn Mullins) *** It was on November 15th 1966 that Point Pleasant, West Virginia had its first experience with what later became known as the Mothman. Many believe it was either the cause of a horrific bridge collapse, or perhaps a harbinger of the doom that was soon to come. The mystery remains to this day – as do some of the eerie happenings in the area. (Mothman Attacks) ** 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was found dead in his high school’s gym – but the circumstances of his death have brought more questions than answers. Was Kendrick’s death a tragic accident – or cold-blooded murder? (The Mysterious Death of Kendrick Johnson)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:56.519 = Mothman Attacks00:12:50.814 = The Mysterious Death of Kendrick Johnson ***00:32:56.273 = Unsolved Mystery of Jerrilyn Mullins ***00:44:05.678 = The King James Book of Demonology ***00:54:07.021 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Mysterious Death of Kendrick Johnson” from The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/dkuavkb3“The King James Book of Demonology” by Jacob Shelton for Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/34vaad3z“Mothman Attacks” by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5ac64hhn“The Unsolved Mystery of Jerrilyn Mullins” by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/224xc2w7(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November 15, 2021This episode of Weird Darkness, hosted by Darren Marlar, moves from a winged cryptid haunting a West Virginia river town to a Georgia teenager found dead inside a rolled wrestling mat, a Minnesota newlywed who vanished from a restaurant parking lot, and a king of England who wrote a manual on demons.It opens with the Mothman, first reported on November 15, 1966, when two young married couples driving past an abandoned World War II TNT plant near Point Pleasant, West Virginia, spotted a six- or seven-foot gray figure with folded wings and glowing red eyes that rose into the air and pursued their car down Highway 62 at over 100 miles per hour. That same night, contractor Newell Partridge of Salem watched his television fill with a strange pattern before his dog Bandit chased two red eyes toward the hay barn and disappeared forever, and the next day Roger Scarberry described passing a large dog's body near the city limits that was gone minutes later. Over the following year roughly 100 people, including Marcella Bennett, reported the creature alongside UFO sightings and men in black, and on December 15, 1967, the 700-foot Silver Bridge linking Point Pleasant to Ohio collapsed during rush hour and killed 46 people, cementing the belief that the Mothman had been a harbinger of the disaster.From there the episode turns to Kendrick Johnson, the 17-year-old three-sport athlete found dead on January 11, 2013, stuffed head-down inside a rolled wrestling mat in the old gym at Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia. Investigators ruled the death an accidental positional asphyxia, theorizing the boy fell in reaching for a shoe, but his 19-inch shoulders could not fit through the mat's 14-inch opening, an hour of footage from all four gym cameras was missing and altered, and his organs were found removed and replaced with newspaper. A second and third autopsy revealed blunt force trauma to his neck and right chest, a fabricated confession recording sold to his family for $1,000 was exposed as a hoax by Sheriff Ashley Paulk, and the case, which once entangled FBI agent Randy Bell's sons Brandon and Brian Bell, was officially reopened on March 10, 2021.Vanishing from a restaurant parking lot is what happened next to Jerrilyn Mullins, a 28-year-old Oakdale, Minnesota, newlywed who left the dinner table at a Chi Chi's in Richfield around 9:00 p.m. on November 15, 1978, and was last seen by her husband's coworker Patrick Melbourne, who said he drove her 22 miles back to a Howard Johnson's and left her there. Her decomposed body surfaced in a Lake Elmo swamp on June 30, 1979, identified through dental records and jewelry, with two autopsies unable to determine a cause of death though her stomach contents placed her killing within an hour of leaving the restaurant. Melbourne, who carried a long record of sexual assault allegations and was later convicted of crimes against a 10-year-old girl, remained the prime suspect; husband Ron Mullins lost a 1989 wrongful-death civil suit for lack of evidence, and the Washington County case stayed unsolved when Melbourne died in 2015.The episode closes with King James VI and I, who returned from a 1589 trip to Denmark obsessed with witchcraft and published Daemonologie in 1597, the only treatise of its kind written by a reigning monarch. In its pages he catalogued the signs of demonic possession, describing superhuman strength exceeding six men, iron-hard skin that could not be pierced, and victims speaking languages they never learned, while arguing that demons inhabit the corpses of the pious and that only prayer and fasting, not Catholic ritual, could repel them. He acknowledged werewolves as men suffering an excess of melancholy rather than cursed creatures, dismissed fairies as illusions sent by the Devil, fixed the ratio of female to male witches at 20 to 1 by reasoning that women were more easily deceived as Eve had been, and produced a work that fueled the European and colonial witch hunts and shaped the weird sisters of William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

An Arkansas father who shot the man accused of abusing his 13-year-old daughter walked free after a sheriff's deputy lost the one piece of footage that might have shown what happened on that highway.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/aaron-spencer-dismissedLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWSNOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

A man called 911 in Tarzana to report he had just killed someone, and the person bleeding in the front yard turned out to be a character actor whose face millions had seen in Top Gun: Maverick and Jumanji.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/james-handy-deathLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A forest lookout sits alone in a glass tower at 2AM and spots flames crowning two distant pines — a fire only he can see. By dawn there's no smoke, no ash, no scorched earth... and no fire at all. From phantom flames that burn and vanish to the burned Bigfoot pulled from a Nevada blaze and the UFOs caught streaking through wildfire smoke, tonight we wander into the strange and unsettling things that appear when the forests burn.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/ghostflamesREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yjwtx7awFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The author of Frankenstein always saw love and death as connected. She visited the cemetery to commune with her dead mother. And with her lover. (Mary Shelley’s Obsession With The Cemetery) *** A girl moves into a new apartment and discovers that a haunting doesn’t necessarily have to be frightening. (Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment) *** The July 1886 murder at the Shawmut Avenue laundry was so shrouded in mystery that even the victim’s name was uncertain. (The Wash-House Murder) *** Ghosts, high strangeness, and even Bigfoot – it appears they may all have something in common, and that would be forest fires. (Forest Fires and the Paranormal) *** How do you explain an experienced lookout reporting a blazing forest fire, only for it to disappear less than an hour later – leaving no trace? (Phantom Flames)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:03:57.045 = Show Open00:05:40.844 = Phantom Flames00:21:25.265 = Forest Fires and the Paranormal00:35:10.279 = Mary Shelley’s Obsession With The Cemetery ***0048:57.368 = Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment00:52:28.197 = The Wash-House Murder ***01:01:09.811 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Phantom Flames” by F.A.Loomis from Idaho Magazine: http://ow.ly/beq730nL94u“Forest Fires and the Paranormal” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: http://ow.ly/ROYC30nL8n1“Mary Shelley’s Obsession With The Cemetery” by Bess Lovejoy for the JSTOR Daily: https://tinyurl.com/y9cgd29w“Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment” by Cassie D, posted at MyHauntedLifeToo,com: https://tinyurl.com/ycexszvm
“The Wash-House Murder” by Robert Wilhelm, from the book “Wicked Victorian Boston”: https://amzn.to/2BGJOO0(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March, 2021Weird Darkness opens a fire-themed descent that runs from a vanished forest blaze in 1976 Idaho through ghosts, Bigfoot, and UFOs born of wildfires, into Mary Shelley's graveyard education, a gentle apartment haunting, and an unsolved 1886 Boston murder.It opens with a U.S. Forest Service lookout stationed atop Pilot Peak in the Payette National Forest near Warren, high above the South Fork of the Salmon River, who woke sleepless at two a.m. in July 1976 and saw a bright orange triangle near a distant crest, then confirmed through binoculars two huge trees crowning out with flame. He calculated an azimuth with his fire-finder, radioed a two- to four-acre fire to the station fifteen air miles away, and watched it recede and vanish completely within forty minutes, leaving no smoke, no flame, and no charred ground at dawn six air miles out. Supervisors dubbed it the Pilot Peak phantom fire and sent smokejumper aircraft and hotshot crews to circle the ridge for nearly a week without finding a trace, until two months later a thousand-acre blaze on Zena Creek burned in roughly the same location he had reported.From there the episode widens into wildfires laced with the paranormal, beginning with the Curve Fire that struck South Mount Hawkins in the San Gabriel Mountains of California's Angeles National Forest on September 1, 2002, traced to a brittle 1935 wooden lookout tower and rumored to follow a cult ritual, after which hikers reported eyeless animals with hardened flesh and tall shadow figures akin to the Dark Watchers. It moves to the Battle Mountain Complex Fire near Battle Mountain, Nevada on August 6, 1999, where a letter forwarded to the Bigfoot Field Research Organization and a later call to investigator Thom Powell described firefighters capturing a burned, roughly seven-and-a-half-foot creature with a strong equine odor and near-human features. It closes with a July 2014 wildfire at West Kelowna near Vancouver, Canada, where a Castanet news video appeared to show an object shooting from a cloud, and a 2017 sighting by Arthur Frenette in New Hampshire's White Mountains, who watched a ball of fire plunge into Kinsman Ridge ahead of an out-of-control blaze.Next the episode turns to Mary Shelley, who in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein traced her writing to her literary parents, though her mother, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman author Mary Wollstonecraft, died of puerperal fever days after her birth when Dr. Poignand removed the placenta with unwashed hands. Raised partly at her mother's grave in the St. Pancras churchyard, where she read her mother's work and escaped a strained home after father William Godwin remarried, the teenage Mary met Percy Shelley through the household and, at sixteen, declared love and reportedly first had sex among the tombstones. That fusion of reading, death, and forbidden knowledge surfaces in Victor Frankenstein's graveyard study of decay and in Godwin's 1809 Essay on Sepulchres, which framed visiting the illustrious dead as a form of communion the daughter carried into her novel of a creature assembled from corpses.From there the tone softens with a benign haunting recounted by a woman named Cassie, who moved into a larger, better-kept apartment over Christmas 2018 and lived there three months before moving in with her boyfriend. The internet blinked off repeatedly, cell reception failed in parts of the unit, electrical sockets quit working, bulbs burned out fast, and the shower switched itself on while she was away at classes. One night around one a.m. she and her boyfriend both heard the pitter-patter of bare feet in the kitchen, yet she never felt threatened, and when she left she said goodbye to whatever shared the space with her.The episode closes with the Wash-House Murder, the July 1886 killing of a Chinese laundryman found stabbed fourteen times in his Shawmut Avenue laundry in Boston's South End, his braided queue cut off and the five hundred dollars he had saved for a return to China gone. The victim's name was never certain, printed variously as Bin Chong, Ding Chong, and Wong Kong, and the case drew the Boston Police into a Chinatown governed by rival companies named Moy, Ching, Lee, and Sing. Detectives questioned the violent Moy company leader Ah Moy Chong and brought in New York interpreter Warry S. Charles, but the murder was never solved, and Charles himself was convicted of first-degree murder in 1908 after importing hatchet-armed assassins as a tong leader, leaving four dead in Chinatown.

“Hands of Death”: A wheelchair-bound collector of murder relics decides the only things missing from his macabre collection are a murderer and a victim — so he engineers his own killer brother's downfall to acquire both. But the dead don't always stay in their boxes, and a pair of severed hands may yet keep a promise of vengeance.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Witching Well” (December 23, 1977) ***WD00:47:28.447 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Armchair Detective” (march 27, 1946) ***WD (LQ)01:17:54.860 = Quiet Please, “Valentine” (February 13, 1949) ***WD01:48:08.576 = Radio City Playhouse, “Duet” (October 16, 1949) ***WD02:17:13.009 = The Croupier, “The Roman” (September 21, 1949) ***WD02:47:28.792 = Sam Spade, “Same And Guiana Sovereign Caper” (July 12, 1946) ***WD03:16:41.034 = The Sealed Book, “Hands of Death” (March 18, 1945) ***WD03:47:40.901 = The Shadow, “Death Rides a Broomstick” (March 02, 1941)04:16:17.053 = Sleep No More, “Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (January 30, 1957) ***WD04:45:27.614 = BBC Spinechillers, “Origami” (February 28, 1984) ***WD05:29:33.275 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0680

Researchers in Italy spent three months baking sourdough from yeast they pulled out of the meltwater inside a 5,300-year-old murder victim.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/otzibreadLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

“Brothers of the Angle”: A grieving widow believes a stranger can carry messages from her dead husband — messages only the couple could have known. But in a story about baiting hooks and landing fortunes, the real question is who's fishing, and who's the catch.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Brothers of the Angle” (December 19, 1977) ***WD00:46:41.705 = Mystery House, “Laugh? I Thought I’d Die!” (April 14, 1946)01:11:23.715 = Night Beat, “Bell Perrin Amnesia Case” (July 06, 1951) ***WD01:41:38.347 = CBC Nightfall, “Hypnotized” (April 22, 1983)02:11:33.366 = Nightmare, “The Leech” (April 07, 1954)02:34:12.420 = “The Leech” by Static Wax (SONG: https://weirddarkness.com/music)02:36:59.340 = Obsession, “Surrender Is Farewell” (January 29, 1951)03:00:13.100 = Origin of Superstition, “No News Is Good News” (1935) ***WD03:15:10.285 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Jack of Clubs Better Encode” (February 20, 1949) ***WD03:44:34.186 = Peril, “Cup of Tea” (ADU) ***WD04:11:15.983 = Mystery Playhouse, “Challenge to Listener” (July 04, 1947) ***WD04:36:15.645 = Price of Fear, “Guy Fawkes Night” (November 17, 1973)05:04:00.821 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0679

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb should never have been friends, they were too different from on another. But they did have one thing in common – they both agreed to create the perfect murder – and a mundane pair of eyeglasses would be their undoing. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/BobbyFranksREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ywzfbb6bLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:”The Perfect Murder of Bobby Franks” by Troy Taylor – from the book “Suffer the Children: American Horrors, Homicides and Hauntings”: https://amzn.to/3lo6CvP (Available on Kindle, paperback, and as an audiobook narrated by Darren Marlar)(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November, 2021

Scientists ground a tooth from a 2,000-year-old elongated skull into powder to settle whether the Paracas Coneheads were human, and the genetic machines still came up short.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/paracas-skullsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

One engineer built an AI laser to roast every mosquito in his house, Google wants federal permission to release 32 million more, and the agency built to stop pests can't clear bed bugs out of its own offices.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/BugWarsLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

Two women camping along a public trail on the Fourth of July woke near midnight to a man cutting through their tent, and for nearly two years no one knew who he was.The FBI believes there may be more victims. Investigators have asked anyone who thinks they were harmed by McLenithan, or who knows anything about other possible crimes involving him, to contact the bureau at (503) 224-4181 or to submit a tip at http://tips.fbi.gov. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/TillamookTentLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A double boom rattled homes across New England on a Saturday afternoon, and the cause turned out to be a five-foot meteor breaking apart miles above the coast before its remains splashed into Cape Cod Bay.SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/CapeCodMeteorLook for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A young Long Island couple discovers that the knife-wielding ghost stalking their cellar and terrorizing their four-year-old son may not be the threat they assumed.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Ghost With a Knife” (December 16, 1977) ***WD00:47:13.694 = Beyond Midnight, “The Party” (1968-1970) ***WD01:18:25.389 = MindWebs, “The Night He Cried” (1975-1984)01:39:31.543 = Voice In The Night, “Necklace” (June 14, 1948)02:09:24.196 = Mystery In The Air, “Lodger” (August 14, 1947)02:40:19.177 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Night Must Fall” (April 12, 1946)03:09:20.782 = Mr. Keen, “The Girl Who Flirted” (February 03, 1944)03:39:48.543 = Murder at Midnight, “The Man Who Died Yesterday” (June 30, 1947) ***WD04:06:14.829 = The Black Museum, “The Shopping Bag” (1952) ***WD04:33:04.964 = Mysterious Traveler, “Change of Address” (January 22, 1952)05:02:31.652 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0678

Back in 1818, the same year *Frankenstein* hit the shelves, a Scottish professor named Andrew Ure decided to see if electricity could actually bring a dead body back to life—so he hooked up a freshly executed murderer to a current and watched in fascination as the corpse twitched, "breathed," and even made terrifying expressions that sent witnesses into a panic.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/AndrewUreREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/58czndx7FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: In 1800s numerous scientists were trying to find the reason for life in the hopes of staving off death or even bringing the recently dead back to life. But in 1818 one scientist named Andrew Ure attempted to do even more – to bring the brain of dead human back into the living. And ironically, his experiments took place the very same year the novel “Frankenstein” was published. (The Real-Life Dr. Frankenstein) *** They say the family that plays together stays together… but does that also mean that the family that crimes together does time together? We’ll look at a few true cases of parents committing crimes – and getting help from their children in doing so. (The Family That Preys Together) *** A hunter comes across a wild man in the woods… but what he hears from the humanoid doesn’t sound like a man at all. (The Man I Saw Through My Night Vision Scope) *** What would you do if you showed up to work one morning and your employer asked you to help dispose of a dead body? Don’t be so quick to say that would never happen. That’s just one part of the story of one of the most notorious crimes of 19th century America – the murder of John Parkman. (Dr. Coolidge Settles a Debt) *** Skipping church to go fishing might get you more than just a guilty conscience – especially if you believe the strange story of the Lambton Worm. (The Legend of the Lambton Worm)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Excerpt from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”00:00:49.707 = Show Open00:03:06.456 = The Real-Life Dr. Frankenstein00:11:54.238 = The Family That Preys Together ***00:31:59.759 = The Man I Saw Through My Night-Vision Scope ***00:40:02.958 = Dr. Coolidge Settles a Debt00:50:44.058 = Legend of the Lambton Worm ***00:59:16.928 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“The Family That Preys Together” by Chrys for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2sv76asj“The Real-Life Dr. Frankenstein” by Rachel Souerbry for Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4pevzd6e“Dr. Coolidge Settles a Debt” from Strange Company: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/7tpj8wmv“The Man I Saw Through My Night Vision Scope” from PerpetualConnection: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4e6nrd3h“The Legend of the Lambton Worm” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/52t8cfnc(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: November 09, 2021

In Nazi-occupied France, German officers repeatedly try to execute a young French woman by hanging — but each time, she returns alive. The woman becomes less a normal person than an allegorical embodiment of France/liberty/resistance: the Nazis can murder bodies, but they cannot kill the spirit they are fighting.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Death Slot” (December 14, 1977) ***WD00:47:44.298 = The Key, “Dear John Letter” (1956) ***WD01:12:44.958 = Lights Out, “Execution” (April 27, 1943)01:42:40.945 = Lux Radio Theater, “Sorry Wrong Number” (January 09, 1950) ***WD02:42:19.825 = Macabre, “Final Resting Place” (November 13, 1961) ***WD03:09:51.480 = Philip Marlowe, “Long Arm” (February 07, 1950)03:39:16.182 = Theater Royal, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (September 13, 1954) ***WD03:59:23.539 = Black Mass, “All Hallows” (September 06, 1963)04:38:13.336 = Michael Shayne, “Pirates in San Francisco Bay” (April 30, 1945)05:07:46.083 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0677