Weird Darkness: Stories of the Paranormal, Supernatural, Legends, Lore, Mysterious, Macabre, Unsolved

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.