Afleveringen
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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-stalker
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
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/AirBNB
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3s9xb4bt
FEATURED 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 Foreboding
00:01:41.053 = Show Open
00:04:08.300 = Book A Stay At a Haunted AirBNB
00:27:56.736 = The Man Who Inspired ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ ***
00:32:42.960 = The Stalisfield Blade
00:40:06.667 = The Bizarre Story Behind the Suicide Bombing of a Southern California Cult ***
00:51:40.417 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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 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, 2024
This 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. -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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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
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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.
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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)
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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)
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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.)
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"I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46
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WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026
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To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at [email protected], or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).
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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/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Chapter of Errors” (April 14, 1978) ***WD
00:46:44.968 = The Shadow, “The Crystal Globe” (October 03, 1943) ***WD
01:15:25.364 = Sleep No More, “Escape of Mr. Trimm” (March 13, 1957) ***WD
01:44:07.395 = 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) ***WD
03:29:31.418 = The Saint, “The Saint Goes Underground” (December 17, 1947) ***WD
03:53:55.525 = Tales From The Tomb, “Spirits of the Dead” (1960s)
03:56:08.118 = 2000 Plus, “Rocket And Skull” (October 10, 1951) ***WD
04:24:16.114 = The Unexpected, “Twilight Meeting” (1948) ***WD
04:36:22.835 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Rue Morgue Mystery” (June 17, 1942) ***WD
04:51:16.528 = 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/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, ”Shriek of the Mandrake” (April 13, 1978) ***WDZ
00:46:51.627 = Peril, “Last Man” (1953) ***WD
01:13:31.419= 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) ***WD
02:39:53.920 = Quiet Please, “Dark Rosaleen” (March 13, 1949)
03:09:16.689 = Radio City Playhouse, “Deception” (November 20, 1949) ***WD
03:37:20.995 = Suspense, “Cat – Audition Episode” (October 21, 1946) ***WD
03:53:18.121 = Sam Spade, “Convertible Caper” (June 15, 1947) ***WD
04:16:34.427 = 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/1651062114
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and print version): https://weirddarkness.com/cotu-melshole
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/m3k2ae6w
Weird 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/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Childish Laughter” (April 10, 1978)
00:44:45.782 = Mystery In The Air, “Mask of Medusa” (September 04, 1947) ***WD
01:13:44.235 = Molle Mystery Theater, “”Further Adventures of Kenny Andrews” (May 10, 1946) ***WD
01:43:04.502 = Mr. Keen, “The Strange Display” (March 16, 1944) ***WD
02:11:54.148 = Murder at Midnight, “Dead Hand” (May 01, 1950) ***WD
02:35:49.001 = The Black Museum, “The Straight Razor” (November 11, 1952) ***WD
03:01:04.966 = Mysterious Traveler, “The Haunted Trailer” (June 03, 1952)
03:33:30.017 = CBC Nightfall, “Love And The Lonely One” (July 04, 1980) ***WD
03:56:45.698 = Obsession, “Tailored For Murder” (February 26, 1951) ***WD
04:24:03.027 = 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-thepack
SOURCES 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/TorsoInTheThames
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3h6yrmk5
FEATURED 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 Open
00:02:24.699 = America’s Ghost Camels
00:09:18.422 = Done By The Dead ***
00:22:00.457 = The Baltimore Borgia ***
00:27:35.655 = The Lying Stones
00:36:08.415 = Torso In The River ***
00:42:13.573 = The Murderess Geisha
00:54:03.666 = Man-Monkey of the Night ***
00:58:48.550 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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:
“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, 2021
This episode of Weird Darkness moves from ghost camels haunting the Arizona desert to corpses that kept making history after death, a Baltimore poisoning that gripped a courtroom for weeks, a professor fooled by carved stones, a child's murder in the Thames that London police have never solved, a Tokyo geisha who killed the man she loved, and a glowing-eyed creature on an English canal bridge.It opens in the American southwest, where the U.S. War Department imported some seventy-two camels in 1857 to haul supplies, only to turn the animals loose in the desert when the Civil War broke out and the soldiers tired of their foul temper and habit of spooking horses. Wild camels roamed Arizona for decades afterward, and one became legend as the Red Ghost — a beast blamed for trampling a woman to death in 1883 and later seen carrying a dead man lashed to its back, a rider who eventually decayed until a human skull dropped from the saddle in front of a group of startled prospectors. An Arizona farmer finally shot the animal in 1893, still wearing the leather straps that had held its corpse rider in place.From there the episode turns to figures who kept shaping the world after they died. A gang of Chicago counterfeiters led by "Big Jim" Kennally plotted in 1876 to steal Abraham Lincoln's body from his Springfield tomb and ransom it for a jailed engraver, foiled by a Secret Service informant working for the very agency Lincoln himself had signed into existence. A grave robber broke into George Washington's crypt at Mount Vernon in 1830 hunting the president's skull and made off with the wrong one. The British philosopher Jeremy Bentham left instructions to have his body dissected and mummified, and it sits on display at University College London to this day. And in the ninth century Pope Stephen VI dug up his predecessor Formosus, dressed the rotting corpse in papal vestments, propped it up for trial, found it guilty, and had it thrown into the Tiber.Next comes Baltimore in 1871, where Elizabeth Wharton, a respected society widow, hosted General William Scott Ketchum in her home on Hamilton Place until he fell suddenly ill and died with twenty grains of tartar emetic in his stomach — fifteen is enough to kill. Police discovered she had bought sixty grains days earlier, and a financial advisor named Eugene Van Ness nearly died the same way after she served him a drink. Her forty-two-day poison trial in Annapolis exhausted the medical and chemical experts of the day, and after deliberating through the night the jury acquitted her of murder.The episode then crosses to Germany, where Johann Beringer, a celebrated professor at the University of Würzburg, spent 1725 collecting strange carved stones dug up on Mount Eibelstadt by teenage boys he had hired — figures of birds, lizards, comets, and the name of God rendered in Hebrew. Convinced they were the handiwork of God himself, he published a book on them called the Lithographiae Wirceburgensis, only to learn the nearly two thousand stones had been planted by two envious colleagues, J. Ignatz Roderick and Johann Georg von Eckhart, who thought him an arrogant know-it-all and wanted to humble him.From an academic hoax the episode moves to an unsolved horror. On September 21st, 2001, a child's headless, limbless torso surfaced from the Thames near the Globe Theatre, wrapped in orange cloth, and London's Metropolitan Police could give the boy no name but Adam. Forensic analysis of poison and minerals in his remains traced him to the Benin region of Nigeria and showed he had been paralyzed and drained of blood in what investigators believed was a muti ritual killing. Nelson Mandela made an international appeal for information, and traffickers including Kingsley Ojo and a caregiver named Joyce Osagiede were investigated, but no one has ever been convicted and the boy's true identity has never been confirmed.The episode carries that darkness into 1936 Tokyo, where Sada Abe strangled her lover Kichizo Ishida in an inn after a days-long affair, then took a kitchen knife to his body and carried a severed part of him away in her handbag. Her capture two days later set off a national obsession the papers called "Sada mania," and her testimony about killing the man she refused to share became a bestseller in a country where such candor was scandalous. She was sentenced to six years, served her time as a model prisoner, and vanished from public life sometime after 1970.The episode closes on a cold English night in January 1879, when a furniture hauler crossing Bridge 39 over the Shropshire Union Canal near the village of Ranton was charged by a shaggy, ape-like creature with glowing eyes that leapt onto his cart and terrified his horse. When he swung his whip at the thing, the lash passed straight through its body, and the creature bolted down toward the canal and vanished. The folklorist Charlotte Burne later learned from the village constable that the sightings had begun only days after a man drowned in that same canal, in a place where people believed a violent death could send someone back in the shape of a beast. -
Max spends his Friday nights broadcasting homemade radio signals toward the Kuiper Belt hoping to reach alien life, and one summer evening, something finally answers back.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1655277373
Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrors
Other stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaU
Other narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.com
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Weird Darkness©, 2026
Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness -
A late-shift barista alone in a small-town cafe finds himself watched by a bald, mud-smeared stranger in a spotless black suit — a man who leaks something dark from his mouth and refuses to leave.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-blacksludge
SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Black Sludge” by Time Freak: https://www.creepypasta.com/black-sludge/
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: July 17, 2026 -
Travelers on the Kansas trail stopped at a lonely inn run by a family of Spiritualists — and the ones who sat in the seat nearest the curtain were never seen leaving it.
🎵 Stick around to the end of the episode for a CROSSROADS HAINT song about the Benders!
READ A DEEP-DIVE ARTICLE ABOUT THE BENDERS: https://weirddarkness.com/bloody-benders
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/bloodybenders
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckuftrv
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: When you think of monsters in America, you probably think of Bigfoot in the American Northwest – or perhaps the Chupacabra in the South. Maybe you think of Dogman in the upper Midwest. But people don’t typically think of the American lakes and shores, where we have our own collection of monsters and sea serpents. (American Sea Monsters) *** As the saying goes – don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. But once in a while the punishment goes far beyond what the crime calls for. (Cruel and Unusual Punishments) *** Marilyn Monroe was found dead of a drug overdose on August 5, 1962. And while the facts of her death are shocking, her troubling childhood wasn’t pretty either. We’ll look at the life and death of this Hollywood bombshell. (The Troubled Life And Shocking Death of Marilyn Monroe) *** We’ll take a look at, not the very first serial killer - but the first serial killer FAMILY in America! The bloody Benders! (America’s First Serial Killer Family)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:45.702 = American Sea Monsters
00:15:00.217 = The Troubled Life and Shocking Death of Marilyn Monroe ***
00:36:04.254 = Cruel and Unusual Punishments ***
00:46:15.542 = America’s First Serial Killer Family
00:54:12.123 = Show Close
= Song: “Don’t Stay at the Benders” by Crossroads Haint (https://weirddarkness.com/music)
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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:
“American Sea Monsters” by Charles M. Skinner, posted at LegendsOfAmerica.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycy9tdes
“Cruel and Unusual Punishments” by Jonathan Hastad for ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y994jmsf
“The Troubled Life And Shocking Death of Marilyn Monroe” by Margarita Hirapetian: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/55bv7naw, and Kelly Kreiss: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/432bykfc for Ranker.com
“America’s First Serial Killer Family” by Miss Celania for MentalFloss.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yz7mbn7v
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January, 2021
This episode of Weird Darkness travels from the sea serpents and lake monsters lurking in American waters to the drug overdose that killed Marilyn Monroe, through history's most gruesome execution methods, and out to a lonely Kansas inn run by the country's first family of serial killers.It opens with a survey of American sea monsters drawn from Charles Skinner's 1896 writings, cataloguing the hundred-foot serpent sighted off Cape Ann and Nahant, Massachusetts as far back as 1638, the fifty-foot finned snakes two men reported battling in Devil's Lake, Wisconsin in 1892, the leonine-skulled creature three women watched churn the Wabash River at Huntington, Indiana, and the Native legends behind them — the Huron horned serpent Okniont, the child-drowning Amhuluk of Oregon, and the water-devils of Crater Lake who hurled a Klamath man from a two-thousand-foot cliff.From there it turns to the troubled life and death of Marilyn Monroe, found dead of a barbiturate overdose on August 5th, 1962 at her home on Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood — a death coroner Thomas Noguchi complicated when he found no pills in her stomach and learned her organ samples had been destroyed before toxicology testing. The episode traces the conspiracy theories that grew from her final phone calls to Peter Lawford and Joe DiMaggio Jr., the strange gap between when housekeeper Eunice Murray found her and when police were called at 4:25 am, and the 1982 review by District Attorney John Van de Kamp that ruled out foul play, before reaching back into the childhood of Norma Jeane Baker — the schizophrenic mother, the orphanage, the string of foster homes, and the marriage at sixteen that pulled her out of the system.Next comes a tour of cruel and unusual punishments across history, from the Norse Blood Eagle carved into a father's murderer to the Chinese lingchi or death by a thousand cuts, execution by elephant in India and Thailand, being blown from the mouth of a cannon in British-controlled Punjab, boiling alive under Henry VIII, the Roman poena cullei that sewed a parricide into a sack with a rooster, snake, monkey, and dog, and scaphism — the horror of being force-fed milk and honey, smeared with the rest, and left between two boats to be eaten alive.The episode closes with the Bloody Benders, the Spiritualist family who settled near the Osage Trail outside Cherryvale, Kansas in 1870 and turned their one-room inn into a slaughterhouse, seating travelers against a canvas curtain and crushing their skulls with a hammer from behind it before dropping the bodies through a trap door to a blood-soaked cellar. When the prominent Dr. William York vanished off the trail in March 1873 and his brothers — a colonel and a Kansas senator — came looking, the Benders fled, leaving behind a garden of buried corpses that may have numbered as many as twenty-one, and though real names later surfaced (Pa was John Flickinger, Kate was Eliza Griffith), no one ever learned where the family went or brought back proof of their fate. -
Something new is coming to Weird Darkness. Starting this Friday night, horror fiction gets its own identity — a dedicated series called Midnight in the Macabre, airing primarily Friday nights at the stroke of twelve. Classic horror stories, creepypastas, and modern horror fiction, plus a little horror-tinged science fiction, all under one clearly-marked banner. In this episode, Darren explains why he's making the change, what it means for listeners who love the fiction, and what it means for those who come to Weird Darkness strictly for the true crime, real hauntings, and dark history. The regular Weird Darkness episodes stay purely non-fiction — every one a true story — while Midnight in the Macabre carries all the fiction. Each series has its own cover art and its own look, so one glance at the thumbnail tells you exactly what you're about to hear before you ever press play. The first Midnight in the Macabre drops this Friday night at midnight.
-
Los Angeles hides an almost overwhelming number of ghosts behind its glamour, from the piano-playing spirit at Hollywood's Magic Castle and the body found in the Cecil Hotel's water tank to the sex-magick rocket scientist, Father Yod's robed disciples, and the cults that made the City of Angels a capital of the occult.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/hauntedla
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p98dtw7
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:24.727 = Hollywood’s Haunted Magic Castle
00:09:13.905 = Los Angeles’ Haunted Hotels ***
00:27:05.636 = Los Angeles: City of the Occult ***
00:51:50.907 = L.A. Ghosts ***
01:01:24.337 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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:
“Hollywood’s Haunted Magic Castle” by Christina Sanza for Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/nhdf2f29
“Los Angeles’ Haunted Hotels” by Andy Miller from Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mvbdcwac
“L.A. Ghosts” by Jen Lennon for Graveyard Shift: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/39xypc6c
“Los Angeles: City Of The Occult” by Christine Aprile for Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4y9rj77r
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: April, 2021
This episode of Weird Darkness turns to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, and the almost overwhelming number of ghosts, haunted hotels, and occult history hiding behind its glamour, from the Magic Castle and the Cecil Hotel to the sex-magick rocket scientist Jack Parsons, cult leader Father Yod, and the ghosts of Griffith Park.It opens inside Hollywood's Magic Castle at 7001 Franklin Avenue, the private clubhouse of the Academy of Magical Arts, where the Houdini Séance Room honors a magician who spent his career trying to debunk spiritualism and left his wife Bess the code phrase "Rosabelle, believe" for contact from the afterlife. The castle carries the story of Irma, the piano-playing ghost said to have died in 1932 and returned to the mansion built in 1909 by Rollin B. Lane, along with the ghost of magician Dai Vernon near his favorite seat in the Palace of Prestidigitation, the unidentified girl in the Haunted Cellar, and a Halloween 2011 fire that started at the exact time of Houdini's 1926 death and gutted the Dante Room while sparing the Houdini Room.From there the episode checks into the haunted hotels of Los Angeles, beginning with the Knickerbocker, which opened in Hollywood in July of 1929, hosted Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio on their honeymoon, and staged Bess Houdini's tenth and final rooftop séance the night an isolated thunderstorm struck the building alone. It moves through the Ambassador on Wilshire Boulevard, where Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan in the kitchen on June 4, 1968, the Rosslyn Annex with its forgotten Prohibition speakeasy, the Alexandria and its bricked-off phantom wing, the Biltmore where Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, was last seen before her 1947 murder, and the Cecil Hotel, home to serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger and the site where guest Elisa Lam was found dead in the rooftop water tank in 2013 after guests complained the water tasted strange.Next the episode traces L.A.'s long history of the occult, running from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and his early Pasadena partnership with rocket scientist Jack Parsons, who performed the "Babalon Working" ritual and later died at 37 in a home laboratory explosion, to Charles Manson and the Family murders of August 1969 that killed Sharon Tate and six others, Carlos Castaneda and the Yaqui shaman Don Juan Matus who launched the New Age movement, and Jim Baker, the marine turned messiah Father Yod, who took fourteen wives and led the Source Family from a Hollywood Hills mansion. It covers avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger and the witch Marjorie Cameron, the 1920 LAPD raid on the Mazdaznan sun-worshipers, the love-cult of Edith Maida Lessing at Mount Helios, the Devil's Gate Dam in Pasadena, and the curse Petronilla Feliz laid on the land that became Griffith Park.The episode closes with a tour of famous L.A. ghosts: the more than one hundred jumpers off Pasadena's Colorado Street "suicide bridge," including Myrtle Ward, whose daughter survived the fall; the body parts Marines found in a freezer at the abandoned Rancho Los Amigos hospital in 2006; picnic table number 29 in Griffith Park, where a couple was crushed by a falling tree in 1976; Bela Lugosi's hearse drifting past his favorite cigar shop; the many spirits of the Queen Mary docked in Long Beach; the unsolved 1929 deaths of Ned Doheny and Hugh Plunkett at Greystone Mansion; the ghost of Superman actor George Reeves; and Bob Baker, still haunting his marionette theater alongside the dead puppeteers who worked there. -
A skeptical London professor sets out to expose a plain, lame hypnotist as a fraud, never suspecting that the woman he dismisses has already decided he belongs to her.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Parasite” (April 07, 1978) ***WD
00:46:20.039 = Lux Radio Theater, “Ghost And Mrs. Muir” (December 01, 1947) ***WD
01:43:56.937 = Philip Marlowe, “Monkey’s Uncle” (March 07, 1950)
02:13:33.368 = Boston Blackie, “The Worthington Ghost” (March 19, 1946) ***WD
02:40:01.156 = The Black Mass, “Boarded Window” (February 12, 1964) ***WD
03:12:59.922 = Michael Shayne, “Recreate A Murder” (May 28, 1945)
03:42:41.656 = Beyond Midnight, “Something On His Mind” (May 30, 1969)
04:11:54.838 = MindWebs, “The Last Question” (March 05, 1983) ***WD
04:41:25.495 = Adventures In The Supernatural, “The Mysterious Carriage” (1932) ***WD
05:05:51.277 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0717 -
An unknown gunman murders the last of the wealthy Van Cleek line, and when two reporters break into the family's boarded-up mansion to photograph it before demolition, they find two people living inside as though it were still the 1890s.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Shark Bait” (March 31, 1978) ***WD
00:46:07.462 = Haunting Hour, “Homicide House” (May 27, 1945) ***WD
01:10:57.188 = Hermit’s Cave, “Buried Alive” (October 06, 1940)
01:35:16.710 = Mystery is My Hobby, “Kid Brown Is KO’d” (1945-1950)
01:59:17.833 = Sherlock Holmes, “Strange Case of the Persecuted Millionaire” (February 10, 1947)
02:28:34.256 = Mystery House, “Murder Me Gently” (May 12, 1946)
02:54:20.575 = Incredible But True, “The Temple of Beal” (1950-1951) ***WD
02:58:04.060 = Inner Sanctum, “Color Blind Formula” (December 06, 1944) ***WD
03:24:45.575 = Jeff Regan, “The Man Who Liked The Mountains” (August 07, 1948) ***WD (LQ)
03:54:30.797 = The Key, “Lost In The Amazon” (1956) ***WD
04:19:43.987 = Lights Out, “Baby” (March 28, 1941) ***WD
04:44:12.185 = Macabre, “Midnight Horseman” (December 11, 1961) ***WD (LQ)
05:11:20.993 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0716 -
A Soho painter can't stop painting the same 19th-century woman — until she starts talking back, insisting she was murdered and thrown down a Manhattan well, and demanding he hear the truth the courtroom refused to believe.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Ghost In The Well” (March 28, 1978) ***WD
00:46:05.307 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Secret Room” (February 13, 1945) ***WD
00:57:55.158 = Eleventh Hour, “Cast Giant Shadow” (ADU)
01:21:29.218 = Escape, “Evening Primrose” (August 25, 1949)
01:49:36.901 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Space Baby / aka First Baby in Space” (June 18, 1958) ***WD
02:09:35.315 = Dark Fantasy, “Dead Hands Reaching” (May 22, 1942) ***WD
02:33:49.707 = BBC Fear on 4, “The Monkey’s Revenge” (January 10, 1991)
03:03:18.954 = Theater Five, “A Nothin’ Place” (November 20, 1964)
03:26:01.748 = Guests of Doom, “Program 11 & 12” (1930s) ***WD
03:51:44.458 = The Hall of Fantasy, “He Who Follows” (March 11, 1950)
04:16:11.455 = Harry Lime, “Love Affair” (September 14, 1951)
04:40:16.602 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “What Was It” (June 28, 1980) ***WD
05:07:37.608 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0715 -
Sixteen children were found in a single room on Ohmer Street, and their mother had been delivering them in hospitals for seventeen years.
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.com/siders-case
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: July 15, 2026 -
In 1912, an axe killed all eight people sleeping in a Villisca, Iowa farmhouse, and the two men suspected of it — a traveling preacher and a business rival — both walked free.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/VilliscaReverendRival
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p84usw4
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Conspiracy theories, while often dark, can also be kind of humorous due to being so outlandishly unbelievable. For example… is the Earth’s moon artificial, and actually an extraterrestrial spaceship? We’ll look at the strange theory. (Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?) *** In 1912 one of the most brutal slayings in America took place in the small town of Villisca, Iowa… a murder so brutal that numerous documentaries have been made about it, books have been written, and amateur detectives have poured over the facts and suspects still trying to find out who the murderer was that swung the bloody axe. (The Unsolved Villisca Ax Murders) *** The President of the United States, no matter who is in the position at the time, is always in danger from those who would like to see someone else in office. We’ll hear on the news of the assassination attempts that came close, but we more often than not are completely unaware of the attempts and plans that have been thwarted – and some of those attempts to kill a sitting U.S. President have been extremely bizarre. (Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents) *** Some Biblical accounts seem unbelievable and we tend to dismiss them as fantasies, or dreams of the person writing the events down. But what if some of the strange creatures described in the bible are actually real – but come from another dimension, or even outer space? (Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible?) *** If you are told there is a city that has been built specifically for the dead, you probably think of some ancient culture that worshipped their ancestors. Personally, I think of pyramids in Egypt… but I never would’ve thought of the suburbs in California, USA. (California’s City of the Dead)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:02:33.183 = Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?
00:08:21.362 = The Unsolved Villisca Axe Murders ***
00:20:59.742 = California’s City of the Dead
00:31:12.990 = Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible? ***
00:39:47.780 = Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents
00:48:06.915 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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:
“Could Our Moon Be An Alien Spaceship?” posted at Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdhz5563
“The Unsolved Villisca Ax Murders” by Joe Turner for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8mnfp6, and from HauntedRoom.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36b6k2h4
“California’s City of the Dead” by Hugh Landman for Ranker.com’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckrxjzd
“Are Extraterrestrials in the Bible?” by Ellen Lloyd for AncientPages.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr3d8dpk
“Bizarre Assassination Attempts on U.S. Presidents” by Richard Stockton for AllThatsInteresting.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/26avtuhr
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January, 2022
This episode of Weird Darkness runs from a Cold War theory that the Moon is a hollow alien spacecraft, through the 1912 Villisca ax murders that left eight people dead in a single Iowa night, into the California cemetery city of Colma where the dead outnumber the living a thousand to one, on to a former NASA engineer's claim that the prophet Ezekiel witnessed a UFO, and closing with some of the strangest attempts ever made on the lives of sitting U.S. presidents.It opens with the Spaceship Moon Theory, proposed in July of 1970 by Soviet Academy of Sciences members Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, who argued the Moon is a hollowed-out planetoid engineered by unknown beings and steered into Earth's orbit. Darren walks through the claims stacked behind the idea — the Moon ringing like a bell for more than an hour after the Apollo 12 crew crashed their lunar module into it on November 20th, 1969, craters of wildly different widths that all share the same shallow depth, moon rocks dated older than the Earth itself, and the near-perfect circular orbit that lets the Moon exactly cover the Sun during an eclipse.From there the episode turns to Villisca, Iowa, and the night of June 9th, 1912, when someone entered the home of Josiah and Sarah Moore and killed all six members of the family along with two young house guests, Lena and Ina Stillinger, striking each victim with an axe as they slept. Darren lays out the crime scene that neighbor Mary Peckham and Josiah's brother Ross discovered the next morning — cloth draped over the mirrors, two cigarette butts in the attic, a slab of bacon left beside the Stillinger girls, and a bloody basin in the kitchen — and the suspects who never brought closure, from traveling minister Reverend George Kelly, who spoke of eight dead bodies before the news broke and later gave a confession the court dismissed, to Josiah's embittered business rival Frank Jones. More than a century on, the boarded-up house survives as a museum where investigators report a heaviness on the stairs, drifting fog, and the sound of dripping blood after the 2 a.m. train whistle.Next the show travels to Colma, California, the suburb built for the dead, where roughly 1,600 living residents share the ground with more than 1.5 million graves across 17 cemeteries. Darren traces how San Francisco banned burials in 1900 and evicted its dead, triggering the largest grave relocation in history after the 1906 earthquake, with more than 150,000 bodies hauled south and tens of thousands reburied in mass graves when families wouldn't pay the ten-dollar transfer fee. He points out the famous names resting there — Wyatt Earp, Levi Strauss, William Randolph Hearst, Joe DiMaggio, brain-injury case Phineas Gage, and self-declared Emperor of the United States Joshua Norton — alongside the darker footnotes of looted skeletons, discarded headstones repurposed as gutters and seawalls, and the town's own gallows-humor slogan, "it's great to be alive in Colma."The episode then examines whether extraterrestrials appear in the Bible, centering on the vision of the prophet Ezekiel by the river Chebar and the four winged creatures with human hands, calf-shaped feet, and four faces that rose out of a fiery whirlwind. Darren details how former NASA chief engineer Joseph F. Blumrich, honored in 1972 for his work on the Saturn and Apollo programs, set out to disprove Erich von Däniken's ancient-astronaut claims and instead became convinced, arguing in his book The Spaceships of Ezekiel that the prophet had described a landing spacecraft — rotor blades, fairing housings, landing legs with round footpads, and remote mechanical arms rendered in the only words an ancient man had for them.The episode closes with a run of bizarre presidential assassination attempts, from John Hinckley's 1981 shooting of Ronald Reagan over an obsession with actress Jodie Foster, to the 2013 ricin letters mailed to the Obama White House by a man framing an Elvis impersonator over an online feud, to truck driver Samuel Byck's 1974 plot to hijack a DC-9 and crash it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon. Darren ends on the two women who tried to kill Gerald Ford seventeen days apart in September of 1974 — Manson follower Lynette Fromme, who never chambered a round, and Sarah Jane Moore, whose shot missed by six inches because her replacement revolver's sights were misaligned. -
Read an even deeper-dive into the werewolf trials here: https://weirddarkness.com/wolves-on-trial/
Across four centuries of European court records, dozens of men, women, and children confessed to shedding their skins for wolf-hides and hunting under the moon — and the magistrates who heard them believed every word.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/RealWerewolfTrials
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/43rjhjvp
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: We’re all familiar with the concept of werewolves – they are all over pop culture, movies, television, comic books, novels, and every other medium you could possibly imagine. And while they are considered fictional, or at least in the realm of cryptids, that doesn’t mean there aren’t true stories of reported werewolves in history. (Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves) *** Just the idea of going to prison is enough to scare people into living a squeaky-clean life, but if you’re one of the most dangerous prisoners known to exist, ordinary prison would look like a vacation as compared to life in the Florence ADX Supermax Prison. (Life In The Supermax) *** What was supposed to be a two day trip turned into a maritime mystery when the ship, the MV Joyita was discovered floating with no crew on board. What happened? (The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:37.814 = Show Open
00:03:32.506 = Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves, Part 1
00:28:44.978 = Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves, Part 2 ***
00:42:51.099 = The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita ***
01:02:49.562 = Life In The Supermax ***
01:15:37.977 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
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:
“Real Historic Accounts of Werewolves” by Miss Celania for MentalFloss.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p84ut66, Nick Redfern for Mysterious Universe: http://bit.ly/2MFFx5p, WolvesRox on Playbuzz.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9bjcht, and Tim Flight for HistoricCollection.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p87s85s
The short fable, “The Werewolf” was written by Angela Carter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckt8fn6
“The Mysterious Abandonment of the MV Joyita” by Marcus Lowth for UFOInsight.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8sux2j
“Life In The Supermax” by Jacob Shelton for Ranker.com’s Unspeakable Times: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8u82p9
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January, 2022
Weird Darkness digs into three dark corners this time out — the real men and women who were tried and executed as werewolves across Early Modern Europe, the South Pacific ghost ship MV Joyita found drifting with all 25 aboard vanished, and daily life inside America's most locked-down prison, the ADX Supermax in Florence, Colorado.It opens with the documented history of lycanthropy trials, tracing the term back through the Old English werwulf and the Greek myth of King Lycaon, whom Ovid recorded being turned into a wolf by Zeus. From there the episode walks through the real cases: the Gandillon family, burned in France in 1598 after the witch hunter Henri Boguet arranged their arrest; Thiess of Livonia, an eighty-year-old man tried in 1692 who claimed to be a benevolent werewolf who fought the Devil for the year's harvest; Peter Stubbe, the "Werewolf of Bedburg," broken on the wheel and beheaded on October 31st, 1589; Gilles Garnier, the "Hermit of Dole," burned alive in 1573 for killing and eating children; the Werewolves of Poligny; the Wolf of Ansbach, an ordinary wolf hanged from a gibbet in a wig and beard in 1685; teenaged Hans the Werewolf, executed in Estonia in 1651; fourteen-year-old Jean Grenier of Gascony, spared the stake and sent to a friary; the "Demon Tailor" of Chalons; and the more modern Spanish serial killer Manuel Blanco Romasanta, the "Werewolf of Allariz," who used lycanthropy as his legal defense, alongside the Ludwigslust and Angers cases and the cannibal beggar Swiatek of Poland.From there the show turns to the MV Joyita, the yacht built in 1931 in Los Angeles for director Roland West and named for his wife, Jewel Carmen. On October 3rd, 1955, she left Apia, Samoa, for the Tokelau Islands carrying 16 crew and nine passengers, and vanished; found over a month later on November 10th by the merchant captain Gerald Douglas, she was drifting more than 600 miles off course, partially submerged but afloat thanks to her cork-lined refrigerated hold. Investigators found the cabin lights on, the clocks stopped at 10:25, the radio tuned to the distress frequency, a doctor's bag holding a scalpel and blood-stained bandages, mattresses stacked over the engine, and all four escape craft gone — with the cargo, and all 25 people, never recovered. Captain Thomas Miller took the blame for sailing on one engine, but the theories that followed ran from mutiny to Japanese fishermen, Soviet submarines, pirates, and insurance fraud, with researcher Robin Maugham laying out the mutiny case in his book The Joyita Mystery.The episode closes inside the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, the ADX Supermax that has held Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Robert Hanssen, Ramzi Yousef, and Zacarias Moussaoui since 1994. Inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in 7-by-12-foot concrete cells with a single 4-inch window angled so the sky and the surrounding mountains stay out of view, communicating through drained toilet pipes and "finger handshakes" through recreation-cage fencing. Former inmates and staff — including warden Robert Hood, who called the architecture itself the control, and prisoner Travis Dusenbury — describe a facility that strips away nearly every trace of ordinary life, the suicide of mentally ill inmate Jose Vega in 2010, and the ongoing lawsuits over medical and mental-health treatment that forced ADX to reevaluate its practices in the mid-2010s. - Laat meer zien
