Afleveringen
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In 1872, the children of a Newburyport schoolhouse watched a bloodless child's hand press against the window glass — and then the dead boy it belonged to began walking their halls. | #WDRadio JULY 05, 2026
HOUR ONE: What caused complete darkness to engulf the New England town of Newburyport in 1871 – and what were the strange lights seen by dozens of students and their teacher? *** Engineers working to link Scotland and England with cables on the floor of the ocean have stumbled across an amazing find from Word War 1… a submarine that was sunk due to a sea monster! (The Submarine Sunk by a Sea Monster) *** “The Mira Theater Haunting” by Bili White
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HOUR TWO: “MJ12: JFK and UFOs” *** No one likes uninvited guests – and it appears, neither do those in the afterlife. (Dead Village) *** Ask Pedro Rodrigues Filho and he’ll tell you he’s a nice guy. After all, he may be a serial killer – but he only kills bad guys. (The Real-Life Dexter) *** What caused the sky to go dark in the middle of the day back in 1780? (New England’s Dark Day)
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SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: Paul Bernardo, with the help of his wife Karla Homolka, stalked a Canadian suburb with a number of terrible rapes that were only the beginning of their life of cruelty. They would come to be known as the Ken and Barbie Killers. (The True Horror of the Ken and Barbie Killers) *** When you think of a con artist, you think of slick players like Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorf from “The Sting”, masters of disguise and ID like Frank Abagnale from “Catch Me If You Can”, or even the mysterious Keyser Söze from “The Usual Suspects”. But I’m guessing what you never picture in your head is a Victorian woman named Madame Rachel. She never got her own movie, but she was the real deal. (The Con Woman Madame Rachel) *** A forest in beautiful West Sussex, UK is only beautiful from the outside – for within, witnesses have seen mysterious things… including UFOs, mysterious deaths, and unexplained vanishings. (Danger Lurking In The Woods)
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SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:
“The Mira Theater Haunting” by Bili White from Paranormality Magazine
“The Shadow Over Newburyport” posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y62cmsun
“The Submarine Sunk by a Sea Monster” from Earth-Chronicles.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ve7bwnvh
“The True Horror of the Ken and Barbie Killers” by Frankie Stein for FilmDaily.co: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5ddyr25y
“The Con Woman Madame Rachel” by Geri Walton: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/f5jnwjwz
“New England’s Dark Day” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2OEuVTl
“Dead Village” by Dreyk: http://bit.ly/33lz1Eg
“The Real Life Dexter” by Kara Goldfarb: http://bit.ly/2IUuQaP
“Danger Lurking In The Woods” by Ellen Lloyd: (link no longer available)
“JFK And UFOs” from Paranormality Magazine
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(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). -
Real animals have grown to draconic sizes, taken to the skies on thirty-foot wings, and even weaponized explosions from inside their own bodies—but could nature ever assemble all three into a living, fire-breathing dragon?
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/realdragons
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2kepzd3u
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Is it possible dragons are… or at least were… real? Science takes a look at the possibility. (Are Dragons Real?) *** In a thick, dark forest in Colorado is a foreboding house which is considered one of the most haunted places in the U.S. (Haunted House In The Black Forest) *** A woman has the gift of speaking with and interacting with those who have passed on… but what began as a gift, evolved into a curse. (The Man Is Back) *** Weirdo family member Ezra tells us of his personal encounter with a black-eyed child. (An Angel Saved Me From a Black Eyed Kid) *** Pukwudgies were known to Native Americans, who gave them a wide berth. And if you see one, it’s best to stay away. (What is a Pukwudgie?) *** What began as a practical joke soon became one of the greatest hoaxes in American history – it’s the true story of the Cardiff Giant. (The Petrified Man) *** Jody smiled at the children playing in her backyard. She didn’t know them, they were probably the neighbors’ kids. At least that’s what she thought at first until she began to notice something disturbing about those children. (Phantom Children of Guilford) *** Dealing with the paranormal is already unsettling. What if you were to learn that the supernatural has actually been feeding on you? (Supernatural Feedings) *** Newlywed couples planning a trip to Venice envision romantic walkways and Renaissance art. What they don’t expect to find is an island that is illegal to set foot on… and for good reason. (Black Plague Island) *** Weirdo family member Ber Bella shares an experience her grandmother had on an icy road. (Angel On Black Ice) *** Sometimes a prisoner is let free, with experts of the opinion he has been completely rehabilitated. Sometimes they are right. Often they are wrong. And in the case of Jack Unterweger – releasing him was the worst thing that could ever have been done. (Poet of Death)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = “The Dragon” by Ray Bradbury (short fiction story)
00:07:30.018 = Show Open
00:10:13.041 = Are Dragons Real?
00:20:11.728 = Haunted House in Black Forest ***
00:34:02.034 = What Is a Pukwudgie?
00:40:21.466 = The Petrified Man ***
00:48:12.375 = The Man Is Back
00:52:49.488 = An Angel Saved Me From a Black-Eyed Kid
00:54:29.177 \ 00:55:52.250 = The Phantom Children of Gilford ***
00:59:58.589 = Supernatural Feedings
01:07:31.225 = Black Plague Island ***
01:17:23.478 = Angel on Black Ice
01:21:03.162 = Poet of Death
01:27:33.935 = 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:
BOOK: “Haunted Places, The National Directory” by Dennis William Hauck: https://amzn.to/4iDKvJN
The short fiction story “The Dragon” written by Ray Bradbury: http://bit.ly/2WHbtKp
“Are Dragons Real?” by L.W. Martin: http://bit.ly/2IqEX5Q
“An Angel Saved Me From a Black Eyed Kid” by Weirdo family member Ezra
“What is a Pukwudgie?” by John Freund: http://bit.ly/319JD8R
“The Petrified Man” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2MvPlif
“The Man is Back” by E6bee: http://bit.ly/2IjyklT
“Haunted House In The Black Forest” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2IeVZUo
“The Phantom Children of Gilford” posted at FarShores (link no longer available)
“Supernatural Feedings” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/2Mquz3p
“Black Plague Island” by Cheryl Adams Richkoff (link no longer available)
“Angel On Black Ice” by Weirdo family member Ber Bella
“Poet of Death” by Shannon Rafael: http://bit.ly/2WEGaQn
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January 2022 -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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A mild-mannered chemistry teacher weighing a lucrative job offer against the quiet life he loves finds his decision complicated when a woman claiming to be from the Pleiades strolls into his house and refuses to leave, insisting to move in.
“A Matter of Ethics” by Russ Winterbotham, originally published by Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy, April 1955
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/amatterofethics
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: July 05, 2026 -
A locked-room death, a fragile heiress convinced her dead mother is beckoning her from the top of the marble stairs, and three witnesses who all swear they've seen the ghost as well.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Impossible Is True” (March 14, 1978)
00:46:17.985 = Jeff Regan, “Lady With The Golden Hair” (July 31, 1948) ***WD
01:15:49.025 = The Key, “Gentleman Companion” (1956)
01:40:02.178 = Lights Out, “The Author And The Thing” (September 28, 1943)
02:03:11.287 = Lux Radio Theater, “The Canterville Ghost” (June 18, 1945)
03:02:19.887 = Macabre, “House In The Garden” (December 04, 1961) ***WD
03:29:59.456 = Philip Marlowe, “Big Step” (February 28, 1950)
03:59:32.488 = Black Mass, “Squaw” (January 24, 1964) ***WD
04:29:14.551 = Michael Shayne, “Murder Trial of Jack Holmes” (May 21, 1945) ***WD
04:58:07.194 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0707 -
An old villager's tale about a beautiful, undead noblewoman feels like harmless folklore to two visiting American brothers — right up until the night one of them meets her.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Wheel of Life” (March 13, 1978) ***WD
00:46:42.838 = Crime And Peter Chambers, “Cemetery Attack” (April 20, 1954)
01:09:59.902 = Hall of Fantasy, “Marquis of Death” (June 22, 1953)
01:33:32.517 = Harry Lime, “Bohemian Star” (September 07, 1951)
01:57:55.866 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “Little Girl Lost” (June 21, 1980)
02:24:28.027 = The Haunting Hour, “Hands of Mr. Smith” (May 19, 1945) ***WD
02:49:17.057 = Hermit’s Cave, “Spirit Vengeance” (December 08, 1946) ***WD
03:13:37.434 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “Death of an Old Prospector” (1945-1950)
03:37:36.810 = Sherlock Holmes, “The Dying Detective” (February 03, 1947)
04:06:49.592 = Mystery House, “Composite Killer” (May 05, 1946) ***WD
04:31:37.992 = Incredible But True, “Death Notice” (1950-1951)
04:35:19.365 = Inner Sanctum, “Voice On Wire” (November 29, 1944) ***WD
05:04:58.539 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0706 -
Every state in the Union has its own creepy collection of urban legends — haunted playgrounds and vampires, cryptids and cursed roads, black-eyed children and shape-shifting monsters — and we're crossing all fifty to find the eeriest tale each one has to tell.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/StateLegends
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/StateLegends
LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS:
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mv357ex6, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckpd7md,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3k9anyn3, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3ahdkmkc,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3kmnpahx, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckpebp7,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8s3eny, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2bz4zr7b,https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5e9whsm4, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p83tczx
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: August 29, 2023
Every state in America is hiding something. Cross the country from Alabama to Wyoming and you'll find a haunted playground where swings move on their own, a vampire buried in a Colorado cemetery, a goat-headed man lurking under a Kentucky railroad trestle, and black-eyed children knocking on car windows in Texas. Some of these urban legends are pure fiction. Others have a disturbing amount of truth buried underneath them — which is exactly what makes them stick.This episode of Weird Darkness travels through all fifty states to uncover the eeriest tale each one has to tell. There's the Alaskan Triangle, where thousands have vanished without a trace, and the shape-shifting otter people the Tlingit say are responsible. There's Resurrection Mary, the ghostly hitchhiker still searching for a dance partner outside Chicago. There's the Villisca ax murders, an unsolved 1912 slaughter that turned a family home into a haunted museum. There's Mothman over Point Pleasant, the skunk ape in the Everglades, the Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens, and Bigfoot stalking the forests of the Pacific Northwest.Cryptids and creepy clowns. Cursed roads and phantom trains. Witches, wendigos, and vampires. Alien crash sites and portals to hell. You'll meet the "watcher" who terrorized a New Jersey family through the mail, the Bunny Man of Virginia, Walking Sam on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and the Candy Lady of rural Texas. Whether these stories were born around a campfire or dragged out of something that really happened, they've survived because nobody can quite prove they're not true.So bolt your doors, lock your windows, and find out what's whispered about in your own backyard — because every state in the Union has its own creepy collection of urban legends, and some of them might be closer than you think. -
The 1975 film that emptied the beaches was built on real horror — the 1916 Jersey Shore attacks that killed four, the unsolved disappearance of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, and the science of why great whites bite at all.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/jaws
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/jaws
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: In June of 1975 we were exposed to one of the scariest movies ever made. For this podcaster, it’s just not Independence Day until I watch it – and you still can’t get me to swim in the ocean. We’ll look at what made ‘Jaws’ so successful… and so frightening. We’ll also look at the true story of a string of shark attacks in 1916 that inspired the novel and the film. And while 1975’s ‘Jaws’ was inspired by a series of shark attacks but greatly fictionalized, the film ‘Open Water’ from 2003 is based on a very real and terrifying story. But the truth behind the movie is a dark mystery that goes way beyond the horror of what you see in the film. We’ll look at several other real shark attacks that are almost too incredible to believe, and also try to answer the question as to why shark attacks don’t happen more often as you would expect them to, seeing as humans should be easy pickings.
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding (My First Experience With a Horror Movie)
00:02:16.983 = Show Open
00:05:28.642 = The Real-Life Inspiration for “Jaws”
00:15:01.913 = The Horror of “Jaws” ***
00:40:05.165 = The True Darkness of “Open Water” ***
00:52:06.811 = Real Shark Attacks
01:04:18.086 = Why Sharks Attack Humans ***
01:23:44.579 = 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 True Darkness of Open Water” by Erin McCann for Ranker: https://tinyurl.com/y8vaqgra
“The Real-Life Inspiration for ‘Jaws’” by Christopher Klein for History: https://tinyurl.com/yb5s35xc
“The Horror of ‘Jaws’” by Jackie Flynn Mogensen for Mother Jones: https://tinyurl.com/y2mxf8us, Andrew Housman for ScreenRant: https://tinyurl.com/yae8ohh6, Meagan Navarro for Bloody Disgusting: https://tinyurl.com/y7p8q9lw, Tim Donnelly for the New York Post: https://tinyurl.com/y9twrcc7, and Rachel Paige for Hello Giggles:https://tinyurl.com/ycdlb6je
“Real Shark Attacks” by Charles W. Bryant for How Stuff Works: https://tinyurl.com/y9scmg9x, and Lou Boyd for Mpora: https://tinyurl.com/y9e55t4u
“Why Sharks Attack Humans” by Richard Gray for BBC: https://tinyurl.com/ycf563up
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: July 03, 2020
This episode of Weird Darkness dives into the world of sharks — the 1975 film that made a generation afraid of the water, the 1916 New Jersey attacks that shaped America's fear of the sea, the unsolved disappearance behind a 2003 horror movie, a catalog of real maulings, and the science of why sharks bite people at all.It opens with Steven Spielberg's Jaws, the 1975 blockbuster that grossed $7 million its first weekend and ranked sixth on IMDb's list of the ten best horror films. The mechanical shark, three models all nicknamed "Bruce," sank on first submersion and corroded in the saltwater of Nantucket Sound, forcing Spielberg to keep the animal off-screen for all but roughly four minutes and to build terror through John Williams' two-note score instead. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb, who now calls it "the fish movie," predicted audiences would fear the ocean the way they feared showers after Psycho. Clinical psychologists Ali Mattu and James Hambrick, both trained to talk people out of irrational fears, admit the film gave them their own galeophobia, with Mattu once showering while standing on the edge of the tub to avoid a drain-based attack. Author Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel, spent his final years advocating for shark conservation after fishermen killed sharks by the thousands in the film's wake, cutting large shark populations along the eastern seaboard by an estimated fifty percent.From there the episode turns to the real attacks that preceded the fiction, the deadly summer of 1916 along the Jersey Shore. Charles Vansant, a 25-year-old from Philadelphia, bled to death in the lobby of the Engleside Hotel in Beach Haven on July 1 after a shark clamped his left leg in three-and-a-half feet of water. Five days later Charles Bruder, a 27-year-old Swiss bellboy captain, lost both legs off Spring Lake, and on July 12 the killing moved more than a mile inland up Matawan Creek, taking 11-year-old Lester Stillwell and Stanley Fisher, the 24-year-old tailor who dove in to recover the boy's body. President Woodrow Wilson convened a cabinet meeting over "the shark horror," and shark hunter Michael Schleisser later killed a shark in Raritan Bay with human bones reportedly found inside, after which the attacks stopped.Next the episode examines Open Water, the 2003 film built on the disappearance of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, experienced divers left behind by the Outer Edge dive boat at St. Crispin Reef on the Great Barrier Reef on January 25, 1998. No one noticed them missing for roughly forty-eight hours. A dive slate later recovered miles away bore the date January 26 and a plea for help, their diaries revealed unhappiness and Tom's stated readiness to die, and their wetsuits and air tanks washed ashore without a single bite mark or trace of blood. Australian diver Ben Cropp argued tiger sharks took them within two days, while boat owner Jack Nairn faced a manslaughter acquittal and a civil negligence conviction that shuttered his company, and more than twenty people claimed to have seen the couple alive afterward, leaving the truth unresolved.Next comes a run of documented real-life attacks stretching across centuries. The USS Indianapolis sank near Guam on July 30, 1945, dropping roughly 900 sailors into the water where sharks reduced the survivors to 317. Barry Wilson, a 17-year-old tuba player, became the first person killed by a shark in California history, and free-diving abalone hunters Omar Conger and Randall Fry were both taken by great whites, Fry's body recovered with his head separated from it. Bethany Hamilton lost her left arm at thirteen and returned to competitive surfing, spearfisherman Rodney Fox survived a torso bite by gouging the shark's eyes and now educates the public about the animals, and Brook Watson lost a leg to a shark in Havana Harbour in 1749 at the age of fourteen.The episode closes with the science of why sharks bite people, drawn from researchers including Gavin Naylor of the Florida Program for Shark Research and marine biologist Blake Chapman. Attacks correlate with the overlap of people and sharks in the same water, which is why rising seal populations off Cape Cod — rebounding under the 1972 Marine Mammal Act — drew great whites that delivered Massachusetts its first fatal attack in eighty-two years in 2018. Most bites appear to be cases of mistaken identity, the flash of a foot resembling bait fish, and the three species most often responsible are the great white, tiger, and bull sharks, the last hunting murky water by smell and electroreception rather than sight. The odds of dying in a shark attack sit near one in 3.7 million, yet Hannah Mighall, mauled by a five-metre great white in Tasmania's Bay of Fires at thirteen, still carries the toothy bite scar on her leg and the nightmares that came with it, alongside her refusal to see the animals culled for what they did to her. -
A bored kid trapped in a powerless, sweltering house sneaks into his father's off-limits basement lab, where a machine that turns AI drawings into living creatures is about to make his worst summer unforgettable.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/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 -
You ever get that feeling like you’re being watched when you’re out in the woods? Turns out, some people know they were — and what they saw was anything but normal.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ParanormalWilderness
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/zyutdd7j
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: There are numerous bizarre and creepy tales of people who have ventured into the woods to find not only the natural world, but perhaps the supernatural as well. (Weirdness In The Wilderness) *** Is it true that the Pentagon has been investigating bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, and other strangeness at the Skinwalker Ranch? (UFOs, The Paranormal, and the Pentagon) *** Dino Bravo is a name that only a die-hard wrestling fan would know, as he never achieved stardom. So when Bravo was murdered, it did not receive much publicity. Which might be part of the reason his murder has never been solved. (The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo) *** Locking the doors in your home is usually a good idea – unless it’s an invisible entity locking you out of the house! Weirdo family member Brenda McDonald talks about the strange experiences she and her family dealt with when moving into a new home. (The Move)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:00:52.894 = Show Open
00:02:33.875 = Weirdness In The Wilderness
00:25:28.664 = UFOs, The Paranormal, And The Pentagon ***
00:37:11.014 = The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo
00:45:20.077 = The Move ***
00:47:58.646 = 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:
“Weirdness In The Wilderness” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/310woY9
“UFOs, The Paranormal, and the Pentagon” by Alejandro Rojas: http://bit.ly/2KtWpsK (more episodes with stories of the Skinwalker Ranch: http://weirddarkness.com/?s=skinwalker+ranch)
“The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo” by Josh Raibick :http://bit.ly/2WqJoaZ
“The Move” by Weirdo family member, Brenda McDonald
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January, 2021
Weird Darkness runs from shapeshifters in the American backcountry to a Pentagon program built around a Utah ranch, then to the unsolved execution of a professional wrestler and a spirit that locked a family out of its own home.It opens in the wilderness, where a wildland firefighter working as an assistant superintendent in Idaho's Hell's Canyon in 2004 met a bobcat that stared him down, screamed, and climbed a tree, then found a boarded-and-chained cabin on federal land before a barefoot Native American woman in a tattered nightgown appeared on the same spot, screamed with the identical cry, and scaled the trunk faster than a person should; a local named the thing a pumawha, a skin changer. A Montana park ranger described a similar abandoned cabin beside a shed whose reinforced steel door had been forced open from the inside, a dazed man who fled into the trees twice, and a full-grown bear that bolted from the house moments after the man vanished. On Mount Sterling in North Carolina, a climber six miles from the nearest road watched a figure with no headlamp arrive at his camp under a full moon and sit motionless facing the tents from roughly 10:30 at night until 3:30 in the morning. Reddit user tytrim89 recounted an abandoned Army training town in North Carolina where two people heard girls laughing in the woods and came back to find the locked jeep's dome light on and a door cracked, followed by a thud that shook the century-old main house. A former summer-camp counselor posting as fleetw16 and a friend followed the sound of running water that grew louder and softer with no creek anywhere on the map, drawn on by a presence that turned sinister the instant they chose to turn back. The segment ends at Yellowstone's Lamar Valley, where a ranger eleven miles from the nearest road found a doe's head severed cleanly and set in the middle of the trail, no blood, no scavenging, the eyes and tongue intact and the body gone.From there the episode turns to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the $22 million Pentagon UFO effort that Luis Elizondo helped expose in the New York Times in December 2017, and to the fuller account that its original name was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program and its real focus was Skinwalker Ranch in Utah's Uintah Basin. Robert Bigelow bought that ranch in 1996 after founding the National Institute for Discovery Science in 1995, and what happened there fills the 2005 book Hunt for the Skinwalker by journalist George Knapp and biochemist Colm Kelleher. The family who sold it, pseudonymed the Gormans, reported a wolf-like creature that shrugged off point-blank gunshots and orbs of light that lured their dogs into the trees for good. Funding ran through Senator Harry Reid and the Defense Intelligence Agency until fundamentalist Christians inside the intelligence community, convinced the phenomena were demonic, lobbied the program shut; retired Army intelligence colonel John Alexander called what they studied precognitive sentient phenomena. Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell's documentary and the History Channel series Unidentified, premiering May 31, carried the material to a wider audience.Next comes the killing of Dino Bravo, born Adolfo Bresciano, a Montreal wrestling star who held a WWWF tag title, benched a claimed 655 pounds as a heel at the 1988 Royal Rumble, and was let go by the company in 1992. Rather than relocate his family to join WCW, he moved into Canada's booming illegal cigarette trade and built a local monopoly, then partnered with a cocaine dealer whose $400,000 shipment was seized by police after sitting three days in a warehouse. A week later, on March 10, 1993, his wife came home to find him shot seven times in the head and ten times in the torso, seated in a chair with the television remote still in his hand and no sign of forced entry. Investigators recovered .380 and .22 caliber rounds and suspect a silencer, since no neighbor reported seventeen gunshots; the execution bore the marks of a Canadian mob hit, and at 44 Bravo left a wife and young daughter behind. The case remains unsolved.The episode closes with Brenda McDonald, who rented a suburban rambler while home on mid-tour leave and watched the back sliding door lock her family out again and again on moving day, its latch not spring-loaded, while her grandson's bedroom door kept shutting and locking until she removed the knob. Home later from deployment, she heard loud snoring beside her on the couch and then in her bed, and during a backyard barbecue a dark shape shot down the hall as a metal candle holder and several pairs of socks flew off a ledge and struck the far wall. A psychic medium told her a frustrated male spirit who wanted a family had followed her daughter home, then coaxed it toward the light, though McDonald came to believe that wherever her daughter goes, spirits follow. -
A routine trip to claim an inheritance becomes a waking nightmare when a young couple discovers their own coffins waiting for them at a lonely, decaying estate.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Red Scarf” (March 07, 1978) ***WD
00:45:52.916 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Dark Wings of Death” (February 06, 1945) ***WD
00:57:09.764 = The Eleventh Hour, “The Box” (ADU)
01:23:41.065 = Escape, “Snake Doctor” (August 18, 1949)
01:52:53.283 = Murder By Experts, “Dig Your Own Grave” (August 15, 1949)
02:22:47.621 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Stranger With Roses” (June 11, 1958)
02:40:30.113 = Dark Fantasy, “Funeral Arrangements Completed” (May 15, 1942)
03:04:28.637 = Fear on 4, “The Face” (February 21, 1988)
03:33:43.361 = Theater Five, “To Be Or No To Be, Maybe!” November 19, 1964) ***WD
03:53:12.113 = Future Tense, “Saucer of Loneliness” (May 30, 1974) ***WD
04:22:21.894 = BBC Ghosts From The Past, “A Warden For All Saints” (April 29, 1992)
05:05:59.571 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0705 -
For a few terrifying hours in the summer of 1955, two Kentucky families emptied their guns into small, glowing creatures that swarmed their farmhouse and simply would not die — and to this day, no one agrees on whether they fought off aliens, owls, or something the mind conjured out of the dark.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/kellyhopkinsville
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p86wb4m
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: It’s considered one of the most bizarre and convincing extraterrestrial events ever reported… we’ll look at the alien encounter in 1955’s Hopkinsville, Kentucky that was experienced by two terrified families. (The Hopkinsville Encounter) *** In the deep jungles of the Congo, natives tell of a giant creature that, once described, sounds exactly like a long-necked dinosaur. But how could this be? And is it pure legend? Perhaps not, as one noted biologist from the area saw it with his own eyes and reported it. We’ll look at the supposed real sighting of Mokele-Mbembe, the living dinosaur of the Congo! (Dinosaur Observed In The Congo) *** Running a club during prohibition was extremely lucrative… and extremely dangerous, as one Theodore Lakoff would’ve learned… had he been awake when he was murdered. (The Mysterious Death of Theodore Lakoff) *** Benjamin Franklin was known not just as one of the father’s of the United States of America, but also as an inventor, a womanizer, and a man with a bit of an ornery streak in him – as is evidenced by a series of letters he wrote to the New England Courant, where he pretended to be a woman. (Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?) *** The internet is a vital part of modern life. Without web access, all kinds of businesses and jobs would be unable to function. So, as you can imagine, there are plenty of people who would love to see the internet crumble. And many have tried. (Taking Down The World Wide Web) *** In 1983 sightings poured in from people on the California coast who claim they saw a sea monster. (The California Sea Monster)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:10.244 = Show Open
00:03:40.994 = The Hopkinsville Encounter
00:13:15.837 = Dinosaur Observed in the Congo ***
00:27:07.561 = Taking Down The World Wide Web ***
00:36:42.752 = The Mysterious Death of Theodor Lakoff
00:43:15.319 = Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?
00:49:11.286 = The California Sea Monster
00:55:29.517 = 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 Hopkinsville Encounter” by Hannah Collins for Ranker.com’s Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yp8pnfx7
“Dinosaur Observed in the Congo” by Richard Greenwell for the ISC Newsletter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc3r3mpp
“The Mysterious Death of Theodore Lakoff” by Kathi Kresol for HauntedRockford.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ku5x3cat
“Who Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?” by Bipin Dimri for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p868eac
“Taking Down the World Wide Web” by Benjamin Thomas for ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/c85j5cau
“The California Sea Monster” by Malcom Smith for Malcom’s Cryptids: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc2wts7h
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: December, 2021
Weird Darkness pulls together a farmhouse siege by little gray creatures in Kentucky, a biologist's claimed sighting of a living dinosaur in the Congo, decades of attempts to knock the internet offline, an unsolved Prohibition murder in Illinois, a teenage Benjamin Franklin's literary hoax, and a hundred-foot sea serpent sighted off the California coast.It opens on August 21, 1955, when Billy Ray Taylor stepped out to the well at Glennie Lankford's farmhouse in Kelly, outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and watched a bright object drop behind the trees. Two families spent the night barricaded indoors, firing a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22 rifle at short gray creatures with spindly legs and glowing eyes that peered through windows and swiped at Taylor from the roof, yet the buckshot rang off them like sheet metal before they floated away unharmed. Skeptics later blamed an aggressive great horned owl or a green glow of bioluminescent foxfire, while the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book dismissed the case as a hoax and filed it under C.P., for crackpot.From there the episode reaches the Likouala swamps of the People's Republic of the Congo, where in 1983 biologist Marcellin Agnagna became the first trained scientist to claim he had seen Mokele-Mbembe, the long-necked animal described as a surviving dinosaur for over two centuries. At remote Lake Télé on May 1, 1983, he watched a creature with a long neck, small head, and broad back rising some fifteen feet above the water, judged it a Mesozoic sauropod, and waded out to film it — only to find he had left the lens cap on, and his last roll of film later developed black.Next comes a survey of attempts to knock the internet offline since Tim Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web. A man named Liu in Weifang, China tore apart four China Telecom junction boxes in 2016 to bury footage of himself joining a public "granny dance," while the Mirai botnet's 2016 assault on the firm Dyn took down Twitter, Netflix, and CNN, and Cornell student Robert Tappan Morris had loosed the first such attack by accident in 1988. It ends on Seth Aaron Pendley, a Texas man arrested in 2021 for plotting to blow up a Virginia data center with C-4 in hopes of crippling most of the web.The show then drops back to January 1931, when roadhouse owner Theodore Lakoff was shot once through the top of the head as he slept in his own Rockford, Illinois resort, a Prohibition den of liquor, gambling, and women he ran under the alias Tony Evanoff. His wallet lay emptied while far more cash sat untouched, and suspicion fell on twenty-year-old Viola Hunsficker, said to be extorting him, until ballistics cleared the pistol found in her apartment. Investigators then turned up five other women who each believed she was his only sweetheart, and the killing was never solved.Then it reaches back to 1722 Boston, where a witty widow named Silence Dogood published letters in the New England Courant skewering religious hypocrisy, Harvard, and fashion, charming readers so thoroughly that several men wrote in offering to marry her. She was the invention of sixteen-year-old Benjamin Franklin, an apprentice in his brother James's print shop who slipped the letters under the door at night for six months before revealing himself, then carried his taste for hoaxes to Philadelphia and a fabricated 1730 account of a Mount Holly witch trial.The episode closes off the California coast, where on October 31, 1983 a highway crew above Stinson Beach watched a dark, slender animal roughly a hundred feet long swim toward shore, trailed by about a hundred birds and two dozen sea lions. Crew member Matt Ratto described three humps rising straight from the water before a head lifted to look around, and days later, near Costa Mesa, a surfer named Young Hutchinson reported a long black eel-like animal with no dorsal fins surfacing ten feet from his board — though a Caltech spokesman offered that the witnesses might have seen a whale or a line of porpoises. -
“The House And The Brain”: A skeptical scientist who swears the supernatural is nonsense spends one night in a house no tenant will stay in—and discovers a terror that follows him out the door.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The House And The Brain” (March 06, 1978) ***WD
00:46:38.363 = Chet Chetter, “The Fall And Rise of the Master Constipator” (1992)
01:16:02.363 = The Clock, “The Other Woman” (December 20, 1955) ***WD
01:42:32.020 = The Crime Club, “Silent Witnesses” (March 27, 1947) ***WD
02:11:44.891 = Crime Classics, “Checkered Life and Death of Colonel James Fisk” (June 29, 1953)
02:41:17.429 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Ghost of Murdock’s Swamp” (February 09, 1947) ***WD
03:07:17.959 = CBC Deep Night, “Bonehouse” (August 12, 2005)
03:40:27.784 = Calling All Detectives, “Taxi Protection Racket” (April 15, 1947)
03:48:33.620 = The Devil and Mr. O, “The House is Haunted’ (August 16, 1952) ***WD
04:17:14.199 = Diary of Fate, “Philip Vale” (June 01, 1948) ***WD (LQ)
04:46:34.156 = Dimension X, “The Roads Must Roll” (September 09, 1950) ***WD
05:15:47.287 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0704 -
The astronomer who says an alien light sail may have passed Earth in 2017 now leads a government team asked to figure out what the military's mystery orbs really are.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/loeb-ufo-council
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. -
Called to a shuttered Queens elementary school over a foul smell, an exterminator opened the ash dump and found a shoe, then a foot — a man's body wedged in the chimney, still unidentified.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/school-chimney-body
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. -
“Crazy Town”: Two bomber pilots who rain death on defenseless villages crash behind the walls of a hidden asylum, where a soft-spoken madman insists they've finally come home to the only community where killers like them belong.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Assassin” (March 03, 1978) ***WD
00:46:37.892 = Strange Adventure, “The Wind Wagon” (1945) ***WD
00:49:51.994 = Arch Oboler’s Plays, “Crazy Town” (May 20, 1939) ***WD
01:17:18.050 = Barrie Craig, “Microfilm in the Fishtank” (October 24, 1951) ***WD
01:46:38.936 = BBC Radio 4/Radio7 GhostStory, “Lifeline” (2006) ***WD
02:15:47.965 = Night Beat, “Mr. And Mrs. Carothers” (October 26, 1951) ***WD
02:45:58.499 = Beyond The Green Door, “John Otis-Mr. Dunn, Disposer” (1966) ***WD
02:49:49.627 = The Black Book, “Vagabond Murder” (March 02, 1952) ***WD
03:04:18.025 = Blackstone, “Ghost That Trapped a Killer” (October 03, 1948) ***WD (LQ)
03:16:00.352 = Box 13, “The Better Man” (January 02, 1949)
03:43:04.360 = Calling All Cars, “York Gang Holdup” (December 13, 1933) ***WD
04:11:50.697 = Casey Crime Photographer, “Reunion” (June 03, 1946) ***WD
04:35:49.460 = CBC Mystery Theater, “The Dream Woman” (May 01, 1968)
05:04:49.273 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0703 -
In 1917, a dead Mark Twain "wrote" a novel through a Ouija board — and the lawsuit that followed forced everyone to ask who really owns a book authored from the afterlife.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ghostwriting
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/366f2sny
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Did Mark Twain write a new novel after he was dead? If so, how? *** Though David Parker Ray's girlfriend Cindy Hendy helped him commit numerous rapes and murders in the 1990s, she was released in 2019 and walks free today. *** Louis Le Prince vanished under mysterious circumstances, but did he willingly decide to hide from the outside world, or was he murdered? *** A man has a dream so disturbing that he’s deeply affected by it well after he dreamt it. And the reason it stuck with him could be that it wasn’t a dream after all – but a premonition of something horrible to come. *** Shortly after finishing her junior year of high school, Alissa Turner disappeared, never to be seen alive again. Her murder would’ve gone unsolved if not for the social media platform, TikTok. *** Humans have been fascinated with Mars ever since we learned it was a planet. But why are we so obsessed with it? Is it simply our next step towards deep-space travel, or are we drawn to it for a more basic reason… because our ancestors originated from there? *** There are many UFO sightings on record, but ones that are accompanied by missing time are particularly interesting. Perhaps not least as they might suggest something more akin to alien abduction than just a mere sighting. We’ll look at one particular incident that took place in Nebraska in 1966.
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:02:26.278 = Do Copyright Laws Apply To Spirit Writing?
00:13:54.317 = The Murder Solved Through TikTok ***
00:19:27.188 = The Nebraska Time Affair
00:35:44.438 = The Strange Dreams of Mr. Moir ***
00:40:33.850 = Did Our Ancestors Live On Mars?
00:52:06.275 = The Toy Box Killer’s Girlfriend ***
01:01:04.695 = The Strange Disappearance of Louis Le Prince
01:06:58.396 = 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 Nebraska Missing Time Affair” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckjf4xe
“The Toy Box Killer’s Girlfriend” by Marco Margaritoff for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8k8j79
“The Strange Disappearance of Louis Le Prince” by Jan Bartek for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9f5zdd
“The Strange Dreams of Mr. Moir” posted at Anomalien: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/33za3tej
“The Murder Solved Through TikTok” by Olivia McCormack for Bust.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/42s9je2z
“Did Our Ancestors Live On Mars?” posted at Earth-Chronicles.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4j8pcrwe
“Do Copyright Laws Apply to Spirit Writing?” posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/nzsen4v5
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: December, 2022
This episode of Weird Darkness moves through posthumous authorship, serial murder, a vanished film pioneer, a TikTok-cracked cold case, alien abduction, Martian origins, and a premonition dug out of the ground.It opens in 1990s New Mexico, where Cindy Hendy helped David Parker Ray abduct, rape, and torture as many as sixty women inside the trailer he called his "Toy Box," a space fitted with ceiling mirrors that forced victims to watch their own suffering. Hendy tracked down targets and stood by while Ray tormented them with electric shocks and medical instruments, until Cynthia Vigil escaped on March 22, 1999, running naked into traffic in Elephant Butte with a dog collar around her neck after stabbing Hendy in the neck with an icepick. Sentenced in 2000 to thirty-six years, Hendy was released on July 15, 2019, because her plea deal predated a law requiring violent offenders to serve eighty-five percent of their terms, and she walks free today.From there the episode crosses to France and the case of Louis Le Prince, born in Metz in 1841 and credited as the forgotten father of motion pictures for building a sixteen-lens camera in 1888. He boarded a train from Dijon to Paris on September 16, 1890, waved off by his brother, and was gone when the train arrived, luggage and all. Thomas Edison spent years asserting sole ownership of cinematography, and Le Prince's son Adolphe, who testified against him, was found shot dead on Fire Island in 1902; a diary entry attributed to Edison and dated September 20, 1890, reportedly records that a man named Eric called from Dijon to say "Prince is no more."Next comes the disappearance of Alissa Turney, a Phoenix teenager last seen on May 17, 2001, after finishing her junior year and arguing with her stepfather, Michael Turney, who claimed she ran away to California. A 2008 search of his home turned up twenty-six homemade explosive devices and a ninety-eight-page manifesto, and he served time on federal bomb charges before his release in 2017. Alissa's younger sister, Sarah Turney, built a TikTok following past one million people around the hashtag campaign for her sister, and in August 2020 Michael Turney was charged with the murder.The episode then turns to a lonely road outside Columbus, Nebraska, on September 5, 1966, where a seventeen-year-old riding his motorcycle to meet his girlfriend's parents saw a completely circular object hovering roughly a hundred feet overhead, ringed with green, red, and yellow lights and emitting a low hum he felt resonate through his body. His engine raged and his wheels spun, but the bike held frozen in place; a five-minute trip took over thirty minutes, and he could never account for the missing time. The same night, radar at Finland Air Force Station in Minnesota tracked an oval craft with the same colored underside, prompting two F-89 jets to scramble from Duluth before it vanished.The Mars segment follows, examining why NASA, SpaceX, and Elon Musk remain fixed on a cold desert planet, and the fringe claim that human life may have originated there billions of years ago before Mars lost its magnetic field and its atmosphere was stripped away by solar wind. The piece leans on the detail that astronauts in space drift toward a 24.9-hour circadian rhythm matching the Martian day, and cites Haim Eshed, former head of Israel's space program, who claimed a secret underground base on Mars where American astronauts and aliens work together, alongside NASA scientist Jim Green's proposal to shield the planet with an artificial magnetic field placed at the Sun-Mars L1 point.Mark Twain surfaces next, seven years after Samuel Clemens died in 1910, when a novel called "The Coming of Jap Herron" appeared in 1917, purportedly dictated by his spirit through a Ouija board to Emily Grant Hutchings and Lola V. Hays. Hutchings, a Hannibal-born writer who had corresponded with Twain in life, had earlier channeled a supposed seventeenth-century spirit named Patience Worth, and psychical researcher James Hyslop tested the Twain claim by asking the ghost to relay the line "Hyslop is a cabbage head," a message that never arrived. Because Harper and Brothers held exclusive rights to Twain's work, his daughter Clara Clemens moved to block publication, and the resulting suit against publisher Mitchell Kennerley ended with every copy pulled from shelves.The episode closes in June 1870 near Boyndie, Scotland, where farm bailiff William Moir dreamed of a bloodied corpse lying on sloping ground near the shore, and weeks later helped carry a drowned asylum inmate over that exact spot, watching blood appear on the dead man's face when the body slipped from its board. The vision returned relentlessly through 1871 until, in January 1872, Moir took a spade to a place called Stakeness and unearthed a human skull and skeleton estimated to be at least fifty years old, in ground where villagers recalled a man named Elder had vanished decades earlier, reportedly murdered in the very room where Moir later slept. The discovery did not free him; he sank into a religious depression and died in October 1873. -
The man appointed to lead one of FEMA's most important disaster-response offices had told podcast audiences he was once physically teleported roughly fifty miles to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/fema-teleport
RELATED ARTICLE FROM APRIL 2026: https://weirddarkness.com/fema-teleportation/
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
Five months after Nancy Guthrie vanished from her Tucson home, the FBI now believes none of the ransom notes tied to her disappearance are genuine — including the two her family thought were real.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/guthrie20260701
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
A search of a Budapest apartment turned up skulls, a severed hand, a lower leg, and a heart in a jar — and the hospital orderly who lived there told police he had prepared and eaten human body parts.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/BudapestCannibal
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
A man who met a woman through online video gaming flew from Canada to Salinas, hid a set of knives and restraints inside a fake Amazon box, and knocked on her door just before ten at night.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/salinas-amazon-attack
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. - Laat meer zien
