Afleveringen
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An insomniac walking a Massachusetts cemetery after midnight spots a light in the groundskeeper's shack, and finds nine men in blue shrouds beside a freshly dug pit.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-bloodkeeper
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
âThe Blood Keeperâ by Christopher Maxim at https://www.reddit.com/r/ChristopherMaxim/
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 26, 2026 -
A Broadway couple buys the vacant Connecticut house no agent in town will touch, covers the den wall with a floor-to-ceiling photograph of an African jungle, and begins to notice that the lion in the picture doesn't always hold the same pose.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe House on Chimney Pot Laneâ (April 28, 1978) ***WD
00:45:28.916 = The Haunting Hour, âDate In The Darkâ (June 03, 1945) ***WD
01:10:28.151 = The Hermitâs Cave, âThe House With a Pastâ (June 27, 1937)
01:34:32.198 = Mystery Is My Hobby, âMillionaire Threatenedâ (1945)
01:59:10.650 = Sherlock Holmes, âThe Haunted Bagpipesâ (February 17, 1947)
02:28:37.363 = Mystery House, âBury Me Notâ (May 26, 1946) ***WD
02:54:24.361 = Inner Sanctum, âDesert Deathâ (January 09, 1945)
03:23:44.926 = Jeff Regan, âThe Diamond Quartetâ (August 14, 1948)
03:52:43.766 = The Key, âNight Prowlerâ (1956)
04:16:47.055 = Lights Out, âUninhabitedâ (December 22, 1937) ***WD (LQ)
04:45:34.772 = Strange Adventure, âThe Five Ticketsâ (1945) ***WD
04:48:49.470 = Calling All Detectives, âA Man Admits To Murderâ (June 15, 1948) ***WD (LQ)
04:56:47.879 = Incredible But True, âThe Face of Deathâ (1950-1951)
05:00:28.938 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0725 -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
-
Mikka thinks space is boring and aliens are a punchline, and by the end of fifth period she has said so out loud to exactly the wrong person.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/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
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Weird Darkness©, 2026
Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kidsâą, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness -
A beautiful young woman knocks on an old soldier's door one summer evening asking to use his phone â and the six-year-old hiding in the back bedroom knows, before anyone says a word, that something is terribly wrong.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-NeverTrustAPrettyFace
SOURCES and RESOURCES: âNever Trust a Pretty Faceâ by Weirdo family member Angie Trafford: https://www.facebook.com/AngieTraffordauthor/
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: July 24, 2026 -
A Louisiana woman vanished from her home in pink pajamas, a K9 search went cold, and a medium she'd never met told her daughters exactly where to find the body in the woods â and now, after a private forensic review, the sheriff's office has reopened the case it once closed as an accidental drowning.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/TheresaDawnJones
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*
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: July 24, 2026
This episode of Weird Darkness follows the disappearance and death of Theresa Dawn Jones near Bernice, Louisiana, a case that ran from a missing persons report to an accidental-drowning ruling to a homicide reinvestigation â and the phone call from a psychic medium a thousand miles away that pointed her family straight to the body.On the night of February 2nd, 2023, fifty-six-year-old Theresa Jones walked out of her home in the Evergreen community on Lake D'Arbonne wearing pink pajamas, leaving behind her phone, her wallet, her car keys, and the eyeglasses she needed to see, and by the time her boyfriend returned from a work trip in Lake Charles he found the house torn apart and Theresa gone. The Union Parish Sheriff's Office searched with a Lincoln Parish K9 unit that tracked her scent out to Highway 2 before losing it, chased sightings of a woman carrying gas cans and a stop at a Circle K in West Monroe, then stalled. Her daughters Ashley Deese and Brittany turned to Carolyn Clapper, a Wisconsin medium who took their call at 10:48 at night and, over forty-five minutes, described a fallen log at a tree line, a creek, and a sickness that would come over whoever went looking â directions that led Ashley to her mother's body in Edmonds Creek the next morning, found nude from the waist down with the water still shallow around her. Dr. Frank Peretti's autopsy in Little Rock ruled the death an accidental drowning with methamphetamine intoxication as a contributing factor, and the sheriff's office closed the case in August 2023, but Ashley never accepted it, and a retired Texas aquatic-death investigator named Greg Lawson publicly questioned why no rape kit or fingernail scraping was ever done. More than a year later, private forensic consultant John Oliveira of Applied Forensic Solutions reviewed the file and found only 150 milliliters of water in the lungs, livor mortis fixed in the legs rather than the face-down position she was found in, a clean upper jacket above the waterline, and bruising the autopsy never recorded â evidence pointing away from drowning and toward a body staged in the water after death. At the end of October 2025, Oliveira presented those findings to Union Parish detectives, and the sheriff's office reopened Theresa Jones's death as a possible homicide, more than two years after the paperwork first called it an accident. -
In the summer of 1958, phantom fires struck the Tuck family's Talladega, Alabama home more than fifty times â bread igniting on its own, single garments bursting into flame, sulfur-smelling fires that followed the family across three homes before a nine-year-old confessed to a scheme that never explained the blaze witnessed by police in the yard, or the fires that started when the boy was gone.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/paranormalflames
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc4nrtuj
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: In the late 1950s, the Tuck family of Alabama found themselves at the center of a terrifying ordeal as mysterious fires spontaneously erupted in their home. Despite their best efforts to escape the flames, the fiery phenomenon followed them from one residence to another, consuming their possessions and leaving them homeless. Weâll look at this case and other similar ones where the seeming explanation is nothing short of paranormal. (Paranormal Flames) *** In the sleepy Kentish hamlet of Charing, a centuries-old mystery unfolds every May Day. As the clock strikes midnight, ghostly children emerge from their moss-encrusted graves, their ethereal feet dancing to the silent fiddle's tune. Itâs all part of the "Night of the Dancing Feet." (Dancing After Death) *** Before his wife's murder in June 2009, Eli Weaver had numerous affairs with women he met through online dating sites, where he called himself an "Amish Stud." But only one mistress was willing to kill for him. (Eli Weaver, Amish Stud and Murderer) *** The American West evokes iconic images often seen in movies: bold adventures, noon shootouts, resolute sheriffs and marshals maintaining order, and the cavalry arriving just in time. However, the history of the Wild West, replete with myths and stereotypes, presents a more complex and sometimes disturbing reality about justice in that era. (Wild West Justice) *** On the morning of July 13, 1997, the body of Denise Johnson was discovered inside her burning childhood home in Kill Devil Hills, NC. Emergency responders quickly realized they weren't dealing with a simple arson, but a murder as well. Now, more than two decades later, the case remains unsolved. (The Unsolved Murder of Denise Johnson) *** Hachishakusama, often referred to as the "Japanese Slender Man," is a haunting figure from Japanese urban legends that rivals the terror of her American counterpart. While the Slender Man has gained a cult-like following and has even inspired real-life horror stories, Hachishakusama's tale is equally spine-chilling and capable of keeping you up at night. (The Japanese Slender Man)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:21.690 = Show Open
00:04:30.483 = Paranormal Flames
00:23:29.009 = The Unsolved Murder of Denise Johnson ***
00:37:06.405 = Dancing After Death (Night of the Dancing Feet)
00:44:39.904 = Wild West Justice ***
00:54:40.356 = Eli Weaver, Amish Stud and Murderer
01:03:17.535 = The Japanese Slender Man ***
01:08:47.360 = 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: âAblaze â The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustionâ by Larry E. Arnold:https://amzn.to/3Uqdhmz
BOOK: âA Killing In Amish Countryâ by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris: https://amzn.to/44wghmb
âParanormal Flamesâ source: Marcus Lowth at UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4eb8xht2
âThe Unsolved Murder of Denise Johnsonâ source: Jacob Shelton at Ranker: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8t3b7p
âDancing After Deathâ by Ken DaSilva-Hill submitted directly to Weird Darkness and used with permission
âWild West Justiceâ source: Christy Box at Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8db9vj
âEli Weaver, Amish Stud and Murdererâ source: Hannah Reilly Holtz at AllThatsInteresting.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4jfmybjh
âThe Japanese Slender Manâ source: Curry L Mitchell at ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdd7fthz
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: May 01, 2024 -
Fourteen years after Irasema Chavez was stabbed more than a hundred times in her Arlington apartment, a single drop of blood on her bedroom television stand and two plastic forks left on a restaurant table have led police to charge one of her former close friends with capital murder.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/IrasemaChavez
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*
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
Two sisters flying to Puerto Rico to clear out their grandmother's house find a shoebox of bloodied feathers in the kitchen cupboard, and thirty handwritten journals hidden under a loose tile in the garage.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-grandmothergrimoire
SOURCES and RESOURCES: âMy Grandmother Left Behind Some Really Dark Secretsâ by Evelyn Bertrand: https://tinyurl.com/yy8gx627
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 24, 2026 -
In an update to the Caroline Peña murder case, the lead detective has testified that while Kitty Diaz drove the car and threw punches during the assault, she never stabbed anyone â and a judge has dropped her bond from five million dollars to two million, which she still cannot afford to post.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/diazsisters20260723
GO FUND ME: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-caroline-penas-children
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*
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
From the vengeful Bell Witch to the lingering spirits of Gettysburg, America is packed with haunted spots that refuse to let go of their ghosts â whether itâs eerie voices in old asylums, shadowy figures in historic mansions, or phantom footsteps in forgotten graveyards. If youâre looking for a brush with the supernatural, these legendary (and lesser-known) locations wonât disappoint.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HauntedAmerica
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36de8fpn
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:
âAmericaâs Most Haunted Placesâ by Troy Taylor and April Slaughter for AmericanHauntingsInk.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/582mh58k (used with permission)
âAmericaâs Not-So-Famous Haunted Housesâ by Troy Taylor for AmericanHauntingsInk.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p979tsv (used with permission)
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January, 2022
Weird Darkness tours fifteen haunted American locations, starting with the ones every ghost hunter already knows. The Bell Witch Cave in Adams, Tennessee, where a spirit claiming to be the witch of Kate Batts tormented the Bell family for years and, some say, retreated into a cave near the Red River. Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, where tuberculosis patients died in numbers large enough to require a body chute running down the hill and out of sight. The Myrtles Plantation, whose most famous ghost stories turn out to be false, though the apparitions on the grounds keep getting reported anyway. The Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, where four members of one brewing family took their own lives across five decades. Gettysburg's Devil's Den, the Stanley Hotel that inspired Stephen King, the Winchester Mystery House with its staircases to nowhere, Bachelor's Grove Cemetery outside Chicago, Yorktown Memorial Hospital in Texas, and the Villisca Ax Murder House in Iowa, where eight people were killed in their beds in June of 1912 and no one was ever convicted.Then the show turns to the houses that never made the lists. Nemacolin Castle in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, built on the site of a French and Indian War garrison and later a stop on the Underground Railroad. Tinker Swiss Cottage in Rockford, Illinois, a twenty-seven-room Swiss-style home on a limestone bluff where children's laughter is heard by staff who came in as skeptics. The McCune Mansion in Salt Lake City, where a little girl walks in and out of a mirror. Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, where a fired servant locked seven people in Frank Lloyd Wright's home in August of 1914, set it on fire, and killed them with a hatchet as they tried to escape. And Prospect Place in Trinway, Ohio, built by an abolitionist who used a cupola signal light to tell escaping slaves that food and shelter waited inside â some of whom never left. -
âAdventure of the Beauty Queenâ: A woman wakes to a voice from a thousand years in the future, telling her a machine has searched all of history for beauty and found her.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe Queen of Palmyraâ (April 27, 1978) ***WD
00:45:45.877 = The Eleventh Hour, âCodeword Silverâ (ADU)
01:11:24.672 = Escape, âThe Fortune of Vargasâ (September 21, 1949)
01:40:04.624 = Exploring Tomorrow, âAdventure of the Beauty Queenâ (June 25, 1958) ***WD
01:59:42.274 = Dark Fantasy, âRendezvous With Satanâ (May 29, 1942)
02:28:27.595 = Fear on 4, âFat Andyâ (March 06, 1988)
02:57:32.941 = Theater Five, âDark Appointmentâ (November 23, 1964) ***WD
03:18:08.219 = Adventures of Superman, âMystery of the Walking Deadâ (November 05, 1949)
03:47:56.562 = Hall of Fantasy, âThe Judgeâs Houseâ (April 03, 1947) ***WD
04:14:35.484 = Harry Lime, âRogues Holidayâ (September 21, 1951)
04:39:24.955 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, âThe Familyâ (July 05, 1980) ***WD
05:07:30.568 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0724 -
A coroner's inquest convenes over a mutilated body in a lonely California cabin, where the only witness swears the thing that killed his friend was standing in plain sight the whole time. (Originally published in the magazine âTown Topicsâ on December 7th in 1893⊠a magazine, interestingly enough, not known for horror at all, but more for art, music, and society.)
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-thedamnedthing
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
âThe Damned Thingâ by Ambrose Bierce: https://tinyurl.com/y6amz952
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 23, 2026 -
A lifelong friend's death leaves Jason Clark hearing that friend's voice picking winners at the track, an unbroken streak that draws the attention of the bookmakers he's bleeding dry â and when they demand his system at knifepoint, what proof can he offer?
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âBet With The Angelsâ (April 21, 1978) ***WD
00:46:18.058 = Chet Chetter, âElmer And The Book of Absolute Truthâ (1991)
01:16:14.133 = The Clock, âThe Hitchhikerâ (January 03, 1956) ***WD
01:40:44.592 = The Crime Club, âGrey Mist Murdersâ (April 10, 1947)
02:10:32.203 = Crime Classics, âThe Terrible Deed of John White Websterâ (July 13, 1953)
02:40:14.956 = Danger Dr Danfield, âNorman Milesâ (September 08, 1946) ***WD
03:05:54.976 = Calling All Detectives, âCasebook of J. Browningâ (June 14, 1948)
03:14:16.749 = The Devil and Mr. O, âHungry Oneâ (January 14, 1972)
03:42:57.931 = Diary of Fate, âNelson Walkerâ (June 15, 1948) ***WD
04:10:44.961 = Dimension X, âHello Tomorrowâ (September 15, 1950) ***WD
04:39:05.898 = The Strange Dr. Weird, âKnife of Deathâ (February 20, 1945) ***WD (LQ)
04:51:32.354 = Strange Adventure, âThe Island of Mysteryâ (1945) ***WD
04:54:56.292 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0723 -
Before sixteen children were found in a single room in Hamden, the Siders family left behind another house in Gallia County â and a renovator says he found it in the same condition.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/siderscase20260722
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*
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
Al Capone begged his way into the prison band, Robert Stroud spent eleven years in the hospital, and every inmate at Alcatraz learned fast that on the Rock, almost everything beyond a meal and a cot had to be earned... and a single broken rule could send you into total silence and darkness in the hole.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/alcatraz
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y7sjc7zw
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:23.422 = Show Open
00:02:30.901 = Being An Alcatraz Inmate
00:19:49.953 = The Impossibility of Escaping Alcatraz ***
00:40:10.152 = Prisons More terrifying Than Alcatraz ***
00:52:59.621 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad 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:
âBeing An Alcatraz Inmateâ by Melissa Sartore for Ranker.comâs Weird History:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/535vhu7n
âThe Impossibility of Escaping Alcatrazâ by Melissa Sartore for Ranker.comâs Weird History:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdfj2ypt
âMore Terrifying Than Alcatrazâ by Michelle Nati for Ranker.comâs Unspeakable Times: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3jwhh268
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: February, 2021
Weird Darkness takes listeners inside the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island â what daily life was actually like behind its walls, the fourteen escape attempts that mostly ended in the San Francisco Bay, and a tour of American prisons whose conditions make the Rock look mild by comparison.It opens with the texture of everyday survival at Alcatraz, where the prison held roughly 330 men in cells measuring five feet by nine, and where food, clothing, shelter, and medical care were the only four rights an inmate had â everything else, from library access to a spot in the prison band, had to be earned. Warden James A. Johnston enforced a code of silence that lasted until 1937, so inmates like Jim Quillen talked through the pipes between cells, and Quillen described nineteen days in solitary as total silence and darkness. Al Capone begged his way into the Rock Islanders band and learned tenor guitar, tenor banjo, and mandola; Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, spent eleven of his seventeen years there in the hospital, studying law and languages. Prisoners were counted thirteen times a day, allowed a single two-page letter each week to a blood relative, and served food widely regarded as the best in the federal system â and still, by inmate Bryan Conway's account, fourteen of three hundred seventeen men went violently insane during his last year, one dock worker chopping off the fingers of his own left hand with an ax.From there, the episode turns to the men who tried to leave. Joseph "Dutch" Bowers became the first, shot off a fence on April 27th, 1936, while working the incinerator detail. Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe sawed through a window in the Model Industries Building and vanished into a storm-driven current in December 1937, their bodies never found. The 1938 breakout by James Limerick, Jimmy Lucas, and Rufus "Whitey" Franklin killed guard Royal C. Cline with a hammer; Arthur "Doc" Barker, son of Ma Barker, was shot in the head near the shoreline in January 1939. The May 1946 "Battle of Alcatraz" pulled in the Coast Guard and the Marines over two days and left guards William Miller and Harold Stites dead. And the most famous attempt of all came in June 1962, when Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin chipped through their cell walls with spoons, left dummy heads made of soap and hair in their beds, and disappeared on a raft stitched from raincoats â three men the FBI never found.The episode closes by leaving Alcatraz behind for prisons still standing. ADX Florence in Colorado, the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," holds inmates like Ted Kaczynski and Ramzi Yousef in seventy-five-square-foot concrete cells for twenty-three hours a day. At the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, an inmate named Andre Thomas removed his own eye. Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County Tent City Jail in Phoenix housed people outdoors in the Arizona heat until it was dismantled in 2017. Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans has stood on the same ground for three hundred years, first used to hold enslaved people who tried to escape. San Quentin, built in 1852 and once home to Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez, drew a court-appointed report describing a facility so old, dirty, and overcrowded that housing people there was called dangerous. -
A 2023 book collects accounts of shapeshifting strangers, reptilian visitors, and living doubles, arguing the aliens John Carpenter put on screen may have been walking among us all along.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/TheyLive
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycktrfu5
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Have you ever felt like something was off about someone you met? What if the truth was more bizarre than you could imagine - that aliens walk secretly among us, perfectly disguised? (Mimic In The Mirror) *** The short story âEight OâClock In The Morningâ by Ray Nelson â the inspiration for the movie âThey Live!â *** Left-handedness: once a mark of the devil, now a unique trait celebrated across the globe. From the Salem Witch Trials to modern-day challenges with spiral notebooks, left-handers have been forced to navigate a world designed for righties, despite the historical stigmas, surprising advantages, and the evolving recognition of left-handers in combat, culture, and commerce. (Left-Handers Are In League With The Devil) *** In the shadow of Switzerland's majestic Eiger mountain, 29-year-old Aidan Roche vanished without a trace during a solo hiking trip. Despite an unlocked camper-van and one last eerie messages sent from the trail, his disappearance remained shrouded in mystery. Months later, a grim discovery brought more questions than answers. (The Disappearance of Aidan Roche) *** In the summer of 1948, a series of inexplicable fires ravaged the Willey farm near Macomb, Illinois, destroying the family's home and barns. Despite the efforts of local authorities and the U.S. Air Force, no logical explanation could be found for the hundreds of mysterious blazes that seemed to start spontaneously. At the center of this baffling case was 13-year-old Wanet McNeil, whose alleged confession to arson left many unconvinced. Was Wanet truly responsible? Could she have been starting the fires with her mind? (The Macomb Firestarter) *** In 1991, 63-year-old Vasile Gorgos left his home in Romania to visit a cattle market and never returned, leaving his family to believe he had met a tragic fate. But 30 years later, Vasile shocked everyone when he mysteriously reappeared, wearing the same clothes as the day he vanished and carrying an unused train ticket from 1991 in his pocket. With no memory of where he'd been for three decades, Vasile's strange case has left people wondering if his disappearance could be tied to supernatural phenomena like portals, alien abduction, or shifts in time and space itself. (The Mysterious Vanishing of Vasile Gorgos)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = âEight OâClock In The Morningâ (short fiction)
00:12:38.092 = Show Open
00:15:46.852 = Mimic In The Mirror: Are Aliens Among Us? ***
00:26:13.246 = Left-Handers Are In League With The Devil
00:32:35.305 = The Disappearance of Aidan Roche ***
00:38:57.889 = The Macomb Firestarter
00:48:20.167 = The Mysterious Vanishing of Vasile Gorgos ***
00:55:50.605 = 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:
âEight OâClock In The Morningâ by Ray Nelson: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mu7tmynm
âMimic In The Mirrorâ source: Sean Casteel at Spectral Vision: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckjpyz8
BOOK: âMimics â The Others Among Usâ by Sean Casteel and Tim R. Swartz: https://amzn.to/3Ws07IJ
BOOK: âSky Crash Throughout Time (A Cosmic Conspiracy)â by Philip Kinsella and Brenda Butler: https://amzn.to/3WlE2v2
âLeft-Handers Are In League With The Devilâ source: Baiily Benningfield at Rankerâs Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8acbdh
âThe Disappearance of Aidan Rocheâ source: Strange Outdoors: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mrxvj87r
âThe Macomb Firestarterâ by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5n7dbzmh (used with permission)âThe Mysterious Vanishing of Vasile Gorgosâ source: Marcus Lowth at UFO Insight:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/jxztu8nd
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: April 30, 2024
In this episode of Weird Darkness, listeners move through alien impostors, the long history of left-handed stigma, a hiker who vanished in the Swiss Alps, a farm besieged by fires no one could explain, and a Romanian cattle trader who came home after thirty years.It opens with the mimics. Ray Nelson's 1963 story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" â the basis for John Carpenter's 1988 film "They Live" â imagined reptilian aliens ruling Earth from behind human faces, and the 2023 book "Mimics: The Others Among Us" argues that scenario may not be fiction. The book collects accounts like that of Brenda Butler, co-author of a book on the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident, who in 1984 met a tall, blue-eyed man calling himself David Daniels and claiming to be from the Pleiades star cluster, then watched his skin turn scaly and reptilian before he shifted back to human. It recounts author Chris Holly's memory of a strikingly similar white-haired, blue-eyed family she later connected to the extraterrestrial "Tall Whites," alongside cases of living ghosts, doppelgangers, and a 1970s poltergeist blamed on a mimic wearing a teenage girl's face.From there the episode traces why left-handedness was treated as sinister for centuries. During the Salem Witch Trials, favoring the left hand could bring an accusation of witchcraft, and as late as the 1970s schools still forced left-handed children to write with their right. The Book of Matthew places the righteous on the right and the cursed on the left, the Zulu scalded children's left hands to stop their use, and communities along the Niger River tied left-handed cooking to witchcraft â while the ancient Celts prized left-handed warriors, Rome read left-side omens as favorable, and the Inca chief Lloque Yupanqui was admired for his left-handedness. The stigma softened by the late 1960s, when William Gruby opened Anything Left-Handed, Ltd. to sell scissors, kitchen tools, and watches built for lefties.Next comes the disappearance of Aidan Roche, a 29-year-old chemical engineer from Middlesbrough who vanished on June 22nd, 2023, while hiking the Eiger Trail in Switzerland's Bernese Oberland. His campervan sat unlocked and abandoned near the trailhead with everything inside intact, and his final messages placed him two hours from Grindelwald in clear weather on a well-traveled path. Swiss police, mountain rescue teams, dogs, and drones searched for five days, and his brothers Connor and Niall raised over ÂŁ30,000 for helicopter surveillance and screen advertisements in twenty-four locations, yet found nothing until September 24th, 2023, when Aidan's body was discovered near the trail with the cause of death still unreleased.The episode then settles on the Willey farm outside Macomb, Illinois, where hundreds of fires broke out in the summer of 1948. They started on August 7th as small brown spots that appeared on the living room wallpaper, spread, smoldered, and burst into flame â more than 200 of them in one week, igniting curtains, an ironing board, and newspapers sealed inside a closed cupboard, often erupting on walls and ceilings while witnesses watched. The blazes consumed the farmhouse on August 14th and both barns soon after, drew over 1,000 spectators on August 22nd, and even brought in the U.S. Air Force, which floated directed radiation from the Russians as a possible cause. Officials declared the case solved on August 30th by pinning it on 13-year-old Wanet McNeil, who confessed to using kitchen matches after hours of questioning despite never being seen holding any; psychiatrist Dr. Sophie Schroeder found her mentally normal, researcher Vincent Gaddis called it poltergeist activity, and Fire Chief Fred Wilson retired still convinced something unexplainable had happened.The episode closes with Vasile Gorgos, a 63-year-old cattle trader from BacÄu, Romania, who left for a market in 1991 and disappeared for three decades. His wife reported him missing, an extensive police search turned up no trace, and his family eventually held a ceremony and accepted that he was dead. On a Sunday afternoon in August 2021, a car pulled up outside his old house and drove off before anyone could read the plate, leaving behind a 93-year-old Vasile in the same clothes he had worn in 1991, carrying an unused train ticket from that year and an old identity card listing an address in another part of Romania. Doctor -
A waterlogged model boat that keeps appearing wherever Professor Anders goes â dripping, shivering, impossible to be rid of â carries a name, a drowning, and a debt that refuses to stay buried.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe Avocado Jungleâ (April 20, 1978) ***WD
00:46:14.846 = BBC Radio 4 / Radio 7, âThe Boat Hookâ (April 15, 1992)
01:30:17.027 = Night Beat, âFive Days Off For Christmasâ (December 21, 1951) ***WD
01:58:08.526 = Beyond The Green Door, âMr. Fritz-Hugh And Poisoned Knife Bladeâ (1966)
02:02:01.418 = Campbell Playhouse, âA Christmas Carolâ (December 24, 1939) ***WD
03:00:24.073 = Box 13, âThe Dowager And Dan Holidayâ (November 16, 1949)
03:27:06.293 = Calling All Cars, âCookie Vejar Killingâ (December 27, 1933)
03:56:51.245 = Casey Crime Photographer, âRed Raincoatâ (August 29, 1946)
04:26:26.709 = CBC Mystery Theater, âThe Ghost Town Hermitâ (May 19, 1967) ***WD
04:57:04.004 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0722 -
A 2-year-old in Chambers County was found bound at the wrists, legs, and ankles and left face-down on a bed for more than half a day, and one of the two suspects was dead by his own hand before the arrest ever came.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/bound-toddler-alabama
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*
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
A man climbed into the waste tank beneath a portable toilet to fish out a dropped bottle of Mountain Dew, and stayed there long enough to require power tools and a fire hose.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/portadew
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*
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
A murderer insists he is perfectly sane, even as he explains in careful detail how he killed the old man and hid the body beneath the floorboards.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-telltaleheart
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 21, 2026 - Laat meer zien
