Episodes
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A nightgown-clad stranger in a flying saucer repeats two nonsense words to everyone who'll listenâbut only a lonely hospital cleaner can understand what he's really saying, and the warning is one no one wants to believe.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âIdentified Flying Objectsâ (March 17, 1978) ***WD
00:45:34.637 = Obsession, âAmnesiaâ (February 19, 1951) ***WD
01:08:44.909 = Origin of Superstition, âThrowing Saltâ (1935)
01:23:20.108 = Pat Novak, âFleet Ladyâ (March 06, 1949) ***WD
01:53:23.239 = Peril, âKillerâ (1953) ***WD
02:16:39.256 = Mystery Playhouse, âCriminal At Largeâ (April 11, 1944) ***WD (LQ)
02:46:09.318 = Price of Fear, âNot Wanted On This Voyageâ (1973-1983) ***WD
03:14:05.007 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, âSaga of Ruffy Ruxâ (November 27, 1947) (LQ)
03:42:57.592 = Quiet Please, âThe Man Who Knew Everythingâ (March 06, 1949)
04:11:53.022 = Radio City Playhouse, âProblem Childâ (November 13, 1949)
04:37:02.732 = Adventures In The Supernatural, âThe Mysterious Carriageâ (1932) ***WD
05:01:28.304 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0709 -
The most evil among us are sometimes sentenced to death â but by cutting their lives short, are we unknowingly creating malevolent entities that haunt us forever?
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/DeathRowGhosts
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr3vu756
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The most evil of lawbreakers in our society â the murderers and rapists â are usually confined to life in prison. The most evil of the evil are sometimes sentenced to death. But is it possible that by cutting short the lives of the horrific individuals on Death Row, we are unknowingly creating new malevolent entities that continue to torment us from the grave? (The Ghosts of Death Row) *** From beatings to murders to a handful of escape attempts made by Alcatraz's prisoners, the terrifying history of Alcatraz prison contains plenty of ghosts. (The Hauntings of Alcatraz) *** What if UFOs arenât from another planet â or even another dimension? What if they are actually machines built right here on Earth, piloted by human time travelers? (Time Machine Flying Saucers) *** Weirdo family member Amber Harris shares a true story called âDarkness Was My Neighborâ. (Darkness Was My Neighbor)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:00:51.953 = Show Open
00:02:45.176 = Ghosts of Death Row
00:23:40.720 = Hauntings of Alcatraz ***
00:40:46.307 = Time Machine Flying Saucers ***
00:47:37.172 = Darkness Was My Neighbor
00:53:53.392 = 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:
âThe Ghosts of Death Rowâ by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2KzEFw9
âThe Hauntings of Alcatrazâ by Erin McCann: http://bit.ly/2QSsuM6
âTime Machine Flying Saucersâ posted at UFO Digest (link no longer available)
âDarkness Was My Neighborâ by Amber Harris â submitted directly to Weird Darkness
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January, 2022
Weird Darkness journeys into haunted prisons, botched executions, secret time-travel technology, and a neighbor's death that seemed to linger after the funeral, spanning true crime, the paranormal, and a firsthand ghost story from a listener.It opens with the ghosts of Death Row, where condemned killers appear to keep terrorizing long after execution. German immigrant Frederick Hollman, one of America's earliest serial killers, was hanged at the Ford County Jail in Paxton, Illinois, on May 14, 1897, after promising to return and rap on the windows of the witnesses and jurors who convicted him â and the jail is now a paranormal hotspot where his face has been photographed glaring into his old cell. Lavinia Fisher and her husband John ran the Six Mile House near Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1820s, allegedly poisoning and dropping wealthy travelers through a trapdoor before their hanging for highway robbery, and her aggressive spirit is still blamed for choking sensations and foul stenches at the Old Charleston Jail. Raymond Snowden, dubbed Idaho's Jack the Ripper for the 1956 stabbing of Cora Dean, endured a botched twenty-minute hanging at the Old Idaho Penitentiary in Boise in 1957 and reportedly haunts the gallows site alongside inmate Douglas Van Vlack, who leaped to his death from the cell block rafters. Ted Bundy, executed in Florida's electric chair on January 24, 1989, has supposedly been seen grinning atop the chair and telling guards he beat them all, while Willie Lloyd Turner â executed by lethal injection in 1995 after fifteen years and five aborted trips to the chamber â appeared so lifelike after death that inmates mistook him for the living. The segment closes across the Atlantic with executioner John Ellis, who hanged more than a hundred people at Manchester's Strangeways Jail before killing himself in 1932 and is said to still patrol B Wing to keep the prison's other ghosts, including poisoner Mrs. Merrifield, in line.From there the episode moves to Alcatraz, the federal penitentiary that operated on its fog-bound San Francisco Bay island from 1934 to 1963 and earned a reputation as one of America's most haunted sites. The solitary cells of D-Block known as "the hole" are tied to the 1940s strangulation death of a screaming inmate in cell 14D, possibly the work of former occupant Rufus McCain, and visitors report icy fingers and unnatural cold there. The 1946 Battle of Alcatraz left two guards and three escapees dead in a utility corridor where clanging noises still echo, psychic Sylvia Browne sensed murdered hitman Abie "Butcher" Maldowitz in the laundry room, and the catacomb "dungeon" beneath A-Block preserves the screams of prisoners once chained naked to its walls. Al Capone spent part of his 1934 sentence strumming a banjo to hold off insanity, and that banjo music is still reportedly heard in the halls, while "Birdman" Robert Stroud haunts the hospital wing where he was confined among his canary research. The island carried dark associations long before the prison, from Ohlone tribal beliefs that it gathered evil spirits to the Civil War soldiers who died chained in its guardhouse basement, and even the 1969 to 1971 Native American occupation ended in fire and loss before the ghosts reportedly stayed behind.Next the episode turns to a fringe theory that reframes flying saucers as human technology rather than alien craft, arguing that a secretive commercial group used patent-law secrecy to build working time machines in twentieth-century laboratories. The account claims these machines can move an ion through time in both directions, that short-range "trans-burst" devices let a person leap across nearby distances, and that the UFOs people photograph are previews of future mankind rather than extraterrestrial visitors. It ties the idea to Einstein's 1901 work as a patent clerk and to E=mcÂČ, and recasts Area 51 as cover not for alien bodies but for a commercial experiment involving four trained monkeys linked to a 1961 interstellar flight.The episode closes with a listener account from Amber Harris, who lived at the end of a cul-de-sac in Williamsburg, Virginia, in a house set down in a ditch so the second floor sat level with the street. After her next-door neighbor died suddenly in his home and his widow moved away, the house sat unsold for months, and one night past midnight the hallway light outside Amber's bedroom switched on without the telltale sound of anyone climbing the loud staircase, casting the shadow of a male figure beneath her door before it went dark. Weeks later her sister woke her by text to watch the dead neighbor's dog standing beneath the orange street light, barking at the empty house before turning its head directly toward the two of them at the window and then vanishing, an image that stayed with the family until a job moved them to Indiana, with the neighbor's house still unsold when they drove past it the following May. -
Missing episodes?
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When a corporate jet is torn through a fold in space and time, its passengers find themselves offered a second chance a thousand years from home â if they're willing to leave everything behind.
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe Time Foldâ (March 16, 1978)
00:45:45.739 = Beyond Midnight, âSignalmanâ (March 28, 1969)
01:14:36.277 = MindWebs, âSword Gameâ (February 26, 1983)
01:37:43.928 = Mystery In The Air, âBeyond Good And Evilâ (August 28, 1947) ***WD
02:06:30.486 = Molle Mystery Theater, âMurder Without Crimeâ (May 03, 1946)
02:35:54.321 = Mr. Keen, âMurder In The Airâ (February 24, 1944) ***WD
03:04:51.982 = Murder at Midnight, âMurder Out of Mindâ (September 15, 1947 â Never Aired)
03:31:07.980 = Black Museum, âThe Spotted Bedsheetâ (October 21, 1952)
03:57:04.381 = Mysterious Traveler, âMurder In 2952â (April 29, 1952)
04:27:01.192 = CBC Nightfall, âThe Appetite of Mr Lucraftâ (December 26, 1980)
04:58:34.157 = Show Close
(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0708 -
Eleven federal agencies spent sixty days working Chicago and Rockford under one flag, and when it ended they had 305 fugitives in custody and 24 children â many of them kidnapped â back home.
SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/OperationNewDawn
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 house built on a history of war, death, and dark magicâwhat lurks within the walls of 63 Maple Street may be more than just restless spirits.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/63MapleStreet
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yck2wx6x
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: âThe Haunting of 63 Maple Streetâ by Jordan Quinn Farkas: https://amzn.to/3w2Ximy
Blog post: âOur Humble Haunted Homeâ from ParanormalHauntings.blog: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5x4y29w4
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: April 22, 2024
Weird Darkness digs into the decades-long haunting of a single working-class home in BeliĆĄÄe, Croatia, tracing how war, buried cemeteries, black magick, and strange lights in the sky converge on one address. The account comes from Jordan Quinn Farkas, who moved to BeliĆĄÄe in 2017 and settled into a house his wife had owned since 2010 on a street locals still call Maple Street, a corner of Slavonia near the Hungarian border founded by the wealthy Jewish Gutmann family around their massive Slavonian Oak sawmill. The ground itself carries a grim record: Communist party members captured and killed the Jewish factory owner in 1945, a Yugoslav "working camp" operated on the town's edge for a single year of killings and starvation, and the Homeland War of the early 1990s drove residents into basements and bomb shelters. Farkas counts more than a dozen deaths on the street since 2017, including two suicides and a neighbor who vanished near the Drava river around Halloween and surfaced miles downstream, a landfill dumped over both an old Jewish cemetery and an even older Celtic one within a few hundred yards, and Roman and Celtic coins dating to roughly 300 AD dug from his own yard. Inside the house, the activity sorts room by room: a lobby where a wardrobe bangs from within and a strawberry-blonde female apparition â believed to be a deceased teenage friend of his wife â walks past the window until a welcoming ritual quiets her; a living room where a bathroom light switch flips itself on despite rewiring done twice, doors open and slam, and a voice recorder captured EVPs of footsteps and toggling switches; a kitchen where he and his wife heard a dragon-like screech and two heavy wingbeats overhead one night around 2 a.m., which they connect to the Croatian Zmaj or Pozoj of regional folklore; a master bedroom where a phantom smoker's residual haunting appeared as swirling smoke and laughing voices over an overnight video call, tied to the original owners' chain-smoking daughter Iva; a kid's room where his son Ivan babbles and laughs at an unseen presence an old man's ghost once shown to a girl named Stella occupied; and an attic where sounds of two creatures wrestling gave way to running "cement boots" footsteps too small to be an adult. Outside, the haunting takes on the shape of a deliberate campaign, with witch's eggs â light and hollow, a Balkan curse object â rolling from an old drainpipe more than once, black roosters and chickens left dead and scattered in feathers, three crow wings severed as cleanly as by a laser, a knotted cord of knot magick hidden in an oak cabinet, and a leather satchel of dust, a small bone, and adult teeth, all of it unfolding alongside a UFO sighting in which a solid cream-colored light outran three fighter jets over the Drava the night after Farkas dreamed of a shuttle landing in his side yard. -
In 1872, the children of a Newburyport schoolhouse watched a bloodless child's hand press against the window glass â 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 â 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) *** âThe Mira Theater Hauntingâ by Bili White
==========
HOUR TWO: âMJ12: JFK and UFOsâ *** No one likes uninvited guests â and it appears, neither do those in the afterlife. (Dead Village) *** Ask Pedro Rodrigues Filho and heâll tell you heâs a nice guy. After all, he may be a serial killer â 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 Englandâs 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 âThe Stingâ, masters of disguise and ID like Frank Abagnale from âCatch Me If You Canâ, or even the mysterious Keyser Söze from âThe Usual Suspectsâ. But Iâm 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 â for within, witnesses have seen mysterious things⊠including UFOs, mysterious deaths, and unexplained vanishings. (Danger Lurking In The Woods)
==========
SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHTâS SHOW:
âThe Mira Theater Hauntingâ by Bili White from Paranormality Magazine
âThe Shadow Over Newburyportâ posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y62cmsun
âThe Submarine Sunk by a Sea Monsterâ from Earth-Chronicles.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ve7bwnvh
âThe True Horror of the Ken and Barbie Killersâ by Frankie Stein for FilmDaily.co: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5ddyr25y
âThe Con Woman Madame Rachelâ by Geri Walton: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/f5jnwjwz
âNew Englandâs Dark Dayâ by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2OEuVTl
âDead Villageâ by Dreyk: http://bit.ly/33lz1Eg
âThe Real Life Dexterâ by Kara Goldfarb: http://bit.ly/2IUuQaP
âDanger Lurking In The Woodsâ by Ellen Lloyd: (link no longer available)
âJFK And UFOsâ from Paranormality Magazine
==========
(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
==========
"I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." â John 12:46
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WeirdDarknessŸ, 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 bodiesâbut 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, itâs best to stay away. (What is a Pukwudgie?) *** What began as a practical joke soon became one of the greatest hoaxes in American history â itâs the true story of the Cardiff Giant. (The Petrified Man) *** Jody smiled at the children playing in her backyard. She didnât know them, they were probably the neighborsâ kids. At least thatâs 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 donât 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 â releasing him was the worst thing that could ever have been done. (Poet of Death)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = âThe Dragonâ 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: âHaunted Places, The National Directoryâ by Dennis William Hauck: https://amzn.to/4iDKvJN
The short fiction story âThe Dragonâ written by Ray Bradbury: http://bit.ly/2WHbtKp
âAre Dragons Real?â by L.W. Martin: http://bit.ly/2IqEX5Q
âAn Angel Saved Me From a Black Eyed Kidâ by Weirdo family member Ezra
âWhat is a Pukwudgie?â by John Freund: http://bit.ly/319JD8R
âThe Petrified Manâ by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2MvPlif
âThe Man is Backâ by E6bee: http://bit.ly/2IjyklT
âHaunted House In The Black Forestâ by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2IeVZUo
âThe Phantom Children of Gilfordâ posted at FarShores (link no longer available)
âSupernatural Feedingsâ by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/2Mquz3p
âBlack Plague Islandâ by Cheryl Adams Richkoff (link no longer available)
âAngel On Black Iceâ by Weirdo family member Ber Bella
âPoet of Deathâ 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.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January 2022 -
A mild-mannered chemistry teacher weighing a lucrative job offer against the quiet life he loves finds his decision complicated when a woman claiming to be from the Pleiades strolls into his house and refuses to leave, insisting to move in.
âA Matter of Ethicsâ by Russ Winterbotham, originally published by Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy, April 1955
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/amatterofethics
WeirdDarknessŸ 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)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe Impossible Is Trueâ (March 14, 1978)
00:46:17.985 = Jeff Regan, âLady With The Golden Hairâ (July 31, 1948) ***WD
01:15:49.025 = The Key, âGentleman Companionâ (1956)
01:40:02.178 = Lights Out, âThe Author And The Thingâ (September 28, 1943)
02:03:11.287 = Lux Radio Theater, âThe Canterville Ghostâ (June 18, 1945)
03:02:19.887 = Macabre, âHouse In The Gardenâ (December 04, 1961) ***WD
03:29:59.456 = Philip Marlowe, âBig Stepâ (February 28, 1950)
03:59:32.488 = Black Mass, âSquawâ (January 24, 1964) ***WD
04:29:14.551 = Michael Shayne, âMurder Trial of Jack Holmesâ (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 â 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)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe Wheel of Lifeâ (March 13, 1978) ***WD
00:46:42.838 = Crime And Peter Chambers, âCemetery Attackâ (April 20, 1954)
01:09:59.902 = Hall of Fantasy, âMarquis of Deathâ (June 22, 1953)
01:33:32.517 = Harry Lime, âBohemian Starâ (September 07, 1951)
01:57:55.866 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, âLittle Girl Lostâ (June 21, 1980)
02:24:28.027 = The Haunting Hour, âHands of Mr. Smithâ (May 19, 1945) ***WD
02:49:17.057 = Hermitâs Cave, âSpirit Vengeanceâ (December 08, 1946) ***WD
03:13:37.434 = Mystery Is My Hobby, âDeath of an Old Prospectorâ (1945-1950)
03:37:36.810 = Sherlock Holmes, âThe Dying Detectiveâ (February 03, 1947)
04:06:49.592 = Mystery House, âComposite Killerâ (May 05, 1946) ***WD
04:31:37.992 = Incredible But True, âDeath Noticeâ (1950-1951)
04:35:19.365 = Inner Sanctum, âVoice On Wireâ (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 â haunted playgrounds and vampires, cryptids and cursed roads, black-eyed children and shape-shifting monsters â 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.)
WeirdDarknessŸ 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 â 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 â 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 â 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, itâs just not Independence Day until I watch it â and you still canât get me to swim in the ocean. Weâll look at what made âJawsâ so successful⊠and so frightening. Weâll also look at the true story of a string of shark attacks in 1916 that inspired the novel and the film. And while 1975âs âJawsâ was inspired by a series of shark attacks but greatly fictionalized, the film âOpen Waterâ 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. Weâll 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 donât happen more often as you would expect them to, seeing as humans should be easy pickings.
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)âŠ
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 âJawsâ
00:15:01.913 = The Horror of âJawsâ ***
00:40:05.165 = The True Darkness of âOpen Waterâ ***
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:
âThe True Darkness of Open Waterâ by Erin McCann for Ranker: https://tinyurl.com/y8vaqgra
âThe Real-Life Inspiration for âJawsââ by Christopher Klein for History: https://tinyurl.com/yb5s35xc
âThe Horror of âJawsââ 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
âReal Shark Attacksâ by Charles W. Bryant for How Stuff Works: https://tinyurl.com/y9scmg9x, and Lou Boyd for Mpora: https://tinyurl.com/y9e55t4u
âWhy Sharks Attack Humansâ 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.)
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: July 03, 2020
This episode of Weird Darkness dives into the world of sharks â 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 â rebounding under the 1972 Marine Mammal Act â 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
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Weird Darkness©, 2026
Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kidsâą, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness -
You ever get that feeling like youâre being watched when youâre out in the woods? Turns out, some people know they were â 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 â unless itâs 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)âŠ
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:
âWeirdness In The Wildernessâ by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/310woY9
âUFOs, The Paranormal, and the Pentagonâ by Alejandro Rojas: http://bit.ly/2KtWpsK (more episodes with stories of the Skinwalker Ranch: http://weirddarkness.com/?s=skinwalker+ranch)
âThe Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravoâ by Josh Raibick :http://bit.ly/2WqJoaZ
âThe Moveâ 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.)
WeirdDarknessŸ 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)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe Red Scarfâ (March 07, 1978) ***WD
00:45:52.916 = The Strange Dr. Weird, âDark Wings of Deathâ (February 06, 1945) ***WD
00:57:09.764 = The Eleventh Hour, âThe Boxâ (ADU)
01:23:41.065 = Escape, âSnake Doctorâ (August 18, 1949)
01:52:53.283 = Murder By Experts, âDig Your Own Graveâ (August 15, 1949)
02:22:47.621 = Exploring Tomorrow, âStranger With Rosesâ (June 11, 1958)
02:40:30.113 = Dark Fantasy, âFuneral Arrangements Completedâ (May 15, 1942)
03:04:28.637 = Fear on 4, âThe Faceâ (February 21, 1988)
03:33:43.361 = Theater Five, âTo Be Or No To Be, Maybe!â November 19, 1964) ***WD
03:53:12.113 = Future Tense, âSaucer of Lonelinessâ (May 30, 1974) ***WD
04:22:21.894 = BBC Ghosts From The Past, âA Warden For All Saintsâ (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 â 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: Itâs considered one of the most bizarre and convincing extraterrestrial events ever reported⊠weâll look at the alien encounter in 1955âs 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. Weâll 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 wouldâve 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 fatherâs 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 â 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)âŠ
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:
âThe Hopkinsville Encounterâ by Hannah Collins for Ranker.comâs Graveyard Shift:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yp8pnfx7
âDinosaur Observed in the Congoâ by Richard Greenwell for the ISC Newsletter: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc3r3mpp
âThe Mysterious Death of Theodore Lakoffâ by Kathi Kresol for HauntedRockford.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ku5x3cat
âWho Was Mrs. Silence Dogood?â by Bipin Dimri for HistoricMysteries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p868eac
âTaking Down the World Wide Webâ by Benjamin Thomas for ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/c85j5cau
âThe California Sea Monsterâ by Malcom Smith for Malcomâs 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.)
WeirdDarknessŸ 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 TĂ©lĂ© 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 â 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 â though a Caltech spokesman offered that the witnesses might have seen a whale or a line of porpoises. -
âThe House And The Brainâ: A skeptical scientist who swears the supernatural is nonsense spends one night in a house no tenant will stay inâand 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)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe House And The Brainâ (March 06, 1978) ***WD
00:46:38.363 = Chet Chetter, âThe Fall And Rise of the Master Constipatorâ (1992)
01:16:02.363 = The Clock, âThe Other Womanâ (December 20, 1955) ***WD
01:42:32.020 = The Crime Club, âSilent Witnessesâ (March 27, 1947) ***WD
02:11:44.891 = Crime Classics, âCheckered Life and Death of Colonel James Fiskâ (June 29, 1953)
02:41:17.429 = Danger Dr. Danfield, âGhost of Murdockâs Swampâ (February 09, 1947) ***WD
03:07:17.959 = CBC Deep Night, âBonehouseâ (August 12, 2005)
03:40:27.784 = Calling All Detectives, âTaxi Protection Racketâ (April 15, 1947)
03:48:33.620 = The Devil and Mr. O, âThe House is Hauntedâ (August 16, 1952) ***WD
04:17:14.199 = Diary of Fate, âPhilip Valeâ (June 01, 1948) ***WD (LQ)
04:46:34.156 = Dimension X, âThe Roads Must Rollâ (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*
WeirdDarknessŸ 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 â 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*
WeirdDarknessŸ is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. -
âCrazy Townâ: 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)âŠ
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, âThe Assassinâ (March 03, 1978) ***WD
00:46:37.892 = Strange Adventure, âThe Wind Wagonâ (1945) ***WD
00:49:51.994 = Arch Obolerâs Plays, âCrazy Townâ (May 20, 1939) ***WD
01:17:18.050 = Barrie Craig, âMicrofilm in the Fishtankâ (October 24, 1951) ***WD
01:46:38.936 = BBC Radio 4/Radio7 GhostStory, âLifelineâ (2006) ***WD
02:15:47.965 = Night Beat, âMr. And Mrs. Carothersâ (October 26, 1951) ***WD
02:45:58.499 = Beyond The Green Door, âJohn Otis-Mr. Dunn, Disposerâ (1966) ***WD
02:49:49.627 = The Black Book, âVagabond Murderâ (March 02, 1952) ***WD
03:04:18.025 = Blackstone, âGhost That Trapped a Killerâ (October 03, 1948) ***WD (LQ)
03:16:00.352 = Box 13, âThe Better Manâ (January 02, 1949)
03:43:04.360 = Calling All Cars, âYork Gang Holdupâ (December 13, 1933) ***WD
04:11:50.697 = Casey Crime Photographer, âReunionâ (June 03, 1946) ***WD
04:35:49.460 = CBC Mystery Theater, âThe Dream Womanâ (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 - Show more
