 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the podcast and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you're already a Weirdo, please share the podcast with others. Doing so helps make it possible for me to keep creating episodes as often as I do. Coming up in this episode, I'll tell you about the sad death of John Sellers, which teaches us that if you must pass from this earthly realm, at least be considerate enough to do so in a way and at a time that is the most convenient for those around you. In October, you can find haunted house attractions on just about every street corner, with a multitude of themes, haunted asylums, ghost hospitals, zombies in Sellers, and hell houses. But in 1905, visitors to Coney Island were treated to a different kind of hell attraction all year long, not just in October. It was a boat ride that for the cost of one dime was meant to literally scare the hell out of you. What type of person raises a young girl telling everyone she is their daughter and then years later marries her? That's just part of the disturbing story of Sharon Marshall. A man wakes up one morning to find his entire family has been handcuffed and the paranormal is to blame. But first, it has happened to all of us. Something will disappear and then come back later or relocate to somewhere else before we find it again. It could be car keys or a wallet or maybe an important paper. Why does this happen? We'll begin with that story. While listening, be sure to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com you can sign up for the newsletter to win monthly prizes, find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated, watch old horror movies for free. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Here's something I'm sure we're all familiar with. An item, usually a small one, inexplicably goes missing. Sometime later it turns up in a place where it has no right to be or even more puzzling appears staring you in the face in an area which had already been thoroughly searched. Mostly we can put it down to absent-mindedness or some such rational explanation. But sometimes it's harder to explain. When we bought a second-hand car, I purchased a log book which stayed in the glove box when I wasn't writing in it. Two weeks later, that log book disappeared. I bought a replacement and that one also vanished after six weeks. I wasn't game to tempt fate a third time, but six or seven years later we collected the car from its twice-yearly service and discovered that the mechanics had left both logbooks not obviously dirty or damaged on the front seat. Obviously they had been discovered in some nook of the car, but how did they get there from the glove box? How come it happened twice and why weren't they found earlier? Just the same, I am not yet prepared to invoke a paranormal explanation. It was just one of those things. However, some other incidents are more difficult to dismiss. Take for instance the experience of Professor Michael Swords. He used to empty his pockets every night and place the objects nearly always the same and always including his watch on a space by the sink. One morning the watch wasn't there. No amount of searching and backtracking could locate it. Finally, after five days without wearing a watch, he purchased a new one and placed it with the other items that night. The next morning not only was the new watch there, but the old one had come back. Have you noticed how missing items tend to reappear just after their absence ceases to be an inconvenience? So do these things represent a genuine paranormal phenomenon? There is a website called RealityShifters about it, while The 40 in Times magazine calls it Pixelation and readers told many stories about how they used to successfully ask for the items back. I suggested elsewhere that this custom might inadvertently encourage the phenomenon. Mary Rose Barrington, a prominent member of the British Society for Psychological Research, labels it JOT for just one of those things and has even written a book about it. The case histories she provides are quite extraordinary, so I'll list a few here. This case was unusual in that it was documented by a series of correspondents. Professor BSM who was living in a house in rural Somerset, the nearest neighbor being half a mile away. The children were at school, his elderly uncle was resting in bed. His wife was asleep in the garden, well secluded from the outside world, but when she woke up there was an unopened letter on her lap, addressed to a Miss X in the west of London. When she showed it to her husband at tea time, they opened it and discovered it had been written a month earlier from the London University College Library demanding the return of a certain book. Where had it been in the interval? Well, it corresponded with the college and returned the letter. Later, the professor realized that although he had made copies of all their correspondence, he didn't have a photocopy of the original letter to Miss X, so he wrote to the library requesting a copy. The one he received was not the original but a copy of the second letter demanding the return of the book. When he brought this to the attention of the library, they searched and searched and discovered that their copy of the original letter had disappeared. This is something you might want to consider the next time a letter from or to you is lost in the mail. A small child chewed a gramophone record and tossed it into the air, where it promptly vanished. Five years later, it returned, complete with tooth marks. As the author said, this is surely too bizarre for anyone to make up with an expectation of being believed. This one is especially weird as it apparently involves a ghost. A month after she had lost her husband, ERC lost a bracelet given to her by her late husband, so that afternoon she and a friend searched for it thoroughly, including every inch of the ground between the car and the front door. Before going to bed, she addressed or prayed to her late husband out loud, asking him to find the bracelet. That evening, her daughter was out on a date. At 1 a.m., she and her boyfriend burst into the bedroom to report that they had both seen her husband looking out through the kitchen window. To cut a long story short, at six o'clock when it was barely daylight, she decided to take her dog for a walk. When she returned about nine, lo and behold, there was the bracelet just below the milk bottles. The milkman insisted he had never seen it. It hadn't been there when ERC had left at six, and certainly not when she and her friend had combed the whole area the previous afternoon. A Frank Drucker was holding a special stamp between thumb and forefinger as he crossed the floor to stick it on an envelope. While both his eyes and fingers were fixed on it, it dematerialized, and of course was never seen again. From your own experience, you probably know that keys are popular items to go wandering. This case was written down within 24 hours of its occurrence. Maurice Gross's wife lost her handbag, so they had to replace the lock on the door. Ditto the keys. Removing the old keys from the key rings was a real trial. Maurice had to use pliers to keep the spring-loaded plunger open. He then put the old lock and the spare old keys in a special box. The very next day, his wife noticed a new key on her key ring. Another one was found in the box with the old lock, and yes, they did fit the old lock. But they weren't the old keys. They were brand new. Not only that, they bore the name and telephone number of a locksmith the family had never used. Further investigations revealed that the locksmith had ceased making this sort of key at least two years before. Dr. Alan Main once picked up a pale green apple in order to eat it, only to have it slip from his fingers. He heard it strike the floor, but then it disappeared. Much later, he was finishing dinner with a retired physicist in the latter's kitchen when a wisened green apple suddenly appeared at eye level and fell softly onto his plate. This is similar to a phenomenon of things materializing out of nowhere which I'll touch on in just a moment. She also provides examples of what she calls odd jots, which defy the laws of nature as we know them. In this case, a woman entered her bathroom, locked it from the inside, and hung her dressing gown on the back of the door. When she emerged from the shower, it was missing, only to turn up at the foot of the stairs. The implication was that it must have passed through the locked door. The book is essentially two books in one. The second half is an attempt at an explanation. It takes us through a grand tour of psychic phenomena and ends up with a bizarre theory of everything which turns out to be pantheism dressed up in scientific language. It may be a vast edifice built on a slim, shaky foundation, but the exposition of paranormal phenomena is well worth the read and it appears the psychical research of a century or more ago was more rigorous than is usually given credit for. Finally, I'd like to throw into the melee another anecdote. I must emphasize that I am not proposing this as a blanket explanation for the phenomenon of jot, but it does deserve a mention. It's case number 267 of the Second Ferry Census and Concerns a Woman from Illinois. Some friends came from the city for the weekend and the lady brought with her a pattern and fabric so I could help make a dress for a party. One of the items was a long zipper and when it came time to put the zipper in, it had gone missing. She drove into a nearby town and bought another zipper and the dress was finished. A couple of days after they had gone, I was in my parlor and I looked up from what I was doing to see a wee man about 18 inches high. He had brown skin and a very odd looking face. His hair was black and tussled like the hair of a baby. His eyes reminded me of apple seeds and in his hand was the missing zipper. Hey, I called out and in that instant, he was gone and the zipper was lying stretched flat on the floor in the doorway. I saw the little fellow clearly one other time while she, her toddler daughter, was playing with him. If you want to learn more about this strange phenomenon, I have linked to the book Jot by Mary Rose Barrington in the show notes. In 1998, Tony Healy and my friend Paul Cropper descended on the small northern territory town of Humpty-Dew to investigate a poltergeist infested house. They didn't have long to wait. While Paul was talking to two of the occupants, there came a clatter, like hail on the corrugated iron roof, and as he looked upwards, a dozen gray pebbles fell to the floor from the ceiling. As it turned out, this was not to be an isolated experience for them. Trickery, they soon discovered, was out of the question. However, it was pretty easy to deduce that the pebbles came from the driveway outside, but how did they get to the ceiling? No one ever saw them move from the driveway into the house or onto the roof, or even hover below the ceiling. Paul got the impression that they had simply passed through both the roof and ceiling without leaving any holes. It's not clear from their reports whether the clatter was heard on each occasion, so did they simply materialize under the ceiling? And why, when the ground was saturated outside, did they remain dry if not warm? And this phenomenon is not limited to Humpty-Dew. Harry Price, the psychic researcher, said that he had heard of many objects falling from ceilings, but never anyone ever seeing anything go up to the ceiling. Most of you, I suppose, already know what poltergeists are supposed to be and what they do. They are either mischievous spirits or RSPK, recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, somebody's subconscious having a psychic tantrum and exhibiting powers the conscious mind could never display. We actually covered that in yesterday's episode of Weird Darkness entitled How Do I Know If My House is Haunted? I'll link to that episode in the show notes. Poltergeists are the things that go bump in the night, and in the daytime, and make a whole lot of other noises as well. They throw things around and smash them, although throw is perhaps not the correct word for the objects frequently move slowly, fall heavily or lightly or change course as if being held by an invisible hand. Although they very rarely harm people, they may slap them, pinch them or pull their hair. They also start fires. With advances in technology, they've now learned how to turn on electrical appliances even when they are disconnected and run up huge telephone bills from disconnected phones. But the most mysterious of all poltergeist phenomena are apports. Apports are objects which appear and disappear. Sometimes it happens just when the onlooker's eyes are averted. On rare occasions, they can actually be seen to materialize or dematerialize in front of the witness's eyes, sometimes on request. At other times, they are seen to move into the room but without any indication as to how they did so, for they were known to have been in some locked container. Sometimes objects appear which simply did not exist in the building in question. They must have come from elsewhere. Such phenomena are worldwide in distribution. In 1967, a 19-year-old girl called Anne-Marie of Rosenheim, Germany, became the focus of poltergeist activity at her employment at a bowling alley and in her home where one night, her bed and that of her parents were bombarded for hours on end with stones, coal, pieces of litter and tools. Came the morning, her mother replaced all the tools in their box, sat on it and announced, Now you will stay there. It must have been like waving a flag at a bull because one by one, the tools were scattered all around the room while she was still sitting on the toolbox. If that makes your mind boggle, consider what happened at Furnace Mill in Lamhurst Kent, as described in the Daily Mail of May 28, 1906. No one could approach the mill unseen and two guard dogs stood watch. Despite this, some remarkably heavy items were disturbed and one morning the horses were all found reversed in their stalls, i.e. their heads were where their tails should have been and vice versa. Supporters of the RSPK hypothesis must therefore assume that somebody's subconscious mind had gone out to the stables at night while his or her conscious mind was still with its body in the house. Not only that, but one of the horses was missing. They searched high and low for it. To be precise, they searched low and finally out of desperation went up to the haloft through a door so narrow even a man had difficulty entering. Since a partition had to be removed to get the horse out, one must logically deduce that somehow it had been moved through solid timber in the first place. What sort of power could do that and just contemplate what it would be like if science were to learn to master it? In point of fact, I have every reason to believe that advanced civilizations have learned to master it. As I stated once before, when I was going through old issues of flying saucer review from the 1970s and 1980s, I kept coming across references to aliens walking through walls and even taking their abductees with them. So fantastic were the accounts that I immediately put them out of my mind and forgot them, but they have been reported independently too often and from too many different places to be ignored. With all this in mind, let us return to Humpty Do and the adventures of Paul and Tony along with three priests, the press, a television crew and two harried families who lived there. Time prevents a complete description of all the wonders they saw, so only the ones germane to the current subject will be discussed. Like the experiences of Danny Sin, a Channel 7 cameraman who was on a ladder next to the open ceiling manhole when he heard something hit the tin roof, he was looking up at the ceiling when he suddenly saw a piece of glass materialize below the ceiling and fall to the floor. It appeared to have passed right through both the roof and the ceiling. He also witnessed a spanner strike a kitchen cupboard with considerable force when no one was around to throw it. It appeared to have come from the lounge room, but neither of the cameras covering the space which it must have traversed through recorded it. Had it simply materialized in the kitchen? Paul and Tony saw a light bulb fall onto the concrete outside the house. Although it must have been airborne for at least two meters, it didn't break. Not only that, but it was a distinct yellowish color and none of the members of the household had any idea where it had originated. Once Paul and Tony were sitting in the kitchen facing two of the tenants, Andrew and Kirsty across the table, when it had a 44 magnum cartridge landed lightly on Paul's knee. Andrew claimed that he had seen it materialize just a couple of feet above Paul's shoulder. Another time, Kirsty was reading a newspaper at the same table when Tony saw a small brass plug which normally resided in the garage fall lightly on the table between them. He'd been facing the object at the time and he had the impression it had simply appeared in mid-air about 18 inches above the table. Did you catch that? On two separate occasions, people saw objects appear out of thin air. They now went on to describe the thoroughly investigated poltergeist infestation at Mayenup, Washington from 1955 to 1957. One rainy night, 50 people, including some journalists, were at Kenanup when stones fell constantly inside and outside the Smith's house. In the living room, Rona Nicholson watched as stones simply appeared in mid-air, floated down and passed through a table to land on the floor below. In fact, many objects simply disappeared for an hour or so and then they would return. One outside witness was present when a teapot suddenly vanished. Two of the visitors included George Dixon and his son from a farm near Boyup Brook, and the poltergeist apparently followed them home. Pencils would appear and disappear. The owners would then assemble them on the kitchen table only to watch them appear and disappear right in front of their eyes. Two journalists saw stones passing right through galvanized iron roofs and other objects appeared and disappeared in front of their eyes. They nicknamed the poltergeist Uncle Bobby after a deceased relative. Once after they had gone shopping at the local bakery, the exact sum that they had just spent dropped out of nowhere onto the kitchen table. What the baker thought was not recorded. On that occasion, pebbles had also fallen inside the car. Since the manifestations appeared to focus on the 11-year-old son of the family, Harvey, George tried some experiments in front of the witnesses. Various marked items would be placed in the boy's pockets, and then his arms would be tied to his sides and covered with a secured buttoned coat. But the objects still got out and turned up all over the house. One can multiply such examples indefinitely. There was poltergeist activity in an engineering workshop in Cardiff in 1989. Things got thrown around, of course, and objects, especially carburetor floats, turned up in unusual places. But when one of the workers, Paul, asked Pete the name that they gave the poltergeist for money, some pennies and half pennies fell to the floor. They came from a collection in the office. But a jubilee crown also appeared, and it originated in the boss's home. This immediately raises issues. How did it get there? I don't suppose anybody saw it moving down the street from the house to the workshop, but the alternative is that it simply dematerialized in one spot and materialized in another. Not only that, but on another occasion, when money was asked for, three pennies dated 1912 appeared on the floor. Since no one had ever seen them before, they must have been spirited away from somebody else's collection. Banknotes also appeared on other occasions. So unless poltergeists are involved in counterfeiting currency, the legitimate owner must have been deprived, and by asking for it, the workmen were unwittingly guilty of theft by poltergeist. One is bound to wonder how far can a poltergeist go to find the apport it wants? Does it have to search for it, or does it know intuitively? Does the apports come from some other poltergeist infestation where items disappear, or are they removed from buildings otherwise unaffected? Is that sock of mine which got lost in the wash still hiding in some uninspected nook in my house? And how did it get there? Or did it turn up at some unreported poltergeist infestation in my suburb? And is it really possible to ascribe all of this to somebody's unconscious mind? I recall the story of an Indian boy who was the focus of a vast amount of poltergeist activity. Not only did an ink bottle materialize on demand next to the ceiling, where else, and fall to the floor, but coins were also seen to appear out of thin air. All of these manifestations have been fully investigated and recorded. The right-reverend Dominic Walker, co-chairman of the Christian Deliverance Study Group in the UK, was once called to a house in Serbiton when the Christmas decorations went up in flames. He discovered a highly dysfunctional family where the 9-year-old had become the focus of poltergeist activity. They tried to control it by getting her to write notes to poultie, and she received written answers while she slept. More to the point, about half a pound of sugar used to appear in the kitchen every day. It happened while he was there. Only sugar. Small objects like coins and pencils I can accept, but granular material like sugar? Where did it come from? Is Roman Catholic counterpart Dom R. Petpier had the reverse experience. A house in Hemel Hempstead had been inflicted by things vanishing. A whole spray of tulips were sitting in a bowl on a table where two ladies were having tea. Well, at least the tulips are still there, one of them joked, and when they looked back, the tulips were gone. It makes you think. When small objects like pencils come and go, it is possible that they had spent the interval in some remote corner of the building. But what about those things which never return? Did those tulips vanish into some extra-dimensional twilight zone until such time as another poltergeist wanted them? Or did they immediately turn up in the house of some bemused stranger? It happened to me as a series of volumes in which the readers of the Forty-and-Times tell of their own paranormal experiences. Volume 2 features a whole chapter on mysterious objects turning up unexpectedly. One woman told about a dozen half pennies were found around her home until she thanked them but pointed out that they were no longer legal tender. Another woman found exotic stamps and a foreign coin in places where they hadn't been before and neither she nor her flatmate collected either stamps or coins or had been in their countries of origin. But a really strange encounter was recorded on page 77 of Volume 1. Rob Kirbison described walking around Huddersfield one Sunday in 1986 when he saw an old man waiting for a bus. In fact, this was the first man he had encountered in the town. They looked at each other from a distance at about 5 meters when suddenly he saw an egg materialize about an inch in front of the man and explode into his face with such violence that his head was thrown back and he almost keeled over. No cars and no other people were present anywhere in the vicinity. Had that egg come from some poltergeist manifestation nearby? If so, had the victim just left the site of the infestation and so was known to the phenomenon? Or was he really a completely innocent and unsuspecting third party? I'm afraid I have to leave it there. My mind is starting to boggle. When Weird Darkness returns, I'll tell you about a ride at Coney Island that was meant to scare the hell out of its riders. Literally. But first, it's the story of the sad death of John Sellers, which teaches us that if you must pass from this earthly realm, at least be considerate enough to do so in a way and at a time that is the most convenient for those around you. That story is up next. I was waiting and waiting and it has finally hit the website. Built Bar now has my absolute favorite flavor available for the holiday season. Candy Cane Brownie, but they have surprised me by coming out with two varieties. The original Candy Cane Brownie Bar, which is chocolatey, chewy and truly does taste like a chocolate covered candy cane, and now they have the new Candy Cane Brownie Puff, which brings the whole holiday flavor to a marshmallow filled creation. Both bars are covered with Candy Cane Sprinkles, but because these are protein bars, not candy bars, each one is only 150 calories or less, and each has 17 grams of protein, so I could use these as a meal or as a low-calorie dessert. Or in my case, both. I have no discipline. I've ordered enough to get me through the Christmas season and beyond because it is a limited-release seasonal flavor. You can join me in the holiday taste festivities at WeirdDarkness.com slash Built. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built, and use the promo code WeirdDarkness all one word and you'll get 10% off everything in your cart. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built promo code WeirdDarkness. It's beginning to taste a lot like Christmas. One Sunday, in the early years of the reign of Queen Victoria, two men were making their way along one of the less salubrious streets near Smithfield. Their identities are a complete mystery, which is a shame, as what they discovered there was remarkable and what they did was little short of heroic. Classic examples of overlooked Londoners they may be, but they are certainly not forgotten. For what these two unidentified individuals stumbled upon in this sad corner of the capital was the body of a man, and body is really the right word for although there was still life in the man, there was not much of it, and every breath he took might well have been his last. The two companions were moved by pity, but they were not entirely surprised for this was West Street in Smithfield and it lay only a stone's throw from the notorious Field Lane. George W. M. Reynolds, a contemporary writer with an eye for the grotesque, gave a horrified description of West Street. To him, it was a nightmare landscape in which the knackers' yards, the suppliers of meat for the vast population of urban dogs and cats, carried on their grisly business with grim efficiency. The bones of the slaughtered horses hung in the windows to bleach, over everything sat a dark pall of offensive smells. Field Lane enjoyed an equally unsavory reputation. However, where West Street was the graveyard of old and diseased horses, Field Lane was a hub of human activity, much of which was not exactly in line with the law. Standing along the pavements were the cheap lodging houses where indigent Londoners lived in sorted and crowded rooms. Many of the rooms were occupied by the receivers of stolen goods, who slept during the day and worked at night. Beneath these, at street level, were eateries and coffee shops. Other houses were occupied by prostitutes. The lodging houses of Field Lane were the subject of a dramatic expose by the social reformer Charles Cochrane. He went there in person one Saturday evening in the autumn of 1847, accompanied by two policemen, and that same night he wrote an account of what he had seen and heard, and above all, what he had smelled. In one house he had found large families living in small rooms where little tokens of normality such as pictures and ornaments sat in unhappy juxtaposition on the dilapidated walls. In another, the lodgers paid four pence a night, with six consecutive payments earning them a free Sunday night to sleep in rooms crammed with cheap bedsteads. They moved through the shadows with the help of rush lights jammed into oyster shells. As Cochrane noted, not without irony, lodgers and other establishments were paying only three pence a night, but they were sleeping two in a bed. But his most damning comments were reserved for the sellers of these establishments, which in all cases were repositories of every imaginable sort of filth. They served as lavatories for the lodgers and mortuaries for the neighborhood cats, and the reek had easy access to the floors above through gaping holes in the rotten floor boards. Cochrane was very distressed by the human degradation that he had uncovered in the lodging houses. He had come face to face with the cynical economics of social inequality, and he confessed in print that until he visited Field Lane, he had not imagined that the wealthy corporation of London would have permitted such horrid dwellings to continue in existence after they had expended so many hundreds of thousands of pounds in improving and embellishing the localities frequented by the richer classes of citizens. A century later, in the road to Wagon Pier, George Orwell would be making similar observations in his account of conditions in the north of England. On another Saturday night, a year or so after Cochrane's visit, a man came to a lodging house at No. 7 Field Lane. His name was John Sellers. He was a vagrant, as were all the lodgers at No. 7, and he was 30 years old. He handed over a few pennies for a bed. When he stepped inside, he was accosted by one of the servants of the establishment. This servant was called Robert Barton. Looking Sellers up and down, Barton asked if he was well. I am not, Sellers replied. I am sick. I can see that you're sick, said Barton. The servant led the way into the dark interior with Sellers shuffling along behind him. During the night, Sellers drifted in and out of consciousness. He slept fitfully, only dimly aware of his surroundings. He heard voices but he did not know who they belonged to. He felt himself moving but he did not know why. When he next opened his eyes, he had a fleeting impression of the dark outside world. Time meant nothing. It might have been a second or several hours that had passed when he saw two men stooping over him, peering into his face. They hauled Sellers to his feet, putting their shoulders under his arms. He felt himself being helped along the pavement and even as his vision was growing dimmer, he heard as if from some far off place the thumping of fists on a heavy wooden door. The door creaked open and Sellers stumbled inside. Once more, he was lying in the dark, but it was the dark inside the mind of a dying man. He never woke again. Such were the last hours of John Sellers. His was a sad and lonely death. And it was a remarkable death, for on the Saturday he had been asleep in the lodging house in Field Lane, and yet on the Sunday he found himself slumped on a pavement in West Street and on the Monday he died in the workhouse of the West London Union, which was only yards away. Two days later, an inquest was held at the Red Lion Public House in Farringdon Street. The coroner, William Payne, saw it as a case of death from want and destitution. The surgeon attached to the workhouse identified typhoid fever as the direct cause of death brought on by the low condition of the dead man. When Robert Barton, the servant at the Field Lane Lodging House, gave his evidence, the coroner was aghast. Barton recalled the events of Saturday night when John Sellers had come looking for a bed. He noticed that Sellers was sick, but not mortally, or so he thought at the time. However, when he went to rouse him the following morning, he found the wretched fellow in a very bad state, unconscious and rapidly declining, and it was then that he made a quite unbelievable decision. We will never know what sort of man Barton really was. Possibly he was callous by nature, without sympathy for his fellow creatures. Possibly the harsh realities of 19th century poverty had taught him to dispense compassion carefully. But the facts are these. With the help of some of the other servants, Barton hoisted Sellers out of his bed. Between them, they managed to drag the dying man out into the street. They staggered off in the direction of West Street, where they left him in a crumpled heap, like a pile of discarded rags. William Payne was shocked. Although his verdict was confined to the cause of death, low fever induced by extreme destitution, he felt compelled to comment on the behavior of Barton. Never, he said, had he heard of such cruelty. John Sellers had been carried from his sick bed to die alone in the streets. Barton protested, better he declared for the dying man to die outside. After all, number 7 was a lodging house, and had Sellers died inside, it would have been, well, inconvenient. Yes, he said, it would have been inconvenient for the other lodgers, had Sellers died inside. In 1905, visitors to Coney Island experienced Dreamland Amusement Park's latest and most unusual attraction. After paying ten cents to ticket sellers in red robes and horned hats, they queued up in front of an open-faced building topped with a huge red-winged figure of Satan. Under his glowering stare, they watched as riders ahead of them crowded into open boats and descended along an ever-narrowing 50-foot whirlpool swirling toward the center until, astonishingly, the boats disappeared, seemingly swallowed up by the waters of the gate. When it was their turn, the riders eagerly surrendered their tickets and clambered into the boats, ready to find out for themselves what lay beneath. The ride was Hellgate, and it was a star of Dreamland's second season. One of several attractions and improvements Dreamland founder William Reynolds had spent $500,000 on in an effort to one-up nearby Luna Park. Hellgate sat catty-corner from creation, a ride that took visitors through the events in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. Dreamland bought that ride, which had debuted at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, all the way to New York at a cost of $250,000. It might seem a little strange to have religious-themed rides in an amusement park, but according to Alex DeLair and Jonathan Anderson, who led walking tours around New York as the history couple, there was a very good reason Dreamland chose them. Amusement parks like Dreamland made these religious rides ones that portray the Judeo-Christian values because New York City would have shut the show down otherwise. In the early 20th century, New York City had very strict laws that only shows of a religious or educational nature could take place on a Sunday. Because Sunday was the only day that people had off, it was the busiest day of the week down in Coney Island. If the owners of the park wanted to turn a profit, they had to have attractions that the city would allow, hence all the shows of a religious nature. While Luna Park tried an attraction that simulated hell, called Night and Morning, riders entered a coffin-shaped room which was lowered into the earth, at which point one side of the coffin fell away as they took a tour of the afterlife, they tended to lean more toward attractions of an educational nature, or shows that allowed adults to feel like kids again. Dreamland, however, went over the top with these shows about heaven and hell, according to Delaire and Anderson. That way, their patrons could start their day in the Garden of Eden, see the apocalypse and end in hell. They turned morality plays into a cash cow. Hellgate was owned by a showman named William Ellis, and it stood where a submarine boat ride from the park's first season had been. It wasn't ready for Dreamland's opening day, though, on May 28, 1905. The Sun noted that the delay in the opening of Hellgate is due to the elaborate machinery required, with the New York Tribune explaining that there is so much mechanism in connection with the operation that it has taken longer than anticipated to assemble the different parts. Once it did open, about a month later, Hellgate quickly became a must-see attraction. On June 27, 1905, Brooklyn's The Standard Union wrote that of the two water rides at Dreamland, it is a question of which is the most popular, the Canals of Venice or Hellgate. The latter is the latest and newest and is drawing crowds. The press was effusive in its praise. The Harrisburg Telegraph called the ride startling and unique, while The New York Times noted that it was rivaling all other waterside attractions. Since the opening, the attraction has caught on amazingly and crowds are the rule in the vicinity. Once they disappeared through the gate, riders took a dash down an incline into a fountain of spray warranted not to wet the adventurer, according to The Sun. A channel bore the boats through dark, plaster of Paris caverns replete with stalactites and stalagmites. Theodore Waters explained how Hellgate worked in the July 8, 1905 issue of Harper's Weekly. The pool is merely a spiral trough made of wood and iron through which the water carries the boats to the center, where the slope suddenly dips and allows them to slip beneath the outer rim of the spiral into a subterranean channel which follows a torturous course under the building. There are scenes intended to corroborate the popular conception of the earth's interior. By the time the spectators above are beginning to wonder what has happened to the boat, Waters wrote, the passengers have had a survey of subterranean horrors and are shot up through one side of the pool to the surface. For its second season, Hellgate got several upgrades. Not only was the ride made longer, but it got a fleet of new boats, new hydraulic effects and increased capacity. Even the whirlpool was faster. This was part of the strategy of amusement parks at the time. There was a philosophy that many of the Coney Island showmen followed. If their attraction didn't pay for itself in the first year, get rid of it. They were constantly updating rides in order to keep things fresh and keep tickets coming in. Because Hellgate stuck around for so many seasons, it's safe to assume it was a money maker. Its popularity even served as inspiration for another ride that debuted in 1906 called The End of the World. When the Italian explorer Duke of Abruzzi visited the park in 1907, he paused to catch his breath at Hellgate and then lost it again shooting down the whirlpool according to the New York Tribune. That same year, Maxim Gorky wrote, what seems to be the only description of what actually happened in the tunnels below the whirlpool for the Independent. Riders saw Satan rubbing his hands and glee. They watched as demons dragged people, a girl admiring herself in a new hat, a man drinking whiskey, a girl who steals some money from a purse, into a trough, triggering grey steam and fluttering tongues of red paper fire. Before the end of the ride, they got a speech about good behavior, which Gorky said was delivered by a man who talked monotonously, warily and did not seem to believe in what he was told to preach. Then an angel appeared, sending Satan diving like a fish into the pit after the sinners. A crash is heard, the paper stones are hurled down and the devils run off cheerfully to rest from their labor, Gorky wrote. For years, Hellgate terrified and delighted visitors to Dreamland. And then, in 1911, the ride that evoked Hell literally went up in flames. Workers were feverishly readying the ride for the decoration day, now Memorial Day, start of the season, when at 1.30 am, the lights in the tunnels of the ride began exploding, plunging the area into darkness. Some tar, which according to the Times Union, was used to create a miniature Hades attracting the attention of the patrons as they ride by in the boats, caught fire and the blaze soon raged out of control. Water pressure at fire hydrants in the park was too low for firefighters to stop the fire, which burned nearly everything in its wake, from West Fifth Street to West Tenth Street and from Surf Avenue to the ocean. According to DeLaren Anderson, when the park caught fire, it was a spectacle in itself. Everyone in Coney stopped what they were doing to watch Dreamland burn down to the ground. No human lives were lost in the inferno, but the Hellgate fire destroyed virtually all of Dreamland, along with 50 other businesses, resulting in approximately $5 million in damage, the equivalent of about $135 million today. The park was not rebuilt. Neither were the smaller businesses engulfed in the blaze. Luna Park and Steeplechase, Dreamland's two major amusement park competitors, escaped unscathed, but things changed in Coney Island after the Inferno. There was a shift in Coney Island's amusement culture. Large-scale productions, like Creation, started to disappear, and more and more dance halls, bars, saloons, movie theaters and other cheap amusements moved in. Coney started to cater to the lower-income neighborhoods, like the Lower East Side, and appeal to a new generation of New York City's youth. Kids started to come, date, make out, and then go back to Manhattan at the end of the day. In the end, Hellgate lived up to its name, transforming what was one of Coney Island's most popular tourist attractions into a smoldering pile of ash and rubble, and helping to change the very fabric of Coney Island itself. Coming up, what type of person raises a young girl telling everyone she is their daughter, and then years later, marries her? That's just part of the disturbing story of Sharon Marshall. Up next, on Weird Darkness. Shock, starring Vincent Price. In the film, a psychologically distraught woman is committed to a private sanitarium. Only to find out that the man who committed her was the man she witnessed commit a murder. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch online with everybody, so grab your popcorn, candy, and soda, and jump into the fun, and even get involved in the live chat as we watch the movie This Christmas Eve Eve. It's Shock, starring Vincent Price, presented by Count Drag and Countess Carita, Saturday, December 23rd, starting at 10pm Eastern, 9pm Central, 8pm Mountain, 7pm Pacific. See a few clips from the film, and invite your friends to watch along with you on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com, and we'll see you on Saturday, December 23rd, for the Weirdo Watch Party. This story is, quite frankly, pretty depressing. It reads like the most bizarre movie you've ever seen, but sadly, it actually happened. The story of Sharon Marshall has many twists and turns, with many dates and aliases. You might need to listen to this episode twice just to take in all the facts. The two main characters in the story first came to be as Trenton Davis and his young daughter, Suzanne. They're first known to be seen together around 1974 in Washington State, and they soon moved to Oklahoma City. Suzanne was a beautiful five-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl, and Trenton was a 31-year-old house painter. The duo never seemed to stay in one place for very long, and were known to have lived in several states. Their names changed regularly too, and the reason why would eventually be evident. The first several years of the father and daughter's life together seemed uneventful, at least from what we know. They lived in numerous states and would take their different names it was discovered from deceased names off headstones. In the mid-1980s, the two were living in Atlanta. They were then going by Warren and Sharon Marshall. Sharon was then in high school, and Clarence was a very controlling and unstable person that everyone who met him seemed to dislike. Sharon herself was by all accounts an amazing and incredibly bright person. Several people talked about what a kind and wonderful friend she was who would always encourage them to try their best. Sharon excelled at her school work as well. She was ranked number 26 out of 350 in her high school class, as well as being Lieutenant Colonel in the ROTC, and was awarded a full scholarship to Georgia Tech to study aerospace engineering. Her dream was to someday work for NASA. Sharon was over the moon at achieving some of her dreams, but then quickly things began to fall apart. It was pretty evident as Sharon was in her later years of high school that she was pregnant. She denied it, when asked, and then as her stomach grew she did finally admit it to a close friend. The father was a guy that she'd been dating thought to be Curtis Flourney. Sharon and her boyfriend had even attempted to run away to Alabama, but Warren quickly found them and took Sharon back with him. Warren and Sharon abruptly left town around 1986 and moved to Arizona. Sharon had the baby there, a boy, who was said to have been adopted out by two wealthy Texas doctors that her father had found. Once again on the move, the two found themselves in Tampa, Florida. Their new names were Clarence Hughes and Tanya Dawn Hughes. Clarence always told people he was a painter, but often complained of having a bad back and being unable to work. He then made his daughter Tanya work as a stripper at a club called Mons Venus to support them. As always, Tanya was very highly thought of at her workplace, both by the customers as well as the coworkers, as being a very kind and friendly person willing to talk to anyone. In 1988, Tanya Tadlock was once again pregnant. The father was a man she was dating when they lived in Arizona, whom she did not tell about the pregnancy. She had decided to keep this baby and so Michael Gregory Marshall was born on April 21, 1988. By all accounts, Tanya was a very devoted and loving mother and Michael was her whole world. Clarence had an affection for Michael as well, but couldn't deal with his crying or any kind of outbursts from him, so Tanya would always quickly deal with them so as not to anger her father. One of the fellow strippers at Mons Venus, whom Tanya had befriended, was a young woman named Cheryl Camesso. She spent some time with Clarence and Tanya at their trailer and her and Clarence even dated very briefly. They were on a boat one day, where a fight escalated and Warren assaulted Camesso, but she was able to get away. Cheryl then retaliated for the assault by calling social services to tell them that Tanya was collecting welfare but made more than $1,500 a week being a nude dancer. Social services suspended their benefits pending an investigation. Clarence was enraged. About a week later, Cheryl left her dad's house to stay with a friend. She promised to call him in the morning, but never did. Her corvette was found abandoned at the airport soon after and Cheryl Camesso was reported as a missing person. With it a few weeks of Camesso's disappearance, Clarence and Tanya were once again on the move. This time they moved to New Orleans. While they were there, their trailer in Florida burned to the ground and was thought to be arson. The couple were now going by Clarence Hughes and Tanya Tadlock. Another interesting thing happened when they got to New Orleans, the father and daughter got married to each other. The couple who had for years posed as father and daughter were now husband and wife. Clarence would say that he did it to give Tanya's son Michael a name, but as information would come out later, there was a more sinister reason that was much more probable. Somewhere around this time, Tanya gave birth to another child. This one was a girl, eventually named Megan, who was adopted by a childless couple in New Orleans. Not much is known of the father of this child, but we'll talk about her daughter a little more as the story unfolds. The couple next moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tanya was again working at a strip club, this time passions, to support her now husband and son. As before, Tanya made friends wherever she went and everyone around her hated her husband. He wasn't allowed in this club and had been banned. There was an angry exchange of words one night between a fellow stripper and Clarence. She had shouted something about how his wife should leave him and Clarence's response was, if she ever left me, I'd kill the bitch. Tanya was dating someone named Kevin Brown while working at the club. She'd always wanted to leave Clarence but had such a fear of him and even more so fear of what he would do to Michael if she ever left him, so she continued to stay. It did appear though that with the support of her new boyfriend Kevin, Tanya was actually planning to leave her husband this time. However, she wouldn't live to see the plan through. The details around Tanya's accident seemed pretty vague. It appears that Tanya, Clarence and Michael were living in a motel. Tanya had walked to the store that night to get some groceries and was later found unconscious on a busy Oklahoma City highway sometime after midnight on April 25, 1990. It had appeared that she had been hit by a car. Clarence claims he was asleep in the motel when the accident happened. She was rushed to the hospital and never fully regained consciousness. Tanya's friends from the strip club wanted to go see her at the hospital but Clarence tried to ban all visitors. They were able to get a few quick visits in, however, when her husband was distracted. Tanya seemed to be getting better and it was noted that her husband was in the hospital room alone with her the night before. By the next morning, her vitals were failing and she died of her injuries that day, five days after her accident. In addition to many old bruises and various injuries, the autopsy also showed Tanya had had several prior pregnancies as well as breast and butt implants. The ultimate cause of death was a severe closed head injury. The doctor had his doubts as to whether her injuries were sustained by a car and classified her death as a homicide. Clarence didn't seem to show any emotion at the death of his young wife. He wanted her cremated and to take care of things quickly. The owner of the passions club as well as her co-workers insisted on giving her a funeral and a proper headstone at their expense. There was so much mystery about their young friend who was now dead but they did their best to honor her life and give her a nice service. Clarence did show up for the service with bodyguards and went on a tangent being verbally abusive to many of the people there, ranting and raving and seemed annoyed that his wife's funeral was even happening. Clarence claimed he needed some time to grieve his wife and asked social services to take Michael for a week while he took care of some things. Before that he had also reportedly called the adopted parents of Tanya's daughter Megan to see if they wanted Michael and they seemed interested but he never followed up. Surprisingly Clarence also contacted Michael's biological father Greg Higgs who didn't even know that he had a son to see if he wanted Michael. Shocked at hearing of Tanya's death and that he had a son he did agree to take him. Clarence said he'd be in touch soon but never contacted him again. Social services did take Michael in and one of the first things Clarence did was to call the life insurance companies to try to claim the $80,000 in life insurance policies that he'd taken out on his wife months prior. The life insurance company asked him for his social security number for verification and the first few he gave them didn't match up. He did finally give them the correct one but Clarence knew his secret was now out. The number he gave them came back to federal fugitive Franklin Delano Floyd. Floyd's backstory was trouble from the very beginning. In 1962 at age 19 he was convicted of abducting and sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years. He was placed in a state mental hospital where he escaped by stealing a car. The next day he robbed a bank. He was recaptured and released in 1972 and sent to a halfway house. While there he attempted to abduct a woman at a gas station. He was arrested and made bail and when he didn't show up for court in 1973 a federal warrant was issued for his arrest. Franklin Delano Floyd, now knowing his real identity was out, fled Oklahoma but was picked up a few months later in Georgia where he was ordered to serve out his sentence. When Floyd asked social services to care for Michael temporarily after his mother's death they were absolutely appalled at the young boy's condition. He was nonverbal and would scream and moan and beat his head on the ground repeatedly. DHS had even wanted to charge Floyd for child abuse. He was given to the loving care of long time foster parents Ernest and Merle Bean. They were overwhelmed at first and even considered declining but they realized how much Michael needed them and agreed to keep him. Franklin Delano Floyd wouldn't make it easy though. He had always insisted that he was Michael's father and with how private him and Michael's mother's life was everyone just believed him. Michael was even ordered to go to prison regularly to visit Floyd, even though by Michael's actions he clearly did not want to go. Floyd vowed as soon as he got out of prison he would be going back to get his son and turn his life around. In all of the legal wrangling of custody of Michael a DNA test was finally ordered. Floyd balked at this and it was soon evident why. Tests confirmed he was not Michael's biological father. All mandatory visitation was halted. Ernest and Merle Bean had lovingly taken care of Michael for over four years at this point and eventually he had started thriving with them. They were now interested in adopting him and making him a permanent part of their family. Floyd also now knew that when he was released from prison and being determined that he wasn't the father he would never get custody of Michael like he'd expected. So a plan was put into action. In early September 1994 Franklin Delano Floyd was out of prison. Ernest and Merle Bean were worried because they knew that Floyd wanted Michael back and was capable of doing anything. Merle even thought she saw Floyd drive by their house in early September and called the police. Floyd got up on September 12th 1994 with a plan to finally get Michael back. He showed up at Indian Meridian Elementary School in Oklahoma and talked to the principal James Davis. He showed the principal a gun and said he wanted him and his son Michael to come with him. Everything was handled calmly and no one at the school was aware of what was going on. The three fled in the principal's truck and stopped at an area only a few miles from the school which also happened to be very close to Ernest and Merle Bean's house. He tied the principal to a tree and Floyd said he would call someone in two hours to free him. Then he took Michael and left in James Davis's truck. It would be the last time anyone would ever see Michael Hughes. Word got out quickly that Floyd had abducted Michael and a frantic search was underway. The principal was able to summon help quickly and was freed from the tree and escaped unharmed. Two months later Floyd was found and arrested in Louisville, Kentucky. But Michael wasn't with him. Floyd had told differing stories but usually said a friend that he trusted was raising Michael. Floyd's sister said that he told her that he'd killed Michael at a motel, but at this point nothing was really believed or could be verified. Michael Hughes was a missing child. Still, Floyd was convicted of the kidnapping and was sentenced to 52 years in prison. Around the time of Floyd's kidnapping trial it was found out that Floyd had abandoned the principal's truck the next month in Texas. Then someone from Kansas purchased the truck at an auction. As the mechanic was working on the undercarriage of the truck they found a Manila envelope taped up near the gas tank. What was inside was not to be believed. The mechanic opened the envelope and inside were about 97 photos. They were sickening. Most of them were of an underaged female in pornographic poses. Sadly the photos of the young girl were none other than Floyd's daughter slash wife Tanya Tadlock. There were some other pictures in the envelope that were horrific. Pictures of a woman who was blindfolded and bound. The victim was being tortured and had been burned, beaten and was near death. She was also posed provocatively. After some investigation it was soon revealed the unknown victim in the photos was Cheryl Cameso. Around the same time the envelope full of pictures was found unidentified remains were found alongside Interstate 275 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Between unidentified remains being located and the unidentified person in the photos it was soon determined the skeletal remains found belonged to Cheryl Cameso. Aside from the torture depicted in the photos she was ultimately killed by two gunshots to the head. Franklin Floyd was charged and convicted of the first degree murder of Cheryl Cameso and sentenced to die by lethal injection. It isn't clear what part, if any, that Floyd made Tanya play in the murder and disposal of Cameso. There is a theory why the marriage between Floyd and Tanya took place though. Floyd knew that a wife could not be forced to testify against her husband and they were married just weeks after the murder. Now that Franklin Delano Floyd had been exposed for all of his horrible crimes and is locked away for life there were still a few important questions that still needed to be answered. The FBI would work tirelessly to try and find out where Michael Hughes was and who Sharon Marshall slash Tanya Hughes and her various other aliases truly was. Several females have been researched over the years and many DNA tests were done but none proved to be a match. Franklin Floyd had been interviewed many times and he was never willing to talk openly and what little he did say couldn't be believed. Then, in 2014, two FBI agents decided to take another crack at Franklin Delano Floyd and question him about two matters only he had the answers to. They did a lot of prep work ahead of time and planned on staying in the area a few days and spoke to Floyd each day. It was very stressful as Floyd would spend most of his time ranting and calling them every name in the book and being combative. The FBI agents were very patient and to their amazement Floyd eventually in bits and pieces finally got around to telling them the real story of how he came to have Sharon slash Tanya. It began in 1974 when Floyd, then going by Brandon Cleo Williams, met a woman at a truck stop diner named Sandra Shipman. She was a prostitute and said she had lost her three daughters to the state. Floyd told her he'd marry her and help her get her kids back. So they married in 1974 after meeting only two weeks prior. Soon, all five of them shortly traveled to Pennsylvania to stay with family. The little girls were Suzanne, Allison and Amy and ages were five, three and two. The family moved around frequently and while living in Texas, Sandra Shipman was arrested for a bounced check. She had to spend a few weeks in jail and when she got out her husband and three daughters were gone. She would soon find Allison and Amy in a nearby Baptist children's home but her husband and her oldest daughter Suzanne Savakas were gone. The FBI was completely shocked at getting Floyd to finally reveal a decades-old question. They were able to verify the marriage certificate and even tracked down Suzanne's birth parents for a DNA test which did confirm she was their biological child. The huge question of course was, why wasn't Suzanne Savakas ever reported missing? When the FBI talked to Suzanne's birth mother, they were not impressed. She would claim she really didn't think she was kidnapped since her stepfather took her but seemed to have no interest or even emotion about her daughter even though she just found out that she was deceased. Even at the time of Suzanne's disappearance, Sandra Shipman's father and brother Jim wanted to find her but Sandra wasn't willing to help so their efforts were not successful. Talking to Suzanne's birth father was a very different story. Clifford Savakas was briefly married to Sandra, he went into the military and was able to visit Suzanne a few times when she was young but ultimately the marriage didn't work out. He was asked to sign over parental rights when she remarried and he thought that would be the best thing for his daughter so he agreed. After hearing what actually happened to his daughter and the life she led and what ultimately happened to her, he was absolutely devastated. The FBI agents had one more task in their interview. They needed to know where Michael was. At one point growing tired from his usual ranting and raving, Floyd did appear to finally tell the story of what happened to Michael. He said that after he had left the principal tied to the tree, Michael wouldn't stop screaming. He wanted Mama Bean, that is Merle Bean and as in the past Floyd couldn't take Michael's screaming. It was clear to him that Michael no longer had an attachment to him and the happy ending he envisioned was not going to happen. He said he shot Michael in the back of the head two times to make it real quick. He drew the agents a map to where he said he laid Michael down. They visited the area with other agents to do a thorough search of the area exactly as Floyd had described, but it being 20 years later no trace of Michael was found. It was noted that there were wild hogs known to be in that area and if that was the case back then not even bones would have been left behind. With Sharon slash Tanya finally having her true identity revealed it was decided to give her a new headstone, this time with her family members and other important people in attendance. It was a very touching service with many people showing up including Michael's biological father, Erneston Merle Bean, Clifford Savakas, Suzanne's daughter Megan, Matt Burbeck, friends, co-workers and law enforcement officials who worked so hard on the case. Suzanne's headstone has now been replaced with a new one with her actual name. A particularly touching moment at the service happened when Suzanne's father Clifford got to meet his granddaughter Megan, one of the babies Suzanne had given up for adoption for the first time. It was also revealed at the service that Megan was pregnant and would soon be having a son. To honor the brother she never got to meet, she would name him Michael. In the end, Franklin Delano Floyd will be locked up in a cage for the rest of his miserable life. Suzanne Savakas was only on this earth for 20 years yet she left a lasting impression on those around her. She had to endure in her life horrors we can't even begin to imagine, but still managed to be a loving soul who put out kindness in this world. Considering the monster who raised her as Sharon Marshall now discovered to be Suzanne Savakas, she was definitely a light in the darkness. When Weird Darkness returns, law enforcement uses handcuffs, as does some who are in the bondage. But ghosts? One man says yes, a ghost handcuffed his entire family. That story is up next. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, dark thoughts, or addiction, please visit the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered numerous resources to find hope and solutions for those suffering from thoughts of suicide or self-harm. There's the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, as well as the Crisis Text Line. Both have trained counselors at all hours to help those in need, and the page even includes text numbers for those in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. Those struggling with depression can get help through the Seven Cups website and app, and there's information for anyone to read more about what depression truly is and how to identify it through our friends at ifred.org. There are resources for those who battle addictions, be it drugs, alcohol, or self-destructive behavior, along with help for those related to addicts. The page has links to help you find a therapist or counselor, to find help for those who have a family member with Alzheimer's or dementia, help for those in a crisis pregnancy, and more. These resources are always there when you or someone you love needs them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. Things would disappear from the house, only to resurface days later. Last month we were all shocked when we woke up to find my two kids handcuffed. When we tried to inquire from them, they couldn't explain what had happened. Ghosts? Using handcuffs? That might make a kinky twist in a romantic poltergeist comedy. Fifty Shades of Ghost? But it's an actual claim by a terrified father in Kenya who's trying to convince the authorities that it's spirits, not burglars, who are stealing from his house, setting fires, tying up his kids and tormenting his two wives. Well, okay, that may be where whatever is causing the trouble got their handcuffs. Anyway, the Nairobi and online news site reports that Cosmos Akumba of the Magay village in Kasumu County in western Kenya claims his family has been bothered by ghosts since 2014 when something started throwing stones at his house. The common way poltergeists are believed to torment the living with their talent for levitation objects, something we discussed earlier in this episode. One of his daughters was hit by the stones and needed medical treatment. Sure, it could have been neighborhood pranksters, perhaps one with a crush on one of the girls, or two, but Akumba says that doesn't explain the fires. Mysterious fires broke out in my two houses. What is strange is that it all happened at the same time. It is also shocking that the fires only burnt the mattresses and blankets. Nobody had lit the fires. Okay, spontaneously combusting mattresses could be a ghost or a consequence of trying to please two wives in two houses, but Akumba says other strange things are happening as well. My phone just disappeared, but at around 11pm my daughter received a call from my number. We later received a text message stating, you are sending people money but you are not sending me anything. I have withdrawn the money I have found in your phone and I am sending your daughter the remaining SH-50. Well, that sounds more like a stolen phone scam than a ghost unless ghosts have moved from ectoplasm to extortion. While these incidents are certainly not harmless, they are tame compared to the last event Akumba blamed on ghosts. During the same time, one of my daughters who was set to join school woke up with a rope tied around her hands with some oil dripping from it. At this point, most people would call the police, but this is Kenya where belief in ghosts, witchcraft and the paranormal are so strong that emergency rooms keep exorcists and shamans on speed dial, so that is where Akumba took them first. When I took my children to the hospital, I was advised to seek divine intervention or seek the services of a witch doctor. I am a prayerful person and I have been praying over it. Yes, one would think that he should be praying for a watchdog or a strong set of locks, but this is Kenya. Matilda Mbuenye, who interviewed the family, said Akumba was obviously stressed and that convinced reporters of his conviction that he and his family were being pelted, pyroed and placed in handcuffs by poltergeists. This doesn't appear to be a village with security cameras everywhere or anywhere, so there's no pictures of this troublemaking spirit or burglars. Akumba says he's notified the local chief, but if this has been going on since 2014, he and others in the village probably know about it. Is Akumba just the crazy neighbor with two wives who someone is trying to force to move out? Or is he really being haunted? Seeing is believing when it comes to most things, but when it comes to ghosts in Kenya, it's more like believing is seeing. Thanks for listening. If you liked the podcast and you haven't already subscribed, be sure to do so now so you don't miss future episodes. And also please, tell someone else about the podcast. Recommend weird darkness to your friends, family and co-workers who love the paranormal, horror stories or true crime like you do. Every time you share the podcast with someone new, it helps spread the word about the show and a growing audience makes it possible for me to keep creating episodes as often as I do. Plus, telling others about weird darkness also helps get the word out about resources that are available for those who suffer from depression, so please, share the podcast with someone today. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story on the website and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. A case of criminal neglect is from London Overlooked. The disturbing story of Sharon Marshall is by Crystal Dawn for Lost and Found blogs. Just one of those things is from Malcolm Smith for Malcolm's Anomalies. Coney Island's Hell Gate was written by Aaron McCarthy for mental flaws, and Ghost Handcuff's family is from Paul Sebern for Mysterious Universe. Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark, and now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Isaiah 1 verse 17. Learn to do right, seek justice, encourage the oppressed. And a final thought, be sure to taste your words before you spit them out. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.