 Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. This is a Fireside Frights episode where I strip away all of the sound effects, music, and fancy production. And it's just you, me, and this campfire, along with stories sent in by you, my Weirdo family. If you want to send in a story for a future Fireside Frights, just visit WeirdDarkness.com and click on Tell Your Story. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, Twitter contests, to connect with me on social media. 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. Before we begin, I would like to say that we don't really have all that many to share this month for some strange reason. I'm guessing you were all pretty busy during the holidays. That's okay. I forgive you if you forgive me for bringing you a short Fireside Frights. But if you'd like to send your stories, I could definitely use them for next month. What you're about to hear are the only stories that I have not already used. We'll begin with Alastor. Hello. I have a story about a very strange day in the summer, I think. So it all started when I woke up one day. Now, I painted my nails the night before and put the nail polish bottles back where they came from. I think it's also important that I tell you about this weird earth light that goes from blue to white and then off, but the color changes if you tap it. I have a weird story about this earth light, but that's another story for another time. So I went to bed and the next morning my earth light was in the middle of my desk and turned on. The nail polish bottles were surrounding the light. I was obviously a little spooked because I know I put the nail polish back and I turned off that light. So a little while later I go to brush my hair and I point at the hair tie just so I know where it is and go get my brush from the other room. So I get the brush, I go back and guess what's missing? The hair tie and I go look for it and it's exactly where I put my brush so I couldn't possibly have moved it. Yeah, so that's about it. I hope you enjoyed reading this. Thank you, Elastor. I appreciate you sending in your story and I can't help but notice that this ghost poltergeist or whatever it is has issues with your personal care. It has issues with your hairstyle, obviously, because it moved the hair tie, so maybe try a style that doesn't use a hair tie. Maybe it will approve of the new look and maybe it doesn't like painted nails. I'm not a big fan of painted fingernails, so maybe it's some guy like me in ghost form. Very shallow, I understand, very judgmental, but you don't want it. It's a ghost. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? So anyway, I appreciate you sending that in. Thank you very much. This next one comes from Chad. He says, Hey there, and first of all, thank you for the podcast. I just found it a few months ago, so I've started at the beginning and I'm listening to it throughout the day at work and in my car until I get all caught up. Still about two years to go, but knocking out about a month or so every day. Anyway, I have a few stories to share with you. Let me first say that I used to be pretty skeptical about ghosts and paranormal activity, even though my first encounter came at a fairly early age. When I was about eight or nine, my family moved into a house in our town. It wasn't very long after that when I began having a recurring dream. Well, not the exact same dream, but the exact theme. I was always being chased by a man dressed in all black, including a black ski mask. Like I said, the dream was different, but the circumstance was the same, always being chased by the same figure. This went on for a while, and then one day while we were riding down the road, I overheard my mom telling my dad that ever since we had moved into that house, that she had been having the same recurring dream. She was being chased by a man dressed all in black with a black ski mask. My mom and I were having the same dreams. I actually didn't say anything to her at the time. Now, fast forward a few months, my father worked third shift as a deputy sheriff, so in the evenings, it was just me, my mom and my brothers. On this one particular night, my mom and I were up late because I had pulled the ultimate grade school kid hijinks. I had waited until the day before to tell her that I had a science project due the next day, so I'm sorry. That reminds me of my own childhood, buddy. I did that. I was just thinking about that earlier today. I had a science project due the next day, and my parents found out about it. I wasn't going to tell them. I don't know how they found out about it, but they did, and I was supposed to gather leaves and put them in like a press book type of thing and label them and find out what tree those leaves belonged to and turn that in as a science project. I didn't space it off. I just completely ignored it. Science was not my thing. I have an interest in it now a lot more, but back then, that was homework, and I thought that was a stupid assignment, so I just didn't want to do it, and oh my gosh, it was I in trouble. Anyway, I'm sorry. I had to throw that in there. Anyway, you pulled the ultimate grade school kid hijinks. You waited until the day before to tell her you had a science project due the next day. She and I are sitting in our dining room table working on the project. It was probably close to midnight, and my brothers were already in bed. My mom had to go to the bathroom, and while she was gone, I glanced out of our dining room window and there, standing underneath the tree in our yard, was a man or a figure wearing all black and a ski mask. I screamed for my mom and told her what I saw. She immediately called dad. We moved out of that house later that very same week, and I never had another dream like it. So odd that you would have the dreams only in that house, and as soon as you left, you no longer had those dreams. That is freaky. Obviously, there is something that happened in that house or something attached to that house. I've never heard of a ghost being dressed in black along with a black ski mask. That is very new, so I'm guessing that something happened in that house. Maybe a burglary gone wrong, and maybe the burglar was killed during the robbery, and that's the way he was dressed. That's just a guess, but that is really, really creepy. Anyway, Chad has another story here. He says, in 2018, I had to take a business trip to Greenville, South Carolina. That evening, I got settled into my hotel room and went to sleep. At about 3 a.m., which I've heard many call the witching hour, I woke up because I heard what sounded like the door to my room open. I sat up in bed and looked around and saw nothing. I leaned far enough to see the door. Nothing. So I sort of just chalked it up to a dream and laid back down. Just a few minutes later, the top blanket on my bed was pulled off of me toward the bottom of the bed. I sat up again and still saw nothing except the blanket piled up at the foot of the bed. Needless to say, I was freaked out. I took a deep breath, took another look around, grabbed the blanket and pulled it back up, this time holding onto it with my hand as I turned over on my side to try and go back to sleep. So I had a grip on the blanket. Just a few minutes later, the blanket was snatched out of my hand and pulled to the bottom of the bed again. I sat up in the bed again, looked around, again, saw nothing. So I hollered out, leave me alone in the name of Jesus. I'm trying to sleep. Well, it worked. I laid back down, went to sleep, and wasn't bothered again. A couple of thoughts on that last story there, Chad. I'm wondering, do you have a pet? The reason I ask that is, could your pet have been under your bed? If the pet was under the bed, it could have tried to get out the door, but it was already in your room and the door was shut, so it couldn't get out, so it went back under your bed. Then it started playing with the blanket, which was hanging down on the floor, and it started playing with the blanket and it pulled it off that first time. And then once you did it again, or once you brought it back up to you, and then you turned over on your side, it said, oh, he's pulling the blanket, so he's playing with me, and then pulls it down again. And then when you yell, that would be your pet knowing that you were angry and would stop doing it. That's the only thing I can think of, but if you don't have a pet, then I really don't know. You can take any one of those incidents and explain them away in some way, shape, or form. The door, yes, it could have just been in a dream because you looked up and you didn't see the door open. Then later, the blanket going down. I've actually had that happen to me once, and it wasn't anything paranormal, I think. It was just the blanket fell down to the ground. So I have a parasomnia, which means that you can move even while you're dreaming. It's not a bad case, but once in a while, I'll find myself kicking or trying to punch the air when I wake up. And that could very well have, I could have done that in my sleep and then knocked the blanket and felt the blanket go down to the floor, but only remember the part where it's falling and not remember me kicking or anything. So you can explain away things like that one at a time, but once you combine them all, it is really hard to explain away. Thank you very much for the email, Chad. Appreciate that. This next one comes from Tina. She says, Dear Daraan, attached is another story from my family history. It isn't particularly scary, but ties into the world, the weird coincidental events that have connected to the Douglas and Flournoy families for multiple generations. Thank you for the opportunity to reignite my love of writing, your weirdo sister in Christ, Tina Douglas, a.k.a. girl problems. Okay, Tina, so here is your story, and she calls it The Ring. When my mother passed away, there came a day when we daughters, I'm the oldest of three, had to divide her ring collection. Among the various rings she had collected over the years was one that I alone was familiar with. It was in a simple white envelope with the words Mrs. Flournoy's ring, carefully written in my grandmother's script. I recognized it from when my grandmother Flournoy, my mom's mother, had passed away. The ring had been tucked in a plain vinyl purse since the night it was placed in the envelope. The purse and ring had belonged to my grandfather's mother and was given to my grandparents along with other effects the night my great grandmother died following a horrible Christmas Eve auto-crash. The ring itself was 24 carat rose gold, quite thin and lacked any design other than being cleanly cut, so the ring might be removed from her swollen finger as the ER staff attempted in vain to save her. The staff member charged with that somber task was an older nurse who had only recently received her LVN credentials. She was also my father's mother. Though neither family knew about each other at the time, my father's mother had handed that ring to my mother's mother during what had to be one of the Flournoy's family's worst moments. Many years later my parents married after a whirlwind courtship. My mother learned the story of the family's chance meeting while living with my dad's family while he was away in the army during the Vietnam War. It was only after packing away my grandmother's effects after her death that my mother realized her mother had kept the purse with all its contents including the ring just as she had received it that night. Mom entrusted me with the purse but wanted to keep the ring in her possession. When we met to divide my mom's rings, we agreed that rather than chance any hurt feelings over who got which ring, we would number and draw for mom's rings. I drew the number attached to the very ring that held so much shared family history. It now resides once again in the plain vinyl purse along with a small collection of other items my great grandmother had with her that fateful night. That is incredible for your families to have had that experience together with before your parents got together. Very cool. Thank you for sharing that, Tina. I appreciate that. This next one comes from K.B. Hearst. She says, Hello Darren, you asked for more paranormal stories. I have a short one regarding an instance in a basement apartment I was renting for my parents. And here we go. Let's see how. This is not too long. Okay. We had moved into the new house and it had a setup where there was a fully renovated basement. So while my parents lived upstairs, I lived downstairs. It had an office area, bedroom, closet, living room, and a small bar. It was perfect for whenever I had friends over. We'd moved in in the dead of winter, so we didn't know anyone. I only saw my neighbors come and go, as it seemed we all had early shifts somewhere. I was usually gone before 7 in the morning to my day job. Spring had finally come, so one afternoon, I decided to leave and take a walk, as I often did in the neighborhood to clear my head. The neighborhood was your typical suburban paradise where everyone seemed to know each other and had your standard picket fence with perfectly trimmed green grass. On my way back from my walk, I noticed several cop cars parked across the street and one officer putting up yellow tape. Whatever happened, had happened while I was walking. Couldn't have been more than 40 minutes later. I went up the driveway and saw my mom talking to one of our neighbors. A young man living directly across the street from the house was shot dead. We were all in shock. Q one of those episodes of Dateline. I had noticed him before, but he was quiet and lived with his mother. I had never spoken to him. My mom did on occasion, as in your typical, hello, good morning, wave. A few days later, one of the neighbors told us that he had shot himself and died instantly. It was very sad to me that whatever was going on in his life, he felt the need to kill himself. Fast forward to a few weeks later, I had forgotten about it and didn't mention it to anyone. We'd all gone on with our lives. I was with a friend who was a professional reader and medium. We were hanging out in a New Age shop that I frequented. She and I were giving each other tarot readings while we waited for customers to come in. In another life, I gave tarot readings and helped at a New Age shop for a friend. Well, we were talking about an experience she had with some ghost of a man that wouldn't leave her alone. I thought it was odd, but I have heard stranger stories. While after telling her to burn some sage or say some prayers, she told me that she would call me the next day when she had done that, to update me. I thought nothing more of it and went home. However, later that night, I was woken up by my headboards hitting the wall. It was as if something or someone was pushing my bed and me, trying to wake me up. I was sleeping on my stomach as I often did and happened to first look at the clock on my table next to my bed, which said 5 a.m. It was still dark out, but the light was starting to come in from the sun rising outside, creating a purple illumination in the dark room. I felt something touching me and I was wide awake at this point and turned my head towards the side of the room that faced the basement window in my bedroom. I saw a young man with messy hair and his demeanor was very confused and stressed. I was now shaking, but not from fear. I was actually trembling from whatever this spirit was feeling. I didn't know what to do, but my first instinct was to say hello. I recalled an episode of Coast to Coast A.M. where George Norrie had a guest talking about shadow people. In that particular episode, a man called telling a story where a dark entity had tried to hug him but abnormally tight, so tight he could not breathe. So he said to the entity, Hello, I love you. Supposedly this was to cause whatever entity was attacking him to be repelled at the love rather than the fear. I recalled other guests calling out Jesus' name, but the man saying I love you to the ghost always made me chuckle. I never forgot that episode, and in placing it at that moment, I saw the young man's ghost and said hello to him. He faded. He was like watching a movie where a spirit would fade like smoke, but I was wide awake, looking at the entity as it disappeared. This was no movie. I believe that because of the proximity of that being showing up so close to when the neighbor of mine killed himself. It could have been him. I said a prayer for him that morning that hopefully he would be able to find some peace. That same day my friend called to tell me she had done the sage and said the Lord's Prayer and she told me the entity left her house and knew it wouldn't be coming back. She also told me she felt the young man had died by suicide. We had not talked about what had happened to my neighbor at all. I told her about the young man passing by suicide when she said this to me. We're both sure it was him. Great stuff, KB. Thank you very much for sharing that. The whole shadow person thing. I've actually been wondering the last few days. I think I've mentioned here in the podcast at some point that I'm working on a speaking presentation where I would go around the country and do a speech about 30 minutes to 60 minutes about some subject. And I had decided on doing urban legends and the true stories that are attached to them. But I'm really starting to think now that maybe I want to do it on shadow people or black eyed kids because I think there would be a big interest in that. And there's some certain materials that I think I could use for my presentation. So if you're listening and you have an opinion on that, drop me an email at darren at weirddarkness.com. Let me know what you think about that particular idea. If I was to come to your area and give a speech, would you rather hear about shadow people, black eyed kids, or urban legends? Let me know. I would really like to, I'd really like some opinions on that. And KB, thank you very much for that. And we have one last story. Like I said, it's going to be a short episode of Fireside Frights this month because I didn't receive very many. So please send your stories to me. Just go to WeirdDarkness.com, click on tell your story, and you can send me your true story, or maybe a story from somebody that you know. Okay, our last one comes from Bill. He says, Hi, Darren. Long time listener, first time contributor. It's great hearing that. It's such a radio thing to hear that. He says, I'll preface my story by saying that I'd always wanted to experience ghostly happenings, but through my childhood, it just never happened. A friend of mine who was a white witch told me that my third eye was not only closed but was sealed shut. She suggested I'd had some sort of psychic trauma either in this life or my last one. Anyway, when I was 35, I finally bought my own house. It was a small little bungalow in a decent neighborhood. Not long after moving in, however, I began to experience some strange things. It started small with the sound of someone coming into the side door of the house and walking up the few steps into the kitchen. I would check, but there would never be anyone there. Doors would open and close on their own in spite of there being no draft in the house. On more than one occasion, I'd wake up feeling like someone was trying to lift up my torso from the bed. The single weirdest event one night was when I was trying to put in an air conditioner in my bedroom window. I'm still not sure how I managed it, but I ended up breaking the storm glass. I cleaned it up and gave up for the night deciding to go to bed. About 15 minutes after I climbed into bed, I heard a thud from the kitchen, which was on the other side of my bedroom wall. After that, I heard giggling and the sound of feet running down into the basement. I got up and looked and a picture I had hanging in my breakfast nook had come off the wall, made a 90 degree turn and landed in the middle of the kitchen floor, all without breaking. I'd done some research by that point and knew the name of my ghost was Rose. She and her husband had lived in the house back in the 1940s. She had in fact died in the house in the early 70s. He stayed on till he passed in the mid-80s. I apologized to Rose for breaking the window, put the picture back on the wall and tried to go to bed. I say tried because for the next two hours I heard big band music coming out of my chimney which came up through a corner of the bedroom. I left a picture of Rose I had found in the attic on the wall when I moved out. I hoped the new people who bought the house treat her with respect, as I tried to do. On a side note, the experience of finally living in a haunted house apparently opened up something in me. I've had many ghostly experiences since and would be happy to share more later. Thanks for keeping up your weird work, signed Bill. Bill, yes, please, send in more of the stories. I could definitely use them and it's odd that you somehow had your mind switched on later in life in order to now be sensitive to this type of thing. I'm 54 years old and aside from the one incident that I have told people about with my sleep paralysis incident, I've never had a paranormal incident. I don't know if it's something that I would wish upon myself or not. I've always debated that. If it was to happen to me and it was to become a regular thing, I would just take it as maybe a spiritual gift from God and try to use it for good, I guess. But I don't know if it's anything that I would pray for. I'm wondering, did you tell the new owners of your house about Rose? Or are you going to let them find out on their own? Well then again, you know what? If they don't have the same open mind as you do, if their third eye isn't open or whatever you want to call it, maybe they won't have any experiences anyway. Hey, thank you again for sharing that, Bill. I do greatly appreciate you sending in your story. I appreciate everybody sending in your stories. Again, if you do like the show, please share it with somebody you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, unsolved mysteries, and you can email me anytime with your questions or comments. It doesn't just have to be a story of your own. If you've got questions for me or just a comment, just send it to Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N at WeirdDarkness.com. That website, WeirdDarkness.com, it's also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated, visit the store for Weird Darkness t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases, more merchandise, sign up for monthly contests, read movie reviews, find other podcasts that I host, find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know struggling with depression or dark thoughts like that story we had earlier about the young man who decided to kill himself, a very sad story. If you're having thoughts like that, you definitely need to reach out to someone, either call 988 in the United States or call 999 if you're in the UK, or go to that Hope in the Darkness page and find some sort of resource to help you get through everything. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions, copyright, 2023. I'm Darren Marlar, thanks for joining me, everybody, for another episode of Fireside Frights in the Weird Darkness.