 Welcome, weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is a Chamber of Comments episode where I answer the emails that I've been sent recently. Sometimes it's just a nice, complimentary email that I receive. Sometimes it's heart-wrenching. Sometimes you're asking for advice or maybe you're complaining about something. You can email me anytime about anything, though. Just email me at darren at weirddarkness.com. By the way, your emails always do come directly to me. I don't have somebody looking at them before they get to me. I don't have an assistant, no service for this, and I do try to read every one of them that comes in. More often than not, I'll reply to those emails here in the Chamber of Comments. Again, you can email me darren at weirddarkness.com. A quick reminder, before we get into all of the emails for this episode of Chamber of Comments, tomorrow, Friday, November 18th, is our next Weirdo Watch Party. We're going to be watching The Ghost Train, and it's being hosted by horror hosts Chad and Bunny. The show itself is a 1941 horror comedy based on a play of the same title, The Ghost Train. It starts tomorrow night on the Weirdo Watch Party page at weirddarkness.com. It starts at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern, 9pm in Hawaii, and for our friends in Greenwich Meantime, 1am. So hopefully you can join me tomorrow. It's always a lot of fun in the Weirdo Watch Party. Our first email comes from David. He says, Darren, I hope you had a great weekend and are ready for this upcoming week of joy. Thank you for your episode. It really touched me as the stories and letters presented in this episode were super compelling. Oh, I'm sorry, David is referring to the Chamber of Comments episode from November 5th. Thanks for your episode. It really touched me as the stories and letters presented in this episode were super compelling. I appreciate the very relatable recounting of the incidents in it and am very glad to have found this episode. I was listening late last night and something told me to stop it and pick it up this morning. Turns out, this was the right move because my brain was then ready to receive the messages therein. I've always believed that God brings us around to what's best for us in life by connecting us in ways specifically for each of us. You and I might hear the same podcast but get different messages from it. For example, I was watching Battlestar Galactica 2005-2009 that brought me out of a lifelong fog of not respecting the story of Jesus. It slowly built my fascination with the series and toward the end, one character who is not involved very much in the religious thread throughout the story in that she doesn't really adhere to faith as we see it today, but turns out she was, well, let me not give it away in case you want to experience it someday, but in the end it's basically a refrain of I've been to earth, I know where it is and I'm going to take us there. For them, earth was a paradise. This brought me to the recognition of the parallel of follow me, I've been to heaven, and I know the way that Jesus brought to us. I've got a starting to ramble here, so I'll be brief. I appreciate you for the hard work of bringing us this podcast and letting God speak to us in the way that he knows he can reach us. I'm also a podcaster and I know firsthand how taxing the work can be. And ours is only once a week. Please keep doing what you do and know that God will continue to work through you. It's kind of a trust of the process and the process leads to salvation, which comes in whatever specific way we're each able to receive it. Have a beautiful week signed David. Wow, David, thank you. I appreciate that. That was a really powerful Chamber of Comments episode. I don't think we've ever had one quite that powerful, especially with that very first letter, which is what I'm pretty sure you're referring to. Just the first letter alone in that Chamber of Comments took us 45 minutes with me reading it and then replying to it. It was a big one and it was so spiritual in nature and really made me think about replying with it. I made that the Church of the Undead for last Sunday. I just took that section of the Chamber of Comments and posted it to my Church of the Undead podcast because it was that on the nose. So I'm glad you got something out of it, David. Thank you. And best of luck on your podcast. A couple of reviews that came in from Charitable. It looks like Marta 79 says, five stars was looking for a new podcast about the paranormal and started to listen. I was hooked. And it's great that a new episode comes each day. My favorite time to enjoy the podcast is late at night driving from work. Another five star one says, I just love listening to this podcast when I'm about to go to sleep oddly enough. And Darren's voice is soothing. That comes from Kell McFarlane. And then I got a three star review, which is titled In the Middle. The reason I'm in the middle is clear. The person says, it's Megan who wrote this. She says, some of the stories scare the living daylight out of me. I listened to podcasts at night and I have dreams about them. So I've been having nightmares for about three months so far. If you like scary stories, you're in for a treat. Well, Megan, thank you very much for the very unique review on that. If you're listening to this, I might suggest not listening to it before going to bed. Just, you know, if it gives you nightmares, just unless you want nightmares, but it doesn't sound like you're really into them. So anyway, thank you. Let's see here. I got an email from Deborah. She says, hello, Darren. Thank you so much for your podcast. My boyfriend and I have been listening for a little over three years now and we really love it. Your voice is amazing and love all the interesting topics. We were wondering if the woman speaking at the beginning of each episode is your wife. Thanks again and God bless. Signed Deborah and Juan. Well, yes, Deborah and Juan. That is my bride, Robin. I had her do that many years ago and it just seems to fit. It's perfect for what I need. She'll jump in very seldom if I need something done either for the podcast or maybe if I'm producing something for a client like a voiceover. She's not really a voice artist. It's not really her cup of tea, but you know, she's there in the house if I need her and she doesn't do a half bad job. So thank you very much for that. I also love that you're listening with your boyfriend, that the two of you are listening together. That's really cool. It always brings a smile on my face when I hear that there are a couple of people listening together and not just friends, but people who are in a relationship, be it like you and your boyfriend or married couples. Somebody emailed me, this was some time back, somebody emailed me once saying that their very first date together was listening to Weird Darkness. Wow. I'm still kind of still struggling on how exactly to respond to that, because I mean, it is a huge compliment. But how do you convince the other person that what you want to do for your first date is to sitting in the dark and just listen to something? I can understand going to the movies. You know, you're sitting there, even a scary movie. I mean, that's fine. I mean, you've got your popcorn and soda there. But you could still see stuff around you. I mean, you could still look over to the other person going, wow, that was scary, wasn't it? But to sit there in that complete dark and listening to Weird Darkness as your first date, it still throws me. Okay, let's see. Our next email comes from Nicole. She says, Hi, I love both your podcasts. I regularly play Church of the Undead for my husband and I before we start our day. I've many, many struggles, Mr. Marlar. I've been battling depression and anxiety all my life, self-medicated for a while. Then I met my husband and came back to Jesus. It's not been easy and it's not been fun, but golly, it has been beneficial. I'm happier and I'm healthier and a portion of that is you. I found your podcasts and now I don't have to have anxiety because I'm not going to be alone while my Alan is at work. You've become my friend and my companion and I just wanted to say thank you. You're constant and faithful in a world that's not. God bless you. Nicole, I certainly don't deserve such high praise, but if your goal was to bring a smile to my face today, you've succeeded. Unfortunately, yeah, this world is full of struggles even and especially if you are a follower of Christ. Not the greatest thing you want to tell somebody when you're trying to introduce them to Jesus, but it is the truth. As soon as you become a Christian, the enemy starts going at you because he doesn't like that you are now saved. But one thing that we have that others don't is we have hope. We know where we're going to end up after death. We know that we're never alone, that God's always with us no matter what the situation and I'm glad that you've found that hope as well. And speaking of being with somebody, I'm really happy that I am your companion throughout the day while your husband's gone. So long as he's not the jealous type. Alex gave me an email. He says, Alex is responding to a question that I had on a previous chamber of comments about witchy wolves. Whenever I go somewhere for an event like one of these cons or expos or conventions, I'm almost always talking with somebody from that area who asks me, have you heard about blank? And that blank is usually something local to them that I've never heard of. I've been doing the podcast for seven years and I still hear about brand new things when I go to these locations. Well, one of them in Michigan, which I believe was Michigan or Plattsburg, New York, I think this one was Michigan. It was witchy wolves. But I had no idea what witchy wolves were. So Alex heard me talking about that and this is his email about it. So the witchy wolves legend is an old Chippewa thing. The witchy wolf is a half dog, half wolf spirit that protects the dead warrior graves of the Chippewa tribe within the Ulmer Plains area and beyond. Supposedly way back when, about five-ish generations ago, this is passed down from my great, great, great, or so grandmother, a group of men came to the sacred burial ground, which is now somewhere in the dead center of Ulmer, allegedly. I'm not sure if anyone remembers where that is. So these men want to collect the items that were buried with these warriors like Jasper, obsidian, weapons, jewelry. When they began to dig, they heard a growl. Apparently it was so deep and so loud it scared them down to their bones. When they turned around they saw a giant animal 22 hands high, so dang near about 20 feet tall. It had eyes they burned with golden fire and fangs that dripped with liquid poison. When the caretaker of the dead came at the first light of dawn, all they found was torn clothing and blood coating the graves. The wise woman of the tribe had to come and bless the graves again, which, according to the stories, is a three-day process in order to appease the spirit. Wow, yeah, great story. And again, that's the first time I've ever heard anything like that. So thank you for sharing that, Alex. I appreciate that. Karen sent me an email saying, my mom introduced me to Weird Darkness and we both listen while sewing, usually. Recently, I've been on medical leave for a back injury and when I came back to work due to my injury, I was assigned parking lot duty. I'm a security officer at a casino, so the job I get is checking in RVs. I've been having some extra depression issues due to my injury and in my boredom and frustration at not being allowed to do my normal work, I remembered Weird Darkness and have been listening to Weird Darkness starting October 1st. Listening to you has calmed my nerves at being alone in the parking lot and decreased my boredom immensely. I just heard the chamber of comments for October 15th and the complaint about true crime. I like true crime and I hope you don't get rid of it and if families are disturbed by some of it, you do have a warning at the beginning of every episode stating that stories and content might be disturbing to some audiences. Thank you for everything you do and thank you for the stories. Someday, I may even get brave enough to actually do something about my depression, but for now, listening to your content helps a ton. Thank you again, signed Karen. Well Karen, I'm really happy to hear that the depression is at least lessened somewhat or listening to me, especially late at night when you're all by yourself. That never bodes well for somebody who's already struggling with depression. To be alone by yourself on the job, it gives you way too much time with your own inner thoughts and it's just a downward spiral sometimes. So I'm glad that you've found a way to take your mind off of that and onto something else, be it the Weird Darkness podcast or even if this wasn't you and it was somebody else saying that they found something in audiobooks or in listening to music or whatever. So long as you've got something to take your mind off of the dark plots and concentrate on something else, that's really important. I think that's a key factor of kind of getting yourself out of the cycle of depression. Sometimes that doesn't help, it just depends on the person. Sometimes it is an internal chemical imbalance type of thing, which is the case for me. So I needed to get drugs, but for some people they just need counseling or sometimes they just need a little guidance to get themselves out of that downward spiral. Sounds like you're doing a pretty good job on your own, you might need a little bit more help and because you're saying you still want to get brave enough to actually do something about your depression. So if that's the case, you know what, doctors are a lot more open nowadays to hearing about depression and knowing what to do about it. In fact, they're not an advertiser anymore, so this is not sponsored, but there is a product called Cerebral, which is an online, kind of like an online doctor, I guess for lack of better words. You can go there and make an appointment with a doctor and you can also get counseling there. If the doctor feels that you need it, you can get psychiatric counseling there, but I decided to go there just for myself and I switched doctors. I decided to start using Cerebral as my main doctor for my antidepressant meds and it works really well because all the meds come to me either to my, I can get them either at my drugstore or I can get them via mail. It just depends on how your insurance company wants to handle it, but you know, I check in with them once every a few months online, so I'm still in my office doing it. I don't have to drive all the way to the doctor's office because he's a four-hour drive away from me. I have met him personally because there was a couple other things that I wanted to talk to him about outside of Cerebral, but I met him through Cerebral and it really worked well for me. I do have, I don't know if the deal is still in place because they're no longer advertising with me, but there was a time where you could save 65% off of your first month of medication management and care counseling if you went to Cerebral.com slash Weird. I don't know if that's still the case, but you could try it and see, but if that doesn't work or if that link isn't working anymore, then just go to my sponsors page at WeirdDarkness.com and there's a link there for Cerebral and you can go there and that should help you out. Alright, so again, not sponsored, it was just something that popped into my head. Eric sent me an email saying Weird Darkness, the damn thing from July 14th. The absolute best I've heard so far. I listen at least six hours daily while delivering, but yeah, that episode awesome. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate that. The damn thing, you know what? It's been so long since I posted that. I'm going to have to go back and listen to that again just to see if it really is awesome or if that's just your opinion. I appreciate it. One more email, this one comes from Brianna. She says, Hi, Darren. I was just listening to the mid-October Chamber of Comments episode. Yes, I'm behind. I was catching up on another podcast, and someone had written in about not liking the True Crime stories. Personally, I only listen to True Crime podcasts except Weird Darkness just as I mostly watch True Crime TV shows. In my experience from other listeners and other podcast hosts, sharing these stories is never about glorifying the killers or criminals, but sharing what they did because the world needs to know that monsters are real, and quite often, we humans are the worst of them. It's just like Stephen King once said, monsters are real, ghosts are real too. They live inside of us and sometimes they win. But more than just reminding us about these awful people, these stories also keep the victim's memories alive in a way, and serve as a reminder that just because they may have been killed doesn't mean that they're killer one. By telling these stories and saying, this monster killed these people, but this is who they were and we remember them, we're making sure that the victims don't get forgotten. And I found that in every podcast I listen to, just as much, if not more, time is allotted to speaking about the victims and their families than the perpetrators, and a lot of compassion is given to them. So in my opinion, the True Crime stories should stay. Plus, not all the True Crime stories you've done have been about murders. There have been bank heists and bungled robberies and the like too. But maybe you can sprinkle in some Florida man stories to keep it light-hearted for the people who feel like the serial killer stories are too dark. Wishing you your ride and your kitty a safe and happy holiday season. Breanna. And then she throws in some emojis of a Christmas tree, Santa Claus, and a turkey. Thank you, Breanna. I really appreciate that. Those Florida man stories, I tell you, if it wasn't for Florida man stories, my first podcast, Daily Dose of Weird News, would likely never have existed. I mean, those stories were all the time making it into the podcast. I don't do that show anymore, just because it didn't really take off like Weird Darkness did, and I needed to make a decision as to which one I wanted to concentrate on. But yeah, I still enjoy sprinkling in some of the dumb criminal stories too, because it's still weird. I mean, it's weird darkness. And so I can do dark and I can do weird or a little bit of both. So by the way, speaking of True Crime, I am not going to be getting rid of it. So you don't you guys don't have to worry about that. In fact, I have been working on well not well, working on working on I like I'm thinking on it, but I'm going to start working on doing a live presentation at these events that I go to. Yeah, quite often, these conventions will also be conferences. And if they are, if they're paranormal conferences, they'll often have several speakers throughout the day. Well, I would like to be one of those speakers. And I'm working on true stories of famous urban legends, or it'll be titled something along those lines. And quite often, those urban legends are true crime based. I won't get into much details here. But you know, the Stranger Calls, the movie about, you know, the calls are coming from inside the house that there's actually a true story behind that. Also the hook where two teenagers are out making out in, you know, a lover's lane. And suddenly they hear an announcement on the radio about an escaped criminal with a hand with a hook for a hand. And they run, they suddenly somebody starts knocking on the door of the car and they speed off. And then later when they stop, they see that there's a hook on the door handle, stuff like that. Are those just urban legends or are there actually true stories behind them? And in fact, another one that I'll probably craft into the presentation is what I share every Halloween on the Halloween live screen. And that's the one about razor blades and poison and everything in candy, where for a long time, that was just an urban legend until it was no longer an urban legend. And it actually started happening. So stuff like that. So I'll be working on that. And hopefully I can use those in 2023. Speaking of the road trip, our December 3rd event was supposed to be in Champaign, Illinois for Christmas carnage. And unfortunately, they sent me an email yesterday saying that they've had to cancel that due to some some other conflicting events that were also happening in the same area. And they didn't want to take away from those other events, which I think is actually pretty cool that they're doing that. So it's not so spread thin that nobody has a successful event. So I think they're going to just focus on an event later in 2023. So if you were planning on coming to Champaign, Illinois, don't bother, or at least not for Christmas carnage, not to see me, because I won't be there. So I really have no more dates left for this year 2023 is when things start up again for me. So thank you very much for listening in, folks. And if you again, if you want to drop me an email, anything you want to talk about, I'm here, you can use this as a ask me anything type of situation. Just email Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N at WeirdDarkness.com. And I'll see you in the podcast, Weirdos.