 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. The world of cryptozoology is no stranger to odd footprints found throughout the world, coming in a wide variety of sizes and with their own peculiarities. These tracks often leave bewilderment, bafflement, and spur-on questions after questions to their origins about what sort of creature could have made them. The answers for what caused them are not always completely clear, but they invariably are cause for much debate and speculation. Among these anomalous prints are those that are from far-flung destinations yet seem to share some similar traits, that of some hoofed creature that has left its footprints behind and which have caused debate as to whether they are caused by the same strange creature, a hoax, or just a curious coincidence. By far the most well-known and widely circulated stories of such mysterious footprints is that of the original Devil's Footprints of Devon, England. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness. 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 show, and if you're listening to the podcast or on YouTube, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. And if you're already a Weirdo, please take a moment and invite somebody else to listen to. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show, and while listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find all of my social media or drop me an email. Coming up in this episode… Picture this. You're called to the scene of a murder. The victim's shotgun was found in his room. It's been used some time recently and there was an empty cartridge on the floor. There was, however, no blood or any other obvious signs of violence in the house, and something else odd. A pot in the kitchen was discovered to contain large amounts of strychnine. It sounds like one of those murder mystery party games you solved with friends, but this is from a true murder mystery in Australia that still fascinates those who study the case. What do a Jesuit missionary and a former slave have in common? The answer? Bigfoot. The FBI described Israel Keys as one of the most meticulous and vile serial killers in American history. So much so, he even had the FBI scratching their heads. But first, one morning in 1855, citizens of the English town of Devon were surprised to find strange footprints about town in the snow. Not just on the streets and sidewalks, but on their doorways and on the house roofs, haystacks, walking up walls and through pipes. The tracks covered over a hundred miles and there was no explanation of how the prints were made. But many had a theory about who made the prints. They say it was the devil. We began with that story. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the weird darkness. One cold winter morning in 1855, the residents of Devon, England woke to a strange sight. The area was blanketed with snow from the night before and it seemed as if everything was frosted in white. Residents were surprised to find a long track of strange, hoof-like prints that seemed as if they must have been freshly made. The individual prints reportedly measured around 4 inches long and 3 inches wide and seemed to have been made in a nearly perfect single file line, with each print spaced between 8 to 16 inches from each other. They looked to be cloven and from something bipedal. In short, like tracks from nothing the locals had ever seen, and they meandered through the snow for between 60 to 100 miles depending on the report. This wasn't the only one of Devon's strange occurrences, but for decades the so-called Devil's Footprints have perplexed both skeptics and believers alike. While Devon is perhaps the most popular instance of Devil's Footprints, similar incidents have occurred throughout history and around the world. The bizarre footprints that appeared on Devon's snowy countryside followed no discernible path, and they appeared in more than 30 different locations all over the town's south and east ends. They meandered across dozens of miles, even leading up to people's doorsteps, frightening the residents. As odd as this all was, what made it all even stranger was the bizarre route that these prints took, going right up over walls, along narrow fencing, overhouse roofs, through barns, haystacks, gardens and courtyards, across frozen lakes, fields and spookily often seeming to come right to people's front doors, as if whatever had made the prints had been intently investigating these homes. Oddly, in some cases, it seemed as if the prints had entered and exited pipes that were only around four inches in diameter, passed through locked gates or seemed to wander straight up trees as well as in totally enclosed or locked off areas and other improbable places. The unexplained tracks shortly acquired the nickname, the Devil's Footprints, or Tracks of Satan, thanks in part to their hoof-like shape. This supernatural implication was aided by the track's unexplainable miles-long path. Devon's Devil's Footprints covered up to 100 miles of land, reaching as far as Topsham, Dollish and Tainmouth. According to some reports, the tracks may also have reached as far south as Totness or Torquay and as far away as Dorset or Lincolnshire. Overall, the strange prints were found spanning an area of anywhere from 40 to 100 miles making most rational explanations seem completely implausible. Without a fresh snowfall, the distinctive marks would have been imperceptible to locals. Moreover, while accounts of the snowfall's heaviness seemed to vary, most agree not only that the previous night was particularly cold, but that a thaw occurred sometime before morning, which may have allowed animal tracks to become distorted. Skeptics often point to this theory to explain the bizarre phenomenon of the Devil's Footprints. Non-paranormal explanations have encompassed everything from hoaxes or the distorted tracks of mice, birds, rabbits, badgers, ponies, horses and even escaped kangaroos. Mike Dash, a Welsh writer and historian, proposed that the tracks were made by several different animals at once, though he conceded at the end of his study that his solutions did not explain all of the tracks' elements and they are still a mystery waiting to be solved. Other theories were things like raindrops falling and creating the depressions, and the even more far-out theory attributed to British novelist Geoffrey Household, who claimed that the tracks were actually made by some sort of experimental balloon accidentally released from the Devonport Dockyard. According to Household, a pair of shackles dangled from the balloon's mooring ropes and their intermittent dragging left the tracks in the snow. Household claimed to have learned of this event from a man whose grandfather had worked at the docks in 1855. While this explanation initially seems feasible, the theory is not entirely sound. The notion of a drifting balloon leaving uniformly spaced tracks seems very implausible, and what's more, no such balloon was ever reported. According to Household's account, however, the event was covered up after the balloon caused some damage and eventually landed near Honiton. People came to believe that the devil walks in Devon, as newspapers would later claim, and took the staying indoors after dark. Some observers even claimed the tracks appeared burned or branded into the snow. This claim was seemingly substantiated 102 years later after the original Devon incident, when in 1957 an anthropologist and psychical researcher reported hoof prints found on a Devon beach that looked as if each mark had been cut out of the sand with a flat iron. These 1957 hoof prints were also spaced six feet apart, implying a much longer stride than those reported in 1855. Also in 1957, Linda Hanson wrote to The Forty in Times detailing tracks she found in her parents' garden. Her description matched the devil's footprints of 1855 almost exactly, and beneath these tracks she claimed to see dry concrete as if the tracks had not just melted the snow but transformed it. According to some accounts, people genuinely came to believe the devil was responsible for the tracks and refused to venture outside after dark. Convinced the devil was still prowling Devon, they claimed he could sniff out their sins. Further fueling their fears was the manner in which the footprints seemed to approach doorways and then stop, as if the creature responsible was keenly interested in the people on the other side. While some sources claim the phenomenon was widely covered in newspapers at the time, firsthand accounts of the devil's footprints were difficult to locate for many years. Not until 1950 did accounts of the event return to the public eye. References to the incident were discovered in records from the former vicar of Kleist St. George. Among these papers were tracings or sketches of the tracks themselves, as well as a letter to the illustrated London News marked Not For Publication. The letter described the tracks as the perfect impression of a donkey's hoof, but instead of progressing as that animal would have done, or indeed as any other animal would have done, feet right and left, it appeared that foot had followed foot in a single line. Furthermore, the letter noted that the tracks were found in multiple perishes and that in every case they were the exact same size, about 4 inches by 2 inches and always the same distance apart. Several courageous individuals attempted to follow the strange tracks and some reported strange findings. A story credited to Reverend J. J. Rowe and R. H. Busk claims the pair tried to follow the trail with hounds, but at last in a wood the hounds came back baying and terrified. Another report tells of a man who followed the prints to their apparent end when he found nothing but a toad. Since the prints in Devon were so numerous and covered such a broad area, multiple sources were likely responsible. This is one of the underlying tenets of skeptics who claim at least some of the hoof prints were likely the work of hoaxers if the marks existed at all. As Brian Dunning points out on the hoof prints episode of the Skeptoid podcast, the very length of the trails discredits the notion that any one source could possibly have seen all the tracks. In 1855 the means didn't really exist in Devon to travel a hundred miles in a single day to verify the length of this track, especially when the ways obstructed by two mile stretches of water, Dunning said. In detailing the various fantastic properties of the footprints, Dunning reaches what he considers a foregone conclusion. Is there really any reason to believe that this happened? Skeptics have attempted to advance a pantheon of reasonable explanations for the devil's footprints. Interestingly, on March 5, 2009 it seems that there was a very similar phenomenon reported from precisely the same area. In this case a resident named Jill Wade of Woolserie, North Devon claimed to have found a strange line of pointed cloven hoof-like footprints in freshly fallen snow in her own backyard. Wade reported that the tracks were five inches long with a stride of between 11 and 17 inches and stretched on for 60 to 70 feet across the garden in an arch-like shape, starting at her window and going out to the other side of the yard where they disappeared. The bizarre tracks were examined by a biologist with the Center for Forty in Zoology, C.F.Z. Graham Inglis, who noticed their striking similarity to the devil's footprints of 1855 from the same vicinity, could not find an easy answer to what made them. However, Inglis did have reservations about jumping straight to a paranormal explanation. Instead of the tracks, this is certainly a first for me. The footprints are peculiar, but they are not the devil's. I don't believe the horned one has been in Woolserie. Personally, I think it belongs to a rabbit or hare, but quite an academic punch-up has started over it. In his book, The Case for the UFO, astronomer Morris K. Jessup mentions the devil's footprints of Devon, hypothesizing that no animal walks by putting one foot directly in front of the other, so these holes in the snow were made with a mechanical precision by something mechanical. Therefore, let's make the broad conclusion that something mechanical passed over Devon in the air. Jessup goes on to theorize that the marks were possibly the result of some type of ray or beam. While the devil's footprints of Devon are rather well-known, more obscure cases of a very similar phenomenon have come in from various places around the world. One such account comes to us from May of 1840 on the remote Kurgulian Islands of the southern Indian Ocean. These windswept rocky swaths of treeless frozen land are surrounded by mercilessly rough gray waters and are located more than 3,300 kilometers or 2,051 miles from the nearest traces of civilization, Madagascar Island, making them one of the most isolated places on earth and earning the islands their nickname, Les de la Desolation, the Desolation Islands. The only plant life to be found here in this chilly uninhabited domain are some lichens, mosses, and grasses, and the only animal life here are a few species of insect, seals, and some seabirds and penguins, as well as feral rabbits, cats, and sheep that have been introduced by passing ships. In May of 1840, Captain Sir James Ross found himself on these shores as part of an expedition to catalog the plant and animal life of the archipelago's main island of Grand Terra. The island was described as being mostly a barren, lifeless wasteland of sparse lichens and moss, with no land animals seen at all. Indeed, at the time there were no introduced large land animals present on the island and the only creatures to be found were insects, seabirds, and seals along the coast. It was for this reason that one discovery would be all the more bizarre. One small detachment led by a lieutenant bird came across a rather odd site as they went about searching the inhospitable snow-swept land for any sign of life. There, in the freshly fallen snow, was a line of horseshoe-shaped hoof-like tracks measuring three inches long and two and a half inches wide, which meandered through the snow for a while before disappearing in a rocky area without snow. Since the island had proven to be devoid of any large land animals and the expedition had no horses or ponies, it was baffling as to what could have possibly made the prince. In the end, Lieutenant Bird speculated that a horse, pony, or donkey must have been left there by a previous expedition or made it to the island from a wrecked ship. But considering that a horse would have died in the Arctic conditions of the island on its own, if it was a castaway, then it must have arrived there fairly recently, and there had been no sign of any other expeditions or shipwrecks in the vicinity at all. Could these prints have possibly been left by a horse or pony that had been left there by someone or had even more improbably escaped a wreck and managed to swim to shore through unforgiving rough waters full of choppy waves and deadly currents? Or was this something else? It also seems improbable that it could have been a hoax, considering no one else was there. It remains a mystery. Yet another unexplained set of Devil's Footprints was found in 1945 near Everberg, Belgium. On January 10th of that year, a curious set of bizarre prints was found etched into the snow on a hill behind a place called the Chateau de Morveaux. The hoof-like prints measured 2.5 inches long by 1.5 inch wide and were composed of a series of a pair of two prints 9 inches apart that then formed a perfect single file line of tracks spaced 12 to 15 inches apart, as if whatever had made them had been hopping along. The tracks wandered for several miles across the hillside, forest, fields, and a stream, and strangely they went right over some deep snow drifts, yet there was no sign of an animal's body sinking within the snow. Only those odd footprints perched atop the frozen white. Locals in the area had never seen anything like it, and one man who investigated the prints, an Eric Frank Russell specifically said that they were reminiscent of the Devil's Footprints of Devon in 1855. Although some have theorized that the tracks were made by a goat, which are common in the area, the Belgian prints have never been satisfactorily explained. Other cases similar to Devon's Devil Footprints have been reported all over the world, but Cathedral in Munich is home to a single tile bearing a footprint said to have been made by a frustrated devil tricked into eating the cathedral's construction. Similarly, a stone in a rock wall in Manchester Main bears marks left behind when a construction worker struck a deal with the Devil to move the large stone. At the Devil's Gate Dam in Pasadena, California, photographers have captured images of claw marks in stone. A comic book series called The Devil's Footprints, written by Scott Alley, received its title and inspiration from a legend Alley remembered from his hometown. The Devil reportedly showed up at the local church in the old town, and the priest chased him up the steeple. The Devil jumped and left one footprint in the stone outside. Are any of these cases of mysterious tracks related? They certainly share some similar traits in their size, appearance, disposition, and the fact that they keep showing up in the strangest of far-flung places. They could be unrelated, but even if they are, we are left with the question of what formed them. Was this the work of known animals, strange weather or atmospheric phenomena, hoaxers, or something else? Whatever the cause may be, one wonders when the next set of these bizarre, clothing tracks will turn up next and what significance they will have. And while there may very well be a mundane explanation at their root, they still manage to incite debate and stir the imagination. Coming up, the victim's shotgun was found in his room, used recently with an empty cartridge on the floor and a large amount of strict nines found in his kitchen. No blood anywhere. Apparently somebody really wanted the man dead, but also wanted it kept a secret. Why? Plus, what do a Jesuit missionary and a former slave have in common? Bigfoot, of course! Those stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial-free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show. Behind the scenes, video updates about future projects and events I'm working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness Contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I'm working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com-Syndicate. That's Weird Darkness.com-Syndicate. True crime historian William Roehead once commented that the setting of a great crime should be properly forbidding. Murder to be fully effective, he said, should be done out of doors and if possible amid surroundings agreeably savage. One in Ghana Station, a cattle ranch located in an isolated valley in Australia's Victoria Alps is to this day a harsh and lonely spot. In the early 20th century, it was as out of doors and agreeably savage a place as any murder fancier could hope to find. So far as I know, the Edinburghian Mr. Roehead had never even heard of the place, but it would have gratified him immensely to know that One in Ghana hosted one of Australia's most notorious murder mysteries. Beginning sometime in 1916, One in Ghana Station was run by a man named James Bargley. He'd been working alone there for some time, but in December 1917, he hired one John Bamford to act as Cook and General Handyman. The two seemed a mismatched couple. Bargley had a good reputation both professionally and personally, but Bamford was widely disliked as he was a quick-tempered, surly sort who was fond of quarreling. There were even rumors that he'd murdered his wife. However, the two men seemed to get on well enough. About a week after Bamford was hired, the pair traveled to the town of Talbotville, about 20 miles from the station, in order to vote on a referendum on introducing the military draft. If any of you are curious, it is recorded that the pair voted the same way, but it's lost to history whether they were for or against the measure. They spent the night at the home of a mutual friend, Albert Stout, and the next morning, December the 21st, the two men began the ride back to One in Ghana, little knowing that their recent votes would prove to be totally irrelevant to either of them. The next time anyone had any reason to visit One in Ghana was on January 22, 1918, when a local man named Harry Smith visited the station to deliver some mail. He was perplexed to find no one there. The only clue to the whereabouts of the men was the message, Home Tonight, written on the door of the kitchen. Assuming that one or both of the men returned up at any moment, Smith decided to wait around for them. When, after two days, there was still no sign of Barclay or Bamford, Smith gave up. Without making any further investigation, he shrugged off the mystery and returned home. On February 14, Smith returned to One in Ghana. When he saw that nothing had been touched since his last visit, the unopened mail was just as he had left it and Barclay's dog Baron was obviously starving, it finally dawned on Smith that something very awful must have happened. He stayed there overnight, doing a fruitless search for some sign of the men, and the next morning traveled to the nearest town, Dargo, to report that Barclay and Bamford had vanished. He also sent telegrams to the ranch's owners, alerting them to what had happened. Police were notified and a search party was quickly assembled. The bedrooms of the two men were disarranged as if they had been ransacked. Some of Bamford's possessions, including his horse, were missing. The horse, which was lacking its saddle and bridle, was later found running wild over the plains. Barclay's shotgun was found in his room. It had been used some time recently and there was an empty cartridge on the floor. There was however no blood or any other obvious signs of violence in the house. Honest of all, a pepper pot in the kitchen was discovered to contain large amounts of strict night. Less than a quarter mile from the house, the search party's worst fears were realized when they discovered a man's skull poking out of a shallow grave. A bit of digging uncovered the rest of the body. The belt and tobacco pouch found with it helped identify the corpse as that of James Barclay. Barclay's autopsy revealed that he had been killed by a single shot through the back. Time of death was estimated as sometime between December 21st and January 4th. Note strict night was found in his system. While no one could say why Barclay was murdered, police had little trouble naming his probable murderer, John Bamford. It seemed obvious that the two had fought after which Bamford shot his employer, grabbed a few belongings and fled. A reward of £200 was offered for any information regarding this dangerous fugitive and a statewide manhunt was on. The hunt for Bamford dragged on without finding the slightest trace of him. It was as if he had somehow managed to vanish from the face of the earth. His whereabouts remained an utter mystery until early November 1918 when the search ended in a most unexpected way. Some men were scouring the Howett Plains, an area about 20 miles from the station and near where Bamford's horse had been recovered. They came across an old abandoned hut. Outside of this hut was a pile of logs. The logs they noticed had a man's boot sticking out from under them. Attached to this boot was what was left of the erstwhile murder suspect John Bamford. An examination proved that he had been killed by a shot to the head. The authorities were disconcerted to realize that they were dealing with not just one bizarre unsolved murder, but two. To this day this is about all we know for certain about the deaths of James Barkley and John Bamford. The police had no success whatsoever in solving the riddle of why the men were killed, let alone by whom. Naturally, many theories have been floated in the century since they died. Perhaps Bamford killed Barkley only to be assassinated by his victim's friends in revenge, or were both men slain by some passing robbers or horse thieves. Was James Barkley, who had a reputation as a ladies man, killed by some jealous rival, who then murdered Bamford in order to silence the only witness to the crime? Could Harry Smith, the first man to alert the world to the mystery, have known more than he ever let on? Who knows? As for that strict nine-filled pepper pot, well, as far as I know, no one has ever even tried to explain that one. The one-and-gottos station murders have remained one of Australia's most solution-defying crimes. Adding to the enigma in a statement made by Barkley's son, James Jr., when he was interviewed about the case in the 1970s, he commented, It was all a long time ago, and both the murderers are long since dead. I can't see that anything can be gained now, it's all best forgotten. Both the murderers? What did the younger Barkley know about the mystery? And why does he obviously wish it to remain a mystery? Some of the strongest sources of anecdotal evidence regarding the existence of the Sasquatch are those that predate the coining of the term Bigfoot in an article about a cat-skinner named Jerry Crew who found massive human-like tracks around his road-building equipment in California's Six Rivers National Forest in August of 1958, and the explosion of the Patterson-Gimlin footage on the world stage in October of 1967. Sightings reported before these two seminal events cannot be dismissed as the work of hoaxers seeking to hop on the Bigfoot bandwagon. The Sasquatch was all but unknown to the Europeans who began flooding the North and South American continents in the 1500s, and to the slaves that they brought with them. Their accounts of bipedal, hair-covered creatures simply cannot be dismissed out of hand. I'd like to discuss here two such historical sightings. The incidents are not well known, but they may well be extremely important when attempting to trace just how far back sightings of wood apes might go. The similarity between these two accounts cannot be denied, and both lend credibility to the opinion of those who believe the animal commonly referred to as Bigfoot was being seen well before the 1950s by people of different cultural backgrounds living many miles apart. The first incident comes directly from the writings of a Jesuit missionary who worked among the people of the province of Sonora, Mexico, a region that stretched up from northwest Mexico to the Sierra Madre near the California coast to Tucson in the 18th century. Father Ignaz Peffercorn, a German Jesuit, lived and worked among the Pima Indians from 1756 to 1767. Details of his work and life among these people can be found in his description de la Provincia de Sonora. The diaries, journals, and logs of missionaries have long been highly valued by anthropologists and historians. Peffercorn's work was no different, and he is considered by academics to have been an extremely reliable and credible observer. His writings continue to be cited by historians to this day. Among Peffercorn's writings were descriptions of the local wildlife. Among the descriptions of what would be considered common animals, the good father wrote about the different bears differentiated by their color found in the region. He wrote, of the Sonora bears some have black hair, others dark gray, and the smallest number are a reddish color. These last are the most cruel and harmful, according to the statements of herdsmen. Only two species of bear are known to have ever lived in the province of Sonora during the 18th century, the black bear and the grizzly. They both made Sonora part of their home range during the time in question. While black bears can be black, blonde, or reddish, it is likely the cinnamon colored bears that were the most cruel and harmful, the grizzlies. While these grizzlies were likely the animals most often responsible for the killing of livestock in the region, some of the other activities attributed to them may well have been the work of something else. Peffercorn, while documenting bear activity related to him by the indigenous tribesmen, in some cases may have actually been recording accounts of Bigfoot interacting with humans. If so, his accounts are some of the earliest ever written down in North America. Here's one intriguing passage. Bears are a special menace to stock-raising, for they eat many a calf, and if no smaller prey falls into their clutches, they will attack even horses, cows, and oxen. They delight especially in eating maize as long as it is still tender and soft. Woe to the field if a hungry bear breaks into it at night. He eats as much as he can and makes off with as much as he can grasp and carry in his mighty arms. In so doing, he ruins even more of the field by breaking it down and treading upon it. The inhabitants assert that a bear defends himself by throwing stones when one attempts to chase him away, and that a stone hurled from his paws comes with much greater force than one thrown from the hand of the strongest man. I don't think I have to tell anybody that a bear can't throw stones, nor is it capable of walking bipedally in order to carry off large amounts of corn in its mighty arms. Hefferkorn was familiar with bears. He had traveled across the region for many years and had seen many ruins. Hefferkorn even witnessed a grisly kill his Indian guide on one trip across Sonora. The guide had attempted to kill the bear, succeeding only in wounding it and paid the ultimate price when the animal turned on its tormentor. This being the case, it's strange that Hefferkorn would attribute rock throwing and the ability to carry large amounts of corn away while walking on two legs to grislies. I think it's entirely possible that the stone hurling, corn-stealing, bipedal bears of Sonora might have actually been wood apes. A strikingly similar account comes from another historical source, a former Arkansas slave. Doc Quinn was one of the oldest living residents of Miller County, Arkansas, yes, the same Miller County that would become known as the home of the folk monster of the legendary Bogey Creek fame when he was interviewed by Cecil Copeland at his home in Texarkana in the 1930s. Doc recalled when he was first brought to the plantation of one Colonel Ogburn between Index and Fulton on the Red River that there was a section of the property dominated by an immense cane break. This cane break was a favorite retreat of bears and other wild animals. It was all but impossible to go in after problem bears that would steal out of the thicket at night and take livestock, so the plantation owner had the slaves round up the hogs and animals and place them in pens at the end of the day. Several slaves were charged with standing guard at night over the domesticated animals. The efforts of the slaves helped somewhat but bears were still seen often and some of their actions were almost human. The following is a passage taken from the book Bearing Witness, Memories of Arkansas Slavery Narratives from the 1930s WPA Collection in which Doc Quinn describes to Cecil Copeland the odd behavior of a bear he came across in a cornfield one day. The bear picked off an ear of corn and put it in his bended arm. He repeated this action until he had an armful and then waddled over to the fence. Standing by the fence, he carefully threw the corn on the other side, ear by ear. The bear then climbed the fence much in the same manner of a human being, retrieved the corn and went on his way. Sounds familiar, does it not? The simple truth is that bears cannot stroll around in a bipedal fashion while plucking ears of corn from stalks in the field with one front paw and placed them into the crook of their other front arm. The description of how Quinn witnessed this animal climb a fence in the same manner of a human being is fascinating. The entire incident simply does not describe bear behavior in any form or fashion. Quinn provides another interesting anecdote in the same interview. I thought long and hard about including it here but not because it is interesting but because Doc Quinn's words are transcribed in such a way that his dialect is evident. Some hot button words, including the N-word, are used. After wrestling with it for a while, I decided to include the account here with only one minor edit. I decided not to use the N-word. I fear in today's climate I'd be accused of approving of it or some such thing. Again, I would remind you that these are not my words. These are the words spoken by former Arkansas slave Doc Quinn and transcribed by his interviewer Cecil Copeland. The text comes straight from the book previously mentioned. To try to focus on the story Doc Quinn is telling, not the language and terminology he uses. The account is as follows. Late one evening, me and another named Jerry was coming home from fishing, rounding the bend in the trail. What did we meet almost face-to-face? The great big old bar. Being young and blessed with swift feet, I make a photo nearest the tree and hastily scrambles to safety. Not so with my fat friend. Peering out and through the branches over the tree, I seized the bar making for Jerry and I says to myself, Jerry, your sins are showcatched up with you this time. But Jerry, honest being mean, must have had to double by his side, pulling out in his bowing knife that jumps to one side as the bar comes charging past and stab it into the side, near the shoulder. As the bar started toning around to make another lunge at him, he noticed the blood spurting from the shoulder. What do you think happened? That old bar forgets all about Jerry, hastily scrambling around. He begins to pick up leaves and trash and clamps them on the wound, trying to keep from bleeding to death. You acted to bar dive? Well, so I don't wait to see the result. Jerry, he done left them parts and not wanting to stay up in that tree all night by myself. I scrambles down and run for a mile home in double quick time. I ask you, what kind of bear notices it is bleeding, stops in the middle of an altercation, begins gathering leaves and then packs its own wound? I'll tell you the answer. None. No bear behaves in this manner. If Doc Quinn is not spinning a yarn to his interviewer, the creature his fishing partner Jerry tangled with was certainly no bear. Was it an aggressive Sasquatch? Certainly the location was right, as the aggressive nature of the folk monster would be well documented some years later. There's a real shortage of viable alternatives if the creature in question was not a bear. The parallels between these two accounts, accounts separated by more than a century and approximately 1,400 miles, are uncanny. Bears cannot and do not gather up corn in their arms and walk away with it in a bipedal fashion. Yet a Jesuit missionary and a former Arkansas slave described observing this same behavior. Doc Quinn's account of how his fishing partner Jerry tangled with an animal that packed its own wound after being stabbed lends credence to the theory that something other than a bear was roaming about Miller County, Arkansas and his youth. Is it possible that these two men from very different worlds, Father Ignos Fevricorn and former slave Doc Quinn, described the same type of animal? An animal they had no name for? An animal that just might have been a wood ape? Sasquatch? Bigfoot? Food for thought. When Weird Darkness returns, the FBI described Israel Keys as one of the most meticulous and vile serial killers in American history. So much so, he even had the FBI scratching their heads. That story is up next. I'm a man of habits. Okay, truth be told, my bride says I'm boring. I like the same stuff and that's what I stick with. And that includes what I eat. Even for breakfast, I used to opt for a leftover pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers. Did I mention pizza? Anyway, now that I'm trying to lose weight and cut back on the carbs, I've had to make changes for breakfast. Now, instead of a big heavy breakfast, I just grabbed one of my built bars, the best-tasting protein bar on the planet. Built bars satisfy my hunger with up to 19 grams of protein and also satisfy my sugar craving, despite being less than 3 grams of sugar. And at only about 150 calories per bar, if I'm really hungry in the morning, I can grab two of them and still feel good about it. Try replacing your dessert or even a meal like breakfast with a built bar. You won't even know it's not really a candy bar. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash built and build a box of your own. Use the promo code WeirdDarkness at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash built promo code WeirdDarkness. For 16 years and maybe even longer, serial killer Israel Keys traveled the country, robbing banks, burglarizing homes, burying kill kits in Home Depot buckets, and preying upon victims who seemed to share nothing in common. He was an investigator's worst nightmare, a serial killer with no apparent pattern or type. By the time he died by his own hand while awaiting trial for the abduction, rape, and brutal murder of Samantha Koenig, he had been linked to at least 11 deaths and disappearances, and his true number of victims may never be known. He's died in his jail cell on December 2, 2012 as a result of self-inflicted cuts on his wrist and strangulation. He left behind a blood-smeared four-page suicide note that's been called an ode to murder. Dr. Stephen Montgomery, a forensic psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, described Keys' chilling note written partially in loosely rhyming meter as showing no remorse, no regard for human life. It's certainly not an ordinary suicide note, Dr. Phil Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at University Hospital's Case Medical Center in Cleveland said after reading the haunting note. He doesn't talk much about his own dilemmas of being in prison or why he's taking his own life. It's more of a final statement of contempt for the American style of life, Dr. Resnick went on to say. I think the other thing he emphasizes is his own superiority, that he has guile and can take advantage of people who are naive and trusting of him. In his suicide note, Keys, who was raised in a cultish survivalist family, keeps disdain upon what he perceives as the normal American way of life and refers to one of his victims as, quote, my pretty captive butterfly, unquote. The skills that Keys' survivalist upbringing had instilled in him, along with a three-year stint in the military, proved helpful as Keys committed his crimes while evading authorities. He had zero victim profile, Marine Callahan told A&E. Callahan is the author of American Predator, a recently released book about the life and crimes of Israel Keys. I think of him as an analog killer in a digital world. All he did was buy a one-way plane ticket to a major city, rent a car, drive thousands of miles. In those drives, he'd be digging up kill kits that he had hidden all over the U.S. The kits were home depot buckets that he filled with guns, ammo, rope, cash, and drain-o which he used to accelerate human decomposition. The locations were only in his mind, never documented. He's partly funded his murderous hobby by committing strings of robberies and burglaries across the country. He'd been connected to several bank robberies, and he suspected of having burglarized 2230 homes. If he could, Callahan said, describing Keys' modus operandi, he'd take the bodies to another location and dispose of them so expertly that he left no trace of them or his DNA behind. This seems to have been what happened to Bill and Lorraine Courier, the Essex Vermont couple who vanished suddenly in 2011. He's later confessed to killing them using a murder kit that he had buried near their home two years earlier. More than merely a methodical killer, he's actually studied criminal profiling in order to learn what not to do. In fact, according to CBS, the FBI has described Keys as one of the most meticulous serial killers in American history. He claimed to have first read John Douglas' book, Mindhunter, inside the FBI's elite Serial Crime Unit, the basis for the Netflix series of the same name, when he was a teenager. According to Callahan, Keys stated that he suddenly realized he wasn't alone, after reading Douglas' descriptions of violent defenders and their pathological urges. Keys was finally arrested in March of 2012. More than a month earlier, he had abducted 18-year-old Samantha Koenig by gunpoint from the coffee booth where she worked in Anchorage, Alaska. Weeks later, her dismembered body would be found at the bottom of Matanuska Lake. In the meantime, however, Keys went on a pre-booked two-week cruise with his family in the Gulf of Mexico, while Koenig's brutalized body lay in a shed back in Alaska. When he returned, he posed her body to look like it was still alive and took a photo of it alongside a days-old copy of the Anchorage Daily News, demanding a $30,000 ransom from her family. It was this ransom demand that eventually led to Keys' arrest. The money was deposited into Koenig's account, and Keys used her debit card to withdraw funds across the Southwest United States. Authorities were able to track the withdrawals and ultimately arrested Keys at the Cotton Patch Cafe in Lufkin, Texas. Once he was in custody, Keys began confessing to crimes but was never as forthcoming as investigators would have hoped. Even the top criminal profilers at the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit were terrified of him and flummoxed by him, according to Callahan. I can tell you right now there is no one who knows me or who has ever known me who knows anything about me, really, Keys himself told authorities. I'm two different people, basically. As an example of this duality, on the same day that Keys dismembered Samantha Koenig's body and sank it in the frigid waters of Matanuska Lake, he attended a parent-teacher conference for his own daughter. American Predator is dedicated to the victims and their families, known and unknown. While Keys admitted to several murders, rapes and other crimes while he was awaiting trial, his suicide left the total tally of his victims unknown, probably forever. One of my hopes, Callahan said of why she had written the book, is that some potentially Keys-related missing persons cases are reopened to find more victims. Unfortunately, Keys' strange suicide note, written in a combination of pencil and ink on a blood-stained legal pad, provided no investigative clues or leads as to the identity of other possible victims, according to the FBI. In 2020, the FBI released a series of crude paintings discovered underneath Keys' jail cell bed. The paintings depicted 11 skulls and a pentagram, and the FBI believes that the 11 skulls signify Keys' victims. Still, the mystery endures, and the messages provide one last cryptic look into the mind of a sick and monstrous man. Forget the lady called Luck, Keys wrote in his bloody final communication with the world, she does not abide near me, for her powers don't extend to those who are dead. Weird Darkness Weirdo's Facebook group on the contact page of the website. If you're listening to the show via podcast or on YouTube, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already done so and leave a review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. And if you're already a weirdo, please take a moment today and share Weird Darkness with somebody you know who loves paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or mysteries like you do. 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. The Devil Came to Devon is by Orrin Gray at Ranker and Brent Swancer at Mysterious Universe. The One and God of Murders is by Undyne for Strange Company. The missionary, the slave, and Bigfoot is from Michael Mays for Texas Cryptid Hunter. And a meticulous serial killer is by Orrin Gray for the lineup. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. John 11, verse 25, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life, the one who believes in me will live even though they die. And a final thought, I don't need a perfect life, I just want to be happy, surrounded by good friends who love me for who I am. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.