 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Picture it. You and your better half are on your way home after a night on the town. It's late, it's dark, and you pull into the gas station for a pack of smokes. Your partner runs in, you wait in the car. You're sitting there, idly waiting for them to return when suddenly you get this inexplicable overwhelming feeling of terror. You set up a little straighter and glance toward the driver's side window, and there, staring in at you are two children, but not just any children. These are black-eyed children, and they want to get into the car with you. Sounds like something out of one of those village of the damned sequels, right? Well, it's not. This is real life, as real as it gets, and this is just one of thousands of reported sightings. Black-eyed children are knocking on doors and tapping on windows, asking to be let in all over the world. 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, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up in this episode. When it comes to the religious practice of snake handling, sometimes God holds back the snake. Sometimes, he sends you to heaven. The idea of waking up each day with no memory of the previous day makes for a humorous scenario in Hollywood, such as the film Fifty First Days, but the real thing is not nearly as laughable. If you visit Central Michigan University, you'll see intelligent students, friendly staff, experienced professors, and if you're not careful, a few undead alumni. The bell rings, you answer the door, and you're met by two young boys. A normal event in the life of everyday people, but have those children on your doorstep ever had jet black eyes? A woman makes the mistake of letting one of these children into her home, and now she's dying. More and more reports are coming in about the after-effects of meeting BEKs, even years after the encounter. Most BEK encounters are the children trying to get into your home, but there is also a story of a normal child going door-to-door, and one of those doors is answered by a black-eyed adult. If you're new here, welcome to the show, and if you're already a member of this weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen, and please leave a rating and review in the podcast app you're listening from. Doing these things helps the show to keep growing, and while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to connect with me on social media, and more. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. BECs or BEKs, black-eyed children or black-eyed kids have, as the name implies, black eyes, completely void of color or light. No pupils, no irises, just dead-looking black eyes. In fact, some witnesses say their eyes seem to be bottomless pools of blackness. These children, typically between the ages of 8 and 16, have very pale skin. Some people say it even looks plastic or artificial, but other than that, they look like normal children. Witnesses say they either dress in drab clothes, generally blue jeans and a hoodie, or they wear very old-fashioned hand-made clothing similar to what Amish people might wear. Sometimes they travel in pairs, sometimes in groups, sometimes you'll see just one. Regardless, these BECs seem to evoke an instant feeling of terror, not just suspicion or even fear, but pure gut-wrenching, I think I might crap my pants, but who cares because I'm about to die anyway, mind-numbing terror. What do they do that's so terrifying? Nothing, really. They just ask to enter your home or your vehicle. But it's not what they ask, it's how they ask it. Witnesses report that the children approach and try to get you to let them into your home to use the phone or ask you to give them a ride home because they are lost or maybe they forgot something. And when they speak, it's in a monotone, almost hypnotic voice. One witness even compared it to hypnosis that she'd undergone to quit smoking. No matter what you say to these children, they don't answer questions or speak about anything else. They just keep saying, let us in, we won't hurt you, this won't take long. This won't take long? To me, that sounds like those children in the Village of the Damned, and that movie always, always freaks me out. Now, I know you're probably thinking these are just children wearing black contact lenses, but David Weatherly, who has written a book called Black-Eyed Children, says that may be true in some cases. However, black lenses would cover the entire surface of the eye, and they're very expensive and extremely uncomfortable. Given the average age of black-eyed children is 13, he doesn't think most children would be able to afford lenses like that, nor would they be able to wear them for any length of time. Jason Offit is another paranormal researcher who's done some digging into the black-eyed children phenomenon, and I accidentally tripped over his blog. It was here that I found the following account. At about 10.45 on a warm night, 18-year-old Caris Holdsworth was walking to her apartment from a friend's house in Lisburn, a city in Northern Ireland near Belfast. Her apartment was in a bad section of town as she approached, she noticed two teenagers in hoodies and jeans standing in her yard with their backs to her. Of course, she was immediately wary and put her hand in her purse to grab hold of her pepper spray. As she was sneaking around the corner, the two boys turned simultaneously to face her, which really freaked her out. She says she felt raw fear when she saw their faces. However, Caris did have her pepper spray in her purse, and she was still alert enough to defend herself should the boys approach. But they didn't. Instead, they seemed able to read her mind. No need for that, the older one spoke, calmly and maturely. We just want to borrow your phone, miss. Caris said they looked just like two normal boys. Until that is, she saw their eyes. They were pitch black, no trace of white or pupil at all, she said. She felt she was in terrible danger and had to get away. Running for her door and fumbling with her keys, the boys following closely at her heels, the boys continued to ask to use the phone. Please, miss, my mother won't be happy if she doesn't know where we are. I wanted to obey them at first, considering that they were young, she said, but seeing their eyes took me away. I just had to get away from them both, and I knew if I obeyed them, I was going to seriously regret it. Caris managed to make it inside her apartment and locked the door, but just as she was about to sit down with a cup of coffee, there came a knock. When she ignored it, the knock came again and she immediately felt a sense of overwhelming terror. When she peeped out the peephole, there they were again, both boys staring at her. Just let us in to use the phone, he said. We won't hurt you. We have no weapons to hurt you with. Caris opened the door and ordered the children to leave her alone. Locked everything up, tied his a drum afterwards and then called a friend. When the friend arrived, the boys finally hightailed it out of there, but not before she too felt an overwhelming sense of danger. Caris soon moved to another neighborhood but says, I always check through that peephole before I go to sleep, she said. I don't know exactly what those boys were, but I do know they meant me harm and that they weren't human in any way. I still get scared thinking about it. So what are these black-eyed children? Weatherly seems to think they are an alien human hybrid, particularly because they bear a strong resemblance to men in black. He is also a little inclined to believe that they might have some sort of demonic origin because a lot of the reports say these children seem to vanish into thin air. Some witnesses also report a huge run of bad luck or even death after encountering one of these soulless children. In the last few years, the frightening phenomenon of the black-eyed children visitations has swept the Internet. Whether or not the stories of midnight encounters with the mysterious black-eyed kids have any truth to them has been a hotly debated topic, but that hasn't stopped tales of the BEKs from popping up on message boards, in chat rooms and on paranormal podcasts, such as this one. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they want? No one is really sure. No matter who tells the story, the encounters always occur the same way. Someone, home alone in the middle of the night, hears a knock on the door. When they peek through the window, children, normally in a pair, are seen standing in the cold. As the resident cautiously cracks open the door to see what might be wrong, a familiar feeling of dread washes over them. The strange children beg to be let inside, but something isn't right. There's something off about these kids. As the lonely resident looks closer, they see that these children's eyes are black as an oil slick, an unnerving detail that causes them to slam the door and deny their pleas for entrance. Some of them call the police. Others clutch a weapon. But never, ever do they let the black-eyed children inside. Until now. The following chilling eyewitness account comes from a woman who emailed me to say that she made the mistake of letting the black-eyed kids inside her home, and now she claims she's paying the ultimate price. Her story comes as a warning to those willing to open their door more than a crack. I've edited the letter for grammar, redacted the identifying information and slightly altered the introduction, but beyond that, the following report is submitted exactly as it arrived. Let me start by saying that I know how hard this all will be to believe, but now that things have taken a turn for the worse, I started looking for stories similar to mine and found your site. I feel like I should share this story with someone and your website seems like the right place. I made the mistake of letting the black-eyed kids inside, and now I'm worried that I might die because of it. I hope this will be a warning to everyone who is ever in the position to make the same mistake I did. I live just outside of a rural town in Vermont. It's a tight-knit community where everyone knows one another and people don't lock their doors at night. There's never been any need to. A little over a year ago, I woke up because I heard a loud banging on my front door. At the time, my husband and I lived in a small home on a dirt road just off the rural route into town. It was the middle of a snowstorm and the nearby hills get very slippery in the snow, so I thought that perhaps somebody may have been in an accident and broken down. It has happened before. When I looked out the window, I could see that our emotion spotlight was on. I could see that there were footprints in the snow that had come from our road and into our driveway, but there was no car anywhere. The snow was still covering the road and no one had driven on it for at least a couple of hours. Our front door was obscured from the window, but I could see that someone was standing there. I wasn't sure what to think, so I woke my husband up just to feel safer. While I was telling him what was going on, the banging on the door started again, and my husband went to answer it while I stood in the hallway. When he opened the door, there were two children standing in the snow, looking toward the ground. They were a boy and a girl and could not have been more than perhaps eight years old. They were dressed strangely and had odd haircuts. The girl's hair was very long and straight, and the boy had a dated haircut that looked almost like a bowl cut. They weren't dressed for winter, and my first thought was that they must have been Mennonite children, but as far as I know there has never been a large community of Mennonites near us. Thinking back on it now, I know that my normal reaction to seeing children in a snowstorm would have been to rush them inside and bundle them up with some blankets and hot cocoa, but that's not how this felt. The children were very unnerving. They would not make eye contact, and when my husband asked them if everything was okay, they asked if they could come in. My husband looked at me like, what do I do? And I asked the kids where their parents were. They'll be here soon, is all they said. It was around two o'clock in the morning at this point, so the only reasonable thought in my head was that there must have been an accident, or these kids maybe got lost. As much as my instincts told me not to bring them inside, I did so anyway. I went into the kitchen to make them some hot cocoa, while my husband took them into the living room. While I was fixing the kettle, I could hear my husband talking to the kids. He was asking them if they were okay, where they came from, how far they walked, if their parents' car was broken down, things like that. But they always answered, our parents will be here soon. They spoke in a sing-songy voice. They weren't afraid to be in a stranger's home at all. I started to notice that our cats we had for were all hiding, except Pigeon who was in the kitchen with me. Normally, our cats are very curious and friendly, and we have to be careful that they don't run out the door when we leave. This time, none of them even tried to see who was here, which I thought was very strange. All of the hair on Pigeon's neck was standing up and his tail was puffed up while he looked into the living room. When I bent down to pet him to see what was wrong, he hissed and started growling and backed up until he had hit himself under the kitchen island. I have never seen him do that before. When I walked back into the living room, the kids were sitting on the couch as still as can be, but my husband was holding his head in his hands. I asked him what was wrong, and he said that he just felt dizzy all of a sudden, but that he was fine. I turned back to the children to give them their cocoa, but when they looked at me, I gasped. It took everything inside of me not to drop the mugs and run away. When they looked at me, their eyes were completely black. They had no whites, just giant black pupils. When they saw that I was scared, they stood up and asked if they could use the bathroom. I tried to be as composed as I could and showed them down the hall. They went into the bathroom together, and I hurried back to my husband to ask him if he had seen their eyes. He had seen them too, and said that it looked like his brother's badly bruised eyes after a car accident. We were in the middle of talking about whose children they could be when my husband's nose started to bleed. He never had nosebleeds as long as I had known him. I just knew inside myself this had something to do with the kids in the bathroom, and I started crying while I ran to get my husband some tissues. That's when the power went out. I heard my husband yell my name from the living room, and as I started to walk back through the hallway, I stopped dead in my tracks. The two children were standing at the end of the hallway. They weren't moving, and I have never been so scared in my whole life. They just stood there in the dark. After what felt like forever, the boy said, Our parents are here, and they walked to the door, opened it, and walked out, leaving it wide open. My husband jumped up to close it and almost fell over. We looked out the window and saw two men standing by a black car idling at the end of our driveway. The men looked like they were wearing black colored suits and were very tall at least six feet. When my husband waved at them, they just stared at us, got into the car, and drove off. Our power came on about a half an hour later, but nothing was the same after that. Over the next few months, three of our cats went missing. We can only assume that they ran away somewhere and never came back, but the worst thing was coming home to find pigeon in a puddle of blood on the living room floor. He looked as if he had been vomiting blood. The vet told us he had some kind of hemorrhage. After my husband's nosebleeds became a regular occurrence, we went to see the doctor. He didn't know what to make of it other than dry nasal passages, but my husband was diagnosed with an aggressive skin cancer. When the doctor asked us if he used tanning beds, we both thought he was joking, but apparently this kind of melanoma is linked to overuse of indoor tanning. The doctors think he will recover but don't understand how it got so bad so quickly. My husband has never worked an outdoor job and spends relatively little time in the sun. Since we let the black-eyed kids inside our home, I have also suffered from regular dizzy spells and nosebleeds on a regular basis. I've had other issues which I won't mention here, but trust me when I say that I am suddenly in the worst condition of my life and no one can do anything about it. I know that all of this is because I let the black-eyed children into my home. We've told everyone we could about the strange kids that showed up that night, but no one else saw them and some laugh at how scared we were of the Mennonite kids, but we know what we saw. I wish my husband had never opened the door. Feel free to use this as a warning to others about the black-eyed kids. My advice would be to lock your doors, call the police and wait for morning. Don't make the same mistake that I did. Another account comes from an airman at a Texas military base. It's one thing to scare a woman alone in her home, but to terrify a trained military man on base? That only goes to show how frightening these kids really are. Buckle up, because this story is a good one. I'm a 6'7", 260-pound airman who was prior Special Forces. About a month ago, while stationed at a base in Texas that I will not disclose, I was drinking a beer when I heard a knock on my dorm door. I got up out of bed thinking it was my pissmate and since we have Jack and Jill-styled bathrooms connecting our rooms, I opened our bathroom door and there was nothing. Being confused as heck, I heard this sharp wrapping on my door again so I look out my peephole. Now, the hole being quite settled halfway down the door, I had to bend down to look through it. Standing there in front of me was a boy who looked about 17 or 18 at the most. I asked, what's up? And he looked up with a smile that I can only describe as partially cruel and hungry looking. With a gaunt face, the boy asked me if he could use my phone. I said, sorry, but I'm about to go to sleep, so try the SP building across the parking lot. I closed the door, thinking nothing of it. He knocked again and I walked over to my window, this time to intimidate the boy into leaving me be. I pulled my blinds up and looked straight at him. He looked up at me. I'd say he was only five foot nine, maybe about 140 pounds, real gaunt and frail looking. Believe me when I say I don't scare easily, but something about him made me feel uneasy as I'll get out. He looked up at me and asked if he could come in again, and then I saw his eyes. They were empty looking coals and a smile crept to his mouth, that same hungry predatory smile, and I felt goosebumps on my legs and back. Something wasn't right. I said, I'm going to tell you one more time before I kick your ass to get lost. I turned around to get my phone and looked back and he was gone. The only thing that I can't help but shake is this feeling that I'd seen him somewhere before. In Pennsylvania, two years before that night, I was working in a gas station. Late one night I was working an 11-7 shift in late October, still in high school, when I saw him walk across a four-lane highway to our pumps and stare at me and my brother who was outside smoking a cigarette. My brother yelled over to him asking if he needed anything and it was that same reply he needed to use our phone. My brother told him it was behind the counter and he can't use it, but the kid kept on coming closer. We went inside and he stood in front of the shop glass and he just knocked for about five or so minutes until my brother got a bat went outside. He said the same thing I did. The kid had a white face and black eyes. I am uneasy about this. I shouldn't be terrified like this. Whether they're banging on doors at military bases or frightening residential homeowners, the Black-eyed children show no signs of slowing their terror tour of America. But now these encounters have started to take a darker turn. People are actually dying in strange ways after meeting the BEKs. Eyewitness accounts continue to spill out from those who've had run-ins with the Black-eyed children and the woman from Vermont who claims she's dying, she's not alone in her maladies. The following report comes from a woman named Jamie Lynn who claims that one of her own friends was also suddenly stricken with an aggressive cancer after meeting the Black-eyed children. My friend took a road trip to see a friend in California. They visited, said their goodbyes, and he stopped by a bar to have a drink before going to his hotel for the night. The bartender was a beautiful woman, my friend was extremely attractive, and she served him and chatted and smiled. After a few more drinks, the woman told him he could stay at her place. She said to leave his car there and she'd drive him back the next day, as her place was hard to find and somewhat remote. He took her up on the offer. He told me later that he began to be very fearful when they arrived at her home. She took him to her room and, of course, the inevitable sex experience. He said he was actually frightened of her then as well, as she was not acting normally and sounded almost inhuman in a way. After laying in bed for a while, the woman had fallen asleep and he got up to get water from the kitchen. As he was walking to the sink, he saw numerous small, frightening-looking children walking to and fro about the place. It was a large two-story house. He wondered what they were doing up at 2 or 3 am if they had school the next day. He also said they looked at him with completely black eyes and he was terrified of them, that he had horrible feelings about them. It turns out the woman owned the bar and she did return him the next day. She forced him out and he had to walk to the highway. I met up with him a week or two later and he seemed perfectly fine but a little frazzled. About a month later, this extremely healthy, athletic individual was diagnosed with bladder cancer and no medication or treatment would impact his condition. He believed it was directly related to that experience with the black-eyed children. He died about six months after his diagnosis. The thought of little kids with black eyes running around knocking on people's doors in the middle of the night is scary enough but the reports of cancer and other strange illnesses take this BEC phenomenon to a whole new level. You definitely do not want to let them in. In 1998, the first reports of the black-eyed children began to surface online with appearances cited in Abilene, Texas and Portland, Oregon. For the next two decades, the reports of creepy children began to appear in frightening stories that permeated the internet, books, and even films. But despite theories of alien human hybrids, evil origins, and other attempts at digging up the truth, one question has always remained. Who were the parents of the black-eyed kids? Now a woman has come forward with her own encounter from the 90s that might just answer that question. Her story is one of the very few that involve black-eyed adults and falls perfectly into the timeline that sparked the arrival of the black-eyed kids. Melissa S. writes in with this story from Pennsylvania. Years ago, when I was a child, I was selling Girl Scout cookies around my neighborhood. Back then, parents were more relaxed and didn't mind a child going door to door on their own as much as they do today. I lived in a safe neighborhood where nothing really happened. I was going house to house but I wasn't having much luck. I saw this red car pull up into the driveway so I ran to catch them as they exited the car. I was desperate to make some sales. I saw there were three of them as they got out of the car, two elderly people, one male and one female, and the third person was a young woman in her 30s. The elderly people saw me and got really excited. From far away, I thought their eyes looked black but I assumed it was just because of the distance between us. I didn't make anything of it but I thought something was off about them when they started excitedly running up to me. I put a smile on my face and said hello as they were running up but my smile turned into an expression of horror when they came right by me and I saw their eyes truly were pitch black. They had no whites in their eyes. They looked down at me with huge smiles on their faces. I just froze in place with fear. They looked at each other for a second and the women said something I couldn't understand to the black eyed man. They looked right back at me. They were slightly bent down and just right in my face. The woman who was with them ran up, took their arms to pull them away and sincerely apologized. She said I'm so sorry and hurried them inside. As soon as she took them and went towards the house, I became unfrozen and ran almost all the way back home. When I slowed down I started to feel bad. I rationalized to myself that maybe they had some kind of disorder that made them that way. I mean they did behave like two-year-olds. I tried looking it up years later attempting to find a disorder that matched what I'd seen but I couldn't find anything. Still I thought maybe it was just a rare disorder and that's why I couldn't find anything. It wasn't until a few years ago when I found out about black eyed children from a friend did I realize that what I experienced was probably supernatural. And this raises so many questions. Who were those people? Why did they have black eyes? Why was that woman caring for them like they couldn't care for themselves? If the theories that these black eyed people are really alien human children, then what are they doing living in a human neighborhood? Maybe it's a combination of messed up genes and mental illness. I'll never really know what they were and why a normal lady cared for them. Makes you wonder what people know that we don't. A kid going door to door bumps into the black eyed adults. Talk about a role reversal. The serpent's tongue flicked from its scarred lips. Its fat brown body coiled in the palmetto, black eyes glinting in the dim light. The forked tongue touched the glass and retreated, touched and retreated, steady as a metronome. Without that flicker of motion, the snake would have been invisible. One more piece of driftwood lost in the shadows, thrown by the branches and wire mesh atop the display. You ever seen a serpent handler's snake? Zookeeper said his cut up arms bulged from a work shirt emblazoned with the logo of Zoo Atlanta. He passed me twice before he spoke, the two of us alone in the gloom of the reptile house, with nothing but the rustle in the cases for a company. Never have, I said, that's a cotton mouth, right? Sure is, the keeper said. He nodded at a lonely rope divider meant to hold the public a few feet away from the glass. It was the only such barrier in the building. That's a Pentecostal snake. You come close, she'll strike at you through the glass and smash her mouth up. She's done that a couple times already, see? That's why we got the rope. She's an angry snake, Jack. I looked down at the rope divider. The cotton mouse head tracked my movement. Where'd she come from? Donated, he said. Came off some Alabama snake handlers. Apparently she bit a few too many. Some people died. He looked down at the heavy brown coils with a beatific smile. We call her preacher killer. I laughed. She's that mean, huh? Not mean, Jack, the zookeeper said. He nodded to me as he left. Just angry. The cotton mouse jaws opened in slow, threatening gait. Its gums glowed a ghostly white. Above the open mouth, its eyes glittered unblinking. I met its gaze for a long time before I walked away. I thought of preacher killer now and then in the following months. I knew nothing about serpent handlers at the time, having grown up Jewish in Orthodox neighborhoods in Dallas and Atlanta. But I loved reptiles, and 20 years of experience of turning over logs and scrambling down ravines had taught me a lot about snakes. I'd seen the magitated, made aggressive by fear or territorial instinct. Never anything deeper than that. But if any snake was angry, it was that one. Angry enough to bash her own face in by striking against solid glass, striking at anything that came close, striking from the sheer existential rage of a snake born into a world filled with people. Had she hatched that way, I wondered? Or was that anger born in a wooden box buffeted to life by holy hands? Who were the people who had kept her? What was life like for the Pentecostal serpent? That story is up next when Weird Darkness returns. Coffee. It's a necessity. Most of us can't be bothered to even be civil to our families until we've had our first cup of Joe. I could drink coffee all day, and often do, and now I've chosen an exclusive coffee just for the task. Weird Dark Roast Coffee. I love chocolate, I mean who doesn't, so I specifically asked for a blend with at least a hint of cocoa, and Evansville Coffee, who roasts each bag to order, knocked it out of the park when they sent me a bag to taste test for approval. Weird Dark Roast Coffee has deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness that makes it great hot or cold. Personally, I like to put a little milk in it when I'm drinking it hot, but it is amazing black and poured over ice. But now you can drink it too. And the only place you can find Weird Dark Roast Coffee is at WeirdDarkness.com. I'm so sure you'll love it that we've even set it up for you to get free delivery on your first order if you use the promo code Weird. The origins of serpent handling lie in the old folk traditions of the Appalachian Mountains, a place where scripture and snakes were in generous supply. But the ritualized handling of snakes attained national prominence in 1910 when a traveling preacher named George Hensley began including it in his sermons. For textual justification, he pointed to the verse Mark 16, verse 18, where handling serpents was listed as one of the signs of those faithful to God. Clearly, Hensley argued, that was a command to take up venomous snakes. Non-venomous snakes are not considered to be serpents. For a time, his contemporaries agreed with him. Appalachia was still caught up in the great revival, a wave of holiness and Pentecostal evangelizing that swept across the country and promoted ecstatic, emotionally charged forms of worship. Adherents were compelled by the power of the Holy Spirit to speak in tongues, cast out demons, heal with their hands. Any man could preach if he felt the Spirit. Serpent handling was an escalation, a powerful ritual that drew crowds of believers and skeptics alike. The practice spread quickly, sister congregations popping up like mushrooms across the hills. The snakes themselves were transformed, no longer dangerous vermin or vague symbols of evil, but conduits for the will of God. In a sermon at the height of his powers, Hensley compared serpent handling to other forms of biblical deliverance, Daniel in the lion's den, Jonah in the fish's belly. But that was before your time, he called to the crowd. I'll show you something of your time, I'll show you how to handle the rattlesnake and you'll all know the result of a rattlesnake. But reporters knew the result of a rattlesnake too. As the dangers of the practice caught up, articles about fatal snake bites appeared in the New York Times, in the Chattanooga News Free Press, in any number of local papers. By 1955, there had been at least 35 confirmed deaths as a result of snake handling. One of them was the 75-year-old Hensley, killed by a five-foot rattlesnake on a boiling Sunday afternoon in Florida. By then, the holiness and Pentecostal assemblages had disavowed the practice and every Appalachian state, with the sole exception of West Virginia, had banned it. What had been an exciting new religious practice was cast to the margins of American religious history and left to die. But a few serpent-handling churches hung on, underground, in the tangled hills and rural communities of Appalachia. There they developed their own traditions, independent of the wider denominations and often independent of each other. For a while, they were one of the South's open secrets, backwards-backwoods people shaking their snakes, raiding somewhere between a curiosity and a joke. That changed in the 1990s, when a preacher named Glenn Summerford got drunk, put a gun to his wife's head, and forced her to stick her hand into a crate full of rattlesnakes. She was bitten twice before she managed to escape and call the police. Her ordeal and Summerford's subsequent conviction for attempted murder drew national attention. Journalists once again flocked to services. Cable channels desperate for content discovered in serpent-handling the perfect excuse for a steady stream of lurid documentaries and reality shows. Most congregations shied away from the limelight, but some, especially those led by young, telegenic pastors, saw the attention as a chance to boost their ministries. One of them was Jamie Coots, Kentucky preacher and star of the 2013 reality show, Snake Salvation. For 16 episodes, Coots invited producers into every aspect of serpent-handling life and he used the publicity to invite skeptics to his church. Then in February 2014, he died of a timber-rattler bite during services. His passing prompted its own wave of sensational coverage, further wrapping serpent-handlers in a televised enclosure of strangeness and death. The news stories shook something loose inside my brain. It had been two years since I had seen Preacher Killer and as a busy undergraduate, I had hardly had time to think of serpent-handlers. The death of Jamie Coots brought back half-forgotten memories of that angry cotton mouth at a glass case, memories tangled up in snatches of film and hazy imaginings. What little I knew about serpent-handlers came from the television and that information now seemed simple and shallow. I wanted to know why Coots had picked up something he knew could kill him. And at the back of my mind, I wanted to know about Snake. The locus of academic research on serpent-handling resides in a tiny, book-choked office at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Broad wooden boxes and the shed, flaking skins of rattlesnakes line the walls. The office belongs to Dr. Ralph Hood, a professor of religious psychology who has been studying the practice since the 1970s. Originally, Hood said serpent-handling was academically dismissed, a deviant tradition of a culturally impoverished people. But that has changed over time, as scholars have been more willing to view the practice as unique and interesting in its own right. Hood himself has amassed hundreds of hours of recordings, interviews and video footage of services and is on good terms with handlers all across the mountains. But legislative attitudes have not kept pace with academic ones. Serpent-handling is still illegal in most southern states and practicing churches are occasionally rated by police. This is constitutionally tricky, however, so states like Tennessee have recently chosen to pursue serpent-handlers for violating laws about wildlife collecting. Officially, the purpose of the ban is to protect people from snakebites. To Hood, that's a flimsy rationalization, meant to hide the fact that southern legislatures have long viewed the tradition as distasteful. Driving a church is pretty dangerous, he says, but nobody is going to ban cars. The argument that the states are protecting people from a religious activity reveals the bias. We allow all kinds of high-risk activities in the secular world, but serpent-handlers are taking a serious risk during a religious ritual, which is something other Christians don't do. No mainstream religion in America does. Secular risks are often brushed off as the choices of consenting adults, but religious risk is not something that American thought has a frame for and ecstatic worship, in general, is usually viewed as the province of the poor. It's not hard to see why the larger revival groups in a bid for mainstream acceptance toned down their services and removed the riskier elements. In return, they've reaped the rewards of rich donors and massive congregations. Mainstream Christians, the kind who sit quietly in church, live comfortable middle-class lives or get elected to state office, would never do anything as out-tray as dance with a rattlesnake. This suspicion leads state authorities to assume that taking up serpent is, effectively, suicide. In fact, the risks are more complex. Six types of venomous snakes are found in the south, and serpent-handling churches make use of all of them. There's the copperhead, the color of a dead leaf and shy, the burly eastern diamond back with its ridged scales and chocolate-spangled hide, the tawny timber rattler, lean, yellow and lethal, the gray-black-pigney rattler, small and rare, the coral snake, smaller and rarer, and of course there is the cottonmouth, fat hissing with long fangs and a mouth the color of snow. Handling any of them is a daunting prospect, but surprisingly few people get bitten, a fact that is commonly attributed to some kind of trickery on the part of serpent-handlers. In fact, Hood's research suggests a person's chance of being bitten is fairly low, especially if they only handle occasionally. Venomous snakes are calmer than we give them credit for, he says, and they can become accustomed to being held and thus less likely to bite. Other researchers disagree with this explanation, though, suggesting instead that the common practice of crowding multiple snakes in a single box leaves the animals sick and parasite-ridden, unable to muster up the energy to strike. There is some evidence for this line of thought. A group of snakes confiscated from a church in Tennessee were so sick that Michael Ogle, a curator of hepatology at the Knoxville Zoo, was forced to have them put down rather than risk the rest of the zoo's collection. Hood brushes this off. Yes, he says, some of the snakes are sick, but most of them are freshly caught before every service and are released soon afterward. Handling sick snakes would be like handling non-venomous snakes and that would defeat the purpose. The point is to have enough faith in God to take up something wild, untamed, and unpredictable. That unpredictability, however, is the root of the danger. However acclimated to humans a snake might be, it's never truly tame. The more often a person handles, the greater their chance for a bite. Bites aren't necessarily fatal. Toxin is both metabolically expensive for a snake to produce and its only tool for subduing prey. So snakes often give dry bites, warning nips that inject none of their precious venom. A full bite from some vipers, like the Copperhead, is easily survivable. Contrary to popular belief, though, it's impossible to become immune to snake venom. Instead, successive bites often lead to worsening allergic reactions. Hensley claimed to have been bitten more than 400 times before he died. Coots was bitten eight times before he received the killing strike. Handling snakes is not a death sentence, but any handling could be your last. Practitioners are well aware of this. There's a constant repetition in recorded interviews. Don't take up a serpent if you don't feel the spirit. Don't handle for show. There's death in that box, boy, and you open it at your apparel. At the same time, they embrace the risk. Life and death rest entirely in God's hands, they believe, and whatever happens while handling is his will. Sometimes he holds back the snake. Sometimes he calls them to heaven. It's not something they expect the rest of the world to understand. It's difficult getting invited to a serpent-handling church these days. The publicity surrounding Coots' death forced the smaller churches to adopt a siege mentality, with any requests for interviews or recordings met with flat denials. Still, Hood provided me with a contact, Billy Summerford, a pastor of a little church in Northern Alabama and the cousin of Glenn Summerford, who tried to kill his wife with a box of rattlesnakes. A week later, I drove up the winding roads and along the eroding flanks of Sand Mountain toward Macedonia, Alabama, and Billy Summerford's church. I arrived at sunset. Tides of blue shadow washed along the trees and swallowed the pitted tracks, calling up a chorus of peeping frogs. The church, white clapboard weathered and sunken, sprawled behind a gravel parking lot filled with pickup trucks. Summerford stood outside, a heavy-set man with graying hair and hound dog eyes. He looked at me as I climbed out of my car. You that Texas boy? I had not told him that I was from Texas, but I was wearing an old black hat and I suppose he guessed. Yep. Well, good to see you. He pumped my hand. Go on in. Find yourself a seat. I went up the creaking steps and slipped inside. Unlike the innumerable brick Baptist churches scattered across the fields of Macedonia, the Summerford church was entirely made of wood with low ceilings, scuffed green carpeting, and an atmosphere heavy with the scent of sweat and old plywood. Rows of pews took up much of the room, with the stage at the other end separated from them by an expanse of open floor. The stage itself was crowded with a pulpit, electric keyboard, numerous guitars, and a drum set. Above them hung a huge wooden cross and a pair of scuffed speakers. At the foot of the stage sat two wooden boxes, snake boxes. About 30 people showed up that night, most of them either under 15 or over 40. They found their seats slowly, stopping to shake hands or kiss each other on the cheek, children running in shrieking patterns across the floor. Everyone in the congregation made it a point to come shake my hand and tell me how happy they were that I was there. Summerford took the stage, accompanied by four women from the congregation. He called for a silent prayer first, as the women tuned guitars and checked the drums. He called out the names of the sick, the words, remember them, spoken after each name, and greeted with a mutter by the congregation. Then, cymbals crashed and drums pounded, and the women on stage launched into a thunderous set of hymns. The congregation sang along, beating tambourines and triangles, stomping and clapping to keep time. The energy built in the room, twisting in the air, until one of the men crumpled, head jerking, mouthing strange words. Those around him laid hands on his shoulders and back as he twitched, head bowed under the weight of some invisible force. Summerford stood above him on the stage, eyes closed, hands up toward heaven. The floor shook under the stamp of feet, sound echoing and curling and dissonant tapestries. Another man snatched up a glass bottle filled with flammable liquid, lit it, and held the flame to his throat as he danced. Jesus, he shouted. The flame danced in and out, licking his throat. Jesus. Then the music died down. The flame was blown out. The bottle replaced. The snake boxes remained untouched. Summerford sat as a narrow-faced man took the stage, a Bible in his hand. Modern life will make you sick, he said, patrolling back and forth like a waiting bird. He flipped the Bible open and began to speak, glancing down occasionally to help himself along. They'll give you medicine, they won't help and pills that make you feel worse, but Jesus won't give you none of that. Yes, Lord, said a woman in front of me, her eyes closed and her head rolling. Jesus gives you salvation and life everlasting, there's trouble and pain in this world, there sure is, but in the next one all will be healed. He thumped the pulpit, his voice conversational. I was going to the store and the folks behind the counter asked me what church I'd go to. I told them that I come here to the Holiness Church and they looked at me like I was crazy. I said to them, boys, you had no problem with me before you knew I was a serpent handler. They all believe what we do is real, but it's a real thing, isn't it? It is, called the congregation. It's a real thing, the man said. His eyes swept the congregation, never quite landing on me. How bad to services with strangers come to see the snakes. The Lord held us down and wouldn't have us handle so that his grace wouldn't be profaned. But we know the truth, don't we? We do, shouted the congregation. Then there was a gentle sound in the air, a sound that burrowed through the ears and danced along the spine. It was the warning buzz of a rattlesnake, muffled by wood, abstract, theoretical, death in a box. It's real this thing, the man said again, at Billy Summerford, at me, at the box. When he spoke, his voice was soft, gliding along with the buzz. It's surely real. I visited the Summerford Church twice more in the following month, and never once did I see them handle a snake. Perhaps they never felt called to do so. Perhaps they were wary of me, a stranger. The rattle in the box was the closest I ever got. In the absence of serpents, the serpent handlers came into focus. Before the preaching, they leaned on the pews and gossiped or talked about fishing trips or shook their heads over politics. The kinds of things people do before every service, and the kinds of things that television cameras cut away. In this, the holiness people are one more portion of Appalachia to be strip-mind. All context discarded. Their lives edited into five-minute segments and half-hour shows. Hillbillies with snakes. See them sweat and jabber on your television. See them dance and wave vipers. Watch long enough and you might see someone die. Step back from the outlandish trappings, though, and what you see are a people who believe themselves chosen, anointed, the last folk standing against a fallen secular world. In this, they are not strange. Proud anti-modernism is a long-standing American tradition. If they are different from other strongly religious groups, it is only by a matter of degrees, people willing to put their money where their mouth is. But what becomes of the snake when you strip everything away? That's the more intriguing mystery, one that discussions of the topic inevitably orbit and seldom touch. Archives are stuffed with analyses, footage, and recordings of serpent handlers. In all of these, the handled are present merely as snake-shaped hangers for human symbols. The serpent is Christ on the Cross or Satan in the Garden or Death waiting in the dusty road. Because we can't know the answer, its experience of the proceedings is never asked. I can imagine it, though. A rattlesnake sits in a crevice beneath the folded rock, a copperhead lays in the bracken, a cottonmouth hides in the reeds. Hands come down and pull the snakes from their place, stuff them in a bag, dump the bag in a box. The snake's weight coiled in the dark, the whale of the electric guitar in the smash of symbols humming beneath their scales. Then the box is opened and they are lifted into the blinding light by sweating hands. Their pit organs burn with the heat of shouting people. Their tongues taste air thick with sweat, oil, and mildew. A few snakes, timid or unconcerned, take it in stride. Some sick, lull lethargically, already near death. Some snakes rattle or flash a white-lipped threat, and some snakes strike. Venom sacks contract, poison courses up dilated veins towards its mark. The preacher picks up the serpent and the serpent kills him. And we watch. This is the ritual we all play out, building boxes around each other. An animal's assertion of its autonomy becomes a moment of religious meaning, and the religious meaning is filtered through empty spectacle. A reinforcing coil of fascination and fear, a tangle of nested stories mistaken at every step for truth. But the serpents are just snakes. The serpent-handlers are just people. Everything else is a box built to be peered into. Sometimes the things in the box stare back. I never saw a preacher killer again after that day in the reptile house. The next time I visited, the rope had disappeared and the case was occupied by a sleek, mild kingsnake. The scarred cottonmouth, who had nearly broken her jaws striking at the glass, was gone. Perhaps she was traded to another zoo or released into the wild. Perhaps she struck the glass one too many times and was killed. I only remember her because the zookeepers gave her a name, preacher killer. The last box for an animal that lived its life in boxes, a perfect encapsulation of its expected role, a narrative shape concealing the real thing inside. A few months ago, I nearly stepped on a wild cottonmouth out in the tangle of swamps and fields behind the Tuscaloosa airport. It raised its thick body and opened its mouth in warning, guns shining white in the Alabama sun. I stepped back and stared at it, trying to see preacher killer in its black eyes, looking for the tell-tale infection of the divine, looking for the Pentecostal serpent. But it was just a cottonmouth in the dry grass. Eventually, it grew tired of being stared at and slithered away. Up next, can you be taunted and haunted by spirits via the World Wide Web? Also, we'll look at the scary reality of anterograde amnesia and we'll wander the campus of Central Michigan University in search of spooks and specters, which apparently are not hard to find there. These stories when Weird Darkness returns. If you or someone you know struggles with depression or dark thoughts, I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered resources to help fight depression with the Seven Cups app, connecting you with people who have also struggled with depression and are there to lift you up, even professional listeners there to listen at all hours of the day. If you're having dark thoughts of harming yourself or worse, there's the suicide prevention lifeline that you can either call or chat online with anytime 24-7. The folks at ifred.org are doing what they can with research and education on depression to give us the tools we need to fight against it in the days ahead. These resources are absolutely free and there when you need them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. Do you believe that a spirit can haunt a person via the Internet? If I were asked that question before January of 2006, I would have probably smirked and answered impossible. What happened to me may just be a case of spirit conjured up by thought, not necessarily a haunting by computer. Either way, though, the medium at hand was the Internet. I've always been a believer in the paranormal, despite never having had an outstanding encounter. I loved to roam around the net browsing the plethora paranormal sites, relishing the many spine-tingling stories of ghostly experiences. This chilly winter day was different than no other, except that I took a look at some sites devoted to ghost towns and abandoned mines. I came across the site for the Bureau of Land Management that gives statistics on abandoned mines, as well as safety reminders for those who are out exploring. There's also a section devoted to the unfortunate souls who failed to heed the warnings posted at the entrances to dangerous mines. There were a few stories that were particularly shocking, but the one that really bothered me was about a man who had fallen down a shaft that was about eight stories high. When his remains were found some time later, the medical examiner stated that the man more than likely survived the fall with nothing more than a broken leg. What killed him was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This person was a well-prepared explorer who packed plenty of survival gear, including a gun. I began to imagine very vividly the man at the bottom of this mine shaft in complete darkness, in complete agony. His pain, both emotional and physical, must have been unbearable. As the hours passed and his anxiety escalated, he began to accept that he was too far out in the terrain for someone to come by. The chance of rescue was nil. He began having thoughts about his family, his life. I could picture the man completely breaking down and sobbing, knowing that there was only one way to end his suffering. I felt so saddened and wondered to myself what I would have done. I immersed myself in these feelings of terror and hopelessness for some time, so much so that I began to feel a sickening feeling in my body. Although I was shocked and moved by this tragic story, I proceeded on to another site. That's when the lamp on the desk next to me began flickering, making a buzzing noise that sounded like an electrical surge. I figured the bulb was just loose, so I checked it and found out that wasn't the case. At that point, my stomach dropped to my knees when I began to feel the presence of someone or something around me. I sat back down and carried on, not wanting to tip off my visitor that I was aware of what was going on. The lamp flickered again. I ignored it. A short time later, I went into the bathroom when the light in the ceiling did the same strange flickering as the lamp. At this point, I became frightened and bolted. Over the next few days, more bizarre electrical occurrences happened. I was at the stove cooking when suddenly the other timer went on, scaringly you know what out of me. That same day, the bathroom light went on the fritz again and this time I was already, uh, seated. I became angry and brave, yelling out, do you mind? I'm trying to use the bathroom here. And with that, a tiny little flicker of the light and then it ceased. My pet cat was also acting strangely, his eyes seemingly following something or someone who was not there. At other times, he would awaken out of a sound sleep with a jolt, focusing on one part of the room, blinking in curiosity. I eventually smudged my house with a sage stick and the activity abruptly stopped. Could it have been that my strong feelings and thoughts about this man enticed his spirit to me or perhaps another random entity I picked up on the information highway that day? Who knows. I firmly believe that the human mind is even more powerful than we realize and that those on the other side can tune in to that power. So I'll ask again, do you believe that it's possible a spirit can haunt a person via the Internet? I do. A year and a half ago, Caitlin Little, a sophomore at Southeast Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina suffered a concussion during a cross-country practice which left her with a rare form of amnesia. All of her new memories are erased each night so every morning she wakes up thinking that it's October 2017. Caitlin's case sounds a lot like the plot of the hit romantic comedy Fifty First Dates, in which Drew Barrymore's character was involved in a serious car accident which left her unable to create new memories after that terrible event, causing her to wake up every morning thinking it was the day of the accident. In 2004, when Fifty First Dates came out, the amnesia Barrymore's character was suffering from was nothing more than a fictional condition called Goldberg's Syndrome and one clinical neuropsychologist even wrote an article about it, claiming that it bears no relation to any known neurological or psychiatric condition. However, several real-life cases of short-term memory resetting have been reported since then and today that once-fictional condition is a medically-recognized disorder known as anterograde amnesia. It's been 17 months since Caitlin little suffered a concussion during a high school cross-country practice but to the 16-year-old it literally feels like yesterday. On October 12, 2017, Caitlin hit her head when one of her teammates accidentally stumbled into her. At the time, both the girls' coaches and a neurologist thought it was a severe concussion, the effects of which would pass in a matter of weeks. But time went by and Caitlin did not display the usual progress. She still hasn't, so every day her parents have to wake her up gently, tell her what day it is, and explain that she hit her head two years ago. I'm always afraid that she is going to jump out of bed and tell me, it's wrong and it can't be and why am I lying to her? So I'm always very hesitant every day when I do it, but it's my job. I have to tell her, Caitlin's father told my Fox Channel 8. Luckily, the most she's ever done after hearing about her condition is act very surprised or questioned, how can that be? When she does that, her father asks her to read a journal by her bedside, which contains notes about what's happened since her accident, and if she has any questions, to come see him after 15 or 20 minutes. Caitlin's anterograde amnesia has made schooling very difficult because her memory cannot retain all the information she learns every day. She can't even remember her teacher's name, so she has to have it written on her binder. Her special education teacher, Tracy Helms, says that every morning, Caitlin acts like they're meeting for the first time. I come in and meet her and she doesn't know who I am. Every day, she doesn't know where her seat is in this class, she doesn't know who her teacher is, Helms told WTKR. Every day is fresh and new to her, just like it's never been seen before. Despite numerous visits to several doctors, no one has been able to find a solution to her condition, so Caitlin's memory continues to reset every night as she sleeps. Her current treatment reportedly costs $1,000 per day, and since neither of her parents are working right now, the bills are racking up fast. Luckily, the family has received financial support through crowdfunding on GoFundMe, after Caitlin's case became the subject of a documentary series on MyFox8 called Caitlin Can't Remember, and I will post a link to that GoFundMe in the show notes. Caitlin's family is hopeful that one day, a switch will flip back on in her brain, and she'll once again be able to retain new memories. But in the meantime, the teen is learned to cope with her rare amnesia. I have to be very organized, she said, so I have lots of post-it notes that say, hey, let's do this or this is new or things to help me out, so it's not as hard as I'd imagine it would be without them. Welcome to Central Michigan University, where the haunts continue long after the Halloween costumes are put away. Something still lurks on campus, watching students, staff, and faculty when no one else is around. Here, some of the University's alumni may continue to appear long after their deaths. These are the haunts of Central Michigan University. Dearborn Heights sophomore Tiara Wright says that her first-floor room in Culkins Hall embodies the cryptic chilliness provided by the North Campus of CMU. North Campus is the home to CMU's oldest building and the most haunting tales. It is the setting for a freshman to be discovered dead under the covers by her roommates in 1951. It's also where a cafeteria employee was strangled to death in Warriner Hall during the 1930s. Her head became trapped within a small window leading to an elevator shaft in 1937 that immediately resulted in her death. Wright said she did not realize her door was haunted until after an incident that occurred in September. One time our friend was waiting outside our door when nobody was in the room. She heard two women from behind the door mumbling about someone waiting outside, she said. Wright and her roommates have been subjected to doors closing by themselves and fans flying off the windowsill and being flung across the room. One day, my roommate, Alyssa, couldn't find her command hook and out of nowhere it slipped down the wall, she said, explaining the hook had slid against the wall as though a magnet were leading it to the floor from the other side. Wright said numerous orbs appear on the screen of two video recordings she made with her roommate in the dorm. I just know that things don't fly off walls normally and the fans just flew across the room too many times for it to be a coincidence, she said. It's not just students reporting hauntings in North Campus, but staff as well. Ruth Barrett, a custodian at CMU, has been working for 35 years and was assigned to work in Barnes Hall from 1994 to 2012. She recalled a story of a girl who had hung herself near a window looking out on Washington Street. She said residents later would consistently report lights and other electronic devices such as televisions being turned on and off in the room. I never really had a problem with Barnes Hall, but a lot of students did, Barrett said. I heard the stories, but I could never get them substantiated. I asked several people about it, but they would never talk, which tells me something. Barrett said students would avoid a certain study room located in the basement. They said they'd have the weirdest feelings down there, Barrett said. Her most personal encounter with paranormal entities happened in Anna M. Bernard Residential Hall, a former residency that opened in 1948 and was demolished in 1997. Barrett said she was doing maintenance in the hall after students had gone home for winter vacation and the campus was left in solitude. It was an interior hallway. The doors were all shut and the lights didn't blink, she said. There was nobody else here. Barrett said, amidst the isolation of her shift, a shadowy cloud has appeared as a tall, human-sized figure and walked past her. I saw it go by me and there should have been nothing there, she said. She believes the ghost is of a freshman who died in her sleep in 1951 on a Sunday morning after spending the previous day at a picnic with her roommates. When the ambulance arrived at Bernard Hall, her body had to be removed from the hall through a back staircase leading into a courtyard. The stairway to me was just like any normal residency stairway, Barrett said. But once you got to the first floor landing, it would be freezing cold. The radiator was always pouring out heat, but you couldn't feel any of it. Barrett said prior to Bernard's demolishment, custodial staff had come to believe the student's spirit was released and would no longer be tied to the root of her untimely death. Other North Campus halls that have been the setting to paranormal activity include Larzelier Hall. Indiana sophomore Shane Kynan said nearly every morning last year he was greeted by the sounds of something moving around in an empty bedroom. He shared a dorm with a front desk employee on the third floor of Larzelier Hall. He didn't want to believe a ghost had been residing in his suit baits bedroom. He left for the weekend and it happened again. I was in the bathroom Saturday morning when I heard someone moving, Kynan said. I peeked my head in and looked around and there was nobody there. His next paranormal encounter took place after returning back to an empty dorm late in the evening. I go to lay down in my bed and I swear that as soon as I turned off the lamp, I hear a little girl giggle in the corner of the room, he said. Gynan spent his Saturday night sleeping in the common room with chairs pushed against both of the bedroom doors, keeping them shut tight. Barrett said she has experienced decades worth of ghostly encounters at CMU. She's been chased out of Finch Fieldhouse by an unsettling energy that followed her during a late night shift. Barrett calls out the ghost of where in her hall by name. She's even been in the tunnel system that exists beneath campus. She said her first paranormal encounter was with Ernie, the ghost of Moore Hall. Barrett said Ernie is the ghost of a custodian from Clare who worked midnight shifts in Moore. He died in the back of room 101 after suffering from ingestion at the beginning of his work shift. My husband said when Ernie hit that chair, he was dead, Barrett said. He said they would experience the strangest things and that the hall would never be the same again once Ernie passed away. Doors in Moore Hall will lock and unlock on their own, Barrett said, and elevators will operate on their own. Ernie was first sited during the summer of 1993 when a husband and wife had been doing labor work for the second elevator that was installed in the hall, Barrett said. The wife requested to use the custodial break room for the weekend as they spent the entire time digging up to space where the elevator would be placed. Barrett left from work Friday morning and did not return until late Sunday evening. She said the wife claimed that a custodian was spotted walking near room 101. There is no custodian at this campus on Sunday at 4pm, Barrett said. She said that he had an olive drab uniform and our guys haven't worked those uniforms in years. I'm convinced the building was locked and there's nothing going on on this campus at that time, in that time of the year in the summer. Barrett said she believes Ernie's spirit still lurks in Moore Hall, roaming the main hallway and riding the newest elevator closest to the towns and Kiva. Maya McKnight said that her first encounter with paranormal activity began during her first welcome weekend as a freshman. The Grand Rapids, Junior and her roommates at the time were in the common room getting to know each other, then one of them had revealed a certain fascination with ghosts and life after death. One of my roommates is into suspense, mystery and horror, she said. She showed us that she has a Ouija board and we immediately told her to put that away because we don't mess with it. The roommate agreed to keep the board tucked away in her bedroom closet, but McKnight said that she and her other roommates still felt an unwanted presence lingering in the room. She said doors would open and close and objects would fall from closets without any known cause. A week and a half into the semester, I'm in the bedroom with my friends sitting on the floor, we were just talking and minding our business and a shoe flew out of the closet, McKnight said. It did not just fall, it literally flew out of the closet and almost hit my friend. Later that semester the group returned to their room on the third floor of Merrill to discover the Ouija board had been taken out of the box and laid on the floor. McKnight said the experience has assured her that a ghost was present in her room along with rumors that a student had committed suicide on the floor. All I know now is that we don't mess with the spirits, the demons or the lions, the witches and the wardrobes, she said. We just don't do anything in that nature. Gross point to senior, Christina Amato said living on the terrace floor of Cobb was nothing short of spooky. She said the basement-like space was more quiet and isolating than the floors above, making the possibility of her freshman dorm room being haunted all the more likely. The RAs said the floor is unlike anything else in the hall, she said. It's almost like a completely different world. Amato said whenever she would wake up in the middle of the night, she felt as though somebody were standing in the center of the room watching her every move in an invisible silence. Amato and her roommates would frequently hear knocking on the walls, but she said the strangest encounter was when a large canvas painting of Charlie Chaplin was thrown into the center of the room. One night it flipped off the dresser and landed facing right side up on the floor, she said. Amato added the canvas was placed leaning against the wall on a dresser with other items and knickknacks sitting in front of it. She said nothing else had been moved off the dresser and it appeared as though the 4x4 canvas was lifted up by an unknown force. We ran out of the room, Amato said. My roommates and I were literally too scared to sleep, so we left all of our lights on overnight. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments through the website at WeirdDarkness.com. That's also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for the newsletter to win monthly prizes, find my other podcast, Church of the Undead, and more. Plus, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story or call the dark line toll-free at 1-877-277-5944. That's 1-877-277-5944. 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 Black Eyed Kids stories were written by Greg Newkirk and Donna Anderson for Week in Weird. The haunts of Central Michigan University is by Samantha Schreiber for Central Michigan Life. Ghosts of the Web is by Melissa Glennie Puckett for Unexplained Mysteries. The scary reality of anti-grade amnesia is from Oddity Central. Slithering Preacher Killer is by Asher Albain for Bitter Southerner. Again, you can find links to all of these stories in the show notes. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 10 verse 19, When words are many, sin is not absent. But he who holds this tongue is wise. And a final thought from Mandy Hale. If you don't love yourself, you'll always be chasing after other people who don't love you either. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Want to receive the commercial-free version of Weird Darkness every day? For just $5 per month, you can become a patron at WeirdDarkness.com. As a patron, you get commercial-free episodes of Weird Darkness every day. Bonus audio. 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