 This episode is dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces and first responders. Whether you are currently serving or have served in the past, you are appreciated. It is because of your courage and sacrifice that we enjoy the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. And I, for one, appreciate every single one of you for protecting what many of us take for granted. So thank you. Some type of very unusual phenomenon that seems to span the disparate worlds of ghosts, aliens, and cryptozoology is that of enigmatic, often utterly perplexing, humanoid creatures of all types. These beings can take a wide range of sizes and shapes, but they all have some things in common and that they are more or less human-like in basic form, and they all lie well out in the fringe of the weird. Mysterious reports of encounters with bizarre humanoid entities come in from all over the world, from people of all walks of life, and the nation of Japan also has its fair share of such tales. I am Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I am Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness Radio where every week you will find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up this hour, most news reporters would relish the opportunity to cover the story of a flying saucer sighting, but one case in 1987 left one radio newsman wishing he had never heard of the letters UFO. In Victorian England, some women had the responsibility of taking in young, unwed, pregnant women and caring for them until they gave birth. Baby farmers, as these ladies were called, were in their positions because of their love for children and the desire to see them start life with hope. But Amelia Dyer was so sinister she was rumored to be responsible for the deaths of 400 children. But first, one was reported as wiry and slightly muscular and around 6 feet tall. It might have been humanoid in shape, but there is nothing else human like about these bizarre entities being encountered in Japan. We begin with that story. If you are new here, welcome to the show. And if you are already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you are listening, be sure to visit WeirdDarkness.com and click on Contact Social to follow Weird Darkness on social media. And also on the website, you can find the daily Weird Darkness podcast which comes out 7 days per week. You can enter monthly contests, find Weird Darkness merchandise and more. You can even send in your own true story of something paranormal that has happened to you or someone you know. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. My doc agrees that I need to lose a few pounds. I knew that going in, but he also told me that the meds I'm taking for my type 2 diabetes aren't going to do me much good if I finish each meal with ice cream or cheesecake. I kind of knew that in advance, too. But cutting back on carbs and sugars is a lot easier said than done. I've tried a lot of protein bars while on the road, but I swear it's like eating non-sweetened chocolate-dusted particle board. But now, I travel with built bars. Built bars taste like candy bars. In fact, I'm now using them for my dessert. And in about 150 calories per bar, less than 3 grams of sugar, up to 19 grams of protein, I can satisfy my sweet cravings guilt-free. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash built in Try a Box. You can go for a variety pack of several flavors to try, or pick and choose to 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. In November of 2015, there was a rather odd encounter with some sort of unidentified humanoid just outside the beautiful historic former capital city, Kyoto, known for its numerous traditional temples and ancient shrines. According to cryptozoology news, 36-year-old teacher Toriki Watanabe had a rather surreal experience as he was driving from Tokyo to Kyoto for his brother's wedding. At around 10 p.m., he claims he stopped at a small roadside shop and stepped inside to have a cigarette before hitting the road again. The surrounding area was said to be forested, and as he had his cigarette and admired the view, he says he noticed something quite odd in the form of a slouched humanoid figure lurking off in the brush around 200 feet away. Whatever it was moved in a distinctly odd way, and as Watanabe looked on, he could begin to make out some of its features and came to the conclusion that this was no person at all. It was described as being wiry and slightly muscular and around six feet tall with a bent over posture and covered in gray skin. No clothing was visible, and as it walked, it remained hunched over with its unnaturally long arms dragging along the ground. Although the witness could not see the things face clearly, he did notice the strange detail that it seemed to emit a faint yellow or white light coming from behind it just around its lower back. The startled man called out to it, but it did not respond, and he stared at it as whatever it was meandered off into the forest. Although it is hard to tell what this bizarre entity could have possibly been, Watanabe has his own thought, suggesting it was an actual specimen of a type of folkloric creature known as a shirimi. This creature was said to be a mischievous, impish thing that liked to scare travelers in the region around Kyoto. Very bizarrely, the creature depicted in folklore is having a huge, glittering eye where its anus should be, and indeed, shirimi literally means buttocks eye. Too bad the witness couldn't see an eye back there, leaving us to speculate as to whether this was an anus-eyed mythical creature, an alien, an interdimensional traveler or just a weird-looking naked guy running around in the woods. Whatever it was, it is a weird report to be sure. Kyoto has in later years been the location for other similar strange sightings as well. In 2016, a woman living on the outskirts of the city claims that she was startled when she heard her normally quiet dog start barking uncontrollably. Wondering what was going on, she claims to have looked outside to see the animal cowering against a fence, smashing up against it as hard as it could, as if trying to push itself through the barrier and away from something there in the yard with it. When the woman looked to see what it was so afraid of, she was met with the sight of a skinny, gray-skinned creature hunched over the dog's food bowl, apparently eating the contents with relish and ignoring the barks and whines of the dog nearby. She says that the odd creature was humanoid but gray and hairless, very thin and sinewy like a greyhound, and with long arms that ended in tiny clawed hands. At first, she could not make out its face as it was concentrating on eating, but then it seemed to sense that it was being watched and whipped its head up to look straight at her in surprise. She would save its face and what happened next, thus. It had a small, triangular face with huge, yellow eyes that took up most of its face and seemed to faintly glow. The ears were small and pointed. As it licked its lips, I could see that it had sharp, jagged teeth. It looked at me for a second with a sort of startled expression, and then it leapt right over the fence in a single bound. What was this being and why did it want that dog food so much? Who knows. Even more recently, as I report from the same city, from March of 2018, and it involves an out-of-town tourist who was staying in Kyoto at a place that he'd found on Airbnb. On the evening of March 11th, he claims that he'd been on his way back to his place at around 11.40pm as he passed a darkened shrine. There were two bizarre creatures that jumped over the wall right in front of him, seemingly coming from the shrine's courtyard. At first, he thought them to be children, but as he approached, he could see that they were something altogether different. The creatures were described as being three to four feet tall, with bodies that were as white as snow, long, thin arms and legs, and heads with pointy ears and large, triangular, black eyes. When they saw the witness, the beings seemed startled and began to run away. The witnesses said, they ran with arms behind them, they went behind a corner of a wall. As I walked towards there, one of them looked back at me and made eye contact. I was feeling terrified. I didn't want to get too close. I lost sight of them as they turned a corner. What could these diminutive creatures have been? While the exact origins of these particular creatures are unclear, another strange and rather frightening humanoid report from another area of Japan seems to suggest bizarre creatures which can only be described as aliens. On February 23, 1975, two seven-year-old boys named Masato Kawano and Katsuhiro Yamahata were out roller-skating in the early evening hours in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, where they claimed that they saw in the sky a pair of luminous orange lights that flickered and made a strange ticking sound. As they looked on in amazement, one of the lights apparently moved off toward the distant mountains while the other started to descend towards the ground nearby. The boys claimed that they went off to investigate and saw the strange craft come down to rest in a small vineyard behind an old abandoned estate. The craft was described as being a domed disc around 15 feet in diameter and 7 feet high which rested upon three ball-shaped legs. The surface of the strange object was silver-colored and appeared to have characters or letters of some sort etched upon it. The loud ticking sound of the craft was very pronounced as they drew closer, sounding somewhat reminiscent of a Geiger counter. As the two boys pondered what they were seeing, a hatch purportedly opened on the side out of nowhere and a ladder extended towards the ground, after which a strange-looking being climbed out. The creature stood around four feet tall and was wearing a reflective silver suit of some sort. The being's skin was allegedly a dark brown in color and it was covered with thick wrinkles that were so pronounced as to make most of its facial features indiscernible, save for two pointed ears and prominent and intimidating two-inch-long silver fangs that jut it out from the folds of where its mouth might be. In its hands, it held some sort of device whose purpose could not be fathomed but which looked somewhat like a rifle. Another of the creatures could be seen sitting within the craft huddled over some sort of flickering control panel. Whatever it was seemed to have completely ignored the two young boys standing there gawking at it as it proceeded to carefully examine the surrounding terrain. After a few moments of this, it suddenly seemed to become aware of the boys after which it approached them and patted one of them, Yamahata, twice on the shoulder while issuing a sound that sounded like a tape recorder running backwards. Upon being tapped, Yamahata allegedly slumped to the ground and was unable to move, paralyzed by some inscrutable force. This pushed Kawano into action and he quickly scooped his friend up onto his shoulders and ran from the area as fast as his legs could carry him. When he got home, Yamahata came too and they supposedly told their parents what had happened who would grudgingly follow the boys out to the estate outside to see the strange orange light coming up in the sky for themselves. The light would then emit a burst of blinding light and vanish. Later, school officials would descend upon the area in daylight to examine the site and would allegedly find two sturdy concrete posts that had been pushed over by some powerful force as well as a ring pattern etched into the ground nearby. Authorities of the Civil Aviation Bureau of Transportation Ministry would later get wind of the story and dismiss the light as merely from normal aircraft in the area. No word on what they thought the fang to humanoid could have been. Another account from the same area was related to me that seems to involve some sort of gnome-like creatures that are really hard to classify. The witness says that this happened in the summer of 2011 out in the wilds of Yamanashi Prefecture. The man claims that he had been hiking out along a remote trail in the middle of nowhere when he heard what sounded like singing coming from somewhere up ahead. It seemed odd as this was a rarely used trail and he had not passed anyone or seen anyone out all day. He stood and listened and the ethereal singing continued, the voices high-pitched like those of children. Curious, the witness continued on his path and the singing got louder and he slowed down and quietly approached what seemed to be the source, which was a forest clearing up ahead. As he peeked through the brush into the clearing, you could now see the origins of the singing, which were no children. He explained that there were seven to ten tiny beings in the clearing, measuring only about two or three feet in height and wearing what looked like some sort of white robes. The faces seemed to be a bright red in color and they were all dancing about and singing in some language the man could not understand. Most bizarrely of all, they were making huge lofty bounds about the clearing, gracefully arching up into the air to come floating down as if they were defying gravity somehow. The witness claims that at some point they realized they were being watched and abruptly stopped their singing, dancing and bounding about. At this point they all turned in unison and stared at the intruder and he could see that their red faces held smallish beady black eyes, large noses and that they had tiny mouths without expression. For a moment they merely stared at each other and the witness said he could feel a certain feeling of dread and foreboding as if he was not supposed to be there and described the sense he got from the entities somewhat malevolent. Then, without a sound, the creatures suddenly and silently dispersed into the surrounding forest, totally without sound and without so much as a snap of a twig or rustle of branches. It is a confounding report that defies any easy classification and one wonders just what in the world these entities could have possibly been. This sense of bafflement is a common thread running through all of these reports and we are left to speculate of what the nature of any of these perplexing beings could have been. Considering their unearthly humanoid nature, it seems unlikely that any of these things could have been any sort of undiscovered cryptid in the wilds of Japan. Could they have been spirits of some sort? Were they visitors from another world? One possibility is that they could have been visitors from some other dimension, so called ultra terrestrials, who have for whatever reason managed to somehow punch through into our reality. Is that what these were? It is curious to note that in some cases the creatures have seemed to be just as surprised as the witnesses, as if they are baffled as to how they could be seen. What possible significance does this have, if any? These are questions were likely to be left without the answers to and these reports served to merely add to the very bizarre literature on strange humanoid sightings reported from all over the world. When Weird Darkness returns, most news reporters would relish the opportunity to cover the story of a flying saucer sighting, but one case in 1987 left one radio newsman wishing he had never heard of the letters UFO. And in Victorian England, some women had the responsibility of taking in young unwed pregnant women and caring for them until they gave birth, but Amelia Dyer was so sinister she was rumored to be responsible for the deaths of 400 children. These stories when Weird Darkness returns. Weird Darkness is now partnering with Paranormality Magazine. Paranormality Magazine is based out of love for the strange, unexplained and paranormal, as well as a fascination with the people and creators that make the paranormal community what it is. Exploring all 40 subjects, from phantoms to UFOs and every cryptid creature in between, their global team collects stories, conducts interviews, and reports on cutting-edge paranormal projects. They also consider contributions from outside writers, researchers and artists. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine to learn more or subscribe to Paranormality Magazine. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine. And you can get 10% off your subscription if you use the promo code Weird. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine promo code Weird. WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine promo code Weird. Reports of men in black date back to at least the 1940s. Described as dressing in all black suits and black hats, these shadowy figures are said to deliver veiled threats to those who dare to discuss publicly the existence of UFOs and aliens. Who they are is a mystery, with speculation ranging from government-backed agencies charged with keeping extraterrestrial secrets out of the hands of ordinary citizens to extraterrestrials themselves, intent on observing those with connections to alien activity. In early October 1987, Danny Gordon, a radio journalist for the country music station WYVE, heard a local report of an unidentified flying object in his hometown of Wytheville, Virginia. The news came from the sheriff's department and stated that four police officers, three of whom were sheriff's deputies and former military men, had witnessed a strange object in the sky the previous night. Being a very skeptical newsman, Danny decided to report the story as a ha-ha piece, something to conclude his news segment on a light-hearted note. What he could not have anticipated was the response from his listeners. Reports of similar UFO sightings flooded in, so much so that Danny set up a special call-in program for the following week. Discussing the call-in program on the 25th anniversary of the sightings, Danny Gordon described it as a lightning-rod moment. After that, every day, the phone would ring off the hook. The people of Wytheville had not only witnessed similar sky anomalies as the police officers, but were willing to share what they had seen. Well, it kind of looked something about like an egg shape to me, said one caller. What we could see was red, green and white, sort of flashing lights. We saw a plane go by with, you know, red, red flashing lights. We know it wasn't a jet of any sort, said another caller. Determined that there was a rational explanation for these strange sightings, such as an experimental military aircraft, Danny felt the situation would resolve itself in time and the sightings would ebb away. He was wrong. Local residents continued to witness strange lights in the sky with their suspicions raised when rumors spread about town that the local military had unconvincingly explained the sightings as planes simply refueling midair above residents' houses. To help clarify the situation, Danny states that he called the Pentagon and talked to the Air Force General there who told him that under no circumstances would refueling occur under 13,000 feet and that the reported sightings of strange lights and aircraft, which were spotted no more than 5,000 feet above the ground, were simply not the U.S. Air Force. With the sightings still unexplained, Danny and his friend Roger Hall decided to investigate further. They headed out to the location of one of the sighting hotspots one evening. After a fruitless search, on their return to town about a quarter to nine, they saw a very unusual object coming across the horizon. Alarmed, Danny stopped the car and both men jumped out. In a later interview, Danny described seeing a craft which was very large. It had a dome-shaped top and no wings. It had a dome-shaped top and no wings, and what it appeared to be a strobe, putting out multicolored lights on the right side. Roger Hall stated that the object was probably less than 1,000 feet away and 1,000 feet high at the maximum. We guessed that being at least two football fields in diameter, said Roger Hall. You could see three huge, looked-like picture windows in the back of it that were lit from the inside out. Danny Gordon said, As I watched the sky from the left came a red ball. As a big mothership went into a small skip of clouds, the red ball docked with the craft. Dumbstruck by what they were witnessing, neither man was able to photograph the object, despite having gone out that night armed with cameras. The following evening, the men went out again and this time managed to photograph the anomaly. When they were developed, they only showed vague streaks of light in the sky. Ready to share his findings with his audience, Danny arranged a press conference. The night before, he received a phone call from somebody who refused to identify himself. Irrally, the stranger warned Danny that the CIA and the federal government were very much interested in Wythe County UFOs and that it was something that he needed to leave alone because it was not his place to be messing in defense matters. The following night, after the press conference, Danny returned home to discover his house had been broken into. Nothing was missing, however. It seemed as though someone, whoever had broken in, had been searching for something. I started to wonder what I had stepped into and my wife was urging me to back off to leave it alone, Danny said. Far from being over, reports of UFOs continued to flood Wythe County. Six weeks after the press conference, Danny Gordon caught sight of strange objects in the sky for a third time. He, his wife and daughter, were leaving the shopping center when everyone in the area stopped to look up. Danny recalls a group of schoolchildren pointing and shouting at the sky. Supposedly, there were four different aircraft flying in formation that made no sound. According to Danny's estimates, there were 200 people who watched them fly over. Once again, Danny was able to photograph the crafts in four separate shots. We looked very quickly and saw what I thought was a large object which later appeared to be four flying disc shapes. As soon as the objects were photographed, they disappeared from view. When the pictures came out, they had a lot of grain, but they showed definite four shapes of objects in the sky. But the most impressive point in the four photographs, the objects appeared to change shape or light formations within one click of the camera. They go from a teardrop shape to a round ball shape. Then they go to a flying saucer like disc shape and then they go to an egg shape as they go out of sight. Danny Gordon said in an interview. Three months after the initial sightings, and Weith County now had more than 1500 reports of UFOs. Something was clearly going on. Danny once again phoned the Pentagon and pushed for answers. The response he allegedly received was shocking. Speaking with the spokesman for defense at the Pentagon, he was told, we do not deny UFOs exist. The government confirms they exist, but we deny they pose a threat to the populace of Weith County. When Danny asked how the spokesman could know such a thing, he was bluntly told that no further information could be given. Danny continued to investigate the UFOs, which plagued Weith County. However, one night after receiving yet another strange phone call, he began to wonder if he was making the right decision. He claims to have been contacted by a retired military intelligence officer who asked Danny to record their conversation so that if anything happened to him, it was on record that he had been forewarned. The man told Danny that he too had been researching UFOs to a tragic end. What I'm tell you Danny, he said, is I've been pursuing this thing for many, many years and like I said, I saw my son die of leukemia. The man claimed that because of his research, his son had been targeted. What I'm telling you, he continued, is they'll try to hit you if they think it's advisable for their purposes to keep you from further investigating this thing and then most likely it'd be done through skin contact chemicals. It'd be something on the door knob of your car or on the steering wheel. They could also come up with something or do something to your children. Segments from the original tape conversation were publicly broadcast during an episode of NBC's Unsolved Mysteries. Understandably, the conversation left Danny shilled. Regardless, he felt he needed to continue his research and uncover the truth behind the mass UFO sightings. Less than a month later, two strange men in black arrived at his home, supposedly journalists wishing to write an article about Danny and the UFO for their newspaper. The men stayed for about 45 minutes, one interviewing Danny and the other wandering around the house taking photos. As they left, they said they would send Danny a copy of the article when it was published. When it did not arrive, Danny contacted the newspaper they claimed to work for. However, it had no record of the journalists stating that the two men did not work for them. So who they were, I don't know, but they were in my house, Danny said, saw my pictures, saw my negatives, talked to my family, took pictures and then left, and they were not with the newspaper. It was some time after this meeting that Danny realized the negatives of the photos he had taken outside the shopping center were missing. Someone had taken the original images of the four UFO photographs. I felt like maybe there was something in those photographs that I was not seeing, he said. So I took the photographs to some other people to look at. We used magnifying glasses, we measured angles, trying to find out why these photographs were so important, and we're yet to discover why anyone would want to steal that one specific set of four in a series of photographs of UFOs. By now, Danny was living alone. His wife and daughter had moved out, exhausted and living in fear of what may happen to them as Danny continued his research. Two months later, Danny had a stress-induced heart attack. He had to stop his investigation. By the time he left Wythe County, he had collected 3,000 sightings from telephone calls and conversations with people in the street. Speaking years later, Danny spoke of his regrets in how he handled the case. If I had the choice, he said, I'd not report the UFO story again. It's just been too hard on my life and created too many problems. Paranormal experiences, encountering extraterrestrials, extraordinary states of consciousness, spiritual phenomenon, encounters with non-human entities that can't be explained by science. These stories of what people have come across are ubiquitous here on Weird Darkness, and often those who have had these encounters choose to stay quiet and not even tell close friends or family out of fear of ridicule, and they suffer silently trying to deal with the internal horror of what they've experienced. If I'm describing you or someone you know, there is now a place you can turn to for professional counseling from experts who, unlike others in their field, are open to the paranormal, supernatural and extraterrestrial experiences of others. And they're not there to explain away your experience but to help you recover from it and move forward with living. I'm referring to the Opus Network. If you want to reach out for help or learn more, look for the Opus Network towards the bottom of the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. to be able to get tonight's podcast. In the meantime, let's share a few historical deaths that you probably shouldn't Google. History is filled with macabre tales of shocking ends and twisted murders, and a few of the most gruesome moments in history were preserved in equally grisly images. Whether official police photographs or amateur video footage, you don't want to Google pictures of these deaths. So spare yourself the nightmare and resist the urge to perform an image search for these stories. The circumstances surrounding these shocking historical moments remain as diverse as the deceased themselves. From Hollywood starlets and defiant outlaws to made men and political martyrs, some of these disturbing fates were the result of cold-blooded murders, while others came from tragic, unfortunate accidents. Regardless of how they happened, each demise yielded unsettling images. Police photography was in its infancy when the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper murdered and mutilated women in the East End of London in the summer and autumn of 1888. Incredibly, one Ripper crime scene photo survives. On November 9, 1888, the butchered remains of Mary Jane Kelly were discovered in her locked room at Miller's Court. Kelly's face remained unrecognizable. Her lover could only identify the body based on her eyes. In August 1969, model and actress Sharon Tate was looking forward to the upcoming birth of her first child. Her husband, the director Roman Polanski, was out of town, and friends were staying with Tate at her Benedict Canyon home. In the early morning hours of August 9, members of the Manson family broke into the home, intending to slay all the occupants. Though Tate begged for the life of her unborn child, the assailants remained unmoved and repeatedly stabbed her. The crime photo displays the scene as the police found it. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, relocated to India as the newspaper's South Asia bureau chief. In January 2002, the 38-year-old Pearl was abducted by terrorists while in Pakistan. On February 1, 2002, his captors beheaded him before cutting up his body and burying the pieces outside of Karachi. A few weeks later, a video of Pearl's final moments was released. Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia, was one of many young women who came to Los Angeles with dreams of stardom, but those dreams abruptly ended in January 1947 when someone took her life. Her body was drained of its blood, cutting half, mutilated and deposited in plain view in a Los Angeles park. The crime scene photograph depicts Short's remains where they were discovered in the grass and the case remains unsolved. Hollywood has seen plenty of tragedies. One of the most horrific fates was that of bombshell Jane Mansfield. Following a performance at a supper club in Mississippi on June 29, 1967, Mansfield, her lawyer and three of her children were driven home in the middle of the night. The driver apparently did not see the tractor trailer in front of him slow down for a truck spraying for mosquitoes, and the car slammed into the semi. Rumors swirled that Mansfield had been decapitated, but that proved to be untrue. Mansfield perished along with her lawyer and driver, but all three children survived. John Torrington was only 20 years old when he joined Sir John Franklin on his ill-fated voyage to chart the Northwest Passage in 1845. The expedition got bogged down by ice in Arctic Canada, resulting in the ends of all 129 men including Torrington. Torrington's icy grave was discovered in 1984 and the ice had preserved his remains in chillingly perfect detail. An autopsy revealed Torrington suffered many ailments including lead poisoning. The detailed photograph of Torrington's mummified cadaver is not for the faint-hearted. In the wake of the Iranian presidential election in June 2009, protests erupted across Tehran. Protesters claimed the re-election of hardline President Mohammad Ahmadinejad was not legitimate. Their anger with Iranian politics may have sparked the so-called green movement, but the pro-government bazaar violently suppressed the protests. Days after the election, Nadea Agha Sultan, a 26-year-old woman and her music teacher, attended the protests. As they stood on the street, seemingly far from the fray, Agha Sultan was shot in the chest. As bystanders rushed to help, others captured the horror of the moment on their phones. I'm burning, she repeated. The video of her passing was uploaded online and shared around the world, transforming her into a martyr and symbol of the green movement. Mob boss Carmine the Cigar Galante ran one of New York's most infamous crime families for years, but his ambition to gain more power paved the way for his downfall. On July 12, 1979, Galante was having a quiet lunch with associates on the patio of an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn when assassins stormed in and shot him. The photograph shows a cigar still perched between his lips. The murders of the Lizzie Borden case remain one of the great unsolved crimes of the 19th century. On August 4, 1892, both Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were found in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. They had been hacked with a hatchet. Surviving crime scene photographs depict their remains. Andrew was discovered on a sofa while Abby was found face down on the floor of an upstairs room. Though their daughter Lizzie was put on trial for the acts, she was acquitted in 1893 and passed away in 1927. Many continue to suspect she was responsible. And please tell others about Weird Darkness who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can send in your own paranormal experiences by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. You can also email me anytime at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes which I will upload to the Weird Darkness website immediately after tonight's show is ended. Creepy humanoids in Japan is from Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe. The Whiteville UFOs and Men in Black is from Paranormal Scholar and Don't Google These Deaths is by Seterajonda for Weird History. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Psalm 27 verse 1, The Lord is my light and my salvation, Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? And a final thought, the only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible. Charles Kingsley. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, keep listening. Hour 2 of the Weird Darkness radio show is coming up! Are you a business owner or marketing manager? How would you like to share your product or service with our Weirdo family of listeners? Whether your business is worldwide, nationwide, or local, I would love to tell people about what you have to offer. To get your business heard in Weird Darkness or just get information about advertising in the podcast, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Advertise. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Advertise. Road dogs, billy big rigs, big strappers, flatbed cowboys, freight checkers, trucklets, 18-wheelers, deadheads, yard dogs, you got your ears on? Whatever you call yourselves or whatever call sign or moniker is thrust upon you. This episode is dedicated to all you truckers driving the boulevard, keeping our bellies full, shells stocked, septics cleaned, and brains entertained with what you're hauling. In the eyes of this ratchet jaw, I'm honored to have you listening. Maybe once in a while grab your CB, head to Sesame Street and tell other drivers how to join this weirdo convoy. Appreciate it. May your break checks be for you, your shutter trouble be absent, and your bare bites non-existent. Keep it cool on the stool. This is Spooky Santa and I'm 10 and on the side. In 2001, the British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that Marlon Brando had purchased an antique film reel for £350,000. Intended to be the basis for Brando's next movie, the footage has supposedly been found at a Gloucestershire junk shop along with other items and ephemera belonging to World War I veteran William Doge. While fighting in the Battle of Mons on the western front, Doge was said to have seen something that defied all rational explanation and caused him to dedicate his life to finding the proof of his experiences there. More than 30 years later in 1952, Doge did just that and captured footage of a real-life angel on camera. Or at least that was the story circulating before the whole narrative came crashing down. Within a year, the BBC revealed that there was no evidence of William Doge's existence, any film reel or a planned Marlon Brando project. But why exactly had the British public been so quick to believe or want to believe that angels not only existed but could also be caught on film? The answer lies in the strange story of the Angels of Mons, actual angels that were said to have protected British forces during World War I's Battle of Mons. For more than a century, the tale of the Angels of Mons has proven to be such an almost impossibly resilient legend that the BBC deemed it the first ever urban myth. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every week you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up this hour, the British public believed the actual divine warriors were on their side against the Germans in World War I. We'll look at the true story behind the Angels of Mons. 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 in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to visit WeirdDarkness.com and click on Contact Social to follow Weird Darkness on social media. And also, on the website, you can find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, which comes out seven days per week. You can enter monthly contests, find Weird Darkness merchandise and more. You can even send in your own true story of something paranormal that has happened to you or someone you know. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. On June 28, 1914, 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. After Austria-Hungary then attacked Serbia-Russia, an ally of the Serbs, it declared war on Austria-Hungary. In turn, Germany, loyal to Austria-Hungary, declared war on Russia. France mobilized its own forces to assist the Russian Empire and in doing so found itself at war with Germany and Austria-Hungary as well. By the beginning of August, virtually all of Europe had erupted into a war zone as the system of national alliances intended to preserve peace between these competing powers instead sparked a chain reaction of increasing conflict. On August 2, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium in order to more quickly attack France. When the Belgians refused, the Germans invaded. The United Kingdom had thus far stayed out of the conflict, but the sanctity of Belgium's sovereignty and neutrality proved to be its breaking point. The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on August 4, Austria-Hungary on August 12 and deployed the British Expeditionary Force, BEF, of about 80,000 to 130,000 troops to the continent. The scale of the quickly growing conflict was enormous, but still, many thought the hostilities would end in short order. As one popular phrase put it, many thought the war would be over by Christmas. The harsh reality of modern warfare however only became apparent to the British when they arrived at the Belgian city of Mons. Originally, the BEF and their French allies under General Charles Lenrezac had hoped to coordinate and use the area's bottleneck of waterways to cut off the German army. Instead, the French accidentally engaged the Germans alone and ahead of schedule, suffering heavy casualties and necessitating their treat so hasty, the British command did not know what had happened until they were already in position. Outnumbered, two to one, the BEF had no choice but to hold the line until the French regrouped. The fighting began on the morning of August 23 as the first German soldiers began running over the bridges above Mons' central canal. British machine gunners mowed down one line of men after another as they tried to cross, but in the face of both heavy bombardment and the sheer size of the German army, written strategy soon proved untenable. By nightfall, overrun and already having lost more than 1500 men, the British abandoned the city. The BEF fled their German pursuers for two straight days and nights without food or sleep before they were able to reunite with the French. There was no time for rest. On August 26, the armies clashed again at the Battle of Le Cateau. The Allied forces were finally able to stop the German advance, but the stalemate came at a high cost. 12,000 BEF troops, at least a tenth of their total forces, had been killed or wounded in the first nine days of combat. When news from the front filtered back to the United Kingdom, the most common reactions were horror and disbelief. In their first outing, British casualties were higher than half those in the Crimean War, a conflict that had lasted two years. The scale of death and destruction was already inconceivable and the war was only just beginning. The public began to panic. This war to end all wars would, in the eyes of some, be the actual end of the world, the apocalypse. The true story of the Angels of Mons continues when Weird Darkness returns. Hey Weirdos, how would you like to receive a box full of scary stuff in the mail full of fear-inducing objects like creepy collectibles, true crime-themed accessories, frightening flair, blood-curdling books, terrifying trinkets, eerie e-downloads, and more? Absolutely free. Every other month, I'm filming an unboxing video of the newest creepy crate that I get in the mail, then I'm boxing it all back up and giving it away by random drawing to someone subscribed to the Weird Darkness email newsletter. And before I close up the box for good, I might toss in a couple of Weird Darkness goodies as well for good measure. You can keep the creepy crate for yourself or give it away to a Weirdo friend or family member. To watch my latest creepy crate unboxing video and to register to win a creepy crate of your own for free, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash creepy crate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash creepy crate. I'm Darren Marlar, welcome back to Weird Darkness. If you'd like to stay up to date on everything Weird Darkness, maybe win some cool prizes, find out some of the new merchandise that I've come out with and a whole lot more, you can sign up for the free email newsletter. And every other month, I also draw a name at random from all the subscribers to win a cool creepy prize. Sign up for the Weird Darkness email newsletter today for free at WeirdDarkness.com. We continue now with the true story of The Angels of Mons. Among a segment of the British population, particularly the religiously minded, there was no mistaking what this new war to end all wars actually was. It was the literal and biblical apocalypse. In 1918, British General Edmund Allenby actually named a clash against the Ottomans and Palestine the Battle of Megiddo to directly invoke the climactic battle of the Book of Revelation. Prior to that, in the spring of 1915, pamphlets with titles like The Great War in the Divine Light of Prophecy is at Armageddon. And another pamphlet, Is it Armageddon or Britain in Prophecy, were already circulating around the country. Even earlier in September of 1914, Reverend Henry Charles Beeching of Norwich Cathedral told his congregation, The battle is not only ours, it is God's. It is indeed Armageddon. Ranged against us are the Dragon and the False Prophet. It was against this backdrop that in the late summer of 1914, a 51-year-old Welsh writer named Arthur Macken sat in another church, unable to focus on the priest's sermon. Distracted by the disturbing reports from the front, he began to imagine a comforting short story. He newly killed soldiers ascent into heaven. After mass, he began to write his story, later published as The Soldier's Rest, but decided he was not capturing the idea correctly. He then tried his hand at another, simpler story. He finished it in a single sitting that afternoon, titling it The Bowman. First published in the London Evening News on September 29, 1914, The Bowman focuses on an unnamed British soldier, pinned down in a trench alongside his comrades under heavy German machine gunfire. Fearing that all is lost, the protagonist recalls a queer vegetarian restaurant he had once been to in London, one which bears a picture of St. George and a Latin motto which translates to May St. George be a present help to the English on all of its plates. Steadying himself, the soldier recites the prayer quietly before rising to fire on the enemy. Suddenly, although no one else seems to see it, he startled by another otherworldly apparition. Voices then cry out in French and English, calling men to arms and praising St. George as a massive force of ghostly archers appears above and behind the British line, firing ceaselessly into the German forces. The other British soldiers wonder how they have suddenly become so much deadlier as their enemy scatters and falls. No one knows what happened, even the Germans, inspecting dead soldiers without a scratch on them, suspecting it must have been a new chemical weapon. Only the main character knows the truth. God and St. George had intervened to save the British army. Macken himself did not think much of his story. It was quaint, far from his best work, but acceptable. Twenty years out from the success of his novella, The Great God Pan, tired by career failures, the death of his first wife, and the demands of his reluctant reporting job for the London Evening News, Macken was okay with submitting something that was merely acceptable and so he handed the piece to his editor. The story came and went with the day's paper with little fanfare. Macken expected that to be that. It wasn't. In hindsight, the bowman might be Macken's most successful story, not because of its popularity, but because no one wanted to believe he'd made it up. As he put it in his column, No Escape from the Bowman in July 1915, Frankenstein made a monster to his sorrow. I have begun to sympathize with him. The first sign that the story had struck a nerve came the week it was published. Ralph Shirley, the editor of the Occult Review and supporter of a theory that Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany was the Antichrist, reached out to Macken to ask if the bowman had been based on fact. Macken said it was not. Perhaps surprisingly, Shirley took him at his word. Later, the editor of his spiritualist magazine, Light, David Gao, asked Macken the same question, receiving the same answer. It is not based on fact. Reporting their conversation in his own column in October 1914, Gao referred to the bowman as a little fantasy, adding, the spiritual hosts are probably better employed in ministering to the wounded and dying. The trouble started that November, with Father Edward Russell, the deacon of St. Alban the Martyr Church in Holborn. Unlike Shirley and Gao, Russell wrote to Macken and asked permission to republish the bowman in his parish magazine. Seeing no harm in this and happy for further royalties, the author agreed. In February of 1915, Russell wrote again, reporting that the issue had sold so well that he wanted to republish it again to the next volume with additional notes, and asked Macken to kindly tell him who his sources had been. Macken explained, once again, that the story was fictional, but the priest disagreed and was sure that the angels of Mons were real. As Macken described in his forward to the bowmen and other legends of the war, Russell said that, I must have been mistaken that the main facts of the bowmen must be true, that my share in the matter must surely have been confined to the elaboration and decoration of a veridical history. Macken quickly realized that nothing he could say would change Russell's opinion. What was worse though was that this man had an audience of willing believers and that there were countless other clergy and congregations like them. By the spring and summer of 1915, the United Kingdom was in the throes of veritable angel mania. Anonymous reports appeared in newspapers around the country, purportedly providing testimony from soldiers who had seen angels on the battlefield at Mons. While all reports spoke of something supernatural that had saved the British soldiers, the descriptions varied by author and publication. Some said they had seen Joan of Arc or Saint Michael leading the British and French soldiers. Some said there were innumerable angels, others said only three who had appeared in the night sky, others still said they had only seen a peculiar yellow cloud or fog. The explanations for these supposed sightings were equally diverse. To rational critics, the stories were either lies or dismissed as a stress reaction, a collective hallucination born from suggestion and a lack of sleep or perhaps spurred by exposure to chemical weapons. Spiritualists, meanwhile, suspected that the phantom army could be made up of deceased soldiers killing in the heat of battle and then rising up to assist their still living comrades. The more traditionally religious minded decided it was a modern miracle. Britain's own answer to France's Miracle on the Marne from September 1914, in which nationwide prayers to the Virgin Mary had supposedly saved the French army and the Russian reports of the Virgin Mary appearing and prophesying Russian victory at the Battle of Augustov that October. To Macon, however, there was only one explanation. His story had gone viral, mutating and picking up embellishments as it spread from person to person. And he did his best to point this out to the public, writing articles and columns to set the record straight. We'll continue with the true story of the Angels of Mons when Weird Darkness returns. Loneliness can be a real burden. 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Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, dark thoughts, or addiction, please visit the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered numerous resources to find hope and solutions. For those suffering from thoughts of suicide or self-harm, there's a suicide and crisis lifeline, as well as the crisis text line. Both have trained counselors at all hours to help those in need. And the page even includes text numbers for the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. Those struggling with depression can get help through the Seven Cups website and there's information for anyone to read more about what depression truly is and how to identify it through our friends at ifred.org. There are resources for those who battle addictions, be it drugs, alcohol, or self-destructive behavior, along with help for those related to addicts. The page has links to help you find a therapist or counselor, to find help for those who have a family member with Alzheimer's or dementia, help for those in a crisis pregnancy, and more. These resources are always there when you or someone you love needs them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Hope. We continue now with the true story of the Battle of Mons. Spiritualists suspected that the Phantom Army could be made up of deceased soldiers killed in the heat of battle and then rising up to assist their still-living comrades. The more traditionally religiously minded decided that it was a modern miracle. Britain's own answer to France's miracle of the Marne from September 1914 in which nationwide prayers to the Virgin Mary had supposedly saved the French Army and the Russian reports of the Virgin Mary's appearing and prophesying Russian victory at the Battle of Auguste that October. To Macon, however, there was only one explanation. History had gone viral, mutating and picking up embellishments as it spread from person to person. He did his best to point this out to the public, writing articles and columns to set the record straight. He showed how no reports published before the bowmen had said anything about the Angels of Mons. And when some of the true, quote-unquote, stories about the Angels of Mons started surfacing, many of the earliest ones even used some of the original details from his, the bowmen, the vegetarian restaurant, the prayer to St. George, the German battlement about what was occurring. Nevertheless, the public ate up these reports and Angel Mania was in full swing. Although initially confident that reason would eventually prevail over public hysteria, Macon's efforts were mostly met with hostility. At best, his opponents said he was unsympathetic due to the comfort that such stories gave to suffering families. At worst, he was both unpatriotic and un-Christian, denying an act of God to boost his own fame and keep himself in the headlines. Among the most vocal of his critics was Harold Begbie, a journalist, writer and Christian apologist whose 1915 book On the Side of the Angels went through three sold-out editions. Although in part a catalog of various testimonies and theories, ultimately Begbie's somewhat jumbled treaties was less concerned with defining what soldiers had seen than proving that Macon had not made up the Angels of Mons. In addition to citing several anonymous reports that he claimed predated the publication of the bowman and even saying he'd met with several unnamed soldiers, Begbie went a step further. He suggested that even if Macon had written the bowman before the Angels of Mons stories became widespread, it did not prove anything. Using the author's story of his inspiration, that the idea occurred to him as an imagined vision against him, Begbie proposed that Macon had psychically experienced actual events occurring on the battlefield. Quote, no man of science who has examined the phenomena of telepathy would dispute it, unquote. Essentially, according to Begbie, it was the Angels who had inspired the bowman, not the other way around. Adding insult to injury, Begbie accused Macon of sacrilege, saying Mr. Macon in his quieter and less popular moments will feel a very sincere regret and perhaps sharp contrition for his attempts to deprive good people of their hope. Another Angel proponent was Phyllis Campbell, a British Red Cross volunteer in France whose essay The Angelic Leaders first appeared in the summer 1915 issue of The Occult Review. Although Campbell did not claim to have seen the Angels of Mons herself, she said that she had nursed several French and English soldiers who had told her strange stories about the retreat from Mons. According to The Angelic Leaders, Campbell first heard about the incident when a French nurse called her over to help her understand an English soldier's request. Apparently, he was pleading to be given some sort of religious picture. After meeting the man who explained that he wanted a picture of Saint George, Campbell asked if he was Catholic. He responded that he was a Methodist, but that he believed in the saints now because he had just seen Saint George in person. For his part, Arthur Macon had one response to such stories, nearly all of which appeared to be anonymous, second or third-hand accounts. As he wrote in the conclusion to The Bow Men and Other Legends of the War, you mustn't tell us what the soldier said, it's not evidence. Macon was not alone in his assessment. The Society for Psychical Research, a still-extant London-based non-profit dedicated to the study of the paranormal since 1882, felt compelled to address the Angels of Mons rumors for its readers of its 1915-1916 journal. After attempting to track down the sources of the reports and letters appearing in British newspapers, the SPR found that in every case, the trail ended with someone who had only heard the story second or third-hand. Their report thus concluded, our enquiry into the apparitions is negative. All our efforts to obtain the detailed evidence upon which an enquiry of this kind must be based have proved unavailing. Nevertheless, the story of the Angels of Mons stuck. By the end of 1916, there was already an Angel of Mons piano solo by Sidney C. Baldock, an Angels of Mons waltz by composer Paul Perret, and a now lost Angels of Mons silent film by director Fred Paul. The Angels began to feature in postcards, both directly, such as in drawings where they hovered behind marksmen mid-shot and indirectly, as in a series of idealized drawings of attractive nurses dubbed the Real Angels of Mons. The story also began to find its way into propaganda, both inside the United Kingdom and on the continent. Soon, Angels were a frequent feature in advertisements for war bonds, donations for the Red Cross, and recruitment posters across the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and the United States. For his part, Mackin blamed the Angels spread on modern churches. If priests spent less time preaching to penny morality instead of Christianity's eternal mysteries, he wrote, believers might have been more scrupulous. But, he said, separate a man from good drink and he will swallow methylated spirit with joy. Some blamed Mackin's writing for being too believable in its imitation of journalism, or blamed the London Evening News for not adequately labeling the story as fiction. Others, however, have seen something more calculated, and perhaps even sinister in the spread of the Angel stories. The single definitive description of the Angelic apparitions said to predate the publication of The Bowman is a postcard, written by British Brigadier General John Charteris, dated September 5, 1914, more than three weeks before Mackin's story was published. The text briefly mentions rumors of strange happenings at Mons. While for some believers this is the long sought-after proof of the Angel's existence, it's worth remaining skeptical of Charteris' account. The postcard itself has never been produced for scrutiny, only described in Charteris' 1931 memoir at GHQ, and Charteris' line of work during World War I gives ample reason to question his motives. Although not technically affiliated with the newly formed War Propaganda Bureau, founded on September 2, 1914, Charteris served as the Chief of Intelligence for the BEF from 1916 to 1918. After the war, in a 1925 speech given at the National Arts Club near New York's Grammarcy Park, The New York Times reported of Charteris bragging to his audience about the various false stories he helped invent during the war. The most notable of these were the rumors of German corpse factories, reportedly used by the enemy to turn their own dead soldiers into weapons, grease, and other essentials. Although Charteris himself later denied the account in the Times, and modern scholars are skeptical that any one person could have started the false speculations, it's worth noting that a number of the other false stories from the front pervaded during this period. The summer and fall of 1914 was the peak of the so-called Rape of Belgium, the term adopted by the British press to describe the atrocious, though arguably embellished conduct of the invading German forces. In addition to the molestation of women, the bayonetting of young children and babies referenced in writings by both Phyllis Campbell and Arthur Macken, there were other more outlandish stories of this time that have never quite held up to scrutiny. For instance, the legendary Crucified Soldier, immortalized in sculptures and illustrations across the United Kingdom and Canada, was supposedly a British or Canadian infantryman who was pinned to either a tree or a barn door either by German trench knives or by bayonets. Despite the contemporaneous ubiquity of the story, no firm evidence has emerged that the event ever occurred. Although no documentation has been found directly linking these stories to the British government, there is no denying that they were convenient for maintaining morale at home and confusing the enemy abroad. Exactly two weeks before the publication of The Bowman, Arthur Macken described a very different phantom army as one of the most remarkable delusions that the world has ever harbored. He was talking about the reports, all second or third hand, of trains carrying Russian soldiers that had apparently been sighted from northern Scotland down to the southern coast. Although, as Macken pointed out, there would have been no logical reason for Russian troops to be in the British Isles on their way to the Eastern Front, there would have been an incentive to keep such stories in the news. As David Clark, writer of the 2004 book The Angels of Mons, points out, the reports of unexpected Russian troop movements confused embedded enemy spies so much that the German command changed their plans in anticipation of a potential invasion from the North Sea. In an era characterized by fervent public anxiety for news from the front and intense government censorship about what could be safely printed in British newspapers, it is striking just how many such stories of fantastical happenings on and around the battlefield were able to propagate. Macken had his own suspicions. He always felt that Harold Begbie for one did not believe a word of it and had been put up to creating what he wrote as a publisher's commission. Some have gone so far as to suggest that Begbie, already writing poems encouraging young men to enlist, was recruited by Charteris himself for the project. Although the underlying message of the Angels of Mons stories that God was on the side of the British in what was a battle of good and evil was certainly beneficial to the war effort, there is no definitive indication of anyone within the British government directing their spread. Still, whether the Angels were guided by intelligence services or the pressures of the reading public, the results were the same. As Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations and himself an American psychological warfare agent in World War I noted in his 1923 book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, when real news breaks, semi-news must go. When real news is scarce, semi-news returns to the front page. For better or worse, over the course of the last century, the Angels of Mons have taken flight from short story to semi-news to a legend that has never quite left the public imagination. In 2019, six teenagers tried to rob a Chicago home and it ended with one dead shot by the homeowner. A Minnesota man is confronted by burglars at his home in 2012 and ends up being charged with murder for killing the intruders. In 2023, a man was killed after he broke into a home and the homeowner is charged with murder. As a listener to Weird Darkness, you know how bad things can go in a crime and even when defending yourself against the criminals, sometimes you are the one facing legal problems. That's why you never let the criminals get access to your home to begin with. Home security is no longer recommended. It is essential and with ADT, it's no longer for the elite. It's for everyone. Right now, you can get a FREE home security system from ADT to keep burglars from entering your home in the first place. Just visit WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. ADT is the biggest and most trusted name in home security and has been since 1874 and they are still equipping people like you and me with the newest and best home security technology with 24-7 monitoring and 24-7 customer service. Whether your home is basic or ultra smart, ADT is the best option for your home security. And again, you can get a FREE custom-built home security system with the latest technology by visiting WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. You ever heard about the fake wedding, staying, drug bust? In Awaso, Michigan in 1990, cops managed to pull off quite the event, a wedding, set up to get dozens of drug dealers into one place. Michigan police officers Debbie Williams and Lacey Moon Brown were partnered up in 1990. They worked as undercover cops, purchasing drugs from as many as 50 dealers in Awaso, Michigan, biding their time and gathering information. The problem they soon realized was that they neither had the manpower nor the funding to apprehend all the dealers and buyers in the area. So instead of trying to chase down offenders, they came up with an alternative. They decided to hold a wedding and invite all of the local drug community to attend. Brown, known as Moon because he liked to drop his trousers during police busts, was the one that came up with the idea in the spirit of a fake funeral that he had once staged. So instead of coordinating drug buys, the police began planning for a wedding. They sent out actual invitations about three weeks before the big day, secured floral arrangements and made centerpieces out of confiscated bottles. Williams bought her dress at a Salvation Army store for $17. The dress was paired with a lace garter, which came in handy. The police brought in retired cops as well as active ones from the surrounding area for the event. Retired Flint and Michigan police sergeant Mike Parish served as the minister and former police chief Ed Boyce played the part of Fast Eddie Leno, the bride's father. To save money, the police had to top two tiers of the three-tiered wedding cake made of cardboard that covered it with frosting and Williams and known even posed in front of it for pictures. The icing on the cake literally was blue to honor the police and there were bumblebees added in honor of the sting. During the time undercover, Williams and Brown had made their ways into the lives of their drug associates and figured they'd be able to pull off the ruse. When they had first gone undercover, they set up backstories that Williams was Debbie Leno, the daughter of a gangster named Fast Eddie. Brown was her boyfriend Danny, a major dealer. Their efforts to seem believable paid off and they sold themselves as a couple in love and ready to get hitched. Brown's real wife even joined the event serving as the maid of honor. At the request of the bride's father, Fast Eddie, guests left their weapons at the door or in their cars. The garter that came with the wedding dress served as the perfect place for the bride to keep her 38-hand gun during the ceremony though, the minister going by the name Reverend Billy Ray Hawk. He had a gun in his possession too. Wedding planners by day and associates of the underground by night, Williams and Moon spread the word of their upcoming nuptials as they continued to play the parts of Debbie and Danny. Williams recalled that the wedding felt like it was the real thing. I was excited and nervous. After the happy couple exchanged rings and kissed, it was time for the party to begin. Only about half of the guests had arrived, so the police decided to wait a while in the hopes that more people would show up. The band, made up of police officers and called SPOC, began to play. They claimed to be a marijuana-loving group whose name stood for Somebody Protect Our Crops, but it was really just the word cops spelled backwards. Eventually, guests arrived and the band gave the cue that it was time for the staying to take place. When they started playing and agreed upon song, I Fought the Law and the Law One, one of the guests yelled, everybody here that's a cop, stand up. Williams took her gun out of her garter and she and Moon started identifying suspects for the other cops in the room. The guests were reportedly stunned and had to be told repeatedly that no, they really were under arrest. Even after the apprehension of wedding guests, which numbered to the dozens, the police continued to track down guests that had not attended. Some guests were captured, others fled, still more posted bail following capture and then promptly disappeared. Most of the men apprehended had been in trouble with the law before, which factored into their convictions when they went to trial. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast app at WeirdDarkness.com. Not only will you hear a copy of tonight's show, you'll also receive daily episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash listen or search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow Weird Darkness on social media by visiting the Contact social page on the website. And please, tell others about Weird Darkness who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can send in your own paranormal experiences by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. You can also email me anytime, Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the stories of the authors in the show notes which I will upload to the Weird Darkness website immediately after tonight's show has ended. The Angel of Mons was written by Andrew Lenoir for all that's interesting, and the fake wedding drug bust is by Melissa Satorre for Weird History. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Colossians 3 verse 17, and whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. And a final thought, you'll never find the right person if you never let go of the wrong one. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Don't go anywhere, weirdos, because sudden death over time is up next. Remember staying up late on a Friday or Saturday night, either at home or at a friend's house, and watching your local TV stations' horror host presenting a terrible B movie with aliens, monsters, ghosts, alien monster ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and all other kinds of crazy creepy characters. Those were fun nights, weren't they? That's what the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com has to offer, all day, every day. Thanks to our friends at the Monster Channel, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Watch Party right after listening to this episode, and immediately be entertained by a horror host and horrible movie, or should I say, horror-ribble movie. And not only can you watch the B movies and horror hosts streaming there 24-7, but once a month we all gather together to watch a movie and talk about it in the chat room on that same page. Get your frights and funnies on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Amelia Dyer may have started her career as respectfully as a baby farmer could, but her care soon transformed into terror by the poor infants she took under her wing. Years passed before the so-called caregiver was finally exposed as the Ogress of Reading, by which point she had claimed a shockingly high number of young lives. In Victorian Britain, unmarried mothers strived to stay afloat. With the passage of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, fathers of illegitimate children no longer had a financial obligation to their offspring, which left unmarried mothers struggling to find any income. It was difficult to bring up children during Victorian society. Single parenthood and illegitimacy were looked down upon. This led to the practice of baby farming. While many businesses were set up to take in young women and care for them until they gave birth, some on-slavery operations had other plans. There could be lucrative financial gain if the baby had well-off parents. Sometimes a newborn was sent away in secret, hiding a scandalous or unwanted pregnancy. However, those who desperately needed the services were primarily impoverished women. During the 19th century, adoption, foster care and out-nursing were normal practices across England. Mother and families paid these institutions to take in and care for their newborns. Often this was done out of desperation. Impoverished new mothers unable to afford long-term child care would pay the comparatively lower charge to send away their child. Yet wealthier families also paid for other similar services. Sometimes newborns were sent to nearby villages to be cared for in their early years, returning to the family when they were toddlers. In a rather well-known example, Jane Austen's family was accustomed to sending their children to a wet nurse in a nearby village for the beginning months of an infant's life. Jane spent a fair amount of time with her parents in the beginning but was in the care of a nurse for the first two years of her life. These wet nurses were reputable, even a part of the family in many ways, and her mother and father visited regularly. Later, James Edward Austen, Jane's nephew, would write disapprovingly of this practice though he recognized the value in the out-care system. Many babies who were provided for by a credible wet nurse would survive infancy in a time when this was not typical. But not every institution was on that level. Infants who ended up at baby farms were frequently lost in the system. Others died of neglect to were worse. Once again, working class and single mothers were most likely to fall victim to these disreputable operations. Often, they could afford no other option. Enter Amelia Dyer, one of the most infamous baby farmers of Victorian England. Amelia was born in a small village near Bristol in 1838 as Amelia Hobley. She was the daughter of a successful shoemaker and was privileged enough to learn to read and write at a time when the majority of women were illiterate. Despite her relative privilege, young Amelia had a difficult childhood due to her mother's mental illness. From a very young age, Amelia was obliged to watch her mother's violent fits and care for her. In 1848, despite Amelia's best efforts, her mother died. After her mother's death, Amelia moved in with an aunt for a while. She eventually found an apprenticeship with a corset maker. In 1859, her father passed away and she became estranged to a few of her siblings. Later, she was trained as a nurse and soon began her adult life as a nurse and midwife. At age 34, she married William Dyer, a brewer's laborer from Bristol. William was her second husband, her first much older husband had passed away in 1869. The Dyer's had two children together, Mary Ann, who was better known as Polly, and William Samuel. Though she eventually left her husband and not much is known about her son, Polly became something of Dyer's assistant. Her life as a midwife proved to be an arduous one, and Dyer was not keen on continuing it. It did, however, lead to her next business venture. Her friend and fellow midwife, Ellen Dane, put an idea into Dyer's head. Charging families to care for their infants was far easier and more lucrative than bringing the newborns into the world. Working under numerous aliases, Dyer put out ads in the newspaper offering a nice family with no children, quaint country home, 10 pounds. Unwed desperate mothers responded to this seemingly respectable Mrs. Harding, as Dyer called herself in these ads, and were thrilled to find a good home for their children. Dyer wrote back, assuring the mother that she would do her duty by that dear child, I will be a mother as far as lies in my power, she said. Once the mothers were put at ease, the baby and adoption fees were handed over. Regardless of what the mother wanted, Dyer always insisted on a full adoption with no further contact. Many a desperate mother relented. It is unclear just when Dyer's operation turned deadly. Records indicate she initially tried to care for the newborns she adopted. At some point, however, whether intentionally or not, the babies under her care began to die. A cruel math then materialized. The quicker a newly adopted infant died, the less money Dyer spent on care, and the more profit went into her pockets. Where Dyer once assisted in the process of welcoming life, she soon felt more content in her role as an angel of death. Eventually, however, one too many death certificates were issued to Dyer. A doctor grew suspicious and authorities were alerted. In 1879, Dyer was arrested. At the time, she was charged with allowing children to die by neglect rather than manslaughter or murder. She was sentenced to six months of hard labor, an experience she later claimed left her mentally ill. Once released, Dyer went in and out of mental hospitals. There's evidence that Dyer began abusing alcohol and opium-based products early on in her baby farming career. At one point, Dyer drank two bottles of laudanum in a suicide attempt. However, her long-term abuse had built up her tolerance to opium products. She soon revisited her deadly trade. In 1890, the illegitimate baby of a governess was put under Dyer's care. When the mother returned for a visit, she realized something was wrong. The governess grew suspicious and, upon further inspection, decided to strip the baby to locate a birthmark on one of its hips. The baby was missing the birthmark and an enraged mother began to question Dyer. This led to Dyer having, possibly, feigning a breakdown and entering a mental asylum. Having served as an asylum nurse, Dyer knew how to behave to ensure a comfortable environment during her time as an asylum inmate. Eventually, she also returned completely to baby farming. This time around, she took extra care to cover her tracks. She no longer called for death certificates. Bodies were wrapped in bags, weighted down with bricks and tossed into bodies of water. Dyer and her family frequently moved through Bristol, Reading, Cardiff and London, never remaining in one place for too long, never leaving a trace. Until that is one cold March day in 1896. A bargeman sending cargo up the Thames and Reading noticed a box lying along the riverbank. Upon further investigation, he discovered the body of an infant within. The bargeman called police. They confirmed that the body was that of a little girl between 6 and 12 months old. They also discovered faint writing on the box that pointed to one Mrs. Thomas and a barely visible address. Detectives were and had been on to Dyer, but there was no strong evidence to link her directly to the crimes. They had collected additional evidence from witnesses and more information from Bristol police but were unable to find any conclusive details. That is when detectives decided to use a young woman as a decoy in order to secure a meeting with Dyer to discuss her services. Whether it was designed to link Dyer to her new business or as a certain opportunity to arrest her, the plan worked. On April 3, 1896, Dyer was expecting a new client. She was instead greeted by detectives outside her home. They entered and raided the home. Upon entering, authorities were apparently hit by the stench of death, though no bodies were actually discovered on the premises. What they did find, however, was a mountain of evidence. Telegrams about adoption arrangements and letters from concerned mothers inquiring about the health and safety of their children. Receipts for newspaper adverts and pawn tickets for children's clothing and edging tape used to strangle babies to death. Authorities estimated that upwards of 20 children had been in the care of this Mrs. Thomas within the last few months alone. All told, the death toll may have been as high as 400. Amelia Dyer was arrested, charged with murder and brought to Newgate Prison where her plea for insanity was rejected. After a jury meeting of just four minutes, Dyer was condemned. On June 10, 1896, Amelia Dyer was hanged outside Newgate Prison. Dyer's disturbing story dominated headlines and soon led to stricter adoption laws. Unfortunately, the baby trafficking did not cease completely after this horrifying case. Polly, Dyer's daughter who got off scot-free from any charges after her mother testified that she had never been involved, was rumored to continue baby farming after Amelia's hanging. A number of advertisements by a Mrs. Stewart for adoptable babies said, quote, the little one would have a good home and a parent's love and care, unquote. Many observers believed that Mrs. Stewart was Polly's pseudonym, following in a ghoulish family business she knew so well. I'm here, darkness!