 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 this hour… Within the arena of cryptozoology, there are a number of stories of people having allegedly been killed by strange creatures. True, false, legend, hoax, we'll look at a few of the cases. Almost everyone is curious about what happens beyond the grave. Some are so eager to know they try to reach the other side before they pass, but in many cases that is a very, very bad idea. Louisville, Kentucky. Famed for the Kentucky Derby, Muhammad Ali, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Louisville Slugger Baseball Bats, and Blue Quasi Humans roaming the streets. Guess which one we'll be talking about. Those stories and more in this next hour. 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 somebody else to listen 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 follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter, and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated to send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know, and more. 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. Can we believe the stories of people supposedly being killed by unknown creatures and monsters? Let's take a look at some of the cases on record, and we'll begin with the matter of the Loch Ness Monster. St. Adamna's life of St. Colomba is a fascinating Gaelic chronicle of the life of St. Colomba. He was a 6th century abbot, also of Ireland, who spent much of his life trying to convert the Iron Age picks of Christianity and who, like Adamna, was an abbot of Iona. In 563, Colomba sailed to Scotland, and two years later happened to visit Loch Ness while traveling with a number of comrades to meet with King Brood of the Picts. It turned out to be an amazing and notable experience, as the life of St. Colomba book most assuredly demonstrates. Adamna began his story thus, when the blessed man was staying for some days in the province of the Picts, he found it necessary to cross the River Ness, and when he came to the bank thereof, he sees some of the inhabitants burying a poor unfortunate little fellow, whom, as those who were burying him themselves reported, some water monster had little before snatched at, as he was swimming, and bitten with a most savage bite, and whose hapless corpse some men who came in a boat to give assistance, though too late, caught hold of by putting out hooks. It should be noted that we could make a rational case the story was simply a parable, a fable, perhaps one designed to demonstrate the power of the word of God over the domain of evil. After all, St. Colomba, as noted, spent years trying to convert the Picts to Christianity. So, what better way than to suggest that God had the power to repel deadly Scottish lake monsters? On the other hand, however, it is decidedly intriguing and curious that, of all the large bodies of water in Scotland that the story could have been set in, it turned out to be none other than Loch Ness, which just happens to be the home of a creature of the deep. Or, to be totally accurate, it was the River Ness, an approximately 12-mile-long body of water that flows out of the locks' northern end. Numerous locks in Scotland have legends attached to them of what were known centuries ago as Kelpies. Loch Ness has such legends too. Within the folklore of Loch Ness and much of Scotland, there are centuries-old legends and myths concerning supernatural, violent, shapeshifting creatures known as Kelpies, or in English, water horses. It should be noted, though, when it comes to Kelpies and Nessies, that although the creatures are assumed by some researchers to be one and the same, there is one noticeable difference between the tales that specifically refer to Kelpies and those that talk about water horses. Typically, water horses are far more at home in deep, sprawling lakes, while Kelpies prefer pools, rivers, marshes, and lakes of a particularly compact kind. Legend has it that numerous people have been killed by Kelpies. Then, there is a variant of the Kelpie known as the Yakuska, which is a far more murderous monster than the Kelpie, but which is clearly of the same supernatural stock. And the Kelpies can take on the image of beautiful women. They'll be the last things you'll see when you are dragged into the depths. How about Bigfoot being a killer of us? Over the years, such claims have been made. Right now, there's no hard evidence. If there was, of course, we would know all about it. Unless that is, you buy into the theory that the government is hiding it all away. I don't. It's not every day that a U.S. president makes comments and observations on what just might have been Bigfoot. Yeah, as incredible as it might sound, President Theodore Roosevelt may have done exactly that in the pages of his 1890 book, The Wilderness Hunter. He wrote, and I quote, a grizzled, weather-beaten old mountain hunter named Bauman, who, born and had passed all of his life on the frontier, told it the story to me, Roosevelt added. When the event occurred, Bauman was still a young man and was trapping with a partner among the mountains dividing the forks of the salmon from the head of Wisdom River. Not having had much luck, he and his partner determined to go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small stream said to contain many beavers. The pass at an evil reputation, because the years before a solitary hunter who had wandered into it was slain, seemingly by a wild beast. The half-eaten remains being afterwards found by some mining prospectors who had passed his camp only the night before, unquote. Something monstrous was in the area. The creature, or whatever it was, was soon after Bauman and his friend. The two made a camp and bedded down for the night. It was a bone-chilling time. Theodore Roosevelt continues, At midnight, Bauman was awakened by some noise and sat up in his blankets. As he did so, his nostrils were struck by a strong, wild beast odor and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague, threatening shadow but must have missed, for immediately afterwards he heard the smashing of the underwood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night and the mysterious activity showed no sign of slowing down. In fact, things only got worse. But you guessed that, right? There was more to come. After this, the two men slept but little, sitting up by the rekindled fire. But they heard nothing more. In the morning, they started out to look at the few traps they set the previous evening and put out new ones. By an unspoken agreement, they kept together all day and returned to camp towards evening. On nearing it, they saw hardly to their astonishment that the lean-to had again been torn down. The visitor of the preceding day had returned and in wanton malice had tossed about their camp kit and bedding and destroyed the shanty. The ground was marked up by its tracks and on leaving the camp, it had gone along the soft earth by the brook. The footprints were as plain as if on snow and after a careful scrutiny of the trail, it certainly did seem as if whatever the thing was, it had walked off on but two legs. And worse was to come. Indeed, it was when the two chose to part for a while that things turned terrible and fatal. We'll continue with the story and Theodore Roosevelt's account of a possible Bigfoot when Weird Darkness returns. Plus, almost everybody's curious about what happens beyond the grave. Some are so eager to know that they try to reach the other side before they pass. And in many cases, that is a very, very bad idea. Hey, Weirdos! Well, the holidays are upon us and one of the traditions here at Weird Darkness is Christmas specials. Just like watching Charlie Brown, Rudolph, Frosty, Ebenezer Scrooge, George Bailey, and Kevin McAllister every year, we have our holiday specials too. First off, Spooky Santa returns with holiday chillers for kids every day from December 14th through Christmas Eve. My partnership with author Sylvia Schultz also returns, with the 12 Nightmares of Christmas, posting December 13th through Christmas Eve. Holiday horrors also returns, with more terrifying stories that take place around the holidays, and those episodes will post every day beginning December 10th and going through Christmas Eve. On Saturday December 10th, we'll also have a brand new Christmas special from our Micro Terror's Scary Stories for Kids series too. On Christmas Day, it's my narration of the entire novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Plus, I'll be posting regular episodes of Weird Darkness the whole month long as well, so if you like a little horror in your holidays, some perturbation in your plum pudding, if you like frighten your festivities, terror in your tree, nervousness in your noel, and cruel in your yule, then be sure to come back every day for more episodes. And be sure to tell your friends and family as well, so they can get creeped out at Christmas too. Happy holidays, and Merry Christmas from Weird Darkness! Welcome back to Weird Darkness, I'm Darren Marlar, and you can stay up to date on everything Weird Darkness and also at the same time maybe win some cool prizes by signing up for the email newsletter. Maybe you could be my next winner. Sign up for the Weird Darkness newsletter for free at WeirdDarkness.com and you'll automatically be honored to win. Let's return to President Theodore Roosevelt telling the story about that potential Bigfoot. The footprints were as plain as if on snow, and after a careful scrutiny of the trail, it certainly did seem as if whatever the thing was, it had walked off on but two legs. And worse was to come. Indeed, it was when the two chose to part for a while that things turned terrible and fatal. At first, Bauman, having left his friend for a while, could see nobody, nor did he receive an answer to his call. Theodore Roosevelt continues. Stepping forward, he again shouted as he did so, his eye fell on the body of his friend, stretched beside the trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing towards it, the horrified trapper found that the body was still warm but that the neck was broken. While there were four great bang marks in the throat, the footprints of the unknown beast creature printed deep in the soft soil told the whole story. The unfortunate man, having finished his packing, had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire and his back to the dense woods to wait for his companion. While thus waiting, his monstrous assailant which must have been lurking in the woods, waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking with long, noiseless steps and seemingly still on two legs. Evidently unheard, it reached the man and broke his neck by wrenching his neck back with its forepaws while it buried its teeth at his throat. It had not eaten the body, but apparently had romped and gambled around it in uncouth ferocious glee, occasionally rolling over and over it and had then fled back into the soundless depths of the woods. Killed by a raging bigfoot? Maybe. The description didn't seem to fit that of a bear. The mystery is unlikely ever to be resolved and there are a few other cases of alleged killings by a cryptid. None of them are particularly impressive. Many stories are a friend of a friend heard about kind of cases from Puerto Rico. The tales are near identical, but there were no names, no specific locations, and well, you get the point. The stories revolved around people having been slaughtered, some were deep in the huge and a yonk in the late 1990s and drained of blood. The authorities supposedly covered the whole thing up. Of course, an amazing story, but there was nothing in the way of proof, not even a bit. So, in light of everything we have heard here, what can we say for sure? Well, we can't say anything for sure. All we have are rumors, legends and folklore. And we should probably stress that does not mean people have not or have not been killed by cryptids, but we do need a bit more evidence than we have now if we are going to make a solid case that people have been killed by cryptids. If something paranormal has happened to you, you can call the dark line toll-free at 1-877-277-5944. We got a call just the other day. This is David from Sarasota, Florida, where my grandma lived and where I grew up, basically, from when I was 7 to 21. The house behind her is that me and my mom and my aunt lived in for probably two weeks. And the reason I say two weeks is because that house was, in fact, super haunted. I was pretty young. I don't remember everything that happened, but the story is that my mom's told me and people that were living there told me. I would always, I sleep in the back room and I would always play with my toys. My mom, before we would go anywhere, would tell me, all right, pick everything up, put them in the bin. I would do so. She would watch me do so and then we'd go to leave. She'd go check the house, go check my and then boom, all my toys scattered on the floor. Every single time I would pick them all up and I would get yelled at about not putting them away. And I would tell her, I put all my toys away and, you know, like for a giant toy box to basically have every single toy out of it, even though I didn't even have every toy out of it. When I was playing with the toys, it scared me a little bit, but I was a kid. I was just like, I don't know what my toys are doing there. I don't know. And so my mom would just help me clean it up. We'd leave. Clothes would be back on the floor. I'd get yelled at a little bit by it, but she wouldn't know what did it. Or if I was doing it, then my mom has had some really scary things happen to her when she was younger with the Ouija board and all types of things. And so anyways, we're in this house. I guess the reason why we moved out is because my mom kept hearing her name being called like as if my two brothers, which are just about one of my brothers, 10 years older than the other ones, like eight, she would hear them like calling her name all the time in different rooms. And they would not be there. And the last time she was in the shower and she heard my brother Jason calling for help, like, mom, help me, come here, please, come here, help me, help me, help me, please, mom, crystal, crystal. And he kept calling her by her by her name, actually, crystal, she said, instead of mom, but it sounded just like my brother. So she hurry up, got out the shower, went and looked in every single room was yelling to my brother's name. My brother wasn't there. She called my brother. Where are you? I'm at my friend's house, blah, blah, blah, in the neighborhood. Why was wrong? We left that house after that happened to my mom and she didn't tell me that story until I was a little bit older. My mom believed that there was something more than just a spirit there for it to be calling her name and sounding like my brother. So vividly where she got so scared where she brushed out of the shower soaking wet looking for my brother thinking he's like dying. Yeah, that scared her half to death. And we moved out of the house and as a kid, I'd see other people move in. There's some old people out asking, Hey, anything going on weird around the house? And every time I'd asked the old guy who'd look at me with this mean face, and they go inside right after every single time because we'd jump on our trampoline and ask them, Hey, I used to live there. Anything weird? And every time he'd see us, he would just ignore us with a mean face and go back inside and through a lot of crazy paranormal stuff. But I don't think any demons or ghosts even want to mess with this guy right here. Blaming your messy room on ghosts. I might have to try that the next time Robin yells at me from my office looking like a tornado hit it. Thanks for the story, David. I hope you're treating your mom right because, well, after that, I can imagine she's a pretty fragile person. If you have a true paranormal or creepy story to share of your own, well, you can do what David and Sarasota Florida did. You can call the dark line toll free at 1-877-277-5944. That's 1-877-277-5944. Ebenezer Scrooge learned the lesson in just one night, that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Of course, it took three ghosts scaring the crap out of him to get the point across, but there's an easier and less terrifying way of going about it. Just scare it forward. The next time you're in a drive-thru buying fast food, donuts, or coffee, tell the attendant you want to pay for the person behind you. In fact, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com slash scare it forward and download a printout to give to the drive-thru worker that they can pass on to the person behind you in line so you don't have to explain everything. It's a great way to bring a little joy to someone during the holiday season, a time that's often tough for many. And hey, maybe the car behind you will want to pay for the car behind them and keep the streak going. It's scare it forward. Get started at WeirdDarkness.com slash scare it forward. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash scare it forward. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. Seances are a means of trying to communicate with spirits who have passed. These ceremonies, led by a medium or other spiritual guide, claim to connect people with ghosts or other entities to learn about their unfinished business, their life after, or how to go on without them. Sometimes they're conducted through a spirit board or other means of communication, while others are simply done by a spiritually sensitive person inviting a spirit to overtake their bodies. Seances have a long history and cultures around the world. However, not every attempt at communication with the afterlife goes as planned. Even experienced mediums may run into an unpleasant spirit from time to time, and those who have no experience whatsoever may find themselves overwhelmed by a strong-willed entity with an inclination to do harm. These allegedly true stories from seances suggest that communication with those who have passed is not always in our best interest, from accidentally unleashing a demon on your girlfriend to cursing your band's next album. Dabbling too heavily in spirit communication can have dire consequences. These seance stories will make you think twice about lighting a few candles and bringing out that dusty old Ouija board from your closet. If you've seen the conjuring, you have a little bit of an idea of what happened in the life of Andrea Perron, but the film didn't tell the whole story. In 1971, Perron and her family moved to a house in Harrisville, Rhode Island. They soon discovered the house was filled with spirits who had not yet passed on due to continuous unexplained phenomena happening. Scared for their lives, the Perron family called upon paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, for help. They promised to try and help the family get the spirits out. When a medium performed a seance, it went dreadfully wrong. She summoned a spirit that went after Perron's mother, Carolyn, throwing her around the house with such force that she sustained a concussion. Perron said, It was the most terrifying night of my life. After the seance, the family no longer experienced severe supernatural events. Andrea Perron has written three books about the hauntings experienced by her family in their Harrisville home. In 1941, psychic Helen Duncan was approached by a mother looking for news of her son, a soldier in the British Royal Navy. Duncan held a seance to conjure up any spirits with news of the man. She revealed that the young man had been lost in the sinking of the battleship HMS Barum. Remarkably, the ship's sinking hadn't yet been revealed to the public to prevent the loss of morale in the difficult days of World War II. Among the people at the seance were two lieutenants of the Navy. They were immediately suspicious of Duncan, prompting two undercover police officers to attend another seance. The officers promptly detained her and Duncan was tried under Section 4 of the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Keep in mind this is taking place in 1941, but the Witchcraft Act of 1735 forbade deceitful spiritual activity. She was the last person to be tried for witchcraft under that act before its repeal in 1951. Individual stories of spirit contact are creepy enough, but even more eerie is the number of people who claim to have contacted an entity named Zozo. The spirit is more known for having intimate knowledge of people's lives and for its ability to manipulate people and objects to cause harm. The entity's origins are murky, but people around the world claim to have interacted with it during seances while using spirit boards or while practicing auto-writing. Sometimes Zozo is a mere trickster, while other times it has reportedly possessed people and caused harm. The entity is a special interest to paranormal researcher Darren Evans, whose website and blog have become a hub for reports of Zozo activity. Whatever the cause, if a spirit identifies itself as Zozo, it might be best to slide that plan shut over to goodbye. Experimental rock group The Mars Volta almost canceled an entire album because of a supposedly cursed spirit board. After guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez picked up a Ouija board in Jerusalem and the band used it, they started experiencing strange happenings, including tracks disappearing from the computer, two floods in the studio, equipment being ruined and a valued engineer quitting. True to form, the band channeled the strange events into their album, The Bedlam in Goliath, released in 2008. Rodriguez Lopez buried the board to avoid any future incidents, and the band released two more albums before breaking up in 2013. Bradford J. Angers, a magic store employee and psychology student, got more than he bargained for when a customer paid him $100 to perform a fake seance complete with sounds and visuals. With the aid of a partner, Angers set out to create an entirely fabricated seance that appeared real. Angers pulled it off without a hitch, with disembodied voices speaking predictions about the attendees' loved ones from a mist that formed in the center of the table. But once it was over, Angers went to help his partner disconnect the equipment they used to produce the special effects, only to find that his partner and the equipment had been locked outside the entire time. Whatever happened during the seance had nothing to do with their plans. Some Ouija board experiments are fun ways to spend a harmless Saturday night, but others can be downright eerie. One Reddit user described an experience on an army base when dabbling with a Ouija board and it led her and a group of friends to contact a spirit named Cheryl. This spirit said that she perished in a car accident and was searching for her boyfriend. After continuing to use the board, they managed to get in touch with the boyfriend who said that he was sorry and he loved her very much but he couldn't explain why he was sorry. The group contacted a third spirit who said the reason the boyfriend was sorry was because he was in hell and the girlfriend was in heaven. At that moment, all of the candles in the room flickered out. Growing up in a creepy, seemingly haunted room could force anybody to take drastic measures. For this unidentified man growing up in Michigan, he knew his room had a bad vibe when he allowed two occult dabbling friends to hold séance to find out the cause of his eerie visions and unexplained voices, things went from bad to worse. The séance backfired. His girlfriend started angrily shouting for the friends to leave. After they left, the man found her trapped in the room, unable to move. Once he pushed a dresser out of the way to gain access, he tried to pick her up but found that she was heavier than normal. Once he got her out, they escaped to the home of his friends where she revealed that she felt like she had been possessed. The friends returned to his home to try and rid his room of the evil entity. They ended up contacting a demon named Enlil who told them that it had been using the bedroom as a gateway and the séance had enabled him to escape along with a host of other terrifying spirits. The friends managed to close the gateway and rid the room of spirits and from then on the room seemed to be normal. While you can't trust everything a Ouija board tells you, one Reddit user discovered that there might be more truth to a prediction than meets the eye. According to the post, the Redditor asked the spirit they connected with to make a prediction about a future news event to which the spirit replied, D I die, D I die, D I die, D I die and then Princess die. When asked how this would happen, it responded, car accident. When asked where this would happen, it gave the answer, Paris. When asked when, it replied, Ohio. The Redditor ended up going to Ohio but nothing happened, so the spirit's message was dismissed as irrelevant. A month later, the Redditor went on another trip to Ohio. During that trip, Princess Diana of Wales lost her life in a tragic car accident in Paris. Sometimes she don't realize you've experienced something inexplicable until after it's over, as this other Reddit user found out when dabbling with a Ouija board on New Year's Eve. A spirit identifying itself as Eugene said that it was afraid. It directed the poster and their brother to the radio, which was playing a song by the band Hart. The board then began repeating the word Hart, Hart, Hart, following it up with cryptic statements like, Don't Go and Church. It wasn't until the next morning that the encounter finally made sense. A distant great-uncle named Eugene had suffered a heart attack overnight, and after passing on the hospital table several times and then being revived and then regaining consciousness, he said that he was terrified that he would end up in hell for not attending church in 20 years, just like the Ouija board was indicating. Improving the existence of the supernatural to a skeptic is often futile, but that did not dissuade Cindy Lawson's mom from trying to make her friend Ricky a believer. Lawson's mother was part of a singing group, and the troupe wanted to prove to Ricky a non-believer that spirits were real. They held a seance and asked for a series of escalating signs, including slamming doors, strange smells and knocking sounds. The night culminated with a visit from a spirit identified as Lorenzo de Medici, a famous patron of the arts in Renaissance Italy, who predicted the skeptical Ricky would soon suffer an accident during his act as a trick cyclist. Though Ricky laughed at the prediction, he did in fact suffer a significant mishap several weeks later, perhaps prompting him to reassess his skepticism about the supernatural realm. Coming up, Louisville, Kentucky, famed for the Kentucky Derby, Muhammad Ali, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Louisville Slugger Baseball Bats, and a blue quasi-human roaming the streets. Guess which one we'll be talking about when Weird Darkness returns. Hey Weirdos, our January Weirdo Watch Party brings sci-fi horror host Duke Suha back with another cheesy sci-fi flick, 1953's The Twonky. The last thing college lit professor Kerry West wants while his wife is out of town is a television set to keep him company, but that's just what his wife Carol and his bot for him, and the television is alive. Possessed by something from the future, the TV is militantly intent on regulating the professor's daily life. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch online with all of us, so grab your popcorn, your candy, your soda, jump into some fun and even get involved in a live chat if you want to, and watch the movie along with a fun sci-fi horror host. It's The Twonky from 1953, presented by Duke Suha. The Weirdo Watch Party is Saturday, January 7th, starting at 7pm Pacific, 8pm Mountain, 9pm Central, 10pm Eastern. You can see a trailer for the film and watch horror movies and horror hosts for free 24-7 on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Again, our January Weirdo Watch Party Saturday, January 7th. Get the details on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I took a look at the clock. I unfortunately am running out of time. I don't think I'll have enough time to talk about this blue quasi-human story. It's the blue man of Louisville, but I will put it in the sudden death overtime of today's show, which I'll put into the podcast immediately after the show, so you will be able to hear that story if you are subscribed to the podcast or if you are a patron of the show. But we do have a little bit of time left in the show, not enough for that story, but let me grab a couple of short stories here for you. One of the world's busiest airports, London's Heathrow, it originated all the way back in 1929. Well, it typically sees about 200,000 passengers passing through its gates on a daily basis. Well, unsurprisingly, then, it has become home to a few of its own ghost stories over the years. One of these concerns the victim of a fatal plane crash that occurred one fally night back in 1948. A Douglas D-3 plane, which had been attempting to land despite the bad weather conditions, crashed and caught fire, killing 19 people. Well, doctors, nurses, traffic girls, fire tenders and ambulances, they all rushed to the scene with first aid and bandages but could do little good in that raging heat. Well, things took a rather peculiar turn when a mysterious man showed up on the scene to ask if anybody had seen his briefcase. When firefighters eventually located the victims of the crash and the wreckage, they discovered that one of the deceased looked exactly like the man who was asking for his briefcase. And since then, that same man, who is typically seen wearing a dark suit and a bowler hat, has made several appearances in and around the vicinity of the airport. On one occasion, the radar office picked up an unidentified individual on one of the runways. When officers went out to investigate, there was nobody there. There was a ghost wearing a bowler hat. And to this day, no explanation for the sightings of the mysterious man has ever been found. And here is a crazy one. This one could easily have ended up in the weird news. A growing number of people seem to believe that the real Internet went offline several years ago, and the Internet that we're using now is fake. We've seen more than our fair share of out-there conspiracy theories over the years, especially here on Weird Darkness. Ideas and concepts ranging from the potentially feasible to just the downright absurd. Well, this one suggests that the Internet that we use on a daily basis was actually a fake one created by an artificial intelligence. This one definitely fits into the downright absurd category. There seems to be a few different versions of this conspiracy doing the rounds, but what they all have in common is the idea that the original quote-unquote real Internet went down several years ago. Perfect timing for me to define this right after the Facebook thing the other day. Known as dead Internet theory, the concept implies that the Internet was taken down by an artificial intelligence and that all the user-generated content that you see online today has also been created by that same AI to put forward the occurrence of a large number of users. Some believe that the government is secretly behind all of this with a group of highly paid influencers helping to perpetuate the illusion that the Internet is still buzzing with activity. The entire thing is nonsense, of course, but such conspiracy theories provide an intriguing glimpse into how the human mind works, as well as how such bizarre ideas actually get started. Whether this particular conspiracy is likely to stick around remains to be seen. I don't believe it, but then again, I would probably qualify as one of those influencers, so you probably can't believe what I'm telling you anyway. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show, or you want to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll hear not only tonight's radio show but also the extra sudden death overtime content that I prepared that I didn't have time to fit in because I went overtime. And while the radio show is one night per week, I upload episodes for the podcast seven days per week. And if you're one of my patrons, you can get a commercial free copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness, and please tell others about the show 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. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call in to the Dark Line toll three to tell your own true paranormal story or a story that happened to somebody you know. That number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, the toll free number is 1-877-277-5944. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright 2021. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Colossians 1, verses 13 and 14, for he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the sun he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And a final thought, learning from your mistakes is wise, but learning from the mistakes of others is quicker and easier. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. What is it like to be a murderer to commit the crime, to have the police examining every scene you've been to for clues in order to track you down? And what if other psychopathic murderers were also out to get you? For the true crime enthusiast, killers, the card game is full of mystery, intrigue and dark humor. Two to five players draw cards to reveal the victims and scenarios, with each kill bringing you closer to winning. But watch out, for the police are also in the game, following up on every clue to stop your murder spree. Roll the dice to determine if you leave evidence at the scene or if you avoid the police. Use your cards to mess with other players and emerge victorious or end up as a victim yourself. The back of the killer card deck also allows you to experience the cold facts, unique history and horror all fans of true crime love. The Dark Trivia will make your party both exciting and disturbingly entertaining for Dark Game Night. Numerous expansion packs make this role-playing game even more delightfully deadly by adding more scenarios, more law enforcement, more victims and expand up to 10 players at once. Part RPG, part collectible, all card game. For ages 18 and up, gameplay includes sensitive topics, killers to card game, available now at WeirdDarkness.com slash card game. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash card game. 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 this hour. When it comes to finding aliens, you're more likely to find them not by looking up, but by looking them up on the internet. And one particular gray-skinned creature got a lot of attention when he showed up on the web in 2011, a being who eventually got hung with the name Skinny Bob. Imagine not remembering getting married, because one of your multiple personalities was in control at the time. That's just one of the strange things one woman had to live with all her life, for she had 17 distinct personalities residing within her mind. It's often said there's a fine line between genius and madness. It can also be argued that there is an even finer line between dashing rogue and out of control menace to society. And that pretty much describes a man by the name of Thomas Pitt. 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. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts for free 24-7, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, and send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or somebody 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. One place where a lot of weird stuff has made the rounds concerning aliens and UFOs is the Internet. There is a vast treasure trove of resources on these phenomena, including countless videos and photos of UFOs and aliens. With so many obviously faked and the veracity of these things so in question, it's nearly impossible to separate what might be genuine from the numerous fakes and hoaxes. Yet every once in a while, something comes out that really manages to make its mark. And one of these was a series of videos that appeared online, claiming to show actual, living, breathing aliens in some sort of government program. In 2011, a very curious video started making the rounds on the Internet. Released on YouTube by a user called Ivan0135, the series of supposed leaked videos allegedly shows alien beings being interrogated by some government agency, allegedly the KGB. In the videos, an alien that looks very much like a typical gray type entity is shown being interviewed and examined, supposedly as part of some sort of diplomatic exchange. The creature is described as being from the Zeta reticuli star system, sent as part of an envoy to discuss matters of mutual concern. According to the videos, the aliens would be escorted by special officers and only meet with high-ranking officials. Although several aliens are claimed to have been present, the one most prominently featured is one with the nickname of Skinny Bob, who would become a viral sensation with his appearance and spark much debate within the UFO community. The alien itself appears as a very thin, slouched over figure with an oversized bald head, slit like mouth, large eyes that seem expressive and they blink and supposedly claw-like hands, although we never really get a good look at the hands in the videos. There was apparently a whole series of interviews conducted with the creature from the years between 1942 and 1969, although only a few clips have managed to get leaked out. The most well-known clip simply shows Skinny Bob sitting at a table, apparently in a telepathic interview, after which we see footage of the alien from head to toe, showing its disproportionately long arms and freakish build. After that, there's a shot of it allegedly within a pool of some sort of liquid, where it would supposedly sleep. You can actually see that footage of the Skinny Bob Gray alien in the Weird News section at WeirdDarkness.com. I uploaded it there the other day for you and I'll also place a link to it in the show notes for this episode. While these two clips are the most well-known and widely available, there were allegedly other clips that have since been taken down, such as that of the alien spacecraft and another of an autopsy being performed on a dead specimen at the base. As soon as these clips were released, there was immediate debate as to their authenticity and over just who Ivan 0135 was. Arguments over the video have gone both ways, with some convinced it is real, while others point out that it's obviously a hoax and much analysis being done on the footage from both sides. Was this CGI, animatronics, or the real deal? One special effects guy by the name of Ben Phillips offered up his own thoughts on the footage, saying, if Skinny Bob was fate, he is either an animatronic puppet or CGI, or a blend of both. If it's digital, then it's outstanding and the creator was a professional. If it's digital, then it wasn't keyframe animation, but motion capture. If it was motion capture, then it would need a studio setup. A studio setup means money and more people. If it was a puppet, then it's not only a stunning design, but the puppeteers were top of the pile. The way he shifts his stance and looks down when he's having his height measured is beautifully done, and one of the reasons why, if it is a computer-generated character, it was done using motion capture and not keyframe animated. I'm not saying it isn't faked, I'm proposing that if it was, then it was done by a multi-disciplinary team of effects professionals. They spent a lot of time and money building physical models for extremely short clips that weren't even the main subject matter of the video, Skinny Bob. If faked, none of these involved have broken silence since May 2011 to lay claim for their work. Others are not so sure. It's been pointed out that the frame rate seems off, and there have been arguments over whether it was 16mm footage or not, and simply that the aliens look fake, with a fake-sounding camera clicking sound overlaid over it all. However, even for skeptics, the main mystery seems to be why anybody would have gone through such trouble to fake it to begin with. It seems like it would have cost quite a lot to make these videos, yet no one has really tried to make money off of them. It's also been suggested that it was some sort of viral marketing for a science fiction film, but if that was the case, then for what film? These clips were released back in 2011, yet there's been no movie that they have been connected to, and no one has admitted making them. Also, no one knows who the mysterious Ivan 0135 is, the person who released the videos. He has never given up his identity, and has sort of dropped off the radar. One Reddit user, James Esquire, has given a pretty good summation of these points as follows. In terms of this being real, he says, There are numerous red flags. The camera clicking sound seems to have been added on over the top of the footage. Overall, it just feels too good to be true. Now, the problem is this. Many CGI experts and those in the movie industry have studied the footage and most agree that if fake, it is the work of a studio with a big budget. I would estimate, especially in 2011, for a studio to produce something of this quality, you're looking at a budget approaching $250,000. To my knowledge, the video has not been monetized. Nobody is making money off of this. No studio has ever come forward to claim it. If this was a viral video for an upcoming movie, we would know about it by now. The footage was released in 2011. Again, I don't want this to descend into a real or not argument. The mystery to me is why. Who made this? Who had the money to make this for seemingly no benefit or profit? We'd love to hear the thoughts of people who work in the movie industry and special effects. What kind of budget or setup are we looking at to make this footage in 2011? Are there examples of homemade CGI from 10 years ago that looks as good as this? Is it even CGI? Is it animatronic? Again, if so, who made it? The videos have been largely judged to have been a hoax. But we are still left with some mysteries. Who made them and why? Why is it that they went through so much effort to pull this off? Who is the mysterious poster of these clips and where did it go? To this day, no one has claimed responsibility for the videos, which has only further caused the believers to insist that they are real. Folks or not, the Skinny Bob videos made quite the waves back in their day and they've often been discussed right up to the present and they show just how difficult it would be to ever get any photographic evidence that would be accepted as real. And it also demonstrates the power of the Internet to spread fake videos far and wide. Again, you can see the Skinny Bob gray alien video for yourself in the Weird News section at WeirdDarkness.com. Coming up, imagine not remembering getting married because one of your multiple personalities was in control at the time. That is just one of the strange things that one woman had to live with her entire life, for she had 17 distinct personalities residing within her mind. That story is up next on Weird Darkness. Are you more than just a listener of Weird Darkness? Are you a fan? Are you a loyal or even a vowed member of the Weirdo family? Then you can join us in the Darkness Syndicate. As a member of the Darkness Syndicate, you can receive exclusive Weird Darkness merchandise, get daily episodes of the podcast, commercial free, listen to chapters of audiobooks that I narrate even before the publishers or authors hear them, and get news about the Weird Darkness podcast before anyone else. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. In 1989, at the age of 29, a woman known under the pseudonym of Karen Overhill went to Chicago therapist Dr. Richard Baer in the hopes of finding the source of her lifelong memory lapses. After an examination and several visits, the diagnosis came back. Overhill had a rare mental condition, multiple personality disorder, now called Disassociative Identity Disorder or DID. Baer determined Overhill had 17 distinct personalities. In the decades since she began treatment, Overhill's condition has become a well-known case study. Mental health professionals have maintained there is a direct correlation between childhood abuse and adult mental illness, citing the example of Overhill. Baer concluded Overhill developed her 16 DID alters to cope with childhood trauma, specifically the sexual assault and torture that she told Dr. Baer she endured in the 1960s when male family members allegedly were in a cult. Baer employed hypnosis and visualization methods to help Overhill reintegrate her personalities, and in 2017 he released The Biography, Switching Time, a doctor's harrowing story of treating a woman with 17 personalities. In 1989, when Overhill first came to the practice where Dr. Richard Baer, fresh out of medical school, offered psychotherapy counseling, he did not expect the extent of her mental illness. He told Chicago magazine she had chronic pain resulting from surgery from delivering her daughter by cesarean section. People who have chronic pain often have depression and knew from her manner that her depression was serious and had to be dealt with before anything else. With this patient, I thought she was just a depressed woman who needed medication. Obviously, I was wrong. He admitted to at first feeling impatient with the new client, not understanding why she seemed so unsure of herself and her life. However, he recognized character traits in Overhill, indicating medication alone was not the answer. Baer initially believed Overhill suffered from secondary depression as a result of chronic pain. His understanding of her circumstances changed as she began to reveal several little tidbits of things that were odd. For example, she told Baer she fainted three times during her wedding ceremony. There were also several instances in which Overhill was unable to respond when the doctor asked what she had done the day before. Baer was hesitant to diagnose her condition because he wanted to be sure that she had multiple personalities before moving forward. He recognized her description of dissociative episodes but could not identify the nature of the episodes until after extensive therapy. According to Overhill, she was just one of the victims of a cult that her father and grandfather founded. According to her, throughout the 1960s, her father collected a variety of men, including a police officer, a teacher and a priest who actively participated in the ritual abuse of children. Dr. Baer explained to reporters how acting as a detective wasn't the way to cure Overhill. In his book, Baer documented a letter from Miles, one of Overhill's personalities. In the letter, Miles explained how he and Elise, another personality, went to the rituals and kept cult and non-cult things separate from Overhill. When Baer researched the claims years after Overhill's treatment, he discovered several stories that seemed to corroborate her allegations. In 1993, the courts convicted her father on 19 counts of sexual abuse. Reportedly, he assaulted Overhill's niece. Over the years, Overhill's accounts remained reliable. He described her as completely consistent in all her memories, in all the alternate personalities, over 10 years. He further explained how she never gave him reason to doubt her. Baer eventually met all 16 of Overhill's alternate personalities. Throughout their therapy sessions, the personalities allegedly revealed different pieces of Karen's frightening childhood, satanic rituals, torture and rape. In one account, personality told Baer how Overhill's father and the cult took her to a funeral home after hours and placed her on an embalming table. According to the altar, her father then jabbed her in the abdomen with needles while strangers abused her. In other memories, personalities recounted several instances of torture, such as being pierced with coat hangers and fish hooks, carved with knives and beaten with hammers and baseball bats. We'll continue with this story in just a moment. Also, coming up, it's often said there is a fine line between genius and madness. Well, it can also be argued that there is an even finer line between dashing rogue and out-of-place menace to society. And that pretty much describes a man by the name of Thomas Pitt. We'll have his story coming up a little bit later this hour when Weird Darkness returns. During the break, why don't you check out the website WeirdDarkness.com where you can find weird news and more at WeirdDarkness.com. 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. I'm Darren Marlar, welcome back to Weird Darkness. Let's return to the story of Karen Overhill and her 17 personalities. Once Dr. Baer suspected Overhill might have multiple personalities, the pair began to investigate her disorder. At first, Overhill was unsure, but a few months into treatment, she arrived at her weekly session to discover Baer had received a letter in the mail. Dear Dr. Baer, my name is Claire. I am seven years old. I live inside Karen. I listen to you all the time. I want to talk to you, but I don't know how. Overhill said she knew instinctively that she had written the note even though the penmanship was utterly different from hers and appropriate for a seven-year-old. Baer later explained in an interview that he believed Claire reached out to him because she wanted a good positive daddy figure. At the age of 12, an elderly relative reportedly sexually abused Overhill, subsequently causing the arrival of Jensen. Jensen, another of Overhill's earliest identities, was an 11-year-old boy who said that he fought back against the abuse and tried to bind Overhill's chest flat to help her appear more masculine. Jensen was one of the personalities who sprang up to help keep Overhill's fractured mind intact while adult men allegedly abused her. As she began to catalog her identities, Overhill initially found 10 additional personalities inside her mind. In addition to Jensen and Claire, there were two more children, two teen girls, Julie and Sandy, a 21-year-old woman, Holden and Catherine who were both 34 and then another very angry man. It took several more years of therapy to find the remaining six personalities. As they came to the surface, each one revealed strikingly different characteristics. For example, two-year-old Karen Boo was Hungarian, five-year-old Sydney pathologically stole, and 13-year-old Julie had asthma. The identities spanned races and ages, and some were left-handed, others were right-handed. Each even had their own distinct mannerisms and gait. Overhill's mind was so neatly divided that the other personalities couldn't feel the physical pain that the dominant personality at the time was experiencing. Overhill had developed these different alternate personalities or just altars to shoulder the burden of her childhood trauma. This protective behavior continued throughout adulthood. The altars worked to shield Overhill from pain, but this sometimes backfired. If I had a bad headache, she said, it would just go away without medication. But this caused problems too because pain is protective. Once I stayed at work till the end of the day when I needed an appendectomy. Bear worked with Overhill for years to gradually dissolve the separation between the altars. His long-term plan included reintegrating the separate identities into one, into Karen. Overhill maintained the gaping holes in her memory had marred parts of her life. She explained how sometimes it would be something small, like forgetting a chapter that she had read in a book. Other times, she'd wake up in strange places. According to Overhill, she doesn't remember marrying her husband. She also has little memory of her life between the ages of six and ten, attributed to her childhood abuse. Even as an adult, Overhill doesn't remember the birth of her child. Reportedly, she awoke after having a C-section, not knowing where she was or what was happening. Overhill initially described these periods as she just wasn't there. Dr. Bear later categorized these blackout events when the altars split her consciousness as dissociative episodes. In 1996, Dr. Bear received a memo from Holden, one of Overhill's altars. Holden was a 34-year-old man charged with protecting the group. He had a plan which he referred to as integration. During a therapy session, Overhill underwent hypnosis to meet one of her altars, a 13-year-old girl named Julie. During the integration process, Julie stepped into Overhill's body, a process that triggered a painful rush of forgotten memories as well as the altars' characteristics. As of April 1998, Overhill has reportedly integrated her 17 personalities. Bear maintains she hasn't been magically cured as continued therapy and healthy life changes factor into the success of her treatments. She's not had a dissociative episode since. Charles Reid described Thomas Pitt thus. He was studious and reckless, scientific and harebrained, tender-hearted, benevolent and barbarous, unreasonably vindictive and singularly forgiving. He lived a humorous ruffian with flashes of virtue and died a hero, a martyr and a Christian. Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford, spent his brief life maniacally swerving between both sides of that peculiar divide. Pitt was born into an exceptionally wealthy and influential Cornish family on February 19, 1775. His uncle, William Pitt, as well as William's namesake son, both served terms as Prime Minister. However, despite his grand heritage, Pitt had a lonely, desperately unhappy childhood. His family virtually ignored him practically from his birth, shuttling him off to various boarding schools in Britain and Switzerland, where his prestigious social position allowed him to do pretty much as he liked, with no fear of contradiction. This appalling combination of lack of parental love and absence of official discipline does much to explain why the young man grew up with a decided feral streak. At a very early age, maybe as young as six, Pitt began a naval career. Imagine that, joining the Navy at the age of six. His curious gift for Mayhem first emerged on the pages of history in 1791 when he was serving on the HMS Discovery. The Discovery was on an important expedition bound for the Cape of Good Hope and ending at Newt Cassound off the coast of North America. During the voyage, Pitt continually made a seagoing pest of himself. The captain, George Vancouver, had him repeatedly flogged for various harebrained offenses, most notably wooing a girl into heady by gifting her with iron that he had stolen from the ship. The boy's behavior was so uncontrollable that Vancouver finally threw up his hands and placed his unruly crewman in irons. In 1793, his fellow sailors were undoubtedly relieved when Pitt's father died and Thomas was summoned home to assume his title and manage the family estate. Rather oddly though, the new baron paid little heed to the news. He continued serving on various ships for three more years before finally making his way to London. His proud, undisciplined spirit continued to nurse a grudge against Vancouver. He sent his former captain a challenge to a duel. Vancouver, by then a prematurely old ailing man, sent a dignified reply stating that he had only followed his official duties. However, Lord Camelford was free to take his complaints to a naval board of inquiry if he wanted to. Well, Pitt was disgusted by such a tame method of writing his perceived wrongs. He went straight to Vancouver's house and verbally attacked him so viciously that the captain was genuinely terrified. Vancouver felt he needed some sort of protection from this aristocratic maniac but realized that Pitt's wealth and social status left him virtually immune from any normal legal or civil actions. Not knowing what else to do, Vancouver made an appointment with the Lord Chancellor to discuss his quandary. In a case of supremely unfortunate timing, while walking to meet the Chancellor, he was spotted by Pitt. The Baron dashed over to the captain and began walloping him with a cane, an incident that became immortalized in a caricature drawn by Pitt's friend, James Gilray. In a classic example of adding insult to injury, Gilray's drawing cruelly depicted Vancouver as a sniveling coward. Despite his long and meritorious naval career, this one cartoon turned the poor captain into a public laughing stock. It must be said that Vancouver wound up having the last laugh though. Before he died in 1789, he completed three large journals, detailing his many voyages of discovery. When published, they became a massive success, ensuring that he would go down in history as one of his station's great mapmakers and explorers. Thanks to his rank, after this fracas, Pitt was merely bound over to keep peace for one year and quickly hustled back to sea. Pitt showed zero signs of mellowing. In 1797, he shot to death two seamen who resisted his efforts to press them into service. He also killed a fellow officer for perceived insubordination. He horsewhipped a storekeeper for poor service. His rank continued to protect him from serious punishment, but his commanding officer quickly had more than enough of Pitt and packed him back to England. Feeling he still had not had his share of trouble, Pitt decidedly to single-handedly invade France, which was then at war with Britain. This escapade led to his arrest on suspicion of spying, although it was soon realized that someone this nutty could hardly be acting as an espionage agent. Pitt, strangely enough, was popular in many circles. Tall, with a slim but muscular figure, the handsome blue-eyed baron was often seen as a charming swashbuckler rather than an anti-social menace. Disliking his family's ornate, if somewhat depressing home, he instead took up residence above a grocers. He decorated his new abode with a variety of imposing looking weaponry and gave himself up entirely to his favorite occupations, boxing and feuding. In 1799, he was fined for knocking a man down a flight of stairs. In January 1802, all of London put on an illumination to celebrate the recent peace with France. Every house in the city was sporting lit candles in their windows, every house that is except for baron camels. Evidently out of sheer perversity, Pitt flatly refused to take part in the festivities, and his residence remained stubbornly insultingly dark. An outraged crowd soon gathered round his lodgings to launch an attack on the offender. The baron gleefully marched out to face the mob alone. It did not turn out well for him, either. Despite being armed with a good stout cudgel which he laid about him right and left, he was simply hopelessly outnumbered. The baron found himself rolled over and over in the gutter until he finally staged a retreat for once in his life crestfallen. Later that same year, Pitt took it into his head to assassinate Napoleon. Before he could get very far in this particular whim, he was detained in Paris and packed back home. Early in 1804, this astonishingly stormy petrol got into what would prove to be his last quarrel. He and an old friend Thomas Best got into some petty argument over a courtesan, which the pair well-matched in hot-headedness decided could only be settled by a duel. Best was a famed sharpshooter, but Pitt characteristically paid no heed to the danger. At dawn on March 7th, the two met in a dewy meadow in Kensington. Camelford, who fired first, missed. Best responded with a shot that went through his adversary's body. Three days later, the baron died from his injuries at the age of only 29. One of his last acts was to leave written instructions, ordering that Best not be punished for his death. It is interesting, if ultimately pointless, to wonder what would have become of Pitt had he made old bones. Or does it may be to believe Pitt had his good qualities? He was fearless, intelligent, generous, and possessed of a strong sense of humor with an innate, if deranged, sense of nobility. Would he have carried on his feckless ways indefinitely, springing from one self-made disaster to another? Or would he have learned some sense of self-discipline and responsibility, maturing into a wiser, if considerably duller, respectability? There is no way to know. It is oddly cheering to note that Thomas Pitt could not even die and be buried like a normal human being. His will stated that he wished to lie on the shores of Switzerland's Lake St. Pierre, a place he had fond memories of from his childhood, where the surrounding scenery may smile upon my remains. He has to be buried under a certain tree where I formerly passed many hours in solitude, contemplating the beauty of human affairs. Unfortunately, this surprisingly sensitive and peaceful desire was never realized. His family instead buried his body in St. Anne's Church in Soho, where, according to rumor, it promptly disappeared. For years afterward, this alleged vanishing turned him into a national punchline. What has become of Lord Kemelford's body was the 19th century's Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. Undoubtedly, Pitt himself would have been the first to laugh at the joke. He has been spotted all over the world, but photographic evidence is lacking, as is any scientific proof. But he still exists and is still seen. And now you can search for Bigfoot every month in the Find Bigfoot calendar by Timothy Wayne Williams. Each month, you'll be captivated by an original Timothy Wayne Williams painting, beautiful and captivating. But within each painting hides a monster Bigfoot is hiding somewhere in each painting. Search for Bigfoot and invite others to do so as well with the new Find Bigfoot calendar available now at WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot. Here's some of the weird news that made it into the Weird Darkness website the past few days. You can find links to these stories by clicking on Weird News at WeirdDarkness.com. Historic England revealed the discovery in a golf course water hazard in Lincolnshire of a Bronze Age wooden coffin carved from a single oak tree trunk containing the remains of a man buried with an axe. Maybe he was buried on the water hazard because that's Boreata's final stroke. Residents of an area in the southern Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea want an explanation for pools of reddish-pink water of unknown origin in sink holes left after the Dead Sea retreated. I blame the Kool-Aid guy. Oh yeah! Apple is warning iPhone owners to be careful about attaching phones with optical image stabilization or OIS or closed-loop autofocus AF technology to motorcycle handlebars or chassis because the specific vibration frequencies found in high-power or high-volume motorcycle engines can fry the phones. In response, Robbie Keneval was quoted as saying, Hold my beer. Scientists at the University of Manchester are creating a concrete-like material made of extraterrestrial dust along with the blood, sweat, and tears of astronauts that is stronger than ordinary concrete and perfect for construction work on Mars and beyond. Okay, so you want me to sit in a tiny capsule for three years just to get to my destination, at which point you want to slice open my veins for blood while sitting in a sauna to sweat while watching old Yeller to make me cry. How much am I getting paid for this trip again? Apple founder Steve Wozniak cryptically revealed that he is starting a space junk collection company to pick up some of the dead satellites and launch vehicle rockets NASA and his fellow billionaires are leaving in orbit. Those tons and tons of booster rockets that fell into the Earth's oceans, that's somebody else's problem. The brains and cadavers of wealthy people who paid huge sums of money to be cryptogenically frozen in the hopes of one day being resurrected by advanced medical technology were stolen from a facility near Moscow by the scorned ex-wife of the founder, probably ending their chances of being brought back to life. It all started when a Waco doctor was operating on a patient, ended up getting a brain from his assistant who thought the label said Abbey Normal so they needed a replacement brain and it all went downhill from there. In September, multiple witnesses outside the old Hull General Cemetery saw a nun dancing with what appeared to be a human skeleton beside a graveyard and then petting a dog skeleton. I guess when you're married to Jesus, the safest man to go cavorting around with would be a dead one. You can find links to these stories and numerous others in the Weird News section at WeirdDarkness.com. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show or you want to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll not only hear tonight's radio show but also the extra sudden death overtime content that I prepared that I did not have time to fit in because I went overtime. And while the radio show is one night per week, I upload episodes for the podcast seven days per week. And if you're one of my patrons, you get a commercial-free copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness. And please tell others about the show 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. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call into the dark line toll-free to tell your own true paranormal story or a story that's happened to somebody you know. That number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, the toll-free number is 1-877-277-5944. You can also email me anytime at darron at WeirdDarkness.com. Darron is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright 2021. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Job 37 verse 5. God's voice thunders in marvelous ways. He does great things beyond our understanding. In a final thought, I don't regret my past. I regret the time I wasted on the wrong people. I'm Darron Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Well, hello there. It's Santa. And my big night is getting closer by the day. You know, I love milk and cookies when I visit your home each year. Well, the milk can get warm while waiting for me to arrive. And a warm toddy is not the best thing to drink if you plan on staying alert and flying around the world. So this year, I'm asking that you instead leave me a plate of cookies at a nice hot thermos or mug of Weird Dark Roast Coffee. It actually tastes like Christmas. It has a hint of cocoa and caramel. And I've been drinking a lot of it recently to wake me up early in the morning to work on toys and take care of the reindeer. So this year, leave Santa a mug or thermos of Weird Dark Roast Coffee. Tell your parents they can find it right now at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. The saga of Louisville's most unusual tourist was first covered in the Courier Journal on January 17, 1921, although sightings of the entity which became known as the Blue Man had been taken place for some time. In the newspaper's front-page story on the mystery, one Reese Carrell told a reporter of his encounter with a stranger. I've only been knocked down once in my life, and it did it. It's been around here every night for the last two weeks. Once and after, I don't know, but one night last week when I came home at about 11 o'clock, I saw somebody standing on our front step. I thought it was my father, and I walked right up to him. Looking for the Blue Man, Pop? I asked him. Just then he hit me in the chest. I was knocked against the fence. When I got up, it was gone. Carrell described the Blue Man as extremely tall and, yes, with the face of a pleasing indigo hue. The following day, the Courier Journal reported on Mrs. Earl Shubnell's encounter with a being on the previous Thursday evening. She said she was sitting where she could see into her kitchen when she heard the shutter of one of the windows rustling, after which a hand was thrust through a broken pane in the window. The hand caught hold of the curtain and pulled it back, said Mrs. Shubnell, but when I screamed, it was withdrawn quickly, and I heard the sound of someone running out of the alley and down the street in the direction of Kentucky Street. In contrast to Carrell's description, Mrs. Shubnell said the hand was large and white, one that was impossible to belong to any Blue Man. A man named Virgil Hobbs claimed to have seen the figure wandering the streets on several occasions. The first time he spotted the Blue Man, a neighbor named Walter Fogel took a shot at it. As he shot, said Hobbs, I saw a tall figure wearing a black overcoat and a black soft hat climb over the coal shed at the rear of the Fogel yard and disappear into the night. Hobbs added, five minutes later, when a crowd had gathered in front of the house, I saw a man who, as I remember, looked suspiciously like the figure I had just seen to disappear, walking leisurely down 8th Street. The man stopped and inquired about the excitement, and when told by one of those standing by, laughed and passed on. On the three other occasions that the intruder was scared off, the stranger passed by, and each time the man, who was white and weighed about 180 pounds, wore the same black overcoat and black hat. Hobbs marveled that the man had so far eluded capture, as on the second night of his appearance, the Fogel house was surrounded by 15 patrolmen, five detectives, and two members of the military force. Adding to the strangeness of the whole business is that no one had any idea what the Blue Man was trying to accomplish. Louisville residents could only speculate that he or it had iron nerve, no brains, or an irresistible desire to obtain possession of a thing or things unknown. On January 19, a nightly hunt for the Blue Man took an unexpected turn. Two detectives, standing guard at 8th and Kentucky streets, saw a man named Stuart Graven walking by, carrying a suitcase and a bundle. Their suspicions aroused, the policemen followed Graven to his home. After he had entered, the detectives knocked on the door and politely forced their way inside. The residents they reported looked like a storeroom, full of expensive goods of all kinds. When questioned, Graven confessed to stealing a large quantity of items from the American Railway Express Company. He said his only motive for the thefts was that he was out of work and could not let his wife and small child starve. He was charged with grand larceny and two charges of stealing from a common carrier. There was speculation that Graven was also the elusive Blue Man, a theory which made the prisoner laugh. Me, the Blue Man, he told reporters, I wish I was. If I was, I wouldn't be in here right now. Despite this sad distraction, the Blue Man continued his rounds. One night Mrs. Emma Perkins heard whisperings outside her home. She investigated but saw nothing. The following night she saw someone peeping into her window, however by the time she opened the door, no one was to be seen. Several days later, on January 20th, someone raised a window in the apartment of Stewart Friend who boarded with Mrs. Perkins. Grabbing his revolver, he ran to the window and shot at a figure standing just a few feet away. He saw it fall against the fence. Mrs. Perkins ran out with her gun and also fired at the intruder. Both were positive they had pumped it full of lead. He really enough, however, when the area was inspected, all that was found was a few bullet holes in the fence. No blood or any other traces of the Blue Man was found. The following night, Mr. Blue took to letter writing. Around 9.30pm, one Henry Etzel heard a light knocking on his door. This was strange as the gate in front of his home always creaked when opened and he had not heard it do so. He had also not heard any footsteps in the adjoining alleyway. When he opened the door, no one was there. Assuming his ears had simply played tricks on him, Etzel went back to his newspaper. A couple of minutes later, he heard more knocks louder than before. He dashed to the front door and threw it open. He still saw no one. There was nothing for him to do but to return to reading, but he stayed wary. Then, someone or something kicked the door several times. Etzel was able to open it before the noise ceased, but he still failed to see anyone. All he found outside his door was a note, reading, I will call again. Don't be afraid. Your friend, the Blue Man, till we meet again. On the night of the 22nd, Mrs. L. I. Dilly heard somebody trying to force open her apartment door. She ran to her neighbor, Mrs. G. S. Spalding, to sound the alarm. Mrs. Dilly then went out to side door and to the back of their residence. She saw a man jump over the back fence. When police were summoned, they could find nothing, not even a footprint in the soft ground. 15 minutes after the policeman left, Mrs. Dilly, who was back in bed trying to go back to sleep, heard footsteps. Again, she heard someone turning her doorknob and pressing against the door. The intruder gave up on the door and retreated. A moment later, Mrs. Dilly saw a shadow on her window and then a face was pressed against the glass. Mrs. Dilly grabbed her gun and ran outside. Seeing a figure fleeing into the night, she shone at it. Once again, the prowler managed to escape. For the second time that night, the police fruitlessly searched the vicinity for footprints. Immediately after Mrs. Dilly retired to bed, she had to call the police for a third time. She told the policeman that as she was drawing the covers about her, she heard a faint noise. She clutched her gun, waiting for whatever might happen next. The shadowy face returned to her window. She and Mrs. Spaulding ran to the side yard, and Mrs. Dilly again fired at the prowler. This time, she heard a moan of, Oh! Oh! She got the blue man at last. However, when the police arrived, they once again found not one thing. No footprints, no blood. If the blue man was not a ghost, it did a very fine imitation of one. Early on the morning of January 23rd, Mrs. J. G. Crider was awakened by her telephone ringing. When she answered, she heard a strange husky voice saying, The blue man, last seen, ate and wandered. Then the collar hung up. Police as usual found no clues to this latest bit of blue man eccentricity. On the night of the 29th, the blue man entertained himself by ringing doorbells. At 9 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. E. O. Mershawn phoned police, complaining of hearing three different kinds of strange noises around their house. First, the bell was rung several times. That was followed by noises like snow sliding off the roof, only it wasn't. Then, Sustainly Searcy reported that her doorbell had been ringing almost continuously from dusk to 11 p.m. It was, she said indignantly, the third night in a row she had been pestered with incessant ringing. Although she stood watch from her window, she saw or heard no one, just the ringing. The police, the courier journal side, passed a restless evening. By early February, it seemed that the blue man had acquired a Distaff sidekick. Several female residents of the Richter Apartments at 4th and Oak Street reported being frightened by the appearance of someone wearing a blue coat suit and a large black hat. This person would knock on doors asking for a glass of water. In a manner, the women found very unnerving. Although the visitor was wearing female clothing, the large physique made the alarmed residents believe it was probably a man. Later that month, newspapers reported that a member of the Fogel family bedridden by illness was being pestered every night by a face blue and terrible, pressed against the pain of his window. It has been shot at in the bullets struck thin air. When the image appeared, members of the family run to the outside but never have seen anything more than darkness. When the family consulted a fortune teller, she told them that when the thing got what it wanted, it would go away. But what did it want? She couldn't say. Reese Carell's name returned to public print. He told reporters that the blue man had been hanging around his home for days. One night, it even crept into the Carell home and stole a pair of trousers. Reese shot at the intruder several different times with the usual failure. Doubting the efficacy of his son's aim, Reese's father tried shooting at the stranger. I never missed a rabbit or a bird in my life, Mr. Carell complained, but the shots went right through him. When asked if he thought the intruder was a ghost, Carell Sr. retorted, Ghost? What would a ghost want with my pants? One night, a patrolman fired no less than seven shots at close range without causing the slightest effect on the blue man. As they say, all good things come to an end. Such was the case with the blue man. Whether he feared being caught at last or simply got bored with his capers, by the end of March, the story disappeared from the newspapers. The blue man was evidently never captured, and the motive, if there ever was one, behind his activities remained a mystery. St. Adam's Vita Colombe in English Life of St. Adam's Life of St. Columbia is a fascinating Gaelic chronicle of the life of St. Colombe. St. Adam's Life of St. Columbia is a fascinating Gaelic chronicle of the life of St. Columbia. She was the last person to be tried for witchcraft under that act until it was repealed in 19- she was the last person to be tried for witchcraft under that act and then it was she was the last person to be tried for witchcraft under that act and then it was