 Welcome, Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Android so you don't miss future episodes. This is a special 12 Nightmares of Christmas episode. Each day from December 13th through December 24th, I'm posting a new episode of Weird Darkness featuring material from the new book The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. Be sure to come back every day from December 13th through the 24th for more holiday horrors. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, put another log onto the fire, pour yourself an eggnog, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. After America won independence from England, the new young nation had miles upon miles of coastline to protect. Ships were built to form America's first navy. One of these was the USS Constellation. 175 feet long, with three main masts, she was launched at Harris Creek, Maryland on September 7, 1797 as a 36-gun frigate. Her first captain was Thomas Truxton, and he started the ship's bloody career with a bang, quite literally. On February 5, 1799, the Constellation got into a battle with the French frigate Lea Sergeant in the West Indies. The French ship was captured, but in the heat and terror of battle, a sailor named Neil Harvey deserted his post. Truxton found out and ordered a Lieutenant Starrett to run Harvey through with his sword. After the battle, Harvey, wounded but still alive, was tied to the end of a cannon and blown to pieces on Truxton's orders as a warning to other sailors not to slack off on duty. Not surprisingly, Harvey's ghost is one of the most frequently seen on the ship. He's even been mistaken for a costumed tour guide. The Constellation saw many missions throughout her long service to the United States Navy. She provided support for land troops fighting Seminole Indians and distinguished herself in the War of 1812. She tussled with slave traders and Barbary pirates and sailed as far as West Africa, China and Hawaii. In 1845, the ship sailed to the Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia for a complete overhaul. She had been given a new stern in 1829 and the haul of a wooden ship needed to be rebuilt every 16 years or so anyway. We don't know how much of the original ship's material was left after the 1845-1855 rebuild, but it was enough to keep the ghosts hanging around. The Constellation's rebuild was finished in 1855. The ship was downgraded from a 36-gun frigate to a 22-gun sloop. The Constellation was the last ship of the United States Navy to be powered completely by sail. The Navy was moving inexorably towards steam power. In 1893, the ship docked at the Naval Station at Newport, Rhode Island and served as a stationary training ship until 1914. Then it sat neglected for decades. In 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt recommissioned her as the flagship of the United States Atlantic Fleet. When the money for that project dried up, the ship was towed to Boston. In 1953, a group of historically-minded Maryland citizens raised funds to bring the Constellation home to Baltimore. By September 1955, the ship had come to her final home, and that's when the ghost stories began. Several ships, including the submarine Pike, were moored nearby. Their sailors told tales of strangeness on the Constellation, odd noises, spooky lights, ghostly shapes, and misty figures walking on her decks. By December 1955, Lieutenant Commander Alan Ross Bruem had heard many of the stories. He decided the situation warranted an investigation. He called up a friend of his who was a photographer and invited him to bring his camera aboard. They set up the camera facing the ship's wheel. Then they waited. At exactly 11.59 and 47 seconds p.m. on that cold December night, Bruem smelled the faint odor of something like gunpowder. Immediately after that, he saw the translucent, bluish-white phantom of a 19th century U.S. Navy captain. The phantasm wore gold epulets and a cocked hat and was slightly bent at the waist, reaching down with its right hand as if to draw a sword. At the click of the camera's shutter, the ghost vanished, but Bruem had his picture. Many witnesses to the spirits of the ship report smelling gunpowder in the air just before the apparitions manifest. Captain Truxton especially announces his impending presence with the acrid tang of gunpowder, and all the Constellation's spirits seem to be most active around midnight, especially in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. There are several ghosts on board to keep Captain Truxton and Neil Harvey company. An 11-year-old boy served on the ship from 1820 to 1822 as a surgeon's assistant. In 1822, he was cornered by two sailors on the Orlop deck and stabbed to death. No one knows why. Another sailor, overwhelmed by the harsh life it see, hanged himself. Then there is the spirit of Carl Hanson, a night watchman who worked on the Constellation in the mid-20th century until an alarm system was installed in 1963. Hanson is the only spirit on the ship who didn't die a violent death and is believed to haunt the ship because he actually is happy to be there. His ghost has been seen enjoying a game of cards on the lower decks. In 1964, a Catholic priest came aboard for a tour. No one from the Maryland naval militia was around at the time, so he went below decks on his own. He was met by a guide who seemed very knowledgeable about the inner workings and terminology of the ship. After the informative tour, the priest thanked the guide and headed for the exit. As he was leaving the ship, he ran into the other guides. He complimented them on finding such an enthusiastic volunteer. The guides exchanged nervous glances. There's no one below right now, one said. The man all rushed down to find the intruder, but there was no one there. The Constellation, at rest now in Baltimore Harbor, is a prized artifact of American history. And apparently some of her crew are still celebrating the holidays, late at night, walking the decks of this grand ship. The second Lord Comba-Mir had a favorite chair in the library at his grand estate, Comba-Mir Abbey. He was so fond of the spot that he was photographed sitting comfortably in that chair while his funeral was being held four miles away. There were two viscounts that held the title of Lord Comba-Mir in the 19th century. The first viscount was a Calvary commander in the early 1800s. In 1817, he was appointed governor of Barbados. It was this Lord Comba-Mir that has a curious connection to the supernatural. He was governor at the time that moving coffins were causing great consternation for the Chase family. The Chase family vault was a beautiful crypt in the burying ground at Christ Church Parish in Barbados. Made of coral, carved stone and concrete walls two feet thick, it was sealed with a massive slab of blue marble. The vault was impenetrable. That's why it was such a shock to find that the coffins that had been placed reverently in the tomb were found to have been rearranged with violent force. Whenever the vault was opened for another burial, the coffins of Chase family members were found thrown haphazardly around the vault, instead of remaining where they had been placed and replaced with tender care. Lord Comba-Mir, the governor, had heard the unsettling stories and decided to put a stop to the nonsense. He ordered the vault opened. He had slaves sprinkle sand on the floor to capture the footprints of any intruders, human or animal. Then, when the vault was closed, he pressed his governor's seal into the fresh cement. Two years later, he returned to inspect the vault. The outside of the tomb was as rock solid as ever. But inside, all was chaos. The six coffins had been tossed about like toys, and the sand on the floor was completely undisturbed. The second Viscount, born in 1818, went by the splendid name of Wellington Henry Stapleton Cotton. In 1891, when this gentleman was visiting London, he was run over by a carriage and suffered injuries to both legs. The sturdy 73-year-old recovered well, and six weeks later he was able to get around with the aid of crutches. But a blood clot developed in Lord Comba-Mir's heart, and on December 1, 1891, he dropped dead. The Lord's funeral was held on Sunday, December 5, at St. Margaret's in the town of Renbury, four miles from the family estate. Many prominent persons attended the funeral, so the time of services was held back a bit, to give the honoured mourners ample time to arrive. The services began at two in the afternoon. It just so happened that a photographer, Sybel R. Corbett, had been engaged to take pictures of the family estate. Lord Comba-Mir's funeral, while unfortunate, was serendipitously timed. Since most of the household would be away at the church, Corbett set up an hour-long exposure in the library, confident that no one would wander in and disturb the ongoing photography project. Other projects came along, and Corbett didn't develop the plates she'd taken at Comba-Mir Abbey until August of the next year, eight months after she'd exposed them. To her astonishment, the photograph she took in the library showed a white, translucent figure in the left side of the picture, sitting in Lord Comba-Mir's favourite chair. The apparition wasn't complete. There was a head sitting atop a clearly defined collar, a shoulder, and a right arm ending in a hand that rested lightly on the arm of the chair. Sybel Corbett checked her diary. Sure enough, the photograph had been taken on December 5th, the day of Lord Comba-Mir's funeral. She did some further investigating with the family and realized that the exposure had been made at 2 p.m. the exact time the delayed funeral was being conducted. Skeptics argued that perhaps a servant had come into the library during the hour-long exposure, sat in the Lord's chair just long enough to register on the photographic plate, then gotten up and left. But the family had agreed that the timing for the photograph was, sadly, ideal, as most of the family and staff of the household would be at the church for the funeral. Besides, the ghostly figure in the picture seemed to have a bald head and a light beard. According to Corbett's diary, the only men in the house at the time were her brother, the butler, and two footmen. All four men were young and beardless. So it would seem that Lord Comba-Mir returned to his library for one last rest in his favorite armchair, before going on to an even more final rest. Another startling ghost photograph comes from another stately English home, Rainham Hall in Norfolk. This one might just be the most famous ghost photograph of all time. Rainham Hall was once the home of Lady Dorothy Townsend, who married Viscount Charles Townsend in 1713. As in many ghost stories, all was not peaceful country life at the Hall. Lady Townsend died on March 29, 1726, at the age of 40, under mysterious circumstances. The official cause of death was smallpox. However, there were rumors that her ladyship had been pushed down the grand staircase and the fall had broken her neck. During the Christmas season of 1835, a Colonel Loftus stayed at Rainham Hall as a guest. His stay was interrupted by a nighttime visitation from a beautiful woman. The Colonel described her as a noble-looking lady who was wearing a fashionable dress of brown satin. Her regal looks were spoiled, though, by the terrifying fact that she had no eyes. Only empty sockets gait where her eyes should have been. Colonel Loftus made a sketch of his midnight visitor and a portrait was painted from the sketch and hung in the guest bedroom where the brown lady made most of her appearances. Decades earlier, in 1786, the future King George IV was a guest at the Hall and stayed in that particular room. The brown lady's appearance sent the Prince Regent shrieking into the hallway in his nightshirt, a rather embarrassing situation for royalty. After that, he swore he would never set foot in Rainham Hall again, a promise he kept for the rest of his days. The brown lady continued her haunting of the Hall well into the 20th century. On September 19, 1936, two photographers from the magazine Country Life ran assignment taking pictures of the Stately Hall. Indra Shira was snapping the photos accompanied by art director Captain Hubert Provaund. Shira and Provaund were setting up a shot of the grand main staircase of the house at around 4 p.m., when Shira saw an ethereal veiled form coming slowly down the stairs. Provaund didn't see a thing. He even bet Shira five quid that nothing weird would show up when the picture was developed. He lost the bet. The brown lady had exchanged her customary brown satin dress for a filmy white veil, but her form showed up distinctly in the picture. One of the most famous ghost photographs in the world ran for the first time in Country Life magazine. Appropriately enough, it ran in that year's December issue. The Tower of London comes by its ghostly reputation honestly. Built by William the Conqueror in 1078, it has stood as a symbol of the might of England for nearly a thousand years. It was originally a royal palace as well as a defensive fortress. In fact, Her Majesty's royal palace and fortress, the Tower of London, to use its proper name, is still officially a residence of the monarch. The Queen has a house on site called the Queen's House. If the ruler is male, of course it becomes the King's House. The Kings and Queens of England realized quite soon after its construction that the Tower was just as good at keeping people in as it was at keeping people out. Although it has been used as a prison since 1100, when Reignolf Flamberd was imprisoned within the Tower by Henry I, Flamberd was also by the way the first person to escape from the Tower. There have been many prisoners, royal, noble, and otherwise, who have met their ends either on the Tower grounds or on nearby Tower Hill. Only seven people were executed within the Tower before the 20th century. One of these unfortunates was Anne Bolin, the second wife of Henry VIII, who was beheaded for treason in 1536. Her ghost is said to haunt the chapel of St. Peter at Vincula where she is buried, but she is also known to roam the grounds of the White Tower while carrying her own severed head. Anne Bolin is arguably the most famous ghost who wanders the Tower due to her ill-fated relationship with Henry VIII. Queen Anne even almost got one poor century court-martialed. The guard was found unconscious at his post outside the King's House one winter morning in 1864. He was accused of falling asleep while on duty and put on trial. At the hearing, though, the century had a really good explanation for his unconscious state. He had been standing guard when a white figure came towards him out of the early morning mist. The century challenged the figure three times, but the silent figure never answered. It just kept walking slowly towards him. Alarmed, the century lunged at the figure with his bayonet fixed, intending to run it through whatever it was. But a flash of fire raced up the rifle barrel and knocked the century out cold. Luckily, other guards, including officers, came forward to testify at the hearing. They said they had seen the apparition too from a window and the bloody tower. After some discussion, members of the court realized that the phantasm had been seen by multiple witnesses just below the room where Anne had spent her last night alive, the night before her execution, on May 191536. The century was cleared. As for the doomed queen, she still wanders the tower with her head tucked underneath her arm, as far as anyone knows. Lighthousekeepers are a sturdy, devoted breed, dedicated to the demanding job of keeping their lights burning to guide sailors safely to land. In fact, there is only one case on record of lighthousekeepers abandoning their post. The Eileenmore Lighthouse was built on a rocky island off the west coast of Scotland. It was a remote and forbidding place, even for a lonely lighthouse. That made the Eileenmore light even more vital to the safety of those waters. The locals who lived on nearby islands believed that particular island was haunted. Only fools, they said, stayed on the island overnight. But the three men who had signed on as lighthousekeepers, of course, had no choice. That was their job to stay on the island and tend to the Eileenmore Light. What happened to those men is still unknown. On the night of December 15, 1900, the Brigantine Fairwind was making her way through the seas near the Eileenmore Lighthouse. Sailors on deck saw a lifeboat in the water. At first they thought the boat was adrift, carrying corpses from a shipwreck. The bodies in the boat were pale, dressed in rags, but they were moving. The sailors of the Fairwind could see that the men in the lifeboat were rowing and that they were heading for the lighthouse. The tiny craft with its ghastly cargo soon disappeared into the blackness. Later that same night, a storm whipped up. Sailors on the Fairwind and other ships noticed that the Eileenmore Light was out. The ship's captains were furious at the oversight. Luckily no boats were wrecked in the stormy darkness. Days passed and the lighthouse remained eerily dark. The sailors on passing ships began to be concerned. Something was definitely wrong. There were three men on the island. If one of them or even two had been taken ill, there still should have been a man left to restart the light. At the very least they should have been able to send some sort of distress signal to shore, but the island stayed stubbornly shrouded in darkness. A supply ship finally made it out to the island to investigate on the day after Christmas. They found no sign of any of the three men and absolutely no clues as to where they had gone. The searchers found two strange things worth noting. The foul weather gear among the lighthouse supplies, the oil skin coats and heavy rubber boots was all gone. The investigators also found shreds of seaweed scattered around. Not so unusual on an island, except that it was of a kind unknown in that area. The searchers did find the lighthouse logbook. That provided no clues, but only deepened the mystery. The headkeeper, Thomas Marshall, wrote that a vicious storm had pummeled the lighthouse for three days beginning December 12. The log noted that the men spent those three days in a state of near panic, praying for their lives and crying, strange behavior for stalwart lighthouse tenders. Had the desolation of their post made all three of the men snap, all at the same time? The final entry in the log was dated December 15. Marshall wrote only this. Storm has ended. See calm. God is overall. But here's the creepy part, besides the fact that the three men simply vanished. On the three days mentioned in the log, December 12 through December 15, there was no storm. As a matter of fact, on the island of Lewis just 20 miles away, the weather for those three days had been unusually calm. A storm had blown into the area of the night of December 15. The day Marshall wrote that the seas were finally calm. The official inquiry into the desertion of the Eileen Moore lighthouse was unable to reach any conclusion as to the fate of Thomas Marshall and his two companions. But the sailors on board the fair wind couldn't put the ghastly sight of the lifeboat filled with living corpses out of their mind. The boat that was being rowed steadily towards the lighthouse by dead men. There was a local legend that said sometimes the ghosts of shipwrecked sailors came ashore to claim the living. On November 7, 1872, the merchant Brigantine Mary Celeste left the port of New York. She was bound for Genoa, Italy with a cargo of alcohol meant to be added to wine to fortify it. Benjamin Spooner Briggs was her captain in charge of a crew of seven. Also on board were Captain Briggs wife Sarah and their daughter Sophia Matilda just two years old. On December 4, the crew of the Degracia saw the Mary Celeste drifting in the Atlantic 400 miles east of the Azores. She was full of cargo and carried six months worth of food and water. But the ship's cat was the only living creature on board. Captain Briggs, his family and the seven crew members were nowhere to be found. They were never heard from again. The ghostly ship known as the Palatine had appeared for nearly 300 years in the waters off the coast of Rhode Island. The eerie apparition has gained fame as the Palatine Light and it usually manifests as a crimson glow on the horizon. The ship was probably a British vessel called the Princess Augusta. It left Rotterdam Holland in August 1738 carrying 240 passengers. Many of them were immigrants from the Palatine region of Germany, headed for a new life in Philadelphia. A few weeks into the voyage, the supplies of freshwater somehow got contaminated, causing an outbreak of fever and diarrhea on board. Captain George Long died as did seven crew members and more than half of the ship passengers. First mate Andrew Brooke took charge of the ship and the immigrants suffering began in earnest. The ship floundered around the Atlantic for an incredible three months after the contaminated water debacle. Supplies of food and fresh water ran dangerously low. Brooke, now in charge, decided he could make a few bucks on the side by charging the passengers for the measly amount of food they were given. The ship ran into storm after storm in the winter months which pushed it even farther north. During Christmas week, the ship was caught in a vicious snowstorm somewhere in the Devil's Triangle, a region of the Rhode Island coast between Montauk Point, Block Island and the mainland. The remaining crew just snapped. They plundered what they could from the ship, launched the ship's longboats and abandoned the immigrants to their fate. The Princess Augusta, adrift without experienced sailors to man the tiller, tossed in the freezing waves until she beached herself on the rocky shore of Sandy Point on Block Island on December 27. Twenty more passengers died when the ship ran aground. The tragic event was immortalized in John Greenliffe Whittier's poem The Palatine, written in 1867. In the poem, the Block Islanders who came down to the shore to investigate the wrecked ship are portrayed as heartless looters no better than the crew who'd abandoned the ship in the first place. Finding nothing of value aboard the stricken ship, in the poem the Islanders simply set the ship on fire and push it back into the sea, passengers and all. Fortunately, this is not what actually happened. The story that Block Islanders prefer to tell is that they helped the 17 people left alive on the battered ship. The Islanders took the immigrants to Simon Ray's farm, but the shipwreck and the privation of the previous weeks had taken their toll. Some of the immigrants regained their health, but most of them were beyond saving. As for the ship itself, it wasn't worth repairing. As it was still sitting wrecked on the rocky shore, the Islanders feared that it would become a hazard to navigation, so they set fire to it. A freak wind lifted the burning ship onto the swell of a wave and it drifted back out to sea. The ship would claim one more victim as it left the shore forever though. One woman was still below decks when the ship was fired. Half crazed from the terror of the voyage, she refused to leave the burning deck. The Islanders watched in horror as the mad woman was burned alive, her shrieks echoing into the night. The ship is still seen even today. It manifests between Christmas and New Year's Eve, usually on the anniversary of the fire. As reporter Edwin C. Hill wrote in 1934, there are people living on Black Island who will tell you with their hands on the book that they have gazed seaward in the blackness of night, startled by a bright radiance at sea, and have watched with straining eyes while the Palatine, blazing from trunk to kielson, swept along the horizon. For many years, the abandoned woman's screams were said to accompany that queer crimson light on the darkening horizon. The light of the Palatine, forever burning, yet never consumed. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with others and help build the weird darkness community by converting your friends and family into weirdos as well. This special episode is part of my 12 Nightmares of Christmas series, a collaboration with paranormal blogger and author Sylvia Schultz. The stories I used in this episode are from her book The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays, and you can find a link to that book in the show notes. Also in the show notes, you can find a link to Sylvia Schultz blog. Do you have a dark tale to tell? Share your story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. Music in this episode is provided by Midnight Syndicate. Find a link to purchase and download this dark, creepy Christmas music in the show notes. I'm your creator and host, Darren Marlar. Merry Christmas and thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, be sure to click the like button and subscribe to this channel and click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos. I post videos 7 days a week, and while you're at it, spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.