 As heard during the podcast, that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. There are places in the world that are not evil due to any supernatural forces or demonic influences, but rather because of the darkness lying coiled within the human heart. It is these places that are perhaps more terrifying than any paranormal activity, for they stem from something that we know is real and which can be seen all around us, the horrors that lurk within us, and the crotesqueries we as a species are capable of. Lying out over rugged scrubland, nestled out of sight of an interstate among uninhabited oil fields and wasteland is a place which certainly holds the stain of such human wretchedness. It is here that for decades the dead have appeared, sprawled across the parched earth, their glazed eyes holding the secrets of their last horrifying moments on this planet. It is an isolated patch of nothingness which has nevertheless managed to attract to it body after body. In the process making it a source of one of the largest caches of baffling unsolved murders there is. These are the sinister Texas killing fields. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode. While modern scientists are busy finding proof of a fourth dimension, ancient people recorded curious events that indicate the existence of another dimension that we are unaware of. A brother and sister are frightened by what they thought was their father until they looked up at him or looked up at it. Just a few hours outside of Melbourne is a former lunatic asylum, now used as a conference center, but one of the lunatics remains in a ghostly form. In 1943 the U.S. Navy purportedly teleported a ship from Philadelphia to Norfolk and also made it invisible at the same time. Many believe the Philadelphia experiment was a hoax, others believe it did happen and is being covered up. What is the real story? Since the 1970s over 30 dead girls and young women have been found in a single area off a Texas highway. Why is this place a magnet for such evil? We'll look at the Texas killing fields. These stories and more in this episode. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to winner contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Bordered about a mile off of Interstate 45, bordering the Calder Oil Field and League City between Galveston and Houston, Texas, is a remote uninhabited patch of land measuring around 25 miles long and marked by abandoned oil fields, marshes, and thick, nearly impenetrable tangles of overgrown brush. This forbidding landscape is ominous enough, especially so considering that this particular stretch of the Interstate is often referred to as the highway of hell due to the inordinate amount of traffic accidents that occur here. Yet, despite its eerie, bleak desolation and sinister reputation for traffic accidents, at first glance there is little to differentiate this dusty area from the many other such isolated places among the rugged, monotonous scenery of the region. It is an area where one could easily drive past without really giving it so much as a second thought. However, this remote area has a dark secret that truly makes it stand out as a location to send chills up the spine, for it is here that since the 1970s the bodies of over 30 girls and young women have been found, with most of these murders still unsolved. Many of the bodies not even properly identified, and even more who have gone mysteriously missing in the area, never to be seen again. It is easy to see why this wasteland has gained its much-deserved nickname of the killing fields. The horrific reputation of this notorious dumping ground of bodies began in June of 1971 when a 13-year-old Colette Wilson vanished after being dropped off at a bus stop after her school band practice. Although at the time it was treated as a missing person's case, her body would be found five months later in what would come to be known as the killing fields near Addick's Reservoir, dead from a single gunshot wound to the head. A couple of weeks after Colette's disappearance, on July 1, 1971, Brenda Jones, 14, disappeared while on her way to visit a sick relative at Galveston General Hospital, which is right off of Interstate 45. Her body would be found floating in Galveston Bay, also killed by a head wound. The killings in the area would continue through 1971 unabated. On October 28, 1971, Gloria Gonzalez, 19, was near her home in Houston when she seemed to just vanish off the face of the earth. Her body would later be found not 35 yards from where Colette Wilson's corpse had been discovered. Allison Craven, 12, Debbie Ackerman, 15, and her friend Maria Johnson, also 15, would all be found in the ensuing months, all shot in the head and found with their hands and feet bound. The horrific murders would continue beyond throughout the 1970s until a total of 11 teenage and adolescent girls were dead and unceremoniously dumped there. At the time, authorities believed that the killings were all the work of a single serial killer since the victims were all similar in appearance, were found near or in bodies of water, and quite a few of them were found naked from the waist down and with hands and feet bound. These cases would prove to be a nightmare to investigate, as the area only had scattered small towns whose police didn't share information freely or compare notes, and little evidence had been left behind in the first place. The 11 murders from the 1970s would mostly go unsolved, with only one tenuous conviction in relation to them, as Michael Lloyd Self, who was thought to have killed a girl named Sharon Shaw in 1971, yet whom many have long thought may not have actually done it based on flimsy evidence. Years later, in 1996, a man by the name of Edward Harold Bell, who was at the time, serving time for an unrelated murder, would claim in a letter to police that he had murdered 11 girls in Galveston County in the 1970s, including Collette Wilson, yet there would never be enough solid evidence to concretely link him to the crimes. Interestingly, Bell was known for the bizarre claim that he was part of a secret government brainwashing program that had programmed him to kill. The 1980s ushered in a new decade of horrors linked to the killing fields, starting with the discovery of the brutalized body of 12-year-old Brooks Bracewell and her friend, 14-year-old Georgia Geer, who had both gone missing while visiting a local convenience store. In yet another killing tied to a convenience store, 23-year-old Heidi Villareal Faye would disappear on October 10, 1983, after using the pay phone there, and her body was discovered when a dog dug up the rotting corpse and carried the skull to a nearby house, where it was dropped at the feet of a toddler. More killings and mysterious disappearances would follow throughout the 80s, with the victims either shot, strangled, or brutally beaten to death. One of the most famous killing field murders of this era is that of 16-year-old Laura Miller, who vanished on September 10, 1984, also in front of a convenience store after making a call home, eerily the very same convenience store from which Heidi Villareal Faye had vanished, and whose body would be discovered in a secluded oil field on February 3, 1986. This murder would send Laura's father, Tim Miller, on a personal mission, fueled with vendetta in order to find his daughter's killer. Frustrated by the lack of progress made by police, with the lack of information sharing between jurisdictions still a major hurdle to solving the cases, as well as the fact that, at first, law enforcement officials were telling him that it was a simple runaway case, Tim Miller set his sights on a potential suspect in the form of a retired, brilliant NASA engineer who had worked on the Saturn rocket, named Robert Abel. Abel had been leasing land on the periphery on the area where Laura's body had been found, and had started a small horseback riding business called Stardust Trail Rides. Abel at the time was an unassuming man in his 60s, who had a bad back and took medication for high blood pressure. Miller's suspicion fell on him when conversations with family members and locals suggested that he had a dark, violent side and that he was prone to abusing women and even beating his own horses with an iron pipe. Miller became convinced that Abel was his daughter's killer, following him around, harassing him, and more or less stalking him, and he even got law enforcement involved in following up on it. Detectives and FBI were able to profile Abel as a serial sexual offender, with many additional traits often present in serial killers, and before long, word got out, and Abel was being treated like a pariah in the area. People were avoiding him at all costs, crossing the street to get out of his way, and some would drive by him shouting, Killer, you're the killer. At one point, hundreds of people, including Tim Miller, even converged upon Abel's property looking for dead bodies that they thought had been stashed there. They found nothing. Nevertheless, Miller became absolutely convinced that Abel was the killer, yet after the police and FBI were finished with numerous in-depth interrogations with both Abel and eyewitnesses and meticulous searches of the man's house looking for any clue whatsoever, not a trace of evidence was ever found to link him to the killing of Laura Miller, and he was never charged for any crime. Miller himself would slowly lose his interest in pursuing Abel as a suspect and even apologized to the man at one point for more or less ruining his life. In July of 2005, Abel would drive his golf cart onto a train track as a train approached, ending his life, possibly a suicide. Miller would go on to come to the conclusion that a Clyde Edwin-Hedrick, also in prison for manslaughter in another case, was the actual killer, although nothing concrete would ever come of this. Tim Miller would start the tradition of setting up crosses to mark the places where victims of the mysterious killer were found, including that of Heidi Villareal Faye, who disappeared while hitchhiking to see her boyfriend in Houston before turning up dead in the fields, and two of the crosses marked the final resting places of two victims who were never even identified, reading simply Jane Doe and Janet Doe. He even went so far as to start his own missing persons search operation called Texas EquaSearch, which uses searchers on horseback, in vehicles, and even in helicopters to try and hunt down people who have vanished. And the killing fields certainly had its share of vanishings, with many people going missing and never found, presumably murdered. One of the most well-known of these cases centers around the mysterious disappearance of 17-year-old Jessica Cain on August 17, 1997. Jessica's abandoned pickup truck was found by the side of I-45, but the girl herself was never located, despite a massive investigation. To this day, her ultimate fate remains unknown. Another unsolved mystery of the killing fields, although it is strongly believed that she was murdered due to other similar cases around the same time. In fact, just two weeks before Jessica's disappearance, 12-year-old Laura Smither had also vanished as she was out taking a jog. Her decomposing, mostly nude, decapitated body would be found 17 days later, beside a pond near Friendswood, South of Houston, by a father and son walking their dogs. The previous year, in March of 1996, there was also a high-profile case when 13-year-old Crystal Baker disappeared from the town of Texas City. Crystal, whose great aunt was none other than the famous actress Marilyn Monroe, had had a fight with her grandmother and had run off in a fury. Later, she made a call from a convenience store, telling her mother about what had happened, and this would be the last time she was ever seen alive. At first, Crystal was treated as a runaway case, but her body would turn up under an interstate bridge later that evening, and she had been severely beaten, raped, and strangled to death. Unbelievably, it would take two weeks before the brutalized body would be identified as Crystal's. Considering the other killings occurring in the area at the time over such a short period of time and involving similarly aged girls of similar appearance, it is probable that Jessica Cain was likely murdered as well. A detective who worked on the Jessica Cain case and indeed other such cases at the killing fields, investigator Brian Gochis once expressed his frustration at the lack of progress made and the difficulties involved in solving these cases, saying, What do you have? You have a car beside the road. That's it. That's your crime scene. Frustrating beyond belief. I mean, how do you find out who was out on the road in the middle of the night? You don't. You had Jessica Cain with just the vehicle beside the road. Was it a policeman? I mean, was it one of us? Was it a wannabe policeman? You know, a volunteer fireman? I mean, somebody we're close with, somebody we drink coffee with, and you just didn't know. It is a frustration that has long hung over many of the murders and disappearances of the killing fields. In many ways, it is the perfect place for someone to dump the body. The area's remoteness and lack of any visitors means most bodies could remain out there for years before being found, if found at all. Additionally, there is no one for victims to call to for help out in this vast wasteland. On top of this, even if the bodies are found, the harsh, hot weather, humidity, scavengers, and insects all quickly go to work on corpses left here, making it difficult, extremely difficult if not impossible to glean any usable evidence from them. It is also hard to get a list of suspects because there are so many potential aggressors, including serial killers, transients, migrant workers, truck drivers, and others who are just passing through. Ominously, there is also a large number of paroled sexual predators living in the region, with one police survey turning up a list of 2,100 such released convicts living in the surrounding areas of the killing fields. Add to this the fact that Texas in general leads the country in unsolved highway homicides and there is very little investigators can do in whittling down the list of possible suspects. It could be anyone. It cannot even be ascertained if these are the work of a single murderer or many. The victims themselves are often troubled young women who are quickly listed as mere runaway cases at first, further creating a window of missed opportunity when something could have been done. Texas Monthly Reporter Skip Hollinsworth once told CBS of the killing fields thus, It is kind of an environment that is sultry and sinister, easy to get to. You jump off of I-45, you drive down on the dirt-rutted roads, you dump the body and you're gone for good. Of all the dumping grounds around this country that there have been, this is about for a serial killer as good a place as they come. The killings and disappearances in the area would continue all the way up to the 2000s, with the vanishings of Tot Herriman 57 on July 12, 2001, as well as the disappearance of 16-year-old Teresa Venegas on October 31, 2006, and the murder of 23-year-old Sarah Trusty, July 12, 2002. Although there have been no further murders or disappearances since then, this is little consolation considering almost none of many murders and vanishings that have taken place here have ever been solved. The only solid conviction that has ever been made in connection to the killing fields happened in 2012 concerning the murder case of Crystal Baker, which had occurred a full 16 years prior. The breakthrough in this instance came in 2009, when Chambers County Evidence Officer Sherry Wilcox had Crystal's dress resubmit it as evidence in order to subject it to more modern DNA testing techniques to see what would turn up. It worked. A DNA match was found for a man arrested for an unrelated drug charge named Kevin Edison Smith, who then admitted to the killing under questioning. In 2012, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Crystal Baker, marking the only time DNA evidence has conclusively solved one of the many unsolved killing fields cases. Indeed, other than this instance, there has been nothing but tenuous evidence, false leads, false confessions, cold trails, tips that have led to dead ends, and suspects without enough evidence to charge. Authorities hope that such advanced DNA testing techniques could be put to use to solve some of the other baffling cases, but the available evidence is scant and the trails have gone very cold over the years. There seems to be a very good chance that most of the killing fields murders and disappearances will remain unsolved for quite some time in the absence of some new breakthrough. It is unfortunate because not only can we not be sure that some predator isn't still out there stalking the I-45 waiting to strike again, instilling fear in those who wonder if their child is next, but the families of the many victims have been robbed of any closure for decades, often in the case of those who simply disappeared not even knowing what became of their loved ones. Reporter Skip Hollinsworth said of the situation, It has become this kind of ghost story for South Texas, for these parents this mystery is not just a ghost story, it is a horrible reality. The mystique and horrors of this desolate place perfectly lend themselves to a horror movie, and indeed in 2009, a movie loosely based on these events and the efforts of law enforcement to solve them, starring Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, entitled The Texas Killing Fields, was released. The cases have also been the focus of an in-depth analysis and investigation by author Catherine Casey. Deliver us three decades of murder and redemption in the infamous I-45 Texas Killing Fields released in 2015. There can be no denying that we have a morbid fascination with these types of unsolved murders, especially when they revolve around such a bleak remote area in the middle of nowhere. Looking at the long list of unsolved brutal murders and chilling vanishings that have occurred here in these Killing Fields, it seems that it does not take supernatural forces or black ancient magic to curse a land. The insidious evil that mankind is capable of is perhaps more than capable of that. It is with this evil that our created places, which, while perhaps not haunted by ghosts, are haunted in a sense nevertheless. Weird darkness continues in just a moment. No matter the time of day or season, sometimes you need to find a way to rid yourself of those ghostly chills that bring raised hairs and goosebumps to your skin. Other times you're looking for those ghostly chills. Either way, it sounds like you need a mug of Weird Dark Roast coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee has deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness that'll send shivers down your taste buds. This is an exclusive coffee that I selected specifically for you, my Weirdo family. Weird Dark Roast is not available in stores, coffee houses, mad scientist labs, or even the dark web, but you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee. Fresh roasted to order so it's as fresh as it can be when it lands on your doorstep and knocks three times. Grab yours now at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee does not actually knock on your door because it doesn't have arms or hands, so if you hear knocks at the door and no one answers when you ask who it is, it's probably paranormal and you should just leave the door shut and locked. While modern scientists are busy finding proof of a fourth dimension, ancient people recorded curious events that indicate the existence of another dimension that we are unaware of. Living in a three-dimensional world, we hardly consider the possibility that there can be a fourth dimension that we can't experience. Yet, according to the SuperString theory, there are ten dimensions. Nine of these dimensions are of space and one is of time. Proving the existence of additional dimensions is extremely difficult, but American and European scientists announced earlier this year that they have actually glimpsed the fourth dimension. It's interesting to note that hundreds of years ago, people observed and wrote down stories of objects that appear to have moved from one dimension to another. What's even more puzzling is that certain cases of this baffling phenomenon occurred in the same region with an interval of a couple of hundred years. How is it possible? How can we explain some very similar and yet independent reports of a specific object that moved between dimensions? Is it possible there are certain invisible points of re-entry to our three-dimensional world? Our first event took place in Bristol, United Kingdom, during the reign of King John Lackand of England, 1166-1216 AD. Alerted English Monk whose name was Gervaisy of Tilbury described the event in an early Latin encyclopedia. Gervaisy of Tilbury wrote that, in the country of Gloucester, is a town called Bristol of wealth and noted for prosperous citizens and merchants, from its ports men sailed to Ireland. The English Monk said that, on one occasion, a man from Bristol left his wife and children to sail to Ireland. That's nothing unusual, but what happened next defies explanation. It was a long journey and the sailor had dinner with the rest of the crew. It was about the hour of Tiers, or 9am, and after eating, he washed his knife in the salt water over the ship's side, Gervaisy of Tilbury writes. Suddenly the knife slipped from his hand. Now at the same time in Bristol, the knife fell in through the roof window, which men call Dormer, and in his own house stuck in the table at which his wife was then sitting. She was dumbfounded at so strange a thing and recognizing this well-known knife laid it aside. Long after that she learned on her husband's return that the incident happened on the very day when she found the knife. It's a very curious incident. The man brought a knife with him on his journey to Ireland, and while being on the ship, the knife slipped from his hand and landed on his kitchen table in Bristol. Interestingly, author and researcher Harold Wilkins learned about an almost identical case that also took place in Gloucester only many years later. Wilkins received a letter from his brother Gordon Wilkins who told him about a woman who recalls a knife suddenly appearing out of thin air in front of her and her husband. Gordon Wilkins wrote that one day last week an elderly lady wrote to the office saying she was unwell and asked me to call at her house off Carlton Road, Gloucester. I found when I called that she wanted me to act as co-witness to her will. As I was leaving the other witness said to the old lady, Amy, have you found the knife yet? The old lady, Mrs. G, said, no, I think the people who were here may have taken it. Mrs. G then turned to me and said, Mr. Wilkins, I want to tell you of a very peculiar thing. My late husband was a linesman employed by the Midlands Electricity Board. One day he was sent to erect some overhead power lines in a field near Brocksworth, as you know about four miles from here. When lunchtime came he pulled out his bread and cheese and found to his annoyance that he had forgotten to put a table knife in his lunchbox. He bent down and there on the grass in the field lay a fine new table knife which certainly had not been there when he came into the field. He took it home and we kept it until, a short time back, some years later after my husband died, it mysteriously vanished. If we assume both these accounts are genuine then there are reasons to ask some questions. As we noticed both cases are reported from Gloucester. Both events involve a knife and took place within the same county at an interval of 750 years. Is it a pure coincidence or could there be a time portal or entry point leading to a higher dimension in this region? This happened when I was around 14 years old and it still keeps me awake at night. I'm from India. We had just moved to our new house in Delhi and my mom was out shopping and my father and younger sister were in the kitchen cooking dinner. My elder brother and I were in the study room and were sitting facing each other with a lamp between us. It was a rainy day and the power was cut. Our father asked us to finish our homework before dinner. However, we were chatting and giggling in very low voices so that our father couldn't hear us. All of a sudden, I realized my father was coming to the study room. It was dark so I could only see a black figure coming towards the study room. I whispered to my brother, shh, papa is coming. He turned around and saw the shadow too so we both started staring at our books. After a second I saw my father enter the room from the corner of my eye and he was walking in a weird way. He was facing us and walking sideways close to the wall. I looked up and smiled at him and only then did I see the big red eyes and twisted hands within a second it disappeared in the corner of the study room. I was shocked and I shouted to my brother who was still pretending to study. He turned back again, saw that my father wasn't there and started running towards the kitchen. I followed him. We were both terrified and told our father there was a ghost in the study room. He didn't believe us. But we knew something was there. Located in the beautiful town of Beechworth, just a few hours from Melbourne, is the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum. One of the most seen ghosts is that of Matron Sharp. Her apparition has been seen in several different parts of the hospital. The asylum was later renamed the Mayday Hills Hospital. It is the second oldest asylum in Victoria, dating back to 1867. When the asylum opened, it stretched half a kilometer from one end to the other. The Beechworth Lunatic Asylum held a total of 1,200 patients when full, 600 men and 600 women. Over 3,000 patients died within its walls in the 128 years the hospital operated. Its doors closed in 1995 and since then is operated as a campus of La Trobe University, run as a hotel and conference center. In one of the day rooms, the signature of a Jay Kelly is scratched in the glass. Jay Kelly was Ned Kelly's, the famous outlaw, Uncle James Kelly. After burning down his sister-in-law's house in Greta, in which a young Ned was in at the time, Jim was sentenced to 15 years hard labor. As part of his sentence, he was sent to Mayday Hills to help build the hospital. After serving his time, it is said his mind was broken and as such spent the rest of his days housed in the hospital until his death in 1903. The ghost tours run at Beechworth Lunatic Asylum have become the most popular ghost tours on mainland Australia. Only the ghost tours offered in Port Arthur and Tasmania attract more visitors. Tours are offered every evening, on some evenings as many as 12 tours are conducted. The Beechworth Asylum is now considered to be one of the most haunted buildings in Australia. One of the ghosts most often seen at Beechworth is that of Matron Sharp. Her apparition has been seen in several different parts of the hospital. Matron Sharp's ghost has been seen in the former dormitory area, which is now part of Latrobe University's computer rooms. Witnesses have seen her walking down the granite staircase and into one of the classrooms. Matron Sharp was apparently very compassionate toward the patients, which is uncharacteristic of the era. One patient whose ghost is thought to haunt Beechworth is Tommy Kennedy. Tommy was well liked at the hospital and was given a job as a kitchen hand. Tommy actually died in the kitchen, which is now part of the Beeshoe Theater. It is here that people have said they have felt the sensation of someone tugging at their clothes or poking their ribs. The reaction hall was an area where patients could sing, play loud music or perform in plays. On Sundays, the hall doubled as the chapel. In 1939, the hall became a cinema where inmates could come in to watch movies. There are two common sightings in the hall. One is of a young girl who approaches women and desperately tries to communicate with them. The other ghost has been seen in a window that was once part of the Bell Tower. The apparition of an elderly man facing away from the window is often seen. The Gravelia Wing was the section of the hospital all patients feared. It has been closed for 13 years and now in a derelict state. As medication wasn't introduced until the 1950s, restraints such as street jackets and even shackles were commonly used as well as electroshock treatment. Electroshock treatment was widely used in the hospital's early days, and there are stories of mass treatments in which almost the entire patient population was shocked in one session. When shocks were administered, the patient's bodies either splayed out backwards with force or contracted inward into a fetal position. Whichever position ligaments would snap, bones would often break and teeth would shatter. There are two common sightings in Gravelia. One is thought to be that of an unknown male doctor. Zapparition has been seen wandering the corridors at night. The other is Matron Sharp, whose ghost was often seen in this area by the nurses who worked at Mayday Hills. They would report seeing the Matron sitting with patients who were due to have electroshock treatment. Those who say they have witnessed this say the room was icy cold, but her presence was comforting and seemed to bring a sense of reassurance to the patients. Workmen at the hospital have reported hearing the sound of children laughing and playing. When they investigate the sound, they are unable to trace the source. Several years ago, on a ghost tour, a parent noticed their ten-year-old son talking to himself when asked who he was talking to, the boy said he was talking to a boy called James who lived there. A patient, a woman who was a big chain smoker, was thrown out of a window to her death by another patient who wanted her cigarettes. Because the woman was Jewish, her body was not allowed to be moved until a rabbi had seen it, so her body was left lying out of the front of the hospital dead for two days whilst the rabbi made the trip up from Melbourne. Her ghost has been seen on the spot where she fell by several witnesses over the last decade. The gardens of Beechworth have long been subdivided into allotments. Those who live nearby have seen the ghost of a man wearing a green woollen jacket. The ghost is thought to be of a gardener named Arthur who worked the gardens for many years, earning ten shillings a week. He wore his green jacket in winter and summer, and no one could persuade him to remove it. After Arthur died, it was discovered why. Arthur had been secretly storing his wages in the seam of his jacket. When the nurses opened it, they found 140 pounds over four years of his wages hidden inside. There is one final and grisly tale of a patient who disappeared despite efforts by staff to locate him. Several weeks later, his location was discovered when the resident dog, Max, was found chewing a leg near the gatehouse at the ground's entry. The second search found the body up in a tree. The body had decomposed so badly that his leg had fallen off to the ground. The ghost of the patient has been seen near the entrance to the asylum. The sightings have often been in the early hours of the morning. The Philadelphia experiment is an event during 1943 in which the United States Navy purportedly teleported a Navy destroyer escort, the USS Eldridge, from Philadelphia to Norfolk. They also made it invisible, as in invisible to the naked eye. Most people believe the incident was either a hoax or the ravings of a lunatic. However, some still believe that it may have really occurred and that there is a large conspiracy to cover it up. What is interesting is that the tale of the Philadelphia experiment has made it into the annals of American legend. So what is the real story? The story of the Philadelphia experiment begins in October of 1943 in Norfolk, Virginia, though the story did not turn up until more than 10 years later. Purportedly, some men aboard the SS Andrew Furyseth saw a ship spontaneously appear in the water in Norfolk on October 28. The story goes that it came from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The destroyer had first disappeared and then it instantaneously teleported to Norfolk. The disappearance and the teleportation were apparently two different functions of the experiment. In other words, the disappearance was not the results of the teleportation, but rather came before it. Once the USS Eldridge reached Norfolk, it was clear something went wrong. Some of the men had disappeared during the trip. Others had gone mad. Some kept becoming invisible and then regaining their forms. Others still had become fused, yes, fused with the ship in various ways. Perhaps that is why no U.S. ships currently have invisibility cloaks and teleportation devices. It could also be that the story is completely false. The story of the Philadelphia experiment comes from a man named Carl Allen, or Carlos Alende, his pseudonym. Carlos wrote a detailed description of the event, along with claims he was a witness aboard the SS Andrew Furyseth when the USS Eldridge arrived in Norfolk, Virginia. He sent the description to the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research. The public got hold of the story and it took off, despite the many unlikely events described in the letter. Carlos Alende wrote that the Philadelphia experiment was made possible by Einstein's unified field theory. Einstein supposedly told Carlos all about it himself. This is not direct proof that the story is mere myth, but it does lend a bit to the crazy factor of the claims. Firstly, it is common for such myths to borrow from the genius and fame of great scientists. Oftentimes, it is easy to refute these myths because the works of great men are typically followed closely. There is no evidence that Einstein ever met Carlos Alende and there is no evidence that his work resulted in a disastrous teleportation. The USS Eldridge, like most other Navy ships, especially in wartime, had a thorough log of where it had been in October of 1943 and the months around it. These logs are currently public information. According to them, the ship was nowhere near Philadelphia in October 1943. The SS Andrew Furyseth was also not in Norfolk at any time the Eldridge was present. Furthermore, William S. Dodge, the man in command of the boat at the time of the Philadelphia experiment, later said that neither he nor any of his crew saw anything strange in Norfolk, Virginia. After receiving the odd information, the Office of Naval Research conducted an investigation. They did not find any evidence that the U.S. Navy was conducting experiments in teleportation. Of course, rendering ships invisible or stealthy is always an interest, but that pertains to radar, not to the human eye. As far as the U.S. Navy is concerned, no such technology exists. Fast forward to the year 1984, the movie the Philadelphia Experiment emerged. In the movie, two men stationed on a ship travel forward in time after an experiment to make the ship invisible to radar goes terribly awry. The image of a sailor's body partially melted into the deck of the ship, burned into the public's psyche, and it would contribute to the persistence of the urban legend. In 1994, Jacques F. Vallee wrote an article about the Philadelphia Experiment. He had written about it before and at that time had requested that anyone who might have more information contact him. Someone did. Edward Dudgeon had served as an electrician in the Navy between 1942 and 1945 on the USS Engstrom. He said the Engstrom was in Philadelphia during the summer of 1943. The nature of his job allowed him access to the classified nature of the equipment aboard his ship and the USS Eldridge. Dave Ruse of How Stuff Works discusses Dudgeon's explanation in his article How the Philadelphia Worked. Far from being teleportation engines designed by Einstein or aliens, the device is enabled the ships to scramble their magnetic signature using a technique called degossing. The ships were wrapped in large cables and zapped with high voltage charges. A degaust ship wouldn't be invisible to radar but would be undetectable by the U-boat's magnetic torpedoes. So there is no proof of Einstein's connection to a naval project aimed at invisibility of solid objects and teleportation. There is no evidence that Carlos Allende met Einstein or that Einstein developed such technology. However, evidence contrary to the USS Eldridge's alleged presence in Philadelphia and Norfolk on October 28, 1943, does exist. And there are counterclaims to Allende's that others witnessed the event. No proof exists apart from the writings of Carlos Allende that supports the legend of the Philadelphia experiment. There's more Weird Darkness coming up. This took place in the mid-80s in Houston, Texas. My wife and I had separated and I was living by myself in a house we'd bought together as a vacation place. I lived close to my parents' home. The bedroom was at the back of the building with a hallway that led to the back door. It was about 1 a.m. in the morning. I'd just gotten back from a late shift and I was tired. I laid down on my bed and I was almost asleep when I heard the back door knob jiggling. I knew the door was locked but I was a little unnerved. I closed my eyes for a few seconds thinking that it would go away. But I have a bad habit of having to check things out. Once I'm stirred, I'm up. I got up, went to look at the door and found it wide open. Not only that, but a man was standing there. I could see him from the waist up. I wouldn't call it a man. It had a gray white skin, pointed ears, black eyes and was dressed in black. I literally wanted to scream but couldn't. This thing looked up at me, cocked its head sideways and smiled. I was terrified. I closed my eyes and screamed. I literally felt the screen pouring out of my body but I couldn't hear it. I opened my eyes and saw the door was closed. I walked over and found it was unlocked. I opened it, looked outside and could see nothing. I packed up my stuff and went over to my parents house. I couldn't even think straight. A few questions come to mind. Why could I only see half of him? Why did he leave? What was it in the first place? I don't think it was a UFO. I think it was a demon. I never saw it again, but I can never forget the way it looked at me. In the mid 1950s, I was traveling with my husband to Amarillo, Texas. It was a nice day and we were enjoying ourselves. We drove south and, to my surprise, we passed a man hanging from a tree. He was dressed in a pair of jeans, no shirt, no shoes. It completely caught me by surprise. I asked my husband if he saw it and he hadn't. He just thought it was my imagination. I thought perhaps I had imagined it too. We arrived in Amarillo, spent six weeks with my family and then we returned home. We were close to the area where I had seen the hanging man. We stopped for some dinner and a rest. My husband and I started talking to one of the waitresses there who told us about a local legend. The legend was that a man could be seen hanging from a tree on the other side of town. That was the same place I saw the hanging man. We finished our dinner, left and I hadn't thought about it for some time until I started reading the stories on your site. I thought it would be an interesting account to share. My true story is actually still ongoing and it involves a mix of many paranormal phenomena. I, like many of my family members, have had encounters with paranormal phenomena all of our lives. This story is very troubling to me as it is happening to my brother Colin who lives in my native country, Scotland. I have lived in the USA now for many years. I hadn't had the chance to talk with my brother for quite a while. I was having trouble getting hold of him. However my other two brothers as well as other family members had assured me that Colin was okay. He worked night shifts and he lived alone. When I finally did manage to contact him I was saddened to hear how much his speech had changed. He stuttered nervously and apologized all of the time. He said he'd been having trouble sleeping. I was shocked and saddened by this as Colin had always been so confident and tough. After much digging he finally opened up about what had been happening to him. He kept telling me that I wouldn't believe him and that if this gets out I'll be put in an insane asylum. I promised him that I loved him and would never allow that to happen. This is his story. He told me that weird paranormal things have been happening to him for as long as he could remember and that no one knew just how strong his abilities were. He wasn't scared of this and actually enjoyed many aspects of it like astral projection. He could astrally project at will. He described how he would get a high from it and not just in the literal sense of leaving the body. He also enjoyed speaking to my deceased mom and saw other spirits. However he went on to say that something else had been happening that he couldn't tell me about as it was so bad and terrified him so much that he could only work night shifts as he could not be alone at night in the house. What the hell could be happening to him? He went on to say that he was being watched by men in black suits and that we had to be careful as they were listening on our call. At first I wasn't sure if his mental health was okay until I had my proof. My poor brother was telling the truth. This episode of Weird Darkness is brought to you by the audiobook The Black Eyed Kids by G. Michael Vasey. There's a knock at the door late at night. You answer it to find two small children standing there. You suddenly are filled with an inexplicable fear. Let us in, they say. We need to use the phone. It is at that point that the fear turns to utter dread as you see that these kids have completely black eyes. The Black Eyed Kids is an exploration of this terrifying phenomenon using true stories of encounters with Black Eyed Kids, BEK, submitted to the My Haunted Life 2 website. G. Michael Vasey examines the evidence and investigates the terrifying BEK phenomenon coming to some startling and shocking conclusions. Are they demonic soul-eaters responsible for the disappearance of some of the 90,000 Americans missing at any point in time? Or is it just another urban legend, another bogeyman designed to keep you awake at night? Listen to the book and find out. To hear a free sample from this audiobook or to add it to your collection, visit the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. My friends and I used to dabble with the occult. We would light candles in graveyards to try and summon ghosts, said the Lord's prayer backwards at midnight in front of a mirror, prayed to the devil on Halloween. We just thought it was a bit of fun. We didn't ever believe in any of it. One night, my friends brought a Ouija board around the house. We didn't expect it to work and just toyed with it. We were all shocked when it started working. A spirit came to us but wouldn't tell us its name. It started ignoring questions from others and only answering my questions. It told me that it was my friend and I started to believe that this entity wanted to be good to me. It made me believe it was a good spirit and a spirit guide. Eventually, if I didn't talk to it when it wanted me to, it would give me headaches and I would feel physically sick. Sometimes it would enter my bedroom while I was listening to music and jam the radio with static. Soon, I decided that I did not want to talk to it anymore. I told it to leave and never come back. That night, it clawed at me and actually bit me. I woke up covered in bruises. This went on for several nights. I decided that I had had enough. I went to a nearby bookstore and found a book on white magic. There was a spell in the book that required a few white candles and a bit of privacy. It was a spell to get rid of evil spirits. I went to the supermarket, bought the candles and came home again. That night, when my mom and dad had gone to bed, I did the spell. I did the spell for four nights in a row. I never heard from it again. I took this experience as a warning to never dabble in the occult. I never have since, and I hope you won't either. Since the beginning of last year, my wife and I have been hearing strange noises in our house. They normally start late at night. Some of the noises are just creaks and bangs, but recently we have been hearing children playing downstairs while we are upstairs. These children are very, very audible and are usually screaming, crying and calling for their parents. We have been suffering through it, but about five months ago, our son said that he saw a woman come into his room, sit on his bed and sing to him. He said that she had black hair, black eyes and a pale face. My wife and I are unsure of what to do. A few weeks ago, we were spending time together in the living room when the room went deathly cold. I looked at my wife and she had a look of horror on her face. She says that she saw a solid black form standing behind me, apparently glided from side to side. I couldn't feel anything, but I know the room was completely cold. Since then the children have been louder and there have been several really loud bangs and crashes. I recently saw the woman standing at the top of the stairs looking down at me. My wife saw her reflection in the window when she was doing some kitchen work. Apparently she looked up at the window and saw the woman standing behind her. My son has seen the black mass several times. We are unsure of what to do. This happened on October 19, 2006 at around 1 pm or so. I usually parked my car at a park for my lunch, as a lot of people did that day. I had parked on a side of the park where there were no cars near me, only a truck facing my car from the opposite side. I got an uneasy feeling about the truck and had to move. I moved the car to another spot. As I sat in my car eating lunch, a man walks past my car towards the pond path when he appears near the front of my car hood. I thought to myself, oh, what an ugly, odd-looking person. It seemed as if he could read my mind as he turned to glare at me with a sinister look. His eyes were all black. I thought I was seeing things. I had to go back to work then. On the way back, a utility truck backed into me and my car was totaled. I never went back to that area again. Honorable mention, Beware the Bindle Stiff by Carolyn Tombs Neary. God never made mistakes, but when he created me, he must have been having one hell of a bad day. According to Mom, I was not so much delivered into this world as convulsed into it. When word of my seizures spread, Mom's Italian clan filled the pews of the church of the Immaculate Conception where they prayed collective novenas for my survival and later for my normalcy. Conversely, Daddy's Romani tribe went into immediate celebratory mode, convinced that my struggles were a sign that I came pre-loaded with the little something extras those fun-filled gypsies so appreciated. Some people called me crazy. Some called me magical. My family called me vittoria. I roared through a childhood filled with love, laughter, barely controllable chaos, a childhood angered by faith, hope and stability. I knew things, felt things that others didn't. Mom and her nine brothers and sisters were a prolific bunch and the cousins numbered somewhere in the 50s. We were close. The older ones were tasked with watching out for the younger ones and I gave them a run for their money. Whether doing aerial acrobatics while clinging to the rope, spanning the rocky ravine that cut through the St. Francis Seminary Woods or holding a perfect handstand on the rail of the footbridge behind the Milwaukee Drop Forge 30 feet above the tracks, I kept them on their toes. We'd been warned about the hobos who ambled along the rails. While not one cousin was lost to any of these bums, we did see them. They were not an urban legend, an idle threat to keep the rossy grandkids away from the tracks. Oh no, they were real. When we played in the swamp at the bottom of the hill between the train tracks and prior playground, we'd stop and stare as one or two of them jumped down from the murky depths of a boxcar, sonored to one of the nearby houses to beg for handouts and then, with brown bags in hand, hoist themselves back up onto the train, once again disappearing into the mysterious gloom. It happened on one of those never-ending childhood summer afternoons in 1959. I'd accompanied six of my cousins and my brother Luca to the swamp in search of garter snakes. I was the only girl and the youngest. Soon, tiring of the quest, I scrambled up the trail and sat down cross-legged. Luca looked up at me and hollered, don't go wander enough, Vito, stay close. I'm just right here, Luca, sheesh, I shouted back. Long marsh grass trickled my bare thighs, mosquitoes sang in my ears. I waved to the flies away while concentrating on pulling apart a big juicy cactail, tossing the fuzz into the air and smiling into the sun as the puffs floated away on the breeze. Thinking. I was always thinking, usually about my odd life and my purpose in this world. Rockus Laughter grabbed my attention and I turned at the sound, then giggled at the ridiculous antics of my brother and cousins. Then, all activity stopped. With ears straining and eyes shaded, we peered south, feeling the reverberations of the approaching 400 before hearing the fearsome scream of the warning whistle. It was one of the diesel-powered passenger trains that zipped between Milwaukee and Chicago at better than 100 miles per hour. As it approached, I closed my eyes in anticipation of the hot breeze that would soon roll from the speeding rocket to gently ruffle my hair. We hooded and hollered at the engineer, then jumped up and down while waving to the passengers. The kicked-up rock was blazing hot with razor-sharp edges. Sailing on past these seven bigger bodies, it homed in on my little mug and smashed into my left cheek. I fell flat, lay motionless among the bugs in the brush before coming to the slow realization that something was wrong. Very wrong. Sluggish at first, the pain ramped up until hitting full throttle. My muscles tightened. My vision faded. My hearing muffled. I strained to look up through the haze. Seven sets of panicky dark brown eyes stared down at me. Richie was the first to speak, to shout, Holy shit, look at her, her cheek, it's gone, I can see her teeth. He gagged and then started barfing. Bobby and Dickie took off running. Through the fog, I heard them yelling back that they were going to the family grocery store to get help. I tried to get up. Couldn't. I rolled to my side and threw up just like Richie had. Luca and Tommy pulled me into a sitting position and squatted down next to me. Oh shit, I heard Tommy say. We got company. Three figures approached from the tracks. Luca screamed at them, leave us alone, my uncles are on their way, so you better get the hell away from us. I looked toward the tramps and quickly realized that I couldn't see out of my left eye. Panic threatened then ran away as I focused my right eye on the tall, bearded stranger standing next to Luca. His aura was rainbow, one of the rarest of colors. I craned my neck to look up at him which sent the jolt of blinding pain slashing through my skull and forcing both of my hands to my face. My brain couldn't quite compute what my fingers discovered there. The bum standing next to the bearded man reached down, wrapped his fingers around my wrists and held my exploring hands away from my face. Don't touch little lassie. He said in a lilting Irish brogue, everything's going to be just fine. The man with the rainbow aura knelt down on one knee. The soft, smoke-colored eyes descended upon me like a wave of healing holy water. He smiled, then slowly undid the knot in the large rag that hung from the end of his spindle staff, releasing a bed roll and other gear. He placed one hand on Luca's shoulder and with the other covered my wound with the cloth. Luca pushed at the man screaming, get that dirty piece of shit off my sister, leave her alone. He murmured, I'm not going to harm her, concentrate on believing, son. I felt the coolness of his skin through the cloth. His large hand covered my eyes, my nose, my mouth, instantly freezing out the pain. Just as he withdrew it, my uncles pulled up to the curb in the store's delivery truck and pounded down the path toward us. Luca screamed, the train kicked up a rock and it hit Vito. Her face, her face is gone. Then he started to cry. The three strangers told my uncles that they'd witnessed the accident while resting in the shade of the trestle. Uncle Sal thanked them for their assistance and offered the cash he had in his pockets. The bearded man accepted the money, picked up his belongings and fell into step beside his two companions as they hiked up the hill to shuffle south along the tracks. When the doctor uncovered my face, he found nothing more than a dime-sized albeit deep wound to my cheek, along with a severe fracture to my cheekbone. There wasn't enough skin or flesh around the burn to allow for stitches. When I came out into the waiting room, clutching the tube of salve the doctor had given to me, Luca stared at my face and stuttered, what the heck, how'd they, Vito? Luca, I whispered, that man, he had a rainbow aura, the power to heal. When we got home, my cousins verified Luca's account of me having had my face ripped off. The aunts and uncles attributed their story to some sort of mass hysteria. Eventually, my brothers and cousins convinced each other that my aunts were right, that they'd imagined the gaping wound my exposed teeth and jawbone. Me? Uh-uh. I felt what I felt. Although a bit smaller and no longer an angry red, I still bear the pencilly racer-sized circular scar. Sometimes I touch it and think about that angel in the guise of a spindle-stiff and of having witnessed my first miracle. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I'm working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com Slash Syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com Slash Syndicate. Unless the sirens stop here, in front of this building, and they always stop here eventually. The house, a sprawling Victorian near the Manona Bay, doesn't look sinister. Some say it was built bad as though evil was a key material embedded in the foundation. It's not true, of course. Until 1944, the mansion was unmarred with both structure and reputation. Then, due to a combination of old age and bad investments, the property was sold and split into several apartments. I was one of the first tenants and I'll probably be one of the last. When I first moved in, people smiled at the building's grandeur. Now people examine the house from the street, searching for the visible traces of tragedy. But I can tell you that, as with most tragedies, the destruction is everlasting, but the lasting damage dwells in memory. Memory can be a harmful thing. It causes us to act out, to shudder ourselves from the world, to seek an escape from that which is always with us. But what if that escape is more detrimental than the thing we are running from? I'm wondering about this, the cause and effect of memory, as I sit across from Christine, our newest neighbor. What memories haunt her? What caused her to run here? She's sitting at her kitchen table, her eyes squinting at an opened laptop, packed boxes and bulging bags strewn, forgotten around the apartment. She's been here for weeks now, but it seems like the only things she has unpacked have been her laptop, a nightie and her shower curtain. At least there's that. Oh wow, she whispers, moving closer to the screen. Mr. R.J. Peters was found dead in his home yesterday evening. Police say the apparent cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. She shudders and looks up September 28, 1944. Geez. I purse my lips, staring at the dark mark forming on the wall behind her. R.J. Peters was a horrible man who deserved to die. It's a shame he got to himself before anyone else did, I mutter. Christine turns and stares out the picture window. To think that happened here. I wonder which apartment he lived in. Yeah, I wonder, I say, rolling my eyes. Oh, Christine gasps. That isn't the only one. She leans toward the screen again. Investigators have released the name of the woman slain in the murder suicide at 306 South Bedford Street. 20-year-old Evelyn M. Austin was found murdered in her apartment last Tuesday evening after neighbors complained of an unpleasant smell emanating from the home. Local police forces discovered Austin lying in a pool of blood beaten and slashed. The apparent murder weapon, a common kitchen knife, was found beneath the body of her attacker, Charles Speth, who authorities surmise had hanged himself from the hallway chandelier. She stops reading and looks up to the ceiling. Jesus! I sigh and glance back at the wall, scowling at the grimy mark that has started to darken and widen. It was horrible. Charles was a good man. My lip trembles. He just, it wasn't his fault. He never would have hurt. I inhale deeply. It wasn't him. It was R.J. Christine shakes her head and turns back to her computer. November of 1944 is just a couple of months after the suicide. She pulls her chair closer to the table. I wonder if it was the same apartment? I nod, but I can't take my eyes off the wall. I hate this. The stain on the wall has started to shift. I watch it as it shrinks in on itself in certain places and swells outward in others. My nostrils flare and air catches in my chest. I should warn her, but I can't. My tongue won't wrap itself around the words, so I swallow them down and exhale slowly. Holy shit! Christine exclaims, calling my attention back to her. She's covering her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide. She leans back and I stand, moving so I'm standing behind her chair. She shivers as I read the text on the screen in front of her. Death by numbers, Madison, Wisconsin. The page lists addresses and the number of deaths that have occurred at each address, all catalogued by manner of death. I shudder as I read the numbers below 306 South Bedford Street. Natural 2. Accident 1. Suicide 4. Murder 2. Undetermined 5. Total known deaths, 14. I close my eyes, the staying of sorrow prickling against my eyelids. 14 deaths and I have seen them all save one. I turn and face the wall. My face hot as I glare at the blackened mark behind Christine's chair. It's taken a human form now and it's starting to bulge from the wall, bringing with it a gut-wrenching stench that fills the room. I feel my temper rise as I remember the ruin and death that has tainted this apartment. I taste bile in the back of my mouth and grit my teeth as rage gurgles up my throat. No! I scream, taking a step forward as the form pulls itself through the paint and ether. Behind me Christine gags as she chokes on the cloying scent permeating the air. I hear her ask what the smell is, but I ignore her. I'm focused on the figure standing in front of me. Its features begin to sharpen and soon I can make out its face. His broken smile seeps into lopsided folds of skin that puddle around a hole in his jaw. His complexion is mottled and waxy, but his eyes are black and I see myself reflected in their darkness. You're not doing this again RJ! I say, stealing myself and planting my body between him and Christine. I turn my head and see her rooted to her chair, her hand covering her mouth and nose. She's shaking slightly and I know how she feels. I remember how dread settled on my skin long before I even knew that I was afraid, let alone what I was afraid of. He laughs, the sound rattling around in his throat. You couldn't stop me before, he rasps, reaching out and wiggling his fingers in the wound slashed across my throat. It's no different now. I feel the familiar sense of hopelessness begin to flood my senses as he moves past me and hovers over Christine. I hear her whimper, though I know she can't see him. Who's there? She whispers, her voice trembling, and it's that trembling that strengthens my resolve. I won't let you, I spin around. Charles was a good man until you, you, he loved me. Is that why you couldn't stand to see anyone happy? No one ever loved you so you couldn't let anyone love it all? I reached into an open box, pulled out a glass and flung it at him. The glass sailed through his skull and shattered against the wall behind him. Christine jumps and scurries to the kitchen counter, cowering as she stares at the broken glass on the floor. He scowls and takes a step toward me, but I don't back down. I feel energy surge within me. The lights flicker overhead and I think about the others. Thirteen people, I say, raising my fingers to my neck. I look towards the bathroom where Katie Clark, for reasons unbeknownst to her, slit her wrists in 1977. My eyes move to the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, and come to rest on the ceiling. So many, I whisper, the vision of a swaying chandelier tugging at my memory. I level my gaze and he shrinks back. This could destroy me, I know, but I have to try. I'm tired and I don't want Christine to be another wailing siren piercing the night. I concentrate and try to visualize Charles, the Charles I knew and loved, not the Charles he was turned into. If hate can destroy love, then love can destroy hate, I think, closing my eyes and picturing Charles' kind eyes and dimpled grin. I open my eyes and a slow smile spreads across my face. Goodbye, RJ, I say, rushing toward him. A rush of ice blasts through me and then there is nothing but warmth. I look around, but he's gone. I look to the wall, but the mark is gone. I glance around and see Christine still huddled against the kitchen counter. Walking over, I stand in front of her and place my hand on her shoulder. Her breathing slows, and she inhales gently. It's okay now, I say, and I finally feel peace. Third Place, Thinning the Herd by Eric Montag My name is Harry Swinton, and when I went looking for Leonard Crowley, I was police chief, Swinton. My youngest brother, Isaac, was a volunteer deputy, and he went with me. So did my younger brother, Carl, a retired schoolteacher who had moved to the North Woods. Isaac owned a successful taxidermy business. He called one evening to tell me that Mr. Crowley and Illinoisan with a nearby cabin had brought him a buck's head to mount. He told me that he was certain that something had noded through the deer's neck to separate the head from the body. He'd even found five puncture wounds at the base of the deer head, and that the arrangement of these wounds suggested that whatever had done the gnawing had a thumb. He said, something held that deer down and chewed through its neck. And further, he also told me that he didn't like the looks of Mr. Crowley. Said the old guy looked like a nut, and it might not be a bad idea to stop by Crowley's cabin and do a friendly checkup, just to remind him that he wasn't in a lawless territory. Isaac even got our brother Carl involved. Each got the other wound up with theories about Crowley torturing animals or running some kind of dogfighting scheme. I told them that I'd go myself. It wasn't the first time I'd done such a thing to get a good look around a place. Isaac went on badgering me and reminded me that I was the only full-time officer in town, and it wasn't smart for me to go alone. I told Isaac that he could ride along in the cruiser and wait in the car while I did the talking. He agreed, and then he invited Carl. Both agreed to wait in the cruiser. I knew which cabin Crowley owned, and we went there. I parked behind Crowley's car, a black Lexus with Illinois plates and tinted windows that looked out of place in the middle of the woods. It was damn cold that day, with a biting wind that made my eyes, water, and nose burn. That didn't stop my brothers from joining me as I walked up to the cabin door. I had just enough time to cuss at them before the cabin door opened. It was my first good look at Leonard Crowley. I'd never seen him before. He was tall, maybe six-four, with gray hair pulled back in a loose tail behind his head. He was wearing jeans that were tore up on his left side and a flannel shirt that looked like it had been put on by someone who was just learning to put on shirts. There were buttons, but some were unbuttoned and some were buttoned wrong. Parts of his skin showed. He flashed us a grin that looked friendly from farther back and descended the stairs of his tiny porch. He was a little older than me, maybe mid-sixties, but he moved smoothly, like there were oiled machine parts beneath his skin. I help you, he asked as we approached each other. I introduced myself and told him that I had gotten some reports from hunters about a pack of wolves or wild dogs in the area harassing and killing animals. I asked him if he had seen any evidence of that. As he approached, I could smell him. Even with the wind, I could smell wet dog. Only one thing smells like wet dog, and that's a wet dog. I haven't seen anything of that kind, Crowley said. He was still smiling, except his smile looked less friendly. More like a gash in his face, despite several days of beard growth, I could see that the corners of his mouth were raw. I told him that I assumed he was a hunter and I just come to warn him about potential wolves. Then I asked him if he had any dogs that might get hurt by a pack of wolves. He didn't answer me right away. Instead, he turned his smile to Isaac. Crowley was close now and I could see his eyes. They were yellow. I wonder what kind of guy wears yellow contacts. I'm a hunter, he said, but I got no dogs. I hate dogs. I didn't like how Crowley was looking at my brother. What do you shoot? Isaac asked. Whatever's handy, Crowley said. Aren't you the owner of that little shop that I was in yesterday? Isaac, right? Isaac Swinton. And you two are Swittens, too. He nodded like he had just told a little joke. Three Swinton brothers come all this way out to the woods to see me. How about that? Isaac crossed his arms in front of him as the wind picked up. Just check it up for your safety, Mr. Crowley. Crowley nodded again and turned back to me. The wind didn't seem to bother him at all. It flapped the loose flannel around his body, but he didn't so much as shiver. Perhaps you three would like to come inside? We could talk about all this business where it isn't so cold. No, Carl said. I turned to him and saw that he was staring over at the edge of the clearing. There wasn't too much snow on the ground to tell that there were dead animals over there. A deer, a cow, and something else that had either black or dark brown fur. From where I stood, it looked like a small bear, or maybe a large bear. I wondered what in the hell was a bear doing out in the winter. Crowley followed Carl's gaze. The cold gets animals great and small. I found that cow there, froze to death. Lest a wandered away from its herd, meets probably okay. It looked like the thought of a cow freezing to death amused him, but I decided to get my brothers out of there. Isaac the Fool had left his gun in the cruiser. Carl had no gun at all, and I did not like Leonard Crowley one tiny bit. I told him that we had others to check in with and thanked him for his time. Then he stuck a hand out for me to shake. I didn't realize until I had already taken it that my gun was hanging on my right side, and it would be unreachable if Crowley didn't let my hand go. He did let it go, but before he did he bent toward me and sniffed. He sniffed me and thanked us for stopping by to warn him. I remember that sniffing sound very well. I hear it in my nightmares now. We left. On the way back to town, I asked Carl and Isaac what they made of Leonard Crowley. They both agreed that he was odd, but Carl reminded us that being odd was not a criminal offense, and he didn't think that Mr. Crowley was into animal torture at all. He suggested that maybe Crowley was just a man who was passing off dead animals as hunting trophies. Isaac the one who had gotten us all involved began with agreed. He even said that he was probably wrong about the puncture marks. Crowley just sloppy knife work and not worth pursuing further. We should drop it. That was the last we ever talked about it, the three of us. We came face to face with something evil that day, and we looked away and pretended it wasn't there. Crowley had been completely without fear before us, and we had turned tail and not looked back. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that he came to the North Woods just to see us. Must have heard about three little Swinton brothers and had to come see. Carl didn't have to live without knowledge long. He died a month later, heart attack while shoveling his driveway. Isaac abruptly decided to close his taxidermy business, didn't even try to sell it, just packed up and left town. Told me he had the urge to move to a bigger city where there was more to do. Maybe live in an apartment building in downtown Minneapolis. And that's what he did. Except that two months after moving, he vanished. I've not heard from him since. I moved to Wausau into the senior community that I live in now. There are lots of people around me and I like that. But two nights ago I woke up and saw a black Lexus parked in the parking lot. I could not go back to sleep. I stayed up last night to watch and saw the Lexus again. I'm going to stay inside and keep my gun handy. But I'm also going to write this down, just in case. Leonard Crowley, Black Lexus, Chicago, Illinois. If you meet him, don't look away. Second place, The Fortune Teller of Rhinelander by Marlon Bressie. Such a peculiar little girl, her grandmother would say whenever Rosie went outside to play. While other neighborhood children would jump rope, play hide and seek along the marshy banks of the Pelican River or sell lemonade from a stand on the sidewalk, Rosie Palm would wrap herself in her grandmother's paisley shawl, put on her shower cap and tell the fortunes of those who strolled down the quaint tree-lined thoroughfare of Randall Avenue. Rosie's fascination with palmistry developed as a result of her own misfortune at a young age. When she was only three years old, she had yanked the tail of Mr. Stanley's ornary beagle, Samson, who responded by snapping his fangs at the girl's fingers. Rosie was left with a jagged pink scar which ran down the side of her palm, crooked and meandering like the course of the Pelican, which she could see from her bedroom window. The scar fascinated the young girl as well as the lines that zigzagged across her palm like highways on a flesh-toned road map. While other children were interested in games and toys, Rosie became fascinated with the human hand. She would spend entire afternoons at the town library reading about fingerprints, fingernails and any other subject related to the hand. Her favorite subject, however, was palm reading. Rosie's grandmother was dismayed about the girl's interest in fortune-telling. If her mother and father were still alive, they would surely not find such behavior appropriate for a young girl. Rosie's grandmother would say. Nonetheless, she allowed the girl to read palms and tell fortunes and costume herself like a gypsy princess as long as she stayed within sight of the house. One quiet and uneventful mid-summer afternoon, Rosie absconded with her grandmother's folding card table and set up a fortune-telling booth on the sidewalk in front of the house. Her grandmother had gone downtown to buy groceries, but Rosie didn't think she would object to her borrowing the table. The passers-by were more than happy to give Rosie a quarter for a palm reading since they had a soft spot in their hearts for the little girl who, at such a tender age, had endured so much hardship. Before long, a woman came down the street. Her natural beauty concealed behind horn-rimmed glasses and she was fashionably dressed in a floral dress and white gloves. Rosie immediately liked the woman and hoped that she could talk her into a palm reading. Beautiful afternoon, isn't it? The woman smiled as she neared Rosie and her makeshift fortune-telling booth. Yes, ma'am, the young girl replied. My name is Rosie Palm and I could tell you you're fortune for a quarter. The woman with glasses chuckled. That's attempting off her young lady. Unfortunately, I don't have much time. I'm waiting for the bus to Milwaukee and before it arrives, I wanted to see the house where I grew up. You grew up on Randall Avenue? asked Rosie, excited to make the acquaintance of a native Rhinelander and one who appeared to have gone on to bigger and better things. Rosie opposed that she might be an actress or singer. They were the only types of women who wore those lovely long white gloves. Yes, right there is where I grew up, the woman replied, pointing to a white house with cheerfully painted red shutters. That's my house! exclaimed Rosie. Her mouth agape in astonishment. I live here with my grandmother. I moved here last year after... after my parents passed away. The woman in glasses gave Rosie a sympathetic stare. I'm sorry to hear that, my dear, she said. It must be terribly difficult for you. I suppose, replied Rosie. But I make the best of it, so you must have been the one who lived in this house before me and grandma? The woman didn't hear the question. She was gazing vacantly at the house, which caused her expression to change into one of sadness. Rosie asked her what was wrong. Nothing is wrong, dear, she said. I'm just remembering things, things that happened long ago, yet are as fresh in my mind as if they just happened today. Her statement, along with the hint of sadness in her voice, aroused Rosie's curiosity. What kind of things? Something bad happened to you when you lived in my house? Something very bad, unfortunately, the woman replied. She took a moment to compose herself, and then told the young fortune teller her story. I was playing outside when a man came up to me and said he was from the water company, that he needed to come into the house and check on the pipes in the basement. There was no one else home, so I let him inside. She paused. He did some awful things to me. The woman's voice trailed off as she recalled the horrendous experience. Like kind of things. The woman in glasses shook her head and told Rosie she was far too young to understand and that she didn't want to frighten the young girl with her story. Don't be afraid, though. They caught the man and he went to jail for a very long time. I only wish I could have done things differently, and perhaps it wouldn't have happened the way it did, but I was young and didn't know any better. Nobody thinks of such terrible things happening in a town like this. What did the man look like? asked Rosie. She was deeply interested in hearing the rest of the woman's story. She had read many books about crime in the library, in the books about fingerprints, which she poured over like a student of criminology. He was a tall man in a gray suit and a black fedora. He… What's wrong? The woman took off her glove in order to glance at her watch. Nothing, dear. I just realized that my bus will be here soon and I must leave. It was very nice meeting you, Rosie, she said, extending her un-gloved hand to the girl for a handshake. Rosie shook her hand, noticing the pink, jagged scar on the woman's palm. Rosie watched the woman disappear around the corner, and was still grasping the strangeness of the incident when she turned around and saw a man walking toward her. He was wearing a gray suit and a black fedora. There's more weird darkness coming up. Nothing goes better with chocolate than vanilla, and nothing goes better with the darkness than vampires. So we've combined all of them into a new blend of weird dark roast coffee called Very Vampilla. This bloody good blend combines a medium dark roast coffee with hints of chocolate, vanilla, and just a tad bit of dried cherry, too. So good, you'll want to sink your fangs into the fresh roasted bag itself. Weird dark roast Very Vampilla, the only thing at steak, sorry, not sorry, bad pun, is your dissatisfaction with your old coffee. Sip it while the sun is down if you're one of the undead. Or when the sun is up, if you just feel dead and need a bit of a boost, get your Weird Dark Roast Very Vampilla at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. First place winner, The Devil in the Cornfield, by Zelia Edgar. Forgive me for saying that the following events occurred when I was young, only 15 in the autumn of 64, living with my family a 20 minute drive from Platteville. I suppose it was October of that year when these things happened as I sat alone on our front porch waiting for my father to come in for the night. The moon was low, casting an awkward amber brightness upon the purple clouds, and the scarecrow that stands in the nearest cornfield was a dark gaunt thing against the sky. I noticed a bright light eclipsing the clouds and moon swallowing up my vision. As it cleared away, I saw a black car parked down by the barn, and a man I thought standing there next to the scarecrow, another shadow on the face of the horizon. It certainly was an odd thing, for we expected no visitors and seldom had passersby. Still, I wandered over to him. If I had been in more of a mind to think, I would have thought it strange how tall he was, for the scarecrow stands exactly 7 feet high, and this stranger was at most 3 inches shorter than it. I approached him and said, Hello? He only stood there, gazing deep into the stitched-up eyes of the scarecrow, and I took the opportunity to more fully study him. As I said before, he was tall and spindly. His pant legs several inches short while his sleeves hung almost to the knuckles of his spider-like hands. It was his face, though, that struck me the funniest. His nose and chin were exceedingly narrow and pointed, in contrast with his large, globe-like cranium and huge dark eyes. It was a full minute before he spoke. Did your father vote for the current president? He droned. No, I said, and explained that it was the Kennedy assassination that put him in office. Good. He pulled a new notebook out of his pocket. After a while of scribbling, he looked up and gestured to the bluffs behind the house. Limestone. Yes? Who lives in your house? He grinned. My parents, brother and sister, me? May I come in? It was at that question the terror struck, and I, forsaking politeness, ran full tilt away from him and into the house. Looking out the kitchen window, I scanned the horizon for the black-garbed man but saw only the scarecrow pointing at nothing. I didn't tell anyone about him. It was early November that the change first happened. In the empty cornfields, it was as though the land was being burnt in giant patterns of dots and spirals. My father thought it was strange, but since no harm was really done, didn't inform anyone about it. Lights began to appear in the sky over our farm, from pulsating blobs of purple iridescence to metallic, flashing things that spun and disappeared. The house itself, too, developed a mind of its own. Objects were stacked, shattered and shifted almost every day. My mother referred to it as a poltergeist and urged us to not discuss it for fear of giving it power. On the other hand, my father, who up until then had been nothing but practical in his life, said he heard voices from outer space, friendly travelers who told him he had been chosen. My brother and sister responded for the most part with silence. Winter that year brought terror. My brother came tearing into the house one afternoon, screaming incoherently about the angel of death, the plague of Egypt. Piecing together where he had been, my father and I walked out to the cow pasture in the new snow, unprepared for what we would see. Every last cow was dead, their empty ribcages yawning at the sky, all their organs stolen with surgical precision. The unnerving thing, though, stalking amid the carcasses in the fresh snow, was the complete lack of blood from the snow, from the bodies, from anything, like something had taken it before performing its unspeakable robbery. Things only disintegrated from there. How can I explain a decade of hell? Every year the new crops were burnt in these strange radial designs. Every new animal was slaughtered and bloodless weeks after its arrival. The house was turned into a representation of madness, items constantly moving, meaningless messages scrawled across walls and tables, doors ceaselessly slamming. One day a window, not just the pain but the actual window, the opening in the wall, moved over two feet. My family, too, was shattered. Shortly after the mutilations of the cattle, my father, convinced men from Venus had chosen him as the leader of a new age, ran off with the young blonde that called herself Astrakes. I don't know where they went. My brother, over the course of years, descended into a paranoia of things he called the bright doctors that he claimed took him in the night. One morning I woke with bizarre burning on my face and that same morning he was gone. My mother, inconsolable with the loss of her son and convinced that demons were to blame, made the mistake of discussing the matter with a local priest. She was promptly sent to the institute at Mendota. My sister and I were the only two left. She claimed no visions, no visitations. As a matter of fact, she never spoke a word of what she thought about anything. We lived this way, silent in the face of insanity, for two years, when, without warning, she left me one July day to live with an uncle of ours. Before she left, I asked her why. What are you waiting for? She asked. None of them are coming home. We need to get out, move on. I felt I couldn't leave like a ghost that haunts its grave and said, but after all this time, what was it that finally got you? She looked out across the dead fields and said, I know what took the kids from the Belmont Mound. Those were the last words she ever said to me. It was October of that year, 1974, and I was then 25 years of age that I wandered the empty cornfields alone. I had half a mind to jump off the bluff, but didn't. I looked up at the night, burning iridescent purple, heard the doors slamming in the empty house, and then I saw it, the scarecrow still standing, still beating at the sky. I stood next to it, gazed in its faded face, and saw myself in it, a thing thrashing at the unseen, beaten by the unknown. And I remembered that night ten years prior, that strange grinning man that I had refused to let in my house. And I screamed. You hear me, you stupid thing? You tall, spindly black clothed man with crooked fingers? You devil in the cornfield! Come out! I don't know why you did this to us, or what it is you wanted, but take it! Come into my house. I don't know what else you could possibly do. I was momentarily blinded. I thought maybe it was the light coming to take me to where it took my brother, but I was mistaken. A black, unmarked car rolled through the fields. The black clothed man got out, walked up to me, held up his wrist as though looking at a watch and said, What is your time cycle? I don't know, I confessed. He walked over to the house and stopped at the open doorway. Well, I said, What's stopping you? You need to let me in. I walked in before him and said, Come in. We sat in the living room and he proceeded to ask me all sorts of questions. Strange questions regarding scars and names of what model of car everyone I ever knew had. I answered to the best of my ability, as he took everything down in another new looking notebook. When he told me he was finished, he said, May I take a photograph of you? Yes, I said, Whatever you like. It was a flash of light, and I woke up in my bed the next morning. You will forgive me for saying these things happened when I was just a young man. For the truth is, I am only 15, and it is only autumn of 64, and I live with my parents and brother and sister 20 minutes from Platteville. And this is where I am confused, for I fell asleep alone in 74 and woke up to my family in 64, and I have lived 10 years that are forgotten and have seen a future that is no more. What I do know is that if I ever see that thing, that man, that devil in the cornfield, he is welcome in my house, for I feel now that he did not cause the evil that came, only was prevented from preventing it. Unsolved Mysteries Like You Do And please leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks that I have narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find The Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on WeirdDarkness.com, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. John 16, verse 33. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. And a final thought. Whatever the fear you want to leap over, the longer you stand on the edge and contemplate moving, the longer you stay on the edge, not moving at all. John Peacock. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. In the film, a man takes $20 from his employer to go on a date, planning to replace the money the next day. But he falls increasingly into more disastrous circumstances and further in need of more money, and it spirals out of control. Join us Friday, February 9th for Quicksand. It's free to watch online, and you can chat along with the rest of us weirdos as we watch the movie together. The show begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain, and 5 p.m. Pacific. You can watch a trailer for the film, and watch horror hosts and schlocky B-movies any time, day or night, on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. I want that coat, and I'm gonna get it for $2,000 for whatever it takes. 1950s Quicksand, starring Mickey Rooney and Peter Laurie. You better come and see me, Or else. Or else what? Or else something is going to happen to you. To you, Danny Boy. Friday, February 9th on the Weirdo Watch Party page. I'll kiss you goodbye if you want me to. 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 seven 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.