 This episode is dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces and first responders. Whether you are currently serving or have served in the past, you are appreciated. It is because of your courage and sacrifice that we enjoy the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. And I, for one, appreciate every single one of you for protecting what many of us take for granted. So, thank you. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this hour. In Australia's infamous, now abandoned institution, physical punishment was replaced with psychological torture. And since then, the living souls have been placed with undead ones. Ghosts are spooky, but zombies are even worse. But what if you came across a ghost zombie? That is exactly the terror Scandinavian Vikings had to deal with. Can you raise someone in a way to create a phobia within them? Sure, that would be cruel and inhumane to do, but is it possible? That's what a couple of behaviorists wanted to find out, and so they went about studying on it by experimenting on a real, live, tiny child. And did a woman accidentally kill her husband because of a Bugs Bunny cartoon? Or was it murder? It's the bizarre case of Linda Duffy-Gwouts. If you're new here, welcome to the show, and if you're already a member of this weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter, and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated and send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know and more. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. From 1833 until 1877, the convict settlement of Port Arthur, Australia housed some of Britain's most hardened criminals. Located on the island of Tasmania off Australia's southern coast, the outpost was billed as an inescapable prison due to its high security, natural defenses, and total isolation. Port Arthur also played host to Separate Prison, an infamous institution where physical punishment was replaced with psychological discipline. Prisoners were identified by number. They wore hoods while in each other's company, and sometimes spent days without seeing light or hearing a sound. It's no wonder, then, that an asylum stood next door and a nearby island known as the Isle of the Dead served as a prison burial ground for more than a thousand souls. In its day, Separate Prison was not seen as barbaric. In fact, it was believed to be enlightened. The institution's design stemmed from English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's theory of the Panopticon, a building that allowed all inmates to be observed at once by a single watchman. In the case of Separate Prison, this resulted in a cross-shaped building that allowed watchmen at the core to see down each wing. Corporal punishment was viewed as counterproductive at Separate Prison, serving only to harden criminals rather than rehabilitate them. Instead, inmates were kept in line with forced social, visual, auditory isolation. The institution used the silent system, in which all inmates remained quiet at all times and wore hoods or masks when not in their cells. In theory, this was intended to give prisoners time to reflect upon their crimes. In actuality, however, it had far darker consequences. Many inmates reportedly developed mental illnesses from the seclusion, while others are said to have committed the capital offense of murder in order to escape incarceration via the death penalty. All prisoners who died at Port Arthur were sent to the Isle of the Dead. Reportedly, 1,646 bodies are buried on the tiny landmass. Of that number, only 180 graves, those of prison staff and military personnel, are marked. The waters that hemmed in Port Arthur were said to be infested with sharks, and the only way to reach the mainland was to travel along a narrow peninsula guarded by soldiers, traps and half-starved dogs. One prisoner named Martin Cash famously escaped by swimming across the bay to his freedom. He later wrote about the escape in his 1870 autobiography The Adventures of Martin Cash, which became a bestseller in Australia. Another prisoner was not so lucky. George Billy Hunt attempted to escape by disguising himself as a kangaroo using a kangaroo pelt. Unfortunately for Billy, the guards were kept on meager rations and they shot at the apparent animal in order to supplement their diet. Billy survived the gunfire, throwing off the pelt and giving himself up. He received 150 lashes for the attempt. In 1877, Port Arthur was abandoned as a prison site, at which point many of the correctional buildings slipped into decay. A set of fires from 1895 and 1897 furthered this disruption. Locals eager to move on from the region's dark beginnings were happy to see the site crumble. In 1996, Port Arthur added a tragic coda to its tail when Martin Bryant opened fire on tourists visiting the area. Bryant killed 35 people and wounded more than 20 more. The Port Arthur massacre was one of the deadliest killings in the world, perpetrated by a lone gunman and led to stricter gun laws across Australia. Today, Port Arthur and the ruins of separate prison are controlled by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and remain one of Australia's most haunting tourist attractions. The land surrounding the prison is beautiful, making the dark events that occurred there all the more chilling. Ghost tours are available in the evenings and stories are told of cells that still echo with ghostly screams, rocking chairs that move on their own, and eerie lights flickering from the Isle of the Dead. When Weird Darkness returns, ghosts are spooky, but zombies, they're even worse. But what if you came across a ghost zombie? That is exactly the terror that Scandinavian Vikings had to deal with. If you're looking for Weird Darkness merchandise, you can find it in the Weird Darkness store, and no matter what you buy, 100% of the profits that I receive from the store are donated to organizations that help people who struggle with depression. You can search through all the merchandise by clicking on Store at WeirdDarkness.com. Weird Darkness continues in just a moment. Hey Weirdos, you seemed to really like it when I was live on camera during the Halloween live stream, so I'm going to do it more often now, like every month. It's called Friday Frights and I'll be telling creepy stories live on camera and when I take a break from narrating, I'll answer the comments that you leave during the show. I'll be broadcasting live to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, so be sure to follow me on all of those sites so you don't miss Friday Frights when it begins. You can find all of those links at WeirdDarkness.com. That's also where you can learn more about what to expect from this new show and the inspiration behind it. Our first Friday Frights live is January 27th at 6pm central time. Again, get all the details and the links you need to follow for the live stream event at WeirdDarkness.com slash Friday Frights and I hope to see you on Friday, January 27th. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. Have you seen the Monster Channel? It has horror hosts, B horror movies, retro television commercials and a whole lot more. You can watch it anytime, absolutely free 24-7-365 on the Monster Channel page at WeirdDarkness.com. When someone dies, they leave this world and depending on your beliefs they either move on or they're just gone. While all deaths are tragic, there are some that hit harder than others, such as murder or suicide. Some people die having left something unfinished. Often we hear of the dead with unfinished business returning as ghosts. The concept of the dead returning as zombies is also well known, though these cases lean more towards virus outbreak or other direct means. There is one belief born from Scandinavian Viking folklore, though, that combines the ghost and the zombie into a single entity, the Gengar. Gengar is a combination of the words again, against, or towards, and the word ganger, which means foot or walker. It means walking again or walking after death. This being is said to have an entirely caporial form, with no ghost-like qualities, yet behaves as a vengeful spirit. The Gengar is often motivated by revenge and its extremely vicious, returning from beyond the grave to wreak havoc and torment its family and friends. In Swedish folklore, the Gengar appears to be nearly identical to a living person. The Gengar attacks in the dead of night while their intended victim is fast asleep. Their attack is as simple as a pinch, after which they flee the scene. The pinch isn't so simple, though. Once awake, the victim will find a blue spot on their skin where they were pinched. Sickness and death would follow soon after. It's believed that even the faintest touch from the Gengar would cause your skin to rot and slough away as the infection would travel straight to the heart. Many of the symptoms caused by the touch of a Gengar have been explained away over the years, associating them to real-life diseases. After all, the sloughing off of skin could just be necrotizing fasciitis, which occurs after an injury or a simple cut. The pinching-based disease could be the first sign of cancer. Fear of the Gengar led people to take extreme precautions to make sure they remained in their graves. A tradition of piling stones or twigs called a varpe would be used to mark a place where someone died. Anytime you pass this place, you would need to throw another stone or twig on the varpe to commemorate what had happened there. Sometimes this would bring a person luck, while not doing it could result in the opposite, bad luck and accidents. As the Christian religion spread, the precautions turned to painting a cross or other symbols on the coffin. Crucifixes and Christian incantations would be used. Even the tradition of carrying a coffin three times around the church before it could be buried. In Icelandic sagas, the Gengar exists among the Gretus saga, Erebusia saga, the saga of Eric the Red. In these tales, the Gengar was a mortal creature, as illustrated by Gretir, slaying the Gengar glamour with his sword. Is the Gengar real? Does it still walk the earth today? Some would say yes. What would you say? Another interesting piece of folklore comes out of Ireland. The slua are an Irish group of creatures most commonly depicted as fey or fairies gone wild. Most believed them to be an otherworldly race with no loyalty, no mercy and stealers of the immortal souls of the living. Once human, these creatures or phantoms were so evil that they were even rejected from hell itself. They come out at night, hunting, taking on various forms from emaciated beasts to a flock of ravens. Most commonly, they take the shape of a gigantic black bird with leathery wings and disfigured legs. Regardless of their shape, they always smell terrible, like a rotting flesh of the deceased. The slua come out at night, they target the weak, preying on those who are sick or dying, but can also attack the strong and healthy. If you say their name, they will come, and there is no escape. However, those with a broken heart or the depressed are their victim of choice. Their goal? To devour your soul, and just before they do, they let out a blood curdling screech, ensuring that this is the last thing you hear before your soul is ripped from your mortal body. The stolen soul is then forced to live forever as one of the slua. You can protect yourself from the slua, knowing that they come from or fly in from the west. You should always lock all doors and windows that face in that direction and never ever say their name. Oh, uh, sorry about that, too late now, I guess. I already said it. But then again, I did ask you at the beginning of the show to bolt your doors and lock your windows, so you're probably just fine. Probably. I hope. You know what, you might want to go double check though, just in case. In 1920, behaviorist John B. Watson and his eventual wife, Rosalie Reiner, then a graduate student studying under him, set out to prove that they could condition a child's feelings. Specifically, they wanted to demonstrate their power to engender phobia within a living being. Their experiment was based on Pavlov's conditioning of dogs, which implemented a repetitive action in order to elicit a desired response. While Watson and Reiner did technically accomplish their goal, they also clearly, yet inadvertently, demonstrated the need for ethics in psychological studies. Their actions against their subject, a baby known as Little Albert, are now understood to have been abhorrent, riddled with ethical issues and due to the researcher's carelessness, determining the amount of damage they inflicted is practically impossible. John B. Watson and his assistant, Rosalie Reiner, instilled a genuine and debilitating fear of white, furry objects in their subject, a child known as Little Albert. Watson wrote that he conditioned the child by creating a loud noise whenever Albert reached out to touch a white rat, leading the boy to become fearful of anything that looked remotely similar to the animal. Watson further wrote that the baby became distressed whenever he saw a rabbit, a dog, or a rudimentary Santa Claus mask with a cotton ball beard. As far as Watson could determine, the boy's fear only extended to objects that were both furry and white. A scientific experiment should record objective observations and employ multiple subjects as a control group. Essentially, other scientists should be able to step into a laboratory and find similar results. Rather than employing these experimentation methods, though, Watson and Reiner carried out their experiment on only one child, without any means to objectively evaluate his reactions. In the experiment, Watson and Reiner introduced Albert to a small white rat. Once Albert was comfortable with the animal and began to reach out for it, Watson struck a metal bar with a hammer creating a loud noise. Watson continued this cycle until Albert was not only afraid to reach out for the creature, but was also afraid of the rat itself. Watson and Reiner concluded that they could train Albert to fear the rat by making noise, though his conclusion was far from objective. Once Watson and Reiner's experiment concluded, they failed to reverse any of the psychological damage they inflicted upon Albert. Supposedly, the duo didn't have time to extinguish the child's fears because Albert's mother left town the moment the study was finished. Rather than reaching out to Albert's mother, Watson and Reiner assured their study's readers that Albert would grow out of his fear thanks to his time in the rough and tumble world. According to Watson, the child used in the Little Albert Experiment was a normal, docile child who could represent the children of the world. Watson wrote in 1920, Albert's life was normal, he was healthy from birth, and one of the best-developed youngsters ever brought to the hospital, weighing 21 pounds at nine months of age. He was on the whole, stolid and unemotional. His stability was one of the principal reasons for using him as a subject in this test. We felt that we could do him relatively little harm by carrying out such experiments as those outlined below. We'll continue with the sad story of Little Albert when Weird Darkness returns. Do you have a true paranormal story that's happened to you or someone you know? You can share it by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. For Weirdos, our February Weirdo Watch Party is Friday, February 3rd and is presented by the deliciously undead hostess Lamia Queen of the Dark from her Horror Hotel as she brings us a classic movie of comedy and horror from 1927, The Cat and the Canary. Based on the award-winning stage play of the same name, in the film, relatives of an eccentric millionaire gathering his spooky mansion on the 20th anniversary of his death for the reading of his will. The film is so iconic, it has spawned at least four remakes, plus countless other movies blatantly using the same premise. In fact, The Cat and the Canary was not only one of Universal Pictures' earliest horror films, but it is considered the cornerstone of Universal's School of Horror. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch with all of us, so grab your popcorn, candy and soda, and even jump into the live chat with me and the rest of our Weirdo family as we watch the movie, along with a fun horror host giving us classic horror film knowledge. Again, it's The Cat and the Canary from 1927, presented by Horror Hotel's Lamia Queen of the Dark. The Weirdo Watch Party is Friday, February 3rd starting at 7pm Pacific, 8pm Mountain, 9pm Central, 10pm Eastern. You can see clips from the film and watch horror movies and horror hosts for free 24-7 on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com and we'll see you there on Friday, February 3rd. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. Let's continue with the sad story of the Little Albert experiment. Albert likely wasn't as healthy as Watson claimed. He may have even been mentally impaired. Modern researchers debate whether or not Watson knew about Albert's possible impairment, although some believe he actually sought out a child with infirmity. After the Little Albert experiment, Watson went on to publish books on child rearing, but he never shared his research on the Little Albert investigation. Before Watson passed in 1958, he burned all of his notes on the experiment, limiting the possibility of anyone tracking down the child at the center of the analysis. No record exists of Watson publishing any additional information on the experiment or discussing his role in the child's conditioning. Modern scholars believe Watson specifically chose a baby for his experiment who was more passive than active. One theory claims that Albert suffered from a neurological disorder and that in the film footage of the experiment he is alarmingly unresponsive. Even if Albert did not have such a disorder, he displayed anti-social behavior. William Goldie, a pediatric neurologist, studied the footage in 2012 and noted that the child barely acknowledges Watson or Reiner. No evidence is provided of mutual gaze or that Albert sees Watson or is responding to any of Watson's specific actions. Albert's temperament and behavior are not within the normal range for his age, and the abnormalities observed on film cannot solely be attributed to the hospital environment or the physical context of filming. One of the more unsettling aspects of the Little Albert experiment is that the child and his mother may not have been able to opt out of the analysis. Whether or not Albert's mother was provided an opportunity to pull her child from the experiment is unclear, although if Watson is to be believed, she removed her baby from observation and left town before he could finish his research. The fact that so many of the experiment's details were unclear led the scientific community to seek out more ethical boundaries in research. Although the APA's code of ethics wasn't established until 1953, it firmly states that psychologists should avoid harm at all costs. This basic guideline demonstrates that the Little Albert experiment was not only unethical, but also incredibly dangerous. According to the APA, psychologists must take reasonable steps to avoid harming clients or patients, students, supervisees, research participants, organizational clients, and others with whom they work and to minimize harm where it is foreseeable and unavoidable. Even before the APA established their code of ethics, the emotional and psychological trauma inflicted on Little Albert must have left the scientific community conflicted. Some have compared Watson's means of instilling fear to tactics used on inmates. Not until 1947 was a set of ethical research principles created, all of which contrasted with Watson's methods for testing the child. Following Watson's experiment, not only did the scientific community deem it improbable that a scientist could gather specific results from a psychological experiment, but even social scientists were questioning the amount of consent they needed in order to conduct their research. One theory as to why Albert's mother allowed Watson to use her child in this experiment is that she worked at a hospital where the experiments took place. Some claim that Albert's mother was a wet nurse at John Hopkins Hospital and she may have felt pressure from her bosses to allow her young child to be tested. While this theory is possible, it is unconfirmed, and the true identity of Albert's mother is uncertain. Certain facts Watson wrote into his paper weren't reflected in the film he made of his experiments. Not only were some of Watson's details muddled in the final paper, but some of the facts were also blatantly incorrect. In his paper, Watson stated that the baby almost fell off the research table, however the film clearly shows that no table was used. When Watson wrote about the experiment later in life, many of the details changed yet again, bringing the experiment even further into question. Because Watson burned his notes, the identity of little Albert has been lost to time. Researchers have attempted to uncover his identity, which has culminated in two possibilities. Initially, researchers believed that little Albert was actually a young man named Douglas Moret, a child with hydrocephalus. Moret passed at the age of six, and if he was little Albert, some believed the emotional stress suffered at the hands of Watson and Reiner contributed to his end. However, in 2014, researchers at McEwen University in Canada posited that little Albert was actually William Albert Barger, a man who lived into his 80s. The researchers claimed that Barger was born during the correct window of time, and while he never spoke about the experiment, his family claimed that he suffered from a lifelong fear of dogs. It would be the first case where the bug's bunny defense was used in a courtroom. Around 2.50pm on April 26, 2007, the LA County Police Department received a shocking 911 call. A wittier area woman named Linda Duffy-Gwouds told the dispatcher that she had accidentally shot her husband. When police arrived at the home, they found 50-year-old Pat Duffy dead on the couch, a large pool of blood beside him with blood spatter on the wall. Pat's left hand was at his pants pocket, and his right knee was supported by a pillow due to circulation issues. It looked like he had been sleeping. However, Linda claimed that the two had been joking around and speaking in dueling Elmer Fudd voices when she accidentally fired what she thought was an empty gun. Linda was adamant the whole thing was a horrible accident, and police believed her. At first. The combination of Linda Duffy-Gwouds' charm and lack of motive, as well as a heavy caseload for detectives, resulted in a five-year gap between the shooting and Linda's eventual arrest. Despite being connected to Bugs Bunny, the case became increasingly ominous as details unfolded. Linda Duffy-Gwouds told police that she and her husband, Pat Duffy, were playing a game when a terrible accident occurred. Linda had picked up one of Pat's revolvers and jokingly said, no more bullets in an Elmer Fudd voice, which was not uncommon for the couple, who often morphed into cartoon characters. So when Pat allegedly replied, no more bullets in his own Elmer Fudd impression, Linda fired what she thought was an empty gun in a fan-fire emotion similar to what's depicted in Old Western's. It was at that moment that Linda shot Pat in the head, killing him. A frantic Linda called 911 and admitted that she had accidentally shot Pat and a years-long investigation into what really happened between Linda and Pat on the fateful April day ensued. In addition to being a radio engineer and private pilot, Pat Duffy was also an avid gun enthusiast. In fact, Linda told authorities that Pat had planned to go to the shooting range the day he died. However, Linda did not have the same interest in guns. During her interview with police, she stated, I'm not really familiar with guns. I'm not afraid of them, but I've never shot a gun in my life. While it's not unreasonable to believe Linda wouldn't share Pat's hobby, this statement would come back to haunt her as police continued their investigation. In fact, her familiarity with guns would come into question following Pat's autopsy, where the medical examiner determined that Pat had been shot in the head not once, but twice. We'll continue with our strange story of the Bugs Bunny murder defense when Weird Darkness returns. If you or someone you know struggles with depression or dark thoughts, I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered resources to help fight depression with the Seven Cups app, connecting you with people who've also struggled with depression and are there to lift you up, even professional listeners there to listen at all hours of the day. If you're having dark thoughts of harming yourself or worse, there's the suicide prevention lifeline that you can either call or chat online with anytime 24-7. The folks at ifred.org are doing what they can with research and education on depression to give us the tools we need to fight against it in the days ahead. These resources are absolutely free and there when you need them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. If you or someone you know struggles with depression or dark thoughts, I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered numerous free resources to help you fight depression, including the Seven Cups app, connecting you with people who've also struggled with depression and know what you're going through and they're there to lift you up. You can even connect with professional listeners there to listen at all hours of the day. If you're having dark thoughts that you can't control, there's the suicide and crisis hotline where you can call or chat online anytime 24-7. Our friends at the International Foundation for Research and Education on Depression are doing what they can to give us the tools we need to fight against depression in the days ahead. And as always, if you are in an emergency situation where you're contemplating taking your own life, you can call 988 in the U.S. or 999 in the U.K. These resources are either free or have free to use options and are always there when you or someone you love needs them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar and we continue with the Bugs Bunny murder defense. Detectives Shannon Lahren and Sean McCarthy were assigned to investigate Pat Duffy's death. Lahren says he didn't believe Linda's story about accidentally shooting her husband, but McCarthy struggled to find a motive for Linda to commit the murder. However, as the investigation advanced, McCarthy would find it increasingly difficult to believe Linda's story. During her first interview with detectives Lahren and McCarthy, Linda explained she had shot Pat's revolver in a fan-fire style that involved holding down the trigger while rapidly depressing the hammer in order to quickly fire multiple shots. The shot Linda described is typically done using a single-action revolver, and Pat Duffy did own two such guns. However, Linda had used his double-action revolver in the fatal shooting. Firearms expert Tracy Peck conducted an exhaustive study where she used the same gun and ammunition that Linda did to recreate the shooting sequence she described and found it to be nearly impossible, especially for someone who claimed to know little about guns. Peck noted that the sound and recoil of the gun would have also stopped Linda from firing a second shot. Detective McCarthy said that when this information was presented to Linda, she had a light bulb moment and changed her story. Instead of saying that she never fired a gun in her life, she now told authorities that she had been practicing fan-shooting with Pat for years using an unloaded gun and was trying to show off her skills when she accidentally shot him. According to Linda, Pat leaned forward as the first shot rang out and she couldn't stop shooting in time to miss his head. When Linda initially informed Pat's siblings about his death, she told them that Pat had accidentally shot himself while cleaning one of his guns. Pat's siblings couldn't understand how their brother could have shot himself since they had grown up with guns in their home. Pat and his siblings had apparently been taught to empty their guns before entering their home, so the idea that Pat was cleaning a loaded gun seemed off. Pat's sister, Kathy Hunt, met with Linda at the funeral home the following day and asked Linda where Pat had shot himself. Hunt says that when Linda tapped the top of her head to indicate where Pat had been shot, she knew something was wrong. Hunt then asked Linda what really happened and Linda told her the Elmer Fudd story. I couldn't quite understand why she had lied, Hunt stated on 48 hours, though Linda said it was because she thought Pat's family would hate her for shooting him. After Linda's initial interview in April 2007, she wasn't interviewed again until early 2009 when McCarthy and Lahren drove by her home and noticed a for sale sign. The detectives soon discovered that Linda was set to marry a famous saxophone player named Lawrence Guelts, whom she had met online. Linda had already moved to Mississippi, where Lawrence was a music professor, and the two were planning a honeymoon in Italy following their wedding. Those close to Linda noticed she had dyed her hair blonde and started dressing differently once she began seeing Lawrence not long after Pat's death. Police were not the only ones who thought it strange how quickly Linda had moved on. When Linda asked her longtime friend Julie Prendergast to sing at the wedding, she declined due to the circumstances surrounding Pat's death. As Pat Duffy's death began to be reinvestigated, blood spatter expert Paul Delhauer was brought in to look at the scene, even examining the couch on which Pat Duffy died. While Linda had told authorities that she had fired rapidly from the same spot, Delhauer determined that Linda must have changed positions while firing the revolver. In fact, Delhauer determined that the revolver would have only been three inches from Pat's head when the first shot was fired, which created blood spatter on the walls as well as Linda's clothes. The second shot was responsible for the large pool of blood next to Pat, which is where Linda initially told detectives she had been standing. Delhauer told 48 Hours that jets of blood would have been hitting Linda if she had been standing where she said she was, but McCarthy and Lahren confirmed that she had very little blood on her. Delhauer theorized Linda shot Pat once while he was sleeping, then fired the second shot when he woke up. After nearly two years, the case had suddenly turned into a murder investigation. With blood spatter analysis pointing towards murder, investigators began interviewing Linda's friends from Whittier to get a sense of her character. McCarthy and Lahren began noticing a pattern with the stories people had about Linda. She was starting out incredibly charming but would eventually turn out to be a compulsive liar. Linda's longtime friend, Julie Prendergast, even said Linda claimed to have had her gallbladder removed on three different occasions, even though the human body only has one gallbladder. Prendergast added that Linda always needed to be the center of attention. As Prendergast put it, you either really, really liked Linda or you really thought, wow, she cannot be trusted. Following the findings of the second blood spatter analysis and interviews with Linda's friends, John McCarthy decided that Linda needed to be prosecuted. The detective flew to Mississippi where Linda told McCarthy she thought the investigation was over. It was at that point that Detective McCarthy arrested Linda for the murder of her late husband. Linda would have to stand trial for Pat's death a full five years after the 2007 shooting. The prosecutor for the case, Deputy District Attorney Robert Vila said that there was a 0% chance Pat's death was an accident. Vila's belief would turn out to be more difficult to prove than he thought. Linda's attorney cited the Bugs Bunny cartoon Linda had referenced the day of the murder and prosecutor Robert Vila said it was the first time in his 27-year career that he had seen a defense rely on a cartoon. As it turned out, the jury could not reach a verdict. After one day of deliberation, they were hopelessly deadlocked. In the second trial, the prosecution gave the jury the bare facts of the case and left out Linda's initial interview with the police. The second jury deliberated for just one day before finding Linda guilty of second-degree murder. When describing Linda Duffy-Gwouts, Detective John McCarthy stated, that night I liked her. As the investigation went on, I liked her a lot less. As with friends and family, investigators and the prosecution maintained that Linda could not be trusted to tell the truth. When Linda's guilty verdict was read, she burst into tears. Pat Duffy's sister, Kathy, noted that it was the first time she had ever really seen Linda cry. Linda even collapsed as she was escorted out of the courtroom by police and had to be wheeled out in an office chair. When asked about the incident, Deputy District Attorney Robert Biela said, I've always thought she was an actress, so that was her moment. In September 2016, Linda appealed her conviction, in which she was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Linda said that none of her initial statements from 2007 were played in court, which led to an unfair guilty verdict. However, a panel of three appellate court justices upheld the verdict, stating that Linda failed to take the necessary steps to preserve this issue for appellate review. One of the issues that left the original jury deadlocked was a lack of motive for Linda to murder Pat Duffy. The couple was known to have a happy marriage and there was never any reports of domestic disputes. Pat did have a $300,000 life insurance policy, but the policy had been taken out years before he was shot by Linda. Even Deputy District Attorney Robert Biela admitted she never expressed what the motive was. She said that he was her best friend. The only possible motive was Linda's fear that she might have to care for an ailing Pat who had been dealing with serious medical issues, but the theory remains unfounded. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show or want to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll hear not only tonight's radio show, but also the extra sudden death overtime content I prepared that I didn't have time to fit in because I went over time, as well as any bloopers from tonight's show. And while the radio show is one night per week, I upload episodes for the podcast seven days per week. And if you're one of my patrons, you get a commercial free copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at WeirdDarkness. And please, tell others about the show who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call in to the Dark Line toll-free to tell your own true paranormal story or a story that happened to somebody you know. That number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, the toll-free number is 1-877-277-5944. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 1 John 4, Verses 18 and 19 There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. And a final thought. We don't stop dreaming and exploring because we grow old. We grow old because we stop dreaming and exploring. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, keep listening. Hour 2 of the Weird Darkness radio show is coming up. Imagine what kind of neighborhood you'd live in if everyone just once a week paid for the car behind them in the drive-through. That's what Weird Darkness' Scare It Forward is all about. Want to join in on the fun? Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Scare It Forward to print out free flyers to give to the drive-through attendant that they can give to the guy behind you. It explains it all so you don't have to. Then, the next time you're grabbing fast food, coffee or donuts at a drive-through, just give the flyer to the drive-through worker and say, you want to pay for the car behind you. Maybe the car behind you will pass on the generosity to the car behind them. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Scare It Forward to get started. That's Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here, you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up this hour, the voice sounded close yet at the same time so far away. It was the most pitiful and horrifying cry I had ever heard. That's how a seasoned paranormal investigator described what they heard in an abandoned asylum. We'll also take a look at a few asylums that are said to be creepy, so haunted that you would never want to be locked in there day or night. If you're a fan of the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, you might remember the Sausage King of Chicago scene. That person was fictional, of course, and the title was played for laughs. But have you ever heard of the Sausage Ghost of Chicago? That too may sound like it was made up for laughs, but no, the Sausage Ghost of Chicago is a story that is all too true. And if we have time, a man calling himself Roland T. Owen checked into room 1046 of the hotel president in Kansas City, Missouri, on January 2, 1935. In just two days time, he would be dead. But no one knows who killed him, and it has become one of history's most popular mysteries. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And if you're already a member of this weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter. And visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast which comes out seven days a week. Watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated. Send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The story I'm about to share with you was written by paranormal investigator and author John D. Mims, and you know that if it chilled him to the bone, it had to be something particularly eerie. It is rare to experience paranormal phenomenon, and it's even rarer to experience it multiple times in the same location. I am one of the fortunate few to hold that distinction. It happened in an old abandoned sanatorium. The dark hallways in the rooms frozen in time from a primitive medical era were enough to put hackles on any man's neck. However, to know that you were not alone in that darkness took it to a completely new level of fear. The first time I was at this location, we picked up the image of a little girl on a flyer, a forward-looking infrared radiometer thermal camera. She was just dancing in the hallway. According to the camera, her temperature was much lower than the air's temperature. Several of us walked out to where she was and experienced extreme cold when we passed through her. After several minutes of observation, she vanished through a wall. Fast forward about four months, we traveled back to that sanatorium. I was with the group in the exact same location in the hallway doing an EVP, an electronic voice phenomenon session. We didn't see or hear anything, but the next morning, I received the shock of my life. We picked up the sound of a little girl singing and moving around. At the end of the recording, you could hear her call playfully. I'm down in this room. 6 months later, a group returned to the sanatorium for a joint investigation with a group from Texas. We arrived at the sanatorium and unloaded our equipment. Soon after that, we received a call from the Texas group saying that they were lost. The three other members of our group drove into town to meet the others and lead them out to the site. As the technical manager, I was designated to stay behind and watch the equipment. I was not completely comfortable with this idea, but I was not going to be a sissy, so I agreed. The equipment was in one of the few rooms with power in the building. It also happened to be directly below the floor where we had experienced the little girl. It was a dark stairwell right beside the door to the conference room. It led to the dusty, pitch-black floors above. The others had been gone about 10 minutes when I heard a scream of agony come from above me. I froze, listening, and then slowly walked to the door. The instant I stepped into the hallway, I heard it again. To describe it with words is very difficult to do. The voice sounded close, yet at the same time, so far away. It was the most pitiful and horrifying cry I had ever heard. The voice was female, but that is all I could tell. It could have been a little girl or it could have been a grown woman. The incredible agony in the voice masked the age. I retreated into the room and awaited the return of the others with a hammering heart. It was the longest 30 minutes of my life. Later that same evening, I was leading a group on an investigation of the building. We were on the same floor where the other occurrences happened. I carried the thermal camera as we hoped to catch a glimpse of the little girl again. Everyone assembled in a semi-circle in front of me so they could see the screen. We had not stopped for long when I felt someone grab my elbow from behind, yanking me backwards. I knew everyone in my group was in front, so my first assumption was that someone else had snuck up beside me to play a prank. When I turned, however, I realized that no one was there. I had the sudden realization that my elbow was numb with cold. It was as if I had stuck it in a deep breeze. We quickly retreated to the equipment room where my elbow was analyzed with the thermal camera. It was 15 degrees colder than the rest of my arm. I had a few other experiences in my tenure as a paranormal researcher, but none so compelling as the sanatorium. Author and paranormal researcher John D. Mims did not tell us at which particular abandoned asylum he had his terrifying experience, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's one of the five that I'm about to share with you when Weird Darkness returns. A hunting party in search of moose gets separated in the Canadian wilderness. One of the party members is abducted by the legendary Wendigo, a novella written by Algernon Blackwood. The Wendigo. Author Robert Eichmann once said to the story, it is one of the possibly six great masterpieces in the field. The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood. You can hear the entire book absolutely free on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Welcome back to Weird Darkness, I'm Darren Marlar. Author and paranormal researcher John D. Mims, he didn't tell us at which particular abandoned asylum he had his terrifying experience, but I'm guessing it might have been one of these. A favorite location of modern horror movies and television shows, insane asylums, have captured our imaginations for ages. They terrify us, but we can't seem to get enough of these mysteries surrounding them. Many of the most famous mental institutions have sordid histories, with famous patients, terrifying ghosts and scads of abuse. Abandoned asylums have become popular tourist spots, but one thing is for certain, you don't want to be caught stuck inside any of these asylums walls when night rolls around, or even during the daytime. Located just a few miles from downtown LA, Rancho Los Amigos Asylum was originally created in 1888 to assist people living in poverty. Here they could work in exchange for care from the local government. Over time, the grounds were extended and the space evolved into a hospital. Eventually it grew to include a mental hospital, though the hospital itself is still in use, that moved to another location. In the 1950s it began to shut down the wards, including the mental hospital. Along the way, some gruesome secrets were discovered. In 2006, during a training exercise, marines uncovered a freezer in the morgue, and inside they found mummified and amputated limbs and brain tissue samples that were left behind from when the hospital was abandoned. Creedmore Psychiatric Hospital opened in 1912 as the farm colony of Brooklyn State Hospital and is still running in Queens, New York. There are some places that have been abandoned to rot, most notably Building 25, which the hospital ceased using in 1975. This ward gained its reputation from a series of reports documenting brutal treatments of patients. In the 1970s, rumors began to emerge about an abundance of patient abuse, including sexual assaults, murders, suicides and beatings. In 1984, a nurse's aide hit a patient in the throat with a blackjack. The man, Robert Vanagas, was restrained in a straight jacket at the time and died due to asphyxiation. The aide had crushed his throat. Shortly after, the asylum was closed for good. Intrepid explorers still explore Building 25, which is now covered in pigeon excrement and filled with detritus from his former days, and maybe even a few ghosts. Built in 1874 and originally intended for attending to tuberculosis patients, Athens Lunatic Asylum in Athens, Ohio housed patients far over its capacity for most of its functioning years. This overcrowding caused the care for each patient to decrease until the hospital began abusing its patients. Athens, also called the ridges, is notable because of its famed physician, Dr. Walter Jackson. Dr. Jackson was a big fan of the transorbital lobotomy, calling it the cure-all for every mental illness. He performed over 200 lobotomies during his time there. While there were hundreds of deaths when the hospital was open, the most famous is that of Margaret Schilling. She went missing while on the ward and either no one noticed or no one cared. Over a month later, her body was found in a locked room in an abandoned part of the tuberculosis ward. Her body left a gruesome stain on the ward floor that can still be seen today. Opened to ease the overpopulation of the other two mental hospitals in Newtown, Fairfield Hills State Hospital quickly became overcrowded itself and resorted to unconventional methods of treating its patients. Aside from the then-normal lobotomies and thorazine prescriptions, this hospital became known for its use of hydrotherapy. Now you're thinking that's not so bad, right? Well, not exactly. Used as a calming method, this treatment involved patients being submerged in ice water, sometimes for more than a full day. They were not permitted out, even to relieve themselves. Many locals believe the remnants of the Fairfield State Hospital to be haunted, especially the tunnels used to shuttle patients, dead and alive, throughout the sprawling campus. Fairfield Hills shut down in 1995. And then there's the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, which opened its doors in 1864, just in time to begin admitting soldiers from the Civil War. At the time, there was no understanding of shell shock or post-traumatic stress. The doctors treated their understandably traumatized patients by doling out lobotomies and other brutal tactics. During the century, it was running, thousands of patients died there. Most were buried in mass graves on the grounds. Its most famous patient, Charles Manson, lived there in the latter years of the hospital's functioning. After decades of mistreatment and abuse, Trans-Allegheny closed its doors in 1994. You can now visit the Trans-Allegheny with one of their ghost tours. Maybe just don't stay overnight, though. While the name may sound made up, I assure you the tale is anything but. In Chicago, Illinois, on the south side of the 1700 block of West Diversity Parkway, you will find residential condominiums, but it wasn't always that way. Once that area was home to a factory, a sausage factory to be precise, and now home to the sausage ghost. Adolf Lutkert moved to the United States in the 1860s from his home country of Germany. Starting in New York City, he stayed with his older brother, Henry, who had immigrated some time before him. A few months later, he picked up and moved to Illinois, where he found work at a tannery, tanning being a skill that he and his brothers had all learned from their father. Work and pay were unsteady, so he took on side jobs here and there. He worked until he had saved up $4,000 enough to start his own business. Initially, Adolf opened a liquor store, but ultimately started the Lutkert Sausage and Packing Company. In time, he would earn himself the nickname Sausage King of Chicago. He married twice. His first wife, Carolyn Ripke, with whom he had two sons, died after just five years of marriage. Two months later, he found himself married again, this time to Louisa Bickneese. Together, they had four children, giving Adolf a total of six. Unfortunately, only three of these children survived beyond the age of two. Adolf and Louisa were known for being good natured people. Their customers loved them and loved their sausage even more. While they were successful, things at home weren't so great. During the panic of 1896, the couple ran into money problems. Adolf began courting a rich widow who he planned to marry. Only problem, he was already married to Louisa. Louisa Lutkert disappeared. Adolf told their children that their mother had gone to visit her sister the previous night but never returned. Louisa's brother, Diedrich Bickneese, went to police a few days later, May 1, 1897. When questioned, Adolf told police that she'd run away with another man. However, there was a problem with that account. On the night of her disappearance, Louisa was seen entering the Sausage Factory with her husband at around 10.30 p.m. A watchman was able to confirm the fact but could not account for what happened afterward. But I'm sure that we can all take a pretty good guess. We'll find out if we're right when Weird Darkness returns. Congratulations to Joshua Trevino. He is my email newsletter winner for January and Joshua has won a Weird Darkness prize back. It includes a Weird Darkness pen, button, phone stand, bumper sticker, fidget key chain, magnet, and more. Congratulations Joshua. If you want to win next month, be sure that you're signed up for the free Weird Darkness email newsletter at WeirdDarkness.com. Not only will you be registered for the monthly drawing, but you'll also stay up to date on everything Weird Darkness. You'll find out when sales are taking place in the Weird Darkness store. You'll see weird news items that don't get shared in the podcast. You'll be informed when the next Weirdo Watch Party and Friday Frights is taking place. You'll know about other contests also taking place. See where I'll be next on the Weird Darkness road trip and more. Sign up for the Weird Darkness email newsletter for free at WeirdDarkness.com and you'll be in the know and automatically be registered for the monthly drawing. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. When we left the story, on the night of her disappearance, Louisa was seen entering the Sausage Factory with her husband at around 10.30pm and a watchman was able to confirm that fact, but he could not account for what happened afterward. You see, Adolf had given him an errand to run and gave him the rest of the evening off. During their search, police found receipts noting Adolf's purchase of arsenic and potash the day before Louisa disappeared. All signs pointed to the husband. An employee suggested they look in the steam vat in the cellar which was used during the sausage making process. There, they found the vat half full with a reddish brown liquid. Pulling the plug revealed a slimy liquid and even bones. Nearby, they found hair and clothing. We accounts of what truly happened to Louisa Lutkart vary and there are two accepted beliefs. The explanation given by police and prosecutors says that she was murdered, her body boiled in lye, then burned in the factory furnace. The more popular explanation is far more grim and I'm sure you know where we're going with this. Rumors swirled throughout Chicago, sausage sales decreased amid claims that the sausage king had killed his wife, ground her up and sold her as sausage to unknowing customers. People reported that the quality of their sausage had dropped significantly. People claimed they had found bone chips and hair in their sausage. Some just said it tasted funny. Adolf Lutkart was arrested and tried. The damning evidence was Louisa's ring. If not for that, he may have walked free. Instead, on February 9th, 1898, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. On July 7th, 1899, he was found dead in his cell. The official cause of death being fatty degenerative heart disease. Since her death, it is believed that Louisa Lutkart still haunts the area. What was once a factory and now homes. There have been sightings up and down the street. Though she has done no harm, she is known as the sausage ghost. While men have been known to kill their wives, their method of hiding isn't usually this creative. Women take the win on that. Just ask Leonardo Cianciulli, the soap maker. A mother would do anything for her son. It doesn't matter how old he gets. He'll always be her baby boy. She's been there from the beginning, first to feed and care for. Next she watches over him, kissing his boo-boos. She watches as he grows up, meets a girl, gets married, starts a family of his own. Through all of this, he is still her little boy. So what would a mother do when her son is about to head off to war? Whatever it takes to keep him safe. In 1939, Leonardo Cianciulli learned that her eldest son and favorite child, Giuseppe, was going to join the Italian army in preparation for World War II. Just as many Italians at the time, he believed he needed to step up and do his part for the war effort. There was nothing she could do to stop him. So she did the only thing she could think of. In order to protect Giuseppe, she would take the lives of others. Leonardo grew up in Montella of Aleno, while a young girl she attempted suicide twice. She was able to overcome and in 1917, she married a local registry office clerk, Raphael Pensardi. In this time, it was not uncommon for her parents to plan the marriage of their daughters, and her parents were no different, so it was no surprise when her parents were upset and unsupportive of her marriage. In fact, Leonardo's mother cursed the couple. In 1921, they moved to her husband's native town of Lauria Potenza, and it was here just seven years later that Leonardo was convicted of fraud. Upon a release, the couple made the decision to move to Macedonia, Abilino, which was relatively close to her hometown. There they remained until 1930, when the Erpinia earthquake struck, their home being one of thousands lost to the disaster. They then moved to Correggio Reggio Emilia, where Leonardo was able to open a small shop. She became very popular and well-respected within her neighborhood. Her neighbors described her as wonderful, noting how she doted on her children. During the course of her marriage, Leonardo had 17 pregnancies. Three of these were lost to miscarriage. 10 of these children died early before the age of 10. With only four children left, she became overly protective. Crippled by the deaths of her children, coupled with the curse from her mother, she became what some would call paranoid. She went to see a Romani who practiced palm reading, hoping for relief or confirmation of her fears. In your right hand I see prison. In your left, a criminal asylum, the fortune teller told her. This prediction did not sit well with Leonardo, who at an earlier date had visited with another fortune teller, one who told her that she would marry and have children, but that all of her children would die young. With the news of her son, Yusepe, joining the army, she was forced to do the unthinkable. Leonardo invited Faustina Setti, a local spinster woman over, under the guise of setting her up with a husband. She told her that she had found a suitable man in Polla, but asked her to tell no one of the news. She then asked Faustina to write letters to her family members, telling them that she would be visiting the man abroad, letters that Leonardo would mail once Faustina reached Polla. As she prepared for her departure, Faustina went to visit Leonardo one last time. The women sat down for a glass of wine together. Unbeknownst to Faustina, one of the glasses was drugged. It was then that Leonardo killed her with an axe and dragged her body into a closet. She cut her into nine parts and gathered her blood in a basin. What happened next, she described in her official statement. I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the mixture until the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank. As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it coagulated, dried it in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk, and eggs, as well as a bit of bargeron, kneading all the ingredients together. I made lots of crunchy tea cakes and served them to the ladies who came to visit, though Yusepe and I also ate them. It is believed that Leonardo took Faustina's life savings, a total of $30,000 lira or $320 when adjusted for 2020 inflation as payment for her matchmaking services. The second victim was lured in with the opportunity of a job at a school for girls in Payasina. Francesca Soavi went to Leonardo's home and just as Faustina was asked to write postcards to be sent to her friends with the details of her plans. Before her departure, she returned to Leonardo's home where the women sat for a glass of wine. On September 5, 1940, Francesca was killed with an axe. Her body was treated the same as that of Faustina, and this time, Leonardo walked away with $3,000 lira. Virginia Casiopo was a singer, a former soprano said to have sung at La Scala. Leonardo had found her work as the secretary for a mysterious impresario in Florence, or so she claimed. Once again, she was asked to write postcards and not tell anyone. On September 30, 1940, Virginia paid one last visit to Leonardo. The two women sat down for a glass of wine and it would be Virginia's last. She was killed with an axe and cut into pieces, just as the previous two had been. She ended up in the pot. Like the other two, her flesh was fat and white. When it had melted, I added a bottle of cologne and after a long time on the boil, I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap. I gave bars to neighbors and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were better. That woman was really sweet. Leonardo received $50,000 lira, assorted jewels and public bonds for her services. She even sold all of her clothing and shoes. What Leonardo did not account for was Virginia's sister. Suspicious of her sister's sudden disappearance, she went straight to the superintendent to police in Reggio Emilia and reported her to the police as a missing person. An investigation was opened and it immediately pointed to the soap maker. Leonardo Cianciuly was arrested and maintained that she had nothing to do with Virginia's disappearance. It wasn't until police began to suspect Usipe as being involved that a full confession was made. She confessed to the murders and even provided detailed accounts of what she had done just to save her son from any blame. In 1946, she was tried for murder in Reggio Emilia. She remained unapologetic and even spoke up to correct the prosecutor when he had gotten particular details wrong. Some say she exuded pride as she concluded, I gave the copper ladle which I used to skim the fat off the kettles to my country, which was so badly in need of metal during the last days of the war. Leonardo was found guilty of her crimes and received a sentence of just 30 years in prison and three years in a criminal asylum, thus fulfilling the prophecy of the palm reader. While incarcerated, she panned her memoirs, titled Confession of an Embittered Soul. Within these memoirs, she even provided helpful hints on how to use the human body in the creation of cakes or soap. She died of cerebral apoplexy, similar to a stroke, in the women's criminal asylum in Pazuli on October 15, 1970. Today, you can find several artifacts from the case, including the pot on display at the Museo Criminologico in Rome. You shut yourself in, the lights are out, and you're listening to weird darkness. But suddenly, you get that feeling you're not alone. You don't know what might be under the bed or in the closet or in the attic or in the room with you. You don't dare try to sleep now. You're too scared to. If you doze off, you might be vulnerable to the creatures who haunt your dreams. That's just one more reason to have Weird Dark Roast Coffee in the cupboard, because you just never know when you might need it. Weird Dark Roast Coffee contains deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness. Each bag is fresh roasted to order by Evansville Coffee, and delivery is free for your first order. Just use the promo code Weird, you can find a link to it at WeirdDarkness.com. Grab a bag before something else grabs you from the dark. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. Do you have a true paranormal story that has happened to you or somebody you know? You can share it by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com or better yet, you can call the dark line toll-free at 1-877-277-5944. That's 1-877-277-5944. I might use your story in a future episode, like what I'm about to do right now. I received a call to the dark line the other day, which I think might very well be my favorite call so far. I have a heart for truck drivers, as many of you may already know, but on top of that, this story is out of this world. Okay, Mr. Marlar, this is Chris. I'm a truck driver driving across the United States. My siblings and I really don't talk about this incident much, but when I was seven back in 1975, we lived in Florida in a kind of a wooded neighborhood, typical backwoods home with sparse houses around us, but behind our house was a very large piece of property that was used for cow pasture at most of the property, but at the northern end of the property, there was a nursery and the owner lived in a house there at the nursery. My siblings, I have two brothers and an older sister, the sister being the oldest, she's 11 years older than me. We were all home being watched by our sister because my parents were at their bowling night, but one of my brothers came into the house just gray faced. He said, there's a UFO outside. So of course, all of us went flying out into the backyard and no kidding, probably 150 feet away from us, about 60 feet in the air is this disc kind of like a inverted saucer, upside down saucer, but the top section would be much larger than an actual dish. The actual dish has like a small round part that it sits on the table. Well, this one would have been sticking up much taller, but it was a very similar shape. Under knees that had multiple different colored lights, your primary colors red, blue, yellow, and there was a smaller white light on the side. That would be the angled up part of the saucer and another white light at the very top, which would be the top circular part. It was moving very, very slowly, unbelievably slowly across this pasture area behind the house. If I had to guess, I would say this thing was probably at two miles an hour, maybe three at most, and it traversed this field from our left to the right for a good 300 yards, and then it started angling upwards and it rose above the tree line and in a flash, I mean literally a blink of an eye, this thing took off at an accelerated speed that no aircraft known to mankind could have possibly gone, and within probably a second and a half, maybe two seconds, it was completely gone from our site. And of course, being a bunch of kids left at home, our parents took the story like yeah, right, sure, whatever, but all of us were visibly shaken. My parents knew that we'd saw something, but they didn't quite believe us. And of course, we didn't really pursue it. I mean, who are we going to tell if our parents don't believe us? Who's going to believe us? This happened probably, I want to say it was late spring, early summer, and then a couple of months later, I would say late summer, early fall, my same sibling, my older brother, came out of his room where he had been looking through his telescope and was super excited. My brother Tom had us all run out in the backyard, and we looked up in the sky, and there was a red dot dancing around the sky at an unbelievable speed and directions. Again, nothing that any aircraft could possibly duplicate, but it was also surrounded by what appeared to be aircraft of a traditional nature who appeared to be chasing this thing across the sky, and it was going all over the place. And these planes and the helicopters, we assume, were trying to catch this thing, but it was an impossibility. My sister got on a phone, hit the operator, got a number for Patrick Air Force Base, which was the closest military base. She called in and tried to find out what was going on. And of course, Patrick denied and said there was no aircraft flying in our area whatsoever, no military aircraft. And as they were saying that a military helicopter flew so low to the house that the lady on the phone could actually hear it. And she was like, um, I gotta go click. I hung up on her. So it was definitely something odd and strange flying around the sky and they didn't want to admit to it. And there was a whole bunch of aircraft chasing after it. We think it was the same thing that we had seen the few months prior. So anyway, that's my story. I actually laughed myself when the woman at the Air Force Base was denying anything was happening while simultaneously hearing helicopters over your house. Nothing to see here. Move on. Nothing to see here. Thanks for the story, Chris. If you have a true paranormal or creepy story to share of your own, you can do what Chris did and call Darkline Tull 3 at 1-877-277-5944. That's 1-877-277-5944. Well, unfortunately, I did not have time for the story about Room 1046 in tonight's episode, which is really a shame because it is an incredible story. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to place that in tonight's sudden death overtime, which you'll be able to hear in the podcast immediately after the show is over. So just look for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show or you want to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll hear not only tonight's radio show, but also the extra sudden death overtime content that I prepared that I did not have time to fit in because I went overtime as well as bloopers from tonight's show. And while the radio show is one night per week, I do upload episodes for the podcast seven days per week. And if you're one of my patrons, you get a commercial free copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness and please tell others about the show who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call in to the Dark Line toll-free and tell your own true paranormal story or a story that happened to somebody you know. That number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, the toll-free number is 1-877-277-5944. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright 2021. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 12 verse 25. Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. And a final thought from Rial Nolan. All mistakes teach us something, and some mistakes teach us more than others. Mistakes are signposts on the road to improvement. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. In 2025, neutron bombs wipe out much of the world's drinkable water. For the next several years, survivors exist in deplorable conditions and their rations are dwindling. One woman arises from the camp, determined to improve conditions. Charlotte is ready to do whatever it takes to ensure clean water for her fellow survivors. Water is almighty. Whoever controls the water rules the world. Can Charlotte prevent the power from falling into the wrong hands? Weird Darkness Publishing presents Working for H2O by Sara Faith. Now available in paperback, Kindle and audiobook versions on Amazon and at WeirdDarkness.com. In what has come to be known as the Room 1046 mystery, a man calling himself Roland T. Owen checked into Room 1046 of the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri on January 2, 1935. In just two days' time, he would be dead. When he was discovered in his room, he was already dying from injuries sustained in what was obviously a brutal attack. The question was, who killed Roland T. Owen and why? But the man known as Roland T. Owen brought with him more mysteries than answers. His behavior during his brief stay in Room 1046 was baffling to hotel staff and authorities alike. And as the investigation into his slaying continued, it soon became clear that even his name was a fabrication. Who was Roland T. Owen and what happened to him in that room? We may never know all the answers, but the pieces of the puzzle are as haunting as any solution could ever be. When the man calling himself Roland T. Owen arrived at the Hotel President a little after 1 p.m. on January 2, 1935, he had some specific instructions. He provided a Los Angeles address, paid for just a single night, and requested a room facing the hotel's inner courtyard rather than the street. Witnesses later placed the man's age anywhere from 22 to 30 years old and described him as having a cauliflower ear, a common malady among boxers and wrestlers, and a scar on the side of a scalp, which he partly covered up by combing over it with his hair. On the way up to his room, he didn't mention why he was in town. He did however complain that he had spent the previous night at the nearby Mulebach Hotel and left after they tried to charge him what he felt was an unreasonable $5 per night. When Roland T. Owen or whatever his real name may have been arrived at the Hotel President, he had no luggage. Witnesses described him as neatly dressed, wearing a black overcoat. The only items he brought with him were a hairbrush, a comb, and some toothpaste, all of which were in his overcoat pocket. He placed all three items above the sink when the porter let him into his room, but all three would be gone even before Owen was. Hotel staff later observed that the man who called himself Roland T. Owen was a strange customer from the moment he arrived. Whenever maids or quarters went up to his room they always found it dark, with the shades drawn and a single desk lamp providing the only illumination. When Mary Sopdick, a maid at the hotel, returned from a few days off, she found herself assigned to Room 1046. When she arrived and found its occupant sitting in the dark she offered to come back later, but the man told her to go ahead and clean the room. She later told the police that Owen seemed like he was afraid or worried about something and that he always wanted to kind of keep in the dark. When the maid was first cleaning Owen's room, he told her not to lock the door as he was expecting her friend in a few minutes. When she returned to the room later that day she found Owen lying on his still-made bed fully clothed, seemingly asleep. A note on the desk said, Don, I will be back in 15 minutes. Wait. The following morning she overheard a brief phone conversation in which Owen said, No Don, I don't want to eat, I am not hungry. Later that afternoon, when she went to drop off fresh towels, she heard two men speaking in Room 1046. When she knocked a rough voice that she didn't recognize answered from the other side of the door telling her they did not need towels. In fact, the maid knew the room didn't have any as she herself had taken them earlier in the day. In an ironic twist, the woman in Room 1048 next door to the man calling himself Roland T. Owen was Jean Owen of Lee Summit, Missouri. She was of no relation to her neighbor and indeed had no idea who he was. However, she later told police she heard noises on her floor throughout the night that consisted largely of men and women talking loudly and cursing. She considered calling the front desk but never did. There was apparently a rather raucous party going on in Room 1055 that night, which could have been the source of the disturbances, Jean Owen noticed, but that wasn't the only oddity. The elevator operator that night reported taking a woman who regularly frequented the hotel with different men up to several different floors in search of a customer who was always very prompt. In spite of spending more than an hour looking around the place, it seems she never found him. On the night of January 3rd at around 11 p.m., a water department employee named Robert Lane was flagged down in the street not far from the hotel president by a man matching the description of Roland T. Owen. The man Lane picked up was hurt. He had a bad scrape on his arm, and Lane suspected he may have had more serious injuries. He was also just in his shirt sleeves, despite it being a January night in the middle of Kansas City and thus not exactly clement weather. You look as if you've been in it bad, Lane said, when the man asked him if he would take him to find a cab. The man's reply, I'll kill that bleep tomorrow. The newspapers at the time didn't print the expletive the man uttered, so we'll just have to use our imaginations, just as we can only guess who he may have been talking about. On Friday morning, the day after a man matching Owen's description was picked up in the street by Robert Lane, the operator at the hotel noticed that the phone in room 1046 was off the hook. She dispatched a bell hop to see what was going on. The bell hop arrived at the room and found the door locked with a do not disturb sign. After knocking repeatedly, he finally heard a deep voice on the other side of the door telling him to come in. With the door still locked, however, the bell hop knocked again. Turn on the lights, the voice said this time. Unable to get into the room, the bell hop simply shouted, put the phone back on the hook, and then returned to the lobby. On the morning of Friday, January 4th, the phone in room 1046 was off the hook. At first, a bell hop was sent up to fix it. He never got inside the room, but simply yelled through the door an instruction to reconnect the phone. About an hour later, the phone was still off the hook, so a different bell hop, Harold Pike, went up to the room and knocked. Receiving no answer, he used his passkey to unlock the door, indicating that it had been locked from the outside and saw its occupant lying in bed naked. Pike later told police that he noticed what appeared to be dark shadows in the bed clothes, but that he assumed the room's resident was simply drunk. He replaced the phone on the cradle and went back downstairs, locking the door behind him. After a long morning of dealing with room 1046's phone being off the hook and his guests Roland T. Owen being naked and passed out on his bed, the hotel operator was frustrated to once again find the phone off the hook a few hours later. She sent Randolph Probst, the same bell hop who had initially taken Owen up to his room two days before, back up to sort the problem out. He knocked on the door, got no answer, and used his passkey to open it up. On the other side, he found a badly injured Owen on his hands and knees a few feet from the door. When he turned on the lights, he saw that there was blood everywhere. When authorities arrived in room 1046, they found Owen on the brink of death. He had been tortured and stabbed and they later determined that many of the bloodstains in the room were hours old, meaning he had already been attacked before the first bell hop bound him seemingly unconscious on his bed. Owen went into a coma shortly after reaching the hospital. While he was still conscious, the only explanation he offered for his grievous injuries was that he fell against the tub. He died in the hospital that night. In the wake of Roland T. Owen's death, police published a sketch of him in the paper under the heading, Do You Recognize This Man? It seems that whoever he really was, the man who called himself Owen, had checked into the hotel under an assumed name. One part of his story was true, though. He had been at the mulebok the night before. While the staff there didn't have any guests named Roland T. Owen, they did recognize the sketch of the deceased, who had checked in there under the name Eugene K. Scott, also from Los Angeles. Of course, the problem was that the police could find no missing people of either name from Los Angeles nor anyone else missing from LA who matched the man's description. The real identity of Roland T. Owen was as much a mystery as what had happened to him. Besides Owen himself and a distressing amount of blood, almost nothing was left in the room to show that he or anyone else had ever been there. Owen was naked and all of his clothes were missing along with the handful of items, brush, comb, and toothpaste that he had brought with him to the room. There was also no sign of a weapon that could have inflicted the injuries Owen had suffered. In fact, the only items in the room were a hairpin, a safety pin, an unlit cigarette, a bottle of dilute sulfuric acid, and a tie label that said it was from Botany Worsten Mills. There were two glasses in the bathroom, one on the shelf, the other broken in the sink. The police found four small fingerprints on the telephone stand that they thought might have belonged to a woman, but they were never identified. Though several people attempted to identify the body of Roland T. Owen, no one was able to. Authorities were preparing to bury him as a John Doe when the funeral home received a call. The unidentified caller asked them to hold off, promising to send enough money to give Owen or whoever he was a proper funeral. Within a month, a funeral home received an unmarked envelope containing enough cash to cover all the expenses. The unidentified man was laid to rest in Kansas City's Memorial Park Cemetery under the name Roland T. Owen, with no one in attendance but police. However, there were 13 American beauty roses laid on his grave. The roses were purchased by an anonymous caller who said that he was doing it for his sister. The caller promised $5 for the trouble. The roses were accompanied by a note that simply said, Love Forever, Louise. A year after the events in Room 1046, a woman recognized a magazine photo of the man who had called himself Roland T. Owen. She said the man was her son, Artemis Ogletree, who had left home when he was 17. While authorities ultimately concluded that she was probably right, this produced its own set of mysteries. For one, Artemis Ogletree was much younger than anyone had believed Roland T. Owen to be. For another, Mrs. Ogletree had received several letters ostensibly from her son and one phone call from someone who said that he was a friend of Artemis. One of the letters and the phone call claimed her son was in Egypt and all of them had been sent after Roland T. Owen was already in the ground. The identification also did nothing to shed any light on why he had been killed, nor the identities of the other players in the mystery such as Don and Louise. In 2003, John Horner, a librarian at the Kansas City Public Library, received an anonymous phone call. The caller said they were going through the boxes of a deceased individual when they found newspaper clippings about the mystery in Room 1046. What's more, the caller said the box also contained something mentioned in the newspaper clippings, but never said what that something was. To this day, the truth behind what happened in Room 1046 remains unknown. The latest notes in the police department cold case files dating back as far as the 1950s simply say, I will continue to pursue the investigation.