 Welcome, Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is a Chamber of Comments episode where I answer the emails that I've been sent recently. Sometimes it's just a nice, complimentary email that I receive. Sometimes it's heart-wrenching. Sometimes it's asking for advice. Sometimes it's a complaint. You can email me anytime about anything at darron-at-weird-darkness.com. You can treat this like an AMA. Ask me anything. Again, my email address is darron-at-weird-darkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Your emails do always come directly to me, not an assistant or a service. I do try to read every single one of them. More often than not, I'll reply to those emails here in the Chamber of Comments. Again, email me darron-at-weird-darkness.com. I do have quite a few to share today. I'm going to start with the last couple that I've received, though, for a good reason. The first one comes from Matthew. He says, Hey, Darren, huge fan. Greatly appreciate all you do for depression. My wife has been struggling for years with it and has looked into the Seven Cups app. I'm emailing you today because I live south in Milwaukee and when I heard one of your recent episodes, you were going to be nearby, I had to come to try and meet you and acquire a Weird Darkness pin. Unfortunately, you weren't here. I hope everything is okay with you and Robin. I hope you're in the area again soon. I want to get loaded up on Weird Darkness freebies and goodies. Thank you for your time. And then I received another email pretty much asking the same thing. Well, for those of you who are wondering and apparently people are talking about it online, you are right. I did not make it to Milwaukee today. Last night, as I was getting ready for bed because I had to get up early today if I was going to go to Milwaukee, I don't know what I did, but I pulled a calf muscle on my right leg. Of course, that's the leg that you use to break and accelerate in your car. And it was so painful last night. I couldn't get any sleep. I finally had to take a couple of muscle relaxers and some ibuprofen just to make it bearable so I could sleep. But there was no way, even this morning, that I was able to walk around with it very well, much less get out of the SUV and start unloading all of the heavy suitcases and setting them up and everything. I would have been miserable all day long. I would not have been fun to talk to. So I had to skip it, unfortunately. That being said, Milwaukee is one of those locations that I am going to come back to fairly regularly. There's like three different cons or festivals that I'm interested in that do make their way to Milwaukee every year. So be looking for me to go to Milwaukee in 2023. It's not on the calendar yet. It's all still in the works, but that is part of the plan. And I'm so sorry for everybody who did want to come and see me in Milwaukee. I really did not realize how many people would want to be there just to say hi to me. That's still something I have a hard time grasping. It's very humbling. But I apologize to all of you for not being there for you. Chris sent me an email saying, I've been listening to your show for a few years now and I've not heard a bad story yet. I especially like that you go across the board with all the stories so you tell a little bit of everything weird and creepy, and a few that I thought were heartwarming. When I was in the hospital, I went back to your library and listened to your earliest stories and helped me get through the boredom of waiting on the doctors. That was a huge help and know that there are a lot of people that you've helped through a hard time without you knowing it. Thank you for that. I really like the fact that you're not afraid to bring awareness of something a lot of people struggle with. There's no way of knowing how many people that you've helped through their dark times. Once again, thank you for that. The LaFleur County Bigfoot War. It's a story I have heard a few times, but the way you tell it is the best. I was born and raised in LaFleur County, and I can tell you there's a lot of things that go bump in the night. There are several hundred places here, and I myself have seen what I call a black shuck. If I continue this email, I'll begin to ramble on, so on that note I'm ending this email. Thank you for all you do. Your pal signed Chris. Chris, thank you very much for the email. I kind of wish you hadn't stopped the email. I'd want to hear more about that black shuck sighting. But then again, you can send that to me for a future fireside frights episode. Just go to the tell your story page on the website and let me know about that black shuck sighting. I don't think I've ever shared a hell hound story in the fireside frights, not that I can remember. So that would be a great one to have. And I appreciate you giving me the compliment on on the story about the LaFleur County Bigfoot and also the nice comments about the whole depression thing, the mental health stuff. I really, I really do appreciate that. I'll take this as an opportunity then as well, to let people know that we're still doing the overcoming the darkest fundraiser this month. And we are just under halfway to our goal. So and it is halfway through the month. So we're just just a little behind schedule of where we need to be. If somebody's planning on giving towards our overcoming the darkness fundraiser, be it $5 $50 $500, whatever it is that's being led that's on your heart to give, we would really appreciate you giving as soon as you can. Just go to the hope in the darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. And you can get the links there on how to give and also learn more about the painting that we're auctioning off a painting that was really created in a very special way. But I'll let you I'll let you read about that on that page. Steven sent me an email saying, Hey, Darren, I don't know you knew this or not, but I remember one of your stories called the Watcher. Well, I was scrolling through Netflix, and I found a show called the Watcher. So I decided to watch it. It falls right in line with the storyline I heard on your podcast and thought how cool it was to hear about it on your show. And now Netflix says a show about it. Anyway, I'm looking forward to this year's Halloween show. If you have a few hours to burn, you might want to check it out. Thank you, Steven. I did go ahead and jump on to Netflix and I found the Watcher. So I put it into my to my queue to watch in the future. It looks like it'll be very interesting. It didn't give a lot away in just the trailer that I was watching, which is good. I really don't like stuff giving away too much just enough to entice me to watch it. So the trailer really didn't entice me to watch it but you writing in entices is enticing me to watch it. So I will give that a look. And yes, I'm looking forward to this year's live screen as well. Halloween, all the details on what time zone for you, what time it starts, you can find that on the live screen page at WeirdDarkness.com. But yeah, this is the one time per year. Only do it once on camera. I do the show live on camera. It's not pre-recorded like you normally hear. It is live streaming. I got the camera on me. I've got a camera on my front porch so we can watch the trick or treaters when they stop by. I've got some fun videos that I'll be playing. I've got a couple of sing-alongs. So if you've got people watching with you, which I highly encourage you to do, get some friends or family. If you're having a Halloween party, maybe you can have me in the background and when it's time for a sing-along, you can turn up the volume and everybody can sing along. And I also have a special song that I wrote myself. Something very special I wrote just for the live screen. And I'm not much of a songwriter or even a singer anymore. I used to be, but the voice is not the way it used to be. I spent so much time doing voiceovers and trying to play movie trailer guy with my voiceovers that the singing voice is completely gone. But that I still had fun putting it together. And so it should be fun. And it definitely fits the season. But it's going to be a great time. Oh, yeah, it'll also be doing giveaways. Like I did last year, I'll be choosing random people from the email newsletter subscriber list throughout the show. So if you're not already a subscriber to the newsletter and you want to maybe win something during the Halloween live screen, you'll want to sign up and be a part of that. Catherine sent me an email saying, first of all, I'd like to let you know how much I enjoy your podcast. I didn't even know podcasts existed until a year ago. Yes, I am one of your geriatric followers. I especially love listening when I'm doing my chores around the house. Your stories make everything go fast and so much easier. However, I am very disappointed in one of the commercials that I have heard the last couple of days. I like you because it seems to be a very political free podcast. I appreciate the fact that you have a line set up for people who are depressed. You seem to do a lot of great things. So when I heard the commercial about the New Hampshire education that people should be able to take money from the public schools and do whatever they want with them. I was a little put back. That is a very emotional political stand for a lot of people. And as I said before, you seem to be non political. Maybe you're not aware of what a big issue this is among a lot of people. I just wanted to point it out to you. I have never texted anyone before on anything before, except once I did send Kerry Grant a fan letter when I was younger. Thank you for reading this. Well, Catherine, more than anything else, I want to know, did Kerry Grant reply to your to your mail that Kerry Grant is my wife's absolute favorite actor of all time. And even though I try to do impersonations once in a while, I cannot do Kerry Grant. And that's the one character she'd love for me to be able to do because she finds his voice so sexy. So I would love to know if he replied to you. But that being said, thank you for letting me know about the political ad. You're right. I don't do politics. If you hear a political ad during the podcast, that was not inserted by me. It wasn't approved by me. It was not endorsed by me. In fact, I have no knowledge of that ads existence. Unfortunately, it's kind of a beast when it comes to the ads that you hear on any podcast nowadays, with so many local advertisers around the country buying ads up to run in their local areas. It's impossible to keep up with them all. And I'm not the one that inserts any of the commercials. I have an outside service that does that. So please know the only commercials that you know I insert myself and approve of or endorse are the ones that have my voice. Any other commercial promo announcement that you might hear while listening to the podcast is inserted by a third party. It is not of my doing. I know this is a frustration for a lot of people, especially during election seasons. Even the political ads that I agree with are still annoying when seeing them on television, hearing them on the radio or in a podcast, getting spam texts on my phone or spam emails. Oh my gosh, it is so intrusive. I like you. I'm looking forward to the political season being over so we can stop being inundated with all of this. But once again, if you hear a political ad or anything that you disagree with on the podcast during the commercial breaks, unless it's in my voice, you know, you can know that I had nothing to do with putting it there. And I did not approve it. Aaron sent me an email saying, Hey, Darren, I'm listening to your show for almost eight months. And man, you've got me hooked line and sinker. Every day I go to work, you're playing through the speakers as I drive through the countryside down here in the land down under. I've recently stumbled across a story about an artist known as Marina Ambrovich, best known for her work on rhythm and a series of art that almost cost her her life. So I thought I'd share it with you in case it tickles your fancy to do a show on it for the rest of the wonderful weirdos we have. I'm humbled to be listened. I'm humbled to be able to listen to someone so kind hearted such as yourself, who never stops doing all they can for others, despite what you ever whatever might be going on in your life. Thank you for everything you do and keep up the good work. Kind regards, Aaron. Thank you, Aaron. I'm glad I saw your email in advance because I actually had to look up who Marina Ambrovich was and I might be mispronouncing her name. And if so, I apologize. I had to look her up and I read a little bit about her. And ironically, the very first article I came across for her was from the Guardian, where she claimed I'm an artist, not a Satanist. Now for her to even feel the need to utter that statement, you know, she's controversial. Well, after learning a bit more about her, I actually have some serious concerns about her mental health. Some performance artists, they're out simply to get attention or to shock people. And at first glance, some might see Ambrovich, excuse me, Abramovic in that way, but she has actually put herself into mortal dangers at times, which you had mentioned that she'd almost lost her life a couple of times. She passed out when she was surrounded by a pentagram of flames. She was chained up once allowing the audience to do whatever they wanted to her. And that means anything. She walked away with that walked away from that with deep lasting physical scars to her body. I got to wonder if Marina isn't a she's not necessarily a masochist as some claim she is, but rather somebody who truly doesn't love themselves. And despite public appearances and statements, is not as confident and self assured as she makes herself out to be. My heart sank when reading about Marina and Bromovic. It's horrible. I truly hope somebody can reach her and help her find a different way to express herself. I mean, she could still be a performance artist. She could still be influential in that genre. She could still be controversial if she wants to. Not my cup of tea, but I can understand some people like that kind of stuff. But when you bring yourself to the point of purposefully self harming just for the art or self expression, you make me really concerned about your mental health. And if you know somebody that is doing self harm to themselves, be it for artistic purposes or not, you might want to check out some of the resources on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. I received a message from one of my patrons from Jamie. She said, I'm so glad that you posted this as I would love to listen to when you do it, but I'm lucky if I can stay up until 9.30 p.m. I get up for work at 3 a.m. And since it doesn't start until 11 Eastern time, I get to hear it here. Well, she's referring to the Weekly Listen and Chat that I just started doing. I'm on a station in Las Vegas, K-C-O-R. And on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. Pacific, 11 p.m. Eastern, they air the show, both hours of it. It's usually the show that you hear on the weekends, but they air it on Tuesdays. And during that two hours, I'm in their chat room at the same time, so we can all listen and chat at the same time. So, similar to a Weirdo Watch Party where you're watching a movie, but in this time, you're listening to Weird Darkness and chatting with me. Same idea, but it's on their website, not mine. And you can find out more about that by clicking on the radio show tab at WeirdDarkness.com. Craig Steele sent me an email saying, thanks for the storytelling. It's very entertaining. Hope you enjoy the picture. You can do what you wish with it. It'll be posted on my Instagram under the same name as below, Minion of the Multiverse. And he put together a really cool artistic thing that says paranormal, murder, mystery, supernatural, weird darkness. And it's got a whole bunch of animated artwork there with a representation of an angel, aliens. Let's see here, what else we've got there? You've got, it looks like a staircase to nowhere, a bloody sword. You've got the hand coming out of the ground. You've got a skull. You've got rats. I'm not sure. I think the picture in the front of the man with sunglasses and hat, I think that's supposed to be me. It makes me look a lot older than I am. Or maybe I just don't think I'm as old as I am. But anyway, I will, oh, and there's a little place there for the light, like the light switch sound that I use. Very cool. The more you look at this, the more you see. I will post a link to this or actually, I'll just go ahead and post the photo itself in the weird news section when I'm done posting the comments here so that way you can guys can check it out. Let's see, next one goes, it's from, it's from Bruce. He said, hydrophobia. Apparently, this is the zombie virus episode that I posted back in March of last year. He says, hydrophobia isn't a fear of water, it's just another name for rabies. The fear of water is actually called aquaphobia. I know a guy who's obsessed with fear and phobias. Rabies started getting called hydrophobia because sufferers of the condition had an extreme aversion to water, but it's not a true phobia. Well, thank you, Bruce. I appreciate the info on that. That's something I did not know. Learn something new every day, even from my weirdos. Kelly sent me an email. She says, I was vaping in my room one day a few months ago and for some reason I decided to snap a photo. In the smoke, you can clearly see a word, die. The next day, no kidding, my 16-year-old Chihuahua passed away unexpectedly. I had written to you some time ago about sleeping in this very same room and waking up next to an entity that called itself elder. I don't know if you remember that or not. Ever since then, I've lost another dog, a Rhodesian ridgeback named Luna, and I hear her walking around on my second floor sometimes at night. I now sleep in the second floor. This photo was on the third floor, attic of my house. To this day, I occasionally hear heavy footsteps up there on the third floor when I'm in bed. I live alone. I'd love to hear what you think of this photo. Take care, sign Kelly, also one of my Patreon supporters. She says, PS, I love the show. So she sent a couple of photos here and there is a smoky, I guess some people would call it ectoplasm, the kind that floats in the air. And yeah, I can see the letters that she's looking at. I can see the D in the eye pretty easily. The E is a little harder to see. I actually see a lower case E, but she says she sees the uppercase, which I can also kind of make out. But it definitely does look like there's actual letters in the air. I'll post, you know what, instead of putting these to the weird news page, I will post these to the blog post for this particular episode of the Chamber of Comments. So if you go to the website and click on special series episodes, there is a drop-down box. You can click on Chamber of Comments, and that has all the episodes of just the Chamber of Comments, and I will place these photos I'm talking about within that episode's blog post. That way you can see it all in the same place. Kelly is another one of my patrons. She said, Hey Darren, I've just listened to your Chamber of Comments from October 4th. Firstly, I hope your depression and my grains are getting better. It's great that you're busy with work, but remember to make time for and look after yourself. You can only give to others if you have reserves for yourself. Secondly, I'm glad you mentioned about having used dark archive episodes, as I was sure I'd heard some of them before. I even looked through the descriptions to check, but there wasn't anything there, and I wondered if I was going a little doulily. Well, more doulily than usual, anyway. I see this year's overcoming the darkness campaign is steadily increasing. I've already donated and hope that the money keeps coming in. Remember, last year you found the beginning of the month was quite slow, and by the end you managed to raise so much more than anticipated. Congratulations on bringing us seven years of weird darkness. Long may it continue. Kind regards, Kelly. Thank you Kelly. I appreciate that. And yeah, the migraines are getting a little bit better. The depression is definitely getting better. One of the things that I think I mentioned in that Chamber of Comments was that I still hadn't done my taxes for 2021. I know most people get those done in April, but I had that giant computer crash. I told you about it. I won't go through all of that again, but I finally just turned everything over to the accountant, and even today we're still going back and forth with the accountant, trying to nail down everything. And it looks like I'm going to be owing the state of Illinois a lot of money, like over $11,000. I don't have to owe the IRS, the federal, because I did enough estimated payments for that. I'm okay, but oh, Illinois. I hate you, Illinois. I hate you, Illinois. But at least I have that off my plate, though, and that took away some of the depression. And as we get closer to the live stream, and once that's over, then that stress level will be gone, as well as all of the October events, and things will slowly get back to normal again. Petra sent me an email saying, oh my goodness, I never win anything. She is my Weird Darkness winner for October. She just was randomly chosen from my list of newsletter subscribers, and on the first of each month I choose one. She was the one for October. She says, oh my goodness, I never win anything. I am shocked and very pleased. Mr. Marlar, I feel like I know you. From the year it's worth of Weird Darkness podcasts that I've enjoyed, you have a wonderful voice and are always interesting and accurate in your stories. I admire and laud your Christian approach. If only there were more people like you, the world would be a better place. I wish you a long and successful career with many more podcasts to entertain and teach us. I live in Australia, though I am American. If you ever decide to bring your bride to Oz for a visit, I have a spare bedroom that you're welcome to use. Looking forward to my goodies, and if I didn't mention it, Weird Darkness is definitely my favorite podcast. You Rock signed Petra. Thank you, Petra. I love your name, by the way. I think I've only met one other person in life with the name of Petra, and I love its meaning, too, because Petra means Rock. Petra is just a flipping of letters for Peter from the Bible, and Peter was called the Rock. Jesus called him the Rock. I will build my church on this Rock, and he was talking to Peter of what Peter had just said. So Petra means Rock, which is pretty cool that that is your name. So thank you very much, Petra, and again, congratulations on winning my monthly giveaway. And our last one comes from Ryan. He says, Hi Darren, I'm a huge fan of the paranormal and have been listening for a few months now. I enjoy the show but have one question for you. Why include true crime? It's the one thing I really dislike about the show is I really do not like true crime podcasts. It's not because I'm squeamish or prudish, but rather because I don't think murderers and criminals should be glorified by people retelling their tales over and over again. How would the victims or relatives of victims in these crimes feel knowing that the person who murdered their loved ones is being celebrated through these true crime segments? I don't know what the solution is because I know you have a show to do and your listeners probably enjoy those sections, but for me, they and the paranormal stories that sound fake are the parts of the show that I skip. Maybe you could separate your releases into episodes that are all paranormal or all true crime or provide timestamps of the start of each story so listeners can skip ones that they don't like. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my email and hope everything is going well for you, signed Ryan. Ryan, that is a really good question and honestly I've never really put much thought into it. I do it specifically as you mentioned because a lot of people like that type of thing. I began Weird Darkness mostly with the paranormal because that's what I liked the most, paranormal and cryptids, you know like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster and werewolves and stuff like that and then I saw how popular true crime was so then I started adding those stories along with unexplained mysteries and essentially it just became anything weird, strange, macabre, dark, anything that fit that genre ended up being part of the show and that's what most people seem to like not not not like you know just the true crime or just the paranormal but they like that it's a mixture of everything it's kind of an anthology with every episode I give you a little little piece of everything in each episode so that's the reason that I do it and I've never really thought much about what the families would think and I know that's actually shallow to say that now that I say that out loud so I'll think on it and maybe others can just drop me an email and let me know what you think should the true crime stay in the podcast I'm guessing it probably will because so many people like it but you do bring up some interesting points if nothing else to think about so I appreciate that Ryan thank you if you'd like to drop me an email again you can do it at darron at weirddarkness.com Darron is D-A-R-R-E-N and I might answer your email in our next chamber of comments