 Welcome Weirdos! I'm Darren Moerler and this is Weird Darkness and our annual Halloween live stream. So glad to have all of you with me tonight. I'm going to be sharing stories as I normally do in the podcast, but we're also going to be doing a lot more. Lots of giveaways, so be sure that you're signed up for the Weird Darkness email newsletter. That is where I'm going to be pulling the names from throughout the evening. And if you're watching me right now, well, you've already discovered the live stream. But in case something goes wrong with your stream, depending on where you're watching, you can look elsewhere. I'm streaming simultaneously on the Weird Darkness Facebook page, the Weird Darkness Twitter account, and the Weird Darkness YouTube channel. So if you lose this tweet on one of those, you can switch over to another one and hopefully continue the fun. And the URL addresses for all of those should be found in the scroll that you're seeing here at the bottom of your screen. If you're new to Weird Darkness, welcome to the show. Happy Halloween. If you're already a member of this Weirdo family, take a moment, invite somebody else to watch along with you, even if they are in another part of the world. I'm streaming live on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. So text it out to your friends to have them tune in during the live stream so they can get in on the fun. And I'm looking at things here that I got to do. I got so many things going on at the same time. I want to make sure that I'm ready for the next piece. Okay, anyway. So please invite all your friends to join us. Maybe post a link to this stream on your social media so others will know about it. And if you click on live screen at WeirdDarkness.com, you will see the links that you can follow for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Coming up tonight, I'll have some creepy true stories surrounding Halloween. I'll be sharing some fun music videos. I have a couple of sing-alongs so that you and your friends and family can join in on it. I've got some fun songs and videos to watch. Plus, we're going to be watching this other camera over here. And that's the that's my doorbell camera. So that way we can see the trick or treaters as they stop by this evening. And since this is a live screen or a live stream, I can also respond to some of the online comments that you leave during the broadcast and already I've got a good 42 of them piling up. So we're going to have a lot to look at once we get to that point. If you're having difficulty commenting, take a look at the video description for a link from StreamYard so that you can log in and leave a comment. And I'll try to get to as many as I can throughout the evening. I'm obviously not going to be able to get to all of them, but I'll do my best. Also, I'm going to be doing giveaways tonight. Throughout the show, I will be giving away free Weird Darkness prize packs. And those include stickers, a fidget keychain, phone stand, wearable buttons, pen, magnets, the brand new Weird Darkness bumper sticker and more. And if you hear me call out your name, you have to email me at the email address that you see on the screen right now before the live screen ends. If you don't, you lose your prize. So if you hear your name, email right away or you'll risk losing your free Weird Darkness swag. And if you're not already on the email newsletter lists, just subscribe now as you're watching on the contest page at WeirdDarkness.com. I'll be doing the giveaways a few times before this live stream is over. And before we begin with the fun, tonight is the last night of October. That means it's the last night that I'm asking you to help me raise funds to combat depression and suicide through our overcoming the darkness campaign. If you're watching and you're listening to this live, please visit the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com, where you can make a donation of any amount to help the cause and also to learn more about those organizations that are going to benefit from your financial gift. And every dollar you give will be split equally. And we donated to the International Foundation for Research and Education on Depression, National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and Seven Cups. So please give generously. And last I checked, we were under $100 away from making our $5,000 goal. But it would be great if we could do so much better than that. Last year, we hit $6,000. And I set it for $5,000 as a goal. But you guys usually surprise me. So we'll see how it goes tonight. Visit WeirdDarkness.com, click on Hope in the Darkness. It's also where you can find the Weirdling Woods Night Angel painting that we are auctioning off this year as well. Okay, that's it. You've waited a lot enough. Close your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. So well, before we get into the darker stories this evening, let's begin with something a bit lighthearted, but still appropriate for the occasion. It is hard to imagine today that Halloween and trick or treating weren't always a huge part of American culture. I mean, for all my life, this has been a time of costumes, door knocking, and of course, candy. If you're my age, you might even remember those plastic costumes that you bought from Woolworths that tied behind your head and came with that mask that you slipped over your face and you secured it with a nylon cord. It was hard to see, almost impossible to breathe. The court usually snapped at some point in the night, but for one evening in the early 1970s, you were Batman, the creature from the Black Lagoon or a character from the Planet of the Apes behind a cheap plastic mask. During my childhood, it seemed the trick or treating had been around forever, but it actually hadn't. It actually didn't make its way to America until the late 1920s. And within the last couple of decades, the tradition almost ended for good. See, it would take candy companies and a gang of cartoon kids to resurrect trick or treating after World War II and make it what it is today. See, World War II not only brought devastation to the entire globe, it also affected the goods and services available on the home front. In an effort to alleviate price hikes and hoarding, the Office of Price Administration printed war ration books with stamps that were used in exchange for goods. Thanks to the fact that as much as a third of the sugar imported to the United States came from Japanese occupied Philippines, sugar was the first consumer commodity to be rationed. War ration book number one nicknamed the sugar book was, excuse me, the sugar book was distributed starting May 4, 1942, with deep cuts to sugar allowances. Children's Halloween celebrations had to be drastically altered. Sugar rationing came to an end in 1947. And by the fall, the commercialization of Halloween started kicking off in ways it never had in the 1920s. Candy companies like Curtis and Brock, they wasted no time in launching Halloween advertising campaigns, but they weren't the only ones. Children's magazines like Jack and Jill and children's activities, they both featured trick or treating in their October issues. Parents who only dimly were their own Halloween traditions began reviving the fun for their own children. Costume parties became all the rage along with hay rides, bobbing for apples, midnight spook shows, and spooky attractions. But it was the iconic comic strip Peanuts that really captured the imagination of American children. In October 1951, creator Charles Schultz ran the first of his Halloween themed strips. The characters made their first appearance in ghost costumes, prepared for Halloween ghosting, as they called it. Patty even used Charlie Brown as the model for her Jack-O-Lantern carving. His comic strips helped spread the popularity of Halloween. In 1966, a TV special, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, began its long run as a Halloween tradition. The short was nominated for three Emmy awards and made such an impression on America's kids that after it aired, children from all over the country sent candy to Charlie Brown out of sympathy. With the trick-or-treating tradition firmly established, it began growing in size. In addition to televisions and magazines, schools began reinforcing the tradition when the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, or UNICEF, launched a national campaign to raise money for children. It handed out cardboard boxes for kids to take with them while trick-or-treating. It turned out to be a pretty effective campaign too, raising more than $175 million dollars in the U.S. alone. So when you take the kids out to collect candy tonight, just remember how close we came to losing this tradition. And just take a few minutes to sit down with Charlie Brown again this year. You won't be sorry you did. Speaking of kids, something really cool for those of you who follow the podcast, every Saturday in October, we uploaded another episode of Microterror's Scary Stories for Kids. We only did it for this month. That's all that was planned. But it has been such a success. And the author, Scott Donnelly, loved it so much. He loves the feedback he's getting. In January 2023, we're bringing it back for every Saturday. So if your kids love scary stories, we're going to do it on two different feeds too. We'll do it in the Weird Darkness feed so you can get it where you would normally be listening now. But we're going to create a separate podcast. We haven't done it yet, so don't look for it yet. But we're going to create a separate podcast just for Microterror's. So your kids can subscribe to that and only get the scary yet family-friendly stories just for them. So I hope you're looking forward to that. I know I am. I had a blast putting them together. All right, let's check a few comments. We have 74 comments. Holy cow. All right. Well, let's move back and see how many we can take care of here. I'll take care of some of the longer ones. A lot of them are just saying happy Halloween. I appreciate that. Just one resource says, hey Darren, I hope you're feeling okay today. I've been waiting for your stream. Thanks. Well, yeah, I'm actually feeling pretty good today, which is a nice change. I had that sinus infection for a while and also had the back pain and today I'm feeling fine just in time for the Halloween stream. So that's pretty good. Janine says I'm already scared. Yeah, I know, but seeing my face will do that to people. Yeah, I understand. All right. Steve says, thank you for all your hard work. You're very welcome, Steve. Thank you very much for the nice comment. Let's see here. Well, who else left some stuff? Lamont asks, hey Darren, how was your trip to the conference in Pennsylvania last week? The conference itself was great. I had a lot of fun in Platsburg. Well, actually it was, I think I'm back in Pennsylvania. Last week was Platsburg, New York. So I don't know if that's the one I was in Sprint in Pennsylvania a few weeks back, but if you're talking about the one last week, it was Platsburg, New York and I had a blast while I was there. That's also the trip while on my way home. I injured myself and that's how my back got bad and I also had the sinus infection during that thing. But the event itself actually went really well and they've already invited me back for the next year. So I really had fun there. Let's see here. Let's see. Just who did this video? I think you're referring to the one that started off the five minutes of movie quotes. I put it together but I grabbed all the quotes from YouTube. I just grabbed it from a whole bunch of different resources, different places. Let's see here. Matthew says the pumpkin singing is awesome. That is the first video I added for this year. As soon as I saw that going, oh my gosh, I gotta play that. That's awesome. Let's see here. Alan says he's from South Carolina, first time watching. Welcome to the weirdo family. Alan, nice to have you here. Robert says thumbs up for those folks who experience depression but are fighting the good fight. Yes, Robert. Yeah, that's what our fundraiser is all about. So anybody if you want to give to the fundraiser, I would greatly appreciate it. Let's see here. Lamont says oh hell, I remember buying penny candy too. Yeah, those were the days, weren't they? Now it's like a hundred pennies, Janine says. All right, let's see. Moving through here, Sonia says, hello from Victoria, Australia. Happy birthday to Weird Darkness and Darren. God bless. Well, thank you very much, Sonia. I think Sonia knows that my birthday is tomorrow, I think. I was born one day late. My grandpa's birthday was October 31st. Mine, November 1st. But it's okay because in Mexico it's Day of the Dead. So I'm actually born on Day of the Dead. Or if you're Catholic, All Saints Day or All Souls Day if you prefer. Um, Sharcy said love the yard decor. Oh, well, you've seen the yard decor. Okay. Well, we are going to be changing that. I see that I've that I've lost my connection to uh, hold on two seconds here. Let me, let me get back and no, no, no. There, there it is. We need to reconnect to my doorbell. There we go. That should fix it. There about that. Is it going to work? It should have refreshed it. Oh goodness gracious. I don't know what just happened. Oh, I know. There we go. There we go. Now it's working. All right. Technology, I'm telling you. It's just going to kill me. Uh, let's see here. Uh, love the decorations outside. Um, thank you. I appreciate that. You'll actually get a tour from the other side from, uh, from outside. I took a video so you can see everything from, from the kid's point of view. Um, let's see. I really like watching your wife take care of the front door. Do you usually get many children visiting? It depends on the year. Last year, not so many or the year before that, thanks to COVID. But this year we're supposed to have really nice weather. It's not cold at all. It's not actually kind of warm outside. Um, no rain or snow in the forecast. So we're planning for a lot of kids this year. And I went out and actually bought extra candy today specifically for that. Uh, let's see if I can find somebody who's not commented yet. Um, Michaela says, can't wait. Well, even after now, here we are. Uh, uh, uh, Zapp said, any chance of a shout out? Sean from Ireland. Well, there you go, Sean. Shout out to you. Bill says, hey Darren, we lost your outside camera. Yeah, thank you. I, I caught that. Um, coffee and weird darkness. That's actually what I'm drinking. I'm drinking a weird dark roast coffee with some pumpkin spice creamer in it. Nice. Okay, let's see here. Your story, um, Phantom Hive, yeah, Phantom Hive. Your story reading is my favorite thing ever and back again for your life thing. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's very nice of you to say. Um, Jeanine says, Robin is really scary. She's totally disappeared. The video's back. Okay. Okay, I get it. All right. Um, let's see. You've commented. You've commented. You've commented. Uh, one more. Um, got to download a bunch of episodes soon as my Thanksgiving tradition to listen to eight hour drive. Wow. Uh, eight hour drive to the house, to your family's house. You listen to Weird Darkness the whole time. That's really, that's really cool of you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. All right. Well, we'll take a look at some, some, uh, comments a little bit later on as well, because we'll be doing that throughout the evening. Horrifying tales of torture, decapitation, and murder. And those are just the acts committed by the accusers. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 remain among the most infamous episodes in all of American history, but across the sea in Europe, hundreds of years prior, similar events took place. This time involving persons accused of lycanthropy or shape shifting into werewolves. According to Mental Floss, the first recorded instance of anybody being accused and convicted of lycanthropy occurred in Polynes, France in 1521. Now the story goes, a supposed wolf attack led authorities to the home of Mikkel Verden, who, after being arrested and tortured, confessed to being a werewolf, along with two other men, Pierre Borgot and Philippe Montau. Borgot also confessed and told authorities of a dead of a deal that is made with three men dressed in black who agreed to protect his sheep in exchange for the rejection of his belief in God. He was given an ointment that allowed them to shape shift into wolves, during which time they would stalk the land, killing and eating children. All three men were found guilty and were executed, currently thereafter. The accounts of lycanthropy that follow that first one are eerily similar in detail, many of them involving ointments and deals struck with other worldly characters. In 1598, the case of Frenchman Jacques Roulay, also known as the werewolf of Caud, involved the use of a transformational salve, which Roulay used to murder and then eat several young children. Although he was sentenced to death for his crimes, a conviction of evil-mindedness instead sent him to an asylum where he received a religious education before being released just two years later. The fate of Peter Stubb, a German man, not so fortunate for him. After flat-out confessing to having made a deal with the devil in which Stubb was gifted a belt allowing him to shape-shift to the sake of killing and consuming countless victims over 25 years, he was publicly executed in 1589 in a most gruesome way. Having his skin ripped away, arms and legs broken, and head removed before being burned. Following that, a man named Folkert Dirks claimed that during the Amersfoet-Auch-Uthelect trials in the Netherlands, and I'm sure I'm butchering that pronunciation, he and his family were able to shape-shift into wolves and cats under Satan's command, as did Conte Hans and his spouse who admitted to possessing the ability to turn into bears under Satan's command, though only after being tortured. Along with supposed deals with the devil, cannibalism is another recurring theme among all of these Lycanthropy cases, including the 1573 execution of Frenchman Giles Garnier, who was accused of killing and cannibalizing children who ventured into his neck of the woods and later confessed to being a werewolf. As many of these confessions of Lycanthropy from Garnier and others only came later, long after the alleged incidents took place, most believed them to be either coerced through the use of torture or attributable to the suspect's mental illness or low IQ, prohibiting them from understanding exactly what they were confessing to. Whatever the case, the Christian people of Europe at the time were opposed to the peasantry's practice of paganism. Thus, many believed these werewolf trials to have been nothing more than a scapegoat for widespread fear concerning a cult and non-Christian practices. An example of the witch-hunt mentality, much like the witch trials that would occur in America a century later. This brings us to the case of a teenage boy named Hans, who was tried during the werewolf trials in Estonia. With 18 trials accusing 18 men and 13 women of being werewolves over the years, the case of young Hans was perhaps the most famous. Only 18 years old, when he was arrested in 1651 on charges of Lycanthropy, Hans quickly confessed to the charges brought against him. Admitting to having hunted as a werewolf for two years, Hans told the court of a man in black who bit him shortly before the physical changes occurred. Many believed the man in black to be the devil, and this mention of satanic forces qualified the werewolf to be tried as a witch and thus sentenced to death. When asked by a judge whether he felt more like a man or an animal, Hans replied that he probably, not unlike most 18-year-olds, felt like a wild beast and that the changes within him could be measured both physically and metaphysically. Despite there being no physical evidence of any murders committed by Hans, he was sentenced to death, simply on the grounds that satanic magic had been performed upon him. While most of the accused never lived to see another day, not all werewolves were guaranteed a death sentence, such as 80-year-old Ice of Caltebroke, claiming to be a hound of God, Ice stated that he used his werewolf cloak to enter hell three nights a year where he battled devils and witches in order to ensure a good harvest for the next season. That's the kind of werewolf I want to be. He never admitted to having made a pact with a demon in exchange for lycathering. Theus was only convicted of practicing book magic believed to encourage the rejection of God and was sentenced nearly to a flogging. How much lighter punishment than so many of history's supposed werewolves had to endure. Looks like we lost our connection outside again. Here we go. It's just now a little after 5.30, and that's when the trick or treaters are really supposed to start showing up. So we'll start seeing some things happening over there pretty quick. However, right now let's take a look at some of the comments that have come in. Joshua said, I love your show. It'd be so cool to hear you do an episode with the Witch of Pongo. I'm not familiar with that one. So if you want to drop me an email and let me know about that, Josh, I'd appreciate it. And that might actually be something I could do. Let's see. Veronica says, Happy Halloween. Thank you very much, Veronica. Lisa, Happy Halloween from Southern Illinois. Texas says wish I was a werewolf. LOL. I don't know if that's something I've always fantasized about it, but I don't think it's really something that I truly would want. It's fun to think about, but not actually do, especially if you have no control over it. Matthew says, Loving this. Happy Halloween, Spooks. Angela says, Happy Halloween from South Australia. Wow. I'm addicted to the Weird Darkness podcast. This is my first live stream. Loving it. Well, thank you very much, Angela. Welcome to the live stream. Glad you could make it here. Bill says, we lost the obstacle. Okay, don't mind. We're to care of that. Lamont said, I posted your show to Truth Social. There. Well, thank you, Lamont. I don't know how many people on Truth Social are going to care about me, but thank you very much. Appreciate it. Let's see here. Let's see. I love everyone's ginger. Zenz says, ginger wolf men are best. Stop it. You're just flattery will get you everywhere. Let's see here. Chris says, he can't watch all night like last year. That's okay, Chris. Don't worry about it. Once this is over, we're going to be posting it to YouTube. And I think it'll stay on Facebook and Twitter as well. So you can go back and look for it a little bit later on. Let's see. Okay, okay. Have a happy one more. Boris says, we have the loop guru, French werewolf legend in my area. Yes, I actually have covered that in the podcast. If you actually do, if you go to the Weird Darkness website and go to the search function, just type in loop guru and you should be able to see it. So, okay, that's it for now. We'll come back to these a little bit later on. If Halloween movies are any indication, bad things always happen on Halloween. That's just movie magic and the stuff of scary stories, you think. Halloween's just like any other day. And most of the time, yes, that's pretty true. Halloween goes by without any creepy hitch or spine shilling occurrences to be seen. Spooky vibes and moonlight nights are peak Halloween energy. Sure, but it's just another day, right? Well, not in the cases that I'm about to share. Sometimes unexplainable, scary, or downright horrible things do happen on Halloween. Costumes, decorations, and fear all accumulate in the melting pot of potential, which sometimes has disastrous consequences. If you're bummed that Halloween this year was different thanks to the pandemic, COVID-19, and the quarantine, and that was especially true last year, well, maybe after I tell you these following true stories, you'll be glad you stayed home for all Halloween Eve last year. In 1992, a 16-year-old Japanese foreign exchange student in Baton Rouge, Louisiana paid the ultimate price after accidentally ringing the wrong doorbell on his way to a Halloween party. The Shihiro Hattori, he'd been unfamiliar with the neighborhood when he and a friend arrived at the home of Rodney Pairs, a nearby neighbor who opened the door armed with a .44 Magnum revolver. Although Hattori allegedly said, we're here for the party, Pairs claimed that he feared for his life and ordered the student to freeze. When Hattori misunderstood the command and kept approaching, Pairs shot him. After being questioned, the perpetrator was arrested, but later acquitted of manslaughter. It's not known what kind of Halloween costume Hattori wore to warrant such a reaction. Famed magician Ari Houdini He claimed that he could take a blow to the abdomen without being taken down. And on October 22, 1926, the student at McGill University asked if he could prove it. Houdini, who had been sitting in his dressing room during an engagement at the Montreal University, obliged. Although he had allegedly braced himself, the student's four punches left the performer in great pain. After suffering for two days, Houdini decided to seek medical help, but by this time he was suffering from a severe fever and acute appendicitis. Defying doctor's orders, he performed instead of undergoing the recommended emergency surgery. When the curtains closed, the magician collapsed, despite having his appendix removed afterward. Houdini passed away on Halloween, surrounded by family. On Halloween day in 1963, the Indiana State Fair held a Holidays on Ice skating exhibition for a crowd of hundreds. The grand finale was not what anybody had expected. Unbeknownst to organizers at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum, propane gas had been leaking from a nearby tank into the poorly ventilated room. During a final act called Mardi Gras, the propane gas caught fire, leading to a horrific explosion that propelled onlookers from their chairs. The death toll was 74 and 400 additional people were injured. The tradition of throwing eggs at people on Halloween is, at best, a harmless prank. At worst, it can turn deadly. That was the case for Carl Jackson, the 21-year-old data entry clerk at Morgan Stanley usually never left the house on Halloween as he thought it was dangerous. On October 31, 1995, his worst fear became a reality. Jackson had decided to venture out to pick up his girlfriend's son from a party. Along the way, a group of teens felted his car with eggs, so Jackson got out to confront them. But as he was getting back into the car, one of the pranksters pulled a gun and fatally shot him in the head. To this day, nobody knows what happened to Hyeong Jong or Cindy Song, a 39-year-old grad student at Penn State University who disappeared without a trace after leaving a Halloween party after midnight in 2001. Song had stopped by her friend's home in the early morning hours, still decked out in her bunny costume and accepted a lift home at about 4 a.m. Slightly intoxicated, she managed to get inside her home and drop off her belongings, including her backpack and cell phone. She had even removed her false eyelashes. But Song herself was never seen again. Investigators found no evidence of foul play and no activity on her credit cards or cell phone. The case eventually ran cold. David Berkowitz became infamous in the 1970s as the son of Sam, serial killer. But not many people know that he could also predict the future. Well, sort of. Berkowitz was incarcerated when 39-year-old Ronald Seisman, a 20- and 20-year-old Elizabeth Platsman, were beaten and shot to death in their Manhattan home in the early morning hours of Halloween in 1981. A fellow prisoner claimed that the son of Sam had previously told him that a cult was planning to carry out just such a massacre. Berkowitz was allegedly even able to describe the victim's apartment to a tee. But police didn't have enough evidence to charge him with involvement in the murders, which still remain unsolved. If there were a prize for most morbid Halloween decoration and Frederica Delaware in 2005, it would have gone to the body hanging from a tree. It would have been beaten, it would have beaten out the fake witches, the skeletons, the jack-o'-lanterns dotting the neighborhood, and for hours people passed by admiring it. Of course, it had an edge over the other decorations. This was a real body. Police believe it was that of a woman who had committed suicide the night before. Note to self, not everyone is wearing a costume on Halloween. In 2012, in the early hours of the morning after Halloween, a two-two-glad marine spotted a uniform clad man in a wheelchair and thought the man's costume was a weak attempt at mocking the military, so he attacked him. As the marine learned upon his arrest, the man's wardrobe was not a comment on our servicemen and women. He was in fact a disabled veteran. The most frightening thing about the graveyard kit that an Oregon woman bought at Kmart in 2012 was the note that she found inside of him. It was written by a Chinese factory worker who claimed that he and others were tortured and enslaved in a forced labor camp, making toys 15 hours a day with no pay or days off, and he went on to plead for the letter to be forwarded to the World Human Rights Organization. The woman did just that, and the Chinese worker was freed when the camp was exposed months later. It's bad enough you have collapsed and died alone on your own porch steps. But adding insult to injury, the morning after this 2012 Halloween tragedy, the mailman, assuming the body was simply an excellent Halloween decoration, sidestepped the deceased on his way to delivering the corpse's mail. Sometimes a costume is just too good. In 2012, a nine-year-old wearing a black outfit and a black hat with a white tassel was mistaken for a skunk by a relative and shot. Fortunately, the girl survived. The year was 1957, Halloween night. A couple was getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. It was late, but the husband answered the door, ready to dole out more candy. Instead, an adult wearing a mask shot him in the chest killing him. Was it a trick-or-treater dissatisfied with the candy selection? Not quite. The murderer, it turns out, was the girlfriend of a woman who had had an affair with the murdered man's wife. The woman convinced her girlfriend to do away with the husband in order to have the wife for herself. Candy. It might be important for Halloween. It's certainly not worth your life, though. It was Halloween night 2011 when a 55-year-old Chicago resident realized his candy bag was missing. He blamed a neighbor for the missing sweets and took his revenge to an extreme, stabbing his neighbor to death with several steak knives. Halloween is known for both tricks and treats, but some pranks just go too far. In 1998, a Bronx man was in the car with his girlfriend to pick up her nine-year-old son from a Halloween party. When a group of teens started egging the car, the man got out and an argument started. After he sat back down in the car, though, one of the teenagers shot him fatally in the head. On Halloween day, in 1955, Marilyn Damon went to a food fair on Long Island to do some shopping. She brought her children, two-year-old Steven and seven-month-old Pamela with her. Telling Steven to be good and watch his little sister, she left the children outside while she went into the store. She returned 10 minutes later to find that her children had disappeared, stroller and all. Pamela's baby stroller, with the unharmed seven-month-old inside, was found a short distance away, but Long Island police were never able to locate Steven. What happened to him remains a mystery. And people thinking dead bodies are Halloween decorations seems to be a gruesome trend in these Halloween stories, doesn't it? And we'll have several more later on. However, in 2017, the opposite actually happened. In mid-September, police in Green County, Tennessee received a panicked phone call from a man who believed that there was a beheaded corpse in his neighbor's driveway. Police arrived on the scene, only to find that the owner of the home had actually just put out his creepy Halloween display a little early. Do not call 911 reporting a dead body reported the police. Instead, congratulate the homeowner on a great display. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's see, Janine, who is this singing? That was Jonathan Coulter. Jonathan Coulter? Is that right? I'm having a brain fart right now. You can go back and listen to the podcast later on and you can get that. I do put the information about that a little bit later on. Doc says, less than $50 away from fundraising gold, a weird darkness. Well, thank you, doc. I appreciate you posting that online. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Josh asks, you ever did a story for the podcast that was so bizarre that it just made you almost didn't believe it? Occasionally. That does happen occasionally. But I tend to believe people unless I unless I unless I have reason not to. I'll go ahead and believe people. I'm trying to think there. In fact, there was one in a chamber of comments that I shared a few chamber of comments is back that I even mentioned that I had to talk to the guy and make sure that he wasn't sending in a story for just the podcast like a creepypasta that that was a true story because it did not read like a true story at all. So if you go back and listen to the chamber of comments, you'll probably you'll probably see that one or hear that one. That is. Michelle says, I love being a weirdo. This is my first year watching the Halloween live screen. Welcome, Michelle. Thank you very much. Let's see here. We've got Marta says nearly midnight here in Sweden. Perfect for watching this. It's amazing how many people are watching outside the U. S. That is so cool. Let us say there one fairly new listener joined within the last few months and I got to say your content gets me through the day. Stay weird. P. S. Loving this live stream. Thank you, Lisa. Appreciate that. Let's see here. Going to another one going to another one. Tim says this is a great live screen so far and lots of weirdo love. Thank you. Scott Baylor says second year watching. All right. Well, thanks for returning. Appreciate it. Bill Taylor says too bad. I can't get weird dark roast coffee here in Canada. I know I'm really sorry about that. I've talked to the roaster to ask if they ever have any plans of changing that and at the moment they don't. And it would actually cost them more to mail it than it does to make it. And so they've decided not to do that at least at this time. So, okay, that's that's good for now. Okay, I share this story every year during the Halloween live screen because first, it's terrifying. Second, it's a true story. And third, it's a long held belief about Halloween and trick or treating that we've all held since we were children. If you're a parent, what is your greatest fear? Just about every person that I know with a child is going to answer that question almost immediately. It's that some sort of tragedy might befall their children. Accidents, calamities, automobile crashes, natural disasters, fires, the list goes on. All these things terrify parents. These are the things that keep them awake at night. Staring at the ceiling of their bedrooms and wondering how they would handle the nightmare if something terrible happened to their child. Of course accidents and calamities are cruel twists of fate. Bad luck if you believe in luck or perhaps providence if you doubt. It plays no favorites. The idea that a terrible accident might occur that claims the life of your child might keep you from sleeping at night. But in the end, there's really nothing you can do about it. Accidents happen, right? But what about that terrible thing that's not an accident at all? What about when the horrible death of a child comes at the hands of another? There are without a doubt killers who walk among us. Is there a more loathsome killer lurking in the darkest corners of America than one that would prey on children? Such monsters have been with us since the first settlers arrived on American shores. We often fool ourselves into believing that the good old days were actually good, but that is far from the truth. Monsters have always been with us. They stalked the innocent in the days when children stayed close to the rugged settlements of the colonies afraid to wander into the dark forest. They were among us before the Civil War claimed the lives of thousands of men and boys. These monsters claimed the lives of the young and naive during the Gilden Age at the dawn of the 20th century through the depression and beyond. We know this as did our parents and their parents before them. The fear of strangers and their terrible deeds has been rooted in the minds of multiple generations of Americans. We created myths and legends and monstrous shapes hoping to scare children so that they never strayed too far from the welcoming light of home and yet blood was spilled. Children vanished never to be seen again. They became faces on milk cartons and cautionary tales of what happened when children were left alone. We must keep our children safe, parents told themselves, but even the most watchful eyes weren't always enough. Our cautionary tales created one of the most popular and most terrifying urban legends of all time. It involved just two things, a babysitter and a telephone. It tells the story of a babysitter who has been left in charge of young children for the night. The parents, hoping for a much needed night out of dinner and a movie, left this trusted neighbor girl with their children. She was experienced, she was reliable, and the parents had nothing to fear. The night is quiet and after finishing some homework, the babysitter turns on the television and the telephone rings. When the girl answers, she hears a man's harsh voice, have you checked the children? Startled, she, assuming it to be a prank, she hangs up the phone. The telephone rings again and once more the same man's voice repeats the question. The babysitter slams down the receiver, but it keeps ringing and the same man keeps asking about the children. Now terrified, she phones the police who assure her that they'll have the calls traced and find out who has been harassing her. A few minutes later, the police operator calls back with horrifying news and you could probably say it along with me. The calls are coming from inside the house. When officers arrive on the scene, they find a distraught babysitter and two murdered children in the upstairs nursery. The killer had somehow gotten into the house. He made the calls to terrorize the babysitter and lure her upstairs to her death. Of course, this morality play ends in tragedy for the young woman who did not watch the children closely enough. She loses her mind and has to be locked away in a mental institution for the rest of her life. Of course, this is only a story, right? I mean, we all know it's just an urban myth that illustrates the perils of being a babysitter and the fact that children are never really safe, even in the most innocent of circumstances. Stories like this and a lot of others like it have been told and retold thousands of times over the years. It's only a story or isn't. When you were growing up, how many times did you hear stories like that one? Or were told never to talk to a sketchy looking man that your mother pointed out on the street, or to never accept a ride in a car with someone you didn't know, or to never accept candy from strangers, especially in Halloween? It was in Halloween when every horror story that your mother could ever imagine came to life. Never knock on a door of a house without a porch light on. Never accept treats that were not professionally packaged. Never bite into an apple that your parents had not carefully checked beforehand. I mean, they were filled with needles and razor blades, don't you know? It all boiled down to never take candy from strangers. But that was crazy, wasn't it? I mean, it's Halloween for Pete's sake. Who is evil enough to stick razor blades into apples or put poison into candy bars? Those are just stories, aren't they? Those kinds of things never really happen. Well, as it turns out, stories like this often get started for a reason, and sometimes the monster is not a stranger at all. On Halloween night 1974, Timothy O'Brien and his sister Elizabeth had anxiously waited for their father Ronald to get home from work so that they could go trick-or-treating. The family, which included their mother Diane, lived in the suburb of Deer Park, Texas. Ronald was an optician at Texas State Optical in Houston, was a deacon at the Second Baptist Church. He also sank in the choir there and was in charge of the local bus program and was, as far as everybody knew, a wonderful loving father. When he finally walked through the door of the family home, the children rushed to him, hurrying him back out to the street. Still wearing his white optician's lab coat, perfect costume, Ronald took Timothy and Elizabeth out to celebrate Halloween. They met some friends and they went to the first house of the night. Timothy rang the doorbell. There was no answer. If anyone was home, they were taking far too long to answer the door. The children impatiently ran to the next house on the block, leaving Ronald to catch up. And when he did, he had five giant pixie sticks in his hands. Tubes of pure sugar goodness that the kids couldn't wait to consume. But Ronald promised he would distribute the candy among the children when they got back to the house. It was late when they returned home. Ronald got the children ready for bed, but before he fell asleep, Timothy asked for just one more treat from the night's bounty of sweets. He chose a 22-inch giant pixie sticks. The sugar had hardened into the tube, so his father helpfully rolled the candy between his hands to loosen the contents. Timothy poured the confection into his mouth, but his face wrinkled and discussed. It tasted terrible. Ronald quickly ran to get some Kool-Aid for his son to wash the bad taste away. Timothy never had the chance to drink that Kool-Aid. Within moments, he began to choke, vomit, and convulse. Something was terribly wrong. When paramedics arrived, they found Ronald cradling Timothy in his arms as the little boy gagged and foamed at the mouth, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital less than an hour later. An autopsy later revealed the eight-year-old had died from a fatal dose of cyanide. But where had it come from? The top two inches of the giant pixie sticks that Timothy had been so excited about contained enough poison to kill two grown adults. The little boy never had a chance. Word spread about Timothy's death naturally starting a panic in the community. Numerous parents in Deer Park in the surrounding area took the candy that their children had collected from trick-or-treating to the police, terrified that it might be laced with poison. None of it was, but the authorities could understand the fear that Timothy's death had caused. They had already started their investigation into the boy's murder. Thankfully, the other four laced pixie sticks, which Ronald O'Brien claimed he received from the first house on the trick-or-treating route after the kids had run ahead, had not yet been eaten. When questioned by detectives, Ronald sobbed as he suggested that an unidentified monster must have handed out poisoned candy to trick-or-treaters. He told police he vaguely remembered where the candy had come from, but he never got a good look at the owner. All he saw was a shadowy hand clutching the pixie sticks from behind a door. The police went to the address and questioned the owner of the house, Courtney Melvin, who worked as an air traffic controller at Hobby Airport. But the police were confounded when they learned that he had not left work until 10.30 p.m. on Halloween night. His wife had stopped answering the door when she ran out of candy around 6.45. That was before Ronald O'Brien claimed that he was even there. In addition, Mrs. Melvin had not given out any pixie sticks that night. Detectives interrogated the entire neighborhood and still couldn't find the source of the deadly candy. Ronald O'Brien was grief-stricken by his son's death. He was already having a terrible year and Timothy's death seemed to have pushed him over the edge with grief. Ronald was eight months behind in car payments and was being threatened with repossession. He defaulted on several bank loans and was suspected of theft at Texas State Optical and was close to being fired. He held 21 different jobs over the last decade and was more than $100,000 in debt. He further strained his family's finances by taking out a $10,000 life insurance policy on his children earlier in the year, to which his wife protested as an unnecessary expense. She also probably would have objected to the additional pair of $20,000 life insurance policies Ronald took out on Timothy and Elizabeth on October 3 if she had known about them. And she definitely would have been horrified to find out that near hours after Timothy's death, her husband called to collect on the policies. The police didn't know about the life insurance policies, not yet anyway, but they did discover that Ronald had visited a chemical supply store in Houston due by cyanide just a week before Halloween. He left without purchasing anything after the smallest amount available to purchase was five pounds. When they found out about the life insurance policies, they were convinced they had their man. Detectives theorized he had laced the candy with poison so that he could kill his own children for the life insurance money. Poisoning their friends with the extra pixie sticks would help cover up the crime. Luckily, none of the other candy was ever eaten. Investigators repeatedly questioned Ronald, but he maintained his innocence. He blamed the whole thing on some mad poisoner, just like in the stories who handed out Halloween candy laced with poison or needles and candy apples with razor blades inside. I mean, surely the police had heard those stories, right? O'Brien was arrested and brought to trial. On June 3, 1975, a jury took only 46 minutes to find the dedicated father and devout member of the Second Baptist Church guilty of capital murder and four counts of attempted murder. Ronald was sent to Death Row in Huntsville, Texas. He was so hated by other inmates, they reportedly petitioned to hold an organized demonstration on his execution date. They had to wait a while for that date, though. His first execution date was set for August 8, 1980, but his attorneys managed to drag things out until March 31, 1984. Shortly before midnight, he was executed by lethal injection. Outside of the prison, a crowd of about 300 demonstrators cheered while others yelled, trick or treat. Ronald O'Brien didn't just kill his son and tried to kill four other children. On October 31, 1974, he also killed the idea of Halloween for several generations of kids that hadn't even been born yet. Ronald, who was known as the Candyman by his fellow Death Row inmates, successfully perpetrated the legend that there are strangers out there intent on killing children with poisoned Halloween candy. The truth was, there had never been a case of a stranger handing out poisoned candy to kids on Halloween. Ever. That really had just been an urban legend. But in 1974, there finally was such a case. But he was no stranger. Ronald O'Brien was a monster in human form and a nightmare brought to life. One of the most terrifying stories that I think I've ever told. Alright, well, let's have a little bit of fun now and check on some of those comments that have been coming in. Let's see here. You guys are talking amongst yourselves, so I have to say Aaron says the monkey's paw, a good classic. You guys are are you I love. Okay, you guys are talking amongst yourselves, so I have no idea what you're referring to. Be right back. I take the dogs out. Hold on. I gotta I gotta scroll back here. You guys are Aaron says, I always liked the one where the girl was dare to put a knife in a grave in the middle of the night, but she stabbed her dress by accident and died of fright. Never heard of that one. If that's an urban legend, if you got a link to that or something send it to me, I'd actually like to see that one. Layla said, I just checked my email. Never received one from you. I signed up again hoping to win. Well, Layla, you're probably in. You might want to check your junk mail folder or spam folder just to make sure, but most of the time that did. That's fine. Let's see here. Sue says they did happen. I remember cases in our town when I was in grade school. If you're referring to the poisoning and stuff like that, it might have been back in 1974 is the is the first incident. So I don't know. I don't know how old you are. Where that puts you. That was written by author Troy Taylor. So I just assume that he he knows what he's talking about. David says he discovered Weird Darkness a couple years ago. Listen to it a lot. Really like your voice and energy, Darren. First time being able to watch. Thank you for the shows. Well, thank you, David. I appreciate the very nice comments. Maria says, Hi, Darren question. Are you ever going to travel with the Weird Darkness machine to Texas around Houston or Galveston? The Weirdo wagon is scheduled to be in Plano, Texas in the near future. There's there is a supernatural TV show fan convention taking place there. And I've got a table there so I can give out all my free free goodies and stuff. I don't think I'm near Houston or Galveston in the near future. That being said, as I say, if you know of of an event that you that you think I should be a part of in your area, let me know about it. And if I have the weekend available and, you know, I'm not already booked doing something else, I'll take a look at it and I might actually might actually go. I'm I am actively looking for for places to go. So LeBont said that was a cool video. I'm assuming you're talking about the the what was that called? Mountain King, King, Mountain King, whatever. Anyway, the I hate when I do a live show and it suddenly I can't I can't think of words that I'm looking for. But the acapella group that's I'm sure that's what you were thinking of. Let's see here. Jeffrey says headless horseman is his favorite. Okay. Didi says that was weird and funny. I'm sure you're talking about the about the video. Everyone in this video looks familiar, but I can't place any of them. Okay. First year watching from Texas. Josh says you got to watch the live stream. Well, I've shared a number of Halloween cautionary tales on Weird Darkness over the years, but I doubt I've shared a weirder one than this. You're going to want to pay really close attention because the language of this is a bit antiquated, but it is totally worth it. And before I get into this story, it's best that you know that there's an old tradition on Halloween for a young single man or woman to throw hemp seed over their shoulder three times saying, hemp seed I saw the hemp seed I saw the and he or she that is to be my true love come after me and draw the they would then look over their shoulder and hopefully see an apparition of the person that they would someday marry gathering up on the hemp. Okay. Now for the article that I came across this is from the cork mercantile chronicle from November 22 1802 I found this at newspapers.com this is a this is a trip again it's hand-equated language so something just to keep in mind before we do that let me start up that video again on doorbell there we go okay so here's the here's the article the ceremony of I almost need to almost want to do an accent on this but I won't the ceremony of sowing hemp seed on Halloween is known to most of our readers the young girl of the name of Mabel Carr servant of Mr. Matheson type founder would need would needs have her Halloween on Monday week and notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of her master who represented the impropriety and absurdity of prying into the secrets of futurity she would not be dissuaded from sowing her hemp seed on that night about 10 o'clock she accordingly went into the foundry alone with a light in her hand which she placed on one of the tables while she performed her incantations she walked through the shop several times pronouncing aloud the words used on such occasions and so anxious was she to see something as she termed it that having seen nothing she gathered up the seed to sow it a second time in the course of this second sowing according to her own account a tall meager figure presented itself to her imagination she shrieked aloud and ran immediately into the house all the doors being open after relating all that she had seen she went to bed placing the Bible under her head she rose on Tuesday and went through the labors of the day in apparent good health but the evening appeared but in the evening uh uh something appeared she let me try that again but in the evening she appeared somewhat timid she however had her supper as usual and went to bed without any symptoms of fear next morning she was called but did not answer again was called but still no answer a daughter of mr matthewsons then rose went to her and found that she was very sick and that she had been so during part of the night tea was ordered for her but before it could be prepared she was seized with a stupor the pulse became sunk and breathing difficult and the hands swollen and blackish a medical gentleman was instantly called he said it was an attack of an apoplexy which she could not survive more than 10 minutes and in rather less than that time she expired the blood bursting from her nose mouth etc the surgeon on being informed the transactions of monday night was clearly an opinion that the impression made on her imagination by the fancy apparition was the cause of this fatal catastrophe we've given the particulars of this unfortunate affair so minutely because reports injurious injurious to a very worthy man have gone abroad on the subject it has been stated that one of mr matthews men concealed himself in the foundry to alarm the girl during her foolish probation it is false mr m's people leave off work at eight o'clock this happened at ten and there was not a soul within the shop but herself it has been further stated that she fell into a faint on the appearance of the fan seed specter and was left to die in that situation it will be seen from the above authentic statement that this is an absolute falsehood and a most malicious one so however you celebrate halloween this year avoid the hemp seed unless of course you want to see something you know now that i think of it listening to this show you probably do all right let's check out a few more of the comments that have been coming in uh they're coming in on facebook twitter and and uh also youtube uh let's see here um uh genean saying explain the stream stopping for policy violation uh oh uh oh i don't know i don't know um it could be that i'm playing copyrighted material in the live stream that might be part of it i don't know but i'm looking at the youtube right now and it appears to be continuing so and you're commenting on youtube so i'm not sure what it is the youtube stream may have stopped briefly because i was playing a video and then after the video stopped they they uh continued it that might have been what it was um i don't know so um yeah i thought master mash was in the public domain as well but i guess i guess not okay well you learn something new every day um erin wants to know who the winner was the winner of this last time was debora l excuse me debora lesich debora lesich so um the singer reminds me of boris carloff well yeah that he was actually doing a boris carloff impression uh during the song that was actually his his intent i'm really sorry you guys couldn't see all of that song that kind of stinks for you guys um text says time to hunt down an angry mob and hunt down a youtuber raking away the stream let's go y'all evil dies tonight nice uh nice quote from halloween kills i love it okay uh you're uh tracy's watching on the on phone on facebook and on youtube on tv um did the same thing happened on facebook tracy or was it just youtube i would actually like to know so um uh joshua says he got to hear war the worlds for the first time last night could you imagine if you uh did that on this day in time i don't you wouldn't be the same nowadays but um somebody did comment on i think it was on on the youtube that i that i posted on that somebody commented that that is exactly the reason why they don't announce that aliens are real today because they think that's exactly what would happen like what war the worlds did um tracy will says it did work on facebook okay good all right so maybe i'll want to uh switch over to facebook uh that's that's up to you um ike says good evening hope you're having a wonderful halloween i'm watching halloween listening to your show well thank ike's thank you ike appreciate it um okay i think that's everybody for now okay that's that's most of the big comments the rest of you the rest of them are i'll hear stefanie saying uh love your podcast era and first time being able to watch the live stream where could people send in their creepy stories uh good question that's something that anybody can do in fact i love getting your creepy stories once a month i do something called fireside frights and if you want to send in your story that's what it'll be included in just go to weirddarkness.com and click on tell your story and you can uh you can turn in your story there just weirddarkness.com and then click on tell your story if you rather have just a url it's weirddarkness.com slash submit um but it works either way um if you like what you're hearing tonight if you want some more halloween from me and if you also want to chat with me online uh you can tune in tomorrow night to my syndicated radio show it is on over 40 stations around the nation on the weekends but i also do a replay on tuesday nights at kcorradio.com and while that show airs i hang out in their chat room and converse with any weirdos who want to talk so that's tomorrow night uh by the way tomorrow night will be my halloween episode as well so we do this every tuesday night at 8 p.m pacific 11 p.m eastern it's at kcorradio.com just click on listen live when you go there and that'll bring you to the online player to listen and then down that page you'll see the chat room where i'll be so i hope you'll join me tomorrow night if you can it's in the chat room uh 8 p.m pacific 11 p.m eastern at kcorradio.com okay that moment when you realize the fake body at a haunted house is real that's awesome until that is you realize it's not a real person playing dead but a real person that is dead that's the stuff psychiatrists live for real dead body halloween decorations are for the macabre and certainly something to avoid for the faint of heart these overly creepy halloween decorations are well equally equal parts frightening equal parts contemptible but 100 messed up these are real dead people that ended up mistaken as or purposely used for the purposes of making a spooky night or setting the night or the setting seem more authentic the real reason poltergeist was cursed you may have heard about that over the years the curse of the poltergeist movies has been one of the most retold rumors in hollywood three films in the franchise for the principal actors dead within years or even months of the film's release and now we all know the poltergeist films were not done on or strictly for halloween but the spooky stories on and off the set are said to have been the result of some sinister props that set off a gory chain of events in 1982 months after the release of the first poltergeist film dominique done the older sister from the movie was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend in 1985 julian beck who played the bad spirit on poltergeist two died of stomach cancer in 1987 will samson the good spirit in poltergeist two he died after a heart lung transplant failed to take and finally at least so far in 1988 heatherl roark who appeared in all three films died of a septic infection that caused severe bowel blockage she went through all the filming of poltergeist three with symptoms of this condition and eventually died of cardiac arrest enroute to the hospital to remove the blockage she was 12 years old people die yes but why so many from this one franchise was something done on the sets of the film to anger the spirit world was something done to tempt the ire of other worlds of the another world while filming the movies well it was all in the props as has been revealed in many interviews with the surviving cast and crew over the years real bones and skeletons were used as set decorations in poltergeist the first movie and the second a weird fact was that it was not revealed to the actors in the first movie that they were swimming in that hole you know with real skeletons mm-hmm yeah that led actor will samson performing a ritual on the set of the second movie to exercise the spirits that might be present might be present during filming there was also an actual mummy found on the set of the six million dollar man tv series in 1976 the pike amusement park in long beach california was being prepped to film an episode of the six million dollar man the props for the scene which would take place in a fun house were being assessed by the director when he saw a man hanging from a rope in the corner and he didn't like that prop a crewman went to move the dummy and was shocked when the dummies arm came off exposing a real human arm bone now before you ask no this was not the six million dollar man halloween special but finding out a human prop is the real thing is still pretty creepy medical examiners identified the body as a vagabond from oklahoma named elmer mccurdy following by a posse uh following by a followed by a posse sent to track the man after he and a handful of others robbed a train of 46 dollars and a shipment of whiskey mccurdy once found once he was found was embalmed with arsenic and used as a prop by the undertaker who received the body he charged people in nickel to come see the corpse of the bandit who wouldn't give up well that body changed hands a few times until somehow it ended up as the property of the amusement park in long beach where unfitting visitors more unwitting visitors marveled at this dummy for years that looked so realistic just to discover later it was an actual human body new york morgue technicians they staged a photo shoot with dead bodies you ever wonder what happens to you after you die i may not in the metaphysical heaven hell sense but your physical your physical dead body assuming that you die under somewhat normal circumstances your body goes to a morgue for processing like the one in new york attended by mortuary technician cahill brosfield when the office of the chief medical examiner took over the supervision of the brooklyn morgue where brosfield was employed things started to calm down in what was once a raucous work environment and by raucous i of course mean to say that they used body parts of corpses as play things they took pictures in november of 2009 blackfield claims a stack of polaroids which depicted him and other unidentified lab technicians posing with severed heads and other body parts in the morgue was stolen from his possession and used in an attempt at blackmail several months after he refused to pay his blackmailer for silence the photos made their way to the management and brosfield was suspended from his position without pay maybe the worst thing about this body parts as props situation is the fact that blackfield and the other technicians they didn't limit themselves to just halloween time to take their pictures some of the confiscated photos were dated while others were unlabeled leading investigators to believe the practice spanned years a dead body halloween decoration was on a person's porch and it turned out to be the real thing on october on a day in october 2009 mostafa muhammad zayed's neighbors they thought that he had gone all out with his halloween decorations for the year going so far as to put a slumped over sinister looking dummy on his porch to frighten his neighbors for days neighbors and guests marveled at the authenticity of the prop though nobody rang mr zayed's doorbell to ask where he had purchased this amazing dummy after a few days someone in the 75-year-old marina del ray california complex they suspected something might be amiss with the prop and called the police who discovered it was not a fake body after all but zayed's corpse on the porch gradually decomposing for almost four days after a single gunshot wound to the eye ended the man's life the body had been looking over the complex for days without anyone noticing that it was not a decoration but the body of their former neighbor there was also the case of the dead woman in the tree in frederica delaware a 42-year-old woman hung from a tree simultaneously frightening and impressing passersby for hours before it was discovered the lifelike corpse hanging from the tree had actually been void of life since that morning on october 25th or 26th 2005 an unidentified woman climbed a tree a quarter mile from her home and jumped from a tall branch in an apparent suicide because of the proximity to halloween all that drove by the display assumed it to be just a clever display for the public and failed to report the body until much later in the morning and then there's the woman on the fence Ohio residents were alarmed to find out what they presumed to be a corpse like halloween decoration hanging from a fence turned out to be an actual dead person on october 31st 2015 police investigated donnie hi you gotta gotta love uh gotta love pronunciation of words uh uh proper names donnie cushion or uh they investigated we'll just say they invested they investigated donnie uh for the murder of rebecca kade a local woman however he was ultimately found not guilty in 2017 and local construction workers believed kade's body to be a halloween decoration only to find out later that it was in fact a dead woman okay let's take a look at some of our other um comments that have come in mackayla says facebook disconnected me after i switched to that to that to hear the music oh so maybe maybe facebook is cutting this out if not i'll keep that in mind for next year uh listening while waiting for trunk or treat all right monica we did a trunk or treat uh the other day and had so much fun with it um we we did it uh saturday it was a combination between our church and the ymca and we had 2,500 people show up uh and most of those kids of course good thing we spent a lot of money on candy before we showed up there was a lot of a lot of kids a lot of kids okay um see pam says you're home now for the live scream yay uh just all in one resource says it's amazing what happens when you donate your body for science believe me a lot of bodies are not used for science i was actually talking to somebody about that the other day somebody who actually works in that in that industry um and they said you know you can be more specific as to who you donate your body to or what you but donate it for um if you just say donate to science you never know what's going to happen to your body so jeffrey schueller says why not six thousand dollars why not please give well i'll take six thousand dollars for our overcoming the darkness campaign i didn't put the six thousand in just because i didn't want to stretch it too far plus i love getting over the goal if possible which we have done but we still could use your your uh your donations uh c w l says the company i work for used to put out a halloween skeleton until we found out it was a real life skeleton and we don't decorate for halloween anymore so one little error like that and suddenly you don't decorate for halloween anymore just one corpse you find sometime and oh that takes all the fun out of halloween wow that's amazing okay uh let's see here um zark says heather orork used to live in my town marries donuts here as pictures of most of their customers and what is heather interesting okay um step says i love the haunted movie set stories good i'm glad you like that thank you um just all in one comes back saying i've watched the documentary on this they're strange it also goes for another movie called exorcist they were just as strange yes yeah there are uh there's there's stories about the exorcist being cursed as well well so now that we've covered the halloween decorations and props that turned out to be actual corpses let's flip that around and look at real people who somehow became corpses at halloween haunted houses and attractions in september 2017 a 21-year-old man chung died after he was struck with a moving piece of machinery in a haunted house chung made his way through a maze called buried alive which was part of a halloween themed fasted ocean park in hong kong five minutes after entering park attendants found chung unconscious in the maze the local government he believes that he entered into an area for mechanical operations that was not open to visitors and was hit by a mechanical part chung was pronounced dead at the hospital the government ordered the ride to close after that fatal accident in september 1957 in the small farming community of utica kansas local parents and school officials were growing worried about the extent to which high school seniors were hazing the incoming freshman annual gymnasium parties commemorating the new pupils had resulted in too much rough housing so english teacher betty stevens and principal william hobert sally devised something different for their students mrs stevens led her charges to an abandoned farmhouse a couple miles outside of town she and some other school staff had decorated the dilapidated home as a haunted house for a pre-hlloween party the centerpiece was principal sally who would pretend to be hanging in the middle of a dark room covered in grease paint and ketchup to simulate blood well you know what happened the students did indeed get a kick out of the moaning limply hanging principal but when mr stevens slipped out of the party to get a picture of sally she made a shocking discovery he had slipped causing the news to tighten on his neck the moaning and struggling the principal well he had not been acting at all the students actually witnessed the slow painful strangling death of mr sally in october of 2014 16-year-old christian faith bang visited land of illusion haunted screen park in middleton ohio a seasonal halloween attraction where her father's band was supposed to perform that night bang entered one of the haunted attractions and collapsed she was given cpr by her mother in paramedics but bang succumbed to a fatal heart attack bang only had one lung and this put significant stress on her heart the county coroner's office would later speculate that fear might have exacerbated the teen's fatal condition in october of 1990 the 17-year-old brian jewel was working at a lakewood new jersey haunted hayride performing a stunt that he had done several times before in the act jewel would simulate hanging himself with a fake noose by stepping off of a platform about one foot off the ground that night though the noose which was designed to not tighten inexplicably did choking and killing jewel when he stepped off the platform about 40 people unwittingly saw a real hanging corpse as the tractor driver became concerned later when it dawned on him the jewel had not been delivering his usual scripted speech on halloween night in 2016 in this small town of chunky massachusetts a haunted hayride ended in a fatal disaster the modest ride holding just 10 guests was moving along the rural mississippi countryside when did i say chunky massachusetts i meant chunky mississippi but he was moving along the rural mississippi countryside this this hayride when tragedy struck a large ford f-150 pickup truck collided with the trailer carrying the people three passengers were tragically killed the rest were injured phantom manor the haunted house ride at disneyland paris is designed to offer its guests a frightful but harmlessly fun experience it's a heavily visited mystery-based amusement ride at the park in april 2016 however disney cast and crew members made a grisly discovery at phantom manor a 45-year-old technician was found electrocuted to death disney closed the ride allowing the police to perform a proper investigation all right so um let's check some of more of those comments see how see how those are coming in we've got uh jenny saying happy halloween everybody um pam says does chunky mississippi make anybody else think of the candy bar that's exactly what i thought of exactly what i thought of uh jenny says rockport texas where the hurricane hardy went through um see here jenny also says don't know who won since the stream went down yeah sorry about that i'm not going to do any more videos that's just that's just too much of a hassle uh but paul tubs was our last our last victim paul tubs um if you were if you're watching on youtube or facebook and it went down for you sorry about that um but paul tubs uh you have until the end of tonight to to email me so you can win your price back vincent says where you guys at i'm in east central florida well uh let him let him know in the youtube comments let him know where you are me i'm in loves park illinois uh let's see here um tim says i hope that hope youtube doesn't do that again well it's not going to if i don't play any more videos so i will keep this in mind for next year i'm really sorry folks i had so much fun videos that i wanted to share with you guys tonight and it just well it just youtube what do you expect uh nicole says put weird darkness on while doing halloween hair and makeup and all my clients love it well thank you nicole i appreciate that so you're one of our weird at work people uh if you have people listening at work with you be sure to uh be sure to register for my monthly weird at work contest you can do that on the contest page at weirddarkness.com and if you don't win this month then just re-register for next month and keep doing it until you do it in 1948 saturday in the early afternoon the denora pencil being a high school football team was defeated on its own home turf legion field by local rival monon monon monon monongahala high school there you go monongahala wow i even practiced that before tonight and i still didn't get it right anyway the final score was monongahala 27 denora seven not a single pass was thrown during the entire game by either team but there was something far more odd sinister and tragic than erratic play on the gridiron that both literally and figuratively overshadowed the field and the 150 or so players and spectators who had gathered together that afternoon at legion field in the suburb of western pennsylvania it was the smog speaking 60 years later in 2008 to reporters from the pittsburgh gazette local resident sam jackson who played in the football game for monongahala high school remembered the smog was like a big cloud of yellowish mist hanging over the players the dora resident paul brown who had left work early from the us the steel company mill where he worked on saturday october 30th 1948 in order to attend the football game told reporters it took a while to get up the hill to the game because it was so foggy i was sitting in the fourth row you could see them punt the ball hear them kick it but it just disappeared into the clouds the denora smog with the new york times has since called one of the worst air pollution disasters in our nation's history affected much more than just a high school football game in suburban pennsylvania before all was said and done what became known as the denora smog which began october 27th 1948 and did not lift for more than four full days finally dissipated sometime the evening of halloween october 31st it would directly claim the lives of 20 people over 5000 residents of denora pennsylvania out of a total of approximately 14 000 would become sick with everything ranging from upper respiratory infections and bronchitis to nausea and vomiting over the course of this four-day smog the smog first began to settle over denora a suburb roughly 30 miles south of pittsburgh during the afternoon of wednesday october 27th 1948 right when most of the townspeople were outside and lining the main street to watch all the town's school children march by in costumes for denora's annual children's halloween parade the yellow smog settled over denora at the start of the long halloween weekend and it stayed in place like a yellow smoke screen for the next 96 hours at its height on the night of october 30th and the morning of october 31st residents described the denora smog as an impenetrable yellow haze driving became impossible and even walking around in public proved hazardous the first death from the smog occurred in the local denora hospital at just after 2 a.m. in the morning on saturday october 30th 1948 over the course of the next 36 hours 19 more residents of denora and the neighboring town of webster would die as a direct result of the smog all the victims died from the onset of acute asthma or the inability to breathe a sort of yellow smog induced asphyxiation and all of those who died in the immediate presence of the smog were either elderly or young children hospitals in the area filled to capacity and many were turned away during the denora smog disaster residents were advised to flee the town and outlying areas during the height of the smog by the local authorities via message broadcasts over the radios but as driving was impossible these advisories simply couldn't be heeded by anyone by halloween night sunday october 31st 1948 the local funeral parlor had run out of caskets for sale phone calls flooded into doctor's offices reporting various respiratory problems and difficulty breathing one brave soul doctor william ronigas carried a lantern through the streets of denora and led ambulances through the town on foot so that medical personnel could reach the most severely ill victims of the smog and transport them to the hospital where they could receive life-saving oxygen on halloween 1948 there was no surprised to speak of in denora pennsylvania or no sunrise that is to speak of in denora pennsylvania the town was caught in the grips of a monstrous yellow smog and the numbers of dead and dying were mounting even higher then almost miraculously before the sun was due to set that halloween the smog suddenly lifted as dr ronigas who had battled the effects of the smog on foot the whole time told reporters the day after the disaster ended if the fog hadn't lifted when it did the casualty list would have been a thousand or maybe more located 30 miles south of pittsburgh on the banks of the monongahollar river prior to the 20th century prior to the 20th century denora pennsylvania had been a small quiet and rural farming community nestled in a valley of the appellation mountains with 400 foot high cliffs rising up on both sides of the town however in 1902 as andrew carnagey owned steel uh uh and let me try that again however in 1902 and andrew carnagey owned steel factory a factory for the united states steel company known the world over as the famous u.s steel opened in the valley right outside of denora the u.s steel factory brought jobs middle-class affluence and more and more residents to the once rural valley of denora pennsylvania by 1908 only six years after the factory's opening denora was home to the largest concentration of railroad freight traffic in the eastern united states and then in 1915 a zinc mining works known to locals as the zinc plant opened up in denora right next to carnagey's u.s steel factory with steel fires burning hazardous zinc mining production tons uh producing tons of toxic waste and pollutants and grotesquely high carbon monoxide emissions from the highly concentrated freight trains at denora officials from the federal government realized early on that air pollution in and around denora could pose a dangerous uh danger to public health consequently in 1918 the american steel and wire company of denora was fined by the federal government for excessive air pollution at a time when such fines were all but unheard of however the fine was paid and no corrective action was ever pursued during the 1920s local farmers had brought class action suits against u.s steel due to the loss of crops and sickness caused to their love to their livestock as a result of the pollution caused by the steelworks and the nearby zinc plant but u.s steel was able to fight off the suits in court and plans to upgrade the zinc work furnaces in order to have them produce less smoke were never implemented by 1948 given the higher rates of pollutants especially metallic particulate matter in the air above denora in late october 1948 conditions were more than right for one of america's histories american history's worst environmental disasters the american steel and wire plant and the denora zinc works emitted a deadly combination of poisonous gases and highly toxic particulate matter into the air and in october of 1948 all of those toxins became trapped in the sky just above denora as a result of a most unfortunate and peculiar weather event called a temperature inversion a temperature inversion is when cold air is trapped in a bubble by a layer of warmer air that settles above it causing the cold air beneath to become stagnant and still in the case of the denora smog disaster this bubble filled with metallic toxins poisonous gases in the form of a yellow smoke cloud became trapped above the town for four whole days as it settled down into the valley and had nowhere else to go to the residents of denora pennsylvania it simply became a yellow cloud of suffocation and death author historian and environmental activist debora davis in her work entitled when smoke ran like water tales of environmental deception and the battle against pollution wrote to the victims of the denora smog disaster that if you look at the x-rays of their lungs they looked like the survivors of the survivors of poison gas warfare even a full decade after the smog disaster government investigators working on behalf of the commonwealth pennsylvania found that the early mortality rate and incidence of chronic respiratory illness among residents of denora was twice that of residents from other nearby communities denora at the average house price in denora dropped by more than 10 percent within a year of the disaster but at the time of the smog disaster the vast majority of denora's 14 000 plus residents were employed either by the steel plant or the zinc works and these industries were the economic lifeblood of the community loyalty to the mills was ingrained almost from birth into the minds of those who lived in denora as miss davis states in her work on the subject the majority of the town worked in the mills any suggestion that there could be a problem with the mill itself which was supporting them financially was simply something that they could not entertain so much so that it was reported in newspapers around the country that the first state government investigators sent to denora to look into the smog disaster in november of 1948 were literally run out of town by people armed with handguns however in conjunction with the state of pennsylvania by the end of 1948 an investigation was launched by the newly formed united states public health service into the causes and results of the smog disaster in total 25 federal investigators were sent to denora and the neighboring town of webster to look into the disaster while there government investigators interviewed residents inspected crops drew blood from the livestock and took countless air samples in and around denora the federal government's official report on the denora smog disaster was issued in october of 1949 almost exactly a year to the day of the suffocating yellow clouds onset in the report the united states public health service found that out of a total population of just over 14 000 individuals no less than 5000 residents of denora had either died or become seriously ill as a result of the smog disaster rather instead of directly blaming the air pollution itself the government reported a report blamed the relatively rare weather phenomenon on a temperature inversion and the high cliffs that surround the town of denora as being the primary causes behind the smog disaster of halloween weekend 1948 despite the federal government's reticence to overly to overtly blame heavy metal production and air pollution itself for causing the denora smog disaster of 1948 the incident did gain nationwide media exposure throughout the united states and for really the first time in american history americans began to take a serious look at the harmful effects of air pollution on our rapidly urbanizing nation one article entitled simply the fog published in the new yorker in 1950 and written by celebrated medical journalist britney roesch was read by millions and brought home to many americans the depth of the suffering experience by the residents of denora as a result of air pollution soon a nascent clean air movement which preached against the harmful effects of air pollution on people's health and well-being began to spread and grow across the nation for the first time in history as a direct result of the denora smog disaster of 1948 americans realized that short-term exposure to large amounts of toxins and pollutants could have a harmful or even fatal effect on otherwise healthy people in 1963 15 years after the denora smog disaster congress passed the clean air act which required that the united states developed and enforced federal regulations to help protect the general public from exposure to harmful amounts of airborne toxins and pollutants just like those that had caused the denora smog disaster for nearly 60 years no one talked much about the denora smog disaster perhaps the memories of that suffocating yellow haze that enveloped their town for four days and its deadly grasp were just too traumatic for many of the town's aging and elderly residents who could still remember who could still remember it to speak about it but then on the 60th anniversary of the disaster the memories of those who died and all those who suffered during the denora smog disaster were forever immortalized when the town opened the denora smog museum on the banks of the monogahala river and today that museum stands as a small and silent reminder to all who walk by of a terrifying yellow haze that descended on a small pennsylvania town in october 1948 and it ended up changing the way we americans viewed our world forever all right so let's go back and check some of the comments that have been coming in um somebody uh just all in what resources you might want to look into doing the roku thing um i could but i do this so i do this so rarely i don't i don't think it would be worth looking into it um rob says that's a long story sorry rob um let's see here uh sark says i still want to visit cent centrelia sometime yes centrelia pennsylvania the inspiration at least some people believe the inspiration for the the video game silent hill uh shon gibson says i'll definitely work on this story for the weekend to turn it into darin thank you shon yes please send me your story um i'd appreciate that um let's see here joshua says thanks for all that you do but i was watching a facebook and now it's telling me that you are not live anymore so youtube it is agnabit sorry all right well you know that that happens uh jeffrey says my son keeps telling me to post this so i hope you read it brail and my son is watching with me he loves the micro terrors he wants to wish you a happy halloween and a happy birthday well thank you very much jeffrey i appreciate it uh folks give me give me two seconds i gotta do something real quick and i will be right back really a pee break uh can you do a pee break in 60 seconds i can't i just had to talk to my bride for a couple of seconds and also get a grab a drink of my weird dark roast coffee with pumpkin spice creamer um okay anyway um let's see here i like the short pauses um okay actually i think we i think we've covered it much i met her in the park on a moonlit night without a single word i knew our love was right i felt her hot breath get near when she nibbled on my ear that i saw her face come into the light she's my werewolf girlfriend it was love at first bite she's my werewolf girlfriend she's only dangerous at night she's still a fox to me even though she has like cathropy my werewolf girlfriend and every month she has her womanly change but instead of getting grumpy she suffers from the mange i don't need to buy her furs the best in the world is already hers her manicures are out of my price range she's my werewolf girlfriend it was love at first bite my werewolf girlfriend she's only dangerous at night oh she's still a fox to me even though she has like cathropy girlfriend and every dangerous when we fight it's really strange when we kiss good night to be the leader of my i need more allergic to silver so i buy her gold i know she's healthy when her nose is cold i know our love will never fail when she starts to wag her tail by the door when i get home she's my werewolf girlfriend it was love at first bite and she's only dangerous at night oh she's still a fox to me even though she has like cathropy girlfriend girlfriend okay you guys seem to have a lot of fun with that one i'm looking at all the comments that are coming in and you uh you like that so that's yeah i love i love the one uh somebody said take that where is it here um there you go take that youtube it's a dare on original thank you janine i appreciate that um by the way i've stopped the video for the doorbell because uh trick-or-treat hours are over here in loves park illinois so there's no sense in and continuing that so all right let me let me share just some of the comments that came in though during that song before i tell you our new winner uh let's see here um zark said lol didi says lol new favorite song vinson gave me a couple of thumbs up um i love uh coop see you masters see you online i love werewolf girlfriend i hope you share it as a youtube short so i can share it with others um i am going to be sharing it on youtube uh i think it's ready to um ready to post uh after the show tonight i think it's gonna post some time later tonight or early early tomorrow so it'll be there as a video it's not gonna be a short it'll just be a straight video but uh there you go uh zark said still a fox to me even though she has likeanthropy thank you i um vincent says great song tim petty says this is the best song i've ever heard okay well i'm i'm not gonna take that at face value too but thank you very much uh jeffry says need to upload the video onto youtube by itself yep that's that i will be doing that i'll double check on that as soon as the show's over um just to make sure that it is set um and i also apologize for the singing on that i know some of you um said that it was it was good but that was just a one take type of thing i i just had to sit here in front i couldn't hear myself the uh the the way i've got things set up here in the studio i cannot sing and listen to music at the same time while recording and so i had to put one headphone on my ear and the other one i was one headphone layer to listen to the music and then um speak here and i had a completely separate device playing the music um and then i had to put them together later and it's it was it was it was a mess but anyway um and i haven't sung in not professionally in years uh because i stopped singing many years ago uh it's a long drawn out story but essentially i i i abused my voice i wasn't singing properly but on the plus side i ended up getting the voice for voiceovers so so it's not really a bad thing um but you can you can tell that singing is not my forte anymore but i still enjoyed putting it together okay uh continuing on here um let's see uh Vincent said really good singing voice Darren kind of Bruce Springsteen sounding you know i hadn't really thought about that that does kind of have a Bruce Springsteen sound to it um uh dan wants to know is that Zach Wilde uh no it's Darren Marlar i'm the one that's saying that one i i wrote the song the lyrics the melody i sang it and then i hired someone to to uh put the music behind it and they have to stay anonymous for professional reasons but they did a great job with it uh let's see Vincent says yeah yeah yeah need more songs from him are you playing the guitar Darren no that wasn't me um Michelle's giving me a standing ovation there thank you very much um uh seal wants me to put it on youtube i will do that again Michaela says the song is my new fave thank you Michaela um Michaela is somewhat biased i've adopted her as my little sister but still uh Kyle says awesome song Deedy says that was beautiful Nick says great song Raina says love it um Gus said that part about mange maybe snort my coffee uh Vincent says it's pronounced yana cone yana cone i have no idea what you're referring to like yana yana cone i have i have no idea isabel says very springsteen asked Steve says uh is all i said was hi Darren um okay all right so that that's it for those that graphic uh in the bag actually works pretty well because we're getting ready to talk about halloween candy oh halloween you're you're nothing like the original holiday area now that's okay i mean thanks to our socioeconomic ideologies we found several ways to capitalize on halloween and enhance the absolute best parts of it all you know that mass consumption of candy there's nothing like knocking on people's doors asking for candy and coming home with a full pillowcase or basket of those sugary treats and we all know that there's this unspoken hierarchy to halloween candy as well i mean there's the good stuff there's the king size stickers the Reese's peanut butter cups full size bags of m&m's you got the candy bars that you're willing to trade though you know maybe that three musketeers bar or that milky way and don't forget the candy that you give to your younger brother because he doesn't know the difference between a delicious Reese's and one of those disgusting little pumpkin shaped candies and then there's the candy that your parents suspect has been tampered with though we'd rather enjoy our candy without fear that someone has done something malicious to it we can't not anymore there are some creeps out there who delight in doing it nowadays for decades parents are worried about the possibility of their children eating a piece of halloween candy laced with drugs or filled with needles in 1983 chicago sun times advice columnist and landers she even wrote a piece about this warning readers that in recent years there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison and taffy apples and halloween candy that said some skeptics write the idea off as an urban legend except for that story that i shared earlier in this episode and there have certainly been false reports and exaggerated stories of tainted candy but there have been a number of shocking and even deadly stories of poisoned halloween candy dating back to the 1950s despite the story that i shared earlier these are some of the real stories that led that contributed to the collective fear the kids might bring home more than candy when they go out trick-or-treating there's the original candy man meet william v shine a quiet dentist from fremont california on halloween 1959 he handed out 450 pieces of candy to trick-or-treaters that happened to be heart-shaped candy coated laxatives nobody knows why he did this but if it was if he was out to make the kids sick well he succeeded 30 kids fell ill parents traced the candy back to the band living at 48 44 norris road and it was none other than shine himself when shine found out the police were looking for him he skipped town police arrested his good friend hazel engelby who was handing out candy with him that night though shine eventually turned himself in on november 11 and he was charged with unlawful dispensing of drugs and outrage of public decency the court dropped the drug dispensing charges and let engelby off the hook shine however still faced a $500 fine and spent six months behind bars a few years later he was arrested again this time for insurance fraud they spent two months in county jail shine passed away in 2007 but he left a legacy of laced halloween candy that would haunt us to this day in 1968 the new york times reported 13 cases of children in new jersey finding razor blades and apples that they received while trick-or-treating on 75% of these cases the children were uninjured however fear of these razor blade apples was so strong the state passed a law to criminalize tampering with halloween candy despite the public reaction to these events two detailed studies of the cases conducted in 1972 and 1982 determined nearly all the claims were false and the children had put the razors of the apples themselves to propagate the urban legend but not every single instance was written off as a hoax that's it's bad enough eating milk duds um that that they get stuck to your molars but finding bullets where your candy supposed to be that's probably worse back in 2014 the mother from Ohio discovered bullets in her four-year-old son's box of milk duds and what made this an even more troublesome discovery was that her son's preschool had handed them out during a trick-or-treat event and these were certainly not milk duds nor were they duds if you know what i mean about bullets these were live rounds all 22 caliber now the school they didn't have anything to tell the press about this incident they were not the ones who brought in the bullet filled candy boxes i would hope not parents brought in the candy from home which means that this is either a sick prank or a really scary message and whatever the case it was not a mistake after trick-or-treating in reynoldsburg ohio in 2015 a boy began biting into a snickers bar but stopped when something just didn't feel right that's something turned out to be a disposable razor which was shoved into the nougat police believed the incident was isolated but named no suspects states one by one are legalizing marijuana for recreational use but before the prohibition on pot was lifted people had to resort to some clever ways of transferring drugs from dealer to dealer or excuse me from dealer to user and one dealer from hercules california thought of the perfect plan transport his drugs in snickers candy bar wrappers great idea unfortunately if you're attempting to mail said marijuana totaling five ounces and you get the address of the postage wrong your plan can backfire call this one unintentional but any mysterious appearance of drugs in an edible substance is creepy as the letter was left stranded at the post office the worker decided to hand out the stickers bars to the kids and that's how four weed snickers bars ended up in somebody's trick-or-treat bag police noted that the snickers bars were so perfectly resealed anyone could have mistaken the candy for actual candy nobody did though obviously when you opened the wrapper you found marijuana butts wrapped tightly in a plastic baggie i'm pretty sure that doesn't smell like chocolate smells like skunk anyway the post office worker was not charged for being an unintentional drug dealer to minors the halloween 2015 incident involved an 11 year old girl in toronto who bit into a chocolate bar only defined a razor blade inside she was the third child in the city to find a sharp object in her halloween candy that year children in the city's upper beaches area found a needle and a thumbtack lodged inside their candy fortunately none of the children were harmed another 2014 halloween candy horror story a young boy from spokane washington found a rusty nail in his halloween candy but it's not like he was pulling apart his candy no halloween candy is not an arts and crafts project he was eating it yes he bit down on the nail and yes it poked his cheek fortunately he was not seriously injured and he did get a tetanus shot just to be safe however i'd personally be terrified of biting into a piece of candy from then on the mother of the young boy's friend proceeded to open up the rest of his trick or treat candy and found several other pieces of metal inside them that included nails staples and what looked to be watch parts so what's the deal with razors well in 2013 a 12 year old pennsylvania boy opened a miniature bag of m&m's to discover a one inch disposable razor in there oddly enough the package didn't show any signs of tampering the boy was not able to pinpoint which house the candy came from because according to him every other house i think i got a pack of m&m's in 2015 a tucson arizona mom found a bottle of dramamine in her five-year-old daughter's candy bag the bottle was open and contained six pills while the substance is safe for adults to take when experiencing motion sickness it can reportedly cause hallucinations and seizures in children the girl's mother had not noticed the dramamine at first fortunately it was caught before the child and ingested any of the pills trick or treating is for kids maybe high school teenagers but definitely for kids so when we see that person who looks questionably too old to be trick or treating part of us has a tendency to judge them don't we mean how dare they take the candy away from the children but it's not like we ever do anything about it unless you're helen file helen file had been passing out candy to young kids all day but when she started seeing people who were too old to be trick or treating in her opinion the 14 to 16 year olds she got a little too wrapped up in a practical joke file took out a dog biscuit some steel wool and ant buttons which is ant trap poison and wrapped it up like a candy bar and then handed it out to a total of 12 teenagers five of the candies were discovered that evening when confronted by police she swore she meant it as a joke there was supposed to be nothing malicious about it but the judge had her admitted to a hospital for a psychological examination he states that he didn't understand how someone with reason could poison children as a joke in 2018 two children trick or treating in marshfield massachusetts found sewing needles hidden within their twizzlers candy at same halloween the mother in tennessee also reported finding a sewing needle in her child's candy none of the children were injured but marshfield police did tell everybody to throw out all the twizzlers candy just to be safe personally i i say throw out the twizzlers anyway because licorice ew now your candy is not yours we've all heard about the parent tax yeah your your candy is not yours until your parents sift through it first that's just how it goes they reach in look for the best stuff and take it that's the mommy and daddy tax the parent tax well salinas california 2013 a mom was eating some of her daughter's trick or treat candy when she started to feel some curious side effects it started as anxiety and then quickly changed to euphoria after feeling ill she checked the candy wrapper for its ingredients and she noticed a small hole in the wrapper it shouldn't be there i mean holes and wrappers aren't there not supposed to be she checked herself into the hospital and the doctor told her she was tripping on lsd the woman didn't suffer any long-term side effects following the incident but had that been her daughter that may have been another story the lesson here is to always let your parents take the halloween candy tax because they double as a taste tester after a fun halloween night in Lloyd mr canada two children found pills in their candy one had a full blister pack of pills the other found an individual pill after biting into a snickers bar though reports didn't include what kind of pill it was it's markings a p o indicated that it was a prescription of some kind when the parents looked at the snickers wrapper it was evident somebody had tampered with it two children who lived just two blocks um excuse me two children who lived just two blocks away from each other and mannesty michigan both found razor blades in their candy while trick-or-treating in 2015 a pack of laffy taffy and a Reese's peanut butter cup both contained small razors similar to what would be found in a portable pencil sharpener the local police chief referred the incidents uh referred them to the incidents as a new level of rottenness fortunately neither child was injured halloween candy just it tastes so good but the ingredients that go into the candy not so good uh i'll be i'm not talking about the caramel the chocolate or even the high fructose corn syrup because that's all good stuff i'm talking about far worse ingredients if you were given instructions to make some of your favorite halloween candy it might include a preservative tbhq tbhq which i'm not even going to try to pronounce is a byproduct of butane it's essentially lighter fluid the substance antioxidant properties are great for preventing the discolor the discoloration of candy that contains iron but gotta make you wonder and if you eat too much halloween candy are you a candidate for spontaneous human combustion and in 2018 a couple reported feeling ill after ingesting their parent tax of halloween candy the sour patch kids had seemed fine before they opened the package but it was obvious that they were not fine the candy ended up testing positive for meth thank goodness their kids didn't need any of it score another point for the parent tax on halloween candy and james joseph smith of miniapolis he's known for handing out stickers bars to local children that he had filled with needles what a guy his crime did not result in any fatalities but one teenage boy was pricked by a needle when biting into the candy smith was later charged with one count of adulterating a substance with intent to cause death harm or illness all right let's do another giveaway how about that no you know what look let's check the comments first we'll check the comments and then we'll do another giveaway all right let's see here doing the comments omg dragon stuff and candy what dragons right my dad collected yep called it the candy tax yep that's exactly what it was seal says what's wrong with people in this world i know i don't understand it either uh jeffree says loved your your reading of egg growl impose the raven ah listen to it the other day you and james url jones reading uh on the simpsons are one a and one b you know what if i'm going to come in second place to james url jones that's i'll take that count that's a compliment thank you very much i appreciate that um didi says worst thing i got was a notebook and stickers from uh teacher uh let's see um what else can we got in here um um rebecca is just logging into the halloween live stream love this tradition thank you rebecca i'm enjoying it too uh just all in one resource he's been posting a lot tonight says i had my brother make popsicles for me and him after a few seconds it seems that he put soap into mine what a taste but that isn't as bad as me putting or uh or gel on my sister's toothbrush that's just mean man that that's just wrong that's wrong um ike says how come you're not doing the live stream on your lawn um well i did that the very first year um actually i think i did that two years in a row um and then one year the the weather didn't cooperate and so we had to move it indoors um and then i discovered stream yard which is what i'm using to to do all the graphics here to look at all the comments um play the different videos and stuff and i really liked the way this worked and i can't really do this outside very well uh so i'm just just doing it indoors it's just it's a lot easier for me and i've got a cat in here how did you get in here yeah now how did you get in here i know miss mocha monster is in here what's you want to come up here do we want to say hi to everybody i know i know it i know you don't like it i just want to show you everybody say hi everybody hi everybody it's miss mocha monster miss mocha monster say meow say meow say meow meow meow meow she hates being picked up all right i'm letting you down she didn't scratch me but she hates being picked up um seal says nice name uh yeah actually it's uh it started off as mocha we got the cat and we just called her mocha oh excuse me i called her mocha and then robin said oh no no no no no miss we're gonna add miss to it miss mocha and i said okay fine but then we got into her personality and realized miss mocha monsters probably a lot a lot more accurate so okay there we go all right i need to get real quick break and let the cat out um i think i think robin came in here she gave me this big bag candy this is all the candy that we had left goodness gracious we got tootsie rolls mounds mr good bars suckers paydays wow okay anyway we're gonna be at that for a while yeah that's that's great for the for the figure all right but anyway i'm gonna take a real quick break so i can let the cat out and i'll be right back all right halloween crimes they usually thought of as the thoughtless mayhem of demented strangers who enjoy poisoning candy or putting razor blades and apples but crimes committed on halloween are much more serious and more real than those urban legends there have been numerous murders kidnappings and assaults that have taken place on october 31st and many are directly related to the festivities of the holiday and while it remains debatable as to whether or not there is a spike in crime on halloween there is no debate that all these particular assaults happened in connection with the holiday many of these crimes i'm about to tell you about have been carried out by people who took advantage of the occasion to wear a costume and fool their victims for just long enough to kill them others involve people out trick or treating or returning from parties late at night but as with most violent crime in general crimes that happen on halloween are usually committed either by somebody known to the victim or in case of mistaken identity in a few cases the crime has never been solved and years or even decades have gone by with no closure for the loved ones of the victims so here are some true stories of the worst crimes ever committed in connection with halloween late halloween night 2004 roommates leslie mazara and adrian insonia went to bed after handing out candy a third roommate lauren meanza was woken up at 1 a.m. by the sounds of a scuffle not knowing what was happening she ran in terror from the house when the coast was clear she ran back upstairs and found both of her roommates dead throughout the investigation fbi agents found cigarette butts near the scene of the crime that matched blood evidence inside the house but found no known matches in any dna databases officers and fbi agents spoke to nearly a thousand people of interest during the investigation including one of insonia's friends lily pooh home her husband eric koppel became a person of interest during the investigation when he began avoiding the police nearly a year after the crime koppel turned himself in and confessed to the crime at the time of the crime koppel was only engaged to the friend of one of his victims and carried on with the wedding thinking that he was in the clear this quote from adrian insonia's mother arlene allen gives a chilling insight into a slayer who thought he got away with it she said you are the man who is so cruel as to invite me the mother of the woman you murdered to stand up for you at your wedding to read scripture to you of love and death and to bless your union on halloween 2010 ohio teenager devon griffin returned home from sunday church services to find his brother derrick mother susan and susan's new husband william liske murdered devon was so traumatized he can only say that the scene was like something out of a haunted house the culprit was found to be william liske's son from the previous marriage william liske junior who had a history of schizophrenia and aggression liske was later picked up and pleaded guilty to all three murders he took his own life in prison in 2015 bronx resident carl jackson was a 21-year-old data entry clerk and morgan stanley on halloween night 1998 jackson went with his girlfriend to pick up her young son from a party while there some teenagers threw eggs at their car but the halloween prank soon turned ugly jackson got out of his car exchanged words with the teens and then got back in the car then one of the teens pulled out a sidearm and shot jackson ending his life instantly police later arrested 17-year-old kurtis sterling for the crime in 2009 three teenage girls were abducted by a man on their way home from trick-or-treating in woodbridge virginia all three were taken at gunpoint to a wooded area and two were sexually assaulted the third girl was able to call her mother causing the man to flee police arrested erin thomas who was already a suspect in numerous sexual assault cases since the 1990s thomas pled guilty to the crime in 2012 yoshi hero hatori which i believe we spoke about earlier was a japanese exchange student living in baton rouge as part of the american field service program on halloween night 1992 hatori and the young son of his host family went to a halloween party for american field service students unfamiliar with the neighborhood where the party was the boy rang the doorbell of the wrong house when they got no answer they started walking back to their car for the owner of the home rodney pears then opened the door armed with a 44 magnet hatori turned around and said we're here for the party claiming that he feared for his life and that the exchange student was scary pears shot the tori ending his life only when both the governor of louisiana and the japanese consulate got involved was pears finally arrested after which he was acquitted of manslaughter sometime in the early hours of halloween 1981 manhattan couple ronald seisman and elizabeth platzman were slain in their chelsea apartment the couple was severely beaten before being shot execution style with the apartment completely ransacked new york police initially believed drug money to be the motive but then the case took a turn for the bizarre a prison informant claimed that one of his fellow inmates had predicted the crime weeks before it actually happened the inmate turned out to be the son of sam killer david berkowitz berkowitz had long been rumored to be involved with a satanic cult that helped him with some of his mutt with the sum of his misdeeds and according to the informant berkowitz had told him that his cult was planning to enter a residence near grenitz village chelsea would qualify for that on halloween to carry out a ritual slaying when questioned berkowitz claimed that seisman had footage of one of the son of sam shootings and was planning to hand it over to the authorities in exchange for dropping some controlled substance charges while no evidence was found to support berkowitz's claims he was basically right about the description of seisman's apartment and the crime still remains unsolved today on halloween night 1993 a group of five pasadena gang members opened fire on trick or treating teenagers returning from a party killing three and wounding three others the gang members were soon arrested and police determined that they'd fired at the wrong people three bloods were found guilty of the crime los angeles hairstylist peter fabiano was slain on halloween night 1957 he opened his door for what he thought was a trick or trigger but was actually a grown-up in a costume the adult shot fabiano in the chest with a 22 and a brown paper bag before fleeing the scene several weeks later golden hyzer that was the guys saying golden hyzer and johne reyville were arrested in what turned out to be a deftly plotted crime of passion pizzer was friends or possibly in a relationship with reyville and reyville was also apparently in love with fabiano's wife betty the two women conspired to get peter out of the equation and reyville bought a sidearm or pizzer to shoot peter with the arrests kicked off a firestorm of lurid coverage as lesbians the 1950s were seen as abnormal monsters with dangerous urges the two pleaded guilty and served long prison terms on halloween 2011 taylor van deest was leaving a party in the small town of armstrong canada she never came home that was found beaten to death near a set of railroad tracks the event traumatized the town especially after it was revealed that she'd sent a text to her boyfriend before the attack saying that she was being creeped on police eventually used dna found under taylor's fingernails to arrest matthew forster for carrying out the deed and his father steven for helping him to cover it up fort dodge iowa resident marvin brandlund and his wife were handing out candy to trick-or-treaters in 1982 when a man wearing a mask came to their door he said trick-or-treat giving your money or i'll shoot the brandlunds thought that it was a halloween prank and tried to remove the man's mask instead he barged into the house and pulled out a sidearm demanding that the couple give him his money or give him their money and that they had uh they had stashed in their basement safe marvin made a grab for the mask to man's gun and the robber shot marvin in the throat he then ran away but left the mask behind in the years that followed marvin's wife perished and the mask was tested for dna evidence as virtually nobody knew about the safe suspicion fell on the brandlund family and a family member did brag about committing the robbery but there's never been enough evidence to charge him christ jankins was a 21-year-old student at the university in minnesota he was last seen leaving a downtown minneapolis bar on halloween night in 2002 for months his body was discovered in the mississippi river still um four months later that is his body was discovered in the mississippi river still wearing his halloween costume since christ was intoxicated that night and he appeared to have drowned authorities initially believed his demise was either an accident or self-inflicted but his parents refused to believe this and pressed for a more thorough investigation finally in 2006 the death was reclassified as a homicide police claimed that an incarcerated suspect told them that he was present when christ was slain and then thrown off a bridge into the river while the story's credible there's never been enough evidence to file charges however one possible theory is that christ jankins could have been a victim in the mysterious and unsolved smiley face murders these bizarre killings involved approximately 40 male college students in the united states who all drowned in some of these cases unexplained smiley face graffiti was found near the body of the water where in the body of water where the targets turned up with no smiley face graffiti um while no smiley face graffiti was ever found in connection to christ jankins death the scenario does have a number of similarities to these killings and it remains unsolved and we also talked about penn state student cindy song earlier she disappeared after leaving a party on halloween night 2001 she'd been dropped off at her apartment and had gone inside but nobody saw her after that and no trace of her has ever been found the case has taken a number of bizarre twists and for a while the investigation focused on a man named hugo marcus solenski solenski had been arrested after five corpses were found in his backyard okay five five corpses in the backyard yeah that might make you a little bit suspicious police informant linked solenski and another man to cindy song cindy song claiming to do a kidnapped sexually assaulted and murdered her to make things even weirder the other man named and the kidnapping was found dead in solenski's backyard more bodies have been found there but none have been proven to be cindy and the case sadly remains open all right let's check a few more comments that came in over the last few bit um oh wow thank you so much i'm i'm not used to getting uh what are these called um the chats the i can't remember what the super chats is is that what they're called you actually give money through youtube that's awesome thank you so much i not asking for that at all i really appreciate it but lindsay gave a dollar and uh kurt gave a dollar 99 super stickers that's what they're called thank you guys that's really that's i'm it's really kind of you i really appreciate that uh steve said when i tried to watch the live stream on facebook it wouldn't let me comment all i said was hi darin uh well thank you steve i appreciate that um you have to use stream yard you have to log in in some certain way connect stream yard to facebook in order to comment so um that could that could have been why you weren't able to do it uh natasha says so glad i caught this live stream tonight well i'm glad you caught it too thank you very much um ceil says the smile face murders i remember that really scared me to death i'm i'm trying to remember if i covered those in the podcast in the past i might have to look and see and if not i'll definitely have to bring them uh bring them more than a century ago an unnamed journalist was tasked with running around washington dc and asking notable politicians the burning questions of the day no not not not those about national politics the the burgeoning movement for women's suffrage or even the war on the tango yeah instead this no doubt future Pulitzer prize winner asked us cabinet secretaries and senators what was your most memorable halloween i'm guessing october 26th 1913 was a really slow news day which never happens anymore remember slow news days anyway my ears hurt just thinking about how today's politicians would answer this question i mean fortunately 1913 was a simpler time as well as an off year for both presidential elections and pandemics in those days if the newspapers are to be believed trick or treat came with the very real possibility of a trick instead of a fun-sized candy bar as some senators learned the hard way from the evening star october 26th 1913 senator atlee pomerain of ohio during his later years is rather looked down on halloween and yet frankly admitted that on one halloween occasion his hair rose like the quills of the more or less well-known fretful porcupine it was like this said senator pomerain i have no idea if he sounded like this but this is the voice i'm going to use it was like this an oz boy is more or less traditional exercise to go forth into the highways and byways and remove gates with certain of the boys in our community it was a sacred ritual to remove a certain number of gates take them to an open lot and have a glorious bonfire okay i don't judge him too harshly where does remember this was before children could plop themselves down in front of screens for hours on end anyway he continues one halloween many many years ago i discerned a gate that appeared to have been left for the very purpose i hadn't mind the matter of removing it and carrying it away occupied but a moment then with my proud burden beneath my arm i started to started to where the rest of the gang had gone walk into the open field where the bonfire was to be arranged i heard footsteps behind me no matter how fast or slow i walked the footsteps continued behind me at first i suspected that a policeman was following me but when i glanced around i could see no one when i reached the field i still i started in to wait until somebody should show up i presumed that i waited about an hour finally i got tired of waiting the rest of the crowd and not yet returned and i began to fear that perhaps they had deserted me and gone home it was nearly midnight and a hollow moaning wind had arisen stopped stooping to the pile of gates i struck a match and lit the pile in an instant it blazed skyward there was a flash of flame and satisfied i stepped back and prepared to watch the performance then to my horror the gate which i had plucked began slowly to crawl out of the fire there was something savoring so of the supernatural and the movements of that gate that i could not budge i was chilled with terror absolutely petrified like a person in a dream who wants to awaken but can't it became terrible the suspense of waiting slowly but surely the blazing gate began to crawl along the ground away from the fire i watched it for a moment as it sneaked along leaving a trail of cinders behind it i gazed again and again saw the haunted gate crawling away toward the brush fire yards away sick with terror i was about to leave when i chanced to see a glint of metal wire a copper cord at that moment came a chuckle a laugh that was human then i discovered the cause of its strange crawlins it was fastened to a copper wire which was run through the shrubs into the hands of my companions they had followed me after directing me to the old gate which they had intended all the time that i should take but i removed it i did not notice that one of the confederates had already attached the wire to it they followed me back to the bonfire ground knowing full well that i would not wait while i wait a while for them and then start the business of the night lighting the fire never in my life have i had such a lesson in the value of private property incidentally might remark that that was my last halloween celebration of a destructive nature afterward i contented myself with parties of a milder and more lawful nature so what have we learned here well property damage is bad yes but but uh more importantly if your friends abandon you in a creepy field at midnight you should probably just go home and make some new friends senator palm marine wasn't the only one with a horrifying halloween haunting now after the story the investigator uh the the after the story the investigator went into the ways of witches with public men went into the office of senator john shaftroth of colorado who enjoys the reputation of being a singularly solid and non-believing man who takes care of the facts and leaves the fancies to themselves so what was your greatest halloween experience the investigator inquired that was a question replied the senator and again i have no idea if he sounded this way but that's what i'm gonna do with it that is a question that is fraught with sorrow in my memory there was then there was a pause and i think he said reflectively that halloween should be abolished it is a dangerous thing to stir up the witches and the sprites one can never tell where it'll end actually we do know senator it can end in bonfires haunted gates and character building experiences sorry i couldn't resist anyway back to senator shaftroth by the way continued the senator did i ever tell you that i held a world's record for running the half mile distance this is how it came about some years ago a great many in fact when i was a boy i attended a halloween party near our house and after remaining there until about 11 o'clock i started on my way homeward it was a rather dark walk in those days for the electric and gas lights were not then small town luxuries coming along the blackened road on a cloudy halloween night i got as far as the long lane which led to our house when i beheld something flickering in the trees at first i paid no attention to it then as i got nearer i gazed up and there apparently sitting on a branch of a tree was a hideous yellow glaring face fixed in a deadly grin the body was of white even as i watched it i could see it sway from side to side like some great bird i was so terrified that i couldn't move i looked again at the creature which seemed to be bending down towards me its eyes were glowing red like the fires of the inferno its nose was a glowing blue the cavernous mouth was simply a ghastly slit without a shape even as i was taking my last look the thing lurched toward me and fell simply and fell almost into my arms it was then that i broke the world record for the half mile i say half mile it may have been more i never attempted to calculate exactly the distance which i put between myself and the creature the next morning i returned to the spot still trembling and examined the eerie thing it was a cleverly devised pumpkin head with colored glass for the eyes and nose four candles were so arranged in it as to give an almost human expression to the eyes a long sheet was on the body the senator then paused i have always regretted he concluded that it was not possible for me to have had a stopwatch on the half mile which i ran i believe this to be the most wonderful part of the whole adventure well if you're venturing out in search of candy this year take a page from senator shaftrothan bring it along to stop watch you might not be able to outrun coronavirus but you can definitely be to disembodied pumpkin and you might as well break a world record while you're at it i'll be back in just a second all right uh let's get uh some some more uh comments in here real quick um ceo says some pranks go in too far i can't believe it lindsay says i'd like to watch him live more often his stories are company to me well thank you lindsay um i've debated doing this more often it's a lot of work to do a live screen but now that i know that those videos aren't going to work it won't be quite so tough um i might consider doing this a bit more often just for the fun of it let's see um oh lindsay also says love his ability to change his voices into certain characters that's a huge talent well thank you i appreciate that that's one of the things i love about what i do um being a voice actor i i get to create new characters all the time and do them um that's one of the things that i'm really loving about this new micro terrors scary stories for kids series because it requires me to to create new voices that's also one of the reasons that i like the weirdling woods series which i really need to get back to now that halloween's uh just about the end uh i'll have more time so i can get back to those stories but again it's because i get to create characters i just it's one of the reasons i also like you know um creepypasta thursdays or thriller thursdays as we're calling them now same same concept uh let's see here um it was a pretty tough life for him the cops did who are we talking about another man oh i don't know oh wow lindsay also gave me a sticker thank you love weird darkness and what darin stands for i five dollars thank you very much lindsay i really appreciate that that's really kind of you natasha says as somebody who struggles with depression i love all you do to help your podcast uh you know to help your podcast has gotten me through a lot it's great to see somebody who truly cares about people well thank you natasha that's that's very kind of you to say i appreciate that i don't care about people i couldn't care less but a kidding obviously kidding kidding um kurt says i appreciate all that you do at the podcast love spooky stories have my own personal stories to tell but i think it's great that you advertise to help those who need it well yes um kurt if you do have personal stories send them in go to that tell your story page at weirddarkness.com and uh you can do that okay i think music in the breaks is amazing well good that's probably what i'm gonna end up doing in the future uh instead of doing the music videos the songs and stuff like that i'll just have to do these quick little music video things for like a minute or so uh for my breaks that's about the only thing that i can do that i know i'm not going to get kicked off of youtube and facebook for uh wrighton says hi enjoying the livestream thank you very much zark says hit that like button all yes please do please hit that like button i'd appreciate it um seal says i focus on your stories and what they're about um that way it's something i can talk about oh nice uh so i'm i'm actually water cooler talk i like that uh monica uh hi monica says i love this i started my morning at four a.m listening to new podcast and now going to bed listening to new ones too well i'm glad to be there for you monica glad to uh i guess in a way rock you to sleep so uh okay let's see here i think i've got time for one more giveaway i think yes one more giveaway okay all right so what i'm gonna do with this one then uh let me get you back over here uh for this giveaway it's gonna be a little bit longer because i promised you at the beginning of this uh of this uh live stream that i would show you the decorations on the outside of the house you guys were seeing him from the doorbell version from the doorbell perspective uh but you didn't see them like if you're coming up to the house from the sidewalk or something so here's what it looks like on the outside of the house hey weirdos well in uh years past we've been doing the live stream indoors so i can utilize uh multiple elements but i thought i'd show you guys what our house looks like on the outside that's the original weirdo wagon before we bought the new one but robin likes to drive it around with a wet magnet on it anyway so i believe we actually have something on the other side of the wagon too let's see this is my first time looking at it robin was outside all morning putting stuff together oh yeah there we go she absolutely loves decorating for halloween and christmas she does such a great job the wreath is just a fall wreath but it has orange lights so at night it actually um not necessarily glows but you can see the little light bulbs kind of like kind of like the holly you're like in a christmas wreath so he's new i haven't seen him before we always have floating ghosts hanging from the uh lights but i have not seen and seen one with that with that facial expression we got down here we have him every year he's made a medal so he's lasted for a really long time i don't believe he is and i don't believe i've seen him before i think he might be new as well this is the sidewalk as kids walk up this is what they're gonna see down here it says yes i'm a witch deal with it trick or treat another medal the very first year that we did the uh live scream i was on this bench right here but there weren't nearly as many plants when that happened there's no way i'd be able to do that now because out there there's a little pumpkin spider this is not that corner back there this is my favorite i'll actually i'll come back to that there's a better angle another medal this one made of wood he's new as well happy halloween look at that it's even got the price tag still on the back all right so zoom in that's a metal skeleton frame that we found a black plastic pumpkin to put on and then we also found the skull mask to put on top of it so it's kind of our own creation let me rephrase that kind of robin's own creation she's she's really the mind behind all of this but there you go this is a better angle this is my favorite part of our halloween decorations every year she goes out and buys a couple hail bales hey bales and then you've brought you may have seen those those bodies in stores in the past and it's your job to find a pumpkin to put on top or whatever and she's found a lot of plastic or um styrofoam pumpkins to put on them and and we just kind of mix and match them you can see the one very back there in the corner the skeleton he's this has a little bit more yellow than orange right next to him is the witch with the purple hair and she went out and found not only the not only the head but she found a hat to go with it down here on the as people are walking up they can see these and him he we've had him for a long time down there will haunt for treats we're starting getting into gargoyles recently so she found a little gargoyle down there we've had these guys for a little while the black cat and the ghost and the pumpkin these however are brand new i've never seen those before robin hits a state sales by the way these these aren't things that you typically would find at a spirit halloween store she likes a lot of the vintage stuff and so do i actually i love i love the look of it it's still family friendly but still has that halloween feel to it there's the door i don't know if i showed that to you already says beware and then below it it says beware of witch with attitude and then the happy halloween banner on the other side of the of the sidewalk you're surrounding on both sides when you're a kid walking up here there's a spider let me let me get in front of these guys to give them a better look there you go there's a spider this guy i believe last year or the year before was our first year with him and cute creepy at the same time but he's also animated so if i wait here long enough you said there he goes he goes back into the pumpkin stays there for a little bit wait a little while he'll come back up eventually definitely not for kids with a short attention span there we go there's a black wreath that has uh little the bulbs around that are actually tiny little skulls robin also got on to a kick for a long time collecting tins mostly for christmas but then she started finding halloween tins so she started collecting those so that's what these are little wooden ghost wooden back that back there that's her son teeth she's making not part of the decorations okay and then of course whatever you get everybody gets everybody's attention are the large inflatables which we've had these thing with three years four years i think we have the black cat which is a big hit with the kids we've had the ghost for a while as well and the dragon she bought the dragon specifically for me because she knew i'd love it the wind's blowing a little bit so it's so it's got its uh left wing kind of flapped behind it but the wings actually do move back and forth back and forth so there you go that oh i didn't show you the front the front window and i don't know if we if you're going to see it so much with the glare i'll zoom in we got a couple of ghosts right there their cloth ghosts we have the scarecrow there that says happy halloween we leave him out um all fall along all the way through thanksgiving just because you know it's just fall decor who cares if it says happy halloween he used to be animated he used to uh rock back and forth and his eyes would light up but when you plug him in now he makes so much noise he's so old that we're afraid he's gonna break so we just don't go that route and there's a couple other scarecrow zoom in there you go it's kind of hard to see with the glare but we have a boy and girl scarecrow there in the window and there you go that is the outside all right well um one last story for you on friday october 31st into saturday november 1st 2014 shawn richie traveled in a van with a small group of friends on the a 981 to a remote farmhouse in the greenburn area near straykin in scotland he vanished without a trace from the woodland near the curtshield farm shawn had been at home that day and froserberg with his family before visiting a convenience store and left with friends to celebrate halloween later that day on november 1st two emergency calls were made to police from the greenburn area one requesting help the second canceling the requested help who exactly these calls came from is unclear it was one of the largest coordinated missing persons investigations in scanish history after this huge search only his shoes hooded top and belt were found but shawn has not been seen since medical experts believe he may have become disoriented in freezing conditions and stumbled into a bog but no remains have ever been recovered even after years of searching so what happened to shawn murder hypothermia accidental drug overdose something more sinister the halloween mystery from scotland extensive and detailed searches were conducted with assistance from every specialist air land and water resource with more than 200 officers covering more than 15 miles of ditches rough terrain and large water areas police also used forensic soil scientists and geoscientists the searches were conducted with the help of the grantee and mountain rescue team the abardine taside and raf kinlos mountain rescue teams a dive and marine unit a dog unit and police scotland air support a patch of neighboring woodland to curshill farmhouse comprised of rowan ash and spruce trees it was heavily searched during the initial investigation at the time of his disappearance shawn was wearing gray jeans a white t-shirt and a gray hooded top the family enlisted the help of glasgow group k9 search and recovery and its human remains detection dog in 2015 but the springer spaniel failed to pick up a scent five days after shawn was last seen thursday november 6th a specialist search teams recovered items of his clothing from the area near greenburn these items were found in a bog shoes hooded top and belt nothing else in august 2016 shawn's mother carol an was charged with wasting police time she believes her son was harmed she even called in a psychic to visit the search site who now supports her theory it's believed the charges relate to anonymous text messages that she sent to shawn's close friends and family suggesting that shawn had been murdered charlie reid shawn's father was working in saudi arabia when news of shawn's disappearance broke he said on the bad days since his son vanished it's hard to function charlie was critical of the investigation by police scotland and has stated his belief that richie was killed over a debt a review by the major investigation team in glasgow of the work of police scotland was done which included a review of forensic work and search activity carried out as part of the investigation detective chief inspector vianila mcphail who oversees the inquiry said we fully appreciate how hard it must be for shawn's family with another year passing since his disappearance and my thoughts are with them at this difficult time our inquiry into shawn's disappearance remains one of the largest ever missing person operations in the history of police scotland chief inspector steward drummond said to date these reviews have all concluded that this remains a missing person's inquiry and there's no evidence to suggest that shawn has been the victim of any crime we will however continue to keep an open mind and i can provide every assurance that we will act on any new information provided to us friday october 31st 2014 last seen by his mother on friday evening at home in watermill road in froserberg that same day cctv images capture richie visiting a convenience store in froserberg friday october 31st into saturday november 1st shawn travels with friends to a farm in greenburn area near striken sunday november 2nd mr richie is reported missing at 8 45 p.m on sunday evening thursday november 6th police officers recover several items of his clothing including his shoes and his belt from the greenburn area the farmhouse near where shawn richie was put up for sale the the the farmhouse near where shawn richie disappeared was put up for sale for 350 000 in may of 2015 and so far that is the final entry in the case of missing person shawn richie who disappeared on halloween all right well before we before we call it quiz tonight let's go check out a few more uh comments uh let's see here we've got a seal saying darren i love your live stream and your stories it's my day a bit more makes my day i guess more creepy which i love you thank for doing this every year in my tradition well you're very welcome and i appreciate you being here with me uh for this tradition uh lindsey says on my worst days of being depressed your stories get me through i can't thank you enough for that you're very welcome you're very very welcome lindsay that i i consider it an honor uh to be here doing this um owen says this is the first time i've seen your face and i love the podcast i listen every day well i hope the face hasn't scared you more than the stories uh janine says do you have a p o box where we could send you stuff darren i do epoxy resin art and would love to send you something for christmas that is so sweet of you janine um yes there is a p o box if you go to the contact page at weirddarkness.com there's a mailing address there for you that you could send stuff to me but you don't have to i i greatly appreciate that though this very kind of you uh let's see here owen says this is the first time i've seen your face by the way i love the podcast i think i just oh i think you posted that a couple of times okay uh angela uh commented on the decorations saying that they are awesome uh mikaela says oh my god i love dragons it's even on my profile bio uh zark says eee sun tea i'm guessing you're not a fan of sun tea uh janine says mini pearl syndrome l o a l o l price tag wow that that is a pull from from my way back yeah okay see you're a weirdo wacken i wish i had that in my driveway um well paint you up maybe just all in one resource says very cool decorations darren my favorite stories are the exanguination of boroughs wisconsin the showers my property isn't normal i dry for serber and many many more well um thank you i appreciate that um the exanguination of boroughs wisconsin is also called the cool and uh that's actually i think that's is that available as a as an audiobook on my page i've done so many of these now that i i start to lose track let me let me check you real quick i think that's that's available in the audiobooks page at weirddarkness.com let me double check you real quick the uh um the color's been down a little span of black um okay no okay it's it's not one of the audiobooks but it's an episode so the reason i ask is that it is it did come out as a book um but uh looks like just the podcast episode as well is out there but if you just look for the exanguination of boroughs wisconsin or if you look for the cool w h o o l if you look for that on weirddarkness.com and the search pay on the search function you'll find that uh for those who have not already seen it um my property is a normal i drive for serber one of the most popular episodes that i've ever done um it was a lot of fun to do too it's again it's another one of those stories where i had to create different voices for each character um but borg of course was the it was really really fun with that one and i had a i've had a lot of uh comments on that particular episode natasha says uh love the decorations and weirdo wackens uh genus says beautiful yard and weirdo wagon thank you very much kurt says saw one of the giant skeletons in a neighborhood nearby um yeah not we've not we've not gone that far yet we've not gone to these skeletons one thing that i did not show you this year um because we didn't have it set up i have a full-size werewolf standing up these about eight seven feet tall and uh normally he's here in the office uh but we moved him out to the family room but he was not set up when i made the video earlier so you didn't get to see him i'll have to make sure that to show you that uh some sometime maybe next year or maybe just like on facebook and twitter and instagram or something like that so uh let's see here uh monica wants to know if we can get a tour at christmas time too uh how about we do a live screen for christmas you can do that um i don't let me think on that i mean i i could definitely do a video and show you all the christmas decorations i mean that's no problem but um i'm having so much fun tonight that i'm i'm kind of wanting to do live screams a bit more often now that i'm kind of getting into the groove of things and i know what can be done and what can't be done what youtube and facebook will and will not allow uh i think i can make this a bit more often maybe not with all the prizes and everything because that gets expensive for me but still doing this live i know you guys kind of enjoy uh watching somebody doing their job um we'll see uh uh jenny says great job robin kurt says decorations are cute jenny says love the house dd says love your dragon laura says my mom and dad asked uh asked to listen to you in the car my daughter is a fan and loves the coffee wow that's awesome thank you very much uh grim neval says dope podcast happy halloween happy halloween right back to you uh let's see here steve says i suffer depression as well listening to your podcast helps me a lot i really appreciate that man i i really do um lindsay says yes halloween live screen all right i'll i'll i'll consider it i'll i'll think about it nicole says crimson christmas live screen would be awesome atasha christmas live screen would be amazing okay all right okay i'll think i will definitely think about it okay i mean you guys oh i have such a push over i am such a push over all right but i've had a blast tonight guys i really have this has been so much fun um so thank you for watching um this is my last opportunity to ask you to to help in raising funds to combat depression and suicide too um our current fundraiser uh let's see here our current total right now is let's see here double check real quick five thousand one hundred seventy four dollars uh and you still have a little under three hours left to give so if you've been waiting until the last minute this is the last minute so please give as much as you can if you've not already done so you can make that donation of any amount and um it i'm losing track of of of of my mind i i've been i've we've been at this now for over four hours so my mind is starting to get drained but give generously and give now if you want to give it to me as a birthday gift tomorrow's my birthday my birthday starts in three hours so if you want to give it to me as a birthday gift you consider that how's that anyway if you liked what you heard today and what you saw please share this with somebody you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories true crime monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do and please leave a rating and review of this show in the podcast app that you listen from and if you're watching on youtube or on facebook be sure to hit that like button the subscribe button um if you want to email me with your questions or comments i can use those in a a chamber of comments episode and i do those fairly regularly now because i get a lot of correspondence from you guys if you want to drop me an email it can be about anything you want to send it to darron at weird darkest.com there's the email address right there weird darkest.com is also where you can find all of my social media not just facebook twitter and youtube you can also listen to the audiobooks that i've narrated you can shop the weird darkest store you can sign up for monthly contests like similar to what i've done in this episode i do that every month with the email subscribers and then i also do an episode or a giveaway for the weird at work contest for people who actually listen at work um and also uh on the on the you know on the on the site you can find that hope in the darkness page so if you are somebody you know struggling with depression or dark thoughts that's where you can go to find resources to help you also on the site if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell click on tell your story you find all of that and more at weirddarkness.com and all stories in weird darkness at least in this episode are purported to be true unless stated otherwise weird darkness is a production and trademark of marlar house productions copyright weird darkness 2020 and now that we're coming out of the dark i'll leave you with a little light song 23 verse 4 even though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil for you are with me your rod and your staff they comfort me and a final thought from sheenan maguire the problem with people who say monsters don't really exist is that they're almost never saying it to the monsters i'm darren marlar thanks for joining me in the weird darkness