 Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show and if you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. Coming up in this episode... Soon after the Cranmer family moved into their new home on Brownsville Road, it became clear that they were not alone. Did US Special Forces really shoot dead a 12-foot-tall giant in Kandahar, Afghanistan? How much truth is behind the story and how does it fit into the age-old narrative of soldiers, knights and heroes battling against and vanquishing giants and monstrous creatures? The Elephant's Foot was created after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 when Reactor 4 exploded, releasing a lava-like mass of radioactive material called corium. So radioactive that it is still dangerous if you try and see it for yourself today. When something horrifying happens, it's natural to tell others about your experience. But what if, no matter how much you explain it, people simply don't believe you? We'll look at numerous stories from people who have true tales that they have a hard time getting even friends and family to take seriously. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Throughout history, tales have been passed down of men fighting monsters. These tales are generally loosely based on real-life encounters, such as the Kraken, likely being a giant squid, or Bigfoot possibly being just bear sightings in dense forests. From UFOs to the Loch Ness Monster, these fantastical beasts and the associated stories dominate our imaginations. One monster race which can be found in the stories of most cultures is giants. From the fairy tale, Jack the Giant Killer, to David vs. Goliath in the Bible, giants are depicted as huge, violent beings. Depending on the story, they are said to feed on humans or livestock. Many cultures use giants as a foe for the hero of the tale, demonstrating the strength of character and intelligence over pure brawn and stupidity. The word giant first appeared in Greek mythology in 1297, derived from the Gigantes. In North mythology, the Jotun are giants who live throughout the nine worlds and oppose the gods. The Jotun come in many forms, such as frost giants, fire giants and mountain giants. While the Norse gods are described as human-sized, the huge giants are their foes in many battles, notably Ragnarok, the final battle where the giants would storm Asgard, the home of the gods, and battle the gods until the world is destroyed. As you can see, giants were firmly fixed throughout Norse folklore. The gods were even related to the giants through many marriages. The whole Norse human world was even told to have been created from the flesh of Emyr, a giant of cosmic proportions. In Icelandic folklore, two giants, a man and a woman, were traversing the fjord near Drangae Island at night. As they were traveling, the sun rose and the sudden exposure to sunlight turned them to stone along with their cow which was with them, creating the island. While in most stories giants were portrayed as the antagonist, such as the popular children's story, Jack and the Beanstalk, there are also plenty of tales showing the giants as both intelligent and friendly, most notably in the works of Roald Dahl and Jonathan Swift. While giants have been confined to ancient tales, books and films, a modern story has emerged from Kandahar in Afghanistan. While supposedly taking place in 2002, the story was not picked up widely until 2016 when a YouTuber named L.A. Marzouli posted an episode of his series Watchers. The episode featured a supposed military contractor or soldier who said they witnessed a blade-wielding giant kill one of their fellow U.S. special forces soldiers. The giant was then taken down by the remaining troops. Following the skirmish, the giant's body was loaded into a military transport aircraft and flown to an undisclosed location to be hidden away from the public. According to the supposed eyewitnesses, the giant of Kandahar was 12 to 15 feet tall, 1100 pounds with scarlet-colored hair and six fingers instead of five. The witness and his team were sent to a remote area to search for a patrol which had gone missing. As they arrived in the area, the giant emerged from a cave wielding a huge blade which it used to skewer and kill his friend Dan. When questioned directly, the U.S. Department of Defense stated that they had no record of this incident occurring. Furthermore, they said that the only member in service who lost their life in Kandahar in 2002 with the first name Dan or Daniel was one of four soldiers who lost their lives during an accident involving the clearance and disposal of explosives. This statement can be backed up by looking through the U.S. Department of Defense press release page which publicly lists all military casualties. The press release page does not contain any records which involve a giant or an entire patrol disappearing in Afghanistan. Although this casts doubt on the story, this has not stopped conspiracy theorists and monster enthusiasts from discussing the story. Upon the release of the YouTube episode which brought the story to light, several websites which are used for discussions about conspiracies and monsters crashed with the traffic from people rushing to look into and talk about the story. In the interview in question, the witness goes into a lot of detail regarding the incident. The witness and the victim were part of a special ops task force looking for a missing U.S. Army squad. After trekking along the mountain trail, they arrived at a large cave surrounded by broken military equipment and gear. As they prepared to enter the cave, the giant emerged, impealing Dan and proceeded to attack the rest of the squad. The witness states it took 30 seconds of continuous fire from them to down the giant. Between them the squad was armed with M4 submachine guns, semi-automatic rifles and 50 BMG Barrett sniper rifles. This much firepower concentrated on one target for one second let alone 30 would create a lot of damage. Stating that they fired for 30 seconds would mean that the target was something big if the story is true. According to the witness, the giant wore canvas or animal hide covers on to protect its feet like moccasins and smell like dead bodies. The creature's body was airlifted back to the squad's base by a helicopter and net. From there it was loaded into an aircraft and taken away never to be seen again. Upon their return, the soldiers were made to sign non-disclosure paperwork to stop the word spreading of their encounter. The witness states that he broke his silence because people have the right to know what's happening on our planet. Whether you believe it or not, this certainly makes for a compelling story. The thought of a cave-dwelling giant who can slay special forces soldiers in a single blow makes the hair on your neck stand up. Throw in a government cover-up and you have something which will keep conspiracy theorists fueled for years to come. When Weird Darkness returns, if something horrifying happens, it's natural to tell others about your experience. But what if, no matter how much you explain it, people simply don't believe you? We'll look at numerous stories from people who have true tales that they have a hard time getting even friends and family to take seriously. That's up next. As a madman on a mission of vengeance, is he friend or foe? You'll find the answer to this fantastic mystery in Black Dragons. Join us Friday, January 26th for our next Weirdo Watch Party as we watch Black Dragons presented by Horror Hotel's resident vampire Lamia Queen of the Dark, bringing us trivia about the film, the actors, and all things horror-related in-between segments of the show. And then stick around after Black Dragons because Doc Dredd will be with us with one of his popular and fun movie reviews, giving his opinion of 2023's award-winning horror flick Beneath Us All. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch online with everybody, so grab your popcorn, candy, and soda and jump into the fun and even get involved in the live chat as we watch the movie. It's Black Dragons, starring Bella Legosi from 1942 presented by Horror Hotel's Lamia Queen of the Dark, then Doc Dredd's movie review talking about Beneath Us All. Friday, January 26th, starting at 10pm Eastern, 9pm Central, 8pm Mountain, 7pm Pacific. See a few clips from the film and invite your friends to watch along with you on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. It will see you Friday, January 26th for the Weirdo Watch Party. When something frightening happens to you, the first thing you usually want to do is tell someone. It can make you feel a little better and a little less alone when you share your story. But if no one believes what you say, it can make you feel confused or even second-guess your sanity. On Reddit people are sharing the eeriest events they've experienced that sound unbelievable, but they insist are true. From Redditor, Real AbstractSquid II, I live in an extremely old house. It creaks, it groans, the house isn't completely level so sometimes unlatched doors swing open on their own, but really because of physics. If you sat in my house on a windy day, you'd swear to God it was haunted because the window frames aren't great and the wind screams through the gaps and rattles the glass as though it were angered. I've lived here for a couple of years now. I know every noise this house makes like the back of my hand. I hardly notice it these days, which is why I found it odd that when I was brushing my teeth one night a few months ago, I clearly heard two men's voices on the other side of my bathroom door. Now it's just me, the dogs, and my boyfriend here. My boyfriend was across the hall laying in bed and the dogs were with him. The voices I heard were clear as day, two older gentlemen. Should we tell them? No. Are they in there? And the second voice did not reply. I obviously yanked the bathroom door open and looked to see who was in my hallway, but there was no one there. I listened for a few minutes, thinking maybe I heard the TV or something. I don't hear anything. I call out and ask if my boyfriend said anything. He hollers back no from where he's at in the bedroom. I go back to my nighttime routine, shut off the bathroom light, and now the hallway is dark. I'm going to go to the bedroom. I bring my hand down from turning the light switch off, and my hand brushes up against a cold, rough-feeling hand, like someone with a lot of calluses on their hand. I felt the thumb and palm distinctly, like someone had reached out to grab my hand, but my movement kind of pulled out of the grasp before they could actually grab my hand, if that makes sense. The hand came from behind me, from in the bathroom. I obviously know there's no one in the bathroom. I just left the bathroom, and then I heard someone mumble from behind me, not words exactly, just kind of a voice like someone grumbling under their breath. I jumped, turned the bathroom light back on, saw no one, left the light on, and hauled butt to the bedroom to tell my boyfriend what just happened because I was extremely freaked out. We checked out the entire house for an intruder, found no signs of any. Everything was locked up as usual. It never happened again. I have no idea what it was. From Redditor Pradara Noir. I was 20 at the time and was helping my girlfriend move from Alabama to Los Angeles. Because she had all her belongings and her car we decided to drive. At that time she had a suspended license, so I was the one who was forced to drive the whole way. Because I didn't want to get any speeding tickets I brought my Redar detector from home to take with us on the drive. Now it was the second day of our trip and we had recently crossed into New Mexico. At the time it was already well past sunset so most of my drive that day was spent on the I-10 at night. I remember stopping that night really late at around 11 or 12 at a rest stop in Gage, New Mexico. The only thing there was a small area with many identical concrete structures covering picnic tables. As we were pulling in the radar detector started going haywire, showing codes for multiple different bands including X, K, A, and laser all at once. I turned the radar detector off not really thinking much of it at the time and pulled into a picnic area near the back. From what I remember I was going to eat a snack or something to tide me over and as I was grabbing the food from the middle row I heard a low rumble or squeak as if somebody was rubbing their palm along the side of the car. As I was grabbing some items from a bag in my lap my girlfriend at the time grabbed my arm with the most intense grip and fear and just started saying we got to go, we got to go with increasing panic. I will never forget what I saw to be honest. In her side mirror there was a large rough silhouette leaning against the car just past the back door. Even from a glance I could tell that the figure had to be much taller than the SUV as it looked a bit hunched over. Seeing this I immediately started to panic as I was not sure if this was a person, animal or whatever. As I was fumbling for the keys in the cup holder I glanced in my side mirror and saw the exact same figure, motionless against the side of the car. A few seconds later I started the car and punched it out of there. Where our car was parked there was nothing visible from the light coming from the picnic awning. I am not a huge believer in paranormal stuff but this was an experience that I would 100% call my only real paranormal encounter. From Redditor, Rattiness It was the first anniversary of my aunt's death. She lived in the same house as me but different apartment. I go to take a bath. The bathtub is positioned in a way that when you are inside you are facing the window. Suddenly I hear a knock. I look at the window and I see a hand formed into a fist quickly pulling down like someone knocked and quickly disappeared. The thing is my apartment was on the second floor and there was no way that someone could reach the window from outside at all. Now looking back at it I just tell myself it was just my imagination. But then I know what I saw and no one believed me, of course. From Redditor throw me away 212-223 I always put my keys in the exact same spot after I get home from work. No matter what they always go in the dish in my living room. One day last August I had been home from work for a few hours and was cooking dinner when the thought of where are your keys got stuck in my head. I looked around the corner and sure enough I was going to see my keys in the dish. But there were no keys. I looked around the surrounding area and expanded my search to my purse, jacket, bedroom only to turn up empty. I drove home from work and let myself in with my keys. I was home alone and my roommates had been out of town for a few days at that point so I knew I had them and I knew no one would have moved them. I flipped my house upside down searching for about four hours before I half-heartedly shook my heaviest winter coat hanging in the back of the closet. I found my keys zipped up in the inside pocket of a coat that I hadn't worn since mid-February at the latest. Everyone always brushes off the story as I must have moved them and forgot about it, but that makes no sense to me. I have absolutely no clue how they got there. I really only have four possible explanations. Paranormal Activity, Glitch in the Matrix, I blacked out and moved them for whatever reason, or there was someone in my house and that was the only thing they did. From Redditor, B.C. Dev. I grew up in a haunted house. My parents still live there to this day. Most traumatic experiences of my life. The one memory that tops the list is one I hate telling and rarely do. I'd always wake up in the middle of the night and see stuff, from as young as I can remember until I moved out at 18. One night I was about six maybe. I woke up to see a man and woman both dressed all in white, palest skin I'd ever seen, both standing at the foot of my bed looking out the window. The woman looked average height while the man reached the ceiling. I tried to convince myself it wasn't real that I was dreaming until the man turned and looked at me. His eyes were red. I turned sideways and covered my head, trying again to convince myself I was dreaming. After a few minutes I looked over the covers and the man was now standing at the side of my bed looking down at me. I remember nothing after that. I talked to a specialist when I was older thinking maybe I suffered from sleep paralysis due to those experiences but that was not the case. In every experience I could move and even ran out of my bedroom multiple times. Great times. From Redditor, Dreaming Druidus. I have many stories because I do cleansings for people and dabble in pagan practices. They all can be pretty wild, but the one most people have the hardest time understanding was witnessed by myself, my mother and my sister. This occurred when I was 8, so 1998, small town in Alabama. My family had bought this house on the lake, a real haunted crapfest but hindsight, you know, literally the second day of moving in we experienced something. Also, this took place well before any dive into the occult. My family was non-denominational Christian. The house was six bedrooms, four baths, top and basement layout. We all had our rooms on the top floor, my room and my parents' room with the furthest down the hall. My sister was near the beginning, right across from the bathroom, so the hall wasn't super long, but my sister decided to put like 14-15 family portraits up on the walls. They varied in size and weight. Now, our mom was in the living room which is what the hall opened up to, so not far and certainly inside of one another. Dad was gone, probably work or something. I was in my room putting up posters, nothing out of the ordinary and it was midday. When my sister finished putting the pictures up she came to get me to show me. She was proud of her work. We were right outside of my room talking when we suddenly felt super uneasy. The atmosphere had changed. I didn't understand it at the time, but it was just heavy and difficult to think straight and breathe. Needless to say, our conversation halted. Even my mom felt it and stopped unpacking things. She turned to look at us. All of a sudden we felt and heard this whoosh of wind go from my parents' room right in front of us down the hall. All of those pictures levitated off the wall and floated mid-air resting in a horizontal position parallel to the ground. We screamed and ran to our mom. We were hysterical as you can imagine. Mom said she was scared, but she had to be mama bear and protect her babies. She said firmly, Stop! You are scaring my children! She also told it to leave because it was not welcome here. Now this part I didn't see because my face was buried into my mom's side as I was crying. She said the pictures all floated down and came to rest in their original spot. The ceiling seemed to just raise and become far away suddenly. My sister saw this too, and I have no idea how else to explain it. They only ever described it that way. But the house became normal and still again like nothing had ever happened. My dad never believed us, despite all three of us experiencing that. Honestly, that was the most tame thing we experienced in the house. Seven years of hell we endured there. From Redditor, the Reddit Scout. I was playing outside by myself and a truck kept driving down the streets. I got uncomfortable and started to walk home and they followed. I stopped. They stopped. I ran. They drove faster. I started sprinting home and when I came near other people, they turned around and drove away. When I arrived home, I told my mom and dad, nobody believed me. Spent five years and I am still shocked. From Redditor, Itchy the Killer 2001. Not sure if this is the scariest, but grew up for a while in this crappy apartment complex in a bad part of California, early 2000s. One night my little kid self woke up in the middle of the night, went out to get something to eat, I think, and took one look to the living room. Huge strange man is kneeling next to the TV. Big mustache. Has a gun. We just stare at each other. I slowly walk back into my room and go to sleep. Next morning I tell my mom what happened and she calls the police. The part no one believes is the dude took our Wii game console, but not the little sensor thing that it needed to actually work. From Redditor, Ms. Rabbit if you nasty. I grew up in a haunted house. Nobody believes most of the stuff that happened to me. The top of everything that nobody believes? I was yanked out of my bed by my ankles in the middle of the night. From Redditor, 25 hams. My bathroom is weird. One time it illuminated from the outside as if someone put headlights up to the window. Empty lots behind me and next to me. No outside light source. Same bathroom, I often find the bottom vanity drawer pulled completely out and on the floor. It had to be lifted off the rollers. Same bathroom, cat was growling and freaking out and doing the stalk stance. From Redditor, JDBritish. And out of body experience, which I hope is never repeated, almost crapped myself in fear. I was about 11, maybe younger, hard to remember and was sick at school, in the nurses station, called a sick room at my school. Laying on the camp bed, feeling just generally weird looking out the very tall thin windows that are typical of Victorian schools in the UK. Then I felt this strange, I can only call it a juke, to the side, but mentally, and I saw myself outside the window looking in, and at the same time I was looking out from the bed through the window at myself floating outside. Apparently I yelled, but I don't remember that part. Then the nurse called my mom to pick me up and I went home. I think I slept the rest of the day, but I have no clear memories of that part. From Redditor, Darina. I live alone and at the time had two cats. I have one of those galaxy projection lights, the kind that basically projects something onto your ceiling. It has an IR or Bluetooth connection because it uses a remote to change the colors and settings on it. It also has a speaker on it for some reason to let you know if the remote is connected. One night, I turned it off and sitting on my chair next to my bed. I was in a dead sleep when I heard the voice toggling on and off saying, Bluetooth disconnected. That was the initial thing that scared me because all I could hear was this disembodied voice. I found the source quickly and realized I had thrown some clothes over it so the IR port was blocked. I fell back to sleep and was awoken again this time in the morning by a male voice saying, Oh, hello Blaze. It was coming from the direction of the light. Blaze is the name of my cat. I laid still for a moment, my heart pounding. I rolled over and found my cat sitting on the other side of my bed. He was in the room. That scared the tar out of me even more. I leapt out of bed and ran over to the thing and ripped it out of the wall. I haven't turned it on since. It's been sitting in a corner of my room with the plug detached. I'm afraid to plug it back in. I would play hypnagogic hallucinations because I have had them before, mostly my mom's voice calling my name, but the fact that my cat was in fact in my room sitting basically in front of the light terrified me. My cats don't have collars or bells, so it's not like I would have passively heard him in my sleep coming into my room and then imagined the voice. Not only that, but he seemed freaked out too like he had heard the voice as well. I have no idea if it was that or he was just reacting to me waking up. I inspected the whole device looking for cameras and microphones. I was going to take it apart, but I was too scared of what I might find. From Redditor, it's 402 AM. I think my friends and I almost got struck by lightning or some electrical phenomenon in Penawawa, Ontario when I was between 5 and 7. It was torrential, raining, thundering, and very humid outside. I was ready to go in, but my friends, two sisters who were my age and younger who lived across the street from me, were stuck outside. I believe their teenage brother had locked them out as a joke. I was standing across their lawn, debating going in or sitting with them on their stoop, as the youngest sister was crying out of fear because of the thunder. Suddenly a huge ball of bluish-white light came down from out of nowhere and seemed to strike the lawn between us. I remember it looked like it was spiraling or spinning, like a super bouncer. It seemed to bounce off the ground and then it disappeared. The little sister screamed bloody murder and they dropped their umbrellas and were holding each other. I ran inside my own house. I remember still seeing the light when I closed my eyes and it haunted me for quite a while after. The lawn didn't look damaged, and my mom thinks it was my imagination. From Redditor, tear-ducked duck. When I was around the ages 4 and 5, I would constantly see weird things in my bedroom at night. It often be shadows on the wall talking to each other. It happened so often that I just took them to be normal occurrences. I saw all sorts of weird things at night, but the shadows were one of the things I saw most often. One night in particular I was dreaming about being in a large landscape of rolling green hills. Dotting the hills were odd buffalo type creatures. Something seemed off about them. They seemed unnatural, evil and slightly monstrous. I started to get scared and woke up. Laying in my bed, I turned over and saw a horrid shadow figure on the wall directly above my door. I tried to ignore it and flipped back over. I could feel it watching me and kept flipping back hoping it would be gone, but it was always there. It was staring and smiling. After a while, I couldn't take it anymore, so I started yelling from my mom. As soon as she came in, it vanished. I have no good way to explain the things that I saw as a child. There seemed to oftentimes be a blurring between my dreaming state and awakened state, so I may have just had a very active and odd imagination to the point where I was truly hallucinating on a regular basis. When I was about six years old, I had enough of the stuff, so I remembered opening the front door of our house and screaming, GET OUT to everything that was bothering me. That's when my nights began to become more normal, and I eventually never had any more problems with them. From Redditor, Dibba666 When I was seven or eight, I just got done watching an episode of America's Most Wanted and I went out onto the front porch to blow some bubbles. As I was doing this, I saw a guy run out of the neighbor's house and hide behind some bushes, armed. Then I realized I hear police sirens getting closer. They suddenly stop before they get to my street. The guy looks over at me, makes the SHUSH gesture, and then runs across our lawn to the other neighbor's yard. To this day, and I swear to God this is true, I recognized his face as one of the guys on America's Most Wanted. Don't remember who, as far as I know, the cops didn't find him, and no one in my family believes that it happened. I was frozen in fear, shock, until he ran out of my sight, at which point I ran back inside and told my parents what I saw. I don't blame them for not believing me, but at the very least, I did see a wanted criminal run across our yard that day. From Redditor, let's get wavy dude. So there's this local legend that there's a cult that practices deep in the woods in my area. One night, my friend and I decided to go on a hike in the woods at like 1am. He said he knew the area, I didn't at all. Unsurprisingly, he gets us lost. And we're wandering around aimlessly. We hear what sounds like dozens of voices chanting all at once. Immediately our first assumption is we found the cult, because this is literally like two miles into the woods off of this road that's in the middle of nowhere, no houses or anything for miles. We walk closer to investigate because we're actual idiots, and this coyote appears on the trail in front of us. I swear it was some kind of spiritual thing or something because it literally appeared out of nowhere. My friend gets spooked and throws a gallon of milk at it. He brought the milk with him to drink. He's a strange one. Coyote runs off. We decide that we should probably rethink our investigation, especially considering we probably made enough noise to alert them anyway. I tell people this story and they find it entertaining, but I don't think anyone actually believes me. From Redditor, MI808IM I was using resistance bands to exercise in our school gym. We had double doors with the post in the middle so the doors could close, so I wrapped the band around the post. I started pulling and a loose screw popped out, so the post came flying out at me. Only one or two inches from my neck pretty close to one of the blood vessels too. Luckily it hit me closer to my shoulder instead, but I still landed on my back from the force. If not for the gym teacher, nurse and four or five students, no one would have believed it. When Weird Darkness returns, soon after the Cranmer family moved into their new home on Brownsville Road, it became clear that they were not alone. But first, the Elephant's Foot. It was created after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 when Reactor 4 exploded, releasing a lava-like mass of radioactive material called Corium. So radioactive it is still dangerous if you try to see it for yourself today. That story is up next. Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial-free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show. Behind the scenes, video updates about future projects and events I am working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I am narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I am working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com In April 1986, the world experienced its worst nuclear disaster yet when a reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine erupted. More than 50 tons of radioactive material quickly wafted through the air, traveling as far as France. The explosion was so severe that toxic levels of radioactive material plumed out of the plant for 10 days. But when investigators finally braved the site of the disaster in December of that year, they discovered something eerie, a heap of searing hot lava-like chemicals that had burned all the way through to the facility's basement where it had then solidified. The mass was dubbed the Elephant's Foot for its shape and color, and benign though that moniker is, the Elephant's Foot continues to release extremely high amounts of radiation to this day. Indeed, the amount of radiation detected on the Elephant's Foot at the time was so severe it could kill a person in a matter of seconds. In the early morning of April 26, 1986, a massive explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in then-Soviet Ukraine led to a meltdown. During a safety test, the uranium core inside reactor 4 of the plant overheated to a temperature of more than 2,912 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, a chain of nuclear reactions caused it to explode, ripping through its 1,000-metre-ton concrete and steel lid. The explosion then erupted all 1,660 of the reactor's pressure tubes, thereby causing a second explosion and a fire that ultimately exposed the radioactive core of reactor 4 to the outside world. The radiation released was detected as far away as Sweden. Hundreds of laborers and engineers at the nuclear plant were killed within weeks of being exposed to the radiation. Many risked their lives to contain the explosion and subsequent fire at the plant, like 25-year-old Vasily Ignatenko, who perished three weeks after entering the toxic site. Countless others contracted terminal illnesses like cancer even decades after the incident. Millions who lived closest to the explosion suffered similar, long-lasting health effects. The effects of all that radiation are still felt in Chernobyl today. Researchers continue to study the aftereffects of the Chernobyl disaster, including the shocking resurgence of wildlife in the surrounding red forest. Researchers are also trying to quantify the broader ramifications of the catastrophe, including the strange chemical phenomenon that formed in the plant's basement, known as the elephant's foot. When reactor 4 overheated, the uranium fuel inside its core became molten. Then steam blasted the reactor apart. Finally, heat, steam, and molten nuclear fuel combined to form a 100-ton flow of searing hot chemicals that gushed out of the reactor and threw the concrete floor to the basement of the facility where it eventually solidified. This lethal lava-like mixture became known as the elephant's foot for its shape and texture. The elephant's foot is comprised of just a small percentage of nuclear fuel. The rest is a mixture of sand, melted concrete, and uranium. Its unique composition was named Corium to denote where it began in the core. It is also referred to as Lava-like Fuel Containing Material, or LFCM, which scientists continue to study today. You can find a photo of it everywhere on the web if you do a search for elephant's foot radiation. I also have a link to one of the photos in the show notes. The bizarre structure was discovered months after the Chernobyl disaster and was reportedly still searing hot. The several-foot-wide blob of chemicals emitted extreme levels of radiation, causing painful side effects and even death within a few seconds of exposure. When it was first measured, the elephant's foot released nearly 10,000 rankins per hour. That meant that an hour's exposure was comparable to that of 4.5 million chest x-rays. 30 seconds of exposure would have caused dizziness and fatigue. 2 minutes of exposure would cause the cells in one's body to hemorrhage, and 5 minutes or more would result in death in just 48 hours. Despite the risk associated with examining the elephant's foot, investigators, or liquidators as they were called, in the aftermath of Chernobyl managed to document and study it. The mass was relatively dense and could not be drilled. However, liquidators realized that it was not bulletproof when they shot it with an AKM rifle. One team of liquidators built a crude, wheeled camera to take photos of the elephant's foot from a safe distance, but earlier photographs show workers taking photos at close range. Archer Khornev, a radiation specialist who took the well-known photograph of the man beside the elephant's foot, was among these liquidators. Khornev and his team were tasked with locating the fuel left inside the reactor and determining its levels of radiation. Sometimes we'd use a shovel, he told the New York Times. Sometimes we'd use our boots and just kick pieces of radioactive rubble aside. The well-known photograph was taken 10 years after the Chernobyl incident, and he was only there for a few seconds. But still, Khornev suffered from cataracts and other illnesses following his exposure to the corium mass. The elephant's foot no longer emits as much radiation as it once did, but it still poses a dangerous threat to anyone within its vicinity. In order to conduct further studies without risking their health, researchers are trying to replicate small amounts of the chemical composition of the elephant's foot in a lab. In 2020, a team at the University of Sheffield in the UK successfully developed a miniature of the elephant's foot using depleted uranium, which is about 40% less radioactive than natural uranium and is commonly used to produce tank armor and bullets. The replica is a breakthrough for researchers who are trying to avoid creating such unintentional radioactive masses again. However, researchers caution that because the replica is not an exact match, any studies based on it should be interpreted with a grain of salt. Andrey Shereyev, a research from the Frumkin Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Russia, likened the simulation to doing real sport and playing video games. Of course, studies of simulant materials are important since they are way easier and allow lots of experiments, he conceded. However, one should be realistic about the meaning of studies of only the simulants. For now, scientists will continue to look for ways in which the disaster that the elephant's foot represents can be avoided. From the outside, the Victorian house at 3406 Brownsville Road in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, looks like any other in the neighborhood. Inside, though, it was once a living hell. This, according to Bob Cranmer, who lived in the home with his wife Lisa and four children for 18 years, he recounts the horrifying events his family experienced in the book The Demon of Brownsville Road. Cranmer writes, From the first, Lisa and I always had the feeling that we were not alone in that house, that we were being watched by someone or something. I can remember the sensation so clearly we felt surrounded by the past as if we were almost living in it, that we were only temporary visitors tolerated for the time being who would eventually be expelled. Strangely, Bob Cranmer felt drawn to the house ever since he was a little boy. When he learned it was up for sale in 1988, he moved in to purchase it. Cranmer was right when he said that he felt surrounded by the past. The property is steeped in history. The house dates back to 1792 and legend has it that a mother and her three children were killed by Native Americans on the ground upon which the house stands and that their bodies were buried in the front yard. Strange encounters began to happen before the family even moved in. While conducting a walkthrough of the house soon after their offer had been accepted, Bob found his young son Bobby Jr. crying and hyperventilating by a staircase, terrified by an unseen force. Lisa also expressed that the house gave her the creeps. Nevertheless, the Cranmer family moved in to the home. Within weeks of settling in, it became clear to the Cranmer family that there was something off about their new home. At first, there were small nuisances. Lights came on by themselves. A pull chain on a light wrapped itself around the light instead of hanging down. Soon, however, things took a turn for the sinister. Bobby Jr. refused to sleep in his bedroom, sleeping instead in a closet with a light on. Also, around this time a ghost began to make its presence felt, sometimes as a black, foggy cloud and sometimes as a stench. The family heard footsteps and unsettling sounds. Then they found bent crucifixes and destroyed rosaries. The Cranmers finally got the Catholic Church involved. They began to look at their situation not as a ghost haunting but as a demonic possession. A ghost, if you believe in them, is generally the soul of a person who passed on in some tragic event or something. A demon is actually the opposite of an angel, Bob told Hollywood on the Potomac. The existence of this thing manifested itself in a much different way than a ghost would. A ghost is generally reliving some type of event that took place during the life. Sometimes they can interact with people that are alive. In our case, this was a demonic, evil, malicious, malevolent spirit that interacted with us on a regular basis and it wanted to hurt us. It wanted to drive us out of the house. There was no pretense of it being some kind of a lost soul. When the family brought in Catholic priests to bless the house with holy water, the Sinister Force allegedly responded by covering the walls with blood. Bob Cranmer writes in his book, Some of the areas where the blood was dripping from were so far up over nine feet that a person would have had to use a ladder to get there. Another interesting aspect was that it was only on the walls and not on the ceilings so that if it were thrown up there, it would have been impossible to miss hitting the ceilings. It looked as if the walls were bleeding. The family worked with three priests for two years to expel the demon from their home. Lisa and two of their children were hospitalized for psychiatric reasons during this traumatic time. In 2006, they were finally successful. Today, at least according to Bob Cranmer, the house on Brownsville Road is quiet. Thanks for listening! If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more along with the show's Facebook group on the Contact social page at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. A Giant of Kandahar was written by Angus Wright for the website Where I Live. Nobody Believes Me was organized and gathered by Amanda Ashley for Ranker's graveyard shift. The Elephant's Foot of Chernobyl is by Natasha Ishik for all that's interesting, and the Demon of Brownsville Road was written by Diana Villabert for the lineup. Weird Darkness is a production of Marlar House Productions, and now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Psalm 147 verse 3, He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. And a final thought, you are not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes. John Wooden, I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.