 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. I was a babysitter in my teens, and I'd often stay up until parents came home, which was usually from around 11 p.m. even up to 4 a.m. I'd stay up and watch TV. In oftentimes, that'd be local channels, which get totally weird in the tiny hours. They'd basically put interstitial things in instead of commercials, bits of music videos, or weird local access stuff. Now, the strongest channel was Channel 8, and so if your tuner was crap, you'd pick up ghosts of it on Channels 9 and 7, though thankfully Channel 7 never had much on it and 9 was the same as 10, so you'd never really notice or have to worry about it. I learned Channel 9 wasn't just 10 stretched across two frequencies, but was actually a mirror of it, so that 9 would go offline at about midnight while 10 kept airing. So one night, the kids are in bed, I'm sitting in the living room quietly watching whatever's on Channel 9, and the program finally ends. But instead of it just cutting to black or loud beeping on a blue background like the higher channels did when they went offline, it cut to fuzz. But superimposed onto this fuzz was a skeletal face that kept shaking back and forth like a no gesture. There was no audio, just the face as it shook back and forth with no noise. It was frightening, and so I scrambled to the TV to change it back to literally any other channel, and by sheer bad luck I chose to click it down to 8. Something had glitched on Channel 8's broadcast wherein a woman with her hair pulled back and very heavy smoky makeup was being interviewed, but the footage was looping about four frames over and over and over, going and and and and and in the middle of her turning her head. She wasn't a skeleton, she just had an expression showing her teeth and such heavy makeup that the ghost of it on Channel 9 made her look like a skeletal face. Though seeing it, it was still horrifying in a way I can't explain. Then the channel I was on led out a loud piercing beep and all the power went off. The TV blinked off, the kitchen lights turned off, everything. And the clocks and the microwave, the fridge, everything. You could hear the electricity dissipate in a few noises. It all went down. The house had very big windows, so as soon as my vision adjusted I realized that the power was completely gone for miles around. No street lights, no cars, absolutely nothing. The power was entirely off for another hour. While I saw lights from the parent's car turning into the driveway, which was the first artificial light I had seen for an entire hour, they came in and were glad everyone was okay. There had been a fire at the power station that, incidentally, was right beside the broadcasting station. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos, this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. While you're listening you might want to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com you can find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated, the Weird Darkness Store, streaming video of horror hosts and old horror movies. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression, anxiety or thoughts of suicide. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness. Investigators noted the hair on the alleged victim's arms was singed and a skin burned. The grass where he claimed to have had the encounter was also scorched. Did this scout master and the boys with him truly experience a real UFO sighting in 1952? Or was it all a hoax? An atheist tells his story about being possessed by demons. Or maybe he wasn't. Is the Thunderbird real or myth? Most would say it is myth, or if it was real it's now extinct. But then how do you explain sightings of the massive airborne creature as recently as 2018? But first, sometimes the darkness of night can hide frightening secrets, especially if you are alone. We begin there. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Some people like to rise early in the morning, watch the sunrise and greet the day head on with a hopeful attitude. Others prefer to stay awake long into the night, bask in the silence of a sleeping world and only rest when the first rays of sunshine peek over the horizon. But sometimes the darkness of night can hide frightening secrets. The night owls of reddit congregated to share their scariest late night experiences like the one we heard at the beginning of this episode. And some may make you reconsider pulling that all-nighter while the rest of the house is lost in Dreamland. From Redditor PennyPonyBoy. Got a house share going on right now and every one of the lads has heard a female voice in a particular hall. Thing is, none of us has brought a girl home in months. We've all just assumed one of us have got lucky. We've taken the cats to bed, so it can't be them. And our neighbors don't get back until January. We're not as afraid of her as we once were, but there is definitely a voice coming from somewhere in the house. And we can all agree she starts by humming, although no one has made out many of the words. I've heard her four times now and I'm 90% sure she's not speaking Portuguese, English or Spanish. From Redditor Beboopadoop. I was sitting in the living room facing the stairs to my bedroom. I was watching a movie and saw legs coming down the stairs with black suit pants and really shiny black shoes. They stopped coming down the stairs and all I could see was up to their knees. They turned toward me for a few seconds and then slowly went back up the stairs. I was home alone with my three dogs. The next morning I checked the cameras to make sure I didn't dream it. And you can see myself and my three dogs staring at the stairs as the legs come down the stairs and then go back up. From Redditor Heckingweeb. Will you please take this bag off my head? Says a voice in the corner of my room at about 2 a.m. I'm alone on the third floor of my grandmother's mansion, save for her asleep on the first floor. In the corner of my room I know that there is a ventriloquist dummy in a bag that I covered because of how creepy it looks. I just went back to bed. From another Redditor. Back in high school I was watching a movie on the couch with my dad's laptop. Parents, little brother and dog were asleep. Then there was this noise. It was so loud. It sounded like someone threw a chair against a wall in the basement. No one woke up. I grabbed a bat, went downstairs and not a single thing was out of place. Spooked me good. From Redditor Activated27. I used to share a room with my little sister. It was a huge room and it was really dark and late like 2 a.m. At some point I hear someone clap their hands, just once. I froze but didn't do anything. Then all of a sudden I feel two hands pushing down on my feet. I ran out of the room, all the way to my parents' room downstairs. We came back and my sister was sleeping. She wouldn't have done that anyway and there was nobody in the room but us. I still can't comprehend. From Redditor Eagleman1776. I live out in the woods and I leave my window open because my room is small and I produce enough heat to overheat my room. I didn't realize this was the perfect setup to get the crap scared out of me until it happened. I was texting a fellow night owl buddy of mine when I heard the loudest, most terrifying screaming of my life. Now, being an armed citizen, I went for my piece, pointed at the window and almost did a blind fire at someone or something I didn't know like a dumbass. I ended up calling the guy I was texting and he rolled up 20 minutes later. We started searching the area together, back to back practically. When we got about 100 yards away from the back of my house, we heard giggling like a child's giggling. You'd better bet we ran back inside. It's been about three months now. We do not bring it up with each other unless one of us is extremely high. From Redditor Cat220022. I was on Reddit at about 3.30 am just like now and I heard the sound of something falling downstairs. Now this happens sometimes, you know, weird house sounds, so I ignored it. About 10 minutes later, I heard a similar sound and now I actually started getting scared. Now, I didn't want to wake my parents who sleep a floor above me because of my paranoid mind, so my stupid brain decided to just take a weapon, a pretty big book, and go downstairs. Before I was even on the stairs, I heard my dog who sleeps downstairs in a crate bark pretty loudly. By this time, my heart was racing really fast because if my dog barks, she probably sees a person or something move. I went even further downstairs as slowly as possible, trying not to make any sounds. Then I was at the door that separates the stairwell from the main room. At this exact time, I heard another weird sound, but now it sounded more like little clicks hitting the ground. This scared me so much that I had to stand still for a minute or so. I was trying to be the hero, so I just closed my eyes and barged in the room with a huge book in front of my head and started screaming. Then I heard my dog bark weirdly right in front of me, even though her crate is in another part of the room. After about 10 seconds, I opened my eyes and slowly realized it was my dog making all the sounds. So it turned out her crate wasn't closed properly and she was just roaming around the house and my stupid butt head thought it was an intruder. I'm also very stupid for trying to get rid of the intruder myself. I felt very stupid after this and I just put the dog in her crate and went to bed. From Redditor Xnattie. I've had a creepy experience with the TV as a kid. I was watching some cartoons in the living room by myself and the screen abruptly turned to black and there was an image of some creepy puppet face like Jigsaw. No talking, just creepy blank stairs. I tried to convince myself I was probably just a kid with an overactive imagination, but I don't know why in the hell I'd randomly believe I saw that. From another Redditor. Once the bedroom door slammed real hard. I sat up in seconds, just like they do in the movies when they have a nightmare and I kept staring at the bedroom door but the door was closed. I went on and opened the door as I was 100% sure I had heard it slam. When I opened it, the light was on in the hallway and I know for certain I always shut the light off before going to bed. I checked on our main door to make sure no one had broken in and saw through the spyhole that the lights in the apartment's hall were on. They are sensor ones, those that are automatically turned on when someone passes by and we're the only ones living on the highest floor. Weirdly enough, my wife hadn't heard a thing. I was scared as heck that night. Didn't get no sleep. From Redditor, Valdox666. Was in total dark watching a movie and saw a shadowy outline with red eyes standing outside my glass door slash wall when lightning struck. I swear I almost went and grabbed one of my pieces. From Redditor, Melston9380. I live in the middle of nowhere. One night while I was awake and everything was completely black, I saw three flashes. No sound. About two minutes later, I heard two large booms like sonic booms and nothing else. I looked all over and the next day could not find any reason for either. From Redditor, currently deep frying. I couldn't sleep one night and, out of nowhere, I heard a really loud dog howl for a solid 10 seconds downstairs. I live alone and don't own a pet. From Redditor, RBF70. My parents' house is haunted. As a child, I'd wake up to the TV being too loud. I'd go to the living room to tell my parents it was loud and the TV suddenly turned off while my parents were in bed. This happened a lot. In the basement, we had a room with a stereo, TV, pool table and pinball machine. I woke up to people laughing and music. I went downstairs and it was a party with adults wearing masks. Again, my parents were in bed. Years later, my nephew got hold of my camera and started taking pictures in the living room. In one photo, there she was. She was blurry with long, dark, blonde hair and a green nightgown. We couldn't see a face. In my teen years, when I'd wake up during the night and go get a drink, I'd see her in the living room and walk through her and it'd be so cold all through me. She was harmless, but still. From Redditor, JXWTF585. I suffer from night terrors and sleep paralysis every once in a while. One time, I laid in bed for what felt like forever, trying to fall asleep, when I began to hear this mild, low growl, like a jaguar's. I opened my eyes and was able to see a lump inside my wall and it was moving around. Every time it moved, there was a scratching and cracking. A few other times, I'd wake up from sleep, unable to move and there'd be a figure at the foot of my bed mumbling to me. I couldn't make out if it was male or female, but my twin perished in the womb, so I comforted myself by believing it was him visiting me. From Redditor, KonigRomanNumeral7. Once, while I still lived with my mom, I was up late putting in job applications and drawing. I heard what sounded like sobbing and stopped what I was doing. I looked over to my younger sister, saw she was passed out and got slightly unnerved because the sobbing just continued, left my room to investigate and ran into my older sister who was also hearing the noise. We checked on our mom and stepdad, sound asleep, looked in our brother's room where the noise seemed to be coming from, he wasn't in there and truly freaked out. So we went downstairs to see if maybe our brother had wandered off to cry and the noise had somehow carried through the air vents to his room. Found him asleep on the living room couch, saw the TV was off. In fact, all entertainment electronics were turned off and checked the time, 3.06am. We didn't sleep the rest of the night and the sobbing sound continued until about 5am from Redditor Leakey Eddy. I used to live out in the country at the end of a dirt road south of Charleston, South Carolina. Right by my house was a historical marker for the old Belvedere school. More than once I was woken up by a little girl's voice saying hi. From a Redditor, A couple of years ago I stayed home with our dog while my parents went on a little trip. At about 3am the dog woke up and walked to the edge of the bed, he's 13 pounds and started growling aggressively. There were a couple of lights on but the house was mainly dark. He jumped off the bed and walked to the doorway and growled like I'd never heard him do before. I grabbed a billy bat, my dad was a cop, and instantly was ready to mess somebody up. I turned on every light, checked every door slash window slash room and there was nothing. From Redditor Trey Thomas Not too long ago, before we moved out of our previous house, one night I was drunk and passed out on the couch downstairs. When I woke up the next day my son's baby bottle rack and everything on it was all over the kitchen floor and the bar stool from the kitchen was sitting next to the couch I was sleeping on. I know for a 100% fact it was not me. When Weirddarkness returns, did a scout master and the boys with him truly experience a real UFO sighting in 1952? Some have their doubts and an atheist tells his story about being possessed by the devil or so he thought at the time. These stories and more on the way. The first letter seemed harmless enough, possibly even just the result of a mistaken delivery. The second one drew concern and paired with the unexplained visions of something darkly unsettling, Sam Morris finally caves. The everyman, safe world he lives in is about to take a drastic and dark turn. He quickly falls into a world of insanity, the morbid and the macabre. He's drawn into a darkness that is just as deadly as it is mysterious. A darkness that dwells in a house that could only be conjured up by a mad brain. It is a house that calls you. A house that haunts you with its ghosts. They'll scratch and claw through your fragile hide, bringing madness bubbling to the surface. Come see the ghosts for yourself, if you dare. Weirddarkness Publishing presents of A Mad Brain by Scott Donnelly. Now available on paperback, ebook and audiobook versions through Amazon and Weirddarkness.com. On a humid August night in 1952, Scoutmaster D.S. Sonny Desvergers emerged burned and barely coherent from a dense palmetto grove in the South Florida Everglades. He claimed he had encountered an unidentified flying object that discharged a fireball which left him singed and barely able to see. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, chief UFO investigator for the U.S. Air Force, would later label the event the best hoax in UFO history. But the Desvergers' incident remains one of the most intriguing cases from Project Blue Book. The Air Force has now declassified investigations into UFOs because it wasn't just a sighting incident, but one involving a purported attack. To this day, it's still unsolved. A series of investigations conducted by the U.S. Air Force between 1952 and 1969, Project Blue Book was tasked with scientifically analyzing UFO related incidents to determine whether they were a threat to national security. Some say the project was commissioned to find rational explanations for these mysterious phenomena to help quell a growing Cold War-era public hysteria over unidentified objects in the sky. UFO fever reached such intensity that in April 1952, four months before the Desvergers' incident, Life Magazine published a story called Have We Visitors From Space? As Ruppelt would later chronicle, it is 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, which I will link to in the show notes. On the evening of August 19, 1952, Hardware Store Clerk and Scoutmaster Desvergers, 30, was driving a group of Boy Scouts home when he saw a bright light flash over military trail near West Palm Beach, Florida. Thinking it may be a downed plane or car accident, Desvergers pulled on to the shoulder of the highway so he could take a closer look. Armed with a machete and flashlights, he entered the Palmetto Grove near where he saw the lights, leaving the three boys in the vehicle with instructions to alert the residents of a nearby farmhouse if he did not return in 15 minutes. According to declassified documents, after about four minutes of hacking through the bush, Desvergers entered a clearing in the Grove. The first thing he described was an acute nauseating smell and then the feeling of somebody or something watching him. He next experienced a sensation of oven-like heat coming from above. Looking up, Desvergers said, he could not see any stars as he was standing beneath a hovering object. The object was circular, Desvergers recounted, dull black with no seams, about 30 feet in diameter with a height of 10 feet, a convex dome atop it, and the bottom edge lit with a phosphorescent glow. What happened next is what separates Desvergers' encounter from thousands of other UFO sightings. As he slowly moved backward, he recalled, he heard a noise like metal against metal, like a hatch opening, after which a red, flare-like light came from the side of the object and slowly moved toward him. Desvergers constantly referred to it as a ship when recounting the tale to the authorities. As he placed his hands over his face, fists closed, hand over each eye, the red ball of light grew into a red mist engulfing him. It was then, he recounted, that he lost consciousness. When he awoke, Desvergers said, he was leaning against a tree but could not see properly as his eyes burned. Scrambling back through the palmettoes, his eyesight slowly returning to normal, he burst incoherent out onto the highway, where he was met by the boys and local authorities. The three scouts, Bobby Ruffing, 12, David Rowan, 11 and Chuck Stevens, 10, remained in the car after Desvergers entered the grove. Later, in recounting what he witnessed to authorities, Ruffing said he initially saw a semi-circle of white lights descending into the trees. Ruffing also recounted seeing a red light through the brush, as did Rowan and Stevens, who told of also seeing Desvergers's flashlight through the trees before going dark. That's when the scouts headed to the nearby farmhouse for help. A Palm Beach County deputy and Lake Worth Constable responded to the farmer's call for assistance. Returning to the site of the abandoned vehicle, almost an hour after Desvergers first said he saw the lights, the officers and scouts witnessed the scout master emerge from the Paul Meadows, waving his machete and babbling incoherently. In all my 19 years of law enforcement work, I've never seen anyone as terrified as he was, the deputy is recorded as saying in Ruppelt's investigation. Back at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Desvergers and the boys underwent questioning. Officers noted that the hair on Desvergers' forearms was singed and the skin burned. They also noted three tiny burn holes in the bill of the scout master's cap. Following procedure, the local authorities contacted relevant agencies with the incident report, which eventually made its way to Blue Book Chief Ruppelt. He later described the case as one of the weirdest UFO reports that I came up against. Arriving in Florida soon after the encounter, Ruppelt and his team began their investigation, obtaining statements from all parties involved and taking grass and soil specimens from the clearing in which Desvergers said the encounter took place. The latter evidence would prove to be the most inexplicable piece of the encounter puzzle. The fact that they documented and took samples at all is lucky, and one of the most interesting aspects of this case says Jeffrey Wilson, a private industry analyst who examines noteworthy ground phenomenon. As a co-founder of the Independent Crop Circle Researchers Association, ICCRA, Wilson investigates global circle phenomena. Though different to the crop circles he examines today, aspects of the Desvergers incident led him to further investigate. As the grass specimens were being tested, Desvergers' character would come under intense scrutiny, with authorities noting his other than honorable discharge from the U.S. Marines due to theft of a car, and what Florida locals would describe as his ability to tell tall tales. But when Ruppelt first interviewed Desvergers, he described the Scoutmaster as likeable, willing to cooperate and displaying the immediate impression he was telling the truth. Taking into account the background checks on Desvergers, along with a return visit to the encounter site where he determined the Boy Scouts could not have witnessed Desvergers and the mysterious red light in the grove due to their distance and denseness of the foliage, Ruppelt would later call the entire event a hoax. Desvergers was painted as an opportunist and media-hungry con man who sold his story to the American Weekly newspaper the following year. Though Ruppelt would come to believe the tale was fabricated and he and his team would come up with dozens of ways the event could have been staged, they never managed to prove the incident was in fact a hoax. Their biggest stumbling block, the grass samples taken at the site. After samples from the Florida Clearing were sent to Battelle Memorial Institute under contract with the USAF to provide scientific support to Project Blue Book, agronomists made some interesting findings. Though the soil remained consistent, the root structure of the plants in question were charred black and the lower leaves had deteriorated as if by heat. The only way the lab could come close to duplicating the effect was to place live clumps of grass in a pan of sandy soil and heat it about 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The Wilson had witnessed singed grass in his investigations into ground phenomenon, it had always been an occurrence above the soil, never the roots as the lab findings in the Desverges case indicate. Wilson says this is the only recorded example of such findings of which he is aware. I'll place a link to the photos of those examples in the show notes. With those associated with the case no longer able to comment or add context, Desvergers and Ruppelt have both since died, the case remains unexplained. But according to Wilson, something unusual happened to that guy and the physical evidence backed him up. That's why I put the effort into checking this out. Why would you go to the trouble of faking something like this, he continued. Why and how would he stage that? It doesn't make any sense. In 1975, when I was a fifth grader at St. William Elementary, a Catholic school in Cincinnati, Ohio, the devil began visiting me. Or at least so I thought. During these episodes, my brain felt as if it were vibrating and then turning to concrete from the inside out. I wouldn't lose consciousness but I would zone out, unable to speak. My reality was twisted in ways both nonsensical and scary. Most everything I saw either changed physically or registered as something else in my mind. For instance, a teacher would turn into an alligator, a pencil into a sword, a tree into a dinosaur. After each episode, I was left with a creepy feeling and a monstrous headache that caused me to be distracted and unsettled for hours. Still, as freaked out as I was, I didn't tell anyone what was happening to me. Not my parents, not any of my teachers, not my friends, not my brothers or sister, nor my perishes priests. In part, it was because I had trouble finding the words to describe what was happening. And at first, I wondered if it was really happening at all, or if maybe it was just my imagination run amok. A few months after my first episode, I experienced a visitation inside St. William Church, or my school attended Mass weekly. And it was then that I began to suspect and worry that what was happening to me was actually the devil's work. In my impressionable and naive 12-year-old mind, it made perfect sense. What or who else could penetrate the thick limestone walls and spiritual force field of God's own house and have its way with me? The more I thought about it and considered the things I'd been taught in school about the devil, the more it made sense. What's more, my hallucinations began about a year after The Exorcist was released in theaters. While I was too young to see the movie, I had heard all about it, and I mistakenly understood it to be a highly accurate documentary. Though my head wasn't spinning and I wasn't spewing green bile, the things I was experiencing were unbelievably vivid and defined logic. I had every reason to believe that I might soon start exhibiting the same disgusting and frightening behavior as the girl in The Exorcist. I was terrified, but also convinced more than ever that I had to keep my affliction a secret. I feared that if anyone found out I was possessed, they would either think I was crazy and send me to an asylum, or if they actually believed me, I would have to face possibly being seen as evil myself. While I hid my possession, I refused to accept it. I fought back hard. I embarked on a three-pronged plan to strengthen my body, my mind, and especially my spirit. To improve physically, I turned to long distance running. I ran every single day for years. My dedication paid off. As an eighth grader, I won the Citywide Catholic Track and Field Championships in the mile run, and as a high school freshman, I ran a marathon in three hours and fifteen minutes. I hoped God was pleased. To enhance my mind, I worked harder in school than I certainly would have otherwise, earning mostly A's, thanks in part to completing every extra credit opportunity placed before me. Of course, what needed the most improvement was my spirit. I prayed multiple times throughout the day and volunteered to serve as an altar boy at every mass I could manage. This included the dreaded 6.30 am weekday masses, but I hoped to prove to Jesus that I believed in him and wanted his grace. My super-secret weapon for my super-secret condition was self-exorcisms, which I would perform in my bedroom or when the rest of my family was out of the house in our dining room. I would place our family Bible on the table and then light a votive candle, which ironically I had stolen from church. With a rosary dangling around my neck, I would make the sign to the cross, splash myself with holy water I got at school, and recite prayers. I would then hold a small piece of sandwich bread over the candle's flame. In my young mind, this process turned the ordinary bread into devil-blasting communion. I'd swallow it, say a few more prayers, and then quickly hide all the accoutrements of my self-exorcisms before my family returned. I was desperate to be freed from my condition, and I was living a double life in hopes of being rescued from the devil. Still, my efforts to live a good, pure life were not always successful. Like most boys my age, I had impure thoughts about girls on a near constant basis. I sometimes stole money from my mom's purse to buy candy. In high school, I started drinking beer, a lot of it on the weekends. This is why I believed my purification efforts weren't successful. From 5th grade through most of the 10th grade, the devil's visits increased in frequency. Though everything I was doing didn't seem to be helping, I worried stopping would only invite Satan to come on even stronger. And one day he did. Big time. While attending a high school leadership seminar in Columbus, Ohio, a hundred miles from home, the devil came to visit again. This time, however, when the episode was over, I woke up in the back of an ambulance. I began to cry. I was scared and assumed I was headed to that asylum that haunted my thoughts. I was, of course, taken to the hospital, where I was given several tests, including an electroencephalogram, EEG, and a brain scan. I remember thinking that those sophisticated machines couldn't detect the real problem. Beelzebub was way too smart for that. I was at least right on that account. The technology did not reveal possession. What it did find, however, was that I had had a grand mal seizure, my first. I was diagnosed with epilepsy that I was told was perhaps caused by some trauma my brain suffered during birth. It turned out the devil wasn't taking control of my mind. My mind was flipping out on its own. There wasn't anything the least bit spiritual or metaphysical about it. I was relieved I wasn't possessed and I finally had a name for what was causing my episodes. But I was more than a little skeptical. For one, while my smaller hallucinatory episodes stopped, these petite mal seizures had been seen as childhood daydreaming, not epilepsy. For several years afterward, I continued to have grand mal seizures, despite being medicated. I wondered if this might all be part of Satan's plan, a neurological smokescreen of sorts. Beyond that, I had just spent about six years engaged in an epic battle of good versus evil. Admitting that I had royally duped myself for all of that time was a hard thing to do. As crazy as my belief in demonic possession may seem, I believe even now that it was in many ways a rational, if not obvious conclusion to come to under the circumstances. In my Catholic bubble, God and Satan were very much of this world. To appreciate how a kid could come to such a conclusion and then go to great lengths to both keep it a secret and self-exercise his demons, one must consider the Catholic worldview. As theologian Andrew Greeley has written, Catholics believe in essence that objects, events and people can reveal God's grace, or the lack thereof. If we lost something, we prayed to St. Anthony, who would then guide us toward the wallet, keys, or whatever else we misplaced. A nun at my elementary school gave every student in her class a recycled Welch's grape juice bottle filled with holy water. We used the water to bless ourselves before tests at school and when saying our evening prayers at home. The people of my working-class neighborhood even put down money in an attempt to curry favor and influence with the Almighty and ward off the devil. In fact, I had an after-school job essentially selling special favors from God. For $5, you could come to St. William's Rectory, the priest's residence and purchase a mass to be said in someone's name. This would bestow a blessing upon him or her, maybe to help them get a new job, recover more quickly from surgery, or aid in the conception of a child. Smaller requests, safe or good weather at the ball game, could be made by lighting a votive candle in church for $0.25. And once, in what remains one of my most quintessential Catholic moments, a feather floated down from the church rafters during a family wedding. At the reception, all the buzz was about that feather, how it must have somehow dislodged from the wing of an angel who came to bestow God's blessings upon the new couple. It is a lovely, nearly poetic sentiment even for this atheist. The thought that it was probably a pigeon feather didn't seem to occur or matter to anyone. Ultimately, we saw the world as a stage where God and Satan battled at both the macro and micro levels. All that was good came from God and His angels and saints. All that was bad came from Satan and demons. Am I angry at the church or its enchanted world and what it led me to believe? Not really. The church, my family and the larger community guided me toward goodness and light, rather than evil and darkness. I am thankful for that. My experiences also gave me an immense appreciation for science and its ability to explain the world. We humans once believed that the earth was the center of the universe. And that belief made a lot of sense. Then, after all, why wouldn't the planet called home by those made in God's image not be at the center of everything? But much can make sense on the surface, but still not be true with the core. My battle with Satan has a certain logic to it given the larger narratives of my faith. But as I dug down deeper to, in essence, make my religious narratives more than stories to me, I came up empty. That doesn't mean I no longer respect those who choose to believe, nor does it mean that I don't miss certain aspects of my religion, such as the rituals and the communal events. I have four daughters, including 10-year-old twins who attend Catholic school after completing their preschool years at a Jewish school. They don't participate in the sacraments, such as First Communion and Reconciliation, but I have no issues with them being exposed to Catholicism's basic tenets. They'll have plenty of time to figure out what faith means for them. But I do watch them carefully for any signs of them zoning out. Should I spot any such thing, I won't take them to church, I'll take them to a doctor, and I'll fight the urge to light a candle along the way. You can read more of Steve Kissing's story in his book, Running from the Devil, a Memoir of a Boy Possessed. I'll place a link to the book in the show notes. Up next. Most believe the legendary Giant Thunderbird is just a myth, but sightings of the creature continue as recently as 2018. Does that sound like a myth to you? Hey Weirdos, our next Weirdo Watch Party is taking place Thursday night, June 9th. CJ, Scarlett and their son make up the Mansion of Mystery show, and they're bringing us a samurai ghost story, the film that introduced Japanese cinema to the world. It's Rashomon from 1950. In the film, the rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, a woodcutter and the samurai's ghost. We're having a party this time on a Thursday night, just to see how dedicated some of you Weirdos are. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free, so grab your popcorn, candy, and soda, and jump into the live chat as we watch a classic presented by Mansion of Mystery, 1950's Rashomon. It's Thursday, June 9th. The movie starts at 5 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Mountain, 7 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. in Hawaii, and 1 a.m. for our Greenwich Meantime viewers. You can find a trailer for the movie, and also watch Horror Hosts and Be Horror Movies all day long every day of the year on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Is the Thunderbird Real or Myth? A gigantic bird was sighted in Alaska in January 2018 by a woman driving, having a wingspan nearly as wide as the road, and in Pennsylvania on May 26, 2013, when two friends were walking through the woods near Brynathan Castle and were startled by something extraordinary. It was extremely loud, and I glanced up and saw a huge black bird, Anthony said in his report. It was sitting above us and we seemed to startle it. It flew about 100 feet to a nearby branch. Its wingspan was at least 10 feet, and judging how far it was, it looked to be around 4 feet tall. This was far from the first sighting of such a creature in Pennsylvania. On the evening of Tuesday, September 25, 2001, a 19-year-old claimed to have seen an enormous winged creature flying over Route 119 in South Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The witness' attention was drawn to the sky by a sound that resembled flags flapping in a thunderstorm. Looking up, the witness saw what appeared to be a bird that had a wingspan of an estimated 10 to 15 feet and a head about 3 feet long. This was just one more sighting of an incredible creature, most often considered a myth known as the Thunderbird. Sightings of these gigantic birds, apparently unknown to science, go back hundreds of years and are a part of many Native American legends and traditions. They have been even blamed for abductions or attempted abductions of small children. The South Greensburg witness told researcher Dennis Smeltzer that the huge black or grayish brown bird passed overhead at about 50 to 60 feet. I wouldn't say it was flapping its wings gracefully, the witness told Smeltzer, but almost horrifically flapping its wings very slowly, then gliding above the passing big rig trucks. The witness observed the creature for about 90 seconds, even seeing land on the branches of a dead tree which nearly broke under its great weight. Unfortunately, no other witnesses saw the bird on this date and no tangible evidence could be found for the bird after the site was searched. What makes this story more interesting, however, even plausible, is that other sightings of similar description were reported in Pennsylvania in June and July 2001. On June 13, a resident of Greenville, Pennsylvania was startled by the great size of the grayish black creature seen soaring overhead, at first thinking it was a small airplane or ultralight aircraft. This witness observed the bird for at least 20 minutes, clearly saying its fully feathered body and confidently estimating its wingspan to be about 15 feet and its body length at about 5 feet. This bird too was seen to perch on a tree for at least 15 minutes before taking to air again and flying off toward the south. A neighbor of this witness claimed to have seen the creature the next day, describing it as the biggest bird I ever saw. Less than a month later, on July 6, a witness in Erie County, Pennsylvania reported a very similar sighting. According to an item in 40 in Times magazine, again the creature's wingspan was estimated to be 15 to 17 feet and was described as dark gray with little or no neck and a circle of black under its head. Its beak was very thin and long, about a foot in length. These were not the first sightings of thunderbirds in Pennsylvania and if these reports are accurate, these birds are the largest flying creatures not yet identified by science. By comparison, the largest known bird is the wandering albatross, with a wingspan of up to 12 feet. The largest predatory birds, which the thunderbird is most often likened to, are the Andean condor, 10.5 foot wingspan, and the California condor, 10 foot wingspan. The legend of the thunderbird reaches back hundreds of years as part of the mythology of several Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region. It might have remained strictly a part of those cultures had not the great wind creature been seen countless times by the white man over the centuries. According to the Native American myths, the giant thunderbird could shoot lightning from its eyes and its wings were so enormous that they created peels of thunder when they flapped. Many tales of the thunderbird are more recent than the Native American legends. The animals almost always listed in the catalogues of cryptozoologists' mysterious creatures. And although the thunderbird has been sighted on numerous occasions, a credible photograph or video of one has never been produced, and a specimen has never been killed or captured, except perhaps once. A tale comes out of the Arizona Territory Desert about two cowboys who encountered the giant flying creature in 1890. As cowboys are wont to do, they took careful aim with their rifles at the amazing creature and blasted it from the sky. According to an article in the April 26, 1890 edition of the Tombstone epigraph, the cowboys and their horses dragged the lifeless monster into town where its wingspan was measured at an incredible 190 feet and its body measured at 92 feet long. It was described as having no feathers but a smooth skin and wings composed of a thick and nearly transparent membrane. Clearly, their description more readily resembles a pteranodon, pterosaur, or pterodactyl than a large bird. Most paranormal researchers consider this story to be a good example of Old West creative writing on the part of the newspaper. But there may be a hint of truth in it. In 1970, a man named Harry McClure claimed that he knew one of the cowboys when he was a small boy. The real story, as the cowboy told the youth, was that the creature they shot had a wingspan of 20 to 30 feet. They did not kill the Thunderbird, however, and returned to town only with their fantastic story. One more intriguing element to this anecdote is that a photo was supposedly taken of the great creature, held up with its wings spread by several townspeople. Remarkably, many people recall seeing this photograph printed in Fate, National Geographic, or Grit Magazine, or in some book about the Old West. But as yet, this photo has not surfaced. In his book, Unexplained, which I will place a link to in the show notes, Jerome Clark lists many more sightings, including in the early 1940s, writer Robert R. Lyman spotted a Thunderbird sitting on a road near Toutersport, Pennsylvania. It soon took to the sky, spreading its 20-foot wingspan. In 1969, the wife of a Clinton County, Pennsylvania sheriff, saw an enormous bird over Little Pine Creek. She said its wingspan appeared to be about as long as the creek was wide, about 75 feet. In 1970, several people saw the gigantic bird soaring toward Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. It was dark-colored, and its wings spread was almost like that of an airplane. In 1948, several witnesses along the Illinois-Missouri border sighted a condor-like bird about the size of a Piper Club airplane. The most terrifying story about giant birds is that they occasionally attempt to carry away small animals and even children. This item appeared in the July 28, 1977 edition of the Boston Evening Globe. From the United Press International, Carried Off 10-year-old Marlon Lowe and his mother, Mrs. Ruth Lowe, claimed that one of two large black birds with eight-foot wingspans tried to carry Marlon off in its claws Monday evening in Lawndale, Illinois. Although several bird experts say that no bird native to Illinois could lift 70-pound Marlon, Mrs. Lowe says that Marlon was carried 20 feet before the bird dropped him when he struck the bird with his hand. Other abduction stories include that of a 42-pound five-year-old girl named Svanhild Hansen, who in June 1932 was carried away by a huge eagle from her parents' farm in Leica, Norway. The giant bird carried her for more than a mile, the report stated, after which it dropped her unharmed on a high mountain ledge. In 1838, another five-year-old girl was snatched from the slope of the Swiss Alps, where she was playing, by an eagle that carried the child to its nest. Unfortunately, the girl did not survive that ordeal and her badly mutilated body was discovered some two months later by a shepherd. The eagle's nest subsequently found was said to contain several eagles surrounding heaps of goat and sheep bones. If you made it this far, welcome to the Weirdo family. If you liked the podcast, please tell your friends and family about it however you can and get them to become Weirdos too. And I greatly appreciate you leaving a review in the podcast Apulism from that helps the podcast get noticed. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. You'll never guess what happened while you were asleep is by Sarah Blumert for Graveyard Shift. The Scouts in the UFO is by Colin Bertram for History. I thought I was possessed by the Devil is by Steve Kissing for The Huffington Post. And the Giant Thunderbird Lives is by Stephen Wagner for Live About. Weird Darkness Theme by Alibi Music. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright Weird Darkness 2020. If you like a transcript of this episode, you'll find a link in the show notes. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 1 Timothy 6, Verse 17. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. And a final thought from Ben Carson. Happiness doesn't result from what we get, but from what we give. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.