 Welcome, Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The allegedly true stories from seances and Ouija board sessions I'm about to share with you suggest that communication with those who have passed is not always in our best interests. From accidentally unleashing a demon on your girlfriend to cursing your band's next album, dabbling too heavily in spirit communication can have dire consequences. These seance stories will make you think twice about lighting a few candles and bringing out that dusty Ouija board from your closet. After reading a collection of spooky Ouija board stories that happened to Redditor Kimmy Gibbler say what, you'd probably go out and buy a ticket for the no thank you train just like me. The writer's most terrifying story comes from an evening when a spirit named Deb proved that it exists by explaining that it knows where she and her friends smoke, possibly insinuating that it's watching them as they get their fix. Not freaked enough by this information to stay inside, the Redditor and her friend Hailey pressed Deb to prove she is real. I said, how will we know you're real? And Deb said, trees. I'm like screw that and Hailey says we have to do it. So we're smoking outside. I'm looking into the forest, sweating balls in fear thinking I'm going to see a demon face in the branches or something. Eventually we relax, but then Hailey mid-sentence her face drops and goes white and she's like get inside now. I toss my cigarette and jump in the window. We close the blinds and we're breathing super heavy. I'm like what, what happened? She says that behind me in the distance there was a big like 100 foot tall tree. There was no wind. I remember this because I was watching my cigarette smoke go directly up and I was blowing perfect o's without them disappearing. She says the tree was still. Then suddenly the whole tree, including the trunk, moved back and forth then went back to perfectly still. I was like hell no and after a while a freaking out sat back at the board. When we put our fingers on it, the board said, did you see? Redditor Huxley Pearl relates a Ouija board story that seems to be more about a family of intuitive people who live in a haunted house than anything else. But it's worth noting that their spooky troubles didn't begin until they horsed around with the Ouija board. There are ghostly issues included phantoms, pulling on a baby's limbs, a black clad ghost slave family and the appearance of a creepy red door. What's more, the sister and the family may have summoned up something very troubling. Her sister said that she was playing with the board one day and when she asked who she was speaking to she got a weird name. It struck her as odd but she didn't really worry about it. Weeks later she watched a special on the History Channel or something. They were discussing demonology. She recognized one of the names as being the strange one she had encountered through the Ouija board. If you've seen The Conjuring, you have some idea of what happened in the life of Andrea Perron. But the film didn't tell the whole story. In 1971, Perron and her family moved to a house in Harrisville, Rhode Island. They soon discovered that the house was filled with spirits who hadn't yet passed on due to continuous unexplained phenomena happening. Scared for their lives, the Perron family called upon paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren for help. They promised to try and help the family get the spirits out. When a medium performed a seance it went dreadfully wrong. She summoned a spirit that went after Perron's mother, Carolyn, throwing her around the house with such force that she sustained a concussion. Perron said it was the most terrifying night of my life. After the seance the family no longer experienced severe supernatural events. Andrea Perron has written three books about the hauntings experienced by her family in their Harrisville home. While missing around with a Ouija board as a young man, the stepdad of a former Redditor was visited by a demon who told him that his firstborn child would perish. Understandably the next morning the guy tried to get rid of the board first by throwing it away, then by burning it and finally burying it with a Bible on top for good measure. Years later his wife miscarried their first child. While playing with a Ouija board with some friends from high school, Redditor Helvin III and some friends encountered a spirit named Nile who said that he had been slain by his father. The group tried to move on from this conversation but the spirit continued to insist that he wanted answers, even going so far as to spell out, satisfy my requests. After that the friends abandoned everything, the board, the house, the street. Truly the only way to bust a ghost. In 1941, psychic Helen Duncan was approached by a mother looking for news of her son, a soldier in the British Royal Navy. Duncan held a seance to conjure up any spirits with news of the man. She revealed that the young man had been lost in the sinking of the battleship HMS Barum. Remarkably the ship's sinking hadn't yet been revealed to the public to prevent the loss of morale in the difficult days of World War II. Among the people at the seance were two lieutenants of the Navy. They were immediately suspicious of Duncan, prompting two undercover police officers to attend another seance. The officers promptly detained her and Duncan was tried under Section 4 of the Witchcraft Act of 1735 which forbade deceitful spiritual activity. She was the last person to be tried for witchcraft before the acts repeal in 1951. After building a spirit board with his sister, Redditor Life in Hexcolors says the duo contacted a spirit named Roger, who perished of food poisoning and knew that the brother and sister's older sibling wanted to talk to them. Shortly afterward, the older sister who was upstairs vacuuming called for the kids to help her with the household chores. The spirit boarding duo got so freaked out that they threw their board away, only for it to return the next day. Imagine a Ouija board that was so pent up with spooky energy that it didn't even have to be used to start screwing around with your life. That's exactly what happened to Redditor Zombie T. Hoven, who took the board in question from a friend who said that every time she tried to use it, the same spirit continued to show up. After taking the board to its new home, things began to move around in the middle of the night. Footsteps were heard and the cats were not happy. But really, when are cats happy? Experimental rock group The Mars Volta almost cancelled an entire album due to a supposedly cursed spirit board. After guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez picked up a Ouija board in Jerusalem and the band used it. They started experiencing strange happenings, including tracks disappearing from the computer, two floods in the studio, equipment ruined and a valued engineer quitting. True to form, the band channeled the strange events into their album, The Bedlam in Goliath, which was released in 2008. Rodriguez Lopez buried the board to avoid any future incidents and the band released two more albums before breaking up in 2013. While using Ouija board to contact the spirit of a young girl's grandmother, one Redditor and a group of friends were contacted by the spirit of something that wore wooden clogs and had a touch of something not quite human. After being called, the spirit entered the room and touched everyone in the circle, causing them to hyperventilate. Suddenly, the girl sitting closest to the door starts hyperventilating and tears fill her eyes. We're all basically frozen in fear at this point. It's really hard to get a feeling for how fast time went, but not long after it started, it stops and starts with the person on her left side doing the same. I don't think I really understood at that time that I was next in line. It ended with the person next to me and I suddenly felt something touch my shoulders. It wasn't completely like the physical touch of a human, but it definitely was something that put weight on my shoulders. I of course freeze and start hyperventilating at the shock of something unknown touching me. When this has gone half way through the circle, it jumps straight at the granddaughter who starts with the same hyperventilating and breaks down crying. While playing with the Ouija board late at night, Redditor frost from fire asked for a simple sign so they could know that they were actually communicating with the spirit realm, not just absentmindedly moving the plant chat around. That is when their local flood alarm sounded three times, even though there was no rain that night. Up next, more true stories of seances that have gone horribly wrong. A hunting party in search of moose gets separated in the Canadian wilderness. One of the party members is abducted by the legendary Wendigo, a novella written by Algernon Blackwood. The Wendigo. Author Robert Ikeman once said to the story, it is one of the possibly six great masterpieces in the field. The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood. You can hear the entire book absolutely free on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. We now continue with when Ouija and seances go horrifyingly wrong on Weird Darkness. Bradford J. Angers, a magic store employee and psychology student, got more than he bargained for when a customer paid him $100 to perform a fake seance complete with sounds and visuals. With the aid of a partner, Angers set out to create an entirely fabricated seance that appeared real. Angers pulled it off without a hitch, with disembodied voices speaking predictions about the attendees loved ones from a mist that formed in the center of the table. Once it was over, Angers went to help his partner disconnect the equipment that they used to produce the special effects, only to find that his partner and the equipment had been locked outside the entire time. Whatever happened during the seance had nothing to do with their plans. Redditor Twisted Missy tells a Ouija story about their grandmother who decided to pass some time with her lady friends and husband one spooky evening. After reaching a spirit and asking the basics, they cut to the chase and asked how the ghost passed. The ghost said it would tell them but not until the boy left the room. After the grandpa left, the spirit began to relay the story of its demise, but when the grandpa returned to Fetch's wallet, the spirit cut its chilling tail short. While playing with a Ouija board with his cousin Donny in a camper outside of his house, Redditor Roblicky kept receiving the same message again and again. The letters H and A followed by U are trapped. When the two cousins decided to leave the camper, they discovered that the door handle had broken off. They were trapped. Eventually they got out of their prison but that was the last time either of them messed with a Ouija board. Some Ouija board experiments are fun ways to spend a harmless Saturday night, but others can be eerie. This Reddit user described an experience on an army base when dabbling with a Ouija board led her and a group of friends to contact a spirit named Cheryl. This spirit said she perished in a car accident and was searching for her boyfriend. After continuing to use the board, they managed to get in touch with the boyfriend who said he was sorry and he loved her very much but couldn't explain why he was sorry. The group contacted a third spirit who said that the reason the boyfriend was sorry was because he was in hell and the girlfriend was in heaven. At that moment all of the candles in the room flickered out. On New Year's Eve 1991, while drinking like only teenagers can, Redditor Eat My Cupcake and their siblings contacted a spirit named Eugene. We asked, why are you contacting us Eugene? We received the answer, afraid. That seemed a bit more serious. We asked, why are you afraid Eugene? It replied, music, music, over and over, nonsense. Then we got a series of numbers. Puzzling. My brother had the bright idea to turn on the radio to the station indicated by the numbers. To our surprise, there really was a station there. The song Don't Leave Me Stranded by Hart was playing. The board immediately started saying Hart, Hart, Hart. I thought my brother was just playing off of what he was hearing and was just screwing with me. Then it started saying Don't Go. Don't Leave Me. Don't Go. Church. Church. Afraid. Don't Go. Over and over and over. We assured it we weren't going to go, but it dwindled into nonsense after a while. It was getting really late and we decided to go to bed. The next afternoon, while everyone was eating breakfast, the family's father received a phone call letting him know that his uncle Eugene had had a heart attack the previous night and died multiple times on the table, only to be revived very early that morning. He'd been terrified of losing his life because he hadn't attended church in decades. It's a well-known fact that the Queen Mary, a historic cruise ship permanently docked in Long Beach, California, is one of the most haunted sites on the planet. So it makes perfect sense that someone would have a very scary Ouija experience onboard the ship, even if they made their board out of two pieces of paper and some band-aids. When Redditor Garden198 and some friends decided to experiment on the ship, they spoke with a spirit who said its name was Zach and who may have tried to physically assault the team after they went to bed that night. Each member of the crew suffered night terrors, with one of them running through the Our Father prayer in a state of lucid dreaming. Redditor WuWuHu tells a couple of stories about their strange Ouija board that predicted major events in the lives of those who used it. But the most interesting thing they mentioned is how the board consistently had 35 cents in its box. One of their friends ended up taking the change for luck and kept it on them at all times. Months later, the change was able to help them make a pay phone call that got them out of a sticky situation. Growing up in a creepy, seemingly haunted room enforced anybody to take drastic measures. For this unidentified man growing up in Michigan, he knew his room had a bad vibe. When he allowed two occult-dabbling friends to hold a séance to find out the cause of his eerie visions and unexplained voices, things went from bad to worse. The séance backfired. His girlfriends started angrily shouting for the friends to leave. After they left, the man found her trapped in the room, unable to move. Once he pushed a dresser out of the way to gain access, he tried to pick her up but found that she was heavier than normal. Once he got her out, they escaped to the home of his friends where she revealed that she felt like she had been possessed. The friends returned to his home to try and rid his home of the evil entity. They ended up contacting a demon named Enlil who told them that it had been using the bedroom as a gateway and the séance that enabled him to escape along with a host of other terrifying spirits. The friends managed to close the gateway and rid the room of spirits. From then on, the room seemed to be normal. Another redditor decided to use her Ouija board in the wilderness one afternoon. She and her family spoke to a spirit who may have been reaching out for help. After meeting something calling itself Patrick, the family had a good time joking around with the ghost until it told them that he had been brutally assaulted and slain near where they were hanging out. After the family shut the conversation down, they returned home and checked up on the story, which had been reported in the local news. More Ouija and séances gone horribly wrong when Weird Darkness returns. Coffee. It's a necessity. Most of us can't be bothered to even be civil to our families until we've had our first cup of Joe. I could drink coffee all day and often do and now I've chosen an exclusive coffee just for the task. Weird Dark Roast Coffee. I love chocolate, I mean who doesn't, so I specifically asked for a blend with at least a hint of cocoa. An Evansville coffee who roasts each bag to order knocked it out of the park when they sent me a bag to taste test for approval. Weird Dark Roast Coffee has deep notes of cocoa, caramel and a touch of sinister sweetness that makes it great hot or cold. Personally, I like to put a little milk in it when I'm drinking it hot, but it is amazing black and poured over ice. But now you can drink it too. And the only place you can find Weird Dark Roast Coffee is at WeirdDarkness.com. We continue now with séances, spirit boards and Ouija board stories, all of which have gone terribly terribly wrong. If you've seen any horror movie with Ouija board, you know that the last thing you want to do is burn a board. We don't know the exact science behind that, but something about setting one of those things on fire angers all of the ghosts and then you have to figure out how to get them out of your house. Redditor Orphan Teer decided to get spooky with his friends one day and printed a Ouija board from the internet. After they failed to get anything going with the ghost, they burned the board in the fireplace. But then everything got creepy. A set of downstairs doors opened randomly and they heard continual banging from downstairs. The creepiest part of the entire story is that one piece of the board survived. The word yes. While you can't trust everything Ouija board tells you, one Reddit user discovered there might be more truth to a prediction than meets the eye. According to the post, the Redditor asked the spirit they connected with to make a prediction about a future news event to which the spirit replied, Die, die. D-I-D-I-E. D-I-D-I-E. Die, die, die, die. And then Princess die. When asked how this would happen, it responded, car accident. When asked where this would happen, it gave the answer, Paris. When asked when it replied, Ohio. The Redditor ended up going to Ohio but nothing happened. So the spirit's message was dismissed as irrelevant. A month later, the Redditor went on another trip to Ohio. During that trip, Princess Diana of Wales lost her life in a tragic car accident in Paris. After having some success speaking with spirits via a Ouija board in college, Redditor DonnyNarco89 claims to have accidentally attached themselves to two ghosts who followed them home after graduating school. The spookier of the beings was an old man who wore a hat and smoked a pipe while sitting next to the Redditor as they slept and shouted at them to wake up. The haunting became so bad that the Redditor and their mother had to cleanse their house. If you're using a Ouija board and the spirit gets tired of you and wishes you a good day, don't get offended and definitely don't keep pestering the entity because things won't go well. While playing with a Ouija board in their teens, one former Redditor and their friends continually pestered a spirit after it told them goodbye multiple times. Finally, the spirit got so tired of these meddling kids that it called them on the phone, spoke to one of their dads and said, don't f with me. Yikes. Take some advice from Redditor Bluejake42 who accidentally invited a demon named Cause into his dreams and leave well enough alone when you're using a Ouija board. The writer says that while they don't necessarily believe in spirits, the conversations they had with this entity on an abandoned basketball court have made them believe that something is out there. He said he was blunt, blue-eyed and burned, all of which I thought was a weird description, and when I asked what he meant by burned, he said, F-I-R-E. Fire. I asked, did you die in a fire? There was some hesitation. I thought I hit the wrong nerve or something with this spirit. It was a long pause and then, yes. I asked what year and it said 1816. Okay, so at this point, I just start talking to it. I still had fun. I asked him if he could visit me because I thought he was an alright guy. Cause said, D-R-E-A-M-S. Dreams. I said, sure, visit me in my dreams. That'd be alright. The spoiler alert cause did indeed come visit the Redditor in their dreams, and it wasn't pretty. After speaking to the creature and inviting it out of the board, no one else was able to contact anything, so it's possible that the demon took over the Ouija board and is still waiting for the Redditor to return to their game. When Redditor Dorian Gray, 98, and their cousin who lived together, decided to dig up an antique Ouija board and play around with the spirit world, they may have gotten more than they bargained for. After goofing around with the spirit, they put the board away without dismissing the spirit, thus inviting it to creep them out constantly, even when they were going to the bathroom. They destroyed the planchette, burned the board and buried it, but then the board reappeared on their doorstep. Proving the existence of the supernatural to a skeptic is often futile, but that didn't dissuade Cindy Lawson's mother from trying to make her friend Ricky a believer. Lawson's mother was part of a singing group and the troupe wanted to prove to Ricky a non-believer that spirits were real. They held a seance and asked for a series of escalating signs, including slamming doors, strange smells and knocking sounds. The night culminated with a visit from a spirit identified as Lorenzo de Medici, a famous patron of the arts in Renaissance Italy who predicted the skeptical Ricky would soon suffer an accident during his act as a trick cyclist. Though Ricky laughed at the prediction, he did in fact suffer a significant mishap several weeks later, perhaps prompting him to reassess his skepticism about the supernatural realm. While using Ouija board with some friends to communicate with a spirit from beyond the grave, Redditor NateSobs1216 chatted with a young woman named Bridget who claimed to have perished in a car accident. When the friends grilled her about the facts of her passing, make and model of the car, the year of the event, etc., the spirit freely gave up her answers until the game ended. The Redditor says they looked up Bridget's info online and discovered that it was true and ever since they have felt like something is following them. Maybe Redditor Slackerish's first mistake was getting crossfaded before invoking a demon through Ouija board, or maybe it was not shutting down the conversation when they discovered they were talking to a demon. Either way, they kept chatting with this alleged demon until it said that it wanted to hurt everyone using the board, which is never a good sign. When the player went home, they discovered all of their furniture moved around and all of the cabinets open. Whether this was simply a prank or the work of a demon is yet to be seen. Another Redditor went out of their way to get haunted by something that came through their Ouija board. After trying and failing to contact a spirit the first time, they cut the lights, lit some candles, and turned on an old radio to play nothing but white noise while they tried to make contact with the other side. That's a pair of bad idea genes if ever there was one. When a spirit finally responded, the Redditor and their friends learned that its name was Zozo, and from there things went about as poorly as they could. We began to try and move the planchette in circles like you do when you're expecting an answer and all of a sudden it stopped at the hello spot on the board and would not move. We actually slid the board off the table trying to get it to move. It was being pushed down hard. The planchette continually alternated between hello and no. The radio emitted screeching sounds, a bunch of objects fell off the top of the refrigerator, the candles blew out, and a cat that lives at the house began walking with a limp the next day. Weird activity continued in her home for the next two weeks. Such is the power of Zozo. Whether you're a true believer or one of those skeptics, these stories of spirits haunting the living from the confines of a Ouija board or through a seance truly are chilling and should make you think twice before communicating with entities from beyond. If not, then just keep listening. Individual stories of spirit contact are creepy enough, but even more eerie is the number of people who claim to have contacted one particular entity which has named itself Zozo. The spirit is most known for having intimate knowledge of people's lives and for its ability to manipulate people and objects to cause harm. The entity's origins are murky, but people around the world claim to have interacted with it during seances while using spirit boards or while practicing auto-writing. Sometimes Zozo is a mere trickster, while other times it has reportedly possessed people and caused harm. When Weird Darkness returns, we ask the questions, is Zozo real and if so, what is he or it? I'm a man of habits. Okay, truth be told, my bride says I'm boring. I like the same stuff and that's what I stick with, and that includes what I eat. Even for breakfast, I used to opt for a leftover pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers... Did I mention pizza? Anyway, now that I'm trying to lose weight and cut back on the carbs, I've had to make changes for breakfast. Now, instead of a big heavy breakfast, I just grabbed one of my built bars, the best-tasting protein bar on the planet. Built bars satisfy my hunger with up to 19 grams of protein and also satisfy my sugar craving, despite being less than 3 grams of sugar. And at only about 150 calories per bar, if I'm really hungry in the morning, I can grab two of them and still feel good about it. Try replacing your dessert or even a meal like breakfast with a built bar. You won't even know it's not really a candy bar. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash built and build a box of your own. Use the promo code WeirdDarkness at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash built promo code WeirdDarkness. Stories of the Ouija Board Demon Zozo have been circulating for just about as long as the Ouija game itself has been around. Who is Zozo? That depends on who you ask. But most people familiar with Zozo believe it to be either a demon, a tulpa, a mischievous ghost trying to scare and impress the living, or just a product of the idea motor effect. Regardless of Zozo's true identity and origins, tales of harrowing encounters with it have become so widespread that they've inspired books and horror movies. Of course, while Ouija is sold as a board game, a toy, and your chances of accidentally speed-dialing a bona fide evil spirit in the middle of your Halloween party are pretty low, it's probably something you don't want to risk. Because you are still literally asking a spirit to come through the veil, and opening that door is never a good idea. Several people claim to have been possessed by Zozo, and the experiences they describe are absolutely nightmarish. Paranormal researcher Darren Evans recounted having a nervous breakdown when Zozo stalked and tormented his daughter until she had to be admitted to a hospital. According to one witness, Zozo first asked a series of questions about players' families through a spirit board before mysteriously extinguishing a candle and going on to cause a streak of nasty luck for the witness and her friend. The first recorded account of a supernatural encounter with an entity calling itself Zozo dates back to far before Darren Evans reports. In the last published edition of La Dictionaire Infernal, the same book that contains the symbol that Evans claimed was a representation of Zozo's name, the author documented a case of demonic possession that took place in the village of Tiley in 1816. The case concerned a girl who claimed to be possessed by three demons. Their names were Mimi, Frappule, and Zozo. According to another theory, Zozo is another name for the Mesopotamian demon Pizzuzu. If Zozo really is the nickname for Pizzuzu, this creature has been terrorizing occultists and party game enthusiasts for at least 2700 years. Zozo's MO is to introduce itself to unwary spirit board users, interact with them through the board for a little while and then slowly begin to spread its influence over their lives. Most encounters with Zozo start off as deceptively benign conversations before they start to turn sinister. However, there are several signs that can tip you off in time for you to disengage before anything truly creepy happens. Here's how you'll know it's time to put the game away. First, the planchette will move in a rainbow pattern from side to side, sometimes pointing to O and Z over and over. Two, the planchette will move in repeated figure eight movements. Three, the planchette will spell out any version of Zozo's name, which include not just Zozo but Zozo, Zaza or even Mama. Four, you might see what look like shadows moving around the area where you're playing. And five, you and whoever you're playing with will start to feel scared, uneasy or upset. If you suspect you might have made contact with Zozo, the best thing you can do is stay calm. If Zozo really is a demonic spirit, your fear will just make it stick around. If you're using a spirit board, close the session by moving the planchette to goodbye. This will formally end the game and you won't be able to make contact with Zozo anymore. Even if Zozo is nothing more than a product of the idea motor effect and an overactive imagination, just removing the source of your fear will help you escape the feeling of being haunted. The easiest way to avoid forming an unwanted connection with Zozo is to stop communicating with it for a while. If you use a spirit board, put it away for a while or use it somewhere besides the place where you believe you've run into Zozo. Cleansing your home or anywhere in particular where you feel Zozo is more likely to bother you is also a pretty reliable way of staving off negative influences and regaining some peace of mind. If you are a spiritual person, go ahead and give your place a cleanse or a blessing with whatever tools work best for you, such as sage or holy water or holy oil. If you're dealing with a run of bad health or cruddy luck, your best course of action is to take care of yourself. Remember that what goes down will come up again. Don't ignore your physical or mental health, whether it's creepy spirits or garden variety health problems that have you worried. And if you're 100% convinced that what you're facing is an actual demonic spirit, it can't go wrong with a good olelectricism. Some sources also associate Zozo with Pazuzu, the mesotopian demon king of the southwest wind and the inspiration for the villainous spirit in the book and movie The Exorcist. Darren Evans, a paranormal researcher whose reports brought Zozo into the public eye, described encountering Zozo through a Ouija board with a symbol etched into it that could be read as the name Zozo. Curiously, this symbol is almost identical to the Zozo symbol used to represent Jimmy Page on the inner sleeve of the fourth-led Zeppelin album. While it's not impossible that Page took graphic design advice from a demon, it's more likely that he adapted the symbol from La Dictionnaire Infernal, an encyclopedia of demons written in 1818. However, this book lists the symbol as a protective sigil, not a demonic one. This means that Evans, a Zeppelin fan, probably took Zozo's name from the symbol he saw in the album and gave it a demonic origin story. Or Zozo just happens to be really into Led Zeppelin. There's no guarantee that any given spirit board session will bring you face-to-face with Zozo, but why leave it up to chance? Before you pick up the plan, take a minute to set some ground rules for whoever or whatever you're hoping to contact. If Zozo does indeed exist, it might think twice before trying to intimidate you if you've shown that you're willing to take control of the encounter. Just dedicate a minute or two before your session to state firmly that you're not interested in talking to anyone who wants to scare or control you and that if they try, you're going to tell them goodbye. Of course, there's also the alternative. Just don't mess with a Ouija board. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll hear not only tonight's radio show, but also the extra Sudden Death Overtime content that I prepared and didn't have time to fit in because I went overtime. I've got masquerading mediums, imitation investigators and dubious demonologists in tonight's Sudden Death Overtime content. And while the radio show is just on the weekends, I upload episodes for the podcast seven nights per week. You can subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com, or search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness. And please tell others about the show who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call into the Darkline toll-free and tell your own true paranormal story or a story that's happened to someone you know. That phone number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, it's toll-free 1-877-277-5944. You can also email me anytime at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. At a final thought, you live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. Ruth E. Rengel, I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, keep listening. Hour 2 of the Weird Darkness radio show is coming up. Weird Darkness is now partnering with Paranormality Magazine. Paranormality Magazine is based out of love for the strange, unexplained and paranormal, as well as a fascination with the people and creators that make the paranormal community what it is. Exploring all 40 subjects, from phantoms to UFOs and every cryptid creature in between, their global team collects stories, conducts interviews and reports on cutting-edge paranormal projects. They also consider contributions from outside writers, researchers and artists. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine to learn more or subscribe to Paranormality Magazine. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine. And you can get 10% off your subscription if you use the promo code Weird. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine promo code Weird. WeirdDarkness.com slash magazine promo code Weird. This episode is dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces and first responders. Whether you are currently serving or have served in the past, you are appreciated. It is because of your courage and sacrifice that we enjoy the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. And I for one, appreciate every single one of you for protecting what many of us take for granted. So thank you. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up this hour, People keep reporting sightings of a giant five-foot-long worm lurking in the Gobi Desert. Witnesses say it's armed with spikes, it spits venom and if you get too close, it can even take you down with an electric shock. It's known as the Mongolian Death Worm. If you've not heard of it, it's because no one to date has yet been able to photograph it. So does that mean that it doesn't exist? Or is it just too fast to capture on film? Mount Petalicus, near Athens, Greece, it's where the marble was cut to build the Parthenon. But more recently, it has a more sinister reputation for being haunted, particularly around a certain cave known as Develis Cave. If we have time in this hour, we'll talk about the toxic woman. You have people in your lives that you just can't stand, a coworker perhaps or a family member or a grumpy neighbor? You might call them toxic, but there was a lady who was so noxious that people couldn't literally stand her. Her name was Gloria Ramirez and we'll talk about her if we have time. But first, for six years Fritz Harman used his position as a police informant to hide in plain sight while he carried out at least 24 grizzly murders as the Vampire of Hanover. He was also called by some the Butcher of Hanover. But neither nickname given to him by the public comes remotely close to describing how evil the man truly was or how gruesome his crimes actually were. We begin with that story. If you're new here, welcome to the show. If you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter, and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast. Watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated. Send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know and more. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. In the 1920s, Brits Harman was known as a successful seller of second-hand clothes and was beloved by housewives for his endless supply of cheap meat. Until they learned, he harvested both of his products from slain, runaway boys. The people of his native Hanover all thought Fritz was something of an oddball, but friendly and certainly harmless. Even the police liked him, and he worked for them as an informant while he carried out a horrifying killing spree right under their noses. Once his crimes were discovered, Harman became notorious as the vampire of Hanover who killed his victims with a love bite that went right through the windpipe. Also called the butcher of Hanover, he ultimately confessed to nearly 30 murders, but police suspected he killed dozens more. Born in 1879 to a morose father known as Sulky Ali, he was doted on by his invalid mother. The youngest of six, he loved playing with dolls, wearing dresses and avoiding other children, especially boys. In an effort to force his son to toughen up, Ali packed young Fritz off to military school in the southern German city of Bresak at the age of 16. Although the boy enjoyed his time there, after just a few months at school, he discovered that he had epilepsy. Dismissed from the school due to his condition, he worked in his father's cigar factory for a year before committing his first crime, sexually molesting young boys. Captured and charged by the police, he was consigned to a mental asylum. After just six months in the asylum, he escaped and crossed the border to Switzerland. While in Switzerland, he became engaged to a young woman named Erna Loert. However, the short-lived engagement fizzled when she got pregnant and he returned to Germany in 1900 to complete his compulsory military service. Due to his epilepsy and probable mental illness, Harmon was hospitalized for four months in 1901 and dismissed from the military in 1902. After his discharge, his father made repeated attempts to have him thrown back in the asylum permanently, but Fritz managed to evade him every time. After leaving the military, Harmon first got by on his pension, which increased in 1904 when he was finally classified as disabled. Over the next decade, he supplemented his pension with petty crimes, burglaries and cons. Unfortunately for the teenage boys of Hanover, Harmon's crimes would escalate dramatically following the end of World War I. By 1913, the police were fed up with his repeated crimes and threw the book at Harmon. Convicted of burglaring a Hanover warehouse, he was tossed in jail for five years, allowing him to sit out World War I. In jail, Harmon met 24-year-old Pimp Hans Granz, with whom he fell quickly in love. Upon their release, they took up residence together. Parold in 1918, as the German Empire was crashing spectacularly, he immediately took up two jobs. One was with a gang of smugglers. The other was as an informant for the Hanover police, a position that would play a huge role in his next project. In September 1918, 17-year-old Friedel Rowe ran away from his home, disappearing into the back streets of Hanover. When Rowe's father set out to find his son, he learned that young Friedel had been friendly with Harmon, who often took young boys over to his apartment for a bit of fun. Yet when Rowe's father brought this clue to authorities, police were reluctant to interfere with their most valued spy. He persisted in his requests, and eventually they agreed to visit Harmon. There they found Harmon in bed, with a 13-year-old boy, but no sign of Friedel. All they could do, under the laws of the time, was arrest Harmon for indecency with a minor. Harmon later pointed out that the police couldn't have searched too thoroughly. Friedel Rowe's severed head had been tucked away behind the stove the whole time they were there. If you like Weird Darkness and you'd like to hear even more, you can check out the free audiobooks that I've narrated at WeirdDarkness.com. I've got free audiobooks there by Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, Charles Dickens, Robert Heinlein and more. You can listen to all of the free audiobooks that I've narrated on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. When Weird Darkness returns, we'll continue with the story of The Butcher Vampire for its Harmon. In 2025, neutron bombs wipe out much of the world's drinkable water. For the next several years, survivors exist in deplorable conditions and their rations are dwindling. One woman arises from the camp, determined to improve conditions. Charlotte is ready to do whatever it takes to ensure clean water for her fellow survivors. Water is almighty. Whoever controls the water rules the world. Can Charlotte prevent the power from falling into the wrong hands? Weird Darkness Publishing presents Working for H2O by Sara Faith. Now available in paperback, kindle and audiobook versions on Amazon and at WeirdDarkness.com. If you're looking for Weird Darkness merchandise, you can find it in the Weird Darkness store. And no matter what you buy, 100% of the profits I receive from the store are donated to organizations that help people who struggle with depression. You can search through all the merchandise by clicking on store at WeirdDarkness.com. We now continue with The Vampire of Hanover, Fritz Harmon, also known as The Butcher of Hanover on Weird Darkness. Harmon was already well-known as a black market butcher, popular among most people of the area for his friendliness and his irresistibly affordable meat. By 1919, Germany was in dire economic straits and many families struggled to keep food on the table. Throughout the early 1920s, Harmon spent much of his time loitering around Hanover's train station, scouting for teenage boys to coax home with promises of food and comfort. Thousands of children were running away from home at this time due to post-war hardships, so he had plenty of victims to choose from. After feeding his victims, Harmon would kill them by biting through their windpipes in what he grotesquely called his love bite before sexually molesting their dead bodies. Finally, he would dismember them, grinding their flesh into sausage meat, or chopping them into cutlets to be sold as beef or pork. After butchering his victims, he dumped their remains into the nearby River Lina. For six years, while the police turned a blind eye to their favorite informants' activities, Harmon is believed to have murdered over 50 boys, often chosen by grants out of jealousy of some item of clothing of theirs. He became successful selling their clothes and their flesh, even as more and more parents descended on the city stalked by the Vampire of Hanover, desperate to find their vanished children. In May of 1924, the police were forced to turn their attention to Harmon when children discovered a skull on the banks of the Lina. After several more skulls and skeletons were found, the River Lina was dragged, uncovering the bodies of at least 22 teenage boys or young men. The city of Hanover panicked, and suspicions turned to Harmon thanks to his reputation for bringing runaway boys to his apartment. Due to his status as a favorite informant, the Hanover police were deemed unfit to investigate him. So two detectives from Berlin arrived on the scene to take over the investigation. The Berlin detectives soon found Harmon in a dark corner of the train station, attacking a teenager. He was thrown in jail while they went to search his apartment, much more thoroughly this time. Inside was a nightmarish scene. The walls and floor were stained all over with blood, and more than a hundred pieces of victim's clothing were found. In custody, the Vampire of Hanover was only too happy to confess to his crimes. When asked how many he'd killed, he casually replied 30 or 40, I don't know. Later he said he probably killed between 50 and 70 boys. However, police were only able to identify 27 of his victims from 1923 to 1924 alone, and were unable to find the dozens of others. Harmon was charged with multiple counts of murder, and a trial date was quickly set. In court, Harmon smoked cigars and insulted everyone present. Once looking at a photo of one missing boy, he shouted at the boy's grieving father that he could never have had anything to do with the child as he was far too ugly. Found guilty of 24 of the 27 murders he was charged with, Harmon was swiftly sentenced to be decapitated by guillotine on April 15, 1925. His lover, Granz, who had often emotionally blackmailed Harmon into murdering particular children, was sentenced to life in prison, but the sentence would later be commuted to just 12 years. After his death, Fritz Harmon's head was preserved in formaldehyde and given to the medical school in Gotenon. In 1925, the remains of his victims discovered in the river Lina were buried in a mass grave in Stokner Cemetery. Though the people of Hanover were eager to get past Harmon's horrifying murders, his crimes inspired the German Expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lange's classic 1931 thriller M. In M, both the police and criminals in a large German city hunt for a serial killer who preys on young children. Harmon and Hans Granz' grizzly crimes had one other tragic effect, though. Although homosexuality was illegal in Germany at the time, it had been largely tolerated for some years. With the lurid stories of Harmon's sexual violence and Granz sickening cruelty, a wave of homophobia swept through the country. As the hearts of most Germans hardened towards the plight of gay men, the path was cleared for the later campaign of murder against homosexuals carried out by the Nazis. Hans Granz, however, survived to a ripe old age, dying in Hanover in 1975. Decades later in 2015, the medical school in Gotenon, tired of storing Harmon's preserved head, cremated it, thus doing away with the last traces of the butcher of Hanover. What I'm about to share is a prophetic dream kind of story, but with a rather unusual twist, usually in these accounts telling the dreams to others saves a life, but in this case it was what doomed the victim. From the Madisonian, May 25, 1839. A letter from Hamburg contains the following curious story relative to the verification of a dream. It appears that a locksmith's apprentice one morning lately informed his master, Claude Solar, that on the previous night he dreamt that he'd been assassinated on the road to Bergdorf, a little town about two hours' distance from Hamburg. The master laughed at the young man's credulity and to prove that he himself had little faith in dreams insisted upon sending him immediately to Bergdorf with $146, which he owed to his brother-in-law who resided in the town. The apprentice, after in vain imploring his master to change his intention, was compelled to set out about 11 o'clock. On arriving at the village of Belwaiter, about half way between Hamburg and Bergdorf, he recollected his dream with terror, but perceiving the baili of the village at a little distance, talking to some of his workmen, he accosted him and acquainted him with his singular dream, at the same time requesting that, as he had money about his person, one of his workmen might be allowed to accompany him for protection across a small wood which laid in his way. The baili smiled and in obedience to his orders, one of his men set out with the young apprentice. The next day, the corpse of the latter was conveyed by some peasants to the valley, along with a reaping hook which had been found by his side, and with which the throat of the murdered youth had been cut. The baili immediately recognized the instrument as one which had, on the previous day, been given to a workman who had served as the apprentice's guide for the purpose of pruning some willows. The workman was apprehended, and on being confronted with the body of his victim, made a full confession of his crime, adding that the recital of the dream had alone prompted him to commit the horrible act. The assassin, who is 35 years of age, is a native of Bill Wander, and previous to the perpetration of the murder, had always bore an irreproachable character. As an aside, I'm going to bet that Solar Fellow wound up feeling like a bit of an idiot. Weird Darkness returns in just a moment. Hey Weirdos, how would you like to receive a box full of scary stuff in the mail full of fear-inducing objects like creepy collectibles, true crime-themed accessories, frightening flair, blood-curdling books, terrifying trinkets, eerie e-downloads, and more? Absolutely free. Every other month, I'm filming an unboxing video of the newest creepy crate that I get in the mail, then I'm boxing it all back up and giving it away by random drawing to someone subscribed to the Weird Darkness email newsletter. And before I close up the box for good, I might toss in a couple of Weird Darkness goodies as well for good measure. You can keep the creepy crate for yourself or give it away to a weirdo friend or family member. To watch my latest creepy crate unboxing video and to register to win a creepy crate of your own for free, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash CreepyCrate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash CreepyCrate. According to sightings, the mongolian death worm is a long sausage-like sand worm, dark red in color, with spikes jutting out of both ends of its shapeless body. Using venomous spit strong enough to corrode metal or electric shocks powerful enough to kill an adult human, these alleged deadly worms are said to live below the sands of the Gobi Desert. Legends circulate freely about these monstrous worms, but no one has ever come forward with proof of seeing them firsthand. This is the true story behind the rumored mongolian death worm. The mongolian death worm is an infamous creature whose legend lives in second-hand accounts that have been passed down for generations. Mongolia's nomadic tribes call it Algoi Corcoi, which translates roughly to Intestine Worm due to its alleged resemblance to the inside of a cow. The worm-like creature with blood-red skin is said to reach up to five feet in length, but it's nothing like your average worm. The mongolian death worm is believed to possess some distinctly terrifying features. A British biologist, Carl Schucher, noted of the legendary creature in his book, The Unexplained, an Illustrated Guide to the World's Natural and Paranormal Mysteries, which I will link to in the show notes, the mongolian death worm is believed to possess spike-like projections at both ends of its body. It is also said to have formidable ways of attacking humans or other animals. The worm can purportedly spit corrosive venom or shoot out a powerful shock, electrocuting its victim. Legend has it these terrifying creatures spend most of their time hidden underneath the sandy dunes of the Gobi Desert, but that they often surface during the wetter months of June and July. If a local should happen upon this creature, they know to steer clear. The mongolian death worm for all the stories of its deadly projectile and grisly appearance has to this day never been photographed, but not due to lack of effort. Curious researchers and intrepid adventurers have combed the Gobi Desert in search of the legendary creature. Most famously, Czech cryptozoologist Ivan Makryly, one of the foremost investigators of the mysterious animal, traveled to Mongolia three times in search of the worm in 1990, 1992 and 2004. Makryly first heard of the death worm as a boy from the work of paleontologist Ivan Yefremov. In college, after meeting a Mongolian student who believed in the worm, he became obsessed. He combed through Mongolian literature to find more clues about the death worm and was finally granted permission by the government to conduct research there when he was in his late 40s. Inspired by Frank Herbert's 1965 sci-fi novel Dune, which features giant sandworms that are attracted to rhythmic vibrations, Makryly's expedition team tried different ways to project vibrations underground during their search for the Mongolian death worm. One of the team's contraptions was a motor-generated fumping machine, but alas, their efforts proved fruitless and Makryly concluded that the creature must be a myth. While Makryly's expeditions failed to discover sound proof of the animal, they did provide most of the modern research material related to the Mongolian death worm. Subsequent expeditions to hunt down the sand beast continue today. Although the legend of the Mongolian death worm remains strong among locals, its existence has yet to be corroborated by physical evidence or research. Zoologist Roy Chapman Andrews was the first western researcher to take note of the legend. He learned about the elusive sand creature from Mongolian officials before his pioneering expedition to document Mongolian wildlife. In his 1926 resulting book on the Trail of Ancient Man, which I'll link to in the show notes, Andrews wrote, Then the Premier asked that, if it were possible, I should capture for the Mongolian government a specimen of the Alargorhai Horhai. None of those present ever had seen the creature, but they all firmly believed in its existence and described it minutely. The Premier said that, although he had never seen it himself, he knew a man who had and had lived to tell the tale. Then a cabinet minister stated that the cousin of his late wife's sister had also seen it. However, this anecdote about the Mongolian death worm is merely a footnote in Andrews book. Scientists dismiss cryptids like the Chupacabra and the Yeti as urban legends due to lack of scientific evidence. But there is a possibility that such a creature like the Mongolian death worm might exist. After all, even Jane Goodall, one of the foremost primate experts in the world, said she was open to the possibility of Bigfoot. The Gove Desert is a vast region that spans a territory of 500,000 square miles of rough terrain, making the existence of an undiscovered animal species very likely. Additionally, there are worm species that have been known to live in sand instead of soil, like the giant beach worm in Australia. Moreover, in worms, the circulatory system functions by absorbing oxygen through their skin and carrying it through their body, which would allow them to grow up to large sizes, like the death worms purported five-foot length. Yet nobody has been able to capture photographic proof of the Mongolian death worm. So how did the legend come to be? There are a few explanations that could be at play. The first theory is that these accounts might actually be true, but like most stories passed orally for generations, they have become greatly exaggerated. The English translation of death worm from its original Mongolian name is also misleading, and experts believe that if such a creature exists, it may be a type of reptile, not a soft, wriggly worm. Either the worm lizard, which looks like a large, limbless worm that burrows underground and grows up to several feet, or a type of sand boa snake, could have originally inspired the death worm lore. No matter how the legend of the death worm began, cryptid researchers have not given up hope that someday they will unearth it. Mount Pentelechus, a mountain near Athens, Greece, has been an important area for thousands of years. It is the location of the ancient quarry from which marble was cut to build the Parthenon and other great structures in the city of Athens during its golden age. Marble, however, is not all there is to the mountain. The mountain also has many mysteries, mostly surrounding a certain cave which has gained the nickname Davelis Cave. Davelis Cave, or Pentelech cave as it is more commonly called, is a cave historically hidden by pine forests. At the back of the 60 meters or 197 foot long and 20 meters or 66 foot high cave is a network of tunnels, one of which leads to an underground pond. Another tunnel, according to one tradition, leads to hell. Although the cave does not look too mysterious from the outside, the cave has been the location of many strange events, such as sightings of shadowy ghost-like apparitions, UFOs, and other paranormal entities. The cave has been considered an otherworldly place since antiquity. In ancient times, it was a sacred site to the nature God Pan and his nymphs, a place known as Panopoleon. Artifacts have been found in the cave depicting the god. Nisha's have been cut into the walls and there is an alcove with a pool of water for some unknown purpose. After the arrival of Christianity, it continued to be a place of spiritual significance and was used as a hideout by Christian hermits and solitary aromatic monks. According to some accounts, the church at the entrance to the cave was built in the 11th century. It was built as two connected chapels. Within one of the chapels are some unusual glyphs which have been attributed to anchorite monks. The unusual design of the church has led to speculation that the church was actually built very early in Christian history by Gnostics, or another offshoot of Christianity. During the 19th century, the cave also gained notoriety. It was said to be used as a base by Davelis, an infamous outlaw who was known for stealing from the wealthy. It is also claimed that he had an affair with a French noblewoman who happened to live nearby during that time. It is this association that earned the cave the nickname Davelis Cave. The cave has always been the site of strange phenomenon. In the 19th century, people claimed to hear mysterious voices coming from the corridors of the cave. Some people would also hear music that didn't appear to have a source. The strangeness of the cave was also reinforced by its environment, being located on an isolated mountain slope surrounded by a potentially ominous pine forest. In the 1960s and 1970s, paranormal investigators gained an interest in the cave and began looking into it. By the mid-20th century, with the dawn of the space age, UFO sightings have also been added to the strange stories associated with the cave. One of the main investigators was a man named George Balanus. The investigation continued for years without progress. These investigations were hindered by malfunctions in technological devices such as cameras and flashlights, as well as peculiar behavior on the part of the investigators. The story of Pinteli Cave got even stranger when in 1977 a group of workers and technicians claiming to be from an unknown organization put up barbed wire around the cave and began to do work on the cave with dynamite and bulldozers. When people tried to go into the cave, they would be turned away by guards posted by the organization. Popular theories of their identity included NATO, the U.S. government and the Greek military. Many people speculated that they were building some sort of nuclear bunker or nuclear weapons storage facility. Wilder theories included the opening of extradimensional portals and manipulation of a magnetic channel connecting the cave to Langley, West Virginia, USA. What is also strange about the work done by the mysterious organization is that after a while they stopped reinforcing restricted access to the cave and holes were cut through barbed wire. During this period there were also a lot of weird stories of events surrounding the cave. I'll tell you about some of those weird stories when Weird Darkness returns. Loneliness can be a real burden. And while you can always log on to social media or watch TV, sometimes you just want someone near you. I mean, what if you could be in your living room sitting right next to Michael Myers or sleeping in your bedroom with Freddy Krueger? Maybe watch a horrible B movie with Alvira right there next to you. Have dinner with Hannibal Lecter. Do some quilting or sewing with Pinhead watching over you the whole time. Maybe wash and groom your dog in the presence of the Wolfman. Bobbletopia is THE place to get your favorite horror characters as bobbleheads, and their Nika line of hyper-realistic horror action figures is incredible, like King Kong, the alien Xenomorph, Pennywise, Frankenstein's Monster and more. And most every item is under 40 bucks. No need to be lonely any longer. Visit bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness and get 10% off your first order by using the promo code Weird Darkness. That's bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness. See, you're feeling less lonely already. I might use your story in a future episode. We now continue with Mount Pentecost near Athens, Greece, which has a very sinister reputation for being haunted and some strange things happening in a cave there. In one account, a couple going on a hike discovered a car perched on a ledge near the cave in a location which seemed impossible for a car to reach. They came back again multiple times over several days and the car was still there. Finally, they went up to the car and found that, oddly, the car did not have any marks of damage expected of a car driven to that position. When the wife looked into some bushes around the car, she started screaming hysterically. When the husband calmed her down, she said that she had seen a white oval-shaped creature that was about 60 centimeters or 24 inches long with two enormous glowing eyes. The husband did not see the creature, but he did see the bushes rustle as if an animal had just moved through them. Days later, the husband also saw something that appeared to be a spinning black sphere outside his car window which caused him to start screaming and shaking until his wife was able to calm him down and coax him into explaining what he saw. Suddenly, in 1983, the work crews disappeared, almost as mysteriously as they had arrived. They, however, did not leave without a trace, even leaving behind some of their equipment that had just been abandoned. The ancient church and natural cave networks had been severely damaged. Additionally, several artificial concrete corridors had been dug, though some appeared to be only half completed. Whatever the objective was of this organization, it is unclear that they reached it. There was another attempt to continue modifications in 1990, but it was immediately shut down by the Greek Ministry of Culture to prevent further damage to the important historical and archaeological sites in the cave. Current explanations for the unusual phenomena in the cave include magnetic channels and disturbances in the local electromagnetic fields. After decades of searching, investigators seemed no closer to finding the answer than they were in the 1960s. One discernible pattern, however, is constant references to electromagnetic disturbances. The work done by the shadowy organization in the 1970s may have been done out of interest in these electromagnetic disturbances. It has been suggested by neuroscientists such as Michael Persinger of Laurentian University that pulsed electromagnetic fields can influence perception, causing people to feel as if there is an invisible presence in a room. It has also been noted by scientists that places that are claimed to be haunted tend to also be places of unusual electromagnetic activity. It is also interesting in light of this that technology such as cameras and flashlights tend to malfunction in the cave, which also can happen as a result of certain kinds of electromagnetic interference. Could there be an actual connection between local electromagnetic fields, technology malfunctions, the interest of shadowy organizations in the cave, and the alleged paranormal activity taking place? It may be a while before an answer is found, but the connection to electromagnetic fields at least provides a clue for solving the riddle of Penteli Cave. And in tonight's Sudden Death Overtime, do you have people in your lives that can't stand a co-worker perhaps or a family member or a grumpy neighbor? You might call them toxic, but there was a lady who was so noxious, literally, that people couldn't stand next to her. Her name was Gloria Ramirez. We'll tell you about the toxic woman in tonight's Sudden Death Overtime, which you can only hear in the Weird Darkness podcast. And while the radio show is just on the weekends, I do upload episodes for the podcast seven nights per week. You can subscribe at WeirdDarkness.com or just search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness, and please tell others about the show who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can always call in to the dark line toll-free and tell your own true paranormal story or a story that's happened to somebody you know. That number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, the toll-free number is 1-877-277-5944. Or you can email me anytime at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And a final thought, good things come to those who wait, but better things come to those who work for it. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Don't go anywhere, Weirdos, because sudden death over time is up next! New technology isn't just for the living anymore. When the dead want to make contact, they will use any means. Radio, TV, mobile phones, cars, you name it. The other side just won't be quiet, and technology often helps make their presence felt. Whether it's a last goodbye from a loved one, a warning from beyond the veil, or just making sure we know they are still there. Ghosts in the Machines, Scary True Stories of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey tells how ghosts, demons, and the dead use our own technology to communicate with us, using true and often creepy stories from people just like you. Ghosts in the Machines, Scary True Stories of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey, narrated by Darren Marlar. Here are a free sample of this audiobook on the audiobook's page at WeirdDarkness.com. Fake psychics are almost as compelling as the real deal. Being a psychic, medium, or other afterlife mediator is rarely a lucrative career, but the flash in the pan attention it can garner has drawn many aspiring supernatural superstars to the field. Fake mediums and other supernatural frauds had a long history in America and beyond, inspiring figures like Harry Houdini to dedicate their lives to exposing the hoaxes. When it comes to supernatural phenomena, the burden of proof always falls on the person who claims that they can communicate with the dead or banish bad spirits. If you say that that's what you can do, then that's what you're expected to do. But these fake psychics and other charlatans instead prey on the fear and grief of others to make their tricks seem believable. Here are just a few of the trickiest psychic frauds who have been making the rounds. The most common depiction of a medium often includes a group of people sitting around a table watching a crystal ball, waiting to hear rapping sounds indicating that someone is trying to communicate with the leader of the seance. Those rapping sounds, however, can be directly traced back to the fox sisters, Leah, Margaret, and Kate, whose antics shaped the future of American spiritualism. As religious movements were gaining strength, the sisters discovered that they could make rapping sounds by cracking their joints, which they used to convince others that they were communing with the dead. Eventually, Margaret and Kate confessed to their trick, though Margaret recanted her confession when she hit a period of poverty later in life. Anyone remember Miss Cleo? Miss Cleo was once a mainstay of the late night infomercial circuit, promising that she would reveal the future to callers using tarot cards and other psychic methods. In actuality, Miss Cleo was Yore Del Harris, a woman from Los Angeles who joined the psychic reader's network in the late 90s. The network was later fined for fraudulent claims and billing deception, and ultimately revealed to not even be filmed live. They were delivered from a script. Though Harris herself was not indicted, she was the face of the company with serious lapses in ethics, making her one of the most visible fake psychics in history. Sylvia Brown was one of the best known television psychics, especially for her work with police in finding missing people. Unfortunately, most of her predictions were revealed to be completely wrong. On more than one occasion, Brown said that missing people were dead when they were later found alive. In one particular case, she told the mother of missing girl Amanda Berry that her daughter was dead. The mother died two years later, seven years before her daughter was found, alive. In fact, according to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry of the cases with conclusive endings, none of Brown's predictions were actually correct. Urie Geller is one of the world's most famous or maybe infamous psychics, best known for his apparent spoonbending ability. However, during a 1973 appearance on The Tonight Show, the host coerced Geller into using objects he selected, rather than Geller's usual equipment. After spending some time contemplating the objects, he claimed that he wasn't feeling strong enough to perform his feats and called it off. Carson, the host that evening, was familiar with stage magic and had set the situation up to prevent Geller from using sleight of hand or other trickery. When Geller declined to perform without his own spoons and other objects, it was a pretty clear signal that when he wasn't in control, Geller's powers seemed to mysteriously vanish. Harry Houdini, the famed American magician, began his investigation into the supernatural shortly after the death of his mother in the 1920s. Consumed with grief, he attended numerous seances in an attempt to contact his mother. However, with each one he attended, he quickly discovered the tricks and sleight of hand being used by the self-proclaimed mediums. From that point on, Houdini made it one of his life goals to discredit and debunk exploitative mediums. Then, in 1923, he encountered Mina Crandon, who was being considered by Scientific American magazine to be a true medium. To test her skills, Houdini developed a fraud-proof cabinet for her to perform with and promptly discredit at her when she failed. Hollywood mediums Tyler Henry gets by with his youthful good looks and odd habit of scribbling on paper to focus his psychic energy. But this modern day medium is merely a skillful cold reader and, most importantly, a Google fanatic. Though Henry claims to know nothing about the celebrities whose deceased loved ones he calls upon, almost every fact he reveals on the show can be easily searched for. And if it isn't easily searched, the celebs in question often don't know what he's talking about. We have only Henry's word to go on that he doesn't use Google, and with his predictions always involving celebrities who are under significantly more public scrutiny than the average person, it's hard to believe that he's the real deal. This next one will be controversial, I know. The cases surrounding Ed and Lorraine Warren, arguably the world's most famous paranormal investigators, have inspired films like The Conjuring, Annabelle, and the entirety of the Amityville haunting story. But they're also incredibly flimsy. Apply the principle of Occam's razor to any of their numerous cases, and it becomes obvious that there are far more plausible explanations for the events than the presence of demons or hosts. Even if the Warrens do have some truly supernatural cases under their belts, there's still a whole lot about these stories that doesn't add up. It's far more likely that in the process of dealing with some truly unexplainable events, they discovered there was profit and fame to be had, leading to a well-crafted image of being real-life ghostbusters. Teresa Caputo gained fame as a medium for her down-home earnest persona, the Long Island Medium. Listening to her speak, you really get the impression that she cares about you and your grief. But that is a carefully cultivated image, and one that suits her quite well as she uses cold-reading and vague statements to make her clients feel like she's really receiving messages from deceased loved ones. Like many television mediums, Caputo relies on spectacle and intentionally vague statements to convince people that she's actually conversing with their relatives. The combination of her personality and her ability to cold-read is what makes her such a captivating figure. She clearly is a talent for reading people, though the purpose she puts into it is worthy of some side-eye. James Van Praugh, another medium who claims to be able to connect people with their lost loved ones, is a frequent subject of examination for skeptics. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry visited Van Praugh's show in 2003, revealing not only that the medium was not psychic, but that he wasn't particularly good at cold-reading either. His heavily edited show makes it seem as though he has a lot of hits with his psychic reading ability, but the investigation revealed that he actually spends far more time floundering than he does telling people what they want to hear. Most fans of ghost-hunting shows know that there's at least some trickery at work, but the show Most Haunted took that to a whole new level. Investigators fed Derek Akora, a medium on the show, the fake name Creed Kafer, which is actually an anagram of Derek Faker, and Akora claimed to become possessed by the spirit of Creed Kafer. Akora then claimed that he'd spoken to another fictitious spirit, worked in some false history based on the intentionally bad information he received, and communicated with spirits from an asylum while actually just being in an average home. Though he has been caught lying on television repeatedly, Akora continues to claim that he is a genuine medium. Rosemary Altea, like many television mediums, makes her living by contacting the dead for bereaved families. But unlike most television mediums, she was exposed on television by Penn and Teller, where tapes and interviews revealed that she wasn't even cold-reading the audience. She had asked the audience questions beforehand or been fed information by her literary agent. Knowing this, her conversations with grief-stricken parents and family members feel pretty ghoulish. One writer believes that Altea is not intentionally deceiving people, but rather that she learned how to read people by accident and merely uses the skill for personal gain. Remember staying up late on a Friday or Saturday night, either at home or at a friend's house and watching your local TV stations' horror host presenting a terrible B-movie with aliens, monsters, ghosts, alien monster ghosts, vampires, werewolves and all other kinds of crazy creepy characters. Those were fun nights, weren't they? That's what the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com has to offer, all day, every day. Thanks to our friends at the Monster Channel, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com to watch the B-movie right after listening to this episode and immediately be entertained by a horror host and horrible movie, or should I say, horror-ribble movie. And not only can you watch the B-movies and horror hosts streaming there 24-7, but once a month, we all gather together to watch a movie and talk about it in the chat room on that same page. Get your frights and funnies on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. On the evening of February 19, 1994, Gloria Ramirez, 31-year-old mother of two, was wheeled into the emergency department of Riverside General Hospital in Riverside, California. Ramirez, a patient with terminal cervical cancer, was complaining of irregular heartbeat and difficulty breathing. En route to the hospital, Ramirez was administered oxygen and given intravenous fluids. By the time she entered the ER, she was barely conscious. Her speech was sluggish, her breathing shallow, and her heartbeat rapid. The medical staff injected her with a cocktail of fast-acting drugs to alleviate her symptoms, such as sedatives and agents to calm her heartbeat. When those failed to produce any change, the staff tried to defibrillate her heart with electricity. At this point, several people saw an oily sheen covering Ramirez's body, and some noticed a fruity, garlic-like odor that they thought was coming from her mouth. A nurse named Susan Cain pushed a needle into the patient's arm to draw blood, when she noted an ammonia-like odor. Cain handed the syringe to Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist, so that she could take a closer whiff of the dying woman. Welch sniffed the syringe in her hand. It smelled of ammonia. Welch then passed the syringe to Julie Gorchinsky, a medical resident who also noticed the unmistakable smell of ammonia. Gorchinsky also observed unusual manila-colored particles floating in the blood. At this point, Cain collapsed and had to be carried out of the ER. Moments later, Gorchinsky complained of nausea, and she too slumped to the floor. Maureen Welch was the third to pass out. That night, 23 people fell ill, of which 5 had to be hospitalized with various symptoms. Gorchinsky was in the worst shape. Her body convulsed, and she breathed intermittently. She also suffered from hepatitis, pancreatitis, and avascular necrosis in her knees, a condition in which bone tissue dies off. Gorchinsky was on crutches for months. Gloria Ramirez died within 45 minutes of her arrival at the hospital. The official cause of her death was given as kidney failure due to metastasized cancer. Ramirez's death and the effect of her presence on the ER staff is one of the most baffling medical mysteries in recent history. The source of the toxic fumes was undoubtedly Ramirez, but autopsy reports were inconclusive. A possibility of the emergency room harboring noxious chemicals and pathogens was also ruled out by a careful search by a hazmat team. In the end, the health department declared that the hospital staff most likely experienced an outbreak of mass hysteria, perhaps triggered by an odor. The report angered many staff members who were on duty that night. The conclusion of the health department they felt was an insult to their professionalism. Eventually, the Federal Research Facility in Livermore was asked to take a look at Ramirez's autopsy and toxicology reports. Forensic analysis had found a lot of peculiar chemicals in Ramirez's blood, but none was toxic enough to produce symptoms as experienced by the emergency room workers. There was a lot of different drugs in her system, such as lidocaine, Tylenol, codeine, and tygan. Ramirez was a cancer patient and was understandably under a lot of pain. Many of these drugs were painkillers. Locating the source of the ammonia-like smell observed in the emergency room was easy. Scientists found an ammonia compound in Ramirez's blood that had most likely formed when Ramirez's body broke down the anti-nausea drug tygan that she was taking. The most peculiar chemical found in her blood was dimethylsulfone, a sulfur compound that occurs naturally in some plants, is present in small amounts in many foods and beverages, and is also sometimes produced naturally in our bodies from amino acids. But in Ramirez's blood and tissues, there was a hefty concentration of dimethylsulfone. Forensic analysts figured that the dimethylsulfone had come from dimethylsulfoxide, or DMSO, which Ramirez must have used as pain relief. DMSO came into existence in the early 1960s as a wonder drug and became very popular among athletics for treating muscular strains until the FDA found that prolonged exposure to the drug caused eye damage. Use of the drug was restricted except in certain formulation, but DMSO continued to gather an underground following as a home remedy. It is likely that Ramirez had applied DMSO to her body to ease her pain. DMSO was absorbed by her skin and entered into her bloodstream. When paramedics and later the emergency room workers gave her oxygen, the dimethylsulfoxide was oxidized to dimethylsulfone. It was this dimethylsulfone that crystallized into manila-colored crystals inside the syringe when Susan Cain drew blood at the hospital. Now, dimethylsulfone is relatively harmless, except for one thing. If you add another oxygen atom to the molecule, you get dimethylsulfate, a truly nasty chemical. Vapors of dimethylsulfate instantly kill cells in exposed tissues. When absorbed into the body, dimethylsulfate causes convulsions, delirium, paralysis, coma, and even damage to the kidneys, liver, and heart. In severe cases, dimethylsulfate can also kill people. What caused the dimethylsulfone in Ramirez's body to convert to dimethylsulfate is up for debate. The Livermore scientists believe that the conversion was caused by the chilled air temperature of the emergency room, but this theory is unsubstantiated. Organic chemists scoff at the idea since direct conversion of dimethylsulfone to dimethylsulfate had never been observed. Others believe that the symptoms shown by the hospital staff don't match the symptoms of dimethylsulfate poisoning. Furthermore, many of the known effects of dimethylsulfate usually take several hours to show, and yet the fainting spells and other symptoms at the hospital began to occur minutes after the supposed exposure. Others still doubt that significant quantities of these suspected chemicals could have been produced from the DMSO. Several years later, the New Times LA proposed an alternative explanation. The hospital staff was illegally manufacturing the drug methamphetamine and was smuggling them in IV bags, one of which was inadvertently hooked up to Ramirez. The exposure to methamphetamine may have caused the rounds of nausea, headache and blackouts. The idea of a secret meth lab in a major hospital not only sounds extraordinarily stupid, it probably is. The basis for such a wild theory is that Riverside County has been one of the country's largest distribution points for meth. The DMSO theory is still the best forensic experts could come up with, but it still doesn't explain everything and its major caveat is that the lack of established mechanism for the dimethylsulfone to dimethylsulfate conversion. The bizarre incident surrounding the death of Gloria Ramirez will continue to remain a medical and chemical mystery. And given to the medical school in Gottingen, Gottingen, Gottingen, Gottingen, Gottingen, Gottingen, Gottingen, Gottingen, Gottingen, to a medical school in Gottingen, Harmon and Hans Grahns, Harmon and Hans Grahns' grizzly crimes had one other tragic effect. Although homosexuality, Harmon and Hans, Harmon and Hans Grahns, Harmon and Hans Grahns' grizzly crimes. Okay, let's see if we can actually say that this time. Macriley's expedition team tried different ways to project vibrations, claiming to be from an unknown organization put up barbed wire. Unknown organization put up barbed. Some Ouija Board experiments are fun. Some Ouija Board experiments are... Some Ouija Board experiments are some... Months later, the change was able to help them make payphone calls, make A, then make... Months later, the change was able to help make... This is not a hard sentence, Darren. 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