 ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. For over 20 minutes, the crew of the HMS Dauntless, a Royal Navy warship, watched what they claimed to be a giant, 100-foot-long snake-like beast with a dragon's head swimming near their boat. Scientists today think they most likely saw a whale, but wouldn't a bunch of experienced sailors know the difference between a whale and a serpent? I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. 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 in this episode, a notorious criminal is brought to justice and later found to have just as notorious of a brain. A burst of UFO activity took place on New Year's Eve outside of New York in 1982. So many sightings and reports, it was impossible to ignore even by skeptics. The social experiment initiated by Stalin's Soviet Union ends with hundreds dead on the first day. But that was only the beginning of the horrors of what would later be known as Cannibal Island. A woman is involved in an accident and once out of the hospital everyone appears to be afraid upon looking at her face, even her. But it's not the scars that are causing terror. One day, in 1863, Dr. Joseph Rogers found himself dealing with a very distressing case. A young pregnant woman had been sent to a workhouse because her circumstances were so dire. Her name was Sarah Ann Eldridge and her husband, Alfred Eldridge, was in prison waiting to be executed. But first, on August 6, 1848, the crew of the HMS Daughterless spotted something monstrous from the deep and it has become the most well-documented sea serpent sighting in history. We begin there. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to win our contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. 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. First launched in 1826, the HMS Daughterless was a 46-gun top-of-the-line frigate of the Royal Navy. Having never been used in combat in that capacity, after 18 years of service in 1844, the HMS Daughterless was literally cut down in size and a recommissioned as a smaller, faster, more maneuverable 19-gun corvette of the Royal Navy. On August 6, 1848, the HMS Daughterless was cruising in the South Atlantic about 300 miles off the coast of West Africa. The weather was dark and cloudy and seemed to presage the onset of a midsummer thunderstorm at sea. At approximately five o'clock that afternoon, midshipmen aboard the Daughterless alerted their officers to a most unusual sight. The ship's captain, Peter McKay, along with the first lieutenant and all of the ship's officers, rushed to the quarterdeck to view what the crewman had described as a sea serpent swimming above the surface of the water alongside their ship. Captain McKay had experienced Mariner, to say the least, with nearly two decades of service in the Royal Navy under his belt, stated in his official report, Our attention being called to the object, it was discovered to be an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea. Another ship's officer, who viewed the supposed sea serpent that afternoon, but chose to remain anonymous in a report he gave to the London Illustrated News sometime in October 1848, just after the Daughterless returned to port, stated that the animal was moving at probably not more than 10 miles per hour. The water swaying under its chest, it was not more than 200 yards from the ship. The eye, the nostril, the color and form were all distinctly visible. To this day, the sighting of a giant unknown serpent-like creature in the waters of the South Atlantic by the crew of the HMS Daughterless remains one of the most well documented and controversial sea monster sightings in history. From the very moment that the Daughterless returned from its voyage to its home port in Plymouth, England, controversy and debate have swirled around what was or was not witnessed by the crew on that stormy day at sea in August of 1848. With the testimony of literally hundreds of sailors and dozens of Royal Navy officers to draw upon, the story of the so-called Daughterless sea serpent immediately became a mid-19th century Victorian-era media sensation. The first report of the Daughterless's sea serpent sighting, the after-action report of none other than Captain Peter McKay, was published in the London Times on October 10, 1848, less than a full week after the HMS Daughterless had returned to port. Writing with both the detailed detachment that was demanded of a 19th century Royal Navy officer, but also with some of the emotion and wonder of a person who had just had a close encounter with the unexplained, Captain McKay, echoing the anonymous statement of his fellow officer in the London Illustrated News, remarked that, it passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter that should it have been a man of my acquaintance, I should have easily recognized his features with the naked eye. What makes the Daughterless sea serpent sighting so remarkable is that so many officers and men of the ship were willing to stake their careers, reputations and even questions of their own sanity by publicly stating the members of the burgeoning Victorian print media descriptions of what they had seen. For that reason, even nearly two centuries later, the sighting by the crew of the HMS Daughterless still remains one of the best pieces of evidence that we have for the existence of sea serpents or unexplained cryptids of the sea. The fact that the Daughterless sea serpent was sighted by crew members, including a substantial number of officers of the Royal Navy, gave reports of the sea monster instant credibility in British newspapers at the time. Royal Navy officers were expected to be gentlemen, men who were cool under pressure and under fire, both literally and figuratively. By the middle of the 1800s, naval officers were by and large educated men with at very least a working knowledge of mathematics, meteorology, navigation, marine biology and any number of other natural sciences. Men like Captain Peter McKay were not normally given to telling yarns or tall tails of the sea. Newspaper readers across Great Britain greeted reports of what the press dubbed the HMS Daughterless Sea Serpent with wonder and astonishment. But that isn't to say that the tale of the unknown sea monster wasn't without its detractors. Sir Richard Owen was an English biologist and anatomist who lived from 1804 to 1892 and was known for his pioneering work studying ancient fossils. He is best remembered for coining the term dinosauria, singular form dinosaur meaning terrible or a great reptile in the 1840s, and for his criticism of Charles Darwin's on the origin of species and the theory of evolution that it propounded in the 1860s. Though Owen himself admitted that some form of evolution probably did occur within species, he believed that Charles Darwin's take on the whole matter was far too simplistic and contained some glaring omissions. Anyway, the purpose here is to not get bogged down in an age-old evolutionary debate, but rather to establish Robert Owen's credentials as one of the most respected scientific minds in all of England during the mid-19th century. In the autumn of 1848, in the wake of the HMS Daughterless Sea Serpent reports, Sir Richard Owen was one of the faculty at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and literally rewriting our understanding of prehistory with his research into dinosaurs. Only a week after it chose to break the story of the HMS Daughterless Sea Serpent by publishing a transcript of Captain McKay's official report, oddly enough, perhaps to simply stir up debate among the general public and sell more newspapers, the London Times published an interview with biologist Sir Richard Owen in which he stated that what the crew of the HMS Daughterless most likely saw was nothing more than a large swimming elephant seal. Owen went on to further suggest that what the crew of the Daughterless had interpreted as the serpent's nearly 60-foot long tail was simply the wake left behind in the water by the swimming elephant seal. When Captain McKay heard what the Times had published in direct contradiction to his official report and when he read that famed biologist Sir Richard Owen had accused his crew of not being able to identify the body of a giant swimming elephant seal from that of an unknown sea serpent, he was furious and he fired back at his critics and detractors in the press immediately. Unfortunately for McKay, within weeks of his after-action Daughterless report, all of his talk of sea serpents and sea monsters in the British press was causing the Royal Navy no end of embarrassment. Things got so bad that Parliament launched an official investigation into the sanity of top-ranking naval officers and ship's captains McKay included within the Royal Navy. Parliament questioned how any self-respecting, let alone sane officer of the Royal Navy could have allowed a report in which he claimed to have cited a sea monster be willfully published in Great Britain's most widely read newspaper. As it turned out, neither Captain McKay nor the Royal Navy had an answer to that, but rather than back down from their critics and detractors, Captain McKay, along with other members of the crew of the HMS Daughterless, took the offensive. Captain McKay worked in conjunction with an artist commissioned by the Illustrated London News, perhaps the London Times chief competitor, and produced a series of remarkable sketches and engravings of the HMS Daughterless sea serpent for all the world to see. The British Admiralty was aghast, but the public aid up the pictures that they saw in the Illustrated London News and the images were reproduced literally en masse around the world. It should also be remembered that in his attempt to explain away the sighting by the crew of the HMS Daughterless, respected biologist Sir Richard Owen never once even bothered to consider the possibility that what the crew saw that day could have been some sort of species of sea serpent or some type of cryptid still unknown to science at that time. At a time before published photography, these professional images of the Daughterless sea serpent, many of which you can find online, which were painstakingly based on the eyewitness accounts of the 6th of August, 1848, firmly cemented the sighting of the HMS Daughterless sea serpent as one of the most remarkable and, at least to the Victorian reading public, one of the most believable encounters with a purported cryptid sea creature to ever take place in history. Though even today there are those who attempt to discredit and explain away what the crew of the HMS Daughterless saw on the afternoon of August 6, 1848, including most recently a study published by the skeptical inquirer in 2015 which asserts that what the crew of the Daughterless witness that day was a rare species of whale swimming past their ship, there has never been a 100% satisfactory explanation to explain away the sighting of the HMS Daughterless as something other than an unknown monster of the sea. When Weird Darkness returns, Dr. Joseph Rogers found himself dealing with a very distressing case. A young pregnant woman had been sent to a workhouse because her circumstances were so dire. It was 1856. Her name was Sarah Ann Eldridge. Her husband, Alfred Eldridge, was in prison waiting to be executed. The story of the murderer's wife is up next. Nothing goes better with chocolate than vanilla. And nothing goes better with the darkness than vampires. So we've combined all of them into a new blend of weird dark roast coffee called Very Vampilla. This bloody good blend combines a medium dark roast coffee with hints of chocolate, vanilla, and just a tad bit of dried cherry, too. So good, you'll want to sink your fangs into the fresh roasted bag itself. Weird dark roast Very Vampilla, the only thing at stake, sorry, not sorry, bad pun, is your dissatisfaction with your old coffee. Sip it while the sun is down if you're one of the undead, or when the sun is up if you just feel dead and need a bit of a boost. Get your Weird Dark Roast Very Vampilla at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Joseph Rogers was a doctor, and as well as campaigning for improvements in public health provision, he worked as a medical officer in the infirmaries of two metropolitan workhouses, first for the Strand Union and then for the Westminster Union. In all that he did and said, and he was certainly outspoken on many matters, he demonstrated integrity and genuine commitment to the welfare of the poor and the marginalized. Many an overlooked Londoner had reasoned to be grateful for the timely interventions of Dr. Rogers. The setting is the Strand Union Workhouse in Cleveland Street. In his memoirs, Rogers gave a detailed and uncompromising account of the building and its unfortunate occupants. He was clearly horrified at the conditions he encountered in the year of his arrival, which was 1856, and he highlighted the particular difficulties he experienced in the discharge of his medical duties. There were no paid nurses, and the routine care of the sick was carried out by female paupers, who were more or less in firm, and who were only occasionally helped by strong younger inmates. Just outside the mail wards, two upright posts in a crossbar had been set up for beating carpets, which generated so much noise that it was difficult for the sick inmates to sleep, as well as filling the yard with dust so thick that the windows had to be kept closed. The mail-insane ward was at the top of a flight of steps, which made it absurdly unsuitable for the sort of unpredictable behavior that was frequently manifested, and the female-insane ward was immediately beneath the lying-in room so that the cries of the lunatics unsettled the expectant mothers. One day in 1863, Rogers found himself dealing with a very distressing case. The young woman in her mid-20s was heavy with child. She was already a mother and had an infant son. She came from Kent and had formerly been in the workhouse in Canterbury, but her circumstances were so unusual and so problematic that the guardians were unsure that they were able to deal with her, and so they sent her away, arranging for the workhouse in Cleveland Street to take her in. Her name was Sarah Ann Eldridge, and her husband Alfred Eldridge was in prison in Canterbury waiting to be executed. Alfred Eldridge was born in October 1830 in Wallworth. His father William Eldridge was a house painter. His mother, Maria Eldridge, had no recorded occupation, but she was mother of several children and she would certainly have had her hands full. We know nothing else about Alfred's childhood, but we can draw a detailed picture of the life he led in his 20s, for we do have it on record that he enlisted in the Army and served with the 54th Regiment. This would have been in the 1850s, a turbulent decade in which a man in uniform would have seen a great deal of action, and during the course of which young Eldridge was caught up in two major military incidents. These were the Crimean War, which broke out in 1853 and lasted until 1856, and the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Later it would emerge that Eldridge had served with credit in his time in the Army, although a less favorable assessment was also recorded, namely that he had been discharged with a blank character. Either way, he was not in the Army for the long haul and around the age of 30 he had returned to civilian life and was working as a laborer. In 1861 he married Sarah and Webb in Canterbury. They had a child, George Thomas Eldridge, who was baptized early in 1862. At this point in the story, more information about the sort of man Alfred Eldridge was begins to emerge. We know for example that he was a Navi and that he was employed on a new line that was being constructed by the Southeastern Railway Company between Canterbury and Herne Bay. He was also apparently a man of strong passions who was inclined to bear a grudge. In fact, his volatile nature had landed him in trouble and at the time of the incident that is central to our story, he had only recently come out of St. Augustine's Jail in Canterbury where he had been serving a prison sentence for stealing timber. At some point he had lodged with a man by the name of Richard Steed in Maypole, a village situated between Canterbury and Herne. Steed, who was in his 50s and about 20 years older than Eldridge, earned his living as a carrier, delivering goods with a horse and cart. Later he had concentrated his efforts on the Navis, men like Eldridge, making frequent runs between Maypole and the railway works with kegs of beer and other essential supplies. However, for reasons unknown, he and Eldridge fell out and Eldridge took himself and Sarah Ann off to a cottage in some other part of the village where, one guesses, he allowed his resentment against his former landlord to grow and grow. Early in 1863, Steed went to find Eldridge in order to recover a debt. The details are not all that clear, but it would seem that Steed was claiming repayment of a few shillings, which Eldridge refused to hand over. In response, the older man took out a county court summons against the former soldier, who, irked that the issue had come to court, visited Steed at home, offering him a shilling by way of settlement. When Steed rejected the offer, the two men quarreled. Steed turned Eldridge out of his house and Eldridge in his turn voiced a number of threats, one of which was that he would do for Steed and that he would do for him before very long in a matter of weeks to be precise. For a while, nothing untoward happened. It looked as if the storm had passed, but on Saturday the 2nd of May, the quarrel started up again and matters quickly got out of hand. What happened was this. Steed closed the door of his house in Maypole and, as was his usual practice, he went down to the railway works at Hearn. He was still there when the Navies were paid off at about 6.30 in the evening and went their various ways. When he too left, Eldridge, who by now had received his wages, was not far behind. However, there was nothing in the manner of the behavior of either man to suggest that they were at Dagger's Dron. The situation was calm and it was still calm half an hour later when they were seen together with the Prince Albert. The Prince Albert was a public house in Hearn Street, no doubt it was popular with the Navies. It was a substantial property built on two floors, with extra rooms beneath the steeply pitched roof. There is reason to believe that it was at one time used as a safe house for local smugglers, and certainly its position on the north coast of Kent made it attractive to the gentleman who made a living by handling contraband. That, though, is quite another story. As far as we're concerned, the Prince Albert is significant only as the place where Steed and Eldridge were last seen together on that fateful Saturday evening in May. Evidently, they were getting on well, almost as if they had decided to draw a line under the past and resume friendly relations. However, what is not clear is whether they were drinking or not. Some contemporary sources state that they were, and it's easy to suppose that alcohol encouraged the two men to squabble again. Other accounts take the opposite view, that when they left the public house in Hearn Street, they were stone cold sober. Drunk or sober, they were in high spirits, so much so that Steed suggested that he and Eldridge walk back to their village together. The distance from Hearn to May Pole was not great, under two miles, and the only route was along a footpath. The footpath passed a spot known locally as Pooley's Gardens, where they were seen at about 730, walking side by side and evidently enjoying each other's company. But the next sighting of Steed and Eldridge was of a very different and distressing nature. For about half a mile from Pooley's Gardens, as the footpath approached May Pole, Richard Steed was found lying in a ditch. He was in a terrible state, which one of these Sunday papers described in the following lurid terms. The skull was fractured, the bones of one side of his face were completely smashed, one of his eyes was crushed out and was lying on his cheek. These injuries have apparently been occasioned by his head and face being stamped upon by a heavy iron-armed boot and his brains and blood were scattered about in all directions. Of Albert Eldridge, the railway navvy with a tall and muscular physique and a violent temper, there was no sign, nor was there any evidence of a struggle between Eldridge and the wretched Steed. The only reasonable reconstruction of events was that the victim had been suddenly struck down as he was walking along and that he had been stamped or jumped on as he lay helpless on the ground. Steed was taken to his home, but he was beyond recovery and in a matter of hours he died. Suspicion fell on only one person, Albert Eldridge. Accordingly, on the morning of Sunday, the 3rd of May, Superintendent William Walker of the Kent Constabulary knocked on the door of a cottage in the village of May Pole intent on performing his solemn but necessary duty. He was a Scott. He was in his late 30s and he had a grim expression on his face. As always, in cases of this sort, the impact of the crime was not limited to the victim and perpetrator and another person who was caught up in these horrific events, though no fault of her own, was Eldridge's wife, Sarah Ann. Sarah Ann Eldridge was only in her mid-twenties and she was having to cope with the demands of motherhood, having an infant son to care for as well as carrying a second child. She was poor and married to a suspected murderer and her prospects were bleak. But we should spare a thought for Hannah Steed, too, for it was her husband who had died in the most appalling way on that footpath. She was at home in the village of May Pole when he was carried back horribly battered and all but dead. He had been discovered lying in a ditch by a young engine driver, George Turk, who dashed into the village to get help, having first gone to the house of William Petz, a young agriculture laborer asking him to watch over the injured man. The men alerted to the tragedy by Turk carried Steed back to the village and it was poor Hannah who opened the door to them and who saw the grim purpose of their visit. The shock must have been very great, although Hannah's distress was in all likelihood matched by that of her 12-year-old son, Albert, who had helped the rescuers retrieve his father's body. She was advised not to look at her husband as he was being brought into the house, for he was very disfigured and although she thought that she had heard him breathing, he was soon pronounced dead. Their married daughter Julia, who lived a few doors away, was also there in the house and she was obliged to witness the upsetting sight of her brother searching their father's pockets for evidence of theft, which he found. Julia declared that the face of the dead man, which had been stomped on with considerable force, was in such bad shape that she did not recognize him. Albert knew what he was looking for. He had been with his father earlier that day down at the railway works and he had seen him collect his wages from the pay office and count out nine shillings and nine pence, which he then carefully pocketed. Only about two shillings remained. The obvious suspect was Albert Eldridge, or he had locked horns recently with Steed, who had demanded that he repay a debt. He was duly confronted by the Kent Constabulary when, on the morning after the assault, a superintendent William Walker, accompanied by a Sergeant Gower, knocked on his door. Walker asked to examine the clothes Eldridge had been wearing on the previous evening and these were fished out of the navies cupboard, although his socks had mysteriously disappeared. This looked suspicious as the socks worn by the assailant would certainly have had evidence of the terrible injuries he had inflicted on his unfortunate victim. Even so, there were blood stains low down on his trousers. Walker then asked to see Eldridge's boots. These had red stains, but an attempt had been made to wash them off and it was not possible to say with certainty that they were blood stains, even when examined by two forensic experts. However, the boots presented two highly significant pieces of evidence, namely small hairs of the same brown and gray color as the victims and small fibers of red wool that exactly matched a scarf he had been wearing around his neck. Finally, Walker ordered Eldridge to show him the root he had taken from Hearn to Maple, and Eldridge obliged, but led the two policemen on what was obviously a detour. He was immediately arrested on a charge of murder and taken to St. Augustine's Jail in Canterbury. We have already mentioned that the horrific details of the assault on Stede should not overshadow the wider impact of his death. His wife and children were confronted very brutally with the reality of the crime, nor must we forget that yet another life that would have been affected was that of Sarah and Eldridge. She was entrusted to the care of the Canterbury poor law guardians and was subsequently transferred to the Stray End Union where she came to the notice of the medical officer Dr. Joseph Rogers. Her suffering must have been very great. She was reluctant to condemn her husband out of hand and she told Rogers that he had been very kind and good to her, but she added that when he was drunk he was capable of anything. Her unhappiness only deepened when he was examined before the magistrates at the St. Augustine's police court before being tried and sentenced at the end of July at the Maidstone to sizes. Eldridge's defense was doomed. The material evidence against him was overwhelming and during the period of his incarceration he'd reportedly admitted to a fellow prisoner that he had indeed killed Stede having, quote, kicked his brains out, unquote. He repeated his confession on the train journey to Maidstone, I deserve all I shall get for it, and he must have known that the game was up even before his trial opened. The jury had no difficulty in finding him guilty and the judge, accordingly, sentenced him to death. And it was while Eldridge was languishing in the prison in Maidstone awaiting execution that Sarah Ann's misery plumbed new depths. After his arrest, she had sold every last possession to pay for his defense and she was now destitute. She was burdened with the knowledge that her husband for whom she retained considerable affection was soon to be hanged and that she herself would inevitably be tainted as having been the wife of a callous murderer. She was also heavily pregnant. Alfred Eldridge was executed at noon on Thursday the 20th of August. The hangman was the infamous William Collcraft who would eventually enjoy the dubious distinction of having carried out well over 400 executions in the course of his career. We might have to do a story about him someday. Another murderer, Alfred Holden, was to be hanged at the same time as Eldridge. The two men sat up late into the night, praying, and on the Sunday before their execution they received Holy Communion. On the Monday Eldridge was visited by his brothers, Sarah Ann was not fit to make the journey down to Maidstone, but she had written to him and it was believed that she had expressed great affection. The execution, not unnaturally, was a somber occasion. He was widely reported and one of the London's papers wrote that, at noon yesterday, the two condemned men appeared on the scaffold, walking with firm steps and attended by Collcraft. The executioner, having adjusted the ropes, the drop fell and the wretched men were launched into eternity. They had manifested signs of penitence and they died quickly. The crowd must have numbered over 6,000, but they were very orderly. The news that her husband's death sentence had been carried out was given to Sarah Ann by the matron of the Strand Union Infirmary. One struggles to imagine how bleak the world must have seemed to her at that moment and we have Roger's testimony to the depressing effect that the whole affair had obviously had on her. He found her excessively distressed. Any efforts he made to console her were of no avail and she would simply say in a voice scammering with emotion that her husband had always been good to her. She had a bad confinement and was very unwell for some time after the birth of her child. At some point in the course of her recovery, she applied to the Board of the Strand Union for outdoor relief. She was instructed to attend the next meeting of the Board, but on the evening of question, as she was making her way to Bow Street from her lodgings, she was caught in a downpour and she sat for two hours in thin, wet clothes. She was soaked through again on the return journey and that night she fell ill. For many days, Sarah Ann's life hung in the balance. She contracted acute bronchitis and her condition was exacerbated by rheumatic fever and heart disease, but she rallied and Dr. Rogers arranged for her to be sent to a convalescent home in Hartfordshire. He clearly saw her as especially deserving and later he wrote, Having seen her under such affliction and having always found her to be grateful and respectable in every way, I have felt for her much sympathy. He maintained that his sympathy was shared by the Board of Guardians, but red tape limited the help that they could offer the young mother of two and although she was granted a year's outdoor relief, she was ultimately dependent on the generosity of charitable individuals. Who were these generous souls? The answer is, quite simply, members of the public. Rogers had launched a newspaper appeal on Sarah Ann's behalf and his dignified account of her predicament not only outlined the troubles she had endured as a consequence of her husband's crime, but also presented her as a vulnerable individual whose damaged constitution would make it difficult to earn her a living by the sort of laborious pursuit that a woman of her class would normally undertake. He did not hold back. Surely the sin of the father should not be visited thus heavily on the widow and the children, he said. And he moved many hearts. Having received 25 pounds in donations, he was able to buy Sarah Ann some extra clothes and to pay for her to return to Canterbury there to begin a new life. Sarah Ann had one further tragedy to confront though. That was the death of her second child which had occurred before she went back to Kent. However, in all other respects, her life did indeed improve. She found work in Canterbury and made enough to support herself and her other child, George Thomas Eldridge, who would have only been about one and a half when his father was executed in Maidstone. Rogers' belief in the goodness of her character was fully vindicated when he caught up with her in Canterbury about seven years later. She had made such a success of her life, she was able to return almost all the money that had been raised by the newspaper subscription. Only five pounds had been spent to cover the cost of her removal from London. All that remains is to answer the question why the Board of Guardians in Canterbury saw fit to send Sarah Ann up to London. Rogers was of the view that if they had allowed her to remain in their workhouse until after the execution of her husband, as a widow, they could not have removed her for a 12 month. They therefore sent her away at once to avoid this dilemma. And he leaves us in no doubt that this heartless treatment of a broken-hearted young woman was prompted by cynical self-interest. He was no admirer of the workhouses, and his daily practice as a medical officer presented him with too many Sarah Ann's for it to be acceptable, both as a doctor and as a compassionate man to hold his tongue. Coming up, a notorious criminal is brought to justice and later found to have just as notorious of a brain. Plus, a woman is involved in an accident, and once out of the hospital, everyone appears to be afraid upon looking at her face, even her. But it's not the scars that are causing terror. But first, a burst of UFO activity took place on New Year's Eve outside of New York in 1982. So many sightings and reports, it was impossible to ignore, even by skeptics. We look at what came to be known as the Hudson Valley Flap when Weird Darkness returns. There have been monsters among us lurking in the darkest corners of America, preying on children since the first settlers arrived on our shores. They've always been with us, stalking the innocent from the days of the original colonies to the Gilded Age, the Depression and beyond. These monsters are not the stuff of fiction. They are blood curdlingly real and they still walk among us, always looking for their next victim. In the chilling book, Suffer the Children, Troy Taylor shines a light on the darkest tales of horror and hauntings from American history and presents a terrifying collection of dark crimes perpetrated against our most tender victims, our children. His most disturbing book yet includes nightmarish tales from the 19th century, when the good old days were never good. Like the monster of the North Wood, the pocusette horror and the girl in the cellar, and continues into the modern day with accounts of the Clarkson Woods, America's first school massacre, Wineville Chicken Coupe murders, Babes of Englewood, Suzanne Degnan, the Girl Scout Camp Massacre, the Perfect Murder of Bobby Franks, and many more. Be warned, this is not a book for the faint of heart. These are tales containing brutal, agonizing and terrifying scenes of horror. Suffer the Children, American Horror's Homicides at Hauntings, Deadman, Do Tell Tales series book 15 by Troy Taylor. Hear a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Back during the summer of the Saucers in 1947 and more than a decade after, UFOs were a serious topic in the media. The subject received plenty of coverage as both the public and the government seemed to grapple with what it was that people were seeing in the skies. But by the time Project Blue Book ended in 1969, the tone in America's newspapers and newsreels seemed to change considerably. Many journalists openly mocked people who talked about Little Green Man and Flying Saucers. This no doubt pleased the federal government, and many researchers suspect that this was happening by design. That wasn't always the case, though. There were some events that generated considerable public attention and were reported on by the press in mostly sober fashion. One of these was the series of sightings in upstate New York that came to be known as the Hudson Valley Flap. While there had always been scattered sightings reported in the area, a couple of hours north of New York City, the real burst of activity seemed to begin on New Year's Eve 1982. A retired police officer reported seeing a huge V-shaped object with multiple colored lights gliding almost silently over his property. He wouldn't be the last person to report such an event. Many others followed, and by March 23 of 1983, the local newspaper in Fort Chester, New York was running a front-page feature describing crowds of people claiming to have seen the triangular object. The witnesses who were interviewed included an on-duty police officer named Kevin Soravia, who testified that he had seen the object twice in a 45-minute period after his department had received more than 100 calls. He described the object the same way the others had, saying that he had seen it stop in midair and turn perpendicular before reversing course and heading away from view. At no point in the article was there any suggestion of people making up stories or misidentifying something. By November of that year, the local newspapers were not just covering the sightings themselves, but also the people who were flocking to the valley to investigate this activity. On November 11, the Journal News in White Plains, New York, ran a two-column story featuring interviews with UFO investigators. One ufologist from Connecticut was a member of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, and he told a reporter that more aliens would probably visit the earth if humans weren't so hostile toward them. A second investigator accused the federal government of having crashed flying disks and alien bodies insisting they were covering up the information to keep it from the public. The paper even included comments from J. Allen Heineck, who described how and why he left in his capacity as a science advisor to Project Blue Book. Heineck also said the researchers were fighting a publicity war with the military because military officials sought to ridicule anyone who reported a sighting. The sightings were still going on well into the following year, and journalists had spread out to explore other possible explanations not involving extraterrestrials. On June 28, 1984, the Poughkeepsie Journal posted a feature in which they spoke to witnesses who were accusing stunt pilots with small aircraft of flying over the region in a close, V-shaped formation to trick people into thinking that they were seeing something otherworldly. They even spoke to a police officer who claimed to have followed the planes back to a local airport and spoke into one of the pilots who admitted to pulling off the hoax. However, the pilots were never named. The paper also made a point of including rebuttals from other witnesses who pointed out that they could easily identify a group of planes flying in formation and added that no set of pilots could account for the numerous sightings that had been reported. There was once again no suggestion that the subject was some sort of joke. In August of that year, the same newspaper covered the first-ever UFO convention to take place in the region. It was attended by more than 500 people, and reporters showed up to cover the event. Heineck was the keynote speaker and he described the ongoing flaps as a real mystery. He and other speakers also threw cold water on the idea that a small group of Cessna airplanes could be responsible for everything that had been happening. Sightings of the massive triangular object eventually trailed off and ended, but the belief in unidentifiable objects flying over the Hudson Valley did not. A restaurant named the Cup and Saucer soon opened in Pine Bush, New York, with a large flying saucer prominently featured on the sign over their door. A museum dedicated to UFOs and the paranormal opened in the same town and remains in operation to this day. And whenever they hold a public event or parade, reporters show up to cover the action and they are still not making fun of the people who attend. Except for a few of the people wearing more outlandish alien costumes, of course. The nation's other larger newspapers spent much of the past five decades ignoring or even mocking stories involving UFOs. That all changed with the release of the New York Times bombshell article in December of 2017. Now it seems as though every outlet in the country is talking about it and covering the actions that Congress is taking. But out in a backwater section of upstate New York, there are some newspapers that beat them to the punch by 40 years. Edward Howard Rulloff is widely considered one of the most notorious criminals of the 19th century, but his life of crime would come to an end when he was hanged in Binghamton. Born in Canada in 1819, possibly 1820, Rulloff was one of four children who would grow up to become a school teacher. Arriving in Ithaca around 1841, Rulloff took a job as a school teacher in Dryden. After marrying one of his students, Rulloff moved his family to Lansing, where he somehow became the town doctor, even though he had no formal medical training. Things began to spiral downward in 1845. It was that year that Rulloff tried to convince his wife to move to Ohio, but she resisted. It is suspected that Rulloff killed his wife and young daughter, but he was not charged with murder as their bodies were never found and there simply was not enough evidence to bring charges against him. Although he was not convicted of their murders, Rulloff was charged with kidnapping his wife and was sentenced to a decade of hard labor at Auburn Prison. While in prison, Rulloff made friends with the son of Ithaca's undersheriff, Albert Jarvis, who may have been the one to help Rulloff escape prison. Another theory is that it might have been the mother of Jarvis who helped Rulloff escape as she was quite vocal in her belief that Rulloff was an innocent man. Either way, Rulloff escaped from Auburn prison. After his escape, Rulloff traveled west to Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he introduced himself to others as James Nelson. Rulloff became friends with a local inventor and convinced the inventor to start a business with him. Rulloff's new persona as James Nelson was an attractive one, attractive enough that he was just about to accept a professor position at Jefferson College. However, that plan was cut short when his friend Albert Jarvis wrote to Rulloff telling him that he and his mother were struggling and needed help or they would be forced to alert authorities of his whereabouts. Rulloff attempted to rob a jewelry store so that he could send what he hoped to steal to the Jarvis's. However, Rulloff was caught, arrested and sent back to Ithaca. In a very bizarre turn of events, even though he was believed to be a killer, had escaped from prison and was caught robbing a jewelry store, Rulloff was able to talk his way out of a conviction and was let go. After leaving Ithaca, Rulloff moved to New York City with Albert Jarvis where they took on a new career as burglars. Through his crimes, Rulloff was once again caught and in 1861 he was sentenced to two years in Sing Sing Prison. While at Sing Sing, Rulloff met his next accomplice, William T. Dexter. In 1870, Rulloff, Jarvis and Dexter made their way to Binghamton where the plan was to rob a dry goods store. Two of the store's clerks lived upstairs and to ensure they would not stop the robbery, Rulloff, Jarvis and Dexter burned chloroform so that the clerks would not awake. But they did. In the midst of the chaos of trying to stop the three men from robbing the store, one of the clerks was shot dead in the head by Rulloff. Rulloff, Jarvis and Dexter missed the boat that they had hoped to take as a ferry across the Chadango River and so they tried to swim across. Jarvis and Dexter ended up drowning. Rulloff made it. Binghamton police launched a manhunt and the next day Rulloff was apprehended and his trial for the murder of the store clerk began on January 4, 1871. Rulloff's trial grew to be quite a spectacle with crowds estimated to be in the thousands showing up each day. Even Mark Twain found himself invested in the trial and wrote a letter to the New York Tribune about it. On March 3, 1871, Rulloff was found guilty of his crimes and sentenced to die. While awaiting his hanging, Rulloff admitted to murdering his wife but maintained his claim that he never harmed his daughter. Following his execution by hanging on May 18, 1871, Rulloff's brain was removed so that it could be examined and it was discovered to be massive in size. To this day, Rulloff's brain is on display at Cornell where it is considered to be the second largest brain ever recorded. The following was written by Julia Nord. I had a friend, Margarita. We all called her Rita. In general, a very sad and rather strange story happened to her which she told me, now I will tell it to you. In general, it all started with how Margarita got into an accident. She was admitted to a hospital and underwent surgery. Everything went well and Rita was discharged. When she went home, all the people looked at her strangely. At home, as Rita told me, she kept looking in the mirror and checking what people were looking at in her and she didn't find anything surprising in herself. This was always the case with Margarita, even when we were talking with her. I noticed that everyone was looking at my friend with a strange, frightened look. Then I realized that people were looking at her face. It changed after the operation but still, why did they, strangers, look like that? Once Rita looking in the mirror noticed she had different eyes. Well, not her eyes, strangers. She even took a picture and showed it to me. Rita always had big brown eyes and in the mirror, they were green and narrow. A week later, Margarita noticed that she had a completely different face in the mirror. Other eyes, nose, lips and it was in all the reflections. Rita became afraid of her reflections and developed a phobia. Not only did she have strange looks from strangers, her reflection was strange. Then I realized why people looked at her like that. Everyone saw something strange in her face and everyone saw it differently. I saw strange eyes in her face and, for example, my mother began to see strange eyebrows in her face. Once Margarita got tired of all of this and she asked her mother to throw out all the mirrors in their apartment. Mother mother did not agree and Rita asked to throw out at least a mirror in her room. She couldn't see her own reflection anymore. But one night, her younger brother John told me this, Margarita got up and went to the toilet and John followed her. My friend walked past the mirror and John stopped her. He saw something in the mirror. When Rita looked in the mirror, she was very scared. She had those narrow green eyes and her mouth was open and blood was flowing from it. The reflection was somehow pale. Rita started to shake herself off, to shake it off her face, but in all the mirrors her reflection was like this. And this reflection in the mirrors was only at night, during the day, someone else's face. Margarita became strange. She had a fear of the dark mirrors, people, and then Rita committed suicide. She jumped in front of a train. Everyone was upset from her family and me to our most unsociable classmate E.G., who by the way hated Margarita. And now I often think about it. And I guess it's all because of her reflection. Recently I researched the internet and didn't find anyone with such a face, except her grandmother. Her grandmother had engaged in black magic, harmless to her friends and offensive to her enemies. She apparently decided to pass it on to Rita. It's a pity I didn't know about it to explain it to her when she was alive. When Weird Darkness returns, a social experiment initiated by Stalin's Soviet Union ends with hundreds dead on the first day. But that was only the beginning of the horrors of what would later be known as Cannibal Island. Terror began in January by the light of the full moon. The first scream came from the snowbound railway man who felt the werewolf's fangs ripping in his throat. The next month there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her cozy bedroom. Now, scenes of unbelievable horror unfold each time the full moon shines on the isolated main town of Tarkers Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next, but one thing is sure, when the full moon rises, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarkers Mills, for snarls that sound like human words can be heard whining through the wind, and all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated. Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King Hear the entire novel absolutely free on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com From the 1920s to the 1950s, the Soviet Union operated hundreds of forced labor camps where, overall, 18 million people were imprisoned. The conditions in Joseph Stalin's gulags were horrific. One to two million people died of overwork, starvation, the elements, disease or execution. The camps were full of dissidents, persecuted ethnic groups, Stalin's political enemies and anyone connected to them, common criminals and more. The labor was a key part of the Soviet Union's rapid industrialization. Stalin wanted the nation modernized so prisoners worked on massive infrastructure, mining and industrial projects. In the early 1930s, Soviet leadership envisioned a different sort of labor camp. It was decided that two million citizens would be rounded up and transported to Siberia and Kazakhstan where they would build new communities and engage in agriculture. They would have no choice in these remote areas but to become self-sufficient and plant for survival, which would help fight the nation's famine. One such place was Nazinsky or Nazino Island, a tiny spot of land in the middle of the Orb River which was in the center of Russia's colossal land mass. It would soon be known as Cannibal Island. In 1933, Soviet soldiers shipped over 6,000 people to Cannibal Island, also named the Island of Death. According to Atlas Obscura, the prisoners were given no tools, shelter, extra clothing or food, save for some flour that could not be cooked without proper utensils and thus had to be eaten as it was or mixed with river water causing dysentery. Hundreds died the first night. Guards shot anyone who attempted to cross the Orb River for the other shore. There was violence over any meager resource. Starving, the captives quickly began killing and eating each other. Some were killed and devoured. Others had body parts sliced off and were left to attempt to survive. I saw that her calves had been cut off, a resident of a nearby town who later met a former Cannibal Island prisoner remembered. I asked and she said, they did that to me on the Island of Death, cut them off and cooked them. Prisoners seized another girl a witness recalled, tied her to a poplar tree, cut off her breasts, her muscles, everything they could eat, everything, everything. They were hungry, they had to eat. The guards did little to stop the horrors. After a month or two, over 4,000 people had died from violence, disease and the cold, and the Soviet government ended the social engineering experiment on the Zinsky Island, shipping the frail survivors elsewhere. Though the survivors and residents of nearby villages knew what happened during those bloody months, as did Stalin and the USSR leadership, the wider public of Russia and the world would have to wait half a century to hear the tale. In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev enacted a policy of glasnost, or openness, as the nation began to democratize. Government secrets, the terrors under Stalin, suppressed information, they slowly came to light and can be discussed more openly. In July 1933, a communist instructor named Vasily Valychko had been living near the Zinsky Island and hearing the whispers of cannibalism investigated for himself. He sent a report to Moscow documenting the events, which was buried until 1994. Other reports, such as those generated by their government's investigation, spurred by Valychko's writing, likewise did not stay hidden forever. It is also thanks to the efforts of the Memorial Human Rights Group that this history has been preserved. In 1989, the group went to Zizinski and nearby areas to speak to survivors, witnesses and others, collecting oral histories. Today, a leading text that educates the global public on this topic is historian Nicholas Worth's book, Cannibal Island, Death in Isoberian Gulag from 2007, which I have linked to in the show notes. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at weirddarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks I have narrated, visit the store for Weird Darkness t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases and more merchandise, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Hanging of a Notorious Brain was written by Tracy Taylor for 98onethehawk.com. Joseph Stalin's Cannibal Island is by Garrett S. Griffin for MSN. The reflection that drove to death is by Julian Yord on medium.com. The Hudson Valley Flap was written by Jazz Shaw for the debrief. The HMS Daughterless Sea Monster was written by Michael Kilianski for Creative History Stories. The murderer's wife was posted at London Overlooked. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 13 verse 3. Those who control their tongue will have a long life. Opening your mouth can ruin everything. And a final thought. Success is achieved by ordinary people with extraordinary determination. David A.R. White. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. And we have Roger's testimony to the depressing effect that the whole affair had obviously it had. And we have Roger's testimony to the depressing effect that the whole affair had obviously. And we have Roger's testimony to the depressing effect that the whole affair had obviously had had obviously had.