 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. Imagine it's an ordinary day. You're walking down the street that you know very well and suddenly you feel that something stops you from taking a step forward. There is no visible obstacle standing in your way and yet you can't seem to move forward. It seems like you've encountered an invisible barrier that simply doesn't allow you to pass. Does that sound strange? In fact, it may sound like an almost impossible scenario outside of science fiction, of course, yet there are several cases of people who have reported such encounters in the real world. 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... Ever since President Zachary Taylor died suddenly in 1850, after just 16 months in office, many have suspected foul play on the part of his political enemies. Is it possible that despite what the history books say, Zachary Taylor was the first U.S. president to be assassinated? Going into an invisible wall or force field is a science fiction trope, but perhaps it's not so fictional as you think, saying as there are numerous cases of people encountering that very thing in real life. According to numerous legends and beliefs, the white gods once came to Earth and helped humanity develop and prosper by offering knowledge in many ways. Could those white gods have been extraterrestrials? Over a hundred children were found stalking a graveyard, armed with knives and sharpened sticks in order to kill a vampire that had already killed and eaten two children in Glasgow. And this one event snowballed into a crackdown on comic books. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, to visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter and our contests, connect with me on social media. Listen to my other podcasts like Retro Radio, Old Time Radio in the Dark, Church of the Undead and a classic 1950s sci-fi style podcast called Auditory Anthology. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts or addiction. 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. President Zachary Taylor's death on July 9, 1850 shocked an uneasy nation. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Taylor had been seen as something of a compromise candidate, but he had a few enemies. At the time, little suspicion clouded Taylor's death. Doctors chalked it up to Cholera Morbis, also known as acute gastroenteritis after the president consumed cherries and iced milk during a Fourth of July celebration. But the elevation of Taylor's vice president, Millard Fillmore, led some to wonder, what if the president had been poisoned in order for the vice president to take power? The question of Zachary Taylor's cause of death would echo through the ages until the 1990s when Taylor was finally exhumed and tested for arsenic poisoning. As the nation tipped toward violence in the precarious pre-Civil War years, Zachary Taylor emerged as something of a compromise candidate. For one, he was fairly apolitical. Taylor had never cast a vote in his life. Secondly, most Americans knew Taylor as a hero of the Mexican-American War. Taylor's service in the Mexican-American War proved important. As Americans rallied round old rough and ready, as he was called, they admired different things about his candidacy. Southerners saw Taylor, a slave owner from Kentucky, as one of their own. They considered American territorial gains during the war a ripe opportunity to spread the institution of slavery. But northerners saw something else. They saw a military man, someone loyal to the stars and stripes. In reality, Taylor was an independent and, in fact, members of both parties had considered him a possible presidential candidate as his victories in Mexico piled up. Taylor himself noted that he'd never harbored presidential ambitions. In 1846, two years before his election, he stated that becoming president never entered my head, nor is it likely to enter the head of any sane person. Taylor had no strong political leanings either way, but he did have a score to settle. He believed that James K. Polk, the Democratic president, had sabotaged him during a battle in Buenavista in order to score political points. A campaign song written for Taylor included the lyrics, Polk thought when the war first began, how grand he'd be in the story. He little dreamed how Zach would rise and carry off the glory. Taylor came out as a wig, W-H-I-G, albeit an unenthusiastic wig. In a purposely leaked letter to his brother-in-law, Taylor noted, I am a wig, but not an ultra wig. The wigs neatly sidestepped the issue of slavery by presenting Taylor as a candidate without regard to creeds or principles. Democrats attacked him as a hypocrite for owning slaves and sneered that he'd been nominated based solely on the ground of his availability. As president, Taylor made his stances more well-known. He threw his support behind the highly controversial Wilmot Proviso, which proposed banning slavery in the new territory acquired during the Mexican-American War. Southerners were horrified. Taylor met threats of secession with anger. He promised to lead the charge against any states that tried to leave the Union, thundering in February of 1850 to a group of Southern leaders that anyone, quote, in rebellion against the Union, I will hang with less reluctance than I used in hanging deserters and spies in Mexico, unquote. These were fiery opinions and a fiery time. Taylor had only been in office for just over a year, but he had started to make dangerous enemies. On a hot July 4th in 1850, the president attended Independence Day festivities. He went and saw the newly dedicated grounds for the upcoming Washington Monument and strolled along to Potomac. During the day, Taylor reportedly consumed cherries and iced milk. Upon entering the White House, he felt thirsty and drank several glasses of cold water. By the next day, the president suffered from terrible stomach cramps. Taylor ate slivers of ice for relief as doctors tried to relieve his pain. They gave him opium and kalamel and even tried bleeding the illness out of the president. Although Taylor did momentarily improve, even feeling well enough to write several letters and sign a bill, his condition soon deteriorated. A few days later, the president called his wife to his side. As soldier to the end, Taylor told her, I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me. He died on July 9, 1850. Taylor's doctors blamed cholera morbis, a term doctors used in those days to describe gastroenteritis, inflammation of the intestines caused by bacteria, a virus or a parasite. Modern doctors believed Taylor became infected due to the poor sanitary conditions in the capital. After Zachary Taylor's death, things began to change very quickly. His vice president, Millard Fillmore, was sworn in on July 10, 1850, just a day after Taylor died. Fillmore threw his support to the most controversial issue of the day, a proposed law that would become the compromise of 1850. Taylor had opposed the compromise. The law would make concessions to both the North and South, but its most enduring impact was the expansion of the Fugitive Slave Act. The new act required all citizens to assist in the capture of escaped slaves and offered rewards to federal commissioners for turning in suspected slaves. So in even less time than his short presidency had lasted, Taylor's work toward preventing the spread of slavery was all undone. Zachary Taylor's death remained an oddity of history for more than a century afterward. Most dismissed his untimely and strange death as just pure bad luck. But not Dr. Clara Rising, a historical novelist and former humanities professor at the University of Florida, Rising noticed that Taylor's symptoms seemed an eerie match to arsenic poisoning. Right after his death, Rising noted, everything he had worked against came forward and was passed by both houses of Congress. In Rising's opinion, Zachary Taylor could have had an enormous impact on American history. Had he lived, he could have prevented, he laid, or somehow solved the problems that led to the Civil War which broke out ten years later. In coordination with a coroner and the Department of Veterans Affairs to oversee the cemetery where Taylor's buried, Rising won approval to exhume the president in 1991 so that Taylor could be tested for arsenic. Arsenic can last in a body for centuries. If someone had poisoned the president, the evidence would still be discovered. The results? Zachary Taylor did test positive for arsenic, but only a small amount. If arsenic poisoning had killed the president, the levels would have been two hundred or even thousands of times higher than what they actually found. And thus, Zachary Taylor's death seems more likely the result of just terrible luck, not a stealthy assassin. And after his death, coordination continued its steady march toward war. When Weird Darkness returns, walking into an invisible wall or force field is a science fiction trope. But perhaps it's not so fictional as you think, saying as there are numerous cases of people encountering that very thing in real life. Up next. 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 Tarker's Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next, but one thing is sure. When the full moon rises, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker's 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. Imagine, it's an ordinary day. You're walking down the street that you know very well and suddenly you feel that something stops you from taking a step forward. There is no visible obstacle standing in your way and yet you can't move forward. It seems like you've encountered an invisible barrier that simply doesn't allow you to pass. Does it sound strange? In fact, it may sound like an almost impossible scenario, yet there are several cases of people who have reported such encounters. Though this may seem like a modern unexplained phenomenon, it is not. Peculiar encounters with invisible barriers can be traced to biblical times. Some curious reports come from witnesses who have caught glimpses from what can be described as parallel realities. If parallel worlds do exist and most scientists suggest they do nowadays, then it's possible that invisible worlds coexisting next to our own reality may be responsible for the emergence of occasional barriers that are invisible to our naked eye. In more modern times, it's also been suggested that mysterious rays and energy fields are causing the appearance of invisible barriers. Such energy fields could explain why a perfect engine suddenly dies in the middle of the road. It can also explain why animals and humans are unable to pass beyond a point in the road. In the Bible itself, Numbers 22-21-39, there is a story describing how Balaam, a sorcerer, was summoned by King Baelic of the Moabites to curse the Israelites as Moses was leading them toward Canaan. Balaam's donkey refused on three occasions to follow the path and nothing could force it to walk any further. The biblical explanation is that the donkey saw an angel standing in the way and tried to avoid it. Suddenly, miraculously, the donkey begins to talk and complains about Balaam's treatment of it. At this point, Balaam is allowed to see the angel of the Lord standing in its path. The angel tells Balaam that the donkey is the only reason the angel did not kill Balaam. It is an interesting account showing there could be entities in our material world that are not always visible to everyone at the same time. Putting the biblical story aside, it should also be noted that this strange encounter was just one of many similar that have been recorded throughout history. There are many reports of encounters with time portals and people who have caught glimpses from the past, which I will return to in just a moment. Such incidents have happened worldwide for as long as anyone can remember. Brief sightings of phantom ancient armies are also not unusual, especially not in the United Kingdom and France where several cases have been reported. One curious incident involving a sighting of a long-gone vanished army and encounter with an invisible barrier took place in 1960 on a road near Otterburn, Northumberland. The place is of great historical importance and many battles have been fought in the area. One of them was the Battle of Flotin that occurred in September 1513. The battle has gone to the history books as the largest encounter between England and Scotland. There are several witnesses who say that they have seen a phantom army near that site. One of them was taxi driver Dorothy Strong who reported that her car came to a total stop when the phantom army appeared. Suddenly the engine died, the fair meter went haywire and the taxi felt as it was being forced against an invisible wall. The soldiers seemed to close in on us then fade into thin air, she said. According to other people it is not unusual that one can encounter an invisible barrier around that location. A similar incident took place in Saxon, Germany in 1930 as many as 40 cars stalled simultaneously on a road. None of them was able to restart again for an hour. What could have caused such engine disturbance? More and more modern physicists are seriously considering the possibility that our world may be surrounded by several invisible realities that coexist next to our own. The multiverse theory is controversial, fascinating and gains popularity among modern scientists. There are some clues that support the parallel universe's theory but conclusive proof has not yet been presented. More scientific work needs to be done before researchers can be confident that they have found evidence of an existence of a multiverse. If and when this happens it will undoubtedly be a major breakthrough in physics and cosmology. As incredible as it might sound, we could see the construction of the pyramids at Giza, the end of World War II and an important event of the future that we still know nothing about. History of the past, present and future would become available to us just like a movie. Unfortunately, we do not have access to higher dimensions but the super string theory, one of the leading theories today, has the potential to unlock one of the biggest mysteries of the universe, namely how gravity and quantum physics fit together. What is interesting for us is that there are so many accounts of people claiming that they have witnessed incredible scenes from the past at certain locations. Is it possible that our world is surrounded by hidden portals leading to other worlds invisible to the naked eye? Can people sometimes stumble upon a portal to another dimension and witness something from another world? Strange glimpses from the past have been reported by several people in East Anglia. There are accounts of these curious incidents which are hundreds of years old. All reports are independent from each other and written down by reliable people who lived during different epochs. The most intriguing part is that these ancient accounts state the same thing. People witnessed events that took place a very long time ago. They saw something they shouldn't have seen. How is it possible? Could these people accidentally encounter a time portal that opened a window to the past? Yes, it sounds incredible but we cannot dismiss these ancient reports without further investigation and archaeologists, historians and geologists are baffled by these cases. Thanks to our great scientific achievements, we possess much knowledge about the world we live in. But we also need to remain modest and admit that there is still a whole heck of a lot that we don't fully comprehend about the nature of our so-called reality. It's time to visit East Anglia and take a closer look at these puzzling reports. Near the village of Roxham in Norfolk, England, alongside the river Boer, there's an area of open water called Roxham Broads. Covering about 34.4 hectares or 85 acres, the Roxham Broads is a depth of 1.3 meters. According to geologists, this region was formed by the flooding of ancient peat workings. At this particular place, people have reported seeing ancient Roman soldiers marching through dry land at the place where the Roxham Broads should have been. Other witnesses saw ancient Roman buildings. If these ancient accounts are true, then we have encountered a mystery dealing with geology as well as physics. The first account of glimpses from the ancient Roman worlds comes from Benjamin Curtis, who in 1603, while swimming together with friends across the lake of Roxham Broads, suddenly saw a Roman amphitheater. Curtis described the event in his writing in The Archives of the North Folk as follows. In the great broad of Roxham, near to Hoverton, St. John, two friends and myself were swimming across the lake from the Boer side to that opposite, when strangely enough we felt our feet touch the bottom. Now with this part there is much water, as much as 12 and in other places some 14 feet. We kept together and presently found ourselves standing in the middle of a large arena, with much seats, one above the other, all around us. The water was gone and we were standing there, dressed as Roman officers. What is more astonishing still, we were not surprised. Neither were we incommodated by this piece of enchantment, but rather we were quite accustomed to it, so that we forgot that we had been bathing. The top of the amphitheater was all open to the sky and many flags of divers colors floated in the wind from the top of the walls. We could dismiss Curtis' strange citing as pure fantasy, but more similar accounts followed. In 1709, Reverend Thomas Josiah Penston reported seeing a procession of ancient Roman soldiers at the same spot. His citing was published in the Gentleman's Gazette from April 16, 1709. Reverend Penston wrote, We were holding a picnic on the banks of a beautiful lake in Norfolk, about 11 miles from the ancient city of Norfolk, when we were suddenly and very preemptorily ordered away by a very undesirable-looking person, whose appearance in clothes belied his refinements of natural good-breeding. As we were somewhat endangered by this unpleasant person's persistence, we made to go away when suddenly we had to quickly stand aside to make passage for a long procession of regal splendor, the outstanding characters of which were a golden chariot containing a hideous-looking man dressed as a Roman general and drawn by 10 white prancing stallions, about a dozen lions led in chains by stalwart Roman soldiers, a band of tropeuteers making a great noise, and another band of drummers, followed by several hundred of long-haired, partly-armored seafaring men or sea soldiers all chained together. They passed quite close to us, but no one apparently saw us. There must have been seven or eight hundred horsemen in this long procession of arches, pikemen, and ballistic machines. Whether they went or from whence they came, I know not, yet they vanished at the lakeside. The noise of their passing was very loud and unmistakable. Several of these sightings are very old and have been reported by credible witnesses. When media learned about this unexplained phenomenon, newspapers started to publish articles and later, something odd happened. As we explore the remarkable incidents, we also take a closer look at our ancestors' interest in time portals and the parallel worlds theory. Is it possible ancient people were familiar with this modern concept but used other terms to describe the idea that our world is surrounded by a number of invisible worlds coexisting next to our own? Did they know more about the multiverse theory than we think? As we are about to find, the region in East Anglia is not the only place where people have reported seeing images from the past. Returning back to the Roxham Broads, we learn that interest in the unexplained phenomenon near Roxham Broads continued. In 1825, the magazine Days Chronicles of East Anglia picked up the story and wrote an article that reads, The Royal Progress of Carossius, as passed through the village of Roxham on its way from Brancaster. So who was this Carossius to whom Day was referring to in 1825? Maceus Carossius was a member of the Menapie, a Belgique tribe occupying the northeast of France, then known as Gaul, from the first century BC onwards. They were territory extended from the Rhine Estuary as far inland as the Ardennes, and they were also established in Ireland. And I know I'm butchering some of these names, but I'm neither Irish nor French, so please forgive me. Carossius made a name for himself in 286, when he fought very effectively for Maximian against Rebel Bogade, who were making life difficult in Gaul. The historian, C. E. V. Nixon, described them as brigands and listed their main activities as looting and pillaging. Following Carossius's success against the Bogada, he was rewarded with command of a fleet known as the Classes Britannica, with which he suppressed the pirates and sea raiders who plied their trade between the East Anglian coast and mainland Europe. Carossius is seemed was a man with his eye to the main chance, and he was suspected of colluding with the pirates that he was ostensibly controlling, helping himself to their treasure or allowing them to raid coastal villages first, then capturing them after they had worthwhile valuables to hijack. For whatever reason, he rebelled against the empire and declared himself Emperor of Britain. In view of his association with pirates, it is particularly interesting that Penston should have described several hundreds of long-haired, partly-armored seafaring men or sea soldiers all chained together. In 1829, Lord Percival Durin also witnessed this peculiar ancient Roman timeslip phenomenon. According to evidence found among Durin's private correspondence from 1829, he was with a party of family and friends aboard his yacht, Amarilis, a few hundred yards from the eastern entrance to Roxham Broad when a curious old man appeared. Could it possibly have been the same strange old character who had appeared to Penston and his picnic party 120 years earlier? The weird old fellow who appeared to Percival Durin's yachting party on July 21, 1829, claimed to be Flavius Mantis, or the keeper of the rolls. This was an extremely senior and important rank. Durin and his party were warned that they were trespassing on lands under the protection of the Western Emperor Caracius. According to Durin's evidence, the strange old man was suddenly transformed into a splendidly dressed Roman officer, and the waters of the broad vanished to reveal the familiar amphitheater and imperial procession. Lionel and Patrick Fanthorpe wrote about this in their book Mysteries and Secrets of Time, which I have placed a link to in the show notes. Obviously, sightings of ancient Romans were reported near Roxham Broad's for almost 300 years, but why did they suddenly stop then? Why are there no more recent reports of this ancient phantom army? If there is a time portal near Roxham Broad's, people should be able to still witness events from the past, but to our best knowledge, there are no more reports of such time slips in this region. What we cannot deny is that Roxham Broad's Norfolk has been a scene of repeated unexplained time slips in the past. When investigating the possibility of time portals in the United Kingdom, we should also not forget that Roxham Broad's is not the only place where time slips have been reported. In his book Mysteries and Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal and the Supernatural, which I have also included a link to in the show notes, author Colin Wilson reminds us of an incident that even raised the curiosity of King Charles I. At Edge Hill in Warwickshire, where one of the greatest battles of the Civil War was fought, the battle was repeated, complete with noises of cannons within a year. A pamphlet about it included accounts by Justice of the Peace and several army officers who had recognized old companions among the ghostly combatants. King Charles I was so intrigued by the story, he sent a group of officers to investigate. These officers, led by Colonel Lewis Crike, witnessed the Phantom battle themselves and testified to it on oath before the King. A 20th century clergyman, the Reverend John Denning, collected accounts of the many witnesses who had heard the sound of the battle. There are many similar stories about time slips and sightings of ancient events in the United Kingdom and other countries. Time slips and time portals are not limited to one country. There are also indications that our multiverse theory is not so modern after all. It seems that our ancestors were familiar with the Many Worlds Theory long before we rediscovered it. We find descriptions of what seems to be multiverse theory in ancient myths and legends. For example, according to Slavic mythology, when the existence as we know it was created and new dimensions and realities were born, three new worlds emerged. The Slavs named these worlds Prav, Yav and Nav. The world of Prav consisted of dimensions and realities. The world of Yav was four-dimensional and contained people and other living beings. The world of Yav was the world that surrounds us. Inside the Yav world, there were suns, stars and solar systems. There were also celestial objects invisible to our senses. The fascinating world of Nav contained multi-dimensional dimensions and realities with the number of dimensions higher than our world of Yav. The myth describes what we today would call the Many World Theory and it would seem that ancient Slavic wisdom confirms the multiverse theory. The presence of an ancient layline system across the world could explain why people can occasionally see glimpses of past events. The layline system is a network grid of energy that runs across the entire planet and intersects at various places along the globe. At some locations, the energy may be so strong that portals to other invisible worlds could be accidentally opened. This is merely a theory and there is no scientific proof of such portals, but it is important to remain open-minded to all the possibilities. Interestingly, scientists have recently also suggested that medieval philosophers were familiar with the multiverse theory. For example, Robert Grossetesta, circa 1175-1253 AD, an English philosopher, theologian and scientist, is described as one of the most dazzling minds of his generation and he theorized about parallel worlds. Grossetesta never mentioned the word multiverse, but according to the physicist Richard Bauer of Durham University, the medieval philosopher presented ideas that were remarkably similar to the reasoning applied in modern cosmology and physics. The large number of reported time slips involving witnessed events from the past shouldn't be ignored. The multiverse theory has not been confirmed, but continued research will one day provide evidence whether parallel worlds exist or not. We will then finally find out whether there are hidden portals leading to invisible worlds, and if there are, then we can say with certainty that the accounts we have already discussed here have been explained at last. But for now, all we know is that time slips near rocks and broads remain unexplained. Coming up, over 100 children were found stalking a graveyard armed with knives and sharpened sticks in order to kill a vampire that had already killed and eaten two children in Glasgow and this one event snowballed into a crackdown on comic books. But first, according to numerous legends and beliefs, the white gods once came to earth and helped humanity develop and prosper by offering knowledge in many ways. Could these so-called white gods have been extraterrestrials? That story is up next on Weird Darkness. My doc agrees that I need to lose a few pounds. I knew that going in. But he also told me that the meds I'm taking for my type 2 diabetes aren't going to do me much good if I finish each meal with ice cream or cheesecake. I kind of knew that in advance too. But cutting back on carbs and sugars is a lot easier said than done. I've tried a lot of protein bars while on the road, but I swear it's like eating non-sweetened chocolate-dusted particle board. But now, I travel with built bars. Built bars taste like candy bars. In fact, I'm now using them for my dessert. And in about 150 calories per bar, less than 3 grams of sugar, up to 19 grams of protein, I can satisfy my sweet cravings guilt-free. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash built in Try a Box. You can go for a variety pack of several flavors to try, or pick and choose to 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. How did the human race pass the test of time? Did we manage to walk this path of life without any help? Or were we actually guided by some extraterrestrial beings willing to help us grow and prosper in their own image? Well, according to numerous legends and beliefs, the white gods once came to Earth and helped humanity develop and prosper by offering knowledge in many ways. Quetzalcoatl is believed to be one of the first white gods to visit our planet. He was one of the most important gods from ancient Mesoamerica and was known as Caculcan to the Mayans, Gucamots to the Kishas of Guatemala, and Hyakatal to the Hostex of the Gulf of Mexico. Based on Mesoamerican folklore, Quetzalcoatl is the one who created the world and all of mankind and was regarded as the god of wind and rain. He is also known for structuring art and culture and was regarded as the organizer of society at that point in time. Since 1200 AD in central Mexico, he was considered the god of learning, agriculture, science and arts. He was also considered the patron god of merchants as he managed to discover corn with the help of a giant red ant who led him to a mountain packed full of grain and seeds. Legends named this entity Quetzalcoatl as the God of Dawn. This is one of the reasons why he is believed to be from a far away planet. Keep in mind that according to Mayan paintings and sculptures, many structures arose during this period that looked like spaceships from the 21st century. Drawings and representations found in sculptures wore something related to spacesuits and many images representing the gods showed similarities to what astronauts look like nowadays. It is believed that Quetzalcoatl burned himself and vanished into the skies toward the planet identified today as Venus. Could this be interpreted as an extraterrestrial being that has fulfilled his mission on earth and quickly disappeared through the skies to head to a new planet in need of guidance? Quetzalcoatl is described as light-skinned, bearded and tall with a serpent head hiding his human appearance. The earliest surviving image of Quetzalcoatl comes from the Almec civilization with a sculpture at La Venta of a beaked snake with a feather crest surrounded by two Quetzal birds. The earliest representations found in Mexico is at Tiohuacan where there are sculptures of feathered snakes dating from the 3rd century AD and that is also the place where a six-tiered pyramid was built in the honor of the serpent god of knowledge. The deity was often described in architectural and sculptural decorations, appearing at other sites such as Zojofoco, but he was rarely represented with any human form before the late post-classical period. Since 1200 AD, Quetzalcoatl was usually represented in his human form and mostly wore shell jewelry and a tapered hat. Representations of the god often have wind jewelry which is a cross-section of a clam world worn as a pectoral and often wear red masks like a goose's beak bearing long canine teeth. The writer Robert Marx has written broadly about this concept of white gods as he came to the conclusion that they are, quote, depicted in almost every indigenous culture in America, unquote. After his journey in South America, the British writer Harold Wilkins also came to the conclusion that a vanished white race had occupied all of South America in ancient times, helping the indigenous people cultivate food and build up pyramids, along with other large structures that would otherwise have been impossible to construct considering the lack of knowledge and tools during that time. He also claimed that Quetzalcoatl was from Atlantis. Sharing his beliefs, some ancient astronaut and UFO writers have suited that the white gods were actually extraterrestrial beings. Peter Colosimo believed that the myths of Quetzalcoatl had support. In fact, he stated that the legends actually described a full race of white men who were born in spaceships and migrated to Atlantis after the city was destroyed by water. The remaining white men moved to the Americas, where they were treated like white gods by the primitive earth dwellers. Another interesting theory is based on the writings of the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Seaguan from the 16th century in which he describes the meeting between the Mexican emperor Moctezuma II and the Spanish captain Hernan Cortez. At the first sight of the white Spanish men, Emperor Moctezuma thought that the white gods had returned from the east and Captain Cortez was the god Quetzalcoatl. Because of his beliefs, the emperor gifted him a mask representing the feathered serpent. The mask was carved from a single piece of cedar wood and covered with turquoise mosaic work. The teeth were made of white clamshell. The design consisted of two serpents, green and blue, encircling the eyes and entangled over the nose and around the mouth. According to Seaguan's description, it was worn with a crown of dazzling, long green-blue shimmering feathers, possibly those of the Quetzalbert, a tropical rainforest bird with iridescent green-blue plumage. Much of the idea of Captain Cortez being seen as a deity can be followed back to the Florentine Codex written down about 50 years earlier about the conquest. In the Codex's tale of the first meeting between Moctezuma and Cortez, the ruler of the Aztec is illustrated as giving a prepared speech in classical oratorical nuatl, a dialect which as reported verbatim in the Codex written by Seaguan's informants added such prostrate announcement of divine or near-divine adoration. An imperfect, intellectual understanding of high Neowatal oratory style make the exact intent of these comments tricky to approve, but some argue that Moctezuma politely offering his throne to Cortez may well have been meant as the exact opposite of what it was taken to mean. Kindness in Aztec culture was a way to affirm dominance and show superiority. This speech, which has been extensively referred to, has been a factor in the widespread assumption that Moctezuma was addressing Cortez as the returning god Quetzalocotal. As time passed by, we educated ourselves through history and managed to see a glimpse of what life used to be. At our current understanding level, we realized that some things from the past might have been impossible to accomplish without any external help. The white gods could have given us knowledge in which the Mesoamericans used to obtain power, but as the extraterrestrials left, the indigenous people could suffice in controlling that power which was given too early without any warning of its side effects. It ultimately led to self-destruction of the most knowledgeable and prosperous civilizations of our past because the guidance of aliens had vanished. If they were real, will they return as the prophecies foretell and help us again to build our future? When P.C. Alex de Proz was called to Glasgow's sprawling southern necropolis on the evening of 23 September 1954, he expected to be dealing with a simple case of vandalism. But the bizarre sight that awaited him was to make headlines around the world and cause a moral panic that led to the introduction of strict new censorship laws in the UK. Hundreds of children, ages from 4 to 14, some of them armed with knives and sharpened sticks were patrolling inside the historic graveyard. They were, they told the bemused constable, hunting a 7-foot-tall vampire with iron teeth who had already kidnapped and eaten two local boys. Fear of the so-called Gourbal's Vampire had spread to many of their parents who begged P.C. de Proz for assurances that there was no truth to the rumors. Newspapers at the time reported that the headmaster of a nearby primary school told everyone present that the tale was ridiculous and police were finally able to disperse the crowd. But the armed mob of child vampire hunters was to return immediately after sunset the following night and the night after that. Ronnie Sanderson, who was an 8-year-old schoolboy in the Gourbal's area of the city when the vampire scare was at its height, described how Chinese whispers in the schoolyard escalated into full-blown panic. He recalled, It all started in the playground. The word was there was a vampire and everyone was going to head out there after school. At 3 o'clock, the school emptied and everyone made a beeline for it. We sat there for ages on the wall, waiting and waiting. I wouldn't go in because it was a bit scary for me. I think somebody saw someone wandering about and the cry went up, there's the vampire. That was it. That was the word to get off that wall quick and get away from it. I just remember scampering home to my mother. What's the matter with you? I've seen a vampire and I got a clout round the ear from my trouble. I didn't really know what a vampire was. There were no records of any missing children in Glasgow at the time and the media reports of the incident began to search for the origins of the urban myth that had gripped the city. The blame was quickly laid at the door of American comic books with chilling titles such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror whose graphic images of terrifying monsters were becoming increasingly popular among Scottish youngsters. These comics, so the theory went, were corrupting the imaginations of children and inflaming them with fear of the unknown. A few dissenting academics pointed out there was no mention of a creature matching the description of the Gourbal's Vampire in any of these comics. There was, however, a monster with iron teeth in the Bible, Daniel 7 verse 7 in the King James Version. After this, I saw in the night visions and behold a fourth beast dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly and it had great iron teeth. It devoured and break in pieces and stamped the residue with the feet of it and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it and had ten horns. Also, a poem taught in local schools had something about iron teeth, but their voices were drowned out in the media and political frenzy that was by now demanding action to be taken to prevent even more young minds from being polluted by the terrifying and corrupt comic books. The government responded to the clamour by introducing the Children and Young Persons Harmful Publications Act of 1955, which for the first time specifically banned the sale of magazines and comics portraying incidents of repulsive or horrible nature to minors. Another of those who had gathered at the graveyards as a child, Tam Smith, said the Necropolis provided the perfect stage for a vampire story to take root, with the noise and light from the nearby ironworks casting spooky shadows across the graves in which some 250,000 Glaswegians had been laid to rest. Mr. Smith said it had been common for naughty children in the area to be threatened with the Iron Man, a local equivalent of the Boogeyman by their exasperated parents. Neither Mr. Smith or Mr. Sanderson had televisions in their homes at the time and neither had ever seen a horror movie or read a horror comic. Comic book expert Barry Forshaw said getting their hands on one of the underground American horror comics had been like finding the holy grail for schoolyards of British children reared on these squeaky clean fare found every week inside the Beano and Dandy, both of which are produced in Scotland. The story of the Gorbell's Vampire had been a gift to the unlikely alliance of teachers, communists and Christians who had their own individual reasons for crusading against the corrupting influence of American comics, he said. Mr. Forshaw added, it was a perfect fit. Here was a campaign that was looking for things to justify itself. And then this event happens. It is ironic that the moral furor began in Scotland where the comics could not have been more safe. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find information on any of the sponsors you heard about during the show, find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, sign up for the email newsletter, find other podcasts that I host, including Retro Radio, Old Time Radio in the Dark, Church of the Undead, and a classic 1950s sci-fi style podcast called Auditory Anthology. Also on the site, you can visit the store for Weird Darkness t-shirts, mugs, and other merchandise. Plus, it's where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression, addiction, or thoughts of harming yourself or others. And if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell of your own, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories on Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes. The Mysterious Death of Zachary Taylor is by Kalina Fraga for all that's interesting.com. Invisible Barriers and Time Portals is by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages. The White Alien God of the Mesoamericans is from Animalien.com. And Comics and the Gourbal's Vampire is by Stuart Nicholson for the BBC. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. First Peter 4, verse 8. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. And a final thought. When you really love someone, age, distance, height, and weight are just numbers. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. 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