 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. It seems that when talking about haunted places, there are certain locales that by their very nature seem destined for the paranormal. Those locations with a history indelibly stained with suffering or dark, bloody or violent events are almost inevitably pervaded by the supernatural, as if this ominous history is managed to draw these forces, absorb them, and make them a part of the very place itself. Certainly one such place lies in the country of England and is a former witch's prison with a sinister story that has turned it into one of the most notoriously haunted places in the world. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up in this episode... Is it possible that the monster your child sees under the bed or in the closet isn't imaginary after all? We look at some true stories of people coming face to face with monsters in their own home. People have said they feel drained after seeing black-eyed kids or exhausted when speaking with whom they later discovered was a self-proclaimed vampire. Is it possible that otherworldly ghostly entities, interdimensional creatures, and even occultist human beings are in some way literally feeding on us? Even for those immersed in ufology, for many a certain controversial subject is so troubling and disturbing they choose to outright ignore it and seldom speak of it. It's the question, are UFOs stealing humans' souls? But first, stories of prisons housing the spirits of the dead is already dreary, but in England there is a prison called The Cage and the haunting spirits there are real life witches. 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, enter contests, 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. The time was the sixteenth century in Essex, England and for the people of the era it was a frightening time when witches roamed the night casting their dark spells and carrying out their arcane rituals. For these people, witches were very real and black magic was a threat that hung over the land like a black cloud. Throughout the region, efforts were made to track down and capture witches to eliminate this evil and the small village of St. Osseth was no different, with a total of fourteen witches rounded up here on accusations for everything from placing curses on people to bringing blight and sickness to unleashing their familiars to wreak havoc. By far the most well-known of the witches of St. Osseth as well as the first to be arrested was a woman by the name of Ursula Kemp. She had been fairly popular among her neighbors in the past and was known for mixing all sorts of herbal concoctions and salves to heat various ailments. At the time she was known as a healer and she was ironically often called upon for her purported ability to actually reverse spells and curses cast by witches for a price. However, with a lonely woman mixing her potions and performing such magic as well as keeping herself surrounded by several cats, it was only a matter of time in this era of rampant superstition and fear of magic before she was accused of being a witch herself, with numerous people coming forward to claim that she had been causing the very sicknesses she had claimed to heal. She was also accused of casting curses herself, including one that causes a baby to fall and break her neck and another that allegedly caused a woman to go lame. Kemp's trial would be held in 1582 and the number of people testifying against her was overwhelming. There were those who claimed that she had set her familiars upon them, others who said she had bewitched people who angered her by muttering curses and that she used black magic to cause deaths. Some charges were quite bizarre, such as that she had used her witchcraft to prevent beer from brewing. The most damning evidence of all was presented by Kemp's very own eight-year-old son, who told the court that she had four familiars, two cats, a black toad and a white lamb, which he had seen suckling blood from her, and that these familiars were two male spirits that killed people and two female spirits that brought sickness to people and destroyed cattle. During the trial, 13 others would be implicated in witchcraft as well, including a woman named Elizabeth Bennet and all of them would be found guilty. They were then moved to the witch's prison known as The Cage, where they awaited punishment, which was execution by hanging for the most part. Indeed, Kemp and six others would be hanged at the prison for their crimes and their bodies unceremoniously dumped in unmarked graves on unhallowed ground. In later years, the prison became a quarantine for plague victims, with many dying here before becoming a prison again. I know what you're probably thinking right about now, and oh yes, it is ever haunted. In fact, it is routinely referred to as one of the most haunted places in Britain. The Cage itself remained an operation all the way up to 1908, after which it was finally shut down and sold to a string of owners who have more often than not had very intense paranormal experiences there. The first buyer sold it a mere two weeks after buying it, and another buyer allegedly went mad and hung himself there. One of the most notorious cases of a haunting at The Cage was experienced by an owner who lived there for 11 years by the name of Vanessa Mitchell and who was left traumatized by a string of bizarre, often violent, ghostly encounters on the property. Vanessa claims that when she bought the property and moved in in 2004, she wasn't told anything about the sinister history of the place or the deaths that had occurred there, but she would soon find out. According to her, she was constantly plagued by poltergeist activity from the very beginning, which seemed to be never ending and would manifest at all hours of the day and night. She would say of this paranormal activity, the daylight hours in The Cage were no less active than the night hours. Ornaments would fly off the mantelpiece. The old chain from the original prison building would swing back and forward, as if to remind me of a horrific history of my home. And the hall stairs door would crash open in a forceful, almost violent way. Blood splatters appeared in the hall in broad daylight in front of witnesses apart from myself. The TV sound would go up and down with no one near the controls to adjust them, and you'd hear someone pacing back and forth in the upstairs hall. It didn't stop. It was all the time, and there was nothing I could do. Even more ominous than these unexplained phenomena were decidedly more violent and menacing incidents. She says that she would see dark shadowy figures lurking about and that she was often subjected to being pushed and slapped by unseen hands. The most frightening such occurrence is allegedly happened when she was pregnant and an unseen force roughly pushed her to the ground, of which she would say it was absolutely terrifying. I just remember feeling the force like someone had pushed me and falling on my side. When I was on the floor, I just lay there in shock. She also claims that she once walked in on a shadowy figure looming over her son as he slept, and even that there was even CCTV footage taken of a satanic goat wandering about. She finally decided to sell the house, and has said of her ordeal, I'm selling the house now because the house is getting worse. We're catching evidence all the time of the tortured spirits inside. I've had every medium, psychic and investigator in there to try and get rid of what's in there. I honestly believe the house is cursed. I've lived there for years, but for me seeing a tall, dark figure standing between me and my son's cot was the final straw for me. There's something evil in there, something demonic, whatever it is that's keeping the other spirits trapped inside. It's so haunted I don't know what more I can do and it's time for someone to own it who can do more with it than me. It is unclear just why she would live there for 11 years if she was so constantly under siege by such terrifying ghostly phenomena, but she no longer lives there and moved out in 2012, refusing to even go near the place alone. The story of Vanessa's experiences at the cage was a media sensation at the time of curiosity seekers, paranormal investigators and ghost hunters to the property. Many of these visitors have had paranormal experiences themselves, such as the paranormal investigator and author Mickey Rawlings, who bravely decided to try living in the cage for research and did not have to wait long before being harassed by some sort of malevolent ghostly force. He has said of the experience there, I've seen books flying off shells in the upstairs hallway, I've watched doors open on their own and I've even seen a shadow person with my own eyes. I'm not a religious man and yet I go to bed every night clutching a crucifix for my own safety. After a few days I got to learn the natural noises of the house, now the non-natural noises keep me awake at night. I had argued that the place is dangerous, I'm convinced it could end up killing someone one day. Other phenomena Rawlings witnessed included the sound of growling, the pattering of footsteps running around, and most bizarrely of all the disembodied tunes of what sounds like a tiny piano playing. Another paranormal investigator who had a rather harrowing experience at the cage was Brad Mack, who went ahead with the plan to spend a night at the location along with some colleagues on December 2, 2017. They would find waiting for them a smorgasbord of weird occurrences, of which Mack would say, We had five volunteers, one investigator who had experience in the cage and myself. Vanessa refused point blank to stay after dark. Through the course of the night I investigated in a few rooms myself, joined the volunteers as they tried to provoke the dark spirits into reacting and mainly watched from CCTV to see if we capture anything in the moment. My melmeter, an EMF measurement tool, fluctuated like crazy. We constantly heard footsteps both light and quick and some heavy but quicker. I heard faint whispers behind me whilst walking around upstairs. We captured numerous lights flickering on both levels of the house. I got bitten or pinched on the leg and even caught two little stick figures cowering from my touch in the motion camera. The motion camera footage shows a stick figure covering its face and recoiling as I try to touch it. All in all it was one of the most frantic and terrifying nights of my life and this was only the beginning of the evening. At one point during the night at approximately 3am the investigators were off upstairs exploring the master bedroom, said to be the most haunted area of the house as Mack and another colleague monitored them on live feed on CCTV from downstairs. At first all was dark and quiet but then in quick succession he says we saw innumerable inexplicable lights flicker across the room. Heard a loud growl coming from the corner and three loud bangs smash off the door behind the volunteers. Then one of Mack's colleagues known only as Debbie was witnessed to undergo a rather unsettling transformation as they were all gathered there with her nose becoming hooked, her eyes becoming fierce and dark, and her face cracking an evil smile that he describes as Joker-like. Mack would explain thus, both me and Dave gasped she was unrecognizable and what I saw shook me to the core. After a moment that seemed a lifetime I knew I had to film this. I whipped out my iPhone fully charged, thank God, her nose it has changed shape completely almost like a witch's with a sharp arch in the bridge of her nose. That nose is not a prop. Making it all even spookier is that Debbie then stumbled out of the room and went downstairs where she complained that something was burning on her back. The crew then purportedly lifted up her jumper to take a look and were astonished to see what looked like four long burn marks splayed out like fingers and another going straight up her back into her neck. Mack speculates that the ghost of one of the witches, perhaps even Kemp herself, had tried to possess Debbie and had briefly succeeded. You can see a video of the stick figures and photos of the transformation yourself. I have placed a link to those in the show notes. Needless to say, the team ended up not going through with their plan, with some of the frightened volunteers even fearing for their very lives if they stayed. Other visitors to the cage and even people passing by have also reported all manner of strangeness from this place and photographic evidence includes countless images of mysterious lights of orbs, shadow figures, and even a photo of what appears to be a witch on a stretcher taken by a local policeman. Interestingly enough, the cage isn t even the only supposedly haunted place in the village of St. Osath as there s a former insane asylum practically right across the street that is also said to be haunted, as well as a tavern right down the road also said to have ghosts that cause cars to careen off the road. Is this all the doing of ghosts and spirits or is there perhaps something else going on? Could it be that perhaps the reason this place is so infused with such strangeness is because of all of the suffering, death, and negative energy that permeate its dark history like a disease? Could this residual energy be merely a symptom of this sickness emanating out to cause these phenomena? Of course, we are nowhere near knowing the answer to this, but it does seem that such macabre locals seem to hold in them a striking intensity of paranormal phenomena and the cage must certainly rank high up there among them. Up next on Weird Darkness, is it possible that the monster your child sees under the bed or in the closet isn t imaginary after all? We look at some true stories of people coming face to face with monsters in their own home. Hey, Weirdos! Well, here we are, October 18th, we re little past halfway in the month and we are just a little past the halfway point in our Overcoming the Darkness campaign when it comes to our goal. We re trying to raise $5,000, we re at $2,700 right now, thanks to the 53 people who ve already made a donation. Thank you so much to everybody. I do have a few people that I ll want to thank here in just a moment, but before I do that, I wanted to let you know why I ve been kind of absent the last couple of weeks. You ve been getting a lot of archive episodes and ironically, it s because of my depression. I ran out of some of my depression meds for about a month and it really wreaked havoc on my brain and I just could not get myself motivated to do anything. But I m finally back on the meds and now after a few days, they re finally starting to kick back in and I m starting to feel a little bit better. But we also had that family emergency that I had told you about a couple of months back and that is still going on unfortunately. I can t get into details and so that s just been taking up a lot of time and more than anything, a lot of emotional and mental energy from me. But in a way, it s kind of appropriate for it happening in October during our Overcoming the Darkness campaign because it s times like this that I m currently going through that these organizations help people get through. The Suiciding Crisis Lifeline, the Crisis Text Line, SAVE.org and the International Foundation for Research and Education of Depression, they all help people who struggle with depression, anxiety, thoughts of suicide and self-harm and so I m actually feeling it a little bit more this year than previous years when I ve been doing this Overcoming the Darkness campaign. Let me thank some people though real quick before I forget, a huge thanks to Howard who gave $25, Kathleen gave $10, Kelly gave $10, Laura not only gave $20, she also left a quick message saying I 100% believe in this cause. Thank you for running this fundraiser, I m glad I can finally donate this year. Wannalee gave $20, Deja gave $20. Actually, she gave twice. She gave $20 twice. I hope that wasn t an accident, Deja. If it was, let me know and I ll refund you that $20. Kristin gave $25. Michelle gave $100 a few days ago. I m just now seeing this. Thank you, Michelle. I appreciate that. She also left a message saying mental health is one of the most important aspects to maintaining our overall well-being. Thank you for your continued effort to increase awareness of mental health struggles and the importance of seeking treatment. Providing information for available resources to assist in some of the darkest times a person can experience is a valuable service in and of itself. I m grateful to be able to donate to such a worthy cause. Thank you, Michelle. You said that better than I did just a few seconds ago, so thank you for that. Daniel gave $11. Nicole gave $15. $36 coming in from Jody. Tracy Ann gave $20. Tracy, I know who you are, my VO, sis. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Derek gave $20 and an anonymous gift just a few hours ago of $70. Thank you to all of you for getting involved with our Overcoming the Darkness campaign. It ends October 31st, so you have a little bit of time to give, but please, it is going to end when October is over. So, if you ve been thinking about donating, please do so. Just go to weirddarkness.com slash hope and click on the donate button and that s also where you can go to find all of these resources that we ll be supporting along with many other resources to help you through a variety of different issues that you might deal with or somebody you know might be dealing with. It s weirddarkness.com slash hope. A recurring fear throughout childhood is that of the monster in the closet and the thing under the bed. What kid hasn t ever had a boogie man lurking there in the confines of their bedroom closet, peering out at them to scare and torment? While this may seem to lie firmly in the realm of overactive imaginations and dark child fantasies, what if there is something more to it? What if the closet monsters are real? Some scattered accounts seem to suggest that there may just be more to this than just childhood fears and imagination and show that maybe something is in there after all. Stories of strange things in the closet come from all over and take many forms. One account from 1952 seems to involve some sort of imp or gnome which would come out of the closet at night to terrorize a young boy named Dan Bortko of Wyandotte County, Kansas in the United States. The family had moved to a two-story home on a rural farm property in Liberty, Missouri, complete with a barn, and from a very young age Bortko claims he frequently saw a small humanoid about three feet tall and fully decked out in German leaderhosen and with a smoking pipe lurking about their house, often appearing in his room at night and frequently stepping out of the closet. The creature would often stand there, looking at him before smiling or winking and disappearing through the closet. Bortko also said that he'd often look outside his window at night to see little people congregating out around the barn. He once drew a picture of the one he had seen up close and it was so frightening to his little brother that he would cry whenever he saw it. Bortko would say of his first encounter with the creature, I had just awakened from a nap and was rubbing my eyes and saw what she'd call a troll. I'll call him a troll because that's what he reminded me of. It was an old man with a long beard, large nose about three feet tall standing at the foot of my bed and I was astounded. It's unclear whether this thing was merely hiding in the closet or using it as some sort of doorway into this world or even whether this was all just a figment of a young boy's overactive imagination but it is quite creepy nevertheless. If it was real then what was it? Could it have been some interdimensional anomaly, some being from another reality? It's hard to say but there are other reports of strange entities that seem to defy categorization that have been reported lurking in closets as well. One account comes from True Ghost Tales and concerns a creature that really defies easy classification. The witness claims that when she was just a girl she'd been watching TV in the living room with her mother when they heard her father start frantically screaming for help from elsewhere in the house. They tracked the source of the screaming to the witness's own bedroom and found that the door was locked tight which was odd considering it was just a plain doorknob with no lock to begin with. They stood there struggling with the mysteriously jammed doorknob while the father shrieked and shouted from within. At the time they thought he was having some sort of breakdown as he was an alcoholic and had been drinking heavily that night. However, when they finally forced the door open they were defined it was something altogether more bizarre. The witness says of what they saw in that room thus. My mom struggled for a few minutes trying to open the door. Finally she managed to open the door and we saw my father up in the air like he was hanging from something and then a few seconds later fell feet down. He was so scared that he sounded sober. He told us to get away from there and he ran as far away from my room. When we saw my dad he seemed almost pale looking. He had scratches on his chest as if he got into a fight or something. My mom asked him what happened to you are you okay? The only thing that came out of my father's mouth was the devil. The devil was trying to take me with him. At first I thought my dad was only saying that to scare me but he was serious about it. He said the devil wanted him and was trying to bite his neck. I thought to myself it sounds more like a vampire than the devil to me. Why would the devil want to bite his neck anyway? The scared family retreated to the living room where they eventually fell asleep and the next day the father explained that when he had been in the girl's room he had seen the closet door open by itself and heard a man's voice issue forth from the darkness beyond before the incident after which something dark had emerged and he blacked out. He took them to the room so that they could take a look at the closet and this is where things get even stranger still. The witness says, We all went to my room then my dad opened my closet door and he saw this figure of a man standing inside my closet as if it was asleep. Its arms were on his chest and he was all black with long fingernails and he had wings. The weird thing about all this is that a few days later I saw it in my room. I was watching TV in the living room. We had the whole light on so that way it could reflect light into my room but that night the light only reflected half way. I saw a dark shadow standing in the middle of my room. Then he took his hand out and started moving his index finger asking me to come to him with his reddish yellow eyes. I was so scared that I couldn't move at all. I was screaming for my parents but they couldn't hear me. How could this be when they were 10 feet away from me? Anyway, when I turned my head back to see him he was already next to me. All he did to me was he had lifted me up and he kissed my forehead and my neck. Then he left, just like that. We never say it again but sometimes when I am in the dark I feel like someone is there with me. What could this thing have possibly been? Was it a vampire, a demon, a ghost, something else? It is interesting that the whole family seems to have witnessed it so it seems beyond just a hallucination or overactive imagination. On the site Phantoms and Monsters there is another account from 2009 of some sort of menacing beast in the closet. The witness claims that he woke up one night suddenly at around 3 a.m. and found that he was covered in sweat and overcome with an explicable cold fear that was overwhelming in its intensity although his brother was still sleeping soundly. There also seemed to be a heavy sense of someone there looming near the bedroom's rather large walk-in closet and the witness would say of what happened next. I looked around in my room hoping to see my mom watching over us from the doorway of the closet. I don't know why I thought it would be her but I did. Since our night light was on I could see things pretty clearly. I looked to my left to see a tall figure in our closet. It had an oval-like head with small eyes and appendages hanging from its face almost like a scruffy beard but it made more sense that it would be some type of structure. It looked over the both of us up and down. At first I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me since I could be very imaginative but what snapped me out of this is when it pushed some of the clothes hangers out of the way and the fact that the window was open. Its skin looked rough and pasty almost like it was in a sauna for two years. It caught a whiff of me being awake and almost immediately I lost consciousness and control over my body. All accounts that were had from that night had not been fully remembered the following morning, beside the fact that my sheets were in my closet instead of on my bed. Again, we are left here with a case that seems to be so bonkers that it is beyond an easy explanation. Just what was this thing and why would it be in that closet? Outdoing even these outlandish encounters is another one reported on phantoms and monsters this time by a witness who was just about the strangest thing you could imagine come out of his closet when he was a boy in around the year 1980. The witness who claims he is now a paranormal researcher says that when he was very young he had been trying to get to sleep in the room that he shared with his brother and again this was a room with a big walk-in closet. As he was lying there the closet door began to open by itself and the witness claims one night as I was trying to get to sleep my brother was already asleep the door opened and I know this sounds crazy but out came Big Bird of the children's show Sesame Street. I remember being frightened at first but others came out too and they were very friendly and led me into the closet with them. All I remember at this point is that Big Bird gave me a flavored chapstick most likely to ease my fear because I loved chapstick and they brought me back to my bed. I went to sleep very happy over the whole experience and was not afraid anymore. I put the chapstick under my pillow after taking a tiny nibble leaving my teeth marks just to see if it was still there in the morning. The next morning I checked and lo and behold the chapstick was there just like I remembered and at that moment I knew for a fact it was not a dream. If it were not for that chapstick the experience probably would not have stayed with me all these years. I tried to tell my brother but he laughed it off as anyone would it sounds totally crazy. Now after reading the other accounts of similar experiences I'm wondering if it was an abduction disguised as a friendly interaction. Put in the world Big Bird? The witness gives an interesting observation in that he believes it might have been an alien abduction with the entities taking a form that would seem non-threatening to a child. This is a feature of some abduction cases with the beings allegedly able to either shape shift or manipulate perceptions in order to take the form of whatever will best serve their purposes in the eyes of the abductee. Is that what was going on here? How else could we explain an actual character from a children's show emerging from a darkened closet? It could have been just the imagination of a child but the fact that the witness remembers it so vividly all of these years later and has the chapstick show for it is notable. Other reports seem to follow a pattern more akin to a traditional haunting, although focused on closets. From your ghost stories comes a report of just such an experience from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The witness claims that as soon as she moved out of her grandmother's house where she had lived for some time she began having extremely vivid dreams of a spirit or demon in the closet to the room in which she had stayed. She says that she had never had these menacing dreams while she had lived there and that they'd only started after she left as well as growing steadily in intensity. She claims the house had always been haunted and says of what happened next. We just recently moved back in October. Now, I've always known this house was haunted. Everyone has. I've had so many different experiences. Everything seemed fine and normal. The house is old. It creaks all night long. You hear someone calling your name. For me, it's Bell. Nothing unusual. I walked past the room I used to sleep in, now my uncle's room the other day, and I instantly felt watched. Shills ran down my spine. I felt in so much danger. I quickly scurried down the stairs and forgot about it not too long after. I would walk by all the time. It's a route to my room. Every time I walk by, the door creaks open. Even if it's shut the whole way, it takes force to open that door. I was carrying my cat from my room to the living room one morning last week. As we walked past my uncle's room, a deep, low, frightening growl came from my cat, and then she hissed the meanest hiss as she kept her eyes locked on the room. The door was wide open. Nobody was inside. Recently, my mom has been feeling it too. The door opens slowly when she walks by and she feels cold eyes watching her. Another report from the same site is similar in nature and just spooky. This report comes from the state of Virginia from a witness who believes an actual demon inhabited the closet of their master bedroom. The witness claims that odd activity near the closet, including loud bangs and murmuring voices at night, was so intense that he actually put a crucifix up by the closet to try and keep whatever it was at bay and contained. There was even an incident where he says the entity pushed over his young daughter and it would later lash out at his wife. The witness says of his experiences with the terrifying demonic force in the closet, it did not take long to figure out that the presence was in a large closet area which adjoined the bathroom and faced directly towards the bed in the master bedroom. The closet area never got natural sunlight and was extremely dark at night. I could feel that something was watching. The crucifix seemed to keep it out of the room but it still stared from the closet. So I did the usual get out this is my house, I command you to leave. I felt that this thing was not going anywhere, that it was not scared at all, it was not moving. Not long after that we found a picture of our children on the floor and did it been smashed in the middle of the frame like something was thrown at it. One night while watching TV my wife left for work and I saw a rather large shadow fly out of the bedroom and out towards the car as she was leaving almost as if it was chasing her. Not long after that she suffered a stroke and a major car accident both of which left no lasting injuries. Was this a demon or just a very powerful spirit? It seems like an interesting detail that the crucifix seems to have had some influence on it but other than that it is hard to know what to make of this account. In another account from Queenie's Paranormal Playhouse is a report from 2005 from a frightened single mother who had just moved into a duplex in the United States with her young son and niece. Almost immediately on the very first night they began experiencing paranormal phenomena such as the bedroom door opening on its own and the children complaining that something had touched their legs as they slept. The witness explains, the second night of our stay my son and I were lying down shooting the breeze in my room. The bedroom door that was cracked halfway open had closed then reopened. This happened a couple times until we finally worked up the nerve to get up and turn on the light. The next night my son blacked out after having what seemed to be a nervous breakdown about the ghost living in his room and closet. Now the thing about it is my son is a big 15 years old and he does not scare easily. After 20 minutes he went back to his normal self and cannot remember the incident. That same night he went to sleep with me and I woke up to something pulling back and forth on the doorknob of my closet. I screamed but my son never woke up. Relatives have said that this place gives them bad vibes and that sometimes they can hear people talking. Now it is day 28 and last night my young nephew and I were sleeping when suddenly he woke up screaming. He jumped off the bed and the bedroom closet swung open in front of him. But this morning he can only remember standing in front of an open closet, hearing the high pitched scream of a female. I talked to the people who lived in the duplex before me and they also lived with this ghost. Even after saying prayers and using holy water the ghost will not leave. I am a single mother and it took my savings to move into this place. Unfortunately it seems we are stuck here for a long time but this ghost is going to drive us insane. The United States is not the only place where such encounters have allegedly occurred and a scary report on phantoms and monsters comes to us from Newfoundland where the witness claims he lived in the late 1960s at an apartment along a place called Black Marsh Road. He says that he was 9 or 10 years old at the time and that he had been living there with his mother, grandparents and three sisters at the time and that the road had been rather well known in the area as a place pervaded by a ghostly phenomenon. He says that although he never actually saw anything ghostly, he sure did hear it and it seemed to originate from a coat closet in the living room. He says, sometimes due to limited space I slept on the sofa in the living room. In the living room was a small stove and coat closet. I remember the chimney ran next to the closet. I remember so vividly being woken up between 3 and 4am every morning to the sounds of a group of people conversing in the closet. To the best of my knowledge there were six or seven people. I could not pick out what they were saying though at the moment I could hear them very clearly. This went on until we moved. I told my mother about this at the same time it was happening but of course it was dismissed as a child's imagination until many years later. He says that after he had moved away and grown up he heard that his grandmother had also had weird experiences with the voices from the closet and that she had finally managed to banish them by reciting the Lord's prayer aloud. This is an intriguing detail as like the crucifix and the other account it seems to suggest that religious belief has some effect whether that is from some higher power or because it helps to focus a person's will against these forces that is if these forces even exist at all and this is not all tall tales. And this is a question you are left with. Are these just tall tales or something more? What are we to make of real reports of our childhood nightmares of boogie men in the closet? Are these just delusions or the effects of sleep paralysis? Are they aliens, ghosts, demons or something else? It is hard to say but it perhaps gives you something to think about next time you are in a darkened room alone and the closet is open just to crack. When Weird Darkness returns, is it possible that the supernatural is feeding on us? Are UFOs stealing our souls? We will look at both of these questions up next. You can hear the snarls right behind you, the faster you run, the closer the creatures seem to get. How can the undead run this fast, you think to yourself. Now you are drenched in sweat but your mouth is dry, you need to find somewhere to stop and think about how to survive the next few minutes of your life. Then you see it and run towards the water station. The zombie fun run will have to wait until you quench your thirst, but bottled water is expensive and you don't even want to know what might be in tap water or much less fresh water. Fortunately, the horde of horror fanatics at this water station planned in advance and brought Patriot pure outdoor filtration water cooler system. It gives you clean cold water wherever you go. Its five gallon tank keeps water cold, keeps ice for days on end, reduces the levels of over 200 contaminants with a two-step filtration technology which you can use with tap water, well water, river water or any water source you find. It's UV resistant so it works just as well at any time of day and you're avoiding the cost of bottled water while also avoiding the unnecessary use of plastic, all in one system. It might be the only non-terrifying thing at your halloween or fall themed activity. Get the Patriot pure outdoor filtration water cooler system at 4patriots.com. That's the number 4 Patriots.com and use the promo code WEIRD to get 10% off everything you order. That's 4patriots.com, promo code WEIRD. Uh oh, zombies are back. In the show notes, I've placed a link to the book Paranormal Parasites by Nick Redfern. The book focuses on a disturbing claim that certain supernatural entities use us as a form of food. Dan of Barstow, California had a very disturbing encounter with two shadow people in early 2011. The shadow people being silhouetted figures that terrify and taunt people in the dead of night. A no-nonsense tough biker, Dan is hardly the kind of person who is easily intimidated or scarce. But the shadow things that intruded on his sleep as he slept in a tent on the slopes of Mount Rainier, Washington state in the summer of 2011 had Dan in a state of near hysteria. An enthusiastic outdoorsman, Dan spent four days hiking around the huge 14,000 foot plus high mountain. He would live to regret doing that. It was around 3am when Dan woke with a start and with an unsettling and intense feeling of being watched very closely. He lay still, holding his breath and clenching his fists. Something was definitely a foot of that much he was sure. That's an understatement. In seconds, Dan was rushed by two spindly shadowy monsters that were humanoid in appearance. Dan suddenly found himself unable to move as the two figures hovered over him and he felt incredibly weak, short of breath and dizzy. A cold sweat enveloped him. All the time, the shadow people had their index fingers on his stomach. Dan came to believe that the shadow people were quite literally draining him of his energy. Imagine waking up in the early hours of the morning and being confronted by one of the most terrifying looking creatures that you could possibly ever imagine. A pale-skinned, humanoid monster with withered arms and legs, a huge stomach, an oversized neck and a mouth smaller than a dime. It stares at you in malevolent style as it leans in close. You suddenly develop a terrible feeling that the monster is seeking out your life force, your vital energies, and your very essence. A sudden weakness and helplessness overwhelms you as you seek to fight off the terrible thing that has suddenly invaded your space. In seconds, it is gone, though, sated and satisfied by the fact that it had just fed on you. Whether you realize it or not, what you have just encountered is an ancient supernatural entity known as a hungry ghost. In some cases, a hungry ghost will resort to one of the most sinister ways of feeding. It will target a person with a particular vulnerable character. Weakness and security or a lack of self-esteem are all angles that the hungry ghosts will seek out and exploit. They will then possess the victim. The reasoning behind this is, for the hungry ghost, quite understandable. If the starving spirit is itself unable to eat, it will invade and take control of both the mind and the body of the person in its sights. In that sense, we are talking about something very similar to full-blown demonic possession, in which the mind of the victim is paranormal elbowed out of the picture and becomes the tool of the supernatural monster. The monster will quickly feed, greedily so, on just about anything and everything it can get its claws into, when in the body of its human host. Then, when the creature exits the soul and mind of the person it briefly inhabited, it takes with it the energy derived from the food that was ingested by the previously possessed host. The hungry ghost is, then, one of the most manipulative of all the many and varied paranormal parasites that haunt our world. The term vampire was not used in the English language until the 1700s, when it appeared in the pages of Travels of Three English Gentlemen in 1746. Nevertheless, tales of marauding, deadly blood-drainers and human form can be traced back to the dawning of history and civilization. Lilith, quite possibly the most dangerous bedroom invader of all, was said to not just have sex with men as a means to steal their sperm, but also to take their blood. The people of ancient India believed in the dreaded batalla. Although they were spirit-based in nature, they also had the ability to drain the living of blood. They were also known for bleeding dry, fresh corpses. They would lurk in the shadows of old cemeteries and graveyards, patiently waiting for darkness to blanket the landscape, at which point they would dig deep and fast into the ground, seeking out that most precious commodity of all, blood. In his best-selling 1987 book Communion, Study of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon, Whitley Stryber made it very clear that his own encounters with the visitors, as he termed the creatures he encountered, revealed a startling connection between alien abductions and the human soul, even a paradigm-shifting connection. In his book, Stryber talked about how abductees experienced their souls being dragged from their bodies during abductions. Stryber himself was told by his abductors that they recycled human souls. That sounds like a more sinister telling of reincarnation. But was Stryber being told the entire truth by his captors, or was this an attempt on their part to push things down a different, more appealing path? Certainly, Stryber admitted something notable that suggests he recognized that not everything was good and positive. Stryber said that the more and more he dug into the matter of his encounters, and as he tried to get a handle on what was afoot, he was unable to banish from his mind the theories of Charles Fort. For those who may not know, he was an acclaimed writer on all manner of paranormal phenomena. His books include low and wild talents. Fort had darkly suggested that in Stryber's own words, in his 1988 book, Transformation, we the human race are animals here for the slaughter, and incapable of seeing the greater and more tangible meanings that surround us. We'll look more into the soul-stealing aspect of UFOs in just a moment. As for more on Charles Fort's opinions, they can be read in his classic title of 1919, The Book of the Damned. Fort wrote, I think we're property. I should say we belong to something, that once upon a time this earth was no man's land, that other worlds explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it's owned by something, that something owns this earth, all others warned off. Joseph McKay, Bay Franciscan monk who passed away in 1955, knew a great deal about all of this. He spent years pouring over ancient texts and doing his utmost to understand the nature of the creatures that so terrified those who lived in Mesopotamia, and particularly so the Sumerians. McKay had a particular interest and a pair of highly dangerous demons called Lilu and Lilitu who dwelled in the region. He was clearly aware of how illness was a side effect of the supernatural encounter. He said in The Story of Religious Controversy, did a maid show the symptoms of anemia? Obviously Lilu and Lilitu had been busy at night with her body. McKay went on to list literally dozens of cases he had on file of people who had nighttime encounters with supernatural entities, and who shortly thereafter began to exhibit signs of anemia, sometimes acute anemia, but in incredibly quick time. This all strongly suggests that certain paranormal things were depleting the people McKay referred to in significantly dangerous fashion. A perfect example of someone falling ill very quickly after a paranormal event is that of Albert Bender, the guy who pretty much kicked off the whole Men in Black mystery in the early 1950s. After getting too close to the truth behind the UFO phenomenon, Bender was visited by three strange and menacing MIB. They were not of the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones type though, rather they were far more like today's so-called shadow people. They were phantom-like things with shining eyes and bad attitudes that walked through the walls of Bender's attic-based abode in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bender was terrified by the warnings of the MIB who told him to quit ufology or else. As it turned out, it took several threats and creepy encounters before Bender finally heeded the words of the terrible trio. When all of this was going down, Bender went down too, with head-splitting migraines, severe stomach pains, faintness and issues with his short-term memory, and he lost significant weight, suggesting that he too was being fed on. Was all of this due to the fear and stress that had been instilled in Bender? Or had he somehow been supernaturally attacked? Who knows, but things didn't end there. Bender, quite out of the blue, developed a fear that he had cancer. Fortunately, he didn't have cancer at all. After quitting ufology and getting married, the symptoms went away and Bender lived to the ripe old age of 94, passing away in 2016. As so often happens when you write a book, people contact the author to share their experiences. One of those people who contacted Nick Redfern was Jim Harper, who said that he had an encounter with a pair of what have become known as Black-eyed Children in March of 2008 in Florida. At the time, Jim and his wife were living in a rented duplex in a small town outside of Orlando. Jim's encounter was a typical BEC one. There was a knock on the door late at night and Jim, having peered through the spyhole on the front door, saw two kids in black hoodies, both staring at the ground. He tentatively opened the door and was confronted by a pair of pale-faced Black-eyed monsters who were now staring right at him. Jim slammed the door and never saw them again. Two days later though, he experienced a severe case of dizziness, followed by a couple of pretty bad nosebleeds. Then, three weeks later, after feeling repeatedly sick, nauseous and shaky, he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Jim's blood sugar levels were extremely low. Having read up on the BEC phenomenon, Jim wonders if his diabetes was somehow provoked by BEC, so adversely affecting him at the time of his encounter. Then there is the account of Michelle, a resident of Nova Scotia, Canada. In January 2017, and just two days after having a graphic dream about Slenderman, Michelle was hospitalized with severe ulcerative colitis, which she had never had before, and that led her to drop five pounds in just a few days. She finally made a good recovery, but was shaken by the timing of the onset of the condition, which she believed and still believes was connected to the skinny monster of her nightmare. As all of this demonstrates, dangerous, paranormal parasites can be found just about here, there, and everywhere. So beware. Another form of food for the paranormal? Our souls. The one dining on them? E.T. At least that is the theory of some. Many UFO researchers are reluctant to address the aliens are stealing our souls theory. It is, after all, one of the most controversial aspects of the UFO subject. The fact is though that there are far more than a few such reports on record. The problem is, however, that for so many in ufology, the subject is so troubling and disturbing they choose to outright ignore it. One of the earliest and most intriguing cases on record came from a man named Paul Inglesby. His real name was actually Eric Inglesby, and his 1978 book UFOs and the Christian, which I have placed a link to in the show notes, was published under Eric Inglesby. But two years later he changed his name to Paul Inglesby and from then on answered to Paul, and as father Paul, in 1980 he converted to Greek Orthodox. Just one year before the Second World War broke out in 1939, Inglesby, who died in 2010, went down with a very serious case of malaria. So serious was it that for a while Inglesby perilously hovered in that mysterious domain between life and death? It was while in this limbo-like state that Inglesby had a frightening dream. Years later he recalled how it all went down. It was an undetermined time in the Earth's future and the UFO-like craft were soaring across the fire and smoke filled skies of our ruined, radioactive planet and launching nuclear missiles at our major cities, killing billions and causing planet-wide destruction. The UFOs were not piloted by extraterrestrials though, but by demonic entities, whose goal was to suck out the souls of those killed in the fiery inferno, which was rapidly overwhelming the Earth and just about everything on it. For Inglesby it was quite literally a wake-up call. The malaria cleared up, Inglesby came out of his unconscious state and he spent the rest of his life pursuing a career in the church and warning people to avoid the UFO issue, fearing that it would lead people to become ensnared by malevolent demonic monsters, all of which Inglesby described in his aforementioned 1978 book, UFOs and the Christian. Inglesby's story dates back to the 1930s and it was in the 1950s onward that he began talking about his nightmarish dream after he realized that what he had seen back in 1938 were images of nuclear explosions and mushroom clouds of the type that were all too familiar by the 1950s. It is important to note though that the issue of a connection between UFOs, aliens and the human soul didn't really surface to any kind of meaningful degree until the latter part of the 1980s, which takes us to the issue of Whitley Stryber's bestseller 1987 Communion, which I will link to in the show notes. When word of Stryber's planned book first got out, ufologists assumed that the book in terms of its contents and its theories would be fairly akin to John Fuller's The Interrupted Journey of 1966 and to Bud Hopkins' 1981 book Missing Time. Both books adhered to the now familiar theory that aliens are stealing our DNA to save their waning species. Stryber's revelations were in many respects far removed from the writings of Hopkins and Fuller, which is why the book created such a firestorm in those locales where ufologists hang out. In Communion, Stryber made it very clear that his own encounters with the visitors and those of others he had spoken to revealed a startling connection between alien abductions and the human soul, even a paradigm shifting connection. In his book, Stryber talked about how abductees experienced their souls dragged from their bodies during abductions. Stryber said that the more and more he digs into the matter of his encounters and as he tried to get a handle on what was afoot, he was unable to banish from his mind the theories of Charles Fort. Fort had darkly suggested that in Stryber's own words in his 1988 book Transformation, part of the Communion series which I'll link to in the show notes, we the human race are animals here for the slaughter and incapable of seeing the greater and more terrible meanings that surround us. As for more on Charles Fort's opinions, you can read his classic title of 1919, The Book of the Damned. It's only 99 cents on Amazon, I've got a link to it in the show notes. I do want to repeat something I said earlier, because it truly is a disturbing thing to think of. In the book, Fort wrote, I think we are property. I should say we belong to something that once upon a time this earth was no man's land, that other worlds explored and colonized here and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it's owned by something, that something owns this earth, all others warned off. 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 information on any of the sponsors you heard about during the show. Find all of my social media, listen to audio books I've narrated, sign up for the email newsletter, find other podcasts that I host, including Church of the Undead, visit the store for Weird Darkness merchandise and more. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can 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 on Weird Darkness are reported to be true unless stated otherwise and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes. The prison haunted by witches and, when the monster in the closet is real, were written by Brent Sponsor for Mysterious Universe. And when the supernatural feeds on us and soul-stealing extraterrestrials were written by Nick Redfern. 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. Psalm 147, Verse 3. He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds. And a final thought. When someone helps you and they are struggling to, that's not help, that's love. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. They say you are what you eat. And if that's true, I'm soon going to be looking like pumpkin head from that horror movie because I just received my limited release box of pumpkin cookie chunk from Built Bar. This is a seasonal flavor, so I have to stock up on it when it comes out. Built bars are not candy bars, they're protein bars. The pumpkin cookie chunk bar has 19 grams of protein, plus it's low sugar, low carbs and low calories, but you'd never know it's a protein bar if you just taste it. Built bars have become my go-to guilt-free solution for dessert, late afternoon, or even late-night snacks, and often I just grab a built bar as a full meal because they're pretty filling. You know how everything pumpkin is going to disappear soon though, so grab your pumpkin cookie chunk built bar while you can before they sell out. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and look in the limited release section for Pumpkin Cookie Chunk. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and use the promo code WeirdDarkness all one word to get 10% off your entire purchase. Hey Weirdos, be sure to click the like button and subscribe to this channel and click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos. I post videos 7 days a week, and while you're at it, spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com slash Listen.