 adds her to during the podcast that are not in my voice or 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. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. While you're listening, you might want to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com you can find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated, streaming video of horror hosts and classic horror movies. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression, anxiety or thoughts of suicide. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness, Stephanie Schism writes of when a circus unexpectedly arrived in a small city, and along with the fun, merriment, and laughter, there was a dark, dreary, and dangerous element. It's when the circus came to town. And an author who goes by the alias 5YN brings a story of what happened on the set of History's Show Alone, something that they covered up. It's no wonder he is writing under an assumed name. The story is simply called Alone. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The tents appeared in the middle of the night without preamble. There was some heated discussion at City Hall because not even the mayor knew they were coming. They must have worked out something though because the Gypsy Circus stayed. Our town wasn't big enough to support even a fair, so this was big news. That was how I found myself with my older brother Tommy and his friends that evening. I was just 15 then, and though we were in a small town now, my mother hailed from Boston. There was no way she would cut me loose to run around on my own, but if she had known how bad Tommy and his friends really were, she would have known I was much better off alone. How much money you got? Frankie asked, punching my shoulder. Of the three older boys I hated him the most, he regularly hit, kicked, and ridiculed me, while my own brother laughed about it. He was twice my size. I was a runt back then, but I dreamed the day I could stand up to him, stand up to them all. I gave him the 20 mom had given me, but not the five I had tucked in my hatbill. With nothing else, I wanted to sneak a candy apple later. Dad was a dentist, and we didn't have things like that around my house. They abandoned me when we walked inside that midway. I'd never been to a circus before. There weren't many rides, but huge tents loomed everywhere. Barkers told us to come one, come all, see the magnificent beasts of the wild, or the horrifying freaks of nature. I laughed at that one. I'd ridden in with the freaks of nature. Still, I wanted to see a lion. They looked so majestic on television. Reluctantly, I parted with two dollars and stepped inside. The tent smelled of sawdust, sweat, and dung, but inside were the most fantastic creatures I'd ever seen. I picked a peanut off the ground and fed it to an elephant, then sat on a bench to await the show. The lions were my favorite part. I knew they were big, but I never expected anything that huge. I held my breath when the lion tamer stuck his head in one of the creature's mouths. Its incisors looked as long as my fingers. Its back teeth, which I knew were called carnasals from a book my dad gave me, worked like scissors to cut and tear meat. No way would I have ever had the guts to stick my head in there. After the show, I debated spending another two dollars to watch the same show again, but I really wanted that apple. As I made my way to the food trailers, a girl called out to me, read your fortune for a dollar. A sight of her took my breath. For the rest of my life, I dream about her face. I wished that she could have seen her own fortune instead of mine that night. She didn't deserve what happened to her. I stared at her, transfixed. Her eyes were two different colors. I wondered if she wore contact lenses to achieve the effect in order to look more striking. One was icy blue and the other brown, like mine. The effect was jarring, even more so because she was lovely. Long black hair, full lips, dressed like a genie from a TV show with her smooth tan belly bared. Hormones trumped hunger and I let her lead me into her tent. She took my palm and stretched it out in front of her. She talked for a while, giving me vague predictions. Then she gave me a long look and said, You need to stand up for yourself. Do not let others control your fate. I always wondered about that later, if she really saw that. It proved to be good advice. I wish I'd heeded it. She walked me out after my reading. Her hand tucked into my arm. Where what do we have here? Frankie boomed. The little monkey has a girlfriend. Her hand tightened on my arm and then she smiled. I'm taking a break. Frankie caught her arm as she tried to walk by and Tommy and his friend James blocked her. I wanted to tell them to leave her alone, but my voice was a frog hugging my throat. Hang on, Frankie said. I got a dollar. I want my fortune told. Matter of fact, he leered at her. What'll a tan get me? To my horror, he grabbed her waist and pulled her against him. She struggled free and snarled something in a foreign language. Then she spat on his shoe. Frankie backhanded her and then dragged her into the tent. I turned to run and James tripped at me. I went sprawling into the dust and my mouth filled with blood. James hauled me up and I heard a click as he opened the switchblade he always carried. He pressed it against my back. One move and I'll slice your spinal cord, he said. Stitches end up in ditches. It only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. They brutalized that girl. I heard her struggle at first, and then nothing. That nothing terrified me. I was crying, blood and snot choking me. People walked right on by and nobody seemed to notice something was wrong. Something was horrible. The newspaper said her father found her, naked and beaten in that tent. It was two days before she could give the police a description. I was relieved when the police pulled up in front of our house. Don't you say a word, Tommy hissed, or I swear on my life I'll end you. I wish I could say that I spoke up. Told the police everything. But I didn't. I thought a description would be enough, and the DNA. But I misjudged small town politics. Frankie, Tommy and James spun some story about the girl being a prostitute and soliciting them for money. They said she grew angry when they didn't have enough and threatened to cry rape if they didn't bring her money. They said another gypsy had beat her to make her story look real. The judge closed his briefcase and let them go. We walked outside together. I have never felt so sick. Ashamed, Tommy and his friends stood beside me in their fresh suits and ties, looking like altar boys. An old gypsy woman approached. She muttered something and then made a sign in the air with her gnarled finger. Frankie stepped toward her and James caught his arm. The girl sobbed against her father. Her beautiful face still swollen and discolored. She whispered something to the old woman and pointed at me. The old woman's eyes narrowed and she made another sign. That's enough, my father said, and let us away. The circus disappeared and within a week my brother and his friends were dead. Tommy got his hand caught in the garbage disposal at the restaurant he worked after school. As it chewed his arm, they thought the pain was making him delusional because he was screaming something about lion's teeth. He bled out before the ambulance got there. James fell off a ladder while he was helping his father patch their roof. The fall severed his spinal cord. Frankie died the most horribly of all. He wrecked around Johnson's band one night and his car caught on fire. Rescuers said they'd never forget his screams. I figured he's still screaming and burning in the place he went. I dreamed about the old woman every night. She said, your crime is silence. You stood quietly and let evil reign. Thus sealed your fate. One morning my tongue felt funny. When I peered in the mirror it looked like a piece of bark was attached to it. Felt like bark too. My mom was still in her room so I didn't bother her. I somehow knew it was my time. I went to the woods behind our house. My steps grew heavier as I walked and I could barely drag my feet through the leaves. When I looked down my legs no longer looked human. They were forming into a tree trunk. Roots curled from my toes and spiked into the ground. I raised my hand to feel my tongue and my arm froze there. Bark raced down it, falling in place like Legos connecting, covering what was human. With no surprise I saw the girl walk out of the woods. I know it wasn't your fault, she said. I begged my Bava for mercy. She said you must learn a lesson. You'll be a tree until you grow and mature enough to bear fruit. When the first apple falls from your tree you'll be human again. I hope you'll always stand up for yourself and others after that. It took three years, but I'm still thankful for that lesson. Up next, something went horribly, horribly wrong behind the reality TV show Alone on History, at least according to a certain creepypasta that I'll share when Weird Darkness returns. Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey. A collection of creepy, often downright chilling, true experiences of the paranormal submitted by visitors to the My Haunted Life 2 website. The tales have been carefully selected and edited and range from apparitions to hauntings to demons through to the downright bizarre. This terrific collection of true stories of the paranormal will keep you looking over your shoulder. Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey. Narrated by Darren Marlar. Here are free samples on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Alone. Part 1. Good Will Hunting. I'm a producer for Alone, the TV show on History. This story is about a participant we had in season 2 whose footage we had to cut. I've never felt comfortable talking about this before, especially because it opens me up for liability. After all, giving away TV show secrets is a bit of a faux pas, especially on a survival show. But I feel like people should know the truth. One of the things you may not know about the show is we often have nearly double the number of participants actually part of the show, and in editing we choose the most entertaining people and only include them in the actual season. That way we can weed out the boring people, super survivors who could literally last years alone, who we have to force tap or otherwise make them quit, and also get rid of the ones who can't even handle a single night alone in nature. That happens a surprising amount, but these people don't make for entertaining TV. Season 2 took place on Vancouver Island, a densely forested land with just as much fish as it has rain. The weather, the chill, the numbing wind took care of most of our contestants. And if you watched the season, you'd know the winner, Dave lasted 66 days. Long, but as I said, there were other super survivors who lasted longer. We let them stay out longer as an experiment to see just how long it might take. These men, all the women had tapped by then, had built impressively sized cabins from the surrounding forests. I'll accept Will, that is. That was his name. When Will sent us his application and video, he seemed like a normal guy. Well, for a survivalist. He was the kind of guy who came off as a good guy to know both at the local bar and should the apocalypse hit. The kind of survivalist who hunts for sport, but you know, could really stay out there for some time. He had professional training, would take others on managed hunts, and spent a lot of time in nature preserves camping by himself. Really personable and had the looks for the show too. We knew he'd be popular, but the image wouldn't last. When we picked up the footage on day 90 and reviewed it, we found a very different person. Describing his story isn't exactly easy. See, one thing about the show is these guys are really alone. Like, really alone. We drop them off, give them their chosen 10 items of survival gear, knife, axe, tarp, fishing line, stuff like that. They get to choose the 10 items themselves. Video equipment, and then we say good luck. Oh, and there's the emergency satellite phone they use for when they finally tap out. It also allows us to track their movements. Usually, at least. Of course, out in the wild with tall, dense forests and the typical cloud cover of Vancouver Island, connections can be tricky. We leave them be until they hit the button to come home, except in the cases of super-survivors and for Will. Days 1-38 were normal for Will. Compared to the others, he struggled no more or no less. Typical footage of failed fishing, some successful drop falls, a way to catch small rodents, but he wasn't desperate enough yet to eat insects. From the looks of it, he was doing well. No real mental struggle, not even a single night scare, which is what we call the footage participants take when they're awakened by a rummaging animal, usually a mouse or other small rodent, but sometimes a wild hog or bear gets nosy. He'd talk about missing his family, his parents and brothers and sister, but every participant does that. But something happened on day 58 that seemed to change Will. We know something happened on day 58 because when Will reappeared on footage on day 59, he was a markedly different person. After not having taped anything since day 39, the footage seemed to come at daybreak, with Will's face covered in blood. We figured it must have been deer blood as he'd been tracking a small group of deer that seemed to live maybe a quarter to a half a mile away. He hadn't been too concerned about the local bears. They're big and dangerous, but he'd only seen one in his entire time there, and wasn't planning on hunting any, and the other game was too small to be worth the energy. He was stringing up his kill. Too blurry to make out the animal, but as I said, we're pretty sure it was a deer. He hadn't cooked it yet, and we couldn't see if he had started a fire. It was just him across the camp, tying an animal up to a tree so he could gut it. The video seemed to come on and off without any movement from him at all, none of the pushing the button on the camera that you would typically see when starting or ending a shot. It just stopped. The video lasted 49 seconds. The participants are supposed to tape every day, and preferably as much as possible, so that we can splice together a ton of shots. Nature shots, instructional shots to show how they created their cabins, weapons or the trinkets like necklaces that some of them enjoy making just to pass the time. The next video from Will came on Day 70. Will did not look like Will. Up until Day 58 he had kept a pretty clean shape and face. He wasn't a big fan of beards and took care to use his survival knife to cut as close as possible to keep that quarterback turned model image that we saw in the application video. But now he looked old, dirty, dried blood flaking from his face, newer blood than Day 58 but old enough to where it shouldn't be their hours or days after hunting and eating the kill. It was just different. He spoke though. He apologized for not taking video as much as he should have. He said hunting was a little more difficult lately and he felt like he was losing weight too fast, that he dream of steak and of prior hunts and of family and of Thanksgiving dinner. He thought about tapping out but said it was too late for that and the video ended. As he promised, the video started back up on Day 76. This time he was ranting, yelling at the forest. He talked about his food rotting too quickly despite the freezing temperatures, not being able to find any others to eat and starving. This was far past frustration we typically see from participants. This was anger, deep, seated anger. The footage ended abruptly after he threw his hatchet at the camera. He didn't tape again until Day 82, but this wasn't normal footage. Not even like before. The video came on and it's just him standing there, silent. Still, not in his tent. In the middle of camp, though, the video was zoomed in closely on his face. No blood anymore and no movement from him either. Not to turn on the camera. Not to make sure the shot was in focus. Just standing. This continued for three days. We thought the video must have inadvertently paused, but I'm not joking. We even checked the GPS records on the emergency phone. For three days, Will stood in his camp without movement. Trees around him shaking in the wind, rain and snow falling from the sky. Will remained still and looking off into the distance until the video shut off in the afternoon of Day 85. The battery and video card on the camera should have run out two and a half days prior, but they didn't. It captured it all. We never did see or even hear any animals in the footage for those three days either, which was weird. To be honest, we're not sure what happened to Will. You see, we arrived at this camp on Day 90 and Will wasn't there. That's not all that uncommon. Sometimes we get there and they're off hunting. We checked the GPS for the phone, but it was nowhere to be found. We waited in camp all day until it started getting dark. We'd already loaded Will's belongings, including the camera equipment, into the boat. A couple of guys stayed behind in a tent to see when he'd show up. He never did. About three miles away down the coast, another suspected super survivor, Benjamin, had made camp. In his last scene, he's fishing along the coast, stick as a rod in hand and a line in the water. He looks up from the river toward the camera, white-faced and wide-eyed, and the video abruptly stops. It was Day 58. We never found him either. Alone. Part 2, Voices You'd think that having been a producer for history's alone TV show since the beginning, you'd just about seen everything by now, but sometimes things happen that surprise you. Things you just can't find an explanation for. 1. Dennett was your prototypical alone contestant. A somewhat gruff but good-looking guy who grew up hunting and fishing. He ran his own naturalist survival outfit in the backwoods of Maine. He taught people how to survive in the woods for days, weeks, or even months, but did it in even more of a naturalist way. Or at least that's what he claimed. Instead of bringing manufactured tools along, he insisted on bringing only tools he made while out in the wild. But what made Dennett really different from most contestants were the voices. It's not that he claimed he could hear voices. It's that we could. Dennett would take hours of video footage as he is required to, except that there seemed to be other voices in addition to his. Almost like an echo. At first, we figured he might have been trying to cheat, and he'd brought other teammates along with him. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. We've had more than a few cases of contestants trying to get an advantage by doing anything between hiding supplies in the forest and tending to them off-camera to actually getting supplies air-dropped to them from a small plane they arranged before taping. So I wasn't surprised we were seeing something new here, with the guys somehow arranging for friends or teammates to join him and then just keeping them off-camera. Except there were no friends or others around him. After we heard the voices and suspected he was cheating, the next time we went in for a medical visit we also put a camera around his camp, unbeknownst to him, and streamed the footage into our camp. But there was no one to be found. At this point we figured there must have been a problem with the equipment we gave Dennett, so we switched all the gear out. Everything, all the cameras, memory cards, even the tripods, everything. Except the voices didn't go away. Instead, when we reviewed the footage after each visit, the voices seemed to get louder and louder, though we still couldn't make out what they were saying or what the source was. All we could do was review the tape and try to remove the ambient voices as we started calling them, but things got more complicated as the voices became louder. The voices it seemed were coming from Dennett, where before the voices were low enough that we thought maybe even we were a bit crazy for even thinking there were voices, now it was clear. As Dennett would speak to the camera, the other voices were talking at the same time, but were not exactly intelligible, at least not at first. We figured maybe there's a chance this guy is just duping us with some kind of ventriloquist-like act, looking for his 15 minutes of fame. Or maybe he was legitimately crazy and was having some type of psychological event. Watching the tape became more and more distracting, so much so that we started simply writing him off as a participant. We'd still do medical checks, including a new mental health check that he passed each time, but we wouldn't dedicate as much time to editing his footage as we would some other contestants. But it was hard not to watch. Admittedly, some guys would laugh at the footage, but I was more sympathetic. This man was seemingly having some type of odd psychological breakdown, or some appearance of schizophrenia or something, but was somehow passing every mental health check we gave him. We had no idea what was going on. But the laughing soon stopped. Dennett's voices became clearer. While he was otherwise doing a self-interview, explaining how hungry he was after not having had any luck with fishing the past few days, the voices were saying far more disturbing things. We need help, it said, in a loud, pleading voice. Please help us. Another voice simultaneously exclaimed, Get him out of here! Make him leave! Except what was heard was different for everyone who watched the tape. I might hear Dennett and one voice, and another person heard Dennett and a different voice. No one seemed to hear exactly the same thing. Just different voices or slight variations or different things entirely. We visited Dennett that night and tried our best to explain some of what was happening. He wasn't really having it. You're just trying to get me to lose, he said. If I tap out, then you can give it to someone who you like more. He wouldn't watch the footage. The outright refused and was getting angrier by the minute. The tone in his voice changed. Screw you, you think you can make us go? Come back with this crap again and you'll see what we can do. We left him for the night. After reviewing the footage of the interview and hearing more of the voices pleading for help, some with impenetrable screams, some of the crew left the production camp, refusing to work any further. We didn't know what we were dealing with, but we felt like we were in danger. We also felt like he was in danger, but we didn't know how to deal with that either. At the request of the remaining crew, we flew in a local pastor, but even he didn't last through one viewing of the latest tape. He demanded to get out, now, especially after his Bible suddenly and mysteriously turned damp and black, so much so that it was as if an entire jug of ink had exploded in his backpack, but got on nothing else. We had to copter him back to civilization that same day. We decided at that moment that we would reduce our checks on Dennett, and all checks would have at least 10 crew members present. For insurance purposes, we'd keep asking him for footage, but we knew he wouldn't appear in the actual show, and we would figure out how to manufacture his exit later. It never reached that moment. On our next visit, we showed up to an empty camp. No shelter, no fire, no remnants of food or someone having lived there at all. The only thing left being the camera gear strewn about the forest floor. A simple note hung from the tree that used to hold up his structure. Going now. Watch and you will follow. The middle of his camp where his campfire had been was now nothing but a hole in the ground that was so deep you couldn't see the bottom. We agreed we would not watch the video and our camera operator melted the card using his lighter and then threw the card down the hole. As we walked back toward our boat, we heard a distant scream coming from his camp, and the water around our boat turned black as ink. On that day, we made a pact never to return. Years later, I heard a rumor that the camera man had actually burned and threw an empty card down the hole, keeping the one Dennett left. When I went to ask him if the rumor was true, it turned out he'd disappeared some months prior, much the same way as Dennett had. He went out camping alone, never to be heard from again, alone part three, bloodless. If you've ever seen the History Channel's TV show alone, you'll know that the animals our participants encounter are often some of the scariest things about the show. Sure, many starve themselves, willfully or not, hook themselves in the hand, cut their legs and whatnot, but there's nothing more dramatic than when the dark of night overcomes their camp and they hear a rustling and grumbling right outside of their shelter. But one of these moments you've never seen is the story of Timothy, who tried to fight back against his aggressor and lost. But the first time this is his story made public. Timothy wasn't exactly our most impressive participant on the show. Many of the men tend to be burly, prior military or skinnyish survivalist hippies. Timothy was just about right in the middle, not usually somebody we'd put on the show. Vegetarian, never hunted, good with tools but not particularly impressive, could start a fire with some help from his ferro stick, but what he had that many candidates lacked was authenticity. It just seemed like a downright good guy, albeit insecure. So he wanted to have him on to serve up something different to our audience. In that way, he didn't disappoint. He did things differently than most participants typically do. Most participants establish a shelter first. Timothy was hungry, so he found some field with a weird-ass flower and started chowing down for a couple hours. Can't build on an empty stomach, he said, as if he hadn't eaten right before being dropped off at his location. He then essentially built himself a mini-swimming pool of sorts, it being pretty warm and Patagonia at that time of the year. He claimed he wanted a good place to hang out, where he could be certain no fishes were going to bite his toes, where glacial fjords might not afford such confidence. It was certainly unique, if nothing else. He did eventually build a shelter, though, and it was surprisingly nice. He did a fair job at choosing the right wood, stringing it all together, using a little paracord tie, everything tightly, and some foliage nicely compacted down to create an as comfortable as it can get bed. Everything seemed to be going quite well at first, but sometime around day three, things started to get a bit weird for Timothy. He'd been lying down in his shelter just talking to the camera about whatever and whatnot when there was a rustling just on the other side of the wall. It clearly startled him. He jumped up and did the usual, hey, toward the sound, and then silence, listening to see if it was still around. Get out! He yelled out. You could hear whatever it was scramble away. And that's not uncommon. After all, we're the strangers temporarily invading some other animals' territory, so it can take a couple of weeks or so for both to get used to the idea of being in a new place or having someone else take up residence. Usually, it goes pretty smoothly, though we'll often see a competitor or two get too scared and drop out during this time. Wildlife in Patagonia is different, though. Sure, we had giant black bears in Vancouver Island, but there's something a little different, like Patagonia's Puma, otherwise known as a Cougar. You might not be too familiar with Cougars, but are more familiar with other terms for them, Mountain Lion and Panther. These are not small cats the size of a Puma shoe or so. These are seven-foot-long, 200-pound predators. They're not something you want to be staring down at, especially not at night when they can see you and you can't really see them. That's one reason Timothy was rightfully pretty skittish. To his credit, though, he didn't tap out like two others did. But there are times when it can be too much. They push themselves too far, suppress the fear that keeps you alive. Timothy realized this, I assume, but maybe it was too late. The competition made him ignore the warning signs. Rustling in and of itself is not a warning sign, that's just the animals scoping out what's going on. We've been over that. A warning sign is like that of finding a young, dead goat, drained of blood sitting at your shelter's door, its eyes wide open and fear toward the opening. Except no sound had been made all through the prior night, and nothing was caught on the outside bringing it up and setting it there. When Timothy woke up to this site, he was visibly shaken on camera. I would be too. Sure, my house cats bring me gifts, but this did not have the same tone. Anthropomorphizing aside, this seemed to send some message. It was something far closer to get off my lawn than hear some food, dad. He didn't seem to get that, though. Maybe it's hindsight that makes it obvious, but for Timothy it was a scary situation, still pretty early in the competition that was really nothing more than an animal leaving it there by chance, but the way the goat was killed was horrific in and of itself. Timothy seemed to get the message eventually, though. Every few days thereafter, there'd be something new. A large pile of scat, the lifeless body of a bloodless baby boar. Once it was a pile of small teeth, something weird was going on at his camp. Except Timothy, instead of tapping out like most might have, decided to get to the bottom of it. The cameras, no matter how many he put out or where he put them, never really caught anything interesting outside of a flash of a tail, something around fur or quails on the very edge of one camera view. Instead, on the night of day 86, Timothy decided to wait up for it, machete in hand. According to footage, at around 1.40 a.m., a sudden scream came from just outside of camp, accompanied by violent rustling in the direction of some heavy brush. Timothy sprang up from where he was sitting in his shelter and grabbed his flashlight in his other hand and rushed toward the entrance, leaving his emergency satellite phone behind. On one outside camera view, you can see Timothy round the front of the shelter, ready to light up the mysterious animal. As he ran just out of view of the camera, a second outside camera picked him up, still running toward the brush, accidentally running into a thick branch from a nearby tree, knocking the flashlight from his hands, dropping to the ground and illuminating the camera's view far too bright to see anything. What we heard next on the camera can't be adequately described, nor what I want to as I'll have to live with those desperate screams, yells and cries for the rest of my life. From what I could tell, it was over quickly, lasting about a minute between the sounds of Timothy and those of continued violent rustling. When we arrived at his camp on day 87, we found his body on the edge of camp, completely drained of blood and his organs missing, the only superficial wounds being some superficial claw marks and three holes in his abdomen. After finding him dead, we quickly had another crew fly over to the only other competitor still in the running and evacuated him, and later faked his crowning after a couple of weeks back in the United States, after we knew everyone was safe. That's why, in the show, the winner was crowned the day after the last competitor was medically tapped. He wasn't really the runner-up, that was Timothy. Timothy was a good guy with a great heart, and sometimes things get to us. Whether it's curiosity or ego or something else, for him, for the first time in his life, he was ready to face his fears, but he chose the wrong battle. We still don't know what exactly attacked Timothy. We assume it was a Puma. Some locals claimed it was the Chupacabra, a mythical creature they had warned us about that ruled the woods and would come out at night to attack livestock. We'll never know, though, as we are never going to go back to Patagonia again. Alone Part 4 Why We Won't Tape a Kids Version Ever Again After picking up all the children for the kids version of our TV show Alone, I knew Adam was a little different than the others. As one of the producers, it was my job to validate our casting department's choice of participants, and kids are always hard to read from their Skype interviews. But when Adam showed up acting cool and calm, which was very different than his Skype interview and from how most of the other kids acted upon meeting them at the airport, I thought that it was strange. That would be just the first of many strange moments with Adam. Tapeing kids' versions of adult shows is somewhere between really fun and really terrifying. Alone, being a show about survival where we had contestants get hurt, starved themselves and, as you've heard before, disappear, this fell somewhere far closer, if not over the line of really terrifying the tape. After all, we're taking responsibility for 12 kids' well-beings. To alleviate some of our concerns, and especially the concerns of overprotective parents, we put into place special safeguards. We set up our cameras, we helped set up and did all the tape and battery exchanges ourselves. A flashlight and pot were part of the equipment we gave all the kids, and we'd do three times per week check-ins instead of the weekly check-ins we instituted after the whole wheel situation. But that's not to say it's all bad taping a kids' version. There are certain benefits to it. First, it's good ratings. They like kids. They do and say funny things. Even these kids who were mostly pretty serious outdoor people already, hunting, foraging and camping with their families. Plus, they're innocent. Except for Adam, apparently. The Adam we met in the Skype interview was clearly nervous. Brown hair, blue eyes, freckles, small, skinny, a little on the runt side, which wasn't surprising as he was the youngest of six kids. Not just came from a big family but a family big in prepping, though it didn't seem to be into it as much as his dad was. Sure, he had hunted, camped, been on adventure excursions, which I gather were more like militia training sessions, but he didn't really seem to be all about it. But his dad signed him up for the casting call and arranged for the Skype session and we thought his combined innocence and knowledge of survival tactics would play well to viewers. The Adam I picked up, though, was different. Cool, calm and collected as the saying goes, the nervousness was gone, not exuding any sense of innocence. It was like he was prepared. He'd been here before, was confident he'd win, and I couldn't so much as get a small laugh out of him to my terrible dad jokes. He just sat there in the passenger seat looking out the window taking note of where we were going. The kids never met each other before the competition, and part of that was because of Adam. Unlike the other kids, all of whom flew into Vancouver proper, I picked him up at the local airport on Vancouver Island, so we never got the entire cast together before taping, which for a kids show would have been nice to get that B-roll intro footage. He actually came in on the same day that we started taping, so half the kids were already in their spots when I picked him up and we drove right over to the docks where we met a film crew and headed straight to where we determined he would make camp. One of the odd parts about Adam was that he brought less than half of the things he intended to bring. The kid participants, like the adults, get to bring 10 items with them, which they buy while at home and we reimburse them for the cost. We get a list of those items before they come, so when Adam showed up with nothing more than a hatchet, that seemed odd. But he insisted that's all he needed, and he didn't even want the flashlight and the pot that we gave all the kids, though we left them on shore for him along with the rest of the items when we dropped him off. But the fact that he didn't bring a sleeping bag, tent, saw, fish hooks in line or anything else you'd normally see was odd. As I said, though, we would check in on the kids three times per week, generally each Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, whether permitting. And of course, each kid received a satellite phone for if they needed help or were ready to tap out. We'd do the same for Adam, of course, and debated checking in on him every couple of days since he brought so few items. He proved us wrong. Right from the start, he created an impressive shelter, a nice, sustainable fire, and found a hardy bush with berries that would sustain him for a few days or weeks until he found other food sources. Adam thrived where we thought he'd fail. Some other kids thrived just as well as Adam did, but then strange things started happening to them. One mysteriously lost his bow and arrows. Another had a tent blown away, I guess. People lose things out in the wilderness, though, especially when they accidentally drop a black pharaoh rod or inadvertently drop it into the fire. But then we got other strange reports from the kids. Some reported seeing another child far off in the woods, crawling around outside of camp or even looking at them, or at least in one case, when the kid came back to his camp, he heard some rustling at the edge of camp and the thing ran off quickly. But by the time the kid would go and investigate, the strange child or thing would be gone. We checked each kid's tapes and didn't see anything nefarious from any participants. None of the cheating we sometimes see or wandering off too far was happening. Even if the kid's camps were closer than the adult's camps usually were, we're still talking about miles of dense forests, creeks, rivers, and mighty hills between them, so we were fairly certain it wasn't a kid. One day, though, Adam came back from a hunt, wearing a coon skin cap. He didn't take that with him. He told us he found it far off in the hills. There's a lot of hunting out there, so that wasn't particularly strange. Plus, participants are told they can use anything they find. But what was strange was he came back from the same hunt with something, some type of meat we couldn't readily discern on camera. He'd already butchered it and skinned it, so the most we could figure was maybe it was a portion of moose thigh or a large feral hog or something of that sort, though taking those down with nothing but a hatchet would be difficult. By the time we saw it on tape and came back to camp and asked questions, he'd eaten it all and discarded the rest in the river, he told us. After that, though, we started getting reports of even stranger things happening around some kid's camps. Emily was another participant who encountered weird things. While fishing, she spotted someone on the opposite shore watching her. She called out and got nothing in return. When she looked away for a moment and then looked back, the person was gone. Later that evening, she said the person came back. A small person with brown hair came into her camp, stole her hunting knife, and ran out. She took chase but got clothes lined by fishing wire that had been set up between two trees around her camp. She didn't set it up. William, a kid near to Adam's camp, woke up being strangled by someone on top of him. He struggled and passed out and when he awoke, he found his camp on fire. He got out and couldn't find his satellite phone and had to flag down a fishing boat that was passing by who got in touch with us. We wanted to check the tapes, of course, to figure out who did it and what had happened, but the fire melted everything and even caught about an acre of woods on fire. He chose to drop out of the competition even after we said we'd help him find a new camp. The strangest thing to happen, though, was when some being appeared at several camps at the same time. Three different kids spaced out about eight miles from each other, reported seeing the same thing at the same moment. A small person with brown hair peering in their direction from outside of camp and immediately afterward a fire came from that direction and spread into camp, forcing them out, at which time the small being chased after them for miles while they could hear the zooms of arrows flying past them. It was bizarre. It was at that time we decided to go ahead and end the competition and taping. Something weird was going on and we couldn't explain it and we were legitimately worried about some type of predator, human or otherwise, stalking the children. When we got to Adam's camp, he was gone. We waited around for him to come back while the other kids were picked up by the other crew members. Very late that night Adam finally returned and we told him that we'd ended the competition and we'd be sending everybody back home, which Adam didn't react to. We took everyone back to the hotel to rest for the night, let their parents know that we'd ended the taping and arranged for tickets home. After I dropped Adam off at his hotel room, I called his parents to let them know that he'd be returning the next day. What do you mean Adam will be returning tomorrow? His dad said on the phone. Yeah, we had to end the competition early, since we were concerned for the kid's well-being with incoming bad weather, I told him, brushing off the real concern. I don't understand, his dad replied. Adam has been here at home the entire time. If you made it this far, welcome to the Weirdo family. Please share a link to this episode in your social media to help spread the word about the podcast. And if you could, please recommend Weird Darkness to your friends, family, co-workers who love the paranormal, horror stories, and true crime. Maybe they'll become a Weirdo family member too. And I'd greatly appreciate you leaving a review in the podcast app you listen from. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true, unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. When the circus came to town, it was written by Stephanie Schism, and alone was written by Five Y N. Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Matthew 10, verse 28. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. And a final thought, if you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. John Wooden. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. And ran his own naturalist-naturalist-naturalist-naturalist tool, grew up hunting and fishing, and ran his own naturalist-naturalist-survive. Why is this a hard word for me? We do the same for Adam, of course, and debated checking in on some-we do the same for Adam, of course, and debated checking in on some every couple of days since he-we do the same for Adam, of course, and debated-we do the same for Adam, of course, and debated checking in on him every couple of days since he brought so few items. Sure, my house cats bring me gifts, but this did not have the same tone. Anthropomorphizing. Anthropomorphizing. Anthropomorphizing. It's a word you hear a lot, but you don't have to say it all that often. Anthropomorphizing. 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 seven 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.