 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. In a 1968 film, Rosemary's Baby, a failing actor, agrees to give up his wife's womb to Satan so he can have a taste of fame. When it was released to America, it was an instant hit, but there has long been a rumor that the satanic overtones of the film imbued the picture with a curse that the cast and crew suffered from the moment the film went into production. The Rosemary's Baby movie curse has allegedly afflicted everyone involved, with the film's director and producer receiving the brunt of the bad luck. There were plenty of bad things that happened during the filming of Rosemary's Baby, but the curse claimed most of its targets shortly after the film went to theaters. Rumors of cursed movie sets have been a norm in Hollywood since the Golden Age, but they've rarely amounted to anything more than, well, rumors. However, the sheer amount of Rosemary's Baby filming tragedies gives credence to the idea that there was actually a curse unlocked during filming of one of the most satanic movies in Hollywood history. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show and if you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Minds, Miwi and more, along with the Weird Darkness Weirdos Facebook group. Coming up in this episode, the movie The Sixth Sense has become a worldwide meme with the phrase, I see dead people. But for one family in Britain, it's not a joking matter. Barbara and Patricia Grimes were murdered in 1956, but new clues have raised hopes the killer might still be caught. In space, no one can hear you scream. Not just a movie tagline, but reality for astronauts reporting some of the strangest things they've encountered while outside our atmosphere. First, Rosemary's Baby was a hit novel that became an iconic film, only to bring woe to nearly everyone who made it. We'll look at the film which many people believe to be cursed. We'll also look at some real-life cases of women who believed they were pregnant with a demon child. And if you're pregnant, how can you tell if you are pregnant with the child of Lucifer? There are a few signs to look for. We begin with Rosemary's Baby. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. In 1967, I-11 was already, by most anyone's standards, a very, very successful writer. At the age of 21, he had sold two TV scripts to NBC. Soon after, a Broadway play garnered a Tony nod, and his first novel in which a ruthless young man murders his pregnant lover won the 1954 Edgar Award. But with every hit also came a flop, and success always seemed to come with a cost, a theme rooted deeply in all his best works, especially Rosemary's Baby. A hit novel turned iconic film, Rosemary's Baby, was a massive success that, according to half a century of pop culture lore, is also cursed. Did Levin's tale of lapsed Christian Rosemary, who unknowingly carries and births the devil in return for her actor-husband's stage success, really jinx all those who got near it? And if so, why did Levin himself stay so seemingly unscathed? Like all good scary stories, this one starts out very ordinary. In 1965, struggling as always for his next big idea, Levin looked no further than his pregnant wife in their New York apartment. He plopped every would-be parent's feelings of anxiety atop an imminent historical moment. June 1966, or 666, aka the number of the beast, as predicted in the New Testament's book Revelation. Religious counterculture was already swirling. The Church of Satan was soon to be established in San Francisco, and in April 1966, Time Magazine had just famously asked on its cover, is God dead? Levin went even darker. What if he took the birth of Jesus and turned the whole tale upside down? What if God was not only dead, but the devil lived? A Jewish atheist, Levin nonetheless, wrote with mounting reservations. He was sort of taking notes, he said, of his wife's progress alongside Rosemary's, but flatly refused to let her read the manuscript. His fears were both personal and professional. The book was blasphemy, perhaps, and Levin feared backlash, blacklisting from publishers or much worse. Rosemary's baby was instead immediately declared perfect, the best horror novel ever crafted, a modern masterpiece. Rave reviews ran in every paper. Truman Capote likened Levin to Henry James. Four million copies flew off store shelves. Levin, not unlike the greedy antagonist and one of his own success-obsessed works, was granted the wildest level of literary success that he might ever have hoped for. A year later, the success only continued with the movie, directed by Roman Polanski, a European auteur looking for his own big Hollywood break. More impeccable reviews. Roger Ebert wrote Polanski outdoes Hitchcock. Liz Smith in Cosmopolitan called it sheer perfection. Variety praised just about everyone involved. Polanski had triumphed, star Mia Farrow was outstanding, composer Christof Kameda's score was top notch, and producer William Castle had crossed an artistic Rubicon. Soon after, the curse began. The first unlucky soul was Kameda. Details of his death are still scarce even today, but Polanski told it this way. In autumn of 1968, then 37-year-old Kameda was roughhousing at a party when he fell off a rocky escarpment and into a four-month coma. The very same affliction Levin's witches used to kill Rosemary's suspicious friend in the book. Kameda never regained consciousness and died in Poland the following year. In April 1969, producer William Castle, sick with worry from the hate mail he received constantly, was suddenly stricken with severe kidney stones. While delirious in the hospital, he hallucinated scenes from the film and was said to have yelled, Rosemary, for God's sake, drop the knife. Castle recovered, just barely and never made a Hollywood hit again. Then there is Polanski's fate, told and retold into legend even by him. Polanski had relocated to California alongside his new girlfriend, actress Sharon Tate, who was fresh off her first movie role as a witch in Eye of the Devil just before filming began on Rosemary's baby. She had gone hard for the lead role in Rosemary's baby, but Paramount cast Mia Farrow. Tate instead loitered around the set, appearing uncredited like a ghost in the background of Rosemary's young people-only party scene and, say some, becoming increasingly obsessed with the occult. Many years later, a friend quoted her in print as having said, The devil is beautiful, most people think he's ugly, but he's not. Polanski last saw Tate, by then his wife and very pregnant, in July 1969, noting in his autobiography a grotesque thought that he had at the time. You will never see her again, he wrote. Tate was brutally murdered on August 8th by the Manson family, as was their unborn son, all while Rosemary's baby still lingered in theaters. Unable to make sense of such a tragedy and captivated by the stories of the Manson family, the public took to Satan and curses as the only explanation. The fanatics say, like Guy Woodhouse, Polanski made his young wife a blood sacrifice for his still untouchable status in Hollywood and beyond. Others maintain the Manson murders were a mere moment in a grand satanic conspiracy scored by the Beatles. A white album was written largely at an Indian meditation with Mia Farrow in attendance. The song title, Helter Skelter, albeit misspelled, was scrawled in blood at the crime scene. And a dozen years later, Lennon was assassinated across the street from the Dakota, the gabled landmark where Rosemary's baby was filmed. But if Rosemary's baby is actually cursed, how did the writer of the novel, Ira Levin, dodge his fate? He didn't, of course. While Levin never fell from a cliff to his dramatic demise, he suffered a more fitting kind of poetic justice. First, his marriage crumbled, with the divorce finalized in 1968. Notoriously private, Levin never gave details of the breakup, though the Stepford Wives, published four years later, maybe says it all. He never rode the Rosemary's baby wave into Hollywood, perhaps a blessing in disguise, but he certainly got the fame he sought. Levin, in particular, bombarded him with ongoing criticism, as did the Catholic Church, which very publicly slapped a C rating for condemned onto the film for its mockery of religious persons and practices. Levin didn't believe in witches or curses, he said over and again, yet fear grew in him just the same. On a 1980 episode of The Dick Cavett Show, featuring alongside a gregarious Stephen King, Levin sits quiet, pensive, and insecure. I don't recall being scared at all, he said of his childhood horror inspirations. Now, I'm terrified. By 1992, in a rare interview, Levin confessed to having mixed feelings about Rosemary's baby, including religious guilt. His work had played a significant part in all this popularization of the occult and belief in witchcraft and Satanism, he acknowledged, while in the same breath, dismissing all these people who hear backward messages in song lyrics and stuff like that. Then in a rare admission of regret, he said, I really feel a certain degree of guilt about having fostered that kind of irrationality. But his family is adamant that the regret wasn't in the book. It was in something else, said novelist David Morrell, co-founder of the International Thriller Writers Organization and former University of Iowa professor of English who wrote a new intro to Rosemary's baby for its 50th birthday reissue. After decades of endless copycats and spinoffs and made for TV movies that made the book feel like a campy caricature, Levin grew seemingly disdainful of his defining work. He wrote less and to less acclaim, rarely did interviews and stopped bingling among the New York literary circles he once so desperately wanted to be a part of. If Levin ever really experienced or enjoyed his literary fame, he didn't say so. I never once heard him comment on his career or what had happened, said Morrell. I'm just intuiting that he had to know he was a success, but I'm not sure he did. Instead, when Rosemary's baby's last big anniversary rolled around, Levin phoned in a poorly planned sequel, Son of Rosemary, which was widely panned and quickly forgotten. Yet it became a bestseller just the same, funding Levin's last decade until his death in 2007 and becoming a sort of cruel, ongoing joke about the fleeting and arbitrary nature of success. Of course, I didn't send back any of the royalty cheques he deadpanned, poking fun at himself as a sellout and fraud. It was one of those jokes that's half true, and it was the last book he ever wrote. Up next, real cases of women who were convinced they truly were carrying a demon child during their pregnancies. Plus, how do you know if you're carrying a demon spawn in your own pregnancy? These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. Nothing goes better with chocolate than vanilla, and nothing goes better with the darkness than vampires. So we've combined all of them into a new blend of Weird Dark Roast Coffee called Very Vampilla. This bloody good blend combines a medium dark roast coffee with hints of chocolate, vanilla, and just a tad bit of dried cherry too. So good, you'll want to sink your fangs into the fresh roasted bag itself. Weird Dark Roast Very Vampilla, the only thing at steak – sorry, not sorry, bad pun – is your dissatisfaction with your old coffee. Sip it while the sun is down if you're one of the undead, or when the sun is up if you just feel dead and need a bit of a boost, get your Weird Dark Roast Very Vampilla at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Researching stories of satanic pregnancy and locating women who truly believe that they've carried Satan's spawn is more difficult than it might seem. The world will always welcome kaleidoscope-eyed Agolites and peasant smocks and Manson-following concubines with swastikas carved into their foreheads, it's true, but bearers of the Antichrist don't always get so lucky. Some in real life Rosemary Woodhouses hail from the colonial era when Satan was basically a household name. Some come from present-day tribes stuck seven centuries back in the time continuum, while others are just goths in love with the smoldering, tormented glamour of the Dark Lord. But all claim to have or have had one thing in common, a womb that has played host to a cloven, mauling, fanged little bundle of joy. In the summer of 2009, San Antonio Police stumbled in on a scene that was so gruesome investigators could barely speak. Physician Patrick McNamara, writing in Spirit Possession and Nectrucism, History, Psychology and Neurobiology, claims that believing that one or one's child is possessed by Satan is all too common in schizophrenics with religious delusions. According to official reports, a three-and-a-half-week-old boy lay in the bedroom of a single-story house, three of his tiny toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed, and his brains ripped out. Officers found the boy's mother, Adi Sanchez, sitting on a couch with a self-inflicted wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed, screaming. She told officers the devil made her do it. Police said psychiatric examiners believe Sanchez suffered from psychosis and was driven to consume her infant Scotty as part of a back-eye-like ritual in which the mother ends and eats her male offspring. According to a 2012 article in The Daily Mail, one of Satan's sons is alive and well in Colombia. At a mere four weeks old, the demon child, who had apparently not been named, could already walk by himself and produce fire, or so is a gassed mother, and Faria Santos says. She also attests that her son frequently hides around the house, cackles in an adult way for hours on end, and has an intimidating pair of eyes. The article claims that Santos' neighbors in fear for their lives have begun pelting the residents with stones, but area lawyers, social workers, and psychologists aren't so sure, and sources say that the mother is being investigated for possible child abuse. The same thing happened to Naomi Watts in The Ring 2 when her son got possessed. In 2016, a 28-year-old Utah mother, Suzanne Connors, made headlines when she gave birth to a screeching entity, whom she just as promptly made the sign of the crossover and cast out. Connors said that her pregnancy felt like being cut with razors from the inside, claimed that she decided on adoption because she wanted no part in raising the Antichrist. Reports state that Dodgers apparently opted for a C-section and found Connors' uterus and amniotic sac completely ripped to shreds. One may assume that the infant was scuttled off. It's a live style, but the babe was then taken to a nearby pediatric hospital for evaluation. Superstitions and phobias about demons and witches are legion, but some people don't hesitate to take them to disturbingly literal levels. Such was the case with 21-year-old Rashida Shoudhury, who in August 2015 tossed her newborn son out of the fourth-story window of her apartment in Queens because she believed he was possessed by an evil spirit. Shoudhury's apparently non-interventionist family confirmed that she had indeed been actively harboring a belief that her child was possessed. Moreover, four adults and two, presumably demon-free, other children were in the residence at the time, which made the setup even more suspect. Shoudhury was charged in both the first and second degree and told the NYPD that she'd had no other choice but to hurl her offspring into the symbolic flames below for his own protection. The realization that one has born or is about to bear a demon child doesn't always come early. Some evil spawns are late bloomers, or so one Juanita Gomez appeared to believe. In August of 2016, the 49-year-old Oklahoma mother made headlines when she took the life of her 33-year-old daughter with a crucifix. The Huffington Post reports that officers arrived and found the victim lying in the home with a large cross slash crucifix upon her chest. Blood was visible and she had suffered severe trauma around her head and face. Juanita Gomez said she believed her daughter was possessed by the devil and was attempting to rid Satan from her body. Specifically, it seems Gomez forced a crucifix and religious medallion down her daughter's throat before cleaning her up and posing her body in the shape of a cross. Gomez does not seem to have expressed any particular interest in the crime after the fact. Her main preoccupation appears to be with her bowels. She's accused officials of providing her with inadequate toilet paper, allegedly complaining in court that she had to use that plastic from the food they give her to wipe her bottom. Another progeny of Satan, but can there be more than one divine inheritor at a time, had the honor of gestating in the womb of a certain Isabella Miroslav of Texas. According to 2014 reports, the encounter came while the avowed Satanist was saying her bedtime chance. All of a sudden, the dark lord appeared in the room, ordered her to undress and then bred her. Miroslav's plans to name the child after his father may seem predictable enough, but there are some inconsistencies in her report that are more troubling. She maintains that her son is supposed to become president at the age of 12 and create a one-world government to later combat the coming of Jesus Christ. Horned, talloned, bat-winged, and snarling, the New Jersey Devil is as American as apple pie. However, his mother, Deborah Leeds, was a Brit. According to historical reports, she and her husband, Jaffet, lived in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey in the early to mid-1700s. They had 12 children and by the time the 13th was conceived in 1735, Deborah Leeds, who by then was past what most people would consider reasonable childbearing age, was in no mood to give birth to it. Some accounts even have her declaring, may it be a devil when she learned of her unwelcome condition. There are multiple versions of what happened on the night of the birth. Some claim that Mother Leeds, as she was called, believed from the outset that her 13th child would be a demon because the number 13 was cursed. Others claim that she invoked the devil during her delivery, thereby dooming the baby. The most popular variation, however, claims that the infant, devil or not, was born deformed and that Mother Leeds cared for it until she passed of old age, whereupon it flew off into the swamps. Whatever the case, in the centuries since the New Jersey devil's birth, there have been numerous sightings of the creature all over southern New Jersey. Born in the French Quarter of New Orleans, legendary voodoo queen Marie Levoe was renowned for her powers as a sorceress and a healer. One of her acquaintances was Camille, the daughter of a prominent Creole family who allegedly angered one of her Creole suitors by throwing him over for a Scotsman. The story goes that Camille's spurned bow approached Levoe and begged her to avenge him by cursing his would-be bride and her child. Shortly thereafter, Camille became pregnant and began having recurring nightmares about her unborn baby being possessed. According to haunted New Orleans tours, Camille passed during childbirth, but just as she had feared, the infant was not a plump and blushing human baby, but a grotesque and lurid imitation, a horror, a curse. Whales filled the room when the thing was exposed and all could see where light tufts of hair should be were two lumps, the early roots of horns to come, where little hands and feet should have been were the claws of some wild animal like a possum or a raccoon. There were scales upon its body. What really happened is anyone's guess, but the babe lives on in infamy as the devil baby of Bourbon Street, and some of Marie Levoe's history was chronicled in American Horror Story's 2016 Roanoke installation. Mother Superior, Giannis Angus, also known as Joan of the Angels, is famous for having been seduced and impregnated by a demon masquerading as a priest masquerading as an angel, basically your classic mix-up. The infamous drama of disangus began when a gentleman known as Urbain Grandier became a parish priest in London, France. In addition to being good-looking and charismatic, he was said to have been a rabid womanizer who regularly disregarded his vows of celibacy. Gian, who had become obsessed with Grandier, alleged that he was the devil who had appeared to her in the guise of a radiant being. She also said that Issacuron, the demon of debauchery, had gotten her with child and she went through a long psychosomatic pregnancy that was rife with shrieking, convulsions and babbling tongues. A group of nuns soon joined her in her accusations and after a lengthy investigation, Father Grandier was summarily tortured and burned the stake in 1634. Gian, who never did bear her demon child, lived more or less piously ever after and the whole debacle was the subject of two films, Ken Russell's The Devils in 1971 and Jersey Cowell-Larowitz's Mother Joan of the Angels in 1961. Jean Adams was an influential figure in Chicago in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She opened up the historic Hall House, a communal gathering place for impoverished immigrants to embrace their shared community and a place for single working women to stay and find safety from the slums. The story postulates that one day, three working Italian women burst through the doors of Hall House and demanded to see the devil baby. Apparently the baby had cloven hooves, pointed ears and was able to articulate even though it was an infant. It was also apparently found a profane language and would curse those that came to visit it. According to Adams, the people attributed her infant to the devil because Adams was allegedly sinful in the child's conception. It's cliche to say that no one knows what to expect when they're expecting, but that applies even more if you are a woman impregnated by the devil. But how do you know if you are carrying a demonic spawn? Similar to knowing whether or not you've been marked by the devil, there are some absolute signs that you are carrying the Antichrist. Perhaps you were involved in a satanic pregnancy ritual, or maybe you've been drinking more blood than usual. Whatever the case, there are numerous signs Satan is near and all you need to do is to learn which of them are real and which are coincidence. Pledge your eternal allegiance to weird darkness and keep listening. Satan is a tricksy lad as signs of his temptation and meddling are never obvious and the ones that are will likely have you sent to an insane asylum if you tell anybody. But once you're carrying the child to Satan, your life isn't as without options as it might seem. Every child needs a mother, even if its father is an ageless evil who has chosen to spend an eternity cackling in his personal fire pit so you could always do your best to be the monstrosity's mother. Or you could give the child up for adoption. There's no rule saying you have to be the mother of the Antichrist. If any of these signs that you've been impregnated by Satan apply to you, remember to consult a physician or a trusted coven of witches before you make any rash decisions. Chances are you're probably just pregnant with a regular human child. A telltale sign of fostering Satan's unborn child in your womb is the appearance of claw marks or deep gouges across your skin when you wake up in the morning. These won't be your run-of-the-mill scratches that you find the morning after a round of suitably rough intercourse. These scratches will be deeper than the average fingernail marks and they will likely be in a more animalistic shape than you're used to. If the claw marks have left any symbols across your body like pentagrams, pyramids, ominous squiggles, then you definitely have a demon baby hiding in your body. Odd cravings, of course, are natural when you're pregnant, but one particular craving that you should worry about is the desire to feast upon raw meat. There's simply something you need to satisfy your cravings, whether you're gnawing on a bloody steak or a tube of raw beef. You may even want to double down on your urges by drinking blood from the still-beating heart of an innocent. If that's how you feel, then you should start picking out baby names from the Book of Revelations. As soon as you discovered that you were pregnant, did people begin referring to your appearance as one or hollow? Do you have a jaundiced look to your eyes when there was once a bright light full of hope? Most women report a glow that takes over their body once they're with child. However, those that have been impregnated by a demon, incubus, or Satan himself, have been known to take on the look of someone whose very life is being drained from their body. Was it only a week ago that you had amazing intercourse with a handsome stranger who may or may not have had goat eyes, and now you've got a six-month baby bump? It's never fun to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems like you might be pregnant with a demonic baby. One of the biggest signs that your child is of the nether realm is if it comes to full term quicker than it should. If you enjoy sleeping with sexy, slightly devilish men, either in real life or in your dreams, you should keep a personal planner handy, just to keep track of any pregnancies that occur. Upon feeling a super strong kick from a baby in your womb, many people, especially mothers-in-law, will say something innocuous like, feels like you've got a soccer player in there, or someone's keeping up with leg day. However, a baby with super human strength is an obvious sign that you've not only been violated by a demon, but that you are carrying its seed. Going by ultrasound alone to decipher whether or not your child belongs to Satan is never a safe bet. Ultrasound photos are known to make the inside of your womb look like a funhouse mirror, and while your child may look a bit devilish, it's most likely a regular human baby. If you notice something off about the baby in your ultrasound, like devil horns, goblin ears, or a tail, ask yourself whether or not you've experienced any of the other symptoms we've described here. If the answer is no and you still feel uneasy, visit a priest. If he suffers a severe nosebleed or fleas from your presence, then it's safe to say your suspicions were correct. Even if you take birth control pills religiously, no pun intended, you've got to remember that Satan's semen, or the semen of a demon-possessed human person, is not only super strong, but is from the body of the greatest evil in the universe. Thus, there is nothing that prescription medication would be able to do to stop it from working. If you find yourself pregnant despite being on the pill, it might be wise to seek help from your closest priest. As with some other signs on this list, having a sore nether-region ladies in the morning isn't exactly positive proof that you've been visited in the night by the king of lies. If you've been having non-demonic sex with somebody on a regular basis, or if your normal means of transportation is a motorcycle or a horse, you probably have nothing to worry about. But if you experience intense pain and have some of the other symptoms on this list, you might have a devil baby inside you. It's rare that women begin to experience telekinesis without having a member of the family pass the gift down to them. So if you suddenly have an uncontrollable ability to knock people over with your mind, you might be with Satan's child. Your best bet is to take a pregnancy test, and if the absorbent sampler changes from white to a blood-red depiction of the crucifix of Christ, then you are 99.9% pregnant with Satan's child. So what have your dreams been like lately? Just the normal stuff? Or have you been visited by a horrific pig man who makes love to you without the societal hang-ups of a normal person but leaves you feeling ashamed with Sumerian symbols etched into your skin afterward? If you were having a lot of dream sex with a demon and now you're preggers, it's probably a sign you're carrying the Lord of the Flies child. Have you been experiencing strange losses of time, especially after sex? Loss of time on its own isn't anything to inspire you to believe that you're carrying the Antichrist, but if it's working in tandem with demon dream sex, telekinesis, or cravings for blood, then you might want to begin panicking. Or you could accept your fate as the mother of Satan's child and lean into it by buying a lot of black clothing. Because Satan and demons operate in the dark to avoid the eyes of God, who has a well-known 10pm bedtime, by the way, it makes sense that most demon child conceptions take place late at night, specifically in dreams. If you begin having dreams of mothering a nightmare child, that may be your body trying to tell you that you've become pregnant with a goat-eyed baby who will tear apart humanity. And if you found yourself to be in the middle of a satanic ritual, willingly or unwillingly, where you may or may not have had intercourse with Satan, a personification of Satan, a lesser demon, or maybe even a possessed regular guy wearing a cloak, then you're probably pregnant with a devil baby. How involved you want to be in this baby's life, that's up to you. But if you've always wanted to be a demonic queen who leads an undead horde of abominations, then you should give mothering your devil baby a shot. When Weird Darkness returns, in space, no one can hear you scream. It's not just a movie tagline, it's reality for astronauts reporting some of the strangest things they've encountered while outside our atmosphere. But first, the movie The Sixth Sense has become a worldwide meme with that phrase, I See Dead People. But for one family in Britain, it is not a joking matter. That story is up next. Elton on Blackwood's novella The Willows was originally published as part of Blackwood's 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories. It is one of his best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers. In fact, horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered the story The Willows to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. And you can hear the story The Willows by Aldrin on Blackwood absolutely free. Visit the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com to find it. The Willows by Aldrin on Blackwood at WeirdDarkness.com slash audiobooks. Trembling with fear, 10-year-old Faye Jackson darted out of her bedroom and down the stairs to her mum. She had just seen the wispy image of a person who had hissed into her ear. Can you hear me? It was the first of hundreds of ghost sightings that would plague the young girl and lead her to believe she may have psychic powers. Incredibly, Faye's younger brother Ashley has now started reporting similar eerie sightings, despite not knowing anything about Faye's. Their mum, Lynn, has come to accept her kids have supernatural powers and that, just like the movie The Sixth Sense, her children can see dead people. To Lynn, by the way, not really her name, we've changed the names in this to protect them, Lynn says this is anything but a special gift. She sees it as a curse that she would love to break. The 39-year-old from Walton Cross Hurts says, It feels like someone's bullying my children and I can't do anything about it. It would have been easier to deal with if they had an illness, at least I'd know where to go for treatment. Faye's got used to it and now she enjoys having this ability, but Ashley hates it. Surveys in the United Kingdom show that one in five Brits have seen or felt the presence of a ghost and 53% believe in psychic ability. The research coincides with Matt Damon's film, Hair After, about a reluctant medium. Faye, now 13-years-old and Ashley, age eight, can relate to that. Stay-at-home mum Lynn says the first sign was when Faye started primary school. She used to tell me one of her friends was purple or the teacher was red. So one day I told her, No darling, that boy isn't purple. She said, Mummy, I mean the color around him. Now they both believe that Faye was recognizing Auras, the glow which is said to radiate around a person. Ghostly sightings started when Faye turned ten and appeared nearly every day. Once they reported her bed being shaken by a frustrated female ghost. Another time she said that she could fuel the energy of an old woman against her back while showering. She even says that at times she could feel ghosts playing with her hair. Lynn says, How do you deal with something like that? She was terrified. I did start off thinking it might be attention seeking, but you know your own children. She was shy and not a storyteller. In her skinny jeans and patent Doc Martin's petite Faye today seems at ease with her powers, but her huge blue eyes still betray her fear during one of the most terrifying incidents. She says, I walked out of my bedroom and there was a mirror at the other end of the hall. In my reflection I saw a person's head on my shoulder. It was red. I was so scared, but now I understand that it's my granddad and that he is my spirit guide who is protecting me. Faye matter of factly goes on to relate how she encounters these unexpected visitors. She says, It's not like seeing something solid like a chair. It's like a glimpse of the person. Mostly I can sense something or feel the energy there and the picture and the details come into my head like their name can pop into my head or how they died. If I close my eyes I see their picture building up. It happens so quickly. I have all this information in a couple of seconds. I used to be really scared. I wouldn't like the dark and I wouldn't like looking in the mirror in case I saw something. The double blow came when Ashley began to see ghosts as well. He refuses to discuss the idea that he might be psychic. His mother Lynn says, We've been careful to keep everything that was going on with Faye from Ashley. I didn't want him to be frightened. Then about a year ago he refused to go into our conservatory and wouldn't go to the toilet alone. I asked him what the matter was and he told me, There's a head following me around. My blood went cold. How do you tell a 7-year-old that some people can see dead people? Lynn's husband, David, age 45 is clearly concerned and supportive, yet like Ashley prefers not to discuss the issue. But supernatural powers might run in the family. Both David's dad and Lynn's grandmother believed they saw spirits. Lynn says, Faye has tried to tell Ashley it's okay and happens to her, but he doesn't believe her. She's intrigued by it now, but he hates it and is terrified. Through talking to other mediums, Faye has learned to cope with the sightings, but Ashley is very much in denial. Instead, a friend who does distant healing called Theta Healing has focused on Ashley, asking that he doesn't see anything frightening. Lynn believes this has reduced the sightings but says he still has what he calls bad thoughts. Faye, who has learned to channel her ability into learning Reiki Healing, says, I can close down my chakras, points in the body from the head to the feet. You do it by thinking of those points as light bulbs and you shut them off so you're closed to the spirits. I can also ask them to go away and I can imagine a white light around me to protect myself. When it first started I was seeing spirits every day, but now it isn't as often. Faye adds, I've only told one friend at school. She was fine about it and accepts it, but I wouldn't tell anyone else because I think they'd tease me. I'd be the witch girl. Lynn and Faye plan to write a book together on their experiences. They've also launched Facebook Group, Children with Spirit. Lynn says, one of my issues is that there is no real help out there for people like us. Talking to other psychic children has really helped Faye, so hopefully it can help others too. From a smattering of stars to a breathtaking view of earth, astronauts see so many awe-inspiring things in space. But sometimes what they see is not only unbelievable but unexplainable. There are some truly creepy things astronauts have seen in space. Astronauts have reported seeing weird lights, extraterrestrials and UFOs. Kind of makes you wonder if they really saw these things or if being in outer space was just messing with their brains. These weird astronaut stories, they prove space is definitely not for the faint of heart. Some weird things astronauts have seen really make you wonder if alien conspiracy theorists might be right. Maybe the government does know about the existence of extraterrestrials and is covering it up. These weird things astronauts have seen in space might make you question what you believe. In 2003, Yang Liwei became the first astronaut sent into space by the Chinese space program. He has said that he heard someone knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer on his maiden flight. He looked outside the ship's porthole but was unable to find the source of the knocking. Considering space is a vacuum it was even weirder that he heard a sound from outside the ship. Liwei is not alone in this discovery either. Other Chinese astronauts heard the sound on missions in 2005 and 2008. During Major Gordon Cooper's solo journey around Earth he may have encountered more than just some space junk. Nearing the end of his 22 orbit trip around the planet he suddenly noticed a green glowing object approaching the Mercury capsule he was flying in. In fact, the rapid approach of the object was even picked up by the closest tracking station in Australia. Cooper even went on to describe the incident to the United Nations. I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets. Most astronauts were reluctant to discuss UFOs. I did have occasion in 1951 to have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe. Major General Vladimir Kovalyonov was part of a crew manning Salyut-6 space station in 1981. When I was working at the Salyut orbital station I saw something strange in a porthole one day he said. The object was the size of a finger. I was surprised to see it was an orbiting object. He added, It was hard to determine the size and the speed of an object in space. That's why I cannot say exactly which size it actually was. My partner prepared to take a picture of it but the UFO suddenly exploded. Only clouds of smoke were left. The object split into two interconnected pieces. It was reminiscent of a dumbbell. I reported it to the emission control immediately. Kovalyonov gives one of the few astronauts to see something inexplicable in space and talk about it openly afterwards. Neil Armstrong, besides strolling around the moon and saying some famous words, may have seen some gigantic UFOs in space. According to a source no less dubious than Aliens and Man, a synopsis of facts and beliefs, Armstrong's rumor to have sent a secret message to NASA during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Armstrong allegedly said, These babies were huge, sir. Enormous. Oh, God, you wouldn't believe it. I'm telling you, there are other spacecraft out here lined up on the far side of the crater's edge. They're on the moon watching us. It's one of many, many such tales associated with the first lunar landing. Armstrong was notoriously tight-lipped about his experiences in space and never commented on this rumor, likely because there simply wasn't much factual basis for the claims that he never saw or said any such things. NASA astronaut Story Musgrave claims to have seen eel-like tubes swim through space. In an interview, he explains that he saw this creature on two separate occasions, while some immediately dismissed this as space junk, possibly some type of hose that detached from a spaceship. Musgrave is adamant that the White Eel had its own propulsion technique. During a Mir, a Russian space station mission in 1991, cosmonaut Musa Manarov was watching a visiting space capsule dock nearby. He was filming its approach when he saw an object that looked like it was coming off the spacecraft. But Manarov knew that there was simply nothing that could come loose at that point, and as he continued to watch the object, it floated downward and away from the capsule. Manarov still can't explain what he saw up there, but he knows for sure that it was not space junk, as some people have claimed. Leroy Chow commanded the International Space Station in 2005. While on a spacewalk, Chow saw white lights aligned in an upside-down check formation whizz right past him. Some people have posited that a string of fishing boats along the South American coast could explain what he saw, but Chow was 230 miles above Earth when this happened. Those would have to be some seriously strong boat spotlights to be seen from all the way up there. Chow told The Huffington Post, I'm skeptical of claims that we've been visited by aliens from another planet or other dimension, but I don't rule it out 100 percent. From 2009 to 2012, astronauts lit things on fire in space. Not because they were all pyromaniacs, but because they wanted to know how fire would behave in the cosmos. They discovered that fire burns at a lower temperature and with less oxygen, and can also burn without a flame in microgravity. Forman Williams, the project leader on the experiments, told Space.com, thus far the most surprising thing we've observed is continued apparent burning of heptane droplets after flame extinction under certain conditions. Currently, this is entirely unexplained. Richard C. Hoagland, a proponent of alternative space theories, believes Alan Bean saw glass domes from a long-existent alien civilization on the moon. In an interview, Bean described space as looking like black patent leather shoes from the surface of the moon. Hoagland maintained space should be velvet black. It should be inky black. It should be infinity, unending, deep, endless black. It shouldn't be shiny. The only explanation for Bean's description, Hoagland concluded, was that he was seeing space through the reflection of a glass dome. During the Apollo 11 mission, astronauts reported seeing light flashes in their eyes. The crews of Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 were warned about this and reported they also saw strange bursts of light even when their eyes were closed. Experiments were conducted on the next four Apollo missions to try and figure out what was causing these weird visions. NASA determined that the astronauts were seeing cosmic rays. We don't see cosmic rays here on Earth because they are absorbed by our atmosphere, but without that barrier in space, astronauts were seeing something no one had ever seen before. While on the Gemini IV mission in 1965, astronaut James McDivitt thought he saw a UFO. In an interview with NASA, McDivitt explained, I looked outside, just glanced up, and there was something out there. It had a geometrical shape similar to a beer can or a pop can, and while a little thing like maybe like a pencil or something sticking out of it, that relative size dimensionally, it was all white. The press got ahold of the story and ran with it, claiming McDivitt had seen a UFO. It wasn't until years later, after reviewing a photograph that he had never seen before, that McDivitt realized what it was, a reflection of some bolts in the window glass. He said, I went back and then I saw what the thing was, and really what it was was a reflection of the bolts in the windows. The windows were made up of about three or four or five panes of glass, so that if one got broken, we still had some pressure integrity. And these little things, when the sun shined on them right, they multiplied the images off the different panes, and I'm quite sure that that's what this thing was. Or maybe that's just what NASA told him to say. In 2013, while astronaut Christopher Cassidy was aboard the International Space Station, he saw a mysterious object floating by his window. Cassidy contacted Mission Control to report the sighting. NASA identified it as an antenna cover from Russia's Zvezda service module, but conspiracy theorists remain convinced that the object was something extraterrestrial. John Glenn, who flew on the Friendship 7 spacecraft in February 1962, suddenly noticed something strange outside his window while in orbit. He immediately reported to NASA what he was watching, and it looked like a group of little glowing fireflies dancing outside his window. However, it would take a perplexed Glenn and worried NASA nearly a year to figure out what these little fireflies really were. At first, NASA was concerned that perhaps these glowing dots were flecks of metal coming off a malfunctioning piece of equipment. However, they later realized during another flight that these specs were actually frozen droplets of condensation that were shifting and cracking as the spaceship traveled. In 2014, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti was on her way to the International Space Station for the first time when she saw the normally gray ISS was bathed in orange light. It was the sun reflecting off the solar panels and onto the space station, something only a handful of astronauts had ever seen. Cristoforetti was taken aback by the beauty of what she was seeing. In a blog post, she wrote, The enormous solar panels were inundated with a blaze of orange light, vivid, warm, almost alien. Conspiracy theorists hooked on to those words, almost alien. They began speculating that the solar panel reflection was a cover story and she had, in fact, seen a UFO. Barbara and Patricia Grimes were murdered in 1956, but new clues have raised hopes the killer might still be caught. That story is up next on Weird Darkness. Do you keep a journal or diary? If not, maybe you should consider it. It's been shown that journaling can help you reduce stress, help relieve depression, build self-confidence, it boosts your emotional intelligence, helps with achieving goals, inspires creativity, and more. In fact, my friend, S. N. Lenees has created a Weird Darkness-themed journal just for you, full of blank pages for you to use as a diary, make notes for class or office meetings, jot down ideas for that novel you want to write, use it for keeping a mileage long if you travel for business, whatever you want. In fact, she has numerous styles of journals to choose from, along with the Weird Darkness journal, there's one for dealing with grief or teachers' notes, for medical residencies, keeping track of your meds or health routine, and several others. Journals make a great gift for others, but it's also a great gift for yourself and your own mental health. No matter what you might want a journal for, my friend Anne has it, and you can see all of our journals, including the one for Weird Darkness, on the sponsors and friends page at WeirdDarkness.com. Like thousands of teenage girls in those days, the Grimes sisters could not get enough of Elvis Presley. They had seen his latest hit Love Me Tender 14 times. On December 17, 1956, they headed to Chicago's Brighton Theater to see it again. Barbara was 15. Patricia was 13. They left the house at 7.30 pm. Their mother Loretta Grimes expected the girls might stay for the double feature, but when midnight arrived and her girls still hadn't come home, she began to worry. Two of the older Grimes' siblings headed to the bus stop to wait for their sisters. By 2 am, it was clear something had happened. A search was quickly assembled. Dorothy Winert, a friend of Patricia's, had also been in the theater and sat behind the sisters. Though Dorothy left after the first film, she mentioned having seen Barbara and Patricia at the concession stand, seemingly in good spirits. One of the largest city-wide hunts in Chicago history followed. Police officers and regular civilians combed the streets looking for the sisters. Adjacent towns and counties got involved and offered their resources to the cause, but as the days passed, the search stalled and law enforcement grew desperate to solve the case. Then random sightings of the missing sisters flooded media outlets. People from all walks of life claimed to have seen the girls in one state or another from as far away as Nashville, Tennessee. This led some to believe that Barbara and Patricia had orchestrated their own disappearance and gone to Nashville to meet Elvis. This theory picked up more steam than expected, and Elvis himself took to the radio to publicly address the girls pleading with them to return home. Police had no other leads and could only surmise that the sisters had run away. Loretta Grimes vehemently rejected the idea, maintaining that her girls would never do such a thing, and that they certainly would not have left behind the brand new AM radio they received for Christmas. After an exhausting month of loose threads and dead ends, the search stalled out. Then on January 22, 1957, a man named Leonard Prescott spotted what he thought were two mannequins on German Church Road in Willow Springs, Illinois. He did not approach them, but instead ran home to get his wife. Together, the Prescots inched closer and closer and found the naked bodies of Barbara and Patricia Grimes positioned awkwardly with Barbara lying face down, Patricia lying face up on top of her sister. Their faces had been damaged by neighborhood animals. At 1.30 p.m., the Willow Springs Police Department learned of the discovery. They immediately deduced that the sisters had probably been on the side of the road since the snowfall two weeks prior. Flurries of suspects were apprehended, the most publicized of which was Edward Lee Bedwell. He confessed to the murders, though there was never any evidence supporting his claim, and then he later recanted it. An autopsy on the girls, which could not be performed until they were thawed, revealed that the last meal they had eaten was the dinner before leaving for the movie theater. Such findings proved the Grimes sisters were killed within hours of going missing. Though the official cause of death was listed as murder, the only explanation offered was secondary shock due to exposure to the elements. The funeral was held on January 28, 1957 at St. Maurice Church. Loretta Grimes was inconsolable. The girls were in white closed caskets, each topped with their respective photograph. They were laid to rest at Holy Sepulcher Catholic Cemetery. Later in life, Loretta volunteered at a nearby prison and secured a promise from the police that they would never stop looking for her daughter's killer. In 1989, at the age of 83, Loretta died without ever getting an answer. Though the disappearance and murder of the Grimes sisters went cold many years ago, author and former criminal investigator Ray Johnson might have cracked it open. Johnson claims that a similar incident, the murder of Bonnie Lee Scott, took place in Addison, Illinois about a year after the Grimes case. Bonnie Lee Scott was killed at the age of 15 and eventually discovered naked. The man responsible for that crime supposedly made a phone call to Loretta Grimes and bragged about getting away with the murder of both Scott and the Grimes sisters. Johnson asserts that information about his phone call went unpublished by the media back in the 1950s and also that non-lethal marks on the Grimes sisters' bodies around the abdomen were very similar to marks found on the body of Scott. Lastly, Johnson claims to have spoken to a third girl who was abducted with the Grimes sisters but escaped. She was 14 years old at the time and did not come forward out of fear. Charles Leroy Melquist was convicted for the murder of Bonnie Lee Scott and sentenced to 99 years in prison. He served 11 years at a sentence before his release and later married and had two children. Melquist was never officially implicated in the Grimes killings. The case of the Grimes sister remains unsolved. However, a Facebook group administered by Johnson called Help Solve Chicago's Grimes sisters' murder today has around 2,000 members. 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. And you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the show's Weirdos Facebook group on the contact social page at WeirdDarkness.com. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, click on Tell Your Story. 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. Real Cases of Rosemary's Baby is by Elisa A. Flowers for Rankers' True Stories. The cursed film Rosemary's Baby is by Rosemary Counter for Vanity Fair. Am I Pregnant with a Demon Spawn is by Jacob Shelton for Graveyard Shift. My Children See Dead People is by Kate Jackson for The Sun. The Unsolved Murder of the Grimes sisters is by Gary Sweeney for TheLineUp.com. And Space Cases is by John Lemelman for Rankers' Space Page. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. James 1, verse 12, Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. And a final thought, it's an African proverb. If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, our next Weirdo Watch Party is coming up fast. It's Friday, February 9th. A gruesome two-sum of Graveyard Cinema, Horrible Henry and Mad Marty are presenting 1950's Quick Sand starring Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre. I suppose you'll know what you're getting into. In the film, a man takes $20 from his employer to go on a date, planning to replace the money the next day. But he falls increasingly into more disastrous circumstances and further in need of more money, and it spirals out of control. Join us Friday, February 9th for Quick Sand. It's free to watch online, and you can chat along with the rest of us Weirdos as we watch the movie together. The show begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain and 5 p.m. Pacific. You can watch a trailer for the film and watch horror hosts and schlocky B-movies anytime, day or night on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. I want that coat and I'm gonna get it for $2,000 for whatever it takes. 1950's Quick Sand starring Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre. Friday, February 9th on the Weirdo Watch Party page. 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.