 This episode is dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces and first responders. Whether you are currently serving or have served in the past, you are appreciated. It is because of your courage and sacrifice that we enjoy the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. And I for one appreciate every single one of you for protecting what many of us take for granted. So thank you. One man, a hairdresser, tells the story of a female client whose hair he was cutting. He had never met her before, and she seemed like a perfectly ordinary, pleasant woman. Then she said something that made him focus on her face. As he looked into her eyes he felt a sudden, soul-shattering chill. He saw something else, something not human staring back at him. I instantly backed away, he said. He had to excuse himself and go into a back room where he stood shaking and on the verge of tears. It took him some moments before he could bring himself to go back out and finish cutting the woman's hair. She paid her bill and walked out. He never saw her again. Is it possible for us to truly see evil in someone? I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up this hour. In January 1966, three children vanished from the seaside suburb of Glen Elk in Adelaide, Australia. Was the sudden disappearance of the Beaumont Children murder, misadventure, or something else? Stories like Sweeney Todd and Soylent Green, warning spoilers, include the imagery of humans eating humans. But when it happens in real life, we still somehow find it morbidly fascinating, even entertaining. But first, some people say they can sense good or bad energy when they enter a place or meet other people. Is this scientifically possible? We begin with that story. 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 in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter, and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know and more. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Is it really possible to pick up good or bad vibes in a particular place or person? If so, if humans can feel good or bad vibes, then how and by which means are these emotional states transferred? Scientists have long been skeptical about the subject, but it seems the first evidence of the perception of good and bad energy is slowly emerging. The study of human chemo signaling is a relatively new field and there is much we still don't know. Researchers have investigated human capacity to communicate fear, stress, and anxiety via body odor from one person to another. It's known that many animal species transmit information via chemical signals, but the extent to which these chemo signals play a role in human communication have long been a mystery. Some years ago, researchers from the Utrecht University in the Netherlands tested whether odor can transmit a sense of fear to others. They asked a group of men to watch either a scary or disgusting video while wearing a certain t-shirt. The men followed a strict protocol to avoid possible contamination. For two days prior to the collection, they were not allowed to smoke, engage in excessive exercise, or consume odorous food or alcohol. They were also instructed to use scent-free personal care products and detergents provided by the experimenter. Later, the shirts were collected and given to women to smell. Scientists observed women's facial expressions and discovered that those who received the fear-sweat shirts showed fearful expressions, and those who had gotten disgust-based shirts made disgusted ones. The result of the study was that chemo signals act as a medium through which people can be emotionally synchronized outside of conscious awareness. In a follow-up study, it was confirmed that positive emotions could be transmitted in the same way. Some scientists suggest that it's possible we can pick up good or bad energy in a particular place. Basically, what we sense is linked to our perception of positive or negative chemo signals left over in that particular environment. This means that if you enter a room where something horrible causing fear has happened, you may actually feel bad vibes. Those who were present in the room left negative chemo signals that you pick up. What's unknown is how long such chemo signals are present in the environment. It's also unclear how the human brain processes chemo signals, and while a reaction evolves quickly, it's undetermined how long it lasts. Many would consider these abilities as a sixth sense, but why limit our senses to six? Actually, according to scientists, humans can have between nine and 21 senses in total. The original idea that humans have only five senses is pure myth. Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, is credited with the traditional classification of the five-sense organs, sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. Aristotle was wrong, but the myth of five senses persists. Currently, there is no concrete definition of what constitutes a sense, but according to most researchers, a sense is a feeling or perception produced through the organs of touch, taste, etc., or resulting from a particular condition of some part of the body. In order for us to have a sense, there needs to be a sensor. Each sensor is tuned to one specific sensation. For example, there are sensors in your eyes that can detect light. The five senses mentioned by Aristotle are what we call traditional senses, but there are also additional senses such as equilibrioception, simply known as the sense of balance. It helps prevent humans and animals from falling over when standing or moving. Proprioception, the perception of one's body in space or the body's position. Even if a person is blindfolded, he or she knows through proprioception if an arm is above the head or hanging by the side of the body. Thermoception is the sense of heat. Specialized cellular sense receptors, thermoreceptors, allow the detection of cold and hot temperatures. It means we know which object is hot without touching it. Nociception is the ability to feel pain. Magnetoception is the ability to detect magnetic fields. Unlike birds, humans do not have a strong sense of magnetoception, but we still have a certain orientation when detecting the Earth's magnetic field. We also have stretch receptors. These are found in such places as the lungs, bladder, stomach, blood vessels, and the gastrointestinal tract. Our chemo receptors help us detect chemicals in the environment. Familiarity is part of our recognition memory. A strong sense of familiarity can occur without any recollection, for example, in cases of deja vu. Hunger and thirst are also senses. The sense of time is still debated, but researchers have discovered humans have an astonishing accurate sense of time, particularly when younger. Other senses are pressure, itch, muscle tension. Many people would also say that intuition is a sense, but there is still not enough conclusive evidence to add that to our sense list officially. However, more and more scientists are becoming convinced some humans are able to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning. Scientists who study the phenomenon say it is a very real ability that can be identified in lab experiments and visualized on brain scans. What is certain is that humans certainly do have more than five senses. Combined, all these senses could also play a vital role in picking up good or bad energy. The idea that we can pick up good or bad energy from someone or someplace has often been relegated to the realm of the supernatural, but our scientific knowledge continues to increase and we may one day learn more about this interesting subject. The next time you walk into an empty room and feel good or bad vibes or come up to someone and feel a sense of evil, you may not be imagining things. Maybe something very good or bad really did happen there once, or something very evil is in that person you are with. When Weird Darkness returns, stories like Sweeney Todd and Soylent Green include the imagery of humans eating humans, but when it happens in real life, we still somehow find it morbidly fascinating. The Butcher of Chicago, up next. If you like watching horror movies, you want to check out the Monster Channel at WeirdDarkness.com. It has horror hosts, B horror movies, retro TV commercials and a whole lot more. You can watch it any time, absolutely free, 24-7-365 on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Just go to WeirdDarkness.com and click on the Weirdo Watch Party page to get your horror fix. This story may seem, if not as old as time, still pretty old. It's the story of the demon barber of Fleet Street, Dickens' Sweeney Todd character of the string of pearls who like to make pies out of people. It's the story of Soylent Green for that matter, the apocalyptic food stuff that's just a little more palatable than death. Everyone loves the story of the dinner made out of one's neighbor. In Chicago, there are several such stories. The first is the one most everyone knows, the story of Adolf Lutkert, the sausage king of Chicago, is an old story. Lutkert went down in history known for killing his wife in his Diversity Avenue Sausage Factory and grinding her up into sausage. According to legend, the resulting delicacy was in high demand by the community. The ghost of Luisa Lutkert was so troublesome to the man who bought the Lutkert house later that he had it moved a block away, but Luisa moved with the house, so he had the house moved again, or so they say. The factory is high-end condos now. For the moment, the residents claim that all is quiet. The engineer says the basement is sometimes a little unrestful though. When the author and web manager of ChicagoHauntings.com was first married, she and her husband bought a house up in the Indian Woods area along Indian Road near Central and Elston. They used to shop at the jewel in Jefferson Park. A neighbor told her that a butcher there back in the 70s once killed someone, butchered the body and packaged it for sale before being arrested. He was connected to a high-ranking cop and, being back in the day, it was not made public. I'd imagine this kind of thing happens a lot more than we know. A story I heard many years ago was one that still remains very mysterious. It's the story of the butcher of Palos Park. A gentleman who grew up in Palos Park and who now lives in Las Vegas says the butcher shop where these events took place was housed in the building where the famous Plush Horse Ice Cream Parlor now stands on Southwest Highway. He verified that many businesses in the area opened in 1893 when there was a mass exodus of single men and families from the building of the World's Fair in Chicago. However, the building which houses the Plush Horse was built in 1893 as a house, but there was a general store built by the wife of the couple who built it while the husband was off fighting the Spanish-American War. She built a store so that her husband would have a job when he came home. A butcher shop was added later, but that is where the history trails off until the Plush Horse opens there in the 1930s. We can't know if the Plush Horse was the site where the butcher of Palos Park committed his dastardly deeds, nor if any such deeds were committed at all, but for those who want to know the tale, keep listening. And the next time you drive along the tree-shrouded roads of Palos, you may wonder just what the shadows of history hold. Just southwest of Chicago proper lies a sprawling expanse of slough-studded forest, one of the largest preserve areas in Northern Illinois and, many believe, one of the most haunted regions in America. Though the story to be told plays out in one of this area's many villages, it cannot be told without setting the larger scene because Palos Park is nestled in one of the nation's most mysterious districts and Chicago's most supernatural realm. The area, known locally as Palos, is comprised of three separate villages, Palos Heights, Palos Hills and Palos Park, and these three towns slumber on the eastern border of the most underpopulated part of this very haunted territory. The district is bounded on its north end by Phantom Riddled Archer Avenue, home to Chicago's most famous ghost, Resurrection Mary, an erstwhile Southside Polish girl who has, for more than 70 years, hitchhiked this old Indian road as far south as Willow Springs. Her stomping grounds are also home to the so-called Sobbing Woman of Archer Woods Cemetery, the gangland ghosts of Rico Dee's Restaurant, an old Capone speakeasy, and the Phantom Automobiles tied in legend to the 1956 double murder of little Barbara and Patricia Grimes, whose frozen bodies were eventually found at nearby Devil's Creek. Archer Avenue was built in the early 1800s by Irish immigrants who settled in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood near present-day Chinatown. The building of the road progressed in conjunction with a much larger, more significant project, the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a waterway that aimed to, at long last, connect by water the Chicago River and the Illinois River, thereby connecting the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Constructing the road over an old Indian trail that snaked southwest out of the city, immigrants worked under conditions that were often slave-like, going without pay or food, and sometimes without water, for days or weeks at a time. It is estimated that many hundreds of canal workers died along the canal route. Indeed, one of Archer's most haunted sites is the churchyard of St. James, established near the Sag Bridge, which was founded to accommodate the bodies of the many dead canal workers. The suffering of the Illinois and Michigan Canal workers certainly left a preternatural imprint on this atmospheric road, but other factors have contributed to the haunting of Archer Avenue can also go a long way in explaining the haunting of the entire region south of it, most notably the presence of water. Even before the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and with less fanfare the Calamite Sag Channel and the Illinois Sanitary and Ship Canal, the Des Plaines River flowed through this heavily forested land, a landscape covered with lakes, ponds and sluffs. Though it was long believed by many cultures that water keeps ghosts at bay, parapsychologists today contend that paranormal manifestations are actually encouraged by the presence of water, an excellent conductor for the electromagnetic energies that ghosts are thought to be. Another contributor to the paranormality of this region may be the sheer underpopulation of much of it. The Chicago area is rife with forest preserves, some of them even within the city limits, and these areas have long been notorious as hotbeds of supernatural phenomena. Why? Theories abound. We'll learn more about the Butcher of Chicago when Weird Darkness returns. We now continue learning more about the Butcher of Chicago, and the Chicago area is rife with forest preserves, some of them even within the city limits, and these areas have long been notorious as hotbeds of supernatural phenomena. Why? Well, the theories abound. Of course, haunted houses most often harbor their ghosts in the attic or basement, areas with infrequent human visitors. Silly as it may seem, ghosts seem to prefer to hide from flesh and blood cohabiters rather than mix in with their everyday lives. It would follow then that forest preserves would be perfect habitats for Chicago ghosts with a distaste for the hustle and bustle of urban life. Other theories, however, suggest that it is humans and not haunts that have infested Chicago's preserves. Some preserve visitors have attested to experiencing chanting and singing by unseen people. At times, this chanting seems to be done by dozens of voices. Others have reported glimpsing apparitions of hooded or cloaked figures, including those seen at Redgate Woods along Archer Avenue and at the notorious Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, part of the Rubio Woods Preserve, an overgrown woodland osuary that remains one of the most haunted cemeteries in the nation. These audio and visual apparitions are often tied to the ritualistic activities that have been reported in Chicago area preserves since at least the 1960s. Those who make the connection believe that these rituals, performed largely by amateurs, have conjured up nature or even evil spirits that their unskilled conjurers could bring but not send back. The little village of Panelspark is today pure woodland serenity, a pocket of humanity comprised largely of mid-20th century ranch houses bordering the great forested preserves of southwest Chicago. Residents commute to Chicago to work but thoroughly enjoy the riding staples, fishing holes and hiking trails of their home village. Don't be fooled by this town's peaceful looks, though. The place holds a terrible secret indeed, if the legends of this town are true. At the foot of a hill on the grounds of Panelspark's unassuming interactive children's farm, a petting zoo and interpretive center catering to school groups is buried ahead and only the head of a horrifying local maniac, the demon butcher of Panelspark. Herman Butcher was one of a number of small businessmen who migrated to the Panels region during the chaos of the Columbian expedition in 1892, when the influx of visitors to Chicago, many of them eventually settling there, drove a significant section of the urban population to quieter realms outside the city limits. The town of Palos was originally dubbed Trenton at its founding in the 1830s. In 1850, the village was renamed by its postmaster, whose ancestors had sailed from Palos de la Frontera with Christopher Columbus. In the days of its establishment, Palospark was a farming community in a region that had been alive with Indians and French explorers in the 1700s, but the building of the Wabash Railroad was the key to its survival, as it allowed non-farming residents with Chicago ties to establish homes in Palos beginning in the late 1800s. Butcher, whose family name came from the long-held family business, was one of several German immigrants who set up butcher shops in Palos in the late 19th century, but it wasn't long before he was the only butcher left in town. The significant depression that swept the United States in the 1890s did not miss Palos, and butchers here were pinned to the wall by the livestock shortage that accompanied it. Fortunately, Herman Butcher was not only well to do, having enjoyed a thriving business in Chicago before his exodus, he was also well connected to executives and managers at the best Chicago meat suppliers. Though he was forced, like his colleagues, to raise his prices, Butcher was able to remain in business. No one knows whether Butcher's insanity stretched back farther than his life in Palos, but what happened during his days there had made residents of Palos afraid to dig more deeply. The atrocities began one afternoon when a large shipment of beef arrived at Butcher's shop. Like most Butchers of the day, Herman retained an apprentice who learned at his side the art and craft of butchering meat. Herman was known in the village to drive his apprentice too hard. With a bad back and a sharp tongue, Butcher pawned off most of the daily workload onto his young charge, who bore the increasing burden with the patience of a saint. On this particular day, though, the shipment was larger than usual. Butcher pressed his apprentice to carry every parcel of it down to the basement meat locker without a lick of assistance from the master. Unfortunately, a particularly heavy package of beef caused the young man to falter on the steep steps. He tumbled to the basement, breaking his neck with a fatal snap. Butcher was horrified. He knew he had a reputation for working his apprentice into the ground and of disciplining him with his foul temper. Because of it, he'd been on unfriendly terms with the boy's family for months. Would the apprentice's family think the boy's death had been Herman's fault? That he'd driven the boy too hard or worse and a flare of temper pushed the boy down the stairs? Strained by months of trying to keep the business afloat, Butcher wasn't willing to chance it. If he were accused of contributing in any way to his apprentice's death, who knew what could happen? And Butcher was sick of worrying and struggling. In a moment of desperation, Butcher stashed the apprentice's corpse behind the parcels of beef that the young man had just unloaded. He locked the freezer door and hoped for the best. It wasn't long before the boy was missed, but inquiries as to his whereabouts were met by Butcher's own feigned bewilderment and anger. I have no idea where he is, Herman claimed, but when you find him, tell him to get into work immediately. Butcher claimed he hadn't seen the boy since he'd left work two days before. He suggested the boy had been unhappy with the job and perhaps had decided to hop a Chicago-bound train to make his fortune in a more pleasing apprenticeship. Despite his cool demeanor, the heat on Herman increased as the week wore on. Adding stress was the always dwindling meat supply. When fair for his customers was at an all-time low, Butcher took action. After closing up shop one evening, he made his way to the basement meat locker. Working by the light of a dim lantern, he carved up a portion of the apprentice's chilled left leg and packaged it in butcher paper. At home that night, Herman roasted the leg meat and sat down to dinner. Sampling his morbid fare, he found it surprisingly similar to beef, but with an added sweetness that rendered it quite delectable. Early the next morning, Butcher arrived to the shop and spent several hours butchering and displaying his gruesome offerings. When the first customers arrived, they were delighted to find the fine-looking cuts of meat and in short time, every one was sold. The next day, nervous Butcher was waiting for the verdict on his grisly new supply. To his delight, the same customers returned, having found Herman's beef scrumptious. Luckily, Butcher had carved up most of the apprentice's remaining corpse so his customers went away happy again. But this couldn't last. Or could it? Butcher found himself newly perplexed. If he could not supply more of the flesh his customers craved, then what would they do? Likely, try to find more of the strangely delicious beef themselves by contacting his suppliers. This simply could not be allowed. The supply would have to continue. When the last scraps and bones had been sold, Butcher launched a fresh plan to protect his ever floundering business. Each evening for weeks he made his way out to the railroad yard and singled out a hungry-looking hobo. Promising food in exchange for some light labor, Herman lured his victim back to his shop where he fed them a drugged dinner, washed down with potent schnapps until they dozed off. When the unfortunate vagrant was suitably comatose, Butcher brought out his cleaver and hacked him up in his sleep, working late into the night to attractively arrange the cuts for sale the next day. Soon, however, word spread through the hobo camp that something untoward was afoot. Overnight, the camp emptied and Butcher was again without meat for his shop. By this time, Butcher had passed the point of no return. One by one, in the days that followed, the children of Palos began to go missing. Besides the hobos who could be plied with food and liquor, these little ones were all that Butcher in his aged state could handle. Worse, with the first child's murder came even greater reviews of Butcher's product. Herman's customers of course found the latest offerings the most succulent of all, so Butcher was insanely encouraged to provide more and more of the sickening stock. Eventually, the locals began to suspect that one of their own villagers was behind the recent straying of child abductions. Working with an assortment of tips and driven by the hunches of the apprentice's family, a group of enraged villagers stormed Butcher's shop late one night searching it from top to bottom and finding in the basement meat locker a shocking array of packaged body parts and the remains of a seven-year-old child hanging from a meat hook. Making their way to Butcher's home, the villagers forced entry and dragged Herman out onto the lawn where they butchered him with his own cleaver. The final blow severed Butcher's head, which the people of Palos buried at Indian Hill across from Oak Hill Cemetery. Today, Palos Park remains a uniquely peaceful suburb of Chicago. The greatest beneficiary of the preserves is surrounded. Residents enjoy horseback riding, fishing, boating and hiking in the beautiful woodlands that abut the village, and even the homes here nestle in lovely woodland settings. Still, at Oak Hill Cemetery, all is not at rest. After the slaughter of Herman Butcher and the burying of his head at Indian Hill, the murderer's headless remains were interred separately in a plot near the center of Oak Hill Cemetery, marked by a stone bearing only the name of Butcher. But they haven't remained there. Residents of Palos Park tell of the body moving ever closer to the head. In fact, the grave has mysteriously moved twice already, from the center of the graveyard toward the road to a plot near the pond, then to its current site along Southwest Highway itself. Is it only a matter of time before Butcher's body returns to its unbutchered state, rejoining its head across the road? Of course, skeptics claim that the Butcher remains have been repeatedly moved by decidedly unsupernatural means. The water table at the cemetery is such, they say, that certain graves have become waterlogged over the years, forcing the caretakers to move them, sometimes more than once. A visitor to the children's farm on a warm summer afternoon seems to chase away all thoughts of ghosts. The air smells of hay and pneumone grass, and the sounds of young animals mingle with the laughter of children, visitors to the farm enjoying its pleasant natural surroundings. Wandering away from the animals and the outbuildings, however, yields a distinctly different feeling, especially if one wanders toward Indian Hill. Is Herman Butcher really buried with other Butcher family members under the tombstone at Oak Hill Cemetery? Is the story really true? Is the plush horse ice cream parlor really the site where these terrible tales played out? And is the head of the Butcher Apollos Park buried at Indian Hill? What do you think? Up next on Weird Darkness, in January 1966, three children vanished from the seaside suburb of Glen Elk in Adelaide, Australia. Was the sudden disappearance of the Beaumont children murder, misadventure, or something else? That story is up next on Weird Darkness. When three children vanished from the seaside suburb of Glen Elk in Adelaide, Australia, Wednesday, December 26, 1966, the greatest land, sea, and air search in southern Australian history began. Today, we are no closer to solving the case, and the disappearance of the Beaumont children remains an unfathomable mystery fused eternally with the Australian psyche. Within days, police dismissed the possibility of misadventures and regarded the matter as one of abduction and homicide, but there has never been a definitive suspect, and the story endures as Australia's most captivating and iconic cold case. The circumstance that led authorities to conclude foul play was involved are witness sightings of a man seen frolicking with the children on the day they went missing. This fact alone could be incidental. Australia in the 1960s was a far more conservative society, and the individual scene may have been an innocent party, reluctant to go to the police. There has only ever been one credible suspect, and this man who came to the attention of police very late in life is possibly Australia's most prolific child killer. The question of whether they did indeed meet with murder or misadventure needs to be revisited. When Adelaide's households woke Wednesday morning, it was already very hot. The mercury in the thermometer was climbing, and the temperature was to reach 40 degrees Celsius. A little after 8.30 a.m., Jane, 9, her sister Anna, 7, and brother Grant, 4 left their home in Summerton Park and walked along Harding Street to the corner. Nancy Beaumont waited by the front gate and waved to her children as they stepped aboard the bus for the five-minute ride to Glenelg. By 2 p.m., Nancy became concerned when they had not come home. She alerted her husband an hour later upon its return from work. Jim and Nancy then began looking for the children, and at 5 p.m., they went to the police. Over the next 36 hours, the largest mobilization in Australian history for missing persons was mounted. Police, along with the army, navy, and air force and thousands of civilians, fanned out in all directions in a desperate search. It was though the children may have met with an accident, either by drowning or covered over by sand or soil in a landslide or cave-in. All seaside suburbs in the foreshore were searched to a distance 30 miles south of Adelaide. The sandhills of North Glenelg and and amongst the rocks at the base of the cliff faces were the scene of a more intensive search. Stormwater drainpipe openings onto the beaches were checked, sewage channels explored, and police divers scoured the murky depths of the Boat Haven. It was drained a week later as a police launch kept watch as the water flowed into the sea. Neighborhoods were traversed where land was being subdivided into vacant lots. Some blocks were in the process of excavation and new homes under construction. If the earth looked freshly disturbed, police cadets made diggings, search parties sprouted, and well-meaning citizens made forays on their own. Nothing was ever found. By Friday, January 28, police began to discount the theory the children had met with an accident. So great was the search and utility of resources that little hope was now reserved for an outcome other than a tragic one. On January 29, Saturday, information was received from a 74-year-old local resident. The woman said she saw a man playing with the children on the lawn of Colley Reserve at the beach between 11.00 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. The younger girl and little boy were jumping over him as he lay on a towel on the grass, and the older girl was flicking a towel at him. He appeared to be encouraging the children. She described the man as being in his late 30s, about 6'1", slim billed with a thin face, light-colored hair, deeply suntanned, although with a fair complexion and almost certainly Australian. He was wearing navy blue swimming trunks with a white stripe down each side. On Wednesday, February 2, a middle-aged woman gave a statement to police. She was sitting on a bench at the beach alongside an elderly couple when a man and the three children walked up to her. He asked them, Have you seen anybody messing around with our clothes? Our money has been pinched. She said the description given by four other people on the day was accurate. Detectives regarded her account as reliable in corroborating the story given by the 74-year-old woman. A staff member at Wenzel's cake shop on and who knew the children from previous visits said she saw them around 12.30pm when they purchased a pie and pastries and a couple of other items. She said Jane paid with a one-pound note. Nancy Beaumont, the children's mother, had only given Jane six or eight shillings, enough to cover the cost of lunch and bus fares home. This anomaly led detectives to conclude correctly that the trio had met someone who gave them the pound note. Ms. Daphne Gregory reported seeing Jane, Arna and Grant Beaumont with a man on Australia Day. She said that he was in his mid-30s with light brown hair which was neatly parted and brushed. She went on to say that he walked with his arms bowed like an ape. This description was entitled in news articles as the man with the crazy walk. So what exactly did happen to the Beaumont children? Well, unfortunately, I don't have enough time, the hour is almost over, but I will tell this entire story in the sudden death overtime content which you can find in the Weird Darkness podcast which I'll be uploading and posting immediately after tonight's show. It's free to listen to, just search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll hear not only tonight's radio show but also the extra sudden death overtime content I prepared that I didn't have time to fit in because I went over time. I upload episodes for the podcast 7 nights per week and if you are one of my patrons, you get a commercial-free copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com or you can search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness and please tell others about the show who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call in to the dark line toll-free and tell your own true paranormal story or a story that's happened to someone you know. That number is toll-free, 1-877-277-5944. Again, the toll-free number is 1-877-277-5944. You can also email me anytime at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes, which you can find in the podcast after the show. The hairdresser story used to begin this episode is from Tess Garretson. Sensing evil in places and people was written by Cynthia Mackenzie for Message to Eagle. The Butchers of Chicago is from Chicago Hauntings. The disappearance of the Beaumont children was written by Stephen Carragess for Crime Traveller. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 1 Peter 5 verse 5 Be submissive to those who are older. All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. In a final thought from Barbara Johnson, never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. An extremely compelling case of alien abduction is that of Linda Napolitano. Napolitano has claimed that she was abducted by the so-called Greys who floated her from a closed bedroom window into a hovering UFO. As time went by, several different eyewitnesses came forward to substantiate her claims. Several bystanders, including a well-known politician, actually saw the incident happen. I'm Darren Marlar. And this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar. And this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up this hour. In December of 2019, the Pentagon did a 180 in its claim that it was investigating UFO activity. It now says certain programs previously said to have done so did not have anything to do with aliens and extraterrestrials. Queen Elizabeth I once said, I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too. And it appears she might also have had a stomach for murder. A young girl's imaginary friend turns out to not be imaginary and they have found her bones to prove it. A bizarre health movement from the 1800s required patients to walk everywhere only on their toes and the balls of their feet. Always. Why? Well, we'll look at the bizarre health practice of Ralstonism. But first, was a woman in New York City abducted in 1989 by a UFO? We begin there. 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 in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, watch streaming, be horror movies, and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know, and more. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. One of the landmark cases of UFO abduction occurred November 30, 1989, in Manhattan, New York. The case centers around one Linda Napolitano who claims to have been abducted from her closed apartment window into awaiting UFO by the Greys and subjected to medical procedures. The case became well known through the efforts of researcher Bud Hopkins. The event began at 3 a.m. After the experience, Linda had almost no memory of what had occurred. She would occasionally recall a brief moment of what had happened. She could recall actually being taken, and even the room she was examined in, but nothing more. The case was pieced together by the means of regressive hypnosis, witness statements, and the actual passing of time as her mind began to heal itself. It would be a year after the actual abduction before Hopkins began receiving mail from two men who claimed to have seen the abduction. At first Hopkins was suspect of their testimony, but in time their reports would help build the case into one of the most well-documented alien abductions in ufology. Without any contact with Napolitano, their report agreed in all aspects with Linda's memories. Eventually the two men would be identified as bodyguards of senior United Nations statesman Javier Perez de Cueo who was visiting Manhattan at the time of the abduction. The bodyguards claimed that Cueo was visibly shaken as he watched the abduction. The three men claimed that they saw a woman being floated through the air, along with three small beings, into a large flying craft. Linda, who was 41 years old at the time, described part of her ordeal as such. I'm standing up on nothing, and they take me out all the way up, way above the building. Ooh, I hope I don't fall. The UFO opens up almost like a clam, and then I'm inside. I see benches similar to regular benches, and they're bringing me down a hallway. Doors open like sliding doors. Inside are all these lights and buttons and a big, long table. There would eventually be more witnesses who come forward with their accounts of what they'd seen. Hopkins kept the details of the eyewitness testimony private until he felt the case was complete enough to release publicly. One of the most striking accounts came from Janet Kimball, who was a retired telephone operator. She had seen the abduction also, but thought she was watching a movie scene being filmed. It would be some time before Hopkins discovered the name of the United Nations statesman. When he did, he knew that if he could get a man of such distinction to come forward with his testimony, it would be the smoking gun of alien abduction and put ufology into the hands of the scientific community at last. Hopkins' wish would not come true. Although it has been said that Queller met privately with Hopkins, he would not go public. Queller did aid Hopkins in verifying details of the case through correspondence, but explained to Hopkins why he could not go public with his testimony. This would always leave a gap in the investigation. Although there were other witnesses and Linda's own account of her terrible ordeal, despite some ups and downs, Hopkins probably did his finest work in bringing together the story of the abduction of Linda Napolitano. When Weird Darkness returns, in December of 2019, the Pentagon did a 180 in its claim that it was investigating UFO activity. It now says certain programs previously said to have done so did not have anything to do with aliens and extraterrestrials. Later, we'll check out one of the calls that came in recently on the dark line. Plus, a young girl's imaginary friend turns out to not be imaginary and they have found her bones to prove it. These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. Welcome back to Weird Darkness, I'm Darren Marlar. If you're looking for Weird Darkness merchandise, you can find it in the Weird Darkness store. You can search through all the merchandise by clicking on store at WeirdDarkness.com. After two years of constant media buzz following the bombshell announcement in December of 2017 that the Pentagon had been investigating UFOs or UAPs as they prefer to call them now, the government dropped another bombshell in December 2019, or perhaps we should call it a curveball, as John Greenwald Jr. of the Black Vault described it. According to a Pentagon spokesperson, neither the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, AATIP, or its progenitor, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, AAWSAP, were related to investigating UFOs. Claiming they want to correct the record and clean up some inaccuracies, the Pentagon now says that AATIP was not a UFO or UAP program. Quote, neither AATIP nor AAWSAP were UAP related, said Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough in an email to the Black Vault. The purpose of AATIP was to investigate foreign advanced aerospace weapon system applications with future technology projections over the next 40 years and to create a center of expertise on advanced aerospace technologies, she said. Since 2017, details have been scarce. However, the Department of Defense's latest position that AATIP was not the UFO program seems to represent one of their most dramatic aboutfaces on the issue since the program was first revealed. This caused quite the stir in the ufology community, as you could probably imagine. Some were pointing out that the language used in Gough's email seemed carefully worded and left some wiggle room for them. It was noted that the phrase, Foreign Advanced Aerospace Weapons System, is somewhat ambiguous because the word foreign simply means not from the United States in this context and that could extend to the rest of the universe, not just foreign countries on earth. But that would seem to be in direct contradiction to the opening statement saying that neither program was UAP related. We'll get to the possible implications in a moment, but let's first assume that we should take Gough at her word and say that AATIP did have nothing to do with UFOs. This means that either the Pentagon or the people at the To the Stars Academy, most specifically Luis Elizondo, are lying. From the moment that TTSA came onto the scene, they claimed that Elizondo not only ran the AATIP program, but that it definitely involved investigating UFOs. In fact, Elizondo said he left government service because of his frustration over the slow pace of those investigations. However, Susan Gough is the same spokesperson who previously said that Elizondo wasn't even involved with AATIP to say nothing of being in charge of it. According to Gough, Elizondo quote, had no assigned responsibilities unquote in AATIP and was not assigned or detailed to the Defense Intelligence Agency. So basically, TTSA is saying that Elizondo ran the AATIP program and that it involved investigating UFOs. The Pentagon is saying he wasn't even associated with the program and at least now it wasn't investigating UFOs anyway. Both of these things cannot be simultaneously true. Now let's get back to why the Pentagon would put out this statement. Elizondo gets the benefit of the doubt here because it's the Pentagon that's been changing their story. They've been telling reporters from across the spectrum for two years now that AATIP was created at the request of Harry Reid and that they were investigating unidentified aerial phenomena. Heck, they were the ones that came up with the UAP acronym because the term UFO was so loaded. The Navy came out and admitted that the objects in those three famous videos were UAPs because they had no clue what they were. And now we get a 180-degree reversal? Two possibilities come to mind. The first is that they've grown uncomfortable with how close TTSA and others have been getting to uncovering whatever is responsible for all of this activity and they've decided to shut down the flow of information and clam up. That would mean that there is no Big D disclosure on the horizon from the government and we are stuck figuring it out on our own. The other, more disturbing possibility, is that the Pentagon actually does know the source of those flying objects and possibly that they actually are some deep black bag project of ours, the Russians or the Chinese. That would make Gough's statement true if the objects really are not unidentified after all, but it would also demonstrate that a large number of their previous statements were fabrications. I don't put much stock in this second explanation though because it would require such a massive leap in technology that most scientists don't think it is currently within our grasp. Unless and until the government offers up any further clarification, your guess is probably as good as anybody else's. But something here simply doesn't add up as things currently stand. Investigators are unsure how possible human remains got inside a home's insulation. A Russell County, Georgia fifth grader is convinced bones found in her home recently belonged to a mysterious friend who told her about being chopped up years ago. Investigators have few clues about how and when the bones got inside the insulation under the living room floor of the mobile home on Jowers Road near East Alabama Motor Speedway. The 10-year-old, Stephanie Ogden and her family have lived in the home since 1998. A great-grandparents John and Marion Stewart own the home. The bones were found as the Ogdens, who are renovating the home, pulled out boards in the living room floor. Russell County Sheriff's Lieutenant Heath Taylor said an initial analysis shows the bones are from the pelvis and leg of a child at least 10 years old, and the child has been dead at least 10 years. Another bone was found the next day. The area where the bones were found had duct tape over the insulation. There's an odor there that doesn't belong, claims the homeowner. The bones probably don't have enough marrow to do DNA tests. Because the trailer has been moved several times between Georgia and Alabama, investigators now are faced with the daunting task of trying to track down missing children from a wide area in two states. Officer Taylor said nommarks on the bones may indicate a rodent placed them inside the insulation. Dirt and plant material on the bones indicate that they were outside at one time. 10-year-old Stephanie said a black girl in a white dress started visiting her room when she was about five years old. The girl was friendly, but she told Stephanie a horrible story. She told me that somebody put her in the floor, Stephanie said. She said he had a mask on and that he chopped her up. She didn't know who the person was because he had a mask on. Stephanie, a fifth grader at Dixie Elementary School, now thinks that the bones that were found in her home belong to her invisible imaginary playmate. It's possible because that girl was a ghost, Stephanie said. Nobody knows about them. 10-year-old Mary Ann Stephanie's great-grandmother said Stephanie used to tell her family about the visitor, but the adults always dismissed the stories as being an imaginative child's fabrication based partly on horror movies. Stephanie used to always ask for two glasses of soda when she would play outside, one glass for her and one for her friend. The grisly discoveries in her home have convinced Mary Ann that the girl's playmate is actually a tormented soul seeking peace. I'm not a psychic and I don't believe in some of that stuff, she said, but I believe this is a soul who has not been put to rest. Officer Taylor said detectives can't base their work on ghost stories, saying do you have any idea how hard it is to investigate a ghost? Investigators are looking through databases of missing children to find any links to the trailer's location, but Taylor doesn't hold out much hope of solving the case. It's just one of those cases where there's just not a lot to go on, he said. When Weird Darkness returns, is it possible that Queen Elizabeth I was a murderer? We'll look into the allegations up next. The allure of royal family is an easy one to accept. Tales of handsome princes and beautiful princesses do not always belong in fairy tales. The royal family of today's UK is among the most talked about and captivating of all monarchies. For centuries, stories of prowness on battlefields and with political machinations have made the royal lineage popular the world over. Some members have proven to be more fondly remembered than others. The Tudor dynasty is a fine case in point. Most people know of Queen Elizabeth I. However, what few people are aware of is that she may have been complicit in a murderous scandal involving her intimate friend and possible love interest Robert Dudley and his wife Amy Robbsart. The Queen was famously quoted as saying, I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too. The comment is among the most famous of all speeches by royalty. Having the heart and stomach of a king, even one comparable to a king of England, is one thing. Could Elizabeth also have had a heart and stomach of a murderer? A cold-blooded one at that. Some armchair detectives have cast an ever-increasingly suspicious eye over the events of September 8, 1560. As a result, they have come to the conclusion that the death of Amy Dudley, maiden name Amy Robbsart, is not such an open and shut case. Several days before her 18th birthday, Amy Robbsart married Robert Dudley. No sooner had they issued their vows, the more cynical members of Tudor society began to question the marriage. Both of the newlywed's parents were nobles in their own right, and, like many of the time, were always seeking ways and means to consolidate and improve their fortunes. A marriage of convenience suited both sets of in-laws. Both would improve their standing in the courts of the monarchy. Additionally, their collective influence would increase. The marriage took place June 4, 1550 at the Royal Palace of Sheen. Edward VI was a guest of honor. The couple had an eventful marriage, much of the time they shifted addresses between numerous palaces and mansion houses, sometimes together, sometimes separately. A little over three years into their marriage, Robert was imprisoned in the Tower of London and sentenced to death, when his father, the Duke of Northumberland, tried to install Lady Jane Gray on the English throne. Amy could visit on a regular basis for the final year of her husband's confinement. Dudley only spent 15 months in the Tower, but had suffered financially in that time. When he was released in 1554, he made efforts to resurrect his name and fortune. Within a year of being released, Robert's father-in-law passed away. Several years on, he lost his mother-in-law as well. Amy's marriage contract, still in effect, meant that she inherited her parents' considerable wealth. As the marriage between Amy and Robert continued, outside events began to shape the destiny of England. Elizabeth and Robert had known one another from childhood. When she ascended to the throne in November 1558, one of her first proclamations was to create the new role, Master of the Horse, and give the position to Robert Dudley. In the new court, this was among the most privileged of all roles. No one else but the Master was able to physically touch the young Queen. Robert closely attended to her travels, accommodations, and everything to do with the royal stables and horses. Additionally, Robert's living quarters were adjacent to the Queen's bedchamber. This put him within scandalous proximity of her, and it may be that the two took advantage of their close living arrangement. Eighteen months before the unfortunate death of Amy Dudley, on April 19, 1559, the Count DeFaria wrote the following. During the last few days, Lord Robert has come so much into favor that he does whatever he likes with affairs. It is even said that Her Majesty visits him in his chamber every day and night. People talk of this freely, that they go so far as to say that his wife has a malady in one of her breasts and that the Queen is only waiting for her to die to marry Lord Robert. Also in 1559, the Ambassador to the Republic of Venice wrote, The Lord Robert Dudley is very intimate with Her Majesty. On this subject, I ought to report the opinion of many, but I doubt whether my letters may not miscarry or be read, whether it is better to keep silence than to speak ill. Although there were many suitors to Queen Elizabeth, many people believed that she was indeed waiting to marry Robert once Amy was out of the way. It was obvious to everyone present that Robert was the Queen's favorite consort. Some say she was in love with him. She was also quite possessive of Robert's time and attentions, and some say that her well-being depended on his presence. At one point, when he wanted to go overseas to take part in military affairs, she forbade it. Spouses could not attend court or official matters of state. Therefore, Amy was never around when Elizabeth and Robert were together. Some have also suggested that Elizabeth warned Amy to stay away or risk some kind of retribution. Robert Dudley was rapidly rising in power within the court. In 1559, the Queen appointed him Knight of the Garter, a highly restricted society of chivalry and honor. Meanwhile, Amy Dudley was dealing with the onset of depression. As well as the potential infidelity involving the reigning sovereign, there is also a theory that she might have been suffering what was called a malady in her breast. Amy allegedly convinced herself that the breast cancer was terminal. One of Amy's ladies in waiting claimed that Amy would pray to God to deliver her from desperation. Sunday, September 8, 1560, was a day of celebration. Our Lady Fair was taking place in Abingdon, close to Amy's residence, Cumner Place. The day began normally. Amy gave all of her servants time off to enjoy the day's festivities while she remained at home. It was only when the servants returned that they found the body of Amy Dudley laying at the foot of the stairs with a broken neck and a pair of deep wounds. Given how and where they had found her, plus the injuries that she had suffered, it was only natural to conclude that death occurred by means of an accident or a misadventure. However, some strange contradictions immediately challenged this logical conclusion. Researchers have reduced an original coroner's report with no mention of a broken neck. The pair of lacerations were in this report but no other injuries. This is enough for some people to doubt that her death was merely an accident. Another curious development followed two days after Amy's death. Elizabeth insisted that the news should be released to the public and that they officialize the cause of death as an accident. On the day of his wife's death, Robert Dudley was performing his official duties far away from home. However, his behavior was curious after he learned of Amy's death. There is some evidence of possible jury rigging going on behind the scenes. Dudley was rumored to have given Robert Smith, the jury foreman, a substantial quantity of velvet for tailoring. The new widower also requested a jury of discreet men. One of the jury members who went by the name of John Stevenson was an employee of Dudley. Additionally, Anthony Forster, who happened to own Comner Place, Amy's home, was given a payment of over £300 not long after Amy was found. This amount today would be £65,000. Other rumors circulated about Amy's death. Poison was a consideration alongside divorce. Some even went as far as to claim that Dudley and Elizabeth had had as many as five children together. Maybe some or all of these rumors were silly or idle gossip. What can never really be in doubt, though, is Dudley's desire to become a consort to Queen Elizabeth. Like his father before him, Dudley was intent on gaining as much power and influence as he was able. Perhaps this was unacceptable to someone who went too far and decided to take matters into his own hands. If this was the case, then who could that someone be? A common trend among heads of state is to have a circle of trusted individuals who oversee various political duties. Elizabeth was no different and would often seek the advice of the most loyal of all loyal subjects. Fewer were more loyal than Robert, but that could have posed a problem of its own. Queen Elizabeth's privy court was well aware of the Queen's apparent feelings for Robert Dudley. Perhaps some members of the privy court managed to persuade the Queen that a relationship with Dudley was not best for the nation. This cloak and dagger plot and counter plot might have been a ruse to get Elizabeth to play some role in the death of Amy Dudley in order to drum up a scandal that would discredit Robert. According to the Wikipedia entry, Elizabeth I of England, Elizabeth seriously considered marrying Dudley for some time. However, William Cecil, Nicholas Throckmorton, and some conservative peers made their disapproval unmistakably clear. There were even rumors that the nobility would rise up if the marriage took place. Outright execution or injury could ultimately end up causing more harm than good. If Elizabeth was actually complicit in the death of Amy Dudley by choice or coercion, it would prove to be a much more effective manner of halting Robert Dudley's rise toward the throne. Merely executing him for no real reason would surely have undermined Elizabeth's own position. By engineering an outcry of this magnitude, Elizabeth may have proven at an early stage of her sovereignty that she was the astute politician that history remembers. Any modern investigation into a death that has suspicious overtones to it will always begin with the immediate family or relatives. The police would have to determine the type of person that the victim was and do as much research into that person as possible. From there, the investigation would focus on those closest to the victim. In Tudor Times, there was hardly a police force worthy of the name, but there were still professionals who dedicated themselves to this purpose. Robert was an obvious suspect in any wrongdoing. Robert Dudley was nowhere near the house when Amy's life ended, but that doesn't mean that he was innocent of it. As alibis go, being in the presence of the Queen of England miles from the scene of a possible crime is quite a hefty one. It's not beyond all realms of possibility that Dudley hired or asked a person or person's unknown to act on his behalf. Without forensics, it would have been easy enough for someone to conclude that the young woman's neck broke in her fall or tumble. That would pretty much be the start and end of the investigation. One trope that is often used in detective fiction is the axiom who had the most to gain by the death of the deceased. Historian Allison Weir proposed that one-time courtier of the Elizabethan court, William Cecil, had a hand in the death of Amy Dudley. As the royal popularity of Robert Dudley increased, that of William Cecil began to wane. It's entirely possible and very likely that the men became bitter rivals to the point of obsession. Perhaps Cecil devised a plan against Dudley and used Dudley's own favoritism as a weapon against him. The announcement of Amy's death shocked the nation. Cecil might have seen the potential of a royal wedding and took the necessary steps to prevent that from happening. Even if the limited capability of the investigating team had managed to find proof of intent, the more popular consensus of opinion would point the finger of blame directly at Robert Dudley. If this was Cecil's gamble, it paid off. Dudley never did marry the queen. In that aspect, Cecil's plan worked, if he had a plan. One of the last things Amy Dudley did in her life was to insist that all servants take the day off to attend the fair taking place in Abingdon. Not all of them considered this to be acceptable behavior for a Sunday and some of them initially refused to go. However, Amy was insistent. Of all the servants, only one, Mrs. Odenjills, refused to leave the house. She did retire to her room though and left Amy alone for the day. The main problem with the suicide theory is that, at the time, it was considered to be a mortal sin and would lead to eternal damnation. Perhaps with a combination of depression, pain, illness and abandonment, it seemed to be the most viable option for her. Another problem with this idea is the actual execution of it. There are more effective ways in which to take one's own life. Throwing oneself down a dog-legged staircase with just eight stairs and a landing in the middle doesn't seem to be the most foolproof method in the world. Modern medicine has indicated that a woman with a similar strain of cancer that Amy perhaps had might have had a side effect of brittle bones. A suicide would be a more bona fide solution if the servants had found Amy on the landing instead of at the bottom of the staircase. Perhaps one point in the overall popularity of the royal family as a group is the intrigue that surrounds them. This is not really true in today's world, but in centuries gone by, the royal family is almost synonymous with tales of war, battle and espionage. If they foreign national were to infiltrate the aristocracy and intentionally kill one of their number, thus forcing Elizabeth to change her plans on a more personal level, it might have weakened her on an international level. The scandal that did follow the death of Amy Dudley made it virtually inconceivable that Elizabeth could marry Dudley after all. Elizabeth no doubt realized this and was forced into keeping her distance. This could explain why Mrs. Odengels refused to leave that morning. This plot would really have needed someone to oversee matters, perhaps even in a hands-on fashion. With so much political intrigue muddying the waters, it is easy to overlook that a life ended. Maybe it ended in a way that a few people tend to believe. This was nothing more sinister than a tragic accident. It is entirely possible that Amy lost her footing or suffered a dizzy spell for a second and overbalanced. However, the coroner's report included interesting wording. The wounds of Amy's neck were referred to as dentis, D-Y-N-T-E-S. It is a Middle English term that is no longer in use. The most suitable modern terminology would be blunt force trauma. We are quickly running out of time and I am not going to have the opportunity to share the story of the strange history of Ralstonism, so I will place that in the Sudden Death Overtime content in tonight's podcast version of the radio show, which I'll be uploading immediately after tonight's show is over. But we do have just enough time to take a call from the dark line. Thanks for listening! If you missed any part of tonight's show, or if you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast where you'll hear not only tonight's radio show, but also the extra Sudden Death Overtime content that I prepared and I didn't have time to fit in because I went overtime. And if you're one of my patrons, you can get a commercial free copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com or search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness. And please tell others about the show who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions, copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 10, verse 19, When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. And a final thought, even if it's difficult, keep moving forward. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Don't go anywhere, weirdos, because Sudden Death Overtime is up next. When three children vanished from the seaside suburb of Glen Elg in Adelaide, Australia, Wednesday, December 26, 1966, the greatest land, sea and air search in southern Australian history began. Today, we're no closer to solving the case, and the disappearance of the Beaumont children remains an unfathomable mystery fused eternally with the Australian psyche. Within days, police dismissed the possibility of misadventures and regarded the matter as one of abduction and homicide. But there has never been a definitive suspect, and the story endures as Australia's most captivating and iconic cold case. The circumstance that led authorities to conclude foul play was involved are witness sightings of a man seen frolicking with the children on the day they went missing. This fact alone could be incidental. Australia in the 1960s was a far more conservative society and the individual seen may have been an innocent party reluctant to go to the police. There's only ever been one credible suspect, and this man who came to the attention of police very late in life is possibly Australia's most prolific child killer. The question of whether they did indeed meet with murder or misadventure needs to be revisited. When Adelaide's households woke Wednesday morning, it was already very hot. The mercury in the thermometer was climbing and the temperature was to reach 40°C. A little after 8.30am, Jane, 9, her sister Anna, 7, and brother Grant, 4 left their home in Summerton Park and walked along Harding Street to the corner. Nancy Beaumont waited by the front gate and waved to her children as they stepped aboard the bus for the five-minute ride to Glenelg. By 2pm, Nancy became concerned when they had not come home. She alerted her husband an hour later upon its return from work. Jim and Nancy then began looking for the children and at 5pm, they went to the police. Over the next 36 hours, the largest mobilization in Australian history for missing persons was mounted. Police, along with the army, navy, and air force and thousands of civilians fanned out in all directions in a desperate search. It was though the children may have met with an accident, either by drowning or covered over by sand or soil in a landslide or cave-in. All seaside suburbs and the foreshore were searched to a distance 30 miles south of Adelaide. The sandhills of North Glenelg and in amongst the rocks at the base of the cliff faces were the scene of a more intensive search. Stormwater drainpipe openings onto the beaches were checked, sewage channels explored, and police divers scoured the murky depths of the Boathaven. It was drained a week later as a police launch kept watch as the water flowed into the sea. Neighborhoods were traversed where land was being subdivided into vacant lots. Some blocks were in the process of excavation and new homes under construction. If the earth looked freshly disturbed, police cadets made diggings, search parties sprouted, and well-meaning citizens made forays on their own. Nothing was ever found. By Friday, January 28, police began to discount the theory the children had met with an accident. So great was the search and utility of resources that little hope was now reserved for an outcome other than a tragic one. On January 29, Saturday, information was received from a 74-year-old local resident. The woman said she saw a man playing with the children on the lawn of Collie Reserve at the beach between 11.00 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. The younger girl and little boy were jumping over him as he lay on a towel on the grass, and the older girl was flicking a towel at him. He appeared to be encouraging the children. She described the man as being in his late 30s, about 6'1", slim build with a thin face, light-colored hair, deeply suntanned, although with a fair complexion and almost certainly Australian. He was wearing navy blue swimming trunks with a white stripe down each side. On Wednesday, February 2, a middle-aged woman gave a statement to police. She was sitting on a bench at the beach alongside an elderly couple when a man and the three children walked up to her. He asked them, Have you seen anybody mess it around with our clothes? Our money has been pinched. She said the description given by four other people on the day was accurate. Detectives regarded her account as reliable in corroborating the story given by the 74-year-old woman. A staff member at Wenzel's cake shop on Jetty Road and who knew the children from previous visits said she saw them around 12.30 p.m. when they purchased a pie and pastries and a couple of other items. She said Jane paid with a one-pound note. Nancy Beaumont, the children's mother, had only given Jane six or eight shillings, enough to cover the cost of lunch and bus fares home. This anomaly led detectives to conclude correctly that the trio had met someone who gave them the pound note. Ms. Daphne Gregory reported seeing Jane, Arna and Grant Beaumont with a man on Australia Day. She said that he was in his mid-30s with light brown hair which was neatly parted and brushed. She went on to say that he walked with his arms bowed like an ape. This description was entitled in news articles as the man with the crazy walk. A local postman who also knew the children said he saw them at around 3.00 p.m. and that they had waved to him and called out there's the postie. Later he changed his mind about the time though and believed the encounter was in the morning. The police considered these sightings credible, as the stories tended to support the others. Mr. Gerard Croissette was an internationally renowned psychic who had reputedly assisted the Netherlands police in solving several missing persons cases. Members of Adelaide's Dutch community had courted him asking for his assistance and guidance in locating the missing children. The Dutchman claimed the Adelaide children were dead. He'd seen them in a vision after receiving photographs from Australia. They were crawling on hands and knees when all of a sudden the earth tumbles down covering them. The seer said they were lying in an underground cave in the rocks near the beach. He said the cave would be difficult to find because the entrance was sealed off by rocks or sand. The clairvoyant was waiting for a detailed map of the area so he could pinpoint the spot. On the night of August 4th, two separate rolls of film depicting the beachfront were mailed to the psychic. The first was taken by a cameraman who worked for a local TV station as he sat in a plane while out at sea. The other had been shot months prior in the early stages of the investigation. Two Adelaide businessmen agreed to share the cost of flying the psychic to Australia. In early November, he arrived in Adelaide to much excitement and anticipation. He flew out of the country days later without success. He said he'd been unable to visualize due to the clamoring of news reporters and TV crews. It was strange and unfamiliar, he said. I'm upset at my lack of success. I wanted to be of more assistance. It's not an easy thing. It has made me very, very tired. During his search, he was shown a warehouse that had recently been erected. The location in Perringia Park was a place the Beaumont children were purported to a plate. The clairvoyant said the children were either buried there or had been there at some point. In 1967, holes were drilled into the concrete floor and a partial excavation made, and 30 years later a complete demolition of the building. Nothing, however, was found. The psychic believed the children had met with an accident and that the man seen at the beach had nothing to do with their disappearance. In 1998, Arthur Stanley Brown, 86, was arrested in Townsville, Queensland and charged with the August 26, 1970 murders of sisters Judith and Susan McKay, ages 7 and 5. Now in the twilight years of his life, he had never come to the attention of police. Following a television episode of crime stoppers documenting the abduction, rape and murder of the Mackay sisters, a relation of Brown's wife contacted the show. She reported her suspicions and told of being raped by him as a child. Detectives then interviewed other family members. Within weeks, Brown was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and rape, involving his eight-step children and other related minors, ages 3 to 10 years old. He was also charged with the murders of the Mackay sisters. It came to light that in 1982 Brown's wife's relations had sought legal advice after individual family members began to learn from one another that they were not the only one he had molested. The trial of Arthur Stanley Brown commenced on October 18, 1999, in the Queensland Supreme Court. Judith and Susan McKay disappeared from Aitkenvale Townsville at around 8.10 am while waiting for the school bus. A witness had seen the girls talking to a man who was sitting behind the wheel of a car. Their small bodies were found, two days later, in the dry bed of Ant Hill Creek, 25 km to the southwest. At trial it was revealed that Brown had worked as a carpenter at the Mackay sisters' school at the time. Testimony was also given of two witness sightings of the girls on the day they went missing. Jean Tweet was a service station attendant in Ayer, 85 km south of Townsville. She recalled that a blue Vauxhall sedan had pulled in at 11 am. The occupant asked for petrol. As she was filling the tank, she noticed the Mackay sisters sitting in the car. She overheard the younger girl ask the man, are we there yet? The older girl then asked, when are you taking us to Mummy? You promised to take us to Mummy. Neil Loney had returned from active service in Vietnam. A man in a blue Vauxhall sedan on the road ahead had prevented him from overtaking. His driving had infuriated him. As he attempted to pull alongside, the man turned his head the other way and it appeared he was trying to hide his face. He noticed two girls in the car, in eight conveyor school uniforms. During their encounters, each was observant enough to notice that the driver's door of the Vauxhall was painted a different color to the rest of the car. At the time, Arthur Stanley Brown owned a blue Vauxhall sedan with a mismatching colored driver's door. The make of the vehicle alone was very uncommon. Both witnesses gave matching descriptions of the driver. They said he had high cheekbones, a narrow skull and one said he had Mickey Mouse ears, all distinguishing features of brown. There were, however, several witnesses who reported seeing a car parked on the road adjacent to the murder site. When asked, they thought the make was a hold-in. This discrepancy led police at the time to conclude that Tweet and Loney were in error. Arthur Stanley Brown made two confessions on separate occasions. The first was to 19-year-old John White in September 1970. The men were drinking in the White Horse Tavern in Charter's Towers, west of Townsville. White reported the matter to police. They interviewed Brown, but he convinced them it was all pub talk. The second time was in 1975. John Hill was an apprentice carpenter to Brown. He had mentioned the Mackie sisters. Brown had reacted in an exasperated manner, stating, I know all about that. I did it. Hill said he did not go to the police as Brown's statement was out of character and he thought he was making it up. At the conclusion of the trial, the jurors could not agree on a verdict. All evidence relating to the pedophilia charges were not heard in court. Neither was the fact that Brown had molested many of his relations at Ant Hill Creek, where the Mackie sisters were taken. The jury, therefore, had to decide whether the 87-year-old, now sitting before them, should be convicted of the rape and murder of two children relying on decades-old witness testimony. A retrial stalled after psychiatric assessments showed the defendant was affected cognitively by dementia and Alzheimer's. The director of public prosecutions had no legal standing to pursue and withdrew all charges. The widespread media coverage led a woman to contact police. She claimed Brown was the man she had seen as a teenager with Joanne Ratcliffe, 11 years old, and Kirsty Gordon, four years old. The children were abducted on Saturday, August 25, 1973, from Adelaide Oval, where rivals Norwood and North Adelaide were competing in the finals of the Australian rules football. Another witness recalled that Brown had mentioned having seen the Adelaide Festival Center under construction and at the stage where it was almost complete. This would place him in Adelaide after June 1973. It has long been regarded by South Australian police that the abductor was the same person who took the Beaumont children seven years earlier. An identikit picture and an artist's impression both published at the time the two girls were taken bear a striking likeness to the identikit picture of the alleged kidnapper of the Beaumont children. More importantly, all sketches look identical to Arthur Stanley Brown. He was employed from 1946 as a maintenance carpenter for the Department of Public Works until his retirement at the age of 65 in 1977. He had unrestricted access to public buildings and worked unsupervised and his employment records are missing. Police investigators have failed to uncover the dates he took holidays. It has therefore proved impossible to cross-check his whereabouts at the time of the Adelaide Oval Abduction in 1973 and on Australia Day, 1966. It needs to be pointed out that homicidal detectives and all involved have no doubt Arthur Stanley Brown murdered the Mackey Sisters. The Queensland Police Service has closed that case. There were few citizens out there in the 1960s and early 70s responsible for kidnapping, raping and murdering multiple children from one family unit on the same day. Judith and Susan McKay were taken in 1970, roughly midway in time between the disappearance of Jane Arma and Grant Beaumont in 1966 and the abduction of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirsten Gordon in 1973. If Arthur Stanley Brown took the Beaumont children, as with the Mackey Sisters, he most probably drove a similar distance along the highway out of Adelaide, parked the car and led the trio into the scrub. True to form, he likely left them where they lay, neatly folding their clothing and belongings alongside. The circumstantial evidence stacked against Brown is so high that his guilt is almost beyond doubt. It is also highly probable he is responsible for other unsolved child homicides dating back decades. Or perhaps the children did indeed meet with an accident, after all playing hide and seek or deviating as kids do on their way home. Perhaps they were crawling through a crevice of rocks at the beach or a trench of earth on a vacant lot and the weight of sand or soil fell upon them. Whether people believe in psychics or not, the likelihood of misadventure is a logical explanation for their disappearance. Despite a search of an unprecedented scale, their burial site may have gone unnoticed. In the decades since, social historians have come to regard this single event as a turning point in the way parents adjusted their outlook on the issue of child safety. At the time, commentators did not suggest the parents were negligent or that the children should not have been permitted to go to the beach unescorted. This complacency by the public reflected the attitude of the day. From then on, families were more guarded when it came to their children, thinking twice before allowing them to play unsupervised, keeping a vigil and watching out for strangers. For Australia, it marked the end of innocence. The mystery behind the fate of the children lingers like a broken record, replaying a verse over and over from a long time ago. It overshadows us like a dark crevasse, a melancholia, a frightening and deeply disturbing nightmare from which we have never awoken. When Webster Edgarley appeared on stage in a late 19th century play about Christopher Columbus, he performed while balancing on the balls of his feet. Critics were confused, but Edgarley, a part-time actor, author and soon-to-be leader of a wildly successful health movement known as Ralstonism, believed that strolling like a centaur, his body weighed on his toes would avoid leakage of what he labeled vital forces of the body. The critics may have thought it was a character choice, or Edgarley, it was a lifestyle choice. In time, Edgarley would write over 80 books, count Queen Victoria among his readers, and offer his pseudoscientific advice on everything from sex, once every eight days, no more, to walking, avoid straight lines at all costs. He envisioned a sprawling city full of his acolytes and bought up real estate in New Jersey for exactly that purpose. He believed Ralstonism was the key not only to health, but to telepathy and other spectacular powers. Nearly a million people followed his views, and he even had a hand in originating the Ralston cereal brand. But if history seems to have forgotten such a peculiar man, there's a very good reason for it. Named after the famous orator Daniel Webster, Edgarley was raised in Massachusetts and attended Boston University where he graduated with a law degree in 1876. Though he was interested in theater as an actor and a playwright, it seemed his true calling was as a guru. The same year he finished school, Edgarley founded the Ralston Health Club, a business devoted to wellness. He named it Ralston by using the letters of his mother's name, Rhoda Lucinda Stone, and later retrofit it to become an acronym for regime, activity, light, strength, temperature, oxygen, and nature. All things Edgarley valued. The Ralston Health Club had no formal location. It existed mostly in Ralston's head, which only conjured a series of self-help titles such as Lessons in Artistic Deep Breathing and Sexual Magnetism. Written under the pen name of Edmund Shaftesbury, these tomes were verbose and offered dubious advice, like picking up a marble from a table and swinging it around in order to increase one's personal magnetism, or what Edgarley believed was a person's energy and charisma. Young men were advised to bed women old enough to be their grandmothers and then marry women 20 years their junior. Edgarley already married once, married again at age 42 to an 18-year-old. He also propagated a new language that he called Adam-Man Tongue. He promised that continued study of this assorted wisdom might ultimately result in the power to control the thoughts and actions of others, or even achieve immortality. These advanced abilities were, of course, attainable only after buying many of his books, which were sometimes priced at an exorbitant $25 in 1892. That would be $730 today for a single book. The cost may have contributed to a feeling that Edgarley's advice was rare and valuable, and the books sold well, affording Edgarley a lavish lifestyle. He eventually counted over 800,000 Ralstonites. Queen Victoria was said to have a complete set of his works. Members identified themselves with black armbands called Ralstonetas. In Star Ralstonism, a kind of member guidebook published in 1900, Edgarley wrote, It is gratifying that all honest doctors who have investigated Ralstonism are its friends and recommend it or rather prescribe it in place of medicines to their patients. A doctor who has investigated this system and does not affirmatively aid and use it may be set down as dishonest and unsafe to employ. A blend of both huckster and quack, Edgarley nonetheless commanded attention in key places. In addition to his royal readership, he became friendly with William Danforth, the founder of the Purina Company. Edgarley had long recommended a whole-grain breakfast, a surprisingly rational bit of instruction, and Danforth believed that Edgarley's paid endorsement would help sell boxes of shelf-stable wheat germ cereal in stores. Ralston Wheat Cereal went on sale in 1898 and was successful enough that Danforth decided to unite with Edgarley commercially to create the Ralston Purina Company in 1902. To consumers, Ralston had taken on a connotation of good health. Unfortunately, Edgarley's beliefs were not always well-intentioned. He was a proponent of eugenics, an abhorrent attempt to improve the human race using selective breeding, and his books often espoused racist ideas such as recommending that all non-caucasian males be castrated. A principal tenet of Ralstonism was the idea of a strictly caucasian new race that could live to be a hundred and without illness. His quest for a superior human soon led him to New Jersey and a project even more ambitious than his book series. He wanted a congregation. For years, Edgarley had moved around from Massachusetts to Topeka, Kansas to Washington. In 1894, he started buying up land over looking the farming community of Hopewell, New Jersey with the goal of creating an entire city of the Ralston faithful. He imagined 400 homes, six farms and six estates, including the one he purchased, renovated and named Ralston Manor. A towering Victorian comprised of 27,000 square feet, the house contained a veritable maze of hallways and had a third floor devoted to a classroom for elocution lessons. The sprawling 72-step staircase was built with a 36-piece orchestra in mind, one band member on every other step. Edgarley planted trees from Japan, Norway and China to add to its exotic aesthetic. With a rich fruit and vegetable garden, he dispatched fresh goods to residents in town, hoping to be perceived as a generous benefactor. In the house, he continued his prolific writing, which so bothered his wife he reportedly built a separate room so she wouldn't be disturbed by his typing. Despite the success of his books, the Ralston utopia failed to meet his expectations. The lots in Hopewell were expensive, even for his upper-class clientele, and there were few job opportunities nearby. Only 25 of them sold. Worse, his attempt to befriend the townspeople did not go as planned. After Edgarley built a water tank on his property that fed the area, residents complained that the water tasted foul. The tank had indeed developed a crack, letting contaminants in. Soon, Edgarley was declared unwelcome in Hopewell and was essentially forced to move to Trenton, where he lived until his death in 1926. Ralstonism largely faded into a historical footnote until an archaeology student, Janet Six, stayed in Ralston Manor in the 1990s. The house had come into the possession of friends after passing through numerous hands. She began investigating the history of its most infamous owner and wrote a thesis about his life. Janet Six helped bring Edgarley back into focus, but the Ralston Purina company seems to hold little curiosity about, or reverence for, their radical and racist forebearer. There's no mention of Edgarley in the company's official history at all, only vague references to a Dr. Ralston, one of Edgarley's pen names. The company was bought by Nestle in 2001 and the name was changed to Nestle Purina. Ralston Manor still stands today. The current owners use it for art and fundraising events, and locals know it as the Castle. They still sometimes talk about the eccentric who once patrolled its halls, thinking up elaborate ways to spread the word of Ralstonism, all while bouncing on the balls of his feet. An erstwhile Southside Polish girl who has for more than 70 years hitchhiked this old Indian road as far south as Willow Springs. The location in Paringa Park was a place in the Bome… The location at Paren… Dagnabbit. The location in Paringa Park was a place the Beaumont children were purported to have played. The location in Paringa Park was a place the Beaumont children were purported to have played. Historian Allison Weir proposed Historian Allison Weir proposed that one-time courtier of the Elizabeth court, William Cecil, historian Allison Weir proposed that one-time courtier of the Elizabeth court, historian Alian, the two men would be identified as bodyguards of Senior United Nations statesman Javier Perez de Salar I don't speak Spanish all that good. The Nightmares of Edgar Allen Poe The Terrors of Bram Stoker The Monsters of Mary Shelley The Suspense of Alfred Hitchcock The Thrill of Robert Louis Stevenson And the Horror of the Blancheville Monster It all culminates in the horror of the Blancheville Monster In a sinister, unreal birthday celebration Only the flashes of madness pierce the darkness of the castle in the Blancheville Monster Mysterious cries, fatal omens, nefarious vices, chilling presences, the Blancheville Monster A dark path where the specter of death rides A woman caught in the snare of a monstrous, fatal spell The spell of the Blancheville Monster Does the coffin contain a creature snatched from life by a curse? Will anyone be able to unravel the mysteries of the Blancheville Monster? And the wicked deeds of the children of darkness The satanic storm of terrors, nightmares, and sadistic violence The Blancheville Monster Our May Weirdo Watch Party is Saturday, May 6th with horror host Lee Turner from After Hours presenting 1963's The Blancheville Monster, where a beautiful young daughter of a crazed count fears that she will fall victim to the family curse, to be sacrificed to fulfill an ancient family legend. Borrowing elements from Edgar Allan Poe's Fall of the House of Usher and some words with a mummy. Originally filmed in the Italian language, it was titled Horror, but we'll be watching the well-done English dubbed version entitled The Blancheville Monster. The Weirdo Watch Party is always free to watch online with everybody, so grab your popcorn, candy, and soda, and jump into the fun and even get involved in the live chat as we watch the movie. Again, The Weirdo Watch Party is Saturday, May 6th, starting at 10pm Eastern, 9pm Central, 7pm Pacific. You can see a trailer for the film on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com and we'll see you Saturday, May 6th for The Blancheville Monster.