 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is a Dark Archives episode of Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, 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 the daily podcast and all social media that I'm on like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Miwi and others along with the Weird Darkness Weirdos Facebook group. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into this Dark Archives episode of Weird Darkness. Soon after Jack returned from his afternoon walk, he noticed the crow perched on the wooden railing outside the large glass doors of the cabin. Its plumage was so incredibly black and in the evening sunshine each individual feather seemed to shimmer. Its eyes were transfixed on him, tracking his every move. Outside, the air had been sharp and with a deceiving chill, the sun merely suspended in the sky as more of a light source than a provider of warmth. He was glad to get back to the log fire of the cabin but it was fading fast and needed more wood. Apprehensively, he rushed through to the kitchen and entered the adjoining storage room, head down and eyes firmly fixed on the ground. An involuntary shutter ran down his spine as he grabbed six logs before urgently marching back and placing one on the fire. The relentless stare from the crow outside did nothing to help. Under the bird's beady eye, he felt a heavy burden of judgment. He often thought birds looked down upon humans as leaden, ungraceful and inferior land confined beasts. Their majestic movements in the air often mesmerized him and as a child he had always fantasized over the desired superpower of flight. He broke an ankle once as he jumped off a shed roof, arms flapping wildly before falling clumsily and painfully to the ground. He knew in his heart of hearts that liftoff only happened in dreams but whenever he got an idea in his head, there was no reasoning. It was just his personality. With that in mind, he wondered why the crow was so interested in him. He ate some leftover lunch by the fire and tried but failed to read a chapter of his book. Two tumblers of warming scotch and the hypnotic crackle of the fire soon encouraged his eyelids to close. When he woke an hour later, the crow was still in place, a dark and sinister stain on an otherwise stunning woody outlook. The cabin stood in a small clearing and was surrounded by gold and red-leaved trees and matching carpet. It gave the place a softness that inspired nostalgia and a satisfying melancholy. They had stayed here once before in happier times and immediately fell in love with it. It had been autumn then too and from what he could recall, they never left the cabin. Days and nights by the fire, under blankets, eating food, talking and making love. Their initial intention was to stay for a week but Jack had been there for nearly two now and he had no plans to move on. He had made the place his sanctuary. He had put a call in a few days ago to let his parents know they were staying on for a while and another to his office to let them know he would not be coming back, hanging up before they had a chance to ask why. Subsequently, he had walked to the small river at the bottom of the creek and thrown his phone in. The bottle felt good in his hand and he lifted the 20-year-old liquid towards the last of the late evening sunshine and made a toast to Rebecca. They originally planned to save the bottle for their wedding anniversary but future plans were now on ice. The whiskey didn't taste as smooth as he expected but he guessed jealousy, anger and grief were not the best mixers. He eyed the leftover bread on the plate and looked towards the crow. Its unwavering glare unnerved him. What do you want, crow? he said out loud. The last of the evening sunlight entered the cabin and again deceived as he moved from the warmth of the fire toward the sliding glass doors. The crow watched him all the way to the door but as he reached for the handle it screamed its call and flew off towards one of the nearby trees. Once it found a branch to land on, it continued its stare from afar. Jack slid the door open and placed the bread atop the wood railing before closing it quickly and moving back to the warmth of the fire. By the time he sat down and looked up, the crow was back in place standing next to the bread. It ducked its head down and flicked the bread away with its beak and then resumed its stare. He looked on and stifled a nervous laugh at the obvious demonstration of disrespect. While awareness of their reputation as a highly intelligent species, this crow had him more than a little unsettled. His heightened state of paranoia didn't help, it was only a matter of time before they came for him. For the time being, he would wallow in the comfort and surroundings of the cabin. The early years had been good, both of them so full of passion and hope and against the wishes of their parents they married young when they were still both in their early 20s. She was everything to him and the only one that truly understood his idiosyncrasies and there were plenty. The Aspergers often alienated him from others but she got him and always had his back. She encouraged him to be the best he could but ironically it was those dreams and aspirations that were surely to blame for the downfall of their marriage. Writing had become his new passion and he knew he had shut her out. It was all consuming and she only got the crumbs. On reflection he supposed she had given him fair warning but he was too obsessed to change. He thought that people were supposed to give ultimatums one last chance and that was the way the world worked. Instead she had gone elsewhere and for that he had caved her head in with a fireplace poker. The confession had messed everything up. F U Crow. They came to his parents cabin to try and talk things through at least that's what he thought. When she told him about the affair he instinctively picked up the weapon and went to work. During the entire process he had felt somewhat detached as though he was reading about someone else's actions in a book and even when life had so obviously left her he had continued bringing the poker down onto her skull. By the time he finished her mother would not have recognized her. It was only when his arm tired that he had collapsed on all fours and broke down in tears a lengthy string of bloody saliva hanging from his mouth where his teeth had cut through his lip. The guilt and remorse followed. They'd been together 20 years, married for 15 and trying for children for the last three. All of that history wiped out and now she was just a piece of frozen meat folded face down in the freezer. Stop staring at me. The betrayal hurt deeply and the sensory overload brought on by the confession left him with a feeling that his brain might short circuit. Consumed by a vacuum of confusion and rage he had lost all control. He had just wanted the noise to stop in his head. Trauma wasn't something he could cope with. She knew that. She must have known what this would do to him. Everything had been so nicely laid out but it had all gone downhill. Rebecca said it had been a cry for help. There were many of those at the end but, like her previous one, they didn't help anyone. After he had put her in the freezer he checked her phone but there was nothing from Loverboy as far as he could see. He did come across a text from her mom, Jody, and it was only then that the true realization of what he had done kicked in as though the fog had lifted. He had taken her away from her parents, from people that loved her and all the time he had only been thinking about how it would affect him. She used to say he was cold sometimes but only when she was upset or angry at his limited emotional resonance. More frequently they would sit down and work things out even though his first instinct would be to try and brush things under the carpet. They had a system but the system had broken down. He looked across at the table in the center of the room and the half-finished jigsaw puzzle depicting a rural landscape. When she had stood in front of him asking for his attention, the sky was only half done. He'd pleaded with her for another 10 minutes even though she had tears in her eyes. I'm sorry, Beck. The room started to spin and as Jack reached for the arm of the chair to steady himself, a startling call suddenly filled the cabin. He turned his head and saw the murder of crows on their way to join their friend. They approached from all directions like an army emerging from the now dull and colorless sky and within seconds they came to rest on the wooden beam outside the glass doors and danced and cawed excitedly. He was sure the demonstration wasn't normal behavior but doubted bashing your wife to death with a poker would be top of that list. In unison they suddenly ceased their chorus and an eerie silence prevailed as his entire audience eyed him from the crowded wooden railing. Jack gaped back and for a moment they all seemed to be playing their part in an incredibly sinister standoff. Suddenly the crows gave a single unified call and took off, all but the one that had greeted him from his walk. He knew that to be true. He just knew. They slowly moved away from the house keeping low to the woody ground, a moving blanket of darkness. He saw some of them occasionally swoop the forest floor, grabbing sticks and rocks with their claws and then merge back into the black thunder cloud. 100 or so yards away they stopped and made their turn. Jack knew their plan even before the shower of ammunition started to hit the glass. He prepared himself but the menacing imagery and the explosion of noise still sent him recoiling back into the chair. The crows dropped their rocks and sticks with remarkable accuracy and returned to the floor to scavenge more weapons. Only the single crow remained. The one Jack knew to be the commander of this assault. More crows continued to add to the pack. The sky was alive with them and any remaining daylight almost completely locked out. They made their next charge, the same pattern, the same formation and the same crushing thunderous sound as rocks and branches hit the glass. Throughout all of this, the commander continued to scrutinize Jack's every move. He raised the bottle of whiskey to his lips with a shaky hand and took a large gulp. There was another explosion against the window but much louder. There must be hundreds of them. It felt as though the bottle might shatter in his grip. His entire body now rigid with fear. He expected the worst was not over and this fear was validated when the commander called to no doubt signal the next attack. What do you want? The darkness approached and he buried his fingers into the arms of the chair and braced for impact. As the front line came into view, he saw that they were carrying larger rocks and sticks, working together to share the burden. The first wave hit, deafening and relentless and then the first crack appeared and then another. He pushed himself up from the chair and retreated slowly towards the kitchen at the back of the cabin, the only other exit. Once out of the main living area, he closed the door behind him and slowly backed up. As he turned toward the kitchen door, he saw his new nemesis sat outside on the welcome mat, watching him once again through the glass with its head conked. The trees beyond were lined with other crows for as far as he could see. The maverick crow gave out its car and in unison the others made their way towards the cabin with the same terrifying screams and menacing formation. The crow with the door continued its stare amid the falling rocks and sticks as the first wave hit. Jack covered his ears but could not drown out the blood curdling cries and thunderous impacts that surrounded him. Momentarily, he thought about opening the door and making a run for the car, but within seconds they had covered it in a cloak of darkness as if to preempt his escape plan. He was kidding himself anyway. There was no escape. He had murdered his wife. He thought of those beaks pecking at his eyes and ripping his flesh apart. It was too much to take. How long would it take him to die? Releasing his right hand, he opened the cutlery drawer and grabbed the kitchen knife. They were on the roof now too. He could hear their scratchy feet. The sinister cause echoed in his head and seemed to be getting louder as if heading towards a brain-bleeding crescendo. They were everywhere and only darkness loomed outside now, the night taken hostage by the Black Army. The crow still watched through the door, eyes fixed on the murderer. Jack backed away to the adjoining storage room, the one where they kept the extra blankets and firewood, and where the freezer stood. There were no windows in this room. A momentary escape from the visual carnage but any relief outweighed by the knowledge his dead wife was only a few yards away. The sound of the glass shattering at the front of the house was his cue, and trembling he moved the knife toward his left wrist. He let it rest there for a moment. The door to the living area started to shudder in its hinges, pounded relentlessly by the darkness on the other side. Pairs prickled on the back of his neck and blood pumped around his body at a frantic pace as if in an excited state at the prospect of release. It was the most alone he had ever felt. The glass in the kitchen door shattered onto the floor, and he subsequently readied himself with a knife. There was no invasion of crows though, as he expected, and silence fell. Only the breeze trespassed, and in the darkness he waited. The crow finally emerged from around the corner and strutted to the center of the doorway before turning and cocking its head as if prompting his opponent to make the next move. Jack knew the others were waiting close by for its command. He pressed hard with the knife and ran it across his left wrist and then swapped hands and did the same to his right. He wasn't sure if he had done it correctly, if it was deep enough. The pain was not as intense as he expected, but there was lots of blood, so much blood. The crow called, then followed by the resounding chorus of acknowledgment. Soon they would be upon him and tearing the rest of him up. He turned and lifted the lid of the freezer to reveal his frozen wife. The blood dripped onto the snow-like interior, its brightness exaggerated by the darkness within. Red is blood, white as snow, black as crow. He climbed into the freezer next to his wife and reached for the lid and brought it down. He didn't feel cold, just numb. The last thing he ever heard was the crow land on top of the freezer and the scratch of its feet as it paced up and down murder of. Keep listening, we have a lot more Weird Darkness coming up. Hey Weirdos, right now through November 30th, everything in the Weird Darkness store is up to 35% off for our Black Friday sale. That means $13 tees, $20 phone cases, $30 hoodies, and way more. And as always, 100% of the profits I receive are donated to organizations that help those who suffer from depression. If you don't like what you see on the Weird Darkness store page, use the search function to find what you do want. There are hundreds of thousands of designs to choose from. And if you're looking for something Christmassy yet creepy, I have four festive designs right there on the front page that might fit what you're looking for, including the brand new I'm the Ghost of Christmas Present design. So you can be festive and freaky at the same time. Save some dough by grabbing your Weird and Dark merchandise during our Black Friday sale and help a fellow Weirdo struggling with depression at the same time. Just click on store at WeirdDarkness.com to save up to 35% on everything through November 30th. Before I get into this next story, it's important to know that it's coming from a woman's perspective. It's kind of hard to do that when you are a man with a baritone voice, but letting you know in advance, maybe it'll help with the story. Here we go. I've always enjoyed killing, and I blame it on my farm childhood. Well, calling it a farm, that's a bit of a stretch. I grew up in a shack on a rural area, only having my father and sister around. He never mistreated us, but he was stiff and relentless on his beliefs. For him, there was no such thing as male or female. Everyone under his roof was, by default, a hunter. Back when we were really young, he would leave us home alone for hours and hours. He first took me hunting when I was three. I never thought rabbits and squirrels were cute. They were always prey. I first hunted a deer when I was ten. I was limber and had developed a strong body. Dana was never a huntress, but she was great at hiding, so she hid at first. Dad was angry, but I hunted so well that I did more than enough for the both of us. Besides, Dana was good enough to manage herself, catching smaller animals. She was outstanding at fishing with her own hands due to her quietness. But she never enjoyed any of it. Dad died when I was thirteen. He was caught by a bear and kept screaming, Shoot it! Shoot it, you bitch! I only had two bullets left, and I was too worried, so the first missed and the second wasn't enough to take down the bear. Dana grabbed my hand and we ran like the wind. I'm honestly not sad for my father's last words to me. He was desperate and being eaten alive after all. I forgave him in a heartbeat. Who I never was able to forgive was myself, for failing dad. We were taken to a foster family after that. Dana soon adapted to having a normal life, and she clearly was held dear by the couple. I'm grateful to them for having a comfy bed and finally learning how to read and write, but I kept myself at home. I missed killing things. So I went hunting alone every day. The first time my family was impressed by my ability. The second time my foster mother muffle cried a the poor ducky. The third, my foster father, begged me to give what I hunted to someone else. I started selling it. I made some nice cash and gave everything to my sister's college fund. She was smart and needed the money after all. I just needed to smell the delicious bitterness of fresh blood. By the time I was 18, I married the sweetest man. It was crazy how he balanced each other's personality, him being always so calm and gleeful. Tom was 15 years older than me and a merchant, selling a myriad of things in our small town. He sometimes sold parts of my hunting, the meat, the fur, the heads as prizes. We were happy. We lived five great years until he was shot in a robbery. From that moment on, a burning rage lived inside of me. The eagerness to kill took over. I didn't know how to manage a shop, so I asked my husband's brother, Stu, to take his place in management. But Stu was a drunk and a buffoon, and soon the shop bankrupted. I was left with nothing. When I learned about certain shady parts of the Internet, I finally realized I could sell my services and satiate my ever-growing bloodlust. I'm famous now. I mean, my work name is. Nobody knows my face. Nobody knows I'm even a woman. My body is small and strong, perfect for sneaking in. I look trustworthy enough for my prey to take me to dinner. Sometimes it's too easy. I have built a name between politicians and rich, cheated wives love me. Of course, my clients are not always from the highest social standings, and they try to bargain a lot. It's not unusual that some broken-ass guy asks me to murder his rich father or uncle and get paid after I do the job, when he gets his inheritance. I just laugh at their faces, tell them to shove off before I murder them instead. Until the day my intuition, no, my instincts, told me to keep talking to the guy after he told me his conditions of payment. I will inherit some money, he wrote, but the thing is, I used to have a brother. He's dead now. No kids, but I talked to my attorney and he told me his widow will get half of my money, so I want to eliminate her. Sure, just send me her info, I replied for the first time. Because I knew this story, I didn't want to be paranoid and think it was me. I just felt sorry for the poor woman and thought maybe I'd screw around with the guy. But it was me, my brother-in-law, who was constantly helped by me and my husband after losing everything in gambling, over and over, who ruined our store and I never said a thing wanted to kill me. No, worse than that, he wanted to hire someone else to kill me. Because this coward couldn't do it himself. I took the job to murder myself. The next day I went to see my sister Dana and asked her something no twin sister should have to ask the other. Can you die in my place? When I take a job, I will finish it, no matter what it takes. So I sent my client a picture of my dead victim, my sister. I was famous for this modus operandi. As I said, Dana ain't a huntress. She's a great hider. So after I forged her death and gave Stu a false sense of safe-ness, he found my sister, characterized as me, at his dirty apartment. D-D-D-Dora, what are you doing here? He was stuttering and sweating. Just came by to talk a little about the inheritance we're about to get, my sister calmly said, perfectly mimicking my voice and intonation. Stu never knew I had a sister because she lived far away during her graduation. Both me and my husband always kept to ourselves and never had a wedding party, so our families didn't know each other very well. Inheritance? I don't know what you're talking about. He made a poor attempt at lying. Why don't you ask the hitman you hired, Stu? She asked. As I came from behind him, wearing the exact same clothes as her, I got to admit it was so much fun to stage this. When he turned to look at me, Stu was pale. I'm pretty sure he pissed himself. What's going on? What kind of joke is this? That's all he could say before I gagged him. It's your fault that my husband was shot, isn't it? I stabbed him once more. I knew very well how to lethally stab someone only once, making a cleaner death. But it wouldn't happen this time. You deadbeat! Your loan sharks broke in the store and killed him. You let the store go bankrupt because you were too frigging terrified of staying there. He shook his head desperately, trying to deny it, but his eyes told the truth. I never fully realized it until that instant. It was a moment of clarity, and I hated his guts even more. Both me and my sister did what we were best at. She hid, not wanting to see the bloodbath I was about to cause, and I stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed. When the body was found, the police immediately arrested Stu's loan shark. They were investigating him for a long time and just needed one more move to make theirs. They confirmed my suspicions about the loan shark killing my husband. I noticed that, with the closure, my bloodlust diminished. I still go hunting most weekends, but I'm done with killing people. Nothing can bring Tom back. But I can move forward, learn new things, work with something else. I still have a lot to live. So, let me give you some advice. If you're thinking about hiring a hit man, don't. The best one just went out of business. He stumbled as his foot connected to something on the floor. He braced himself with his hand against the damp stone wall. He couldn't tell what exactly it was that he tripped on. This passageway was too dark. He was aware of the sound of his breathing, tense, heavy, and increasing. He knew he would be in some serious trouble if he couldn't get a hold of his fear. He caught flint glimmers of light, and he got a sense of a bend in the corridor up ahead. He held his breath, hoping to make out a sound. Any sound. He crept forward slowly, his ears straining. Then, when he was within arm's reach of the corner of the hallway, he heard something. Something around the corner. Was it the scuff of a boot on the stone floor? He froze. Then he heard something like maybe the scrape of metal across the stone wall in a grunt or short growl. His pulse increased. He felt sweat up here on his neck and forehead. He knew something very menacing was right around the corner. He didn't want to see it, but knew he had to. It was the reason he had come to this subterranean labyrinth. A malevolent creature had been tormenting the citizens of the small nearby town, and he had to stop it. Suddenly, whatever it was made an abrupt inhale and stopped moving. The creature knew he was there. His eyes widened as he anticipated the attack of the creature. There was a low growl. He pulled his knife from its sheath and the flashlight from his jacket. Suddenly, the entity behind the corner began to move, quickly making a lot of noise, bellowing and stomping. He heard it round the corner. He raised his flashlight and clicked it on. Its beam was so bright that he had to close his eyes. The creature roared. He squinted his eyes open. There, a wash in bright white blue light was a twisted and raged monster. A thick, clawed hand shielded its face as the other hand flailed before it. Its skin was a sickly, moldy green yellow with blotches of brown, uneven and lumpy, taut over sinewy muscles. The thing had to be seven feet tall. It emitted a foul odor, a mix of mold and sewage. He poised the knife, ready to defend or strike, and the creature began to lower its hand, uncovering its squinting eyes. Deep red. The creature roared and lunged, its talon-like fingers outstretched. His heart pumping, he gasped and shouted in anticipation of the strike. He felt the clawed hand grab his shoulder. Immediately, the fingers tightened like a vice. He swung his hand up with a knife, but the creature grabbed his wrist and snapped it. His knife flew into the darkness and clanked on the floor. He felt the monstrous, fetid breath as its mouth was lunging toward his face. As its immense dagger-like teeth tore into his flesh, he gave brief shout and sat up. He was in a bed. What? He gasped. He looked quickly around. Where was he? Even though it was night and dark, the room was far more visible than the passageway. He glanced at the walls and saw occasional pieces of art or a photo, the breeze outside animating the shadows of tree branches in the bedroom. On a nightstand, a glass of water, a digital clock reading 345, a book opened and facedowned. Next to him, a body under the covers. A smooth and lithe arm gently curved over a pillow and around a mass of hair. The body stirred and moaned a bit. It was a woman. He saw the profile of her face. Who was she? He leaned over a bit to examine her. He didn't know her or did he. She began to look familiar. Sheryl Sherry? Wait, he whispered. What the hell is going on? He looked at her face again. Yes, Sheryl. This is bizarre. He turned away from her, pulled the covers off himself. He moved his legs so they hung over the side of the bed. He was dressed. In the clothes he was wearing in the corridor. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand. His wrist wasn't broken. On the wall was a photo of his and Sheryl's trip to Mazelton in 2012. How did I know that? he muttered. This is your chance, a voice whispered. Apparently not coming from any source. He quickly looked around and stood up. The woman stirred and exhaled deeply. He stopped and spoke very quietly. What is this? What's going on? You've been given the chance to live a normal life. The voice seemed wispy as if made of air. No longer will you have to risk your life fighting those monsters. You will have the love of a woman and a family if you desire. He looked back to the bed and the beautiful woman lying there. He felt something, a familiarity. Almost as if this life he was being offered was already his. But he knew it wasn't. It couldn't be. Moments before, he was hunting some sort of monstrosity below the earth. Are those monsters real? he asked, not flinching away from the woman. Yes, the voice answered. They would no longer be any concern of yours. In time, you would forget about them and the life you led until now. Allow yourself to be happy. Enjoy the kind of life not given to you before. He looked down to the floor and his shoes. They still had traces of mud on them, a spot of blood. I can't, I can't be here. This life would be awesome and perfect and everything I should want but I can't. There's those monsters and demons and whatever else out there. Somebody has to end them. I couldn't live this life knowing that innocent children and people were being killed. I just couldn't. Are you certain? the voice asked. This is your chance. It shall not come again. He exhaled and walked slowly and quietly to the other side of the bed. He gently pulled some strands of hair from Cheryl's face. She is beautiful. He whispered gently. He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled and she snuggled into her pillow. But she's not mine, this house, this life. They aren't mine, not for me. I gotta do what I know how to do. That is protect people like her. He vanished. Keep listening. Two more creepy pasta stories are still on the way. Wander around the Tinker Swiss Cottage and explore the haunted rooms yourself. It takes place Saturday, December 4th at 7pm at the Tinker Swiss Cottage in Rockford, Illinois. Tickets are $25 and you must register and pay in advance if you want to attend. Visit WeirdDarkness.com and click on the events calendar to learn more and get your tickets. I hope to see you in Rockford on December 4th for some scary Christmas time ghost stories at the Haunted Tinker Swiss Cottage. I've never published my research, though. Specifically, my small team and I study a small population of Canada geese that migrates to Arizona during the winter months from Alaska. This weren't mostly involved checking the new adults tagged during the summer months from our sister team in Alaska. This is important because the specific flock that we are keeping track of has two unusual things that our teams determined required for their study. The first is the unusual size of the flock itself. The average size of a migrating flock of Canada geese usually falls in the range of between 30 and 60 individuals. Our population was originally counted at 239 individuals in the year 2009 and as of the last count in 2018, the population had grown to 367 birds. The flock was first discovered in 2009 by a fisherman at Lake Pleasant when he noticed a large flock come in and land in late November when the busy summer lake is empty of weekend watersport enthusiasts. The initial research only consisted of the initial counting of the population and fitting tracking bracelets on a couple of individuals. Come April, the flock left the area of the lake as expected and started their migration to Alaska. This led to the discovery of the second thing that makes this flock so unusual in its behavior. It is normal for a population of geese to not begin migrating all at once, usually leaving in smaller groups as I described earlier. This population however left as a single group on the same day and there as we could tell the same hour. The radio tracking bracelets fitted to the individuals also showed a strange behavior in their flight patterns. I'm sure most everybody knows the familiar V shape that Canada geese fly in while traveling. Without going into too much detail, it's the most optimal pattern that the flock can fly in in order to conserve energy for the long trip to their breeding grounds during the spring and summer months. We honestly thought it was a mistake when the first reading of the GPS tracking bracelet came in and showed that our flock was not flying in this V formation. Because of the few amount of GPS units our team could afford at the time it was really impossible to tell what the formation actually was, but the distribution of tracked individuals showed definitively that the flock was not flying in the V pattern normal for Canada geese. With the usual size of the flock and our initial findings of the flight pattern it wasn't hard to secure funding for more GPS units to attach the next time the flock appeared at the lake. It also allowed us to get in contact with the closest ornithology professor in Alaska in order to get an accurate account of their breeding grounds. Unfortunately the breeding area of this flock was in a pretty remote area, so the professor and his students could only get to their breeding grounds for a two-day span in the middle of June when all of the gosslings had already hatched, so their nesting behavior really couldn't be studied that first year. However, they were able to accomplish the important task of attaching more GPS units to breeding adults in order to try and get a more accurate representation of their flight patterns. They also gave us an accurate number of individuals in the population. As expected, the GPS units transmitted the first migration data in the middle of October. We were expecting exciting results as with the inclusion of the new units we'd be able to get a more accurate picture of what their unusual flight pattern actually looked like. The flock left Alaska in a single hour and formed into the first noticeable pattern three hours later. The pattern wasn't real clear despite the number of GPS units attached, but this could be attributed to the unusual size of the flock. It was actually one of the research students working in my team that put the dots together, quite literally, as our readout of the flight pattern was only a number of dots representing each individual with a unit on it. The student, who I won't name for anonymity, sent me the readout when the flock was somewhere in British Columbia. While missing obvious spots, it was possible to make out a word. Butcher. Yeah, you heard that right. The geese were flying in a formation that spelled out the word butcher. Like I imagine most of you are doing right now, I dismissed the image. It had to be an error on the GPS unit or the student was reading too much into it and connecting dots that weren't really there. The geese landed at Lake Pleasant in early November. By sheer chance, the same fisherman that had seen them the first time was out fishing again when they approached the lake and informed us of their arrival again. I remember the email from him because he emphasized how freaked out he was when he first saw them in the distance. Freaked out because he clearly saw the flock was flying in a pattern that spelled out his last name, butcher. Coincidence? That was the only thing that made sense to think at the time, or maybe my student had been playing a joke on me with the GPS tracking image and the fisherman was involved somehow. I stopped thinking that though when I saw an image of the fisherman's face on the local news two weeks later with his full name, Jonathan Butcher plastered on my TV screen. According to the news anchor, he had been murdered by his wife when he was caught watching porn. A senseless and sad way to go, but I still refused to believe it was anything more than coincidence. The next couple of months were filled with multiple trips to Lake Pleasant, attaching more GPS units we managed to scrape together and getting another count of the population for our records. The flock left in April as a single unit, just like last year, although we weren't able to get a visual on what their finalized pattern looked like until the first GPS readings came in a couple of hours later. This time the word they spelled out was much clearer as the new GPS units filled up many of the gaps we had seen in the previous readings. Shilling This was when I finally started to believe something strange was going on. As I had gotten these readings myself, it would have been impossible for any of my team to change or mess with them. The name itself, Shilling, didn't mean anything to me, besides being the name of a former pitcher for Arizona's MLB team. In May 2010, Wendy Shilling of Anchorage, Alaska was shot and killed by her husband when he arrived home early from his long haul truck route to find her in bed with his brother. This happened two and a half weeks after our Canada geese flock landed at their breeding grounds. Because of the particular interest I was taking with this flock, I asked my colleague to check on the flock in their breeding grounds and note any odd or peculiar behavior the flock showed while there. Bless his heart, he spent an entire week at the breeding grounds by himself taking account and attaching even more GPS units to them. Unfortunately, the week did not yield any unusual behavior from the flock and hence didn't give any answers as to what on earth was going on. Come October of 2010, the flock flies out of their home in Alaska and toward their summer home here in Arizona. Considering what had happened the last two times, I waited impatiently while the first GPS readings came in. Townsend was the name. A week and a half after landing at Lake Pleasant, Jacqueline Townsend was killed in a road accident when her husband drove drunk from a bar in Northern Phoenix. The husband survived the accident and was charged with manslaughter. In April 2011, the flock left Lake Pleasant and arrived in Alaska keeping a formation spelling out the name Richardson. In June 2011, Tim Richardson disappeared in the Alaska wilderness when his partner and him went camping just outside of Anchorage. While the partner was eventually recovered, Tim was never found and has been declared dead. Annie Noeck murdered by her abusive husband in Phoenix in December 2011, two weeks after our geese landed at Lake Pleasant. Brennan Zamora. Maeve Doherty. Emanuel Chambers. Every single one dead at the fault of the person who loves them the most in the world. Every single one dead within three weeks of our geese landing within 100 miles of them. Every single one named weeks beforehand in a geese formation. Because I don't want to sound like a crazy person and get all of my funding cut from my other research, I've never published the results of this study. However, I feel the need to mention this because the geese left their winter home at Lake Pleasant yesterday. Just like all of our GPS readings over the last decade, the formation of the birds spelled out yet another name. I'm currently on a working vacation with my wife in Anchorage to try and see this group of geese come in for myself, so I was excited to look at the first GPS readings for the flock yesterday. I became a lot less excited when I saw the name that they spelled out. Stevenson. My name is Dr. Aaron Stevenson. While collecting firewood and chestnuts on Hothfield Common near Ashford in Kent last October, we discovered an area of disturbed ground where a small fire had recently been lit. It was just before 6am in the morning and the night before had been mild, starry, and moonlit. The ashes of the fire were still warm. Various bones had been partly consumed in the fire and our immediate thought was that a tramp or maybe a rough sleeper had cooked a bird of some kind, possibly a chicken or a partridge, although my own feeling was that the bones were too large to be a bird. Both birds are common in the area though, so I thought no more about it. We moved on, but only a few yards away we discovered something even more interesting. Carved into the ground was a large five-sided star with more bones arranged to form strange letters in each of the triangles of the star. In the center of the star was a small bone dish, which I suspect may have been formed from the skull of a smallish animal, possibly that of a small dog, cat, or maybe a fox. This bowl was filled with a thin pink liquid, which had a sour, pungent smell, possibly blood thinned down with urine. Around the star was evidence of the ground being disturbed with many footmarks, as though several people had shuffled or danced around it in some fashion and for some time. Outside the ring of footmarks, the ground looked to have been scuffed with either sharp sticks or knives in a slashing manner, and a large log had been dragged across from the nearby trees to form a seat or sofa like platform near the star. Several pairs of women's panties and two black t-shirts seemed to be arranged to form a pillow at one end, and the log was quite damp in several areas, some places also with blood marks. A thin braided cord made from colored ribbons and very long human hair was tied to a small branch stub on the log, and a length of galvanized fencing wire had been formed into a small crescent shape at one end with a spring-type handle for the other. A thin rope encircled the log, tied with a bowline knot at one end, and they roughly formed Hengman's noose at the other. The crescent shape on the wire had obviously been heated to red hot as it was blackened and had some type of meat-like material still singed to it. It reminded me of old cowboy films in which they branded cattle. At the time we had no camera or phone with us, but we quickly drove back home to collect a camera and notebook and drop off our dog, who seemed to be quite distressed while at the site. We were gone for less than half an hour as we lived close by, but on our return at about 6.30 the star and the log had both been cleared away. The ground looked as though it had been roughly swept with a stiff broom and the gashes in the ground trotted back in. We found the log about 50 yards away inside the trees, now upside down and scattered with dead leaves and dust as though it had never been disturbed. There was no sign of the wire, the ribbon braid or skull cap. The clothes had been collected too. Water had been put on the fire and all of the bones had been removed and taken away. Only one item of evidence remained, but not at the site. As we walked back to the car we discovered another pair of white panties pushed deep into the bushes close to the style. We pulled them out using a twig and discovered that they had the mark of a crescent in scorched blood at the front where the pubic area would be. At this point my wife felt a little sick and that we should not get further involved. So we bend the knickers and the nearest dog soil bin and left. Later my wife told me that she had the distinct feeling that every move that we had made there had been watched and noted. Possibly it had. We no longer take our dogs to Hothfield and collect nuts and firewood from other areas now. The feeling of being observed has never quite gone away though and still today we sometimes talk about what it all means and just who were the people involved. In fact, we are very careful now with all local people as it is possible in this small rural community that we know every one of them as our neighbors or friends. Our conclusion from a little research is that a coven exists in our area and that ceremonies of a strange and erotic nature take place at various times. We seem to have arrived too early at Hothfield Common on that particular day and had likely disturbed the clearance of the evidence of modern witchcraft. Do we really live in a modern age? Thanks for listening to this Dark Archives episode of Weird Darkness. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at weirddarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N and you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Minds, Miwi and more, including the show's Weirdo's 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 or call the Dark Line toll-free at 1-877-277-5944. That's 1-877-277-5944. 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. Weird Darkness is a copyright and trademark of Marlar House Productions. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, our next Weirdo Watch Party is Saturday, December 11th. Horror host Mistress Malicious is back and she brings her entourage of miscreants from Mistress Pease Theatre for an insanely fun Christmas episode. Santa Claus conquers the Martians from 1964, starring Pia Zadora and Santa Claus. The Martians kidnap Santa Claus because there's nobody on Mars to give their children presents. Join us for this atrociously bad movie. Jump into the chat with us to poke fun at the acting, the sats, man to make jokes as we watch the film and let's all celebrate Christmas with a really weird and wacky film hosted by a really weird and wacky woman. The Weirdo Watch Party is free, so grab your movie popcorn, candy and soda and join us Saturday, December 11th. The film starts at 9pm Central, that's 7pm Pacific, 8pm Mountain, 10pm Eastern. You can see a trailer for the film and also learn more about the Weirdo Watch Party on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com.