 Merry Christmas and welcome to Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Android so you don't miss future episodes. This is a special 12 Nightmares of Christmas episode and each day from December 13 through December 24, I'm posting a new episode of Weird Darkness featuring material from the new book, The Spirits of Christmas, the Dark Side of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. So be sure to come back every day between now and the 24th and be sure to catch up with all the episodes you've missed up until this point for more holiday horrors. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, put another log onto the fire and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Max Kubas lay awake in bed that early December night in 1913. There was a real Wisconsin blizzard howling around the house, the winds piling the snow into deep drifts, but something else was keeping him from sleep, a faint scratching sound coming from somewhere in the house. It wasn't on the second floor where the family slept, it seemed to be coming from the first floor. Sounded like someone walking around in slipper feet, pacing the night away in the darkness. Max couldn't stand it any longer. He got out of bed carefully not to wake his wife Julia. He tiptoed quietly across the room. He held his breath as he reached for the door knob. He didn't want the squeak of the opening door to wake Julia or the two girls, Helen and Armila, who slept peacefully in the bedroom across the hall. The moment his hand touched the door knob, a terrible pounding on the front door echoed through the house. Julia sat bolt upright with a yelp and the girls called out in their room. Max thought briefly about going to answer the door, but before he could take a step outside the bedroom, the front door crashed open and heavy footsteps trampled through the front hallway into the kitchen. Julia and the girls joined Max as he stood in the upstairs hallway, trying to summon the courage to peer over the banister. Who's there? Max demanded as his wife and daughters huddled close to him. I'm going to see what's going on. Max muttered. Julia and the girls followed him closely as he cautiously went to the stairs, flipped on the light, and went down to the first floor. They searched the entire house, but found no one. As the month wore on, the winter grew fiercer. One night, sometime later, Julia slipped out of bed before dawn to add more wood to the bedroom stoves. She was halfway across the room when a misty figure materialized next to the stove. The figure coalesced into the apparition of an elderly woman who held her hands out to the stove as if trying to warm them. The ghost vanished moments later. The Kubis family decided to investigate the history of their home. Perhaps a former resident had returned home. The old lady at the wood stove and the nocturnal prowler might possibly be the same spirit. Max and Julia learned from their neighbors that their house had been the lifelong home of an old woman named Mrs. Alex Pikman. She had loved her Milwaukee home and had always told her husband and relatives that she fully intended to return there as a ghost. She had recently died and was buried in Omaha, Nebraska. Apparently, she hadn't forgotten her promise to haunt her former home. During the next few weeks, Mrs. Pikman continued to visit her old house, always between midnight and 1 a.m. The front door would slam open as if to announce the spook's arrival. Then footsteps would pace the house as Mrs. Pikman made her nightly rounds. The family also heard the ghost wheezing alarmingly as though Mrs. Pikman was trying to catch her breath. The neighbors nodded knowingly. In life, Mrs. Pikman had an asthmatic condition. One night though, the ghost changed its habits. The Cuba's girls, Helen and Armila, were fast asleep at midnight. Suddenly, they were jolted away by the thought of a body hitting their bed, followed by the commotion of someone invisible scrambling to get under the covers. The girls fled from the room screaming bloody murder. Their resident old lady ghost was behaving like a rowdy eight-year-old at a sleepover. The Cuba's family had quite enough. The very next morning, Max told Julia and the girls to pack their bags. They moved all their belongings out of the house that day. Well, almost all of them. In their hurry to get out of the haunted house, the family left behind the clock that sat on the mantle. Julia Cubas remembered it the next day and went back for it in the daylight. When she picked it up, she found that it had stopped at midnight. There is a lot of strangeness tucked away in the wild corners of New England. One of these places is the ravine between Garvin and Heartland Hills in Vermont. These back roads are haunted by a commune of hippie ghosts. In 1971, so the story goes, five young men and two women rented a house nearby for Christmas break. They were wealthy college students from out of state and they told people they were going to go skiing at Woodstock. According to the locals, they were really there to smoke pot, a lot of pot. Whatever the reason, they were there on vacation. But tragedy struck when the house caught fire. No one knows how the blaze began, but it took near moments for the flames to engulf the place. The seven students inside were two days to react, much less to escape. All of them were killed in the fire. Even today, locals driving the back roads around that land report seeing ghostly long haired figures along the side of the road. One witness, a Mr. Sawyer, was a bit detailed in telling of his experience. He says he saw a ghostly figure running down the road, holding a flaming chair in his arms, eternally trying to escape his fiery fate. The city of New Orleans is crawling with ghosts at every time of the year. Those specters represent the same vivid cross-section of humanity that throngs the streets of this vibrant city in life. There is a house on the 700 block of Royal Street that features a rooftop ghost, a phantom, that is, shall we say, not safe for work. The spirit is that of a young, pretty slave girl who fell hopelessly in love with a creole man. The young man was handsome, but he apparently had a vicious streak. He promised to marry the young slave if she proved her devotion to him by spending the night on the roof of his house stark naked. The girl was so besotted that one night, soon after, she actually did as he demanded. She stripped off all her clothes and lay down to spend the night. Unfortunately, she was too impatiently love-struck to wait for warm weather. It was a cold December night when she lay down. She never got up. Her would-be husband found her on his rooftop the next morning, frozen to death. Neighbors say that when December nights turn especially chilly, the young slave girl comes back, still trying to prove her undying love for her intended. She still wanders the rooftop of that house. Her life, nude form, backlit against the starry sky. In West Virginia, many years ago, there lived a family by the name of Alts. They weren't a large family. In fact, there were only the three of them, Mr. and Mrs. Jim Alts and their daughter Anna. They were a happy, prosperous family with but one blot on their blessed lives. Anna Alts was quite sickly and no doctor could explain her illness. One night in early December, Anna suddenly got up from her bed. Her parents were astounded. Anna had been bedridden for most of her young life. Dreamily as if in a trance, Anna threw back the covers, went to the door and walked outside. Her parents followed. Her mother wringing her hands with worry. Was Anna sleepwalking? Would it be wrong even dangerous to wake her? Anna wandered through the yard, her bare feet leaving small prints in a newly fallen snow. She came to a rose bush she had often gazed at through her bedroom window. Anna's strange journey out to the garden sapped what little strength she had. She sank to the frozen ground. Her hand outstretched to the rose bush. Her mother and father rushed to her side, but it was too late. Anna was dead. Her parents were heartbroken at the loss of their only child, but they soon had a strange consolation. The rose bush began to bloom shortly after Anna's death. It continued to bloom all year round, even into the winter months. Even when the rose bush was covered in snow, beautiful red roses dotted the bush. Several years later, Jim Alts and his wife moved to a new house. They dug up the rose bush and took it with them as a reminder of their lost Anna. They replanted the rose bush in the yard of the new house, but to their sorrow, they didn't bloom that spring. Summer, too, came in with plentiful sunshine and rain, but still the rose bush didn't bloom. The Alts feared the rose bush had died. In early December of that year, on the anniversary of Anna's death, a light snow fell. The next morning, Mrs. Alts looked out the window and shrieked. Anna's rose bush was gone. Mr. and Mrs. Alts rushed outside to see what had happened. The rose bush had indeed disappeared, and small footprints in the dusting of new snow led away from the spot where it had stood. The grieving parents followed the footprints. They had to know who would dig up their daughter's beloved rose bush. They traced the footprints all the way to their end and stopped, gazing at the scene in wonder. The footprints led straight to the cemetery and stopped at Anna's gravesite. There on the daughter's grave stood the rose bush. It was covered with beautiful red roses in full bloom. Many years ago, Dr. Anderson was awakened by a frantic pounding on his front door. He dressed quickly and hurried down to answer it. The moon shone brightly on the white snow and on the young girl standing on the doctor's front porch. The doctor wondered briefly why she was out so late. It was past midnight and the girl couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. He didn't recognize her. She was dressed in a blue coat and her shaking hands were thrust into a white muff. Please help me. The girl begged through chattering teeth. It's my mother. She's very sick and I'm afraid she'll die. The girl explained that she and her mother had recently moved in to the old Hossler Place about three miles away. Her father was dead and it was just the two of them now. I think she's got pneumonia, the girl said. Please, you've got to come see her. At the dreaded word, pneumonia, the doctor gave a short, sharp nod. Of course I'll come. I'll be just a moment. The girl turned and darted away, heading for the old Hossler Place. The doctor shrugged into his good sheepskin coat, grabbed his bag, and went to the barn to saddle his horse. As the horse trotted down the road, the doctor mused at the bravery of the young girl who had ventured out after midnight in the bitter cold to seek his help. He was sorry she'd run off before he could invite her in to warm up just a bit. The ride didn't take long, but Dr. Anderson was still chilled to the bone when he came in sight of the Hossler Farmhouse. He swung down, tied his horse to the gatepost, and hurried up the walk. No one answered his knock, so he eased the door open and came in. The woman lay huddled in a bed, wheezing and shivering. The doctor turned up the oil lamp and set to work. If he could break the fever, the woman might live. He trickled medicine down the woman's throat, then poked the fire to life so he could heat water for hot holtuses. He worked for a couple of hours, and soon the woman stirred back to lucidity. How did you know to come? She asked as she accepted a cup of something hot and steaming from the doctor. Your daughter came to my house to fetch me. She was very brave to come out on foot on such a bitter night. The woman's face paled even further. My daughter died of pneumonia three years ago. But who could it have been? If it wasn't your daughter, how would she know you were ill? I tell you, there was a young girl about thirteen years old who showed up on my porch. She was wearing a blue coat and a white muff. My daughter had a blue coat and a white muff. The woman whispered, they're hanging in the closet over there. Dr. Anderson strode to the closet and yanked open the door. There, hanging right in plain view, were a blue coat and white muff. With trembling hands, he reached out and tucked a finger inside the muff. The fur inside the white muff was damp with perspiration. It was a cold winter afternoon early in the last century. A mother huddled in her cabin on the west fork of the Little Pigeon River in Tennessee. She held two of her children in a tight embrace. But one was missing. Her two-year-old son had wandered away from the cabin earlier that day. Since then, the temperature had been falling steadily, along with a heavy snow. A neighbor came in, stamping the snow from his boots to grab a few moments warmth by the fire. The mother looked up, hope dawning briefly in her eyes, then looked back down, defeated at the shake of the neighbor's head. She was grateful, of course, that all the menfolk were out looking for her precious lost little one. Word had been passed from cabin to homestead, from house to church, and soon the entire community was out looking. Her own husband was off in Europe in the trenches fighting the Germans. All she could do was pray that one of the neighbors would find her little boy and soon. Dr. Thomas appeared at the door of the cabin. He dressed warmly for the trudge through the woods. He'd come thinking to help the young mother. One look at her stricken face, though, and he realized that he could best help not by doctoring her, but by finding her missing son. Pulling his heavy overcoat closed, he headed out into the snowstorm with the other searchers. Dr. Thomas struck off in a random direction, hoping he was looking at grounds that hadn't already been covered. With the snow falling so thickly, the footprints of the searching men were soon being covered over. Dr. Thomas held his lantern high in the gathering dusk as he scanned the area. The shadows of the evening crowded close under the pines as the last light of day slipped away. The doctor stopped for a moment, listening to the silence of the woods. Somewhere, he knew men were searching for the little boy with dogs, but he hadn't yet heard the deep bay of a hound on a scent. All around him, the snow fell in a silent hush. The branches of the pines swayed with the wind, even as laden with snow as they were. As night fell, the snowstorm grew worse. Dr. Thomas trudged along the dwindling path in the woods, stopping every so often to look closely at any fallen log that might shelter a shivering little boy. His toes were beginning to go numb, even with the three pairs of thick woolen socks he wore, but he kept wandering the woods. His lantern held high in search of any sign of the boy. If he was cold, the toddler would be even worse off. Dr. Thomas stopped and turned in a slow circle. He couldn't give up hope, not while the boy was still out there, lost in the storm. He held his lantern high, and there on the ground was one footprint. Dr. Thomas bent closer to study it. It wasn't the track of a deer or a dog. It was the footprint of a child, a child who was barefoot. The doctor's heart leapt and adrenaline spun in his cold fingers and toes, warming them briefly. Finally, here was some sign of the boy. The doctor looked around carefully for more footprints. There was another one and a third. The barefoot prints were just visible in the hard packed old snow, and as the doctor watched, more appeared. The feathery new snow blowing off the old prints. Carefully, the doctor followed the prints. As soon as he passed the last one, the next one appeared, leading him further into the woods. The doctor no longer cursed the biting wind, because oddly enough, the wind seemed to be blowing the fresh snow off of the prints, revealing the path the barefoot toddler had taken through the woods. Dr. Thomas followed the footprints as they led him to a patch of evergreens. The doctor lifted a low hanging branch and gasped. There, curled up on a soft bed of fallen pine needles, was the young boy. But the doctor had come too late. The boy's skin was waxy white, and his little chest didn't rise and fall with a peaceful sleeping breath. The boy had frozen to death in the storm. Dr. Thomas stifled a low moan and gathered the child up in his arms. He unbuttoned his coat and his woolen shirt and cradled the boy to his chest. The boy had died in the freezing cold. Although it was too late, the doctor could at least keep him warm with a sad walk home. He rebuttoned his coat and headed back to the cabin. As the doctor approached the cabin, the young mother came out to meet him. Seeing her there, silhouetted against the yellow glow of the lit cabin behind her, Dr. Thomas felt his spirits sink. How could he break this woman's heart? The mother caught sight of the doctor with his sad burden and ran to him. Dr. Thomas reached the open cabin door just as the woman came out, crying joyful tears at the return of her baby. The doctor unbuttoned his coat and opened his shirt. I'm so sorry, at least I found him. And to his shock, the little boy blinked sleepy brown eyes at him. The child turned his head, fearing his mother's cry of joy. Mama! Stunned, Dr. Thomas handed the toddler to his mother, who cuddled him fiercely. She looked up, tears of gratitude standing in her eyes. Thank you, doctor. Thank you so much. You saved my little boy. Please come inside and get warm. The doctor followed her into the cabin. His analytical mind fumbled for an explanation. The boy must have been chilled to the point where his vitals had slowed, putting him into a state of suspended animation. The walk back, cuddled against the doctor's warm chest and wrapped in the heavy overcoat, must have warmed the child slowly, enough for him to recover with no harm done. The gentle warming had brought the child back to life as surely as a violet blooms in the spring. Vaguely he became aware that the boy's mother was still talking. I'm so grateful to you for finding him. She kissed the toddler, who sighed sleepily in her arms. Dr. Thomas roused himself from his thoughts. Yes, I followed his footprints in the snow. I'm amazed he was able to wander so far with bare feet. Bare feet? The mother said, puzzled. But he's wearing shoes. Frowning, Dr. Thomas lifted one of the boy's feet. Sure enough, the boy was wearing sturdy brogans. I have to tie his shoes on tightly with double knots so he won't kick them off, the mother explained. Here, have some coffee. It'll warm you right up. Good job, a neighbor said, putting a tin cup into the doctor's hand. Dr. Thomas accepted the congratulations and heartfelt thanks to his neighbors. The little boy was safe. That was all that mattered. But the doctor's scientific mind wouldn't rest until he figured out the answer to the mystery. Several nights later, he woke from a sound sleep, sitting bolt upright in bed, reeling from a thunderclap of realization. The wind hadn't blown the fresh snow off the child's old prints. The bare footprints had been appearing in the snow, step by step, as he'd been following them. He hadn't been tracking a living child. He'd been following an invisible child, a ghost or an angel. One night in December 1943, a British airman stationed in London was out for a stroll. He was crossing Pond Square in Highgate when he heard a strange sound for the mid-20th century, the sound of carriage wheels on cobblestone. Then he heard an even more incongruous sound for a chilly December night in the middle of London, the loud screech of a chicken. The airman looked around in confusion. He couldn't see a carriage, but he did see a chicken running in disoriented circles and squawking with fright, and probably also with cold because this chicken had already been plucked. The airman took a few steps toward the bird, hoping to help the poor shivering creature, but as he got closer, the chicken vanished. This chicken ghost has been seen in Highgate for over 300 years. It has a perfectly good reason to haunt Pond Square, and its story affects us even today. You see, that was the world's first frozen chicken, and it led to a revolution in food preservation. The story goes that in April 1626, Sir Francis Bacon was riding in a carriage through London with his friend Dr. Witherbone, a physician to James I. The sight of the snow-covered ground led to a discussion of the possible use of snow to preserve food. Looking out at the rolling wheels and the path left behind the carriage, Bacon pointed out to Witherbone that the wheels were packed with chunks of snow, and the grass revealed by the passing of the wheels looked fresh and green, even in late winter. Bacon's friend belittled his theory. Irritated enough to want to prove his point immediately, Bacon ordered the carriage to stop. He trotted to the nearest house and bought one of the household's chickens. He wrung the hen's neck, plucked it, cleaned it, and stuffed the carcass with snow. Then he packed more snow around the prepared bird. Bacon's experiment worked, and a new era in commercial food preservation was born. Unfortunately, Bacon's impetuous adventure in the snow led to his contracting pneumonia. He faded quickly and died on April 9, 1626. Soon after Sir Francis' death, visitors to Pond Square began to hear the squawking of a chicken about to be butchered. But no chicken was in sight. Then the audible became visible. People would see a plucked chicken running in confused circles before vanishing through a brick wall. The airman's experience in 1943 was just one in a series of naked chicken sightings down through the years. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with others and help build the Weird Darkness community by converting your friends and family into weirdos as well. This special episode is part of my 12 Nightmares of Christmas series, a collaboration with paranormal blogger and author Sylvia Schultz. The stories I used in this episode are from her book The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays, and you can find a link to that book in the show notes. Do you have a dark tale to tell? Share your story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. Music in this episode is provided by Midnight Syndicate. You can find a link to purchase and download this dark, creepy Christmas music before Christmas arrives so you can have it to listen to. You can find that link in the show notes. I am your creator and host, Darren Marlar. Merry Christmas and thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.