 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. Welcome Weirdos and Happy Halloween. 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. 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 follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter and visit WeirdDarkness.com where you can find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free, listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated, you can send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or somebody you know and more. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Halloween is the season for little ghosts and goblins to take the streets, asking for candy and scaring one another silly. Spooky stories are told around fires, scary movies appear in theaters and pumpkins are expertly and not so expertly carved into jack-o-lanterns. Recently creepy clowns seem to be doing some real terrorizing. In August of 2016, locals in Greenville, South Carolina reported a clown who was allegedly trying to lure children into the woods. Then in September, a teen reported a ninth-wielding clown in Summitville, Tennessee. Local and state officials in many areas urged people to report suspicious clown sightings. In South Florida, some stores pulled clown costumes from their shelves and Broward County police advised people not to dress up as the masked grinners, according to the Miami Herald. In 2017, the clowning around continued. A movie based on the classic Stephen King story It was remade and released in the United States on September 8 of that year. In the movie, a demon that takes the form of a clown lures children into the sewer with a red balloon. In Lilitz, Pennsylvania, police responded to reports of over 20 red balloons tied to sewer grates. People dressing as clowns remain a popular way to scare. Children in North Dakota, for example, were targeted recently by a ninth-wielding clown with a boa constrictor and in September, Australia saw an increase of clown sightings before Halloween. Amid the silly and scary antics, Halloween is much more than just costumes and candy. In fact, the Halloween has a rich and interesting history. Halloween, also known as All Hallows Eve, can be traced back about 2,000 years to a pre-Christian Celtic festival held around November 1 called Sauen, which means summer's end in Gaelic, according to Indo-European entomology dictionaries. Because ancient records are sparse and fragmentary, the exact nature of Sauen is not fully understood, but it was an annual communal meeting at the end of the harvest year, a time to gather resources for the winter months and bring animals back from the pastures. Sauen has also thought to have been a time of communing with the dead, according to folklorist John Santino. There was a belief that it was a day when spirits of the dead would cross over into the other world, Santino told Live Science. Such moments of transition in the year have always been thought to be special and supernatural. Halloween provides a safe way to play with the concept of death. People dress up as the living dead and fake gravestones adorn front lawns, activities that would not be tolerated at other times of the year, unfortunately. But according to Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University in Toronto, of Halloween from pagan ritual to party night, there is no hard evidence that Sauen was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship. According to ancient sagas, Sauen was the time when tribal peoples paid tribute to their conquerors and when the Sid or ancient mounds might reveal the magnificent palaces of the gods of the underworld, Rogers wrote. Sauen was less about death or evil than about the changing of seasons and preparing for the dormancy and rebirth of nature as summer turned to winter, he said. Though a direct connection between Halloween and Sauen has never been proven, many scholars believe that because All Saints Day or All Hallows Mass celebrated on November 1st, and Sauen are so close together on the calendar that they had to have influenced each other and later combined into the celebration now called Halloween. The tradition of dressing in costumes and trick-or-treating may go back to the practice of mumming and gizing in which people would disguise themselves and go door to door asking for food. Early costumes were usually disguises, often woven out of straw, and sometimes people wore costumes to perform in plays or skits. The practice may also be related to the medieval custom of souling in Britain and Ireland when poor people would knock on doors on Holomus or November 1st asking for food in exchange for prayers for the dead. Trick-or-treating didn't start in the United States until World War II, but American kids were known to go out on Thanksgiving and ask for food to practice known as Thanksgiving begging. Mass solicitation rituals are pretty common and they are usually associated with winter holidays. While one tradition didn't necessarily cause the others, they were similar and parallel. These days the trick part of the phrase trick-or-treat is mostly an empty threat, but pranks have long been part of the holiday. By the late 1800s the tradition of playing tricks on Halloween was well established. In the United States and Canada the pranks included tipping over outhouses, opening farmers' gates and egging houses, but by the 1920s and 30s the celebrations more closely resembled an unruly block party and the acts of vandalism got more serious. Some people believe that because pranking was starting to get dangerous and out of hand, parents and town leaders began to encourage dressing up and trick-or-treating as a safe alternative to doing pranks. However, Halloween was as much a time for festivities and games as it was for playing tricks or asking for treats. Apples are associated with Halloween, both as a treat and in the game of bobbing for apples, a game that since the colonial era in America was used for fortune-telling. Legend has it that the first person to pluck an apple from the water-filled bucket without using his or her hands would be the first to marry, according to the book Halloween and Commemorations of the Dead by Rosanne Montillo. Apples were also part of another form of marriage prophecy. According to legend, on Halloween, sometimes at the stroke of midnight on Halloween, young women would peel an apple into one continuous strip and then throw it over her shoulder. The appleskin would supposedly land in the shape of the first letter of her future husband's name. Another Halloween ritual involved looking in a mirror at midnight by candlelight for a future husband's face was said to appear. Scary variation of this later became the Bloody Mary ritual familiar to many schoolgirls. Like many such childhood games, it was likely done in fun, though at least some people did take it seriously. Some evangelical Christians have expressed concern that Halloween is somehow satanic because of its roots in pagan ritual. However, ancient Celts did not worship anything resembling the Christian devil and had no concept of it in fact. The Sauen Festival had long since vanished by the time the Catholic Church began persecuting witches in its search for satanic cabals, and of course black cats do not need to have any association with witchcraft to be considered evil, simply crossing their path as considered bad luck any time of the year for some folks. As for modern Halloween, beliefs and customs were brought to North America with the earliest Irish immigrants, then by the great waves of Irish immigrants fleeing the famines of the first half of the 19th century. Known in the North American continent since colonial days by the middle of the 20th century, Halloween had become largely a children's holiday. Since that time, the holiday's popularity increased dramatically as adults, communities and institutions like schools, campuses and commercial haunted houses have embraced the event as have podcasts and radio shows. Through the ages, various supernatural entities including fairies and witches came to be associated with Halloween, and more than a century ago in Ireland, the event was said to be a time when spirits of the dead could return to their old haunting grounds. Dressing up as ghosts or witches became fashionable, though as the holiday became more widespread and more commercialized, and with the arrival of mass-manufactured costumes, a selection of disguises for kids and adults greatly expanded beyond monsters to include everything from superheroes to princesses to politicians. And most of them also have a sexy version. Hey Weirdos, have you signed up for the Weird Darkness email newsletter? It'll keep you up to date on what's happening with the podcast when our next Weirdo Watch Party will take place. You can see when the next sale in the Weird Darkness store is scheduled. Sign up for the Weird Darkness email newsletter for free at WeirdDarkness.com. Weird Darkness is celebrating its eighth birthday this month and our way of celebrating is to raise money for organizations that help people who struggle with depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide and self-harm. It's called Overcoming the Darkness and you can make a donation right now at WeirdDarkness.com slash overcoming. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash overcoming. A gift of any amount will bring us that much closer to our goal and your donation helps that many more people who are affected by depression, so no gift is too small. Our goal is to raise at least $5,000 this month. If you've not donated yet, or if you'd like to give again, or maybe you'd like to grab the link and share the fundraiser on your own social media and challenge others to give, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash overcoming. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash overcoming. The fundraiser ends on Halloween, so please give right now while you're thinking about it. WeirdDarkness.com slash overcoming. Happy Halloween and welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. If I had to create a list of my favorite ghost films, the 1980 classic The Changeling would have to be there somewhere, especially at this time of year. In the film, George C. Scott plays a composer who loses his wife and a child in a terrible car accident. Looking for a fresh start, he moves into an old house that he quickly discovers he's haunted. Those who've seen the film will vividly recall its many chilling scenes like the seance and an incident involving a red rubber ball and agree with me, it ranks as one of the best haunted house movies of all time. But what you might not know about The Changeling is that the story of an angry ghost haunting an old mansion is based on true events, or at least as true as most based on true story horror films seem to be. In 1968, a composer named Russell Hunter moved from New York into the Henry Treat Rogers mansion, which was located in a historic neighborhood near Cheesman Park in Denver, Colorado. According to his account, he rented the sprawling old home for a mere $200 a month because, well, nobody else wanted to live there. After only a few months, Hunter began noticing some strange things in the house. It started with a banging sound that he heard each morning. It stopped whenever he got out of bed. Doors opened and closed by themselves, faucets turned on and off, and sometimes pictures on the walls shook so violently that they flew off the walls. Looking for a source for the weird happenings, Hunter later stated that he discovered a hidden staircase in the back of an upstairs closet, and it led to a small room that contained the belongings of a young boy, including a journal of his secret life. After reading through the journal and holding séances in the house, it was learned that the resident ghost was a sickly child who had once lived in the house and had been the heir to a fortune left to him by his grandmother. The boy died very young, and his parents were so worried that the inheritance might be passed on to another family member that they buried him in an unmarked grave in a field southeast of Denver. Soon after, they adopted a boy from an orphanage to pose as their child. He kept the secret, received the family fortune, and went on to great wealth and success. Hunter claimed that the ghost of the sickly boy directed him to the location of his unmarked grave, which was now beneath a house on South Dahlia Street in Denver. The spirit reportedly threatened the family living in a house if Hunter could not convince them to let him dig up the boy's body. The family agreed, and Hunter and some friends managed to unearth a set of human remains, along with a gold medallion that was inscribed with the dead child's name. The haunting should have been over at this point, but it wasn't. In fact, things got even worse. The activity in the mansion became violent. Objects were thrown, a wall collapsed behind Hunter's bed, and one night a set of glass doors exploded, badly cutting him. Afraid for his life, he finally fled the house. He moved into a new place on Kearney Street, but the haunting followed him there. Eventually, a minister from the Epiphany Episcopal Church cleansed the house, and the activity came to an end. Hunter's story, spoiler alert, is very close to the story told in the movie version of The Changeling. Even the red rubber ball makes an appearance in his true account since it was the sickly boy's favorite toy. Over time, Hunter's story has been called into question. His ghostly claims were fact-checked, and no record was found that said that he ever did live in the Henry Treat Williams mansion, although he did reside in Denver in the late 1960s when he was helping his parents manage the Three Birches Lodge in Boulder. It's very possible that his residence in the house was off the books, just as he claimed, for a low price because nobody wanted to live in the house. There's also no record of the boy who supposedly haunted the house, but there are some curious facts about the family who built the mansion, including that they owned the farmland where the child's unmarked grave was said to be located. It's very unlikely that Hunter could have known that or had access to the records that proved this information when he lived in the mansion. It should also be noted that strange happenings and hauntings have been reported all over Denver's Cheezman Park neighborhood for decades. It might be because the park was originally a very large cemetery. As recently as the past few years, workmen who were digging in the park unearthed a number of skeletons. In fact, they turn up all the time, which reminds me of another good horror movie or two. The story I'm about to tell you is a true story written by Catherine Neville. She said, as me, our ghost was first sighted on Halloween Day of 2000, shortly after I moved in to a 150-year-old gothic house located smack in the middle of Virginia's hallowed grounds, the landscape where more than 80 percent of the battles took place in what we foreigners call the Civil War. Native Virginians still refer to that historic debacle as the late unpleasantness. That Halloween morning I had made an appointment with a landscape designer of the local farmer's co-op, I'll call him Jim, hoping that his group might help me figure out how to lighten up our spooky entrance. Those dark rows of cloth closed in boxwoods and used that marched alongside a walkway of broken stone tiles. But that morning it was so bitterly cold that Gardner Jim, after his brief landscape tour outdoors, couldn't hold his pencil and his fingers to write anything. So we went indoors where I offered him a cup of hot tea and a seat at the small table in my otherwise empty library. When he finished his sketches and estimates, he surprised me by saying, Do you mind if I go upstairs here and look around for a bit? This made me nervous. I hadn't actually moved much furniture in yet. I've been camping out with our pets, Tootie the Cockatiel and Tiger the Cat while waiting for the movers and Carl, Dr. Carl Primbrum, my spouse, to arrive in a few months. Well, the upstairs is empty, I told Jim. Did you want to study the gardens from the windows above? No, no, he assured me. I'm Scottish, you see. When I was just a lad, my grandmother discovered that I've got the second sight. I want to see if you have a ghost. Of course, they did have a ghost. Otherwise, we wouldn't be telling the story here on Weird Darkness, but I'll continue with the story when Weird Darkness returns. Hey, weirdos, are you ready for the Halloween live scream? It's an annual tradition here at Weird Darkness. It's one day of the year that I do the show live on camera, streaming simultaneously to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. I'll be sharing spooky stories as you would expect, but I'll also be answering your online comments during the live stream. I'll be giving away some Weird Darkness prize packs to randomly drawn newsletter subscribers live on the air, too. It all takes place October 31, Halloween night, starting at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern, and 12 midnight for our Greenwich Mean Time, weirdos. You can learn more and watch videos from previous Halloween live scream episodes at WeirdDarkness.com. And I hope you can join me Halloween night for our annual Halloween live scream. It's an encore presentation from Halloween 2021. Welcome back to Weird Darkness, and we continue with our story about Esme the Ghost. When he'd finished his sketches and estimates, he surprised me by saying, do you mind if I go upstairs here and look around for a bit? This made me nervous. I hadn't actually moved much furniture in yet. I've been camping out with our pets, Tooty the Cockatiel and Tiger the Cat while waiting for the movers and Carl, Dr. Carl Primbrum, my spouse, to arrive in a few months. Well, the upstairs is empty, I told Jim. Did you want to study the gardens from the windows above? No, no, he assured me. I'm Scottish, you see. When I was just a lad, my grandmother discovered that I've got the second sight. I want to see if you have a ghost. This seemed perfectly natural. I'm sure we must have, I told him. After all this is an antebellum house, I've lived in so many places that were over a hundred years old and all of them had a ghost. So I accompanied him upstairs, footsteps creaking across the old heart pine floors. Jim wordlessly explored many of the large empty rooms. In the absence of furniture, one couldn't tell which room was what. Jim was halfway across the room that was planned as the master bedroom when he halted at center and gait at the far corner from where I stood across the room, I could see the hair standing up on his neck. It's right there, Jim croaked, pointing toward the empty corner. Oh, I said, how exciting! I can't wait to tell Carl what does it look like? Jim admitted he couldn't actually see the ghost but saw a sort of shimmering effect invisible to me. I had noticed the tiger, the cat, who loved stairways and refused to go upstairs here by himself unless accompanied by a human. That evening, Halloween, my favorite holiday, I put candles along the front walk, turned on all the porch and inside lights and our gothic house was visited by 87 children of all ages. Parents told me it was the first time anyone had seen lights on in the house. I told them about our newly discovered ghost. I later phoned Carl with the day's recap, who couldn't wait to experience the ghost himself. A few weeks later Carl stopped by and route to his classes in Washington, D.C. We explored for the ghost but saw nothing. I awakened on Sunday morning to discover that my lavish Yves Saint Laurent ball gown, covered with palates and tulle, had vanished during the night. It had been too hard to pack for the movers so I detached it to a padded hanger suspended from the picture rails that ran around our ten-foot-high ceilings. Now it had vanished, hanger and all. After quite a search we found the dress, still attached to its hanger, tucked beneath a library table at the far side of the house. Our ghost must be a pretty young girl, Carl said optimistically. She was out dancing all night in your ball gown, just like the fairytale princesses. He dubbed her Esme, the acronym for our phone number in Washington, D.C. After she had pulled a few other pranks, we decided to fix up a room for Esme to stay put and not run around at night frightening the animals. The room we chose was the gothic room with its high, pointy windows which seemed appropriate for a ghost, and we hung the ball gown there. That was not the room she wanted, however. There was a small room halfway upstairs on the landing. I had stored by easels there since it was the only room in the house with northern light to paint by. One morning soon after we found that everything had been thrown out of my paint room onto the landing and my giant industrial easel had been unscrewed, flattened and was jutting halfway out the door. The base was too wide and it had lodged in the doorway, or it would have sletted in a crash to the bottom of the stairs. It appears, said Carl, that Esme prefers this room on the landing. It better move your art supplies elsewhere. Only a few months after our furniture finally arrived, our house became an overnight way station for my fellow writers, traveling through Washington, D.C. to my many Virginia author events like Charlottesville's Virginia Book Festival or Richmond's prestigious James River Writers Conference. One of our early guests was the award-winning mystery writer, Marsha Talley. I'd known Marsha for years. She'd stayed at my place in Santa Fe and now she requested an instant tour of the new house. But as soon as we reached the small room on the landing, Marsha said, Oh my gosh, the hair is standing up in my arms. Is there an attic draft here? I forgot to tell you, I apologized. This is Esme's room, our ghost. Marsha was delighted to have been one of the first to experience Esme's presence. Esme did not cotton to everyone as easily as she did to Marsha or to us. We soon discovered that whenever she wanted to get our attention about something or someone, she would disappear things, and then hours or days later, they would reappear exactly where you knew you had left them. My ball gown was first, but there were many others. Carl's briefcase, containing papers he needed to grade, they went missing for a week, and rematerialized right next to his desk. My Algerian ring disappeared twice. Tiger the cat even disappeared for two whole days until he was located by his younger brother, locked in a closet in Esme's room. No wonder he never went upstairs alone. But Esme's favorite things to steal to get our attention were eyeglasses. Whenever eyeglasses disappeared and reappeared, we knew that Esme wanted us to notice something. One night after a long party, a friend, Kim, asked to stay over in our guest room, so she wouldn't have to drive home late at night. At 3.30 am, all the alarms went off all over the house. Smoke alarms, burglar alarms, glass break alarms, voices saying to exit the premises. Our guest, Kim, was walking around the kitchen barefoot in her bathrobe. I said it was just some glitch. I had the security service shut the system down. In the morning, Carl and I found Kim back in the kitchen, wringing her hands nearly in tears. I can't drive home today, she explained. During the night, my eyeglasses disappeared. Wherever I am, in a hotel, whatever, I always place my glasses on the right-hand bedside table. I put them there last night, but this morning they're gone. Carl and I exchanged, knowing glasses. Esme, we both said in unison. Carl explained that Esme was our ghost, who loved to steal eyeglasses, and he suggested we strip the guest bed and look underneath it too. After a complete strip search of the bed, I found Kim's glasses wrapped tightly inside the bedsheet at the left side of the bed. In a way, they might not have been found for quite a while. Kim never returned for another visit. Esme never became violent, except once, when someone sent a psychic to our house as a gift to contact the ghost. When the psychic was on the phone, trying to write down my street address, the lady mentioned that she planned to exercise your ghost, lay its spirit to rest for good and all. Just as she spoke those words, a storm sprang up, a sudden bolt of lightning hit somewhere in the middle of town, and our connection was severed. The next morning the psychic came walking up the street, looking for our house. When she found me sitting on the porch swing, she asked if this was the house. I never wrote down your address, she said. A lightning bolt hit my house last night and the phones are still not working. So much for visionary capability, Esme had decided not to be exercised. Over the years living in such close contact with an active spirit, we did some research on Esme. Only five families had lived in our house since it was built in 1856 and we met the owners or descendants of all but the very first owners. We determined that our ghost might be of African descent. In a few years we had a ghost profile and MO as we say in the mystery biz. After numerous years of playful pranks, Esme suddenly became very active. She stole one of Carl's hearing aids, returned within 24 hours. My favorite necklace from Molly, many pairs of eyeglasses, some important files, each time we would look at each other and say, What does Esme want? One morning I was lying in bed, in the room where Esme was first sighted, and I saw some black ooze coming from the air conditioner vent over my head. I got on a ladder and touched it. Black mold. I called the toxic and hazardous folks and told them I needed them to remove all the yucky, moldy, blown-in attic insulation, most carefully by hand. If you suck the insulation out with a vacuum, you release mold spores throughout your house. Toxic waste was my former profession. For three weeks the TAH, Toxic and Hazardous Guys, labored in my attic in extreme and dangerous heat. After the first few days one gent came downstairs and said, Ms. Neville, look what we found in your attic. He handed me a piece of parchment. I opened it. It was a land grant deed for land in Missouri dated 1856, the date of our house, and signed by President Franklin Pierce. I said, Gentlemen, if you find any other papers up there, please put them in this bag and give them to me. Weeks went by and the TAH men discovered rare treasures of Virginia history tucked away in our attic since the mid 1800s. A library of Virginia Rare Books Archivist came and evaluated the documents and the librarians restored them. There were books in French, English, Italian and German. There were more land grants, numerous artifacts in my favorite. It ships provisioning manifest from the Brandywine, a ship that had borne Lafayette to America for his last voyage and which later sunk off the coast during the late unpleasantness. A manifest signed by the captain listed all the sailor's names and the provisions they had received. Although Carl has died, Esme is still on active duty at our house. Her most recent disappearances include a yo-yo from a library fundraiser I did in the 1980s, a picture of Carl's grandmother, Saisha from Indonesia, a pair of my Flamingo sunglasses from Venice Beach, and the trip goes on. He has been spotted all over the world, but photographic evidence is lacking, as is any scientific proof, but he still exists and is still seen. And now you can search for Bigfoot every month in the Find Bigfoot calendar by Timothy Wayne Williams. Each month you'll be captivated by an original Timothy Wayne Williams painting, beautiful and captivating, but within each painting hides a monster. Bigfoot is hiding somewhere in each painting. Search for Bigfoot and invite others to do so as well with the new Find Bigfoot calendar available now at WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot is an encore presentation from Halloween 2021. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness and Happy Halloween. If Halloween movies are any indication, bad things always happen on Halloween. That's just movie magic and the stuff of scary stories, though, you think, right? Halloween is just like any other day. And most of the time, yeah, that's true. Halloween goes by without any creepy hitch or spine-chilling occurrences to be seen. Spooky vibes and moonlight nights are peak Halloween energy, sure, but it's just another day, right? Not in the cases I'm about to share with you. Sometimes unexplainable, scary or downright horrible things do happen on Halloween. Costumes, decorations, and fear all accumulate in a melting pot of potential which sometimes has disastrous consequences. In 1992, a 16-year-old Japanese foreign exchange student in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, paid the ultimate price after accidentally ringing the wrong doorbell on his way to a Halloween party. Yoshihiro Hattori had been unfamiliar with the neighborhood when he and a friend arrived at the home of Rodney Pieris, a nearby neighbor who opened the door armed with a 44-magnum revolver. Although Hattori allegedly said, we're here for the party, Pieris claimed he feared for his life and ordered the student to freeze. When Hattori misunderstood the command and kept approaching, Pieris shot him. After being questioned, the perpetrator was arrested but later acquitted of manslaughter. It's unknown what kind of Halloween costume Hattori wore to warrant such a reaction. Famed magician Harry Houdini claimed that he could take a blow to the abdomen without being taken down. And on October 22, 1926, a student at McGill University asked if he could prove it. Houdini, who had been sitting in his dressing room during an engagement at the Montreal University, obliged. Although he had allegedly braced himself, the student's four punches left the performer in great pain. After suffering for two days, Houdini decided to seek medical help, but by this time he was suffering from a severe fever and acute appendicitis. Defying doctor's orders, he performed instead of undergoing the recommended emergency surgery. When the curtains closed, the magician collapsed. Despite having his appendix removed afterward, Houdini passed away on Halloween, surrounded by family. On Halloween day in 1963, the Indiana State Fair held a Holidays on Ice skating exhibition for a crowd of hundreds. The grand finale was not what anyone had expected. Unbeknownst to organizers at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum, propane gas had been leaking from a nearby tank into the poorly ventilated room. During a final act called Mardi Gras, the propane gas caught fire, leading to a horrific explosion that propelled onlookers from their chairs. The death toll was 74 and 400 additional people were injured. The tradition of throwing eggs at people on Halloween is, at best, a harmless prank. At worst, it can turn deadly. That was the case for Carl Jackson, the 21-year-old data entry clerk at Morgan Stanley who usually never left the house on Halloween as he thought it was dangerous. On October 31, 1995, his worst fear became a reality. Jackson had decided to venture out to pick up his girlfriend's son from a party. Along the way, a group of teens pelted his car with eggs, so Jackson got out to confront them. But as he was getting back into the car, one of the pranksters pulled a gun, and fatally shot him in the head. David Berkowitz became infamous in the 1970s as the son of Sam, serial killer. But not many people know that he could also predict the future. Well, sort of. Berkowitz was incarcerated when 39-year-old Ronald Seisman and 20-year-old Elizabeth Platsman were beaten and shot to death in their Manhattan home in the early morning hours of Halloween in 1981. A fellow prisoner claimed that the son of Sam had previously told him that a cult was planning to carry out such a massacre. Berkowitz was allegedly even able to describe the victim's apartment to a tee. But police didn't have enough evidence to charge him with involvement in the murders, which remained unsolved. If there were a prize for most morbid Halloween decoration in Frederica Delaware in 2005, it would have gone to the body hanging from a tree. It would have beaten out the fake witches, skeletons, and jack-o-lanterns dotting the neighborhood. For hours, people passed by admiring it. Of course, it had an edge over the other decorations. This was a real body. Police believe it was that of a woman who had committed suicide the night before. Note to self, not everybody is wearing a costume on Halloween. In 2012, in the early hours of the morning after Halloween, a 2-2-clad marine spotted a uniform clad man in a wheelchair and thought the man's costume was a weak attempt at mocking the military. So he attacked him. As the marine learned upon his arrest, the man's wardrobe was not a comment on the servicemen and women. He was, in fact, a disabled veteran. The most frightening thing about the graveyard kit an Oregon woman bought at Kmart in 2012 was the note that she found inside of it. It was written by a Chinese factory worker who claimed that he and others were tortured and enslaved in a forced labor camp, making toys 15 hours a day with no pay or days off. He went on to plead for the letter to be forwarded to the World Human Rights Organization. The woman did just that and the Chinese worker was freed when the camp was exposed months later. It's bad enough to have collapsed and died alone on your own porch steps. But adding insult to injury, the morning after this 2012 Halloween tragedy, the mailman, assuming the body was simply an excellent Halloween decoration, sidestepped the deceased on his way to deliver the corpse's mail. Sometimes the costume is just too good to be true. In 2012, a nine-year-old wearing a black outfit and a black hat with a white tassel was mistaken for a real skunk by a relative and shot. Fortunately, the girl survived. The year was 1957, Halloween night. A couple was getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. It was late, but the husband answered the door, ready to dole out more candy. Instead, an adult wearing a mask shot him in the chest, killing him. Was it a trick-or-treater dissatisfied with the candy selection? Not quite. The murderer, it turns out, was the girlfriend of a woman who had had an affair with the murdered man's wife. The woman convinced her girlfriend to do away with the husband in order to have the wife for herself. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you want to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast. And while the radio show is one night per week, I upload episodes for the podcast seven days per week. And if you are 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. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at WeirdDarkness.com, 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 also, if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call in to the dark-lined, toll-free to tell your own true paranormal story or a story that happened to somebody you know. That number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, that toll-free number is 1-877-2777 5944. You can also email me anytime at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Psalm 23 verse 4, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. And a final thought from Shaman McGuire. The problem with people who say monsters don't really exist is that they're almost never saying it to the monsters. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, keep listening. Hour 2 of the Weird Darkness radio show is coming up. Central Massachusetts is a land of oddities and apparitions. Stories of the strange and paranormal have been passed down from generation to generation. And only the local populace has any idea of just how vast and deep their superstitions run. The world around you is much more than you can touch, taste, smell, see, and hear. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, but all of them give you a taste of what it's like to be from the oddest part of the United States. You can't have a region of the country that has been settled for centuries without getting a few odd tales out of it. Open up a whole new world of fact and fiction that'll leave you with a deep appreciation for the strange and bizarre ghosts and heroes await. And the only thing they need to live on is you. Slightly Odd Fitchburg by Ed Sweeney. Now available on Kindle, paperback, and audiobook versions on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. In the eyes of this ratchet jaw, I'm honored to have you listening. Maybe once in a while grab your CB, head to Sesame Street, and tell other drivers how to join this weirdo convoy. Appreciate it. May your brake checks be with you, your shutter trouble be absent, and your bare bites non-existent. Keep it cool on the stool. This is Spooky Santa, and I'm 10 and on the side. The Wing is an encore presentation from Halloween 2021. Welcome, Weirdos, and Happy Halloween! 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. 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 somebody else to listen 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 to 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. Before we get into the darker stories of the evening, let's begin with something a bit lighthearted, but still appropriate for the occasion. It's hard to imagine today that Halloween and trick-or-treating were not always a huge part of American culture. For all my life, this has been a time of costumes, door knocking, and candy. If you're my age, you might even remember the plastic costumes that you bought from Woolworths that you tied behind you that came with a mask that you slipped over your face and secured with a nylon cord? It was hard to see through those things, wasn't it? Almost impossible to breathe, and the cord usually snapped at some point in the night, but for one evening, in the early 1970s, you were Batman, the creature from the Black Lagoon, or a character from the Planet of the Apes. During my childhood, it seemed the trick-or-treating had been around forever, but it hadn't. It didn't make its way to America until the late 1920s, and within less than two decades, the tradition almost ended for good. It would take candy companies and a gang of cartoon kids to resurrect trick-or-treating after World War II and make it what it is today. World War II not only brought devastation to the entire globe, it also affected the goods and services available on the home front. In an effort to alleviate price hikes and hoarding, the Office of Price Administration printed war ration books with stamps that were used in exchange for goods. Thanks to the fact that as much as one-third of the sugar imported to the United States came from Japanese-occupied Philippines, sugar was the first consumer commodity to be rationed. War ration book number one, nicknamed the Sugar Book, was distributed starting on May 4, 1942. With deep cuts to sugar allowances, children's Halloween celebrations had to be drastically altered. Sugar rationing came to an end in June 1947, and by fall the commercialization of Halloween started kicking off in ways it never had in the 1920s. Candy companies like Curtis and Brock wasted no time in launching Halloween advertising campaigns, but they weren't the only ones. Children's magazines like Jack and Jill and Children's Activities, they both featured trick-or-treating in their October issues. Parents who only dimly recalled their own Halloween traditions began reviving the fun for their own children. Costume parties became all the rage, along with hayrides, bobbing for apples, midnight spook shows, and spooky attractions. But it was the iconic comic strip Peanuts that really captured the imagination of American children. In October 1951, creator Charles Schultz ran the first of his Halloween-themed strips. The characters made their first appearances in ghost costumes, prepared for Halloween ghosting. Patty even used Charlie Brown as the model for her jack-o-lantern carving. These comic strips helped spread the popularity of Halloween. In 1966, a TV special, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, began its long run as a Halloween tradition. The short was nominated for three Emmy awards and made such an impression on America's kids that after it aired, children from all over the country sent candy to Charlie Brown out of sympathy. With the trick-or-treating tradition firmly established now, it began growing in size. In addition to televisions and magazines, schools began reinforcing the tradition when the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, or UNICEF, launched a national campaign to raise money for children. They handed out cardboard boxes for kids to take with them while trick-or-treating, and it turned out to be an effective campaign, raising more than $175 million in the U.S. alone. So every year, when you take out those kids to collect candy, just remember how close you came to losing this tradition. Take a few minutes to sit down with Charlie Brown every year. You won't be sorry you did. She was a beautiful girl who decided to celebrate Halloween as a bunny rabbit. Young Jang Cindy Song was a 21-year-old Pennsylvania State University student originally from Seoul, South Korea. During the very early morning hours of November 1, 2001, Cindy was last seen at a Halloween party hosted by Players Nightclub, a popular bar in state college. She left the party at 2 a.m. Eyewitnesses said she was wearing pink shirt sleeves, rabbit ears, a white skirt, and a fluffy white tail above knee-high brown suede boots. Two hours later, one of Cindy's friends dropped her off at state college park apartments located on the 300 block of West Clinton Avenue. All agreed that Cindy was likely drunk by this time. Three days later, after Cindy did not contact any of her friends, they reported her missing. Police investigators discovered that Cindy was not at home and that very few of her items had been stolen or taken. Detectives noticed that only Cindy's keys and purse were missing from the apartment. The search of Cindy's cell phone did not uncover any outgoing or incoming calls during the three days after Halloween. Police also claimed that Cindy's apartment showed no signs of a struggle or forced entry. Two years later, a separate police investigation shed light on the possibility that Cindy may have been the victim of a serial killer. Just north of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, police began excavating the property of Hugo Sileski, a man who authorities believed was responsible for the deaths of two drug dealers. Police did find the charred remains of three victims on Sileski's property, but they also found more bodies. In total, 12 bodies, many of which had been burned in a fire pit, were found on Sileski's property. Many believe that Cindy's song was one of these bodies, but police have not yet been able to prove this for sure. In 2003, Sileski was arrested for the original double homicide, but three years later, a jury refused to convict Sileski of homicide. They did convict him, however, of abusing corpses. At the same year, Sileski was charged with two other murders. These victims were Michael Krakowski and Tammy Fassett, both of whom had been robbed and beaten before being murdered. In accomplice, Paul Weakley later admitted to helping Sileski in his double homicide. That year, while Sileski was rotting behind bars after being convicted of other crimes, he managed to escape from prison, thanks to a rope fashioned out of bedsheets. He spent three days on the run before turning himself in. Over a decade later, Sileski was finally convicted of the murders of Krakowski and Fassett. He received a life sentence. The disappearance of Cindy's song on Halloween, however, remains unsolved. Hey, weirdos, have you signed up for the weird darkness email newsletter? It'll keep you up to date on what's happening with the podcast when our next Weirdo Watch Party will take place. You can see when the next sale in the Weird Darkness store is scheduled, and more, sign up for the Weird Darkness email newsletter for free at WeirdDarkness.com. Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show. Behind the scenes video updates about future projects and events I'm working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I'm working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. Is an encore presentation from Halloween 2021. Happy Halloween and welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. Horrifying tales of torture, decapitation and murder, and those are just the acts committed by the accusers. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 remain among the most infamous episodes in all of American history. But across the sea, in Europe, hundreds of years prior, similar events took place, this time involving persons accused of lycanthropy or shape-shifting into werewolves. According to Mental Floss, the first recorded instance of anyone being accused and convicted of lycanthropy occurred in Polany, France in 1521. As the story goes, a supposed wolf attack led authorities to the home of McHelver Dunn, who, after being arrested and tortured, confessed to being a werewolf, along with two other men, Pierre Bourgeau and Philippe Bermontot. Bourgeau also confessed and told authorities of a deal made with three men dressed in black who agreed to protect his sheep in exchange for the rejection of his belief in God. He was given an ointment, he said, that allowed them to shape-shift into wolves, during which time they would stalk the land, killing and eating children. All three men were found guilty and were executed shortly thereafter. The accounts of lycanthropy that follow the first one are eerily similar in detail, many of them involving ointments and deals struck with other worldly characters. The 1598 case of Frenchman Jacques Roulay, also known as the werewolf of cowd, involved the use of a transformational sav, which Roulay used to murder and then eat several young children. Although he was sentenced to death for his crimes, a conviction of feeble-mindedness instead sent him to an asylum where he received a religious education before being released just two years later. The fate of Peter's stub, a German man, was not so fortunate. After flat-out confessing to have made a deal with the devil in which stub was gifted a belt allowing him to shape-shift for the sake of killing and consuming countless victims over 25 years, he was publicly executed in 1589 in a most gruesome way, having his skin ripped away, arms and legs broken, and head removed before being burned. Following that, a man named Folkert Dirks claimed during the Emersfoot-Auch-Utrecht trials in the Netherlands that he and his family were able to shape-shift into wolves and cats under Satan's command, as did Conti Haas and his spouse, who admitted to possessing the ability to turn into bears under Satan's command, though only after being tortured. Along with supposed deals with the devil, cannibalism is another recurring theme among all these lycanthropy cases, including the 1573 execution of Frenchman Giles Gardner, who was accused of killing and cannibalizing children who ventured into his neck of the woods, and later confessed to being a werewolf. As many of these confessions of lycanthropy from Gardner and others only came later, long after the alleged incidents took place, most believed them to be either coerced through the use of torture or attributable to the suspect's mental illness or low IQ, prohibiting them from understanding exactly what they were confessing to. Whatever the case, the Christian people of Europe at the time were opposed to the peasantry's practice of paganism. Thus, many believed these werewolf trials to have been nothing more than a scapegoat for widespread fear concerning occult and non-Christian practices, an example of the witch hunt mentality, much like the witch trials that would occur in America a century later. This brings us to the case of a teenage boy named Hans, who was tried during the werewolf trials in Estonia. With 18 trials accusing 18 men and 13 women of being werewolves over the years, the case of young Hans was perhaps the most famous. Only 18 years old when he was arrested in 1651 on charges of lycanthropy, Hans quickly confessed to the charges brought against him. Admitting to having haunted as a werewolf for two years, Hans told the court of a man in black who bit him shortly before the physical changes occurred. Many believed this man in black to be the devil, and this mention of satanic forces qualified the werewolf to be tried as a witch and thus sentenced to death. When asked by a judge whether he felt more like a man or an animal, Hans replied that he probably, not unlike most 18-year-olds, felt like a wild beast and that the charges within him could be measured both physically and metaphysically. Despite there being no physical evidence of any murders committed by Hans, he was sentenced to death, simply on the grounds that satanic magic had been performed upon him. While most of the accused never lived to see another day, not all werewolves were guaranteed a death sentence, such as 80-year-old Theus of Caltenbroon, claiming to be a hound of God, Theus stated that he used his werewolf cloak to enter hell three nights a year, where he battled devils and witches in order to ensure a good harvest for the next season. As he never admitted to having made a pact with a demon in exchange for lycanthropy, Theus was only convicted of practicing folk magic, believed to encourage the rejection of God, and was sentenced merely to a flogging, a much lighter punishment than so many of history's supposed werewolves once had to endure. I share this story every year during the Halloween live screen. It's the only story from the live screen that I'm also going to share in the radio show tonight. And why am I doing that? Well, first, it is terrifying. Second, it's a true story. And third, it addressed a long-held belief about Halloween and trick-or-treating that we have all held since we were children. If you're a parent, what is your greatest fear? Just about every person that I know with a child will answer this question almost immediately. It's that some sort of tragedy might befall their children. Accidents, calamities, automobile crashes, natural disasters, fires, the list goes on. All these things terrify parents. These are the things that keep them awake at night, staring at the ceiling of their bedrooms and wondering how they would handle the nightmare of something terrible happened to their child. Of course, accidents and calamities are cruel twists of fate. Bad luck, if you believe in luck, or perhaps providence, if you don't, plays no favorites. The idea that a terrible accident might occur that claims the life of your child may keep you from sleeping at night. But in the end, there's nothing you can do about it. Accidents happen, right? But what about that terrible thing that's not an accident at all? What about when the horrible death of a child comes at the hands of another? There are, without a doubt, killers who walk among us. Is there a more loathsome killer lurking in the darkest corners of America than one who would prey on children? Such monsters have been with us since the first settlers arrived on American shores. We often fool ourselves into believing that the good old days were actually good. But this is far from the truth. Monsters have always been with us. I'll continue with this in just a moment on Weird Darkness. Coffee. It's a necessity. Most of us can't be bothered to even be civil to our families until we've had our first cup of joe. I can drink coffee all day, and often do, and now I've chosen an exclusive coffee just for the task. Weird dark roast coffee. I love chocolate, I mean who doesn't, so I specifically asked for a blend with at least a hint of cocoa. An Evansville coffee who roasts each bag to order knocked it out of the park when they sent me a bag to taste test for approval. Weird dark roast coffee has deep notes of cocoa, caramel and a touch of sinister sweetness that makes it great hot or cold. Personally, I like to put a little milk in it when I'm drinking it hot, but it is amazing black and poured over ice. Now you can drink it too, and the only place you can find weird dark roast coffee is at WeirdDarkness.com. 2021. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness and Happy Halloween. Monsters have always been with us. They stalked the innocent in the days when children stayed close to the rugged settlements of the colonies, afraid to wander into the dark forest. They were among us before the Civil War claimed the lives of thousands of men and boys. These monsters claimed the lives of the young and naive during the Gilded Age, at the dawn of the 20th century through the Depression and beyond. These monsters are not the stuff of fiction. They are blood-curdlingly real. They have been among us since the nation began, and they are with us still, always looking for their next victim. We know this, as did our parents, and their parents before them. The fear of strangers and their terrible deeds has been rooted in the minds of multiple generations of Americans. We created myths and legends of monstrous shapes, hoping to scare children so that they never strayed too far from the welcoming light of home. And yet blood was spilled. Children vanished, never to be seen again. They became faces on milk cartons and cautionary tales of what happens when children were left alone. We must keep our children safe, parents told themselves. But even the most watchful eyes weren't always enough. Our cautionary tales created one of the most popular and most terrifying urban legends of all time. It involved just two things, a babysitter and a telephone. It tells the story of a babysitter who has been left in charge of a young neighbor girl with their children. She was experienced, she was reliable, and the parents had nothing to fear. The night is quiet, and after finishing some homework, the babysitter turns on the television. And then the telephone rings. When the girl answers, she hears a man's harsh voice, have you checked? The children, he asks her. Startled, but assuming it to be a prank call, she hangs up the phone. The telephone rings again, and once more the same man's voice repeats the question. The babysitter slams down the receiver, but it keeps ringing, and the same man keeps asking her about the children. Now terrified, she phones the police who assure her that they will have the call traced and find out who's been harassing her. A few minutes later, the police operator calls back with horrifying news. The calls are coming from inside of the house. When officers arrive on the scene, they find a distraught babysitter and two murdered children in the upstairs nursery. The killer had somehow gotten into the house. He had made the calls to terrorize the babysitter and lure her upstairs to her death. Of course, this morality play ends in tragedy for the young woman who did not watch the children closely enough. She loses her mind and has to be locked away in a mental institution for the rest of her life. Of course, this is only a story, right? We all know it's just an urban myth that illustrates the perils of being a babysitter and the fact that children are never really safe even in the most innocent of circumstances. The stories like this and a lot of others like it have been told and retold thousands of times over the years. It's only a story. Or is it? When you were growing up, how many times did you hear stories like that one? Or were told never to talk to a sketchy-looking man that your mother points out on the street? Or to never accept a ride in a car with someone that you didn't know? Or to never accept candy from strangers, especially at Halloween? It was at Halloween when every horror story that your mother could ever imagine came to life. Never knock on a door of a house without a porch light on. Never accept treats that were not professionally packaged. Never bite into an apple that your parents hadn't carefully checked. They were filled with needles and razor blades, don't you know? And all boil down to never take candy from strangers. But that was crazy, wasn't it? It was Halloween for Pete's sake. Who is evil enough to stick razor blades into apples or put poison into candy bars? Those are just stories, aren't they? Those kinds of things never really happen. Well, as it turns out, stories like this often get started for a reason. And sometimes the monster is not a stranger after all. On Halloween night, 1974, Timothy O'Brien and his sister Elizabeth had anxiously waited for their father Ronald to get home from work so that they could go trick or treating. The family, which included their mother Dainine, lived in the suburb of Deer Park, Texas. Ronald was an optician at Texas State Optical in Houston. He was a deacon at the Second Baptist Church where he also sang in the choir and was in charge of the local bus program and was, as far as everyone who knew him was concerned, a wonderful, loving father. When he finally walked through the door of the family home, the children rushed to him, purrying him back out to the street. Still wearing his white optician's lab coat, Ronald took Timothy and Elizabeth out to celebrate Halloween. They met some friends and went to the first house of the night. Timothy rang the doorbell. There was no answer. If anyone was home, they were taking far too long to answer the door. The children impatiently ran to the next house on the block, leaving Ronald to catch up. When he did, he had five giant pixie sticks in his hand, tubes of pure sugary goodness that the kids couldn't wait to consume. But Ronald promised he would distribute the candy among the children when they got back to the house. It was late when they returned home. Ronald got the children ready for bed, but before he fell asleep, Timothy asked for just one treat from the night's bounty of sweets, please. He chose a 22-inch giant pixie sticks. The sugar had hardened in the tube, so his father hopefully rolled the candy between his hands to loosen the contents. Timothy poured the confection into his mouth, but his face wrinkled and discussed. It tasted terrible. Ronald quickly ran to get some Kool-Aid for his son to wash the bad taste away. Timothy never had a chance to drink it. Within moments, he began to choke, vomit, and then convulse. Something was terribly wrong. When paramedics arrived, they found Ronald cradling Timothy in his arms as the little boy gagged and foamed at the mouth. He was pronounced dead at the hospital less than an hour later. An autopsy later revealed that the eight-year-old had died from a fatal dose of cyanide. Where had it come from? The top two inches of the giant pixie sticks that Timothy had been so excited about contained enough poison to kill two grown adults. The little boy never had a chance. Word spread about Timothy's death, naturally starting a panic in the community. Numerous parents in Deer Park in the surrounding area took the candy their children had collected from trick-or-treating to the police, terrified that it was laced with poison. None of it was, but the authorities could understand the fear that Timothy's death had caused. They had already started their investigation into the boy's murder. Thankfully, the other four laced pixie sticks, which Ronald O'Brien claimed he received from the first house on the trick-or-treating route after the kids had run ahead, had not been eaten. When questioned by detectives, Ronald sobbed as he suggested that an unidentified monster must have handed out poisoned candy to trick-or-treaters. He told police he vaguely remembered where the candy had come from, but he never got a good look at the owner. All he saw was a shadowy hand, clutching the pixie sticks from behind a door. The police went to the address and questioned the owner of the house, Courtney Melvin, who worked as an air traffic controller at Hobby Airport. But the police were confounded when they learned that he had not left work until 10.30 p.m. on Halloween night. His wife had stopped answering the door when she ran out of candy around 6.45. That was before Ronald O'Brien claimed that he was there. In addition, Mrs. Melvin had not given out any pixie sticks that night. Detectives interrogated the entire neighborhood and still couldn't find the source of the deadly candy. Ronald O'Brien was grief-stricken by his son's death. He was already having a terrible year, and Timothy's death seemed to have pushed him over the edge with grief. Ronald was eight months behind in car payments and was being threatened with repossession. He had defaulted on several bank loans and was suspected of theft at Texas State Optical, and was close to being fired. He had held 21 different jobs over the last decade and was more than $100,000 in debt. He further strained his family's finances by taking out a $10,000 life insurance policy on his children earlier in the year, to which his wife protested as an unnecessary expense. She also probably would have objected to the additional pair of $20,000 life insurance policies Ronald took out on Timothy and Elizabeth on October 3, if she had known about them. And she definitely would have been horrified to find out that near hours after Timothy's death, her husband called to collect on those policies. The police didn't know about the life insurance policies, not yet anyway, but they did discover that Ronald had visited a chemical supply store in Houston to buy cyanide just a week before Halloween. He left without purchasing anything after the smallest amount available to purchase was five pounds. When they found out about the life insurance policies, they were convinced they had their man. Detectives theorized that he had laced the candy with poison so that he could kill his own children for the life insurance money. Poisoning their friends with extra pixie sticks would help cover up his crime. Luckily, none of the other candy was ever eaten. Investigators repeatedly questioned Ronald, but he maintained his innocence. He blamed the whole thing on some mad poisoner, just like in the stories, who handed out Halloween candy laced with poison or needles candy apples with razor blades inside. Surely the police had heard those stories, hadn't they? O'Brien was arrested and brought to trial. On June 3, 1975, a jury took just 46 minutes to find the dedicated father and devout member of the Second Baptist Church guilty of capital murder and four counts of attempted murder. Ronald was sent to Death Row in Huntsville, Texas. He was so hated by the other inmates that they reportedly petitioned to hold an organized demonstration on his execution date. They had to wait a while for that date. His first execution date was set for August 8, 1980, but his attorneys managed to drag things out until March 31, 1984. Shortly before midnight, he was executed by a lethal injection. Outside of the prison, a crowd of about 300 demonstrators cheered while others yelled, trick or treat. Ronald O'Brien didn't just kill his son and tried to kill four other children on October 31, 1974. He also killed the idea of Halloween for several generations of kids that hadn't even been born yet. Ronald, who was known as the Candy Man by his fellow Death Row inmates, successfully perpetrated the legend that there are strangers out there intent on killing children with poisoned Halloween candy. The truth was, there had never been a case of a stranger handing out poisoned candy to kids on Halloween. That really had just been an urban legend. In 1974, there finally was such a case. But he was no stranger. Ronald O'Brien was a monster in human form and a nightmare brought to life. As you already know, Built Bar is a sponsor of Weird Darkness. Don't tell them I said this, but I would continue to let them be a sponsor without them paying me at all, so long as they continue to send me these free samples. Today, I received their new cookies and cream chunk. It's like having actual cookies and cream chunks in the candy bar. These are protein bars. These aren't candy bars, so they're low calorie. This has 18 grams of carbs. That's fewer carbs than an average size banana or a honey crisp apple. This is my lunch, and it feels like I just had dessert. This cookies and cream chunk is just insanely good. You can save 10% off of anything you buy from Built. Just go to WeirdDarkness.com slash Built and use the promo code WeirdDarkness. All one word, you can get 10% off your entire order, including the cookies and cream chunk. Now the hard part is, this actually tastes like dessert, but I want to eat another one. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. According to a recent poll, nearly half 45% of Americans believe in ghosts. Scientists have come up with many reasons for spirit sightings ranging from the physical, low frequency sounds, magnetic fields, thermal patterns, to the psychological, suggestibility, fear of mortality. But while ghosts can't be proved to exist, they cannot be resoundingly debunked either. I found a few vivid firsthand experiences with the paranormal from Redditors, so listen in and ask yourself, do you believe? From Redditor, Patented Spacehook I've never lived in a haunted house, but my mother did as a teen. Other houses on her street had strange things going on too. A few homes away from her lived a man in his family. One night, one of his daughters went to bed with a bad headache. The next day, she was dead. She passed away from an aneurysm. After the funeral, the family went away to get their minds off the tragedy and the father asked my uncle, my mom's brother, to check on their pets. My mom and dad, they were dating then, went with my uncle. My mother had heard there was a grand piano and she wanted to play it, and my dad was studying to be a veterinarian. After entering the house, my uncle and my father headed to the basement to see the animals, and my mother went to the piano on the ground floor. She was playing it when she felt something brush her ankles. She thought a cat must have left the basement and walked past her. She kept playing and she felt it again. She looked under the piano and saw nothing. When she started again, she felt hands clasp her legs and grabbed them tightly. She dashed to the basement door, called my uncle and father and waited for them. When they all walked outside, my uncle could tell my mom was rattled and asked what was wrong. She told him what had happened and he turned white. He told her the daughter who died used to play a game with her father. When he would play the piano, she'd crawl underneath, grab his ankles and push his feet up and down on the pedals. From Redditor Zerbo. The ambulance company that I used to work for had a haunted ambulance, rig 12. A lot of EMTs had stories about it, but I never put much stock in paranormal stuff. That is, until I had my own experience with rig 12. My partner and I were working in a rural community at 3 a.m. and it was pitch dark and completely quiet. We were both dozing. I was in the driver's seat and she was in the passenger seat. I woke up to a muffled voice and I thought my partner was talking. I told her I was trying to sleep and closed my eyes. I distinctly heard a male voice saying, Oh my God, am I dying? Following by a few seconds of heavy breathing. My partner and I sat up straight and looked back into the patient compartment where it sounded like the voice had come from. Things were quiet for a couple of seconds, then we heard the click of an oxygen bottle regulator and a hiss as if it was leaking. I turned on the lights and we ran out of the rig. I thought a transient might have climbed in while we were asleep, so we opened the rear doors. No one was there. I checked the oxygen bottles. Neither was opened. We didn't sleep much after that. From Redditor, Abbey's Alibi. My neighbor Diane and I had a playful poltergeist for years. We called it Billy. I'd come home and find something put in a weird place, milk in a cupboard, toilet paper in the fridge, laundry detergent in the bathtub. Diane once called to ask if Billy had been around because she couldn't find a gallon of milk. We finally found it, outside, on her back steps, and sugar, tarn, sugar. Every morning my sugar bowl was empty. When I had enough, I'd point to Diane's home and yell, Go see Diane. Within five minutes, I'd get a call from her and she'd say, Thanks a lot because he'd gone and pulled shenanigans at her place. This occurred for the entire two years we lived there. No one believed us, not even our husbands. My mother thought someone was sleeping from us when we were sleeping or out of the house. My sister believed something was going on but didn't know what. I still can't explain it. Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you want to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast. And while the radio show is one night per week, I upload episodes for the podcast seven days 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. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at WeirdDarkness.com 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 maybe has happened to somebody you know. That toll-free number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, 1-877-277-5944. You can email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Weird Darkness is a production and copyright of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Psalm 23 verse 4, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. And a final thought by Shaman McGuire. The problem with people who say monsters don't really exist is that they are almost never saying it to the monsters. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.