 The doppelganger is someone who looks almost identical to someone else, even though they are not related to that person. It's eerie to come across someone with practically the same features and characteristics as yourself or another person you know, and doppelgangers are often seen as spooky. True doppelganger stories can be truly horrifying, and often include interesting details about how people tried to interact with their look-alikes. With over 7.5 billion humans in the world, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there are plenty of people who look uncannily similar to each other. But what about someone who is unrelated to you, but is your exact duplicate? Meeting a doppelganger can be a surreal experience, especially if they suddenly disappear without a trace. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up in this episode. Violence, mayhem, even rape. Horrifying atrocities committed by the most evil of human beings. But in one case in Culver City, California, it wasn't a man who engaged in these obscenities, but specters of the paranormal. We'll look at a handful of out-of-body experience stories directly from those who lived through them and they might change your opinion about the afterlife. Weirdo family member Daniel Hagen shares how he once explored some woods on his bike and ended up peddling for his life to escape paranormal beasts that appeared from nowhere. Digging in their backyard, two brothers find what appear to be small human heads carved of stone. But the curious find turns creepy once they bring the heads into the house, resurrecting sightings of a wolf-like creature not seen in almost 70 years. In 1886, Chicago, one of the nation's very first serial killers would build a sadistic chamber of horrors to live out his most demented fantasies. But first, we'll look at true encounters from redditors who claim to have come across doppelgangers, their exact duplicates, or duplicates of those they love, and it's almost always a disturbing experience. We begin there. If you're new here, welcome to the show! While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to win our contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, fold your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Late at night, I usually go to the bathroom multiple times, but for the past four days, every time I go to leave, I can see myself still standing in the mirror from the corner of my eye. It's like the other me is watching me leave the bathroom. It terrifies me to the point where I almost run out without looking directly at the mirror. I never told my husband about it because I didn't want to acknowledge it out loud. Earlier today, I took a nap in our bed while he sat in the chair next to it watching TV. When I woke up, he told me that he had seen me sit up and crawl backwards to the edge of the bed and stand up in front of our bedroom door from the corner of his eye. He thought it was weird that I got up like that because I'm in the last month of my pregnancy and I can't really move so well without it hurting. So he tried talking to me. What I didn't answer, he looked at the door to find me not there, still sleeping in bed. I got really creeped out and I finally told him about what I was seeing in the bathroom. He thought it was creepy as well, but he didn't really want to talk about it anymore because he thinks that it will give whatever it is power or energy. I have no idea what it wants or why we both have seen it. I remember one Sunday morning my brother and I were watching Cardcaptor Secura on TV and someone knocked on the door. We lived in an apartment that was empty. The owner hadn't rented the second floor, it was a two bedroom apartment, a kitchen and a bathroom by the door. A small apartment but with a big window that faces out the door. So when I heard someone knock, I checked the window and saw my father, so I thought. I was going to the door to open it. When I was going to unlock the door, my mother pulls me away and screams at me to not open the door because I didn't know who it was. I told her I saw my dad. She freaked out, going to the window and checking and then checking the people. She started to get terrified and she said to go to the farthest room in the apartment and not to come out. She went and woke up my dad. My dad got up angry and confused. We told him what we saw and the man was still knocking on the door. My dad screamed, Who is it? No answer. He said that he was going to call the cops, the regular threats, you know, but nothing. We saw while my dad was busy screaming at him that he was just standing still in front of the door. So my mom took us to the farthest room from the door while my dad got ready to open the door with a metal bat. Once he did, the man was gone. My dad goes out looking everywhere around the apartment. The apartment door was a heavy metal door and always was heard when somebody came in and out, but we heard nothing that morning nor nothing when my dad opened the door. We heard no footsteps either. But my brother, my mother and I, we saw that man and he looked exactly like my father. I remember one time I was talking to my dad in a hallway of my house once. I don't really remember what it was about. We both saw my mom clearly walk past us and into her room shutting the door. I walked back out into the living room and my mom was still on the couch, albeit asleep. I looked back at my dad and he looked at me. We were both terrified. We both crept over to their bedroom and looked at the closed door. Neither of us went inside. We were too freaked out. I'm pretty sure my dad slept on the floor that night. When I was nine, I stayed home sick from school. I distinctly remember that I wasn't actually sick, simply playing hooky to avoid the mean kids as I did that a lot around that age. I awoke from a nap, turned on the TV in our living room, and scrolled through some channels when my mother suddenly leaned over the bar and stared at me without saying anything. I'd been awake for a few minutes at this point, so I can't rightly blame sleep paralysis for all of this. Whatever this thing was, it was entirely identical to my actual mother. It sounds weird to describe, but it's as if the only difference was that this thing pretending to be my mom had never felt a single emotion in its life. It was really unsettling. It beckoned me and I attempted to talk to her as I would my mother. She kept beckoning, refusing to answer, and that's when I sensed something horribly wrong. The whole scenario felt disgustingly familiar, but I'll get into that later. Naturally, I started screaming at this thing to answer me. It just kept beckoning. I bolted, running out of the room and into the yard yelling for help. My mother, the real one, had been working in the yard and came rushing over. I told her what I had just seen and she soothed me with some easy explanations that it must have been a fever dream. But thankfully, she did stay by my side the rest of the afternoon, as I was a nervous wreck. When I was about 16 or 17, I was really heavy into doing a Ouija board. Other stuff happened, but the dopplegangers were definitely the worst. The first one was my mom. I heard her come in and my best friend was with me. She and I walked down to greet her and she looked like a younger version of my mom and was carrying groceries, so I tried calling out to her, but she didn't respond and walked into my brother's room. Then I got a sick feeling. I called out to her, but she didn't respond still, so I followed her up. She was not there. When I walked back down, my real mom had come in and didn't know what was going on. She was also wearing a different outfit. The next one was my brother. My mom was talking to him on the phone and he said that he was on his way home. As soon as he hung up, my brother walked in the door. He talked to us for a little, mom wanted him to take out the garbage or something, and then walked to the bathroom. He had been in the bathroom for like 15 minutes and then I got a sick feeling again. I asked if he had fallen in or something, and then my real brother walked in the front door. We were freaked out. My mom checked on him all night to make sure he was okay. Both times these doppelgangers had darker eyes and it felt sort of like a dream, but I was definitely awake and other people witnessed it. Both times that my family experienced doppelgangers, the doppelgangers refused to respond when spoken to. The first was my sister's doppelganger who my brother told to go downstairs for lunch. She did not answer. When my brother walked downstairs, he instantly saw my actual sister wearing a different shirt. She couldn't have passed by my brother so quickly because the staircase led directly to our dining area. The second was my own doppelganger who stood at my door at 12 p.m. mute, staring at my sister who was using the computer. I wasn't actually home until 4 p.m. later that day after school. My sister didn't know that though until she asked me why I was just staring at her without emotion around noon. I woke up one morning to my dad going to the kitchen and stopping by to say, Hey, wake up. And then I took my phone and started watching YouTube. I was awake for sure. Later, my mom was walking to the kitchen and did the same thing my dad had done. And then I get out of my bed and I see that my parents are still in their room. I asked them if they asked me to wake up while walking to the kitchen and they said no. I don't know what it was. Can somebody please explain this? We had problems with doppelgangers at a fast food joint that I worked at. I had two separate sightings myself. First, my GM comes by to tell me and drive through and the register person to clean the lobby, then goes to the restroom. So he and I come up with a plan and wait for her to come out. We see her walk out of the restroom, walk by us and walk into the lobby. We go to catch her and no one there. We turn around and she is walking out of the bathroom. We tell her what we just saw but she doesn't believe us. Second, manager and I are in the prep area. One of the girls is working up front, walks back and right into the walk-in cooler. About five minutes awaiting, the manager asks me to go check on her. I open the walk-in door. There is no one in there. As I am trying to explain this to my manager, the girl in question walks into the prep area from the front. Needless to say, the manager believed me this time because she saw it as well and she finally believed what had happened in that first sighting. The first one was my husband. I turned into the hallway and saw him there, walking away from me and towards the bedroom at the opposite end. I called to him but he didn't respond. As soon as he entered the bedroom, he turned to the left. There is just a wall there, not even any windows. I followed him into the bedroom but there was no one there. My husband had been upstairs the entire time. The second time was my dad. He was unloading some things from his truck and was going to bring them to the back door which opens into the kitchen. I was in the kitchen and heard a noise at the door. Through the window in the door, I saw my dad bending over as though he was bending down to untie his shoes. I ran to the door and opened it but there was no one there. My dad was still at his truck. Both times it's been a family member. Both times I haven't seen their faces. Neither event felt wrong in any way or sinister. The movements that the figures made were exactly the movements my dad or husband would have made. This happened to me when I was living at my sister's house in college. My room was in the basement and the bathroom was on the second floor. One morning, she saw me in the hallway mirror behind her, walking toward the bathroom in the same clothes I was wearing. She said good morning but I didn't even look like I noticed. I then came upstairs about five minutes later and she seemed puzzled, thinking I was already upstairs. Freaked her out. My wife said she saw me in the kitchen doing something while I was actually at work at the time. She initially thought I'd come home from work and was worried and then the figure of me apparently vanished, which was naturally even more upsetting. No other occurrences before or since. When I was in middle school, I was at a friend's apartment. She lived there with her mom. Her mom was cool and let us party there and she was always at work for long late hours. There was a group of us there, maybe six people or so. Everyone was in the living room except for this couple who were in the mom's bedroom with the door closed and lights off. We all got pretty baked. I just made myself a snack and was walking to my friend's bedroom, which was right past the mom's room where the couple was. As I walked past the mom's bedroom door, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door opening from the inside and a partial face or head that looked identical to my friend's mom, who wasn't at home. I didn't think anything of it since there were so many people in the small apartment and I kept walking and sat in my friend's room. A minute later the girl who had been screwing around in that bedroom came out and yelled at me and asked me why I'd kicked the door open. I told her I saw somebody come out of there and she was adamant that I had walked by and kicked the door open. The more I thought about it the weirder it was. I thought she was messing with me at first, but the person I saw didn't look like anyone who was there at the time. It looked so much like the mom of the house. If it were her, it would have meant that she had somehow snuck back into the apartment after being gone for hours, hidden in her room in the dark for over an hour while this couple was messing around on her bed and then she would have had to have discreetly left the bedroom and passed the living room full of people to get out the door. This is just a little story that's probably not worth telling, but a couple of friends got a kick out of it. I let my dog out at midnight one night, left the door ajar for him to come back in and then went about making some soup and something to drink. After a couple of minutes I heard his distinctive two long toenails trotting back in on the wood flooring. I lock up the door and return to my meal. Then I hear my dog barking from outside. Any dog owner knows that there is no mistake in those toenails, so I was a little shocked that he was somehow back outside. So what had come in? So I had just gotten real baked in my friend's apartment, walking home in broad daylight down the sidewalk ahead of me. I see two young girls, instantly recognizable as Mormon missionaries. They get about 50 feet away from me and one of them waves and calls me by name. We meet and one of the girls gives a friendly hello, acts like she knows me. Bear in mind I'm pretty stoned, so I'm trying to figure out if I do know her from somewhere, but she catches on that I don't recognize her and she acts kind of offended, so she reminds me that we had some big long conversation on her friend's porch on such and such street just a few days prior. Now at this point in my life I smoked a lot of weed, but I never drank or did anything else, and going to random parties and charming pretty young blondes was completely off the menu. I was already half in love from the moment she smiled at me. I don't think I would have forgotten this long and grossing conversation we apparently had. Now her expression I remember as I stumble through this conversation. At first she thought I was joking, and then she thought I was being mean, and then she kind of looked just as confused as I was. So I suggest maybe it was my brother you met? She looks at me skeptically, not unless he's your identical twin. Me and my brother, we look like brothers, but you would never confuse us for one another. So we awkwardly, confusedly part ways. I don't remember the other girl ever saying anything. And then it dawns on my dumb-stoned brain, she knew my name. I turn around, there are a few hundred feet away, I yell, wait, how did you know my name? But they don't hear me, and I foolishly couldn't muster the courage to run to catch up with them. That bugged me for weeks. I wanted to know what we had talked about. When Weird Darkness returns, we'll look at a handful of out-of-body experience stories directly from those who lived through them, and they might change your opinion of the afterlife. But first, violence may have even rape. Horrifying atrocities committed by the most evil of human beings. But in one case, in Culver City, California, it wasn't a man who engaged in these obscenities, but specters of the paranormal. That story is up next. There have been monsters among us lurking in the darkest corners of America, praying on children since the first settlers arrived on our shores. They've always been with us, stalking the innocent from the days of the original colonies, to the gilded age, the depression, and beyond. These monsters are not the stuff of fiction. They are blood-curdlingly real, and they still walk among us, always looking for their next victim. In the Chilling Book, Suffer the Children, Troy Taylor shines a light on the darkest tales of horror and hauntings from American history, and presents a terrifying collection of dark crimes perpetrated against our most tender victims, our children. His most disturbing book yet includes nightmarish tales from the 19th century, when the good old days were never good. Like the Monster of the Northwood, the pocusette horror and the girl in the cellar, and continues into the modern day with accounts of the Clarkson Woods, America's first school massacre, Wineville Chicken Coupe Murders, Babes of Englewood, Suzanne Degnan, the Girl Scout Camp Massacre, the perfect murder of Bobby Franks, and many more. Be warned, this is not a book for the faint of heart. These are tales containing brutal, agonizing, and terrifying scenes of horror. Suffer the Children, American Horror's Homicides at Hauntings, Dead Men Do Tell Tale Series Book 15 by Troy Taylor. Hear a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. The story of one of the most frightening and violent hauntings of all time starts in 1974 with a single mother by the name of Doris Bither, who lived in Culver City, California with her four children. The family had moved here from Santa Monica in order to try and start a new life after a string of abusive relationships that Doris had been in, and to try and escape her demon of alcoholism. It was a rough time of things, as Doris had barely enough to raise her four children, all born of different fathers, and they were a broken family living in dirt, poor conditions. But things would soon get worse still when something decidedly dark and paranormal came calling. It started rather creepily enough with an elderly woman who came over one day shortly after they moved in to tell Doris out of the blue that she had once lived in the home and that it was evil before wandering off to never be seen again. So far, so eerie, but it would prove to be almost prophetic. Not long after this, there would be instances of classic poltergeist activity, such as lights turning on and off, objects moving on their own, and anomalous noises, all of which were witnessed by all of the family members. Then, things graduated to the more frightening when apparitions would start appearing. At first it was just glimpses, a shadow figure moving across the living room here, a movement in the periphery of the vision there, but it got steadily more intense, and even neighbors began seeing these things around the house. The figures that were seen started to take shape, appearing as fog-like humanoid shapes that would move about or merely sit in the corner and simply watch. In an interview with Ghost Theory, Doris' middle son, Brian Harris, would describe them like this. It was never clear. When they would make themselves known, it was always like a fog, like a human, but not quite. It was like a sculpture, like a chiseled body, not a full figure, but at times we could see some of it. At times, it would be annoying. We'd be watching television and these things would walk by, like nothing. We were so used to the poltergeist that we just got to a point where we wouldn't even care. It became increasingly clear that there were more than one entity as well, either three or four of them, depending on who you ask, although Harris said that there were four. This spooky paranormal activity, although at first scary but mostly harmless, would not stay that way for long, soon becoming increasingly terrifying. Not content to just mill about and cause mischief, the entities began to lash out at the family, pushing, shoving, hitting, and even clawing or biting them, and this would happen at all hours, even in the middle of the daytime. Harris would say, we all experienced some form of attack. There was the pushing, biting, and scratching being done to us. There were about four entities in the home and they made themselves known by appearing all the time. I think it took a lot of energy for them to do that. It was as if they, the four entities, showed themselves whenever they felt like. Although he said there were four of the specters, Doris herself would later claim that there were only three, but the true number was too many. Even more terrifying still was the entities that began to actively target Doris most vehemently, and it went from simple pushes, scratches, and bites to full-on assault with the ghosts even allegedly holding her down and raping her with abandon. This would often happen in the next room while the terrified children listened to the bangs, thuds, and their mothers desperate screaming as they cowered in the shadows. But it also sometimes happened right in front of their eyes, and Harris has described these spectral attacks. The whole rape thing was real, he said. My room was right next door to my mother's. I would hear the attacks happening, things being thrown, her screaming. Then she would come out of the bedroom and have all these bruises, on her legs or inner thighs. There were times where we would see it happen in front of us. It was like if a man was standing in front of my mother and would start to beat her. Imagine a woman being beaten. You could see her being picked up and thrown around. Sounds, slaps. But there was no one there to actually do it. We all felt it too, pulling, biting, and scratching. We were all attacked. These vicious attacks and sexual assaults went on unabated, with the apparitions appearing without warning, practically every day and night, and it got to the point where the family was desperate for anyone to help them. The biggest of the entities even gained a creepy nickname for himself, Mr. Who's It. Doris took it upon herself to approach paranormal investigators and parapsychologists Harry Gainor and Dr. Barry Taft, who were intrigued by her harrowing tale to say the least, and went about arranging a full investigation into the claims. They would not be disappointed. The team moved in for their investigation August 22, 1974, thinking at first that there would not be much to this all other than a seriously disturbed young woman. The first thing they did was take a look at the myriad bruises, scratches, and scars that she had all over her body, especially along her inner thighs, allegedly inflicted by the entities, and which proved to be far more savage and severe than they had expected. She gave them additional information on the attacks by saying that there were three of them, despite her son's claim that there were four, and that the two smaller entities would hold her down while the bigger one raped her. Intrigued, but not yet sold, the investigators set up their equipment in an effort to gather any evidence at all of a haunting. When this was done, they had Doris go into one of the rooms where the most activity had been occurring and told her to start yelling and cursing at the unseen entities, trying to draw them out. Almost immediately, there was intense orb activity captured on the equipment, with spots of light flitting all over the place, like angry bees. After this, Doris was seen to be enveloped by greenish mist, followed by the materialization of what appeared to be the upper torso of a man, which hovered there in the mist and was apparently so terrifying that one of the investigators fainted. This torso could not be captured on the equipment, but there is a photograph of Doris with a strange arc of light appearing over her. This sort of intense paranormal activity would continue virtually unabated for the next several months of the investigation, including apparitions, mysterious lights, temperature drops, horrific mystery odors, and moving objects. It was even noticed that the investigators' presence actually seemed to anger and irritate the entities, and it was also found that playing music by the metal group Black Sabbath also seemed to cause an uptick in activity, making it all stronger, but then it suddenly started winding down and stopping altogether for no discernable reason. In later years, Doris would move her and her family to other places on several occasions, but according to her, each time the entities would follow her wherever she went, although somewhat weaker than they had been. She would even claim at one point that she had been impregnated by one of the spirits. Although her case had become quite well-known at the time, Doris herself would drop off the radar for years before finally succumbing to cardiac arrest in 1995, leaving us no further along as to what happened to her than when these supernatural forces first targeted her. What exactly happened to this poor woman and her family? What sort of spirits or entities targeted them and why? That would depend a lot on who you ask, but according to Taff himself, it has nothing at all to do with ghosts or spirits as we imagine them. Taff is convinced that the phenomena were caused by the subconscious human mind lashing out to affect the world around it through psychokinesis, the ability to move objects with the mind. In his theory, this is all the result of various factors coming together to cause the mind of a victim to reach out to wreak havoc on the outside world, most often without their awareness that they are even doing so. So insistent to see that this is the case and that such hauntings are caused by the projections of living beings rather than demons or the ghosts of the dead, that he has expressed disdain for these paranormal ideas, saying, I don't for one second believe this is the work of dead people throwing living people around, as there are no academic credentials required for anyone to go out and investigate the paranormal. Every new age groupie is out there looking for demons, emulating the garbage they've seen on cable TV paranormal shows, to fully comprehend the possibility that a living person's subconscious mind can involuntarily generate such power as to manifest luminous anomalies, apparitions and macroscopic psychokinetic events is for me far more compelling than if a discarnate intelligence was responsible. The evidence and collected data suggests these effects are the result of what's called recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, RSPK. There's two types of psychokinesis, moving physical objects around with physical means. There's microscopic, which works on a very small scale, things like affecting random number generators, random event generators and moving subatomic particles around. It's usually electrostatic based. Fatigue in the individual is shown as it's done on a conscious level. And then there is macroscopic, what we call poltergeist, and that is a whole different ball of wax. We're talking about the ability of moving very massive objects, hundreds of pounds easily. It's done on a subconscious level as there is no fatigue seen in the person at the core of it. Like the microscopic type, it's believed that the phenomena are generated by a living human agency. Taff has used this explanation to explain a wide range of what are traditionally considered to be paranormal phenomena, which he has compiled into a book called Aliens Above, Ghosts Below, Explorations of the Unknown, which takes the approach of trying to explain all of these disparate phenomena with possible real-world rational solutions. Others disagree and say that this was some sort of demonic presence, a trio of ghosts up to no good, or just the delusions of a fractured mind. It has never been solved regardless. Whatever the case is remains to be seen, but in the meantime, the Doris Mithers story has gone on to become one of the most frightening and controversial accounts of a haunting on record. So famous and noteworthy is this mysterious case that it was made into a 1983 Hollywood film based on these events, called The Entity, starring Barbara Hershey, directed by Sidney J. Fury, and which is loosely based on the real events. What was it that terrorized this family so violently? We may never know for sure. You've probably heard of the stories or seen it in the movies. People slip out of their bodies for a split second and their outlook on life is totally changed. From premonitions about death to soaring high above the ground, these experiences shook their beholders to the core and they might have the same effect on you. After heart surgery 10 years ago, Michael, age 35, specifically remembers floating above his hospital bed. Looking down, he saw the nurses frantically moving around him, calling to grab the paddles. Despite the urgency in the room around him though, Michael reports feeling exceptionally calm the entire time. He just floated above, watching. Then, suddenly, it ended. He woke up in the hospital bed with his dad and girlfriend sitting beside him. When he relayed the experience to a nurse later, she laughed and said this was a common experience for cardiac patients who flat line. Michael never considered himself a religious man, but after this experience, he knows there is something in the universe much larger than any of us. When Margaret, now 38, was a young girl, she remembers repeatedly being able to step away from her body and fly away shortly after falling asleep. The first few times it happened, she thought it was a dream. She could move through walls without touching them and was actually able to watch her parents in real time. It was then she knew it was no dream. The only spooky thing was her dog, a normally calm and quiet animal, her dog would whine whenever Margaret emerged from her body immediately causing her to return. She stopped having out of body experiences after her parents divorced during her freshman year in high school, and it hasn't happened since. Jason, now 28, has experienced stepping out of his body more than once and was able to induce it himself a few times while in deep meditation by visualizing himself as hovering over his body. He describes slipping out of your body like being attached to a spider's thread. You're always connected but aware of a separation. He became interested in meditation because of previous sleep-induced out-of-body experiences or OBEs. He wanted to determine if those experiences were real or just something in his head. Over time, he has become convinced that they are indeed real. He has since tried to understand what exactly an OBE is and why they occur, but after speaking with various meditation teachers, none have offered answers that satisfy him. Maybe it's just something that we'll never be able to understand. 36-year-old Eugene's case is another dealing with meditation. He started the practice to help manage his stress but found more than he was expecting. Once a man from Nepal came to his meditation center to present a lecture on mindfulness. He seemed aware of the room's collected skepticism in his unconventional ways, so he handed out post-it notes to five members present and told them to write a number between one and a hundred. They were then instructed to put the paper in their pockets, then lay them face-up on the floor after he had entered an out-of-body status and was gone. He claimed that when he returned to his body, he'd be able to tell them what numbers were on the papers. The room sat in 30 minutes of silence before he eventually sat up and correctly stated all five numbers. To this day, Eugene has no explanation for how this was done. Was it truly an out-of-body experience or was it simply some kind of crafty magic trick? It was a very quiet day and 25 year old Sarah recalls that she felt particularly relaxed. Her eyes were closed. She was outside and listening to the surrounding noise. As she lay there, she felt like she was slowly moving up as though she was standing or being lifted, though she was confident this was not the case. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the sense of being in two places at once, floating in the air and still lying on the ground below. Even stranger, she could see the world around her despite her eyes being closed. It was disorienting, so she threw out her arms to try and catch herself and emerged from this strange state. It hasn't happened again since. When Anna was 14 years old, she had a dream that she was standing in her grandparents' kitchen and saw her grandmother telling her grandfather she wasn't feeling well. He started crying and her grandmother tried to comfort him. Anna woke in tears herself, feeling an enormous sense of grief, but blew off the experience as just a really bad dream. A couple days later, her mother got a phone call from her grandfather, saying that her grandmother had suffered a massive heart attack in the kitchen and died. Three days after the call, Anna's family went to the Gulf Coast of Alabama where her grandparents had moved a year earlier. She had never been before, nor seen any pictures, but when she entered the kitchen, it was the exact same as she had seen in her dream. She didn't tell her mother about this until she was nearly 30, and her mother wasn't surprised. She said Anna had always been close with her grandfather and thought she probably went to him because he was sad. Anna believes she somehow ventured into the future to her grandparents' house the moment her grandmother died. It made her realize that we are truly connected to people we love in a way that is far beyond physical. Finally, Brian, now 30, was seven when he was climbing a tall tree in his backyard and took a fall. He landed flat on his back, hitting his head on a root. However, the next thing he knew he was getting up off the ground and dusting off his clothes. His mother ran from the house, yelling for his dad. Brian was ready to tell her that he was okay when he looked down and saw another, him, still lying unconscious on the ground. From a distance, he watched his mom kneel over his body and gently pat his face. He woke with her leaning over him. To this day, he still isn't sure what caused this amazingly real experience, but it has made him more open-minded to things where most people would automatically assume disbelief. Up next, Weirdo family member Daniel Hagen shares how he once explored some woods on his bike and ended up pedaling for his life to escape paranormal beasts that appeared from nowhere. Plus, digging in their backyard, two brothers find what appear to be small human heads carved of stone. But the curious find turns creepy once they bring the heads into the house, resurrecting sightings of a wolf-like creature not seen in almost 70 years. These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. Paranormal experiences, encountering extraterrestrials, extraordinary states of consciousness, spiritual phenomenon, encounters with non-human entities that can't be explained by science. These stories of what people have come across are ubiquitous here on Weird Darkness, and often those who have had these encounters choose to stay quiet and not even tell close friends or family out of fear of ridicule, and they suffer silently trying to deal with the internal horror of what they've experienced. If I'm describing you or someone you know, there is now a place you can turn to for professional counseling from experts who, unlike others in their field, are open to the paranormal, supernatural, and extraterrestrial experiences of others, and they're not there to explain away your experience but to help you recover from it and move forward with living. I'm referring to the Opus Network. If you want to reach out for help or learn more, look for the Opus Network towards the bottom of the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. This next story comes from Weirdo family member Daniel Hagen. Here's the story in his own words. The story took place during the summer of 1981. I was 12 years old. I was camping with my family at a place called Canoe River Campground in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The location of the campground is right on the edge of the Huckamuck Swamp Bridgewater Triangle. As was the custom on any sunny day, I took my red BMX bike and went looking for something to do. After cruising by the rec room and seeing that it was filled with teenagers, I decided I would explore one of the small brooks that feed into Mill Pond. There was a path that followed the brook part of the way, which I had stopped at last time. This time I decided I wanted to go further upstream and see what was there. So I dropped down into the brook and rode deeper into the woods. The brook was shallow and easy to navigate. As I made my way down the brook, I stopped and explored any clearing or path I found. I estimated I had ridden for about 30 or 40 minutes when I came upon a path that led away from the brook and into the woods. Without hesitation, I rode on to the path and followed it. I was only on the path for maybe five minutes when I spilled out into a clearing, and that is when I came upon the abandoned house. It was an old, dilapidated farmhouse with a stone foundation. It was pretty run down and kind of creepy, but it was a bright, sunny summer morning. I jumped off my bike and started to explore the place. I moved through the first floor, old stove cabinets, and then I walked up the rickety old stairs to the second floor and looked in all the bedrooms. I eventually found my way down into the basement, which led to what looked like an old garage. Now when I tell you the place was abandoned, it was in no doubt. The house was an absolute wreck. Walls crumbling, windows smashed out. The only living things around were run-of-the-mill wildlife. The place was empty. Now the garage was filled with old bottles of every description, and being a bored 12-year-old, I decided that it would be a good idea to smash bottles off the stone foundation. So I collected up bottles and proceeded to go around the house and smash bottles on every part of it. Like I said, it was an early summer morning. Sun out, insects and birds doing their thing. I was having a blast when suddenly everything changed. I didn't notice right away as I was busy smashing bottles, but when I ran out of bottles and was heading back to get more, I suddenly got a strange feeling, like I was being watched. I froze, and that is when I noticed that things had gotten quiet. I then heard the scraping of chains on the ground. A cold chill ran up my spine and I started to feel very scared. I finally got up the courage to move and I turned toward the opening of the garage and that is when I saw two of the meanest, evilest dogs you ever saw. They weren't there five minutes ago. Impossible. I just came from there. Well, after looking at these two demon dogs for what seemed like an hour, I regained my composure and jumped on my bike and got the bleep out of there. I know it sounds like the wild imagination of a 12-year-old boy, but I know what I saw. Wolf at large in Allendale was the headline of the Hexham Current on 10 December 1904. The Current reported that in the last three weeks, farmers around the village of Allendale were stabling their animals at night as loss of livestock had become a serious concern. One farmer had found two of his sheep killed, one with its bowels hanging out. The head and horns were all that remained of another animal. Many of the unfortunate livestock had been bitten around the neck and legs, suggesting an attack by a wolf. It was suggested that the perpetrator was a gray wolf that had escaped from its owner, Captain Bain, of Shotley Bridge. However, Shotley Bridge police station had recorded Captain Bain's wolf as being only four and a half months old, not much of a danger to men or livestock. Sightings of the beast began to filter through the community. A report of an imposing looking wolf lurking around behind Allendale's school brought a hunting party of 150 residents to the scene, some armed with guns. A search of the area found only a spot within a large drain where it was thought the beast may have slept. The Hexham Current reported on 17 December that on the previous Wednesday, the wolf had committed great slaughter of a flock of sheep. The wolf had been tracked by a 100 strong hunting party, but could not be driven towards the guns of the group. The following day, another hunting party, 200 strong, half of whom were armed with guns again attempted to track the wolf, but the search proved hopeless. Further sightings, sometimes conflicting, were reported over the next several days, describing the beast as black and tan or done-colored. The community became unsettled. Lanterns were kept burning overnight in an attempt to ward the wolf away, and the Hexham Wolf Committee was founded to organize efforts to track down the beast, offering rewards to prospective wolf trackers. Throughout the winter, the hunt for the Allendale Wolf continued. Renowned tracking dogs, the Hayden Hounds were put on the trail, but not even the prized bloodhound of the group, Monarch, could find its quarry. Charles Ford, who recorded the case in his book Low, commented, The wise dog was put on what was supposed to be the trail of the wolf, but if there weren't any wolf, who can blame a celebrated bloodhound for not smelling something that wasn't? The wolf committee persevered and hired Mr. W. Brittick, a skilled Indian game hunter. Mr. Brittick was interviewed by the New Castle Evening Chronicle, stating that he would find the Allendale Wolf on scientific lines. Despite his experience and scientific pretensions, Brittick was unable to track down the animal. Despite the lack of success in tracking down their wolf, the locals adopted the continuing search as part of their folklore. Hunt days soon took on a sense of occasion, complete with fancy dress and sing songs. Throughout December and over Christmas, the search continued. The wolf was witnessed jumping over a high wall to escape two men, and the following day it was seen attacking a black-faced you. One afternoon in late December, the wolf was encountered by a group of women and children whose screams startled and scared the wolf away. In 1905, a corpse of a wolf was found on a railway track in Covington, Cumbria, some 30 miles west of Hexham. The Hexham Current, on the 7th of January, reported that the corpse was not that of the wolf of Allendale, and the wolf committee claimed the beast was still at large. It was suggested that there were perhaps an entire family of predators living in the Allendale woods, which does offer an explanation as to why there had been differing descriptions of the animal. By the end of January 1905, reports of the wolf began to wane, culminating with a succinct report of a wolf sided with a snare attached to its leg. Eventually, the sightings and livestock killings ceased altogether. Little or nothing was heard of the wolf of Allendale until 1972. At the Robson family home in Hexham, only 10 minutes walk away from where the legendary wolf of Allendale had roamed the woods, the two young Robson brothers dug up two small carved stone heads whilst they were tending the garden. Several nights after the discovery of the stone heads, neighbor Ellen Dodd and her daughter were sitting up late one evening when both of them witnessed a half-man, half-beast entering the bedroom. The pair screamed in terror, but the creature seemed indifferent to them and simply left the room, heard to be padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs. Later on, the front door was found open. It has been thought that the creature had been in search of something and had left the house to continue searching elsewhere. Interest in the local legend of the wolf of Allendale was rekindled by this event and the stone heads became associated with the possible reappearance of the wolf. The two stone heads, each about the size of an orange, were thought to be Celtic in origin and collector Dr. Anne Ross took possession of the heads as she had several other stone heads in her collection and wished to compare them to the Hexham pair. A few nights after taking possession of the heads, Dr. Ross awoke at 2 a.m. one morning, feeling cold and frightened. Looking up, she saw a strange creature standing in her bedroom doorway. Quote, It was about six feet high, slightly stooping, and it was black against the white door, and it was half-animal and half-man. The upper part I would have said was a wolf and the lower part was human, and I would have again said that it was covered with a kind of black, very dark fur. It went out and I just saw it clearly and then it disappeared, and something made me run after it, a thing I would not normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it. I got out of bed and I ran and I could hear it going down the stairs. Then it disappeared towards the back of the house. Living and working in Southampton, Dr. Ross knew nothing of the wolf of Allendale Legend and the association of the Hexham heads with the possible return of the wolf, and she attributed the experience to a nightmare. Dr. Ross came home with her archaeologist husband, Richard Feacham one day, only to find their teenage daughter, Bernice, in a distressed state. Bernice explained that she had used her key to unlock the front door and entered the house that afternoon to witness a large black shape rushing down the stairs. Halfway downstairs, the creature vaulted the banister, landing with a soft, heavy thud like a large animal with padded feet. Believing the presence of the stone heads to be responsible for these events, Dr. Ross passed on her whole collection of stone heads along with the Hexham pair to other collectors. The Hexham heads found their way to the British Museum for Public Display, though they were soon removed from display and mothballed amid reports of unsettling events associated with the heads. There have been claims that the Hexham heads were not Celtic in origin and had simply been carved as toys by the previous occupants of the Robson family home only 20 years previously and had subsequently become lost in the garden. It has also been said that the heads were examined by the universities of Newcastle and Southampton for dating. For now, the current whereabouts of the Hexham heads remain unknown. Despite this, the legend of the Hexham heads and its association with the Wolf of Allendale has become a cornerstone of the local folklore of the area. When Weird Darkness returns, in 1886, Chicago, one of the nation's very first serial killers would build a sadistic chamber of horrors to live out his most demented fantasies. Are you a business owner or marketing manager? How would you like to share your product or service with our Weirdo family of listeners? Whether your business is worldwide, nationwide, or local, I would love to tell people about what you have to offer. To get your business heard in Weird Darkness or just get information about advertising in the podcast, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Advertise. There are some creepy places in this world that go beyond merely haunted, being not only supposedly infested by ghosts, but also imbued with a history of pain, woe, strife, and death, indeed pure evil. One such place exists in the city of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. It was here that one of the nation's very first serial killers would build a sadistic chamber of horrors to live out his most demented fantasies. And the murder castle has remained a dark mark on the city's history and haunted with both real ghosts and its horrific past. In 1886, a man named Henry Howard Holmes came to the city of Chicago, Illinois, and began a humble job working at a corner drug store, owned by an Elizabeth S. Holton, and by all accounts he was an intelligent, hard-working and very charming man who before long had made quick friends with everyone in the area. He also seemed to be moving up in the world, eventually buying the store and becoming owner. What many people did not know was that the man they knew as H. H. Holmes was not who they thought he was, and that he was to begin a reign of terror that would shock the city and indeed the nation. What most people did not know back then was that Holmes had begun life as Herman Webster Mudgeit, born in 1861 in New Hampshire. He also had a rather turbulent past, moving from school to school before finally settling at the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery, during which time he had worked at a medical lab and began his first steps on the road to a criminal career by using cadavers to defraud insurance companies. Also during his university days he was married, had a son, and got separated, and after graduating he began the first of his many jumps around the country, settling in Moores Forks, New York, where his history would begin to take on a tint of the sinister. While living in New York, he was suspected of having something to do with the mysterious disappearance of a boy he had last been seen with, and although he was never charged with any crime and denied any wrongdoing, he rather suspiciously moved on to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he took up work as a pharmacist at a drug store. Here, too, there would be suspicions aimed his way when a young boy overdosed and died from taking medication from the store. Once again, Holmes was not prosecuted, but he once again skipped town right after, this time finding his way to Chicago, where he changed his name and planned to start a new identity. This is where we come back to Holmes and his new life, where everyone was blissfully unaware of any of his shady past and where he seemed to be successful and well liked. Yet it was during this time he would get up to his old manipulative ways, marrying another woman, Myrta Belknap, while still technically married to his previous wife, although they soon separated as well. Despite this, no one had a clue what he was up to, and he was still ever the charming, successful businessman. He was so successful, in fact, that in 1887, in the years leading up to the 1893 Chicago World Fair, he bought a lot across the street from the drug store and began the construction of a massive three-story building that he planned to turn into a hotel. The construction would prove to be unorthodox, to say the least, with Holmes changing architects, contractors and workers frequently, but this wasn't quite strange enough to gather any suspicions at the time. When the hotel was completed in 1891, he began hiring employees, and oddly enough, he demanded that they have life insurance, and additionally that they make him the beneficiary. Strange, but again not weird enough to arouse any suspicion at the time. The World Fair would come and go, and unfortunately the hotel portion of the building seems to have never been opened due to various disputes over payment with the various contractors and architects who had worked on it, but the store's front section on the first floor proved to be a success. Holmes was still up to his ways, marrying yet another woman, Georgiana Yoke, in the meantime, as well as allegedly having numerous mistresses, mostly employees, but there was no reason yet to think that he was anything other than another rich, charming playboy. No one knew that during the World Fair, Holmes had been hard at work completing a string of insurance scams all over the country, with an accomplice by the name of Benjamin Pitticell, and there was no particular suspicion raised when he suddenly left Chicago to go off and pull off more scams. Not all of these schemes were successful, and Holmes once ended up in jail for a scam, and on another occasion he tried to scam an insurance company by faking his own death, only for it to fail when red flags were raised. Not long after this, Holmes kept at his faked death scam, this time turning to his accomplice, Pitticell, and having him fake his own death so that they could collect the insurance money, the same plan he had unsuccessfully tried before with himself. It is unclear just what part of the faked of a fake death Holmes didn't understand, but he ended up making Pitticell just plain dead, after which he collected the money and skipped town. Police wanted Holmes for an outstanding warrant for fraud, but also began to suspect Holmes of foul play when they learned of the scam that he had planned, coupled with Pitticell's disappearance, and they eventually tracked him down in Boston, with the help of information provided by a disgruntled former accomplice of Holmes. He was arrested November 17, 1894, and this would be the beginning of the end for Holmes, and the start of a show of horrors the likes of which the country had never seen. As they dug deeper into the case, the investigation discovered that not only had Pitticell been murdered in cold blood, but that three of his five children who had last been seen with Holmes had also been killed and buried in the cellar of a house Holmes had been renting. Holmes was now a murder suspect, and he was also increasingly linked to more and more mysterious disappearances, namely a number of women who had worked at his hotel. However, it was when they began searching his hotel's premises that the real horror show began. He was immediately found to be a rather odd and unsettling place, with doors and stairways that led to nowhere, doors that opened onto brick walls or only opened one way, a complicated labyrinthine floor layout that seemed almost designed to confuse people, and various trap doors, secret doors, peep holes, and anomalous holes that would later be found to have been used to insert hoses for pumping poisonous gas. It was also found that several of the rooms were soundproofed, had been rigged with alarms, and held shoots leading to the basement as well. These baffling and hazy clues would all become very clear and draw sharply into focus when police searched the murky depths of the hotel basement. One of the first things they discovered down there in those dark depths was a pile of animal and human bones which would later be shown to have come from children. More macabre discoveries followed, such as other bone fragments, an acid vat presumably for dissolving human remains, chemicals for just that purpose, and a large stove for cremation found to have a pile of ashes containing a woman's gold chain, a watch, and some metal buttons. There was also a dissecting table with bloodied women's clothing lying atop it, as well as various tools for dissection. According to some accounts, it was even claimed that there were various horrific torture devices like something out of a medieval dungeon scattered about. For all appearances, this was a veritable murderer's playground, and police began to suspect what he had been up to. It was thought that Holmes had rigged the rooms with alarms that sounded in his own room and peep holes so that he could secretly watch guests and keep an eye on their movements, and the secret doors would have allowed him to move about unseen. He could then administer gas into their rooms to knock them out when his victims were least expecting it, after which he would drop them down a chute to the basement where he would torture them, kill them, chop them up, and then dissolve or burn any remains. He even also seemed to have intentionally designed the hotel to be confusing, along with its non-intuitive layout, one-way doors and stairways to nowhere in order to thwart any effort to escape. Although the hotel seems to have never actually opened for business, it was suspected that he still had some guests from time to time, and that he had numerous mistresses stay here as well, although how many he may have killed in his death trap was unknown. In the end, for all of this, there were found no full human bodies, and the bones could have come from anywhere. After all, Holmes had worked with cadavers before, so they may have been from people who were already deceased. Despite all of the gruesome and disturbing evidence on hand, there was nothing concrete to prove that Holmes had actually murdered anyone there, and so he was not charged with anything concerning the hotel, which was now widely becoming known as the Murder Castle by sensationalized news reports. Additionally, Holmes insisted that he was innocent and had done nothing wrong. Eventually, after a very highly publicized and bizarre trial, Holmes would only officially be found guilty of the murder of Benjamin Petticell, but he was highly implicated in the murder of Petticell's children as well. In the wake of his murder conviction, Holmes underwent a sinister change, going from proclaiming his innocence to a full confession of having carried out 27 additional murders as well as six attempted murders. He also began to make claims that he was under the influence of satanic forces, and that he was at times even fully possessed by the devil. One of his most famous quotes while incarcerated was, I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the evil one, standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since. All of this added to the macabre lure of the case, which was splashed everywhere in the news, drawing intense interest from all over. These sensational news stories were often over exaggerated, adding grim details or inflating the death toll, with some pulp tabloid-style newspapers claiming that the monstrous Holmes had slaughtered up to 200 people. But no matter what the real number was, he was only convicted of one, the murder of Petticell. For this murder, he would be sentenced to death and executed by hanging May 7th, 1896 in a spectacle that included a botched execution that led to Holmes dangling about the rope for 20 minutes before finally dying and ending his reign of terror. Oddly, Holmes had requested that his body be encased in a huge slab of concrete in order to prevent grave robbers from stealing it, and this was done in accordance with his wishes. In the aftermath of Holmes' death, there began a string of mysterious accidents and deaths involving people and places who had been associated with him or who had helped put him behind bars. The first strange incident occurred not long after Holmes was dead, when a coroner who had testified against him suddenly developed serious blood poisoning for no reason and died. Next was a mysterious explosion and fire that completely raised the hotel to the ground in 1895. After this, other deaths followed in quick succession, including another coroner and the judge who had sentenced Holmes to death, who both fell down with mysterious illnesses, as well as the prison warden from suicide. Then there were the deaths of the father of one of Holmes' alleged victims, a priest who had read him his last rites, and a jury foreman from the trial who died in a freak accident when electrical wires fell down on him. All of this quickly convinced people that Holmes had left some dark curse behind. The curse continued when one of the offices of the insurance company that had foiled his fake death plot burned to the ground. There were also more strange deaths in later years. The man who had pointed authorities in Holmes' direction who had been pardoned for providing the information was shot and killed in a violent shootout with police in Chicago in 1909. Then there was the suicide of the former caretaker of the hotel, who killed himself in 1914 after claiming that he had been haunted with constant strange hallucinations. One of the detectives who helped track Holmes down also fell seriously ill, although he survived. Whether any of this had anything to do with a supernatural curse or not is unknown, but it is all very creepy nonetheless. Other strange mysteries hover about Holmes and his murder castle as well. Although the building was destroyed in a fire, people claimed that at night there could be heard ghostly screams and moans coming from the charred plot and that shadowy figures could be seen stalking about in the darkness. Animals were also said to avoid it like the plague, with dogs refusing to go anywhere near it. Even when a post office was built there in 1938, the hauntings didn't stop, and the building is said to be incredibly haunted to this day. Postal workers have described all manner of paranormal phenomena occurring here, such as anomalous noises, moving objects, roving cold spots, shadowy apparitions, and even the ghost of Holmes himself, and this is all experienced the most in the basement, which is a surviving remnant of the original hotel. Besides the curse and hauntings, there have also been conspiracy theories attached to the story of Holmes. It was long believed that he had never even died at all and that the body they buried that day was not his, his final masterpiece of a scam. This conspiracy was so rampant and pervasive that in 2017 his grave was actually exhumed to see if there was any truth to it. Within the immense two-ton chunk of concrete, the remains and even his clothes were found to be remarkably intact and well-preserved, and the body would be conclusively identified as that of Holmes, ending the conspiracy theory. With the dark and sinister infusing at all, it is understandable why the grotesque story has gained so much attention and has produced so many spooky accounts. The colorful, morbid tale of Henry Howard Holmes has achieved an almost legendary status, but it is also so peppered with exaggerations and unknowns that it's hard to know sometimes where the truth of the man ends and the myth begins. Very little is known of the man himself, and even his deeds have been played up for maximum creepiness. We don't even know how many people he really killed. With all the stories of hauntings and curses, it all gets even further pushed into the murky realm of strange mysteries and the unknown, where it's hard to really know what to make of any of it. Nevertheless, it is certainly a breathtaking tale of horror and serial killers from a time when that wasn't even a common phrase in America, and it will remain indelibly imprinted upon history as a glimpse into pure evil. You know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, visit the store for Weird Darkness T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases and more merchandise, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. A famous case of frightening entities was written by Brent Swancer. Creepy encounters with real doppelgangers is by Nathan Gibson. Demon Dogs was by Weirdo family member Daniel Hagen. Surviving out of body experiences was written by Audrey Webster. Hexham Heads and The Wolf of Allendale was written by Neil Boothman. Murder Castle of Chicago was written by Brent Swancer. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions' copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Matthew 6, verses 19-21 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. In a final thought, let people do what they need to do to make them happy. Mind your own business and do what you need to do to make you happy. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. When Salem Roanoke took a job near his family's new home as a hired hand in the Texas Hill country, he anticipated learning the ranchers' trade, but a series of strange events, shocking murders, and unholy revelations divert him down another path. This terrifying trajectory puts him directly into the middle of a struggle between monsters, magic, and men. Armed and backed by a militia of ranchers, Salem attempts to combat the creeping tide of evil that threatens to engulf his new home and destroy the people most important to him. Will Salem manage to save his home or have his actions condemn everyone he hopes to save? The Witch Trials, a summer of wolves and season of the witch by SR Roanoke, available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. Look for The Witch Trials by SR Roanoke on Amazon or find it on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash audiobooks.