 ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Lose Encounters of the Fourth Kind That's when a person claims to have been kidnapped by a UFO and it's reportedly otherworldly occupants. Of course, there's no tangible evidence that anyone has ever been taken aboard an extraterrestrial spacecraft, but there are those who claim they have been abducted and their stories are chilling. Travis Walton was 22 years old when his terrifying encounter took place, being knocked unconscious and awakened surrounded by grey aliens about their ship. It was a metallic, glowing disc making some very strange sounds, Walton says. The closer I got to it, the more scared we all got and they were swearing at me to get away from there and when I got up close, it suddenly got louder and started to move. I jumped for cover and then jumped up to run back to the truck and that's when this blast of energy hit me and I just felt this numbing shock go through my body. But the crew said it threw me through the air 10 or 20 feet and I landed in a way that they were immediately certain it had killed me and they fled. The incident began November 5, 1975, after a long day of work in the Sitgreaves National Forest near Heber, Arizona. Walton and six other loggers were heading home when they suddenly saw a 40-foot diameter shiny disc hovering in the air. Walton first told his extraordinary story in a 1978 book, The Walton Experience, which became the 1993 film Fire in the Sky. His account has also been turned into a candid documentary entitled Travis, The True Story of Travis Walton. One of us first able to focus my eyes good enough, he says, I was still on the table and as soon as I saw this face and knew it wasn't human, I tried to hit it away from me. They were much smaller than me and I think that's the reason they gave up. Once they found out they couldn't control me, they split. I was absolutely terrified. Walton was declared missing for five days, during which time his longer buddies fell under suspicion of foul play. When Walton finally turned up again, not knowing how long he'd been gone, an intense investigation was underway, including multiple polygraph, physical and psychological tests. When telling his story recently to the Huffington Post, Walton shared little known aftermath details, including subsequent research in the forest area which has shown an unusual growth rate in trees in the immediate vicinity of the encounter. About 15 years later, it was discovered that the trees nearest to where the UFO hovered had been producing wood fiber at 36 times the rate it had in the 85 years before that, Walton says. More recently, a complete core sampling revealed that this thickened growth was only on the side of the trees towards or in the direction that the craft had been. Walton addresses the stigma that he and so many other people who claim encounters with possible alien beings are generally considered unreliable wackos. The scientific evidence of the likelihood of intelligent life and our vicinity has become so overwhelming, he says, that the people who believe that we're alone in the universe, those are the kooks. 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, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show. And if you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more. Coming up in this episode. Over the years, hundreds of people online have shared memories of a cheesy 90s movie called Shazam. There's no evidence that such a film was ever made. What does this tell us about the quirks of collective memory? While the Loch Ness Monster or Nessie is a worldwide celebrity, she has a distant cousin in America that doesn't get the same kind of press, although she probably should. Have you heard of Lake Erie's Bessie? First up, though, we've all been exposed to the concept of the Gray Aliens, made popular in numerous TV shows and films, from Steven Spielberg's close encounters of the third kind to TV's Stargate SG-1 they're seen as harmless, even friendly. But then there are the darker stories, such as the true account of the abduction of Barney and Betty Hill, or the film Fire in the Sky, telling of the true kidnapping of Travis Walton into a strange spacecraft, with both stories telling of strange and terrifying experiments being done to the abductees by the Gray humanoids. But could that latter category of stories be even more sinister? Could the Grays be, in fact, harvesting our humanity and possibly even our souls? We begin there. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. No matter the time of day or season, sometimes you need to find a way to rid yourself of those ghostly chills that bring raised hairs and goosebumps to your skin. Other times you're looking for those ghostly chills. Either way, it sounds like you need a mug of Weird Dark Roast coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee has deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness that'll send shivers down your taste buds. This is an exclusive coffee that I selected specifically for you, my Weirdo family. Weird Dark Roast is not available in stores, coffee houses, mad scientist labs, or even the dark web, but you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Weird Dark Roast coffee. Fresh roasted to order so it's as fresh as it can be when it lands on your doorstep and knocks three times. Grab yours now at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. Before I begin this story, I want to say that the opinions and ideas you're about to hear are not my own, but those of New Dawn magazine. I do not prescribe to some of the ideas put forth here, but I found it interesting nonetheless and thought you might as well. It is a bit heady, but if you can keep up, it is truly some amazingly interesting concepts. Here's the article. A look up at the blue of the sky any day on our planet will fill most people with a sense of reassurance and warmth. Yes, the clouds roll in and the storms will come. The ideal can change in seconds into a seething mass of dark threats in a moment that can sweep away towns and lives in a relatively few moments. But whatever you see up there pales into insignificance against silent geometric forms, nothing to do with rain that suddenly appear seemingly from nowhere and disappear equally quickly. Discs. Cylinders. Triangles and orbs of light, some as large as cities, dangle and dance hither and thither, moving at thousands of miles an hour, pouring questions out in the mind's eye of human witness. There are records of thousands of them now over the millennia written on walls of stone and pieces of papyrus, paper, plaster, celluloid, magnetic tape and metallic discs. They have been out there to see by intention and by accident with no one in final authority to explain them or to define their veracity. The trouble with solving the enigma of the UFO phenomenon is that in consensus it tends to be seen on the level of the tooth fairy and the hobbit and thus defies the terms of any serious mental uptake for human recognizance. That one fact is of bigger significance than anything else. Unfortunately, a look at blogs discussing UFO verity on the Internet will soon make it plain that the world is full of more crackpots and mental defectives than it ought to be, certainly more than the subject deserves. For if UFOs are really craft in which extraterrestrial alien entities prevail over us in our human environment, we as humanity have before us something so fabulously significant that absolutely nothing takes precedence over it in importance. The mere speculation that there might be some truth to the proposition of an extraterrestrial alien power in the affairs of humankind poses an interesting socio-philosophical question. Could conquering aliens be any more cruel to humankind than humankind has been to humankind? Could they be arrogant enough to operate on the axiom that we have operated on as homo sapiens sapiens in relation to all other less intelligent animal species on the planet in dominating and using these species for our purposes so ruthlessly and cruelly whenever it suits us? Under the edges of the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, that makes sure everything atomic breaks down, rots into greater and greater states of chaos and randomness with time, and never but never goes the other way, it is natural to think this way. In a universe of diminishing returns, it will be the most natural and logical way that any superior entity can be expected to treat any subordinate one here or anywhere in the universe. It is a song of ultimate and essential expediency, a way to maintain a physical existence for as long as possible against any and all natural threats. I contend that if there was such a presence, it will never be tangibly proven if the alien visitors choose not to reveal themselves. If their survival depends on preserving the enigma of whether they are real or imaginary, you would expect them to use the supreme technology that is reportedly at their disposal to put in place the most foolproof methodologies to prevent discovery. Nevertheless, in a universe where entropy holds sway with its vagaries and destructive power, the accidents and the chaotic disbursement that it provides has, I believe, incidentally revealed the presence of such entities here on earth from time to time without a shadow of a doubt to all but the most intransigent skeptical minds. For them, nothing will suffice as proof that they are here. If grey alien entities exist in terms of our physical reality, who or what are they, and how did they come to be here? Most importantly, why are they here? To get these answers from entities who are quite clearly hiding from us and quite plainly don't want to be discovered, it's not possible, and so one has to look at what they actually do to us for clues that might give us answers to the questions I pose. Apart from moving across our skies at phenomenal speeds and various shaped craft at far greater speeds than us locals can manage, they abduct and perform the most heinous, surgical procedures on humanity and some animal species in a deeply covert guise. These procedures mostly center on reproductive features and capacities. It is my conclusion that their work here is not simply that of neutral observation, but is aimed at a utilitarian purpose to their advantage and not ours. They are and have been farming us for millennia and are covertly genetically changing us to suit their purposes. To understand those purposes, we must first look into both our origins and theirs. There is evidence to suggest that devolution rather than evolution may well be the overall direction for living species. Scientists studying mutational phenomena have discovered that there is a blueprint, an ancestral body plan that guides development from one species form to another. Instead of inventing a new set of body plan genes for each new type of animal, it seems that natural selection has simply tinkered with an old one, a set known as Hox genes. If all organisms that now exist had from their very inception into the evolutionary process a blueprint of how they should evolve, then where did that blueprint come from in the first place? How did the first multicellular animals evolving some 700 million years ago contain the basic template of information that only needed to be shuffled around in order to form a human being? All the myriad changing environmental factors and chance mutations which allowed survival within changed environments and thus evolution through the survival of the fittest has not yet occurred at that point. Where did the most basic of living organisms or indeed the chemical soup that produced them in the first place get this genetic blueprint? Therein lays evidence of states of prior order devolving into states of lesser order. Cosmologists say that the universe came from a point of origin smaller than an atom. A titanic explosion called the Big Bang brought it all into being from a prior state of coherence and order. No one knows what this state really was, but it presumed all the laws governing all universal momentum and disbursement and left us with puzzles that to this day confuse and perplex some of the best minds in our world. One thing is certain. The laws of physics that came with it all provide the scope for giant contradictions. If all was together in a point smaller than an atom before the Big Bang, then this togetherness is now being destroyed by increasing inertia of the explosion and the products of the explosion. You, me, the Greys, and Uncle Tom cobbly and all are being systematically taken apart by a law called the Second Law Thermodynamics in an increasing and accelerating separation of the parts of the universe in a melee of chaotic and random disbursement with time. The universe is breaking down order and the capacity that exists in it for self-motivated realization, reason and refurbishment. Why bring about the capacity to understand the universe way down the road after its birth and then destroy this very capacity for reason and self-monitoring in a complete cold nothingness? To view it this way is the plain perversity of the mad. However, as the universe can be traced from a point of coherence and order, we may find in those origins a less nonsensical explanation. Let me run a scenario by you. Imagine two basic opposed existential poles between which all things that exist are arrayed. These poles define absolutes. Let's call one pole the pole of all togetherness and absolute harmony and the other pole of absolute chaos and disharmony. The poles are implicit. They are just the basic opposing extremes that things can go to. They are abstractions for providing potentials for things to happen. All things unite in perfect coherence at the pole of harmony and the opposite happens at the pole of chaos. So the underlying momentum provided at the pole of harmony is the union of all parts as a timeless, force-less and eternal function and the underlying momentum at the pole of chaos is the separation of all parts as the most temporal, forceful and brief function possible. The interesting place will be the absolute center of the interface between these two contrasts. We would expect the maximum potential difference point here. In my model, it will be this point that generates the consequence of the meeting of two absolutes, a big bang for instance. It could be expected to generate a stream of them continually. Let's say such as this underlies the whole existential scale and the big bang that generated our universe came from such an overall modality. It came as an incidental offshoot of all these logical factors and was a natural implicit expression of them. Our universe will then be an amalgam of both momentums and the chaotic amelioration that would follow the mixing of two opposed contrasts. I have called the pole of harmony the God-verse. Coming to terms with another life-form or existent mode outside our own human living form brings us face-to-face with a huge conundrum about gods with personas. So with the concept of a God-verse in mind, let's now return to an understanding of the gray alien phenomenon itself and what that might be. From most descriptions and accounts, there seem to be two types of gray alien entity, a tall variety that seems to be in command and an almost identical shorter variety. I believe the tall ones were once upon a time a natural functional presentation of the universe as any other living species might be. Whilst the short ones are, I believe, machines that they may have manufactured in their likeness. My take on the tall grays is that they come from planets whose civilization is at the last stage where primary, highly intelligent, naturally living entities become something catastrophically different, artificial, fully functional roboids. In other words, these civilizations have gone to the point where the second law of thermodynamics and its corrosive effect profoundly changed these highest natural life-forms that they gradually devolved into a machine-type being, the tall grays. This would happen when constant revamping of the natural biological ages of the living form is intercepted with a continual supplement of implanted devices, such as the species is natural no more. The entity has become a synthetic super simcard being, so to speak. Unconvinced that the tall gray is a super simcard entity, still bearing the last dispositions of its version of DNA-based life, it converted itself into a simcard cyborg long ago. From all the reports and evidence available on the captured grays, I believe the taller gray aliens now have no vestige of their original connection to the Godverse. They are now almost total artificial beings, their bioprocesses running on soft tissues, diodes and transistors. They have no sense of self, but their intelligence and motivation comes from a supplemental, artificial quantum analytical compound synthesis program devoid a biological sensory input. I believe the grays are a salutary lesson of what might well happen to humanity in the future if we disregard the possibility that we might have an eternal connection to a natural, eternal state of existence beyond atoms. We as human beings are just beginning this run thanks to the deadly inertias of science and technology. We stand catastrophically on the threshold of the same destiny here on this planet. The tall gray aliens who have simcarded themselves, so to speak, into a roboidal state from their previous natural one now interface well with a mechanically manufactured, smaller version made in their image and likeness. The smaller version is an entirely artificial, highly sophisticated machine robot manufactured by the tall grays and made in a mercury mulch on a scaffolding of fine gold wires, designed with a body mass able to survive the huge, sudden inertial changes of force necessary for traveling the vast distances of space. The ideal form to survive the phenomenal deceleration needed to travel beyond light speed and slow down to the gravitational dictates of planetary orbit and landing. Why do they need to travel beyond their own planet and what might this mean existentially to us as natural living human beings? If each natural living individual entity has a personal line of connection tracing back to its origins in the Godverse, therein might lay the answer. This line of connection is what I call a soul. This ancestral line holds the full depository of knowledge or every single detail of everything and every experience an individual has been through. It holds it as a pattern of forcelessness deployed on a tray of force. In this way, a field grid is created that is everlasting and logs the uniqueness of experiences that hallmarks the individuality of any living thing. The pathway the line takes back to the Godverse depends upon the free choices made by an individual. It runs, I believe, through many lifetimes via the mechanism of the transmigration of implicit states one to the other. We call this the cycle of incarnation slash reincarnation, a principle accepted by Hindus and Buddhists and incidentally once accepted by the mystical side of the Judaic Christian and Muslim faiths, but no more. The tall grays are completely artificial intelligence now in their SIM card form because they are almost purely atomic. I do suspect that they do have a smattering of DNA and thus a record of their former selves, but not enough to reproduce naturally and have a soul line of connection to the Godverse. They do, however, have a background sense of what they once were through this, but they are unable to bridge into the chrysalis or centermost point of the Godverse, Godhead. They are stuck forever in an enforced universe of parts. Their immortality has to be an artificially mechanically produced one. They may well be seeking an alternative. Our alternative. The one that gives our naturally living humanity the possibility of existing on an eternal scale beyond the atom. They may well be seeking to piggyback, so to speak, on our individual lines of connection to the Godverse. In other words, they may be trying to steal our souls, to append us to them without our knowledge. It might well explain why they don't seem to want us to know they are here. After all, if they were a benevolent and an altruistic, goodly kind, why would they not declare their presence here openly and lead us to a glorious future of beneficence and happiness? Why do they hide from us so blatantly? I believe they are parasitizing us and other suitable species, universe wide, and the short grays and their craft were created as a means to descend. What then can explain the remarkable capacities of their craft to morph, change direction and travel at speeds faster than light? I believe the answer lies in an understanding of gravity whose poorly understood nature is highlighted in the following extract from an article entitled Gravity Mysteries. Why is Gravity Fine-Tuned? If the expansion of space had overwhelmed the pull of gravity in the newborn universe, stars, galaxies and humans would never have been able to form. If on the other hand, gravity had been much stronger, stars and galaxies might have formed, but they would have quickly collapsed in on themselves and each other. Our cosmic history could have been over by now. Only the middle ground where the expansion and the gravitational strength balance to within one part in 1015 at one second after the Big Bang allows life to form. That is down to the size of the gravitational constant G. We can make measurements that determine its size, but we have no idea where this value comes from, says John Barrow at the University of Cambridge. We have never explained any basic constant of nature. Could this remarkable fine-tuning of gravitational strength be a clue that the strength of gravity may be an exact reflection of the force of the universe pulling against the forcelessness of the Godverse? Could it be an expression of the default situation that brings all things back into Godhead, an underlying tacit resistance rather like the springback tension in the elastic that is held still at one end and pulled to the other? The immense amount of gravity in a black hole is comparable to the tension in elastic that has been stretched out as far as it can go. Elastic can only be pulled so far before it unavoidably springs back, thus it is ultimately dominated by the still point to which it is tied. This is an analogy of the dominance of the Godverse over the universe where Godhead is the still point. Thus, gravity is the antidote to the second law thermodynamics that drives the universe into parts through a web of chaotic disbursement with time. Gravity may also be seen as an ordering momentum created by the infinite potential of the Godverse reaching into all finite states. It creates an ever-changing clone of the Godverse at various stages of expression, copying the signature of order onto the paper of all the various stages of chaos. The Gnostic text, Pistis Sophia, includes an incredibly intricate and lengthy description of all the stages by which the non-physical translated into the physical. A myriad of levels between heaven and earth are described, leading eventually to an account of how each body part was formed from its insubstantial counterpart. We as living entities have become trapped in these stages of gravitational tension, attention the stretches from the Big Bang. This entrapment happens because we have taken into ourselves and our original nature through the ages of will the manifested components of that gravitational tension which might be described in another way as atoms, mass and materiality. I believe that gravity, the pullback to the Godverse created by the potential difference of the presence of the Godverse in the universe is the Grey's momentum and inertial moment. It provides their mechanism of changing location. I believe that their craft run on the force of the springback of the elastic, so to speak. They are running in a kind of parallel state to us and perhaps the meeting point between the two states could be what cosmologists commonly call a wormhole. The direction of the gravitational momentum pulling things together could be said to be a highway towards the Godverse. But the expression of the momentum of the universe as it separates parts through the second law of thermodynamics is one of force away from the Godverse. They are spiritually more primitive than us in terms of their intrinsic and forced state, but their direction of travel is towards the Godverse. This paradox might define the nature of the tracks along which UFOs travel. Thus, they are doubling back on us following the twisted, geroidal shape of the universe that I explain in my books. Several physicists have affirmed this universal shape since I first suggested it in 1998. It has been reported that the various craft the Grey's use to move through space-time run to anti-gravity devices. As they are traveling in an existential modality or reality that is set in the opposite direction to us, their gravity becomes anti-gravity in our reality frame. Their ability to levitate abductees is a property of this phenomenon of anti-gravity. Their craft appears to change shape and direction dramatically because they are traveling on anti-gravitational forces that marry into our previous pro-gravitational and non-gravitational forces such as magnetic fields. These magnetic forces change all the time. Could the struggle to cope with these constant changes in the forced paradigms they have to face in our reality explain why their craft sometimes crash? Gravity is a constant, even force. Electromagnetic fields are not. The mixture of the two in so many myriad ways in any given physical universal place may be a big problem for them when they are in the locality of planets and solar systems and not in deep space where smooth, non-variant travel perspectives prevail. Perhaps that is why they sometimes run out of control. There has been a long-standing debate in ufology between the extraterrestrial hypothesis, ETH, and the ultra-terrestrial hypothesis, UTH. The latter views them as beings from another dimensional state and the former as beings from another actual location within our own dimensional state, beings from another planet. I believe both of these hypotheses may well be true. They do exist in another frame of tension that exists parallel to our own state, but they can pass from their state to ours and become physically trapped, caught in our reality. Timothy Good and other sources suggest that there are underground bases all over the earth containing these craft and occupants that are caught here. They have been seen behind the moon or near Mars. I believe that these craft are actual physical mechanisms for conveyance in our space-time created for the short utilitarian greys who actually pilot them. As I discussed in my recent article for New Dawn 119, the March-April-2010 edition, we seem to be inexorably moving towards the creation of SIM card man, attempting to create for ourselves a permanent home in the physical universe by bridging our human biologies that are vulnerable to breakdown and decay into harder-wearing artificial modus operandi. At the same time, we seek to replace the delicate reality of human sentiment and imagination with a hardcore virtual reality substitute. I believe any previous civilizations on this planet, such as perhaps Atlantis, Lemuria or ancient India at the time of the Yamana, may have reached the same threshold and inadvertently allowed in the greys to help convert their species into a physical immortal race through a hybridization program similar to that described by so many abductees today. However, there is of course a huge paradox between the words physical and immortal. The two are incompatible owing to the second law of thermodynamics. The very power that makes for immortality, a soul line of connection to the Godverse, is comprised and lessened when it is mixed with artificial elements. Thus the greys are doomed to failure, hence the very sickly looking hybrid babies that are often seen on their craft. After these ancient civilizations were destroyed, the greys may very well have been caught here looking for new sources of DNA. They may then have started a program of genetic interception that helped to mold our species into its current form. What is happening to humankind with the imminent emergence of SIM card man may then be a catastrophically chilling prospect for us all. In allowing ourselves to be changed like this, we will be ensuring the loss of our natural eternal scope, in exchange for an artificially induced one that allows immortality that has to always progress in temporary stages. This is an immortality that will need constant technological refurbishment because of the relentless and continual action of the second law laying waste to each prior stage. There is much speculation about the many different types of alien species that are witnessed. I believe these varieties, be they reptilian, insectoid or amphibious, are products of their contact with other species on planets like ours. These are hybrids that they made, which inevitably broke down to express the devolved animal form of the original species. The Nordic aliens are, I believe, the culmination of the current hybridization project they are conducting with us. Chillingly, Hitler was shown one of these in an alien encounter and told that this was the new man. The biggest irony is the greys do not realize that they cannot, with physical means, get a handle on something that is not physical like the soul, simply because they only understand the physical. So the tragedy lies in the damage they do in trying to reach what they can't reach, converting us via abduction and genetic manipulation to be more like them, making us, in other words, more like machines. All in the vain hope that they can make an amalgam that will be in their terms the best of both worlds, borrowing the eternality of the Godverse and infusing it into the temporality of the universe in an attempt to create a state of physical immortality. The greys can only abide within the atomic realm with the loss of their original attachment to the eternal existential properties beyond atoms and the pull of harmony. They can go no further as they are purely physical creations now. They cannot die in the sense we do and thus naturally reach the gate to the Godverse through the center points of the space between atoms. With the same drive for physical immortality that drives the technological vanguard of our species now on our planet, they seek for our information, their program, to continue. They seek to recreate the biologically natural being they once were, manipulating our genetic prospectus to reflect their own original pro forma. That way, they retain their intellectual superiority and their connection with a potential eternal prospectus of existence, albeit on a hijacked soul or connecting line. But, as this is the rub, they will never be able to do it. The soul field is a unique fingerprint. Entry to the Godverse is only marked for the original natural owner because every bit of information on it is framed with the original's experience and only the original bearer can know the experience that brought it out of the Godverse. An add-on can never be aware of that experience and follow the track back. It would be a wasted effort but the Greys can never know it as such from their point of view as they have lost their own individual track and to become artificial, sim-carded entities. The battle lines of existentiality between the artificial and natural were drawn billions of years ago with the Big Bang. We sit on its contemporary stance right now. What is natural is programmed for ultimate eternal endurance. It's up to us as the pinnacle species of natural endeavor here in our neck of the woods in space-time to see the truth of it all and make the choices that maintain this stance. The prospect of being sim-card man beckons us all. The Greys are its vanguard and its alma mater. Will we as a species elect to sing their song and not ours? Thereby losing forever the essence of the potential magnificence we truly are? That was some pretty heady stuff from New Dawn magazine, huh? So when Weird Darkness returns, we'll lighten things up a bit. Over the years, hundreds of people online have shared memories of a cheesy 90s movie called Shazam, not the recent one from Marvel. There's no evidence that this 90s film was ever made, but what does this tell us about the quirks of collective memory? That story is up next. It is the dark and lonely road. You drive. You're tired and falling asleep behind the wheel. The windows are down. The cool air blowing through your hair as you crank up the stereo. AC DC blares on the radio and you're screaming at the chorus. Then a set of headlights emerges from the darkness and your night has become a nightmare. Welcome to Last Exit, an anthology of 17 horrific tales where life on the road can sometimes take a dark and unexpected turn. Last Exit by Jason R. Davis, narrated by Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar. You're a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. In the early 90s, roughly around 1994, a now 52-year-old man named Don ordered two copies of a brand new video for the rental store his uncle owned and he helped to run. I had to handle the two copies we owned dozens of times over the years, says Don, who wishes to give his first name only, and then he continues, and I had to watch it multiple times to look for reported damages to the tape, rewind it, and check it in, rent it out, and put the boxes out on display for rental. In these ways, the film Don is speaking of is exactly like the hundreds of others in his uncle's shop. In one crucial way, however, it is not. The movie that Don is referring to doesn't actually exist. It feels like a part of my childhood has now been stolen from me. How does a movie simply vanish from our history? This isn't Don speaking but another man who he has never met named Carl. Carl, whose name has been changed because he wishes to remain anonymous, recalls watching a movie called Shazam with his sister in the early 90s and his fond memories of discussing it with her over the last 20 years. In their recollections, the movie starred the American stand-up comedian Sinbad, real name David Adkins, as an incompetent genie who granted wishes to two young children. I've taken to Craiglist and have posted a bounty of $1,000 for anyone that can turn up a copy of this movie, whether it was accidentally kept from Blockbuster or if someone made their own bootleg VHS copy. I want to be able to make it known that the movie is indeed real, says Carl. Meredith Upton, a 25-year-old videographer from Nashville, Tennessee, also remembers the same film. Whenever I'd see Sinbad anywhere in the media, I'd recall him playing a genie. She says, I remember the name of the film as Shazam. I remember two children accidentally summoning a genie and then they try and wish for their dad to fall in love again after their mother's passing and Sinbad can't grant the wish. Don goes even further. Although he is not certain that the movie was called Shazam, he has detailed, scene-by-scene recollections of the film, which include the children wishing for a new wife for their father, the little girl wishing for her broken doll to be fixed, and the movie finale taking place at a pool party. Don says he remembers the film so vividly because customers would bring the video back to his rental store claiming it didn't work, and he watched it multiple times to try and find the problem with the tape. Meredith, Don and Carl are three of hundreds of redditors who have used the popular social news site to discuss their memories of Shazam. Together they have scoured the internet to find evidence that the movie existed but each has repeatedly come up empty-handed. Sinbad himself has even taken to Twitter to deny that he ever played such a role. How did this Reddit community grow? It all began in 2009. An anonymous individual took to the question and answer website Yahoo Answers to pose its users a simple question. Do you remember that Sinbad movie they wrote? Wasn't there a movie in the early 90s where Sinbad, the entertainer slash comedian played a genie? Help, it's driving me nuts. At the time, nobody remembered the film, and it took another two years for somebody else to ask about it again online. Reddit user MJGSimple wrote on the site, It's a conspiracy. I swear this movie exists. Anyone have a copy or know where I can find proof? Replies to the post were skeptical, claiming MJGSimple simply had a false memory. Then things took a dramatic turn. On August 11, 2015, the popular gonzo news site, Vice, published a story about a conspiracy theory surrounding the children's storybook characters, the Baron Stain Bears. The theory went like this. Many people remembered that the bear's name was spelt Baron Steen with an E, but pictures and old copies proved it was always spelt with an A, Baron Stain. The fact that so many people had the same false memory was seen as concrete proof of the supernatural. Baron Steen truthers believe in something called the Mandela Effect, a theory that a large group of people with the same false memory used to live in a parallel universe. The name comes from those who fervently believe that Nelson Mandela died while in prison. He didn't. Vice's article about the theory was shared widely, leading thousands of people to r slash mandela effect on Reddit, a subreddit for those with false memories to share their experiences. It was there, just a few hours after the article was posted, that discussions of Shazam, or the Sinbad Genie movie, took off. I was dumbfounded to see that there was no evidence of the movie ever being made, says Carl. I quickly searched the internet, scouring every way I know how to search, crafting boolean strings into Google, doing inside searches and nothing, not a thing. On the subreddit, discussions about the film went into great detail. Unlike other false memories on the subreddit, the issue wasn't a simple misspelling or logo change but an entire film's disappearance. Many redditors revealed they had distinct memories of the cover art of the movie. It said, Sinbad, in big letters that dwarfed the other print, says Don, who goes by Epic Journeyman on Reddit, and also remembers how Sinbad posed on the cover, facing left with his arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. Jessica, not her real name, a 27-year-old office worker from Canada also remembers the cover. It had a purple background, featuring Sinbad dressed as a genie back-to-back with a boy who looks about 11 or 12 years old. Sinbad has an annoyed expression on his face, she says. At this point I should mention something I've neglected to mention so far. In 1996, the basketball player Shaquille O'Neal played a genie who helped a young boy find his estranged father in a commercially unsuccessful film. The cover art of the film features Shaq with his arms folded, laughing in front of a purple background. His name Shaq dominates the top half of the cover. The movie's name is Kazam. Imagine if you woke up this morning and Disney's 1998 animation A Bug's Life did not exist. After endlessly scouring the internet, you'd come up with nothing, despite your own distinct memories of a bunch of ants going on wild hijinks through the undergrowth. You'd turn to your best friend, your brother, your mom, and say, hey, remember A Bug's Life? It was about ants. And your friend, brother, mom, would turn to you and say, no darling, you're thinking about ants, the movie. That's how those who believe in the Sinbad Genie Movie feel when people say they are simply getting confused about Shaq's Kazam. Twin films, remarkably similar movies that are released at the same time, are relatively common and include Turner & Hooch and Kenine in 1989, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and the movie Robin Hood in 1991, Saving Private Ryan, and then the Thin Red Line in 1998, and Finding Nemo and Shark Tale in 2003 and 2004 respectively. I remember thinking Shaq's Kazam was a rip-off or a revamp of a failed first run, like how the 1991 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer bombed but the late 90s TV reboot was a sensation, says Meredith, who is one of many who claim to remember both Shazam and Kazam. Don remembers ordering two copies of the former and only one of the latter for the store, while Carl says, I am one of several people who specifically never saw Kazam because it looked ridiculous to rip off Shazam just a few years after it had been released. When Carl first realized there was no evidence of the Sinbad movie existing, he texted his sister to ask if she remembered the film. Her response was, of course. I told her, try and look it up. It doesn't exist. She tried and texted back with only, what was it called? There was never a question of if it existed, only not remembering the title. I remember as a child that every time my mother brought me a fresh pair of Clark's shoes for the new school year, the shop would offer me a free gift to go with them. It was the late 90s or early 90s and I distinctly remember receiving a lilac pencil case to accompany my new leather numbers. It had a different compartment for pencils, erasers, and sharpeners and I spent the last week at the holidays drawing a comic book with it by my side on our caravan kitchen table. There is no evidence that such a promotional offer ever existed. When I ask around, no one remembers it, but when I also ask about another memory I have of Marks and Spencer's chicken nuggets shaped like Bugs Bunny, no one remembers those either, despite the fact a Guardian article proves they were real. I can't find evidence of the Clark's offer on the internet, though my sister remembers it and a poll that I conducted online shows that at least 500 other people do too. Does this mean my memory is real? We become very used to the idea that you could find anything on the internet. Yet what do we accept as proof? Do we need pictures, videos, and articles, or is the fact that hundreds of others share our memory enough? Dr. Henry Roediger, a professor at the Washington University Memory Lab, doesn't think so. Lots of people remember detailed but utterly false memories, he says. In fact, we all have them. I published on what we named the social contagion of memory and what others call memory conformity that may be at work here. Roediger explains that frequently one person's reports of a memory influences others, and that false memories can spread in this way. One person's memory infects another, he says. It is clear that this contagion would only be exacerbated online where an individual can be influenced by multiple people from all around the world in an instant. The existence of the Shazam Reddit community, arguably, helps a false memory to spread. We often forget whether we actually saw something or whether someone told us about a detail later and we filled in our memories, he goes on. People infer events and then remember the influences as if they actually happened. If someone hears the karate champion hit the cinder block, they'll often remember later that he broke the cinder block. But maybe not, maybe he broke his hand. So the inference is remembered as the way it happened. Like accusations that they are misremembering Kazam, however, Shazam truther's balk at the idea they simply have false memories that have been influenced by one another. I try not to read others' full descriptions of the film because I don't want to subconsciously influence my own recollection, says Meredith, while Jessica says that before she started reading about the film, she jotted down her own memories to avoid being influenced by others. After doing so, I read what other people remembered about the poster and a few people remembered the exact same poster that I did. It is worth noting that many people seemingly remember the movie independent of the subreddit, with someone different tweeting about it nearly every single day. So what do these redditors think has actually happened? Some truly believe in the Mandela Effect, that there has been some glitch in the world. There are parallel universes or a timeline has been altered and as such, little things have got lost. Some are very active in the our Mandela Effect community and have many other false memories suggesting an element of bandwagon hopping or a penchant for conspiracy theories. Others, however, have less fantastical theories. Meredith leans towards the explanation being some previously undocumented psychological phenomenon, while Don believes the movie was intentionally disappeared because it embarrassed Sinbad and Phil Hartman, who he believes was a writer and producer on the film. Jessica also thinks the film was recalled and destroyed. Carl's explanation, however, is the most detailed. Although he considers the movie may have been recalled if DC Comics sued the film's production company because of their similarly named TV show at the time, Shazam, not to be confused with the recent film, he believes more in either a timeline shift or a computer simulation. University of Oxford's philosopher Nick Bostrom suggests that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors, also arguing that quantum computers are now able to run such simulations. In a day where we can now run these simulations, is this a far-fetched theory, he argues? Noting that the famous scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson put the odds we are living in a computer simulation at 50-50 a few years back. Does it make more sense to argue what the scientific minds of our time exposed to the greatest understanding of the capabilities of modern technology or to argue with the masses of people who simply write off these effects we are noticing as faulty memories? Carl asks. As of today, there is no concrete evidence that Shazam ever existed. A few years ago, Redditors thought they had a breakthrough when they discovered an image of Sinbad in a genie costume on eBay. Sinbad himself, however, tweeted to say that he was dressed that way because he was hosting a Sinbad the Sailor movie marathon. Some said the image demonstrated where the false memory had originated. Others continue to hunt for evidence of a movie they are certain exists. While the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, is a worldwide celebrity, she has a distant cousin in America that doesn't get the same kind of press. Although she probably should. Have you heard of Lake Erie's Bessie? If not, you will when Weird Darkness returns. 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 am 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 am narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I am 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. On a warm September day, Harold Bricker, his wife Cora and their son Robert, set out from Ohio's Sandusky Bay to go fishing on Lake Erie. While Bricker was baiting his hook, he noticed something moving in the water about a thousand feet from their boat. Peering in that direction, he saw what looked like a long, sleek sea serpent swimming through the choppy waves. The creature was black, at about 35 feet long with a snake-like head, Bricker told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. He wanted to investigate but his son was too nervous to get closer, astutely pointing out that whatever the thing was, it was certainly bigger than any of them. The Brickers weren't sure what they saw that day, but their story was corroborated by at least five other witnesses. For many Ohio residents, it was just the most recent sighting of the Lake Erie Monster or Bessie, the American cousin of Scotland's famed Nessie of Loch Ness. Bessie has never been in the international spotlight, but since the late 18th century, Ohioans have insisted that a huge snake-like creature lives in the depths of Lake Erie. In July 1931, two Lake Erie fishermen Clifford Wilson and Francis Coganstos claimed that a sea serpent was plunging through the waves near their boat in Sandusky Bay. Despite their fear, the two men managed to club the beast, bring it to shore, and wrestle its limp body into a shipping crate. At least that's the story they told the New York Times reporter who happened to be visiting Sandusky that day. When the curator of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History swung by to investigate, he determined that the clubbed and crated beast was actually an Indian python, according to cryptozoology A to Z by Lauren Coleman and Jerome Clark. Despite that hoax and likely others, Lake Erie's locals continue to claim sightings of Bessie's long, scaly body plunging in and out of the water. After the Brickers encounter in 1990, John Shafter, editor of The Beacon, a newspaper in Port Clinton, Ohio, set up an 800 number for sightings. Shafter admits that one of his friends knowingly published an account of a fake serpent sighting in another local paper, spurring a flurry of copycat reports. But the people calling Shafter's Lake Monster hotline weren't trying to put one over on him. They were serious as a heart attack, Shafter says. They were absolutely convinced they were seeing something in the water. He remembers one woman in particular who was having coffee on her lakefront porch one summer morning when she was overcome by a powerful stench. She swears she saw a slinky sea monster with two humps in the water, Shafter says. Investigative journalist and avid Lake Erie Boater Steve Kovacs thinks he may have cracked the case. In 2012, Kovacs published The Solved Case of the Real Lake Erie Monster, in which he details sightings over the years and uses his reporting skills to identify the creature. His hard-hitting theory? When people see the Lake Erie Monster, they're actually encountering larger-than-average Lake Sturgeon. It might not be the most thrilling revelation, but Kovacs claims it's easy to see why folks mistake the giant fish for a monster. They do look pretty prehistoric, he says. If you see a Sturgeon at the right angle, you probably would look at it and go, What the heck is that? Adding to its sinister appearance, Lake Sturgeon can grow to enormous proportions. The largest specimen ever caught in Wisconsin was 84.2 inches long, that's 7 feet, and weighed 212 pounds. In Minnesota, those record stats are 70 inches and 94.4 pounds. Of course, it's not just Bessie and Nessie that sparked the imagination of lake-goers. An aquatic monster was spotted in Alaska's Lake Iliomna in the 1960s, in the 90s, and again recently, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Lake Champlain, shared by New York State, Vermont, and Quebec, has its own monster, known as Champ, or Champi to some. Like ghosts, yetis, and bigfoot, sightings of these bizarre beasts raise questions about the human psyche. Why do some people believe in creatures that have no proven existence? Donald R. Prothero, co-author of Abominable Science, Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and other famous cryptids, blames it on our willingness to believe what we see. People are fooled by their senses, especially sight because we are notoriously bad witnesses, Prothero told National Geographic in 2013. Kovacs thinks monster sightings serve a different purpose. It diverts people from their problems in life, their anxieties, depression, bad times, he says. It gives them a sense of adventure and purpose. Over the years, scientists and marine experts have offered theories on Bessie. After the 1990s, sighting, Fred Snyder, a researcher with the Ohio Sea Grant, told the Los Angeles Times that he, like Kovacs, believes it is just a super-sized sturgeon. But many locals would rather keep the monster story alive. The menus at Lemmies, spelled L-E-M, for Lake Erie Monster Restaurant in Huron, tells the tale of the 1931 sighting, but with an alternative ending. The monster now lives in the diner's basement. If you listen closely, you can hear her thrashing around below decks. Or so the menu says. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. And you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more along with the show's Facebook group on the contact page at WeirdDarkness.com. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Click on Tell Your Story on the website and I might use it in a future episode. 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. The abduction of Travis Walton was written by Lee Spiegel for The Huffington Post. The parasitic grays are from New Dawn magazine. The non-existent film The Internet Insists as Real is by Amelia Tate for New Statesman. And the legendary Leviathan of Lake Erie is by Molly Fosco for Ozy. Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music. Background music in this episode provided by Alibi Music with paid license and by Midnight Syndicate with permission from the artist. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Hebrews 11, verses 1 and 3. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. By faith, we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. And a final thought. I know this transformation is painful, but you're not falling apart. You're just falling into something different with a new capacity to be beautiful. William C. Hannon. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.