 This episode is dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces and first responders. Whether you are currently serving or have served in the past, you are appreciated. It is because of your courage and sacrifice that we enjoy the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. And I, for one, appreciate every single one of you for protecting what many of us take for granted. So thank you. In the Martians' first land on earth, in the 1996 sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks, for a moment it appears all will be fine. We come in peace, says their leader, as the music swells and a dove soars overhead. Seconds later, the Martian pulls out a laser gun and opens fire on a crowd of human onlookers. Yet another blockbuster alien invasion has begun. That's Hollywood, of course. But the melodrama underscores one of humanity's most widely held fears, that if and when we do encounter extraterrestrial beings, they will wreak all kinds of havoc much as they do in the movies. Or will they? I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every week you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up tonight. In the 1860s, John Mudd found some letters that he wouldn't publish for more than 50 years because what he read in those letters terrified him. People sometimes say they experience a kind of floating, weightless feeling when in bed, but one man's bed floated all the way to the ceiling. During the Kentucky meat shower of 1876, cloudy with a chance of meatballs was real life when meat purportedly poured from the heavens. In 1936, a series of hold-ups escalated into armed robbery and eventually murder, all carried out by a trio of teens. Some say it's nothing short of a miracle, others are downright dubious about it. A unique Bible continues to spew out an unidentified oil, and so far, scientists are unable to explain it. If I have time tonight, I'll tell you about the Gollum. It's said that it was made of clay and given life by mystical means. The Jews created it as a means of protection, so the story goes at least. We'll look at the legend of the Gollum and see if there is any truth behind it. In tonight's sudden death overtime content, which you can hear in the podcast, it is Abraham Lincoln who issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, but did he get the idea for this historic legislation from beyond the grave? Plus, in 1866, a woman named Laura Foster was murdered. A man named Tom Dula was convicted and hanged for the crime. The crime now lives on in one of the most famous folk songs ever recorded. Those stories you can only hear in the podcast. But first up tonight, we may or may not ever see an actual alien invasion of our planet. Hopefully not. But if we do, scientists are now saying the extraterrestrials would not be here to eat us. And they explain why. We begin with that story. 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 in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness radio to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free, listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated, send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know and more. You can find all of that at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. For his new book, Aliens, the world's leading scientists on the search for extraterrestrial life, quantum physicist Jim Alcalely asks a series of experts to explore how humans might actually make contact with aliens. The possibility is not as far-fetched as it once seemed. Since NASA launched its Kepler mission in 2009, researchers have discovered thousands of new planets and revolutionized our concept of how many habitable worlds could exist, writes astrobiologist Natalie Kubral in one of the book's essays. But while Hollywood suggests we should expect to battle their inhabitants, science tells a different story. Here are five popular alien myths that this book debunks. Myth number one, aliens would eat us. Movies like The Blob and Critters imagine aliens harvesting humans for food, an unpleasant prospect, but it doesn't track with the science of nutrition, writes astrobiologist Louis Dartnell. In order for aliens to get nourishment from eating us, their bodies would have to be capable of processing our molecules, like amino acids and sugars, and that requires having a similar biochemistry, a long shot, for a species that hails from a different world. Myth number two, aliens would breed with us. Both of this summer's extraterrestrial blockbusters, Alien Covenant and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 involve human-alien hybrids, but given that we can't reproduce with our nearest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee, it's overwhelmingly improbable that we could do so with aliens, according to Dartnell. Myth number three, aliens would look like us. Human evolution depended on so many unique and unpredictable factors, it's nearly impossible that an extraterrestrial species would have human-like features, like the aliens in The Day the Earth Stood Still and Star Trek. It's far likelier, writes neuroscientist Anil Seth, that they be as different as the octopus, our very own terrestrial alien, which has a high level of intelligence, a decentralized nervous system, and an alternative style of consciousness. Myth number four, aliens would be living creatures. Even restrained films like Arrival get this one wrong, according to scientists. Should aliens contact us, cosmologist Martin Rees believes we will hear not from fellow organic creatures, but from the robots they produced, who can, in theory, live forever. In myth number five, aliens would steal our water and metal. The aliens in Independence Day famously arrive to strip Earth of its resources, but again, that logic doesn't add up, according to Dartnell. Most of our metal is in the Earth's core, not its crust. Asteroids would be far better targets for mining, and icy moons like Jupiter's Europa would be easy places to stock up on water. They're uninhabited and they don't have Earth's strong gravitational pull. So if aliens aren't interested in harvesting our lands or our bodies, why would they make contact? Dartnell suspects a purer motive, curiosity. If aliens did come to Earth, he writes, it would probably be as researchers, biologists, anthropologists, linguists keen to understand the peculiar workings of life on Earth, to meet humanity and learn of our art, music, culture, languages, philosophies, and religions. Presumably we would hide all of our alien movies. Up next on Weird Darkness Radio, in the 1860s, John Mudd found some letters that he would not publish for more than 50 years. Why? Well, because what he read in those letters terrified him. Loneliness can be a real burden. And while you could always log on to social media or watch TV, sometimes you'd just want someone near you. I mean, what if you could be in your living room sitting right next to Michael Myers or sleeping in your bedroom with Freddy Krueger? Maybe watch a horrible B movie with Elvira right there next to you. Have dinner with Hannibal Lecter. Do some quilting or sewing with Pinhead watching over you the whole time. Maybe washing Groom your dog in the presence of the Wolfman. Bobbletopia is the place to get your favorite horror characters as bobbleheads, and their Nika line of hyper-realistic horror action figures is incredible, like King Kong, the alien Xenomorph, Pennywise, Frankenstein's Monster, and more. And most every item is under 40 bucks. No need to be lonely any longer. Visit bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness and get 10% off your first order by using the promo code Weird Darkness, that's bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness. See, you're feeling less lonely already. In the September-October 1915 issue of the United States Naval Institute Proceedings, a string story buried in old family letters was shared by pay director John A. Mudd. Mudd stated that he had received the packet of letters from home just a few days after he had shipped out to sea as a midshipman. The letters were the back and forth correspondence between a member of Mudd's family and a cousin who had joined the Navy, which is probably why someone thought it might be of interest to Mudd. The letters were very old, ranging from the early 1840s up to the American Civil War in the 1860s, when one of the two men died. Just the age of the letters made them interesting, filled with details of a life long ago. But the contents of just two or three of the oldest of the letters contained a story that Mudd felt a need to share with his naval comrades. Mudd didn't publish his account of the tale until many years after he had first read the letters, and there was a reason for that. But first, the tale from the letters. The unnamed cousin of the letters was a lieutenant in the Navy stationed on the African coast at the time he wrote. The lieutenant's ship, described as a brig of war, was returning home from a run down south when the crew sighted a ship they took to be a slave, a ship laden with slaves. Shortly after this vessel was first seen, they lost sight of the ship as a sudden, furious squall that in those seas have stripped many a ship to its deck blew up, and they wondered if the other ship had either been sunk or blown out of view past the horizon. The sailing master was shaken by what he had seen, reclaimed the strange vessel had been pressing forward with her sails full against the wind. No one else had noticed this, if true for the sighting had been so short. The doctor, we are told, kept an eye on the sailing master. Two nights later, the lieutenant's ship was in the midst of a lightning storm, when, out of the darkness, a huge sailing vessel appeared and passed the lieutenant's ship. There were no lights aboard, and no sound came from the strange ship as it sailed forward against the wind. A bolt of lightning flashed down, which seemed to pierce the high, strange bark as it vanished under the cloak of night. The sailing master, who had been standing near the lieutenant when the mysterious vessel passed, came down with a bad fever that night and told the doctor their ship was doomed, because that's what it meant when you saw the Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman, you see, is a legendary ghost ship associated with Africa's Cape of Good Hope and believed to be doomed to sail until the end of the world. It is said that it is only seen in storms, sometimes it said it brings the storms, and it is believed that those who see the ghost ship are doomed. It is likely the sailing master felt their whole ship was doomed, simply because of how many of the crew saw the strange vessel. One week later, the unknown ship appeared on the horizon again, sailing into a gentle breeze. The lieutenant was on watch at the time and swung his spyglass around to get a better look. Just as he got the ship within his view, a sudden and frightful gust of storm seemed to slap the strange thing off the face of the ocean. The storm never touched the lieutenant's ship. In his momentary glimpse of the mysterious ship, the lieutenant saw the half of the stern or forward windows seemed to have been shot out and he could almost see into the cabin, but then it was gone. It would seem that by the third time the strange vessel was seen, the crew were in general agreement that if it was not the actual Flying Dutchman, it still presented them with a bad supernatural omen. According to the lieutenant's letters, the ship's purser told that his great-uncle had been part of an English squadron in the last century that had set out for the Cape of Good Hope with each ship loaded with one cannonball made of silver, for it was believed that silver shot could touch and harm even a ghost, and the purser further claimed that the squadron had in fact encountered the Flying Dutchman on their mission. The frigate, called Splice, fired its silver cannonball on the Phantom ship, but in the crew's haste to fire, they only managed to smash part of the stern of the Flying Dutchman, which seemed to coincide nicely with what the lieutenant claimed to see. Based on this family story, the purser urged the crew to allow him to make a silver ball from the dollars in the strong chest. It's not said if he was allowed to or not, but the lieutenant's ship did not encounter its strange pursuer again, so such a cannonball would not have been used. Mudd states that the letters then tell of a continuing ill luck attached to the lieutenant's ship, mostly stating there was a mutiny that was suppressed, for which three men were hung by their necks from the yard arms. This ill luck, Mudd asserts, lasted from the time of the strange sightings until an unusual gust knocked the brig over sideways enough that it had to be abandoned before it sunk to the bottom in the Gulf of Mexico during the Mexican War. Much to my surprise and suspicion, it was very easy to identify the ship that Mudd chose not to name in his article. Only one known brig of war both capsized due to a sudden change of weather in the first year of the Mexican War and had to hang three mutineers earlier in its career. The USS Summers The USS Summers was launched on April 16, 1842 and later capsized while chasing another boat on December 8, 1846. She was initially deployed to Puerto Rico for a shakedown cruise returning to New York afterwards. On September 10, 1842, the USS Summers was sent to the Atlantic coast of Africa to deliver messages to another ship, having constantly missed the other ship at various African ports, the USS Summers left Africa for the Virgin Islands on November 11, 1842. The mutiny mentioned by Mudd was a series of events that started around November 25 of the same year after the ship left Africa. So given that the above strange events are reported as happening around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, we can narrow down the date range of the events that may have happened to the time the ship was there, sometime around September 10 to November 11 of 1842. Though Mudd chose not to name what vessel his distant cousin was supposedly on, it is undoubtable that most of his readers being associated with the Navy would likely know what ship Mudd was describing due to the exact two details that let me know what ship it was. There have been very few actual mutinies in American history, and the mutiny on the USS Summers and the subsequent trials were both well known and infamous in their reputation. The families of the sailors who were hanged were not allowed to bring civil suits against the captain of the ship, leaving a general distrust of the whole matter in public opinion. This is all because the USS Summers was acting as an experimental school to train naval apprentices, so a number of less experienced sailors were serving on board when it made its trip to Africa. It was a group of these lesser experienced sailors who were accused of planning a mutiny and chained, and three of which who were eventually killed for having supposedly trying to recruit others for the mutiny, not for actually performing a mutiny which never happened. The families of the sailors that were executed were denied the chance to take the ship's captain to civil court, which left an overall bad feeling and suspicion in the public eye about how the matter was handled. When Weird Darkness Radio returns, we'll continue with the story of what eventually became known as the Summers Affair. Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey, a collection of creepy, often downright chilling, true experiences of the paranormal submitted by visitors to the My Haunted Life 2 website. The tales have been carefully selected and edited and range from apparitions to hauntings to demons through to the downright bizarre. This terrific collection of true stories of the paranormal will keep you looking over your shoulder. Your Haunted Lives, True Tales of the Paranormal by G. Michael Vasey, narrated by Darren Marlar. Here are a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Welcome back to Weird Darkness Radio. I'm Darren Marlar. We continue now with the story about James Mud and how scared he was to report what happened on the USS Summers. The Summers Affair, as newspapers dubbed it, eventually led to the establishment of the first U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, USA with the intention of fully training new naval recruits before they were sent out on ships, precisely because one of the vagaries of the supposed plot to mutiny may have simply been that the sailors accused didn't act the way the captain felt they should if they were proper sailors. Because of this contentious history, the story of the mutiny would still have been known and told of as part of a general Navy schooling when Mud published his strange account of the sightings in 1915, which means that if Mud wanted to make up a spooky story of a cursed ship, then the USS Summers was a good choice. While it's quite possible that Mud is not merely inventing the story, it's very odd that he would not simply name the ship if its history was so obvious to his audience. Perhaps by not actually naming it, Mud couldn't readily be accused of lying about the ship's history, so I have to be a bit suspicious of the story as it stands at the moment. Still, there are other details that can be tracked down that might take this suspicion off the story, such as an earlier account of the sightings, which I'll keep digging for, and a possible family relation between Mud and a Lieutenant serving during the African voyage in 1842. This is the first, and so far only, assertion I've ever run across claiming that silver can be used against phantoms of any sort. I've done a little digging backwards and can't find any other mention of this idea, so it seems to be unique to this account. It's also oddly suspicious that Mud's ancestor happened to have someone aboard his ship who claimed to have known who caused the damage seen on the phantom vessel. The account does have the important distinction of actually reporting the flying Dutchman as appearing at the Cape of Good Hope, which is the proper reported range of the phantom ship. In many accounts, the name Flying Dutchman is simply used to describe any possible phantom ship worldwide, so while these may be phantom ships, they are not likely to be the Flying Dutchman, due to not being at the Cape of Good Hope. Oh, and the reason Mud didn't publish an account of the letter's story earlier? Because the same day he first read the tale, he claims that something happened that scared him so badly that it was years before he could describe both the tale from the letters and his own experience. My story begins in Boise, Idaho in the summer of 1960 when I was six years old. My aunt moved to Boise from Greenville, New York that summer and there was no spare bedroom for her, so my parents moved the bunk beds my younger sister and I shared from our bedroom to an odd shaped hall that was full of huge windows all the way around the side of the room that we slept in. I slept on the top bunk. I enjoyed being able to look out the windows and see the moon and the stars at night. I'd stare at them until I fell asleep. I'm not sure how many nights went by before something very strange began to happen to me. Late at night after everyone was in bed asleep, I would be awakened by a feeling of someone gently lifting me up off of my bed. Only it was toward the ceiling. I could touch the ceiling with my hands. I did touch it many times. I could feel the heat of the ceiling with my hands and also on my face. I would feel weightless and the blanket or sometimes just the top sheet would be over me. I would put my hand underneath me and feel that I was raised up off the bed. I would look around at the tops of the windows over my feet and see the stars. I know I was awake. Then all of a sudden I would begin to lower back down onto my bed again. It felt weird. I touched the bed as lightly as possible. I would lay there wondering what happened. What did that to me? A few days went by and the same thing happened all over again. I sort of enjoyed it. I don't know how many times that happened to me before it stopped. I grew to really like it, though now I'm happy it stopped. I've never met anyone who could explain why that kept happening to me as a young child. So I just say I never knew why. It was a clear March morning in Bath County, Kentucky in 1876 when meat started falling from the sky. That's right, meat. Between 11 and 12 o'clock, I was in my yard not more than 40 steps from the house, a local farmer's wife named Mrs. Crouch told local reporters. There was a light wind coming from the west, but the sky was clear and the sun was shining brightly. Without any prelude or warning of any kind and exactly under these circumstances, the shower commenced. Not just any shower, but a shower of fresh raw meat. Some lump says light as a snowflake, some that reached up to three inches in length. For several minutes, Mrs. Crouch and her husband Allen watched as the unusual downpour fell around them before it finally ceased, leaving the sky as clear and sunny as it had been before. Immediately, the Crouches believed that the meat shower had either been a miracle or a grisly warning. Before long, word of the meat shower had spread, bringing flocks of curious neighbors to the scene. In the end, an area about 100 yards long and 50 yards wide had been left covered in chunks of meat. It was found on fences, the farmhouse, and scattered across the ground. The overall consensus seemed to be that the meat was beef, as it was a similar color and had a similar smell. However, a local hunter disagreed, claiming that the uncommonly greasy feel of the meat most resembled that of a bear. To end the debate once and for all, a few brave men skilled in hunting took it upon themselves to taste a few pieces. Their official decision was that by taste alone, the meat had to be either venison or mutton. Unsatisfied with the three conflicting opinions, a local butcher also took a bite. According to him, however, the meat was none of the above, claiming that it tasted neither like flesh, fish, or fowl. Finally, town authorities decided it was time to get an official ruling on what exactly had fallen from the sky. So they collected samples and wrapped them up, sending them to chemists and universities around the country. One chemist from Louisville College deduced that the sample was indeed, as one of the hunters had suggested, mutton. Another disagreed, though, stating that while it certainly was meat, it definitely wasn't mutton. Eventually, scientists gave up on the what, focusing on the far more concerning where. If it was, in fact, meat, how did it fall from the sky? And more importantly, how did it get up there in the first place? What did the scientists decided that the meat was likely the result of a meteor shower, or meat, your shower, if you will? According to the present theory of astronomers, an enormous belt of meteoric stones constantly revolves around the sun, and when the Earth comes in contact with this belt, she is soundly pelted, wrote William Livingston Alden, a New York Times writer. Similarly, we may suppose that there revolves around the sun a belt of venison, mutton, and other meats, divided into small fragments, which are precipitated upon the Earth whenever the latter crosses their path. In addition, he offered a more macabre theory, suggesting that the meat was actually the flesh of finely-hashed citizens of Kentucky, who had been caught in a whirlwind while engaged in a little difficulty with bowie knives and strewn over their astonished state. One scientist, Leopold Brandys, wrote an article in The Sanitarian in which he claimed the event was simply a shower of nostok, a genus of cyanobacteria, which takes on a jelly-like appearance when it comes in contact with rain. His theory was that it simply bloomed on the ground and that whatever fell from the sky was simply a normal rain shower. Both of the more scientific theories for the Kentucky meat shower were later shunned, after a more likely but equally as unfathomable theory came to light. Both the Crouches, a chemist named Robert Peter and the chemist from Louisville College, all put forth the theory that the Kentucky meat shower was the result of a flock of vultures vomiting simultaneously after feasting themselves more abundantly than wisely. I am informed that it is not uncommon for buzzards thus to disgorge their overcharged stomachs, one chemist wrote, and that when in a flock one commences the relief operation, the others are excited to nausea and a general shower of half-digested meat takes place. The townspeople decided that this was the most likely scenario and elected to believe it as the best explanation for the Kentucky meat shower. Obviously it had slipped their minds that members of the town had actually eaten pieces of this half-digested meat, unless people were just cool with that in the 1870s. When Weird Darkness Radio returns, in 1936 a series of hold-ups escalated into armed robbery and eventually murder, all carried out by a trio of teens. They came to be known as the Baby Bandits of San Francisco. That story is up next. In 2019, six teenagers tried to rob a Chicago home and it ended with one dead shot by the homeowner. A Minnesota man is confronted by burglars at his home in 2012 and ends up being charged with murder for killing the intruders. In 2023, a man was killed after he broke into a home and the homeowner is charged with murder. As a listener to Weird Darkness, you know how bad things can go in a crime and even when defending yourself against the criminals, sometimes you are the one facing legal problems. That's why you never let the criminals get access to your home to begin with. Home security is no longer recommended. It is essential, and with ADT, it's no longer for the elite. It's for everyone. Right now, you can get a free home security system from ADT to keep burglars from entering your home in the first place. Just visit WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. ADT is the biggest and most trusted name in home security and has been since 1874. And they are still equipping people like you and me with the newest and best home security technology with 24x7 monitoring and 24x7 customer service. Whether your home is basic or ultra smart, ADT is the best option for your home security. And again, you can get a free custom-built home security system with the latest technology by visiting WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash ADT. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness Radio. I'm running a lot later tonight than I expected, so the story about the Miracle Bible dripping the oil and also the story about the Gollum will be placed in tonight's sudden death overtime content which you can listen to in the podcast. Also in the podcast tonight, a couple more exclusive stories including Abraham Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, possibly because he got the idea from beyond the grave. And Laura Foster was murdered in 1866 by a man named Tom Dula. At least he was the one convicted of the crime and was hanged for it. And the crime now lives on in one of the most famous folk songs ever recorded. Those stories and more in tonight's sudden death overtime content which you can get in tonight's podcast. Now though, let's talk about those baby bandits of San Francisco. In 1936, a series of hold-ups escalated into armed robbery and eventually murder, all carried out by a trio of teens that the California newspapers dubbed the baby bandits. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse is a maxim rarely quoted by high school commencement speakers. But for some who attended Preston High School, a different kind of learning institution took this adage seriously with fatal results. On November 23rd, two young bandits about 18 years old robbed three bars in the early hours of the morning. One of the robbers was Stocky, the other average size. Two days later, two places in San Francisco's North Beach were robbed. This time by the same robbers, with a third man acting as their leader, their young age caused the newspapers to call them the baby bandits. But their actions showed sophistication and planning. They would steal a car from a garage, use the car in hold-ups and then abandon it the same night. In their second crime spree, the hold-up men used sawed-off shotguns stolen from a hardware store on Mason Street in North Beach. Police assumed that the gang were from this neighborhood and circulated photographs of local criminals, but none of the victims recognized the photos. Police Captain Dulea was still convinced that there was a connection, so he called in John Dooling, the North Beach beat cop and asked him to canvass the neighborhood. For the next three days, nothing happened. Then on Thanksgiving, November 26th, Mike's saloon on 14th Street was robbed. Dan O'Connell, a customer, was shot in the stomach when he moved too slowly. Later that evening, O'Connell died. The baby bandits had now graduated to murder. The next day, Officer Dooling came in with his first lead, Frank Crone, a recent graduate of the Preston School of Industry, was not working, yet he had been seen sporting a fancy new wardrobe. Preston, a legendary reform school, opened in 1894 and counted such notables as a rapist and writer, Carol Chessman, serial killer Gerald Galegos, beat generation icon Neil Cassidy and musician Merle Haggard among his graduates. Further digging revealed that Crone had been hanging out with Ernest Plaw and William Daley, two other recent Preston School graduates. Photographs of the three men were positively identified by the victims of the gang's latest hold-ups. Preston was considered the rookie league of crime, just as minor league baseball players in the 1930s dreamed of being Lou Gehrig, young criminals dreamed of being John Dillinger. Though he was a hardcore bank robber and a killer, John Dillinger was a folk hero to many whose homes had been foreclosed on by the banks. Police, assuming that the bandits had left town, had put an all-points bulletin out for the state of California, used every precaution in apprehending these men, they are dangerous killers, it said. The bandits split up. Ernest Plaw hid out with relatives in Merced. Crone and Daley kidnapped a young couple and forced them to drive to Sacramento, where they let them go. Crone and Daley drove on to Merced, apparently to hook up with Plaw. Hungry after their long ride, they stopped to eat at the Square Deal Cafe. They were observed by a young friend of Plaw's who hurried to notify Merced police chief, Fred Zunker. Zunker and police officer James Turner questioned Crone, who gave them an International Siemens Union card. When Daley was questioned, he pulled out a gun and ran. Turner fired a warning shot and then squeezed off two shots at Daley, who was hit but kept on running. Crone, who was unarmed, lunged at chief Zunker who pulled his gun out. I could have killed him, Zunker later said, but I don't shoot kids. Instead, Zunker clubbed Crone over the head with the barrel of the gun. Turner returned to the cafe to find chief Zunker in a life-and-death struggle with Crone. Turner clubbed Crone over the head with his nightstick, knocking him unconscious. Other police followed the trail of Daley's blood for four blocks until they reached the first Baptist Church. Then they heard a shot. Crawling under the church, they found Daley dead of a self-inflicted bullet wound. At about the same time, Ernest Plaugh, convinced by his mother, surrendered peacefully to police. Plaugh and Crone were reunited in the Merced jail and shared the same cell. Crone awoke in jail on his birthday. I'm 21. I suppose I'll get the rope before I'm 22, he said. Crone described Daley as the leader of the gang and said their ambition was to be as famous as John Dillinger. Both Plaugh and Crone blamed Daley for the murder of O'Connell, but O'Connell's dying statement described Crone as his killer. Later that night, Crone made his prediction come true by hanging himself with Plaugh's suspenders. That dirty bastard now he's left me hiding the bag alone, Plaugh complained bitterly, and I've got no suspenders to wear to court. Ernest Plaugh pled guilty to murder in 1937 and was sentenced to life. He was paroled in 1949 and died in 1984. It's also where you'll hear tonight's sudden death overtime content with stories you will only hear in the podcast, such as a unique Bible continues to spew out an unidentified oil, and so far, scientists are unable to explain it. There's the legend of the Gollum. We'll look at its history and see if there's any truth behind it. Did Abraham Lincoln get the idea for the Emancipation Proclamation from Beyond the Grave? And Tom Dulla was convicted and hanged in 1866 for murder and a famous folk song sprang from it. These stories you will only hear in the sudden death overtime content in tonight's podcast. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness and please tell others about Weird Darkness Radio who love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. The Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876 was written by Katie Serena for all that's interesting. Baby Bandits of San Francisco is by Paul Drexler for a crime traveler. Strange Sea Creatures was posted at Anomaly.info. Bad Rising was by Eddie R at YourGhostStories.com and To Serve Man was posted at the website AlienUFOCitings. Weird Darkness Radio is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness 2023. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 18 verse 2, Pools have no interest in understanding. They only want to air their own opinions. In a final thought, ignoring rumors and gossip is as hard to do as turning down a delicious dessert. Taking just one bite of either one creates a taste for more. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Monster, Ghosts, Alien Monster Ghosts, Vampires, Werewolves and all other kinds of crazy creepy characters. Those were fun nights, weren't they? That's what the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com has to offer, all day, every day. Thanks to our friends at the Monster Channel, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Watch Party right after listening to this episode and immediately be entertained by a horror host and horrible movie. Or should I say, horror-ribble movie. And not only can you watch the B-movies and horror hosts streaming there 24-7, but once a month we all gather together to watch a movie and talk about it in the chat room on that same page. Get your frights and funnies on the Weirdo Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. This episode is dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces and first responders. Whether you are currently serving or have served in the past, you are appreciated. It is because of your courage and sacrifice that we enjoy the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. And I, for one, appreciate every single one of you for protecting what many of us take for granted. So thank you. The legend of Edward Mordrick tells the wretched tale of a man with two faces. One was just like any other person. While the other was on the back of his head, spitting out horrific curses at passers-by and whispering terrible things to Mordrick as he slept, was there really a man born with an evil face on the back of his head in the 19th century? It is entirely possible that aristocratic inbreeding caused mutations like Edward Mordrick's second face, but whether it spoke to him might be a different story. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness Radio. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up this week, Canada is full of folklore and legend, but one of the darkest is the Wendigo and there are numerous terrifying stories of encounters with the creature. A man has a strange encounter with an alien in Germany and in odd ways ends up playing a game of catch with it, using an eerie, transparent ball. If I have time, I'll tell you about Joseph Vache. They labeled him the French Ripper and to this day we still have no idea how many victims were killed by him during his bloody reign of terror in 19th century France. In tonight's sudden death overtime content, which you can only hear in the podcast, James Rainey was a manly man unafraid of no one, until that is he killed his fiance. Everybody knew he did and he ran like a coward, not that it did him any good. But we begin tonight with the story of Edward Mordrake. It's fascinating and horrifying, with the poor man having an evil face growing on the back of his head that he said he could converse with and that said horrible things to him. But how much of that story is true and how much of it is pure fabrication? We begin there. 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 in with you. Recommending Weird Darkness Radio to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter and visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast. Watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks that I've narrated. Send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or someone you know and more. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Obsession with medical oddities dates back generations. For instance, Joseph Merrick, otherwise known as The Elephant Man, made a living off of just letting people look at him. And the man with three legs lived a full life. Edward Mordrake's story is a twisting narrative that tasks the reader with parsing fact from fiction. Could a man like Mordrake have survived the 19th century with a damned hissing face on the back of his head? According to various myths, Edward Mordrake claimed that he often heard a voice coming from the face, taunting him and whispering horrible things to him at night. Despite his pleas for a doctor to remove the face, no one would attempt the procedure. At the time, doctors weren't even sure why Mordrake had a second face, let alone how to sever it from his head without killing him. Even if the face wasn't alive, it doesn't mean Mordrake didn't hear things. If he grew up with people always talking about his evil second face, he could have become paranoid or depressed. Other mental ailments like schizophrenia or PTSD can lead to auditory hallucinations as well. In all the tales about Edward Mordrake, it is not just the afflicted nobleman who believed his second face was evil. Others echoed the sentiment, saying the face told him to act out. The demon face, as Mordrake reportedly called it, had its own idea of how he should live and wanted to inflict pain on others as well. While most stories say Mordrake had male facial features on the back of the head, others claimed the second face was that of a beautiful woman. One described the face as lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil, and its eyes would track those who passed it. The face allegedly smiled whenever Mordrake was upset and furled its brow on the rare occasion Mordrake was happy. Whether the face was male or female, legends say its intentions were malevolent. In the 19th century, people probably thought Mordrake was a monster or his family had done something awful to deserve a son with a scary second face. In reality, if he existed, Mordrake had a real medical condition called deprosopus. This malady is a congenital defect that gives otherwise healthy children and sometimes animals duplicated facial features. It is an incredibly rare genetic abnormality. Researchers reported only 35 human cases up until 2013, and even more unlikely it would cause a full vestigial face on the back of the head. Still, it is not impossible. After realizing he couldn't have his second face removed without risking his own death, Mordrake began to isolate himself. In Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, the text describes Mordrake as a profound scholar and a musician of rare ability, and perhaps he buried himself in these pastimes in an attempt to drown out the nagging, wicked appendage. Some versions of the Edward Mordrake myth say he completely cut himself off from everyone, including his own family. There are a lot of rumors about the true identity behind Edward Mordrake, the man with two faces. Most literature about this man with a terrible affliction alleges that he was born into an aristocratic family. Many believe Mordrake's story first appeared in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, published in October 1896. The text says Mordrake was said to have been heir to one of the noblest peerages in England. He never claimed this title, however, because of his affliction. The text also goes out of its way to mention how handsome Mordrake was except for the monstrous face on the back of his head. Could his second head have been the outcome of generations of inbreeding within noble families, or was there something evil at work? There is no official word on what happened to the man with two faces, but there are two stories about his untimely demise. In one story, the young man was so fraught with depression over his ailment that he overdosed on poison and drifted away in his sleep. He was supposedly only 23 years old. The other, more visceral version of the story has Mordrake shooting himself in the head, right between the eyes of his second face. Mordrake's story is nothing short of fantastical, even if it is a bit macabre. It has a fictional feel to it, and there is a chance someone made up his entire existence. The story of Mordrake first became well-known when it appeared in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle published in 1896. The book is a collection of medical anomalies, like Mordrake, but there is no source information for any of it. In 2015, historian Alex Bose found Gould and Pyle's source, an 1895 article from the Boston Sunday Post. The report about half-human monsters features the story of the weird and melancholy Edward Mordrake. If you've ever looked into Mordrake, you've likely seen a photo of the medical anomaly rendered in black and white. The picture appears to provide proof of Mordrake's existence, but there's just one problem. The photo isn't real. I mean, the photo does exist, but the head in the photo is a wax mock-up of Mordrake, not the man himself. If Mordrake did exist, it would be weird that there weren't any photos of him. Joseph Merrick, the elephant man, lived during the Samara, and there is a famous photo of him. In fact, people were so interested in him he made most of his money from public appearances. If Mordrake were real, it's likely there would be photographic proof. The story of Mordrake and his second face has captured people's imaginations for generations. He's made his way into short stories, wax sculptures, even TV shows. The biggest bump in the Mordrake story came from American horror story Freak Show, which features Wes Bentley playing Mordrake. As you might imagine, AHS's Mordrake is much more evil than the version described as a melancholic shut-in. Aside from direct references to Mordrake, the man with two faces appears in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone under the guise of Professor Quirrell. Quirrell is Harry's defense against the Dark Arts professor, but he's hiding the hideous face of Voldemort under his headscarf. Even though there is zero factual documentation about Mordrake, there are numerous accounts of people born with medical anomalies similar to his disorder. In 2014, a set of Australian twins were born with diprosypus. The twins, Pope and Faith Howie, were born with two faces attached to one body. They clung to life for 19 days before they passed away. This story is similar to that of most children born with the condition, so the idea that Mordrake could have lived 23 years is far-fetched, but not impossible. In 2017, Missouri's Trey Johnson, a boy born with two faces, celebrated his 13th birthday, despite doctors claiming that he would not survive past infancy. His parents continue to share updates on his life via Facebook. Coming up, Canada is full of folklore and legend, but one of the darkest is the Wendigo, and there are numerous terrifying stories of encounters with this creature. That's up next on Weird Darkness Radio. Both have trained counselors at all hours to help those in need, and the page even includes text numbers for those in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. Those struggling with depression can get help through the Seven Cups website and app, and there's information for anyone to read more about what depression truly is and how to identify it through our friends at ifred.org. There are resources for those who battle addictions, be it drugs, alcohol, or self-destructive behavior, along with help for those related to addicts. The page has links to help you find a therapist or counselor, to find help for those who have a family member with Alzheimer's or an adventure, help for those in a crisis pregnancy, and more. These resources are always there when you or someone you love needs them, on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. What are the oldest, darkest, and most pervasive Canadian folktales is the legend of the Wendigo, an evil cannibalistic spirit of Cree and Algonquin tradition? From the reports of 17th century French Jesuit missionaries who brought the word of God into the innu of eastern Quebec to the letters of 19th century fur traders who manned the lonely, frozen outposts at the far north, historic Canadian documents are littered with gruesome anecdotes illustrating the prevalence of this frightening native tradition on the Canadian frontier. In this author's opinion, Wendigo tales share a certain characteristic with aged cheese, namely that they are best consumed in small quantities. A brief immersion in the red waters of this historical mystery deliciously stimulates the sense of morbid curiosity common to most students of the unexplained. Overindulgence in this folkloric delicacy, on the other hand, could prove unpalatable to listeners with a less than iron constitution for reasons which will soon become obvious. An excellent introduction to the legend of the Wendigo appears in an article entitled Here and There published in the June 1946 issue of a magazine called The Alberta Folklore Quarterly. The piece was written by Philip H. Godsell, the magazine's editor and a Canadian folklorist and historian who spent most of his adult life in Northern Canada working as an inspector for the Hudson's Bay Company. The wheatigo, Godsell wrote, is an evil spirit that enters the body of a sick man converting him unless he is destroyed into a cannibal, endangering the lives of every member of the band. Hardly a spring goes by, but some wandering band of nomad hunters become obsessed with the idea that there is one of these cannibal spirits haunting the outskirts of the camp, anxious to become domiciled within the person of some sick Indian. Godsell went on to describe an incident that took place at a remote Hudson's Bay Company post at what is now the Hamlet of Wabiska, Alberta, located about 85 kilometers or 53 miles northeast of Lesser Slave Lake. One day the Fort's Factor, an Orcadian scot named Frank Beaton, whom Godsell knew well, found himself the unexpected host to a frightened band of Cree Indians. The band's chief informed the fur trader that one of their number had become possessed by a Wendigo and that strange words were pouring from his lips. Beaton, who was married to a Cree woman and had spent most of his life in the Northern Forests, was perfectly familiar with the legend of the Wendigo and had come to fear that evil spirit of the Northland almost as much as his native neighbors. He agreed with his guests that their only recourse was to destroy the possessed man before he could complete his transformation into a Wendigo and begin devouring members of the band. Loaning them muzzleloaders, powder and ball, Godsell wrote, he dispatched them on their grizzly errand. First they riddled their poor sick creature with trade bullets, then, lest the evil spirit again re-enter the body and revive it, they drove a stake through it, deep into the mud floor of the cabin. Finally to make assurances doubly sure they set a torch to the building, fired off their guns to drive lurking spirits away and hurried from the haunted spot. Poor Beaton was in for a hot time afterwards when Mounted Police investigated the affair and came within an ace of being convicted on a manslaughter charge. Which reminds me, Godsell continued, of another peculiar case. Visiting a Kree camp, I noticed an old leathery-faced crone, just animated bones and parchment, lying neglected and uncared for on the outskirts of the camp. I gave her some tobacco and tea, which her talon-like hands grabbed with horse croaks of delight. I learned from the Indians that she was supposed to be over 115 years old. The following year, Godsell learned that a medicine man had warned the woman's sons that their mother was possessed by evil spirits, which kept her alive. Kindling a huge ten-foot fire of resinous spruce logs, Godsell wrote, they cast the poor creature onto this funeral pyre alive. Watching till the body was consumed, they raked through the ashes with a stick and found the heart still intact, sure signed that it must have been full of evil. The sons skewered their mother's heart on a pointed stick and placed it into the fire, watching it intently until it shriveled to a cinder. Only when the heart was completely consumed by fire were they satisfied that their mother's soul was finally at rest. When Weird Darkness returns, Godsell continues talking about the Native Americans and also a couple of couriers who mysteriously disappeared several years earlier while delivering mail by dog sled. Could they have been taken by a Wendigo? Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial-free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show. Behind the scenes video updates about future projects and events I'm working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests, events, and merchandise. You can download word search puzzles based on episodes of the podcast. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You can also hear auditions I've submitted for other voiceover projects and get updates on the progress of those I've been cast in, such as my voice acting roles as Wolverine and J. Jonah Jameson in a couple of Marvel fan series or as Green Lantern, Hal Jordan in a DC fan project. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com slash Syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Syndicate. Welcome back to Weird Darkness Radio. I'm Darren Marlar. Let's continue with the article about the Wendigo written by Philip H. Godsell, the magazine's editor. He still has a lot more to say. As you travel through the North, Godsell continued, you realize that but a few years ago, when the Indians depended largely on the caribou and game for sustenance, cannibalism was anything but infrequent in Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories. Looking over old Hudson's Bay journals at Fort Chippewaian on Lake Athabasca, I read of numerous revolting cases of cannibalism on the part of natives driven to desperation by hunger. Godsell went on to relate the tale of two couriers who mysteriously disappeared several years earlier while delivering mail by dogsled between Fort Norman and Fort Goodhope, two Hudson's Bay company posts situated on the eastern shores of the Mackenzie River in Canada's Northwest Territories. Starvation stalked the North that year, he wrote. There were no rabbits and few fur-bearing animals and the weather was bitterly cold. Two old squaws it was later discovered had been camped beside the Mackenzie River below Fort Goodhope and it was noticed when they came into the fort that, in contrast to their emaciated tribesmen, they were looking hardy and well-nourished. Later, they boasted to other Indians that being on the verge of starvation, they had seen these two mail-runners plodding along the river and signed to them to come to the waning campfire. The two whites decided to camp there overnight and, after a feed of dried meat, bannock and tea, rolled themselves in the rabbit-skin robes and fell asleep. Assured that they were sleeping soundly, the two squaws brained them with an axe, cut up the bodies and consigned them to the pot. One of the squaws complained that one of the victims, a heavy smoker, didn't taste very good. Godsell finished his narrative by repeating a tale told to him by Father Emil Pettito, a French oblate missionary who ministered to the spiritual needs of the hair, slavy and mountain Indians of Fort Norman. While traveling along the shores of Great Bear Lake, Pettito's denna guide confessed that he had devoured both his mother and sister years earlier during a severe famine. The missionary, who was well fed at that time, went to bed with a certain amount of mental disquiet and trepidation, but banished it with the realization that there was lots of food in the grub box and lots of caribou around so that it would not be necessary for his guide to indulge his appetite for human flesh. A hundred and eighty years before Philip Godsell's article was published in the Alberta Folklore Quarterly, a fur trader named Alexander Henry the Elder had his own brush, with what contemporary natives would almost certainly have designated a Wendigo. Alexander Henry the Elder was one of the first of the so-called peddlers, independent British and new English fur traders who took over the old trading grounds of the French in the aftermath of the Seven Years War. In 1761, 22-year-old Henry purchased several canoes worth of trading goods in the city of New York, hired a crew of French Canadian voyagers in Montreal, and set out for the Great Lakes and the Great Northwestern Wilderness beyond. Two years into his adventure, Henry became entangled in Pontiac's rebellion, a violent conflict between the ancient Abbey natives of the Great Lakes and the British Army. Following his capture by Ojibwa warriors, he was rescued by a chief, whom he had befriended and lived among his French Canadian employees and friendly Ojibwa bands for many years. In the winter of 1766, Henry and his voyagers left the village of Salt Saint-Marie, where fishing proved uncharacteristically poor and relocated to what is now known today as the Kiwena Bay at the southern end of Lake Superior. Henry described the incident that ensued in his 1809 autobiography, Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories between the years 1760 and 1776. After being here a fortnight, we were joined by a body of Indians, flying like ourselves from famine. Two days after, there came a young Indian out of the woods alone and reporting that he had left the family to which he belonged behind in a starving condition and unable from their weakly and exhausted state to pursue their journey to the Bay. The appearance of this youth was frightful and from his squalid figure there issued a stench which none of us could support. His arrival struck our camp with horror and uneasiness and it was not long before the Indians came to me saying that they suspected he had been eating human flesh and even that he had killed and devoured the family which he pretended to have left behind. These charges upon being questioned, he denied, but not without so much equivocation in his answers as to increase the presumption against him. In consequence, the Indians determined on traveling a day's journey on his trek, observing that they should be able to discover from his encampments whether he were guilty or not. The next day they returned, bringing with them a human hand and skull. The hand had been left roasting before a fire while the intestines, taken out of the body from which it was cut, hung fresh on a neighboring tree. The youth, being informed of these discoveries and further questioned, confessed the crime of which he was accused. From the account he now proceeded to give it appeared that the family had consisted of his uncle and aunt, their four children, and himself. One of the children was a boy of fifteen years of age. His uncle, after firing at several beasts of the chase, all of which he missed, fell into despondence and persuaded himself that it was the will of the great spirit that he should perish. In this state of mind, he requested his wife to kill him. The woman refused to comply, but the two lads, one of them, as had been said, the nephew, and the other son of the unhappy man, agreed between themselves to murder him, to prevent, as our informant wished us to believe, his murdering them. Accomplishing their detestable purpose, they devoured the body, and famine pressing upon them still closer, they successfully killed the three younger children, upon whose flesh they subsided for some time, and with a part of which the parasites at length set out for the lake, leaving the woman who was too feeble to travel to her fate. On their way, their foul victuals failed, the youth before us killed his companion, and it was a part of the remains of his last victim that had been discovered at the fire. The Indians entertain an opinion that the man who has once made human flesh his food will never afterward be satisfied with any other. It is probable that we saw things in some measure through the medium of our prejudices, but I confess that this distressing object appeared to verify the doctrine. He ate with relish nothing that was given him, but, indifferent to the food prepared, fixed his eyes continually on the children which were in the Indian Lodge, and frequently exclaimed how fat they are. It was perhaps not unnatural that after a long acquaintance with no human form, but such as was gaunt and pale from want to food, man's eyes should be almost riveted upon anything where misery had not made such inroads, and still more upon the bloom and plumpness of childhood. The exclamation might be the most innocent and might proceed from an involuntary and uncockerable sentiment of admiration. Be this as it may, his behavior was considered, and not less naturally, as marketed with the most alarming symptoms, and the Indians, apprehensive that he would prey upon their children, resolved on putting him to death. They did this the next day with a single stroke of an axe, aimed at his head from behind, and of the approach of which he had not the smallest intimation. Eighty years after Alexander Henry's disturbing experience on the southern shores of Lake Superior, an Irish-Canadian artist named Paul Cain heard a similar story west of that same lake, on what is known today as the Namakan River. Inspired by American artist George Catlin, who painted hundreds of portraits of American Indians during an epic journey up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the 1830s, Cain decided to travel across Canada and immortalize the characters and scenes he encountered on canvas. In 1846, he accompanied a Hudson's Bay Company fur brigade across the continent from Lake Superior to Fort Vancouver in what is now the American State of Washington. The first leg of Cain's journey was a succession of portage trails and water routes between Lake Superior and westerly Rainy Lake. On June 1, 1846, near the end of his stretch, Cain and his companions came upon a Salto Indian and his wife, from whom they purchased some dried sturgeon. In his 1859 travel memoir, Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America, Cain wrote that his French-Canadian Voyager companions subsequently informed him that the couple with whom they had just traded were believed to be Wendigos or those who eat human flesh. There is a superstitious belief among the Indians, Cain wrote, that the Wendigo cannot be killed by anything short of a silver bullet. I was informed, on good authority, that a case had occurred here in which a father and daughter had killed and eaten six of their own family from absolute want. The story went on to state that they then camped at some distance off in the vicinity of an old Indian woman who happened to be alone in her lodge, her relations having gone out hunting. Seeing the father and daughter arrive unaccompanied by any other members of the family, all of whom she knew, she began to suspect that some foul play had taken place and to feel apprehensive for her own safety. By way of precaution, she resolved to make the entrance to her lodge very slippery, and as it was winter and the frost severe, she poured water repeatedly over the ground as fast as it froze until it was covered with a mass of smooth ice and instead of going to bed, she remained sitting up in her lodge, watching with an axe in her hand. When near midnight, she heard steps, advancing cautiously over the crackling snow and looking through the crevices of the lodge, caught sight of the girl in the attitude of listening, as if to ascertain whether the inmate was asleep. This, the old woman feigned by snoring aloud. This welcome sound no sooner reached the ears of the wretched girl than she rushed forward, but slipping on the ice, fell down at the entrance of the lodge, whereupon the intended victim sprang upon the murderous and buried the axe in her brains. And not doubting, but the villainous father was there at hand, she fled with all her speed to a distance to escape his vengeance. In the meantime, a weaned-to-go father, who was impatiently watching for the expected signal to his horrid repast, crept up to the lodge and called to his daughter. Hearing no reply, he went on, and in place of the dead body of the old woman, he saw his own daughter and hunger overcoming every other feeling, he saved his own life by devouring her remains. The weaned-to-goes are looked upon with superstitious dread and horror by all Indians, and anyone known to have eaten human flesh is shunned by the rest, as it is supposed that having once tasted it, they would do so again had they had an opportunity. They are obliged, therefore, to make their lodges at some distance from the rest of the tribe, and the children are particularly kept out of their way. However, they are not molested or injured in any way, but seem rather to be pitied for the misery they must have endured before they could be brought to this state. I do not think that any Indian, at least none that I have ever seen, would eat his fellow creature, except under the influence of starvation, nor do I think that there is any tribe of Indians on the North American continent to whom the word cannibal can be properly applied. Up next on Weird Darkness Radio, a man has a strange encounter with an alien in Germany, and in an odd way ends up playing a game of catch with it, using an eerie, transparent ball. What kind of person does it take to build a civilization from the ground up? Astronaut Nick Burke will have to learn how to be a leader if he wants humanity to survive on a new planet, even if he himself is no longer human. Nick Burke dreams of successfully creating the first sustainable space colony in human history. After a third failed mission on Mars, Nick returns to Earth heartbroken, but during the trip home, he has an epiphany caused by a near-death experience on how to truly accomplish his dream. Nick launches a billionaire-funded startup company that solves the interstellar travel problem, transporting people in a spaceship without any people aboard. After Nick lands on his new, distant planet, he has to combat his greatest trials yet, including raising children and goats while becoming a colony building survivalist. Fans of Andy Weir's The Martian and Dennis E. Taylor's We Are Legion, We Are Bob, will find familiar themes of innovative science fiction ideas with plenty of humor and pop culture. The hard science fiction novel, Seed, by Matthew G. Dick, narrated by Darren Marlar. You are free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. One morning in August of 1981, an unnamed 55-year-old Polish immigrant living in Germany took a bicycle ride from his home in the city of Rada Weidenbroek on a clear, sunny day. And on this day, he decided to head to a small lake called Lintel, not far from where he lived. And although his bicycle chain broke and he was forced to walk, it wasn't far, and it was such a lovely day that he kept on going. As he sat looking out over the placid water, his attention was drawn to movement out across the lake on the opposite shore. He could see an old shed out there and nearby, a figure who seemed to be moving around in a strange manner. According to the report, the witness saw a massive metallic object about 10 meters high and 30 meters in diameter that looked somewhat like an upside-down plate, hovering silently about 50 feet above the surface of the lake. It sort of hovered there for a time, never making a sound, and when the witness looked back to the fisherman that he had been observing, he could now see that the man was in the company of several other figures, dressed in some kind of suits that seemed to sparkle and glint in the sunlight. As he looked on at this bizarre sight, he still had no idea what he was looking at, and when he saw a woman walking her dog right past the object, the witness began to think that it was perhaps some sort of super-advanced transport aircraft accepting passengers. He took it upon himself to approach the strange craft, and as he got closer, he could see that there was some type of oval opening in its side, and he went even closer, meaning to ask how much admission was for the ride on this wondrous aircraft. There was a platform leading from the opening down to the ground below, and as he approached, the witness noticed one of the figures in the sparkling suits examining the bicycle he had left not far away. He could now see that the being was somewhat translucent, but this was still not enough to deter him from stepping aboard the craft. Once inside, it was led to sit on an invisible bench by another of those strange figures. He could now smell a very unpleasant smell like burning rubber, and noticed that the fisherman that he had seen earlier was sitting nearby in some sort of daze and was half naked, being examined by one of the entities. The one near him then telepathically demanded that he hand over his satchel, which he did. He says of what happened, In my way toward the being, I was somewhat light as if there was no floor below. They put me on some table, while I felt lightness as if I was devoid of some internal organs. He was brought into a misty blue grayish room with more of the beings, and he was undressed and forced to lie down on another table. He was then examined, dressed up again, and his bag was returned to him. He was also given some sort of belt that seemed to transform into different shapes, and had strange symbols on its side, and would always return to its original position no matter how much he tried to fold it up. The witness also says that a small transparent ball as big as a tennis ball suddenly materialized in his hand, which sparkled with many colors. He could see when it shone that the bones in his hand were visible, like an x-ray, and this frightened him enough to make him want to throw the ball away, but he found he could not, as every time he threw it, he had hovered back to him in much the same way that the belt did. The ball seemed to be weightless, and when he looked within it, he could see various strange things. The original report by UFO researcher, Marcin Mazzara, would say of this, the ball was emitting an image from inside, something like a three-dimension show that were impossible things inside, from a chaos, a multitude of colorful stains divided by lines, there formed some images. There appeared a tower measuring pressure from the town where he lived, and then a town hall and a tower block standing in vicinity of his house. Then other similar elements were seen, for example church towers, playing fields, parking lots, etc. Mr. X saw even himself holding the ball and looking into it. He wanted to turn it in his hands, but it transformed into a big glass circle that got smaller immediately and transformed into the original ball. What in the world was going on here? It's all so bizarre that it's hard to say. All through this, one of the mysterious figures just looked on with an inscrutable expression, as if observing, and the witness would say what happened next. I smiled foolishly because it was weird, cool, and funny. I haven't seen something like it before. The humanoid was looking at me as a king and a clown. Anyway, I found myself unexpectedly on a scrap heap. There he was, just suddenly there on the ground, around five kilometers from the lake with a severe headache and his watch inexplicably broken. His skin was red as if suffering a sunburn, and he also noticed that both the orb and the belt that he had been given on the craft were gone. A search of the area also showed that his bicycle was gone, and so he walked home. He felt a sudden exhaustion upon arriving and fell into a deep sleep. From that day on, he claims that he suddenly had an incredible affinity and talent for painting and went on to become a well-known artist in the area, although it's unclear if this had anything to do with his surreal encounter or not. The whole thing is incredibly bizarre, and it's really hard to make sense of. What happened to this man and what did he experience while he was out there? It's hard to say for sure, but it is certainly one of the weirder alien encounter reports that there is. Thanks for listening. Unfortunately, I don't have time to share the French Ripper story, so I'll add that into tonight's sudden death overtime content, along with the story A Cowardly Lover, both of which you can find in the podcast after tonight's show. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you'd like to hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast app at WeirdDarkness.com Slash Listen. Not only will you hear a copy of tonight's show, you'll also get daily episodes of Weird Darkness as I post seven days a week. Again, you can subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com Slash Listen, or just search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can send in your paranormal experiences to me by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. The legend of Edward Mordrake was written by Jacob Shelton for a graveyard shift. When to go, the classic Canadian cryptid is from Mysteries of Canada, and Polish man meets German E.T. was written by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe. Weird Darkness Radio is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness 2023. Now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. John 16, verse 33, I've told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. And a final thought, forget the mistake. Remember the lesson. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Don't go anywhere, weirdos, because sudden death over time is up next. You shut yourself in. The lights are out, and you're listening to Weird Darkness. But suddenly, you get that feeling you're not alone. You don't know what might be under the bed, or in the closet, or in the attic, or in the room with you. You don't dare try to sleep now. You're too scared to. If you doze off, you might be vulnerable to the creatures who haunt your dreams. That's just one more reason to have Weird Dark Roast Coffee in the cupboard, because you just never know when you might need it. Weird Dark Roast Coffee contains deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness. Each bag is fresh roasted to order by Evansville Coffee. You can find a link to it at WeirdDarkness.com. Grab a bag before something else grabs you from the dark. Born in 1869 to a peasant family in the French town of Beaufort, Joseph Vache's early life was marked by fairly bizarre behavior. According to testimony that came out during his later trial, he'd been caught mutilating animals and once fired a gun in the direction of some children his age. His parents eventually sent him to a strict Catholic school at St. Geneleval, where he was taught to obey and fear God. Just how successful this schooling actually was seems open to debate, considering that he was later thrown out for inappropriate sexual acts with other boys in the school. With no other options, Vache began his compulsory military service, though his explosive temper and odd appearance marked him as a loner. There's at least some evidence to suggest that he may have been responsible for five unsolved murders that occurred between 1884 and 1890, although they remain officially unsolved. What is known about him was that Vache fell in love with a pretty maid servant named Louis Beraint. She felt absolutely no attraction for the strange-looking soldier, though, and after his tour of duty was over, laughed at him when he proposed marriage in 1893. Vache was enraged and shot her four times before shooting himself. They both survived, although Vache's face was left partially paralyzed as a result. One of the bullets also remained lodged in his skull and brain damage may have contributed to his later psychiatric issues. He was sent to the St. Robert Asylum in Daule, France and released as completely cured just a year later. The doctors would later regret their optimism. He then became a drifter, moving from one part of France to another. His facial paralysis added to his already odd appearance and he formed no real community ties wherever he went. Supporting himself through begging and odd jobs, Vache began a murder spree with at least 11 victims over a three-year period. His known victims included one adult woman, five teenage girls, and five teenage boys. Most of the victims were shepherds that Vache was able to attack while they tended flocks and isolated fields. After raping the victims, Vache would often disembowel the corpses before leaving them to be found by others. Despite the trail of bodies, Vache's murderous career was only stopped in 1897 when he attacked a woman near her home in southern France. The woman fought back and her screams brought her husband and son to her aid. The men took Vache to the local police, though were it not for Vache eventually confessing to everything, investigators might never have been able to link him to the other murders. Given that he faced the death penalty, Vache had ample reason to have himself declared insane. In the letter that he wrote to the judge, Vache stated that he had committed the murders due to a lifelong insanity caused by being bit by a rabid dog as a child. His insanity caused him to go into a wild frenzy in which he would kill his victims and drink blood from their necks. Vache also argued that the asylum doctors who released him were the ones who were really at fault for his murders. As part of the prosecution's case, the legendary forensic pioneer Alexander Lukasanya was called in to do an in-depth evaluation of the defendant. After an exhaustive five-month examination of Vache, including exploring his various bizarre symptoms, Lukasanya concluded that Vache was faking insanity and that he was fit to stand trial. His comprehensive presentation to the court in which he described his findings were so impressive even Vache was heard to murmur, he is very good. In the end, Joseph Vache was convicted and sentenced to death in 1898. The French newspapers at the time trumpeted the news of the Vache affair and played up the fact that he had been a homeless vagabond when he committed the murders. Thousands of other drifters were wandering about France and the newspapers used Vache's case to highlight the danger that homeless beggars posed and the need for action to deal with them. The fact that Vache's fellow beggars were also his most likely victims seemed irrelevant. Some columnists even expressed a perverse national pride since their ripper had more victims than the English ripper. The publicity of the case guaranteed an enormous turnout on December 31, 1898, when Joseph Vache went to the guillotine. Crowds cheered as he was led out and he was heard to shout, look, the victim of the asylums. He refused to walk to the guillotine and needed to be carried to his execution. Public interest in the case faded quickly after the execution, but forensic experts and journalists continued to write about Vache. His body was carefully dissected as researchers tried to learn more about what caused his violent acts. Researchers found nothing unusual about Vache's brain, but his head still went into one of the large criminal anthropology collections at the time. Forensic authorities, including La Casseña and Richard von Kraft Ebbing, wrote about Vache's sadism, it was still a new diagnosis at the time, his inverted tendencies or homosexuality, and other bizarre sexual behaviors, his psychiatric symptoms, and speculations about his early childhood. While Joseph Vache's case was famous for its time, he seems largely forgotten today. Dubbed the French Ripper to distinguish him from the more famous Ripper case in England, Joseph Vache represents one of the first known serial killers. Others would soon follow in his footsteps. Lottie Jackson of Greasy Bend, Kansas was engaged to marry James Japp Rainey, but she broke it off in the fall of 1893. It was probably due to his rowdy ways. Japp Rainey had a reputation as a gambler and all-around sport. He argued with Lottie, then left in a fit of jealous rage, vowing to kill her. On October 28, 1893, Lottie paid a call at the home of Bosworth Morgan in Osawatomie. As she stood by an open window that night, she did not see Japp Rainey sneaking toward the house. He approached the window, then raised his pistol and made good on his promise. He fired into the house, killing Lottie Jackson, then escaped into the darkness. Everyone knew who did it, and they quickly formed a posse to track him down. Their intentions were clear. When they caught Rainey, they planned to lynch him on the spot. Realizing his position was hopeless, Japp Rainey went to the police station in Paola, Kansas, and gave himself up. This was not enough for the residents of Greasy Bend, however, who organized a mob of 75 men to travel to Paola, break Rainey out of jail and lynch him. Rainey remained safe in the Paola jail until his trial in February 1894. He tried a plea of temporary insanity, but the jury didn't buy it. Rainey was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang. He moved for a new trial, but the judge overruled the motion. When Rainey asked for mercy, the judge replied that even if such were meted, there was but one sentence possible under the jury's verdict. He sentenced Rainey to one year in the penitentiary, then, whenever the governor should so will it, to be hanged. The governor, however, was not in a hanging mood, and as of December 1898, 46 men, including Japp Rainey, were on death row in Kansas, awaiting execution. In October 1913, after serving 19 years at the penitentiary, Japp Rainey met with a pardon clerk, S.T. Seaton, and fell on his knees, pleading for Seaton to bring about his release. Seaton promised to do so, and that's the last we hear of Japp Rainey. My doc agrees that I need to lose a few pounds. I knew that going in, but he also told me that the meds I'm taking from my type 2 diabetes aren't going to do me much good if I finish each meal with ice cream or cheesecake. I kind of knew that in advance too, but cutting back on carbs and sugars is a lot easier said than done. I've tried a lot of protein bars while on the road, but I swear it's like eating non-sweetened chocolate-dusted particle board. But now, I travel with built bars. Built bars taste like candy bars. In fact, I'm now using them for my dessert. And at about 150 calories per bar, less than 3 grams of sugar, up to 19 grams of protein, I can satisfy my sweet cravings guilt-free. Visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Built in Try a Box. You can go for a variety pack of several flavors to try or pick and choose to build a box of your own. Use the promo code WeirdDarkness at checkout and get 10% off your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Built. In 1866, a woman named Laura Foster was murdered in Wilkes County. A man named Tom Dooley was convicted and hanged for the crime. That murder and the name Tom Dooley live on in one of the most famous folk songs ever to come out of North Carolina. The traditional version of the story casts Tom Dooley as a dashing, handsome Confederate veteran. When Dooley returns from the war, he meets Laura Foster, a young woman who was being courted by a school teacher from the North by the name of Bob Grayson. Foster fell in love with Tom Dooley, but so did another woman, Ann Melton. Melton was married, wealthy, beautiful, and insanely jealous. Learning that Dooley was in love with Foster, not her, Ann Melton stabbed Laura Foster to death in a jealous rage. Tom Dooley was blamed for the murder, though. He fled, heading for Tennessee. Bob Grayson headed a posse to hunt down Tom Dooley, and the posse dragged the fugitive back to Wilkes County, North Carolina. Dooley realized that it was Ann Melton who had committed the crime, but Tom Dooley's sense of chivalry made him unwilling to see a wealthy woman dishonored and facing a death by hanging. So Dooley confessed to a murder he did not commit in order to save Melton's reputation. On May 1st, 1868, Tom Dooley was executed for the murder of Laura Foster. Grayson returned home to the North, and Melton went slowly insane from guilt, and years later, as she was on her deathbed, the trees around her house filled with black cats, and the air was filled with the smell of burning flesh as demons came to take her soul to hell. In this version of the tale, a complicated story that ends in the death of an innocent man that became immortalized in a folk song that circulated in North Carolina for nearly a hundred years, before it was made nationally famous by the Kingston Trio in 1958. In a way which shows how much the ways in which we define music categories has changed in the past half century, the Kingston Trio recording of the Ballad of Tom Dooley reached number one on the Billboard R&B charts, even higher than its near-top placement on Billboard's country charts. It is said that Tom Dooley wrote the song himself. The legend has it that he was singing it, strumming along on his banjo as he sat on top of his own coffin, riding in the wagon on the way to his execution. But the actual history behind the story of Tom Dooley and the murder of Laura Foster are what might be generally described as slightly different from how the song tells it. Hang down your head, Tom. Hang down your head on your head, Tom Dooley. I met her on the mountain. There I met her on the mountain. Stepped her with my knife. Hang down your head, Tom Dooley. Hang down your head and cry. Hang down your head, Tom Dooley. You're bound to die this time tomorrow, breaking where I'll be. I've been for gracing. I'd have been in tenant tomorrow, breaking where I'm down in some low valley and from a white oak. Hang down your head, Tom Dooley. Hang down your head and cry. The real story of Tom Dooley and Laura Foster is a lot more complicated than the version told in the song, and it involves a lot more syphilis. Tom Dooley was born in the deeply impoverished mountains surrounding the Yadkin Valley in 1845. Sometime when he was a fairly young teenager, he began sharing the household of James Melton and his wife Anne. Melton was a successful cobbler and had lost interest in his much younger wife who happened to be about the same age as Dooley. With James Melton's consent, Tom Dooley and Anne Melton began sharing a bed in Melton's cabin. James Melton slept alone. Dooley left the Melton household temporarily when he volunteered for the 42nd Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry. After the war, he returned to the hills and resumed his unusual household arrangements. But then things began to get even more romantically complicated. Pauline Foster, a distant cousin of Anne Melton, had moved into the Melton household when she was hired as a servant. It must have been a small cabin because soon, Dooley and Pauline Foster began having an affair. In a remarkable display of open-mindedness, Anne Melton didn't object to her lover's new arrangement. In fact, she joined in. So Anne Melton, Pauline Foster and Tom Dooley were all sharing the same bed in James Melton's cabin. James Melton was still sleeping alone. As if this wasn't complicated enough, Tom Dooley soon met another Foster. This was Laura Foster, another cousin of Anne Melton who had recently followed her cousin to the area. Laura Foster was no stranger to the company of men, and soon, she and Tom Dooley were carrying on together in an affair seemingly completely separate from Dooley's arrangements back in Melton's cabin. Splitting his time between Laura Foster and his menage à trois in the Melton household seemed to keep Dooley happy and probably pretty tired. What Dooley didn't know was that Pauline Foster hadn't just come to the area to seek employment. She also came seeking treatment for syphilis. As is the way of such things, Pauline gave the diseased Tom, who then gave it to Laura and to Anne. But because of the timing of the appearance of symptoms, Tom Dooley thought it was Laura Foster and not Pauline Foster who had infected him. Dooley vowed revenge on Laura Foster. Laura Foster disappeared on May 25, 1866. That morning, Foster's father woke to discover both her and his horse missing. The horse returned the next day, but Laura did not. After several weeks of searching, a rope that had been used to tie Foster's horse to a tree was discovered on blood-stained ground not far from where Tom Dooley was living. Suspicion immediately began to fall on Dooley and he fled for Tennessee. About the same time, Pauline Foster also visited Tennessee and when she returned to Wilkes County, a friend jokingly inquired if she had left because she had killed Laura Foster. Pauline Foster, also seemingly in chest, replied that she and Tom Dooley had killed Laura together. Pauline Foster was soon arrested and charged as an accessory to murder. Fearing for her life, Pauline Foster told everything she knew. Dooley and Anne Melton had killed Laura Foster together. She led them to Laura Foster's shallow grave in the woods and her badly decomposed corpse was exhumed. The body was only identifiable from the clothing, but the evidence of a vicious stab wound under the left breast into the heart was still there. The police learned that Tom Dooley was living in Tennessee where they had been working on the farm of a Colonel James Grayson. Dooley learned that the authorities were on to him and fled Grayson's farm. Grayson joined the search party which caught up with Dooley in Pandora, Tennessee. Grayson persuaded Dooley to surrender and Dooley was taken back to Wilkes County, North Carolina to stand trial. In a surprising move which brought the case to national attention, former North Carolina Governor Zebulun Vance volunteered to represent Dooley pro bono. When the press learned the complicated details of Dooley's sex life, the newspapers went crazy and the trial became a national sensation. The Adkin Valley region was painted as a decadent bastion of free love and the public gobbled up as many sorted details as the papers could serve to them. Tom Dooley and Anne Melton were tried separately. Dooley was convicted, Melton acquitted. Tom Dooley was hanged on May 1, 1868 in Statesville. Reportedly his last words were, You have such a nice clean rope, I ought to have washed my neck. Anne Melton died in 1874, although the historical record is unclear as to whether she died from injuries from a carriage accident or from complications of syphilis. Although she maintained her innocence until her death, rumors that it was Melton not Dooley who had dealt the fatal blow followed Melton to her grave. Interestingly enough, though it was the more romantic version of the story that propelled them to fame, the members of the Kingston Trio knew of the sorted details of the story of Tom Dooley and delighted in sharing them backstage with the various house crews that they would meet on their tour. On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in the Confederate States would be free as of January 1, 1863. Of course, Lincoln really had no authority over slavery in the south since the Confederacy considered itself a separate country. But that is not the most surprising thing about the emancipation proclamation. It is where Lincoln allegedly got the idea for it. After the death of Willie Lincoln in February 1862, Mary Lincoln turned to the comfort of spiritualism to ease the pain of her son's death. Later that year, Mary met the woman who became her closest spiritual companion, Nettie Colburn Maynard, a medium that President Lincoln also met with. Many are familiar with the tale, told about a séance attended by Nettie Maynard in 1863 where a grand piano levitated. The medium was playing the instrument when it began to rise off the floor. Lincoln and Colonel Simon Case were both present, and it is said that both men climbed onto the piano only to have it jump and shake so hard that they climbed down. The stories of Lincoln attending séances became so well known that a piece of music was even published in England with Lincoln's image on it. It was called the Dark Séance Polka, which I will play for you in just a moment. Many of those who attended séances with President Lincoln documented those events in diaries and journals. One acquaintance even claimed that Lincoln's plans for the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the Southern slaves, came to him from the spirit of Daniel Webster and from ardent abolitionists who had died and were communicating from the other side. To this day, the Emancipation Proclamation is considered one of the defining documents in American history. But did Lincoln's grand plan actually come from the spirit world? Eastern road dies before a sane jump of unlucky and unlucky all at the same time. It is for freedom, but fire is for life, life taken from you. Put me on shadows, dance around Dark Séance Polka. Now go, the Dark Séance Polka. An example of college and devotion to the course of what Jeffery's done. It was our first big vapor. We were trying to take a stone ball. We've been trying, it seems, for years. Finally though, we got there. I was fighting, staying in it. We were all crazy, on top of the wall. Yes, there was my boy who had shot, looking up at me from the ground. Don't know that, not alive. We had killed him a long time ago, but I knew it. When Weird Darkness returns, the legend said that it was made of clay and given life by mystical means. The Jews created it as a means of protection, so the story goes at least. We'll look at the legend of the golem to see if there's any truth behind it. In 1936, a series of hold-ups escalated into armed robbery and eventually murder, all carried out by a trio of teens. And some say this is nothing short of a miracle. Others say it's downright dubious. A unique Bible continues to spew out an unidentified oil, and so far, scientists are unable to explain it. These stories are up next. 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've 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. The Gothic horror novel Frankenstein is one of the most well-known stories in which man tries to play God by attempting to manufacture a living being. A similar story, that of the Gollum, exists in Jewish folklore and legend, albeit with some obvious differences. For instance, the Frankenstein monster is popularly depicted as an amalgamation of body parts from cadavers, whilst the Gollum is said to be made from clay. Additionally, it was science that gave life to the Frankenstein monster, whereas the Gollum is said to have been given life by mystical means. Gollum is said to appear once in the Bible, Psalms 139 verse 16. Your eyes saw my unformed body all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be, although I personally think this verse is referring to human beings yet to be born or even conceived. The word Gollum means shapeless mass or unfinished substance in Hebrew. According to a Talmudic legend, Adam was a Gollum for the first 12 hours of his existence, indicating that he was a body without a soul. In another legend, the prophet Jeremiah is said to have made a Gollum. Some believe these legends regarding the creation of Gollums are merely symbolic in nature and may refer to a person's spiritual awakening. There are others who interpret the stories of the Gollum literally and believe that it is possible to create such creatures. In the Sefer Yet Zira, meaning the Book of Creation or Formation, there are instructions pertaining to the creation of Gollums and several rabbinic commentaries on this book have provided different explanations as to how these directions should be carried out. In most versions, the Gollum is first formed into the shape of something resembling a human being. There are several ways, however, to bring a Gollum to life. In one version, for example, a Gollum may be brought to life if its creator were to walk or dance around it whilst saying a combination of letters from the Hebrew alphabet and the secret name of God. In another version, the letters Aleph, Mem, and Tav, these letters combined to form the word emet, meaning truth, are required to be written on a Gollum's forehead in order to give him life. A third way to bringing a Gollum to life is to write the name of God on a parchment and stick it into its arm or mouth. One of the most famous Gollum stories is that of Rabbi Judah Lo Ben-Bazalel, an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, and philosopher. This Rabbi is believed to have lived at the end of the 16th century in Prague, which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire. At this time, the Empire was ruled by Rudolf II. Although Rudolf was an enlightened emperor, the Jews of Prague were subjected to anti-Semitic attacks. In order to protect the Jewish Quarter, the Rabbi created a Gollum. As the Gollum possessed incredible strength, it also helped out with physical labor in the Rabbi's household and the synagogue. Additionally, the Gollum was given a special necklace made of deerskin and decorated with mystic signs. This necklace made the Gollum invisible. Another version of the story states that a Jewish-hating priest tried to incite the Christians of Prague against the Jews near Easter during the spring of 1580. As a result, Rabbi Lo created the Gollum to protect his people during the Easter season. While the Gollum succeeds in protecting the Jews, the story has a less than happy ending. The Gollum grew stronger and stronger, but it became increasingly destructive as well. Instead of doing good deeds, the Gollum began to run amok and threatened innocent lives. As a result, Rabbi Lo removed the name of God from the Gollum, thus turning it back into a lifeless statue. Some believe that the Gollum was hidden by the Rabbi in the attic of his synagogue. In addition, entrance to the attic was forbidden for centuries, and the stairs to the area were even removed. When the synagogue was finally explored hundreds of years later, there was no trace of anything resembling a Gollum. Gollums are such prominent figures in Jewish legend that they continue to inspire artists and writers to this day. For at least the past 200 years, these creatures have made their way into painting, sculpture, illustration, and, more recently, video and digital artwork. They still have an air of fascination and magic about them, but also remind us to question what it really means to be human. Some say this is nothing short of a miracle, while others are downright dubious. A unique Bible continues to spew out an unidentified oil tested by a chemist who couldn't explain the substance. It is totally colorless and odorless, according to them. Jerry is the man who possesses this biblical book. He first kept it in a plastic zip bag before later moving it to a larger-sized container. Many wonder what this oil is and why it continues to ooze from this Bible. Oil is not magical by one perspective, but essentially is the oil of his presence. From the Scripture, this is like the Lord thy God leading the Israelites in the wilderness with a cloud by day and fire by night, which you could read about in Exodus 13. The Lord is leading us to him. God has told us his oil, his presence, and his power are inside all believers from his Holy Spirit. These miracles come from Jesus and his mercy, love, presence, and power. Remarkably, this Bible started emitting oil from the Book of Genesis until it spread across the entire Bible. Even the words highlighted with different inked marker colors have not yet bled across the pages printed. There have been numerous reports of people using this oil who have recovered from different ailments. Some of these include a person recovering from a severe esophageal disease, someone fighting off kidney failure, cancer recovery, broken bones being mended, and more. After using the oil, a 67-year-old man named Larry Wyatt was deeply troubled. He was full of anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness. Larry was later visited inside the ICU at the hospital by family and friends. He went from being a disbeliever to finding salvation in the Lord. Not long after being blessed by the oil with a paper towel, Larry later recovered. The Bible isn't the only dripping happening either. Located in the back of a small gift shop in Dalton, Georgia, is a prayer room. Over the last several years, people have come here to gather and pray for their city, region, and one another. There has been different reports of oil dripping from the walls here. There certainly seems to be some kind of supernatural-type activity happening in this place. Jerry said that God spoke to him and said as long as he doesn't sell the oil, it will continue to flow freely. He continues to give away the mysterious oil in vials to those who sincerely need it. He also invites people to dip their hands in the oil if they wish to do so. One person said after dipping their hands into the oil, it continued to multiply on their hands. It is believed all of this is related to healing gifting. When we see things like this happening, we quickly try to justify it. Perhaps this really is some kind of divine miracle happening. It really makes one wonder. And in a world of the paranormal and extraterrestrial, why not supernatural?