 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. Oh my God, my friend Arnie Cunningham cried out suddenly. What is it? I asked. His eyes were bulging from behind the steel-rimmed glasses. He plastered one hand over his face so that his palm was partially cupping his mouth and his neck could have been on ball bearings the way he was craning back over his shoulder. Stop the car, Dennis. Go back. What are you? Go back. I want to look at her again. Finally I understood. Aw man, forget it. I said, if you mean that thing we just passed, go back. He was almost screaming. I went back, thinking that it was maybe one of Arnie's subtle little jokes. But it wasn't. He was gone, locked stock and barrel. Arnie had fallen in love. She was a bad joke. And what Arnie saw in her that day, I'll never know. The left side of her windshield was a snarled spiderweb of cracks. The right rear deck was bashed in and an ugly nest of rust had grown in the paint scraped valley. The back bumper was a skew, the trunk lid was a jar and upholstery was bleeding out through several long tears in the seat covers, both front and back. It looked as if someone had worked on the upholstery with a knife. One tire was flat, the others were bald enough to show the canvas cording. Worst of all, there was a dark puddle of oil under the engine block. Arnie had fallen in love with a 1958 Plymouth Fury. From the novel Christine by Stephen King. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness 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 this hour, the list of places that are supposed to be haunted might be ingrained into your mind. We have abandoned areas, scary old buildings and any place that holds close to it some memories of a tragic or tumultuous past. Ghostly phenomena certainly run the full range of the weird and it is all largely unsolved in many respects. We can only guess at what is going on beyond cases of hauntings and frightening apparitions. Yet can some things be haunted that we don't traditionally think of as being haunted? Does this include vehicles as well? Can cars also become spectral anomalies that haunt and spook those who would encounter them? 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. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to visit WeirdDarkness.com and click on Contact Social to follow Weird Darkness on social media. And also on the website, you can find the daily Weird Darkness podcast which comes out seven days per week. Visit sponsors you hear about during the show. You can enter monthly contests, find Weird Darkness merchandise and more. You can even send in your own true story of something paranormal that has happened to you or someone you know. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, fold your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Loneliness can be a real burden. And while you can always log on to social media or watch TV, sometimes you 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 wash and 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. Now, it needed to be lonely any longer. Visit bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness and get 10% off your first order by using the promo code WeirdDarkness. That's bobbletopia.com slash Weird Darkness. See, you're feeling less lonely already. Stephen King's Christine made for one heck of a terrifying book and movie. But what if there really is a car so haunted, so possessed that it's known for killing dozens and dozens of people? Meet the 1964 Dodge 330 limited edition dubbed The Golden Eagle, the most evil car in America. The Dodge was originally purchased as a police car for Old Orchard Beach, Maine, but was sold to an elderly local man after the car began generating a creepy reputation. All three officers to ever drive the car died in bizarre murder suicides, killing their families and themselves. The car later became the everyday driver for current owner Wendy Allen's family, but this proved to be problematic as the car would randomly fling open its doors while going down the highway. Oddly enough, The Golden Eagle never turned on the Allen family as violently as it did so many others. Wendy Allen reports the car has killed 14 people to her knowledge, but it seems the number might actually be much higher. In the 1980s and the 1990s, members of different local churches vandalized the car, and apparently each of the lead vandalizers died in horrific car crashes from 18 wheelers decapitating them. The car's current owner even claims all 32 people from the two groups died under strange circumstances, four of them being hit by lightning. Of all the strange stories related to this car, the deaths involving children are by far the creepiest. Two children, one in the 60s and one in the 80s, were hit by cars and flung across the street to land either under the bumper or on the hood of the Golden Eagle car. Both died before paramedics could reach the scene. The last story is the most chilling. In 2008, a kid was dared to merely touch the Golden Eagle, and a couple weeks later he murdered his entire family, even the dog, and burned his house to the ground. Today the car is in pieces after another church group decided a demon was living in the car back in 2010. The group stole the car, chopped it up, and distributed it to various junkyards. But Wendy Allen's internet cries for help were heard, and most of the parts were found and returned. That same church group has harshly labeled her as the sea witch of old Orchard Beach, and claims that she uses the car to cast death spells. Allen takes offense to people labeling her and the car as dark and demonic. Quote, I say it's just a car that's been passed down in my family for years and people are reading too much into the things that have happened to people around the car. Because look at me, my family, my friends. We're fine, aren't we? If the car was hell-bent on killing everyone, well why isn't everyone dead? There's a wide range of ghostly phenomena out there, ranging from hauntings to spectral apparitions to other even weirder things, and there's no common explanation for any of it, and it all swirls out there beyond our understanding. One very bizarre type of phantom encounter is that of mysterious vehicles that don't seem to be firmly angered within the world as we know it. They cruise about on the periphery of our understanding, inviting many questions but answering few. One of the most well-known of the phantom cars is one that originates in the former Soviet Union and which involves a phantom black vehicle that has come to be known as the Black Volga. Tales of this spectral vehicle go back to the 60s and 70s when in intimidating jet black Volga limousine with white rims, tinted windows, curtains, horse on its rear view mirrors and often described as completely spotless or with the ability to accelerate way faster than a normal car was said to roam about all over the Soviet Union and in some cases even Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Mongolia, terrorizing locals wherever it went. The tale goes that the Black Volga would appear from seemingly out of nowhere to pull up to people, mostly children, and abduct them. Anyone who tried to interfere in this dark business or to even come too close was said to either drop dead on the spot or within 24 hours of the encounter, making the mysterious vehicle a site that instilled great fear in anyone who laid eyes upon it. In some stories, the car is said to be completely impervious to damage as well. One harrowing 1960s report from the Ukraine told of this mysterious black car pulling up to two young girls after which the doors opened and the two were seemingly sucked into the vehicle as if it were a vacuum cleaner. The witness, a middle-aged man, ran to their aid and pried the driver's side door open, notably not dropping dead like the law suggested he should. When the door was open, the witness was able to see that indeed there was no one behind the wheel at all and the front of the car was completely empty. That was about all that he was able to ascertain before there was allegedly a blinding white flash and the man woke up 24 hours later with a terrible headache. Throughout these spooky incidents, no one was ever able to see who was driving the car or cars and this led to rampant speculation over who could possibly be behind the wheel. Some theories claimed that the victims were killed so that their organs could be sold on the black market. Others pointed to a shadowy group trying to sew social unrest while others blamed government agencies or Satanists or some other dark cult. Many locals went as far as to claim that the devil himself was driving the black Volga. In recent years there have even been suggestions that it was none other than the men in black themselves on some nefarious, no doubt UFO-related mission. Considering that the Volga was an extremely expensive luxury vehicle at the time, only driven by the most affluent, it was thought that whoever was in there was wealthy and or well connected. After the 70s, accounts of the mysterious black Volga dropped off considerably so it's hard to ascertain how much truth any of the eerie stories hold, if any at all. What was the black Volga? Was it, as has variously been speculated, some possessed car powered by a mysterious force, the KGB, black market organ dealers, a secret organization, the men in black, Satanists, demons or even Satan himself, or is it all government propaganda, fear mongering or merely an urban legend? No one really knows, but the tale has sown terror throughout the area. A more modern version of the black Volga from the same region involves a black BMW or Mercedes, often described with horns coming out from where the rear view mirrors should be. The car is driven by a mysterious man who will ask for the time, only to kill the person when they approach or whisk them off to who knows where. Moving over to the United Kingdom, we have tales of an enigmatic phantom car from the villages of Athleek and Mount Talbot in Ireland. In the 1920s, there was frequently reported a spectral motor car that went far faster than anything available at the time and which could phase through whatever got in its way. One article from January 2, 1927 said of the mysterious vehicle, witnesses in the locality state that on many occasions about midnight, a mysterious vehicle somewhat like a high-powered motor car ablaze with light dashes noiselessly through the roads. There was apparently no driver, but seated in the car are a number of white-robed figures. Walls, ditches, fields and plantations present no obstacle to the car. The superstitiously inclined connect the visitation with a tragic occurrence in a neighboring estate when, during the recent troubles, a landlord and his wife were driving from their homes and died a fright. Local inhabitants are afraid to leave their homes after nightfall. In later years, we have reports from the 1950s of a ghostly car said to terrorize a stretch of desolate road in Kent County in southeast England. The car was usually described as black and of a very old-fashioned make and model, but was said to have the speed, handling and capabilities of something far more advanced. While a driver was usually not seen to be present in the vehicle, which seemed to be driving itself, there are other reports of a fog-like rave said to be the driver. One report from October of 1950 said of such an account, Driving through Hildenboro at 7 a.m. on Sunday, a motorist observed another car parked by the roadside in a deserted spot. He saw the shadow of a man outlined against the mist in the driving seat. He got out of his own car and shook the other car violently, but the huddled figure did not move. Tunbridge police were told, but on investigation they could not find a car on that particular stretch of road, and now take the very material view that the silent driver was waiting for the mist to rise before proceeding. In other countries we come to Australia, which also has its report to phantom vehicles, especially in an area near a town known as Canilla. Here there is said to be a spectral car that tears along the roads at great speed, only to vanish into thin air without warning. One incident in 2012 allegedly happened to three MotoGP race car drivers heading from an event at Phillip Island, Victoria, back to their hometown in Adelaide, South Australia, a journey of about 560 miles, meaning they would drive all night in shifts. At the time of their incident, one of the drivers was asleep in the back while the other two were awake in the front. It was about 4.30 a.m. and they were between the towns of Nil and Caniva, and the witnesses would explain, I had only seen a handful of cars between Horsham and Nil, so I was surprised when I saw a car way off in the distance behind us. It was catching up to us too. I was surprised at the speed this car was catching up. I was already going over the speed limit by 30 km per hour. I estimated it going probably 160 km per hour. Nathan suggested it might be the police, so I dropped back to 100 km per hour. Kind of futile, I know, but at least we'd know if it was a copper. Eventually the car caught us up, but just sat behind us. There was no street lights being country Australia, so neither me nor Nathan could accurately identify the car. But I did notice the headlights on the car were very old, like what you'd find on a Model T Ford or Brun if you've ever watched that TV show. They were round and fairly dim. By this stage we'd worked out it wasn't a cop, but why wasn't it trying to overtake us? It was a single lane each side, two-way road, so there was plenty of room to pass, and I hadn't seen a car going the other way in about half an hour. An overtaking lane approached us, so Nathan suggested I move into that lane so the car behind us can overtake. I move into the lane and guess what? The car followed. I then slowed down to 80 km per hour to try and convince him to overtake, but he doesn't. He just stays behind, although now I can't see his headlights at all. The car is that close to ours. The two increasingly worried men decided to open their windows to see if they could discern anything from the vehicle's engine noise, but were surprised to hear that although they were tearing along at 80 km per hour and the car was a mere inches from their bumper, they could hear no noise at all emanating from it, as if it were completely silent. The witness would go on to explain, back at 130 km per hour and the car is still behind us, matching our speed, still inches away from our back bumper. Both me and Nathan were freaking out a bit now. Why wouldn't the car pass us? Why was he driving so close? We were approaching Caneva by this stage. There's a big street light right on the edge of the town, and then street lights all throughout the main street. Finally, we'd be able to identify the car. We pass through the street lights and look behind us. The car had stopped following, right before the street light. It had simply stopped in the middle of the road. We still couldn't work out what kind of car it was, but we didn't want to turn around and find out. More true stories of ghostly vehicles when Weird Darkness returns. He is young and intelligent and highly trained. He is Eric Banfeld, shipwrecked on a long forgotten colony world where brawn and brute strength are more valued than knowledge, physically untrained and emotionally unprepared in the barest skills of survival. He seems compelled to spend a short and very unpleasant life as a half-naked savage, worked like a beast of burden on a world so sunk into barbarism that its inhabitants have no concept of the wheel. It's either that or die. His only possible chance, his only hope of becoming one with the folk is to become a singer or teller of stories. But in Eric Banfeld's case, he must be a singer of lies. Singer of Lies, a science fantasy novel by Michael R. Collings. You're a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. We continue now with true stories of ghostly vehicles. Interestingly, there is said to be a ghostly 1940s-era big-rig truck said to haunt the same roads near Caneva. Indeed, according to a news report in a 1951 edition of the Argus newspaper, the mysterious truck even managed to run a truck driver clear off the road after it came heading right for him, only to pass through as if nothing was there. The reports would say, there was no crash. The maniac truck fused briefly with the big diesel outfit, passed through and out. It's hard to say if this phenomenon has any connection to the ghostly car of the same area, but Caneva seems to be a fairly scary place to drive at night, either way. Of course, the United States also has its share of frightening accounts of mysterious cars up to no good. One is a mysterious car that is said to prowl around the area of Nixon, Missouri, which actually purportedly ran a sheriff, Frank Jones, off the road in 1932 to cause his tragic death, and which has, on occasion, also caused other near-crashes. Another one is said to haunt the NC 49, which meanders through the low hills between Ashboro and Charlotte, North Carolina. It is said that in the 1940s, this two-lane remote road was being navigated by a family late at night when they were approached by an angry vehicle acting very aggressively toward them, when a truck came out of nowhere and smashed it clear off the road to leave it a twisted wreck, killing the driver. It was not long after this that the stretch of road gained a reputation for having a very fast, very aggressive, phantom car that would pull up behind other drivers at high speed. Most cars will pull to the side to let it pass, and as it does, they will notice that it is a vintage 1940-style Ford, which even more oddly doesn't seem to have a driver. This Ford will swerve and veer around to completely freak out other drivers, before dissipating into thin air, as if it were never there at all, leaving one to wonder if this is the phantom remnant of that long-ago crash. A very weird account comes from Kailua, Hawaii in 1982 and was posted on the site Castle of Spirits. The witness claims that at the time she had been out with her visiting cousin just cruising around the area along a stretch of lonely beachfront road at Lanakai. There were no other cars out at the time, but at some point while driving along this road, they looked back and the witness would say, behind us loomed a huge, black, very shiny car. I can only say it was completely out of place and had so suddenly appeared that we were both shocked into silence. We turned from the rear view mirror and looked at each other, not saying anything, but both with our eyes wide and the unspoken question between us. That took all of a second. Then we both turned our heads to look out the window and the car was gone. There was no way that car could have gone anywhere. There were no cut-offs or turns or even driveways the car could have ducked into, just one long, narrow road. Even if there had been a place for the car to go into, it wouldn't have had time. This all happened in a second. I honestly don't remember what we did or said next. We just got out of Lanakai as quickly as possible. When I think back on it now, I can't remember having seen any driver of the mysterious black car. More recently still are two accounts given on the site Your Ghost Stories. The first comes from August of 2006 and supposedly takes place in Sunland, California. The witness says that he and a friend had been driving along the isolated Big Tejanga Canyon road when they had a very bizarre encounter. At one point, the witness says that they stopped by his friend's house to pick some things up and as he waited outside in the car, there would be some weird happenings indeed when he noticed the indistinct shape of a car speeding down a sharp turn in the road with no headlights on. The witness would say of what happened next, thus. It is a notorious highway for being treacherous for careless drivers even during daylight hours. No one can possibly drive without headlights. Yet to my utter astonishment, I began to barely see the shape of a car coming down the road around the bend in front of me without any headlights or any lights of any kind at all. My first thoughts were that this person must be desperate to try and get out of the canyon like this. Maybe they had trouble with their car's lights but were still attempting to drive this impossible way. Perhaps they were hunched over the dashboard or something. I couldn't believe it and I watched it drive right by my car. When it passed by directly parallel to my side of the car, I looked to see who was driving and I saw that no one was in the car. It was moving very slowly and without any sounds of a motor or wheels and like a silhouette practically see-through. It looked like an old and grayish-colored four-door sedan type vehicle. I kept just staring at it in amazement and looked back to see if maybe it had rear brake lights. No, it did not have them either. Then it disappeared like all the other cars into the darkness of the highway. Also rather strange is a case from 2011 in the state of North Carolina. The witness in this case says he was driving home from work one afternoon on a beautiful sunny day. Although the road was smack in the middle of nowhere, in his words, it was such a clear day that he would not have had any sort of sinister or scary vibe from the road. However, all of this would change rather quickly. As he approached one of the few intersections along the route, he claims he saw an antique car coming up off of one of the farm roads which he described as brown and from the 1930s. He passed the car and says he was admiring the restoration work that must have gone into it with no feel of anything supernatural at this point. However, he would explain, after about a quarter mile, perhaps a half mile, I looked in the mirror and was surprised to see that the car was no longer there. In most cases, and in most places, this would come as no surprise, but here, the middle of nowhere, there was no place the car could have gone. I came to a place where I could turn around and backtrack to see if the car had fallen into the deep ditch, really the only place it could go. I found nothing. In the ensuing years, I've seen the car on the same road several times, and every time I've seen it, it disappears. This is not to say I've actually seen the car vanish, but I'll be watching the car. My attention is called elsewhere and when I look back, the car is gone, and there is no place it could have gone to. I've told several people and nothing. I've looked for the car parked in a yard or open barn and again, nothing. My wife, who does believe in ghosts, thinks I'm seeing a ghost car. I have no explanation. Some supposedly haunted cars seem to have a mysterious ghostly history that has imbued and permeated them for years. From the Forum of Unsolved Mysteries comes an account from Halifax, Nova Scotia, where a young man found himself needing a new car right away in order to make his long commute every day after his own car broke down. Across the street from the house of a friend of his was a car that was apparently in good working order but had been sitting out on the lawn for years. The witness approached the owners of the house about it and they were extremely quick to get it off their hands for a very cheap price. The witness took this as lucky, but it would soon prove to be far from it, as all manner of issues began to surface with the vehicle, such as the electrical system going on the fritz, the radio turning on and off by itself, the speedometer stopping, and other minor technical annoyances. However, when he brought the car to a mechanic, nothing could be found wrong with it at all. The witness just sort of chalked it up to the car's age and ignored it. But this is when stranger incidents began to occur, which would graduate into paranormal bizarreness that showed something was very wrong with this vehicle beyond just mechanical issues. The witness says, I started ignoring it and one day on the way home from my girlfriend's house, I heard a weird noise in my back seat. It sounded like paper crumpling up. I looked back and nothing. I also look around at each window and none were opened. I thought it might have been the wind. I then heard the same noise in between the two front seats. I looked down and nothing. Very confused, I started trying to figure it out. Now I was just coming to a top of a hill and in my left ear, I heard my own name whispered to me gently. I immediately froze and popped my car into neutral so I could coast home. My home was at the bottom of the hill, and when I rolled into my driveway, I jumped from the car, leaving the keys behind and crawled through a window to get into my house. Now there were three incidents, that being the first. The second incident accrued when I was driving my car to my friends to pick up an instrument. I see another friend of mine walking along the side of the road so I pulled over and asked if he needed a ride. They said yes, jumped in and I continued along the way. I arrived at my friends whom I was getting the instrument from and the friend I picked up said that he would wait in the car and they didn't know my other friend that well. I went into the house and my friend started talking to me. I wasn't in there for more than a couple of minutes when I heard the front door bust open and my friend who was waiting in the car come running in yelling for me. I was quite shocked as they didn't even know my friend and they busted in like they owned the place. They finally found me and I asked what's wrong. They said they were in the car and they heard the sound of paper being crumpled up and then the same noise in the front and then the seatbelt pulled tight and something grabbed their hair. I was absolutely shocked as I had told no one about my incident. Now this proved there was something going on in that car and the final incident occurred when I arrived home one night. I plopped myself on the couch and turned on the TV. I suddenly felt as if something was watching me. I slowly turned to see a tall man in a black suit with a large brimmed hat. Their face was smudged out with no facial features though it felt like his eyes were peering into my soul. I froze for about 30 seconds which felt like forever and it slowly disappeared. I rose to my feet and said out loud I don't want no trouble I'm just going to bed. I was nearly scared to death. I suddenly seen the apparition appear at the base of my doorway. As I froze it disappeared. Now the scary thing about this story is that I realized that there is an intelligence behind these spirits. They're conscious. Oh yeah and I sold the car the next day for a few hundred bucks. Never seen the spirits again. Considering these frightening experiences one wonders if the previous owners knew about the haunting of the car and that's why it had been abandoned to that desolate lawn to gather dust. The witness does not mention approaching them to ask about it so we'll probably never know. Even more true stories of haunted cars when Weird Darkness returns. 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. From the Quora comes some other spooky accounts of haunted cars, the first being from a Stacy Panter who says she once owned a car that seemed to be pervaded by a ghostly force. Immediately upon purchasing the vehicle she says she could never relax in it, always feeling as if someone were riding in there with her even when she was alone and she says she even often caught glimpses of movement in the rear view mirror just out of comprehension but she mostly thought this was just her adult mind playing tricks on her. However, she would soon realize that this was anything but. She says, One night a friend of mine needed to go somewhere so I allowed him to take my car. When he returned he was very pale and asked me why I didn't inform him my car was haunted before we left it. Well, I explained to him what I've just said here. He said something very bad happened to someone in that car and felt like maybe someone had killed somebody and transported them in it. I have no real evidence that anything happened in the car but the fact that I felt that I wasn't alone when so many times I was in it. Interestingly the same witness claims that a friend of hers also had a haunted car but seems to have tethered it to a spirit that could not escape. She says, My friend owned a Jeep Cherokee that's sort of a different story. He allowed me to drive it to visit a friend of mine after he first got it. My friend wasn't home so I was going to write her a note. I had pen and paper and desperately tried to write her a note and couldn't. My hands would violently shake when I tried to write. I told my friend and when I said I was going to write her a note he interrupted and said, You couldn't write it, could you? You couldn't do it. I asked him how he knew that and he told me he had the very same thing happened to him. He said he'd been to Walmart the week before in the neighboring town to where I live and a lady approached him and wanted to see his vehicle. He allowed her to check it out and she told him her husband had committed suicide in that car. He'd written an extensive suicide note. The Jeep seemed to drive itself quite a bit and it's hard to explain. As I said there's more of an explanation as to why the Jeep was haunted than the one I had that time. My friend didn't keep the Jeep very long after that though. Can a ghost be tied to a car just as surely as to a place or building? There's the case of a witness on the same site who says that shortly after purchasing a relatively new red Toyota Corolla it became obvious that the vehicle was abnormally prone to accidents and it would also get inexplicable scratches on it for no apparent reason. This would all soon take a turn into the realm of the supernatural when he began to see a ghostly figure lurking about the car and sometimes appearing within it. He explains, I remember one day my dad, sister and I were driving to the library. I saw an old man get on the road as we were passing. My eyes widened and my heart came to a halt when I realized my father was not stopping the car. I nearly shouted, fully expecting to hear a thud at any moment. Nothing happened. I looked back but there was no one on the street. Didn't you see that guy? I asked my father and sister. Neither of them had a clue what I was talking about. Ghost pedestrian? Who knows. What really spooks me is what I have been seeing in the car since then. Back in our old house, the kitchen overlooked a living room with large bay windows pointed straight at the driveway. Every now and then I'd turn around and see someone's figure in the driver's seat. I'm not talking about a creepy shadow in the night either. I mean, I was doing the dishes after making lunch and there'd be a silhouette in there. It didn't disappear when I blinked. I'd usually get distracted for a moment and look again only to find the car then empty. This happened all the time, at least twice a month. One night I was driving back home and looked in the rearview mirror. You know, in those horror movies when you see a figure in the mirror, holy crap it happened. I very, very clearly saw a man sitting in my back seat. I turned my head but of course there was nothing there. I recently moved and the car cannot be seen from any of my windows. I see the car when I get out of the bus and when I take out the trash. When I do, oftentimes I'll see a figure in there. Heck, just last week I went to the grocery store and on my way back to the car I got this weird feeling. I looked up and there was someone in the driver's seat. It doesn't matter what angle the car is in either. I've seen the silhouette straight on, from the back and from the side. So what do you think? Can cars become haunted? Is my car haunted? How the heck does a car even get haunted? Thanks for listening. If you want to hear even more true stories of haunted vehicles, I do have a few more to share at the end of tonight's podcast recording of the show which I'll upload once tonight's show is over. Be looking for those stories in the sudden death overtime content at the end. If you missed any part of tonight's show or if you want 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 receive daily episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast at WeirdDarkness.com slash listen or search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow Weird Darkness on social media by visiting the Contact social page on the website. And please tell others about Weird Darkness 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. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can send in your own paranormal experiences by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes which I'll upload to the Weird Darkness website immediately after tonight's show is ended. Fanos Behind the Wheel was written by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe and Austin Koop for Road Trippers. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 17 verse 28 Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent and discerning if he holds his tongue. And a final thought, everyone you meet has something to teach you. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, keep listening. Hour two of the Weird Darkness radio show is coming up. Remember staying up late on a Friday or Saturday night, either at home or at a friend's house and watching your local TV station's horror host presenting a terrible B movie with aliens, monsters, ghosts, alien monster ghosts, vampires, werewolves and all other kinds of crazy, creepy characters. Those were fun nights, weren't they? Well that's what the Weird Oh 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 horrorable 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 chatroom on that same page. Get your frights and funnies on the Weird Oh Watch Party page at WeirdDarkness.com. Stories of mysterious phantom black dogs abound in Britain. Almost every country has its own variant, from the black shuck of East Anglia to the padfoot and bogey beast of Yorkshire. Phantom black dogs have been witnessed too frequently in modern times to parcel the phenomena as pure folklore and legend, but then folklore and legend often have origins in real events. There are various theories to explain the phenomena and they seem to have many common traits from sighting to sighting. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness 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 this hour, Dalton Highway is already a scary road for those driving down the ice-covered highways of Alaska. The loneliness on the barren stretch of highway can go on for hours without seeing a single soul, but for one ice road trucker, the solitude would be interrupted by something terrifying and unexplainable. Sometimes drugs can work too well. For example, a hair loss prevention drug could turn your own children into hairy wolf-man-like monsters. But first, it has several names all over the world such as the bogey beast, the black shuck, hairy jack, padfoot, striker and more. But a phantom black dog by any other name is still a phantom black dog. 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 to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to visit WeirdDarkness.com and click on Contact Social to follow Weird Darkness on social media. And also on the website, you can find the daily Weird Darkness podcast, which comes out seven days per week. You can visit sponsors that you hear about during the show. You can enter monthly contests, find Weird Darkness merchandise and more. You can even send in your own true story of something paranormal that has happened to you or someone you know. 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. A black dog is a motif of a spectral or demonic entity found primarily in the folklore of the British Isles. A black dog is essentially a nocturnal apparition, in some cases a shapeshifter and is often said to be associated with the devil or described as a ghost or a hellhound. Its appearance was regarded as a portent of death. It's generally supposed to be larger than a normal dog and often has large glowing eyes. It's sometimes associated with electrical storms, such as the Black Shucks appearance at Bungay Suffolk and also with crossroads, places of execution, and ancient pathways. The origins of the black dog are difficult to discern. It's uncertain whether the creature originated in the Celtic or Germanic elements of British culture. Throughout European mythology, dogs have been associated with death. Examples of this are the Quinanwen from Welsh, Garmer of the Norse, and Cerebrus from Greek, all of whom were in some way guardians of the underworld. This association seems to be due to the scavenging habits of dogs. It's possible that the black dog is a survival of these beliefs. Black dogs are generally regarded as sinister or malevolent, and a few, such as the Vargas and Shuck, are said to be directly harmful. They may also serve as familiar spirits for witches and warlocks. Some black dogs, however, such as the Gert Dog and Somerset, and the black dog of the Hanging Hills in Connecticut, are said to behave benevolently. Some, known as guardian black dogs, guide travelers at night onto the right path or guard them from danger. In appearance, the phantoms vary from region to region, but it's not uncommon for them to be described as calf-sized, with saucer eyes and a shaggy coat. Phantom dogs are not always black, however. The one that's supposed to haunt the area around Cothorpe and Hoffam in Lincolnshire is described as white, but still has saucer eyes and is as big as a calf. The Coussif, the traditional fairy dog of Scotland, is dark green in color, with a shaggy tail up its back. Black dogs are more often than not associated with a specific location, such as an old trackway or lane. This is sometimes reflected in the name of the routeway, although not every black dog lane has a tradition of the haunting. There have been some attempts at classification. The folklorist Theo Brown divided the black dog phenomena into three separate types, A, B and C, A being a shape-shifting demon dog, B being a dark black dog calf-sized with shaggy fur, and C, a dog that appears in time with certain ancient festivals in specific areas of the country. Catherine Briggs, the renowned folklorist, splits these further into mysterious demon dogs, the ghosts of human beings, and the ghosts of dogs in their own right. In local traditions, black dogs are seen as death portents, especially those seen in ancient church yards in the form of the Church of Kirk Grimm, Kirk being the Scottish word for church, which is thought to represent a folk memory of a sacrifice. The black dog that used to haunt Peel Castle and a nearby graveyard on the Isle of Man is one such grim. It is said to have scared a century to death. Other sightings from the south of England have been related to coincidental sudden deaths. The next two accounts relate to actual deaths by a black dog over 400 years ago, although it is likely both events were the result of ball lightning. A weather vane in Bungay Market and Suffolk depicts a black dog and a flash of lightning. It commemorates an event on Sunday, the 4th of August 1577. Between 9 and 10 in the morning, while the parishioners of Bungay were at church, a fearful and violent storm broke out, which caused the sky to darken and the church to quake. Suddenly, in the midst of the storm, a black dog appeared within the church. Lit by flashes of fire, it ran about the body of the church causing great fear and panic. It passed between two people kneeling at prayer, killing them instantly, and caused another man to shrivel up, severely burned, although he is said to have survived. About seven miles away, in Blytheburg, at around the same time, another black dog, or possibly the same phenomena, appeared in the parish church preceded by the same thunderstorm. This black dog struck three people dead and left scorch marks on the north church door, which can still be seen today. These two examples suggest phenomena related to the weather conditions, perhaps some form of little understood ball lightning, substantiated by the fact that one person was burned and the scorch marks on the church door. It is difficult to make any snap judgments because of the long span of time involved from the recorded events. Weird Darkness continues in just a moment with even more true stories of black phantom dogs. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, dark thoughts, or addiction, please visit the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered numerous resources to find hope and solutions. For those suffering from thoughts of suicide or self-harm, there is the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, as well as the Crisis Text Line. Both have trained counselors at all hours to help those in need, and the page even includes text numbers for those in the US, 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 dementia, 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. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. You can stay up to date on everything Weird Darkness also maybe wins some cool prizes at the same time by signing up for the email newsletter. It's free and every other month I draw a name at random to win a cool, creepy prize. Sign up for the Weird Darkness newsletter for free at WeirdDarkness.com. We continue now with true stories of Phantom Hounds and The Black Chuck. Other Phantom dogs are more benevolent and stories exist of people being helped from tight spots. For example, Augustus Hare in his book In My Solitary Life recounts a common tale he heard about a man called Johnny Greenwood of Swancliffe. Johnny had to ride through a wood in darkness for a mile to get to where he was going. At the entrance of the wood, he was joined by a black dog. It patterned beside him until he emerged from the trees whereupon it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. On his return journey through the wood, the dog joined him again on the dark woodland path and again disappeared mysteriously when he emerged. Apparently some years later, two prisoners condemned to death confessed that they had decided to rob and murder Johnny that night in the wood, but the presence of the large black dog had stopped them. Black dogs often seem to haunt ancient lanes, trackways, crossroads, old church yards and prehistoric sites. Many of these places were associated with local superstitions and the uncanny. They are liminal places where the veil between worlds was thought to be thin. The haunts of the black dogs are also features said to denote laylines. It has been suggested they represent some form of energy or natural phenomena molded by the mind into an archetype of the black dog. A great deal of work has been done by Earth mystery researchers to suggest that certain geophysical conditions may affect the human mind. These places were recognized by ancient man and that is why black dogs, as some form of archetype, appear at places of ancient sanctity. This same theory has been applied to other unexplained phenomena. Gallows sites, often crossroads, were also common black dog haunts. The black dog was often seen as the spirit of the executed criminal, such as the dog said to haunt a gallows site in Trang Hertfordshire. An old woman was drowned for witchcraft at Trang in the year 1751. A chimney sweep was held responsible in part for the killing and was hanged and gibbeted near to the place of the crime. A black dog came to haunt the place where the gibbet stood and was seen by the village schoolmaster. He described it as being shaggy, as big as a Newfoundland with long ears and a tail, eyes of flaming fire and long teeth. It is interesting to note that at first the black dog appeared as a standing flame, flames and scorched earth being another aspect associated with black dog sightings. Black dogs are also seen as guardians of treasure, especially in Scotland. A black dog was said to guard treasure buried under a standing stone near Murthley in Perthshire. Here we have an account of a black dog at an ancient site and as a guardian of treasure. In summary, it seems that the phenomena of phantom dogs is a complex mix of folklore, sightings and local superstition, which has roots reaching far into the past. There are probably a myriad of different explanations for modern sightings and a phantom black dog is a powerful archetype incorporated into modern stories such as The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. We hope to delve into the mystery further in the future, including some of the many folktales associated with them. Here are just a few of the hundreds of sightings of black dogs. In Thornton, near Bradford, Jim Cravenwell was the haunt of the ghost of Peggy Witt Lantern and Bloody Tongue, a great dog with red eyes and a huge tail. The well is now gone. Meeon Hill has both a phantom black dog and a ghostly pack of white hounds. The death of George Walton in very curious circumstances on the 14th of February 1945 was accompanied by a black dog being hung in a nearby tree. Walton had seen a black dog on nine occasions. The last time it changed into a headless black woman. His sister died shortly after. Although strongly contested, Walton's death has many overtones of the ritual sacrifice of a cunning man. During the Second World War at Brookhouse Snitterfield, which used to be the bellbrook inn, a big black dog was seen. It ran over the tilled earth of the garden without leaving footprints. Very old people of Warwick used to say that the castle was haunted by a black dog. The tale has the hallmarks of a time-incrusted tall story. The local version claims it all started when an old retainer there, a woman called Maul Bloxham, sold milk and butter from the castle's stores for her personal gain. On Christmas, she overdid this and then the Earl of Warwick, getting wind of it, stopped her source of supply. Curiously angry, she vowed that she would get them haunted. She apparently succeeded and returned in the form of a big black dog. In due course, the clergy were called in to exercise the ghost with bell, book, and candle, but for a time they were entirely unsuccessful. Then one day, so it was said, a huge black dog sprang from Caesar's Tower into the river below and so ended the ghost story. At Alveston, Charles Walton, a plow boy, met a phantom black dog on his way home on nine successive evenings. On the final occasion, a headless lady in a silk gown rushed past him and the following day he heard of his sister's death. A black dog has been said to haunt the Newgate Prison for over 400 years, appearing before executions. According to legend, in 1596 a scholar was sent to the prison for witchcraft, but was killed and eaten by starving prisoners before he was given a trial. The dog was said to appear soon after and although the terrified men killed their guards and escaped, the beast is said to have haunted them wherever they fled. A black dog is said to haunt Ivalet Bridge near Ivalet in Swaledale, Yorkshire. The dog is allegedly headless and leaps over the side of the bridge and into the water, although it can be heard barking at night. It is considered a death omen and reports claim that anybody who has seen it has died within a year. The last sighting was around 100 years ago. On Dartmoor, the notorious Squire Cabell was said to have been a ghostly huntsman who sold his soul to the devil. When he died in 1677, black hounds are said to have appeared around his burial chamber. The ghostly huntsman is said to ride with black dogs. This tale inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write his well-known story, The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Coussith, Scottish Gaelic pronunciation, is an enormous otherworldly hound said to haunt the Scottish Highlands. Roughly the size of a cow or large calf, the Coussith was feared as a harbinger of death and would appear to bear away the soul of a person to the afterlife, similar to the manner of the Grim Reaper. Supernatural dogs and the legends are usually completely black or white with red ears. The Coussith's coloration is therefore highly unusual because of its light green color, although it may be derived from the green color often worn by Celtic fairies. 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. I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. Coming up, Dalton Highway is already a scary road for those driving down the ice-covered highways of Alaska. The loneliness on the barren stretch of highway can go on for hours without seeing a single soul, but for one ice-row trucker, that solitude would be interrupted by something terrifying and unexplainable. First, though, sometimes drugs can work too well. For example, a hair loss prevention drug could turn your own children into hairy wolf-man-like monsters. I'll share that story for you in just a second. First, though, if you like to get more Weird Darkness seven days a week, you can get it through the podcast, which you can find wherever you listen to podcasts. I upload episodes seven days per week and then some. You can go to WeirdDarkness.com slash Listen and find a list of all the apps where you can listen to the show. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Listen. Now, let's find out more about that drug that turns babies into werewolves. This story is a bit different than my normal fare, but it is so bizarre I decided to share it anyway, just out of pure curiosity. More than a dozen babies in Spain have been diagnosed with so-called werewolf syndrome after taking contaminated medication according to officials. The infants took a preparation of a meprosal, a drug used to treat conditions caused by excess stomach acid like heartburn. The batch was contaminated with minoxidil, a medication for baldness, according to a statement from the Spanish Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare. Manuel Fuentes of the Official College of Pharmacists of Granada explained to Granada Hoy the drugs are different to the meprosal capsules taken by thousands of adults. As children can't swallow capsules, pharmacists must prepare special meprosal syrups. The condition faded after the children stopped taking a meprosal according to the Spanish Ministry of Health. Parents who have a preparation for babies containing a meprosal should visit their pharmacy to check if it's not from a contaminated lot. Anyone who notices excessive hair growth after using the drug should visit a doctor. On July 11, the Spanish Agency for Medicine and Health Products regulatory body released an alert relating to one batch of a meprosal, official documents show. By August 6, the body had recalled 22 lots. Before the July recall, the health department was notified of 13 cases of the condition known as hypertrichosis. They later learned of three new cases in the southern Spanish province of Granada, prompting the second recall. The Spanish pharmaceutical firm, Farma Quimisa Sur, distributed the 22 batches of the drug and imported the active ingredient from Indian firm Smilax Laboratories Limited. Farma Quimisa Sur and Smilax Laboratories Limited did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Newsweek. Health officials told Granada Hoy the product was contaminated in Asia. Officials stopped the company from manufacturing, importing or distributing drugs in July. Hypertrichosis is characterized by excessive hair on any part of the body when compared with those of the same age, sex and race. In rare conditions, the condition is inherited rather than caused by a drug as it was in Spain. Only 50 such cases though have ever been reported. The condition can also be triggered in cancer patients, where hair can appear on body parts including the eyelids and nose. It is unclear why this happens. Malnutrition in those with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa is also associated with hypertrichosis. The only currently available treatment for forms of the condition not related to drugs is removing the hair including shaving, waxing or performing laser removal on the area. I am an ice road trucker. Every winter I drive my semi up the Dalton Highway in Alaska to deliver supplies. Other drivers complain about how isolated the road is but I love it. Driving through expanses of snow covered wilderness surrounded by nothing but the stars, it is a dream. Well, it was a dream, until the night of January 17, 2017. I was driving the stretch between Coldfoot and the Pruto Bay oil field around midnight. It is the loneliest part of the highway. 200 plus miles with no gas stations, restaurants, no cell phone reception, no traces of civilization at all. And then my headlights rolled over a truck. It had skidded off the road and flipped on its side. From the distance, I couldn't tell if it was fresh or a weak old wreck the recovery crews just hadn't picked up yet. Hey, Jim, I yelled. He was back in the sleeper. We drove together and took turns, so we didn't have to stop for the night. Besides, it was always safer to have a second person if we ran into an emergency. He poked his blonde head out. What? Look, I said. The wreck rapidly approached. It was dark. No headlights, no fire, no lights on in the cabin, just a metal husk breaking the otherwise monotonous Alaskan landscape. Poor fella, he said, reaching for the cup in the holster. A long slurp echoed from behind me. This road gets mighty nasty sometimes. Maybe we should stop, I said, see if they need help. Nah, it's an old wreck. Look how dark it is. Uneasiness settled in my stomach. I'd always felt safe driving up the Dalton Highway because fellow truckers were so helpful. Once, when I'd gotten a flat, no less than three stopped in to make sure I was all right. It was like we were all part of an unspoken brotherhood, looking out for each other. I stomped on the brakes. The truck screeched to a halt. Hey, Jim protested. We're stomping? Sorry, I need to make sure no one's in there. Leaving the headlights on, I swung the door open and pulled myself down. Wait, wait, I'm coming! Jim called after me, pulling on a coat. I didn't wait for him, though. Instead, I walked ahead, ice crunching noisily under my boots. The cold wind bit into my exposed face, and I grimaced. Hello? I called out into the darkness. No answer. Anyone there? I called again. See? No one there, Jim said, coming up behind me. Stopped for nothing. I ignored him, and I walked towards the cabin. He was facing away from us, pointing towards the forest in the distance. The trailer was nondescript. No logos or color, but the back hatch was open. Rolled up just a few inches. Jim called out behind me. See? They removed all the supplies already, left the hatch open. This thing's probably been here for weeks. Okay, I get it. I called back. No, wait. I just want to check out the cabin, all right? Humor me. Humor you. We're wasting precious time, Danny. I ignored him, and walked across the frozen plain anyway. My boots crunching loudly through the snow. I rounded the corner and came upon the cabin. I stopped, dead in my tracks. It was a mangled mess of metal. The hood was crunched like a tin can. The side view mirror dangled, limply. There was no windshield, just a misshapen hole where it used to be. Through it, I could make out the driver's seat. It was horribly buckled and bent, conjuring awful images of what the driver must have looked like. Hello? I called through the window. He looked empty, but just in case. All was silent. It's empty, huh? Jim asked, a wild smile on his face. Yeah, and I don't think the driver made it, I replied. My mouth suddenly dry. The highway. She takes them good sometimes. Nothing we can do. Just a circle of life and all that. Great. Jim was waxing poetic now. Okay Jim, I said, cutting him off. Let's get back on the road. But that's when I noticed it. The snow around the truck was undisturbed. No swirl of frantic footprints from a rescue team. No tire tracks from police cars racing to the scene. No grooves from the body being dragged away. The cabin was empty. The driver had most likely perished and no rescue team had come out. Why aren't there any prints around here? I asked Jim. If the rescue team came out, ah, must be weeks old. As I said, probably snowed 10 times since I got him and the supplies out, covered the prints right up. I guess you're right. That did make sense. Now that I took a closer look, there weren't any skid marks in the snow from the truck either. Defeated, I turned and walked back towards our truck. Wait, what's this? I turned around. Jim was crouched in the snow, trailing a finger across the ground. What's what? These prints! I walked back over and crouched beside him. There were several overlapping trails of footprints. They began at the back door of the trailer, weaved through the snow and ended somewhere in the darkness of the plains. And they looked fresh. The edges were sharp and clean, not softened by the wind or snowfall. That doesn't make any sense. We're in the middle of nowhere, not a single soul for miles around. Then who made these prints? I don't know. Let's find out. Jim walked over to the back door and with a grunt pulled it open. The metallic sound reverberated through the trailer, echoing against the snow. I pulled a flashlight from my pocket and flicked it on. What the hell? The trailer looked… lived in. Empty glass bottles glinted in the light, stacked up in a line against the wall. Clothing was strewn everywhere. In the right corner, they were piled up with a blanket to form a rough bed. There's nobody for 200 miles at least, he said with fascination, pulling himself up into the trailer. What the heck is going on here? Hey, wait! I called after him. We shouldn't. Tools back here, Danny, he called out, his voice echoing in the metal box. All kinds of knives and spears and stuff. I suppose that's how he gets his food. Ruts it down. I stepped onto the lip of the trailer and hoisted myself inside. The air was musty, damp and cold, though warmer than the outside. The floor, which was really the side of the trailer, was tilted at a slight angle. I glanced around. While there were many household items I recognized, knives, shears, clothes, there were some I didn't recognize. A black medallion emblazoned with a strange symbol next to the bed area. A stone bowl and a stick that resembled a mortar and pestle. Danny, take a look at this. I turned the flashlight towards him and jumped back. White bone, twisted mouths, sunken eye sockets, more than a dozen animal skulls all lined up in a neat row at the back wall. The first was tiny, the size of a mouse head. They grew progressively larger. The last ones looking like they belonged to deer, caribou, moose, and painted on the ground under our feet was some sort of symbol. A circle with strange characters all around it, like letters from an unknown language. This is freaking creepy, Jim said. Wish I brought my camera. Despite my thick jacket, a chill went up my spine. Come on, jambles, let's go. Like you said, we're wasting time. We'll get to Pruto late and, oh, now you care about wasting time. His blue eyes met mine. You're just a scaredy cat. That's what you... thunk. We both froze. That thunk sound had been faint, but in the absolute silence of this Alaskan wasteland, it was more than just a random sound. More than the wind, the forest, the earth could produce. You hear that? Jim whispered. We listened, but there was only silence. Okay, let's get out of here, Jim said, taking a step forward. We walked to the front of the trailer, our footsteps shaking the metal, and then we jumped down into the snow. My blood ran cold. A man stood in the darkness, dressed head to toe in black, tattered clothing. A hood veiled his face in shadow, and a knife glinted in his right hand, catching the light of our headlights. We broke into a run. He bolted forward, crunching footsteps rang out behind us, growing louder by the second. My lungs burned in the cold air, but I forced myself forward. My hand fell on the metal handle of the truck. I dove in. Jim followed me a second later. Click, click, click. He madly pressed the lock button. I turned the key and the engine rumbled underneath us. Drive, Jim yelled, panting. My headlights flashed over the man. He stood still in the snow, staring at us with wild blue eyes, gripping his knife tightly. And behind him, more figures materialized around the fallen trailer, all wearing black hooded clothing. They remained still, their heads turning to stare as we pulled onto the highway. Then they were left in the dust as we sped forward into the Alaskan wilderness. We called the police, but by the time they made it out there, the truck had been cleaned up. It was just an empty old wreck, no animal skulls, no strange symbols, no sign that anyone ever lived there. I haven't driven a truck up the Dalton Highway since that night. I still deliver supplies, but to other parts of Alaska. Never again will I voluntarily drive up that cursed road. But sometimes I hear about disappearances along that highway. A lonely trucker here or there vanishing into thin air. His vehicle left behind, parked on the side of the road. And I know he didn't just get lost on that lonely stretch of highway. I believe he was taken. Looks like I still have a little bit of time left here in this hour, so I'll dig into the archives and see if I can find something kind of creepy and fun to share when Weird Darkness returns. Urban legends are thought by most to be tall tales passed down through the ages. Some of the stories are obviously make-believe, while others, as strange as they may seem, have their origins in actual events. Do alligators roam the dark tunnels deep beneath New York City? Do boogeymen who terrorize those afraid of the night really exist? Are killer clowns a myth, born from our fear of the unknown? Or could such evil truly walk among us? These are just a few of the urban legends that are explored in this book. After hearing some of the history for yourself, maybe you will be able to answer the age-old question. Could it be true? Could it be true? Volume 1, Urban Legends by Cindy Parmitter, narrated by Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar. Here a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. Welcome back to Weird Darkness, I'm Darren Marlar. How'd you like to receive a box full of scary stuff in the mail full of fear-inducing objects like creepy collectibles, true crime-themed accessories, frightening flair, blood-curdling books, terrifying trinkets, eerie e-downloads and more? Absolutely free. Well, every other month I'm filming an unboxing video of the newest creepy crate that I get in the mail, and then I'm boxing it all back up and giving it away by random drawing to somebody subscribed to the Weird Darkness email newsletter. And before I close up the box for good, I might toss in a couple of Weird Darkness goodies for good measure. You can keep the creepy crate for yourself, give it away to a weirdo friend or family member, whatever you want. You can watch my latest creepy crate unboxing video and register to win a creepy crate of your own for free. Just go to WeirdDarkness.com slash creepy crate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash creepy crate. Well, forget your hats, sunglasses and knee watches. The summer accessory that you didn't know you need is a poison-detecting guinea pig carrying case. From February 3, 1923, a newspaper article from The Dominion reads, Travelers through America are advised to carry guinea pigs with them to test the quality of any liquor offered them. The animal should be allowed to lap up a few drops of the fluid and then be watched carefully for 15 minutes. If a pleased expression comes over its face, the drink may be taken without fear. If it dies, it is advisable to leave the liquor alone if possible. Each guinea pig should only be used in testing three drinks, as after that, it is impossible to tell whether it is dead or dead drunk. It is said that cases can be procured to carry four rodents. The cases are made to fit the pocket of evening clothes or can be carried by ladies in a vanity case. It was a real newspaper article. So grab yours now for the low, low price of $59 and never leave home without your guinea pig poison detectors. Cases are also available for carrying drunk elephants and drunk kittens. Disclaimer, the manufacturer cannot be held responsible for any animal endangerment lawsuits filed by PETA. Use the carrying case at your own risk. Thanks for listening. 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. That only will you hear a copy of tonight's show. You'll also hear the sudden death overtime content that I did not have time to share during the live show. Tonight I have stories of phantom cars, sea myths and sea monsters, including a look at Megalodon, we'll discuss what's at the bottom of Skeleton Lake and the Himalayas and more. Plus, if you subscribe to the podcast, you'll receive daily episodes of the show. I post seven days a week. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash listen or search for Weird Darkness wherever you listen to podcasts. You can follow Weird Darkness on social media by visiting the Contact social page on the website. And please, tell others about Weird Darkness 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. If you'd like to be a part of the show, you can send in your own paranormal experiences by clicking on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes which I will upload to the Weird Darkness website immediately after tonight's show is ended. Phantom Black Dogs is by Vinty Jane for Unexplained Mysteries. The Terror on Dalton Highway was written by Blair Daniels for Thought Catalog. Drugs turn babies into werewolves is by Kashmir Agander for Newsweek, and Guinea Pig drinking buddy is from Second Glance History. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. James 4, verse 7. Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. In a final thought, the smallest deed is better than the greatest intention. John Burroughs. 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. Coffee. It's a necessity. Most of us can't be bothered to even be civil to our families until we've had our first cup of joe. I can drink coffee all day and often do, and now I've chosen an exclusive coffee just for the task, Weird Dark Roast Coffee. I love chocolate. I mean, who doesn't? So I specifically asked for a blend with at least a hint of cocoa. And Evansville Coffee, who roasts each bag to order, knocked it out of the park when they sent me a bag to taste test for approval. Weird Dark Roast Coffee has deep notes of cocoa, caramel and a touch of sinister sweetness that makes it great hot or cold. Personally, I like to put a little milk in it when I'm drinking it hot, but it is amazing black and poured over ice. But now you can drink it too. And the only place you can find Weird Dark Roast Coffee is at WeirdDarkness.com. This case is rather interesting in that the car itself had no history of violence or death, no discernable reason for why this paranormal activity should happen. With the witness saying of the car, this isn't some used refurbished car I got off of Craigslist after it killed a bunch of innocent kids in a horrible traffic accident. I mean, it has had a few bumps and bruises along the way, that's all. So why should this particular vehicle have this supernatural force attached to it? Who knows? It's an odd case to be sure if it is all true. Some of the entities supposedly haunting cars take on an even more malevolent atmosphere. It almost suggests that these are not the ghosts of the living at all, but rather perhaps something more demonic in nature. A witness from Canberra, Australia told your ghost stories about a Ford Falcon that she'd recently purchased used and which was in fairly good condition except for some odd stains on the upholstery which the dealer wrote off as coffee stains. The strange, rather ominous activity happened almost the first time she drove it. She says, I went to pick up my friend from his house and we drove into the Canberra City Center. We were listening to 87.6 FM, a techno radio station, pretty loudly. We started talking about the blood stains and very shortly after while driving, my steering wheel started to shake. I let go of the wheel and me and my friend were watching in amazement at the event occurring. After about 10 seconds of that, my car decided it would try to ram the car next to me. At this point, I grabbed the wheel to stop the oncoming collision and immediately after the radio cut out with the sound of when an older TV can't find a channel, white noise, I believe it's called, well then after about three seconds of white noise, the radio changed to 66.6 AM. Now it might be coincidental but in my own opinion of the experience, it wasn't. Changing to AM radio is not just a simple change of the signal, you actually have to press a button for it. Me and my mother later found out when trying to get the car registered in Canberra that it was involved in a crash and written off. I know God was watching over me at this time so I changed my bad ways. And or he was protecting me from the bad spirit in the car because after this experience the car did not pass inspection as it was rusted. We checked the car, engine, etc. before buying and there were no signs of rust. It did not pass inspection so we sold it back to the dealers in Sydney for a loss of $500. Ghost? Demon? Or just a wild imagination? A similar story with demonic undertones on the same site comes from a witness called Melinda A from Atlanta, Georgia. She claims that she always kept a cross dangling from a leather string on her rear view mirror. Yet although she was the only one who used the vehicle and indeed the only one with keys to it, she began to find that cross tossed to the floor when she got into the car each day after which things would escalate. She says of the strange sequence of events. I found it to be really odd because you would need to lift the metal cross and leather string that it was hanging from to get it off the mirror. About six months later, I found the cross wrapped around the mirror as if the car had rolled several times. It isn't possible to have this happen from driving. The cross has weight to it and it would physically have to be lifted to wrap several times around the mirror. This time I started to get concerned about what could make this cross move like this. I moved about a year later and the same thing happened at my new house. I considered putting up a camera to catch it on film but I never got around to it. A year or so later I was with my twin on vacation and we were in her new Porsche and when we stopped for lunch and when we came back out to the car, her cross had done the same thing. We were both taken aback but just dismissed it. It's been about eight months and she just called to tell me it's happened again when the car was in her garage. At this point I'm really wondering what is going on. In another case we have a report from a Reddit user who, if her account is to be believed, seems to have had a car displaying a full-on demonic possession. It started when her new car began to break on its own at the most inopportune of times. While at other times it would accelerate or slow down without warning or reason, sometimes almost causing accidents. She also began to notice unexplained handprints on the windshield that were made from the inside of the vehicle on the passenger side, even though she was the only one who ever drove in the car. She began to hear the strange sound of water dripping or sloshing about in the car, even though there was no apparent origin for the sound. And when she brought the car to a mechanic, he was surprised to find water inexplicably pouring down from under the glove compartment. Things got odder still when the car experienced a sudden infestation of ants that seemed to have come from nowhere and for no reason she could figure out. Ants were apparently everywhere no matter what she did to get rid of them, and despite the fact that she never ate in the car and kept it very clean, and this caused her to confide in a friend about what was happening. She says of what happened after that, he thinks my car is haunted. With all the handprints, the sudden automatic braking system, the water and the insects, he even brought up a dream I told him about a year ago, which I regret telling him now because he's so sure that a ghost is in my car. The dream is about me and a friend who's a girl, who I know now as my new classmate whom I met at January and now I'm giving her a ride home, driving home. I ask my friend who's sitting beside me in the car where we should go next and she tells me that we could hang out at her apartment. A little girl behind us suddenly spoke up and I looked at her. I saw her eyes turn dark as night as she grinned at me. I wouldn't do that if I were you. She said it in a playful voice and I glared at her before snapping. And why not? The demon girl just leaned her head on my friend's shoulder and told me, because a demon is obsessed with you and if you're not home in a couple of days he'll be mad. That's when I woke up. I only got my car last January as an early gift and I only met my friend last February. The dream happened last year September. I'm just looking for a good explanation for all this because I drive home alone now after my internship ends by 11pm and I seriously don't want to imagine a ghost or whatever invisible it is sitting beside me in the dark. Could this be demonic forces at work? What's going on here? Although we have looked at nothing but frightening cases so far, it seems that that's not always the case. Cars can be haunted by more benevolent forces as well. Take the account of a commenter on Quora who claims to have had a car which she calls Bessie imbued with a ghostly presence that seemed to want to help. The commenter explains, when you hopped into this car you felt at home, happy at peace. We had Bessie for 12 years and she was a station wagon who loved to travel. My father said he could feel her take over the steering if there was heavy traffic. She kept us safe, she avoided animals safely. Bessie was a perfect lady. She never leaked oil or lost her cool. You could push on the accelerator all you wanted. Bessie kept to the speed limit. The day she stopped and wouldn't move turned out the boat trailer was loose on the back coupling. My father had time to fix the problem and save a highway disaster. Such cases seem to show that the phenomenon of ghostly hauntings seems to expand beyond just the usual suspects of dilapidated old buildings and locations entwined with a dark past. Such mysterious occurrences seem to be able to pop up in the most unlikely of places, including your own car. So what is going on here? Is this ghostly or even demonic forces at work or is it all just misunderstandings and overactive imaginations? The next time you are in your car, be sure to keep an eye on the rear view mirror and that unoccupied seat behind you. It might not be as unoccupied as you thought. My doctor 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 for 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 in 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 and 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. On September 6, 1992, a pair of moose hunters came across an old, rusted bus just outside Denali National Park in Alaska. The bus was a strange sight in the middle of the wilderness, but over the years it had become well-known to hunters and hikers. It was often used as a stopping point for travelers and trappers who visited the area. What was not a usual sight was the crumpled note that had been fixed to the door of the bus. A handwritten letter scrawled on a page torn from a Nikolai Gogol novel which read, Attention possible visitors, S-O-S, I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you. Signed Chris McCandless. But Chris was not out picking berries. He was inside the bus. He had died 19 days before. Sparking a years-long investigation into his life by John Krakauer that was turned into the heartbreaking book Into the Wild. Despite the in-depth account of his travels, though, what we know about Chris' life in the Alaskan wilderness is relatively little. He kept a diary that detailed the events that led up to his death, but the weaker he got, the less sense those entries made, and his death still remains mystery. What we do know is that Chris hitchhiked from South Dakota to Fairbanks, Alaska in April of 1992. The last man to give him a ride was a local electrician named Jim Galleon, who dropped him at the head of Stampede Trail on April 28. Galleon later said that he had deep doubts about Chris' ability to survive in the wild, unforgiving wilderness. Chris, who had been using the name Alexander Supertramp on the road, didn't seem to have the appropriate equipment for survival, but insisted that he be fine with his light backpack, meager rations, several books, rifle, and the pair of Wellington books that Galleon gave him. Chris ended his hike at the old bus, deciding it would make the perfect campsite for his adventurous summer. For the next 113 days, he lived in that bus, surviving off a nine-pound bag of rice that he had brought with him, as well as local plants and small game like squirrels and game birds. At one point he managed to shoot a moose, but the meat went bad before he could figure out how to preserve it. Chris' diary entry is described the food that he ate, and despite his inexperience, he did pretty well. However, the last month of entries told a different story. After three months, Chris decided to return to society. He packed up his camp and began the trek back to the trailhead and the highway. Unfortunately, the trail that he had taken to the bus was now flooded from the snowmelt that had flowed down from the hills. Unable to cross the flooded river, he returned to the bus in despair. From there, the journal entries became bleaker, and he wrote less frequently. One week before his death, he wrote his final entry, which read, Beautiful Blue Berries. From then, until day 113, the last day of his life, his entries were only marked with slashes. On the 132nd day after Chris had been seen alive, his body was found by the moose hunters. One of the men who read the note entered the bus and found what he thought was a sleeping bag filled with rotting food. Instead, he found Chris' body. The cause of his death has been debated ever since. It was initially assumed that he had starved to death. His ride supply had run out, and the hungrier he got, the harder it was for him to find the energy to get up and hunt. In the end, park rangers believed he simply wasted away. However, John Crackhower came to a different conclusion. Based on journal entries that detailed his food sources, Chris may have eaten the poisonous seeds of a wild sweet pea, believing they were something else. Under ordinary circumstances, the seeds might not have been toxic. The poison in them is usually rendered ineffective by stomach acid. However, if he had eaten the seeds as a last resort, his digestive system may have been too weak to combat the poison. The hunters who found Chris' body also found a camera, which contained dozens of photographs taken by mechanics of his journey, including self-portraits. If anything, the photographs deepened the mystery. In them, his physical deterioration is obvious, though the intent behind them is not. His body was wasting away, evidently right before his eyes, yet he continued in solitude, only asking for help when it was too late. Known by many as Skeleton Lake, Rupkhand is a high-altitude Himalayan body of water that sits 16,499 feet above sea level in the northern state of Uttarakhand, India. Every time the snow melts and the ice thaws, this shallow glacial pool reveals the ghastly origins of his nickname. A pile of human skeletons is at rest at the bottom. Scattered around the rim of the lake are even more bone remnants, as well as iron spearheads, rings, and leather slippers. In total, nearly 300 souls call Rupkhand their final resting place. Even more strange, research suggests that nearly all of these eternal residents died at the exact same time. A forest ranger named H.K. Madwal officially stumbled across this location in 1942, though mentions of the lake and its grisly contents date back to the 19th century. The first person to climb the surrounding mountains and see the bones must have been terrified. Rupkhand is awash with corpses, as if it were the site of a mysterious massacre. Later visitors were baffled by just what could have caused so much death at such a remote location. Local folklore told of a goddess furious at the defilements of her mountain sanctuary by disrespectful strangers. To retaliate, she rained down death upon the trespassers, flinging hailstones as hard as iron upon their heads. For years this explanation was dismissed as apocryphal. It would be decades before science ultimately proved this local legend was accurate. DNA tests conducted in 2004 suggest the bones date back to approximately 840 A.D., almost 1200 years ago. The testing also suggests that among the almost 300 human remains present at the lake, there are only two groupings of people, a small clan or family, and a group of porters and guides. The family's DNA leads back to Iran, while members of the servant's troop seem to be local. It is hypothesized that perhaps the wealthy family was in search of new land or new opportunity. While historical documentation of this specific expedition is currently nonexistent, that area of the Himalayas is known for its ancient trade routes. What shocked researchers the most, however, was the way in which this large group died, all from blows to the head that seemed to come from above. Yet the skull fractures didn't point to sharpened weapons, instead some sort of round, blunt object did the deed. This is where legend and science intertwine. Both believe now that while traveling through the mountains, the group was caught by a sudden and deadly hailstorm. Stranded at the pass with no shelter in sight, the travelers were forced to stand and endure the blows of the flying ice chunks. Ultimately, nature prevailed. One by one, the skulls of the travelers were caved in by falling hail. The deaths were followed by a long winter burial in the mountains, preserving the bodies in icy graves for nearly 1200 years. Today, the Alpine Pool is a popular hiking destination for serious trekkers, yet the bones at the bottom of Skeleton Lake serve as an ominous reminder to all those who visit. Respect the awesome power of Mother Nature. Although British anatomists often hunted for fresh cadavers in the 15th century, it was only in the 18th century that demand boomed. In particular, an explosion of new medical schools and rising requirements for students meant that there were not enough bodies to go around. Too bad they didn't know about Skeleton Lake. Enlightened laws also only allowed for medical science to use the bodies of executed criminals. Soon enough, academics turned to illegal body snatching, which required skill in removing the body without taking the clothing or disturbing the ground too much. A lucrative and ethically questionable industry was born that offered a way out of poverty for many. While some responded with cemetery guards and robber-proofed coffins, resurrectionists worked to turn a profit, often by whatever means necessary. William Burke and William Hare both emigrated from Northern Ireland to Scotland to work on the Union Canal. While Burke settled in Tanners Close with his second wife Helen Madougal, Hare worked as an agricultural laborer before moving to Edinburgh in the mid-1820s. The two met in 1827 while working on the harvest at Midlothian, and they and their wives became fast friends. After Hare and his wife moved into Burke's lodging house, the two soon plunged into a world of body snatching, only to become the world's most infamous resurrectionist duo. They first collaborated on selling the body of a deceased lodger to the desperate Dr. Robert Knox of Edinburgh Medical College. To meet Knox's high standards, the pair turned to murder and killed 17 lodgers, prostitutes, and other unfortunates between 1827 and 1829. The Westport murders shocked the medical science capital of Edinburgh, though Burke soon grew overconfident. On the night of October 31st, 1828, he used the pair's trademark method of suffocation, later known as burking, on a Mrs. Doherty after inviting her to his home. Too drunk to deliver her to Knox, Burke was found in the morning and later executed by hanging thanks to Hare's testimony against him. While Hare and Knox both escaped to England, Burke's body was publicly dissected at Edinburgh Medical College, the very college he delivered corpses to, and he was put on display as a skeleton along with a death mask and a wallet was made of his tanned skin. Around the same time, John Bishop and his compatriots James May and Thomas Williams worked as resurrection men in London. After a dozen years of body snatching though, the trio decided to go from stealing corpses to creating them. They specifically focused on street urchins and made around nine guineas per body which would translate to about 1500 U.S. dollars today. At the same time, the ghouls boosted their profits by knocking out and selling teeth to dentists as well. In November 1831 though, Bishop slipped up while preparing a subject for the anatomy instructors at King's College. After he presented them with the corpse, the instructors noticed the boy's suspicious head wound and called the authorities while claiming that they needed change for a 50-pound note. When caught, Bishop and Williams confessed to the murders of a 10-year-old boy, 14-year-old agricultural worker, and a 35-year-old woman. They admitted modeling their activities on Burke and Hare but threw their victims into a well head first to die after being doused with rum and laudanum. In his confession, Bishop declared with pride that he had sold as many as a thousand anatomical subjects. Soon enough though, he was just another anatomical subject himself, though his crimes inspired Charles Dickens to focus on the plight of beggar boys in his writings, especially the Pickwick Papers. In the same year of 1831, the body of Catherine Walsh of Whitechapel was sold to surgeons at the London Hospital. However, they quickly realized that the woman in question had been murdered. Walsh, who sold lace and cotton for a living, had been living with Elizabeth Ross and her family. Until that point, Elizabeth had largely been known for her love of gin and thieving. Upon investigation, though, Ross' 12-year-old son and his father Edward Cook reported seeing the young mother with their lodger shortly before her death. When Elizabeth was then accused of murdering Walsh and selling her body, she herself reported last seeing their lodger going off with Cook and her son. However, the damage was done and rumors began to fly about the neighborhood cats disappearing around the Ross' home. In court, she was portrayed as a large, burly Irish woman who could easily kill a man in cold blood. Yet actual sketches showed a slight woman and the son's testimony seemed biased in favor of his father. With little evidence, Ross was convicted and executed by a city held by an intense fear of murderous body snatchers. Not all encounters with resurrection men were negative, though. In a broad sheet from shortly before Burke and Harris's spree, John McIntyre describes a harrowing experience of being saved by grave robbers. The April 15, 1824 article starts at his deathbed, with the man mysteriously paralyzed but still fully conscious. He watched in silence and horror as his family gathered and then mourned over his coffin at his wake, him completely conscious the entire time. Then McIntyre details what it was like to be sealed in his coffin, taken to the graveyard and buried with clods of dirt falling onto his wooden prison. Silence fell and McIntyre was left to the ensuing darkness. As he imagined his ensuing death, the man heard the sound of digging. A gang of body snatchers pulled him from the grave, stripped him of his shroud, and delivered him to a local university. There he was laid out on a dissection table as students and doctors alike filled the room. McIntyre realized he was in a lecture hall shortly before he felt the knife slicing his chest and finally woke. Once the doctors realized their corpse was not dead, they were able to fully revive him and the man recovered. Ross, Bishop, Burke and Harris Crimes all led to the 1832 Anatomy Act, which combated body snatching by increasing the supply for medical research. Yet decades later, in 1885, a similarly gruesome crime was uncovered in San Francisco, California. After complaints of a stench from a building in Chinatown, the city's coroner uncovered decomposing human remains in the basement. In one room, workers were busily boiling the bodies down, scraping the flesh off in order to speed the process. Most bodies had been taken from California area cemeteries, likely on behalf of their family members back home in China. They had paid for their late loved ones' bodies to be boiled down to the bones so that they could be easily shipped back home. By the end of their investigation, authorities had recovered over 300 human bodies from the building's basement. Even during its heyday, body snatching was an especially uncertain business. Not only were bodies not always legally obtained, but they could even be far from dead. That was the case for Robert Morgan, who was captured and tied up in a sack by hackney coachman and resurrection man John Bottomley in 1816. In other cases, the bodies of loved ones could be ransomed for cash. For instance, in 1881, the Earl of Crawford's body was taken from his mausoleum in Aberdeen and held for ransom. Still, the profits of body snatching were hard to resist, with an adult corpse in the early 1800s easily earning four pounds and four shillings, or around 450 U.S. dollars today. As a result, even with increased regulation, the practice took quite some time to abate. To this day, people are often willing to steal other people's bodies, so long as they can make a tidy profit in the process. Up next, Megalodon died out millennia ago. But our fascination with this mighty shark will likely never go extinct. We are so obsessed with this ancient Leviathan that people still claim to spot Megalodon even today. But that couldn't be possible, could it? And Megalodon isn't the only creature of the deep, people report citing. For centuries, a denizen of oceanic monsters have allegedly been seen. But the question is whether or not they are fact or fantasy. These stories, when Weird Darkness returns. Paranormal experiences, encountering extraterrestrials, extraordinary states of consciousness, spiritual phenomenon, encounters with non-human entities that can't be explained by science. These stories of what people have come across are ubiquitous here on Weird Darkness. And often, those who have had these encounters choose to stay quiet and not even tell close friends or family out of fear of ridicule, and they suffer silently, trying to deal with the internal horror of what they've experienced. If I'm describing you or someone you know, there is now a place you can turn to for professional counseling. From experts who, unlike others in their field, are open to the paranormal, supernatural, and extraterrestrial experiences of others. And they're not there to explain away your experience, but to help you recover from it and move forward with living. I'm referring to the Opus Network. If you want to reach out for help or learn more, look for the Opus Network towards the bottom of the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. Humans are fascinated by sharks. And the larger the shark is, the tighter its grip on our collective imagination. So let's take a look at the biggest shark of them all, Carcarol Cleese Megalodon, or Megalodon for short. It's thought to have grown to approximately 60 feet long, and when extinct, approximately 2.6 million years ago. However, not everybody is convinced that Megalodon is actually dead and gone. Some Megalodon truthers think the massive shark is still alive and well, and living undiscovered in the Earth's oceans, and they will often point to the sightings I'm about to share with you as evidence. Even if you believe that Megalodon is long extinct, in which case you are in good hands, scientists everywhere agree with you, the myth of the modern Megalodon is still fascinating. If nothing else, these alleged Megalodon sightings prove humans are fascinated by the ocean's mysterious depths. And in an ideal world, the fascination might lead to increased interest in conservation of actual extant sharks. This first entry isn't a sighting, but a fossil find that sometimes is brought up and frequently misinterpreted in discussions of whether or not Megalodon is still with us. In 1875, the British ship HMS Challenger pulled up a pair of Megalodon teeth from a seabed. In 1959, Dr. W. Sharnesky of London's Queen Mary College attempted to date the teeth by studying the buildup of the manganese dioxide layer on each tooth. Through examining manganese dioxide deposition, Sharnesky determined the teeth were 11,000 and 24,000 years old, respectively. If correct, those findings would indicate that, at the very least, Megs have gone extinct far later than previously thought. However, manganese dioxide dating is often unreliable, particularly in dating shark teeth. As Ben S. Roche writes in the 1998 Cryptozoology Review article, a critical evaluation of the supposed contemporary existence of carcaradone Megalodon, shark teeth are more durable than typical fossil bones, and they are able to withstand considerable erosion. This can make it challenging to determine how old the teeth actually are. Many researchers now think it likely that shark teeth once believed to be post-Pliocene Megalodon teeth were indeed older specimens that were somehow moved from their original, older sedimentary layer and deposited in a younger layer. In his book Sharks and Rays of the Australian Seas, Australian naturalist David Steed shared an anecdote which some believe describes a terrifying encounter with Meg herself. According to Steed, in 1981 he spoke with several crayfish fishermen who were so terrified of a shark they saw in their fishing grounds off Broughton Island, they refused to return to the ground for days. They claimed to have seen a shark of unbelievable size surface in the deep water of the fishing grounds, taking the pots and mooring with it. Given that the crayfish pots were over three feet in diameter and loaded with a heavy catch, that would be no small feat. Steed and the local fisheries inspector, A. Mr. Patton, questioned the men who all agreed to the shark's monstrous size. One claimed that its head along was at least as long as the roof of the wharf shed Nelson's Bay. Many said it measured around 115 feet in length. Others said the water seemed to boil where it surfaced. All of them were confident that it was a shark rather than a whale and that it was pale white in colouring. Given that the men they spoke to were all hardened fishermen accustomed to sharks, whales and other sea creatures, the conversations they had with these frightened witnesses left quite an impression on Steed and Mr. Patton. But even if the shark observed by the fisherman were as massive as described, several signs indicate that it still could not have been mighty megalodon. As Roche writes in his 1998 paper, if megalodon were alive in the modern world and surviving in the deep sea, it is unlikely he would be the white colour described in the 1918 accounts. Most deep sea sharks are dark rather than white, although there is a general misconception that dark deep sea habitats result in lack of pigmentation. In his 1978 book Let's Go Fossil Shark Tooth Hunting, author B. C. Cartmel describes an alleged incident that took place off the edge of Australia's Great Barrier Reef in the 1960s. According to Cartmel, the sailors involved initially refused to speak of the incident because they feared teasing. But after time, they admitted that when their 85-foot ship was forced to weigh anchor for engine repairs, the captain and crew were shocked to see a gargantuan white shark swim slowly past their anchored ship. It rivaled the entire boat in size. All aboard agreed it was not a whale. But was it Meg herself? Probably not, but whatever the sailors saw that day, it is proof that the ocean is a fascinating place. The Black Demon of Cortez is believed to be a massive black shark seen off Mexico's Baja Coast. Some reports allege that the big boy may even be comparable in size to the ancient Megalodon. In one alleged encounter, fisherman Eric Mackey reported that the Black Demon rocked his boat while its towering tail stuck five feet out of the water. Of course, if the Black Demon is real, that doesn't mean it's a Megalodon. It could easily be a plankton-eating whale shark or even a large great white with melanism. The enormous black shark was the focus of an episode of the History Channel Cryptozoology TV show Monster Quest. However, the investigators failed to find any evidence of the fabled demon. Novelist and deep sea angler Zane Gray claimed to have had an experience with a massive shark that some believe could have been Megalodon. In his novel Megalodon, Fact or Fiction, Rick Emmer writes that Gray claimed to have seen one of the man-eating monsters of the South Pacific, a shark much larger than his 30-40-foot boat. Apparently the shark was yellow-green with a square head, immense pectoral fins at a few white spots. In other words, not a mere harmless white shark. As fun as it is to imagine these stories are evidence that Megalodon is still alive, that's just not the case. As Megan Balk, a Megalodon researcher at the University of New Mexico, told the Daily Beast, there is no doubt in the scientific community that Megalodon is extinct. Balk explains that Megalodons stayed close to the coast, so if they were still alive today, we'd know it. It would be hard to miss a 50-plus-foot super predator roaming the shores. According to Balk, most large sharks occur in the upper 500 meters of the water column, probably due to productivity. The deep is much too nutrient-poor to support such a large animal. In many ways, Shark Week is responsible for popularizing the myth that Megalodon is still around. In 2014, Discovery aired the highly controversial Shark Week mockumentary Megalodon the Monster Shark Lives. The incredibly misleading program presented evidence that Megalodon was not only still alive but also attacking humans and boats. Although a brief disclaimer at the end of the so-called documentary explained that it was actually a work of fiction, many viewers were understandably fooled by the eyewitness accounts and interviews with quote-unquote scientists. The next year, Discovery aired a follow-up mockumentary called Megalodon the New Evidence, which only compounded the confusion. Megalodon also garnered increased curiosity in the public eye around the release of the 2018 movie The Meg. Based on the Steve Alton book, Meg, a novel of deep terror, The Meg featured Jason Statham going fist to fin with the prehistoric predator after the shark escapes from the Mariana Trench. After entering the open ocean, the shark goes on to eat a whale and terrorize swimmers at a beach in China before Statham saves the day. Although the action movie was more explicitly fictional than the infamous 2014 Discovery documentary, it's easy to understand how the different representations of Megalodon in pop culture could cause debate. Considering Shark Week 2019 launched with the special expedition unknown Megalodon and a The Meg sequel is already rumored to be in the works, it's likely confusion over this prehistoric predator will persist. Sadly, even if Megalodon were discovered to be alive today, experts say it's likely humans would soon put them on the path to extinction again. Conservationist Shark Expert and Shark Week critic David Schiffman wrote in 2014 that if Megalodon were alive today, it would probably be hunted to extinction for its fins. He estimates that if a hypothetical modern-day Megalodon has 1.5 metric tons of fins, it could be sold for around $600,000 and make approximately 70,456 bulls of Megalodon shark fin soup. And as Schiffman points out, if the hypothetical overfishing of a species that has been extinct for millions of years as you upset as it has me, you should learn more about the real overfishing of shark species that are still around. At least for now. Are you a business owner or marketing manager? How would you like to share your product or service with our Weirdo family of listeners? Whether your business is worldwide, nationwide, or local, I would love to tell people about what you have to offer. To get your business heard in Weird Darkness or just get information about advertising in the podcast, visit WeirdDarkness.com Megalodon is not the only sea monster we get reports of. Humans have always been fascinated by the ocean. After all, even today, we are not entirely certain what lies beneath the waters that cover more than 70% of the Earth's surface. So it is no wonder that storytellers throughout history, from the most ancient mythologies to modern monster movies, have populated those dark waters with all sorts of giant ocean monsters, ready to wreak havoc on the surface world at a moment's provocation. Some of these mythic monsters are so large they can lay waste to entire cities with ease, while others are no bigger than the creatures that actually inhabit the oceans of our world. But all of them have captured human imagination throughout the years, just like Meg herself. Let's look at just a few of our favorite sea monsters, from the mists of prehistory to the silver screen of the last few decades. Cthulhu It would not be a proper sea monster list without touching on at least a few of the squamous entities that dwell beneath the waves in the stories of HP Lovecraft. Cthulhu is probably the old gent's most famous creation, described by Lovecraft himself as resembling an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature. According to Lovecraft's work, Cthulhu waits, dreaming in his house in the sunken city of Ralea, and when he wakes up, there will be trouble. Dagon While Cthulhu may be Lovecraft's best known sea monster, he is by no means the only one. An actual deity from ancient times, Dagon is not only mentioned in some of Lovecraft's most famous stories, the esoteric order of Dagon plays a major role in The Shadow over Innsmouth, but also has a story of his own, named after him, and lent his name to Stuart Gordon's 2001 Lovecraftian film, Dagon, despite that movie sharing more in common with The Shadow over Innsmouth than it actually does with Lovecraft's story of Dagon. Ebyra Beginning in 1954, Toho created a sort of cottage industry, releasing films starring their own homegrown radioactive monster, Godzilla. Over the years, Godzilla went up against many threats, several of which came out of the ocean. Heck, Godzilla himself is technically a sea monster. But for a sea monster list, why not go with the creature that lent its name to the 1966 film, Godzilla vs the Sea Monster? In the movie, Ebyra is a giant crustacean controlled by an evil organization known as Red Bamboo. Ebyra later reappears, thanks to the magic of stock footage, in All Monsters Attack, and then later in Godzilla Final Wars. Ebyra is superficially similar to the monster Ganyms, a mutated stone crab that appears in the 1970 film, Yogg Monster from Space, or also known as Space Amoeba. Giganto In the 50s and 60s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby populated the pages of comic books with a lot more than just some of their greatest superheroes. They also filled them with lots of big, lumpy monsters, many of whom came out of the sea. Few of these seafaring brutes, however, are as memorable as Giganto, actually the name of a whole race of giant whales with arms and legs who helped the Atlanteans attack the surface world, beginning in Fantastic Four number four, published in May of 1962. Kraken Sea Monster names can be confusing, and the kraken is a prime example. The word comes to us from Norwegian, where it means an unhealthy or twisted animal. But it entered the popular lexicon when it was borrowed for one of the main antagonist monsters in Ray Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans film. While Harryhausen's Kraken was a humanoid sea monster with tentacle-like arms and a fishy tail, the mythological kraken more closely resembles a giant squid. The second Pirates of the Caribbean movie featured a more mythologically accurate depiction of the kraken, while the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans boasted a critter that was something of a mixture of the two, also incorporating some crab-like elements. The version of the kraken that shows up in Clash of the Titans may have been inspired by the mythological ketos, taken from the Greek word ketos, meaning a large fish or sea monster. When Queen Cassiopeia ticked off Poseidon by claiming that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than the Nereads, sea nymphs who accompanied Poseidon, he punished them by sending the sea monster ketos to attack Atheopia. The king and queen consulted an oracle and were told to sacrifice Andromeda to the monster in order to spare their kingdom. They chained her up to a rock, but she was saved when Perseus slew ketos. In some versions of the story, he did this using Medusa's head. Certainly sounds a lot like the Kraken of Clash of the Titans, doesn't it? Ketus later lent its name to a constellation and also showed up to Menace Sinbad's crew in the animated film Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas. Atoia There are loads of giant and not-so-giant sea monsters populating the movies, from the giant octopus of It Came from Beneath the Sea to more recent creatures, like those in, say, Megashark vs. Giant Octopus. But one of my favorites is the thing that attacks the Argonautica in Stephen Summers' 1998 Aliens-like film Deep Rising. While one of the characters within the movie hypothesizes that the creature is an evolution of a type of Cambrian worm known as the Atoia, the end result is something more closely resembling the mythical Kraken. Skyala and Charibdus Something of a matched set, Skyala and Charibdus also come to us from Greek mythology, specifically the Odyssey. Two monsters dwelling on either side of the Strait of Messina, Skyala represented the dangers of the rocky shore and was depicted in a variety of ways, including as a woman with a dragon-like tail and dog heads sprouting from her body, while Charibdus represents a deadly whirlpool. The two monsters have given us an idiom that dates back to this very day with between Skyala and Charibdus, meaning about the same thing as between a rock and a hard place. Sirens Famed for luring unwary sailors to smash their ships upon the rocks, the sirens are known for their lovely and enchanting songs, with which their names have become virtually synonymous. In Greek mythology, the sirens plagued both Jason and the Argonauts and Odysseus on their respective voyages. Most depictions of the sirens show them as part women, part bird, though some more recent variants have taken a looser approach, as in the 2003 animated adventure, Sinbad Legend of the Seven Seas, in which the sirens are portrayed as a sort of living water taking on humanoid form. The Terrible Dogfish In Disney's 1940 animated feature film version of Pinocchio, Gepetto and Pinocchio are swallowed by a sea monster named Monstro, whose portrayed as a giant sperm whale. In Carlo Collodi's original 1883 book, The Adventures of Pinocchio, however, that role is filled by the Terrible Dogfish, a giant ocean monster also known as the Attila of Fish and Fisherman. According to Collodi, the shark-like dogfish is larger than a five-story building and has three rows of teeth in its enormous mouth, which is plenty big enough to swallow ships, and of course, Pinocchio and Gepetto. Jormungandr In Norse mythology, Jormungandr is also known as the Midgard Serpent, because it is so long that it wraps all the way around the world and can hold its own tail in its mouth. The offspring of Loki and a giantist named Ogriboda, when the Midgard Serpent releases its tail, it will mark the beginning of Ragnarok. During that cataclysmic event, Thor will fight a final battle with Jormungandr, during which he will slay the mighty Serpent only to then fall dead himself from its venom. Sea Bishop According to sea monster myth and legends, the sea bishop or bishop fish was caught and taken to the king of Poland who showed it to a group of Catholic bishops. When the bishops released the creature, it made the sign of the cross before disappearing back under the waves. The bishop fish is a type of fish that looks like a man, specifically like a Catholic bishop, while other variations include legends of the sea monk, a fish that looks like a monk. Later experts came to the conclusion that the sea monk was probably actually an angel shark, a type of shark that is also known as a monk fish. The bishop fish made an appearance in the fourth volume of Conrad Gesner's Historia Animalium, an inventory of Renaissance zoology, as well as Johann Zahn's Specula Physico Mathematica Historica Notabilium, and it has been associated with the imagery of the half-human half-fish sages known as Apkalu in ancient Mesotopian mythology. Lion Turtle This mythic sea monster exists in the world of Avatar the Last Airbender, but unlike other creatures on this list, the gigantic half-chimera half-turtle animal is pretty benevolent. In the television series, Aang, the main protagonist, accidentally encounters one of these fearsome creatures when he swims toward a floating island just off the coast in a trance. When he snaps out of it, he realizes the island he's sitting on top of is actually the back of this large creature. He dives into the ocean to communicate with it. The backs of lion turtles are so large that they host their own entire ecosystem on their shell. In The Legend of Korra, the successor to Avatar the Last Airbender, a large number of these creatures existed in the past, serving as both shelter and guardians for humans. In the early days of humanity, settlements were built on the backs of these creatures since they were the only safe place for humans to thrive. This was the case because the world outside the lion turtle towns and villages was populated by troublesome spirits that had a tendency to attack humans. In addition to this, lion turtles also provided humans with the ability to bend fire, water, earth and air when they traversed outside the colonies to gather resources. Avatar the Last Airbender didn't create these island-sized lion turtles' whole cloth, though. They are inspired by the legends of Aspeta Shalone, which are described in Medieval Bestiaries as turtles or fish so large that they are mistaken for islands by sailors. Ritosaurus Before Godzilla, there was The Beast from 20,000 fathoms. This 1953 monster movie takes its inspiration from The Foghorn, a Ray Bradbury story about a sea monster that falls in love with a lighthouse's Foghorn. In the film, the monster is a Ritosaurus, a made-up dinosaur that is awakened from hibernation by atomic testing and the Arctic Circle. Sounds like a Godzilla movie already, doesn't it? The Ritosaurus heads south, destroying a lighthouse along the way in a scene reminiscent of Bradbury's short story before finally meeting its end at New York's Coney Island. Brought to life by special effects legend Ray Harryhausen, the Ritosaurus was far from the last sea monster that Harryhausen would bring to screens. He also contributed creatures to other parts of this list, including the giant octopus in It Came from Beneath the Sea and, of course, the Kraken in Clash of the Titans. Umebozu In Japan, these sea creatures were pure nightmare fuel for sailors who believed in the myths surrounding this creature. Umebozu is a giant, shadowy, humanoid-like monster who terrorizes sailors who are unlucky enough to cross paths with it during a voyage. Upon encountering the creature, what was once a beautiful day with calm waters immediately turns into thunderous chaos with harsh waves and never-ending rain. According to Japanese mythology, when an Umebozu appears, they will either immediately attack a ship and drown its crew or ask for a barrel from the ship's supply as an offering. If the crew complies with the creature's demand, sometimes the Umebozu will spare the ship. But in order to ensure a safe travel away from the sea monsters, sailors say that giving the Umebozu a bottomless barrel will leave the creature confused, giving the ship and its crew an opportunity to flee before the Umebozu realizes that it has been tricked. A Tropical Horror The British author William Hope Hodgson produced a vast and varied body of work around the turn of the century. But what he is perhaps best known for are his stories of horror on the high seas. Returning again and again to the weed-choked wastes of the Sargasso Sea, Hodgson's sea stories had the ring of truth to them, due in part to the fact that Hodgson himself had served several years as a sailor. The ocean in a William Hope Hodgson story is populated by all sorts of weird monsters, from ghost pirates to giant crabs to sinister fungi to things even more impossible to describe. Yet describe them Hodgson did, and one example is the epitomous thing in his story, a Tropical Horror. Rising from the bulwarks, Hodgson writes, seen plainly in the bright moonlight is a vast slobbering mouth of fathom across. From the huge dripping lips hang great tentacles. As I look, the thing comes further over the rail. It is rising, rising, higher and higher. There are no eyes visible, only that fearful slobbering mouth set on the tremendous trunk-like neck which even as I watch is curling inboard with the stealthy celerity of an enormous eel. Capricorn More often than not, when we hear the word Capricorn, our minds immediately jump to birth charts and zodiac signs, but this sea monster actually has its roots in Greek mythology. Capricorns have the face and upper body of a goat and the tail of a fish, making it capable of swimming and laying out on shores. Despite anatomically making zero sense whatsoever, these creatures were capable of speech and were often favored by the gods. The mythology behind Capricorns starts with Precus, the original Capricorn who fathered the entire race. Precus was granted immortality and the ability to turn back time by Kronos, the god of time. When his Capricorn children walked on the shore and stayed out to sea too long, they ended up becoming regular goats who lost their ability to swim, speak and think. In an effort to revert this, Precus used his time-reversing ability to turn the regular goats back into Capricorns. Precus couldn't keep up with how many times his children repeatedly stayed on the shore though, so he gave up trying to remedy the situation and led a life of loneliness. Taking pity on Precus, Kronos turned the creature into the constellation that we all know today, so he could happily see how all of his goat children are doing from the sky. Gyarados This intimidating sea monster has appeared many times throughout the Pokémon series. Gyarados, which I'm sure I'm butchering the name of, as I have with many of the names on this list, thrives in both fresh and saltwater and is infamously known for its bad temper and destructive nature. Trainers in the Pokémon universe who are capable of capturing and taming this beast are said to share a powerful bond with Gyarados, since the creature will repress its violent instincts to obey its master. Gyarados' sea serpent design was actually inspired by dragons in Chinese mythology. Unlike European dragons, these creatures are very serpent-like in shape and have distinct whiskers on their faces. Funny enough, Gyarados also evolves from the very useless Magikarp, a fish Pokémon that's incapable of doing anything but splashing about. According to Pokémon lore, it's this very dramatic shift in brain structure during evolution that causes Gyarados to have violent tendencies. Vodgenoi Rooted in Slavic mythology, Vodgenoi are water spirits who take on the form of a naked old man with a frog-like face. After spending so much time in fresh and saltwater, these creatures tend to have moss, algae and other plant-like growth all over their bodies, giving them a distinct green color. Vodgenoi are said to be relatively calm and can often be seen floating down a river or along the shore on a log or driftwood. In popular culture, these creatures have appeared in the Witcher series, where they have formed a society and share the ocean with other races. Despite their old appearance and peaceful demeanor, if angered, Vodgenoi can be quite destructive. In Slavic lore, if anyone angered these sea creatures, the Vodgenoi would destroy man-made structures near the body of water it resided in or drown humans and animals in the area. Worst case scenario, a really mad Vodgenoi would drag its victims down to its underwater home where they would be enslaved for eternity. Leviathan Hebrew in origin, this terrifying sea monster is often drawn and described as being a water reptilian of some sort. Immensely large in size, the Leviathan appears in the Old Testament as a sea serpent with multiple heads. In this scene, God kills the creature and it offers its carcass as food for the Hebrews. As a creature rooted in a religion that comes from ancient Mesopotamia, this creature has been interpreted in a variety of ways in different religions and cultures. As Judaism continued to develop, the Leviathan upgraded from sea serpent to the water dragon that many associate with the creature today. In Christianity, the Leviathan is presented as a ravenous demon that has an insatiable appetite for all of God's creations. In some Christian interpretations, the Leviathan might also be just a giant crocodile. Because of this creature's massive size and underwater dwelling, the name Leviathan is actually used as a general term for describing large sea monsters. More than likely, due to its very old origins, the Leviathan is pretty much the root of most sea creature myths. Therefore, the Leviathan easily takes home the title for the oldest and most fearsome of sea creatures. It's kind of interesting that the Leviathan is supposed to have double armor on its belly, comes from the sea, and breathes fire. Sounds a lot like Godzilla. Sigmund the Sea Monster Not all sea monsters are scary, of course. In fact, the star of the Sid and Mardi Croft children's show, Sigmund and the sea monsters, was a sea monster himself named Sigmund, and he got in trouble with his sea monster family precisely because he couldn't or wouldn't scare humans. Along with Sigmund himself, the show featured the rest of his aquatic clan, including his two brothers named Slurp and Burp, and their parents Big Daddy Ooze and Sweet Mama Ooze. When Salem Roanoke took a job near his family's new home as a hired hand in the Texas Hill Country, he anticipated learning the ranchers' trade, but a series of strange events, shocking murders, and unholy revelations divert him down another path. This terrifying trajectory puts him directly into the middle of a struggle between monsters, magic, and men. Armed and backed by a militia of ranchers, Salem attempts to combat the creeping tide of evil that threatens to engulf his new home and destroy the people most important to him. Will Salem manage to save his home, or have his actions condemn everyone he hopes to save? The Witch Trials A summer of wolves and season of the witch by SR Roanoke. Available in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions, look for The Witch Trials by SR Roanoke on Amazon, or find it on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash audiobooks. And click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos. 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