 Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode... The Axe Murders in Villisca, Iowa. The DeFail Murders made famous by the Amityville Horror. Two crime scenes where no one heard a thing. The same thing happened in the charming little town of Churchill's Grove. A story not so famous, but just as disturbing. Lillydale, where spiritualism is celebrated and practiced more than just the spooky months. Populated by hundreds of psychics and mediums, it has become a kind of tourist attraction for those seeking a psychic reading. But first, Bowden Road in Huntsville, Texas seems to have no end of paranormal activity and strange experiences, particularly the section of road that leads straight into Martha Chapel Cemetery. Bowden Road is considered so haunted locals have come to call it Demon's Road. We begin there. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to enter contests to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Bowden Road in Huntsville, Texas, perhaps better known as Demon's Road, has a steady flow of reports regarding the experiences travelers claimed to have had while driving down the Old Road. People that wander off down Demon's Road tell tales of disturbing encounters and an eerie feeling that sweeps over anyone who dares disrupt the spirits said to be lingering down Demon's Road. The Old Road leads to an old cemetery known as Martha's Chapel Cemetery. Locals warn curious people who desire to brave the path or visit the graveyard not to provoke the spirits. Many of those warnings are spoken by those who claim that a spirit followed them home after being in that area. In May of 2010, a woman reported the encounter her husband and their friends had while at the cemetery. She claimed they saw a man wandering through the cemetery one evening but did not pay much heed to the wanderer. A few days later, as the woman was getting into the shower, she turned around to close the shower curtain and much to her surprise, there in her bedroom stood the same man they had seen wandering through the cemetery. The man disappeared after instilling immense fear in the woman and she has not reported seeing him since. According to one man's story, he and a buddy saw a hand protruding from a grave in the cemetery off Demon's Road. Eventually, the whole arm was said to be out from within its grave and grasping around in search of something or anything. The man moved towards the grave against the persistent urging of his friend. He said he bent down to touch the hand with his friend pulling at him desperately the whole time. His friend's pleadings did not stop him from making contact with the hand which in turn allegedly grasped his hand and began to pull him downward toward the grave. He was able to pull free from the hand. He turned to his horrified pal who asked if he was okay before noticing that there was something standing just behind his friend. He darted towards his friend in an effort to protect him from whoever was behind him. Just before he reached his friend, the man behind his friend lifted his head and looked at him. According to the man, the figure had been standing behind his friend and he looked exactly like his friend who had been begging him to leave. When he turned to look at his real friend, he wasn't there. The man then says he bolted and headed for the vehicle. As he raced up to the car, he noticed handprints in the dust on the car. The man said that as he climbed into the safety of the car, he realized his friend was dead in the backseat. Witnesses report large handprints being left on their vehicles. Some witnesses claim the handprints appear to be where somebody or something unseen grabbed at their car. Almost 100 car owners who found prints on their vehicle have reported these encounters. Reports of mysterious red lights seen along Demon's Road are also often made. Those who claim to have seen the lights say that the number of lights that appear depends on the number of people traveling in the vehicle. One group of four said they were leaving the road at approximately 4 a.m. and four red lights appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly, four handprints appeared on the hood of the truck, according to one of the men in the group. Some say a cult believed to be that of the KKK has been spotted down Demon's Road holding ritual ceremonies. It's even been said the members of the cult have been seen drinking blood from a sacrificed dog. Others allege that they were visited by apparitions of a young child with glowing eyes riding a tricycle while on the road. A strange, faceless, threatening creature is also said to appear to some people. Whatever form the spirits choose to reveal themselves in, the spirits have never been reported as anything less than hostile and terrifying or at least frightening. So if you must go down Demon's Road in Huntsville, Texas, or if you just cannot resist the urge to explore the unexplained, please remember not to provoke or disrespect the spirits along your way. Steer clear of those who have passed on but are attempting to escape their graves and avoid becoming the legendary cult's next sacrifice. And it's probably best not to let a ghostly hitchhiker follow you home. When Weird Darkness returns, the Axe Murders in Voluska, Iowa, the DeFeo Murders made famous by the Amityville Horror, two crime scenes where no one heard a thing. The same thing happened in the charming little town of Churchill's Grove, a story not so famous, but just is disturbing. The Simon Peter Nelson Murders, up next. Do you keep a journal or diary? If not, maybe you should consider it. It's been shown that journaling can help you reduce stress, help relieve depression, build self-confidence. It boosts your emotional intelligence, helps with achieving goals, inspires creativity, and more. In fact, my friend, S. N. Lenees, has created a Weird Darkness-themed journal just for you. Full of blank pages for you to use as a diary, make notes for class or office meetings, jot down ideas for that novel you want to write. Use it for keeping a mileage log if you travel for business, whatever you want. In fact, she has numerous styles of journals to choose from. Along with the Weird Darkness journal, there's one for dealing with grief, for teachers' notes, for medical residencies, keeping track of your meds or health routine, and several others. Journals make a great gift for others, but it's also a great gift for yourself and your own mental health. No matter what you might want a journal for, my friend Anne has it. And you can see all of our journals, including the one for Weird Darkness, on the sponsors and friends page at WeirdDarkness.com. The following was written by a good friend of mine, Stu Wallen, who, along with me, lives in Rockford, Illinois. And I had no idea about this story until Stu decided to write about it. It's dark in the slumbering home, and he creeps from room to room. This is my house. His dark outline appears in a bedroom doorway, but the sleeping eyes inside don't see him. He hesitates there, savoring the moment, taking a deep breath, releasing it slowly, quietly. Now poised, he sets in motion what he's come to do. June 10, 1912. During an overkill, Blitz-style attack in Beliska, Iowa, an unknown assailant acts as six children and two adults to death as they slept in their beds. How long would that have taken? There's little evidence that anyone woke up before the killer reached their bed, and neighbors never heard a thing. He steps from the bedroom and into the hallway. He has begun. His heart is pounding and his chest is heaving. He's clutching the weapon in his fist. It seems to bristle with electricity. He's under its control now. Even his shadow seems different now. The moon knows. It's no longer the likeness of a man silhouetted in the moonlight. No, this shadow is stretching grotesquely down the hallway now, advancing for the next bedroom before he's even taken a step. It beckons him, and a madman advances. There's no turning back now. November 13, 1974. Ronald Butch DeFeo shoots his mother, father, and four siblings to death in their beds with a rifle during what was estimated to be a 15-minute rampage in Amityville, New York. Again, there was no evidence that anyone had awakened, and neighbors heard nothing. Both cases have resulted in numerous books and movies, and the homes where both tragedies occurred are widely rumored to be haunted. Tonight, I'd like to take you a little closer to home. My home, where half a block away, a man brutally murdered his six children and the families dashed in the night, and no one heard a thing. The following is the true story of a mass murder from which a neighborhood has never fully recovered. Neighbors only whisper about it if they can bring themselves to speak of it at all. The 40th anniversary of the unspeakable passed quietly. It's a charming little piece of tree-lined heaven, seemingly exempt from the crime plaguing other neighborhoods not so far away. Churchill's Grove is a place where the American dream still lives, a place where neighbors still talk and watch out for one another, a place where you might meet a neighbor for a beer in the driveway after mowing the lawn and talk about how good the Cubs are looking this year. It's a place to raise kids to build a life. There are two things for which the rest of the city descends on Churchill's Grove every year, the neighborhood garage sale and Halloween. But every Halloween, parents lead their children past one house on Camp Avenue. Other kids dare one another to ring the doorbell, hoping to catch a closer look at where it really happened. January 9, 1978. This inetown USA neighborhood in Rockford, Illinois woke on a Saturday morning unsuspecting of the horror that would be revealed unfolding throughout the day. The city was still trying to recover from the murder of 15-year-old newspaper carrier Joey Didier less than three years earlier. But surely nothing that bad could happen again. Rockford police officer Steve Peerages was directed by a dispatcher to perform a welfare check at a home on Snow Blanketed Camp Avenue. Being met with no response at the front door, Peerages circled the house looking for anything out of the ordinary. Unable to find an unlocked door or signs of trouble, there wasn't much else he could do but leave. That was until the second, this time urgent call came from Milwaukee to the Rockford police. Ann Nelson, who lived with her husband and six children in the Camp Avenue home, advised that she believed her husband, Simon Peter Nelson, may have harmed the kids. With the situation now escalated, young Peerages and fellow officers would gain access to the house through a window at 7.30 am. Immediately, Peerages reported there was a sense that something was terribly wrong. He told the Rockford Register Star, there's a different feel in homes where murders happen. You just kind of smelled death. It was really eerie. Walking from room to room upstairs, Peerages would discover the bodies of six children, bludgeoned beyond recognition, and stabbed repeatedly. On the second floor, Roseanne and Jennifer, ages 5 and 12, were found in their bed with pretzel, the family dog, dead beside them with a slashed throat. Ascending to the third floor, police found the four boys, Simon 10, Andrew 9, Matthew 7, and three-year-old David. One of the boys' bodies was discovered partially out of bed. Did this indicate one of them had awakened during their father's terrible spree? Or could the throes of death itself account for this? Either way, given the overkill nature of the slayings, it's difficult to fathom how anyone could have remained asleep while this was going on. Peerages went on to say, their heads had been smashed and their throats slit. What he did to those kids was unspeakable. It seems the second call from Milwaukee to Rockford Police came after aunt's husband, Simon Peter Nelson, had gained entry to her Milwaukee motel room and proceeded to assault her. He likely would have beaten her to death if Milwaukee police hadn't intervened. It was during this attack that Pete Nelson, as he was known by neighbors, had told his wife Anne that he had killed their children. She had hoped it was only a bluff, but her worst nightmare was soon realized. The small parcel of property back in Rockford was roped off with police tape and officers swarmed the scene. Curious neighbors of the tight-knit community, still sipping their coffee, wandered out into the street, asking one another what had happened. No one seemed to know, and the officers guarding the perimeter remained tight-lipped, silently bearing the horrible burden of knowing what had occurred inside, protecting this quaint neighborhood's innocence for one last futile moment. Then there was the arrival of vehicles from the coroner's office, producing multiple stretchers that were wheeled into the house. Out of earshot, a police chaplain whispered with the family's own pastor. Now neighbors were speechless, fingers crossed, praying that somehow everything was still going to be okay. That was until the first little body wrapped in a blanket was removed from the house. Gasps and sobs filled the air once the unspeakable was confirmed. Despite the winter chill, Churchill's Grove residence stood vigil in the street as five more blanketed stretchers were eventually removed from the scene. Footprints taken just after the births of the children were required to identify some of them. 46-year-old Simon Peter Nelson, already in Milwaukee police custody for battering his wife, now faced charges of killing his six children with a hunting knife and a rubber mallet. According to multiple reports, the marriage of Pete and Anne, a local figure skating instructor, had been on the rocks for some time. Peter had been out of work and had been letting himself go. Determined to turn things around, though, Pete accepted a job offer from his friend of seven years, Michael Weldon. On the Friday preceding discovery of the bodies, Weldon reportedly talked with Pete on the phone until around 11.30 p.m. Weldon said he heard what sounded like children playing in the background during their 30-minute talk, indicating that Pete had not yet carried out his awful task. But Weldon learned that Anne had allegedly laid down some ground rules recently. Pete would have to stop drinking, lose weight, and get rid of his beard. Weldon said Pete arrived with a fresh haircut and clean-shaven face the week leading up to the murders. And Pete said he'd started exercising at the Y every day. Weldon also felt that Pete had a renewed zest for improving his work performance. This was a man determined to save his marriage. But was it too little, too late? The same week, Anne was allegedly already speaking to a lawyer about divorce. He reportedly advised her to take a short getaway to think things over. Thursday morning, Anne checked in to Milwaukee's Ramada Inn, where she planned to stay for the weekend. The next morning, Anne's mind was made up. She called her attorney and told him to light the fuse on a divorce from Pete. By 3 p.m. on Friday, Pete had received a call from Anne's attorney, advising him of Anne's decision. Pete left work early after hearing the devastating news, explaining to Weldon that he really needed to try and save his marriage. It was suggested that Pete stay with a mutual friend in order to give the couple a little space. Pete said he'd follow up on the suggestion, but that he wanted to see Anne first. If he couldn't change her mind, Pete said that he'd go stay with a friend. Anne's attorney, apparently a friend of the couple, stopped by the Nelson home later that night to check up on Pete. When attorney Carl Winkler arrived around 8 p.m., he said Pete was already in the company of another friend, Douglas Hamm. Relieved that Pete already had someone to talk to, Winkler said he only stayed for about 30 minutes. As Pete and Weldon talked on the phone late Friday night, Weldon reported that Pete said he intended to plead his case to Anne, to show her that he's really trying to be better, that he's doing everything she'd asked of him. Weldon told the Rockford Register Republic Pete had said, the most important thing to me right now is my wife and kids. When they hung up at around 11.30 p.m., Pete then phoned a family friend in Waukesha, less than 20 miles from Milwaukee, asking him to go to Anne's hotel and try to talk her out of divorcing him. The man, Ernie Johnson, was a skating student of Anne's and Pete implored him to call back afterwards and let him know how it went. According to the Rockford Register Republic, confidential sources with access to the investigation allegedly told the paper that Hamm had stayed with Nelson until 2 a.m., leaving some of today's amateur sleuths with a degree of suspicion regarding that night's timeline of events. But it was late. Hamm may well have been tired and he had a long drive back home to Fontana, Wisconsin after all. So now alone and with the children all presumably asleep in their beds, Pete's mind would seem to begin developing some very bad ideas between 2 and 3 a.m. Meantime, his friend from Waukesha had complied with Pete's request, arriving at Anne's room just after midnight. But by the time he tried to call Pete back more than two hours later, Pete wasn't answering. After nearly a dozen more unanswered calls, both the friend and Anne started to worry. But it turns out at least one person may have heard something. Next door, a neighbor later reporting having been awakened around 3 or 4 a.m. by a pounding noise. The sound eventually ceased and the neighbor fell back asleep. At 4.30 a.m., a newspaper carrier saw what he thought was Pete's car pulling away from the Camp Avenue home where the lights remained on. Next door, the sleeping neighbor awoke to pounding again at 6 a.m. But this time it was on the Nelson's front door, when Officer Perrages had first arrived. By 7 a.m. Pete had arrived in Milwaukee and was inside Anne's room. A man believed to be the friend that Pete had sent there overnight instructed a desk clerk to send police to Anne's room. When police arrived, they found Pete beating Anne in the bathroom and took him into custody. Shortly after, Officer Steve Perrages was sent back to the Nelson home where a gruesome crime scene awaited. As funeral attendees mourned around half a dozen fresh graves in the frozen ground of Cavalry Cemetery, Simon Peter Nelson would enter a plea of not guilty to six counts of murder levied by a grand jury's indictment. Nelson was pleading insanity. Judge Reinhard read the charges but paused before the point when he'd normally state the names of the victims. Reinhard offered Nelson the opportunity to choose whether he would hear the names of his six children or to waive a full reading of the charges. Conferring with his attorney, which only took a short glance, Pete chose the latter. Anne Nelson would later testify that she kept asking Pete about their children after he'd confronted her in her motel room. She said Pete responded, Call a priest, call two priests, then call the police. I've killed the children and I've done it in such a spectacular way that you'll never work again. They're all dead. How do you feel? Anne testified that Pete had wanted to see the expression on her face when he told her their kids were dead. This plan was allegedly to then kill himself in an automobile accident so that in his mind she alone would suffer the consequences resulting from her decision to leave him. Anne then testified that Pete called out for his father who had committed suicide 24 years earlier on the birthday of Pete's mother. Pete reportedly cried out one word, Daddy, before physically attacking Anne in Milwaukee. In court, Anne admitted that she and Ernie Johnson, the very friend Pete had asked to intervene at her motel room, had been involved in an affair. Hearing this was too much for Pete to bear and he excused himself from listening further to her testimony. The defense would seem to seize on this detail as a cornerstone in order to paint Anne as being a bad wife and mother. Meantime, Nelson's attorney began crafting Pete's insanity defense. After a failed suicide attempt in the basement on the night of the murders, Craig Peterson claimed Nelson had seen his dead father ascending the stairs toward the children's rooms before blacking out. Pete allegedly begged the apparition not to hurt the kids. It seemed that sometime after his father's suicide, young Pete had read the man's diary and learned he blamed his own family for the feelings of despair leading up to his death. Pete too had allegedly threatened suicide and spousal arguments over the course of two failed marriages. Peterson argued that Nelson would see his father's face whenever he got depressed and thought about harming himself. His father had been abusive, the defense argued, in an attempt to paint Pete as a victim. In a page taken from Anatomy of a Murder, the defense, while not denying Pete had committed murder, claimed Pete had no memory of killing his six children. Instead, Nelson claimed to recall witnessing his father carrying out the slayings and that it was his father again in Anne's motel room. In fact, State Attorney Dan Doyle introduced a paperback copy of Anatomy of a Murder into Evidence, a copy belonging to Simon Peter Nelson. Doyle asserted that Nelson's temporary insanity defense was gleaned directly from the book in the weeks leading up to the murders. The trial eventually came to a close and Pete was convicted after only 75 minutes of deliberation, but jurors still needed to determine his punishment. Perhaps the jury comprised of wholesome peers didn't want the weight of sentencing a man to death on their shoulders. Deliberations over the death penalty resulted in a deadlock, but jurors were in agreement that Simon Peter Nelson should never draw a breath of freedom's air again. Instead of sending Pete to death row, the court administered terms of 100 to 200 years for each of the six first-degree murder counts. From behind bars, Nelson remarried in 1982. Jewel Friend met Pete while teaching at the Menard Maximum Security Facility. He was later moved to the Graham Correctional Center and Jewel passed away from cancer in 1982. As for Anne, those who know her after the murders never told what became of her, only that she had remarried and moved away to start a new life with Ernie Johnson. She too has since passed away. And for decades to come, the community would have to circulate petitions every few years when Nelson would be eligible for parole to assure members of the parole board that no one had forgotten or forgiven that horror back in 1978, a scab that was never really able to heal when there was a possibility he could ever be released. Even before moving into the neighborhood two years ago, I was certainly aware of what had happened inside that home. During my years as a newspaper reporter in town, I even reached out via email to an owner of the home. I'll admit I wasn't exactly doing a story about the murders, but I was curious what it was like to live in a house where six children had been murdered. How can something like that ever be erased or painted over? Though I can't say I was surprised to learn what I did, I wasn't expecting the owner to reveal to me that what was described as poltergeist-like activity was present in the home. The house was on the market at the time and the owners told me there were two kinds of people who expressed interest in buying, those who lost interest once they learned of the murders, and those who were drawn to the home because of them. It has since become a rental property and no one seems to stay for very long. On June 18, 2017, Church Hills Grove and the rest of Rockford, Illinois, breathed a sigh of relief. Simon Peter Nelson was dead at 85. Could the healing finally begin in Church Hills Grove? Since moving into a house half a block from the crime scene, I don't think a day goes by where I still don't gaze out the window at the Nelson house while sipping my morning coffee or look down the street at night while taking in some fresh air on the porch and I remember. Now spring is upon us and my neighbors will start stepping out of their houses after a winter's hibernation. Maybe this will be the summer where I'll be taking an after-dinner walk and strike up a conversation with whomever may be living there now. At some point, I'll breach the subject, maybe they'll laugh it off and say, it's just a house. But maybe they're so glad that winter is over that they can spend as much time outside of the house as possible. Maybe they'll even invite me inside, hoping I'll experience something out of the ordinary, thereby vindicating self-assurances that they're not crazy, that even after 40 years there's still something not right about the place. During those solitary moments on my front porch on cool nights, the sound of a child's swing can be heard intermittently on the wind. I've never found the source, but the Nelson house is still there. The memory is there. Pete is dead now, but we all still remember. Neither time nor cleansing rain will make us forget the unforgettable, and houses have memories too. At these times, I find myself again speculating what it must be like to live there now. If what a previous owner told me was true, that there is paranormal activity in the house, would that activity dissipate after Pete's passing? Could his children finally rest in peace? Would objects stop moving around in the house? But then a chill hits me, and I can't escape the thought that Simon Peter Nelson may too have come home to Camp Avenue when he died. And I wonder whether his children were there to greet their father at the door, or if the terror of January 7, 1978, replays itself over and over again in a hellish loop, like a stuck record. Up next, Lilydale, where spiritualism is celebrated and practiced more than just spooky months. Populated by hundreds of psychics and mediums, it has become a kind of tourist attraction for those seeking a psychic reading. Sometimes you feel a bit nutty, especially if you're a weirdo. If that feeling transfers to your taste buds as well, I've got some great news for you. Weird, dark roast, nutty mummy coffee. Wrap your taste buds around this medium dark roast blend with shrouds of almond, honey, and chocolate. Each bag of nutty mummy is exclusive to weird darkness and is roasted to order. Then, bandaged, I mean, bagged specifically for you to ensure a maximum freshness for you, your mummy, and anyone else you share it with. Entomb your old coffee and bring your taste buds back from the dead with Weird, Dark Roast, Nutty Mummy at WeirdDarkness.com Every summer, tens of thousands of visitors flock to Lilydale, a village in New York State where mediums connect the living to the spirits of their deceased loved ones. Spiritualism in Lilydale is positive rather than spooky. Visitors can receive messages from the dead, attend workshops on new-aged topics, and undergo healing sessions with reiki practitioners. But they should not expect to have their fortunes told or to have any run-ins with malevolent spirits. Stories from the town of Lilydale detail its fascinating history. Although the Fox sisters, Leah, Margaret, and Kate are frequently credited with founding Victorian-era Spiritualism in 1847, the idea of a spiritual retreat in the Lilydale area predates them. In 1844, a mesmerist visited the city of Leona, New York, not far from present-day Lilydale, bringing with him spiritualist ideas. A group called the First Spiritualist Society of Leona formed around a decade later. By 1879, the group owned farmland that bordered Casa Daga Lake. Spiritualists met on the shore of the lake every summer, and in 1906, the area officially became Lilydale. The name comes from the flowers that grow on and around the lake. Unlike any other town in the world, spiritualism is the only religion practiced in Lilydale. Spiritualism shares some similarities to Christianity. Followers may believe in the Bible as well as the idea that people become energy once they die, although there is no death in spiritualism. One of the main tenets states that Jesus Christ existed, but he was a medium. But despite these parallels, spiritualism is a distinct religion of its own. This form of the religion began during the Victorian era, when expressing grief and communicating with the dead led to the rise of seances. In Lilydale, spiritualism is the only religion practiced, although visitors don't need to be members of the Spiritualist Church to visit. Orbs and spirits routinely show up in photographs here. Many of the spirits in Lilydale cannot be seen or heard by anyone other than mediums, but they do appear in photographs. Pictures with orbs, ghostly images and unusual manifestations are a frequent occurrence around the village. According to photographer Shannon Taggart, she showed one woman a photo of her with a purple orb on one shoulder. The woman said, Oh, that's my late husband, Bob. The assembly doesn't let in just anyone claiming to be a medium either. There are a number of standards that a medium has to meet before they can practice as a part of the Lilydale assembly. Mediums undergo a test that involves giving three 30-minute readings that have to meet accuracy standards determined by the assembly and its officials. And passing is no guarantee of security either. A medium's membership can be taken away if they give too many inaccurate readings. One medium surprised a guest with a message from the past. In 2013, Pamela Hudson met with a medium in Lilydale who she claims connected her with her deceased parents. Hudson didn't say much throughout the reading and mostly sat quietly while the medium gave her some very specific details. Once Hudson's parents were done talking, the medium had a surprise. A late acquaintance of Hudson's was present and had a message for her. She came up with the name of a guy who died when I was about 18 and she knew that he died in a car wreck. A name, a date, the method of death, and at this point she still didn't even know my name. Come to think of it, I never did tell her my name, not even at the end. This young man from my past had a message for me that was actually very helpful. I hadn't thought of him in decades and was never close to him, but his message actually helped me a lot. It addressed a sliver of a relationship we actually did have briefly and mostly it came down to let your pain and suffering go. It gets better in the next life. One medium connected a visitor with three of her deceased relatives. Lilydale visitor Holly LeBide attended a public session during her visit. The session consisted of several mediums tossing out messages to the audience, unsure of who the spirits were trying to reach. According to LeBide, one medium said she was hearing from a male bus driver, another man named Steve and a woman named Margaret. All three of these spirits were connected to LeBide. They sounded like two of her uncles and her mother who was named Marjorie but called Margaret. Their message to her was simple and involved telling people thank you more often and sending cards regularly. What the medium didn't know was that LeBide had a thank you card sitting on her table at home that she had procrastinated sending. Surprisingly, there is one group of people visitors won't see at Lilydale. Fortune tellers, those who use crystal balls, read tea leaves or attempt to predict people's futures are forbidden from practicing their craft on the premises. Why? Spiritualism was founded on free will and knowing what the future supposedly holds goes against that entirely. Inspiration stump is supposedly surrounded by spiritual energy. Inspiration stump is all that remains of an old tree in the Leolin Woods just outside of Lilydale. The area is said to be filled with positive spiritual energy that affects even the most ardent non-believers. The stump is also where group medium sessions are held for larger crowds of visitors. These sessions are free to attend and guests might just connect with some of their late loved ones during them. Visitors can also take spoon bending lessons. There's more to do in Lilydale than just speak to the dead. A number of workshops and activities are held there every summer, relating to spiritualism and new age thinking in one way or another. Old fashioned séances, reiki healing sessions and even spoon bending workshops are just some of the past times visitors can engage in. So why spoon bending? Well, it's supposed to demonstrate the power of mind over matter. But personally, I just think it looked cool in the matrix. Thousands of suffragettes came there in 1893. Lilydale has always been a place where women are welcome, so it makes sense that in 1893, 45 years after the Seneca Falls Convention, 3,000 women appeared in Lilydale for a meeting that promoted equality and the right to vote. Lilydale was also a safe place where Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Katie Stanton, and Elizabeth Lowe Watson, among others, were invited to speak about their feminist beliefs. The Fox Sisters are also honored here with a memorial garden. Kate and Maggie Fox lived in a cabin with their parents when they encountered their first spirit. This cabin, originally located in Hidesville, New York, was moved to Lilydale in 1915, where it was restored as it looked during the 1840s. However, it sadly burned down in 1955. The residents of Lilydale turned that site into the Fox Memorial Garden. Visitors can see the foundation of the structure, view a plaque with information, and walk through the garden in order to connect with the sisters who made spiritualism what it is today. Their spirits may even still be around. Lilydale is a fantastical place in many ways, but the village does have its normal side, too. The Volunteer Fire Department stands ready to protect and serve Lilydale's mediums, visitors, and of course the buildings, some of which date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. There's also a post office, as well as a museum containing spiritualist artifacts from the Victorian era. Lilydale is a tight-knit community with a purpose, and the people who govern it want to make sure it stays that way. That's why anyone who wants to lease or buy property in the village must be a member of the Lilydale Assembly. In order to join the Assembly, an individual has to belong to a spiritualist church and meet a number of other requirements. So I guess the First Amendment of freedom of religion doesn't apply in this little hamlet. Unless that religion is spiritualism, then feel free to worship how you wish. Many Lilydale visitors describe the village as having a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere, despite the many spirits said to linger around its streets and buildings. Some say that the area has a fairytale ambiance, and that there is nothing creepy about it. In fact, no one seems to mention any malevolent spirits or demons at all. Maybe the mediums keep them at bay. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks of narrated, visit the store for Weird Darkness t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases, and more merchandise, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. All stories in Weird Darkness aren't purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. Demons Road of Huntsville was written by Dana Gulesby for Texas Escapes. No one heard a thing, the Simon Peter Nelson murders was written by Stuart R. Wallin, posted to Medium.com. Welcome to Lillydale is from Hidden Haunts Paranormal's Facebook page. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Moerler House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 13 verse 9, It's pleasant to see dreams come true, but fools refuse to turn from evil to attain them. And a final thought, rehearsing potential troubles results in experiencing them many times, whereas you're meant to go through them only when they actually occur. Sarah Young I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.