 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. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. They flew under the cover of darkness in bare bones plywood biplanes. Their planes were too small to show up on radar. Radio locators were useless as the female flying Soviet squadrons never used radios on their after-dark missions. Their bomb runs were so deadly accurate that the Nazi soldiers were terrified to the point of being afraid to light a cigarette for fear of giving away their position. They braved bullets and frostbite in the air, and skepticism and sexual harassment on the ground. From pilot to mechanic to officer, every one female. They flew silently, with the only hint of their approach, being the soft, whooshing sound their cheaply constructed wooden planes made in the wind. A sound resembling that of a sweeping broom. Thus the Germans gave them the nickname not Hexen, the Night Witches. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here, you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. While you're listening, you might want to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com you can find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated, streaming video of horror hosts and old horror movies. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression, anxiety or thoughts of suicide. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness. The jackalope is a mythical animal, so why do so many people claim to have seen it, even in modern times? There are places all over the world, even today where, during a wedding ceremony, you might hear the reverend say the words, Do you take this corpse to be your lawfully wedded husband? An old grudge between a detective and a reporter led to one of the strangest and most damning fake news stories of all time, a story that nearly ruined Lizzie Borden. In 1948, sightings of mysterious green lights in the skies of Los Alamos, New Mexico and the Sandia Atomic Weapons Laboratories and other sensitive military installations had the U.S. government extremely worried. That means that the green balls of fire weren't from America, so what were they? But first, during World War II, a squadron of crop duster-like planes flown by Soviet female pilots were used as bombers to terrorize Nazi troops. They were so terrifying to the enemy, they earned the nickname Night Witches. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the weird darkness. In all female squadron, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of Soviet Air Forces got their nickname as the Night Witches during World War II. The brave women of this squadron compromised their own safety by not carrying parachutes due to the heavy weight of the bombs and their techniques to fight at low altitudes. Though women were barred from fighting in the war, Major Marina Raskova used her position and contacts to form this all-female combat unit which terrorized the Nazis. The women in the squadron had no radar, no machine guns, and even had to decorate their own planes, which they did using their lipsticks and navigational pencils, then struck fear into the Nazi forces. The few things they carried during an attack included maps, a compass, rulers, flashlights, and anything important that would not add significant weight to the plane. Nazis were terrified of the Night Witches and their stealth techniques. In one such technique, they would glide to the bomb release point, idling the engine just before reaching near the target. This would make their approach almost completely silent, aside from the wind noise, which was then linked to sound of broomsticks and thus the name Night Witches was given to them by the terrified German soldiers. The female military aviators, when deployed at the front line in 1942, were honored with the guard's designation and reorganized as 46th Guard's Night Bomber Aviation, and later became the 46th Taman Guard's Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. Their involvement in the Novorossiysk Taman Operation on the Taman Peninsula referred to the Taman in the regiment's name. In just four years during World War II, the Night Witches were able to successfully complete 30,000 bombing raids and dropped more than 23,000 tons of munition on the advancing German armies. Interestingly, this all-female Night Witches squadron was formed with young women in their late teens and early twenties, all who volunteered to be actively involved in the war effort, all brave women who wanted to be engaged in combat on the front lines. Marina Rostova, who was also known as the Soviet Amelia Earhart for her world records in long-distance flights that many male pilots couldn't achieve, received a number of letters from Soviet women who were willing to be involved in the war to support their nation. Rostova took this seriously and put all of her power of position and political contacts as a hero of the Soviet Union to use, petitioning to Joseph Stalin himself to be able to form the all-female bomber units against the German military. This proceeded with the establishment of three all-female air squads on October 8, 1941 and the Soviet Union became the very first country to allow women pilots in combat missions. The three regiments included the 586 fighter regiment, the 587 heavy bomber regiment and the 588 night bomber regiment. Not just pilots, but from commander to the mechanics, each member of the Night Witches was a female. By mid-October, as confusion and chaos swept Moscow in the face of the rapid German advance, Rostova set up her training camps at the large aerodrome in the city of Engels on the Volga River. There, the women of the three regiments were to be trained with planes, engines, armaments, aeronautical study and military drills. While the college-educated women were trained as navigators, those with factory or armor experience would work as mechanics. Naturally, all volunteers wanted to become famous fighter pilots, inspired by Rostova, but only the most talented were accepted into the fighter regiment since it required lightening quick reflexes and an ability to stay calm in battle. The professional pilots with many hours of experience were put into the heavy bomber regiment led by Rostova herself. Those with less experience were put into the night bomber regiment, but those women may have needed the greatest courage of them all. The Night Witches in all means were given the worst conditioned equipment, but the strong female regiment made the best even from the non-military grade equipment. They were provided uniforms that wouldn't fit, which were originally meant for male soldiers, but instead of complaining about it, the women in the squadron tore apart their bedding to stuff into their boots so as to prevent them from slipping off. Moreover, the Night Witches were to fly the Polokarpov PO-2, a flimsy biplane compared to the then modern dive bombers. An open cockpit, two-seated plane that had been mostly used for training, made from lightweight plywood and percol, which had finely woven fabric made out of cotton. It was cheap to manufacture, small, slow, and an outdated aircraft. The unimpressive plane was nicknamed the crop duster, or the duck, while Germans knew it as a sewing machine or the plywood rust. The plane offered absolutely no protection from freezing wind at night in sub-zero temperatures, but Night Witches bravely not only fought the war using these rusty planes, but did so successfully. Since the plane was totally defenseless and too slow to outrun any of the German fighter planes, it could only operate in the safety of night. In fact, even small firearms could bring this plane down fairly easily, but the overall situation was so bleak that even those little planes became a symbol of hope and resistance. Over time, women began to appreciate the simplicity of the crop duster, especially since the women of the heavy bomber regiment had to fly the Su-2, which was nicknamed Bitch because of how difficult it was to fly and master it. The women in these regiments were constantly mucked and teased for their lack of femininity by the males, but this only hardened their determination. Since to them, a soldier was a soldier. Rescova ordered the women to shorten their hair and the battalion's commissar forbade anything she saw as girl talk and prohibited any sort of flirtatious behavior. The German forces, especially the ground battalions, were so terrified of the Night Witches and their stealth techniques that no soldier would even light a cigarette in the open at night for fear of being spotted and become a target for the witches. The Night Witches' skills made German forces so terrified that rumors spread of the Soviet government enhancing the eyesight of the women with experimental medicines and the German military even announced the issuance of a prestigious iron cross medal to any soldier who would take down any Night Witch aircraft. The Night Witches followed many skillful techniques during their missions in which they usually flew in a group of three. The first plane would throw down flares to illuminate the target and loads would be dropped by the second after idling the engine and gliding to the target. They would then turn the engine back on and escape before the Germans could fight back. Every morning, the women of the Night Witches came back with red faces and bloodshot eyes. They rebuilt their lives around their nocturnal life, having dinner in the morning and going straight to bed. They were constantly tired and hungry, but they were also proud to show the Soviet Union that women could do just as well as any man when it came to war. With every successful mission, they earned more and more respect from fellow male pilots and officers, but that would not protect them from the constant danger they faced. They had no parachutes given since the Soviet High Command figured that in case of an engine failure, the planes could simply glide back to the ground. This totally disregarded the fact that the percol cotton fabric and plywood of the Polikharpov P02 plane would burn like crazy and if that ever happened it was likely that both pilot and navigator would burn to death. But to Soviet High Command, it was still preferable to be burned down and die rather than to be captured by the German military forces. In fact, those who were shot down or crashed behind enemy lines were expected to fight to the death as capture was dishonorable to any Soviet soldier and would leave a stain on their name for the rest of their lives. Even pilots who were shot down behind the lines but made it safely back to their own lines were interrogated and often condemned to death by the commissar. Not all night witches were able to escape from the Germans and 32 of the pilots lost their lives on the front line including Raskova. 23 pilots of the regiments were prestigiously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union but the night witches were excluded from the Victory Day parade in Moscow and the reason was the legendary plane they fought the whole war with which was deemed too slow. Nevertheless, the night witches cemented their place in history with their incredible skills and bravery. They might have drawn flowers on the side of their planes with lipstick and mascara but they also drew their part in history for their bravery in chapters of World War II history that few could have. Up next, an old grudge between a detective and a reporter led to one of the strangest and most damning fake news stories of all time, a story that nearly ruined Lizzie Borden. Plus, the U.S. government was in a frenzy when green fireballs were seen in the sky of Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1948. What could they have been? These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show. Behind the scenes, video updates about future projects and events I'm working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I'm working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. Lizzie Borden's secret was the headlines screamed across the top of the Boston Daily Globe's morning edition from Monday, October 10, 1892. The 14-column article that followed rolled out shocking new evidence about the acts murders of Borden's parents in Fall River, Massachusetts, a crime that transfixed America that year. The secret? Borden, who was awaiting trial for the brutal killings, was pregnant. Her outraged father, Andrew, had been overheard threatening to banish her from their home unless she revealed the name of the man who got you into trouble. She refused. A day later, both he and Lizzie's stepmother, Abby, were dead. More damning revelations followed. The morning of the murders several passers-by had seen Lizzie at the upstairs window where Abby's mutilated body was found. A rubber cap or hood covered her head. And while the significance of this strange headwear was not mentioned in the article, armchair detectives could deduce it was worn to protect her hair from blood spatter. Other witnesses claimed to have heard Lizzie offering to buy the silence of the family's maid, the only other person known to have been in the house about the time of the murders. Keep your tongue still, she allegedly whispered, and you can have all the money you want. The article presented the statements of 25 witnesses filling almost two full pages of a 10-page paper with incriminating evidence. Lizzie's inquiries about her father's will, her animosity toward her stepmother, her suspicious behavior and strange comments in the hours after the bodies were discovered. The Globe's star crime reporter, 24-year-old Henry G. Tricky claimed to have spent six weeks compiling every fact of importance in the hands of police and prosecutors. Lizzie Borden would not stand trial until the following June, but the judicial process now appeared to be a formality. She'd been convicted in the court of public opinion. There was, however, a problem with the blockbuster story. Hardly a word of it was true. Welcome to a bizarre tale of fake news in the gilded age. The Globe's Lizzie Borden scoop is a dark and little-known episode in the history of American journalism, a rock bottom point for a profession that was struggling for credibility and respectability. The Fall River Tragedy, one of the earliest books to chronicle the Borden case, ranked it as nothing less than the most gigantic fake ever laid before the reading public. Newspaper hopes were shockingly common in the 19th century as publishers vied to outdo rivals and boost circulation with exclusive stories, some accurate, some not. Texas A&M University Communications Professor Randall Sumter has noted that faking was a rampant journalistic practice. Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, and Benjamin Franklin all passed off fiction as fact at some point in their careers. The New York Sun's legendary moon hoax of 1835 offered vivid descriptions of creatures living on the lunar surface, while New York's Herald once concocted a realistic and alarming report of rampaging beasts in Central Park in a misguided attempt to warn of safety risks at the park's zoo. Sumter, in a book on early journalism training, tells of a buffalo newsman who acquired fingers from a cadaver, then wrote stories claiming he had discovered them and demanded the police investigate a possible murder. The Borden story, however, was not a hoax, at least not a deliberate one perpetrated by the journalist who wrote it. Tricky and his editors were convinced their information was true. They rolled out the allegations in compelling and credible detail, complete with the names, addresses, and occupations of the purported new witnesses. And Tricky, despite his slippery-sounding surname, was the most accomplished and trusted reporter in the newsroom. He'd met a journalist since he was 16 and his assignments ranged from the crime beat to political affairs, including stents covering major stories in Canada. By the time he tackled the Borden case, he had covered more than 60 homicides for the globe, earning the unofficial title of the paper's Murder Man. He was impulsive, fiercely competitive, tireless in the pursuit of stories, and above all staunchly loyal to the globe. His loyalty was almost a failing, his employers acknowledged in hindsight. It sometimes outran his caution. The Globe's evening edition for October 10th reveled in its success, boasting the story had astounded all New England and created mob scenes at newsstands. Doubts of Lizzie A. Borden's guilt the paper proclaimed were shaken. It had been widely believed that Lizzie must be innocent. The attacker was a tramp or fiend who had somehow managed to enter and leave the house undetected. No young woman from a good family, no daughter of a successful businessman many people reasoned, was capable of such brutal acts. She was 32 years old and respectable, a churchgoer who supported an array of local charities. Suddenly her scandalous double life had been exposed along with several possible motives for murder, protecting a secret lover, the shame of a pregnancy out of wedlock, a threatened banishment from the household, a case that had horrified the public was now a salacious one as well. The Globe's scoop seemed at last to bring into the case the love interest noted Edmund Pearson, a pioneering true crime writer who studied the case in the 1920s for which many newspaper reporters had almost pined away and died. Tricky and his editors in their zeal to break the story never bothered to check whether the most sensational allegation that Lizzie was pregnant was true. The story unraveled with lightning speed. Borden's lawyer Andrew Jennings denounced the allegations as false and trumped up. Rival Boston Papers fought back with stories headlined a fake and a tissue of lies. Within 24 hours the Globe acknowledged its blockbuster had been proven wrong in some particulars, most importantly about Lizzie's physical condition at the time of the murder. She was not pregnant, the Borden family's doctor confirmed, and never had been. By the time the late afternoon edition rolled off the press on October 11, the paper was in full retreat. Much of the information in its original report is false, it now acknowledged, and never should have been published. A front page apology was issued to readers and to Lizzie for the inhuman reflection upon her honor as a woman. The Globe refused to take responsibility for the debacle, proclaiming itself an honest newspaper and as much a victim of the false allegations as Lizzie. Its journalists had been grievously misled by a remarkably ingenious and cunningly contrived story. In a long statement published under his byline, Triggy described how he had purchased the information for $500, about $12,000 today, from Edwin D. McHenry, a private detective who had assisted the police during the murder investigation. Fearing the detective would sell the information to a competitor, Globe editors made no attempt to verify the allegations before rushing the story into print. McHenry was still owed money for his legwork on the case, and he may have seen the Globe's cash for information offer as suitable compensation. He would later claim he planted the bogus story with the blessings of the Fall River police, who suspected Triggy was feeding information to Borden's defense lawyers. The leak, according to the detective, was an elaborate ruse to catch the reporter passing along tantalizing details of the prosecution's case. McHenry had demanded 24 hours notice if the Globe planned to publish the information, enough time to reveal the hoax, and prevent the accusations from appearing in print. But Triggy had reneged on the promise. McHenry's ultimate goal, however, may have been revenge. He and Triggy had clashed while investigating a high-profile murder in Colorado the previous year, and since then, McHenry later admitted, we had not been on friendly terms. But when they met again in the wake of the Borden murders, Triggy had begged him for information. I want something big to scoop this gang of newspaper fellows who were in the town, he told McHenry. Since Triggy seemed convinced that Lizzie had a secret lover, McHenry invented one. The unscrupulous detective, author and lawyer Cara Robertson has noted in a new book on the Borden case, apparently relished the opportunity of doing Triggy a bad turn. The elaborate hoax was payback. Rather than sullying Lizzie's reputation or prejudicing her defense, the Globe's story and its quick retraction rebounded in her favor. For her supporters, and there were many in Fall River and beyond, it was further proof an innocent woman was being persecuted. The avalanche of false evidence muddied the waters, making it difficult to know who or what to believe. The final result of this wretched affair may well have been to add to the number of those who distrust the newspapers, noted Edmund Pearson, and to persuade them that if this damaging story were false, everything which seemed to tell against the prisoner might equally be false. Cara Robertson has convinced the hoax and its fallout made Lizzie a figure of sympathy in the lead up to her trial. With no eyewitnesses or physical evidence to link her to the killings, a jury deliberated for a little more than an hour before declaring her not guilty. The Lizzie Borden's secret story, the scoop that never was, ended the career of a man hailed in the press as one of the best writers upon criminal cases in the world. A grand jury indicted Tricky on December 2, 1892 on a charge of witness tampering. The authorities, still clinging to the bizarre notion he was in cahoots with the defense, despite his zeal in publishing a fabricated story that condemned Lizzie, now claimed he had tried to induce a key prosecution witness to leave the country. Tricky fled to Canada to escape arrest, traveling under the name Melzar, his wife's maiden name and posing as a salesman. A day after the indictment was announced, as he rushed to catch a train pulling out of the station in the Ontario City of Hamilton, he lost his grip on a handrail and slipped under the wheels. He died almost instantly. In Fall River, the news was met with disbelief. Many persons, noted one Massachusetts newspaper, were heard to express themselves as believing the story to be a fake. Even the state's Attorney General was skeptical. Albert E. Pillsbury, who knew the reporter pretty well, ordered that inquiries be made to confirm that he was indeed dead. Tricky, he confided to a friend, was a man capable of a number of things. In February 1949, the Los Alamos New Mexico Skyliner newspaper ran a piece on what it referred to in typical newspaper parlance as flying saucers and a possible conspiracy around them. Los Alamos now has flying green lights. These willow wisps seen generally about 2 a.m. have alerted the local constabulary and their presence is being talked about in Santa Fe Bars, but local wheels deny any official knowledge of the sky phenomena. Each one passes the buck to another. The story ended with, have you seen a green light lately? In fact, a great many had and would continue to do so. Enough to prompt Time magazine in November 1951 to publish a piece on the phenomenon called Great Balls of Fire. What makes the multiple sightings of flying green lights in New Mexico in 1948 and onward, such a significant chapter in UFO history is exactly that. There were multiple sightings. That was unnerving enough. But most alarming, particularly to the United States government, was that the sightings were concentrated around the Los Alamos and Sandia Atomic Weapons Laboratories and other highly sensitive military installations, including radar stations and fighter interceptor bases, weren't far away. That meant the sightings were reported by typically cool-headed pilots, weather observers, scientists, intelligence officers and other defense personnel, and led many to suspect the fireballs were Soviet spy devices. On the night of December 5, 1948, two separate plane crews reported having seen a green ball of fire heading west to east. In one of these instances, the fireball raced head on toward the plane itself, compelling the rattled pilot to swerve the plane out of the way. One pilot, some time later, would vividly describe the green fireballs. Take a softball and paint it with some kind of fluorescent paint that will glow a bright green in the dark. Then have someone take the ball out about 100 feet in front of you and about 10 feet above you. Have him throw the ball right at your face, as hard as you can throw it. That's what a green fireball looks like. When a crew of intelligence officers led by Dr. Lincoln La Paz, head of the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics, plotted the fireball's flight path and scoured the area a meteorite would have hit, they found nothing. No meteor fragments, no debris, no craters, no evidence of fire. The inexplicable sightings continued in the area, with sightings on December 6, 7th, 8th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 20th and 28th. December 20th proved a turning point, literally, and a particularly alarming one for those clinging to the theory that these were meteors. The balls of fire descended from the heavens at a 45 degree angle, then abruptly leveled off into a gravity-defying horizontal flight path. And, as La Paz would note in a letter to the District Commanding Officer of the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations, none of the green fireballs has a train of sparks of a dust cloud. In the years since, there have been reports of green fireball sightings around the world, from Alberta, Canada to South Africa. In June 2018, a green fireball made an impressive appearance at a concert performance in the Netherlands by the Foo Fighters, coincidentally the band named for the U.S. pilot's term for UFOs during World War II. And, according to the International Meteor Organization, there were more than 170 reported sightings of the fireballs that night, in at least five European countries. The band's reaction, according to their official Twitter account, the sky is a neighborhood. The phenomenon came to the attention of the Australian physicist Dr. Stephen Hughes in 2006, when several green fireballs were spotted in the sky in Queensland and New Zealand. I came to the conclusion that there was something a bit strange going on, he says. Hughes went on to write a paper that theorized a possible connection between green fireballs and the well-documented, but still ultimately little understood phenomenon of ball lightning, mysterious hovering orbs of electricity that have only been taken seriously by science since the 1960s, well after the New Mexico sightings. There is still no conclusive theory of what ball lightning is, but hypotheses include antimatter, light bubbles, microwave interference, retinal after images, electromagnetic knots, even primordial black holes. Dr. Hughes' own theory of ball lightning, which he believes fits the description of the New Mexico fireballs, electrified air. It occurred to me sometimes when something shoots through the atmosphere, like the meteor, it could be creating a conductive pathway from the ionosphere, a whole ocean of plasma above the earth, down to the ground, the air becomes electrified. The phosphorescent green color, Dr. Hughes says, is due to ionized oxygen, which also accounts for the striking greens of the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights. This potential explanation could not have occurred to those on the ground in New Mexico in 1948. After interviewing more than a hundred witnesses, Dr. LaPause went on to advise the military and the Atomic Energy Commission of his opinion that the fireballs were likely either top secret unconventional defensive devices being tested by the U.S. or Soviet spying devices. When Edward J. Ruppelt, director of the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book UFO Investigations, visited the Los Alamos National Laboratory in early 1952 to interview scientists and technicians, he noted that they became particularly animated when the idea of interplanetary vehicles was suggested. They had been doing a lot of thinking about this, they said, and they had a theory, wrote Ruppelt in the report on unidentified flying objects in 1953. They thought the fireballs were actually extraterrestrial probes projected into our atmosphere from a spaceship hovering several hundred miles above the earth. Officially, government investigators concluded that the green fireballs were some kind of never-before-seen natural phenomenon. Interest in and investigation into the fireballs dropped off at the outbreak of the Korean War. Writing these off as natural phenomena did not solve the problem, says UFO researcher Jan Aldrich, who believes the green fireballs were related to aerial phenomena spotted in Fort Hood, Texas in 1949. It just pushed it under the table. But that hasn't stopped UFO researchers from speculating more recently. In his 2008 book UFO and Nukes Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, Robert Hastings, drawing on declassified official documents, suggests that the fireball trajectories align with those of fallout debris clouds associated with top-secret atomic testing. But according to Dr. Hughes, there's another reason to suspect those green fireballs were buoyant balls of plasma. All those unpredictable movements, which suggest their paths may have been following electric field lines above the earth. Personally, I think that the erratic change in direction is reasonably conclusive proof that the phenomenon is electrical in nature, says Dr. Hughes, citing the more familiar sharp angles of a lightning bolt streaking through the sky. If the ball lightning phenomenon was a solid mass, there would be enormous inertia, making it very difficult to explain the source of energy for such extreme acceleration. In the case of a plasma ball, an internal energy source is not required, in the same way that a bolt of lightning does not need some kind of electrical rocket and motor to rapidly change direction on the way to the ground or between clouds. Still, at this stage, it's hard to shake the sense that equating the green fireballs with ball lightning is tantamount to explaining a mystery with another mystery. I'm a believer in the sense I believe that UFOs exist, says Dr. Hughes, who finds the name apt. They are unidentified flying objects. I just don't think that there are little green men at the controls. When Weird Darkness returns, the jackalope is a mythical animal, so why do so many people claim to have seen it, even in modern times? Plus, the idea of a corpse bride isn't all that far-fetched. Even now in today's world, it happens a lot more than you might think. These stories are up next. You shut yourself in. The lights are out, and you're listening to Weird Darkness. But suddenly, you get that feeling you're not alone. You don't know what might be under the bed, or in the closet, or in the attic, or in the room with you. You don't dare try to sleep now. You're too scared to. If you doze off, you might be vulnerable to the creatures who haunt your dreams. That's just one more reason to have Weird Dark Roast Coffee in the cupboard, because you just never know when you might need it. Weird Dark Roast Coffee contains deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness. Each bag is fresh roasted to order by Evansville Coffee. You can find a link to it at WeirdDarkness.com. Grab a bag before something else grabs you from the dark. The jackalope is a mythical animal that many people claim to have seen in modern times. Do these horned hairs really exist, or are they just a myth? Why do so many people claim to have spotted the jackalope? What could be the truth behind these reported sightings? Tales of the jackalope have been circulating for centuries. Many legends of this unusual animal come from America, but stories of horned hairs have been known by many ancient cultures worldwide. In North American folklore, the jackalope is a jackrabbit with antelope horns. In Central America, mythological references to a horned rabbit creature can be found in Weecho Legends. In ancient Persia, people spoke about a rabbit with one horn, similar to the famous unicorn that's mentioned seven times in the Bible, but only by mistake. The biblical unicorn was actually an onyx. Vikings also managed to fool Europeans with their unicorn bluff for hundreds of years. They started selling a narwhal's tooth, claiming it was a unicorn horn. In Germany, the horned hair often has other strange body parts—wings and beaks—and is called the Wolpertinger in Bavaria Southern Germany or the Rasselbach in Thuringia Central Germany. Many myths of our ancestors tell of various horned animals and other beings. Known under different names, the horned serpent has been encountered in North America, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Europe. In Europe, we encounter several mythological beings who were believed to have had horns. Cernanus, a god in Celtic mythology, possessed two deer antlers on the top of his head. Herna, the hunter, a mysterious mythical creature who was said to reside in Windsor Forest and Great Park in the English country of Berkshire, also had horns. According to our ancestors, horns represented the primal power of nature, expressed unstoppable power and majesty throughout human history. Because of this, horns have been synonymous with strength and they became a universal ancient symbol. For example, cornucopia, the horn of plenty, is a symbol of wealth, abundance, fertility, and nourishment, highly respected by many ancient cultures including the Celts whose concept of abundance was a main part of their religion. Many of us have a cornucopia at home. It can be made of plastic, wicker, metal, wood, or other materials. It can be symbolically filled with something valuable or something beautiful. One can say that the ancient worship of horns has survived. We don't think about it, but when we look around, we can clearly see there are many objects and symbols that remind us of our ancestors' deep respect for horns. Knowledge of the jagalope, spread, and the horned rabbits suddenly appeared in medieval paintings. During the Renaissance and later, scientists started to debate whether this creature could be a genuine biological species. At the end of the 18th century, most scholars rejected the idea that horned rabbits could be more than mythological animals. It was Douglas Herrick, a Wyoming resident who made the jagalope really famous. In 1932, while returning from a hunting trip, he tossed a carcass onto the floor where it came to rest beside a pair of deer antlers, as a taxidermist that gave him an idea that he put into action. Together with his son, he started to produce jagalope mounts. Before passing away at the age of 82, he and his son had made thousands of jagalope mounts. Douglas Herrick earned a lot by selling his jagalope mounts, but his work was just a hoax. People embraced this animal as a symbol of the West. The jagalope appeared on postcards, brochures, and Wyoming became known as the Jagalope Capital of the World. Curious people came to catch a glimpse of this rare animal, but one cannot search for something that is unreal. In 2005, Wyoming legislators declared the jagalope as the state's official mythical creature. The fact that the jagalope is today considered a mythical creature hasn't put an end to the sightings of the horned hares. Witnesses say they have seen antlered species of rabbit that are brownish in color. The animals believed to weigh about three to five pounds and it can move at a remarkable speed, up to 90 miles per hour. Does this mean that the jagalope really exists? The answer to this question is yes and no. It cannot be denied that some real rabbits do indeed sprout horn-shaped growths from their heads, but this condition is triggered by a virus called papillomatosis. Over the years many people claim to have seen the jagalope, but not everything is always what it seems. Unfortunately, behind many of these alleged sightings we find a combination of hoax and media activity. Several people have used this mythical creature to seek financial gain. According to scientists there is no solid physical evidence of a jagalope as described by our ancestors. Nevertheless, occasionally people keep reporting sightings of this rare animal and many are still convinced it does exist. And the legends told around the campfire are being kept alive. True love conquering all is a concept that appeals to romantics worldwide. From Tim Burton's corpse bride to the bride of Frankenstein, weddings and other rituals for those who have passed have always been a staple of art and lore. Some strange shenanigans from spirit polygamy to weddings with decomposing bodies do go on in real life, and in the 21st century no less. Here are some memorably ornate ceremonies that are probably commencing somewhere around the world as I speak to you. According to Ellen Schatzneider, a sociocultural anthropologist and professor at Brandy's University, bride-doll nuptials are still practiced in some parts of Japan. Basically, bride-doll nuptials came about during World War II when a young man fell in battle before he had a chance to marry. To make up for this, the soul of the young man was married to a consecrated stand-in figure, a doll representing his spouse. In a 2001 study published by Emory University, Schatzneider recalled an incident in which a mother hired a medium to speak with her deceased son. The soldier, speaking through the psychic, apparently lamented his bitter loneliness in the voids between the worlds, and he urged his mother to procure him a spirit spouse. The ceremony took place at a nearby Buddhist temple and involved a bride-doll which was encased in a box with a photograph of the son. Sati, the Hindu practice of bride-burning, is a ceremony in which a bride willingly emulates herself on her husband's funeral pyre. As of 1987 and the Indian Sati Prevention Act, the right is officially illegal, but it has been unofficially banned since 1829 and it has rarely been practiced since. However, there are some modern-day instances of it. According to a report in the Times of India, a 60-year-old widow tried to burn herself on her husband's funeral pyre in 2009 but was stopped just in time. The last reported Sati was in 1987, but the act is still glorified in some areas. The Rani Sati Temple complex has received criticism for allegedly hosting discrete congregations that glorify Sati. The temple's official website even claims that the House of Worship, which is named after a 13th-century heroine who sacrificed herself, is inspired by feminine bravery and spirit. In 2013, a court in China sent four grave robbers to prison for black market corpse dealing. The buyers were the families of recently deceased people who were in need of similarly recently deceased spouses. According to The Guardian, the tradition of ritual ghost marriage is rare in this day and age, but it's not unheard of. The idea is to furnish a deceased groom with a deceased bride so that they will not be lonely in the afterlife. Apparently these corpses go for high prices and really wealthy buyers can even purchase their corpse brides straight from hospitals. Lower-income families, however, have two options. They can either use a corpse stand-in like a doughy human-shaped biscuit with black beans for eyes, or buy an old rotten corpse at a discounted price, dress it in clothing, and reinforce its skeleton with steel wire. Thanks to one old law that was never overturned, it's apparently possible to wed the deceased in present-day France. In fact, the law isn't even all that old. It was first established in 1959, when the Malpasset Dam broke and Charles de Gaulle, the French president at the time, visited the town in the wake of the disaster. A young woman apparently begged him to allow her to legally marry her fiancé, even though he had perished in the flood. The president consented. Parliament drafted and the woman wed her departed beloved. Since then, apparently various others have applied for the same nuptial permissions, and after complicated petitioning procedures, been granted them. One notable occasion took place in 2004 when a woman married her late betrothed and, in the process, became both widow and bride in the course of one ceremony. Leverate marriage, known as Yibem in Hebrew, is a Jewish tradition that states that a man must marry the childless widow of his brother to produce a child who will carry the deceased's brother's name, so that the deceased brother will not be forgotten. The tradition, which was first mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy in the Bible, can get somewhat complicated. Should the brother of the deceased refuse to marry his sister-in-law, a ceremony called Halitza, also known as the Removed Sandal, takes place. The widow loosens, or removes, the brother-in-law's shoes, spits in front of his face and says, so shall be done to a man who refuses to build up his brother's house. This ceremony is only performed by the Orthodox today, but after it is done, the widow is free to marry whomever she wants. Some present-day culture practices in Ibanez State, southeastern Nigeria, apparently stipulate that marriage must come before burial, and in early 2016, Adeo Emanuel found himself on the receiving end of such a decree. After his fiancée died in childbirth, her family reportedly refused to let her burial ceremonies commence without a wedding. For financial reasons, however, this request left Emanuel in a bind. He said, I have no money to pay for the mortuary, I also have no money to feed the children, and my in-laws are demanding for me to come over and do a compulsory marriage with her before she can be buried. They say some rituals must be performed and 350,000 nera must be paid to her family as part of her bride price, before talking about the burial at all. Where do I get the money from? In Haitian voodoo, also called voodoo, a primary spirits are called Iowa. It is reportedly not uncommon for followers of this religion to marry an Iowa in a mystic marriage, which even involves a ring, a priest, and a cake. This ceremony apparently ensures a spiritual protection, but it requires abstinence on a certain holiday. The Iowa are known to have distinct personalities. Some are brave but quick-tempered, while others are flighty but generous. In 1982, famed boxer Kim Duck-Koo collapsed into a coma after his opponent beat him within inches of his life. Four days later, he died, but his inconsolable fiance didn't let that stop her. I have decided to make a spiritual marriage with him because I believe that it is the only way to console him, his bride, who at the time of his death was pregnant with his child, explained. Though she reportedly did not go through with the ceremony, she claimed she had no plans to marry anyone else. And I just had to save this one for last. In 2007, a young woman began visiting Charles Manson in prison and eventually acquired a marriage license. To marry the man, either during his life or after his death, she was good either way. However, it turned out to be commercial interests that inspired Afton Elaine Burton to pledge her eternal love. According to the Independent, she was hoping to use his body as a tourist attraction. Manson, however, wasn't having it. He refused to marry Burton after discovering what she planned. If you made it this far, welcome to the Weirdo family. If you like the podcast, please tell your friends and family about it however you can, and get them to become Weirdos too. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true, unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The Lizzie Borden newspaper hoax was written by Dean Job for crime reads. Horned Hairs was by Ellen Lloyd for ancient pages. The Night Witches was posted at Bugged Space. Beyond the Grave Nuptials is by Lisa A Flowers for Ranker. And UFOs and Green Fireballs was by Darren King for history. Weird Darkness Theme by Alibi Music. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. I say a 29 verse 15. Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think who sees us, who will know. And a final thought, bad things happen every day to everyone. The difference is in how people deal with it. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.