 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. 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 this hour. When you think of vampires, you probably think of Transylvania or some gothic background in centuries past. But you probably don't think of a suburb of Madison, Wisconsin in the 1980s. But that's when and where it all started with the mineral point vampire. In the 1600s, police would sometimes accept help from anywhere they could get it when it came to solving crimes. Like at one time, when they needed help to solve a murder and turn to a guy with a dousing rod. Plus, we're all familiar with the idea of haunted places. But all throughout history, we have reports of paranormal activity surrounding objects. Sometimes the activity continues through generations as the object is passed from person to person. We'll look at America's five most haunted objects. These stories and more in this episode of Weird Darkness. 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 somebody else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening, be sure to follow Weird Darkness on Facebook and Twitter. And visit WeirdDarkness.com to find the daily Weird Darkness podcast. Watch streaming B horror movies and horror hosts 24-7 for free. Listen to free audiobooks I've narrated. And send me your own true story of something paranormal that's happened to you or somebody you know and more. You can find it all at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, close your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The Mineral Point Vampire has stalked the people of Mineral Point, Wisconsin for years and would seem like mere urban legend if it wasn't for all the credible witnesses who have encountered it. There's no way of conclusively knowing when the undead creature moved into town, but reported sightings go back to 1981. Wisconsin vampires have faced hardships aplenty in Wisconsin, including a proposed piece of legislation seeking to make vampirism illegal. Perhaps that's the primary reason the Mineral Point Vampire disappeared for long periods of time. Despite these disappearances, the nocturnal bloodsucker most enjoys spending time in Mineral Point's Graceland Cemetery. Witness reports indicate at least three real-life vampire sightings between 1981 and 2008. In each case, police officers responded to resident complaints and uncovered evidence that the vampire really exists. Of course, Mineral Point police have a long history of hearing about things that go bump in the night. The city is home to the Ridgway Phantom and the Haunted Walker House in addition to the Mineral Point Vampire. Here is all the evidence that suggests this Wisconsin vampire did and may still exist. One thing that suggests a story is likely just urban legend, it's just how many versions of the story evolve over time. With the Mineral Point Vampire, each witness during the vampire's three periods of activity provides a very consistent description of the undead creature. Considering the 23-year gap between the first two sightings, it seems highly unlikely that this was a case of one story influencing another. Instead, the description of a tall, thin, pale and imposing caped figure remains the same. Each figure also remarked that what they saw seemed like a vampire. The strange case of the Mineral Point Vampire began on a snowy night in 1981. After receiving multiple reports that someone who looked suspiciously like a vampire was haunting Graceland Cemetery, Officer John Pepper decided to go investigate. This was almost certainly a cursory visit meant to placate anxious residents, but it turned into much more when Officer Pepper spotted the vampire himself. The Mineral Point Vampire realized he had been observed and fled the scene. Officer Pepper gave chase, but the vampire was ultimately too fast and got away. After losing the vampire, Mineral Point Police Officer John Pepper made a report about his encounter. The vampire got away when it made a superhuman leap and easily cleared Graceland Cemetery's six-foot-tall fence. The next morning, Officer Pepper and a few other members of the police department went to the cemetery to look for evidence. They found snowy footprints leading to the fence, but there was nothing on the other side. This caused other officers to believe the entire thing was a ruse and they dropped the case. The Mineral Point Vampire was dormant for 23 years after its first encounter with the police officer. By 2004, though, the vampire apparently felt safe enough to resume stalking local residents. Several witnesses claimed that a creepy-looking man attacked people residing in a nearby apartment building by jumping at them from a tall tree. Again, the police dispatched officers to check out the situation. When they arrived, they spotted a man who not only fit the description of the complaints, but also seemed eerily familiar. After police spotted the vampire in 2004, he fled again and officers gave chase. This time, they lost their prey when he seemingly flew over a 10-foot-tall wall. Although they saw the so-called vampire and found physical evidence in the form of footprints, they were unable to catch him. Just like before, the footprints disappeared at the wall as if the person making them simply flew away. Perhaps the Mineral Point Vampire took the form of a bat as he leapt clear of the police officers. The Mineral Point Vampire may have felt emboldened by his two escapes because he resurfaced for the third time only four years after the second incident. Instead of being out in the open this time, the vampire chose to stalk would-be victims from a more subtle location. A couple fishing heard the vampire before they spotted him. They then watched as he climbed up from under the jetty before running away terrified. In a moment of pure instinct, Brandon Hines attempted to defend himself and his girlfriend by throwing his flashlight at the oncoming vampire. Hines then fled to his car which enabled the couple to flee mere seconds before the vampire could reach them. Mineral Point Police received a third chance to solve the vampire mystery when witnesses Brandon Hines and Janie Marker reported their run-in with the town's scariest resident. As always, officers dutifully reported to the scene and conducted a thorough investigation. The first thing they noticed was that all the fishing gear was sitting undisturbed on the jetty. The vampire has no use for fishing gear so this makes sense. The flashlight though had disappeared and may still be in use to light up the Mineral Point Vampire's dark resting place. The Ridgeway Phantom is yet another odd supernatural entity that Mineral Point residents have encountered. This specific ghost spent much of the mid-19th century haunting Ridgeway and Mineral Point. If early accounts are reliable, the Ridgeway Phantom took on several shapes to terrify people, ranging from a ball of fire to a headless man. Fear of the Phantom became so rampant that citizens requested armed escorts before leaving their homes after sunset. This legend seems to trace its roots to the 1840 murder of two local brothers. The Mineral Point Vampire isn't the only supernatural entity that calls this Wisconsin town home. The current owners of the historical Walker House claim that there are no ghosts in the building. However, many who visited or worked at the house before it changed hands dispute these claims. In fact, the one-time property manager of the house, Walker Calvert, had numerous spectral encounters, including one with a headless man in 1981. Some believe all of this paranormal activity dates back to the 1842 public execution of murderer William Caffey, which took place at the Walker House. The population of Mineral Point hit an all-time high in 1870 at 3,275 people. Shortly thereafter, people started moving out. The timing of this seems closely linked to the Ridgeway Phantom. In fact, there wasn't any type of rebound until 1900, but this was temporary. As rumors about ghosts at Walker House began to circulate, Mineral Point's population nosedived. The town's lowest point in 1980 found approximately 1,000 fewer people living in Mineral Point than in 1870. Is it a coincidence that the town began to empty out after the Phantom, the Walker House ghosts and the vampire appeared? We may never know for sure, but it certainly seems like supernatural causes are a viable possibility. In hunting the American werewolf, Beastman in Wisconsin and beyond, Linda S. Godfrey says a woman she identifies only as Kim contacted her in 2004 about a 1987 werewolf sighting in Mineral Point. Kim says that in the middle of a spring afternoon just before the full moon, she saw a werewolf running as it was transforming. She says the creature sprinted into a building, clutched a railing, and turned back into its human form. She said a group of about 15 to 20 people also witnessed the incident, although Godfrey could not corroborate Kim's story with any additional sources. In his book, The W Files, Jay Wrath writes that in 1986 a local sheriff as well as several residents witnessed a bright light over Mineral Point. The light appeared to be motionless then took off at a high rate of speed soundlessly. The sighting occurred around the same time as the first vampire sighting and the werewolf sighting. It may indicate that Mineral Point is a hotspot for supernatural activity. He has been spotted all over the world, but photographic evidence is lacking as is any scientific proof, but he still exists and is still seen. And now you can search for Bigfoot every month in the Find Bigfoot calendar by Timothy Wayne Williams. Each month you'll be captivated by an original Timothy Wayne Williams painting, beautiful and captivating, but within each painting hides a monster Bigfoot is hiding somewhere in each painting. Search for Bigfoot and invite others to do so as well with the new Find Bigfoot calendar available now at WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Bigfoot. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. In 1879, Walter Hubbell, an actor with an intense interest in the paranormal, published a book entitled The Haunted House, A True Ghost Story. The book was an account of the mysterious manifestations that have taken place in the presence of Esther Cox, the young girl who is possessed of devils and has become known throughout the entire dominion as the Great Amherst Mystery. In the introduction to the book, Hubbell wrote that manifestations described in this story commenced one year ago. No person has yet been able to ascertain their cause. So who exactly was Esther Cox and what was the Great Amherst Mystery? When the mysterious manifestations described in Hubbell's book began, Esther Cox was 18 and living with her married sister, Olive Teed in Amherst, Nova Scotia. The story goes that Esther was the victim of an attempted sexual assault by a male friend. Shortly thereafter, the manifestations began. It started with the strange sounds in the night. These were followed by seizures that rocked Esther's entire body. Then objects began to move around the house of their own volition. When the family called the doctor, he witnessed bedclothes moving by themselves and heard sounds coming from beneath the bed. Perhaps most chillingly, everyone in the room saw writing appear on the wall above Esther's bed which read, Esther Cox, you are mine to kill. After that, supernatural activity grew worse. Many visitors to the home witnessed the phenomena which continued for several months, abating only when Esther came down with diphtheria and was moved to the home of another married sister in Sackville, New Brunswick. The Cox family returned to Amherst, this time moving in with the local family. But the disturbances refused to relent. In addition to strange sounds and flying objects, spontaneous fires would appear in various places throughout the house. Esther herself claimed to now see a ghost. There he stands, all in gray. See how his eyes are glaring at me and he laughs when he says I must leave the house tonight or he will start a fire in the loft under the roof and burn us all to death. Enter Walter Hubbell. Hubbell had heard about the case and in the summer of 1879, he traveled to Amherst to rent a room in the same house where Esther resided. During his time there, he claimed to witness objects move on their own or appear out of thin air and fires would start spontaneously. He also witnessed some of Esther's painful fits and claimed to have communicated with several spirits present through wrapping techniques. Such activity inspired Hubbell to document his experiences. His book released that same year sold quite well and brought increased attention to Esther's case. Buied by his success, Hubbell orchestrated a speaking tour with Esther as its star. The tour, however, was ill-fated. Esther faced skepticism and hostility at most of her engagements. When the heckling became too much, she returned to Amherst. Upon her return, Esther attempted to put her haunted past behind her. She found work with a local farmer until the farmer's barn burned down. The farmer accused Esther of arson and she was sentenced to four months in prison, though she served only one before being released. As is the case with so many reports of demonic activity, the phenomena surrounding Esther Cox eventually faded away. She went on to live a relatively normal life after the barn incident, marrying twice and dying in 1912. Though Esther's story and by extension Hubbell's was dismissed by academics in the years that followed, those who witnessed the great Amherst mystery continued to attest to the otherworldly activity that took place around the young woman from Nova Scotia. A quick news story for you. A boy visited a haunted house that was supposed to be safe, fun, and ended up getting stabbed for real by one of the actors. In the hope of scaring those who dared walk through the seven floors of hell haunted house at the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds, an actor wielded a real knife this month to up the scare factor and the end result, well, he stabbed an 11-year-old boy in the foot. The actor was scraping the knife on the ground, playing around with it, and the boy's mom said, my son said to him, I'm not afraid, your knife is fake. So the man was like, oh, it's real, trust me, it's real. And that's when he started poking it at the boy's feet multiple times and then stabbed him in the foot. Police said Christopher Pogazowski has been charged with negligent assault a third degree misdemeanor. According to a police report, the 22-year-old admitted to authorities that using the knife was not a good idea. Gee, yeah, you think? Halloween brings out the best in people and the bonehead in people. Coming up on Weird Darkness, in the 1600s, police would sometimes accept help from anywhere they could get it when it came to solving crimes. You know, like that one time when they needed help to solve a murder and turn to a guy with a dousing rod? It really happened. I'll give you that story coming up on Weird Darkness. You've heard the first few episodes of Weirdling Woods, but now the book is available, where you can read all of the stories even before I use them in the podcast. This new anthology, written by author John Allen, not only gives you the chapters I've already used and will be using in Weird Darkness, but it also includes a bonus chapter that I will not be sharing in the podcast and a list of horror-themed Easter eggs that have been hidden throughout all of the chapters. You can find Weirdling Woods in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon and on the Weird Darkness publishing page at WeirdDarkness.com. I'm Darren Marlar, welcome back to Weird Darkness. We're all familiar with the idea of haunted places, but all throughout history we have reports of paranormal activity surrounding objects. Sometimes the activity continues through generations as the object is passed from person to person. While all of these items are now safely accounted for, some even under lock and key, these are five of the most haunted objects in America. At number five is Anna Baker's wedding dress. The legend of Anna Baker's wedding dress is a tale as old as time. Anna was a young woman from a well-to-do family who had recently moved into a stunning neoclassical mansion in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Being from such a wealthy family, though, her father didn't approve of the young steelworker Anna fell in love with. Young love fights on though, so Anna and her lover decided to get married in secret. Behind her father's back, she got as far as purchasing a wedding dress for the blessed event, but her father eventually found out. In a fit of rage, he purchased the steel mill where Anna's fiancé worked and had him shipped off to another city. Over the years, Anna's father tried tirelessly to find a suitable man to replace her fiancé. It was all a waste though and she eventually died a bitter and angry old spinster with a wedding dress still hanging in her closet. After her death, the wedding dress remained unworn, emanating all the anger and despair that had seeped into the fabric from Anna's thwarted marriage. Today, visitors to Baker Mansion can catch a glimpse of Anna wearing her dress at midnight, dancing in the pale glow of moonlight. Perhaps in death, Anna finally got to live out the wedding that she could never have. 4. The Devil's Favorite Chair No one knows for sure where the Glatzel family first found their infamous rocking chair, but for the first 30 years, it sat quietly in their home as the family's favorite chair. It wasn't until 1980 when it suddenly became the center of demonic possession and eventually murder. It all started when 11-year-old David Glatzel woke in the middle of the night screaming that he had seen the face of a hooved man with large black eyes, sharp teeth and the ears and face of an animal. After that rude awakening, David became eerily quiet and drew into himself. Hoping to help the boy out of his depression, sister Debbie Glatzel asked her fiance, Arnie, to stay with the family. Unfortunately, things only got worse from there. David continued to dream of the terrifying man and began waking with inexplicable cuts and bruises. From the attic, Arnie and David could hear the scratching of claws. This fever dream finally reached its peak when David began seeing the beast rocking back and forth in the family's chair. They called in an exorcist to cast out the demon, but it only made the situation worse. David's visions intensified and he began seizing through the night. With the help of famed paranormal experts, Ed and Lorraine Warren, David underwent several exorcisms while sitting in the chair. At one point, the chair even lifted off the ground and hovered in mid-air in front of shocked clergymen, family members and the Warrens. The demon eventually left the poor boy, but it wasn't finished with the Glatzel family. Arnie then became possessed and went on to murder his landlord. To this day, the chair remains locked away in the haunted museum where visitors can view it behind glass, but be warned, sitting in the chair can cause intense back pain and create a terrible tension so bad that you may require surgery. At number 3 is the Bassano vase. At first glance, the Bassano vase might appear like any other antique silver vase, but it's not something you want lying around your home. As legend has it, this 15th century silver Italian vase has been the cause of multiple unfortunate deaths. Although no one is certain where its evil power comes from, some believe that a jealous suitor placed an alleged curse on the object before gifting it to a young bride the night before her wedding. Unfortunately, she would not get the chance to walk down the aisle as she was murdered in her bed that very night. After her murder, the family passed the vase from member to member. With every successive new owner, though, death seemed to follow. Within just days of taking ownership of the vase, each family member would succumb to a violent death, with time they realized just how cursed the object was. For centuries, the family kept it hidden away, buried with one of their dead relatives, but in 1988 the Bassano vase resurfaced. It passed from buyer to buyer, leaving a new string of deaths with it, before finally being laid back to rest in a lead box in an undisclosed location. 2. The Dibic Box The Dibic Box first became a media sensation when it surfaced on eBay with a rather sinister tale. According to Kevin Manus, its seller, this seemingly innocuous wine cabinet was actually the cage and home to a Dibic. According to Jewish folklore, a Dibic is the evil spirit of a dead person who possesses the bodies of women before their wedding nights. During possession, the Dibic robs the brides to be of their innocence and can only be dislodged by a cabalist great rabbi. Subsequent owners of the Dibic Box have reported strings of bad luck, night terrors, and a foreboding sense of melancholy surrounding the box. Rapper Post Malone even reported suffering a flood of bad luck after a run-in with the box and it served as the basis for the 2012 horror film, The Possession. And number one, as far as cursed objects go, Annabelle the Doll might just be one of the most infamous items in the world, certainly on every haunted doll stories list. Thanks to the 2014 blockbuster hit Annabelle and the conjuring films, you would likely struggle to find anybody unfamiliar with Annabelle. But did you know that the real Annabelle Doll was an innocent-looking raggedy Ann? After it was purchased as a gift for a young nurse, the doll began displaying peculiar and demonic behaviors. At first, it would move throughout the day and cross its legs. Over time, it began leaving warnings and even bleeding. These events climaxed when the nurse's boyfriend woke in the night feeling suffocated and covered in inexplicable cuts. Just like in the movie, the nurse called in Ed and Lorraine Warren, who declared that the doll was not actually possessed but being manipulated by an inhuman demonic being looking to possess a human host. They blessed the house, sprinkled the doll with holy water, and then took it away to be locked behind glass where it still remains to this day. Visitors to Ed and Lorraine's museum are warned not to mess with the doll, but that has not stopped everyone. One man was asked to leave after taunting Annabelle, but he never made it home. Shortly after leaving, he died in a motorcycle accident. Of course, there are likely hundreds of cursed objects I could have talked about here, and if you have a favorite one, drop me an email at darren at weirddarkness.com and let me know about it. Maybe I can do a little digging and find out more about your favorite cursed object for a future episode. Here is some of the weird news that made it to the Weird Darkness website the past few days. You can find links to these stories by clicking on WeirdNews at WeirdDarkness.com. The extremely haunted house that the Conjuring movie was based on, the infamous Perrin family home, has been put back on the market. The three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath home was built in 1736, has over 3,100 square feet of living space, and sits on eight-and-a-half acres of land. It lists for $1.2 million, which is asking a lot, saying as you got to share it with a bunch of previous ticked-off undead owners. Traffic jam in New Mexico is being blamed on a chupacabra. Traffic was backed up on Highway NM16 due to the filming Chupa, a Netflix movie about a boy who discovers a chupacabra living on his grandfather's ranch. A chupacabra? Really, Wilson? Last week, you were late to school because you said you hit a jackalope. The week before that, you had a flat tire from swerving to avoid a windigo with mange. What's next, huh? An undead grandpa back from the grave ate your homework? You can find links to these stories and others in the Weird News section at WeirdDarkness.com. Hey, Weirdos! Well, the holidays are upon us, and one of the traditions here at Weird Darkness is Christmas specials, just like watching Charlie Brown, Rudolph, Frosty, Ebenezer Scrooge, George Bailey, and Kevin McAllister every year. We have our holiday specials, too. First off, spooky Santa returns with holiday chillers for kids every day from December 14th through Christmas Eve. My partnership with author Sylvia Schultz also returns with the 12 Nightmares of Christmas, posting December 13th through Christmas Eve. Holiday horrors also returns, with more terrifying stories that take place around the holidays, and those episodes will post every day beginning December 10th and going through Christmas Eve. On Saturday, December 10th, we'll also have a brand-new Christmas special from our Microterror's Scary Stories for Kids series, too. On Christmas Day, it's my narration of the entire novel, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Plus, I'll be posting regular episodes of Weird Darkness the whole month long as well, so if you like a little horror in your holidays, some perturbation in your plum pudding, if you like fright in your festivities, terror in your tree, nervousness in your noel, and cruel in your yule, then be sure to come back every day for more episodes, and be sure to tell your friends and family as well so they can get creeped out at Christmas, too. Happy holidays and Merry Christmas from Weird Darkness. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. It began with a brutal double murder on July 5th, 1692, when a wine merchant and his wife were killed in the cellar of their shop in Lyons, France. Since the money known to be in the shop was missing, authorities concluded that the couple had been robbed and murdered using the bloody billhook that had been left behind. Unfortunately, forensic science was virtually non-existent at the time, and the magistrates had no idea about who might have committed the crime. Rather than letting the crime remain unsolved, however, the magistrates were urged to consult Jacques Amar. Though actually a stone mason, Amar had become fairly famous in the area for his skill as a douser. Still known as water-witching at the time in some parts of the world, dousing basically involves the using of a witching or dousing rod to locate underground sources of water or buried treasure by passing the rod over the ground. Think of it like a supernatural version of a metal detector. While dousing had largely faded into obscurity by the 17th century, at least in France, local stories about Amar's success in locating other lost items quickly spread. But his greatest fame came from his apparent success at solving crimes. Several years earlier, Amar had reportedly used his dousing rod to track down a thief who had stolen some clothes in Grenoble, France. Not only did this dousing rod identify the thief, Amar reportedly tracked down where the stolen goods were hidden. According to another story, Amar had used his dousing rod to locate the body of a murdered woman and implicate the woman's husband who promptly fled the parish. Feeling that they had nothing to lose, and under considerable pressure to solve the double murder, Lyon's magistrates asked the procurer de Roy to test Amar and see if he could find the murderer. Not shy about gaining more publicity, Amar insisted that he could solve the crime if he and his dousing rod could be taken to where the murder happened. In the wine shop, he carefully doused the crime scene and concluded that three men were involved in the murder. After gaining his impression of the killers, he left the wine shop and began tracking his prey across town. Following some impressive guesses, he began wandering into the countryside, pointing out spots where the killers had slept, ate, etc. Although Amar convinced some of the skeptics, the procurer general demanded that he be tested further. The local comptroller who likely had a vested interest in proving that Amar was genuine conducted several tests in which he allegedly found the murder weapon where it had been hidden. Since the available account fails to provide any details, it is hard to decide how rigorous the testing actually was. In any event, Amar passed all of the tests and was assigned a team of archers to help him arrest anybody who might be implicated by his dousing. Following a lengthy search, his dousing rod led him to a jail in a neighboring town where, after securing permission to test the inmates, identified one prisoner as being involved in the murders. The prisoner, a 19-year-old hunchback who had been arrested for stealing at a local fair, vigorously denied committing the murders or ever visiting Lyons. While Amar offered to search for the other two killers, the hunchback prisoner was taken to Lyons for further interrogation. Given that torture was still allowed in 17th century France, that interrogation included a lengthy session on the wreck and the prisoner was persuaded to confess. Not that he admitted to the actual murders just to being a servant to the other two killers who were still at large. Amar's attempt at locating them failed to turn up any leads and he concluded that they had fled the country. On August 30th, 1692, the hunchback was broken on the wheel in the Place de Tireau in the heart of Lyons. While there was no physical evidence linking the condemned man to the murders for which he was executed, his confession was deemed to be proof enough. With the reputation Amar gained after the Lyons case, the Prince de Conda took a personal interest in proving whether or not he was genuine. After ordering him to Paris, the Prince arranged a new series of tests that would be far more rigorous than anything that had been tried on him before. In one of these tests, five holes were dug in a garden. One hole contained gold, one contained silver. Silver and gold were placed in a third hole, copper in the fourth, and the fifth hole contained nothing but stones. Amar failed this test miserably. The Prince then sent Amar to Chantilly to discover who had been stealing trout out of the ponds in a park. After carefully investigating with his dousing rod, Amar implicated one of the park's keepers who emphatically denied the theft. Seeing that Amar was convinced of his guilt, the hapless keeper promptly fled. He likely heard what happened to the hunchback. To test Amar further, the Prince arranged for a peasant, selected more or less a random, to be brought in as a suspect along with a young boy who was supposedly the keeper's son. When Amar confirmed that they had both been involved in the theft, the Prince had all the proof he needed. Since the peasant and the boy were chosen at random, and the boy had not even been in Chantilly when the theft occurred, Amar was sent away in disgrace. Other members of the French government decided to test Amar as well. One of them, the Recorder of the King's Council, smashed a window in his house and called for Amar to find the valuables that had supposedly been stolen. Not only did Amar report that the thief had entered through the broken window, he also indicated another window that the thief had used to leave. Since no robbery had actually happened, that was enough for Amar to be kicked out of the house as a fraud. After several other humiliating failures, Amar left Paris and returned to Grenoble. While Amar's reputation for accuracy had taken a serious hit due to his failures in Paris, he was still famous enough to be used in other cases, including the notorious anti-Hugannot campaign to root out religious heretics. No word in the record on how successful he was there. After that he faded into obscurity, with no details of his later life being available. Though Jacques Amar helped popularize dousing to France, his success as a crime solver seems largely limited to Lyon's case. Even there, whether he actually identified the right man or not is debatable at best. According to Sabine Beringoult and her classic book Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, which is still a must-read, dousers seem particularly vulnerable to self-deception, especially since the actions of the dousing rod are largely influenced by unconscious motor actions. In her own examinations of the Amar case, Beringoult was perhaps more charitable than modern skeptics would be and suggests that he may have genuinely believed in his own dousing ability, but that his confidence faded when subjected to actual rigorous testing. The history of dousings filled with examples of dousers using anecdotes as proof of their success while failing completely when investigated by actual skeptics. In Amar's case, what distinguished him from virtually all other dousers who tried and failed to prove their abilities was the fate of the man he identified as being guilty of the Lyon's murder. Though the prisoner he identified confessed to the crime, the fact that his confession was extracted by torture makes it completely worthless as evidence. While dousers have come and gone since Jacques Amar's time, they largely confined themselves to less ambitious tests, such as finding water or precious metals. For the most part, anyway. Not that long ago, a controversy over the use of dousing tools to detect landmines arose, leading to the bizarre decision by security forces in Iraq to purchase the devices for use in protecting troops. That people are still relying on dousing to make life-or-death decisions centuries after Amar's debacle demonstrates the need to be more vigilant in protecting people from the harmful consequences of sheer gullibility. You'll hear not only tonight's radio show, but also the extra sudden death overtime content I prepared that I didn't have time to fit in because I went overtime. And while the radio show is one night per week, I upload episodes for the podcast seven days per week. And if you missed any part of tonight's radio show, my Patreon members get a copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness, and please tell your friends, family, co-workers and classmates about the show. Tell someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Telling others about Weird Darkness makes it possible for me to keep doing the show, and if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call the Dark Line toll-free with your own paranormal story, or a story that happened to somebody you know. You can also email me anytime at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. I do read every email I receive. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright 2021. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 1 Peter 4, verse 8. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. And a final thought from Eckhart Toll, acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Well, hello there. It's Santa. And my big night is getting closer by the day. You know, I love milk and cookies when I visit your home each year. Well, the milk can get warm while waiting for me to arrive. And a warm toddy is not the best thing to drink if you plan on staying alert and flying around the world. So this year, I'm asking that you instead leave me a plate of cookies and a nice hot thermos or mug of Weird Dark Roast Coffee. It actually tastes like Christmas. It has a hint of cocoa and caramel. And I've been drinking a lot of it recently to wake me up early in the morning to work on toys and take care of the reindeer. So this year, leave Santa a mug or thermos of Weird Dark Roast Coffee. Tell your parents they can find it right now at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. St. Albans Sanitarium, located in Radford, Virginia, shut its doors in the early 1990s after a century of abuse and terror. Actually, the terror began even earlier during the American colonial period when the Drapers Meadow Massacre occurred on the very site that would one day be a boys' school and later a mental hospital. It seems that almost every city in town the world over has some claim to paranormal fame, but few could come close to matching the amount of ghostly activity that's been recorded and reported at the Haunted St. Albans, one of the most haunted places in Virginia and perhaps the entire country. Over more than 100 years, St. Albans was the site of severe emotional and physical abuse of patients and the numerous suicides it led to. Even when it was a boys' school at the turn of the 20th century, students were tormented by staff and encouraged to bully one another. A number of deaths were reported on the campus during the site's 20-year tenure as a school officer. When the hospital closed its doors in the 1990s, a former patient purchased the property with plans to turn it into a center for learning. In order to raise the funds to make it happen, he hosted regular ghost tours and overnight ghost sleepovers at the old hospital. If he's eventually able to open his business, perhaps at long last something good will come from a place of such sorrow. Then again, there is plenty in the hospital's history that should have him thinking twice about wanting to spend so much time there. There are plenty of haunted locations all over the east coast of the U.S., but a number of paranormal experts named St. Albans Sanatorium in Radford, Virginia as the most active location on the east coast. This probably has to do with just how long the land there has been inhabited. Members of the Pohattan, Shawnee, and Cherokee tribal peoples all settled on that land. Then there was the Boys School in the late 19th century. The mental hospital followed and ran until the 1990s. In the fall of 1755, long before the cornerstone of St. Albans was laid, a band of angry Shawnee tribesmen descended upon the pioneer community of Draper's Meadow, which would one day be the site of St. Albans. A number of settlers were murdered that day, and several people were taken hostage by the Shawnee. One of these, a young mother named Mary Draper who was taken to what is now Kentucky, but was able to eventually escape and walk nearly 800 miles back home. Some of the spirits from the massacre might still haunt the site today. In the late 19th century, the original buildings of what would later become St. Albans Sanatorium were constructed. It opened as a Lutheran school for boys, purportedly to train up the next generation of Southern gentlemen. However, the school quickly developed a reputation for harsh treatment and the encouragement of bullying between the students. To complicate matters further, the school was highly competitive in athletics and had a rivalry with another school. The students were encouraged to go above and beyond to win games, and when they failed, they were punished. While there was no official deaths on the record books, a number of deaths occurred on the campus, including suicides. A few students left after their first term, refusing to return due to the wretched atmosphere and cruel treatment. The school remained open for only 20 years, closing in 1911, but plenty of dark energies and emotions were left behind. Five years after the Lutheran school for boys shut its doors, Dr. J. C. King arrived in Radford to transform the building from a boy's school to a hospital for the mentally ill. His idea was to revolutionize the treatment of mentally ill patients, a practice with a poor centuries-long reputation. King encouraged the latest techniques and technologies, while also purporting to offer compassion and good basic patient care. Initially, St. Albans Sanatorium became known as one of the most progressive treatment centers for the mentally ill. However, in the early days, King's methods were untested and many patients suffered and died from the experimental nature of the techniques. A number of suicides reportedly took place as St. Albans. It is said that the spirits of the tortured and miserable patients of St. Albans linger and have made their presence known to those who visit. While society is grateful for innovative and even experimental treatments and medicines that have saved countless lives, there was no such thing as patient consent in clinical trials like there is today. During the early 20th century, experimental treatments and drugs were used on patients without their consent. Some of the treatments used at St. Albans were at the very least questionable, while some were absolutely barbaric. Some of these included something called insulin comatherapy, electroconvulsive therapy and hydroshock therapy. Patients were often left alone for many hours in treatment rooms, strapped to gurneys while they received frightening and painful treatment. Some of the mentally ill patients suffered a further decline in their health while others died as a result of the treatments. One of the most paranormally active areas inside modern-day St. Albans is the suicide bathroom. In this bathroom, four documented suicides have taken place. The ghostly activity emanating from this room is said to be more aggressive than any other spot on the property. Visitors say they can feel the overwhelming oppressive presence of two of the women who killed themselves in the room. Some visitors claimed to see full apparitions of the suicide victims, floating lights and paranormal experts have made recordings of disembodied voices heard in the room. Another hotbed of ghostly activity at St. Albans is the sanatorium's bowling alley. It is said that an evil entity dwells there and some have reported seeing a set of red eyes floating in the room. Others claim the ghost of a little girl named Ali lingers there. She may have been the daughter of one of the hospital's patients. Also, the ghost of Gina Rene Hall, who was murdered near St. Albans in June 1980, is said to roam through the bowling alley. Another area of paranormal activity at St. Albans is the hydrotherapy room. Here is where some of the worst sort of treatments were carried out on patients. The term hydrotherapy may sound like something akin to a relaxing spot, but that was not remotely the case at St. Albans. Patients were either wrapped up tightly like mummies in icy towels or bound to gurneys. They were also sometimes strapped into steaming pools of water unable to move or escape. Sometimes they were left there for days at a time. Other patients were violently hosed with water from a fire hose. Perhaps the creepiest site of paranormal activity at St. Albans is Donald's room. Paranormal investigators have left this room shaken and baffled. The story of the room is that a maintenance man named Donald lived on the St. Albans campus and was a known pedophile. He expressed regular interest in luring young male patients to his room because he wanted to get them into his closet. The worst tale told of the evil Donald has to do with his raping and killing a young boy who was abandoned at the sanatorium. According to one paranormal expert, a visit with Donald's spirit was so remarkable it bears including here. Our approach with Donald started off as our retired police detective, Mike, tried to get a remorseful confession out of Donald using a ghost box. After that, things got weird, really weird. We started playing this little game with Donald that I'll call you light up my periscope, I'll get into your closet with you, you homicidal ghost. All the guys in the room took turns talking to Donald, getting into his closet. Donald would respond by lighting up the periscope, cutting up and laughing with us through the use of the ghost box. The entire session was irreverent but not disrespectful to Donald. We did thank him for his time but he left our minds more than a little blown to say the least. Spirits can be seen and sensed throughout St. Albans. One of those spirits called Elizabeth is known to sing to investigators. Another has been dubbed the grumpy old man for his tendency to create loud noises that include bangs and heavy footsteps. For such a large building, it is truly remarkable that almost every area of St. Albans is known for paranormal activity. Even the attic of St. Albans is reported activity. Investigators have recorded a wide variety of disembodied voices, both male and female, calling out, be brief, get out. That's you. It's not good. It has begun. Won't come. And more strange phrases. Morgosly footsteps and disembodied voices are heard in the sanatorium's infamous electroshock therapy room. In the early days of the sanatorium, patients were given lobotomies. When those proved ineffective, an experimental electroshock therapy treatment was implemented. The experience was nothing less than terrifying for the patients who experienced fractures, seizures and severe memory loss. Some modern-day visitors claimed to have witnessed objects being thrown in sight instances of spirit jumping, where visitors felt the touch of a spirit on their body. Ebenezer Scrooge learned the lesson in just one night, that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Of course, it took three ghosts scaring the crap out of him to get the point across, but there's an easier and less terrifying way of going about it. Just scare it forward. The next time you're in a drive-thru buying fast food, donuts or coffee, tell the attendant you want to pay for the person behind you. In fact, you can visit WeirdDarkness.com slash scare it forward and download a printout to give to the drive-thru worker that they can pass on to the person behind you in line so you don't have to explain everything. It's a great way to bring a little joy to someone during the holiday season, a time that's often tough for many. And hey, maybe the car behind you will want to pay for the car behind them and keep the streak going. It's scare it forward. Get started at WeirdDarkness.com slash scare it forward. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash scare it forward. Welcome back to Weird Darkness. I'm Darren Marlar. Nearly everyone has heard a completely ludicrous time travel story at least once in their life. Like the internet-famous Backwoods Home magazine ad, which read, Wanted, somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322, Oakview, California 93022. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before. It was of course a hoax, as many similar stories are, but what about real-time travelers? Do they exist? That's something you have to decide for yourself, as no time travel stories can be conclusively proven. But there are some convincing stories of people who might have actually traveled through time. In 1901, two professors from St. Hughes College in Oxford, England, went to visit the Palace of Versailles. Versailles was of course the French royal home until the monarchy was abolished in 1792. Marie Antoinette, one of the last royals to live there, was executed in 1793, so on that day in 1901, when professors Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain were walking the grounds of the palace, it's pretty safe to say they did not expect to see Marie Antoinette in the flesh just chilling out on a stool outside the Pétit Trinon. A private retreat built for Antoinette by her hubby, Louis XVI. And yet there she was, sitting and sketching and completely oblivious to the fact that the two women were gaping at her and all the other people in 1780s period attire who had just appeared as suddenly as Marie Antoinette. Antoinette and everyone else disappeared when a tour guide approached Moberly and Jourdain. Together they wrote a book, an adventure about their experience, and the story gained notoriety because of how grounded it seemed. These were two highly educated and well respected women. They wouldn't just make up a story like that, so what was it then? Did they actually travel through time? It's one of the most thoroughly reported, compelling, and famous time travel stories that still can't be explained. Air Marshal Sir Robert Victor Goddard was sent to inspect an abandoned airfield in Edinburgh in 1935. It was dilapidated, of which he made note. He got back in his plane and took off, but heavy rain and low visibility prevented him from going too far, so he turned around and headed back to the airfield to wait out the storm. As he approached the landing strip though, something very strange happened. The clouds cleared. The sun shone brightly, and he saw that the previously abandoned land was now bustling with mechanics in blue jumpsuits. There were four yellow planes on the tarmac, and one of them was a kind that he had never seen before. Keep in mind this guy was a military pilot. He was pretty familiar with all the different plane models available at the time. Goddard was totally confused. Had he imagined it? Was he hallucinating? Was it a dream? It couldn't be real, certainly. But four years later he was sent back to the airfield. Far from being abandoned it was now in full use, complete with blue jumpsuit wearing mechanics and yellow planes, and sitting on the runway was that plane that he couldn't identify in 1935, a Miles Magister. The Magister was first manufactured in 1938, three years after Goddard initially saw it. Goddard's story is convincing, because he wasn't even trying to travel through time. Something unexplainable just happened to him. Journalist J. Bernard Hutton and photographer Joaquin Brandt were sent by a German newspaper to do a story on the Hamburg shipyard in 1932. It was an uneventful visit until the bombs began raining down on them. Hutton and Brandt realized they were caught in the middle of an air raid and they high-tailed it out of there, but not before snapping a few photographs. When they got back to the center of Hamburg, no one believed their story. They developed the photos that they took, intending to prove to everybody that they weren't crazy. In fact, they proved the opposite. The photos showed no signs of an air raid. Eleven years later Hutton was living in London when he opened up a newspaper and probably nearly spit his coffee across his desk. There was a story about Operation Gomorrah, an air raid on Hamburg. The accompanying photos looked exactly like what he had experienced in 1932. We'll continue with our strange and possibly true time travel stories when Weird Darkness returns. What is it like to be a murderer, to commit the crime, to have the police examining every scene you've been to for clues in order to track you down? And what if other psychopathic murderers were also out to get you? For the true crime enthusiast, Killers, the card game, is full of mystery, intrigue, and dark humor. Two to five players draw cards to reveal the victims and scenarios, with each kill bringing you closer to winning. But watch out, for the police are also in the game, following up on every clue to stop your murder spree. Roll the dice to determine if you leave evidence at the scene or if you avoid the police. Use your cards to mess with other players and emerge victorious or end up as a victim yourself. The back of the killer card deck also allows you to experience the cold facts, unique history, and horror all fans of true crime love. The Dark Trivia will make your party both exciting and disturbingly entertaining for Dark Game Night. Numerous expansion packs make this role-playing game even more delightfully deadly by adding more scenarios, more law enforcement, more victims, and expand up to ten players at once. Part RPG, part collectible, all card game. For ages 18 and up, gameplay includes sensitive topics. Killers, the card game, available now at WeirdDarkness.com slash Card Game. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Card Game. Hi, I'm Darren Marlar. Welcome back to Weird Darkness as we continue looking at some of these strange and believable time travel stories. In the 12th century, a young boy and a girl were found alone in Wolpit, England. They didn't speak English or any other identifiable language for that matter, and their skin was green. That's right, green. They were taken in by a local villager, and though the boy died soon after, the girl survived and eventually learned to speak English. Finally, she was able to tell someone where she came from. She said that she had come from a twilight-covered place called St. Martin's Land and that she and her brother were taking care of their father's sheep one day when they found a cave. They went into the cave and after walking for what felt like a very long time, they emerged in Wolpit. Maybe it's just a folktale, or maybe they came from the future. After all, their story does sound suspiciously like a time slip. Unfortunately for them, they were never able to get back to where or when they came from. In 1968, Charlotte Warburton entered a cafe that she had never seen before. Nothing seemed amiss, but when she tried to go back a few days later, the cafe wasn't there. It had vanished. Charlotte later learned that there was in fact a cafe in that spot many, many years ago. It had been replaced by a supermarket long before Charlotte claims to have walked in and visited it. In 1996, a police officer and his wife were shopping in Liverpool. His wife went into a bookshop while he took off for a CD store down the street. As he walked away from the bookstore, he noticed that everything was suddenly quiet. The nevan that looked like it was from the 1950s hawked and swerved around him. Somehow, he was standing in the middle of the street and stranger than that, everyone around him was dressed in 50s-style clothing. Infused, he tried to go back to the bookstore, but it wasn't there. In its place was a woman's clothing shop named Crips. So he went into the clothing shop, but as soon as he did, it was a bookstore again. He was back in 1996, but he couldn't figure out what had happened to him, until he learned that Crips hadn't existed since the 1950s. In 1954, a man trying to get through customs at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan, had a bit of trouble with the customs agents. It wasn't because he forgot to declare something on his customs form, but because he claimed to be from a country that didn't exist, and he had a passport and stamps to prove it. His passport was from a country named Tared, which he claimed was in between Spain and France. When customs officials pulled out a map and asked him if he meant Andorra, he became angry. He said that yes, the location was right, but Tared had existed for at least a thousand years. He had never heard of Andorra. He was given a hotel room for the night while the police tried to figure out what was happening. Even though there were armed guards posted outside his room, the man vanished before the next morning. His passport, which had been stored in the security office at the airport, also disappeared. Officials never figured out the mystery of the man from Tared. In 1850, a man named Jophar Vorin was found in Frankfurt on the Oder, Germany, and he was questioned. He spoke very broken German, which made his claims even more difficult to understand. He said he was from Laxaria, and he spoke the languages of Laxarian and Abramian. He said he was in search for his long-lost brother, but he was shipwrecked on the way to his destination. Vorin didn't recognize any of the maps or globes that were presented to him. He claimed that the world as he knew it had five sections, Sacraia, Aflar, Aslar, Aslar, and Uplar. In the yearbook of facts in science and art, John Timbs reports Vorin was taken to Berlin to be questioned and studied. There is no doubt that Vorin existed. The question is, was he crazy, or was he from a very distant future? In 1979, Jeff and Pauline Simpson and Len and Cynthia Gizby were traveling through France. When it became late, they decided to find a hotel for the night. They found a place not too far down the road that they were traveling. It was an odd place. The doors to the rooms had only wooden latches, no locks, and the windows only had thick shutters, no glass. In the morning, they had breakfast at the hotel. They encountered two gendams, or armed French policemen, that were wearing old-looking uniforms, complete with capes. The whole experience at the hotel seemed strange, not least because their stay only cost 19 francs. Other hotels in the area cost over 200 francs. Still, they happily went on their way, and on their return journey, they tried to stop and stay at the hotel again. Except it had seemingly vanished in thin air. And the uniforms those gendams were wearing, they were from around 1905. In 1935, Dr. E. G. Moon was leaving the residence of one of his patients in Kent, England, when he realized that his car was not where he'd left it. Both the driveway and the road seemed a lot rougher than he remembered. Dr. Moon spotted a man walking by the house, and he realized that the man was wearing several capes and a top hat and carrying a long-barreled gun. He looked to Moon like he was from the 19th century, not the 20th. Dr. Moon turned to go back to the house, but as he did, he saw that the driveway was paved again, and his car was, once again, parked in the driveway. He turned back towards the road to look for the man, but he had vanished. In November of 2000, the Time Travel Institute forums saw a spike in unusual activity. Nestled among the usual conspiracy theories and far-fetched UFO sightings were a string of posts from a man who called himself John Titor. He claimed to be from the year 2036, saying the government sent him back in time to 1975 to retrieve an IBM computer, which they needed in order to debug some computer programs. He hopped off his time machine in 2000 for personal reasons, and since he was already there, he decided to warn everybody about how crappy the future was going to get. He claimed that civil unrest would begin in the United States in 2004, and there would be full-blown civil war by 2012. By 2015, he said a quick World War Three would have come and gone. Of course, none of these things have happened, so you're probably wondering why did people believe this wingnut. Well, it's because his posts about Time Travel were so detailed. The description of its mechanics and his machine so thorough, it seemed almost impossible that he wasn't telling the truth. In 1969, two men were having lunch in a southwestern Louisiana town. Afterward, they got in their car and headed back to work along U.S. Route 167, highway that spans much of the state. In the distance, they saw an old car. As they got closer to it, they realized it was moving very slowly and they could see the year 1940 printed on its license plate. The two men pulled up alongside the car and peered in to see if everything was okay. They were greeted by the sight of a woman, done up in full 1940s regalia, and a small child, both of whom looked very confused and even, they thought, brightened. They gestured to the woman, indicating that she should pull over and that they would help her. As she began to pull onto the side of the road, the two men stopped a few yards in front of her. When they turned around to make sure that she'd parked safely, the whole car had vanished into thin air. At an Air Force base in Montauk, New York, at the eastern tip of Long Island, Preston Nichols claims some top secret government Time Travel experiments took place. Nichols writes in the Montauk project, experiments in time that in the 1980s he recovered repressed memories of working on the project, and his claims seem outlandish. They experimented on children. One child had psychic abilities. They created a Time Portal to 1943, but not just any moment in 1943. The portal opened up onto the USS Eldridge, the subject of another famous alleged government project, the Philadelphia Experiment. Proponents of the Philadelphia Experiment Conspiracy Theory purport that, at the height of World War II, the U.S. conducted a series of tests to try and cloak its warships. They wanted their ships to be invisible and undetectable. In October 1943, they reportedly succeeded, but there was a side effect. The Eldridge traveled back ten minutes in time and the experience drove the crew mad. They were brainwashed afterward, the memories wiped of the whole incident. A film about these alleged events, the Philadelphia Experiment, was released in 1984, and wouldn't you know it, that film triggered some repressed memories and won Al Beelik. Beelik began discussing these memories with the press, which brought him to the attention of Nichols. The two got in touch and together told a story that linked the Montauk project and the Philadelphia Experiment. Beelik had traveled through the time portal from the USS Eldridge to Montauk. The scientist Montauk pushed him back through to the Eldridge. It's easy to dismiss Nichols and Beelik's claims as pure science fiction, but the tale is so compelling, so detailed and unbelievable. Don't you almost want it to be true? Are you more than just a listener of Weird Darkness? Are you a fan? Are you a loyal or even a vowed member of the Weirdo family? Then you can join us in the Darkness Syndicate. As a member of the Darkness Syndicate, you can receive exclusive Weird Darkness merchandise, get daily episodes of the podcast, commercial free, listen to chapters of audiobooks that I narrate even before the publishers or authors hear them, and get news about the Weird Darkness podcast before anyone else. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com slash Syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Syndicate. Even a man of God can be tormented by the darkness. Let's hear Michael's story on the Dark Line. Our second child, we noticed that there was just something wrong with the house. Actually, it was before that because I am a 30-something-year-old man and I was scared of the dark in that house. And I mean, actually legitimately afraid of the dark in that house. There was something not positive in there. There were strange things around. There was a fist hole in the bathroom door and I did not do that. That was there when we moved in. There was this massive lamp oil stain in a back room and I'll talk about the back room in a minute, but no explanation for that either and we could never get that cleaned up. So when our second child was born, my wife had his room set up in that back room that I talked about with the oil stain and she would go back there in the night to nurse him. Well, when she would go back there, she said she never felt good in that room and it just always felt wrong. So that was one tip off. I will say we never saw anything per se. A lot of what we experienced was strange feelings, but there is a little bit more. Things really started to seem strange when we moved our son out of the back room because it felt so bad into the main nursery with our daughter and every night I would pray over them and it started happening that when I would start to pray that there would be this scratching in the wall and it would always start about the time we were laying them down for bed and I started praying and there were some times that I would try to pray louder and the scratching would get louder and at first we were just thinking, huh, that's odd. We've got rats. Well, we had exterminators come that could never find anything. We also started to notice a smell of rotten eggs and I think you've talked about that before. So finally, one night had had enough and our denomination does not have a right of exorcism, but I did look in a prayer book and I found a blessing that basically called for any dark spirit to go away and I went from room to room and I prayed that prayer in Jesus name and after I did that prayer, the scratching never came back. There were still some things that just didn't feel right in that house. I don't know what happened there and it never felt comfortable there, but finally the scratching stopped. When we moved to our new house in Sandoval, we did not have any feelings like that, so we don't know what it was, but there was something about that house that didn't feel good. Anyway, that's my story. Thanks for listening and you're doing a great job, Darren. Have a great day. Blessings. Bye. Thanks for the story, Michael. Now, for a Christian pastor to get this kind of thing happening to them, you know it has to be the real thing. I like how you went and set a blessing over every room of your house because that is exactly what we did when we moved into our new home. We took some oil and we set a blessing over the entryway of every room of the house asking for God's protection over our home and to keep out everything that was not from him. It sounds like even after you had something dark in your home, that blessing had an effect. I'm glad to hear that. Things may have continued to feel spooky afterwards because either A, the presence wasn't completely gone, or B, which is what I probably would believe, you had the lingering thoughts of what had been there before and you could just never really feel comfortable again. Much like somebody having difficulty revisiting the sight of a bad accident they were in, the memories and emotions of that location are still strong in them. I think moving that was probably the best thing you guys did either way and I'm glad that that scratching stopped. Thanks for the call, Michael. It's great to hear from a pastor who listens to the show. If you have a true paranormal or creepy story to share of your own, you can do what Michael did and call the Dark Line toll-free at 1-877-277-5944. That's 1-877-277-5944. Here's some of the weird news that made it to the Weird Darkness website the past few days. You can find links to these stories by clicking on WeirdNews at WeirdDarkness.com. Living on the International Space Station keeps getting more dangerous. A new study published in the journal Biofilms and Microbiomes found that the ISS's drinking water is full of bacteria, even though it uses a sophisticated water purification system that recycles wastewater. Well, I think I found your problem right there in the words System That Recycles Wastewater. Stop drinking that and your problem corrects itself. Tesla obtained a patent on a state-of-the-art windshield wiper that uses laser beams to clean debris off of cars. I already pretend driving through snowflakes is me in a spaceship going warp speed through the stars. Now I'll have laser guns to shoot the guys I'm chasing in front of me. Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! In case you haven't already heard, the legendary Star Trek Captain Kirk is boldly going where astronauts have gone before. Actor William Shatner, despite being 90-years-old, is set to take a trip into space this month aboard the next civilian flight of Jeff Bezos' new Shepard spacecraft. Of course, there is a lot of buzz around this, but they did tell him that the command beam me up Scotty isn't going to work this time around, right? Wouldn't it be funny if they put him in a red shirt before taking him up? A woman in North Yorkshire, England purchased donated sperm and an insemination kit online, watched a YouTube video on how to use them, and gave birth nine months later to a healthy baby that she named Eden, whom the Internet is now calling the world's first e-baby. Maybe now she can find a YouTube video on how to be a responsible parent. A team of researchers at Northwestern University has developed tiny flying microchips, not much bigger than a grain of sand, that nonetheless contained sensors, power sources, antennas for wireless communication and embedded memory, making them the smallest flying machines ever built. So that mosquito you swatted this morning might actually have been a kid's science project and you just guaranteed him an F. You can find links to these stories and others in the Weird News section at WeirdDarkness.com. Thanks for listening! If you like the show, be sure to subscribe to the podcast where you'll hear not only tonight's radio show but also the extra sudden death overtime content that I prepared that I didn't have time to fit in because I went overtime. And while the radio show is one night per week, I upload episodes for the podcast seven days per week. And if you missed any part of tonight's radio show, my Patreon members get a copy of tonight's show immediately after it's over. You can become a patron and or subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com. You can follow the show on Facebook and Twitter at Weird Darkness and please tell your friends, family, coworkers and classmates about the show. Tell somebody you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. Telling others about Weird Darkness makes it possible for me to keep doing the show. And if you'd like to be a part of the show, you can call the Dark Line toll-free with your own true paranormal story or something that happened to somebody you know. That number is 1-877-277-5944. Again, that number is toll-free. 1-877-277-5944. You can also email me anytime at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. And I do read every email I receive. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright 2021. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. 1 Peter 5, verses 6-8. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. And a final thought by Robert too. The struggle you're in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow. Don't give up. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. If you or someone you know struggles with depression or dark thoughts, I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered resources to help fight depression with the Seven Cups app, connecting you with people who have also struggled with depression and are there to lift you up, even professional listeners there to listen at all hours of the day. If you're having dark thoughts of harming yourself or worse, there's the suicide prevention lifeline that you can either call or chat online with anytime 24-7. The folks at ifred.org are doing what they can with research and education on depression to give us the tools we need to fight against it in the days ahead. These resources are absolutely free and there when you need them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. Some years ago, I read a poll which stated that the number one complaint people had about their neighborhood was, well, the neighbors. Sometimes these neighborly squabbles can get bad enough to end up in a civil court or, with some extreme cases, a police station. Still, it could be worse. In the old days, such disputes would often lead to a witchcraft trial. One of the most famous examples took place in 1582 in the small English village of St. Ossoff. Two residents of this village, Grace Thurlow and Ursula Kemp, they'd been on bad terms for years. It was an ordinary example of two women rubbing each other the wrong way. The sort of thing you'd see in probably any community until their simple mutual irritation turned into a grave legal matter indeed. The trouble began when Thurlow's young son Davy suffered a serious illness. One day, Kemp came by to try a little friendly white magic on the boy. She held his hand, intoned the words, a good child, how thou art loading, and then left the house. Kemp returned a few moments later and repeated the ritual two more times, reassuring Thurlow that Davy would now soon get better. Fortunately, she proved to be correct. At that time, Thurlow was about to have another child. Kemp apparently assumed, particularly after her success with young Davy, that Thurlow would ask her to assist at the birth. When she learned that Grace had secured the services of another woman, Ursula took this as a personal insult and wasted no time in marching over to the Thurlow residence to let her know what she thought of such ingratitude. In response, Thurlow made reference to the fact that she had recently been troubled by lameness. She hinted ominously that if it didn't go away soon, she would go to a magistrate and blame Kemp for her disability. Kemp offered her a deal. If Grace allowed her to attend Grace's upcoming labor, she would teach Grace a ritual that would cure her lameness. It's not recorded if Thurlow took her up on this witchy offer, but soon afterward she gave birth to a healthy daughter. Ursula offered to act as a wet nurse for the new baby, but Grace again refused her services, opting to nurse the child herself. Three months later, the baby fell from her cradle, fatally breaking her neck. Ursula's response was one of the cruelest I told you so on record. She sniffed that if Thurlow would just allow her to nurse the child, the baby would have been alive still. You probably aren't surprised then to learn that this incident ended any pretense of friendship between the two women. Grace's lameness returned with a vengeance. Ursula told her that for the price of 12 pence, she would cure her ailment. Thurlow was in such pain, she agreed. Her lameness went away. All was well until a few weeks later when Kemp called on Thurlow to collect her payment. Thurlow had to tell her that she was simply too poor to scrape together such a sum. Kemp, infuriated at this welching of their deal, told Grace in very unladylike language just what she thought of her and stocked off. Immediately afterward, Thurlow's mysterious lameness came back, or still the sickness of her only surviving child, Davy, returned. Thurlow had had enough. In February 1582, she went to the local justice of the peace, Brian Darcy, and accused Kemp of putting a curse on her and her children. Ursula seems to have been a very unpopular woman, and from what little is recorded of her, that's not really surprising. So other villagers saw this as an excellent opportunity for a bit of peeback. On that same day, another woman, Agnes Leatherdale, went to the magistrate with her own charges against Kemp. She told Darcy that Ursula had asked her for some scouring sand. Kemp would, in exchange, dye her a pair of hose. However, Leatherdale, knowing her to be a naughty beast, refused. When she saw this sand being delivered to another household, Ursula was heard to mutter furious words to herself. Immediately afterward, one of Leatherdale's children fell gravely and mysteriously ill. Leatherdale went on to say that she visited a cunning woman to learn the cause of her child's sickness. She was probably unsurprised to be told that Ursula Kemp's witchcraft was responsible. When Leatherdale confronted Kemp with this news, Ursula just shrugged and denied everything. When Ursula was brought in for questioning, she told Darcy her side of the story. She claimed that some years back she herself had become lame. She visited a wise woman in the neighboring village of Wheely who informed Kemp that she had been bewitched. The woman gave Ursula a detailed cure for her ailment. It involved hogs-dung and drinking ale infused with sage and St. John's wort. Having found that the treatment worked as advertised, she shared the formula with two other women who had also been witched into lameness with the same happy results. Darcy felt this was all well and good, but it did not address the pointed issue. Did Kemp be witch the Thurlow and Leatherdale households? The magistrate, in essence, offered Ursula a plea bargain, confess everything, and she would not be treated harshly. In response, Kemp burst into tears and sobbed out a tale that was probably even more than Darcy bargained for. She claimed that she had four familiars. Two, a black toad named Pigan and Tiff and a white lamb, caused sickness to her enemies and their cattle. The other two, cats named Titty and Jack, brought the ultimate curse, death. These evil spirits were responsible for the sickness plaguing a Thurlow and Leatherdale children, as well as the death of Grace's baby. As if that wasn't damning enough, Kemp also volunteered that she sent Jack to murder her sister-in-law. Darcy brought in Grace and Agnes to confront this self-confessed murderer. Kemp hysterically begged their forgiveness, saying that in addition to her own crimes, she had arranged for another village woman, Alice Newman, to send her own familiars to torment Agnes' child and Grace. After a good night's sleep, it began to dawn on Ursula that perhaps she'd been a tad too chatty. The following day, she offered Darcy a slightly revised story. She said that a few months back, she and Alice Newman had quarreled. During the argument, Newman threatened to tell Darcy that Ursula was a witch. Despite this, the two patched up their differences, and by the time Alice left her house, carrying with her Ursula's four spirit pals in a pot, they were good friends again. Some time later, after Ursula's fight with Grace Thurlow, she asked Alice to send Titty to cause Thurlow some grief. After Ursula got into a dispute with John Stratton and his wife, she had Alice sick jack on them. The women would reward the spirits by allowing them to suck their blood like demonic mosquitoes. Naturally, Alice Newman was brought in to see what she had to say. She confirmed that she and Ursula had quarreled, and she did indeed call her friend a witch, but she stoutly denied the rest of Ursula's testimony, particularly the part about her possessing spirit contract killers. Darcy then pulled a stunt worthy of Lieutenant Colombo. He threatened to take away her spirits if she did not tell him the truth. Alice snapped that it was impossible for him to remove them. If she had any spirits to remove, that is. Oops. More villagers came forward to rat on the accused women. One William Hook told Darcy that he had once overheard Alice's husband, William, blame her for all his troubles. Hook added that dinnertime conversation between the Newmans often took an odd turn. Whenever Alice served meat, Hook would overhear William saying, dust thou not see? Which Hook took to mean that evil spirits were sharing their meal. Alice would reply that if William should see something, he should just give it some of their meat and it would leave. Meanwhile, Ursula had not finished incriminating her neighbors. She now said that other village women, Elizabeth Bennett, Alice Hunt, and Agnes Glasscock also kept spirits that they used to torment and sometimes kill anyone who happened to get on their bad sides. When Glasscock was hauled in for questioning, she stubbornly denied everything, even when a search of her body found suspicious spots in several places. When Ursula repeated her charges against Agnes to her face, Glasscock erupted with rage, calling Camp a witch and a whore. She maintained that far from being a guilty party, she herself was a victim of Camp's sorcery. Alice Hunt was not made of such stern stuff. She initially denied everything Ursula had said, but when she learned that she was to be arrested anyway, she, like Camp, tried throwing herself on the mercy of the court. She went to Darcy and confessed that she did indeed have two spirits, Jack and Robin. They even warned her that Ursula would eventually grass on her. She added that her sister Margie Salmon also had a pair of spirits. The siblings had inherited them from her late mother, who was also a witch. After a bit of prodding, Margie acknowledged that her sister was telling the truth. She was beginning to look as if practically every woman in the Osath kept killer spirits around the house in a way normal housewives kept pots and pans. Evidently, under the assumption that the more they talked, the easier Darcy would be on them, the accused women kept naming more and more of their neighbors. A widow named Joan Pesci was said by Alice Hunt to be an even more skilled witch than Alice's mother had been. Henry and Sicily Celis were led to have used their spirits to unleash various forms of mayhem on their neighbors. A constable from a nearby village accused one Alice Manfield for causing his cart to become stuck in the ground. She afterwards admitted to having four spirits. Alice Hunt's daughter and Ursula's son confirmed that their mothers were witches, providing previously unknown details about their diabolical doings. Kempsone brother Lawrence joined in. He declared that his wife, who had long been on bad terms with Ursula, had been witch to death by his sister. Once Ursula began confessing, you couldn't shut her up. Every time she was examined she gave her questioners new names of witches, new crimes they had committed. To hear Kemp tell it, virtually every death, every illness, every bit of ill fortune, in and around St. Osseth was due to witchcraft. On March 29, 1582, all the accused women stood trial for various crimes that calms for the sizes. Ursula and Elizabeth Bennet were found guilty of murder by witchcraft and sentenced to hang. The others were either acquitted or remanded. A latter often proved to be a death sentence. A number of the prisoners died in jail before they could be discharged. The great St. Osseth witch hunt was finally over, although I assume it was quite some time before the village settled down to anything like normal life. I also wager that for a long time afterwards the inhabitants were very careful about how they argued with each other. Thankfully, the days when you dealt with pesky neighbors via witch trials are extinct. Although, from what I've seen of next door, there are a lot of people who would like to see such tribunals make a comeback. Quick note, centuries after Ursula's execution, there was a darkly humorous footnote to her tragic story. In 1921, a St. Osseth resident unearthed in his garden a skeleton. As it was nowhere near any burial ground, it was presumed that these were the remains of Ursula Kemp, who, as a convicted witch, was buried in unconsecrated ground. After spending some years in a local museum, the bones were purchased by an eccentric artist named Robert Linkiewicz, who proudly displayed the skeleton in his library next to the embalmed body of a tramp. After Linkiewicz died in 2002, the bones were finally given a formal examination by an archaeologist, and the study revealed the skeleton was that of a young man whose identity is fated to remain forever unknown. His longtime imposter was given a dignified burial in a local cemetery. The real location of the bones of Ursula Kemp, then, still remain a mystery. Here's some of the weird news that made it to the Weird Darkness website the past few days. You can find links to these stories by clicking on WeirdNews at WeirdDarkness.com. A homeowner who was shocked to discover a ragdoll holding a spine-chilling note inside the wall of his new property is told how he finds the prank funny, but says his friends have urged him to sell and move out quickly. Jonathan Lewis has picked up the keys to his new home in Walton, Liverpool, and he decided to examine a hole under the stairs, which was boarded up. And it wasn't long before he came across a creepy ragdoll dressed in pinstripe dress and bonnet into the even creepier note. He explained, So I'm underneath the stairs at the minute in the kitchen, and next to me here is what used to be a cupboard. It's just plasterboard and there's a wire here and I don't know where it goes. I thought I need to put a hole in here and try and figure out what it does. So I put the hole in, look inside, and that's when I found the doll. Mr Lewis admitted the note was quite creepy and went on to read it aloud. The note attached to the doll said, Dear reader slash new homeowner, Thank you for freeing me. My name is Emily. My original owners lived in this house in 1961. I didn't like them, so they had to go. All they did was sing and be merry. It was sickening. Stabbing was my choice of death for them, so I hope you have knives. Hope you sleep well. So what did he do with the doll? Well, he left it there. A mother-in-law Halloween party in October, he said, and she's going to be the star guest. I think I'll leave her in there for the time being and let a few people see her and then eventually, when I do the kitchen up, I'll probably take it all down and then I'll figure out what to do with her. And then he added, My thoughts are either it's a joke or haunted dolls are real, so I'm going with it's a joke. And then he added, Some of my friends found it hilarious like me, but others said get out of the house now, put it back in the market and sell it quickly. But I found it quite funny to be honest. Pied and yellow-clubbed hoverflies spend their summers pollinating plants in the UK and Scandinavia, then fly to the Mediterranean and North Africa in autumn, and scientists have discovered they use a time-compensated sun compass that keeps them on course throughout the day as the sun moves across the sky. Except for two days a year, that is, when they spend the entire day adjusting their internal clocks because of daylight saving time. The increasing amount of media interest in UFOs has resulted in an increase in membership for the mutual UFO network or MUFON across the country. Remember when we all just wanted to be a part of the Mickey Mouse Club? Retired NASA astronaut Bill Shepard told a congressional panel that the cracks in the ISS station are serious. There's probably many more that we don't know about and this needs to be resolved before planning any future ISS projects, he said. What, NASA doesn't have duct tape? The Apialanova is an ancient species of all-female ancient asexual beetle mites that have baffled scientists with their ability to reproduce and survive despite not having sex. But a new study has finally found their secret. The beetles are able to create genetically varied clones of themselves. One more step towards feminism getting rid of men entirely. If you've ever wondered how small-armed, big-legged upright dinosaurs were able to run while maintaining their balance, a new study suggests that they wagged their huge tails to shift their weight back and forth to help them stay balanced and conserve energy. And they really got going when they saw you pulling in the driveway carrying a sack of freshly-grilled brontosaurus burgers. Two, three-strand bracelets featuring a total of 112 diamonds that once belonged to Marie Antoinette are up for auction and it's estimated they'll sell for between $2 and $4 million, possibly more. The diamonds were going to be placed in her necklace instead of her bracelets, but it was decided that she just did not have the neck for that kind of thing. With the Martian atmosphere being primarily carbon dioxide, engineers at the University of Cincinnati used a carbon catalyst and a reactor to convert carbon dioxide into methane, a process that could turn Martian air into rocket fuel to power a spacecraft so it would not need to carry extra fuel for its return mission. I might also suggest having Taco Bell provide all the meals for the astronauts. Scientists at the Ohio State University have developed a new chemical process to turn stinky, toxic sewer gas into a clean-burning fuel by using iron sulfide to break it down and extract the hydrogen in a process called chemical looping. Housewives are already begging for a portable version to use on their husbands. Students at the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia spent $20,000 equipping a school chair with eight propellers and used it to carry a pilot for 10 minutes over 0.6 miles to prove its potential use to fight fires on the upper floors of tall buildings. It's the most fun they've had using school furniture since... Okay, it's the only time they've had fun using school furniture. A protein named SHH, after the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog, may offer possible new ways to treat Parkinson's disease and improve the quality of life for patients by preventing involuntary tremors known as Aldopa-induced dyskinesia or LID. The tough part is getting Parkinson's patients to play Sonic the Hedgehog. A drone video taken by a man recording a canoeing fundraiser for Alzheimer's disease on Loch Ness might have captured actual footage of Nessie. I didn't notice what I had picked up until others told me to watch out for it, he said. It could be a trick of the light, but we can't be sure. I gotta admit, after watching the video a few times, the shadow or shape really does look like what we've come to expect to see for the Loch Ness monster. Whether it's Nessie herself, I'll let you judge by watching the video yourself in the Weird News section at WeirdDarkness.com. Authorities in Croatia have identified a mystery woman found alone, injured and suffering from amnesia on a remote island. But the mystery of how she got there remains. Authorities were baffled as to how the woman got there. The distance was not swimmable from the mainland and only a miles-long hike through inhospitable terrain led to her location. She spoke perfect English but had no memory of how she got there or where she was from. A lack of ID and a cell phone only bolstered the mystery. Answers finally came when a U.S. researcher used facial recognition software to identify her as Daniella Adamkova, a Slovakian citizen living in Los Angeles. Friends of hers from the area soon confirmed that, yes, it was her. As it turned out, Adamkova had spent the week prior to her rescue traveling through Croatia by herself after turning off her cell phone and discarding its SIM card. Her fears were rooted in breaking COVID-19 quarantine protocols. I'm pretty sure COVID-19 doesn't travel by mobile phone and SIM card. Does it? Has it mutated into a computer virus variant now? Why doesn't anybody tell me these things? A study found that, on average, more microplastics were found in the feces of six one-year-old babies in New York City than in the feces of ten adults. It's probably due to infants having a higher exposure to microplastics from child-safe plastic-feeding utensils, pacifiers, sippy cups, and plastic toys. Even worse than finding plastic in your poop? Having a job where your responsibility is looking for plastic in people's poop? I will never complain about my job ever again. The Space Force unveiled its new designs for service, dress, and work uniforms that have a unisex look designed with women in mind, with a dark blue wraparound jacket and diagonal buttons over a dress shirt and neck-wear that some people think look like Star Trek uniforms. Let's just hope those uniforms don't come in red, if you know what I mean. Archaeologists recently discovered a medieval skeleton near Milan Cathedral showing signs that the person died by one of history's most painful deaths, being tortured on the wheel in a punishment that usually involved being tied to a cartwheel and being rolled or dropped repeatedly. Of course, we no longer use the wheel today. Forcing somebody to watch Bravo TV on cable is usually torture enough for any serial criminal. The British pest control company Rent-A-Kill initial has developed a high-tech identification system that will allow cameras at rat-infested sites to use facial identification technology to identify individual vermin to enable controllers to count the number of rats targeting a specific location before following them and catching them one by one. I don't mean to sound like a jerk here, but if you have the ability to facially recognize a rat with a camera, couldn't you just equip that camera to kill the rat? It's right there in front of the camera. There you go. Problem solved. To test the effects of weightlessness on female astronauts, scientists in Toulouse, France are placing 20 women in bathtub-like containers covered in waterproof fabric, basically giant waterbeds for five days as part of a dry immersion study that's already been conducted on males. Here I thought I had no skills other than talking, and yet now I find out I'm qualified for space travel? Five days in a waterbed? That's a vacation for me. You can find links to these stories and others in the Weird News section at WeirdDarkness.com.