 Welcome, Weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar, and this is a Chamber of Comments episode where I enter the emails that I have been sent recently. And sometimes it's just a nice, complimentary email I receive. Sometimes it's heart-wrenching. Sometimes it's asking for advice. Sometimes it's a complaint. You can email me anytime about anything at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. And your emails always come directly to me. I do not have an assistant, I don't have a service doing this. It's just me here at Marlar House Studios, and I do try to read every email that comes in. I may not reply to them directly when I first receive them, but very often they'll end up here in the Chamber of Comments. So again, you can email me, Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N at WeirdDarkness.com. And it has been quite a while since I've done a Chamber of Comments, so I have a lot of comments to share. This might be a long episode. Before I get into it, though, I did promise you during our Friday Frights that I would announce who the winner is for our creepy caption contest. And the winner is Lori Alexander. Lori gave us the caption, and that's how the white rabbit made a peanut butter and blood sandwich. And so she is our winner. I actually left it up to my Dark Syndicate members, those who are my Patreon members. I let them do the voting on this because it was really hard for me to decide. And that one came in with 30% of the vote, which was higher than anything else. So thank you very much, Lori. I appreciate it. Your t-shirt has already been ordered, and it should be in the mail to you very, very soon. And we had a lot of fun with our Friday Frights, and yes, the music was a little loud in the beginning, so we did turn it down about 30 minutes in. So if you stopped listening because the music was too loud, I apologize for that. If you do want to go back and watch it, you can find it at FridayFrights.com. That's just a page on the Weird Darkness website that I've created for it. I just have the URL forwarding to that page. But if you go to FridayFrights.com, you can watch FridayFrights live as it took place live. And about 30 minutes in, like I said, is when I turn the music down. Robin comes in and says, Hey, people are commenting that the music is too loud. So I finally turned it down. That's the problem with doing the show live and doing it by myself. I can't see all the comments coming in as I'm reading the stories. And so you might say, Hey, we can't hear you, or we've lost a connection, or the music is too loud. But I don't know about it until I take a break and see the comments. So thank you to all of you who were making those comments. What happened was my mom was watching all the comments and she was watching the show. And so she texted Robin, who then came in here and showed me the phone saying, Hey, you need to turn the music down. So and after a while, I just turned the music off entirely just to see how that would go. So give it a listen. If you did tune out a little bit early, go about 30 minutes in, like I said, the music does get cut down to about 25% at that point. And then after a while, I just turned it off completely. Let me know what you prefer. And that way next month, I'll know how to set it in advance. And we did have so much fun with it. I think I will do it next month. We do have Friday Frights for next month scheduled for February 24. And I don't know exactly what's going to be entailed with that. But that was the open Friday that I had for next month. So that's the way that's what we'll do. And we'll see how it goes. Okay, so let's get to some of the comments that have come in. This one came in from Kel saying, Hello there, I just want to start off saying, I'm not a Christian in my belief system. I am more pagan if you wouldn't want to even call it that. I just love to show people love, respect and understanding. Because in the end, that's all we need. However, your words of light at the end of all the podcasts, do you resonate? I think they meant the podcast that the words resonate. I think there's too much darkness and bad things going on to care. To care what we are at the end of the day, as long as we all show each other light and love and positivity. On a side note, I happened upon your podcast one night when I was bored and couldn't sleep. I usually help my friend with her podcast or doing some of my paranormal investigative work. I do have a bunch of stories. I would love to share them with you. There's just so many I have to pick which one I think would be the best. Keep up the great work on this great podcast. I wish you lighten, love and positivity. All the best, signed Kel. Thank you very much, Kel. I understand not everybody is a Christian like I am. I would be a hypocrite if I didn't share my faith on the podcast because that's what my faith demands. But I understand it's not going to be for everybody. But I love your attitude. Even if you're not a Christian, you still understand the importance of love, respect and understanding. And that's really cool. It's not everybody who is not a Christian has that same attitude. They'll get antagonistic towards me about it, which I don't understand what the big deal is. It's a one-hour podcast and you have an issue with like 10 seconds of the very end after I'm done telling the stories anyway. Really? That's going to ruin your day? But you have the perfect attitude and I really appreciate that. And you don't have to choose which of your stories is best. Go ahead and send them all. Just send them one at a time. But send them all because I can use them in the fireside rights episodes. That would be great. Let's see, the next one comes from Brooke and oh yeah, this is way back in December. People were posting on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook what they had listened to the most in their podcasts. I guess some of the podcast apps were saying, here's what you listened to most last year and then people decided to grab screenshots and share them. Brooke said, Hey Darren, since I heard a few other weirdos showing off how much they listen to your podcast, I thought I would too. So you were my second most listened to podcast, but haunted places is over now. So in 2023, you will be my number one. You will always be my favorite though. I spend almost 20 days listening to your voice, helping me through work every day. Thanks Darren for all the love. May it come back to you tenfold blessed be. And what she means by listening 20 days, not just listening a little bit for 20 days, but that's actual number of hours, 24 hours in a day times 20. She listened that many hours to Weird Darkness in 2022 and that is just incredible. I have a hard time believing that I've even spent that much time doing the podcast, much less people listening to it. Brooke, thank you, I really appreciate that. Let's see here, this one comes from Ryan and he did the same thing. He says, Hi Darren, I just thought I'd share how many minutes I've shared with you this year and looks like he spent 33,844 minutes listening to Weird Darkness in 2022. I'm not going to do the math, I'll let somebody else do the math and all of that. Julianne said, I heard you say that your downloads were down by 18% since you started sharing your faith on Weird Darkness. I want you to know that those numbers will turn around in time as word gets out that you are a man of faith and not afraid to share it. I really impressed me and I have shared your podcast with several people, hang in there, your paranormal pal, Julie Yoder. I appreciate that Julie, thank you very much, especially for your heart in that, not even the Christians necessarily understand where I'm coming from. I was on either Twitter or Facebook the other day and no, no, I take it back, it was YouTube. I was looking at some of the comments that people leave on my YouTube channel and those are always going to be a bit more jaded anyway for some reason, but there was a Christian woman there saying that I was not a real Christian because of what I do. I don't know. I can't remember exactly how she was putting it, but even the Christians sometimes have an issue with what I'm doing here, but later in this chamber of comments, I will show you how this is actually not just a show, but it has become a ministry and I'm not talking about Church of the Undead. I'm talking about Weird Darkness, but I'll share that a little bit later on in this chamber of comments. You'll understand what I'm saying and I will throw that at anybody who says that I'm not doing what God wants me to do, but you'll understand that later on when I get to it. William Wood said, I've been listening to you for a few years now. One of the stories you told was about the boy in the box. They found his family through DNA. His name is Joseph Augustus Zarelli. I don't know any more information about other than this, but thought you'd like to know. Thank you for everything you do, signed Bill. Bill, yes, I do appreciate that. You are not the only person to send in a message about that. Once that story broke, so many people came at me. Stephen said, you've covered this story and he sent me a link to it. Jamie sent in, hey, I was listening to your podcast and thought you'd be interested to know one of the mystery stories was solved recently. Wasn't sure you had done any updates yet, but boy in the box found in Philly in the 50s was finally identified, and then she sends a clip from the newspaper. From a patron, they sent me something as well. We'll see. Maggie said, hey, Darren, I know you did the story about the boy in the box. I just saw a new story, so a lot of you sent that in. I do appreciate you keeping me on my toes on that. Thank you very much. Jamie is one of my patrons and so I'll share one of her comments. She said, so I love your podcast. Listen every day. I also love the different voices you do, but the woman's voice you do is horrible. Sorry, had to be said. Love you, Jersey girl in South Carolina world. I could not agree with you more, Jamie. I'm a base low baritone. It is impossible for me to do anything to make my voice sound like an actual female without some sort of digital manipulation, which I just don't have a time to deal with or anything. But how about this, though? What if all the female characters in my episodes have just been chain smoking since they were toddlers? That would explain why they all sound like men, right? Let's see, Steve said this one in. Steve said, the subject of this email was Santa Claus. He says, hi Darren, I hope you and your bride are doing well. I just listened to your latest episode entitled Real Kris Kringle Sightings and More True Christmas Stories. Loved that episode. I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject with you as I sit here listening to Handel's Messiah definitely puts me into the Christmas spirit. I truly do believe in Santa Claus. Now I have not lost my mind. I have good reasons to believe in the jolly old elf as I have outlined below, backing up my statements with peer-reviewed studies. There are approximately 1.9 billion children in the world, as of 2022, according to Statista.com's website. Additionally, an estimated 85% of American kids believe in Santa Claus. I suggest that the collective consciousness and thought intentions of these billions of children have created the physical existence of Santa. This statement is based on numerous studies conducted on directed intent and collective consciousness. In the Philip experiment, a fictitious character was created, Philip, by researchers. Participants in a seance who did not know the character was made up contacted an entity named Philip that responded accurately to questions regarding Philip. In another study conducted by Raiden et al. 2006, 2000 people in Tokyo focused positive intentions toward water samples located inside an electromechanetically shielded room in California. There was another sample of water crystals not treated with thought intentions. Ice crystals formed from both sets of water samples were blindly identified and photographed by an analyst and the resulting images were blindly assessed for aesthetic appeal by 100 independent judges. Results indicated that results from the treated water were given higher scores for aesthetic appeal than those from the control water. In another study conducted at the Burning Man Festival, an energetic shift during the two main ceremonies was actually detected significantly. These three studies, in my opinion, support the possibility that the collective thoughts of individuals can manifest physical phenomena. So as Francis P. Church notes, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they're not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. Thank you, Darren. I hope you and your bride have a wonderful and blessed Christmas. We did. Thank you very much, Steve. I appreciate you sending that in. He also gives me some information about the Philip experiment itself, which is kind of lengthy and I won't share that with you. But it's very interesting and it's pretty much the theory of the topa. I think it's really what it boils down to, that if enough people believe something that it is manifest physically, which is what a lot of people think a bigfoot might be, or what is it? That's the one that I'm thinking of more than anything else. It's Slender Man. A lot of people believe he has become a tulpa, started off as a fictional character on a website that so many people started believing in him that people really did start seeing him in real life. Whether or not that's true, whether Santa is that way, I don't know. I don't think it's out there with proof that it's going to be hard to prove anything like that, too. But I loved the latest Santa movie, Violent Night, and he talks to the little girl saying a lot of people don't believe in him, including a lot of kids, but he is still there for those who do believe. And I thought, you know what? That's a pretty cool way of handling it. Yes, some kids might get gifts from their parents who say that it's from Santa, but maybe he is there for the kids that don't have parents that way. I don't think that's the case, but man, it would be cool if it was. Let's see, Max sent me something saying, the story of the Jinkunman really skeeved me out. Ever since I saw the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, that image has always been in the back of my subconscious. So through that whole story, my mind was just in full on nope mode. He's referring to the human-faced dog. I remember that scene from Body Snatchers. It freaked me out as well, and it still is the one that sticks in my head every time somebody mentions that movie. There is so much in Invasion of the Body Snatchers that you could remember, but that one scene, I mean, it's just a brief, maybe one second, two seconds at the most of frames, and it is so powerful and creepy, it stays with you. I agree. Kay sent me an email saying, a hypothesis. Darren, I heard about a similar podcast to yours from an ad on your show and decided to branch out my podcast listening. Bear with me, please, first for an explanation of a point of Catholic theology about spiritual protection. It's needed to understand this story because of Hollywood's all-encompassing distortions. Catholics believe that, yes, there are bad things out there and that spiritual warfare surrounds us, but oppressions and suppressions are rare, very rare. In U.S. diocese, bishops approve only about one in a thousand requests for extreme interventions. Hollywood loves a dramatic scene in the E.R. with monitors beeping and defibrillator paddles sizzling, but will never make a film about preventive medicine, eating your vegetables, stopping, smoking, etc. Hollywood falsifies life. It falsifies religion. In Catholicism, the vast bulwark of protection is not provided by exorcisms. It is provided by good works, good conduct, prayers, Bible readings, and following the seven sacraments. This will place your soul in what Catholics term a state of grace. These bad things exist, but they are of no long-lasting importance to someone in a state of grace. At worst, they can harass you and throw themselves against you, but can do no life-changing harm to a soul thus protected and living a good life. I have never really had nightmares. I felt sorry for those who did. No demons, no bad things going bump in the night. I attributed this to a soul being in the state of grace. Guess what? After listening to only a few episodes of this other unnamed podcast, I had my first nightmare. Worse, it featured a demon. I then wondered, why have I listened to the similar Weird Darkness podcast for so long and nothing like this ever happened? I have developed a working hypothesis to answer this question. Your Bible verses and Christian traditions offer some level of protection to your listeners. The other podcast had the same material, but was a no-judgment zone. People freely described being involved in evil. There was no sense of morality, of good or evil. Anyway, that is my hypothesis and I am sticking to it. So Darren, please ignore your Christian-hating critics and continue to protect your listeners. You go, boy. You go. And you do Weird Darkness the whatever way you want and God bless. Okay, that was an amazing email. Thank you. I am no longer Catholic. I was born and raised Catholic, but I left the Catholic Church just because I didn't want anything to do with Church at all. But then I found Jesus and I ended up in several denominations until I finally landed in a non-denominational Church where I am now, just where I feel most comfortable. But that being said, I agree with you on so many points in this email. I had never considered that I was protecting my listeners. That is very interesting because I just recently, I should have been doing this for the past seven years. Why haven't I? I don't know. But I just recently started praying for you, my Weirdo family. I just started praying that God would protect you, that God would speak to you, that God would make himself real in your life, be it through the podcast or not. So it is interesting that you would think or come to the conclusion that my Bible verses and the occasional opinions that I throw into the stories are a way of protection. That's pretty interesting. There's also a Bible verse and I got to look it up here real quick because I don't know it offhand. He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world. That is 1 John 44. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. And I bring that up because I believe, much like you, that if you're in, as you mentioned, a state of grace, I would say if you're in Christ, if you're a true believer, not one who just happens to go to church, but somebody who truly is a follower of Jesus, you can't be possessed. You can be oppressed. Just like you mentioned, you can be hit from the outside and Satan and his demons can do things to you in order to try and make you stumble or whatever, but they cannot possess you. You cannot be possessed by a demon in which point you would need an exorcism. That is not, in my opinion, and this is what I've heard from others and I just agree with it. In my opinion, you cannot, as a born-again Christian, as somebody who is in grace, you cannot be possessed by Satan or his demons or whatever. Only somebody who is a true nonbeliever would be in that situation. I think, again, my opinion, but it's interesting that you came to some of the same conclusions. Thank you, Kay. I appreciate that. Let's see, Justin sent me an email. His is also about the boy in the box. Once in a while, I will share reviews from Charitable and here's just a few of them. Five stars, Brasco. I can't stop listening since I've found this podcast. I've been listening for the past two days. Thank you for the entertainment. It is awesome. Well, thank you, Brasco. Another five stars saying, Great show. Me and my family love listening to you. The stories are done with a nice touch and we love sharing your religion also. Keep up the great work, Derek and Amy. Thank you. And then a four star saying, Excellent, but repetitive too. The show is really good and the storytelling is top notch. The only problem with this particular podcast is that it will say the same thing, sometimes four or five times. I listened to the Krampus episode for about 20 minutes, but I had to pause it for a bit. Yes, I've noticed that Krampus is it's really different in every movie. However, you've played that part of the podcast three times and you started off the episode with that story from the beginning. Please stop with the repetition in your show to this current degree. I'm getting to where I cannot listen to your podcast because it keeps repeating. Besides that, the show is one of my favorites. Yes, I was just making a point by mentioning how the show repeats itself by repeating myself in the review. Well, thank you, Sparky. That's the name. I'm not calling. I'm not calling him Sparky for, you know, to be antagonistic. That's actually how he said Sparky 54. Oh, thank you, Sparky. You know what? Your opinion is noted. I appreciate it. I don't know if I'll change things because I do. Somebody also mentioned and I might get to that email here in a little while, somebody complaining that it takes five minutes for me to get to the stories. And that's because in the beginning, I give a quick preview of what all the stories are going to be. And the more stories I have in an episode, the longer it's going to take me to get through that before I start getting to the actual storytelling. But I do that because I know that if just one of those stories is interesting to somebody, they'll stick around and continue listening for it. But if they don't know what's coming up, they won't know to stick around and they might might after the first few seconds at the first story decide, eh, I'm not interested in the story and then they just tune off. So that's why I do it. And that's why you see that like if you're watching the evening news, they'll say, here's some of the stories that we're going to be covering. You may only be interested in one of those stories. And so you'll stick around until they at least cover that story. And usually, those are the stories that are going to be towards the end because they want you sticking around for the entire show. But that's it's pretty much the same principle. It's just it's called teasing. And that's what I'm doing. A teasing sounds mean, but I don't mean for it to be. Let's see. Amanda says, I just want to say I absolutely love Weird Darkness. Everyone in my house snores in the night. I plug in my headphones and turn on your show and I sleep like a baby. I've suffered from insomnia most of my life. And there's just something about your show that calms me. Thank you for the much needed sleep. Not to say it makes me sleepy, but calms. I listen during the day too. So I mean, Amanda, appreciate it. James said, Dear Darren, love the podcast. Could you please tell me what the name or episode that you told a story about or the man having a drink with the devil? I tried to find this one and I couldn't. So I know what he's talking about. But for the life of me, I cannot find this story. It's going to drive me batty now until it pops into my head. I thought it was the one about Stingy Jack. It has a man tricking the devil over a drink, but it's also the origin of the jack-o'-lantern. But he says no, that's not the one he was looking for. He's looking for a one where there's a girl who walks in all a mess and then starts talking to the man over a drink. So you stumped me on that one, James. That's the reason I'm sharing it here in the comments. If somebody knows what story that is, if you can find it for me, I'd appreciate it. It does sound familiar. I think I've told it, but for the life of me in my notes on the website, I just can't locate it. Bristol says, Hi Darren, I've been listening nonstop to your podcast from 2018 forward for the last eight months or so while I work. I almost enjoy most of the podcasts, but I must say now that I'm getting into 2022, I'm not digging all the sound effects. Seems like there are more of them in current episodes. The only sound effects I truly love is the crackling of a fire when you do the fireside frights. It's typically my favorite episode to listen to. Maybe you could cool it off with the sound effects. To me, it takes away from the stories. I find myself distracted by them. I would say keep up the good work, but I enjoy the older episodes more than the newer ones. Take care. Signed, Bristol. Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. This is Chris, Chris. Well, sorry, Chris. I'm sorry you don't care for the sound effects. Those are only used in fiction episodes, like when I'm doing a Thriller Thursday, or if I'm doing a Weirdling Woods episode, or in the new Micro-Terrors Scary Stories for Kids. Those are all fiction episodes, too. If it's a nonfiction episode, you're not going to hear the sound effects. So that could be why, because I'm doing a little bit more fiction recently with Weirdling Woods and the Micro-Terrors. And that's probably why it seems like I'm using it more, because I am. But I'll keep that in mind. I appreciate that. And if somebody wants to drop me an email and let me know your opinion about the sound effects, even in the fictional stories like Weirdling Woods and Micro-Terrors, let me know. I'm always open to listening to opinions. This one comes from Michael. He says, Hi, Darren. It's so nice to finally be sending this email to you. Four months late, I've been listening to Weird Darkness for probably half a year now, and I thank you for sticking with making new episodes. Your podcast is one of my favorites for creepy and paranormal subject matter. When I heard your mini-episode Road Trip Ruminations from October 25, 2022, I knew I finally had to email you my thoughts. I've been a follower of Jesus since as far back as my memory goes, so of course I found a kindredness when I noticed that you featured a Bible verse at the end of your episodes, and then later found your statements of faith on your website and faith-based comments during some of the episodes. Thank you for your boldness in sharing Jesus in a really unique way to people who have interests not usually talked about in church. In response to the aforementioned Rumination episode, I would really love to hear your research and thoughts on paranormal activity in light of the Bible, either on the podcast and or as a live presentation. I suggest listening to and reading content from Dr. Michael Heiser. I discovered him this past year and he not only has encouraged my interest in a non-Western understanding of Scripture, but also really opened my eyes to the spiritual realm in our everyday life. Sometimes not super fun to know the truth, I've had more spiritual activity in the house these past few months than I ever have before. I think more people would be interested to hear what the Bible said and be open to hearing the Gospel if they were aware of what God has told us about ghosts, angels, demons, aliens, other spirits, and how the unseen realm is alive and active around us all the time. Michael Heiser's website shows that to me there. And keep up the great storytelling and Gospel sharing work. Your sister in Christ, Brooke. Oh, okay. Thank you very much, Brooke. I appreciate that. I will check out Michael Heiser's websites. You've got one here that I'll go ahead. Oh, the Naked Bible Podcast. Okay. Yeah. All right. I'll check out the podcast and the Naked Bible Podcast. I'll take a look at it and let's see. I'm going to go ahead and click on that right now so it's off to the side, ready for me to give it a listen to. And I will check it out. I appreciate that. Always open to hearing about new podcasts. I don't know how many I can listen to all at once though. I was just looking through my podcasts today and I've got 21 of them and 20 of them I don't want to go without. How do you have time? How many podcasts can you listen to and still keep up with? Fortunately, one or two of them are podcasts that it doesn't matter when I listen to them. They're like old time radio shows and so I can go back and listen to those anytime. But a lot of them update every day, maybe one or two minutes each. Some of them are news. So of course, those are going to be something that you'd want to listen to every day. Otherwise, they're going to become irrelevant. How many podcasts can you listen to and still keep up with them? I'm kind of curious. Let me know. Drop me an email. For me, apparently it's 20 at the moment and even then it's kind of tough. Steve sent me an email saying, let me start off by saying, oh, I actually shared this one in the Friday Frights live stream on Friday. For those of you who did not watch that though, I'm going to go ahead and share it with you here again because it is such an interesting email. And all I'm going to say is Steve, I'm not going to give you the rest of his name. And there's a reason for that. You'll understand why in a second. Darren, let me start off by saying Semper Fi. As a combat marine from the Gulf War, I can honestly say there's not much of anything that scares me. Once you faced enemy military weapons firing at you, one tends to get over your initial fear quite fast. Either that or you die. I'm still around, so obviously I chose the first one. I'm a huge fan of the show. My lovely wife actually turned me on to your podcast. We love listening to your insightful stories and comments. I used to work at the Johnson Space Center, NASA in Houston, Texas, with a high-security clearance. Believe me, there is so much the government does not tell the general public for whatever reason. That being said, keep doing your great podcast, especially in the area of so called conspiracy theories. There are some subjects that may be listed as conspiracy theories by the public, but they are in fact true to life. For obvious reasons, the proof has to come out from shows like yours and serious investigative reporters that just don't give up on a story or theory. What I can tell you is I honestly feel the lid is about to be blown wide open on several so-called conspiracy theories to the general public. For now, you stay safe, have a great 2023 and keep doing a marvelous job sent for by my friend. Signed, I'll just say Steve. Steve, you should not have told me that you have inside information on conspiracy theories. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me right now to not ask you to spill the tea? I won't because I care about your safety more than I do about getting the story. But man, you are a tease. Thank you, though, for the incredibly kind words, sir. Thank you for your service. I know that sounds cliche and empty nowadays. It's said so often. It's almost like a reflex. But when I say it, I do mean it. I have a huge respect for those who are in or who have been in the military. And whether you agree with current politics, presidential administrations, wars, or police actions in various parts of the world, you still need to respect the brave men and women who are there under orders in the name of the United States of America. So again, I thank you. And even though I'm not in the Marines, simplify right back to you. And thank your lovely wife, too, for introducing you to the podcast. Give her a giant hug for me. I appreciate that. And if you ever decide that you do want to spill the tea, just let me know. I'll keep you anonymous. Just send it to me though. Let's see here. Oh, by the way, Steve also wrote back to me saying, here's his reply. Darron, I wrote to you earlier about some of the secrets I've experienced over the years. By no means am I at liberty to disclose that info, the government doesn't want you or the general public to know. That's where your diligent research will pay off in the end. That being said, there's a channel on YouTube of all places that might shed some info into some conspiracy beliefs and theories. It's called The Y-Files. But by no means am I authenticating or endorsing the information he states. At the same time, I can tell you that the info he reveals is truly not far off from reality, as far as what the government doesn't want the general public to know. Yes, The Y-Files deals a lot with conspiracy theories that are popular in our world today, but it does shed truth on a number of subjects that categorically removes it from being a simple conspiracy and moves it to the truth. I tell you this so you can check it out and determine if there's any information you might want to use. God bless you, my friend. Again, science, Steve. Steve, thank you for turning me on to The Y-Files. Very interesting stuff. I like the YouTube channel. I also found out that he has a podcast, so I'm going to that as well. But honestly, I think the YouTube channel is much better than the podcast. Even though it's the same audio, you really get to see his facial expressions. The guy has an amazing presentation. He makes it fun and light-hearted. He has his goldfish that keeps interrupting him with smart-ass comments, which is just hilarious. And yet, he's doing that with some of the darkest topics. So, yes, thank you for turning me on to that. And I share that here so our weirdo family can also check it out. It's called The Y-Files. And it is a lot of fun. And if you guys do check it out, let me know what you think about it. I got another review on Apple podcasts saying, love this, five stars. I started listening to this podcast a few years ago, but then stopped. Maybe I forgot about it. Maybe I forgot about it in searching for other podcasts, and perhaps it stopped downloading because I'd not listened in a while. I'm not sure, but kicking myself for it. This is such a great podcast and definitely will not stop. Well, thank you to OneLove4BK. Thank you. I appreciate the very nice comments. Let's see. This one comes from Joy. She just says, love your bloopers. They make my day. Well, I'll try to include those a bit more often, Joy. Michelle said, Oh, for a second there, I thought this said, spooky Santa and Texas. So what? Spooky Santa and Texas. Okay, that's much better. This is Michelle. She's saying, Hi, Darren. I wanted to let you tell you thank you for the spooky Santa episodes during the holiday season. It really gives me the chance to share my weirdness with my kids and hope that they follow in my weird footsteps. So far, it's going well. Also, I have one question. Why aren't you going to the convention in Plano, Texas? I was getting ready to buy tickets for myself and my eight-year-old and noticed you weren't going anymore. We're bummed, but glad I noticed before we bought tickets. Keep up all the amazing work that you do. Hopefully, we'll see you one day down here in Texas. Signed Michelle. This is another email that I shared in the Friday Frights episode because I didn't know how many people might be in the Texas area and were hoping to see me there this coming weekend. Michelle, I'm glad that you and your kids like spooky Santa. He was a lot of fun to put together. As for Plano, Texas, I can't really explain why I canceled it. It was just a gut feeling. I actually canceled two events with that same company and both were for the supernatural TV show fan expos. And it's strange because I loved the supernatural TV show. It was a lot of fun. I think the people at these expos would definitely be the kind of crowd that would be interested in Weird Darkness, but I just had this uncomfortable feeling about it. So, I bowed out. That's all I can say. I do have family very close to Plano, Texas, so I'll keep an eye out for events that could bring me back to that area in the future. But it's just one of those. I had a gut check on it, what I would call a check in the spirit because I feel like maybe God was saying, you know what, this is one I just don't want you to go to. And I have no idea why that would be because I go to these other expos and conventions and I mean, there's people from all kinds of faith and there's a lot of darkness in there. I shared a room once. Not a room, but a corner of one room with an atheist one time. He was at the table right next to me and we had great conversations. So, it's not like God doesn't want me going out to these places, but for some reason, I just didn't feel good about this particular event. And I don't know why. It might be because God knew it wouldn't be good for me for some reason. Maybe people wouldn't pay attention to me because they'd be so paying attention to the actors on the TV show, but I don't know. I will say, Michelle, it is very flattering that you would want to buy tickets to go there to see me and have decided not to go because I'm not going to be there. That really speaks volumes to how big of a fan you are. And I truly appreciate you saying that. I was having this conversation the other day with one of my friends over at Spreaker. Spreaker is where I host my podcast. It's kind of like the server where I put the podcast and then it goes out from there to everywhere else in the world. So, you can listen to it on whatever podcast app you listen on, including Spotify and Stitcher and on Pandora, on Apple podcasts, everywhere, even YouTube. But I was talking to her. I said, it's so interesting because I've had a request to be a part of Spooky Empire. Spooky Empire has two events per year, one in May and one in October. They want me to come out to both of them and do a Q&A, sign autographs. They said they'll have eight by tens of my face there for me to sign for people. And it's like, what? They have had people. I cannot reveal who they're planning on having in May and November. Or excuse me, May and October. I have some basic information who I think is going to be there, but I won't say. But in the past, they've had people like, well, I can tell you who they've already announced this year. The cast from Night of the Living Dead, the original George Romero, they're going to be there this coming May. Those are celebrities. I get that. That makes sense. You go and you see them, you do the Q&A, you want to get their autographs and selfies with them. Totally understand that. In years past, they had the cast of Twin Peaks. I see where you'd want to do that. That makes sense. I'm a podcaster. I have a little show that 30,000 some people listen to. And that's at least that's about the number of downloads I get per episode. So I assume it's 30,000 people. There's really no way of measuring it entirely. Maybe 31,000 if you count my YouTube. Even though my YouTube has 40,000 subscribers, I only get about a thousand downloads per video. So I'm guessing only about a thousand people really do pay attention on YouTube. So maybe 31,000. All right, that's it. That's what I get. And yet these people are wanting to treat me like a celebrity. And even talking with them, they want to set up like maybe side engagements where I can go out like they're talking with Salem, Massachusetts right now, where all the witch trials took place. They think they can get me into like a theater there somewhere and do a talk or do the show live in a theater. It's just so weird that they're treating me like a celebrity. And I was talking like I said, I was talking to my friend over at Spreaker. And she said that she that podcasters are her celebrities now. And not because she works for a podcast company. It's just that she spends so much time listening to podcasts. She also watches movies and TV shows and stuff like that. And she says that she doesn't really get starstruck when it comes to Hollywood actors. She just maybe she's burned out on them. Maybe she has been been burned in times past by meeting them. Or maybe you hear enough about them in the news and the media and you realize they're just not nice people or whatever. I don't know. It gets it would depend on what celebrity you would gravitate towards. But she said that one of the biggest thrills of her life was going to one of these expos and meeting one of her favorite podcasters. That was the biggest thrill for her. And she actually found herself starstruck. It's just such a weird world that we live in. So all of that to say, Michelle, thank you very much. Like I said, it is the ultimate compliment that you want to go there and actually spend money by those tickets to come see me when you could be out there meeting Jensen Ackles. Jensen Ackles is awesome. I wouldn't I wouldn't mind meeting him. I think that'd be great. If nothing else, I'd want to go up to him and said, number one first, Supernatural was awesome. But number two, congratulations on being the new voice of Batman. You are great in that role. Layla says, Okay, so what I got is that it's some sort of conspiracy theory. She's talking about Irish shadow. I do know that's why he's asking everyone he knows. If you don't know, that's fine. But keep your ears open. It's it's probably something new. My son's own. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, this is this actually comes from a from an email that we were going back and forth with her son heard something about an Irish shadow. And that's all that's all he knows about it. Some sort of conspiracy theory about an Irish shadow. It's really vague. So like, is it a shadow person in Ireland? Is it a radio show in Ireland based on the classic the shadow series? I asked her, she could give me more details. And she says, no idea. Just so it's just just that it's a conspiracy theory. Like, okay, well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. So if anybody under knows what she might be talking about with Irish shadow, if I like some sort of conspiracy, let me know on that because that was completely stumped me. Let's see here. Kerry sent me an email saying, Hi, have you considered doing a talk about words? The idea that we keep ourselves under a spell by the words we use, for example, the word release re equals again or do over lease equals a contract or an agreement. So when we release an emotion, we're actually signing on to experience the emotion again and paying with our peace and happiness. Because let's face it, we only try to release the negative. Just a thought signed Kerry. That's a little too deep for me, Kerry. That's way too many brain cells used in that. And also English words change over time. It may have very well been that at one time a release was to lease something again. But English words change. And so and it may be that release is based on something completely different. It may not be release. I don't know. I'm not a linguist, so I would have to have to rely on somebody who actually knows the history of language to go into that one and give us an answer. DW Dave says, Love your podcast. Thanks for all you do. I have one request. Can you please add the time stamp to the different stories in a podcast? Often, I'll want my wife to hear a particular segment and it takes an inordinate amount of time to find it. Having the time stamp would help enormously. Apologies and please disregard if this would be an erroneous task. Signed Dave. Well, Dave, first of all, thank you very much for giving me permission to disregard it if it's an onerous task. I appreciate that. Most people don't give me that permission. They just say, please do this. I'd appreciate it. And this leaves it at that. I do know that people will often do chapters like this, time stamps on YouTube videos, but that being said, it would take a lot more work as a one-man creator. I don't know that I'd have time to do that. Plus, the time stamps wouldn't be consistent either because the lengths of the commercial breaks can change even on a daily basis, depending on what the hosting provider is doing with the commercials that they put in there. They might have a 60-second commercial, or they might put in two 60-second commercials, or they might only put in one 20-second commercial. And that would change where those time stamps are so radically that they would be completely unreliable. So there's really no sense in doing that. Plus, most podcast listening apps don't have that function. Some do. And so you might be listening on one that has that function. Most of them, at least at this time, don't. And so I would be doing that for such a small number of people. It just really wouldn't make sense. But it's a great idea. And if I had the time to do it, maybe just for that small amount of people who would use it. But at this precise moment being a one-man team, I can't do it. But thank you, Dave. I appreciate the idea. I got another chartable, excuse me, another Apple podcast review saying, this is from Kiana87 saying, nobody works harder. Five stars. Just wanted to pop in and say, nobody works harder than DM on quality content without sacrificing quality. Very nice for you to say that. Thank you. This one comes from Echelon, or excuse me, yeah, Echelon. I listen to, I love the podcast. I listen to it the whole time I'm at work. And it really helps make the day seem less repetitive. Thank you for giving the weird oes a home. You're very welcome, Echelon. I appreciate you listening at work. If you are listening at work, by the way, thank you for the opportunity to plug one of my contests. I have a monthly contest called Weird at Work, which you can find on the contests page, WeirdDarkness.com. If you listen at work with at least one other person, you can go ahead and enter that contest. And each month, I will draw one name at random, and that person will win coffee cups and excuse me, coffee mugs, some Weird Dark Rose coffee, T-shirts, and some other fun stuff. So thank you very much for the compliment. I appreciate that. This one came in as a phone call, but I've got the text here from Mark saying, I enjoy your show daily. And I recently listened to the story of Ed Gein. I have known for years about Ed, but really enjoyed your take. I have a friend who is from Wisconsin, and once, as we were discussing the Gein story, he told me the cafeteria at the Wisconsin State House at one time offered an Ed Gein open-face sandwich. I thought you might enjoy this. Thanks for what you do, Mark. Oh my gosh. That is both funny and disgusting at the same time. The Ed Gein open-face sandwich. Wow. I am amazed a restaurant would actually put that on the menu, knowing how triggering that's going to be. That is brave. I gotta give them kudos. I don't know what restaurant that is, or the cafeteria, or whatever, but wow. Kudos to you for having the guts to do it, knowing going in that you're going to have complaints and doing it anyway because you just don't care because you thought it was clever and funny, and it is, but also very disturbing at the same time. So thank you very much, Mark. I appreciate that. I really didn't know much about Ed Gein until I moved here to Illinois near the Wisconsin border. He's known nationwide as a serial killer, but I didn't really get into serial killers and everything until I started doing Weird Darkness and to find out that it's something that happened so close to where I am now is just kind of stuck in me even that much more. But I appreciate the kind words and I'm glad that you liked that episode. Wayne sent me an email saying, my daughter called your helpline for depression and the changes in her, she tells her friend that if they need to tell somebody, get help. I have talked to you before about your, to tell the truth about your show. It's very choppy, very choppy here. He's probably trying to type and think at the same time. Essentially, what he was saying is that his daughter called the helpline for depression and she learned about it through the Hope in the Darkness page because he's the one that listens and told her about it. God bless you brother for your help. Wayne, thank you. That is amazing news. I am really happy to hear your daughter was able to reach out and find help. I know my show isn't going to be for everybody. Wayne does mention that he had to stop listening to the show for storage for a while, I guess. It was getting too dark. But anyway, it's not going to be for everybody. I understand that. But I am so glad your daughter remembered the resources that I've listed there, be it from her listening or from you telling her about them. I hope now she's receiving the continual help for her depression either through counseling or medical help. So God bless you and your daughter. I really appreciate that. I was talking to another listener today about, well, you know what? I'll just go to that. Renee sent me an email saying, my husband's disabled retired army veteran. He proposed to me by saying, so want to be an army wife? After I said, sure, I guess, he said, great. Well, I leave for special forces training in three months. So we should get married before then, LOL. It's great that you continue to thank the men and women who serve and have served our country on a regular basis. Our son just graduated from the police academy and is serving our country on the home front now. Our son-in-law is a Marine and my father was a fighter pilot in the USAF. You're such a good person, Darren. I bet Robin is an incredible woman as well. She is, Renee. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. This is not the email that I was expecting it to be. I was thinking of another one. But I'll go ahead and read this one. Yeah, Robin's a very incredible woman. She put up with me for the past 28 years. My dad was in the Air Force. Robin's dad was in both the Air Force and the Army. I've got friends and relatives in law enforcement or the military. I was never brave enough to do it myself, but I have always appreciated those who did. I've always wanted to do something for my country. And maybe that day I'll come through the podcast, the radio show, maybe doing voiceovers down the line. But at least I can support those who are doing something for their country now by that are signing away their personal rights in order to protect the rights that the rest of us tend to take for granted. And I'm doing that just by supporting them through the podcast. If nothing else, just saying, hey, I appreciate you. So please thank your husband and son-in-law for their service for me, especially as you know, I truly do mean it. I can't remember. I might hit the email that I was thinking of a second ago. But essentially, somebody was saying that they also suffer from depression and anxiety, and they're on four medications right now trying to deal with it. But they they thanked me for being so open about my own struggles in that area. And I'm on two medications. I'm on Citalopram and Bupropion. And I also discovered just maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago, B12 seems to help me as well. I didn't realize, I knew B12 was something that people would get shots with in order to get like a boost, but you don't have to get a shot. You can just take the pills. But what I've been doing is I've been or the vitamins, that is, that's what I've been doing. I've been taking the vitamins each day, doubling up on the vitamins. And also, I'm drinking my own energy, which is just like a flavor additive to my water or soda or whatever I'm drinking. And that also has B12 along with caffeine. But I think the I've had caffeine all the time in the past, drinking sodas or energy drinks or whatever. And it never really gave me the boost that I was looking for. But the B12 seems to be helping, I think. So if it's something that you're still struggling with, with your depression and anxiety, if you're on medications, and they're not giving you the the full effect that you were hoping they would maybe try B12, it's one of those vitamins. I'm not a doctor. Please don't quote me on this. You might want to talk to your doctor about this before trying it. But from what I've read, it's similar to vitamin C, where you can take as much as you want. Your body will absorb what it needs. And then the rest of it will just be eliminated through waste. So it's one of those safer vitamins to take. Combine that with vitamin D, which you can have too much of. So you got to be careful with how much you take. And also vitamin K, same idea. That's one of those that you really can overdose on. But the B12 seems to have kind of helped my attitude. Okay, this one comes from Max. I just want to give you thanks for turning me into a Rusty Cage fan. He's talking about the Hearse song episode. I also highly recommend checking out the version by Creature Feature. One of those weird kids that loves hearing renditions of that Hearse song. My exposure was the Scary Stories books. This one comes from Gray saying, Dear Darren, myself and my wife have been long-time listeners of your show starting in 2017, with us in every night without fail, and love your content and dedication to what you do as well as your voice. So easy to listen to. Recently, however, we have become increasingly frustrated by your ads and the frequency of them. In one episode alone, I listened to your ad for your movie night 12 times before I switched to another podcast at a sheer frustration. To play the same ad so many times in one episode is absurd in itself, but to play it back to back four times in a row between stories has put me right off listening. And as of last night, I'm no longer a subscriber. I don't believe there's any viable excuse for this except pure laziness. I know you do a lot of voiceover work, audiobooks, etc. But to neglect your core fan base and subject them to this is outrageous. Good luck going forward. But sadly, we are out. And this is Graham. Graham, I emailed him back and we went back and forth. He's a listener again, because he was bringing something to my attention that I didn't know about. And that's the reason that I'm bringing up his email here, because many of you may have noticed that very same thing going on. I did not know this was happening. This is not something that I put in myself. It's hard to explain. But thank you for pointing out the issue. I learned something new about the back end of Spreaker to keep this problem forever ever happening again. And the solution was there all along. I just never knew about the solution over these past years of being with Spreaker. There's a lot of little things which are kind of hidden unless you know where to look for them. So Graham, thank you for letting me know about this issue. I could set things up now so the ads should not play back to back ever again. If you do hear him doing that, it shouldn't be happening. What was happening is much like radio stations, if they see that there's a place open in a commercial break, let's say you're going to put three commercials in there, but you'll only have one of them sold. You'll put two public service announcements in there or something. Well, what Spreaker does is it gives me the opportunity to fill those with my own PSAs, my own public service announcements, which I've been using to promote the Weird Darkness syndicate and the Weirdo Watch Party and other things. Well, for a while, I only had one announcement in there and so it kept putting in the same announcement to fill those empty slots. I did not know that was happening because it doesn't happen everywhere. It only happens at certain places like here in the Chicago area. All of those commercial slots may have been sold, but if you were in the UK, maybe none of them were sold and so you heard it three times back to back to back. I didn't know that because if I'm listening back to it, I'm not hearing the exact same thing that you're hearing. But I went to Spreaker, I said, this is not acceptable. What is going on? How do I fix this? They showed me how to fix it. It was something that's been there all along, but I just didn't know about it. In fact, one of the people that's been working at Spreaker forever was saying, hey, I'm learning something new every day too. There's so much stuff on the back end that you can take advantage of that you have to be a tech expert to even know about it. It should be fixed now. If you guys hear the same commercial playing three times in a row, please let me know. It might still be in recent episodes because I just now fixed it and you may have already downloaded those episodes, so it's already there in the recording, but in future episodes coming up, that should no longer be an issue. If you do hear it though, starting now, maybe starting in February, if you hear that happening, please let me know because that is just totally inexcusable. It is one of the most annoying things ever and I couldn't agree more with Gray about that. Nick said, I love your work, but why? Why do you always wait for five? Like I said, five minutes before you get to the point. Okay, there's the one that I was talking about and then Nick said it again in a separate email. Why do you spend five minutes before the show starts? Five minutes. Yes, I've timed it. I'm a fan, but come on. Also, no one cares about saving souls, leave Jesus out of it. You were fine giving me the whole five minute spiel, but once you talk about how people don't care about saving souls, leave Jesus out of it, you're wrong. You are so wrong. I'll get to that here in a little bit, but I told you earlier in the Chamber of Comments why I do the five minutes thing. It's to let people know what's coming up in the podcast, so if they hear just one of the little tease sentences that is a story that they do want to stay with, then they'll keep listening, even if they don't like the other stories. That's why I do it. But Nick, I'm really sorry that you have that attitude about saving souls, about Jesus because it shows me right then and there that you truly do need Jesus, and I'll be praying for you tonight. Let me just find that real quick, because it's Nick's email that spawned me to want to share this. I was not going to share this, but for those like Nick who don't understand why I talk about Jesus, that you hate it, that you don't think it's appropriate for the podcast, this is why. And this email means more to me than any email that I have ever received, ever in my seven years of doing this. I won't say that I'll just call the guys and I'll just call him Josh. I won't say his full name. He says, Hi there, Darren. My name is Josh, and I never thought I would find myself penning an email like this. I suppose in some cases it's best to just read to a lead strong and honest, so here we go. I was raised in a Mormon cult, left quite young on my own, grew up angry, first white atheist, which morphed over time to heavy experimental occultism. What could possibly go wrong? As these things go, things went poorly. I went through and saw a lot of darkness, sometimes literal, sometimes in people, and yes, sometimes supernatural. This all reached a peek around Christmas 2022. I found myself alone on Christmas. I recently lost my partner to COVID after she was on a ventilator for an extended period. I was listening to a marathon of your podcast. It kind of eliminated the sting, so genuinely thank you for that as well. One of your episodes of Church of the Undead came on, and frankly I was just too weak to get up and change it. So I listened. What you said made sense. It was a very different Christianity. That night I had a really crazy series of experiences that it's probably not best to describe just yet, but what I will say is it is one of the most intense occult experiences I've ever had. Very dark and at its peak, there came a very soft but very authoritative voice, basically saying, need a hand, kid? But the first time I replied, well, yes, actually. The next day I woke up Christian. Though my early experiences still make that challenging even to say. Nonetheless, since then it's been like a switch, like a light switch got turned on. Everything that was occurring has either been eliminated or moderated to the point of laughable. Difficult lesson. I've always been obsessed with radio. I'm legally blind and have albinism. I grew up listening to The Shadow and the process of trying to organize a podcast that aims to directly help the disabled with their problems in a practical, non-clinical way. I just thought I should say thank you, and it keeps crossing my mind. I'm learning not to ignore that. Thank you for what you do, genuinely. I'm probably downplaying it on accident. These things are not my favorite to write about, but to not say something wouldn't really be just either. I suspect you do it because you're attempting to help. Seems only just to say thank you when you have. But thank you. And I apologize for the inherent weirdness of this email. It may be a bit startling for that. I'm sorry. Great work. I'll be listening, signed Josh. Josh, thank you. It is this email I don't believe I've ever received an email like this before that you would essentially come to Jesus thanks to listening to the podcast. That is a greater, and I don't want to say compliment. That's not the word I'm looking for. That's the best news I've ever heard. And it's not something that was intended necessarily. I would hope that leaving the Bible verses at the end and sharing my faith once in a while would get someone to look into the Bible or look deep in themselves and question their faith about what they believe, be it if there are a Christian or not. It's always good to question what you believe to make sure that you truly do believe what you believe with purpose. But for you to listen and then come to Christ is thank you. I don't know what else to say. Thank you, Jesus, for Josh and for reaching him and for letting Josh let me know that you reached him through the podcast. I was telling Robin the other day this no longer makes Weird Darkness just a show. It's now a ministry. It's a strange ministry, very, very strange ministry. But this confirms that God is using it in ways that most people would never understand. Josh, I'm going to be emailing you directly. But if you're listening to this, I want to encourage you to not give up. You're going to come up against a lot of backlash, especially from your occultic friends, people who think that Christians are weak, that they use Christianity as a crutch, all those saying that you've probably heard multiple times in your life, maybe even said multiple times in your life when you were on the other side of things. But don't give up. Christianity is not an easy path. I'll say that right. So many people will say, come to Christ, come to Jesus and everything will be great. That is a lie. Being a Christian is tough because exactly like what Nick was saying, why do people care about Jesus and your faith? Stop talking about it. I got a comment on a Facebook post earlier today about I posted one of my recent Church of the Undead and they said, gee, I hope Christianity doesn't spread any further. Look at all the bad stuff that's happened to the name of Jesus or something along those lines. And yeah, that's because we're all faulty people. We're all hypocrites. We're all fallen creatures. And I'm not talking about just Christians. People in general are hypocrites. We are all sinful creatures. We all fall. None of us are perfect. And sometimes we do things in the name of God when in actuality we're doing it for our own selfish motives. And that gives a really bad you know, a really bad view of Christianity to the rest of the world. Oh, well, if that's what Christians do, then I don't want to have any part of them. Well, what they were doing was not real Christianity. Josh, I'm going to email you back because you have a heart to help other people. You mentioned that you're going to start your own podcast and you want to do it to help others who are disabled. And I would be honored to help you with that. So be looking for an email from me, Josh. And again, thank you so much for sharing that with me. I can't tell you how much that meant to me. I'll go back to the rest of these emails. Brian sent me an email saying, Darren, I know this probably won't get read, but I want to tell you that I really enjoy your podcasts. I'm an army vet with a real bad PTSD and I love sleeping to your stories. Please keep doing your thing. Lots of us are out here going to peaceful sleep to your voice and stories. Maybe one day I'll have a weirdo story to tell you. Well, hopefully, Brian, you don't have a weirdo story to tell me because that would mean that you've not had any deal dealings with the paranormal. If you do, though, yes, please send me the story. I would love to read it. But of course, your email gets read. Like I said earlier, I read all of these. They all come directly to me. I don't have an assistant or a service. And I'm really glad that I can help you sleep at night, especially since you are a veteran. I've always had a heart for our men and women in uniform, and I appreciate you taking that time to serve your country, risking your life to do so. PTSD is such a monster. And you don't have to have been in the military to deal with PTSD. I know that. But I can't imagine how much worse it would be because you were in the military and what you may have experienced. So I'm really glad that I can give you a little bit of relief at night, even if my soothing voice puts you to sleep. I hear that from a lot of people. I go to bed listening to you and I have to wake up the next day and rewind because I fell asleep to your voice. I'll take that as a compliment. So if I can give you a little bit of relaxation, that's great with me. Let's see here. Max sent me an email about the 2023 Find Bigfoot calendar. Oh, cool. He says, I know I've sent you a couple of these in the past weeks, but I just had to send this one. I ordered the Find Bigfoot calendar about a week ago. I just got it today and I love this thing. Please, if you can send Mr. Williams a word of appreciation from my end, this is going to be fun to go through throughout throughout the year. Well, thank you, Max. I will definitely let him know about your comments there. Timothy Williams is the artist for the Find Bigfoot calendar. He does one every year and they are really good. They're a lot of fun. Let's see. This one comes from my... Okay, this is actually from, I guess, Instagram. I took a screenshot of this. It says, Brother, I have a question. Is narrating about the dark supernatural? Does that have an effect of you as a Christian? Or how do you balance your life on your walking with the Lord? Yeah, I guess it does affect me somewhat. In the beginning, I would have said it didn't. But I have noticed that I never had any paranormal experiences at all until I started the podcast. None whatsoever. But then, after I started the podcast, I had my sleep paralysis incident, which I've talked about many times, so I won't get into here. But it's one of the darkest, most demonic things that I've ever felt in my life. And that's why I'm convinced that in some cases of sleep paralysis, there really is a demonic aspect to it. But that didn't happen until I started doing the podcast. However, it also didn't happen until I started being more vocal about my faith. And that is when it happened. Almost as if the devil and his dominion was saying, We don't want you doing that anymore. We're going to try to push you down. And it scared me for a short while. There was not long, maybe a day or two that I thought, You know, maybe I shouldn't be doing this podcast. And maybe that was his whole point of doing that to me, because he wanted me to stop talking about Christ in my paranormal show. But I continued and I just stay prayed up now. And more so, the last couple of weeks that I've really, really tried to get in, read the Bible every day. And you'll hear me. You'll see me posting things a bit more often now from my Bible study, just because I'm learning new things or I'm coming across something that I might even find funny. I read the proverbs every day. There's 31 proverbs. And so there's one for every day of the month. And you can just go over and over and over. And there are some of those that if you read them, I'm reading it in the American standard version or the English standard version. And some of the way they're worded, you just know God has a sense of humor. And I'll say this off topic at all. But if you read the proverbs, this is Solomon's words from Proverbs. If you read the proverbs all the way through, I can't tell you how many times he compares something to having an argumentative wife or a shrew of a wife. It's better to do this than to be married to a shrew. And I thought, Dude, you're the one that had so many different wives. Did you have like 40 wives or something like that? Maybe that was your problem. He has so many negative things to say about women who are disagreeable was probably because he had so many women in his life. Maybe you just stick with the one wife. It's a lot easier to keep her happy. But it's just so funny the way he puts things. But anyway, all of that to say, yeah, it will affect me once in a while. Once in a while, I'll tell the story that I'll I'll even double think or second guess that is about whether or not I should even post it. And there have been a couple of times that I won't that I'll go ahead and go back in and say, you know, I spent an hour on that, but I'm not going to post it because it's just too dark or it takes people into a direction that I think is really dangerous in their thinking, something along those lines. In some ways, though, it's actually made me a better Christian because it does make me think about what I what I believe. It makes me question my beliefs. It makes me wonder, OK, what do I truly believe about ghosts or aliens or all this other stuff? Do I still do I do I believe the way other people believe like most of the other world? Or does my Christian faith? Does that does it does it frame those in a different light for me? And it just makes me appreciate that much more my salvation because I see so much darkness in the world now and what I'm not experiencing that I could be experiencing. I'm so thankful that God has kept me out of that stuff. Let's see here. More reviews came in. Five stars from SCLB 71 saying, I enjoy about 90 percent of the podcasts also love the Bible quotes and versus great inspiration and wisdom. Another five star fabulous long time listener probably one of the best podcasts I've listened to very grateful Darren for your time and effort and research into these amazing stories. All the best. That's E V I E P T and then three stars coming in commercials. I don't mind the commercials, but the same ones are played over and over kind of tough to listen to. Well, that's what we talked about earlier, James. So hopefully that has been that has been fixed. The next one comes from David saying, long time listener. First time right again. Just throwing it out there. A theory about Apollo 20. I've heard that in the early 60s, even before our American Apollo missions, that the Russian space program had actually managed to get cosmonauts to the moon without going public about it because like quite a few of them failed and either disappeared into space malfunctioned. Obviously, we know what happens next. Or in the case I heard that they crashed on the moon and we're just never we've never recovered and never recovered them and the Russian government never went public about it at all. So in your episode about the subject, Apollo 20, I feel like like what was actually potentially what could have been found. Pardon my terrible writing right now. I'm using voice text lol. Basically, it was a crashed Russian craft and it was all human, not alien. That's all signed David. Well, David. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. What he's referring to is the Apollo 20 program, which has never been revealed. That you know, there was never really an Apollo 20. So we so we were told or 18 or 19, I think. But anyway, supposedly, Apollo 20 went to the other side of the moon, the side that we never get to see what we call the dark side of the moon. It's not always dark, but it's called dark because it's we don't know anything about it because we never get to see it. But supposedly Apollo 20 went to that side and saw a crashed spacecraft and possibly even bodies. And what David here is saying is that maybe those aren't really extraterrestrials. Maybe it's the Russian space program that crashed on that side and the bodies would be that the dead cosmonauts that were there. And that makes that makes perfect sense. That actually makes more sense than the crashed Martians. David. So yeah, I would actually buy that before I would buy something else. Now, why it wouldn't be revealed at that point? I don't know. Maybe because that would mean that the cosmonauts like Russia got to the moon before we did. And we just didn't want to admit it. But I would think that the U.S. would say, hey, you know what, they made it they made it first. But here's what happened to them. They would actually want to report that. But you never know what the government and what's going on. Like, you know, like that Marine or the former NASA guy from earlier in the comments was saying, you never know what the government is holding back. They do it for so many different reasons. We might know the truth someday. This one comes from Lee saying, awesome, sir, I'm retired from the Army 20 plus years, several deployments, 100 percent disabled. I love the fact that you are an unashamed Christian and like the weird stuff. Please, please, please keep it up. If you're ever in your southwest Louisiana, I'll be there. I'll be joining next week. But listen just about every evening. I listened to all night Friday, January 27th. Thanks for the weirdness, Lee. Lee, thank you. So you were you were listening and watching to Friday Frights on January 27th. That's great. I'm kind of curious. You said that you're near southwest Louisiana. You'll be there that you're joining next week. I don't know what that means. Maybe you're moving next week. Maybe that's what you meant to say. But regardless, thank you very much for your service. I appreciate the 20 years that you've been retired. So you've been out of it for a while and being 100% disabled. That's really sad, man. I hate to hear that. But it sounds like you're still living your life as best you can. And you've got a good attitude about it. So that's really good to hear. Carol says, I really enjoy the show. And I'm not one for emailing, but OMG! Just listen to the episode with half-hanged Maggie and Thomas Weir. And you had me shouting at you. I don't like shouting at you. Too good a person. The reason? You can say Edinburgh perfectly. But Yusselberg, it's Musselborough. And I think the other one was Inveresque. Three distinct syllables when you say that. I think I was probably saying Inveresque or something. Anyway, that's my PSA on behalf of us, Scott. Great podcast. Apart from the occasional annihilation of place-name words, we'll continue to listen. Keep up the weird darkness, Carol, a nearly 50-year-old pedantic place-name-pronouncer. Thank you, Carol. I appreciate that. You know, I'm telling you, Friday Frights was the worst. Trying to do French pronunciations in some of the names in Edgar Allan Poe's Murder in the Room org. Goodness gracious, that was brutal. Foreign names, they just... Why can't the rest of the world spell things phonetically? But then again, we don't. Even though we say Phonix is your best friend, you know, I was hooked on Phonix. But then you have thou and though and rough, with L, U, G, H. So which one is it? Is it rough or is it though? You know, or is it row? You never know. So let's see here. One final one. This one comes from Caden. Hey, Darren. You may have already reported on it, but have you heard about all the ghosts residents have seen in the main village hit by the tsunami in Japan a few years back? A woman talked to a group of young men who were dead, them not knowing what to do, and many cam drivers have had their customers vanish when they get to their destination. Kind of like Resurrection Mary. I scrolled through to see if you might have already talked about it, but I didn't see anything. Have a great night and God bless you. I'm also one who struggles with anxiety and depression. I take four meds that keep me on and even keel. Thanks for all the work you do for the charities that support help with depression. There's the email that I was looking for earlier about the depression and the four meds, but Caden or yeah, thank you. I don't believe I have covered that story. I will certainly have to look into it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. It does very much sound like the Resurrection Mary situation. Only you've got several ghosts as opposed to just one. It's just jacking up the creep factor exponentially. So yeah, I will I will look into that. Thank you very much for the suggestion. I appreciate it. Well, if you have an email that you'd like to send my way, it's easy to do. Just send it to Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N at WeirdDarkness.com, and I might feature you in a future chamber of comments. God bless weirdos.