 Hey weirdos, it's Aaron and I know a lot of you are on the other video waiting So I'm gonna wait for you guys to to come in over here, but this is all you guys can see Before I start actually broadcasting. All right, folks. Well, this is the This is the weird darkness live scream for 2019 and As you can see there's Pamela. Hey Pamela welcome to the To the live scream. Let me know that you can just make just so I make sure Well, she's she's dressed as a cat. I mean, that's pretty close Either way it's a menace I understand All right guys, hey, I'm sorry. I turned away for a second Let me know that you can hear hear me. Oh everybody's on the other we can hear you great. All right good Okay, well as you can see I am outside of Marlar Manor This year we knew there was a chance of rain possibly snow and Temperatures dropping below freezing as trick-or-treat hours begin and We have a wizard here, could you do something about the snow wizard? Okay, not powerful enough Okay, so anyway You bought froze giving out candy tonight Yeah, we're giving out full-size candy bars here by the way in case you're in the neighborhood So anyway, this is the outside of Marlar Manor and I'll walk up slowly and they will make our way inside Well, we're out where we'll actually do the live scream. I Wanted to give you guys a real quick look at what we did outside. I did earlier a few days ago a couple weeks ago, but there's This is all from my bride Robin. She's the one that did all of this We have a fall wreath up there. We used to have a Flat pumpkin that would actually go directly in there, but it fell apart. We've been using it for years So it is so weird to have snow on the ground They said between three and six inches possible. We didn't quite get that but then again, there's also a possibility for some more snow tonight and tomorrow and I haven't seen it myself for Robin was saying that we might actually get negative seven degrees For a low tonight. That is just insane for Halloween. So anyway Taking a look here I Got it. I really do have to hand it to Robin. She does an amazing job with the decorations In fact with the snow that kind of pop out a little bit more Some of you may remember that skeleton there Edgar Allen bones Talked about him and on Facebook and you got the AC on thanks a lot foofy Not sure you can see him. There's a right there in the window. There's the scarecrow. By the way, you may remember There right there in front of the garage door. We used to have Jack Skellington He would not stay up for some reason. He just would not stand stay up straight And we couldn't stake him to the ground because he was on the driveway. So We just had we just had to put him away, but you know what Christmas is coming and Jack Skellington is nightmare before Christmas So we might bring him out for Christmas along with an ativity scene. That's gonna screw up the neighbors New this year is Our black cat animated there he goes turns the head and The dragon who's also animated who is his wings Okay Okay, now we got 25 people watching already. I think we're already better than last year Not that that's saying much but still Still we do have a few short trigger treaters. Look at that. They're they're actually braving the weather I'm surprised Okay, moving inside. This is where we're gonna be doing our live broadcast tonight. There you can see there's a couple of A Couple of ghosties lurking window. There's the scarecrow that used to work He used to bob back and forth and the lights would turn on but he's really noisy So we're not gonna have him on especially since we're doing this inside a couple of other scarecrow is looking outside Where you can see some? Trigger treaters walking up Unfortunately, when I actually start doing the storytelling, we're not gonna be able to see the trigger treaters. So They're waving the parents there Okay, moving over here again, this is all Robyn's doing I Was telling her friend Suzanne who's visiting with us at the moment that she just has a great eye for decorating for the holidays I'll have to do something for Christmas and show you guys. I don't know if I'll do a Lives a live screen for Christmas. Maybe I'll just do a Q&A or something But I got to show you what she does for Christmas. It's just phenomenal We have like 13 or 14 nativity scenes. I'm not kidding. There's a new business cards We brought those out just in case we could pass them out to trick-or-treaters, but I don't think we're gonna have that opportunity Down on the ground You're probably not gonna be able to see too much there during the actual broadcast Because I got the table in front of it. But still up here These are so small you kind of have to get up close all Halloween stuff all of it. I'm glad I'm doing it this way because it gives people time to catch up. I tried to start broadcasting on the video that I set up for the for the actual time But I couldn't figure it out on the phone and nowhere I looked online would give me the answer on how to do that Hey, welcome to the welcome to the weirdo families there. Awesome. Yeah, it is a nice lamp Yeah, the lamp itself actually is not spooky but Robin put the The skull on top of it and found that tiny little skeleton body So moving over here So hopefully you'll all be able to hear me still as I walk away from the phone Gonna put this down On to that. Oh, no do not power off. No. No Almost powered us off. That would have been that would have been bad. I don't know why that's not Okay, I need to move that a little bit more a little too heavy on the side Just do this up there is my beautiful bride Step up closer to the phone so people can see you just come closer to the camera This is my bride Robin The sign looks awesome of the background music love the ambient music How's how's my how's my wife look? Hello, Mrs. Jinji Thank you Karla Karla's been a fan for a long time. She's a stalker on on a face on YouTube Oh, yeah, oh, yeah My stalkers Okay, hopefully the camera won't move too much after we get started here. I Think we're good Adorable hello, you're beautiful. Yep Robin is always a bigger hit than I am All right, and you like spooky music good. I'm glad to hear that wasn't sure if you'd be able to hear it or not We are using Grace they have graciously Allowed me to use their music shadows symphony They give me special permission to use their music for the podcast and for this And I wouldn't be able to do without them. It's just some of the best creepy ambient music Without sounding cheesy Yes Watching it. I'm ready to go to the chat room right now And when I do What can I get out of here? The microphone's always gonna crackle as I'm moving So hopefully though That'll stop here in a second. Yeah Okay, like a Geiger counter. Well, maybe in a second I can Like it's put it down since I won't be walking anymore and maybe that'll help so once I can get to the Live screen. There we are. I do have a nuclear personality so There we go. Now I can see you guys Okay, well, let me try to turn that down a little bit and see if that helps. I'm gonna turn Can you hear me now? still no Can hear me you can hear me now. Yes. Yes. Yes. I Wonder what happened Okay, and mom just texted saying yes, too. How long have I been gone? I don't know. This is the same thing happened last year And I have no idea why I didn't touch I didn't touch the microphone. Whatever. Anyway Okay, well, we'll just skip over the whole Whole Witch thing Anyway, uh, thank you very much for for letting me know. Thank you mom. Appreciate it Mom always to the rescue. Okay You didn't hear any of the story Are you serious From the beginning believable You can hear me now Okay, but you can hear me now. All right Well, you know what if it was about witches and I was actually getting bored with it. So We'll go on Unbelievable the same thing two years in a row Uh, I'm gonna be editing that before I post it to the podcast Okay, we'll go with the changeling based on a true story This is by one of my favorite author authors, uh, Troy Taylor. I love his work If you've read any of my lists of favorite ghost films, you know that the 1980 classic the changeling is always a highly recommended movie Especially at this time of year In the film, George C. Scott plays a composer who loses his wife and child in a terrible car accident Looking for a fresh start. He moves into an old house that he quickly discovers is haunted Those who've seen the film will vividly recall its many chilling scenes Like the seance and an incident involving a red rubber ball And agree with me that it ranks as one of the best haunted house movies of all time But what you might not know about the changeling is that the story of an angry ghost haunting an old mansion Is based on true events Or at least as true as most based on a true story films seem to be In 1968 a composer named Russell Hunter moved from New York Into the Henry Treet Rogers mansion, which was located in a historic neighborhood near Sheisman park in Denver, Colorado According to his account He rented the sprawling old home for a mere 200 a month because no one else wanted to live there After only a few months Hunter began noticing some strange things in the house It started with a banging sound that he heard each morning, which stopped whenever he got out of bed Doors opened and closed by themselves Faucets turned on and off and sometimes Pictures on the walls shook so violently that they flew off the walls Looking for a source for these weird happenings Hunter later stated that he discovered a hidden staircase in the back of an upstairs closet It led to a small room that contained the belongings of a young boy Including a journal of his secret life After reading through the journal and holding seances in the house It was learned that the resident ghost was a sickly child who had once lived in the house That had been the heir to a fortune left to him by his grandmother The boy died very young And his parents were so worried that the inheritance might be passed on to another family member That they buried him in an unmarked grave in a field southeast of Denver Soon after they adopted a boy from an orphanage to pose as their child He kept the secret received the family fortune and Went on to great wealth and success Hunter claimed that the ghost of the sickly boy directed him to location to a location of his unmarked grave Which was now beneath a house on south Dahlia street in Denver The spirit reportedly threatened the family living in the house If hunter could not convince them to let him dig up the boy's body The family agreed and hunter and some friends managed to unearth a set of human remains Along with a gold medallion that was inscribed with the dead child's name The haunting should have been over But it wasn't In fact, things got worse the activity in the mansion became violent objects were thrown a wall collapsed behind hunter's bed and The night and in the night a set of glass doors exploded badly cutting him Afraid for his life. He finally fled the house He moved to a new place on carney street, but the haunting followed him Eventually a minister from the epiphany Episcopal church Cleansed the house and the activity came to an end Hunter's story spoiler alert Is very close to the story told in the movie version of the changeling Even the red rubber ball makes an appearance in his account since it was the sickly boy's favorite toy Over time hunter's story has been called into question His ghostly claims were fact-checked and no record was ever found that said that he'd lived in the henry treat Williams mansion although he did reside in denver in the late 1960s when he was helping his parents manage the three birches lodge in boulder It's very possible that his residence in the house was Off the books just as he claimed for a low price because no one wanted to live in the house There's also no record of the boy who supposedly haunted the house But there are some curious facts about the family who built the mansion Including that they owned the farmland where the child's unmarked grave was said to be located It's very unlikely that hunter could have known this or had access to the records that proved this information when he lived in the mansion It should also be noted that strange happenings and hauntings Have been reported all over denver's cheeseman park neighborhood for decades It may be because the park was originally a very large cemetery As recently as the past few years were men who were digging in the park unearthed a number of skeletons In fact, they turn up all the time Which reminds me of another good horror movie or two So you're all still with me? You still hear me? All right, how charlie brown saved halloween Before we get into the other darker stories this evening. Let's begin with something a bit Lighthearted, but still appropriate for the evening It's hard to imagine today that halloween and trick-or-treating were not always a huge part of american culture For all my life. This has been a time of costumes door knocking and candy If you're my age You might even remember the plastic costumes that you brought that you have bought from woolwars that Tied behind you and came with a mask that you slipped over your face and secured with a nylon cord It was hard to see almost impossible to breathe through and the cord usually snapped at some point in the night But for one evening in the early 1970s You were batman or the creature from the black lagoon or a character from planet of the apes During my childhood it seemed the trick-or-treating had been around forever But it hadn't It actually did not make its way to america until the late 1920s And within less than two decades the tradition almost ended for good It would take candy companies and the gang of cartoon kids To resurrect trick-or-treating after world war two and make it what it is today World war two not only brought devastation to the entire globe It also affected the goods and services available on the home front In an effort to alleviate price hikes and hoarding the Excuse me in an effort to alleviate price hikes and hoarding The office of price administration printed war ration books with stamps that were used in exchange for goods Thanks to the fact that as much as a third of the sugar imported to the united states came from japanese-occupated philippines Sugar was the first consumer commodity to be rationed War ration book number one nicknamed the sugar book was distributed starting may 4th 1942 With deep cuts to sugar allowances children's halloween celebrations had to be drastically altered Sugar rationing came to an end in june of 1947 And by a fall the commercialization of halloween started kicking off in ways it never had in the 1920s Candy companies like curtis and brock wasted no time in launching halloween advertising campaigns But they weren't the only ones Children's magazines like jack and jill and children's activities both featured trick-or-treating in their october issues Parents who only dimly recalled their own halloween traditions began reviving the fun for their own children Costume parties became all the rage along with hay rides bobbing for apples midnight spook shows and spooky attractions But it was the iconic comic strip peanuts that really captured the imagination of american children In october 1951 Creator charles schultz ran the first of his halloween themed strips The characters made their first appearance in ghost costumes prepared for halloween ghosting Patty even used charlie brown as the model for her jack-o-lantern carving These comic strips helped spread the popularity of halloween In 1966 a tv special it's the great pumpkin charlie brown began its long run as a halloween tradition The short was nominated for three Emmy awards and made such an impression on america's kids that after it aired children from all over the country sent candy to charlie brown out of sympathy With the trick-or-treating tradition firmly established it began growing in size In addition to televisions and magazines schools began reinforcing the tradition when the united nations international children emergency fund or unicef launched a national campaign to raise money for children they handed out cardboard boxes for kids to take with them while trick-or-treating It turned out to be an effective campaign raising more than 175 million dollars in the u.s alone So when you take the kids out to collect candy tonight just remember how close we came To losing this tradition Take a few minutes to sit down with charlie brown again this year You won't be sorry you did Speaking of fund raising our overcoming the darkness campaign does end tonight If you are planning on giving please do so before the end of tonight before midnight. That's when the cutoff is You might be able to get it in tomorrow morning when I do the tallying But that will be the end i'll have to close it out then so if you've been wanting to uh to give to the campaign To help those who suffer from depression and anxiety Tonight's the last true night to do it. So please do you can do that by clicking on overcoming the darkness at weirddarkness.com Let's move on to tricks in the treats This is actually from the book suffer the children another one from toy from a troy taylor and i'm slowly Narrating this into a audiobook Uh, but it's gonna be sticking me forever to get done because I got so many other things going on But I really wanted to add this one because I think it's it's something important that we all need to hear And you'll understand why once we get through it If you're a parent What is your greatest fear? Just about every person I know with a child will answer this question almost immediately It's that some sort of tragedy might befall their children accidents calamities automobile crashes natural disasters fires the list goes on All these things terrify parents These are the things that keep them awake at night Staring at the ceiling of their bedrooms and wondering how they would handle the nightmare if something terrible happened to their child Of course accidents and calamities are cruel twists of fate Bad luck if you believe in luck or perhaps providence if you don't plays no favorites The idea that a terrible accident might occur that claims the life of your child might keep you from sleeping at night, but in the end there's nothing you can do about it Accidents happen, right? But what about that terrible thing that's not an accident at all? What about when the horrible death of a child comes at the hand of another? There are without a doubt killers who walk among us Is there a more lonesome killer lurking in the darkest corners of america than one that would pray on children? Such monsters have been with us since the first settlers arrived on american shores We often fool ourselves into believing that the good old days were actually good, but this is far from the truth Monsters have always been with us They stalked the innocent in the days when children stayed close to the rugged settlements of the colonies Afraid to wander into the dark forest They were among us before the civil war claimed the lives of thousands of men and boys These monsters claimed the lives of the young and naive during the gilded age At the dawn of the 20th century through the depression and beyond These monsters are not the stuff of fiction They are bloodcurdlingly real They have been among us since the nation began and they are with us still Always looking for the next victim We know this as did our parents and their parents before them The fear of strangers and their terrible deeds has been rooted in the minds of multiple generations of americans We created myths and legends of monstrous shapes Hoping to scare children so that they never strayed too far from the welcoming light of home And yet blood was spilled Children vanished never to be seen again They became faces on milk cartons and cautionary tales of what happened when children were left alone We must keep our children safe parents told themselves But even the most watchful eyes were always weren't always enough Our cautionary tales created one of the most popular and most terrifying urban legends of all time It's just two things a babysitter and a telephone It tells the story of a babysitter who's been left in charge of young children for the night The parents hoping for a much needed night out for a dinner in a movie left this trusted neighbor girl with their children She was experienced. She was reliable and the parents had nothing to fear The night is quiet and after finishing some homework the babysitter turns on the television and then the telephone rings When the girl answers she hears a man's harsh voice Have you checked the children? He asks her Startled but assuming it to be a prank call. She hangs up the phone The telephone brings again and once more the same man's voice repeats the question The babysitter slams down the receiver, but it keeps ringing and the same man keeps asking her about the children Now terrified she phones the police who assure her that they will have the calls traced and find out who has been harassing her A few minutes later the police operator calls back with a horrifying news The calls are coming from inside of the house When officers arrive on the scene they find a distraught babysitter and two murdered children and the upstairs nursery The killer had somehow gotten into the house. He'd made the calls to terrorize the babysitter and lure her upstairs to her death Of course, this morality play ends in tragedy for the young woman who did not watch the children closely enough She loses her mind and has to be locked away in a mental institution for the rest of her life Of course, this is only a story, right? We all know that it's just an urban myth that illustrates the perils of being a babysitter And the fact that children are never really safe even in the most innocent of circumstances Stories like this and a lot of others like it have been told and retold thousands of times over the years It's only a story Or is it When you were growing up How many times did you hear stories like that? Or were told never to talk to a sketchy looking man that your mother pointed out on the street Or to never accept a ride in a car with someone you didn't know Or to never accept candy from strangers, especially at halloween It was at halloween when every horror story that your mother could ever imagine came to life Never knock on the door of a house without a porch light on Never accept treats that were not professionally packaged Never bite into an apple that your parents hadn't carefully checked first They were filled with needles and razor blades. Don't you know? It all boiled down to never From strangers, but that was crazy. Wasn't it? It was halloween for Pete's sake Who's evil enough to stick razor blades into apples or put poison in candy bars? Those are just stories. Aren't they those kinds of things never really happen When it turns out stories like this often get started for a reason And sometimes the monster is not a stranger after all On halloween night 1974 Timothy O'Brien and his sister Elizabeth had anxiously waited for their father ronald to get home from work So that they could go trick-or-treating The family which included their mother danine lived in the suburb of deer park, texas Ronald was an optician at texas state optical in houston He was a deacon at the second baptist church where he also sang in the choir and was in charge of the local bus program And was as far as everyone who knew him was concerned a wonderful loving father When he finally walked through the door of the family home the children rushed to him hurrying him back out onto the street Still wearing his white opticians lab coat ronald took timothy and elizabeth out to celebrate halloween They met some friends and went to the first house of the night Timothy rang the doorbell There was no answer If anyone was home, they were taking far too long to answer the door The children impatiently ran to the next house on the block leaving ronald to catch up When he did he had five giant pixie sticks in his hand tubes of pure sugary goodness that the kids couldn't wait to consume But ronald promised he would distribute the candy among the children when they got back to the house It was late when they returned home Ronald got the children ready for bed But before he fell asleep timothy asked for just one treat from the night's bounty of sweets He chose a 22 inch giant pixie sticks The sugar had hardened in the tubes so his father healthily rolled the candy between his hands to loosen the contents Timothy poured the confection into his mouth, but his face wrinkled and disgust. It tasted horrible Ronald quickly ran to get some kool-aid for his son to wash that bad taste away Timothy never had a chance to drink that kool-aid Within moments he began to choke vomit and then convulse Something was terribly wrong When paramedics arrived they found ronald cradling timothy in his arms as the little boy gagged and foamed to the mouth He was pronounced dead at the hospital less than an hour later An autopsy later revealed that the eight-year-old had died from a fatal dose of cyanide Where had it come from? The top two inches of the giant pixie sticks that timothy had been so excited about Contained enough poison to kill two grown adults The little boy never had a chance Words spread about timothy's death naturally starting a panic in the community Numerous parents in deer park and the surrounding area took the candy They took the candy their children had collected from trick-or-treating to the police terrified that it was laced with poison None of it was But the authorities could understand the fear that timothy's death had caused They'd already started an investigation into the boy's murder Thankfully the other four laced pixie sticks Which ronald o'brien claimed he received from the first house on the trick-or-treating route after the kids had run ahead Had not been eaten When questioned by detectives ronald sobbed as he suggested that an unidentified monster must have handed out poisoned candy to trick-or-treaters He told police that he vaguely remembered where the candy had come from But he never got a good look at the owner All he saw was a shadowy hand clutching the pixie sticks from behind the door The police went to the address and questioned the owner of the house Courtney Melvin Who worked as an air traffic controller at hobby airport? But the police were confounded when they learned that he'd not left work until 10 30 p.m. Halloween night His wife had stopped answering the door when she ran out of candy around 6 45 That was before ronald o'brien claimed that he was there In addition, mrs. Melvin had not given out any pixie sticks that night Detectives interrogated the entire neighborhood and still couldn't find the source of the deadly candy Ronald o'brien was grief-stricken by his son's death He was already having a terrible year and timothy's death seemed to have pushed him over the edge with grief Ronald was eight months behind in car payments and was being threatened with repossession He had defaulted on several bank loans and was suspected of theft at texas state optical and was close to being fired He had 21 different jobs over the last decade and was more than a hundred thousand dollars in debt He further strained his family's finances by taking out a ten thousand dollar life insurance policy on his children earlier in the year To which his wife protested as an unnecessary expense She also probably would have objected to the additional pair of 20 000 life insurance policies that ronald took out on timothy and elizabeth on october 3rd If she had known about them And she definitely would have been horrified To find out that mere hours after timothy's death Her husband called to collect on those policies The police didn't know about the life insurance policies not yet anyway But they did discover that ronald had visited a chemical supply store in houston to buy cyanide just a week before halloween He left without purchasing anything after the smallest amount available to purchase was five pounds When they found out about the life insurance policies, they were convinced they had their man Detectives theorized that he had laced the candy with poison so that he could kill his own children for the life insurance money Poisoning their friends with the extra pixie sticks would help cover up his crime Luckily, none of the other candy was ever eaten Investigators repeatedly questioned ronald, but he maintained his innocence He blamed the whole thing on some mad poisoner Just like in stories who handed out halloween candy laced with poison or needles and candy apples with razor blades inside Surely the police had heard those stories, hadn't they? O'brien was arrested and brought to trial On june 3rd 1975 a jury took over took just 46 minutes to find the dedicated father and devout member of the 2nd baptist church guilty of capital murder And four counts of attempted murder Ronald was sent to death row in huntsville, texas He was so hated by the other inmates. They reportedly petitioned to hold an organized demonstration on his execution date They had to wait a while for that date. His first execution date was set for august 8th 1980 But his attorneys managed to drag things out until march 1st march 31st 1984 Shortly before midnight, he was executed by lethal injection Outside of the prison a crowd of about 300 demonstrators cheered while others yelled trick or treat Ronald O'brien didn't just kill his son and tried to kill four other children on october 31st 1974 He also killed the idea of halloween for several generations of kids that hadn't even been born yet Ronald who was known now as the candy man by his fellow death row inmates Successfully perpetuated the legend that there are strangers out there intent on killing children with poisoned halloween candy The truth was there had never been a single case of a stranger handing out poisoned candy to kids on halloween That really had been just an urban legend In 1974 there finally was such a case But he was no stranger Ronald O'brien was a monster in human form And a nightmare brought to life Love that story I'll look through some of the some of the chats that have been coming in here Uh It's like one of them had to be had to be approved before coming in I really appreciate you all you guys being here and getting involved 84 people watching right now That's much better than we had last year. Thank you so much Um, we still have time. I don't know what time is it now? I don't know what time it is 650 we haven't even been at this for an hour so we have some time to go Maybe you can uh invite some of your friends to come on over and listen in as well Uh, let's see here Told the dude said bet he's toasty warm now. Yeah, I bet he is Uh, so is the jerk sick. All right. Thank you That's awesome Leave the grown-ups to mess up a good thing. I know right right I actually heard some some neighborhoods because of the weather Uh, we're wanting to cancel Uh, halloween or move it like like to tomorrow over the weekend or something Because that's for pansies. Remember when we were kids Didn't matter what the weather was we went out and we got our candy That's just halloween You can't do halloween on any other day other than october 31st. That's just it just doesn't work that way Okay, let me get a drink here and we'll continue on but I really do appreciate you guys being here. Thank you so much Um Let's see we got that one or we could do let's do one from a weirdo. How about that? Uh They said that uh over a year ago, but I'm getting around to it a weirdo revoke Set this one and he's called the lady in white Hello, my online name is revoke and excuse me Never have dairy before before narrating. All right, just just say it Okay Hello, my online name is revoke and wanted to send you one of my many experiences with the paranormal for your halloween special episode I saw an apparition of a female wearing an old style white dress I learned I'm so sorry I learned recently that the most common apparition is that one of a woman in a white dress But I did not know this when it happened to me so many years ago This experience was the spark that ignited my obsession with the strange and unexplainable It was the summer of 1991 I was 11 years old and lived in the town of melrose park illinois The house was pretty old and it had two floors and a basement With stairs in the back which were not covered and anyone could see people going up or down That'll be relevant later in the story It was a normal hot and humid midsummer night like any other Yet something strange and unforgettable would happen Around two or three in the morning. I woke up for no apparent reason and opened my eyes to a very strange sighting It was the profile of a lady in a white dress But she was not completely solid. I could see through her Somewhat it seemed that she wasn't aware that I was looking at her and passed inches away from my face I wasn't completely awakened and I was more confused and intrigued of what was happening than being scared It seemed to disintegrate right before going out the door of the room that I was sleeping in After a few minutes of trying to figure out what just happened I just brushed it off and continued sleeping since I didn't hear or see anything else A few days passed by and I kind of forgot about it until I heard my father tell some of my uncles that He saw a ghost lady in a white dress a few days back And actually went through his arm leaving his arm with a cold sensation for a few seconds That shocked me and made me remember that day immediately sending a chill through my body But for some reason I didn't tell anyone about my experience Maybe because I wasn't completely convinced that it really happened A month or two passed by and I didn't see the lady in white and sort of forgot about her once again When I passed Then I saw one of the neighbors ask for my mom completely out of the blue At what time she woke up to go to work because You would often see a lady in white go up and down the stairs around three in the morning almost every night from the window of his house My mom told him that he was mistaken because no one in the house left the house at that time That was all I needed to needed to know to erase any doubt that the ghost lady in white Was real and that I really saw her that night Are we done with trick-or-treating? Oh So you can you turn off all the stuff outside Okay So if we hear knocking on the door, we're just going to ignore it. All right Months passed by and I didn't see or hear anyone talk about the lady in white At least not until Pablo the youngest of my uncle my uncles moved to the house with his newlywed wife Rose They moved to the second floor of the house, but that didn't last very long I never saw my uncle's wife tell her experience But I know that they had to move out of the house only a few short months later Because she was experiencing something extremely scary There it goes Sorry, I couldn't see you guys A ghost lady in a white dress appeared outside her bedroom window almost every night and the lady Actually spoke to her Uh He uh supposedly yelling at her to get the heck out of the house or hell out of the house You don't belong here. She said She also described the lady as having big red eyes and teeth that looked rotten She was terrified and moved with one of her sisters before my uncle Pablo could find another place to live My family moved out of that house not too long after as well About 10 years passed by and everything seemed to be more or less normal in our new home But once again the story repeated itself now in the town of Northlake where my family and I bought our first house A few months after we moved one of the neighbors asked my mother that if she Uh, that if she usually Be out at work around three in the morning because she noticed a woman in a white dress and uh I'm losing my place. I don't know first. I think I think I got mixed up here My mother was confused once again remembering the same question was asked about 10 years prior And told the neighbor the same response That she didn't leave for work a couple hours past three in the morning that she had no idea Who could be the person going around the house at that time? I never saw the lady in white after my first experience and neither my mother or my three sisters saw her at all I don't know if she was a good spirit that followed a member of my family Or if she was attached to somebody in a bad way All I know is that this experience made me a believer in the paranormal from a very young age And still excites me and puzzles me to this day Okay You know since since you guys didn't hear the uh first first story because I was having mic issues Why don't I go back to that? It's actually uh, it was kind of interesting It's about the origins of the witch Let me uh I'll fold that Fold that there so I can go back to it It's the origins of the witch by Danica McClure A fearsome being what you actually hold on let me let me check out some of these before we get started Uh, who knows no rain in my part Just 28 degrees Good to know dragonfly cat Scott Baylor love listen to his voice. Thank you. I appreciate the compliment Uh, let's see here A lot of kids showed up with plastic bags over their costumes to keep I'm sure that happened here, too. I wasn't able to see the kids, but I'll bet that's the bet. That's true Uh, but looking forward to this stream all day. That didn't disappoint, but darin never does. Oh, thank you It's midnight there That's even better. Yeah, I agree Uh, the dude says there's no other narrator such as mr. Marlar Uh, you guys are too you guys are too kind really. I appreciate it, but Uh, okay. How many how many did we have watching now? I'm curious. We've got uh, 83 83 watching right now. That's awesome. Okay origins of the of the witch by Danica McClure If you somehow lose audio Type a type something like an old caps or something and I might be able to see it a little bit better All right, here we go A fearsome being of fairy tale and myth The witch is carved out of home in nearly every culture across the world in time Indeed the witch represents the dark side of the female presence. She has power that cannot be controlled While this time of year brings about depictions of aging ugly Hook-nosed women surrounding their cauldrons and inflicting toil and trouble on the masses History tells us that the witch's origins are far less sinister In fact those who we consider to be witches have often been healers Carol Fontaine an internationally recognized american biblical scholar argues in an interview that the idea of the witch has been around as long as humanity has tried to deal with disease and avert disaster In the earliest centuries of human civilization witches were the women who served the goddesses and therefore they were revered throughout their communities In the middle east ancient civilizations not only worshiped powerful female deities But it was often women who practiced the holiest of rituals Trained in the sacred arts these priestesses became known as wise women And may have been some of the earliest manifestations of what we now recognize as the witch These wise women made house calls Delivered babies dealt with infertility and cured impotence According to Fontaine what's interesting about them is that they are so clearly understood to be positive figures in their society No king could be without their counsel No army could recover from a defeat without their ritual activity No baby could be born without their presence So how did the benevolent image of a wise woman Transform into the malevolent figure of the witch we know today Some scholars maintain that the answer might be linked to events long before the birth of christ When indo-europeans expanded westward bringing with them a warrior culture that valued aggression and male gods of war Which dominated the once revered female deities Others believed that that Or believed that is that when the Hebrews settled in Canaan 1300 years before the common era Their male centric and monotheistic view of creation came along for the ride Obeying laws of the bible Hebrews believed witchcraft to be dangerous and prohibited it as a pagan practice Centuries later the sphere of witness witches spread to europe In the 1300s when the plague decimated europe and killed one in three people It also brought with it hysteria Amid the panic many attributed their misfortune to the devil himself and his supposed worshipers At this point the catholic church's inquisition which had already been established for decades Expanded its efforts to seek out and punish the non-catholic causes of the mass deaths Including devil-doting witches These women were believed to worship in large nocturnal assemblies where various social ills were performed such as promiscuous sex naked dancing gluttonous feasting on the flesh of human infants At the climax of this festival people at the time believed that the devil himself would appear and participate in an unbridled orgy with all attendance In order to save the church and its followers from the devil then These women had to be tamed It is with that in mind that the catholic church inquisitors jacob springer and hennrick kramer wrote the malleus maleficarum A book which assisted witch hunters in their gruesome task of diagnosing and punishing so-called witches Who as women were sexually vulnerable and therefore easy prey for the devil What else is a woman but a foe to friendship wrote the monks? They are evil lecherous vain and lustful All witchcraft comes from carnal lust which is in women insatiable The manuals vivid descriptions would serve as a platform for zealous witch hunters to act on their prejudices for over 200 years At the time malleus maleficarum was second to the bible in terms of popularity Fontaine notes that while there had been witch hunting manuals prior to the publication of the malleus maleficarum These two monks were the first to associate a specific gender with witchcraft By the end of the 1600s the witch-hunting hysteria in europe reached its peak Witch hunts spread like wildfire across europe the worst of which occurred in france and germany Worsburg germany was home to the to the worst instance of witch hunting the magistrates of the times Determined that most of the town was possessed by the devil and condemned hundreds to death Religion professor Barbara McGraw notes in a 1996 interview that there were some towns in germany where there were no women left Thousands were arrested and brought to inquisitors for examination Undered inquisitors brutal scrutiny the accused were stripped and searched Any suspicious warts muller birthmark could be enough to receive a death sentence In order to execute the accused however, they first needed to confess Torture seemed to be the best way of inciting confession And the church would use instruments such as thumb and leg screws head clamps and the iron maiden to generate the truth needed to enact the death While torturing women under examination The malleus maleficarum warned the torturer not to make eye contact with her as her evil powers might cause the torturer to develop feelings of compassion When this period ended at approximately the beginning of the 18th century an estimated 60 000 people in europe had been killed as witches Overseas the most anthologized witch hunt took place in salem, massachusetts The 17th century settlement had a rough beginning decades of indian wars land disputes Deep religious divisions and a tendency to look to the supernatural to explain the The unknown it helped to set the grounds for this particularly new world brand of hysteria The witch hysteria in salem began in 1692 in the home of a puritan minister named samuel perris Perris was deeply concerned about a game that his daughter elizabeth and niece abigale had played In which the two girls looked into a primitive crystal ball and saw coffin This vision had sent them into convulsions And within a few days nine other girls throughout the community were stricken with the same ailment Under the pressure of perris the girls then named three witches who may have cursed them titaba their household slave sarah good a beggar woman and sarah osborne A widow rumored to have had an illicit affair with one of her servants All three women were social outcasts and thus easy targets for suspicion The 1692 salem witch trials spread witch hunting hysteria to 24 outlying villages That year jails were crowded with more than 200 accused witches 27 of whom were found guilty 19 were killed The trials been a swift end however in part because supposed victims began pointing their fingers at high ranking figures within the community when the wife of the governor of the mass that when the wife of the governor of massachusetts was accused of witchcraft leaders saw to it that the trials ceased immediately as to what spurred the girls confessions Fontaine attributes them to a form of social release The girls have been so tightly controlled in salem fontaine argues that this confession allowed the girls to receive some kind of attention Hundreds of years later the fearsome image of the witch faded and was absorbed by a popular culture who used the witch's violent history as costume inspiration others however used it as a means to find to found a new spiritual movement In 1921 British archaeologist Margaret Murray penned a book called the witch cult in western Europe in which she argued that witchcraft had not been an obscure occult but a dominant religious force though Murray's theories have been wildly discredited since the book's publishing her work sparked a fascination with witches that had been dormant for 300 years eventually helping spawn the wicca religion the religion which is named after an Anglo-Saxon term for craft of the wise circles back to ancient practices that use herbs and other natural elements to promote healing harmony love and wisdom all following the tenets of harm none it remains to be seen who the world's powerful will choose as their next witch but as history has shown the fearful is often the female nice god i'm glad i was able to get that back in there since you guys didn't hear it the first time all right let me take a look at more of these started to watch the sailing witch trials on the travel channel okay good job darin great show thank you very much gentlemen joe uh the witch was a really good puritan themed movie uh yeah that was actually a really good movie the witch i i wasn't sure what to expect with that movie i watched it and it was it was very surprising not scary per se it's not really a horror movie but it's definitely creepy great storyline on that too um let's see here the weather is cold yeah i understand that uh good story the weather is hot and clear here well thanks a lot starly party um um michael fair fact says you like that you like the living room setup thank you um as i mentioned earlier on when i first started the broadcast uh that's my wife's doing she did it all she did she did a great job i agree uh and like i said earlier i'll have to show you guys the christmas stuff once we get it set up um it'd be interesting to know the language this stuff was written in and asserts through historical documents of this era i'm guessing you're talking about uh about the witch thing maybe i would that would be cool um let's see here not sure why that's being there you go found i found a i found a uh message that that was held for review so um okay so i think i'm caught up now darin is all kinds of awesome you guys are so cool thank you so much okay so uh let's go back to where i left off then we're gonna get a sip of this and we'll continue on my my mouth is a little bit dry i think maybe drinking a cherry lime age probably not the best thing for me i should have been just going just drinking directly with water okay so is that still all right oh yeah you can still see me see me perfectly fine all right let's go with the uh what do the origin of the jack-o-lantern you want that or we can do yeah we'll do that yeah let's move on no it's not whiskey the dude no i said cherry lime aid am i gonna lie to you oh wow thank you for the five dollar um super chat man a zalfinian today's your second wedding anniversary your husband's working tonight so you're happy to be able to celebrate thank you very much actually your husband did uh contact me and asked me to give you guys a shout out today for a happy anniversary and i told him i wasn't sure if i would remember so i'm glad you reminded me thank you very much very happy anniversary to you it's cool you guys got married on halloween that's uh i mean number one there's no excuse ever to forget your anniversary so your husband has no excuse there as well but uh i'm curious how you guys dressed did you guys dress in like a gothic uh tone or did you go with a traditional wedding being on halloween i'm just kind of curious um let us know in the in the uh in the chat i'd love to know uh so uh 30 degrees outside did i have halloween themed wedding yeah that's exactly right rations asking the same question that i have i would love to know steampunk outfits that is awesome that is so cool i don't know if you can post i don't know if you can post photos in the chat or not but then that would be awesome to see if not send me send me the send me the pictures and i'll post them on the website or something that's that's pretty cool okay moving on let's go to the origin of the jack o'lantern uh crackling are you talking about the the microphone is the microphone crackling again if it is i'm sorry let me know i just move the microphone uh i just want to make sure you guys can still hear me can you still hear me now since i moved that sometimes moving that i lose a signal so i just want to make sure so just say yes i can hear you or whatever yes all good okay good yeah the the crackling i don't know why it does that i think maybe it's uh you can hear me better now good all right i don't know what it is i need to buy myself a new lavalier mic i think maybe this one's just just pooping out on me so okay move it on the origin of the jack o'lantern before it was halloween october 31st was the pagan holiday of saun the official end of summer in the end of the harvest season ancient calz believed that at saun the veil between worlds of the living and the dead was extremely thin allowing the dead to cross over into the world of the living sometimes they appeared as apparitions and sometimes in the form of animals most particularly black cats the living lit bonfires and uh the living lit bonfires and dressed in costumes to confuse the spirits and keep them from re-entering the world when christianity came to ireland and scotland it simply co-opted the three-day festival of saun and folded it into all hallows eve october 31st all hallows day or all saint's day would be november first and all soul's day would be november second it was a perfect fit and the original pagan saun blended seamlessly into the new christian celebration in most of i don't know about the crackling i don't know what i can do about that there is that better is that better no it's not i really don't know what to do i wonder if it's my beard hitting the mic i wonder if that's it good now okay move on in most of christian europe the emphasis was and still is on all saint's day my birthday by the way um tomorrow it's right anyway uh but in ireland and scotland because of the Celtic past and uh the legacy of saun all hallows eve or halloween became the big deal and various local traditions developed in ireland children carved out potatoes or turnips as jacka lanterns and lit them from the inside with candles the practice originated from an irish myth about a man named stingy jack who invited the devil to have a drink with him and then didn't want to pay for his drink as the story goes several centuries ago among a myriad towns and villages in ireland there lived a drunkard known as stingy jack jack was known throughout the land as a deceiver manipulator and otherwise drag society on a fateful night the devil overheard the tale of jack's evil deeds and silver tongue unconvinced and perhaps envious of the rumors the devil went to find out for himself whether or not jack lived up to this vile reputation typically of jack uh typical of jack he was drunk and wandering through the countryside at night when he came upon a body on his cobblestone path the body with an eerie grimace on its face turned out to be satan himself jack realized somberly this was his end satan had finally come to collect his levelant soul jack made a last request he asked satan to let him drink ale before he departed to hades finding no reason to request satan took jack to the local pub and supplied him with many alcoholic beverages upon first jack asked satan to pay the tab on the ale to satan's surprise jack convinced satan to metamorphose into a silver coin with which to pay the bartender impressed by jack's unyielding nefarious tactics brutally jack stuck the now transmogrified satan the coin into his pocket which also contained a crucifix the crucifix's presence kept satan from escape and this coerced satan to agree to jack's demand in exchange for satan's freedom he would spare jack's soul for 10 years 10 years later to the date when jack originally struck his deal he found himself once again in satan's presence jack happened upon satan in the same setting as before and seemingly accepted his time to go to hades for good as satan prepared to take him to hell jack asked if he could have one apple to feed his starving belly foolishly satan once again agreed to this request as satan climbed up the branches of a nearby apple tree jack surrounded its base with crucifixes satan frustrated at the fact that he had now been entrapped yet again demanded his release as jack did before he made a demand that his soul never be taken by satan into hades satan agreed and was set free eventually the drinking and unstable lifestyle took its toll on jack he died the way he lived as jack's soul prepared to enter heaven through this through the gates of st. peter he was stopped jack was told by god that because of his sinful lifestyle of deceitfulness and drinking he was not allowed into heaven the dreary jack went before the gates of hades and begged for commission into the underworld satan fulfilling his obligation to jack could not take his soul to warn others he gave jack an ember marking him a denizen of the netherworld from that day on until eternity's end jack was doomed to roam the world between the plains of good and evil with only an ember inside a hollowed out turnip to light his way that is references to pumpkin uh there we go references to pumpkins date back many centuries the name pumpkin originated from the greek word for large melon which is pepon pepon was changed by the french into pompom the english changed pompom to pompion shakespeare referred to the pompion in his merry wives of windsor american colonists changed pompion into pumpkin the pumpkins referred to in the legend of sleepy hollow peter peter pumpkin eater and even cinderella native americans dried strips of pumpkin and wove them into mats they also roast long strips of pumpkin on the open fire and eat them the origin of pumpkin pie occurred when the colonists sliced off the pumpkin top removed the seeds and filled the insides with milk spices and honey the pumpkin was then baked in hot ashes it's a story that came to america with hundreds of thousands of irish immigrants in the mid in the mid 19th century in america pumpkins were cheaper and more readily available than turnips but carving them and making them into jack-o-lanterns lit by a candle inside became an american tradition as halloween was enthusiastically adopted in the new world by people from every possible ethnic background by the 1880s it had really got on and had become a part of the tapestry of american holiday traditions today most think of halloween as an american holiday and are unaware of the ancient old world roots of the carved pumpkins that are a traditional part of the celebration so now you know why we carve pumpkins at halloween it's all because of the ancient Celts pagans and irish descendants who came to america pagans today still celebrate saun all right look into some of these other uh some of your comments holy moly my up uh interesting history thank pumpkin is a gourd yeah it's a good gourd uh remember the story satan supposedly told jack to make his own health to make his own hell i haven't heard that version that's interesting uh happy halloween all right love the story of jack good i'm glad you like that wasn't really sure if you guys would get into that or not sometimes you want ghosts and scary stuff other times other times i think it's kind of cool to throw in a little history and stuff like that so um the witch of pongo it's a true story about a lady accused of being a witch in virginia beach in the 1600s if i'm still crackling i'm sorry i don't think i could do anything about it buddy i apologize for that um i'll try to remember that witch of pongo i'll go back and look at the comments a little bit later on and i'm probably crackling as i go back and forth with my head like this because um i'm moving and it's clicked to my to my uh shirt okay let's do another uh story by a weirdo family member this one is from ana it's called death follows my grandparents lived in a rural community in northern Ohio their backyard borders that of my grandfather's brother and sister-in-law all of the houses in that little cluster had large yards to walk from my grandparents house to meet my great uncle and aunt's house you'd have to cross an open area about as long as a football field bordered on one side by a fenced horse pasture and on the other side by a line of tall pine trees after my great uncle passed away my grandparents would often walk over in the evening to look in on my great aunt and were very heartbroken at the loss of her husband and was now left living alone on one such fall evening my grandparents were over visiting great aunt grace and stayed past dark they sat out with a flashlight to walk home across the big field where they lived it was pitch black at night time no streetlights around just the wide open darkness of the field and horse pasture as they were walking home my grandmother started looking behind her my grandfather asked what's the matter and to which he replied hurry up Lee walk faster my grandfather always paid attention to my grandmother's gut instincts so he walked faster faster she said hurry up she said it a couple more times along the way until they were practically jogging when they were almost at their back door my grandfather asked what the hell is going on and she replied hurry up and get into the house I feel death but is behind us it's following us my grandfather opened the door as fast as it could they ran in and once inside bolted the door my grandfather quizzed her what was she talking about had she seen something someone all she could say was that she felt death behind them and it was following on their heels she closed the curtains and said that there would be no answering the door if a knock came my grandfather was spooked and confused the next morning my great aunt grace called on the phone to say that she had just heard that the neighbor across the street had been murdered the night before he was owned by his sister that morning and the killer was on the loose was it actually the angel of death the grim reaper who was in the neighborhood for the murder victim that was following my grandparents home was it the killer himself the brigger of death out on foot watching my grandparents walking home across the field either answer is terrifying the killer was eventually caught and served justice and yes ryan never ignore that instinct you're right about that uh let's see here there's actually a road in virginia beach called witch duck road witch duck stupid name okay um okay butt fungus got me down says he has to go that's okay man i understand uh the video will be posted a little bit later on uh once we're done with the actual the actual broadcast uh 93 people watching now that's really good i can't remember how much we had last year at a maximum i know it wasn't nearly that many so thank you very much for for supporting what i'm doing here i know you guys are most people are podcast listeners not youtube subscribers um so it's just kind of an interesting experiment to do this once in a while i have not done a a q and a in forever i really need to do one of those someday soon maybe i can uh schedule that sometime between now and and christmas um and i'll just do that in the office so i don't have to worry about the mics working and everything else and you know just sit there and just talk for an hour or so and just ask questions if they come up maybe maybe i'll do that uh okay let's move on we'll do the uh the disappearance of cindy song she was a beautiful girl who decided to celebrate halloween as a bunny rabbit yang zhong or cindy song was a 21 year old pennsylvania state university student originally from soul south korea during the very early morning hours of november first 2001 cindy was last seen at a halloween party hosted by players nightclub a popular bar at state college she left the party at 2am eyewitnesses said that she was wearing pink shirt sleeves rabbit ears a white skirt and a fluffy white tail above knee-high brown shoes two hours later one of cindy's friends dropped her off at the state college park apartments located on the 300 block of west clinton avenue all agreed cindy was likely drunk by this time three days later after cindy did not contact any of her friends they reported her missing police investigators discovered that cindy was not at home and that very few of her items had been stolen or taken detectives noticed that only cindy's keys and purse were missing from the apartment a search of cindy's cell phone did not uncover any outgoing or incoming calls during the three days after halloween police also claimed that cindy's apartment showed no signs of a struggle or forced entry two years later a separate police investigation shed light on the possibility that cindy may have been the victim of a serial killer just north of wilts bar pennsylvania police began excavating the property of hugo selensky a man who authorities believed was responsible for the deaths of two drug dealers police did find the charred remains of these victims on selensky's property but they also found more bodies in total 12 bodies many of which had been burned in a fire pit were found on selensky's property many believe that cindy song was one of those bodies but police have not yet been able to prove that for sure in 2003 selensky was arrested for the original double homicide but three years later a jury refused to convict selensky of homicide but they did convict him of abusing the corpses that same year selensky was charged with two other murders these victims were michael kirkowski and tami facett both of whom had been robbed and beaten before they were murdered an accomplice paul weakley later admitted to helping selensky in this double homicide that year while selensky was rotting behind bars after being convicted of other crimes he managed to escape from prison thanks to a rope fashioned out of bed sheets he spent three days on the run before turning himself in over a decade later selensky was finally convicted of the murders of kirkowski and facet he received a life sentence the disappearance of cindy song remains unsolved okay it's 7 30 we've been doing that we've been doing this for an hour and a half i had no idea we'd be doing it that long uh let's do another uh oh man i want to do that one too i heckled when i keep going i got 90 87 people watching let's keep on going for a little bit how's that i think last year we only made it about 90 minutes but that's because i was outside my butt was hurting sitting on that concrete slab i just couldn't handle it anymore we're indoors this time i'm actually uh fairly comfortable so we'll just keep on going all right i'm curious i'll be able to read these back a little bit later on but what are you guys doing as you're listening and watching this are you guys doing the trick or treating thing or you're answering the door you got a halloween party going on are you just sitting in the dark listening and watching i'm just kind of curious as to what you're doing let me know let's go with i got a couple of stories here that i definitely want to get through oh before we get into that though another quick reminder uh overcoming the darkness our fundraising our fundraising campaign we're trying to raise as much as we can for iFRED it's the international foundation uh for depression or for our research and education of depression and uh it's a great organization and they give people hope and light who suffer from depression and anxiety and if you know anything about me or if you're in the weird darkness weirdo's facebook group you know how important uh resources are for those who do suffer from depression and those who think of suicide possibly have even attempted it um so we're trying to raise as much money as we can and we've been doing that all this month well today is the last day of the month so if you have not made a donation please do so it doesn't matter how much you get uh it can be five dollars we'll be fine uh last i checked and something may have come in since we started this uh this evening so i don't know but last i checked which was last night we still had a little over nine hundred dollars left to make our goal of twenty five hundred a twenty five hundred is not a magic number it's not like anything's going to fail if we don't make it to twenty five hundred but it's nice to have a goal and uh last year we raised over two thousand for our fundraiser so we should be able to do to uh to make it to twenty five hundred this year i thought but we're running we're definitely running behind so five dollars ten dollars um if you're i had one person the other day donated one hundred and fifty which is amazing uh and i'll also be donating uh all of my my patreon uh money that's coming in i i've said before all of the everybody that signs up to be a patron this month your first month is going towards this fundraiser so uh tomorrow once i uh once i have everybody uh accounted for i'll make that donation as well so i hope we will be over twenty five hundred i definitely i would love to be able to go to ifred and tell them hey we raise this much and when i click that button on go fund me it does not come to me just directly to them which i this is that's one of the reasons i set it up this way i don't want to be a middleman and i don't want there to be any question as to whether or not that money is actually going to the right source if you go to go fund me well if you click on overcoming the darkness at WeirdDarkness.com you can get to the go fund me page and it's actually set up to go directly to them i think you can even see that on the page so i did what there to be any doubt whatsoever you're way too many people doing fundraisers and then finding out that they're taking a portion or not even donating any of it to the supposed cause and all it makes me angry so anyway i'm going to make sure that they are going to get it and they will probably tomorrow once i do all the all the math and everything and close it out um i know i'm all scratchy i apologize for that um when i move my head back and forth like that you're probably hearing a lot of scratching and that's because my shirt's moving and my beard's probably going against the microphone i apologize uh you're eating pizza and junk food watching all right um sitting down eating candy listening to you while enjoying my evening nice sitting in your recliner watching on a smart tv very cool uh uh no you do not donate here want to you know you could i guess you could do a super chat but i'm not i'm not really familiar with how all that works so if you're going to do uh if you can just go to WeirdDarkness.com and click on overcoming the darkness that would actually be the best way to donate and that way i you know the money's going towards the uh to the fundraiser if you were to give here on on facebook and do and do a super chat or something that money actually comes to me and then i would have to forward it and i would but if you want to be just 100% sure uh just go to the website click on overcoming the darkness and that can get you to the uh go fund me page okay let's do another story from uh one of our weirdos this is this one's from Ken uh morel and i got my wife in the other room working on a on the microwave hey babe what you guys doing that sounds good too bad i can't have that that sounds good it's too bad i can't have that that sucks i don't would that would that work with my being lactose intolerant wouldn't wouldn't the powder itself though what are you making it with all right i'll just continue all right my wife is awesome she takes such good care of me um you can't hear me at all all right now can you hear me now well you're okay with the crackling it makes kind of spooky okay can you hear me now though going back and forth like that i wonder if maybe the the issue is with this mic right here okay dude says he can hear but i just i just touched my microphone i want to make sure again i fart a lot with my lactose intolerance yes i do that's one of the reasons i found out that i was lactose intolerant i have a lot of gas you can hear me okay better now okay good okay yeah i think it's the microphone itself i'm next between now and next year i'm going to give myself a new lavalier mic i think that's the issue we had the same problem last year and there's i'm not doing anything different i'm like barely moving and it still crackles and stuff like that so i'll get i'll get a much higher quality one for next year um last year i got the cheapest one i could find because it was my first time doing it and i wasn't sure what would happen um and then this year i just decided to use the same one because i again i wasn't sure what was going to happen but obviously now i got 90 people watching right now so i know that people care so i'll get a better better microphone next year i apologize all right somebody donate the man a new mic that's cute all right here we go but that's see that's what my patreon members do patreon is for that kind of stuff about to upgrade equipment and stuff like that all right here we go the creepiest halloween night ever by weirdo family member ken murrell um url my wife and i live in a small central oklahoma oil town it's nearly crime-free but not quite mayberry the nest has been empty for years the past few years someone or some ones have rung our doorbell late at night 9 30 to 10 30 the first couple of times that happened i opened the door finding no one on the front porch i walked around the outside of our house looking for a prankster didn't see anything but half expecting to hear a giggle from our shrubs but nothing those doorbell events never prepared my wife and i for our creepiest halloween night ever on halloween night it's become inconvenient for us to buy expensive candy and then get up and down for trick-or-treaters every time the doorbell rings typically we go into our bedroom in the back of our house close the blinds and keep all the lights turned off but we can still watch a movie too old for much else last halloween we changed that pattern though and sat in our front room all the lights were off the shutters were closed tight as my wife sat in her recliner getting her classroom lessons ready for the next day and i sat in my recliner buried under my laptop papers and books by 10 all the kids would be home so we expected nobody at the door from where i sat it was possible to see the front door suddenly there was a very loud bang on the door and the entire wall seemed to shake violently it was as though somebody gave the center of the heavy wooden entry door a tremendous power kick we both looked at each other as if to say who would kick our door like that i couldn't jump up and run outside to investigate this mischievous person or persons nor be able to catch anybody if i could make it outside quickly i told my wife in the morning i'll look the footprint left behind to see if i see uh if it could have been a neighbor kid well the strange thing about it there were no sounds of footsteps or laughing before or after the episode the next morning my wife and i both looked at the door not so much as a smudge was on it who or what could have quietly approached our front door making no noises of footsteps no talking then after kicking sad door with all of their might leaving no mark and just to silently go away no laughs no sounds of running no talking the event still creeps me out whenever i think about it i'm not going to fart during the live screen you are so weird uh okay uh let's do uh what time is it 740 we're still got a little bit of time if you guys listen to the podcast you probably heard the bloopers in the back on the end of it and i have burped a couple of times pretty bad but no no farting uh here's one for the this is an interesting one what if you uh if you know me you know one of my favorite cryptids is the werewolf and this is from uh a website that i i actually get a lot of material from it's called all that'sinteresting.com some really cool stuff there i mean it's the perfect name for the website everything is interesting this one's called the werewolf trials horrifying tales of torture decapitation and murder and those are just the acts committed by the accusers the selam witch trials of 1692 remain among the most infamous episodes in all of american history but across the sea in europe hundreds of years prior similar events took place this time involving persons accused of lycanthropy or shapeshifting into werewolves according to mental flaws the first recorded instance of anyone being accused and convicted of lycanthropy occurred in paulnie france in 1521 thank you baby you're fine she's awesome as the story goes a supposed wolf attack led authorities to the home of michael verdin who after being arrested and tortured confessed to being a werewolf along with two other men pierre borgo and filibret montau borgo also confessed and told authorities of a deal made with three men dressed in black who agreed to protect his sheep in exchange for the rejection of his belief in god he was given an ointment that allowed them to shapeshift into wolves during which time they would stalk the land killing and eating children all three men were found guilty and were executed shortly thereafter the accounts of lycanthropy that follow that first one are eerily similar in detail many of them involve ointments and deals struck with other worldly characters the 1598 case of uh frenchman joc roulet also known as the werewolf of cod involved the use of the transformational sav which roulet used to murder and then eat several young children although he was sentenced to death for his crimes a conviction of feeble mindedness instead sent him to an asylum where he received a religious education before being released two years later the feat the fate of peter stube a german man was not so fortunate after flat out confessing to having made a deal with the devil in which stube was gifted a belt allowing him to shapeshift for the sake of killing and consuming countless victims over 25 years he was publicly executed in 1589 in a most gruesome way having his skin ripped away arms and legs broken and had removed before being burned following that man named fokert dirks claimed during the the amshufut uk utrek trials in the netherlands that he and his family were able to shapeshift into wolves and cats under satan's command as did kanthihans and his spouse who admitted to possessing the ability to turn into bears under satan's command though only after being tortured along with supposed deals with the devil cannibalism is another recurring theme among all of these lycanthropy cases including the 1573 execution of frenchman gills gardener who was accused of killing and cannibalizing children who ventured into his neck of the woods and later confessed to being a werewolf as many of these confessions of lycanthropy from gardener and others only came later long after the alleged incidents took place most believe them to be either coerced through the use of torture or attributable to the suspects mental illness or low IQ prohibiting them from understanding exactly what they were confessing to whatever the case the christian people of europe at the time were opposed to the peasantry's practicing of paganism thus many believe these werewolf trials to have been nothing more than a scapegoat for widespread fear concerning a cult and non-christian practices an example of the witch hunt mentality much like the witch trials that would occur in america a century later this brings us to the case of a teenage boy named hawns who was tried during the werewolf trials in estonia with 18 trials accusing 18 men and 13 women of being werewolves over the years the case of young hawns was perhaps the most famous only 18 years old when he was arrested in 1651 on charges of lycanthropy hawns quickly confessed to the charges brought against him admitting to having hunted as a werewolf for two years hawns told the court of a man in black who bit him shortly before the physical changes occurred many believed the man in black to be the devil and this mention of satanic forces qualified the werewolf to be tried as a witch and thus sentenced to death when asked by a judge whether he felt more like a man or an animal hawns replied that he probably not unlike most 18 year olds felt like a wild beast and that the changes within him could be measured both physically and metaphysically despite there being no physical evidence of any murders committed by hawns he was sentenced to death simply on the grounds that satanic magic had been performed upon him while most of the accused never lived to see another day not all werewolves were guaranteed a death sentence such as 80 year old theus of colton brune claiming to be a hound of god theus stated that he used his werewolf cloak to enter hell three nights a year where he battled devils and witches in order to ensure a good harvest for the next season as he never admitted to having made a pact with a demon in exchange for lycanthropy theus was only convicted of practicing folk magic believed to encourage the rejection of god and was sentenced to merely to a flogging a much lighter punishment than so many of histories supposed werewolves once had to endure all right think it looks over your other chats here love it dare it looks great with the snow well yeah okay so you went back to the beginning and saw that yeah i can't believe it's snowing here on october 31st we've we've lived here in the rockford illinois area for well since 2004 so it was 15 years now and we've seen flakes of snow in the past but not not this kind of snow on halloween it's just it's weird you're in marshfield wisconsin uh dragonfly castle it's slowing down 52 kids showed up we didn't count ours this year we should have but still 52 kids in this kind of uh weather that's pretty good all right let's do uh we'll do another weirdo uh family member tale they wanted to remain anonymous on this one and uh they just will call it haunted psychosis i was born and raised in louisiana this state is well known for its colorful culture divine cuisine and of course spooky history as long as i can remember pretty much everywhere we lived was either haunted or several homes throughout the neighborhood were abandoned schools old factories crumbling houses practically everything was said to harbor one kind of spirit demon or other such boogins uh boogins i love that word boogins we moved around a lot as my parents looked for work but the place that i call my hometown is st francisville louisiana this may sound familiar to those who follow the haunted house scene as this is the town where the legendary myrtle's plantation resides it's been featured on unsolved mysteries national geographic at various other haunt hunter shows the national geographic explorer filming crew famously determined that in a photography in a photograph that they took there is captured what appears to be an apparition you could actually see the image of the slave girl the exterior boards of the mansion are clearly visible through the body of the apparition pretty spooky and worth the google search the myrtle's plantation was built in 1796 and it's touted as one of america's most haunted homes the main plantation house is rumored to be built on top of a tunica indian burial ground throughout the plantation there resides some 12 ghosts and it's often reported that 10 murders occurred in the house for a house over 200 years old i'm sure that part is no surprise one of these ghosts is said to be that of william drew winter who was alleged to have been shot by a stranger in 1871 mortally wounded he staggered back inside the house and died trying to climb the stairs he died on the 17th step and to this day both visitors and tour guides report hearing his dying footsteps struggling up the stairs several of my friends in town would tell me about their ghostly experiences one that stands out the most to me was a friend whose house was built on land where some of the myrtle's plantation slave quarters once stood as he went to his room one night to go to sleep he opened his bedroom door and as soon as he did he saw a pair of feet quickly shuffle underneath his bed as if the ghost were trying to quickly hide that story still freaks me out well there are many stories from different friends i could share second hand i'd like to instead share with you the one of the scary things that i have personally experienced having graduated high school and not possessing any clue as to what next to do with my life i took a job delivering pizzas my mom worked at a mental hospital the east louisiana state hospital next town over in jackson louisiana after several months of slinging pie and chauffeuring hot dode a non-tipping small town folk my mom let me know that they were hiring orderlies at the mental hospital and suggested i apply heck yeah i was more than happy to do anything other than escort cheesy sticks to meth heads and poh dunks i applied for the orderly position and was promptly hired i was told to show up for two weeks of training makes sense this was a mental hospital i needed to know how to conduct myself how to properly treat the residents what to look out for and so on during the training we were taught how to check blood pressure how to properly apply restraints what to do in case of emergencies how to communicate with residents oh and that east louisiana state hospital was haunted i thought of course it is what isn't haunted in this wackadoo state what was originally known as the state insane asylum was established in 1847 honestly the main building is beautiful and it's considered to be a particularly fine example of greek revival architecture imagine an 1800s tank on a white pillared ancient geek temple and let you get the idea it was set on a pleasant 250 acre tract known as flowery hill with a which is a stone's throw away from downtown jackson separated from the town by a small stream the location of its building was chosen because jackson is in a hilly well-drained location compared to the rest of the state it's relatively free of disease bearing mosquitoes which plagued silums in new orleans originally it housed some 90 or so patients and employed 12 staff with the typical foresight of louisiana politicians the hospital was woefully under funded so the already suffering residents went without proper nutrition beds clothes and other necessities right off the bat these already poor miserable souls were made to suffer even more patients who were deemed fit enough were made to work farmland to help feed the hospital as time went on a brick factory was built where the patients worked eventually after selling over three million bricks the state took notice of the facility and gave them funding enough to build on four more buildings the capacity of the hospital was increased from 100 patients to more than 600 in just one day the hospital received 130 inmates that were bused in from new orleans asylums as time passed and unclaimed patents would patients would die they would be buried in a graveyard on the asylum grounds rows of nameless crosses denote the graves of past residents on the side of a hill at the rugged cross sanctuary in its 170 year history this graveyard has grown has grown to hold over 4 000 dead until very recently the burial grounds weren't even properly maintained which would make for restless spirits if i had to guess madness suffering displacement brutality and death this is the perfect recipe for the during my time working there i saw and heard many horrifying things on a daily basis i saw my first cadaver during a training tour of the morgue i witnessed patients scream and swat at the nothing is attacking them some would laugh endlessly at jokes only they heard or point and babble at you with a rage i never knew existed in human capacity many were gentle and calm even though they could move 800 pound concrete tables as if they were made of particle board because they didn't know what the word heavy meant my co-workers would often share experiences that chilled my soul one of the places i was told about was called the dungeon it was built under the original hospital the dungeon was supposedly where the most violent or criminally insane were kept in the past in addition to the dungeon the hospital has steam tunnels too the ghostly plumes of evaporation lent an eerie air to the already uncomfortably aged asylum i worked the night shift during my breaks i had often walked the grounds and through the buildings the dungeon was no longer used and sat empty there was talk about turning it into a wine cellar but once a closer look was given to the structure it was deemed unsafe bolstering at the arches underneath the hospital was seen as too expensive the decision was made to just fill the whole thing in with dirt since i hadn't yet seen the dungeon i decided i should take a look before it was too late on the night i decided to go the door to the stairs leading down were blocked by caution tape it was quiet throughout the entire unused portion of this part of the building the only thing i could hear was my own heartbeat and breathing i don't know how long i stood in that dimly lit hallway when i finally decided heck with it i want to check it out i pulled out the plastic ribbon blocking my way just high enough to get past and then started down the stairs were made of stone and as i descended had to hunch down some so i wouldn't smack my noggin on the ceiling as i continued down and began to feel very cold and clammy the human cold went straight to my bones and i began to shiver from the temperature change the corridor was musty and dank my mind began to reflect on all the people who must have come and gone through this very passage over the decades either willingly or in restraints frothing at the mouth singing loudly laughing and jibbering all of these sounds once echoed throughout this short tunnel at the bottom of the stairs the room opened up into a large brick chamber lined with arches the brick looked as if it had been suffering from decades of frequent water damage and i started to see why they wanted to fill it in the ceiling had cables running along the tops of them with dim yellow light bulbs dangling down every six feet it was so very quiet down here it's hard to believe what once took place in these walls i took a few steps forward and realized the floor was mostly dirt and small gravel the sound each crunchy step i took was unnerving i just knew someone would hear me and i get in trouble but i padded along walking heel to toe as softly as i could as i got closer to one of the walls i saw a wrought iron o-ring fastened at about head height for a moment i wondered what it was for and as i looked along the wall i saw more of them spaced evenly along the face of the wall it dawned on me these were to chain people up my god it really was a dungeon i could still see a bit of rust and wear on the bricks where the chains once hung how many people had been forced to stay in this spot and dangle like so much unwanted meat imagine a row of people along each wall just hanging there and being put there by a medical professional of the era what hopeless times those must have been for the patients and the doctors there was no circulation down in the dungeon just cold dusty air that smelled of decaying wood and brick dust bricks made by the hands of the mad those bricks then used to build this dark arched cavern whose only purpose was to house the most dangerous among them there was no medicine to help them no counseling to silence their affliction there was no hope for the dwellers in the dungeon they were sent to another level of their hell excuse me they were sent to another level of the hell their minds were born into how many had perished in this cold darkness among the bellowing yelps of the insane these unfortunate souls were forced to stay there chained to frigid brick walls alongside other raving babbling confused and tormented vines until they felt silent and were deemed fit enough to ascend those stairs again enjoying the others above the more i thought about the suffering endured down there the more sad i became it was time for me to leave this antiquated pit my curiosity had been fulfilled i turned to walk towards the exit and she stood face to face with me eyes bulging mouth a gape she fell towards me in the twinkling of an eye i felt what she felt and thought what she thought nonsense drone incessantly between my ears and hundreds of voices barked out all manner of vile things i saw horrible visions then it was over i ran i took strides in a rapid uncoordinated manner i didn't know that i was even capable of it this wasn't me running this was my body on autopilot my subconscious flight reaction put its foot to the floor and while my mind was still shaking off the delusions and hallucinations my body fled i don't remember going back through the hall i don't think i touched a single stair back to the top the next thing i can remember is unlocking the ward that i was stationed to i was lucky that my co-worker wasn't at the front desk i had a moment to compose myself i finished my shift in silence i went through my duties robotically and trying to forget what i had experienced but in so doing i was dwelling on it and the rosy first lights at the morning as i drove home she was on my heart and mind i cried all the way home i cried for her from that day to this i believe because she shared with me her melody i've gained a deep empathy for those who suffer all levels of mental illness my heart breaks for those who struggle with life filled with what i experienced for those brief moments i soon decided to go to college and become a psychologist it didn't work out for me and maybe that's a good thing i don't know if i could ever harden my heart enough to properly shield myself from what others go through on that level east louisiana state hospital is still there today it houses some 500 patients and over a thousand doctors cooks and other staff the graveyard adds nameless crosses for more residents each year and the dungeon i don't know if they ever filled it in or not but if they didn't i truly hope they've blocked off all access to it for good i like that one that was a nice one i get some of the greatest stories from you weirdos uh some of you are really good writers you really are let's see here did i don't get touched on that one i think maybe i did oh no i'm not okay we're still we're still good okay man it is eight o'clock we've been doing this for two hours um i probably need to be wrapping it up here pretty quick i could start i can't do all of that i can't do that somebody pages left i'm torn because i my voice is starting to go hoarse um i'm tired and i've also been dealing with some vertigo all day uh whenever the whenever the weather is bad it kind of it can treat it can either trigger vertigo headaches my grades or both fortunately it's just vertigo today but um let's see no never no i got 93 people walking around i can't i can't stop at 93 people watching me what am i insane uh all right well then let's see what it will do you want to do the origin of halloween or do you want to do wege boards the novelty toy of the spirit world which is just sort of a uh it's a factual thing it's not really a ghost story which one do you want you want you want wege boards you want the origin of halloween or do you want oh no that'd be it okay those are the only two i got left you want wege boards or do you want origin of halloween so you got wege uh four more hours please i don't think i can make it four more hours bob um wege boards do the halloween one wege uh origin okay wege do do et halloween wege boards wege boards halloween okay okay all right fine fine fine i'll do both all right i'll do both holy cow all right let me take a sip of my and my cocoa then which will probably give me phlegm while i'm narrating it i know you're saying it's wege but it's actually pronounced wege it's just most people pronounce it wege i don't know how it ever got changed actually you can do it both ways i think it's not like it's wrong to say wege but uh i've heard it's pronounced wege and i kind of like it that way it almost sounds like it's more authentic or more foreign wege that's why i use it so okay but first we'll we'll do the uh i'll just do these in order so i'll do the the origins of halloween and then i'll step into the uh wege boards okay we'll see how long how long i can go here this also depends on whether or not my phone uh camera is does not power so if i if i just cut out that's why it's not because i've given up it's because my camera gave up i can't see how much power is left from here so i'm just gonna hope for the best to keep on going how's that okay so we'll do the origin of halloween by benjamin radford by the way did you guys still hear the music in the background i turned it down like when i first started because you guys can hear it's really loud to me but i wasn't sure about you you can hear i'm not using a wege board on the live screen are you insane i will i won't have one of those in my house no way james no yep yep yes yes okay i'm guessing that's for the music all right cool i was just curious i won't be able to hear this until we're all done i go back and listen to it later all right origin of halloween by benjamin radford halloween is the season for little ghosts and goblins to take to the streets asking for candy and scaring one another silly spooky stories are told around fires scary movies appear in theaters and pumpkins are expertly and not so expertly carved into jack-o-lanterns recently creepy clowns seem to be doing some real terrorizing in august of 2016 locals in greenville south carolina reported a clown who was allegedly trying to lure children into the woods then in september a teen reported a knife-wielding clown in summit bill tennessee local and state officials in many areas urged people to report suspicious clown sightings and in south florida some stores pulled down clown costumes from their shelves and broward county police advised people not to dress up as the master grinners according to the miami herald in 2017 the clowning continued the movie based on the classic steven king story it was remade and released into the united states september 8th in the movie a demon that takes the form of a clown lures children into the sewer with a red balloon in liditz pennsylvania police responded to reports of over 20 red balloons tied to sewer grates according to cbs news people dressing as clowns remains a popular way to scare children in north dakota for example were targeted in may by a knife-wielding clown with the boa constrictor and in september australia saw an increase of clown sightings before halloween amid the silly and scary antics halloween is much more than just costumes and candy in fact the holiday has a rich and interesting history halloween also known as all hallows eve can be traced back about 2000 years to a pre-christian Celtic festival held around november 1st called saun it means summer's end in galak according to the indo-european etymological dictionaries because ancient records are sparse and fragmentary the exact nature of saun it's not fully understood but it was an annual communal meeting at the end of the harvest year a time to gather resources for the winter months and bring animals back from the pastures saun has also thought to have been a time of communing with the dead according to folklorist john santino there was a belief that it was a day when spirits of the dead would cross over into the other world santino told live science that such moments of transition in the year have always been thought to be special and supernatural halloween provides a safe way to play with the concept of death santino said people dress up as the living dead and fake gravestones adorned front lawns activities that wouldn't be tolerated at other times of the year but according to nicolas rogers a history professor at york university in toronto an author of halloween from pagan ritual to party night oxford university press 2003 there is no hard evidence that saun was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship according to the ancient sagas saun was the time when tribal peoples paid tribute to their conquerors and when the seed the ancient mounds might reveal the magnificent palaces of the gods of the underworld rogers wrote saun was less about death or evil than about the changing of seasons and preparing for the dormancy and rebirth of nature as summer turned to winter though a direct connection between halloween and saun has never been proven many scholars believe that because all saints day were all hallows mass celebrated on november 1st and saun are so close together on the calendar that they influenced each other and later combined into the celebration now called halloween the tradition of dressing in costumes and trick or treating that might go back to the practice of mumming and guising which people would disguise themselves and go door to door asking for food early costumes were usually disguises often woven out of straw and sometimes people wore costumes to perform in plays or skits the practice may also be related to the medieval custom of souling in britain and ireland when poor people would knock on doors on halloween november 1st asking for food in exchange for prayers for the dead trick or treating didn't start in the united states until world war two but american kids were known to go out on thanksgiving and ask for food a practice known as thanksgiving begging mass solicitation rituals are pretty common and are usually associated with winter holidays santino said while one tradition didn't necessarily cause the others they were similar and perilla these days the trick part of the phrase trick or treat is mostly an empty threat but pranks have long been a part of the holiday by the late 1800s the tradition of playing tricks on halloween was well established in the united states and canada the pranks included tipping over outhouses opening farmers gates and egging houses but by the 1920s and 30s the celebrations more closely resembled an unruly block party and the acts of vandalism got more serious some people believe that because pranking was starting to get dangerous and out of hand parents and town leaders began to encourage dressing up and trick or treating as a safe alternative to doing pranks however halloween was as much a time for festivities and games as it was for playing tricks or asking for treats apples are associated with halloween both as a treat and in the game of botting for apples a game that since the colonial era in america was used for fortune telling legend has it that the first person to pluck an apple from the water filled bucket without using his or her hands would be the first to marry according to the book halloween and commemorations of the dead by chelsea house apples were also part of another form of marriage prophecy according to legend on halloween sometimes at the stroke of midnight young women would peel an apple into one continuous strip and throw it over her shoulder the apple skin would supposedly land in the shape of the first letter of her future husband's name another halloween ritual involved looking in a mirror at midnight by candlelight for a future husband's face was said to appear a scary variation of this later became the bloody mary ritual familiar to most schoolgirls like many such childhood games it was likely done in fun though at least some people did take it seriously some evangelical christians have expressed concern that halloween is somehow satanic because of its roots in pay and ritual however ancient kelts did not worship anything resembling the christian devil and had no concept of it in fact the saloon festival had long since vanished by the time the catholic church began persecuting witches in its search for satanic cable satanic balls and of course black cats do not need to have any association with witchcraft to be considered evil simply crossing their path is considered bad luck anytime of the year as for modern halloween excuse me as as for modern halloween santino writing in american folklore and encyclopedia noted that halloween believes and customs were brought to north america with the earliest irish immigrants then by the great waves of irish immigrants fleeing the famines of the first half of the 19th century known in the north american continents since cologne continent since colonial days by the middle of the 20th century halloween had become largely a children's holiday since that time the holiday's popularity increased dramatically as adults communities and institutions such as schools campuses and commercially haunted houses have embraced the event through the ages various supernatural entities including fairies and witches came to be associated with halloween and more than a century ago in ireland the event was said to be a time when spirits of the dead could return to their old haunting grounds dressing up as ghosts or witches became fashionable though as the holiday became more widespread and more commercialized and with the arrival of mass manufactured costumes the selection of disguises for kids and adults greatly expanded beyond monsters to include everything from superheroes to princesses to politicians there you go all right you were a pentecostal church so suddenly halloween was the devil i attended a pentecostal church for a while i know what you're talking about um i am a born-again christian and i love halloween so i don't i uh i've never really seen the i mean there are evil aspects to it but i mean there's also evil aspects to life in general but we don't we don't say don't go out and live so i think the fun part of halloween i mean we're not out there uh you know worshiping the devil or anything we're out there asking for candy and we're you know we're uh having parties and stuff like that and it all the whole the death thing everything i mean there are churches that are built out of human skeletons so you can't say it's just because of the death aspect that it's non-christian that doesn't work either so um i think yeah i think the the people who say that the halloween is of the devil and shouldn't be uh shouldn't be recognized they they have good intentions but no uh okay so let's see here uh we'll do the the uh weisha boards and my gosh it's 817 all right here we go weisha boards the novelty towing of the spirit world dun dun dun since the beginning of recorded time man boy that almost sounded like a movie trailer guy since the beginning of recorded time man has claimed to be able to communicate with the spirit world all right sorry however it would not be until the heyday of the spiritualist movement that he would begin claiming to do so as an everyday occurrence that um yeah that particular movement was founded by two young girls kate and maggie fox who established a way to communicate with a ghost they used a series of knocks and raps that answered yes and no and eventually assigned a code for letters of the alphabet in this way they were able to spell out longer and more detailed messages as spiritualism grew in popularity those with an interest began to establish what were called home circles small groups of friends and family members who would gather around and attempt to communicate with spirits they experimented with the knocking and rapping sounds and table tilting as a method of receiving yes and no from the spirit world soon the tiresome and time-consuming method of knocking and tipping tables began to fall out of fashion and so mediums began a new form of contact called automatic writing which provided a direct line of contact with the spirits it was believed these ghosts would guide the mediums hand and spell out messages for these sitters who were present it's a replaced slower methods of communication and soon mediums claimed to receive more complex messages from the beyond while automatic writing was being embraced by mediums those who satisfy their curiosity about the spirit world in the home circles were also searching for a more efficient way to reach the other side than just wrapping on tables in 1853 a french spiritualist named m planchette according to the stories anyway should be noted by the planchette in french translates to little plank making the story a little dubious anyway the man invented a device that could do much more than tap on the table the planchette was a small heart-shaped table with pencils attached to its legs those who used it claimed it operated by spirit force and ghosts wrote out messages from beyond the invention was often used by the mediums as a more elaborate form of automatic writing but it really didn't hold wide appeal for the general public however a short time later another invention would come along that could be used by everyone no experience was required and no real psychic skills were needed this new device would revolutionize the spiritual movement and have an impact that still resounds today the talking board was born at the height of the spiritual movement a cabinet and coffin maker from maryland named ec rike created a new method of communicating with the dead he devised a wooden lap tray with the letters of the alphabet arranged in two lines across the center of the board below these letters he placed the numbers one through ten and the words yes and no in each lower corner of the board he used the planchette with his board but removed the pencil tips and placed wooden pegs on the bottom of it making it free to move around the board it was always believed that rike named his board the ouija or ouija because the name represented the french and german words for yes we and ja but this was not the case he believed that the word ouija was the egyptian word for luck needless to say it's not but since he but since he'd claimed to receive the word from a spirit on the board the name stuck but rike was more interested in spirits than making money and he sold the invention to his friend charles canard who soon founded the canard novelty company with borrowed money and began producing the first commercial ouija boards around 1886 the first patent for a talking board was filed on may 28 1890 and listed charles canard and william h a moped both of baltimore as the assignees the patent did not claim to know how the board worked it simply stated that it worked no effort was able was uh able and made to describe how the board worked in any of its advertising materials making it seem even more mysterious and mystical the less sad about the how and the more about the supposed results ensured the board was imbued with spiritual powers shortly after the company started the shop manager william fold decided to go into business for himself he forced canard out of the business and changed the name to the ouija novelty company he began producing the folds talking board in record numbers and became a successful businessman he was a member of the baltimore general assembly in later life and remained in control of the company for the next 35 years fold died in a freak accident in 1927 he was on the roof of a new factory supervising the erection of a flagpole with the metal support that he was holding on to failed and he fell from the roof breaking several ribs an ambulance was called to rush into the hospital but on the way the ambulance lurched over a bump in the road which caused one of the broken ribs to pierce fold's heart killing him instantly opponents of the ouija board had long used fold's death to give the board an eerie taint the ouija board was anything but a curse to fold's company though it became the most successful talking board manufacturer of all time selling millions of boards as well as other toys and games folded created a new industry with the ouija board which he claimed to have invented himself he started the apocryphal tales of the naming of the board using we and ja and claimed many of his successful of his successful sales plans came from the board itself his heirs maintained the company until 1966 when they sold out to parker brothers this company also known for their success with toys and especially board games produced not only reproductions of the fold board but also made a deluxe wooden edition of the board for a time today they hold all the patents and trademarks to the board and they still produce it in large numbers it's sold in novelty and toy stores today but it remains nearly duplicate of the board embraced by spiritualists in the 19th century a talking board or ouija board ouija board if you prefer is perhaps the most controversial method of spiritual communication imaginable mostly because it can be used by anyone and requires no special powers to navigate the board has been both condemned and praised in equal amounts as