15 KILLER KIDS & MURDEROUS MINORS: Can We Predict Which Kids Will Become Killers?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
If cop shows and forensic dramas have taught us one thing,
it's that serial killers are a breed apart from other
human beings. They're the monsters that hide in the shadows,
the diabolical predators of otherwise peaceful times. But it's extremely
rare for a child to commit any serious crime, even

(00:30):
rarer for that act to be outright murder. So when
cases of homicide committed by children make the news, they
fascinate the viewers and stay in the public consciousness long
after the trials of ended. Murder itself is such an
extreme crime that even what motivates adult killers can remain mysterious.

(00:53):
Getting to the bottom of what pushes a child to
commit the heinous act is even more difficult. Many such
crimes involve children attacking those younger than them, usually with
an age gap of six to eight years. Needing to
feel powerful comes into some of the cases, as does
curiosity simply wanting to know what killing feels like. I'm

(01:20):
Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome weirdos. This
is weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy,

(01:44):
mysterious macabre, unsolved and unexplained coming up in this episode
of Weird Darkness. You can teach a dog to roll
over and fetch, You can teach a cat to use
the toilet. Lions and tigers have been trained to jump
through hoops of fire to thrill spectators at circuses worldwide,

(02:07):
and even a gorilla has been taught some basic sign language.
But would you believe there was once a horse that
could do arithmetic? William Stead was a newspaper editor and
journalist in the eighteen nineties. His beat wasn't the fashion
scene or stock market, nor was it the arts district
or even politics. He covered the paranormal, and it wasn't

(02:31):
hard to come up with stories because all he had
to do was to call up someone from the underworld
for an exclusive interview. If you move into an old house,
it always feels awkward at first. After a while, though,
it begins to feel like home for some people. If
the house is a bit older, perhaps that odd feeling

(02:52):
of being watched never really goes away. But if your
house was built two hundred and seventy years ago, you
probably should just assume you've got a spook or two
already residing there. Before you sign the mortgage. As a
listener of true crime podcasts, you likely are more than
familiar with names like H. H. Holmes, Richard Ramirez, and

(03:15):
Gary Ridgeway. But what happens when the serial killer hasn't
even reached adolescence. We'll look at some chilling murders that
were carried out by children, which will change the way
you look at youthful adolescence from now on. And are
there traits you can look for in a child that
might indicate if they'll become a killer later in life.

(03:38):
We'll look at three traits believed to be indicators. Now,
bult your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the weird darkness. We all

(04:15):
know of Ted Bundy, Ed Geen, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John
Wayne Gacy, some of the most notorious serial killers of
the twentieth century. These murderers have even inspired movies and
TV shows based on their callous acts. Their victims suffered
gruesome killings, and the public understood that although the killers

(04:39):
might have faced psychological problems, they were still adults. But
what happens when the killers haven't even hit puberty? Murder
can be an act so horrific and inconceivable that many
of us fail to understand why someone would do it.
Some of us even forget that there is no age

(05:00):
limit to becoming a killer. There are teens and youth
who seek out their victims and take their lives brutally
and violently, sometimes without remorse, and in ways we can
barely believe. From cooking a victim's flesh and poisoning their family,
to stabbing their neighbors and killing for the fun of it,

(05:22):
Here are some killer kids whose stories will keep you
up at night. Accused of luring young boys into the
local woods, where he would then beat them with his fist, belt,
or knife, Jesse Pomeroy is alleged to have killed nine people.
He began to torture other children when he was only

(05:44):
eleven years old. During the winter and fall of eighteen
seventy one, Pomeroy trapped and attacked seven younger boys. Pomeroy
would strip and tie the boys up, severely beating them,
sometimes even poking pins into their flesh. He had distinguishable features,
a harelip and one completely white eye, so identifying him

(06:08):
was easy. He was eventually caught and was sent to
reform school. He was supposed to stay until he reached
the age of eighteen, but was released after he completed
a year and a half of his sentence. Once released,
Pomeroy didn't just want to inflict pain. He wanted to kill.
The debts that finally put him in prison were that

(06:30):
of a ten year old girl, Mary Curran from South Boston,
found in his basement, and a four year old boy,
Horace Mullen, found mutilated near a marsh. At the time
of his arrest, Pomeroy was fourteen and confessed to the
murder of Mullen. When police asked him if he killed
the boy, Pomeroy replied, I suppose I did. Eventually, Pomeroy

(06:55):
confessed to having a total of twenty seven other victims.
Police covered the remains of twelve other bodies in his
old home. When convicted a first degree murder, Palmeroy, also
known as the Boston Boy Fiend, became the youngest person
convicted of first degree murder in the state of Massachusetts.

(07:16):
It's really no surprise that Mary Bell turned out the
way she did. Her mother was a seventeen year old
prostitute when she had Mary, and was often absent from
their home during Mary's childhood. Betty Bell, Mary's mother, married
Billy Bell, although it's unclear if he was Mary's biological father.

(07:37):
Billy was a habitual criminal, often arrested for robbery. The
Bell home was located in the economically depressed Scotswood area
of Newcastle, where domestic violence and criminal behavior were the norm.
It's no surprise that Mary quickly began engaging in her
own crimes, attacks on other children, vandalism, and theft. It

(08:02):
didn't take long before Mary started searching for heavier crimes.
Mary Bell committed the first of two shocking murders on
the day before her eleventh birthday. In May of nineteen
sixty eight. Mary strangled a four year old boy in
a derelict house before leaving notes claiming responsibility in a

(08:23):
nursery she and a friend had broken into. A month later,
and joined by that same friend, Mary strangled a three
year old boy in the same area as the first killing.
She returned to the body and carved the letter M
into the boy's stomach, along with scratching his legs and
mutilating his genitals. Mary was convicted of manslaughter and released

(08:46):
in nineteen eighty. She made headlines again after being released
from prison and won a high court battle to have
her own anonymity and that of her daughters extended for life.
As a result, any court order that permanently protects the
identity of someone is now known as a merry Bell order.

(09:08):
Charles Charlie Starkweather was brought up in a respectable home
with well behaved siblings. He was the third of seven.
In contrast, Starkweather's time in school was unpleasant because he
was often teased and bullied for his limitations. He was
born with jinuvarum, a leg desformity, a speech impediment, and

(09:31):
also suffered from severe myopia. The only place he excelled
was jim class, and he began to bulk up as
a result. With his new found physique, stark Weather transformed
from bullied to bully and went from the most well
behaved teenager to the most troubled student. By nineteen fifty six,

(09:54):
eighteen year old stark Weather was introduced to Carol Ann Fugate,
who was thirteen at the time time, and the two
quickly hit it off. Gradually, Charlie convinced himself that he
had to become a criminal in order to gain money
and respect. On December nineteen fifty seven, Charlie committed his
first murder and at once felt euphoric and peaceful. The

(10:19):
day after Charlie robbed and murdered his first victim, Robert Culvert,
he admitted everything to Carol. His confession caused their bond
to become even more intense. It would also lead to
their mass murdering road trip. Charlie, nineteen years old at
this time, along with his fourteen year old girlfriend, carried

(10:40):
out the two months spree that inspired films like California
and Natural Born Killers. The teens strangled, stabbed, sexually, assaulted,
and shot eleven different victims between December nineteen fifty seven
and January nineteen fifty eight, across the states of Nebraska
and Wyoming, including his girlfriend's family. The day of their

(11:05):
final murder, the duo ran into law enforcement and Starkweather's
girlfriend confessed, resulting in their high speed capture. Stark Weather
was sentenced to death by electric chair seventeen months after
he was arrested. On February twentieth, two thousand and nine,

(11:26):
the then eleven year old Jordan Brown murdered his father's
twenty six year old fiance, Kenzie Hoach, who was eight
months pregnant at the time. Her unborn son was also killed.
While the soon to be mother was sleeping in her
bed in their New Beaver, Pennsylvania farmhouse, Brown shot her
in the back of the head using a gun given

(11:47):
to him by his father. Houk's youngest daughter alerted nearby
adults to the situation after Brown had gotten on the
school bus. Police arrived later that day to find a
shotgun in the house with the smell of burnt gunpowder.
Jordan was interviewed by Pennsylvania State police twice the day
of the incident before being arrested the following morning. It

(12:09):
was later confirmed that Hawk was killed by a youth
model Harrington and Richardson twenty Gage shotgun. Prosecutors speculated that
Brown killed his stepmother because he was angered by the
pending birth of a new sibling and was jealous about
the attention his stepsisters received. Initially, Brown was to be
tried as an adult, but was eventually found guilty of

(12:32):
first degree murder as a juvenile. In twenty eighteen, Brown
was exonerated as the court determined that the evidence could
have been planted by an unknown assailant and thus was
insufficient to find him culpable beyond a reasonable doubt. On
the day that fourteen year old Shirley Wolfe helped murder

(12:53):
a great grandmother in her condominium, Wolfe wrote in her
journal today, Sandy and I ran away and killed old
and old lady. It was lots of fun. Wolf had
known fifteen year old Cindy Collier less than a day
when they decided to knock on various doors of Collier's
condominium development in Auburn, California. The girls used their innocent

(13:16):
demeanor to their advantage in order to get in the
apartments of older residents. They used tactics like asking for directions,
a glass of water, or to use the phone. Some
of the senior citizens were not fooled and felt an
unsettling presence when they met the girls. After two older
women saw the girls, they immediately locked their windows and doors. However,

(13:39):
the kind and helpful Anna Bracket, an eighty six year
old former seamstress, decided to invite the girls into her
two bedroom condo, unaware that it would cost her her life.
After Bracket let them in, they brutally stabbed her for
her car. Wolf grabbed Bracket by her throat and threw
her to the floor while Collier handed her a knife

(14:02):
from the kitchen. Wolf repeatedly stabbed her neck until she
was dead. Before they left, the girls ransacked the condo
for money and the car keys. No one could believe
that the teenage girls were responsible for the heinous act,
but when the Plaser County Sheriff's deputies interviewed Wolf, she confessed.
Within minutes later, Collier affirmed, after we did it, we

(14:26):
wanted to do another one. We just wanted to kill
someone just for fun. The two were found guilty of
first degree murder. Nathan Leopold and his lover Richard Loeb
confessed to the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Franks, which
they claimed to have committed solely for the experience. Before

(14:47):
that incident, Leopold and lob had racked up a laundry
list of crimes. By November nineteen twenty three, Leopold and
Lobe had already performed several burglaries together and set fires
a few times. Their criminal behavior was fueled by Nietzsche's
concept of the superman. Leopold was furious that their misdeeds

(15:08):
had yet to earn them media attention, so the two
spent seven months planning a bigger crime that would prove
they weren't just above the law, they were too smart
to get caught. They spent the winter months of nineteen
twenty four planning the crime to the smallest detail. They
would kidnap a child and ask for a ten thousand

(15:28):
dollars ransom. They had even decided how they would request
the money. The wealthy University of Chicago students eventually kidnapped
and murdered a fourteen year old boy in May nineteen
twenty four as an affirmation of their intellectual supremacy. The
pair spent nearly two hours driving around the streets of
the South side of Chicago looking for a possible victim,

(15:50):
until they spotted Bobby Franks. Frank's was Loeb's cousin. He
knew that Frank's father would be able to pay the ransom.
After offering the boy ride and taking a chisel to
his head, they dumped his body after a failed attempt
to collect the ransom. A pair of glasses belonging to
Leopold discovered near the body linked the murder to the boys.

(16:13):
Leopold and Lobe were convicted of murder and sentenced to
life in prison plus ninety nine years. Fascinated with poison
from a young age, Graham Young would poison his father, stepmother,
younger sister, several classmates, and at one point even himself.

(16:35):
He used poison that made them violently ill. The symptoms
included vomiting, diarrhea and excruciating stomach pain. When he was
only fourteen, in November nineteen sixty one, Young served his sister, Winifred,
a cup of tea exposed to poison that would later
cause her hallucinations. She was taken to the hospital, where

(16:56):
doctors came to the conclusion that she had consumed the
poisonous atropa belladonna. Young's father was suspicious of his son,
but unable to find anything incriminating in his room. Regardless,
he warned his son to stop using chemicals. Young eventually
killed his stepmother, and after the fifteen year old was

(17:18):
sent to a psychiatrist, the police were brought in. Young
landed himself in a psychiatric facility for people who have
committed criminal offenses and was diagnosed with a personality disorder
dubbed the teacup poisoner. He killed a fellow inmate and
poisoned several staff members before being released nine years later

(17:39):
deemed fully recovered. He would eventually land back in prison
in the early nineteen seventies to live out the rest
of his days after poisoning at least seven more people
and killing one. David Brahm is known as a mass murderer,
having killed nearly his higher family, parents, brother, and sister

(18:03):
with an axe on a February morning in nineteen eighty eight.
The murders happened after Brahm got into a fight with
his father in their Minnesota home the night before the
morning after the murders, the sixteen year old skipped school
and convinced a fellow student to do so as well,
bragging to her about what he did in graphic detail.

(18:25):
He detailed the ways he killed his family with an
axe and the fact that his father had struggled during
the attack. Brom informed the student that he'd gotten into
an argument with his father at about eleven thirty PM
over the music he was listening to. He then stayed
awake until three a m. And entered his parents room
and killed his father first. He attacked his brother and

(18:48):
killed his mother and sister last. The news reached his
school's administration, who notified police. Initially, Brahm's case was referred
to the juvenile court system because of his age. However,
due to the severity of the crimes, Brahm was sent
into the adult judicial system. Bram's defense was insanity, and

(19:09):
much of the trial and media attention focused on whether
or not Brahm was legally insane at the time of
his crimes. In October nineteen eighty nine, Bram was convicted
of first degree murder and was given three consecutive life sentences.
He remains in prison to this day. In February nineteen

(19:31):
ninety three, Robert Thompson and John John Vennables, both ten
years old at the time, were skipping school and decided
to lure a young two year old boy away from
his mom. CCTV showed the boys observing children, most likely
searching for a victim, throughout their time in the shopping center.

(19:52):
The boys were also seen stealing various items sweets, a troll, doll, batteries,
and can of blue paint. Eventually, the boys spotted James
Bulger and decided to approach the boy. While his mother
was distracted, The boys led Bulger by the hand out
of the mall, where they planned to push him into
oncoming traffic. However, the boys decided to travel two and

(20:16):
a half miles through Walton, Liverpool to a set of
railroad tracks. During their walk through Liverpool, the boys were
seen with Bulger by a total of thirty eight people.
Bulger had a bump on his forehead and was crying,
but bystanders did not intervene. Once they reached the railroad tracks,
the boys stripped Bulger of his clothes, stuffed batteries into

(20:39):
his mouth, threw paint in his eye and bricks and
stones at his body, and dropped a twenty two pound
iron bar on him before weighing his body down on
the tracks using rocks so a passing train would mutilate
the boy's body. The police used CCTV footage to track
the two child murderers down, and the two boys were
found guilty, becoming the youngest individuals to be convicted of

(21:02):
burder in the twentieth century. When Eric Smith was younger,
he was considered a loving and funny boy that quickly
changed as he got older. Smith had been diagnosed with
intermittent explosive disorder, a mental disorder that causes individuals to
act out violently and unpredictably. It was a rare disorder

(21:27):
that was even rarer at Smith's age. Smith was a
loner and was often bullied because of his appearance, as
he had protruding low set ears, thick glasses, red hair,
and freckles. It seems this led to Smith's suppressed rage
later taken out on his victim, Derreck Roby. At age thirteen,

(21:48):
Eric Smith murdered Derreck Roby, a four year old boy,
after luring him into the woods while they were on
their way to the same summer camp. After luring the
young boy into the woods, Smith hit him over the
head with a rock, strangled him, and sodomized him with
a tree limb, which Smith would later say he used
to confirm the boy was dead. The body was found

(22:09):
within hours after the little boy's mother reported him missing.
Within the same week, Smith confessed to his family. He
was charged with second degree murder and is currently in
a medium security prison in New York State known as
the Warwick slasher. Craig Chandler Price was arrested for four murders.

(22:33):
Price killed his first victim when he was just thirteen
years old. After breaking into her home only two houses
down from his own, he stabbed the twenty seven year
old woman living there fifty eight times with a kitchen knife.
At the age of fifteen, he would brutally stab three
more neighbors, a mother, Joan Heaton nearly forty, and her

(22:53):
two young daughters. With his first murder unsolved, Price was
able to commit his second horrific crime. Similarities in the
killings led police to bring in the FBI to investigate
a possible serial killer. At first, tying Price to the
scene seemed impossible, but then an observant detective noticed a

(23:14):
cut on Price's hand. When he was arrested, Price calmly
confessed and showed no remorse for the killings. He even
described the night he was in the Heaton's house, how
he bit Heaton's face as he knifed her and mimicked
the final cries of her dying daughters. He was sentenced
as a miner, and upon his potential release, bragged that

(23:36):
he would make history before earning an additional ten to
twenty five years for various instances of criminal behavior while
in prison. At one time, he was to be in
jail until twenty twenty, but on April fourth, twenty seventeen,
Price stabbed fellow inmate Joshua Davis at the Sewani Correctional

(23:56):
Institution in Live Oak, Florida, with a five inch home
made knife. He was sentenced to an additional twenty five years.
Peter Woodcock was a Canadian serial killer and child rapist
who showed signs of psychopathy at a young age. By
the time he was a teenager, Woodcock was using his

(24:18):
bike to wander around the edges of Toronto and select
his victims. He'd ride his bike and evolve a fantasy
in which he led a gang of five hundred invisible
boys called the Winchester Heights Gang. His foster parents were
aware that he spent time wandering around on his bike,
but were shocked to discover that Woodcock had been sexually

(24:40):
assaulting children. He assaulted many children and would eventually kill three,
all under the age of ten, between nineteen fifty six
and nineteen fifty seven. The murders were carried out by strangulation.
Woodcock would also beat his victims and forcibly insert objects
in to their privates before killing them. He was caught

(25:03):
after being seen cycling away from his last victim and
found not guilty by reason of insanity. Woodcock would be
sent to a maximum security mental health center. As he
seemed less dangerous over time, the man was released to
a lower level facility. In that facility, Woodcock, now going
by the name David Michael Kroger, fell in love with

(25:26):
a fellow patient who rejected his sexual advances. While out
on a weekend pass, Kroger convinced a former lover, Bruce Hamill,
to help him kill that man. Hamil and Kroger stabbed
Dennis Kerr to death. Immediately after the murder, Kroger reported
himself to the police. He was transferred back to the

(25:47):
high security facility, where he passed away nineteen years later.
From Jacksonville, Florida. Josh Phillips earned a life sentence for
murdering an eight year old neighbor in nineteen ninety eight
when he was only fourteen years old. Phillips alleges that
he was home alone the day Mattie Clifton came over

(26:09):
to play baseball. He agreed to play even though he
was not allowed to have friends over when his parents
weren't home. After he accidentally hit her in the eye
with the ball, the young girl began to scream and
cry loudly. Knowing that his father would arrive soon and
fearing his reaction, Phillips pulled her into the house and
strangled her with a phone cord for fifteen minutes. He

(26:32):
proceeded to hit her with a bat and then stuffed
her body under his waterbed mattress. Phillips interacted with his
father upon his arrival home for a few minutes before
returning to his room. Realizing that Clifton was still alive,
he stamped her eleven times to stop her moaning, which
finally killed the young girl. He left her body underneath

(26:56):
his bed. It was discovered by his mother, who thought
the water bed was leaking, but came to find it
was the young girl's decomposing body. She ran outside the
house to contact police, who arrested Phillips the very same
day at his school. Sandy Charles is perhaps one of

(27:17):
the most bizarre child murderers on the list. Charles, along
with a young accomplice, murdered a seven year old boy
after watching the horror movie Warlock. The film follows a
warlock who drinks the liquefied fat of an unbaptized child
to gain special powers. The killer teen stabbed and smothered

(27:39):
his young victim in the woods, only a few hundred
yards from where he was staying with his grandmother in
Sinotte Crescent, an isolated community in Canada. After stabbing his victim,
Charles beat the boy with a rock in a beer bottle,
then proceeded to cut strips of fat in skin from
the boy's body. He then took the body parts home

(27:59):
cooked and ate them, confessing that he thought drinking boiled
down fat from a virgin would give him the power
to fly. As shown in the horror film, Charles was
suffering bizarre delusions due to schizophrenia, only strengthened by his
constant rewatching of Warlock and its sequel. He had contemplated suicide,

(28:20):
but decided against it when spirits in the room told
him that he'd be better off killing someone else. He
was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent
to a psychiatric hospital. In April of two thousand and six,
the bodies of Mark and Deborah Richardson and their eight

(28:40):
year old son were found in their home. The murderers
were the Richardson's twelve year old daughter, Jasmine Richardson, and
her twenty three year old boyfriend Jeremy Stankey, who she
had met at a punk rock show that same year.
The two had an interest in dark horror and creatures
like vampires stinker. He even claimed he was a three

(29:01):
hundred year old vampire. He told friends he liked the
taste of blood and wore a small vial of blood
around his neck. Richardson's parents did not approve of Stankey
and punished her for dating him because of the age difference.
The pair, who were deeply infatuated, refused to be separated,
and so Jasmine Richardson came up with a plan. She

(29:24):
proposed the idea to kill her parents so she and
Stankey could finally live together. Hours before the murder, the
two had watched Natural Born Killers. During a conversation with
an undercover cop while in police custody, Stankey said that
the movie was the best love story of all time.
Richardson was found guilty of three counts of murder in

(29:47):
the first degree and sentenced to the maximum allowance for
juveniles ten years. Stankey received three life sentences. It's believed
that Jasmine Richardson is the youngest person to be convicted
of multiple murder in Canada. She was released after serving
her full sentence in twenty sixteen. Reportedly, she has shown

(30:08):
genuine remorse for her crimes coming up. Can you predict
whether or not a child will become a killer? Are

(30:28):
there traits you can look for in a child that
might indicate if they will become violent later in life? Plus,
I'll tell you about Hans Clever, a horse supposedly so
intelligent that it could actually do math. These stories and
more when weird darkness returns. Wouldn't it be useful if

(31:15):
we could identify violent criminals before they harm their first victim.
Wouldn't it be incredible if we could observe certain behaviors
as serious red flags and figure out a way to
treat children who seem to be at the highest risk
for future violent behavior. It's almost as if we could

(31:36):
answer the most terrifying problem we have as human beings.
How do we stop those who seek to harm us
in the most brutal ways. Most of those interested in
true crime are familiar with a certain three childhood behaviors
that immediately spark concern in amateur forensic psychologists. These three

(31:58):
behaviors when happening together are known as the McDonald triad.
What the McDonald triad attempts to do is to predict
future sadistic behaviors by identifying certain traits that show in
childhood and adolescents. Forensic psychiatrist J. M. McDonald identified three
such traits in his nineteen sixty three paper, The Threat

(32:20):
to Kill. They are arson, bedwetting, and animal cruelty. In
his paper, he wrote about his study of one hundred
patients who had threatened to kill someone. He found that
his patients that exhibited signs of aggression and psychosis were
more likely to have a history of the three aforementioned behaviors.

(32:43):
In nineteen sixty six, Daniel Hellman and Nathan Blackman published
a study that supported the McDonald triad. Of the eighty
four prisoners they worked with, they found that three quarters
of the thirty one most violent offenders all possessed a
history of the behaviors. This triad has blended into the

(33:03):
canon of true crime, and many of us have taken
it as a psychological fact. So what are we talking
about when we talk about the McDonald triad? Arson? According
to a two thousand and four paper by Singer and Hensley.
Fire starting is an early attempt at releasing anger and aggression.

(33:23):
Because some studied serial killers experienced prolonged episodes of humiliation
and shaming in childhood, it's proposed that they sought a
way to release the negative emotions and rebalance themselves. The
study also concluded that arson is not a good predictor
of future violence cruelty to animals. This is probably the

(33:45):
most famous traits that people assume will predict violent behavior.
The reason that psychologists believe that children and adolescents torture
and kill small animals is also because of humiliation at home.
Children cannot fight against their abusers, so they take their
anger out on animals that are vulnerable to them. Psychologists

(34:06):
Wright and Hensley studied five cases of serial murderers in
two thousand and three and found that these animal kills
are almost like practice for future violence. The methods employed
to harm the animals are often similar to the methods
that criminals use on their human victims. Another study conducted
in two thousand and three with forty five incarcerated violent

(34:28):
male offenders found that fifty six percent openly admitted to
past animal cruelty. It's also indicated that More often than not,
the children who harmed animals were also victims of parental abuse. Bedwetting,
specifically unintentional bedwetting during sleep persistent after the age of five.

(34:50):
Many children may wet the bed, but in the context
of the McDonald's triad, a child older than five must
wet the bed while sleeping at least twice a week
for a three month period. Forensic psychologists call the idea
that bedwetting has anything to do with future violent behavior
a destructive myth. Though chronic bedwetting is sometimes considered another

(35:12):
sign of a child's distress, researchers have not found a
sodded link between bedwetting and abuse, so how accurate is
this hypothesis. McDonald himself began to question his own theory
in his nineteen sixty eight book Homicidal Threats, which I've
linked to in the show notes, claiming he could find

(35:32):
no true statistical link between the triad and future violent tendencies.
Researchers agree, they question whether two small studies can warrant
a legitimate theory. More recent studies and analyzes seem to
show little correlation. Some go as far as to call
the triad of behaviors an urban legend. Nonetheless, it has

(35:54):
found its way into forensic psychology classes and even into
law and order SVU. In two thousand and nine, Corey
Ryan submitted a master thesis study which to date is
the most extensive review and analysis of violent criminal data
from the last half of a century, and she found
little to prove that the McDonald triad has any predictive value.

(36:18):
It's not that these behaviors aren't signs for concern. They are,
but less so for potential future victims and more so
for the child exhibiting them. The behaviors described in the
McDonald triad are more likely to show that a child
may be experiencing severe abuse. The correlation to violent criminal
behavior may be that many who do commit violent crimes

(36:41):
have a history of childhood abuse and neglect. Forensic psychologist
Catherine Ramsland claims that some violent criminals may exhibit one
of the traits of the triad, but rarely do they
possess all three together or alone. The triad behaviors can
indicate a stressed child with poor coping mechanisms, or a

(37:02):
developmental disability, Ramsland wrote for Psychology Today. Psychologists worry that
the McDonald. Triad's popularity may cause more distress and stigmatization
for children that are labeled as a future threat through
behaviors that actually signal abuse of the child. Ramsland continued
to say, such a child needs guidance and attention. However,

(37:25):
until we design and carry out better empirical studies than
we've seen thus far, researchers and media agencies should refrain
from stating that the triad identifies a future serial killer.

(38:00):
I don't know about you, but I could use a
more amusing story right about now, after such a dark
beginning to this episode, so let me tell you about
Clever Hans. In a paved courtyard surrounded by high apartment
houses in the northern part of Berlin, a small crowd
had gathered to watch an old high school mathematics teacher
demonstrate the brilliance of one of his precocious pupils. The

(38:24):
sixty something math instructor stood proudly with a black slouch
hat covering his thinning white hair. To his left stood
the pupil, an impressive Russian trotting horse. For more than
a decade, Wilhelm von Austen, the instructor, had helped clever
Hans the horse to develop a number of cognitive skills.

(38:46):
Von Austen would ask a question and Hans would answer
correctly by nodding his head for a yes or a no,
or by tapping his foot to indicate numbers. Clever Hans
could show directions by turning his head, could differ intiate
between left and right, identify colors, read the clock, recognize
and identify playing cards, and understand a large number of

(39:09):
different concepts. Not only could Hans count, he could perform
arithmetic far beyond the fundamentals. How much is two fifths
plus one half? Von Austen would ask. Hans would answer
with nine taps, followed by another ten to indicate that
the answer was nine tenths. What's the square root of sixteen?

(39:32):
Hans would make four taps? What are the factors of?
Twenty eight? Hans would tap consecutively two, four, seven, fourteen,
twenty eight. Hans could even pick up cleverly worded questions.
I have a number in mind, I subtract nine and
have three as a remainder. What's the number I had

(39:55):
in mind? Twelve hoof taps in the number three, six, five, two, eight, seven,
one four nine, I place a decimal point after the eight,
How many are there now in the hundred's place? Von
Austin would press on. Hans would reply promptly with five taps.

(40:15):
Clever hans intelligence wasn't just limited to arithmetic. The horse
would astonish crowds by spelling out words and names of
people with taps, where one tap is an A, two
taps a B, and so on. Hans also gave evidence
of excellent memory and apparently carried the entire yearly calendar
in his head. You could ask him, if the eighth

(40:38):
day of a month comes on a Tuesday, what's the
date for the following Friday? And he would tell you.
The versatility of Hans in other directions was baffling. He
would recognize tones, recognize people and photographs, tap out the
time of the day, distinguish between straw and felt hats,

(41:00):
know the different colors, and so on. By some estimates,
Hans's mental development was similar to a child of thirteen
or fourteen years. Naturally, Hans aroused curiosity among many psychologists, zoologists,
and experts in various other fields. This was a time
when studies on animal cognition and their mental processes were

(41:22):
few and far between. The general consensus was that animals
were incapable of exhibiting anthropomorphic intelligence. In no case is
an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher
psychological processes, warned C. Lloyd Morgan, a respected nineteenth century
British psychologist. Morgan believed that higher mental faculties should only

(41:44):
be considered as explanations if faculties that stand lower in
the scale of psychological evaluation and development could not explain
a behavior. This is known as Morgan's canon, and it's
a fundamental precept of comparative animal psychology. In the face
of rising media attention, the German Board of Education appointed

(42:05):
a commission to investigate von Austen's scientific claims. This Hans
commission consisted of a veterinarian, a circus manager, a cavalry officer,
a number of school teachers, and the director of the
Berlin Zoological Gardens. Following extensive testing, the commission concluded in
nineteen oh four that no tricks were involved in the

(42:27):
horse's performance. As far as they could tell, Clever Hans's
mental abilities were real. The commission then passed off the
evaluation to Oscar Funkst, a young psychologist who worked in
the laboratory of the man who headed the commission. Funkst
designed a careful set of experiments and began testing Hans.

(42:47):
To rule out the possibility that von Austen was secretly
feeding Hans the answers, He removed Von Austen from the
scene and was pleasantly surprised when Hans was able to
get the correct answer, even when von Hgeustin wasn't the
one asking the questions. With the likelihood of fraud out
of the way, Von Austen began examining whether the horse
was getting clues unknown to the questioner by reading subtle

(43:11):
changes in the questionnaer's demeanor, posture, tone, etc. To confirm this,
Funks kept the answers hidden from the questioner. At once
Hans's accuracy dropped. Oscar Funks explains the procedure of this
test quote, mister von Austen whispered a number in the

(43:31):
horse's ear, so that none of the persons present could hear.
Thereupon I did. Likewise, Hans was asked to add the two.
Since each of the experimenters knew only his own number,
the sum, if known to anyone, could be known to
Hans alone. Every such test was immediately repeated, with the

(43:51):
result known to the experimenters. In thirty one tests in
which the method was procedure without knowledge, three of the
horse's answers were correct, whereas in the thirty one tests
in which the method was procedure with knowledge, twenty nine
of his responses were correct. Since the three correct answers
in the cases in which procedure was without knowledge evidently

(44:12):
were accidental, the results of this series of experiments show
that Hans was unable to solve arithmetical problems unquote. Funks
also found that when the questionnaire stood farther away from
Hans than normal, the horse had trouble correctly answering the questions.
Oscar Funks wrote, quote, the usual distance was one quarter

(44:33):
to one half meter. This holds for all tests hitherto described.
Seventy tests, which were made for the purpose of discovering
the influence of change in distance, showed that the reaction
to the horse upon the customary signal of the head
jerk was accurate up to a distance of three and
one half meters. At a distance of three and one
half to four meters, there suddenly occurred a fall of

(44:55):
sixty to seventy percent in the number of correct responses.
At a distance of four to four and one half meters,
only one third of the responses were correct, and at
a distance beyond four and one half meters there were
no correct responses. The greater number of these tests were
made in our presence by mister von Austen, who was
under the impression that we were testing the accuracy of

(45:17):
the horse's hearing, whereas we were really testing the accuracy
of his perception of movements. Every test Funkst conducted, Hans
failed miserably, even his memory. Some people tried to explain
Hans's supposed intelligence on muscle memory was found to be
average and unsuitable for performing the astonishing feats that had

(45:39):
been claimed for him. After it became evident that the
horse was entirely dependent on external stimuli from the questioner,
Funks began observing the questioners instead to understand what kind
of clues humans subconsciously gave away. The psychologist immediately noticed
that a questioner's breathing posture and facial attire expression involuntarily

(46:01):
changed each time the hoof tapped. Funks observed a marked
tension in the muscles of the questioner's face and neck
as the horse approached the correct answer. As soon as
the final correct tap was made, the tension was suddenly released.
This provided a cue for Hans that he should stop tapping.
Once Funks learned to read these barely perceptible cues as

(46:24):
good as Hans did, he carried out further tests in
which he played the part of the horse. Funks asked
his subjects to concentrate upon a particular number. Funks would
then tap out the answers solely by observing the body
language of his human subjects. Even more incredible was that
the subjects seemed unable to suppress these subtle cues, even

(46:46):
when made aware of them. Oscar Funk's research proved that
Clever Hans was an excellent observer who could read the
microscopic signals in the face of his master, and this
ability greatly exceeded that of the average man, But his
intelligence by no means approached that of a human. Oscar
Funct's conclusions that researchers can unknowingly lead a subject is

(47:11):
now recognized as widespread in research involving human subjects as
well as animals. This is known today as the Clever
Hans effect to prevent prejudices and foreknowledge from contaminating experimental results.
Many experiments in the fields of perception, cognitive psychology, and
social psychology are double blind, where most information about the

(47:34):
experiments is withheld from both the researchers and the subjects
until after the experiment is complete. The Clever Hans effect
has also been observed in drug sniffing dogs, where cues
from the handler are transmitted to the dogs, resulting in
false positives. Despite Funk's expose, Clever Hans never stopped being
a sensation. His owner Von Austen, continued making tours throughout Germany,

(47:58):
drawing crowds where wherever he put up a show. Von
Austin never charged a dime for these exhibitions. He genuinely
believed in Clever Hans's unmatched intelligence. Wilhelm von Austen died
in nineteen oh nine, after which his horse, Clever Hans,
changed owners several times until he was drafted as a

(48:19):
military horse at the beginning of World War One in
nineteen fourteen. His fate is unknown, but some believe that
Hans was killed in action. In nineteen sixteen. When weird
Darkness returns William Stead was a newspaper editor and journalist

(48:42):
in the eighteen nineties. His beat wasn't the fashion scene
or stock market, nor was it the arts district or
even politics. He covered the paranormal and it wasn't hard
to come up with stories because all he had to
do was to call up someone from the underworld for
an excul elusive interview. And if you move into an

(49:03):
old house, it always feels awkward at first. After a while, though,
it begins to feel like home for some people. If
the house is a bit older, perhaps that odd feeling
of being watched never really goes away. But if your
house was built two hundred and seventy years ago, you
probably should just assume you've got a spook or two

(49:25):
already residing there before signing the mortgage papers. These stories
are up next. William T. Stead was a Victorian era

(49:59):
newspaper editor and journalist who got swept up in the
London spiritualism scene in the eighteen nineties. But he didn't
just attend seances and report about his experiences. Steed discovered
he had his own psychic abilities. He could receive direct
messages from the dead through his hand, a process called

(50:20):
automatic writing. His main contact was Julia a ames An
American journalist he had befriended years earlier, but who had
died December twelfth, eighteen ninety one. Long before her passing,
she and a lifelong friend, Ellen agreed that whoever went
to the grave first would send messages to the other

(50:41):
from beyond. Sure enough, Ellen claimed to have seen apparitions
of Julia standing near her bedside. I know it was Julia,
and she has come back to me as she promised,
Ellen told Steed. But I could not hear her speak,
and I couldnot bear to think that she may have
come back with a message for me, And yet I
could not hear what she had to say. Fortunately for

(51:04):
Ellen and Julia, Steed was ready to help with his
new found automatic writing skills. I offer, in case she
were willing and able, to use my hand as her own,
to allow Julia to write what message she pleased by
that means, Steed explained in the introduction to his book
After Death or Letters from Julia, which I've placed a

(51:25):
link to in the show notes. Julia took him up
on the offer and had plenty to say. Sitting alone
with a tranquil mind, I consciously placed my right hand
with the pen held in the ordinary way at the
disposal of Julia, and watched with keen and skeptical interest
to see what it would write. Steed added. The first

(51:46):
batch of messages Steed received were for Ellen, but later
messages were meant for publication to broader audiences. Here's one
of Julia's descriptions of the afterlife quote, all is so new,
and there are such unexpected samenesses as well as differences. When,
for instance, we wake into the new life, we are

(52:08):
still in the same world. There are all the familiar
things around us, the walls, the pictures, the window, the bed,
and the only new things is your own body, out
of which you stand and wonder how it can be
that it is there and that it is no longer you.
And then you begin clearly to understand what has happened.

(52:30):
It is very much like experiences you have in dreams,
which after all, are often due to the same cause,
the conscious soul leaving the physical frame, which however, remains breathing.
The first thing you notice that is not the same
is the angel. You are the same. I mean that
there is no break in your consciousness, your memory, your sex.

(52:54):
I was woman in my bodily life and I am woman.
Still there is no change there, but you are in
a manner different. According to Steed's daughter Estella and her
medium Pardo Woodman, the journalist and automatic writer's adventures and
spiritualism continued when he took his own trip Beyond the Veil.

(53:16):
Stege's journey began when a journey to the United States
went unfinished. He was one of the more than fifteen
hundred people who died on the Titanic in nineteen twelve.
Surviving witnesses said Steed had helped women and children escape
and gave away his life jacket. Several years later, Woodman,
an acquaintance of Estella's, developed a knack for automatic writing

(53:39):
and began channeling her father. Mister Woodman never knew my
father personally, nor has he come into touch with his
writing or with his work in any way. And yet
the wording and the phrasing of the messages are my father's,
and even the manner of writing is typical of him.
Estella wrote in the preface to Steed's The Blue Island

(54:00):
Experiences of a New Arrival Beyond the Veil, which I've
also linked to in the show notes. In the first chapter,
Steve recounts his experience after the sinking of the Titanic.
Here's a portion of what Woodman says he had to say.
The end came and it was all finished with. It
was like waiting for a liner to sail. We waited

(54:21):
until all were aboard. I mean we waited until the
disaster was complete, the saved, saved, the dead alive. Then
in one hole we moved our scene. It was a
strange method of traveling for us all, and we were
a strange crew bound for we knew not where. The
whole scene was indescribably pathetic. Many, knowing what it occurred,

(54:44):
were in agony of doubt as to their people left behind,
and as to their own future state. What would it
hold for them? Would they be taken to see him?
What would their sentence be? Others were almost mental wrecks.
They knew nothing, It seemed to be uninterested in everything.
Their minds were paralyzed. The strange, true, indeed, of human

(55:06):
souls waiting their ratings in the new land a matter
of a few minutes in time only, and here were
hundreds of bodies floating in the water, dead, hundreds of
souls carried through the air alive, very much alive. Some
were Many, realizing their death had come, were enraged at

(55:26):
their own powerlessness to save their valuables. They fought to
save what they had on earth prized so much. The
scene on the boat at the time of striking was
not pleasant, but it was as nothing to the scene
among the poor souls newly thrust out of their bodies,
all unwillingly. It was both heartbreaking and repellent. And thus

(55:48):
we waited, waited until all were collected, until all was ready,
and then we moved our scene to a different land.
It was a curious journey that far more strange than
anything I had anticipated. We seemed to rise vertically into
the air at terrific speed. As a whole we moved

(56:08):
as if we were on a very large platform, and
this was hurled into the air with gigantic strength and speed.
Yet there was no feeling of insecurity. We were quite steady.
I cannot tell how long our journey lasted, nor how
far from the earth we were when we arrived, but
it was a gloriously beautiful arrival. It was like walking

(56:30):
from your own English winter gloom into the radiance of
an Indian sky. There all was brightness and beauty. We
saw this land far off when we were approaching, and
those of us who could understand realized that we were
being taken to the place destined for all those people
who pass over suddenly. On account of its general appeal,

(56:53):
it helps the nerve racked newcomer to fall into line
and regain mental balance very quickly, feeling in a sense
proud of ourselves. It was all lightness, brightness, everything as
physical and quite as material in every way as the
world we had just finished with. Before I begin this story,

(57:33):
a quick note of the chronology. I refer to everyone
in this story as what they are to me now,
stepdad and stepbrother, even though at the time they were
family friends. It makes it much easier to tell the story.
My mom and my stepdad married just one year ago,
but we've known him for many years since I was five.

(57:55):
When we met him, he had just moved into our
town with his now ex wife and son and purchased
an old home located in a remote part of town.
It was one of the oldest homes in the area,
having been built in the seventeen hundreds by a sea captain,
and had been passed down through that family for the
next two hundred years. When my stepdad purchased it, it
had been deserted for many years and was in poor condition,

(58:19):
yet with significant renovations, it looked good as new. The
house was l shaped, with the main part of the
home being the original two story construction, and then a
separate one floor edition on the back of the house,
which contained the living room, kitchen, and back office room
and bathroom, was added in the eighteen hundreds. The first
time I visited the house, my stepdad took us on

(58:42):
a tour. The newly remodeled living room and kitchen were beautiful,
with new wooden floors and a large fireplace. This part
of the home had a distinctly warm ambience. That atmosphere
instantly changed when we entered the oldest part of the
home toward the front. I cannot explain what was different

(59:02):
or why I felt anxious. I cannot point to anything
tangibly distinct about that part of the house that justified
that feeling. Still, a feeling of anxiousness originated deep inside
of me, and every hair on my body stood on end,
especially in the upstairs hallway and near the staircase, which

(59:22):
was narrow, claustrophobic and with a very low ceiling, and
the whole front and upstairs of the house just felt dark.
Even with many windows around, it felt shrouded in darkness.
The floors were a very dark wood, and most of
the walls were painted either blue or crimson. At the time,

(59:44):
I wrote it off as my nerves getting the better
of me and having read too many ghost stories in
my spare time. Still, there was something inexplicably creepy about
parts of the house. Everywhere I went, I felt that
there were entity I could not see, staring me down
with a menacing gaze. I was afraid to open any

(01:00:06):
doors because of the innate feeling there would be something
right behind them waiting to jump out at me. I
felt exactly the same way turning corners into other rooms,
and I felt as if I was going to be
grabbed from behind by something unseen. It was like I
just knew there was something there and it was aware

(01:00:27):
of and anticipating my presence. Everywhere I went in the
front part of the house, I felt I was being
followed or chased. If I was in the front part
of the house with another person and they left to
go into the back of the house, the only area
where there was any relief from the sensation. I would
run as fast as I could after them. Being left

(01:00:50):
alone in that part of the house felt like I
was exposed and in danger. I visited the home probably
once a week as a child, as my stepdad was
then a good family friend. My now stepbrother is the
same age as me, so we often played around the
house and in the backyard. He never seemed to be

(01:01:11):
afraid of the house and always wanted to venture off
into parts of it that I was uncomfortable going into.
I remember specifically one time we were playing hide and seek,
and he must have figured I would not feel comfortable
searching upstairs. I searched the entire downstairs, hoping to find him,
hoping that I would not need to even go upstairs.

(01:01:32):
Finally I heard a rustling sound from the closet located
under the stairs. I opened the door and shouted, found you,
But to my shock and horror, there was no one there.
The closet was almost empty, with the exception of one
or two jackets. I knew for a fact I had
heard noise coming from there. Too. Shaken to venture upstairs

(01:01:54):
by myself, I asked my stepdad to come upstairs with
me and search for his son. As we were climbing
the stairs, I heard a noise from the upstairs hallway,
as if someone had bumped into the wall. I ran
around the corner, expecting to see my stepbrother, but he
was not there. All that was there was an old
rocking chair which was slowly rocking back and forth on

(01:02:16):
its own, with the sound of someone humming to themselves.
There was no window, nor draft, and no one sitting
in the chair. I suddenly felt short of breath and
felt as if there was someone right beside me, breathing
down my neck. I knew there was something there that
I could not see. I remembered flailing my arms in

(01:02:37):
all directions as if trying to swat whatever it was away,
But there was no physical manifestation of this presence, and
that horrified me. I screamed and ran downstairs and bumped
right into my stepbrother, who came out from hiding under
the sofa in the downstairs back room. As I clearly
had not been able to find him. He got sick
of waiting and ended the game. The very last time

(01:03:01):
I went upstairs by myself for many years, About a
year later, due to my anti social tendencies as a child,
my mother insisted I sleep over at the house so
I could learn to make better friends with my stepbrother.
The thought of staying overnight in the house petrified me,

(01:03:22):
especially given that at the time my stepbrother's room was upstairs.
The entire night leading up to bedtime, there was no
other worldly activity. They made me a nice dinner, We
watched TV and music videos in the back of the house,
and I felt content and at peace. This feeling, nice
as it was, was short lived. I begged them to

(01:03:46):
let me sleep on the sofa in the back living room,
even though it would have meant I would be alone
in that part of the house, but they insisted I
sleep upstairs because all the bedrooms were upstairs and it
would make it easier to check on us if we
needed anything. Also, there were two twin sized beds in
the room, so it made the most sense in terms
of sleeping arrangements. I protested and protested, but with no success.

(01:04:10):
I begrudgingly accepted that I would have a night of terror.
As I was being put to bed, I remember seeing
my stepdad's ex wife shut the door to the upstairs
bedroom right at the top of the stairs and turn
out the light. Surprisingly, I fell asleep quickly, but did
not stay asleep. I woke up in the middle of

(01:04:31):
the night and immediately noticed the room was much darker
than it should have been. Usually, even at night, once
your eyes begin to adjust, you can see what's around
you and sense the light coming in from the moon outside.
My eyes just could not adjust, and the darkness was overwhelming.
I immediately could sense that there was something in the

(01:04:52):
room with me that I could not see, and I
could hear deep breathing sounds emanating from the darkness. I
turned and looked over to my stepbrother's bed, and he
was not there, which meant I was actually alone and
he wasn't the one making the noises. I heard footsteps
in the upstairs hallway and assumed that my step brother
had gotten up to use the bathroom and would be

(01:05:14):
right back, but felt like an eternity passed and he
did not return to the room. I hid my head
under the covers, trying to hide from whatever unseen entity
was there, but eventually I got so scared that I
got out of bed and darted down the stairs at
full speed. In the dark, trying to get away from
whatever was there. I distinctly could tell I was being followed,

(01:05:37):
as I heard thump, thump, thump down the stairs behind me,
as if there was someone following closely behind me and
breathing right down my neck. I ran through the downstairs hallway,
through the old dining room and was ready to cross
into the back of the house and slam the door
behind me and turn on all the lights. When I
ran right into the door. The door was never kept closed,

(01:05:58):
so I was not expecting it to be shut, and
I could barely see it was there. A sound immediately
woke up my stepdad, who turned on all the lights
and ran to me in a panic, checking to see
if I was injured. I was hyperventilating and panicking, shouting
that there was someone in the house who was following
me and chasing me. I could barely get the words out.
He assumed I meant an intruder and checked every corner

(01:06:21):
of the house top to bottom and found no one. Still,
seeing how panicked I was, he allowed me to sleep
on the downstairs sofa for the rest of the night.
As I got older, I became less afraid of the house,
but I still refused to be alone upstairs, and the
feeling of there being people or entities surrounding, following or

(01:06:42):
watching me never subsided. Other times I heard sounds coming
from other parts of the house, even when no one
was there, music playing that had no source, and it
sounded like it was from a past era. Voices calling
out my and other people's names, footsteps, and items being
banged around and knocked off tables. I never investigated the sounds,

(01:07:05):
and whenever I'd point them out to another person, they
would stop. Everyone was convinced it was all in my
head and I was the only person hearing the noises.
They moved out of the house when I was about twelve,
and the owners that bought it next lived there until
twenty sixteen, when the house was on the market. In
twenty sixteen, the Wheeltor had an open house and anyone

(01:07:28):
could come by and walk through it. I walked through
the entire house. It had been remodeled and the walls
were now all painted white, and the windows had been
replaced and were now much larger and more modern. Somehow,
these modifications made the home feel much less menacing. I
could still sense a presence, but it did not feel

(01:07:50):
as menacing. I wandered away from the tour group and
stood upstairs in the hallway, held out my arms and
said aloud, if there's anyone here, reveal yourselves to me.
Nothing appeared, and I didn't honestly expect it to, but
I felt a slight breeze whisk by my face down
the hallway, causing the curtain on one of the windows

(01:08:12):
to rustle, and it was gone as quickly as it came.
In the moment, I felt as if whatever presence was
there had recognized me from childhood and was affirming to
me finally that it was not going to harm me.
It felt like closure. After our recent conversation with my stepbrother,

(01:08:32):
he admitted that he felt the same things I did
when in the upstairs of the house, but that he
tried to pretend to be brave and never made his
experiences known, but that eventually the presence felt too strong
and menacing that he moved his bedroom to the downstairs
back office. My stepdad's ex wife also moved her room downstairs,

(01:08:54):
both due to the feeling of a sinister presence upstairs
and the dissolution of her marriage. My stepdad claims he
had no experiences in the house, but he said he
felt a chilling feeling upstairs where hairs stood on end.
He attributes it to social conditioning and the expectation that
a house at that age would have expirits. He's not

(01:09:15):
a believer and refuses to reconsider his stance. It was
incredibly validating to hear that I was not the only
one experiencing this, because for years everyone had pretended I
was and no one believed me. Turns out that they
experienced many of the same things I did, but did
not want to tell me at the time because they

(01:09:35):
did not want to scare me. We still communicate with
my stepdad's ex wife. She's a good friend to this day.
She confided some of her own experiences. One time, she
was downstairs late at night and heard the sound of
someone or something tumbling down the stairs. She ran in
a panic, assuming my stepbrother had fallen, but when she

(01:09:58):
got to the stairs there was nothing. She says this
was by far the most unnerving experience she had in
the house. Another time, after she'd moved her bedroom downstairs,
she heard footsteps coming into her room from the front
hallway and the sound of a marble rolling across the floor.
The sounds were right in front of her, but she

(01:10:18):
could not see anything there. In the morning, she had
searched for anything that could have made the rolling sound
on the floor, but there was nothing. No marble, pen, pencil,
or coin. These experiences stay with her even to this day.
There is a legend that about one hundred and fifty
years ago a woman was murdered by her husband on

(01:10:41):
the staircase, who came from around the corner and pushed
her down the stairs in the middle of a heated argument.
The story has neither been confirmed nor denied. If you
made it this far, welcome to the weird O family.

(01:11:04):
If you like the podcast, please tell your friends and
family about it however you can and get them to
become Weirdos too. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported
to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find
source links or links to the authors in the show notes.
Killer Kids was written by Abby White and Predicting a
Killer was written by cws both from the lineup The

(01:11:27):
Horse Could Do Math was by Koshikh Patawery for amusing
planet words. From Beyond the Grave is by Mark Hartzman
for weird Historian and seventeen fifties horror hom is by
Virulent Peach for your ghost stories, Weird Darkness theme by
Alibi Music, and now that we're coming out of the dark,
I'll leave you with a little light on one John two,

(01:11:50):
verse seventeen. The world and its desires pass away, but
the man who does the will of God lives forever.
And a final thought, does not have to be perfect
to be wonderful. Annette Nicello. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for
joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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