A Demon Was Buried Under This Temple! Here's What They Dug Up

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome Wirdos. I'm Darren Marler, and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode. The devil

(00:30):
is dead now and here is his skeleton. That's the
headline that ran in the Los Angeles Herald on October sixth,
eighteen sixty five. And this was no nineteenth century clickbait.
They actually found real bones that fit the bill. There
are a number of tragic cases where people lose all

(00:51):
memory of who they are, and for whatever reason, no
one's able to help them recover their identities. However, few
such stories are as complicated and uncanny as the long
long Search for the real Charles Jamison. Imagine suddenly, without warning,

(01:12):
finding yourself in a completely different life, a different place
to live, different friends and family, nothing is the same.
This is what happened to author Carolyn Levitt, and that's
only half of her truly bizarre story. A secret aircraft
reportedly crashed during takeoff at raf Boscombe Down in nineteen

(01:35):
ninety four, sparking what has been an ongoing and fascinating
mystery ever since now bulge your doors, lock your windows,
turn off your lights, and come with me into the
weird darkness. If you're skeptical when I say that the

(02:06):
Devil's bones have been found, I wouldn't blame you, even
for me, someone who does believe in God and Satan
and all the powers of evil and good in battle
around us. If you were to say that Satan's skeleton
was dug up, I'd be raising an eyebrow so high
it had hit my ceiling fan. But here's the story.

(02:26):
The Devil's bones were supposedly discovered buried under a Japanese
temple in eighteen ninety five. The bones were brought back
to the United States, where they were said to have
been either the remains of a nine foot primate or
a total hunx. What follows is the newspaper article that
reported the find, the Los Angeles Herald from October sixth,

(02:47):
eighteen sixty five. The Devil is dead. Not only so,
but his remains have been shipped to New York and
are to be seen today in an establishment on Winter Street.
The remains of the Devil were smuggled out of Japan
at the risk of the lives of several men who
confessed that they stood in fear of the personages whose

(03:07):
bones they were attempting to carry to this country. To
be plain, there was found some years ago in the
ruins of a Japanese temple, a grave in which there
were the bones making up an apparently perfect skeleton, of
gigantic proportions, and altogether strange and hideous in appearance, which,
according to an inscription found above the tomb, constituted nothing

(03:30):
less than the remains of his Satanic majesty, as the
Japanese understood him. A doctor in Yokohama, to whom the
news of the discovery was brought, succeeded in obtaining possession
of the astonishing skeleton, and in time conspired with the
captain of a tramp steamer which visits New York, and
succeeded in having the dead devil forwarded to this city.

(03:52):
A miller and sons, who now have the skeleton devil
in keeping, have much to do with shipping men. Captain
Williams of the steamer Argyle decided to place in their
possession the seven foot box in which the skeleton was contained.
When the box was opened a few weeks ago, and
the straw and strange wrapping paper. Removed, mister Miller found

(04:12):
an apparently perfect skeleton of some creature of gigantic stature.
The box was only seven feet long, and in order
that the giant bones might be accommodated, those of the
thighs and legs had been placed beside the rest of
the skeleton. To begin with, there was a terrific head.
The skull presented a frontal bone almost a foot across,

(04:34):
showing eye sockets of astonishing size, a square jaw like
nothing that ananimous snow, and a mouth fully six inches wide,
garnished with twenty eight teeth which were closed and interlocked,
and of astonishing size and sharpness. Altogether, the effect was
truly terrifying. The head was articulated to the vertebra, and

(04:56):
the spinal column was almost five feet in length, to
which ribs of te tremendous proportions and a sternam of
immense strength and size were joined. The skeleton was apparently
complete from the skull to the end of the pelvis.
Beside it were placed which in leg bones, which it
seemed at first glance, must have belonged to some monster
of the guerrilla species. The legs apparently had been of

(05:19):
the short and tremendously powerful order, which New Yorkers have
seen in the Central Park Menagerie when Chico was alive
and imprisoned there. The foot was fully fourteen inches long
and had but three toes, each of which, in addition
to being of enormous length, was furnished with an almost
clawlike nail. Its appearance, therefore, was between that to the

(05:42):
human foot and that belonging to a bird of the
ostrich species, greatly exaggerated. Some attempts had been made to
rearticulate the skeleton, for the knee joints were furnished with
modern couplings of brass, and the bones were really ready
for mounting. Captain Williams of the Steamer Argyle, who in
trusted the box and its contents to Miller and Sons

(06:02):
a few weeks ago, told them simply that the skeleton
was the property of a European doctor now resident in Japan,
and that the director of a Japanese hospital was authority
for the statement that the bones were those of a
monster which lived long ago in the mountainous regions of Japan.
He assisted the doctor in smuggling it out of the
country and apparently believed that it was a genuine skeleton.

(06:25):
As a matter of fact, the skeleton contains bones of
the bovine, equine, human and shark families, and having been
brought here and sized up by an expert in anatomy,
they furnished material for an expose of Japanese demonology which
is nothing short of remarkable. The skeleton was simply manufactured
long years ago and buried beneath the temple at Kutsu

(06:47):
to serve the purpose of a clique of priests who
ruled that section of Japan by fear at the time. Accordingly,
when the skeleton was finally discovered, there was found beside
it a sort of map containing a picture of the
devil in life, together with a full description as to
the manner of his death and interment. The map contained

(07:07):
a picture which is presented here without any attempt at
producing the finer lines, which are of Japanese workmanship and
intricate beyond measure. Buried ages ago under a temple in
the center of an inland province of Japan, and one which,
by the way, has been of great interest since to archaeologists,
it was discovered by workmen who were excavating for the

(07:27):
purpose of erecting a new structure on the old site.
Thirteen feet below the surface of what had been the
cellar of the old temple, the workman discovered an old
stone grave bearing an inscription in Japanese characters, which, being interpreted,
means the tomb of the Devil. This, together with the
discovery of the remarkable bones which the coffin contained, caused

(07:48):
great excitement among the Japanese and led to a scientific
investigation of the nature of the discovery. The Herald, learning
that the remains of the Devil, as constructed by Japanese artisans,
had been forwarded to this country, requested the water Street
firm to permit an examination of the bones. I called
there a day or two ago and inspected the box
and its contents. To the layman, the skeleton was apparently

(08:11):
that of a giant ape or some similar monster, which
in life must have been nine feet high, and it
presented an appearance which was terrifying beyond measure. On Friday
last I succeeded in interesting doctor William J. O'Sullivan, the
medical legal expert in the death of the Devil and
the discovery of its remains, and in inducing him to
visit the Miller cooperation and inspect the bones. Doctor O'Sullivan

(08:35):
was at once pleased and astonished. He examined the bones
with great care and said, here is something which, while
it has been manufactured with an art which the Japanese
only possess, will excite great interest among the archaeologists in
this country. The map itself is simply a marvel of
that rare work which the Japanese execute and in which

(08:56):
they are unexcelled. Coming up. There are a number of
tragic cases where people lose all memory of who they are,
and for whatever reason, no one's able to help them
recover their identities. However, few such stories are as complicated

(09:18):
and uncanny as the long long Search for the real
Charles Jamison. Plus. Imagine suddenly, without warning, finding yourself in
a completely different life, a different place to live, different
friends and family, nothing is the same. This is what
happened to author Carolyn Levitt, But that's only half of

(09:40):
her truly bizarre story. Those stories and more when Weird
Darkness Returns. One day in February nineteen forty five, an

(10:07):
ambulance arrived at the emergency entrance of Boston's US Public
Health Service hospital. Inside was an unconscious, middle aged man
whose condition was so obviously grave that the nurse on
duty dispensed with the usual formalities and had him immediately admitted.
She asked the ambulance driver for the man's name, Charles Jamison.

(10:28):
He replied the man would not or could not say
anything more about the patient. Then he disappeared along with
the ambulance, never to be heard from again. For some time,
it was uncertain that Jamison would survive. He suffered from
an acute stage of osteomalitis, an infection of the bone marrow.
He had hideous sores all over his body, and his

(10:50):
back was badly scarred with what doctor's guests were shrapnel wounds.
After weeks of treatment, his life was finally out of danger. However,
the the infection left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down,
and his speech was so impaired that anything he said
was almost unintelligible. On top of all of this, Jamison

(11:11):
was suffering from complete amnesia. He was unable to say
who he was or what had happened to him. At first,
authorities assumed they could trace his identity. Surely, there had
to be some record somewhere of this terribly ravaged man.
But the more they tried to investigate the patients passed,
the more mysterious he became. The shabby clothes he had

(11:34):
worn contained no identification of any sort, and they even
lacked labels or laundry marks. No one ever called the
hospital to ask about him. Inquiries to every ambulance service
in and around Boston revealed that none of them had
dispatched an ambulance to the Public Health Service Hospital on
the day Jamison had been admitted. Jamison was around sixty

(11:58):
years old, with graying hair and brown eyes. He was
six feet tall and weighed about two hundred pounds. There
was a two inch scar on his right cheek. The
index finger of his left hand was missing, and both
arms were covered with tattoos. His appearance was so distinctive
that it was thought it might help identify him, but

(12:19):
that failed to be the case. The tattoos were a
mixture of flags and hearts. Some of the flags were American,
others British. One faded tattoo had a scroll that seemed
to say US Navy. This led to the assumption that
Jamison had been a sailor in the naval and or
merchant service, a belief bolstered by the fact that he'd

(12:39):
been brought to the only hospital in Boston that specifically
treated seamen. There was a theory that Jamison had been
aboard a freighter that had been shelled and torpedoed by
a German submarine, but that could never be verified. However,
after being set Jamison's fingerprints, both the FBI and the
military replied they had no record of him, which would

(13:00):
not have been the case that he served in either
the Navy or the merchant Marines. His photo was sent
to the Missing Persons bureaus across the country, but that
proved to be just as futile as every other effort
to identify him. For years, the poor man spent long
days sitting in his wheelchair in a blank silence. He

(13:21):
rarely made any sounds and seemed to take little notice
of the world around him. Then, in nineteen fifty three,
the hospital's newly installed medical director, Oliver C. Williams, became
intrigued by this most enigmatic patience. He felt there had
to be some way to learn who this man really was.
Doctor Williams decided the only way to learn Jamison's true

(13:43):
identity was by finding a way to communicate with the
man himself. He devised a simple word game where Jamison
would be given a phrase or a simple question and
asked what, if anything, it meant to him. When asked
how old he was, Jamison stubbornly insisted that he was
forty nine, although it was clear that he was far older.

(14:04):
The question how old is your wife made his eyes
briefly light up, but after struggling to think for a moment,
he sighed and said, I don't know. He knew who
Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone were, although he spoke of
them as though they were still living British statesmen, not
historical figures dead for many decades. This communication method elicited

(14:26):
information in a very slow and difficult manner, but doctor
Williams managed to learn enough to convince him that Jamison
was an Englishman who had served in the British Navy.
At one point, while looking at pictures of various parts
of England, Jamison suddenly remarked, I'm from London. Unfortunately, all
he could add to that was the statement that he

(14:47):
lived in a gray house. Jamison said that he had
no living relatives, and that he had gone to see
at the age of thirteen. He recalled that he had
attended the gunnery school at Osbourne ninety one or eighteen
ninety two. When he was shown an issue of Jane's
fighting ships, he recognized the British battleship Bellerophon. It was

(15:09):
commissioned in nineteen oh nine and took part in World
War One. I served on her when she was new,
he commented with evident pride. When asked what ships he
had served on during the Great War, he was reluctant
to reply. He said they were all in convoy under
secret orders. They had no names, only numbers, and if
I knew them, I couldn't tell you. Even when it

(15:31):
was pointed out to him that the war was long over,
he refused to give any more information on his wartime duties.
The little information Jamison provided about his career was sent
to British naval authorities. However, they found no record that
anyone named Charles Jamison had attended the gunnery school or
served in their navy. The British were equally unable to

(15:54):
find any record of his fingerprints. More dead ends. At
this point, Jamison was able to provide one more clue,
he told doctor Williams that one of the tattoos on
his arms was the British ensign crossed over a US
shield with the motto United. The other was of an
English clipper that he had sailed on, called the Cutty Sark.

(16:16):
When contacted about the ship, London authorities confirmed that there
had indeed been a clipper by that name, but it
had been retired almost fifty years earlier, and no other
ship had carried that name since then. The Jamison mystery
took an even weirder turn. The name Charles William Jamison
was found on the manifest of a US Navy Troop

(16:38):
transport ship which had docked in Boston on February ninth,
nineteen forty five. This was just two days before Jamison
had arrived at the hospital. The manifest's information about Jamison
was all handwritten in ink, an inexplicable detail in an
otherwise type written document. It claimed that he had been

(16:58):
repatriated after spending four years in a German pow camp.
He was picked up by the transport ship on January
twenty fourth in Southampton, England. His age was given as
forty nine and his birthplace was Boston. The manifest also
said that he'd been a sailor on a ship which
had been torpedoed. The name of the ship was Cuddy Sark,

(17:21):
which had not been on the seas for five decades.
Records showed that no Charles William Jamison had been born
in Boston between eighteen eighty five and nineteen oh five,
No one by that name had been made a naturalized citizen.
No one connected with the transport ship had ever heard
of anyone by the name of Charles William Jamison, and

(17:41):
they could not say who had made the handwritten notations
about him. Jamison was quickly becoming the spookiest amnisiac on record.
Authorities and then for Cargo. New Zealand cabled the hospital
that Jamison's description sounded identical to that of a crew
member of the freighter Hinemoa named James Jennings. As it happened,

(18:03):
Jamison had mentioned the ship a few times. He remembered
that at one time he had been a mate on
the Hinemoa. It had carried nitrates from Chile to England
until it was sunk by the Germans. However, the name
James Jennings rang no Bells with him. Research proved that
Jamison's information about the Hinemoa was correct, but the freighter's

(18:23):
crew lists did not have Jamison's name or anyone matching
his description. It was discovered that a Charles William Jamison
had been born in Illinois in nineteen oh eight. His
name appeared in the Coastguards file of merchant mariners, but
no further information could be found about him. When asked
about this man, Jamison replied with only a blank stare.

(18:46):
In nineteen fifty six, a segment dealing with the Jamison
riddle aired on National TV. A viewer in Texas thought
Jamison resembled his father in law, Frank J. Higgins. Higgins
had been a chief engineer in the Merchant Service before
he disappeared many years back. As seemed to happen at
every turn in the case, this fresh lead just led

(19:06):
to more mystery. Higgins, who was born at approximately the
same time as Jamison, was a New Yorker who spent
his adult life as a sailor. On December ninth, nineteen
forty one, his ship, a freighter named the Francis Solomon,
docked in Galveston, Texas. It was in port for less
than a week before it sailed for Portland, Maine with
a load of sulfur. On January twelfth, nineteen forty two,

(19:30):
Higgins's wife Rosalie, received a letter from him. He was
at Saint John's, Newfoundland about to sail to Quarterbrook, Newfoundland.
Higgins and his freighter were never seen again. The Francis
Solomon failed to arrive at Corner Brook and its fate
is unknown to this day. In the words of the
ship's owners, she simply disappeared from the face of the earth.

(19:53):
Although we will likely never know what became of Frank Higgins,
we can at least rule out the possibility that he
was Charles Jamison. Their fingerprints didn't match. Thus ended the
search for the true identity of Charles William Jamison. He
died in the same hospital in January of nineteen seventy five,
still unable to say who he was, where he came from,

(20:16):
or how he wound up at the hospital he was,
in the words of the fellow patient, the living unknown Soldier.
In an intriguing article over at Psychology Today, author Carolyn

(20:37):
Levitt recounts her experience with extremely vivid dreams during a
medically induced coma dreams that have continued on to this day.
Here's the story in her own words. After the birth
of my son, I got sick, really sick, with a
mysterious blood clotting disorder. And because the panicked doctors couldn't

(20:58):
figure out what to do, they put me into a
medical coma with memory blockers. They didn't want me remembering
the pain or any of the procedures. But coma is
a mysterious thing. Nobody knows exactly what happens in a coma.
Some scientists believe koma patients don't see or feel or
hear a thing. Others say something different. Some scientists believe

(21:21):
that koma patients actually dream. I don't know if I dreamed,
but I do remember something the memory blockers couldn't stem.
When I woke up, it felt like someone had pulled
me violently from one world I knew to another, as
if I had stepped from one room to another. I
began to talk to Jeff, my husband, to my friends

(21:45):
Nancy and Lindy, who had sat by me every day,
that I'd been living in this imaginary town, and that
it had been well incredible. It had all these stores
and my apartment was hard to get to, but it
was big and beautiful, and I knew the streets, the people,
and I knew it was real. They nodded supportively, they

(22:06):
encouraged me to talk, but when I told the doctors,
they just said, well, you're on a lot of nasty medications.
They told me, I was just adjusting now, that all
those crazy thoughts and feelings would pass, except they didn't.
I kept dreaming about the town. By the time I
got home. The imaginary town kept coming back in my dreams,

(22:28):
so real, so vivid, that I knew it was something
different than a regular dream. It felt as if it
were calling me, and I didn't know why, or what
it wanted, or what I was supposed to do. I
knew it wasn't lucid dreaming, where you know in the
dream you are dreaming even though everything looks and feels
and seems like real life. Because I've had those dreams,

(22:51):
this one felt different. I just knew that it was real.
The dream kept coming back over and over. I was
always surprised to see the imaginary town again, surprised that
I knew which streets to go down, that I knew
how to progress through it. At first, I was living
in a house that had no way to get to anywhere.

(23:12):
At first, there were no subways, and the house had
a moat and dangerous animals guarding it. The next time
I dreamed about the town, I heard that someone I
had loved who had died shockingly had actually not died
at all. He had faked his death and everyone had
agreed to pretend about it, and now he was living
in California. I bolted awake, but the dream wasn't gone. Instead,

(23:35):
I believed it was true, as if I could hold
two realities in my mind. I've kept dreaming over the years,
always the same town, the same people in it, But
things change. I've moved out of the house with the
moat into a place close to the subway, now in
the West Village, where I've always wanted to live. Do

(23:57):
our dreams come out of our emotions? Maybe they do.
But I can't figure out the emotions of this dream
other than I have this complete sense of familiarity and
wonder all at once. I feel like I need to
figure out these dreams. I'll talk to my therapist about them,
and she points out, well, they started in the trauma
of a coma. It makes sense that they still reappear. Maybe,

(24:20):
she says, this is just like the way I immerse
myself in another world, writing fiction that I live other
lives through my characters in order to understand my own.
After all, the worlds I write about in my novels
feel just as real to me as the world I navigate.
But then I talk to a quantum physicist friend of
mine who tells me about parallel worlds, different realities that

(24:43):
can coexist. Is that just theory or true? I ask her,
and she shrugs. Who knows for sure? She says, maybe
the coma did something to my brain to make my
dreams appear like real life. Maybe I'm processing some cellular
memory from an ancestor. Who knows, she tells me. But
isn't it exciting? The truth is, I don't know whether

(25:06):
to be scared or excited by these strange dreams. All
I know is something is happening, and I'm choosing to
see it as an adventure to stick around for what
might come next or not come next. Remember that old
song life is but a dream. Maybe in this case,
it's the dreams that are a real life. Kierlin's dreams

(25:29):
of this Place feel so real that she even spoke
to a quantum physicist about the possibility of parallel universes
and alternative realities. Our dreams gateways to other worlds just
as real as our own. Now that's a question. Commenters
to her story have raised the possibility of astral projection,
as well as the idea that our souls actually exist

(25:52):
with multiple lives, and that what are those alternative lives
may have surfaced during her coma. It's not on her
of for people to vividly dream while in a coma,
but Kirolyn Levitt's case of recurring dreams of a singular
town and over a period of many years, seems an
extraordinary one. Others have shared their own experiences with coma

(26:15):
dreams online. A Reddit thread back in twenty fourteen asked
users if they'd experienced any One claimed that while dreaming,
they simply continued life as normal. Mostly in my dreams,
I was going about my daily business of college classes
and coffee houses. The twist would be that I was
introducing myself as having been in a bad car accident,

(26:35):
but I was okay and in a hospital. Another thread
from twenty eighteen contained similar anecdotes with one person recalling
vivid and terrifying nightmares that incorporated the world around me

(26:56):
when weird Darkness returns. A secret aircraft reportedly crashed during
takeoff at rif Boscomb Down in nineteen ninety four, sparking
what has been an ongoing and fascinating mystery ever since.

(27:25):
On the evening of September twenty sixth, nineteen ninety four,
an aircraft was set to take off from Runway twenty
three at rif boscom Down, a Royal Air Force base
in Wiltshire, England that is tasked with flight testing and
weapons development. As the aircraft made its run down the runway,
a malfunction caused the crew to abort the takeoff. Soon after,

(27:47):
London Air Traffic Control Center or LATCC was contacted and
notified that the entire runway needed to be closed, but
followed was a highly peculiar and swift response that is
still wrapped in secrecy. It included the mysterious stricken aircraft
being wrapped up and presumably partially disassembled, so that it

(28:08):
could be flown home to the United States in a
Lockheed C five Galaxy transport plane. Despite eyewitness testimony, there
has never been an official explanation for the strange events
at RAF Boscomb Down on that fall night in nineteen
ninety four, but it seems quite clear that some kind
of clandestine event did indeed occur. RAF boscom Down, today

(28:32):
known as MOD Boscomb Down Ministry of Defense boscom Down
has long been a major locale for military aircraft testing
and evaluation in the United Kingdom. Cutting edge test beds
and recovered foreign tactical jets are just some of the
aircraft that have called boscom Down home since its construction
in nineteen seventeen. The British Aircraft and Armament Evaluation Establishment

(28:56):
AAE begin using the base for aircraft experiments in nineteen
thirty nine, and in nineteen ninety four the site was
placed under the control of the Defense Evaluation and Research
Agency or DERA, Britain's equivalent to the US Defense Advanced
Research Project's Agency DARPA. In two thousand and one, DERA
was split into two parts that became the UK Ministry

(29:18):
of Defence's Defense Science and Technology Laboratory DSTL and the
private company Kinetic. It was during the basis time as
part of DERA the mysterious incident occurred. Much of what
the public understands about the incident stems from a March
nineteen ninety seven cover story in Air Forces Monthly written
by Ren Hook and Marco Vanderwelk that reads like an

(29:39):
aviation ghost story. The story goes like this. On September
twenty second, nineteen ninety four, eyewitnesses living near Boscomb Down
reported hearing an abnormal noise approaching the base. According to
local television news reports the next day, the noise sounded
almost like a freight train or a low frequency rum

(30:00):
mbling or humming. A few days later, on the evening
of September twenty sixth, an unknown aircraft malfunction shut down
Runway twenty three at RAF Boscom Down. Eyewitnesses reported that
they broken aircraft was quickly covered by a frame and
tarpaulins while surrounded by emergency vehicles. While sitting on the runway,
the aircraft's rear section was unusually elevated, possibly indicating a

(30:24):
nosewheel collapse. Shortly after, the aircraft was pulled into a hangar,
where it sat behind closed doors for two days. During
this time period, it became clear that a clean up
operation was underway. Witnesses reported seeing UK special Operations forces
at Boscomb Down, and two special operations aircraft reportedly arrived

(30:44):
at the base an augusta A one O nine helicopter
from the British Army's eight Flight AAC, a unit that
provided covert transport for special Air service sas personnel, and
a Chinook from the RAF's number seven Squadron, a unit
tasked with reporting British Special Operations forces. According to the
two year investigation conducted by Air Forces, monthly witnesses reported

(31:07):
several unusual aircraft coming in and out of Boscomb Down
during this time. A USAFC twelve Huron, used by the
DoD for priority air transport throughout Europe, landed in the
days following the incident, as did an apparently unmarked Boeing
seven oh seven. Though the Boeing seven oh seven has
not been conclusively identified. There are reports that a particularly

(31:30):
shadowy example of one of these aircraft, ostensibly operated by
the USAF with the serial number six seven DASH one
nine four one seven and designated as either an EC
one thirty seven D or EC one thirty seven E,
appeared at Exeter Airport, some eighty miles to the southwest
of Boscomb Down. A month after the incident. It's not

(31:51):
clear whether or not this sighting was directly related, but
this aircraft, which was acquired by the US government in
nineteen ninety two and flew in an effectively unmarked gray
white paint scheme for around a decade, was subsequently linked
to clandestine activities and the Central Intelligence Agency, as well
as Air Force Special Operations Command AFSC. It's also worth

(32:13):
noting that this jet had previously been on the US
Civil Register as N seven oh seven HL, with the
last civil owner being a company known as E Systems
in Greenville, Texas. E Systems, which subsequently became a division
of Raytheon, already had a long history of working on
highly classified aircraft projects for the US government, including the

(32:35):
US military and the CIA by the early nineteen nineties. Today,
sixty seven DASH one nine four one seven is in
storage at the boneyard at Davis Monthan Air Force Base
in Arizona, where it's listed as an EC one thirty
seven D. Perhaps most interestingly, eyewitnesses reported also seeing a
Boeing seven thirty seven T forty three landing at the

(32:57):
base that featured the now iconic red and white markings
associated with aircraft operated by private contractor EG ANDNG. That
company famously operated the Janet Airlines seven thirty sevens that
shuttle employees to and from the groom like facility and
Tanapa Test Range Airport north of Las Vegas, Nevada, as
well as other clandestine flight tests and aerospace development locales

(33:21):
throughout America's Southwest. Urns Corporation acquired EG and G from
the Carlisle Group in two thousand and two and stopped
using the EG ANDNG brand in two thousand and nine,
morphing it into URS Federal Services. On September twenty eighth,
eyewitnesses reportedly got a glimpse of the partially covered air
vehicle when another aircraft was removed from the same hangar

(33:44):
in which it was stored. The mystery aircraft was said
to have been charcoal gray with inward canted twin tail
fins and featured chines extending from its nose section, not
too dissimilar from those found on the SR seventy one
or the character isss we see on stealthy aircraft designs
such as the YF twenty three. The aircraft was reported

(34:06):
to be the size of a large fighter jet and
its canopy appeared to hinge forward at the front. The
crashed aircraft remained in the hangar at Boscombe Down until
a lumbering USAFC five Galaxy appeared to fly the wreckage
home on September twenty eighth, nineteen ninety four. The SA
five's original flight plan had it landing at Ramsdeen Airbase

(34:27):
in Germany until it requested a diversion to Boscomb Down
late in its flight. When the C five took off
from Boscomb Down days later after being loaded with an
unidentifiable tarpaal and covered object, its destination was reportedly listed
as KPMD, otherwise known as USAF Plant forty two. Airport
Plant forty two is home to the most advanced military

(34:50):
aircraft manufacturing centers in the world, including Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks,
as well as sprawling Northrop Grumman and Boeing installations. At
that time, two specially modified C five c's serial numbers
six to eight DASH zero two one three and six
to eight DASH zero two one six were based at
Travis Air Force Base in California and frequented Palmdale, mainly

(35:12):
for use in support of various space programs and some
clandestine aircraft development programs. They lacked an upper passenger compartment
and had other modifications allowing them to carry even larger
outsized cargo than their standard C five A stablemates. In
the weeks following the incident, raf Boscomon Down was visited
by a C twenty Gulf Stream four with the u

(35:35):
S Civil registration code and six zero four M, reportedly
operated by the CIA. The same aircraft made several stops
throughout England in early October nineteen ninety four under heavy security,
including Southampton, where Northrop Grummans facilities in the United Kingdom
are situated. The British Ministry of Defense and the US
Defense Department both denied the incident that occurred. David Oliver,

(36:00):
former editor of Air Forces Monthly, told The Independent that
the magazine had no doubt that an incident did happen
on the day in question, and it has never been
satisfactorily explained by the authorities after their two year investigation.
Oliver assured The Independent that Royal Air Force officers had
been among the sources of the investigation and that he

(36:20):
was sure the report was true. In nineteen ninety four,
Martin Redmond, a member of the UK Parliament from Don
Valley brought up the incident in that legislative body. The
response from Defense Minister Nicholas Somas was that he was
aware of a press report of such an incident, but
that staff at Boscomb Down have confirmed, however, that there
was no crash at the unit on that date or

(36:42):
indeed so far this year. Soems added that the only
flying which took place that night was the launch of
two Royal Navy C King helicopters in support of an exercise.
In their March nineteen ninety seven cover story, Air Forces
Monthly makes the case that the crashed aircraft was the
long rumor never confirmed ASTRA Advanced Stealth Reconnaissance aircraft, one

(37:04):
of the more popular ghost stories of black budget aircraft lore.
The article claims the Astra was produced by Northrop and
even includes the alleged USAF serial number of the crashed vehicle,
ninety two four one four. According to the Air Forces Monthly,
the vehicle was referred to as AV six or Air
Vehicle six, and may have been born from research related

(37:27):
to the production of the YF twenty three, the unsuccessful
contender for the Advanced Tactical Fighter ATF program that spawned
the F twenty two. The alleged Astra is only one
of a number of shadowy aircraft which are claimed to
have been developed around the same time period. For instance,
many rumors and small pieces of disparate, unsubstantiated evidence suggest,

(37:50):
when viewed just the right way, the existence of an
extremely high speed, manned aerial surveillance platform. The name largely
attributed to this mythical air Aurora, derives from a few
misinterpreted line items and Air Force budget documents throughout the
nineteen eighties that actually belonged to what would become the
Advanced Technology Bomber and then the B two. Sightings of

(38:13):
unknown black triangular aircraft are often attributed to Aurora, Astra
or similar apocryphal programs. Several high profile sightings throughout the
nineteen nineties fueled speculation that the United States was operating
just such a classified reconnaissance aircraft. In one of these sightings,
a trained former member of the Royal Observer Corps reported

(38:34):
witnessing a black triangular aircraft refueling from a KC one
five over the North Sea while being escorted by two
F one to eleven Ardvark combat jets. There has never
been hard proof of such a high speed reconnaissance aircraft's existence,
especially one in an operational state that would have been
flying around the globe on missions at the time. Additionally,

(38:57):
by that time a then still seeks revolution and aerial
reconnaissance had already occurred, making snapshots in time collected by
high speed aircraft less attractive than using stealth technology to
persist over an enemy's territory, sucking up intelligence for hours
on end. Also, significant improvements in spy satellites made the

(39:18):
high speed and also hugely expensive airborne reconnaissance proposition far
less attractive than it once was. That brings us to
the so called t R three, a Black Manta subsonic
stealthy tactical reconnaissance aircraft. There were also large numbers of
sightings of a broader triangular shape aircraft during this period,

(39:39):
especially over Europe, which led to a UFO buzz. Popular
Mechanics even ran a cover story in December nineteen ninety
one exploring the idea of the rumored t R three
A of all the possible classified aircraft of the era,
Tyler Rogway believes such a subsonic penetrating tactical reconnaissance aircraft
potent with secondary electronic attack capabilities possibly did exist in

(40:04):
very small numbers during this time period. This aircraft would
have served as a missing link of sorts that would
have bridged the persistent and penetrating reconnaissance revelations made by
then Northrop's top secret TACIT Blue Demonstrator and unmanned penetrating
reconnaissance aircraft concepts that began to emerge in the late
nineteen nineties, culminating in at least one operational type, the

(40:27):
RQ one seventy Sentinel. There was also a lot of
work being done around the time regarding small and stealthy
tactical special operations transport aircraft, with some notional designs seemingly
quite similar to the aircraft described. Such a capability would
likely be quite attractive to the Ministry of Defense, which
could have prompted a joint program between the two countries.

(40:50):
This would have occurred after stealth was proven over Iraq
during Desert Storm via the F one seventeen. The UK
passed on being part of the F one seventeen program
when it was still in the realm of top secret classification.
The public curiosity over the alleged black aircraft grew to
the point that then Secretary of the Air Force Donald

(41:11):
b Rice issued a statement in December nineteen ninety two
calling ideas of such an aircraft nothing but fantasy. The
USAF spokesperson added that the Air Force has looked into
all such sightings as we have for UFL reports, and
we cannot explain them. No Air Force aircraft were operating
at the times and places of the alleged sightings. That

(41:33):
same year, the Federation of American Scientists or FAS also
concluded that at least the Aurora was nothing but a
ghost story. The UK press reported several similar sightings, strange
engine noises and deflections by Parliament throughout the same period,
although none of these was ever confirmed to be related
to any black aircraft. One could easily argue that actually

(41:57):
admitting to a clandestine aircraft with a sensitive role defeats
the point, and denials are hardly unheard of in this regard.
There's also the possibility that the crashed aircraft at RAF
Boscomb was something else altogether. Boscomb was involved in evaluation
of aircraft from threat nations around this post Cold War timeframe.

(42:18):
According to the war Zones Thomas Nudick, it's possible that
the aircraft was a captured or recovered foreign made design
being evaluated or tested against Western made aircraft. Eastern Bloc
combat aircraft and helicopters from mainly former East Germany and
Hungary are almost certain to have passed through here. Nudick
says it would explain the level of secrecy, since this

(42:40):
stuff was all highly classified a lot of the time.
The presence of these aircraft in the UK is only
confirmed through records of transfers in Germany and in other
cases where the aircraft ended up on ranges or in
UK museums. The war zone's own. Joseph Trevithick has pursued
multiple freedom of information requests to the USAAF, the CIA,

(43:01):
and the UK Ministry of Defense in relation to the
Boscombe Down incident. The most noteworthy response he says he's
received so far is a statement in which a CIA
spokesperson did not refuse to confirm or deny that any
such incident had occurred at all, but instead pointed him
to the USAF. We believe your request as written would
more likely fall under the auspices of the US Air

(43:24):
Force and Department of Defense. Allison Pong, information and Privacy
coordinator at the CIA, wrote in response to a Freedom
of Information Act request Trevithick submitted regarding Boscombe Down. The
Air Force Safety Center responded to an identical FOIA request
by stating it had no information about any incident that
involved one of the services aircraft at Boscomb Down in

(43:45):
nineteen ninety four. Air Force Material Commander and the UK
Ministry of Defense have yet to respond to identical requests.
The Warzone contributor and former editor of Combat Aircraft Monthly
Jamie Hunter, has looked in too the RAF Boscom Down
incident on his own too. He says he has yet
to find evidence other than accounts that corroborate the fact

(44:07):
that a C five Galaxy did in fact land at
RAF Boscom on the alleged date. I remember seeing a
flight plan for the C five which was due to
fly into Boscomb Down, Hunter told The war Zone, but
I didn't actually see it on the ground. The war
Zone also spoke with author and consultant Nick Cook, who
at the time was aviation editor at Jane's Defense Weekly

(44:29):
and was the first to break the Boscom Down story
in the Sunday Telegraph. While Cook is confident that the
incident happened the way it has been described. To this day,
he remains unsure about what the craft may have been.
My former editor, who had some good sources in the
RAF and MOD, was contacted to see what he might
know about what happened at Boscom Down. He contacted me,

(44:50):
and to be honest, it sounded really fanciful when I
heard it. Something crashed on the runway. Special forces went
into action around the site and shut it down. I
said I'd look into but I wouldn't hold my breath.
I contacted a few sources, and sure enough, after a
few calls, I was fairly satisfied something had happened. They
shut down the main highway, the A three to zero
three that runs into Boscom Down. The cover story didn't

(45:13):
make a whole lot of sense. The main cover story
was that a tornado had been testing a towed decoy
which had gotten stuck on its roller and wouldn't retract.
The cover story about a towed decoy was familiar because
the RAF had been testing toad decoys for tornadoes and
it was quite secret. So if you're going to cover
up something secret and do it well, it's best to
do it authentically with another secret so decoy makes sense,

(45:37):
but it was patently a cover story. I definitely think
something happened. The C five definitely came into Boscom Down.
I didn't talk to the witnesses directly, but I read
enough witness testimony to say they saw something with a
tarpaulin on it on the runway. It had to have
been American or have had some American lineage in it
in order for the C five to have turned up.

(45:59):
There were quite rumors of joint black programs between the
US and the UK at the time. There was a
lot of the Aurora stuff knocking around at the time,
but I don't think it was Aurora. It sounded smaller, tactical,
deployable F one point seventeen, like that's sort of size.
Certainly something happened, what it was, I have no idea.

(46:20):
Evaluating the boscom Down incident decades later is clearly a
difficult proposition. Whatever the case is, the evidence available about
the incident suggests that something sensitive occurred at Boscom Down
on that fall evening back in nineteen ninety four, but
the culprit of the incident remains a mystery to this day.
Still it may be that the incident that the testing

(46:41):
base was the closest the public has come to being
exposed to a true and still classified black jet of
the era, whatever its origins. Thanks for listening. If you
like the show, please share it with someone you know

(47:03):
who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters,
or unsolved mysteries like you do. 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. My Unconscious Other Life is by
Rob Schwartz for Stranger Dimensions and Carolyn Levitt for Psychology Today.

(47:26):
Satan's Skeleton was posted at strangego dot com. The Boscomb
Down incident is by Brett Tinley for the Drive, and
the Man Without a Past is from the website Strange Company.
Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music. Background music in this
episode provided by Shadows Symphony and is used with permission
from the artist. Weird Darkness is a production of Marler

(47:49):
House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark,
I'll leave you with a little light Psalm thirty seven,
verse four. Take the light in the Lord and he
will give you the desires of your heart, and a
final thought, do not lose hope. Please believe that there
are a thousand beautiful things waiting for you. Sunshine comes

(48:11):
to all who feel rain. R M. Drake. I'm Darren Marler.
Thanks for joining me in the weird darkness. Welcome to Marshport, Maine,

(48:35):
a quaint little coastal town preparing for their annual Winter
Wonderland Festival. But beneath the lights and holiday cheer, something
evil is stirring and it's not a mouse. When a
mysterious package arrives on the doorstep of veteran police officer
Matthew Klein and his family's home, it seems at first

(48:55):
like a harmless holiday gift. However, there's no tag and
no sender. Inside lies an antique wooden advent calendar with
strange engravings and twenty four doors that each shelter something
dark and unspeakable. The line between reality and nightmare quickly
becomes blurred as Matthew races to figure out the calendar's

(49:19):
origin and who sent it. But as each door is
opened and Marshport is thrust into a sinister nightmare, Matthew
realizes the terrifying truth and is forced to relive the
horrors from his past that refuse to stay buried. The
countdown has begun, and once that first door is opened,

(49:40):
there is no turning back. Where Darkness presents Advent of Evil,
a twenty four episode audio saga beginning December first. Listen
each day for a new chapter through Christmas Eve, and
if you'd like to follow the story in print. The
full novel is now available in paperback and hardcover editions,
as well as on Kindle. Grab the novel now for

(50:03):
yourself or for someone else and be ready to follow along.
December first, and for a limited time only, you can
also grab an Advent of Evil gift pack, including a
signed copy of the novel by the author Scott Donnelly,
wrapped up with an Advent of Evil bookmark, pen, highlighter,
hot chocolate, Chai, tea chocolates, a candy cane, and some

(50:24):
horror stickers. The gift pack is in limited supply, so
act fast if you want to take advantage of it.
You can find links to purchase the book or the
gift back at Weird Darkness dot com slash Advent of Evil.
That's Weird Darkness dot com slash Advent of Evil, and
then be ready as the first episode comes your way

(50:45):
December first,

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