Bigfoot Tracks Plus Railroad Tracks? Their Mysterious and Unexplained Connection!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darn 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. Have you

(00:29):
ever noticed there seems to be something special going on
with railroad tracks and Bigfoot. A man in Oklahoma reports
a being on the side of the road that looked
human except it had the head of a snake, and
the Native American population there have an answer to what
it might be. What do you do if you're a

(00:52):
woman living in the eighteen hundreds whose husband was just
tossed into prison for grave robbing, Well, if you were
anything like Helen Miller and e Begbie, you might decide
to continue the family business on your own. And later
an author seeks out an alien abductee in order to
try and get abducted himself. Now, bulge your doors, lock

(01:17):
your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me
into the Weird Darkness. There was a rare story, unelaborated,

(01:38):
the tidbit of which is currently being investigated by Strange
main author Michelle Solieri, that tells of the finding of
an ape man near the railroad tracks at Greenville, Maine
in eighteen fifty six. It holds the promise of further intrigue.
This item is brought to mind the quite frequent place
that railroads fit into such stories. You ever noticed there

(02:01):
seems to be something special going on with railroad tracks
and sasquatch. For anyone who reads the hominological and cryptozoological literature,
you'll be quite familiar with the notion that railroads keep
popping up in sighting accounts. Cases like the Enfield Monster
of Illinois nineteen seventy three mention the railroad tracks almost

(02:23):
as if they're being used as the avenues of movement
for the creature. In the midst of a series of
bigfoot sightings, on January fifteenth, nineteen eighty near Manchester, Iowa,
railroad engineer Sire O'Brien, who was on a train at
the time, saw a strange creature on all fours eating
a carcass weird. Six towed tracks were found in the

(02:44):
area later. Rail right of ways are natural green belts
for animals to employ for ease of travel. Did any
wonder that railroads are so often involved. Railways, of course,
have been used as a form of explanation too. Various
threads have been linked to the railroads in Bigfoot stories,
in the same fashion that the erecked circus train myths

(03:07):
were used by early news reporters to explain away unknown
mystery cat sidings. Those circus trains, needless to say, road
the rail lines. It'll be recalled that during the White
wild Man sidings in British Columbia in nineteen twenty two,
it was written at the time that the wild men
running at large more or less have been cited ever

(03:28):
since the advent of the GTP, and we're supposed to
have been working on the railroad construction afterwards squatting on
the wild lands, abounding in the district, until they in
turn became wild themselves. According to the remoteness from supplies
or from other human companions, the stray people became the
feral or wild people, who became sasquatch, who were told

(03:53):
the theme has been used before. One of the most
discussed historic Bigfoot railroad cases, of course, is the Jacko incident.
The story of Jacko that of a small ape like
young sasquatch said to have been captured alive in the
eighteen hundreds is a piece of folklore that refuses to die.

(04:13):
Despite a superb investigative article published in nineteen seventy five
co authored by John Green and Sabina W. Sanderson, the
investigation into the Jacko story did not begin until decades later.
During the nineteen fifties, a news reporter named Brian McKelvey
became interested in the then current stories of the sasquatch

(04:34):
being carried by his local British Columbian newspapers. McKelvey searched
for older reports. What he found was the Daily British
Colonist from July fourth, eighteen eighty four, an article about Jacko.
The account detailed the citing of a smallish, hairy creature,
something of the guerrilla type, supposedly seen and captured near Yale,

(04:56):
British Columbia, on June thirtieth, eighteen eighty four. Housed in
a local jail, McKelvey shared the Jacko account with researchers
John Green and Renedahinden. Mcklvey told them that this was
the only record of the event due to a fire
that had destroyed other area newspapers of the time. In
nineteen fifty eight, John Green found and interviewed a man,

(05:19):
August Cassel, who remembered the Jacko talk of the time,
but he said his parents did not take him to
the jail to see the beast. Other senior citizens remembered
the talk of the creature, but no one could produce
any truly good evidence for or eyewitness accounts other than
the British colonist's story of Jacko. The story's appearance in

(05:40):
Ivan T. Sanderson's nineteen sixty one Abominable Snowmen Legend Come
to Life propelled the Jacko incident into history. Meanwhile, some
of the older accounts are merely short references to the
sightings of wild people, whatever that means. For example, the
appearance of a black wild man is noted in one

(06:01):
old article as having been seen near a railroad station
in eighteen seventy at Chattawa, Mississippi. This seems similar to
the Vincennes monster, also said to look like a wild
black man, seen near a railroad bridge in Indiana in
eighteen eighty five. But the question for today is what
happened in Greenville, Maine in eighteen fifty six. By the way,

(06:25):
when is an old report of a wild man in
Maine not really in the state of Maine when it's
an account from Maine, New York, of course. In Robert
Bartholomew's and Paul Bartholomew's Bigfoot Encounters in New York and
New England from two thousand and eight, the authors detail
wild man sidings occurring between August and November eighteen eighty

(06:47):
three at just such a location. They write that these
encounters took place in extreme south central New York, near
the small town of Maine, New York, on the western
border of Brooin County, north west of Binghamton. This main
New York creature was described as low in stature, covered
with hair, and running while bent close to the ground

(07:10):
with no forearms as its arms ended at the elbows.
Now that is one weird looking sasquatch. When we're darkness returns.
What do you do if you're a woman in the
eighteen hundreds whose husband was just tossed into prison for

(07:33):
grave robbing. Well, if you were anything like Helen Miller
and e Begbie, you might decide to continue the family
business on your own. But first, a man in Oklahoma
reports a being on the side of the road that
looked human, except it had the head of a snake,
and the Native American population in the area have an

(07:54):
answer to what it might have been. That story is
up next. Adam Myers of Kansas, Oklahoma, another in a

(08:22):
long line of creative oaky names, had an encounter of
the slithery kind in the summer of two thousand and five. Kansas, Oklahoma,
is a small town in Delaware County, just off the
Cherokee Turnpike. It has a population of six hundred and
eighty five according to the last census. Meer states, I
was riding my four wheeler at dusk behind my uncle's house,

(08:43):
where there's a lot of trees. Back behind this house,
there's a dip that leads to a pond that he
also owns, and before you reach the pond, there's a
turnaround point. It was dusk and meares began to get spooked,
he continues, I turned around and right at the dip,
my four wheeler immediately shuts off. I'm trying to pull
start it, and I started getting a little more freaked

(09:05):
out because I heard some rustling off to the side.
I look over and see a human like shadow standing
off to the side, but instead of being a normal human,
he had a snakelike head. The being approached Mers, who
struggled more and more frantically to start his vehicle. I
gave one final pull on the starter while pressing on
the gas at the same time, and my four wheeler

(09:28):
starts and I haul out of there and go tell
my friend Joe what I seen. Joe took the four
wheeler and returned to the site, but headed back to
the house after hearing a noise that did not seem normal.
The most interesting thing about Mer's snake headed humanoid is
the resemblance it bears to the Seminole Tribe's human snakes,

(09:49):
legendary malevolent creatures that lived in dens full of giant snakes.
I asked Mears if he was familiar with the legend,
and he said that he was not. Sna are either
half snake half human, or they can shape shift between
the two. Human snakes aren't the only breed of strange
snake the Native Americans believe in. The Cherokee tribe tells

(10:12):
of Ukenna, giant horned reptiles that live in the water,
and perhaps most interesting are the Creek's tie snakes, strong
dark snakes that live in caves alongside riverbanks and are
capable of pulling unsuspecting humans to a watery death. Of
the forty six species of known snake native to Oklahoma,

(10:34):
only a few are aquatic, and none are powerful enough
to prey on humans. The western diamondbacked rattlesnake and the
coach whip hold the title of Oklahoma's largest snakes, both
plucking in just shy of seven feet long. But could
there be monsters hiding in the forests and lakes as
the native legends hold. Snake Creek near ten Killer Lake

(10:57):
in Oklahoma appears to have been named for a good reason.
Edna Stubblefield recalls in these Doublefield Memoirs that sometime in
the eighteen nineties she and her family spotted a snake
at the creek that looked like in a big old
fence post crawling across the road. A nine foot Burmese
python turned up in a Tulsa driveway, and on October

(11:19):
twenty fifth, two thousand and one, another Burmese python, this
one seven feet long, appeared in a still water neighborhood.
While we're on the subject of out of place reptiles,
how about rampaging alligators. The official range of The American
alligator is restricted to extreme southeastern Oklahoma, particularly Choctaw and

(11:41):
McCurtain Counties, and yet they just seem to keep turning
up in other parts of the state. In August two
thousand and two, a South American cayman of all things,
was nettled in Lake ten Killer. Another cayman, this one
two to four feet long, appeared in a Tulsa backyard
in February two thousand and four, and in July two

(12:03):
thousand and six, animal control officers spent two days trying
to capture a four foot long alligator that appeared in
the Battle Creek golf course in Tulsa. The gator was
never caught and apparently vanished quick note of interest here.
The Battle Creek Housing addition was also home to another
out of place creature in two thousand and five, a

(12:23):
mountain lion reportedly terrorizing the neighborhood, praying on household pets.
It also was never caught and eventually just faded away.
And of course, the strange case of the fugitive gator.
In the summer of two thousand and three, a three
hundred and fifty pound reptile dubbed the Truck traveling alligator

(12:44):
was caught in a pond, sent to a breeder, and
then sent to Safari Joe's, a wildlife sanctuary and a dare.
The gator promptly vanished from its pen and reappeared in
a pond just south of Interstate forty four, and then
turned up in yet another pond, this one behind the
Big Cabin Truck Plaza, where he was finally recaptured. He

(13:06):
was relocated to Prime Gator Habitat in McCurtain County. Granted,
giant reptiles are nothing new to Oklahoma. The same Noble
Museum in Norman hosts the world's largest Potosaurus ninety three
feet long, found in the Panhandle. And if that's not
big enough for you, the world's largest dinosaur to date

(13:27):
also once called Oklahoma home. In nineteen ninety four, fossils
that were first thought to be tree trunks were discovered.
The trunks turned out to be neck bones, each four
feet long. The sauropod the bones belonged to stood an
estimated sixty feet tall and weighed sixty tons, and was
dubbed soro Poseidon, the earthquake god lizard. This monster supposedly

(13:53):
when extinct one hundred and ten million years ago, but
you just never know. Ah Last Wade, set in the
beautiful countryside of Midlothian, Scotland, once with a penchant for

(14:14):
growing strawberries and an excellence at paper making and carpet manufacture.
Who'd thought the tranquility would come to a screeching halt
in eighteen twenty nine, with a rising population and the
Old Kirk closing its doors to the congregation in seventeen
ninety three. It is perhaps with some surprise that the
site here was ever targeted at all. But targeted it

(14:38):
was mainly due to the miller woman who wouldn't keep
her mouth shut and needed to make a penny or
two to survive while her own grave robbing husband was
serving time for snatching a cadaver back at Lanark. Life
in the rural village of last Wade was ticking along
relatively smoothly in the early nineteenth century, and with its
steadily increasing population three thousand, three hundred forty eight inhabitants

(15:02):
in eighteen oh one, rising to fiveenty twenty two forty
years later, the graveyard was being suitably refreshed on a
regular basis. The Old Kirk once dedicated to Saint Edwin,
had been slowly turning into a ruin since seventeen ninety three,
when with the congregation over one thousand, a new church
was needed elsewhere in the village. The three story high

(15:26):
bell tower, used as a watch tower against resurrection men,
would not fall down until eighteen sixty six, when repairs
to make the structure safe backfired. Interments at the old
kirk still continued, as week after a week, the deceased
of the parish would be laid to rest among the
gravestones of earlier inhabitants. The fact that Helen Miller ne

(15:47):
Begbie was married to a resurrection man grave robber would
perhaps have put her on high alert when it came
to burying the parish dead. It was her husband's livelihood
after all, and well it pays to keep these things
in the family. But when her husband was imprisoned for
stealing cadavers from the graveyard and Lannard, Helen's living allowance

(16:09):
suddenly dried up. The likes of Helen Miller didn't get
handouts from the surgeons like body snatchers wives did in
London with their men were sent to jail. Now she
had to make her own way for the next few months,
and there was only one way in which she knew how.
Urged on by the fact that she also needed to
fund a liquor habit, Helen came up with a plan

(16:31):
that was about to help probably all of the resurrection
men working in and around the city of Edinburgh. Her
plan was pretty straightforward. She would tell them where and
when a fresh cadaver was available and get paid for
providing the information. Simple and so it was that Helen
Miller Kneebegbie turned informant. Her first target was known counterfeiter

(16:55):
and thief James Gow The twenty five year old, by
all accounts, sounded as though he'd turned his hand to anything.
So when Helen gave him information as to where he
could find a cadaver, and a fresh one at that,
he wasn't going to miss the chance of earning a
quick buck. The going rate for fresh subjects was ten
pounds at least that's what doctor Knox was paying, and

(17:18):
so while Burke and Hare were still quietly knocking off
on suspecting folk from the city streets in Edinburgh, James
Goal grabbed his painter friend and sidekicked James Hewitt and
made a bee line for last weight. It's not every
counterfeiter and painter that already have their own equipment for
extracting cadavers, as so, before leaving Edinburgh, the pair paid

(17:40):
a visit to anatomist, John Lazar's, offering him first refusal
of the cadaver, if he'd give them some money for
a spade. The criminal fraternity aren't really known for keeping
their word, and so it was perhaps of little surprise
when Lazar's refused to help on this occasion. He was,
how still interested in purchasing the cadaver once they had

(18:03):
got it out of the ground. This was of little,
in fact, if any helped to the two James's, and
so off they went to try their luck with Thomas
Aitkin instead, surgeon and lecturer at Surgeon's Square. Again they
were rebuffed. There perhaps wasn't an anatomist in the whole
of Edinburgh who'd be stupid enough to give a body

(18:24):
snatcher money before seeing the corpse. But whether this was
Gal's first time at snatching orre he was merely trying
his luck, he was going to have to try to
find his own spade. The first cadaver that Helen let
slip that had just been freshly buried was that of
a female corpse, highly prized amongst surgeons and guaranteed to
bring a fair price. Two days later, Gowin Hewitt turned

(18:48):
up with the cadaver of Joan Swan stuffed into a
sack at the back door of Surgeon's Square, corpse stripped
and with their hand out waiting to be paid. Things
were finally going to more. News was coming from Miller
that even more cadavers were ready for snatching at Last Wade,
and so the pair returned, only to be met with

(19:09):
a scene no one had quite anticipated. In her desperation,
either for drink or some other commodious item, Miller had
worked her way around a number of resurrectionists in Edinburgh,
one by one, telling them of the bounty available in
Last Way. When gow and Hewett returned to the site,
they weren't the only ones visiting the kirkyard. By the

(19:30):
time Helen had finished spreading the news of the spoils
to be had on the outskirts of town, a total
of eleven body snatchers and surgeons were involved in the
plot to strip Last Waed clean of its dead, and
amongst them was notorious Edinburgh body snatcher Andrew Merriles. Andrew
Merriles alias Andrew Lees, was a regular on the anatomist

(19:53):
circuits and at the time had dealings with doctor Knox,
the anatomist, who was also getting a steady supply of
cadavers from murderer's burke and hair. It was to be
another nine months before their last victim, Mary Doherty, was
to be discovered, and quite frankly, the consequences of their
actions had yet to be considered. Originally from the country,

(20:14):
Lees was the head of a small band of resurrection
men who often descended on Edinburgh's kirkyards for its dead.
The men and women let's not forget Helen Miller in
this tale, were charged with violating the sepulcher of two graves.
In last way, the counts mentioned three cadavers being sold
to the anatomists that January in eighteen twenty nine. After

(20:35):
a little research, I believe these to be John Braid,
Joan Swan mentioned earlier, and the body of an unknown child.
When the trial was finally held in July, three of
those accused were immediately outlawed for not appearing. One of
these included Andrew Lees. Although there were three people who
were outlawed, and the instigator of the whole affair, Helen Miller,

(20:57):
wasn't prosecuted, that still left a number of individuals still
to deal with. The anatomists involved weren't prosecuted, and the
only men punished for their part in the last Waded
raids were three body snatchers by the names of Kerr,
Barclay and Cameron. John Kerr, a known resurrectionist on the
streets of Edinburgh, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment with

(21:19):
hard labor in the Bridewell on Colton Hill. He was
to be joined for six of those months by James
Barclay and George Cameron. Having had a lucky escape at
the trial in July, Gough had learnt nothing from his
recent brush with the law. One year later, he was
once again being accused of stealing a cadaver, but this
time things were about to take a slightly different turn.

(21:43):
Having previously made a deal to acquire a cadaver for
lodgings in Old Assembly Close, tucked tight off the Royal
Mile in the heart of Edinburgh City, On arrival, the
door was found to be locked. Instead of returning At
a later date, James Gal together with accomplice Daniel Grant,
broke down the door, now escalating their crime from a misdemeanor.

(22:04):
I have read that James was transported for this crime,
but I don't believe that to be true. Instead, I
believe he was sentenced, along with Daniel, to nine months
imprisonment in the bridewell on Calton Hill. Take a trip
to Last Wade today and you'll find remnants of its
body snatching past. Fear of a visit from these ungodly
men had brought a genuine fear into the lives of

(22:27):
the inhabitants of Last Wade and this can be seen
throughout the Old Kirkyard today. As you walk into the site,
look up and over to the left. The caged lair
you see is in the Calderwood enclosure, lying in the
Calderwood of Polton Isle of the Old Kirk. Its iron
barred roof would have created a barrier between the body

(22:48):
snatcher and the anatomist's table. If you're lucky, the door
to the lair might be unlocked. I find these places
incredibly eerie when walking inside. Laying on the grass near
what is known as the Elden Isle is a large
lump of rock properly referred to as a mortstone. This
would have been shared amongst the parish and placed over

(23:09):
the top of the coffin until the corpse inside was
no longer useful to the anatomists. To get a better
understanding of mortstones, you might want to read an article
from Digging Up eighteen hundred dot com called Mortstones protecting
yourself from the Resurrection Men. You could find it in
the Weird Darkness blog. The final type of body snatching

(23:29):
prevention is sadly no longer here, for it collapsed in
eighteen sixty six. In the former bell tower to the
original Kirk was a watchhouse taking up the lower floor
of this three story high structure. It would have been
there in eighteen twenty nine when the site was being
raided by Goo and his fellow body snatchers, and it
remains a mystery why no watch was on duty that

(23:52):
particular January. In eighteen twenty nine, even Helen Miller mentioned
that the coast would be clear, for there was no
want a grave mistake. Indeed, when We'd Darkness returns, an

(24:22):
author seeks out an alien abductee. Why to try and
get abducted himself. I get these messages from other planets.

(24:52):
I'm apparently some kind of agent from another planet, but
I haven't got my orders clearly decoded yet. William S. Burrows.
In nineteen eighty nine, the American author William S. Burrows
wrote to Whitley Striber, a writer previously best known for
his successful horror fiction such as The Wolfen and The Hunger,

(25:12):
about his alleged experiences of alien contact and abduction. In
his first supposedly non fiction book, Communion, published in nineteen
eighty seven, and its sequel, Transformation, published in nineteen eighty eight,
Striver asserts that he was abducted from his cabin in
Upstate New York on the evening of December twenty sixth,
nineteen eighty five, by non human beings. Although the books

(25:36):
are generally thought of as accounts of alien abduction, Striber
draws no conclusions about his alleged abductor's nature, referring to
them as the Visitors, the name he chose to be
as neutral as possible. Burroughs read both Striver's first two
books on his experiences with the Visitors, and wrote saying
that he would very much like to contact them. Streber's

(25:58):
wife Anne wrote by saying that they received a lot
of crank letters and had to be sure he really
was who he said he was. His dex's letter, in
which Burrows assured the Strivers I am indeed really me
convinced them and they invited him to spend the weekend
at their cabin in upstate New York, where the experiences
were alleged to have occurred. Burrows later said I had

(26:21):
a number of talks with Striver about his experiences, and
I was quite convinced that he was telling the truth.
He told me this, when you experience it, it is
very definite, very physical. It's not vague, and it's not
like an hallucination that they are there. For his part,
Striver said Burrows was almost overly polite during his visit,

(26:42):
but was clearly genuinely interested and very curious about details
of his experiences. Although the visitors he describes do travel
in what appear to be Nuts and Bolt's physical craft,
which manifest very much in the classic flying saucer mode,
and as for the beings, the roughly humanoid mammalian beings

(27:03):
wearing at one point would appear to be blue overalls.
Streber himself had not ruled out the possibility they may
not be extraterrestrials at all, but rather exist in his mind.
Burrows himself, no stranger to altered states, other realms of
perception and psychic manifestations, and a lifelong champion of Count
Alfred Korzubinski's general semantics, which opposes the so called Aristolian

(27:28):
street jacket of either or thinking, could certainly concur Regrettably,
the visitors did not choose to manifest themselves when he
was around, but he remained open minded about the possible
reasons for this. It may mean that it was not
propitious for them to come and pick me up at
that particular time. It may mean they would contact me
at a later date, or it may mean that they

(27:49):
regard me as the enemy. We have no way of
knowing what their motives are. They may find that my
intervention is hostile to their objectives, and their objectives may
not be friendly at all. Striver referred to the visitors
in his books also by the name Grays, a meme
which took on a life of its own and has
become very much the standard way of referring to at

(28:10):
least one type of alien that is apparently a regular
visitor to our small world, roughly humanoid with a large,
bald domed head and usually large black wrap around eyes.
This idea and image soon found its way into Burrows's
own personal cosmology. He continued to be fascinated by them,

(28:30):
and in a diary entry February third, nineteen ninety seven,
written just five months before his death and later published
posthumously as part of Last Words, the Final Journals of
william S Burrows, he wrote, the Grays apparently are control
aliens who have lost the ability to create a dying
race that needs blood and seamen from humans. Bad folks,

(28:53):
those Grays. I recall that Whitley Striver was accused of
working for the Grays. Why are abductions and contacts all
to mediocre or inferior minds? Why don't they come and
see me? Because they don't want to are afraid to
contact anyone with advanced spiritual awareness. The Grays want to
make people stupider. Anyone with real perception is a danger

(29:15):
to them, a deadly danger. In an official interview, David Ole,
a friend of Striver, asked william S Burrows about his experiences,
asking you went to New York a few weeks ago
to see some aliens. What happened? Burrows replied, I talked
to Whitley Striver, who wrote Communion, and he invited me
up to his cabin. I just read his book Majestic,

(29:37):
about the cover up that followed the alleged crash of
an alien ship, referring to the infamous Roswell, New Mexico
case of nineteen forty seven. They recovered a body which
was taken to Los Alabos for autopsy. It had no stomach.
Apparently these creatures are nourished by some kind of very
sophisticated photosynthesis chlorophyll people. They also have very large eyes,

(29:58):
and they clustered together in their space, which are like hives.
All this upset then President of the United States Truman
A great deal. They live in hives, he said, it
makes my blood run cold. Got no stomachs, and their
genital organs are vestigial. Are they communists? He wanted to know,
My God, the dumbness to alienate the aliens. The fact

(30:20):
that the recovered alien body was allegedly taken to Los
Alamos would have been a particularly portentious detail for Burrows.
It was where he had been sent to a boy
scout style ranch school as a boy, which he had hated,
and was the facility later taken over by the US
military to be used as a top secret base for
the development of the Adam baumb details that recur with

(30:42):
ominous significance throughout a number of his works. Later, towards
the end of the same interview, All asks is there
something out there? And Burrows's reply shows, among other things,
an interesting knowledge of UFO lore. He said, there's something
out there. It maybe far away in space and time,
but remember time itself is a human invention, as are measurements.

(31:06):
Remember Betty and Barney Hill, the two people abducted by
aliens and Exeter in New Hampshire. While the aliens noticed
that Barry had false teeth, they asked about this, and
Betty said, well they've worn out age, you know, length
of time. And the aliens said, what is time? What
is age? They had no concept of it. Time is

(31:27):
both a human invention and a human affliction. In a
collection of essays published in nineteen eighty six as The
Adding Machine, Burrows summed up a lifetime of musing on
the intricate and mysterious relationship between the creative impulse he'd explored,
both as a writer and in later years increasingly as
a painter, and the mysterious other realms of altered perceptions

(31:51):
and expanded consciousness that he had long sought to come
to terms with. Characterized in terms of the impulse to
get into space, in which he contracts the nuts and
bolts efforts of the space program with perhaps more subtle
and creative methods, he said, We're not setting out to
explore static, pre existing data. We're setting out to create

(32:11):
new worlds, new beings, new models of consciousness. As Brian Geyson, painter,
poet and Burrow's long term friend and collaborator, said, when
they get there in their trillion dollar aquaalong, they may
find that artists are already there. What you experience in
dreams and out of body trips, what you glimpse in
the works of writers and painters, is the promised land

(32:33):
of space. Towards the end of the nineteen eighties, not
showing any signs of slowing down and still reaching out
to new forms of creative expression, Burrows collaborated with American
avant garde theater director Robert Wilson on an opera called
The Black Writer. It was based on a German folk
tale Der Freieshoots in a version that had come down

(32:55):
via English opium eater Thomas de Quincy and Burrows wrote
the libretto to accompany music by Tom Waits. Flushed by
the apparent success, towards the end of nineteen ninety one,
Wilson approached Burrows about a further collaboration, and Burrows put
forward an idea he was calling Paradise Lost. I had
an idea of an opera based on Paradise Lost, where

(33:17):
Lucifer and the fallen Angels have been the victims of
an atomic attack and they're picking themselves up out of
the ruins of Hiroshima, Based in part on Milton's original poem,
it would also include material to do with aliens, abductions, UFOs,
and in particular the infamous crash alleged to have taken
place at Roswell, New Mexico in nineteen forty seven, although

(33:40):
nothing came of this at the time. Following Burrow's death,
his former companion and manager now literary executor James Groholtz
gave the material to former husker Dow drummer Grant Hart,
who used it as the basis for his twenty thirteen
album The Argument. As part of the promotion and publicity
for The Black Writer, Burrows was interviewed at home in Lawrence, Kansas,

(34:02):
on June tenth, nineteen ninety one, by Nicholas Zerbrug, asking
him about his current interests and reading material. Burrows showed
the interviewer some books on Native American Indian shamanism and
then explained, so I'm interested in shamanism. I'm also very
interested in all of these space aliens. They're flying saucers
and all that. I'd just like to see some myself,

(34:24):
that's all. As a matter of fact, There's been sightings
in Kansas and some out at the lake where I
have my house on the lake, but I have not
been favored. That same year, the writer Victor Bokras visited
his old friend at home and Lawrence to talk with
him for Interview magazine. During a discussion about Stryver's alleged
experiences and how Burrows was finding the nineties a very unfunny,

(34:48):
very grim decade. At one point Bachris was very upset
about a sense of being invaded, and the reply shows
that for william S. Burrows, many of the old concerns
about control and possess had not gone away. You are
no more invaded than the rest of us. When I
go into my psyche at a certain point, I meete
a very hostile, very strong force. It's as definite as

(35:11):
somebody attacking me in a bar. What you have to
do is confront the possession. You can do that only
when you've wiped out the words. For Burrows, any escape
into the altered state of consciousness that he saw represented
by the freedom of space would always be achieved in silence.
Back in the nineteen sixties, amid the all too often

(35:32):
drug fueled paranoia of sci fi conspiracy theories, in which
he seriously considered the possibility women were an alien species
and that famously language is a virus from outer space,
Burrows had written, to travel in space, you must leave
the old verbal garbage behind. God talk, country talk, mother talk,

(35:52):
love talk, party talk. You must learn to exist with
no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to
live it alone in silence. Anyone who prays in space
is not there. As the decades progressed and the space
race failed to deliver on its promise of brave new
worlds and the high frontier of the stars. Burreuws's interest

(36:12):
waned in the possibility of nuts and bolts solutions to
getting out of the body and off the planet. His
already long standing interest in magic, the occult and psychic
phenomena took him further in the direction of astro projection,
dream control, remote viewing, and the like, as well as
actual forays into ritual magic. During his final years in

(36:35):
the Midwest, as well as his interest in UFOs and
possible alien contacts such as those written about by Whitley Striper,
Burrows explored the possibilities offered by an encounter with an
anthropologist neighbor who was working with a Lakota Indian medicine man,
Black Elk, and was also initiated into the chaos magic
order the Illuminates of Thanatos. All of this is detailed

(36:58):
at length in Matthew Levis Stephens book The Magical Universe
of William S. Burrows by Mandrag of Oxford, published in
twenty fourteen. I'll place a link to that book in
the show notes. Later in the collection of notes from
his dream journals and related musings that were published as
My Education, a book of Dreams, Burroughs wrote, I was
convinced that the aliens, or whatever they are, or a

(37:21):
real phenomenon. The abductions in several accounts involved sexual contacts, indeed,
that would seem to be their purpose. After some consideration,
Burroughs came to the opinion that the aliens, if the
visitors were indeed beings that originated physically outside of the
collective unconscious or some other such physical realm, were in

(37:41):
fact abducting people primarily to have sex with them. He
was struck by the fact that in one of Striver's
accounts of just such a close encounter, the beings wanted
him to get a bigger erection than the one that
they had somehow been able to induce in him. In
an attempt to attract them to his home and Laurence Kansas,
Burrows decided to let the grass grow long on his

(38:03):
lawn and then had somebody cut a patch of it
into the shape of an erect penis, like making a
crop circle, I guess, in the hope that would attract
their attention. Although Whitley Striver continued to receive further visitations,
which he would write about in subsequent works such as
Breakthrough the Next Step and latterly solving the communion enigma

(38:24):
What is to Come? The visitors never did come for
william S Burrows. Let's end this episode with a story
from one of our WEIRDO family members. This comes from
Megan Campbell. This just happened earlier this week, and I

(38:45):
can't stop thinking about it. I'm sorry if I write
too much. I just keep processing what happened. I worked
the overnight shifts in a group home for a youth
with special needs. Nights are typically pretty quiet, aside from
the odds snore or kid quietly singing to himself. I've
worked in this particular house for just a couple of
months now and have noticed the sound of light footsteps

(39:06):
often coming from upstairs. If I'm downstairs. When I go
up to check on the residents, they're all asleep. The
house can't be more than thirty years old if I
had to guess, but I'm sure all houses, both old
and new, make noises. No big deal. The other night,
while I was using the washroom on the main floor,
listening to weird darkness, I was suddenly startled by a

(39:28):
loud stream sound directly above my head. It was as
if someone was dragging furniture across the floor. I started
rushing to finish up, thinking a kid was out of
bed or something, but I then realized what room was
right above me. Another staff sleeps in a small room
located directly above the main floor bathroom. Specifically, the first

(39:51):
third or so of the sleeping room is above the bathroom,
where no furniture is located. Further back in this room
is a bed in a dresser. This was five am,
and I figured the staff would have no reason to
be moving any furniture, let alone moving it close to
the door. The sound lasted for about ten seconds at
least as I listened perplexed, I washed my hands and

(40:14):
crept up the stairs. The kids were asleep. No sound
came from the staff's sleeping area. The air felt heavy,
and I instantly felt lightheaded. I immediately went back downstairs
and tried to think of a logical explanation. It was
a little bit windy out and perhaps a branch was
scraping against the side of the house. No, there aren't

(40:36):
any trees near the sides of the house. Nothing leaned
against the side of the house. About an hour later,
there was some thunder and rain that lasted a short time,
so I thought maybe it was just unexpected thunder. I
took comfort in that thought, but still couldn't shake the
feeling that this sound was so loud and so close
to me, and a very negative and unsettling feeling with it.

(41:01):
Suddenly it occurred to me that I drew a pentagram
on my hand earlier in the shift with Hennah that
another staff member brought. It was upright, and I don't
even believe in the devil or demons. In my neopagan
belief system, the symbol represents the elements, but I realized
that the star could be perceived as being inverted so
easily depending on the position of my hand. I told

(41:24):
myself this was a silly coincidence, but I was truly disturbed.
The next day, I felt the need to make a
cleansing spray to bring to work. I mixed various herbs
and small crystals in a spray bottle with water that
had been charged under the full moon. I envisioned a
white light pouring into the bottle as I filled it.
I tested the sprayer. It worked and was ready to

(41:46):
go shortly after arriving at work. I took the bottle
upstairs with the intention of spiritually cleansing every room before
the kids went to bed, but the bottle would not spray.
I tried adjusting the nozzle, rinsing it out, shaking it.
Nothing would come out. Logic told me that the nozzle
was clogged with herbs. My gut told me that whatever

(42:09):
negative energy was in this house was not allowing the
bottle to spray. I'd be damned if I let that
stop me. I took the top off, splashed my hand
with the water, and flicked it around each room and
on every window and door. I said, firmly but quietly,
in each room, if you are not of love and light,
you are not welcome here. I still felt uneasy about

(42:31):
the whole situation, despite the calming smell of lavender and
eucalyptus all around. But it was a quiet night, aside
from some crazy winds that shook the house for a bit,
and then all was calm. I felt much more at ease.
I think that sometimes your gut feeling is more important
than logic. Thanks for listening. If you like the show,

(43:20):
please share it with someone you know 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.
Writing the Rails with Bigfoot was written by Lauren Coleman

(43:40):
for Cryptomundo. The Oklahoma snake Man was posted at kryptok.
Invasion of the Last waed Body Snatchers was written by
Susie for Digging Up eighteen hundred dot com, and an
author's search for extraterrestrial visitors was posted at Animalian dot com.
Weird Darkness is a production of House productions, and now

(44:02):
that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you
with a little light Isaiah forty one, Verse ten. Do
not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed,
for I am your God. I will strengthen you and
help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand.
And a final thought, your mind always believes everything you

(44:25):
tell it. Feed it with faith, truth and love. I'm
Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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