FIGHTER PILOT VS UFO: George Gorman’s Terrifying Dogfight Against An Alien Spacecraft

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome Weirdos. 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 of Weird Darkness.

(00:30):
The US government explained the rapidly maneuvering lights as a
weather balloon. But if you believe what fighter pilot George F.
Gorman says, you'll believe there are some giant holes in
the US government story because Gorman ended up in an
aerial battle with one of those so called weather balloons.

(00:51):
A passerby found scraps of paper on the ground implicating
that one of the area's most prominent families was harboring
a secret that the husband had his own wife imprisoned
in their own home for months on end, unable to
leave her own bedroom. But that was just the beginning
of the story. In the wilds of Africa, it is

(01:14):
said there is a manlike creature human in every way
aside from one the being has no head, the most
famous being the Grim Reaper. Dark hooded entities seem to
be relatively common in the reports of ghost like beings.
They can be intimidating, foreboding, and downright terrifying. One man's

(01:39):
experience didn't stop with only one encounter. They haven't stopped
at all. A couple have a fight, one of them
leaves the home to cool off. It's something that happens
every day in every town and city. It's simply how
some couples have to work through things. But in one case,

(02:00):
thirty two years later, the woman who left to cool
off has yet to return, and her family is still waiting.
Now bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the weird darkness. In the

(02:36):
words of Captain Edward J. Rupelt, the man who investigated
unidentified flying object reports for the US Air Force in
the early nineteen fifties, the Gorman Dogfight remains one of
the classics among UFO sightings. The incident, which still lacks
an air tight explanation, involved a twenty seven minute air
encounter between a veteran World War II fighter pilot named

(03:00):
George F. Gorman and a mysterious white orb at a
high altitude above Fargo, North Dakota. I've never seen anything
like it, Gorman told a local newspaper following the October first,
nineteen forty eight event. If anyone else had reported such
a thing, I would have thought they were crazy. Captain

(03:20):
Rupelt operated Project Blue Book, which continued the work of
Project Sign and Project Grudge, a series of hush hush
studies conducted by the US Air Force between nineteen forty
seven and nineteen sixty nine. His mission to determine if
UFOs were a threat to national security and to scientifically

(03:40):
analyze UFO related data. What makes the Gorman dogfight unique
in the now declassified pages of Project Blue Book is
not only the length of the encounter, but that it
was recorded both on the ground and in the sky
by numerous reputable sources. At the time of the incident, Gorreon,
a twenty five year old former fighter pilot, served as

(04:03):
a second lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard.
It was this role that placed him behind the flight
controls of a P fifty one Mustang on October first,
nineteen forty eight, taking part in a cross country flight
alongside other National Guard airmen. While the other pilots landed
at Fargo's Hector Airport on that fateful evening, Gorman stayed

(04:25):
in the air in order to get in some night
flying time in the cloudless conditions. Having circled his P
fifty one over a lit football stadium, he was preparing
the land at about nine pm, advised by the control
tower that the only other plane in the vicinity was
a Piper cub, which Gorman could see. About five hundred
feet below him, he witnessed what he believed to be

(04:47):
the tail light of another craft passing on his right,
though the tower had no other object on the radar.
Deciding to take a closer look at the unidentified object,
Gorman pulled his plane up and closed to within about
a thousand yards. It was about six to eight inches
in diameter, clear white, and completely without fuzz at the edges.

(05:09):
He said of the object in his report, it was
blinking on and off as I approached. However, the light
suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank.
I thought it was making a pass at the tower.
Deciding to follow, Gorman tried in vain to catch up
with the object, reporting that he finally got behind it
at around seven thousand feet, where it made a sharp

(05:31):
turn and headed straight for the P fifty one. Almost
at the point of collision, Gorman dived and said the
light passed over his canopy at about five hundred feet
before cutting sharply once more and heading back in his direction.
Just as collision seemed imminent once again, Gorman said, the
object shot straight up in the air in a steep climb,

(05:52):
so steep that when he tried to intercept, his plane
stalled at about fourteen thousand feet. The object was not
seen again, but according to Gorman, he'd been engaged in
aerial maneuvers with it for twenty seven minutes by the
time he brought his plane in to land. Shaken by
the encounter, the pilot went on to report he noticed

(06:13):
no sound, exhaust, trail, or odor from the object, and
while he had reached speeds of up to four hundred
miles per hour while in pursuit, he couldn't keep up
with whatever it was. I'm convinced that there was definite
thought behind its maneuvers, Gorman said in a sworn statement
to his commander. I am further convinced that the object

(06:34):
was governed by the laws of inertia because its acceleration
was rapid but not immediate, and although it was able
to turn fairly tight at considerable speed, it still followed
a natural curve. Gorman reported blacking out temporarily due to
the excessive speed he reached an attempting to turn with
the object. I'm in fairly good physical condition, and I

(06:56):
do not believe that there are many, if any pilots
who could withstand that turn and speed affected by the
object and remain conscious. He wrote. The object was not
only able to outturn and outspeed my aircraft, but was
able to attain a far steeper climb, and was able
to maintain a constant rate of climb, far in excess
of my aircraft. Gorman wasn't the only one to see

(07:19):
the mysterious object that night. It was also witnessed by
air traffic controllers Lloyd D. Jensen and H. E. Johnson,
who were manning the Hector Airport tower. According to Johnson,
who reported seeing the Piper Cub and the UFO at
the same time, the object was traveling at a high
rate of speed and was fast enough to increase the

(07:39):
spacing between itself and Gorman's fighter. Johnson described the object
disappearing to be only a round light, perfectly formed, with
no fuzzy edges or rays leaving its body. Doctor A. E. Cannon,
the pilot of the Piper Cub and his passenger, also
viewed the object, both in the sky and upon their
return the airport, where they immediately joined the traffic controllers

(08:03):
in the tower. Cannon described the light as moving very swiftly,
much faster than the fifty one. Two. Civil Aeronautics Authority
employees on the ground also reported seeing the object. Could
it have simply been another aircraft? Taking the technology of
the time into account, Doctor Travis S. Taylor, aerospace engineer

(08:26):
and author of Introduction to Rocket Science and Engineering, believes
any other aircraft would have been apparent to Gorman. Earlier
that year. He points out Chuck Yeager made his famous
flight in the Bell X one at record breaking speed
in which he broke the sound barrier. A craft like
that would have been very obvious to a pilot in

(08:47):
a P fifty one. Gorman would have known what he
was looking at. The X fifty one looked like an airplane,
says Taylor. If he was chasing something that didn't look
like a standard aircraft and he couldn't keep up with it,
either it was too far away and he didn't realize
how far away it was, or it was moving faster
than a P fifty one could move. US Air Force

(09:10):
investigators from Project Sign later to become Project Grudge and
ultimately Project Bluebook soon arrived in Fargo, where Geiger countermeasurements
of Gorman's plane revealed heightened radioactivity, though this was later
explained away as a side effect of the high altitude
flying that took place. Was Gorman a kook or maybe

(09:32):
touched in the head by his war experiences. Government investigators
found him to be a credible witness, noting that he
did not make the impression of being a dreamer. He
reads little and only serious literature. He spends ninety percent
of his time hunting and fishing, drinks less than moderately,

(09:52):
smokes normally, and does not do drugs. He appears to
be a sincere and serious individual who was considerably puzzled
by his experience and made no attempt to blow his
story up. One conspiracy theory speculated that Gorman's encounter may
have been with a top secret test craft, with World
War II a very recent memory. Tensions in nineteen forty

(10:15):
eight were heightened both in military and civilian circles, and
as the Cold War tightened its grip on the American Psyche.
The US government sought to boost its scientific firepower with
a clandestine initiative called Operation paper Clip, through which it
recruited former Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians, including Werner von

(10:36):
Braun and his V two rocket team, to America to
boost the nation's chances in the Cold War and looming
space race. Further afialed, the Soviets had begun testing the
r Ian rocket, a Soviet version of the German V
two of World War II, the same year as Gorman's encounter,
raising questions of whether the object he and the other

(10:57):
saw could have been a Soviet craft or weapon. The
r I didn't have the range to go from wherever
their launch capability was in the Soviet Union to Fargo,
says Taylor. It was a dumb rocket. All the rockets
at that time were projectiles. They used aerodynamics mostly to
guide them. They could do slow maneuvers, but if they

(11:17):
did a fast maneuver, they'd start tumbling apart. Back in Fargo,
after the Air Weather Service revealed it had released a
lighted weather balloon ten minutes before Gorman first saw the object,
investigators pounced, proclaiming the balloon the likeliest explanation for the
object seen. As for the seemingly incredible movements witnessed, the

(11:39):
report said those were due to Gorman's own maneuvers as
he tried to chase the bright object. Essentially, investigators wrote,
his high speed gave the balloon the appearance of moving
in opposite directions as he passed by. Added to that theory,
investigators noted the bright appearance of Jupiter on that date,
hypothesizing that Gorman had attempting to chase the bright dot

(12:01):
of the planet at the same time the weather balloon
was in range. The lighted weather balloon would become the
official cause of the encounter in the Project bluebook file.
We were doing Project Mogul at the time, which was
high altitude balloons fitted with high powered microphones that we
were trying to listen to see if the Soviets were
doing above ground nuclear testing, says Taylor, who points out

(12:25):
that the famous Roswell New Mexico UFO sighting was explained
away as a Project Mogul balloon. Whether Gorman was happy
with the official outcome remains unknown. Maintaining his silence, he
returned to the Air Force full time, eventually retiring at
the rank of lieutenant colonel in nineteen sixty nine. He
never spoke publicly about the encounter again, though according to

(12:49):
the Bismarck Tribune, he did tell friends he was never
convinced that he'd been dueling with a lighted balloon for
twenty seven minutes. Gorman died in nineteen eighty two. Taylor
has his own theory, possibly somebody was playing around with rocketry,
but he notes there were no known test facilities or

(13:10):
scientists in the Fargo area when the encounter took place.
All the Operation Paperclip Germans were at the missile grounds
in White Sands, New Mexico, while rocket guru Robert H.
Goddard had died in nineteen forty five. It makes no sense,
says Taylor, that there was anything there that was man
made that they were chasing up. Next in the wilds

(13:42):
of Africa, it said that there is a manlike creature
human in every way aside from one The being has
no head, and a passerby found scraps of paper on
the ground with writing implicating that one of the area's
most prominent families was hard boring a secret that the
husband had his own wife imprisoned in their own home

(14:04):
for months on end, unable to leave her own bedroom.
But that was just the beginning of the story. A gaunt,

(14:41):
wretched figure stood at the barred window of a ground
floor room, attempting nervously to attract the attention of anyone
passing by. Laurel House was in an isolated position at
the far end of peckham Rae Common, on the road
leading down to Camberwell Old Cemetery, surrounded by market guard
gardens and farmland, with a few neighboring houses. Using a

(15:04):
pencil begged from a kind servant and scraps of wallpaper
covertly peeled from the wall, the woman wrote a series
of notes in which she explained her plight and asked
that her brother in law, Thomas Morgan, be informed that
she was being kept against her will. She had been
estranged from her family for some two years, but she

(15:24):
had no doubt that in spite of their disappointment and disapproval,
they would come to a rescue. Her savior was one
Miss Jane Charlotte Barber, a single woman who resided two
doors down from Laurel House in Piermont Cottage, and who
was fully aware of the style in which doctor Hammond
and his young family lived in their detached villa, where

(15:46):
they were attended by a devoted housekeeper, two maids, and
a gardener. Miss Barber had also noticed the attractive young
lady who would often drive out with the dashing doctor,
dressed expensively in a black silk game with a red
velvet jacket and jaunty bonnet, and it was Miss Barber who,
on this particular occasion a Tuesday in September eighteen sixty four,

(16:10):
saw the ragged note flying through the open window. Although alarmed,
she summoned her courage and picked up the note. Horrified
by what she read, she hurried to the local police.
They had no hesitation in contacting the mister Morgan mentioned
in the note, having learnt that its author was Rosalind

(16:30):
Hammond and that she was being held against her will
by doctor Edward Hammond, her husband. Police Constable Spinx, accompanied
by mister Morgan, arrived at the house and demanded to
see missus Hammond. The doctor said that it was not
possible as she was sleeping and could not be disturbed,
but after firm words from Spinx, he relented, and with

(16:53):
a show of reluctance, he took them to her room,
which was bolted from the outside. The room was dirty
and meekly furnished, with just an iron bedstead and fusty linens.
The occupant was thin and pale, and dressed in nightclothes.
She explained that her husband kept her locked up, and
that he was aided and abetted by Elizabeth Allen, who

(17:15):
was his housekeeper, and by Emily Wakeman, who had once
been his maid and was now his mistress. But she
appeared to be unbroken by her ordeal. The newspapers described
her as an intelligent woman, and she had clearly retained
her senses. How had the wealthy missus Hammond come to

(17:35):
such a pass aged thirty seven? She was worth six
hundred pounds per annum, which would be about seventy thousand
pounds in today's money, and yet she had to borrow
a hat and a cloak in order to present herself
decently at Lambeth Police Court. Her story is one of
misfortune and cruelty met it out not only by her

(17:58):
husband but also by the Tory in society and its
legal system. Rosalind Hammond nay Buckley was born at the
Lawn in South Lambeth, in one of the houses built
by her grandfather, Philip Buckley. Her mother, Anne Wolfe, who
was the only child of an East India house employee,
had married the wealthy widower Henry Buckley, who made his

(18:20):
living as a floor cloth manufacturer, trading from premises adjoining
King's College and the Strand and at thirty nine Westminster
Bridge Road, where the manufactory was based. Floor cloths, which
were sold as alternatives to expensive carpets and elaborately tiled
or marbled floors, were made of canvas protected by up

(18:41):
to twelve coats of paint per side, with a stenciled
or hand painted design. Being both popular and expensive, floor
cloths certainly contributed to Henry's fortune. He had two children
by his first marriage and four much younger daughters with
Anne Rosewellyland, who was the youngest of the children, enjoyed

(19:02):
a privileged childhood in Lambeth and at River Hill, the
family's country house near seven Oaks in Kent, which boasted
nine indoor servants and gardens laid out in a Himalayan style.
She was only fifteen when in eighteen forty one her
father died, leaving significant money and property, including four houses

(19:23):
in Lambeth, the Leasehole Manufactory, the lease to River Hill,
and thousands of pounds in stocks. His wife and children
were all handsomely provided for. The daughters would inherit their
share when they reached the age of twenty one or
earlier if they married. The respectable and wealthy miss Buckleys
were eagerly sought as brides. Henrietta married the Reverend Cyril Acoustice,

(19:48):
Ellen married John T. Wright, a solicitor, and Fanny Alicia
married Thomas Morgan, a wine merchant of Tower Hill. Rosalind
two would have been expected to lead a life of respectability,
either as the perfect Victorian wife, the angel in the house,
or as her widowed mother's companion, which was often the

(20:09):
fate of the youngest daughter. Then, in eighteen forty eight,
when she was twenty two, she was sent for a
water cure at an establishment run by a homeopathic doctor,
and things did not go quite to plan. The water cure,
or hydropathy, gained popularity from the eighteen forties. Kate Summerscale

(20:30):
in Missus Robinson's Disgrace describes it as a popular treatment
for the vague anxiety related sicknesses of the mid nineteenth century.
The theory was that immersion in hot and cold baths
and showers could restore health to an unbalanced body. Patients
might include men who overworked or over indulged, and women

(20:52):
suffering from female complaints or hysteria. Female hysteria was the
diagnos for a raft of symptoms that included fainting, insomnia,
bad temper, and an unmaidenly interested in sex. Enlightened doctors
of the time believed that the cause was often unfulfilling

(21:12):
lives centered on the needs of others. Women, they argued,
were obliged to repress their natural desires, whether these were
sexual or simply a yearning for something more interesting than needlework.
We do not know why Rosalind took the water cure,
but we do know that she was seduced by her
doctor at the Hydro, and that in eighteen fifty she

(21:34):
gave birth to a boy who was christened at Saint
John's Church in Erith, in Kent. The baptismal record declared
that the boy was Stanley Ellis Buckley, that he was
the son of James and Rosalind Buckley, and that his
father was a farmer. That this was not entirely true.
Was soon discovered, whereupon James and his occupation were expunged

(21:57):
from the record and the blank space filled with the
damning words single woman. We now find it hard to
grasp how scandalous and illegitimate child born to an unmarried
middle class girl would have been in the nineteenth century.
It is interesting to spanculate on the identity of Rosalind's seducer,

(22:18):
for which we have no other evidence than that his
name was probably, but not necessarily James. The proprietor of
the Sudbrook Park Hydro in Petersham was James Ellis, but
then again there was a clutch of homeopathic James's running
water cure establishments in and around Malvern. James Manby, who

(22:40):
seduced the future Florence Bravo when she was his patient,
is partner James Wilson and a James Marsden. I think
we can assume that whatever had brought it on, Rosalind
was being treated for hysteria, for in the eighteen fifty
one census she was living in Leytonstone in Essex, at
the home of doctor Stephen Mackenzie, along with the doctor's

(23:02):
family and a clutch of female patients. Mackenzie is described
as extensively known by his successful treatment of the most
inveterate of hysterics in on the Pathology and Treatment of Hysteria,
written by his assistant Robert Brudenel Carter in eighteen fifty three. Sadly,
Carter also records that Mackenzie, who died tragically falling from

(23:24):
his carriage, kept no patient records for the next ten years.
Rosalind remains a mystery until on the twentieth of August
eighteen sixty one, she married a man called Edward Hammond
at Saint Nicholas Church in Brighton. At this point her
sisters were probably relieved that a man who had full

(23:45):
knowledge of her unfortunate past was willing to take Rosalind
off their hands. He was not quite the addition they
wanted for the family. He was a man of limited means,
he had four young children, and he was determined to
have control of Rosalind's generous annuity. But in light of
her youthful lapse, they knew that Rosalind was lucky to

(24:06):
find a husband. After a few months buried life in
Lower Clapham Road soured, Edward encouraged Rosalind to behave as
a semi invalid who stayed in bed all day and
dosed herself with morphia and brandy. Numerous local doctors were
brought in to treat her rather vague symptoms, and early

(24:27):
in eighteen sixty two she suffered the double affliction of
the death of a twelve year old Stanley and a
difficult confinement. Rosalind was also beginning to entertain suspicions about
the nature of her husband's relationship with Emily the Maid.
In March, she took the new baby to live with
a wet nurse and Maidstone and Kent. She was accompanied

(24:50):
by Emily, and in the course of the overnight stay
she challenged her. The girl said that she had been
raped by doctor Hammond, with a pillow pressed over her
face to muffle her screams. Rosalind furiously rejected Emily's story
and wrote to her father, accusing her of being Edward's mistress.
She refused to go back to Clapham, instead asking her

(25:12):
family for help. As they disliked Edward. They encouraged her
to separate from them, but Rosalind capitulated, possibly because she
loved the doctor, possibly because she was trapped if she
left him. She also left her money. When they married,
all her assets became his, but she also had to

(25:34):
have his agreement for any legal separation. A divorce might
free her, but in eighteen sixty four she did not
have sufficient grounds. Whereas a man only had to show
that his wife had committed adultery, a woman had to
prove not only that her husband was an adulterer, but
that he had also deserted her, or had committed sodomy

(25:55):
or incest, or had been guilty of bigamy or cruelty.
Was no easier to prove than adultery. An Act for
the Better Prevention and Punishment of Aggravated Assaults upon Women
and Children had been passed in eighteen fifty three, but
it merely redefined what was or was not acceptable behavior

(26:16):
without banning violence outright, and so Rosalind returned home and
retracted her accusation against Emily Wakeman, later saying that she
had been coerced. By September eighteen sixty two, the family
had moved to a property called Lanark House on Queen's
Road in Peckham, where previously Edward had encouraged his wife

(26:38):
to stay in bed for most of the day. He
now employed Elizabeth Allen to stop her from leaving the house.
Rosalind was no longer treated with respect by anyone in
a household, and on Christmas Eve her husband hit her
around the head. He was the worse for drink, and
he was encouraged by Emily Wakerman. Even though the maid

(26:58):
was now his acknowledge mistress, he continued to sleep with
his wife, who gave birth early in January eighteen sixty
three to a girl named Emily Rosalind. If Hammond was
to keep both Rosalind's annuity and his paramour, it was
important that no one in the neighborhood begin to ask
questions about his wife's whereabouts. With this aim, he moved

(27:20):
the family in May eighteen sixty three to Laurel House
on the edge of the much less densely populated Peckham Rye.
Here Rosalind was confined to a single room. Meals were
brought to her by Elizabeth Allen and one or two
of the children. To stop her making an escape, the
window was barred and the door was kept locked. Her

(27:42):
day clothes were removed, and she suffered the further indignity
of seeing them on Emily Wakeman. Her jewelry box was
pilfered by her husband, who then sent his gardener, Thomas Abraham's,
to pawn the contents. In fact, Doctor Edward Hammond was
not a doctor at all, in contravention of the Medical
Act of eighteen fifty eight. His medical title was self awarded.

(28:06):
Born in Dartford in Kent in eighteen eighteen, Hammond had
not had the privileged upbringing that Rosalind had enjoyed, and
he was not a professional man. In eighteen forty three,
when he married his first wife, another Emily, he was
working as an oil merchant. Eight years later, with Emily
and their young family, he was living in rural Lower

(28:27):
Tooting now Tooting Broadway, a few doors from the Mider
public House. He was a manufacturer of the gelatine used
as a setting agent in many of the elaborate puddings
loved by Victorians. Knowing that your Bland's made Georgelly was
given its wobble with boiled down connective animal tissue cannot
have been very appetizing. By eighteen sixty one he was

(28:50):
a widowed chemist and druggist, living in east Wickham in Kent,
which was only three and a half miles from Erith,
where Rosalind's son Stanley was baptized. Moving forward to September
eighteen sixty four, those attending Lambeth Police Court were horrified
to see how unwell missus Hammond looked and how poorly

(29:11):
she was dressed. But her husband's lawyers were determined that
she would receive no pity, and they set about demolishing
her character by revealing that she had given birth to
an illegitimate child, and that she habitually stayed in bed
all day, imbibing Brandy and Morphia. Hammond himself explained to

(29:31):
Way the fact that she was kept locked up by
claiming that she had threatened to murder him. The two
knives hidden in her bed were evidence of her homicidal tendencies,
the implication being that if not quite mentally unstable, she
was at least a degenerate woman who needed to be
restrained for her family's safety. Rosalind calmly countered all that

(29:52):
was said about her, and a doctor was brought in
to explain that she was sane. The magistrate was not
sympathetic to Edward Hammond, and he sent the case to trial.
When the case came to court in November eighteen sixty four,
Hammond pleaded guilty, but sentencing was deferred to allow his
lawyer's time to negotiate a settlement with Rosalind's legal team.

(30:16):
The not guilty pleas submitted by Emily Wakeman and Elizabeth
Allen were accepted because they had acted under Hammond's orders.
At the sentencing hearing in January eighteen sixty five, Hammond
was confident he would be returning to Laurel House for
dinner with his faithful Emily, relying on his generosity in
agreeing to a legal separation from Rosalind and in allowing

(30:40):
her half the annuity that she had brought to the marriage.
But his mute defense cut no mustard, and he was
sentenced to twelve months hard labor in Wandsworth Prison. Hammond
moved with him went his children, and also Emily Wakeman,
who remained with the family in some capacity for the
rest of her life. Even if Hammond had wished to

(31:03):
marry the girl, it would prove impossible, as Roslind remained
resolutely alive until eighteen ninety six. Rosalind lived alone in
various lodging houses on the Isle of Wight and in
South London. She was deprived of her child, Emily Rosalind,
who remained with her father. She also had to relinquish

(31:24):
half her annuity, for it would not be until eighteen
eighty two that a woman was legally entitled to keep
the money that she had brought to a marriage. On
her death, Rosalind was buried in the family grave in
Norwood Cemetery, leaving a poultry seventy six pounds to a
Reverend John Beresford. Although people living in medieval Europe knew

(31:59):
a lot more of the wider world than many initially think,
with strong trade links in Asia and northern Africa, they
were still intrigued about what lay beyond the land known
to man, and stories of mythical creatures abounded. One such
creature which fascinated for centuries was the Blemy. These creatures

(32:21):
were said to be a type of man who lived
in Africa, but they did not have a head. Rather,
their face appeared on their chest their shoulders above them.
The Blemys were in fact a real African people, forming
a nomadic kingdom in northern Nubia between six hundred BC
and three hundred AD. Even from their early origins, however,

(32:44):
stories were told of their headless nature. Herodotus, who lived
between four eighty four and four twenty five BC, wrote
in his histories that they were known as the Akafaeloi,
or those without a head, and that they lived on
the eastern edge of Libya. A few centuries later, in
circa forty five AD, Mela, a Roman geographer, wrote that

(33:07):
the Blemy lived in Africa and had their faces in
their chests, and this was confirmed by Pliny the Elder,
who said the tribe had no heads, their mouths and
eyes being seated in their breasts, and located them in
Ethiopia or Nubia. The stories of these strange headless men
continued long after the real Blemy tribe was gone. In

(33:30):
medieval Europe. Drawings of these creatures can be found in
manuscripts and in the extremities of world maps charting the unknown.
The drawing of a Blemy features in an Anglo Saxon
manuscript in the British Library dating to circa ten twenty five,
and Blemys are also found on the Herford Mappa Mundi
of thirteen hundred. The largest medieval map to still exist

(33:55):
Isidore of Seville, who lived from five sixty to six
thirty six Adylanes in his Etymologies, people believe that in Libya,
blemy are born as trunks without heads, and have their
mouth and eyes on their chest. Others born without necks
have their eyes on their shoulders. As the centuries progressed,

(34:16):
stories of the blemys continued and they moved with the
boundaries of exploration. In the late medieval period, some are
shown as being in India, such as on the fourteen
thirty six Andreo Bianco map. As the sixteenth century arrived
and the discovery of the Americas began, the blemys moved

(34:36):
across the seas. Ottoman Admiral pieriy Rice placed a blemy
on his fifteen thirteen world map near the coast of
Brazil and put a description next to the drawing. He
said the blemys grew to around five foot three inches,
their eyes were close together, but that they were harmless.
In fifteen ninety six, Sir Walter Rawley wrote a book

(34:58):
about his journey to Guyana, where he reports that there
was a nation of people whose heads appear not above
their shoulders, who are reported to have their eyes in
their shoulders and their mouths in the middle of their breasts,
and that a long train of hair grows backward between
their shoulders. Although Raleigh did not see these people for himself,

(35:19):
he decided that the stories were truthful, as everyone he
met there confirmed it. So why did people believe these
stories for so long and where did it originate from?
Numerous theories have been centered on the idea that the
original Blemy warriors may have carried shields with faces on them,

(35:39):
or that they marched with their heads tucked close to
their chests. Others make links with how some types of ape,
such as the Bonobo, sit with their shoulders hunched up
head down, and suggest various tribespeople may have sat similarly,
or that the apes themselves were the origin. The mythology

(36:01):
of human creatures with their faces in their chests spanned
over a thousand years and found its way into aspects
of culture in the West, from adorning maps and manuscripts
and churches, to being reported as scientific fact to appearing
in literature including Shakespeare. The Blimy fascinated Europe. They were

(36:23):
a symbol of something other that could be found in
the margins of the civilized world, strange creatures on the
edge of truth, and even now they continue to intrigue
us today when we'd darkness returns, the most famous being
the Grim Reaper. Dark hooded entities seem to be relatively

(36:47):
common in the reports of ghosts. Like beings, they can
be intimidating, foreboding, and downright terrifying. One man's experience didn't
stop with only one encounter. In fact, they haven't stopped
at all. And a couple have a fight, one of
them leaves the home to cool off. It's something that

(37:08):
happens every day in every town and city. It's simply
how some couples have to work through things. But in
one case, thirty two years later, the woman who left
to cool off has yet to return and her family
is still waiting. It's a scenario that plays out every

(37:52):
day in the real world. A couple have a fight
and one of them leaves to cool off. However, in
this case, thirty two years later, her family is still
waiting for her to return. Elizabeth Anne Campbell was born
on May thirty first, nineteen sixty seven, to Tom and

(38:13):
sam Soon Campbell. She was the youngest of five children
and grew up in a very close knit family who
resided in Lampasas, Texas. Elizabeth was said to have led
a quiet, sheltered life and was very close with her mother.
She was a month shy of her twenty first birthday,
and she was attending Central Texas College in nearby Colleen, Texas,

(38:35):
along with her boyfriend, Ricky Ray. She had plans to
attend Texas A and M in the fall to study
marine biology. Then, on April twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine,
which started out to be just an ordinary Monday for Elizabeth,
would end in a horrible way that no one could
have ever imagined. Elizabeth was working a shift at a

(38:57):
seven to eleven convenience store on Rand Avenue in Colleen, Texas.
Her boyfriend came that night to pick her up after
her shift ended. The couple had planned on studying together
that night for some upcoming tests at college. There was
an argument concerning some things related to Elizabeth's job as
well as Ricky wanted to study English that night and

(39:19):
Elizabeth wanted to study trigonometry. The argument apparently got heated
enough that Elizabeth wanted to leave Ricky's house, so she
phoned her mother for a ride. Ricky was heard by
Elizabeth's family in the background promising that he would give
her a ride home, so her mother didn't make the drive.
Elizabeth is said to have walked outside of Ricky's house,

(39:40):
thinking he would soon join her and drive her home. However,
Ricky never came outside, so angrily Elizabeth started to walk
home on her own. Unfortunately, her house was thirty miles away.
Exactly what happened next is unclear. Elizabeth had left Rickey's

(40:01):
house in Colleen and then gone from there to near
Central Texas College CTC in Colleen. Police believed that Elizabeth
probably got a ride to travel that distance in that
amount of time, but no one has ever come forward
to confirm that. The next sighting of Elizabeth was when
a fellow student of CTC said he witnessed her walking

(40:23):
down a service road near the college. He was working
late at the computer lab that night and saw her
on his way home. He said he didn't personally know Elizabeth,
but recognized her from college. He stated he gave Elizabeth
a ride to a seven to eleven in Coppera's Cove,
about seventeen miles from her house, where witnesses did report

(40:43):
seeing a green gremlin drop her off. She then went
inside to use the phone to call Ricky to ask
him to give her a ride. This was approximately forty
five minutes after Elizabeth left and eleven miles away from
Rickey's house. Elizabeth said she was scared. The couple argued
again about her leaving, and during the fight he refused

(41:04):
to pick her up, so she hung up. She told
him she was going to call her family to come
get her. She knew that would be a long distance call,
so she used the payphone outside the seven eleven to
try to reach them. Around midnight, Elizabeth's mother said the
phone did ring. She had turned the phone off in
the bedroom, so by the time she got to the

(41:25):
other phone in the house it had stopped ringing. Presumably,
judging by the time and the situation, the mist call
was from Elizabeth. What happens next is the biggest unknown
of this case. No one ever sees or hears from
Elizabeth again after she is sided at the phone booth
outside the seven eleven, except one witness who claims to

(41:48):
have seen her leave the seven eleven and get in
a maroon car with a Landau roof. Although there is
never another confirmed sighting of Elizabeth, many people over the
next several months will report that they have seen her
in a variety of locations and situations. The family didn't
realize that Elizabeth was even gone until the following morning,

(42:11):
when she wasn't in her bedroom. They phoned her boyfriend Ricky.
He didn't know where she was exactly, but thought she'd
probably gone to her sister's apartment at the CTC Housing complex.
When she wasn't there, her family tried to report her
missing with the police right away, they were told they
could not because it had only been twelve hours. The

(42:32):
family was reportedly told conflicting things by the police, such
as they had to wait twenty four, forty eight or
seventy two hours to report her as a missing person,
depending on who they talked to. The family felt the
police were not as proactive as they could be, and
some didn't even think Elizabeth was missing at all, but

(42:52):
was an adult who chose to leave. The family then
sprang into action on their own. They did absolutely everything
to try to track their loved one down. They initially
hired a PI, but it was getting to be expensive
and they felt they could do just as good of
a job. Elizabeth's father then takes a lengthy leave of
absence from his job to help in the search. Over

(43:15):
the years, they sell property, cattle, stocks, land, jewelry, in
anything they had of any value to help fund the
search for their beloved daughter. The family distributed flyers, made
countless phone calls, traveled anywhere there was thought to be
a sighting, and even went to some very seedy and
dangerous locations. Elizabeth's mother, Sam Soon refused to sleep in

(43:39):
a bed for the first one and a half months
after her daughter went missing, because if her daughter was suffering,
she would be too. There was even a bizarre phone
call made to a worker at the Lampasses Hospital the
week after she went missing, asking if the ambulance carrying
Elizabeth's body had arrived at the hospital yet Also Tom

(43:59):
came Amble. Elizabeth's father is said to have hounded the
television show Unsolved Mysteries until they agreed to do a
segment on Elizabeth's disappearance. After the segment aired in November
of nineteen eighty nine, there were two hundred phone calls
of possible sightings. Just six days after Elizabeth disappeared, there
was a possible sighting in Waco, Texas, eighty five miles

(44:22):
from where she disappeared. The witness at the gas station
said the woman was with a rough looking Asian man
who held the female by the wrist and spoke in
a foreign language. The woman kept looking down and would
not make eye contact. The second sighting was two weeks
after the disappearance, just two miles from where she vanished.
The clerk at the convenience store said a woman resembling

(44:44):
Elizabeth was with an angry looking Asian man who was
holding her by the wrist. It appeared the woman was
not allowed to talk. The third siding was two months
after Elizabeth vanished and was in Garland, Texas, one hundred
and fifty miles from where she went. Miss the Lady
bumped into a woman as they were entering a convenience store.

(45:04):
The woman appeared to be nervous and hurried to get
back to the car with the man inside. She's convinced
the woman she encountered was Elizabeth. The police didn't really
put too much confidence into these sightings. They did say, however,
that at the time there was an underworld pipeline that
supplies Asian prostitutes from Colleen to Dallas and Houston. Elizabeth

(45:29):
was attractive and was half Korean, so she could have
been a target. But there was no actual evidence to
support it that. In May of nineteen ninety two, there
was a possible development in the case that gave Elizabeth's
family renewed hope. Briefly four years after her disappearance, her
purse was discovered in the Crockett County Sheriff's Department, more

(45:51):
than two hundred miles from where she was last seen.
What at first gave the family hope soon turned into
anger and frustration. It was revealed that the purse had
actually been in the evidence room of the Crockett County
Sheriff's Department since between April twenty fifth, nineteen eighty eight,
to January nineteen eighty nine, shortly after Elizabeth had disappeared.

(46:14):
So someone apparently found the purse around Azona, Texas, and
turned it in, where it was put in an evidence
room and completely forgotten. There was no record made of
who found it and exactly when and where it was found.
There were too many fingerprints on the purse to be
of any help, and it didn't appear to have been
out in the elements for any amount of time. The

(46:36):
only reason it was discovered in nineteen ninety two was
a new deputy had arrived and was going through the
evidence room for things to be auctioned at the annual
Alliance Club auction when the deputy saw what was inside
the purse her driver's license, military ID, and bank statements.
He ran the information and discovered she was still missing
and alerted Coppera's cove PD. Barbara Campbell also stated in

(47:00):
her radio interview that she actually visited the Crockett County
sheriff two years after her sister went missing. She gave
him a missing person flyer and talked to him about
the purse and what might be in it. All the
while during this conversation, she was apparently mere feet away
from the evidence room where her sister's purse was sitting
and had already been turned in. She angrily confronted the

(47:23):
new sheriff in nineteen ninety two when this came to light,
and he seemed to put the blame on the former,
now deceased sheriff and was never given a satisfactory answer.
There is another possible theory as to what happened to
Elizabeth Campbell that is not widely mentioned in discussions about her.
There's no concrete proof or evidence to support this, but

(47:45):
it could be related to serial killer Robert Ben Rhodes,
dubbed the truck stop Killer. He was thought to have
been active from nineteen seventy five to nineteen ninety. He
was an over the road truck driver and was known
to be in the vicinity during his routes, near where
Elizabeth went missing. His first victim's body was even disposed

(48:07):
of near a Zona, Texas, where Elizabeth's purse was later discovered.
His first murder wasn't discovered until nineteen ninety, but he
has claimed his crimes went back fifteen years. In the
research by the Police cross referencing roads trucking logs with
records of young women who went missing during the years
he was active, it's thought he could have had as

(48:28):
many as fifty victims. His semi was said to have
been a traveling torture chamber, and he usually picked up
young female hitchhikers as well as trucks dot prostitutes. In
nineteen ninety four, he was convicted of three of the
murders and is currently serving a life sentence at the
Minard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois. There seems to have

(48:50):
been a lot of regrets from Elizabeth's loved ones in
the years since her disappearance, which is understandable. Had the
family known Elizabeth needed a ride home that night, they
would have certainly been there for her. Her brother was
driving around Colleen visiting friends at the time, and one
of her sisters was actually working at a seven to
eleven in Colleen that night across town. The missed phone

(49:13):
call at her parents' house was just a very unfortunate
circumstance that happened by accident. I'm sure Elizabeth's then boyfriend, Ricky,
also regrets his actions that night in refusing on two
occasions to give her a ride home. He's quoted at
the time in a newspaper article as saying, I was
thinking of myself. I was a stupid ass. Ricky was

(49:37):
never really viewed as a suspect in his girlfriend's disappearance.
He had witnesses who verified where he was that night,
and he also passed a polygraph test. The eyewitness sightings
are interesting, but it doesn't seem likely that someone who
abducted someone and had an interest in trafficking them and
stripping them of their identity would parade them out in

(49:58):
public spaces so soon after, especially after the missing flyers
had been put up, it would make sense they would
want to keep her isolated. Elizabeth had already accepted a
ride that night with someone she didn't know, so it's
entirely possible she accepted another ride, hoping to get from
Coppera's Cove to her home in Lampass, but sadly came

(50:22):
to harm then. Even though Elizabeth was angry that night,
I don't believe she left with the intention of staying gone.
She had made a few phone calls to try and
solicit a ride and seemed eager to return home. Plus,
there was a PEA check that was never picked up,
and there has been no bank account or credit card
activity since she disappeared. Elizabeth Campbell's family still to this day,

(50:47):
works day and night to find out answers as to
what happened to their loved one. Her mother is in
fragile health but will never stop her fight. When Elizabeth
went missing, in her room, she found rapped Birthday and
Motherday gifts to her from her daughter, which she still
refuses to open. Her logic behind that is simple. She

(51:07):
wants her daughter to see her expression when she opens
up her gifts, so she's saving them until she's reunited
with her beloved daughter. The family also has a makeshift
memorial to Elizabeth in the living room of their home. Sadly,
Elizabeth's father, Tom Campbell, passed away in twenty eighteen, still
heartbroken over his missing daughter. Tom's quote in the Unsolved

(51:30):
Mysteries segment regarding if she'd been brainwashed and forced to
be on the streets is very poignant. She's our daughter,
not what somebody's tried to make her. She'll always be
our little girl. The Campbell family is undeterred in their
fight to find their loved one and return her to
those that love her. I hope they can get all

(51:52):
the answers one day and finally know whether Elizabeth's disappearance
was the result of trafficking or tragedy. This black cloaked

(52:15):
hooded entity has visited me at least four times in
my life. I believe it all began after I bought
a kid's puzzle game that showed a black cloaked hooded
entity skeleton and a black cloak with an A symbol
on its skulls forehead and the title is Alchemist in
September nineteen ninety seven, when I was a kid, I

(52:38):
was watching an episode of Zoro on TV with my mother.
When Zoro became a black cloaked hero to scare his enemies,
he made this sound oooooo. That night, at four am,
I was awake on my bed when the bedroom door
opened and I heard this exact same sound. But I
knew the TV was turned off and everyone was sleeping.

(53:01):
I knew this sounded crazy, but it was real. I
stood up on my bed to see outside the door,
and I knew that it was a real ghost this time,
but it was too dark that I did not see anything,
but I know that something was there. I tried to
ignore it and lay back down on my bed and
closed my eyes to sleep. Suddenly I became paralyzed and

(53:24):
could not move while I could hear a strange sound
that sounded like a high pitched airplane engine, and I
could see a pathway image in my head as if
I was moving at a very high speed. It was terrifying,
or perhaps this entity had the power to control my emotions.
I was frightened to the point I was able to
get control on my hands, so I rubbed my eyes

(53:46):
very fast to get the image away, but then I
became paralyzed again. However, the image and sound were gone,
and a new image appeared that showed a tree and
grassland with two people who were talking about something. I
was not frightened anymore, so I smiled to show the
ghost that I was not afraid. So the image disappeared

(54:07):
and I was able to open my eyes and move again.
It seemed that the ghost had a power over me
when I was afraid, but when I was not afraid
of it, then the ghost could not do much. The
next incident happened in nineteen ninety eight. When I was
playing a video game. At the corner of the reflective
frame of the screen of the TV, I could see

(54:29):
something moving behind me. It looked like the black cloaked,
hooded figure with a bit of white skull inside the hood.
I looked back, but did not see anything. I was
then overcome with a rancid smell, as if something dead
and rotting for days was in my bedroom. I investigated
to see if there was a dead rat in my bedroom,

(54:51):
but I already knew that that was impossible since I
lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building and
I had never seen a rat in my apartment. Incident
happened late at night, I could not sleep because I
was hungry, so I went to the kitchen to find
myself something to eat. While I was slicing some sausage,
I caught something out of the corner of my eye

(55:12):
outside the door of the kitchen. It looked as if
there was a transparent, black cloaked, hooded figure with no legs,
no arms, and no face moving above the floor at
a fast speed, while it's hood was staring down as
if it was looking down while walking. I wasn't very scared,
but I knew something was there as it moved from

(55:34):
left to right outside the kitchen doorway. The last incident
occurred in August twenty thirteen, more than fifteen years after
the first incident. I'm not a kid anymore, and it's
been a long time since this black cloaked, hooded entity
visited me, but I think it still remembers me, and
this is why it came back to see me. I

(55:56):
could hear the ghost making that same sound oOoOO oooo,
just like the first incident back in nineteen ninety seven
when I was a kid. This time, however, I could
also feel what I believed to be two hands shaking
on my blanket. Very fast, and I could hear the
sound of chain rattling, as if both of my entity's

(56:16):
arms were wrapped in chain. It's as if this entity
was once a prisoner or something and it had been executed,
which would explain the chain. I could also smell that
same rancid smell of a dead body, like the second
incident in nineteen ninety eight. Again, I was able to
open my eyes, and I wasn't very scared, but I

(56:36):
saw something that looked like the transparent, black cloaked, hooded entity,
floating in mid air with no legs, no arms, and
no face. To my surprise, it was much smaller than
what I expected. I was expecting to see it standing
next to my bed and looking larger than normal human size,
but it looked smaller and moved freely in midas. I

(57:01):
think this was the first time I was able to
see this entity much clearer than before. It seemed to
me that this black cloaked, hooded ghost or entity was
not as threatening or evil as I expected it to be.
I don't know if it's evil or not, but it
was not threatening yet at the same time could be
frightening too. The lesson I learned is that if you

(57:25):
can control yourself and prove or show the entity that
you're not afraid of it, then this entity cannot do
anything to you. At the same time, however, never even
challenge it or offend it, because perhaps it could also
be dangerous if it gets angry. We cannot underestimate this entity.

(57:47):
I would never recommend anyone to offend this entity because
we might never know its full capability or what it
can do to us. From what I've learned, Satanists and
many devil worshipers would normally wear this black cloak with
a hood during the Satanic ritual, while some Christian priests
would wear a brown cloak with a hood. I suspect

(58:08):
that it could be the ghost of the Satanists who
was prosecuted and executed by the Church for following Satanism
during the medieval times. Also, a friend once told me
that near where I live, there's a small hill where
Satanists used to perform the Satanic ritual. If you made

(58:32):
it this far, welcome to the Weirdo Family. If you
liked this episode, please cheer it on your social media
or tell a friend or family member about the podcast
and maybe they'll become a Weirdo Family Member too. All
stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless
stated otherwise, and you could find source links or links
to the authors in the show notes. The Gorman Dogfight

(58:55):
was by Colin Bertram for history dot Com. Beware the
Headless Bleming is by Jemma Holman for just History Posts.
The black hooded figure that Haunts Me is by Stephen
Wagner for Live About. Imprisoned in her own room by
her husband is from London Overlooked, and the Elizabeth Campbell
Mystery is from Heathergrup for Lost and Found Blogs. Weird

(59:19):
Darkness theme by Alibi Music. And now that we're coming
out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light.
John Chapter fourteen, Verse twenty seven. Peace I leave with
you my peace I give you. I do not give
to you as the world gives. Do not let your
hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid. And a

(59:40):
final thought, don't ask God to guide your footsteps if
you're not willing to move your feet. I'm Darren Marler.
Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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