Harvard's Secret Experiment Opened a Door To Another Dimension That Should Have Stayed Closed

I was just a janitor mopping floors when a Harvard professor invited me to witness history – the opening of the first wormhole. What came next cost me fifteen years of nightmares.

IN THIS EPISODE: It’s Thriller Thursday! This week - “The Artist” by C.J. Henderson *** “The Harvard Wormhole Experiment” by Nathaniel Lewis *** “The Itch” by Weirdo family member Mark Towse 

YOUTUBE CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:05.760 = “The Artist” by C.J. Henderson
00:16:35.736 = *** “The Harvard Wormhole Experiment” by Nathaniel Lewis
00:40:08.187 = *** “The Itch” by Mark Towse
00:50:13.177 = Show Close

SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…
“The Artist” by C.J. Henderson: http://bit.ly/2EIdZFQ
“The Harvard Wormhole Experiment” by Nathaniel Lewis: http://bit.ly/2EEl1vp
“The Itch” by Weirdo family member Mark Towse – submitted at https://WeirdDarkness.com
Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library.
= = = = =
(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
= = = = =
"I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46
= = = = =
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.
= = = = =
Originally aired: June, 2021

CUSTOM LANDING PAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/HarvardWormholeExperiment

#WeirdDarkness #HorrorStory #WormholeExperiment #CosmicHorror #ScaryStories #GovernmentCoverUp #Paranormal #HorrorPodcast #CreepyStories #Interdimensional

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome, Weirdos. I'm taraon Marler, and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,
the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.
Coming up in this episode, I'm sharing three incredible stories

(00:30):
of fiction. I have the Harvard Wormhole Experiment by Nathaniel Lewis,
plus Weirdo family member Mark Taus sent in a story
titled The Itch. But we begin with a creepypasta, The
Artist by C. J. Henderson. Now bult your doors, lock
your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me

(00:53):
into the weird Darkness. There's this painting my wife loves,
called Death and Life by Clint. I don't know what

(01:14):
she finds so fascinating about it. I made all the
right noises when she showed me her beloved framed print.
When we were first dating, ooing and eyeing and making
up some crap about warm and cold color schemes and
the specific choice of angles and line. She was an artist.
Our first few dates involved long walks through museums. It

(01:37):
took an art history course as an elective. When I
was finishing up my doctorate. I remembered enough of the
lingo to charm my fantastically gorgeous future wife and lure
her back to my stupidly filthy apartment. We're talking me
as the foul bachelor frog, sitting on a lily pad
made of empty takeout containers, surrounded by a pond of

(02:00):
enough unwashed clothes to keep a laundromat in business for
a cool six months. I remember scrambling to find two
of any sort of cup like container for the bottle
of wine we had brought back. While she was in
the bathroom. I wrenched out a couple of coffee mugs
and ran into the bedroom to try and clean things
up on the bed, neatly laid out against the rest

(02:20):
of the chaos where my wife's dress, bra and panties.
She came out of the bathroom completely nude aside from
a pair of high heels, took the wine from me,
and took a swig straight from the bottle. I fell totally,
completely and irrevocably in love. I have no head for

(02:40):
artistic things. I work in finance. I get creative with numbers,
not paint. But I love her stuff. She's made a
name for herself over the past few years. Critics call
her the American Damien Hurst. One of her first exhibits
was composed of a dozen oil paintings of rotting pastries
surround an actual cake filled with thousands of dead ladybugs

(03:04):
being fed to a mummified tarantula dressed up as little
Miss Muffett. I have no idea what it meant, but
it was sick, successful and catered by Balthazar. So I
ate about twenty croissants. They did not have bugs in them.
I checked. She was amazing. She had the body of
a laker girl and the face of a model, and

(03:26):
still does. She's charming, charismatic, deep, the kind of person
people flock to want to be around constantly. She was
great in the bedroom, too, like she had something to prove.
She had a twisted sense of humor as well. As
soon as I hooked a job with enough figures to
keep a girl like that satisfied the way she should be,

(03:46):
I proposed bought her a historical brownstone in the city
with a garden full of roses and hardwood mahogany floors,
And for the first few years she seemed happy. We
were the kind of couple you see in New York
magazine and scoff at because they're just too damn lucky.
But we had a rough spot, like all married couples do.

(04:07):
She was still superficially the same woman I fell in
love with, looking amazing. People always asked me when she
was going to host the next dinner party. She still
had an amazing eye for art, I knew, though I
knew she was miserable. I could see it, the misery
in the corners of her eyes and the curve of

(04:28):
her mouth. It happened gradually. First it was the shower curtain.
She bought three or four of them from a small
boutique downtown, brought them home so we could choose one
out together. We decided on one, peel blue, made of
material that was impractical and way too expensive for a
drapery in a bathroom, But we had the money and

(04:50):
it made her happy, so why the heck not. A
few days later, I was shaving and realized she still
hadn't put the curtain up. It wasn't until a about
a month after that I caught a glimpse of it
hanging up in her studio, cut to shreds and died
till it was almost unrecognizable. I chose to ignore it

(05:11):
because I had learned it's usually not the best course
of action to call an artist out on their creative license,
unless you want to start an all out war with
no discernible end. A year after that, though I had
no choice. She had been so on edge it was
like she was standing on a razor. She usually had
a show every three or four months or so, and

(05:33):
if anything, she had too many ideas. The galleries always
asked her to trim down her collections. When the year
passed without so much as a single finished painting, I
started to worry both about her well being and our
bank account. We were extravagant spenders, and each of her
shows would bring in a cool twenty thousand dollars that

(05:55):
paid for a few months of European beaches and ski
trips in Aspen. The final straw, though, it was when
she burned down the roses. Turned out she had finished
dozens of projects over the year. She hated all of
it and had either destroyed or painted over everything. While
I was at the office, she flew off the handle,

(06:16):
doused about sixteen canvases and lighter fluid and set the
yard on fire. When I got the call from the
fire department, I rushed home to find her sitting in
the back of the ambulance, covered in ashes, blonde hair
singed at the ends. She was smoking a cigarette. I
looked over the burnt flowers, the skeletons of her paintings,

(06:37):
the ruined limbs of broken sculptures, and asked her what
happened and why. She took a drag of the cigarette
and said it was mine to burn. She took big,
fancy pictures of the inferno, a family of bunnies suffocated
in the smoke. She had them stuffed and mounted in

(06:58):
size order on a baking so of allocano, like the
kindyes see in middle school science fairs. She gathered up
a few of the charred bits and pieces, wired it together,
and made some warped, pained looking kind of phoenix thing,
weighing in at four hundred pounds and easily over eight
feet high. She called the whole thing from the ashes,

(07:19):
and the reviews in the Times called it incendiary, her
first foray into becoming a true artist. Someone bought the phoenix.
I pity the person who wakes up every day and
looks at that strange thing suspended in constant agony. We
were both drunk at a random, expensive, vaguely Dante's Inferno

(07:42):
themed bar in San Francisco when I finally got a
chance to ask her what was bothering her. We'd been
making dark jokes all night about the beautiful irony of
her show and our current locale. At first, she vehemently
denied anything was wrong, angrily pointing out that we had
made four times as much off her last show as

(08:02):
anything before it, that it had more than covered the
damages that it had paid for the vacation we were on.
I stayed silent. She tossed her newly cropped hair and
looked like she was going to open up. For a second,
I saw her soft blue eyes fill with tears. Then
she took a shot of whiskey from a glass that

(08:23):
had a bull's head and smirked. Well for starters, she
slurred nonchalantly, dangling the glass from the bull's nose, ring
I am fairly certain I'm pregnant. She let the glass
drop from her finger and it shattered on the floor
as she slid out of her seat and stumbled to
the exit. I sat there for a while and drank more,

(08:45):
feeling furious, confused, and miserable. I remembered her face when
she showed me that climt painting. I remembered how she
wore glasses back then, and how she pushed them up
the bridge of her nose when she smiled as I
talked to the warm and cold colors and the angles
and the lines. We converted her studio into a nursery. Rather,

(09:08):
I did while she stayed in San Francisco and did
god knows what with her artist friends. I had a
landscaper come in and replant the roses. I worked a
lot of overtime, drank myself to sleep while I skimmed
through parenting books. She came back when she was almost
full term. I came home from work one night to

(09:29):
find sonogram pictures posted all over the fridge of two
healthy looking twins, big baby girls. I walked into our
bedroom and saw her dead asleep on top of the covers,
belly swollen, smelling faintly like pot and paint thinner. She
had a rainbow of dried paint on her fingertips. I

(09:50):
loosened my tie and walked to the nursery. She had
been busy. The canary yellow I had chosen was covered
in a layer of translucent blue, and she covered one
wall in climped esque patterns and curly cues. The creamy
plush carpet was covered in paint splatters. She'd worked furiously
to finish it. She had cut a swathe from one

(10:13):
of the new rose bushes and made a giant bouquet,
shoving them so tightly in the vase that some had
escaped and made their way from their perch on the
changing table to the floor. She had scattered them in
the bacinete on the windowsill. It was chaotic and beautiful.
The next few years were peaceful for the most part.

(10:35):
We bonded over raising the girls, despite my wife's less
than careful prenatal preparation. They were wickedly smart and beautiful.
They both looked like her, with long, curly blonde ringlets
and blue eyes. Sometimes when I put them to bed,
I wondered if any of my DNA was in them
at all. They were like miniature versions of her. My

(10:58):
wife agreed to see a psychiatrist for a little bit.
She took some medication for a while, xanax, some mood stabilizers. Eventually,
she and her doctor decided her crisis had been hormonal
and temporary. We started having dinner parties again, soothed the
gossip that had infected our social circles. She stopped painting

(11:18):
and took up teaching at a university. She seemed content again,
even happier than she was before. Every once in a while,
I'd catch a look in her eyes, like repressed artillery fire,
like she was ready to explode at any second, But
it never lasted for longer than a few seconds before
they went back to the soft, cornflower blue. I knew

(11:41):
so well, and who doesn't get a little agitated every
once in a while. I rose through the ranks at work.
I loved the feeling of power that came with promotions.
I loved my girls, and by God, I loved her,
my crazy, disgusting, beautiful, hateful and loving, extraordinary wife. Then

(12:03):
came today today. I came home from work early today.
My wife took the day off to be a chaperone
on a class trip to the met They were after
her four months because of her expertise in the art world.
They wanted the children to experience the culture in the
most sophisticated way possible. I thought it was ridiculous. They

(12:26):
were one to three year olds in a private daycare.
They saw more beauty and cheerios than in Monet's water lilies.
But they wore my wife down, and she was given
a gaggle of toddlers and wide eye teachers to tour
around the museum. I came home for lunch because I
had forgotten my iPad that had notes on it for
a presentation I was giving that night. I walked through

(12:48):
the rose garden and noticed a tiny piece of sculpture
left over from the Ashes exhibit from so long ago.
It was half of a tiny bird. It had the
kind of exquisite detail that my my wife used to
be so famous for. I was pretty sure it was
an actual bird that she had cast in clay. I
thought I could see a small piece of feather in

(13:10):
one of the cracks. I idly wondered why I hadn't
noticed that before. I went inside and poured myself a
glass of orange juice. The fridge had pictures that my
daughters drew, happy crooked stick figures that looked nothing like
the beautiful horrors their mother used to churn out. I
was happy about that. I hoped they would fall in

(13:31):
love with numbers like I did. It was absolutely silent,
and I sipped the sweet citrus and enjoyed the nothingness.
And then I thought I had caught a vague scent
of fresh paint in the air. Curious, I walked into
the living room and there was my wife, sitting on
the leather couch with a bottle of wine, looking like

(13:52):
an angel of death. She was covered head to toe
in blue gray body paint, with a special concentration underneath
her eyes. She was wearing a revealing patchwork blue dress
covered in crosses of various shapes and sizes. Not a dress,
I realized, but the shredded shower curtain from so many
years ago. I could see most of her still perfect breasts,

(14:16):
the curve of her waist. The bottle of wine was
elongated and painted a strange shade of orange. The smell
of paint was stronger in here, an overwhelming smell of
lighter fluid, and something else I couldn't place. She had
shaven her head. I stared at her for a while, minutes,
maybe an hour. Eventually she took a swig of wine

(14:39):
from the bottle, swirling it around in her mouth. I
noticed paint deep blues and even deeper reds around her fingers.
I sat down in the armchair across from her, unable
to think of what exactly I wanted to ask her,
Maybe because I knew, maybe because I didn't want to know.
I noticed a camera on the table between us. I

(15:02):
went to pick it up, and she rested her gray
hand on mine. Before I could, softly, gently, with all
the familiarity of years of marriage, she opened her mouth
to speak, soft pink lips made pallid by the paint.
They were mine. And I've been sitting here, knowing what's
behind the door to my daughter's room with the climped

(15:23):
wall we never repainted, Knowing why my phone keeps ringing
with calls from the school, from the NYPD, Knowing why
I couldn't find my sleeping pills last night, Knowing what
that smell is, Seeing in my peripheral, the red pooling
and staining the carpet from underneath the floor, the pile

(15:44):
of clothes neatly folded next to my wife on the couch.
I can picture that thick wire she used to fit
all of her subjects, where she wanted them. What a perfect,
detailed recreation it must be, because she's so perfect. I
see the phoenix in my mind's eye. I hope when

(16:05):
she flicks that cigarette she's about to light, we both burn,
keep listening when we return. I have the story the
Harvard Wormhole Experiment by Nathaniel Lewis. They gave me a

(16:44):
million bucks to keep my trap shut, and I did
for fifteen years. But last night I was making the
rounds and I saw the Professor again. I had a
heart attack three years back, and I tell you when
I saw him standing there in front of Room two
four or I felt another one coming on. He turned
and smiled, and it was like he hadn't aged a

(17:06):
day in fifteen years. Here you there, chief, he said,
and that was it. I dropped my clipboard on the
ground and high tailed it out of there, never looking back.
What I'm about to tell you is liable to make
me sound crazier than a three horned goat. But I
promise you there is crazier things out there. The cops

(17:27):
don't believe me. The official story is that the professor
and those students died fifteen years ago. Room two O
four just up and exploded. They said, damned his thing,
And there's some truth there. That room did explode, but
it wasn't an accident. We knew exactly what we were doing,

(17:49):
or we thought we did. They call me an assistant
supervisor of maintenance, but really I'm a janitor and always
have been. If you might wonder why I'm still at
it after getting that million bucks. That does for Junior
so he doesn't have to go through the same stuff
I did. The night this happened, I was assigned to

(18:09):
the Astrophysics Center, a bit northwest of the main Harvard campus.
Until that night. This was always my favorite beat. I mean,
God to help you if you wound up at one
of the biology labs. Those damn dead, cut open animals
all over the place used to give me nightmares, and really,
thinking back, I'd take those nightmares of mutilated and scattered

(18:32):
organs any night over the stuff that's haunted me ever since. Anyway,
I was there mopping the hallway on the second floor
of the lab building when the door to room two
A four opened up and this guy popped his head out.
Hey you, I looked around to make sure that he
was talking to me. Yeah, can I help you? Sir,

(18:53):
I thought he was going to complain about the room
being a mess or something. How would you like to
make a thousand bucks, chief, an hour's work at most?
Easy money? Does that sound good to you? It sure did.
Things were tight at home, as they always were. A
thousand would knock off some of those long overdue bills.
But I was also on a tight schedule. They didn't

(19:13):
give you much breathing room. Don't want to standing around
thinking about it, all, I guess. And that sounds great, Sir,
I said, But I got a stick to my beat.
The man laughed, Who're about to make history, Chief, and
you're worried about emptying the bathroom trash? Come on, don't
sweat it. You won't get in trouble. I promise. I'm
a professor here. I'll vouch for you. The guy did

(19:35):
look like a professor, with carefully combed gray hair and
big old glasses on his face. I shrugged, leaned my
mop against the wall, and said, sure, what do I
have to do? That's fantastic? Come on in, Chief, come
on in. I followed him into the room. One look,
and I should have just turned around then and there

(19:57):
and told him to keep his stinking money. I didn't.
As soon as I stepped in, I felt the little
hairs all over my body. Stand up. I don't mean
I was scared. I mean there was an electrical charge
in that room, and I had a guess about where
it was coming from. There in the center of the room,
on a round table was a large glass globe crackling

(20:19):
with electricity, like what you see if you go into
a kid's science museum, Like they somehow created a lightning
storm in a glass ball. This one was sort of
vibrating around on its stand and buzzing, and the lightning
inside was black. I could feel the electricity coming from
it from across the room. There were four kids there, students,

(20:42):
I guessed, sitting in a row of chairs along one wall.
More than sitting, they were strapped into those chairs with
metal things over their heads, like those big bowl things
you see at a hair salon. And they all had
their eyes closed. Uh. I said, what's going on here?
Those kids? Okay, they're quite fine, said the professor. As

(21:04):
to what's going on? As I said, we're about to
make history. We're going to open the first wormhole. Wormhole,
I said, like in the movies, The professor laughed. I
suppose so, Chief. Now listen, we had a last minute cancelation.
But that's okay, because it's an easy job. We're going
to be kicking things off here shortly, and once they're

(21:27):
properly kicked off, the wormhole will open. I will enter
if I'm not back in thirty minutes. You are to
pull that lever there, and that will close the wormhole.
I looked to where he was pointing at a big
red lever attached to a giant whirring machine that was
hooked up to the metal bowls over these students' heads.
But won't you be trapped on the other side of

(21:49):
the wormhole? I asked, not that I had the slightest
idea what the hell was going on? Just so, Chief,
said the professor. We've left this down to two possibilities. One,
the wormhole opens to what we're calling a second universe.
The best way that I can explain this possibility is
that there's a different reality that exists on the other
side of this one, the other side of an invisible wall.

(22:12):
The wormhole will provide a door in that wall. And
the other possibility that the wormhole will open to a
place that man was not meant to go. Thirty minutes
will give me enough time to get in and out.
If the first possibility is true, and if it's the
second possibility, then you'll close the hole with that lever,

(22:34):
and my students will destroy my work. This was all
way above by pay grade, and my head was spinning.
Why only two possibilities, and how did they come up
with those two? And if this is real, why the
hell would the professor take a coin toss chance of
getting stuck in the place that man was not meant

(22:55):
to go. I mean, those were just starter questions among
the swarm that was around my head. I see you
have some reservations, said the professor. I assure you that
your only job is to pull that lever after thirty minutes.
That's it, Chief. We'll take care of the rest, and
anything that happens isn't on you. The documentation is quite

(23:17):
in order. He tapped a folder that was sitting on
the circular table, and here, I'll write you a check
now before we proceed. As he wrote out the check,
I wondered if it'd still be valid if he got
swallowed up by a wormhole. I actually had that thought,
as crazy as it sounds. It was still all so
weird and abstract to me at that point. Here, he said,

(23:40):
handing over the check, let's do it, chief, as soon
as I enter that hole, give me exactly thirty minutes
on the dot. That's all you have to do. I
took the check, mumbled a thanks, and watched as he
walked over to the machine. He pulled the lever. There
was a loud crack a sound, and I watched in

(24:01):
unease as one by one the student's eyes shot open.
There were no pupils. Their eyes were rolled back into
their sockets. He now, I said, taking a step toward
the machine. They're quite fine, said the professor. I assure you.
Their jaws started to move like they were grinding their teeth.

(24:22):
The professor took a jar of Neon blue liquid from
a shelf on the wall. He unscrewed the lid and
poured the stuff over the electric globe on the round table.
The thing started going crazy, and then the globe shattered completely,
bits of glass flying through the air as shoots of
black lightning zapped out into the room. I ducked down.

(24:43):
I'd had enough by then and was ready to get
the heck out of there. But then it happened. A
black hole appeared in the middle of the room, sucking
in the bolts of electricity. It grew larger and larger
until it took up half the room. All I could
hear was this rushing sound, like the world's largest vacuum
cleaner running a full throttled Remember, Chief, shouted the Professor

(25:06):
with a wild look on his face. Thirty minutes exactly,
and then he stepped into the thing and was gone.
At first, my mind was a mess, staring at that
wooshing black hole that seemed hungry to suck everything in.
I looked at the kids hooked up to the machine.
Their eyes rolled back, white holes. I guess they looked

(25:29):
like their jaws grinding away like crazy. It was too
much to make sense of. I looked down at my watch.
Fifteen minutes and thirty one seconds had gone by since
the Professor got swallowed up by the wormhole. My heart
was pounding, and I kept pacing back and forth, back
and forth, trying to work out what the heck was

(25:49):
going on. Then I started to zero in on it.
I was getting pranked, not a prank like we used
to do as kids, setting dog poo on somebody's front
on steps and all that idiocy. I mean, a prank
like the sophisticated college folk do, where they tell you
something's going on, but the whole point is just to
observe your reaction, a psychological experiment. Probably cameras in here

(26:13):
watching me right now, just to see what I'll do.
Twelve minutes to go, I saw a trickle of blood
come down from one of the kid's noses. I leaned
down to look at him closely. He was shaking a
little bit all over. If I throw that lever, this
will all probably stop. Maybe that was the test I

(26:36):
had to decide between trapping the professor in the black
hole and saving the kids hooked up to the machines.
None of it was real, of course, but they didn't
know that. I knew that. But then, screaming in the
back of my mind was that voice, what if it
is real? Ten minutes to go. The professor had promised

(26:57):
me that the kids were all right. Another one started
eating from the nose. If it wasn't real, it was
a hell of a trick. Where did the professor go?
If not through that black hole? I thought about touching it,
but whenever I got close, I was filled with total terror.
It sure seemed real, like it really took you someplace far,

(27:18):
far away from here. I walked over to the table
and picked up the folder that was there, Just like
the professor had said, the first page was instructions to
shut down the machine and destroy it if he didn't
return within thirty minutes. I flipped that page over and
the next one had a photograph of one of the students.
I read what it said. It was a consent for him.

(27:40):
I Jackson Stewart, acknowledged the possibility of my imminent death
if I participate in this experiment. I am prepared to
give my life to science. I flipped that page and
there were three more just like it. Now. I'm no lawyer,
but there was no way in hell that this experiment
was legal if it was real, even with those consent forms,

(28:02):
so it probably wasn't real. And if it was, then
the professor lied to me. He had said that the
kids were fine. His folder was telling me something else.
Two minutes to go. I took a deep breath and
paced the room, watching each second tick by. My mind

(28:22):
was telling me that none of it was real, but
my gut was screaming in horror. I just looked at
my watch. It would be over soon enough, one way
or the other. Thirty seconds, I walked over to the
machine and put my hand on the lever. Damn it,
Why is he cutting it so close? I watched the
second hands tick by, and I didn't know if I

(28:45):
could do it. I didn't know if I could risk
trapping the professor wherever the heck he gone off to.
Five seconds, my hand was shaking. Four seconds, sweat was
pouring down my face, dripping into my eyes. Three seconds
one of the students started to moan. The one that
I saw was named Jackson in the folder. Two seconds,

(29:07):
Oh god, oh God, oh god. One second Jackson started
to shake. Zero seconds. Damn. I tensed my muscles to
pull the lever. One look at Jackson, and I knew
I had to pull it. He was violently jerking around. Now. Wait,
I snapped my neck around to see the Professor's head

(29:28):
sticking out of the black hole. Wait, damn it. Then
his shoulders were through. I turned back to Jackson. Blood
was pouring out of his eyes. I'm almost through. A
second kid started to shake. One more second. I looked
to see that the professor was through. He was back
in the room, do it, he shouted. Two things happened

(29:48):
after that. At the exact same time, I heard a wet,
popping sound, and I watched as the wormhole disappeared, as
though it were never there. But I had never pulled
the lever. I slowly turned to look at Jackson. His
head was gone. Judging by the bits of brain and
splatters of blood on the bowl thing above his neck,

(30:09):
his head had just exploded. The worrying of the machine
gradually died down, and then it was silent. The three
kids who were still alive stopped shaking and closed their eyes.
A tragedy, said the professor, pointing at Jackson with the
exploded head. But not for nothing. I've been there. I've
seen it, Chief, I've seen it. I hunched over and puked.

(30:34):
It was weird, but my first thought was what a
mess I'll have to clean up later. I don't know.
I guess my mind had sort of shut down and
I was going on autopilot. I was the janitor, and
I cleaned up messes. That was all I knew. Then
it hit me the reality of what had just happened. You,
son of you told me those kids would be okay.

(30:55):
The professor put this sickening smug grin on his face.
He would have been chief. Had you hold the lever
at the thirty minute mark as instructed. You told me
to wait, did I? Yeah, yeah, I'm calling the police.
I had a walk eclipped to my belt. It wouldn't
get me the police, but it would get campus security.

(31:15):
I reached for it and had it in my hand
when I heard a groan behind me. I turned to
see that it was one of the kids. They were
waking up. I went over to unstrap them from the chairs.
The first kid's eyes blinked open, and when she saw
the professor, she started screaming, it's okay. I said, it's okay,
it's all over. She kept screaming. Then the second kid

(31:37):
woke up. He looked right at me with wide, terrified eyes.
Get us out of here, he shouted. I'm working on it,
I said, fumbling at the straps they were on tight.
The third kid woke up. It's here, she said, I
made it through. Everything's okay now, I said, your friend
didn't make it. I'm afraid, but it's over. I'll make

(31:57):
sure the professor pays for what he did to you
and your friends. The first kid was still screaming at
the top of her lungs. Kid, is out of here,
shouted the second kid again. The third kid looked me
dead in the eyes and in a totally calm voice, said,
that's not the professor, What of course it is. I said,

(32:18):
what I saw when I turned to look at the
professor will haunt me forever. The Professor's mouth was twisting
around at odd angles, like something was moving the lower
half of his jaw randomly, or like he was trying
to get a hair out of his mouth that kept
jumping around. The veins on his neck bulged, then sank
back down, and then bulged again so that they were
as thick as ropes. His wrists were rotating in ways

(32:41):
that weren't supposed to rotate as his arms flailed around wildly.
I had the first kid, the screaming one, free. She
jumped out of the chair and ran to the door,
but her legs were wobbly and she tripped over herself
in the middle of the room. I went to work
on the second kid, whipping my head around every second
to look at the professor. Looked like there was something

(33:02):
crawling around under his skin. Something big. Get us out
of here, the second kid shouted yet again. The first
kid was still on the ground, screaming. I worked away
furiously on the straps. If you believe in God, said
the third kid, with an eerie calm, then pray. I
took a glance at the professor, and that's when the

(33:22):
first bone burst out of his chest threw his suit.
I call it a bone, but it was pure black
and dripping with green slime. As for me, said the
third kid, I do not believe that there is a God,
not after what I've seen. The second kid was free
and made a run for it. I scooted over to
the third kid, but watched as the professor reached out

(33:44):
an arm and grabbed the second kid by the top
of his head. The professor gave one quick twist and
let go. I heard a terrible snap, and the kid
slumped to the ground dead. There were more black bones
coming out of the Professor's chest, dripping. He laughed and
bent down to the first kid, who was still screaming
as bones began to poke out of his back like

(34:05):
a stegosaurus from hell. What is that thing? I asked,
as I fumbled at the straps of the last kid.
He does not belong here, said the kid. No, duh,
I said, getting one strap free. But what is it?
It comes from a terrible place, a place where there
is nothing save pain, endless pain, incomprehensible to our minds. Great,

(34:27):
I muttered, as I noticed with a sinking heart that
the screams from the girl behind me. It stopped. Then
I heard a wet crunch. I couldn't help it. I
looked to see the professor tearing into that poor girl's
throat with long black fangs, dripping in green slime. I
turned back to the third kid, Almost done with the straps,
just a few more seconds. What's your name anyway, kid? Claire? Claire,

(34:52):
I said, my mind trying to stay focused. When I
get you out of these straps, I want you to
pick up this chair and throw it at that thing. Okay,
I'll do the same thing. Okay, then we make a
run for it. You understand. Can you do that? I understand,
said Claire. I do hope it works. I hoped it
would work too. We have to make it work, Claire,
We have to, I said, ganking off at the last strap.

(35:14):
Come on, We stood up together and I reached over
to pick up a chair. I hurled it at the
professor with all of my strength, and it shattered against
his boned back. I heard a terrible shriek then, and
watched us. Claire's chair followed behind. I grabbed Claire's arm
with one hand and reached for my pocket knife with
the other. The only way out of that room meant
passing by the professor. We started running as I pulled

(35:37):
the knife out and flicked it up. The professor stood still,
shrieking as the green slime mixed with the red blood
from the kid's throat and dripped down his chin. I
took a wild stab at the Professor's neck and connected.
I kept running with Claire, leaving the knife stuck in
the Professor's neck, and made it to the door. I
had my hand around the knob when I felt Claire
pulling away from me. I looked back helpless as I

(36:01):
saw the Professor reach long black claws into her gut.
I threw the door open and left her there. Good God,
I left her there. I made it outside the lab
building somehow. I don't remember how. My mind just sort
of shut down as I ran, like hell, I guess

(36:21):
I did have the presence to go around and lock
all of the doors from the outside. Then I got
onto the radio to campus security. You guys need to
get the police over to the Astrophysics Center asap. Damn it,
there's a massacre in there. The front door started to rattle,
and I heard that god awful shriek again, repeat, said
a voice over the walkie. Look, I said, call up

(36:44):
Lawrence Somers right now. That was the president of Harvard
at the time, and I'd seen his signature on the
papers in that folder with all the consent forms. Tell
him that the wormhole experiment has gone way the hell south.
The rattling at the door stopped. I only prayed that
the thing didn't figure out. It could just break a

(37:04):
window and crawl out that way. This is the janitor, right,
said a different voice on the other end of the walkie.
This is a joke, the wormhole experiment. You've been drinking.
Call Lawrence Summers. If you don't, I promise you you'll never
be able to live with yourself. Do it now. There
was a horrible pause. I heard the professor trying the

(37:24):
side door now shrieking once again. Sad for a fleet
of black SUVs pulled up. Just two minutes later. A
team of heavily armed men jumped out and ran past me,
breaking through windows and jumping inside. I heard a stream
of gunfire and screams, so many screams, and the professor's

(37:45):
horrible shrieks. After a while, it was quiet, and a
second team of men jumped through the broken windows. I
didn't hear any more gunfire. I felt a hand on
my shoulder and whipped around. A man was standing there.
I don't remember a single thing about what he looked like,
but I do remember our conversation. Tell me what happened,

(38:08):
he said. I told him the full story, the same
one that I've told you. We're prepared to give you
a lot of money to sign NDA NDA nondisclosure agreement
means you can never tell anybody about what happened here tonight,
how much a million dollars had a promotion. The man paused,

(38:31):
you mean you still want to work work here after tonight?
Somebody's got to clean up the mess. I said, uh, fine,
of course. One more thing. And what's that? Asked the man.
I want to know that this will never happen again.
I want you to blow up all of that stuff

(38:51):
and burn all the notes, of course, and I want
to watch, of course, said the man. And so I
thought it was over, but it's not. Last night I
saw the Professor again. He looked me right in the eyes,
flashed that smug grin and said, hey there, chief, that's

(39:13):
what I ran the hell out of there. The police
don't believe me. I have sent a dozen emails to
Lawrence Summer's assistants. I called every number I have found
listed for him. I haven't heard anything back. I don't
know who else to turn to. I'm afraid the Professor
is going to open up that wormhole again, but I'm
afraid this time he might bring his friends back with him.

(39:45):
One more story is still to come on Weird Darkness.
Keep listening for the Itch by Weirdo family member Mark
Tause Up Next, Joe sighs loudly and turns on to

(40:14):
his back after kicking the freshly washed duvet from the bed.
He studies his fingernails for blood and skin, but the
only bloody finds is dry from where he bit the
nails down yesterday. The fresh, cool, new territory of the
bottom sheet provides temporary relief for his back but the
unreachable prickling is soon making its presence known again. He

(40:36):
digs his fingers into his chest to gouge at the
latest and most intensive itch, but he can't fool the brain.
They're like stumps, no sharpness at all. He convinces himself
there are thousands of tiny bugs crawling over his skin,
and he can't bear it anymore, and starts roughly scratching
at his back again. It's worse than yesterday, much worse.

(41:01):
Images of them laying eggs and defecating on his skin
fill his head and he's sure they must be breeding.
For the second night in a row, he is still
awake past midnight, and he's on the verge of tears.
His head begins to itch that's never happened before. They're
spreading fast. The fingers of his right hand provide momentary

(41:22):
relief on his scalp, but he feels as though he's
chasing the bugs around and they're constantly moving just out
of reach. His back is getting worse, and the fingers
of his left hand are doing nothing to stem the
itch that seems to be burrowing further into his flesh.
At work yesterday, he wanted to say something, But how
do you begin to talk about a skin infection with

(41:43):
work colleagues. Besides, it was year end. People had called
in sick, and everyone else looked stressed and too exhausted
to care. Later that evening, he had phoned his parents.
His dad suggested it might be dermatitis, but right now
it seems much more serious than a simple skin allergy.
As soon as the doctor can see him was next week.

(42:04):
They were apparently short staffed and incredibly busy. He feels
as though his skin is alive, a hyper sensitive composition
of raw nerve endings that are randomly making their presence known.
The back of his neck is next, and he moves
his right hand to chase that one down, but it
quickly moves just out of reach. Again, he moves his

(42:24):
left hand from his back and across to his right
thigh as a new patch of skin cries for attention.
There is yet another outbreak near his ankle, and then
the latest and worst of all, on the bottom of
his foot. He begins hitting it with a closed fist,
but it does nothing. There are new patches of torment everywhere,
and Joe begins to punch himself on the back on

(42:46):
his neck, scalp, spine, and legs. He assumes the bed
is teeming with microscopic bugs, so he jumps out and,
in a frenzied state, starts brushing himself down. There is
some relief to his escape. The sheets that must be
by now a writhing landscape of infestation, but he can
still feel them on him and worse in him. Next

(43:09):
are his boxers and t shirt, and he throws them
into the bin next to his bed. The remote control
on the floor catches his eye and he quickly grabs it,
shakes it, and then switches on the TV. The noise
provides a brief slice of normality to proceedings, but doesn't
detract from the escalating intensity of his itchy skin that's
demanding his complete attention. Words fill the room, but most

(43:34):
of them cannot be heard above the thoughts in his
head that are screaming at him to scratch some more.
He hears something about the third day as he slides
open the window and enjoys the hit of the cool
breeze as it caresses his body, but the relief is
temporary as he starts to claw at his skin once again.
The sound of sirens can be heard from all directions,

(43:55):
and from his tense story room, he notices the blur
of lights against the backdrop of darkness. He can hear
the whirr and chopping noise of the helicopters, and above
the sirens, he thinks he can hear people screaming, and
was that gunfire? For just past the midnight hour? The
night is abnormally explosive. Every square inch of his body

(44:16):
then sings out in a chorus of irritation. He rushes
toward the bathroom and catches the words emergency broadcast as
they scroll across the bottom of the TV screen, but
he takes no heat and quickly steps into the shower
and turns the tap. The immediate hit of cold water
catches him off guard, but he welcomes the brief override

(44:37):
of the maddening itch. He scrubs at his skin relentlessly
with a sponge, but he can't get deep enough. The
itch manifests in his eyes next, and he digs the
balls of his hand firmly into his sockets, and they
squelch like marshy ground as he rubs frantically. He fumbles
at the shower door and steps out of the water,
watching himself in the bathroom mirror. As he rakes at

(44:59):
his his chest and back. His skin is red and flared,
and his eyes are bloodshot and puffy and underlined by
huge dark circles. Now in frustration, he screams and paunches
the mirror and it fractures, sending shards to the floor.
The sensation is unbearable now and getting worse. He picks

(45:20):
up a piece of glass and there's immediate relief as
he runs the sharpness across his chest and back. But
it's not enough, and he can feel the inward retreat
of the alien bodies inside him. There is a scream
for help down the hallway, but Joe has other things
on his mind, and he pushes the sharp edge of
the glass into his chest. The skin concedes and a

(45:42):
small leg of fresh crimson forms. He follows the itch
around with the blade and buries it deeper. His reflection
makes him sick, so he returns to his bedroom and
starts working on his wrist. They are definitely in there,
he can feel them. As the blade digs further in.
There's an explosion of pain as he brushes against the nerves,
and he lets out his own piercing scream. His body

(46:04):
seems to vibrate with agony and its seconds before it
stabilizes to a dull but painful throb. They move again,
and he stabs himself in the leg multiple times and
then in the center of his left hand. The TV
is droning on about a terrorist attack and something about
the third day, but he needs to get out of
the apartment into the cold night air. His skin is

(46:26):
on fire. He swings the door open and catches sight
of a naked lady slumped against the far wall. Multiple
gashes and fresh, glistening blood decorate her body. One of
her eyes is leaking, and some implement remains buried in
its corner. There's a smeared line of blood across the
elevator button, and he presses it multiple times with his

(46:47):
good hand and leaves his own bloody trace. A scream
emerges from one of the rooms behind him, followed by
a loud, crashing noise against the door. He hears footsteps
and then another thunderous small, as though someone is throwing
themselves against it or someone else. Finally, the lift arrives
and the door opens to reveal two more motionless and

(47:09):
naked bodies. One half of a pen emerges from one
of their necks. As he steps in, the glass in
the elevator reveals the full extent of the damage he
has done to his body. Still, the intrusion marches on,
and it feels now as though something is gently gnawing
at his spine. The elevator door opens to a cacophony
of screams and gunfire. There are naked and half naked

(47:33):
bodies everywhere, strewn across the floor, each of them torn,
bloody and lifeless. Near the reception desk, he sees two
men mercilessly beating each other, but they are pleading to
be hit. Their naked bodies are covered in red patches
and their faces swollen and bloody. Joe makes a run
for it. He has no plan as he plants the

(47:53):
glass into his right thigh, but feels that if he
can make it outside, there may be a chance of salvation.
He sprints to the foyer door and thrusts it open
and gives himself to the coldness of the night in
the hope it will somehow cleanse him. As he stands there,
naked with a shard of glass still sunk into his thigh.
There is a scream from an approaching soldier for him

(48:15):
to get down on the floor. The mask he is
wearing cuts a sinister figure amid the surreal events of
a normally sedate street corner, but Joe doesn't get down
to the floor. Instead, he breaks down in tears and
screams at the top of his lungs for the soldier
to shoot him. More gun fire punctures the air and
he closes his eyes, but the impact doesn't come. The

(48:37):
soldier with the gun is still aiming at his head.
David looks down the scope of his gun. The order
was to shoot on sight. He wasn't trained to shoot
innocent civilians. They should be going after the terrorists, not
cleaning up their mess. Their brief was so limited, just
that there were people going insane, killing themselves and each other.

(49:00):
The scientists have no breakthrough yet. The man is begging
to be shot, but he can't bring himself to pull
the trigger. He wondered what his father would do, or
what his family would say if they knew he was
aiming his weapon at an unarmed man. He immediately releases
his right hand from the gun to attend to a
sudden itch and slakes his fingers across the back of

(49:21):
his neck. As he does, he watches the man retrieve
the glass from his leg and plunge it into his eye.
He doesn't stop there and continues to stab himself multiple
times on all parts of his body. The screams are unbearable.
David places his hand back and steadies the gun and
fires off a shot that is a direct hit between

(49:41):
his eyes. He watches as the man falls to the ground,
still clutching the glass. There is an immediate and intense
itch on David's cheek, but he can't get to it
because of the gas mask. The knight continues around him,
but his part in it is over. As he sits
down in the middle the road amid the chaos and
begins to cry. The itch is driving him crazy now,

(50:05):
but he still dare not remove his mask in case
of infection. He couldn't bear to go like the man
he had just shut Thanks for listening. If you like
the show, please share it with someone you know who
loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or

(50:29):
unsolved mysteries like you do. The Artist is by C. J. Henderson.
The Harvard Wormhole experiment was written by Nathaniel Lewis, and
the Itch is by a Weirdo family member, Mark Taus.
Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marler House Productions,
copyright Weird Darkness. Now that we're coming out of the dark,

(50:50):
I'll leave you with a little light Jonah two, verse six,
to the roots of the Mountains. I sank down the
earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord, my God,
brought my life up from the pit. And a final thought,
you are never too old to set another goal or

(51:12):
dream a new dream. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining
me in the Weird Darkness.