December 20, 2025 • 24 mins
When ten-year-old Stephen was grabbed by invisible hands and dragged toward the foot of his bed, his parents dismissed it as a nightmare—but years later, his mother revealed a terrifying secret she'd been hiding since she was ten herself.
Episode 8 of 12 in the “Twelve Nightmares of Christmas” series!
In this episode: “The Thing At The Foot Of The Bed”, “The Mystery of St. Luke’s Church”, “The Guttenberg Poltergeist”, “The Tickling Terror”
SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…
All stories in this episode are from the book, “The Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays” by Sylvia Shults: https://amzn.to/3uT2vMA
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Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. Background music provided by Alibi Music Library, EpidemicSound and/or StoryBlocks with paid license. Music from Shadows Symphony (https://tinyurl.com/yyrv987t), Midnight Syndicate (http://amzn.to/2BYCoXZ) Kevin MacLeod (https://tinyurl.com/y2v7fgbu), Tony Longworth (https://tinyurl.com/y2nhnbt7), and Nicolas Gasparini (https://tinyurl.com/lnqpfs8) is used with permission of the artists.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =(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.)
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"I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46
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https://weirddarkness.com/MomsSecret
#WeirdDarkness #ParanormalStories #GhostStories #ChristmasGhosts #TrueParanormal #HauntedHolidays #Poltergeist #SupernaturalEncounters #ScaryStories #CreepyChristmas
Episode 8 of 12 in the “Twelve Nightmares of Christmas” series!
In this episode: “The Thing At The Foot Of The Bed”, “The Mystery of St. Luke’s Church”, “The Guttenberg Poltergeist”, “The Tickling Terror”
SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…
All stories in this episode are from the book, “The Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays” by Sylvia Shults: https://amzn.to/3uT2vMA
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. Background music provided by Alibi Music Library, EpidemicSound and/or StoryBlocks with paid license. Music from Shadows Symphony (https://tinyurl.com/yyrv987t), Midnight Syndicate (http://amzn.to/2BYCoXZ) Kevin MacLeod (https://tinyurl.com/y2v7fgbu), Tony Longworth (https://tinyurl.com/y2nhnbt7), and Nicolas Gasparini (https://tinyurl.com/lnqpfs8) is used with permission of the artists.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =(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.
https://weirddarkness.com/MomsSecret
#WeirdDarkness #ParanormalStories #GhostStories #ChristmasGhosts #TrueParanormal #HauntedHolidays #Poltergeist #SupernaturalEncounters #ScaryStories #CreepyChristmas
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macabb
unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, be sure to
subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Android so you
don't miss future episodes. This is a special twelve Nightmares
(00:25):
of Cristmas episode. Each day from December thirteenth through December
twenty fourth, I'm posting a new episode of Weird Darkness
featuring material from the new book The Spirits of Christmas,
The Dark Side of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. Now
bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
(00:45):
put another log onto the fire, and come with me
into the Weird Darkness. Just like superheroes, all paranormal researchers
have their own origin story, the event that launched them
(01:07):
on their careers as investigators of the unknown. Author Stephen
Lancaster came to his first supernatural experience earlier than most.
He was just ten years old when he was attacked
by an invisible entity in his bed. Lancaster remembers the
date vividly. It was December fourteenth, nineteen eighty seven, and
(01:31):
he was living in a small town in western Maryland
with his parents and younger brother. The family had moved
in several months before. Stephen recalls that the Christmas was
to be there first in the new house. As the
older kid his little brother was just five, Stephen felt
perfectly justified in claiming the top of the bunk bedset.
(01:52):
When the family moved in. The boy's bedroom was chilly
at night. The house was heated by a coal furnace,
and its warmth struggled to reach the second floor. Up
on the top bunk, it was even chillier, but it
was worth it to Stephen to have the prized spot.
On the night of December fourteenth, the boys had gone
(02:15):
to bed at nine o'clock, but of course, going to
bed and going to sleep mean two very different things
in kid speak. Stephen and his brother horsed around for
a while, keeping quiet to stay off the parental radar.
After a couple of hours of covert play, Stephen's little
(02:35):
brother was ready to actually go to sleep. He dropped
off almost immediately. Stephen, on the other hand, lay awake
for a while, tossing and turning in the chilly room.
Around one in the morning, Stephen clocked out two, he
came fuzzily awake to something pulling on his ankles. He
(02:56):
couldn't see much in the dark room, but something was
tentatively grasping his ankles and pulling gently. Of course, Stephen
assumed it was his little brother. Stephen hung his head
over the side of the top bunk, peering down to
the bottom bunk. His brother looked like he was sound asleep.
Stephen shook his head. Leave it to a pesky little
(03:18):
brother to try a trick like that. He stuggled back
down into his warm nest and closed his eyes. He
almost dozed off when he felt another tug on his ankles.
This one was harder. Again, Stephen poked his head over
the bedrail, hoping to catch his brother diving under his
own blankets with a muffled giggle. And again he heard nothing,
(03:42):
and his brother looked dead to the world. At that point,
it occurred to Stephen that his brother might not be
the one responsible for the ankle tugging. His sleep fuzzied
brain was waking up, and he was beginning to realize
that it was virtually impossible for his brother to invade
Stephen's domain give him a tug on the ankle, then
slip back under his covers, undetected, and pretend so convincingly
(04:06):
to be fast asleep. Stephen was mulling over this puzzle
he realized that some invisible something was slowly pulling his
blanket down towards the foot of his bed. He reached
for his blanket to pull it back, and something grabbed
both of his wrists. Imagine someone grabbing you around the wrists.
You know what that feels like. This felt exactly like
(04:29):
that something was holding on to me and not letting go.
The skin around my wrists was actually indented, as if
someone were physically grabbing me. Stephen would write much later
in his book True Case Files of a Paranormal Investigator.
It's a straightforward description of stark terror. The unseen entity
(04:49):
had hold of Stephen, and whatever it was had no
intention of letting him go. Within moments, Stephen felt weak,
drained of energy, and the entity was still pulling him
down to the foot of the bed. Moments before, Stephen
had sat upright to reach for the retreating blankets. Now
the phantom yanked him forward, flipping him so that his
(05:12):
feet were on the pillow, and still he was tugged,
pulled relentlessly toward the foot of the bed. Stephen tried
to drag in a breath to scream, but it was
like trying to yell in a dream instead of a
full throttled holler for help. Stephen's cries of Mom, Dad
came in thin, whistling gasps, and yet he still struggled,
(05:35):
fighting with wiry kid's strength against the invisible monster that
had him in its clutches. Suddenly, Stephen broke free. He'd
been tugging so hard he overbalanced and crashed into the wall.
The back of his head hit the wall so hard
it left a dent in the wood Paneling, Stephen found
his voice Mom, His parents came running, His little brother
(05:58):
was roused from sleep. Everyone one piled into the room
as Stephen stammered out his incredible story. Despite the evidence
of the headsized dent in the wall, Stephen's parents wrote
the story off as an amazingly vivid nightmare. The boys
were soothed back to sleep, but a paranormal investigator was
born that terrifying night. There was an interesting PostScript to
(06:23):
this story. In nineteen eighty seven, Stephens's parents both dismissed
his tale. Theirs was a Christian home and such talk
was discouraged. But many years later, Stephen was talking with
his mother about that long ago night, and she decided
to share a secret with him. When Stephen's mother was
herself ten years old, the exact same thing happened to her.
(06:49):
Her encounter with the invisible entity was so violent it
left visible marks on her wrists where she was pulled
toward the foot of her bed. This story happened in Liverpool, England,
(07:17):
in the early nineteen nineties. It has never been explained.
The story begins one foggy December evening in nineteen ninety one.
On the evening of December twentieth, at seven pm, the
Edwards family of Dovecot decided to do a bit of
late Christmas shopping in the Liverpool City center. Mister Edwards
(07:38):
drove his wife and four children to town in his
old Volvo estate. Many people had similar plans for the
evening and finding a place to park was a chore.
Mister Edwards trolled the streets looking for a parking spot
while his daughter and three sons, too excited to fuss,
watched the spectacular Christmas decorations slide by the car windows. Abbey,
(08:02):
the youngest, at six years old, was especially entranced with
the colorful lights. As mister Edwards grumbled about parking, Missus
Edwards pointed to a secluded side street called Bold Place.
That's perfect, mister Edwards said. He turned and drove up
the poorly lit cobblestone road, which ran past the back
(08:23):
of Saint Luke's Church. As soon as the car was parked,
the kids jumped out of the vehicle, bubbling with excitement. Meanwhile,
an icy fog began to roll down the street. The
family was about to start off for the shops when
mister Edwards suddenly stopped short and glanced around the short street.
Where's Abbey? Everyone looked around. Mister Edwards peered into the
(08:48):
windows of the car, but his little daughter hadn't lagged behind.
It was a tremble in Missus Edwards's voice. Where is she?
Three boys looked around, but there was no one else
on the street. Then they all heard a faint voice
scream out in the distance, Daddy. The voice sounded like Abbey's.
(09:08):
It seemed to come from the end of the lane
where Bold Place met Roscoe Street. The Edwards family rushed
up the cobbled road, with mister Edwards leading the way. Abby,
he shouted, where are you. The gates at the back
of Saint Luke's were open, and mister Edwards figured that
Abby had wandered through the gate and onto the grounds
of the old church. He hurried into the churchyard, followed
(09:32):
closely by his wife and their sons, and again they
heard Abbey call out for her daddy, But the little
girl was nowhere to be found, and the fog was
getting thicker by the minute. Mister Edwards didn't want to
say this in front of his family, but he was
beginning to wonder if some stranger had grabbed Abby and
taken her into the ruins of the old church. He
(09:54):
handed his wife the car keys and told her to
get a flashlight from the vehicle. When Missus Edwards came back,
mister Edwards climbed up onto the ledge of the church
window and shone the light into the deserted church. The
interior was in ruins, with nothing but rubble scattered around.
Mister Edwards knew that the Church of Saint Luke had
(10:15):
been gutted by an incendiary bomb in World War II.
During the blitz, only the shell of the building had survived.
The church had been left in that condition as a
reminder of the horrors of war, even though it was
in ruins. Though mister Edwards couldn't shake the thought that
Abbey's voice had been calling for help from inside the church.
(10:37):
As he clambered down from the window, ledge, Missus Edwards said,
listen the faint, eerie sounds of organ music drifted through
the open window. The family went to the police station
and told the desk sergeant about their lost child. The
sergeant alerted all the patrol cars in the area and
told the officers in the city center to be on
(10:58):
the lookout for the young girl. The family then rushed
back to Bold Place to keep looking for Abbey. They
searched the grounds of Saint Luke's once again and found nothing.
They were about to go to the car to warm
up when something happened that continues to puzzle the Edwards
family to this day. A tall man wearing a top
(11:19):
hat and a long black coat came out of the
grounds of Saint Luke's and walking with him holding his hand,
was a little Abbey. When Abbey saw her parents, she
ran to them and started to cry. As her father
picked her up. The sinister man in black looked like
something out of the Victorian age. He had long, bushy sideburns,
(11:41):
a pallid face, and staring, ink black eyes. He stood
outside the gates of the churchyard and said, in a low,
creepy voice, please, except by sincere apology for any distress caused.
Then he turned and walked slowly back towards the rear
of the ruined. A police patrol car came tearing down
(12:03):
the road and mister Edwards told the officers about the
stranger who had just returned his daughter. Three police officers
bolted from their car and rushed into the church, but
the police found no one. The church was empty. More
police came. The grounds were searched with powerful flashlights, but
the place was deserted. Some of the officers also heard
(12:26):
the faint sounds of organ music, but they never could
find where the mysterious music was coming from. One of
the policemen asked Abby where she had been. That is
when things got really weird. Abby said that an old
woman in a shawl had grabbed her and dragged her
into the church where a mass was being held. There
(12:48):
were many people dressed in old fashioned clothes, the women
wore big hats, and the men were all dressed in black.
Abby had screamed for her father, but the old woman
had put her hand over the girl's mouth to keep
her quiet. Some time later, a tall man had come
into the church and pulled Abby from the woman's clutches.
He had been the man who had taken Abby back
(13:10):
to her parents. The intrigued policeman continued to interrogate the
little girl, and he asked her if the man had
spoken to her about what had happened. Abbe shook her head,
then said, the man said he had been a long
time dead, that's all. A cold shudder ran up everyone's
spine when they heard Abbe's reply. Since that strange incident,
(13:34):
the Edwards family refused to go anywhere near Saint Luke's,
especially during the Christmas season. On December seventeenth, nineteen fifty nine,
(14:14):
the William Meyer House near Gutenberg, Iowa, was the scene
of excitement that had nothing to do with the upcoming holidays.
A poltergeist took over the house, and soon no one
in the family was in the Christmas spirit. One evening,
as the Myers were sitting in their living room, a
crash thundered through the house. The couple raced into the kitchen,
(14:37):
where the source of the bang was immediately apparent. They
found the refrigerator tipped over. As they watched horror struck,
a flower stand flew across the room and exploded against
the stove. Movement near a basket of eggs on the
windowsill caught their eye. Next, one egg lifted out of
the basket, floated across the room, and smashed itself on
(15:00):
the kitchen floor. The Myers were dumbfounded. Missus Meyer was terrified.
The inexplicable was in their home, in their kitchen, the
heart of the home. What on earth was going on.
The Myers hadn't had supper yet, but Missus Meyer was
far too upset to cook in that kitchen. The couple
(15:22):
went out to eat instead. Out of the house. Among
the chatter of the other diners, the Myers could almost
forget the high strangeness of earlier. Missus Myers felt herself relaxing.
Surely there was some rational explanation for what had happened.
When they got home, the Myers got ready for bed.
(15:44):
It had been a sorely trying evening, and all they
wanted to do was go to sleep and try to
forget the destruction. In the kitchen, missus Meyer got a
glass of water and put it on the nightstand. Then
she got into bed and reached for a book. A
little light in reading would relax her. There would be
no relaxing reading that night. The glass rose from the
(16:08):
nightstand and hovered over missus Meyer's head as her husband
watched in horror. Then the glass was squeezed in a
powerful invisible hand. It exploded, drenching her with water and
shards of glass. Missus Meyer screamed. Her husband, Bill, just
as terrified, insisted they moved to the guest bedroom. Missus
(16:30):
Meyer dried herself off, and they moved to the other bedroom.
They scooted under the covers like children, frightened of the boogeyman.
Before Bill could even turn off the light, missus Meyer
shrieked again. Little black specks were appearing on the blanket.
The Myers looked up, mystified soot was falling on them
(16:52):
from the ceiling, appearing out of nowhere to shower the
bed with black grit. In the morning, Bill called the
share who came out to the house to investigate. He
was called away in the middle of his search, but
he promised to come back. When the sheriff did come
back several hours later, the Myers met him on the
front lawn. They'd been spooked yet again. The sheriff hadn't
(17:16):
witnessed any activity during his walkthrough of the house, but
after he left, several chairs had skidded across the floor.
Even stranger, every single window in the house had cracked,
but the Myers hadn't heard any sounds of breaking glass.
This was the most excitement Clayton County, Iowa, had seen
(17:36):
in decades. People from Gutenberg and other towns started to
show up unannounced at the Meyers home searching for ghosts.
One of these visitors was a Mississippi River towboat captain
who came with some friends to investigate the strange tales.
He admitted to the Myers that he didn't believe in ghosts.
Missus Meyer, a gracious hostess despite her supernatural troubles, offered
(18:01):
the men the use of the guest bedroom for the night.
The captain turned in while his friends stayed in the
kitchen with the Myers, drinking coffee and getting better acquainted.
A ruckus in the bedroom brought the group running The
befuddled captain was still lying on the mattress. The mattress, however,
was on the floor, eight feet away from the bed frame.
(18:24):
After a few months of poltergeist activity, Bill Meyer and
his wife had had quite enough. They moved away, leaving
the house empty. Curiosity seekers and amateur ghost hunters made
the abandoned house their haunt for a while. The Myers
eventually sold the house to their former neighbors, the Finnegans,
to combat the vandals that had started using the house
(18:46):
as a playground. Wallace Finnegan turned the house into a barn,
now filled with hay instead of ghosts, The house lost
much of its spooky appeal. The vandals finally left it alone.
(19:40):
Billy Plumber snugged the covers up under his chin. He
was finding it hard to fall asleep on that December
night in nineteen thirty nine. He sighed, then turned over.
Suddenly he jerked. It felt like his wife, Gert, was
tickling his feet. Startled, he yelled out, hey, knock it off.
(20:00):
A sleepy mumble met his ears. Billy looked over at Gert,
who was just waking up out of a sound sleep.
Then her eyes widened and she twitched away from him.
Billy gosh, stop, that's mean. I hate being tiggled. Gert,
I didn't do yer. Billy squirmed. I said, stop, I
didn't touch you. I've been asleep. Then Gert made a
(20:22):
face and clamored out of the bed. If you didn't
touch me and I didn't touch Hugh, we need to
check the bed for bugs. Billy sprang out of bed
at the mention of bugs and switched on the light. Together,
Billy and Gert stripped the bed sheets, pillowcases, even the
mattress pad landed on the floor. After a good shaking,
(20:43):
no bugs, Thank goodness, Gert said. Two pairs of hands
made short work of putting the bed back together. The
couple lay down, their fears calmed to enjoy peaceful night's sleep.
They got no such thing. The invisible entity tickled them unmercifully.
The plumbers giggled, cried, moaned, squirmed, pleaded. Eventually, the entity
(21:08):
relented and allowed the exhausted couple a few hours of sleep.
At four o'clock in the morning, the thump rattled the bedframe,
jerking Billy and Girt from an uneasy doze. Billy slapped
the light switch but no one was in the room
with them, at least no one they could see. A
symphony of taps, rattles, and bangs played up and down
(21:30):
the bedframe. For months, the strange nocturnal noises continued. One
night in February, a deep voice came from somewhere underneath
the bed. Is the baby asleep? Gert shot from the
bed and into the baby's room. To her immense relief,
their infant son was sound asleep. In mid March, Billy
(21:54):
decided to try an experiment. He twisted a copper wire
onto one of the bed springs and ran out to
a gas pipe in the kitchen. That night, for the
first time in months, the plumbers slept peacefully. They awoke
the next morning, refreshed and rested. The next night, the
tickling and thumping was back in full force. Billy had
(22:17):
had enough, so had Girt. On the first warm spring day,
Billy took the bed apart and hulled it off to
the Wichitad dump. A new bed was a small price
to pay for a good night's sleep. If you enjoyed
(23:03):
this episode, consider sharing it with others and help build
the Weird Darkness community by converting your friends and family
into weirdos as well. This special episode is part of
my twelve Nightmares of Christmas series, a collaboration with paranormal
blogger and author Sylvia Schultz. The stories I used in
this episode are from her book The Spirits of Christmas,
(23:26):
The Dark Side of the Holidays, and you can find
a link to that book in the show notes. Do
you have a dark tale to tell? Share your story
at Weird Darkness dot com and I might use it
in a future episode. Music in this episode is provided
by Midnight Syndicate. You can find a link to purchase
and download this dark, creepy Christmas music in the show notes.
(23:51):
I'm your creator and host, Darren Marler. Merry Christmas, and
thank you for joining me in the Weird Darkness
Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macabb
unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, be sure to
subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Android so you
don't miss future episodes. This is a special twelve Nightmares
(00:25):
of Cristmas episode. Each day from December thirteenth through December
twenty fourth, I'm posting a new episode of Weird Darkness
featuring material from the new book The Spirits of Christmas,
The Dark Side of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. Now
bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
(00:45):
put another log onto the fire, and come with me
into the Weird Darkness. Just like superheroes, all paranormal researchers
have their own origin story, the event that launched them
(01:07):
on their careers as investigators of the unknown. Author Stephen
Lancaster came to his first supernatural experience earlier than most.
He was just ten years old when he was attacked
by an invisible entity in his bed. Lancaster remembers the
date vividly. It was December fourteenth, nineteen eighty seven, and
(01:31):
he was living in a small town in western Maryland
with his parents and younger brother. The family had moved
in several months before. Stephen recalls that the Christmas was
to be there first in the new house. As the
older kid his little brother was just five, Stephen felt
perfectly justified in claiming the top of the bunk bedset.
(01:52):
When the family moved in. The boy's bedroom was chilly
at night. The house was heated by a coal furnace,
and its warmth struggled to reach the second floor. Up
on the top bunk, it was even chillier, but it
was worth it to Stephen to have the prized spot.
On the night of December fourteenth, the boys had gone
(02:15):
to bed at nine o'clock, but of course, going to
bed and going to sleep mean two very different things
in kid speak. Stephen and his brother horsed around for
a while, keeping quiet to stay off the parental radar.
After a couple of hours of covert play, Stephen's little
(02:35):
brother was ready to actually go to sleep. He dropped
off almost immediately. Stephen, on the other hand, lay awake
for a while, tossing and turning in the chilly room.
Around one in the morning, Stephen clocked out two, he
came fuzzily awake to something pulling on his ankles. He
(02:56):
couldn't see much in the dark room, but something was
tentatively grasping his ankles and pulling gently. Of course, Stephen
assumed it was his little brother. Stephen hung his head
over the side of the top bunk, peering down to
the bottom bunk. His brother looked like he was sound asleep.
Stephen shook his head. Leave it to a pesky little
(03:18):
brother to try a trick like that. He stuggled back
down into his warm nest and closed his eyes. He
almost dozed off when he felt another tug on his ankles.
This one was harder. Again, Stephen poked his head over
the bedrail, hoping to catch his brother diving under his
own blankets with a muffled giggle. And again he heard nothing,
(03:42):
and his brother looked dead to the world. At that point,
it occurred to Stephen that his brother might not be
the one responsible for the ankle tugging. His sleep fuzzied
brain was waking up, and he was beginning to realize
that it was virtually impossible for his brother to invade
Stephen's domain give him a tug on the ankle, then
slip back under his covers, undetected, and pretend so convincingly
(04:06):
to be fast asleep. Stephen was mulling over this puzzle
he realized that some invisible something was slowly pulling his
blanket down towards the foot of his bed. He reached
for his blanket to pull it back, and something grabbed
both of his wrists. Imagine someone grabbing you around the wrists.
You know what that feels like. This felt exactly like
(04:29):
that something was holding on to me and not letting go.
The skin around my wrists was actually indented, as if
someone were physically grabbing me. Stephen would write much later
in his book True Case Files of a Paranormal Investigator.
It's a straightforward description of stark terror. The unseen entity
(04:49):
had hold of Stephen, and whatever it was had no
intention of letting him go. Within moments, Stephen felt weak,
drained of energy, and the entity was still pulling him
down to the foot of the bed. Moments before, Stephen
had sat upright to reach for the retreating blankets. Now
the phantom yanked him forward, flipping him so that his
(05:12):
feet were on the pillow, and still he was tugged,
pulled relentlessly toward the foot of the bed. Stephen tried
to drag in a breath to scream, but it was
like trying to yell in a dream instead of a
full throttled holler for help. Stephen's cries of Mom, Dad
came in thin, whistling gasps, and yet he still struggled,
(05:35):
fighting with wiry kid's strength against the invisible monster that
had him in its clutches. Suddenly, Stephen broke free. He'd
been tugging so hard he overbalanced and crashed into the wall.
The back of his head hit the wall so hard
it left a dent in the wood Paneling, Stephen found
his voice Mom, His parents came running, His little brother
(05:58):
was roused from sleep. Everyone one piled into the room
as Stephen stammered out his incredible story. Despite the evidence
of the headsized dent in the wall, Stephen's parents wrote
the story off as an amazingly vivid nightmare. The boys
were soothed back to sleep, but a paranormal investigator was
born that terrifying night. There was an interesting PostScript to
(06:23):
this story. In nineteen eighty seven, Stephens's parents both dismissed
his tale. Theirs was a Christian home and such talk
was discouraged. But many years later, Stephen was talking with
his mother about that long ago night, and she decided
to share a secret with him. When Stephen's mother was
herself ten years old, the exact same thing happened to her.
(06:49):
Her encounter with the invisible entity was so violent it
left visible marks on her wrists where she was pulled
toward the foot of her bed. This story happened in Liverpool, England,
(07:17):
in the early nineteen nineties. It has never been explained.
The story begins one foggy December evening in nineteen ninety one.
On the evening of December twentieth, at seven pm, the
Edwards family of Dovecot decided to do a bit of
late Christmas shopping in the Liverpool City center. Mister Edwards
(07:38):
drove his wife and four children to town in his
old Volvo estate. Many people had similar plans for the
evening and finding a place to park was a chore.
Mister Edwards trolled the streets looking for a parking spot
while his daughter and three sons, too excited to fuss,
watched the spectacular Christmas decorations slide by the car windows. Abbey,
(08:02):
the youngest, at six years old, was especially entranced with
the colorful lights. As mister Edwards grumbled about parking, Missus
Edwards pointed to a secluded side street called Bold Place.
That's perfect, mister Edwards said. He turned and drove up
the poorly lit cobblestone road, which ran past the back
(08:23):
of Saint Luke's Church. As soon as the car was parked,
the kids jumped out of the vehicle, bubbling with excitement. Meanwhile,
an icy fog began to roll down the street. The
family was about to start off for the shops when
mister Edwards suddenly stopped short and glanced around the short street.
Where's Abbey? Everyone looked around. Mister Edwards peered into the
(08:48):
windows of the car, but his little daughter hadn't lagged behind.
It was a tremble in Missus Edwards's voice. Where is she?
Three boys looked around, but there was no one else
on the street. Then they all heard a faint voice
scream out in the distance, Daddy. The voice sounded like Abbey's.
(09:08):
It seemed to come from the end of the lane
where Bold Place met Roscoe Street. The Edwards family rushed
up the cobbled road, with mister Edwards leading the way. Abby,
he shouted, where are you. The gates at the back
of Saint Luke's were open, and mister Edwards figured that
Abby had wandered through the gate and onto the grounds
of the old church. He hurried into the churchyard, followed
(09:32):
closely by his wife and their sons, and again they
heard Abbey call out for her daddy, But the little
girl was nowhere to be found, and the fog was
getting thicker by the minute. Mister Edwards didn't want to
say this in front of his family, but he was
beginning to wonder if some stranger had grabbed Abby and
taken her into the ruins of the old church. He
(09:54):
handed his wife the car keys and told her to
get a flashlight from the vehicle. When Missus Edwards came back,
mister Edwards climbed up onto the ledge of the church
window and shone the light into the deserted church. The
interior was in ruins, with nothing but rubble scattered around.
Mister Edwards knew that the Church of Saint Luke had
(10:15):
been gutted by an incendiary bomb in World War II.
During the blitz, only the shell of the building had survived.
The church had been left in that condition as a
reminder of the horrors of war, even though it was
in ruins. Though mister Edwards couldn't shake the thought that
Abbey's voice had been calling for help from inside the church.
(10:37):
As he clambered down from the window, ledge, Missus Edwards said,
listen the faint, eerie sounds of organ music drifted through
the open window. The family went to the police station
and told the desk sergeant about their lost child. The
sergeant alerted all the patrol cars in the area and
told the officers in the city center to be on
(10:58):
the lookout for the young girl. The family then rushed
back to Bold Place to keep looking for Abbey. They
searched the grounds of Saint Luke's once again and found nothing.
They were about to go to the car to warm
up when something happened that continues to puzzle the Edwards
family to this day. A tall man wearing a top
(11:19):
hat and a long black coat came out of the
grounds of Saint Luke's and walking with him holding his hand,
was a little Abbey. When Abbey saw her parents, she
ran to them and started to cry. As her father
picked her up. The sinister man in black looked like
something out of the Victorian age. He had long, bushy sideburns,
(11:41):
a pallid face, and staring, ink black eyes. He stood
outside the gates of the churchyard and said, in a low,
creepy voice, please, except by sincere apology for any distress caused.
Then he turned and walked slowly back towards the rear
of the ruined. A police patrol car came tearing down
(12:03):
the road and mister Edwards told the officers about the
stranger who had just returned his daughter. Three police officers
bolted from their car and rushed into the church, but
the police found no one. The church was empty. More
police came. The grounds were searched with powerful flashlights, but
the place was deserted. Some of the officers also heard
(12:26):
the faint sounds of organ music, but they never could
find where the mysterious music was coming from. One of
the policemen asked Abby where she had been. That is
when things got really weird. Abby said that an old
woman in a shawl had grabbed her and dragged her
into the church where a mass was being held. There
(12:48):
were many people dressed in old fashioned clothes, the women
wore big hats, and the men were all dressed in black.
Abby had screamed for her father, but the old woman
had put her hand over the girl's mouth to keep
her quiet. Some time later, a tall man had come
into the church and pulled Abby from the woman's clutches.
He had been the man who had taken Abby back
(13:10):
to her parents. The intrigued policeman continued to interrogate the
little girl, and he asked her if the man had
spoken to her about what had happened. Abbe shook her head,
then said, the man said he had been a long
time dead, that's all. A cold shudder ran up everyone's
spine when they heard Abbe's reply. Since that strange incident,
(13:34):
the Edwards family refused to go anywhere near Saint Luke's,
especially during the Christmas season. On December seventeenth, nineteen fifty nine,
(14:14):
the William Meyer House near Gutenberg, Iowa, was the scene
of excitement that had nothing to do with the upcoming holidays.
A poltergeist took over the house, and soon no one
in the family was in the Christmas spirit. One evening,
as the Myers were sitting in their living room, a
crash thundered through the house. The couple raced into the kitchen,
(14:37):
where the source of the bang was immediately apparent. They
found the refrigerator tipped over. As they watched horror struck,
a flower stand flew across the room and exploded against
the stove. Movement near a basket of eggs on the
windowsill caught their eye. Next, one egg lifted out of
the basket, floated across the room, and smashed itself on
(15:00):
the kitchen floor. The Myers were dumbfounded. Missus Meyer was terrified.
The inexplicable was in their home, in their kitchen, the
heart of the home. What on earth was going on.
The Myers hadn't had supper yet, but Missus Meyer was
far too upset to cook in that kitchen. The couple
(15:22):
went out to eat instead. Out of the house. Among
the chatter of the other diners, the Myers could almost
forget the high strangeness of earlier. Missus Myers felt herself relaxing.
Surely there was some rational explanation for what had happened.
When they got home, the Myers got ready for bed.
(15:44):
It had been a sorely trying evening, and all they
wanted to do was go to sleep and try to
forget the destruction. In the kitchen, missus Meyer got a
glass of water and put it on the nightstand. Then
she got into bed and reached for a book. A
little light in reading would relax her. There would be
no relaxing reading that night. The glass rose from the
(16:08):
nightstand and hovered over missus Meyer's head as her husband
watched in horror. Then the glass was squeezed in a
powerful invisible hand. It exploded, drenching her with water and
shards of glass. Missus Meyer screamed. Her husband, Bill, just
as terrified, insisted they moved to the guest bedroom. Missus
(16:30):
Meyer dried herself off, and they moved to the other bedroom.
They scooted under the covers like children, frightened of the boogeyman.
Before Bill could even turn off the light, missus Meyer
shrieked again. Little black specks were appearing on the blanket.
The Myers looked up, mystified soot was falling on them
(16:52):
from the ceiling, appearing out of nowhere to shower the
bed with black grit. In the morning, Bill called the
share who came out to the house to investigate. He
was called away in the middle of his search, but
he promised to come back. When the sheriff did come
back several hours later, the Myers met him on the
front lawn. They'd been spooked yet again. The sheriff hadn't
(17:16):
witnessed any activity during his walkthrough of the house, but
after he left, several chairs had skidded across the floor.
Even stranger, every single window in the house had cracked,
but the Myers hadn't heard any sounds of breaking glass.
This was the most excitement Clayton County, Iowa, had seen
(17:36):
in decades. People from Gutenberg and other towns started to
show up unannounced at the Meyers home searching for ghosts.
One of these visitors was a Mississippi River towboat captain
who came with some friends to investigate the strange tales.
He admitted to the Myers that he didn't believe in ghosts.
Missus Meyer, a gracious hostess despite her supernatural troubles, offered
(18:01):
the men the use of the guest bedroom for the night.
The captain turned in while his friends stayed in the
kitchen with the Myers, drinking coffee and getting better acquainted.
A ruckus in the bedroom brought the group running The
befuddled captain was still lying on the mattress. The mattress, however,
was on the floor, eight feet away from the bed frame.
(18:24):
After a few months of poltergeist activity, Bill Meyer and
his wife had had quite enough. They moved away, leaving
the house empty. Curiosity seekers and amateur ghost hunters made
the abandoned house their haunt for a while. The Myers
eventually sold the house to their former neighbors, the Finnegans,
to combat the vandals that had started using the house
(18:46):
as a playground. Wallace Finnegan turned the house into a barn,
now filled with hay instead of ghosts, The house lost
much of its spooky appeal. The vandals finally left it alone.
(19:40):
Billy Plumber snugged the covers up under his chin. He
was finding it hard to fall asleep on that December
night in nineteen thirty nine. He sighed, then turned over.
Suddenly he jerked. It felt like his wife, Gert, was
tickling his feet. Startled, he yelled out, hey, knock it off.
(20:00):
A sleepy mumble met his ears. Billy looked over at Gert,
who was just waking up out of a sound sleep.
Then her eyes widened and she twitched away from him.
Billy gosh, stop, that's mean. I hate being tiggled. Gert,
I didn't do yer. Billy squirmed. I said, stop, I
didn't touch you. I've been asleep. Then Gert made a
(20:22):
face and clamored out of the bed. If you didn't
touch me and I didn't touch Hugh, we need to
check the bed for bugs. Billy sprang out of bed
at the mention of bugs and switched on the light. Together,
Billy and Gert stripped the bed sheets, pillowcases, even the
mattress pad landed on the floor. After a good shaking,
(20:43):
no bugs, Thank goodness, Gert said. Two pairs of hands
made short work of putting the bed back together. The
couple lay down, their fears calmed to enjoy peaceful night's sleep.
They got no such thing. The invisible entity tickled them unmercifully.
The plumbers giggled, cried, moaned, squirmed, pleaded. Eventually, the entity
(21:08):
relented and allowed the exhausted couple a few hours of sleep.
At four o'clock in the morning, the thump rattled the bedframe,
jerking Billy and Girt from an uneasy doze. Billy slapped
the light switch but no one was in the room
with them, at least no one they could see. A
symphony of taps, rattles, and bangs played up and down
(21:30):
the bedframe. For months, the strange nocturnal noises continued. One
night in February, a deep voice came from somewhere underneath
the bed. Is the baby asleep? Gert shot from the
bed and into the baby's room. To her immense relief,
their infant son was sound asleep. In mid March, Billy
(21:54):
decided to try an experiment. He twisted a copper wire
onto one of the bed springs and ran out to
a gas pipe in the kitchen. That night, for the
first time in months, the plumbers slept peacefully. They awoke
the next morning, refreshed and rested. The next night, the
tickling and thumping was back in full force. Billy had
(22:17):
had enough, so had Girt. On the first warm spring day,
Billy took the bed apart and hulled it off to
the Wichitad dump. A new bed was a small price
to pay for a good night's sleep. If you enjoyed
(23:03):
this episode, consider sharing it with others and help build
the Weird Darkness community by converting your friends and family
into weirdos as well. This special episode is part of
my twelve Nightmares of Christmas series, a collaboration with paranormal
blogger and author Sylvia Schultz. The stories I used in
this episode are from her book The Spirits of Christmas,
(23:26):
The Dark Side of the Holidays, and you can find
a link to that book in the show notes. Do
you have a dark tale to tell? Share your story
at Weird Darkness dot com and I might use it
in a future episode. Music in this episode is provided
by Midnight Syndicate. You can find a link to purchase
and download this dark, creepy Christmas music in the show notes.
(23:51):
I'm your creator and host, Darren Marler. Merry Christmas, and
thank you for joining me in the Weird Darkness
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