NATIONAL PARK DISAPPEARANCES: Cases That Defy Logic #WDRadio

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
In national parks and forests, a chilling enigma unfolds. Each year.
Hundreds of people vanish without a trace, most eventually found,
but a haunting few remain unsolved. The unsettling pattern reveals

(00:26):
a focus on the vulnerable, children aged twenty months to
twelve years and the elderly between seventy four and eighty five. Curiously,
those armed or equipped with transponder devices seem immune to
the inexplicable disappearances. Yosemite National Park a hotspot with forty
to forty five cases, harbors and eerie connection the abundance

(00:50):
of huckleberries in areas where vanishings occur. Children with dogs
lost but often found, refuse to speak of the ordeal.
Bafflingly bad weather and elusive sense thwart search efforts, leaving
behind only unsolved mysteries, from unexplained journeys to encounters with

(01:12):
green berets. These inexplicable disappearances defy logic. What unseen entities
lurk in the shadows of these forests and parks? Why
do some of the missing reappear miles away in improbable locations.
I'm Darren Marler, and this is weird. Darkness, welcome Weirdos.

(01:43):
I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where
every week you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,
the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.
Coming up this hour. Near the end of World War One,

(02:07):
a bizarre disease known as sleepy sickness or lethargic encephalitis
was contracted by millions of people across the world. What
was it and why did nearly one million people who
came down with the disease die from it while so
many others did not. A pitch black room at an

(02:28):
inn yields to a strange glow. But first, each year,
hundreds of people simply disappear from parks and forests. What
happened to them? And where are they? We begin with
that story. If you're new here, welcome to the show.
And if you're already a member of this weirdo family,

(02:48):
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(03:09):
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your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me

(03:32):
into the weird Darkness. Each year, hundreds of people are
reported missing in national parks and forests. Most are eventually found,

(03:57):
but there is a smaller category of cases that are
never solved, including a few close to home. Most of
those who have disappeared are children ages twenty months to
twelve years and the elderly ages seventy four to eighty five.
Not one person carrying a firearm and only one carrying

(04:17):
a transponder device has disappeared. Typically, a search is initiated
and run for about ten days before being dropped. Fifty
percent of the children who do go missing are found dead,
and the ones who are found are found miles away
from where they disappeared in areas seemingly impossible for them

(04:38):
to get to on their own. Yosemite National Park, with
forty to forty five cases, has the largest cluster of vanishings,
and oddly, in most areas where the disappearances have occurred,
auckleberries are almost always in great abundance. The majority of
children who have disappeared had dogs with them in some

(05:00):
in cases, the dogs returned, but the children never did.
Children found alive won't talk about their experience or say
they don't remember what happened to them. They're found, usually
running a low grade fever and appear traumatized. In all cases,
the parents say that the child was right behind them

(05:20):
when they disappeared. Usually the children are wearing bright, colorful
clothing when they do disappear, and even if they are
found miles away without the shoes they are wearing, their
feet are not scratched or bruised. Many of the areas
that people have disappeared from carry such names as Devil's Gulch,

(05:40):
Devil's Lookout twin Devil Lake, and Devil's punch Bowl, perhaps
named to reflect the evil that people have sensed in
these places over time. Ninety five percent of the cases,
bad weather strangely follows a disappearance, washing out footprints and
other clues and making it impossible to carry on a

(06:00):
search until the weather clears. Ninety eight to ninety nine
percent of the cases, tracking dogs are unable to find
a scent or simply refuse to track. Almost ninety eight
percent of the disappearances occur in the afternoon. Searchers have
been known to cover an area over one hundred times,

(06:21):
only to later find the person alive or dead in
the very same area they've already searched. A few cases
follow In the Rocky Mountain National Park in nineteen thirty eight,
a husband and wife hiked high into the park and
sat down to rest. Looking up high above them on
a cliff in an area called the Devil's Nest, they

(06:43):
spotted a small boy all alone. Thinking the foolish parents
were nearby, the couple moved on and later drove home.
As they arrived in the valley below where they had hiked,
they saw as many as twenty five hundred people mulling about,
but didn't stopped to ask what was going on. The
Next morning, they saw a photo of the missing child

(07:05):
in the newspaper and recognized him as the child that
they had seen. They drove back to the park to
tell the searchers, but the young boy was never found.
In April nineteen fifty two, a two year old boy
named Keith Parkinson and Ritter, Oregon, who vanished near Obatilla
National Forest, was eventually found and astonishing twelve miles away.

(07:29):
He was found unconscious nineteen hours later in a frozen
creek bed. The journey would require the toddler to venture
over two mountain ranges, as well as fences, creeks, and rivers.
This case is just one of many where children disappear
and are later found several hundred percent outside of the

(07:49):
grid system carefully designed by search and rescue teams. Additionally,
there are some rare cases where after tracking dogs have
led rescuers to a large river, search teams will explore
the other side and miles away they find the kid.
The FBI refused to give any information on the disappearance

(08:10):
of another small two year old boy who disappeared in
Yosemite in nineteen fifty seven. In that case, the boy
simply vanished as he walked around the perimeter of his
family's campsite, bloodhounds and hundreds of people searched for him.
He apparently climbed three thousand feet straight up a mountain.

(08:31):
He was found dehydrated and suffering from exposure, with a
T shirt, no pants, one sock, and no shoes. One
of the strangest finds by rangers was a missing man,
Charles mccullor, who was found leaning against a log his
pants around his ankles. The only parts left of him

(08:51):
were part of his tibia in his right pant leg
and part of his skull and his scapula bones in
one inch by one inch pieces. On May twenty eighth,
nineteen sixty six, six year old Larry Jeffrey, who was
vacationing with his family, walked away from his brother near
Mount Charlestown and never returned. The local authorities set out

(09:14):
a five day search made up of a few hundred men.
There were no large animals in the area or car access,
so if Larry wasn't eaten by a predator or snatched
by a kidnapper, that just what happened to the boy
That remains a mystery today, as he was never found
and with no solid explanation for his disappearance, it's as

(09:36):
if he simply vanished into thin air. In a few cases,
green berets have surprisingly shown up to join and or
take over searches. This happened in nineteen seventy one in Newcombe,
New York, when an eight year old boy vanished while
walking back to a lodge to change his clothes. His
scent was lost in a swamp and he was never found.

(09:59):
Young girls also disappear in national parks. In Yosemite, in
nineteen eighty one, a fourteen year old girl, Stacey Eiras
of Saratoga, was backpacking on horseback with her parents and
a group of people up ninety two hundred feet to
Sunrise High Sierra camp. When they stopped to rest, the
girl asked if she could go with a seventy year

(10:20):
old man on the trip fifty feet away to take
some photos. The old man sat down on a log
and the girl went to the edge of an elevation
to take a photo of a lake down below. She
walked down the hill and never came back. In another
more recent Yosemite case, a young woman was found dead
at the bottom of a high cliff from where it

(10:42):
seemed she had been flung. It was determined that she
had been raped. After her fatal fall, a six year
old boy disappeared in nineteen sixty nine in the Great
Smoky Mountains. Two families with the last name of Martin
happened upon each other, and their two sons began playing
hide and seek in the nearby bushes. When the parents

(11:04):
called the boys into camp and one didn't return, the
boy's father went to find help. A rain storm began
as he ran down the hill. At the same time,
further down the hill, another family with the last name
of Key heard a sickening scream and looked up to
see what they thought at first was a man hiding
in the bushes. The boy's father reached the valley and

(11:28):
called the FBI to meet him at the park, but
the agent told him to meet them at another location,
which made no sense. The green Berets showed up again
and took over the search completely. Meanwhile, mister Martin stayed
in the park two months looking for his son, who
was never found. The father stated that when the Key

(11:48):
family spotted the man in the bushes, he or it
was carrying something on its shoulder. However, none of this
information the Key family offered was included in the FBI report.
Paulidas was told during his investigation of this case that
some wild men live in the park that the Park
Service had not been able to control. Twelve other people

(12:11):
have disappeared in the same area, and the FBI agent
monitoring those cases allegedly committed suicide. The phenomena is not
limited to the US either. In the Philippines, many people
have disappeared, most never returning. When visitors go there, they
are told that they must not wear colorful clothing into

(12:31):
the jungle. The bright colors seem to attract whatever it
is that takes people. This clue is similar to the
American children who have disappeared wearing bright clothing. Casey Holliday
went missing on October fourteenth, nineteen ninety, about ten am
near Alder Creek Street, Mary's, Idaho, at age eleven. The

(12:54):
boy was a developmentally disabled child living with his aunt
eight miles south of Maurice and Tik twenty miles south
of Spokane, an identified cluster area. Casey was eventually found
forty eight hours later and just a mile from his
aunt's home, babbling and seemingly in a daze. Thursday, May

(13:15):
twenty seventh, nineteen ninety nine, Carl Landers, sixty nine years old,
disappeared on Mount Shasta while hiking with friends. They were
camping at a location called fifty to fifty, a place
on the mountain where climbers can stop and rest before
reaching the summit. According to his friends, Milled Gaines and
Barry Gilmore, Carl had complained about not feeling well and

(13:37):
decided to take a head start toward Lake Helen. They
never caught up with him and never saw him again.
Carl was described as a very experienced climber, so it
was unlikely that he fell. The siski Yu County Sheriff's
Department immediately set out on a search, with a National
Guard covering the air using an infrared helicopter, and the

(13:59):
US Ranger and volunteers covering the ground on foot and skis.
No trace of Karl was found, not even his equipment, backpack,
or clothing. The latest disappearance is of a thirty four
year old California firefighter, Mike Herdman, who vanished with his
dog on Friday, June thirteenth, twenty fourteen, in the Los

(14:21):
Padres National Forests in California. He was camping with a
friend when he ran off shoeless, chasing his dog downhill
toward a stream. His friend searched for hours, then had
to hike two days out of the wilderness to find help.
The area being searched is two times the size of
the Grand Canyon. On June nineteenth, the firefighter's dog was

(14:45):
found alive. Herdman was found dead June twenty seventh. Like
others who have disappeared into the National forests, Herdman was
found at approximately twelve hundred feet above the river bottom
which he had chased his dog into. The day he
disap appeared. When his remains were discovered, authorities were astonished
to find him shoeless. Rescue crews spent nearly five thousand

(15:09):
man hours searching and covered fifty square miles on foot
and horseback, as well as by air, including the use
of two drones. The sheriff stated it was unimaginable that
a shoeless person could have traversed so far in such
rough terrain. One of the more recent and highly unusual
cases occurred in South Carolina. In this case, the boy

(15:33):
was twenty one months old. How well could he toddle
and how far could he walk. How quickly could he
get out of view? How much stamina does a twenty
one month old child have. The boy was in his
residence with the family dog and his mother. She left
the room momentarily, and somehow the boy and the dog

(15:54):
got outside. There was a large open field surrounding the
residence before reaching thick i one woods. The mother realized
that her son and the dog were gone and ran
outside to check the yard. The boy and the dog
were not only not in the yard, they weren't anywhere
in sight. The mother called the sheriff and searchers started

(16:14):
to arrive en mass By late in the afternoon, the
weather started to change to rain. Searchers continued to walk
the surrounding property and found nothing that first night. The
first morning of the search, the sheriff's deputy and a
natural resource officer were in kayaks on a river two
miles from the victim's residence. They were just two of

(16:36):
hundreds looking for the boy. A search helicopter was flying
above the river looking for a body and had just
flown over the Kayakers. The two law enforcement officers were
paddling upstream from the area of the residence and just
turned a corner in the river when they made an
amazing find. It was two thirty pm. When they looked
at a sand bar in the middle of the river.

(16:59):
They found the missing boy alive, lying on his back
in the middle of the sand They immediately called the
helicopter back to the scene to pick the boy up
and take him to his residence. The pilot confirmed that
he had just flown over that section of the river
and the boy was not on the sandbar minutes later,
though he was lying there. There are many confusing aspects

(17:23):
to this case. How the boy got away from his
residence so quickly is not understood. How a twenty one
month old can manage to go through thick woods, enter
the river, and arrive at a sand bar in the
middle of the river. Why didn't the boy respond to
hundreds of searchers that were in the woods that first night.
The boy did not suffer from hypothermia, even though the

(17:46):
weather had been in the low forties with rain. The
boy's dog did reappear at the residence. This is one
of three cases where very small children have disappeared from
the interior of a residence while with a family dog.
Each case equally fascinating Some of the possible reasons for

(18:06):
the disappearances are when Digo, a beastlike creature with an
appetite for human flesh, variously described with matted hair, glowing eyes,
and long yellow fangs who stalks the lonely places. The
wendigo legend was prevalent in the northern United States and Canada,
largely involving a cannibalistic predator who roamed around woods and

(18:28):
forests in the coldest climates where food was scarce and
survival was challenging. But also include demons as a possible cause,
which goes along with the belief in the Philippines that
the gin or demons are responsible for the abductions. Also
suspect are large birds and extraterrestrials. Up next on Weird Darkness.

(19:03):
Near the end of World War One, a bizarre disease
known as sleepy sickness or lethargic encephalitis was contracted by
millions of people across the world. But what was it
and why did nearly a million people who came down
with the disease die from it while so many others

(19:23):
did not. That's up next on Weird Darkness. Meanwhile, if
you or someone you know struggles with depression or dark thoughts,
I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page
at Weirddarkness dot com. There I've gathered numerous free resources
to help you fight depression, including the Seven Cups app,
the suicide and crisis Hotlineifread dot org, and more. And

(19:46):
these resources are absolutely free either there when you need
them on the Hope in the Darkness page at Weird
Darkness dot com. Near the end of World War One,

(20:24):
a bizarre disease known as sleepy sickness or lethargic encephalitis
was contracted by millions of people across the world. There
seemed to be no treatment for it, and the cause
of the disease remains a mystery to this day. What
was it and why did nearly one million people who
came down with the disease die from it while so

(20:47):
many others did not. That's the problem. No one knows.
Those who survived the disturbing illness probably wished they had died.
It transformed people to living statues, forcing them to spend
the rest of their lives trapped within their bodies and
locked away in institutions, speechless and motionless. You're probably thinking

(21:12):
that you've never heard of this, and there's a good
reason why. The brain illness spread around the globe at
the same time as the Spanish flu pandemic that killed
over fifteen million people, causing it to be overlooked by
history in spite of the one million dead and the
millions of lives that were affected by it. Although most
cases were reported near the end of World War One,

(21:35):
it's believed that the epidemic began in nineteen fifteen or
nineteen sixteen, when soldiers who displayed incredible lethargy and confusion
were examined by doctors in Paris. At first, they assumed
the cause of their unusual symptoms was mustard gas, which
had been used during the war, but this proved to
be wrong. It turned out that the disease was already

(21:59):
being studied by a neurologist from Vienna named Constantin von Echinomo,
who'd been studying the effects of the illness in civilians.
In a paper, he wrote, we are dealing with a
kind of sleeping sickness having an unusually prolonged course. The
first symptoms are usually acute, with headaches and malaise van
a state of somnolence appears often associated with active delirium,

(22:22):
from which the patient can be awakened easily he's able
to give appropriate answers and to comprehend the situation. This
delirious somnolence can lead to death rapidly or over the
course of a few weeks. On the other hand, it
can persist unchanged for weeks or even months, with periods
lasting bouts of days or even longer, a fluctuation of

(22:43):
the depth of unconsciousness, extending from simple sleepiness to deepest
stupor or coma. Just a year after Economo's paper was published,
the horrifying illness turned into an epidemic, taking its toll
in human lives and leaving millions of Pea people trapped
in their own bodies. Lethargic encephalitis literally translates to brain

(23:06):
inflammation that makes you tired, but it became commonly known
as sleepy sickness. It's a funny name, but the result
was anything but humorous. Most accounts state that over a
third of those infected died, while around twenty percent survived
but were more or less dependent on professional care for
the rest of their lives. Sadly, fewer than one third

(23:29):
made full recoveries. It affected people of all ages, but
like the Spanish flu, young people between fifteen and thirty
five were hit the hardest. The initial stages of infection
were a lot like the flu, a high fever, headache,
feeling tired, running nose. There was no way for the
infected to know that he or she was battling a

(23:50):
deadly disease, which gave the virus just enough time to
spread into the brain. The disease peaked just after the war,
but lingered for almost ten years. Finally it began to fade,
but it never completely disappeared. In fact, new cases were
reported as recently as nineteen ninety three. Modern doctors who

(24:12):
studied the new cases came to believe that patients were
affected by a rare form of Streptococcus bacteria. They noted
that the massive immune reaction to the bacteria caused the
immune system of the infected to attack the brain, resulting
in brain damage. But that's just a guess. So far.
There is no warning, no treatment, and no cure for

(24:36):
sleepy sickness. It remains one of the strangest medical mysteries
of all time. It was sometime in late October or

(24:58):
early November two three, my husband and I had been
invited by friends to attend their daughters christening in Oberon,
in the central table lands of New South Wales, Australia.
When we set out on our trip, there were reports
of black ice along the way on Bell's Line Road
up in the Blue Mountains. This was unusual because it

(25:18):
was already late spring. Seasons are the other way around
in the Southern Hemisphere. Black ice forms when the air
gets cold enough on the road surface and its raining.
It is a treacherous, clear, icy glaze, impossible to see
on the black colored road, much the same effect as
a diesel fuel spill. As driving under those conditions was

(25:40):
dangerous and we had been traveling all day, we decided
to break the journey up by spending the night at
the Comet Inn in the village of Hartley Vale in
the Blue Mountains. It was a pleasant historic inn, established
during the time when the shale mines were still open
in the eighteen hundreds. We had dinner at the pub downstairs,
which was a cozy, welcoming place filled with local memorabilia

(26:03):
from the early settlers' days. Despite our best intentions of
having an early mark. We wound up staying until early
hours of the morning, chatting with the woman who ran
the inn slash pub and the bartender. It was well
after two am when we finished our drinks, both of
us by now feeling in a mellow state. The room

(26:23):
we were given was on the first floor, up a
short flight of stairs and around the corner to the left.
I can't really describe the room too well, being quite
well and truly tuckered out by this stage. I think
it was furnished in the early colonial style, probably from
the eighteen eighties or thereabouts. An old fashioned lacy wedding
gown hung on one wall. The room felt a bit

(26:46):
crowded with heavy ornate dark wood furniture crammed into a
small space. The bed, with its mile high mattress, was
too tall for my short legs, and I could have
done with a step letter getting into bed. A dresser
with a tall mirror was positioned really close to the
right side of the bed where I slept, and I
had to squeeze past it to reach the bed. At

(27:09):
the same time, I had to be careful not to
knock off the various porcelain knick knacks displayed on the
dresser or the vintage style brass I think touch sensor lamp.
My husband, having done all the driving that day, fell
asleep in an eye blink. But sleep wasn't in the
cards for me. I'd come down with a gastroe bug

(27:30):
the day before we left home, and all the rich
food at dinner washed down with alcohol wasn't agreeing with me.
Before long, to my dismay, I had to get up
again and make my way to the necessary room. Thick
blackout curtains hung at the windows, so once the lights
were off, the room was pitch black. I bumped my knee,

(27:50):
then my arm on the corner of the dresser, fumbling
around to find the brass lamp, hoping I didn't break
anything too valuable or irreplaceable. In the process, I remember
muttering irritably to myself, where's the stupid light? A faint,
silvery green glow appeared near at hand, and I thought,
with relief, Oh goody, here's the lamp. So I tapped

(28:13):
the lamp once more to brighten the light, proceeded to
do what I needed, and climbed back into bed. By
now I was purged of all alcoholic effects. My forehead
was clammy, and I felt as strung out as a
wet linguinie. Feeling miserable, I grumbled to my husband, I
don't feel so good. He slept on, totally oblivious. By now,

(28:36):
I felt too weary even to raise my hand to
push aside the sticky strand of hair laying across my forehead,
so I just made a feeble attempt to blow it off.
Then I thought I felt a breeze pass over my brow,
stirring my hair. It was barely a wisp of air,
I thought. Some one whispered to me, there there, huh.

(29:01):
I blinked, but the room was too dark to even
see my hands before me, shrugging it off as my imagination,
but strangely comforted anyway, I was finally able to sleep.
The next thing I knew, my husband was moving around
in the room getting ready for breakfast. Still hazy from
lack of sleep and positively seedy, I touched the lamp

(29:23):
and it occurred to me how the light was another color,
ambery yellow now instead of a pale silver green. So
I played around with the different light settings on a
lamp by tapping it several times in a row. Tap
dim light, tap, brighter light, tap, full light, tap light off.
My husband asked me, what are you doing, I replied, puzzled.

(29:46):
The light's the wrong color. So I told him about
my experience and wondered if it could have been a
street light from across the road or a passing car
at the time, but my husband reminded me that the
window curtains were called black out for a good reason.
The curtains had been drawn when we went to bed,
and no light could be seen from the street. He

(30:06):
also pointed out that there were no street lights outside
the inn or across the road. We were still discussing
the reason for the mysterious light source as we sat
at the breakfast table. When our hostess and bartender heard
about our story. They exchanged strange looks, so we pressed
them for further details, and they told us the story

(30:28):
about the room. Apparently, the room that we slept in
had belonged to a young wife. They told us her name,
but I've forgotten it, who lived in the house at
the time, probably in the eighteen hundreds. Tragically, she died
during childbirth in that very room while her husband was
away from home. The wedding gown hanging up in the
room had been hers. Other guests in the past have

(30:52):
experienced various things being moved around in the room, or
drawers and doors slamming. Once, a well known Australia and
celebrity better not mention his name, spent the night there
while he was filming a fishing show in the area.
He was woken up when the foot of the bed
was shaken violently. Yes, she really wanted his attention. Although

(31:14):
booked in for a few nights, he refused to stay
any longer and promptly packed his bags and escaped the
next morning. When I think on that breeze, it seems
more and more to me as if a cool hand
had gently brushed my damp hair back off my forehead.
Was it a product of a fevered imagination? Who knows,

(31:36):
But it's nice to think that someone gave me comfort
when I was feeling ill. When weird dirkness returns, a
series of unexplained incidents took place in the early nineteenth
century at the Chase Vault in the cemetery of the
Christ Church in Oysten's, Barbados. Each time the vault was

(31:58):
opened to bury a family member. All coffins but one
had changed position. A series of unexplained incidents took place

(32:40):
in the early nineteenth century at the Chase Vault and
the cemetery of the Christ Church in Oiston's, Barbados. Each
time the vault was opened to bury a family member,
all coffins but one had changed position. When this had
happened several times without explanation over a number of years,

(33:00):
the vault was eventually abandoned. The vault, located about seven
miles from Bridgetown, was a large structure built for the
Chase family and their close friends. The vault was built
roughly half above and half below the ground, which allowed
for some degree of protection from the elements. The first
placed inside the vault was Missus Thomasina Goddard and a

(33:23):
simple wooden coffin. Built in July eighteen oh seven, two
year old Mary Anne Chase was placed in the vault.
The very next year, the older sister of Mary Anne,
Dorcas Chase, was put into the vault on July sixth,
eighteen twelve. Some claim that Dorcas starved herself after she
was forced into depression by her father. A few weeks later,

(33:47):
her father, Thomas Chase, died and was to be placed
in the vault. Legend says that Thomas was one of
the most hated men in Barbados. When the Chase Vault
was opened for the bearial of Thomas Chase, the eight
pallbearers who carried Chase's coffin down into the vault were
the first to notice that the two lead coffins already

(34:08):
in the tomb were not where they had been left
a month earlier. Mary Anne's coffin was lying upside down
in the opposite corner from where it had been placed.
The workers returned the coffins to their side by side
positions and left that of Thomas Chase next to them.
The smaller coffin of Mary Anne was placed on top
of one of the larger ones. After the crypt was

(34:31):
resealed with its heavy marble door, a curious murmuring started
among the Baysians. The mourners soon resolved to place the
blame on the slaves who had assisted in the burials.
The alleged cruelty of Thomas Chase toward his servants offered
an easy revenge motive. The case apparently having been solved,

(34:52):
the crypt remained undisturbed for four more years. On September
twenty fifth, eighteen sixteen, the vault was opened for the
burial of eleven year old Charles Brewster Aimes. As with
the previous time the vault was opened, each of the
coffins had been misplaced and thrown about, including the two

(35:12):
hundred forty pound coffin of Thomas. The vault was put
back in order and re sealed. Fifty two days later,
Samuel Brewster was to be buried inside the Chase vault.
This time a large group of witnesses crowded around the
vault looking for the mystery to continue. The slab of
stone which covered the door was carefully examined. No defects

(35:36):
were found, and the vault was opened. The vault once
again was found in disarray. Missus Goddard's coffin, the only
wooden one placed in the vault, was badly damaged and
was later wrapped in wire to keep it together. Several investigators,
including the Reverend Thomas Oderson, examined the vault. Nothing could

(35:56):
be found that would indicate a cause for the strange happening,
so the vault was once again cleaned and sealed. On
July seventeenth, eighteen nineteen, the vault was once again opened,
and once again the vault was found to be in disorder.
The only coffin untouched was the wooden and fragile one

(36:17):
of Missus Goddards. This time, the governor of the island,
Lord Kammimer, ordered his own professional investigation. The entire vault
was looked over and nothing strange could be found. The
coffins were restacked, with Missus Goddard's wooden coffin being stacked
against a wall. As it was so frail, sand was

(36:38):
placed on the floor to catch the footprints of the perpetrators.
The vault was then reclosed and personal seals of the
governor were placed on concrete. Everyone on the island awaited
the next reopening. The next opening of the vault was
not for a burial, but for the governor's curiosity. On
April eighteenth, eighteen twenty, the overnor and several friends traveled

(37:01):
to the vault and found his seal unbroken. When the
vault was opened, however, it was found that the coffins
were once again in disarray, some even flipped upside down,
and the sand revealed no footprints. After this incident, the
vault was abandoned and the coffins were buried elsewhere. The

(37:22):
vault still exists today at christ Church Parish and it
is still vacant. If you're looking to visit Colorado in
the near future and are looking for some strange urban
legends to experience, here are three from Paranormality magazine that

(37:45):
you might want to check out. Route six six six,
the infamous road formerly known as Route six sixty six,
dubbed the Devil's Highway, cuts through Colorado. In an attempt
to alleviate the fear associated with the demonic connects of
the number, the road was renumbered as Route four ninety
one in two thousand and three. However, the change in

(38:07):
numbers did not eradicate the eerie phenomena that continues to
occur on this haunted thoroughfare. During its time as Route
six sixty six, this particular stretch of highway had an
unusually high rate of accidents. Numerous individuals driving along the
Devil's Highway have recounted unsettling experiences, such as being trailed

(38:28):
by a black phantom sedan that dangerously tailgates them regardless
of their speed. Bewilderingly, when they pull over, they discover
that there is no car following them. Accounts also abound
of a pack of hell hounds that terrorize unsuspecting travelers.
These creatures inexplicably managed to keep pace with the vehicle,
regardless of the speed or reckless maneuvers of the driver.

(38:53):
Many believe that these hell hounds are responsible for shredding
tires and causing horrendous wrecks. Even claim that these beasts
have the ability to leap into windows and viciously attack people.
The vampire's grave in the realm of European folklore, captivating
narratives about vampires have well captivated generations. However, an intriguing

(39:17):
twist of fate unfolds in a small town nestled within
the heart of Colorado. Enter Theodore Glova, an immigrant hailing
from Transylvania who embarked on a new life as a
coal miner in this unfamiliar land. As the legends go,
Theodore was an enigmatic figure, towering in height with a
pallid complexion, plaid in a somber coat, and sporting elongated fingernails. Tragically,

(39:44):
in the fateful year of nineteen eighteen, he succumbed to
the flu finding his eternal rest in the serene grounds
of Lafayette Municipal Cemetery, Yet whispers persist that Theodore's spectral
presence lingers under the moonlit skies, haunting those who chance
upon his grave. According to some tales, an extraordinary tree

(40:06):
now stands as a sentinel, its roots said to have
entwined with the stake that once pierced Theodore's heart, effectively
warding off his undead existence. And then there are the
Gates of Hell is a local legend surrounding Riverdale Road
in Thornton, Colorado, often referred to as the Gates of Hell.

(40:28):
According to rumors, this particular stretch of road is said
to lead to a sinister place associated with satanic worship
and even human sacrifices. Supposedly, at the end of this
road you can find rusted iron gates that serve as
an entrance to an infernal realm, accompanied by the remains
of a charred mansion believed to be a direct path

(40:50):
to Hell. The mansion itself has a historical background, dating
back to the time of the Gold Rush, when it
was constructed by a man named David Wolpert. Throughout the years,
the mansion has undergone various transformations, serving as a brothel,
a cowboys saloon, and even a hippie commune before meeting
its demise at a devastating fire in nineteen seventy five.

(41:13):
Local suspicions suggest that a troubled individual residing in the
mansion tragically ended the lives of his family before setting
the home ablaze. These macabre events have contributed to the
belief that the mansion's grounds hold portals to the underworld.

(41:38):
Thanks for listening. If you missed any part of tonight's show,
or if you want to hear it again, you can
subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast app at
weird Darkness dot com slash listen. Not only will you
hear a copy of tonight's show, you'll also receive the
Sudden Death overtime content which you can only hear in
the podcast, including a story about how a couple was
haunted by a dead rooster and the incredibly disturbing case

(42:00):
of William Bowen, known as California's Freeway Killer. These are
only in the podcast version of tonight's show, which will
be uploaded early Monday morning. You can follow Weird Darkness
on social media by visiting the contact social page on
the website, and please tell others about Weird Darkness who
love the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or

(42:21):
unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing that helps make it
possible for me to keep doing the show. If you'd
like to be a part of the show, you can
send in your own paranormal experiences by clicking on tell
your Story at Weirddarkness dot com. You can also email
me anytime at Darren at Weird Darkness dot com. Darren
is dr r En. All stories in Weird Darkness are

(42:42):
purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can
find links to the stories of the authors in the
show notes, which I've already posted to the Weird Darkness website.
Colorado's Best Urban Legends is from Paranormality magazine. Be Forgotten
Epidemics by Troy Taylor. Comfort at the Comet Inn is
by Jubilee from your ghost Stories dot com. The Chase

(43:03):
Vault is from ghoststory dot Co dot UK. And People
Are Vanishing into Thin Air in Our National Parks is
by an unknown author. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark
copyright Weird Darkness. And now that We're coming out of
the Dark, I'll leave you with a little light Proverbs eight,
verse thirteen. To fear the Lord is to hate evil.

(43:25):
I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior, and perverse speech.
And a final thought, he who does not live in
some degree for others hardly lives for himself Montane. I'm
Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me in the weird Darkness.

(44:05):
In H. T. Wells classic novel of eighteen ninety five,
The Time Machine, an adventurous Londoner heads off into a
dark future where he clashes with cave dwelling monsters, explores
ruined cities, and witnesses the final moments of life on Earth.
In the nineteen sixty eight movie Planet of the Apes,
Charlton Heston's character Taylor, an American astronaut, arrives on a

(44:30):
nightmarish world run by a race of talking apes. Only
at the film's climax, as he stumbles upon the remains
at the Statue of Liberty, does Taylor realize with horror
that he has not set foot on some far off
planet after all. Rather, he is home, two thousand years
in the future, and after a worldwide holocaust that has

(44:50):
destroyed human civilization. Then there's Michael J. Fox's character Marty McFly,
who in the nineteen eighty five Hollywood comedy blockbuster Back
to the Future, travels through time to nineteen fifty five.
On doing so, he almost makes out with his then
teenage mom, comes perilously close to wiping out his own

(45:10):
existence as a result of his time traveling antics, and
in single handed fashion, invents rock and roll. And let's
not forget Bruce Willis in nineteen ninety five's Twelve Monkeys.
At least as far as Megabucks, movies and literary classics
are concerned, the theme of time travel is a spectacularly
successful one. But what of the real world are time

(45:33):
travelers really among us? Is there a direct connection between
the world of time travel and that of UFOs? I'm
Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos. I'm

(45:55):
Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every
week you'll find story of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,
the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.
Coming up this hour. Horror and sci fi author and

(46:17):
Weird Darkness fan JD. Buffington doesn't believe in such things
as ghosts. If Houdini couldn't reach his wife from the
other side, then certainly no one else could either. Rite
But that being said, JD has had some weird stuff
take place in his life. Soon after moving into a
sprawling Denver mansion, Russell Hunter sensed he wasn't alone. I'll

(46:42):
share true events that inspired the film The Changeling. But first,
for those who claim to have spoken with extraterrestrials, they
are told the aliens arrive here from other worlds. But
what a feasts so called aliens? Aren't we aliens at all?
What if they are humans visiting from the future. We

(47:06):
begin with that story. If you're new here, welcome to
the show. And if you're already a member of this
weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else
to listen in Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make
it possible for me to keep doing the show. And
while you're listening, be sure to visit Weirddarkness dot com
and click on contact Social to follow Weird Darkness on

(47:28):
social media and also on the website. You can find
the daily Weird Darkness podcast, which comes out seven days
per week. You can enter monthly contests, find Weird Darkness
merchandise and more. You can even send in your own
true story of something paranormal that has happened to you
or someone you know. You can find it all at
Weirddarkness dot com. Now bult your doors, lock your windows,

(47:53):
turn off your lights, and come with me into the
Weird Darkness. Just about everyone has heard of unidentified flying

(48:21):
objects or UFOs, but what about unidentified future objects? Alien
encounters have been reported for decades. If there's one thing
that the aliens are keen to tell us and have
us believe, is that they originate from other worlds. But
are they being truthful with us? Might they really be

(48:43):
time travelers? Why is it that our aliens conveniently speak
our languages. How is that, with no trouble at all,
they can breathe our atmosphere? Why do they abduct us
and use us in bizarre genetic experiments? Surely we are
not physically and genetically compatible with creatures from far away

(49:05):
solar systems. They assure us that we are indeed compatible,
though it all sounds far too convenient and carefully stage managed.
Maybe that's because they are not from far away worlds.
After all, perhaps they are from right here on Earth,
not our Earth, so to speak, but the Earth of

(49:28):
the future, the distant future, an Earth that is in ruins,
and at a time when the human race is perilously
close to extinction, they travel into their distant past our present,
and engage in clandestine programs to reap DNA cells, sperm

(49:48):
and eggs as a means to try and save what
is left of us thousands of years from now. Keenly
aware of the fact that the people of the twentieth
and twenty first century held deep leafs with regard to
the concept of extraterrestrial life, they chose to adopt the
guises of the alien things we believe in as a
means to camouflage their real identities. Could that be the

(50:13):
shocking truth? Formerly of the US Air Force and one
of the key military players in the famous UFO encounter
at Rendelsham Forest, Suffolk, England in December nineteen eighty, Sergeant
Jim Peniston in nineteen ninety four underwent hypnotic regression as
part of an attempt to try and recall deeply buried

(50:34):
data relative to what occurred to him during one of
Britain's closest encounters. Very interestingly, and while under hypnosis, Peniston
stated that our presumed aliens are in reality visitors from
a far flung future. That future, Peniston added, is very dark,
in infinitely deep trouble, polluted, and where the human race

(50:57):
is overwhelmingly blighted by reaprint deductive problems. The answer to
those same massive problems Peniston was told by the entities
he met in the woods is that they travel into
the distant past to our present day to secure sperm,
eggs and chromosomes, all as part of an effort to

(51:17):
try and ensure the continuation of the severely waning human
race of tomorrow. Time travel is not theoretically possible, for
if it was, they'd really be here telling us about it.
British physicist Professor Stephen Hawking famously said, and even if
time travel did one day become a possibility, it would

(51:38):
be beset by major problems. Claimed talking suppose it were
possible to go off in a rocket ship and come
back before you set off, What would stop you from
blowing up the rocket on its launch pad, or otherwise
preventing you from setting out in the first place. Not
everyone agrees with Hawking. One possible way of traveling through

(51:58):
time is via what are known in physics as wormholes,
a term coined in nineteen fifty seven by theoretical physicist
John Wheeler. The wormhole is basically a shortcut through both
space and time, and although firm evidence for the existence
of these so called time tunnels has not yet been
firmly proven, they do not fall outside of the boundaries

(52:21):
presented in Einstein's theory of general relativity. Then there is
the matter of the sinister Men in Black. They are
perceived by UFO researchers as human looking alien creatures or
government agents whose secret role is to silence UFO witnesses,
something that history has shown they are very good at. Maybe, though,

(52:44):
the miib are not the bad guys after all, Perhaps
they are time cops working to ensure that UFO witnesses
don't get too close to the truth, namely the time
travel angle. After all, just about everything about them is
out of time. They almost always wear nineteen fifties eras

(53:05):
black suits. Their mode of transport, old time Cadillac cars,
is out of time as well. They have even asked
witnesses on more than a few occasions what time is it.
Maybe they're actually asking what year they are in, or
even which century. Perhaps in the distant future, little is

(53:25):
known of our time. Maybe we destroyed ourselves, and as
a consequence, the people of the future are tasked with
repairing the planet and doing their utmost to save what
is left of our species. Possibly they've limited knowledge of
our culture and even our fashions, apart from what they
know from pages of aging, crumbling old magazines from the

(53:47):
nineteen fifties, So they adopt the attire they assume will
allow them to blend in with the people of the
twenty first century, when in reality it's the exact opposite.
The MiB st and out like a sore thumb, or
like a man out of time. Perinormal researcher Joshua P.
Warren comments on this link between time travel and the

(54:11):
Men in Black. It could be that the men in
Black follow all this UFO stuff around. That's their job.
Not that they're causing these things to happen, but they
are alerted to it when there's a dangerous timeline issue
that needs to be corrected. They're not necessarily the bad
guys at all. They might be doing damage control, and
maybe that includes warning and silencing witnesses to protect the

(54:34):
time travel secret. They might be weird and they might
look weird, but their overall mission may be just to
keep order and protect the timelines. Of course, we need
to remain grounded on all of this. So far, there
is no definitive proof whatsoever that we have or have
ever had time travelers in our midst and there's no

(54:56):
evidence that UFOs are really time machines. So in other words,
everything is very much theoretical and speculative and just about
nothing else. But it doesn't hurt to speculate. Coming up,
Weird Darkness listener and also a horror and sci fi author,

(55:20):
J D. Buffington doesn't really believe in ghosts. In JD.
Buffington's mind, if Houdini couldn't reach his wife from the
other side, well certainly nobody else can either. But that
being said, JD has had some weird stuff take place
in his life, which he shares with us when Weird
Darkness returns. I'm Darren Marler. Welcome back to Weird Darkness.

(56:07):
Do you have a true paranormal story that has happened
to you or someone you know? You can share it
by clicking on Tell your story at Weirddarkness dot com
and I might use it in a future episode. In fact,
that is exactly what happened with this next story. JD.
Buffington happens to be a horror and sci fi author

(56:27):
and a listener to Weird Darkness, and a couple Halloween's back,
he decided to share some creepy things that happened to him.
Here's what he wrote and sent to me. I like

(56:49):
to think I'm a pretty open minded guy. I believe
in God and spirits. I'm certain of extraterrestrial life, and
I'm unwilling to dismiss outright anything anyone leaves with absolute conviction.
I believe they believe, and reality is perception. So yeah, Now,
having turned thirty three this year, I've lived a little

(57:10):
while and I've seen things that would fall in the
paranormal category. On today's Sunday morning, they were talking to
Chip Coffee and he said something to the effect of
paranormal means you don't know or you can't explain what happened,
but you know something happened. I've had a number of those.
Being the season for ghost stories, I'll share my experiences here.

(57:35):
I know I've got a pretty powerful memory. I can
remember pretty far back, and I can remember instances with
intense clarity, even mundane things. My earliest memory, of which
there are two right around the same time and within
the same house, I know I'm laying in a crib.
I can see the bars, the direction I'm facing, laying

(57:57):
on my stomach, I can see the window. It's either
late or early. The light is dim and silvery outside.
This bush has a pretty wicked shape to it, but
as I'm looking at it, two glowing red eyes seem
to open, and it takes the shape of a monster,
maybe like a pterodactyl, and I slowly turned my head

(58:19):
the other way to not see the monster outside my window.
Looking back on that memory and the second one, where
I'm being held by my mother and we're watching fireworks outside,
I realized it was just a bush and a car
across the street, perhaps in their driveway, stepped on the brakes,
lighting up the demon's eyes. That's hindsight. It doesn't change

(58:43):
the fact that one of my earliest memories is of
being scared of a monster staring me down. Growing up,
I remember a lot of things, but being scared of
ghosts monsters came when I moved into the house that
I mostly grew up in. My dad still lives in
that house, though whatever plagued me doesn't seem to bother him.

(59:06):
But of course I was a kid. The first few
nights we stayed there, sleeping on the couch before I
had bedroom furniture, I nightmared of a man or thing
staring at me through the two windows on the top
of the front door. It wanted in. It wanted to
get me. It was battering the door, and I was
scared stiff like any kid. Once I finally shook off

(59:30):
the dream, I ran to my parents room. The nightmares
in that house were always intense like that, usually of
something outside desperately trying to get me. I had many
night terrors inability to move despite feeling wide awake. Sometimes
it would even feel like someone was sitting or lying

(59:51):
in the bed with me. Once I even felt the
bed depress under some one's weight with no one there.
But those aren't ghosts. The ghosts, or phantoms, as I
like to label them, came once I was established in
my room. They came into my room regularly out of

(01:00:13):
my peripheral vision. I saw them daily, always outside of
directly looking at them. Shadow people, male in shape, very tall,
always coming in through my bedroom door. One of them
was so vivid that I didn't realize I was seeing
a phantom, and believed my dad had stepped into the room,

(01:00:33):
so I began to talk to him. My dad, ten
feet away in his own bedroom, finally did come walking in,
asking what I was talking about. I told him I
was talking to him. I thought he had just stepped in.
Needless to say, it was spooky for both of us
standing in the kitchen one night, just talking to each other.

(01:00:56):
I don't remember the conversation itself, just that we were talking.
A toy car of mine jumped up off the carving table.
Problem no batteries and this wasn't a It was sitting
near the edge and fell to the floor. Thing. It
drove six inches and launched itself three feet across the room,
right in front of me. And my dad saw it

(01:01:18):
just take off from a standstill. Again, we're both a
little freaked, but laugh it off. In that house, besides phantoms,
there was the thing in the kitchen. I never saw it,
but I heard it. The first time was when I
had two friends over for a slumber party. On my

(01:01:41):
seventh or eighth birthday. I thought my mom or dad
had gotten up and was making coffee or breakfast at first,
but the cabinets kept opening and shutting over and over.
I lead there, petrified as I realized there was no
other sound like a feat or bottom movement, just the

(01:02:01):
cabinets swinging open and shutting with a clunk. I know
I was awake because I looked at my friends, each
sleeping on the floor, dead asleep. That wasn't the only
time I heard it either. There were plenty of mornings
the cabinets opened and shut, and I finally asked my
dad if he was doing it or heard it, to

(01:02:22):
find that no, he had no idea recently staying the
night there. I was actually scared I would hear that,
but fortunately it seems the restless cabinet monster had finally
found what it was looking for. My first full frontal
encounter with a ghost came around Thanksgiving in a little

(01:02:43):
house in Sweetwater, Texas. The family had gathered at my
dad and I slept on a hideaway bed in the
living room. One night, I woke up, I don't know
when in the evening, but it was dark inside and out.
Just ambient light from outside street lights or the moon,
and much to my surprise, someone was sitting next to me,

(01:03:06):
about my midsection between the edge of the bed and
the TV, enough room for one person's wid Waking up
and seeing this person staring at me, it was jarring enough,
but I thought I recognized the face. At first, I
looked directly at her person I thought was my aunt.
But as I looked directly in this thing's face staring

(01:03:29):
at me barely two feet from my face, I realized
it had no eyes, just black, smoky pits, slamming my
eyes shut. Terrified, I tried to will myself back to sleep.
This was just a nightmare? Was it just a nightmare? JD.

(01:03:55):
Buffington continues his story, along with several other ghostly encounters
of his, when Weird Darkness returns. Welcome back to Weird Darkness.

(01:04:30):
I'm Darren Marler. You can stay up to date on
everything Weird Darkness. You can read original articles by me,
register for contests and more by signing up for the
Weird Darkness email newsletter. You could sign up for free
at Weirddarkness dot com slash newsletter. That's Weird Darkness dot
com slash newsletter. When we left JD. Buffington, he was

(01:04:52):
telling us about a strange, creepy thing that was happening
to him while he was in bed as a youth.
We continue his story. No now it had no eyes,
just black, smoky pits, slamming my eyes shut. Terrified, I

(01:05:16):
tried to will myself back to sleep. This was just
a nightmare. I tried to make small movements to back
myself up against my dad. Maybe I could annoy him
awake to chase whatever it was away. I lead there
with my eyes squeezed shut for a long while, relaxation
only coming after nothing happened for so long, but I

(01:05:39):
was still afraid to open my eyes even when the
morning light came. I asked my aunt about it. Had
she come into the room to maybe check on me?
Did she sleep walk? Please just tell me it was her?
And I was just confused in the darkness. But no.
And then everyone started sharing easy, scary encounters of their own,

(01:06:03):
hardly making me feel safe, but at least not alone
in my experience. Other than a general apprehension in the dark,
the no eyed ghost was the worst thing I saw
for a long time, and I'm willing to concede that
most of what I've explained here could all very well
be explained away, but that's not all of my experiences.

(01:06:25):
One in particular is more recent and happened over a
period of months during all matter of hours, and I
have corroborating witnesses. Near twenty first and Garnett here in
Tulsa are the Dove Park Town Homes. I'd been living
in a single bedroom for the last six months and
the drummer in my band was looking to move out

(01:06:48):
of the house that she was in and wanted to
know if I'd be cool with rooming with her. We
both worked for the same place, we were in a
band together. It'd work out great, we could carpool help
each other with bill awesome. It was completely platonic, and
she actually stayed there, rarely opting to stay the night
with her boyfriend most of the time. So basically I

(01:07:09):
had a whole big place to myself and she used
one of the rooms as storage. She paid her half
of everything on time, and we were good. But it
wasn't good, not all the time. The very first night
in that place and I was alone that night too,
she hadn't moved her bed over yet I heard stream

(01:07:30):
sounds from across the street in a little strip shopping center,
and then helicopters and sirens, and it was a commotion
for a long while, making it difficult to sleep. Someone
had been murdered at a nightclub, shot dead in their car,
not two blocks from our apartments. It was a great
start to our lease. Outward appearances made it seem like

(01:07:52):
it was a decent neighborhood. Yeah, there was the aforementioned
strip mall, but all around it was a decent neighborhood.
So I was shocked and apprehensive about living in a
place like that. Through that first week, we started having
plumbing problems. I had a private little water closet just
off the main bath, which was between our two bedrooms upstairs.

(01:08:15):
It always stank like sewage, and one time the toilet
acted like it was backed up, and my own efforts
with a plunger weren't releasing whatever the stinking blockage was.
I called the complex managers and they'd send a plumber.
I went to work that evening there was a work
order receipt they had fixed the problem. I went upstairs,

(01:08:36):
still a slight odor, but the toilet seemed to be working.
Next morning, going through my routine, the exact same thing,
raw sewage spell toilet backs up. My efforts fail. But
when I went downstairs, the ceiling was leaking, dripping water
all over my roommate's couch. Furious, I called both the

(01:08:59):
apartment people and my roommate and I just wanted out shootings,
bad plumbing, ruining furniture. This was an exercise in frustration,
but my roommate convinced me just to be patient. We
couldn't really afford anywhere else or to back out anyway.
I mostly quit using that toilet anymore, just to be

(01:09:19):
on the safe side. These events just sort of set
the table. In watching a million ghost shows and haunting
specials and perusing YouTube surveillance footage of ghosts got on film,
a few things always stick out to me, especially regarding
the really inexplicable hauntings, cold spots, sounds from above like

(01:09:40):
footsteps or balls rolling, and a prevalent stinking smell. I
had the stinking smell in my bathroom, which at first
I attributed to poor plumbing, considering they couldn't fix the problem.
But on many days and nights being alone in the
house watching TV or playing a game, either in the
living room or on my PC, which was set up

(01:10:02):
in the kitchen. I could hear what sounded like a
game of billiards going on upstairs, sounding like it was
coming directly from my roommate's room. I went up often
to check on things, thinking something had fallen down, but
nothing was ever out of place. On occasion, I would
hear our neighbors or their kids through the walls, so

(01:10:23):
I figured the kids were rough housing upstairs and I
was hearing reverberation downstairs. I began to dismiss it. It
was a symptom of living next to a family with kids.
One evening, getting home after dark from work, I stepped
into the house, sat down my bag, and was about
to go into the kitchen when a knock came at
the door. I opened it up and it was our neighbors,

(01:10:46):
husband and wife. Looking concerned. They asked if everything was
all right. Uh, yeah, I just got home. The looks
on their faces put me off guard. They were startled
like there was a fight, a pretty bad one. We
just wanted to make sure everything was okay. Again, I
told them I had just got home and my roommate

(01:11:08):
wasn't in. They were genuinely concerned this day and age
of turning a blind eye. They came over together, ready
to confront a domestic dispute, and I was all alone
in a house that had been empty just moments before.
When they heard something. All three of us looked up
the dark staircase just behind the front door. It was surreal,

(01:11:30):
like out of a movie. I leaned back and looked
at my back kitchen door to make sure that it
hadn't been kicked in. Maybe there were burglars upstairs. I
looked back at them, thanked them for letting me know,
and I would check on it. The man said if
there was a problem, to let him know. I shut
the door and scoured the first floor. Nothing was out

(01:11:53):
of place, and I had unlocked the front door when
I had come in. I finally worked up the courage
to go upstairs, terrified of finding a living person ready
to jump me, remotely scared of something paranormal thanks to
strange noises and smells in the house. I turned on
every light like a kid, scared of the dark, reaching

(01:12:15):
in quietly to flip the switch before I bodily entered
the room. But no one was there. Nothing was out
of place, I searched closets under the beds, not a
thing out of order. Whatever was happening in the house
was happening even when we were away, and our neighbors
could hear it too. In the midst of all of this,

(01:12:36):
my roommate and her boyfriend had their own experiences well,
mostly with the sounds, telling me about hearing footsteps where
no one was. This relieved me greatly. I'm not crazy.
Other people can hear the sounds. The neighbors aren't the
ones making them. They're hearing them too. But for about
four or five months, that was it scary sounds. My

(01:13:01):
best friend bought a house and asked if i'd want
to move in. It'd be like a bachelor pad, three
of us in a house together doing guy stuff. Twenty
four to seven. I still had a month on the lease,
so I didn't feel like I could take him up
on the offer. So he offered that i'd just pay
my portion of the utilities and he'd give me the
rent off for the first month because he'd still be

(01:13:21):
making out better if I was only helping with the utilities.
Sounded too good to pass up. I shut everything off
except electricity and started to move out. My roommate was
cool with it. She'd move out early too, and in
with her boyfriend. I slowly moved junk over in my car,
my computer being one of the last things I moved.

(01:13:42):
I checked email and bills before preparing to power it
down and take everything apart. Upstairs, I could hear footsteps
and heavy movement, like furniture moving. This was different than
the odd little Billiard's sound. It definitely sounded like a
body and things moved. I assumed it was my roommate's boyfriend.

(01:14:03):
He had been in and out helping her move, so
I paid it no mind and didn't think that it
was our ghost by any means. Satisfied enough to turn
off my computer and the monitor blanked out. How it
was set up, you could see the living room reflected
in the monitor's glass. The lamp was on in there,
and standing behind me between the back of my chair

(01:14:24):
and the lamp, creating a darkened silhouette, was a man.
I thought it was Josh come down to say hi,
or maybe to try and spook me, So I said Hi,
Josh before turning around. Only when I turned around, there
was nothing, no one, nobody, and no body. The house

(01:14:47):
was empty and now very quiet. I ran upstairs, no
lights on and nothing else gone. From the last time
I'd been upstairs. It had finally shown itself, and it
was right before me. Just writing this recalling it sets
my skin to crawling. I immediately called my friend and

(01:15:07):
asked him to come over right then, because I still
had things to move to my car. After relating the tale,
he refused. He didn't want to see a ghost. The
coward I kid. I was terrified and desperately wanted out myself.
I wasn't exactly courageous in facing the unknown. He told
me just to go ahead and stay the night at

(01:15:29):
his house, starting that evening, to just get my stuff
in broad daylight. I did, and once that last month
of our lease was up, I did a walk through
with the manager. The smell still lingered in the upstairs bathroom,
but nothing made a sound or showed up while we
were there. Once we stepped back outside, I told him

(01:15:50):
everything that had happened in case he or the company
needed to be made aware of that kind of thing.
He didn't shrug me off. Instead, he told me of
his own hauntings at a lake house he stayed in
as a kid. A lot of people experience crazy things,
and we worry we are crazy experiencing them, but we're

(01:16:11):
not alone. I'm not embarrassed of my ghost stories. I'll
share them with people gladly, and most people I've shared
them with have had stories of their own. Coming up
on Weird Darkness soon after moving into a sprawling Denver mansion,

(01:16:32):
Russell Hunter. Since he wasn't alone, I'll share true events
that inspired the film The Change Length. I'm Darren Marler.

(01:17:08):
Welcome back to Weird Darkness. And if you like what
you're hearing and you'd like to hear even more, you
can check out the free audiobooks that I've narrated at
Weird Darkness dot com. I've got free audiobooks there by
Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, HP Lovecraft, Charles Dickens,
Robert heinlend and Moore. You can listen to all of

(01:17:28):
the free audiobooks that I've narrated on the audiobooks page
at Weird Darkness dot com. Chances are you're familiar with
the nineteen eighty ghost movie classic The Changeling, even if

(01:17:49):
you've never seen it. That's because the film's iconic scene
of a red rubber ball bouncing down the stairs has
been referenced in numerous horror flex throughout the years. In fact,
the sequence came in at number fifty four on Bravo's
list of one hundred Scariest Movie Moments, and Martin Scorsese

(01:18:09):
listed The Changeling as one of the eleven scariest films
of all time. More recently, Guierremo del Toro made numerous
nods to the ghostflick in his horror gothic romance Crimson Peak.
What you may not know about The Changeling, however, is
that it's a tale of a malevolent spirit haunting a

(01:18:29):
gloomy mansion, and it's based on a true story. In
nineteen sixty eight, composer Russell Hunter moved from New York
into the Henry Treat Rodgers Mansion near Chiesman Park in Denver, Colorado.
He would later claim in an interview that he rented
the estate for the unbelievable price of two hundred dollars

(01:18:50):
per month because no one else wanted to live there.
In February of nineteen sixty nine, Hunter began experiencing strange
phenomena in the house It started with an unbelievable banging
and crashing every morning at six a m. That stopped
whenever Hunter would get out of bed. Doors opened and

(01:19:12):
closed by themselves, faucets turned off and on, and walls
vibrated so violently that they knocked paintings to the floor.
As he investigated these strange disturbances, Hunter claimed to have
found a hidden staircase in the back of an upstairs closet.
The narrow passageway led to a secret room where Hunter

(01:19:33):
found the belongings, including a journal of a young boy
who had lived in the house a century ago. Hunter
poured through the journal contents and conducted a seance to
piece together the paranormal puzzle. He discerned the resident ghost
was a sickly child who once lived in the home
and had been heir to a fortune from his grandmother

(01:19:55):
before succumbing to his infirmity. The boy's parents were worried
his inheritance might pass to another family member if word
got out about his death, so the unscrupulous couple buried
their dead son in an unmarked grave in a field
southeast of Denver. They then adopted a boy from a
local orphanage to pose as their child, who accepted the

(01:20:18):
inheritance and later went on to great wealth and success.
According to Hunter, the ghost of the sickly boy directed
him to the aforementioned unmarked grave, which was now located
beneath a house on South Dahlia Street in Denver. The
spirit reportedly threatened to harm the family living in the
South dah Jahan if they didn't give Hunter permission to

(01:20:41):
dig there. The family acquiesced. It wasn't long before Hunter
and his team on earthed human remains, along with a
gold medallion inscribed with the dead child's name. Yet the
grisly discovery didn't solve Hunter's problem. In fact, the haunting
only grew worse. A set of glass doors exploded in

(01:21:04):
Hunter's face, severing an artery in his wrist. The wall
behind Hunter's bed imploded and crumbled down on top of him.
Fearing for his life, Hunter fled to a new house
on Carney Street, but the hauntings moved with him. Finally,
Hunter called in a priest from the Epiphany Episcopal Church

(01:21:25):
to perform an extorcism, which seemed to clear the air.
Hunter's account will sound familiar to anyone who has seen
the changeling. Film. The red rubber ball even makes an
appearance in the original tale, as it was apparently the
sickly boy's favorite toy. Hunter's claims also seemed like they
would be easy enough to corroborate, and yes, when you

(01:21:47):
begin inspecting Hunter's account, gaps do emerge. The Denver Library
recently did an excellent job of fact checking Hunter's ghostly claims.
Among the library's findings is the absence of any concrete
records that Hunter actually lived in the Henry Treat Williams mansion,
though he did reside in Denver at the end of

(01:22:08):
the nineteen sixties, where he helped his parents manage the
Three Birches Lodge in Boulder. As for the boy who
supposedly haunted the house, there isn't any solid record of
him either, and there's no way he lived in the
house a century before Hunter did, as it wasn't even
built until eighteen ninety two. There are enough odd mysteries

(01:22:30):
surrounding Hunter's account to make a paranormal investigator curious, though,
including the fact that the family who built the mansion
owned farmland around where the child's unmarked grave was said
to have been located. None of that stops people from
continuing to report strange happenings all over Cheeseman Park neighborhood
to this very day, including cold spots, sudden sensations of dread,

(01:22:54):
and ghostly orbs appearing in photographs. These may have nothing
to do with Hunter's story, however, and much more to
do with the fact that Cheesman Park was originally a graveyard.
As recently as twenty ten, workers digging trenches for the
park's irrigation system unearthed four skeletons from the abandoned cemetery.

(01:23:16):
And if that's not the beginning of a killer ghost story,
then what is. Throughout the history of aviation, pilots have
reported sightings of unidentified objects in the sky. These encounters
continue to intrigue and perplex and one such incident occurred
in July twenty twenty two, when Julio's Figueroa, a skilled

(01:23:39):
pilot from Virginia, experienced a close encounter with a strange
object while flying a plane carrying skydivers. With a passion
for aviation from a young age, Figaro's journey to become
a proficient pilot led him to serve in the Navy
for two years to accumulate flight time and enhance his skills.
Following his military service, he embraced a jobb as a

(01:24:00):
skydive pilot in the Midwest, where he would eventually witness
something extraordinary. On the fateful flight of July tenth, twenty
twenty two, as Figueroa and his passengers ascended to ten
thousand feet, something remarkable cut his attention. A spherical, golden
orb emerged in the distance and began rapidly approaching his
aircraft from the north, about fifteen feet to his left

(01:24:22):
at an astonishing speed. Intriguingly, the object appeared almost invisible
when looked at directly, a phenomenon consistent with reports from
other pilots who have encountered similar objects. Figueroa described the
orb as being approximately the size of a small car. Subconsciously,
he turned the aircraft to the left as the enigmatic

(01:24:43):
object zipped past, prompting an involuntary yell from Figueroa, which
also caught the attention of three passengers, including one of
the sky diving instructors. Despite Figureoa's attempt to get answers
from air traffic control, no trace of the object was
found on radar, leading to an intrie mystery surrounding the encounter.
As more investigations into unidentified flying objects or UFOs and

(01:25:07):
unidentified aerial phenomena UAPs are launched, sightings like Figueroa's may
become more prevalent and continue to captivate the imagination of
aviation enthusiasts worldwide, with stories of similar encounters reported from
various corners of the globe. Figueroa remains vigilant during his flights,
hoping to catch another glimpse of the inexplicable Golden orb.

(01:25:29):
As the search for answers regarding UFOs and UAPs intensifies,
pilots like Figaroa may provide crucial insights into these enigmatic
sightings that have fascinated humanity for generations. Thanks for listening.

(01:25:50):
If you missed any part of tonight's show, or if
you want to hear it again, you can subscribe to
the podcast in your favorite podcast app at Weird Darkness
dot com slash listen. Not only will you hear a
copy of Tonight's show, you'll also receive daily episodes of
the Weird Darkness podcast. You can follow Weird Darkness on
social media by visiting the contact social page on the website,
and please tell others about Weird Darkness who love the

(01:26:13):
paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries
like you do. Doing that helps make it possible for
me to keep doing the show. If you'd like to
be a part of the show, you can send in
your own paranormal experiences by clicking on tell your Story
at Weirddarkness dot com. You can also email me anytime
at Darren at Weird Darkness dot com. Darren is D

(01:26:35):
R R E N. All stories in Weird Darkness are
purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can
find links to the stories of the authors in the
show notes, which I've already uploaded to the Weird Darkness website.
Virginia Pilot Encounter's mysterious Golden orb during skydive flight is
by Brandon Grimes for Paranormality Magazine. Aliens Us from a

(01:26:57):
Future Time is by Nick Redfern or Mysterious Universe. My
Many Ghostly Encounters is by J. D. Buffington from his
Circus Sized blog and also sent to Weird Darkness. The
real life events that inspired the Changeling is by Orin
Gray for the lineup. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark
copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of

(01:27:19):
the dark, I'll leave you with a little light Proverbs thirteen,
verse three. He who guards his lips guards his life.
But he who speaks rashly we'll come to ruin. And
a final thought, we are all not in the same boat.
We are in the same storm. Some have yachts, some

(01:27:39):
have canoes, and some are drowning. Just be kind and
help when you can. Damian Barr, I'm Darren Marler. Thanks
for joining me in the Weird Darkness. In nineteen seventy nine,

(01:28:28):
dozens of murdered teenage boys were spotted on California's sprawling freeways,
with one victim as young as twelve. As police discovered
the bodies of the victims, their corpses showed signs of
violent sexual assault, with the modus operandi of the serial
killer being death by strangulation and stabbing. Unlike most serial

(01:28:51):
killers of the era, he had accomplices. These accomplices helped
the freeway killer, with the physical act of the murder
between Los Angeles County and Orange counting from an ice
pick to a tire iron to a jack handle. The
murderer used a variety of weapons for the murders. His
name was William Bonen, and he officially murdered fourteen teenage

(01:29:15):
boys and unofficially up to twenty one. Some victims managed
to escape from Bonan's clutches and recounted their terrifying experiences.
I told him that I didn't need to go any further,
and the car drifted to the side of the busy freeway.
It stopped suddenly, without a word. He took out a
piece of cord, lunged across and wrapped it around my neck.

(01:29:36):
I thought, this is it. I'm dead. This victim escaped
after he kicked Bonan in the groin and ran out
of the car, flagging down a police cruiser as Bonan
sped away. A second victim, David McVicar, actually testified against
William Bonen in court. He had set the gun on
his left hand side, but he already locked the door

(01:29:57):
on the right, so I couldn't get out without reaching
a and grabbing the door. So I knew that by
the time that I did, he could easily grab the
gun and shoot me. He started taking off his clothes
and told me to take off mine. He was raping
me in the front seat of the car, and he
had a t shirt around my neck with a tire
iron through the sleeves and he was twisting it trying

(01:30:18):
to strangle me. In this rare case, Bonan unexpectedly let
the fourteen year old David go free after the rape.
William Bonan himself was the product of a dysfunctional family
and child molestation. Born in Connecticut on January eighth, nineteen
forty seven, he was the middle child of three brothers.

(01:30:39):
He grew up with an alcoholic father and absentee mother,
and was primarily raised by his grandfather, who was a
convicted child molester. He ran away from home at the
age of eight. In his early adolescence, he was sent
to a juvenile detention center for stealing license plates. During
this time in the detention center, Bonan was allegedly sexually

(01:31:01):
assaulted by older teenage boys. In nineteen sixty five, Bonan
enlisted in the U. S. Air Force and served during
the Vietnam War as a helicopter gunner. During his enlistment,
he assaulted two soldiers under his command. After the war's end,
Bonan married divorced and relocated to California at the age

(01:31:24):
of twenty two. He was arrested for sexually assaulting five
boys in the South Bay communities in nineteen sixty nine
and spent over five years in prison. After his release,
he sexually assaulted the aforementioned fourteen year old David McVicker
in nineteen seventy five. Bonan was immediately shipped back to
prison for an additional four years. Bonin was once again

(01:31:47):
released from prison in nineteen seventy nine and bowed to
never get caught again. This tragically resulted in an escalation
of the violence as Bonan began to murder his teenage victim. However,
Bonen didn't commit these murders along, as he had four accomplices,
Vernon Butts, Gregory Milly, James Monroe, and William Pugh. His

(01:32:11):
first murder victim was Marcus Grabs, a seventeen year old
German exchange student. He was last seen hitchhiking along the
Pacific Coast Highway on August fifth, nineteen seventy nine. His
naked body was found a few days later in Malibu Canyon,
stabbed nearly eighty times with a nylon rope around his neck.

(01:32:32):
On August twenty seventh, a mutilated body of Donald Hayden,
a fifteen year old from Hollywood, was discovered in a dumpster.
His throat had been slashed and he'd been strangled and raped.
The same fate met seventeen year old David Morillo, who
disappeared on September ninth while he was on his way
to the movies. Three days later, his body was found

(01:32:54):
sodomized and mutilated. A number of the dead like James McCabe,
which as kid. Twelve year old McCabe was waiting for
a bus to take him to Disneyland in March of
nineteen eighty when he was snatched, bludgeoned, strangled, and tossed
in the trash. The majority of Bonin's victims had been
sexually assaulted and were strangled with their own t shirts,

(01:33:17):
with the killer using a metal bar to tighten it
around their necks. Bonan's body count continued to rise until
police found one of his accomplices, William Pugh, who confessed
to allegedly only witnessing the murders. Following his statements, the
police quickly placed Bonin under surveillance. On June eleventh, nineteen eighty,

(01:33:39):
Bonan set out in his van, stopping to talk to
five young men along the way. Finally, one young man
accepted a ride. Police caught Bonin in the act of
sodomizing the fifteen year old victim. They found a length
of white nylon cord, several knives, and a thick scrapbook
of clips about the freeway killer in his van. He

(01:34:01):
went to trial on November fourth, nineteen eighty one, and
was sentenced to death. Bonen made history as the first
person to die by lethal injection in California. On his
final day, Bonan spent his time with friends, and in
the late afternoon he was escorted into the death watch cell.
For his last meal, Bonan requested two large pepperoni and

(01:34:24):
sausage pizzas, three pints of coffee ice cream, and three
six packs of regular Coca Cola. During the evening, Bonin
was visited by the warden and the Catholic chaplain. His
last words were that I feel the death penalty is
not an answer to the problems at hand. That I
feel it sends the wrong message to the youth of
the country. Young people act as they see other people acting,

(01:34:47):
instead of as people tell them to act, and I
would suggest that when a person has a thought of
doing anything serious against the law, that before they did
that they should go to a quiet place and think
about it seriously. Bourne was executed on February twenty third,
nineteen ninety six. As for his accomplices, two of them died,

(01:35:08):
with Vernon Butts hanging himself while awaiting trial and Gregory
Milly succumbing to injuries from an attack in prison for
taking part in one of Bonen's killings. James Monroe is
currently serving fifteen years to life per second degree murder. However,
William Pew was sentenced to six years for voluntary manslaughter
and was freed from prison after serving only four. This

(01:35:48):
is a story that is absolutely true and happened right
here in New York. It's about a rooster that had
its head cut off and continued to crow for days afterwards.
A brother in law of mine, living in the Upper Bronx,
occupied a five room, one family house at the rear
of his garden. He had erected a chicken coop and

(01:36:08):
a long runway for the chickens to exercise. He had
forty chickens, including a magnificent specimen of a rooster which
stood nearly two feet in height, and how that boy
could crow. This brother in law of mine was a
taxi cab driver. He arose every morning at four am
and left the house at five to be at work
by six. He retired to bed every night at nine.

(01:36:32):
The only trouble was that he could not secure a
night's unbroken sleep due to the crowing of the rooster.
He complained to his wife, saying that roosters got to go.
A few days afterwards, upon his return from a hard
day's work, my brother in law took an axe, grabbed
the rooster, and severed its head. The rooster ran around

(01:36:53):
headless for a while and then collapsed. Chicken frickasy didn't
taste bad that evening for supper. The next night, my
brother in law was awakened in the early hours by
a crowing sound. He was not sure, so he listened again.
There it was, The rooster was still crowing. He knew

(01:37:14):
that he was not dreaming because the crowing repeated while
he lay in his bed. Not wishing to alarm his wife,
he told her nothing about his experience in the night.
He went to sleep again the next night and sure enough,
the rooster woke him up again. He wanted to tell
his wife, but knowing how irish and superstitious she was,

(01:37:35):
he kept the knowledge to himself. However, the third night
was too much for him. He was beginning to get nervous.
All he knew and was sure of was that he
had killed that darned rooster, and being over twenty one,
he had sense enough to know that dead roosters can't crow.
He had only one rooster at the time, he now

(01:37:56):
had none. So where was the crowing come from? He
hit upon a plan. He got up and dressed, and,
taking a flashlight and an axe with him, went out
into the light and down to the chicken coop. He
placed his hands on the wire mesh and closing the
runway and waited. He wasn't disappointed. Sure enough, there it was,

(01:38:18):
right inside the coop, cock a doodle doo. He almost
dropped the axe, but gathering his courage, or what was
left of it, he rushed to the coop, tore open
the door and looked in. There were the chickens, all asleep,
huddled up close to each other. No rooster. He closed
the door quickly and bolted for the house. When he

(01:38:40):
was safely inside. He woke his wife up and told
her the story. His wife looked at him to see
if he'd been drinking, and said, are you losing your senses?
You know that you killed that rooster three days ago
and that we ate him. Now hold your wish and
get back into bed. We get a body up with
such a fool tale as that, go on, go back
to sleep. He tried to convince her, but it was

(01:39:03):
no use. Suddenly the rooster crowed again, and she sat
up in bed. There you are, there, you are, said
the brother in law. See my lion. You hear it
here yourself, don't you. His wife crossed herself and said,
Glory be to God, he's coming back to haunt us.
Oh what'll we do? What'll we do? I'm gonna go

(01:39:24):
right down again enough I have to kill every one
of them, damn fowl. I'll get to the bottom of this,
my brother in law said, And away he went. He
went straight to the coop once more, opened the door,
and going inside, closed the door after him. He put
his flash light out and waited. Suddenly, the cockadoodle doo
came again, and he put the light on. What did
he see? He couldn't believe his eyes. One of the

(01:39:48):
chickens was crowing. Oh, said he, that's it, is it.
He took his handkerchief out of his back pocket, and
tying it around the legs of the culprit, slammed the door.
When he reached his wife, he told her that he
had solved the situation and explained what he had discovered.
He killed the chicken the next evening when he came

(01:40:08):
home from work. And the peculiar thing about it was
that when he began cleaning the chicken, he discovered a
three inch long nail right through the gizzard. Figure it
out for yourself. However, he did get his sleep after that,
and that ends the story. Sid in death over time

(01:40:35):
with your darkness

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