Police Officers Share Their Most Terrifying Paranormal Calls

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
In two thousand and eight, I was sent to a
call about a neighbor dispute, which is never a good time.
Being a raft in the middle of two neighbors that
have usually hated each other for eons is a reoccurring nightmare.
I get there and this completely professional woman is ticked
off beyond comprehension. I say professional woman because in my

(00:30):
occupation dealing with all types, the first thing I tend
to see in people is education and professional level. She
seemed normal, well grounded, nothing that would indicate any type
of drug abuse or substance abuse. She informs me that
her neighbors are racist assholes and they've been threatening her
by yelling through the wall when she's inside the house.

(00:52):
This seems legit to me. She was convincing, and when
I interrupted and had her retell the story at different points,
it was always the same, with the same details. In short,
I could not twist her story and say, to myself,
seems like bull so I started writing things down that
she was saying. She tells me that she's lived at

(01:13):
the house with her husband for about a month and
loves it, but every time they're inside the house, their
racist neighbors starts screaming leave the home, and they're tired
of it. She goes on and tells me that before
she calls this time, she was bringing groceries into the house,
and she likes to pile all the groceries by the
back door at one time and then bring in the

(01:35):
bags to the kitchen. She told me that while she
was in the kitchen, the neighbor shot a twenty four
case of pop with a pellet gun. I go outside
and look at the case of soda, and there are
several cans inside the case that look like they are leaking,
but I don't see where a projectile hit the case.
It was also about seventy degrees and beautiful, So I

(01:57):
opened the case, which was sealed, and there are four
cans that just look smashed to hell, but the rest
are fine, and I see no pellet holes or whatever else. Also,
in my mind, I have no idea how these cans
could have been this deformed in the pattern they were
found in without damaging the cans near them or the

(02:17):
case they were in. I might be college educated and
have some cop experience, but I shrug it off, because
how the hell do I know they weren't damaged in
packaging or some other explanation, but the spider sense had
started tingling, and hey, I get paid for this stuff.
So I went next door and did the cop thing.

(02:38):
And two of the sweetest old women ever live in
that house, and they're of the same race as the
neighbor in distress. No males live there or have been there.
So I go back to the complainant and ask where
does the voice come from? But she points right at
the old lady house next door. I asked, is it
a male voice or female? And she said, without hesitation, male,

(03:01):
and he sounds so pissed off all the time. So,
in an effort to put this to rest, because obviously
there was some kind of disconnect, and anytime you can
get neighbors to be happy, they tend not to call anymore,
I marched the complainant over to her neighbor's house to
introduce everybody. She, like so many people, now had no
idea who was living next to her. We all got

(03:24):
invited inside, and if you could picture two grandmothers that
were roommates, you could picture inside this house. They even
had a candy tray and pastries to offer. So I
finally explained to the grandmothers, what's going on, I kid
you not. One looks right at me and goes Paul
said that happened to him before he passed away. They

(03:46):
then tell us that the previous homeowner before the current one,
apparently told his neighbors that a voice was yelling at
him to leave the home a few months before taking
a handful of sleeping pills. Now I'm pretty rational person,
but the more I thought about it, crazy racist neighbors
don't yell things like leave the home. They're usually more

(04:08):
explicit and hateful. I kind of think the only type
of entity that would tell you to leave the home
would be something inside the home. So I have no
idea what to believe. I know that A short time
later I saw a real estate sign in front of
the house and the complainant packing her stuff into a truck.

(04:28):
She waved, I waved back. But that's all I know,
and luckily I'm not assigned to that area anymore. I'm
Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos. I'm

(04:52):
Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness Radio, where every
week you'll find stories of a paranormal, supernatural legend lore,
the Strange and bizarre, crime conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.
Coming up this hour, a bizarre phenomenon that manages to

(05:15):
teeter where the lines of Bigfoot werewolves. The paranormal and
Urban legend intersect takes things deeper into the strange, with
various reports that suggest these beings utilize the mental power
of telepathy as well. We'll look into some of the
creepy encounters with the dog Man, but first, no one

(05:38):
really thinks about it, but cops are usually one of
the most credible witnesses to paranormal phenomena. Police officers are
trained observers and usually will make better witnesses than a civilian.
But even our bravest men and women in blue can
be terrified into a shade of white. We begin there.

(06:00):
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(06:20):
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(06:42):
even send in your own true story of something paranormal
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can find it all at Weird Darkness dot com. Now
bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the Weird Darkness. One family

(07:27):
in two thousand and seven reported hearing train sounds and
screaming in their one hundred and forty year old farmhouse.
Now train tracks for miles until you realize that the
walking path behind the house was an old railroad line
that donated the track space to complete the walking path.
Never went back there. I saw and heard nothing, but

(07:49):
why tempt fate. One young woman in two thousand and
nine had just moved into a new house, and when
we got there, opened the door and had a look
of terror on her face, and the first thing she
said was this house hasn't been blessed yet. There's something
in the basement. Okay, I mean blessed or not. Gott

(08:12):
to check the basement, guns and flashlights out. Nothing stood
there for about ten minutes, with the owner yelling at
us from upstairs that it won't happen because we're here.
Furnace fires up. Admittedly it looks old, and debated some
kind of noise that sounded like a growl with some banging.
She starts screaming, that's it, you hear it. We explained

(08:35):
what it was, but she still left the house, insisting
she would have a priest or something over to bless
it before she came back in. I had a call
to a residence for a mental evaluation or a fifty
one to fifty anyway. I get there and speak to
a fifty something year old woman who states her twenty

(08:58):
something year old son is under the influence of an
unknown drug and kept repeating that he can't go in
his bedroom because there was an old man hanging in
the room. She stated she was too scared to go
in his room and investigate it for herself because he
constantly brings over friends that are drug addicts and is
unsure if his claims were true or not. I then

(09:19):
go speak to the son, who is clearly under the
influence of some kind of stimulant. He goes on to
tell me that he was told by a spirit to
not enter the bedroom because her father dressed in his
military class a uniform was hanging in his bedroom. I
checked the room out, and of course there was no
body hanging in the room. As I'm in the middle

(09:40):
of explaining to the mother that there was no body
in the bedroom, a veteran officer arrives on the scene
to assist me. He pulls me aside and stated, earlier
in his career he responded to this residence at that
same bedroom, he had to investigate a suicide by hanging
of an older male subject. He didn't remember all the details,
so it up in our report management system in my

(10:02):
patrol car. Sure enough, he was right. The subject who
died was a World War II veteran. He had dressed
in his military uniform and hung himself. In my mind,
I always thought that when they purchased the home, possibly
this incident was disclosed to them. However, I thought the
mother would have mentioned that to me if it had

(10:22):
been disclosed to her. She was genuinely concerned about her
son and the allegations. I was dispatched to an unknown
disturbance a couple years ago, around one hundred. The caller
either wasn't making sense or didn't give many details, as
there was hardly any information on my screen other than

(10:45):
the caller believed their friend had been possessed. I get
to the address and there's a group of young twenty
somethings all huddled in one corner of a small apartment.
There's a scared looking girl sitting in a chair in
the opposite corner, crying with her knees drawn tight against
her chest. The group was telling me they were all
hanging out watching a movie when their friend developed a

(11:08):
blank stare and started talking in an unintelligible speech. They
didn't do a great job of explaining this to me,
but it had obviously terrified them. While they were describing
this girl in the corner, she began to cry harder.
One of her friends was also crying and kept saying
something along the lines of it wasn't your voice, that

(11:29):
wasn't your voice. I went to talk to the girl.
She told me she didn't remember anything. At this point,
I was worried she had some kind of medical issue,
maybe a stroke. I checked her pupils. They seemed normal,
and I called the fire department to come check her out.
I got hold of her mother and an ambulance transported

(11:50):
her to a hospital for an evaluation. I responded to
many calls that were complaints of supernatural activity, but this
was the only one that involved a group six or
eight people witnessing the event. All in all, it was
pretty creepy. I used to work for a private police

(12:13):
security firm as a patrol supervisor. On one of my
patrol routes, we had a huge church that was also
a private daycare in kindergarten. It was my responsibility to
clear and secure the building every night between three and
four am, due to recent instances of doors being found
left open in the morning. In the early nineteen hundreds,

(12:35):
the building was a schoolhouse and supposedly a fire killed
several children trapped inside. I didn't know any of this
prior to working for the company. Several extremely creepy things
happened while I was at the church my first night there.
I had just walked down the very long main classroom
hallway to clear all the rooms. When I turned around

(12:57):
to walk back up the hallway, there was a red
blue floating in the middle of the hall that was
definitely not there prior. In the old pastor's office, there
was a lamp shaped like a lighthouse that sat on
a table in a large window. When I'd pull up
to the church, the lamp would be the first thing
I would see in the office window. It was always

(13:17):
turned on. However, what I would go to check or
lock the pastor's office from the inside, the lamp would
always be off. When I'd get back into the car
to leave, though the light would be back on again.
I also had the unusual phenomena of previously closed or
locked doors being found open just seconds after closing and

(13:38):
locking them. Another officer that filled in for me one
evening quit the very next day because he reported that
as he was checking the main chapel, the pipe organ
started playing itself. My FTO told me about this one

(13:59):
school o Wahoo that has a statue. Two officers were
set there because the alarm was going off, and both
walked past this statue that's outside on campus. The officers
didn't find anyone inside the school, and after the case
was done, the two officers asked each other if they
had seen the statue's head turning to look at them.

(14:20):
Apparently they had seen it move. That same school is
also notorious for having false alarms when the schools closed
and one's inside. The school installed a microphone in the
classrooms and during one call, picked up the laughter of children.
Only the voices were shimmering or moving in and out.

(14:41):
I can't describe it, sort of like the ghostly effects
from movies. I got sent to that school last week
for an alarm going off in a classroom, and again
the dispatcher said they could hear juveniles. However, the school
was closed and there wasn't a single kid around. The
doors and windows were weird. I was on duty one

(15:08):
night at the front desk of bar office when I
got a call from an elderly male in a village
a few miles away. He was very short of breath
and wanted me to give him the number of a
local doctor. I didn't have the number on hand, so
I put the phone down for two seconds while I
looked it up. When I picked up the phone again,
the line was still open, but I couldn't hear anything.

(15:31):
I tried shouting into the phone, telling the man to
make any sort of noise if he could hear me,
but I got nothing. A contacted the control room on
another line and got them to trace the call so
I could get help to the man, who I was
convinced had collapsed and was dying. When the number was traced,
the local cops went round to the address, which they

(15:52):
recognized as the scene of a sudden death. Three weeks before,
the sole occupant of the house had died of a
respiratory illness, and the house was empty and vacant on
their arrival. It would seem that I just had a
call from beyond the grave. I don't answer the phone anymore.

(16:17):
Several years ago, while on duty, another officer and I
responded to a possible prowler call. When we arrived, we
were met by the residents, who advised that the light
in the living room had turned off and they saw
a female walking in the room. We were about to
conduct an interior search when a neighbor called us over.

(16:38):
The neighbor told us that everyone who rents the house
leaves after a couple of months due to strange occurrences.
We went back and asked the residence if they were
moving out. We saw moving boxes through the window. The
residents said they were moving out because they would see
a female in the house and lights would turn on
and off. Not too scary a story, but definitely different.

(17:07):
The traffic guy at my agency was catching up to
a DUI suspect no lights or sirens. The suspect was
easily three to four hundred yards ahead at oh three
thirty hours on a very long stretch of semi rural road.
The last side of the street was lit by street
lights and the right side was dark. Both cars were

(17:28):
moving fast, about eighty miles per hour or so. His
dash cam video showed the suspect vehicle lose something from
its rear, and it turned out it was the suspect's
rear bumper. After the bumper stopped tumbling, the video showed
a black figure dart into the roadway from the left,
the side lit by the street lights, pick up or
move the bumper, and then dart to the right side

(17:50):
of the roadway, where it was dark. The video showed
nothing on the right side of the roadway. When the
officer drove by the area. The officer didn't see this
occurred at the time, but instead when he reviewed the
video in the car to find out where the suspect
lost his bumper. The dark figure had no reflective clothing on,
as most joggers or dog walkers do in the area,

(18:13):
and was definitely in the right place at the right time,
as the officer most likely would have hit the bumper
due to his speed and possibly crash. When I was
working as an EMT slash security officer at a casino,

(18:36):
I was walking the parking structure around oh three hundred hours.
Up on the hill by the top level were some
street lights, a guard rail, and a road leading up
to a water tower, but nothing else. This night, the
light seemed to be a lot dimmer than usual, and
there was an all black figure just standing there looking
straight ahead. I couldn't tell if it was looking down

(18:59):
the hill at no or up the hill towards the tower.
I didn't have a flashlight on me, so I decided
to go grab one before investigating. I went down one
level and met up with another officer and told him
about the figure. The hill was in sight the whole time.
I turned to speak with the officer briefly, and when
I turned back around, the lights seemed to have been

(19:21):
turned up to normal and the figure was gone. I
found out later that there had been a number of
sightings in the area and on levels five through seven
of the garage. Apparently, when the casino was put in,
they had to move an old Indian cemetery and the
sightings started pretty soon after that. When Weird Darkness returns

(19:46):
a bizarre phenomenon that manages to teeter where the lines
of Bigfoot were wolves. The paranormal and urban legend intersect
takes things deeper into the strange, with various reports that
suggest these beings lies the mental power of telepathy as well.
We'll look into some of the creepy encounters with the

(20:06):
dog Man up next. One type of mysterious creature that

(20:35):
has gained a bit of a following in recent years
is what's commonly referred to as the dog man. Much
as its name suggests, these entities are usually described as
being very tall, bipedal, and covered with shaggy hair, much
like the more well known sasquatch, but in this case
they also have pointed muzzles and features of a very

(20:57):
keen nine nature. It in many regions of the United States.
The dog men are a bizarre phenomenon that manages to
teeter where the lines of Bigfoot, werewolves, the paranormal and
urban legend intersect. Yet taking things deeper into the strange
are the various reports that suggest these beings utilize the

(21:19):
mental power of telepathy as well. One very interesting and
quite bizarre such account comes from a witness who posted
her experiences on the site truth Seeker Highway and claims
that she had regular telepathic contact with a dog man
calling itself Tulock. The sentathy was first encountered by the

(21:40):
witness in the rugged Sandia Mountains in New Mexico, where
she was out one fine day with her fiance Michael,
for a hike. At one point during their peaceful walk,
her fiance suddenly called out to her to be careful
of a bear ahead. Looking forward, she saw what he
was talking about, as a hulking brown shape could be

(22:00):
seen and heard crashing through a thicket. Seeing a bear
out there was quite unexpected, But what's even stranger was
what allegedly happened next. The witness said of this, as
I watched the bear run away out of some trees
to the right of it, I saw a very strange
and I mean very strange person walking going opposite of

(22:22):
the bear. Its stride was like something I've never seen,
especially a normal person do. For every step it took,
there must have been four to five feet in between
each step, which means that I was looking at something
very tall. Its back was hunched over, and at first
I thought that maybe he was carrying a backpack. I mean,
my mind was doing one hundred miles a minute trying

(22:44):
to figure out what exactly I was looking at. Then
I realized that it wasn't a backpack but the man's back.
Then I saw how strange the color of the man was.
At this point I had no idea I wasn't looking
at a man. Its color was gray, purple, and dark brown.
There seemed to be patches of what looked like to

(23:05):
me purple, but who knows what I was looking at.
It didn't turn and look at me, but kept at
a very fast pace walking down what we eventually saw
was a path. I said to Michael, how weird this
fellow was, but he couldn't see him. I then pointed
to the location of where he went, and as we
walked in that direction. That's when the horrible feeling hit

(23:28):
both of us in the gut. Something told both of
us to stay back. It was a clear message and
one I was willing to ignore, but Michael wasn't. I
wanted to go down the path further, but he said
it was too dangerous. I must say the feeling in
our gut was like a slight punch, almost a nauseating feeling.

(23:50):
It affected our heart rates and our adrenaline was racing.
I could feel my heart beat all over my body.
It was at this point that I decided to take
photos in the direction, and the strange hiker ad gone.
It was in one of those photos that we captured
what turned out to be a dog man. He was
standing and watching us as we were trying to figure
out what to do next. We didn't smell him at all.

(24:14):
He didn't have an odor any more than the bear did.
But I must say we sure did feel him after
they got home. The witness says she maintained a sort
of psychic connection with the spooky entity that she learned
a lot of new and surprising things through this one thing.
She claims she was able to glean from her exchanges

(24:36):
with Tuloc is that despite their fierce appearance, these dogmen
are not violent or vicious creatures at all. She would say,
Tuloc has relayed interesting information to me. The most obvious
is that they don't think like humans. They understand their
place in the forests, and they don't put out their
threatening stance to other animals in the forest except when

(24:58):
they hunt. As far as how they interact with each other,
he stated that they have an understanding with each other.
He preferred his solitude and said he particularly didn't stay
with any group, but he knew where they roamed. He
was to me obviously intelligent beyond just a beast in
the woods. He distrusted people extremely, as do most cryptids.

(25:20):
He didn't go into more detail than this, but I'm
pretty sure that what we see on TV with werewolf
movies isn't even close. Tulock said that he and the
large brown bear have been palling around for years. People
put human issues and temperaments to other creatures and beings
that have nothing to do with them at all. Another

(25:41):
account of telepathy and dogmen was given to the site
Weak and Weird by a witness calling himself Ze, who
claimed that he was in regular telepathic contact with dog
men in the forests of rural Pennsylvania in the United States.
Similarly to the previous report, Zay has said that these
creatures are not violent or malevolent in any way, and

(26:04):
that although they are frustrated and displeased with humankind, they
hold no ill will or hatred for us. They explained
of these beings, very few people understand what courage really is.
Courage is not about facing a werewolf, because I've visited
with a werewolf in a sighting area more than once.
Courage is not about traversing through dog man areas with

(26:27):
guns and ammunition, because I have visited dog man territories
numerous times, always alone and unarmed. If I'm not worthy
to be here, then the dog men can have me.
But I have yet to experience aggression from them, and
have had several subtle encounters with dog men. I've recently
discovered a three toe pawprint that was almost as big

(26:48):
as the palm of my hand and was so fresh
that the dog man could have been watching me as
I passed by. Most people are trapped inside the bubbles
of their own existences reach out to the life around me.
I don't write books, nor am I well known. I'm
a bachelor that lives a very quiet and private life,
and one of the things I love to do is

(27:10):
to get acquainted with the unknown. Anger, fear, and arrogance
rarely wins anyone friends that are truly trustworthy. The kind
of feelings that you emit from your life force are
the same ones that are going to be attracted to you.
I have literally had dog men approach me after dark,
announcing their presence with sounds that defy what you would

(27:31):
reason as being from average animals. I've heard mystical heavy
breathing sounds to non aggressive growls of acknowledgment. I even
had a dog man creep up on me for fifteen
minutes that I was aware of the entire time, and
when I sensed that it was very close, perhaps right
behind me, I had a black and white telepathic image

(27:52):
of a kenine head and snout that came to my mind.
It's an amazing world. If given a choice between passing
through cryptid tear territory or gang territory, I would choose
dog men and bigfoot over humans any day. I've walked
through dog man's territories in Pennsylvania, before without fear, because
I trust them with a kind of trust that I

(28:13):
don't often have for humans. There are very few people
in this world I would genuinely trust. I know just
how arrogant and angry spirited people can be. I know
quite a bit angry about my own kind, and I'm
far more interested in knowing more about cryptids and protecting
their habitats from further human development and destruction. While these

(28:36):
reports so far seem to portray the dog men as
decidedly benevolent entities, others cast a rather more sinister light
upon them. In an article at the Cloaked Hedgehog, a
site devoted to dog man and werewolf phenomena, there is
a somewhat frightening account relayed by Anna mk Larson, who
runs the site and appears to have spent quite a

(28:58):
bit of time mapping and crossmacling dog man sightings and encounters.
She's also specifically documented a few accounts of telepathy and
dog men, saying of the phenomenon when it comes to
esp I've heard people talk about perceiving the dog man
in ways other than through the regular five senses, Maybe

(29:18):
talk about the creature sending them a message telepathically about
not to talk about their sighting or else. Mayy talk
about having a distinct gut feeling when these things are around,
and some even say that they have been sight jacked,
as in them seeing through the eyes of the dog man,
and most likely vice versa. She did relays a personal

(29:40):
experience she had along these lines, which points towards a
psychic ability to lash out mentally, and which supposedly happened
in the mid nineteen nineties while she was outside her
house one evening stargazing. As she looked up at the
blanket of glittering stars across the vast, inky canvas of
the black sky, she claims that she was suddenly overcome

(30:02):
with a heavy sense of dread that seemed to emanate
from a small grove nearby. She would say, of what
happened next, Thus, I definitely sensed something was in that
grove below the fence, something very very bad. I felt
it like a thousand needles on my skin, and a
horrible paralysis and heavy fear overcame me, which seemed to

(30:25):
be protected onto me by someone or something else. I
heard my own voice in my head, my higher self,
say go inside, do not run. Twice inside. After calming
down a bit, about ten minutes later, I opened the
window and almost immediately heard a god awful howl from
the cemetery a block away. The window was closed again

(30:48):
really fast. Larson then goes on to explain that she
was routinely subject to some form of psychic attack by
the creatures, describing it as being sought out and set
upon by tentacles of energy, and most pronounced when she
was engaged with research or looking into the dogman phenomenon.

(31:08):
According to her, it seems almost as if they do
not want to be looked at too closely, and that
they are trying to scare her off the subject. She
has said of this, I have also felt them in
the ether, as I call it, while studying this subject.
I perceive it as tentacles of energy searching through the ether,

(31:28):
searching for the one searching for them. The more I
read and studied, the more I could perceive them coming closer.
Sometimes I took breaks when I felt them coming too close.
While working on those maps of dog man sightings two
years ago, things got really intense for a long time.
Months of reading about and mapping dogman reports for at

(31:50):
least sixteen hours a day. I felt the tentacles. I
ignored them. I wanted to finish the maps. One day
there was a connection made. I could feel it so
distinctly contact. They had found me. Luckily, I understand that
they only found me mentally. They still didn't know where
I physically was. Yet after this experience, I have become

(32:14):
more afraid of the dark. I had some weird experiences
with a mirror in my bedroom that I finally had
to get rid of. I don't really dare look out
a window at night anymore. I sometimes forced myself because
I will not live in fear of them. But damn
it's hard now. Also rather ominous in a sense was

(32:36):
the account given by a Bigfoot and dog Man researcher
Parker Duval on an episode of Coast to Coast am
called Bigfoot and dog Man with host Connie Willis. Duvalda
spent years studying the dog man phenomenon in his home
state of Kentucky, and told Willis that he'd made telepathic
contact with a dog man named Rauser and has created

(32:58):
a relationship with the entities. According to Duval, the dog
men are a warrior like race that utilize an ability
to fill humans with terror and primal fear, as this
is apparently the state in which people learn the most
about themselves. He also set the program several images of
what he claims were of one of the dog men,

(33:20):
and a couple that were the aftermath of dog man
attacks on livestock. It's hard to know just what to
make of such accounts, or to discern just how much
truth any of these may have, but they certainly do
add a new weird dimension to the already rather bizarre
phenomenon of the dog man. These creatures are quite entrenched

(33:41):
in the outer fringes of cryptozoology, seemingly defying any sort
of biological explanation as it is, and these accounts of
weird telepathic abilities further make this an area in which
we largely have no idea of what we might be
dealing with, whether we are looking at werewolves, thought forms, demons, ghosts,

(34:02):
or something else entirely. The dog man phenomenon most certainly
seems to get just otter and otter, and shows no
signs of waning coming up. A group of hunters and
bigfoot enthusiasts go out looking for the elusive creature, but

(34:24):
what they find is even more bizarre than anyone might
have expected. Up next on Weird Darkness. In January two

(34:58):
thousand and three, from the UK's Center for forty and
Zoology headed out to the town of Bolum, which is
situated in the north of England. In the days and
weeks previously, there had been a spate of sightings of
what can only be termed as a British Bigfoot. The dark,
hulking creature was even seen by members of both the

(35:18):
CFZ and a local group Twilight Worlds, although it appeared
to be one dimensional in appearance, which is highly strange.
So what exactly was it that the CFZ and tw
CRUZ encountered. Let's take a look at a highly controversial theory,
one which suggests something not just incredible, but beyond incredible occurred.

(35:43):
One of the little known and seldom talked about aspects
of the Bolum affair goes like this. In February two
thousand and three, barely a month after the amazing encounter,
when a one dimensional bigfoot type occurred, a story appeared
in the local press that suggested a very down to
earth exit planation for the presence of the creature. In
an article titled back to the Beast of Bolam Hoaxer's

(36:06):
horror at Bolum Beast. A journalist with the Newcastle based
Evening Chronicle one Andy Lloyd, reported that young Hoaxers Today
revealed how they created a monster myth only months before
the real life Northumberland Bigfoot reared its head. The article
told of how two friends, Harriet Warman and Alex Dordoy,

(36:26):
then seventeen and eighteen respectively, had hired a gorilla costume
from a local shop and duly roamed the pathways of
Kielder Forest in the summer of two thousand and two
as part of an arts project at school, and as
Andy Lloyd noted so the pals, both sixth formers at
Goesforth High School and Newcastle, were spooted when they discovered

(36:48):
Northumberland does have its own yetti legend. Harriet, who lived
in goes Forth, told the Evening Chronicle, we were amazed.
It was really weird. When we saw the news about
the Bigfoot. We followed it closely. We visited Kielder Forest
with the idea of a photography project. The place was
so atmospheric a bigfoot myth seemed a great idea. We

(37:10):
hired a gorilla costume from a fancy dress shop and
took turns to dress up as Bigfoot and take pictures.
We spent three days there. It was boiling hot inside
the costume and the forest was full of midges. She continued.
The idea was to recreate some of the famous Bigfoot
photos from America, with the animal walking away, as if

(37:32):
a human and a monster had encountered each other and
the person had grabbed their camera, snapped and hoped. We
tried to capture that shaky, don't quite know what it is, effect,
but we also developed it as a story from a
police hunt for the beast to pictures of Bigfoot visiting
a corner shop. Harriet added, no one has taken a

(37:52):
photo of this creature in Northumberland, but our photos show
how easy it is to create a fake. Her final words,
specially on the matter of the Beast of Bolum encounter
investigated by and even witnessed by the CFZ and Twilight Worlds,
were lots of people in school are coming up and
asking if we are behind this siding. But I can

(38:12):
say we weren't responsible for this one. And as the
Evening Chronicles, Andy Lloyd noted in closing. Alex and Harriet
were among dozens of young artists from the Northeast to
devise arts projects through the Sambling Visual Arts Foundation. Linda Russell,
head of the sixth form at goes Forth High School,
said the project caused a real talking point in the school.

(38:35):
The younger students loved it. So you may wonder where
am I going with all of this? Well, let's look
at the facts. Most, but granted not all, of the
reports of the Bolum Beast did originate around the time
that the kids from Goesforth High School were running around
in an eight costume in the depths of Kilder Forest,

(38:56):
which just so happens to be the largest man made
forest in all of England. The problem, however, is that
the distance from keeld Or Forest to Bolam Lake is
more than forty miles, and the kids who took part
in the arts project are adamant that all their activities
occurred at the forest and never even on solitary occasion

(39:16):
at the lake. But goes Forth High School is situated
only seven miles from the scene of all the action
at Bolham Lake. In view of the close proximity between
lake and school, maybe someone else perhaps even another student,
one who took inspiration from the actions of Harriet and Alex,

(39:36):
may have later and secretly hired the very same guerrilla
costume and decided to take part in some high jinks
at the lake. Such is not at all impossible as
a scenario. But here's the important thing. Regardless of what
may have been behind the sightings at Bolham Lake, a
real beast or a kid in a costume, the encounters

(39:57):
most certainly instilled in the minds of many include members
of the Center of forty and Zoology and the Twilight
World's people. The idea that there really was a beast
at Bolham in the area, thus with deep belief and
firm expectation both brewing and expanding at near exponential rates,
is it feasible that, in a truly astonishing fashion, the

(40:19):
one dimensional monster that appeared before the startled eyes of
the research teams was actually a thought form, one unknowingly
born out of that same belief and expectation, and which
manifested before those present in its all shadow like glory. Certainly,
that particularly memorable encounter could not, under any circumstances whatsoever,

(40:42):
be blamed upon the antics of a student of goes
Forth High School, particularly so when one takes into consideration
the utterly flat and huge shadow style nature of the
entity that appeared before the amazed and shocked throng. Perhaps
then we should give some very serious and deep thought
to an intriguing idea By sowing the seeds of a

(41:03):
bigfoot in the area. The antics of the kids of
goes Forth High School caught the attention of numerous seasoned
monster hunters. Those very same monster hunters were collectively hopeful
that they just might be lucky enough to see the
creature of Bolham Lake. As a result, they inadvertently created
a temporary thought form equivalent of the very beast they sought.

(41:28):
The result was that, for a very few brief moments,
and right in front of two teams of researchers, the
monster briefly manifested before winking out and perhaps being reabsorbed
into the minds of its creators, who were the very
same monster hunters who saw it. Thanks for listening. If

(41:55):
you missed any part of tonight's show, or if you
want to hear it again, you can subscribe to the
podcast in our favorite podcast app by searching for Weird Darkness.
Not only will you hear a copy of tonight's show.
You'll also receive daily episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast.
You'll find me wherever you listen to podcasts, even YouTube.
You can follow the show on social media by visiting

(42:15):
the contactsocial page at Weirddarkness dot com, and please tell
others about the show who love the 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 experience
by clicking on Tell your Story at Weird Darkness dot com.

(42:38):
While there, you can also find my other podcasts like
Retro Radio, Old Time Radio in the Dark, Church of
the Undead, and a classic nineteen fifties sci fi style
podcast called Auditory Anthology. You can find all of that
at Weird Darkness dot com. All stories in Weird Darkness
aren't purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you

(42:58):
can find links to the story or the authors in
the show notes, which I've already posted to the Weird
Darkness website. Bizarre Encounters with Telepathic DOGMN was written by
Brent Sponsor for Mysterious Universe. Police and the Paranormal is
a collection of stories gathered from ghosttheory dot com and
Ghostsanngoules dot com. The Ultimate Monstrous thought Form is by

(43:19):
Nick Redfern. 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 Matthew ten Verse twenty eight.
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body
but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the
one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

(43:42):
And a final thought from Mary Kay. A mediocre idea
that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea
that inspires no one. I'm Darren Marler, Thanks for joining
me in the Weird Darkness. Among all the mysterious beasts, creatures,

(44:25):
and monsters said to lurk in the wild places of
our world, there are occasionally those that go beyond the
merely strange to plant themselves firmly into the territory of
the almost absurd. Surely to be counted among the denizens
of the domain of the patently outrageous are a type

(44:46):
of nocturnal, large headed beings that reportedly stalk rural roads
in the northeast of the United States. These creatures are
said to look more or less human, but with a
sickly pallor and enormous, almost comically oversized craniums, often also
mentioned as possessing sharp, shark like teeth that sit atop

(45:10):
their slight, emaciated frames, and they wander about the forests,
surprising motorists, startling hikers, and sometimes downright terrifying people with
their nightmarish visage. They've come to be known as the
melon heads. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.

(45:40):
Welcome Weirdos. I'm Deren 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. In parts of Africa, it's not

(46:03):
the werewolf you need to look out for, but the
ware hyena. And it's almost always the local blacksmith that
is the man behind the monster. Does the Vatican have
a device that allows them to see in the past
and the future. Some believe they do, and if it
were to ever fall into the wrong hands, it could

(46:24):
then create the scariest dictatorship the world has ever seen.
Some fathers will do whatever it takes to protect the
virtue of their daughters. One man's solution came at the
end of an axe blade, but first. The stories range
from them being inbred Cretans running amok, to government created

(46:46):
mutants to escape to hydrocephalic patients from an insane asylum.
What are the strange creatures people are seeing in the
deep woods of Ohio. 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 with you. Recommending Weird Darkness to others

(47:07):
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 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

(47:30):
own true story of something paranormal that has happened to
you or someone you know. You can find it all
at weird Darkness dot com. Now bult your doors, lock
your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me
into the Weird Darkness. Such titials of something very bizarre

(48:01):
lurking in the woods come to us from the wilds
of the state of Ohio, where we have stories of
an incredibly strange tribe of pale, bulbous headed, freakish looking
cannibals that have long been said to stalk rural areas
in and around Kirtland and Shardan, Ohio, and have come
to be known as the melon heads. These creatures are

(48:24):
said to look more or less human, but with a
sickly pallor and enormous, almost comically oversized craniums, often also
mentioned as possessing sharp, shark like teeth that sit atop
their slight, emaciated frames, and they wander about the forests,
surprising motorists, startling hikers, and sometimes downright terrifying people with

(48:48):
their nightmarish visage. The supposed origins of this odd tale
are murky, to say the least, and there are many
versions of how the melon heads came to be, but
the most popular is perhaps of a group of orphaned
children that came to be subjects of a dark and
twisted scientific experiment gone awry. According to this version of

(49:12):
the story, a mad scientist by the name of doctor
Crowe came into the possession of these abandoned children by
unspecified means, and proceeded to take them out to a
secluded facility in the middle of the rural woods near Kirtland, Ohio,
in order to perform demented medical experiments on them. Depending

(49:34):
on the version of this particular story you hear, the
children's heads then became deformed and misshapen due to either
the effects of the mysterious experiments or the fact that
they already had a condition known as hydrocephalous, which causes
a build up of fluid in the brain. These deformed
children went mad from whatever was being done to them,

(49:56):
and escaped into the woods again, depending on the version,
either from sneaking out or with the help of doctor
Crowe's wife, who had become sympathetic with their plight. One
permutation of this tale is that doctor Crowe's wife died
and in their sorrowful tantrum, the children knocked over a
lamp to burn the cabin down in a fiery inferno.

(50:18):
In this story, the melonheads are either the descendants of
these freakish mutants or are the ghosts of the children
eternally wandering the wilderness. Another version of the melonhead's origin
is a more straightforward story of a top secret government
project which was doing experiments out in the wilds of

(50:39):
Lake County for who knows what nefarious purpose. In this scenario,
the subjects underwent some sort of drastic experiments on their brains,
which caused them to become ballooned and deformed. These subjects,
over time craved some sort of contact with the outside
world and are said to have escaped to make their

(51:01):
way to civilization. Unfortunately, they soon realized that civilization did
not want anything to do with them and their hideous visages,
and so the forlorn freaks trudged back out into the
wilderness to live forever in seclusion. The government, not wanting
to create a widespread panic, did what any sinister government

(51:23):
does in a good conspiracy theory and covered it up.
Still other stories say that they are inbred descendants of
a renegade band of witches who escaped into the forests
to get away from persecution in colonial days. Whatever they are,
stories of these bizarre entities with their freakishly oversized heads

(51:44):
prowling the woods of Ohio have persisted for years, and
indeed the legend has spread beyond borders to both Michigan
and Connecticut, with each having their own versions of the strange,
ranging from that they are inbred cretans running amok, to
government created mutants, to escaped hydrocephalic patients from an insane asylum.

(52:06):
In most traditions, these strange entities are said to still
live out in the wilderness, often haunting remote rural roads,
and have kept their numbers steady over the years through
continued inbreeding, which has made them even more insane and
alien looking. We'll learn more about these so called melon

(52:29):
heads when Weird Darkness returns. I'm Darren Marler. Welcome back

(53:02):
to Weird Darkness. If you like programs from the golden
age of broadcasting, you'll want to check out my other show,
Retro Radio, Old Time Radio in the Dark. I post
shows from classic radio of the macabre and horror, mysteries
and crime, and even some dark science fiction. You can
find a retro radio old Time Radio in the Dark

(53:22):
at Weird Darkness dot com, slash retro radio That's Weird
Darkness dot com, slash retro radio, or look for retro
radio Old Time Radio in the Dark on YouTube or
wherever you listen to podcasts. We continue now with some
strange encounters with the bizarre melonheads. Depending on the version

(53:49):
of the tale, these melonheads are either shy and glimpsed
only briefly, or they are ravenous, vicious little monsters that
will attack anyone one who gets too near, and they
are for the most part, said to be best avoided
no matter what they are or where they reside. The
melon heads are often purportedly not at all pleasant to

(54:12):
be around. They are supposedly quite aggressive ferial creatures, said
to come out at night under the cover of darkness
to roam the wilds, hunting and getting into mischief, and
it's said that they are responsible for the mutilated bodies
of animals sometimes allegedly found in the deep back woods.
They are also said to terrorize or even kill and

(54:34):
eat people who wander into their territory from time to time,
even each other. On occasion with those who have disappeared,
and melon Head Country sometimes said to have fallen victim
to the vile creatures. Stories and reports of eyewitness accounts
of encountering these outlandish beings are numerous. One popular tale

(54:57):
is that of a group of teenagers who were traveling
through try Melonhead Territory in Wickliffe, Ohio in nineteen sixty
four when they passed by one of the bizarre creatures
standing by the side of the road, just staring at them.
When they slowed the car down to get a better look,
the creature scurried off into the wilderness, and the teens

(55:18):
decided to give chase. They made their way through the
brush and trees until they allegedly came to a clearing
in which sat an old fashioned house with an older
couple sitting leisurely on the porch, with several of the
melon heads milling about them at a surreal scene none
of the teens could quite believe. One of the teens

(55:39):
asked the man what was going on, and he wove
a bizarre tale. Indeed, he apparently told the teens that
he had once been a nuclear scientist during World War II,
and that the radiation he had constantly been exposed to
had caused his children to be born deformed with their
bulbous heads. He claimed that the government had paid him

(56:00):
to keep quiet about it and relocated him into their
remote area along with his wife and the mutated children,
where they would be kept away from normal society. The
man made them promise not to tell of the location
of the house and sent them on their way. Of course,
teens being teens, they supposedly immediately told all of their

(56:22):
friends about how they had run into the legendary melonheads,
and a group of them went out to find them.
As they drove along the lonely road towards the house,
they then apparently were stopped by a large group of
police officers, which was surprising as they were in the
middle of nowhere. The cops asked what they were doing
out there, and when the subject of melonheads came up,

(56:44):
the police adamantly insisted that this was just an urban
legend and they had best head back. When the teens refused,
they were then allegedly taken to the police station and
their parents came to pick them up. The teens would
later claim they had been doing nothing wrong and that
they had just been driving minding their own business, making

(57:04):
them suspect that a cover up was going on. Bizarre
reports like this have come in sporadically all the way
up to the more modern times. In an account published
in Weird Us, Your travel Guide to America's Local Legends
and Best Kept Secrets in two thousand and one, a
witness known only as Tony claims that he'd been out

(57:26):
traveling the dark roads of Melonhead Territory in Chardon, Ohio,
actively trying to find any truth to the legends. Up
until then, he had driven back and forth along these
remote roads and found nothing except the still dark and
quiet trees of the forest. But as he was about
to leave, he claims that he looked out the windows

(57:47):
to have seen one of the creatures running alongside his car,
going around forty to fifty miles per hour. Interestingly, rather
than being a short, dwarfed being as the legends say,
he described this one as standing perhaps five foot seven,
although with the same spindly limbs and outsized heads as

(58:07):
in the lore. The creature apparently kept pace with the
vehicle for quite a time, veering off back into the woods.
He would say of the incident. Thus, it didn't look
like anything like I've heard in the stories. He looked
about the same height as me, five foot seven inches,
was wearing brown pants which were ripped up and where

(58:28):
the seams would be it was held together by what
looked like corn husk. He wore a white shirt with
brown and red stains all over, hoping the red stains
weren't blood. Its head was a very light brown tint.
It had two holes in the side of its head,
which I think were ears. Its head was swelled up,
and its eyes were very big looking. Just as we

(58:50):
turned a curve, it jumped into the woods. That's my
story of the melon heads. And yet another relatively recent account,
a woman named Kelly top Pedrosian claims that she had
a run in with the melon heads as she was
poking around the abandoned Felt mansion in Laketown Township at
Allegan County, Michigan. While exploring the ruins of the old

(59:12):
estate with some friends. She says that she happened to
spy a man standing some distance away, and that she
soon realized that there was something rather off about him.
He said, seemed to be larger than it should be,
and then he began walking towards them, she would say
of the rest of the encounter. Not knowing who this
man could be, my friend yelled below to try and

(59:35):
be friendly, but all we got was allowed grunt, and
the man continued to walk towards us, but now at
a faster pace. At this point, the same idea hit
all of us, and we all started sprinting towards our car.
We scrambled in and peeled out of the parking lot
at full speed, not slowing down until we were several
miles from the mansion. Another account, this time from the

(59:58):
Creepy Cleveland Archives, was posted in two thousand and nine
by a witness who calls himself JB. He claims that
as a child, he used to live by the woods
of Wisner Road, Ohio, near a place called the Lundgren Barn.
It was here that he would have his unusual encounter,
which she would describe thus, It was an early autumn night,

(01:00:21):
around ten PM when I heard my dog bark, and
I ran outside to see what was going on. When
I went outside to see what the commotion was all about,
I found my dog lying there bleeding. I looked towards
the woods and saw what I believed to be a
small figure with very pale skin and a large head.
When the creature saw me, it ran into the woods.

(01:00:43):
I went out the next morning and followed the tracks,
but they stopped near a creek. It is worth noting
that Wisner Road in Kirkland, Ohio is a notorious hotspot
for melonhead sightings. Indeed, certain roads have become known as
being magnets for melonhead activity, where sidings are especially frequent,

(01:01:04):
and mutilated animals can supposedly be sometimes found strown about
the vicinity. Another of these roads, which is probably the
most famous of the melonhead roads of all, is a
road called Velvet Street, which runs through Trumbull and Monroe, Connecticut,
and it's more well known for its sinister nickname Dracula Drive.

(01:01:26):
There have been scores of alleged melonhead encounters along this road,
and one of the more dramatic was one written of
in Joseph Citro's book Weird New England. The account comes
from the nineteen eighties when a group of girls named Megan, Sue, Kim,
deb Jen, and Karen were out on a joy ride

(01:01:47):
one Friday night. The group decided to take a ride
down Dracula Drive for kicks, knowing full well about all
of the dark folklore of melonheads that orbited it. As
they turned onto the secluded road. None of them thought
they would actually see one of the beasts, and they
even parked their car to get out and explore. It

(01:02:08):
would apparently be a decision they would soon regret. As
they walked down the road, giggling and trying to spook
each other with scary stories, they allegedly heard the door
of their car open, after which it started up and
then actually came driving towards them the mysterious thief. Obscured
by the dark and the blinding headlights, the car barreled

(01:02:31):
towards them, forcing them to jump off into the tree line,
and when they looked around, they would finally see the
car thieves within as the vehicle passed. They were described
as child sized humanoids dressed in ragged clothes and with
humongous heads and wide eyes that glowed with an orange light.
The creatures could be heard giggling maniacally as the car

(01:02:53):
sped past and off into the night, never to be
seen again. Surely, the bizarre notion of tribes of pale
vicious cannibals with oversized heads lurking in dark forests, killing
animals and humans seems like it must be pure urban
legend and absurdity, and it likely is. Yet this has

(01:03:14):
not stopped people from continuing to report sightings of them
from time to time, and indeed there are many who
swear they are real urban legend or something else. The
melonheads are certainly one of the weirder mystery monsters out there.

(01:03:34):
When weird darkness returns in parts of Africa, it's not
the werewolf you need to look out for, but the
ware hyena, and it's almost always the local blacksmith that
is the man behind the monster. Plus, a young girl
is surprised to find the Easter Bunny visit her in
the middle of the night, but many years later she
learns it wasn't either of her parents. But first, does

(01:03:59):
the Vatican have a device that allows them to see
in the past and the future? Some believe they do,
and if it were to ever fall into the wrong hands,
it could then create the scariest dictatorship the world has
ever seen. We'll learn about the Vatican's chronovisor up next.

(01:04:44):
Conspiracy theories will continue to live with humanity, probably until
the end of mankind on earth. Of course, not every
theory stands the chance of being true. But remember the
old saying that in every rumor there is a little
bit of truth. At the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church,
the Vatican, has been embroiled in many conspiracy theories. One

(01:05:08):
of these theories is that the Vatican has a secret
device called the Chronoviser, which it uses to look into
past and future events. In the late nineteenth century, the
English author H. G. Wells published his science fiction novel
The Time Machine. Although the work was fiction, it attracted
interest in both the scientific and pseudoscience community. The novel

(01:05:32):
became popular to the extent that some physicists believed traveling
through time is possible. Although time travel still remains a
controversy among the scientific community today, some scientists have proven
the mission possible. In twenty fifteen, a group of scientists
from the University of Queensland, Australia simulated how time traveling

(01:05:55):
photons might behave, suggesting that at the quantum level, the
father paradox which makes time travel impossible, could be resolved.
The study used photons single particles of light to simulate
quantum particles traveling back through time. By studying their behavior,
the scientists revealed possible strange aspects of modern physics, concluding

(01:06:19):
that time travel is possible. Having established this fact with
the modern day scientific community, the Vatican's Chronoviser rumor appears
to have an element of truth. In May nineteen seventy two,
an Italian newspaper published an article titled A machine that
photographs the past has finally been invented. The article alleged

(01:06:41):
that the machine capable of this extraordinary task is called
the Chronoviser and was invented by Vatican insiders. The article
further revealed that the device enables its user to observe
future as well as past events, and that the machine
the Vatican possessed is one of the greatest guarded secrets
humanity has ever had. This article was the first to

(01:07:04):
shed light on the Kronaviser publicly, but as for those
familiar with activities that go on inside the Vatican, the
article wasn't surprising. According to details of the article, many
scientists contributed to the building of the Chronoviser in the
nineteen fifties under strict supervision of the Vatican. Father Pellegrino
Maria Ernetti, an Italian physicist who later became a priest,

(01:07:27):
is said to have led the project. He received technical
and important information from Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi and the
famous rocket scientist Werner von Braun. The article described the
machine as a small object that is equipped with a
number of antennas composing entirely of precious alloys, cathode tubes,

(01:07:48):
some dials and levers. The device is capable of capturing
specific locations, important events in the past and those that
are yet to come. In nineteen ninety six ven, the
German author Peter Krossa revealed more details of the Kronaviser
in his book Father Ernetti's Cronaviser, The Creation and Disappearance
of the World's First Time Machine. Crossa had a personal

(01:08:12):
encounter with Father Ernetti before Arnetti's death in nineteen ninety four.
The priest told Crossa that he had in fact invented
the machine. Father Ernetti confirmed that he used the machine
to witness the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and other
major historical events, including the founding of Rome in seven
fifty three BC. He also claimed to have attended a

(01:08:35):
performance of a previously unknown play by the Roman playwright
Quintessenius by the help of the machine. According to Crossa,
Arnetti said he used the machine to witness the crucifixion
of Jesus Christ, as well as witnessing Napoleon, the Roman
philosopher Cicero, and other great in momentous historical and biblical episodes. However,

(01:08:57):
when asked about the whereabouts of this amazing device, Father
Arnetti refused to answer, saying he was not allowed to
talk about the location or whether the device was still
being used or not. Apart from what Crossa published, others
who were close to Father Arnetti speculated that Father Ernetti
himself decided to dismantle the machine due to fear of

(01:09:19):
the machine falling into the wrong hands. Father Arnetti is
reported to have said if the chronavisor fell into the
wrong hands, it could then create the scariest dictatorship the
world has ever seen. Another source also quoted Father Arnetti
as saying Pope Pious the twelfth forbade us to disclose
any details about this device because the machine was very

(01:09:40):
dangerous it can restrain the freedom of man. The Vatican
later denied links with the machine, warning that anyone using
an instrument of such characteristics would be excommunicated. This warning
prompted many conspiracy theorists to believe the Church is hiding
the Cronaviser from the rest of the world. Whether this

(01:10:00):
is true or not, the Cronaviser rumor still hangs around
the neck of the Vatican, refusing to disappear. Do you
believe the Vatican has no knowledge of the machine or
do you believe the rumor? The United Kingdom is home

(01:10:22):
to the eerie body morphing creature known as the phantom
black Dog. On rare occasions, people have described the mysterious
red eyed dogs taking on multiple forms, including large cats
and even bear like animals, and walking upright. No less,
the United States has its very own supernatural equivalent of

(01:10:44):
the Phantom black Dog. It's the morphing and mysterious coyote.
Far less well known is a somewhat similar creature that
lurks and roams within the continent of Africa. It's known
as the rare hyena. It's a beast that some believe
is actually a human who becomes a hyena. Others, meanwhile,
teach that it's a hyaena which has the ability to

(01:11:07):
take on human form. Before we get to the matter
of the supernatural hyaena, though let us first look at
its regular normal equivalent widespread across East Africa and South Africa.
The hyaena is a formidable and highly dangerous animal, one
which will not think twice about attacking, healing, and even

(01:11:27):
eating people if it comes down to it. Muscular and athletic,
the hyaena can reach a height of around three feet
and can live for up to twenty five years. Now
we'll examine the far stranger side of the hyaena, the
one which is dominated by the undeniably strange matter of
morphing from one form to another. As far as the

(01:11:49):
morphing beast of Africa is concerned, it is East Africa
and North Africa where the creature is predominantly, said to dwelve.
One of the most visible of the various bodies of
African where hyenas is that which is known as the Boltungen.
It voraciously and savagely hunts in the vicinity of Lake Chad,

(01:12:09):
which borders upon northern Nigeria. In eighteen eighty three, Gerald
Massey wrote of this particular controversy in the natural Genesis
quote in the Kanori language of Bornou, Africa. The name
of the hyena is bolta, and from this is formed
the verb baltungen, which signifies I transform myself into a hyena.

(01:12:32):
There is a town named Callbatinoa, the inhabitants of which
are said to possess this faculty of transformation. Quote. Massy
was of the opinion that this belief could be explained
away in wholly down to earth fashion and as a
result the dawning of the hyena skin in their religious masquerade.

(01:12:52):
But is that all there is to it, rites and
rituals and nothing else at all. Not according to the locals,
it's not far from it. Throughout Morocco, the Lake Chad
area and Tanzania, there is an intriguing belief that each
and every blacksmith has the ability to take on the
form of a hyena, chiefly as a result of the

(01:13:15):
same blacksmiths also being experts in the fields of magic
and sorcery. Whereas the werewolf traditionally surfaces when the moon
is full, the blacksmith turned ware hyaena is limited to
activity during daylight hours. Interestingly, in Tanzania, there is a
long standing belief that witches travel on the backs of

(01:13:36):
supernatural spotted hyaenas late at night and in much the
same fashion that the traditional European witch takes to the
skies on the traditional broomstick. Moving on, we have the
war Hyena of the Republic of Molly in West Africa.
The republic is home to a secret society known as
the Core. Jurgen W. Fremgen says in the Magicality of

(01:14:00):
the Hyaena Beliefs and Practices in West and South Asia
that members of the society become hyenas by using zoomorphic
helmet masks and playing dramatic roles, both of which refer
to the dirty habits, trickiness, and nastiness of the animal
mentioned above. They may also be used to invoke fear
among the participants real shape shifting hyenas or tales born

(01:14:25):
out of graphic, violent rights and rituals. The question remains
wide open and is very much dependent on belief systems.
When I was younger, I used to live by the

(01:14:45):
woods and could see a cemetery from my back porch.
One Easter, I remember waking up and seeing the Easter Bunny.
And what really gets me is I remember smelling the
wet hay when I woke up. I didn't tell anyone,
but there was an extra Easter egg in my house
that my parents didn't tide. Years later, when I was

(01:15:05):
in high school, I asked my parents if they ever
dressed up like the Easter Bunny and came into our room.
They said they would never go through so much trouble. Then,
my younger sister, who I shared a bunk bed with
when this happened, said she remembers when the Easter Bunny
came into our room and made a remark about the
hay smell. I was terrified that we both remembered seeing

(01:15:28):
a person dressed as a bunny in our room. To
make it even stranger, I told the friends I sat
with at lunch what happened. One of the girls was
my neighbor across the street. She told me one Easter
a long time ago, she looked out her window during
the night and saw the Easter Bunny standing in her driveway.

(01:15:50):
I had chills. To this day, I am terrified of
people in rabbit costumes coming up. Some fathers will do
whatever it takes to protect the virtue of their daughters.
One man's solution came at the end of an ex blade,
and a man believes the creature in his nightmares may

(01:16:13):
be trying to speak with him these stories when weird
darkness returns. Thursday, December thirteenth, eighteen seventy seven began as

(01:16:52):
an ordinary day for Alfred Jones, a seventy two year
old farmer in Lynnville, Ohio. He walked to Brownsville and
returned home about eleven, had lunch, sat down to relax,
and dozed off. He awoke when he heard the sound
of squeaking shoes coming from the back porch. He had
heard that sound before and thought it meant his daughter

(01:17:14):
was up to no good. Jones went out the back
porch and caught a glimpse of someone disappearing down the
ravine behind the house. He followed after and met his daughter, Susannah,
coming back up the hill carrying three large flat stones
she planned to use as stepping stones in a marshy
area near the house. Forty one year old Susannah had

(01:17:36):
never married. After her mother died twenty one years earlier,
she stayed to keep house for her father. She had
recently joined the Lutheran Church against her father's wishes, and
he suspected that she was inappropriately intimate with several of
their married neighbors. Jones helped his daughters carry the stones
up the hill, then suddenly turned and said, you had

(01:18:00):
a man over there. Father. You accuse me wrong, she replied. Enraged,
Jones picked up a hatchet lying nearby and began assaulting
Susannah with it. She warded off the blows and managed
to run about fifty yards before he caught up to her.
After a brief struggle, Jones overpowered Susannah raining blows with

(01:18:20):
the hatchet until she lay dead in a pool of
her own blood. He hid the bloody hatchet under the
house and put his bloodstained coat and shirt in an
ash barrel inside the house. He cleaned up and put
on his best clothes, then walked twelve miles into town,
where he surrendered to Sheriff Schofield. At first, the sheriff

(01:18:41):
and his men laughed at the old man confessing the murder,
thinking he must be drunk. Jones denied that he was drunk,
saying I'm a Virginian and it's Virginian grit when a
man has broken the law to give himself up and
suffer the penalty. The sheriff took Jones into custody, then
went out to his farm to see for himself. He

(01:19:01):
found Susannah dead on the ground, and he and his
men located the hatchet and bloody clothes. Alfred Jones was
indicted for a first degree murder, but it was assumed
that he was insane. Neighbors had known Susannah Jones as
an industrious, amiable, and intelligent woman who took good care
of her father. There was not the slightest ground for

(01:19:24):
her father's suspicion of adultery, but Jones remained convinced that
his daughter had done wrong and used the Bible to
justify killing her. He said he had read the scriptures
three times and they declared whoever committed adultery should be
put to death. It was his duty to kill her.
While acknowledging the enormity of his crime, Jones showed no remorse.

(01:19:48):
He asked the sheriff if he would be compelled to
pay for his board and lodging while in prison, and
thought it best if he were hanged as soon as possible.
The Stark County Democrats said Alfred the Lynnville murderer, if
not a lunatic, he is an idiot. At his trial
the following April, Jones was treated as sane but was

(01:20:10):
not sentenced to death. He was convicted of second degree
murder and spent the remainder of his life in the penitentiary.
I've been having some nightmares lately, involving a man standing

(01:20:31):
at the bottom of my bed. I can't see his face,
but can make out his outline. He doesn't move, he
just stands at the bottom of my bed. I presume
he's staring at me. When I wake up in the morning,
I can vividly remember the dream. It's been happening for
several weeks. I've also started to notice that little things

(01:20:52):
have been happening around the house. I live alone, and
I woke up last Thursday to find that the fridge
door was wide open. I also found my wallet had
been moved, and I've been noticing tapping and creaking sounds
at night. I never noticed these things before, and I
do feel they are connected to my dream. The house

(01:21:15):
I live in isn't old, it's a new building. I
don't know anything about the history of the area. Is
it possible for a spirit to want to get in
touch with me via my dreams? The phrase glitch in
the matrix was first coined in the nineteen ninety nine
film The Matrix, which posited the idea that humanity is

(01:21:38):
living in a giant computer simulation. Over the years, Glitch
in the Matrix has become shorthand for an example of
an unusual occurrence that cannot logically be explained, and it
happens so often that Paranormality magazine has dedicated a section
of their publication to it. Here's one of their recent
stories from the August twenty twenty three edition. From Redditor,

(01:22:02):
we you this happened this afternoon, and I'm still super
weirded out. I have yet to find a single plausible
explanation to what went on. My husband and I live
in a small work in progress cabin in the woods
on an acreage in Atlantic Canada, with two parrots, a rabbit,
a senior citizen cat, and two absolutely rambunctious dogs. My

(01:22:25):
husband just can't say no to something fluffy that is
in need of a home cleaning up after this zoo
is quite the daily effort. As I was going about
my chores today, I decided to toss the dogs outside
for a while so I could suck up the previous
day's layer of dog fluff without them declaring war on
our vacuum machine, as their hatred for the vacuum is

(01:22:46):
quite passionate. Once the dogs were outside and merrily jumping
around in the mud puddles, I got to work on
the floors. I did a really thorough vacuum job today,
even getting on my hands and knees to suck up
the fluffies that were nesting underneath the tables furniture. After
I wrapped up the chores, I went to go retrieve
the dogs. The dog run is accessible by a doggy

(01:23:07):
door that is off of a room that's completely separate
from the room I was cleaning. As I already mentioned,
the cabin is a work in progress and entirely unfinished,
and the room with the doggy door is the newest
room to be added on to the build and is
even more unfinished than the rest. I entered into this
room and shut and latched the door behind me. As
I knew that the soggy dog stampede was going to

(01:23:29):
be fierce, I planned on letting the pooches dry off
in that separate room while I went to town to run
a couple errands. I opened the doggy door and the
two canines bounded into the room and began to shake, in, pounce,
and play with all their dogly enthusiasm. They were soaked
and muddy and seemingly more than content to hang out

(01:23:49):
in this room. So I undid the latch on the
door that led to the main room and carefully opened
it a crack, just enough to squeeze my body through
so that the dogs cannot follow after me. I closed
the door behind me and latched it shut. Picked up
the water bowl and reached for some toys so that
I could toss them into the side room to keep
the dogs entertained while I was gone. As soon as

(01:24:11):
I entered the main room and looked down, however, I
absolutely froze. There were fresh, muddy paw prints on the
floor that I had just cleaned. I could still hear
the dogs bouncing around on the other side of the door,
in the room I had locked them into. They did
not follow me, and yet here I was looking at
fresh muddy paw prints that were not here a moment ago.

(01:24:35):
Perhaps there was mud on the bottom of my flip flops,
and I had made the prince myself. I lifted my
feet one at a time, and the bottoms of my
flip flops were totally clean. The prints were not from me.
Then I lifted my gaze and was horrified to see
that the paw prints continued all down the length of

(01:24:55):
the room, from the kitchen to the front door of
the cabin, where they suddenly stopped, as though a muddy
dog had taken a single run through the length of
the room and then completely vanished. The prince only went
in the one direction. There were no smudges of mud
or backwards prints to indicate a muddy dog changing direction
in any way, just a straight line of fresh, wet,

(01:25:18):
muddy prints, and then nothing. They weren't there moments before.
My dogs had not entered the room and were still
locked up in another room. There were no other creatures
in this room, and no possible entrances for rogue invaders.
I have no explanation. I don't understand. I feel like
I'm either losing my mind entirely or else. In an

(01:25:40):
alternate timeline, one of the dogs slips past me into
the cleaned room and runs down the floor, and somehow
the timelines bled together for a moment, just long enough
for alternate dimension dog to leave the muddy paw prints
and then vanish back into his own timeline. Thanks for listening.

(01:26:05):
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, or search for Weird Darkness wherever
you listen to podcasts, even YouTube. You can follow Weird
Darkness on social media by visiting the contact social page
on the website. And please tell others about Weird Darkness

(01:26:26):
who love the paranormal or strained 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 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. All stories in
Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless dated otherwise,

(01:26:48):
and you can find links to the stories or the
authors in the show notes, which I have already posted
to the Weird Darkness website. Glitch in the Matrix is
from Paranormality Magazine. If you'd like to subscribe to the magazine,
just visit Weird Darkness dot com Slash Magazine lesser known
morphing monsters. The shape Shifter Hyena was written by Nick Redfern.

(01:27:09):
The Vatican's Cronovisor is by Ammando Flavio. The Lynnville Murderer
is by Robert Wilhelm. Spirit Communicating through My Dreams was
written by Ari Lancaster. The Easter Bunny Creeper was submitted
anonymously to Weird Darkness dot com, and Strange Encounters with
the Bizarre melon Heads was written by Bres Swanzer. Weird

(01:27:31):
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 one Peter four, verse eight above,
all love each other deeply because love covers over a
multitude of sins. And a final thought I just read
behind every successful person is a pack of haters. So

(01:27:54):
if you can all please start hating me now, I'd
really appreciate that. Hi'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me
in the Weird Darkness. Welcome to Marshport, Maine, a quaint

(01:28:23):
little coastal town preparing for their annual Winter Wonderland Festival.
But beneath the lights and holiday cheer. Something evil is
stirring and it's not a mouse. When a mysterious package
arrives on the doorstep of veteran police officer Matthew Kleine
and his family's home, it seems at first like a

(01:28:43):
harmless holiday gift. However, there's no tag and no sender.
Inside lies an antique wooden advent calendar with strange engravings
and twenty four doors that each shelter something dark and unspeakable.
The line between reality and nightmare quickly becomes blurred as

(01:29:04):
Matthew races to figure out the calendar's origin and who
sent it. But as each door is opened and Marshport
is thrust into a sinister nightmare, Matthew realizes the terrifying
truth and is forced to relive the horrors from his
past that refuse to stay buried. The countdown has begun,

(01:29:24):
and once that first door is opened, there is no
turning back. We're Darkness resents Advent of Evil, a twenty
four episode audio saga beginning December First. Listen each day
for a new chapter through Christmas Eve, and if you'd
like to follow the story in print. The full novel
is now available in paperback and hardcover editions as well

(01:29:48):
as on kindle. Grab the novel now for yourself or
for someone else and be ready to follow along December first,
and for a limited time only, you can also grab
an Advent of Evil gift back, including a signed copy
of the novel by the author Scott Donnelly, wrapped up
with an Advent of Evil bookmark, pen, highlighter, hot chocolate, Chai,
tea chocolates, a candy cane, and some horror stickers. The

(01:30:12):
gift pack is in limited supply, so act fast if
you want to take advantage of it. You can find
links to purchase the book or the gift pack at
Weird Darkness dot com slash Advent of Evil. That's Weird
Darkness dot com slash Advent of Evil, and then be
ready as the first episode comes your way December first,

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