THEY ALL CLAIMED GOD SPOKE TO THEM: When England Went Mad With False Prophets and Miracle Seekers

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Claiming to audibly hear from God either makes you crazy
or a prophet, and only time can tell which is true.
If you claim things are going to happen because God
says they will, and then they don't happen, that means
your pray cray and a false prophet. That also makes

(00:23):
your followers a bunch of dupes. Sadly, the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries were full of crazy false prophets with mindless
sheep worshiping them. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.

(00:51):
Welcome Weirdos. 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.

(01:11):
Coming up this hour, we look at the creation of
false prophets and those who follow them. If you're new here,
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(01:52):
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(02:22):
sure what first inspired Richard Brothers to declare himself Prince
of the Hebrews, but his strange career as a prophet
and the followers who believed in him make for quite
a story. He was born in Placentia, Newfoundland, in seventeen
fifty seven on Christmas Day, of course, and his father,

(02:43):
an English soldier stationed there during the Seven Years War,
arranged for his son to be educated in England. After
graduating from the Naval school at Woolwich, Brothers embarked on
a naval career and was promoted to lieutenant before retiring
in seventeen eighty three. Serving in the Merchant Marines, he
traveled across Europe before settling down and marrying in seventeen

(03:05):
eighty six. The marriage didn't last long, and they quickly
separated when he learned about his wife's infidelity. Whether he
was due to his marital breakdown or growing religious fervor,
Richard Brothers began to question whether his oath of loyalty
to the British government was consistent with his religious beliefs.
This refusal to swear the oath cost him his military pension.

(03:30):
During the same period, he began an intense reading of
the Bible, as well as various other religious works, including
the mystical writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Losing his pension meant
that he had no money to pay his rent, and
he was forced into a workhouse to support himself, which
was mandatory due to the UK's poor law system. For

(03:53):
whatever reason, Brothers began to experience religious visions during the
six months he spent in the workhouse, most of them
focusing on the role that the British people would play
in the reclaiming of Palestine and his own unique role
as a prophet. In one of these visions, Brothers heard
the voice of an angel proclaiming the fall of London,

(04:14):
which the angel called Babylon the Great. After Brothers pleaded
with the angel for mercy towards the city, God reportedly
agreed to spare London for a time. Brothers also reported
that a heavenly lady would eventually descend from heaven to
shower him with the love and happiness that his religious

(04:34):
views convinced him he deserved. By seventeen eighty two, Richard
Brothers had a new mission. In addition to being a
prophet of the Lord, he also had the gift of healing.
Although large crowds dutifully gathered, his spiritual gifts were never
all that spectacular, and his quote unquote miracles tended not

(04:57):
to impress too many skeptics. For that reason, the doubters
were hardly convinced when Brothers announced that he had been
chosen as an apostle of a new religion. As the
new Prince of the Hebrews, it was Brother's responsibility to
lead the Jews back to Palestine and reclaim God's kingdom.

(05:17):
As a descendant of the House of David and nephew
of the Almighty. It was Brothers who would identify the
hidden Jews among the people of England, ignorant of their
true heritage. Armed with a rod of rosewood that he
had carved himself, the new prince announced that he would
use it to work miracles, such as Moses had done before.

(05:40):
A pamphlet that Brothers published in seventeen ninety four was
titled A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times Book
the First wrote under the direction of the Lord God
and published by his sacred command, it being the first
sign of warning for the benefit of all nations, containing,
with other great and remarkable things not revealed to any

(06:03):
other person on earth, the restoration of the Hebrews to
Jerusalem by the year of seventeen ninety eight under their
revealed Prince and Prophet I. E. Richard Brothers. In his work,
Brothers declared that the people of Western Europe, and especially
the British people, were the descendants of the ten Lost
Tribes of Israel, and that the hidden Jews of England

(06:27):
would be part of the new Kingdom of God on Earth.
While he wasn't the only prophet preaching the notion of
Anglo Israelism, Brothers was definitely the most flamboyant. He actually
attracted quite a following for a while, including prominent clergymen, politicians,
and writers. Richard brothers crusade was sabotaged though by his

(06:49):
own lack of good judgment. Not only did he prophesy
the death of King George the Third, he also denounced
the war against France as quote many men fighting again
the spirit of God. After declaring that God will break
the Empire in pieces. Due to British colonialism, Richard Brothers

(07:09):
was charged with fond and fantastical prophecies. He was quickly
declared to be criminally insane in seventeen ninety five, but
the intervention of one of his disciples, who also happened
to be a member of Parliament, led to his being
sent to a private asylum instead of bedlam. Brothers kept
on writing pamphlets and made numerous predictions relating to world events.

(07:33):
He also spent the last thirty years of his life
designing palaces, government buildings, and uniforms for the new Jerusalem
that would arise after he was revealed as Prince of
the Hebrews and ruler of the world on November nineteenth
seventeen ninety five. Suffice it to say the particular prophecy
didn't pan out. In writing about his imprisonment in the asylum,

(07:57):
Brothers wrote, no man must be deemed who is inoffensive
in his actions, and is civil in his actions, and
is civil in his language. He was able to work
at any kind of employment for a livelihood, to receive
or give instructions, or to take proper care of himself.
All men are not born with the same faculties for learning, teaching, inventing,

(08:18):
or executing. And wisely has God ordered it so to
make the diversity of properties in the mind appear by
the greater variety of ways and improvements for the general
good of all. The fact that he and his followers
were considered to be lunatics weighed heavily on him, but
he never recanted his crusade. You would think that would

(08:47):
be the end for Richard Brothers, at least for his
so called ministry, But he and his influence weren't done yet,
will continue with false prophets and their followers when weird
darkness returns. Quite often I come across stories that I
can't fit into weird darkness, or just don't feel quite

(09:08):
right for the show, but I still find them interesting.
Or I write an article based on a recent Weird
Darkness story. When that happens, I put it in the
Weird Darkness blog. Sometimes it's a news story, other times
it's a video. I sometimes get inspired to write a
movie review. Just about everything I want to share that
doesn't end up in the podcast ends up in my blog.

(09:30):
I posted the blog several times a week, too, so
there's always something to come back for. Just click on
blog at Weirddarkness dot com. Richard Brothers was finally released

(09:58):
from the asylum in eighteen oh six, but his followers
had largely abandoned him by that point. He died in
the home of his last follower, John Finlayson, in eighteen
twenty four. Even after Brother's death, Finlayson continued writing pamphlets
and manifestos describing the new Christian Kingdom and generally trying

(10:20):
to keep Brother's crusade going. Despite Finlayson's efforts, Richard Brothers
was quickly forgotten, although other prophets with a similar message
developed followings of their own. If the English government had
hoped that imprisoning Richard Brothers in an asylum would end
his millinery and movement. They were sadly mistaken. Those followers

(10:43):
who became disillusioned with Brothers and his prophecies quickly found
a new prophet to take his place, or rather a prophetess.
Born in Devonshire on April fourth, seventeen fifty, Joanna Southcott
was the fourth daughter of William and Hannah Southcott, and
showed no sign in her early childhood of her remarkable destiny.

(11:07):
Although her family had once been very prosperous, Joanna grew
up on a small farm and with very little education,
she had little choice but to go into domestic service
in the Devonshire area. Her employers would later describe her
as being honest but prone to episodes of melancholy depression.

(11:28):
In her own writings, she would state that the spirit
of truth first descended on her when she was eighteen,
but her mission in life didn't really begin until Joanna
was forty two. There's no way to tell what her
employers thought when Joanna announced to them that she was
a prophetess and that the Lord had appeared to her
to warn her of what was coming upon the whole earth.

(11:51):
As far as she was concerned, higher powers were using
her to spread their divine word, and Joanna began writing
an elaborate series of prophecies, usually centered around war and destruction.
Bundles of her prophecies were sent off to various clergymen
and bishops who were urged to examine them. While most

(12:13):
of the clergy ignored Joanna and her warnings, she attracted
the interest of one Vicar James Pomeroy, as a successful
preacher in Cornwall. Pommeroy seemed to give south Caught the
attention that she craved. From seventeen ninety six to eighteen
oh one, she besieged Pomeroy with her prophecies and demanded

(12:35):
that he get her work examined by a clerical committee. Eventually,
Pomeroy broke off the association when he realized that his
involvement with her was exposing him to ridicule. Since Pomeroy
refused to deal with her any further, and no other
clerics had any interest in her prophecies, Joanna decided to
publish her prophecies instead. In February eighteen oh one, her

(12:59):
first installment of her book, The Strange Effects of Faith
was published, with five additional installments being added over the
next year, on the first page of the book, she
issued the following challenge, If any five ministers who are
worthy and good men will prove that these writings come
from the devil, I will refrain from further printing. If

(13:21):
they cannot, I will go on. Her followers would trumpet
that same challenge long after her death. Although the five
ministers she asked for didn't come forward, Joetna Southcott certainly
attracted a diverse group of followers. After Richard Brothers was incarcerated,

(13:42):
his disillusioned believers were quick to turn to this new
religious leader. Among them were included three ministers and other
prosperous members of society. After these followers took her existing
prophecies with them to London, Joenna Southcott decided to safeguard
her new prophecies in a way that added to her mystique.

(14:03):
She decided to seal her prophecies with a special seal,
including the initials I see with two stars, and place
them in a special container that was kept in the
care of one of her followers. The legends surrounding the
great box that contained her prophecies quickly took on a
life of their own. Her prophecies had a surprisingly feminist

(14:26):
tone for the era. As a daughter of Eve, she
would challenge the devil to mortal combat and cast back
upon him the guilt which women originally incurred by transmitting
his temptation to man and Eden. As the chosen instrument
for destroying Satan, Joanna would be the bride of the

(14:46):
Lamb who would usher in a new kingdom on earth.
By eighteen oh two, she began sealing her followers to
be among the select few who would be saved. When
one of her wealthy followers, Elias carp Under, brought her
a ream of paper from his mill, Southcott cut it
into squares and inscribed each piece with a circle. Inside

(15:09):
each circle she wrote the sealed of the Lord, the
Elect and precious Man's redemption to inherit the Tree of life,
to be made heirs of God and joint heirs with
Jesus Christ. By eighteen oh seven, she had distributed fourteen
thousand of these squares to be among the one hundred
forty four thousand to be saved according to the Book

(15:31):
of Revelation. Her crusade continued for the rest of her life,
with continued challenges to the Church of England to examine
her prophecies in detail. The ceiling ensured that her followers
stayed loyal to her, despite other prophets launching similar crusades.
This loyalty was put to the test in eighteen fourteen,

(15:53):
when sixty five year old Joanna Southcott announced that she
was pregnant by the power of the Most High. According
to one final vision, she had been chosen for a
virgin birth and that her son would be the Shiloh
who would redeem the world. Although newspapers quickly denounced her
as a deluded, elderly virgin, her followers enthusiastically waited for

(16:18):
the miraculous birth. They presented Joanna with an expensive crib
made of satin wood and gold. When a team of
physicians confirmed her pregnancy, she married one of her followers
to avoid the scandal of being an onwed mother. James
Pomeroy declined the honor. In December of that same year,

(16:39):
Joanna reluctantly called her supporters to her bedside and confessed
that it all appears delusion. Her followers were devastated, and
rumors began that her son had been snatched up into
heaven to escape the dragon of revelation. Joanna Southcott went
in to decline afterward and died on December twenty seventh.

(17:04):
Four days after Joanna Southcott's death, a team of physicians
met for a post mortem examination. Aside from gallstones, they
found no evidence of medical problems or other abnormalities. An
assigned statement, the doctors concluded that quote we the undersigned
present at the dissection of Missus Joanna Southcott, to certify

(17:25):
that no unnatural appearances were visible, and no part exhibited
any appearance of disease sufficient to have occasioned her death,
nor was there any appearance of her ever having been pregnant.
Despite her death, Joanna Southcott's movement lingered on. Although the
number of her followers dwindled, legends of Joanna's Great Box

(17:49):
and the hidden prophecies that she left behind were still common.
She left instructions that the box should only be opened
in times of national crisis, with a full gathering of
the Church of England's bishops in attendance. After attempts by
her followers to have the church open the box during
the Crimean War and World War One, it was finally

(18:11):
opened in nineteen twenty seven. Only one prelate agreed to attend.
The only contents of the box were some oddments and
unimportant papers, including a lottery ticket that didn't deter some
of the followers, though they insisted it was the wrong box.

(18:32):
While rumors of the Great Box still crop up in
the news from time to time, most of Joanna Southcott's
prophecies are available online. Among them is a memorable prediction
that the world will end in two thousand and four.
G I hope she wasn't right about that. Sadly she
did not see the twenty twelve movement coming. If she

(18:54):
had added another eight years to her prophecy, she might
have earned herself a new generation of believers. Her story
continues to be a fascinating example of religious mania and
the persistence of belief. England was in full religious ferment
during the first few years the nineteenth century. Joanna Southcott

(19:14):
was leading a messianic crusade, with countless followers revering her
as the Lamb who would bring them to salvation. Other
prophets like Richard Brothers, had their own crusades promising the
imminent coming of God's kingdom on Earth. The English were
considered to be God's chosen people, tales of signs and
wonders proclaiming the impending second Coming spread wisely. When Weird

(19:42):
Darkness returns, will continue looking at false prophets and their followers,
beginning with Mary Harker, later to become Mary Bateman, also
known as the Yorkshire Witch. If you've ever wanted to

(20:10):
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(20:57):
weird Darkness dot com slash newsletter. And now back to
the darker material talking about false prophets and their followers,
and it brings us to Mary Bateman aka the Yorkshire Witch.
Born Mary Harker on a small farm in North Yorkshire
in seventeen sixty eight, Mary had few choices but to

(21:19):
go into service, much as Joanna Southcott did. Unfortunately, Mary
was not a particularly good servant and quickly acquired a
reputation for petty thieving, which got her fired. As a
compulsive liar, thief, confidence artist, and all around crook, Mary
never managed to hold any job for long. She was

(21:40):
a very good actress, however, and managed to impress people
with her claims of supernatural powers. By seventeen eighty eight,
she had set herself up in Leeds as a dressmaker
and part time fortune teller. Her marriage to John Bateman
nearly ended when her husband discovered his wife's criminal past.

(22:00):
On one occasion, she tricked him into going to his
hometown to see his father, who was supposedly ill. While
he was away, Mary sold her husband's clothes to pay
off a debt and avoid prison. He eventually joined the
militia to get away from his treacherous wife, but later returned.
The two of them then settled down into a larcenous

(22:22):
life together. They had four children, and Mary was the
main supporter of the entire family. With no other source
of income, Mary became a full time fortune teller and
common artist. Posing as Missus Moore, a seventh child of
a seventh child, Mary carried out elaborate schemes to trick

(22:42):
victims into handing over their savings to her. She developed
quite a reputation as a local miracle worker who could
accomplish amazing things with her witch powers. She was also
a keen observer of new trends and always trying to
find ways to exploit them for her her own profit.
When Joanne Southcott began sealing her followers in eighteen oh two,

(23:06):
giving them a special token to mark them as being
among the one hundred forty four thousand to be saved
according to the book A Revelation, Mary managed to get
one of the markers herself. It was then that she
began one of her most notorious and profitable schemes. Although
her reputation as a fortune teller had begun to suffer too.

(23:28):
Many of her victims complained. Mary played on her status
as one of Southcott's sealed to make an amazing announcement.
Like many other country women of her time, she kept
several hens to supply her with fresh eggs, and she
claimed that one of them had laid an egg with
the inscription Christ is Coming. Mary announced that she had

(23:50):
been granted a vision which told her that her hen
would lay fourteen special eggs, and that the last one
would mark the beginning of the apocalypse. As word of
this marvel began to spread, more eggs bearing religious inscriptions
were laid, and crowds quickly gathered. She charged them a
penny each to see her marvelous hens. Not only did

(24:12):
the eggs proclaim Christ's coming, but they announced that it
would happen very soon, which added to the growing hysteria.
Along with making money from displaying the chickens, Mary also
began providing pilgrims with special seals, a piece of paper
bearing the initials j C, which would guarantee its bearer

(24:32):
admission into heaven. Following the apocalypse, thousands of visitors came
to be saved. It's hard to say how long this
would have gone on, but a skeptical doctor managed to
examine one of the eggs and found that the inscription
had been written in ink. When authorities were notified, they

(24:53):
staged a raid on the tavern where Mary lived with
her chickens. They caught her red handed, so to speak,
inserting one of her special eggs up the chicken's egg
duct so that it could be laid later. Mary was arrested,
and the resulting scandal forced Joanna Southcott to stop sealing
her own followers because of the stigma. A little thing

(25:15):
like public exposure didn't stop Mary Bateman for long enough.
She simply switched to becoming a practitioner of folk remedies
as well as being an abortionist. Her services were in
high enough demand that the inevitable rumors about the people
buying her medicines didn't deter other customers. Two Quaker sisters

(25:36):
named Kitchen sought out her services until one of them
sickened and died after taking medicine that Mary had provided.
When the mother of the two women arrived to deal
with her daughter's death, she ended up sickening and dying
as well, along with her surviving daughter. All three of
them were buried in the same grave. Although Mary insisted

(25:58):
that all three of the kitchen women had died of
the plague, authorities quickly became suspicious. After their creditors investigated
what property was remaining, they found scarcely any furniture or
belongings left in the kitchen sister's house. Amazingly, Mary was
able to continue with her frauds despite the suspicion that

(26:19):
she had crossed the line from theft to murder. The
previous death of another woman, Rebecca Perigo, was also being
investigated after her husband complained to authorities in eighteen oh eight.
It was the husband, still being fleeced by Mary two
years after his wife's death, who arranged for a meeting
at which she was arrested by two officers. A search

(26:43):
of Mary Bateman's house turned up items that had belonged
to Rebecca Perigo and the Kitchen sisters. The various ingredients
that went into her remedies were also found, including poison.
After going on trial at York in eighteen oh nine,
Mary was quickly found guilty of murder, despite her repeated
claims of innocence. Desperate to escape hanging, Mary even tried

(27:08):
pleading the belly claiming to be pregnant, although a medical
examination proved otherwise. With all her legal options exhausted, Mary
Bateman went to the gallows on March twenty eighteen oh nine.
More than five thousand people turned out for the hanging,
including many who still believed in her supernatural powers and

(27:29):
were convinced that the Yorkshire Witch would somehow save herself
from death. As the Annals of Yorkshire later described the hanging,
Mary was launched into eternity with a lie upon her lips,
having denied her guilt to the last, As was the
common practice of the time for executed murderers, her body

(27:50):
was turned over to the local medical school for dissection.
There was enough public interest in Mary's corpse for the
local hospital to charge money to see the body. More
than twenty five hundred people paid threepence each. Her skin
was also tanned and cut into pieces so they could
be sold as souvenirs believers in the powers of the

(28:11):
Yorkshire which used these skin pieces as talismans. It would
have galled Mary to know that she wasn't making any
money from her corpse. Mary Bateman's skeleton is still on
display at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds, England. Visitors
seeing her there can appreciate her presence as a strange

(28:32):
sort of testimonial to the power of human gullibility and
how easily it can be exploited. Throughout the nineteenth and
early twentieth century, Jamaica was a stunning contrast of natural
beauty and stark poverty. The twin legacies of slavery and
colonialism left the island with a population consisting primarily of

(28:55):
former slaves, people of mixed race or colored as they
were called then, and white colonists, who, despite being a
small minority, owned most of the land and resources. While
formal independence from the UK would come in the twentieth century,
life in nineteenth century Jamaica was often harsh for the
freed slaves and their descendants. It hardly seems surprising that

(29:19):
religion would be a major influence among the island's inhabitants,
not only with the various branches of Christianity, but also
more exotic religions based on traditions imported from Africa. Obeya
and Malism were widely practiced. Despite attempts at suppression by
the authorities. These traditions were often incorporated into more mainstream

(29:41):
religions and helped fuel the Christian Revivalist movement. The nineteenth
century was marked by religious clashes and spiritual missions that
quickly attracted believers, which brings us to Alexander Bedward. He
was born in southeastern Jamaica in eighteen forty eight in
extreme poverty. While his father is unknown, his mother had

(30:04):
a local reputation as a healer. Alexander Bedward never learned
to write and had minimal reading skills. Given his family's poverty,
he had little choice but to work on one of
the big sugar plantations in Colon, Panama. Whatever future he
may have planned changed after a massive fire swept through Kingston,

(30:25):
Jamaica in eighteen eighty two. Following the fire, Bedward began
to have disturbing dreams and erratic behavior that so frightened
his family they tried to have him put away for lunacy.
He insisted the dreams meant that God had chosen him
for a divine mission. By eighteen eighty nine, Bedward was

(30:46):
formally installed as one of the twenty four elders of
August Town's Native Baptist church, and his religious crusade began
and what a crusade it was. By October eight teen
ninety one, Bedward had resigned from his plantation job to
launch his healing mission. Using water from a spring on

(31:08):
his property near Jamaica's Hope River, he conducted healing ceremonies
based on a divine vision that told him that the
water of the Hope River would be miraculously converted into
medicine for soul and body. Along with his healing, Bedward
delivered sermons on a large rock overlooking the river, and
thousands of people gathered every Wednesday to hear him. The

(31:31):
descriptions of Bedward's crusade were closely followed by reporters from
Jamaica's Daily Gleaner. Although the newspaper dismissed Bedward as an
ignorant black man living somewhere in the Long Mountain, his
movement certainly made news. In one less than complimentary account,
Bedward's crusade was described as one of the most painful

(31:52):
and saddening phenomena that could possibly be witnessed by any
one of ordinary intelligence who has his countryes good at heart.
The seething mass of ignorance congregates in the vicinity without
a blush of shame at the credulity and infatuation which
is on every side exhibited. Not only did Bedward's followers
gather to hear him speak, they also brought bottles, jugs,

(32:15):
and anything else capable of holding the precious spring water
to bring back to their homes. There were also the
invalids who came hoping for divine healing, including lepers, people
with running sores, the crippled and deformed, blind, consumptive asthmatic,
and in fact every complaint known in the medical world.

(32:37):
The local authorities and clergy were especially outraged by the
healing sessions featuring nude men and women bathing together by
the thousands. Medical doctors denounced Bedward for his outlandish claims
and the false hope he gave patience. Stung by his
numerous critics, Bedward continued as Wednesday sessions, and people still

(32:58):
gathered at the river for healing. The Daily Gleaner newspaper
gave regular editorials denouncing the Bedward craze and unsavory hints
that his family's previous attempts at having him committed began
to surface. Meanwhile, the Bedwardites, as they were being called,
were making arrangements to build a temple to honor their profit.

(33:19):
Colonial authorities were increasingly worried by Bedward's sermons directed against
the upper class Jamaicans who grabbed the substance of the poor.
On January sixteenth, eighteen ninety five, Alexander Bedward gave a
sermon denouncing the white minority and predicted the end of
the world in which the wicked would be punished and

(33:40):
the faithful rewarded. He railed against the government and the
clergy as vagabonds, thieves, robbers, and liars, and called on
his followers to drive out the white population. That was
enough for the government to lay a charge of seditious
language against him, and Bedward was quickly arrested. Sequent trial

(34:00):
in April of that same year, with an all white jury,
returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Although Bedward was sent to a local asylum, he was
released a few weeks later after a successful appeal. Bedward
returned to his mission and the healing sessions went on
as before, though he eventually insisted that his followers be

(34:23):
fully clothed when they bathed in the river. Although skeptics
claimed that Bedwardism would eventually run its course. The movement
continued into the early years of the twentieth century. By
nineteen ten, Bedward and his followers had built an impressive
compound in Augustown, complete with the chapel. While Alexander Bedward

(34:44):
was still seen as a threat by the colonial authorities,
he had enough support to prevent any attempt at arresting
him again. It's hard to say how far the movement
might have gone if Bedward hadn't had one final vision.
In nineteen twenty, believing that the millennium was at hand,
Alexander Bedward announced to his followers that he would ascend

(35:06):
into heaven on December thirty one, nineteen twenty. As you
might expect, the Gleaner newspaper scoffed at this revelation, but
thousands of his followers gathered at the compound in the
hope of being saved. Many of these followers sold all
their possessions, and the tailor's shop on site provided simple

(35:27):
white gowns for them to wear for the big event.
Due to the fear of rioting and a possible black uprising,
a military regiment was sent in to maintain order throughout
the day. Bedward's followers were repeatedly told that his ascension
was postponed. He had originally promised that it would happen
at ten in the morning. By late afternoon, the followers

(35:49):
were told that the ascension would be spiritual rather than physical,
and by evening most of the followers went home disappointed.
Although this event broke up much of Bedward's support, he
was still able to rally six hundred followers for a
manifestation in Kingston that following year. Police took no chances

(36:10):
and promptly arrested him and many of his followers once again.
He was declared not guilty by reason of insanity, but
there was no release this time. Up until his death
in nineteen thirty, Alexander Bedward was held in Jamaica's Bellevue Asylum.
Much like Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott before him, Bedward's

(36:32):
supporters slowly drifted away following his imprisonment and death. Many
of these followers later became part of Marcus Garvey's Pan
African movement, as well as the growing Rastafarian religion. In
some circles, Bedward is still considered a martyr and an
early leader in Jamaican nationalism, leaving aside questions surrounding whether

(36:54):
he was mentally ill. His religious crusade inspired tens of
thousands of people at the peak of his pomp ularity.
Although I have focused on four very different profits in
this story, the similarities among their movements and the people
who believed in them seem apparent enough. So why do
some religious leaders launch major movements that continue after their

(37:17):
death while others sink into obscurity? Heaven only knows up
next headline exciting Wake. If you were to see those
words exciting and wake in the same newspaper headline, you

(37:41):
can probably make a guess that someone is not resting
in peace. That story is up next on weird Darkness

(38:09):
headline exciting Wake. When you see the words exciting and
wake in the same headline, you can make a guess
that someone is not resting in peace. Fortunately, funeral services, however, weird,
seldom get as ghastly as the following tale from the Huntington,

(38:31):
Indiana Daily Democrat, July twenty first, eighteen ninety Sedalia, Missouri,
July twenty first, A burial which was performed under the
most peculiar and weird circumstances took place at Spring Fork,
fifteen miles from this city, at an early hour. Among
the early settlers of Pettis County were a young German

(38:52):
by the name of John Peterson and his bride. On Thursday,
Missus Peterson died of dropsy. When a girl, Missus Peterson
slim and supple, but as years passed on she grew
very fleshy, and at the time of her death was
a remarkably large woman, weighing nearly three hundred pounds. Immediately
after Missus Peterson's death, arrangements were made for the funeral.

(39:14):
The largest casket that could be procured in the city
was the exact measurement required at the time of her death,
but it was not delivered until Friday morning. The corpse
had swollen so much that it was crowded into the
narrow case with difficulty. The lid was screwed down and
the remains left in that condition for burial. The funeral
services were set for Saturday afternoon, and as is customary,

(39:37):
a number of neighbors acted as watchers on Friday night.
Just as the stillness of midnight was approaching, the watchers
were startled by a loud report in the parlor where
the coffin was placed. The women screamed and ran out
of the house, but the men plucked up enough courage
to go into the parlor. The site presented was a
most horrible one. The gases of the body had accum

(40:00):
mulated in the casket until their force burst the glass
over the face and bosom of missus Peterson. So terrific
was the explosion that the body was shot forward and upward,
the head protruding from the coffin. A vapor cloud laiden
with the rankest of putrid odors, filled the room. The
men sent for mister Peterson, who, after dressing himself, went downstairs.

(40:23):
A consultation was held and it was decided that, owing
to the advanced state of decomposition of the remains of
the deceased, the burial should take place at once. Half
a dozen of the male watchers agreed to dig a
grave in the garden near the house, while the others
attended the other details of the burial. The grave having
been prepared, the coffin was carried to the grave and

(40:44):
strong ropes were placed under the casket. Just as the
coffin was lowered, one of the assistants let go of
the rope. This through the weight of the head of
the coffin, and the ropes were jerked from the hands
of the men stationed there. The coffin fell with great force,
head downward and was burst into peace. It was decided
to fill the grave at once, without waiting for another casket,

(41:05):
and the remains were thus interred. Cremation has a lot
to be said for it. 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 Weirddarkness dot com slash listen.

(41:28):
Not only will you hear a copy of Tonight's show,
you'll also receive daily episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast
absolutely free. Plus you'll hear the sudden death overtime. Bonus
content in Tonight's podcast, including people claiming to see full
sized African lions not in the savannah or in the wilderness,
but in North America, and the terrifying oswing is the
most feared creature of Philippines folklore. I'll tell you why

(41:51):
that's in a podcast version of Tonight's radio show, which
you can find at Weirddarkness dot com. Slash Listen or
wherever you listen to podcasts, and please tell others about
Weird Darkness 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 experiences by clicking on

(42:14):
Tell your Story at Weird Darkness dot com. You can
also email me anytime at Darren at Weird Darkness dot com.
Darren is dr r N. All stories in Weird Darkness
are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you
can find links to the stories or the authors in
the show notes, which I will upload to the Weird
Darkness website immediately after tonight's show has ended. Creating False

(42:36):
Profits is by doctor Romeo Viatelli for Providentia and Exciting
Wake is from the Huntington, Indiana Daily Democrat and reposted
on the Strange Company website. 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 deuterotomy.
One verses twenty nine to thirty. Then I said to you,

(42:57):
do not be terrified, do not be afraid to them.
The Lord your God, who was going before you, will
fight for you as he did for you in Egypt
before your very eyes. And a final thought, don't make
excuses for why you can't get it done. Focus on
all the reasons why you must make it happen. Ralph Marston,

(43:18):
I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me in the weird darkness.

(43:42):
In twenty ten, American horror novelist Stephen King wrote Full
Dark no Stars, an anthology comprised of four novellas. One
of these novellas, entitled nineteen twenty two, tells the fictional
story of a Nebraska farmer who experienced panormal activity on
his family farm in the year nineteen twenty two. It

(44:05):
has been said that truth is stranger than fiction. This
idiom rings true when one compares the eerie plot of
nineteen twenty two with an even more chilling real life
case of supposed paranormal activity, which took place that same
year on a remote Nova Scotian homestead far from the

(44:26):
arid planes of Nebraska. I'm Darren Marler, and this is
Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos. I'm Dereren Marler and this is
Weird Darkness Radio, where every week you'll find stories of

(44:47):
the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lower the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and explained. Coming up this hour, a smitten man
falls in love with a talented actress and convinces himself

(45:09):
she loves him in return. This sounds very much like
a story out of today's entertainment magazines. But this tale
of unrequited love took place in the eighteen eighties, but
first in nineteen twenty two, an otherwise unremarkable farmhouse in
Nova Scotia was the site of alleged poltergeist activity, which

(45:30):
made headlines all over Canada and the United States. A
poltergeist that liked to set fires. We begin there. 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 helps make it possible for
me to keep doing the show. And while you're listening,

(45:52):
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 own true story of
something paranormal that has happened to you or someone you know.

(46:16):
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. The farm

(46:57):
was owned by an elderly couple named Alexander and Janet McDonald,
who lived there with their fifteen year old adopted daughter,
Mary Ellen. The McDonald homestead was located near Caledonia Mills,
a rural community comprised almost entirely of Catholic Highland Scots,
situated in northeast Nova Scotia, about twenty minutes southeast of
the town of Anaginish. In nineteen twenty two, this otherwise

(47:21):
unremarkable farmhouse was the site of alleged poltergeist activity, which
made headlines all over Canada and the United States. The
activity began in December nineteen twenty one. One cold winter morning,
old alex McDonald, while tending to his animals, found that
someone had set his horses and cattle loose from their

(47:41):
stalls sometime in the night. Mere minutes after he guided
the last horse back into its stall, all the animals
inexplicably escaped again. Several days later, McDonald awoke to learn
that the horses and cattle had switched places. On another occasion,
he discovered that some not eternal agent had bobbed his
horse's taels or twisted the horsehairs into elaborate braids. Alexander

(48:07):
MacDonald quickly grew weary of the pranks. Eventually he asked
some of his neighbors to assist him in catching the
culprit red handed. Unfortunately, these well meaning Novascotian farmers fared
little better than McDonald, although they did witness a number
of mysterious manifestations. One farmer saw a strange blue light

(48:29):
emanating from McDonald's barn one night. Another noticed that household
objects seemed to vanish before reappearing in other sections of
the estate. Two neighbors even claimed to have observed a
hand waving a white cloth from the second story window
at McDonald's farmhouse at a time when no residents were
in that part of the house. It quickly became clear

(48:51):
to Alex and his neighbors that something very strange was
going on at the McDonald farm. Soon, McDonald mysterious tormentor
began lighting fires on his property. This arsonist activity intensified
until on January sixth, nineteen twenty two, Alex McDonald and
six of his neighbors spent the day combating both a

(49:13):
ferocious blizzard and a whopping thirty eight fires which erupted
mysteriously in and around his farmhouse. Fearing for his family safety,
Alex asked his neighbor, Leo McGillivray, if he and his
wife an adopted daughter might stay at his farmhouse until
the mystery was solved, a request which McGillivray happily granted.

(49:34):
In the ensuing weeks, the elderly Alex slogged over three
miles of snow covered dirt road twice a day to
feed his livestock. News travels fast in small towns, and
soon the story of the poltergeist of Caledonia Mills reached
the airs of regional newspapermen. On January sixteenth, nineteen twenty two,
a reporter named Harold B. Whidden, who worked for the

(49:56):
Halifax Harold was dispatched to the McDonald farm and charged
with writing a few pieces on the activity. Witten dutifully
interviewed Alexander, Janet and Mary Ellen, as well as several neighbors,
and included their startling testimonies in a number of articles.
He also visited the abandoned McDonald farmhouse and saw that

(50:16):
it indeed bore evidence of many fires. Shortly after the
conclusion of his first visit, Harold Wynnan made a second
trip out to the McDonald farm, this time intending to
stay in the farmhouse for three nights. He was accompanied
on this outing by Alexander MacDonald and Detective po Peachey Carroll,
the county policeman from the nearby town of Pigtown, Nova Scotia.

(50:39):
The men's first day of investigation was uneventful. On their
second night, however, both Wittan and Carol heard strange noises
unlike anything they had ever heard before, which seemed to
emanate from the upper floor of the farmhouse. As Witten
listened to the sounds, his eyes glued to the ceiling,
he felt a hard slap on his arm, noticeable through

(51:01):
several layers of thick clothing. Did you just slap me?
He asked Carol. The policeman shook his head and claimed
that he too had similarly felt pressure on his arm. Immediately,
the two men had the distinct impression that someone else
was in the room with them. After twenty hair raising minutes,
the strange presence left the house. Bewildered, Witten and Carol

(51:25):
roused Alex McDonald, who was dozing nearby. As it turned out,
McDonald had slept through the whole ordeal and hadn't heard
or felt a thing. Following that incident, Wyden decided to
cut his investigation short and book a hotel room in Anaginish,
where he documented his experience in a number of pieces
for the Halifax Herald. His articles stirred the fires of

(51:48):
public curiosity, and soon various authorities on the supernatural, including
celebrated Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were invited to
assess the situation for themselves. The only authority ready to
accept the challenge was doctor Walter Franklin Prince, an esteemed
parapsychologist from New York City. In March nineteen twenty two, Prince,

(52:09):
accompanied by Harold Wynnen, Leo McGillivray, and a Hallegonian that is,
a resident of Halifax, Nova Scotia named Dan Mcritchey, paid
a visit to the McDonald estate and began to conduct
his own investigation into the alleged poltergeist activity. Many of
the local Nova Scotians who encountered Prince during his visit
perceived him as an arrogant and egotistical Yankee. Their low

(52:32):
opinion of him as reflected in a number of contemporary
newspaper articles. Prince began his inspection by recording the nature
and location of various items in the farmhouse, examining the
scorch marks on the walls, and interviewing the McDonald's and
their neighbors. Early on in the investigation, the parapsychologists on
a whim asked Wyden and Mcritchey to take part in

(52:55):
an experiment. He placed a sheet of paper before each
of them, provided both of them with a pencil, and
asked them to hold the pencils in their hands passively
over the paper. Then, Prince invited any spirit in the
house to use these pencils to communicate with them if
they so desired. In accordance with the expectations or lack thereof,

(53:16):
of all three of the men, nothing happened. On Friday,
March tenth, Witten was called away to anaginish before he
left the farmhouse, so strange urging prompted him to ask
Prince to perform the pencil experiment with him again. Parapsychologist obliged.
This time, something incredible happened. Some mysterious force seemed to

(53:39):
take possession of Wyden's writing hand and began to scribble
on the page, producing what is known to parapsychologists as
automatic writing. As Witten put it in a later reminiscence,
suddenly I felt a prickly sensation in the end of
some of my fingers of my right hand, which increased.
The hand then became numb. Before I realized what was happening,

(54:00):
the pencil began to move slowly, without any effort or
intention on my part. For two hours, Witten scribbled in
this manner, going through many sheets of paper which prints provided.
At first he produced nothing but circles and slanted lines.
Then his scribblings began to take on a more intelligent shape,

(54:21):
and in no time he was spelling out messages in
a handwriting that was not his own. Although the exact
content of these messages has never been released to the public,
Widden later claimed that the scribblings asserted that the acts
of arson and other mischief at the McDonald farm were
committed by spirits. Witten also claimed that there were other

(54:41):
more profound messages as well, regarding which he wrote, most
of the written statements were of the utmost significance, and
not a few of them were of an entirely personal character.
For that reason, the greater part of the contents of
the strange manuscript will probably never be divulgd. In one place,
for example, it seemed as if my sister, who passed
away on August thirteenth, nineteen twelve, was sending me a message.

(55:05):
One sentence in the writing which followed was people must
realize that those who have passed beyond are ever present.
God is merciful, God is good, he is just, and
later spirits do visit earth after death. The whole message
was full of kindly expression and sympathy. There was no
sign of ballast or enmity in it. It wrote that

(55:26):
it would trouble the McDonald's no more, and it would
never appear to them. Later on, Whitten wrote, this may
all seem incredible to some people, but every word of
it is true. In fact, I have merely given the
readers the skim of it for the very best of reasons.
The cream will never be written. I still have every
sheet of paper upon which the message was written, and

(55:47):
will preserve them as the most valuable documents in my possession.
To the best of this author's knowledge, the whereabouts of
these documents are currently unknown. After six days on the farm,
Walter Prince wrapped up his investigation and published his findings
in the nineteen twenty two issue of the Journal of
the American Society for Psychical Research. Many false reports regarding

(56:11):
the nature of his conclusions were published in newspapers all
over North America, pulling their information from interviews with him
and members of the McDonald family, which Prince claimed never
took place. A read through Prince's original report, however, reveals
that the parapsychologist believed that fifteen year old Mary Ellen
was responsible for the fires in the McDonald farmhouse, and

(56:33):
that she had set these fires in a dissociated state
under the influence of some supernatural entity which thrived off
her energy. He claimed that Mary Ellen was unaware of
her actions and thus was not culpable for them. Prince
further theorized that the same entity which directed the actions
of Mary Ellen was also responsible for many other strange

(56:54):
activities which took place around the farmhouse, including the phenomena
which Harold Witten and Detective Garrell experienced during their own
independent investigation regarding Widdin's automatic writing incident, the existence of
which some newspapers erroneously reported Prince denied entirely. Prince admitted
that he was uncertain whether Widden's hand was guided by

(57:15):
the same aforementioned entity or his own subconscious mind. Three
months after Prince's investigation, the McDonald family moved back into
their farmhouse. To their relief, they enjoyed a pleasant summer
devoid of any strange activity. Then in October, mysterious fires
began to appear on the property once again. This time,

(57:38):
regional authorities blamed Mary Ellen for the activity and hauled
her off to the Nova Scotia Home for the Insane
in Asylum in Dartmouth. Following her release, mary Ellen married
and moved to Ontario, where she lived to a ripe
old age. Not long after Mary Ellen was institutionalized, Alexander
and Janet MacDonald abandoned their farm on will to live

(58:00):
on it any longer, and unable to sell it. With
no one to maintain it, the farmhouse slowly fell into disrepair. Today,
there is little to distinguish the old McDonald estate from
any other patch of land in the country of Anti Guinish.
Local legend has it that the land is cursed, and
that anyone who removes anything from the area, be it

(58:21):
a fragment of shingle or a pebble, invites the fire's
book of Caledonian mills into their own home. Indeed, one
woman who defied the curse in the spring of nineteen
seventy one, retrieving an egg cup from the ruins of
the McDonald farmhouse, lost her own farmhouse to a mysterious inferno,
which consumed the place while she was away in her

(58:43):
city home in Anaginish. In May of eighteen seventy nine,
sixteen to nineteen year old Maggie Blair ran away from
home from Jonesboro, Tennessee, to Russellville, Tennessee. It isn't stated

(59:05):
why she ran away, but it's believed that her stepfather,
Anthony Blair, was part of the reason. Maggie was described
as a smart and industrious girl. Maggie was working for
Esquire William Donaldson and his family. Of July twenty ninth,
eighteen seventy nine, Anthony showed up to the home of
the Donaldsons. He'd found out that Maggie was there and

(59:27):
had ridden the train toget her. He walked into the
kitchen and demanded she leaves with him to talk. At
the time, Maggie was in the kitchen with Missus Donaldson
preparing a meal. Maggie seemed afraid and told him she
wasn't going outside with him and if he had anything
to say, he could say in front of Missus Donaldson.
Mister Donaldson was arriving home at the same time. He

(59:49):
had forced Anthony to leave the residence. Anthony didn't show
up again until the night of July thirtieth. A few
nights later, on the night of July thirtieth, Maggie went
up to a black church near Russellville for a prayer meeting.
She had gone with friends. After the prayer meeting, Anthony
showed up again. He had found people who were at
the prayer meeting. Anthony went by the group, but at

(01:00:12):
a short distance, and took another road in which Maggie
and other folks were walking. He walked through the crowd
up to Maggie, who was walking in the back with
Henry Taylor. Maggie filled with fear as Anthony pressed Taylor
away and grabbed Maggie's hand. You must go home with
me on the train tonight, to your grandpa, he stated,
as he dragged her one hundred and fifty to two

(01:00:32):
hundred yards down the road. All while she struggled to
get out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Of his grasp.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
She screamed that she would rather die than go back
with him. This enraged Anthony, and he pulled out his
gun and shot her twice. She didn't immediately pass and
it had taken her two days to die from her
wounds on August first. On August eighth, Anthony Blair was
convicted and sentenced to the death penalty. It was said

(01:00:58):
when they delivered the death penalty that Anthony may have
been the calmest person in the room. He just stared
at the judge. He was due to die on September
twenty sixth, eighteen seventy nine, he had made a deal
with local doctors that he would will over his body
after death for fifteen dollars. This allowed him to keep
a supply of tobacco and candy. On September twenty sixth,

(01:01:21):
eighteen seventy nine, twenty six guards went to Anthony's cell
at noon. Anthony seemed unaffected and walked with a firm
step to the wagon that would bring him to the gallows.
After religious services were done by Reverend George Branner, Anthony
sang a song and then talked for thirty minutes. He
stated his guilt, but presented his facts for the reason

(01:01:43):
it led to him killing Maggie. The newspaper wouldn't state
these facts, as it was unsuited for the public to
read or hear. At one thirty a rope was placed
around his neck and the black cap arranged. By one
thirty five, the wagon pulled away from beneath him. He
had no pulse at nine minutes. In ten minutes, his
heart stopped beating. In fifteen he was pronounced dead, and

(01:02:08):
in twenty two he was lowered into the casket. His
body was taken by the doctors who paid him for it.
Medical students and doctors embalmed the body. His heart and
brain were kept in jars. They boiled his bones. In
eighteen eighty they were assembled and hung in the back
room of a drug store. They were used as a

(01:02:28):
way to attract visitors to the store. The fire eventually
broke out and burned the store down. You don't have
to go to his cemetery or haunted house to experience
the supernatural. You don't need to drive a cursed road

(01:02:48):
to encounter a ghost. Sometimes the paranormal takes place on
military basis.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Up next.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
When it comes to the paranormal, there seem to be
certain places that are well suited to or seem to
draw the most activity. Old abandoned places, ruins, graveyards, dilapidated houses.
These are the usual suspects for haunted places. But there
are always exceptions to this, and certainly one of these

(01:03:35):
would be military bases. And these locations also have, on
occasion drawn to them strange stories of the unexplained. It
seems that the men and women stationed here would already
have enough to worry about besides ghosts and ghouls. But
here we'll look at some very curious accounts of encounters
with strange entities from beyond our understanding at military installations.

(01:03:58):
One report comes from a whitis called Sergeant M, who
in twenty fifteen was assigned to twenty four hour desk duty,
which entails keeping a full twenty four hour watch at
a barracks. One of their duties was to keep an
eye on soldiers who were demonstrating psychological issues or who
had been confined to their barracks to protect those around them,
and were considered high risk. The witness relates a tale

(01:04:21):
about one such individual who had been kicked out for
being a troublemaker and an angry, hate filled individual that
never progressed past private second class and his twenty months
in uniform. The mysterious individual was also apparently rumored to
be into black magic and Satanism, and most of the
others had kept well away from him. According to the witness,

(01:04:43):
this unruly individual left the barracks without making any effort
at all to clean out his filthy room, which would
be described thus. When he was kicked out, he left
his barracks room a complete mess. I've seen portable toilets
cleaner than his room. The toilet had been broken and
didn't flush, but he had continued to use it. In
the closet. There were mountains of trash and rotten food

(01:05:05):
in the sink and refrigerator. The shower was also filled
with garbage and water. Aside from the mess, there were
strange things as well. When the commander, first Sergeant and myself,
the supply sergeant, went into his room, we found chicken
bones tied together, hanging from strings from the ceiling. They'd
been lashed together to make seemingly archaic symbols. We counted

(01:05:25):
roughly two dozen before we quit counting. The floor was
covered in grime and candles had been lit in a circle.
All of the furniture had been stacked out of the
way or shoved in the closet. I'll spare you the
description of the smell, but the whole room had an
unsettling feeling to it. The air in the room felt wrong.
I couldn't tell at the time if it was the

(01:05:46):
smell or the filth. Whatever the reason, I didn't want
to be in there. We called a special clean up
team and put in a work order to have the
room stripped and cleaned by professionals. After they were finished,
the room spotless. Not long after this, there allegedly began
to trickle in reports of strange phenomena surrounding the room

(01:06:07):
in question, even though it was still unoccupied. There were
claims that things could be heard banging around within, and
odd odors would also emanate from the room, such as
a scent of burning plastic that could not be identified.
The witness says that he ended up being assigned to
the duty roster that put him into close proximity to
the haunted room, and one evening he had a very

(01:06:30):
terrifying experience as he was on duty with a private.
It started when they suddenly heard a roar come from
the room, which he describes as sounding like metal tearing
while someone playing a recording of a scream, except distorted
and in reverse. The startled men then warily approached the room,
and the witness would say of what happened next. Thus

(01:06:52):
being the senior ranking, I instructed the soldier to call
the barracks representative LNO and have him get to the
desk as soon as possible. Minutes later, he and I
are using his master key to gain access to the room,
while my private covers the hallway from the desk, staying
with the phone and also watching our backs. As soon
as we enter the foyer, we're hit with the smell
of dog poo and burned plastic. Neither of us can

(01:07:15):
identify the source, but the room is completely empty. We
sweep and clear every nook and cranny, later agreeing that
we felt like we were being watched the whole time.
We found nothing, but the smell remained. We decided to
re secure the room and not log the incident, because I,
for one, didn't want to look like a crazy idiot
when my boss's boss read my report, we move for

(01:07:38):
the door. We exit, turn and go to close the
door behind us, when a massive force hits the door
from inside the room, shoving the barrack's representative out of
the doorway and slamming the door shut. None of the
doors are allowed to slam. They all have hydraulic arms
at the top to prevent that. They're not even quick
to close if a two hundred pound mail leans on them,

(01:08:00):
so one slamming so hard it could move a grown
man is impossible, especially considering it had worked moments prior
when we entered the room. We tried to open the
lock again, but this time the key card wouldn't work.
We agreed that neither of us wanted to go in
again anyway, and we agreed not to report any of
it because we would be taken as seriously as anyone else.

(01:08:22):
After that incident, I kept an ear out, but didn't
hear anything nearly as dramatic. Again, on another occasion, it
sounded like there was some kind of shuffling coming from
the room, like someone moving around, but I kept a
stalwart face about it and ordered my private to stay
away from it as well. To this day, I cannot
explain what happened in that room. What was this? Was

(01:08:44):
it some sort of demonic entity conjured up by the
troubled soldier who had left, It's hard to say. In
another case defying classification, the tale is told by the
nephew of the eye witness, but it is no less spooky.
The uncle called Bob was reportedly a new soldier in
the army in nineteen eighty five, and at the time
he was on fence patrol duty at a base in Arizona.

(01:09:07):
As he and a partner made their way around the perimeter,
he claimed that they heard an anomalous noise from behind
them and turned to see a strange sight. Indeed, according
to the one relaying the account, when they turned around,
they saw an old man dressed in buckskin with long
hair and braids. Bob described it as being so gray
that it almost glowed. The man was standing approximately thirty

(01:09:31):
feet behind them. Both men drew their weapons, as the
old man was in a shoot to kill area with
warning signs all over the place. Neither Bob or the
other man wanted to shoot an old man. They figured
that he must have Alzheimer's and had wandered into the
base or something. After all, he was not being threatening
and appeared harmless. The men shouted to the old man,

(01:09:52):
telling him he was in a restricted area and that
he needed to put his hands in the air. Bob
thought they'd walk him to post call and call the
leased apartment, who would then be able to get him
back home. Bob tried the radio, but it was just static.
Calling his friend to help. Both he and Bob turned
to tinker with the walkie, although they only looked away
for half a second. To quote my uncle. When they

(01:10:15):
turned back, the old man was gone. In his place
was a massive cottontail rabbit, just sitting there watching them.
The two startled men looked around to see if the
old man was still around, but the mysterious stranger was gone,
nowhere to be seen. All that was there was this
rabbit sitting there staring at them in the desert night.

(01:10:35):
They warily continued on with their duty, and shortly after
heard the noise again, this time from the opposite side
of the perimeter fence. When they looked, they were shocked
to see the same old man standing there on the
other side, staring in at them. Since this was a
military base, the fence was very high, around ten feet
and decked out with razor wire very secure, so it

(01:10:58):
seemed impossible that the old man could have gotten over
the fence so quickly without being detected. This was frightening
enough that the two men quickly got out of there
and never spoke of it with their commanding officer. This
case is particularly interesting due to the location Arizona and
the apparent shape shifting quality of the strange intruder. One

(01:11:18):
phenomena often reported from the southwest United States is that
of what are called skinwalkers, basically shape changing entities from
native lore that have been cited all over the region
by often very reliable witnesses is that what these two
men saw. Unfortunately, this is a second hand account that
is impossible to verify, so it's all left to the

(01:11:41):
imagination and speculation. If it was a skinwalker, it certainly
wouldn't be the only one reported by military personnel. I
was given a curious account by a reader who says
he encountered one in New Mexico, where he'd been stationed
at the White Sands Missile Range. According to the witness,
he'd been on guard duty one evening along with a partner,

(01:12:02):
and it was typically a rather uneventful, even boring duty.
Yet on this night they would have a frightening encounter
that has stayed with them ever since. The witness says
that as they conducted their patrol, his partner stopped him
and pointed off into the barren surrounding desert wilderness, where
there appeared to be two pin points of light hovering
over the scrub around six feet in the air. Thinking

(01:12:25):
it was perhaps just a wild animal, they crept closer
to its position to find that it seemed to be
a tall, dark figure just standing out there in the
middle of nowhere in the dark. It then became apparent
that this cloaked individual was a man, although with a
deeply wrinkled face that looked ancient. The witness would describe
what happened next. We were a little spooked because there

(01:12:48):
should have been no one out there at this time,
especially that close to the base. And this guy, he
gave off a weird vibe just standing there staring at us,
even as we approached his face. He looked like he
was maybe Native American, and I couldn't tell so well,
but his skin looked creased, craggy, and pock marked somehow ancient.

(01:13:09):
He was wrapped up in some kind of cape or cloak,
and we couldn't see his hands or feet. We called
out to him to identify himself, but this guy, he
didn't flinch. I don't even know if he hurt us
or not. Well, now we're a bit unsettled and think
we're dealing with a seriously disturbed individual or some senile
old fart from a reservation, So we know we have

(01:13:29):
to apprehend him or at least get him out of there.
We started getting closer to this guy who's still standing
stocked still like a statue, and that's when it happens. Boom,
He just sort of drops. There's a flutter of the
cape and he's gone, just gone. My partner calls out
in surprise, and right then a coyote runs right past us,

(01:13:50):
practically close enough to touch, before dashing off into the night.
That old guy, there's no sign of him. It freaked
us out for sure, like a classic skinwalker encounter. What
did those guys see out there? There have been strange
paranormal encounters reported from bases in other areas of the
world as well. One account was given by a witness

(01:14:12):
named Adolf Schaeffer, who claims to be the equivalent of
a sergeant in the United Arnoored Forces of Germany called
the Bundesfer. He claims to have had a very anomalous
experience when he was just a cadet at boot camp
in East Germany. One evening at around five pm, they
were apparently outdoing drills when they heard some sort of eerie,

(01:14:32):
unexplainable noises coming from one of the nearby buildings. They
did not think much of it at the time, but
then at eight pm the power grid began to go
on the fritz, with lights flickering everywhere, which was odd
as it had been inspected just a few days before.
The base drill sergeant was convinced that it was just
a faulty generator and had the witness go out with

(01:14:53):
three others to fix it. The men then made their
way to the basement where the generators were kept, and
there they found that two of the generators worked fine,
although one had inexplicably been turned off. It was when
they got to the larger third generator when things would
get ominous down there in the dank basement, and the
witness says of what happened. Thus, the third generator was

(01:15:16):
the largest main source of power in the base. The
first thing I noticed were the scratches. This seemingly super
hard to break hunk of metal had what I think
were scratches and cuts claw marks, piercing its outer metal
shell like a buzzsaw. So deep the scratches had cut
the cords inside and had damaged the batteries as though

(01:15:36):
they were paper. After a moment of thinking, I knew
this couldn't have been a person doing this, seeing as
nothing any cadet had could cut through that tough metal
so easily. I immediately rushed up the stairs to tell
my drill sergeant hoping he would know what to do.
He told me, the most we can do is tell
bays Command to put someone to guard the door and
have the generator replaced. Good thing, reporting this Cadet Schaeffer.

(01:16:00):
After getting a pat on the back, I resumed my
daily training routines without anything too odd happening. But some
hours later, sometime in the night, I can't be exactly sure,
when I heard scratching noises, but not from the basement.
They were too close and too loud, as if they
were in the sleeping quarners. After that moment of realization,
I opened my eyes and looked around. I saw what

(01:16:22):
I thought was someone in the corner going through a bag.
But when I looked around the room, sheer terror came
into me. All the bunks were full, every one. What
the hell, I thought to myself. But then, as if
it had heard what I was thinking, the thing in
the corner turned to face me. It was a pale

(01:16:44):
gray with no nose and claws like razors. This thing
was skinny and two feet taller than my six foot self.
After that, I just froze in a blank stare of horror.
In my mind. Seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned to
hours and hours turned to days. I think I passed
out of terror, because all I remember after that is

(01:17:06):
waking up to my buddies and Sergeant looking at me
while talking to me, telling me I looked sick and
I felt sick too, like all energy from me was
drained for days on end. Also strange is another case
from way over in Afghanistan where a witness named Jerry
Aberdeen saw something very unusual during his tour of duty

(01:17:27):
out in that forsaken wasteland. It's an account that seems
hard to really categorize, but seeming to deal with ghosts,
demons or some other supernatural being. The incident happened to
him while he was stationed at an airbase in Mosul
Ninmah Province in two thousand and four, and the witness
would say I was attached to two thirds inf three

(01:17:47):
SBCT at FOB Patriot. The call went out on the
radio that FOB Diamondback the airfield was under attack. Everyone
on every fob from Courage, Blickenstaff, Patriot and Marez jumped
into the closest vehicle and headed to the airfield to
counter the attack. I was in a vehicle with some
other infantry guys, an engineer and a syops guy. When

(01:18:09):
we got to the airfield, we saw some dudes trying
to climb over the wall. The gunner opened up on them,
and the rest of us took up a position in
a ditch on the other side of the road and
opened fire. There were three of us side by side,
the engineer, syops guy, and myself. We fired at one
guy and he dropped from the top of the wall.
Hard to tell who actually shot him. Right after he fell,

(01:18:29):
there was a stream of black smoke coming out of him.
The engineer made that comment that he must have been
wearing a suicide vest and a malfunction. A few seconds later,
the black smoke grew larger and started to take a
human looking form. What happened next all three of us saw,
and there was no doubt. The now fully materialized black
smoke was standing upright and now had red, smoky glowing

(01:18:53):
eyes and a weird looking mouth. The damn thing actually
smiled at us and turned to sort of run, but
it just dissipated after it took a few steps. Very
hard to describe how it all happened. All three of
us just looked at each other, wide eyed for a
second or two.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
After it was.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
All over, we only spoke about it once, then never again.
What sort of entity was this, if it ever really
existed at all, There's no way to know, and that
seems to be a recurring theme with all of these reports.
Here we've looked at an assortment of cases of what
seemed to be very odd paranormal entities of some sort

(01:19:32):
which seemed to elude easy categorization. What are these things
and what do they want? Are we looking at ghosts,
skin walkers, demons or all of the above. Considering the
range of differences between these cases, there's probably no clear
answer that can explain all of them, and they probably
represent very different, disparate phenomena. But one common question we

(01:19:56):
can ask is why have they been drawn to these
military installations or are these merely creepy campfire stories being
told by some soldiers for a good laugh. As usual,
we are left with some very jolting accounts and hints,
but no clear answers to any of these, and once
again we have more to pile onto the great big

(01:20:16):
pile of weird things we may never understand. It looks
like they don't have enough time to share the story
of James Doherty, a lunatic who was smitten with a
talented actress and convinced himself that she loved Tim in return.
So I'll place that story in tonight's Sudden Death overtime,

(01:20:36):
which you can get in the podcast at Weirddarkness dot
com slash listen. In the meantime, I'll go check the
archives and see if I can come up with something
to share. When we return, you suddenly wake in the

(01:21:04):
dead of night, feeling startled and alert. Glanting at your
bedside clock reveals the time is exactly three in the morning,
the witching hour. This strange phenomenon occurs often enough that
science sought answers in circadian rhythms and biology. Yet many
believe more sinister supernatural forces are at play as the

(01:21:29):
veil between world's thins, paranormal activity spikes and possibly disturbs
our slumber. What might these shadowy powers be and why
do they seem to target three am to rouse people
from sleep. According to paranormal researchers, three AM represents a

(01:21:49):
convergence of spirit world activity in the wee hours. Protective
barriers supposedly weaken, allowing spirits easier access to the living
to report upticks in poltergeists and apparitions around this time.
Mediums also claim three Am brings clearer connections and messages

(01:22:09):
from the beyond. This involves more than just wayward spirits.
Demonologists caution that three Am also harbours negative entities seeking
vulnerable victims. Biblical scripture associates the hour with Satan bowling
earth for souls to steal. Under the cover of night,
Demonic influences grow stronger to mislead people towards darkness. Waking

(01:22:34):
suddenly around three AM may suggest one is under spiritual attack.
Coglore reinforces the Witching hour's link to dark forces. Ancient
legends worn midnight to three AM are when malevolent spirits,
including wicked witches, assembled to invoke curses and cast spells.

(01:22:54):
References to three Am as the Devil's Hour date back centuries,
turning is time into a fearful superstition. Strange and tragic
events striking around three Am further cement the mystical warnings
beyond harbingers of evil. Three Am may also attract benevolent

(01:23:15):
spiritual guides. Angelic beings are said to move among mortals
during their most defenseless hours of sleep. Many report visitations
from deceased loved ones at exactly three am, when mystical
connections manifest most easily. Their touch jolts people briefly from
sleep as a sign of spiritual presence. Skeptics challenge these

(01:23:39):
paranormal explanations as irrational superstition. However, the historical persistence of
spooky three am associations must give one pause. If enough
people over generations fear this hour, perhaps collective belief manifests
paranormal powers we have yet to fully unders stand. For now,

(01:24:02):
should you wake up at three AM feeling a strange presence,
listen closely. You may have just received a message from
the other side. Thanks for listening. If you missed to
me part of tonight's show, or if you want to

(01:24:23):
hear it again, you can subscribe to the podcast in
your favorite podcast app at Weirddarkness 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
absolutely free, and you'll hear tonight's sudden Death overtime content
about the lunatic James Doherty, who had a twisted way

(01:24:44):
of showing his love. That's Weirddarkness dot com slash listen.
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 unsolved mysteries like you do. Doing
that helps make it possible for me to keep doing

(01:25:06):
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 Weird Darkness 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 purported to be true unless stated otherwise,

(01:25:26):
and you can find links to the stories or the
authors in the show notes, which I upload to the
Weird Darkness website immediately after tonight's show. The fire Spook
of Caledonia Mills is by Hammerson Peters for Mysteries of
Canada the Military and the Mysterious is by Brett Sponsor
for Mysterious Universe. The murder of Maggie Walker was posted
on the website. Murders in History and the Witching Hour

(01:25:49):
of three Am is from Paranormality magazine. 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 Olympians four, verse thirteen. I can do all
this through Him who gives me strength. And a final thought,

(01:26:10):
do not let the shadows of your past darken the
doorstep of your future. Forgive and forget. I'm Darren Marler.
Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Das James

(01:26:57):
mcderty was an industrious young man in Brooklyn in the
eighteen eighties. He worked as aligneman for the Postal Telegraph Company,
and in his spare time he studied meteorology, electricity, astronomy
and other sciences. He dabbled in a little of everything
until he watched a play. He became obsessed with the

(01:27:17):
leading lady, Mary Anderson, and his love for her became
his sole, controlling passion. He would go wherever she was
performing and do whatever he could to be close to her.
In eighteen eighty seven, miss Anderson traveled to Europe, and
Doherty followed. By this point, He believed that Mary Anderson
loved him as well, but she was surrounded by a

(01:27:40):
group of conspirators dedicated to keeping them apart. They were
controlled by Antonio Fernando de Navarro, his chief rival for
Mary's affections, who would marry her in eighteen ninety While
in Liverpool in eighteen eighty seven, Doherty believed that the
conspirators had tried to poison him, so he moved back
to America. He settled in Washington, d c. Where he

(01:28:03):
sold encyclopedias. Mary Anderson followed him to Washington, he would
later tell his doctors, and took lodging across the street
from him. At this time, his enemies were so intent
on surveiling him, Doherty said that they used a system
of mirrors arranged over the transom of his door so
they could follow his every move. In eighteen eighty nine,

(01:28:24):
while Anderson was appearing in New York City, Doherty's constant
stalking came to the attention of the police. James Doherty,
a tall, lanky man with dark, wild looking eyes peering
through spectacles, was declared insane by doctors on Ward's Island
and sent to the King's County Insane Asylum in Brooklyn.
At first, Doherty was considered dangerous and kept under close observation,

(01:28:47):
but gradually his condition appeared to improve, and his obsession
with Mary Anderson had subsided, to the point that he
received the news of her marriage to mister Navarro with
apparent indifference. Considering him no longer a threat, the doctors
put Doherty to work on the asylum's farm, but their
trust had been premature. Doherty took the farm as an

(01:29:08):
opportunity to escape. The asylum guards searched for him, but
with no avail. After ten days. According to the rules
of the asylum, Doherty was recorded as discharged. On September
twenty sixth, eighteen ninety Dorty returned to the asylum and
walked up the stairs with a revolver in his hand.
Several doctors and nurses who were on the porch scattered,

(01:29:30):
and Doherty walked into the office of doctor Fleming, superintendent
of the institution. Doctor Fleming told him he was not
wanted anymore, and Doherty said he had come for the
things he left behind. His things were promptly procured, and
Doherty left without using his revolver. Doctor Fleming did not
report the incident to the police. Two weeks later, on

(01:29:52):
October tenth, Dorty returned again, this time with a revolver
loaded and cocked in each hand. Entered the main office
the asylum and asked for doctor Fleming. Doctors Lloyd and mcgreel,
who were in the office at the time, told him
that doctor Fleming was out. Doctor Lloyd, who recognized the
former inmate right away, began to say, now, Doherty, you

(01:30:13):
ought to be but the sentence was cut short by
the sharp report of a revolver. Doherty had shot Lloyd
in the left side of his chest. Doctor Lloyd staggered
to his feet, and as he rose, Doherty fired again,
getting Lloyd in the throat. Doctor Lloyd gasped oh Doherty,
and then fell to the floor and died instantly. Doctor

(01:30:35):
mcgreil ran from the room and out of the asylum,
shouting police. Also with the asylum that day was doctor
Edward H. Ashford, who was employed by the federal government
to collect the mortality census in New York and Brooklyn.
He heard the shots and saw Doherty leave, then hurried
to the Flatbush police station and told them what had occurred.
The police in Brooklyn correctly assumed that Doherty would flee

(01:30:58):
to Manhattan and captured him as he crossed the bridge.
While in custody, Doherty said to the captain, I did it.
I meant to kill him and would have killed ten
more if I had the chance. He said that he
meant to shoot Lloyd Fleming mcgreel and the whole crowd
for the brutal treatment he had received at the asylum.
I'm not crazy, he said, but as sane as the

(01:31:20):
sanest man that walks New York today. In his pockets,
the police found the two revolvers, one forty four caliber
and one thirty eight caliber, fifty cartridges, a half filled
bottle of whiskey, thirty cents, and four letters addressed respectively
to missus Mary Anderson Navarro, his mother, and friends mister

(01:31:41):
Lewis Spader and mister Charles Pearson. In the letter to
Mary Anderson, he implied his intention to kill himself, saying
he would meet her in the next world and bequeathing
her three manuscripts, which were also found on his person.
To mister Spader, he requested that his body be planted
and a grapevine playst over it that it may nourish

(01:32:01):
and bring forth fruit to gladden the palate and tickle
the brains of posterity. The grand jury charged Doherty with
first degree murder. They also censured the State Lunacy Commission
for their policy of marking escaped patients as discharged, and
admonished to doctor Fleming for allowing Doherty to remain at
large after September twenty sixth. At his trial the following January,

(01:32:24):
Doherty's court appointed lawyer argued for his acquittal on the
grounds of insanity. Doherty's rambling testimony, which covered the same
conspiracy theory that he'd been spouting since his first arrest,
would seem to bear out the insanity plea, but Doherty
argued that he was not insane and said many times
that he would rather be electrocuted than return to the asylum.

(01:32:45):
After six hours of deliberation, the jury returned a compromise
verdict guilty of second degree murder. Doherty's attorney continued to
assert his insanity and argued that he should serve a
sentence at the state Insane Asylum in Auburn. Justice Bartlett
agreed to appoint a committee to investigate Doherty's sanity before

(01:33:05):
deciding his sentence in February. The commission concluded that Doherty
was suffering from a newly named form of insanity called paranoia,
formerly known as monomania, characterized by hallucinations and peculiar false beliefs,
where the sufferer believes he has enemies conspiring against him
and that he is of unusual talent, beauty, or importance.

(01:33:28):
His hallucinations, however, did not interfere with his understanding regard
the motives and purport of his trial. In every respect,
he comprehended the trial with as keen an intelligence as
a perfectly sane person. After reading the committee's report, Justice
Bartlett concluded that since Doherty's mental disease did not prevent
him from understanding the proceedings or from making a defense,

(01:33:50):
he was not insane to the extent necessary to prevent
the rendition of the jury's judgment. He sentenced James M.
Doherty to be imprisoned for the rest of his natural life,
life in the state prison at sing Sing. The terrifying
oswang is the most feared creature of Philippine folklore, and

(01:34:14):
with good reason, stalking its prey in the small rural
towns of the Philippines is deadly monster nocturnally hunts for
meals of human flesh and blood. The oswang is a
flesh eating, shape shifting monster. During the day, oswangs appear
as regular townspeople, though they may be observed by others

(01:34:36):
to have reclusive habits or magical abilities. At night, oswangs
shift into eerie predatory forms and go hunting for human prey,
preferring to feast on children and pregnant women above all else.
Varying horrible descriptions have been given of the oswang's appearance,
but some recurrent traits stand out among all the different description. Usually,

(01:35:01):
the oswang is a woman during the day. At night, however,
it may appear as a bird, a pig, or a
dog no matter which animal form it takes, and oswang
will differ from a regular animal in various disturbing ways.
Most oswangs have long, prebosis like tongues and are frequently
described as walking with their feet backwards. They have also

(01:35:25):
been depicted as being so thin they can hide behind
bamboo posts. The oswang's most fearsome ability is its knack
for blending in with its victims. During the day, Oswang's
look and act just like regular people. Although they are
generally shy and somewhat preclusive, they can have jobs, friends,

(01:35:47):
and even families. During the night, oswang's shift into a
form that is better suited to hunting. Different regional versions
of the creature are said to take different forms and
walk walk become large birds, while the zegman, sometimes described
simply as a companion of the monster, takes on the

(01:36:08):
form of a Tasmanian devil. Oswang's have also been reported
shifting into pigs and dogs. In addition to shape shifting,
oswang's also have the ability to transform the appearance of
other objects. It's common for an oswang to transform plant
material into a doppelganger of one of its victims in

(01:36:29):
order to hide the evidence of its feeding habits from locals.
These doppelgangers might replace corpses, which oswangs often consume, or
they might replace living people. If the doppelganger replaces a
living person, it'll return to the person's home, gets sick,
and quickly die. Another tactic oswang's used to disguise themselves

(01:36:52):
is to use sinister vocal tricks. As the fearsome predator
gets closer to its victim. Its call gets quiet and quieter,
so its victim is tricked into thinking the monster is
actually getting further away. The oswang's hunting prowess is almost
as frightening as its ability to hide itself in plain sight.

(01:37:13):
Oswang's like to dine on corpses, fetuses, and small children.
They often appear at funeral wakes or at the bedside
of pregnant women to eat. The oswang uses its probosis
like tongue to suck blood from its victims or suck
a fetus from a pregnant woman's womb. They also have
superhuman strength during the nighttime. A person transforms into this

(01:37:38):
deadly predator by tying a fertilized chicken egg to his
or her stomach. After some time, the chick passes from
the egg into the stomach. Once this has happened, the
remaining eggshell is buried in a bamboo tube along with
coconut oil and chicken dung. The person now has the
powers of the oswang. A dyeing oswang can also pass

(01:38:01):
its powers along to someone else if it wishes. The
oswang holds its mouth close to a chosen person and
the chick inside the monster's stomach hops into the mouth
of the new person. The first step towards ridding a
town of this deadly assailant is, of course, identifying the monster.
There are several ways in which you can do this.

(01:38:23):
Oswang's generally have bloodshot eyes since they've been awake hunting
all night. In addition, it is said that if you
look directly into an oswang's eyes, your reflection will appear
upside down. The most common method of detecting oswang's, however,
involves using albularious oil, a special oil made of coconuts
and holy plants. This oil is said to boil whenever

(01:38:46):
an oswaan is near. Oswang's are repelled by garlic and
religious artifacts, and are at their weakest during the day.
When they are in human form. They can be killed
by decapitation or by being struck with a whip made
from a sting ray's tail. The oswang has a lot
in common with Western vampires, but there is no evidence

(01:39:07):
to show that either creature inspired the creation of the other.
Stories of the Filipino monster and of vampires probably evolved separately.
Other monsters in Philippine folklore are more likely to be
related to the oswany. Both the walk walk version of
the oswang and the monanangals a different monster, leave behind

(01:39:28):
half of their human torso when they transform into a
predatory form during the night. Oswangs also have connections to
witchcraft in the Philippines, and are generally described as women.
They are also sometimes said to have magical powers during
the day. While they are generally to be feared, they
are sometimes said to provide healing potions or to cast

(01:39:50):
spells for local people. The oswang was born out of
Philippine folklore, with stories of this terrifying creature dating back
to at least the sixteenth century, when Spanish explorers created
the first written record of the monster. The explorers noted
that of all the monsters in their folklore, the oswang
was the most feared by native people. The creature's name

(01:40:13):
comes from the Sanskrit word asura, which means demon. This
terrifying monster is also sometimes called the tick Tick or
the walk walk. These names come from the sinister sounds
the monster is said to make while hunting. Despite the
fact that belief in this terrifying creature has spread throughout
the Philippines, there aren't many well known individual stories. Instead,

(01:40:37):
the Oswang's fame is built on a collection of first
hand encounters, and almost everyone who claims to have seen
this fabled creature has a slightly different report. Oswang mythology
was formalized in the nineteen sixties when Maximo Remos included
a description of the monster in a book titled Creatures
of Philippine Lower Mythology, which I've linked to in the show.

(01:41:01):
Drawings of the Oswang have populated Philippine folk art for centuries.
Since its introduction to Western culture, the creatures also begun
to make appearances in Western art. The Oswang Inquiry, an
illustrated book by A. Gilder Cordero Fernando, contains many paintings
of the Oswang. Stage plays have also brought the mythology
surrounding this creature into the spotlight, with Luna and Oswang

(01:41:25):
Romance and Tik Tik the Oswang Chronicles both showcasing the monster.
Most recently, a documentary called The Oswang Phenomenon explored the
evolution of the related mythology and the culture behind the myths.
Have placed to link to this documentary in the show notes,
as well as fantastic as stories of the Oswang might

(01:41:46):
seem they may actually have been inspired by real life events.
One theory is that native wildlife was the inspiration for
the legends. The tick tick and walk walk hunting calls
the monster is said to make are probably the cause
of nocturnal birds, bats, Tasmanian devils and cogwang, and endangered

(01:42:06):
species of flying lemur have all been killed because they
have been suspected of being Oswang in a transformed state.
Another possible explanation of Oswang mythology is the presence of
a rare genetic disease called XDP, which almost exclusively affects
Filipino men. XDP causes patients to have Parkasonian and dystonic symptoms.

(01:42:31):
The patient is afflicted with uncontrollable muscle spasms, contortions, and tremors.
Images of Oswang's during transformation are strikingly similar to photographs
of the patient experiencing XDP symptoms. The highest concentration of
XDP occurrences is in the Capez region, which is rumored
to be the original home of the Oswang. Finally, the

(01:42:54):
Oswang legend may be used to explain away horrendous unsolved
crimes in the film. When a person disappears or is
brutally murdered, it may be easier for local people to
attribute the crime to a demon rather than to one
of their fellow humans. Tabloids often attribute crimes to the Osway,

(01:43:15):
which adds fuel to the mythology. What has come to

(01:43:52):
be mostly known as the American maned lion is more
often than not described as being a large cream or
golden colored cat measuring around five to eight feet in
length and approximately three feet high at the shoulder, with
shaggy hair and a very noticeable mane, and the cat
will sometimes even be described as having spots or stripes.

(01:44:17):
Reports of some sort of large, maimed mystery cat in
America go back well into history. In seventeen ninety seven,
a man named Peter Pence allegedly shot and killed a
large cat of some type at Bald Eagle Mountain, Pennsylvania,
which had a matted mane and was very much like
an African lion. In this case, the mysterious big cat

(01:44:40):
had been blamed for a killing spree of cattle in
the area, and its bloody rain was only brought to
an end with its apparent extermination. It's unclear just what
happened to the carcass after this, and we are left
to wonder. Another of these supposed lions was shot and
killed in eighteen sixt near Lake County, California. Hunter Archie

(01:45:03):
McMath apparently tracked the animal down and took it out
of the picture after it had terrorized the region, and
it was reported as measuring around eleven feet long, possessing
black stripes along its shoulders. In the late nineteenth century,
there was also a spate of sightings of some sort
of maimed big cat, possibly a lion, in parts of

(01:45:25):
North Carolina, which was referred to as the Santa. The
cat was typically described as being about the size of
a very large puma, with a beige coat that was
sometimes said to be striped lengthwise down the body. Whatever
it was, it stopped being sighted in the area after
the eighteen nineties, going off to who knows where. In

(01:45:48):
nineteen seventeen, a lioness and cup were apparently sighted in
the state of Georgia, and in August of nineteen nineteen
there was a report from the Syracuse Daily Journal which
told of farmers near an area called Union Springs, New York,
spotting a mysterious large cat with a head like a lion,
prowling about their properties and terrorizing the livestock. One farmer

(01:46:14):
by the name of John Redman claimed that the mystery
beast had attacked and bit the tail off one of
his cattle. Although the farmers got together to try and
hunt the creature down, they never did find it. Throughout
the nineteen forties to the nineteen fifties there were reports
as well. In eighteen forty eight, there was a mained

(01:46:35):
lion seen prowling about with oddly enough, a partner in
the form of a mysterious black panther near the town
of Elkhorn Falls, Indiana. In eighteen fifty four, a farmer
named Arnold Najar apparently spotted an African lion in Surprise, Nebraska,
and other sightings would follow, sparking a full blown hunt

(01:46:56):
for the creature. It was never found. Another lion was
supposedly seen farther north near Capus Casing, Ontario, in nineteen sixty,
when a farmer named Leo Paudolaire watched one prowl about
his farm, complete with a bushy tip to its tail.
In that same year, a farmer in the state of

(01:47:17):
Georgia claimed to have shot and killed a lion that
had been terrorizing and killing his livestock. Although it is
unclear just what happened to the body, there is supposedly
a photo of it somewhere. The following year would see
a minor hysteria break out in the area of Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
in February of nineteen sixty one, when there was a

(01:47:39):
deluge of reports to police of people seeing a very
large wild cat of some type prowling about. What would
go on to be known as the Milwaukee Lion was
seen by numerous respectable, reliable witnesses and was even sighted
by several police officers, and there was plaster casts apparently
made of its prints. The cat seemed to favor the

(01:48:01):
western suburbs and startled many homeowners as it crossed yards,
leaped fences, and apparently sometimes let out a loud yelp
or squeal. Police searched for the phantom cat, but were unsuccessful.
The only evidence those tracks left behind. There was some
speculation that this was a large mountain lion being seen,

(01:48:24):
but these animals are no more native to the area
than African lions. On taxidermis named Walter Pelzer believed it
to be a misidentified large dog and would say it's
just like the flying saucer bit. The possibility of a
mountain lion roaming the Greater Milwaukee area is about as
remote as finding the abominable snowman on Holy Hill. Whatever

(01:48:46):
it was did not seem to bother any pets or
livestock in the area, and sightings abruptly stopped as suddenly
as they had started moving into the nineteen seventies. In
nineteen seventy nine, sightings continued when what was described as
a large male African lion was witnessed to roam about

(01:49:06):
a Coyote Hills Regional Park near Fremont, California. In later years,
still we have a series of sightings of a mained
cat near Mentor, Ohio in nineteen ninety two, which was
rather hilariously written off by authorities as being a misidentified
Golden Retriever dog, despite witnesses being adamant that it was

(01:49:27):
a maimed lion and not a dog. In June of
nineteen ninety six, there was a sighting of an apparent
lion near Spokane, Washington, at a place called Canyon Drive.
Witness Bell and Grab claimed that she'd been driving through
when she saw what she described as a large African
lion casually stroll across a nearby golf course. She stopped

(01:49:50):
her car to watch it and said that it was
a dark beige in color with a full brown mane.
The sighting prompted an intense search for the beast by authorities,
but no trace was found. Sightings of large lion like
cats in America have persisted well into the two thousands
as well. Two thousand and two saw mained mystery cat

(01:50:12):
sidings pop up all over the place. In Niles, Michigan,
a whole family the youngs spotted a massive cream colored
cat with a long tail wandering about right outside of
their home. They immediately went to a neighbor who was
a hunter, after which they examined the area to find
the plug marks of some large cat. More similar reports

(01:50:34):
would come in from throughout the area, but no cat
was ever found, and it's unknown if this was a
lion and out of place cougar or what. Also from
September two thousand and two was a series of sightings
near Quitman, Arkansas, which ended in four large maned lions
being allegedly shot and killed, although no DNA analysis was

(01:50:56):
done on them, and the bodies were apparently promptly toroid.
It was speculated that the cats had been escapees from
a nearby safari park called Safari Unlimited, but the park
denied having lost any animals. Later that very same month,
two witnesses named Troy Guy and Ashley Clawson would claim

(01:51:17):
to have spotted a mained big cat as they drove
along Poga Road in Carter County, Tennessee. Another witness named
Evelyn Cable also saw the beast standing by the side
of the road while driving along Highway three twenty one
and described it as an African lion with a thick maine.
In July of two thousand and eight, there were sightings

(01:51:38):
of something similar in El Paso County, Colorado, near Colorado Springs.
Three separate witnesses came forward claiming to have seen a
lion with a red mane and a long tufted tail,
and one of them even claimed to a photographed at
chasing dogs. There would be two additional cell phone photos
presented by a witness named Sharon hardt Shaw, as well

(01:52:01):
as tracks found which convinced authorities that the animal was
definitely not a cougar, but rather what appeared to be
an actual African lion, although where it could have possibly
come from is a mystery. A nearby big cat sanctuary
called the Serenity Springs and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, as well
as three other animal sanctuaries, all claimed to not be

(01:52:23):
missing any big cats. An official investigation and search was undertaken,
but no big cat could be located. Most recently of all,
we come back to the old stomping grounds of the
Milwaukee Lion of the nineteen sixties, where yet another mysterious
maned big cat was widely sighted in twenty fifteen, which

(01:52:44):
would captivate the nation and lead police on a wild
goose chase all over the city. Sightings began on July twentieth,
when authorities received fourteen calls from frightened locals claiming to
have seen the animal roaming around right out in the
open on city streets. Over the coming week, the cat
would be seen by numerous other witnesses as well as

(01:53:06):
police officers, and there was cell phone video footage of
the mystery cat presented as well. One witness named Herbert
Ball said of his own scary sighting she was walking
down the hill sideways, putting her feet crossways. She was
snooping down with her head like she was fixing to
attack somebody. The people over there were having a cookout,

(01:53:26):
and I ran over there to tell them there's a
cat coming their way. But what the cat did is
change her mind. She went under the bridge and relaxed.
This particular sighting prompted a massive police response, with officers
setting up a dragnet on a bridge overlooking a ravine
and positioning snipers around to take the potentially dangerous animal

(01:53:47):
down ifded be. Two of the officers even said they
saw the cat pass through, but it was gone into
thick brush before a proper response could be mounted. Indeed,
the cat was very good evading all attempts to capture
or find it, eluding several checkpoints set up by heavily
armed officers trying to capture it, and even foiling canine units.

(01:54:10):
It was also exceptionally good at not being photographed except
for a single grainy video, leading to skepticism on whether
there was really anything out there at all, But police
were certain that something was indeed causing the sightings, leading
to speculation as to where it had come from. One
idea was that it was a cougar, while another idea

(01:54:33):
was that it was an escaped African lion, either from
a zoo or someone's private exotic animal collection. This would
not be so far fetched, as Wisconsin is one of
the only states that does not prohibit the importation of lions. However,
all wildlife sanctuaries in the area, including the Milwaukee Zoo,

(01:54:53):
reported that they had no missing animals, and if this
was a privately owned big cat the owner had reported it,
one official would make a plea to the public for
the potential owner to come forward, saying, whoever this cat
belongs to, this is for real. If you don't want
the cat, you should have called the zoo, even animal control.

(01:55:14):
You didn't have to let the cat run free in
the city. You've got innocent people walking the street in Milwaukie.
The prospect of a very dangerous animal wandering about such
an urban area did not seem to deter droves of
onlookers trapesing about trying to get a glimpse of the lion,
despite warnings from police to stay away. The animal would

(01:55:37):
go on to be widely seen by both civilians, animal
control officers, and law enforcement personnel, causing quite a media sensation,
and despite numerous searches, dragnets, and stakeouts set out, the
wily big cat was never found or captured. What was
this mystery big cat and where did it go? When

(01:56:01):
looking at the sheer number of supposed maimed lion sightings
from all over the United States, were left with a
lot of questions. Where did they come from?

Speaker 2 (01:56:11):
What are they?

Speaker 1 (01:56:13):
Where did they go? The most common idea is that
these are escaped exotic pets, and in some cases this
might be the case, but there seems to rarely be
any evidence of anyone missing such a large cat. Other
ideas are that they are misidentified mountain lions or even
large dogs. Perhaps the most intriguing theory has been postulated

(01:56:36):
by a cryptozoologist, Lauren Coleman, who wrote a whole chapter
on American mystery lions in his book Mysterious America, which
I've placed a link to in the show notes. In
this theory, some of the sightings are perhaps of a
relic population of an ancient, thought to be extinct big
cat from the Place to Scene era called Panthera atrox.

(01:56:57):
These predators roamed all over North and Seth America around
nine thousand years ago, and we're about twenty five percent
larger on average than an adult African lion. Could some
cases be surviving specimens of this formidable species. No one
knows wherever the explanation lies, whether it be a long
lost species, exotic escapees, or mere misidentifications. There is definitely

(01:57:23):
a phenomenon with large mystery cats of the mained variety
running around. Perhaps the answers will be clear at some point,
but for now we just don't know and are left
to speculate on the mysteries. This world of ours has

Speaker 2 (01:57:43):
Sid in that, over time were darkness

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