October 26, 2025 • 47 mins
EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/mothmanharbingerofdoom/
SYNOPSIS: Hosts Ghost and Ghoul Friend conduct an in-depth analysis of Darren Marlar's Weird Darkness episode "Mothman: Harbinger of Doom," exploring the concentrated year of terror that gripped Point Pleasant, West Virginia between November 1966 and December 1967. The discussion examines over 100 credible witness accounts of the seven-foot winged creature with glowing red eyes, beginning with the harrowing high-speed chase of the Scarberry and Millat couples, the mysterious disappearance of Newell Partridge's dog Bandit, and Marcella Bennett's traumatic close encounter. The hosts analyze the creature's consistent physical descriptions, its connection to UFO sightings and "men in black" encounters in the area, and the tragic Silver Bridge collapse that killed 46 people in December 1967—questioning whether Mothman was a harbinger of the disaster or directly responsible for it. The episode expands beyond Mothman to explore related phenomena including 19th-century mystery airships, 1960s UFO encounters with missing time, psychic abilities and their psychological toll, Steven Stayner's kidnapping survival story, and the absurdly dangerous 1908 Great Race from New York to Paris. Throughout, the hosts examine how unexplained encounters create lasting psychological trauma—fear without memory, dread without explanation—that fundamentally changes those who experience the unknown.
SYNOPSIS: Hosts Ghost and Ghoul Friend conduct an in-depth analysis of Darren Marlar's Weird Darkness episode "Mothman: Harbinger of Doom," exploring the concentrated year of terror that gripped Point Pleasant, West Virginia between November 1966 and December 1967. The discussion examines over 100 credible witness accounts of the seven-foot winged creature with glowing red eyes, beginning with the harrowing high-speed chase of the Scarberry and Millat couples, the mysterious disappearance of Newell Partridge's dog Bandit, and Marcella Bennett's traumatic close encounter. The hosts analyze the creature's consistent physical descriptions, its connection to UFO sightings and "men in black" encounters in the area, and the tragic Silver Bridge collapse that killed 46 people in December 1967—questioning whether Mothman was a harbinger of the disaster or directly responsible for it. The episode expands beyond Mothman to explore related phenomena including 19th-century mystery airships, 1960s UFO encounters with missing time, psychic abilities and their psychological toll, Steven Stayner's kidnapping survival story, and the absurdly dangerous 1908 Great Race from New York to Paris. Throughout, the hosts examine how unexplained encounters create lasting psychological trauma—fear without memory, dread without explanation—that fundamentally changes those who experience the unknown.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey where it goes.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Before I get too far into this, I want to
let you know I am never ever going to use
AI in the actual podcast. Okay, I'm playing around with
AI for something else, just for the fun of it.
But I want you to know that episodes of Weird Darkness,
if you hear my voice, it's always going to be me.
It's never going to be AI.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I want to make that clear, because what you're about
to hear sounds very realistic, but it's all AI. What
I have done. I was just kind of playing around
with this today just to see what it would sound like.
I learned about Google's notebook LM I think is what
it's called, and it's free to play around with, so
I thought, okay, I'll just give it a try, see
(00:43):
what it sounds like. You can create You can upload
audio and text and everything and essentially create a little
talk show with a guy and girl talking back and
forth about whatever it is that you want them to
talk about. So what I've done again, for fun, I've
created a talk show about Weird Darkness. So like after
(01:06):
let's for for example, let's say the episodes just finished.
In fact, tonight's episode was about Mothman A right, that
was the first story. So so this talk show which
i've I've named Weird after Dark. These two people which
I'm just nicknaming them Ghoul and excuse me Ghost and
Ghoul Friend just for fun because they don't have names,
(01:27):
so I'll name them whatever that guy want. So I've
created it so they talk about the latest episode. I
have no idea what it is that they're going to say.
Before I plug it in. I just plug in the
text of the of the episode. I give them the
audio as well, and I could probably do just the text,
but anyway, I'm just again, I'm just playing around with it.
(01:49):
And then I jumped online to video bolt and created
a little well I used excuse me, I used Sora
to create the logo for Weird after Dark, and then
I jumped on video Bolts to make the introduction video
just kind of just to give it a little bit
of a jazz. This is what it came out as.
(02:10):
And I'm telling you, I could post this as a
regular daily podcast. And I don't know if, except for
the fact that two voices are the same with anybody
who uses notebook LM, if you're ever able to change
those voices to whatever you want. This would I don't
know if you'd be able to tell the difference. AI
(02:31):
is just it's cool, but it's scary how good it
is getting so again, just to let you know, if
I do start using this, because I think it's fun,
but if I start using this again, you will never
ever hear my voice as an AI. I just want
you to know that before before you jump into this,
(02:54):
check this out.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Welcome everyone to a dark dive into the unexplained. I'm
Ghost and you are into Weird after Dark and I'm
gool Friend.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
We're channeling the strange frequencies tonight because our deep dive
is centered on the massive scope of information presented by
Darren Marler, you know, the host of Weird Darkness. Yeah,
specifically his deep drive titled Mothman, Harbinger of Doom. One
hundred witnesses, forty six dead, and still no answers to
what it was.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Wow, that title is less a title and more and
immediate descent into terror, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Our mission, as always is to take that immense stack
of sources and pull out the most compelling, frightening, and
frankly sometimes absurd nuggets. We're not just talking about cryptids here.
We're examining how fear, whether it's the fear of the unknown,
or the fear of tragedy, or even the fear of
a memory you can't quite access how that shapes human
history and you know, personal trauma exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It's a journey through the dark corners, kind of spanning
from like nineteenth century airships all the way to nineteen
sixties UFOs, but it's all anchored by the definitive harbinger
of destruction, the Mothman. I mean, when you look at
the raw numbers, one hundred credible witnesses seeing something over
just a single year, immediately followed by the death of
(04:06):
forty six people, the creature really transcends simple cryptozoology. It
becomes this piece of tragic folklore.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So we're zeroing in on Point Pleasant, West Virginia, a
small town just absolutely plagued by anomalies between November nineteen
sixty six and December nineteen sixty seven. And the setting, well,
it's almost too perfect for a horror story, isn't it.
That abandoned T and T plant.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Oh, definitely, And it's crucial to visualize this location We're
talking about hundreds of acres of pretty inaccessible force right
near the Ohio River, and it's filled with these relics
from World War two, huge kind of dome shaped concrete
bunkers where they used to store high explosive Yeah, plus
this whole labyrinthine network of tunnels underneath. I mean, if
a large nocturnal, maybe territorial creature wanted a silent, shadowy
(04:51):
sitctuary for over year, well that area bordering the vast
Clinic Wildlife Station, it was the ideal spot. It was
practically designed to hide something monstrous.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Okay, unpack this inaugural terror. Then the event that really
set the tone for the entire crisis, The first official sighting,
November fifteenth, nineteen sixty six, immediately involves four people, two
young married couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steven Mary Millett.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And their story is instantly just high octane. They were
driving past the old TNT plant when they spotted it.
The description they provided was remarkably detailed and pretty consistent too.
They said, seven feet tall, man shaped with large terrifying
wings folded against its back. And the eyes, oh yeah,
the eyes large and red.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Classic. They didn't exactly hang around to confirm the species,
did they.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Not at all? They cannicked, jammed the gas pedal down,
hitting over one hundred miles per hour, fleeing down Highway
sixty two toward the city.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
But this is the detail that makes this story just legendary,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Absolutely? The creature apparently spread what they called its huge
bat like wings and kept perfect pace with their.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Car one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, they couldn't shake it until they hit the point
pleasant city limits. Then it just veered.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Off that ability, matching the speed of a car going
over one hundred mile rout, especially you know, a car
from nineteen sixty six. It suggests that whatever this thing was,
it possessed either like supernatural speed or maybe some kind
of advanced something that defied known biology.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Right, it wasn't just a big bird, It was a
relentless pursuer.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Again, the terror it seemed to spread like immediately radiating out.
That very same night, Later on ninety miles away in Salem,
we get this bizarre tale of dual partridge and his
dog banned it.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, this one's weird. Partridge was home around ten thirty
pm when his television went completely haywire. The screen went dark,
replaced by this weird oscillating pattern, and then this loud,
high pitched whining sound started up outside. Partridge's dog banned it.
And this is apparently a highly trained hunting companion, not
just some random mutt. Right, bandit started howling and just
charging toward a barn about one hundred and fifty yards away.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
But banned it. Wasn't casing an animal.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Was he No, that's the creepy part. He was chasing
two distinct red circles, which Partrier's described as looking exactly
like bicycle reflectors, just moving quickly toward the barn. Okay,
that's specific, very specific. Partridge understandably freaked out, grabs his rifle,
but he was paralyzed by fear. He admitted, he was
just too scared to step outside. The next morning, bandit
(07:22):
was gone, vanished without a trace.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, Well yeah, and then there's a connection back to
the first setting.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yes, and this is where the source material really connects
the dots in a truly chilling way. Two days later,
Cartridge reads the newspaper account of the Scarberry's chase, and
Roger Scarberry mentioned they saw the body of a large
dead dog near the point Pleasant city limits right after
they lost the creature. Oh no, yeah, when they drove
back just minutes later to check the body, it was gone.
(07:50):
Partridge read that and he instantly feared the worst for bandit.
The dog was never found.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
That temporal and geographical link, I mean, whether it's just coincidence,
some real connection, it definitely cemented the paranoia in the
community right absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
It suggested the creature was mobile, fast, and most terrifyingly
capable of maybe inflicting violence and even manipulating its surroundings
making things disappear.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
The wave of sightings just kept coming. The very next night,
November sixteenth, we get the story of missus Marcella Bennett.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Right and before her really close up encounter, she first
witnessed something else, a funny red light hovering above the
T and T plant.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
So there's that UFO element again, right alongside the creature exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It weaves in right from the start. So she pulls
up to her friend's house, steps out holding her baby,
and that's when it appeared. She said she saw a
big gray thing, bigger than a man, with terrible glowing eyes,
just slowly rising from the ground nearby.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Oh my god, holding her baby.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, she was so horrified. She actually dropped her baby, luckily,
just onto the ground. The baby was okay, scooped her
back up and scrambled inside the house.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Hey can it imagine?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
But it didn't leave. It shuffled onto her porch using
these human like legs they described, and actually peered into
the windows, just staring the family down. They were hysterical.
Finally called the.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Police, and by the time the police got there, predictably
vanished gone.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
But the long terms tole on missus Bennett was profound.
She sowt medical help for months afterwards, suffered terrible nightmares,
and reported hearing this distinct, chilling sound near her isolated home.
What sound a keening sound like a woman screaming. Okay,
that's that's unsettling, and that sound the description. It brings
(09:35):
us back to the consistent details people reported during this
whole year long reign of terror rite. Over one hundred
people saw it between late sixty six and late sixty seven.
What were the key features everyone seemed to agree on. Yeah,
consistency is really the key here, especially when you're trying
to counter the easy hoax explanation. It was consistently described
as five to seven feet tall, considerably wider than a man.
(09:55):
It moved awkwardly when on the ground, shuffling on human like.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Legs, and the eye is still red.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Almost always cited as red and glowing and unnervingly set
near the top of his shoulders, not really where human
eyes would be. That detail is really specific and strange. Definitely,
in the flight, it wasn't like a bird, No witnesses agreed.
It didn't really flap its wings much. It just glided smoothly.
But and this is weird, the sources specify that it
could also ascend straight up vertically like a helicopter taking off.
(10:24):
That suggests a completely different method of propulsion than you know, biological.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Wings any other consistent descriptions.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Skin sounds often described as having murky gray or brown skin,
and it seemed to emit sounds sometimes a low humming sound,
which might connect back to that TV disturbance Partridge experienced
right the whining sound exactly, and other times that high
pitched screeching sound like the one Missus Bennett heard the
woman screaming.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
It's just a bundle of terrifying attributes.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
And what's fascinating historically is that the Mothman sightings, the
numerous UFO reports in the air, and even these encounters
with the eerie, intimidating men in black, they were all
clustered during this narrow thirteen month period. Local residents really
felt they were all part of the same escalating weirdness, like.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
A perfect storm of high strangeness pretty much. And that storm,
that anomaly, it all culminated in the ultimate catastrophe, didn't it.
The last confirmed sighting of the Mothman was late November
nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, and less than a month later, December fifteenth, nineteen
sixty seven, at five zero BM sharp rush hour, the
Silver Bridge, the main artery linking Point Pleasant to Ohio,
just collapsed completely.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Oh God, the timing.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
It was a terrible disaster. Officially, it was caused by
a catastrophic engineering failure, specifically a tiny defect and a
single eyebar in the suspension chain that finally gave way
under the load. But for the residence of Point Pleasant,
who had just endured a solid year of terrifying omens,
while the scientific exclamation felt.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Secondary, yeah, I can imagine how many.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
People forty six people died in the freezing river, soy say,
and almost immediately most of the Tan believed that the
Mothman was either directly responsible or at the very least
it was a terrifying warning, a literal harbinger of doom,
just like the title says.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Did anyone claim to see it near the bridge right before?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
This source notes that, Yeah, some people claim to have
seen the creature near the bridge just minutes before it fell.
Whether that's memory playing tricks after the fact, or something real,
who knows.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So what does this all mean? You've got what one
hundred credible witnesses, people from all walks of life seeing
this thing.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Right. The sheer volume of credible, unconnected witnesses makes simply
dismissing it all as a hoax really difficult. It wasn't
just one group telling a.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Story, and the fact that this barrage of high strangeness,
the UFOs, the men in Black, Mothman himself, it just
abruptly stopped after the bridge collapse. That's the enduring.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Puzzle, isn't it Exactly? If it was some natural phenomenon,
maybe a misidentified bird, why the premonition like timing. If
it was supernatural, why the precise chronological link to this
specific crajuch. Why point pleasant?
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Why then?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
The fear it left behind was absolutely palpable and lasted
for decades.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The Mystery of the Mothman ended in tangible, measurable tragedy.
But speaking of tragedy and fear, let's move now to
a profoundly human and heartbreaking story of horror and survival.
This is the true crime account behind the film. I know,
my first name is Stephen.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, this is a tough one, the story of Stephen Stainer,
abducted in nineteen seventy two when he was just seven
years old, and it's a chilling reminder of a different era.
I mean, still dangerous obviously, but an era when a
seven year old walking home alone from school wasn't quite
as unusual as it seems today.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
So how did it happen?
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Stephen was spotted by this predator, Kenneth Parnell and his accomplice,
a guy named Irvin Murphy. Parnell's strategy was immediate and
just insidious. Murphy posed as a minister collecting donations for
a church.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Oh, the manipulation starts right away.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Instantly, Stephen accepted a ride, thinking it was just a
few blocks to his home, but they drove right past
his street.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
And then the psychological games began immediately.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Parnell was apparently a master of psychological manipulation. He didn't
need physical chains, he used emotional ones. The very next day,
he convinced little Stephen that his parents, who had five
kids and were probably overwhelmed, had actually given him up
because they didn't want him anymore. That's just cruel, utterly cruel.
Stephen's vulnerability was just completely exploited, and within a week,
(14:25):
the source says, he was calling Parnell dad.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Oh God. And the abuse started quickly too.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, the source is pretty explicit. Parnell began the abuse
on the first night, and Stephen was being sexually assaulted
regularly within two weeks of his captivity, and Parnell immediately
changed Stephen's name to Dennis Gregory Parnell. It was all
part of erasing his identity, replacing his reality with the
kidnappers narrative.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And he wasn't the only abuser.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
No. For about eighteen months, a woman named Barbara Matthias
moved in with Parnell, and she also sexually assaulted Stephen.
The source says on at least nine occasions by the
time he was just nine years old.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Plus.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Throughout the ordeal, Stephen was beaten, given alcohol and marijuana.
It was constant degradation.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
What's so disturbing and kind of hard to grasp is
the type of control Parnell had. Stephen wasn't locked in
a basement the whole time.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
No, not at all. He was allowed this strange level
of freedom. He was enrolled in different schools as they
moved around California. He could technically come and go from
the various homes they lived in. He wasn't physically locked
in a cage.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
So why didn't he run?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Because, as the source explains it, he didn't know how
to flee. The control was absolute psychological dominance. He'd been
convinced for years that his real family didn't want him,
that Parnell was his only father figure. His identity had
been systematically shattered and rebuilt over seven years of constant
abuse and isolation. He didn't have a concept of home
(15:52):
to run back to anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
That's that's horrifying in a different way. So what changed?
How did he eventually escape?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
By nineteen eighty he even was fourteen, He had internalized
all this trauma, obviously, but maybe was starting to push
back in small ways. Parnell, meanwhile, was getting older and
apparently wanted another younger boy. He actually tried to abduct
other kids several times, but Stephen secretly sabotaged those attempts.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Wow. Even in that situation, he tried to stop it.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, but Parnell eventually succeeded. He bribed a teenage friend
of Steven's, a guy named Randall Porman, promised him drugs
and cash to help abduct five year old Timothy White.
That happened on Valentine's Day, February fourteenth, nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So now there's another child.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Involved, exactly, And this new abduction became Stephen's absolute turning point.
He had only known little Timothy for two weeks, but
seeing this five year old start to suffer the same
things he had, Stephen decided he couldn't let Timothy go
through that seven year ordeal.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
That takes incredible courage, it really does.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
His girlfriend at the time, Lorie Duke, recalled Stephen saying
something like if he didn't interview now, it would only
get worse for Timothy. I mean, that's the definition of
profound selfless heroism. Isn't it breaking that cycle of trauma,
even when that cycle is basically all you've ever known?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Absolutely? So, how did he do it?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
He waited for his chance. On March first, nineteen eighty,
Parnell went off to work. Stephen just took Timothy's hand
and they ran. They managed to hitchhike quite a distance,
eventually ending up at a police station in Yukaya, California.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And that's when he said the famous line.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
That's it. His declaration to the police officer became the
defining line of his life. I know my first name
is Stephen, just reclaiming his identity after seven years.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Incredible what happened to Parnell?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Parnell was arrested the next day. A background check turned
up a prior sodomy conviction from way back in nineteen
fifty one, which probably didn't help him. He was eventually
convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to seven years, but was
paroled after only five.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Only five years for seven years of that.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, and his accomplices got lesser charges. What's really tragic,
legally speaking, is that due to jurisdictional issues and incredibly,
the statute of limitations Parnell was never actually charged for
the years of sexual assault Stephen endured.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
That's unbelievable. So Stephen comes back a hero, but the
adjustment must have been incredibly difficult, agonizing. By all accounts.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
He returned at age fourteen, but he was, as the
source puts it, almost a grown man in terms of
the trauma and street knowledge he possessed after surviving that hell.
Yet his parents, understandably perhaps still treated him like the
seven year old boy they remembered losing.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
That's a huge disconnect massive.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
He was used to a certain kind of twisted independence
under Parnell, managing his own movements, and the sudden structure
of family life felt suffocating. He clashed heavily with his
older brother Carrie, apparently feeling like he was constantly competing
for attention. After seven years of being Parnell's sole captive focus,
it was just fertile ground for more emotional distress.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And school that must have been brutal.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Oh awful. The kids were relentless bullying him, teasing him,
questioning his identity, his sexuality, just cruel stuff. And compounding
the problem, his father initially refused counseling for Stephen believing
he didn't need it, which was sadly a tragically common
perspective back in the eighties regarding trauma.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
So he struggled deeply.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
He turned to alcohol, eventually dropped out of school. The
psychological residue of his captivity apparently left him volatile. He
got kicked out of the house after a major fight
with his father. Here he was a survivor who had
saved someone else, yet he couldn't really save himself from
the emotional damage that had been done.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Did things ever get better for him?
Speaker 3 (19:31):
He did find a measure of stability. Later on, he
met and married Jody Edmondson. They had two children, and
he channeled some of that trauma into advocacy. He started lecturing,
appeared in documentaries, and even testified before the California State
Assembly to push for tougher laws increased penalties for child kidnapping.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's good finding purpose, Yeah, he.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Seemed to be finding his way. He was working at
a pizza hut, but then his life was just tragically
cut short on September sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
What happened.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Stephen's driver's license was suspended at the time, and that
day there was heavy rain. He made a point of
not taking the company delivery truck home, specifically because he
didn't want to risk an accident driving without a valid license,
so he decided to ride his motorcycle instead. Oh yeah,
it was just this heartbreaking twist of fate. Riding home
in the rain, a car pulled out in front of
(20:22):
him unexpectedly, he rammed into it and was killed instantly.
Stephen Stanner, the boy who survived seven years of torture
and abuse, who achieved this moment of pure, decisive heroism.
He died at just twenty eight years old.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
It's just devastating after everything, it really is.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
The funeral was attended by five hundred people, and Timothy White,
the boy he rescued, who was fourteen by then, served
as one of his pallbearers. Wow, that single detail, the
boy he saved, carrying his coffin. It's just such a
profound testament to Stephen's impact, his legacy. The inscription on
his casket reportedly read going home. As his wife Jody
(20:58):
said at the time, he's he's not hurting anymore. Nobody
can hurt him now he's free.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And Parnell what became of him?
Speaker 3 (21:04):
The final dark PostScript is that Kenneth Parnell, apparently unrepentant
after his parole, tried to bribe a nurse for access
to a young boy in two thousand and four. He
was seventy two years old. Then he died in prison
four years later. A monster right up until the end.
Stephen's story is just such a heavy reminder that true
crime often leaves behind victims who struggle for decades, sometimes
their whole lives, trying to reconcile that trauma.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Okay, well, that deep dive into human trauma, intense as
it is, actually sets the stage pretty well for our
next segment, because this deals with trauma of a completely
different sort, the potentially overwhelming psychological burden of possessing a
psychic gift. We're discussing a UK family dealing with the
issue of well, my children see dead people.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah, this is the dilemma facing Lynn, a thirty nine
year old mother in the UK. Her two children, Fay
who's thirteen, and Ashley who's eight, both insists they see spirits,
dead people. And for Lynn, this isn't just some quirky
family thing, It's a genuine family crisis. She confessed it
felt like a.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Curse, A curse that's strong.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, And she said something really heartbreaking that it would
almost be easier to deal with if they had an illness,
because then at least she would know where to go
for clinical treatment. For answers with this, she's lost.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Is this common in the UK seeing ghosts?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Well, the cultural backdrop is interesting. The source cited surveys
suggesting it's not entirely an anomaly over there. Apparently one
in five Brits report having seen or felt a ghost,
and something like fifty three percent believe in psychic ability.
But you know, believing it exists is one thing. Living
with a constant stream of spirits invading your daily life
(22:41):
is something else.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Entirely, especially for kids. So tell me about the daughter, Fay.
How did it start for her?
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Fay's experiences started quite young. Initially, she just reported seeing
colors around people auras back in primary school, pretty standard
psychic kids stuff. But by age ten, the ghostly sightings
became nearly daily occurrences. She described her bed being violently
shaken at night by what she felt was a frustrated
female ghost, and talked about feeling energy while she was
(23:08):
just trying to take a shower. Having spirits like tugging
at her hair, just constant, low level intrusions.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Okay, that sounds disruptive, but maybe not terrifying yet. Was
there a specific scary incident.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Oh yeah, One particular incident stands out as genuinely terrifying.
Fay was looking in the hall mirror and saw a
person's red head appearing on her reflection's shoulder.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yikes.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Okay, yeah, But interestingly, she seems to have since rationalized
this fear. She's now interpreted that spectral figure as her
deceased granddad, who she now believes acts as her protective
spirit guide.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Ah. So she's reframing the fear into something comfaning, a
coping mechanism exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
It seems like a way to manage it. Her specific
method of seeing spirits is also kind of unique. According
to the source, she doesn't usually see them as solid
physical forms. Instead, she receives a sudden glimpse. She said,
this is the energy first, and then details like the
ghost's name or how they might have died, just pop
into her head instantly. She described closing her eyes and
(24:08):
seeing their picture building up very quickly in her mind.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So how does she deal with this? Constant influx. Does
she have ways to turn it off?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
She's actually learned some spiritual coping mechanisms, which is pretty
sophisticated for a thirteen year old. She employs concepts from
reiki and theda healing.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Okay, remind us what those are.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Sure. Reiki is basically an energy based healing practice focusing
on channeling universal life energy, and Theta healing is a
meditation technique that uses the theta brainwave state, that deep
meditative state supposedly to promote physical and emotional healing and
access intuition.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So how does Faye use those?
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Specifically? She uses these methods to protect herself by consciously
closing her chakras. She visualizes them as light bulbs that
she can switch off to kind of shut herself down
to the spirit world when it gets overwhelming. She also
uses the classic visualization of a protective white light around her.
It seems like she's really taken ownership of this ability
and found ways to manage it.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
That's actually pretty impressive for a teenager. But the tragedy
the article suggests that her younger brother, Ashley, hasn't been
able to do that exactly.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Lynn and her husband David. He's forty five. They apparently
tried really hard to shield little Ashley from Fay's experiences,
probably not wanting to frighten him. But about a year ago,
when he was seven, actually started seeing things too, and
his reaction was different, completely different. Unlike his older sister
who's now somewhat intrigued by it all and actively coping,
Ashley is purely terrified. He reported seeing a head following
(25:38):
me around. He got so scared he refused to go
into certain rooms alone, like the conservatory or even the toilet.
For him, this psychic reality is just crushing his sense
of safety.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
He's only eight, right, and this contrast between the siblings
is really crucial to Linn's dilemma. Fay is managing the ability,
finding ways to live with it. Ashley is in total denial, complete,
letely resistant to the idea that he might be psychic too.
Lynn mentioned that for Ashley they've specifically used theta healing
techniques to sort of request that he doesn't see anything
(26:09):
frightening anymore. She believes it has reduced the sightings for him,
but the underlying fear, what she called the bad thoughts,
that still.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Remains m It raises some profound questions, doesn't it about
the nature of these gifts? The article mentioned to family history.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah, apparently Lynn's grandmother and David's father both reportedly believe
they saw spirits too. So is this some kind of
biological or energetic inheritance passed down through generations? And if
it is, how do parents balance supporting one child who's
accepted it Fae with shielding another child who's terrified by it? Ashley,
The psychic residue, the fear and anxiety it causes, seems
(26:45):
just as psychologically damaging in its own way as the
kind of trauma Stephen Stainer face.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
It's a different kind of haunting. Okay, speaking of things
that defy physics, logic, and the known timeline of history,
let's pivot now from psychic energy to impossible airship. We
are traveling back in time, way back to eighteen ninety
six and eighteen ninety seven to discuss America's mystery airships.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yes, this is one of the most compelling historical anomalies
in the source material. For sure. We're talking about aircraft
powered aircraft being seen by literally thousands of people across
the globe. Years before the Ripe Brothers achieved their first
control flight at Kitty Hawk in nineteen oh three.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Right back then, sustained flight other than maybe a hot
air balloon drifting on the wind was considered technologically.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Impossible, absolutely impossible. Yet the witnesses were incredibly specific. They
described seeing these dark, oblong or cylindrical shapes, sometimes described
as being constructed of weird metals and shiny steel, often
illuminated by three bright white lights. The sightings kicked off
in Sacramento, California, in November eighteen ninety six, them thousands
(27:51):
over San Francisco just days later. Then sightings started popping
up all over the country, even internationally.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Okay, but it's the encounters with the occupants where this
story really spirals into high strangeness.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Okay. An early witness claimed to see two men actually
peddling a sort of bicycle type frame attached underneath the object,
and they were apparently shouting down she'll hit the steeple
as they flew over a church peddling.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That sounds almost cartoonishly low tech. Yeah, it kind of
throws a whole advanced alien craft theory into immediate doubt,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
It does It's one of the many contradictions. The occupants
were often described as looking human, but maybe not your
average citizens, possessing superior intelligence, sometimes having odd skin tones
or strange speech patterns not quite fitting in.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Were there any interactions that gave clues about who they
were or where they came from.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Well, there are some fascinating details that tied directly into
the historical context of the time. Consider the landing reported
near Springfield, Illinois in April eighteen ninety seven. Two men
and one woman supposedly emerged from the airship and told
some field workers they were on their way to report
to the government. When QB is declared.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Free, Okay, wait, when Cuba is declared free. That's super specific, right.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
It anchors the sighting directly into the political tension boiling
up around the Spanish American War, which was just about
to happen. It suggests the occupants, whoever or whatever they were,
were aware of current global events.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
That's wild. But then you also get these reports that
sound incredibly high tech. He mixed with the absurd, exactly like.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
The mayor of Mount Vernon, Illinois, who claimed he saw
a man hovering outside the airship, apparently making repairs in
mid air using some kind of device strap to his back.
This sounds like a form of early jet pack technology,
which is decades ahead of the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
The shrinking ship. Did I read that right?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You did? Witnesses in one account claimed that a pilot
after a supposed crash or landing, showed them a device
that allowed him to shrink the entire airship down to
pocket size. Now, if that detail is even remotely true,
we're dealing with physics far beyond our current comprehension, let
alone anything possible in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Okay, that's definitely out there. But nothing really beats the
wh Hopkins encounter in Springfield, Missouri? Does it? The naked Martians?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Oh, that one's a classic of weirdness. Hopkins apparently found
a grounded airship propelled by three large propellers. The crew.
He described them as a beautiful woman and a bearded man,
both of whom were completely naked.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Naked okay, why who knows?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
And when Hopkins asked them where they came from, they
simply pointed up to the sky and uttered a single word.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Mars, mars. Okay. So that detail alone just makes any
single explanation impossible, right, are these time travelers? Are they aliens?
Is it just evidence of mass hysteria fueled by opportunistic
newspaper sensationalism. The newspapers back then were pretty wide.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
They really were. And you also have to factor in
reports like the one about the prisoner. Anonymous but supposedly
reliable witnesses claimed they saw an airship containing a woman
tied to a chair being attended by another woman while
a man guarded them with a pistol. These accounts are
just wildly inconsistent in terms of motivation, technology, and the
nature of the crew.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
It's all over the place. Is there any tangible evidence,
anything solid?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Well, for tangible evidence, we have to turn to the
most famous incident, Aurora, Texas, April nineteenth, eighteen ninety seven.
The story goes that an airship crashed into a windmill.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
There the crash. Did they find anything?
Speaker 3 (31:19):
The sources confirm the story. The dead pilot was recovered
and described by the locals as clearly not an inhabitant
of this world. The wreckage itself was apparently analyzed too.
Strange hieroglyphic like figures were found on some of the debris,
and the material was described as an unusual heavy mixture
of aluminium and silver, weighing tons.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Altogether aluminium and silver. That's an odd mix. What happened
to the pilot's body?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
The town, being deeply religious, apparently gave the pilot a
Christian burial in the local Aurora cemetery. Now fast forward
decades later to nineteen seventy three, investigators using metal detectors
reportedly found readings of unusual foreign metal buried right under
the supposed grave marker.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Okay, so maybe some proof.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Here's the kicker. When those investigators or perhaps others, returned
years later planning to do a full excavation and maybe
get a sample of this metal, both the original eighteen
ninety seven grave marker and the weird metal readings were gone, vanished, gone.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
That suggests a coverup, doesn't it, or at least someone
deliberately removing the physical evidence.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
It certainly suggests a sustained effort by someone at some
point to remove the tangible proof of the Aurora crash.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
So if we mostly discount the mass hysteria theory because
there were just too many unconnected, credible witnesses spread over
vast distances, what are we left with well.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
The leading rational theory proposed by researcher Jay Allen Danglik
is the unknown inventor hypothesis. He suggests that some forgotten genius,
perhaps funded by wealthy San Franciscan investors, secretly built a working,
lighter than air prototyped.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Dirigible using eighteen ninety six technology. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Dan argues it was constructed using the best available eighteen
ninety six technology, maybe revolutionary for its time, but ultimately
flawed and prone to break down. He suggests they flew
short test flights, possibly sticking close to railway lines for
logistical support and navigation, before the whole project met with
disaster sometime in late April eighteen ninety seven, explaining the
(33:19):
sudden end to the sightings.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Okay, that would explain the human like occupants maybe trying
to repair their experimental machine. That sounds plausible.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It's an elegant theory, but it requires completely ignoring the
reports of naked martians, the impossible anti gravity shrinking device,
and crucially, the clearly non human pilot supposedly found in Aurora.
It ultimately leaves us right back in that paradox. Materials
and knowledge from the eighteen nineties should not have produced
(33:47):
a technologically baffling machine that could fly across the continent
and exhibit such bizarre characteristics. The mystery really does remain.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Unsolved, completely unsolved. Okay, let's connect those flight anomalies of
eighteen ninety six forward in time to the high tech
terror of the mid twentieth century. We're moving ahead now
to September nineteen sixty six. The UFO phenomenon is still
going strong, but now we have this added layer of
weirdness missing time, which often suggests abduction.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Exactly. This specific incident took place in Columbus, Nebraska in
September nineteen sixty six, which interestingly is only about two
months before the mothman sighting started kicking off back in
West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Huh Okay, who was the witness.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
The witness was a seventeen year old kid just riding
his motorcycle to his girlfriend's house, a journey that he
said should have taken maybe five minutes tops, but it didn't.
He arrived thirty minutes late. He said he was about
a mile out from town on a lonely stretch of
road when he saw it, a completely circular object just
hovering silently about one hundred feet overhead. Did he get
(34:47):
a good look, Yeah, he described it pretty clearly. It
had red, yellow, and green lights arranged underneath, kind of
like the spokes of a wheel, and it wasn't totally silent.
It emitted this low humming sound that he claimed he
coul feel resonating right through his body.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Okay, creepy. So what happened during those missing twenty five minutes?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
This is where the physics of the encounter just completely
break down. He understandably freaked out and sped up his motorcycle,
gunning the engine. But he said the engine was roaring,
the wheels were spinning on the pavement, but the bike
and he himself remained absolutely frozen in place on the road.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Frozen. How did he know he wasn't moving?
Speaker 3 (35:23):
He could tell by the landmarks beside the road, trees,
fence posts. He just wasn't passing them, despite the engine
raging and the bike vibrating beneath him. He was stuck.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Then just as suddenly as it started, he was moving again,
But he found himself coasting slowly down to about twenty
five mile prior, whereas moments before he'd been trying to
hit seventy and he had this profound, visceral impression that
he had missed something huge, something important.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And when he finally got to his girlfriend's house.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
She immediately noticed his condition. He arrived thirty minutes late
for that five minute trip, and she said he was pale,
incredibly jumpy, and unusually quiet, just clearly shaken to his core.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Did the trauma stick with him.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Oh, definitely. The source for the story actually comes from
his ex wife, who reported the incident years later in
two thousand and four. They had eventually married and then divorced,
but she claimed his constant state of fear and panic,
that psychological residue we keep talking about, lasted for many,
many years.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Did he ever talk about what happened in that missing time.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
No, she said. He absolutely refused to discuss the night ever,
not when it happened, not during their marriage, not even
at the time of their divorce. It suggests that whatever
happened in those missing minutes was filled with such unconscious
distress or terror that he literally couldn't face it, couldn't
bring it to the surface.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Was there any trigger that made him talk about it
at all?
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Yeah, there was one incident about a month after the encounter,
he and his girlfriend were parked near a radio tower Suddenly,
seemingly out of nowhere. He panicked and just blurted out
the entire story. The object, the lights, the humming, the
bike being frozen and.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
In place mirror radio tower.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Interesting, right, The proximity that man made source of electromagnetic
energy perhaps subconsciously reminded him of the craft's power or
the feeling of it, evoking that buried trauma trigger.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Okay, so it's one guy's freaky story, right, but is
there anything to back it up?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
This is what gives the account enormous weight. There is
corroborating evidence. On the very same evening, September fifth, nineteen
sixty six, just about an hour earlier, Finland AFS that
stands for Air Force station. So we're talking official military
documentation here, right. Finland AFS up in Minnesota, reported both
radar and visual confirmation of an unidentified oval object with red, yellow,
(37:39):
and green.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Lights, the exact same colors the kid in Nebraska saw
exactly the same configuration. This wasn't just an isolated local incident.
It seems to have been part of a larger phenomenon
witnessed by military personnel and tracked on radar, suggesting a
technologically advanced craft was indeed operating in the Midwest that evening.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Did the military try to intercept it?
Speaker 3 (38:01):
They did. Two f eighty nine Scorpion jets were scrambling
to intercept the object over Minnesota, but by the time
they got there, the object just vanished from radar with
lightning speed.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Gone wow, So this Nebraska kid's story suddenly sounds a
lot more credible.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
It really does, and it raises these terrifying questions that
connect right back to the core themes of this whole
deep dive. Did that craft use some kind of unknown
technology to physically freeze his bike and him in time
and space? Was that thirty minute encounter deliberately wiped from
his conscious memory, leaving only that residue of pure, inexplicable
fear that haunted him for years.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
It's the silent, hidden cost of the paranormal, isn't it.
The fear that just lingers deeply even when you don't
have this specific memory to attach it to. It kind
of mirrors the unresolved psychological agony that someone like Stephen
Stainer carried even after he was physically free.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Exactly the trauma manifests, even if the source remains hidden
in the subconscious.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Okay, wow, well, to maybe cleanse the pas a little
after all that hidden trauma in high strangeness. Yeah, let's
get it one last time to a story of sheer
human audacity and maybe near lethal stupidity. The Great Race
to Stupidity.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Ah. Yes, the legendary nineteen oh eight New York to
Paris automobile race, which, believe it or not, became the
loose inspiration for that wacky nineteen sixty five comedy film
The Great Race.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
With Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon. But the real race
was well, less comical and more insane.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Pure insanity is a good word for it. The premise
was glorious on paper. Six international teams racing westward from
New York City, across the US, across the Pacific, across
Asia and Europe, all the way to Paris, the goal
to prove national automobile supremacy.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Okay, but this is nineteen oh eight. Automobiles are still
pretty new.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Right, brand new. Practically, they only dated from the mid
eighteen eighties. The sources make a point of saying that
horses were often still the more reliable method of long
distance transport. Back then, your top of the line Mercedes
might hit fifty three miles per hour, but only under
absolutely the ideal conditions on a perfect road.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
And they were sending these fragile, new fangled machines halfway
around the.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
World, exactly across continents with barely any roads. It kicked
off from Times Square in February nineteen oh eight. It
was supposed to be a race, but it very quickly
devolved into just an epic test of sheer endurance and
mechanical improvisation.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
How many actually finished.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Only three of the original six teams even made it
to Paris, and the winner, the American Thomas Flyer, finally
rolled into Paris on July thirtieth, nineteen oh eight. That's
over five months after they started back in New York.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Five months.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
What were the conditions like, primitive beyond belief. The cars
had open cabs, no roofs, no windows, certainly no heating
glass was actually considered a safety hazard back then, might shatter.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
So they were just exposed to the elements the whole
time completely.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
And they started in February specifically hoping to cross Siberia
before the summer thaw turned everything into impassable mud. But
the downside was they immediately ran into massive blizzards right
there in New York State, teams were constantly digging their
cars out of huge snow drifts.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Sounds fun, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
The American car, that nineteen oh seven model thirty five
Thomas Flyer, needed a team of fourteen Clydesdale horses just
to pull it through the mud and snowdrifts in Indiana.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Fourteen horses and navigation? How did they even find their way?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Barely? There were no detailed road maps for most of
the route. The American mechanic, a guy named George Schuster,
who became the real hero of the story, had to
rely on a compass stargazing at night, and at one
point he even crafted his own makeshif sextant just to
figure out their latitude.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Okay, that's resource. Well what about roads.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Mostly unpaved if they existed at all. Often the teams
resorted to driving directly on railroad tracks. It was bumpy
as hell, but at least it was a defined path.
That Thomas Flyers spent so much time bouncing along the
Union Pacific Line out west that railroad workers affectionately dubbed
it train hashtag forty nine huh.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Train hashtag forty nine I love it. What were some
the mishaps?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
There must have been tons, legendary ones and often absurd.
For instance, anti freeze hadn't been invented yet, so every
single night, the mechanics had to manually drain the entire
radiator system to prevent the water from freezing and cracking
the engine block. Then they'd have to refill it again
in the freezing morning every single day. Tvious Incredibly, Schuster
(42:21):
also had to travel seventy five miles on foot or
by horse just to find a telegraph office to order
a replacement gear after the Thomas Flyer got hopelessly bogged
down in quicksand out in Nevada Grassley.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
It's like something out a cartoon.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
It really is. And the drama wasn't just mechanical. There
was cheating involved. The German team took a significant shortcut
by loading their car onto a train for a large
section of the American leg. They got caught eventually and
were slapped with a fifteen day penalty.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Fifteen days seems light for.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
That, maybe yeah, And the legal troubles were almost comical.
When the American car finally reached Germany, it accidentally hit
a pigeon, breaking one of its heads lights. When they
got to Paris, they were almost arrested because the car
wasn't technically street legal without two working headlights. They had
to quickly borrow a spectator's bicycle lamp and strap it
onto the fender to avoid getting thrown in jail right
(43:13):
at the finish.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Line after five months getting busted for a broken headlight.
That's rough. Whether tensions between the teams or even within
the teams.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Oh huge tensions. The original plan, believe it or not,
was to drive across the frozen bearing straight from Alaska
into Siberia. Get out, seriously, seriously, That was the plan,
but the spring thought came early that year, making it impossible,
so they had to backtrack and ship the cars by
steamer from Seattle over to Vladovostok, Russia. But the tension
continued overseas. One of the French team members, this Norwegian
(43:46):
adventurer named Hans Hendrik Hansen, actually challenged a teammate to
a duel with pistols after they got stuck in a snowdrift.
Hanson ended up getting fired from the French team a.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Duel over getting stuck yep, well wait it gets better.
Hanson leader somehow managed to join the American team.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Ohway, the duellist.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
The very same, and the danger escalated. Remember, these teams
were traveling through some incredibly remote and lawless territories, especially
in Siberia and Manchuria. They were all armed because the
risk of bandits attacking them for supplies or even attempting
kidnapping and ransom was very real.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
So Hanson joining the armed American team did that end?
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well, not exactly. At one point deep in Russia, Hanson
apparently got into another dispute, this time with his new
American teammate, George Schuster, the mechanic hero. Hanson actually fixed
his side arm on Schuster, ready to shoot him. Oh
my cud. Yeah. It required the third teammate, the driver,
Montague Roberts, to quickly draw his own pistol and diffuse
(44:48):
the potentially lethal situation. Just imagine the tension in that
car for the next thousand miles.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Unbelievable. It sounded like the journey itself was trying to
kill them pretty much. And my favorite detail, just demonstrating
the sheer desperate and chaos of the whole endeavor. During
the long transpecific steamship journey, Schuster discovered that some of
the ship's crew members had been secretly pilfering the Thomas
Flyer's leather fenders, cutting strips off them to make themselves
(45:13):
new shoes.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
They're literally disassembling the car for footwear exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
The car was falling apart from the journey and being
cannibalized by the support crew at the same time.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
The Great Race really only proved one thing conclusively, didn't
it The immense, sometimes illogical will of humans to complete
a goal, no matter how ridiculous the premise, how insane
the dangers, or how primitive the technology available.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Absolutely, it's a perfect, almost comical historical mirror to the
utterly inexplicable anomalies like the Mothman and those mystery airships.
Human endeavor pushed to its absolute limit, whether by choice
or by circumstance.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
It is, indeed, Wow, what an incredible journey through human
history and the deep dark corners of the unknown that was.
We started with the terrifying Harbinger the Mothman, connecting cryptids
to directly to verifiable catastrophe.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Which was immediately followed by that profound human trauma and
ultimately the heroism found in Stephen Stainer's story.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah. We then questioned the overwhelming nature of psychic gifts
in that modern family, the sheer terror of seeing dead
people when you don't want to, before traveling way back
to analyze those impossible nineteenth century airships.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
And then jumped forward again to the time warping UFOs
of nineteen sixty six, linking directly back to military reports
and lingering fear. Everything we've covered today really touches on
that edge of comprehension, that point where logic breaks down
and fear takes over.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
So thinking about that, we connect this all back to
that Nebraska UFO witness, the kid on the motorcycle who
was perpetually pale and jumpy for years after his thirty
missing minutes. The source made a really insightful note. It
suggested that the trauma may have created a fear that
constantly evoked distress, maybe even outright panics sometimes, but failed
to provide any conscious memories to explain it.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Could that be the true last and horror of so
many unexplained paranormal encounters.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
The fear is absolutely real. The distress is long term
and life altering, but the actual cause remains invisible, locked away,
not the memory of what happened in the dark, but
just the silent, inexplicable psychological residue that fundamentally changes who
you are, leaving you haunted by nothing but pure, untethered dread.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
That is a genuinely terrifying thought to leave you all
with tonight, but definitely one worth considering when you look
into the vastness of the unexplained.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
If you enjoyed this deep dive into the strange and
the macabre, we definitely encourage you to check out more
discussions on all things weird.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
You can find more of our episodes and join the
weirdness anytime at weirdafterdarkpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Until next time, stay spooky.
Hey where it goes.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Before I get too far into this, I want to
let you know I am never ever going to use
AI in the actual podcast. Okay, I'm playing around with
AI for something else, just for the fun of it.
But I want you to know that episodes of Weird Darkness,
if you hear my voice, it's always going to be me.
It's never going to be AI.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
I want to make that clear, because what you're about
to hear sounds very realistic, but it's all AI. What
I have done. I was just kind of playing around
with this today just to see what it would sound like.
I learned about Google's notebook LM I think is what
it's called, and it's free to play around with, so
I thought, okay, I'll just give it a try, see
(00:43):
what it sounds like. You can create You can upload
audio and text and everything and essentially create a little
talk show with a guy and girl talking back and
forth about whatever it is that you want them to
talk about. So what I've done again, for fun, I've
created a talk show about Weird Darkness. So like after
(01:06):
let's for for example, let's say the episodes just finished.
In fact, tonight's episode was about Mothman A right, that
was the first story. So so this talk show which
i've I've named Weird after Dark. These two people which
I'm just nicknaming them Ghoul and excuse me Ghost and
Ghoul Friend just for fun because they don't have names,
(01:27):
so I'll name them whatever that guy want. So I've
created it so they talk about the latest episode. I
have no idea what it is that they're going to say.
Before I plug it in. I just plug in the
text of the of the episode. I give them the
audio as well, and I could probably do just the text,
but anyway, I'm just again, I'm just playing around with it.
(01:49):
And then I jumped online to video bolt and created
a little well I used excuse me, I used Sora
to create the logo for Weird after Dark, and then
I jumped on video Bolts to make the introduction video
just kind of just to give it a little bit
of a jazz. This is what it came out as.
(02:10):
And I'm telling you, I could post this as a
regular daily podcast. And I don't know if, except for
the fact that two voices are the same with anybody
who uses notebook LM, if you're ever able to change
those voices to whatever you want. This would I don't
know if you'd be able to tell the difference. AI
(02:31):
is just it's cool, but it's scary how good it
is getting so again, just to let you know, if
I do start using this, because I think it's fun,
but if I start using this again, you will never
ever hear my voice as an AI. I just want
you to know that before before you jump into this,
(02:54):
check this out.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Welcome everyone to a dark dive into the unexplained. I'm
Ghost and you are into Weird after Dark and I'm
gool Friend.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
We're channeling the strange frequencies tonight because our deep dive
is centered on the massive scope of information presented by
Darren Marler, you know, the host of Weird Darkness. Yeah,
specifically his deep drive titled Mothman, Harbinger of Doom. One
hundred witnesses, forty six dead, and still no answers to
what it was.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Wow, that title is less a title and more and
immediate descent into terror, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It really is.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Our mission, as always is to take that immense stack
of sources and pull out the most compelling, frightening, and
frankly sometimes absurd nuggets. We're not just talking about cryptids here.
We're examining how fear, whether it's the fear of the unknown,
or the fear of tragedy, or even the fear of
a memory you can't quite access how that shapes human
history and you know, personal trauma exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It's a journey through the dark corners, kind of spanning
from like nineteenth century airships all the way to nineteen
sixties UFOs, but it's all anchored by the definitive harbinger
of destruction, the Mothman. I mean, when you look at
the raw numbers, one hundred credible witnesses seeing something over
just a single year, immediately followed by the death of
(04:06):
forty six people, the creature really transcends simple cryptozoology. It
becomes this piece of tragic folklore.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So we're zeroing in on Point Pleasant, West Virginia, a
small town just absolutely plagued by anomalies between November nineteen
sixty six and December nineteen sixty seven. And the setting, well,
it's almost too perfect for a horror story, isn't it.
That abandoned T and T plant.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Oh, definitely, And it's crucial to visualize this location We're
talking about hundreds of acres of pretty inaccessible force right
near the Ohio River, and it's filled with these relics
from World War two, huge kind of dome shaped concrete
bunkers where they used to store high explosive Yeah, plus
this whole labyrinthine network of tunnels underneath. I mean, if
a large nocturnal, maybe territorial creature wanted a silent, shadowy
(04:51):
sitctuary for over year, well that area bordering the vast
Clinic Wildlife Station, it was the ideal spot. It was
practically designed to hide something monstrous.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Okay, unpack this inaugural terror. Then the event that really
set the tone for the entire crisis, The first official sighting,
November fifteenth, nineteen sixty six, immediately involves four people, two
young married couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steven Mary Millett.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And their story is instantly just high octane. They were
driving past the old TNT plant when they spotted it.
The description they provided was remarkably detailed and pretty consistent too.
They said, seven feet tall, man shaped with large terrifying
wings folded against its back. And the eyes, oh yeah,
the eyes large and red.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Classic. They didn't exactly hang around to confirm the species,
did they.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Not at all? They cannicked, jammed the gas pedal down,
hitting over one hundred miles per hour, fleeing down Highway
sixty two toward the city.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
But this is the detail that makes this story just legendary,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Absolutely? The creature apparently spread what they called its huge
bat like wings and kept perfect pace with their.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Car one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Yeah, they couldn't shake it until they hit the point
pleasant city limits. Then it just veered.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Off that ability, matching the speed of a car going
over one hundred mile rout, especially you know, a car
from nineteen sixty six. It suggests that whatever this thing was,
it possessed either like supernatural speed or maybe some kind
of advanced something that defied known biology.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Right, it wasn't just a big bird, It was a
relentless pursuer.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Again, the terror it seemed to spread like immediately radiating out.
That very same night, Later on ninety miles away in Salem,
we get this bizarre tale of dual partridge and his
dog banned it.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, this one's weird. Partridge was home around ten thirty
pm when his television went completely haywire. The screen went dark,
replaced by this weird oscillating pattern, and then this loud,
high pitched whining sound started up outside. Partridge's dog banned it.
And this is apparently a highly trained hunting companion, not
just some random mutt. Right, bandit started howling and just
charging toward a barn about one hundred and fifty yards away.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
But banned it. Wasn't casing an animal.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Was he No, that's the creepy part. He was chasing
two distinct red circles, which Partrier's described as looking exactly
like bicycle reflectors, just moving quickly toward the barn. Okay,
that's specific, very specific. Partridge understandably freaked out, grabs his rifle,
but he was paralyzed by fear. He admitted, he was
just too scared to step outside. The next morning, bandit
(07:22):
was gone, vanished without a trace.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Okay, Well yeah, and then there's a connection back to
the first setting.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yes, and this is where the source material really connects
the dots in a truly chilling way. Two days later,
Cartridge reads the newspaper account of the Scarberry's chase, and
Roger Scarberry mentioned they saw the body of a large
dead dog near the point Pleasant city limits right after
they lost the creature. Oh no, yeah, when they drove
back just minutes later to check the body, it was gone.
(07:50):
Partridge read that and he instantly feared the worst for bandit.
The dog was never found.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
That temporal and geographical link, I mean, whether it's just coincidence,
some real connection, it definitely cemented the paranoia in the
community right absolutely.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
It suggested the creature was mobile, fast, and most terrifyingly
capable of maybe inflicting violence and even manipulating its surroundings
making things disappear.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
The wave of sightings just kept coming. The very next night,
November sixteenth, we get the story of missus Marcella Bennett.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Right and before her really close up encounter, she first
witnessed something else, a funny red light hovering above the
T and T plant.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
So there's that UFO element again, right alongside the creature exactly.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It weaves in right from the start. So she pulls
up to her friend's house, steps out holding her baby,
and that's when it appeared. She said she saw a
big gray thing, bigger than a man, with terrible glowing eyes,
just slowly rising from the ground nearby.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Oh my god, holding her baby.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, she was so horrified. She actually dropped her baby, luckily,
just onto the ground. The baby was okay, scooped her
back up and scrambled inside the house.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Hey can it imagine?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
But it didn't leave. It shuffled onto her porch using
these human like legs they described, and actually peered into
the windows, just staring the family down. They were hysterical.
Finally called the.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Police, and by the time the police got there, predictably
vanished gone.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
But the long terms tole on missus Bennett was profound.
She sowt medical help for months afterwards, suffered terrible nightmares,
and reported hearing this distinct, chilling sound near her isolated home.
What sound a keening sound like a woman screaming. Okay,
that's that's unsettling, and that sound the description. It brings
(09:35):
us back to the consistent details people reported during this
whole year long reign of terror rite. Over one hundred
people saw it between late sixty six and late sixty seven.
What were the key features everyone seemed to agree on. Yeah,
consistency is really the key here, especially when you're trying
to counter the easy hoax explanation. It was consistently described
as five to seven feet tall, considerably wider than a man.
(09:55):
It moved awkwardly when on the ground, shuffling on human like.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Legs, and the eye is still red.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Almost always cited as red and glowing and unnervingly set
near the top of his shoulders, not really where human
eyes would be. That detail is really specific and strange. Definitely,
in the flight, it wasn't like a bird, No witnesses agreed.
It didn't really flap its wings much. It just glided smoothly.
But and this is weird, the sources specify that it
could also ascend straight up vertically like a helicopter taking off.
(10:24):
That suggests a completely different method of propulsion than you know, biological.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Wings any other consistent descriptions.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Skin sounds often described as having murky gray or brown skin,
and it seemed to emit sounds sometimes a low humming sound,
which might connect back to that TV disturbance Partridge experienced
right the whining sound exactly, and other times that high
pitched screeching sound like the one Missus Bennett heard the
woman screaming.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
It's just a bundle of terrifying attributes.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
And what's fascinating historically is that the Mothman sightings, the
numerous UFO reports in the air, and even these encounters
with the eerie, intimidating men in black, they were all
clustered during this narrow thirteen month period. Local residents really
felt they were all part of the same escalating weirdness, like.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
A perfect storm of high strangeness pretty much. And that storm,
that anomaly, it all culminated in the ultimate catastrophe, didn't it.
The last confirmed sighting of the Mothman was late November
nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Yeah, and less than a month later, December fifteenth, nineteen
sixty seven, at five zero BM sharp rush hour, the
Silver Bridge, the main artery linking Point Pleasant to Ohio,
just collapsed completely.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Oh God, the timing.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
It was a terrible disaster. Officially, it was caused by
a catastrophic engineering failure, specifically a tiny defect and a
single eyebar in the suspension chain that finally gave way
under the load. But for the residence of Point Pleasant,
who had just endured a solid year of terrifying omens,
while the scientific exclamation felt.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Secondary, yeah, I can imagine how many.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
People forty six people died in the freezing river, soy say,
and almost immediately most of the Tan believed that the
Mothman was either directly responsible or at the very least
it was a terrifying warning, a literal harbinger of doom,
just like the title says.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Did anyone claim to see it near the bridge right before?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
This source notes that, Yeah, some people claim to have
seen the creature near the bridge just minutes before it fell.
Whether that's memory playing tricks after the fact, or something real,
who knows.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So what does this all mean? You've got what one
hundred credible witnesses, people from all walks of life seeing
this thing.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Right. The sheer volume of credible, unconnected witnesses makes simply
dismissing it all as a hoax really difficult. It wasn't
just one group telling a.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Story, and the fact that this barrage of high strangeness,
the UFOs, the men in Black, Mothman himself, it just
abruptly stopped after the bridge collapse. That's the enduring.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Puzzle, isn't it Exactly? If it was some natural phenomenon,
maybe a misidentified bird, why the premonition like timing. If
it was supernatural, why the precise chronological link to this
specific crajuch. Why point pleasant?
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Why then?
Speaker 3 (13:02):
The fear it left behind was absolutely palpable and lasted
for decades.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The Mystery of the Mothman ended in tangible, measurable tragedy.
But speaking of tragedy and fear, let's move now to
a profoundly human and heartbreaking story of horror and survival.
This is the true crime account behind the film. I know,
my first name is Stephen.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, this is a tough one, the story of Stephen Stainer,
abducted in nineteen seventy two when he was just seven
years old, and it's a chilling reminder of a different era.
I mean, still dangerous obviously, but an era when a
seven year old walking home alone from school wasn't quite
as unusual as it seems today.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
So how did it happen?
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Stephen was spotted by this predator, Kenneth Parnell and his accomplice,
a guy named Irvin Murphy. Parnell's strategy was immediate and
just insidious. Murphy posed as a minister collecting donations for
a church.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Oh, the manipulation starts right away.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Instantly, Stephen accepted a ride, thinking it was just a
few blocks to his home, but they drove right past
his street.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
And then the psychological games began immediately.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Parnell was apparently a master of psychological manipulation. He didn't
need physical chains, he used emotional ones. The very next day,
he convinced little Stephen that his parents, who had five
kids and were probably overwhelmed, had actually given him up
because they didn't want him anymore. That's just cruel, utterly cruel.
Stephen's vulnerability was just completely exploited, and within a week,
(14:25):
the source says, he was calling Parnell dad.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Oh God. And the abuse started quickly too.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, the source is pretty explicit. Parnell began the abuse
on the first night, and Stephen was being sexually assaulted
regularly within two weeks of his captivity, and Parnell immediately
changed Stephen's name to Dennis Gregory Parnell. It was all
part of erasing his identity, replacing his reality with the
kidnappers narrative.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And he wasn't the only abuser.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
No. For about eighteen months, a woman named Barbara Matthias
moved in with Parnell, and she also sexually assaulted Stephen.
The source says on at least nine occasions by the
time he was just nine years old.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Plus.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Throughout the ordeal, Stephen was beaten, given alcohol and marijuana.
It was constant degradation.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
What's so disturbing and kind of hard to grasp is
the type of control Parnell had. Stephen wasn't locked in
a basement the whole time.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
No, not at all. He was allowed this strange level
of freedom. He was enrolled in different schools as they
moved around California. He could technically come and go from
the various homes they lived in. He wasn't physically locked
in a cage.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
So why didn't he run?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Because, as the source explains it, he didn't know how
to flee. The control was absolute psychological dominance. He'd been
convinced for years that his real family didn't want him,
that Parnell was his only father figure. His identity had
been systematically shattered and rebuilt over seven years of constant
abuse and isolation. He didn't have a concept of home
(15:52):
to run back to anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
That's that's horrifying in a different way. So what changed?
How did he eventually escape?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
By nineteen eighty he even was fourteen, He had internalized
all this trauma, obviously, but maybe was starting to push
back in small ways. Parnell, meanwhile, was getting older and
apparently wanted another younger boy. He actually tried to abduct
other kids several times, but Stephen secretly sabotaged those attempts.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Wow. Even in that situation, he tried to stop it.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah, but Parnell eventually succeeded. He bribed a teenage friend
of Steven's, a guy named Randall Porman, promised him drugs
and cash to help abduct five year old Timothy White.
That happened on Valentine's Day, February fourteenth, nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So now there's another child.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Involved, exactly, And this new abduction became Stephen's absolute turning point.
He had only known little Timothy for two weeks, but
seeing this five year old start to suffer the same
things he had, Stephen decided he couldn't let Timothy go
through that seven year ordeal.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
That takes incredible courage, it really does.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
His girlfriend at the time, Lorie Duke, recalled Stephen saying
something like if he didn't interview now, it would only
get worse for Timothy. I mean, that's the definition of
profound selfless heroism. Isn't it breaking that cycle of trauma,
even when that cycle is basically all you've ever known?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Absolutely? So, how did he do it?
Speaker 3 (17:07):
He waited for his chance. On March first, nineteen eighty,
Parnell went off to work. Stephen just took Timothy's hand
and they ran. They managed to hitchhike quite a distance,
eventually ending up at a police station in Yukaya, California.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And that's when he said the famous line.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
That's it. His declaration to the police officer became the
defining line of his life. I know my first name
is Stephen, just reclaiming his identity after seven years.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Incredible what happened to Parnell?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Parnell was arrested the next day. A background check turned
up a prior sodomy conviction from way back in nineteen
fifty one, which probably didn't help him. He was eventually
convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to seven years, but was
paroled after only five.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Only five years for seven years of that.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, and his accomplices got lesser charges. What's really tragic,
legally speaking, is that due to jurisdictional issues and incredibly,
the statute of limitations Parnell was never actually charged for
the years of sexual assault Stephen endured.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
That's unbelievable. So Stephen comes back a hero, but the
adjustment must have been incredibly difficult, agonizing. By all accounts.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
He returned at age fourteen, but he was, as the
source puts it, almost a grown man in terms of
the trauma and street knowledge he possessed after surviving that hell.
Yet his parents, understandably perhaps still treated him like the
seven year old boy they remembered losing.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
That's a huge disconnect massive.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
He was used to a certain kind of twisted independence
under Parnell, managing his own movements, and the sudden structure
of family life felt suffocating. He clashed heavily with his
older brother Carrie, apparently feeling like he was constantly competing
for attention. After seven years of being Parnell's sole captive focus,
it was just fertile ground for more emotional distress.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And school that must have been brutal.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Oh awful. The kids were relentless bullying him, teasing him,
questioning his identity, his sexuality, just cruel stuff. And compounding
the problem, his father initially refused counseling for Stephen believing
he didn't need it, which was sadly a tragically common
perspective back in the eighties regarding trauma.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
So he struggled deeply.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
He turned to alcohol, eventually dropped out of school. The
psychological residue of his captivity apparently left him volatile. He
got kicked out of the house after a major fight
with his father. Here he was a survivor who had
saved someone else, yet he couldn't really save himself from
the emotional damage that had been done.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Did things ever get better for him?
Speaker 3 (19:31):
He did find a measure of stability. Later on, he
met and married Jody Edmondson. They had two children, and
he channeled some of that trauma into advocacy. He started lecturing,
appeared in documentaries, and even testified before the California State
Assembly to push for tougher laws increased penalties for child kidnapping.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's good finding purpose, Yeah, he.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Seemed to be finding his way. He was working at
a pizza hut, but then his life was just tragically
cut short on September sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
What happened.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Stephen's driver's license was suspended at the time, and that
day there was heavy rain. He made a point of
not taking the company delivery truck home, specifically because he
didn't want to risk an accident driving without a valid license,
so he decided to ride his motorcycle instead. Oh yeah,
it was just this heartbreaking twist of fate. Riding home
in the rain, a car pulled out in front of
(20:22):
him unexpectedly, he rammed into it and was killed instantly.
Stephen Stanner, the boy who survived seven years of torture
and abuse, who achieved this moment of pure, decisive heroism.
He died at just twenty eight years old.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
It's just devastating after everything, it really is.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
The funeral was attended by five hundred people, and Timothy White,
the boy he rescued, who was fourteen by then, served
as one of his pallbearers. Wow, that single detail, the
boy he saved, carrying his coffin. It's just such a
profound testament to Stephen's impact, his legacy. The inscription on
his casket reportedly read going home. As his wife Jody
(20:58):
said at the time, he's he's not hurting anymore. Nobody
can hurt him now he's free.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And Parnell what became of him?
Speaker 3 (21:04):
The final dark PostScript is that Kenneth Parnell, apparently unrepentant
after his parole, tried to bribe a nurse for access
to a young boy in two thousand and four. He
was seventy two years old. Then he died in prison
four years later. A monster right up until the end.
Stephen's story is just such a heavy reminder that true
crime often leaves behind victims who struggle for decades, sometimes
their whole lives, trying to reconcile that trauma.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Okay, well, that deep dive into human trauma, intense as
it is, actually sets the stage pretty well for our
next segment, because this deals with trauma of a completely
different sort, the potentially overwhelming psychological burden of possessing a
psychic gift. We're discussing a UK family dealing with the
issue of well, my children see dead people.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah, this is the dilemma facing Lynn, a thirty nine
year old mother in the UK. Her two children, Fay
who's thirteen, and Ashley who's eight, both insists they see spirits,
dead people. And for Lynn, this isn't just some quirky
family thing, It's a genuine family crisis. She confessed it
felt like a.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Curse, A curse that's strong.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Yeah, And she said something really heartbreaking that it would
almost be easier to deal with if they had an illness,
because then at least she would know where to go
for clinical treatment. For answers with this, she's lost.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Is this common in the UK seeing ghosts?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Well, the cultural backdrop is interesting. The source cited surveys
suggesting it's not entirely an anomaly over there. Apparently one
in five Brits report having seen or felt a ghost,
and something like fifty three percent believe in psychic ability.
But you know, believing it exists is one thing. Living
with a constant stream of spirits invading your daily life
(22:41):
is something else.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Entirely, especially for kids. So tell me about the daughter, Fay.
How did it start for her?
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Fay's experiences started quite young. Initially, she just reported seeing
colors around people auras back in primary school, pretty standard
psychic kids stuff. But by age ten, the ghostly sightings
became nearly daily occurrences. She described her bed being violently
shaken at night by what she felt was a frustrated
female ghost, and talked about feeling energy while she was
(23:08):
just trying to take a shower. Having spirits like tugging
at her hair, just constant, low level intrusions.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Okay, that sounds disruptive, but maybe not terrifying yet. Was
there a specific scary incident.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Oh yeah, One particular incident stands out as genuinely terrifying.
Fay was looking in the hall mirror and saw a
person's red head appearing on her reflection's shoulder.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yikes.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Okay, yeah, But interestingly, she seems to have since rationalized
this fear. She's now interpreted that spectral figure as her
deceased granddad, who she now believes acts as her protective
spirit guide.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Ah. So she's reframing the fear into something comfaning, a
coping mechanism exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
It seems like a way to manage it. Her specific
method of seeing spirits is also kind of unique. According
to the source, she doesn't usually see them as solid
physical forms. Instead, she receives a sudden glimpse. She said,
this is the energy first, and then details like the
ghost's name or how they might have died, just pop
into her head instantly. She described closing her eyes and
(24:08):
seeing their picture building up very quickly in her mind.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So how does she deal with this? Constant influx. Does
she have ways to turn it off?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
She's actually learned some spiritual coping mechanisms, which is pretty
sophisticated for a thirteen year old. She employs concepts from
reiki and theda healing.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Okay, remind us what those are.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Sure. Reiki is basically an energy based healing practice focusing
on channeling universal life energy, and Theta healing is a
meditation technique that uses the theta brainwave state, that deep
meditative state supposedly to promote physical and emotional healing and
access intuition.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So how does Faye use those?
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Specifically? She uses these methods to protect herself by consciously
closing her chakras. She visualizes them as light bulbs that
she can switch off to kind of shut herself down
to the spirit world when it gets overwhelming. She also
uses the classic visualization of a protective white light around her.
It seems like she's really taken ownership of this ability
and found ways to manage it.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
That's actually pretty impressive for a teenager. But the tragedy
the article suggests that her younger brother, Ashley, hasn't been
able to do that exactly.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Lynn and her husband David. He's forty five. They apparently
tried really hard to shield little Ashley from Fay's experiences,
probably not wanting to frighten him. But about a year ago,
when he was seven, actually started seeing things too, and
his reaction was different, completely different. Unlike his older sister
who's now somewhat intrigued by it all and actively coping,
Ashley is purely terrified. He reported seeing a head following
(25:38):
me around. He got so scared he refused to go
into certain rooms alone, like the conservatory or even the toilet.
For him, this psychic reality is just crushing his sense
of safety.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
That's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
He's only eight, right, and this contrast between the siblings
is really crucial to Linn's dilemma. Fay is managing the ability,
finding ways to live with it. Ashley is in total denial, complete,
letely resistant to the idea that he might be psychic too.
Lynn mentioned that for Ashley they've specifically used theta healing
techniques to sort of request that he doesn't see anything
(26:09):
frightening anymore. She believes it has reduced the sightings for him,
but the underlying fear, what she called the bad thoughts,
that still.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Remains m It raises some profound questions, doesn't it about
the nature of these gifts? The article mentioned to family history.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah, apparently Lynn's grandmother and David's father both reportedly believe
they saw spirits too. So is this some kind of
biological or energetic inheritance passed down through generations? And if
it is, how do parents balance supporting one child who's
accepted it Fae with shielding another child who's terrified by it? Ashley,
The psychic residue, the fear and anxiety it causes, seems
(26:45):
just as psychologically damaging in its own way as the
kind of trauma Stephen Stainer face.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
It's a different kind of haunting. Okay, speaking of things
that defy physics, logic, and the known timeline of history,
let's pivot now from psychic energy to impossible airship. We
are traveling back in time, way back to eighteen ninety
six and eighteen ninety seven to discuss America's mystery airships.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yes, this is one of the most compelling historical anomalies
in the source material. For sure. We're talking about aircraft
powered aircraft being seen by literally thousands of people across
the globe. Years before the Ripe Brothers achieved their first
control flight at Kitty Hawk in nineteen oh three.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Right back then, sustained flight other than maybe a hot
air balloon drifting on the wind was considered technologically.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Impossible, absolutely impossible. Yet the witnesses were incredibly specific. They
described seeing these dark, oblong or cylindrical shapes, sometimes described
as being constructed of weird metals and shiny steel, often
illuminated by three bright white lights. The sightings kicked off
in Sacramento, California, in November eighteen ninety six, them thousands
(27:51):
over San Francisco just days later. Then sightings started popping
up all over the country, even internationally.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Okay, but it's the encounters with the occupants where this
story really spirals into high strangeness.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Okay. An early witness claimed to see two men actually
peddling a sort of bicycle type frame attached underneath the object,
and they were apparently shouting down she'll hit the steeple
as they flew over a church peddling.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That sounds almost cartoonishly low tech. Yeah, it kind of
throws a whole advanced alien craft theory into immediate doubt,
doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
It does It's one of the many contradictions. The occupants
were often described as looking human, but maybe not your
average citizens, possessing superior intelligence, sometimes having odd skin tones
or strange speech patterns not quite fitting in.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Were there any interactions that gave clues about who they
were or where they came from.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Well, there are some fascinating details that tied directly into
the historical context of the time. Consider the landing reported
near Springfield, Illinois in April eighteen ninety seven. Two men
and one woman supposedly emerged from the airship and told
some field workers they were on their way to report
to the government. When QB is declared.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Free, Okay, wait, when Cuba is declared free. That's super specific, right.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
It anchors the sighting directly into the political tension boiling
up around the Spanish American War, which was just about
to happen. It suggests the occupants, whoever or whatever they were,
were aware of current global events.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
That's wild. But then you also get these reports that
sound incredibly high tech. He mixed with the absurd, exactly like.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
The mayor of Mount Vernon, Illinois, who claimed he saw
a man hovering outside the airship, apparently making repairs in
mid air using some kind of device strap to his back.
This sounds like a form of early jet pack technology,
which is decades ahead of the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
The shrinking ship. Did I read that right?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
You did? Witnesses in one account claimed that a pilot
after a supposed crash or landing, showed them a device
that allowed him to shrink the entire airship down to
pocket size. Now, if that detail is even remotely true,
we're dealing with physics far beyond our current comprehension, let
alone anything possible in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Okay, that's definitely out there. But nothing really beats the
wh Hopkins encounter in Springfield, Missouri? Does it? The naked Martians?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Oh, that one's a classic of weirdness. Hopkins apparently found
a grounded airship propelled by three large propellers. The crew.
He described them as a beautiful woman and a bearded man,
both of whom were completely naked.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Naked okay, why who knows?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
And when Hopkins asked them where they came from, they
simply pointed up to the sky and uttered a single word.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Mars, mars. Okay. So that detail alone just makes any
single explanation impossible, right, are these time travelers? Are they aliens?
Is it just evidence of mass hysteria fueled by opportunistic
newspaper sensationalism. The newspapers back then were pretty wide.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
They really were. And you also have to factor in
reports like the one about the prisoner. Anonymous but supposedly
reliable witnesses claimed they saw an airship containing a woman
tied to a chair being attended by another woman while
a man guarded them with a pistol. These accounts are
just wildly inconsistent in terms of motivation, technology, and the
nature of the crew.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
It's all over the place. Is there any tangible evidence,
anything solid?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Well, for tangible evidence, we have to turn to the
most famous incident, Aurora, Texas, April nineteenth, eighteen ninety seven.
The story goes that an airship crashed into a windmill.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
There the crash. Did they find anything?
Speaker 3 (31:19):
The sources confirm the story. The dead pilot was recovered
and described by the locals as clearly not an inhabitant
of this world. The wreckage itself was apparently analyzed too.
Strange hieroglyphic like figures were found on some of the debris,
and the material was described as an unusual heavy mixture
of aluminium and silver, weighing tons.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Altogether aluminium and silver. That's an odd mix. What happened
to the pilot's body?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
The town, being deeply religious, apparently gave the pilot a
Christian burial in the local Aurora cemetery. Now fast forward
decades later to nineteen seventy three, investigators using metal detectors
reportedly found readings of unusual foreign metal buried right under
the supposed grave marker.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Okay, so maybe some proof.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Here's the kicker. When those investigators or perhaps others, returned
years later planning to do a full excavation and maybe
get a sample of this metal, both the original eighteen
ninety seven grave marker and the weird metal readings were gone, vanished, gone.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
That suggests a coverup, doesn't it, or at least someone
deliberately removing the physical evidence.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
It certainly suggests a sustained effort by someone at some
point to remove the tangible proof of the Aurora crash.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
So if we mostly discount the mass hysteria theory because
there were just too many unconnected, credible witnesses spread over
vast distances, what are we left with well.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
The leading rational theory proposed by researcher Jay Allen Danglik
is the unknown inventor hypothesis. He suggests that some forgotten genius,
perhaps funded by wealthy San Franciscan investors, secretly built a working,
lighter than air prototyped.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Dirigible using eighteen ninety six technology. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Dan argues it was constructed using the best available eighteen
ninety six technology, maybe revolutionary for its time, but ultimately
flawed and prone to break down. He suggests they flew
short test flights, possibly sticking close to railway lines for
logistical support and navigation, before the whole project met with
disaster sometime in late April eighteen ninety seven, explaining the
(33:19):
sudden end to the sightings.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Okay, that would explain the human like occupants maybe trying
to repair their experimental machine. That sounds plausible.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It's an elegant theory, but it requires completely ignoring the
reports of naked martians, the impossible anti gravity shrinking device,
and crucially, the clearly non human pilot supposedly found in Aurora.
It ultimately leaves us right back in that paradox. Materials
and knowledge from the eighteen nineties should not have produced
(33:47):
a technologically baffling machine that could fly across the continent
and exhibit such bizarre characteristics. The mystery really does remain.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Unsolved, completely unsolved. Okay, let's connect those flight anomalies of
eighteen ninety six forward in time to the high tech
terror of the mid twentieth century. We're moving ahead now
to September nineteen sixty six. The UFO phenomenon is still
going strong, but now we have this added layer of
weirdness missing time, which often suggests abduction.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Exactly. This specific incident took place in Columbus, Nebraska in
September nineteen sixty six, which interestingly is only about two
months before the mothman sighting started kicking off back in
West Virginia.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Huh Okay, who was the witness.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
The witness was a seventeen year old kid just riding
his motorcycle to his girlfriend's house, a journey that he
said should have taken maybe five minutes tops, but it didn't.
He arrived thirty minutes late. He said he was about
a mile out from town on a lonely stretch of
road when he saw it, a completely circular object just
hovering silently about one hundred feet overhead. Did he get
(34:47):
a good look, Yeah, he described it pretty clearly. It
had red, yellow, and green lights arranged underneath, kind of
like the spokes of a wheel, and it wasn't totally silent.
It emitted this low humming sound that he claimed he
coul feel resonating right through his body.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Okay, creepy. So what happened during those missing twenty five minutes?
Speaker 3 (35:06):
This is where the physics of the encounter just completely
break down. He understandably freaked out and sped up his motorcycle,
gunning the engine. But he said the engine was roaring,
the wheels were spinning on the pavement, but the bike
and he himself remained absolutely frozen in place on the road.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Frozen. How did he know he wasn't moving?
Speaker 3 (35:23):
He could tell by the landmarks beside the road, trees,
fence posts. He just wasn't passing them, despite the engine
raging and the bike vibrating beneath him. He was stuck.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Then just as suddenly as it started, he was moving again,
But he found himself coasting slowly down to about twenty
five mile prior, whereas moments before he'd been trying to
hit seventy and he had this profound, visceral impression that
he had missed something huge, something important.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
And when he finally got to his girlfriend's house.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
She immediately noticed his condition. He arrived thirty minutes late
for that five minute trip, and she said he was pale,
incredibly jumpy, and unusually quiet, just clearly shaken to his core.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Did the trauma stick with him.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Oh, definitely. The source for the story actually comes from
his ex wife, who reported the incident years later in
two thousand and four. They had eventually married and then divorced,
but she claimed his constant state of fear and panic,
that psychological residue we keep talking about, lasted for many,
many years.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Did he ever talk about what happened in that missing time.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
No, she said. He absolutely refused to discuss the night ever,
not when it happened, not during their marriage, not even
at the time of their divorce. It suggests that whatever
happened in those missing minutes was filled with such unconscious
distress or terror that he literally couldn't face it, couldn't
bring it to the surface.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Was there any trigger that made him talk about it
at all?
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Yeah, there was one incident about a month after the encounter,
he and his girlfriend were parked near a radio tower Suddenly,
seemingly out of nowhere. He panicked and just blurted out
the entire story. The object, the lights, the humming, the
bike being frozen and.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
In place mirror radio tower.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Interesting, right, The proximity that man made source of electromagnetic
energy perhaps subconsciously reminded him of the craft's power or
the feeling of it, evoking that buried trauma trigger.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Okay, so it's one guy's freaky story, right, but is
there anything to back it up?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
This is what gives the account enormous weight. There is
corroborating evidence. On the very same evening, September fifth, nineteen
sixty six, just about an hour earlier, Finland AFS that
stands for Air Force station. So we're talking official military
documentation here, right. Finland AFS up in Minnesota, reported both
radar and visual confirmation of an unidentified oval object with red, yellow,
(37:39):
and green.
Speaker 4 (37:40):
Lights, the exact same colors the kid in Nebraska saw
exactly the same configuration. This wasn't just an isolated local incident.
It seems to have been part of a larger phenomenon
witnessed by military personnel and tracked on radar, suggesting a
technologically advanced craft was indeed operating in the Midwest that evening.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Did the military try to intercept it?
Speaker 3 (38:01):
They did. Two f eighty nine Scorpion jets were scrambling
to intercept the object over Minnesota, but by the time
they got there, the object just vanished from radar with
lightning speed.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Gone wow, So this Nebraska kid's story suddenly sounds a
lot more credible.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
It really does, and it raises these terrifying questions that
connect right back to the core themes of this whole
deep dive. Did that craft use some kind of unknown
technology to physically freeze his bike and him in time
and space? Was that thirty minute encounter deliberately wiped from
his conscious memory, leaving only that residue of pure, inexplicable
fear that haunted him for years.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
It's the silent, hidden cost of the paranormal, isn't it.
The fear that just lingers deeply even when you don't
have this specific memory to attach it to. It kind
of mirrors the unresolved psychological agony that someone like Stephen
Stainer carried even after he was physically free.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Exactly the trauma manifests, even if the source remains hidden
in the subconscious.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Okay, wow, well, to maybe cleanse the pas a little
after all that hidden trauma in high strangeness. Yeah, let's
get it one last time to a story of sheer
human audacity and maybe near lethal stupidity. The Great Race
to Stupidity.
Speaker 3 (39:12):
Ah. Yes, the legendary nineteen oh eight New York to
Paris automobile race, which, believe it or not, became the
loose inspiration for that wacky nineteen sixty five comedy film
The Great Race.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
With Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon. But the real race
was well, less comical and more insane.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Pure insanity is a good word for it. The premise
was glorious on paper. Six international teams racing westward from
New York City, across the US, across the Pacific, across
Asia and Europe, all the way to Paris, the goal
to prove national automobile supremacy.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Okay, but this is nineteen oh eight. Automobiles are still
pretty new.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Right, brand new. Practically, they only dated from the mid
eighteen eighties. The sources make a point of saying that
horses were often still the more reliable method of long
distance transport. Back then, your top of the line Mercedes
might hit fifty three miles per hour, but only under
absolutely the ideal conditions on a perfect road.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
And they were sending these fragile, new fangled machines halfway
around the.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
World, exactly across continents with barely any roads. It kicked
off from Times Square in February nineteen oh eight. It
was supposed to be a race, but it very quickly
devolved into just an epic test of sheer endurance and
mechanical improvisation.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
How many actually finished.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Only three of the original six teams even made it
to Paris, and the winner, the American Thomas Flyer, finally
rolled into Paris on July thirtieth, nineteen oh eight. That's
over five months after they started back in New York.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Five months.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
What were the conditions like, primitive beyond belief. The cars
had open cabs, no roofs, no windows, certainly no heating
glass was actually considered a safety hazard back then, might shatter.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
So they were just exposed to the elements the whole
time completely.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
And they started in February specifically hoping to cross Siberia
before the summer thaw turned everything into impassable mud. But
the downside was they immediately ran into massive blizzards right
there in New York State, teams were constantly digging their
cars out of huge snow drifts.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Sounds fun, Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
The American car, that nineteen oh seven model thirty five
Thomas Flyer, needed a team of fourteen Clydesdale horses just
to pull it through the mud and snowdrifts in Indiana.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Fourteen horses and navigation? How did they even find their way?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
Barely? There were no detailed road maps for most of
the route. The American mechanic, a guy named George Schuster,
who became the real hero of the story, had to
rely on a compass stargazing at night, and at one
point he even crafted his own makeshif sextant just to
figure out their latitude.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Okay, that's resource. Well what about roads.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Mostly unpaved if they existed at all. Often the teams
resorted to driving directly on railroad tracks. It was bumpy
as hell, but at least it was a defined path.
That Thomas Flyers spent so much time bouncing along the
Union Pacific Line out west that railroad workers affectionately dubbed
it train hashtag forty nine huh.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Train hashtag forty nine I love it. What were some
the mishaps?
Speaker 3 (42:00):
There must have been tons, legendary ones and often absurd.
For instance, anti freeze hadn't been invented yet, so every
single night, the mechanics had to manually drain the entire
radiator system to prevent the water from freezing and cracking
the engine block. Then they'd have to refill it again
in the freezing morning every single day. Tvious Incredibly, Schuster
(42:21):
also had to travel seventy five miles on foot or
by horse just to find a telegraph office to order
a replacement gear after the Thomas Flyer got hopelessly bogged
down in quicksand out in Nevada Grassley.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
It's like something out a cartoon.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
It really is. And the drama wasn't just mechanical. There
was cheating involved. The German team took a significant shortcut
by loading their car onto a train for a large
section of the American leg. They got caught eventually and
were slapped with a fifteen day penalty.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Fifteen days seems light for.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
That, maybe yeah, And the legal troubles were almost comical.
When the American car finally reached Germany, it accidentally hit
a pigeon, breaking one of its heads lights. When they
got to Paris, they were almost arrested because the car
wasn't technically street legal without two working headlights. They had
to quickly borrow a spectator's bicycle lamp and strap it
onto the fender to avoid getting thrown in jail right
(43:13):
at the finish.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Line after five months getting busted for a broken headlight.
That's rough. Whether tensions between the teams or even within
the teams.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Oh huge tensions. The original plan, believe it or not,
was to drive across the frozen bearing straight from Alaska
into Siberia. Get out, seriously, seriously, That was the plan,
but the spring thought came early that year, making it impossible,
so they had to backtrack and ship the cars by
steamer from Seattle over to Vladovostok, Russia. But the tension
continued overseas. One of the French team members, this Norwegian
(43:46):
adventurer named Hans Hendrik Hansen, actually challenged a teammate to
a duel with pistols after they got stuck in a snowdrift.
Hanson ended up getting fired from the French team a.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Duel over getting stuck yep, well wait it gets better.
Hanson leader somehow managed to join the American team.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
Ohway, the duellist.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
The very same, and the danger escalated. Remember, these teams
were traveling through some incredibly remote and lawless territories, especially
in Siberia and Manchuria. They were all armed because the
risk of bandits attacking them for supplies or even attempting
kidnapping and ransom was very real.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
So Hanson joining the armed American team did that end?
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well, not exactly. At one point deep in Russia, Hanson
apparently got into another dispute, this time with his new
American teammate, George Schuster, the mechanic hero. Hanson actually fixed
his side arm on Schuster, ready to shoot him. Oh
my cud. Yeah. It required the third teammate, the driver,
Montague Roberts, to quickly draw his own pistol and diffuse
(44:48):
the potentially lethal situation. Just imagine the tension in that
car for the next thousand miles.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Unbelievable. It sounded like the journey itself was trying to
kill them pretty much. And my favorite detail, just demonstrating
the sheer desperate and chaos of the whole endeavor. During
the long transpecific steamship journey, Schuster discovered that some of
the ship's crew members had been secretly pilfering the Thomas
Flyer's leather fenders, cutting strips off them to make themselves
(45:13):
new shoes.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
They're literally disassembling the car for footwear exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
The car was falling apart from the journey and being
cannibalized by the support crew at the same time.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
The Great Race really only proved one thing conclusively, didn't
it The immense, sometimes illogical will of humans to complete
a goal, no matter how ridiculous the premise, how insane
the dangers, or how primitive the technology available.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Absolutely, it's a perfect, almost comical historical mirror to the
utterly inexplicable anomalies like the Mothman and those mystery airships.
Human endeavor pushed to its absolute limit, whether by choice
or by circumstance.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
It is, indeed, Wow, what an incredible journey through human
history and the deep dark corners of the unknown that was.
We started with the terrifying Harbinger the Mothman, connecting cryptids
to directly to verifiable catastrophe.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
Which was immediately followed by that profound human trauma and
ultimately the heroism found in Stephen Stainer's story.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Yeah. We then questioned the overwhelming nature of psychic gifts
in that modern family, the sheer terror of seeing dead
people when you don't want to, before traveling way back
to analyze those impossible nineteenth century airships.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
And then jumped forward again to the time warping UFOs
of nineteen sixty six, linking directly back to military reports
and lingering fear. Everything we've covered today really touches on
that edge of comprehension, that point where logic breaks down
and fear takes over.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
So thinking about that, we connect this all back to
that Nebraska UFO witness, the kid on the motorcycle who
was perpetually pale and jumpy for years after his thirty
missing minutes. The source made a really insightful note. It
suggested that the trauma may have created a fear that
constantly evoked distress, maybe even outright panics sometimes, but failed
to provide any conscious memories to explain it.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
Could that be the true last and horror of so
many unexplained paranormal encounters.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
The fear is absolutely real. The distress is long term
and life altering, but the actual cause remains invisible, locked away,
not the memory of what happened in the dark, but
just the silent, inexplicable psychological residue that fundamentally changes who
you are, leaving you haunted by nothing but pure, untethered dread.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
That is a genuinely terrifying thought to leave you all
with tonight, but definitely one worth considering when you look
into the vastness of the unexplained.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
If you enjoyed this deep dive into the strange and
the macabre, we definitely encourage you to check out more
discussions on all things weird.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
You can find more of our episodes and join the
weirdness anytime at weirdafterdarkpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Until next time, stay spooky.
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