GODDARD’S IMPOSSIBLE FLIGHT: Did This WW1 Pilot Really Fly Through a Time Portal To The Future?
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He was flying in an open cockpit over mountainous terrain without radio navigational aids or cloud-flying instruments. In the high winds of the storm's strange brown-yellow clouds, he lost control of his plane, which began to spiral toward the ground. Goddard was unable to stop the spin, and he was uncertain of his location.

Things looked really bad and he feared that the rapid fall would lead to a crash into the mountains. He seemed to have little chance to come out of the clouds. As he looked around, he noticed the sky was darker than ever, and the clouds were strange yellowish brown. Goddard was now flying at 150 miles per hour and he was still falling.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally succeeded in leveling out his plane and managed to avoid a crash. At this point, something strange happened... Welcome Weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness!

Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Now bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness!

I'm currently working through my first year at university. I elected to stay on in some very nice university apartments that were built a few years ago. However, I'm starting to think that my apartment is haunted. Objects fall over, lots of shadows moving around, loud bumps, footsteps, as well as some phantom voices.

The day after I moved in, I woke up at 3am to a large crash from the kitchen. A few days later, I also heard my name called and footsteps in the bedroom. I shook that off as just one of those things your imagination drums up when you're all alone in a place. However, a few days later, I was in the shower when I heard the same voice call my name. It's a male voice.

I saw a man-sized shadow move across the wall one afternoon while I was working. I also heard very loud footsteps from the bathroom to the kitchen. I decided to get a roommate. She stayed about three weeks before she moved out. She said she wanted to move in with her boyfriend, but I actually think she was freaked out by some of the weird things that happen in this place. I'm pretty sure she heard her name called.

My phone often has crackling interference. Electronics break very quickly. I'm considering moving, but the apartments are so nice I'm not sure I want to give it up. We recently moved into a new house in Canterbury, England. The house is really rather beautiful and I have no complaints at all. But some strange things have been happening since we moved in.

A few nights ago I was lying in bed and as I'm lying there I started to hear footsteps running up the stairs. Now we have two children so I just thought it was one of them, but the sound kept on and on and on. It was like there was a child running up and down the stairs. I got up, left the room and it stopped. I went back to bed and it started again.

This happened several times before I went downstairs, completely awake. A few days later, I was in the kitchen when I heard someone walking behind me. I turned around and nobody was there. These footsteps happen quite often. I've decided that the house is haunted by the spirit of a playful child. We've had objects move from room to room, and doors opening and closing.

I have no idea what I can do to help this spirit, but I wanted to share this story to prove that sometimes these incidents can be completely harmless. I don't think ghosts are all terrifying and miserable. I do believe sometimes they can be just looking for fun. My older brother moved into his first home with his young wife in 1985. He invited me to spend the holiday season there.

It was late at night and we were watching TV together when we heard heavy footsteps on the second floor. We both sat there, listening as these footsteps walked across the room above us and into the second bedroom. Then we heard the footsteps walk into my bedroom. Then they stopped, but we could hear the floorboards creaking as though someone was standing still and just moving from one foot to the other.

Then we listened as the footsteps resumed and walked right back to where they started from, above our heads in the master bedroom. My brother and I went upstairs to investigate. We couldn't find anyone up there. His wife was spending time with her parents and there was nobody else staying with us. That was the only incident I heard but my brother later complained about footsteps as he was lying in bed.

doorknobs turning, voices and all manner of strange things going on in that house. His wife also complained constantly of activity. I have no doubt that there were ghosts in that house. One of the most mysterious biblical passages deals with the story of the Witch of Endor. It's a fascinating story that can be explained in many ways.

But there is no real agreement among biblical scholars what really happened when the Witch of Endor summoned the spirit of the prophet Samuel. Is it a biblical ghost story? Was the Witch of Endor a woman who possessed supernatural powers? Did she have the ability to bring back spirits of the dead who predicted the future? Or was the entire event simply an illusion? In the first book of Samuel, chapter 28, verses 3 through 25,

We learn that Saul, first king of the kingdom of Israel and Judah, is terrified with fear because the entire Philistine army had gathered to attack Israel's smaller and weaker troops. He makes several attempts to talk to God and seek guidance to his problems through dreams, priests, and prophets.

King Saul uses his mysterious communication devices, Urim and Thummim, to contact God, but he fails because the Lord refuses to speak to him. When King Saul was a young man, he was close to God, but later he became cruel and rebelled against God's word. On one occasion, King Saul murdered a whole village of priests, and now he thinks this could be the reason why he cannot contact the Lord.

Being desperate, King Saul takes two servants, disguises himself, and goes to a medium and asks her to bring up the spirit of Samuel the prophet back from the world of the dead to tell him about the outcome of the impending battle. The medium, who is the Witch of Endor, is not very responsive to his requests at first. She reminds him of his own prohibition before she engages in her occult practice.

But King Saul wants to know what will happen in the future and demands that she contact the spirit of the prophet Samuel, and so she does. The Witch of Endor is alone when the spirit of the prophet Samuel appears, and she can clearly hear his voice. Samuel's spirit says that King Saul has disobeyed God.

He reveals that King Saul will die and his entire army, including his three sons, will be defeated in battle the next day. Samuel's vision of the future was correct. The next day, Saul's army was defeated, as prophesied. His three sons died and King Saul committed suicide.

Supernatural powers and communication with spirits were common beliefs in the ancient world. But for Israelites, however, these powers were off-limits. Yahweh, God, was the ultimate power, and His transcendence meant that Israel must trust Him alone. The story of the Witch of Endor has mystified Biblical scholars and readers of the Holy Book in general. For Christians, the story causes a historical and theological problem.

Can souls be recalled from limbo or purgatory? Since necromancy was forbidden in ancient Israel, some interpreters, like the reformer Martin Luther, say the spirit was really a demon. Some Christian scholars have suggested the spirit was just an illusion, while others think this could be a ghost story. The truth is that we have no answers to these questions,

But the biblical passage made a great impression on several writers, such as, for example, Lord Byron, who once described this episode as "the finest and most finished witch scene that was ever written or conceived," concluding that it beats all the ghost scenes he had ever read. The story also inspired a poem by another famed British poet, Rudyard Kipling.

Do you like my horror-able humor episodes called Mind of Marler? If so, and you'd like more, it now has its very own podcast. Comedic creeps, sarcastic scares, frivolous frights, macabre madness. Every week I dive into strange history, twisted true crime, and paranormal weirdness. All the stuff you'd expect from me on Weird Darkness, but delivered with dark comedy, satire, and just the right amount of absurdity.

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Peer inside. One twist changes everything. A woman awakens in a grotesque, human-sized arcade game. A mysterious cigar box purchased at a farmer's market releases an ancient djinn who demands a replacement prisoner. An elderly woman possesses the terrifying power to inflict pain through handmade dolls.

An exclusive restaurant's sinister secret menu includes murder-for-hire and harvested organs. With each turn through these 20 tales, Reddit NoSleep favorite AP Royal reshapes reality, creating dazzling patterns of horror that entrance as they terrify.

Many scientists are convinced there are a number of higher dimensions and, possibly, several invisible worlds surrounding our own.

If this is the case, then there could be so-called interdimensional time portals on Earth. These interdimensional doorways would be invisible to the naked eye, but stumbling upon one of them could transport a person to a different time and unknown world. There are many intriguing stories about people who have accidentally entered different worlds through time portals

and one of them is Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard of the British Royal Air Force. In 1935, Goddard flew a Hawker Hart biplane to Edinburgh, Scotland from his home base in Andover, England. It was a weekend visit, and on Sunday, Goddard decided to fly over an abandoned airfield at Drem, not far from Edinburgh. It was closer to his final destination than the airport at which he landed.

Instructed during the First World War, the Drem airfield was not much to see. It was overgrown with foliage and the hangars were falling apart. The former airport was now a farm and cattle grazed where planes were once parked. On Monday, Goddard began the flight back to his home base, but he encountered a bizarre storm that gave him problems controlling his aircraft.

He was flying in an open cockpit over mountainous terrain without radio navigational aids or cloud-flying instruments. In the high winds of the storm's strange brown-yellow clouds, he lost control of his plane, which began to spiral toward the ground. Goddard was unable to stop the spin, and he was uncertain of his location. Things really looked bad, and he feared that the rapid fall would lead to a crash into the mountains.

He seemed to have little chance to come out of the clouds. As he looked around, he noticed that the sky was darker than ever, and the clouds were a strange yellowish-brown. Goddard was now flying at 150 miles per hour, and he was still falling. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally succeeded in leveling out his plane and managed to avoid a crash. At this point, something strange happened.

He looked around, trying to determine his location. To his surprise, he noticed that the sky was now suddenly bright with golden sunlight, and he was approaching the old abandoned airfield at Drem. As he looked around, Goddard noticed this was the same airfield, but yet everything was different. The hangars appeared to be new. There were four airplanes on the ground. Three were familiar biplanes but painted in an unfamiliar yellow.

The fourth was a monoplane. This was really odd because the Royal Air Force had no such plane in 1935. The mechanics were dressed in blue overalls, which Goddard thought odd since all RAF mechanics dressed in brown overalls. Even more curious was that no one seemed to notice him. He was flying over the airfield but none of the mechanics paid any attention to him or his craft.

It was almost as if he was invisible to the people on the ground. Leaving the area, he again encountered the storm, but he managed to return to his home base safely. Goddard told the other pilots about his unusual experience, but no one took him seriously.

His friends thought that he was either crazy or drunk, and Goddard decided to keep the story to himself for many years before finally, in 1966, he wrote down and revealed his strange encounter with an unknown place from a different time. In 1939, Goddard watched as RAF trainers began to be painted yellow and the mechanics switched to blue coveralls.

The RAF introduced a new training monoplane, exactly like the one he had seen in his flight over Drem. It was called the Magister. He learned that the airfield at Drem had been refurbished. Did Goddard, for a brief moment of time, travel into the future? It would seem so. How else could he have known what Drem Airfield would look like in four years?

Goddard's time slip is an intriguing time travel story that gives us something to think about. Did he accidentally enter a time portal while flying through the storm? The RAF pilot's mysterious time slip and encounter with the unknown cannot be neither confirmed nor denied. What we can know with certainty is that there is still so much we do not fully understand about the nature of time and space.

On April 21, 1930, a fire broke out at the overcrowded Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus and claimed the lives of more than 300 inmates. If prisons are truly haunted because of the death and tragedy that takes place in them, then the Ohio Penitentiary must have been one of the most haunted buildings in the region. Even though the prison itself is no more,

This has not stopped the stories of murder, brutality, and, of course, ghosts from being told. The prison may be gone, but some say the spirits of the past still linger. The Ohio Penitentiary opened in late October 1834 when 189 prisoners were marched under guard from a small frontier jail to the partially completed building.

As they walked along the banks of the Scioto River, they must have been amazed and dismayed by the stone walls of their new place of incarceration, as many other men would be in the years to come. Hundreds of thousands of men were sent to this prison over the next 150 years, and thousands of them died, usually violently, behind the high walls.

The penitentiary that was located on Spring Street was actually the third state prison in Ohio and the fourth jail in early Columbus. The first jail in the city had been built in 1804 and was a two-story log stockade that was surrounded by 13 whipping posts. Author Dan Morgan noted that horrible stories were told about this primitive prison and said that men, women, and children were all brought there.

They were stripped of their clothing and then tied to the posts. This was followed by whippings that left their backs resembling raw beef. Further torture was inflicted with hot ashes and coals that were spread onto their bleeding flesh. It was obviously a horrifying place. Between 1813 and 1815, the first state prison was built along Scioto Street, which later became Second Street.

It was a simple structure that housed prisoners in 13 cells on the third floor. The prison was full within a year, so the General Assembly commissioned a larger structure designed for 100 prisoners that was completed in 1818. This building provided unheated cells, straw mats on the floor, infestations of lice and rats, and was plagued by several cholera epidemics.

It also had several subterranean places of punishment called "holes" where conditions were even worse. The prison remained in use until a new building was constructed on Spring Street. However, an odd occurrence took place there in 1830. At that time, a fire of incendiary origin destroyed most of the prison workshops.

Strangely, a century later, in 1930, another fire of incendiary origin destroyed an entire cell block and claimed 332 lives at the new penitentiary. It is still considered the worst fire in the history of American prisons. American penitentiaries were originally designed as a place of contemplation for the mistakes made that caused the inmates to break the law in the first place.

Prisoners labored in silence during the day and were locked in solitary confinement at night. The men worked in factory shops located behind the walls to make leather harnesses, shoes, tailored goods, barrels, brooms, hats, and other common goods that were not manufactured by legitimate business in Ohio. The poultry food the prisoners ate usually consisted of cornbread, bacon, and beans,

and was served on rust-eaten tin plates and eaten with crude implements fashioned from broom handles. They slept on haystacks, and although fold-down beds were installed around the time of the Civil War, blankets were only issued in the wintertime. The clothing and the bedding were filthy and were major carriers of disease as laundry facilities were non-existent in the early days. There was also no medical treatment to speak of,

and epidemics, dysentery and diarrhea killed many. In 1849, a cholera outbreak killed 116 of 423 prisoners. The guards fled the grounds, and the prisoners begged for pardons. The inmates were routinely punished for both major and minor infractions.

Whipping remained the major form of discipline until 1844, but was replaced by no less cruel methods of causing pain. These included dunking inmates in huge vats of water, hanging them by their wrists in their cells, and of course, the sweat box. In 1885, the prison would begin carrying out executions as well.

The golden age of the prison came during the tenure of Warden E.G. Coffin from 1886 through 1900. A number of flattering books were written about the institution during this era, and visitors who came to tour the place could even buy picture postcards and souvenir books.

One section of the souvenir book stated, "It is to Mr. Coffin's revolutionary methods of inaugurating, perfecting, and successfully establishing humane but repressive methods in the management of the prison that the Ohio Penitentiary owes its worldwide celebrity." On Christmas Day, 1888, Columbus newspapers reported that Warden Coffin had decided to do away with such punishments as the dunking tub and the stretching rings.

Coffin said, "A hard box to sleep on and bread and water to eat will cause them to behave themselves. It may not be so speedy, but it is more humane." Despite the fact that things at the Ohio Penitentiary seemed to be changed from the outside, the prisoners had a different story to tell. In 1894, a newspaper reporter learned that prisoners were still being locked in sweat boxes as punishment and that the ball and chain were also in use.

The newspaper denounced the state of Ohio for a partial return to the Dark Ages when the stocks and pillory were used for punishment. In addition, the prisoners were still being given bad food and medical care was still very poor. They also complained of payoffs and political gaffe that resulted in some prisoners being blindfolded and tortured with water hoses, while well-connected inmates were given large cells and special privileges.

It was also during this era when the death house was brought within the walls. Prior to that, the gallows had been set up on a place called Penitentiary Hill, located in a ravine near the present-day intersection of Mound and Second Streets in Columbus. The first execution in the county had been carried out in 1844 when a convict was hanged for murder.

The day of the hanging was regarded as "truly the greatest event in the history of Columbus" and was remembered as a day of "noise, confusion, drunkenness and disorder" during which one bystander, Sullivan Street, was reportedly trampled by a horse. Two sets of physicians were anxious to obtain the remains of the hanged man. One of the groups went to his grave and exhumed him and, while they were making off with the body, they were shot at by the other doctors.

The first party ran off, leaving the body to the second group along with the now empty grave. The dead man's foot was for many years preserved in alcohol and kept on display by Drs. Jones and Little, who had an office on East Town Street. In 1885, the gallows were moved behind the walls of the Ohio Penitentiary,

Starting with Valentine Wagner in 1885, 28 men, including a 16-year-old named Otto Luth, were hanged at the end of the prison's east hall. The electric chair, considered a humane form of execution, replaced the gallows in the hall in 1897, and 315 men and women were put to death in it. This aspect of prison life became hated and feared by guards and prisoners alike,

"Corrections Major" Grover Powell, who spent 31 years as a guard at the Ohio Penitentiary, told reporter David Lohr in 1984, "Nobody ever really wanted to work the executions. Nobody ever volunteered." Death house duties, such as staying with the prisoner during the last meal, fastening the straps, or flipping the switch, were rotated.

The warden would get $75 overtime pay to split among the attending officers. Powell recalled that many of the men, even during the lean days of the Depression when extra money came in handy, did everything they could to get out of working the executions. But nothing in the history of the prison, even the macabre execution devices, matched the carnage and horror of April 21, 1930.

The fire began as a candle flame in a bundle of oily rags on the west block of the prison, paralleling Neal Avenue. Authorities later reported that three prisoners had set the blaze in hopes that it would really start to burn around 4:30 p.m. They hoped it would divert the guards' attention from their escape, which they planned to take place when most of the prisoners were still in the dining hall.

The fire smoldered too long, though, and didn't erupt for an hour after that, just after the hundreds of prisoners had been returned to the cell block. Most of the 322 inmates who died that evening perished because of the poisonous smoke given off by green lumber being used in some construction scaffolding on one part of the cell block, but others suffered a more gruesome fate.

Photographs of the debris from the fire showed evidence of incredible heat, which turned the levels of catwalks and bars into a tangle of blackened and twisted metal. Many of the prisoners were literally cooked alive. It was the worst fire in Ohio history, and the worst in the history of American prisons. The cell block had been dangerous and overcrowded, critics said, citing concerns about too many men in the prison that dated back to 1908.

At that time, over 4,500 men had been jammed into the century-old prison, with room for 1,500, and this had created the volatile conditions that had ended in the fire. The attention on the prison led to a repeal of judicial control over minimum sentences, which was thought to have contributed to the overcrowding.

A package of new laws in 1931 established the Ohio Parole Board and established parole procedures, which by 1932 released 2,346 prisoners from the Ohio Penitentiary alone. Officially, the fire was blamed on three inmates, two of whom committed suicide in the months following the tragedy.

This was the official word anyway, although many suggested that the fire had been accidental and that prison officials had blamed the disaster on the prisoners to cover up their own incompetence. Only a handful of people named a more sinister source for the fire, noting with interest that the doomed West Cell Block, which had been added to the original prison in 1875, had been built directly on top of the old prison cemetery.

The bodies, the legends say, were never moved. Were some of the former prisoners having their revenge against the prison from the other side? The 1930s saw more problems at the Ohio Penitentiary. This era began to see an increase in problems at the prison.

Many believe that the growth of the rackets and the general disrespect for the law in the 1920s and 1930s resulted in an upsurge of prison terms that had the available prisons filled to overflowing. The one-man cells at the prison were converted to handle three or more men, and the average daily count swelled to 4,100 inmates by the end of the decade.

In 1939, Warden William Amrine once again recommended the construction of a new prison, stating that conditions at the Ohio Penitentiary are a disgrace to the state of Ohio. His request was turned down, but World War II marked the beginning of a new era for the prison. The 1930s had been a horrendous time at the prison, but changes came about because the inmates were now desperately needed to produce goods for the war effort.

Warden Ralph "Red" Alves is created for the major changes in the prison, eliminating lockstep marching, the strict requirements of silence and striped prison uniforms. And while many of the restrictions were lifted and the men were kept productive during the war, the food became worse. Wartime restrictions and rationing were hard on the ordinary public, but even worse on the prisoners.

Gentry Richardson, a prisoner who began serving time at the prison in 1942, recalled, "They would give us butter beans with a piece of fat sow belly in there with hair on it. Big hairs, up to an inch long. Bad food, in fact, was a reason for the 1952 Ohio Penitentiary riot, the first of three to rock the institution over the next two decades. It would not be until after this incident that the rations would start to improve."

Warden Alves began to implement recreational programs for those incarcerated in the Ohio Penitentiary and began to assume a more humane posture toward the prisoners. His goal was to improve prisoner morale and to encourage a sense of dignity in the men. He believed this was the best way to rehabilitate the inmates and, hopefully, to release changed men back onto the streets.

Holiday boxing and wrestling matches came about as early as 1940, and a bandstand was built on the O. Henry Athletic Field, the home of the inmates' baseball team, the Hurricanes. For years, the Ohio Penitentiary drew celebrities, athletes, and performers like fighters Joe Lewis and Jack Dempsey, and entertainers such as Lionel Hampton.

Ohio State University students performed classical music and opera behind the walls, and pilots from the Lockbourne Air Force Base led literary discussions. Legendary coach Woody Hayes even once offered to help start an inmate football team. The high point of each year was always the Inmate Christmas Show, which was performed by the prisoners and always played to a full house.

A few outsiders were allowed in for each show and the tickets were always in high demand. Despite all of this, the conditions of the prison building continued to deteriorate, and overcrowding became even more of an issue. The prison population reached a record high of 5,235 in April 1955. Classrooms and visiting areas had to be used as dormitories, and many of the programs fell apart.

"With more men came more danger." One former prisoner stated, "I saw a lot of men die behind the walls. How many? I can't even remember half of them, but there was a lot of killing." On June 24, 1968, the worst series of riots in the prison's history began in the print shop, forcing a number of political decisions that would end with the closing of the penitentiary 16 years later.

The initial June riots led to at least $1 million in fire damage and the destruction of nine buildings and damage to six others. Tensions continued to mount through July and led to more riots in August, when inmates not only started fires but also took nine guards hostage. This forced a 28-hour standoff between the leaders of the convicts and the authorities that ended with an assault on the prison on August 21st.

Officers blew holes in the south wall and the roof and invaded the prison with deadly force. Five of the convicts were killed, but the guards managed to make it through alive. This strengthened the conviction that the prison needed to be closed down.

Governor James A. Rhodes ordered a new maximum security prison to be built in remote Lucasville, Ohio, and placed the old prison under the control of Warden Harold Cardwell, who immediately canceled the Christmas shows, the exhibitions, and the team sports. The prison was now under a permanent lockdown and would remain that way for the rest of its existence.

In 1972, most of the prisoners were transferred out and sent to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, which had just been completed. The old prison now housed only the sick, the psychotic, and the troublemakers. Except for the most secure areas, the place was falling into ruin. The fire-gutted buildings had been left to rot and decay, and were slowly crumbling away.

In 1979, the prison was ordered closed down for good as of December 31, 1983, but the first time in more than 150 years the Ohio Penitentiary was completely silent and empty. Or was it? Not long after the last of the inmates departed, new stories began to be told about the legendary place, and they were stories of a much darker sort.

While some stated that the only "ghosts" that remained in the prison were those of legend, remnants of the history and memories of the place, others soon began to argue that point. They believed that the fires, the executions, the stabbings, the shootings, and the quiet, desperate suicides that snuffed out thousands of lives behind the prison walls were not the only horrors to be imprinted on the desolate location.

they began to believe that the spirits of many of these angry and sinister men remained behind. Stories began to spread about the old prison site. Those who wandered too close to the old buildings or who dared to go inside began to believe that the otherwise empty cell blocks were haunted by the spirits of the men who died in the prison. There were those who even claimed to experience the phantoms connected to the horrendous fire of 1930.

It was said that by standing out in the prison yard, you could hear the roar of ghostly flames from inside and the horrible screams of the men who burned alive in their cells. These stories continued for several years until finally the prison was torn down and the site where it stood was cleared away. A sports arena was built where the prison once stood,

And in the fall of 2000, the arena became the home of the Columbus NHL hockey team. All traces of the old prison were finally destroyed. Or were they? According to reports, witnesses have spotted apparitions and have heard disembodied screams echoing across the arena's parking lot at night. This has led many to believe that the site continues to be haunted today.

Years ago, when it was first proposed that a tourist attraction or development would take place of the prison, one of the former guards spoke up: "I wouldn't care if they dynamited the place. It's the entrance to hell itself. I can't tell you what is there, what is seen and unseen." Could the destruction of the prison have erased the ghostly memories and restless souls that once lingered here, or do they remain?

still hoping for some sort of redemption to appease their troubled past. They've been here for thousands of years, making their presence known in the shadows. They might be seen by a lonely motorist on a deserted road late at night, or by a frightened and confused husband in the bedroom he's sharing with his wife. Perhaps the most disconcerting part of this phenomenon boils down to this question:

Has the government been aware of their presence all along and is covertly working with them towards some secret end? In the audiobook, Runs of Disclosure, what once was fringe is now reality. While listening, you'll meet regular people just like you who have encountered something beyond their ability to explain.

You'll also hear from people of great faith and deep religious belief who continue to have these strange and deeply unsettling encounters. Author L.A. Marzulli explores these ongoing incidents to discover the answers to these questions: Who are they? What do they want? And why are they here? Can you handle the truth? Listen to this audiobook if you dare!

"My first experience with the paranormal happened at the age of 12. My dad passed away when I was little, and I grew up idolizing my mother, a tarot card reader.

We settled down in Concord, New Hampshire, but went back to India for a couple of weeks as my grandmother was about to breathe her last. My mom was very attached to her, and Granny always wanted to meet me before she closed her eyes for one last time. So we took a flight from Boston with a layover at Frankfurt and then to Chennai. We missed our flight in Frankfurt due to a snowstorm and had to wait for a day until we got a re-booked flight.

While I was about to board the flight, I heard someone call my name. I turned back and asked Mom if she had called me and she said no. Then we took our seats in the flight and I was listening to a few songs on my Sony Walkman. We didn't have iPods or MP3 players during those days. I was trying to sleep when I heard the same voice again. I woke up and then the entire flight was empty and my granny was next to me and looking at me. I was shocked.

I was searching for my mom but couldn't see her. My granny came next to me and said, "All I wanted was to see your face one last time. But fate never let that happen, so I came looking for you. You look exactly like your dad. I wish he had lived long enough to see you grow into a man. Do not worry, I will take care of you as long as you live." She kept fading away. Suddenly I woke up and realized it was just a dream.

I immediately told Mom that I had a dream like that, and she started sobbing uncontrollably. She said she too had a similar dream, where Granny bid farewell to my mom as well. I brushed aside the fact that it was Granny's spirit and still had the slightest of hope that she would be waiting for me in Chennai. After we reached home, we realized Granny passed away a day ago

Around the same time, my mom and myself had that dream. They had to cremate her immediately, as they couldn't get a freezer box to hold her corpse until we arrived. I felt completely heartbroken. I have never seen my granny in my life, but the amount of love and affection she had on me was huge. She wanted me to come to her at least once before she died. I never had the chance to show her the same kind of affection even once.

and my fate. I will have to live with that guilt for the rest of my life. Even now, every year on the day she died, I still get the same dream, with Granny at a much happier place and constantly taking care of us. We got our cat when he was three months old. He came from the house of a crazy cat lady. She literally had 20 feral cats living in her basement. He was one of the latest litters to be born.

The woman who kept the cats didn't try to socialize him, so our cat was pretty near feral. After a few years, he started sleeping on my bed at my feet, which was as close as he voluntarily came to me, unless I was feeding him. After eight years, he became very ill, which devastated my husband, as they had grown quite close. My cat lost a lot of weight very quickly, and we put him down because he was suffering terribly.

That night, our family mourned. The next morning I woke up, looked at the foot of my bed and saw him in his usual spot looking as healthy as can be. Then he just disappeared. I mentioned this to my husband and he said he saw the cat earlier that morning in the same spot. He does not believe in spirits and immediately said it must have been the blanket and the dim light. I know it was my cat.

I know he came back to say goodbye and let us know he was at peace. I never saw him again after that." On December 7, 1939, a young woman who was regarded as a child prodigy after publishing her first novel at the age of 12 walked out of her house one evening and was never seen again. Like a character from her best-known book who disappeared into the woods one day, Barbara also vanished.

She was never seen again, and to this day, her disappearance remains unsolved. Barbara Newhall Follett was born on March 4, 1914, to writer Wilson Follett and his wife Helen. She was an exceedingly bright toddler who had an obsession with words and letters. When she was just three years old, she discovered her father's typewriter and, to his delight, became fascinated with the machine.

By the time she turned five, she was being homeschooled by her mother. This allowed Barbara as much as she wanted to pursue her creative interests. She began her first book, The Life of the Spinning Wheel, the Rocking Horse and the Rabbit, at the age of eight, brushing aside time with her friends in order to write. During her childhood years, she also created an imaginary world called "Barxolia," which she developed a complete language and vocabulary.

There was no question, she was not an ordinary child. Finally, in 1926, at the age of 12, she published her first book, The House Without Windows. She had actually completed it when she was nine but rewrote it from memory after the original manuscript was lost in a fire.

The book told the story of, in Barbara's own words, "a child who ran away from loneliness to find companions in the woods, animal friends." Wilson Follett had been working for Knopf in New York and passed along his daughter's novel to an editor. It was quickly approved for publication, and in February 1927 the glowing reviews began pouring in.

The New York Times praised the book, as did famed English children's author Eleanor Farjean, who said, "I don't know what to call this book except a miracle." Fame came suddenly for the young girl. H. L. Mencken even wrote to her parents with his congratulations. Two years later, Barbara wrote her second novel, "The Voyage of Norman Dee." Several other books followed, and Barbara's future looked bright. But such a future was not to be.

Wilson Follett, going through a mid-life crisis, decided to leave his family for a younger woman. Barbara was devastated by her father's betrayal. Helen tried to be optimistic and took her daughter on a sailing trip through the Caribbean. The mother and daughter even co-authored a book about their travels, which was published in 1932 as "Magical Portholes." Unfortunately, though, by 1929 there was little money left.

After the stock market crash, followed by the onset of the Great Depression, Barbara's plans to write for a living were dashed. At 16, she took a fast course in shorthand and found a secretarial job. Even so, her creative spirit could not be completely stifled. She wrote two more books, Lost Island and Travels Without a Donkey, but that was the end of her literary career.

Without her father's backing, Barbara burned out and settled into what seemed an ordinary life. She met a man named Nickerson Rogers, and the two eloped. For a while, things were peaceful for her. The couple settled in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Barbara traveled extensively. But after returning from a solo trip in November 1939, she learned that her husband had been cheating on her.

Barbara's life was once again in chaos, and the couple began to argue constantly. After one argument on the evening of December 7, 1939, Barbara walked out of the house with $30 in her wallet. She never came back. Nick Rogers waited two weeks before reporting his wife's disappearance to the police and another four weeks before filing a missing persons report.

Hospitals and morgues were contacted. Hotels were searched. But there was no sign of her. A public plea was sent out because no one recognized the name Barbara Rogers as opposed to her more famous maiden name. The call for information went largely unnoticed.

More than 13 years passed, but Helen Follett continued to press the authorities. She knew that her son-in-law had made little effort to find Barbara and suggested that he may have had something to do with her disappearance, but there was no evidence of that. Helen vowed to continue the search. In 1966, 27 years after Barbara vanished, Helen published a story about her daughter.

The press finally got wind of the fact that child prodigy Barbara Newhall Follett was the missing Barbara Rogers. There was a renewed interest in the story as well as in Barbara's work, but it quickly faded. There was still no trace of the missing woman.

Those who knew her best came to believe that Barbara simply decided to follow the storyline of her books, in which the characters ran off to the woods or left on a voyage across the sea when their troubles became too great. She simply had enough of her current reality, they thought, and decided to create a new one from her own imagination. We'll probably never know what happened to the young genius who just wanted to write books. We're left with the mystery of whatever happened to her.

and the mystery of what books she might have someday written if her life had not gone awry. Thanks for listening! If you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes! All stories used in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the authors, stories, and sources I used in the episode description, as well as on the website at WeirdDarkness.com.

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