SUBMERGED SECRETS: Why Do 50% of UFO Sightings Happen Near Water? Are There Aquatic Aliens?
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My dad worked in the mines of Kentucky in the steel mill in Gary. Through him, I learned what hard, dangerous work was and saw that workers like him need a voice when tragic things happen. That's why I focus my law practice on helping hardworking people get justice. Like Mike, whose hand was mangled at work because of a dangerously defective machine. We fight every day to protect the rights of accidentally injured people. In fact, it's all we do. I guess you can say it's in our DNA.

In the depths of our planet's oceans, lakes and rivers, a hidden world may exist beyond our wildest imagination. UFO researchers and investigators have long suggested that alien bases could be lurking beneath the waves, serving as permanent outposts for extraterrestrial visitors.

From the United Kingdom's coastal waters to the ancient lakes of Siberia, reports of strange underwater phenomena and otherworldly encounters have captivated believers and skeptics alike. Eyewitness accounts describe bizarre craft emerging from and disappearing in two bodies of water, while alleged abductees recount harrowing journeys to submerged alien facilities.

These stories paint a picture of an underwater alien presence that has potentially existed for thousands of years, conducting experiments and observing humanity from the shadows of our oceans. But are these tales merely the product of overactive imaginations? Or could there be some truth hidden beneath the surface?

Tonight, we'll dive into a world of mystery and intrigue as we explore the possibility of underwater alien bases. From government cover-ups to inexplicable encounters, what you hear may very well challenge your perception and beliefs of what lies beneath the waves. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness.

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. Coming up in this episode...

In 1969, a strange man's disturbing joke about strangling a woman led to the unraveling of a horrific series of murders.

Jerome "Jerry" Brudos, known as the "shoe fetish" killer, had been living a double life - family man by day, brutal serial killer by night. Somehow his childhood obsession with women's shoes spiraled into a murderous rampage that shocked the public and ended only when a secret workshop revealed its grisly contents.

In the heart of New Orleans' Garden District stands Buckner Mansion, a breathtaking testament to antebellum opulence and a magnet for ghost hunters and history buffs alike. Built to outshine its rivals, this Greek revival masterpiece has witnessed over 150 years of triumphs, tragedies and unexplained phenomena.

From its days as a slaveholder's showpiece to its starring role in TV's American Horror Story, Buckner Mansion continues to captivate visitors with its grandeur and the persistent whispers of its spectral inhabitants. In the 6th century AD, a terrifying sea monster known as Porphyrios emerged from the depths to wreak havoc on Byzantine ships, challenging even Emperor Justinian's mighty fleet.

This legendary whale, whether sperm whale or orca, became the stuff of nightmares for sailors and the subject of heated debate among historians for centuries. The enigmatic Nazca Lines have puzzled archaeologists and enthusiasts for decades, with some claiming they are ancient runways for extraterrestrial visitors or evidence of advanced human flight,

But as we delve deeper into the mystery, we find that the truth may be far more grounded in human ingenuity and cultural symbolism than sci-fi fantasies. But first... Sightings of advanced alien craft disappearing beneath the waves are as frequent as those in the skies. Are these submerged realms hiding the true secrets of alien life on Earth? We begin there. Now, bolt your doors.

Lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. The reality that many UFO and alien encounter reports contain as much detail about what occurred in the great depths below the surface of the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers around our world as they do of space cities or other planets is forgotten by all but a few.

In fact, although it is an estimation and not a verifiable statistic, there are many scientists involved with the subject who believe that at least 50% of UFO encounters happen near or above water. Also, if we remember that water is known to cover 70% of the Earth and about 90% of those parts are unexplored, perhaps these aquatic realms make an ideal place for some kind of underwater facilities.

Many UFO researchers and investigators have suggested that alien bases belonging to aquatic aliens may exist far beneath the many bodies of water around our world. After all, even today, sightings of these bizarre, advanced craft still head into the waters and vanish. Could it be that some abductees are actually being taken to an underwater facility?

And if so, what are these underwater bases and facilities anyway? Are they the short-term offshoots of foreign visitors from space? Or could they serve as semi-permanent settlements thousands of years old? Maybe the perfect starting point is to look at some of these suggested areas where alien facilities are situated underwater.

In the United Kingdom alone, UFO sightings swirl each year, with evidence of a possible extraterrestrial naval base that could exist at any point between the waves in the southeast and the southwest, miles from London. In eastern parts of the country, there's been a long-standing relationship between unidentified and visible objects that have sparked many resident sightings up and down coastal North Sea towns.

Also, several military jets have experienced strange, fast-moving objects over water off the east coast of England. More recently, an alleged UFO video has surfaced showing UFOs coming and going from North Atlantic waters off the coast of southwest England.

A webpage that logs UFO reports states that someone from the Devon area spotted a saucer-shaped craft rise out of the water late one afternoon in July and return after another dismal entity materialized from nothingness before just as speedily submerging. For completeness, we will remain in the United Kingdom briefly to address claims of UFO activity around Welsh coastlines and for some strange goings-on at sea off the shore of Puffin Island.

Dozens of residents in the region have seen lights that appear to come from the water and enter it. Furthermore, a few alien abductees from the region claim that they were taken to bases underwater on or near the Welsh coast. We should also look at the Alla Hederaive doorway discovered in the Baltic Sea, where these Vikings are merely a stone's throw from here across the water.

However, as previously mentioned, there is also the Baltic Sea location that contains an amazing grouping of UFO activity above and below water. At least one military deployment in 2014 to this politically sensitive region has been orchestrated due to unknown underwater action. In 2016, a band revealed that they had discovered what looked like an artificial structure in what was a Millennium Falcon-type anomaly on the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Of course, we can guess the finding has been written off as a natural formation, but those who've seen it are blown away by the meticulous pattern and perfect straight lines. However, its waters are not the only ones to have reported underwater alien incidents. The numerous lakes of the Americas are all equally energetic.

The lakes of North America are also hotspots for UFO activity. Indeed, one of the weirdest lakes that fit this sequence is Lake Ontario. It is not just the area around this ancient waterway that teems with activity, but it also has strange disappearances of both people and aircraft nearby on or in the waters. The same can be said for the part of Lake Erie that is within Ohio.

Numerous accounts of luminous, disc-shaped objects entering the water and vanishing have been seen. Now south of the equator, there are two bodies of water that concern us. Lake Titicaca is both one of the oldest lakes on Earth and also, with an altitude of 3,806 meters above sea level, one of the most elevated. Like others of its kind, it has a long and colorful history with both UFOs and peculiar entities.

From an ancient astronaut perspective, many of the mythologies and origin tales around Earth revolve around this one body. Black, solid objects that some claim are a type of UFO called the Black Triangle or TR-3B are supposedly entering South American lakes.

Several videos have emerged online showing reports ranging from large black solids moving underwater, including one video where an Italian tourist apparently hit a nerve in the UFO community by capturing deep waves and aquatic corkscrews. Puerto Rico is likely one of the most active nations when it comes to UFOs, especially sightings off the northeast coast. Even more curious are what appear to be revelations from researcher and journalist Jorge Martin

He asserted that he had discovered proof of man-made constructs extending from miles offshore to far below the ground in several mainland towns. He insisted that he had discovered these tunnel-like structures using pictures from NOAA satellites. One of these reputed tunnels led to the city of Ponce, which had experienced a series of odd noises coming up through the ground since around 1986.

Residents described these noises as sounding like deep drilling machines, which would stop as soon as anyone came out to check. It could be that one day an alien base underwater may be discovered in the ancient lakes of Siberia. This time, the alien tail is associated with a body of water called Lake Baikal.

unknown to the public at large. But as files leaked into the world by propagandist mouthpieces and briefing detachments across Europe following independence and the transition from communist Soviet Union government to fledgling statehoods, around 1982 a team of military research divers encountered several strange entities underwater. The account says the unit had seen unusual aerial activity in the days leading up to it and that they were tracking an unknown object for quite a while.

But it was during their return from a mission dive that many members of the unit realized they were not alone. To their surprise, there were half a dozen 10-foot-tall human-like beings, all wearing skin-tight silver suits and weird helmets, standing just off to one side, staring at them. The two groups stood, stock still, staring at each other for several seconds.

Instructions were issued to the diving unit to try and "catch" a creature. They moved toward the beings to enmesh one of them. The next thing they knew, they were soaring toward the surface of the water extremely quickly. According to the files, it looked like a high-tech sonar weapon was used by these mysterious visitors. Three of the unit members died, their ascent being so rapid that the surviving divers suffered severe injuries.

We may be a little cynical about such claims to avoid falling for intentionally planted disinformation, but it is undoubtedly one of the most intriguing yet. Assuming for an instant that this event is completely real, could it be possible that a long-kept dark extraterrestrial underwater base lurks below the Arctic Ocean in Siberia? Two enigmatic anomalies at the bottom of this lake were observed when it was mapped by satellite not long ago.

They also looked, distinctly, alien. If the planet is home to multiple undersea alien bases, one would think that information about them might come through claims of alien abduction. These cases may not be the most familiar, but there are more than a few examples suggesting such an underwater habitat. Some of them clearly state this. For instance, consider the most celebrated case of alien abduction, that of Betty and Barney Hill.

While this may at first appear as a run-of-the-mill alien abduction along some New Hampshire back road, when we look between the lines of certain transcripts from hypnotic regression sessions, there is perhaps something more to be found. In one phase of the conversation, she described being on an odd craft and then saying they might have come in about water. Another famous abductee is Betty Andreason, who confirmed that her own experiences began in childhood.

In 1950, odd creatures came into her room and allegedly abducted her, moving her to a spaceship. She was taken out and put in another type of vehicle with wheels, which were released into the ocean by remote control from the main ship. She was then taken to an odd and wondrous underwater station.

She recalled being brought into a weird room, which she later remembered as a "museum of time," containing a multitude of glass-like receptacles housing different human individuals from various historical epochs. Another alleged alien abduction of some fame is that of Linda Courtaille.

By then, the saucer had begun to turn on its bright white lights, and Cortile found that she could not move as large, shadowy figures in dark uniforms appeared above her through an otherworldly light. What was especially fascinating about the Cortile case is that two security guards saw her being abducted, unbeknownst to Cortile and Hopkins when she had reported the abduction before any regression.

They were operating as drivers and security for the then United Nations Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, late one evening. Their car stalled in the middle of the road along the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge beneath Cordile's apartment. As they got out of the car to assess the problem, they saw a lady floating in mid-air. Stranger still, above her, they could make out three odd forms hovering as well.

The security guards watched the scene until quartile was brought into the disc-shaped craft, which had remained suspended outside the apartment tower. It subsequently backed off and then dipped down to the surface of the East River. In seconds, it disappeared beneath the water.

What makes the testimony of these two security guards compelling is that Courtaille had recalled under hypnotic regression transcripts publicly revealed long before any form of contact with Hopkins or mentioning to anyone how the craft she was on board came to a sudden stop beneath the water, including virtually no movement and no sound.

She could also see, ominously through a window in this otherworldly vehicle, bottles of soda and more garbage floating on the bank, if not directly below it, somewhere beneath the East River. While these three cases may be among the best-known alien abductions in terms of public awareness, they are certainly not the only ones to consider.

The book, The Alien Jigsaw by Abductee Katarita Wilson, link in the episode description, contains a fascinating example of recall from supposed alien abduction episodes. Describing it, she said that they were in this weird craft that would take sharp turns, then go downward at a very steep angle before buoying, and suddenly realized there was water all around us.

Only then did she realize that they were going down into some kind of aqueduct or pipe under the water. Anna Jamerson's book, "Connections: Solving Our Alien Abduction Mystery," speaks of abductions via underwater tunnels and crafts entering the water. I've linked to that book in the episode description as well. In one event, just as one ocean liner was about to pull up outside the shoreline, she recalled remaining on a special craft that appeared to enter it.

She then remembered traveling underneath the massive craft and entering a long tunnel, which she perceived as having soft walls, likely water. Other encounters give far more specifics of these alleged alien abductions to underwater bases. The 1956 beachside abduction of Orlando Jorge Faraude is a case in point.

The seven-foot-tall, slender, shiny blue man stepped from the glare and led him out of helplessness on a spaceship. But instead of a trip into outer space to another planet, it took him under the waters. He ended up in what was described as a huge underwater dome, designated as a place to "get our ships refurbished."

Faraudi was informed that this alien presence had been here for many thousands of years and appeared to be conducting experiments with humans, as Earth could be a sort of zoo planet. On a quiet Miami, Florida back road in January 1979, Filiberto Cordinas was carried away by an alien vehicle on a disc inside a strange beam that paralyzed him as he approached to see why his car had died while visiting with family and a friend.

His friend reported him missing to the police. The highway was more than 10 miles away, and the man was later found in the middle of it with no memory of how he got there. Months later, during hypnotic regression, he began to remember what happened. He said that once aboard the craft with several strange-looking humanoid figures, he was strapped to a smaller vehicle. This was then ejected from the main craft and crashed into icy cold waves somewhere in the waters off Florida.

Another smaller craft went through an underwater tunnel and came to rest in a larger hangar. This, as he was informed by his hosts, was one of many such sea labs around the world. The bottom line is that there must be a link between UFO sightings and alien abductions with figures from other worlds and those unearthly underwater caverns at locations worldwide.

What that connection entails remains an open question and the subject of considerable argument. When Weird Darkness returns, in 1969, a strange man's disturbing joke about strangling a woman led to the unraveling of a horrific series of murders.

Plus, in the heart of New Orleans' Garden District stands Buckner Mansion, a breathtaking testament to antebellum opulence and a magnet for ghost hunters and history buffs alike. These stories and more on the way.

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How did you know I would bring you back home and not take you to the river and strangle you? That was the question that the strange little man asked his prospective date in 1969. When she was shocked, she pretended it had been a joke. But the young woman didn't think it was funny.

When she made the man leave, she called the police, and a short time later a search warrant was obtained for the home of Jerome "Jerry" Brudos. When police investigators opened the door to the secret locked workshop he had built onto his house, he was arrested. And on May 25th, 1969, the murders of the Shoe Fetish Killer - a serial killer that no one knew existed at the time - came to an end.

Jerry Brudos had been born in South Dakota in 1939. He was the youngest of two sons, something his controlling mother never let him forget. She had hoped for a girl and was disappointed when she got Jerry instead. Throughout his childhood, she constantly reminded him what a burden he was. When she wasn't berating him about not being a girl, she neglected and ignored him, leaving the imaginative young boy to his own devices.

One day, while exploring a local junkyard, Jerry found a discarded high-heel shoe. Fascinated, he took it home with him - the start of something he would do many times in the coming years. By the time he had started elementary school, he had started sneaking into neighbors' homes and stealing women's shoes and underwear. At one point, he even attempted to steal his teacher's extra pair of classroom shoes. He was eventually caught and punished.

but it did nothing to discourage his fetish. And if it had just remained a fetish, several lives would have been saved. Unfortunately, it didn't. By the time he was 17, Jerry's sexual appetites had led him to attacking two young women. He forced one teenage girl to remove her clothing at knife point so that he could take photos of her body.

Too ashamed over what had happened, she refused to talk about the incident. However, the other young woman reported the attack to the authorities, and Jerry was sent to a mental hospital for treatment. At the hospital, Jerry was diagnosed with schizophrenia and blamed his mother's mistreatment for Jerry's resentment of women. He was confined at the hospital for nine months, and when he turned 18, he was released. This would prove to be a fatal mistake.

Jerry returned home, graduated high school and enrolled at Oregon State University with plans to be a mechanical and electrical engineer. He missed so many classes, though, that he was kicked out. After that, he joined the Army, but was soon discharged due to bizarre obsessions. Jerry then began working at a radio station, and it was there that he met his future wife, a 17-year-old named Darcy. The two of them soon began dating.

Darcy's parents didn't approve of their daughter's relationship with Jerry, but the two of them got married in 1961. They settled down in a suburb of Salem, Oregon, and soon the couple had two children together. Jerry seemed to stay out of trouble at the beginning of the marriage and only requested mildly odd things from his young wife, like having Darcy clean the house nude except for a pair of high-heeled pumps. But the honeymoon from murder didn't last long.

Jerry began complaining of migraine headaches and blackouts. The only thing that seemed to help was to go on prowls around the neighborhood at night, stealing shoes and lace undergarments. Jerry built a workroom that was attached to the house that no one else was allowed to enter. Although no record of them exists, it is believed that Jerry also began attacking women again. There were reports in the area of women being knocked to the ground and the mugger stealing nothing but their shoes.

Was the attacker Jerry? No one knows, but it is possible. What is known is that Jerry committed his first murder in January 1968. Linda Slauson was selling encyclopedias in the neighborhood and made the mistake of stopping at the Brudos' home. Jerry acted interested to get her inside, and then he strangled her to death.

He later admitted that he kept Linda's body in his workroom for a few days so that he could dress her up however he wanted before he dumped her in the river. Before he did, he cut off one of her feet so he could use it as a model for high heels. Once Jerry had killed, he couldn't stop. His next victim was University of Oregon student Jan Whitney. She was traveling home for Thanksgiving when her car broke down. Jerry happened to be driving by at the time and pulled over to offer assistance.

Unable to get the car started, he offered her a ride to the nearest telephone. But once she was in his car, Jerry strangled her. Jan's body was taken to his workroom where he dressed her up and took photographs of her. Before dumping her body, he cut off part of her chest to keep as a trophy. Jerry killed two more times in 1969, claiming the lives of Karen Sprinker and Linda Sally.

Just as he had with the other two young women, he brought their corpses back to a secret workroom and dressed them in lingerie and heels and eventually dumped them in the river. The final two girls would prove to be Jerry's undoing. On May 10th, 1969, a fisherman near Corvallis, Oregon found a body floating in the Long Tom River. It turned out to be Linda Sally. Two days later, police divers found the body of Karen Sprinker near the same spot.

Both women had been tied to auto parts to weigh them down, but it had not worked. The investigation began with detectives questioning Karen's fellow students at the University of Oregon. Several of them revealed that they had received phone calls from a man claiming to be a lonely Vietnam veteran looking for a date. Only one student had accepted his offer.

She told detectives that the man acted strangely and asked her, "How did you know I would bring you back home and not take you to the river and strangle you?" Detectives asked her to set up a second date with the man so they could question him, and she gave Jerry Rudos the mystery date a call. When he arrived for the date, he didn't find a pretty college girl waiting for him. He found the police.

Jerry denied knowing anything about any murders, and detectives decided to release him. For now. Something bothered them about the man, though, and decided they needed to take a little closer look. Meanwhile, other detectives were looking into cases of women who'd been attacked in the area and called in one of them to look at photographs of possible suspects. Almost by accident, she picked out Jerry Brudos as her attacker.

After obtaining a search warrant, detectives searched Jerry's home on May 25th, 1969. It was in his secret, off-limits room where they found the evidence that would put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Inside the workroom, they found nylon rope and photos of the dead women, along with the trophies that Jerry kept, shoes, bras, and even a grotesque paperweight made from that woman's chest.

Confronted with the evidence, Jerry confessed to the murders on the spot. He pled guilty in court and received a life sentence. While in prison, Jerry often wrote to shoe companies and requested catalogs. Prison authorities could do nothing about it. Women's shoe catalogs were not on the list of banned materials, but maybe they should have been. When Jerry was not perusing his collection, he was busy filing appeals to regain his freedom, but none of them worked.

He died in prison in 2006 of liver cancer at the age of 67. The Garden District in New Orleans, Louisiana is simply stunning, with oak-lined streets and some of the most beautiful homes you will ever see, ranging from narrow shotgun houses to opulent, Italianate manors. But there are few as distinctive as Buckner Mansion.

Built in 1856 across from Forsyth Park on the northern end of Bull Street, this is one of Savannah's most easily recognized mansions. The house is so forbidding that the producers of Ryan Murphy's horror anthology, American Horror Story, used it as a primary location during its third season. Yet Buckner Mansion carries a dark and haunted past of its own, plagued by rumors of ghosts and other supernatural apparitions as well.

It is only natural that over 150 years since its construction, this historical site maintains an ambiance of abstraction which fails to fade in the eyes of all those who visit it. Henry Sullivan Buckner was a well-known person in New Orleans of the 19th century. Buckner was born around the year 1800 and became rich as a slaver and cotton overlord, largely responsible for central Memphis' original Fortune 500 list of landowners.

By the time he decided to commission Buckner Mansion, he had already owned multiple impressive houses. According to Visit New Orleans, when Buckner decided to construct the mansion, he was determined it needed to be larger and more grand than Stanton Hall in Mississippi, that of his former business partner, Frederick Stanton.

It was a big job. Stanton Hall, built two stories high and spanning an entire city block, is so grand that it became the model for Disneyland's Haunted Mansion ride. Nonetheless, by 1856, Buckner cast the vision of what would become both his family home and one of New Orleans' great architectural treasures: Buckner Mansion.

The last thing Mr. Buckner definitely accomplished, making an impossible-to-ignore spectacle even more so in order to show up his former business partner. Buckner hired prominent architect Louis E. Reynolds to draw the plans for him. The contract for the building described it as a two-story brick house with observatory and four pediments. The result is an opulent, palatial manor in the Greek Revival style, completely painted stark white and grey with seemingly endless verandas.

The mansion has 48 fluted Ionic and Corinthian columns, galleries on three sides of the house. It's partially surrounded by water and an enormous three-story service wing. The interior of the house is equally magnificent, with 16-foot ceilings soaring up from what feels like a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows and three very grand ballrooms. The entire property is surrounded by an elaborate stone and cast-iron fence.

The surrounding sea of oak trees, lush greenery and grand estates in New Orleans' famous Garden District only enhance the mansion's glamour. To this day, Buckner Mansion is still considered one of the most desirable pieces of real estate across neighborhood lines and remains a grand testament to mid-19th century Greek Revival architecture. Once the construction of Buckner Mansion had finished, Henry Sullivan Buckner and his wife, Catherine, moved into the house.

Laura and her husband Cartwright Eustace assumed ownership until Laura died in 1895. The mansion stayed in the Buckner family for more than 60 years before being sold around 1920. The mansion was utilized as the new home for the prestigious Solé Business College in

A two-story brick building was built during the late 1920s to accommodate classrooms. It was installed next to the house and back of the lot, so it could be turned into a school by its founder, George Solle. At the bottom of an intricate pair of front gates that welcome visitors to a sidewalk leading up to the mansion's entrance is scrawled in tiny mosaic, "The public character its color from education as the parent draws."

Solet had apparently taken these tiles from the old school to Buckner Mansion when he relocated here. It was a respected institution, the oldest business school in the South at that time. It closed in 1983 and would soon usher in a new chapter of life within the walls of Buckner Mansion. When the Solet Business School shuttered, Buckner Mansion reverted to a single-family private residence. Per Redfin, it is now valued at more than $3.1 million.

Buckner Mansion was leased by FX in 2013 as the primary location for American horror story Coven. It was used in the show as Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, a boarding school for young witches. Nowadays, hundreds of fans of the series leave their city to go and see this prominent filming spot at the house's iron gates.

According to road trippers, the last time it was listed on VRBO, a booking for the mansion would run nearly $4,700 per night. The availability of Buckner Mansion as a rental today is uncertain, but prospective tenants can get further details from the property's old listing on Villa Vacations. However, should you be lucky enough to sneak a peek inside the Buckner Mansion, be sure to know about its tragic history before your tour.

Buckner Mansion is an antebellum home with all the ghost stories you can wish for. Although the manor's appearance in American Horror Story likely bolstered its reputation for being haunted, it has a much older and darker history than that. It was constructed in the South before the American Civil War, and also when the Garden District itself had been a huge area of plantations. The Buckners themselves built their fortune on cotton and were supposedly slaveholders.

Therefore, the history of deeds connected to slavery is intertwined throughout this house. Extended to the present, as legend goes, a ghostly African-American woman referred to only by the affectionate moniker "Miss Josephine" haunts the house and stayed with descendants of the Buckner family post-Civil War. Others believe she stayed in the house after her death and still haunts the Buckner mansion grounds to this day.

Over time, inhabitants of the home have reported spotting what they believe to be the ghostly silhouette of Josephine on the stairs. Sounds identical to those that came from someone's sweeping, and even a smell thought to resemble lemon peel, one of Josephine's favorite scents, as quoted by American Ghost Walks.

Flickering lights, doors that open and close on their own, and chandeliers swinging for hours despite no breeze are just some of the paranormal experiences house visitors have reported. Naturally, none of these legends have ever been confirmed. Whether true or not, the fact remains that Buckner Mansion still attracts some to its gates over a century later with equally unshakable determination. Coming up...

In the 6th century AD, a terrifying sea monster known as Porphyrios emerged from the depths to wreak havoc on the Byzantine ships. This legendary whale became the stuff of nightmares for sailors. But first, the Nazca Lines have puzzled archaeologists and enthusiasts for decades, with some claiming they are ancient runways for extraterrestrial visitors or evidence of advanced human flight. That story is up next.

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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.

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!

"Rungs of Disclosure: Following the Trail of Extraterrestrials and the End Times" by L.A. Marzulli Narrated by Darren Marlar Here is a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com After years of intensive research, one mystery remains that cannot be explained: the enigmatic Nazca Lines. Archaeologists may have figured out how they were made, but their function remains somewhat of a mystery.

Recent research suggests that they're related to water availability and fertility rights, but the long, straight lines continue to elicit alternative explanations. Theorists suggest that these are ancient runways, but this argument lacks serious evidence. The drawings of Nazca include various figures, from identifiable animals like spiders and monkeys to abstract forms, but there's a series of straight lines that demand attention.

Those poised on the top of hills come to a sudden end at a cliff's edge, resembling airstrips. This has naturally led to theorizing that these lines are prehistoric aircraft runways or jump-off points for gliders. There are two schools of thought regarding these hypotheses: one claiming the Nazca geoglyphs were made by aliens, and another arguing they were built with flight in mind, thousands of years after the Nazca culture.

Advocates of such theories have pointed to the Ptolema artifacts, or the gold figurines, as evidence for both local and extraterrestrial flight technology. The alien explanation fails for a lack of concrete evidence supporting extraterrestrial contact beyond crashed spacecraft or rare metal alloys. Furthermore, examination indicates that these designs were etched gently with the removal of topsoil, a feat which would have been disrupted by spaceship landings.

Because the desert is so serene, any potential landing mishaps would be observable. The evidence, however, weakens the case that extraterrestrials produced the Nazca Lines, including alleged landing strips. Based on experimental archaeology, creating the Nazca Lines would have been possible for the locals with the technology of that time. According to Occam's Razor, it can be suggested that the lines were created by the Nazca people themselves, rather than proving the existence of extraterrestrial visitors.

Some fringe theorists have logically followed this conclusion and postulated that the Nazca civilization had flight and other advanced technology because of the supposed runways. To support this idea, they provide photographs of Nazca geoglyphs that resemble mechanical structures or are designed like windmills or hooks. However, we should consider that our interpretation of the designs differs from that of the Nazca people.

Critics argue that a tool named a hand axe used by early hominids might not have been an axe, but some other tool. Similarly, when a flower was identified as a windmill, it led to misinterpretations. Critics said they would rather create a flower. However, when the flower picture was juxtaposed with another, and their combination appeared as a flower, it indicated that the Nazca had a different representation.

Not every straight line is a runway, and the existence of long, straight lines does not indicate they might have been runways. Thus, the existence of alleged runways and supposed mechanical geoglyphs is too general to prove that these are artifacts of a superior technological culture. There currently is no evidence of Nazca being the origin of aircraft or flying machines. However, we have telling lines and symbols that are as close as we can get to signs of runways,

The absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but it certainly isn't encouraging either. Proponents of the ancient Nazca civilization theory also claim the inclusion of Tolima or Quimbaya artifacts. The Quimbayas produced gold pieces in the forms of frogs, birds , insects, fish, and other animals. A few winged statues that look like planes are the cause of much debate.

These figurines that resemble airplanes are essentially an upgrade on what's already a stylized animal figure, and there's no clear difference from the animals. The similarities may be coincidental, stylistic traits that an observer recognizes as early symbols of contemporary culture, not evidence of visiting astronauts or ancient interstellar air traffic.

Although gliders based on the Tolima artefacts have flown, these scaled-up designs require significant modification to take off, lessening confidence that they represent accurate models of actual aircraft. Before the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903, or even before man first took to the air in a hot air balloon on June 4th, 1783, records speak of many attempts from ancient China, the Islamic world, and medieval Europe to create something that could fly.

Nevertheless, far less evidence exists of widespread flight before the 18th century. Even though it's a very tenuous possibility, it's not enough that the geoglyphs and figurines may have some resemblance to modern-day technologies or look like runways. This by far cannot prove ancient human flight. In other words, without tangible aircraft technology, the hypothesis of ancient human flight remains unproven.

Herman Melville tells of a whole string of incidents in the book "Moby Dick" where a whale team already dedicated to hunting down those migratory cetaceans decided it was not happy about being hunted itself by man and instead attacked their boats or even their ships.

We know that Moby Dick's author used the tale of an earlier white whale slaughter, a sperm whale attack on a ship named Essex, and melded it with another true story from the same time period about yet one more giant albino, in this case appropriately named Mocha Dick. Melville, though, also carves out a few lines to mention an altogether older horror that supposedly reared its scaly head in the 6th century AD.

Porphyrios, a sea serpent whose depredations caused Byzantine mariners so much distress and ships to sink as quickly at their mornings that it had even raised alarms with Emperor Justinian. As was stated in the original text, our clearest account of an attack from Porphyrios comes from Procopius of Caesarea, a historian whose works are key to knowing anything about Justinian.

He referred multiple times and distinctively described that beast, calling it a whale both in history of the wars as well as his less trustworthy "secret history" one such example given those proportions, 45 feet by 15 feet according at least to him. Concerning the kind of whale that it is identified with, as Melville writes, "For there are some things here in this compassionable world which cannot be adequately described by anyone but Truth herself."

all these prodigies ahab at sea ranks ahab ashore but when procopius tells us about a seaborne monster much less does he say for all verifiable nautical thesauri and marine school-books are silent on all points touching whales whether it was animal or fish male or female

But we have good reason to believe, particularly if like me you know phylogy beyond Herodotus' age and phyllolos offhand, that baleen creature called grampus translates into huge spermicetic whale, the sperm whale. In the end, in reality it is not confirmed, nor is there any reason to decide which species it was. Some modern scholars suggest that this might be an orca because it is often found in the Mediterranean.

But the size mentioned by Procopius is not even close to fitting the orca. Males of this species can grow to 8 meters, and females and calves are even smaller. Thus, the more widespread opinion is that Porphyrios is a sperm whale, a marine mammal that can grow to more than 20 meters in length and weigh over 50 tons, enough to have the courage to enter into battle with ships.

In fact, as mentioned a little earlier, there are many stories that sperm whales, feeling too much attention or having to protect the calf, ram their huge heads through the hulls of chasing ships, a third of their body length.

Once, for one reason or another, they thought sperm whales were attacking them. Sperm whales live in pods, thus they have no reason to be afraid of predators, even though orcas and sharks can attack sickly young or full-grown individuals. However, in order to break the so-called "marguerite formation" - the assistivem, where the cetaceans then surround the vulnerable individual to protect him - a lot of them need to come together.

The fact that Procopius says that this whale was eating dolphins goes against the idea that this was a sperm whale. Although it could be an embellishment of the story, or it could have been a mistake in the observation that they were more often observed swimming together. Sperm whales do not swim in the eastern Mediterranean at all. They can be found in the east, but most of the sinking of the ships that Procopius mentions was in the eastern Mediterranean. The proposed theses can be contested in the following passage from Moby Dick:

For a long time, I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now, I am certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present constitution of things, a place for this habitual gregarious resort.

But further investigations have recently proved to me that in modern times, there have been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told on good authority that on the Barbary Coast, a Commodore Davis of the British Navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale.

Now, as a vessel of war readily passes through the Dardanelles and Lake, as the Sea of Memora is called, is but a continuation of the archipelago. Therefore, through the spread-out photograph of that Caesar and his title ship, therefore the whale would pass on his way.

There's one more argument in support of this version: their age. Sperm whales are long-lived and the fact is that reports of an attack on Byzantine vessels occurred for more than five decades, with periods of almost calm between these events because the sperm whale would sometimes disappear for a fairly long interval.

Apparently, Porphyrios did not differentiate. He rammed not only simple fishing vessels but also merchant and even warships, and usually this happened on the shores of the Bosphorus. It should have been visible like a parade since in addition to the sailors from the ship who patrolled this place, there were always image-keepers from the shore.

Procopius.

The Byzantine soldiers who went to Italy to fight the Ostrogoths as well carried protective amulets, it's known. This object was difficult to be solved since whaling dated back from ancient historical eras, and during modern age almost all the hunting activities were focused on smaller cetaceans – dolphins, belugas – and besides the Byzantines, neither have a tradition of whaling.

Others bring up that Theodora hired the great general Belisarius to get rid of it. He left with 500 archers and a catapult, which implies they tried both shooting arrows at him – that should have been fun – also using heavy missiles or harpoons from flying weapons, but were unable to center their aim.

This is interesting, but unfortunately incorrect, as it comes from the pen of a writer, namely Robert Graves, who thought that there's an analogy between this Sophie and Porphyrios in his 1939 book Count Belisarius, based on another classic text by Procopius, just as his famous I Claudius and Claudius the God are based upon Suetonius' The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.

It is closer to Graves who speculates that Porfirios might have been an orca on a vendetta against fishermen, a plot inspired by the 1977 movie Orca starring Richard Harris, also known as Orca the Killer Whale. Curiously, from the year 2020 on, there have been recorded about 50 cases of aggression by orcas against boats near the Strait of Gibraltar and Spanish Levant, excluding trawling interactions.

Experts explain these cases with two hypotheses: the aversion situation a negative experience involving a boat motivates an animal to seek out others and self-induced behavior . The actual Porphyrius, in any event, went on to enhance his scurrilous reputation over the years until he detracted enough Byzantine haters, a tradition through whom even the most monstrous of quadrupedal mammalian also will make a homecoming back for centuries.

We discussed Mocha Dick and others. What's interesting about the chosen name, though, is that we're not exactly sure where these cause and why stories have come from. Porphyrios is thought to be a nod either to Porphyrios Calliopus, another premier chariot driver of antiquity and again the best-known one at the time period, or else Porphyrio, a mythical giant son of Gaia who began battle against other deities before being felled by Zeus' thunderbolt.

In name, Porphyrios, on the other hand, most scholars agree it is derived from Porphyria, the colour purple, perhaps in reference to Porphyri being the appropriate shade for Imperial clothing, or maybe even due to what may have been a coloration of those animals.

As for the latter, sperm whales are naturally grey and orcas are black and white, yet depending on which way they were facing with respect to sunlight could easily have made them appear dark reddish or some shade of red, at least during certain hours. The literal translation of the name is "purple child", a meaning that has been recently dismissed.

The most important thing of this all is that, even after Edward Gibbon implied its extraordinary size and location might mean it wasn't real but rather just a metaphor, Porphyrios was the first time someone documented proof of a whale attacking human beings . We witnessed this behavior of repeating the one and same thing over again getting repeated a number of times without anyone stopping it. Then what became of Porphyrios and his uncontrollable wrath?

Sadly, he came to a bad end. I'll let Procopius tell the story. Several of them saw the whale and ran, almost all off every which way, but most near the mouth of Sangarius. The whale, meanwhile, slurped up a few it happened to catch and began swallowing them whole.

Mora may have been driven by hunger or a separatist spirit, but whatever the case, it pursued just as voraciously with each stroke of its huge black talons until suddenly, and without knowing it, found itself very near land. It beached itself there in the mud, and although it tried mightily to get out quickly, this is a shoal where you just can't turn around easily.

leading ever deeper other comers after him. But once it was discovered by all the people nearby, they instantly attacked, grinding the whale. In spite of ceaseless hacking as they swarmed up those vines to the very last individual for a moment from life,

Instead, they dragged it up with heavy ropes. Even though just ten more feet of length and four cubits ahead in the rock, there was a space to pull the megalith out easily, put her on makeshift carts, whose weight must have exceeded three rough stones. Time passed by. They then grouped in teams before dividing the whale. Some immediately consumed part of it, while others decided to preserve their peace.

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. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light.

1 Peter 3:12, "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." And a final thought: I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. Martha Washington. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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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.

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The Kaleidoscope, 20 Terrifying Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by A.P. Royal, narrated by Darren Marlar. Hear a free sample on the audiobooks page at weirddarkness.com.