SWALLOWED BY THE MIST: Strange True Cases of People Who Have Disappeared in Fog, Smoke, and Mist
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Join a community that believes in better, naturally. Visit azurestandard.com today and discover a simpler, healthier way to shop for the things that matter most. He noticed a white light shining in the dark off to the left side of the road. Thinking this to be odd, he continued on his way, only to suddenly notice that a grayish-white luminous cloud of smoke had stretched across the road ahead, almost like a wall.

He then drove right on into the eerie fog and claimed to have driven through it for almost an hour but soon found that it was so thick he could barely see the road right in front of his truck. It was all extremely odd considering that such dense fogs are exceedingly rare in such desert locales. Perplexed, the witness exited the vehicle to take a look around.

But as he did, he suddenly lost control of all of his limbs and sprawled to the ground, dizzy and numb, unable to move. As he lay there on the parched earth, surrounded by this clinging vapor, two shadowy figures approached. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness,

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Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness! An intriguing detail of some mysterious vanishings is the presence of what is usually described as a mist, fog, smoke, or cloud.

often strange in color or abnormally thick and opaque, often appearing out of seemingly nowhere. There have been several accounts of people over the years either entering mysterious clouds or, even stranger still, being enveloped by them, only to seemingly vanish into thin air, as if devoured by these nebulous vapors.

Some of the spookier and most baffling vanishings attributed to mysterious fogs or mists involve aircraft that seem to have just flown off the face of the earth. One of the more well-known of these occurred in 1914, when Chilean Second Lieutenant Alejandro Bello Silva disappeared under rather odd circumstances. On March 9, 1914,

Silva embarked aboard his plane, a snazzy new Sanchez Besa model biplane, on a flight that was to earn him his aviator certification.

The challenging flight was to take him on a circuit over treacherous mountainous terrain from Loespio Aerodrome in central Chile all the way to Culatrán, then to Cartagena, and then back to Loespio for a total of 111 miles, which for the biplanes of the day was a fairly good distance, all of it over intimidating mountain passes and peaks.

Although the flight was considered to be quite challenging, Silva was widely respected as a top student of Air Force Flight School and a skilled pilot, and it was fully expected that he would be able to complete the course with ease. After experiencing some trouble with poor visibility and damaged landing gear, he confidently took off again on his mission, all while trailed by a plane carrying a companion and an instructor.

Unfortunately, the instructor's plane experienced a fuel shortage and was forced to return to base, but Silva continued on undeterred. Witnesses would later claim that the pilot's plane entered a thick cloud bank that had gathered quite suddenly, but rather than emerging from the other side, as expected, it just seemed to have vanished. Silva never did fly out of that cloud.

and indeed neither he nor his plane have ever been seen again. The odd disappearance provoked a massive search for the missing pilot, but no trace of him or scrap of the plane was ever found, causing him to be pronounced lost and presumed dead.

Despite numerous follow-up searches and investigations in the ensuing years, to this day Silva's vanishing remains unexplained. And the case is so well known in Chile that there is even an expression there which means "more lost than Lieutenant Bello" when referring to someone having completely and hopelessly lost their way. A similarly bizarre disappearance of a plane happened in 1952 during the Korean War,

In March of that year, fighter pilot Commander John Baldwin was on patrol in the skies of Korea aboard an F-86 Sabre when he purportedly flew into a strange cloud formation and seemingly off the face of the earth. At no point was there ever any distress signal issued by Baldwin, nor was any sign of a crash ever found.

Indeed, he was a seasoned pilot, had not been engaged in any sort of dogfight at the time, and had not met with enemy fire. Upon entering that cloud, he had seemingly ceased to exist. It is not clear what became of these pilots or their aircraft, but a perhaps sinister hint can be found in a rather harrowing and unexplained account from the Vietnam War

While flying aboard a C-130 cargo plane off the coast of South Vietnam, crewman Robert L. Pollack allegedly looked outside to see a whirling, gray, cloudy mass near the rear troop door, which seemed to be pulsating and growing in size. Pollack immediately attributed it to a fire or some other malfunction, but everything was in working order, and the whole time that strange cloud grew

until it was almost filling the entire rear of the aircraft, still ominously swirling about in a clockwise motion. The now rather unsettled Pollack called other crewmen, and they too saw the amorphous mass of roiling smoke. Pollack claimed that he had tentatively put his hand within it and even stepped inside of the bizarre fog and described it as being completely dark inside, yet not having any discernible odor or taste.

Others, who put their hands in, noticed that their hands would completely vanish. Such was the utter thickness of the mist. The unidentified cloud reportedly got alarmingly large, and the crew began to back away in terror. But then it suddenly began to recede until it was just a tiny, swirling wisp, after which it disappeared, simply puttering out of existence. What was this mist?

And was it perhaps about to make this plane disappear as well? It's hard to say. It's not only planes that have disappeared into unexplained mists, and indeed one of the weirdest mass vanishings ever involved such a phenomenon.

The case in question goes back to the fighting of World War I, in particular the Gallipoli Campaign which took place on the Gallipoli Peninsula of the Ottoman Empire from April 25, 1915 through January 9, 1916.

The objective of the campaign was for the Allied powers of Britain and France to launch an ultimately unsuccessful naval and amphibious assault against the Turks to secure the Dardanelles, which is a strait that connects the Mediterranean with the Black Sea, and served as an essential sea route for their ally, Russia. At the time, the strait was controlled by Turkey, an ally of Germany's.

The eventual plan was to push through and forcefully claim the city of Constantinople present-day Istanbul, which was the Ottoman Empire's capital, and expel the Turks from the war. In the midst of the bloody campaign, there came the Sandringhams, a military unit that had been created in 1908 by King Edward VII, consisting of men that had been recruited from the staff of the Royal Sandringham Estate,

They would later be included with the 5th Territorial Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, or the Norfolks. The regiment was rather unique in that it was one of the first examples in the British forces of what came to be referred to as "Pals Battalions," which were military units made up of men who had been all recruited from the same civilian group for instance, the same town, company, or in this case, royal estate.

These were close-knit groups, comprised of men who knew each other well and, in many cases, had even grown up together. In the case of the Sandringhams, they were about to go to war together.

The Norfolk regiment, made up of 250 men, 16 officers, and led by Sir Horace Proctor Beauchamp, set out for the Gallipoli Peninsula from Liverpool on July 30, 1915 aboard the SS Aquitania and arrived at Suvla Bay in Gallipoli on 10 August 1915 amidst heavy fighting. They did not have to wait long to see battle for themselves.

On August 12, just two days after their arrival, the 5th Norfolk's as part of the 163rd Brigade were ordered to launch an intense offensive against Turkish positions holding the Anafarta Plain in order to clear them out ahead of a planned Allied advance. From the beginning, the mission was faced with serious setbacks.

The men were in poor physical condition due to the rigors of their arduous journey, the side effects of inoculations, a profound lack of sleep, and the harsh, brutally hot and arid climate of the area. Many of them were sick with dysentery and general morale was low.

In addition, the advance was to be carried out in broad daylight, with poor supplies, inadequate water, and with inaccurate maps against seasoned Turkish fighters who knew the land well and were deeply dug in along ridges. Additionally, the objective of the mission was not made particularly clear, with some of the men thinking that they were to attack the village of Anafartasaga rather than clear the way for the British assault.

It is perhaps no surprise that the attack turned into a massacre. The exhausted, thirsty and sick men first made an error and turned the wrong way, separating them from the larger 163rd Brigade. Realizing their mistake, they nevertheless prepared to advance against Kavik-Tep Ridge without support or reinforcements.

When they did, they were immediately met with a rain of machine-gun fire and picked off by numerous snipers entrenched in the ridge and sitting in trees. The Norfolk Regiment bravely pressed on into this maelstrom of blood and bullets, actually managing to push the enemy back towards a forest that was ablaze from artillery fire. Beauchamp and his men continued the charge into the burning forest, and that was the last anyone would ever see of them.

The battalion would never emerge from the forest. None would come back to tell the tale, and by most accounts they had simply vanished from the face of the earth. It was largely thought that the men had simply scattered and been killed in the heavy fighting out there in that blazing forest, but there was no strong evidence at the time to suggest this was the case. Nevertheless, this was and still is the official conclusion.

The case of the vanishing battalion remained pretty much closed until the 50th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings in April 1965, when a New Zealand World War I veteran by the name of Frederick Reichardt, along with two of his compatriots, came forward with their own alleged first-hand account of what he saw on that fateful day.

The story was recounted by Reichardt during a reunion of veterans and offered a bizarre, if controversial, twist on the tale of the famed missing battalion. Reichardt went on record saying that they had been sappers with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and that they had been operating in an area near a Turkish position known as Hill 60, which was not far from where the lost Norfolk Regiment had been waging war.

The sapper claimed they noticed between six and eight odd, grayish-brown, loaf-shaped clouds hovering over the battlefield. The weird clouds were described as being completely still, even in the face of high winds at the time. Beneath these clouds was reportedly another even larger and denser-looking cloud that was estimated at being around 800 feet in length, around 200 feet high.

This massive cloud was allegedly hugging the ground over a dry creek bed when the Norfolk Regiment approached, and without hesitation they proceeded to march directly into it. When the regiment had disappeared into the cloud, Reichardt claimed that it had then slowly risen upward to join the other strange clouds, apparently taking the soldiers with it, after which they all moved off to the north in unison before disappearing from view.

The bizarre story was first published in the September-October edition of the New Zealand UFO magazine Spaceview in 1965.

The story would be somewhat corroborated when in 1966, another New Zealand veteran of the campaign, Gerald Wild, told Spaceview magazine that although he had not seen the disappearance directly, he had heard many rumors among soldiers that the entire Norfolk regiment had disappeared into a cloud that had been straddling the ground.

It was a rather bizarre story that flew in the face of the official conclusion of what had happened to the vanished battalion, but it was immediately jumped upon by UFO enthusiasts and became an almost legendary tale among missing person cases, particularly those suggesting alien abduction. The story took on a life of its own.

especially among alien abduction enthusiasts, and would be told again and again in various publications, each time gaining further details or having the details changed somehow. People just couldn't seem to get enough of this sinister tale of a cloud-shaped UFO whisking away a whole regiment of men in the middle of a battlefield.

The story gained such a following amongst the public that the British Ministry of Defense and the Imperial War Museum were constantly deluged with letters demanding the release of top-secret files that outlined the mass alien abduction and that it had been covered up.

Things got weirder still when a secretive group of U.S. scientists and officials, referred to as MJ-12, released a report on the same incident in a paper titled "First Annual Report" in 1998. The document is apparently an annex to another paper that describes the incident dating to 1952. The First Annual Report describes the incident thus:

On August 21, 1915, members of the New Zealand Army Corps' 1st Field Company signed sworn statements that they saw the 1/4 Norfolk Regiment disappear in an unusually thick brown cloud which seemed to move and rose upward and vanished. There were no traces of the regiment nor their equipment. No explanation can be found in the historical records of the Imperial War Museum archives.

Although this particular statement is thought to be a hoax, it adds an intriguing layer to the whole mystery. Another report that takes the story into a decidedly paranormal direction is a claim made in a 1967 book titled "Flying Saucers Are Hostile:

in which authors Brad Steiger and John Rittenhour claim that a further 22 more witnesses from the New Zealand military eventually came forward to corroborate Reinhardt's story, and also they share what they refer to as part of the official history of the Gallipoli campaign.

In the book, the authors state that this official history describes how the Norfolks were ensconced with a strange, unseasonable fog which reflected sunlight in such a way as to produce a blinding glare in which artillery personnel had been unable to fire. There have been many, many theories as to what happened to the now almost legendary Vanished Battalion,

ranging from that they were gunned down and massacred by Turkish forces and their deaths covered up by the War Office, to that they were whisked away to another dimension or another world. The story has certainly been played up and exaggerated over the years, and fact can be difficult to distinguish from fiction.

But the idea of a whole battalion of men disappearing into strange unexplained clouds is a powerful one that has remained pervasive in the field of the paranormal. More recently, and not nearly as well known, is an eerie disappearance in the country of Japan. On November 19, 1963, a Tokyo bank manager, an employee, and a customer were in the manager's car on their way to play a game of golf.

This is not so strange in and of itself, as golf games are common venues for business transactions in Japan. What is weird is what they would witness along the way. For much of the way, a black car had been in front of them, and when they pulled up next to it they noticed that the front windows were tinted and that in the rear there was an elderly man calmly reading a newspaper.

Although the car was somewhat odd to them, the witnesses did not think much of it, until a white smoke or fog began to envelop the car, seeming to come out of nowhere. The smoke was exceptionally thick and soon had completely obscured the vehicle, although it did not spread to anywhere else. After a few moments, the fog inexplicably dissipated, and when it did, the black car was simply gone.

The witnesses would later claim that the whole episode had lasted only a few seconds. What in the world is going on here? An even more terrifying encounter allegedly occurred in April of 1992, and while it did not result in a vanishing, it certainly seems like it was headed in that direction.

On the evening of April 12, the anonymous witness was driving through the desolate desert wasteland of US-180 near Deming, New Mexico, at approximately 11:20 p.m., when he noticed a white light shining in the dark off to the left side of the road. Thinking this to be odd, he continued on his way, only to suddenly notice that a grayish-white luminous cloud of smoke had stretched across the road ahead, almost like a wall.

The witness then drove right on into this eerie fog and claimed to have driven through it for around an hour, but soon found that it was so thick he could barely see the road right in front of his truck. It was all extremely odd considering that such dense fogs are exceedingly rare in such desert locales. Perplexed, the witness exited the vehicle to take a look around,

But as he did, he claims that he abruptly lost control of his limbs and sprawled to the ground, dizzy and numb and unable to move. As he lay there on the parched earth, surrounded by this clinging vapor, two shadowy figures approached out of the murk to grab him by each arm and began hauling him through the smoke towards a shiny metallic object situated nearby.

According to the witness, these beings brought him through a rectangular opening in the side of the craft and placed him in a chair-like device. It was now that he could see that the two figures were not human, but rather slender, bony entities around five feet in height with oval faces and large black eyes.

The chair was put into a reclining position, and the witness claims that something was inserted into his nose, some type of tube or device which caused a distinct buzzing and stinging sensation that caused him to shout out. The two beings were apparently startled, reportedly then throwing him back outside, after which he levitated to his vehicle and the thick fog melted away to leave him there shaking and sobbing in the desert night.

These cases surely cover a range of disparate disappearances, and what I like to call near-vanishings, and perhaps there's no real connection to any of them other than the presence of strange clouds, fogs, smoke, and mist. Yet, one wonders just what the significance of this detail is on the outcome of what happened to these people. Was it just coincidence? Or did this fog have some dark meaning and effect?

If so, then where did it come from? And what does it mean? Is this aliens? An interdimensional phenomenon? Or something altogether even stranger still? The answer remains unclear. No matter what has happened here, the one thing we can be sure of is that in most of these cases, these people encountered clouds or mist and ceased to exist.

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Today, tourist pamphlets and websites will earnestly tell you that Lavinia Fisher was America's first female serial killer, when in fact there is no hard evidence that she ever killed anyone. What we do know is that she was a violent and unrepentant outlaw. She earned her fame by being a tough woman with a bad attitude in a town known for its genteel Southern Bells.

The legend of Lavinia Fisher will vary from teller to teller, but the gist of the story, told for more than a hundred years, goes something like this: John Lavinia Fisher owned an inn, the Six Mile House, on a lonely road outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The building was well-maintained and was a welcome sight to weary travelers, but it was rumored that sometimes guests checked in and did not check out.

One night, a fur trader named John Peoples stopped at the inn and was warmly greeted by the fishers. The beautiful Lavinia fisher was especially friendly. Peoples thought the fishers were being a little too friendly, and, suspicious of their intentions, he went to bed early. Peoples' suspicions grew, and he could not sleep. He decided not to lie in the bed but to sit in the corner, facing the door, so he could see if anyone came in to attack him.

His suspicions were confirmed when a trapdoor sprung, dropping the bed into the cellar where John Fisher was waiting with an axe. Peoples escaped and hurried back to Charleston to tell the authorities. John and Lavinia were arrested, and their property searched. The human remains were found, including many bodies in a lime pit in the cellar under the trapdoor. The Fishers were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang,

The unrepentant Lavinia Fisher went to the gallows in 1820 wearing her wedding dress. John Fisher pinned all the blame on his wife, but he was hanged along with her. Lavinia's ghost now haunts the old jail on Magazine Street in Charleston, as well as the Unitarian Cemetery. Lavinia Fisher was hanged in 1820, but the crime was highway robbery, a capital offense at the time, not murder.

She was a member of a large gang of highwaymen who operated out of two houses in the backcountry outside of Charleston, the Five Mile House and the Six Mile House. It's not clear whether or not the Six Mile House was a hotel, but it did serve as a hideout for a number of outlaws. Wagon trade in and out of Charleston was a profitable business and an important part of the city's economy.

In 1819, trade was disrupted by a gang of highwaymen stopping wagons on the road and stealing goods and money. Since the victims were unable to identify their assailants, the authorities were powerless to act. A group of Charleston citizens decided to take matters into their own hands and, if necessary, invoke Lynch Law.

According to the Charleston News and Courier, a gang of desperadoes have for some time past occupied certain houses in the vicinity of Ashley Ferry, practicing every deception upon the unwary and frequently committing robberies upon defenseless travelers. As they could not be identified and thereby brought to punishment, it was determined by a number of citizens to break them up, and they accordingly proceeded, in a cavalcade on Thursday afternoon, to

to the spot, having previously obtained permission of the owners of some small houses to which these desperadoes resorted, to proceed against the premises in such manner as circumstances might require. The cavalcade proceeded first to the Five Mile House where they gave the occupants 15 minutes to vacate the premises before they burned it to the ground. At the Six Mile House, they evicted the occupants and left a man named Dave Ross behind to guard it.

Believing their work was finished, the cavalcade returned to Charleston. The next morning, two men from the outlaw gang broke into the house and assaulted Dave Ross, driving him outside where he was surrounded by a gang of nine or ten men and one woman, the beautiful Lavinia Fisher. Ross looked to Lavinia for help, but she choked him and shoved his head through a window.

Two hours later, John Peoples was heading out to Charleston in his wagon and stopped near the Six Mile House to water his horse. He was accosted by the gang, including Lavinia Fisher. They stole about $40 from him. Peoples returned to Charleston, and this time he was able to tell the authorities the identities of his attackers.

He did not know all of their names, but he had just cause to believe that among them was William Hayward, John Fisher and his wife Lavinia Fisher, Joseph Roberts and John Andrews. This, along with Dave Ross' story, forced the authorities to act. Sheriff's Deputy Colonel Nathaniel Green Cleary got a bench warrant from Judge Charles Jones Colcock and set out for Six Mile House.

John and Lavinia Fisher, along with several members of the gang, gave up without a fight and were taken to jail in Charleston. Over the next several days, many other gang members were arrested. John Peoples identified them as the group who robbed him. John and Lavinia Fisher were charged with highway robbery, a hanging offense at the time. While they were awaiting trial, a grave containing the remains of two human bodies was found about 200 yards from Six Mile House.

They were believed to be the bodies of a white man and a black woman, dead for at least two years. With so many people in and out of Six Mile House during that time, it was impossible to identify their killers, and no one was ever hanged for their murders. Only two bodies, no more, were found at Six Mile House. The trial took place in May of 1819. The Fishers pleaded not guilty to the charge of highway robbery, but the jury thought otherwise.

The verdict? Guilty of highway robbery. John and Lavinia planned to appeal their conviction to the Constitutional Court, and while they awaited the hearing, they were kept in the Charleston jail. Because they were a married couple, John and Lavinia were kept in the debtor's quarters in the upper part of the jail rather than the heavily guarded lower floor. On September 13, they attempted to escape through a hole they made under the window of the cell.

John went first down a rope made of blankets, but it broke before he reached the ground. He could have escaped alone, but chose to stay behind with Lavinia. Their motion for a retrial was rejected by the Constitutional Court, and the Fishers could do nothing now but wait for execution. The Reverend Richard Furman would visit them often to help them make peace with their maker. He appeared to make some headway with John, but Lavinia was more likely to curse than pray.

On February 4, 1820, they were taken to a gallows erected on Meeting Street just outside the city limits of Charleston. Each was wearing a loose-fitting white robe over their clothes, possibly the source of the wedding dress myth. It was a public execution, and everyone, including the fine ladies of Charleston, came out to see Lavinia Fisher

John mounted the gallows peacefully, but Lavinia had to be physically dragged to the platform where she beseeched the crowd to help her. According to one historian, she "stomped in rage" and swore with all the vehemence of her amazing vocabulary, calling down damnation on a governor who would let a woman swing. The crowd stood shocked in silence while she cut short one curse with another and ended with a volley of shrieks.

When Lavinia was quiet, Reverend Furman read a letter from John Fisher in which he thanked the Reverend for explaining the mysteries of our holy religion. John then told the crowd he was innocent and blamed Colonel Cleary for coaching the witness who accused him. The legend of Lavinia Fisher had probably already started, but her last words to the crowd, her true last words to the crowd at her hanging, guaranteed her immortality.

"If you have a message you want to send to hell, give it to me, I'll carry it." The Fishers were buried in a potter's field, not the Unitarian cemetery Lavinia supposedly haunts. It is strange that Lavinia Fisher has a legend as a murderess when, in fact, it is unlikely that she ever murdered anyone.

It is possible that somewhere along the line, the legend of Lavinia Fisher became confused with the true and well-documented crimes of the bloody Bender family in Kansas in the 1870s. So we will look at that case next. In the early 1870s, the counties of Labette and Montgomery in Kansas were experiencing an alarming number of missing persons.

The investigation passed several times through the cabin of the Benders, a family of German immigrants who ran a small grocery store and restaurant outside of Cherryvale, Kansas, but the Benders appeared completely innocent. When authorities found the cabin abandoned one day, the picture changed. A closer look revealed nine murdered corpses. The handiwork of the bloody Benders.

Around 1870, the Bender family built a small cabin outside of Cherryvale, Kansas, about 50 miles north of the Oklahoma border. William Bender and his wife, sometimes referred to as "Ma" Bender, were in their 60s. Thomas and Joanna, better known as Kate, were in their 20s. They were German immigrants, all spoke with accents, and the elder Benders spoke little English. It is unclear exactly how these four were related.

Most accounts say that Thomas and Kate were the son and daughter of William Bender and his wife, but Thomas was also known as John Gebhardt and is sometimes referred to as Kate's husband. Other accounts say that none of them were actually named Bender and that only the mother and daughter were related. The men are described as large, coarse-appearing men.

The description of Kate ranges from "a large, masculine, red-faced woman" to "good-looking, well-formed, rather bold in appearance." A number of sources agree that she had a "ruddy complexion" and she may have been a redhead. The Benders kept a small grocery store in the front of the cabin, selling staples such as tobacco, crackers, sardines, candles, powder, and shot. They also provided meals for travelers.

Though they kept to themselves, the Benders attended church and town meetings and seemed to be an ordinary rural family. The only exception was Kate, who professed to being clairvoyant, giving public lectures on spiritualism and advertising in local newspapers her ability to "heal disease, cure blindness, fits and deafness."

In 1873, citizens of Labette County became concerned over the inordinate number of missing persons in their community. Neighboring counties were experiencing losses as well. In March 1973, Dr. William York from Onion Creek, Montgomery County, came in search of a man named Lausher and his infant daughter who had traveled in the region the previous winter and were never heard from again. Dr. York never made it home either.

Dr. York was from a very prominent family, and in April, his brother, Colonel A.M. York, came to Labette County leading a party of 50 citizens of Montgomery County. They searched unsuccessfully for the missing doctor, stopping several times at the Bender's cabin. On one occasion, they asked Kate to use her clairvoyant powers to help with the search, but she had no information for them. The next time someone stopped at the Bender's cabin, it appeared to be deserted.

Their wagon was missing, and a calf they were raising had died of neglect. The authorities in Cherryvale were notified and went back to check on the house. Everything seemed to be in order. Nothing was missing but clothes and bedding, but a thorough search of the house began to reveal the Bender's horrible secret. Near the table where guests were served was a trap door, and the foul-smelling hole beneath the door was clotted with blood.

The ground in an orchard near the house had been carefully plowed, but one small section was noticeably indented. The ground was dug up, revealing the decomposing body of Dr. York. His skull had been crushed and his throat had been cut. Before nightfall, seven more bodies were extracted, and another was found the next day. Most were badly decomposed, but were still identified by clothing and jewelry. They were W.F. McCrotty of Cedarville,

D. Brown of Cedarville, Henry F. McKenzie of Hamilton County, Indiana, Mr. Lauscher and his baby daughter from Independence. Two unidentified men and one child believed to be an eight-year-old girl. Another body previously found in Drum Creek was also attributed to the Benders. All but the baby had fractured skulls and slit throats. It was believed that the baby was suffocated when buried alive with her father.

The eight-year-old girl's body had been badly mutilated. The travelers were murdered for their money. The amounts stolen by the vendors ranged from $0.40 to $2,600, along with horses and wagons. From the conditions of the bodies and the arrangement of the house, the authorities were able to surmise how the killings were done. The table where customers took their meals was in a small booth formed by cloth partitions on both sides.

The partitions were close enough to the back of the chairs that, when sitting upright, the heads of the diners would indent the cloth. The mailbenders would wait behind the cloth partitions, and when the opportunity presented itself, would smash their victims' skulls with stone-breaker's hammers. The bodies were thrown through the trapdoor into what one book called the slaughter pen, where the throats were cut to guarantee death. After dark, the bodies were removed and buried in the orchard.

This speculation was verified, to an extent, by a Mr. Wetzel of Independence, Kansas, who had read Kate's advertisement and traveled to the Benders with his friend, Mr. Gordon, seeking a cure for neuralgia. Kate examined Wetzel and expressed confidence in her ability to effect a permanent cure but invited them to dine first. For some reason, the two men rose from the table and decided to eat their dinners at the counter instead.

This caused a change in Kate's behavior. She became caustic and abusive toward them. They saw the two Bender men emerge from behind the partitions. Wetzel and Gordon became suspicious and decided to leave, a decision that probably saved their lives. When the news of the murders spread through Labette County, it whipped the citizens into a frenzy. They demanded vengeance and formed vigilance committees to hunt down the Benders.

The vigilantes went first to the home of a man named Brockman, another German immigrant who had briefly been a partner of Mr. Bender's. They put a rope around his neck and threatened to hang him if he would not confess. When Brockman swore he knew nothing, they hanged him from a tree, but when he was at the point of death, they lowered him down and questioned him again. When he still had nothing to tell him, they hung him again. This torture was repeated three times before the posse left him, semi-conscious, lying on the ground.

The search for the benders continued, but though the governor of Kansas offered a $2,000 reward for their capture, the benders were never brought to justice. One investigation determined that they took a train from Thayer to Chanute, where John and Kate got off and took the M, K, and T train south to Red River in Indian Territory. Here they met up with the elder benders and traveled through Texas and New Mexico. Other residents of Labette County told a different story,

While researching the Bender's story for his 1910 book, Celebrated Criminal Cases of America, San Francisco Captain of Police Thomas S. Duke contacted police chiefs of Cherryvale and Independence, Kansas, and this is how they responded: "Cherryvale, Kansas, June 14, 1910. Dear Sir, Yours just received. It so happened that my father-in-law's farm joins the Bender farm and he helped locate the bodies of the victims.

I often tried to find out from him what became of the Benders, but he only gave me a knowing look and said he guessed they would not bother anyone else. There was a vigilance committee organized to locate the Benders and shortly afterward, Old Man Bender's wagon was found by the roadside riddled with bullets. You'll have to guess the rest. I am respectfully yours, J. N. Kramer, Chief of Police. Independence, Kansas, June 14, 1910. Dear Sir,

"In regard to the Bender family, I will say that I have lived here 40 years and it is my opinion that they never got away. A vigilance committee was formed and some of them are still here but will not talk except to say that it would be useless to look for them and they smile at the reports of some of the family having been located. The family nearly got my father. He intended to stay there one night but he became suspicious and although they tried to coax him to stay, he hitched up his team and left.

Regretting that I cannot give you more information, I am yours respectfully, D. M. Van Cleve, Chief of Police. Several times suspected members of the Bender family were arrested in other parts of the country and brought back to Kansas to be tried. Most notably, in 1890 two women were arrested in Michigan and alleged to be Ma Bender and Kate,

Their attorneys had affidavits proving that they were Mrs. Elmira Griffith and Mrs. Sarah E. Davis and were in Michigan between 1870 and 1874. After a habeas corpus hearing, they were released from the Labette County Jail. The true fate of the Bender family remains a mystery. After my divorce, I moved into a small apartment while I tried to make sense of my life. During this time, I spent a lot of my spare time at home.

While I never saw anything physical, I found that the more time I spent at home, the worse I would feel. I would go through stages of anger, pain and hatred, intense hatred during my time at home in that apartment. I felt feelings there that I never felt when I was out of the house. It would creep over me from that moment I arrived home to the moment I couldn't stand it anymore. Now, at the time, I thought this was all part of the grieving process.

But a few months after moving in, I started talking to the lady who lived next door. She told me that very few people had stayed in that apartment for long. When she had first moved in, a married couple had lived there. They had gotten divorced two or three months after she moved in. They lived in the apartment for around a total of six months. After her, a student moved in and was involved in a crime of passion, and then I moved in.

Keeping all the previous occupants of that apartment in mind, I started to wonder if my intense anger and hatred was created by living in that place. I decided to move, moved and found that I don't have those feelings anymore. If I was asked, I'd say that place is cursed. You might think differently.

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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. Hear a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com.

Now there's a new way to share weird darkness with the weirdos in your life. It's a skill on your Amazon Echo device. Just say, play Weird Darkness, and you'll immediately start hearing the newest episode. With your Amazon Echo or smart device, you can let me keep you company all day and all night. And it's easy to tell your friends how to tune in, too. Just tell your Amazon device, play Weird Darkness, to start listening.

On Saturday, October 13th, there was a raucous party on the banks of the Chunky River, yards from the infamous Stuckey's Bridge in Mississippi. Most of the partygoers keep together at a safe distance from the legendary bridge, but a few have separated from the crowd to attempt climbing it. The bridge climbers say they're not there for the party. We're on a ghost hunt, they say.

Stuckey's Bridge is a 157-year-old structure that crosses the Chunky River in Savoy on the aptly named Stuckey's Bridge Road. In the 20th century, it replaced its long-lost function of bridge with the new functions of party spot and legend manufacturer.

Having been built a decade prior to the Civil War, the bridge, which is made of wooden planks and rusty metal, was never meant for the use of cars. But many people drive across it anyway, oblivious to its loud creaks and moans, paying no mind to the distance between themselves and the water below. There are many legends surrounding the bridge's namesake, the most popular casting him as a Norman Bates-style innkeeper/serial killer.

But the most believable telling of the legend appears in L. N. Fairley and J. T. Dawson's Paths to the Past: An Overview History of Lauderdale County, which is published by and can be found within the Lauderdale County Department of Archives and History. That version of the legend begins with the passage through Meridian of the infamous Dalton Gang. The gang is said to have left behind a member by the name of Stuckey.

Stuckey, according to legend, murdered and robbed countless victims in the southwestern corner of the county during the first half of the 19th century. Stuckey allegedly slayed travelers and stole their money, throwing their bodies into the Chonky at the future site of the bridge. After the bridge was erected in 1850, Stuckey was caught, tried, and then hung from the railings of that bridge.

Legend holds that Stuckey haunts the bridge to this day, bitter and menacing, angry at having been subjected to the same fate as his victims. Today, the bridge is covered with graffiti of years of visitors. Some of the jottings are light-hearted, such as "Stuckey for President," says one, "Save the Bridge," says another. But others are more in keeping with Stuckey's murderous legacy, such as "Don't Turn Around," which is scratched in black marker along the railings.

or you will die. Flippant bits of graffiti may appear alongside the more ominous sets Ducky's Bridge, but the stories all remain on the sinister, if not always serious, side. The ghost pulled me off the bridge, one Clarkdale student claims, lifting his shirt to show the scars that he supposedly obtained in the encounter. However, the ghost is more commonly reported to manifest itself in the form of visible apparitions or untraceable sounds.

According to roadsites.org's Lost Highway, many claim to have seen the ghost in the form of an old man carrying a lantern along the banks of the Chunky, or to have heard the conspicuous sound with no apparent source of a loud splash from beneath the bridge.

Rumor holds that the splashes are echoes of Stucky's body hitting the water after being cut from the noose, and that anyone looking in the right spot at the time of the splash will be able to see a glowing spot where his body met with the cold waters of the Chunky River. Probably the most popular story about Stucky's ghost, however, is that on certain nights his corpse can be seen still hanging from the bridge, and those who see it had better run.

Stuckey's Bridge was posted to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. If you'd like to experience the legend for yourself, you can find it on Stuckey Bridge Road in Savoy, where it intersects with Meehan Savoy Road. Just look for the sign that says Stuckey Bridge Closed in big black letters. And a word to the wise, don't drive over it! 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. If you like the show, please, share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do! You can email me and follow me on social media through the Weird Darkness website.

WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find information on sponsors you heard during the show, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, get the email newsletter, find other podcasts that I host. You can visit the store for creepy and cool Weird Darkness merchandise. Plus, it's where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression, addiction, or thoughts of harming yourself or others.

And if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell of your own, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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.

Monsters, myths, mysteries, mirth, and more every Monday with Mind of Marlar. I like alliteration, can you tell? You can find a list of where you can subscribe to the podcast at WeirdDarkness.com under the menu tab for podcasts.