THE WITCH VILLAGE OF TRASMOZ: The Covenstead Cursed By The Catholic Church
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So sign up now at ChumbaCasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's ChumbaCasino.com and live the Chumba life. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW group void where prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply. Nestled away within the rolling foothills of the Moncoyo Mountain Range in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain is the tiny village of Trasmoz.

The town has a long history, with its origins as a lordship dating back to the 12th century. Its colorful and turbulent past has seen it being conquered by Jaime I, King of Aragon, as well as a civil war with the nearby Varuella Abbey, and it is also known as being the temporary home of a Spanish man who invented the mop and bucket.

Over the years, the population has dwindled here from around 10,000 people in its heyday to just around 62 permanent residents, and it seems like just another quaint little Spanish countryside town. But this place is remarkable as having a rather sinister past as a place of witches, pagan rituals, and black magic. 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.

If you're new here, welcome to the show! While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, to visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter, enter contests, connect with me on social media, hear other podcasts that I host, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression, dark thoughts, or addiction. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

Now bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness! Ground zero for rumors of witchcraft in Spain can be traced to the construction of the castle of Trasmas sometime in the 13th century.

The layout of the spooky and imposing structure was a unique hexagonal shape, which was seen as a sure sign of witchcraft afoot. And it did not help that the castle supposedly constantly issued forth anomalous noises such as rattling chains, the banging of metal which was seen as the result of witches mixing potions in their cauldrons and other mischief, as well as occasional shrieks and arcane wails.

Even the construction of the castle was wreathed in myth, as it was said to have been created in a single night by a magician called Mutamin. Many of these bizarre rumors seem to have been originally intentionally spread by the castle's very own inhabitants. At the time, the castle of Trasmaz was said to be a major den of the illicit manufacture of fake coins, which was helped along by the rich silver and iron mines of the area.

It is said that in order to keep the locals from becoming too nosy about all the noise they were making, the counterfeiters intentionally began to fan out rumors that the scraping and banging of metal was from the nefarious activities of witches engaged in their dark, arcane business. And the ploy worked, and it is thought that this was where the village's reputation as a haven of witches began.

Unfortunately for the villagers, the rumors spread by the fake coin forgers worked a little too well. Before long, the rumor grew to encompass the whole village, until it was seen as a veritable hive of witches and warlocks, a cursed place, and a center of the dark arts that stirred fear and superstition in the surrounding areas, an idea still held onto by many today.

It got to the point that the neighboring monastery of Varuela had the entire village officially excommunicated from the church, although this is often seen as just being an excuse to force Trasmas to pay taxes to them, something from which they had previously been exempt, as it didn't officially belong to the Catholic Church.

With the excommunication carried out and in full effect, the villagers nevertheless refused to beg for forgiveness, with many of them Jews and Muslims, and not even Christian, which only furthered their reputation as devil-worshipping heathens. The friction between Trasmas and Varuela Abbey would continue for many years, eventually almost leading to civil war when the abbey began trying to divert the village's irrigation water without paying.

Although the King of Spain, King Ferdinand II, deemed Trasmas to be in the right in terms of the water dispute and ruled in their favor, the Church took this as an affront. Seething that they had been bested by this witch-infested, excommunicated town, the Catholic Church went about getting revenge.

Pope Julius II gave permission to dust off the powerful and rarely used Catholic curse Psalm 108 of the Book of Psalms, which is said to be a potent curse saved for the worst of times, and in this case, it was invoked to curse the entire village of Trasmos. Psalm 108 reads as thus, a song, a psalm of David.

My heart, O God, is steadfast. I will sing and make music with all my soul. Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn. I will praise you, Lord, among the nations. I will sing of you among the peoples, for great is your love, higher than the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth."

Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered. God has spoken from his sanctuary. In triumph I will parcel out Shechem and measure off the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine. Manasseh is mine. Ephraim is my helmet. Judah is my scepter. Moab is my washbasin. On Edom I toss my sandal. Over Philistia I shout in triumph."

"Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom? It is not you, God. You have rejected us and no longer go out with our armies. Give us aid against the enemy, for human help is worthless. With God we will gain the victory, and he will trample down our enemies." Why this somehow was seen as a curse is beyond me.

It was in the wake of this wicked curse that the once prosperous and populous village fell into severe decline, suffering from a mysterious epidemic of disease, famine, a fire which burned down the castle of Trasmas in 1520, and other myriad woes, during which time the population fell to its current low.

Even to this day, the village is poor and in shambles, its buildings weathered and decrepit, its nearly empty streets cracked and weed-choked, a veritable ghost town, and for many this is a result of the Catholic curse, which is technically still in effect, as no pope has ever officially lifted it.

This makes Trasmas the only entire town in all of Spain to remain both excommunicated and also cursed by the Catholic Church, as well as to incidentally still be considered a haven for witches and witchcraft. This reputation has brought in droves of tourists to this tiny withered village who come for the dark history and to see for themselves what an officially cursed town of witches looks like.

Trasmoz does little to downplay this history of witchcraft, and indeed there is the yearly festival held there, during which amulets, potions, herbs, charms, and other magical witches' items are sold, and there is even the crowning of the Witch of the Year. There is a museum of witchcraft now located in the castle of Trasmoz, where the whole legend started.

If one is ever to visit, there are plenty of charms to be bought against witchcraft. So, rest assured, you're in safe hands. Up next, Jeffrey Dampier won the lottery, was generous with it to everyone he knew, but it didn't stop him from being murdered by a family member.

They found Annie stretched out on the floor with a pistol lying by her hand, with no sign of struggle and nothing had been taken. So why is there a question whether she actually committed suicide? But first up, the incredible true story of Betty and Barney Hill who claim to have had a close encounter of the fourth kind and even have evidence to back it up. These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns.

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She's tired of seeing 98% of my closet being weird darkness t-shirts. Go figure. She's also making me out to be the hero in front of my nieces. We got a cute little toddler-sized poplin-smocked flutter-sleeve dress for my youngest great-niece, complete with pink puppies for the pattern. It's adorable, I'll admit that. We got a pair of cotton-stretched skinny jeans coming from my newly-teenaged great-niece, along with a set of organic cotton long-sleeve and pants pajamas.

My oldest niece, the mom in the family, is getting a pair of ultra-soft high-rise pocket leggings. Emphasis on pocket. That's a pet peeve of my bride. She refuses to buy pants without pockets. And we're also sending a pair of ultra-form high-rise leggings. I would look horrible in all of this stuff, but the ladies in the family are going to look awesome. Of course, we'll be going back to quince.com in the next few days to begin shopping for the nephews.

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The idea of little green men from Mars invading our planet has been bringing us excitement, joy, and even laughter for decades simply due to the absurdness of the image. But on September 19, 1961, a reported event occurred on the back roads of New Hampshire that single-handedly rewrote what experts believed about UFO encounters and little green men.

Up until this time, only a handful of reports of a similar nature had surfaced. However, this was the first highly publicized abduction account filled with detailed information. What happened close to Lancaster that evening made international headlines and made celebrities out of the couple that came forward. Their names were Betty and Barney Hill, and this is their story.

The Hills were a married couple living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with their pet dog, Delcy. Betty was a social worker with the state welfare agency, and Barney worked for the post office. They were respected members of their community as members of the NAACP and the Unitarian Church. In fact, the governor had appointed Barney to serve on the state's civil rights committee. After a short vacation to Niagara Falls, they were driving home on Highway 3 through the White Mountains,

Betty sat in the passenger seat and was idly gazing out the window when she noticed a bright light that she initially thought was a star. It seemed to be following them, but it was moving erratically. The couple had a brief conversation about it. Barney initially assumed that it was just an ordinary aircraft, but Betty suggested they pull over so they could get a better look and also to give Delcy a pit stop. Barney stopped the car and got out his binoculars.

Betty looked first. She knew it wasn't a star when she saw a spinning craft with an odd shape and flashing lights of different colors. Barney took his turn to look through the binoculars. Although he had presumed it must be an airplane, he saw it rapidly descend and move in their direction. Too quickly to be a plane. He rushed back into the car and continued to drive toward Franconia Notch.

Betty watched the craft as it got closer and closer until it was right over them, forcing them to stop in the road. Barney did not know what they were looking at, but it was huge and silent. It hovered about 100 feet above them. He grabbed his pistol and the binoculars and went out to investigate. Barney saw windows across a pancake-shaped object. As he moved toward it, he saw something else that made him turn and run back to the car.

inside the craft. There were up to 11 beings that didn't quite look human. They were staring at him through the windows. Barney hysterically ran back to the car and drove away as fast as he could. But the hills were suddenly overcome by buzzing and tingling throughout their bodies. This was when things became very cloudy for them. When they regained full consciousness, they were once again experiencing the tingling

and they were 35 miles further down the road, without any memory of the drive to get there. When the Hills arrived home around dawn, they both felt strange. They knew they had seen something, but they couldn't remember what had happened after they felt the buzzing sensations. Both Betty and Barney had physical changes from the night before, including Betty's torn and stained dress, Barney's scraped shoe and a broken binocular strap.

but neither of them had any memory of these things having happened. Each also owned a watch, and after the previous night's events, neither watch ever worked again. Attention quickly turned to the car. On the back of the vehicle, shiny circles of concentric nature were discovered. A compass placed near the circles indicated that the circles were somehow magnetized.

Betty confided in her sister who strongly advised that she get in touch with the local Air Force base to report the incident. Barney was more concerned with being labeled an eccentric but allowed Betty to get in touch with Peace AFB on September 21. At that time, she made her first report. Five days later, Major Paul Henderson visited the Hills at their home and completed an official inquiry.

A report written by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon concluded that the Air Force files had insufficient data on the events of that night. Ten days after their encounter, Betty began to have vivid dreams about the strange event. Five nights in a row, her dreams contained small men in uniforms who forced the hills into a strange craft and subjected them to examinations.

She wrote down her dreams in a journal. Betty went to the library and found a book on the UFO phenomenon written by former Marine Corps Major Donald Kehoe, leader of NICAP. She contacted him directly, and their investigation began about a month after the sighting. Both of the Hills were interviewed at length by NICAP officials. Betty and Barney both admitted to seeing the same thing – a large disk that was silent.

The people that Barney said he saw were somehow not human. The couple did try and put the whole episode behind them, but were being affected in different ways. Barney grew more and more stressed and anxious as time went on. Outsiders assumed that this was due to their interracial marriage, an uncommon occurrence during that generation. Some criticized the couple based solely on their union.

None of this helped either spouse, and things got so bad for Barney that he was forced to take time off work in order to try and recover. Things were not much better for Betty, but she turned her attention toward trying to find out as much as she could about their perceived encounter. Meanwhile, Barney began seeing a therapist. Their feelings that "something" happened that they couldn't quite piece together gnawed at them for two years.

A speaker at the Hills Church, Ben H. Sweat, gave a talk about his poetry and Betty and Barney attended. The pastor was aware that Ben dabbled in hypnotherapy and asked him about it. At the end of the talk, Betty and Barney asked Ben if he thought hypnotherapy might be able to help regain what they felt were lost memories. They also asked for his help, but he declined because he didn't feel that he was qualified, and instead he recommended they ask Barney's therapist for a referral.

They took his advice, and that is when they found Dr. Simon. Dr. Benjamin Simon began working with the couple at the start of 1964. Over the course of around six months, he used hypnotic regression. During the first sessions, Dr. Simon concluded by inducing amnesia to each partner in order to reduce the possibility of potential collusion out of session. If neither was able to remember what happened, then there was less chance of them discussing matters among themselves.

In his sessions, Barney had many new recollections, such as meeting an Irishman that had red hair. There were also beings there that didn't seem to be human. All of these individuals were dressed in similar-looking uniforms. Each had a peaked cap and silver piping on the uniform itself that reminded Barney of Nazi uniforms.

According to his own memories during hypnosis, Barney said the crew spoke a language he could not understand and also English, but they weren't using their mouths. Barney said they appeared to use thought transference. Betty reported similar events during her hypnotic sessions separately from her husband. Both revealed that they underwent medical exams during which the beings took numerous samples that included blood, bodily fluids, and hair.

Betty also stated that as part of her exam, skin samples were taken. Much of what Betty had mentioned during her sessions were things that had already been written in her journal. Something took place on board the craft that only Betty noted, though. She indicated that the aliens showed her a map of where they came from, which she drew during one of her sessions. Some people believed this could be the location of their homeworld.

Additionally, Betty had indicated that the beings showed her trade routes that they used frequently, routes they did not take often and those they took for expeditions. Sometime around 1970, a teacher from Ohio made a match to the Zeta Reticuli star system. It looked just like the map Betty drew and also included our own son.

Some of the stars on that map were not catalogued until after the Betty and Barney Hill incident, which for some people proves that their experience was genuine. Carl Sagan, however, provided another perspective on his show Cosmos, episode 12. He said there is a resemblance between the two maps, but that's mainly because the lines corresponding to the navigation route have been copied from the Hill map onto the real star map.

If we were to substitute some other set of lines for the hill lines, we find that the eye suddenly is biased against seeing any agreement between the two maps at all. He also indicated that anyone can find just about any pattern from various vantage points in space. Once Dr. Simon completed the hypnotic sessions, he presented the tapes to the local NICAP investigators.

Having interviewed the pair shortly after the original event, NICAP officials were impressed by their honesty and intelligence. Both wanted nothing more than to get to the bottom of what happened to them. Many people considered the Hills to be reliable, and even Dr. Simon believed that the Hills truly and sincerely believed what they reported. On the other hand, Dr. Simon never believed in UFOs or alien visitations.

he was under the impression that the Hills shared a delusion based on Betty's dreams. Although he conducted the hypnosis sessions, he never swayed them into their testimonies. On the contrary, Van Sweat heard the session tapes and indicated that Dr. Simon actually tried to suggest logical, rational explanations for the Hills' memories during the sessions, but to no avail. They stuck with their abduction stories.

Toward the end of 1965, the Boston Herald Traveler managed to get an exclusive scoop when they somehow acquired reports of the original encounter. Someone had broken confidence, and October 25th was the first of a five-day exposé of the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction story. According to Sweat, Barney was upset about the leak, and he had called Sweat in the middle of the night in a panic about it.

"Barney said he and Betty were afraid that they would be scorned and ridiculed and lose their jobs," said Sweat in his personal statement about the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case. Now that the couple was a media sensation, they both felt they had little choice. They needed to break their own silence. Before this, neither made any overtures for publicity at all. The Hills and Dr. Simon all collaborated with author John Fuller to produce a book based on their experience.

This book, titled "The Interrupted Journey," emerged in 1966. Betty's niece, Kathleen Martin, wrote a second book entitled it " The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience." Both publications are still available today, along with countless others. We may never know what really happened to Betty and Barney Hill on September 19, 1961,

The public is divided in its perception of the story between those who believe it wholeheartedly and those who think the story was merely a confabulation. What is certain is that despite their reluctance to come forward and report their encounter, the hills have become synonymous with the UFO community. Their experience turned into the most well-known of all UFO reports and would set the stage for many others like it.

As the 1960s progressed, Barney's health began to worsen. In February 1969, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Betty never remarried after his death and went on to become something of a UFO celebrity until her own death in 2004. John Dorman left the farmhouse to work in his fields at about 1:15 the afternoon of September 1, 1897.

His wife Lizzie had some banking to take care of and left for Philadelphia at about 2. As usual, they left their children in the care of John's half-sister Annie. 18-year-old Annie Dorman had lived with John and his wife at their Cobbs Creek home off and on for the previous five years, working as a nurse to their four children. Around 3 p.m. that day, a neighbor, Mrs. Myers, came by to chat with Annie, leaving about 10 minutes later.

At 4:30, one of the children found Annie lying on the floor of the second-story room, dead from a gunshot wound. The children ran for their father, who returned to the house with Al Myers, stable boss at nearby Melbourne Mills. They found Annie stretched out on the floor, with a pistol lying by her hand. There was no sign of a struggle, and nothing had been taken. The men could only conclude that Annie had taken her own life.

But suicide was unlikely for a number of reasons. No one who knew Annie could imagine what would have driven her to kill herself. She was bright and pretty, with an even and sweet temperament, and was always cheerful. Her boyfriend, Ernest L. Pendlebury, was steady and honest. She was a religious girl, healthy in mind and body, a favorite among the congregation of Sarah D. Cooper Methodist Church.

The circumstance of Annie's death made suicide all but impossible. The pistol was old and rusty, sitting unused for at least two years, high on a shelf in the room where she was found. Annie was only five feet tall and would not be able to reach the pistol without standing on something, and none of the furniture had been moved. Chief Barry of the Chester Police Department examined the pistol and found it so rusty that it took all his might to cock it and pull the trigger.

It had been fired five times. Two shots went through the ceiling, one went through a washerboard under a window, one shot shattered Annie's jaw, and one shot went through her heart. The shot through the heart had killed her, but the shot to the jaw had been so severe that she would not have been able to fire another. Since nothing had been stolen, it was thought that Annie may have been raped. When the body was found, her dress had been smoothed, as if to hide signs of a struggle.

but the top had been opened, exposing her breasts. The medical examiner determined that Annie had not been raped and was still a virgin. The inquest held at the Dorman homestead on October 5 revealed that the household had not been as peaceful as it first appeared. A letter from Annie's father said that John's wife had not treated her right. One witness said that he had seen Annie crying on several occasions and had seen Mrs. Dorman chase her with a broom.

Lizzie Dorman admitted that once during a quarrel with Annie she had grabbed her by the throat, but generally their relations had been pleasant. Their disagreements were seen as trivial, hardly provoking murder, and Mrs. Dorman was in the city at the time of the shooting. The coroner's jury ruled that Annie Dorman was shot by a person or persons unknown. The Philadelphia Inquirer speculated that a man who knew Annie and was familiar with the place had been watching and knew when she was alone.

He entered the house between 3.30 and 4 and approached Annie with one intention. She at once detected the foulness of that intention. She pleaded with him, then threatened him. It was someone she knew and he realized he had gone too far and must silence her. He reached for the gun and she rushed him, fighting for her honor and her life. Three shots were fired wildly before the two that killed her.

The murderer then placed the gun by her side and smoothed down her dress to hide evidence of a struggle, but like all takers of life, left the one mute piece of evidence in the shape of the exposed bosom. But there was no way to prove any of this, and no way to determine the identity of the man or even whether the killer was a man.

With no leads to follow and no funds available to hire professional detectives, Delaware County District Attorney W.I. Schaefer was forced to drop the investigation. The circumstances of Annie Dorman's murder still remain a mystery. If you're like most people, you've probably fantasized at least once about winning the lottery.

After all, with that kind of money you'd never need to deal with going to work. You'd never have to worry about bills or saving for retirement. But to paraphrase Biggie Smalls, sometimes more money just means more problems. And that's especially true for people who win the lottery. It turns out that becoming a multi-millionaire overnight doesn't always lead to happiness. Just ask Jeffrey Dampier.

Jeffrey Dampier was an average guy. He grew up on Chicago's West Side and worked as a security guard until he won a staggering $20 million in the Illinois State Lottery in 1996. After coming into that kind of money, Dampier's life changed very abruptly. He and his wife got divorced, splitting the winnings 50-50. Dampier then began dating and eventually married another woman named Crystal Jackson.

Two years later, the couple moved to Tampa Bay, Florida, where they opened a gourmet popcorn store. Dampier was generous with his winnings, especially to Jackson's side of the family. He spent lavishly on cruises and gifts, and when his sister's-in-law fell on hard times, he offered to take care of their finances. Of course, Dampier had a less-than-innocent motive for doing so – he was actually having an affair with his wife's sister, Victoria Jackson.

It seems like things were good for Dampier, for a few years at least. Then in 2005, the story took a dark turn. Victoria was also dating another man named Nathaniel Jackson. No relation. Nathaniel knew about Jeffrey Dampier's money and came up with a plan to get his hands on it with Victoria's help.

According to Victoria's account, she showed up in Nathaniel's apartment on July 26. He then demanded that she call Dampier and tell him to come to the apartment. Victoria lured Dampier over by claiming that she was having car troubles. When Dampier showed up to help, Nathaniel pulled out a shotgun and forced him into a van. Dampier then had his hands bound behind his back with shoestrings while Victoria drove the van.

Nathaniel repeatedly hit Dampier with the butt of the gun, demanding that he turn over his money. When Dampier proved uncooperative, Nathaniel and Victoria switched places so she could try to reason with him. Finally, Nathaniel handed the gun to Victoria. According to police, he demanded that Victoria shoot Dampier. "Shoot him or I shoot you," he said. Victoria then fired a single shot into the back of Dampier's skull, killing him almost immediately.

The pair drove the van to a deserted road and abandoned it with Dampier's body inside. The body was discovered soon afterward, and the two fugitives were arrested a few days later. At the trial, the defense painted Victoria as a victim. According to her sister Tiffany, Jeffrey Dampier began his relationship with Victoria when she was just 15. They knew she was 15 when he started messing with her, she said. Where's the justice for her?

And according to the defense, Nathaniel had forced Victoria into committing the murder, but the prosecution argued that when she placed the phone call that lured Dampier to the apartment, she knew what would eventually happen. For her part, Victoria felt that the victim wouldn't have blamed her. After the guilty verdict was read, she turned to her mother in the courtroom and said, "Jeffrey forgives me. Both Jacksons were sentenced to life in prison where they remain today."

For Jeffrey Dampier, winning the lottery turned out to be a death sentence. His widow Crystal agreed in a later interview that he would have been better off without the money. "I think it is a curse," she said. When Weird Darkness returns, we'll look at some of the numerous ghost brides of the United States. And gargoyles. Aside from looking menacing, could they also be a kind of protection from evil? These stories are up next.

My guess is that you've heard a lot of people talking about Factor, the two-minute meals packed with nutrition. Up until recently, though, I didn't really care much about nutrition. I was into convenience. Burgers, pizza, you get the drift. But the older you get, the more you realize nutrition is kind of important.

At the same time, convenience is still crucial for me. I am busier now than I've ever been in my life, so eating food fast without eating fast food is a bit of a challenge. Was a bit of a challenge. With Factor, I get to check both of those off my list. I just heat it up, and two minutes later, I'm sticking a fork in it.

Factor is more than convenient though. I don't even have to jump into my car to go through a drive-thru or pay a bunch of extra money so I can wait 30 minutes to an hour for a delivery app to come through for me. Factor meals arrive directly at my door, fresh and ready to eat. And with my new weight loss goals, the menu options are a real bonus. They have gourmet meals if I want to be calorie smart or pack on the protein, go keto and more. They have 45 weekly menu options.

How many weeks are there in a year? 52? Yeah, that's pretty dang close to a different menu for each week. I can use Factor for breakfast, quick lunches, premium dinners, even guilt-free snacks and desserts. Imagine that. Snacking without guilt. I didn't think that was possible. If you'd like to join me on this journey, you can visit factormeals.com slash darkness50off, then use the code darkness50off to get 50% off and free shipping in your first box.

That's factormeals.com slash darkness50off, then use the code darkness50off to get 50% off and free shipping. I'm not big on trends, never really have been, so I can't be trusted when it comes to clothes shopping for others. I'm married to someone who does understand what looks good.

Quince.com asked me to endorse them on Weird Darkness, and at first I thought, eh, that's a bad idea, for reasons I've already laid out. But I let my bride check out their website, and, well, she immediately started shopping for Christmas, birthdays, Mother's Day, Just Because Day, apparently that's a real thing, and now she keeps going back to Quince.com. Their lightweight layers and high-quality staples have become a go-to place for everyday essentials now.

Quince has all the things you actually want to wear this summer, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. And the best part? Everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands.

They work directly with top artisans, so they cut out the middlemen. And Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. I honestly didn't think I needed Quince.com, but Robin says, yeah, I do. Desperately. I think that means she'll be buying some clothes there for me, too.

She's tired of seeing 98% of my closet being weird darkness t-shirts. Go figure. She's also making me out to be the hero in front of my nieces. We got a cute little toddler-sized poplin-smocked flutter-sleeve dress for my youngest great-niece, complete with pink puppies for the pattern. It's adorable, I'll admit that. We got a pair of cotton-stretched skinny jeans coming from my newly-teenaged great-niece, along with a set of organic cotton long-sleeve and pants pajamas.

My oldest niece, the mom in the family, is getting a pair of ultra-soft high-rise pocket leggings. Emphasis on pocket. That's a pet peeve of my bride. She refuses to buy pants without pockets. And we're also sending a pair of ultra-form high-rise leggings. I would look horrible in all of this stuff, but the ladies in the family are going to look awesome. Of course, we'll be going back to quince.com in the next few days to begin shopping for the nephews.

I'm not allowed to pick out those clothes either. Robin just does not trust me. Good call. Stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from Quince. Go to quince.com slash weirddarkness for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash weirddarkness to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash weirddarkness

Okay, yeah, I got to admit, this t-shirt is kind of fading. Hey everyone, this is Keri Champion, the host of Naked Sports. When you sit behind the wheel of the all-new 2025 Nissan Armada Pro 4X, you'll feel like the entire world is your playground, and you'd be right.

Because this unshakable fortress of a vehicle is built to take you on your next adventure. With the twin-turbo V6 engine, the all-new Armada is powerful enough to take you anywhere. With its 8,500 pounds of toying capacity, it will let you bring all your toys along. And with seating for eight, your whole crew can join you.

Nissan created a truly capable vehicle in the all-new Armada. In fact, it's the first Armada to earn the Pro 4X badge, which Nissan reserves for its most adventure-ready vehicles.

The Armada is a big SUV designed and built for big adventures and must be experienced to be appreciated. Drive the all-new 2025 Nissan Armada today. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. Intelligent four-wheel drive cannot prevent collisions or provide enhanced traction in all conditions. Always monitor traffic and weather conditions.

A young woman, groom, and some of their wedding guests decided to play a game of hide-and-seek in a large mansion used for the wedding reception. One version of this story says it was the father of the bride's house. Someone other than the bride was designated as "it" — some versions say the maid of honor, others say the groom — and everyone was found but the bride.

Friends and family searched the house for hours, days, even weeks. A missing report was even filed. Eventually, the groom had to move on with his life, and one day, in the far-off future, someone was cleaning the house. They opened a large chest in the attic and found a skeleton in a tattered wedding dress. It seemed that the lid of the chest shut on the bride when she used it as a hiding place

she was unable to open the lid, and she suffocated to death. Some say the heavy lid crushed her skull. Another legend about ghost brides that I heard growing up involves a deadly wedding dress. There are many versions of this story, too. Sometimes it's not even a wedding dress. The story goes that a dead young woman was to be buried in her wedding dress, but her parents decided at the last minute to bury her in a different dress.

Since the wedding dress was expensive, they decided to sell it for profit. This dress ended up in the hands of another young woman and she needed it for a community dance. The entire night of the dance, the dress gave off an odor and she felt very faint. Her date decided to take her home since she was not feeling well. She did not make it home alive. Her date told the doctor about the odor.

The doctor investigated and found formaldehyde in her veins, which had caused her blood to coagulate and stop flowing. When they asked the store about the dress, they revealed that they received it from a funeral home and it had been worn by a corpse. The dancing most likely caused the young woman to sweat, which opened her pores and took in the formaldehyde. I'm not sure why revisiting such dreadful stories bring joy to people,

But in writing all of this, it sent me down a rabbit hole full of ghost brides. So enjoy the following bits of paranormal history involving brides, grooms, and haunted wedding dresses. The Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park. The inn itself is already very haunted. A woman staying in room 2 reported a woman dressed in 1890s clothes floating at the end of her bed,

People have also reported the fire extinguisher moving and doors opening and closing. The most interesting ghost, though, is the Headless Bride. People have reported a woman in a white dress drifting across the crow's nest, holding her head under her arm. According to legend, the bride was a young woman from 1915 New York that, despite her wealthy father's wishes, married a much older male servant.

Her father provided them a one-time dowry of a substantial amount, with the agreement that they would not ask for money ever again and would leave New York forever. They married and headed to Yellowstone National Park for their honeymoon, staying in room 127 of the Old Faithful Inn. On their way to Yellowstone, the groom spent most of the money on gambling and booze. A month into their honeymoon, the dowry was gone.

This led to intense arguments between the couple, which was heard by hotel staff. One day the husband stormed out and never returned. The hotel staff thought that they might give the heartbroken wife her space and after a few days decided to check in on her. The maid found the young bride bloody in the bathtub. Her head was nowhere to be found. A couple days later, an odor in the crow's nest led staff to her head.

Dauphine Orleans Hotel, New Orleans, Louisiana. A young courtesan named Millie worked in May's Place, a bar in the Dauphine Orleans Hotel. The morning of her wedding, her groom-to-be was shot dead in a gambling dispute. Millie, from that point on, and even after death, walked around the bar in her wedding dress. She still walks around the bar in her wedding dress today, waiting for her fiancé to return.

The Driscoll Hotel in Austin, Texas. Room 525 is haunted by two brides. Allegedly, two young women ended their lives in the room on their honeymoons, 20 years apart. The room was closed for a time and then eventually reopened for renovations.

The renovations brought about some paranormal activity, including apparitions, weird sensations, unexplained leaks, distant voices, and other odd noises. The Hotel Galvez in Galveston, Texas. Since her death in the 1950s, a ghost bride haunts room 501 in Hotel Galvez. Her fiancé was a mariner, and she, when expecting his return, would watch the sea from the hotel.

One tragic day, she watched as his ship sank and soon after ended her life. She had actually survived and returned to heartbreak. She still walks the halls, scaring guests. One guest in room 501 abruptly left the hotel at 3 a.m. in tears. The City Tavern, Philadelphia, PA.

A bride and her bridesmaids were preparing for the wedding when one bridesmaid accidentally knocked over a candle, setting the curtains on fire. The fire spread throughout the tavern, taking the lives of the bride and her bridesmaids. The ghost of the bride is active today, especially during wedding events at the tavern. Some wedding photographers have even reported seeing her apparition appearing next to the living bride when looking through the camera viewfinder, although no one has caught her on film.

Emily Morgan Hotel, San Antonio, Texas The Emily Morgan Hotel resides in a building originally erected in the 1920s. The hotel itself was established in that same building in the 1980s. The building, first used as a medical arts building, is lined with gargoyles portraying a different medical ailment. Such an astonishing building comes with some astonishing ghost stories, of course.

The seventh floor of the 13th floor building is haunted by a ghost bride. Her backstory is unknown. Visitors of the hotel have called down to the front desk after hearing loud shrieks. Hotel staff simply reply, We're sorry, but we do think it might be a ghost responsible for that. Hotel Conneaut, Erie, Pennsylvania Elizabeth and her new husband stayed in room 321 on their honeymoon.

Their blissful vacation was interrupted by a raging fire in the hotel. The husband was able to get out alive, but Elizabeth was trapped in the room and died. The heartbroken bride still roams the third floor, looking for her husband and sobbing. Wearing a wedding dress, she leaves behind a smell of jasmine. The Alpha Gamma Delta House at University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

The AGD Sorority House at the University of Georgia once housed the wealthy families of Athens. The mansion was built by William Winstead Thomas in 1896 as an engagement gift for his daughter Isabel and her fiancé, Richard W. Johnson. The house is often called the "wedding cake house" because of that. Isabel ended her life in the house after Richard left her at the altar. The house went through a couple of hands before becoming a sorority house.

According to several reports, the scorned bride is still active in the house. Paranormal activity includes faucets turning on, lights turning on and off by themselves, doors opening by themselves, and faces appearing in the window. One sorority sister named Sarah lived in the engagement room and described her experiences. "The door to my bedroom and my roommate's closet door randomly swing open on their own.

I swear that the ghost who lives here is doing it. It really freaks me out. Long Island Campgrounds, Bolton Landing, New York. The state campground has 90 sites over 100 acres. In the 1960s, a new husband and wife decided it was the perfect location for their honeymoon. They were allegedly murdered in their sleep while camping. The bride now wanders the grounds, looking for her husband among the living campers. Phelps Grove Park, Springfield, Illinois.

When driving over a bridge in Phelps Grove Park, a newly married couple lost control of the car and both died. The bride still haunts the location. She can be seen holding the hem of her wedding dress, and her face is only darkness. Curves Onondaga Hill, New York A similar story appears in Onondaga Hill folklore. About 60 years ago, a young couple died in a car crash on a very snaky road just after their wedding.

People claim to see the bride on Halloween. Her glowing figure floats down the road in a wedding gown, searching for her husband. Some say she carries a bright orange lantern. Baker Mansion, Altoona, Pennsylvania. Anna Baker, the daughter of the rich Elias Baker, fell in love with a local steelworker. Her father forbade her to marry him because he was of a lower class. She died alone.

Much later, the Baker Mansion in Altoona, Pennsylvania was made into a museum and a wedding dress was put on display in a glass case in Anna's bedroom. When there's a full moon, the dress violently shakes, sometimes to the point of almost breaking the glass. Myth says she is so mad she never got to wear a wedding dress and therefore shakes it in anger. Some people often report seeing it dance by itself.

with the shoes tapping along. Some small town in North Dakota. The book Haunted America by Michelle Norman and Beth Scott tells a spooky story of sisterly jealousy in the 1930s. Sisters Lorna May and Carol were complete opposites. Lorna May, the youngest sister, was strong, cheerful, and a hard worker. The older sister, Carol, was reportedly more attractive, grumpy, and lazy.

They both fell in love with the same man, a widower with three children, Ben. Ben chose Lorna May to be his wife, imagining the both of them working side by side on the farm. Carol was very angry. Shouldn't he be with the prettier one? Shortly before the wedding, Lorna May suffered abdominal pains. Carol was nearby and was sent to get the doctor. She returned saying that she could not find a doctor in town.

It's believed she lied about that and even dawdled in town to waste time. Lorna May was rushed to town but died of a ruptured appendix shortly after arriving. Carol then set out to marry Ben. She even demanded the undertaker remove the wedding dress from Lorna May's dead body before the burial. A month after the funeral, Carol was able to convince Ben to marry her. Their wedding was in mid-July, in 100-degree heat.

Carol looked beautiful in Lorna May's high-neck wedding dress. During the festivities, though, Carol began to sway and grab at her throat. She died in Ben's arms. The autopsy revealed that it could not be heat stroke. The wedding dress had absorbed some of the embalming fluid while on Lorna May. The hot weather caused Carol to sweat, which opened her pores and allowed the fluid to enter. Well, I'm back at that same childhood legend, aren't I?

While if you are planning on getting married in the near future, I might suggest going with a new dress, not going vintage. Gargoyles are depicted with many fearsome faces. They grin and leer down from roofs and towers of medieval churches and have been present there for centuries warding off evil. They decorate great churches and cathedrals of the British Isles, Ireland and other European countries.

It is traditionally believed that gargoyles were created during the medieval period. However, their history goes far beyond that time to the very beginnings of art, when man created demons to scare away demons. Many examples of these creatures have been found in ancient civilizations as well.

The use of decorative water spouts was known to the ancient Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks and Romans, and gargoyle-like carvings have been found in other parts of the world, especially in countries that were influenced by European culture and tradition, such as Mexico. They have appeared in a number of different images and figures, and it is said that no two gargoyles are identical, but no one seems to know why.

They were seen on the roofs of Egyptian temples, where their mouths served as a spout for water. Also, Greek temples were decorated with gargoyles in form of lions and other animals. Later, these creatures became strictly ornamental and assumed many forms such as dragons, devils, demons, half-human and half-animal as well as caricatures of real people or classes of people.

The name Gargoyle is often attributed to St. Romanus, the Archbishop of Rowan. According to legend, he saved his country from a monster by the name of Goji, sometimes called Gargoyle. The Gargoyle is said to have been a legendary dragon with bat-like wings, a long neck, and the ability to breathe fire from its mouth that lived in a cave near the Seine River in the 7th century and was ravaging the town and people of Rowan.

It was slain by St. Romanus, the Archbishop of Rouen. After the dragon was slain, its body was set ablaze. Its body was consumed by fire, but the head and neck survived and was mounted on a building. Supposedly, the monster was so scary-looking that it frightened off evil spirits. This led to some calling the monster a protector and placing similar carved figures on churches and other important buildings.

Originally, the term referred only to the carved lions of classical cortices or to terracotta spouts, such as those found in the Roman structures at Pompeii. The word later became restricted mainly to the grotesque, carved spouts of the European Middle Ages. It is often but incorrectly applied to other grotesque beasts. Gargoyles always have drainage conduits. Other carved beast depictions do not.

What's important is not all grotesques are gargoyles, but all gargoyles are indeed grotesques. A French abbot, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090-1153, was famous for speaking out against gargoyles, most probably because he didn't fully understand their role when he wrote, "'What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters before the eyes of the brothers as they read?'

What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, these strange, savage lions and monsters? To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half-beast, half-man, or these spotted tigers? I see several bodies with one head and several heads with one body.

Here is a quadruped with a serpent's head. There a fish with a quadruped's head, then again an animal half-horse, half-goat. Surely, if we do not blush for such absurdities, we should at least regret what we have spent on them.

Even in the United States, gargoyles were used on more modern buildings as a form of decoration, such as the stainless steel versions used on the Chrysler Building in New York City, at Princeton University, University of Chicago, and Duke University. Perhaps the most famous are the gargoyles that decorate the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the sixth largest cathedral in the world and likely to be the last Gothic cathedral ever built.

It has 112 gargoyles, rain diversion devices with a spout, and over 1,000 other grotesques, those without a spout. When people think of gargoyles, most envision monsters and dragons and the like, but there are also other intriguing and odd figures. More famous gargoyles from history are those used on Notre Dame de Paris. They reside atop dizzying heights and are often unnoticed by human eyes but ever watchful of our movements.

They have observed us for centuries. The gargoyles of the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, half man, half beast, preside over Paris and have done so since the medieval times. It is believed that there is no commonly accepted explanation of why these odd carved creatures exist as they do. Why were these figures actually placed atop the buildings?

Do they have a symbolic meaning? Were they used for repelling evil or perhaps only for architectural balance? Or were they perhaps, as Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin suggested, watchmen of the period, guardians of the ancient religious sanctuaries?

I'm not big on trends, never really have been, so I can't be trusted when it comes to clothes shopping for others. I'm married to someone who does understand what looks good.

Quince.com asked me to endorse them on Weird Darkness, and at first I thought, eh, that's a bad idea, for reasons I've already laid out. But I let my bride check out their website, and, well, she immediately started shopping for Christmas, birthdays, Mother's Day, Just Because Day, apparently that's a real thing, and now she keeps going back to Quince.com. Their lightweight layers and high-quality staples have become a go-to place for everyday essentials now.

Quince has all the things you actually want to wear this summer, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. And the best part? Everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands.

They work directly with top artisans, so they cut out the middlemen. And Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. I honestly didn't think I needed Quince.com, but Robin says, yeah, I do. Desperately. I think that means she'll be buying some clothes there for me, too.

She's tired of seeing 98% of my closet being weird darkness t-shirts. Go figure. She's also making me out to be the hero in front of my nieces. We got a cute little toddler-sized poplin-smocked flutter-sleeve dress for my youngest great-niece, complete with pink puppies for the pattern. It's adorable, I'll admit that. We got a pair of cotton-stretched skinny jeans coming from my newly-teenaged great-niece, along with a set of organic cotton long-sleeve and pants pajamas.

My oldest niece, the mom in the family, is getting a pair of ultra-soft high-rise pocket leggings. Emphasis on pocket. That's a pet peeve of my bride. She refuses to buy pants without pockets. And we're also sending a pair of ultra-form high-rise leggings. I would look horrible in all of this stuff, but the ladies in the family are going to look awesome. Of course, we'll be going back to quince.com in the next few days to begin shopping for the nephews.

I'm not allowed to pick out those clothes either. Robin just does not trust me. Good call. Stick to the staples that last with elevated essentials from Quince. Go to quince.com slash weirddarkness for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quince, Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash weirddarkness to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash weirddarkness

Okay, yeah, I gotta admit, this t-shirt is kind of fading. My guess is that you've heard a lot of people talking about Factor, the two-minute meals packed with nutrition. Up until recently, though, I didn't really care much about nutrition. I was into convenience. Burgers, pizza, you get the drift. But, well, the older you get, the more you realize nutrition is kind of important.

At the same time, convenience is still crucial for me. I am busier now than I've ever been in my life, so eating food fast without eating fast food is a bit of a challenge. Was a bit of a challenge. With Factor, I get to check both of those off my list. I just heat it up, and two minutes later, I'm sticking a fork in it.

Factor is more than convenient though. I don't even have to jump into my car to go through a drive-thru or pay a bunch of extra money so I can wait 30 minutes to an hour for a delivery app to come through for me. Factor meals arrive directly at my door, fresh and ready to eat. And with my new weight loss goals, the menu options are a real bonus. They have gourmet meals if I want to be calorie smart or pack on the protein, go keto and more. They have 45 weekly menu options.

How many weeks are there in a year? 52? Yeah, that's pretty dang close to a different menu for each week. I can use Factor for breakfast, quick lunches, premium dinners, even guilt-free snacks and desserts. Imagine that. Snacking without guilt. I didn't think that was possible. If you'd like to join me on this journey, you can visit factormeals.com slash darkness50off, then use the code darkness50off to get 50% off and free shipping in your first box.

That's factormeals.com slash darkness50off. Then use the code darkness50off to get 50% off and free shipping. Hey, everyone. This is Carrie Champion, the host of Naked Sports. When you sit behind the wheel of the all-new 2025 Nissan Armada Pro 4X, you'll feel like the entire world is your playground. And you'd be right.

Because this unshakable fortress of a vehicle is built to take you on your next adventure. With the twin-turbo V6 engine, the all-new Armada is powerful enough to take you anywhere. With its 8,500 pounds of toying capacity, it will let you bring all your toys along. And with seating for eight, your whole crew can join you. Nissan created a truly capable vehicle in the all-new Armada. In fact, it's the first Armada to earn the Pro 4X badge, which Nissan reserves for its most adventure-ready vehicles.

You are never to speak of this again.

"These are the words that Lt. Robert Jacobs says his military superior warned him with after they witnessed a UFO at Vanderburg Air Force Base. 'What we photographed up there affected me for the rest of my life,' added Jacobs, 'and made a huge impact on my understanding of the universe and of governmental manipulation of our minds.'"

Jacobs, who was the first officer awarded with an insignia for guided missiles in the Air Force, was responsible for optical instrumentation with nuclear missiles to ensure they launched properly. But on that transformative evening, he claims to have witnessed something inexplicable, exclaiming to his superiors, "We got a UFO."

However, Jacob's superiors did not seem as excited, and he was immediately told, "As far as you're concerned, this didn't happen." Are extraterrestrials watching over us? If so, what are their intentions? Some might laugh even at the mention of aliens, despite the high statistical likelihood of there being advanced life somewhere else in the universe.

But what you are about to hear are testimonies from military personnel across the globe who claim to have seen UFOs with their own eyes, and the reason they give for being visited will leave you in awe.

Here is a clip of United States Air Force Lieutenant Robert Jacobs being interviewed by Larry King on CNN. And as the dummy warhead and the package flew on down range, we were all celebrating the fact that we had seen the thing and accomplished the mission. And I got back to the base with the film the next day. I was called into the office of Major Florence J. Mansman. And there were three people in gray suits standing in there. There was a 16-millimeter camera and a screen set up.

Major Mansman said, "Lieutenant, sit down and watch this." And he turned down the lights, turned on the camera, on the projector, and the film came on. I recognized it as the film that we'd shot at Big Sur the previous day. Toward the end of the flight, I was looking at Major Mansman saying, "Pretty good stuff, huh, sir?" And suddenly he said, "Just watch this." And as I watched, the warhead, the dummy warhead, the chaff that was put out in front of it as a decoy to deflect the Russian anti-missile missile tracking radar,

Everything was flying along and suddenly in the same direction this stuff was flying at about 8,000 miles an hour. An object came into the frame, shot a beam of light at the warhead, flew up to the top, shot another beam of light at the warhead, flew around the direction it was flying, shot another beam of light at the warhead, flew down, shot another beam of light at the warhead, and flew out the same way it came in. Well, I don't see it. Why didn't you see this when you were shooting it?

Well, it was 600-800 miles away from us. Oh, I got you. And they confiscated the sealers? Well, first of all, the major mansman said to me, what was that? Were you guys screwing around up there? I said, no, sir. And he said, then tell me what that was. And I said, we got a UFO. And he said, Lieutenant, you are never to speak of this again. As far as you're concerned, this didn't happen. But Jacobs isn't the only member of the military to witness a UFO.

According to the website Collective Evolution, another incident occurred at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and is one of the most remarkable events in the history of UFO encounters with the military. This occurred in March of 1967 at a base that was responsible for a large amount of nuclear weapons. Witnesses here saw a red, glowing UFO hovering just outside the front gate.

After that happened, all of the nuclear missiles shut down and went completely dead.

Captain Robert Salas, one of the men involved in the incident, gave his testimony at the Citizens' Hearing on Disclosure that took place a few years ago, where a number of academics, politicians and ex-military gathered in front of several Congress people to discuss the matter and what happened there. "Sometime in the evening hours on March 24th, I received a call from one of my topside guards, the flight security controller.

stating that they had been observing strange lights in the sky making odd maneuvers and wanted to report it. I thought it was kind of a strange report, but I took it seriously. You have to understand we were protecting nuclear weapons and the reports we generally got were very professional. At any rate, I kind of dismissed the call. He called back about five minutes later. This time he was screaming into the phone saying they're looking...

With all of these incidents occurring near or directly above nuclear missile sites, one must ask the question: Are these UFOs attempting to hinder human nuclear experimentation to prevent apocalyptic destruction?

Well, it's a theory that has also been proposed by a high-ranking officer named Colonel Ross Dedrickson, who spent the majority of his career working on and near nuclear weapons sites. According to Dedrickson, he received numerous reports of visits by UFOs over the storage facilities. He added, "We observed the UFO were very much interested in the facilities nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities that were visiting.

A couple of nuclear weapons that were sent out into space were destroyed by the extraterrestrials. And that is their major concern: to preserve the integrity of the Earth because it affects their own system.

There was one incident when we exploded a nuclear weapon over the Pacific, and the disturbance that it caused because it shut out communications entirely over the Pacific base for a number of hours in which no radio transmission was available at any time.

This was one of the things that the extraterrestrials were highly concerned about, because it affected our ionosphere. And, in fact, spacecraft were unable to operate because of the pollution in the magnetic field, which they depended on.

At the very end of the 70s and early 80s, we attempted to put a nuclear weapon on the moon and explode it for scientific measurements and other things which was not acceptable to the extraterrestrials. They destroyed the weapon before it got to the moon.

The idea of any explosion in space by any Earth government was not acceptable to the extraterrestrials, and that has been demonstrated by extraterrestrials over and over. The testimonials that have been taken along these lines are extraordinary.

From that same citizens' hearing on disclosure broadcast on CNN, here is UFO researcher Robert Hastings. Declassified U.S. government documents and witness testimony from former or retired U.S. military personnel confirm beyond any doubt the reality of ongoing UFO incursions at nuclear weapons sites. When I say UFO...

The witnesses have described these craft as disc-shaped or cylindrical shape or spherical. These objects are capable of both hovering and high velocity flight, usually completely silently. Over the past 37 years, I have personally located and interviewed more than 120 of these former or retired military personnel.

all of whom report UFO incidents at one or more of the following locations: nuclear missile sites, nuclear weapons storage areas, and nuclear weapons test sites in Nevada and the Pacific during the era of atomic atmospheric testing. Retired United States Air Force Captain Bruce Fenstermacher: Right above us, there's a huge white thing pulsating light above us

And I had to call them to make sure I wasn't seeing anything. I'm prodding, he told us it was shaped like a fat cigar. I think he said a pregnant cigar. White pulsating light between the pulsations, he saw red and blue lights. It was silent because I prodded him saying, is it some sort of helicopter? He said, no, it's very silent.

We're talking to him for several minutes and he says it's starting to move away along our access road. And again, UFO researcher Robert Hastings. I believe these gentlemen believe that this planet is being visited by beings from another world who, for whatever reason, have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II.

Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion, their opinion, is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire.

that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment. So could it be that extraterrestrials are trying to warn or flat out prevent humans from using nuclear weapons because we simply cannot be trusted with such massive power? At this point, and given all of the testimony, it would not be surprising.

In fact, at this point, we could probably use a little protection from ourselves. We don't seem to be doing all that well on our own. On August 14, 1948, a barn burned to the ground on the farm of Charles Willey who lived outside of Maycomb, Illinois. Such an event would not seem to be much cause for alarm, except for the fact that the source of the fire has never truly been explained.

Plus, it was only one of hundreds of fires that broke out on his property in the summer of 1948. The only person connected to each of these fires seemed to be his niece, a teenager named Juanette, who may have been starting them with her mind. Following her parents' bitter divorce, Juanette and her father moved from the Willey farm.

Wynette was unhappy and disturbed, and emotions were running high that summer, which may have been the reason for the mysterious fires. They began on August 7. At the time, the residents of the farm included Willie, his wife, his brother-in-law, and Wynette's father, Arthur McNeill and McNeill's two children, Arthur Jr., 8, and Wynette, who had recently turned 13.

The first fire began not as a blaze, but as a small brown spot that appeared on the wallpaper in the living room of the Willey farmhouse. That first spot was followed by another, and then another. The spots would appear, spread out several inches as they smoldered, and then when they became hot enough, the spots burst into flames. The brown spots occurred day after day, leaving the family confused and befuddled.

Willie called on several of his neighbors to investigate, but they were as mystified as he was. However, many of them stayed on the property, crowding into the house and even sleeping on the floor in an attempt to help keep watch over the situation. Pans and buckets were filled with water and placed all over the house, and each time one of the small fires broke out, it was quickly doused.

Regardless, the fires kept popping up in front of the startled witnesses. As word spread, friends and neighbors came to help but could find no cause for them. Maycomb's fire chief, Fred Wilson, was just as confused as everyone else. In the days that followed, fires also appeared outside of the house on the front porch. Curtains were ignited in several of the rooms

An ironing board burst into flames, and a cloth that was lying on a bed burned so hot that it turned to ash. Chief Wilson had never seen anything like it before. Charles Willey contacted his insurance company, and their investigators were just as confused. Deputy State Fire Marshal John Burgard was contacted by Chief Wilson, and he too came to the Willey farm. He was also confused by the strange events.

Nobody has ever heard anything like this, he announced to the press, but I saw it with my own eyes. In the week that followed, more than 200 fires broke out at the house, an average of nearly 20 each day. Finally, on Saturday, August 14th, one of the blazes raged out of control, and before the Maycomb Fire Department could be summoned with trucks, the entire Willie Farmhouse was consumed.

Charles Willey drove posts into the ground and made a tent shelter for he and his wife, while McNeil and his children moved into the garage. The next day, while the Willeys were milking cows in the barnyard, the barn burst into flames and the building was destroyed. Two days later, on a Tuesday, several fires broke out on the walls of the milk house, which was being used as a kitchen and dining room for the family.

On Thursday morning, there were two more fires and a box that was filled with newspapers was found burning in the chicken house. A few minutes later, Mrs. Willie opened a cupboard door in the milk house and discovered more newspapers smoldering on a shelf inside. There had been no one else in the building and the cabinet had not been opened. There was no logical reason for the newspapers to have caught fire.

Later that same day, at about 6 p.m., the farm's second barn caught fire. The blaze burned so hot that the entire building was destroyed in less than half an hour. Firefighters who arrived on the scene were unable to get close to the inferno. Only six small outhouses remained on the farm, so the family escaped to a nearby vacant house. Regardless, the fires continued.

The United States Air Force even got involved in the mystery. They suggested that the fires could be caused by some sort of directed radiation, presumably from the Russians, but could offer no further assistance. By the end of the following week, the farm was swarming with spectators, curiosity seekers, official and self-appointed investigators, and reporters. Over 1,000 people came to the farm on August 22 alone.

Theorists and curiosity seekers posed their own theories and explanations. They ran the gamut from fly spray to radio waves, underground gas pockets, flying saucers and more. The authorities had a more down-to-earth explanation in mind. They suspected arson. They realized that they could not solve the riddle as to how fires could appear before the eyes of reliable witnesses, but things were getting out of hand on the Willie farm.

An explanation needed to be discovered. And quickly. On August 30th, the mystery was publicly announced solved. The arsonist, according to officials, was Wynette McNeil, the slight red-haired niece of Charles Willey. They claimed that she was starting the fires with kitchen matches when no one was looking, ignoring the witness reports of fires that sprang up from nowhere, including on the ceiling.

Apparently, this little girl possessed some pretty amazing skills, along with a seemingly endless supply of matches, even though she was never witnessed holding any matches. After hours of intense questioning, she allegedly confessed. She stated that she was unhappy, didn't like the farm, wanted to see her mother, and, most telling, that she didn't have pretty clothes. The mystery was solved.

This was in spite of the fact that witnesses to the fires had seen them appear on walls, floors, and furniture all when Wynette was not even in the room. This explanation pleased the authorities, but not all of the reporters who were present seemed convinced. The hundreds of paranormal investigators who have examined the case over the years have not been reassured either.

One columnist from a Peoria newspaper who had covered the case from the beginning stated, quite frankly, that he did not believe the so-called confession. Neither did noted researcher of the unexplained, Vincent Gaddis, who wrote about the case. He was convinced the case was a perfect example of poltergeist phenomena. What really happened on the Willie farm? We will probably never know because the story just went away after that.

Wannette was taken to Chicago for examination at the Illinois Juvenile Hospital, but was found to be mentally normal by Dr. Sophie Schroeder, a psychiatrist. "She's a nice little kid caught in the middle of a broken home," she reported. She was later turned over to her grandmother and spent the rest of her teenage years untroubled by mysterious brown spots that appeared, spread and burst into flames.

The insurance company paid Willie for the damage done to his home and farm, and the farmhouse was later rebuilt. Arthur McNeill and his son moved back in with the Willys for a time before eventually moving out of state. Fire officials abandoned the case after the "confession" cleared up the mystery for them, but privately many of those involved continued to question what really occurred on the Willie farm for years afterward.

Fire Chief Fred Wilson talked about the case for quite some time and later retired from his position, convinced that something unexplainable had taken place. The reporters who descended on the Willie farm all received closure for the stories, whether they believed the conclusion or not, and the general public was given a solution that could not have possibly been the truth. Not surprisingly, the case is still listed as unexplained today.

This is one incident which happened way back when I was a kid, around 7 years of age. I grew up at my maternal grandmother's place. There were few kids in my neighborhood, and we all used to play in the evening and continued to do so until someone from our respective homes would come and take us away.

The incident is of one such evening. In front of my house there was an empty house. As far as I remember, once a family used to live there. There were a married couple and the wife was expecting. They gave birth to a boy, but after a few months the boy died and they also soon after left the home. No one came to stay in that home after that and hence it was vacant.

The house had a small wall as its boundary to the veranda, and the veranda was connected to the main entrance of the house. At the backside of the house was a mini garden, or you can say lawn. But that wasn't a lawn anymore. Those were like wild grass which had popped out everywhere in the backyard. In that backyard was a small storeroom which was locked from outside and had just one grilled window.

One evening, we friends decided to play hide and seek. One of us started counting and the others began to hide. I went into the house to hide. I went to the backyard thinking that no one would guess I'm there. A few minutes passed and no one came searching for me. So I began to roam around and went near that storeroom and tried to peek through the window. All I could see was darkness.

After a few seconds, I decided to walk back and it was then when I saw a faint light in that room. I focused and that light became bright and all of a sudden I saw a shadow passing by. I screamed and ran and was busted by my friend who was searching for the hidden ones. He told me to stay at the front of the house while he was searching for the others. I was too scared to stay alone. I was in shock and didn't utter a single word.

After a few minutes, all of us gathered at a single place. It was still quiet and when they asked me the reason, I told them everything. A few of them were scared but the rest of them laughed. So I kept mum after that. Then me and one of my friends discovered something lying on the veranda.

When we got a close look, it were two earthen pots of very small size, like approximately of a tennis ball's size, and a red cloth was wrapped around their openings or mouth. We didn't know what it was. I tried to open it, but my friends started scaring me and I left it. I came back home and told everything to my grandmother, and she scolded me for having gone there. She asked me to not go to that place ever again.

I told her everything except for the fact that I had brought with me one of those pots. That night, I tried to open it, but it wouldn't open. I kept it by my pillowside and slept. I had horrendous nightmares that night, and the next morning I woke up with a high fever. My grandmother discovered that pot and immediately got rid of it.

She didn't scold me as I was not well, but what I do remember next was that we had a puja conducted in our house and something was tied on my hand and I was told to not take it off. I was well again and after a couple of days started playing with my friends. One friend told me that her mom told her that those pots were evil as somebody was performing black magic with them.

I didn't know what Black Magic was at the time, neither did my friend, but we knew that whatever it was, it wasn't good. We never went to that house again. Today there is a whole new house constructed at that place and I heard that a family moved in there but they also moved out of there after the elderly of their family passed away. I don't know what's there that still exists and neither do I exactly know what it was back then. Up next:

Two men interested in the same woman, all three spending a day together. Not a good plan from the start. Add a bit of alcohol and you just may have a powder keg ready to explode. And over the course of just two years, Christopher Dunge operated on 38 patients in the Dallas area, leaving 31 paralyzed or seriously injured and two of them dead. It's no wonder he was given the morbid nickname of Dr. Death.

And when we come back, we'll begin with the story of the outback of Queensland, Australia. Some ghostly orbs of light have been frightening people there for centuries. But what do we know about the mystery of the orbs? And what are some of the theories about what they could be? These stories, when Weird Darkness returns. My guess is that you've heard a lot of people talking about Factor, the two-minute meals packed with nutrition.

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In the outback of Queensland, Australia, ghostly orbs of light have been frightening people for centuries. Local residents call them Min Min lights, named after the early settlement and hotel in Bulia. Seemingly persistent one moment, but then fleeting the next, the lights follow travelers far across the land and seem to have an intelligence about them.

The town of Bulia has become somewhat famous for these ghost lights. Oral traditions of the Aboriginal people recorded them as having existed even before the colonization of Europeans in Australia. Europeans first documented the Min Min lights in 1838,

They're usually described as fuzzy discs or glowing, football-shaped orbs that can grow in size, get brighter or dimmer, take on different colors, and move about. They hover about three feet above the ground and are often mistaken for the lights of an oncoming vehicle.

But, unlike vehicle lights, these phantom lights of Booyah often appear to follow or approach travelers, whether they are on foot, on horseback, or driving a car. Sometimes they stand still, while at other times they seem to chase the observer or bob up and down as if they're dancing. Thousands of people have seen them over the years, and many of them reported it as a frightening or spooky experience.

The Sydney Morning Herald published an interesting story of an eyewitness account of these lights on January 25, 1947. The article began with the tale of the Shady Min Min Hotel, which was once notorious for selling drugs and modified alcohol to the workers who would stop for a drink. Some of the men would stay at the hotel, while others passed through. Numerous men died there.

either from the drugs and tainted alcohol, deadly brawls, or hoodlums murdered them for money. Those men were buried behind the hotel. But there was a fire in the early 1900s that burned the hotel down, and the only thing that remained was the graveyard. A short time after the fire, a stockman on horseback was passing through, and he encountered the bizarre light. He rode to the police station, and this is what he reported:

I saw a strange glow appear right in the middle of the cemetery. I looked at it, amazed. The glow got bigger till it was about the size of a watermelon. I couldn't believe my eyes as I saw it hovering over the ground, and then I broke into a cold sweat for it started to come towards me. The stockman continued to tell the sergeant that he tried to ride away, but the light kept following him until he got to the edge of town.

The officer just smiled unbelievingly at the man's story. However, since the stockman's encounter, thousands more have witnessed the lights. It is unclear when Aboriginal people of Australia began seeing the Min Min lights. Oral traditions make it difficult to maintain a clear timeline of events.

Some of the oldest stories of the Boulia region indicate that the increase in lights was associated with the killing of Aboriginal Australians by Europeans. Aboriginal people believed the lights came from their graveyards as the spirits of their dead ancestors, who were perhaps unrestful because they felt the injustice of their murders. The Aborigines feared the lights and believed that they could take someone's life. There are other theories about the lights.

One idea suggests that they are the result of gaseous releases from the earth, such as those often seen at graveyards. Others propose glowing insects like fireflies may cause the illuminations. Fringe theorists support the UFO and paranormal avenues. Jack Pettigrew is Emeritus Professor of Physiology and Director of the Vision, Touch and Hearing Research Center at the University of Queensland.

While he was studying a nocturnal bird, he had an experience with the Min Min light. During his first encounter, he initially assumed it was the planet Venus. However, he observed that the light approached the horizon but never set below it, like a normal planet would as the Earth rotated. On another occasion, Professor Pettigrew was driving at night with some colleagues when they saw the mysterious phenomenon.

At first, they thought the lights were the shining eyes of a cat, maybe 50 meters away. When they stopped the car, though, the lights continued to hover in front of them. The mystery only deepened when the scientists tried to track the lights to their source, which they calculated to be over 300 kilometers away, beyond the horizon.

Professor Pettigrew hypothesized that the min-min lights are a type of mirage, or a fata-magana. A temperature inversion causes these types of mirages, in which a layer of warm air traps a layer of dense, cold air underneath it. When light passes through the two layers, refraction occurs. In other words, the light bends.

Since it is optically difficult for humans to identify bent light, it's easy for someone to believe that the light originates from where it appears to be. In a fata morgana, the image appears to be floating above the horizon or close in front of them, and this can be quite frightening for many people.

Pettigrew stated, "Wonderful during the day, such fata morgana can be terrifying at night, when a single light source gives no hint that it is actually part of a mirage emanating from a great distance. Even hardened outback observers can break down when they're unable to interpret the unusual optical properties of the light in terms of their own, very different past experiences."

Professor Pettigrew conducted an experiment in which he created his own type of phantom light phenomenon. He chose a night with the right weather conditions and drove about 10 kilometers. Six witnesses saw the car lights floating above the horizon. Many other people saw an even more spectacular Fata Morgana the following morning when they saw a whole mountain range floating above the ground.

Phenomena of phantom lights are not unique to Australia. Many other countries have stories about floating orbs and therefore have many names for them: Ghost lights, fairy lights, will-o'-the-wisp and ignis fatus. Will-o'-the-wisp are ghost lights that were observed and named by people of the ancient Celtic lands of Europe, Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales.

Unlike the Min Min lights, though, the Will-O-Wisps appear mostly around wet grounds, such as bogs and swamps. Some people believe them to be fairies or spirits, and because the lights resemble a disembodied lantern moving through the darkness, the story of the Jack-O-Lantern is related to the Will-O-The-Wisp. In Mexico, there is a type of light similar to the ghost orbs of Buya that locals believe are the souls of witches. They call these Brujas.

In the South American countries of Argentina and Uruguay, the ghost lights are called "luzmala" meaning "evil light." Luzmala is a rural phenomenon, similar to the min-min lights, however the residents dread them and have incorporated them into many myths. Magic exists when something defies our understanding. There are many people in the Buya region who want to keep that magic alive.

However, science doesn't necessarily negate the beauty or wonder of the Min Min lights. Aboriginal people of Australia first described this enduring mystery long ago. Hence, it is clear that many people of the region now identify with the lights. Whatever they may be, they have become an attraction for people who come from all over to get a glimpse of the famous lights of the Australian outback.

George Widman and Thomas Brownlee accompanied a young lady by the name of Miss Norris on an excursion up the Hudson River from Yonkers, New York, to Newburgh aboard the steamer Grand Republic on Sunday, October 5, 1879. Widman, a 25-year-old carpenter, and Brownlee, a 27-year-old blacksmith, were good friends, members of the same hose company of the Yonkers Fire Department.

Widman was a steady man with quiet, temperate habits. Brownlee was a hard drinker, known to become quarrelsome when drunk. As the trip progressed, it became clear that Miss Norris favored the attention of Widman, who had taken her to the circus the previous Friday. Brownlee drank heavily on the boat and expressed his feelings toward Widman in very intemperate language.

When the boat returned to Yonkers, the two men were seen walking down the main street together and there appeared to be no ill will between them. About 20 minutes later, Brownlee pulled a leather case from his pocket. He opened the case, drew out a five-shot pistol, and fired at Widman, hitting him in the groin, severing two arteries. The shot drew the attention of roundsman Woodruff, who rushed to the scene and found Brownlee trying to rouse Widman,

George Widman was rushed to St. John's Hospital but died on the way. Brownlee was arrested for murder. There had been two witnesses to the shooting, so there was no question that Brownlee was the killer, but he claimed the shot was accidental. The pistol recently acquired by Brownlee had an interesting history. It had originally belonged to Roundsman Woodruff and fell out of his pocket, still in its leather case, as he climbed a fence while pursuing a criminal.

Before Woodruff realized it was gone, James Douglas found it on the ground and turned a quick profit when he sold it to Brownlee for $2. After shooting Widman, Brownlee threw it into a stagnant pond near the road. Only the leather case remained. There were two theories of why Brownlee shot his friend. The first was jealousy over Widman winning the affection of Miss Norris.

The second theory, considered more likely, was his anger that Widman had not come to his aid when he got into a drunken altercation with a stranger on board the boat. Whatever the trigger, though, the root cause of Brownlee's action was… alcohol. He maintained that the shooting was accidental, and at his trial the following March, the defense contended that he was unconscious from the effects of liquor.

Thomas Brownlee was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. From 2011 to 2013, dozens of patients in the Dallas area woke up after their surgeries with horrible pain, numbness, and even paralysis. Even worse, some of the patients never got a chance to wake up.

and it's all because of one surgeon, named Christopher Dunch, aka Dr. Death. Dunch's career started off bright. He graduated from a top-tier medical school, was running research labs, and completed a residency program for neurosurgery. However, things soon went south,

Christopher Dunsch was born in Montana in 1971 and raised alongside his three siblings in an affluent suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. His father was a missionary and physical therapist, and his mother was a schoolteacher. Dunsch received his undergraduate degree from the University of Memphis and stayed in town to receive an M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee Health Center.

According to D Magazine, Dunge did so well in medical school that he was allowed to join the prestigious Alpha Omega Medical Honor Society. He did his surgical residency at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, spending five years studying neurosurgery and a year studying general surgery. During this time, he ran two successful labs and raised millions of dollars in grant funding, according to Rolling Stone.

However, it wouldn't be long until Dunch's seemingly perfect career began to unravel. Around 2006 and 2007, Dunch began to become unhinged. According to Megan Cain, an ex-girlfriend of one of Dunch's friends, she saw him eat a paper blotter of LSD and take prescription painkillers on his birthday. She also said that he kept a pile of cocaine on his dresser in his home office.

Kane also recalled a cocaine and LSD-fueled night of partying between her, her ex-boyfriend, and Dunch, where, after the end of their all-night party, she saw Dunch put on his lab coat and go to work. According to D Magazine, a doctor at the hospital where Dunch worked said that Dunch had been sent to an impaired physician program after he refused to take a drug test. Despite this refusal, Dunch was allowed to finish his residency.

Dunch focused on his research for a while but was recruited from Memphis to join the minimally invasive Spine Institute in North Dallas in the summer of 2011. After he arrived in town, he secured a deal with the Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano and was given surgical rights at the hospital. Over the course of two years, Christopher Dunch, aka Dr. Death, operated on 38 patients in the Dallas area.

Of those 38, 31 were left paralyzed or seriously injured, and two of them died from surgical complications. Through it all, one way Daunsch was able to lure patient after patient under his knife was his extreme confidence.

Dr. Mark Hoyle, a surgeon who worked with Dunch during one of his botched procedures, told D Magazine that he would make extremely arrogant announcements such as "Everybody's doing it wrong. I'm the only clean, minimally invasive guy in this whole state." Before working with him, Dr. Hoyle said that he didn't know how to feel about his fellow surgeon. "I thought he was either really, really good or he's just really, really arrogant and thought he was good," Hoyle said.

He performed only one surgery with the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute. Dunch was fired after he performed a surgery and immediately left for Las Vegas, leaving no one to look after his patient. He might have been fired from the institute but was still a surgeon at Baylor Plano. One of the patients who suffered disastrous consequences was Jerry Summers, the boyfriend of Meghan Kane and a friend of Dunch.

In February 2012, he went under the knife for an elective spinal fusion surgery. When he woke up, he was a quadriplegic with incomplete paralysis. That meant Summers could still feel pain but was unable to move from the neck down. Dunge had his surgical rights temporarily suspended after his botched surgery on Summers, and his first patient back was 55-year-old Kelly Martin.

After a fall in her kitchen, Martin had experienced chronic back pain and sought out surgery to alleviate it. Martin would become Dunch's first casualty when she bled out in the intensive care unit after her relatively common procedure. Following his blunders, Dunch resigned from Baylor Plano in April 2012 before they could fire him. He was then brought on board at the Dallas Medical Center, where he continued his carnage.

His very first operation at the hospital would once again turn deadly. Floella Brown went under his knife in July 2012, and shortly after her surgery, she suffered a massive stroke caused by Dunge slicing her vertebral artery during surgery. The day that Brown suffered her stroke, Dunge operated again, this time on 53-year-old Mary Efford,

She came in to have two vertebra fused, but when she woke up, she experienced severe pain and couldn't stand. A CT scan would later reveal that Efford's nerve root had been amputated. There were several screw holes nowhere near where they were supposed to be, and one screw had been lodged in another nerve root. Dr. Death was fired before the end of his first week for the damage he had inflicted on Brown and Efford.

After several more months of botched surgeries, Dunsch finally lost his surgical privileges altogether in June 2013 after two physicians complained to the Texas Medical Board. In July 2015, a grand jury indicted Dr. Death on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of harming an elderly person, his patient Mary Efford.

Christopher Dunge was sentenced to life in prison in February 2017 for his heinous acts. He is currently appealing his sentence. 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. I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway. Welcome to The Wealth Break.

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