Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

I’m A Police Officer And I Forced A Sane Man Into An Asylum | And More Fictional Horror Tales!

1 h 30 min · 13 de jun de 2026
Portada del episodio I’m A Police Officer And I Forced A Sane Man Into An Asylum | And More Fictional Horror Tales!

Descripción

A candlemaker guards one dying flame through the night while ravenous things in the dark demand the soul of a frozen stranger. An old woman stares through a second-floor window with no ledge to stand on, and the shadow man behind her inches closer with every passing night. And a small-town officer commits a man to a psychiatric hold for claiming a five-year-old suicide was really a murder — until the same vision starts playing out in front of his own eyes. FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: I have three stories in this episode for you! Andrew Pendragon pens the tale, “Candles” to start things off. Weirdo Family member Randy Hogan shares a fictional tale called “Old Woman in the Window”. And then our final story is from S.F. Barkley called “I’m a Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy”. CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = Show Open 00:01:10.223 = Chandler’s Candles 00:19:35.808 = The Old Woman in the Window 00:24:35.615 = I’m A Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy, Part 1 *** 01:03:09.029 = I’m A Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy, Part 2 *** 01:29:19.732 = Show Close *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps [https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps] *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast* SOURCES and RESOURCES: “I’m a Cop And I Institutionalized Someone I Knew Wasn’t Crazy” by S.F. Barkley: https://sfbarkley.com/ [https://sfbarkley.com/],https://www.reddit.com/user/Barkles52/ [https://www.reddit.com/user/Barkles52/] “Candles” by Andrew Pendragon: https://www.creepypasta.com/candles/ [https://www.creepypasta.com/candles/] “The Old Woman in the Window” by Weird family member, Randy Hogan (Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.) WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: September 10, 2020 Weird Darkness gathers three works of horror fiction for Creepypasta Thursday, moving from a candlemaker's nightly bargain with the dark, to a watcher at an upstairs window, to a small-town murder reopened by a vision no evidence could explain.It opens with a candlemaker in the small town of Clovetown, the last practitioner of an inherited art he calls Chandler's candles, passed to him from his father and grandmother and kept alive mostly through monthly orders from the Catholic church down the road. His after-hours visitors come only once, telling him sad stories before they go, and on a freezing Tuesday a muddy, shivering man named Basim arrives — a wanderer whose family left Israel before settling in a Midwestern state he refuses to name. The candlemaker warms Basim with tea, tends a bruise left when local children pelted him with a rock, and sends him off with a vanilla-scented sculpted candle and a box of matches. That night the shop window shatters under another volley of stones, and Basim is found frozen to death on a bench outside. As the power fails and darkness floods the shop, ravenous shadow-creatures his family has sheltered against for centuries surround him and demand Basim's marked soul, and he survives the night only by shielding the dying flame of that single candle with his own body until dawn.From there the episode turns to a teenage boy who finds an old woman staring through his second-floor bedroom window, her face blank and dead, though no ledge or balcony exists for anyone to stand on. She returns each night after 10:30 for eight months, and the pattern eventually breaks — she appears in the living room window in daylight, then inside the house, and finally seated beside him with the same lifeless expression. A second figure joins her, a shadow man with masculine features who edges closer with each appearance, and his presence twists the old woman's blank stare into one of horror and terror. By the end, both stand within inches of the boy, and he does not know whether he will live to see another night.The episode closes with Sean Barkley, a Crisis Intervention Team officer working the night shift in rural Pennsylvania, dispatched on a freezing-rain night to a farmhouse where a man named Kevin claims to have witnessed a murder. Kevin's sister, Melissa Watson, died in that house five years earlier in a death ruled a suicide, but he now sees a recurring vision in the upstairs bedroom — Melissa pleading for her life as her husband Andrew fires a gun — and Barkley glimpses the same muzzle flash in the window. Rather than let Kevin hunt Andrew down, Barkley commits him on an involuntary hold and quietly reopens the case with fellow officer Tim, uncovering an autopsy that recorded old bruises and a broken rib never investigated, a handgun bullet buried in the mattress, and a shotgun shell hidden in an air duct. The trail leads to Virginia Beach, where a search warrant turns up Melissa's missing .380 and a destroyed external hard drive holding child exploitation material, some of it filmed in the basement of the farmhouse. Andrew is arrested and then released on bail before he is found dead in a motel room, an apparent suicide with a note only Barkley can see, and a final vision of Melissa's spirit reveals that she had drawn the investigation toward exposing her husband so that she could claim her own revenge.

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Portada del episodio The Martians Who Landed in Kentucky and Met a Moonshiner | #MidnightInTheMacabre

The Martians Who Landed in Kentucky and Met a Moonshiner | #MidnightInTheMacabre

When Martian invaders armed with deadly alien weapons arrive in the Kentucky hills to test their arsenal on unsuspecting humans, they make the fatal mistake of choosing Lem Coy—the local moonshiner's 'simple' son who's too dumb to die and strong enough to make extraterrestrials wish they'd stayed home. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-martiansandthecoys [https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-martiansandthecoys] SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Martians And The Coys” by Mark Reynolds, originally published in “Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy,” June 1951 WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 21, 2026

21 de jul de 202624 min
Portada del episodio Markheim and the Voice Whispering Murder | #RetroRadio

Markheim and the Voice Whispering Murder | #RetroRadio

A Christmas Eve margin call sends a rich man's nephew scrambling for six thousand dollars he doesn't have, with a voice in his head whispering that theft and worse would be so easy. Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR] CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = Show Open 00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Murder at Troyte’s Hill” (April 17, 1978) ***WD 00:45:26.180 = Weird Circle, “Markheim” (May 20, 1945) 01:13:15.849 = The Whistler, “Return of Innocent” (April 02, 1945) 01:42:35.169 = Strange Wills, “Margin For Love” (September 07, 1946) 02:12:13.142 = Witch’s Tale, “Suicide” (January 22, 1937) ***WD 02:35:32.097 = X-Minus-1, “The Moon Is Green” (January 02, 1957) 03:03:54.289 = Zero Hour, “Mind of the Beholder” (May 21, 1974) ***WD 03:21:09.669 = ABC Mystery Time, “My Adventure in Norfolk” (1957) ***WD (LQ) 03:45:10.191 = Strange Adventure, “The Friendly Ghost” (1945) ***WD 03:48:27.530 = Arch Obeler’s Plays, “Another World” (July 29, 1939) ***WD (LQ) 04:17:11.933 = Barrie Craig, “The Case of the Borrowed Knife” (November 07, 1951) 04:45:37.476 = Show Close (ADU) = Air Date Unknown (LQ) = Low Quality ***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing. CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0721

21 de jul de 20264 h 46 min
Portada del episodio True Hitchhiking Horror Stories: Killers, Victims, and Ghosts Thumbing Rides

True Hitchhiking Horror Stories: Killers, Victims, and Ghosts Thumbing Rides

A serial killer who kept his victims' heads, a woman held under a waterbed for seven years, and a phantom passenger who vanishes from the back seat — the open road has taken more than its share. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HitchhikingHorrors [https://weirddarkness.com/HitchhikingHorrors] READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/29xmnbka [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/29xmnbka] FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The open road is a beautiful place where you can make friends that you’d otherwise never meet and have adventures that will change your life. But there are also extreme dangers to traveling with strangers on highways and backroads. No matter how trustworthy or well-intentioned a driver might seem, it's nearly impossible to tell if they are actually a predator or murderer, preying upon innocent hitchhikers. Creepy, true hitchhiker stories can make you think twice before picking up that stranger at the side of the road - or trying to "thumb it" yourself. LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps [https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps] *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast* SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Hitchhiker” original story at the beginning of this episode was written by HoneyBunny00:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8b53e2 [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8b53e2] “Hitchhiking Horror Stories” by Isadora Teich for Ranker.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3yj8t3ka [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3yj8t3ka], by Jacob Shelton for Ranker.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2s4a2wkz [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2s4a2wkz], Eric Redding for ThoughtCatalog.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/hk8pn8rf [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/hk8pn8rf], and from ScaryCarries.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2aead59t [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2aead59t] “Phantom Hitchhikers” posted at Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y4dxkv7m [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y4dxkv7m], Kelly Agan for Medium.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36wucpzm [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/36wucpzm], Paul Adams for The History Press:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8z538u [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8z538u], and Krystal DeCosta for ScientificAmerican.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr29nkpa [https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr29nkpa] (Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.) WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: January, 2021 Weird Darkness gathers the true horrors of the open road and the ghosts said to haunt it, moving from real hitchhiker murders across the United States and abroad to the phantom passengers who vanish from the back seat before the ride is over.It opens with the account of a newly married couple driving through a rainstorm who stop for a soaked hitchhiker, drop him at a crossroads, and later break down on a dark stretch of highway, only for the wife to wake to police floodlights and the sight of the same man atop their car with a machete over her husband's dismembered body, an escaped prison inmate cut down by gunfire moments after she runs.From there the show turns to a long run of documented and reported cases. Jacci Ansell-Lamb was last seen hitchhiking from London toward Manchester in May 1970 and found sexually assaulted and strangled with electrical wire outside Knutsford, England, a killing police have linked to serial murderer Peter Tobin though no suspect was ever charged. A German traveler on foot near Timaru, New Zealand had all his belongings stolen by a man in a white Honda in February 2016. Along Australia's outback near the cattle town of Hughenden, as many as twelve hitchhikers including eighteen-year-old Catherine Graham and thirty-two-year-old Tony Jones turned up dead over roughly two decades on a stretch dubbed the Highway of Death, the murders still unsolved. On May 19, 1977, twenty-year-old Colleen Stan was hitchhiking to a friend's birthday in California when Cameron Hooker picked her up and held her as a sex slave for seven years, keeping her in a box beneath his waterbed until his wife helped her escape in 1984 and Hooker drew a 104-year sentence.Next comes the case of Edmund Kemper, the six-foot-nine "Co-ed Killer" born December 18, 1948, who shot his grandmother and grandfather at fifteen, was released from a psychiatric hospital into his mother's care, and between May 1972 and February 1973 picked up hitchhiking female students, killed and decapitated them, and had sex with the corpses before murdering his mother with a claw hammer on Good Friday 1973 and phoning the same local police he drank with to confess. Woven among these are firsthand accounts shared online, among them a driver whose kindness reportedly talked a would-be killer out of his plan, a New Zealand couple who vanished in 1989 near Thames leading to the disputed conviction of David Tamihere, and a backpacker in Austria who fled a trucker's advances barefoot at a gas station.From there the episode moves deeper into unsolved and predatory cases. Between 1972 and 1973 the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders claimed at least seven women in Sonoma County, California, beginning with nineteen-year-old Kim Wendy Allen found bound and strangled in a creek bed on March 5, 1972, and including twelve-year-olds Maureen Sterling and Yvonne Weber, thirteen-year-old Lori Lee Kursa, fourteen-year-old Carolyn Davis, and twenty-three-year-old Theresa Walsh, the case never closed. The segment also gathers the crimes of clown-costumed killer John Wayne Gacy, trucker Keith Hunter Jesperson who dragged one victim beneath his rig, photographer Joseph Naso the "Alphabet Killer," the spree killers Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman, and sadistic trucker Ben Rhoades, caught when an Arizona trooper found a shackled woman inside his cab.The episode closes on the phantom hitchhiker, tracing the folk formula of the vanishing passenger before laying out the strongest real-world cases. One belongs to Maria Roux, killed on the N9 near Uniondale, South Africa on Good Friday 1968, whose specter was reported by driver Anton Le Grange in 1976 and motorcyclist Dawie Van Jaarsveld in 1978, her rear door seen opening and closing by a following officer. Another is "Lydia" of Jamestown, North Carolina, the white-gowned figure sighted at a railroad underpass since the 1920s and possibly rooted in the 1920 traffic death of Annie Jackson on the High Point Road. The final account belongs to carpet fitter Roy Fulton of Dunstable, England, who picked up a silent young man on Station Road near Stanbridge on October 12, 1979, turned to offer him a cigarette, and found the seat empty, a story he repeated without change on Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers in 1985.

21 de jul de 20261 h 29 min