CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE and More Strange True Stories! #WeirdDarkness

Listen to “CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE and More Strange True Stories! #WeirdDarkness” on Spreaker.

IN THIS EPISODE: The next time that you hear a conspiracy theory, take the time to investigate before you decide that it’s too impossible to be true. (Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True) *** The Black Knight satellite. Is this satellite nothing more than a Russian attempt at signal jamming or spying? Or is there something more sinister behind it? (Black Knight Satellite Conspiracy) *** A man starts to fall asleep at the wheel – but gets a supernatural shakeup from an unusual police squad car. (Guardian Angel Speed Trap) *** In a quiet Virginia cemetery is a peculiar tomb that has mystified visitors for nearly two hundred years. Nobody seems to know who is buried there. (The Grave of the Female Stranger) *** A man is knocked unconscious and while being so, he lives an entirely different life. (A Parallel Life) *** “I do not suppose that any man and wife lived more happily and wished each other better than we.” Strange last words from a man who murdered his wife due to a love triangle. (Neal Devaney) *** Did a strange race of albino, sun-fearing people used to roam the Appalachian Mountains? (Moon Eyed People) *** She can kill a man just by sucking all the blood from his body out through his nose. She can slip out of her skin at night to terrorize the countryside. Those who believe in hoodoo call her the Boo Hag. (The Boo Hag) *** A rash of attacks took place in India’s New Delhi back in 2001 – and the attacker was described as having monkey-like qualities. Who or what was the Monkey Man of New Delhi? (Monkey Man of New Delhi) *** Bizarre secrets are said to hide somewhere in the bottomless depths of Mel’s Hole. The hole definitely exists… but it appears that Mel himself may never have been real. (Mel’s Hole) *** The old hag, the succubus, whatever you call it – it’s a paranormal nighttime encounter with erotic overtones. Erotic – but more terrifying and mentally scarring than enjoyable. (The Old Hag Revisited)

SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…
“The Black Knight Satellite Conspiracy”: https://tinyurl.com/r3wxu6s
“Guardian Angel Speed Trap” submitted by Weirdo family member Blackfire Wolf
“Grave of the Female Stranger” by Orrin Grey: http://ow.ly/7cVz30nf1Di
“Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True”: https://tinyurl.com/yxxg7ess
“A Parallel Life/Awoken By a Lamp” posted anonymously to Reddit: http://ow.ly/kgX130ncj11
“Neal Devaney” by Robert Wilhelm: https://tinyurl.com/ycsf7nqz
“The Old Hag Revisted: Nighttime Terrors” from the book, “Basic Instinct: Erotic Paranormal Encounters”:https://tinyurl.com/yx5unkfx
“The Moon Eyed People” by Brent Swancer: https://tinyurl.com/vgdmen7
“The Boo Hag”: https://tinyurl.com/uz3vb6r
“The Monkey Man of Delhi”: https://tinyurl.com/rq488nu
“Mel’s Hole” by Maggie Clendenin: https://tinyurl.com/u9lzy78
Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library.

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WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.
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Originally aired:

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:

DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.

SHOW OPEN==========

Welcome, Weirdos – I’m Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you’ll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.

Coming up in this episode…

A man starts to fall asleep at the wheel – but gets a supernatural shakeup from an unusual police squad car. (Guardian Angel Speed Trap)

In a quiet Virginia cemetery is a peculiar tomb that has mystified visitors for nearly two hundred years. Nobody seems to know who is buried there. (The Grave of the Female Stranger)

The next time that you hear a conspiracy theory, take the time to investigate before you decide that it’s too impossible to be true. (Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True)

A man is knocked unconscious and while being so, he lives an entirely different life. (A Parallel Life)

“I do not suppose that any man and wife lived more happily and wished each other better than we.” Strange last words from a man who murdered his wife. (Neal Devaney)

Did a strange race of albino, sun-fearing people used to roam the Appalachian Mountains? (Moon Eyed People)

She can kill a man just by sucking all the blood from his body out through his nose. She can slip out of her skin at night to terrorize the countryside. Those who believe in hoodoo call her the Boo Hag. (The Boo Hag)

A rash of attacks took place in India’s New Delhi back in 2001 – and the attacker was described as having monkey-like qualities. Who or what was the Monkey Man of New Delhi? (Monkey Man of New Delhi)

Bizarre secrets are said to hide somewhere in the bottomless depths of Mel’s Hole. The hole definitely exists… but it appears that Mel himself may never have been real. (Mel’s Hole)

The old hag, the succubus, whatever you call it – it’s a paranormal nighttime encounter with erotic overtones. Erotic – but more terrifying and mentally scarring than enjoyable. (The Old Hag Revisited)

But first… the Black Knight satellite. Is this satellite nothing more than a Russian attempt at signal jamming or spying? Or is there something more sinister behind it? (Black Knight Satellite Conspiracy)

If you’re new here, welcome to the show! And if you’re already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show! And while you’re listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com where you can find the show on Facebook and Twitter, and you can also join the Weird Darkness Weirdos Facebook group.

Now.. bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness!

STORY:  BLACK KNIGHT SATELLITE=====

Many conspiracy theorists firmly believe that Tesla was the first person to stumble across the Black Knight satellite when he detected a strange space signal, back in 1899. At the time he had just developed a high-voltage, radio transmission setup.

Tesla claimed that the signal he discovered was clearly repeated periodically and had some sort of order to it’s broadcast.

He spent a few weeks studying this signal in detail and came to the conclusion that it was a message from an extraterrestrial group.

Tesla claimed that his in-depth studies show that the signal was coming from the planet of Mars…but this claim was quickly rubbished…by his own studies…when he came out and admitted that he got the Mars angle wrong!

A strange satellite was discovered in the late 1950’s in orbit around Earth. Initially the Russians were thought to have been behind the vessel, but before long it was determined that the satellite was neither Russian or American.

Experts looking into the vessel then claimed that it seemed way too heavy to have been launched from Earth, and it travelled at speeds much higher than a normal satellite could reach.

They also concluded that the schedule of the satellite was very mixed up – it didn’t seem to stick to a regular orbit pattern at any one time.

Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper (1927-2004) eventually came out and claimed that he had picked up the strange satellite signal when he took part in the Mercury flight. He also claimed that his ground control contacts also picked up the strange signal.

Unfortunately Cooper went back on this statement not long after he made it, and signed off on transcripts claiming he was lying and he never heard any sort of signal on his flight.

Why did he go back on his word?

Was he forced into this action by authorities?

In 1988 the astronaut team aboard the Space Shuttle Orbiter Endeavour actually managed to take a few photographs of the strange satellite in orbit.

Many ufologists got very excited over the images, but numerous sceptics came forward and claimed that the images were nothing more than a thermal blanket that had escaped it’s latching on the nearby International Space Station.

There are numerous articles online claiming that they have solved the mystery of the Black Knight – some even going as far as claiming the whole subject was/is nothing more than a hoax.

But the truth of the matter is that nobody really knows the answer to this strange space mystery.

If you have any thoughts or opinions on the Black Knight Satellite, please leave them in the comment section below.

STORY: GUARDIAN ANGEL SPEED TRAP=====

This happened back in 2011 when I was studying at a tech school in western PA outside of Pittsburgh. I lived outside Philadelphia and it was a 5 hour drive one way to school so I lived in an apartment just off campus and rarely went home on weekends. My then girlfriend now wife lived 3 hours from my school so I would drive almost every weekend to spend time with her since she was closer than home. I would leave Friday after class and not head back till Sunday night, usually around 10-11 PM. Like anyone else who goes to college or a trade school, sleep is hard to come by and often I would be very sleepy when it came time to drive the 3 hours back to my school and many times I would be fighting sleep driving, sometimes I would not be able to remember half the drive I just did. This one time I was heading back to school from my girlfriend’s place and it was after 11 PM and I was tired. I was on hwy 22/322 which was always deserted at night. Now I will admit I have a lead foot so 15 over the limit is my usual, but when I’m tired it can be dangerous. I was feeling really tired as I was flying along the curving highway and my eyes were getting heavy but I thought I was fine as I had done this so many times before. Well I must have fallen asleep for a few seconds because suddenly my eyes flew open and I jumped as if startled awake. I was in the fast lane or the left lane when my headlights hit the reflective stripes on a rear bumper of a car sitting next to the medium along the fast lane. I saw the back window and the outline of a light bar on the roof as I shot by the sitting state trooper. My heart jumped as I just missed side swiping the car. “Damn it” I whispered as I looked at my speedometer while still dazed from having nodded off and saw I was doing 85 in a 55 zone. As I had zoomed by the red and blue lights flipped on and lit the road behind me. I immediately began to slow and put my turn signal on to pull over while kicking my self for being dumb. Looking in my rear view mirror, I was surprised to see the lights pull a U turn and race off in the opposite direction. What could have been more important than pulling me over after I had just blown the cop’s doors off. I was rattled but glad I didn’t get a ticket and drove the rest of the way at safer speeds all be it still tired. Fast forward 3 weeks later when I had visited my girlfriend but had to leave when it was still light out. Now most of the time I drove to my school was at night so I was taking in the things I could see now that it was light out when I approached that stretch of road and I remembered the whole ordeal again. That’s when I thought “Hey, maybe I can see where he turned around.” But there was a problem, there was no place to turn around. Not only does the concrete medium run the whole way from where I get on to where I get off, but there is no shoulder beside it to sit in and camp. If that trooper had been sitting by the medium I would have rear ended him. I was dumbfounded at this and as i thought more about it, I realized that after I had passed the car, all I ever saw was just the lights that turned and raced off in the other direction. What had I seen that night? I told my girlfriend and being both Christians, we agree I saw my guardian angel take whatever form he needed to wake me and get me to slow down. you could argue being tired it was a dream, but I wasn’t asleep. I know what I saw but I don’t know what it was. All I know is now I am happily married with a 5 month old son and memories I would never know I i had stayed asleep when driving that night.

STORY: GRAVE OF FEMALE STRANGER=====

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia is home to a most peculiar grave—one that bears no name, only a haunting inscription: “To the memory of a Female Stranger.” The identity of the soul at rest beneath the headstone remains a mystery, attracting visitors and inspiring ghostly tales since at least 1833.

The inscription in its entirety reads as follows: “To the memory of a Female Stranger whose mortal sufferings terminated on the 14th day of October 1816. Aged 23 years and 8 months. This stone is placed here by her disconsolate Husband in whose arms she sighed out her latest breath and who under God did his utmost even to soothe the cold dead ear of death. How loved, how valued once avails thee not/To whom related or by whom begot/A heap of dust alone remains of thee/Tis all thou art and all the proud shall be. To him gave all the Prophets witness that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. Acts 10th Chap. 43rd verse.”

The poetic verses are taken from Alexander Pope’s 1717 poem “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,” with a few alterations. The first print mention of the Grave of the Female Stranger appears to be in a poem published in the Alexandria Gazette in 1834, which details a visit to the tomb. The poem was published under the initials S.D. and later revealed to be the work of poet Susan Rigby Dallam Morgan of Baltimore, Maryland.

Ms. Morgan also wrote about the grave in her column for The Philadelphia Sunday Courier under the pen name Lucy Seymour. In an entry from 1836, Morgan wrote that the Stranger had been a foreign woman of “tearful face and a pale complexion” who traveled with a male companion said to be her husband, though locals doubted this claim. According to Morgan, the only soul that the Stranger confided in before her passing was a local pastor, whose name is also lost to time.

Articles about the Female Stranger continued to surface throughout the years, growing more mysterious with each publication. In 1848, the Alexandria Gazette published a letter that claimed the grave belonged to a beautiful woman of pale complexion who was accompanied by a disreputable man. The companion gave his surname as “Clermont” and paid his bills with $1,500 in counterfeit English currency.

An 1886 version published in the Hyde Park Herald added such dark Gothic details as a doctor sworn to secrecy and a reclusive husband who kept his wife’s face hidden behind a veil and forbade anyone to speak to her or attend her funeral. An account published in the Washington Evening Star suggested that the Female Stranger and her male companion were doomed lovers. Yet another penned by Col. Fred Massey in the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette in 1887 adds that the lovers were European nobles who absconded to Alexandria, and that the Female Stranger died in her husband’s arms with their lips locked in a final kiss. The husband buried his partner in secrecy then disappeared from town, only to return in the dead of night and exhume her body to take it with him.

With little in the way of concrete proof, multiple theories as to the true identity of the Female Stranger have circulated. Some are comic in their outlandishness—one suggests that the Female Stranger was, in fact, Napoleon Bonaparte in drag—while others possess a whiff of truth. A persistent theory claims that the Female Stranger is actually Theodosia Burr Alston, the daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr, who disappeared at sea some four years before the recorded death date of the Female Stranger.

Whoever she was—if she existed at all—the Female Stranger has left a lasting impression on Alexandria. Tourists visit her grave to this day. The stranger’s spirit, too, still lingers. She is said to have died in Room 8 at the nearby Gadsby’s Tavern. Some claim that her ghost haunts the room in which she passed, and can be seen standing at the window and gazing out the glass.

STORY: CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE=====

Although conspiracy theories are commonly seen as denying actual history or reality itself, these hypotheses can be viewed as an attempt to make sense of actual events that seem to be connected. In particular, they approach such patterns by suggesting the influence of multiple persons or organizations upon negative events or situations. Some may not be warranted, but those who believe in such grand schemes are largely characterized as foolish at best and mentally unbalanced or dangerous at worst. However, their bad reputation is because conspiracy theories fundamentally go against common beliefs and cannot be directly proven, at least at first.

Here is your guide to those theories that turned out to be true – and left the public scratching their heads in confusion.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

In 1932, the United States Public Health Service and Tuskegee Institute began the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male to record the natural history of syphilis and analyze differences between black and white men. The study involved 600 black men in Macon County, Alabama, 399 of whom had contracted syphilis and 201 of whom had not. It was supposed to last only 6 months, but would go on for 40 years, during which the men were merely told that they had “bad blood”. Participants received free medical exams, meals, and burial insurance, but they were never told that they had syphilis and were never treated for it. Many discovered their illness after registering for the draft in World War II, but they were still denied penicillin or an exit from the study.

In 1972, the Associated Press published a story that led to public outcry and the appointment of an Ad Hoc Advisory Panel that found the study ethically unjustified. The study ended and was followed by a class-action lawsuit that was settled out of court for 10 million dollars and lifetime medical benefits. For many, it was too late; by the 1970s, only 128 of the original 399 still lived, while 49 wives and 19 children had also contracted the disease. Despite a presidential apology, the Tuskegee Experiment remains a powerful symbol of American racism and government abuse of the poor.

Project MKUltra

For a long time, the United States government denied that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been running experiments on citizens from the 1950s onwards. However, a Freedom of Information Act filing in 1977 brought 20,000 previously classified documents to light that would lead to a series of Senate hearings on the CIA’s mind control program. When all was said and done, the evidence clearly showed that the government had organized the treatment of American citizens with drugs, hypnosis, subliminal persuasion, sensory deprivation, electroshock therapy, verbal and sexual abuse, and even torture. The goal of all such methods was to experiment with behavioral modifications in the hopes of developing programming for government agents.

Despite the large amount of damning evidence involved, CIA Director Richard Helms most likely destroyed the most damning files on MKUltra in 1973. Furthermore, the government contracted out such projects out to over 80 different pharmaceutical companies, prisons, hospitals, and universities. As a result, a great deal of the program’s operations remains unclear. To this day, as well, no one has been brought to justice for this abusive program or the negative impacts upon participants.

Operation Mockingbird

Although contemporary media often face critiques for seemingly collaborating with government officials, the CIA once actively tried to control mass media outlets. Near the beginning of the Cold War, Director of the Office of Special Projects Frank Wisner launched a top-secret project to buy influence at major media outlets. He specifically established Mockingbird based on directions from above to craft an organization to engage in sabotage, propaganda, and subversion of hostile states through domestic and foreign media. Wisner would then enlist journalists and news organizations, including current figures like Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post. In effect, they would become veritable spies and propagandists. Agents held posts at ABC, NBC, CBS, the Associated Press, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, and other key players in news media.

By the 1950s, the CIA had a vast network of agents at America’s most prominent news organizations, businesses, and universities. It was only in the 1970s that Rolling Stone and The New York Times reported on the overlap between the CIA and prominent news organizations. A Congressional report followed in 1976 that documented the CIA’s reliance upon networks of several hundred foreign individuals around the world for intelligence and influence upon public opinion through propaganda. Although Mockingbird was publicly halted, many believe that the program continues to this day.

Operation Northwoods

In the past, supposedly wacky conspiracy theorists proposed that the United States military had developed plans to provoke war with Cuba. For a long time, the theory seemed outlandish – at least until Congress passed a law in the 1990s to make records surrounding President John F. Kennedy more transparent. As it turned out, Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer led the military Joint Chiefs of Staff in drawing up and approving just such a plan. In the early 1960s, they developed a detailed guide for a wave of terrorist actions that would build support for a war against their Communist neighbor.

Citizens would be bombed and shot in the street.
A Cuban aircraft would shoot down a plane of college students
Boats of refugees would sink in the Gulf of Mexico.

Other plans also included the explosion of a US ship in Guantanamo bay and the apparent murder of astronaut John Glenn mid-flight – with Cubans and Fidel Castro taking the blame.

This plan to oust Castro by building public and international support never came to be. After presenting the plan to Defence Secretary Robert McNamara in March of 1962, President Kennedy would tell Lemnitzer three days later that there was no way that force could be used to take Cuba. Shortly thereafter, Lemnitzer himself was shifted to another job.

The US Government Illegally Spies On Its Own Citizens

Another long dismissed conspiracy theory is the notion that the National Security Administration (NSA) illegally eavesdrops on its citizens. While this particular theory has a long history, it gained new life after the events of 9/11 and a push by government agencies to monitor all communication to prevent terrorist acts. As the Director of National Intelligence recently revealed, the surveillance state is incredibly robust. As the Snowden documents also show, multiple programs, institutions, and companies constantly monitor cell phone, email, and other communication records. The scope of government surveillance is now far beyond the wildest dreams of most conspiracy theorists.

However, constant data collection does not have clear benefits. In 2014, The Washington Post reported that almost 90% of data collected by NSA surveillance was unrelated to terrorism. At the same time, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit claiming that this surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and First Amendment rights to free speech and association. Furthermore, collecting every possible piece of data is basically self-defeating. Not only are financial costs hefty, but, even when information like Syria’s use of chemical weapons comes to light, the U.S.A. cannot necessarily intervene. The greatest cost, though, is the loss of privacy, freedom, liberty, and mutual respect that should hold a society together.

These are not isolated instances of government abuse. Much like the Tuskegee Experiment, prisoners, soldiers, and mental health patients in Guatemala were deliberately infected with syphilis by their government in order to test antibiotic treatments. At base, the government is made up of imperfect and fallible human beings like any social institution. We must hold them to clear standards and regular evaluations to prevent injustice from occurring. At the same time, be careful what you dismiss. The next time that you hear a seemingly delusional conspiracy theory, take the time to investigate before you decide that it’s too impossible to be true. Otherwise, you might regret it.

BREAK=====

Coming up on Weird Darkness… The old hag, the succubus, whatever you call it – it’s a paranormal nighttime encounter with erotic overtones. Erotic – but more terrifying and mentally scarring than enjoyable. (The Old Hag Revisited)

Plus… She can kill a man just by sucking all the blood from his body out through his nose. She can slip out of her skin at night to terrorize the countryside. Those who believe in hoodoo call her the Boo Hag. (The Boo Hag)

These stories are up next!

STORY: THE OLD HAG REVISITED – NIGHTTIME TERRORS=====

(The following is an excerpt from the book “Basic Instinct: Erotic Paranormal Contact”. You can find a link to the book in Kindle, paperback, or audiobook form by clicking the link in the show notes.)

A novelist called Robert Moss has described the experience of being visited by a horrific hag which transforms into a beautiful woman. Moss remembers how, as a teenager, a horrible hag-like creature with many arms and floppy, withered breasts entered his room and attacked him. He lay paralyzed as the entity moved up the bed, stood on his chest, and then lowered herself onto him. Moss explains how,

“Despite my disgust, I am aroused and now she is riding me. Her teeth are like daggers. My chest is spattered by blood and foulness from the rotting heads. There is nothing for me to do but stay with this. I tell myself I will survive. At last, the act is done. Satisfied, the nightmare hag transforms into a beautiful young woman. She smells like jasmine, like sandalwood. She takes me by the hand to a forest shrine. I forget about the body I have left frozen in the bed.[1]”

Not everyone who experiences the Old Hag is happy to put it down to sleep paralysis. Like me, they notice some unavoidable discrepancies between having a waking dream and an intrusion into their reality. This poster with the name LucidDreams expressed his/her doubts in a public forum as follows (edited for readability):

Sleep paralysis doesn’t even begin to explain away the experience I had. I found this forum afterwards looking to see if others had had a similar experience, and read up about the “Old Hag Phenomenon”. A lot of the accounts were spot on, except for one thing… I was wide awake and able to move. Anybody that tries to rationalize this experience as a sleep disorder has obviously never had it happen to them. That’s the problem though. People who have never had a paranormal experience won’t believe in them, and will try to come up with a rational explanation that is often more ridiculous than just believing in ghosts.

I was lying down downstairs in the family room about to doze off. It was really dark in the room with just a clock light and the small green light from my PC to allow some vision, once your eyes adjust. I heard my steps creak, which isn’t unusual at all because I ran a dehumidifier down there, and as moisture is picked up that will happen. Only it didn’t stop there. I immediately heard the next stair down creak and it no longer just sounded like creaking stairs. It sounded like something was descending them! All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I just had the feeling that I wasn’t alone. I was WIDE awake at this point, and not paralyzed, for the record. I looked in that direction and saw what looked like a black glob, a form without any general shape. It was jet black, so black that it even stood out in a very dark room. This form wasn’t moving like a person in motion would, it was “orbing”, like it would be at one spot one instant, then at another. It went from the middle of my stairs, to the bottom, and then was in front of a coat rack in the corner of my room, and then right at my feet. I’m still not 100% convinced that my eyes aren’t just playing tricks with me at this point, so I’m not completely terrified… yet. And then it happened.

I saw what looked like an angry old person hovering above me. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, but it looked very old, wrinkled, and had scraggly wavy hair. There were hands with long, sharp nails extended towards me. All I could see was a head and hands, nothing else. It wasn’t a solid figure, it looked more like what a mirage is described as. I cannot reiterate enough how angry and mean the expression on this things’ face looked. It looked like it wanted to scratch me. I (being fully able to move), pulled my blanket up over my head and started praying. I even made a cross over my chest with my fingers. When I looked up again… it was gone.

I quickly reached over to turn on a light, afraid of what I might see when I did, but it was a risk I was willing to take at the time. Nothing there. I haven’t seen it again since, and this was several years ago now. Needless to say, I never slept down there again, and it took me about a year to start sleeping without a night light on again.

What makes this really creepy is that a friend of mine told me and my buddy a similar story many years ago, when we were kids. This kid lived right across the street from where I live now (where this happened), and a couple houses down. He told us that one time, when he woke up, he saw an old lady standing over him with long, sharp claws, and that she started screaming and scratching him. Actual physical contact! He said it scared him so badly that he passed out again. When he woke up, he at first thought he just dreamt it, until he saw the dried blood on his arms. Me and my friend didn’t believe it, of course. At that time, I’d never had any paranormal experience and was one of “those people” I mentioned above. We just laughed and said, “yeah right”, and he was actually upset and said something like “I don’t care if you believe me or not, it happened”. I certainly believed him after my experience.

Turns out that people have been witnessing these “things” damn near since the beginning of recorded history, after looking into it. You would think it would be taken more seriously. I don’t know if ghosts, demons, angels, etc… exist, but I can tell you without any doubt that this Old Hag phenomenon is very real, and at least in my case, had nothing whatsoever to do with a sleeping disorder. How would all of these people just “coincidentally” happen to have the same hallucinations (hear footsteps, dark cloud, old person, long sharp nails)? It’s inconceivable that that can be by chance. And not only one, but two senses failing at the same time (not just vision, but hearing as well). They try to come up with “rational” explanations, that’s not rational at all. It’s far more rational, IMO, to believe that there are simply things we cannot explain or quantify, but they do non-the-less exist anyway.

I have to say, I totally agree…

STORY: THE BOO HAG=====

Now we move from the OLD HAG… to the BOO HAG…

One there were two men who had been friends all their lives. They married two beautiful women about the same time and everything seemed fine. But one day, one of the men came to his friend and asked him “When you wake up a night, is your wife in bed with you?”

“She sure is,” said his friend, “Why do you ask?”

“When I lie down in bed at night, my wife is with me. But when I wake up in the middle of the night, she’s gone. But then come morning she’s back in bed.”

“Man,” said the friend, “I think you married a boo hag!”

Now they knew this was serious. A boo hag is a kind of witch that can slip out of her skin and fly around at night and cause all kinds of trouble in the world. A boo hag can kill a man just by sucking all the blood from his body out through his nose. They’ll get on a man and ride him at night so he can’t move and he can’t breathe. A boo hag is not something you’d ever want to meet, and sure not something you’d ever want to be married to. So the man asked his friend what he should do.

“You got to wait until she slips out of her skin in the middle of the night, and then you find that skin. Look under the stairs. That’s where boo hags like to hide their skins. You take that skin and you pour salt and pepper all over it. Then she won’t be able to get her skin back on.”

And so that night the man went to bed with his wife and pretended to sleep. About midnight, he felt her slip out of bed beside him. He waited for her to get downstairs and then got out of bed and then quietly hid where he could see her. He saw his wife pull off all of her skin and roll it up into a ball and hide it under the stairs. Then she flew right up the chimney, going out to cause trouble in the world.

Well, that man didn’t waste any time. He went and got that skin and salted it and peppered it real good, then rolled it back up into a ball and hid it put it back under the stairs where he found it. Then he went back to bed and waited until early in the morning when he heard a noise of something coming down the chimney and he heard his wife’s voice speaking softly.

Skin, skin, you know me?
Skin, skin, this is me.
Skin, skin, you know me?
Skin, skin, this is me.

But he knew that with all that salt and pepper she couldn’t get back into her skin. He waited and heard his wife speak again.

Skin, skin, you know me?
Skin, skin, this is me.
Skin, skin, you know me?
Skin, skin, this is me.

And he knew that she was stuck without her skin. He heard her coming up the stairs and pretended to be asleep. He felt his wife crawl into bed with him and wrap herself up tight in the sheet. But he reached his hand over and could feel something warm and raw and rubbery in the bed next to him. After that, he didn’t need to pretend not to sleep.

When the morning broke, the man got up and said to his wife “Time to get up. Time for breakfast,” but she said “I ain’t getting up. I’m sick,” and lay there wrapped up tight in that sheet, not showing one inch of herself.

The man said he’d go get the doctor, but she said the doctor cost too much money. So the man said he was going to go hoe the garden.

The man went outside and hid under the window. Sure enough, he heard his wife come down the stairs and call out again.

Skin, skin, you know me?
Skin, skin, this is me.
Skin, skin, you know me?
Skin, skin, this is me.

That was enough for the man. He went down to fetch the conjure man who would know what to do. He told the conjure man his story and the conjure man told him to go home and start a big barrel of pitch boiling and he’d be by shortly.

So the man went home and built a fire in the garden and started a big barrel of pitch boiling on it. Soon, the conjure man walked up the road and the two of them went inside and went upstairs to where the woman was back in bed, all wrapped up tight in her sheet again. The conjure man said “what ails you, woman?” and she said there was nothing wrong. But the conjure man wasn’t having none of that. He ripped the sheet right off of her and there she was, lying there all raw and bloody.

“Man, you done married a hag!” said the conjure man, and they grabbed her and carried her out to the garden where they threw her in that big barrel of boiling pitch and burned that hag alive.

What else could they do?

Boo hags are part of the African-American tradition from the coasts of North and South Carolina. According to tradition, one of the best ways to keep a hag out of your house is to lay a broom across the front of your door. A boo hag can slip into a house through the keyhole, but if she sees a broom she has to stop and count every straw on that broom. By the time she’s done the dawn will have come and she has to return to her skin.

A conjure man, sometimes called a conjure doctor or a root worker, is someone experienced in the art of hoodoo, the African-American magical and spiritual tradition. Conjure men can help not only with dealing with hags and other supernatural entities, but a good conjure man is knowledgable in spells to help with such mundane matters as finding love, a good job, or winning in a court case. Hoodoo is a living tradition and there are root workers practicing in North Carolina to this day.

BREAK==========

Up next…

A man is knocked unconscious and while being so, he lives an entirely different life. (A Parallel Life)

“I do not suppose that any man and wife lived more happily and wished each other better than we.” Strange last words from a man who murdered his wife. (Neal Devaney)

And did a strange race of albino, sun-fearing people used to roam the Appalachian Mountains? (Moon Eyed People)

These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns…

STORY:  A PARALLEL LIFE=====

My last semester at a certain college I was assaulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive (note he was 325lbs I was 120lbs). While unconscious on the ground I lived a different life.

I met a wonderful young lady, she made my heart skip and my face red, I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over, after two years we got married and almost immediately she bore me a daughter.

I had a great job and my wife didn’t have to work outside of the house, when my daughter was two she [my wife] bore me a son. My son was the joy of my life, I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter.

One day while sitting on the couch I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd, like inverted. It was still in 3D but… just.. wrong. (It was a square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade). I was transfixed, I couldn’t look away from it. I stayed up all night staring at it, the next morning I didn’t go to work, something was just not right about that lamp.

I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon I stopped that too as I wasn’t eating or drinking. I stared at the fucking lamp for 3 days before my wife got really worried, she had someone come and try to talk to me, by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother’s house just before I had my epiphany…. the lamp is not real…. the house is not real, my wife, my kids… none of that is real… the last 10 years of my life are not fucking real!

The lamp started to grow wider and deeper, it was still inverted dimensions, it took up my entire perspective and all I could see was red, I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises and I became aware of pain…. a fucking shit ton of pain… the first words I said were “I’m missing teeth” and opened my eyes. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn’t know, lots were freaking out, I was completely confused.

At some point a cop scooped me up, dragged/walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car, I was still confused.

I was taken to the hospital by the cop (seems he didn’t want to wait for the ambulance to arrive) and give CT scans and shit..

I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed, I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says.

STORY:  NEAL DEVANEY=====

In the summer of 1866, newlyweds Neal and Catherine Devaney left Ireland for New York City. Catherine worked as a domestic servant and had saved enough money to book passage to America for both of them, but they had very little left upon their arrival. They knew no one in New York but Neal had friends in Hazelton, Pennsylvania and planned to find work there while Catherine stayed in the city to work as a servant. Neal thought it would be easier for Catherine to find work if the employers thought she was single, so they agreed to pose as brother and sister. Neal then left for Hazelton promising to send for Catherine when he was established.
In July 1867, Neal wrote to Catherine and asked her to meet him in Easton, Pennsylvania on Monday, July 22. From there he took her to Hazelton and left her at John McKelvy’s boarding house. It had not been a joyous reunion. Catherine confided to Mrs. McKelvy that Neal confessed that he had met and been intimate with a woman named Mary Callahan. She became pregnant and the following Sunday Neal and Mary were to be married. Neal told Catherine that if Mary’s family found out he was already married they would kill him. Neal urged Catherine to return to New York, but she refused. Catherine told Mrs. McKelvy that Neal had shown her a two-barreled pistol and said he had considered shooting himself.
On Wednesday evening Catherine said she was to meet Neal at the Catholic church at 8:00. Mrs. McKelvy tried to dissuade her from going, believing that Neal would not hesitate to remove whatever obstacle stood in the way of his upcoming marriage. Catherine left anyway, heading in the direction of the Jeansville Road. She never returned.
On Thursday the McKelvys went to the Justice, explained the circumstances and attempted to get an arrest warrant for Neal Devaney’s arrest, but he did not believe it was enough to justify a warrant. The McKelvys continued to tell their story until on Friday they found a lawyer who was able to initiate an investigation. Witnesses near Jeansville Road reported hearing a pistol shot between 10 and 11 o’clock Wednesday night, followed by two screams several seconds apart. Neal Devaney was arrested on Friday; he was carrying the pistol with only one barrel loaded, and the keys to Catherine’s trunk.
Soon after, the body of Catherine Devaney was found near the Jeansville Road, about 300 yards from the Catholic church. She had been shot in the chest and her throat had been cut, severing her jugular vein and carotid artery.
Neal Devaney’s trial began on September 5. The evidence was purely circumstantial, and the prosecution was hindered by the fact that everything Catherine told Mrs. McKelvy was ruled inadmissible. Devaney denied killing Catherine, called those who testified against him liars and tried to accuse Catherine’s cousin of the murder. The trial lasted one day, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. The following day Devaney was sentenced to hang. When asked if he had anything to say, Devaney said:

“I never committed the crime. I am innocent as a child unborn; they sold me for money.”

Neal Devaney maintained his innocence until the night before his execution when he finally admitted to the murder, dictating a story that matched the one Catherine had told Mrs. McKelvy. He ended by saying:

“I do not suppose that any man and wife lived more happily and wished each other better than we until I commenced keeping company. This was the cause of my committing murder.
“I am very sorry that I did it, and I hope to be forgiven. I am now prepared to die at any moment.”

The confession was hastily printed up and as Neal Devaney climbed the scaffold in Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania on the morning of November 12, 1867, copies of his confession were being sold to the crowd at his public hanging.

STORY: MOON EYED PEOPLE=====

There have long been tales of lost civilizations and strange peoples that have faded into the sands of time. Such enigmatic races lurk in the tales and history of nearly every major culture, and they span the range of the supernatural, to pure myth, to the possibly real. One tale of a mysterious lost race comes to us from the Appalachian Mountains of the United States, and it tells of a strange race of albino, sun-fearing beings who supposedly roamed this land long before even the Natives arrived.

In the untamed wildernesses along the Southern Appalachian Mountains of the United States the Native Cherokee people have long told of a strange race of beings they call “The Moon-Eyed People.” This mysterious tribe was supposedly smaller than average humans, almost dwarfish in nature, very pale skinned, like pure white alabaster, with shocking white hair, generous beards and body hair, and inhumanly large blue eyes, sensitive to light to the point that they were said to be unable to see in the daytime, hence their name. These Moon-Eyed people were purportedly completely nocturnal, hiding in dank caves and underground caverns during the day only to come out at night when the sun had retreated, and indeed sunlight was said to be enough to kill them if they ever got caught out in the open during daylight hours.

These strange, diminutive nocturnal denizens of the land were said to have been here long before the first Native peoples had settled the area, and according to most legends they were eventually expelled by local Natives, although what form this expulsion takes varies from tradition to tradition. In some tales it was the Creek people from the south who cast them out, wherein in others it is the Cherokees themselves who waged a relentless campaign and full-out war against these pale-skinned creatures to drive them to other lands. The American botanist, naturalist, and physician, Benjamin Smith Barton, wrote of these people and their downfall back in 1797, in his book New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, thus: ***The Cheerake tell us, that when they first arrived in the country which they inhabit, they found it possessed by certain ‘moon-eyed-people,’ who could not see in the day-time. These wretches they expelled.***

Whatever happened to this enigmatic race, their legacy has supposedly remained behind in the ancient rock structures and mysterious pre-Columbian mounds and ruins that dot the landscape along the Appalachians from North Carolina all the way down through Georgia and Alabama, all said to have been erected by the Moon-Eyed People. Perhaps the most famous of these is an 850 foot long stone wall dated to 400 – 500 C.E., which meanders through Fort Mountain State Park, just over the North Carolina border in Georgia, and is said to be a vestige of the bloody war between the mysterious Moon-Eyed People and the native Cherokee. There are countless other crude rock structures, walls, mounds and forts scattered all throughout the Appalachians, as well as anomalous carvings, figurines, and a soapstone carving of conjoined figures now on display at the Cherokee County Historical Museum said to be of these strange people, and no one really knows who made any of them except for the Cherokee themselves, who say it was the work of the Moon-Eyed People.

Whoever built such structures has long remained a mystery, and when Europeans first came to the region the Natives, who were not known for making such fort-like structures themselves, claimed that they had been always been there, saying that they were constructions of the Moon-Eyed People. Interestingly, while Cherokee folklore has many tales of supernatural beings and various spirits, the Moon-Eyed People are never spoken of in such a manner, rather being described matter-of-factly as physically another race inhabiting the same lands.

Of course, with such an oddity as a cryptic tribe of bizarre dwarf subterranean albino people, almost like vampires in their intolerance for sunlight, and who predated the native peoples and constructed their mysterious mounds and forts, there is bound to be theorizing as to who or what they may have been. One of the most popular ideas is that they are evidence of Native contact with European explorers who had made it to the New World long before history says they did, possibly connected to the legend of the “Welsh Speaking Indians.”

The story of white-skinned, Welsh speaking Indians in the New World originates with a 16th-century manuscript published by Welsh antiquarian Humphrey Llwyd, in which he writes of Welsh settlers coming to these shore in the 12th century, in particular a Prince Madoc, who along with his followers was said to have emigrated to America from Wales in about 1170, landing somewhere in the vicinity of Mobile Bay, Alabama. Madoc would supposedly end up shipping over hundreds of his followers to the New World, where they would disappear into the wilderness, never to return. In the following centuries there were many stories of fair-skinned, blue-eyed natives who spoke a form of Welsh from the area, and these have been speculated to have been the descendants of these settlers. Indeed, there are many tales of “blue-eyed Indians” from the New World, which I have covered here at MU before, and perhaps this all has some part to play in the mystery of the Moon-Eyed People.

Another idea put forth by Benjamin Smith Barton is that they were out of place descendants of members of the Guna people of Panama, who have such an uncommonly high rate of albinism that they were once referred to as the “White Indians,” and who were also reportedly able to see better at night. Another theory is that, rather than go to war, the Natives of the land actually integrated with the Moon-Eyed People and absorbed them. Still other more far-out theories are that these were some other species of human, a new race, or even ancient astronauts from another world.

It is still unclear who or what the Moon-Eyed people may have been, and they remain a distinctly enigmatic lost civilization, if they ever even existed at all. Who were these albino, sun-fearing people? Were they some lost race, descendants of pre-Columbian explorers, or even a new species or alien interlopers? Or were these just a figment of folklore and myth? The answers to such questions remain obscure, but the tales of the Moon-Eyed People have persisted for over a millennium, and the idea that such a race of lost humanoids has been lost to history captures the imagination.

BREAK=====

When Weird Darkness returns…

Bizarre secrets are said to hide somewhere in the bottomless depths of Mel’s Hole. The hole definitely exists… but it appears that Mel himself may never have been real. (Mel’s Hole)

These stories are up next!

STORY: MONKEY MAN DELHI=====

In April 2001, in the Indian capital region of Delhi, a rash of attacks by a supposed monkey-man creature were reported.

What would quickly escalate into a widespread phenomenon began with an isolated incident on 5th April. Anil Gopal reported to police being attacked by a monkey whilst asleep on his terrace in the early hours of the morning.

For two weeks there were no further reports, then, on 18th April, a second report was made. Once again a resident complained of being attacked in the early morning whilst sleeping on their terrace.

From that point onwards, reports of people being viciously attacked in the same manner poured in. On 19th April, police were called to investigate the attack of yet another sleeping man, who spent three weeks incapacitated at home because of his injuries. Even the police themselves experienced the attacks, when a wireless operator was attacked at the police station.

Whatever the creature was it was vicious and could move quickly. One witness reported seeing the beast jump twenty feet across terraces with ease.

The increasing number of reports and rising public panic prompted the police to start a separate register of monkey attacks in order to be better able to track the incidents.

Hundreds of people came forward claiming to have seen the creature, and a variety of different descriptions emerged.

According to one witness, the creature was gorilla-like with a “very big” back. Another described the attacker as having gleaming bulbs on his otherwise dark, black body.

In a different variant, the monkey man was described as being about four feet tall, covered in black hair, with glowing red eyes, a metal helmet, metal claws, and three buttons on its chest. According to some others, the monkey man even had the ability to turn into a cat after attacking.

Based on such reports, Delhi police released a sketch of the alleged attacker.

Whilst monkey man reports were numerous in April, it was in the month of May that attacks by the creature began to escalate. For many nights, hospitals were overwhelmed by dozens of patients claiming to be suffering from injuries inflicted by the monkey man. Terrified, local residents in the areas where these attacks were most prevalent organised night-time vigils, in an attempt to catch the elusive assailant. The police even put out a 50,000 rupee reward for any information on the monster.

For all of this, on Monday 14th May the monkey man not only struck again, but with seeming vengeance. Over 50 places reported sightings of the monkey man at once, with 16 people injured. It was reported that east and north-east Delhi, where the attacks were concentrated, were placed under siege by a large police operation with the intention of capturing the assailant – to no avail.

If it had not been considered so already, the situation was by now out of control. Not only that, it was endangering lives, not just because of the supposed monkey man inflicted injuries, but by panic, with at least two people dying whilst attempting to flee during a perceived attack.

With many determined to put a name to the attacker, rational speculation began to circulate that eyewitnesses were merely describing a normal monkey and that there was nothing peculiar about the case. Yet, the director of the National Zoological Gardens told reporters that could not be possible.

“It cannot be a monkey as suspected, because they do not have the height attributed to the attacker by eyewitnesses,”

The repeated, unprovoked violence of the attacks also led many to conclude that an animal could not be responsible.

A victim with bite marks from the creature was examined by a dentist at the request of police, who determined that the bites were “not human”.

The only explanations left were trickery of some sort or a genuine mysterious creature attacking people. However, finding the truth of the matter proved to be impossible, with a concrete explanation never being attained. In time the mysterious attacks decreased and eventually faded away from Delhi altogether. Strangely, reports of the monkey man reappeared a year later in other parts of India. Yet, once again, an explanation proved elusive. Now, the incident has faded away altogether, relegated by sceptics to the realm of mass hysteria and legend.

STORY: MEL’S HOLE=====

So many weird things happen in the Pacific Northwest that, comparatively, a mysterious hole in the ground seems pretty innocuous – at first. Next to numerous Bigfoot sightings and miles of giant mushrooms, the phenomenon of Mel’s Hole seems pretty straightforward until you realize that it also happens to be a bottomless pit that brings animals back from the dead. Mel’s Hole is one of the most mysterious places in the state of Washington. The mystery of Mel’s Hole all started with an interview on Coast to Coast AM radio when a caller identifying himself as Mel Waters claimed that he found a real-life bottomless pit on his property.

As you can imagine, things only got creepier from there – Pet Sematary creepy. Today, this supernatural phenomenon in Washington, like so many others, straddles the line between being famous and elusive.

Though Mel Waters (if he ever existed at all) is credited with having brought attention to the pit, the legend itself began long before he came around. Local residents, authorities, and indigenous tribes knew of the hole for decades before Waters bought his property.

As the story goes, the pit was about nine feet in diameter, with walls constructed out of hand-placed bricks stretching 15 feet down before transitioning into dirt and darkness. Known popularly as “the Devil’s Hole,” the locals all agreed that there was something rather unsettling about the hole’s existence, but no one cared – nor wanted – to think too hard about what that “something” might be.

Manastash Ridge residents instead used the hole as a garbage dump and decided not to question the eerie fact that the pit never appeared to fill up.

According to Waters’s interview with Coast to Coast AM host Art Bell, once Waters realized that the hole wasn’t showing any signs of filling up, he decided to test it. His plan was to bring thousands of feet of fishing line and a sturdy fishing rod out to the hole, add weight to the fishing line, and then measure how far down it went before hitting the bottom.

By the end of hist test, Waters got more than he bargained for: the hole had no bottom. And if a bottom does exist, it’s deep enough that the weighted line failed to go slack after 80,000 feet. Neither Waters nor anyone else has ever confirmed reaching the bottom.

People who have been brave enough to approach the pit all noticed something peculiar about the area’s wildlife – or more aptly, the lack thereof. Animals obviously hated the hole and would do their best to stay as far away from it as possible. Waters even reported that his own dogs refused to approach the hole. When he tried to bring them closer to it, they dug their paws into the ground in protest.

Other visitors even took note of the fact that birds avoided flying directly over it and no other small animals ever appeared near it. According to various reports, the only signs of wildlife were piles of bones strewn around the mouth of the pit.

After Waters allegedly lowered 80,000 feet of fishing line into the hole on his property to try and locate the bottom, he suspected that there might be something more sinister about the hole than its infinite depth. Waters began performing a variety of other tests in an attempt to better understand this seemingly endless pit. When he yelled directly into the pit, he heard silence instead of an echo; and if he brought a handheld radio near the hole, it would play music that sounded decades out of date.

Further tests were conducted at a location known as the second Devil’s Hole, a pit in Nevada believed to have properties identical to those of the Washington hole. When a bucket of ice was lowered about 1,500 feet down into the hole, the ice had changed by the time it was brought back up—it felt inexplicably warm, seemed to dry out the air near it, and even became flammable.

Mel Waters’s interview with Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM brought the hole into public consciousness, and one of the stories he told during the call was absolutely chilling. According to Mel, locals have used the hole to get rid of anything from old equipment to dead cattle. But, apparently, throwing something down the hole didn’t guarantee that it would stay there. During the interview, Mel claimed that when one of his neighbors’ dogs passed away, his neighbor brought the dog to the hole to get rid of it.

The neighbor then allegedly told Mel that after he’d done so, he later saw his dog running in the forest, alive and well—and still wearing the collar that had been around its neck when its body had been brought to the hole.

One of the most skin-crawling stories about Mel’s Hole details the fate of a sheep that Mel Waters claims to have lowered into the pit as one of the many experiments he conducted. The sheep, like Mel’s dogs and other local animals, was absolutely terrified of the pit and Mel had to tranquilize it in order to get it close enough to the mouth of the hole. Curious after hearing about the strange fate of a bucket of ice that apparently became warm and flammable after being lowered into a similar hole, Mel decided to do the same thing with the sheep. What happened to the sheep, though, was even stranger.

When Mel hoisted the sheep back up out of the hole, it was dead, and it appeared to have been cooked from the inside. Even stranger was that something appeared to be moving inside it, and when it was cut open, Mel saw something that he described as resembling a fetal seal with human eyes staring back at him. He immediately threw the creature back into the hole.

When he told the story to curious neighbors, some said that they too had seen a similar creature around the hole before. Whatever it is, it may be the only thing that can get in and out of Mel’s Hole.

Mel Waters’s property in Washington is home to the original pit that spawned the legend, but it’s not the only one. Another hole is said to exist in Nevada that displays properties very similar to those attributed to the original Mel’s Hole. According to Mel, he’s visited the second hole as well, and it’s every bit as bizarre and fascinating as the one found on his property.

Birds of an unidentifiable species have been seen circling the Nevada pit, and when Mel attempted to shoot one down for study, he found that the bullets seemed to ricochet right off of them. If bulletproof birds are any indication, the Nevada hole is likely hiding just as many supernatural secrets as Mel’s.

The alleged interaction between Mel Waters and the US government, if true, means that Mel’s Hole is more important than even Mel himself realized. According to Mel’s story, government agents attempted to prevent him from entering his own property, claiming that a plane had crashed there. When he refused to believe their story, they abruptly switched tacks and offered to lease his land from him for $250,000 on one condition: if he accepted, he would have to leave the country.

Mel, being in dire straits at the time, accepted. He then moved to Australia and didn’t return for several years. When he did, government agents insisted that they had bought his land. Locals then informed Mel that the area around the pit had been guarded by black vans and helicopters since he left.

After Mel Waters’s first interview on Coast to Coast AM, no one had any reason to question his identity. Then his story started to strike a chord. Coast to Coast listeners were enthralled by stories of the pit, so Mel decided to give a second interview. But, paradoxically, the more Mel stepped into the spotlight, the more interesting he – and his story – seemed to become.

He had been featured on Coast to Coast AM several times before followers of the story began to search local records for his name in hopes of determining the exact location of the hole—and they found nothing. No property transfers had been conducted in the area during the time that Mel claimed to have sold the land to the government, and no one named Mel Waters had voted, paid taxes, or even lived there. Whether “Mel” was a hoax or a pseudonym, Mel Waters was ultimately consumed by the mystery of the hole himself.

Among the Coast to Coast AM listeners who took an interest in the story of Mel’s Hole was a geologist named Jack Powell. After hearing Mel describe the characteristics of the pit on the radio, Powell thought he recognized the hole as being an abandoned mine shaft that he was familiar with from his childhood. But when Mel revealed that he had lowered at least 80,000 feet of fishing line into the hole in order to test its depth, Powell realized that the story was much stranger than he had thought: a hole that deep would not be physically possible.

Based on Powell’s geological expertise, this can only mean that Mel Waters designed a spectacular hoax—or that among the many mysteries presented by Mel’s Hole is a localized geographical anomaly.

SHOW CLOSE=====

Thanks for listening. 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 anytime with your questions or comments at darren@weirddarkness.com – and you can find the show on Facebook and Twitter, including the show’s Weirdos Facebook Group on the CONTACT/SOCIAL page at WeirdDarkness.com. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, click on TELL YOUR STORY.

All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true (unless stated otherwise) and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes.

“The Black Knight Satellite Conspiracy” is from RealParanormalExperiences.com

“Guardian Angel Speed Trap” submitted by Weirdo family member Blackfire Wolf.

“Grave of the Female Stranger” by Orrin Grey

“Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True” from The Occult Museum

“A Parallel Life/Awoken By a Lamp” posted anonymously to Reddit

“Neal Devaney” by Robert Wilhelm for Murder By Gaslight

“The Old Hag Revisted: Nighttime Terrors” from the book, “Basic Instinct: Erotic Paranormal Encounters” which you can find on Amazon, I’ve linked to it in the show notes

“The Moon Eyed People” by Brent Swancer

“The Boo Hag” from North Carolina Ghosts

“The Monkey Man of Delhi” posted at Paranormal Scholar

“Mel’s Hole” by Maggie Clendenin

Again, you can find link to all of these stories in the show notes.

WeirdDarkness™ – is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions.

Now that we’re coming out of the dark, I’ll leave you with a little light… “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” – Romans 2:1

And a final thought… “Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.” – Jerry Garcia

I’m Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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