“DID MARK TWAIN WRITE A NOVEL… FROM HIS GRAVE?” and More Creepy True Stories! #WeirdDarkness
Listen to ““DID MARK TWAIN WRITE A NOVEL… FROM HIS GRAVE?” and More Creepy True Stories! #WeirdDarkness” on Spreaker.
IN THIS EPISODE: Did Mark Twain write a new novel after he was dead? If so, how? *** Though David Parker Ray’s girlfriend Cindy Hendy helped him commit numerous rapes and murders in the 1990s, she was released in 2019 and walks free today. *** Louis Le Prince vanished under mysterious circumstances, but did he willingly decide to hide from the outside world, or was he murdered? *** A man has a dream so disturbing that he’s deeply affected by it well after he dreamt it. And the reason it stuck with him could be that it wasn’t a dream after all – but a premonition of something horrible to come. *** Shortly after finishing her junior year of high school, Alissa Turner disappeared, never to be seen alive again. Her murder would’ve gone unsolved if not for the social media platform, TikTok. *** Humans have been fascinated with Mars ever since we learned it was a planet. But why are we so obsessed with it? Is it simply our next step towards deep-space travel, or are we drawn to it for a more basic reason… because our ancestors originated from there? *** There are many UFO sightings on record, but ones that are accompanied by missing time are particularly interesting. Perhaps not least as they might suggest something more akin to alien abduction than just a mere sighting. We’ll look at one particular incident that took place in Nebraska in 1966.
SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…
“The Nebraska Missing Time Affair” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckjf4xe
“The Toy Box Killer’s Girlfriend” by Marco Margaritoff for All That’s Interesting: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8k8j79
“The Strange Disappearance of Louis Le Prince” by Jan Bartek for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9f5zdd
“The Strange Dreams of Mr. Moir” posted at Anomalien: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/33za3tej
“The Murder Solved Through TikTok” by Olivia McCormack for Bust.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/42s9je2z
“Did Our Ancestors Live On Mars?” posted at Earth-Chronicles.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4j8pcrwe
“Do Copyright Laws Apply to Spirit Writing?” posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/nzsen4v5
Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library.
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Originally aired: December, 2022
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…
Though David Parker Ray’s girlfriend Cindy Hendy helped him commit numerous rapes and murders in the 1990s, she was released in 2019 and walks free today. (The Toy Box Killer’s Girlfriend)
Louis Le Prince vanished under mysterious circumstances, but did he willingly decide to hide from the outside world, or was he murdered? (The Strange Disappearance of Louis Le Prince)
A man has a dream so disturbing that he’s deeply affected by it well after he dreamt it. And the reason it stuck with him could be that it wasn’t a dream after all – but a premonition of something horrible to come. (The Strange Dreams of Mr. Moir)
Shortly after finishing her junior year of high school, Alissa Turner disappeared, never to be seen alive again. Her murder would’ve gone unsolved if not for the social media platform, TikTok. (The Murder Solved Through TikTok)
Humans have been fascinated with Mars ever since we learned it was a planet. But why are we so obsessed with it? Is it simply our next step towards deep-space travel, or are we drawn to it for a more basic reason… because our ancestors originated from there? (Did Our Ancestors Live On Mars?)
There are many UFO sightings on record, but ones that are accompanied by missing time are particularly interesting. Perhaps not least as they might suggest something more akin to alien abduction than just a mere sighting. We’ll look at one particular incident that took place in Nebraska in 1966. (The Nebraska Missing Time Affair)
Did Mark Twain write a new novel… after he was dead? (Do Copyright Laws Apply to Spirit Writing?)
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, and please leave a rating and review in the podcast app you’re listening from – doing these things helps the show to keep growing. And while you’re listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to connect with me on social media, and more!
Now.. bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness!
STORY: DO COPYRIGHT LAWS APPLY TO SPIRIT WRITING?=====
These days any estate planning lawyer worth his salt will tell you to pay attention to intellectual property rights. “Estate planning” is of course our polite term for “who gets the dead guy’s stuff”. Physical assets like cash and real estate are relatively easy to deal with. When it comes to future revenue generated from so-called “products of the mind”, things get a little murkier, but a good attorney can sort it out for you. During your lifetime you invented a better mousetrap and patented the idea. Of course, you’re probably suffering in the hoary netherworld, tormented by the ghosts of slaughtered rodents, but the folks you left behind may still be dispatching vermin to the afterlife based on your brilliant final solution to the rodentia problem. The trick here is that you invented it while you were alive. What about intellectual property created after you’re dead?
If you don’t think this has been a problem, go dig up Samuel Clemens. He’ll give you an earful. Or he would if he wasn’t deader than a mackerel. And if you disinter him and he happens to get chatty, you probably have bigger, more immediate problems like how to efficiently dispatch the ravenous undead, witty and charming as they may be. The American writer Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) is celebrated as one of the greatest humorists America has ever produced and universally recognized as a literary giant. He died in 1910. This presented a problem, when a book appeared in 1917 called “The Coming of Jap Herron” that was purportedly authored by his spirit. Starting in 1915, Emily Grant Hutchings and Lola V. Hays reported they were transcribing this brand new Mark Twain novel via Ouija board (they also claimed to be transcribing a second posthumous Twain novel called “Brent Roberts”).
This seems a bit above and beyond, literally and preternaturally, literary agent-wise, but hey you’ve got to earn that 10 percent by hook or by crook. Emily Grant Hutchings (formerly Emily Rosalie Schmidt) was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1870. Despite later professing that she had no personal acquaintance with Mark Twain, it is likely she first met him in St. Louis at a 1902 luncheon in his honor given at the Museum of Fine Arts, where he received an honorary degree (jokingly conceived just for him) of “Master Doctor of Arts”. There are a few letters between Hutchings and Twain that have been preserved, so they do appear to have had minor correspondence, although they are generally brief and discuss the vagaries of the writing process. Ms. Hutchings had a fairly productive writing career of her own – spending 12 years as a feature writer for the St. Louis Sunday Globe-Democrat, as well as publishing articles in Current Literature, Cosmopolitan, Country Life, Current Magazine, The Open Court, Philistine, and Atlantic Monthly. She wrote one published novel entitled “Chriskios-Divine Healer.”
Hutchings graduated high school at 17 and went on to attend a famous school for girls in Altenburg, Germany, returning to America and enrolling in the State University at Columbia, Missouri. As writing does not traditionally pay very well, she also taught Latin, Greek, and German at Hannibal High School, marrying Charles Edwin Hutchings, secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Tower Grove Park in 1897.
Hutchings’ collaborator on Jap Herron (apart from the deceased Twain), Lola V. Hays was a psychic medium, plying her spiritualist trade in St. Louis, but there is decidedly less biographical information on her than Hutchings. We do know she really dug Ouija boards.
Hutchings had previously ventured into the literary spirit world, teaming with another St. Louis psychic medium, Pearl Lenore Pollard in 1913. The two worked on channeling (also via Ouija board) a 17th Century spirit that identified itself as “Patience Worth”. The undead Worth dictated several novels, some poetry, and short prose – most of which were reasonably well-received, albeit skeptically. Of course, researchers over the years have failed to identify that a person named Patience Worth was ever not dead, or ever existed in a corporeal state at all, and she evinced a remarkable awareness of Victorian norms for a dead 17th Century woman.
When Hutchings hooked up with Lola Hays, they appeared to initially make contact with Patience Worth yet again, but Mark Twain quickly muscled into the communications to dictate two volumes of fiction, Jap Herron and Brent Roberts. American psychologist and psychical researcher James Hyslop (an important figure in the Society for Psychical Research), took it upon himself to investigate, commenting “There would be little difference of opinion about the absence of Mark Twain’s characteristic humor in these two volumes. Mrs. Hays had read a little of Mark Twain, and Mrs. Hutchings nothing until after the work had been partly completed” (Hyslop, 1919, p399). It seems Hyslop took Hutchings at her word that she hadn’t read any Twain prior to the spiritual communications, but that was patently false, firstly because she was a relatively well educated woman, and particularly because she had actually corresponded with Twain while he was still amongst the living.
Hyslop went on to try and get some independent verification of the contact between Hutchings, Hays, and Twain – like any good researcher, he found himself another medium (Mrs. Chenoweth). “So I told Mark Twain that I wanted him to deliver a message through the two ladies. He agreed to try, and I gave him the sentence: ‘Hyslop is a cabbage head.’ His immediate reply was: ‘You do not expect me to be so blunt as that, do you? That message shows no consideration for cabbages’” (Hyslop, 1919, p404). Now, that of course sounds a little more like Twain, but the message was never delivered by Hutchings and Hays.
What was Jap Herron actually about? One of the least generous reviews said something along the lines of, “Jap Herron, is a dreary tale of a pseudo-Sawyerish urchin so irritatingly well behaved that a genuine Twain hero would have sent him home bawling with his eyes blackened”. This opinion was not universal at the time of its publication, as some critics thought they did detect some stylistic similarities to Twain’s writings. Most folks agreed that if it was indeed authored by Twain, it was clear that death constituted a serious slump in mentality and literary style.
After Jap Herron was released to the mass market by publisher Mitchell Kennerley, the New York Times (September 9, 1917) review of it was fairly uncharitable, but nonetheless garnered it some attentions, stating “The story itself, a long novelette, is scened in a Missouri town and tells how a lad born to poverty and shiftlessness, by the help of a fine-souled and high-minded man and woman, grew into a noble and useful manhood and helped to regenerate his town. There is evident a rather striking knowledge of the conditions of life and the peculiarities of character in a Missouri town, the dialect is true, and the picture has, in general, many features that will seem familiar to those who know their ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’. A country paper fills an important place in the tale, and there is constant proof of familiarity with the life and work of the editor of such a sheet. The humor impresses as a feeble attempt at imitation and, while there is now and then a strong sure touch of pathos or a swift and true revelation of human nature, the ‘sob stuff’ that oozes through many of the scenes, and the overdrawn emotions are too much for credulity. If this is the best that ‘Mark Twain’ can do by reaching across the barrier, the army of admirers that his works have won for him will all hope that he will hereafter respect that boundary”.
The fact the Jap Herron was published by Mitchell Kennerley turned out to be extremely problematic, as Harper and Brothers Publishers owned the sole right to the publication of Mark Twain stories. In February 1918, Mrs. Ossip Gabrilowitsch of Bryn Mawr (formerly Clara Clemens, Twain’s daughter) asked her attorney, Charles P. Lark of New York, to prevent the publication of the work through an injunction and demanded that already published copies be destroyed. And so we have the case of the suit of Harper and Brothers vs. Mitchell Kennerley, not only over violations of copyright, but also arguing that Jap Herron was of such poor quality that it would besmirch the Twain brand, additionally pointing out that Twain never believed in life after death.
The lawsuit never made it to trial. Hutchings and Kennerley didn’t like their chances, and agreed to pull all copies of Jap Herron from the shelves, which disappointed some folks who wanted to see if Samuel Clemens would be called to testify via Ouija board. As a result, actual paper copies of the novel are pretty darn rare (although it’s now out of copyright, so a digital copy is pretty easy to find). As to the novel “Brent Roberts” – it never seems to have seen the light of day. The moral of the story is that posthumous authorship is a legal minefield, and should you find yourself without a source of income in the afterlife, it’s probably a bad bet, even for a famous writer, and one should look for something more lucrative. As Mark Twain himself said, “Buy land, they’re not making it any more”.
BREAK=====
When Weird Darkness returns… there are many UFO sightings on record, but ones that are accompanied by missing time are particularly interesting. Perhaps not least as they might suggest something more akin to alien abduction than just a mere sighting. We’ll look at one particular incident that took place in Nebraska in 1966.
But first – shortly after finishing her junior year of high school, Alissa Turner disappeared, never to be seen alive again. Her murder would’ve gone unsolved if not for the social media platform, TikTok. That story is up next on Weird Darkness.
<COMMERCIAL BREAK>
STORY: THE MURDER SOLVED THROUGH TIKTOK=====
On May 17, 2001, Alissa Turney finished her junior year of high school. She was excited about her summer plans and was going to attend a graduation party that night, but she never arrived. The last time anyone would see Alissa alive was the day Paradise Valley High School adjourned for the year.
According to Alissa’s stepfather, Michael Turney, the pair had celebrated Alissa’s last day of school with lunch around 11 a.m., but at the meal, there was a verbal altercation. Alissa wanted more freedom, something Michael was reluctant to give. “She wanted to … be able to stay out later at night, and not be accountable to where she was at. And I told her, ‘As long as you’re under my roof, we’re gonna have to, uh … check in with Daddy, ’cause Daddy’s a nervous wreck if you don’t,” Michael recalled to ABC in 2009. Michael then claims he dropped a still-frustrated Alissa off at home and went to run errands and pick up his younger daughter, Sarah.
Upon returning home Sarah and Michael found an empty house, and a note claiming that Alissa was running away to California. The police determined that there was no foul play, Alissa was marked as a runaway, and the case went cold.
The case got even more confusing when in 2006 an incarcerated Florida man, Thomas Hymer, confessed to killing Alissa. Hymer had only seen age-progressed photos of Alissa and believed she was a woman that he had murdered. After he saw a real photo of Alissa he recanted his confession. As Hymer was incorrect in his descriptions of Alissa, investigators were left believing this was not a genuine confession.
While Hymer was a dead end, it reignited public interest in the case. And two years later, in 2008, the Phoenix Police Department declared that foul play was a factor in Alissa’s disappearance. The department didn’t elaborate on how this determination had been made. Sergeant Maggie Cox of the Missing Person Unit told Dateline that allegations of sexual abuse had been raised against Michael Turney, and led investigators to look more critically at Alissa’s stepfather.
In late 2008, a search warrant was executed at Michael Turney’s residence. The police would find the largest stockpile of explosives discovered in Phoenix Police Department history. There were 26 handmade explosive devices, a van filled with gasoline cans, two handmade silencers, and 19 high-caliber assault rifles.
Along with the arsenal, there was a 98-page manifesto penned by Michael called “Diary of a Madman Martyr.” The document claimed that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was involved in the kidnapping and murder of Alissa. Michael had created a plan to blow up the union hall in revenge for Alissa’s death.
Michael Turney was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for his unregistered pipe bombs and was released in 2017.
After the search, the case was cold for another decade. But the need for answers and justice never went away for Sarah Turney, Alissa’s younger sister.
After her father was released from prison in 2017, Sarah begged him for answers. The pair met at a local Starbucks and talked for over an hour. “I felt a lot of different emotions [afterward],” Sarah told Elle, adding, “I was sad that he still refused to give me any answers… I was hopeful that [putting those statements on TikTok] would prompt the police to finally bring him to a grand jury for questioning.”
In a video recording, Michael Turney refused to give Sarah answers about her sister’s disappearance, claiming that on his deathbed she’ll be given all the answers. That wasn’t an acceptable response for Sarah.
For 20 years, Sarah has been tirelessly trying to give her sister justice when no one else was paying attention. In 2019, Sarah began her own podcast, “Voices for Justice.” Different from most true crime podcasts, this series gives a personal look at the cost of losing a loved one. Sarah dives into her and Alissa’s family history, a timeline of events, and updates since Alissa’s disappearance.
But real traction came when Sarah joined TikTok. Sarah told Dateline in June, “Believe it or not, it has become an important outlet for Alissa’s story. I’ve received more interest in this case from that app in the past month than the last 10 years.”
Sarah’s TikTok account @Saraheturney has over 1 million followers and her videos have a total of over 20 million likes.
In February 2019, the case was submitted to the County Attorney’s office. They were requesting homicide charges be made against Michael Turney. Six months later, he would be indicted for his step-daughter’s death.
On Thursday, August 20, 2020, Michael Turney was charged with the murder of Alissa Turney. The Maricopa County Attorney announcing the charge gave Sarah credit for her continued efforts to get justice for her sister. “Sarah Turney, your perseverance and commitment to finding justice for your sister Alissa is a testament to the love of a sister,” she said. “Because of that love, Alissa’s light has never gone out and she lives on in the stories and photos you’ve shared with the community.”
While waiting for her father’s trial, Sarah is using her social media platform to help other families get justice for their loved ones. She’s continuing her work so that no victim is left without the justice they deserve.
STORY: THE NEBRASKA MISSING TIME AFFAIR=====
There are many UFO sightings on record, but ones that are accompanied by missing time are particularly interesting. Perhaps not least as they might suggest something more akin to alien abduction than just a mere sighting.
An incident in the autumn of 1966 in Nebraska could be just such a case. A journey that should have taken no longer than five minutes seemingly took over half an hour. And what’s more, the witness to these strange events seemingly had no recollection of the events.
It is perhaps interesting that the incident we are about to examine occurred on an otherwise lonely road. Many potential and apparent abduction cases occur in similar locations around the world. Does this suggest a deliberate targeting of exposed individuals? Or might it be the locations themselves, perhaps built on or near locations that are energetically charged and flowing with paranormal activity?
The account wasn’t reported until decades later in 2004 and entered the public arena through the files of Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). It is from those files that the following account is based.
The witness was 17 years old at the time of the incident, [1] although it was his ex-wife (who was his girlfriend at the time) who would eventually make a report in 2004. On the night in question on 5th September 1966, the unnamed teenager was riding on his motorcycle to his girlfriend’s house to meet her parents in Columbus, Nebraska.
He was due to arrive at around 9 pm and was around a mile away from his destination when he noticed something truly out of the ordinary overhead. He could see a bizarre object which was “completely circular” and was around 100-feet above him. It also had a combination of green, red, and yellow lights on the underside. He would further recall how a pattern on the underside reminded him of the spokes on a wheel.
Although he could make out the shape of the object, due to the darkness of the evening he could not see any further detail such as the color, or any specifics on the top side. He did recall, though, that it made a “low humming sound” – a sound that “resonated” through him.
By the time he realized that the object was not moving and was, in fact, stationary, he increased the speed of the bike. However, then things turned even more bizarre.
The engine of the bike was indeed raging, and the wheels below were spinning as they should. The bike and consequently himself, though, remained in the same place on the road. Due to his familiarity with the road, he knew this was not something he was imagining. For example, he knew he should have passed certain locations on the roadside by now.
He increased the speed even more. Still, the bike remained where it was, working, but seemingly frozen.
The next thing he knew, he was traveling (and moving) once more along the road. However, he had the distinct impression that he was missing something. What’s more, despite going nearly 70 miles per hour only seconds ago, he was now seemingly coasting along at around 25 miles per hour.
He took a moment to clear his mind and then, while still very much concerned and unnerved, he continued on his journey.
By the time he arrived at his girlfriend’s parents’ house, he was around 30 minutes late. The journey itself should have taken no more than 5 minutes. As he pulled up the property, his girlfriend immediately saw how pale he looked and how jumpy he was acting. In fact, he was distinctly quiet for the rest of the evening. This change, while discreet, was something that didn’t leave him for some time, at least according to the recollections of his (then) girlfriend.
It wasn’t until a month or so later that he would eventually reveal to her what had happened that strange night at the start of September.
It was while the pair were on a night out around four weeks after the missing time episode when things began to make a little more sense to the witness’s girlfriend. They decided to park their car near a radio tower in a quiet part of the town. They had been before and many of their friends did the same. However, on this evening, things took a sudden change.
After only being there for several minutes, the witness suddenly declared they had to leave. As his girlfriend tried to calm him and find out what the matter was, he would suddenly blurt out what he had seen a month earlier on the way to her parent’s home. He still, though, could not account for the missing 30 minutes. Or why his bike was seemingly frozen in the same spot for such a prolonged period of time.
The pair would eventually marry and have children. However, they would divorce several years before the report of the incident was made. His wife also claimed that his constant state of fear and occasional panic would last for many years. And even at the time of their divorce, he would refuse to speak of the night in question.
1966 and 1967 were both big years for UFO sightings, in particular 1967 which would see a wave of UFO activity around the world. However, the build-up to that wave of incidents began in the fall of 1966. More specifically, there were several such incidents around the same time as the Nebraska missing time case which are very much worth mentioning here.
For example, on the same evening as the alleged encounter above, in Minnesota at Finland AFS, a sighting of an oval-shaped object was reported. What’s more, the object had red, yellow, and green lights on the underside – the same as the lights seen in Nebraska around an hour earlier. As well as being seen visually, it was also picked up on the radar signal. So convinced that something untoward was in the skies above the region a decision was made to scramble two F-89 jets from nearby Duluth. However, as shows up in other similar reports, as soon as the fighters approached the object it disappeared with lightning speed.
Only two nights earlier, on the evening of 3rd September in Harlingen, Texas, a local resident would notice significant disturbance on his television. When he went outside to inspect what the matter was, he witnessed a “fantastic spinning light” that illuminated the entire area below. Unfortunately, the report does not say what colors the lights were, only that the object hovered there for some time. And furthermore, it had been seen in the area on other occasions.
Whether the above accounts are connected or not is obviously open to debate. They are, however, extremely interesting when considered against the missing time account in Nebraska. And perhaps even more so when considering the wave of UFO encounters that would occur in 1967.
It is perhaps examining the case of “Mark”, who would report his encounters to an online reporting website decades after they occurred, but that contain similar details to the above encounter. Perhaps interestingly, he would start his report by claiming that “to the best of his knowledge” he had never been abducted. However, he did have two specific “blocks of missing time” from the early 1970s. And what’s more, there appeared to be no medical reasons why he should suffer these bizarre and random blackouts.
He would claim that the first of these strange episodes occurred at around 2 am in the early hours as he was driving along Highway 10 to Osseo in northern Minneapolis. The road was quiet as you might expect, but when he arrived at his home and pulled into the driveway, he suddenly realized that he had no memory whatsoever of the journey. Even pulling onto the drive had been done in an almost trance-like state. He likened it to being a passenger who fell asleep during the journey, only waking upon arrival and consequently, confused.
Even stranger, he noticed that 50 minutes had passed by. In the car with him was a friend. However, to his disbelief, his friend had seemingly fallen asleep and also remembered nothing of the journey. When Mark told him that he too could not recall the drive home his friend thought he was merely tying to pull his leg and so brushed his words aside. After persisting with his claims, though, his friend relented, now a lot more concerned about the situation.
What is perhaps interesting here is that the are many cases of alien abduction on record where the witness has been with one or multiple other people before the apparent abduction, and they have simply fallen (or remained) asleep well the events unfold – as if they had been intentionally placed in a temporary comatose state.
This, however, would not be the first incident that Mark would experience with missing time.
Only several months later, he would claim that have returned home from work one Friday evening, as normal, ready to enjoy the weekend. The next Monday morning he arrived at work as usual. However, when one of his work colleagues asked him through idle chitchat would he had done during his days off, he realized he could not recall a single thing after walking through the door on the Friday evening. Almost as if he had simply fallen into a deep sleep and not awoken until the Monday morning two days later.
Perhaps even more bizarre, and concerning for the witness, he still can’t recall the events of that missing weekend even today. He claimed to have spent considerable time and effort in an attempt to recall the events of those missing days. He would even speak with several friends who he usually spent time with, all of them stating that they had not been with him on the dates in question. It would appear that no one had any idea what he had done or where he had been over that 48 hour period.
In his report, Mark also mentioned several other strange incidents that he had been witness to. For example, at some point in the late-1950s or early 1960s while he was playing little league baseball, he noticed a strange, spherical object with a strange “blue-green gaseous glow” to it moving at overhead with remarkable speed. He continued to watch the object for several moments – completely taking his attention off the game – before it disappeared into the distance.
In more recent times (at some point in 2000s, he witnessed a bizarre cylindrical object as he was driving on a sunny day just north of Minneapolis. The object appeared to be headed in the same direction as he was, giving him chance to focus on it for several seconds at a time. He couldn’t recall any particular markings on the side of the object, and that it appeared to have no wings or any visible means of propulsion.
He would take his eyes off the craft for a split second so as to focus back on the road. However, in that time the object had simply disappeared. It was visible for around 15 seconds in total. Mark wasn’t sure if the object had sped off into the distance or “vanished into another dimension”.
There are perhaps several intriguing details to note about the encounters of Mark. Not least that it would appear, despite his certainty that he has not been abducted, that he very well might be a victim of repeat alien abduction. Simply the fact that he appears to have had sightings that go back to childhood is often suggestive of some kind of repeat alien interaction. And when we consider that these sightings have seemingly continued into the contemporary era, we might suspect that these extraterrestrial contacts are continuing today.
The missing time and the fact that his passenger friend appeared to sleep right the way through the strange event is, as we mentioned above, suggestive of alien abduction encounters. And perhaps further suggests that Mark was the specific target of the abduction, which would again lean toward the notion that he has likely been abducted several times throughout his life.
If Mark is a victim of repeated alien abduction, it would suggest that he, like many others, is just one of many such abductees. People who very likely have suffered similarly repeated abduction episodes over the course of their lives going back decades. This would suggest something more than merely random incidents, but rather a predetermined program that is perhaps still in action today. A program that has unknown consequences for humanity as a whole. We might ask, how many other people might have had very similar incidents occur to them as Mark, only they haven’t reported it? Indeed, these strange missing time events might be much more widespread than some might think.
Did the anonymous witness suffer an alien abduction that evening on a lonely road in Columbus, Nebraska?
All the signs are certainly there, not least the missing 30 minutes of time. Was he taken on board the strange circular craft before being sent back on his way on his motorcycle? Was this incident really wiped from his mind? Or might it be possible that he very much recalled the events of that half an hour? However, he simply refused to speak about it? Might that have been why he would act as fearful for his life when returning near to the location a month later?
Or might that fear have been something in his unconscious? Something that doesn’t provide memories. But instead only evokes emotions such as distress, desperation, and outright terror.
Without hearing the witness’s side of the story there is so much left unanswered here. And it is not likely that we shall be able to fill in those gaps. Did the witness, for example, suffer any similar incidents in the years that followed? Did he recall any further memories of the night in question? And if the incident wasn’t a case of alien abduction, just what did happen during those 30 minutes? And what technology or energy caused the apparent standstill of his bike?
It is certainly an intriguing account. And one that, if we can assume the credibility of the person who made the report for a moment, certainly suggests something a lot more out of the ordinary than a mere sighting of strange lights in the sky. Just what did happen that September evening in Columbus, Nebraska, though, will likely remain a mystery.
BREAK=====
Coming up… a man has a dream so disturbing that he’s deeply affected by it well after he dreamt it. And the reason it stuck with him could be that it wasn’t a dream after all – but a premonition of something horrible to come.
Plus… humans have been fascinated with Mars ever since we learned it was a planet. But why are we so obsessed with it? Is it simply our next step towards deep-space travel, or are we drawn to it for a more basic reason… because our ancestors originated from there? These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns!
<COMMERCIAL BREAK>
STORY: THE STRANGE DREAMS OF MR. MOIR=====
In June 1870 William Moir, bailiff responsible for a farm at Boyndie near Banff, had a strange and vivid dream in which he saw the dead body of a man with blood on its face, lying on a slight mound on some sloping ground that bounded his farm and stretched to the seashore, about 16ft from the high water mark.
Moir, described as an “intelligent, steady, and modest man, 35 years of age, and married”, was deeply affected by the dream. In July 1870 there came what initially appeared to be the fulfillment of the dream.
A man who had been an inmate of the Banffshire Lunatic Asylum, at Ladysbridge, was found drowned at a point about 200 yards from the place in Moir’s dream.
Together with some menservants, Moir had been out sea fishing and from their boat they observed the dead body. Hastening ashore, Moir was the first person to put his hand upon the corpse.
He and one of his companions proceeded to carry the body to the village of Whitehills nearby. Whilst carrying the body, they passed over the exact spot Moir had seen the dead man lying in his dream.
When about six yards beyond this, Moir’s companion slipped and dropped the board upon which the body lay, causing it to fall to the ground. Moir, keeping hold of his end of the board, observed blood upon the face of the corpse, and he looked upon the incidents as the fulfillment of his dream. However, more was to come.
The vision in the dream returned repeatedly to Moir through 1871, to the point it disturbed him so much that he could not go out walking or sit down at home in the evening without recalling it.
He was conscious of becoming taciturn, morose and absent. Finally, at the end of January 1872, he went down to a place known as Stakeness, about 400 yards from the place in his original vision and began digging with a spade. He immediately turned up a human skull, followed by the lower jaw with teeth and shoulder bones.
Further digging brought up other bones of a human body as far as the tigh. Realizing he had dug up a skeleton, Moir fetched one William Lorimer, the cattleman at the farm, to help with the digging and they brought out the lower bones of the skeleton.
Both men then deposited the bones in the cavity, and covered them up, and Moir went to the village of Whitehills to consult Mr. Taylor, a local shopkeeper.
An Inspector M’Gregor of the county police happened to call into the shop at the same time. Moir immediately told him what had happened and they hurried to where the bones lay. It being dusk, the inspector arranged the removal of the skeleton the next day and reported the matter to the Procurator Fiscal.
The place where the bones were found seemed an unlikely one for a grave, there being only a thin layer of mould and earth above the shingle; nearby were some discolored stones, suggesting it might have been the site of a kiln for burning kelp, a local industry that had been discontinued about half a century earlier.
No murder or disappearance was known locally to account for the discovery. It was suggested that Moir might have heard something in childhood, but in fact his family did not live in the district at the time. The bones were estimated to be at least 50 years old.
However, when inquiries were made about the case in 1883 by a Mr Stewart on behalf of the recently formed Society for Psychical Research, it was soon learned that the story had not ended happily.
Stewart discovered that Moir had fallen into what was described as “a state of religious depression such as seriously to unhinge his mind before his death,” which occurred in October 1873.
It seems, Moir had been a troubled man until the finding of the skeleton, and after its discovery, he divulged his belief that “his dream proceeded from an unaccountable feeling, as if he himself had somehow been witness, of or implicated in, the murderous act”.
Moir’s wife Jessie confirmed her husband’s strange reactions from the night of his dream until the day he dug up the grave. She stated that although the dreams had stopped after the bones were found, the shock to his system led to his death.
She also revealed that old people living in the village of Boyndie knew that a man named Elder had disappeared suddenly some 40 or 50 years before.
He was said to have left for America, but it was generally believed that he had been murdered in the room which Moir later slept. The dream of the dead passes into the dream of the living; it persists in Moir’s mind with the same intensity as in the murdered man’s own imagination.
STORY: DID OUR ANCESTORS LIVE ON MARS?=====
Recently, Mars has been the focus of NASA, world governments, SpaceX and billionaires who aspire to go to the Red Planet. Mars is an absolute obsession, as “Marsomania” is virtually nonstop…
But why? By all accounts, Mars is a cold, desolate desert. One could go to the Atacama Desert in Chile and get a much more acceptable “Mars” for survival. What exactly is it that draws us to Mars? Maybe we just don’t want to be alone in the universe?
It’s as if humans have a built-in desire to get to Mars. Given the danger, you’d think we could focus more on saving the environment here on Earth. Obviously, we need to do that.
However, Elon Musk has stated that he intends to go to the Red Planet by 2026, despite all the dangers. One day he hopes to establish a self-sufficient Martian civilization.
Many species on Earth have an instinctive urge to return to their homeland. To get there, they are capable of extraordinary feats of navigation and endurance.
According to many researchers, life on Earth may have originated on Mars billions of years ago. Now we have it in us to want to return there, even in its present devastated state. Although the prospects look bleak, nothing will stop us from flying to Mars.
About 4 billion years ago, Mars was more like Earth, but for unknown reasons it lost its magnetic field. Then solar winds stripped the planet of its atmosphere. To escape, humans may have traveled to Earth or seeded life through organic molecules on Martian meteorites.
Remarkably, there is a physiological indication that Mars may be our original home planet.
When astronauts go into outer space, their circadian rhythms, their body’s biological clock changes from a 24-hour day to a 24.9-hour day, which is the exact rotation period of one day on Mars.
Thus, this indicates that people who go to Mars may actually return to their home, where they have not been for thousands of years.
Notably, many people have a circadian rhythm closer to 24 hours and 11 minutes. On Mars, a day is about 24 hours and 40 minutes.
Here on Earth, the human “body clock” (biological clock) can range from 24.2 to 24.9 hours. When exposed to sunlight and following a daily routine, they tend to synchronize with the 24-hour clock.
It sounds unrealistic, but some claim that humans and aliens currently have a base on the Red Planet. For example, Haim Eshed, who headed Israel’s space service for 30 years, recently claimed that there is a secret underground base on Mars. There American astronauts and aliens have been working together… for many years now.
Eshed has long claimed that the U.S. government signed an agreement with the aliens. If true, this could coincide with stories about President Eisenhower in the mid-50s. According to Philip Schneider, a high clearance design engineer, Eisenhower made a pact with three kinds of aliens. (Schneider later died under highly suspicious circumstances).
Whether these stories are true or not, a Martian base is inevitable. According to Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator for the British Ministry of Defense:
“I think the next few years will be absolutely pivotal in Mars exploration. We see mission after mission, mission after mission, and again the question becomes, ‘Why?” – Pope said.
“Because when humanity goes into space, will we need a planetary base? Mars is the right place for that,” Pope said.
Of course, common sense dictates that humans need a base, and what better way to do so than on our nearest neighboring planet?
Thus, former Air Force meteorologist and contactee Charles J. Hall argues that there has long been an agreement between the government and “high white” aliens.
In exchange for the colonization of exoplanets by aliens, the “high whites” wanted help in building bases for their periodic use, Hall claims.
Notably, Eshed suggested that sharing spaceships might be the milestone at which aliens would deem humanity worthy of further contact.
Scientists recently published a study suggesting that huge lava tubes on Mars might be a suitable temporary shelter for astronauts. Similar tunnels on the Moon could also serve as protection from radiation. Perhaps the astronauts would find that life has already found shelter there? If not American astronauts and aliens, probably some extraterrestrial extremophilic microbes.
Today, NASA is partnering with SpaceX, which won a $2.89 billion contract from two other private companies to deliver astronauts to the moon. If successful, NASA astronauts will walk on the moon for the first time since 1972 (if they were actually there for the first time then). Ultimately, NASA hopes to get humans, as well as supplies and materials, to the moon and beyond.
In essence, NASA has shifted the costs and risks to a private spaceflight company.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk recently made some interesting comments about Earth Day 2021. Musk spoke with Peter Diamandis, who is launching a contest with a $100 million prize. The XPRIZE Carbon Removal contest is the largest incentive prize in history to combat the biggest threats facing humanity on Earth: climate change and rebalancing the Earth’s carbon cycle.
“Flying to Mars is like a Shackleton ad going to Antarctica. You know it’s dangerous, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s a long trip,” Musk said.
Musk then suggested that dying for a glorious adventure would be worth it. Of course, that’s easy to say if he’s not aboard a spaceship.
“You may not come back alive, but it’s a glorious adventure, and it will be an amazing experience.”
“Yeah, honestly, a bunch of people will probably die in the beginning.”
“It’s tough out there.”
Mars is barren today, but there are plans to terraform the planet. Perhaps this will return it to more Earth-like conditions of the distant past.
If Elon Musk gets his way, the planet could be warmed by detonating nuclear bombs over the Martian polar ice caps. The radiation created would then escape into space, he suggests. There is almost complete recklessness involved.
Otherwise, scientists have ideas of redirecting comets or asteroids to fall on Mars. So maybe it’s not so crazy? According to ancient space theorists, such an idea could have been carried out by aliens in Earth’s past.
In short, the current state of Mars is the opposite of the current state of Earth. While we have too much carbon dioxide because of our activities, there is not enough on the Red Planet to create favorable global warming. Too bad we can’t export the excess CO2 to Mars, though it still wouldn’t be enough.
Currently, NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s MOXIE experiment aims to change what little CO2 there is on Mars into oxygen. Since the amount of oxygen would be so small, a more realistic plan might be to export oxygen-creating extremophilic microorganisms from Earth. About 2.5 billion years ago, it was such cyanobacteria that created our oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Unfortunately, NASA determined in 1976 that using microorganisms to create a breathable atmosphere could take thousands of years. Moreover, since Mars has lost its magnetic field, this would be a futile endeavor anyway.
Therefore, the first problem is to restore Mars’ magnetic field. But how can this be done?
Interestingly, according to the Planetary Society:
“We don’t have the technology to rock the planet’s core faster to revive its magnetic field, says NASA chief scientist Dr. Jim Green. He and his colleagues have suggested that a magnetic field placed at the L1 point between the Sun and Mars, where their gravities are roughly equal, could theoretically envelop Mars and protect it from the solar wind.”
At present, according to Green, scientists can already place a weak field at the stable Lagrangian point L1 between the Sun and Mars. (2,000 Gauss) So if they can figure out how to make the magnetic field stronger (more like 10,000 Gauss), it might work.
If all goes well, Mars could become similar to Earth again. However, because of the lower gravity, conditions are likely to be similar to those of life in the Himalayan mountains. Think about it: cold, thin air with low oxygen content.
Interestingly, on Earth, the Himalayas retain traces of ancient civilizations that have disappeared. Similarly, Martian conditions at high altitudes in Chile seem to coincide with frequent reports of UFOs.
Perhaps the aliens found ideal conditions there.
All things considered, it seems better to restore the environment here on the Blue Planet before we go to the Red Planet. Nevertheless, the appearance of astronauts on Mars seems inevitable in our quest to find other life in the universe.
As with the Moon, humans will become aliens, if not Martians, returning home.
BREAK=====
When Weird Darkness returns… though David Parker Ray’s girlfriend Cindy Hendy helped him commit numerous rapes and murders in the 1990s, she was released in 2019 and walks free today.
And… Louis Le Prince vanished under mysterious circumstances, but did he willingly decide to hide from the outside world, or was he murdered? These stories are up next.
<COMMERCIAL BREAK>
STORY: THE TOY BOX KILLER’S GIRLFRIEND=====
In the late 1990s, New Mexico couple Cindy Hendy and David Parker Ray abducted, raped, and tortured as many as 60 women in the American southwest. Inside Ray’s torture trailer that he called his “Toy Box,” the disturbed couple tormented their victims with electric shocks and medical instruments, while mirrors installed in the ceiling forced the women to watch themselves suffer.
According to Hendy, Ray was the mastermind behind their depraved spree. Her role consisted of helping him track down victims, watching as he brutalized them, and occasionally helping him torment them.
Now, though she was sentenced in 2000 to serve a 36-year prison sentence, Cindy Hendy was released in 2019. This is the story of how she went from a troubled upbringing to becoming a suspected serial killer’s girl Friday — who now walks free.
Born Cynthia Lea Hendy in 1960, the future kidnapper and sexual criminal had a troubled childhood. Raised in an impoverished neighborhood on the outskirts of Everett, Washington, Hendy grew up with an alcoholic mother, a bartender who would routinely let her daughter go hungry.
“She would never give the kids a dime,” a childhood friend recalled. “All of us were hungry. We’d be lucky to get a can of tuna fish out of her. We’d go over after school, and Cindy would have to beg like hell till her mother threw out a can of tuna fish just to get rid of us.”
As a child, Hendy saw her mother get beaten by an abusive boyfriend named Dick. Hendy’s mother eventually married another man when her daughter was eight. Hendy was around 11 when he crawled into her bed and attempted to rape her. He convinced his wife he drunkenly mistook one bed for another.
Hendy’s mother took her new husband’s side and the two kicked Cindy out of the house around age 12. Left on her own, Hendy dated drug dealers, prostituted herself, and became dependent on alcohol and cocaine.
She enjoyed aggressive, near-violent sex that included rape fantasies. One partner recalled she once said they should “rape somebody, maybe a prostitute.”
She also gave birth to three children with three different men, and like her mother, she struggled to take care of them. When her youngest child turned 10, Hendy gave up on raising them and sent them off to their grandparents.
Then, in 1997, fleeing convictions on grand theft and drug charges, Hendy moved from Washington to the town of Truth and Consequences, New Mexico, where she met David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer.
In New Mexico, Cindy Hendy worked at a state park, where she met David Parker Ray. The two quickly bonded over their shared violent sexual fantasies.
Though Ray was 20 years her senior, 37-year-old Hendy began living with him soon after she moved to New Mexico when her relationship with an abusive ex-boyfriend soured.
“When I moved in, he started to tell me all the women he had murdered. He said at least one a year for about forty years,” Cindy later recalled. She wasn’t sure if she believed Ray’s story at first, and she said she was both nervous and intrigued after hearing it.
Hendy would later state that Ray had bragged that he knew how to kill someone and bury them in a lake.
“The thing to do is cut them down the belly, scoop out their guts, fill the chest cavity with cement weights and then use bailing wire to wrap them up,” she said.
“They seemed to feed off of each other, and Cindy got an opportunity to let go of all of her inhibitions,” said reporter Yvette Martinez.
Soon, Hendy began to routinely help Ray pick targets, starting with an acquaintance. “I felt for Angela cause her and I were friends,” Hendy said. “I had partied with her a few times.” So, Hendy and Ray actually released their first shared victim, making her promise to keep the abduction a secret.
According to Hendy, while the two had a victim in their clutches, Ray would do most of the torturing while she stood by and watched. “I had no remorse at the time. It was like slow motion. I don’t think I had any feeling one way or the other.” Hendy recalled.
She also claimed that Ray never hurt or tortured her the way he did their victims. But in 1999, their horrific spree ended when a victim managed to get away.
On March 22, 1999, dispatchers received calls reporting a naked woman was hysterically trying to stop traffic on a street in Elephant Butte, New Mexico. Cynthia Vigil had a dog collar wrapped around her neck. She had just escaped from the clutches of the Toy Box Killer.
Ray had kidnapped her three days earlier, but he hadn’t worked alone. As usual, Cindy Hendy was his accomplice.
It was Hendy who drove to Albuquerque on March 20, 1999, and found the pimp who introduced her to Cynthia Vigil. Ray took it from there and invited the prostitute to his trailer.
Impersonating a cop, Ray flashed a badge and handcuffed her.
“I knew something was wrong,” Vigil recalled.
Chaining Vigil to a table, Ray and Hendy raped and tortured the woman with medical instruments, electric shocks, and whips for three straight days. Hendy later claimed that she had only whipped Vigil while Ray did the rest.
“There were videotapes that he took of the victims,” said FBI agent Frank Fisher. “There were audiotapes that he would play to the victims telling them what he was going to do.”
Ray’s tape instructed Vigil to address Ray as “master” and Hendy as “mistress,” and to only speak when spoken to. Fisher said authorities later found Ray’s journal, with “meticulous records detailing the victims that he abducted and what he did to them.”
“The way he talked, I didn’t feel like this was his first time,” said Vigil. “It was like he knew what he was doing. He told me I was never going to see my family again. He told me he would kill me like the others.”
In the face of certain death, Vigil saw her opening on March 22, 1999. Hendy had left the keys to Vigil’s restraints on a nearby table while she left the room. Vigil released herself, stabbed Hendy in the neck with an icepick, and bolted out of the trailer.
Authorities saved Vigil and arrested Ray and Hendy immediately. When a reporter asked Hendy if she was in any way involved, she replied:
“No…kind of.”
After their arrest, Ray and Hendy initially claimed Vigil was a heroin addict that they were trying to detox. Authorities quickly saw through the story after searching the trailer. They found the audiotape which backed up Vigil’s claims, and a slew of torture instruments ranging from pulleys, whips, and sexual devices inside the “Toy Box.”
Police also found footage of them torturing another woman, leading them to suspect that more than one crime had occurred. Two other victims — Kelly Garrett and Angelica Montano — came forward to confirm as much. Both had been tortured by Ray and Hendy on separate occasions.
A full month before Vigil’s abduction, Montano had been dumped by the side of the road after three days of torture. Montano alerted police to the couple’s crimes against her, but authorities never investigated her claims until after Vigil’s escape.
Not two months after Ray and Hendy’s arrests, Montano died of heart failure brought on by pneumonia at the age of 28.
Now in custody, the repercussions of her actions hit Hendy like a ton of bricks. Facing 197 years in prison if convicted of 25 felony counts of kidnapping and criminal sexual penetration, she turned on Ray and agreed to a plea deal on April 6, 1999.
Her cooperation revealed even more of the couple’s sadistic methods: forcing victims to look at themselves being mutilated and shoving them into a wooden contraption so dogs and acquaintances could rape them. Hendy also revealed that Ray previously had another accomplice.
“David confided in her that he had a friend by the name of Roy Yancy who he forced to kill a woman,” said Martinez. “He strangled her and then buried her body out in the desert.”
In return for testimony against Ray and Yancy, Hendy still faced a maximum of 54 years and a minimum of 12. She told investigators about 14 murders Ray committed and pointed out some of the potential burial sites.
“No matter how many places they checked, they were never able to find any bodies,” said Martinez.
Ultimately, Hendy was sentenced to 36 years in prison. Ray was sentenced to 224 years but died of a heart attack on May 28, 2002.
After 19 years in prison, Hendy was released on July 15, 2019. She was let out early as her plea deal came three months before a new law required violent criminals to serve 85 percent of their sentence.
As such, the Toy Box Killer’s former lover — and trusted accomplice — now walks amongst us.
STORY: THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF LOUIS LE PRINCE=====
Louis Le Prince was poor, and he had debts, so he had reasons to disappear, but he was just about to present his great invention that would make him a rich man. Was he deliberately prevented from performing a planned public demonstration in the US, or did he commit the perfect suicide?
What role did Thomas A. Edison play in the vanishing of Le Prince? An interesting and surprising old document sheds new light on this historical mystery.
Born on August 28, 1841, in Metz, France Louis Aimá Augustin Le Prince was the first person to shoot a moving picture sequence using a single lens camera and a strip of film.
Most people have never heard of Louis Le Prince, but anyone interested in the history of movies will know he is widely recognized as the forgotten father of motion pictures. After completing his studies at Paris and Leipzig Universities, Le Prince was offered a job in Leeds, the UK in 1886. He was not a rich man, but he had many ideas and his inventions were promising.
Le Prince and his wife became well-known in Leeds, where they established a school of applied art named the Leeds Technical School of Art.
Together with their son, they moved to the United States and Le Prince kept pondering how he could construct a device allowing him to make motion pictures. In 1888, his motion-picture experiments finally led to a breakthrough and he invented the sixteen-lens camera that allowed him to take motion pictures.
There is little valuable historical information about Le Prince’s life, but it’s known he suddenly disappeared on September 16, 1890, never to be seen again. Some parts of his movements can be reconstructed.
At the time of his mysterious vanishing Le Prince was on a visit to France. He was going to take a train from Dijon to Paris, before continuing his journey back to England. His brother accompanied him to the station and waved goodbye. When the train reached Paris, there was no sign of Le Prince or his luggage. It was almost as if he had vanished into thin air, but he didn’t.
Historians have never solved his disappearance but there some theories. Some think Le Prince planned his disappearance because his financial situation was horrible. This seems unlikely because Le Prince had been invited to the United States, where he was going to demonstrate his motion camera. This invention would solve all his financial troubles, so he had no need to escape and change his identity.
Le Prince’s disappearance led to many conspiracy theories. According to another theory, Le Prince did stake his suicide because he wanted to start a new life in Chicago after his family had learned he was homosexual. There is almost no evidence to support these claims. Some think his brother murdered Le Prince for unknown reasons. The French inventor’s family accused Thomas A. Edison of murder and cover-up.
Le Prince’s widow and son, Adolphe wanted Loui to become recognized as the inventor of cinematography, but this was not easy.
Adolphe appeared as a witness for the defense in a court case brought by Edison against the American Mutoscope Company. This suit claimed that Edison was the first and sole inventor of cinematography, and thus entitled to royalties for the use of the process. Adolphe Le Prince was involved in the case but was not allowed to present his father’s two cameras as evidence, and eventually, the court ruled in favor of Edison.
This was not the end of the legal battle because one year later, that ruling was overturned. Edison then reissued his patents and succeeded in controlling the US film industry for many years. In 1902, two years after Le Prince’s son Adolphe had testified in the suit, and he was found shot dead on Fire Island, New York.
Le Prince’s invention was forgotten, and so was his existence.
New intriguing information about Edison’s role, in this case, emerged when Alexis Bedford, a graduate student at the University of New York, found interesting documents inner forgotten archives of the New York library.
“I’ve always admired Louis Le Prince, but really not much was known about him because of his sudden disappearance,” Bedford recalled.
“As Bedford relates it, he was turning over some papers on Thomas Edison’s work with lighting methods when he stumbled across a dilapidated leatherbound book.
The book would turn out to be one of many notebooks in which Edison was fond of jotting down ideas and test data. “Leafing through it,” explained Bedford, “I merely thought I’d find perhaps some interesting and as yet unknown processes that Edison had tried in the laboratory. I never thought I would stumble upon this!”
He had found a small entry dated September 20, 1890, by Edison’s own hand which read, “Eric called me today from Dijon. It has been done. Prince is no more. This is good news but I flinched when he told me. Murder is not my thing. I’m an inventor and my inventions for moving images can now move forward.” 1
According to this diary, Edison admitted he was happy Le Prince was gone, but he also emphasized he didn’t kill the Frenchman.
In 2004, a photograph of a drowned man bearing a strong resemblance to Le Prince was discovered in the French police archive. The drowned bore resemblance to Le Prince, who was discovered in the Seine in Paris just after the time of his disappearance
The mysterious disappearance of Louis Le Prince remains unsolved, and unless extraordinary evidence emerges, it’s unlikely, we will ever know what happened to the French artist and the inventor of the early motion picture camera.
Maybe Le Prince did commit suicide, or maybe he was a victim of a murder.
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 through the website at WeirdDarkness.com. That’s also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for the newsletter to win monthly prizes, find my other podcast “Church of the Undead”, and more. Plus if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can 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 Nebraska Missing Time Affair” by Marcus Lowth for UFO Insight
“The Toy Box Killer’s Girlfriend” by Marco Margaritoff for All That’s Interesting
“The Strange Disappearance of Louis Le Prince” by Jan Bartek for Ancient Pages
“The Strange Dreams of Mr. Moir” posted at Anomalien
“The Murder Solved Through TikTok” by Olivia McCormack for Bust.com
“Did Our Ancestors Live On Mars?” posted at Earth-Chronicles.com
“Do Copyright Laws Apply to Spirit Writing?” posted at Esoterx.com
Again, you can find link to all of these stories in the show notes.
WeirdDarkness™ – is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright, Weird Darkness.
Now that we’re coming out of the dark, I’ll leave you with a little light… “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.” — Proverbs 12:19
And a final thought… “Boredom is only for boring people without imaginations.” – Tim Tharp
I’m Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.
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