“WHITEWATER: THE SECOND SALEM” and More True Tales of the Macabre! #WeirdDarkness

Listen to ““WHITEWATER: THE SECOND SALEM” and More True Tales of the Macabre! #WeirdDarkness” on Spreaker.

IN THIS EPISODE: Whitewater legend says that the bizarre experiments conducted at the Morris Pratt Institute of Spiritualism in Wisconsin, to communicate with the dead, have left the town cursed by witches and haunted by restless spirits. It’s no wonder it has garnered the nickname of “Second Salem.” (Whitewater: The Second Salem) *** The Wild West had many drifters with troubled pasts. One found himself at the heart of one of the most infamous crimes in American history. Ben Kuhl went from horse theft, to stagecoach robbery, to murder – from notoriety to infamy – all in pursuit of elusive riches. Finally arrested and convicted due to a bloody handprint (The Last Stagecoach Robbery) *** Fred West was just a regular boy, or so it seemed. But behind closed doors, in reality, he was becoming evil incarnate. And upon meeting his future wife Rose, it only expanded his predatory predilections. Fred and Rose descended from petty crimes to unspeakable horrors of rape and murder – even of the most young and innocent. From their “House of Horrors” the depths of their depravity was acted out — hidden from site. But as the walls closed in and the truth emerged, the true horror of their crimes was laid bare. (The Evils of Fred And Rose West) *** AND MORE!

SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…
“Whitewater: The Second Salem” by Charlie Hintz for Wisconsin Frights: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9bktup
“Bygone Gluttons” by Ben Gazur for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p99hjxj
“The Evils of Fred and Rose West” from Biography: https://www.biography.com/crime/fred-west
“The Last Stagecoach Robbery” from Creative History Stories: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdh3h8h5
Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library.

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Originally aired: April 16, 2024

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:

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INTRODUCTION=====

In the eerie depths of Wisconsin’s haunted past lies the story of the Morris Pratt Institute. Born from a vow whispered amidst the ethereal whispers of a seance, this strange establishment emerged as a beacon of spiritualism, casting a chilling shadow over the town of Whitewater. From its inception, the institute was shrouded in mystery and macabre tales. Morris Pratt’s solemn pledge, sealed in the ghostly embrace of the unknown, beckoned forth dark forces to weave their tendrils into the fabric of reality. With the aid of Mary Hayes-Chynoweth, a conduit for otherworldly powers, Pratt’s vision materialized into a grand edifice—a temple to the spirits that prowled the fringes of the living world. Within the institute’s hallowed halls, students delved into the arcane arts, their minds ensnared by whispers from beyond the grave. Yet, as the shadows deepened and the veil between worlds grew thinner, whispers turned to wails, and the spirits unleashed their wrath upon the unsuspecting. Through the Great Depression, the institute began to fall apart. Yet, even in its darkest hour, the echoes of spectral voices persisted, guiding the institute to a new home in the heart of Milwaukee—a city cloaked in secrets darker than the grave. But Whitewater, forever marked by the institute’s ghostly legacy, has remained a nexus of the supernatural. From haunted cemeteries, to whispered tales of unholy rites, the town’s streets still pulse with an otherworldly energy. Shadows continue to dance to the tune of unseen spirits in Whitewater’s streets, and the veil between worlds grows ever thinner. The legend of the Morris Pratt Institute, a chilling reminder of the spectral forces that lurk in the shadows, will likely continue to haunt this town for eternity, its secrets forever intertwined with the fabric of the supernatural.

I’m Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness.

SHOW OPEN=====

Welcome, Weirdos – 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…

The Wild West had many drifters with troubled pasts. One found himself at the heart of one of the most infamous crimes in American history. Ben Kuhl went from horse theft, to stagecoach robbery, to murder – from notoriety to infamy – all in pursuit of elusive riches. Finally arrested and convicted due to a bloody handprint (The Last Stagecoach Robbery)

Fred West was just a regular boy, or so it seemed. But behind closed doors, in reality, he was becoming evil incarnate. And upon meeting his future wife Rose, it only expanded his predatory predilections. Fred and Rose descended from petty crimes to unspeakable horrors of rape and murder – even of the most young and innocent. From their “House of Horrors” the depths of their depravity was acted out — hidden from site. But as the walls closed in and the truth emerged, the true horror of their crimes was laid bare. (The Evils of Fred And Rose West)

Whitewater legend says that the bizarre experiments conducted at the Morris Pratt Institute of Spiritualism in Wisconsin, to communicate with the dead, have left the town cursed by witches and haunted by restless spirits. It’s no wonder it has garnered the nickname of “Second Salem.” (Whitewater: The Second Salem)

If you’re new here, welcome to the show! While you’re listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, to visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter, enter contests, connect with me on social media, hear my other podcasts including “Church of the Undead” and a sci-fi podcast called “Auditory Anthology,” listen to FREE audiobooks I’ve narrated, plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you’re struggling with depression, dark thoughts, or addiction. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

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

STORY: WHITEWATER – THE SECOND SALEM=====

The Morris Pratt Institute, singular of birth, unusual of purpose, sheds a weird intellectual light in a world of great darkness,” historian Fred L. Holmes wrote in 1939. “The school attempts to ‘radioize’ students to catch the spirit messages from the world of the ether.”

Wisconsin is a long way from spiritualism’s 1848 birthplace in the home of the Fox Sisters of Hydesville, New York, but it wasn’t long before it became one of the most important centers for the practice in the country. Madison, Milwaukee and the Fox Valley area were all home to large spiritualist communities by the late 1800s.

One of Wisconsin’s earliest supporters of spiritualism was Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, a senator from New York who was appointed the third governor of the Wisconsin Territory by President John Tyler in 1844.

Tallmadge had recently purchased land in the territory in preparation for his retirement, but he decided to move his family there when he accepted the governorship. Nathaniel and Abby Tallmadge’s 19-year-old son William visited from law school to see the family’s new home in the spring of 1845. He fell in love with a large hill on the property, telling his family that one day, when he died, he wanted to be buried there.

Just two weeks later, William’s life came to an abrupt and unexpected end, and he was buried in his spot at the top of the hill.

By 1853, Nathaniel was a devout spiritualist. In a book published that year, a letter Tallmadge wrote to one of the authors described how his youngest daughter Emily, then 13 years old, was being taught by spirits to play the piano.

Morris Pratt, another New York native, emigrated to Wisconsin in the 1850s. He built a successful farm in the Whitewater area, where he and a number of neighboring families who frequented the seances in Lake Mills (home of the legendary Rock Lake pyramids) would host renowned mediums from around the country to commune with their dead loved ones in their homes.

Pratt was known to engage in frequent arguments with ministers who criticized spiritualism. He was forcibly ejected from a church on more than one occasion.

Frustrated, he wished for a way to teach what he believed were the scientific truths of the spirit life.

During a seance in the early 1880s, Pratt vowed that if he ever became wealthy, he would dedicate much of his money to spiritualism.

To his good fortune, a powerful mystic was present that day whose psychic abilities would soon help him achieve his goals.

In 1853, a 27-year-old school teacher in Waterloo named Mary Hayes-Chynoweth had an experience that changed her life forever. She was in the kitchen of the family farm where she lived with her parents when she felt something she described as a “force” take control of her body.

Mary felt herself drop to her knees, and she began to pray in a language neither she, nor her father nearby, could recognize. The “force” told her that she would spend the rest of her life healing others.

Afterwards, she discovered she had the ability to peer into the bodies of the sick, to see the diseases ailing them, and remove them. She learned how to take the sickness into her own body, which would cause her to break out into blisters and rashes, but otherwise didn’t harm her.

“Spirit knocking” and other supernatural phenomena were being practiced by mediums across the country in exchange for money. Mary believed those were mostly hoaxes, and did no such thing. She began accepting sick visitors into her home, as well as travelling around Wisconsin, healing people for free.

She believed she needed to use the “Power” given to her by God to help those in need rather than faking spirit communication to take money from the grieving.

“Mrs. Hayes was not a medium,” her son J.O. Hayes wrote in 1938. “In her young womanhood she became very much interested in the question of man’s immortality and prayed for two years very earnestly and devotedly that she might know the truth regarding it. As a result of this effort she passed through an experience somewhat similar to that of Jesus in the wilderness as recorded in the Bible. She spoke in tongues unknown to her; she restored those possessed to a normal condition and did untold miraculous things that could not be explained by the use of any ordinary human methods. From that time until her death a large part of her time was given to healing the sick, and she did this without charge or financial compensation.”

Pratt’s vow captured Mary’s attention. She had been attending seances in Lake Mills and Whitewater at the recommendation of her friend Warren Chase. Chase published a weekly newspaper called the Spiritual Telegraph, and is credited with being the first to spread spiritualism around Wisconsin and Illinois. He had expressed to Mary a desire to open a school in the area.

“Do you intend, if made wealthy, to carry out your promise?” Mary asked Pratt.

Pratt confirmed that he meant what he said – he would use his money to support the movement of spiritualism.

Mary then told Pratt, along with her two sons who were lawyers with interests in mining, to invest in a barren and seemingly worthless tract of land in Northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Mary claimed to have been guided to this land by her “controlling spirit,” an old German professor, while in a trance.

Pratt and Mary’s sons did as Mary instructed.

The Hayes brothers’ company, with Pratt as a stockholder, bought the land, opened the Ashland Iron Mine, and began digging. The land yielded nothing for the first couple years. Pratt came to Mary with doubts on several occasions, but she urged him to be patient.

Then, in 1886, a discovery was made.

The land Mary recommended was found to be the heart of the massive Gogebic iron range, and was filled with high grade Bessemer ore – some of the best in the region. Pratt and the Hayes brothers became wealthy practically overnight.

Pratt set out to fulfill his promise without hesitation. In 1888 he laid the foundation for a building in Whitewater without knowing exactly what purpose it would serve. He just told people it would be used “in the interests of Spiritualism.”

Locals scoffed.

The construction became known around town as “Pratt’s Folly.”

But Pratt didn’t back down.

“I made a vow before I made my investment that I would erect a temple to the spirit world with a share of the profits I was to realize,” he told his detractors, “and I intend to do so.”

Upon its completion, Pratt and his wife left their farm and moved in to occupy several rooms within the ornate 3-story building. They held public seances there for many years before Pratt decided to make Whitewater the “Mecca of Modern Spiritualism” by opening the world’s only school dedicated to the study of the spirit world.

In 1902, while making plans to open the school, Pratt’s health began to give out. He reportedly gave the deed to the estate to seven Spiritualists, a sort of board of trustees, whose names have never been accounted for in any written documentation.

Pratt died just a few months later.

His funeral was presided over by a man named Moses Hull, a former Seventh Day Adventist minister turned Spiritualist whom Pratt had tapped to carry out his plans for the school.

“In his discourse Mr. Hull gave the Spiritualists’ idea of death and Spiritual world,” a paper reported of the funeral. “He claimed that death was neither to be dreaded nor feared; it is as natural as any event in life – in fact, it is only a birth out of the physical body into the spiritual world.”

Hull carried out Pratt’s wishes, and the doors of the Morris Pratt Institute opened the following year. The terrible loss of life in the Civil War that fueled America’s interest in spiritualism had faded by the time the school opened, but there were still some who sought to learn the art of talking to the dead.

Students came from around the country to study general subjects like mathematics, history, grammar, and literature, as well as the Philosophy of Spiritualism and Psychic Culture. It had living quarters and facilities for up to 50 students, seeing as many as 45 at a time at its height from 1910-1915.

The school was known by that time to apprehensive Whitewater residents as the “Spook Temple.”

Still, the curious public showed up when the doors opened every Sunday evening for seances or educational lectures like the 1924 program “Mediumship Explained.”

On the walls hung spiritualist iconography, memorials to the original Hydesville community, and artwork like the piece Fred L. Holmes described when he visited in the 1930s – a “painting of a beautiful woman, who, according to the medium, returned from the spirit world to speak for a moment to earthly loved ones and tarry long enough to be sketched.”

The third floor, however, was off limits to everyone but members of the Spiritualist church. That space was a hallowed chamber where everything was painted white, a space “not to be profaned by a non-believer,” an editor of a local newspaper once described. He, too, had been denied access to the room.

Famous Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow, known for his agnostic beliefs, once visited the institute. Of his experience there, he said he was “unconvinced, but mystified.”

Funding for the Morris Pratt Institute dried up during the Depression, forcing the school to close its doors in 1932. It reopened a few years later, but to considerably fewer students than before. Interest in spiritualism had long since faded.

The institute sold the building in 1946. The new owners briefly opened it as a rest home for aged spiritualists. Later it was used as a girl’s dormitory for the nearby Wisconsin Teacher’s College. It was torn down in 1961 and replaced by a new office for the Wisconsin Telephone Company on the corner of Center St. and Fremont.

Recalling the paranormal history of the town, a 1981 issue of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater newspaper The Royal Purple wrote, “Long-distance communication with the dead had been replaced by long-distance calls to the living.”

But that wasn’t the end of the Morris Pratt Institute. After selling the building in Whitewater, the school moved to Milwaukee where it still exists today, remaining one of the few places in the world (along with Wisconsin’s Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp) dedicated to the study and practice of psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, mediumship and psychic surgery.

Course offerings include:

Clairsentience
Psychometry
Spirit Photography
Materialization & Dematerialization
Teleportation & Apportation
The History of the Human Aura
Levitation
Out-of-the Body Experiences (OOBE)

Graduates go on to serve in one of more than 90 churches and camps around the country that belong to the National Spiritualist Association.

No matter how many years have passed since Pratt’s spirit house was razed, Whitewater was forged from the earliest of its traditions and remains haunted by the superstitions of its practices.

Whitewater today is so steeped in legends of ghosts and witchcraft that it has come to be known as “Second Salem.”

Rumors abound of dark rituals carried out in secret tunnels beneath the city and around the historic stone water tower in Starin Park – said to be a place of great significance to the witches of Whitewater – of a forbidden book locked away in the basement of the Andersen local library said to drive readers to madness and suicide, and of a haunted triangle formed by the city’s three cemeteries – the center of which is the original location of the Spook Temple.

According to local lore, witnesses have seen a coven of witches conducting rituals around or inside the tower.

This stigma only increased when the original fence was accidentally installed backwards. Spikes meant to deter trespassers were unintentionally pointing inward, as if to keep something inside the tower from escaping.

Whitewater legend says that every building is haunted within the nearly perfect isosceles triangle formed by the city’s three cemeteries, a supernatural nexus of increased occult significance known as the “Witches Triangle.”

Whether it’s due to seances or witchcraft is unclear, but it’s within the cemeteries themselves that much of the town’s bizarre history can be found.

Legend says an old crypt in Oak Grove Cemetery is the final resting place of Mary Worth, an axe-murdering witch who not only cursed the town when she was executed for her crimes, but may have been the inspiration for certain Bloody Mary legends.

Her ghost can be seen wandering among the tombstones on Halloween.

Oak Grove is also said to be the site of ritual sacrifices in the 19th century. Those who conducted the sacrifices, local lore says, were buried upright in the cemetery around their altar.

According to some stories, the public receiving vault at Hillside Cemetery is the real grave of Mary Worth. Receiving vaults were used to store the bodies of those who died during the winter months until the ground thawed enough to bury them, not for actual burials. But it does look like a fitting tomb for an axe-murdering witch.

Other notable interments at Hillside include Sarah Posey, who may be haunting the Hamilton House, as well as Edward Schaude, the unfortunate husband of the “Poison Widow” Myrtle Schaude, and even Morris Pratt himself.

For a man who dedicated his life to communication from beyond the grave, however, Pratt’s grave is surprisingly quiet.

n Calvary Cemetery, which borders the land once occupied by the Schaude farm (it’s now the UW-Whitewater sports complex) is the grave of Nellie Horan, who may have poisoned her entire family.

A few miles south of the city is Whitewater Lake, where fishermen in 1923 claimed a large creature with tentacles overturned their boat and dragged them under. They fought against it and eventually broke free, but found themselves covered in small bite marks.

Residents of Whitewater Lake also tell the story of a series of strange (unspecified) events that happened over the summer of 1944. To make it stop, men from the area gathered at a small local cemetery, where they are said to have dug up all of the coffins there that had been buried vertically in the ground.

The men brought the coffins back to the lake, weighted them down with rocks, and threw them in.

That put an end to whatever strange occurrences had been plaguing those who lived on the lake.

Decades later, in 1992, three Whitewater students who were renting a house on the lake stumbled upon a late night ritual being performed on the beach by four men dressed in strange black clothes. They were chanting and swaying. At first the students just thought the men were drunk. But then a thick fog rolled in from the lake, and a green light glowed through it.

“We heard the water start splashing and this deep gurgling noise,” one of the students said. Their names were withheld from the reports, as they were scared and wished to remain unidentified for their safety. “We all just looked at each other, but when we heard this slurping sound and saw something coming out of the water, we ran like hell.”

Another resident also witnessed the incident and called the police. They weren’t able to respond right away, but by the time they arrived in the morning, the group was gone. On the beach, however, they found the remains of the ritual – small bones and rocks arranged in strange patterns in the sand.

Cult activity was suspected, which had also been prevalent in an area just a few miles away, where the Beast of Bray Road was terrorizing residents of the Elkhorn community around the same time.

Did experiments to pierce the veil and reveal the mysteries of the spirit world inside Pratt’s restricted inner sanctum open doors for sinister energies to take hold in Whitewater? Or is it that the town’s unusual history, as it is whispered around the UW-Whitewater campus year after year, filled with just enough mystery that our imaginations can’t resist filling in the blanks?

“How much communication, if any, the students managed to experience between the Spiritual world and themselves is unknown,” The Whitewater Register wrote in 1972. “We can be certain, however, that legends surrounding the Pratt Institute will be alive in Whitewater for many years to come.”

BREAK=====

Up next… Fred West was just a regular boy, or so it seemed. But behind closed doors, in reality, he was becoming evil incarnate. And upon meeting his future wife Rose, it only expanded his predatory predilections. Fred and Rose descended from petty crimes to unspeakable horrors of rape and murder – even of the most young and innocent. From their “House of Horrors” the depths of their depravity was acted out — hidden from site. But as the walls closed in and the truth emerged, the true horror of their crimes was laid bare. That story and more, when Weird Darkness returns.

STORY: THE EVILS OF FRED AND ROSE WEST=====

A quick warning – the following story has graphic descriptions of violence and sexual abuse even of children – listener discretion is advised.

Fred West became one of the most horrific serial killers known to the United Kingdom, with he and future wife Rose responsible for the dismemberment and murder of women and young girls, including two members of their own family. West was awaiting trial for twelve murders when he hung himself on January 1, 1995.

Frederick West was born to Walter and Daisy West on September 29, 1941, in Much Marcle, a Herefordshire village in England. Some say he seemed like any other young boy growing up, with his aunt eventually telling the press that he “has always been such a nice boy.” One neighbor described him as “a bit cheeky, a bit mouthy, but that was the way these kids were.”

One of six children, West was reportedly his mother’s favorite child. There have been reports however that cast a dark shadow on the West family. Some have claimed that West was sexually abused by his mother. West himself later told authorities that his father had incestuous relations with young girls, although this was never substantiated.

West didn’t do well in school and eventually dropped out to become a farm laborer. When he was 17, a motorcycle accident left him comatose for a week with serious head injuries. A metal plate was placed in his head that may have affected his behavior and impulse control according to some experts.

The young West incurred another head injury, and possibly permanent brain damage, upon falling off a fire escape at a local youth club.

West’s subsequent behavior was erratic and he became known to the police for various petty crimes. Then in 1961, he was accused of impregnating a 13-year-old girl who was a friend of the Wests, causing his banishment from the family home. He became a construction worker, but was soon caught stealing from his employers and again having sex with minors. At his trial for the rape of the young family friend, he escaped a jail sentence as it was claimed that he was suffering fits as a result of his head trauma, but he was convicted of child molestation.

He became involved with Rena Costello, a Scottish girl who had a police record for burglary and prostitution. At the time, she was pregnant with another man’s child. She and West were married in November 1962 and a child was born in March 1963, whom they called Charmaine. But trouble continued to brew, as West’s new job as an ice cream van driver gave him steady access to young teenagers who fell prey to his interests.

In 1964, Rena bore West’s child, daughter Anna Marie. It was also at this time that they met Anna McFall (with some sources listing her first name as Anne). McFall was a friend with whom they moved to Gloucester, where West found a job in a slaughterhouse. According to some researchers, this profession may have catalyzed his morbid obsession with death, mutilation and dismemberment.

While living in Gloucester, there were eight reported incidents of assault where the perpetrator’s description fit West, but he was not immediately linked to these crimes. The West marriage became increasingly unstable and Rena returned to Scotland, leaving her children with West and McFall, but she returned some months later to find them living together in a caravan.

Early in 1967, McFall became pregnant with West’s child, urging him to divorce Rena and marry her instead. West, unwilling to do so, killed the pregnant McFall that July and buried her near the caravan park, cutting off her fingers and toes, a signature mutilation that was to become a common feature in his future crimes. Rena moved into the caravan following McFall’s disappearance.

Within six months of McFall’s death, West was linked to another disappearance, that of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm, who was abducted from a bus stop in Gloucester in January 1968, although only circumstantial evidence has ever been produced to corroborate this. Then in November 1968 he became acquainted with Rose Letts, who was to become his next wife and life-long accomplice.

Rosemary “Rose” Letts was born in Devon on November 29, 1953, the result of a difficult pregnancy, with both of her parents suffering from mental illness. Electro-convulsive therapy, administered to her pregnant mother for deep depression, may have caused prenatal injury that contributed to Rose’s poor school performance and bouts of aggression growing up. She also had a weight problem in adolescence and developed an interest in older men.

The marriage of Rose’s parents was a turbulent one. Her father was a paranoid schizophrenic prone to violent behavior, serving as a terrifying, dictatorial presence. Her mother, Daisy, moved out of the family home, taking Rose with her. Rose, however, decided to move back in with her father again around the same time that she became intimate with West during her teens.

Her father objected strongly to their relationship, resorting to contacting social services and threatening West directly, but to no avail; Rose was soon pregnant with West’s child and found herself looking after his two children by Rena Costello when West was sent to prison on various petty theft and fine evasion charges. Rose gave birth to daughter Heather in 1970.

It’s thought that the pressure of caring for three children while still a child herself was a trigger for Rose’s violent, erratic tendencies, and it’s believed that she murdered 8-year-old Charmaine, West’s eldest child, in 1971, during one of these outbursts.

Whatever the true circumstances, Charmaine suddenly disappeared. As West was in jail at the time, it is likely that her body was hidden by Rose until West’s release. He was then thought to have moved the body, again removing the fingers and toes, as with his first victim, before burying her. This knowledge of Rose’s murderous act undoubtedly gave West a significant hold over the young woman.

When West’s first wife, Rena, came in search of her daughter, she was strangled, dismembered and also had her fingers and toes removed. She was buried in the same general area as West’s first victim, Anna McFall.

Fred and Rose West were secretly married in Gloucester in January 1972, and their second daughter, Mae, was born in June of the same year. With a growing family, they moved to 25 Cromwell Street, which was large enough to enable them to take in lodgers to assist with the rent.

By this time, Rose earned extra money as a prostitute and West committed acts of bondage and violent sex acts on underage girls. He fitted out the cellar at No. 25 as a torture chamber, and his daughter, Anna Marie, became one of its first occupants, subjected to a horrifically brutal rape by her father while her stepmother held her down. This became a regular occurrence, and the child was threatened with beatings if she told anyone of her ordeal.

Their behavior extended beyond the family circle when, in late 1972, they engaged 17-year-old Caroline Owens as a nanny. She was incarcerated, stripped and raped. Despite threats that she would be killed and buried in the cellar, Owens was able to make an escape and reported the Wests to the police. Charges were brought against them. Incredibly, despite his existing criminal record, West was able to convince a 1973 court magistrate that Owens had consented to the activities. Owens was too deeply traumatized over what she had survived to give testimony. The Wests both escaped with fines. Rose was pregnant at the time with their first son, Stephen, who was born in August.

Over the next several years, Lynda Gough, Lucy Partington, Juanita Mott, Therese Siegenthaler, Alison Chambers, Shirley Robinson and 15-year-old schoolgirls Carol Ann Cooper and Shirley Hubbard all became victims of the Wests. After brutal sexual attacks, all were murdered, dismembered and buried in the cellar under 25 Cromwell Street.

Rose had several more children, and daughter Louise was born in 1978. (Not all Rose’s children were believed to be fathered by West.) Barry joined the brood in 1980, with Rosemary Junior following in 1982 and Lucyanna in 1983. The children were aware to some extent of the activities in the house, but West and Rose exercised strict control over them.

West’s sexual interest in his own daughters didn’t wane either, and when Anna Marie moved out to live with her boyfriend, he switched his attentions to younger siblings, Heather and Mae. Heather resisted his attentions and, in 1987, told a friend about the goings on in the house. The Wests responded by murdering and dismembering her, and burying her in the back garden of No. 25, where son Stephen was forced to assist with digging the hole.

Given that the Wests’ vicious sex acts did not result in murder every time, and the sheer number of attacks, it was inevitable that someone would expose their activities. Detective Constable Hazel Savage led a search at Cromwell Street in August 1992 that found pornography and clear evidence of child abuse. West was arrested for rape and sodomy of a minor, and Rose for assisting in the rape of a minor.

In the course of the investigation, Savage uncovered the abuse of Anna Marie as well as the disappearances of Charmaine and Heather, warranting further investigation. Rumors also arose about what might be buried under the patio. The younger West children were taken into care, and Rose attempted suicide at this time, although she was found by her son, Stephen, and revived.

The case against the Wests collapsed when two key witnesses decided not to testify against them. Savage continued to pursue her search for Heather, questioning the West children repeatedly, but they had been well trained by their parents and failed to cooperate.

In February 1994, a warrant was obtained to search the Cromwell Street house and garden. Police found the remains of two dismembered and decapitated young women, one of whom authorities suspected might be Shirley Robinson. West claimed sole responsibility for the murders and, when Rose heard of the confession, she denied all knowledge of Heather’s death.

Then, inexplicably, West admitted the presence of the bodies in the cellar to the police, who discovered the remains of nine individuals. Establishing the identities of each victim was a mammoth task.

Continuing to cooperate, West revealed the whereabouts of the remains of first wife Rena, lover Anna McFall and daughter Charmaine, who were all buried away from the Cromwell Street house.

As the case against them developed, Rose tried increasingly to distance herself from West, claiming that she was also a victim, but police were not convinced of her innocence given the sheer number of murders which had occurred and her participation in the rapes.

On December 13, 1994, West was charged on 12 counts of murder and taken into custody at Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, where, on January 1, 1995, he hung himself in his cell with knotted bed sheets.

Rose West went to trial on October 3, 1995, in the glare of media frenzy. Witnesses, including stepdaughter Anna Marie, testified to her participation in sexual assaults on young women. Her defense counsel tried to argue that evidence of assault was not evidence of murder but, when Rose testified on her own behalf, her violent nature and dishonesty became clear to the jury, and they unanimously found her guilty on 10 separate counts of murder on November 22, 1995. She received a life sentence, having to serve a minimum of 25 years in jail.

Rose West’s sentence was later extended to a “whole life order” sentence by the home secretary, effectively removing any possibility of parole.

There remains a widespread belief that Fred and Rose West’s victims numbered far more than the 12 with which they were charged.

Rose West refused to accept her fate and launched appeals in 1996 and 2000, claiming variously that new evidence clearing her had come to light, and then that huge media interest had prevented her from receiving a fair trial. The 1996 appeal was rejected, and she dropped the later one. She remains incarcerated.

The Wests’ home at 25 Cromwell Street, or the “House of Horrors,” as it was dubbed by the media, was razed to the ground in October 1996. In its place is a pathway that leads to the town center.

Rose was again the focus of media attention in January 2003, when it was claimed that she was to marry Dave Glover, the bass player of rock group Slade, following a courtship via letters. Glover disputed that there was an engagement and said the media attention over his letters to Rose had cost him his position with the band.

BREAK=====

When Weird Darkness returns… the Wild West had many drifters with troubled pasts. One found himself at the heart of one of the most infamous crimes in American history. Ben Kuhl went from horse theft, to stagecoach robbery, to murder – from notoriety to infamy – all in pursuit of elusive riches. Finally arrested and convicted due to a bloody handprint! That story is up next!

STORY: THE LAST STAGECOACH ROBERY=====

Ben Kuhl was born in northern Michigan sometime in the year 1884. A school dropout with alcoholic parents, some would say that Ben Kuhl never had a chance at an honest life from the very beginning. As a teenager he drifted west and in 1903 he was arrested for horse theft and sentenced to a term of 1 to 10 years in an Oregon state prison.

It’s not known exactly how long Ben Kuhl spent in prison, but what is known for sure, is that by the year 1916 at the age of 32 Ben Kuhl had both literally and figuratively drifted his way into the remote and isolated mountain town of Jarbidge, Nevada. Upon his arrival in town Ben took up residence in a tent with two other drifters named Ed Beck and Billy McGraw.

He worked for a stint as a cook at the OK Mine, a place just outside of Jarbidge, where miners from all over the American west hoped to strike it rich by finding gold. By 1916 the small frontier town of Jarbidge located in Elko County, Nevada only about ten miles from the state border with Idaho was home to some 1500 people.

The word Jarbidge itself is derived from a Native American word of the Shoshone people meaning “devil”. Indigenous people who lived in the area considered the mountains that surrounded the town to be haunted by demonic spirits. And as it was, even among the white settlers who first came to the town in droves in the year 1909 during a mini-Nevada gold rush, Jarbidge was notorious for its harsh and unforgiving climate–arid and hot summers followed by frigid and snow filled winters.

Jarbidge, Nevada, in the year 1916 was the kind of place where only the possible presence of gold and a chance to strike it rich would make men want to go and Ben Kuhl was no exception to that rule.

Not long after his arrival in town and employment as a camp cook Kuhl was promptly arrested and put in handcuffs for trying to jump another man’s gold mine claim. But fights over finding gold were all too common in Jarbidge back in 1916 and Kuhl was promptly released from the local jail after doing no more than a few days behind bars. By December 1916 Kuhl was once again spending his days drinking at the Jarbidge Saloon and spending his nights cavorting with his two vagrant buddies Ed Beck and Billy McGraw.

In 1916, due to its isolated location and recent status as a gold mining boomtown, Jarbidge, Nevada still retained the flavor of an Old West town like Deadwood, or Dodge City in the 1870’s and 1880’s, even at a time when the 20th century had long since left the lawless days of cowboys, gunfights and stagecoach robberies long behind. By 1916 more Americans owned automobiles than horses, but apparently, no one had given Ben Kuhl or his compatriots that memo.

On December 5, 1916 Ben Kuhl and his two associates, Ed Beck and Billy McGraw attempted to pull off a crime that would have made even Billy the Kid proud.

Today, the town of Jarbidge, Nevada is definitely no longer haunted by any devils of Native American creation. It is a town of less than 100 permanent residents that sits on the banks of the Jarbidge River, nestled in the valley of a canyon and surrounded on all sides by verdant mountains. Jarbidge today is very popular with both campers and hunters who are drawn to the location because of the large population of elk that roam the surrounding area.

However, even over 100 years later, Jarbidge, Nevada cannot entirely shake the ghosts of its Wild West past. Because of what happened there on December 5, 1916 Jarbidge will forever have an ignominious reputation as the scene of one of the twentieth century’s most infamous crimes.

A plaque, which sits in front of Jarbidge’s historic jail that was built in 1911, sums up what happened there about a century ago best. It reads:

“…most noted inmate was Ben Kuhl who robbed the Rogerson-Jarbidge Stage in December 1916 killing Fred Searcy the driver…the last stagecoach robbery in the U.S. and the first conviction based on a bloody palm print.”

The Rogerson-Jarbidge Stage was the route taken on a regular basis by a two-horse United States mail wagon from the larger town of Rogerson, Idaho across the state border and into Nevada.

Ben Kuhl, who had worked earlier in the year at the OK Mine, knew that December 5, 1916 would be payday for most everyone who worked in Jarbidge. He knew that the stagecoach would be coming into town with loads of cash on that day because Rogerson, Idaho was home to a United States Bank from which most of the hard currency that flowed into Jarbidge was drawn.

There was only one dirt road between Jarbidge and Rogerson. The road was impassable to automobiles in 1916 and that’s the reason why Jarbidge still relied on a horse drawn United States mail wagon to communicate with the outside world.

The driver, Fred Searcy, set out from Rogerson on his way to Jarbidge on December 5, 1916 in a driving snowstorm never to return.

At first, even though Searcy did not return when expected, some time was allowed to elapse because the postal authorities assumed that his progress must have been delayed on account of the snowstorm. But worried about Searcy’s fate on the night December 5th United States Postmaster Scott Fleming had an experienced outdoorsman named Frank Leonard ride throughout the canyon into Jarbidge and attempt to locate Searcy and his wagon in the snow on the road into town.

Leonard reached the top of the canyon and rode along the entire route to and from Jarbidge but found no trace of Searcy or the mail wagon.

The authorities grew very alarmed. By dawn on December 6th nearly two feet of snow had fallen in and around Jarbidge making any rescue mission extremely hazardous.

A local woman named Rose Dexter, who lived about a half mile outside Jarbidge said that she had seen the stagecoach pass by her house earlier in the day on the 5th and that she had even waved to the driver who had waved back. But she also said that the driver had, “His collar pulled up and was leaning forward and seemed at great pains to cover his face from the driving snow.”

As United States Postmaster Scott Fleming organized and launched a rescue mission he already feared the worst–that Fred Searcy had been blown of course by the driving snow and drowned in the icy Jarbidge River.

But within hours of setting out the rescue mission’s search party located the stagecoach purposefully hidden in a copse of willow trees several hundred yards off the main road from Rogerson to Jarbidge.

Searcy was found slumped over in his seat. It seemed, initially, as if he had frozen to death where he sat. The mail had been carrying two large sacks when it first set out from Rogerson. The first mail sack contained parcels and letters for the residents of Jarbidge, the second contained $4000 in cash or the equivalent of nearly $100,000 in today’s money.

The searchers quickly found the first sack containing letters and parcels. It had been left in the wagon and undisturbed but the second mail bag containing the $4000 cash was missing!

Although, at first the search party had thought that Searcy had frozen to death, as his body thawed, burns and gunpowder residue were observed around a small hole at the back of his head. Searcy had been shot with a .44 caliber revolver at point blank range in the back of the skull.

Animal tracks were noticed in the snow and a stray dog walked up to the search party and started to follow those tracks. The dog stopped and began to dig in the snow and scratch at the dirt. That’s when the second mailbag with the cash was discovered buried beneath the snow. The bottom of that mailbag had been cut open and all $4000 in cash and coins had been stolen.

Law enforcement scoured the sagebrush and the snow covered wilderness in the area around Jarbidge. Eventually, Ben Kuhl and his two associates, Ed Beck and Billy McGraw were discovered sheltering from the snow in an abandoned cabin a few miles outside Jarbidge. An ivory handled .44 caliber revolver was found in Ben Kuhl’s possession and all three men were arrested, taken into custody and charged with the first degree murder of Fred Searcy.

Immediately, Kuhl contended his innocence. He claimed that he had spent the night on the 5th drinking at the Jarbidge saloon. At trial, a series of several witnesses confirmed that they had seen Kuhl at the Jarbidge saloon at different hours throughout the night, but since none of them were certain exactly of the time when they had seen him, and because all of them had been drinking, the prosecution asserted that their testimony was meaningless and that Kuhl’s alibi was made up.

The prosecution contended that Ben Kuhl had hidden himself in the sagebrush on the side of the road during the snowstorm and waited for Searcy and the mail coach to pass by before jumping aboard the wagon to kill Searcy by shooting him in the back of the head and taking control of the stagecoach.

Nevada state historian and archivist Ben Rocha claimed that Ben Kuhl confessed to him years later that he had committed the murder but said that, “He had only killed Searcy over a dispute about how to split the money.” This would imply that the so-called stagecoach “robbery” had been an inside job between Kuhl, his compatriots and Fred Searcy of the United States Postal Service.

The trial of Ben Kuhl for first degree murder was held in the Elko County Courthouse with future Nevade governor Edward P. Carville as the prosecuting attorney.

Most of the evidence against Kuhl was circumstantial. The prosecution tried to dismiss his alibi despite the presence of several witnesses. They brought up his damning criminal record, mentioning repeatedly how he had been arrested in California and sentenced to a prison term in Oregon for horse theft and they brought up how he had been arrested and jailed in Jarbidge that very same year.

Still, given the fact that the money could not be recovered and that there was no concrete physical evidence directly tying either Kuhl or his associates to the crime, the jury’s decision hung in the balance until two forensic scientists from California testified for the prosecution. These forensic scientists asserted that a bloody palm print found on an envelope that was aboard the U.S. mail stagecoach that had been robbed identically matched the palm print of Ben Kuhl which would directly place him at the scene of the crime.

This evidence, the first ever use of forensic evidence in American history to convict a man of murder, was enough for the jury to find Ben Kuhl guilty of first degree murder and for the judge to sentence him to death by firing squad.

Kuhl’s sentence was later commuted to life in prison. All three men, Kuhl, Beck and McGraw were transferred to the Nevada State Prison in Carson City in October of 1917.

Ben Kuhl spent nearly twenty eight years in prison prior to his release on May 16, 1945. He never publicly confessed to the murder of Fred Searcy and never mentioned where the $4000 was hidden despite the fact that the state of Nevada repeatedly offered him a reduction in his sentence if he would help them to find its whereabouts. To this very day rumors persist about the existence of buried stolen loot from the last stagecoach robbery in American history in the wilderness around Jarbidge, Nevada.

As a man of over sixty years old, after his release from prison at the end of World War Two, Ben Kuhl drifted his way into California where he is believed to have died of tuberculosis in San Francisco less than a year after his release in 1946.

BREAK=====

Up next on Weird Darkness… In the strange world of insatiable appetites, gluttony knows no bounds. From the scandalous streets of Georgian London, to the dark corners of ancient Rome, to the glitz of America’s Rock and Roll, the hunger of voracious eaters defies comprehension. But beware the shadows, for lurking within is the most infamous glutton of all, whose insatiable cravings led to unthinkable horrors. Coming up!

STORY: BYGONE GLUTTONS=====

Gluttony is a very public sin. Those of us who overeat tend to become somewhat portly and so cannot conceal that we partake in one of the seven deadly sins. For centuries in Christian Europe, where famines were common, the clergy railed against gluttons. Despite the holy hatred of gluttony, history is full of people who found that they were never full and could not satisfy their hunger. Here are a few of the most voracious eaters that ever menaced a table.

***Edward Dando: Today, oysters are regarded as a food of the elite, but at many points in the past, they were simply a welcome addition to your daily diet. In the middle of the 19th century, hundreds of millions of oysters were eaten every year in London alone. Archaeological digs often uncover vast piles of oyster shells wherever crowds of people gathered. Oyster bars in Georgian London could provide a dozen oysters for a few pennies. Despite the low price, there were some who simply could not pay for their addiction to this delightful shellfish. Edward Dando was the scourge of Georgian oyster sellers. He was trained as a hatter, and some would say he was as mad as the proverbial hatter for his exploits. Some would also call him a thief. To others, he was simply the “celebrated oyster eater.” Dando was well known for walking into an oyster bar, eating up to 360 oysters in a sitting, and then revealing he could not pay for them. The outraged seller would then either beat Dando or have him hauled away to prison. Sometimes, he would be released from prison and set out straight away for another feast. When brought before a judge, he simply said, “I was very peckish, your Worship, after living on a gaol allowance so long, and I thought I’d treat myself to an oyster.” Not that oysters were his only delight. In 1831, he was arrested after he “devoured divers rounds of toast, and sundry basins of soup and coffee, at the Sun Coffee-house, Charles-street, Hatton-garden, without paying for the same.” Alas, Dando’s tendency to end up in jail cost him his life when, in 1832, he caught cholera in prison and died.

***Nicholas Wood: You know your eating habits are extreme when someone publishes a pamphlet about them. In the 17th century, one was produced with the title “The great eater of Kent, or Part of the admirable teeth and stomacks exploits of Nicholas Wood, of Harrisom in the county of Kent, His excessive manner of eating without manners, in strange and true manner described.” Little is known about Nicholas Wood except that the author of the pamphlet saw and heard of his exploits. We are told that he could consume “a quarter of fat Lamb, and three-score Eggs have been but an easy colation, and three well larded Pudding-pies … [and] eighteen yards of black Puddings.” Wood was also apparently not averse to eating a whole duck raw—guts and bones included. At another time, he ate a whole raw sheep, including the wool and horns. Wood’s fame as an eater did get him into trouble once. Sir William Sedley once bet Wood that he could not eat a feast designed for 30 people. Wood did his best but fell into a food-induced coma before completing the meal. When he awoke eight hours later, he was dragged from the house and placed in a pillory for the public to jeer at his inability to eat everything on the table.

***Michel Lotito: Not everyone who has a strong appetite restricts themselves to eating things most people would consider as food. For Michel Lotito, the ability to eat almost anything turned into a lifelong career. Known to his French audiences as “Monsieur Mangetout”—”Mister Eat-Everything”—he entertained and horrified people for decades. Lotito’s exploits are said to have started when he was nine, and he began to crunch glass fragments from a broken tumbler he was drinking from. Over the course of his life, he is said to have eaten “8 bicycles, 15 supermarket trolleys, seven TV sets, six chandeliers, two beds, a pair of skis, a low-calorie Cessna light aircraft, and a computer.” To be fair, some of his meals lasted a long time. He said it took two years to eat the airplane and that the rubber tires were the most unappealing part. There have been doubts about some of Lotito’s claimed feasts. Did he really eat three bicycles per year? There is no doubt that he certainly put some odd things in his mouth.

***Vitellius: Some people’s gluttony becomes so infamous that it is almost the only thing history remembers about them. Aulus Vitellius had a varied career in the first century AD. He was said to have been one of the young lovers of the emperor Tiberius, a friend to the mad emperor Caligula, and an army general in Germany before his troops declared Vitellius himself emperor following the death of Nero. But all anyone talks about today is how fat he was. If a bust or statue of a rotund Roman is dug up, someone, somewhere, will declare that it is the likeness of Vitellius. However, the sources all agree that Vitellius was given to gluttony. The historian Suetonius tells us that Vitellius was known to steal food from street vendors and even from the altars of the gods to satisfy his hunger. To be able to eat as much as he pleased, Vitellius would take an emetic to vomit up his last meal so he could consume another straight away. On becoming emperor, his brother threw a feast that consisted of “no less than two thousand choice fishes, and seven thousand birds.” It was one of Vitellius’s own culinary creations that has gone down in legend. He concocted a dish known as the Shield of Minerva. “In this dish, there were tossed up together the livers of char-fish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, with the tongues of flamingos, and the entrails of lampreys, which had been brought in ships of war as far as from the Carpathian Sea, and the Spanish Straits,” Suetonius tells us. Vitellius was deposed after just a few months and killed by the forces of the rival emperor Vespasian.

***George IV: King George IV does not have a good reputation in British history. As the heir of George III, the future George IV had to step in as regent while his father suffered bouts of insanity. He had not endeared himself to the public by running up enormous debts while he waited to become the king, up to £650,000 in 1795. These debts had to be paid with funds from Parliament, and people resented having to pay for his lavish lifestyle. While Prince of Wales, he became very fat from his fondness for food. He was lampooned in the press as the “Prince of Whales (w-h-a-l-e-s).” A cartoon of the day shows George leaning back in a chair after one of his feasts, picking his teeth with a fork, while his waistcoat struggles valiantly to cover his distended belly and holds on by a single button. When he did become king, George kicked off his reign with a feast that cost £27 million in today’s money. It featured over 7,000 pounds of beef, 7,000 pounds of veal, and 20,000 pounds of mutton. To be fair, George did not eat all this himself. At one of George’s last recorded meals, he was joined by the Duke of Wellington for breakfast. On the table was an enormous pie stuffed with beef steaks and pigeons. The duke wondered how many others were joining them for the meal, but it was to be just the two of them. The king polished off most of the pie himself.

***William Buckland: William Buckland was not a man who ate a lot at once, but he did like to consume a lot of different and unusual things. He found fame in the 19th century as a geologist and paleontologist. It was Buckland who wrote the first scientific description of a dinosaur. Fossilized dung, known as coprolites, was among his favorite topics, and he even had a table in his home inlaid with slices from them. His interest in the natural world extended to discovering what animals tasted like. All animals. Buckland was a dedicated zoophage. Over the course of his life, he is known to have consumed mice on toast, puppies, panthers, porpoises, hedgehogs, crocodiles, and ostriches. Not everything he tried was a success. Blue bottle flies were apparently disgusting, and the humble mole was said to be the vilest food he ever tried. Buckland did not limit his eating to animals. When he was shown a portion of the preserved heart of King Louis XIV, Buckland declared, “I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,” and gobbled it down. Buckland’s son Francis carried on the family tradition by eating kangaroos, exotic birds, and elephant trunks.

***Elvis Presley: Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, was one of the greatest musical superstars of the 20th century, but for our purposes, we will be discussing him as one of the greatest eaters of the 20th century. The tales told of his gluttony are legion and have been mythologized. You may see some accounts that say he ate 65,000 calories a day. Better research has reduced this to a more modest 12,000 calories—still five times the recommended amount. Elvis loved the food of the American South. Fried chicken and greasy sides were among his favorites. His most famous meal dates from 1976. That year, he flew a group of friends to enjoy what he considered the best sandwich in the world—the Fool’s Gold Sandwich. This consisted of a loaf of bread, buttered and layered with peanut butter, jelly, and a whole pound of bacon. While it was designed to satisfy eight people, Elvis enjoyed a whole one to himself.

***Charles Domery: When a Polish soldier serving in the French navy was captured by the British in 1799, one of the most extreme cases of ravenous hunger was discovered. Dr. J. Johnston was called in to care for Domery and wrote up what he observed. “The eagerness with which he attacks his beef when his stomach is not gorged, resembles the voracity of a hungry wolf, tearing off and swallowing it with canine greediness. When his throat is dry from continued exercise, he lubricates it by stripping the grease off the candles between his teeth, which he generally finishes at three mouthfuls, and wrapping the wick like a ball, string and all, sends it after at a swallow. He can, when no choice is left, make shift to dine on immense quantities of raw potatoes or turnips; but, from choice, would never desire to taste bread or vegetables.” Over the course of a day, Domery was fed four pounds of raw cow’s udder, 10 pounds of raw beef, and a pound of candles. When Domery’s initial prison rations proved insufficient, he was known to have eaten a cat and 20 rats. It is said that while still serving on his ship, one of his crew mates had their leg blown off by a cannon, and Domery attempted to snatch up the severed limb to eat it.

***Tarrare – the most infamous glutton of all: It is a biological fact that some people are hungrier than others. Sometimes, the signal that lets most people know they are satisfied does not register in the brain. These people have to live their lives always gnawed by ceaseless cravings to eat. The most famous victim of this lived in France at the end of the 18th century, and he was called Tarrare. Because of his ravenous appetite, Tarrare was thrown out of his home by his parents, who could not afford to feed him. He began to perform on the street for money, and his act consisted of eating stones and live animals. Tarrare joined the army, but even getting four sets of rations, he was never full. He resorted to eating food he found in the gutters. Tarrare was hospitalized for being chronically underweight despite his enormous diet. While there, he snuck out of the ward to satisfy his urges. He ate offal discarded from butchers, drank blood, and raided the morgue to try and eat the cadavers. Tarrare was only thrown out of the hospital when he was suspected of eating a 14-month-old infant. On Tarrare’s death, it was discovered that his stomach was vastly bigger than that of a normal person. Which, of course, is not surprising.

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 and follow me on social media through the Weird Darkness website. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find information on sponsors you heard during the show, listen to FREE audiobooks I’ve narrated, get the email newsletter, find my other podcasts including “Church of the Undead” and a sci-fi podcast “Auditory Anthology”. Also on the site you can visit the store for Weird Darkness tee-shirts, mugs, and other merchandise… plus, it’s where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression, addiction, or thoughts of harming yourself or others. And if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell of your own, you can click on TELL YOUR STORY. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

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

“Whitewater: The Second Salem” by Charlie Hintz for Wisconsin Frights
“Bygone Gluttons” by Ben Gazur for ListVerse

“The Evils of Fred and Rose West” from Biography

“The Last Stagecoach Robbery” from Creative History Stories

WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright, Weird Darkness.

Now that we’re coming out of the dark, I’ll leave you with a little light… Proverbs 11:4, “Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.”

And a final thought… “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.” — Teddy Roosevelt

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

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