Going Dark Theatre

Although the Going Dark Theatre podcast has been on hiatus since May 2021 due to me writing my first two books about haunted history and folklore, the stories of the darker side of humanity throughout time will resume in this podcast beginning in April 2022. Thank you all for listening to these stories. There is much more to come soon.

Key West, Florida, 1933 - Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos Mesa died in 1931 at the age of twenty-two. Carl Tanzler, the so-called doctor who was obsessed with her in life, continued his obsession after her death, visiting her every night in the tomb he built for her. But that was not enough, and his obsession becomes insanity and he removes her from the grave.

Key West, Florida, 1931 - In the island paradise of Key West, there lived a beautiful young Cuban woman named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos Mesa. Abandoned by her husband after a miscarriage, she came under the obsessive eye of a supposed doctor named Carl Tanzler. Elena dying of tuberculosis is only the beginning of this disturbing tale.

The DelMarVa Peninsula, 1769-1829 - Patty Cannon may be the first female serial killer in the United States. She also led a gang that created a Reverse Underground Railroad for thirty years, selling free Black men, women, and children South into slavery. This episode separates the myth from the truth.

Germanton, North Carolina, 1929 - Two weeks before Christmas 1929, Charlie Lawson took his wife and their seven children to town, buying them all new clothes and then having a family photograph taken. By the end of Christmas Day 1929, all members of the Lawson family except one would be dead. The truth about why it happened remained hidden for 60 years.

Wilmington, Delaware, 1851-1972 - Imagine if Downton Abbey, inhabited by several generations of a wealthy family and their faithful servants, was a haunted house with a ghost in nearly every room. That is the tale of the the Rockwood Mansion, where members of the Shipley-Bringhurst family and their servants remain behind decades after their deaths.

In this special Halloween episode of the podcast, I talk about the history of All Hallow's Eve and then tell a tale of a terrifying haunting that occurred in a 19th century French chateau. Translated for the first time into English by Morgan Heussaff Zielinski, the diary of a true ghost story to chill you on Halloween.

Sussex County, Delaware, 1780-Present Day - Sussex County, Delaware, where I grew up, is a place filled with legendary superstitions. There are tales of spirit boards and witches killed by silver bullets, ghosts, and a creature known as the Burnt Swamp Monster, who continues to be seen to this day.

Pea Patch Island, Delaware, 1814-1865 - Fort Delaware is regarded as one of the most haunted places in the world, as I can attest from personal experience. Featured in my upcoming book of Delaware ghost stories, this island boasts a dark and cursed history that has left phantoms ready to tell their tales.

Fruita, Colorado, 1945 - A human head can remain conscious for twenty seconds after being decapitated, but did you know there was once a chicken who lived for eighteen months after being beheaded? Mike's tale is a prime example of truth being much stranger than fiction.