EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/HalloweenNovel

SYNOPSIS: Think you know Michael Myers? Think again. Join us as we rip open the pages of the 1978 Halloween novelization—the story John Carpenter's film left in the shadows. We're talking ancient Celtic curses, a deformed Irish boy named Enda seeking bloody revenge, and a supernatural evil that's haunted humanity for millennia. But that's just the beginning. We'll also pull back the curtain on the low-budget magic that created a horror icon: $320,000, 20 days of shooting, a $2 Captain Kirk mask painted white, and bags of leaves raked between every single take in sunny California pretending to be autumn Illinois. From cosmic horror backstory to indie filmmaking genius, we're diving deep into what makes Halloween the ultimate boogeyman tale. Discover why Dr. Loomis was truly terrified, how Jamie Lee Curtis almost got fired on day one, and the unsettling truth behind that iconic 5/4 time signature that keeps you on edge. This is Weird After Dark—where we unravel the darkness thread by thread. "Fear is the relinquishment of logic... and Michael Myers is still out there."
TEASE: Do you know about the ancient Celtic curse that spawned Michael Myers and the low-budget magic that turned a $2 Captain Kirk mask into the face of pure evil? We're diving deep into the 1978 Halloween novelization – the little bits of the story that didn’t make it to the screen, the backstory, the reason Michael is the way he is… and we look at the indie filmmaking genius that created a horror legend.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/wotw

In this episode of Weird After Dark, your ghost hosts dig into one of the most infamous moments in broadcast history — the 1938 War of the Worlds radio panic. Following Darren Marlar’s replay of the original Mercury Theatre production, the hosts unpack how Orson Welles’ Halloween broadcast managed to convince thousands that Earth was under attack by Martians. From ancient fears of the red planet and Percival Lowell’s “canals” to H.G. Wells’ biting social critique and the raw anxieties of Depression-era America, they explore the perfect storm that turned fiction into full-blown mass hysteria. The conversation moves through later adaptations, from Cold War films to Spielberg’s post-9/11 version, and how each era projects its own fears onto the story of invasion. The hosts also touch on real-life consequences — including deadly riots in Ecuador — and how science eventually debunked the myth of Martian civilizations. Wrapping up, they draw a chilling parallel between Wells’ microscopic “heroes” and our modern vulnerabilities to invisible threats.



NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/BigfootManMonsterMyth


You thought the Bigfoot mystery was just about footprints in the mud? Think again. In this episode of Weird After Dark, we dig deeper into Darren Marlar’s latest Weird Darkness story — “Bigfoot: Man, Monster, or Myth?” From its hoaxed beginnings to bone-chilling encounters that leave witnesses shattered, we’re unpacking the science, the fear, and the strange truth that keeps Bigfoot’s legend alive. Weird After Dark — where the stories you thought you knew… go even deeper.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/grimreaperappearsinhospital/

A nurse encounters something impossible during her hospital rounds—a seven-foot figure in black bent over a dying patient. She sees it twice. The patient dies hours later. Then, across the Atlantic at England's Mermaid Inn, centuries-old spirits are getting up to very different mischief—moving guests' clothes, soaking them mysteriously, and causing relationship-ending arguments. Join us as we explore two very different hauntings: one clinical and terrifying, the other chaotic and strangely playful. From the Grim Reaper's hospital visit to poltergeists sabotaging couples, this episode has it all.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/MunchausenByProxy

From mothers who poisoned their children for attention to two young boys who rode horses across America alone - this episode explores the darkest depths of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy alongside the incredible story of the Abernathy brothers, proving that both unimaginable evil and extraordinary courage can exist in the same world.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/NicolasFlamel

TEASE: The Weird After Dark ghost hosts explore the line between history and legend, from Nicolas Flamel's quest for immortality through alchemy to Stalin's bizarre 11-year experiment eliminating weekends to control Soviet workers. They examine how both mystical seekers and totalitarian regimes have tried to conquer time itself—and the devastating social chaos that follows when humans attempt to bend reality to their will.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/JureGrando

TEASE: The Weird After Dark hosts explore Europe's first documented vampire who knocked on doors for sixteen years promising death, violated his widow nightly, and when villagers finally opened his coffin in 1672, he was perfectly preserved with tears streaming down his face—screaming as they sawed through his neck. But the cosmic horror deepens when they examine our moon's 'impossible perfection': positioned exactly 1/400th the distance from Earth as the sun while being exactly 1/400th its size, creating the precise conditions for life—leading to mind-bending theories that future humans traveled back 4.6 billion years to build it, or that it was deliberately placed there by intelligent design.
SYNOPSIS: The Weird After Dark hosts dissect Darren Marlar's latest episode spanning centuries of paranormal phenomena, beginning with Jure Grando, Europe's first documented vampire case from 1656 Kringa, Croatia. The discussion examines two conflicting origin stories: either Grando was a stonemason buried alive after defying the monks' "jus primae noctis" custom (right of first night with newlyweds), or he was already a strigon sorcerer practicing blood rites before death. For sixteen years, Grando's knocking on doors signaled imminent death for households, while he violated his widow nightly until villagers finally opened his coffin in 1672, finding him perfectly preserved with a scornful grin, crying tears when confronted with a cross, immune to hawthorn stakes, and screaming as they sawed through his neck. The episode explores Black Shuck, the demon dog of English folklore whose origins may trace to Norse protective hounds that Christianity transformed into a devilish omen, responsible for killing two parishioners in Bungay Church in 1577. The hosts analyze the 1872 "Bermondsey Ghost" haunting in London that terrorized a family with flying objects and mysterious knocking, ultimately revealed to be 13-year-old servant girl Eliza Rose using hidden threads to manipulate objects—a case exposing Victorian-era child labor abuse rather than supernatural activity. The discussion shifts to David Stephens' 1975 Maine UFO abduction by four-and-a-half-foot tall "mushroom-headed" beings with webbed fingers who conducted clinical examinations and communicated telepathically, followed by witnessing two UFOs emerge from Trip Pond in a stair-step pattern. The episode concludes with the moon's "impossible perfection"—being exactly 1/400th the size of the sun and positioned exactly 1/400th the distance away, creating perfect solar eclipses and tidal effects that make Earth habitable, leading to theories ranging from Christopher Knight and Alan Butler's time-traveling future humans building the moon, to biblical creation accounts suggesting purposeful intelligent design rather than cosmic accident.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/wdr20251026

The Weird After Dark ghost hosts trace Halloween's dark evolution from ancient Celtic human sacrifice and bog body rituals to today's $12 billion surveillance spectacle. They explore how a terrifying festival meant to appease chaos and death transformed through 2000 years of assimilation, moral panics, and corporate commodification into a holiday where Ring doorbells track every trick-or-treater and people sign 40-page waivers to experience simulated torture—revealing that the veil thinning today isn't between worlds, but between our private lives and the data profiles corporations hold about us.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/mothmanharbingerofdoom/

SYNOPSIS: We conduct an in-depth analysis of Darren Marlar’s Weird Darkness episode “Mothman: Harbinger of Doom,” exploring the concentrated year of terror that gripped Point Pleasant, West Virginia between November 1966 and December 1967. The discussion examines over 100 credible witness accounts of the seven-foot winged creature with glowing red eyes, beginning with the harrowing high-speed chase of the Scarberry and Millat couples, the mysterious disappearance of Newell Partridge’s dog Bandit, and Marcella Bennett’s traumatic close encounter. The hosts analyze the creature’s consistent physical descriptions, its connection to UFO sightings and “men in black” encounters in the area, and the tragic Silver Bridge collapse that killed 46 people in December 1967—questioning whether Mothman was a harbinger of the disaster or directly responsible for it. The episode expands beyond Mothman to explore related phenomena including 19th-century mystery airships, 1960s UFO encounters with missing time, psychic abilities and their psychological toll, Steven Stayner’s kidnapping survival story, and the absurdly dangerous 1908 Great Race from New York to Paris. Throughout, the hosts examine how unexplained encounters create lasting psychological trauma—fear without memory, dread without explanation—that fundamentally changes those who experience the unknown.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

EPISODE BEING DISCUSSED: https://weirddarkness.com/PhineasGage

Synopsis:The Weird After Dark hosts dissect Darren Marlar's latest episode exploring medical mysteries, historical crime, ancient artifacts, and supernatural phenomena. The discussion begins with the legendary case of Phineas Gage, a 25-year-old railroad foreman who in 1848 Vermont was distracted while packing explosives when a 13-pound, 3-foot-7-inch tamping iron sparked ignition, shooting through his left cheek, up through his brain, out the top of his skull, and landing 80 feet away covered in blood and brain matter—yet Gage remained conscious, walked to a doctor, and survived for 12 years, though his personality transformed from a responsible, intelligent businessman into an impulsive, profane drifter unable to hold jobs, fundamentally changing neuroscience's understanding of brain function and personality. The hosts examine an 1885 case where social attitudes toward adultery and murder collided when a jealous husband shot his wife's lover, sparking debate about whether the cuckolded spouse or the adulterer deserved more sympathy. The episode explores the Emerald Tablet, a cryptic ancient alchemical text translated by Isaac Newton promising "the glory of the whole world" and power to "vanquish every subtle thing and penetrate every solid thing," with its current whereabouts unknown despite intense interest from occultists and historians. The discussion covers Japan's Shimokubo Dam, so aggressively haunted that the government warns ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts to stay away due to overwhelming supernatural activity. The hosts analyze the Beast of Gwanda Town in Zimbabwe, a mysterious creature living near Mtshabezi Bridge that has killed numerous men since the 1970s—always targeting males who drown in shallow water after claiming to see a fish, with bodies always recovered (ruling out mermaids), leading local prophets to suspect either witchcraft or angry ancestral spirits requiring ritual appeasement. The episode examines Lizzie Halliday, born a year before Lizzie Borden and committing atrocities that "would've made Lizzie Borden's stomach turn," becoming known as "The Worst Woman on Earth." The most unsettling story involves Daniel Murdock, a morose Canadian who leased an isolated farmhouse in 1850s Stockholm, New York, identifiable from his twin brother David only by a large scarlet birthmark on his throat. When found hanged in his barn three years later, neighbors preparing his body discovered the birthmark had vanished completely. During the overnight vigil, schoolmaster Eli Jones saw the birthmark suddenly reappear at 2 a.m., fled screaming, and when neighbors returned at dawn, the corpse had completely disappeared from the candlelit room—never to be found again, leading to theories of suspended animation, body-snatching, or something far more sinister.

NOTE: Some of this content was created with assistance from AI tools and voices, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.