Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

By Darren Marlar | Weird DarknessSociety & CultureDocumentaryTrue CrimeHistory
Download on the App Store
  • Ranking

    46th

    on Documentary

  • Favorites

    3,158

    Followers

  • Typical duration

    53 min

    per episode

  • If it hooks

    60%

    finish an episode

Based on Podcast App listening data

Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories episodes

  • THE BLACKNESS OF TERROR: The Moaning Behind The Music Room Wall | #RetroRadio
    A stroke has left a wealthy recluse unable to speak or move, and every night after dark his eyes fix on something beside his bed that nobody else in the room can see.

    Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR

    CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
    00:00:00.000 = Show Open
    00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “High Caquetta” (September 13, 1978) ***WD
    00:46:40.532 = BBC Haunted Tales of the Supernatural, “The Inexperienced Ghost” (August 09, 1980)
    01:12:37.532 = The Haunting Hour, “Revenge” (August 10, 1945)
    01:37:33.431 = Hermit’s Cave, “The Blackness of Terror” (April 06, 1947)
    02:02:51.680 = Mystery Is My Hobby, “Wife Poisoned” (1945-1950) ***WD
    02:27:41.835 = Sherlock Holmes, “The Scarlet Worm” (March 24, 1947) ***WD
    02:56:44.523 = Mystery House, ‘Dagger In The Dark” (July 05, 1946) ***WD
    03:24:11.257 = Inner Sanctum, “Bog Oak Necklace” (April 10, 1945) ***WD
    03:53:52.392 = Jeff Regan, “The Lady With No Name” (September 25, 1948) ***WD
    04:24:48.466 = The Key, “Showgirl Murdered” (1956)
    04:48:59.695 = Tales of the Frightened, “Dr. Harvey Cushing” (1057-1963) ***WD
    04:53:19.056 = Beyond The Green Door, “Harwell And The Matland Indians” (1966) ***WD
    04:56:48.898 = Tales From The Tomb, “Hooked” (1960s)
    05:01:00.583 = Show Close

    (ADU) = Air Date Unknown
    (LQ) = Low Quality
    ***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
    CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0770

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    5 hr 2 min
  • THE LADY OR THE TIGER: Two Doors, One Choice, And A Jealous Princess | #MidnightInTheMacabre
    In a kingdom where the accused settle their own guilt by opening one of two identical doors, a starving tiger waiting behind one and a bride behind the other, a young courtier walks into the arena for the crime of loving the king's daughter.

    EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-LadyOrTheTiger


    SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Lady or the Tiger?” Frank R. Stockton (The Century Magazine. November 1882)

    WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

    Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 10, 2026

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL



    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    17 min
  • THE DEVIL IN THE POOL: David Bowie's Exorcism And The 1980s Witch Killers
    In the mid-1970s, David Bowie became convinced something was living in his swimming pool – and instead of a priest, he called a witch. A few years later and a few hundred miles north, a married couple set out to rid America of witches one body at a time.

    EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/davidbowie

    READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y5w8223h

    FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: David Bowie was no stranger to the occult – he even went so far as to have his swimming pool, which he believed to be possessed, exorcised not by a priest – but by a woman named Walli Elmlark who claimed to be a witch. (David Bowie’s White Witch) *** The gruesome true story of two people whose love caused their insanity to grow darker with each passing day, eventually sending them on a crusade to kill anything they deemed evil or immoral – but resulting in the murders of innocent people. (The San Francisco Witch Killers)

    CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
    00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding
    00:01:08.103 = Show Open
    00:02:31.005 = The 1980s Witch Killers
    00:11:32.949 = David Bowie’s White Witch (Part 1) ***
    00:26:01.424 = David Bowie’s White Witch (Part 2) ***
    00:33:26.720 = Show Close
    *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break




    LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS:
    Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
    *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
    SOURCES and RESOURCES:
    “The San Francisco Witch Killers” by Alyse Wax from The13thFloor.tv: https://tinyurl.com/ycyurbey
    “Murderous Minds: Vol 4: 1980’s Witch Killers”: https://amzn.to/3J68cel
    BOOK: "David Bowie - UFOs - Witchcraft - Cocaine - and Paranoia”: https://amzn.to/45ZucBu
    “David Bowie’s White Witch” by Sean Casteel from the Conspiracy Journal: https://tinyurl.com/y2ht47pt
    (Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)

    WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
    Originally aired: June 2021
    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL
    On this episode of Weird Darkness, a married couple who believed they were hunting witches leave a trail of bodies across California, and David Bowie hires a real one to drive the devil out of his swimming pool.It opens in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where a former Phoenix family man named James Carson reinvents himself as Michael Bear, marries a self-described mystic named Suzan, and adopts a belief system the pair call "vegetarian Muslim warriors" – one that treats witchcraft, homosexuality, and abortion as capital offenses. Their first confirmed victim, in March 1981, is their own roommate, aspiring actress Keryn Barnes, stabbed thirteen times and beaten with a frying pan after Suzan decides she's a witch stealing her "yogic powers." From there the couple drifts to a Northern California marijuana farm, where Michael shoots fellow farmhand Clark Stephens in the head and tries to burn the body, and then to the shoulder of Highway 101 in 1983, where hitchhiking ends with driver Jon Charles Hellyar stabbed and shot in front of passing traffic. A televised press conference, a recanted confession, and two 75-years-to-life sentences follow, and Michael's own daughter Jenn later describes visiting him in prison as looking into the eyes of someone with no soul.The episode closes in the mid-1970s with rock journalist and Wiccan practitioner Walli Elmlark, the Circus Magazine columnist New York knew as the White Witch, whose story is told through the memoir of her friend Timothy Green Beckley, founder of the New York School of Occult Arts and Sciences on 14th Street. Elmlark's most famous client is David Bowie, who at the height of a cocaine addiction is drawing protective pentagrams on every surface of his Los Angeles home and reading Dion Fortune's "Psychic Self Defense" as a survival manual. When Bowie becomes convinced Satan is living in his indoor pool, he turns down a Greek Orthodox priest and instead performs an exorcism from Elmlark's written instructions, with a few hundred dollars of talismans bought from Hollywood occult shops. According to his then-wife Angie, the water begins to thrash, a gargoyle-shaped stain appears on the bottom of the pool, and later tenants can't paint it away. Elmlark herself dies around 1980 of a barbiturate overdose, a death her friends learned of only through her family and which at least one of them still finds suspicious.

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    35 min
  • THE CONVICT: He Chose Mars Over Prison, Then Stole A Ship Home | #RetroRadio
    A bank robber who chose permanent exile on Mars over fifteen years in a cell has spent a decade freezing in the mines, and a stolen spaceship is about to take him back to Earth.

    Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR

    CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
    00:00:00.000 = Show Open
    00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Ignorant Armies” (September 08, 1978) ***WD
    00:46:01.952 = Murder By Experts, “It’s Luck That Counts” (August 29, 1949) ***WD
    01:15:32.066 = Exploring Tomorrow, “The Convict” (December 11, 1957) ***WD
    01:33:33.271 = Faces In The Window, “Lightning Rod Man” (January 17, 1953) ***WD(LQ)
    01:57:13.596 = Dark Fantasy, “Thing From The Sea” (November 28, 1941)
    02:22:12.034 = BBC Fear on 4, “William And Mary” (January 10, 1988)
    02:50:50.369 = Theater Five, “To Helen With Love” (November 30, 1964)
    03:12:11.041 = Future Tense, “Martian Death March” (May 07, 1974) ***WD
    03:39:43.552 = BBC Ghosts From The Past, “The Boat Hook” (April 15, 1992)
    04:24:20.384 = Guests of Doom, “Program 11 & 12” (1930s) ***WD
    04:51:09.521 = Harry Lime, “Every Frame Has A Silver Lining” (October 26, 1951)
    05:15:33.419 = Show Close

    (ADU) = Air Date Unknown
    (LQ) = Low Quality
    ***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
    CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0769

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    5 hr 17 min
  • PHANTOM VITALS: The Haunting of Bed Seven | #MidnightInTheMacabre
    Halfway through a routine night shift, ER nurse Megan finds the monitor at her station reporting a steady heartbeat, even breathing, and normal blood pressure for bed seven, a bed that has been empty all night.

    EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-phantomvitals

    SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Phantom Vitals” by Keith Conrad

    WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

    Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 09, 2026

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    14 min
  • "He Was The Devil": Frankfort Mother Charged With Murdering Her 2-Year-Old Son | #WeirdDarkNEWS
    About three and a half hours after her last reported group text about the Lindsay Clancy trial, police were called to a Frankfort, Illinois home where prosecutors say a mother had hanged her 2-year-old son in the basement and then told officers he was the devil – and a Will County judge has now ordered her held while her lawyers argue she was psychotic at the time.

    SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/corriewalsh

    Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736


    *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*

    WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    13 min
  • DEAD WRONG: The Reaper Took The Wrong Peter | #RetroRadio
    A healthy, happy lawyer dozing on his porch after tennis is told he's dead, and the only man who can take his place has just decided he likes living and refuses to die.

    Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTR
    CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
    00:00:00.000 = Show Open
    00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Dead Wrong” (September 06, 1978) ***WD
    00:46:53.341 = Crime Club, “Murder Makes a Mummy” (May 29, 1947) ***WD
    01:16:17.616 = Crime Classics, “Incredible Trial of Laura D Fair” (August 17, 1953)
    01:44:32.312 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Henry Comes Home” (October 13, 1946)
    02:10:28.577 = CBC Deep Night, “Birth” (July 08, 2005)
    02:41:24.963 = The Devil and Mr. O, “Cemetery” (February 25, 1972)
    03:10:39.895 = Diary of Fate, “Rollie Andrews” (August 03, 1948) ***WD
    03:38:28.526 = Dimension X, “The Professor Was a Thief” (November 05, 1950) ***WD
    04:07:54.629 = Eleventh Hour, “Echo of Savage” (ADU)
    04:31:35.631 = Escape, “Three Skeleton Keys” (November 15, 1949)
    05:02:02.134 = Show Close

    (ADU) = Air Date Unknown
    (LQ) = Low Quality
    ***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
    CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0768

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    5 hr 3 min
  • TWO TOWNS TERRORIZED BY MAIL: A Dead Man And An Empty $1.3 Million House | Circleville and Westfield
    A school bus driver in Circleville, Ohio was told in block letters to end an affair or her husband would die, and he did. Decades later a New Jersey couple paid $1.3 million for 657 Boulevard and never spent a night there, because a stranger signing himself The Watcher kept writing to ask about the "young blood" in the house.

    EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/circleville

    READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2ycj6492

    FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Two stories of people living ordinary lives being terrorized by threatening, creepy letters in the mail. We’ll begin in 1976 in Circleville, Ohio. Then I’ll share a more modern story where a New Jersey family moves into a home and is terrorized for years by mail through 2017.

    CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
    00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding
    00:01:50.978 = Show Open
    00:03:06.569 = The Circleville Letters
    00:14:25.756 = The Westfield Watcher ***
    00:43:42.991 = Show Close
    *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break




    LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS:
    Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
    *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
    SOURCES and RESOURCES:
    “The Circleville Letters” by Les Hewitt for Historic Mysteries: https://tinyurl.com/y8hhhjnr
    “The Watcher of Westfield” by Les Hewitt for Historic Mysteries: https://tinyurl.com/yadngrqd
    (Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)

    WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
    Originally aired: June 2021
    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL
    This episode of Weird Darkness follows two unsolved campaigns of terror by mail: the Circleville Letters that tormented a small Ohio town beginning in 1976, and The Watcher, an anonymous writer who drove a family out of a $1.3 million house in Westfield, New Jersey.It opens in Circleville, Ohio, where school bus driver Mary Gillespie started receiving block-lettered letters postmarked from Columbus accusing her of an affair with the school superintendent and warning that her house was being watched. Her husband Ron Gillespie got one ordering him to end the affair or die, and on August 19, 1977, after a phone call whose contents Mary never learned, Ron grabbed his pistol, drove off, and struck a tree at a nearby intersection. Police found the gun had been fired once, the postmortem showed his blood alcohol at 1.5 times the legal limit despite friends describing him as a teetotaler, and the crash was ruled an accident. The letters resumed and spread to elected officials, and in 1983 Mary pulled over her bus to tear down a sign threatening her daughter and found a box rigged with a booby-trapped pistol that failed to fire. Police traced the gun to her brother-in-law Paul Freshour, who was convicted of attempted murder on the strength of a disputed handwriting test despite an alibi. The letters kept coming from Columbus for the entire decade Freshour sat in prison, one of them mailed to Freshour himself, and six months after his release, when Unsolved Mysteries aired the case, the network received its own note signed The Circleville Writer.From there the episode moves to Westfield, New Jersey, where Derek and Maria Broaddus paid $1.3 million for 657 Boulevard in June 2014 and found a letter in the mailbox before they'd moved in, addressed to the new owner and signed The Watcher. The writer claimed his grandfather had watched the house in the 1920s and his father in the 1960s, named the Honda minivan out front, knew the ages and nicknames of the couple's three children, and asked whether the house would be filled with "young blood." Later letters described which bedrooms faced the street and asked whether the children would be afraid to play alone in the basement. Westfield police questioned the Langford family next door, a private investigator and a former FBI agent named Robert Lenehan built profiles, and a DNA test on one envelope came back female but matched no suspect. The Broadduses never spent a night in the house, sued the previous owners John and Andrea Woods over a similar letter received days before closing, and were denied permission to subdivide the lot in 2017. Two weeks after renters moved in, a fourth letter arrived promising car accidents, fires, and dead pets, and the case remains unsolved with the house still in the family's hands.

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    45 min
  • WHAT IF IMAGINARY FRIENDS ARE REAL?: Can Children See What We Don’t?
    What if the imaginary friend you had as a child wasn’t imaginary at all — but something lingering, watching… and very real?

    EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/imaginaryfriends

    READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckr4ry4

    FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Most people had imaginary friends when they were younger. These "friends" were usually nice, funny, and even comforting. They took the form of animals, other humans, and sometimes larger-than-life characters that defy classification. And sometimes they were extremely creepy and downright scary, especially when examined in hindsight.

    CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
    00:01:22.744 = Show Open
    00:02:39.239 = Imaginary Friends, Part 1
    00:15:42.835 = Imaginary Friends, Part 2 ***
    00:25:41.562 = Song: “Funny Man” by Dark Weirdness (about an imaginary friend)
    00:30:08.623 = Show Close
    *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break

    LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: 
    Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
    *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
    SOURCES and RESOURCES:
    Imaginary Friends 01: http://ow.ly/olpf30nQLkP
    Imaginary Friends 02: http://ow.ly/obdb30nQLl8
    (Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)

    WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
    Originally aired: June 2021
    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL
    Weird Darkness collects fifteen true accounts from adults who look back on the imaginary friends of their childhood and find something other than imagination: a murdered girl buried a mile and a half from the house, a tall man in bloody scrubs at a tea party, two girls in white nightdresses who vanished whenever the dog ran in, and a voice in a basement window where nobody lived.It opens with a toddler named Karen who had to be treated like a real person, a friend so insistent that the child's mother wondered if she was seeing something nobody else could. Decades later, an article about a missing-person case in the same city named a murdered girl called Karen, and a text to her mother for the old address confirmed the body had been buried about a mile and a half from their former home, more than a decade before the family moved in.From there, a Redditor who broke into foreclosed houses at five or six years old describes Sarah, a young Hispanic girl in cut-off tank tops and pastel-orange spandex shorts who waited in the upstairs bathroom of an empty house for a mother who never came home. The house had no silverware, no furniture, and mildewed carpet, and the writer no longer believes she could have been there.Next comes the Green Man, an overly tall figure in a doctor's mask and blood-covered scrubs who attended a small child's tea parties and stood behind the chair with a hand on the child's shoulder. A psychiatrist later traced the figure to long hours in hospital waiting rooms during the grandparents' failing health, an explanation the parents accepted after years of insisting he wasn't real.A boy who called his invisible brother Tom set places for him at the table and talked to him on long bus rides until a child psychiatrist's puzzles and questions ended the conversations. Ten years on, his mother played him a recording of a psychic who described a dark-haired young man watching over him, asked whether the name Tim meant anything, asked if he was a Gemini, and asked about the large birthmark on his side, then suggested the two had been twins in a past life.The lighter stories follow: a sister's imaginary friend Thoup, whom her brother announced he had killed, earning him a long grounding for a murder he argued couldn't count; Charlie, a little man who went everywhere with a four-year-old until the move, after which the family learned a little person had died by suicide in the house before they bought it; and Olean, a gigantic black raven who kept a 28-year-old writer company through age eleven or twelve in an antebellum house on the Ohio River in Kentucky.A writer who had three imaginary friends between ages three and six could only see one of them, a sad blonde girl wearing nothing but her underclothes, dirt in her frazzled hair, who said she lived in the woods behind the house and answered every invitation inside with the same two words: "I can't."After the break, Michael, a dark-haired boy in red shorts, followed a two-year-old home from the beach in Pensacola, Florida and rode in the back seat the whole way, staying until kindergarten and leaving with the news that he had found his family and was going home. A girl named Christine with long pigtails told a nine-year-old in Virginia that she had lived in the house before; the mother later admitted to hearing footsteps and a child's voice upstairs during school hours, and the father to finding an old photograph of a little girl at the bottom of a closet.Two sisters could both sense one friend, a black ball of energy that gave a name and got a place at the dinner table, until their parents forbade any mention of her. Years afterward the family learned a small Native American group wiped out about a hundred years earlier had carried the same name. Becky Reeder, a curly-haired girl of eight or nine, colored and played dolls downstairs for three years and never once came upstairs, until the night she invited her friend to sneak out to a family party by the water and, after the mother stopped the escape, appeared at the bedroom door to say "I hate you" and never returned.Two barefoot girls in white nightdresses with their hair in buns stepped out of the dark to sit on a child's bed nearly every night until age seven, refused offered milk and cookies with the words "we can't", and vanished every time the dog Sophie bounded into the room; the mother later learned two young girls had been attacked by a neighbor's dog in that yard and died fifteen years before. In a pink house on the bad side of town, a man named Tim in a yellow jacket and bright pink helmet talked to a four-year-old through the basement window and kept asking the child to climb inside, and the father says nobody ever lived in that basement.The episode closes out the stories with an evil twin named June who lived in the attic and wrote left-handed apology letters, a poker player who called the writer June twenty years later, and a lonely only child whose dozens of imaginary friends were mostly pigs from the planet Zion, including Good Piggy, Naughty Piggy, a churchgoing pig named Peter, and a pink bird named Sweety, none of whom the child could control and all of whom drifted away once school brought real friends.At the end of the episode Darren includes the song “Funny Man” based on the true story of parents noticing their child has made an imaginary friend in their new home… but once they find out the truth of who the imaginary friend really is, it’s hard to believe.

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    32 min
  • THE RESTORATION: Ten Thousand Square Feet of Blood on Marble | #MidnightInTheMacabre
    A restoration contractor who makes his living not asking questions takes a job scrubbing three and a half centuries of dried blood off the floors, walls, and fifty-foot ceiling of a boarded-up mansion, with one condition from the client – stay out of the rooms behind the barricades.

    EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-restoration

    SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Restoration” by Jordan Eilbert (aka Devlin Riptide): https://tinyurl.com/yx3xb5bv

    WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

    Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 08, 2026

    LIKE WHAT YOU’RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

    More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
    2 hr 6 min

About Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

From the publisher's feed

Award-winning podcast of true stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, true crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained -- seven days a…

Best of Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Ranked by our users in the last 21 days

More shows like Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Jim Harold's Campfire by Jim Harold

Jim Harold's Campfire

6,996 Listeners

Real Ghost Stories Online by Real Ghost Stories Online | Paranormal, Supernatural & Horror Radio

Real Ghost Stories Online

3,376 Listeners

The Paranormal Podcast by Jim Harold

The Paranormal Podcast

4,757 Listeners

Monsters Among Us by Derek Hayes | Audioboom Studios

Monsters Among Us

7,701 Listeners

Unexplained Encounters by Eeriecast Network

Unexplained Encounters

4,883 Listeners

Paranormal Mysteries by Nic Ryan | Paranormal Mysteries Podcast

Paranormal Mysteries

1,972 Listeners

The Dark Swamp: Horror Stories by The Dark Swamp: Horror Stories

The Dark Swamp: Horror Stories

1,247 Listeners

Paranormal Portal by Paranormal Portal - Ufo's Paranormal Ghosts

Paranormal Portal

590 Listeners

The Dark Paranormal by The Dark Paranormal

The Dark Paranormal

1,130 Listeners

Horror Story: True Paranormal Mysteries and Hauntings by Horror Stories

Horror Story: True Paranormal Mysteries and Hauntings

793 Listeners

Freaky Folklore by Eeriecast Network

Freaky Folklore

903 Listeners

Just Creepy: Scary Stories by Just Creepy

Just Creepy: Scary Stories

1,118 Listeners

Destination Terror by Eeriecast Network

Destination Terror

328 Listeners

Alone in the Woods by Eeriecast Network

Alone in the Woods

580 Listeners

Tales from the Break Room by Eeriecast Network

Tales from the Break Room

1,510 Listeners