Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

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

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

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

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.

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.