Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova were born joined at the waist in Moscow in January of 1950; their mother was told they’d died of pneumonia, and Soviet scientists kept the girls for experiments, packing one sister in ice while they took the other’s temperature. Decades later, the British journalist who befriended them came to believe one twin had all the traits of a psychopath and the other had become an empath.

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

READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckzmj3t

FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Conjoined twins might be identical genetically, but their personalities can be drastically different – with different interests, different opinions, different mental conditions… even different gender preferences when it comes to romance. The odd story of real-life conjoined twins, Masha and Dasha. (Empath And Psychopath Share The Same Body) *** Weirdo family member Alexis Bishop hears a creepy voice in the dark. (Cover Your Feet) *** As parents, you want to empower your children. You want to teach them independence, and a good way to start is letting them walk to school, without a parent or chaperone. But what happens when it all backfires, and your child never makes it to school? (Austin Sigg and the Murder of Jessica Ridgeway) *** One of the common themes in Yowie reports – and many Bigfoot reports – is that they like to throw stones. A lot. (Did A Yowie Throw That Stone)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:06.338 = Show Open
00:02:53.822 = Empath And Psychopath Share The Same Body
00:11:45.660 = Cover Your Feet
00:16:01.374 = Austin Sigg And The Murder of Jessica Ridgeway ***
00:30:15.711 = Did A Yowie Throw That Stone? ***
00:40:58.460 = 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:
“Empath And Psychopath Share The Same Body” by Jodi Smith for Ranker: http://bit.ly/2N0y4KV
“Austin Sigg and the Murder of Jessica Ridgeway” from The Scare Chamber: http://bit.ly/2JaeWsC
“Cover Your Feet” by Weirdo family member Alexis Bishop
“Did A Yowie Throw That Stone?” by Paul Cropper for The Fortean: http://bit.ly/33Ra8jX(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: July 2020
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 follows Soviet conjoined twins kept for medical experiments, a bedtime warning from a voice in the dark, the 2012 murder of Jessica Ridgeway in Colorado, and two old Australian accounts of a hairy creature that throws stones.
It opens with Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, conjoined twins born in Moscow in January of 1950. Their mother was told they'd died of pneumonia, and Soviet scientists, beginning with physiologist Pyotr Anokhin, used the girls for experiments, packing one sister in ice while taking the other's temperature and shocking them in time to a metronome. British journalist Juliet Butler, who befriended them in 1988, came to believe Masha had all the traits of a psychopath and Dasha had become an empath; in 2003, Dasha died about seventeen hours after her sister.
From there, listener Alexis Bishop remembers a house where Alexis's mother heard small footsteps like a child's after midnight while both of her children lay asleep, and the night a 13-year-old, drifting off with both feet sticking out from under the blanket, heard a voice like a horror-movie monster say, "cover your feet".
Next, on October 5th, 2012, 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway left her home in Westminster, Colorado, to walk to school, and she never got there. Hundreds of volunteers searched before her remains were found in Pattridge Park Open Space in Arvada, and police tied the case to an attempted abduction at Ketner Lake that May. Then Mindy Sigg called 911 to say her 17-year-old son, Austin Reed Sigg, wanted to turn himself in; he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison plus 86 years.
The episode closes with two old Australian accounts of stone-throwing Yowies: in the Sydney Mail of March 14th, 1928, C.W. Peck retold an Indigenous story from the Georges River about two brothers who killed a hairy "wullundigong" and became stone-throwers themselves, while an 1892 letter to the Armidale Express told of four stockmen on the Kangaroo Hills run who were chased through the night by something throwing stones and, at first light, saw a large creature shaped like a man standing on the spur above them.

A Scottish poet published the rules in 1786: a candle, a mirror, an apple, and the face of your future husband looking over your shoulder. The girls who play it now chant a dead woman's name in a dark bathroom instead, a book that sold thirty million copies turned the same trick into a self-help plan, and some of us have carried it into the prayer closet without noticing.

Listen through the end for the song “Say It Three Times” by Incorruption, based on this sermon’s message!

EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and print version): https://weirddarkness.com/SayItThreeTimes

Book: "CHURCH OF THE UNDEAD: Book One — Wendigo, Zombies, Werewolves, And Other Subjects You’d Never Hear From Your Pastor’s Pulpit” at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HJ454R1P

Weird Darkness® and Church Of The Undead™ are trademarked. Copyright © 2026.

The doors are locked, the library is dark, and ten-year-old Lucy is about to find out she isn't the only one still inside behind those locked doors.

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

SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Creeger the Creeper” by Scott Donnelly, written for http://www.MicroTerrors.com.

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

Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: October 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

On the morning he was to hang at Exeter in 1885, John Lee told his warders he'd dreamed the scaffold wouldn't work. Then the hangman pulled the lever again and again, and the trapdoor under Lee never opened.

From the book “BOTCHED EXECUTIONS: Four Centuries Of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections And Firing Squads” by Darren Marlar at https://weirddarkness.com/botchedexecutions

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

Originally aired: October 09, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HM3LZM9M/

A small-town Russian doctor who's given up on his filthy hospital starts spending hours in the ward for the insane out back, talking philosophy with one of the patients.

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, “Ward Six” (December 13, 1978) ***WD
00:45:59.959 = Dimension X, “Universe” (November 26, 1950) ***WD
01:15:57.328 = The Eleventh Hour, “Explosives” (ADU) ***WD
01:45:27.736 = Escape, “Command” (December 06, 1949)
02:14:38.515 = Murder By Experts, “Murder By Prescription” (July 11, 1949)
02:45:04.700 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Dreams” (January 01, 1958) ***WD(LQ)
03:04:40.566 = Dark Fantasy, “House of Bread” (December 26, 1941)
03:29:31.612 = BBC Fear on 4, “Music Lovers” (January 24, 1988) ***WD
03:57:57.771 = Theater Five, “Fog” (December 03, 1964) ***WD
04:20:37.631 = Future Tense, “With Folded Hands” (May 14, 1974) ***WD
04:48:59.681 = Incredible But True, “The Lady And The Lake” (1950-1951)
04:52:29.652 = Strange Adventure, “Stepson of Satan” (1945) ***WD
04:55:44.204 = Tales of the Frightened, “Never Kick A Black Cat” (1963)
05:00:22.496 = 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.