Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Five Navy bombers vanished on a routine training flight in 1945, and so did a rescue plane sent out to find them; the Bermuda Triangle is one of 12 Vile Vortices Ivan Sanderson mapped around the globe, and the oceans have their own sea serpents and ghost ships too.

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

READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/55c3tyxy

FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The Bermuda Triangle, also called the Devil's Triangle, is a famous part of the ocean where many ships and planes have mysteriously disappeared. Located between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the tip of Florida, this area has puzzled people for over 100 years. From the spooky disappearance of the USS Cyclops with 306 crew members in 1918 to the more recent sinking of the SS El Faro in 2015, the Bermuda Triangle becomes more mysterious year after year. Tonight we’ll look at some of the strangest events in the Triangle, like Flight 19, which vanished during a routine training mission; and the Witchcraft, a boat that disappeared just minutes after calling for help. We’ll look at other locations around the world similar to the Bermuda Triangle that don’t get the same recognition – but are just as mysterious. And while we’re in the water, we’ll touch on a few ocean ghost stories, and reports of sea monsters. So before we get started, if you tend to get sea sick, you might want to grab your Dramamine.

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:21.662 = Show Open
00:02:05.707 = Bermuda Triangle: A History of Mystery
00:10:18.399 = Vile Vortices Around the World ***
00:20:14.052 = Monsters Beneath The Waves ***
00:38:09.122 = Ocean Ghost Stories
00:47:18.818 = 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:
Bermuda Triangle sources: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/6sw5aj4j, https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3mf3vvw6
Vile Vortices source: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8fhp3b
Ocean Ghost Stories source: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/rmhs277y
Monsters Beneath The Waves source: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/596estzu(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 10, 2024

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 host Darren Marlar covers the ships and planes lost in the Bermuda Triangle, the 11 other Vile Vortices said to swallow travelers around the globe, centuries of sea serpent and mermaid sightings, and the ghost ships still said to sail the open ocean.
It opens with the USS Cyclops, which vanished with all 306 people aboard in March 1918 on its way from Brazil to Baltimore, and with Flight 19, the five Navy Avenger torpedo bombers lost out of Fort Lauderdale on December 5th, 1945, along with the rescue plane sent after them. The cabin cruiser Witchcraft was gone by the time the Coast Guard arrived, about 20 minutes after Dan Burack radioed for a tow off Miami in December 1967, and the SS El Faro went down in Hurricane Joaquin on October 1st, 2015, and was later found sitting upright 15,000 feet below the surface.
From there, it follows the map biologist Ivan T. Sanderson drew in the early 1970s of 12 Vile Vortices, among them Japan's Devil's Sea, where the research vessel Kaio Maru No. 5 disappeared with 31 aboard in 1952, and the Wharton Basin in the Indian Ocean, a possible resting place for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Next come the sea monsters, starting with the serpent hundreds of people reported off the Massachusetts coast in 1817 and again in 1819. Captain Peter M'Quhae of HMS Daedalus told the Royal Navy in 1848 that he and his officers had watched a 60-foot serpent for 20 minutes, and Christopher Columbus wrote in his journal on January 9th, 1493, that the three mermaids he'd seen were "not half as beautiful as they are said to be".
The episode closes with ghost ships, from the SS Ourang Medan, whose crew was said to be found dead in the Strait of Malacca in the 1940s before the ship burst into flames, to the Mary Celeste, found drifting near Portugal in 1872 with its lifeboat and 10-person crew gone, and the SS Baychimo, an abandoned cargo ship spotted drifting in the Arctic until 1969.

Tennessee gave Christa Pike two full doses of pentobarbital at Riverbend on Wednesday night, and she was still snoring behind a closed curtain when the witnesses were led out; she's alive in a hospital, the governor has called off the state's last execution of the year and ordered an outside review, and nobody has said whether Tennessee will try again to execute her.

SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/ChristaPike20261001

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 physicist invents a machine capable of doing the impossible – and makes the mistake of showing it to a Hollywood mogul who immediately sees dollar signs. What begins as a scientific breakthrough soon becomes an experiment neither man can quite control. A man has to have a place to confess a horrible sin … and this is as good as any other!

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

SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Don’t Shoot” by Robert Zacks (Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1955)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: October 01, 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

In the Missouri Ozarks of 1879, Charles May walks into the woods to dig a ditch on the morning his son swears he'll make him pay for a bloody nose, and he never walks back out.

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, “The Thing at Nolan” (November 20, 1978) ***WD
00:46:36.423 = Dimension X, “Competition” (November 19, 1950) ***WD
01:15:42.732 = The Eleventh Hour, “Escape To Die” (ADU)
01:40:44.847 = Escape, “Letter From Jason” (November 29, 1949)
02:10:11.926 = Murder By Experts, “Two Coffins To Fill” (July 04, 1949)
02:40:43.999 = Exploring Tomorrow, “Desert Object, aka The Alien, Nago” (December 25, 1957) ***WD
02:58:33.516 = Dark Fantasy, “Men Call Me Made” (December 19, 1941) ***WD
03:23:48.862 = BBC Fear on 4, “The Monkey’s Paw” (January 29, 1988) ***WD
03:51:34.254 = Theater Five, “Found Money” (December 02, 1964) ***WD
04:14:47.999 = Future Tense, “Pictures Don’t Lie” (May 09, 1994) ***WD
04:43:08.003 = Hall of Fantasy, “Markheim” (April 24, 1947)
05:09:09.878 = 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/WDRR0788

Succubus visits run from the days of a future pope and his secret lover, Meridiana, to a Bakersfield, California, bedroom recently, where a young man says something held him down and laughed at him. What are sex demons? And could your girlfriend be one?

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

READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdzak2yv

FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Succubi are female-appearing sexual demons that approach men in a variety of ways, usually while they are sleeping, then seduce them. Often men report that their experiences with succubi are positive and enjoyable, but just as often, they report that the pleasure had a thread of something evil running through it… and that thread leads to utter destruction. (The Deadly Allure of the Succubus) *** And the woman you are living with right now – your own wife or girlfriend – is it possible she is a succubus? We’ll look a bit deeper into the signs of a succubus so you can be aware and on alert! (Is My Girlfriend a Sex Demon?) *** In recent years, stories of personal encounters with shadow people have flooded the Internet. So much so, that a subcategory of Reddit was created solely for those who have experienced a shadow person and wish to share their story. We’ll share some of those reports. (Real Life Encounters With Shadow People) *** Many towns have tales of an old woman who might be a witch of some kind. Warrington, England had its own local, evil crone. She was known as Old Peggy Gronach and was described as being “evil, ugly and haggard.” But was she truly a witch? Many people thought so! (The Strange Tale of an English Witch)

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:23.650 = Show Open
00:03:40.413 = Real Life Encounters With Shadow People
00:14:09.248 = The Deadly Allure of the Succubus ***
00:30:04.307 = Is My Girlfriend A Sex Demon?
00:40:11.988 = The Strange Tale of an English Witch ***
00:47:33.051 = 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:
“Real Life Encounters With Shadow People” by Audrey Webster: http://bit.ly/2YvO77h
“The Strange Tale of an English Witch” by Nick Redfern: http://bit.ly/2KdGAF9
“The Deadly Allure of the Succubus” by Cheryl Adams Richkoff: http://bit.ly/2KdnDlJ
“Is My Girlfriend a Sex Demon?” by Jacob Shelton: http://bit.ly/314rXdP(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

This episode of Weird Darkness runs from shadow people and the succubus to a 1600s English witch whose neighbors believed she could turn into a horned beast.
It opens with shadow people as Reddit users describe them, from five pitch-black figures drifting around a bedroom in the late 1960s to a man in a top hat who sat in a chair beside a bed and talked, and a voice in the dark that told one sleeper, "don't move", before hands closed around the sleeper's throat.
From there the episode turns to the succubus, the female sex demon of legend, starting with the medieval tale of Gerbert of Aurillac, the future Pope Sylvester II, and his secret lover Meridiana, who is said to have predicted his death. The accounts carry on through French novelist J.K. Huysmans waking in a monastery cell, a young man in Bakersfield, California, held down in his bed in December 2012 by something that laughed and cried out, "Soon!", and an anonymous man who says he prayed to Lilith for a succubus and got one.
Next comes a checklist for men who suspect the woman they're living with is a succubus, from a girlfriend with no family at all to friends who can't explain why they hate her and the drained feeling that follows their nights together.
The episode closes in Warrington, England, in the 1600s, where a woman known as Old Peggy Gronach settled at a ruined farm after slipping away from witch-hunters in Norwich, and children who crept up to her cottage saw a hair-covered creature with red eyes and horns at the window just before Peggy came screaming out the front door. Years later, rumor had it that a skeleton with the body of a four-legged animal and a human skull had turned up half-buried in a field nearby.