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Boarding the train in Japan we're taking the imaginary bridge and heading to a beautiful island. What island is that you ask? We are heading to a place that has been kicking ass with listener support recently, and as we learned from a listener, they are not all pussies. We are heading to the land of Peter Jackson, Taika Waititi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Ernest Rutherford, who if you're not up on your scientists, was a physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday, Jean Batten, a female aviator who made the first solo flight from England to New Zealand, and the list could go on. Since we gave it away in the last description… You've probably guessed it… We're heading to New Zealand! Not only that… Creepy New Zealand!

So you know by now how we do it here on our creepy series, we like to give you a history of the location we're at and then drive into all that is creepy about said place! Having said that, let's check out the history of New Zealand. It all started when Bilbo Baggins found a ring. It was the one ring to rule them all… Oh wait.. Sorry… Wrong history… oh ya here we go..

Māori were the first inhabitants of New Zealand or Aotearoa, guided by Kupe the great navigator. When did Maori first arrive in New Zealand? According to Māori, the first explorer to reach New Zealand was Kupe. Using the stars and ocean currents as his navigational guides, he ventured across the Pacific on his waka hourua (voyaging canoe) from his ancestral Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki. It is thought that Kupe made landfall at the Hokianga Harbour in Northland, around 1000 years ago. You will not find Hawaiki on a map, but it is believed Māori came from an island or group of islands in Polynesia in the South Pacific Ocean. There are distinct similarities between the Māori language and culture and others of Polynesia including the Cook Islands, Hawaii, and Tahiti. More waka hourua followed Kupe over the next few hundred years, landing at various parts of New Zealand. It is believed that Polynesian migration was planned and deliberate, with many waka hourua making return journeys to Hawaiki. Today, Māori are part of an iwi (tribe), a group of people who are descendants of a common ancestor and associated with a certain region or area in New Zealand. Each iwi has their own hapū (sub-tribes). Iwi can trace their entire origins and whakapapa (genealogy) back to certain waka hourua. The seven waka that arrived to Aotearoa were called Tainui, Te Arawa, Mātaatua, Kurahaupō, Tokomaru, Aotea and Tākitimu. Māori were expert hunters, gatherers and growers. They wove fishing nets from harakeke (flax), and carved fish hooks from bone and stone. They hunted native birds, including moa, the world’s largest bird, with a range of ingenious traps and snares.

Māori cultivated land and introduced vegetables from Polynesia, including the kūmara (sweet potato) and often cooked hāngi (an earth oven). They also ate native vegetables, roots and berries. Woven baskets were used to carry food, which was often stored in a pātaka — a storehouse raised on stilts. To protect themselves from being attacked by others, Māori would construct pā (fortified village). Built in strategic locations, pā were cleverly constructed with a series of stockades and trenches protecting the inhabitants from intruders. Today, many historic pā sites can be found throughout the country.

Māori warriors were strong and fearless, able to skillfully wield a variety of traditional weapons, including the spear-like taiaha and club-like mere. Today, these weapons may be seen in Māori ceremonies, such as the wero (challenge). You can also find these traditional weapons in museums. While Māori lived throughout the North and South Islands, the Moriori, another Polynesian tribe, lived on the Chatham Islands, nearly 900 kilometres east of Christchurch. Moriori are believed to have migrated to the Chathams from the South Island of New Zealand. In the late 18th century, there were about 2000 Moriori living in the Chathams. However, disease and attacks from Māori saw the numbers of this peace-loving tribe become severely depleted. The last full-blooded Moriori is believed to have died in 1933.The first European to sight New Zealand was Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. He was on an expedition to discover a great Southern continent ‘Great South Land’ that was believed to be rich in minerals. In 1642, while searching for this continent, Tasman sighted a ‘large high-lying land’ off the West Coast of the South Island.

Abel Tasman annexed the country for Holland under the name of ‘Staten Landt’ (later changed to ‘New Zealand’ by Dutch mapmakers). Sailing up the country’s West Coast, Tasman’s first contact with Māori was at the top of the South Island in what is now called Golden Bay. Two waka (canoes) full of Māori men sighted Tasman’s boat. Tasman sent out his men in a small boat, but various misunderstandings saw it rammed by one of the waka. In the resulting skirmish, four of Tasman’s men were killed.

Tasman never set foot on New Zealand, and after sailing up the West Coast, went on to some Pacific Islands, and then back to Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). His mission to New Zealand was considered unsuccessful by his employers, the Dutch East India Company, Tasman having found ‘no treasures or matters of great profit’. Captain James Cook, sent to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus, was also tasked with the search for the great southern continent thought to exist in the southern seas. Cook’s cabin boy, Young Nick, sighted a piece of land (now called Young Nick’s Head) near Gisborne in 1769. Cook successfully circumnavigated and mapped the country, and led two more expeditions to New Zealand before being killed in Hawaii in 1779. Prior to 1840, it was mainly whalers, sealers, and missionaries who came to New Zealand. These settlers had considerable contact with Māori, especially in coastal areas. Māori and Pākehā (Europeans) traded extensively, and some Europeans lived among Māori. The contribution of guns to Māori intertribal warfare, along with European diseases, led to a steep decline in the Māori population during this time. Signed in 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement between the British Crown and Māori.

Around this time, there were 125,000 Māori and about 2000 settlers in New Zealand. Sealers and whalers were the first Europeans settlers, followed by missionaries. Merchants also arrived to trade natural resources such as flax and timber from Māori in exchange for clothing, guns and other products.

As more immigrants settled permanently in New Zealand, they weren’t always fair in their dealings with Māori over land. A number of Māori chiefs sought protection from William IV, the King of England, and recognition of their special trade and missionary contacts with Britain. They feared a takeover by nations like France, and wanted to stop the lawlessness of the British people in their country. As British settlement increased, the British Government decided to negotiate a formal agreement with Māori chiefs to become a British Colony. A treaty was drawn up in English then translated into Māori.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed on February 6, 1840, at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands. Forty-three Northland Chiefs signed the treaty on that day. Over 500 Māori Chiefs signed it as it was taken around the country during the next eight months. The Treaty had three articles:

that the Queen (or king) of Great Britain has the right to rule over New Zealand;

that Māori chiefs would keep their land and their chieftainships, and would agree to sell their land only to the British monarch; and

that all Māori would have the same rights as British subjects.

The second and third articles have caused controversy through the years, mainly because of translation problems. Successive governments believed the Treaty enabled complete sovereignty over Māori, their lands and resources. But Māori believed that they were merely giving permission for the British to use their land. Disputes over ownership followed involving a series of violent conflicts during the 19th century. These became known as the New Zealand Land Wars, and were concentrated around Northland and the southern part of the North Island during the 1840s, and the central North Island in the 1860s. Both sides suffered losses, with the British Crown the eventual victor. Land confiscation and questionable land sales carried on through to the 20th century, until the vast majority of land in New Zealand was owned by settlers and the Crown. Following its signing, many of the rights guaranteed to Māori in the Treaty of Waitangi were ignored. To help rectify this, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975. It has ruled on a number of claims brought by Māori iwi (tribes) and in many cases, compensation has been granted.

While disagreements over the terms of the treaty continue to this day, it is still considered New Zealand’s founding document.

The grounds and building where the treaty was signed have been preserved. Today, the Waitangi Historic Reserve is a popular tourist attraction. Here you can explore the museum, watch a cultural performance inside the carved Māori meeting house, and visit the colonial mission house, historic flagstaff, and beautiful waka taua (Māori war canoe). Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century, the ‘homeland’ of Britain had an enormous influence on New Zealand. Government administration, education, and culture were largely built on British models. New Zealand troops fought, and suffered severe casualties in the Boer War and the two World Wars. As Prime Minister Michael Savage said about England in 1939, ‘where she goes, we go, where she stands, we stand’. After World War II, cultural ties with Great Britain remained strong. However, successive New Zealand governments saw the USA as their major ally and protector. New Zealand signed the joined SEATO (South-East Asia Treaty Organisation) and signed the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, and United States) Pact. New Zealand troops also fought with US forces during the Korean and Vietnam wars. While New Zealand is still heavily influenced by its colonial heritage, the country now has its own strong sense of identity. While still a member of the British Commonwealth, and maintaining close, friendly relations with the USA, New Zealand now has a far more independent trading and foreign policy. Since the mid 1980s, New Zealand has been a nuclear free zone, with its armed forces primarily focused on peacekeeping in the Pacific region. This history of the country was taken directly from NewZealand.Com. It was the best summation without getting too overblown we could find! So now with that history of the country down let's get into the creepiness!!

First up, a ghost town!

Now farmland and Bush, Tangarakau once was a thriving community of 1200 people. It's a tiny dot on the map 90 minutes' drive from both Stratford and Taumarunui - so remote that it isn't even on the Forgotten Highway. You must turn off State Highway 43 and drive 6km into bush and rugged farmland to reach all that's left of it, which is almost nothing. There's a campground with cabins and provision for motorhomes, a working farm, the heavily rainforested banks of the Tangarakau River and surrounding hills to explore and plenty of outdoor activities: fossil collecting, kayaking, hunting. The name, which translates as "to fell trees” seems appropriate, for there's nothing but paddocks where a community of 1200 tunnellers and railway workers once thrived. Tangarakau was the epicentre of an epic construction job accomplished with picks, shovels and dynamite - a project which it's said would have cost $9 billion in today's money. Construction of the Stratford-Okahukura railway line began from Stratford in 1901 and took more than three decades to complete. The link was mothballed in 2009, though you can still ride over it in tourist railcarts. For most of its life this railway thrived, with goods trains carrying coal, stock and wool and passenger railcars travelling both ways every day. One feature of visiting Tangarakau on the railcarts is that the railway ballast on this part of the track is full of fossils. For about 10 years, during the height of construction, Tangarakau boasted a drapery store, hairdresser and tobacconist, boot shop, tearooms, confectioner and fruiterer, social rooms, post office and savings bank, police station, a boarding house, resident doctor and dispensary (formed by a co-operative Tangarakau Medical Association), a maternity home, cinema and social hall, lending library and reading room, a well-equipped school, recreation ground and tennis court.

The streets were lit by a power station provided by the Public Works Department.

According to Taranaki's Ghost Town by Derek Morris, men who built the Stratford-Okahukura railway line earned only a few pounds a week. But everyone gave a day's wages to the victims of the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake. After the line was completed in 1932, the workers drifted away and most buildings were dismantled and removed. During the 1960s, the population dwindled to eight. Now only Bushlands Holiday Park remains.

Not far from the ghost town, in the spectacular Tangarakau Gorge, is the grave of pioneer surveyor Joshua Morgan who died in 1893.

Morgan was an extraordinary man - the first European to cross the Urewera Ranges and an eyewitness to the 1886 Tarawera eruption. He spoke fluent Maori and often used English and Maori interchangeably.

Morgan fell ill while surveying the road linking Stratford and Taumarunui and did not survive to see the historic railway line through to completion.

Morgan's tomb has become a place for travellers to pause and reflect on those who built the Stratford-Okahukura railway line. There's not a ton of sightings from this place but there are a few ghost stories. Some have stated that they've seen apparitions wandering the ground. And there are reports of strange noises in the area as well. Some campers at the campground have reported creepy things happening while they've stayed there including odd noises and something messing with their tents andRVs, wildlife or spirits of the tallest workers that died working hard to complete the railway?

So we started out light to whet your whistles. Let's get into more creepiness!

Next up we head to Auckland! There we find the Ewelme cottage, which from what we can tell is considered one of the most haunted places in the area! Built in the 1860s, this charming cottage in Parnell was once home to Reverend Lush and his wife. It also functioned as a bolt-hole during times of tribal conflict in Howick, where Reverend Lush preached. This house has remained largely intact and virtually unchanged in the years since when it was built.

It is a glimpse into what life in New Zealand used to be like!

It is also rumoured to be haunted by the spirits of women and children, and in particular by the spirit of a young girl. We found a description of a paranormal investigation done at the house and we're gonna share some of those findings. Rather high EMF levels were detected in a few places within the house. 🖕 They do disclose that some of these reasons were due to wiring in those areas. Upstairs, a couple of the more sensitive members felt rather uneasy and could feel ‘something’ in the child’s bedroom area. One of the sensitives, during an EVP session, picked up that the toy doll, sitting on a small chair in the child’s room, was lovingly named “Georgina”. One photograph, taken outside the house standing on the veranda aimed at a glass window, seemed to show a rather eerie face looking back at the camera through the glass. Also upon reviewing our photographs we noticed a couple of rather odd-shaped shadows which appeared on the wall in the study. These shadows did not appear in other photos taken off the same spot. They managed to debunk one of the shadow photos but the other one could not be replicated or explained. Two members recall doing an EVP session. One of the members had brought along a balancing bird toy as a trigger object. It balanced nearby to where they were sitting and started the session. During the EVP session they noticed that the bird was moving. Unfortunately a video camera wasn’t on it at the time. However, upon reviewing the recorded EVP session from that room, a “kkkkk” sound is heard and immediately after, they are heard then sounding excited about the bird moving. One of our sensitives felt that there was something, (a male) in the downstairs office. She also felt very sad in the upstairs children’s room and thought that maybe there was a little girl up there. The name Isabella came up. Outside of this we've found stories of many people seeing the ghost of a young girl by oak tree in the garden, this is a very common sighting. A further resident had claimed that people have seen a cat running down the hallway and disappearing into the wall! Another visitor claimed they heard whispers when they were in the upstairs of the house, which is also where the paranormal investigators claimed it seemed most likely there was activity.

Nothing like a good old haunted house!

Next up, one of our standby sites… An old railway tunnel! The Otira tunnel to be exact. The Otira Tunnel is a railway tunnel on the Midland Line in the South Island of New Zealand, between Otira and Arthur's Pass. It runs under the Southern Alps from Arthur's Pass to Otira – a length of over 8.5 kilometres (5.3 mi). The opening of the 8.5-km Ōtira tunnel completed the long-planned transalpine railway between Christchurch and Greymouth. At the time, it was the longest tunnel outside the Alps and the seventh-longest in the world.

Work had begun on the ‘Midland’ line 36 years earlier, but the private developers’ grand plans soon came unstuck. The government’s Public Works Department (PWD) took over in 1895 and the West Coast section reached Ōtira by 1900. Tenders for a long tunnel through the Southern Alps to Arthur’s Pass, 737 m above sea level, were called in 1907. Contractors J.H. McLean & Sons began work the following year, but the project was plagued by engineering problems, extreme weather and labour shortages, forcing the PWD to step in again. When the two ends of the tunnel were joined in 1918, the surveyors’ centre lines were less than 30 mm apart, impressive accuracy for the era. Due to the tunnel’s length and steep gradient, electric locomotives were used to haul trains through it until 1997. As with all of the other rail tunnels we've covered, this one has had its share of deaths and accidents associated with it! The onboard commentary tells of a ghost who is sometimes seen on the Old Coach Road. Apparently the male ghost walks with his swag along the road beside the tracks. It is considered that the man was a Scotsman who was one of the workers killed during the construction of the 8.5km Otira Tunnel. He is always seen travelling east on the Old Coach Road and is thought to be trying to get to Littleton so he can catch a ship home. Many people have claimed to see this ghost also in various other spots along the railway.

Next up… How about a psychiatric hospital! Kingseat Hospital was a psychiatric hospital that is considered to be one of New Zealand's notorious haunted locations with hundreds of claims of apparitions being reported, as of 2011. The construction of Kingseat Hospital began in 1929 when twenty patients from a nearby mental institution came to the site along with twelve wheelbarrows and ten shovels. Kingseat Hospital was named after a hospital in Aberdeenshire, Scotland following Dr. Gray (the Director-General of the Mental Health Division of the Health Department at the time) returning from an overseas trip, who felt it appropriate to have a sister hospital with the same name in New Zealand. Flower gardens, shrubs and trees were grown in the grounds of Kingseat Hospital, using surplus plants from the Ellerslie Racecourse and Norfolk Island pine seeds from Sir George Grey’s garden on Kawau Island.

Kingseat Hospital was in operation from 1932. In 1939, the Public Works Department and Fletcher Construction Company, Ltd. agreed on the construction of a two-storey nurses home at Kingseat Hospital, with the government to provide the steel for the building.

The hospital grew throughout the mid-late 1930s and 1940s to such an extent that by the beginning of 1947, there were over eight hundred patients. In 1968, certain nurses at Kingseat Hospital went on strike, which forced the administration to invite unemployed people and volunteers to assist within the hospital grounds with domestic chores.

In 1973, a Therapeutic pool was opened by the then-Mayoress of Auckland, Barbara Goodman, four years before the main swimming pool was added to the hospital in 1977. The site celebrated its 50th Anniversary Jubilee in 1982.

During the 1970s and 1980s, there were many places attached to psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand where alcoholics were treated for their drinking addictions and Villas 4 and 11 at Kingseat Hospital served this purpose. In 1996, South Auckland Health sold Kingseat Hospital after government decisions to replace ongoing hospitalisation of mentally ill patients with community care and rehabilitation units. This led to the eventual closure of Kingseat Hospital in July 1999, when the final patients were re-located off the complex to a mental health unit in Otara.

After the closure of Kingseat Hospital in 1999, the grounds were initially considered as a potential site for a new prison, able to accommodate six hundred inmates. In 2000, legal action was taken against the Tainui tribe for financial issues involving the former hospital. By 2004, more than two-hundred people had come forward to file complaints against the national government for claims of mistreatment and abuse of patients at New Zealand's psychiatric institutions (including Kingseat Hospital) during the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the complainants, who at the time of the incidents were aged between 8 and 16 years old, said that they were heavily over-medicated, unwillingly subjected to electro-shock treatment, and placed in isolation for long periods of time — sometimes for months. A paranormal team found a diary that contained the following: 'There was never enough hands to help the extremely handicapped eat, no medications to avoid being scratched or attacked nurses or kitchen or laundry staff alike-if having to go past the residents to clean up or stop them attacking each other,' the diary read.

'We could use the hours between meals to just clean up the dining rooms.. I cried with relief to learn this hospital has closed.'

Oof, also the diary claimed more nurses died there than patients. One of the most prolific reports is of the 'Grey Nurse', believed to be the ghost of a former worker who died while the psychiatric hospital was still operational.

The property contains abandoned nurse's quarters where the apparition is meant to have been spotted lurking in the shadows.

The nurse is just one of many 'shadows' spotted in the halls, a phenomenon which has been described as having 'always existed and feed[ing] on negative energies and the emotions of fear'.

Here we have another paranormal team account: 'The EMF meter suddenly went off. We started tracking the field and found we could actually gauge the shape and size of it. It was about the size of a football and was floating about a meter or so off the ground,' he wrote.

'At one point it was ‘hovering’ around Kel’s [another team member] head for a couple of minutes, before moving off...As I was measuring the field around Kel, I could feel an icy cold patch all around my hand holding the EMF meter,' he said. The team recorded several unusual incidents, including hearing the name 'Stephen' very clearly when they used a 'spirit box' to communicate with ghosts in the rtold A family living in one of the villas told the Haunted Auckland team that spirits regularly showed themselves.

'They play with the kids. Sometimes we see them, but they don’t bother us at all, it’s all good,' the team were told.

Footage shows the paranormal investigators of Haunted Auckland supposedly communicating with a ghost named Alexis Jackson, a nurse who continues to “look after patients” at the hospital. During a visit to a former nurse’s house, another team member claimed to feel “dizzy and nauseous” when she touched a bathtub. Climbing in, she sensed something terrible had happened.

“I closed my eyes and saw a bit clearer a picture of a woman being pushed under the water,” she said. “I saw her arms and legs threshing in the bathtub. I could see a hand and arm pushing her under the water drowning her.

staff at Spookers(a haunted house attraction) have been creeped out by “object manipulation”, and chilly spots. And at the Kingseat villas, there’s been some serious poltergeist activity with reports of shaking cupboard doors, tapping on windows, self-operating toilets and taps, and moving furniture. Voices have been heard, sulphur smelt, and shadowy figures seen. TV show Ghost Hunt features footage of an unplugged dentist chair turning itself on and claims to have captured the shape of a ghost’s face in a shower stall.

Good stuff!

Cryptids anyone? Sure thing! How about the Moehau! Moehau also known as Maero, Matau, Tuuhourangi, Taongina or Rapuwai described by the Maori people of New Zealand as being "Terrible creatures, half man, half animal", with a very aggressive temperament, they were only too happy to massacre and eat anyone that strayed into their domain. Early encounters often talk of these creatures exhibiting aggression and throwing rocks to frighten people off. It was these creatures, largely found in the Coromandel Ranges, that were thought to be responsible for the find of a headless, partially devoured body of a prospector in the Martha Mine region in 1882, later further up in the foothills the corpse of a woman was found, it was discovered she had been dragged from the shack in which she lived while the remainder of her family were away, and her neck had been snapped.

On the topic of aggressive behavior, Taonginas were greatly feared by the population of the lower Wanganui River as they were said to viciously attack any fishermen who strayed into their territory. This vicious behavior however seems to have abated in more modern encounters as the beasts in most instances flee on sight of humans.

Rapuwai are believed, from legend, to be able to crush any strong Maori warrior with ease employing their large powerful hands. They are said to be tool-producing beasts using wood and stone, the articles crafted are said to resemble those produced by Homo erectus hominids. The Rapuwai are mostly believed to be an evolved orangutan that fled to these uninhabited islands of Polynesia. Meanwhile the Moehau are depicted as being as tall as a man, completely hair covered, with marginally ape-like facial features. The primary difference from human appearance being the extremely long fingers, tipped with sharp talons, capable of tearing apart the toughest prey. Often described as “Manimals”. It is possible that if these man-beasts existed prehistorically they would have been more than capable of bringing down the largest of Moa - Dinornis. The large talons spoken of seem to designate this creature's predatory nature. However, large talons are also found elsewhere in the animal kingdom in animals that rip open rotten logs to acquire nourishment, considering the indigenous Maori used to eat the large nutritious Huhu Grubs; it is not impossible that this beast may also be insectivorous. Matau Giants are described as being ape-like but 3m tall. The Rapuwai are gigantic, slow clumsy creatures that are of a strong muscular stature.

These creatures can be categorized as follows, those that are the stature of an ordinary human, the Moehau and Maero and those that are of giant stature the Matau, Tuuhourangi, Matau Giants and the Rapuwai.Many areas of New Zealand are named for these great hairy man beasts, Moehau Mountain, where they are believed to reside and people are cautioned against going up there is one such place. The Moehau are thought to populate both Mount Tongariro and Ruapehu, the Karangahake Gorge, Coromandel Ranges, Martha Mine Region, Waikaremoana – in the Urewera Ranges, The Heaphy River of the Northwest Nelson State Forest Park, Kaikoura Mountains, Fiordland National Park and are believed to be very common in the Haasts Pass area particularly around the Haast River.

The Matau Giants inhabit Lake Wakatipu in Central Otago. Toanginas are found in the lower reaches of the Waikato River. Maero are encountered in bush country throughout both the North and South Islands. Rapuwai are said to inhabit the Marlborough Distract and the Milford Sounds area. There is further another as yet unidentified type of man beast that lives in the Cameron Mountains in the South West of the South Island. Footprints are in most instances the main evidence of these creatures, in 1903 footprints larger than a mans were found in the Karangahake Gorge in Coromandel. In 1971 a trail of footprints similar to a mans though extended in appearance was located on snow-covered ground and led into a zone of bush on a hillside by a Park Ranger. 1983 was when a deer hunter chanced upon man-like footprints that could have been no more than an hour old along a riverbank in the Heaphy River area. In 1991 campers in the Cameron Mountains of the South Island elected to abandon their camp after finding unusually large man-beast prints near where they were camping.

In 1970 another party of campers had to abandon their camp as a 2m tall man beast assailed them screaming loudly and hurling rocks at the camp.

1972 and a hunter in the Coromandel ranges watched a naked, hairy man beast about 2m tall work its way through the scrub on the other side of a gully, upon reaching the place the creature had been traversing, footprints were found.

Well we know why Moody's going to New Zealand!

Next up are the kaikoura lights! UFOs or whatever the lame explanation that the "man" gives us. The now-famous sightings began in the early hours of December 21. Civil Aviation officials later called in the air force due to the number and nature of the UFO reports.

Two Safe-Air flights left Woodbourne bound for Christchurch and one sighted lights off the Clarence River just before 2am. On the way back north, the crew were told Wellington Radar was picking up returns from its transmissions in that area, and the crew reported lights again at 4am, making rectangular patterns.

The second aircraft left Woodbourne at 3am and also checked out the radar observations, without seeing anything near the river. But radar signals in Wellington appeared to show something tracking the Argosy and at one point the crew saw a bright orb, pear-shaped with a reddish tinge which seemed to be stationary, though the plane's own radar showed it tracking the aircraft. On December 31, another Argosy carrying a film crew saw a cluster of four or five lights near the Kaikoura Peninsula, and a pulsing white light, while Wellington radar had contacts about 21km ahead of them, near the Clarence River.

Then there were radar "returns" from behind the aircraft, and a radar "target" where the crew saw a white light off their starboard side.

Flying out of Christchurch after 2am, the crew again saw a large white light, which they said aligned with a large radar target.

The sightings were filmed by the professional news camera crew filming an item about the earlier incident.

In the 2cm-thick file on the Kaikoura sightings, a report by Dr Bruce Maccabee for the NZ UFO Studies Centre, said the incidents were hard to explain through "conventional phenomenon". Conventional phenomena huh… Right… Wanna hear the explanation? Well here ya go… declassified New Zealand Defence Force files released yesterday showed the RNZAF attributed the sightings to "freak propagation" of radio and light waves, an unusually-bright Venus and the lights of a squid fishing fleet, cars and trains. Sounds like a whole lot of bullshit to us.

We'd be remiss if we left out a haunted hotel. So we now take a trip to the Vulcan hotel. The Vulcan Hotel is a restored and reputedly haunted public house, located on the main street of St Bathans, and is the town's main tourist attraction. Originally called the Ballarat Hotel, it was built in 1882 of mud brick. The building is registered as a Category I historic place by Heritage New Zealand. The building is notable as possibly the country's most famous haunted building. Room 1 of the hotel is reputedly home to the spirit of a young woman, thought by some to be a prostitute known as "the Rose", who was strangled to death in the hotel in the 1880s. The new owner of the building had an encounter with a ghost! Royce Clark has been visiting St Bathans for duck shooting and rugby with mates for more than 40 years, and has been a regular at the hotel. He recalled a story where an electric jug in his room turned on by itself although it wasn't plugged in, one night and he thought it was his buddies needing around but he couldn't find any sort of trickery even after he took it apart the next day. He also talked about hearing strange things during his visit.

Ok so there you have our first installment of creepy New Zealand. There were stone more cool spots including a hospital and prison that we didn't get to this time but we'll for sure be back!

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Monday Jul 05, 2021

Aokigahara Forest, AKA The Suicide Forest

Monday Jul 05, 2021

Today we're taking a trip to Japan. Today's episode may contain some talk that could be hard for some to listen to. We will be discussing suicide in parts of today's episode. While we normally have a pretty lax, “we don't care who we piss off or trigger” kind of attitude, we all agree that mental health and suicide are serious issues and we do not want anyone who may already have some problems to listen to something we are discussing and to make any said problems worse. We joke around and have fun and there will be jokes and fuckery in this episode, BUT, we will not make jokes about suicide or mental health. We will try and find some levity to shake off the darker situations, but will do our best to also be respectful when needed. We say this all the time and this is another great spot for this message, please if you are having any sort of thoughts of suicide and depression please reach out to someone that you can talk to. There are many many excellent resources for those who need them.

With that being said, in today's episode we are talking about Japan's Aokigahara Forest, also known as the suicide forest. We are going to go through the history of the forest and we are also going to talk about some of the tales of spirits and monsters in the forest. Also we’ll get into some spooky stories, of course, because that's what we do here!

Due to the high level of stress faced by the Japanese, Japan is seen as one of the top countries with high suicide rates. According to a report by The Guardian, depression, serious illness and debt are among the common reasons one seeks to end their life.

Historically suicide has been viewed differently in Japan than the way we see it now. Most people today will remark how selfish or cowardly suicide is. Japan historically has had the view that suicide was an honorable thing.

Back in the feudal era in Japan, committing suicide was seen as an act of honour. Samurai warriors would rather commit suicide, or known as seppuku sometimes referred to as Harakiri (ritual disemboweling) than fall into the hands of their enemy – a way to uphold their honor and dignity. It was also used as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed because they had brought shame to themselves. It was later practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa period (particularly officers near the end of World War II) to restore honor for themselves or for their families. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade like a tantō into the belly and drawing the blade from left to right, slicing the belly open. Some practitioners of seppuku allowed themselves to die slowly, but they usually enlisted the help of a “kaishakunin,” or second, who would lop off their head with a katana as soon as they made their initial cut. The goal was generally not to take the head off in one swing, rather most of the way off on the first swing with the second bringing down a very light cut allowing the head to fall into the hands of the deceased. Among other rituals, the doomed individual often drank sake, they were only allowed a specific number of sips, and composed a short “death poem” before taking up the blade. In each case, it was considered an act of extreme bravery and self-sacrifice that embodied Bushido, the ancient warrior code of the samurai. There was even a female version of seppuku called “jigai,” which involved cutting the throat using a tanto. Japanese Tanto knives (or short swords) are characterized by their dagger-like design. The tanto knife first appeared around the year 900. Seppuku fell out of favor with the decline of the samurai in the late-19th century, but the practice didn’t disappear entirely. Japanese General Nogi Maresuke disemboweled himself in 1912 out of loyalty to the deceased Meiji Emperor, and many troops later chose the sword over surrender during World War II. Perhaps the most famous case in recent history concerns Yukio Mishima, a renowned novelist and Nobel Prize nominee who committed ritual seppuku in 1970 after leading a failed coup against the Japanese government.

On October 25, 1944, the Empire of Japan employed kamikaze bombers for the first time. (Kamikazi bombers were named after the “divine wind” that had destroyed the Mongol fleet in the thirteenth century, thus saving Japan from invasion.) The tactic was part of the ferocious Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, which took place in the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines. Kamikaze strikes against Allied warships continued throughout World War II.

Kamikaze pilots deliberately crashed specially made planes directly into enemy warships, which resulted in suicide. It was a desperate policy. Motoharu Okamura, who commanded a kamikaze squadron, remarked that by 1944, “I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes. There is no other way. Provide me with 300 planes and I will turn the tide of war.” In these kamikaze attacks, more than 3,000 Japanese pilots were killed, and there were more than 7,000 casualties among American, Australian, and British personnel. Flight Lieutenant Haruo Araki wrote the following letter to his wife before his last flight:

Shigeko,

Are you well? It is now a month since that day. The happy dream is over. Tomorrow I will dive my plane into an enemy ship. I will cross the river into the other world, taking some Yankees with me. When I look back, I see that I was very cold-hearted to you. After I had been cruel to you, I used to regret it. Please forgive me.

When I think of your future, and the long life ahead, it tears at my heart. Please remain steadfast and live happily. After my death, please take care of my father for me.

I, who have lived for the eternal principles of justice, will forever protect this nation from the enemies that surround us.

Commander of the Air Unit Eternity

Haruo Araki

WOW!

The reason we wanted to include this letter is that last line. He referred to himself as living for the eternal principles of justice. He says he will forever protect his nation from the enemies that surround them. This goes to show that there was still a sense of pride in the fact that you are committing suicide for the cause. It was seen as a strength not a weakness historically. On the other side of the coin, the Allies, steeped in the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the sanctity of life, the apparent willingness of Japanese servicemen like Araki to carry out suicide attacks was profoundly shocking. But then, as scholars of the kamikaze point out, the word suicide in Japanese does not always have the same “immoral connotation” that it has in English. Two versions—jiketsu (self-determination) and jisai (self-judgement)—“suggest an honorable or laudable act done in the public interest.” There is, moreover, no ethical or religious taboo regarding suicide in Japan’s traditional religion of Shintoism. To surrender, on the other hand, was seen as dishonourable, hence the contempt the Japanese felt for prisoners of war. Japanese soldiers believed that when they fell on the field of battle they would become kami, or gods, and join the nation’s spirits at the Shinto shrine of Yasukuni in Tokyo. Hence the typical farewell from members of the Shimpū (Divine Wind) Special Attack Corps: “I’ll meet you at the Yasukuni Shrine!”

Nowadays, many have chosen to end their life not for honourable reasons, but mainly because they could not fit into society. In Japan today, suicide is considered a major social issue. In 2017, the country had the seventh highest suicide rate in the OECD, at 14.9 per 100,000 persons, and in 2019 the country had the second highest suicide rate among the G7 developed nations. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is “an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives.”, as per their website. Seventy percent of suicides in Japan are male, and it is the leading cause of death in men aged 20–44. After peaking in 2003, suicide rates have been gradually declining, falling to the lowest on record (since 1978) in 2019. Monthly suicide rates in Japan increased by 16% between July and October 2020, due to a number of reasons attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. What is driving these big divide rates? As of 2020, the leading motive, with 49% of suicides was "Health issues". However because the category for health issues includes both mental (like depression) and physical issues, it is not possible to distinguish between the two. The second most commonly listed motive for suicides was "Financial/Poverty related issues" (e.g., Too much debt, Poverty), which was a motive in 17% of suicides. The third motive is "Household issues" (e.g., disagreements in the family) listed in 15% of suicides.

By occupation, 59.3% of suicide victims were in the broad "Not Employed" category, which is not to be confused with the colloquialism "unemployed" (as in those who are seeking but unable to find a job). The "Not Employed" category also includes pensioners, homemakers and others. While the teenage suicide rate in Japan is lower than the OECD country average, teenage suicide rates have been the only category to increase slightly in recent years, despite the significant drop in overall suicide rates over the past decade.

Many who decide to commit suicide will chose a place where it is hidden and not easy to be found to spend their last moment. And for the Japanese, Aokigahara Forest is one of the most common locations. It is also known as the world’s second-most common location to commit suicide. The most common location is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, in the US. Aokigahara is located at the northwest base of the country’s highest mountain, Mount Fuji. Due to its high density of trees, Aokigahara is also known as a Jukai – which simply means a “sea of trees’. The tree cover is so thick that, even at noon, you will hardly find a bright spot in the forest. Aokigahara is also known as Japan’s Demon Forest, and the “perfect place to die”. Many Japanese believe that the forest is haunted and dare not go nearby. This 35-sq km, around 14 sq mile, forest is cold, rocky, and contains some 200 caves, of which a few, such as the Ice Cave and Wind Cave, have been popular among tourists. Because of the rocky area and thick trees, Aokigahara’s surroundings are almost identical, making it the perfect journey for those who are making a one-way trip. For trekkers and hikers, they often carry along plastic tape to mark their way so that they will find the way out again.

Let's find out a bit more about the forest itself, because well, nerd shit. It formed out of a devastating volcanic eruption that occurred in the year 864. Which was ironically, chainsaw's second birthday. The nickname “Sea of Trees" captures the full grandeur of how this wind-swept forest appears from the mountain with its treetops rolling like waves. The trees in the forest do bear an exotic, gnarled appearance because they grew out of hardened lava. Their roots could not penetrate to the usual depth. The flow of the lava left the ground with an uneven surface before hardening, where it is not unusual to see trees partially uprooted, along with gaping holes—cave-like recesses—that have formed in the ground. Aokigahara has been falsely portrayed as a place where navigational compasses go haywire. Needles of magnetic compasses will move if placed directly on the lava, aligning with the rock's natural magnetism, kind of like moody, except the exact opposite, which varies in iron content and strength by location. However, a compass behaves as expected when held at a normal height. The forest has a variety of conifers and broadleaf trees and shrubs. Deeper in the forest there are many aromatic flowering plants. There are also many mosses, liverworts and ferns. Aside from the immense savings of plant life that choke the forest, it is home to plenty of wildlife. Some of the animals you may encounter include the Asian black bear, deer, fox, Japanese mink and Japanese squirrel, boar, and wild rabbit. Also the forest is a great place to see tits! That's right my friends, they have many kinds of tits including willow tits, long tailed tits, and of course the great tits.

So why is this such a popular place for people to end their lives? Well as stated earlier it is a very quiet place that offers up dense cover to help conceal things that are going on. Essentially it's peaceful and you can be alone away from prying eyes. Not only that, there was a mystery novel called “Kuroi Jukai” (translated as Black Sea of Trees) written by Seicho Matsumoto in 1960. The novel ends romantically with the lovers committing suicide in the forest, which revitalized the Suicide Forest’s popularity among those who wanted to end their life. Also Wataru Tsurumui’s controversial 1993 bestseller, The Complete Suicide Manual, is a book that describes various modes of suicide and even recommends Aokigahara as the perfect place to die. Apparently this book is also a common find in the forest, usually not too far away from a suicide victim and their belongings. Undoubtedly, the most common method of suicide in the forest is hanging. It's not uncommon for officials to find abandoned cars at the trail heads, empty campsites throughout the forest, strings and ropes left by people who venture off path to help find their way back, and sadly the body's of those who decided to enter the first and never come out. There are signs along the trails urging people to seek help if they are having issues and contemplating suicide. The signs read, “Your life is something precious that was given to you by your parents” and “Think about your parents, siblings, and children once more. Do not be troubled alone.” The signs end with a helpline telephone number, hoping the lost souls who seek to die would call for help. There are people who hike the forest in hopes of finding people and stopping them before it's too late. One man has found over 100 bodies in his time in the forest. With all of this death surrounding it, is it any wonder that there are tales of Hauntings and strange things happening here. There are also stories of demons that inhabit the forest. And with that being said and most of the heavy lifting being done, let's get into what we come here for every week… Creepy shit!

The most common tale of the forest being inhabited by something evil had to do with the Yurei. Yurei are thought to be spirits barred from a peaceful afterlife. Ukiyo-e artist Maruyama Ōkyo created the first known example of the now-traditional yūrei, in his painting The Ghost of Oyuki. Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. The Zenshō-an in Tokyo houses the largest single collection of yūrei paintings which are only shown in August, the traditional month of the spirits. Yurei are seen in white clothing believed to signify the white burial kimono used in Edo period burial rituals. They have long black wild hair. They generally lack legs and feet and the haha typically dangle at the wrists. The arms are usually held stretched out or at the sides stretched out at just the elbow. The Yurei are often accompanied by hitodama, which are floating flames. They can be various colors such as blue, green or purple. So Yurei is actually somewhat of a catch all phrase for ghosts. There are actually different types of Yurei. There's Onryo, which are vengeful ghosts who come back to scene a wrong doing done to them, Goryo, which are spirits of the high class and aristocrats which are also vengeful usually for having been martyred. There are Ubume which are mother ghosts who either died in childbirth or left children behind when they passed, they come back to care for the child and often bring sweets to them. There are several others as well including Funayurei which are the ghosts of those who died at sea and Zashiki-warashi which are the ghosts of children. There are more but you get the point. According to legend, people bring their family members during famine to the forest and leave them to die there, in order to save their food for other family members. Those left in the forest would slowly die due to starvation, turning them into yurei. The belief in yurei continues to today. When a body is found in Aokigahara, forest guardians place it in a room next to the forest before being sent to authorities. Legend has it that if the body is left alone in the room, its yurei move around screaming in the room. Hence, forest guards will play rock-paper-scissors to determine who the unlucky companion to the body is.

Also in Japanese legend, aside from the Yurei, the forest is said to be haunted by demons. So there's that. Demons are always good to have around. So knowing that there are possibly ribs of ghosts and demons hanging around, let's get into some creepy stories from the forest!

During a VICE documentary that takes a tour of the forest, an extremely creepy curse is found. There's a Jack Skellington-like doll with his face cut off, nailed upside down to a tree as a sort of inverted crucifixion. According to the documentary's guide, Azusa Hayano, "They nailed this character upside down as a symbol of contempt for society. No, it's more like a curse. The curse is nailed in." Apparently, it's not that uncommon for visitors to leave a curse on the world they're leaving behind.

This next story was written for a Japanese newspaper:

Jun 26, 2011

I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this vast woodland whose name, in part, translates as “Sea of Trees.”

Inexplicably, I find myself moving toward the sound, searching for signs of life. Instead, I find death.

The source of that scream remains a mystery as, across a clearing, I see what looks like a pile of clothes. But as I approach, it becomes apparent it’s more than just clothes I’ve spotted.

In a small hollow, just below a tree, and curled up like a baby on a thick bed of dead leaves, lies a man, his thinning gray hair matted across his balding cranium. His pasty upper torso is shirtless, while his legs are covered only by black long johns — with blue-striped boxers sticking out above the waistband — and a pair of woolly socks.

Under his bent legs a pair of slacks, a white shirt and a jacket have been spread out as a cushion at his final resting place. Scattered around are innumerable documents, a briefcase and other remnants of a former life. Nearer to him are items more closely related to his demise: empty packets of prescription pills, beer cans, and bottles of liquor…

The article goes on but this is the end of the story for our creepy purposes...

The man had been dead for some time so there's no way he could have produced the scream. So where did it come from? A demon or Yurei trying to draw the man in?

The destination truth television show filmed an episode in the forest and may have caught a Yurei on camera. A man was hanging out in a spot alone and in a clip on you tube he says that he thought he saw something so he checked the camera. After checking the camera he notices a shape that seems to rise up from the ground. It's white and human-like. It's there for a couple seconds and then send to disappear back into the ground. Now what it was we can't say, it could have been a yurei or honestly it looks just as much like someone dressed in white standing up from behind a bush then crouching back down. Given the forest legend though… We won't rule out ghosts.

We found this next story buried in a message board. There have been many stories of people who have had their guide lines cut while they were exploring the forest. This is an account of one of those incidents. It was written by an anonymous person so take it how you will!

"While on vacation me and my friend decided to check out the suicide forest. We were told the best thing to do would be to get on a tour and check out the caves as well. We didn't really want to do a touristy thing though. We decided to hike out there ourselves. We read up on dinner things about the area and decided we would bring along a bunch of Paracord to string along so we wouldn't get lost. We got there in the late afternoon and found a trailhead and parked. Immediately we were struck with an eerie feeling and the signs at the beginning of the trail and in various places saying not to commit suicide and get help didn't help. We set off on the trail to check it out. We walked for about 15 minutes and found a spot in the dense forest that we thought would be a good spot to head in. My friend tied the Paracord to a tree a few feet in and we set off. The further we got in the creepier it got. It was very quiet. You couldn't hear animals or birds or other people. There was not much light coming through but we could still see ok. After about an hour of exploring and letting out our line, which actually ended up being two large bundles of Paracord tied together, we decided to head back. We reeling in the line and heading back the way we came. At some point we started to hear a rustling. We thought this was strange cus we hadn't seen any animals but hey .. We're in a forest so who knows. But it soon became evident that something was actually following us! We were both spooked and picked up the pace. The rustling got louder but then whatever it was it seemed to take off ahead of us. We were both somewhat relieved… That is until a few minutes later when we got to a point where the Paracord had been shredded and the shredded end wrapped around a random tree! We couldn't find the other end of the cord and we started to freak out. Then… We heard the rustling again, but we could not see anything. We started to look around for the other end of the cord. As we were looking the rustling seemed to come from all around us. We kept getting more scared and my friend started crying and freaking out about being lost and telling about how we're going to end up dead like the rest of them. The rustling got louder and louder and then all of a sudden… Nothing. No rustling, no noise, nothing. We both stood there looking around. That's when I saw it. I saw a shadowy white figure off a little into the first. I thought I was seeing things at first. I rubbed my eyes and looked again and it was still there. At this point I lost it and started screaming. My friend turned around to see what I was screaming at and saw it too. It started to move towards us. It wasn't walking though it was like… Floating. As it came closer I see that the figure had no bottom half… It was basically a floating torso. You couldn't see the face as whatever it was had long wild hair. My friend started screaming as well and we both started frantically looking for the other end of our line. As the figure came closer we finally found the end of the cord and started moving as fast as we could. The figure continued to follow us, matching our speed. After what seemed like hours of moving as fast as we could through the forest with thing following us we finally came to where we started and could see the main trail. We ran on to the main trail and ran all the way to the car without looking back. Neither of us said a word on the way back to the hotel. To this day we don't talk about it. In my head I truly think that whatever that figure was trying to trap us in that forest. That figure still haunts me"

Creepy!!!

Locals in the area that reporters have spoken too, classic they have become used to the stories and they are not worried for the most part. Despite these statements there are still reports of locals hearing blood curdling screams at all hours from the forest. Some locals claim to see Nthe Yurei from time to time as well.

There are numerous stories of people that may not have necessarily seen anything but definitely get the heavy sad feeling when they visit as well as the feeling that something or someone is watching them. Then of course there are those with the unfortunate story of coming upon a body which is probably the worst story you can bring home.

By all accounts the forest is a beautiful place to visit and most people have no issues there. Regardless, take heed when exploring and please be respectful to the place that many have lost their lives.

Movies:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?countries=jp&keywords=japanese-horror-film&sort=user_rating&title_type=feature

Monday Jun 28, 2021

The Alphabet Murders

Monday Jun 28, 2021

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On today's episode we are bringing it back to the world of true crime. If you're a regular listener you know that we don't do much true crime as there are exactly 1,742,657,301 true crime podcasts out there. You'll also know that when we do true crime stuff we like to touch on the unsolved crimes. And if you're not a regular listener you won't know this stuff and what's your problem anyways. All that being said, today we are looking at the alphabet killer or also known as the double Initial killer. There are some weird coincidences and crazy connections in this case so it makes for an interesting one for sure.

The alphabet killer is so named for the fact that his/her victims all had names that were double Initial names. So first off let's get into the lives and tragic deaths of the victims.

The first victim we're going to talk about is Carmen Colon. This one is nuts as people essentially saw her abduction happening and no one did anything to help, but we'll get to that point in a minute. Carmen Colon was only 10 years old when she went missing on November 16, 1971. She was on her way home after running an errand for her grandmother; getting a prescription filled at the local pharmacy. She left the pharmacy empty handed after learning that the prescription was not yet ready. Store owner Jack Corbin remembers Carmen’s hurried last words to him: “I got to go. I got to go.”

She was seen by witnesses entering a parked car nearby the pharmacy and was reported missing later that night by her family.

Approximately fifty minutes after Colón exited the pharmacy, scores of motorists driving along Interstate 490 observed the child, naked from the waist down, running from a reversing vehicle believed to be a dark-colored Ford Pinto hatchback, frantically waving her arms and shouting in an attempt to flag down a passing vehicle. At least one of these witnesses observed Colón being submissively led back to this vehicle by her abductor. Police say that more than 100 motorists saw this happening and no one called the police or stopped to try and help this girl. Experts attribute this to a thing known as the bystander effect or genovese syndrome. The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present. First proposed in 1964, much research, mostly in the lab, has focused on increasingly varied factors, such as the number of bystanders, ambiguity, group cohesiveness, and diffusion of responsibility that reinforces mutual denial. The theory was prompted by the murder of Kitty Genovese about which it was wrongly reported that 38 bystanders watched passively. Recent research has focused on "real world" events captured on security cameras, and the coherency and robustness of the effect has come under question. More recent studies also show that this effect can generalize to workplace settings, where subordinates often refrain from informing managers regarding ideas, concerns, and opinions.

Whatever the reason, the fact that no one stopped or made a phone call to help these girls sounds pretty ridiculous.

It would be two full days before her body was discovered, two teenage boys discovered Colón's partially nude body in a gully not far from Interstate 490, and close to the village of Churchville. This location was approximately 12 miles from where Colón had last been seen alive. Her coat was found in a culvert 300 feet from her body, but her trousers were only found almost two weeks later, close to a service road where she was last seen attempting to escape her kidnapper.

The forensic examiner noted that Carmen suffered a fractured skull, and a broken vertebrae before she was strangled to death. She was also raped, and her body indicated excessive fingernail scratches throughout. The viciousness of the beating and the scratches indicate an incredibly emotionally charged murder. Perhaps an impulsive one, as a result of her attempt at escape, which the other children did not manage to do.

Almost a year and a half later, on April 2, 1973, little red-haired Wanda Walkowicz, 11, disappeared from east Rochester, also when returning home from an errand. She visited a delicatessen to purchase a few groceries, and was seen by the owner of the store walking down a major avenue at 5:15 pm. Wanda was reported missing by her mother three hours later, when she failed to return home.

Wanda Walkowicz

Detectives quickly jumped into action, orchestrating an intensive search to locate the missing child. Approximately 50 police officers searched a wide area around her home, the store where she was last seen and a nearby river where Wanda used to play.

While the search was ultimately fruitless, several witnesses saw Wanda struggling to carry the bag of groceries, with three classmates recalling with clarity that they saw her brace the bag against a fence so she could get a better grip, as a brown car drove past her. The same color vehicle that witnesses saw in the Carmen Colon abduction.

After setting up a tip hotline, police received a witness who claimed to have seen the young girl standing next to the passenger door of a large, brown vehicle as she spoke to the driver. Another witness that came forward said they saw a man forcing a young girl matching Wanda’s description into a light-colored Dodge Dart on the day she went missing. The witness who originally gave the partial number plate returned to the police station several days after his original visit. The man had luckily come across the same beige vehicle he had stopped to help but this time he was able to get a full license number. This led police to an unemployed petty criminal living with his family in Lyons, New York.

The suspect was a good match for sketches given by witnesses. He had also been the owner of the beige sedan witnesses had reported seeing. Despite this, the suspect claimed he had nothing to do with the murders and that he had an alibi.

The man’s alibi was that he was job hunting all day. After checking his account of events telephone records appeared to confirm his story, though it could just as easily been a family member using the phone, and his family also gave him an alibi. Police eventually released the suspect, who has never been named, after he passed a polygraph.

Only one day later Wanda’s body was discovered by a police officer in the morning, at the base of a hill alongside the access road to state route 104, in Webster, about seven miles from her hometown of Rochester. The way her body was positioned seemed to indicate that she was likely thrown from a moving vehicle, her small delicate body rolling down the dirty embankment to its final resting place.

Just like Carmen, she too was sexually assaulted and strangled. Although unlike Carmen, she was fully clothed, and was strangled by a ligature (thought to be a belt) from behind, whereas Carmen was manually strangled from the front. She also appeared to have been redressed after her death, with the autopsy revealing traces of semen and pubic hair on her body.

Interestingly, several strands of white cat fur were found on her clothes, although her family didn’t own a pet with white fur.

Only seven months later, on November 26, 1973, another 11-year-old girl went missing. Michelle Maenza failed to return home from school, and was last seen by her classmates walking alone towards a shopping plaza located close to her school, with the intention of getting a purse her mother had left inside a store in the plaza earlier that day.

A little while after she was seen walking to the plaza, a witness saw Michelle sitting in a beige or tan car that was traveling at high speed. The witness noted that Michelle was weeping.

Hours later, another motorist saw a man standing by a large beige or tan car with a flat tire, alongside Route 350 in the nearby town of Walworth, holding a girl he believed to be Michelle by the wrist. When the motorist stopped to offer a hand, the man “grabbed the girl and pushed her behind his back”, while also covering his license plate from view. The witness claimed that the man stared at him with an angry, menacing look that compelled the driver to move along, although he did write down a partial license plate.

Two days later, Michelle’s small, fully clothed body was found lying face down in a ditch on a rural road in Macedon, 15 miles from Rochester. Like the other two girls she had been raped, strangled from behind with a ligature, with her body bearing bountiful evidence indicating excessive blunt force trauma.

Like Wanda, there was the presence of white cat fur on her clothing, while leaf samples in her clenched fists matched those in the surrounding area where her body was found, meaning she was likely strangled to death at the location she was discovered. Police also noted the presence of semen, which helped determine that she was raped by only one person. Unlike the other cases, detectives were able to recover a partial palm print from her neck, although so far of little use.

Oddly, her stomach contents revealed that she had eaten a hamburger and onion rings approximately one hour before she was murdered. This was corroborated by earlier reports of a girl matching Michelle’s description eating at a nearby fast food joint with a white male with dark hair, aged between 25 and 35, approximately 6 ft tall.

Those are the three victims. The search began for suspects almost immediately after the first murder. Next up we'll talk about the suspects in the car. There are some interesting people in this set of suspects.

Building on police investigators’ theory that Carmen knew her killer, police strongly consider Carmen’s uncle Miguel Colon as the main suspect. Miguel was Carmen’s father’s brother, and once her parents divorced, he formed a relationship with Carmen’s mother, quickly becoming known as Uncle Miguel.

There are several compelling reasons why he is thought to have been her killer:

Weeks prior to her murder, Miguel purchased a car that closely resembled the vehicle seen by witnesses reversing down the interstate chasing down Carmen. When investigators searched his vehicle after the murder, they found that it had been wiped clean both inside and out.

To add to the suspicious nature of the state of his car, the trunk was found to have been washed with an incredibly potent cleaning solution. The dealership that sold him the car confirmed to police that they didn’t wash the car’s trunk with detergent before selling it.

One of Carmen’s dolls was found in his car, which relatives informed police was not unusual considering that she frequently traveled with Miguel.

Merely two days after the death of his niece, Miguel informed his friends that he had to leave the country to Puerto Rico, as he had “done something wrong in Rochester.” He left only four days after Carmen was murdered.

While investigators did travel to Puerto Rico to question Miguel in 1972, local papers leaked this, causing Miguel to flee. He eventually surrendered a few weeks later and was extradited back to Rochester for questioning. Although he didn’t have a credible alibi on the date of Carmen’s murder, and other circumstantial evidence, there was simply no physical evidence at the scene or his vehicle to link him to the murder. And so he was released.

Several years later Miguel would commit suicide in 1991 after a domestic violence incident in which he shot his wife and his brother, both of whom survived.

Many family members are still vocal about their belief that Miguel is Carmen's killer.

Next up a giant piece of shit. Just weeks after the death of the final victim of the Alphabet Murders, Michelle Maenza, a man held a teenager at gunpoint. The girl refused to stop screaming despite his repeated threats so the man decided to flee and go on the hunt for an easier target. The man in question was a Rochester firefighter named Dennis Termini. Termini was a prolific serial offender known as the "Garage Rapist" who is known to have committed a minimum of fourteen rapes of teenage girls and young women between 1971 and 1973. He is also known to have owned a beige vehicle similar in description to the vehicle observed by several eyewitnesses to the abductions. On top of this he lives roughly a block away from where Michelle Maenza was abducted. After he was chased by police from his botched kidnapping he was cornered in his car where he promptly did the world a favor and shit himself in the head. A subsequent forensic examination of Termini's vehicle did reveal traces of white cat fur upon the upholstery.In January 2007, Termini's body was exhumed to obtain a DNA sample for comparison with the semen samples recovered from Walkowicz's body. The results of this test confirmed Termini was not responsible for her murder. Despite this he still remains a plausible suspect in the other abductions.

Another interesting suspect is none other than Kenneth Bianchi. We're going to assume that you guys know who that is but for those who don't, google the hillside stranglers. Before Bianchi headed to Los Angeles and committed the hillside strangler murders he lived in the area of the murders and worked as an ice cream vendor. While he was never charged in the murders he remains a suspect. He was known to drive a car similar to the description given of the car involved in the alphabet murders by witnesses. Bianchi would vehemently deny any involvement in the case. He repeatedly asked investigators to officially clear him as a suspect but they did not.

The last suspect we're gonna talk about is a guy they called Crazy Joe. Joseph Naso is a convicted serial killer and serial rapist sentenced to death for the murder of six women in California. His crimes spanned between 1977 to 1994. Naso has been one of those killers who seemed to take pride in his work, so much so that he had a rape diary containing gruesome details of the victim's deaths. And that wasn't all. He had a list better known as 'The List of Ten' of his ten murders that he seemed insanely proud of. While the details of the list were vague for the layman, it was a reminder of his work for Naso. He led a life as a photographer with a penchant for clicking pictures of dead women — especially those he killed and had quite the collection. Naso lived in Sacramento between 1999 and 2003 and finally settled in Reno, Nevada, in 2004. He was arrested in 2010. It was quite the body count he stacked up. Roxenne Roggasch was found dead in 1977 after her body was dumped near Fairfax. She was strangled to death. This was followed by Carmen Colon in 1978. This one is obviously crazy considering that it's the same name of one of the victims in New York. Pamela Parsons was a waitress who was found murdered in 1993. Three of those four fit the same pattern as New York. Double initials. He drugged, raped and strangled these women before dumping their bodies. He was also convicted in the murder of another double Initial murder of Tracy Tafoya. All of this is pretty similar to what went down in New York. Another victim would be identified from his book, Sarah Dylan. All told six women would be connected to Naso but the other four in his book would never be identified. Naso also had numerous pictures of women in various states of undress all seemingly unconscious, some of which were found to be his murder victims. Not only was Naso linked due to the double initials of his victims and those in the Rochester Alphabet Murders but also because his modus operandi was to offer a lift in his vehicle before murdering his victims, similar to how police believed the Rochester perpetrator enticed his victims. Police were given further hope as Joseph Naso was born in Rochester, New York and lived there for many years, including the time period when the young girls were murdered. Again investigators we're hopeful with this lead but again when the DNA taken from Wanda was tested with crazy Joe it was negative. Due to this he had been largely written off as a suspect but many still think he had something to do with at least one of the murders in New York.

DNA was only able to be collected from one victim. And while the suspects mentioned did not match her, it didn't necessarily rule them out on the other ones. Some people think there were separate killers. With a popular opinion being that Miguel killed Carmen Colon and someone else was responsible for the other two. This is another case that has fascinated true crime enthusiasts and confused investigators. We may never get the answers we're looking for but that won't stop people from looking and speculating.

https://addictedtohorrormovies.com/2017/06/15/the-10-best-horror-movies-of-1995/

Monday Jun 21, 2021

Creepy West Virginia

Monday Jun 21, 2021

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Ep. 106

Creepy West

Virginia

Today's episode takes us to a place that birthed one of your lovely hosts. We're not talking about hell, we're talking about the great state of West Virginia. That's right Jon was put forth into this world from good ol' West Virginia. In fact we're pretty sure Isaiah might be my grandpappy. For those of you that are from out of the country or from the US and don't know much about West Virginia, we're gonna talk about the history of West Virginia and then get into the creepy!

The area now known as West Virginia was a favorite hunting ground of numerous Native American peoples before the arrival of European settlers. Many ancient earthen mounds constructed by various mound builder cultures survive, especially in the areas of Moundsville, South Charleston, and Romney. The artifacts uncovered in these give evidence of a village society having a tribal trade system culture that practiced the cold working of copper to a limited extent. As of 2009, over 12,500 archaeological sites have been documented in West Virginia. The Adena provided the greatest cultural influence in the state. For practical purposes, the Adena is the Early Woodland period From the years of about 1000 B.C. to about 1 A.D. according to West Virginia University's Dr. Edward V. McMichael.

In 1671, General Abraham Wood, at the direction of Royal Governor William Berkeley of the Virginia Colony, sent the party of Thomas Batts and Robert Fallum into the West Virginia area. During this expedition the pair followed the New River and discovered Kanawha Falls.

The Treaty of Albany, 1722, designated the Blue Ridge Mountains as the western boundary of white settlement, and recognized Iroquois rights on the west side of the ridge, including all of West Virginia. The Iroquois made little effort to settle these parts, but nonetheless claimed them as their hunting ground, as did other tribes, notably the Shawnee and Cherokee. Soon after this, white settlers began moving into the Greater Shenandoah-Potomac Valley making up the entire eastern portion of the State and just fucking everything up for everyone one. They found it largely unoccupied, apart from Tuscaroras who had lately moved into the area around Martinsburg, WV, some Shawnee villages in the region around Moorefield, WV and Winchester, VA, and frequent passing bands of "Northern Indians" (Lenape from New Jersey) and "Southern Indians" (Catawba from South Carolina) who were engaged in a bitter long-distance war, using the Valley as a battleground.

Orange County, Virginia was formed in 1734. It included all areas west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, constituting all of present West Virginia. However, in 1736 the Iroquois Six Nations protested Virginia's colonization beyond the demarcated Blue Ridge, and a skirmish was fought in 1743. The Iroquois were on the point of threatening all-out war against the Virginia Colony over the "Cohongoruton lands", which would have been destructive and devastating, when Governor Gooch bought out their claim for 400 pounds at the Treaty of Lancaster (1744).

During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, a growing demand for beaver sent trappers up and down the Kanawha region's tributary creeks by canoe and raft. Trading posts were established at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers at Point Pleasant, West Virginia where, in the mid 1780s, Daniel Boone resided for several years. Likewise, St. Albans, West Virginia, at the confluence of the Kanawha and Coal Rivers, became a point of trade. In the late 18th century, the steel trap increased efficiency, and beaver became scarce. A shift to exporting the state's other natural resources began. Kanawha salt production followed by coal and timber could be seen on the waterways.The logging industry furthered the river shipping industry. A horse-drawn logging "tram" with a special block & tackle for hill-side harvesting was brought into use, allowing expansion of Crooked Creek and the opening of a wooden barrel plant at the creek's mouth. In the 1880s, this tram and other steam machinery were used for collecting timber used as railroad ties in the railway construction along the Kanawha river. Railroad spurs were built throughout West Virginia, connecting mines to the riverboats, barges and coal-tipples.

In 1861, as the United States itself became massively divided over slavery, leading to the American Civil War (1861–1865), the western regions of Virginia split with the eastern portion politically, and the two were never reconciled as a single state again. In 1863, the western region was admitted to the Union as a new separate state, initially planned to be called the State of Kanawha, but ultimately named West Virginia.

When the First Wheeling Convention met, 425 delegates from 25 counties were present, but a division of sentiment soon arose. Some delegates favored the immediate formation of a new state, while others argued that, as Virginia's secession had not yet been ratified or become effective, such action would constitute revolution against the United States.[16] It was decided that if the ordinance were adopted (of which there was little doubt) another convention including the members-elect of the legislature should meet at Wheeling in June 1861. Even before the American Civil War, counties in northwest Virginia had desired to break away from Virginia to form a new state. However, the federal Constitution did not allow a new state to be created out of an existing state unless the existing state gave its consent. Soon after the Union government declared that the Restored Government was the legitimate government of the Commonwealth, the Restored Government asserted its authority to give such approval. It authorized the creation of the State of Kanawha, consisting of most of the counties that now comprise West Virginia. A little over one month later, Kanawha was renamed West Virginia. The Wheeling Convention, which had taken a recess until August 6, 1861, reassembled on August 20, 1861, and called for a popular vote on the formation of a new state and for a convention to frame a constitution if the vote should be favorable. In the election held on October 24, 1861, 18,408 votes were cast for the new state and only 781 against. At this time, West Virginia had nearly 70,000 qualified voters, and the May 23, 1861 vote to secede had drawn nearly 54,000 voters. At first the Wheeling politicians controlled only a small part of West Virginia. However Federal forces soon drove the Confederates out of most of West Virginia. On May 13, 1862, the state legislature of the reorganized government approved the formation of the new state. An application for admission to the Union was made to Congress. On December 31, 1862, an enabling act was approved by President Lincoln, admitting West Virginia on the condition that a provision for the gradual abolition of slavery be inserted in the Constitution. President Lincoln issued a proclamation admitting the state at the end of 60 days, on June 20, 1863. Meanwhile, officers for the new state were chosen, and Governor Pierpont moved the Restored Government to Alexandria from which he asserted jurisdiction over the counties of Virginia within the Federal lines.

In recent years, there has been serious talk about the possibility of certain counties in the Eastern Panhandle rejoining the Commonwealth of Virginia. Frustrated by bad economic conditions and what they perceive to be neglect from the Charleston government, this movement has gained at least some momentum. In 2011, West Virginia state delegate Larry Kump sponsored legislation to allow Morgan, Berkeley, and Jefferson counties to rejoin Virginia by popular vote.

So there's a somewhat abbreviated history of west Virginia and it's formation. I know it may not seem abbreviated but there's a long history to the area and we wanted to hit the big points to keep our passengers better informed! So with the history of the region told… Let's get into why we are all here… The creepy shit!!!

Our first stop on the creepy West Virginia tour starts at a place of much fun and enjoyment, an amusement park! Well, what used to be an amusement park anyway. We are heading to Mercer county and a visit to Lake Shawnee Amusement park. The southern West Virginia park was abandoned in 1966, after the accidental deaths of two of its young patrons. But it seems Lake Shawnee's haunted history reaches much farther back. Mercer County was home to a Native American tribe until 1783, when a European family's attempt to settle the land sparked a violent turf war. The patriarch of the family was a farmer named Mitchell Clay, according to the Wyoming County Report. While he was out hunting, a band of Native Americans reportedly killed his youngest son, Bartley Clay. A daughter, Tabitha, was knifed to death in the struggle. Eldest son Ezekial was kidnapped and burned at the stake. Mitchell Clay enlisted the help of other white settlers to seek vengeance for his family. After burying his children, he murdered several of the Native Americans. Centuries later, in the 1920s, a businessman named Conley T. Snidow purchased the site of the Clay farm and developed it into an amusement park. He built a swing set, a ferris wheel, a water slide, a dance hall, and a speakeasy. He also added a pond and swimming hole, complete with canoes.A little girl in a pink ruffled dress met her end after climbing into the circling swing set. She was killed after a truck backed into the path of the swing. Another little one, this time a boy, drowned in the amusement park's swimming pond. According to Visit West Virginia, the park's rides were responsible for a total of six deaths. The park eventually shut down, but its structures were left to rot and rust. After 20 years, another businessman approached Lake Shawnee. Gaylord White thought the sleepy meadows seemed ideal for future neighborhoods. But, as construction crews tore into grass and soil, they unearthed bones and Native American artifacts.

It turned out the amusement park sat atop an ancient burial ground. And most of the skeletons belonged to children. Archaeologists believe the remains had been there long before settlers moved west. So with that history in mind is it any wonder Lake Shawnee ranks as one of the Travel Channel’s “Most Terrifying Places in America.” ABC goes even further. Their experts declared the property one of the “10 Most Haunted Places in the World.” So what kind of stuff happens here? Well, let's find out. There is no shortage of strange stories coming from visitors like people getting horrible vibes, seeing ghosts, or feeling the presence of evil spirits. Scariest Places on Earth filmed there in 2005. However, none of the psychics would work on the property at night, claiming that the energy was so dark it was making them sick. Swimming is no longer allowed on the property but, of course, there are still those idiots that try it anyways. Many reports day that while attempting to swim it felt as if someone, or something, was trying to pull the people down into the water and drown them. There are tons of reports of seeing the ghost of a little girl playing on the old swings. Most people agree that it must be the ghost of the little girl in the pink dress. There are also reports of people seeing ghostly children playing by the ferris wheel. Some report the sounds of children laughing or Natives chanting. And then there Moody's favorite, the conversion stand food! Well not exactly, there's no conversion stand anymore but people have stated that they can still smell the concession stand foods aroma in the air. Then there are the shadowy figures that many will say they are on the old ferris wheel and swing rides still adorning the park. When the Discovery Channel filmed, Chris White, descendant of Gaylord White, says one of its investigators got stuck in the old ticket booth and went into such a panic she had to go to the hospital in Princeton. “She couldn’t get out and she was yelling for help,” he said.

“It was a push door and she was pushing.”

White won’t speak of any personal “creepy” Lake Shawnee experiences. He does, however, say his father had an encounter with the little girl who lost her life on the swings 49 years ago.

“Dad was on the tractor mowing the field and he kept feeling a weight on his shoulders,” White said. “He didn’t know what it was, so one day he felt the weight and he turned around and the little girl from the swings was there. She was in a ruffled dress and she just appeared. He wasn’t scared, but the only thing he could think of was, ‘Well, if you like this tractor so much, I’m going to give it to you.’

“So he got off of it and left it sitting there. It’s still sitting where he left it in the late ‘90s.”

Creepy shit for sure!

So where to next you ask? Well, how about the Silver Run Tunnel #19 near Cairo WV. Silver Run Tunnel is located along the North Bend Rail Trail. Before the Civil War, the Rail Trail was–as the name implies–a railroad. According to West Virginia State Parks, the railroad was sold in the ’80s, and construction of the recreation trail as it now began. The trail stretches 72 miles and has 10 tunnels. The tunnel in this legend is also known as Tunnel #19. According to BridgeHunter.com, the tunnel is 1,376 feet long. Locals say that the tunnel is almost permanently damp and foggy. The tunnel is home to the legend of the lady in the white dress. The legend of the lady in the white dress goes that she was a bride who was riding on a train with her groom, and either she was pushed or fell from the train and died.

One early account guess as follows: In 1910, a young engineer was making the 169 mile midnight westbound express run along the Baltimore and Ohio tracks starting in Grafton and heading toward Clarksburg and then, Parkersburg. When the engineer came upon the short stretch of railway at the entrance to Tunnel #19, in the light of the moon and headlights, he saw a woman in a pale dress with raven-colored hair and golden slippers walking along the tracks. Horrified he would hit her, he tried desperately to stop the train by throwing the brakes into emergency. He could not stop in time.

The engineer would later report to watchmen at the Smithburg Tunnel about 36 miles west that he and the fireman jumped from the train, but a layer of fog on the tracks seemed to swallow up the pale lady. Crazy shit!

“And there’s a saying that goes along with the tunnel. If you watch the trains, and the train slows down, they see the ghost, and the engineer has never seen the white lady before, but if the engineer just barrels on through the tunnel, he has had an experience with the ghost, and he’s not going to take it anymore,” explained Jason Burns, a West Virginia storyteller, “Because the ghost has a habit of standing in the tracks, and when the train stops to check if it has run over somebody, there is no one there. So the engineer gets ticked off that he has stopped his train for this person who is obviously a ghost, and so they would just barrel through the tunnel as fast as they can next time, so they don’t have to worry about it.” In one particular instance, an engineer stopped his train a few times, thinking he might have run over somebody. Like the other engineers, the man decided to go quickly through the tunnel to avoid falling for her trick again.

“Well, on the way to the next town, usually there’s people waving at the trains along the tracks anyways at this time period, but he starts noticing that there was an inordinately large amount of people following his train, and some of them are on horseback, and some of them were yelling and waving crazily,” said Burns, “When he finally gets to the town, Proper, and stops his train, there’s this group of people that has literally followed him most of the way down the train tracks, and they’re like, ‘Where is she?’ and he’s like, ‘Where is who?’ and they said, ‘The lady,’ and he was like, ‘What lady?’ and they said, ‘The lady in the white dress,’ and he said, ‘you mean the ghost back in the tunnel?’ They said, ‘No, the ghost that was riding your cow catcher for the past two and a half miles.’ Apparently, the ghost had a sense of humor because she was allegedly sitting on the cowcatcher of the train, and if people were standing by watching the train go past, she was waving at them.”

And now for something completely different… Except for not! We're gonna stick with tunnels and head to Dingess tunnel! Dingess is an unincorporated community in Mingo County, West Virginia. The community was named after William Anderson Dingess, a pioneer settler. As of 1894, Dingess contained two hotels, eight boarding houses, four restaurants, four groceries, four sawmills, and a school with two teachers and about 100 students. 133 coal miners lived in Dingess. The community once garnered a reputation for being a lawless land. From 1900 to 1972, approximately seventeen lawmen were shot to death in the area which stretches fifteen miles along Twelve Pole Creek. The Dingess Tunnel was built in 1892 for the Norfolk and Western Railroad, largely by African American and Chinese immigrant workers. Legend has it that residents of Dingess, who didn't take kindly to outsiders, used to hide in the hills just outside the tunnel and shoot any dark skinned passengers aboard the train, according to internet reports. No records were kept but it’s estimated that hundreds of black and Chinese workers died. In addition to the murders, workers also died during construction, and at least two trains collided on the tracks there, causing more deaths. These crimes and accidents still haunt the area and earned the tunnel its terrible nickname: "Bloody Mingo." The dark history of the tunnel loaned itself well to macabre tales told during Halloween. Eventually, the stories grew, and the celebrations turned horrific. Almost as if the area proved once again to be untamable, the youths of the town took to mischief. They would spend Halloween night building bonfires in the middle of the tunnel. With the smoke pouring out, the town itself was virtually blocked off from outside assistance. The tunnel served to keep the residents locked in for the night. From there, the nightmare continued. There would be rocks thrown through windows, buildings and vehicles set on fire, and other acts of damaging mischief. The dirty deeds would carry on throughout the night, but by the following day, things returned to normal. It was like a real life “Purge” movie. In recent years this activity has for the most part gone away, but many of the locals still tell stories of those horrific nights. Sabrina Daniels, known locally as the “Mountain Medium,” and a host of others interested in the paranormal happenings at the tunnel including the “Relate with Nate” television crew, a local news show, hoped to make contact with that energy during a recent investigation at the infamous 3,327-foot tunnel. Countless times they entered in, both on foot and in vehicles, to the dark, dank, stone tube cut through the hill. Countless times they called on the spirits within to make them aware of their presence as they dealt with leaking water and enhanced echoing of even the quietest voice. And, if the evidence is any indication, countless times they were successful. “I can feel the emotions of the souls here,” Daniels said while taking a break between one of the many trips in and out of the tunnel on the night of the ghost hunt. “I feel sadness, but I felt peace with them. I didn’t feel any doom or anything, except in the middle (of the tunnel). What I felt there wasn’t anything that has tasted life. There’s a difference there. I’ve always felt the negative energy through the middle.” since things went down that they claim were paranormal. A light flickered, then came on and shut off, seemingly by itself here. Strange audio picked up through the wireless mics there. The sound of a train whistle, although no railroad line is anywhere in the immediate vicinity, echoed through its expanse. Eerie images caught on photos taken within the tunnel’s claustrophobic walls showing what appear to be flames rising up from beneath. What appeared to be shadows of workmen, perhaps even the image of a lantern in what could be construed as the window of a train show up in the far distance. As the crew nears the tunnel’s midsection, all notice an extreme and sudden drop in temperature, a tell-tale sign of the presence of poltergeists, or what the locals refer to as “haints.” So yea another creepy tunnel. I guess it makes sense there are a bunch of creepy haunted tunnels given the fact that there are mountains everywhere in WV.

Next up is a bird… It's a plane...it's a uh...UFO? We are talking about the Flatwoods monster! The encounter made the local and national news, scaring a wider swath of people. Then it prompted a U.S. Air Force UFO inquiry, part of a project called Project Blue Book that dispatched a handful of investigators around the country to look into such claims. The May brothers Ed, 13, and Freddie, 12, had been playing in their schoolyard with their 10-year-old friend Tommy Hyer. After noticing a pulsing red light streak across the sky and crash on a nearby farm, the three youngsters ran to grab the Mays boys’ mother, then high-tailed it up that hill to check out where the light had landed. A few other boys, one with a dog, showed up too.

They ran back down—in sheer and credible terror.

“Seven Braxton County residents on Saturday reported seeing a 10-foot Frankenstein-like monster in the hills above Flatwoods,” a local newspaper reported afterward. “A National Guard member, [17-year-old] Gene Lemon, was leading the group when he saw what appeared to be a pair of bright eyes in a tree.”

Lemon screamed and fell backward, the news account said, “when he saw a 10-foot monster with a blood-red body and a green face that seemed to glow.” It may have had claws for hands. It was hard to tell because of the dense mist. Lemon said he aimed a flashlight in that direction and momentarily saw a tall "man-like figure with a round, red face surrounded by a pointed, hood-like shape". The group said they had smelled a "pungent mist" and some later said they were nauseated.

“Those people were the most scared people I’ve ever seen,” said local newspaper publisher A. Lee Stewart, in that 1952 news story. Stewart himself had marched up that hill with a shotgun after witnesses told what they saw. “People don’t make up that kind of story that quickly,” Stewart said then.

According to UFO writer Gray Barker's account, the next day, A. Lee Stewart, Jr. of the Braxton Democrat claimed to discover "skid marks" in the field and an "odd, gummy deposit" which were subsequently attributed by UFO enthusiast groups as evidence of a "saucer" landing.

After investigating the case in 2000, Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry concluded that the bright light in the sky reported by the witnesses on September 12 was most likely a meteor, that the pulsating red light was likely an aircraft navigation/hazard beacon, and that the creature described by witnesses closely resembled an owl. Nickell suggested that witnesses' perceptions were distorted by their heightened state of anxiety. Nickell's conclusions are shared by a number of other investigators, including those of the Air Force.

Fuck that… It was a UFO and an alien. We all know this! In celebration of the legend, the Braxton County Convention and Visitors Bureau built a series of five tall chairs in the shape of the monster to serve as landmarks and visitor attractions. The town of Sutton also houses a museum dedicated to the monster legend and offers promotional merchandise.

Now you're gonna need some place to stay while checking out all these creepy things… So why not a creepy hotel? How about the Glen Ferris Inn? The Glen Ferris Inn began its life in 1839 when Andrew Stockton received a license to operate a "common room" to cater to the stagecoach traffic through the area. Prior to that year, the site probably contained a home as early as 1810, which at some point partially burned, and was reconstructed as Stockton's Inn.

In 1853, the common room expanded into what is now the Glen Ferris Inn. During the Civil War, soldiers from both sides stayed at the inn, as did two future presidents of the United States. It is rumored that the home even served as a makeshift Civil War hospital between 1863 and 1865.

After the war, aluminum production began in the area, and Union Carbide purchased the inn, expanding it with a 10 room wing in 1929. Additions were built in the 1960s and again in the 1980s, before a local family purchased the inn from Elkem Metals in 1996.

The inn is thought to be haunted by a ghost of a Confederate soldier with a long beard, nicknamed The Colonel. He is a friendly and playful ghost, known to close doors behind people, make the birdbath water bubbly and frothy, and walk around with audible footsteps. His apparition has been seen from the waist up.

In 2018, a young couple stayed several days there and planned to have breakfast with the day manager when they were departing. The manager was told by the desk clerk that the couple departed in haste at 4:30 that morning and left an apology for missing the planned breakfast. The reason?

They had awakened in the night and saw a man with a long beard who was wearing what appeared to be a uniform sitting in a chair across the room.

Another story we found goes as follows: " I have worked there in the past (2002) and it was one of the experiences that I had that caused me to quit on the spot. I was a waitress in the dining room and it was around 7:30pm. There was no one in the dining area when I first looked but all of a sudden a little boy in a grey civil war type suit was sitting at one of the tables. I walked over to him and asked him if he was waiting for someone and he shook his head no. I asked if I could get him something and he said in almost a whisper "chocolate milk, ma'am" I walked into the kitchen and got his milk, brought it back to the table and he was gone. I asked the cook if he had seen anyone come in and he said that he didn't, so I then went up front and asked the desk clerk if she seen anyone and she said no as well. I realized that it was a ghost kid. I told my manager that I was done, I couldn't deal with ghosts, grabbed my stuff, and high-tailed it out of there as fast as I could."

Creepy! Sounds like a place you should check out. Apparently their rolls are fucking fantastic.. So there is that too.

What creepy place would be complete without a Creepy road! Well West Virginia has route 901. West Virginia Route 901 is a 5.5 mile stretch through farmland in Berkeley County. Formerly known as County Route 3, locals are familiar with this short state highway. However, it has been immortalized in publications like Haunted West Virginia: Ghosts & Strange Phenomena of the Mountain State as a destination full of ghostly activity. The area wasn’t a battle site, but may have been a campsite for soldiers during the Civil War.

In the recent past a couple was driving Route 901 near Spring Mills Plantation late one evening in October. Near Harlan Run the couple entered a bank of fog and the interior of the car became quite cold. The fog began to take on a greenish hue and suddenly, the car came to a stop; the engine went dead and the headlights shut off. The couple was left in cold, silent darkness.

From out of the darkness the couple was stunned to see the form of a bedraggled Confederate soldier appear. He held his back as if he’d been wounded and he appeared to notice the couple as he neared the front of their car. With a thump he laid his hands on the hood and peered pleadingly before collapsing leaving bloody handprints on the car. The husband opened his door and walked to the front of the car to help the pathetic figure who now lay prone in the roadway. When he reached out to the poor soldier the figure disappeared along with the bloody handprints. The couple quickly left vowing never to drive that stretch of road in the dark. Another plus about this road is the fact that the Hammond Mansion is located there. The Hammond Mansion was built between 1838 and 1845, and was home to Dr. Allen C. Hammond and his family. It was an L-shaped brick federal style building. It is rumored that another family lived on the property in the 1700s, but was attacked by bears.

The Hammonds were among the few Confederate supporters in an area which was largely under Union occupation. While Dr. Hammond and his sons were off fighting in the War (his son George was with Company B 1st Virginia Confederate Calvary and died during the war), the ladies remained in the home.

Legend states that during this time, the ladies shot, sniper-style, several Union soldiers. As a result, the ladies were captured and locked into the brick, windowless slave shack on the property. The order was given to get rid of the women, meaning to take them out of the area, but the order was misinterpreted, and indeed, the women were gotten rid of. Fire was set to the slave shack, killing them all.

Also during this era, the home served as a Civil War hospital. When a typhoid epidemic broke out, victims were sent here, and quarantined on the summer porch.

In 1978, a fire gutted the home, leaving little more than a brick shell. In its state of disrepair, the home became a favorite shelter for the homeless population, and one vagrant did freeze to death in the area of the summer kitchen.

It is this homeless man, and the women who tragically died in the fire, who are said to still roam the grounds of the mansion.

The house WAS eventually restored, and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Spring Mills Historic District, listed as for sale. Also in the district is another haunted location, the Stephens-Hammond Mill at Falling Waters. It is said that the mill, once used by Gen. Jackson, was home to ghostly lights and sounds coming from the second and third stories of the mill, even though the floors of the upper levels were rotted away. The mill is now torn down. So there you get a nice little 2 for 1!

We're gonna throw some quick hitters in here for ya now!

Screaming Jenny:

Legend, has it that Jenny, a poor woman with no family, lived in a shed along the B&O Railroad in Harpers Ferry. She barely had enough money to eat, and the shed stayed cold during the winter months. One day in late autumn Jenny was drinking broth over a fire and trying to stay warm. She was so focused on the broth that she didn't notice a spark had flown up from the fire and caught her skirt on fire. Her skin started to burn, she leapt up and threw the rest of the broth onto the flames, but it did little to put it out. She began to run along the train tracks to Harpers Ferry station, trying to find someone to help her, but it wasn’t long until her entire body was alight with fire. Overwhelmed and screaming in pain, she mistakenly rushed onto the tracks, when a train came around the corner and ran her over. To this day, every year on the anniversary of her death, an engineer has rounded the corner to the station and seen a women completely on fire and seems to be hit by the train. When the train stops, there's nobody there! It’s now one of the most haunted places in West Virginia!

The Red House is an imposing 2.5 story brick structure located in Eleanor, WV. The original structure was built around 1840 by the Ruffner family, but there is reason to believe that the house may have actually been built as early as 1825. The house, with its converted slave quarters and North and South Wings added by the Federal Government during the 1930s, now is home to the Eleanor Town Hall offices. The right (North) wing, serves as the town hall section, while the left wing (South) serves as the Homestead Room, available for rent for parties, meetings, etc. The original middle section of the house is being readied for a future museum dedicated to its New Deal Homestead history.

The town of Eleanor took possession of the Red House, or Ruffner House as it is commonly called, in January of 2001. Earliest records from the Eleanor town website say that the structure was home to the Samuel Earl Gibeaut family in the 1890s. In the 1920s, it was owned by Frank Fitzsimmons, then passed to his brother Chris and family. While Chris and his family briefly moved out of state, a family of Boldens lived in the Red House. Chris returned to the home, and then sometime it was acquired by the C.H. King family. C.H. King and his wife Ruth had a large family and farmed the land. The King family was living on the property at the time of the New Deal, and the home was acquired by the Federal Government. In 1946, the government deeded the title over to the Washington Homesteads for use as an administration building, and later, it came into possession of Dr. Lyle Moser.

With a long and somewhat incomplete history as to ownership of the house, legends of this structure abound. One legend states that a slave was murdered on the uppermost staircase landing. Another legend states that tunnels run from the house to the nearby Kanawha River, as part of an Underground Railroad stop. To date, evidence of such tunnels has never been found. However, one legend DOES seem to make itself known to employees and visitors. That legend is the ghostly overseer, protector, or guardian angel of the Red House. Employees have dubbed him "Sam," and say that Sam likes to be heard, but not seen.

In recent years, however, it appears as if Sam, or perhaps some other resident ghost, DOES like to be seen! Eleanor citizens walking along the town's sidewalks past dusk have been reporting seeing a man standing in one of the upper windows of the Red House.

Next…

The Captain's House, located on Juliana Street in Parkersburg's historic district, was built by George Deming, prior to 1860. George was born in Connecticut in 1806, and was an accomplished Master Mariner. Shortly before the Civil War, Deming left New England, and took his young family to Parkersburg, where he built at least two homes.

This home, sometimes referred to as the "Markey House," is the oldest, and is built in a classic New England style, with a small front yard, and narrow halls and a low ceiling, reminiscent of a ship.

Deming passed away in 1861, possibly due to the typhoid epidemic which was sweeping the area. Deming's young son also passed away sometime during this time period. Both are buried two blocks from the house in the Riverview Cemetery. Deming's gravestone has an elaborate ship carving, and along with his birth and death dates bears the claim that he is a direct descendant of Myles Standish. Unfortunately, the son's stone is too worn to accurately see the dates or name.

It is believed that since Deming was in his 50s at his time of death, yet he had several young children, his wife was probably much younger. There are no records of any other Deming's in the cemetery, so it is believed that she moved away shortly after the death of her husband and son, and remarried.

The Captain's Home has since then acquired a reputation for being haunted. Rumors abound that subsequent owners have been driven mad while living in the home, which has undergone extensive renovations over the years. While these rumors seem largely unsubstantiated, the home still has paranormal activity associated with it. Workers restoring the home reported seeing a child's footprints in the dust in the attic, although no children lived in the home at the time. The dust was cleared, and several months later, the footsteps would reappear, although no children had even set foot in the closed off section.

Another strange anomaly seems to be the glow of a fire reflected in the home's windows. People looking at the window see the reflection of orange flames whipping about, and other weird light anomalies, which are attributed to the Captain's pipe burning.

Oddly enough, the Captain isn't confined to his former home. Residents have seen his apparition in various parts of town, often walking with his head down, and wearing a black overcoat. He is seen at times in Riverview Cemetery, and some claim, even in the Blennerhassett Hotel.

Gotta have a bridge story right? The town of Wheeling, among other attributes, boasts the longest single span stone bridge in the United States. The famous bridge: The Main Street Bridge, constructed between 1890 and 1892. Some sources say that bridge was constructed to replace an earlier bridge, one built in the 1840s. There isn't much there to confirm this though.

In any event, the building or rebuilding in the late 1800s was quite a spectacle for the townspeople. In an effort to enforce safety, a sign was erected which read "Danger! No one is allowed to loaf on this bridge by order of the Board of Public Works." Pat Weir, the city's watchman, was giving the task of policing the bridge, and dealt with more than one smart-alec who insisted that they were loafing on their own free will, and not by order of the Board of Public Works, thus, it was okay for them to be there.

Whatever diligence was taken to ensure safety unfortunately couldn't prevent at least one fatal accident from occurring. Dominick Carey, a contractor from the Paige, Carey & Co. of New York apparently fell from the bridge while heavy stones were being moved. It has been theorized that the scaffolding gave way, and Carey fell into the icy Wheeling Creek, which feeds the Ohio River, being swept away.

Carey's body was never found, but that doesn't mean he was never heard from again...Witnesses say they encounter the apparition of the unlucky contractor on the bridge, as well as another possible spirit.

Allegedly, either the new bridge or the bridge it supposedly replaced, saw another tragic accident. A gentleman leading a team of horses across the bridge stopped to fix a loosened hitch. When he dismounted, he spooked his own horses, and they trampled him to death. Witnesses have reported being approached by a man who asks "Have you seen my horses?"

Ok one more for you and we'll wrap this up! This next one is a little church with some cool stories. St. Colman Catholic Church is located about 15 miles away from Hinton, in an area of Irish Mountain named Sullivan's Knob. Maurice Sullivan was the first settler in the area, purchasing 435 acres of land from the Gwinn Family in 1855. The following year he was joined by the Quinlan family, and then several other Irish families. Together, they turned the small, isolated community into a thriving Irish farm settlement.

The community was largely of the Roman Catholic faith, and church services were held in private homes, provided once a month by a traveling preacher from St. Patrick's in Hinton. The community pushed for a church of their own, and in 1876, Sullivan deeded over 1 acre of land to Bishop Joseph J. Kain for use as a church and a cemetery. The cemetery unfortunately came first, as in that same year, John Quinlan passed away and was buried on the grounds.

The church was built the following year and consisted of a hewn log structure. The cemetery is unique in that it has a "Lost Souls" corner for unbaptized babies. The name St. Colman comes from a Gaelic saint, and the church became known as the "little Catholic church on Irish Mountain."

The church never did gain its own preacher, and continued to receive services through St. Patrick's in Hinton. In 1928, the church was refurbished. Clapboard painted white was erected over the hewed logs. In 1983 it became a registered historical site.

Visitors to the church in recent years have reported unexplained cold spots and cold mists that are actually seen. Some have reported these cold mists will take an almost human shape, and that sometimes they will stop and pause on pews by visitors, as if sitting beside them.

Paranormal groups have investigated and found numerous things. There are stories of small children's ghosts in the lost souls area of the graveyard. They also report sounds of children crying or laughing. There are stories of objects like balls being moved. Again stories of figures sitting in the pews. Sounds like a cool creepy little place.

So with all those stories you may be wondering why we didn't talk about the more well known haunts like Harpers Ferry or the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic asylum and others like that. Well if you've listened to our other creepy episodes you'll know we like to find less talked about stuff to explore. With the history of this state going back as far as it does and all the strife and hotties of the civil war in the area, it's no wonder there are tons and tons of creepy and supposedly haunted places in west Virginia. We are definitely coming back for seconds here and we actually have a couple of the spots in this state on our actual list of episodes, so we'll definitely be back to West Virginia.

Top ten horror movies set in west Virginia

Tuesday Jun 15, 2021

The Union Screaming House

Tuesday Jun 15, 2021

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A story from a Union Screaming House Survivor

By Steven LaChance, 2004

“Do you believe in ghosts? I used to be like many of you. I was a true skeptic. A true disbeliever. That was me until three years ago. Now I do believe. I wish I didn’t. It would be easier for me to sleep at night. Even now, three years later, I am still woken up in the night by the memory of the screaming man, the child in pain, and the dark ghostly image that turned my world upside down and changed my beliefs forever. I do believe in ghosts.

It was in May 2001. I needed desperately to find a place for myself and three children to live in Union, Missouri. Our lease was up at the apartment where we had lived for two years. I was a single father, and I was about to find myself and my children homeless. Like many, I had answered just about every ad in the newspaper for rentals. One evening I received a call from this woman telling me about this house. She said it was a rather large old house that was in very good shape. She invited me to an open house which was to be held that coming Sunday. Sunday rolled around. You can’t imagine the surprise when my daughter and I rolled up in front of this large old white house. We walked in. The smell of cookies baking hit us immediately upon entering through the front door. To our surprise, we were standing in a living room with cherubs surrounding the top of the walls all the way around the room. All of the original woodwork was intact and a large wooden pole ran to the ceiling creating a divider which separated the living room from the family room. The house had two floors with three bedrooms, and a large family kitchen with a mudroom that led to the back door. The upstairs bedrooms had a breezeway that could be accessed from all rooms.

The basement had an old butcher’s shower and a fruit cellar. It was more house than we ever imagined for the price and immediately made up our minds that we had to have it. Anyone who has lived in an apartment for two years with three children would understand our desperation. We had to have this house.

We spoke with the landlady and she gave me an application to fill out. There were many people there looking at the house so we knew we would have to compete to be its tenants. I handed my application to the landlady. “You understand the responsibility that comes with living in an old house such as this?” she asked. “Oh, yes I understand. It’s beautiful.”, I quickly replied, not really understanding to what I was agreeing to. “Well then I will get back to you,” she quickly retorted and was off to peddle her wares to another of the visiting house hunters. She was a strange old lady and the way she showed the house wasn’t in a real estate type manner. She showed the house as if she were showing a museum. We felt like we were on one of the house tours often given each year for charity.

A week went by before the phone rang one evening. It was the strange landlady overly excited to tell me that she had selected me, my daughter and two sons to live in the old house. I was to meet her that following day at a restaurant to settle all of the paperwork and payment. I thought this was a little strange and I was a little disappointed because I couldn’t wait to see the house that would now become our home. The papers were signed on the following day. That weekend was Memorial weekend and we were all set to move in.

It seemed like years before Friday came that week, but we were finally there. Moving day. The move was a normal one and before we knew it all of our belongings were hidden safely inside the old white house. I was removing the last few items from the moving truck when a car slowed down, almost stopping in front of our new home. From the window of the slow-moving car, the passenger said, “Hope you get along okay here,” and then sped up and drove away. “What do you think of that dad,” my puzzled daughter asked. “Friendly neighbors I suppose,” I replied as I shut the sliding door to the truck.

The first night in the house went by without fanfare. Maybe because we were so tired from the move or perhaps because the house wanted to draw us in a little closer before beginning its series of attacks and assaults upon me and my family. The next morning started like most any other day. Except I did notice one strange thing about the house. Each of the houses’ interior doors had an old-fashioned hook and eye latch, but not on the inside of each rooms doors to keep someone out. The latches were on the outside of the rooms doors, as if to keep something in. “What is it dad?” my youngest son asked from behind. “Oh nothing,” I replied and went about the business of unpacking our things.

The first incident happened in the living room when I was hanging a large picture of two angels. My daughter thought that this would complement the cherubs that surrounded the room. I hung the picture and turned to walk away. Crash! I turned to see that the picture had fallen to the floor. Re-hanging the picture once again, I turned away. Crash! The picture was once again on the floor. Hanging it for a third time, when I started walking away I felt a rush of air and something hit the back of my ankles. “What the hell…?” I turned to see the picture lying at my feet. More determined than ever, I hung the picture again and stated loudly, “Stay there dammit.” I had to laugh because I was alone. Who did I think I was talking to? The kids were playing on the front porch.

“Dad come and see this,” my daughter’s voice rang through the front door. I stepped out onto the porch. “Sit down and watch this,” she said excitedly. “Watch what?” I replied. No sooner were the words out of my mouth when my daughter pointed to an old man walking down the sidewalk toward our house. However, when he reached our property line he quickly crossed the street and continued his walk on the opposite sidewalk. “They don’t like walking in front of our house dad. Isn’t that weird?” my daughter, breathless with excitement stated. And right she was. I sat on that porch for a good three hours watching our neighbors cross the street away from our house any time they walked along our street. A couple of times I motioned as if to say hello, but they just dropped their heads and continued on their way at a brisker pace. “Maybe they are uncomfortable with new neighbors?” I rationalized trying to make sense out of the senseless situation. We went inside for dinner and the rest of the night went normally without incident.

Sunday. The kids came home from church excited because we had set aside the whole day to work on our yard. This was a big deal for us because the only outside area our apartment provided was a front balcony. We mowed the grass and cleaned out the leaves from under the porch and in the front yard. Strangely enough, the trees seemed to be shedding their leaves as if it were Fall. Strange tree behavior, I thought, and made a mental note to mention it to the landlady when I talked with her next. I asked my youngest son to go inside and bring out the garden hose from the basement so we could clean off the walkways and wash down the weathered white of the house.

A few moments passed when I heard him screaming from inside the house. Running frantically into the house, I found him standing in the kitchen shaking, in the middle of a puddle of urine. “What’s wrong? What happened?” Looking at me with the scared eyes of a child, he said, “Something chased me up the basement steps.” “What chased you?” I asked, already thinking the overactive imagination of a little boy was at play here. “I don’t know daddy, but it was big.” Me and my other two children checked the basement but found nothing except for the garden hose that had been dropped during his frightened escape. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” I said. Naturally, there was teasing from my other two children about the proverbial basement monster. “Better watch out when you go into the basement because…” The glare of my eye finished my middle boy’s sentence. The rest of Sunday and Monday went without any other incidents and we were so happy those first few days in the house. My daughter was making plans about gardens, decorating, and my boys thought it would be easy to walk to their baseball games because the park was very close. It was a normal, happy time which, unfortunately, did not last for long.

Monday came. The last week of school for my kids and a long week of work for me. Each day we would leave the house and return each evening to find every light in the house turned on. I blamed the children for leaving the lights on in the morning. However, on Friday, my daughter and I sent the boys to the car while we toured the house making sure that every light was off. That night we returned home to again find every light burning. When I walked into the house I was a little shaken – there being no logical reason for all of the lights being on other than there was someone in our house. Searching the house in a panic, I found nothing.

“Daddy, it’s cold in here,” my daughter stated from the living room. What was she talking about? Sweat was pouring down my back and across my brow. However, when I stepped into the living room, the temperature dropped a good thirty degrees. That was the first time I felt its presence. I can’t describe it any better than it felt like an electrical current running through my body, bringing tears to my eyes and bumps to my arms. It passed quickly. I remember thinking, “What the hell was that?” Soon, my daughter stated, “Daddy it’s getting warm in here,” and sure enough the temperature was rising as I watched the thermostat climb. That night my children slept with me – what little sleep I got.

Sunday night. We were sitting in the living room talking. I was getting ready to take a trip the following morning to Indianapolis for work and we were discussing their plans for a stay at Grandma's. The kids had their backs to the living room, for which I am still thankful because the memory of what happened next still haunts my dreams to this day. I noticed it first out of the corner of my eye. A quick glance. Something moving, standing at the kitchen doorway that led into the family room. Not something – someone. I looked toward it again. It was a dark figure of a man, even though there was full light. He was solid in form except there was a moving, churning, dark gray, black smoke or mist that made up his form.

I looked down because I was sure I wasn’t seeing this and that my eyes were playing tricks on me. One or two good rationalizations and we could go on with our lives without incident. A few moments passed and I was sure that when I looked up again that it would be gone. But, he was still there and he began to move.

Moving into the family room and pausing in the center of the room, his form was still a mass of churning, turning blackness. He stood there for what seemed an eternity, but in actuality, it was only a few moments and then he melted into the air. Gone. I remember the thoughts that were racing through my head. ” I have two choices. We could run out of the house screaming into the night like those crazies you always see in the movies. You know the ones that are always based on fact. Or, the other choice, we could get up quietly, leave the house and figure all of this out.” My hands were shaking uncontrollably. “That’s what we’ll do. We will go quietly, orderly as if nothing was wrong”

Standing up on shaky legs, I said in my calmest daddy voice, “Let’s go get a soda and see grandma.” My youngest was instantly excited at the prospect of a soda before bed and the older two looked at me as if I lost my mind. “Come on guys, it will be fun.” Thank God, my car keys were on the coffee table in front of us. We moved orderly out the front door and I turned to lock the door, when a loud painful scream of a man came from inside the house. It sounded as if he was screaming in pain, so loud that it could be heard throughout the neighborhood and the dogs began to bark. To hell with orderly, “Get in the car!” I screamed at my children.

At a dead run, we headed to the car and to drive to my Mom’s house, which is still a blur to this day. I was in a panic and I knew that we had to get away from the old white house. But before we were away from the neighborhood, my youngest son, in a very scared voice, said, “Daddy the basement monster is standing in the upstairs window.” I looked back and sure enough, the black form was standing in the window watching us leave.

That night we stayed at my parents’ house. Early the next day, I gathered my things and left for my business trip. I had a whole week of rationalizations by the time I returned home to pick up my children. Where else were we to go? I had put everything I had saved, and then some, into the move. We had no other choice but to go back to the big old white house. Besides, after a week of talking myself out of the events of that night I was ready to return, so on Friday night we returned to the house. The weekend went by without incident, though we got very little sleep.

I was taking another extended weekend to make up to my kids for my week away. On Saturday we explored the big shed at the back of the yard and in it, we found a number of personal belongings that appeared to belong to different people. My parents convinced me that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to call the strange old landlady and ask her some straight forward questions about the house.

It was to be one of the most awkward and strangest phone calls of my life. Once I was able to reach her, I carefully chose my words and asked in a normal voice if any of the previous tenants had ever mentioned a ghost. Well of course, she said at first that she could not remember. However, she went on to say that one female tenant had claimed that her dead father came to visit her, but the old woman always thought she was crazy. The landlady said that some of the stuff in the shed had been left behind by the girl, but she couldn’t get her to come pick it up.

The other stuff in the shed evidently belonged to a man who had lived there but left in the middle of the night, leaving behind his things. But, no she had never heard of anyone talking about the house being haunted. I asked her how long ago did these people live there? And she said, “Not much more than a year honey, why do you ask?” The phone call wasn’t of much help. And it didn’t calm my fears much, but what else could I do?

The rest of the long weekend came and went. I actually had convinced myself that it was just a one-time ordeal because nothing more was happening. That was until Monday night. I was on the phone with my mom. The kids were off playing in my bedroom which was located on the first floor. While on the phone, I began to hear the inside doors rattling. Listening closely, they rattled again and I yelled at the kids to quit playing games. I told my Mom that everything was okay, just the kids playing tricks. They rattled again, this time harder. So, I scolded the children this time louder to behave and stop playing tricks. At this time they rattled louder, but before I could scold them, my daughter’s scared voice cut me off., “Daddy, I’m in here reading and my brothers are asleep.”

Now I will try to recreate what happens next to the best of memory. Some of it I remember clearly. Other parts are a blur to this day. Just as soon as I heard my daughter the temperature in the house instantly dropped a good thirty degrees. With it came the feeling of the electrical charge running through my body. Along with its energy a horrible stench that I cannot describe permeated the room. And then, the screaming started – softly at first, but building in momentum. I yelled through the phone to my mother to come help – we were getting out. Then the whole house began to shake and come alive. From above, I could hear something large coming down the stairs. Boom. Boom! BOOM! The screaming of the man over and over. The screaming of my daughter, “Daddy what is happening!” Along with this came the thought that one of my two bedroom doors connected to the stairs. BOOM! BOOM! It was coming down those stairs! I had to get to my children! The whole house was alive with noise. The floor beneath me was shaking as I made my way to the bedroom door. I felt something behind me and I knew I didn’t want to turnaround to see it! BOOM! SCREAMING! A new scream mixed into the man’s scream – this one from a child. BOOM! SCREAMS! BOOM! I made it to my bedroom door but it wouldn’t open. By this time I, too, am screaming. Throwing myself against the door it still wouldn’t budge. I continued to throw myself against the door again and again until it finally slammed open.

My daughter was in shock by this point. I instructed my middle son to grab his brother and run out the front door and head for the car. BOOM! BOOM! SCREAMS! My daughter won’t move and I finally had to slap her to bring her to life. Finally responding, I grab her and head for the door as I hear the other bedroom door slam open behind us. It was on our trail and I knew I couldn’t let it reach us. The whole house was still shaking and alive with noise and something big on our heels. When we reached the front door and out onto the porch, I slammed the front door behind us. As we got into the car we could still hear the noise coming from the house. I drove away and parked at the top of the street where I could still see the house and wait for my parents to arrive. We could see “it” searching through the house. Searching! Searching for us! It’s blackness moving from room to room methodically.

That was our last night in the house. My children never returned. When I returned to get a few of our things on several occasions I never went alone. Everyone I brought into that house with me would also witness something happen. A scream. Whispers. Pounding from the floor above. It was not selective anymore at who it let hear its fury. I remember what the old lady said to me as I turned over the key. Standing there, the whole side of my arm and torso still bruised from throwing myself against that bedroom door, she said, “Some people are meant to live in an old house like that. And some people aren’t. I never thought you were the old house type.” And I guess she was right.

About a month after moving out of the old house a friend sent me a website address that she wanted me desperately to see. “Put John T. Crowe, Union, Missouri into your search engine,” she said. When I did, the face of a man came onto my screen. The same face that showed up in a picture my brother took in the fruit cellar one afternoon while I was packing for the move. The man was famous. The land itself is famous, with a history dating back to the civil war.

About a year ago, someone I know saw a police car race up to that house one night and witnessed a family running out of its front door in their nightclothes.

As for the house today – the old lady turned it into a dog kennel this past fall. I guess she ran out of people that could live in an old white house like that one.

You see I do believe in ghosts. I still drive past that house every once in a while and when I get enough nerve I look up at the upstairs window and it’s there. Watching. Waiting. Angry. Sometimes its screams still wake me from my sleep, its infectious scream creeping into my dreams, turning them into nightmares. I still don’t sleep very well. In my dreams I see a faceless man standing in that basement washing away blood from his naked blood-covered body. Grunting. Panting. Breathing.

The breathing you’d hear when you were alone with it in a room. The breathing you would hear when you knew it was there. Heavy. Labored. Breathing. Yes, I do believe in ghosts. I do believe in ghosts. And maybe you should too?

Submitted by Steven LaChance. Updated: March, 2017 who wrote a book about his experiences called The Uninvited.

Ok, so who was this captain John T. Crowe? Well, we found his actual obituary from 1923.

Obituary for John Thomas Crowe

from the Republican Tribune, Union, Missouri

April 20, 1923

Captain John T. Crowe died at his house nine miles west of Union Monday night, April 16, 1923, aged 81 years, three months and nineteen days having been born in the home in which he passed away, December 28, 1841.

Captain Crowe belonged to one of the most highly respected families of the county and one that perhaps has been as long connected with the progressive spirit of the county as any of the many prominent families that have left their imprint upon our county’s progress.

Captain or Judge Crowe, as he was sometimes called, belonged to one of the oldest families in the state as well as in the county. His great-grandfather, Godfrey Crowe, was born and raised in Germany and came to Missouri in 1796 and settled in St. Charles county.

Michael Crowe, the grandfather of Captain Crowe was born and reared in St. Charles county. He married a Miss Green, the daughter of Col. Jas. Green, who was born in Virginia and came to Kentucky, where he took part in the Indian troubles and was a close companion of Daniel Boone. When the latter came to Missouri, Colonel Greene came with him and settled in St. Charles county, towards the close of the 18th century. Michael Crowe and his wife came to Franklin county in 1808 and settled near Labaddie. March 1, 1818, he was killed while loading a log on a wagon. The father of Captain John T. Crowe, Martin Luther Greene Crowe, was born August 18, 1818. A few months after the death of his father, he was married to Jane Catherine Jump, daughter of Samuel Jump, July 25, 1838. The father died November 14, 1890 and the mother, February 7, 1891. Martin L. G. Crowe was elected county assessor in 1854. At the expiration of his term as assessor he was elected county judge and in 1859 he became county clerk and served faithfully in that capacity until January 1, 1871.

To Mr. And Mrs. M. L. G. Crowe, six children were born: two died in infancy, one son, Samuel, died in 1886 at the age of almost 30 years, Mrs. William Leiser, the only daughter, died in Montana a few years ago and one son. George Crowe is at present living in Nogales, Arizona.

When the father took charge of the county clerk’s office in 1859, his son, John T., although only 18 years old, immediately became his father’s assistant and main reliance and remained to the office until President Lincoln’s first call for 75,000 men to serve three months. John Crowe was one of the first to respond to his country’s call. At the end of three month’s service, he returned to Union and enlisted in Co. E, 26th regiment of Missouri volunteers infantry. This company was organized in the southern part of the county in December 1861. It was recruited by Robert C. Crowell, who desired and expected to be captain. At the election of officers, however, John T. Crowe, who was just twenty years old, was almost unanimously elected captain. But owing partly to his youth, but more largely to the loyalty to his older friend, positively declined any office in his company whatever. He accepted, however, the position as adjutant for the regiment. He took this because he realized what all others knew, that owing to his office experience and education he was better fitted for the place than anyone in the regiment. He was appointed 2nd lieutenant of the company June 26, 1862 and six months later was transferred to company I and promoted to first lieutenant, August 22, 1862. He became captain of the company June 23, 1863 and remained at the head of his company until the expiration of his enlistment, which was December 25, 1864. He lacked three days of being 24 years of age and was one of the youngest captains in the service.

Soon after its organization the regiment joined the expedition under General Pope against New Madrid and as an officer Captain Crowe took part in the following military activities: Battles of Tipton, Farmington, Corinth, Iuka, Port Gibson, Missionary Ridge and in Sherman’s famous march to the sea and through the Carolinas.

The late Judge Ryers, who made a study of the army reports told that the official records of Captain Crowe were among the very best of any in the state. When he reached Union after the expiration of his enlistment he was commissioned adjutant to the second military district of Missouri. When the war was over he came back to Union and resumed his duties in the office of the county clerk and continued to relieve his aged father of as much of the work as he could. He retired from his duties as deputy when his father’s term expired, December 31, 1870.

In 1868 he was admitted to the bar of Franklin county but did not enter the regular practice of law. In 1872 he was elected sheriff over John R. Roberson. He was reelected in 1874 and in 1876 he was elected probate judge over H. R. Sweet and served until January 1, 1881 when he was appointed deputy internal revenue collector at a much larger remuneration than he had received as probate judge. He served as deputy revenue collector until the election of Cleveland when he retired to the old homestead and where he has made his home practically ever since. He was elected as representative in the legislature in 1890 and served the county faithfully in the 36th general assembly. He was by nature a great lover of agricultural pursuits and sold all his real estate in Union and lived the remainder of his life on his farm which was well fitted with modern conveniences.

On January 16, 1860, John T. Crowe married Minerva M. Breckenridge, a daughter of Asa Breckenridge, a most highly respected citizen and relative of the famous Breckenridge family of Kentucky. To this union four children were born, Asa B., a prominent merchant of Sullivan; Martin Luther, who was killed in a railroad accident October 17, 1890; Maude, the wife of R. L. Allen, a banker of Farmington; and Nellie, the wife of Lilburn W. Brown, with whom the father made his home on the old homestead. Mrs. Crowe died in July, 1874. On March 9, 1877, Mr. Crowe was again married, this time to Miss Sarah E. Hendricks, a member of an old and honored family. To this union three children were born; Addie, the wife of Fred Lyford, a civil engineer living in Iowa; and John and Howard Crowe, prominent business men of Southwest Missouri. The second wife died September 18, 1895. In addition to the six children above enumerated captain Crowe is survived by one brother, George Crowe, of Nogales, Arizona, who arrived at the bedside just four hours before his brother died. He also leaves sixteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Captain Crowe had been a prominent Mason since early manhood. He was a member of some three or four old soldiers’ organizations and always attended their meetings as long as he was able to do so with comfort. Captain John T. Crowe was a patriot in the fullest sense of the word and proved it by his facing the enemies of this country in the most trying circumstances. He was always courteous and amiable in society and was always a gentleman. But above and beyond all he left a family that are each and all an honor to themselves, their country and the communities in which they live. No man could leave a greater or nobler heritage to posterity.

Paranormal groups and the Catholic Church were called in to investigate the home. Historically, the home was supposedly built on the remains of a slave quarters cabin from the pre-Civil War era. Within five hundred feet of the home was an older cemetery, while across the street in a separate home, a violent ax murder once took place.

Paranormal groups have documented dozens of EVPs and photographs of the activity in the home. Such documentation has not come without a price, while some investigators have been bitten or scratched. The Catholic Church issued a rare 156-page report on the home claiming it was indeed manifested with a strong demonic presence.

The Screaming House was built in 1932 and was placed upon the actual spot which once held the slave quarters. In all historical documents, you will not find one incident where the Captain admittedly was a slave owner. The slaves were always listed as belonging to his wife Minerva who came to Union, Missouri with her family from Kentucky. There is talk of Minerva having improper relations with at least one of her male slaves which may have led to her death and the deaths of all of the young male slaves on the property. One of the sources of this atrocity was an actual member and heir of the Captain himself. Captain Crowe sold his land in Union, Missouri to A.J. Saey who later became the first Governor of Oklahoma. Captain Crowe moved to Beaufort, Missouri where he spent the rest of his years. Below you will see the grave sites of the Captain and his beautiful wife.

Standing on the hillside overlooking Union City Park is a huge Nursing Home. In its day this building was used as a Civil War Hospital and was also used after the war as the County Poor House. It is a well known fact among Union residents that if you don’t know where one of your ancestors is buried they are most likely buried in one of the mass graves in the city park. One of these mass graves is not far from the Screaming House.

In 1974, a replaying of a modern Lizzy Borden case took place almost directly across from the Screaming House on the next street over. A woman took an ax and killed her husband. Once she had completed her dirty deed, she took a gun and committed suicide. You might be thinking that a woman using a gun to commit suicide is uncommon, but not in Union, Missouri. Several women have ended their lives at the end of a gun. Another house across from the Screaming House a man committed suicide in front of his young nephew with a gun. So all in all there is plenty of reason for the Screaming House to be haunted. It seems the land on and surrounding the house is just bad. If you speak to some of the residents of the town who will talk about the haunting. They will tell you that you get an awful feeling from the home and some claim to even get physically ill when they are near it. Others will tell you that not only the house is haunted but the entire neighborhood as well.

It seems that Union, Missouri is rife with axe murders.

From Sue Blessing at emissouri.com

“A story from an 1875 issue of The Record first alerted me to this murder, as the woman accused of the crime was then being housed in the jail at Union. I was particularly drawn to the case because the account stated the perpetrator was the widow of Capt. William Eads, whose steamboats had plied the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in an earlier era.

William Eads Sr., and William Eads Jr. were both riverboat captains. It is possible she could have been married to the younger Eads, who died in 1863 at age 27, but this is mostly speculation.

However, the case was an interesting one so I began searching for more information. I’ll start at the beginning, drawing on at least a dozen resources. The murder was said to have taken place on April 1, 1872. At the time, Mrs. Eads was living on a farm in Jefferson County with a hired man by the name of Joe Howard, two children she had adopted, Louis Merrill Taylor, age 6, and his sister, Mary Josephine Taylor, age 13. Also living in the home was Charles Eads, a young man she had raised and apparently given her surname to. Whether she had any children of her own is not known.

According to an 1875 issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mrs. Eads was very abusive to the young children, often cuffing them about. One day, two or three eggs were missing and she accused young Louis of taking them. He denied having done it and told Mrs. Eads the dog was the guilty culprit. Not believing the boy, Mrs. Eads became enraged. She picked up an axe handle and struck the child over the head. He fell to the floor dead. Howard and young Eads came into the house and, after seeing what had happened, volunteered to bury the body.

Mary Josephine had been churning butter in the next room, but had seen the killing. She ran away and hid. She was found and threatened with instant death if she ever told anyone. As was the case with several aspects of this story, there are two versions as to what happened to Mary Josephine. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch version, she was sent to live with her Uncle Eldridge who lived 3 miles northwest of Camden Point in Platte County.

The Record told a different story. Not wanting to kill Mary Josephine, Mrs. Eads came up with the idea of sending her off into the wilderness and leaving her to starve to death. Eads and Howard put the child on a bareback mule and took her 40 miles from the scene of the murder and left her in the woods far from civilization. In the meantime, Mrs. Eads left her farm home.

After much suffering, Mary Josephine found her way to a house but, because she feared for her life, did not tell the whole story. She asked for help and said she wanted to go to the home of her Uncle Eldridge, who lived in Platte County.

The plot thickens. Mary Josephine’s Uncle Eldridge had no respect for Mrs. Eads because she had been caught in a conspiracy to have her parents done away with so she could get her hands on their fortune. Mary Josephine opened up to her uncle and told him everything. Both Mary Josephine and her uncle kept their own counsel until the day young Mary Josephine spotted Charles Eads in Platte County. She told her story to the authorities and Eads was soon arrested. Her uncle believed Eads had come to Platte County with the intention to do him harm.

While jailed, Eads wrote a letter to Mrs. Rebecca Boltinghouse, 2620 Papin St., St. Louis. The Platte County sheriff at once suspected that Mrs. Boltinghouse might be Mrs. Eads. He contacted the St. Louis chief of police and it was determined that his suspicions were right. Mrs. Eads, age 40-plus, had been living as the mistress of Frank Boltinghouse, a 24-year-old brakeman on the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

Mrs. Eads was arrested. Frank Boltinghouse came to the jail to see her and they had a good cry together. They decided to get married and the ceremony was performed in the police captain’s office. Mrs. Eads, who had been living with Boltinghouse since November 1874, was expecting a baby.

Both Mrs. Eads-Boltinghouse and Charles Eads were jailed in Union for a time because an affidavit alleged the crime had taken place in Franklin County. The scene of the crime, however, was Jefferson County, and they were eventually sent to Potosi for trial. She was charged with killing young Taylor and Eads was charged with assisting her in concealing the body.

A change of a venue took the case to St. Francois County where Mrs. Eads-Boltinghouse was found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to 20 years in the penitentiary. Due to a defect in the charge on which she was tried, the judgment was arrested and both Eads-Boltinghouse and Eads were remanded back to Jefferson County to wait for the grand jury to act on the case. In the January 1877 term, Mrs. Eads-Boltinghouse was again indicted, but Charles Eads was released. A second change of a venue resulted in the murder trial being moved to Iron County where she was tried and found guilty of murder in the second degree. She was sentenced to serve 10 years in the penitentiary.

According to a list of prisoners published in the Warden’s Report, Rose B. R. Boltinghouse, white, born in Ohio, entered the penitentiary on Nov. 23, 1881. The 1888 Goodspeed history gives her complete name as Rosabelle Rebecca Boltinghouse.”

So, what the hell is going on in Union, Missouri? Axe murdering women… a creepy captain that just won’t go away. Whatever it is that’s haunting the area, it’s a pretty amazing story and we want to know what you think! Is this house just someone’s overactive imagination or is the Captain still lingering about, attempting to wash the blood from his hands, screaming and moaning, warning anyone that will listen.

(MOVIES INTRO)

Top Ten Movies About Haunted House Attractions

Monday Jun 07, 2021

The Rendlesham Forest Incident with Jeff Butchko

Monday Jun 07, 2021

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Ep. 104

The Rendlesham

Forest Incident

Tonight we talk about what is perhaps the most well documented ufo sighting, and depending on who you talk to, one of the best examples that aliens have been to earth! Hot damn! Not only is it well documented, the credibility of those involved, with a few exceptions which have weeded out, is pretty much as good as it gets. Not only that, but... it wasn't just a couple of people that witnessed part of this event. At least 80 people saw it, first hand, and that doesn't include people from the town and area surrounding where this incident took place. We're of course talking about the one, the only, the Rendlesham forest incident!!

Most of our story and info today comes from an amazing book we found called Encounter in Rendlesham Forest written by Nick Pope with assistance from two of the main players in the incident, John Burroughs and Jim Penniston, both retired from the United States air force. Nick Pope actually worked for the British ministry of defense investigating UFOs, alien abductions, crop circles and more. So, basically Moody’s dream job.

So, the Rendlesham forest incident was actually composed of two, count em two, sightings in just a couple of days span. We’ll discuss both incidents and then talk about theories and such. So let's dive into it.

The Rendlesham area was home to two military bases, Bentwater and Woodbridge. The two bases were separated by roughly 300-400 yards of forest… The, you guessed it, Rendlesham forest. The forest itself was pretty thick and dense. Both bases were run by the US. Both bases were speculated to house nuclear weapons. It was never confirmed or denied. Many people believe that's the reason for this UFO visit. Nuclear power seeking aliens! Amazing. Also it gives even more credibility to those involved being that they were in charge of a pile of nukes. Or were they?

On the night of December 26 1980, John Burroughs, who was an airman first class, saw strange red and blue lights on Rendlesham forest outside of the gates of the base while patrolling the east gate of the Woodbridge base. At first Burroughs thought the lights may have been a civilian aircraft that crashed. He began the prices of running the report through the proper channels to investigate the lights. First he reported to staff sergeant Bud Stefans, who then ran it too sergeant Crash McCabe, who in turn got a hold of sergeant John Coffey, who then ran it up to the on duty flight chief which was staff sergeant Jim Penniston.

At this point Penniston decided to head out and check out the situation himself. He headed out to the east gate with his driver Edward Cabansag. As they arrived at the east gate, Bud Stefans would make a strange remark. He said "it didn't crash… It landed." White this was going on they had the control tower check around with their radar and also contact other air force bases in the area as well as Heathrow airport to see if they saw anything. Turns out about 15 minutes before the lights were seen, a "bogey" was seen on radar but disappeared as it got directly over Woodbridge. Penniston, Burroughs, and another dude named master sergeant Chandler headed into the forest while Cabansag hung bag. As they got closer to the lights all of their radios began to malfunction. It was as if something was trying to interfere with the radio signal. In order to trust messages back to the base, Chandler went back to the Jeep while Penniston and Burroughs pressed on. As they walked further into the forest they described a change in the air as they drew closer to the lights. They said it felt like the air was charged with electricity and the hairs on the back of their necks and arms stood up. After this they said it became hard to walk, as if they were wading through deep water. They finally made it to the source of the light in a small clearing. They say there was a sudden explosion of bright light except that it was completely silent. Both men hit the deck and waited for a minute to be sure it was safe. When the men stood up they saw something unbelievable. Penniston claims they were looking at a small triangular craft roughly 9 ft tall by 9ft wide resting on tripod-like legs. He said the way it looked was similar to our lunar lander. On the side of the craft he says there were a bunch of blue lights while a white light was on top. The craft was completely silent. Penniston decided to approach closer. He described the area around the craft as a "bubble field". As he entered the field he claims that all of the ambient noise in the area ceased. He described it like the air was dead. The static charge he had felt earlier was even stronger. He claimed to turn and yell to Burroughs but Burroughs was just standing and staring at the object. Penniston said he thought he was going to die. In his head he thought this object a weapon. He didn't know if his radio was working so he decided to pull out his notebook and start documenting the incident that way. As he got nearer to the object he said he saw strange symbols on the side of the craft. They appeared to be etched into the side of the craft. Penniston said the symbols were not recognizable. He said at best there was a passing resemblance to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Being a real man's man, Penniston then decided it would be a great idea to touch the object. He said that it was smooth like running your hand over glass but the symbols were rough like sandpaper. He then claims that as he touched the symbols the lights became blindingly bright and when he took his hand back the light went back to normal. After this Penniston stood there and just tried to document the situation as much as he could in his notebook.

After a bit the craft began to lift off the ground. Penniston said everything seemed to move in slow motion. After a few minutes the craft made it over the top of the trees. After clearing the trees it silently flew away at what was described as an impossible speed. Literally…Penniston wrote in his notebook "speed-impossible".

So you may be asking yourself… What about Burroughs… What the hell was with him? Well, despite standing only about ten feet from Penniston his recollection of the event was completely different. Burroughs maintains he saw something. He claims that after the silent explosion of light and he hit the deck, he saw no craft whatsoever. He said he saw a red oval sun like object in the field. He also claims that unlike the up close encounter that Penniston had, his encounter lasted only seconds. Oddly enough this was his official statement. In his original statement taken roughly 72 hours after the incident occurred, he had included a speech of a craft that looked very similar to Pennistons sketches from his encounters. Since people will point to this as a sign that this was definitely a real event and that his official statement was cleaned up a bit to try and cover up the true nature of what happened.

At this point both men agreed that after the initial silent light explosion they saw a light rise into the sky and headed ready over the coast. After the craft took off the two men noticed something else. Although this was the middle of winter and the ground was essentially frozen, they were able to see three indentations on the ground. This told them that something extremely heavy had been there. On top of that the indentations created an almost perfect equilateral triangle, claimed Penniston. As they looked around more they noticed that there were many broken branches on the trees around the clearing where the supposed craft had landed. These branches were broken from low on the trees all the way to the tops!

When they returned to the Jeep to meet up with Cabansag and Chandler, the two men would find out something else that's pretty crazy. The two men figured they were gone for five or ten minutes out of radio contact. In all actuality they were out of radio contact for a whopping 45 minutes! What's more, not only was there lost time, the two men's watching were running 45 minutes slow, it's like time stopped for them during the incident. Cabansag and Chandler had been in contact with the base checking in, which was even more proof the men had been gone much longer than they thought.

On top of all this they found that others had seen something crazy as well. We'll talk about the things they might actually have seen later when talking about possible explanations!

That night there was another incident reported. Two other men reported seeing lights in the forest as well. They claim that when they went to check it out a bright light engulfed them and their jeep stalled out. They could not get the Jeep to start again.

The USAF was obligated to call British authorities to report that they had gone off base to investigate the incident. So instead of informing the military they called the local police for some reason. The police in their official report that upon receiving the call they had found a place where it appears that a craft had landed.

As one would expect the next day the men involved were getting quite the ribbing from everyone else. At this point another major player would enter the picture. That morning Colonel Charles Halt reported for duty at 5am. The aforementioned Sergeant Crash McCabe, when asked by Halt what was going on, said "Penniston and Burroughs were out chasing UFOs all night. Halt recommended that they use the term unexplained lights instead of UFO so that things would not get out of hand. Immediately paperwork concerning the night's escapades were pulled and classified as secret. This included indecent and complaint reports as well as security blotters. The off thing about this is that normally this would have to go through Colonel Halt, but he was not made aware of any of this when it happened. They were pulled by base commander Ted Conrad.

Major Edward Drury thought that the entire thing was just a Christmas prank, but after talking to Penniston and Burroughs, and getting more of the story, as well as hearing about the bogey on the radar, he decided to investigate a bit. He took some guys with him and went and took some pictures and checked out the site. They kind of figured this would be the end of the whole situation but in actuality it was only the end of the first of the two incidents!

The next day on the 27th, there was a combat support group awards ceremony scheduled for the evening at the on base bar called Woody's. That night during the festivities lieutenant Bruce England who was on duty came in and grabbed Colonel Halt, pulled him aside and told him that the UFO had returned. Halt decided that he would check this out for himself. He gathered a team of men that were still sober and called in sergeant Monroe Neville's and Master sergeant Bobby Ball to join the group. Halt had the men grab some floodlights. But mysteriously the floodlights were not working. Now while it must be said that some of the portable flood lights were out of gas, not all of them were. The ones that had gas and by all accounts should work were simply just… Not. At this point Halt took his team to the original landing site instead of where the men were setting up the lights and where the new sighting was. While all of this was going down Halt was recording everything with his portable tape recorder. They used Geiger counters on the area to see if they could detect any kind of radioactivity in the original landing area. While they did find a little bit of a spike in the reading it was definitely not a significant sign regardless of what some people would have you believe. Another issue is that they were actually using the wrong type of Geiger counter to get the readings they got. Now you can hear this on the 18 minutes of recordings that were made available to the public.

Also in the recordings you can hear the point when the men again see a strange light. One man refers to how there's light that is there and gone then returns again. The men sound legitimately dumbfounded by what they are witnessing. Halt behind to describe what is going on on the tape. The last roughly 4 minutes of audio available is this prob of the encounter. Halt at one point describes the light as shooting a break of lights to the ground, which you can hear on the recordings. Later, according to Halt's memo, three star-like lights were seen in the sky, two to the north and one to the south, about 10 degrees above the horizon. Halt said that the brightest of these hovered for two to three hours and seemed to beam down a stream of light from time to time. The other strange thing about Halt's recordings is that while only 18 minutes of recordings were made available Halt supposedly had around 4 hours or more of recordings from that night which he claims will probably never be released for us to hear.

Not really knowing what to do with all of this the Halt sent a memo to the Ministry of Defense and tried to get the British involved but they were not having it. The memo can be found online and we will post a picture of. Halt claims that the U.S got rid of the copy her head sent to the higher ups as they deemed the incident did not warrant further investigation.

So what the fuck happened in Rendlesham forest. Well it depends on who you want to believe. There's a ton of skeptics obviously, then there's guys like Moody who are fully on board for the UFO theory. This incident is rude with theories, detractors, conspiracies, people who claim they were the ones perpetrating the hoax… It's kind of crazy. Let's look at some of the theories on what happened and what the skeptics say.

There's one story that we can put to rest for you right off the top. In December 2018, David Clarke, a British UFO researcher, reported a claim that the incident was a set-up by the SAS as a revenge plot on the USAF. According to this story, in August 1980, the SAS parachuted into RAF Woodbridge to test the security at the nuclear site. The USAF had recently upgraded their radar and detected the black parachutes of the SAS men as they descended to the base. The SAS troops were interrogated and beaten up, with the ultimate insult that they were called "unidentified aliens". To enact their revenge, the SAS "gave" the USAF their own version of an alien event; "....as December approached, lights and coloured flares were rigged in the woods. Black helium balloons were also coupled to remote-controlled kites to carry suspended materials into the sky, activated by radio-controls." However, Clarke's investigation concluded that the story was itself a hoax. This story still gets tossed around in some circles even though there is absolutely nothing to back it up.

That's were several locations that claimed they had a hand in the hoax. One man claims he rigged an old cop car with lights and sound equipment and drove around in the forest to essentially fuck with people. No evidence of this was ever proven. Another man that local people described as "a character" claims that he was driving his truck around with a load of manure in the back and what the men saw that night was… Wait for it…. Burning shit. Also no evidence of this being true was found. As far as these two cases go… We would like to think that if you're approaching this case, that either way you believe, real or fake, you would at least agree that these airmen would be able to tell if it was a car driving around or burning manure In the back of a truck!

Speaking of knowing the difference between things… Some skeptics like to blame this whole incident on a lighthouse. Y day that the strange lights were actually the beacon from a lighthouse on the coast. Now we can concede that on the second night, some of those guys probably mistook the lighthouse beacon for something more. In the Halt recording you can hear someone say that he sees a light, then a short time later it's gone, then a short time later it's back. The intervals actually live up with the revolving time of the lighthouse beacon. So at that moment in time yes it's likely that those men saw the lighthouse beacon but the lighthouse didn't account for the rest of the witnessed phenomena.

As far as the lights in the sky that Halt said they watch in the sky…the skeptics say nothing more than stars. The bright lights off in the distance are often blamed on stars when talking to people looking to disprove the incident. But what of the beams of light coming from the stars? According to many it was atmospheric distortion causing it to merely look like a beam of light coming from a craft. As far as the scientific basis of these arguments, we can't speak to that. While they sound good we don't know. Could be plausible explanations for sure. But again it feels like a high ranking long serving airman would be able to tell the difference between a star and a strange light.

Another explanation often offered for the lights seen the first night is the debris from a Russian satellite falling to earth. This is confirmed to actually have taken place on the night Penniston and Burroughs had their experience. This could definitely explain lights in the sky but how did it explain the craft they saw and the speed and maneuverability of what they reportedly saw. Granted that's if you believe the men. Also that same night there was some meteoric activity which some point to what the men saw in the sky. This activity was also confirmed to have been actually taking place at the time.

So while these explanations all seem like possibilities to explain perhaps some of what was seen, they don't really explain everything.

Then there's the cover up talk. Many of the witnesses have conflicting statements. The statements they made the night of the first incident are different from the official statements the government has on file. Burroughs' original statement included a sketch of a craft that very closely resembled what Penniston also sketched and described. Only problem is in his official statement he claimed to see no craft, only the ball of light. Edward Cabansag, who was there with the other gentleman that night, would later claim that his official statement wasn’t actually his. He said that as he was waiting to give his statement officials came to him with an already prepared statement that he was persuaded to sign. He claims he never even read the statement. Then there are the missing reports and paperwork the next morning when Halt had arrived. Why did they take them so quickly and mark them as secret without him being informed as he was usually a part of that sort of thing on the base? Were they trying to hide something or, as some would say, prevent embarrassment. Another odd thing is that Penniston and Burroughs have been fighting to get health records released for years. They have been blocked at every turn. We have a picture of one request sent to then president Barack Obama, asking for the records to please be turned over to the men. Why will they not let these men have these medical records? We could go into some of these things in much more detail but for now we just want to get these things in here without making a 4 hour episode. Maybe a bonus will get into all of these little side quests.

As the years went by both men have stood by their stories. Some say that Pennistons story had become inconsistent throughout the years. And while some things may be a little different from here to there the bulk is consistent according to most. A couple of things about Penniston. Penniston usually refers to what he allegedly encountered as being ‘a craft of unknown origin’ but has specifically and repeatedly denied that it was extraterrestrial. So where was it from? After undergoing regression hypnosis in September 1994 he seems to have become convinced that it was a craft from tens of thousands of years in the Earth’s future. According to what Penniston told the hypnotist, it contained our distant descendants returning to obtain genetic material to keep their ailing species alive: ‘They are time travellers. They are us,’ he said. There's Jon's favorite theory! Another thing is his binary code. He had filled many many pages in his notebook with binary code that he claimed was being sent to him telepathically. Penniston claims to know nothing about binary code. And from what we've read, they were supposedly able to date the pages and writings to the right time frame as people claimed that he wrote this much later in his notebook as a hoax to further his story. The crazy thing is when he finally had the binary decoded it did reveal a message. It is supposedly as follows :

EXPLORATION OF HUMANITY unclear 8100

52 0942532 N 13131269 W

CONTINUOUS FOR PLANETARY ADVANC(E)

FOURTH COO(R)DINATE CONTINUOUS unclear

BEFORE

16 763177 or 26 763177 N 89 117768 W

34 800272 N 111 843567 W

29 977836 N 31 131649 E

14 701505 S 75 167043 W

37 110195 N 25 372281 E

EYES OF YOUR EYES

ORIGIN 52 0942532 N 13131269 W

ORIGIN YEAR 8100

So where are these coordinates?

They are as follows: Caracol, Belize) (Sedona, Arizona) (Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt) (Nazca Lines in Peru) (Tai Shan Qu, China) (Portara at Temple of Apollo in Naxos, Greece) (Hy Brasil)

Brasil, also known as Hy-Brasil or several other variants, is a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. Irish myths described it as cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years, when it becomes visible but still cannot be reached. So what does it all mean? Well if you're up on ancient aliens theory these sites hold some water… If you are not a believer then it doesn't matter that much but still very compelling. The origin year 8100, did that mean this craft was from the future?

To this day there is no shortage of people constantly calling Penniston a liar and trying to poke holes in his stories and pointing out any type of inconsistency they can. That is all to be expected. You can dig deep into this incident and find support for whatever side you believe in. We wanted to present the facts as told by the men who lived it. Whether they were lying, saw something and extrapolated things from there, or truly had an extraterrestrial experience isn't ours to say. None of us were there so we'll never truly know. But given the amount of people that witnessed something that night and who since of these people were out measures for a very compelling tale.

Monday May 31, 2021

The Long Island Serial Killer

Monday May 31, 2021

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https://www.ranker.com/list/best-new-york-horror-movies/ranker-film

So here we are again. Dipping into the world of true crime. Unsolved true crime, our favorite! Today we are looking at a decades long unsolved case. Many women have gone missing, their bodies turning up around Long Island. No one is sure who's doing it or why. There are many theories as to the identity including a doctor and a dirty chief of police. We’re going to discuss all of this on tonight's episode. We are talking of course about the Long Island Serial Killer. Also referred to as The Gilgo Beach Killer or the Craigslist Ripper, The LISK is an unidentified individual allegedly responsible for the murder of between 10 and 17 women – and one man – and the subsequent dumping of their bodies along the Ocean Parkway over a period of nearly 20 years.

On May 1st 2010, Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker went to a clients house for a meet up. It wouldn't be long before things went awry and Shannan went missing. Sometime after she arrived to her appointment, she ran from the house and took off screaming. She ran to another house on the street and banged on the dorr. The man who lived there looked outside and saw Shannan hysterical on the porch. Shannan was screaming and the man was having trouble understanding her aside from her asking for help. The man was very confused and said he would call the police for her. As he said this and turned to walk to his phone, Shannan began screaming again and took off down the street. That is the last time anyone would see Shannan alive. While Shannans body would not be found for a year, the search for her would turn up something incredible, the evidence of a serial killer operating for possibly decades in the Long Island area.

In December of 2010, police officer John Mallia and his canine companion, a german shepherd named Blue, were searching for Shannans body on their own time in the dunes of Ocean Parkway on the South Shore of Long Island. Mallia and Blue came across a body. The body was not Shannans but it was a body that started a search for a serial killer. They found the skeletal remains of a woman stuffed into a worn burlap sack. The horrifying discovery led to a police search of the Ocean Parkway between the towns of Gilgo Beach and Oak Beach in Suffolk County and the area of Jones Beach State Park in Nassau County. Two days later three more bodies,all female, were found dumped among the dunes. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer was quoted by news media as saying: “Four bodies found in the same location pretty much speaks for itself. It's more than a coincidence. We could have a serial killer."

The four bodies would all be identified as women who used craigslist as a means to get work as escorts. Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Connecticut, was an escort who advertised her services online. Maureen was last seen on July 9, 2007, saying that she planned "to spend the day in New York City." She was never seen again. Maureen worked as a paid escort via Craigslist to pay the mortgage on her house. She had been out of the sex industry for seven months, but she returned to the work in order to pay her bills after receiving an eviction notice. Shortly after her disappearance, a friend of Maureen's, Sara Karnes, received a call from a man on an unfamiliar number. The man claimed that he had just seen Maureen and that she was alive and staying at a “whorehouse in Queens”. He refused to identify himself and could not tell Karnes the location of the house. He told Karnes he would call back and give her the address, but never called again. Karnes said that the man had no discernible New York or Boston accent.

Melissa Barthélemy, 24, of Erie County, New York, went missing on July 10, 2009. She had been living in the Bronx and working as an escort through Craigslist. On the night she went missing, she met with a client, deposited $900 in her bank account, and attempted to call an old boyfriend, but did not get through. Beginning one week later, and lasting for five weeks, her teenage sister, Amanda, received a series of "vulgar, mocking and insulting" calls from a man, who may have been the killer using Melissa's cell phone. The caller asked if Amanda "was a whore like her sister." The calls became increasingly disturbing, and eventually culminated in the caller telling Amanda that Melissa was dead, and that he was going to "watch her rot." Wow...that's pretty fucked up. Police traced some of the calls to Madison Square Garden, midtown Manhattan, and Massapequa, but were unable to determine who was making the calls. Melissa's mother noted that there were "a lot of calls to Manorville" from Melissa's phone around the time of her disappearance. That detail comes into play with one of the suspects.

Megan Waterman, 22, of South Portland, Maine, went missing on June 6, 2010, after placing advertisements on Craigslist as an escort. The day before, she had told her 20-year-old boyfriend that she was going out and would call him later. At the time of her disappearance, she was staying at a motel in Hauppauge, New York, 15 miles northeast of Gilgo Beach.

Amber Lynn Costello, 27, of North Babylon, New York, a town ten miles north of Gilgo Beach, was a prostitute and heroin user who went missing on September 2, 2010. That night she reportedly went to meet a stranger who had called her several times and offered $1,500 for her services

After these four bodies were found, police widened the scope of their search. As they did this more and more gruesome things were found. In late March and early April of 2011, four...yes four more bodies were found. One body was found about a mile east of where the first four were located, and three more on the north side of the highway several miles further down. What differed about these four was that none of their remains were encased in burlap, as the initial four had been. And again, Shannan Gilbert, whose disappearance had initially sparked the search of the area, was not among them. Suffolk County Police expanded their search into Nassau County in an effort to find more potential bodies.

Of these four new bodies only one has been identified. That is the body of Jessica taylor. Jessica was 20 years old and also worked as a prostitute. She went missing in July of 2003. When they found her body it was missing its head and hands. They would later be found at ...you guessed it...Gilgo Beach. Another female body was found and named Jane Doe 6. She was found dismembered. Next body found was identified as a young asian male. They dubbed him simply John Doe He had died from blunt force trauma. The fourth body is not thought to be related to the LISK for one main reason. It was a child. A toddler between the ages 16 and 24 months and dubbed “Baby Doe,” had been found wrapped in a blanket and showed no visible signs of trauma. Suffolk officials have not ruled the baby’s death a homicide, and speculate that it was unrelated to the alleged victims of the Long Island Serial Killer, as it obviously did not fit with their established modus operandi in any discernible way.

On April 11, the search in Nassau County intensified, and soon afterward a set of partial remains were uncovered – bones found by a police dog – as well as a separate skull from yet another possible victim; this brought the body count linked to the alleged Long Island Serial Killer to ten. On April 22, police found two human teeth while hacking through thick brush alongside Ocean Parkway with machetes and chainsaws; officials had reported previously that the dense vegetation in the area was making their search difficult.

These partial remains have never been identified, except as "Jane Doe No. 3," and "Jane Doe No. 7." The remains of "Jane Doe No. 3" were discovered in a plastic bag near Jones Beach State Park; DNA analysis indicates her to be the mother of "Baby Doe."

DNA also linked "Jane Doe No. 7," whose skull and several teeth were recovered at Tobay Beach, to a set of severed legs found in a garbage bag on Fire Island in April, 1996. On September 20, 2011, police released composite sketches of “Jane Doe No. 6” and “John Doe” in addition to photographs of matching jewelry worn by both "Jane Doe No. 3" and “Baby Doe” in hopes of identifying the victims.

In December 2016, authorities linked the DNA of "Jane Doe No. 3" to the unidentified torso of a woman found in Hempstead Lake Park in 1997. The victim had been dubbed "Peaches" under the Hempstead Lake Park investigation, so named for a tattoo on the woman's chest. According to a recent Long Island Press report, investigators said that "Peaches'' was a black woman between the ages of 20 and 30. Her torso was discovered by a hiker who found it stuffed in a plaastic bag inside a green Rubbermaid container on June 28, 1997. Because no head has been found to match "Jane Doe No. 3" or "Peaches," police have not been able to release a composite sketch of what she may have looked like.

At this point, authorities began to speculate that the alleged killer was someone familiar with law enforcement techniques, as the phone of one victim was used to call the deceased’s sister several times; however, the calls were too short in duration to be traced, and the locations used – such as Manhattan’s Penn Station – were too highly trafficked for anyone in particular to stand out. Several other bodies discovered in other areas of Long Island have been speculated to be the work of the Long Island Serial Killer and are being considered by authorities, although without any hard evidence linking them, the connections are considered speculation, and nothing more. The bodies found are as follows:

On June 28, 1997, the dismembered torso of an unidentified young African-American female was found at Hempstead Lake State Park.

On March 3, 2007, a suitcase containing the dismembered torso of an unidentified Hispanic or African-American washed up on a beach in Mamaroneck.

Tanya Rush, 39, of Brooklyn, whose dismembered body was discovered in a suitcase on the side of the Southern State Parkway in Bellmore, NY. It is theorized that these last two are at least related two each other due to the suitcase disposal tactic.

The remains of an Asian woman between the ages of 20 and 30 years old were found in a sandy area on Sheep Lane in Lattingtown.

On March 16, 2013, 31-year-old Natasha Jugo disappeared after leaving her home in Queens; on June 24, 2013, her body washed up on Gilgo Beach

Shannan Gilbert's body was eventually found. She was found in a marsh about a half of a mile from the client's house that she disappeared from. Investigators maintain there was no foul play in Shannan’s case. They say she got caught up in the muddy brush and bramble of the marsh and drowned, per NBC.They speculate that she accidentally wandered into the swamp in a drug induced panic and got caught up and drowned. Her family however thought this was a bunch of fucking malarky. Mari, her mother, and the Gilbert family's estate lawyer, John Ray, believed Shannan was killed. Her purse and cell phone were found a few days earlier, just a quarter mile from where she was found dead, per Oxygen. Police won’t budge on the drowning theory, but after the police-ordered autopsy, the medical examiner ruled her cause of death inconclusive. Her mom Shannan’s death was linked to the 10 other murders based on the independent examination conducted by former New York City medical examiner Michael Baden, MD. Dr. Baden said there was no evidence indicating Shannan drowned, succumbed to the elements, or overdosed—the theories Suffolk Country authorities were pushing, per NBC. One piece of evidence that could settle these conflicting theories could be the recordings of Shannan's 911 call, during which she reportedly told the operator, "They are trying to kill me," according to Former Suffolk County Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone. In an interview with 48 Hours, he recalled, "She's saying, 'There's someone after me; there's someone after me.' It's a girl who clearly believes...she's in harm's way." Shannan’s last client, Joseph Brewer, and neighbors in Oak Beach made additional calls to the police that evening as well, according to Oxygen. The Gilberts lawyer eventually was able to listen to the tapes and says they are a valuable resource in the case. The police as of now from what we can find have still not made the tapes public and the family’s lawyer is barred from discussing what was said on the tapes. In a shocking turn of events, Mari Gilbert was murdered in 2016. Mari was stabbed to death by her other daughter and Shannan’s younger sister, Sarra, in July of 2016. Sarra, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2017 after pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

Ok so there's the rundown of the victims they attribute to the killer and some other possible victims. We know what you’re asking yourselves. “Hey guys, I know that the case is not solved but they do have some suspects right? There's gotta be someone right?” Well there are a couple suspects and theories and we’d be happy to run through some for you.

So there are four main suspects we're going to talk about here as they are the four that most people seem to gravitate towards. Whether the cases against them are be strong or not, there the best anyone has right now.

First up we have Dr. Peter Hackett. Hackett became linked to the case of Shannan Gilbert after he called her mother, Mari Gilbert, after Shannan's disappearance. Hackett was once a “big shot” in his private Oak Beach neighborhood—but after that phone call, Hackett found himself linked to the unsolved Long Island murder mystery.

Hackett — the former head of the Suffolk County Emergency Medical Services — had become an integral part of the private, secluded Oak Beach community by the time Gilbert, a Craigslist sex worker, disappeared in May 2010 after meeting a client in the community.

“He was sort of the local big shot in Oak Beach,” Robert Kolker, the author of “Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery” said in an interview. “He raised a family there, was their emergency services guy, their security guy. Anytime there was anything going on he was helpful.”

When Hackett called Mari, Shannans mother, a few days later, she claimed the doctor told her he had interacted with Shannan the night she died. Hackett, who police have said is not a suspect, initially denied ever making the call, but later admitted to calling the Gilbert family after phone records showed he had placed two different calls in the days that followed her disappearance. In two letters to “48 Hours” in 2011 he denied ever seeing Shannan that night but said he had called the family to be “supportive” after getting Mari’s number from Shannan’s boyfriend and driver when the pair came to the neighborhood to look for Shannan in the days after she disappeared.

“During my conversations with them they asked that I call the family,” he wrote. Hackett denied any contact with Shannan and denied providing any medical treatment. Hackett said in his response to “48 Hours” that he had been at home sleeping with his wife the night Shannan disappeared.

“There’s no proof that he even saw her that night, but he did call Mari,” one person close to the case has said during an interview.

Police have said that they do not consider Hackett a suspect in the killings, according to The Long Island Press. However, Shannan’s family, who has maintained the woman's death was not an accident, believes the doctor may have had something to do with the woman's death and filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Hackett in 2012.

The lawsuit alleged Hackett took Shannan into his home in the early morning hours on the day she disappeared and gave her drugs. Due to the “control exercised” by Hackett, Shannan’s family believes she “experienced pain, suffering, anguish, agony, and knowledge and fear of her imminent death,” according to the lawsuit.

“Upon information and belief, on or about May 1, 2010, at Defendant Hackett’s aforesaid address, Defendant Hackett induced, coerced, overreached, and persuaded Shannan Gilbert to enter his aforesaid premises and to accept the aforesaid treatment and medications he provided and administered to her,” the lawsuit said.

Hackett’s attorney, James O'Rourke, has denied Hackett had anything to do with Shannan’s death and called the allegations against him contained in the lawsuit “categorically false.”

So there's that weirdo…

Next up we have a one James Bissett. Bissett was one of the suspects of the case because he was the main supplier of “burlap” in the region of Long Island and the killer used burlap to strangle women whose remains were found in the area during the investigation. And they were also found stuffed inside burlap sacks. However, Bissett could not be interrogated as he took his own life while in his car at Mattituck park right after Shannans body was discovered. Sounds pretty shady to us.

Next up we have John Bittrolf. He's a pretty good candidate on the surface.

John Bittrolff is a convicted murderer and a suspect in the Long Island Serial Killer case. In July 2014, he was charged with the murders of Rita Tangredi and Colleen McNamee. He is also a suspect in the murder of a third woman, Sandra Costilla. Bittrolff became a suspect in the unsolved murders after his brother, Timothy Bittrolff, was partially matched to DNA found on the bodies in 2013. Timothy Bittrolff submitted the sample after violating an unrelated order of protection, in 2013.

On July 5, 2017, Bittrolff was found guilty of Tangredi and McNamee's murders. He was sentenced to two consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences on September 12, 2017. He is imprisoned at Downstate Correctional Facility.

After Bittrolff's sentence, the case's prosecutor announced that Bittrolff was also a suspect in at least one of the 10 murders attributed to the unidentified Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) in New York's Suffolk and Nassau counties. Suffolk County District Attorney's office prosecutor Robert Biancavilla released a statement noting that Bittrolf was likely responsible for the deaths of other women, and that "There are remains of the victims at Gilgo that may be attributed to the handiwork of Mr. Bittrolff, and that investigation is continuing". Bittrolff was a carpenter who lived in Manorville, where the torsos of official LISK victims Jessica Taylor and Valerie Mack were recovered. The remains were discovered roughly three miles away from Bittrolff's home. He was also a hunter who seemed to enjoy killing and mutilating animals, and reportedly once "cut out the heart of a deer he had just shot and ate it raw in the woods". Another link between Bittrolff and the Long Island Serial Killer case became apparent when it was revealed that the grown daughter of Rita Tangredi, one of the women that Bittrolff was convicted of killing, was reportedly "best friends" with Melissa Barthelemy, who was one of the first LISK victims discovered strangled and wrapped in burlap at Gilgo Beach. Barthelemy's mother also reported that Melissa "had a lot of calls to Manorville from her phone" at the time.

This guy seems as good of a suspect as any.

The fourth guy on our list is James Burke. Burke was a police officer when the investigation started and was elected as chief of police in 2001. From then, the investigations into the Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) apparently started getting murky. After all, James Burke refused to let the FBI examine the killings. As per the New York Post, an agent believes the reason for this was the Chief’s already fraying relationship with the Bureau for having assaulted Christopher Loeb. At that time, Christopher, an admitted heroin addict, had broken into James’ department-issued SUV to steal his duffle bag. When the Smithtown native was brought into custody, he was tied to the floor and violently beaten by James. In a podcast, Christopher claimed that the bag contained sex toys, pornography, and what seemed to be snuff films that could link James to the LISK.

In 2016, James Burke was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to depriving a person of civil rights and conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice in connection to the Christopher Loeb case. That same year, an escort also came out to pose allegations against him. She said that in 2011, she partied with James at an unknown Oak Beach home, where they engaged in “rough sex.” According to her, there were various drugs at the place, and she saw James use cocaine on a few occasions. These claims are significant as it puts James in the same area where a possible LISK victim disappeared.In 2015, before James Burke was sentenced to severe 46 months along with three years of supervised release, he resigned from his post. Plus, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons records, he was released from behind bars in 2019. As far as we know, James is now following his relief requirements by regularly meeting with his probation officer and providing them with his monthly income and expense statements. Along with that, as he hasn’t faulted, we assume that he is also cooperating with the authorities when required. James has not made any public statements or appearances since his discharge. But a source told Newsday that he “has not decided on any plans… but to take several months to relax… with boating in the summertime… and stay out of the limelight.” Even though James’ reputation has taken a hit, especially with Vice calling him a “sex-obsessed narcissist” and a “middle-aged bachelor with a vulgar disregard for social niceties,” the facts remain that there is no concrete evidence that ties him to the serial killings. He's another that seems like a pretty good candidate.

In 2020 investigators released information on another piece of evidence. Police from Suffolk County released a photograph of a black leather belt with the letters WH or HM imprinted on it. The leather belt, which was found at a crime scene, police believe is linked to the murder investigation. The initials written on the belt likely belong to the perpetrator. The police commissioner said that the belt was found “at the initial stage of the investigation” along Ocean Parkway on Long Island.

So there you have it. A somewhat truncated tale of the LISK. There's a ton of info out on this subject. There's a Netflix documentary, a bunch of Podcast series, and a couple books. We got information from about 15 different articles online. While most of the information is consistent from article to article we did notice there are some discrepancies in a few of them so we tried to make sure the info we put in the episode was the most consistent throughout. And Also Logan Is “cute” says Moody...

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Monday May 24, 2021

The WOW! Signal

Monday May 24, 2021

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Today we take a little break from all the murder, witches, ghosts, creepy places, and all of the other horror to bring you an episode that's on the lighter side but still could be rooted in creepiness! We are gonna take a look at the WOW signal! What is it? Where did it come from? Is Owen Wilson involved? Well hopefully we'll find out… Maybe not… Who knows!

Some of you have heard of the wow signal and you may know a little about it already, hopefully we can give you guys some more insight today.

The story starts back in 1959 when two Cornell university physicists, Philip Morrison who was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and for his later work in quantum physics, nuclear physics and high energy astrophysics and Giuseppe Cocconi, who was an Italian physicist who was director of the Proton Synchrotron at CERN in Geneva. He is known for his work in particle physics and for his involvement with SETI. These two nerds speculated that there might be a specific radio frequency that an intelligent extraterrestrial life would use if they were trying to make contact. That frequency is 1420 megahertz.

That frequency was chosen for a particular reason, it is the same frequency naturally emitted by hydrogen. Now if you're up on your elements you know hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. It stands to reason, therefore, that hydrogen and thus its frequency would be familiar to any intelligent civilizations in the universe.

Then between 1965 and 1971 The Ohio State University Radio Observatory carried out the Ohio Sky Survey. Data was collected using the Big Ear radio telescope. The observatory was a Kraus-type (after its inventor John D. Kraus) radio telescope.

The observatory was part of The Ohio State University's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. Construction of the Big Ear began in 1956 and was completed in 1961, and it was finally turned on for the first time in 1963. The survey was primarily at a radio frequency of 1415 MHz, but data was also collected and evaluated at 2650 MHz and 612 MHz. Only one "channel" or band of frequencies was sampled for each frequency. The antenna was oriented to one declination at a time, (a declination is the angular distance of a point north or south of the celestial equator) and as the sky drifted past the meridian field of view, radio energy from that area was received and detected. Signal power was plotted on an analog chart recorder and also digitized and recorded on magnetic tape for later processing. A given declination was observed for a number of days before the telescope was moved to another declination in a systematic fashion.

The area surveyed was from declinations 63 degrees north to 36 degrees south, with a resolution at 1415 MHz of roughly 40 arc minutes in declination by 10 arc minutes in right ascension (RA). Over the course of the Survey, 19,620 sources at 1415 MHz were identified, of which 60% were previously uncataloged.

Some of the objects first identified by the Ohio Survey included quasars, objects of intense radiation and power at the edge of the then-known universe. The archived data subsequently permitted these and other sources to be reviewed over several years of observations. Later, the LOBES survey used most of the same apparatus as the Ohio Survey, and was able to automatically determine and verify the sources first charted by the Ohio Survey.

After the Ohio Sky Survey, Big Ear was put to use for Ohio State's SETI research program. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, for example, monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other planets. Now we are already getting kind of nerdy so we are not going to get into the history of SETI and all of the people that were involved throughout the years. It would basically be its own big nerdy episode. It's pretty awesome and interesting to get into if you've got the time to get into it. Actually, it sounds like an awesome Patreon Bonus. But for now the basic description is all you need… People looking for intelligent life throughout the universe. Because, well, there isn’t a whole lot here on earth. The Ohio State seti program lasted from 1973-1995 and made the 1995 Guinness book of world records for the longest running seti program. It was during this 22 year run that the WOW signal came into being. So with that history out of the way let's get to the signal itself… There's going to be some sciencey stuff so get ready to get your nerd on!

On August 15, 1977 as Big Ear was scanning the heavens, it received a remarkable signal. Astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was sifting through data for several days and came across the signal. On a piece of printed tape with mostly 1s 2s and 3s there was the occasional higher number and then he noticed a line that contained the following sequence, 6EQUJ5. Ehman circled the section in red and wrote a little note in the margin... one word… that word? It was “poop.” No one knows why he wrote “poop” next to the sequence, either. And of course that’s stupid and I made it up. No, you silly fuckers! The word was, of course… “WOW!” The signal seemingly came from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and contained the expected hallmarks of extraterrestrial origin! Aliens, bitches!!

The sequence string 6EQUJ5, commonly misinterpreted as a message encoded in the radio signal, represents in fact the signal's intensity variation over time, expressed in the particular measuring system adopted for the experiment. Got that? Good.

The signal itself appeared to be an unmodulated continuous wave, although any modulation with a period of less than 10 seconds or longer than 72 seconds would not have been detectable. So basically the letters and numbers represent how strong or intense the signal was as compared to the constant background noise. If the signal was longer than 72 seconds any modulation in the signal would not have been able to be detected.

Ok so the intensity of the signals were measured at a signal to noise ratio. Basically they would constantly measure the noise coming through to determine a baseline reading to compare any received signals to. The signal was sampled for 10 seconds and then processed by the computer, which took 2 seconds. Therefore, every 12 seconds the result for each frequency channel was output on the printout as a single character, representing the 10-second average intensity, minus the baseline. So essentially every 12 seconds a series of numbers were printed out giving the researchers an idea of how strong any signal that might be received was as compared to the baseline noise.

The numbers and letters were part of an alphanumeric system set up by the researchers to determine signal strength. If there was just a blank space that meant the signal was between 0-1. This means a signal between the baseline and one standard deviation above the baseline. So essentially there's no signal but the baseline noise coming back. This is why when you look at the printout there are mostly spaces and 1s as there was no signal side from baseline noise coming back. The numbers 1 to 9 denote the correspondingly numbered intensities (from 1 to 9); intensities of 10 and above are indicated by a letter: "A" corresponds to intensities between 10 and 11, "B" to 11 to 12, and so on. So we know that was a bit tedious but that information is needed to understand just why the series of numbers and letters was so incredible. The wow signal had the highest intensity measured at the value of U. This means that while most of the returns were between 0-2 deviations above the baseline the WOW signal hit U which means it was around 30-31 deviations above the baseline! So in layman's terms imagine you're watching your tv at a volume level of 1 and all of a sudden it hits a volume of 30 that's kind of what we're dealing with. And if you're wondering, the frequency that the WOW signal was detected at was indeed around the 1420 that we mentioned earlier. The frequency that was suggested as the most likely for use by an intelligent civilization trying to make contact.

The length of the signal does not necessarily mean that the 72 seconds was the total length of the signal though. The Big Ear radio telescope was only adjustable for altitude (or height above the horizon), and relied on the rotation of the Earth to scan across the sky. Given this fact, sure to the speed of the Earth's rotation, any signal could only last a max of 72 seconds until the rotation of the earth took the radio telescope out of the way of the signal. The signal strength would be shown to get gradually louder then gradually softer as the telescope approached and then went away from the source of the signal. This is what we see with the WOW signal.

Though the signal came from the general direction of the Sagittarius constellation, due to the telescope's design it was not possible to pinpoint the location exactly. The Big Ear telescope, which featured two feed horns, each receiving a beam from slightly different directions, while following Earth's rotation. The Wow! signal was detected in one beam but not in the other, and the data was processed in such a way that it is impossible to determine which of the two horns received the signal. The region of the sky in question lies northwest of the globular cluster M55, in the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude star group Chi Sagittarii, and about 3.5 degrees south of the plane of the ecliptic. The closest easily visible star is Tau Sagittarii. If you know what all that means… More power trip you… if not, were with you! No nearby sun-like stars were within the antenna coordinates, although in any direction the antenna pattern would encompass about six distant stars.

So now after all that… What the fuck was the signal? Where exactly did it come from? Was it aliens?

Many different hypotheses have been put forth over the years although none have really gained traction with scientists and astronomers due to the strangeness of the situation.

One hypothesis that was presented early on was that the signal was actually a signal generated from earth and reflected off of some space junk and picked up by the telescope. Ehman has said: "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris." Ehman backed off of this suggestion after further research showed an Earth-borne signal to be very unlikely, given the requirements of a space-borne reflector being bound to certain unrealistic requirements to sufficiently explain the signal. Also, it is problematic to propose that the 1420 MHz signal originated from Earth since this is within a protected spectrum: a bandwidth reserved for astronomical purposes in which terrestrial transmitters are forbidden to transmit.

The reason Ehman suggested this theory is that they searched for the signal again many times and were never able to find it again. This lead to a few other hypotheses like the signal was a rotating signal similar to a lighthouse beacon or that it was just a one time signal shot in our direction like maybe something knew we were scanning!

In a 2012 podcast, scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning concluded that a radio transmission from deep space in the direction of Sagittarius, as opposed to a near-Earth origin, remains the best technical explanation for the emission, although there is no evidence to conclude that an alien intelligence was the source.

Speaking of looking for it again, there have been many attempts to locate the signal since it was found. As stated Ehman and his crew searched for it many times to no avail.

Robert H. Gray looked for the signal in 1987 and again in 1989. Gray is a data analyst, astronomer, and author. He wrote the book The Elusive Wow: Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Gray heard about the WOW signal a few years after it had been discovered and contacted Ehman. He went and visited Big Ear, and spoke with Ehman, Robert S. Dixon (director of the SETI project) and John D. Kraus (the telescope's designer). In 1980 gray set up a commercial telecommunications dish in his Chicago backyard and started scanning the skies for some trace of the wow signal. He began to run and monitor his small SETI Observatory regularly in 1983 but still could not find a trace of the wow signal. In 1987 and 1989 he led searches for the wow signal using the Harvard/Smithsonian META radio telescope at the Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts. In 1995 and 1996 Gray would again search for the signal. This time he would pair up with Kevin B. Marvel and use the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. Kevin B. Marvel has served as the Executive Officer for the American Astronomical Society, the largest professional organization for researchers in astronomy and related disciplines, since July of 2006. He began work with the AAS as Associate Executive Officer for Public Policy in 1998 establishing the Society’s public policy program becoming Deputy Executive Officer in 2003. Before taking up a position with the American Astronomical Society in 1998 he served as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology's (CALTECH’s) Owens Valley Radio Observatory. He received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1996 from New Mexico State University. So you know… This guy knows his shit. The Very Large Array, or VLA for short, is a centimeter-wavelength radio astronomy observatory located in central New Mexico. Astronomers using the VLA have made key observations of black holes and protoplanetary disks around young stars, discovered magnetic filaments and traced complex gas motions at the Milky Way's center, probed the Universe's cosmological parameters, and provided new knowledge about the physical mechanisms that produce radio emission. Gray became the first amateur astronomer to use the VLA, and the first individual to use it to search for extraterrestrial signals. In 1998, he and University of Tasmania professor Simon Ellingsen conducted searches using the 26-meter dish at the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory in Hobart, Tasmania. Gray and Ellingsen made six 14-hour observations where the Big Ear was pointing when it found the Wow! signal, searching for intermittent and possibly periodic signals, rather than a constant signal. No signals resembling the Wow! were detected. In 2011, Gray published the book The Elusive Wow: Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, summarizing what is known about the Wow! signal, covering his own search for the signal, and offering an overview of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 2016, Gray published an article in Scientific American about the Fermi paradox, which claims that if extraterrestrials existed, we would see signs of them on Earth, because they would certainly colonize the galaxy by interstellar travel. Gray argues that the Fermi paradox, named after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, does not accurately represent Fermi's views. Gray states that Fermi questioned the feasibility of interstellar travel, but did not say definitively whether or not he thought extraterrestrials exist. This guy is like the king of searching for the wow signal. He, more than anyone else, had kept the dream alive so to speak of finding this signal again.

In 2017 a new theory emerged that got people talking. The headlines all over science publications read that the mystery had been solved. Everyone dove into this theory. Antonio Paris, of St Petersburg College, thought discovered the explanation: a pair of comets. The work was published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences.

These comets, known as 266P/Christensen and 335P/Gibbs, have clouds of hydrogen gas millions of kilometres in diameter surrounding them.

The Wow! Signal was detected at 1420MHz, which is the radio frequency hydrogen naturally emits.

Notably, the team had verified that the comets were within the vicinity at the time, and they report that the radio signals from 266/P Christensen matched those from the Wow! signal. They used three of world's biggest radio telescopes: the Parkes radio telescope in Australia (210 feet or 64 metres in diameter), the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia (140 feet or 40 metres in diameter), and Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico (the world's largest at 1,000 feet or 300 metres in diameter). In his paper, Paris wrote that comets will, under certain conditions, emit radio waves from the gases that surround them as they zoom closer to the sun. According to the study, Comet 266P/Christensen was in about the right position on the right day in 1977.

Several astronomers, including Ehman, think Paris is wrong about the comet. Ehman looked at Paris' study with Robert Dixon, who directs the radio observatory at The Ohio State University (Big Ear was destroyed in 1997). Two big issues are that the signal didn't repeat, and it appeared for such a short time. Ehman noted that the Big Ear telescope had two "feed horns," each of which provides a slightly different field of view for a radio telescope.

"We should have seen the source come through twice in about 3 minutes: one response lasting 72 seconds and a second response for 72 seconds following within about a minute and a half," Ehman told Live Science. "We didn't see the second one."

The only way that can happen, he said, is if the signal was cut off abruptly. A comet wouldn't produce that kind of signal, because the gases that surround them cover large, diffuse areas. Nor would the comet have escaped from the radio telescope's field of view that fast.

The other issue is the frequency of transmission. Paris said he has shown that comets can emit in that range, but Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, is skeptical. Shostak used to study emissions from neutral hydrogen in the 1,420-MHz range, and is less sure the emission would look right. Comets may not generate enough hydrogen to make a bright enough signal like Wow!.

"I don't think anyone ever found such emission from comets," Shostak told Live Science.

In late 2020 another theory came about. A star! First, some background. Back in 2013, the European Space Agency launched the Gaia space observatory to map the night sky — to determine the position, the distance, and the motion of stars with unprecedented accuracy. So far, Gaia has mapped some 1.3 billion stars, allowing astronomers to begin creating the most detailed 3D map ever made of our galaxy. The mission is expected to continue until 2024. Gaia’s new star map has significantly improved our understanding of the galaxy and the stars within it and this gave amateur astronomer Alberto Caballero an idea. The Gaia database is now significantly more detailed than the star catalog that John Kraus studied in the 1970s. Perhaps the new database might reveal the source of the Wow! signal, he reasoned. So Caballero repeated the search, looking for Sun-like stars among the thousands that have been identified by Gaia in this region of the sky. By Sun-like, he means stars that share the same temperature, radius and luminosity .

The search returned just one candidate. “The only potential Sun-like star in all the WOW! Signal region appears to be 2MASS 19281982-2640123,” says Caballero. This star sits in the constellation of Sagittarius at a distance of 1800 light-years. It is an identical twin to our Sun, with the same temperature, radius, and luminosity.

Of course, Caballero’s work does not mean that 2MASS 19281982-2640123 must have been the source. He points out that there are many stars in that region of the sky that are too dim to be included in the catalog. One of these could be the source. And there are some 66 other stars in the catalog that Caballero identified as potential candidates but with less strong evidence. These match the Sun’s temperature but data about their luminosity and radius is currently incomplete. So future data releases from Gaia and other mapping projects might yet reveal them as matches. For the moment, 2MASS 19281982-2640123 is our best bet and a good candidate for future study. Caballero says an obvious goal would be to look for signs of exoplanets orbiting this star. It could also be prioritized for study in the radio part of the spectrum.

So what else could it be? Could it still be an alien signal coming from a distant planet? Ehman isn't convinced it's aliens, either. There are many phenomena that show sudden appearances and disappearances of radio signals, including fast radio bursts (FRBs), which are mysterious radio bursts with hotly-debated astrophysical origins that generate irregular signals that last only milliseconds. Fast radio bursts are intense bursts of radio emission that have durations of milliseconds and exhibit the characteristic dispersion sweep of radio pulsars. The first was discovered in 2007 by Lorimer, although it was actually observed some six years earlier, in archival data from a pulsar survey of the Magellanic clouds. It was dubbed the “Lorimer Burst”. Many FRBs have since been recorded, including several that have been detected to repeat in seemingly irregular ways. Most FRBs are extragalactic, but the first Milky Way FRB was detected by the CHIME radio telescope in April 2020. When the FRBs are polarized, it indicates that they are emitted from a source contained within an extremely powerful magnetic field. The exact origin and cause of the FRBs is still the subject of investigation; proposals for their origin range from a rapidly rotating neutron star and a black hole, to extraterrestrial intelligence. If the Big Ear picked up only the tail end of such an emission, the data could look similar to the Wow! signal, Ehman speculated.

"The issue with the feed horns is something no one can explain, including me," Paris said. "There is some data out there to suggest the issue is at the telescope end and not the phenomenon itself." So it's possible that the signal could have been caused by a glitch in the Big Ear telescope.

Was that E.T. or was it not E.T.? Nobody knows,” Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, tells Astronomy. “Nobody has ever found another explanation for what that might have been. It's like you hear chains rattling in your attic and you think ‘My god ghosts are real.’ But then you never hear them again, so what do you think?” Most importantly, Shostak says that if the signal wouldn’t have had Wow! written across it, no one would’ve ever heard of it. One-off signals like this were common back in the early days of SETI, when observatory computers were too primitive to notify astronomers of discoveries in real time, or perform rapid-fire follow-ups.

Despite uncertainties on signals picked up from across space, scientists continue to look for signs of alien life. For instance, NASA's TESS mission hopes to find exoplanets. The effort has already led to the discovery of “hot Saturn” planet TOI 197.01. Lead author Lisa Kaltenegger, a professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, said that life might exist in different types of worlds, but what we know is that there is a world like ours who can support life. Thus, it makes sense to search for Earth-like planets.

So all this being said we found a race of aliens originating from the constellation of Sagittarius. These guys could have been the ones that sent the signal. You wanna know about them… Well we gonna tell you about them either way.

Bellatricians are one of many races stated by people to be an actual, existing species of extraterrestrial life. As such, they appear in alien conspiracy theories, most notably those expressed by Sheldan Nidle and his life partner, Colleen Marshall.

Bellatricians are stated as being a bipedal dinosaurian/reptilian hybrid with scaly, multicolored skin that seems to possess a sort of luminosity. These scales are similar in design to those of a crocodile and can be green, yellow, brown, or even red in coloration. With this in mind, green and yellow are the dominant scale colors. Overall, they are very scaly and bony. A large bony crest surrounds their upper head, while a small bony crest runs up the middle of the back and connects to the larger crest found on top of the head.

Their eyes are large and protruding, and can be either red or dull yellow in hue, resembling those of Earth's reptiles. They are set forward on the face just above and to either side of their very small nose. These eyes have been stated (by Colleen Marshall) as "conveying more warmth than I had ever thought possible".

Their mouth has thin lips that run from one side of the head to the other, presumably filled with razor-sharp teeth. Ears are tympanic in nature, like a frog's; the only sign of their existence is a circular patch of extra-smooth, 3 inch (7.62 centimeter) diameter area on either side of the head just behind the eyes.

Thin hands are attached to their arms, and are armed with six long, clawed fingers. The feet have five toes which end in small yet very sharp claws. While they do possess a tail, it is short, only extending to the feet, although it is thick like that of a crocodilian. They exhibit sexual dimorphism, with males being slightly shorter than females.

This reptilian creatures are notable for their great skills in leadership and diplomacy. They speak in a very coarse and guttural tone, their speech filled with deep growling and hissing noises. They require between 5 to 8 hours of sleep daily.

The Bellatricians migrated from the constellation of Sagittarius around 25 million years ago into the area surrounding the constellation of Orion. They are now found some 112.5 light years from Earth. For the past 6 million years, they were in charge of all the former Alliance forces for our sector of the Milky Way Galaxy. However they were finally accepted into the Galactic Federation far more recently, approximately 3 years ago.

Former members of the League of Orion, it is stated that the Bellatricians presented themselves as tyrannical overlords in the Milky Way galaxy for eons. During this time, they were the oppressive ruling class for the Draconian Empire. However, now they are attempting a transformation, and aspire to be accepted as trustworthy members of the galaxy. They are now a very curious and benevolent group that wish to connect with Earth and exchange perspectives on our shared history. They are also open to connecting with those who wish to have an experience during dreamtime. It is proposed that the more open and accepting that humanity can be, the more likely we are to attract an "otherworldly" experience.

The Bellatricians have expressed their sincere desire to make amends for the atrocities they have performed throughout the ages. They are trying their hardest to let go of their natural self-serving attitude and are learning to embrace the joy received when in service to others. They wish to have a gentle introduction to those who can open their hearts, and forgive them for what they represented in the past, and instead accept who they are today. They are very solemn and serious beings, and thereby do not grasp the concept of humor, especially that which is derived from the misfortune of others.

So what about their technology?

Here's what we know:

Scout Craft: Look like dew drops and beetle, and can vary in length from 100-400 ft (30.5-122 meters).

Mothership: Look like large tadpoles, and very enormously in length, from 1-400 miles (1.6-640 kilometers) across.

Could they be the source of the signal? Jon believes they are!

There we go passengers! A little bit more light-hearted and nerdy episode for you guys. With all of the alien talk around these days we figured this would be a fun episode to speculate upon! What do you guys think? Let us know.

Scariest space movies

https://variety.com/lists/10-best-space-horror-movies/

Saturday May 22, 2021

SPECIAL EPISODE an interview with a Joplin Tornado Survivor

Saturday May 22, 2021

This is SUCH a special episode for us! We had the pleasure of interviewing a survivor of the catastrophic tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri ten years ago, TODAY!

Thank you, Andy.

Please check out the pictures he sent to us over at www.themidnightttrainpodcast.com under our blog section.

Again, thank you Andy. You're a hero.

Monday May 17, 2021

Creepy Sweden

Monday May 17, 2021

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