Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

The Pilton Super Opener opens a can in no time at all, and nobody at the company, least of all the man who designed it, can say where the can disappears to in the process.

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

SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Super Opener” by Michael Zuroy (“Worlds of If” Science Fiction magazine from August, 1958)

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

Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 14, 2026

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

During the Black Death, medieval Europeans bathed in vinegar, slept on rotting straw, dumped waste in the streets — and still couldn’t figure out why everyone was dying.
==========
HOUR ONE: During the bubonic plague in the early Middle-Ages, those who became sick and were even suspected of having the plague, were forced to relocate to a quarantined island – Poveglia Island. The gruesomeness that took place there still continues today, with the island being illegal to visit – and reportedly, very haunted. (Inside Black Plague Island) *** We look at some of the bathing – and lack thereof – that took place during the bubonic plague, as well as some of the beliefs they had about diet and how it might protect from contagion. Some of the ideas of what people thought could protect them from the disease are nothing short of shocking. (Living With The Black Death)
==========
HOUR TWO: About 80 years after the black plague began, a different plague came upon England – a fatal one that would cause you to almost instantly perspire to death. (Death By Sweat) *** Most everyone is familiar with the plague in Europe in the early 1400s – but in the early 1900s it struck again. This time in San Francisco. If you’ve not heard that before, it could be because the U.S. government tried to cover it up. (The Plague of San Francisco) *** Of all the imagery that comes to mind when hearing the words “bubonic plague” the most prevalent is most certainly that of the doctors – and the odd, bird-like masks they would wear. Why they dressed that way is interesting – but what the doctors did while wearing those suits and in their labs as they tried to battle the illness is absolutely horrifying. (Plague Doctors) *** And it probably comes as no surprise that something so deadly and horrific as the black plague would leave behind some residual paranormal energy – and boy is there a lot of it. (A Plague of Ghosts)
==========
SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: We look at some of the bathing – and lack thereof – that took place during the bubonic plague, as well as some of the beliefs they had about diet and how it might protect from contagion. Some of the ideas of what people thought could protect them from the disease are nothing short of shocking. (Living With The Black Death – CONTINUED) *** Europe just could not escape plagues of any kind – for example, the plague that made you, against your will, keep dancing until you dropped dead. (The Dance of Death)
==========
SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT’S SHOW:
“Inside Black Plague Island” by Cheryl Adams Richkoff for Graveyard Shift: https://tinyurl.com/v85y7k6
“Plague Doctors” by Melissa Sartore for Ranker’s Weird History: https://tinyurl.com/rmap5d8
“Death By Sweat” by Melissa Sartore for Ranker’s Weird History: https://tinyurl.com/vqpvgrz
“The Dance of Death” by Melissa Satore for Ranker’s Weird History: https://tinyurl.com/u6kdwgp
“The Plague of San Francisco” by Melissa Brinks for Ranker’s Weird History: https://tinyurl.com/sbaht69
“Living With The Black Death” by Genevieve Carlton for Ranker’s Weird History: https://tinyurl.com/tcbo9af,https://tinyurl.com/sfkjhrg; and Kellen Perry for Ranker: https://tinyurl.com/u4bxkuf
“A Plague of Ghosts” by Erin Wisti for Graveyard Shift: https://tinyurl.com/tm2cxzr
==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
==========
"I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46
==========
WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2026
==========
To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

New Orleans high society adored the charming Jacques St. Germain, right up until they started asking why a man who claimed to be forty could describe the 1700s like he'd lived them. Now more than a century later people are still arguing over whether Jacques St. Germain was a con man, an immortal, or a true-life vampire.

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

READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9xjvjy

FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Was a New Orleans neighborhood home to an immortal vampire in the early 1900s? (Vampire in New Orleans) *** A young girl disappeared in Yosemite National Park back in 1981. To this day no one knows where she is, and some say a paranormal cause is to blame. (A Supernatural Disappearance in Yosemite) *** After Lori Erica Ruff's death, her husband discovered he had been married to a complete stranger. Because Lori Erica Ruff never existed. (The Woman Without an Identity) *** Was there a plot to murder Marconi scientists in the 1980s? (The Marconi Murders)

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding
00:00:41.374 = Show Open
00:02:10.004 = The Immortal Vampire of New Orleans
00:18:58.982 = A Supernatural Disappearance In Yosemite ***
00:29:58.328 = The Woman Without An Identity
00:36:55.918 = The Marconi Murders ***
00:51:45.221 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break

LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: 
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Vampire In New Orleans” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2IrlOTU
“A Supernatural Disappearance in Yosemite” by Beth Elias: http://bit.ly/2v94zOB
“The Woman Without an Identity” by Stephanie Webber: http://bit.ly/2UBMIyO
‘The Marconi Murders” posted at The Unredacted: http://bit.ly/2VR1PRC
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)

WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: June 16, 2020

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

This episode of Weird Darkness moves from a suspected vampire in early-1900s New Orleans to a teenager who vanished in Yosemite National Park, a Texas wife who'd stolen a dead child's identity, and a string of bizarre deaths among British defense scientists during the Cold War.It opens with Jacques St. Germain, a wealthy stranger who arrived in New Orleans in the early 1900s, settled into a mansion at 1039 Royal Street, and began hosting lavish parties for the city's elite. He spoke French, English, and Spanish, described centuries-old events as if he'd witnessed them, was almost never seen in daylight, and never ate at his own feasts. He also claimed descent from the Comte de St. Germain, the 18th-century adventurer and alchemist who told Casanova he was three hundred years old, and the resemblance between the two men was close enough that people began to wonder if they were the same person. A prostitute's leap from his upper-floor window, her story of an attempted bite to the neck, and what police allegedly found in his darkened second floor after he skipped town turned a rich man's eccentricities into one of the city's most enduring vampire legends.From there the episode heads to California and the disappearance of fourteen-year-old Stacy Ann Arras, who walked away from a horseback tour group at Sunrise High Sierra Camp in Yosemite on July 17, 1981, intending to photograph a nearby lake, and was never seen again. As many as 150 searchers, tracking dogs, divers, and helicopters combed the area and recovered only a single camera lens. The segment weighs the theories still attached to her case, from a runaway teen in flip-flops to David Paulides and his Missing 411 research, along with search-and-rescue volunteers who explain how wind, ridgelines, and dry ground can swallow a person's voice and scent within fifty feet.Next comes the woman who called herself Lori Erica Ruff, found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot outside her in-laws' home in Longview, Texas, on Christmas Eve 2010. Her husband, Blake Ruff, then opened a lockbox she'd forbidden him to touch and found the birth certificate of Becky Sue Turner, a two-year-old who died in a Washington house fire in 1971, along with the paper trail of a name change in Idaho in 1988. Investigators listed her as a Jane Doe for six years until DNA from her young daughter traced her to a Pennsylvania family whose seventeen-year-old, Kimberly McLean, had walked away from home in 1986.The episode closes in Britain, where at least twenty-five scientists and engineers connected to Marconi Electronic Systems and related defense contractors died between 1982 and 1990, many of them working on projects tied to America's Strategic Defense Initiative. Dr. Keith Bowden's car went off a bridge on tires someone had swapped for worn ones, Vimal Dajibhai went off the Clifton Suspension Bridge with a puncture wound on his buttock, Arshad Sharif tied a ligature to a tree and hit the accelerator, and Alistair Beckham wired himself to a power socket in his garden shed hours before Ministry of Defence men arrived to collect his files. Coroners returned open verdicts, Computer Weekly journalist Tony Collins wrote a book arguing the pattern pointed to a plot, and Margaret Thatcher's government called the whole cluster a coincidence brought on by workplace stress.

A movie actress worn down by a lifetime of asthma puts her hand in a bald doctor's and agrees to let him remove her head, on his promise that a prettier one is on the way.

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

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Beheading” (September 20, 1978) ***WD
00:46:46.654 = CBC Nightfall, “Willoughby Obsession” (September 05, 1980)
01:14:40.820 = Nightmare, “The Leech” (April 07, 1954)
01:37:20.592 = Song, “The Leech” (based on the Nightmare episode) by Static Wax
01:40:07.933 = Obsession, “Cry Vengeance” (May 05, 1952) ***WD
02:10:24.576 = Origin of Superstition, “Two Walker” (1935) ***WD
02:23:04.029 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Rita Malloy” (April 23, 1949)
02:52:43.186 = Peril, “Squeeze Play” (1953) ***WD
03:16:26.722 = Mystery Playhouse, “Lady In Morgue” (May 15, 1945) ***WD
03:40:09.104 = Philip Morris Playhouse, “Night Has A Thousand Eyes” (August 19, 1953) ***WD
04:04:47.576 = Price of Fear, “William And Mary” (September 08, 1973) ***WD
04:32:19.384 = Quiet Please, “The Other Side Of The Stars” (May 08, 1949)
05:01:42.559 = Show Close

(ADU) = Air Date Unknown
(LQ) = Low Quality
***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.
CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0773

In 1896 the visitors pedaled airships. In 1952 they were blond and worried about the bomb. Today they're gray, from forty light-years away, and worried about the climate. Somebody keeps updating the aliens, and it might be us.

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options here: https://pod.link/1651062114

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

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