A Six-Inch Doll, A Dead Puppy, and A Stolen Strongbox: Perigi’s Wonderful Dolls | #RetroRadio

A discontented Long Island housewife and the forgettable corset salesman she seduced hatch a clumsy plot to murder her sleeping husband — a scheme so poorly executed that one famous newsman couldn't resist giving it a name. ========== HOUR ONE: Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray devised a scheme to get rid of Ruth’s husband – and they planned it so well that, okay… actually no. They were so inept they were caught immediately, and even the police publicly called them incompetent. (The Dumb-Bell Murder) *** For over 2,000 years across South and Southeast Asia, trained elephants served as living instruments of execution, crushing condemned prisoners with calculated brutality under the control of their handlers. (Execution By Elephant) *** Before he became a Civil War general, Congressman Dan E. Sickles' scandalous murder trial changed our legal system forever. He said outright that he had killed his wife’s lover. So how did he avoid being found guilty of the crime he admitted to committing? (How A Congressman Got Away With Murder) *** In 1150, two children were found near Woolpit in England – they wore strange clothes, spoke oddly, but the most identifiable characteristic for both children was their skin was green. The children themselves were a mystery – but what happened when they grew up? Did they marry? Did they have children? Could there be decedents of the green children of Woolpit living among us today? (Great Grandkids of Green Children) *** In the summer of 1518, a mysterious dancing plague seized the French town of Strasbourg, compelling hundreds to dance without rest for months—some until they collapsed and died—in a frenzy that baffled authorities and remains unexplained to this day. (Dancing Plague) ========== HOUR TWO: When it comes to receiving the death sentence, history has given us several ways to go about the execution. Hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, being stoned to death or burned at the stake… but you have to be some whole new level of “hated” by the people if your death blow comes by way of molten gold being poured down your throat. (Death By Golden Throat) *** Typically, when you hear the phrase “high speed chase”, you think of law enforcement trying to catch the bad guys who are in a getaway vehicle. Perhaps after a bank robbery, or after blowing a stop sign and simply refusing to pull over. But have you heard about the time that the police were involved in a high-speed chase up to 100-miles-per hour, trying to catch up to a flying saucer? (The 100mph UFO Chase) *** When the Black Plague arrived at their doorsteps, the villagers were forced to choose between life or certain doom. It’s the tragic tale of England’s Plague Village – the village of Eyam. (The Black Death Comes to Eyam) *** In the 1800s, women finding themselves “with child” but unmarried, were treated like second-class citizens or worse. And during a time when birth control was limited or even unavailable outside of the rhythm method, what was a girl to do if she found herself in such dire circumstances? Fortunately, there was a woman there ready to help – to take the baby off their hands and give it a good home. Or so everyone thought. (Minnie, The Baby Farmer) *** On frozen lakes near Manitowish Waters, a hooded figure appears to ice fishermen, silently guiding them to the best spots for a catch before vanishing into the winter air. (The Ice Fisherman Ghost) ========== SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: “Tom" and "Lena" are in a loving relationship and have a young child together. It sounds like the perfect family – except for one tiny detail about their relationship. Tom and Lena are biological brother and sister. (I Fell In Love With My Sister) *** In Norfolk, England the village of Eccles was slowly gobbled by the rising waters of the sea in the early 1600s. But even today, sometimes during a particularly heavy story, you can see St. Mary’s Church mysteriously reappear… bringing with it, the dead buried in the church...

Something tall and black is standing on the mountain above the Arctic outpost, it hasn't moved in days, and every man who sees it is a man who has something to answer for. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/shapeinthesnow FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: A machinist ships out to an Arctic research outpost for a one-month government contract, keeping a journal at his wife's insistence to pass the time. The work is dull and the crew gets along. Then he sees something standing on the mountainside — tall, black, motionless, miles off — and finds he isn't the only man in camp who can see it. His roommate has heard of it before, from a grandfather who spent his life being watched by it, and who left behind a single line copied from an asylum patient's journal: “All of our mistakes are never forgotten.” Day by day, the thing on the mountain is closer. 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: https://www.creepypasta.com/forgotten_mistakes/ (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: February 01, 2024

In the quiet village of Maxley, where shadows stretch long and the dead refuse to rest, an unsuspecting community is about to uncover a horror that has slept for centuries. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mrsamworth READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mr2n9c8m FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: “Mrs. Amworth” by E.F. Benson *** “The White Death” by Christina Skelton *** “My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived” by Richard Saxon CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = Show Open 00:01:28.161 = “The White Death” by Christina Skelton 00:06:24.330 = “My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived” by Richard Saxon *** 00:26:30.035 = “Mrs. Amworth” by E.F. Benson *** 01:03:48.287 = 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: “Mrs. Amworth” by E.F. Benson: https://tinyurl.com/yyvqdwub “The White Death” by Christina Skelton: https://tinyurl.com/yxjcujwx “My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived” by Richard Saxon: https://tinyurl.com/y4l9zzgq (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: August 20, 2020 Weird Darkness returns with a night of urban legend, found-footage horror, and classic vampire fiction, moving from a South American death-spirit to a stack of home videos that shouldn't exist to an English village with a very sociable widow. It opens with "The White Death" by Christina Skelton, told by a narrator sitting at his computer waiting to die. A friend's aunt, drunk the night before, finally explained how the boy's parents had died: they were doing mission work in a small South American country when a terrified man burst into the mission hospital claiming a Muerta blanca — the White Death, the White Devil Girl — had killed his sister and was coming for him. She was a girl with dead black eyes that wept bile, who moved without moving her legs, and who knocked on the doors and mirrors between her and her victim: once for the skin she uses to patch her own rotting flesh, twice for the muscle, three times for bones she carves into knives, four for the heart she wears around her neck, and on through the teeth, the eyes, and finally the soul. She can only find you if you saw her kill someone, or if someone tells you about her. The missionaries phoned the aunt about it that same night, and were found in the morning skinned and dismembered, their bodies covered in small, child-like handprints. The aunt was murdered the night she told the story, the friend died on the phone while the...

A man who has feared death every day of his life wakes among strangers who cannot die — and finds that to them, he is something called an “atavus” — drawn by lot into what they have waited five hundred years to do. 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, “Wise Child” (March 24, 1978) ***WD 00:45:57.515 = Arch Oboler’s Plays, “Immortal Gentleman” (June 17, 1939) ***WD 01:14:01.420 = Barry Craig, “Corpse On Delivery” (November 31, 1951) 01:41:53.419 = BBC Radio 4/Radio 7, “Mortmain” (April 22, 1992) 02:26:10.177 = Night Beat, “Lost Souls” (November 16, 1951) ***WD 02:55:47.576 = Beyond The Green Door, “Mk. Arkady Bradian, Bolder and TNT” (1966) 02:58:57.644 = Man In Black (The Black Book), “The Price of the Head” (February 02, 1952) ***WD 03:13:42.390 = Blackstone The Magic Detective, “The Ghost That Wasn’t” (November 28, 1948) ***WD 03:26:24.838 = Box 13, “The Professor And The Puzzle” (January 09, 1949) 03:52:53.344 = Calling All Cars, “The Human Bomb” (December 20, 1933) ***WD 04:22:42.424 = Casey Crime Photographer, “A Tooth For a Tooth” (July 15, 1946) ***WD 04:48:33.183 = 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/WDRR0713 Weird Darkness presents Retro Radio: Old Time Radio in the Dark, a collection of vintage broadcasts spanning psychological horror, hard-boiled detective work, ghost stories, and the strange corners where the two overlap. It opens with the CBS Radio Mystery Theater and E.G. Marshall's presentation of "Wise Child," written by Sam Dann and starring Ralph Bell. Joyce and Calvin Spurlock argue their way off a turnpike into a storm near a place called Kiowa Flats, sleep the night in their stalled car, and wake to find a newborn baby lying naked on a hillside — alive, unharmed, and abandoned. Joyce insists the child is a miracle and claims him as her own, inventing a birth story to secure a certificate. Calvin Junior never grows, not an ounce, not a fraction of an inch, while doctors find him perfectly healthy. Then a newspaper report reveals that the wilderness north of Kiowa Flats had been used as a secret dumping ground for atomic waste — and Calvin begins to sense something in the air, a force, a light, a power that lets him read the minds of his boss, his sister, and his customers, reshaping his entire life around whatever entered that child during the storm.From there, Arch Oboler's "Immortal Gentleman" arrives with Edmund O'Brien and Anne Shepherd, in which a man terrified of death his entire life screams aloud in a crowded auditorium and then explains why to the woman beside him. Sitting through a political speech, he found himself displaced into a future where science has abolished death entirely — a world of young people conditioned for fifty years, filled with all human knowledge, living two hundred, three hundred, five hundred years with nothing to do because "the old ones" never die and never surrender their positions. They call him an atavus, a throwback that surfaces once in every two thousand embryos. Twenty-four of them draw lots in a darkened room, and he is handed a black box and told to throw it at a...

“Judas Kiss: The Traveling Clairvoyant of Tipton Mountain” — A hermit who claims he can watch distant events from inside a hollow pine tree becomes convinced the woman renting the cabin above his is a murderer — and only he knows what she's done. 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 Judas Kiss” (March 23, 1978) ***WD 00:45:48.210 = Tales From The Tomb, “Spirit Calling” (1960s) 00:50:20.385 = Two Thousand Plus, “World’s Apart” (November 29, 1950) ***WD 01:19:02.978 = The Unexpected, “Heat Wave” (1947-1948) 01:31:11.637 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Indian Fakir” (February 17, 1944) ***WD 01:44:47.860 = Dark Venture, “Elizabeth Is Frightened” (July 22, 1947) 02:14:43.934 = The Weird Circle, “Haunted Hotel” (May 13, 1945) 02:42:15.220 = The Whistler, “Murder Will Shout” (March 19, 1945) 03:11:41.385 = Strange Wills, “Emily” (August 31, 1946) 03:41:20.826 = Witch’s Tale, “Statue of Thor” (May 22, 1933) 04:04:13.136 = X Minus One, “Honeymoon In Hell” (December 26, 1956) 04:33:07.327 = ABC Mystery Time, “Murder In Haste” (1957) ***WD 04:56:48.877 = Strange Adventure, “Death Rides The Carousel” (1945) ***WD 05:00:05.724 = 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/WDRR0712 Weird Darkness presents Retro Radio, a night of classic dark radio drama spanning three decades of murder, madness, and the supernatural. It opens with the CBS Radio Mystery Theater's "The Judas Kiss," in which Oscar Absecker, a solitary handyman living on a dying mountain outside the village of Tipton, believes a big black dog barks three times whenever someone dies — and believes he can watch distant events unfold by standing inside a lightning-struck, hollow pine tree. When Deputy Luke Marbury rents the cabin above his to a woman named Enid Grant, Oscar becomes convinced that she is destroying the much younger man who joins her there, and his visions show him one killing after another. Fred Gwynne stars, with E.G. Marshall hosting.From there comes "Spirit Calling" from Tales From The Tomb, a short piece about a nine-year-old girl named Amy, alone in the house during a violent summer storm after her uncle Stanley's death, and the telephone call that comes through on a dead line.Next is Two Thousand Plus and "World's Apart," in which rocket engineer Jim Granger talks his way onto Flight 17, the first crewed voyage to Neptune, only for the spaceship Phoenix to be dragged off course by an uncharted comet. Crippled and lost, the ship limps to a landing at a place called Green Valley, where Commander Dijkstra can hear heartbeats across a room, the milk is green, and gravity does not behave the way it should.The Unexpected follows with "Heat Wave," starring Barry Sullivan as Whitey Malone, a fugitive sweating out a 110-degree heat wave in a fifth-floor garret while the police close in — and burning to settle accounts with the woman he thinks tipped them off.Then Unsolved Mysteries brings "Indian Fakir," a story told at the United Services Club in Simla, where a colonel recounts what happened when his young English bride, alone...