History’s Oddest Individuals And Sinister Psychopaths

Two best friends sneak out on the first night of summer break and find a working elevator standing alone in the middle of the woods — and the moment they step inside, the way home stops making sense. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-ElevatorInTheWoods SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Elevator In The Woods” by Adrian Johnson: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-elevator-in-the-woods/ WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: August 01, 2026

Records that surfaced in the weeks after the Siders children were found also describe a set of conjoined twins who died in 2022, two more underage marriages inside the extended family, and a stalled Ohio bill that would have raised the marriage age before any of it happened. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/siderscase20260731 Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://pod.link/1078714736 *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast* WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

This episode covers real-life horror far more extreme than usual, including a Russian professor arrested in 2011 for keeping the mummified corpses of 29 women and girls in his apartment, each one fitted with a hidden music box. It also includes the story of a 19th-century whiskey heir who paid six handkerchiefs for a 10-year-old girl so he could watch cannibals kill and eat her, and the theory that Alexander the Great was declared dead nearly a week before he actually died. Content is more graphic than usual, so listener discretion is advised. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/necropolyst READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8e5eme CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:00:47.354 = Show Open 00:01:58.356 = Alexander the Great 00:05:52.710 = The Ravenous Beast of Gévaudan 00:09:41.943 = The Rape and Burial of Jessica Lunsford *** 00:11:55.911 = The Dyatlov Pass Incident 00:15:29.080 = The Torture Dungeon of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng 00:19:10.197 = Robert The Doll 00:23:08.785 = The Disappearance and Eerie Return of Bobby Dunbar *** 00:26:33.271 = Albert Fish – The Brooklyn Vampire 00:30:06.498 = The Strange Disappearance of the Sodder Children 00:34:28.570 = Anatoly Moskvin, The Russian Who Mummified Dead Girls 00:38:41.505 = The Jameson Whiskey Cannibal *** 00:42:29.572 = Show Close *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast* SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Real-Life Horror Stories More Freaky Than Fiction” by Marco Margaritoff for AllThatsInteresting.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8p9c72 (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: March 2022 Weird Darkness this episode gathers real-life horror too extreme for scripted television, spanning from ancient Macedonia to the Congo basin and landing, along the way, in a Russian apartment stacked with mummified girls.It opens with Alexander the Great, who collapsed in Babylon in 323 B.C. after a 24-hour drinking binge triggered a sudden fever, a stabbing pain in his back, and creeping paralysis that eventually left him speechless; doctors pronounced him dead at 32. His body reportedly stayed "pure and fresh" for six days afterward, evidence ancient Greeks took as proof of his divinity. In 2019, Dr. Katherine Hall of New Zealand's University of Otago proposed in the Ancient History Bulletin that Alexander actually suffered from Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that paralyzes the body while leaving the mind fully intact; since fourth-century-B.C. doctors checked for breath rather than a pulse, Hall's theory suggests Alexander may have been declared dead nearly a week before he actually died, and was buried alive.From there, the story moves to 18th-century France, where a wolf-like creature killed or mauled close to 300 people across three years in the Gévaudan region, most of them women and children. Fourteen-year-old shepherdess Jeanne Boulet was the first confirmed victim in 1764; a fifteen-year-old girl killed a month later survived long enough to describe her...

A killer holes up in a snowbound hotel room with a dead woman in the closet — and finds he can't stop talking to her. 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, “Room 418” (May 09, 1978) ***WD 00:46:24.291 = SONG: “You Can’t Kill Me Twice” by Static Wax, inspired by ‘Room 418’ (July 30, 2026) *** https://weirddarkness.com/music 00:51:41.227 = The Whistler, “To Rent Danger” (April 16, 1945) 01:20:51.876 = Strange Wills, “They Met in Monte Carlo” (September 14, 1946) 01:50:12.816 = Witch’s Tale, “Violin” (May 03, 1934) 02:15:44.521 = X Minus One, “A Saucer of Loneliness” (January 09, 1957) 02:44:29.640 = Zero Hour, “Driving Sally Insane” (May 22, 1974) ***WD 03:01:45.934 = ABC Mystery Time, “Noe One Will Ever Know” (1956) ***WD 03:25:46.822 = Appointment With Fear, “Pit And The Pendulum” (September 18, 1943) ***WD 03:52:54.256 = Arch Oboloer’s Plays, “Bathysphere” (November 18, 1939) 04:22:18.566 = Barry Craig, “Dead On Arrival” (November 14, 1951) 04:50:29.917 = Tales From The Tomb, “The Girl Of His Dreams” (1960s) 04:54:03.798 = Incredible But True, “Premonition” (1950-1951) 04:57:39.831 = Strange Adventure, “John Friday Keeps Out” (1945) ***WD 05:00:56.402 = SONG: “Can’t Kill Me Twice” by Maggie Cross, inspired by ‘Room 418’ (July 30, 2026) *** https://weirddarkness.com 05:05:51.662 = 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/WDRR0730

A phony spiritualist who fakes contact with the dead to swindle grieving clients gets more than she bargained for when the voices calling back from Summerland might not be fake after all. 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, “Death And Desire” (May 08, 1978) ***WD 00:45:30.201 = Sleep No More, “Woman in Grey” and “Suspicious Gift” (March 20, 1957) 01:14:18.462 = BBC Radio 4 Spine Chillers, “Fresh Blood Series: A Fare To Remember” (March 2006) 01:27:08.082 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Murder Will Out” (February 27, 1945) ***WD 01:39:45.502 = Suspense, “Cat And Mouse” (March 30, 1944) 02:09:03.700 = The Creaking Door, “Isle of Lost Souls” (November 23, 1964) ***WD 02:37:51.669 = The Saint, “Case of Unhappy Homicide” (March 03, 1948) ***WD 03:01:54.083 = 2000 Plus, “When Worlds Met” (May 03, 1950) ***WD 03:30:56.223 = The Unexpected, “Heard But Not Seen” (1947-1948) 03:43:03.263 = Unsolved Mysteries, “The Witch Doctor” (1936) ***WD 03:57:59.514 = Dark Venture, “Pursuit” (July 31, 1945) ***WD 04:27:44.521 = The Weird Circle, “Black Parchment” (1945) 04:55:17.899 = Tales of the Frightened, “The Vampire Sleeps” (1963) 05:00:07.048 = 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/WDRR0729