THE DEAD HOUSE: Thirty-Six Corpses Wired To A Bell, And Mark Twain's Errand | #RetroRadio

On January 16th, 1935, federal agents poured more than 1,500 rounds into a two-story house on Lake Weir in Ocklawaha, Florida, and when the shooting stopped, Fred Barker and his mother, Ma Barker, were dead inside, and visitors to the empty house say an old woman's cries still come from behind its bullet-riddled walls. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/MaBarker READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/jtk393c3 FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The Lingering Ghost of “Ma” Barker haunts the shores of Lake Weir in Florida. *** Sex with ghosts… is it erotic or horrific? *** An axe-wielding maniac stalked the streets of the Big Easy, and the only way to avoid slaughter was to play jazz.  CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:01:11.112 = Show Open 00:02:21.878 = The Axman of New Orleans 00:11:56.246 = Ghost Sex: Erotic or Horrific *** 00:21:34.894 = The Lingering Ghost of Ma Barker *** 01:17:33.555 = Show Close *** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break *No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast* SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Ghost Sex: Erotic or Horrific” written by G. Michael Vasey: http://amzn.to/2FQGHTV “The Lingering Ghost of ‘Ma Barker”: https://tinyurl.com/y5pdb6rd “The Axman of New Orleans”: https://tinyurl.com/y46okmow(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: January 24, 2021 More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

In the early 1980s, a witness swore flames rose from a man's leg in Virginia's chair, Alabama needed three jolts to kill John Evans, and Mississippi's gas chamber left Jimmy Lee Gray striking his head on a steel pole. In Georgia, "Repeat the execution" was the commissioner's answer when an official told a tape recorder that Alpha Otis Stephens was still alive. From the book “BOTCHED EXECUTIONS: Four Centuries Of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections And Firing Squads” by Darren Marlar at https://weirddarkness.com/botchedexecutions WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: October 19, 2026 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HM3LZM9M/

On June 19th, 1953, Julius Rosenberg died in Sing Sing's electric chair, and minutes later his wife, Ethel, took his place. After the shocks that had killed him, the doctors still heard her heartbeat, and the executioner asked, "Want another?" From the book “BOTCHED EXECUTIONS: Four Centuries Of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections And Firing Squads” by Darren Marlar at https://weirddarkness.com/botchedexecutions WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: October 19, 2026 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HM3LZM9M/

Nord Holber and Mike Doren have spent three days fishing a single rock out of the asteroid belt, and when a colonel on the visiphone reports that the pirate Dhain Kadine has robbed the Jovian Nymph and is running for the asteroids below them, they're the only ship in his way. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/SpaceLane SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Space-Lane of No-Return” by George A. Whittington (Planet Stories Summer 1946) WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: October 19, 2026 More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

In the first hour, Weird Darkness Radio digs into the archive for Halloween stories, with the Denver haunting behind the film The Changeling, the Halloween-night disappearance of Penn State student Cindy Song, Europe's werewolf trials, the history of the Ouija board, and how to support a friend after a paranormal experience. Weird Darkness Radio stays with Halloween itself in the second hour, covering how trick-or-treating nearly died during World War II, where the holiday's customs come from, the legend of Stingy Jack behind the jack-o'-lantern, and how the wise woman became the witch. ==== HOUR ONE:It opens in Denver, where composer Russell Hunter said that in 1968 he rented the Henry Treat Rogers Mansion near Cheesman Park, found a hidden room full of a sickly boy's belongings, and followed séances to a grave beneath a house on South Dahlia Street. His account became George C. Scott's 1980 ghost film The Changeling, down to the red rubber ball, though no record places Hunter in the mansion, and Cheesman Park itself was laid out over an old cemetery where workers still turn up skeletons.From there, the hour turns to Cindy Song, a Penn State student from Seoul, South Korea, who left a Halloween party at Players Nightclub in State College dressed as a bunny and was dropped off at her apartment around 4 a.m. on November 1st, 2001. Only her keys and purse were missing. In 2003, investigators dug burned human remains out of the yard of Hugo Selenski's home near Wilkes-Barre, and Selenski was later convicted of two other murders and sentenced to life, but police have never connected him to Cindy, and her disappearance is still unsolved.Next come the werewolf trials of early modern Europe, beginning in Poligny, France, in 1521, when Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun confessed under torture to rubbing on a devil's ointment that turned them into wolves. The roll call runs through Gilles Garnier, Jacques Roulet, the Werewolf of Caude, and Peter Stumpp, executed in 1589, on to a teenager named Hans, sentenced to death in Estonia in 1651, and Thiess of Kaltenbrun, an old man who said he was one of the hounds of God and got off with a flogging.After that, the hour traces the Ouija board from the Fox sisters' rapping messages and the planchette to the Kennard Novelty Company of Baltimore, named on the first talking-board patent in 1890, and to William Fuld, who took the business over and died in 1927 when a rib he broke falling from his factory roof pierced his heart. Parker Brothers bought the board in 1966, and the segment weighs the scientists' answer, unconscious movement of the users' fingers, against the belief that spirits push the planchette themselves.The hour closes with Rebecca Montiel's advice, from an article for Paranormality magazine, on supporting a friend who reports a shadowy visitor that comes into the bedroom every night and leaves the sleeper unable to move or scream: listen without interrupting, keep skepticism out of it unless asked, and help rule out a medical cause first. ===== HOUR TWO:It opens with War Ration Book No. 1, the so-called Sugar Book handed out starting May 4th, 1942, after sugar became the first consumer good rationed in wartime America, which all but ended the young custom of trick-or-treating. Once rationing lifted in June 1947, candy-company advertising, children's magazines like Jack and Jill, Charles Schulz's Halloween Peanuts strips, and the 1966 special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown brought it back for good, with UNICEF's cardboard collection boxes riding along.From there, after the 2016 creepy-clown sightings and the red balloons found tied to sewer grates in Lititz, Pennsylvania, the year the remake of Stephen King's It reached theaters, the hour goes back about 2,000 years to Samhain, the Celtic festival marking summer's end. Folklorist Jack Santino ties Samhain to the dead crossing over, York University historian Nicholas Rogers finds no hard evidence of...