(UPDATE) The 16 Siders Children: Vinton County Seeks Permanent Custody | #WeirdDarkNEWS

When a beautiful cigar shop girl is found dead under mysterious circumstances, a troubled Edgar Allan Poe becomes obsessed with solving the real-life crime—turning tragedy into fiction in a desperate search for truth. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/PoeCigarGirl FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: I’m sharing a chapter from the book “Nevermore: The Haunted Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe” by Troy Taylor, which I narrated the audiobook for. But this chapter by itself was so interesting to me that I thought it would make a great episode of Weird Darkness – plus, it gives you a little peek into what you might get if you purchase the book itself. I’ve left a link to the book in the show notes below. This is the true story about the murder of a girl who worked in a cigar shop, the investigation of it by law enforcement, how Edgar Allan Poe saw it as an opportunity to escalate his career and name… and how it all almost blew up in his face, even with some claiming Poe was the murderer of the poor girl! 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: “Nevermore: The Haunted Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe” by Troy Taylor: https://amzn.to/41e7BxJ (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 devotes this episode to the unsolved 1841 murder of New York shopgirl Mary Cecilia Rogers and its strange collision with the unraveling life of Edgar Allan Poe. It opens with the July 28, 1841 discovery of Rogers's body floating in the Hudson River near Hoboken's Sybil's Cave, tracing her path from a Connecticut-born clerk at John Anderson's Tobacco Emporium on Manhattan's Nassau Street to the local celebrity known as "the beautiful cigar girl," then following the search led by her fiancé, cork-cutter Daniel Payne, and former suitor Alfred Crommelin, through the police suspicion cast on Payne and on Anderson, the September discovery of her bloodied clothing in a Weehawken thicket, and Payne's own laudanum suicide at that same spot that October.From there, the episode moves to Philadelphia, where Poe was following the case from a distance while his household came apart around him: his wife Virginia's sudden pulmonary hemorrhage during a parlor performance on January 20, 1842, the day after Poe turned thirty-three, marked the onset of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill her, and the strain bled directly into stories like "The Masque of the Red Death" and "Eleonora." It follows Poe's collapse at Graham's Magazine, including his refused request for a salary advance on an $800-a-year wage, his failed bid for a Philadelphia Custom House post that ended with a fumbled meeting tied to President John Tyler, and his abrupt exit from the magazine after being passed over for associate editor Charles Peterson.Next comes Poe's attempt to solve the Rogers case through fiction, recreating how he pitched a sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"...

A bored twenty-one-year-old in New Orleans got an anonymous email inviting him to a bar with no name, and it gave him three separate chances to turn around before the elevator stopped going down. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-secretbar SOURCES and RESOURCES:  “Secret Bar” by K. Banning Kellum: https://www.creepypasta.com/secret-bar/ (find more creepiness in K. Banning Kellum’s book “Gris Gris and Ju Ju, A New Orleans Horror” https://amzn.to/2EaYeH6) WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: July 29, 2026

For over a century, witnesses across Michigan and Wisconsin have described the same impossible figure – upright, wolf-headed, and aware of being watched. Some walked away with scars, others with a story they were afraid to tell for decades. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/dogman READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckpcp8s FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Across Michigan and Wisconsin, encounters with an upright, wolf-headed figure span more than a century – from nineteenth-century logging camps to farm roads, deer stands, and suburban backyards. Witnesses describe a creature with human-like hands, glowing eyes, and an unsettling awareness of being watched, several of them staying silent about what they saw for years rather than risk being disbelieved. Hunters, drivers, and at least one retired sheriff's deputy all report the same detail – something that watches back, and in more than one account, something that speaks. CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:06:13.435 = Show Open 00:08:57.805 = Part One 00:18:33.555 = Part Two *** 00:46:24.349 = Part Three *** 01:00:02.576 = Part Four *** 01:14:17.255 = Part Five *** 01:27:28.423 = Part Six *** 01:34:00.844 = Part Seven *** 01:46:18.276 = Show Close 01:47:34.794 = SONG: “Dogman of Silver Creek” by Dark Weirdness *** = 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: PHOTO: 1961 photo of Dogman (at Strangeology.com): https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/muajp2my BOOK: “The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf” by Linda Godfrey: https://amzn.to/43xNkro The InBetween with Carol Ann (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@TheInBetweenTales MichigansThumb.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p98vf2c TetZoo.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4maj49wk Hangar1Publishing.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc29e65a MythFolks.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8wdd24 DiscoveryUK.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p88uxkj CreepyEncounters.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckncywh ListVerse.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mtybyttw (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 22, 2025 Weird Darkness devotes a full episode to the Dogman, the upright, wolf-headed cryptid reported across Michigan and Wisconsin for more than a century, moving through firsthand encounters, a claimed government cover-up, a witnessed fight between a Dogman and two Sasquatch, and a side-by-side comparison of Dogman folklore against traditional werewolf mythology.It opens with the creature's documented history, tracing the first alleged sighting to 1887, when a group of lumberjacks in Wexford County, Michigan described a being with the body of a man and the head of a dog during the state's great logging era. Similar reports followed in Allegan County in the 1950s and in Cross Village, Big Rapids, and Manistee County during the 1960s, while Elkhorn, Wisconsin became the center of activity in the early 1990s. The segment also catalogs standalone...

A man wakes up convinced he murdered someone in his sleep, and the marks on his own body say the dream might not have been a dream at 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, “Cool Killer Carl” (May 05, 1978) ***WD 00:46:18.874 = Mystery Playhouse, “Nightmare” (November 28, 1944) 01:15:15.928 = Price of Fear, “Remains To Be Seen” (September 01, 1973) ***WD 01:42:19.483 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Terrified Man” (January 15, 1948) ***WD (LQ)a 02:06:01.040 = Quiet Please, “The Smell of High Wines” (March 20, 1949) ***WD 02:35:22.653 = Radio City Playhouse, “Interval” (November 27, 1949) ***WD 03:03:46.860 = Half Hour To Kill, “Blackout Never Aired” (October 29, 1946) ***WD 03:32:04.765 = Sam Spade, “Adam Figg Caper” (October 05, 1947) ***WD 03:55:50.400 = The Sealed Book, “Stranger In The House” (May 06, 1945) ***WD 04:25:19.830 = The Shadow, “Bubbling Death” (December 05, 1943) ***WD 04:50:39.793 = Strange Adventure, “Title Unknown – Episode 69” (1945) ***WD 04:53:57.077 = Calling All Detectives, “Jerry Investigates a Mysterious Increase in Hospital Deaths” (July 06, 1948) ***WD (LQ) 05:01:43.438 = 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/WDRR0728

Six strangers board a night train crawling through the worst winter in years — a divorced businessman, a runaway couple, a wealthy man running out of time, and an elderly woman being shipped off by her own family — each quietly hoping this trip might be the one that changes everything, for better or worse. 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, “Journey To Somewhere” (May 04, 1978) ***WD 00:44:26.457 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Killer Come Back To Me” (May 17, 1946) 01:13:35.047 = Mr. Keen, “The Leaping Dog” (April 13, 1944) ***WD 01:42:41.788 = Murder at Midnight, “The Man With The Black Beard” (May 08, 1950) ***WD 02:08:37.327 = The Black Museum, “The Tan Shoe” (January 15, 1952) 02:33:18.183 = Mysterious Traveler, “The Green Plague” (June 17, 1952) 03:00:29.228 = CBC Nightfall, “Hands Off” (July 25, 1980) 03:27:14.184 = Obsession, “Clinging Hate” (May 14, 1951) ***WD 03:49:55.235 = Origin of Superstition, “Kissing Under Mistletoe” (1935) ***WD 04:04:07.297 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Rory Malone” (March 20, 1949) 04:33:03.187 = Peril, “Lucky Lady” (1953) ***WD 04:58:54.597 = 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/WDRR0727