(Bonus Episode) “AMATEUR IN CHANCERY” by George O. Smith (Short Sci-Fi Story) #WeirdDarkness

Sixty-five years ago this week, a Portsmouth couple drove home through the White Mountains and arrived hours later than they’d planned; the story of what happened in that gap became the template for the modern alien abduction narrative, and the psychiatrist who drew it out of them believed half of it. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full script): https://weirddarkness.com/betty-and-barney-hill/ 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* WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Originally aired: September 15, 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 On the week of the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Betty and Barney Hill UFO incident, Weird Darkness retraces the September 19th to 20th, 1961 drive through New Hampshire's White Mountains that became America's first widely reported alien abduction account, from the light over Route 3 to the Project Blue Book file, the hypnosis tapes in Dr. Benjamin Simon's Boston office, the Zeta Reticuli star map, and the sixty-five-year fight over what any of it means.It opens at 10:05 PM in a Colebrook restaurant, as Betty and Barney Hill of Portsmouth start the last leg home from Montreal in a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air with their dachshund Delsey in the back seat. South of Lancaster, Betty spots a light below the moon that keeps pace with the car past Cannon Mountain and Franconia Notch, and two miles north of North Woodstock it comes down over the highway; Barney walks into a field with 7x50 binoculars and sees figures in shiny black uniforms watching him from a row of windows before he runs back to the car shouting that they're going to be captured. Two sets of beeps from the trunk bracket a thirty-five-mile stretch of road neither of them can remember, and the kitchen clock reads after five when they get home, two hours later than the drive should have taken.From there the episode follows the paper trail: Barney's scuffed shoes, a dozen shiny circles on the trunk lid that send a compass needle spinning, a torn dress dusted with pink powder, and Betty's September 21st call to Pease Air Force Base that produced Air Force Information Report 100-1-61, a document that never mentions the figures Barney saw. Hayden Planetarium lecturer Walter Webb interviews the couple for six hours for NICAP, two IBM men work out the missing two hours in November, and Betty begins five nights of dreams about small men with Jimmy Durante noses who examine her aboard a craft. Barney's health collapses into ulcers, hypertension, and a ring of growths on his groin, and in December 1963 the couple lands in the Back Bay office of Dr. Benjamin Simon, a Second World War Army psychiatrist who hypnotizes them separately over the following months while a tape recorder runs. Barney describes wraparound eyes that pushed into his brain and a...

Test pilot Steve Weston chased something impossible at the edge of Earth's atmosphere and returned ten hours later – yet only with enough fuel for ten minute flight. He returns, convinced he has an urgent warning to save Earth. Is it delusion from his time in space – or something we must all pay attention to in order to preserve humanity?  EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-outerlimit SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Outer Limit” by Graham Doar (“The Saturday Evening Post” December 1949 / X Minus One) WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 15, 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

A physicist who has spent five years and twenty million dollars chasing one missing equation leaves his attaché case in a highway diner, where the seventeen-year-old at the cash register reads the twelve pages inside and understands every line. 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 Conversion Factor” (September 22, 1978) ***WD 00:45:12.953 = Radio City Playhouse, “Reflection” (January 01, 1950) ***WD 01:14:57.212 = Mercer McLeod’s The Man With The Story, “Blood On The Doorstep” (1946-1947) 01:29:08.386 = Sam Spade, “Missing News Hawk Caper” (July 18, 1948) ***WD 01:59:52.584 = The Sealed Book, “Broadway Here I Come” (June 17, 1945) ***WD 02:29:21.088 = The Shadow, “The Drums of Doom” (March 19, 1944) ***WD 03:00:16.061 = Sleep No More, “Conquerors Isle” (November 21, 1956) ***WD 03:28:50.328 = BBC Radio 4 Spinechillers, “The Boy Who Cried Woof” (December 24, 1984) 03:43:36.519 = The Strange Dr. Weird, “Devil’s Cavern” (April 03, 1945) ***WD(LQ) 03:55:30.259 = Strange, “Deja Vu in France” (1955) 04:10:23.699 = Suspense, “Dark Tower” (May 04, 1944) 04:39:06.093 = The Creaking Door, “Vagrant” (April 29, 1965) **WD 05:08:21.600 = 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/WDRR0774

Philadelphia homicide detectives are working through 50 hard drives pulled from a boarded-up house in Olney where a violent pornographer lived for two decades, and among the 70,000 videos is one they believe shows him strangling a woman to death – while five women tied to the address remain missing and not a single body has been found. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/horschhouse20260911/ 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. 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

A 27-year-old who spent three years building AI at two of the industry's leading labs quit on a Tuesday and said the people he'd worked beside privately expect the technology could wipe us out within the decade. The man in charge of keeping Anthropic's AI in line replied in public that he was right about the fear. But how frightened should we really be? SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/coxonwarning/ 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. 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