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

An Arkansas father who shot the man accused of abusing his 13-year-old daughter walked free after a sheriff's deputy lost the one piece of footage that might have shown what happened on that highway. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/aaron-spencer-dismissed 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. #WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

A man called 911 in Tarzana to report he had just killed someone, and the person bleeding in the front yard turned out to be a character actor whose face millions had seen in Top Gun: Maverick and Jumanji. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/james-handy-death 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. #WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS

A forest lookout sits alone in a glass tower at 2AM and spots flames crowning two distant pines — a fire only he can see. By dawn there's no smoke, no ash, no scorched earth... and no fire at all. From phantom flames that burn and vanish to the burned Bigfoot pulled from a Nevada blaze and the UFOs caught streaking through wildfire smoke, tonight we wander into the strange and unsettling things that appear when the forests burn. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/ghostflames READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yjwtx7aw FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: The author of Frankenstein always saw love and death as connected. She visited the cemetery to commune with her dead mother. And with her lover. (Mary Shelley’s Obsession With The Cemetery) *** A girl moves into a new apartment and discovers that a haunting doesn’t necessarily have to be frightening. (Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment) *** The July 1886 murder at the Shawmut Avenue laundry was so shrouded in mystery that even the victim’s name was uncertain. (The Wash-House Murder) *** Ghosts, high strangeness, and even Bigfoot – it appears they may all have something in common, and that would be forest fires. (Forest Fires and the Paranormal) *** How do you explain an experienced lookout reporting a blazing forest fire, only for it to disappear less than an hour later – leaving no trace? (Phantom Flames) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:03:57.045 = Show Open 00:05:40.844 = Phantom Flames 00:21:25.265 = Forest Fires and the Paranormal 00:35:10.279 = Mary Shelley’s Obsession With The Cemetery *** 0048:57.368 = Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment 00:52:28.197 = The Wash-House Murder *** 01:01:09.811 = 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: “Phantom Flames” by F.A.Loomis from Idaho Magazine: http://ow.ly/beq730nL94u “Forest Fires and the Paranormal” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: http://ow.ly/ROYC30nL8n1 “Mary Shelley’s Obsession With The Cemetery” by Bess Lovejoy for the JSTOR Daily: https://tinyurl.com/y9cgd29w “Ghostly Happenings In My Old Apartment” by Cassie D, posted at MyHauntedLifeToo,com: https://tinyurl.com/ycexszvm 
“The Wash-House Murder” by Robert Wilhelm, from the book “Wicked Victorian Boston”: https://amzn.to/2BGJOO0 (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....

“Hands of Death”: A wheelchair-bound collector of murder relics decides the only things missing from his macabre collection are a murderer and a victim — so he engineers his own killer brother's downfall to acquire both. But the dead don't always stay in their boxes, and a pair of severed hands may yet keep a promise of vengeance. 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 Witching Well” (December 23, 1977) ***WD 00:47:28.447 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Armchair Detective” (march 27, 1946) ***WD (LQ) 01:17:54.860 = Quiet Please, “Valentine” (February 13, 1949) ***WD 01:48:08.576 = Radio City Playhouse, “Duet” (October 16, 1949) ***WD 02:17:13.009 = The Croupier, “The Roman” (September 21, 1949) ***WD 02:47:28.792 = Sam Spade, “Same And Guiana Sovereign Caper” (July 12, 1946) ***WD 03:16:41.034 = The Sealed Book, “Hands of Death” (March 18, 1945) ***WD 03:47:40.901 = The Shadow, “Death Rides a Broomstick” (March 02, 1941) 04:16:17.053 = Sleep No More, “Jilting of Granny Weatherall” (January 30, 1957) ***WD 04:45:27.614 = BBC Spinechillers, “Origami” (February 28, 1984) ***WD 05:29:33.275 = 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/WDRR0680

Researchers in Italy spent three months baking sourdough from yeast they pulled out of the meltwater inside a 5,300-year-old murder victim. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/otzibread 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. #WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS