How Would You Feel If You Inherited a HAUNTED MANSION?: #RetroRadio EP0323 #WeirdDarkness

Because the canvas roof had been waterproofed with gasoline, the small flame that touched it on July 6, 1944 swept across the Hartford circus big top in seconds, and most of the 167 people it killed were children. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/HartfordCircusFire READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/39d8nfwh FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Three boys fishing in the middle of the night hear a blood-curdling scream. But it wasn’t a human making all that noise – it was an extraterrestrial. And thus began a series of meetings with alien beings! (What Do You Say When Meeting An Extraterrestrial?) *** A day of hilarity turns into a day of horror as an uncontrollable fire breaks out at the Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circus – resulting in the most deadly circus disaster in history. (The Day The Clowns Cried) *** Most ghosts and specters do a great job of scaring the pants off you – and some can get creative with how they do it, with stacking chairs, making toys talk, slamming doors, etc. But apparently not all spooks are worried about their reputation – and when it comes to haunting, they just phone it in, doing the bare minimum. (Lazy Phantasms) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = Show Open 00:01:39.923 = Lazy Phantasms 00:12:35.047 = What Do You Say When Meeting An Extraterrestrial? *** 00:42:41.671 = The Day The Clowns Cried *** 00:52:38.951 = 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: “What Do You Say When Meeting An Extraterrestrial?” from Anomalien.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/44h5ykk9 “Lazy Phantasms” posted at Esoterx.com: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2y69m7hu “The Day The Clowns Cried” by Rachel Souerby for Weird History: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4ek5rsup (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: November, 2021 Weird Darkness ranges from a shapeless apparition that appeared inside the Tower of London in 1817, to a string of close-range UFO and humanoid encounters reported across North America, to the Hartford circus fire of 1944 that killed 167 people in under ten minutes.It opens inside the Tower of London in October 1817, where a cylinder of dense, white and pale-azure fluid about the thickness of a man's arm materialized over the supper table of Edmund Lenthal Swifte, the Keeper of the Crown Jewels. Swifte was holding a glass of wine and water to his wife's lips in the Jewel House, with her sister and his young son present, when the shape...

A Newport Beach physician who ran a Riverside skin-care clinic pleaded guilty to the sexual battery of three patients during their exams, and he will never hold a medical license again. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/Sannoufi 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.

A Paris auction house expected half a million dollars for the world's first lab-grown Tyrannosaurus rex handbag, and the bidding gave out at a hundred and fifty thousand for a purse paleontologists say is mostly chicken. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/trexpurse 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.

At her own party, a wealthy widow watches her trusted investment counselor's fingers close around a small copper idol — the Queen of Thieves — as if the little goddess had reached out of the shadows and chosen him for her own. 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, “Ranee of Rajputana” (January 24, 1978) ***WD 00:47:42.858 = Mr. Keen, “the Boy Who Used Big Words” (February 10, 1944) ***WD 01:16:48.935 = Murder at Midnight, “Black Swan” (August 18, 1947) 01:44:05.862 = The Black Museum, “Shilling” (1952) ***WD 02:09:13.868 = Mysterious Traveler, “Stranger In The House” (January 29, 1952) 02:40:26.038 = Mystery House, “Murder Takes Practice” (April 21, 1946) ***WD 03:07:28.614 = Night Beat, “Antonio’s Return” (July 13, 1951) ***WD 03:36:51.555 = Nightfall, “After Sunset” (April 29, 1983) 04:03:47.330 = Obsession, “Dynamite” (October 09, 1950) ***WD 04:34:36.912 = Pat Novak For Hire, “Jack of Clubs” (February 20, 1949) ***WD 05:04:05.819 = 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/WDRR0689

Sometime before dawn on July 2, 1951, a 67-year-old St. Petersburg widow was reduced to ash in her own armchair while the room around her sat almost untouched, leaving behind little more than a shrunken skull, a piece of spine, and a single foot still resting in its slipper. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/MaryHardyReeser READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p88de8v FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: When police found her in 1951, she was almost entirely ash. But mysteriously, the rest of her apartment remained almost perfectly intact. We’ll look at the death of Mary Reeser – which became known as “The Cinder Woman Case”. (Did Mary Hardy Reeser Spontaneously Combust?) *** Most crimes are pretty ordinary – assault, robbery, the occasional murder, but once in a while a crime is committed in a strange, shocking way – to the point it’s almost hard to believe what you are hearing is a true story. I’ll share a few of those strange crimes. (Creepy Crimes and Crazy Criminals) *** One of the reasons we find chimpanzees so interesting is because they are so much like humans – in body shape, the way they express themselves, it’s eerie sometimes. But still, we know they are just apes. Then there is the strange case of Oliver – a chimpanzee that also appeared to be human. Or was he a human that appeared to be a chimpanzee? Or, is it possible, that Oliver was a genuine genetic hybrid of the two? We’ll look at his incredibly strange story. (Oliver, The Humanzee) *** Some hauntings are more terrifying than others – and some are stranger than others. What happened to the Palzon family in Zaragoza, Spain possibly qualifies for both. They didn’t have a typical haunting – this was no poltergeist or spirit of a recently passed person… they were terrorized by a horrifying goblin. (The Zaragoza Goblin) *** Most haunted paintings are hundreds of years old – but one in particular was painted in the late 20th Century, and to many, it is the most disturbing painting they’ve ever laid eyes on. (The Hands Resist Him) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:01:14.404 = Show Open 00:03:53.182 = Did Mary Hardy Reeser Spontaneously Combust? 00:14:39.389 = The Hands Resist Him *** 00:29:00.706 = Oliver, the Humanzee *** 00:44:04.298 = Creepy Crimes and Crazy Criminals *** 00:59:07.540 = The Zaragoza Goblin *** 01:09:16.862 = 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: ““The Hands Resist Him” by Jenne Gentry for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/mtmj2ysr “Oliver, The Humanzee” by Bipin Dimri for Historic Mysteries: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2ttc3p8s “The Zaragoza Goblin” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2jxxdd6b “Did Mary Hardy Reeser Spontaneously Combust?” by Tommy Thompson for Talk Murder: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p937wec “Creepy Crimes and Crazy Criminals” by C.J. Phillips for ListVerse: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8b3dyw (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...