New Orleans high society adored the charming Jacques St. Germain, right up until they started asking why a man who claimed to be forty could describe the 1700s like he'd lived them. Now more than a century later people are still arguing over whether Jacques St. Germain was a con man, an immortal, or a true-life vampire. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ImmortalVampire READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p9xjvjy FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Was a New Orleans neighborhood home to an immortal vampire in the early 1900s? (Vampire in New Orleans) *** A young girl disappeared in Yosemite National Park back in 1981. To this day no one knows where she is, and some say a paranormal cause is to blame. (A Supernatural Disappearance in Yosemite) *** After Lori Erica Ruff's death, her husband discovered he had been married to a complete stranger. Because Lori Erica Ruff never existed. (The Woman Without an Identity) *** Was there a plot to murder Marconi scientists in the 1980s? (The Marconi Murders) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding 00:00:41.374 = Show Open 00:02:10.004 = The Immortal Vampire of New Orleans 00:18:58.982 = A Supernatural Disappearance In Yosemite *** 00:29:58.328 = The Woman Without An Identity 00:36:55.918 = The Marconi Murders *** 00:51:45.221 = 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: “Vampire In New Orleans” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/2IrlOTU “A Supernatural Disappearance in Yosemite” by Beth Elias: http://bit.ly/2v94zOB “The Woman Without an Identity” by Stephanie Webber: http://bit.ly/2UBMIyO ‘The Marconi Murders” posted at The Unredacted: http://bit.ly/2VR1PRC (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: June 16, 2020 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 This episode of Weird Darkness moves from a suspected vampire in early-1900s New Orleans to a teenager who vanished in Yosemite National Park, a Texas wife who'd stolen a dead child's identity, and a string of bizarre deaths among British defense scientists during the Cold War.It opens with Jacques St. Germain, a wealthy stranger who arrived in New Orleans in the early 1900s, settled into a mansion at 1039 Royal Street, and began hosting lavish parties for the city's elite. He spoke French, English, and Spanish, described centuries-old events as if he'd witnessed them, was almost never seen in daylight, and never ate at his own feasts. He also claimed descent from the Comte de St. Germain, the 18th-century adventurer and alchemist who told Casanova he was three hundred years old, and the resemblance between the two men was close enough that people began to wonder if they were the same person. A prostitute's leap from his upper-floor window, her story of an attempted bite to the neck, and what police allegedly found in his darkened second floor after he skipped town turned a rich man's eccentricities into one of the city's most enduring vampire legends.From there the episode heads to California and the disappearance of fourteen-year-old Stacy Ann Arras, who walked away from a horseback tour group at Sunrise High Sierra Camp in Yosemite on July 17, 1981, intending to photograph a nearby lake, and was never seen again. As many as 150 searchers, tracking dogs, divers, and helicopters combed the area and recovered only a single camera lens. The segment weighs the theories still attached to her case, from a runaway teen in flip-flops to David Paulides and his Missing 411 research, along with search-and-rescue volunteers who explain how wind, ridgelines, and dry ground can swallow a person's voice and scent within fifty feet.Next comes the woman who called herself Lori Erica Ruff, found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot outside her in-laws' home in Longview, Texas, on Christmas Eve 2010. Her husband, Blake Ruff, then opened a lockbox she'd forbidden him to touch and found the birth certificate of Becky Sue Turner, a two-year-old who died in a Washington house fire in 1971, along with the paper trail of a name change in Idaho in 1988. Investigators listed her as a Jane Doe for six years until DNA from her young daughter traced her to a Pennsylvania family whose seventeen-year-old, Kimberly McLean, had walked away from home in 1986.The episode closes in Britain, where at least twenty-five scientists and engineers connected to Marconi Electronic Systems and related defense contractors died between 1982 and 1990, many of them working on projects tied to America's Strategic Defense Initiative. Dr. Keith Bowden's car went off a bridge on tires someone had swapped for worn ones, Vimal Dajibhai went off the Clifton Suspension Bridge with a puncture wound on his buttock, Arshad Sharif tied a ligature to a tree and hit the accelerator, and Alistair Beckham wired himself to a power socket in his garden shed hours before Ministry of Defence men arrived to collect his files. Coroners returned open verdicts, Computer Weekly journalist Tony Collins wrote a book arguing the pattern pointed to a plot, and Margaret Thatcher's government called the whole cluster a coincidence brought on by workplace stress.
