Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Darren Marlar | Weird Darkness | Full-Time Voice Actor

Award-winning podcast of true stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, true crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained -- seven days a week! Hosted by professional voice actor Darren Marlar, named one of the “Best Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal.

  1. They Dared Him to Carve His Name Into the Black Cursed Tree | 3 Stories of Horror Fiction!

    2h ago

    They Dared Him to Carve His Name Into the Black Cursed Tree | 3 Stories of Horror Fiction!

    Three nine-year-old boys in a Massachusetts port town go looking for the schoolyard ghost called Skeleton Jack and instead find a tree that should not exist — black and leafless, cold enough to seem to drink the life out of the air — a tree one of them is dared to carve his name into, while something he can't see breathes in the dark just behind him. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BlackTree FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: "The Abandoned Drive-In Theater" — A newcomer to North Carolina, biking past the ruins of a drive-in theater that's been dead for decades, hears an engine roar and turns to see a film flickering across the filthy, torn screen — then finds every speaker smashed and every wire long since severed, with no way the movie could have been playing at all. *** "He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral" — Six days before Christmas, a security guard helps lower his coworker Jake into the ground after a fatal heart attack — and two mornings later, arriving alone at the snowed-in, empty worksite, he finds Jake's car already parked in the lot. *** "The Black Tree in the Woods" — In a Massachusetts port town haunted by the schoolyard legend of a flayed pirate ghost, three nine-year-old boys push deep into a forbidden forest and find a short, withered tree that grows no leaves and seems to drink the life out of the air — and when one of them is dared to carve his name into its strangely soft bark, something he cannot see begins breathing in his ear. CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = Show Open 00:02:17.025 = The Abandoned Drive-In Theater 00:07:35.119 = He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral *** 00:17:39.759 = The Black Tree In The Woods *** 00:58:35.975 = 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 Abandoned Drive-In Theater” by January Nelson, from Thought Catalog: https://tinyurl.com/ybwbdgev “He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral” by Thomas J. Sotvedt: https://tinyurl.com/yckfue5w “The Black Tree In The Woods” submitted anonymously to Thought Catalog: https://tinyurl.com/y7rocj8v (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 10, 2020

    1 hr
  2. STAR WARS: Return of the Jedi | NPR Radio Drama | #RetroRadio

    4h ago

    STAR WARS: Return of the Jedi | NPR Radio Drama | #RetroRadio

    Thirteen years after The Empire Strikes Back, the long-delayed finale arrived in 1996 — six episodes that brought the original trilogy to a close. Funding cuts had stalled production for more than a decade, but the conclusion was completed at last, with Anthony Daniels returning one final time as C-3PO, joined by Brock Peters as Darth Vader, John Lithgow's Yoda, and Ed Asner as Jabba the Hutt. Still carried by John Williams' score and the original sound effects, it's Return of the Jedi as you've never heard it. | #RRStarWars 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 00:02:37.835 = Episode 01: Tatooine Haunts 00:34:52.858 = Episode 02: Fast Friends 01:04:58.749 = Episode 03: Prophecies And Destinies 01:38:38.890 = Episode 04: Pattern And Web 02:06:06.595 = Episode 05: So Turns a Galaxy, So Turns a Wheel 02:40:27.908 = Episode 06: Blood of a Jedi 03:14:07.134 = 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/WDRRSW03

    4h 22m
  3. Something Was Wrong With the Silent Man on the Subway | 2 Short Horror Fiction Stories!

    1d ago

    Something Was Wrong With the Silent Man on the Subway | 2 Short Horror Fiction Stories!

    A bored New York commuter who passes the time on the A train by quietly sorting his fellow riders into types becomes fixated on one unremarkable man whose blank stillness never breaks — a man who takes the same seat in the same car to ride to the end of the line and right back again — until the need to know what he really is pulls the commuter off his own route and down into the tunnels after him. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/StrangersOnTheSubway FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: "The Statues" — Forced to babysit his toddler cousin in his aunt's house full of religious statues, a teenager finds a black gargoyle crouched in the baby's room that his aunt swears she never owned — right before she starts screaming at him to get the child out. *** "The Strangers" — A bored subway commuter who passes the time sorting strangers into types becomes obsessed with one blank, silent man who rides to the end of the line and back for no reason — until learning what he really is pulls him down into the tunnels after him. CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = Show Open 00:00:58.163 = The Statues 00:14:23.981 = The Strangers (On The Subway) *** 00:50:09.127 = 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 Statues” by Sammy Ruiz: https://tinyurl.com/ydxzvtfm “The Strangers” submitted anonymously to Creepypasta.com: https://tinyurl.com/ycv86sfs (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: July 02, 2020

    51 min
  4. CONSPIRACY IN DALLAS | The Case That Lee Harvey Oswald Was Set Up to Take the Fall

    1d ago

    CONSPIRACY IN DALLAS | The Case That Lee Harvey Oswald Was Set Up to Take the Fall

    The official story has Lee Harvey Oswald firing three shots from a sixth-floor window, yet the witnesses on the stairs never saw him flee, the paraffin test on his cheek came back clean, and J. Edgar Hoover himself admitted the voice on the Oswald tape from Mexico City belonged to another man. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ConspiracyInDallas READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8hjttr FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Was there a conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza in 1963? (Conspiracy In Dallas) *** A Weirdo family member tells of his own personal experience with what might’ve been a hell hound. (The Dog That Wasn’t There) *** One island, one couple, one murder. We’ll look at the strange life and death of Rolf Neslund. (The Rolf Neslund Murder) *** She was murdered in November of 1901. Her lover spent more than a dozen years in prison, proclaiming his innocence, before being pardoned by the governor. So why did he commit suicide soon after getting out of prison? We’ll look at the strange murder of – and eventual haunting by - Nell Cropsey. (The Lingering Ghost of Nell Cropsey) CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:01:09.039 = Show Open 00:02:46.404 = Conspiracy In Dallas 00:20:59.391 = The Dog That Wasn’t There *** 00:22:36.375 = The Rolf Neslund Murder 00:31:41.043 = Lingering Ghost of Nell Cropsey *** 00:40:08.752 = 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: 
“Conspiracy In Dallas” posted at The Unredacted: http://bit.ly/weirddarkness2YVxMdq “The Dog That Wasn’t There” by Weirdo family member Daniel Mulberry “The Rolf Neslund Murder” by Elizabeth Tilsa: http://bit.ly/weirddarkness2KywOAX “The Lingering Ghost of Nell Cropsey” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/weirddarkness2UnJ2Rb (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 28, 2021 Weird Darkness host Darren Marlar moves from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas to a phantom black dog in the English county of Dorset, the murder and dismemberment of a retired sea captain on a quiet island in Washington's San Juan archipelago, and the 1901 killing of a young woman in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, whose spirit is said to still walk her family home.It opens in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, where President John F. Kennedy was shot and the Warren Commission, headed by Judge Earl Warren, concluded in 1964 that ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots alone from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Eyewitnesses undercut that account from the start: Arnold Rowland saw two men at the window minutes earlier, one holding a rifle and neither matching Oswald, while secretaries Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles and caretaker Jack Dougherty never saw Oswald flee down the only staircase he could have used. The episode dismantles Arlen Specter's single-bullet theory — the claim that Commission Exhibit 399 passed through Kennedy's neck and inflicted five separate wounds on Governor John Connally before turning up nearly pristine on a Parkland Hospital stretcher — a conclusion Connally and his wife Nellie both rejected and Abraham Zapruder's home film contradicts on timing. Oswald's negative paraffin test, his suspicious 1959 defection to the Soviet Union and fluent Russian, his leafleting against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee alongside FBI-linked investigator Guy Banister, and a Mexico City impersonation so plain that J. Edgar Hoover told President Lyndon Johnson the recorded voice and surveillance photograph did not match the man in custody all steer the evidence away from a lone gunman. The thread ends with Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, whose out-of-state mob contacts spiked twenty-fivefold before he shot Oswald on live television and whose 1965 hint that the truth would never surface still shadows the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that remains the strongest piece against the accused.From there the tone turns to folklore and a listener's firsthand sighting of Black Shuck, the spectral black dog reported for centuries across Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and East Anglia and long treated as an omen of coming disaster. Camping alone beside a medieval moat near Raoul Castle in East Dorset, he watched the dark shape of a large dog settle on the far embankment and stare back at him, then rise and dissolve into nothing as every nearby sound of wildlife cut out, leaving him zipped inside his tent until morning.Next comes the disappearance of Rolf Neslund, an 83-year-old retired sea captain who in 1978 drove a 550-foot freighter into the West Seattle Bridge before retreating into a drink-soaked marriage on Lopez Island in Washington's San Juan Islands. When Rolf vanished in August 1980, his wife Ruth insisted he had flown home to Norway, yet his prescriptions went unfilled, his American and Norwegian bank accounts went untouched, and no Christmas card reached his relatives that December. In 1982 Ruth's brother told police she had confessed that on August 8, 1980, a second brother held Rolf down while she shot him twice in the head, after which the body was dismembered in the bathtub, burned in a backyard barrel, and scattered on the manure pile. A search turned up replaced carpet over bloodstains, spatter on the ceiling, and a bloodstained .38-caliber Smith & Wesson hidden in Ruth's dresser, tying her to a killing that began as a fight over the roughly $80,000 she had quietly moved into an account bearing only her name; convicted in 1985 and sentenced to twenty years, she maintained her innocence until her death at seventy-three.The episode closes with nineteen-year-old Nell Cropsey, who walked onto the front porch of her family's Elizabeth City, North Carolina home with her suitor Jim Wilcox on the night of November 20, 1901, and was never seen alive again. Her body surfaced in the Pasquotank River on December 27, her death caused by a violent blow to the left temple, and Wilcox — the son of the local sheriff, known for a fierce temper — was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to thirty years before Governor Thomas Walter Bickett pardoned him in 1918. Once freed, Wilcox sought out newspaper editor W.O. Saunders to reveal something so startling that Saunders began planning a book, but Wilcox killed himself with a shotgun before he could tell it, Saunders died soon afterward in a car wreck, and whatever he knew went with them. More than a century on, the former Cropsey home still answers with lights that switch on and off, doors that open by themselves, faucets that run with no hand on the tap, and a pale young woman glimpsed crossing empty rooms and gazing from an upstairs window — recognized by more than one resident as Nell, her killing never truly solved.

    41 min
  5. STAR WARS: The Empire Strikes Back | NPR Radio Drama | #RetroRadio

    1d ago

    STAR WARS: The Empire Strikes Back | NPR Radio Drama | #RetroRadio

    In 1983, the team behind NPR's record-breaking Star Wars returned for the darker, colder middle chapter — The Empire Strikes Back, told across ten episodes. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels were back as Luke and C-3PO, Billy Dee Williams reprised Lando Calrissian from the film, and a young John Lithgow voiced Yoda, all set to the original sound effects and John Williams' score. From the frozen wastes of Hoth to the clouds of Bespin, it's the Star Wars sequel as you've never heard it. | #RRStarWars 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 00:02:18.293 = Episode 01: Freedom’s Winter 00:27:42.852 = Episode 02: The Coming Storm 00:53:25.863 = Episode 03: A Question of Survival 01:17:59.498 = Episode 04: Fire And Ice 01:44:01.903 = Episode 05: The Millennium Falcon Pursuit 02:09:29.038 = Episode 06: Way of the Jedi 02:36:34.560 = Episode 07: New Allies, New Enemies 03:03:42.954 = Episode 08: Dark Lord’s Fury 03:28:52.899 = Episode 09: Gambler’s Choice 03:52:56.581 = Episode 10: The Clash of Lightsabers 04:20:16.969 = 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/WDRRSW02

    4h 22m
  6. STAR WARS: A New Hope | NPR Radio Drama | #RetroRadio

    1d ago

    STAR WARS: A New Hope | NPR Radio Drama | #RetroRadio

    In 1981, National Public Radio turned the biggest movie in the world into a thirteen-episode radio epic that went on to break the network's listening records. George Lucas sold the rights for a single dollar and handed over the original sound effects and John Williams' score, letting a full cast bring the galaxy to life in sound alone. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels reprised Luke Skywalker and C-3PO in a sweeping retelling that expands well beyond the film — the original Star Wars as you've never heard it. 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 00:02:26.702 = Episode 01: A Wind To Shake The Stars 00:29:28.616 = Episode 02: Points of Origin 00:57:12.772 = Episode 03: Black Knight, White Princess and Pawns 01:24:56.510 = Episode 04: While Giants Mark Time 01:52:19.601 = Episode 05: Jedi That Was, Jedi To Be 02:19:58.041 = Episode 06: The Millennium Falcon Deal 02:46:11.104 = Episode 07: The Han Solo Solution 03:11:18.777 = Episode 08: Death Star’s Transit 03:39:30.428 = Episode 09: Rogues, Rebels and Robots 04:07:04.628 = Episode 10: The Luke Skywalker Initiative 04:31:53.682 = Episode 11: The Jedi Nexus 04:58:33.511 = Episode 12: The Case For Rebellion 05:26:28.922 = Episode 13: Force And Counter Force 05:54:27.266 = 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/WDRRSW01

    5h 56m
4.6
out of 5
3,836 Ratings

About

Award-winning podcast of true stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, true crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained -- seven days a week! Hosted by professional voice actor Darren Marlar, named one of the “Best Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal.

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