“BEFORE THEY LOCKED THEIR DOORS: The True Story of the Shell Lake Murders” and MORE! #WeirdDarkness
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Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. The Peterson family, who lived on a farm in Canada, were quite poor, but still lived a life filled with love and warmth in a quiet farming community in Saskatchewan.

Jim and Evelyn Peterson had created a loving home for their nine children and had recently celebrated their oldest daughter Kathy's wedding in July 1967. But on August 15th of that year, their tranquil life would be ruptured in one of Canada's most tragic mass murders. That day, when Victor Hoffman, a 21-year-old man with a history of serious mental illness, woke up and wandered the streets in the early hours of the day,

He picked the Peterson home at random. Armed with a .22-caliber rifle, methodically shooting Jim, Evelyn and seven of their children, only two sisters would survive: Kathy, who had recently moved out to get married, and four-year-old Phyllis, who was discovered face down along with her dead sisters. The Shell Lake Massacre sent shockwaves across rural Canada and raised an important national debate about mental health care in isolated communities.

Hoffman had been briefly institutionalized just months before the killings and had displayed serious signs of mental illness since childhood, including violent impulses and hallucinations about devils and angels.

His story, along with the devastating consequences it wrought on the Peterson family, would become a sobering reminder of the vital need for mental health resources and the high price of failing to catch vulnerable adults who have the potential to fall through the cracks of life. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness.

Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode... One October morning in 2018, 16-year-old Carly Gousset walked away from her California home after attending a party the night before.

and despite three witnesses who saw her walking with a piece of paper in her hand, she was never seen again. A Sunday drive to an antiques fair becomes an encounter with the impossible when Richard and Helen witness a massive UFO mothership.

A suspicious purchase of a freezer chest, a chainsaw, and a wood chipper during a snowstorm seemed strange, but it would lead investigators to one of the most shocking murder cases in Connecticut history and revolutionize how crimes are solved. In 18th century England, a wealthy grocer named Henry Trigg was so terrified of grave robbers that he made an unusual request in his will.

Instead of burial, his body should be stored in a coffin in his barn's rafters for at least 30 years. But his attempt to protect his remains would lead to an ironic and mysterious fate. The idea that aliens visited Earth in ancient times has captivated millions through books, documentaries, and TV shows. But what does our willingness to credit extraterrestrials rather than ancient peoples reveal about modern society?

But first... In the quiet farming community of Shell Lake, Saskatchewan, a family's peaceful life was shattered on August 15, 1967, when Victor Hoffman, a troubled young man with untreated mental illness, randomly chose the Peterson home and methodically killed nine members of their family, leaving only two survivors and forever changing how rural Canada approached mental health care. We begin there...

If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, to visit sponsors you hear about during the show, sign up for my newsletter, enter contests, connect with me on social media, hear other podcasts that I host, listen to free audiobooks I've narrated. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression, dark thoughts, or addiction. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness! It was a quiet August day in the farmlands of Saskatchewan, Canada, when a tragedy occurred that rocked the isolated community of Shell Lake forever.

What unfolded on August 15, 1967, not only tore apart a family and sparked painful questions about mental health care in rural areas, but changed how residents viewed their precious safe haven. Referred to as the Shell Lake Massacre, this terrible chapter serves as a sobering reminder of the cost of untreated mental illness and the vulnerability of rural communities in the 1960s.

These events had a deep impact on the Peterson family, a core member of the Shell Lake community. Jim Peterson, 47, and his wife Evelyn, 42, had built a life rooted in their nine children and their family homestead. It was a pretty humble place, the one where Jim had grown up,

but it was full of life, with not a lot of room and they shared the living quarters. Kathy , Jean , Mary , Dorothy , Pearl , William , Colin , Phyllis and Larry , some sleeping in one of the two bedrooms and others making sleeping spots in the living room on a fold-out cot.

The Petersons had once lived up the street in a larger house, but they were forced to move because Saskatchewan winters were unbearable in a poorly insulated home. After Jim's parents moved out of his childhood home, the Peterson family carved out the smaller house for themselves, trading size for warmth and comfort. Despite the closeness, the home was brimming with love and energy.

Jim and Evelyn were married in 1946 and together forged a life of hard work and devotion. Jim provided for the family with a lifetime of hard work, and Evelyn, with her soft-spoken nature and love for their large family, found ways to make things work. Their offspring became a staple of Shell Lake, frolicking together, helping out with farm chores and assisting neighbors in need. Their reputation for kindness and generosity endeared them to the local populace.

A joyous union had recently danced in their midst. Their eldest daughter Kathy married Lee Hill in July 1967, and sister Jean was the bridesmaid. Despite the resource constraints, Jim and Evelyn had left no stone unturned to make sure the nuptials were perfect. It was a testament to how much they loved their children and wanted them to be happy.

Less than a week after the big day, the couple set out for Shetland, British Columbia, where Lee had found work, a 12-hour drive from Shell Lake. The farewell was an emotional one, made all the more fraught by the fact that Peterson had no telephone in his house, calling into question any future correspondence. In a chilling foretelling, Jean had expressed to Kathy a feeling of unease before she left, saying they may never see each other again.

Kathy had sought to allay her sister's fears, unaware of how prophetic Jean's words would turn out to be. Kathy couldn't shake this conversation from her mind, now etched in her heart as if it was carved there as a reminder to how precious life is and to never take a moment we have with our loved ones for granted. Will Drew Lang rode over to the Peterson farm on the sunny morning of August 15, 1967, to help his buddy Jim with the regular chores.

Acts of kindness like this, however, were a common occurrence in the close-knit farming community where neighbors cared deeply for one another. But as Lang crossed the threshold ground of the farm, dread enveloped him. The normally vibrant farmhouse, alive with the laughter of children and the sounds of morning chores, seemed eerily quiet.

There were no merry children, no indication that Evelyn was tending to little Larry or the cows, and no sign that Jim was doing his typical morning chores. That silence seemed deafening, especially for a place that is usually a hive of perpetual emotion.

Typically, even at the crack of dawn, there would be a flurry of activity as the Peterson family began their respective routines. Children helping out with chores, Evelyn cooking breakfast, Jim getting ready for his job working the farm. The eerie silence sent a shiver down Lang's spine as he neared the house.

As he shoved open the unlocked door, an accepted practice in rural Saskatchewan at the time where neighbors shared a deep level of trust, he was greeted with a grisly sight. Jim Peterson was dead on the floor of the entryway, pools of blood around him.

Wisely, Lang did not go deeper into the house, sensing the danger. Instead, he ran to the Petersons' station wagon and sped to the nearest payphone to call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP. Lang then reached out to the Seminar family for help. The Seminars, where they lived across the street and were closely tied to the Petersons, immediately felt something was dreadfully wrong when they saw Lang pull up in Jim's car.

In the mid-1970s, seeing a neighbor drive Peterson's vehicle was strange enough to immediately alarm those in the neighborhood. Spurred by Lang's desperate call for help, Alvin Seminar returned with Lang to the Peterson residence, preparing for the coming of the police. When the RCMP arrived, they would never forget what they would come upon. Jim Peterson had been shot several times, and their search of the house revealed even more victims.

With each victim that was systematically uncovered, the methodical and brutal nature of the attack became more apparent. Dorothy, 11, had been peacefully sleeping on the fold-out cot in the living room when she was discovered lifeless. In one bedroom, 3-year-old Colin, 5-year-old William, and 13-year-old Mary were found together in one bed, while 17-year-old Jean and 9-year-old Pearl shared another.

Phyllis, the only survivor in the house, found face down, appearing lifeless alongside her now-dead brothers and sisters, between Jean and Pearl. In the beginning, there were concerns of a domestic situation going wrong, as Evelyn and baby Larry were not seen, but this notion was quickly dismissed by people who had known the family. Evelyn was a pillar in the community, known for her kindness and dedication to her family.

Her inclusion was resolved as soon as officers located their bodies in the backyard, Evelyn holding Larry, a heartbreaking reflection of her instinct as a mother to protect her child. The monster who did this horrible thing, Victor Hoffman, 21 years old, turned out to be a lifelong mental case. Born January 15th, 1946, to Stella and Robert Hoffman, Victor was the fifth of seven children on a farm in Leesk-Sask.

His story is a tragic illustration of the lack of mental health resources in rural Canada in the 1960s. Victor showed different behavior from his siblings at a young age, leaving his family worried. He remained on a typical development track, yet odd signs began to appear: outbursts of rage, injuries inflicted on himself, compulsive hair pulling in the same spot that had left a bald patch.

Regrettably, these early symptoms, however worrisome to his parents, were ignored because there was so little awareness of mental health and little medical assistance in rural parts of the country. Victor's isolation tendencies only grew as he grew up. Victor, unlike his siblings who developed healthy social ties, was extremely withdrawn, with little interest in befriending other children and a tendency towards solitude.

This self-imposed isolation was not mere timidity, and it foreshadowed his declining mental well-being. By the time that Victor was six, he started having intense hallucinations that would shape his understanding of reality in the future. He often found himself face to face with what he assumed was a devilish being: tall, dark, with a long tail and no genitals. He also claimed to have seen angels and heard the voice of God.

These were not just childhood daydreams, but dynamic, psychotic experiences that would later manifest in his violent actions. When Victor was 10 years old, he began to experience violent impulses, leading his mental health to deteriorate further. At first, he expressed these impulses through acts of violence against animals, a behavior mental health professionals consider a serious red flag.

However, the mental health services at that time could not offer any treatment for these alarming developments. Three months before the tragedy struck, in May 1967, Victor's mental health sharply declined. In what appeared to be a random act of violence, he attempted to run over his brother with a family farm truck. This disturbing experience led him to tell his mother that he had "overcome the demon." His parents finally decided to seek help.

Realizing just how severe his condition had become, they facilitated admission to a psychiatric facility, where one of the doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia. Sadly, the treatment options available in the 1960s were scarce and pretty primitive by modern standards. At the time, the principal therapies were electroconvulsive therapy and sedative drugs, neither of which addressed the complexity of severe schizophrenia.

Yet, after only two months of treatment in two hospitals, and despite his unstable status and respective symptoms, Victor was discharged - a decision with catastrophic consequences. When Victor returned home, he showed signs of progress, keeping busy with mechanical and farm work. But like so many others stricken by deep mental illnesses, he eventually stopped taking his medications.

His parents noted that his behavior was growing more belligerent and aggressive, but they were in a difficult position. When they brought up the possibility of him returning to the hospital, Victor begged them not to send him back, saying he would rather die. Not wanting to traumatize him further, and without the benefit of a professional's counsel, his parents decided the right course would be to keep him at home.

What they did not know was that beyond his occasional lucid moments, Victor's mind was unraveling. His violent impulses grew all-consuming, and he began to consider potential targets. He first contemplated attacking his own family, but rejected that idea in favor of attacking strangers, a decision that led him to the Peterson family.

One dark morning in August 1967, the raging conflict within Victor spilled over into concrete action at 3 a.m. Silently slipping away from his sleeping family, he got his .22-caliber rifle from the garage, suggesting a degree of planning with the spare ammunition in tow even though his targets were not yet selected. Victor drove aimlessly through the small towns off Highway 39 before making his way to Shell Lake.

the Peterson home, came into view. Driving through the long driveway with two gates, Victor stopped his vehicle and walked to the unlocked front door at dawn. Jim Peterson was getting himself up and ready for the day when Victor walked through. Jim confronted him and stood up to face Victor holding a rifle. Displaying incredible courage, Jim fought back against Victor, but he eventually succumbed to his injuries after he succeeded in pushing Victor to the front door.

He died trying to protect his family from harm, but could not prevent its wrath. When he ran out of ammunition in the fight, Victor coolly retreated to his own car to reload before delivering the finishing blow to Jim. This sober calculation defined the entire ordeal, showing that even through the madness in his mind, Victor had a stillness chillingly seen in how the actions were carried out.

He then moved by measured cruelty through the house, first killing 11-year-old Dorothy on the living room cot. As Evelyn attempted to escape through a window with infant Larry, he calmly followed, killing her in the yard. At first letting Larry off the hook, he returned to finish the young child's life, claiming it was an act of mercy to save the child from an agonizing death by starvation and dehydration, an obvious display of his warped mental state.

Next, in the children's bedroom, the massacre continued with 3-year-old Colin, 5-year-old William, 13-year-old Mary, 17-year-old Jean and 9-year-old Pearl. But 4-year-old Phyllis, who was found face down among her siblings, was the only survival of this brutal spree. Victor later said the only reason he spared her was that she couldn't identify him since she didn't see his face.

But others speculate he might have missed her, or perhaps he was mesmerized by what was described as her angelic face. After the terrible things had been done, Victor showed a disturbing fastidiousness, carefully picking up the shell casings strewn about the house and yard, carefully searching the blankets for casings, before tending to the bodies.

His detailed collection of evidence suggested a keen understanding of his actions, something that would serve pivotal during his later trial. The horrific news of the slaughter spread through Shell Lake, a town of fewer than 200 residents, none accustomed to such horrific crimes. Petrified of the unthinkable, residents began locking their doors, something unheard of in this close community built on trust and working together.

The RCMP launched the largest manhunt in the region's history, setting up roadblocks, interviewing everyone in the affected areas door-to-door, and piecing together every bit of available evidence. The urgency to solve the case was clear, as not only was fear shrouding Shell Lake, but fear had also permeated surrounding towns.

Only 48 hours after the horrific event, one crucial break came when a Leask resident provided investigators with a tip that led them to zero in on Victor Hoffman. His father cooperated fully with law enforcement and helped them to search for the .22-caliber rifle, which was subsequently determined to be the murder weapon.

Victor was arrested on August 19th, and on that day the Peterson family was honored with one of the most extravagant funerals seen in this part of the country. When asked about his actions, Victor calmly confessed with not an ounce of remorse in his tone.

Even seasoned investigators found his adamant recall of events and matter-of-fact disposition jarring. The severity of his mental disorder led to a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, albeit he understood what he was doing was wrong. He received a life sentence in a psychiatric ward where he claimed to see the devil every day and never admitted to feeling repentant until he died of cancer in 2004.

The Shell Lake Massacre remains one of the most tragic stories in Canadian history and launched a national conversation about mental health care, particularly access in rural communities. It not only redefined what was considered safe in the community, but also served as a catalyst for significant improvements in psychiatric services in Saskatchewan.

The tragedy highlighted the pressing need for early intervention in cases of mental illness and for better post-release care for patients released from psychiatric hospitals. The surviving Peterson siblings, Phyllis and Kathy, continued their family legacy in separate ways. Kathy, just married herself, suddenly had the responsibility of caring for her younger sister in addition to her own deep grief.

Phyllis, too young to understand the full breadth of what had happened, grew up carrying both the tragedy on her shoulders and the burden of upholding her family's memory. The Peterson family legacy is one of love, compassion, and togetherness. They are remembered for their closeness as a family, just as much as their heartbreaking fate.

All these decades later, the actions of August 15th, 1967 still stand as a powerful and tragic reminder of the high cost of a lack of mental health treatment and the importance of communities recognizing and providing help for those who have fallen through the cracks of the system. This story may have hit close to someone listening. Someone who may be debating doing something horrible and violent either to themselves or others.

If this is you, I beg you, before you do anything else today, to call 988 if you're in the USA and tell the person who answers how you're feeling and what you're thinking about doing. Again, that number is 988. If you're in the UK, you can call 999. Please, don't let these violent thoughts take over your actions. Talk to someone right now, even before you listen to the rest of this episode.

You can find these numbers and other resources to help with depression, anxiety and other issues on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. Coming up... When Richard and Helen got lost on their way to an antiques fair, they never expected to encounter a 2,000-foot spacecraft that could camouflage itself like a chameleon or to hear human voices crying for help from inside it.

Plus, while the History Channel's Ancient Aliens asks if extraterrestrials built pyramids, critics point to a troubling question. Why do these theories always seem to dismiss the accomplishments of non-European civilizations? These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns.

Hey Weirdos, if you enjoy what you're hearing from me in the Weird Darkness Podcast throughout the year, may I ask for a Christmas gift from you? It's an easy one, and it's free to give. This month, just invite two or three people you know to give Weird Darkness a listen. That is truly the greatest gift you could ever give to me.

Letting your family, friends, coworkers, neighbors and others know about the podcast is incredibly valuable to me, my bride Robin and our cat Ms. Mocha Monster. That's it. Tell someone about the show. Drop a link to Weird Darkness in your social media. Maybe send a text to a few folks to wish them a very scary Christmas with a link to the show in that text. It doesn't matter how you do it, but it does make a huge impact when you do.

From all of us here at Marlar Manor, thank you, and Merry Christmas!

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Alright, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the Bartesian. Bartesian? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails. Plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for $5.

So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier. ♪

Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at bartesian.com slash cocktail. That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail. For years, governments around the world kept a huge secret from their people. The United States Air Force

NASA, Britain's Ministry of Defense, and plenty of other institutions all had their suspicions that strange things were happening in the skies above, but they just preferred if nobody knew about it. Things began to change in 2023. In Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives held a special meeting about UFOs, which are now referred to as UAPs, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.

Former aviators and military personnel described their experiences with strange flying vessels shaped like Tic Tac candies. These craft were capable of what seemed like impossible feats: sharp turns at high speeds, flying faster than any airplane on Earth. A former Air Force intelligence officer made some astonishing claims during the meetings. He said the government had crashed UFOs stashed at secret bases.

Even more remarkably, he said that they had discovered "non-human biologics," meaning the bodies of aliens from the crashed ships, clarifying these were humanoid, but also insectoid. To this day, no one knows exactly where these unusual craft come from. Some of these may be from other planets, or perhaps even from other dimensions.

Some believe that the government is indeed gradually preparing humanity for the truth about these visitors so that it will be less of a shock when we actually get to meet them. Here's a particularly interesting story from Maria, a 75-year-old woman from Heswell in England. Maria and her husband Phil were exploring Thurston Hill, an area of red sandstone rock and wonderful views, in August of 1997.

While they were there, they and two other couples witnessed something spectacular. A gigantic, disc-shaped silver craft came flying down from the north. Phil, a former employee at an aircraft firm called Lockheed Martin, estimated the craft to be roughly 1,300 feet in length. The mirror surface of the UFO reflected the sunlight as it stopped and hovered in Caldy Beach. Then it flew away toward Wales and vanished into a haze.

But an even more amazing story unfolded in September 1992. A doctor named Richard and his girlfriend Helen, who would go on to become his wife, were driving to an antiques fair at the Parkgate Hotel. Helen was driving because Richard had gone to a party the night before. They did sort of get lost and while they were roaming around trying to find their way, they witnessed something unbelievable - a huge round craft descending from the heavens.

Richard originally thought it was simply a kite, but as it closed the distance, they discovered it was something significantly larger. Other cars on the road paused to gawk as the massive craft touched down in a field of orange bushes known as gorse. Helen was frightened and wanted to go. "Oh my God, we're being invaded," she said. But Richard was curious. He estimated the craft's wingspan to be about 2,000 feet, larger than six football fields side by side.

It was resting on a cone-like structure beneath it. Richard stepped out of the car and climbed over a gate to get a closer look. When he and Helen walked to the left to view it from another angle, something very strange happened. The massive vessel began to blend with the blue color of the sky, making it almost disappear from some angles. Then they heard something alarming. What sounded like people yelling "help" from the front of the UFO.

There was suddenly a flash of light from the craft. The cone-shaped piece then went back into the ship and it began to take off from the ground. Richard and Helen ran to their car and drove away fast, forgetting the antiques fair altogether. Richard kept looking back as they drove away. Peering out of the back window, he watched it tilt off to one side and soar toward North Wales until all sight of it was lost.

Later, at a pub in Prenton, they learned that others had also seen the giant saucer-shaped UFO over Parkgate that day. Richard, as a doctor, chose not to say anything about what he saw. He was afraid that people would assume he was lying. But years later, when a guest on BBC Radio Merseyside talked about UFOs at the station, many listeners called in with similar tales about the craft.

To this day, no one knows who was calling for help from inside the UFO. Were they human souls who had been abducted by the craft? As with many UFO tales, it raises more questions than it answers about our sky's mysterious visitors. On the surface, Richard Crafts seemed to have everything anyone could want. He lived in a nice house in Newton, Connecticut with his wife, Hellie, and their three children.

As an airline pilot, he made good money, $125,000 a year. But beneath this perfect picture, dark secrets were brewing that would lead to one of the most shocking murders in Connecticut history. Richard and Hellie met while working in the airline industry. Richard was a pilot and Hellie was a flight attendant for Pan Am Airlines. They got married in 1979 and settled down to start their family. However, Richard's past wasn't as simple as it appeared.

Before becoming an airline pilot, he had worked for Air America, a secret airline run by the CIA. During this time, he flew dangerous missions and developed a fascination with weapons. By 1986, he had collected an arsenal of guns in his basement, including machine guns, rifles, and even grenade launchers. While Richard flew planes for Eastern Airlines, Kelly continued working as a flight attendant.

Her job meant she was often away from home, flying to places all around the world. Richard used this time alone to date other women behind his wife's back. He thought he was being careful, but Helly started to suspect something wasn't right. Worried about her husband's behavior, Helly hired a private detective named Keith Mayo to follow Richard. It didn't take long for Mayo to catch Richard in the act.

He took photos of Richard kissing another flight attendant named Nancy Dodd at her home in New Jersey. When Helly saw the pictures, she knew her marriage was over. She wanted a divorce. But Helly was scared. She knew her husband had a bad temper, and she had told her friend Rita Bonanno, "If Richard ever found out what I was doing, he'd kill me." She also confided in another friend, Gertrude Horvath, saying, "I know he's up to something. I just don't know what."

Richard was furious about the divorce. He knew it would cost him a lot of money, and he was already having financial problems. Instead of accepting the end of his marriage, he started making strange purchases. First, he bought a huge freezer chest that could hold 200 pounds. Then he bought a new chainsaw. Finally, he rented something unusual from a company called Bush Bandit, a massive wood chipper that weighed over 4,000 pounds.

On November 18, 1986, Kelly returned home from a long flight from Frankfurt, Germany. A big snowstorm was moving into Connecticut that night. Richard was waiting for her. Police later determined that he hit her twice in the head, killing her almost instantly. But what he did next would shock everyone. Richard took his wife's body into the woods behind their house. Using the chainsaw he had bought, he cut her body into smaller pieces.

He stored these pieces in the freezer he had purchased. Then, in the middle of the snowstorm, he drove to Lake Zoar with the woodchipper he had rented. A snowplow driver working that night saw something strange - a man pulling a woodchipper through the snow near the lake. It seemed like a weird thing to be doing during a blizzard, but the driver had no idea he was witnessing part of a terrible crime.

Richard was feeding his wife's frozen body parts through the wood chipper, hoping to destroy all evidence of what he had done. When Helly didn't show up for work, her friends became worried. Richard told everyone that Helly had flown to Denmark because her mother was sick. But Rita Buono, remembering Helly's fears about Richard, didn't believe this story. She called Helly's mother in Denmark and discovered she had never been sick at all.

The police started investigating, but at first they didn't have much to go on. Richard seemed to have thought of everything. However, he had made some mistakes. When investigators searched Lake Zoar, they found a chainsaw at the bottom with its serial number scratched off. They also found tiny pieces of evidence scattered along the shore, small bits of bone, teeth, and blonde hair mixed in with wood chips. This is where Dr. Henry Lee entered the story.

Dr. Lee was a forensic scientist, someone who uses science to solve crimes. In the late 1980s, this was still a new way of solving murders. Dr. Lee and his team carefully collected thousands of tiny pieces of evidence. They found drops of Helly's blood in the craft's home. They discovered that one of the tooth fragments had a dental crown that had been put in by a dentist in Denmark, just like the kind Helly had.

Dr. Lee brought in many experts to help solve the case. A wood expert studied the marks on the wood chips. A rope expert analyzed rope fibers they found. They studied the bones and pieces of fabric. It was like putting together a puzzle with thousands of tiny pieces. Even though they only found about an ounce of remains, less than one one-thousandth of Helly's body, it was enough to prove what had happened. Richard Crafts went on trial for murder in 1989.

This was unusual because it was Connecticut's first murder trial without having a complete body as evidence. The first trial ended in a mistrial, when one of the jurors suddenly quit. But in the second trial, all the scientific evidence Dr. Lee and his team had collected helped convince the jury that Richard was guilty. On November 21, 1989, Richard Crafts was found guilty of murdering his wife. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

He showed no sadness or regret for what he had done, leading people to say that he had ice water in his veins. The Crafts case changed how murders are investigated. It showed that even without a body, scientific evidence could help solve crimes. Dr. Lee went on to work on other famous cases, including the JonBenet Ramsey case and the O.J. Simpson trial.

The story even inspired the movie "Fargo," where the filmmakers included a scene with a wood chipper based on this real-life crime. Richard Crafts thought he had committed the perfect crime. He believed that by destroying his wife's body, he could get away with murder. But he was wrong. Thanks to careful police work, new scientific methods, and dedicated investigators like Dr. Henry Lee, the truth came out.

The case showed that no matter how clever criminals think they are, science and dedication can help bring them to justice. Hellycraft's murder led to changes in how crimes are solved, helping make sure other criminals can't escape justice, even when they try to destroy all the evidence.

"They're falling out of the skies like flies. Government knows all about it. Chariots of the Gods, man. They practically own South America. I mean, they taught the Incas everything they knew." That's Palmer, played by David Clennon, speaking in John Carpenter's classic 1982 alien horror movie, "The Thing." But what he's espousing is a popular and widely-held pseudoscientific theory that the Earth was visited in prehistory by ancient astronauts.

It even references one of the more popular books on the subject, Erich von Däniken's 1968 work, Chariots of the Gods, which was made into a documentary film in 1970 and nominated for an Academy Award. Like any widely held theory of popular pseudoscience, ancient astronaut theory has a number of variations. But they almost all agree about one central fact.

that extraterrestrial visitors came to Earth in prehistoric times or visited ancient human civilizations. Reporting on the popular History Channel series "Ancient Aliens" which is probably the most recognized modern mouthpiece for the theory, Stephen Kuritz wrote for the New York Times, "According to the show's talking heads, extraterrestrials may have had a role not only in the extermination of the dinosaurs but also in the construction of the Egyptian pyramids."

Indeed, probably the most central tenet of the vast majority of ancient astronaut beliefs is that these extraterrestrial visitors are responsible for much of the culture, technology and architecture of most ancient civilizations – especially, it must be said, the non-white ones.

As one attendee of AlienCon puts it in that same New York Times piece, "Just because someone says the Egyptians made the temples with ropes and wooden rollers doesn't make it true. We shouldn't accept blindly things we've been taught by quote-unquote scientists."

Of course, in addition to claims that ancient aliens helped to build structures such as the Pyramids of Egypt or the Maui of Easter Island, ancient astronaut theory poses a number of other hypotheses too. Including that deities from most if not all religions are extraterrestrial in origin. Or as Poloquin puts St. Clive Barker's Nightbreed, "gods and astronauts."

One of the first people to seriously advance such a theory was a British journalist named Harold T. Wilkins, who wrote several books about UFOs in the 1950s, with such fanciful titles as "Flying Saucers on the Attack" and "Flying Saucers from the Moon." But the idea that aliens had visited Earth in ancient times, even seeding the planet with life, was already a popular vehicle for fictional exploration by pulp writers, including H.P. Lovecraft.

By the 1960s, the theory was beginning to take on new proponents, and its widespread popularity can probably be traced to books like the aforementioned Chariots of the Gods, which sold more than 7 million copies. Even astrophysicists, I. Sovchlovsky and Carl Sagan, who were openly reproving of von Däniken and other uncritical writers, devoted some space in their 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe to the possibility of early contact with extraterrestrials.

even if they emphasized that such possibilities were unproven and improbable. Why do people believe in the ancient astronaut theory? Racism? Probably more accurately, colonialism. Of course, that's only part of it, but it is a big part, and an undeniable one. Today, ancient astronauts are one of the more elaborate theories in pseudohistory with a racist component, writes Jason Colavito, quoted at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The idea that aliens built the pyramids isn't so funny when it draws young people to websites that quickly switch out "aliens" for "Jews" and start talking about gas chambers. More to the point, the vast majority of ancient astronaut theories focus on structures and places that were historically home to a majority of non-white, non-European populations, such as Africa, South and Central America, pre-colonial North America, and so on.

By doing so, they perpetuate and give air to the racist notion that only Europeans, white people, ever were and ever will be capable of such architectural feats, as postdoctoral researcher Julien Benoit wrote in a piece for The Conversation. A lens of colonialism may have been what spurred the initial popularity of ancient astronaut theory, but racism can only partly explain the current resurgence.

By the 1980s, the theory had largely fallen out of favor amid a new panic around alien abductions and other fringe ideas that were more in keeping with the 80s cultural zeitgeist. So what happened in the meantime? Much of the theory's modern popularity can probably be laid at the feet of the History Channel's hit show, "Ancient Aliens," which dredged many of the old theories back up and repackaged them in ways that popped for contemporary audiences.

But even that wasn't all. Just as they were in the late 60s, when Chariots of the Gods was first released, audiences have been primed to buy into these kinds of conspiracy theories. As Stephen Kuritz wrote in that same New York Times piece, many Americans of the Internet age have been in a mood to challenge established ideas. Yet, Kuritz also points out that this is more than a political divide, as people on both sides of the line have reason to doubt.

"We now know that the history that has been taught for years excluded the experiences of so many African Americans, women, the working poor," he wrote. "What else has been left out? Ask most scientists about ancient astronaut theory and you'll usually be told that debunking it is already giving it too much credit. It never really had enough of a scientific foundation to be bunked in the first place." Writing in The Handbook of UFO Religions, Olaf Hammer and Karen Schwartz put it more simply:

Such assertions have been refuted by more or less every archaeologist and historian who has taken it upon themselves to review the evidence offered. Despite all this, however, many people still believe. An alien con was reportedly attended by some 10,000 people in 2018. Prior to the success of the History Channel's Ancient Aliens series, the ancient astronaut theory was primarily disseminated through books and the occasional TV movie or episode of a show like Unsolved Mysteries.

Of those books, probably the most important is Daniken's Chariots of the Gods, which was reissued for a 50th anniversary in 2018. While it was a seminal work, however, it was far from the only one. David Hatcher Childress is also a regular on the show Ancient Aliens and the owner of Adventures Unlimited Press, which specializes in books on unusual topics, including ancient astronauts.

Among his own books are several on the theme, such as "Extraterrestrial Archaeology," which suggests that aliens have also built structures and may still be living on other planets in our solar system. Of course, not every book on ancient astronauts is quite so credulous.

In "Foundations of Atlantis: Ancient Astronauts and Other Alternative Pasts," Jason Colavito digs into nearly 150 documents often cited by ancient astronaut theorists and other alternative historians to see how these sources have been used and misused to support often fanciful claims. Up next on Weird Darkness...

In 18th century England, Henry Trigg was so terrified of body snatchers that he devised an unusual plan to protect his corpse after death, mounting it high in his barn's rafters. But he was unable to escape an even stranger fate than grave robbery. But first, on a cold October morning in 2018, three witnesses watched a teenage girl walking along Highway 6 with a mysterious piece of paper in her hand, gazing at the sky.

It would be the last time anyone ever saw Carly Gousset. That story is up next. We all dream, but for some people, what should be a time for their bodies and minds to rest turns into a nightmare from which they cannot escape. Our next Weird Darkness live stream is Saturday night, December 28th on the Weird Darkness YouTube channel, and during the live broadcast I'll share some of these chilling nighttime stories.

Tales of shadow people, sleep paralysis, and demons who stalk their victims in that place between dreams and reality. I'll share true tales of prophetic dreams, some joyful, some not. Sleepwalking incidents that are both amusing and disturbing. I'll also share real stories of night terrors so horrifying that sleep

became something to fear and dread for those victimized by the night. You might not want to sleep after joining our next live-screen. It's Saturday, December 28th at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern. On the lighter side, I'll also be responding to comments and questions live on the air and doing a giveaway of some Weird Darkness merch.

Prepare yourself for our next live-screen for chilling tales of what some people must endure in an attempt to get some sleep. Find the details on the live-screen page at WeirdDarkness.com.

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All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the partition. Partition? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too. I just got it for $5.

So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier. ♪

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So how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty. Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow. It's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian. Because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off. Tis the season to be jollier.

Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at bartesian.com slash cocktail. That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail. Carly Gousset has not been seen since October 2018, when she grew extremely paranoid after smoking marijuana and walked away from her home in Chalfont Valley, California.

Carly Gousset sounds like an ordinary teenage girl. She had a boyfriend, enjoyed hanging out with her brothers, and liked scary movies. But in October 2018, her life took what seemed to be a tragic turn. She left her family's house and walked into the frozen desert nearby.

The previous night, Carly attended a party with her boyfriend and some other friends. She smoked marijuana, which induced a paranoid response so severe that her father and stepmother thought it might have been laced with something. Afterward, however, her family got her home and settled in bed. And she slipped out the door. She hasn't been seen since.

"We're not going to give up on finding Carly," said Sean Reagan, special agent in charge of the FBI's Sacramento field office, referring to the case's open status. "People don't just vanish into thin air." Carly Lane Gousset was born on May 13, 2002, and led a pretty normal life until her disappearance.

Her parents divorced when she was two, and after living with her mother, Lindsay Fairlay, for an undisclosed period, Carly moved in with her father, Zachary, and his wife, Melissa, in Bishop, California. "So sweet and quiet," her classmates at Bishop Union High School said, according to a 2019 Fox News report. She was popular at school, and to most people in her life, there was no apparent signs of any personal struggle.

Looking back, though, there were some troubling things about Carly Gousset's life in the days and weeks leading up to her disappearance. For one thing, she'd experienced a few bad reactions to smoking marijuana, and Carly had reportedly exhibited signs of paranoia, telling friends she feared being tracked on her phone. And on the evening of October 12th, 2018, everything felt normal. She then went to a small party with her boyfriend, Donald Arrowood III.

But by around 8 p.m., things became alarming. On the final night Carly Gousset was seen alive, she called her stepmother in a panic and asked to be picked up at a party. She'd used marijuana and apparently had an adverse reaction to it. Arrowood later recalled that she was frightened of the music and frightened of him. "She was in a panic," Melissa Gousset later told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "She wanted me to come take her.

Melissa showed up to retrieve her stepdaughter, only to discover that Carly had already left the party. The teenager was running down a dark lane and was still acting paranoid when Melissa spotted her and got her into the car. Fox News reported that she told Melissa numerous times that she was scared, switched seats several times within the vehicle, and kept saying that the car would kill her.

At home, Carly appeared so paranoid that her father suspected that the marijuana she had smoked had been spiked with another drug. He and Melissa videotaped what they could of his conversation with Carly, hoping to explain the next day when she woke up how drugs could be dangerous. The conversation, which is recorded and runs 8 minutes and 45 seconds, serves as evidence of how paranoid Carly was that night.

"I screwed up big time today," Carly says at one point, and Melissa says in response, "We all do things in life that we regret. Drugs especially." In another, Carly blasts her stepmother for wanting to kill her. When Melissa says that's preposterous, Carly sobs, "I'm just thinking all this demonic stuff, I can't help it." As SFGate noted in 2021, the timeline from here gets a little murky.

From the start, Melissa had said to the press that she had last seen Carly at 5:45 a.m. When she returned around 7:15 a.m., the girl was missing. Melissa later revised this narrative, saying that she'd actually stayed the whole night in Carly's room. When she woke around 7 a.m., Carly was gone from her bed. When they discovered Carly Gousset wasn't at home, Zachary and Melissa immediately searched their house and nearby neighborhood.

After two hours of searching, Zachary informed his ex-wife of what had happened and filed a missing persons report with the Mono County Sheriff's Office. Investigators quickly responded to the scene and began searching for the missing teenage girl. Fortunately, they'd uncovered a few witnesses who had seen her that morning. The first, a neighbor of the Gousset's, recalled seeing her walking with a piece of paper in her hand, gazing skyward.

Another observed her strolling toward Highway 6 and noted that she was also carrying a piece of paper in her hand. The third and last witness noticed her standing by some sagebrush off the highway, which is where search dogs lost her scent. So what happened to Carly Gousset? She may have died in the desert, where mornings can be bitterly cold and the days swelteringly hot. At the time of her disappearance, Carly was wearing sweatpants or jeans, a white t-shirt, and Vans.

She might well have trekked deep into the desert where no one would find her and died of exposure. Some theories hold that somebody may have given her a ride if she was walking on the road. Others accuse Melissa Gousset because of inconsistencies in her story. And Carly's mother, Lindsay Fairlay, actually posited in 2019 that Carly may have died from an overdose and that Melissa and Zachary cleaned it up.

But a polygraph test has cleared the couple, and police found no evidence that Melissa and Zachary Gousset were involved in Carly's disappearance. To this day, no one knows for certain what happened to Carly Gousset. She simply walked out of her home that October morning and disappeared into thin air, apparently wracked with paranoia and fear. "My whole body and soul, I'd trade it all," her father Zachary said in an interview with the FBI, "just to have her home safe."

Doctors and scientists have examined human anatomy through dissection of human bodies for centuries. In the past, a reliable source of corpses was people who were executed, frequently for petty crimes. Executions were commonplace in medieval times, which meant plenty of bodies for medical students and surgeons to experiment on. But as laws changed and the number of executions declined, medical schools started to run short on cadavers.

That shortage gave rise to resurrectionists, or grave robbers, who would dig up freshly buried corpses to sell to schools of anatomy. To deter grave robbers, cemeteries began taking drastic measures. They hired guards to watch the graves, installed traps, and even put graves in iron cages known as mort safes.

Others were mort houses, temporary storage buildings where corpses could rot until they were no longer of any use to thieves. Still, fear of body snatching was prevalent, and one man, Henry Trigg, devised a unique solution to defend his own body. Henry Trigg lived in early 18th century Stevenage, a small town in Hertfordshire, England. He was a prosperous grocer and owned a number of stores and properties in the neighborhood.

He was well regarded in the community, serving as warden of St. Nicholas' Church and overseer of the parish. But one night after a trip to the local tavern, Henry's life changed forever. Henry walked by the churchyard on his way home with friends. There, they saw an alarming sight: grave robbers laboriously digging up a freshly buried corpse.

These resurrectionists intended to sell the cadavers to medical students and surgeons. The gruesome scene left Henry jolted. He was determined that his body would not go the same way after he died. Henry knew that he would have to take action himself. He made a peculiar request in his will, specifying that instead of being buried in the churchyard, his body should not be buried but instead placed in a coffin and kept in the rafters of his barn.

He also stated that he wanted his body to stay there for a minimum of 30 years. Henry thought that he would die, and after this he would resurrect and would take his property back. And to clarify his wishes, Henry requested the barn doors be locked from the inside with the key placed in the coffin, so he could let himself out. But the plan raised an obvious question. If Henry's body would be left alone inside, who would lock the barn door?

Henry died in 1724, a few years after he made his extraordinary will. Without a wife or children, he left his whole estate to his brother, Reverend Thomas Trigg. But Henry feared that Thomas wouldn't comply with his unusual burial request. To guarantee compliance, Henry inserted a condition in his will that if his wishes were not followed by Thomas, Thomas would lose his inheritance.

In that scenario, the estate would go to their other brother, George Trigg, and if George declined, it would go to their nephew, William Trigg. Faced with these conditions, Thomas complied with Henry's bizarre request. Henry's corpse was encased in a lead-lined coffin and swung up into the rafters of his barn, roughly ten feet up. The unconventional burial soon attracted local attention.

So the people came from far and wide to view the coffin in the barn, and it proved to be something of a Stevenage tourist attraction. When the property was turned into an inn in 1744, known as the Old Castle Inn, the coffin stayed put. Even after Henry's niece, Anne, requested that his remains be moved to a churchyard, the inn's new owners refused. They viewed the coffin as a means to attract more visitors and keep the legend from dying.

Henry's remains were beset by many challenges over the decades. Several fires raged through the barn and coffin, and people frequently pilfered souvenirs from the body. When the coffin was replaced in the early 1800s because of damage, a carpenter allegedly took one of Henry's teeth and a lock of his hair. The inn's landlord, Mr. Bellamy, opened the coffin in 1831 and noticed that Henry's hair appeared in fair condition.

But by the time the East Hertz Archaeological Society studied the remains in 1906, they estimated that around a third of the skeleton was missing. During World War I, soldiers based in Stevenage also reportedly removed more bones from the coffin and substituted them with horse bones. By 1999, National Westminster Bank bought the property, barn and all. The coffin was moved to an undertaker during the renovations.

What happened next is under dispute. According to some reports, the coffin was empty when it was removed. Others say the undertaker discovered bones of both humans and other animals and so made arrangements for burial. Either way, Henry's attempt to safeguard his remains apparently backfired. The barn and workshop still exists today in Middle Row Stevenage.

Henry's empty coffin still sits beneath the rafters, a still reminder of his unusual tale. Local legend has it that Henry's ghost still roams the buildings in search of his lost bones. The last known sighting of his spirit was reported in 1964 when an eyewitness said he saw the ghost walk through a brick wall feet first. There have been no new sightings, but the story of Henry Trigg still ignites interest among those who hear it.

Thanks for listening! If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do! You can email me and follow me on social media through the Weird Darkness website.

WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can listen to free audiobooks I've narrated, get the email newsletter, visit the store for creepy and cool Weird Darkness merchandise. Plus, it's where you can find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression, addiction, or thoughts of harming yourself or others. While on the site, you can also click on Tell Your Story to share your own true paranormal or creepy tale. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

All stories used in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the authors, stories, and sources I used in the episode description as well as on the website at WeirdDarkness.com. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light.

Deuteronomy 31:6: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you." And a final thought: A goal you don't plan is a wish, not a goal. John Fuller, I'm Darren Marlar, thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

Listen up, folks. Time could be running out to lock in a historic yield at public.com. As of September 23rd, 2024, you can lock in a 6% or higher yield with a bond account. But here's the thing. The Federal Reserve just announced a big rate cut, and the plan is for more rate cuts this year and in 2025 as well. That's good news if you're looking to buy a home, but it might not be so good for the interest you earn on your cash.

So if you want to lock in a 6% or higher yield with a diversified portfolio of high yield and investment grade bonds, you might want to act fast. The good news, it only takes a couple of minutes to sign up at public.com. And once you lock in your yield, you can earn regular interest payments even as rates decline.

Lock in a 6% or higher yield with a bond account at public.com. But hurry, your yield is not locked in until you invest. Brought to you by Public Investing, member FINRA and SIPC. Yield to worst is not guaranteed. Not an investment recommendation. All investing involves risk. Visit public.com slash disclosures for more info.

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