#FIRESIDEFRIGHTS VOLUME 32 #WeirdDarkness

Halfway through a routine night shift, ER nurse Megan finds the monitor at her station reporting a steady heartbeat, even breathing, and normal blood pressure for bed seven, a bed that has been empty all night. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-phantomvitals SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Phantom Vitals” by Keith Conrad WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness. Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 09, 2026 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

About three and a half hours after her last reported group text about the Lindsay Clancy trial, police were called to a Frankfort, Illinois home where prosecutors say a mother had hanged her 2-year-old son in the basement and then told officers he was the devil – and a Will County judge has now ordered her held while her lawyers argue she was psychotic at the time. SOURCES, LINKS, AND PRINT VERSION: https://weirddarkness.com/corriewalsh 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. 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

A healthy, happy lawyer dozing on his porch after tennis is told he's dead, and the only man who can take his place has just decided he likes living and refuses to die. 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, “Dead Wrong” (September 06, 1978) ***WD 00:46:53.341 = Crime Club, “Murder Makes a Mummy” (May 29, 1947) ***WD 01:16:17.616 = Crime Classics, “Incredible Trial of Laura D Fair” (August 17, 1953) 01:44:32.312 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Henry Comes Home” (October 13, 1946) 02:10:28.577 = CBC Deep Night, “Birth” (July 08, 2005) 02:41:24.963 = The Devil and Mr. O, “Cemetery” (February 25, 1972) 03:10:39.895 = Diary of Fate, “Rollie Andrews” (August 03, 1948) ***WD 03:38:28.526 = Dimension X, “The Professor Was a Thief” (November 05, 1950) ***WD 04:07:54.629 = Eleventh Hour, “Echo of Savage” (ADU) 04:31:35.631 = Escape, “Three Skeleton Keys” (November 15, 1949) 05:02:02.134 = 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/WDRR0768

A school bus driver in Circleville, Ohio was told in block letters to end an affair or her husband would die, and he did. Decades later a New Jersey couple paid $1.3 million for 657 Boulevard and never spent a night there, because a stranger signing himself The Watcher kept writing to ask about the "young blood" in the house. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/circleville READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2ycj6492 FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Two stories of people living ordinary lives being terrorized by threatening, creepy letters in the mail. We’ll begin in 1976 in Circleville, Ohio. Then I’ll share a more modern story where a New Jersey family moves into a home and is terrorized for years by mail through 2017. CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00.00.000 = The Foreboding 00:01:50.978 = Show Open 00:03:06.569 = The Circleville Letters 00:14:25.756 = The Westfield Watcher *** 00:43:42.991 = 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 Circleville Letters” by Les Hewitt for Historic Mysteries: https://tinyurl.com/y8hhhjnr “The Watcher of Westfield” by Les Hewitt for Historic Mysteries: https://tinyurl.com/yadngrqd (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 2021 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 follows two unsolved campaigns of terror by mail: the Circleville Letters that tormented a small Ohio town beginning in 1976, and The Watcher, an anonymous writer who drove a family out of a $1.3 million house in Westfield, New Jersey.It opens in Circleville, Ohio, where school bus driver Mary Gillespie started receiving block-lettered letters postmarked from Columbus accusing her of an affair with the school superintendent and warning that her house was being watched. Her husband Ron Gillespie got one ordering him to end the affair or die, and on August 19, 1977, after a phone call whose contents Mary never learned, Ron grabbed his pistol, drove off, and struck a tree at a nearby...

What if the imaginary friend you had as a child wasn’t imaginary at all — but something lingering, watching… and very real? EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/imaginaryfriends READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yckr4ry4 FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Most people had imaginary friends when they were younger. These "friends" were usually nice, funny, and even comforting. They took the form of animals, other humans, and sometimes larger-than-life characters that defy classification. And sometimes they were extremely creepy and downright scary, especially when examined in hindsight. CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding 00:01:22.744 = Show Open 00:02:39.239 = Imaginary Friends, Part 1 00:15:42.835 = Imaginary Friends, Part 2 *** 00:25:41.562 = Song: “Funny Man” by Dark Weirdness (about an imaginary friend) 00:30:08.623 = 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: Imaginary Friends 01: http://ow.ly/olpf30nQLkP Imaginary Friends 02: http://ow.ly/obdb30nQLl8 (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 2021 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 Weird Darkness collects fifteen true accounts from adults who look back on the imaginary friends of their childhood and find something other than imagination: a murdered girl buried a mile and a half from the house, a tall man in bloody scrubs at a tea party, two girls in white nightdresses who vanished whenever the dog ran in, and a voice in a basement window where nobody lived.It opens with a toddler named Karen who had to be treated like a real person, a friend so insistent that the child's mother wondered if she was seeing something nobody else could. Decades later, an article about a missing-person case in the same city named a murdered girl called Karen, and a text to her mother for the old address confirmed the body had been buried about a mile and a half from their former home, more than a decade before the family moved in.From there, a Redditor who broke into foreclosed...