Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

The ashes were still warm just before six in the morning, and by the time they had driven home for a camera and come back half an hour later, the star, the log, the bones and every scuff mark in the ground were gone.

EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-hothfieldwitches

SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Hothfield Witches” by Ken DaSilva, submitted to Weird Darkness

WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 06, 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

A century after 11-year-old Janette Lawrence was brutally murdered walking home from a babysitting job, her ghost is still seen wandering the streets of Madison — seeking justice that never came.

EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/KluxenWoods

FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: I narrate a chapter from the audiobook, “Suffer the Children: American Horrors, Homicides and Hauntings” by Troy Taylor. The chapter is entitled “1921: Murder at Kluxen’s Woods” - a murder that has yet to be officially solved, although many hundreds of people in the area feel they know exactly who got away with murder. A murder that resulted in a haunting!

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*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Murder at Kluxen’s Woods” is from the audiobook, “Suffer the Children: American Horrors, Homicides and Hauntings” by Troy Taylor: https://amzn.to/45NQExh
(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 the 1921 murder of an 11-year-old babysitter beside a New Jersey winery, the two suspects tried and acquitted for killing her, and the ghost that motorists still report walking the same street toward a home she never reached.It opens on Fairview Avenue in Madison, New Jersey, on the evening of October 6, 1921, when 11-year-old Janette Lawrence left a babysitting job at the Sandt home and walked past the wooded edge of the Kluxen Winery estate toward her house at 142 Ridgedale Avenue. Two Boy Scouts found her body beside a tree stump in Kluxen's Woods about two hours later, stabbed 23 times, her hands bound behind her with the kind of cord local rose greenhouses used for shipping. The Madison borough council ordered the arrest of 14-year-old Francis Kluxen III, grandson of the winery's founder, the next day, and a judge released him on bail after calling the arrest unjustified. Morris County prosecutor John M. Mills went after a different man, 29-year-old greenhouse worker Frank Jancarek, on the word of Frank McGrory, a fired ex-convict who claimed Jancarek confessed to him the night of the killing. Jancarek's April 1922 trial in Morristown featured a letter opener with blood under its handle, a single hair that "closely resembled" his, a witness who conferred with the sheriff before picking him from a lineup, and a defense that told jurors to disregard the chemist's findings because he was German; the jury acquitted him in under an hour. Attorney General Thomas F. McCran then won an indictment against Kluxen, whose trial that July turned on his Boy Scout knife, his footprints at the stump and a nearby hydrant, trousers his mother soaked in water that night, and two mended handkerchiefs from the crime scene that a sewing teacher matched to five taken from a cabinet outside his bedroom. That jury deliberated three hours before acquitting him as well. Kluxen was later adopted by Monell Sayre, the wealthy founder of the Episcopal Church Pension Fund, joined the Marine Corps, shot a neighbor named Joe Hollman dead in San Diego in 1933, and went to San Quentin for a string of burglaries in 1934. The chapter, drawn from Troy Taylor's audiobook Suffer the Children: American Horrors, Homicides and Hauntings, closes with the houses now standing where the woods were, where a family with no knowledge of the case reported a thin, light-brown-haired girl appearing in a child's bedroom, and where drivers on Ridgedale and Fairview Avenues describe a girl in an old-fashioned coat and beret who vanishes in their headlights.

The tracking data showed the flock flying in a formation that spelled out a word, Butcher, and two weeks later the fisherman who first reported them, Jonathan Butcher, was dead at his wife's hand.

EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/mitm-butcher

SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Canada Geese of Lake Pleasant” by A.S. Lowe: https://www.creepypasta.com/the-canada-geese-of-lake-pleasant/

WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: September 05, 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

Three Micro Terrors listeners, ages seven to twelve, wrote this week's stories: a boy wakes up on the first morning of spring break to a kitchen that's a little too tidy and birds that chirp right on cue; a puddle of red slime shows up beside a dinner chair just before bedtime; and two brothers spot a strange light on long pole legs on the walk home from school… and then it starts moving.
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/1655277373
Find more family-friendly frights and creepy games to play on our website at http://MicroTerrors.com!
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/microterrors
Other stories, novels, and more from author Scott Donnelly: https://amzn.to/3LymHaU
Other narrations, podcasts, and audiobooks from voice artist Darren Marlar: https://WeirdDarkness.com
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Weird Darkness©, 2026
Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids™, 2026#MicroTerrors #WeirdDarkness

A cash-strapped couple inherits Great Aunt Hester's country manor on one sole condition: her cat, Saladin, lives out its days there in the style to which it's accustomed, and the new master of the house has no patience for a pampered pet.

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, “Cross Fire” (August 21, 1978) ***WD
00:46:44.221 = Peril, “Sidewalk Empire” (1953) ***WD
01:10:02.717 = Mystery Playhouse, “Cask of Amontillado” (April 24, 1945) ***WD
01:38:57.010 = Philip Morris Playhouse, “Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse” (September 18, 1951)
02:08:59.394 = Price of Fear, “To My Dear Saladin” (June 06, 1983) ***WD
02:38:17.909 = Quiet Please, “Dark Gray Magic” (May 01, 1949) ***WD
03:07:49.740 = Radio City Playhouse, “Twas The Night Before Christmas” (December 25, 1949)
03:37:07.621 = Max Haines, “Arthur Gusy” (mid 1940s)
04:00:58.139 = Sam Spade, “Wheel of Life Caper” (July 11, 1948) ***WD
04:30:18.915 = The Sealed Book, “Ghost Makers” (June 10, 1945)
04:59:48.346 = 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/WDRR0764