Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

From cursed quarterbacks to ghostly gridirons, we explore the haunted history and supernatural legends that still linger on football fields across America.

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

*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*

SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Football Hauntings” by Giancarlo Ferrari-King for Bleacher Report https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2o64vefa, YourGhostStories.com (link no longer available), and Sports Planning Guide: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1ivxxh5l(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: August 2018
More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.
Weird Darkness takes football into haunted territory, from a quarterback's curse on the Detroit Lions to ghosts reported in stadiums and dorm halls across the country.
It opens with Bobby Layne, who'd won back-to-back championships for the Lions before a broken leg in 1957 let Tobin Rote take Detroit's third title in six years; traded to Pittsburgh in 1958 at 31, Layne told the media the Lions wouldn't win for 50 years, and they spent those decades with football's worst winning percentage and no Super Bowl.
From there it's Notre Dame's George Gipp, dead of pneumonia in December 1920 at 25, days after beating Northwestern, and later played by Ronald Reagan in Knute Rockne, All American; legend says he caught his cold sleeping on the steps of Washington Hall after curfew, and students have since reported late-night music, slamming doors, a shove from invisible hands on a stairway, and light bulbs unscrewing themselves.
Next, a young listener recalls waking at 3:45 a.m. to a boy of about seventeen in plaid pajama pants and a green football helmet, holding a potato sack that looked full of sand, who vanished just before a cell phone light reached him.
The episode closes with stadium ghosts: Michael Plume, the 19-year-old Air Force member found dead in Indiana University's Memorial Stadium in February 1960, whose ghost fans still report; a player called Nick said to spin fire extinguishers in Kansas State's Purple Masque Theatre; Jimmy Hoffa, who vanished July 30, 1975, reportedly cheering at Ford Field; Civil War soldiers at Wisconsin's Camp Randall; and seven coffins unearthed in 2010 behind the bleachers at Lee Williams High School in Kingman, Arizona, where witnesses describe a little girl asking to go out and play.

More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

A German man scribbled "YOGTZE" hours before he was found dying in his wrecked car, a woman's body turned up stuffed inside a hollow tree in England, and the Black Dahlia is one of numerous murders where no killer was ever caught.

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

READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5dbv8s24

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:26.134 = William Desmond Taylor
00:10:26.677 = The Grimes Sisters ***
00:16:35.616 = The Villisca Axe Murders00:20:24.119 = Günther Stoll and “YOGTZE”
00:25:47.137 = Bella Wright And The Green Bicycle
00:33:14.713 = The Servant Girl Annihilator ***
00:40:02.597 = The Murder of Georgette Bauerdorf
00:45:18.379 = The Seal Chart Murder
00:53:12.270 = The Benny Evangelist Murders ***
00:57:29.939 = The Killing of Ken McElroy
01:03:01.290 = The Keddie Cabin Murders
01:10:30.620 = The Murder of Margaret Martin
01:15:13.508 = The Texarkana Moonlight Murders ***
01:21:22.577 = Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm?
01:24:53.756 = The Hinterfaifeck Murders
01:28:16.821 = The Black Dahlia ***
01:33:54.312 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Chilling Unsolved Murders” from The Line Up: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/foyleo4o(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: August 2018
More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

Indiana needed five jolts to kill William Vandiver, and Arizona's gas chamber took ten and a half minutes while a TV anchor kept a stopwatch running on Donald Harding. In between, Alabama connected the chair's cables wrong for Horace Dunkins, a synthetic sponge sent flames from under Jesse Tafero's mask in Florida, and both states called it human error.

From the book “BOTCHED EXECUTIONS: Four Centuries Of Failed Hangings, Electrocutions, Gassings, Injections And Firing Squads” by Darren Marlar at https://weirddarkness.com/botchedexecutions

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

Originally aired: October 20, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HM3LZM9M/

More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

In the story, David and Alice Leiber are a happily married couple living in Los Angeles, but when Alice gives birth to a healthy baby boy, she fears the baby is somehow abnormal and will kill her.

EPISODE BLOG PAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/SmallAssassin

SOURCES and RESOURCES: “The Small Assassin” by Ray Bradbury from “The Stories of Ray Bradbury”: https://amzn.to/3AT6E6Q

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

Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: October 20, 2026

More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

In a future where the government runs legal murder, a clothing man on his seventh hunt tracks his victim to a sidewalk cafe in New York and finds her sitting alone with both hands on the table.

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = Show Open
00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Complete Recovery” (January 01, 1979) ***WD
00:47:03.252 = Witch’s Tale, “The Priest of Sekhet” (February 27, 1933) ***WD(LQ)
01:13:22.062 = X Minus One, “Seventh Victim” (March 06, 1957)
01:36:47.331 = ABC Mystery Time, “Death Walked In” (1956-1957) ***WD
02:00:48.532 = Appointment With Fear, “The Speaking Clock” (April 13, 1944)
02:29:08.838 = Arch Oboler’s Plays, “Truth” (June 28, 1945) ***WD
02:57:20.767 = Barry Craig, “Murder Island” (January 09, 1979) ***WD
03:27:38.576 = Ghost Story, “The Tower” (January 02, 1987)
03:41:19.292 = Night Beat, “Old Itch” (July 03, 1952)
04:10:21.392 = The Black Book, “My Favorite Corpse” (February 24, 1952) ***WD
04:24:48.069 = Box 13, “Dan And The Wonderful Lamp” (March 27, 1949)
04:53:16.118 = Strange Adventure, “the Jade Ring” ( ***WD
04:56:30.783 = Tales of the Frightened, “Voice From The Grave” (1957-1963)
05:01:17.266 = 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.

More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.

CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0804

More episodes, additional podcasts, books, original music, in-depth paranormal and true-crime articles, and much more at https://weirddarkness.com.