Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

A gunman walked to a Skid Row corner in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday night, told three people standing there that this was where he did business, and opened fire before fleeing on foot.

PRINT VERSION OF THIS STORY: https://weirddarkness.com/skid-row-shooter

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*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
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A self-styled prophet sits headless at his own desk, his wife and four children butchered in the rooms above, and a basement chapel filled with altars and tagged offerings that no church ever blessed. The Ravenmill police call in a private eye with a taste for the strange — and the only honest witness left in the house is a single bloody fingerprint on the brass. 

EPISODE PAGE (includes list of sources): https://weirddarkness.com/noir-headlessprophet/

THE REAL CASE BEHIND THIS STORY: On July 3, 1929, real estate agent Vincent Elias arrived at the home of Benny Evangelista on Saint Aubin Street in Detroit and found a scene that would baffle investigators for decades. Evangelista — a self-proclaimed Divine Prophet who sold spells, hexes, and spiritual cures from a basement chapel filled with papier-mâché planets and a crude altar — sat decapitated at his desk, his head arranged on the floor among framed post-mortem photographs of his deceased son. Upstairs, his wife Santina and their four children, ages 18 months to seven years, had been slaughtered in their beds with an ax. Police pursued three theories: extortion letters from the fading Black Hand criminal network; a tenant named Umberto Tecchio who had visited the night before and whose barn yielded a suspiciously clean ax and banana knife; and Evangelista's old occult partner Aurelius Angelino, who had murdered his own children with an ax in 1919 and escaped from a Pennsylvania asylum for the criminally insane in 1923, never to be seen again. A bloody fingerprint on the front doorknob was the only physical evidence preserved at the scene, and it never matched any suspect. The case was eventually shelved as cold and remains officially unsolved nearly a century later. The Evangelista house was demolished years ago, but locals still speak of disembodied screams and a headless figure walking the empty lot.

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

Originally aired: May 1, 2026

A father’s sins often haunt the son, but in the case of Ion Rimaru—dubbed the Vampire of Bucharest—his brutal killing spree eerily mirrored his father’s unsolved crimes, leading to one of Romania’s most horrifying true crime sagas.

FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Ion Rimaru is a murderer like no other – vampirism, cannibalism, necrophilia – and why shouldn’t he? After all, he’s taking after his serial killer father. (The Disturbing Crimes of a Father and Son) *** A neural network named "Norman" is disturbingly different from other types of artificial intelligence. How? Well, for one… it’s a psychopath. (Meet Norman, The Artificially Intelligent Psychopath) *** Twenty high school students all lost consciousness and collapsed under mysterious circumstances during class on Tuesday, July 3. Was it mass hysteria? Juju in Ghana? Or did the students actually see ghosts as they claim? (Ghana Students Faint After Seeing Ghosts) *** At a young age, Edmund Kemper decapitated his sisters' dolls and even stalked his second-grade teacher with a bayonet. But he was young and just getting started. (Serial Killer Edmund Kemper) *** During the Second World War, in the gruesome world of Unit 731, the unthinkable was done on a daily basis. Prisoners, were subjected to unimaginable horrors. Today, ghostly voices are heard and anomalies frequently appear in photographs. (Unit 731) *** Top Secret CIA files have emerged from the 1950s exposing the explosive truth about alien UFOs visiting earth. (Bigger Than Roswell) *** After the wealthy and prominent Blanche Monnier fell in love with a commoner, her mother did the unthinkable in an attempt to stop it – locking her in her room for years on end. (Locked Away For Falling In Love) *** A similar story to that of Blanche Monnier, is the imprisonment of Elisabeth Fritzl. She spent 24 years in captivity, confined to a makeshift cellar and repeatedly tortured - by her own father. (The Horrifying Case of Elisabeth Fritzl) *** Despite having one husband and two boyfriends over the years, Dolly Oesterreich continued to keep her secret lover hidden in her attic. (Lover In The Attic) *** The Star Gate project. What was it, really? And did the government shut it down? (The Star Gate Project)

CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:01:10.410 = Show Open
00:04:08.300 = The Disturbing Crimes of Father and Son
00:16:05.365 = Ghana Students Faint After Seeing Ghosts ***
00:19:39.257 = Serial Killer Edmund Kemper
00:26:53.894 = Unit 731
00:31:10.331 = Meet Norman, The Artificially Intelligent Psychopath ***
00:36:09.488 = The Star Gate Project
00:48:00.820 = Locked Away For Falling In Love
00:53:01.433 = The Horrifying Case of Elisabeth Fritzl
01:00:50.103 = Lover In The Attic
01:08:23.753 = Bigger Than Roswell ***
01:11:51.675 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break

LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS:
Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other apps. Get the full list of options here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*

SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Ghana Students Faint After Seeing Ghosts” by Sequoya Kennedy for Mysterious Universe: http://bit.ly/2oqghUU
“Serial Killer Edmund Kemper” by Gabe Paoletti for All That’s Interesting: http://bit.ly/2nDRLiF
“Unit 731” posted at Ghost-Story.co.uk: http://bit.ly/2nGqXyg
“The Disturbing Crimes of a Father and Son” by Les Hewitt for Historic Mysteries: http://bit.ly/2nG8phK
“Meet Norman, The Artificially Intelligent Psychopath” by Mindy Weisberger for Live Science: http://bit.ly/2m8n2d7
“The Star Gate Project” by Arjun Walia (link no longer available)
“Locked Away For Falling In Love” by Gina Dimuro for All That’s Interesting: http://bit.ly/2nDCz57
“The Horrifying Case of Elisabeth Fritzl” by Katie Serena for All That’s Interesting: http://bit.ly/2mc4h8M
“Lover In The Attic” by Erin Kelly for All That’s Interesting: http://bit.ly/2ooCN0h
“Bigger Than Roswell” by Michael Havis for DailyStar.co.uk: http://bit.ly/2mGGePD
(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, 2018

EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources and full transcript): https://weirddarkness.com/BeastOfBucharest

A radiation-scarred inventor has built a submarine that burrows through solid bedrock, parked it beneath the city, and aimed its torpedoes at the fault line — and the planets are sliding into position to help him pull the trigger.

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options 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, “The Tunnel Man” (September 20, 1977)
00:45:40.665 = CBC Mystery Theater, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” (January 1968) ***WD
01:14:57.979 = Chet Chetter’s Tales From The Morgue, “Elmer Meets Death” (1990-1992) ***WD
01:43:03.330 = The Clock, “The Hunter and the Hunted” (November 22, 1955) ***WD
02:09:06.215 = Creeps By Night, “The Final Reckoning” (July 12, 1944) ***WD
02:37:03.067 = The Crime Club, “Sentence of Death” (October 09, 1947) ***WD
03:05:59.992 = Danger Dr. Danfield, “Case of the Counterfeit $10 Bills” (December 22, 1946) ***WD
03:31:06.412 = The Devil and Mr. O, “No Escape” (November 19, 1971) ***WD
03:56:48.974 = Diary of Fate, “Trina Crowley” (March 09, 1948) ***WD
04:25:17.920 = Dimension X, “Beyond Infinity” (July 21, 1950) ***WD
04:54:28.084 = 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/WDRR0645

A Lee County deputy on U.S. 41 clocked a red Toyota Supra at 123 mph around 1 a.m., recognized the car from a previous stop, and pulled over a 25-year-old driver who had blown a 0.23 on the breathalyzer.

PRINT VERSION OF THIS STORY: https://weirddarkness.com/supra-123-mph

Look for this podcast on YouTube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and numerous other podcast apps. Get the full list of options 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.
#WeirdDarkness, #WeirdDarkNEWS