Dark Histories

Christmas Campfire 2021 (Part 2)

Happy New Year! Here is part of the Christmas (New year? Holiday?) Campfire episode! This year's campfire was a brilliant collection of stories, thank you so much to everyone who sent in stories and got involved. Onwards and upwards, here's to 2022! x

Christmas Campfire 2021 (Part 1)

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays everyone! Here is the first part of this years Christmas Campfire episode and I have to say a massive thank you to everyone who sent stories in! This year the Campfire episode had overwhelming interest from everyone and there were so many great stories from everyone, it was such an enjoyable experience reading them and collating them for the episode, so thank you so much! I hope you all enjoy some creepy for the holiday season and have a great holiday, best wishes to you and all your family! Thank you so much for another great season of Dark Histories!

The Gloucester Sea Serpent of 1817

From the ancient pages of the Old Norse Edda to the interwar pages of American adventure magazines, the depths of our oceans have, in imagination, been host to unspeakable monsters for many hundreds of years. In modern times, the phrase “Here Be Dragons” has been absorbed into popular culture as titles for books, films, TV shows, bands and video games, all this despite the fact that it only ever appeared on the unknown seas of a single 16th Century Globe. Far more common were the giant sea monsters that adorned maps for hundreds of years, existing only as illustrations and in the minds of those that viewed them. In the summer of 1817, just off the coast of Massachusetts, however, these illustrations became flesh and blood for several weeks when witnesses of a Giant Sea Serpent numbered into the hundreds, in what the 19th Century Harvard Professor Jacob Bigelow called “the most interesting problem in the science of natural history.”
 
SOURCES
 
France, Robert L. (2021) Ethnozoology of Egede’s “Most Dreadful Monster,” The Foundational Sea Serpent. Society of Ethnobiology, Boston, MA, USA.
 
Egede, Hans (1818) A Description of Greenland. T & J Allman, London, UK.
 
Paxton, C. G. M. & Knatterud, E. (2005) Cetaceans, sex and sea serpents: an analysis of the Egede accounts of a “most dreadful monster” seen off the coast of Greenland in 1734. Archives of Natural History, London, UK.
 
Nickell, Joe (2019) Gloucester Sea-Serpent Mystery: Solved after Two Centuries. Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 43, No. 5. https://skepticalinquirer.org/2019/09/gloucester-sea-serpent-mystery-solved-after-two-centuries/
 
Magnus, Olaus (1658) A compendious history of the Goths, Swedes, & Vandals, and other northern nations. J. Streater, London, UK.
 
Pontoppidan, Erik (1755) The Natural history of Norway. A. Linde, London, UK.
 
Linnæan Society of New England (1817) Report of a committee of the Linnæan society of New England, relative to a large marine animal, supposed to be a serpent, seen near Cape Ann, Massachusetts, in August 1817. Cummings & Hilliard, Boston, USA
 
Brown, Chandos Michael (1990) A Natural History of the Gloucester Sea Serpent: Knowledge, Power, and the Culture of Science in Antebellum America. American Quarterly
Vol. 42, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 402-436. The Johns Hopkins University Press, USA
 
The Long Island Star (1817) A Frightful Fish! The Long Island Star, 20 August, 1817, p.3. NY, USA.
 
Dublin Evening Mail (1842) The Missouri Leviathan. Monday 07 November, 1842, p.3. Dublin, ROI.
 
The Illustrated London News (1848) The Great Sea Serpent. The Illustrated London News, 28 October, 1848, p.8. London, UK.
 
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Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
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Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
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The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

The New York Press & The Headless Torso Mystery

New York journalism in 1897 was in a pretty technicolor space. Newspapers, so long the grey, stolid, medium of the merchants and businessman, were instead being filled with lurid stories of murder, scandal and drunken debauchery and the public were loving it. As papers fought for readers in the streets, sometimes quite literally, the stories that filled the pages and the methods utilised on order to write the stories grew more and more sensational by the day. It all came to something of a boiling point in the high temperatures of Summer, when a body washed up in the East River, carved up and lacking a head. The investigation that followed was carried out just as much by the journalists as it was the police, as the lines between who was who became increasingly blurred.
 
SOURCES
 
Collins, Paul (2011) Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars. Broadway Books, NY, USA.
 
Reagan, L. J. (1995). Linking Midwives and Abortion in the Progressive Era. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 69(4), 569–598. John Hopkins University Press, USA
 
The World (1897) Boys Ghastly Find. 27 June 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) The Fragments of a Body Make a Mystery. 28 June 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) World Men Find A Clue. 28 June 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) The Murder Mystery is a Mystery Still. 01 July 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) Murder Will Out. 03 July 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) Mrs Nack’s Confession. 04 July 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) Supposed Thorn is Captured. 07 July 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) Thorn’s Friend Betrays Him. 08 July 1897, p3, NY, USA
 
The World (1897) Mrs Nack Talk Freely to The World. 06 August 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
The Journal (1897) Mrs Nack: Murderess! 01 July 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
Buffalo Evening News (1897) Says He Bought Corpses. 14 January 1897, p1, NY, USA
 
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For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com
Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories
Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9
Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories
& Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/
Or you can contact us directly via email at contact@darkhistories.com
or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072
or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf
The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

The Supernatural in War

Prior to the First World War, ghostly apparitions across battlefields tended to be confined to large scale skirmishes fought in the skies. In America, Modern folklore has helped to spawn a cottage industry within the tourist trade of Civil War battlefields. The equation of such high death rates, paired with intense levels of trauma seems to equate to an acceptance that wars were surely the perfect breeding grounds for the supernatural. Though this doesn’t always appear to ring true, war is, nevertheless, a ripe area for some very bizarre stories.
 
SOURCES
 
R. Machen A., (1915) The Angel of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War. London, 1915.
 
Runcorn Guardian (1915) Angel At Mons. 27 August, 1915. P.5. UK.
 
Davies, Owen (2018) A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith during the First World War. Oxford University Press, UK.
 
Carrington, Hereward (1918) Physical Phenomenon and The War. Dodd, Mead and Co. New York, USA.
 
Liverpool Echo (1916) The Trench Ghost. 21 November, 1916. P.3. Liverpool, UK
 
Bird, William R. (1930) And We Go On: A Memoir of The Great War. The HUnter Rose Co. LTD. Toronto, Canada.
 
Psychic News (1941) Edition No. 455, 08 Feb 1941.
 
Vu Hong Van, Nguyen Trong Long, Trinh Thi Thanh, Tong Kim Dong & Pham Van Luong (2020) Folk Beliefs of Vietnamese People. Book Publisher International, UK.
 
BBC Witness History (2017) US Psychological Warfare in Vietnam. BBC World Service, 21 July, 2017.
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For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com
Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories
Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9
Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories
& Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/
Or you can contact us directly via email at contact@darkhistories.com
or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072
or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf
The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

The Borley Rectory Affair

When Harry Price published his first book covering Borley Rectory in 1940, he would have been well aware of how sensational, and potentially controversial, the title would appear. “The Most Haunted House in England” shot Borley Rectory to fame, cementing the name in history with the likes of Jack the Ripper, The Salem Witch Trials and later, The Amityville Horror. That the contents of the book stirred up so many years of controversy is an outcome that was bound to have materialised regardless of the title, with stories of spectral nuns, monks and horse-drawn carriages, ghostly writings on the wall and secret passages, all set in the spiritualist boom between the wars. Tables tipped, planchettes moved, bells rang and eventually the house burnt to the ground. Eighty years later, the legend of Borley still lives on fighting against allegations of fraud all the way.
Sources
Price, Harry (1940) The Most Haunted House in England. Longmans, Green, UK
Price, Harry (1946) The End of Borley Rectory. George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., UK.
Dingwall, Eric J., Goldney, Kathleen M. & Hall, Trevor H. (1956) The Haunting of Borley Rectory - A Critical Survey of the Evidence. Proceedings for the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 51, Part 186, January, 1956. UK.
Adams, Paul, Brazil, Eddie & Underwood, Peter (2009) The Borley Rectory Companium. The History Press, UK
`Ωcv|”aqTabori, Paul & Underwood, Peter (2017) The Ghosts of Borley. UK.
Wall, V.C. (1929) Ghost Visits to a Rectory. The Daily Mirror, 10th June 1929, UK
Wall, V.C. (1929) Weird Night in Haunted House. The Daily Mirror, 14th June 1929, UK
Clarke, Andrew (2021) The Bones of Borley Rectory. [online] Foxearth.org.uk. Available at: [Accessed 11 August 2021].
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For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com
Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories
Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories
& Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/
Or you can contact us directly via email at contact@darkhistories.com
or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072
or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf
The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Biped Beavers & The Man Bats from the Moon

1938 saw one of the world's most famous media hoaxes terrify a nation of unexpecting listeners when the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast was sent out across the airwaves unannounced, leading many to believe it to be a genuine news item. Somewhat more obscure is the tale of its precursor, when 103 years earlier in August of 1835, daily New York newspaper The Sun ran a week-long series of articles concerning the discovery of life on the moon. The paper’s “Lunarians” were a bizarre species of temple building man-bats living in perfect harmony with the animals that surrounded them. It was a humbug to match the audacity from any of the exhibits in P.T.  Barnum's American Museum and as unbelievable as it may sound today, at the time there were many who firmly believed it, fueling debates that raged across all levels of society.
Sources
Goodman, Matthew (2008) The Sun and The Moon. Basic Books, NY, USA.
Adams Locke, Richard (1835) Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made By Sir John Herschel, LLD FRS &c At the Cape of Good Hope. New York Sun, NY, USA
Allen Poe, Edgar (1846) Some Honest Opinions at Random Respecting Their Autorial Merits, With Occasional Words of Personality. The Literati of New york City - Vol VI. USA.
Liverpool Mercury (1835) Alleged Discovery of Men, Animals, Vegetables Etc. In The Moon. Friday 25th September, 1835, p.8. Liverpool, UK
Herschel, John F. W. (1834) A Treatise on Astronomy. Carey, Lea & Blanchard, London, UK.
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For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com
Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories
Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories
& Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/
Or you can contact us directly via email at contact@darkhistories.com
or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072
or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf
The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

The Many Confessions of Alfred Packer

The North American mineral rushes of the 19th Century saw hundreds of thousands flock to mountains and mines across the continent in search of fame and fortune, from panning for gold to working long, dangerous shifts down poorly run mines, entire industries exploded overnight, sucking in workers from around the world. During the San Juan Silver Rush of the 1870s, one of these workers was a young man named Alfred Packer, an epileptic, military cast-off, who drifted across America looking for his passport to a new life. He had lived a reasonably anonymous existence, until one fateful expedition saw him wind up almost starving to death, only surviving by eating his fellow party members, a surprisingly common occurrence in the Old West.
SOURCES
Keller, David (2015) The Story of Camp Douglas: Chicago's Forgotten Civil War Prison. The History Press, UK
Schechter, Harold (2015) Man-Eater: The Saga of Alfred G. Packer, American Cannibal. Head of Zeus, London, UK.
Brown, Robert Leaman (1965) An Empire of Silver: A History of the San Juan Silver Rush. Caldwell, Idaho, USA.
Randolph, John A. (1874) A Colorado Tragedy. Harper’s Weekly, Sunday 17th October, 1874. New York City, USA
The Cincinnati Enquirer (1874) Revelation of a Horrible Crime - Sequel to a Recent Cannibalistic Sensation! The Cincinnati Enquirer, 9th September, 1874. p.1. USA
The Abingdon Virginian (1874) A Horrible Diet. The Abingdon Virgianian, 25th September, 1874. p.1. USA 
El Paso Herald (1901) Packer Released. El Paso Herald, 8th January, 1901. p.1. USA
The Herald (1989) Scientists Uncover Skull Bone. 19 July, 1989. p.22, USA.
The Orlando Sentinel (1989) Cannibal. 23 July, 1989, p.12, USA.
Christensen, Mike (1989) Final Word: Packer Guilty as Sin. The Daily Sentinal, 13 October, 1989, p.1. USA.
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For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com
Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories
Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories
& Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/
Or you can contact us directly via email at contact@darkhistories.com
or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072
or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf
The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Somerton Man With Professor Derek Abbott

Hi everyone, I'm taking a small summer break for a couple of weeks, so to cover the gap I have a few older patreon bonus episodes to put out for the main feed and give everyone a chance to hear them. Here is an interview I did with Professor Derek Abbott on the recent news about the Exhumation efforts in the Somerton Man case. 
Professor Derek Abbott is Director of the Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Adelaide, Australia, Somerton Man expert and all-round bloody nice bloke. You can find out more about him here: http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/Personal/dabbott/
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For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com
Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories
& Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/
Or you can contact us directly via email at contact@darkhistories.com
or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072
or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf
The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

The Barnes Mystery: Kate Webster’s Best Dripping

In Victorian England, fishing all manner of filth, detritus and human body parts from the Thames River in London was not such an unusual affair. Used for centuries as a dumping ground and waste disposal, it became so bad by the mid 19th Century that it was renamed “The Great Stink”. In 1879, a coal porter pulled out an old wooden box and unearthed one of the more macabre treats the river has tossed up over the years when he opened it to discover a heavily mutilated body. The mutilations might have been somewhat notable, but far more so was the killer, who once tracked down was found to be a woman, a fact that rocketed it straight into the spotlight of public attention.
 
SOURCES
 
O’Donnell, Elliot (1925) Trial of Kate Webster. W. Hodge, London, UK.
 
Court Transcript (1879) Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, 30 June 2021), June 1879, trial of CATHERINE WEBSTER (29) (t18790630-653).
 
Fuller, Katie Lisette (2009) Victorian airbrushing: cultural, physical and artistic representations of upper-class women of then and today. Graduate Theses and Dissertations, 11105. Iowa State University, USA.
 
Wilkes, David (2011) Cut up and boiled to feed street children: Horrific fate of Victorian murder victim whose skull was found in David Attenborough's garden. The Daily Mail, 6th July, 2011, London, UK
 
The Execution of Kate Webster and its Lessons. South Wales Daily News, p.2, 30th July 1879, Wales, UK.
 
The Barnes Mystery. Wolverhampton Express and Star, p.3, 12th March 1879, Wolverhampton, UK.
 
Mysterious Package from the Thames. The Daily Review, p.3, 11th March 1879, Edinburgh, UK.
 
Extraordinary Discovery. The Nottingham Evening post, p.3, 10th march 1879, Nottingham, UK.
 
Home News. Paisley & Renfrewshire Gazette, p.2, 8th March 1879, UK.
 
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For extended show notes, including maps, links and scripts, head over to darkhistories.com
Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories
Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast
Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories
& Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/
Or you can contact us directly via email at contact@darkhistories.com
or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072
or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf
The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye
Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017
Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.