As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 210 - Disturbing Scary Stories & Dark Web Horror Stories

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

Today, on the 210th episode of the As The Raven Dreams podcast, we have 9 True Chilling stories. These stories come from the shadowy corners of reality, where everyday life takes an eerie twist & ordinary people experience the extraordinary. Today we will be diving into Some incredibly disturbing scary stories as well as some tales from the Dark web. Today's episode was written by Tom K, Find his other works here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBVX81W7 If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like or rate the podcast, and leave me a comment with your thoughts if the platform your on supports it! I upload episodes every 3 days, so there are 2 days between new uploads. The podcast consists of new scary story collections, Glitch in the matrix collections, and also what I call the "Dark Dreams" collections (which are older stories, remastered and layered with rain sounds). If you have a story to submit, would like to find where to listen to the podcast, or want to find me on social media platforms, all of that info can be found at https://www.astheravendreams.com You can also send stories into my subreddit (r/theravensdream) or email them to me at [e-mail] Want to check out some ATRD Podcast Merch? ➤ https://teechip.com/stores/astheravendreams Or for signed merch ➤ https://ko-fi.com/AsTheRavenDreams I wrote a novel, "The Insomniac's Experiment" by Raven Adams! Check it out on amazon (Or you can email me for a signed copy!) Join Patreon to get early access and support the Podcast! ➤ https://www.patreon.com/AsTheRavenDreams Check out my gaming channel with my pal Ghost_Ink ➤ @superNefariousBros On YouTube Thank you to all of the authors that have stories in todays episode... Tom K (My Man For Research Pieces!), 90sSisters, Hidden Fox, Random Username, As Well As Any Author That Has Requested Anonymity. TimeStamps… Ad breaks after Story 1 & Story 4 1 ➤ 1:36 2 ➤ 15:47 3 ➤ 25:37 4 ➤ 35:07 5 ➤ 46:08 6 ➤ 54:19 7 ➤ 1:01:20 8 ➤ 1:11:09 9 ➤ 1:15:02 ----- Disclaimer ➤ Episodes include a content warning for language and sensitive/disturbing content. Listener discretion is always advised. ALL Audio and visuals on this podcast are copyright of AS THE RAVEN DREAMS / RAVEN ADAMS and may not be duplicated, in any format. Bless This Mess. None of my audio is AI Generated, I am a real person reading real stories into a real microphone. Note: The podcast nor the host endorses any advertisements played during the podcast, ads are not chosen by ATRD or Raven Adams, they are chosen automatically by the advertisement systems by the platforms that host the podcast. I do not endorse, support, or promote any opinions or statements made in any adverts played during the show. #ScaryStories #UnexplainedMysteries #DarkWebStories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and good afternoon, my friends. I apologize that I, uh, haven't posted lately. I owe you guys an extra Dark Dreams podcast Glitch edition episode. I accidentally skipped over that this week. Uh, it's been kind of a crazy week and, uh, yeah, it, it, uh, the stresses of life, they hit whenever you don't expect them to. And then whenever they hit, it's hard to get your head out of that. headspace and get work done. Um,

plus I've been doing with some freezing pipes. It did hit negative 50 here in Rochester, Minnesota. As I said, it was going to, to anyone who would listen, at least. I don't think I said anything on here, but to anyone who would listen, I said it. Because it, uh, negative 50 with windchill is no joke, and it hit it, so. Had some freezing pipes, got it all sorted out for the most part. We are good to go, no bursts, thankfully. Just something I have to kind of plan for in the future. Moving up here this year was... It's been a test. Tested my patience a little bit, to be honest with you.

But anyway, today we have some disturbing and dark web stories. Not just disturbing dark web stories, but disturbing scary stories and dark web stories. Hopefully you enjoy them. Obviously, content warning, as the title should suggest. Hopefully you do enjoy them. Hopefully, I see you guys again here soon. But until then, please have a fantastic weekend. And of course, enjoy.

This is something that has... happened to my twin sister and I when we got our first place together at the age of 20. We'd been living at home. Neither of us quite set on what we wanted to go to college for, if at all, so we just focused on working. After saving up enough, we got an apartment together for a decent price. It was a two-bedroom, one bath. It was in an older building, but it was our first place that we got all on our own, so we were proud of it. Our landlord, Don not only owned the building, but lived in one of the apartments as well on the top floor. We had to supply bank statements to show that we could afford the rent, pay a deposit, and two months of rent.

But we also didn't have to apply or do any kind of credit pulling, so we were pretty happy about that. Don seemed like a pretty normal guy. Maybe in his late 40s. He was professional enough, going over the rules, what was allowed, what was not. He explained if there were any maintenance issues to just call or come tell him and he would take care of it. He did the walkthrough with us, making sure the place looked fine and that nothing needed to be fixed immediately. As we worked on the process in the walkthrough, he asked about us, about where we worked, what we did for fun, if we planned on having any friends over or pets.

At the time, it just seemed like normal questions to learn about the tenants, so we answer them on. Honestly. At the time, we just had two parakeets, so nothing that would make a mess in the apartment. As for friends, we did plan on having some over, but nothing long term. About two months after we moved in, we started noticing small things that felt off. I would come home and feel like things had slightly moved. Not obviously ransacked or anything, just different. I was pretty specific with how I leave things. My drawers were always completely pushed in.

When they're slightly ajar or crooked, it would drive me crazy. Same with chairs. Even if I was just getting up for a second, I would push it all the way in. So when I came home and went to my room and noticed that my drawer was slightly off, I knew that it had been moved. The drawer in particular had my bras in it, and I asked my sister if she had borrowed one and she said no. I thought it was weird,

but it didn't look like I was missing any, so I assumed maybe it was just a one-off chance that I didn't realize I didn't push it all the way in. To be honest, I didn't believe that, but I had no other explanation. But when it kept happening, but to areas like the bathroom or the living room, I started wondering if it was maintenance.

There were a few things that we had reported. The sliding door didn't seem to lock properly, and the dryer started making a loud noise. Well, at this point the dryer wasn't quite as loud, but the door still wasn't locking, so I kind of just assumed that maybe maintenance had come in for the dryer. However, they weren't supposed to enter when we weren't home. And since our stuff was obviously being moved around,

I had a big problem with it. So I went to Dawn's unit to complain about it. I didn't want us to be pushed around just because we were younger, so I was ready to put a stop to it immediately. I knocked on his door and he answered in a pair of sweatpants and no shirt. He looked surprised to see me. I explained that I noticed things being moved around in our apartment that neither I nor my sister had moved. I tried to keep my tone polite but firm,

explaining that I know the rules and I know that maintenance could not enter without us home and that they also had to give us a 24-hour notice. I remember how Dawn's face did this weird thing where he looked almost panicked for a second. Then when I mentioned maintenance, he overcorrected into being super apologetic and understanding. He said that he would look into it and make sure that it didn't happen again. It seemed like he did talk to them because the weird moving of objects stopped for a while. And my sister also never saw anything out of place. Fast forward a bit, my sister talked about a nightmare she had.

had and worries about sleep paralysis. She mentioned how she was locked in a room with a slit in the door that slid open and shut. When the slit opened, she could see a pair of eyes staring at her, but she couldn't do anything about it. She tried to scream, but she couldn't. She tried to move or hide under the covers, but she couldn't. She never had issues with sleep paralysis before, and I know those nightmares could happen. I'd had them before as a kid, but that was just it.

Neither of us had had a nightmare to that degree since we were kids. It was pretty crazy, but we both agreed that maybe she was just stressed at something weird, and we moved on. That is, until I woke up one night needing to use the restroom. I was in one of those positions where you know you will not get that comfortable if you get up, but my bladder was shouting at me. I rolled over to face the door, and as my eyes focused, my heart dropped. My door was cracked open, something I didn't do, and it looked like someone was standing there watching me. I lied there for several seconds trying to figure out what I was seeing.

Was this real? Was I dreaming? I didn't know how to react, not wanting to get out of bed, so I just said out loud, "'Sys, what are you doing?' And that's when I almost peed myself. The figure slowly backed away. I quickly sat up trying to grasp if what I just saw was real. I got up, turned on my light, and slowly opened my door and looked down the hallway.

My sister and I are both pretty small, so if this was an intruder, there was no way I could take them. I was afraid to rush out there and confront them, but was hoping that I was sleepwalking or just imagining it. But I was not feeling confident in that, though. After a few seconds, I opened the door all the way and looked down the hall towards our kitchen and dining room. I didn't see anyone, so I quickly opened my sister's door across from me and saw her asleep in her bed. I woke her up and told her what I just saw, and she quickly sat up, now fully awake. We called the police and reported it. The slider still wasn't fixed at that point, but the balcony didn't go anywhere and we were on the second floor.

and to no surprise to anyone, there were no ladders or ropes leading to the bottom, meaning the person had to have come from our front door, of which I was certain we locked. The police asked the normal questions, and since they didn't see anyone around and didn't catch anyone, they left, and we were unable to fall back asleep. It was crazy to us. We didn't have a lot of stuff, as we were just going alone and getting stuff as we had the money, for it. Everything else, like our couch and TV, were clearly older, as they were brought from our parents' place. But since nothing was missing or even searched through, it seemed like

robbing us was not their intention, which I felt even more creeped out about. The next day, my sister and I went to talk to Don about what happened. I remember him being completely shocked about it, and made a comment that he had never had reports like that until we moved in. It wasn't until we left that I realized what he said. We told him that we wanted to better secure the apartment and mentioned getting a doorbell camera and he was apprehensive. We explained that we would be paying for it and installing it ourselves so there was no cost to him. But he said he didn't want those installed on the doors because it invaded people's privacy. I argued that it wouldn't because it's on our door and would only catch people walking by it or stopping at our door.

I even reminded him that someone broke into our apartment, so we were trying to catch the person that did it, making his apartment complex safer. But no matter what, he refused. He gave a half-assed apology but said that he wouldn't allow anything on the outside of the building, and also felt that it was appropriate to say any damage done to the apartment would come out of our deposit if and when we moved out. We left feeling defeated and like he definitely would. wouldn't do anything for us if it came down to it.

We were barely six months into our lease, and already we were getting some really bad feelings from it all. We did tell our parents about everything that happened, and they both agreed that they didn't like his response to it. My dad understood him not wanting things installed on the outside of the building, but said that there were other ways he could have handled it. He mentioned using a magnetic plate to put it on the door, that way nothing had to be installed, no holes being made.

But they both didn't like how he didn't seem concerned about the break-ins in general. That's when my sister pointed out the way he said that it didn't happen until we moved in. Like it was our fault. So my dad helped us with the way around it. We went and picked up two cameras and had them set up to face both of our doors. One was on the bookshelf facing the front door and the other was on the entertainment center facing the slider, just in case. This way it just captured the doors,

so it wasn't too intrusive for us, and if someone broke in, we would have even better proof that they were inside our apartment. I know setting up the cameras didn't really secure us any better, but it at least gave me a little more fire, knowing that we would have proof.

We both just made sure the doors were locked at all times, the slider being fixed at this point, so there was no doubt that it was. was left unlocked. Things went back to normal after that, and we started to relax for a bit. We didn't feel quite as uncomfortable being home at night, and our dad called or texted us goodnight every night, making sure we were okay. Then, it all came to a head about two weeks later.

We were both asleep, and I once again had the urge to use the restroom. I rolled over and noticed that once again, my door was slightly open. but this time there was no figure in the doorway. I did, however, immediately sit up, knowing that I didn't leave my door like that, and was worried that someone came in again. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911 ready to call, as I slowly stood up and walked the few steps to my door. I swung my door open quickly, into my horror.

There was a guy facing my sister's room with her door open, and his pants were down. I know that he heard me swing the door, because he started to whip around as he tried to pull his pants up. But my scream is what woke up my sister. She turned so quickly covering herself up, as she was sleeping in just a t-shirt. I was so angry and freaked out at once.

I wanted to just lock myself in my sister's room and call the police, but the anger took over when I recognized the intruder. And you probably guessed at this point, it was dawn. I grabbed the first thing within my reach, which was a boot on this shelf that sat between our rooms, and I threw it at him. And then, I kept throwing shoes at him until I ran out and finally got up and left our apartment. My sister was on the phone with the cops while we waited for them to show up. I checked our cameras. It clearly showed him entering our apartment through the front door, pulling down his hood, and looking around the apartment.

He then walked down the hallway where he was out of view until it showed him crawling across the floor, ducking my shoes. He'd been there for about 20 minutes. I was horrified and disgusted. No wonder he didn't want us to install a camera. He had a key to the place so he could come and go as he pleased, and the camera would just show him doing as much. He clearly wasn't expecting us to have cameras inside the apartment based on his conversation with the police. police. When they arrived, we told them everything, and then showed them the camera footage. They went to confront him, and he had completely changed his clothes and denied everything,

claiming we had caused nothing but trouble since we moved in. He actually told them that we were probably doing it because we had tried flirting with him to lower our rent. But when they told him that we had video proof it was him, he shut up and wouldn't say another word. There was a whole legal thing after all this, which is why I didn't use any real names, just in case. He still tried to argue that we had to pay to get out of our lease, but that didn't go as he planned. He was charged for basically breaking and entering, among some other charges. We moved out pretty quickly after that, even though he wasn't around. We still didn't feel comfortable being there. So, back to our parents' place we went, at least until we figured.

figured it all out again. The next place we got, we vetted it much better, and we went through a company rather than a single person. And we still had our cameras up, too, because now, I just find it hard to trust people. I have read and seen too many people making comments about how the dark web isn't really what it's claimed to be. That it's not full of illegal content or psychopaths. I'm here to say that is, or at least was, incorrect. I have no idea what the dark web is like now. I have no idea what the current and modern state of the dark web is.

But I know what I saw back in 2016. I know that a lot of what's out there is likely to just be people scamming others or FBI honeypots, but some of it is absolutely real. I don't care if people believe me. I just need to get it out of my head. I mentioned that I don't know about the modern dark web. That's because this happened about 10 years ago. Back in 2016, when I was a sophomore living in a dorm room that smelled like coffee and body odor.

I was a nobody and was going through the morbid curiosity phase that a lot of guys go through. I had been to some of the messed up surface web sites. I'd seen things that I probably shouldn't have, things that. things that likely messed up my psyche. But even then, I was curious about what was out there, what things were hidden below the surface. I downloaded the Tor browser. It's surprisingly easy.

You just install it, connect it to a relay node, and then suddenly you're part of this vast anonymous network. Once you connect, you're now underwater, and how deep you swim is completely up to you. For the first few weeks, I stayed on the shallow end and was pretty damn bored with what I found. The dark web is mostly broken links and slow-loading pages that look like they're from the late 90s. That and a few actual scams. I surfed the hidden wiki looking for random things to entertain me, and I landed mostly on conspiracy forums.

From one of these conspiracy forums, I actually found a link that led me to what this story is about. It was in a random comment that was posted to a thread about radio equipment. I even remember the comment because it said, click here if you're seeing red. Thinking back, that was actually pretty clever, and I was an idiot for not seeing it coming. The page that loaded was stark white. No graphics, no banners, or anything resembling a page title.

Just a list of timestamps and links labeled things like session one and session two. At the bottom of the list, there was red text that said, Live feed active. My heart did a little jump at this. Most people don't realize this because of the movies and whatnot, but live feeds on the dark web are not common because of the bandwidth latency. Tor and Onion routing has a lot of latency issues, data being slow between getting to point A and point B.

When I clicked on the link for the live feed, the page loaded in, and it started taking a really long time. The buffer wheels spun for several minutes while I sat there in the dark. Finally, the video player did load in the center of the screen. The quality was terrible and heavily pixelated. The audio from the video was a low and distorted hum that sounded like it was being recorded through a running washing machine. After a few moments, the picture cleared up some, and I could see that the video was of a room that was covered in plastic sheeting. Have you seen Dexter?

Think of his old killrooms, top to bottom in plastic sheeting with tape holding all of them together. In the center of the room was one of those heavy school desks, the kind with the chair and then the desk is connected to the chair. After a few moments of nothing happening, I was starting to think that I was watching a weird video loop. But then there was motion off to the side, and two men walked into the room. Well, one man walked in, the other sort of stumbled like he was partially unconscious or drunk.

The sturdier man pushed him into the room and pointed at the desk, and the second man obliged, sitting down at the desk, crossing his arms and then putting his head down immediately. then the first man walked closer to the camera and waved. He actually waved, like he was saying hi to everyone that was watching. Like this was some kind of weird twitch stream. The man was wearing a yellow apron over dark clothes and a mask. It wasn't a clown mask, just a weird smiling white mask,

like you could buy at a cheap craft store. Then after he waved, he lifted his other hand to show the camera, camera that he was holding what looked like a large meat cleaver. A large, rectangular, slightly dingy or rusted meat cleaver. That's when it clicked in my head that I was seeing something more than I wanted. That's also in the chat box under the video, a box that I didn't know was there because there was nothing happening before that moment, appeared.

There were no names attached to the comments being made. It was just the things people were saying. It popped up with, oh, finally! And then another message said, I'll bid, take his clothes off. The person on the camera shook his head, and then turned and did something off camera. When he came back, he had a piece of paper that said,

bidding is closed, observation only, boss's orders. I don't want to get into a lot of the detail about what happened next, because it was... Messed up. So I'm going to be a little vague while still giving the visuals that I can. The first man walked over to the guy in the chair and pulled the unconscious guy's head up by his hair.

He didn't really struggle, but he was definitely more awake than he looked. The standing man then pointed toward the camera, then looked back, and I think it was then that the guy at the desk really came to realize what was happening. The standing man then grabbed the sitting man's arm and held it down to the desk. I could see the sitting man starting to freak out and plead for whatever was about to happen to, well, not happen.

But the room didn't seem to have a proper microphone because the audio was still a garbled mess. To make this a bit shorter, I sat there, at my desk, watching as the man with the knife raised the cleaver, and cut this guy's fingers off one by one. He started with the pinky finger, and then after it was done, he put the hand back down and moved to the ring finger, the middle, the pointer, and then his thumb. He did this in rapid succession, no pausing or hesitation between them.

The sitting man was clearly screaming in agony, but he wasn't doing much to fight it. It seemed like he couldn't do anything. if that makes sense. After the fingers were gone and the man stopped screaming, the man in the apron walked back to the camera, gave a thumbs up and then turned back toward the man at the desk. The chat at this point was going wild,

talking about how much they loved it, and they wanted more. The masked man then walked around to the other side of the desk and grabbed the sitting man's arm, forcing it down onto the surface. He looked back at the camera and motioned towards the fingers and then shook his head like, no, no, no, not the fingers this time. Then he motioned toward the wrist. He then looked back at the camera and nodded. That is where my description's going to stop.

I didn't see how far he took it because I closed everything. I shut the computer off and then proceeded to vomit numerous times into my trash can. I couldn't believe what I had just witnessed, that I had just watched this random man be partially mutilated. I was sickened, and I was disappointed in myself for actually watching it because that made me a participant. I was one of the audience, one of the group of people that was pushing this to happen. That made it that much worse. I hated myself for sitting there as long as I did. I didn't get back on my PC for several days, thinking that I would somehow see that website again. When I did get back on the computer, I didn't just delete Tor.

I formatted the hard drive and factory reset the entire machine. I was terrified that my info had been logged somewhere on that site, and I was of the mind to just completely make the computer feel like new. I never found that site again because I never looked for it. People say that red rooms are myth, but I know for a fact that that's what I ended up on. Maybe they're mostly right, but that one, at the very least, did exist. College is a huge time in the lives of those fortunate enough to attend it. For a lot of people, it's their first time out on their own in the world.

They make friends, build bonds, and begin finding out just who they are and what their role the world is going to be. Many people think of their college years as some of the best and happiest of their lives. Still young enough to be carefree and uninhibited, but just mature enough to handle their responsibilities. Well, in some cases, not so much. Sadly, that was not the case for four young university

of Idaho students. For them, things would have a far more tragic end. Madison, Maddie Mogan, and Kaylee Gonsalves had grown up together and had been best friends since their childhood. They had rented an off-campus home with three other female students, Zanacronodal, Dylan Mortensen, and Bethany Funk. The 21-year-old Maddie was a marketing major and holding down a part-time job at a restaurant called The Mad Greek. Kaley, also 21, was majoring in general studies and was set to graduate a sales. semester early the following month, with a job lined up with an IT company in Dallas. Zana, age 20, was majoring in marketing and also worked at the Mad Greek alongside Maddie.

Ethan Chapin, 20, was majoring in recreation, sport, and tourism management. He was also a triplet and was the boyfriend of Zana. For these four young people, tragedy would strike on November 22nd, 2022. All five of the housemates were in the house by 2 a.m., plus Zana's boyfriend. At 4 a.m., Zana received a.m. And at 4.12 a.m., she was on TikTok, which suggests that she was awake when the intruder made his presence known. This also gives us a bit of a timeline because police suspect that the four murders occurred between 4 a.m. and 4.25 a.m. The closest we have to any kind of firsthand account is from Dylan Mortensen.

Dylan says that she had been asleep in her room on the second floor when she was awoken by loud noises from the third floor. Dylan explained to the police that she had initially thought it was just Kaylee and her dog making noise. A bit later on, she said that she heard someone saying something and she thought it was Kaylee saying something like, There's someone here. But when she looked out her door into the hallway, she saw nothing and nobody. minutes later she heard what sounded like someone crying from Zana's room.

Upon opening her door, again Dylan heard an unfamiliar male voice say, It's okay, I'm going to help you. Opening the door a third time, she saw the intruder, clad in black, and wearing a mask that covered his mouth. The unknown man was walking toward her, and Dylan said she froze in fear as he got closer. To her surprise, he walked right past her and exited out a sliding door, located in the kitchen. Dylan later told detectives that she did not call 911 right away because she was intoxicated and in denial. At 426, Dylan left her room and joined their other roommate Bethany. She saw Zana lying face down on the floor in her room and Dylan said she thought

she was just intoxicated. When they still had not heard from their housemates the next morning, they called other friends over to help. Shortly after arriving, one of the friends, found Ethan and Zana in her room. Neither of them had a pulse. He ushered the other ones out of the house, and Bethany called 911. By that afternoon, all four students had been declared dead, and the crime was brutal. Kaylee was stabbed more than 20 times, as well as injuries that suggested blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. Zana had more than 50 stab wounds.

many of them were defensive wounds, which means the young woman put up one hell of a fight for her life. Around the time of the murders, security cameras showed a white or light-colored Hion de Alantra in the area. Investigators noted that it made multiple passes of the neighborhood the victims lived in, and this led them to begin sifting through over 22,000 records of owners of Hionda-A-Lontras manufactured between 2011 and 2013.

Another surveillance camera caught the same vehicle past the victim's house three times beginning around 3.30 a.m. At 406, the car returned a fourth time and by 4.20, the car was seen speeding away from the area. Now, unfortunately, I have to say the name of the person that was convicted of these atrocious crimes. And yes, even speaking, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This led police in nearby Pullman, Washington, a nearby college town, to begin investigating 28-year-old Brian Christopher Coburger, who was attending Washington State University as a Ph.D. student and teaching assistant. Coburger had quite the list of academic accomplishments and had several degrees, including a bachelor's degree in psychology, and a master's in criminal justice.

Part of how they decided Coburger was a person of interest in the crime was how often his cell phone had been pinging the cell tower closest to the home of the four victims, over a dozen times in the months before the crime. When the police recovered a knife sheath from Maddie's bed that had traces of male DNA on it, initially the police were working with the Forensic Genealogy Company, Othrum. But by December 10th, when potential relatives to the same, suspect declined to speak with Arthur or authorities, the FBI stopped working with the company and took over the investigation themselves.

They then immediately turned over to the company's MyHeritage and GED match. These companies had the DNA of people who had not opted into being part of the law enforcement search data banks, and the police began to pull from that pool, despite it being a Justice Department decree that law enforcement only used DNA from databases that provide explain wasn't noticed to the users that law enforcement may use the services of their site. Despite the incredibly moral gray area, this did prove to be a windfall for the case. As in previous searches through Othrum, they had only found people that shared 70.7 centimorgans of DNA, which is said to be the equivalent of sharing a great-great-grandparent.

But once they started using the other databases, regardless of legality, they found a match that shared 250 centimorgans of DNA. This, of course, meant that they had found a much, much closer relative. Within days of this, the police had Coburgers' parents' home under surveillance. It was during the surveillance that police noticed Coburgur wearing surgical gloves and placing numerous bags of trash into his neighbor's bin. They also witnessed him cleaning the car inside and out, not missing an inch of area. Objects from the trash bins were sent to the Idaho State Lab for testing.

After a search of the home, investigators found a knife, pistol, and a face mask, as well as ID cards inside a glove in a box. Finally, on December 30th, Coburger was arrested by police while at his parents' home. Once the legal proceedings began, the defense lawyer for Coburger stated that his client had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. although the judge stated that he had witnessed no odd behavior in that Coburger gave all signs of being high functioning. The judge prohibited the jury from hearing any testimony on an autism diagnosis unless Coburger himself took the stand. On January 3rd, 2023, Coburger agreed to be extradited back to Idaho. While he was in jail in his home state of Pennsylvania, he had been held without bail and once sent back to Moscow, Idaho. he was again held without bail.

After months of legal proceedings in May of 2023, when Coburger appeared in court, he refused to offer any sort of plea, and the judge entered a not guilty plea for him. On September 9th, 2024, Coburger was granted a change of venue and transferred to Ada County for the trial. On June 30th, 2025,

Coburger agreed to a plea deal in which he pled guilty to all five felony charges leveled against him. That's four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary, in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table. He would also give up the rights to all appeals, which would mean that he would be in prison until the day he dies. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm really tired of saying this guy's name, so we're going to move on to the closing of this one by once again remembering the victims of this monster's carnage. four young people who most certainly did not earn such a horrific end.

Madison Maddie Mogan, 21, Kaylee Gonzalez, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. May they rest in peace. In Cottage Grove, Minnesota, Amy Allwine and her husband, Stephen Allwine, had an idyllic life. They had a nice house. They were involved with their church. Amy was a successful dog trainer and Stephen was the IT guy that had the air of a pastor.

On the surface, everything was perfect. They were the couple that had it all. But when you peeled back the veneer, there was an unease brewing, an unease that was invisible to everyone, but Amy. Amy was the kind of woman that found pleasure and happiness in the small things,

training a dog to trust their owner, a happy tail. wag that told her she had succeeded, the smell of coffee brewing before one of her clients started arriving. She and Stephen were the kind of couple that said that faith and hard work still meant something, that the combination was an answer to success. But if they could see inside the walls of the Allwine House, they would have noticed that the air was slowly beginning to turn from the warmth of a happy marriage into something colder. It started with Stephen's sudden sullen silences, a quiet withdrawal.

He retreated into the glowing screen of computer monitors far into the night, long after Amy had retired to an empty bed. Stephen said it was work, always work. But Amy could feel something beneath the surface. She tried to convince herself that it was just the stress of an overworked spouse. But something far darker was beginning to take its form, And when it made its presence known, it would shatter not just lives, but shake an entire community to its core. Amy was trying to patch the cracks in the relationship.

But while she was working hard to fix the problems she could see from the ones she couldn't, that darkness was seeping in. While she was working to keep her marriage alive, deep on the internet, beyond the domain of Google, there was a person under the name of Dog Day God. They were leaving a digital footprint in the darkest parts of the internet. What he was seeking was the most heinous of services that you can possibly look for. This led him to the Basimafia. What sounded like some kind of bad joke was actually all too real. The messages, the Bitcoin transfers, all of it was reality.

All of the information conveyed, name, address, schedule, it all pointed to one person, Amy Allwine. Whoever this dog day god was, he intimately knew Amy's schedule and information. He even sent photos of her car. They knew when she'd be home, everything someone would need to know in order to order a hit on her. All of this coupled with the thousand. thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin transferred, all pointed to the fact that someone wanted Amy out of the way, permanently. However, there was one thing that Dog Day God didn't anticipate. The site itself was a huge scam.

There were no assassins taking orders, no killer that was preparing to follow through. It was just con men taking money and doing, well, absolutely nothing. Also, most unfortunately, the digital footprint left behind was very, very real. And they painted a picture of pure intent. The FBI stumbled upon this plot before anything could have been carried out. They traced everything, the messages, the payments, and the chilling requests. And one of the agents even contacted Amy. And I just want you to try and imagine what that would feel like.

being told that your name was on a murder for higher list. Just sitting in your living room surrounded by the comforting sights and smells of your own home. The place you're supposed to feel safest. And being told that someone wants you dead and have already made the payments. Amy tried to process the news. She didn't panic, though. She didn't cry. She did what most people tried to do when being hit with what feels like absolutely.

impossible news. She tried to make sense of it. Perhaps it was mistaken identity, a bad joke that had been taken too far. Regardless, the safety of even her own home felt like it had been violated in the most intimate ways possible. Meanwhile, somewhere

the light of a computer monitor glowed into the night. On the morning of November 13th, 2016, Stephen went down to the basement to work. He spent the day down there, staring at a computer monitor while Amy went about her normal business. Sometime after 3.15 p.m., the couple's nine-year-old son found the unthinkable when he entered his parents' room looking for his mother. He found his mother, Amy Alwyn, dead with a single

gunshot wound to the head. He rushed to the basement to tell his father what he had stumbled upon. While the timestamps here are incredibly vague, police and quix. court records have either redacted the times, or just plain chose not to publish them at all. There is speculation that the 911 call came in around 7 p.m. I can't tell you what time her son discovered her or how much time may have lapsed between the discovery of her body and the call going out either, for which I am deeply sorry. We scoured trying to find anything, but, yeah. That all being said, around 7 p.m., the call

was placed by Stephen reporting his wife dead. When the police and EMS arrived, they were greeted at the door by Stephen, who said that his wife had taken her own life and that her son had found her hours before. When police began to take in and process the scene, everything seemed consistent with Stephen's assertion that Amy had taken her own life. And there really was no reason to doubt it. In her left hand was a 45-caliber pistol. She had a single gunshot wound to her head.

Everything seemed consistent with what her husband had told them. However, in the days that followed, that darkness that had begun to seep through the cracks of the Allwine home began to make itself known in the investigation. I'm sure it didn't take long for the inconsistencies to become more clear, and what seemed like a self-ending, started to become more of a series of unanswered questions. One of the first inconsistencies that came to investigators' attention

was the fact that family members and photographs made it clear that Amy was not left-handed. She was right-handed. They also discovered that some of the bloodstains on the floor around her were diluted and showed signs of someone trying to clean them up. And the scent of cleaning products noted on the night police, received the call that Amy was found deceased, suddenly took on a darker tone when they realized that someone had actively tried

to wipe down surfaces. The autopsy also discovered scopolamine in her system. Now, on the surface, this doesn't mean much. Anyone could be taking a medicine like that if they're experiencing really intense bouts of nausea. However, Amy did not have a prescription for scopolamine. Furthermore, in large doses, the drug can cause disorientation and even make a person fall unconscious.

Closer inspection of her body also began to give up other secrets as well, number one of which was the absence of gunpowder on either her hand or her forehead. And now when investigators looked back on the initial state of the scene, things finally began to click into place. The picture they painted was indeed quite grim. What followed was warrants being issued for the seizure of all of Stephen's electronic devices, his phone, his computer, etc.

And everything all tied back quite neatly to him. The retrieval of deleted files and browser history all led back to Dog Day God, and the evidence of Bitcoin transfers under that name painted quite the incriminating picture of Stephen Allwise. By the time all of this was processed, it goes without saying that detectives were quite eager to have a few words with one Mr. Stephen Alwynne. And that incriminating picture that I mentioned, it only got all the more damning the more he opened his mouth. The first big tip off that something wasn't quite right about this guy came just from his presentation during questioning.

He certainly seemed a lot calmer than someone that had just lost his wife, probably had any rights to be. Then the inconsistencies in his story began to mount up. Between his abysmal interviewing skills and the plethora of digital evidence, it became clear to the investigators that this entire thing had been planned from the same laptop, in the same basement, where he had pretended to work all those long nights. The community was even further shocked when they learned that the perfect husband, the god-fearing man that was so heavily involved in the church,

Church was in fact a cold-blooded killer. And on February 1st of 2018, after only five hours of deliberation, Stephen Alwyn was convicted of first-degree murder. This, of course, means they had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime had been premeditated. In the following day, on February 2, 2018, he was sentenced to life in prison with zero chances of parole. A significant portion of this case was handed to the prosecutors in a nice, tight bundle because one man thought his anonymity on the dark web was impenetrable. With all that being said, it's best to remember Amy as the bright young woman and proud mother that she was.

So rest in peace, Amy Allwine. Hey, Raven, I definitely owed you this story a long time ago since it happened to my wife about a month ago. at this point. I mentioned it on one of your community night streams. I apologize for the delay, but hopefully the story I'm about to tell you makes it worth the wait. As always, this is a true story.

My wife will often drive for Spark, which is a service through Walmart that allows you to shop, pick up, and deliver groceries to customers. While doing this, she experiences various odd and unusual situations all the time, to the point that we're not.

we have our own countermeasures to make sure she's safe. We have an app that allows us to track our phones, codes and protocols to alert each other of any situations that we might have, and it definitely pays off. It was late evening, heading towards that dusk look where the sun is still in the sky, but it was still dark, and my wife had initially called me to let me know

she was wrapping up a batch order that had about 15 stops on it. something she was used to having and didn't mind since they paid more. She was ready to come home after this last stop, which took her about 30 minutes away, into a rural tree-filled area. She was telling me about how the houses were all spaced out and hidden in thick, tree-filled land, and after some banter between us both, she told me that she would call me back, because she was about to be at her final stop.

We ended her conversation, I was about to finish working on the computer when she immediately called back almost 30 seconds later. Ping me, right now, she demanded, which is usually what we say when we want a screenshot of our location from the tracking app in case of an emergency. I asked her what was going on, and she told me that when she arrived on the property, the front mailbox had animal skulls, candles, and odd symbols all over it. In just past it was a long, narrow dirt driveway cutting through three. thick, tall trees. My wife said the GPS indicated the mailbox was a mile out from the actual house,

and she felt uneasy having to travel all the way down this creepy driveway. I told her that I would stay on the phone, and she said that her dash cam was still going, as well as her body cam. As I said before, we have plenty of countermeasures for when we drive for delivery services because a lot of crazy things happen to delivery drivers and couriers in this field of work. And most services leave us to fend for ourselves and only care about completed deliveries, and not being liable for anything else. Anyways, as she drove down the driveway, she was narrating what she saw, mentioning how the darkness

from the towering trees made her feel like something dark was creeping all around her, and apparently a few of the trees had carved symbols on them, and finally more animal skulls. As she approached the end of the driveway, she said that something smelled like a dead animal. And as she approached the end, the smell got stronger. The actual house was a large structure with black roofing and black wooden walls. And it seemed to be old, run down, and somewhat abandoned. The three cars parked near the house were fairly new-looking, so we knew that someone lived there. and my wife told me that she had a note to leave the groceries behind the carport,

which she didn't notice initially, but sure enough to the right of the run-down house, wasn't equally decrepit and worn-out carport, which, ironically, none of the cars were parked under. My wife said that once she opened her door, the stench of whatever had died made the air thick and unbearable to breathe, but nonetheless she began hauling the groceries under the carport. And she mentioned to me that no one had come out of the house or even acknowledged that she had arrived. But she actually interrupted herself with a few swear words and then told me that she was getting the hell out of here right now. To which I, of course, asked her, what happened? Are you okay?

And I wasn't expecting her to say what she said next. There's nooses in the carport. It's not a prop and it's not fake. It's real rope. One of them is right above me, and it looks like something big is hanging from one of them further back, she told me. As she placed the last few things from the grocery order at the carport, she also mentioned to me that there was some weird, giant symbol that looked like it was burned

or painted into the floor of the carport, and that whatever smelled horrible seemed to be stronger in the carport. The sun was starting to set more, and the darkness around her wasn't helping how terrifying the entire ordeal was. She quickly went back to her car and glanced at the front of the house, once more on reflex. When she first arrived, no one had come out of the house, or was on the porch, or even in the yard. My wife makes a point to greet any customers that come out of the house or approach when she arrives, but again, no one was originally there.

When my wife looked back this time, she said that a man with the full long beard was standing there, wearing black pants and what she described as a black hoodie or cloak. He stared at her with a dark scowl and his hands were clasped together in front of him, as if he were casually waiting for someone to arrive. She told me how cold she felt when she saw him standing there, and she immediately began turning her car around to leave. This is where things got weird because as she did this, the man made his way down from the porch of the house and began walking quickly toward her car.

My wife peeled out while I was on the phone with her, saying choice words the entire time. And once she got far enough down the long driveway, she calmed down a bit and told me that she was going to report the location as unsafe. She archived the dash cam footage of the location for an investigation, and a week later, my wife received an email response to her report to Spark customer service, and that stated that the customer was since removed from the Spark platform. So, there you have it. The story about the cursed driveway. She showed me footage from the dash cam, but will not allow me to upload it. But I will say this.

Since her car was facing the front of the house, the dash cam recorded the porch and part of the carport. When she runs back to the car after seeing the nooses, the man that she saw on the porch didn't appear on the camera until she glances over. And he literally just appears. He didn't open the door or a merch from somewhere off camera at all. He just literally appeared on the porch. I know there will always be naysayers and even some trolls who insist that everything is made up or fake. But honestly, from how my wife felt when she came home and how terrified she was when everything was happening, I know this wasn't fake.

Both of us have experienced some scary, unhinged, and flat-out wild situations while she's driving from. spark, and I'm driving for DoorDash. I wish the animal skulls that she saw in the mailbox and tree were fake, but we have an eerie feeling they weren't, and we don't think that someone would go out of their way to set up an elaborate stage just to scare some random delivery driver. Some things that happened in life, as all of us and Ravens flock know well, aren't always able to be explained away. And it doesn't make us crazy or inhinged because we explain.

experience them. In the end, I'm just glad that my wife is okay. Hi, Raven. I want to start this off by saying that I'm a moderately thrill-seeking 21-year-old male that is often interested in some, well, questionable things sometimes. One of them being the dark web. I'm a huge loner. I don't have any in real-life friends, although I did have some in the past, but we grew

apart. Most of my social activities are through Reddit, or telegram as sad as that sounds. Anyway, I wanted to get on the dark web for a while now. I saw your horror story videos regarding the dark web, and they freaked me out. I also saw a couple of other YouTubers talk about it. One YouTuber I remember claimed to have ordered a mystery box off of the dark web, although I don't know how legitimate that is. While my fear was still there, my desire eventually outgrew it.

This past Wednesday, I decided to install Tor on my desktop computer. I know that might be stupid, but I didn't want to buy another laptop or computer. I figured as long as I didn't buy or sell anything and just browsed the dark web, I would be okay. I also made sure to disable JavaScript. Going in, I assumed that. the worst of everyone. 99.99% of marketplaces were at best a scam or at worst a honeypot. But I wanted to see what was out there.

I was told that a lot of it was illegal drugs, guns, counterfeit money, and worse. I just wanted to see if it was all true. I did a little research on Reddit and found a site on the dark web that resembled Reddit a lot, albeit smaller. Off that page, I found other links that led to marketplaces. I also found a link page that led to a forum where you could live chat with other people. This sounded cool and wholesome. I'm not going to give out the name, but it's a small activity board and the design is basic but functional.

It kind of reminds me of how the internet would be what I imagined it to be in the past. I'm too young. Anyway, the following Wednesday after getting on the dark web, I was on the forum, and there was actually a link section on the forum that contained links to the other websites. Yay, I thought. More digging that I can do for fun. There were categories like crypto, forums, counterfeits, advertising, hacking, etc. One of them was leaks. I clicked on leaks, and here comes a huge list. list of links. I scroll down and I read some of them. Most of them actually claimed to be data leaks. I went through most of the links and I don't remember any of them working. It would say something

like Onion's site not found. I scrolled down a little more and clicked a link described leaks and hacked IP cameras. I thought it would go to a dead link, but I was wrong. The site loaded. Now, I'm not going to say what it's called, but it has a lot to do with voyeurism. I, and I'm not proud of this, made an account, because some of the features were locked. There was a whole section dedicated towards girls' photos being leaked from all over the world. They would even have their social medias, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, and YouTube, as well as country, state, city, date of birth, phone. an email address all listed, although the last five were paywalled.

You could also see hacked IP cameras. It was disturbing. You could pay to see their leaked photos, assuming it wasn't a scam or honeypot. And I have a gut feeling it's legitimate because the site is well designed, but it could have been a honeypot. Again, I don't have any desire to buy the content. I was just investigating creepy stuff on the dark web. What makes it even more wrong is you would get paid to leak content

if someone wants to remove the content, and who even knows if they do remove it. I don't know how people even get these girls' photos. It's crazy. And I know that you're screaming, contact these people's Instagrams or whatever, but no, because who knows if it is.

is all a trap. And even seeing that stuff could be illegal. So, yeah, that's my story. Other than drugs, guns, and the usual, I did see a site containing legitimate Nazi memorabilia for sale. So, yeah. This is probably not the scariest story ever, but I definitely found it disturbing.

If you are a sensitive person, I would definitely recommend staying off the dark web. Me, on the other hand, I'll continue to explore what craziness this world has to offer. This person actually sent me an update, which is a rarity for submitted stories. Update. A couple of weeks later, I was browsing some more and found one of those sites that served as a search engine for the dark web. I know this doesn't sound very innocent, but I wanted to see if there were any escorts on the dark web. Again, I'm not interested in said server.

services, but like my dark thrill-seeking, well, I found something that was absolutely wild. I found a site claiming to sell children, both boys and girls, from as young as newborns to as old as 16. The kind of disturbing thing about this, as if it already isn't, is that the kids in the photos looked ashamed or nervous. For better or worse, the site is small, but part of me wonders if it's legitimate. I research that human trafficking occurs in the dark web, but it very well could be a honeypot or scam, which I really hope it is. They even go as far as having an FAQ. They even list their session IDs.

One of the questions from the FAQ asks if they're law enforcement, somehow I find that even more suspicious that they say that they aren't. The disturbing part is that I guess I could have found a legitimate trafficking site on there. Every once in a while, a case comes along that really makes a person scratch their head, and this is definitely one of those cases. This case may also make you very, very angry for how it was handled in the immediate aftermath. So there's a trigger warning for everyone there because it honestly made me so. angry, that I had to walk away from writing this for a few days.

For multiple reasons, this is one of the cases that really stands out, especially once you begin digging into it. The Moore case, or, as it's also called, the Velisca Axe murder case, has many layers. A lot of intrigue, and it's one of those cases that, to me, absolutely reeks of a cover-up. Granted, that is just my, that's Tom Kay's opinion, based on the degree of difficulty I had finding details about a lot of this. But let's go ahead and get into this case, and then you, my lovely listeners,

can as usual draw your own conclusion based on the information. Josiah Moore, 43, was a local affluent businessman that owned a John Deere franchise. His wife, Sarah Moore, 39, played the piano at their church and helped organize the Children's Day program there as well. They had four children. Herman Montgomery, 11, Mary Catherine 10, Arthur Boyd 7, and Paul Vernon, 5. Pretty idyllic family for the times.

Josiah and Sarah were married in 1890, and in 1903 they moved into the home where they would be spending the rest of their lives. Although, that was certainly cut a lot shorter than they could. have anticipated. On Sunday, June 9th, 1912, Mary Catherine had invited Inamay, 8, and Lena Gertrude Stillinger, 12, to spend the night in that evening they joined the Moor family at the Presbyterian Church. Services ended at 9.30 p.m. and the girls walked home to the Moor residents, arriving

between 9.45 and 10 p.m. That was the last time that any of the Moors or the St. still-in-girls were seen alive. The next morning on June 10th, the Moors' neighbor, Mary Peckham, became concerned when she noticed that they had not been outside to take care of their usual morning chores. She went to the Moor's house and knocked on the door. After receiving no answer, she went and let their chickens out and then called Josiah's brother Ross to come and check on the family.

Once he arrived, he too received no answer to his knocks or when he called out. Since he got no answer, Ross used his copy of the house key to let himself inside the home. Once inside, he opened the door to the downstairs guest bedroom, and he found the Stillinger's sister's bodies lying on the bed. He quickly exited the house and asked Peckham to go and call the local peace officer Henry Horton. What Horton would find was absolutely horrific. In addition to the Stillinger girls, he found the entire Moore family had been bludgeoned to death with an axe that belonged to Josiah.

The axe itself was recovered from the guest room where the Stillinger sisters were found. Doctors who examined the bodies, the victims concluded that the murders had happened any time between midnight and 2 a.m. The butts of two cigarettes were found in the attic, which suggested that the killer had waited patiently. This is a bit of speculation on my part, but I think the killer had gotten into the home while they were at the church, and they waited for this opportunity. But again, that is just the author's personal speculation. The massacre began in the master bedroom, where Sarah and Josiah were sleeping. Josiah received the most brutal treatment. He'd been hacked with the sharp side of the axe, and his face was so mangled that his eyes had been completely destroyed.

Investigators also found a gouge mark in the ceiling where the killer had raised the axe over their head to strike. I found some conflicting reports that the sharp side of the axe was used on Sarah or that she was bludgeoned. The children all suffered head trauma from the blunt side of the axe as they slept, except Lena Stillinger, who had defensive wounds on one of her arms, suggesting that she had tried to fight back. And here is something truly bizarre. After killing the sisters, the killer went back up to the master bedroom to inflict more wounds on Sarah and Josiah.

Afterwards, they placed the axe in the guest room and left a four-pound slab of raw bacon next to the weapon. From here, they also did some vulgar positioning to Ida and then left her. Let's just say exposed. Initially, investigators thought that the killer had at least tried to assault her, but there was never any further proof to back that claim up. Some other very strange things were also discovered in the aftermath, such as untouched food and a blood-covered glass, which were found in the kitchen.

Every mirror in the home had been covered with blankets or clothing, whatever could be used as a covering, and things don't stop getting weird here. In an act that today we would find completely strange, unthinkable and unacceptable, people from the town flocked to the house and were allowed to traips around the crime scene completely contaminating things.

One of the most morbid and quite frankly sickening acts was that people completely disrespected the more family home in the crime scene and took pieces of Josiah's skull as souvenirs. In my personal opinion, this was nearly as grotesque as the crime itself. And if not grotesque, it definitely falls into the category of being in poor taste to say the absolute least.

I mean, who the heck does something like that? But I digress. Hundreds of people handled the murder weapon. It took hours before the sheriff was able to gain complete control of the crime scene. When the county coroner, one, Dr. Lindquist arrived around 9 a.m., he first examined the crime scene himself and then met with Horton and the sheriff to go over all the information. they had gathered. Dr. Lindquist was very unhappy

with a constant stream of townspeople parading through the crime scene and urged the sheriff to call in the National Guard to help secure the scene. By 10.30, the guard was on site securing the scene. A local druggist whose hobby was photography showed up and took pictures

of the crime scene, but the photos were considered too ghoulish, and he was later dismissed. Most people speculate that his actions were completely financially driven as many drugstores would sell postcards with pictures from crime scenes emblazoned on them at the time. Something else completely unthinkable in our modern times. As more details began to be uncovered, people began to question how a killer could have

maneuvered and moved about a cramped, creaky farmhouse without being detected. This led to speculation that the killer had spiked milk or cocoa the family had drunk with a sedative of some kind. However, toxicology tests were not a routine part of autopsies back then, so this was never confirmed. The police did put together a list of suspects, including Frank Jones and Reverend George Kelly. Kelly was an English-born minister that traveled about peddling religion like a snake oil salesman in one town after another. On many occasions, he'd been accused of peeping and asking young girls to pose nude for him. ultimately he was tried twice with the first trial ending in a hung jury.

Kelly had confessed to the killings during trial, but the jury did not believe his confession, and he was ultimately never convicted of the crime. There really is not a whole lot more I can go into on this case, as to this day, it is unsolved. And no one has ever been able to definitively prove who was responsible for the murders, and no motive has been established. I do think, based on some of the vulgar details, including Ida Stillinger's body,

that Reverend Kelly is a very likely suspect given his history of inappropriate behavior. But with the brutality that was inflicted upon Josiah, you can't rule out Frank Jones having something to do with it based on the past business dealings between him and Josiah. There are also legends that the house is haunted, but I'm not going to go into that here, as that would be a write-up for another episode, and that perhaps we could get into an estranged things of Iowa episode. Now, as always, we're going to reiterate the names of the victims of this savage crime as each one of them, as always, deserves to be remembered as a human being

and not just some spectacle for people to gawk at. Josiah Moore 43. Sarah Moore 39. Herman Montgomery Moore 11. Mary Catherine Moore, 10. Arthur Blyde Moore, 7. Paul Vernon Moore 5 Ina Mae Stillinger

8 and Lena Gertrude Stillinger 12 May they rest in peace Before I begin my story I just want to say that I love listening to your stories Raven and thank you for all that you've done Thank you for listening my friend This happened a few years ago when I was a teenager

I had already heard and listened to Dark Web horror stories and stuff like that on YouTube Back then, I just thought of the dark web as this sort of mythical place on the internet that only hackers could access. But I was pretty wrong about that. I was curious, so I looked up on my laptop how to access the dark web. It gave me instructions that I had to download a special browser called Tor. And so I downloaded it onto my laptop.

Once I had finally downloaded it, I started to look at some surface. web dark web guides like the hidden wiki, the dark web search engines, and so on. I basically just spent a few hours copying and pasting links into the Tor search bar, and well, I was actually a little disappointed, because most of the links that I pasted were just offline or dead. But then I finally found some of the links that were interesting. A gun market and also a bunch of drug markets. It reminded me of the Silk Road that people mentioned when talking about the dark web. Note that I only went on here to browse, not to buy anything illegal.

There were also some, let's just say, interesting pop-up ads related to adult content and other things. But here is where everything got real. So, a few days after I browsed the dark web, I found some GitHub links to the dark web. One of them was for this chat room, which I won't see. say what it was called, because I don't want anyone else to code to that site. It started off by giving me a captcha, and then I clicked new chat. It took me to this Omegal-style chat room where it said, Waiting for Random.

So, I waited for about 15 seconds before, in the chat box, it said, Found a Random Say Hi. And that's what I did. The first person I met was normal, and we had a normal chat before. he disconnected. Then another random came into the chat box. I said hi, but then they asked what I was into. This question was a pretty strange question to ask a stranger right away without saying

hi, so I just said, you know, dark web stuff. He then asked me if I had any child content. That's when I clicked for a new chat, but it was hopeless because every Every single chat from there on was the same thing, full of pettos trying to get CP from me and asking me if I wanted to exchange pictures, if you know what that means. I actually thought that I had a decent person to talk to for the first time in a while that wasn't a petto, and I said that I was new to the dark web. He said that this could help me as a guide to the dark web, and then he typed a link into the chat. Now, I'm not sure what made me click it, but it sent me to an illegal child image, and I clicked off immediately. It really disgusts me that this chat room is full of predators who ask each other for other pictures to exchange.

Now, I still do go on the dark web from time to time, but I have never been to that disturbing chat room since. Columbia Falls, Montana. It was a Wednesday in September of 2017, the 13th, to be specific, when the first threatening messages started coming in. Received by parents and school staff all across the district of Columbia Falls, they came in by text and email both. The messages were beyond disturbing, and as I said, they were threatening. someone claimed that they were watching the children of the district and that they had their information.

The messages started going out late in the day and overnight into Thursday morning. Even the students themselves were getting very, very disturbing messages. Your child still looks so innocent. Don't let them go outside. Some of the messages were even more graphic. They all said that if they weren't paid a ransom, in Bitcoin, of course, that they would make the students' personal information public. An anonymous letter was even sent to the school district that offered payment tiers that would affect the amounts of the ransom.

$75,000 if paid immediately. $100,000 at the district author wrote an embarrassing essay, and $150,000 if paid an installment. They made it clear that if their demands were not met, that they would release personal information regarding the students on the dark web. You see, a few days before this, a hacker group called Dark Overlord had hacked the school district servers and stolen all of the names on the student register,

as well as their home addresses and so forth. They also implied that they may do even worse if the demands were not met. Initially, the parents and students knew nothing about the ransom demands. All they knew was that they were getting messages that were threatening their children directly. So, of course, panic began spreading across the entire district faster than a late summer wildfire. It was spreading so fast that authorities didn't have any time to make any kind of statement before the entire community was having one of the most understandable breakdowns in the world. Needless to say, there was no school in that entire district Thursday or Friday.

The district officials immediately closed more than 30 schools across the entire Columbia Falls area. More than 15,000 students sat at home with locked doors and closed blinds, scared, confused, and trying to understand why anyone would do something like this. Basically, the entire community went on lockdown. Law enforcement was crawling all over the area, making sure that none of the implied threats of violence were made good. upon. This included local PD, the sheriff's department, and even the FBI were in town and in full crime-fighting mode. In the end, the police said that while the threats were horrific, whoever had issued them didn't seem to actually have the presence or the means to actually carry out the kind of

violence they had threatened. On September 19th, a letter was sent to the police, and it was only then that the police knew for sure who they were dealing with, because the Dark Overlord Hacker Group had taken credit for the entire incident. And they were just getting started. Less than a month later, they would strike again. But this time, they would escalate considerably. Johnston, Iowa.

On October 3rd, 2017, Dark Overlord would strike again, this time in Iowa. It was the exact same pattern they used in Montana back in September. The parents, students, and school staff started getting threats. And these were even more intense than the last time that they had sent them out. One parent got a text that said, quote, I'm going to kill some students at your son's high school. That kind of escalation was extremely shocking.

How this entire thing wasn't labeled as some kind of terroristic threats I'll never know, but it fits the very definition of what constitutes a terrorist threat. The police all but said as much, but the actual statement was something along the lines of the threats were graphic, explicit, and clearly meant to simulate a credible and imminent act of violence. And what happened this time was that a third-party vendor that was connected to the district had been compromised, and hackers had managed to get students' personal information, such as home address, full legal names, academic information, and any contact details associated with them and their families.

Now, while in the Columbia Falls incident, no ransom was ever paid, Dark Overlord never made good on their threat to publish the actual information that they had, at least allegedly stolen, and intended to make public. In the case with Johnston, however, as I said, it had had to be a lot of. escalated in multiple ways. One of those ways was that this time, Dark Overlord made good on their threat and actually did make the information public.

They bragged about the theft and the threats on social media. They tagged the school district and even began to taunt the police. Of course, Johnston canceled classes and a similar lockdown took place as law enforcement prepared for any violence that may end up occurring as a result of this. In Montana, Dark Overlord had learned that creating an atmosphere of fear and panic was a great way to cause chaos, which the group appeared to have a certain fondness for. This time they decided to take that fear to the next level, and the whole thing must have been fairly gratifying as it appeared that the chaos was the real goal,

and that the money was kind of just an afterthought. Splendora, Texas When Dark Overlord published their little brag list on social media, they also claimed credit for attacking the school district in Splendora, Texas in late September. And, sure enough, on September 29th, the Splendora School District had issued a public statement that they were receiving threats from hackers, and that they promised tiered escalation including direct messages to parents, students, and staff. While they admitted that they didn't know exactly what information it was,

was, it was safe to assume that it included most of their personal information like addresses. What is less clear in the Texas case is if they ever made good on the threats to publish the student directory as they did in Iowa. I know this particular case is a bit thin, which is why I tacked it on here at the end, even though it happened before the Iowa attack. But there's just not a whole lot that is publicly known, so a lot of the details regarding Splendor is with Dark Overlord are really kind of foggy at best. Now, all of this led, of course, to fallout at multiple levels.

After Montana, Texas, and Iowa, even the federal government was forced to take action. Since it was quite clear that this was going to be a motif in the future for other groups, or future attacks by the Dark Overlords. The first thing they did was issue a national. alert at every K-12 school district that there was a new cyber extortion threat in which students personal data may be targeted. They also warned that there may even be direct threats sent to parents and the students. They even included that payment may be demanded in the form of Bitcoin in order to prevent the release of data on the internet. All of this also led to schools being reclassified

as, quote, soft targets in national cybersecurity meetings. What this meant was low security, high-impact targets. This incident sparked an entire debate about whether student data should be treated with the same protections as other sensitive federal categories. At the more academic or grassroots level, all of this resulted in a nationwide tightening of cybersecurity. School districts began to audit their networks. Also, since Iowa had pointed out the extreme vulnerability of them, they began evaluating any third-party vendors that have handled their servers or data. They also started to establish cybersecurity response plans.

In short, the school district realized that, We're Just a School, was no longer an effective shield against such attacks. But these reforms were actually a good thing for Columbia Falls, because they finally had to make some major changes and updates that they had been trying to avoid because of costs. Of course. Across the country, administrators and staff were now receiving basic cyber hygiene training. This was something that prior to the attacks in Montana, it had never been a standard.

At an even more personal level, the people who had experienced the threats, and having their information made public, in the case of Johnston, suffered pretty long-term trauma. In both Montana and Iowa, the school districts reported that parents kept their children home for weeks. Parents reported that their kids were sleeping with their lights on. The parents were demanding transparency from the schools, and rightfully so. In short, this attack wasn't just as simple as a digital crime. Entire communities were held hostage by a nameless, faceless group of cyber terrorists. The only way it could have felt more like a personal violation would have been if someone actually had entered their homes

and or their schools and left threatening graffiti or something equally dramatic and theatrical. That was clearly the entire thing fueling the Dark Overlords. The more they sensationalized what they did, the more they seemed to enjoy it. The hacker group didn't exactly walk away whole themselves. In the wake of the Montana, Texas, and Iowa attacks targeting the schools,

after hospitals, law firms, clinics, and even corporations were hit, there was a member of the group, Nathan Wyatt, extradited from the UK in connection with Dark Overlord and charged with cybercrimes that included stealing information and threatening to publish it if ransom wasn't paid. There were other charges, but I really don't feel like slipping into legalese at this point in the script. He, of course, pled guilty to the charges and was, sentenced to five years in prison, and was ordered to pay $1.47 million in restitution.

Law enforcement didn't completely dismantle the Dark Overlord group, far from it, but Wyatt was the first major player in the group to face justice in a courtroom. So the battle wasn't over, but the first battle had been won. The first steps in being able to bring this hacker group to justice had been taken, and at least someone in connection with those kinds of crimes had to stand in a courtroom and was sentenced to even a modicum of prison time. This marked a huge tightening of international cooperation. A British National was extradited in connection to cybercrimes that included what amounted to acts of cyberterrorism.

However, it wasn't just the hacker group that ended up facing legal repercussions. There was a clinic in Georgia that ended up being fined more than one point. $1.5 million under HIPAA, because subsequent investigations uncovered that their security practices were less than stellar. This shows just how deep these attacks cut. Even people that fell victim to the group ended up facing regulatory backlash, because the gaps in their security were just way too large to be ignored. Which, if they were truly that negligent, maybe it was for the better.

But regardless of Wyatt's conviction, the far-reaching reforms that echoed across the nation, and the FBI's involvement, the full dark overlord organization was never fully exposed, dissolved, or otherwise disbanded. Law enforcement never announced any of the core leaders of the groups having been arrested. But you could almost say, seeing as how they seem to thrive on chaos and attention, they had a fate that was far worse, at least for a theatrical and dramatic group like them. They faded from the headlines, from the public consciousness. Not because they were defeated in the great cyber battle,

but because they shifted their targets, went deeper underground, and the internet moved on to other monsters. So, in conclusion, the Dark Overlord's crimes weren't the largest or most financially damaging of that era, but they were arguably worse for the intimate nature of the threats. They didn't just threaten the institutions they stole from.

They took things to an entirely different level. They took communities hostage, made them afraid to send their kids to school. And not just for a few days between the attacks and the resumption of school, but for weeks after things had returned to normal for the school districts in the official capacity. It was an even more violating crime than just taking money from people. They took people's sense of security in their own homes. They made them not even want to go outside. I think that's an even worse kind of thing to take from people.

Home is the place that we should always be able to feel safe. And when someone takes that from you, it's almost impossible to get it back. Hello there, friends, Raven here. Welcome to the end of this episode of As the Raven Dream. I hope that you genuinely enjoyed this collection of scary stories, as I enjoyed putting them together for you. If the platform you're on has the option to follow the podcast or leave ratings, reviews, please do consider doing so as it helps the podcast grow. Of course, if you enjoy the content, that is.

If you didn't enjoy it, then feel free to also leave a rating as honesty is important, and I take all feedback seriously. Also, I do have a YouTube channel. It's a lot of the same content, but we do live streams on Saturdays around 6 p.m. Central, so if you're free one Saturday night and want to come over and say hi, I would love to have you there. We just kind of have a good time doing whatever we want for the few hours that I'm online. You can also join the Patreon, patreon.com slash as the Raven Dreams, for early access to all this content. Check out the website, astherravendreams.com for information and where you can listen to the podcast, find on my social media links,

Find the merch store, and send in your own stories to keep the podcast going, as it pretty much exists on crowdsourced content at this point. All of you really do keep the show going, so a huge thank you for that. Also on the website is information about the book that I wrote, titled The Insomniacs Experiment by Raven Adams. It's a psychological thriller, and I think it's pretty good. You might actually like it. Check it out. It's available on Amazon. Or if you want a signed copy, you can email me to see if I have to see if I have a psychological.

have any left, and I will absolutely oblige if I do. All that said, friends, I hope you have a lovely rest of your day. I hope I see you again here very soon. But until then, remember that you are loved. You are valid. You are important. And the world is a better place with you in it. Don't forget that.

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