The Lets Read Podcast - 307: THIS CULT IS ABSOLUTELY DERANGED | 8 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 293

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about cults & encounters in the middle of nowhere HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2-600 to speak to an advisor for your charge. I'm going to be. Chad Dable was born on August 11th of 1968 and was raised Mormon in the city of Springville, Utah. Following high school, he was accepted into Brigham Young University, but one year into his education, he applied to be a missionary, after which he spent two years,

in New Jersey. After returning to BYU, Chad graduated with a bachelor's in journalism and then went on to work as a copy editor for the Ogden-based publication, The Standard Examiner. In 1990, a 22-year-old Chad would marry a girl named Tammy Douglas, and the couple welcomed their first child into the world shortly afterwards. Outwardly, Chad was living the life of a clean-cut Mormon 20-something, But beneath the surface, he began to entertain some deeply unsettling thoughts and hobbies. For instance, while he was still a student at BYU, Chad developed an interest in cemeteries. It started as a part-time job, digging graves in the evenings after his studies were completed. But after a while, it seems Chad started to enjoy the act of digging fresh graves among those already occupied.

Even after getting his copy editor's job over at the Standard Examiner, Chad maintained a second full-time appointment as the sexton of Springville Cemetery. He eventually resigned from his position in the late 90s, but only after becoming fixated on a new and very different kind of hobby. In 2001, Chad published One Foot in the Grave, a non-fiction book that chronicled his experiences working in cemeteries. Thanks to a few poignant tracks regarding mourning and mortality, Chad's first serious offering was fairly well received.

But then for his second outing, Chad took a radically different direction. He began to write what might be referred to as Mormon End Times fiction, stories that depicted apocalyptic situations and dystopian futures. They often featured thinly veiled versions of his friends and family as protagonists, with recurring themes centering around supernatural voices, giving instructions to his characters. When asked where he got these ideas from, Chad gave a very interesting response. And the author's note of one of his novels, Chad explained that suffering not one, but two near-death experiences in his life had allowed him to see, and I quote,

Beyond the Vale. I don't fictionalize any of the events portrayed in my books, he writes. I'm really not that creative. My torn veil allows information to be downloaded into my brain from the other side. The scenes that I am shown are real events that will happen. While his claims were well received among certain sections of his audience, many were turned off by Chad's wild claims and wilder plot lines, and by 2009, his readership began to shrink.

Chad began catering more and more to the mostly radical Mormon readership that remained, and to supplement his income, he began giving speeches at LDS events concerned with the second coming of Jesus and other such end-time scenarios. Over time, this led to Chad's religious convictions becoming more and more extreme, and by 2011, he was claiming to have visions regarding the end of days. He claimed to see earthquakes so powerful that California and Oregon would sink into the Pacific, along with war so destructive they'd engulf entire continents. But it wasn't until 2015 that he claimed to hear the voice of God.

And apparently, God was telling him to move to Rexburg, Idaho. But right around the same time Chad was driving Tammy and their five children over to Idaho, a woman in Texas was opening up one of his books. And her name was Lori Vallow. Born Laurie Noreen Cox in Loma Linda, California, on June 26th of 1973, Lori was raised Mormon, and by 2015 was married to her fourth husband, Charles Vallow. Having married in 2006, the couple adopted Charles' grandnephew, J.J. Valo, as the boy's birth parents were unable to care for him,

and by all accounts, the marriage was Lori's happiest and most stable to date. But in 2015, when Lori became interested in Chad's Standing in Holy Places series of books, she experienced something of a spiritual reawakening. She became increasingly invested in radical religious beliefs, read dozens of books detailing near-death experiences, and began listening to podcasts hosted by excommunicated Mormons. Three years later, in October of 2018, Lorry attended a preparing a people event in the state of Utah.

One of the speakers was Chad Daybell. Enraptured by his vivid representations of the end times, Lori approached Chad following one of his speeches and reportedly began flirting with him. Chad then told Lori that he believed they'd been married in previous lifetimes, and after exchanging phone numbers, they began a secretive correspondence. Under the guise of maintaining a professional relationship, Chad and Laurie made joint appearances on several episodes of the Preparing a People podcast. She claimed to have been captivated by his unique and outspoken beliefs. In reality, the two were conducting a deeply sorted

extramarital affair. And over time, a small but deeply fanatical cult formed around Chad and Lori. He christened their organization, the Church of the First Born, before crowning himself its one and only leader. The group consisted of Lori and her brother Alex Cox, along with Lori's friends, Melanie Gibb, and Zulima Postines, the latter of whom ended up married to Lori's brother. All had been raised as deep adherence to the Mormon Church. But on Chad's orders, they relinquished their beliefs with a chilling degree of relish. Despite being rejected by the mainstream Mormon church, the concept of reincarnation played a huge role in Chad's belief system.

He claimed to have lived 31 previous lives, some on distant planets while inhabiting the bodies of advanced species of xenomorph, and one inhabiting the body of St. James, the less, a figure from early Christianity. Lori, on the other hand, had lived a total of 21 previous lives, five of which she'd spent in the company of Chad, and one in which she inhabited the body of Mary French, the great-grandmother of the LDS's founder, Joseph Smith.

They were sealed, as Chad phrased it, following their marriages in previous lives, and conveniently, this relationship superseded those of their earthly marriages. When follower Melanie Gibbs suggested that Chad and Laurie should divorce their spouses, Lori told her that they were not permitted to due to information they were receiving from, and I quote, the other side of the veil. Yet while Chad and Lori had no problem granting themselves a couple of heavenly hall passes, they were incredibly judgmental when it came to other people.

Chad categorized people as either light or dark, depending on whether he associated them with Christ or Satan. But his judgment was far from arbitrary. He and Laurie employed a uniquely elaborate scoring system, making people love for virtuous or saintly characteristics, and marking them down for morally dubious or outright sinful behavior. Those who scored highly were considered to be reincarnations of famous figures from Christian history, while those on the bottom end of the scale were considered to be possessed by evil

spirits. If the group liked you and deemed you worthy of saving, they might be considered to be possessed by evil spirits. they might perform what they referred to as a casting, a ceremony in which they try to cast away evil spirits through prayers and scripture readings. However, if the demons inside a possessed person were too heavily entrenched and thus impossible to exercise, Chad and Laurie claimed the only possible remedy was death. As you can tell, the passage of time saw Chad and Lori's beliefs become more and more extreme, and eventually, Chad began making apocalyptic proclamations

and insisted the end of the world would come on July 22nd of 2020. He told his followers that he was guided by angels and could see hidden truths, while Laurie claimed to be an exalted goddess, able to see the future and unconcerned with earthly laws. She became increasingly disinterested with her husband, Charles Vallow, and in February of 2019, she told him that she no longer cared about their marriage or their adopted son, JJ. Lori then loaded up her truck and disappeared for almost three whole months. When she finally returned home, she was confronted by her husband, and a vicious argument erupted.

During the fight, Lori told Charles that he was possessed by the evil spirit of a man named Ned Schneider and that this was the root of all the negativity in their marriage. But that's not all. Lori then told Charles that rather than a mere mortal, she was a living deity, assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 on the occasion of Christ's second coming, which, coincidentally, was only 18 months away. There was much work to be done between that day and the date of Christ's return, and if Charles got in her way, Lori would murder him.

The threat to his life prompted Charles to consider divorce, but ultimately, he decided not to give up on her. Lori was quite clearly suffering from severe mental health issues, and as her husband, it's reasonable to believe Charles felt a great deal of responsibility for her. But as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Right around the same time Charles decided to stick around and work on his marriage, his wife had stopped referring to him by name altogether. In secret text exchanges between Chad and her brother Alex,

Laurie routinely called her husband Ned, or Hiplos, the latter being the name of the demon, thought to have possessed him. Lori told members of her small but fanatical cult that Charles had become a zombie, and that if he couldn't be redeemed through prayer and casting, there would be grave consequences. But before efforts to save his soul have even commenced, Charles Valo discovered his wife's affair. Somehow, Charles managed to obtain the email address of Tammy Daybell, Chad's long-suffering wife.

He drafted a long and heartfelt email informing Tammy of their spouse's infidelities after apologizing for the pain his revelation might cause. Shockingly, after reading through the email, Tammy Daybell simply deleted it and then blocked Charles' email address. Following a huge confrontation regarding the discovery of the affair, Laurie left Chad's home to stay in Chandler, Arizona, with little JJ, splitting his time between his parents. Then on July 11th of 2019, Charles drove over to Lori's home to pick up JJ, but upon his arrival, he was confronted by none other than Lori's brother, Alex.

There was an altercation between the two. Charles retrieved a baseball bat from the trunk of his car, Alex Cox responded by shooting him dead. 16-year-old Tiley Ryan, Lori's daughter from her third husband, later confirmed that Charles did indeed arm himself with a bat, but had run back to the house by the time the shooting commenced and couldn't provide any further insight into the moments before Charles' death. Incredibly, and most likely based on Tiley's testimony, no charges were filed against Alex, and the shooting was deemed to be, self-defense. Neighbors reported that later the next day, they witnessed a very loud and very jubilant pool party at Lori's Arizona home, and by August of 2019, Lori had relocated her family

to Rexburg, Idaho, in order to be closer to Chad. Upon her arrival, neighbors noticed that little JJ's behavior appeared erratic, and that Lori often left him outside to play alone, without adult supervision and for long periods of time. When controlled, In fronted about this, Lori neglected to mention that young JJ was autistic and instead told neighbors that he was, quote, her niece's drug baby. Just weeks later, Lori and her brother Alex took Ty Lee on a hiking trip to Yellowstone National Park. They walked the trails, ate snacks, but when their trip drew to a close, only Lori and

Alex climbed back into her truck. Lori would later tell neighbors that Ty Lee had been accepted into Brigham Young University on some kind of early scholarship program for gifted high schoolers. In reality, no one would ever see Tiley again. A few weeks after the Yellowstone trip on September 22nd of 2019, Melanie Gibb and her boyfriend, David Warwick, were staying at Lori's home. In the evening, Warwick saw Alex Cox taking a sleeping JJ upstairs to his bedroom,

and this marked the last time anyone would see the boy. alive. A few days later, Lori informed Rexberg Elementary School that she would now be homeschooling her adopted son. But the truth was infinitely more disturbing. In October 2019, two Venmo payments were made from Tiley's account to her older half-brother, Colby Ryan, with odd messages attached. When he expressed concern towards Tiley via text, he received responses from her cell phone indicating that She was safe, but too busy to talk. Melanie Gibb later said that Lori and Chad were convinced Tiley and JJ were possessed, and to become zombies. Zolima Pstenis also testified that Chad had told his followers how, shortly before the little boy's disappearance, young JJ would soon die.

But JJ's death was not the only one Chad predicted around this time. He began telling his followers that his wife, Tammy, was in limbo. after becoming possessed by a spirit named Viola. Her case was a severe one. If they didn't act soon, she was in danger of becoming a zombie. And that was something which Chad was never going to allow. Right around the same time, Colby Ryan was receiving Venmo payments from his dead sister, Tammy Daybell returned home from an errand, parked in her driveway, and stepped out of her car.

A masked man stepped out from the shadows, aimed an assault rifle at her. then pulled the trigger. Tammy screamed, but her shriek of terror was the only sound to pierce the evening silence. The rifle had misfired. Tammy later told police that due to his mask, she had been unable to identify the man who attempted to shoot her. Police warned her to be much more vigilant and to report any further developments, but it was no good. Ten days later, Tammy was found dead in her home, apparently from natural causes. Chad claimed that she had retired the previous night with what he called a terrible cough, and that she tragically died in her sleep. He also mentioned that Tammy had been experiencing low blood pressure, seizures, and negative reactions with homeopathic

medicines, though none of her medical records supported his claims. Three days later, at Tammy's funeral, mourners found Chad's behavior extremely suspicious. The funeral came so soon, but it still felt so planned, one said. Others said Chad seemed business-like, and that he didn't seem upset, and that he wasn't crying, but was trying to cry. Mourners were then deeply perturbed when Chad referred to his late wife as lazy and not easy to live with during what was supposed to be a heartfelt eulogy. Chad's sister-in-law, Heather Daybell, thought his behavior verged on the bazaar, and later stated that, he just didn't seem upset. In the weeks that followed, Chad began introducing Lori to his friends and family.

One of his neighbors, Alice Gilbert, described her first meeting with Lori as awkward, as despite the fact Chad had only recently buried his wife of three decades, he seemed remarkably happy. Gilbert observed that the couple was very affectionate, laughing and joking with one another, even as Lori explained how her daughter had passed away just six months prior. fire. This marked the first admission that Tiley was deceased, but since Alice Gilbert was just a neighbor, she had no inkling whatsoever of the admission's sinister implications. Despite the cryptic hints at their terrible crimes, Chad and Lori played the role of a happy, wholesome Mormon couple

who had bonded over personal tragedy. But by late November, their mass were beginning to slip. On November 26th of 2019, police visited Lori's Rexburg townhouse at the request of Kay Valo, sister of the recently deceased Charles Valo. She hadn't heard from little JJ for weeks and was beginning to grow concerned, and so in the afternoon of the 26th, two Rexburg police officers stopped by Lori's home. There, they found Chad Daybill and Alex Cox, who informed them that while Lori wasn't home, they were more than happy to answer any questions the officers might have. When asked where JJ was, Alex Cox claimed that he was with his paternal grandmother,

K. Valo, the same woman who had called in the welfare check to begin with. Officers knew that he was lying, but played along before asking Chad where Lori was. Chad replied that he, quote, hardly knew Lori, and was only present at her home because he was a friend of Alex. again that was demonstrably false marriage licenses are a matter of public record and seeing as chad and lorry had gotten hitched in hawaii just weeks prior the cops knew that he was lying too when they eventually got in touch with laurie she too provided the police with easily disprovable information she claimed j jay was staying with melanie gib in arizona one phone call was all it took to prove this was a lie chad and lorry might have made grave mistakes and lying to the police, but they weren't entirely moronic. They knew the game was up, and just hours after police came to question them, they loaded up a truck with their belongings and fled to Hawaii. Right around the same time Chad and Lorry were moving into a rental home on the island of Kauai, police officers were conducting

thorough searches of their homes. Days later, the Rexburg Police Department officially pronounced J.J. entirely as missing persons, and asked for the public's assistance in locating them. Police also announced that Chad and Lorry were persons of interest following their prompt departure from the mainland United States, and that the children's disappearance might well be linked to the suspicious death of Chad's late wife, Tammy. As interest in the case grew, so did the amount of media attention it received, and before long, news networks all over the country were broadcasting interviews with people who described the errant couple's beliefs as frightening, disturbed, and cult-like.

Incredibly, Chad and Lori released a statement through their attorney on December 23rd of 2019. An extract from the statement reads as follows. Chad Daybell was a loving husband, and he has the support of his children in this matter, while Laurie is a devoted mother, who resents assertions to the contrary. All false allegations will be addressed once we have moved beyond speculation and rumor. Their statement was met with a response in early 2020 when a collection of the couple's relatives issued a public message begging Lori and Chad return the children. They announced a reward of $20,000 being offered to anyone who either returned the missing children

or shared information directly contributing to their return. Weeks later on January 25th of 2020, Lori and Chad were located in Kauai, and were handed a court order requiring Lori to physically produce Ty Lee and JJ at the Idaho Department of Welfare within the next five days. The next day, police seized the couple's rental car and searched their rental townhome in Princeville. Both Tai Lee's debit card and JJ's iPad were recovered.

Just hours after their Princeville home was searched, the daybells were confronted by an East Idaho news reporter named Nate Eaton. Eaton asked them where the children were. Chad and Lori refused to answer. Finally, on February 20th of 2020, Lori was arrested by the Kauai Police Department before being extradited to Idaho. Her arrest prompted Chad to also return to Idaho, where he tried convincing his neighbor, Alice Gilbert, to put her home up for Bond to get Lori at a prison. When she asked why, he told her Jesus had given him the idea. When Alice then confronted him on what he had said about Lori's daughter being dead,

Chad gave a cagey answer about it being a custody issue and then promptly fled the scene. Months went by without development, until finally, in June of 2020, police found human remains buried in unmarked graves in the backyard of Chad's home. The bodies were located in an area of the Debeau's family called The Pet Cemetery, as it had been used to bury their cats and dogs. As the property was being searched, Chad phoned Lori in jail to warn her about the situation. Then after police found and began to unearth the bodies, he tried to flee the scene. He was chased down, apprehended, and then placed under arrest for concealment of evidence. Days after the discovery of the so-called Pet Cemetery,

police confirmed the human remains found on Chad's property belonged to the missing children, Tiley and J.J. Tiley's body had been burned and her hands had been cut off, while little J.J.'s body was relatively undamaged, having been wrapped in plastic before being gently lowered into the makeshift grave. However, unlike J.J., Tiley's remains had not been treated with such reverence. Her corpse was so decomposed and damaged that her cause of death could not officially be determined, while J.Js had been carefully dispatched with a plastic bag over his head and duct tape over his mouth,

possibly after being drugged. Following the announcement that the children's bodies have been found, Chad Daybell was officially excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the basis of his religious teachings, some of which were described as those of a doomsday. cult. At the trials, Lori was found guilty of the murder of her children. She received three consecutive life sentences for the murders and conspiracy with an additional two life sentences and a 10-year term for grand theft to be served concurrently. She now resides at the Women's Correctional Center in Pocatello, Idaho. Chad's convictions came the following year when he was

pronounced guilty on all counts, including murder, conspiracy, and insurance fraud. He was sentenced to death in June of 2024, and is currently being held at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Boise. If he's a man of conviction and believes he'll be reincarnated on another plane of existence, facing the lethal injection shouldn't be too frightening for old 31 lives, Chad. But if those convictions waver, if his beliefs were merely a tool with which he could manipulate and murder without feeling an ounce of guilt, then it'll be a morbid comfort to know he faced the same mortal terror as those his victims did in their own final moments on earth. What feels like a lifetime ago, I decided to go visit a friend living in San Francisco,

which involved driving just over a thousand miles from our hometown of Montrose, Colorado. My plan was drive all the way through Utah in a single day, spend the night at the holiday inn in a little place called Ellie, Nevada, and then drive the rest of the way to San Fran after a good night's sleep and a decent breakfast. Thankfully, I made it on time and in one piece, but that didn't mean that the journey went smoothly. It might sound funny, but I'd never been to Utah before the drive to San Francisco. It's less than 100 miles west of Montrose, but if I left town, it was usually to drive east to Boulder or maybe Denver. I knew eastern Colorado could be pretty desolate, but Utah was a whole other story.

By the time I drove through a place called Delta, the landscape looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. The road had been nothing but a straight line through the desert for hours, and about 30 to 45 minutes past Delta, I realized that I messed up. I should have stopped for gas when I had the chance, and by the time I realized my gas gauge was creeping towards empty, I started to panic a little bit. The last thing I wanted was to be stranded in the middle of nowhere, so you can imagine my relief when I suddenly saw a sign up ahead. It was the first sign of civilization since I'd left Delta, a solitary gas station sign which read, Last Chance Gas Five Miles. I thank God out loud, not that I'm really a believer, but you get where I'm coming from. And then a few minutes later, I spotted what looked like a small town coming up on the horizon. It sort of clung to the highway, this cluster of dilapidated buildings with peeling paint

and broken windows. Not the nicest place I'd ever seen, but it was a very welcome sight. Gravel crunched under my tires as I pulled into the station, and there was no one at the pumps, no cars in sight and no sign of life from the small store attached to the station. When I turned off the engine, I was suddenly struck by how quiet everything was. I glanced around and saw the town was eerily still. People talk about sleepy desert towns, but I remember thinking, Sleepy, this place is in a goddamn coma.

Approaching the gas pump, I noticed it was of an old model, the kind that you don't really see anymore. The nozzle felt heavy and the kind of heavy where it feels like it was designed to just last forever. But when I tried to pump gas, there was just no flow. I shook it, gave it a tap against the pump, hoping that that might fix it, but it was nothing. It was like the pump itself was just completely empty. Assuming that there was some trick to getting the pump to work that only the station's attendant might know,

I went into the old gas station to look for some help. The door creaked when I opened it and a bell rang, sounding weirdly loud, and the place looked old, very old. Snacks on the shelves were vintage, like those bright, colorful candies from like decades ago. And the cash register was almost from another era, all metal, very heavy, with just huge buttons. And the posters on the walls were very faded, showing promotions for movies and events from probably all the way back in 2001. And when I got there, this was, I think, the fall of 2009. I called out hello, but my voice just echoed back at me and no one seemed to answer.

On the counter, there was an old newspaper from eight years ago talking about some kind of festival. and the calendar behind the counter was stuck on the same date as that newspaper, still showing June 2001. And that's when I started to feel very uneasy. I went to check the back room, and the door was open a little, and inside was more of the same. There was a mug with what looked like old dry remains of coffee at the bottom, a coat still hanging on the back of a chair, and a silent radio that was plugged in but not playing anything. I found a ledger with the last entry on the same day as the newspaper, and it was like everyone in town just disappeared on that day.

I left the back room and saw through the window that the playground across the street was empty, swings moving gently in the wind, but no kids or adults around. Then on the way back to my car, I just felt this burning curiosity taking over my unease, and I decided to just look around a little more in the town before I drove off. Every door I tried was locked and every window was dusty with grime and soot, like no one had been there for a long time. In one house, the door was slightly open, and inside it was like whoever lived there had stepped out of their house

and the expectation they'd be back in mere minutes, but they'd never come back. A book was open on a couch. There was another glass of dried something with dead mold cling to the rim of it, it and upstairs, a kid's room had toys scattered in the floor like play had just suddenly stopped and never resumed. I knew that I shouldn't have been in there, but I just had to check. And after I backed out of that kid's room, two thoughts were going back and forth in my head. The first being, just what in the hell was I thinking walking around a total stranger's house? It was like I came to my senses thinking, what if all these good but slightly untidy folks are

or at a county fair or something, and some psycho, me, is just wandering around their homes. I also appreciate how in denial that sounds, but never underestimate the mind's ability to try and rationalize things in favor of going into complete fight or flight mode. But the second thought was more in lines with, okay, I'm pretty sure something bad happened to these people, and if I don't get the hell out of here, whatever happened to them is going to happen to me too. and I hurried back to my car, feeling like I really shouldn't be there now, but also with that horrible feeling that someone was watching me, even though I was 99% sure the place was completely

abandoned. In my car, I tried my phone, really didn't have any reception, and next I actually tried the radio, and it was just crappy static. I mean, I guess we technically were in like a dead zone out there. As I started the car, I was worried that I was going to run out of gas and end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. But that place had me so unsettled that it seemed worth the risk. If I got stranded, it'd suck, but it was damn sure preferable to staying in that place for even a minute longer. And thankfully, I had just enough gas to make it to cross the state line and actually make it to Ellie. But by the time I rolled into Chevron, I'm not even exaggerating when I said I was running on fumes.

As I filled up my car, I noticed that I had some bars finally on my phone, but since I didn't want to use it at the gas station, they still had signs of back then saying, please do not use your cell phone. And I went inside to ask the clerk if I could use their phone instead, which would also give me the chance to ask them about that abandoned town. The clerk seemed to have no idea what I was talking about, but that didn't really surprise me, I suppose. What did was how matter-of-fact the deputy sheriff was when I called his office back in Utah.

The clerk knew enough to know that I must have come through Millard County if I'd been on Route 50, so I knew I had the right people when I called them up after looking through the phone book. The first deputy I talked to knew what I was talking about and knew the place. They called it Milberg, that it had been abandoned for a number of years, and he just really didn't know why, I guess. I then asked if I could talk to someone higher up, and he put me on the phone with the deputy sheriff, who, like I said, was very open about some things. He just wasn't so open about others.

When I told him about the abandoned town, he actually gave me a little chuckle as he was like, oh, yeah, he must have stopped in Milburg. Place has been empty for years now. He told me he had nothing to worry about, and despite it looking very creepy, there was nothing sinister about the place at all. more like the place had been scheduled for demolition for a few years but the people who bought the land couldn't get permits so till they did millard county had its very own ghost town one that even attracted the odd tourists who actually enjoyed getting the willies from being in an abandoned place like milburgh and i'll be honest the sheriff's answer was actually very reassuring and i felt kind of silly for having worked myself up into a minor freak out over it but then just before i Before we were about to end that call, I asked the sheriff why Milberg had been abandoned. And he paused and then asked me, you some kind of reporter?

And when I told him no, he said if I wanted to talk about it, it was more than welcome to stop by their office over in Fillmore, and he was much more comfortable talking about it face to face rather than over the phone. Now call me paranoid, but I think that was sort of like a bluff or something. I think he was counting on me to not stop by the office to talk about this, and he was kind of right because I didn't. I kept going towards San Francisco, and was only like an hour or so later than my schedule, so like I said at the start, I made it in one piece and on time.

But it was majorly on my mind for the rest of that day, and my friends and I, who I'd driven all the way out there to see, had a long talk about it that evening, and it amounted to this. my friends basically said that yeah something bad probably did happen out there in milburgh but that it wasn't something i should be fixating on the right authorities seemed to be on top of it no wonder the deputy sheriff was cautious of reporters he'd probably been burned in the past after some loose talk made it into the papers and my friend thought it was basically a case of my imagination getting the better of me after having stopped somewhere that i shouldn't have i mentioned the fact that if i have stopped and dealt with you to for gas like I was supposed to, I'd have just rolled through Milberg like it was any other town, and it wouldn't have been on my mind like it was. My friend then told me to live in that reality. Pretend that I'd never even seen Milberg, because when it comes to events where whole towns disappear, sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.

That helped me keep Milberg off my mind for a couple of days, but obviously when the trip drew to an end, I had to drive back the way I came. I considered taking a diversion and stopping in Fillmore to see if I could talk to the deputy sheriff again. But then I was reminded of what my friend told me. After making sure that I had enough gas, I floored it after seeing Milberg in the distance, zooming through that town in barely two or three seconds. And I didn't look back, not even for a second. My name's Darren. I'm from Cornwall, and I don't know if this counts as a scary story in the traditional sense, but it scared me, so maybe it'll scare you too.

So basically a few years ago, I found out that an old schoolmate of mine had become the youngest ever person. in the UK to be convicted of being a terrorist. The police raided his mom and dad's house back in 2019 and nicknamed him after they found instructions on how to make bombs. He went to court over it, but managed to dodge prison time because of how young he was when he downloaded the instructions. The local paper said that he was a neo-Nazi, and I'm not disputing that because apparently the old bill found all sorts of Hitler stuff when they raided his bedroom.

but when I looked into it myself, there was way more to it than that. When I first heard about it, I read every single article about it that I could get my hands on. I used to be dead Pally with the guy back in year seven and year eight and seemed like an all right kid back then. But then apparently, after I moved schools at the start of year nine, he took a drastic turn for the worse. The whole thing hit really close to home, so you can imagine I wanted to know as much about it as I possibly could, mainly because I wanted to know what had gone so wrong in the guy's life that he thought about making bombs. And that's how I discovered, while reading one online article, that my old pal had been visiting the website of a group known as 09A. And the article

kind of glossed over any details on the group and stated that they were neo-Nazis and just moved on. But like I said, there was a lot more to it than that. Having read a lot about very U.K. neo-Nazi groups while researching my old pal's arrest, the name 09A jumped out at me immediately because I've never heard of it before. I read all about the National Front, National Action, and the likes of Combat 18, but never anything about a group called 09A. So out of sheer curiosity, I decided to do some research on them to see what my old pal had gotten himself into. Then from the moment I plugged the name into Google, I think my jaw stayed on the floor for the whole time. 09A stands for the order of the nine angles, and that's angles, not angels. And to put it in

the simplest terms possible, they're Nazi Satanus. They want to tear down society which they think is controlled by Jews and build a new one based on paganism and a sort of survival of the fittest mentality. One of their big beliefs is human sacrifice, which they think will speed up the downfall of civilization. But they're not all talk when it comes to actually inflicting suffering and things like that, as I found out for myself when I looked them up. In the summer of 1997, two Swedish members of the 09A committed the Keelers Park murder, which was where those two blokes tried to ritually sacrifice an Algerian man. Then in 2019, an American soldier was found out to be a member of the Order of the Nine Angles and was planning on kidnapping and killing his fellow soldiers,

in the name of Satan. I know you're probably thinking, okay, I was with you too. You tried making out that there's satanic terrorists in the U.S. Army, but please, if you think I'm trying to mess with you, then look it up. The fella's name is Ethan Melzer,

and there's a bloody New York Times article about the whole thing. And this is legit, not just some stupid creepypasta. The year after that, another soldier was found to be a member of 09A, only this was a member of a group within the 09A called, and you might want to spell this out instead of saying it so you don't get in trouble, the R-A-P-E Woffon. The group of scumbags hatched the idea of violating white girls

and getting them pregnant from it so that more white babies would be born. Like I said, my jaw is resting firmly on the floor by this point as I was reading stuff like that, and because it legitimately sounds like badly written blue-haired fan fiction, I had to stop and look all this up as I was reading it, only to find out that, yeah, it was all true. Another one that sounded too insane to be true was the story about another member of the Order of Nine Angles, whose name I've got handy, but I don't know that you want to edit out, but he's named Luke Austin Lane. He and his two mates were caught planning the murder of some Antifa couple, and yeah, I'm no fan of Antifa, but this bloke was actually planning on killing

this couple's kids in front of them. before finishing them off in turn. They're kids, man. What kind of scumbag deliberately executes innocent kids like that? And I just couldn't believe what I was reading. But it kept going. To prepare for the murders, Luke Lane and his mates killed a sheep,

drank its blood, and then took a lot of LSD or mushrooms or something to go in a sort of spiritual journey. I read another thing about a bloke in Canada who killed a Muslim guy and then I think he stabbed some Sikh fella, and then when he was caught, boom, police found out that he was a member of 09A.

And there are loads more satanic murders like that, mainly in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and they're all connected to what is literally a satanic terrorist group. But to be honest, that's not even the half of it, because if you look up all the stuff that the orders members are involved in, you start seeing the same sick pattern playing out over and over, over again. Excluding 2018, every single year for the past seven years, a member of the order of the nine angles had been arrested and convicted of being a child abuser. Be that

through having material on their hard drives or actually doing disgusting things themselves, most of these incidents have been in the UK, but as of 2021, they've spread to America and Sweden too. But then, as much as you might think that these dudes are just straight, up creeps, and hear me out about this one, I don't think that's necessarily the case. The Order of the Nine Angles has these two documents about human sacrifices. One's called A Gift for the Prince, and the other is called Calling, a Guide to Sacrifice. Most of their literature is absolute garbage. Like it's legitimately difficult because of how much jargon and inside language they use,

but there's one bit that really stood out to me. something that makes me think that all the C-Sem stuff is basically part of their ethos. The Order says that human sacrifice isn't just confined to killing people. If they were burning and decapitating people every week, they'd all be caught in no time, right? Well, to continually propagate human suffering without overly alerting the authorities, the Order distributes C-Sem as a way of sort of feeding evil, if that makes sense. it sounded wild to me at first too i can promise you but the more i read and the more i thought about it the more it all started to make this sort of horrible kind of sense to me the kids involved in this

it's them that are being sacrificed and by distributing the images of them being abused the order of the nine angles is able to sacrifice them over and over again while corrupting other people in the process again i know this sounds too insane to be true but here's yet another example of it happening back in 2020. In April of that year, Russian police raided the homes of a group suspected of, and this is a direct quote from the Russian website now, incitement to murder due to religious and racial hatred and criminal activities against women. I think they thought that these dudes were just neo-Nazis, but during the raids, they found the men were members of a Russian-based chapter of the 09A called Legion Ave Satan.

Turns out one of these lads had burned down a really old church someplace, and it was never solved until they found photos of him setting it on fire in his house, but that wasn't the worst part of it. As I was reading about this group, I remember thinking, okay, well, at least these lads weren't pedos, but then lower down the article from the Russian website, I saw that they were. They had been grooming kids in this place, Krasnodar, where they lived and were trying to get them into underage prostitution. And I imagine that they were going to profit in some way from it. But that's not the point with these order of the Nine Angles people.

It's about suffering. It's about the suffering of innocent people. And that's what they trade in. And it's because human suffering makes Satan more powerful, so they say. It has to be a specific kind of human suffering, though. The kind that doesn't improve a person, things like grief, severe physical pain, with a lifelong mental scarring that comes with being abused at a really young age. And I'm sure you'll agree. The order of the nine angles rabbit hole makes for some of the

worst stuff you've ever heard, and by the time I'd finished reading about it, I was in two minds about my old mate not getting any jail time. He was 14 when he got into that order, 16 when he was arrested, so yeah, I can put that down to something a stupid teenage boy would do. But the order is no joke, and the fact that he had some of their human sacrifice documents downloaded on his computer was very worrying. I'm not saying that we should lock everyone up who does or says something silly on the internet, but reading through all the 09A stuff makes me wonder if a mistake hasn't been made. And I hope my old mate turns a new leaf, and it was all just a silly phase to him. I mean, he's definitely sorry that he got caught because I know for a fact that he's got all

kinds of restrictions placed on him. And don't ask me how I know. Everyone knows everyone in Cornwall, but I know he can't go on certain websites or talk to certain people, and if he does, he's in serious trouble. Then it definitely have me thinking, I've made a mistake here, and I really do hope that he sees it that way, because honestly, the alternative is bloody well terrifying, isn't it? If it cracks on with life and it becomes something deaf that he did back when he was a lad, then good on him. But if not, well, I imagine I'll be reading about him at some point in the future for whatever terrible thing that he does in the name of the devil. I used to do a lot of urban exploring out of Chicago,

and me and my crew ticked off a lot of places over the years. There are the big grain silos in Pilsen, left empty after a big explosion, and then near Joliet there's an old prison with cells and chapels now open for tours. In Gary, Indiana, we saw this incredibly beautiful but decaying church, than under Chicago, there are old freight tunnels, mostly closed off now that were anything but beautiful. The old Chicago post office was huge and empty for years, and there's the old Cook County Hospital, not becoming a hotel, but once a place right out of Silent Hill. But then, after a while, we started looking further to hit up places that we hadn't been before. And that's when we heard

about a place in the middle of nowhere over in Iowa called Buckhorn. Back in the 1900s, Buckhorn used to be a pretty prosperous place because of the big creamery that they had in town. It used to turn out hundreds of tons of butter a week and it employed almost everyone in town. But then, when rising costs forced the creamery to shut down, it meant just about the whole town was suddenly out of work overnight. And with no jobs, people started leaving one family at a time. Then I think by the 80s or early 90s, the place was just a total ghost town. We did some research online, mainly using Urbex forums where others would post about their experiences, and drew up a list of places we wanted to visit.

There was obviously the old creamery, which was huge and falling apart, but there was also the abandoned church and cemetery we could take a look at, along with a handful of other places too. It looked like a great place to explore. The only drawback was the four-hour car ride, and since it was late October when we got the urge to visit, and men starting the journey at the crack of dawn if we wanted to hit up all of our chosen spots before it went dark. So one day in early November, we loaded up my friend Mike's van, and then we drove off down Highway 64 in the direction of the Iowa State line. The weather was miserable when we hit the road, a cold gray Saturday morning that I'd much rather have just spent in

bed. But honestly, Urbex, when the weather is nice, feels kind of odd, and no filter in existence makes a place feel gloomier or creepier than a naturally overcast sky. And on top of that, the prospect of hitting up a brand new place kept us so excited that we didn't mind that the heating in Mike's van was completely broken.

And besides, each of us was dressed for the Arctic, so the cold was at the back of our minds as we got closer and closer to Buckhorn. When we arrived, the town was exactly as you'd imagine, empty and silent, with buildings that looked like they'd crumble if you so much as looked at them for too long. The streets were overgrown with weeds, and apart from the sound of the wind whispering around the abandoned buildings, it was completely silent. We started at the old schoolhouse, a building that seemed to sag under the weight of its own rotting structure,

and inside the air was musty and dank, and there were leaks. almost everywhere from the previous day's rain. How the place was still standing was beyond me, and I was way more worried about it coming down in our heads, even after I saw what was written on the chalkboard. Mike pointed it out at first, directing us into a classroom that had the word, danger, written on the chalkboard in big white letters with an exclamation point.

Mike was smiling when he showed us, and it got a little chuckle out of me, too. You see a lot of that kind of spooky graffiti around well-trodden urbex sites, and it's usually a little more creative than just danger. You pay attention to official-looking signs and warnings about unstable structures or active power cables and all of that, but when it comes to stuff like abandon hope all ye who enter here or Pennywise's layer, you tend not to take it very seriously. And we figured the danger on the chalkboard amounted to some other Urbexer's tag,

like an unsettling way of saying, I got here first. But these days, I think that graffiti was much more significant than we first imagined. We moved on to the other classrooms, checking the chalkboards for more messages, but there was nothing. And I remember the desks being covered in a thick layer of dust, and after wiping at some of it with his glove to see just how thick it really was, Mike started playfully chasing us around and threatening to wipe that grime on one of her jackets. And that's when I first noticed something was off with our friend Tom. He was usually the most enthusiastic of us. His camera was always ready.

His curiosity was boundless. But that day, he seemed tired and distracted, almost like he was in some kind of days. He barely reacted as Mike came at him, and when he did notice what was on his finger, he didn't really even find it funny. He just snapped it, Mike. Not overly harshly or anything, but we knew that the joke was over. and moved on from the school to the general store. The shelves were still stocked with cans made by brands that we'd never heard of,

and some of their labels faded so badly that we could barely read them. Tommy stayed quiet as we walked the aisles, which, again, was totally not like him. By the time we got to the old town hall, his behavior had gotten even weirder. He seemed like he was muttering to himself, his eyes darting around like he was seeing things that we couldn't. Then suddenly, Tommy reached up and just started clutching his nose. Blood poured out, dark and thick in staining his gray gloves, and he looked scared. We tried to help, but he backed up and held out an arm like, get the hell off of me. And his nose was bleeding so much that one of us actually asked if Tommy was good to keep going.

But the idea seemed to just irritate him even more than his nosebleed did. he said we hadn't driven all that way to just turn around and leave over a nosebleed and in the moment I appreciated how unselfish it sounded no one wanted to just leave not if we could avoid it so as Mike went into his pack to get our first aid kit so Tommy could stem the blood coming out of his nose I wandered off alone towards the old sheriff's office to take a look around it looked much like I imagined it to it first. Reception area, back office, hallway leading to what must have been cells of some description. It wasn't immediately visible from the front door, but the second I turned the corner into the reception area, I saw it. In huge black letters, dobed in what must

have been spray paint, where the words, if you bleed, leave buckhorn and never return. The sight of it sent literal shivers down my spine immediately. and I ran back to tell the others. I told them that we had to leave, but again, Tommy objected. And I started to explain that what I'd seen written on the wall of the sheriff's office, and as I did, Mike and the others started to listen. But I still only got a couple of words out before Tommy went nuts and started screaming at me. He says something like, how many times do I have to say it?

We're not leaving, all right? Then as he started walking towards me, still yelling. Others jumped in to hold him back, thinking that he was about to punch me. We worked to calm him down, and it kind of seemed like we did it first. But then, when I look back on it, I think that's when that weird kind of fatigue started to set in. We basically managed to drag Tommy back to the van after he stopped struggling because we were convinced that he was going through some kind of medical emergency. He offered to take him to the hospital, but all he wanted to do was go home.

The drive back was just quiet and very tense. Tommy's nosebleed had stopped, but he was very pale, and his breathing shallow, and he passed out before we even hit the highway, and his body was just limp against the seat. We tried to wake him when we got back to town, but he was unresponsive, barely stirring even when we shook him. The fact that he even showed signs of life was a huge relief, and when we finally got him to his apartment, Tommy, was acting like someone recovering from some deep sleep, very groggy, very confused. And we just left him to rest. And we asked his mom and sister to keep an eye on him after telling them what had happened, but we were all very shaken by what had taken place. The image of that warning on the wall, the nosebleed and the fear in Tommy's eyes, it just all played over and over again in my

mind. And lying in bed that night, I couldn't shake off the unease of what we'd seen. Why did Tommy react that way? And what was it either in or about Buckhorn that made him act like that? The warning in the sheriff's office was very clear, but its implications were terrifying. Was it some kind of chemical exposure? And if so, why was it only Tommy who reacted that way? I thought about the stories that I'd heard of Buckhorn, tales of that town that once thrived but fell due to reasons that were never quite clear. And I'd read about the creamery shutting down, but it didn't occur to me until then, that it didn't say why the creamery was shut down in any of the posts that I'd read. Some spoke of economic downfall, but there was nothing about a mysterious

illness or any other kind of unexplained events that led to its abandonment. The next day, I did some research, but found nothing that could really explain what had happened to him. There were no records of toxic spills, no known unusual occurrences officially documented. yet the physical and psychological impact on Tom was undeniable. And we all saw it. It scared the hell out of us. He was the only one who bled and the only one who started acting strange like that, or at least strange in a way that we could see and recognize.

I wrote this down not because I'm good with words, but because I need to warn others. If you ever hear about Buckhorn, if someone suggests a reason to visit, just don't. Stay the hell away from that place. whatever's there isn't just the ghost of the past it's something that can reach out and touch you and make you bleed make you lose yourself my friend has recovered but honestly you might pay a

very high price on covering whatever secrets that place holds When I first heard about NXIVM, or Nexium, it was through a friend who had attended one of their executive success programs. She spoke glowingly about the personal development courses, the community, and how the teachings had changed her life, the promise of self-improvement, leadership skills, and the allure of being part of an elite group of thinkers and doers was intoxicating, really. I was at a point in my life where I felt directionless and eager for something that could provide both purpose and community. I attended my first nexium seminar out of curiosity and was immediately drawn in by the sophisticated jargon, the sense of exclusivity, and the charismatic leadership of Keith Reneery.

The courses were expensive, but promised rapid personal growth, which should be very much. seemed like a fair trade at the time. The workshops were intense, filled with long hours of introspective exercises, group discussions, and what they called ethical training. It all felt like a step towards becoming a better version of myself. No over time, I became more deeply involved, moving up through the ranks of their curriculum. I met many intelligent and successful people who seemed genuinely transformed by their experiences. I was part of a community that celebrated personal empowerment and seem to shun conventional societal norms in favor of a more enlightened approach to life. The jargon, terms like ESP, executive success programs, EM, ethical movement, and vanguard

for Reney himself, gave us a sense of belonging to something special, almost like a secret society. The structure of nexium was intriguing too. It was hierarchical, the inner circles where you could move up by demonstrating loyalty, financial investment, and adherence to the teachings. There was always another level to achieve, another course to take, another way to strip away your limitations. This constant push for more was disguised as personal growth, but was really a tool for control, something I didn't fully grasp at the time. I recall the first time that I met Keith Reneer, or Vanguard, as he was called by his followers. He had this aura of omniscience, like he could see right through you to your core issues.

His talks were mesmerizing, filled with philosophical insights and psychological tricks that seemed to elevate your understanding of the world. But looking back, they were also manipulative, designed to make you doubt yourself from rely on his guidance, and my perception only really began to shift when I was invited to join what was described as an even more elite group within nexium, called DOS. I was told it was a sorority for women committed to deeper levels of personal discipline and empowerment, led by women for women. The secrecy and the promise of an even higher level of personal evolution was intriguing,

but the initiation into DOS was unlike anything I had experienced at Nexium before. It was here that the facade began to crumble. I was asked to provide collateral, sense that personal information or compromising photos as a sign of trust and commitment. This was justified as ensuring my dedication to the group's secrecy and my personal growth. The discomfort was immediate, but it was too deep in the Annexia mindset to see it for what it was at first. The revelation came when I learned about the branding ceremony. Women weren't just committed to a group.

They were being branded with a symbol that, unbeknownst to them at the time, was a combination of Keith Reneerese and his partner Allison Mack's initials. The branding was done under the guise of a sisterhood ritual, but the reality was far more sinister. It was a sign of ownership, a mark of slavery. I was horrified. The realization that what I thought was an empowerment group was actually a front for a master's slave dynamic, and it was shattering. women were expected to follow commands from their masters which included intimate servitude extreme dieting and absolute obedience the women were not just controlled they were manipulated into believing that they were in control of their choices while being stripped away of their agency the cognitive dissonance was overwhelming here i was thinking i was part of a movement towards enlightenment only to find out that it was on the brink of being drawn into a cult where human rights were being egregiously violated. I felt betrayed, not just by the leaders, but by

the system that I had begun to trust so deeply. And what made it even more chilling was the realization that many of the women in DOS were not just victims, but also enforcers of this system. They had been indoctrinated into believing that this was part of a noble cause, and their own status within the hierarchy depended on how well they could control others. This created a cycle of abuse where victims became victimizers, all under the banner of personal growth. And my exit from nexium was not easy. The psychological rip was strong, and there was the ever-looming threat of my collateral being exposed. But I managed to leave, thanks in part to supportive friends outside the organization who helped me see the reality of my situation. The aftermath was a period of

intense reflection and recovery. I had to rebuild my sense of self. I trust in another. I was a and understand how I had been so thoroughly deceived. This experience left a very profound impact on me. It taught me to be wary of where the path to self-improvement might lead, especially when it demands secrecy, blind loyalty, and the surrender of personal autonomy. It was a harsh lesson in the importance of critical thinking and the dangers of charismatic leadership unchecked by accountability.

Looking back, I see how Nexium used the guise of power to exploit vulnerabilities and manipulate minds, even control lives. The allure of belonging to something greater, the promise of transformation, and the manipulation through psychological techniques were all tools in the hands of those who sought to do one and one thing alone. Dominate. On May 20th of 1999, the South Australian police were investigating a missing person's case linked to the city of Adelaide when they received a tip from an informant.

They were to drive 80 miles north to a small municipality of around 300 people, named Snowtown. Once there, they were to make their way to the old abandoned bank on 1st Street and conduct a thorough inspection of the bank's vault. Two South Australian police officers drove for hours along the nation's A1 Highway. Then upon their arrival in Snowtown, they parked their cruiser outside the abandoned bank. After gaining access to the secure structure, and with their flashlights at the ready, the two officers crept down dark and dusty hallways,

until they reached the bank's vault. There, they found the large steel door had been left ajar. Then after pulling it open, they discovered half a dozen large plastic barrels. The officers must have had their suspicions, but to be certain, one of them crept forwards and peeled back just a small portion of one of the barrel's lids. And the stench was overpowering. After a total of eight human corpses were pulled out of the barrel. of the six plastic drums, the Australian media went into a veritable frenzy.

The previously sleepy village of Snowtown became the center of a gruesome investigation, capturing national attention and sending the general public into a state of near panic. They demanded a swift and robust response from the South Australian police, who were to open an investigation into the murders immediately. But they were told that, in truth, law enforcement, had been investigating a series of disturbing disappearances for the past five years. And their case seemed to center around a man named John Bunting. John Justin Bunting was born on September 4th of 1966 in Narlah, Queensland,

and it's believed that he had a relatively normal and stable upbringing. State social services have no records of him being abused or neglected by his parents, and until the age of eight, his school reports painted a picture of a perfectly normal little boy. But shortly after entering the third grade, something terrible happened to little Johnny Bunting. While playing at the home of a neighbor, eight-year-old Johnny found himself alone in a room with his friends, much older brother. John was cornered, beaten, and then carnally assaulted by a boy much older and stronger than him, and the experience left him with a profound hatred of both homosexuals and pedophiles. As a teenager, he developed a healthy fascination with photography and was said to have a talented

eye for composition. His fixation with human anatomy, on the other hand, was to put it mildly, not so healthy. But on what bordered on downright pathological, was John's obsession with acts of physical violence. At age 22, Bunting found work at a Queensland abattoir, and was not only highly proficient in his work, but reportedly bragged about enjoying the factory-style slaughter he and his co-workers indulged in. In 1991, a 25-year-old Bunting would relocate to the Adelaide suburb of Salisbury, and here he befriended two of his neighbors, 20-year-old Robert Joe Wagner, and 33-year-old Mark Ray Hayden. Bunting was known to be intensely charismatic and could exert significant psychological control over others.

He also had a highly dominant personality and relished the opportunity to take on a leadership role within his group, which included people who were vulnerable, disaffected, and looking for direction. Over the next few years, Bunting curated a small but viciously loyal social circle of those who shared his deep hatred for pedophiles, homosexuals, and unlawfuls. Others, he deemed morally corrupt. But over time, what started as a kind of recreational outrage, transformed into something deeper and darker, something more like ideology than opinion. He then went about convincing his acolytes

that they should engage in vigilante justice, drawing others into his worldview through slow but persistent indoctrination. He would become a central figure in their lives, providing a sense of belonging or family, which was crucial for people like Mark Hayden, Robert Wagner, and James Veloccus. These men became accomplices in what Bunting framed as a moral crusade, but was, in reality, a terrifying spree of sadistic violence motivated by greed, control, and prejudice.

The murders began in August of 1992, when a 20-year-old man named Clinton Douglas Tracise, was invited over to Bunting's apartment on the pretense of a social call. Bunting, having acted as both judge and jury, had declared Tracez, a abuser of children. Then, right there in his living room, in front of his baying adherence, he beat the 20-year-old to death with a shovel, and then had him buried in a shallow grave. In 1997, Tracez was the subject of two episodes of the Australian television show, Australia's Most Wanted.

Bunting watched an episode of the show with Velasicus and his mother, and reportedly boasted, that's my handiwork. 26-year-old Ray Davies was Bunting's next target, because in 1993, he entered into a relationship with an ex-girlfriend of Bunting's named Suzanne Allen. Reportedly, to be intellectually disabled, he was accused of making inappropriate advances towards Allen's grandsons, yet these allegations appear flimsy at best. Following the termination of their relationship,

Ray Davies and Suzanne Allen, remained close friends and the former actually lived on the latter's property and a small caravan at the time he was targeted. To some, this was testament to the idea that the accusations had been spurious, but to bunting, it was evidence of a vile conspiracy between the two.

An unboxing day of 1995, Suzanne Allen's daughter witnessed Bunting and her mother clearing out Davies' caravan. Bunting later told James Vlococcus that he had murdered Ray Davies on Christmas Day, not only with the assistance of his wife, but also Vlococcus's own mother. They had reportedly stabbed him in both legs, immobilizing him before Robert Wagner strangled him unconscious. The group then drove 90 minutes to a home, in a town known as Bacara, where they tossed their victim into an empty bathtub and tortured him. Initially, the purported purpose of the torture was to get Davies to reveal his bank details,

and if he did, he was assured that his anguish would cease. It was a lie. Once the group had drained his bank account, Davies was beaten to death with the same sharpened metal pull used to mutilate his genitals. And next on the list was Davies and Bunting's ex-girlfriend. 47-year-old Suzanne Allen. According to Bunting, she was being targeted for execution due to her perverse collusions with Ray Davies. In reality, Bunting simply wanted her money. It's unclear how she was killed, but Allen's plastic wrapped remains were discovered buried

at Bunting's Salsbury property in May of 1999. Following her murder, Bunting claimed $17,000 of her pension through fraudulent means. Although Alan most likely died by Bunting's hand, charges were eventually dropped by the prosecution due to their lack of evidence, and the perpetrators were tried but not found guilty as a result of a hung jury. And her case was never tried again. Next up was 19-year-old Michael Gardner, a cousin of Robert Wagner's wife. By September of 1997, Gardner had been cross-dressing for a number of years,

thus drawing the ire of the highly homophobic Bunting. Bunting had reportedly witnessed him playing with Wagner's children when he grabbed one of them by the arm and placed his hand over their mouth. Small children sometimes say some pretty terrible things, partly out of malice and partly out of ignorance. So from the sounds of it, Gardner had simply heard one of the children say something rude or explicit and was attempting to correct them with an easily understood but ultimately physical gesture. Yet to Bunting, the site proved a potent reminder of his own carnal violation at the hands of his friend's older brother,

and in that moment, Bunting decided Gardner had to die. He and Robert Wagner somehow convinced Gardner to accompany them to a place called Murray Bridge. There, Gardner was taken to a shed, then repeatedly strangled as a form of torture. Every time he collapsed due to lack of oxygen, Bunting and Wagner would force the teenager to stand up straight before they strangled him all over again. Finally, when Gardner passed out for a fourth or fifth time, Bunting kept his hands wrapped around his victim's throat,

squeezing and tightening his grip until Gardner expired. The two killers then staged a robbery at Gardner's apartment, stealing some of his landlady's belongings. When this landlady somehow got in touch with Bunting, to inquire after her errant tenants' whereabouts, he convinced her that Gardner had been the one to burglarize her residence in order to pay for a sex-change operation. Gardner's decomposing corpse was then kept in a plastic barrel, and the very same shed he was murdered in, until it was eventually moved to the Snowtown Bank vault. His left foot had been severed so the drum's lid could be properly sealed.

Bunting's next victim was another ex-girlfriend, 42-year-old Vanessa Lane. Bunting had previously welcomed Lane into his circle of acolytes due to her willingness to aid in the hunt for child molesters. Yet ironically, her home was firebombed after she too was accused of grooming a local schoolboy. In the aftermath of the firebombing, she attempted to lay low. but ended up beginning a relationship with an 18-year-old boy by the name of Thomas Trevillian. Somehow, Trevillian ended up reaching out to John Bunting, whereby he was informed that Lane had been grooming and molesting him long before he came of age. It's unclear why Trevillian would betray his new girlfriend in such a way,

but the move undoubtedly signed the woman's death warrant. And on October 17th of 1997, Bunting, Wagner, and Trevillian picked the woman. Vanessa Lane up from her home, apparently following some kind of reconciliation. Lane was then prompted to verbally abuse her own mother via telephone, then told to inform her that she wanted nothing more to do with her, was moving to Queensland, and was never coming back. In all likelihood, Lane was led to believe that the rebuke of her own mother would prove her loyalty to the group. In reality, it was a trap. Should she suddenly disappear, Lane's mother was just about the only person who cared enough to report her daughter missing.

With a relationship in jeopardy, Lane became an easy target. And one by one, her toes were crushed with metal pliers as she was tortured for her bank account details. When she revealed them, she was promptly strangled to death. Less than a month later, on November 4th of 1997, an increasingly unhinged Thomas Trevillian began chasing a dog around his neighborhood while armed with a knife. Having reportedly been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Bunting saw Trevillian as a liability that, and I quote, would go mental on them.

The next day, under the pretense of undertaking another bashing, as Bunting referred to the murders, Bunting drove Trevillian to Curzbrook in the Adelaide Hills. He was discovered hanging from a tree in humbug scrub the following day. Next on the chopping block was an associate of James Velascus, a 29-year-old named Gavin Porter. A diagnosed schizophrenic, Porter moved Adelaide from Victoria following the death of his mother in 1997. He and Velascus were heroin addicts, a trait which caused Bunting to dub him a waste of flesh, although it's unclear why Velascus wasn't singled out for similar treatment.

Porter was sleeping in a parked car on Bunting's property when he and Wagner attacked him. Once he was dead, his body was displayed to Velascus, potentially as a warning, before being put into a barrel for disposal. The group's next target was Velascus's half-brother, 21-year-old Troy Ude. Velascus claimed Ud had repeatedly subjected him to brutal abuse during his youth, prompting Bunting to add his name. to their so-called kill list. They drove over to Ude's home in the middle of the night, before they bound him, threw him into his own bathtub,

and tortured him relentlessly. This marked the first time Bunting brought along a video camera so he could make a record of his grisly crimes. Once the device was rolling, Bunting used pliers to crush Eud's toes and increased the intensity of the torture if his victim failed to call him God or master. Following this period of torture in which Eude was forced to reveal sensitive financial information,

he was executed by strangulation. Next up was Mark Hayden's nephew, 18-year-old Frederick Robert Brooks. Bunting became fixated on the spurious idea that Brooks had been, quote, touching up young girls and decided that something needed to happen to him. September of 1998 saw Brooks accepted into the Austroo. Australian Air Force cadets, an occasion which Bunting Wagner and Velascus claimed they wish to celebrate. Brooks was tricked into showing up in abandoned property, a so-called party house, but all that awaited him was humiliation, torture, and death. The three men shoved lit cigarettes into his ears and his

nostrils, and lit sparkler was inserted into his urethra. A syringe was used to inject bleach to his testicles, which was wired to a varriac, sending painful electrical impulses through his body. His toes were crushed by pliers before finally he choked to death on his gag. The next target was a physically and mentally disabled man, 29-year-old Gary O'Dwyer. Having discovered that O'Dwire received sizable monthly disability payments from the Australian government, he was targeted by Bunting and his associates, who tortured him for his financial details before strangling him to death. The group's pen-ultimate murder was that of Mark Hayden's own wife, 37-year-old Elizabeth, who was apparently on the verge of reporting Bunting's crimes to the police.

After making sure that she was home alone, she was murdered by John Bunting and Robert Wagner after they forced their way into her home. Later that day, her remains were exhibited. to her husband, who merely laughed before ordering the disposal of her corpse. Ultimately, the group's final victim was James Velascus, half-brother, 24-year-old David Johnson. Bunting despised Johnson and referred to him using homophobic slurs on account of his cleanliness and sharp appearance. On May 9th of 1999, the group tricked Johnson into driving out to the abandoned bank in Snowtown, under the pretense of purchasing a cheap computer. There, he was overpowered as soon as he stepped into the building,

and following his murder, Bunting and Wagner reportedly fried pieces of his flesh before eating them. For years, Bunting's crimes went completely undetected, partly because the victims were people whose disappearances did not raise immediate alarm. However, suspicions began to grow as more individuals went missing. under mysterious circumstances. A break in the case when Velascus, the youngest member of the group, confessed his involvement to the police. Being the group's only heroin addict, it's possible that he was detained following a minor

legal infraction, such as theft or possession of illegal substances. Then while in custody, withdrawal symptoms would have made him a ripe target for police pressure. His detailed account of the murders and the group's methods provided investigators with the evidence needed to unravel the full extent of the crimes. Police surveillance eventually led them to Snowtown, where the plastic disposal barrels were finally uncovered. The Snowtown murders resulted in one of the most complex

and expensive legal proceedings in Australian history. Bunting and Wagner were convicted of multiple murders, then sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. James Velascus received a reduced sentence after cooperating with with authorities, but was still sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 26 years. Mark Hayden, who played a lesser role, was convicted of assisting with the disposal of bodies and received a sentence of 25 years. The trial shed light on the group's twisted dynamics, with Bunting, revealed as the

manipulative ringleader who exerted an almost cult-like influence over his accomplices. The court also heard harrowing testimony regarding the suffering endured by the group of group's victims, painting a grim picture of the killer's utter lack of empathy as well as their boundless greed. The revelation of the murders shocked the tight-knit community of Snowtown, which had previously been known for little more than its rural charm. The town's name became synonymous with the atrocities, leading some residents to push for a charge in its name to escape the stigma. While the town remains officially named Snowtown, its reputation had been indebtably linked to the crimes. But beyond Snowtown, the case promoted broader discussions

in Australia about how society treats vulnerable individuals. But ultimately, the Snowtown murders are also a stark illustration of how prejudice, greed, and manipulation can combine to create a strain of near-limatless malevolence. The man we were about to discuss has gone by many names. He's been known as Dr. York, Chief Black Eagle, Issa al-Hadi al-Madi, and even his excellency, Dr. Malachi Cobina York. At one point in his life, our subject went so far as to adopt the title, and this is a direct quote, folks, so don't hold on to your britches.

Imperial Grand Potentate, the noble Reverend Dr. Malachi Z. York, 33 degrees, 720 degrees. If he asked the man himself, he might tell you that he spent his life in the pursuit of knowledge. But the proof, it seems, is in the pudding. as despite his so-called quest for enlightenment, the man's legacy remains one of hatred, fraud, and child molestation. He might have granted himself all manner of lofty but ultimately meaningless titles, but to your infinite relief, I'll refer to him only by the name on his birth certificate.

And this is the story of Dwight D. York. Throughout his life, York would claim to have been born in places such as Ghana, Baltimore, New York, or New Jersey. But according to his birth certificate, he was born on July 26th of 1945 in Boston, Massachusetts. He claimed that, at age seven, he was sent to the city of Aswan in southern Egypt, where he supposedly received an Islamic education at the hands of his grandfather. Later in life, he wrote that, My grandfather, as Said Abdur Rahman al-Madi, the East

The imam of the Ansars in the Sudan until 1959 AD, upon looking into my eyes, foretold that I was the one who would possess the light. York then claimed that following his education, he returned to the United States in 1957 and at the age of 12, settled with his family in Teaneck, New Jersey. By the late 1960s, a young Dwight York had taken to calling himself, imam isa he developed an interest in organizations such as the nation of islam and the moorish science temple of america but instead of joining one of the many pre-established black nationalist movements he decided to found his own after changing his name to iman isa abdula he founded a movement

that had become known as the nuavian nation and with a handful of loyal proselytizers he set about growing the organization among the ripe ideological seedbed of 1970s Brooklyn. Wearing green and black dashikis, York and his followers set up a bookstore specializing in black nationalist literature and would attempt to recruit those who visited. The method was an effective one, and by the end of the 1970s, York commanded a congregation of between two and three thousand followers. Throughout the 70s, York and his acolytes and by a relatively simple mix of orthodox Islam and black nationalism. However, as the 1980s rolled around, York began to preach a much different form of religion.

While drawing from various religious and historical themes, he renamed his movement the Holy Seed Baptist Synagogue and unveiled a new logo featuring the six-pointed star of Judaism, the Islamic Crescent, and the Ankh, an Egyptian symbol that also associated with pre-Islamic Sudan. This upset a great deal of his conservative Muslim followers, and the group began hemorrhaging adherence. But York wasn't done. He renamed the group a second time,

calling it the Yama Sea Native American tribe, and began teaching his followers that they were affiliated with the Muskogee Nation. They told them their ancestors had not been brought over on slave ships and had instead migrated to America during the time of Pangaea, a supercontinent that existed around 2 to 3 million years ago, which eventually separated into the continents of the present day. Naturally, this sounded nothing short of unhinged to the majority of his followers, who understood their roots were in Africa, and not the Americas. And once he started changing religious ideas, the older followers became skeptical and

left the group, said former follower Robert J. Rohan. That's what happened to me. He came up with an idea to move down south, apparently because he was under FBI investigation, Rohan added. But then he told us it's because we were moving to meet our spiritual parents. I guess he forgot to give us two explanations, and that's what made a lot of the brothers think that he was full of it. Following the announcement that the group was relocating to Georgia, York once again rebranded his organization. He changed his name to Malachi York, effect of March 12. 1993, then declared his movement the United Nuwobian Nation of Moors, a group that once numbered in their thousands now stood at just two to three hundred strong, and ironically, York was more

powerful than ever. He built up quite a war chest throughout the past 23 years and due to the FBI's interest in his movement. Many believe that this was done through illegal means. Yet the fact remains that York had enough capital at his disposal to purchase a 476-acre plot of land near Eaton, Georgia, on which the compound known as Tamaray was constructed over a period of three years. The New York Times later reported that the compound featured 40-foot pyramids, obelists, statues of gods and goddesses, as well as a giant sphinx. Yet the Times also reported that Tamaray was not York's full-time residence. Instead, York stayed at a half a million dollar mansion in Athens, Georgia, about 60 miles away from Tamaray that he purchased with so-called community funds.

After completely relocating the group in 1993, and utterly drunk on the power he wielded, York began preaching an increasingly radical form of his own personal religion, Nuwobianism. The Southern Poverty Law Center described this belief as a black supremacist idea, with worship of the Egyptians in their pyramids, a belief in UFOs, and various conspiracies related to the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers. The profile on their website included quotes from a letter pen by York himself on which has stated, The Caucasians had not been chosen to lead the world. They lacked true emotions in their creation.

We never intended them to be peaceful. They were bred to be killers, with low reproduction levels and a short lifespan. Another Nuwabian racial origin theory has Caucasians descending from Cain. Adam and Eve were sent to the Aegean islands between Asia and Europe, where they started having children, York wrote. Each couple's firstborn child was an albino, and those albinos are called Cain in the Bible, and Cain is short for Caucasian.

At some point, after moving to Georgia, York began telling his followers that he was, an alien. I am an extraterrestrial master teacher from the planet Risk, he wrote. My kind has been coming to this planet before it had life form on it. My incarnation as an Ila mutajasid or avatar was originally in the year in 1945 AD. In order to get here, I traveled by one of the smaller passenger crafts called sham out of a mother plane called Merkaba or Nabil. York also informed his adherence that the so-called Mother Plain, or Nibiru, would launch the Crystal City, sometimes called New Jerusalem, to our solar system from its position in Orion. He claimed that this would be a 40-year process, by which the 144,000 chosen few would be transported to the planet-craft Nibiru from August of 2003 to August of 2043.

The chosen few would then be groomed for 1,000 years before being returned to Earth for the final battle against the Luciferians, and thus redeeming man from the 6,000-year rulership of the devil in his seed. To York's followers, his word was prophecy. Outsiders had a much simpler view. They're a cult, said Ghazi-Wa-Kankan, a representative from the Council in American-Islamic relations. They considered their leader a prophet, which means they have deviated from the Islamic way, he said. But York had not simply deviated from pre-established Islamic teachings.

He had deviated from basic human decency, too. As far back as the group's days in Brooklyn, York had established strict sexual practices within the Nubian community and declared that he and he alone had the right to intimate relations with the group's women and girls, including the wives and daughters of his followers. Theodore Gabriel, emeritus lecturer in theology and religious studies at the University of Gloucestershire, wrote that, while extolling the virtues and importance of family life and the conjugal relationship, York denies relationships to his followers except at strictly controlled intervals. He urges his female followers to pattern themselves on the Islamic paradigms of

the wife and mother, apparently desiring the creation of stable family units. But in reality, the husbands and wives are segregated in dormitories, separated also from their children. York permits spouses to cohabit only once every three months. They were permitted to meet in the green room prior to appointment only. Having managed to coerce his followers into allowing access to their wives and children, York's proclivities became increasingly. increasingly depraved as the years went by. Many had suspected the FBI's interest in him was related to potential financial crimes, and while fraud and racketeering was indeed taking place,

York was eventually arrested for something far, far worse. In 2002, following anonymous complaints that might well have come from his followers, York was arrested and charged with more than 100 counts of sexually molesting dozens of children, some as young as four years old. According to Bill Ozynski, who wrote a 2007 book about York in the case, when he, York was finally indicted, state prosecutors literally had to cut back the number of counts listed from well beyond 1,000 to slightly more than 200,

because they feared a jury simply wouldn't believe the magnitude of York's evil. It's believed to be the nation's largest child abuse prosecution ever directed at a single person in terms of number of victims and number of alleged criminal acts. Following his arrest in 2003, York attempted to negotiate a plea bargain with the federal government. The letter to the case's presiding judge read as follows, Your Honor, with all due respect to your government, your nation, and your court, we the indigenous people of this land have her own rights, accepted sovereignty, our own governments. We are a sovereign people, Yamacy, Native American

creeks, Seminole, Washita mound builders. All I'm asking is that the court recognized that I am an indigenous person. Your court does not have jurisdiction over me. I should be transferred to the Moores Cherokee Council Court in which I will

get a trial by juries of my peers. And I cannot get a fair trial, Your Honor, if I'm being tried by the settlers or the Confederates. I have to be tried by Native Americans as a Native American and that's my inalienable rights, and it's on record. Since York's appeal was grounded in his belief that he was indigenous to North America,

the judge promptly rejected the appeal. York was then convicted of transporting minors across state lines for the purposes of molestation, as well as racketeering and financial reporting violations, then sentenced to 135 years in prison. York's followers assert a number of defenses, including that their leader, Malachi Z. York, who was charged and convicted as not the same person as the Dwight D. York, who is listed in court documents as the defendant. Others say that York was set up by a son Jacob, in coordination with al-Qaeda-linked American Moss, who were jealous of York's influence among African-American Muslims.

York himself believes that his betrayal, arrest, trial and imprisonment, along with his eventual release, were foretold in Chapter 10 of Zechariah Sitchin's book, The War of the Gods and the Men, with York claiming to be represented by the Supreme Egyptian deity, Ra. York's followers then said that since 1999, York has been the Council General of Monrovia, Liberia, under the appointment of then-president Charles Taylor. They argued that he should be given diplomatic immunity from prosecution and extradited as a persona non-grata to Liberia, but both American and Liberian officials have rejected this claim. As of 2024, Dwight York is serving his sentence at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.

He is inmate number 17911-054. and solitary confinement for 23 hours a day with a projected release date of July 12th of the year 2120. If Dr. York or Chief Black Eagle, or whatever he wants to call himself, is indeed an intergalactic educator from a distant planet, then maybe he'll survive long enough to see that release date. If not, and he proves to be a mere mortal, then he'll die where a man of his character belongs. cold, alone, and far away from the innocent. The FRIGHT. Lannin Isles, or Seven Hunters, are an isolated chain of islands situated more than 40 miles off the Scottish mainland.

These uninhabited islands, which stand proud among the unforgiving North Atlantic, are accessible only by private boat or rare tours, with their harsh weather and rugged cliffs deterring all but the heartiest of visitors. The largest of these far-flung islands is known as Eileen Moor, and is known to naturalists as being a sanctuary for seabirds such as the Atlantic Puffin, the black-legged kitty wake, and the European shag. It was also the site of one of the most perplexing and haunting mysteries of the 20th century. The Flanin Isles Lighthouse was constructed on Isley and Moore between the years of 1895 and 1890, with the purpose of guiding ships through the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic. Designed by David Allen Stevenson and standing at 75 feet tall,

The lighthouse represented a significant feat of engineering, and its construction, amidst harsh winds and unforgiving seas, could in itself be considered an immense achievement. It was first lit on December 7th of 1890, with three full-time lighthouse keepers being appointed, James Duckett, Thomas Marshall, and a man named William Ross. However, during the winter of 1899, Mr. Ross came down with a rather debilitating illness and was temporarily replaced by a man named Donald MacArthur. The Keeper's daily routine included maintaining the lighthouse, ensuring the light was operational, and logging weather conditions in addition to any notable events. They were trusted to be reliable and punctual in their routine, and for more than a year, they were. But on December 15th of the year 1900, entries in the logbook suddenly and inexplicably ceased.

Three days later, on December 18th, a steamer sailing from Philadelphia to Scotland reported that Flannin Lighthouse had gone dark. The report was not immediately acted upon due to severe weather conditions, which delayed any investigation until December 26th when a lighthouse relief vessel could finally be dispatched to the. island. Upon arrival, the crew of the relief vessel expected some kind of mechanical problem, but after making their way to the almost 100-foot-tall monolith, they found it completely abandoned. The entrance gate and the main door were closed, the beds were unmade, and the lighthouse's clock had stopped. Inside the kitchen, a meal had been laid out, but not eaten, and one set of oil skins was missing, suggesting at least one keeper had gone outside for some reason. There were no signs of struggle or violence, just an eerie silence, and the enduring question of

just what in the hell happened to our three lighthouse keepers. One of the most widely accepted explanations is that while securing equipment on the notoriously perilous west landing, the keepers were caught by a massive freak wave, which washed all three from the island in one fell swoop. Evidence which points to this include bent iron railings, a displaced rock, and scattered supplies, indicating a sudden storm of significant force struck the island, catching the keepers unprepared. Despite no such storm being recorded elsewhere, and thus casting a great deal of doubt on such a theory, weather patterns on the region can be unpredictable.

Is therefore very possible a rogue wave or freak storm hit an isolated area around the lighthouse and swept the doom lighthouse keepers from the island. Another theory suggested a violent, potentially deadly altercation between the lighthouse keepers, one that ended in a fatal accident or perhaps even murder. Donald MacArthur was known to have a volatile personality and might well have instigated some kind of physical confrontation. Additionally, the isolation of lighthouse duties can strain relationships, leading to heightened tension.

Yet the lack of any signs of a scuffle or violence in the lighthouse makes this theory less plausible unless the conflict occurred outside, whereby evidence could be washed away by the sea. The isolation and history of the Flanin Isles, once a place of pagan worship, have fueled supernatural theories. Local folklore speaks of spirits or so-called fairy storms that could have whisked the men away. However, this is more folklore than fact, but has been popularized in various cultural representations like poems and songs. The Flannin Isles do indeed have a rich tapestry of myth and legend, including tales of sea monsters and ancient gods. Yet while these stories enhance the mystery's allure, they offer no plausible explanation to those grounded in logic and reason. More improbable theories include abduction by foreign agents, or the keepers choosing to escape their secluded lives in what might be called voluntary disappearances.

While such theories are intriguing, they are largely unsupported by evidence and lean heavily into the realm of speculation. Though highly unlikely due to the logistics of suction operation on a remote island, the idea of abduction might entertain those who enjoy spy thrillers, but no geopolitical context or motive supports this theory. As for escape, have no apparent reason to abandon their posts and lives, and this comes after extensive testimony from friends and family. Another practical explanation suggests that one keeper went out to check on or secure supplies and the others followed in an attempt to warn him against it. Then after falling

into the sea somehow, the keepers attempted to rescue their drowning comrade and were taken by the seas in turn. This theory accounts for the missing oil skins, yet it doesn't and explain why all three went out in bad weather. Perhaps one keeper noticed something amiss with the external equipment, prompting him to exit the lighthouse, and given the camaraderie among lighthouse keepers, it's conceivable the others would follow to assist, only to be overwhelmed by unexpected weather. Britain's northern lighthouse board conducted an official inquiry, concluding that in all likelihood the keepers had likely swept away out to sea during a storm and drowned.

However, the lack of concrete evidence fueled a great deal of morbid speculation among the general public. Superintendent Robert Meirhead, who claimed to have known the keepers personally, visited the lighthouse in the aftermath of their disappearance. He was among the first to conclude that it was nothing but a tragic and unforeseen accident, and while many agreed, others have accused him of organizing a cover-up. And following the incident, safety measures of lighthouses were real. assessed, and this led to the introduction of better equipment, more reliable communication systems, and protocols for emergency situations that ensure that no such disappearance can

reoccur in the future. The mystery has not only inspired countless stories, poems, and films, but also led to the improvements in lighthouse safety protocols, including better weather monitoring and emergency signaling systems. Theories abound, but without definitive proof, the fate of James Duckett. Thomas Marshall and Donald MacArthur continues to be a subject of intrigue and debate. Even now, more than a hundred years later, the incident serves as a poignant reminder of the solitude and peril faced by those who keep watch over the sea, ensuring the safety of others at the cost of their own.

Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.