You ever get that feeling like you’re being watched when you’re out in the woods? Turns out, some people know they were — and what they saw was anything but normal.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ParanormalWildernessREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/zyutdd7jFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: There are numerous bizarre and creepy tales of people who have ventured into the woods to find not only ...
You ever get that feeling like you’re being watched when you’re out in the woods? Turns out, some people know they were — and what they saw was anything but normal.
EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/ParanormalWilderness
READ or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/zyutdd7j
FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: There are numerous bizarre and creepy tales of people who have ventured into the woods to find not only the natural world, but perhaps the supernatural as well. (Weirdness In The Wilderness) *** Is it true that the Pentagon has been investigating bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, and other strangeness at the Skinwalker Ranch? (UFOs, The Paranormal, and the Pentagon) *** Dino Bravo is a name that only a die-hard wrestling fan would know, as he never achieved stardom. So when Bravo was murdered, it did not receive much publicity. Which might be part of the reason his murder has never been solved. (The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo) *** Locking the doors in your home is usually a good idea – unless it’s an invisible entity locking you out of the house! Weirdo family member Brenda McDonald talks about the strange experiences she and her family dealt with when moving into a new home. (The Move)
CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…
00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding
00:00:52.894 = Show Open
00:02:33.875 = Weirdness In The Wilderness
00:25:28.664 = UFOs, The Paranormal, And The Pentagon ***
00:37:11.014 = The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo
00:45:20.077 = The Move ***
00:47:58.646 = Show Close
*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad break
LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS:
Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps
*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*
SOURCES and RESOURCES:
“Weirdness In The Wilderness” by Brent Swancer: http://bit.ly/310woY9
“UFOs, The Paranormal, and the Pentagon” by Alejandro Rojas: http://bit.ly/2KtWpsK (more episodes with stories of the Skinwalker Ranch: http://weirddarkness.com/?s=skinwalker+ranch)
“The Mysterious Death of Pro Wrestler Dino Bravo” by Josh Raibick :http://bit.ly/2WqJoaZ
“The Move” by Weirdo family member, Brenda McDonald
(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.
Originally aired: January, 2021
Weird Darkness runs from shapeshifters in the American backcountry to a Pentagon program built around a Utah ranch, then to the unsolved execution of a professional wrestler and a spirit that locked a family out of its own home.It opens in the wilderness, where a wildland firefighter working as an assistant superintendent in Idaho's Hell's Canyon in 2004 met a bobcat that stared him down, screamed, and climbed a tree, then found a boarded-and-chained cabin on federal land before a barefoot Native American woman in a tattered nightgown appeared on the same spot, screamed with the identical cry, and scaled the trunk faster than a person should; a local named the thing a pumawha, a skin changer. A Montana park ranger described a similar abandoned cabin beside a shed whose reinforced steel door had been forced open from the inside, a dazed man who fled into the trees twice, and a full-grown bear that bolted from the house moments after the man vanished. On Mount Sterling in North Carolina, a climber six miles from the nearest road watched a figure with no headlamp arrive at his camp under a full moon and sit motionless facing the tents from roughly 10:30 at night until 3:30 in the morning. Reddit user tytrim89 recounted an abandoned Army training town in North Carolina where two people heard girls laughing in the woods and came back to find the locked jeep's dome light on and a door cracked, followed by a thud that shook the century-old main house. A former summer-camp counselor posting as fleetw16 and a friend followed the sound of running water that grew louder and softer with no creek anywhere on the map, drawn on by a presence that turned sinister the instant they chose to turn back. The segment ends at Yellowstone's Lamar Valley, where a ranger eleven miles from the nearest road found a doe's head severed cleanly and set in the middle of the trail, no blood, no scavenging, the eyes and tongue intact and the body gone.From there the episode turns to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, the $22 million Pentagon UFO effort that Luis Elizondo helped expose in the New York Times in December 2017, and to the fuller account that its original name was the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program and its real focus was Skinwalker Ranch in Utah's Uintah Basin. Robert Bigelow bought that ranch in 1996 after founding the National Institute for Discovery Science in 1995, and what happened there fills the 2005 book Hunt for the Skinwalker by journalist George Knapp and biochemist Colm Kelleher. The family who sold it, pseudonymed the Gormans, reported a wolf-like creature that shrugged off point-blank gunshots and orbs of light that lured their dogs into the trees for good. Funding ran through Senator Harry Reid and the Defense Intelligence Agency until fundamentalist Christians inside the intelligence community, convinced the phenomena were demonic, lobbied the program shut; retired Army intelligence colonel John Alexander called what they studied precognitive sentient phenomena. Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell's documentary and the History Channel series Unidentified, premiering May 31, carried the material to a wider audience.Next comes the killing of Dino Bravo, born Adolfo Bresciano, a Montreal wrestling star who held a WWWF tag title, benched a claimed 655 pounds as a heel at the 1988 Royal Rumble, and was let go by the company in 1992. Rather than relocate his family to join WCW, he moved into Canada's booming illegal cigarette trade and built a local monopoly, then partnered with a cocaine dealer whose $400,000 shipment was seized by police after sitting three days in a warehouse. A week later, on March 10, 1993, his wife came home to find him shot seven times in the head and ten times in the torso, seated in a chair with the television remote still in his hand and no sign of forced entry. Investigators recovered .380 and .22 caliber rounds and suspect a silencer, since no neighbor reported seventeen gunshots; the execution bore the marks of a Canadian mob hit, and at 44 Bravo left a wife and young daughter behind. The case remains unsolved.The episode closes with Brenda McDonald, who rented a suburban rambler while home on mid-tour leave and watched the back sliding door lock her family out again and again on moving day, its latch not spring-loaded, while her grandson's bedroom door kept shutting and locking until she removed the knob. Home later from deployment, she heard loud snoring beside her on the couch and then in her bed, and during a backyard barbecue a dark shape shot down the hall as a metal candle holder and several pairs of socks flew off a ledge and struck the far wall. A psychic medium told her a frustrated male spirit who wanted a family had followed her daughter home, then coaxed it toward the light, though McDonald came to believe that wherever her daughter goes, spirits follow.
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