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Lights Out With Sylvia Shults

Explorations of the paranormal with your paranormal investigator Sylvia Shults.

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Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/02/17

Customers at the Sweet Fish Cafe in Khanom, Thailand, walk to their tables through ankle-deep water that covers the entire floor and contains dozens of koi fish. Before entering the cafe, people must remove their shoes and disinfect their feet. They are not allowed to touch the fish. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Level … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/02/10

Some new parents in Japan sent bags of rice that weighed the same as their babies to relatives who were unable to visit during the COVID lockdown. The bag of rice featured a picture of the baby on the front so that family members could feel like they were really holding the newborn. (From Ripley’s … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/02/03

We’ve all heard the stories about octopi slithering out of their tanks and escaping, or playing tricks on their keepers. There is a story in a treatise called The Nature of Animals, written by the Roman author Claudius Aelianus (175-235 AD). He claims that a giant octopus would sneak into a town through the sewers … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/01/27

Africa’s Lake Malawi is popularly known as Calendar Lake. It is 365 miles long, 52 miles wide, and fed by 12 main rivers. (From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Level Up)

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/01/20

Bongo Marie, an African gray parrot, was always picking on another parrot named Paco. One night, parrot behavior expert Sally Blanchard was cooking dinner at her home in Loveland, Colorado, where Bongo Marie and Paco lived with her. Pulling a chicken out of the oven, Blanchard set the steaming bird on the kitchen counter. “Oh … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/01/13

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. If you encounter a bag of rubber bands in a friend’s fridge, they’re not storing them as a tasty snack. Rubber bands actually last longer and get stretchier at cooler temperatures. While most materials expand when heated and contract when cooled, the polymer structure of rubber actually produces the opposite effect. … Continue reading Today I Learned …

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/01/06

The planet Venus rotates so slowly that if you were to walk across its surface while watching the sunset, it would never end. (It’s not suggested that you actually do this, though, as the average temperature on Venus is 864 degrees Fahrenheit.) (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Beyond the Bizarre)

Lights Out: St. Albans

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2025/01/04

The Roman town of Verulamium was one of three British towns laid waste by the vengeance of Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe. Much later, the town of St. Albans, outside London, still remembers its ancient history. Ghosts prowl the streets of St. Albans, spirits that have made the place their home over the centuries. … Continue reading Lights Out: St. Albans

Today I Learned …

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/30

Greg Novak from Gilman, MN, used farm equipment to build a 50-foot-high snowman. It took him hundreds of hours to construct the snowman, who had plywood eyes, a barrel for a nose, garbage can lids for buttons, an 80-foot-long scarf, and carried a 35-foot-high broom.

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Twelve: The...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/24

We are going to end things with a bang, and with a ridiculously fun episode of Lights Out! I am delighted to bring you this super-cool episode, recorded in June 2017 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I’ll be joined by the ever-fabulous Janice Williams, tour guide for Dead of Night Tours in Plymouth. She’ll tell us the … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Twelve: The Wreck of the General Arnold

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Eleven: Today...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/23

The Japan outlet of Domino’s Pizza had a novel way of delivering pizzas for a hot minute. In 2016, Domino’s Japan thought it had come up with a clever way to promote its new live delivery GPS system, take on raging blizzards in Hokkaido, and add a bit of festive cheer all at once: delivery reindeer. According to … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Eleven: Today I Learned …

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Ten: The...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/22

(This story comes from Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays, available at www.bookshop.org and at Amazon.) The Wild West held many secrets in its wide-open spaces. A thriving community could become a shivering ghost town in the space of just a few years, if the mine failed or the promised railroad didn’t … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Ten: The Phantom Saloon

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Nine: More...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/21

I had a fabulous time chatting with Jon Mallard, host of the Odd to Newfoundland podcast. Listen in as I spin some spooky tales of Christmas hauntings. https://podfollow.com/oddtonewfoundland/view?fbclid=IwAR0_FlxyNn0BRuyKLYV16pIAr713xclaqyPJPaWkYl6bFDklXajyTgp2xT8#_=_ Drop in on www.weirddarkness.com, too. You’re sure to find even more exciting ghost stories over there.

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Eight:...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/20

(This story comes from Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays, available at www.bookshop.org and on Amazon.) The small town of Beechy, Saskatchewan, didn’t see much excitement during the year. But the evening of December 10, 1932, was a special occasion. That night, people were braving the wintry weather and flocking to the … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Eight: Professor Gladstone and the Murderer

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Seven: The...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/19

(This story comes from Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays, available at www.bookshop.org and on Amazon.) Chicago and her suburbs are justly famous for the phantom hitchhikers that roam the streets. Hovering somewhere between urban legend and outright ghost story, these apparitions rack up the paranormal equivalent of frequent flyer miles with … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Seven: The Kennedy Road Phantom

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Six: The...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/18

A cake on Christmas Day. What a beautiful, festive way to start the holiday. Marie Lawson got up early that day to make her family-famous raisin cake. The seventeen-year-old Marie might have hummed a carol to herself as she mixed butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and of course, the raisins. She filled two pans with the … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Six: The Lawson Family Massacre

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Five: Lights Out

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/17

Welcome to our annual roundup of Lights Out Extra Christmas episodes! Just follow the links. They’ll take you to the YouTube version of the shows. Enjoy! The tragic disappearance of the Sodder children, on Christmas Eve 1945, began in flames and ended in enduring mystery. How could five children simply vanish from their bedrooms without … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Five: Lights Out

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Four: Today I...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/16

Communities in New England and along Canada’s East Coast build huge Christmas trees using carefully stacked lobster pots. The finished towers are then decorated with colorful buoys instead of Christmas lights. (from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not: Out of the Box) What do you suppose is under the Christmas tree over at Weird Darkness? Go … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Four: Today I Learned…

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Three:...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/15

The karaconcolos is a tall, hairy, ape-like figure that stalks Bulgaria, Turkey, and Serbia. In Turkey, it appears in the “first ten days of Zemheri, the dreadful cold.” In other words, the bitter heart of winter, from December 22 to January 2. In Turkish folklore, the karaconcolos imitates the voices of loved ones to lure … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Three: Karaconcolos, The Turkish Christmas Sasquatch

The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Two: The...

Lights Out With Sylvia Shults ·

2024/12/14

Welcome to Day 2 of The Nightmares of Christmas! Regular readers will remember that I’m not only a geek for the mysterious and macabre and ghostly, but also for history. The tradition of hanging stockings next to the chimney for Santa to fill with treats has a long and detailed history. The idea came from … Continue reading The Twelve Nightmares of Christmas, Day Two: The Stockings Were Hung By The Chimney With Care

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