{"podcast":{"title":"Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories","slug":"weird-darkness-paranormal-true-crime-stories-475827","podcast_index_feed_id":475827,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/3655291/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://weirddarkness.com","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/a1570d70b941e8f0e16b68380622d72f.jpg","author":"Darren Marlar","episode_count":1000,"summary":"Award-winning podcast of true stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, true crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained -- seven days a week! Hosted by professional voice actor Darren Marlar, named one of the “Best Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-28T14:17:16.106491+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/weird-darkness-paranormal-true-crime-stories-475827"},"episode":{"title":"They Dared Him to Carve His Name Into the Black Cursed Tree | 3 Stories of Horror Fiction!","slug":"they-dared-him-to-carve-his-name-into-the-black-cursed-tree-3-stories-of-horror-fiction","published_at":"2026-06-15T00:00:03+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/weird-darkness-paranormal-true-crime-stories-475827/they-dared-him-to-carve-his-name-into-the-black-cursed-tree-3-stories-of-horror-fiction","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/weird-darkness-paranormal-true-crime-stories-475827","url":"https://weirddarkness.com/BlackTree","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72517994/wd20260614a_blacktree.mp3","summary":"Three nine-year-old boys in a Massachusetts port town go looking for the schoolyard ghost called Skeleton Jack and instead find a tree that should not exist — black and leafless, cold enough to seem to drink the life out of the air — a tree one of them is dared to carve his name into, while something he can't see breathes in the dark just behind him. EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BlackTree FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: \"The Abandoned Drive-In Theater\" — A newcomer to North Carolina, biking past the ruins of a drive-in theater that's been dead for decades, hears an engine roar and turns to see a film flickering across the filthy, torn screen — then finds every speaker smashed and every wire long since severed, with no way the movie could have been playing at all. *** \"He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral\" — Six days before Christmas, a security guard helps lower his coworker Jake into the ground after a fatal heart attack — and two mornings later, arriving alone at the snowed-in, empty worksite, he finds Jake's car already parked in the lot. *** \"The Black Tree in the Woods\" — In a Massachusetts port town haunted by the schoolyard legend of a flayed pirate ghost, three nine-year-old boys push deep into a forbidden forest and find a short, withered tree that grows no leaves and seems to drink the life out of the air — and when one of them is dared to carve his name into its strangely soft bark, something he cannot see begins breathing in his ear. CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)… 00:00:00.000 = Show Open 00:02:17.025 = The Abandoned Drive-In Theater 00:07:35.119 = He Showed Up To Work After His Funeral *** 00:17:39.759 = The Black Tree In The Woods *** 00:58:35.975 = Show Close *** = Begins immediately after inser…","meta_description":"Three nine-year-old boys in a Massachusetts port town go looking for the schoolyard ghost called Skeleton Jack and instead find a tree that should not exi…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3600,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/weird-darkness-paranormal-true-crime-stories-475827/episodes/they-dared-him-to-carve-his-name-into-the-black-cursed-tree-3-stories-of-horror-fiction/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/weird-darkness-paranormal-true-crime-stories-475827/they-dared-him-to-carve-his-name-into-the-black-cursed-tree-3-stories-of-horror-fiction.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}