10.28.19. The Man in Black

This week on The Micah Hanks Program, as Halloween is just around the corner, we bring in the season with tales of haunted houses, mysterious monstrous eggs found deep in the ocean, and a whistleblower’s story of searching for extraterrestrials.

Then for our “Unidentified October” segment, we look at eerie stories of “ghost lights”, and how geophysics might hold the key to understanding strange lights seen in the night in various places around the world for centuries. James Waldo, a professional geologist with the Army Corps of Engineers, has seen them on many occasions in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, and gives us a few ideas on what their causes might be.

Then in the conclusion to our Halloween series for 2019, we look to one of the most frightening and ubiquitous terrors of all time: the “Man in Black.” Since ancient times, our fear of darkness has led us to view mysterious, black-clad strangers as omens or harbingers of misfortune. This universal theme of a mysterious evil force embodied in an odd, and at times a mischievous stranger, has become a staple of the horror novels written by “The Master Storyteller” Stephen King over the years. What are the origins of this ultimate evil, and why does it so often take the form of a mysterious “Man in Black,” whether in fiction, folk traditions from around the world, or even modern literature pertaining to UFO encounters?

Below are links to stories featured in this week’s episode: