Dark Midwest | Volume 1 Issue 1

In 1955, the small remote town of Otter, Indiana was abandoned suddenly and for reasons unknown. Many of the former residents were known to either distantly relocate, change their names and/or develop severe psychological problems.

On Saturday, May 7, 1924, dozens of witnesses claimed a 12-foot tall “shadow man” inexplicably walked through the town square of Orion, Il.

Henry Riggins, a lifelong southern Illinois coal miner, died in 1980 at age 85. His eldest daughter discovered a cache of his secret artwork in his basement: paintings and drawings detailing a complex subterranean pantheon of entities and fantastic creatures.

Upon examination, experts concluded the work was a collaboration between two artists and was completed over decades. The other has never been identified.

The story of the Young Fighter is a cherished local legend in Hatters, Iowa. Allegedly, in the early 1920s a debt-ridden a young man was forced into an underground boxing match and left for dead beneath the Quarry Road Bridge.

On misty nights, locals claim to hear his pained groans sweeping up from below. It’s customary to leave a dollar on the bridge for the dead fighter’s debts.

In 2006, city inspectors in Link, South Dakota, discovered a locked room in a derelict public works basement.

Inside, they found six dressed human-sized figures made of cornhusk, debris and animal parts positioned around a table as if discussing the news of the day.

A 12-foot tall obelisk of unknown purpose was discovered in the Orion National Woods near Cairo, Illinois, in 1985.

Experts believe the object was placed there nearly 1,000 years ago. The obelisk is inscribed with multiple sets of unknown glyphs.

The sets of glyphs are believed to be written hundreds of years apart. The most recent set was inscribed within the last decade.

In the 1930s and 40s, a secret unnamed men’s drinking club operated throughout Kansas City and neighboring towns.

Based on the Mensur societies of Germany, men would drink beer, practice swordplay and duel.

The secret society fell into conflict with the local mafia and lost many of its leaders in a wave of murders.

Defeated, the club disbanded, though for years afterward the occasional midwestern mafioso was found dead of a sword wound, an empty beer stein beside him.

Between 1973 and 1990, six unrelated young men vanished from Harrow County, Kentucky. No significant clue was ever found.

In 1995, a never-finished housing development in the local unincorporated highlands was demolished. Each of the six missing bodies were found in chimneys—the most likely cause of death was “positional asphyxia.”

Why and how the men came to be in those chimneys has never been determined.

A series of banks were robbed throughout Southern Illinois in the summer of 2011. An exhaustive, multiyear investigation yielded few clues and no suspects.

In 2019, an anonymous tip led to the investigation of a Carbondale, Il, morgue and the discovery of a capital flight system in which cash was hidden in cadavers and channeled through the human body trade pipeline.

Ultimately, 12 people were arrested including two city morticians and a medical examiner.

In 1999, a small town in eastern Kentucky was briefly terrorized by a “de-patched” outlaw motorcycle gang member.

When he was found dead in his trailer of multiple hammer blows to the face, suspicion immediately fell on a local fixture in the community: the 65 year old iron artist known as “The Hammer Woman.”

Though there seemed to be overwhelming circumstantial evidence and she never denied the killing, local authorities declined to investigate her further. She still lives there quietly.