What if your computer started receiving messages from someone living 400 years in the past? And what happens when a brutal family murder gets blamed on witchcraft and a rare blue moon?

This week on Para(normal), Nicolina and Marie investigate two bizarre cases where the supernatural explanation might be just as fascinating as the truth.

In 1984, Ken Webster was living in an old cottage in Dodleston, England, when strange messages began appearing on his BBC Micro computer. The person writing them called himself Lukas and claimed to be living in the same location, in the 16th century.

What followed was an alleged correspondence spanning hundreds of years, eventually documented in Webster’s book The Vertical Plane. Were the Dodleston Messages an elaborate hoax, a paranormal encounter, a time slip or evidence that different moments in time can somehow overlap?

Then we head to Pensacola, Florida, where Voncile “Bonnie” Smith and her sons John and Richard Smith were found murdered inside their home in 2015.

The case quickly became known as the Blue Moon Murders after investigators publicly discussed possible ritualistic elements, witchcraft and the rare blue moon occurring around the discovery of the bodies.

But prosecutors eventually presented a much less supernatural motive. So was there really something ritualistic happening beneath the blue moon, or did a sensational paranormal theory nearly overshadow a very human crime?

Sources & Further Reading

📖 The Vertical Plane by Ken Webster — Google Books

👻 The Dodleston Messages Research Archive

📚 The Vertical Plane: The Mystery of the Dodleston Messages — Open Library

🌕 Blue Moon Murders — The Minds of Madness

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