History's Toughest Heroes: Margery Kempe: Ministry of Tears

Speaker 1 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Speaker 2 It's finally here! Black Friday at Ulta Beauty. Take 30% off MAC foundations and lip colors.
Save $100 on the iconic Dyson Air Wrap. And starting Tuesday, shop mascaras for $14 and lip colors for $12.

Speaker 2 Perfect for stocking up. To make it super easy, shop online and pick up in store or get same-day delivery.
Head into Ulta Beauty and shop Black Friday deals now now through November 29th. Ulta Beauty.

Speaker 2 Gifting happens here.

Speaker 4 If you love the great outdoors or are just morbidly curious about what can go wrong out there, then lace up your hiking boots and get ready because this is the show for you.

Speaker 8 Each week on National Park After Dark, my co-host and I dive into the darker side of nature. Epic survival stories, tragic history, animal encounters, and yes, even some paranormal encounters.

Speaker 9 We also share inspiring tales and our passion for protecting the wild places we all love. Take a walk on the dark side of the wilderness with us on National Park After Dark.

Speaker 1 In 1414 an English woman called Marjorie Kemp arrived at the holy city.

Speaker 11 And she sees Jerusalem, she thanks God in her heart. She is suddenly overcome with what she describes as a great sweetness.

Speaker 1 She was so moved, she almost fell off a donkey.

Speaker 1 Now some other pilgrims run over to help her.

Speaker 11 But she explains to them that actually she's not

Speaker 11 unwell. She is feeling very emotional about the fact that she's just arrived in this place where her Jesus lived and died.

Speaker 1 After months of dangerous travel, she was finally here.

Speaker 1 Kemp here all the sights.

Speaker 11 This is a kind of a bit like a kind of medieval tourist event.

Speaker 1 She prayed all day in the church of the holy sepulchre, went on a candle-lit tour of the sites of the Passion.

Speaker 1 Then, finally, she approached Mount Calvary, the site of the crucifixion, the very spot where, according to the Bible, Jesus had died for her sins.

Speaker 11 And when they came up onto the Mount of Calvary, she fell down because she could not stand or kneel, but rather writhed and wrestled with her body, spreading out her arms widely and crying with a a loud voice as though her heart should burst apart.

Speaker 1 It was as if she was seeing the crucifixion happen right in front of her.

Speaker 11 This vision happens to her with such veracity that she feels that she has no choice but to just sort of physically collapse.

Speaker 1 Now she thrashed about on the floor, wailing and shrieking.

Speaker 11 Marjorie has these most incredible, astonishing physical bouts of crying where she sometimes falls to the ground in these sort of paroxysms of agony that she feels at that particular moment, sometimes like she's actually going to die of her crying.

Speaker 1 Kim cried a lot. I mean, she cried for her sins, she cried for the sins of others, she cried for the sufferings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

Speaker 1 Church teaching said crying like this was a bit of a gift from God.

Speaker 11 But of course it causes her all sorts of problems.

Speaker 1 This kind of crying could come on at any time. It could get a bit awkward.

Speaker 1 She was called a heretic, a kind of religious outlaw and a threat to church and state. But Kemp refused to be silent.
She continued doing her thing.

Speaker 1 Even if she risked being burnt at the stake for it.

Speaker 11 And this unwavering toughness that she just exudes almost to the point that she just can't help herself.

Speaker 1 I'm Ray Winston, and for BBC Radio 4, this is history's toughest heroes. True stories of adventurers, rebels, and survivors who live life on the edge.

Speaker 1 Marjorie Kemp, Ministry of Tears.

Speaker 12 Marjorie Kemp lived at the end of the 14th century and in the 15th century. She was an extraordinary woman.

Speaker 1 Robert Gluke is a writer and artist based in San Francisco. In her old age, Marjorie Kemp wrote a book.
She was illiterate herself, so she dictated it to a priest.

Speaker 1 In it, she writes about her travels, her marriage, and even her conversations with Jesus. She describes the highs and the lows, the melody of heaven, and the voice of the devil.

Speaker 1 She's also pretty honest about her lust.

Speaker 12 When I encountered her in 1965, she was not known, and there was a little scrap of her writing in this anthology. And even then,

Speaker 12 I knew that she was for me and that we had some kind of future together.

Speaker 1 Robert wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Marjorie Kemp, based on Marjorie's writing.

Speaker 12 Marjorie really explodes into modernity. Part of her forward momentum is that she just can't be kept in a medieval context.
She kind of erupts into modern times.

Speaker 1 Kemp was born in about 1373 in Bishops Lynn, now Kingslyn in Norfolk. England was still recovering from the Black Death.
Her family were prosperous traders and at 20 she married John Kemp.

Speaker 1 Marjorie Kemp starts her book with the birth of her first child.

Speaker 11 Her body was clearly struggling with the end of the pregnancy and this labour, and no doubt she was in incredible pain and also probably incredibly frightened.

Speaker 11 Medieval childbirth was an extremely dangerous business.

Speaker 1 Laura Callis is Associate Professor of English Literature at Swansea University.

Speaker 11 It was such a common thing for women to unfortunately die in childbirth that midwives were actually accorded the power to baptize babies and to even read the last rites.

Speaker 1 A lot of women died in childbirth or just after.

Speaker 11 Men's warriorhood and knightly conduct and sort of bravery in medieval romance texts and so on is taken as a given. But the peril of childbirth and the toughness that women had to draw upon is

Speaker 11 very

Speaker 11 private, almost hidden.

Speaker 11 labour, quite literally, that these women are doing is sort of silence.

Speaker 1 Now, after a rough pregnancy and labor, Kemp was pretty sure she was about to die.

Speaker 11 In this terrible, painful, despairing state, she calls for her confessor. He arrives to give her the last rites.
But unfortunately, it goes a little bit wrong.

Speaker 1 She was tormented by a sin she had never confessed to. Now, that sin would send her straight to hell.

Speaker 11 The speculation is that it's some sort of sexual sin, you know, some sort of fornication.

Speaker 1 She struggled to admit, finally, what she had done.

Speaker 11 But her confessor is too impatient with her. He doesn't let her get her words out properly and he tries to hurry her up.

Speaker 1 She was terrified, ashamed and in so much pain. Now she wasn't given the chance to speak.

Speaker 11 This situation of intense pain and fear and inability to confess at the most critical moment of her life sends her out of her mind.

Speaker 1 She was sent into a living nightmare. She wrote about it in a book.

Speaker 11 She was bewilderingly vexed and troubled by spirits for half a year, eight weeks, and odd days.

Speaker 11 And at this time, she saw, so she thought, devils opening their mouths all inflamed with burning flames of fire, as though they might have swallowed her in, sometimes pawing at her, sometimes threatening her, sometimes pulling her and dragging her around both night and day.

Speaker 1 She bit down on her own hand so hard, she was scarred for life.

Speaker 11 And she also violently tore her skin on her body over her heart with her fingernails, for she had no other instruments, and she would have done something worse, but that she was bound and forcibly restrained both day and night so that she could not have her way.

Speaker 1 For months she raged and struggled while she was tied to her bed. Her family despaired.

Speaker 1 Then she had a visitor.

Speaker 12 Marjorie has her first relationship, her first visit from Jesus.

Speaker 1 He appeared as a man, but...

Speaker 11 The most handsome, the most beautiful, and the most affable that could ever be seen with human eye. Clad in a purple silk mantle, sitting upon her bedside.

Speaker 11 She is absolutely healed and transformed.

Speaker 1 Marjorie Kemp recovered.

Speaker 1 After her visit from Jesus, she decided to dedicate herself to God.

Speaker 1 But for the next few years at least, she was still a woman of the world.

Speaker 11 You know, she's quite trendy in her young adult life.

Speaker 11 She likes beautiful clothes and she clearly is a a bit of a girl about town for quiet quite some years, and and really rather fancies herself as being a bit of a, you know, a style icon.

Speaker 1 Eventually, she stopped craving nice things.

Speaker 1 She went to confession two or three times a day, fasted and prayed for hours on end. It seemed to be going well, even if friends were a bit put off by it all.

Speaker 1 But Kemp was still tormented by lust.

Speaker 1 God, she reckoned, had abandoned her to temptation of the devil. Then, as she sat in church, she heard Jesus speak to her.

Speaker 1 God hadn't left her. In fact, Jesus told her.

Speaker 11 She will receive all the joys of heaven, and therefore she should stop eating meat. She's also told, at that point by God, that she should now start to anticipate some trouble.

Speaker 1 He warned her. She'd be under attack.
The path ahead was was going to be rough.

Speaker 11 She's realizing that she's going to be humiliated and punished in the world. And, you know, this is where some of this toughness really does begin.

Speaker 13 When you need a break, skip the scrolling. Visit myprize.us.
The games are super exciting and you can actually win. Myprize.us is the most fun, free-to-play social casino around.

Speaker 13 Everyone deserves to win big. All the slots and table games you love with incredible bonuses.
Sign up today for an incredible welcome package.

Speaker 14 Myprize.us is a free-to-play social casino. Users must be 18 or older to play.
Void work prohibited by law. Visit myprize.us for more details.

Speaker 13 When you need a break, make it memorable. Visit myprize.us.
Real prizes, real winners, real easy.

Speaker 4 If you love the great outdoors or are just morbidly curious about what can go wrong out there, then lace up your hiking boots and get ready because this is the show for you.

Speaker 8 Each week on National Park After Dark, my co-host and I dive into the darker side of nature. Epic survival stories, tragic history, animal encounters, and yes, even some paranormal encounters.

Speaker 9 We also share inspiring tales and our passion for protecting the wild places we all love. Take a walk on the dark side of the wilderness with us on National Park After Dark.

Speaker 16 The wait is over. The NYX Black Friday sale is on now at knix.com.
Shop early and save up to 60% off site-wide.

Speaker 16 Plus, all kinds of limited-time daily deals from the number one leak-proof brand in North America.

Speaker 16 Don't miss your chance to save big on innovative intimates like leak proof underwear, wireless bras, shapewear, and more. Everything is on sale.

Speaker 16 Millions have made the switch to NYX's revolutionary period underwear and there's never been a better time for you to try them too.

Speaker 16 During the Black Friday sale, save up to 60% on super comfy, machine-washable, and stylish leak proof undies. Plus, shop the best deals of the year on NYX's best-selling assortment of wireless bras.

Speaker 16 Don't miss this chance to stock up on your NYX favorites or try something new during the NYX Black Friday event. That's KNIX.com.
The sale ends December 2nd and sizes will sell out. Go to NYX.com.

Speaker 16 That's KNIX.com.

Speaker 1 She spent days in church and hours meditating. She had visions.
and imagined herself actually taking part in the gospels.

Speaker 1 Helping Mary change baby Jesus, I mean, doing odd jobs for her, even comforting her after the crucifixion. But in her marriage, something felt wrong.

Speaker 11 She becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with her husband.

Speaker 1 Kent was sure she and John had upset God by enjoying themselves too much in bed.

Speaker 12 She has lots of visions that are sexual, but she also describes herself.

Speaker 12 She's married, but that doesn't keep her from describing lustful feelings that she's acting on.

Speaker 1 She wished she was still a virgin and went right off sex with John.

Speaker 11 She describes it as being like the equivalent of eating the muck, as she puts it, or the mud from the bottom of the river. It absolutely repulses her.

Speaker 1 She wanted to give up sex completely, but this meant her husband, John, had to give it up too. And he refused.
refused.

Speaker 11 This gives Marjorie great sadness and distress. From a modern perspective, with John refusing to allow her to say no, what we see here is marital rape.

Speaker 11 And this is something that she

Speaker 11 suffers with for many, many years.

Speaker 1 Kim endured pregnancy and childbirth 14 times. When she heard Jesus speak to her, he tried to reassure her.
He said he loved wives just as much as virgins, but she still wanted to be celibate.

Speaker 1 Finally, at about 40, John agreed to take the vow of chastity.

Speaker 11 It is a bit like a kind of a divorce in the Middle Ages in the sense that a solemn vow had to be made in front of a bishop, and it was actually enforceable by the church.

Speaker 1 Sometimes John came with her on these pilgrimages, but if she was attracting too too much attention, he'd walk off, pretending he didn't know her. Because wherever she went, Kemp spoke her mind.

Speaker 11 And she is not afraid to tell people off if she thinks that they are being ungodly.

Speaker 1 She scolded people for swearing, corruption and immorality. And she didn't care who they were.

Speaker 11 She does have the courage to just tell people what she thinks.

Speaker 1 Crowds gathered around her. Some were curious, others hostile.
Some accused her of being a lollard. Lollards were heretics.
They wanted Bibles to be in English, not Latin.

Speaker 1 They didn't think people needed to confess to priests. They thought anyone could speak to God.

Speaker 1 Some in the crowd shouted that Kemp should be burnt.

Speaker 1 They were even ready to build the fire.

Speaker 1 Kemp held her ground.

Speaker 11 She goes to visit various sort of pilgrimage locations. She goes to visit the holy blood of Hales.
She goes to Norwich in 1413 to meet with the famous anchoress Julian of Norwich.

Speaker 1 Julian was another holy woman, a mystic. Locked up in a tiny cell attached to a church, she encouraged Marjorie to believe in herself.

Speaker 1 Then Jesus told Marjorie to go on a pilgrimage. all the way to Jerusalem.

Speaker 11 She embarks on this very, very difficult journey. and so she ultimately is going to Palestine, she's going to the Holy Land.

Speaker 1 The journey was long and dangerous, over 2,000 miles. Jesus told her she should wear only white, a sign of her chastity.

Speaker 1 Kim, set out and face one challenge after another.

Speaker 11 Most of them, interestingly enough, are not because of the dangers of sea travel, which of course in and of themselves were quite significant

Speaker 11 but it's more the danger of the people that she's traveling with because she irritates people constantly.

Speaker 1 Pilgrims like Kemp travel in groups safety in numbers. Thieves, bandits, bad weather or sickness could strike at any time but Kemp would not stop talking about God.

Speaker 11 I think they think she's a party pooper. They just, they can't tolerate this woman that refuses to eat meat, refuses to sort of make merry with them at mealtimes.

Speaker 1 In the end, they made her eat alone.

Speaker 11 The people get so irritated with her that they actually cut off her gown up to the knee, ostensibly, I suppose, to humiliate her. And they just get so irritated with her that they abandon her.

Speaker 1 Alone in a strange country,

Speaker 1 she prayed for help.

Speaker 11 She is extremely afraid because she feels like she is susceptible to rape and even to murder.

Speaker 1 A man from Devonshire said he'd be her guide. Together they traveled from Constance in southern Germany to Bologna.

Speaker 1 In Venice she fell sick for several weeks. Then she set sail for Jerusalem.
After she nearly fell off a donkey at the sight of the city, she had a vision of the crucifixion.

Speaker 1 Now she spent time exploring the sites, crying and praying.

Speaker 1 She went on to Rome, then finally back to England with a souvenir. A walking stick she believed was made from the staff of Moses.

Speaker 1 But there was trouble back home.

Speaker 1 The Lollards had rebelled. They were being hunted, hanged and burnt at the stake.

Speaker 1 Kemp rolled up powerful men. As well as maybe being a heretic, she was a bad influence.
I mean, what if their wives behaved like her? Leaving home to travel around the place, talking about God.

Speaker 11 This really flew in the face of Orthodox Church teachings. St.
Paul in the Bible states that a woman should remain silent and not speak.

Speaker 11 Ever since that, really, the church had stated categorically that women were not allowed to preach.

Speaker 1 Kemp went to Leicester where seeing the crucifix set her off crying. She was so loud about it, the mayor of the town had her arrested.

Speaker 11 On suspicion of heresy, specifically the heresy of being a lollard.

Speaker 1 The steward of Leicester questioned her.

Speaker 11 During this quite troubling episode, the steward of Leicester actually threatens to rape her in this side room, just seemingly to sort of prove that paradoxically she's not a virgin.

Speaker 1 The steward only stopped when she told him her answers came came direct from the Holy Ghost.

Speaker 12 She was accused of being a whore

Speaker 12 because accusations,

Speaker 12 such accusations go quickly into the sexual realm.

Speaker 1 Now the mayor sent Kemp to be examined by the Abbot of Leicester and his clerics. They questioned her hard about her faith, watching.
for any signs of heresy. But they couldn't afford her answers.

Speaker 1 The mayor said she was lying kemp turned around and told him he wasn't fit for his job and eventually she was allowed to leave she went to york while she was at the church there a priest grabbed her by the collar and called her a wolf

Speaker 11 by this time word has got around about marjorie kemp's reputation as being this sort of

Speaker 11 difficult

Speaker 11 perplexing woman.

Speaker 1 A fit of crying in York Minster meant another arrest. Priests, monks and theologians lined up.

Speaker 11 Who all demand to know why she's there, whether she's got permission to be there from her husband.

Speaker 1 She said she had.

Speaker 11 And they give her an extensive test on the articles of the faith.

Speaker 1 These guys decided she should be judged by none other than the Archbishop of York, one of the most powerful men in England.

Speaker 11 And people are calling for her to be burned for heresy, specifically, calling her a Lollard.

Speaker 1 The leader of the Lollard rebellion, he was still on the run.

Speaker 1 The members of the Archbishop's household clustered around her, swearing horrible oaths. They told her she'd be burnt.
She told them their swearing meant they'd be burnt too, eternally and in hell.

Speaker 11 The Archbishop comes into the chapel with all of his clerics and he speaks to her very brusquely and it's there where she really does

Speaker 11 seem to grasp the gravity of the situation because it's a very frightening encounter with him.

Speaker 1 He demanded to know why she went about in white. Was she saying she was a virgin?

Speaker 11 And Marjorie kneels down in front of him and says, No, sir, I am no virgin, I'm a wife.

Speaker 11 So the Archbishop then orders his men to fetch a pair of shackles and tells them to fetter her because she is a faithless heretic.

Speaker 1 Even in chains, Kemp spoke up for herself.

Speaker 11 And she says, I am no heretic and you shall not prove me one.

Speaker 1 The Archbishop left her alone for a while.

Speaker 11 Marjorie is bound by her hands and her feet, so she cannot escape. She cannot go anywhere.
She is literally under their total power.

Speaker 1 Kemp prayed for help.

Speaker 11 And her body trembled and shook so amazingly that she was forced to put her hands under her clothes so that it couldn't be seen.

Speaker 1 The archbishop returned with a group of clerics.

Speaker 11 She is, on one hand, forcing herself to maintain this bravadery and this toughness and this ability to sort of speak about God and to,

Speaker 11 you know, refuse to admit to anything that she hasn't done. But on the other hand, she cannot get away from the fact that she knows that this could potentially be a life or death moment for her.

Speaker 1 Kemp began to weep, Marjorie style.

Speaker 11 The Archbishop and all his clerics are incredibly astonished, really, at the extent of her crying, and they've clearly never really seen anything quite like it.

Speaker 11 And he asks her, why are you weeping like this woman?

Speaker 1 She answered boldly.

Speaker 11 And she says, sir, someday you shall wish that you had wept as bitterly as I have.

Speaker 1 The Archbishop said he'd been told she was a wicked woman. Kemp told him she'd been told he was a wicked man.

Speaker 1 And if he was, he'd better change his ways.

Speaker 1 The Archbishop was rattled. Here he was, one of the most powerful men in the country, getting back chat.
from a Norfolk housewife.

Speaker 11 And then he says, you will swear that you shall neither teach nor censure people in my diocese. And she says, no, I shall not swear this, for wherever I go, I shall speak of God.

Speaker 1 One of the clerics challenged Kem about St. Paul's order that women shouldn't preach.

Speaker 11 And she answers this by saying, I don't preach, sir. I enter no pulpit.
I use only discussion and good words. And I'll do so as long as I live.

Speaker 1 They were threatening to burn her alive, but she still refused to give an inch.

Speaker 11 So, you know, Marjorie talks herself out of the situation.

Speaker 1 This wasn't her last brush with the authorities. Soon, she was arrested, again, and held back in front of the Archbishop of York.

Speaker 11 And he says, I believe there was never a woman in England who was treated as she is and has been.

Speaker 11 And so she's finally issued with a letter from him, which attests to her holiness, in fact, and her innocence, and it enables her to escape subsequent arrests.

Speaker 12 People need to speak truth to power and that's what she did and she was afraid. It wasn't that she wasn't afraid but she found a way to say what she needed to say to the people in charge.

Speaker 1 In Robert Kluke's novel Marjorie Kemp's love for Jesus is interwoven with his own love affair with a man known as El.

Speaker 12 And so it was

Speaker 12 in one part it was a way for me to express this

Speaker 12 my own middle-aged breakdown and this incredibly this obsession that took hold of me.

Speaker 1 At the height of the AIDS crisis Kemp's courage and resilience struck Robert.

Speaker 12 Nobody really wanted Marjorie around and nobody wanted to hear her.

Speaker 12 And certainly in my era, people were famously silent about HIV. President Reagan, most famously, just wouldn't even say the name.

Speaker 12 There's

Speaker 12 an epidemic, a pandemic in the country killing thousands and thousands of people, and the president of the country can't say it.

Speaker 1 Fear would not stop Kim, not ever. She'd heard Jesus speak.
And she was going to share that, no matter what.

Speaker 12 Well, I would say, with Marjorie, what's the good of being around if you can't cause a little trouble? So maybe in that regard, Marjorie and I are not so different.

Speaker 1 Kemp kept on.

Speaker 1 People asked her advice and asked her to pray for them. And some people loved her.

Speaker 1 Some people couldn't stand her. Then she dictated her book.

Speaker 11 Around 1438, there is a record of Marjorie Kemp having having been entered into the Holy Trinity Guild at Kingslyn.

Speaker 1 Being accepted by this religious guild of merchants was a big deal, but then Marjorie Kemp disappeared.

Speaker 11 We don't know anything about her death. We don't know where she's buried, but she sort of dissolves into the ether

Speaker 11 when she finishes her book with this final prayer. She lists all the different parts of the world and the universe and prays for everybody and everything.

Speaker 11 at the end of her final prayers to the world, her book finishes and Marjorie kind of disappears.

Speaker 1 Her book was lost for centuries until 1934.

Speaker 1 A couple of guests at a posh country house were playing ping pong.

Speaker 1 Someone trod on their ball and as they rummaged through some old cupboards for a new one, they found a pile of dusty old leather bound books.

Speaker 1 One of them was the only surviving copy of the book of Marjorie Kemp.

Speaker 11 And so the publicity surrounding Marjorie Kemp's book in the 1930s positions her as a sort of English answer to Joan.

Speaker 11 Joan of Arc, heroic, if you like, in her own way, because of the great resistance that Marjorie faces throughout her life and her own determination to progress her own sort of idiosyncratic path.

Speaker 12 It really was her passion that was so powerful in her book, so powerfully described. In a way, she taught me how to cry,

Speaker 12 being quite an expert at it herself.

Speaker 11 People seem to be quite captivated by Marjorie's character as a woman that will not be silenced, even though the Bible and the church tell her to be quiet.

Speaker 1 Next time, on history's toughest heroes, the mysterious Lakota warrior vows to protect his people at any cost.

Speaker 12 He was mysterious because the skin was lighter and the way his face was painted. Tashunka Wicko, his horse is wild.

Speaker 1 The ballad of Crazy Horse.

Speaker 17 I'm David Runciman and from BBC Radio 4, this is post-war.

Speaker 1 From the cradle to the grave, they said.

Speaker 17 80 years on, we're telling the story of the 1945 election and the creation of post-war Britain.

Speaker 14 There must be a revolution in our way of living.

Speaker 17 This is the Britain that many of us grew up in, and which still shapes an idea of who we think we are.

Speaker 12 Even Winston Churchill's throne.

Speaker 11 All right, he may have won the war, but he's going to win the peace.

Speaker 17 Post-war with me, David Runceman. Listen on BBC Sounds.

Speaker 14 Can we have the prison we desire?

Speaker 15 Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles: designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life.

Speaker 15 But for millions of businesses, Shopify is the ultimate partner. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US.

Speaker 15 From household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started. Build a stunning online store with Shopify's ready-to-use templates.

Speaker 15 Boost content with AI-powered product descriptions, page headlines, and enhance photography. Marketing is easy with built-in tools for email and social media campaigns.

Speaker 15 Plus, Shopify simplifies everything from inventory to shipping and returns. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify.
Turn your big business idea into with Shopify on your side.

Speaker 15 Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash try. Go to shopify.com/slash try.
Shopify.com/slash try.

Speaker 4 If you love the great outdoors or are just morbidly curious about what can go wrong out there, then lace up your hiking boots and get ready because this is the show for you.

Speaker 8 Each week on National Park After Dark, my co-host and I dive into the darker side of nature. Epic survival stories, tragic history, animal encounters, and yes, even some paranormal encounters.

Speaker 9 We also share inspiring tales and our passion for protecting the wild places we all love. Take a walk on the dark side of the wilderness with us on National Park After Dark.