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THE DEVIL’S LEDGER
Week of August 24, 2026
It is still freakin’ August.
This week on The Devil’s Ledger, we surrender to the heat and turn our attention toward masked lunatics, black-eyed children, Victorian blackmail, spectacular fraud, and another trip into a supernatural dimension that desperately needs better lighting.
We begin with The Creepiest Thing I Heard This Week: The Chucky Mask Spree. Philadelphia police say a masked man targeted at least half a dozen people during a bizarre early-morning spree, including a 40-year-old jogger whom he allegedly chased after asking whether she was ready to die. Surveillance cameras captured the suspect wearing a Chucky-style doll mask—and investigators noticed that beneath it he appeared to be wearing another black face covering.
Fictional monsters are considerably less entertaining when someone decides to wear their face in the real world.
👹 THIS WEEK ON THE DEVIL WITHIN
The New Monsters continues with The Black-Eyed Children, one of the internet age’s most unsettling urban legends.
They appear outside homes, beside cars and on lonely streets asking for help—and eventually asking to be allowed inside. Then their victims notice the eyes: completely black.
We trace the origins of the legend, how the stories spread across the internet, and the much older piece of folklore hiding beneath them: the idea that evil sometimes requires an invitation.
This week on The Devil Within: The New Monsters — The Black-Eyed Children.
🔎 THIS WEEK ON CRIMINAL MISCHIEF
Carolyn Ossorio trades true crime for the original master detective with a special reading of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
First published in 1891, the story introduces Irene Adler, the extraordinary woman who manages to do what remarkably few characters in the Sherlock Holmes canon ever accomplish: outmaneuver Holmes himself.
Royalty, romance, blackmail, disguises and one dangerously important photograph send Holmes and Watson into one of Doyle’s cleverest adventures.
Pour yourself something appropriate, settle in and prepare for a trip to 221B Baker Street.
And yes, we’re allowing Carolyn to attempt the accents.
We may regret this.
💰 THIS WEEK ON THE SLIPPERY
Meet Lacy Johnson, a woman accused of approaching fraud less like a specialty and more like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Her alleged schemes ranged from faking a life-threatening cancer diagnosis and operating a bogus charity purportedly supporting American troops to identity theft, financial manipulation and even burglarizing and vandalizing the home of a former employer.
Her most devastating alleged cons, however, were reserved for the people who believed they were closest to her: romantic partners who discovered that intimacy itself could become another tool for extracting money.
It’s The Relentless Hustle of Lyin’ Lacy Johnson, this week on The Slippery.
🎬 THIS WEEK IN HORROR
We’re heading back into The Further with Insidious: Out of the Further, the sixth installment in the Insidious franchise.
This time, Gemma discovers she possesses the ability to enter The Further—and, considerably less conveniently, bring things back with her.
Naturally, the inhabitants of that purgatorial nightmare eventually realize what she can do. Lin Shaye also returns as Elise Rainier, continuing her admirable refusal to allow something as trivial as death to interfere with steady employment.
Sometimes you want elevated horror examining grief, trauma and the existential uncertainty of human existence.
Sometimes you want demons.
This week, we’re going with demons.
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📧 STORIES, TIPS & FEEDBACK
Have a creepy story? A criminal case we should investigate? A con artist we somehow missed? Send your stories, tips, case suggestions and feedback to info@eviocreative.com.
August continues. Apparently forever.
Stay cool, drink some water, don’t invite any black-eyed children into your house, and we’ll see you somewhere this week across the Evio Universe.
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