Both of today's stories are about people who actually achieved their big career ambitions.

But at an extremely high cost.

But before we get into today's stories,

if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format,

then you come to the right place because that's all we do,

and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, please replace the Follow Button's nasal spray with super glue.

Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called Proving a Point. On the afternoon of June 10, 1871, a defense attorney named Clement Valandingham sat in a courtroom in Lebanon, Ohio, listening intently as a prosecutor question to witness.

And with each word that this witness said on the stand, it made the knot in Clement's stomach get tighter and tighter.

Because this testimony was very bad

for Clement's client, an accused murderer named Thomas McGeehan.

So the murder that McGeehan was on trial for had happened about six months earlier on Christmas

Eve in the nearby city of Hamilton. That night, McGeehan had stormed into a saloon with a group of men and attacked another

man named Tom Myers. And at some point during this attack, a gun went off and Tom Myers was shot

and killed. Now, there were at least 30 witnesses in the saloon at the time. But the whole

attack had happened so fast and was so chaotic that no one

had seen who did the actual shooting. Despite that, everyone in town immediately decided that

McGeehan had done it. However, even Clement had to admit that that was a reasonable assumption.

McGeehan and the victim, Tom Myers, had a longstanding feud,

and everyone knew they hated each other. Also, McGeehan was a well-known violent criminal,

who was said to have killed at least four other people. So when Tom Myers got killed,

the citizens of Hamilton didn't even wait for a trial. They wanted to hang McGeehan right now.

Now, the police had obviously intervened and arrested McGeehan instead, but word had spread

...