Have you ever been afraid to go to sleep? Have you ever turned off the lights, closed your eyes,

and realized how completely vulnerable you are when you're unconscious? Have you ever heard a

noise in the dark and ignored it, convincing yourself that you are completely safe in your own home?

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I'm a writer and an actor who will happily

laugh at people who believe in ghosts, but also never in a million years spend a night in a haunted

house. This week, the story of a gruesome octopal murder in a quiet farming town in Valiska, Iowa,

and why after more than a hundred years, given the surprising number of similar murders,

this one still fascinates us.

On November 7th, 2014 at 12.45am, 37-year-old Robert Steven Larson, Jr. desperately called his

friends for help. His friends were just outside the house, and when they ran in to help Robert,

they found him lying on the floor bleeding from a stab wound in his chest. There was no one else

in the room. Robert had stabbed himself in the chest. It wasn't a suicide attempt, as far as anyone

knows. After surviving the incident, Robert has refused to make any statements about what happened

to him that evening and what compelled him to stab himself. He says he's remaining silent out of

respect for the family. Which family Robert meant is up for interpretation? He could have been

referring to Darwin and Martha Lynn, who owned the house he was in when the incident occurred,

or maybe his own family? But chances are the family Robert was respecting was the more family,

which is strange, considering the more family had all been dead for over a hundred years at that

point. In fact, Josiah and his wife, Sarah Moore, had likely died in the very room in which Robert

had stabbed himself. But how did Robert know about the Moors? And what made him stab himself in their

bedroom more than a hundred years after their deaths? On the morning of June 10th, 1912, in the tiny

town of Aliska, Iowa, Mary Peckham noticed her next door neighbors the Moors hadn't been outside

...