My name is Mark. I am a investigative journalist,
podcaster, storyteller, and for the last six years I've been
running The Dark Mind Detective, a podcast that I'm proud to say
have reached a global reach in the top 1.5%.
And this is my first podcast where I'm now going into a new
direction. I want to expand my audience to
a bigger, broader audience. Now, I'm very appreciative for
everything I learned in the last six years, but I did learn some
pretty tough lessons. And I'm here in this episode to
kind of share my journey, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Hopefully as we move forward, you the listener can learn from
my trial and errors, things that I've been through, and hopefully
you can avoid them as well because there, there's a couple
of things, right? The there's a dark side to
social media. I'm here to talk about that as
well. There's a lot of benefits.
There's a lot of wonderful things about social.
I met some amazing people. Without my platform, without my
reach, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to talk to some
amazing people. I've talked to forensic doctors
about some of the cases I've researched.
I researched the some of the scariest, darkest cases in human
history. I've researched over 150 serial
killers. I've researched over 1000
missing person cases. And I come from an area where
thousands of people go missing under very mysterious
circumstances. It's actually the area where I
live. It's a highest missing person
rates probably across United States and Canada, but
definitely across my nation. And, and it's it's three times
the national average. So I've been researching strange
clusters of missing persons for for a long time, since about
2007. And as we get more deeper into
the series, I am going to do a breakdown of these clusters of
cases. I've researched cases in
Vancouver, BC, I've been researching cases in Chicago,
IL, and I've also been researching cases in Austin, TX,
New York State and across Canada and across the United States.
I also do a lot of work and research on missing indigenous
women. We in a province, there's a
place called Highway of Tears and a lot of strange, mysterious
cases of that. And I'm down the road, I will be
breaking down those cases, but primarily this new podcast, it's
called Dark Realities and it's going to focus on different a
few different areas. It's going to go into serial
killer cases. I'm going to go abroad across,
but I'm going to look at them differently.
We're going to look at things from a multifaceted angles.
We're not going to just look at what's already been reported and
we're going to look at it from a variety of angles, but I'm not
trying to create like a conspiratorial slant.
So together, as we break down these cases, we're going to look
into what we know from an investigative point of view and
rule out the practical aspects of these investigations,
especially some of the really baffling missing men cases.
We're going to really breakdown what we know how and then rule
those things out before we get into the spookier stuff, right?
There are some amazing researchers out there and I'm
not, I'm not into the whole calling people out bullshit
shit. And there are some people who've
done some amazing storytelling and they really break down these
cases and they have me over the cold.
I feel like I'm at a campfire because they're so good at
telling these stories and, and you know, they, they've
convinced me that. And then I feel that sometimes,
not all the time, they cherry pick a narrative to try to fit
into these, to make the cases spookier than they have to be
when they're already are. Pretty terrifying.
And one of the things that I have been doing for the last six
years especially is I try my best to work with victims
families because at the end of the day, right when something
terrible happens to your son, your daughter, your loved one,
they go missing in a way that is just horrifying.
In almost every case that I've worked with, the families have
never been satisfied with the investigation.
And lot of times they get pretty handled pretty rough by
investigators. And then there's the media
component to it, where the media comes in and suddenly sit down
with them and they talk really nice to them.
And then they publish something that really didn't have much to
do with the conversation. And the families will talk to me
and say, Hey, we told them this and we told them that.
And they never said that in the, in the article is either very
soft boiled down like, or it's a hit piece.
And then they call back to the media person and says, Hey, you
got this wrong and that wrong. And he said this and they're
like, oh, oh, did we? Oh, that's too bad.
Oh, so then there's that, right. And I worked, I, I'm friends
with a lot of victims of families and, and they've been
treated very rough, not by only, not only by the system, but also
by the media and also by the investigators.
Like I, you know, I have, I could tell you guys stories that
would really upset you. So I really aim to do things
differently here, right? I come from a compassionate
place. First, these were real people.
They had loved ones, these people, they didn't want to be
victims. So then it comes to the other
aspect of what's important in my series.
And I'm really big believer in what I call dark psychology.
And I use dark psychology as a umbrella term because quite
frankly, for the last little while, all we hear is
narcissist, narcissist. And of course there's
narcissist, but I think that narcissism brush gets painted
too broadly. So I instead I say dark
psychology. Dark psychology is manipulative,
toxic behavior that's used against you or used against a
person to facilitate either criminal behavior, abuse, or
trauma. Over the last six years, I have
worked with so many people that been on the receiving end of it.
And quite frankly, I've been on the receiving end of it it as
well. I really have.
I want to not only for myself, but hopefully for you, the
listener, because I want to give you tools and Shields against
this type of behavior. Because in my experience and my
research, every victim starts off as being manipulated, get
into a relationship. The relationship, of course, is
always good at first, but then, you know, something turns around
and maybe they're not like abusive, like a like smack you
or hit you, but they're, you know, they're distant, they're
cold. And all of a sudden it's a game
of hot and cold, pulling levers, pulling strings, parrot and
stick. And then over time, the, the
behavior and the abuse gets worse and worse and worse.
And when people who are predators and there's people
that are good at this, like we get into the realm of social
engineering, manipulation, even mind control stuff that cults
use, right. And I'm a big believer that
everything is on a spectrum on the low spectrum.
It's subtle. It's it's you can't quite place
it. And then if you call him on it,
right, oh, they have something to say.
Oh, it's all in your head. I've met a lot of people.
I have also a corporate sales background.
And before that I did stockbroking.
Before that I worked in construction.
I've been around all kinds of different behaviors.
I also worked in the nightclub world, where I've been exposed
to a whole spectrum of behaviors.
But universally, these toxic behaviors are a pattern.
Sometimes they're applied overtly, very aggressive,
coercive, and sometimes they're very applied to subtly.
And there's people that are very skilled at it, very slick.
So I mean too. So I want to give you guys
tools. This is not a podcast.
It's going to be about this fire housing you with morbid and
terrible facts and gore and stuff.
And trust me, my head is full of it.
From the cases I I've witnessed and, and +2, I have some pretty
amazing confidential sources. I have sources that have been in
the highest realms of organized crime.
I've talked to some people off the record about the darkest
stuff, stuff that goes on the dark web, human trafficking,
even stuff like red rooms and people.
Oh no, red rooms don't exist. Yes, they do.
They do. They do.
And I'm going to tell you a quick story about a story that
kind of got me on this journey a long time ago and really opened
my eyes to this horror that is now more of a prevalent reality
that we are facing. Back in 2000, I went to school.
I went to school for programming computer skills and, you know,
learn all the different graphic design programs and I even took
a desktop printing program to learn how to, you know, make
stuff like, you know, and it can print shops and posters and
magazines. And and then I took a lot of
back end stuff like program back in the day when it was
JavaScript and HTML and that kind of thing.
Classes at night because I was a real night owl because I came
from the club scene and I wanted to change in my life.
So I want a new skill. So I decided this whole Internet
thing seems to be blowing up. And so I started taking these
courses. So I met this guy, he became a
roommate of mine and he was also doing, he was doing more like
computers, like science courses and kind of in a different
direction. I was doing more front end
development. He was more on the back end
development, right, servers, that sort of thing.
And one day I'm drinking with this guy.
I don't know him very well, right?
And I lived in this big dupe. Actually, it was a quadplex, so
it had 4 units in this one big house.
So it was like big cob. This place was huge.
The part that I lived in had three bedrooms.
So to help out with, you know, school and stuff, I rented out
two of the bedrooms and I lived in one with my girlfriend.
You get the ideas, right? So we had two other roommates,
so this guy had one. And one day, you know, we're
having some beers and stuff, yucking it up.
And then he looks at me and goes, hey, I want to show you
something, right? And I was like, OK.
And he pulls up his computer, right?
We go up to his back when there was nothing, you know, laptops
were around, but everyone had desktop.
So we go, I go in his room, right?
And he fires up the desktop. And then he starts typing around
and he goes to some kind of message board.
And then he pulls up some folders and on his computer.
And he showed me some of the most horrific pictures I have
ever seen. And I don't really want to say
what what was on them because, you know, again, I'm putting
this on YouTube and Rumble. I don't want to get docs with
community guideline strikes as I'm just starting to roll out my
stuff. But it was horrifying.
It was absolutely horrifying. The pictures was of a young
woman and the pictures were looked like they were taken by
professional photography. Very clear, very crisp, very
good lighting. And you know, this is before
there was no AI, there was no really good graphic design
programs. And it was shocking because I've
never seen anything like this. And remember, this was back in
2000. I've never seen anything like
that. And I, and I honestly, I just
felt, I felt nauseous because I've never ever seen anything
like, I haven't even heard of anything like this.
And he seemed like the look on his face, he became very
animated and his eyes just looked fucking crazy.
And I'm just looking at him in a new light.
And then he starts showing me all these message boards, you
know, where men can gather and do this kind of stuff and
countries that have like the most lenient laws and were, you
know, and all the tricks of how to do it and get away with it
and this horrible. And I was shocked and I felt
sick and I, and it felt like I instantly sobered up and I
couldn't talk for about 10 minutes.
And then finally I just said to him, I said, dude, you got to
move out. You got to move out.
Because now I'm thinking this guy's into this stuff here with
my girlfriend in this place. And then there's like another,
there was another woman living in the other room.
I'm like, this guy's a creep. Like this guy's a bonafide
creep. So remember, this was 2000 and
the Internet, so people back then already were organizing,
facilitating the most darkest horrific crimes predators.
So imagine what it is now. And I've done a lot of
investigation on this. So my aim for the series is 1
inform you. We'll talk about historic cases.
We'll, we'll get into the dark depths of these cases and we're
going to use mainstream forensic research before we get into the
spooky stuff. And then we're going to teach
you how to avoid becoming a victim, all myself included.
We all can be manipulated. We all can be played.
There are some good people out there and there's cyber wolves
out there. There are people out there that
want to do you harm, like the scary people.
And then in my last like 6 years, right, I have, I've had
this kind of like been on the receiving end of a lot of bad
behavior. So again, my platform, this was
I what I was all about. I'm not about controversy.
I'm not about trying to get views and likes and all that
kind of stuff. My platform that I built on
Instagram exploded. I had different platforms before
I had a fitness 1. I had mindset and motivation and
that kind of thing. And then I did a true crime
platform back to mode 2019 and it just went kaboom.
I, I, I was getting 1000 followers a week and at its peak
I had about 50,000. But the thing was it, it just
that the toxic people I would deal with like this, people that
would really make me sick. I did a case about a woman.
Her friend reached out to me and this woman was from Australia
and she was murdered in front of her son in a very awful domestic
violence. If you go on my Spotify and
Scroll down, you can find it like a really heartbreaking
case. It's just absolutely awful.
I'm interviewing her friend. Her friend's talking about her
life. What a great person this was and
it brought out the creeps like it really did like I I was just
blocking people. They were like just saying the
most awful stuff. And when I would get mad, Oh,
you're a snowflake. No, I'm not a snowflake.
This is someone's mother. This child saw saw her.
So there's a dark side brought out some weird things.
So I got tired of it. I got tired of like these
weirdos, so I decided to become the dark blind detective where I
look at things in a very more forensic, more of a deep dive
analytical way. You know, into my credit, I
built a great following from that.
I've interviewed many like forensic doctors about the cases
and stuff because I feel that these cases are not just
entertainment. These are tragedies.
So I'm kind of creating new ground rules now, right?
Because I have to preserve my health, right?
I can't deal with the Karens, the, you know, the people that
just want to scold me because, oh, I posted this and I posted
that. And to fairness, after my wife
died in 2020, I was in kind of deep trauma.
So I would kind of make myself available to lots of people.
You know, I'd answer every DM and there's a lot of people that
when you come to familiar with you, they just see you're, they
just get, it's just too easy for them just to be unpleasant and
be kind of shitty. So I'm building myself
boundaries more as I move forward and build more of a
bigger platform. And one of the things I'm going
to really deep dive back into is, is books that have helped me
through the year. So one of the books I'm really
going to get into is a 48 Laws of Power.
I read this book first in 2000. I went to chapters.
I used to read a lot and I still do.
But back then I would try to force myself to read a book.
A week went into chapters and I saw this book and it really
stood out. It was orange and royal blue and
it had these gold letterings of 48 laws of power.
And the words power horizontally down was unlike any book I've
ever read. It was like it combined history.
It combined life lessons that provided examples.
Yeah. Truly amazing book.
And I used to review, make myself read it every year kind
of because these are the tools that people use universal.
And I've seen it, I've seen it in every aspect.
I've seen it on the construction site, I've seen it in the
nightclubs, I've seen it in the boardrooms, I've seen it in the
stock broker boiler rooms. These are the tools.
They're universal, right? There's a Romans would say
nothing new under the sun like these.
These rules are really ancient tricks of humanity of how to
have power over people. Book acted as my shield and I'm
going to review it again because I need it again because man,
I've been through a lot of bullshit six years and I don't
want to go through it anymore. And the biggest bullshit I've
got was accepting people in my inner circle.
So then they can abuse you and abuse is very subtle and there's
there's punch you out abuse or there's a shitty cutting remarks
or scolding like people don't know you well, don't have the
right to scold you about your their thought process.
They don't like I don't understand, like I and I've
never done this where someone posts, you know, a story and I
used to post news because I wanted to share, you know,
breaking news stories doesn't mean I agree.
What happened in the news? News is like, Oh, look what
happened today. And then I get the Karens.
Oh, why are you talking about this and that?
But they never say it like that. First they insult you.
They it's always like the first line.
It's an insult and you're just supposed to take it, right?
But but what I'm saying that happening once or twice,
whatever, you're going to meet shitty people.
But when you get a constant barrage, they're like pebbles in
your shoe, right? They become quite unpleasant.
And then over time, it's like I'm doing all this war people
and tragedy and you want a nitpick, right?
So no more nitpicks, right? And this is what I mean.
But the, the laws of the four, eight laws of power, it becomes
your shield to all types of manipulation, even someone, even
allowing someone to subtly nitpick you make snide remarks,
make comments about you. It's disrespectful and they're
trying to exert a certain level of power over you.
And then there's a government. The government is very different
now than when I was raised. The government wants you
powerless because the more power, the less power you have,
the less you can stand up for yourself.
So again, to recap this, what this podcast is about the
program, the program's about conditioning, mind control, dark
psychology. And then how are these
principles? These techniques are used in the
most awful circumstances by predators and evil people that
truly want to do you harm. And also this podcast is about
empowerment, how to have a shield, how to create
boundaries, how to have no more room for nitpickers, you know,
shit talkers, people that try to undermine you, the people that
are pretend that they're your friend, but they're jealous of
you. And, and like I said, I went
through a real like crazy roller coaster ride in the last six
years of this platform. I came out on the other side
tougher, more determined, more focused.
But there's times where it really did affect my mental
health, where I'm in the deep, darkest weeds of some of the
most grotesque, darkest deprived cases that the government
essentially covered up or just really softballed it to make.
It's being like, oh, too bad serial killers exist.
Nothing we can do about it, where we're just like, what the
next target? And then there's going to write
like some little softball article.
Oh, too bad, Mark shouldn't have been out late that night, right?
So there's like this weirdness in our society that I don't
like. I really don't like it.
I want to be understanding of what is happening to us, right?
Why are we always pushed in these little directions and keep
pushed and pushed and pushed until it's like you don't
recognize where you are anymore? So I want to bring back mental
sovereignty, the ability to critical think.
And by doing this, we're going to apply this to some of these
really baffling cases. Like I said, missing men cases
have have troubled me for a long time because there's a lot of of
them and they're very strange. I study cases that are that are
very upsetting. They're the missing indigenous
women and they are hugely widespread, not talked about.
Awful. Is this to say they make the
perfect victims for these predators because they get away
with it and they continue to get away with it over and over and
over again. And then these missing men cases
are even more baffling because they're the complete opposite of
a lot of the women cases because these boys are just like normal
kids, going to school, hanging out with their friends, going to
college. They disappear off the face of
the earth. And some of the cases I've
researched, they disappear out of their bedroom.
They were last seen going up in their bedroom saying goodnight,
mom, see you in the morning. Can you make pancakes for
breakfast and never be seen again.
I really want to have a real examination of these cases, the
clusters throughout North America.
And like I said, we're going to use check off the list of all of
the, you know, conventional possibilities of these cases.
So I've been thinking a lot about this.
Like, for example, there's these strange cases like out in the
woods, for example. Again, I live in an area where
it's heavily wooded. Lots of people go missing.
Sometimes people go missing because an animal right again,
or they slip and fall. Some are treacherous path
because I grew up in the wilderness and did a lot of
camping and I know a lot of people that do search and
rescue. Search and rescue people are
usually know their area very well and they know the spots
were that are problematic and troubling.
And The thing is, the difference between when you're out in the
wilderness, you have a backpack, you have, you know, a lot of
times you're wearing hiking boots, so you're heavy.
So it makes clear footprints when you're walking on a trail.
So if someone attacks you, let's say, let's say you know, some
crazy person living out in the woods, there's going to you're
going to see the scruff marks, you're going to see the the
event happening. Animals, It's messy.
It's bloody. A Big Bear.
Oh yeah, you're going to know that.
And not at times in these areas. There's one way in and one way
out. So we're going to rule those
things out first before we get to the spooky stuff, right?
And there's some strange stuff out there.
There really is. I truly believe life is stranger
than fiction. Then on the other side of it,
someone goes missing in the urban area, which to me is a
little more frightening because it's like this, right?
Say you're a woman, good looking woman who keeps in really good
shape and you know you're wearing your athletic year and
you jog the same path every day. Every day at that same time, 3
o'clock. You go to a park or on a running
trail, you have your headphones in, you get to your car, maybe
do a little stretching before you get in.
You don't notice there's a dude in a van who's been watching you
the last three days. Or let's say you are an
attractive young man, right? And you work that, say at a
coffee barista. Every day at 10:00, you know
you're doing your closing shift. You throw your the garbage away
in the dark back alley knowing there's some creeper stalker
who's been waiting for you, who's been watching you for the
last 5-6 months. And you only know that, right?
Because I'm saying there are some creeps out there.
I've experienced creeps. And in this podcast we're going
to, I'm going to share a lot of my own personal experiences.
So hopefully you can learn from the things that I've been
through. So again, welcome to the program
where we shed light on the darkest realities.
I want to thank you for listening for the first one.
Please join me on Spotify and iTunes where I can talk about
these cases a little bit more detail because again, this
specific talk that I'm doing in this one is going to be for
YouTube and Rumble. And I don't want to get off on
the bat. So this censorship it's it's
hard to understand what you can say or can say.
And I don't really want to talk like a a toddler and say Pew Pew
and I'm alive. I want to talk to you guys like
you're adults, right? So thank you so much for tuning
in. We're going to come back here.
Hopefully you'll come back and join me again tomorrow because
I'm going to be doing this five days a week.
Each conversation is going to be between half an hour to an hour
each day. And we're going to keep building
on to these cases as as we go farther and farther and deeper
into these darker cases. So again, my name is Mark.
I am an investigative journalist, storyteller, deep
dive researcher of serial killers, predators and dark
psychology.