Darkness in the News Reaches 666th Story

Darkness in the News, a website that catalogs and documents news stories from around the world, publishes its 666th story.

(PRWEB) September 17, 2004 -- In a milestone event, Darkness in the News (http://www.stygianlabyrinth.net/darknews), a website that catalogs and documents oddities and mysteries in the world from ghosts to psychotic axe murderers, published its 666th story. Sean Francis, the owner and operator of the website, indicated that while there is some level of personal joy in reaching this arbitrary point, it isn't an end point at all.

"When you collect these types of stories, whenever ominous numbers like 3, 13, 9, 23, or 666 appear, there is a desire to point it out," Francis said. "The 666th story is significant to us only because it represents a significant body of work and a significant amount of effort."

Francis has high hopes for Darkness in the News hoping to make it one of the essential resources for research into strange phenomenon and a key distributor of writings regarding the mysteries of the everyday world. "We are always looking for writers, essays, opinions, or personal anecdotes regarding the darkness that exists in the world," Francis indicated.

Among the most read stories on Darkness in the News are reports about pictures of the Loch Ness Monster, a story regarding a haunted wine box being sold on E-bay, and a news report about a man who injected other men with his HIV tainted blood for some weird sexual thrill. The collected stories are not your standard quirky oddities you can find in tabloid papers, but are sometimes very graphic and very sickening.

A few authors have utilized Darkness in the News to promote their work. "It was a red letter day for us when we got our first submission from an author wanting us to run a story promoting her book." Darkness in the News saw the book NO GREATER DECEPTION written by Sydney Newman Dotson as a minor breakthrough. "We were being taken seriously in the marketplace. Definitely a minor player, but a player nonetheless," Francis said.

Francis acknowledged that Darkness in the News does very little original research and reporting, relying upon other news aggregators like Ananova.com, Yahoo.com, and one of the luminaries in the field of strangeness in the world, Fortean Times (forteantimes.com). Francis remarked, "Ideally, as we mature, we will be able to attract independent works and add to the volume of knowledge in regards to the various elements of darkness."

"The one thing that is guaranteed about this world," Francis wrote in an email, "is there will always be unexplainable, unreal, and truly odd events that make us cringe in terror or laugh in glee at the whimsy." And if Sean Francis has his way, Darkness in the News will be there to make a record of each and every one of those events.

# # #