Elisa Lam

Elisa Lam is an interesting story to me because it deals with psychiatric disorders. In case you didn’t read my earlier blog on the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, she was the woman who was videotaped acting strange on the elevator and was eventually found in the hotel’s water tower deceased, two weeks later. It’s a weird and creepy story that had people going crazy trying to come up with explanations and pulling the typical piece by piece analysis to try and prove whatever theory they had without looking at the entire thing.

Elisa Lam was a 21-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who was staying in the hotel. People who spoke with her prior to her disappearance thought she was acting strangely. She is then captured in the elevator footage acting as if she is playing hide-and-seek and communicating with someone who is not there. Two weeks later, after guests complained about the water, a maintenance man discovered her in one of the water towers on top of the hotel. The police investigated and ruled her death accidental. Internet detectives were quickly on the scene.

Why was she acting strangely on the video?

Because the police confirmed she either had, or probably had, bi-polar disorder and was obviously experiencing psychosis; she was not on drugs. End of that piece of evidence. No, she wasn’t possessed, and no she wasn’t talking to ghosts, demons, or any other evil spirits, she was hallucinating and delusional.

Why did the elevator stay open for three minutes?

Well, she pressed a bunch of buttons and maybe the elevator had a sensor on it, triggered by her constantly moving back and forth inside and outside of it. Her hand constantly waves between the doors at one point, so that makes sense. Also, the color of the walls doesn’t change when the elevator doors open. Well, they do, but it’s on a different floor, with different color walls. Some people also suggest that the time on the camera changes by a few seconds here and there, but maybe it’s motion activated? Also, I would think an otherworldly entity with the ability to stop a camera for one second would go ahead and make it not work at all.  

How did she get on the roof?

This one is simple. The fire escape. She walked up it to the roof. There were only two ways to get there, and that was one of them. I keep reading about how there was an alarm on the entrance that should have sounded and that’s true. It was an alarm on the door leading from the stairs, which she did not take. The fire escape could obviously be accessed with ease, like pretty much every fire escape.

Why was she naked and what happened to her clothes?

I think only internet sleuths were concerned with her clothes. She was obviously psychotic before her death and probably took her clothes off before going swimming. The roof is windy, because it’s a roof and high in the air. Her clothes could have blown away, she could have thrown them off the roof and the homeless picked them up, or one of the maintenance men could have found them, assumed it was nothing, and got rid of them.

How did she get in the water tower?

She climbed the obviously visible ladder in the pictures and jumped into it. The water towers were never said to be locked, only the entrance to the roof. Some people also claim that it is impossible for her to get inside one, because apparently there is no entrance to them, but they got her out, so I would assume there is. Maybe she climbed up, sat on the edge, took her clothes off and tossed them into the air where they went over the side, and then she dove into it. Also, people want to know how the lid closed by itself, because now there is one, but no one said it stayed open, so it probably closed on top of her.

What about the serial killers, suicides, murders, etc.?

What about them? It’s Los Angeles, one of the most populated cities in the world, and the hotel has anywhere from 300-600 rooms and over time started catering to the criminal element. The entire area around it is a slum with a large homeless population.

Why are the police secretive about the investigation?

They’re not. It wasn’t a member of your family, so it’s none of your business. Additionally, they answered all of the questions post people have put forth, but that wasn’t good enough, apparently. 

Surreal

I had an amazing day the other day. While it wasn’t psychedelic, it was as if space and time were distorted and reality had taken the day off, so I’ll cover it here.

I hadn’t had much sleep, but Angelique, the member of my pack I was about to spend the day with, had been getting less. She had sent me a text message to see if I was ready, to which I responded that I was “killing shit”, i.e. getting everything ready in quick order. She responded, “Get me a buffalo.” We go to get something to eat for breakfast in Covington, early, not realizing everything but Waffle House is closed. We jump across the bridge to Newport, because we know the Pepper Pod is always open and have good breakfast. We eat, chill, talk, and the View Master is brought up in a weird context I will not cover here. At first, we couldn’t remember what it was called, but our waitress helped us on that. We decided to go shopping.

If Angelique were writing this, she’d probably spend more time talking about the shoes she found at the Savings Place, and how her Chuck Taylors were the same as Amy Pond from Dr. Who, but she’s not, so I won’t. We went into a pawn shop, which had nothing but jewelry we weren’t even interested in, but a side door led us into a more eclectic area that had a huge amount of Elvis memorabilia, vinyl records, and an assortment of other odd things. Rather than peruse the music and take six hours, we instead looked at the shelves against the wall, where we found a vintage, 1940-50’s View Master, with the box. We purchased it, but it didn’t have any slides. We were blown away that they had one, and while it may not be an uncommon thing in a pawn shop, I had never seen one around here.

The next leg of our shopping covered many stops, but the St. Vincent DePaul stood out the most, at first. We looked around the entire store, before asking if they had a View Master, particularly slides, since that was what we were really seeking. Less than a week prior, they had received one, so the leady went to check for it. She told us they had been playing with it and looking at the slides, so she knew they had one in, but believed they had sold it. We continued our search down the street at a consignment shop. Instantly in the door, we asked if they had a View Master, and the lady began searching, pretty sure they did. After about five minutes, she found a plastic case, with two red View Masters, a stack of slides, and a sticker with a value more than the money we had on us, but she was willing to accept what we had.

We decided it was due time to go drinking, but first we wanted to show our waitress that we had found exactly what we discussed earlier. She probably thought we were kooks, but we were impressed with ourselves. Angelique told her we were going to play the lottery, so she gave us three numbers, 210, which we played. While having beers at a bar, we looked through our acquisitions, and on one of the slides, we had buffalo. On a fake lottery ticket, we contracted AIDS (long story on why that’s awesome.) There were more coincidences, but I’ve rambled for far too long.

The entire experience was rather surreal, but eventually we had to go our separate ways. Whatever magic we had when together, eventually faded, because when I checked the lottery numbers, we had two of them, just not the third. So close. So damn close. 

This day ruled.

Mass Murder

"100% of gun massacres occur by people with mental illness. If you disagree with that statement, be prepared to make the case that there are some rational, cool-headed people who, after thinking clearly and weighing the pros and cons, decide to commit mass killings. There aren't. Rather than focusing our efforts on demonizing society, guns, gender or family, we should focus our efforts on getting people with mental illness the help they need. The fact that there's stigma associated with receiving mental health care is a problem. If you know someone in need, reach out and try to get them help. Trying to rationalize an irrational act is futile. Rational people don't go on shooting rampages." -Maddox

This is about as real as true as it gets, but calling for societal changes, and these changes actually happening, are not the same thing. James Alan Fox, pretty much the world's foremost authority on mass murder, believes that you cannot spot or prevent it, since these killers for the most part lead ordinary lives. You can, however, spot them because they obviously stockpile weapons and ammo in preparation for bad things that are going through their head. Before you cast judgement on some nutcase who went around murdering people, ask yourself if anyone was there to support them in their time of need, and that answer will almost always be no. Then ask yourself if you have ever gone out of your way to lend support to someone, and if that answer is no, you have not done your part to stop mass murder. 

Don't Drink the Water at the Cecil Hotel

The Cecil Hotel was a real shit hole somewhere in Los Angeles. You could stay there for less than $500 a month, which, might I remind you, isn’t a lot of money in LA. Built in 1927, it has several hundred rooms, and has been rented by some very famous people. Richard Ramirez worshipped the devil, and killed 13 people, while only paying $14 a night for his room. Jack Unterweger, an Australian “rehabilitated” rapist and murderer, killed a handful more prostitutes while staying there for a few weeks. Even before that, there had been a handful of murders, and maybe even disappearances, not to mention a long string of suicides, including one jumper who took out a pedestrian. A few years ago it became news because Elisa Lam's strange pre-death video made headlines, where she acted strange on the elevator and eventually drowned in the water tower on the roof. She was found a few weeks later when people complained about the taste and smell of the water. Normally, Wikipedia is the go to website for info, but I found the blog, Pantless Alley, to be far superior this time. 

Cecil Hotel Wiki

Brogan Dulle

It's really sad that this young man was found last night, apparently having killed himself, after over a week of overwhelming search efforts from friends, family, community, and law enforcement to find him. Even sadder, his body was discovered in the building directly next to his residence, and while I'm not going to entertain the idea that the police somehow failed in their job of finding a suicide victim by not busting in the doors of every single building in a ten mile radius, I am going to turn on society as a whole.
Why the fuck aren't all search efforts this great? Why is it that thousands of people were wearing missing shirts, handing out flyers, combing neighborhoods, violent ones at that, for this guy, but not for anyone else? Why are we picking and choosing who is worthy of our search efforts, and being as he was an adult, why don't we do this for the thousands of other kids and teenagers who are reported missing? Answer me that and I might hate most of you less.

Raymond Clutter

Raymond Clutter is a wealthy, local man who supposedly once owned strip clubs and other businesses in the Northern Kentucky area. One night in 1994, he was out with a couple of buddies, when they were nice enough to give a woman, 37-year-old mother of 4, Peggy Casey, a ride. Getting sidetracked, he instead decided to rape her, and then fearing he would be in trouble for that, he slit her throat and killed her, and then fearing he would be in trouble for that, decided to dismember her and dump her body parts all across Ohio. He was in prison already (for sodomizing the daughter of his ex-girlfriend), when they convicted him of the murder, 16 years after it happened. That was 4 years ago, but I just found out today. I knew one of Peggy’s daughters, and I remember the case very well, but figured it just went cold and no one would ever find out who did it, so imagine how happy I was for her when I finally heard the news. 

I hope he lives to a ripe old age. In prison. 

Memorial Day Is Not Veteran's Day

Every year someone thanks veterans across the globe for their military service on Memorial Day. The only problem is Memorial Day is not the same thing as Veterans Day. When you correct them, they often respond with an air of superiority that Memorial Day should apply to all of the troops. Okay, so Memorial Day honors troops who have died while serving, and I personally would like to keep the number of troops honored at a bare minimum. I get that you don’t know the difference between that and Veterans day, but when it’s clearly explained to you, don’t be a dumb cunt and try to salvage you’re already ignorant and disrespectful remarks to someone who does know the difference first hand.

So here’s a hypothetical. You’re mortally wounded while in service to your country, even officially declared dead. However, by some strange occurrence, you wake up alive, even having those near death experience memories. Should you be honored on Memorial Day, or just Veterans Day? This stuff keeps me awake at night. 

Bigfoot's Not Real (and Other Myths) (Or Not)

“I hate Indians.” -Ayn Rand

I was raised on the stories of bigfoot, or that something that makes those weird howls in the woods, breaks trees in half and all those other things bigfoot supposedly do. I’ve never seen one.

I’m divided on how I assess the Bigfoot videos though. On the one hand, pretty much every single one of them is grainy or shaky and you barely see anything except a large, hairy figure trouncing through the woods. On the other, unless you’re an experienced cameraman, what exactly should people expect? Even if we had a video of a plain as day bigfoot playing pool and smoking cigarettes, someone would still find fault with it and then say that video isn’t evidence and can easily be faked. The latter is certainly true, but so is some major scientific research. There is no strong evidence, outside of faked carcasses that get big news coverage for some odd reason.

You have those overnight primatologist who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there cannot be a large, unknown species of nocturnal ape that primarily live in remote, mountainous areas, because the expert they sided with said so. There’s no solid proof. At all. Kind of like those big cats that didn’t exist in Kentucky until someone shot one. I know what you’re thinking, that big cats actually exist elsewhere, so it’s not that shocking they wind up that far north, and it’s not really, but everyone who claimed photos and videos were feral cats were obviously wrong and made a poor assumption. Bears shit in the woods. We actually have a little bit of evidence to support this. Or do we? For all I know, the scat samples were found in someone’s yard and placed in the woods, or just claimed to be found in the woods. I’m not saying they’re real, but I’m also not going to dismiss the possibility.

The United States isn’t over-flooded with technology and urbanization and is still a third forested, so it’s a bit ridiculous to pretend we’ve discovered every creature there. While it’s just as ridiculous to automatically believe every photo, video, or soundbyte, we find new species all the time, including large ones, like the Saola, which we didn’t even believe still alive until 2010, despite a bunch of Vietnamese rednecks claiming it was. 

Hated other non-whites as well. Died.

Wicked Lady

Wicked Lady were an obscure apocalyptic psych or proto-metal trio that never released anything while together as far as I can prove. Some would argue that they influenced Black Sabbath's early albums, but their contemporaries were obviously more talented and held it together much longer. While not as polished as something like War Pigs, War Cloud is a rather creepy and haunting premonition of what could happen in the threat of nuclear war. 

Town of Salem

I’ve been a bit incapacitated as of today and I got bored not being able to do anything. I gave this browser game called Town of Salem a chance. I know, it sounds like some lame game about brewing potions, and to be honest, you’d think they would at least have witches as the regular villains, but that’s not the case. If you’ve ever heard of the party game called Mafia, then you know what Town of Salem is about (or can Google it and stop reading my blog.) At the start of the game, everyone is assigned a role. Most people will be town members, each with a unique special ability that aids the town members in the investigation. At least three will be Mafia members. I know, why didn’t they make them witches instead, since it’s called Town of Salem? I guess they wanted to make it obvious who they were ripping off. One person gets to be the serial killer. The game is split into night and day. At night, everyone can use their abilities. A doctor can heal one player, who, if attacked, will survive. A jailor does just that and can question someone, and even execute them if they feel they are not telling the truth. The mafia can plot with each other to frame and kill people. The serial killer obviously kills people of his own accord. During the day, everyone discusses who they think is guilty, using the clues from their abilities used the previous night to find out who the bad guys are. The daytime is the political aspect more than anything, where you have to convince the others to vote on who to send to trial. The accused can then plead their case before the town sentences them. In this, either the Town wins, Mafia wins, or serial killer wins. There are a few other characters, such as the Jester, whose goal is to get himself lynched by the town to win, and the executioner, whose goal is to get his target lynched by the town to win. These characters win so long as they accomplish their goal, regardless of if the Town, Mafia, or SK win.

The game looks a bit ridiculous and gives you some cheap graphics, combined with some stupid choices, like what house you live in, but the dynamics are a lot of fun and it’s still in beta, so no reason to gripe. You can play a game in around 20 or so minutes and it’s a lot of fun once you learn how to play it, so I recommend it. Don’t log in with your Facebook account. Just don’t.

Town of Salem 

Gloria Ramirez

They're all monsters. The only difference is they're in your bed instead of under it. -Mrs. Anderson, House of Good and Evil

The above quote has nothing to do with Gloria Ramirez. She was a lady who wound up in the emergency room. Not out of the ordinary, I know, but eventually three people who treated her passed out. They noticed something was odd about her, so they did an emergency evacuation on the entire ER to protect the other patients and staff. The doctors think she was using a chemical solvent for pain relief and when they broke out the defibrillators to get her heart going again, it converted it to a toxic substance. Science, bitch! 

Gloria Ramirez Wiki

Led Zeppelin Stole Everyone's Music

Apparently some band that no one has ever heard of is suing Led Zeppelin today, claiming the opening of a song, Stairway To Heaven, was ripped off from them. It's no secret that LZ is perhaps one of the best cover bands in the history of music, but how did this group who originally wrote the opening not hear Stairway to Heaven anywhere in the last 100 years it has been released? Don't get me wrong, it's criminal to steal music and take credit for it. But I'm not sure if LZ actually took credit for it, since they didn't design the track listings on their albums, as far as I know.
Think about it though. You're an aged musician who made very little money in your entire life. You have a right to be pissed when someone takes your song and turns it into a hit without crediting it to you. However, I personally see Led Zeppelin as the world's greatest retirement plan. Let's wait until I'm calling it quits so I can sue them for back royalties on my song that no one ever heard or cared about until another band got famous. As an end note, pretty much every artist that got big ripped off music. There aren't a lot of the top acts that haven't been accused of it. It's wrong, but it happens. It's crappy when someone isn't credited. It's also just as crappy to hold off on a lawsuit until you're out of money.

Steve Hughes

"They're not tough? They fuck men!" -Steve Hughes

This guy has a great routine. I own his album, Heavy Metal Comedy, which rules. Sadly, Youtube is either obsessed with some of the same gags, or he doesn't have too many. Regardless, whenever I want a laugh, I watch him.

Brown v. Board of Education and Dinosaurs

I'm seeing a lot of posts about how today is the anniversary of the court decision that made education "equal" because "separate but equal" was bullshit, especially towards tax-payers who have every right to the same damn treatment from public education. However, that was yesterday, so you're a day late. Regardless, it seems like just a year ago slavery was abolished in the United States, because Mississippi finally ratified the 13th amendment. 
Where am I going with this? Right, dinosaur bones. So they found a huge femur in Argentina which increases the largest size of a dinosaur. Apparently, people still believe the Jurrasic Park styled reptiles that go trouncing around on the screen are accurate depictions, but they've claimed for years that this is inaccurate and they looked more like a bucket of KFC. People get all excited about discoveries of ancient dino bones, and honestly, why shouldn't they? But digging up bones and understanding them are not the same thing. The last thing we need is someone having a giant leg bone and nothing else, and then assuming the entire creature was a certain height. Maybe it was a legasaurus, which looked like a giant leg and hopped around? 

The Madonnasaurus is still 

the biggest dinosaur in Argentina.

Apparitional Experiences Part 3

The top landing of the hallway has a window, and across from it is a door that leads to the attic. On each side of them, there is one door, each leading into a bedroom. The boring, front bedroom is to the right, and what appears to be the master bedroom to the left. The master has a full bathroom, but no shower head. It also has a larger closet, with another closet inside of it. Yeah, we never understood that either. I may have written this before, but when my parents first moved in there, that was where they had their bedroom. My father often worked second or third shift, so my mother had no problem with having her kids in the bed with her until they were grown. The room has reports of dark shadows, something walking across the floor, something bumping into the bed, and the door to the closet opening by itself. Sometimes you could hear the door handles slowly turn in the adjacent room, when you had the door locked on the other side. Currently, the drywall caved in due to rain damage from a leaking roof, so while the roof has been repaired, no one uses that room since it hasn't been fully repaired. That's sad, really, because it's the same size as the living room, and only limited by the additional bathroom and closet.
When we asked the previous resident, one of Gertrude's younger sisters, about deaths in the house, the response was a brief silence, followed by a confirmation and question as to why. Feeling like an ass, my mother moved along and just said she was curious. They then told us how the downstairs bathroom used to be a walk in closet, but that after their sister died, the kids didn't like going into the master bedroom, so they added the bathroom downstairs. As the family grew, they added on a kitchen/dining room and another room to the basement, but the master bedroom went largely unchanged. Aside from the little girl footprint, we never saw anything resembling a little girl. Then one night my nephew, maybe 3 or 4 at the time, was supposed to be asleep but came into my sister's bedroom and told her that there was a girl lying on the floor in a white dress. He thought it was his sister, who was around 9 at the time, but then she turned and looked at him and he realized it wasn't her. I know, children aren't the most reliable witnesses, but it was a rather odd coincidence. Add that to the body of reports that sound like someone sneaking through the house, and it starts to make you question. I looked into the event as best I could.
I gathered that Gertrude was born in 1908, and I believe she died nine years later of scarlet fever, in the house. She may have been the oldest daughter, but I'm not absolutely certain. I can't remember off hand how many siblings there were total. With most of the activity stemming from the master bedroom, it makes me wonder if that was the room she died in, separated from her other siblings.

LSD

I used to have this album; it speaks for itself.

No One Should Have To Work

I see people post shit like that all the time, and for once I completely agree. No one should have to work, and you don't have to work, so what's stopping you from quitting your job and living off the land? You. 
But the reality is that your 40 hour work week is something society has developed to help you live within it. For once, if you didn't have a job, you would have no money, which seems to be the main point of contention for most people. You need money to pay bills, especially utilities, which honestly you don't need. You could go without all of them, but don't forget that they had predecessors, so that heat and light you enjoy so much will be replaced by maybe wood, which you have to chop yourself, assuming you own the land you live on, and then you will have to have enough trees to sustain you and your family. Running water will need to come from a well or cistern, or you can go get it out of the river, every day, which would really suck in the winter. Twitter would be carrier pigeons. Facebook would be an actual book full of pictures and anecdotes. Blogger would be random, one-man plays that toured the country. 
What I'm saying is that despite the fact you don't have enough money for your high speed internet and Starbucks, living off the land is more than 8 hours of work a day. Most days you can double that if you're starting from nothing, and it will take years just for you to adapt to the land and understand it's habits. Additionally, you'll need money for just about everything you start up, unless you're going to use tools you made yourself. There's a reason so many of them are made out of metal these days. 

Has no vinyl records.

Casey Kasem

This cat's missing. Apparently his caregiver, I believe his wife, wouldn't let the kids see him. He has some type of dementia and needs nursing care. Once the court ruled that the kids could see him, the wife says he's not in the country. Not sure if she's protecting her husband's estate from greedy children, or she's a gold-digging cunt herself, but there will be drama. I remember Kasem on the radio in the early 80's. He always had that warm voice and I found out years later he voiced the character of Shaggy on Scooby-Doo.
Back to the radio, he would take requests and told some of the most unintentionally funny stories. The one I remember, we were driving to my grandmother's house, my mom and I. Kasem retells this story from a girl who wanted, I think, a pair of boots for her birthday. Her father had given her the present to open before school, eluding to the fact that it was the boots. But when she opened them, it was something else entirely. She told him she hated him and wished he were dead, because that's what you're supposed to do when you don't get what you want. She then stormed out of the house and went to school. Later that day, her mom picked her up and told her the father had passed away of a heart attack. When she got home, there was a present on her bed, which contained the boots she wanted. My mother and I busted out in laughter at the ridiculousness of it all.
I hope Casey Kasem is doing well. Below is a video of him losing his shit because some ass played an uptempo record while he was doing a death dedication. He rules.

Mother Nature Is a Bitch, and Then You Die

Why the hell was it 90 degrees (American) yesterday? We just got over polar vortexes and arctic temperatures that made life here pretty crappy every morning I had to get up and go to work, especially since it primarily snowed and iced on those days. Now it's still windy, hotter than hell, and getting ready to rain for the entire week. 
I know, you're thinking, "I'm so smart; it's climate change!" Die. The weather here in Kentucky is always unpredictable, only the overpopulation of the Earth has made it even worse. I'm just not a fan of the heat, not a fan of people, and not a fan of inconsistent weather. I must be getting old. 

For It Is Man's Number

I’ve been devoting this blog day to covering lesser known movies, music, and other forms of entertainment that I like and others should, too. Today I thought I should change that up (at least on some occasions). I’m not big on writing reviews. I read them, naturally, but that is so I know what to look for next, maybe give a chance, or what to avoid. As far as I’m concerned, people can watch, read, or listen to it themselves and form their own opinion. Additionally, some people do them far superior than I could give two shits about doing, so why not just let them? But it certainly rules when you can read someone with similar tastes in something to get their opinion. This fellow Blogger™ writes about movies pretty much every day. He’s been divorced, arrested, institutionalized, and ran out of several countries because of it. Despite this, we have very similar movie tastes and he’s one of my go to people for wanting quick info on a film. I’ll not promote his entire biography here, but if you’re interested in film, and not just genre films, then give him a chance.

As a side note, I’m not doing this to cross-promote myself, especially since I don’t even promote myself as is. Honestly, I’d stop following him if he decided to do a post on his movie blog about how they should stop everything they’re doing and come to my blog so they can read the insane ramblings of someone with schizolycanthrodysplasia. It’s just that I appreciate his diligent work and recommendations over the years. However, I must warn that every contest he ever talks about is only for UK residents, so he’s kind of racist. Other than that, it’s worth it to click here. 

Or here: http://foritismansnumber.blogspot.com/

Mother's Day

Normally I wouldn’t break character and talk about how great Mother’s Day is, and I see nothing abnormal about today, so I’ll instead talk about how all of these holidays are the bane of my very existence. I don’t really know what the bane of my existence means, but it certainly sounds good in a blog entry. Why does everybody have to have a day? Mother’s, father’s, grandparent’s, step-cousin’s. It gets old. Then you have Black History Month (white guilt much?), Latino Heritage Month, Asian Day, Native American Hour, and the list goes on. Just last week I commented on how saints cover a wide range of things, such as being the patron saint of dishwashers, basketball players, and the month of June, all in one. Sounds to me like it would make an awesome story of how it came to be, but instead they’re more or less darts with names of occupations on it thrown at a board and whoever they pin is the patron saint of it. I feel like holidays are the same way. Someone created Christmas, and then everyone got jealous because they didn’t have a day to be celebrated.

I had a great mom; she did everything. I have no problem buying her a card, flowers, and chocolate once a year, but I have to do the same thing for Valentine’s Day, and Sweetest Day, and whatever other day they come up with. How about we just all be more appreciative of each other year round? Nah, I hate people. Die, everyone.

Picture unrelated.

Apparitional Experiences Part 2

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today,

I wish, I wish he'd go away...

- Hughes Mearns (The Guy With 2 Last Names)

Just a simple set of dark wooden stairs against white risers, they go up to a landing, turn, and go up another shorter set of stairs to the second floor. That’s the first thing you see when you enter the front door. Most people don’t pay attention to the adjacent bathroom not-so-hidden beneath the second set sitting to the right. There’s no window on the landing, so you either get the light from the fixture above, or from the window on the next floor, or none at all towards evening. Regardless, everyone looks up them as soon as they enter. “Sensitives” often inquire about what happened there, and my usual response is, “You tell me.” I don’t know if anything ever actually happened on that landing and probably never will. It appears they may have once been a window there, but it is nefariously sealed up and painted over! Just kidding. The house next door was built up against mine, so I assume that’s why. I’m not going to talk about how we found a footprint in the drywall dust on the upstairs landing, the hallway light being turned off by itself, or about the time something came across and tried to force itself into my sister’s bedroom, since I’ve already covered them. But we have animals getting bent out of shape, pennies being dropped, and full-sized apparitions walking up and down them.

I don’t think it really started or stopped at any given time. I think it had always happened but we just never paid much attention to it. It usually happened at night. You would hear a penny hit the linoleum, as if it had been dropped. Only no one was in the hallway. You would hear that on a regular basis. We always assumed it was the cat, but then she died. It continued, when all of our other animals were accounted for. When I moved back into the house, we swept the stairs and found a few dozen pennies on them. A few nights later we found a few more. I had been living off of credit cards and hadn’t been using money in any physical form, yet they continued to appear. Sure, maybe it is mice with copper fetishes, unaware that pennies don’t contain much copper at all. Stupid mice. The dates on the pennies don’t seem to have any significance.

When I was younger I saw a bearded man dressed in flannel walk out of the bathroom and up the stairs. He was not accompanied by any sounds and it happened so fast while I was in the living room watching TV, so I assumed I hallucinated. A few months later my mother reported seeing the same man in the kitchen, so I related my story. On more than one occasion, we have all heard someone heavy going up the stairs, all the way to the third floor. The first step to the attic lets out  aloud squeak when you step on it, so we know they made it that far. My mother mistakenly thought it was me, before realizing I walk light. I heard this myself twice, accompanied by an odd jangling noise, which I assumed was my uncle’s biker jacket, but I was of course wrong. It may have been the ghost of Hipster’s past, since we did have a lot of records up there.

But the thing that has always bothered me the most was the feeling that someone is right behind you when you walk down them. I remember as a kid, running as fast as I could downstairs. It may have just been the fear of the unknown at the time, based upon odd experienced I had earlier, but as late as my teen years, I remember being bothered by it. When my nephew lived in the house for a couple of years, he did the same thing, running to get to the bottom because he felt like someone was behind him. We had a poorly engineered two-way lighting circuit, one that you had to turn on wherever you turned it off. When you went to bed late at night, you climbed the stairs to your bedroom, turned the light off, went to bed. In the morning, since there was so much daylight, you forgot the light was off, so didn’t turn it back on. Later that night, you had the unfortunate task of walking up the stairs in darkness. The attic was set up the same way, but it wasn’t creepy. When I moved back in, I noticed I still had that same apprehension when going up them, but coming down, I decided I was too damn old to be worried about some monster getting me and just walked at a regular pace, but on occasion those hairs still stand up on the back of your neck. Of note, it was brought to my attention that improperly installed two-way circuits can give off high EMF readings, which in theory can give you strange feelings. While the EMF reading off the circuit is indeed almost double or triple the normal, the circuit has been turned off for the past month, due to an electrical short, and people still continue to look up the stairs, have weird feelings like someone is behind you, and get attacked by a ghostly lumberjack.

Next we explore Gertrude’s room. 

The C.A. Quintet - Trip Thru Hell (1968)

Some say 500 copies of this album were pressed, some 700, and others say 1000. Regardless, the album wasn't successful, due in part because it was way ahead of it's time, and because it was released independently in Minnesota, where all innovative psych bands were born and died a quick death. The band was actually around for probably 5 or so years, but only managed to crank this one out. It's quite simply an amazing, pioneering record if you're into apocalyptic psych, which I certainly am.
I'll be honest and admit that the album certainly isn't what one would expect, since pretty much every song coming out at the time was about peace, love, women, etc. and here we have a bad acid trip (through hell) presented in music played on instruments that had never been used in the genre before, like a lost Clint Eastwood western soundtrack. This is an all out horror story. Amazing bass performance, entrancing drums, dual guitars, haunting organs and backgrounds, trumpets (yes, trumpets) signifying it is the end, this album is not to be missed. Well, it was, but you should be listening to it now.

Drive-throughs

Most people have no clue if their alcohol stock will last them, especially when they have no clue how many people will show up that night and buying an overabundance of the shit will guarantee a stay in the hospital, if not for you, for someone else on the end of a Indian-cursed violence spell. Sure, a few 2 liters and some liquor will ultimately save the day in the eyes of your partiers, but some people don’t have time for that, myself included. It’s late and you don’t want anyone seeing you stumbling around half intoxicated and trying to purchase more alcohol. You manage to drive to the local drive through to purchase more. Oh, wait, those places barely exist these days.

It was really convenient when practically every city had the drive through. You could get your essentials, juice, milk, a loaf of bread, the daily paper, bags of snacks, candy bars, and of course adult magazine (and condoms, which you probably don’t need if you’re buying a magazine), as well as the whole purpose of these things, alcohol. But now you hardly see them and they severely lack the quality they once did. A drive through used to be a building you drove through and you could see everything they were selling. It was like standing in line at the grocery store and grabbing all the small items you forgot you needed while waiting on the slow ass in front of you that forgot an item or wants to put one back. We had one in Covington growing up, conveniently located next to the interstate, but like so many other great things. it didn’t survive the 80’s.

Now we have one that’s more like the drive through at McDonald’s called Liquor City, complete with an old man who hates his job and life, likes to take his sweet ass time because he did a piss poor job on the layout of the operation, and takes five minutes to inspect your ID, even if you’re older than him. The next closest thing is the adjacent city of Newport where they have the infamous Big Daddy’s. It’s only infamous because they never carded anyone until people started paying with credit cards. They always hire people who can’t do basic math with a calculator and you usually have to tell them how much you owe them, not the other way around. This world will never be the same.

Yes, this is a real place. We also have Cox Smokers.

St. Hubert (Hubertus)

I was reading about the Devil Deer of Kentucky, which is an old hunters legend (there are hundreds from the past several hundred years) about a deer that has some wicked antlers and hunts hunters instead of the other way around. Then I stumbled upon the story of St. Hubert. As a good Catholic, I thought I should inform you heathens who he was. 
In typical fashion, he was a not-so-holy man leading a life that was destining him to Hell. While out hunting one day, he came across a magnificent stag and decided to pursue. When it turned to face him, he noticed a crucifix floating above it's head between it's antlers and then he heard the voice of God tell him he needed to change his ways and to lay off the shrooms. He did this and apparently decided to not be a sociopathic hunter anymore by declaring people would kill their prey humanely, with the cleanest shot possible so that the animal did not suffer. St. Eustace did the same exact thing even earlier, apparently, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Jesus Stag is real, but very little record of it remains, because they were all mostly pagans back then and set on fire. 
He became the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, and thirty other unrelated occupations (like most saints). He was also called upon to cure rabies until they realized priests kept getting bit by infected people. What is most remarkable is that this magical Christ-bearing stag appears on every bottle of Jagermeister.

 It's a sin not to have a shot, 

unless you're a mathematician. 

Saint Huber Wiki

Saint Eustace Wiki

J(funny a that's not on my keyboard)germeister Wiki

9 Months

That's how long I forgot to pay my water bill. They put a notice in my door, but since it has been windier than Chicago, it blew out. Then one day I came home and went to wash my hands, but the water wasn't running. Since it was an old house, I assumed it was one of the pipes that had busted. When I went into the basement to look, I was wrong. Pissed, and assuming the water company had turned mine off by mistake, I went back upstairs and channeled my anger to do some cleaning, since it was too late to call the water company. When I took the garbage out, I noticed a pink slip laying next to my porch. It was a notice that they had turned my water off. Yeah, thanks for letting me know. When I called them, the lady said, "Well, you haven't paid your bill in nine months." I laughed and told her to turn it back on. She didn't fine me funny. But my water is back on. A day in the life.

The Contraption (1977)

The Contraption is a short film I saw years ago, maybe Night Flight on the USA Network, although I recall seeing it in the daytime. The interesting mix of sound effects and the building of the mystery device, as well as it's purpose, made me realize how less can be more. 

Don’t Let Them Vaccinate You!!!

The alarmist title was a joke, really, but I keep seeing the anti-vaccine movement in the news. 

I'm lucky to not be one of those parents who are asking why their child has something like autism, but I do have ADHD, which is a neuro-developmental disorder in the same spectrum, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, because I assure you, if left untreated, it is very debilitating and can severely impair your ability to succeed. But I'm pretty certain I got that from my father, and it is believed my grandfather had it as well. I also come from a family of smokers and grew up in a tobacco state, and my brain was developing before all of these smoking bans, in the midst of a chemical believed to cause ADHD. My why has been answered. 

I've said before that I have all of my vaccines and then some, but you still see things I've been vaccinated for have huge outbreaks, like the measles, for instance. The thing with that is that the majority of people who had those vaccines had them after 12 months of age. This points out that the immune system in people shares a lot of commonalities, but at the same time, each person can be different. Sure, vaccines might cause autism in some kids, but there's no solid proof, and just because a court decides to award money in a case involving it, doesn't mean the courts are right. 

We have a lot of idiots in politics and the legal system in general. My state added the sleep drug, Ambien, to a list of controlled medications doctors can at any time test for to make sure their patients are taking it (and not taking illegal and non-prescribed drugs.) The only problem with this is that the standard urine test they demand cannot detect Ambien, so it shouldn't have even been on the list. I'm sure there are other medications as well that shouldn't be on there. I'm an advocate for questioning everything, especially the solid walls of science and medicine, and honestly, it's the only way advances are ever made. But being skeptical and absolutely against are not the same thing. Doctors don't know why your children have autism. That's the best truth you're going to get. If they knew it was the vaccines, or even suspected it was the vaccines, with this much media focused on it, the heavy increase in diagnoses, etc., you better believe there would be too many whistle-blowers out there being assassinated by our shadow government. To make it simple, avoid all articles that have the name Andrew Wakefield attached to them; he's a quack and started this whole mess.

Apparitional Experiences Part 1

"I'm a scientist; I don't believe in anything." - Michael Persinger

My name is Insanislupus and I have experienced strange things. Why not go over them in more detail?

We had a massive house growing up; it’s the one I’m living in now. Sure, it’s not as massive now that I’m an adult, but large rooms and 12 foot ceilings were something to be envious of when you’re from a working class background. I had good parents, Dad’s drinking aside, and I was close to my older sister, who was only a year and a half older than me. Once she started kindergarten, I was without her for half the day, or about 4 hours. Since we played by ourselves in our upstairs front bedroom, that meant I had to do that by myself now. I remember braving it, going up those long, turning stairs all by myself. We had large windows, so they let plenty of light in. Back then, you didn’t have the awesome assortment of toys the kids did on TV commercials. You had a GI Joe and a Transformer and plenty of knockoff toys you got at the grocery store, or the flea market, but they all played well together. One of my favorite things was laying them out in a semi-circle in front of me. They didn’t have much order in them, just randomly laid across the carpet. I had these two planes, small, made of plastic, about the size of a quarter, years before Micro-Machines came out. I remember picking them out when my grandmother took me shopping with her, but I can’t tell you much more about them aside from one being red and one being blue. They were cool, because they were so small. That made them hard to capture in my mind. In a scenario where they were taking on a GI Joe for whatever reason, he was able to take out the blue one. The red one, however, was better, faster, and I’m sure I made cool noises to go with its imaginary attack on him. But GI Joes were good guys and they always one. The red plane was shot out of the air, where it dropped and landed at the soldier’s feet. When that battle was over, I set them to the side in the start of what normally became a large pile. Then it was on to the next battle for the day.

This is probably the first time I suspected my house was haunted, but at that age (3 and a half, almost 4) you don’t have much besides Casper to base your hauntings on. Playing with new toys from the collection, I remember something non-threateningly landing on my head and then bouncing off and landing in front of me. It was the red plane, the same one that was supposed to be in the pile to my side. I remember not taking much time to process what happened. Instead, I stood up and took off running down the stairs. I’m thankful for having any memories from such a long time ago and at such a young age, but I don’t remember anything after that. I couldn’t tell you what I did once I hit the bottom of those stairs. Had I said something to my parents, they would have shot it down like they did until I was a teenager.

Hear about the haunted hallway in the next episode. 

Eve Morris - Eve's Song (1974)

This is an obscure gem from Eve Morris, who, prior to this, spent time in the first openly gay country band, Lavender Country. While that band certainly had a more homosexual than lesbian theme (she was the only female,) this song is apparently more autobiographical and focuses on feminism. Not sure if it has a B-side, since I don't own it, and I'm also not sure if this was a one off release or an attempt to put out a solo album. What I am certain of, at least in my opinion, is that, had Lavender Country utilized her as the main vocalist instead of the overly twangy and comical voice of Patrick Haggerty, they probably would have had more success. The psychedelic rock sub reddit, as usual, is just not ready for actual psych music and I got an instant downvote within 10 seconds of posting it over there. If I could get Tame Impala to cover it, I'd have 75 upvotes. 

Investigation Discovery

"The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." E. A. Poe

Known as the ID Channel to most, what exactly is it that makes a bunch of housewives want to watch hour-long blocks of people getting murdered? Honestly, it's a bit disturbing (and hot) for a woman to watch it. I watch horror films, and usually live by the creed, "It's not worth watching if no one dies in it." But those people dying on my screen are fictional people, not real ones, usually not kids, teenagers, families, etc. The revelation that so many women like this is more shocking than the realization that a large percentage of them are kinkier than me. But I digress (and hate when people say "I digress"), and more to the point, what the hell is wrong with my horror films, when you want to watch rom coms and the ID channel? I hate women. 

The Fly (1986) is a romantic horror film.