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Post by Phalon on Oct 3, 2021 6:40:38 GMT -6
What?!!! You're suggesting I share my chocolate?!
Sigh.
Yeah, I can do that. For Her. You like chocolate, Imp?
<claps hands, and nods enthusiastically>
Ok, then. Here's a little story, not a scary story mind you, but one with just a touch of Halloween vibe, and a whole lot of chocolate. This one made statewide news about a week ago, as a human interest story.
I'm sure when auctioneers are called in to do estate sales, they find all kinds of bizarre stuff. Such was the case recently when woman was moving to a long-term care facility, and her family hired an auction company to clean out her Lansing area Michigan residence. The auctioneer found a 175-year old 5-foot tall marble tombstone...in her kitchen! He's a bit puzzled perhaps, but it's probably not the weirdest thing he's seen as an auctioneer, so apparently he just shrugged, says to himself, what-the-heck, and puts it up for auction on-line.
A California man who used to live in the Lansing area, saw the tombstone up for bid on-line, thinks to himself 'hey, WTF', and contacts the Friends of Lansing Historic Cemeteries, (FOLHC) who then contacts the auction company, and the headstone gets removed from auction and donated to FOLHC.
FOLHC then contacts the family who owned the house where the tombstone was found. They had no idea where it came from; it had always been there, in the kitchen, as long as they could remember...and had always been used to make fudge. The smooth marble surface of the backside of the headstone was perfect for cooling the chocolatey treat. A genealogist is hired to trace the family of the name on the headstone and track down living relatives. The family tree included a Michigan Speaker of the House of Representatives, members of the Blue Book Society of Detroit (a directory of the wealthy and elite), and a Shakespearean actress…but no living relatives.
So whose tombstone was used to make Dead Man’s Fudge? Born in 1801, Peter J. Weller was a prominent business man in the Lansing area, where he owned a restaurant and grocery store. When he died in 1849, he was buried in the city’s Oak Park Cemetery…which was not his final resting place. Twenty-five years later, Oak Park Cemetery closed, all the bodies were uninterred and moved. Weller’s body was relocated to Mt. Hope Cemetery outside the city where his grave remained without a headstone for nearly 150 years – it was lost in the move. (As a side note, the site of the former cemetery, which is now a city park, is said to be haunted – they never bothered to move the paupers' graves.)
Peter Weller’s headstone was restored and set at his gravesite alongside his two daughters. Their headstones, which had broken, fallen over, and became partially buried over the years, were restored and reset as well. All six markers at the family plot were also cleaned. A dedication ceremony took place last week, which included details about Weller’s life. I wonder if it was mentioned at the ceremony that he had a hand in fudge making…from beyond the grave.
I’m thinking this little story qualifies as a small portion of the inordinate amount of time we’ll spend in cemeteries this month. What do you think, Imp?
<licks chocolate fudge from fingers, and grins.>
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Post by Phalon on Oct 4, 2021 6:15:54 GMT -6
Let's sing a little song. I shall call this “The Irritating Song of the Month”, and am posting it in hopes of passing it off. I don’t remember how I ran across it, but shortly after Stepper prodded me to start drilling more than a month ago, it came up, and it’s been stuck in my head since, creeping back in even when I’ve got a decent song stuck in there. Come on, Imp. Sing with me! Alouette, gentille alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai la tête. Je te plumerai la tête. Et la tête! Et la tête! Alouette! Alouette! A-a-a-ah.... I remember learning the song in music class in school during second or third grade, and have a vague memory of singing it in rounds or something of the sort. I never remember though, pointing to various body parts, as little French-speaking children do. In "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" fashion (remember that one?), children will point to the part of their body as it's mentioned in the song....their eyes, their feet, their backs, their beaks, wings, and tails. Beaks, wings, and tails? WTF kind of weird-ass kids are these?! Here's the song in English... Lark, nice lark, Lark, I will pluck you.
I will pluck your head. I will pluck your head. And your head! And your head! Lark! Lark! O-o-o-oh Lark, nice lark, Lark, I will pluck you.
I will pluck your beak. ×2 And your beak! ×2 And your head! ×2 Lark! ×2 O-o-o-oh... ...and so on and so on, until all that's left is an empty eye-socketed, beakless, naked bird, to whom you've just described in great detail the torture you're going to inflict upon it. The song is thought to have originated in the French-Canadian fur trade, and was sung by trappers to pass the time and keep cadence while rowing their canoes. Larks were game birds; they were also annoying, being the first birds to sing before the crack of dawn, and in French folklore, they were gossips and the carriers of bad news. So yeah, it makes sense that the fur-trappers would sing a song about plucking the life out of a bird which would probably end up in a pot over the fire. But as a children's song? Maybe not so much. Just in case you've forgotten the tune (and in hopes of it getting stuck in your head and out of mine), here's an animated video geared toward the preschool crowd - "a nice French song for kids and babies", complete with a little French girl hovering over a bird in its nest as the bird cries, the feathers fly, various body parts become naked, and some creepy weird-ass monkey nods its head in time with the music.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 5, 2021 4:37:43 GMT -6
I love vintage stuff; old photographs are no exception, offering glimpses into a time gone by - an era in which our grandparents might have lived. What was Halloween like when they were kids - what kind of costumes did people wear back then? And looking at these photos, WTF were they thinking? Who knew a little bit of paper-mache with slapped on paint, some old clothes, and maybe a flour sack or two, could look creepy as hell. I don't think many of them were supposed to be creepy, (or even worn at Halloween; some of them appear to from folkloric traditions in other countries) but if some of these characters showed up on our doorstep on Halloween night, I might not even answer their Trick-or-Treat calls. That would mean more chocolate for me, of course, but I'd probably be eating it with the covers pulled over my head. www.boredpanda.com/scary-vintage-halloween-creepy-costumes/?utm_source=search.yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic
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Post by Phalon on Oct 6, 2021 4:42:26 GMT -6
31 Days of Halloween Tip of the Day: On those occasions when you find yourself surrounded by Evil Clowns…
…go straight for the juggler.
<impish giggle>
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Post by Phalon on Oct 7, 2021 21:35:44 GMT -6
I did quite a few drills while my knee was driving me nuts, and didn’t seem to be getting much better. This is one of them.
Random Word Drill: Bizarre Cursed Knee
And here it is – who knew my pain-in-the-ass knee injury would lead to our (first?) creepy-@ss doll story of the month. The story comes to us from Japan, beginning in the year 1918, when a boy purchases a doll for his little sister while on vacation. The little girl was overjoyed with the gift from her brother, and names the doll Okiku, after herself. Okiku the Girl, and Okiku the Doll became inseparable, and everywhere the girl went, the doll came with her. A year later the girl suffered a severe case of influenza, and died. Her heartbroken family placed Okiku’s doll in a family altar in memory of their beloved daughter and sister. Soon they began to notice something odd about the doll. Its hair, jet black and shoulder length in the traditional Japanese style of the time, started growing, its neatly cut ends becoming jagged and uneven. It wasn’t long before the doll’s hair grew past its knees! The family was freaked, but at the same time, hesitated about getting rid of the doll because they figured that somehow the spirit of Okiku the girl inhabited Okiku the doll. They even tried to keep the doll’s hair trimmed, but it always grew back to about knee-length. About twenty years later, in 1938, the family moved. This was their chance to start a new life without the thankless job of playing hair-stylist for creepy-ass Okiku (the doll), but because they believed their daughter’s spirit lived inside the doll, they didn’t want to just pitch it. Instead they took it to Mannenji Temple, and explained creepy-ass’s weird hair issue to the temple priest. The priest agreed to take the doll, and trimming its hair became a regular ritual. Pictures of the doll and its various different hair lengths soon adorned the shrine where it was kept. More than 80 years later, Okiku the doll is still at Mannenji temple in a wooden box, and no matter how often its hair is trimmed, it still continues to grow. Samples of the hair have been analyzed and proven to be human, but dolls often had human hair in the 1800s and early 1900s. Nothing though, explains the perpetual hair growth. The haunted doll is rather famous throughout Japan; the Okiku story has been adapted into books, movies, and plays, although sometimes with embellishments for added creepiness – typical creepy-ass doll stuff such as giggling, crying, wailing for Okiku, and moving on its own. The family denies any of the creepiness – the doll’s hair simply won’t stop growing.
As if that’s not creepy enough.
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 7, 2021 23:45:47 GMT -6
I wonder what horror can come from a 2-minute drill on any of these subjects?
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Post by Phalon on Oct 9, 2021 4:41:21 GMT -6
No sweet tea - I guessed right! At least partially, when as a Northerner married to a Southerner, I wondered what those Southern Horror story videos might contain: my other guesses were green beans (or any other vegetable) that did not have the life cooked out of them, and when your Southern son marries "The Damn Yankee", (which, is how my "dearly" departed mother-in-law referred to me until the day she departed). Or the time a husband was wearing brand new khakis, had a flat tar, and in changing the tar, got tire all over the seat of his pants, and your Southern son married to The Damn Yankee tells you, "No Mom, this time it really is 'tar'" because in retelling the horror of tar on the husband's pants, you tried to talk "northern" so the Damned Yankee could understand you. Oh, and btw, yes, it is pop. But no, hamburgers and hot dogs is not barbecuing; we call it grilling. On to the drill. In truly random fashion, a word from the first sentence in each video. Random Word Drill: Creepy Fishin' Hour Ruckus Inside Feels No A creepy short story that I'm probably glad I did not read before our weekend in the cottage in the woods by a lake. (The editor's note at the end makes it even more creepy). Have You Heard of the Outside People? thoughtcatalog.com/jeremy-alderman/2021/05/have-you-heard-of-the-outside-people/
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 9, 2021 15:32:37 GMT -6
Ooh. That was a cool story. It reminded me of the time I had to deal with the outside people. Only, I felt like they were angels protecting me from something. I’m pretty sure I posted about it in a thread on here years ago. Maybe I can find it when I’m on my laptop.
If I recall correctly: I was either reading a book, or watching TV. It was in the wee hours of morning. I suddenly felt fearful. I felt like I was in danger from something/someone. It was like my gut was telling me something bad was about to happen. And then movement from the front window caught my eye. I could see long robes. It appeared to be the backs of what I assumed were angels. I’d look away, and then look back. And at one point, one of them bent down and shifted their weight to look in at me. And that’s when I decided it was time for me to go to bed . . . and, that’s what I did. I figured whatever was coming, the angels would deal with, and I left them to it.
I wonder which thread I would have posted that in? I don’t even remember what year it happened in . . . or what season it happened in. I don’t remember having Mom’s dog then, so it could have been before summer/autumn in 2015. And I created my Facebook profile in November of 2015, and it hasn’t popped up on there every year in my memories. . . . hmmm . . .
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 9, 2021 20:04:09 GMT -6
Proboard's Search isn't working for me. I can't seem to find that post.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 11, 2021 5:00:38 GMT -6
Freaky experience, Joxie! I don't remember you posting about it in the past though, and couldn't find it in a search either. "Angel" or "robe" mostly brings up posts from the song games...
...which reminds me.
Whatcha singin', Imp?
<snarl>
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 11, 2021 13:07:08 GMT -6
Maybe I intended to post able it and forgot. Or I posted it somewhere else.
The weird thing is, I felt fully awake. I wasn’t drowsy at all. But I figured if I was having that strange experience, it meant I was tired, and needed to go to bed. Odd the tricks the mind can play on you when it’s tired.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 13, 2021 4:46:04 GMT -6
Very true! Random Word Drill: Inordinate Amount of Time Spent in a Cemetery Stepper may have coined the phrase here, but based on the drill, it seems there are a whole lot of people who spend an inordinate amount of time doing a whole lot of weird stuff, to include spending their time in cemeteries. The people who photograph and research headstones on the "Find a Grave" website are among them. This is one of the more interesting things that popped up on the drill; it appears on "Find a Grave". It's the story of Marie O'Day. It sounded familiar - like something I saw once on "American Pickers", when Mike found a mummy in a ramshackle trailer used to store old sideshow attractions. Yes, it's the same mummy mentioned in the show. Marie O'Day's body was mummified after being murdered by her boyfriend around 1925, and thrown in Great Salt Lake, where it was preserved by the salt until it washed up on shore 12 years later. Then somehow it ended up as a sideshow, exchanging hands many times throughout the years, until traveling sideshows faded from popularity and Marie O'Day got stored in a dusty trailer along with taxidermied animals, and jars filled with various pickled creepy-ass stuff. Her "Burial" information on "Find a Grave" reads: Donated to Medical Science, Specifically: THIS IS A MUMMIFIED BODY, THAT HAS BEEN USED IN A 'TRAVELING SHOW.' THE BODY IS CURRENTLY IN A STORAGE, IN NORTH CAROLINA. ITS NOT BURIED, AND CURRENTLY FOR SALE.The information on her page are from newspaper articles written by some of the sideshow performers who "worked" with her, circus announcements, and one very interesting piece by one of her "owners" who tells the true story of Marie O'Day, and how her body became mummified. Oh, and there's an article from Mike Wolf on American Pickers, who passed on the chance to buy her. www.findagrave.com/memorial/193852127/marie-o%27dayMarie, unfortunately, is one person who has not spent an inordinate amount of time in a cemetery. She appears to still be listed as "for sale".
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 13, 2021 14:23:09 GMT -6
Did she not have any family? If so, they must not have cared about her. Maybe someone should buy her and bury her. Unless she doesn’t mind being passed around, or bought and sold.
Whoa. That would be one strange story idea. A dead prostitute for necrophiliacs. Wonder what the pimp’s name would be? Or what the name of the brothel would be?
Ghouls 4 Sale -or- Death Becomes Her
“You shank ‘em, and we make bank off of ‘em.”
Pimp: The Necromancer -or- The Ghoul Wrangler
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Post by Phalon on Oct 14, 2021 21:05:08 GMT -6
A stripper murdered by her jealous boyfriend, then dumped in a lake where she's mummified by saltwater is apparently a much better money-maker than a Jane Doe without any ID who died of tuberculosis in a Mississippi bus station, was embalmed with too much arsenic resulting in turning the corpse into the consistency of wood. The story of Marie O'Day told in sideshows was fake, though the mummy is real - on the Find a Grave site, one of the sideshow owners provides some of the details; researchers for National Geographic provided the actual forensics.
Laying her remains to rest would be the decent thing for whoever currently owns her to do.
Now on to today's drill. The Imp is impatiently awaiting her MEAT. All in good time, my little Pretty, all in good time. But here’s a story with a tiny morsel just to whet your appetite. We are very dog friendly at the nursery. Customers bring their dogs with them as they shop in the park-like setting; the dogs always get extra attention and pets from us. Recently a woman brought her Dachshund with her – a cute little guy, but not very friendly. I’m not a small dog person, and dachshunds to me look kinda weird with their pointy noses, abnormally long bodies, and short stubby legs. Sorry Topper, you were the inspiration for today’s drill.
Random Word Drill: Weird Dachshund Horror
A Quiz: Which of the following is the cheesiest?
1.) Dressing up your dog head to tail in a Halloween costume, such as a lobster, lady bug, ballerina, or pumpkin (actual costumes I saw in the pet section of the grocery store this week) 2.) Low-budget B-movie horror flick about giant rats on steroids with a taste for blood who terrorize a town by eating its residents. 3.) A combination of 1 and 2.
Yes, the low-budget 1982 Canadian horror movie “Deady Eyes” is about giant rats that devour the townsfolk after growing super-sized from digesting steroid-contaminated grain. And instead of special effects to create these mutant bloody-thirsty rodents, the movie uses Dachshunds dressed in rat suits – thirty-five of them, along with five terriers. Controlling a pack of dachshunds can’t be easy, and throughout the movie, the “vicious” dog-rats are kinda cute, rolling around in their costumes, and chasing their fake rat tails. To keep their attention and to get them to run where they were supposed to (because apparently it’s hard to see where one is going when dressed in a rat costume), the director used meat and blood to coax the dog-rats in the right direction. Because hey, why use dog treats? Who wouldn’t prefer feasting on meat and blood over kibbles?
<Nods in solemn agreement and drools a little.> The movie was so bad that James Herbert, who wrote the novel upon which it was based, called the film absolute rubbish, which says a lot considering he wrote a novel about giant rats on steroids eating people. The use of dogs as rats wasn’t the only tragically bad decision made during the filming of this bad movie. Although the dogs were well-treated on set, one of the Dachshunds died from suffocation while in costume. As bad as it is, like a lot of really bad movies, “Deady Eyes” is considered a cult movie in Canada – where it’s played every Halloween at colleges for film students to watch as a joke…and probably learn how not to make a movie.
Is that enough of a MEATy morsel to tide you over for a bit longer, Imp? <runs off following the scent of fresh meat.>
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 15, 2021 1:51:40 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Oct 16, 2021 6:14:04 GMT -6
Though I've never seen "Deadly Eyes" or "Rabid", I've certainly seen my fair share of cheesy horror flicks; on our first date, Hubs and I went to see "A Nightmare on Elm Street". Even the original "Carrie", one of the only horror movies to win Academy Awards, seems really cheesy by today's standards; I watched that one last weekend.
Now that we’ve done dogs, it’s time for cats to have their time in the 31 Days of Halloween spotlight…because everyone knows that "Cats rule and Dogs drool". At least that’s the case according to Gypsy. But even before the little beastie entered our lives and ruled the household, there was Dusty…aka Devil Kitty, the Demon Cat from Hell.
Random Word Drill: Devil Kitty, Demon Cat from Hell.
Hello. Meet the demon whose mission it is to trick little kids all over the world into worshiping the Devil, aka Kitty White…aka Hello Kitty. Yep. That cartoon little white cat with the red bow and no mouth is actually a demon in disguise, created as a result of a pact with the Devil.
In the 1970s in China, a 14-year old girl was dying of cancer of the mouth. The doctors told her mother there was nothing they could do medically. Her mother, desperate and refusing to give up hope, prayed for her daughter’s recovery. When that didn’t work, she turned to the Devil himself, who agreed to save the young girl in exchange for one thing – the woman would have to create a cartoon character appealing enough to children that they would fall in love with it, and under its spell, welcome the Devil into their hearts. When the girl made a miraculous recovery, the woman held up her end of the bargain, and Hello Kitty was born. The cartoon cat’s pointy ears represent the Devil’s horns; the cat has no mouth which represents the mouth cancer the Devil cured, and “Kitty” in Chinese means “Demon”, so every time a little kid says “Hello Kitty” they in fact are saying hi to the demon.
And that is the 100 Percent True Origins of Hello Kitty…true only if you are prone to believe wacked-out conspiracy theories (and the scary part in all of this is that based on the myriad YouTube videos explaining Hello Kitty’s True Origins there are a whole lotta wacked-out conspiracy theorists out there). There are different variations of the conspiracy theory, but they all stem from a 2008 e-mail that, along with the cartoon demon cat’s backstory, claims “Hello Kitty is evil and that God fearing people should stay away from any Hello Kitty products as they are affiliated with the Devil and Devil worship.”
There are, as with any conspiracy theory, glaring holes in this one. Hello Kitty was drawn by a Japanese woman who worked for a Japanese company that produced novelty items with cute cartoon characters (Hello Kitty’s first appearance was on a coin purse) – the cat did not originate in China. There is no Chinese language or dialect in which “kitty” means “demon”; neither does “kitty” mean “demon” in Japanese. But hey, what do a facts matter when it comes to conspiracy theories?
Sanrio, the company that produces Hello Kitty, (her name was originally Kitty White), says she lacks a mouth because she speaks from her heart. Without a mouth, she has no expression because it enables people to project their own feelings onto Hello Kitty – when the person is happy, Hello Kitty can be happy with them; when they are sad, Hello Kitty can commiserate. And when they believe stupid-ass conspiracy theories, without a mouth, Hello Kitty can’t say “Seriously? WTF is wrong with you?!”
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 16, 2021 19:11:48 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Oct 18, 2021 5:47:46 GMT -6
Well now, that is bizarre! And probably the real reason Hello Kitty has no mouth - so the people at Sanrio don't have to listen to her constantly complain, "Seriously?! WTF?!! I'm a cat, dammit, I'm a cat!"
Hmmmm. We're over halfway through the month - let's see how were doing on the Big Four. The Imp has been keeping tabs. Imp?
1. Creepy-ass Doll: We had Okiku, the doll in constant need of a haircut. Check.
2. Evil Clowns: A tip taken directly from the "How to Survive an Evil Clown Attack for Dummies" handbook (don't put that one on your Christmas list; I just made it up.) Partial credit.
3. An Inordinate Amount of Time Spent in a Cemetery: There was the chocolate-covered tombstone of Peter Weller, a perfect Halloween treat, though a bit heavy to carry door-to-door trick-or-treating. We also visited with Marie O'Day at a site dedicated to cemeteries, although the poor girl has never spent a day of her death in one. A long way to go until we get to the proper amount of time to be considered "inordinate".
4. MEAT: We've had a tiny morsel fit only for a rat-sized dog, not an Imp. Just an appetizer - main course to follow.
It's a start, but the finish line is still far in the distance.
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Post by stepper on Oct 18, 2021 17:46:29 GMT -6
I don't know who to be upset with - you or the Imp! Maybe you should have spent more time in the cemetery! All you needed was some snow instead of rain and you could have put your skis to work. As it is, I get the feeling you didn't actually share a Reese's or didn't share enough. Of course with the Imp, enough might have been an entire bag. Or two. In any case, I got an evil email from a friend of hers called the Judge. "It" wants me to make an on-line appearance on Wednesday morning for jury duty. (I know the Imp was involved - "it" is known for wearing a black robe and that's her favorite color.) But on the first day all they do is pick victims, I mean jurors. If you get picked, then the next day you get to go to the big house down town and hope the process takes less than a day because once they've got you, you're stuck! And please tell her to stop cackling!
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Post by Phalon on Oct 20, 2021 5:10:29 GMT -6
<impish cackle>
OMG, Stepper - your potential jury duty is perfect timing for today's drill...though it wasn't the inspiration for it. I recently saw a photo taken by a photographer in the Ohio woods, of a hand protruding from beneath a heavy log, its blackened, rotting fingers grasping as if whoever was beneath had been trying in vain to free himself before dying. The dead man's fingers were the only thing left of what was once a fun guy. Oops, a typo - I mean a fungi. It was a weird-ass mushroom appropriately called "Dead Man's Fingers".
31 Days of Halloween Random Word Drill: Macabre rotting dead man’s fingers
Throughout ages, there has been some freaky sh!t that’s gone down in the name of religion. For this little bit of freakiness, we have to go back approximately 1,125 years to Rome, and sit in on a council of clergy, called a synod. This particularly macabre synod is commonly known as the Cadaver Synod.
A bit of backstory: All of Europe was in turmoil; kingdoms conquering kingdoms vying for land, wealth, and power. The Church was no different, and was wide open to corruption and greed, influenced by kings, and powerful wealthy families. The pope was not only the core of the Church – he was at the core of all European power. He held the power to anoint kings. All manner of atrocities were committed in order to sit in the chair of Saint Peter at the helm of the Church – and it didn’t matter what he did to get there; law stated that popes could not be judged as he was God’s emissary on earth. This made the pope a dangerous figure…and it was dangerous a dangerous position to hold. P!ss off the wrong powerful people, and you’re out of a job and into the grave. In the nearly one hundred years between 872 and 965, there were 24 popes; five of them were assassinated and two others died of foul-play. In less than 10 years, between 896 to 904, the succession of popes was so rapid there was a different pope every year! Our story takes place within that Pope Du Jour ten-year period. It’s the first month of the year 897, and the current pope Stephen VI has been stewing over what to do about his predecessor, Formosus. Stephen had the backing of a very powerful Roman family who was extremely against Formosus’ political views, and the ordinances he decreed while Pope. So to appease his backers, Stephan decides to bring Formosus to trial.
Wait a minute – didn’t we just learn a pope couldn’t be brought to trial while on earth?
Formosus , which ironically in Latin means “good looking”, wasn’t exactly on earth – he was six feet under, and anything but handsome at this point; he’d been dead for nearly eight months! Stephen orders him to trial, has the rotting corpse of what was once Formosus disentombed from his grave in St. Peter’s Basilica, dressed in pontifical vestments, and props him up in a chair before a council of clergy. Stephen acts both as judge and jury, and since this is a “trial” in which the accused must be able to defend himself, he assigned a teenaged deacon to represent Formosus – not in the way a lawyer would represent a defendant by speaking for him, mind you, but by speaking as him cuz dead men don't speak.
The charges against Formosus are read: perjury, coveting the papacy and violating church canons as pope. As the gathered repulsed clergymen watched in horror, Stephen screamed accusations and insulted the decaying corpse of his predecessor as if he were alive, even going so far as to mock his appearance. The young deacon, standing behind the chair containing the propped up former pope, meekly proclaims innocence, and one would assume, apologizes for his appearance, “Sorry Judge, I was given no time to freshen up before trial”. With Stephen as jury, Formosus, of course, is convicted as guilty on all charges. Now came the sentencing – as judge, what kind of punishment does one sentence upon a corpse? Because the whole macabre spectacle of the synod was politically motivated, you might think all acts and ordinances during Formosus’ reign would be declared by Stephen as invalid – which he did. But then he goes just a bit further – maybe even a bit over the edge – and orders Formosus’ three fingers used for papal blessings removed, the rotting corpse stripped of its papal robes, re-dressed in those of a pauper’s, and buried in a common grave. Clearly obsessed and quite possibly insane, Stephen then decides a common grave is too good for Formosus. He orders the corpse dug up once again, paraded down the streets to the Tiber River, and thrown in. The corpse is found by monks, who fished it out of the water, and hid it away for safe keeping. The whole morbidly gruesome affair was too much for the people of Rome. They riot, and Stephen is imprisoned; a handful of months later, he’s strangled to death. Stephen’s successor, Pope Theodore II, holds another synod, which found Formosus innocent and a victim of an insane pope. His body is once again dressed in pontifical robes (cannot a corpse get any rest around here?), mass is held, and Formosus is buried back in his tomb at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Theodore’s papal reign lasts less than a month, and next up is Pope John IX, who reinstates all Formosus’ acts and ordinances…
…and makes it illegal to ever put a corpse on trial again.
If you do get picked, Stepper, at least it won't be a rotting corpse up there in the defendant's chair!
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Post by Phalon on Oct 22, 2021 5:21:22 GMT -6
“What kind of scary-ass clowns came to your birthday?” ~ Chandler Bing, Friends
Random Word Drill: Scary-ass Clown Party
Clowns have a long history of being scary-ass. In a TIME magazine article about the history of clowns in medieval Europe, a professor of psychology, Frank T. McAndrew, says that “They’re designed to make people afraid. If you go all the way back to the beginning of clownhood, they’ve always been bad. They’re pranksters, they play tricks.” David Kiser, director of talent for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, told Smithsonian Magazine, that clowns have always had a dark side – “the clown has always been an impish spirit”, he said.
OMG, Imp! Calm down. He didn’t say clowns are Imps, or Imps were clowns. He said clowns can be impish…like mischievous, sometimes evilly so. Remember the time you replaced my dark-roast coffee with decaf? Like that. Here, listen to todays’s story; you’ll see what I mean. Once upon a time, in May of 2007, a group of white supremacists decided to hold a rally in Knoxville, Tennessee. They obtained the necessary permits, and called their brethren from far and wide to convene and publicly declare their hate-filled message of White Power.
<shudder>
Yeah, that’s some scary-ass stuff.
When the day of the rally came…
Send in the clowns.
As the group of white supremacists gathered, so did a group of clowns – clowns on stilts, clowns on unicycles, and clowns with painted faces and round red-noses. So many clowns, they outnumbered the white supremacists.
When the white supremacists started preaching “White Power”, the clowns joined in the chant…except they got the message a bit mixed up. “White Flour! White Flour!”, they yelled, throwing flour all over each other, creating a huge white cloud of dust around them, drawing the attention of onlookers and the media. The dust hadn’t even settled, when one of the clowns declared “White Flour” wasn’t the message they were supposed to be preaching. The correct message was “white flowers! The flour-dusted clowns were met by another clown posse carrying armloads of white flowers, and together they all ran through the streets, chanting “White Flowers! White Flowers!”, and passing out flowers to the gathering crowd. The clowns suddenly huddled closely together as a clown on slits sprayed them with water for a “Tight Shower!”
Finally, they got it right when another assemblage joined them, carrying signs with the correct message – “WIFE POWER!” Clowns wearing wedding dresses danced with other clowns and with people in the crowd, while everyone cheered “Wife Power!”
As clowns and onlookers joined together, the spectacle evolved into a street-party. Led by police escorts, the growing crowd paraded through the streets of downtown Knoxville, the party lasting long after the outnumbered and upstaged white supremacists slithered away hours before their rally was due to end.
<claps enthusiastically> So see, Imp? Evil is in the eyes…and hearts of the beholder. I’m sure that day in Knoxville, the white supremacists thought clowns were evil for ruining their little hateful pity party. The clowns showed though, that sometimes a little devilish impish-spirit is a good thing. Sometimes.
Because Imp. If you ever mess with my coffee again, I will not share my chocolate with you.
<impish pout>
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Post by stepper on Oct 22, 2021 17:52:07 GMT -6
The accused may very well turn out to be a rotting corpse, or will wish he was before things are all over. If he's convicted, his life will be unbelievably difficult as long as he survives.
I was selected on the first day but as it turned out, I was one of 80 still being winnowed down to legal size limits. We would be reduced to 14 (12 for the jury and 2 reserve jurors). The young man in question was accused of felony murder - of a 2 year old girl. The lawyers warned us that the trial would include conflicting doctor's statements and pictures some of which were from the little girls' autopsy. Fortunately, I was not one of the 'lucky' 14. How could you un-see those images?
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Post by Phalon on Oct 24, 2021 5:52:40 GMT -6
Glad you didn't get picked as a juror, Step. I don't think if I was a juror on a trial like that, that I could be impartial.
Yanno, through the years of doing these Halloween random word drills, I've run across some truly frightening stuff. Plug in some random words in a search (and there are some words I've learned to never use), and you never know what's going to come up. There are a whole lot of deranged people out there who do some vile things - the story of Albert Fish was the most recent thing I ran across. Although those kinds of stories might fit in with the Halloween theme, I don't post stuff like that, because like you said, 'how to you un-see (or un-read) that'?
You can't.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 29, 2021 4:57:14 GMT -6
We've been slacking, Imp. It's almost time, and we've got such a long way to go. Here's one inspired by dinner. No, Imp, not your dinner - I don't even want to think about what you eat. Hubs and I were making pizza. Topping were veggies: onions, mushrooms, red bell peppers, and black olives. Skip the black olives - when I opened the jar, they were brown instead of black, and mushy - not the firm consistency black olives are supposed to be. I pitched them just in case they were rotting. Random Word Drill: Scary Brown Rotting Olives When I think of vampires in a historical context, I usually think of Old World Europe. Or old New Orleans because that's were Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles took place. But New England? New England is for witches, not vampires. In the 1800s New England though, there was quite an epidemic of vampires. Mercy Brown was one of them. "Mercy Brown: The Last New England Vampire": www.thescarechamber.com/mercy-brown/
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Post by Phalon on Oct 30, 2021 6:08:13 GMT -6
Imp. For you. Random Word Drill: Bizarre Meat <claps hands and drools>"Vulture vomit? Weird bacteria? Something else? Whatever it was, it stank." ~ from "A Dark and Stormy Bite" <more drool>In humorous gory detail, "A Dark and Stormy Bite" columnist Lillian Stone tells us the history of what would become known as the Kentucky Meat Shower. It began on March 3, 1867 in Bath, Kentucky.... A meat shower? In Bath, Kentucky? What a blood-Bath that musta been. thetakeout.com/the-kentucky-meat-shower-of-1876-explained-1846667333So, how's that for you, Imp? Satisfy any craving for MEAT? Oh, no you don't! Stop it, Imp!! Stop. It. La, la, la, la, la...I can't hear you. Crap! And there it is....it's stuck. I guess it's better than "Alouette"; thank you very much, Dearest. It's raining meat! Hallelujah! It's raining meat! Amen! It's raining meat! Hallelujah! <impish giggle>
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Post by Phalon on Oct 30, 2021 19:48:20 GMT -6
Imp, I must say, you look quite ravishing tonight. Hhmmm…ravaging is a better word. What are you up to? No, no, no. Nevermind. I’m sure I don’t want to know.
<wide toothy impish grin>
Have you ever wondered, Imp, what’s hiding in the closet. No, I don’t mean that stinky-ass MEAT stash that you keep hidden away. Or all that chocolate you’ve stolen from me – yeah, I know about that.
<feigns guilt>
I don’t mean stuff you’ve hidden. I mean things that prefer to remain unseen. Until the time is right. Like when you’re home alone, in bed asleep. You’re awakened by a noise. You wait, thinking maybe you’ve dreamt it. You start to drift off again. There it is again. Thump. Thump. Thump. You definitely weren’t dreaming, and now you’re wide awake. Thump. Thump. Thump. Sliiiiiide. The thumping you hear isn’t your heart in your chest, suddenly beating too hard…only because your heart is now in your throat. Thump. Thump. Sliiiiide. It’s the laborious sound of something being dragged – something heavy. And it’s coming from inside the house. THUMP. THUMP. SLIIIIIIDE. The noise gets louder. Whatever is making it is getting closer. You are petrified. THUMP. THUMP. Sliiiiide. You realize whatever it is, isn’t inside the house…that is, it’s not in the living area of the house. It’s in the attic. And now it’s directly above your head. You heard the phrase before, but didn’t grasp that it was actually possible – that someone could be paralyzed with fear – but that is exactly what’s happening to you. You literally cannot move. THUMP! THUMP! SLIIIIIDE! THUMP! CRASH!!! It’s not in the attic anymore. It’s in your closet!!!! Even in the dark, you can see the closet door slooowly start to open. A dark shadow from within the closet starts to move. You stupidly recall of all those nightmares you ever had in which you were unable scream, and discover that is not the case at all, because you listen to yourself screaming louder than you ever thought possible. But even above your screams, you hear the thing in the closet call your name. Random Word Drill: Closet Creeper
The above story is true. My parents had taken a week-long vacation when I was in high school, leaving my brother Bobby and I home alone, and trusting us to be responsible teenagers. They did not however, trust us to be responsible enough to take care of our younger brother, Mike, for a week – and probably rightfully so - he stayed at a friend's house. It was Friday or Saturday night – I don’t remember which – and Bobby went his way with his friends, and I went my way with mine. I got home first; it was late and I went to bed. Bobby got home some time later…but he forgot his house key. Instead of doing what a normal person would do – knock on the front door, which was next to my bedroom, or even lean over the porch, and knock on my bedroom window – he came up with a plan only a teenage brother could devise. He could get into the garage; it wasn’t locked. The door from the garage to the mudroom was though. But in the garage was the attic access…and in my bedroom closet was another attic access. It wasn’t a finished attic – except for a plywood platform for storage near the garage access, the rest of the attic was just rafters. So in the pitch dark, my brother shimmies himself along the narrow beams, sliding across the entire length of the house, and plops down in my bedroom closet. Brothers can be so annoying.
The story that came up in the “Closet Creeper” drill though, I wasn’t exactly sure was true. First clue was that it appeared on a tabloid-type of “news” publication. It went something like this:
In 2008, A 57-year-old man in Japan notices some small, but odd things going on in his house. Objects would be moved. Food mysteriously disappeared. He’d wake up to strange noises in the night. Every time he’d get out of bed to investigate, he’d find nothing out of the ordinary. His doors and windows were locked, and no one was in his house. After several months of these strange occurrences , he set up surveillance cameras throughout his house. “The next morning, he ran back the footage on the camera and that's when he saw it. A strange woman crawling out of a closet like it was the TV in The Ring. And if you think that's terrifying, imagine what happened inside his stomach when, at the end of the video, she crawled back into the closet. The one that was just a couple of feet away from where he was standing, watching the video.” – per the tabloid publication. The man called the police, who searched the house. They found a woman huddled in a small closet…and she’d been living there undetected for an entire year!
Creepy as hell, but it doesn’t seem possible. I did a side drill, and yes, it is a true story - mostly. It was reported by every major news source to include the Associated Press and Reuters. The tabloid publication though, added a few embellishments to make the story creepier. The man didn’t hear noises during the night; he only noticed food was missing. He was not home when he watched the surveillance video; the live feed was transmitted to his phone while he was out of the house. The video didn’t show “a strange woman” crawling out of his closet; it only showed someone walking through a room. The police though, did find a homeless woman in the upper compartment of his closet – where she kept a small mattress and a supply of water bottles; she ate and showered whenever the man left the house. And she had being doing it for a year. Not as creepy as the tabloid reported, but still creepy if you stop to think about it. More reliable news sources report that the woman was neat and clean; when arrested for trespassing, she simply stated, “I didn’t have anywhere to live.”
But what if it wasn’t just a homeless woman needing a place to stay. What if it's someone - or something with more nefarious intents. What if you’re home alone, and get the uneasy feeling that you’re being watched. What if you’re asleep, and are startled awake by a noise. A noise coming from your closet. You see your closet door slooowly open. A shadow within moves. A voice calls your name.
And you don’t have an annoying teenage brother.
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Post by stepper on Oct 31, 2021 18:23:44 GMT -6
Thanks for the stories Phalon - and the Imp should give you back at least half of the candy. Tell her we all said good-nite since she'll be leaving soon.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 31, 2021 22:27:47 GMT -6
I didn't get around to posting as nearly as many as I drilled. As always. But there is one more little bit before the night is over. Remember that little creepy cottage in the creepy woods by the lake we rented about a month ago...and the last entry in the guest book, dated 2017? "Don't listen to the voices. Don't look at the lights. And ignore...but respect the graves." We stumbled...and I mean literally stumbled...upon the creepy little cemetery that was as neglected as was the cottage. We even uprighted a lot of the statues next to the graves that had toppled over, and cleaned fallen brush off the headstones. Still, we didn't know exactly what it was that we stumbled upon. I mean, it's not every day you come across a cemetery like that....or every person that makes a cemetery in their backyard. BP texted her former landlord, the cottage's owner, asking him about it. "It's were I buried the ashes of loved ones. And some animals", he replied. Uhm... Ok. Our entry in the guest book, four years after the one prior, read in part: "We listened to the voices. We looked at the lights. We did not ignore...but respected the graves." Yeah, we saw, heard, and did it all that weekend. Good night. Sleep tight. Hope you make it through the night! Happy Halloween!
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Post by Phalon on Feb 10, 2022 8:30:56 GMT -6
It's February: Black History Month.
The other night I watched an excellent PBS documentary made a couple of years ago, titled "Jim Crow of the North". It documents real estate inequality brought on by "racial covenants", which was prevalent between 1910 and the late 60s, when the Fair Housing Act was passed. Basically a racial covenant is a legal and binding contract written into a homeowner deed that states the property will never be sold, leased, or rented to anyone of any race other than White. Because cities were expanding in the early 1900s, these covenants encompassed huge swaths of land as it was being developed. This lead to another practice further making it more difficult for POC to own a home - "red-lining". The federal government drew maps of cities, with areas where POC lived marked in red because they were largely made up of an "undesirable population". Red-lined areas enabled banks to charge higher mortgage rates, and discouraged investors from infrastructure development. In other words, "green-lined" areas became wealthier, and "red-lined" areas more impoverished.
The documentary discusses Minneapolis specifically, but both racial covenants and red-lining were used all across the United States. "Jim Crow of the North" is a very eye-opening program, definitely worth watching.
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 10, 2022 21:19:45 GMT -6
It's such a shame that this was done to fellow human beings. I've seen articles about black communities in the past that were attacked and wiped out. Little to no people surviving. I was told that my county did not treat blacks well at all in years past. When I was in second grade, they had to shut down the black school, and all of the adults would talk in hushed whispers. So, I was expecting something really awful to happen at my school, and flabbergasted when it was only four black kids joining my classroom. Thankfully, there were no protests and mistreatment, that I witnessed. And all of the blacks lived in mostly one town, and were clustered in a small part of the town that wasn't taken much care of. To this day, there is a nearby county that black people will not enter for fear of being harmed. My heart breaks when I hear such awful stories of what went on, and what still goes on even now.
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