Dare We Share Some Spooky Stories?

[Spookie Monster]

On September 30, 2008, yours truly proposed that the fine members of Elliquiy engage in a round of hyakumonogatari kaidankai, the ancient Japanese tradition where people tell stories amid one hundred candles, extinguishing them as they go.  The response was positive, so I reintroduced the idea the following year; in addition, because we hadn't actually told the full one hundred stories the first time around, we simply continued on from where we left off.  (I just resurrected the thread, incidentally -- that is, the first two years of our storytelling appear in that single thread.)  In subsequent years we went on to share further stories here, here, here, and here.  Finally... well, let us say only that when that one-hundredth candle was blown out, we were rewarded, or perhaps punished, for our efforts.

We'd completed our round of hyakumonogatari kaidankai.  Needless to say, though, many stories, and much passion to share said stories, remained.  Therefore, at the onset of 2014's Season of the Witch I proposed following our round of hyakumonogatari kaidankai with a round of de duizenderotischeprikkennacht, the ancient Dutch tradition where people gather together to tell one thousand spooky stories; when that one-thousandth story is concluded, it is said that a wonderful and strange visitation from the Otherworld will occur.  2014's thread appears here; 2015's here; 2016's here; 2017's, 2018's, and 2019's here, here, and here, respectively; 2020's appears here; and last season's thread appears here.

Worth noting is that the stories that we told from 2008 through 2020 spanned thirteen years -- a cycle both mystical and portentous.  In completing that cycle and beginning another last season, thus paying homage to the tremendous power of the Spirit of Thirteen, we may have avoided a curse that would have condemned us to tell the same stories to one another over and over and over throughout eternity.  (Perhaps; perhaps not; I admit some conjecture here.)  We are now spinning in a nascent cycle; "we are free to dive, or soar, or run"!  And, of course, we have many tales left to tell if we are to fully realize our round of de duizenderotischeprikkennacht.

So?  So this: If you have a spooky story to share, please post it in this thread.  It might have happened to you; it might have happened to someone else.  It can be short or long, simple or sly.  It can be completely true or even maybe-could-be-possibly-ever-so-slightly less than completely true.  Ghost stories, urban legends, eerie folktales, disquieting anecdotes, and chilling news reports are all welcome indeed.  Stories can be creepy, eerie, gory, funny.  Even twice-told tales shall not provoke auricular vexation.  I would be delighted if you were to tell multiple stories, although I do ask that you include only one story per post.  Finally, please give credit where credit is due.  Editing or tweaking a source is perfectly acceptable.  Your own stories are not simply permitted -- they're encouraged.  Perhaps this will prove the year that we finally find out who was phone!

So where to begin, or resume, or reboot?  Hmmm...  You know, our fresh cycle allows, nay, demands a medley of yarns, now doesn't it?  In contrast to the last few years, therefore, when I myself pursued a specific theme, I for one just plan to spin where the spinnin' is good...

For my first, I think that I'd like to bring you a story in dissonant harmony with the very first story that I told during our round of hyakumonogatari kaidankai way back in 2008.  That one concerned a figure who slinks through Japanese urban legend with scissors and slit mouth -- the kuchisake-onna.  This one concerns her cousin, known as Teke-Teke; I'm drawing from here.


Teke-Teke

One evening, a boy, Eita, was leaving his school when he heard a noise behind him.  Looking back, he spotted a beautiful girl sitting at a window.  The mysterious girl had her arms resting on the windowsill and she was just staring out at him.  Smitten, he smiled at her; she smiled back.  He wondered why she was there -- after all, it was an all-boys school.

With that, the girl hugged herself so that she was holding her elbows.  Then, without warning, she procured a vicious scythe from the shadows behind her and, lunging out of the window, landed on the concrete a story below.

Eita stood frozen, though not from the gleam of the scythe.  The girl was missing the lower half of her body: all that remained was a gory stump, if it could be called as much.

She raced toward him, leaving a broad smear of blood behind her.  Skittering along the pavement, running on her elbows, she made a teke-teke-teke-teke-teke sound.  Eita could only watch, wide-eyed and slack-jawed; within seconds, she swept her scythe and chopped him in half at the waist, making him into one of her own.


Teke-teke-teke-teke-teke...

Spel

[Spookie Monster]

Some time back one of Elliquiy's tutelary spirits graciously passed the following tale along to me; I'm now passing it along to you.  (Many thanks to said spirit -- both for the tale itself and for always working so diligently throughout the site.)  Having lived for realz in Transylvania once upon a time, this ol' ghost is certainly swirled by it.  Stoke the fire and fire up your imagination as you visit... the "Mansion."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7sOtuwVJMQ


Our adventures have begun -- but only begun, and only just begun, for the lands beyond the veil have many mansions, each with many rooms.  Do you have a spooky story to share?

Spel

[GloomCookie]

I'll share a story from where I grew up and one based on my own experiences.



It's late at night when engine 25 departs the station, making it a few miles out of town when suddenly and without warning, the train slows and comes to a stop. Concerned one of the wheel brakes had engaged, the conductor got out and started walking up and down the train looking for the source of the problem, swinging his lantern as he went. He checked every wheel along the train as he went, but could not find the problem. He was looking under the last set of wheels when the engine suddenly lurched into motion, causing the conductor to become pinned and lose his head.

A few days later engine 25 is leaving the station, again late at night, and gets a few miles outside of town when it again slows and comes to a complete stop. The new conductor gets out and starts inspecting the wheels for the source of the problem and is about to check the last set of wheels when he spots a light coming down the tracks. He stops and holds up his lantern to see who it is, and is shocked to see it was the previous conductor walking down the tracks, swinging his lantern and trying to find his head.



Old dormitories on college campuses are always the worse. They smell strange, are often drafty, and they are no stranger to unusual phenomena, from stupid pranks to what can only be described as the supernatural. While I lived in mine, we had the following.

The Banshee
On more than one occasion I would be studying late at night when I would hear a woman screaming. The sound would come from one end of the hall and run to to the other past my door. The first time I could understand, but it didn't stop... sometimes it would happen multiple times a week, even several times per night, though if you ever opened your door the sound would stop almost as quickly as it had begun. Even asking around, no one seemed to know what was happening, but all could recall hearing it. I would discover later that it was the final screaming of a woman who'd been chased down the halls before being brutally murdered by a jealous ex-boyfriend.

The Black Ceiling
Being a dorm, naturally the showers and toilets are communal, but it was always the bathroom on the second floor on the east end that had black ceilings. At first I thought it was mold, but it was far too consistent, and then thought it was just painted black for some reason. No, apparently no matter how often they'd paint the ceiling white year after year, it always turned black within a few days. No one ever found out why.

The Unending Alarm Clock
Everyone's been late to class because they slept in, sure, but what about the empty dorm at the end of the hall? Every day, regardless of what day it was, there was a dorm that always had an alarm clock going off. It was one of those digital ones that beeped, and it never, ever, stopped. I asked the RA if they could step in and do something about it, and they told me that no one lived there, and was empty as far as they knew. Every time someone went in to turn off the alarm, it stopped as soon as they opened the door. It beeped from the day I moved in to the day I moved out.

The Chaste Elevator
This was in a different dorm nearby. It was tall enough to justify its own elevator, but only one, and there was a weird rule printed on a piece of paper in the lobby that said simply "No couples" and had a man and woman side by side with a no symbol over it. I thought it was bullshit of course. I'd find out later that whenever two people, a boy and a girl, rode the elevator it would always just drop a floor or two. It never did it with a pair of guys or pair of girls or multiple people, only if there was a couple in the elevator.

[Valerian]

When Brad Culp was a student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, there was a rumor that the town was one of the most haunted places in America. When Culp started an on-campus magazine, he couldn’t wait to write about several of the area’s most famous phantoms. Not long after his story published, though, he kept finding himself thinking about one ghost in particular—the ghost of Oxford Milford Road.

As the story goes, many decades ago, probably sometime in the 1940s, there was a young man courting a young woman in a rural part of town. Because the woman’s parents didn’t approve of the match, each night he visited under the cover of darkness. After her parents went to bed, the young woman would sneak out of her farmhouse and flash the lights of her parent’s car three times. Then her young suitor would ride his motorcycle down the road.

“One night he took the turn right before her house a little too sharp,” says Culp. The motorcycle went one way, he went the other. His injuries were so severe that he did not survive. Rumor has it, however, that his lovestruck ghost still haunts this stretch of Milford Road.

Curious, Culp, his girlfriend (now his wife), and a friend decided to head out there one night to see if they could verify the tale. His girlfriend was worried she’d be completely freaked out. “She believes more in that stuff than I do,” Culp says. But he was mostly concerned that his suspicions—that none of this was actually true—would be confirmed. On this particular night, as Culp passed the abandoned farm, an idea came to him, and he pitched it to his girlfriend (how could she not say yes?). Though reluctant, she relented, and Culp turned a short way into the farmhouse driveway.

He killed the engine and flashed his lights three times. “No joke, there was a single headlight that appeared three-quarters of a mile down the road,” Culp says. “You saw it start to come, going pretty slow. It kept coming and coming. My wife was freaking out. It was coming closer and closer.” As a collision seemed imminent, Culp turned on his car’s lights. He expected to see a kid on a bike, bailing out from his prank now that he’d been caught. “But there’s nothing there. The light is just gone,” he says.

They got out of the car. They walked around, trying to figure out what it was they could have seen. “To this day, we still talk about it. I saw something I cannot explain,” he says. If you get him and his wife around a campfire, they’ll swear up and down that the story is true. And if you’re ever in Oxford, Ohio, consider parking for just a few minutes on Oxford Milford Road at night to test your own nerve.

[Lilias]

When my sister Betsy and I were kids, our family lived for awhile in a charming old farmhouse. We loved exploring its dusty corners and climbing the apple tree in the backyard. But our favorite thing was the ghost.

We called her Mother, because she seemed so kind and nurturing. Some mornings Betsy and I would wake up, and on each of our nightstands, we’d find a cup that hadn’t been there the night before. Mother had left them there, worried that we’d get thirsty during the night. She just wanted to take care of us.

Among the house’s original furnishings was an antique wooden chair, which we kept against the back wall of the living room. Whenever we were preoccupied, watching TV or playing a game, Mother would inch that chair forward, across the room, toward us. Sometimes she’d manage to move it all the way to the center of the room. We always felt sad putting it back against the wall. Mother just wanted to be near us.

Years later, long after we’d moved out, I found an old newspaper article about the farmhouse’s original occupant, a widow. She’d murdered her two children by giving them each a cup of poisoned milk before bed. Then she’d hanged herself.

The article included a photo of the farmhouse’s living room, with a woman’s body hanging from a beam. Beneath her, knocked over, was that old wooden chair, placed exactly in the center of the room.

(By whoeverfightsmonster on Reddit)

[Spookie Monster]

Welcome, Valerian and Lilias!  The Snoop Sisters were neat enough, I guess, but you Spook Sisters are much cooler.  Thank you for always joining us and bringing us such great stories!

So, whither now?  The possibilities lie even beyond our collective imagination, for, as has oft been noted, reality is not subject to such risible limits...

You know? -- let's go back, back, back.  Fear, after all, is old -- far older than humanity itself -- and some of the earliest recorded stories are devoted to the spooky.  Now, we need not go back to the very beginning -- not to those Sumerian and Egyptian tales of ghosts and demons -- juuust far enough to remind ourselves that the more things change, the more they stay the same.*

With that in mind, please let me now present a passage from Petronius' Satyricon, a contemporary novel published in the burgeoning Roman Empire.  It features a story told over dinner that involves a beastie who's as recognizable now as two thousand years ago.  (Interested parties might be interested in an equally familiar, and interesting, story from Ancient Greece that we once pondered here...)


Don't Think I'm Joking

Well now, after all had wished themselves health and good sense, Trimalchio glanced at Niceros, saying: "You used to be better company at dinner: I wonder why there's not a murmur from you, not a sound.  I beg you, think of my happiness, tell us something that happened to you."  Niceros, delighted by his friend's amiability, said: "Let all profit pass me by, if I'm not ready to burst with joy, at seeing you in such good humour.  Well, let it be purely in fun then, though I fear lest your learned friends laugh at me.  Let them laugh, I'll still say on: what harm does it do me, whoever may laugh?  Better to be laughed at than scorned."

Once he had spoken these words, he began the following tale:

"While I was yet a slave, we lived in a narrow alley; the house is now Gavilla's.  There, the gods willed that I fell in love with the wife of Terentius the innkeeper: you remember her, Melissa from Taranto, a lovely plump little woman.  But, by heavens, it wasn't a physical thing, a sexual passion, but rather because she was kindly by nature.  If I asked her for anything, she never refused me; if she earned any money I had half; whatever I had I put in her purse, and was never cheated.

"Now one day her husband died at the country house.  So I decided to find a way to come at her, by hook or by crook: furthermore, in dire straits your friends become apparent.  By chance, my master had gone to Capua, to discharge some business.  Seizing the opportunity, I persuaded a guest of ours to come with me as far as the fifth milestone.  He was a soldier too, and brave as anything.  So we took ourselves off about cockcrow, the moonlight bright as noon.

"We arrived among the wayside tombs: my companion began to do his business behind the gravestones; I sat down, my heart singing, and counted the same.  Glancing round at my friend, I saw he had stripped off his clothes and placed them by the roadside.  Heart in mouth, I stood there like a dead man, as he pissed all round his clothes, then suddenly turned into a wolf.  Don't think I'm joking; no amount of money would make me lie about this.

"Well, as I started to tell you, after he'd turned into a wolf, he began to howl, and fled into the woods.  I hardly knew where I was, at first, then I went to gather his clothes: but they'd all turned to stone.  Who could be more terrified than I was?  But I drew my sword and went along slaying shadows, all the way to my love's house.  A mere ghost, I entered, boasting barely a breath of life, sweat pouring down my legs, eyes like the dead, scarce able to be revived.

"Dear Melissa began expressing surprise at my arriving so late, and said: 'If you'd come earlier you could have helped us, at least; a wolf got into the yard, worried all the sheep, and shed their blood like a butcher.  However he won't be laughing, even though he fled, since our man pierced his neck with a spear.'  On hearing this, I could open my eyes no wider, but rushed back to my master's house, in broad daylight, as if I'd been robbed and, when I reached the spot where the clothes were turned to stone, found nothing but a pool of blood.

"Yet when I arrived home, my soldier was lying in bed like an ox, with a doctor dressing his neck.  I realised he was a werewolf and could never sit down to eat with him thereafter, not if you'd threatened me with death.  Others can decide on an explanation; but your guardian spirits may torment me if I lie."

We were all struck dumb with wonder.  "Bless your tale, if it's true," cried Trimalchio, "how my hair stood on end, since I know Niceros never talks nonsense: he's solid and not garrulous."


By the way, you do like those terrifying, seasonally-released "monster" breakfast cereals, don't you? -- vampiric Count Chocula, ghostly Boo Berry, Adamic Franken Berry?  Well, if you haven't heard, this year They™ are also releasing the rare lycanthropic Frute Brute, beloved of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, among others.  If you like breakfast cereal that tastes like cough syrup and you're located in a region where it can be bought, therefore, break out the moolah!

Spel


* Originally for this entry I did consider passing along a letter that was discovered in a tomb dated to Ancient Egypt's Middle Kingdom; in it, a man pleads with his ghostly wife to just stop haunting him, for cryin' out loud.  Alas, said letter is about as dry as a mummy..

[Spookie Monster]

We've gone with something old; now, how about something new?  I could use "new" to mean "recent," obviously, and tell a modern tale to contrast with the antiquity of the Roman one.  Instead, though, I'm going to use "new" here to mean "young."  Have you been introduced to the Faroese niðagrísur?  (I'm drawing from here and here.)


The Niðagrísur

In the folklore of the Faroe Islands, a niðagrísur is the ghost of a newborn or an infant that was murdered without having been christened.  Round and dark brown, it is an apparition no bigger than a ball of yarn, searching for its missing name.  Usually it scurries around on all fours; sometimes it rolls around.  It's said that if it's able to pass between a person's legs, that person will not survive a year.

Historically it was believed that mothers were most often harassed by these dreadful spirits, because they were most often suspected of the murders themselves: It was claimed that, due to Scandinavia's living conditions and harsh climate, mothers regularly killed their unwanted or weak children after giving birth.  These ghosts also commonly haunted priests, however, demanding that they be christened; if they were christened, they would disappear immediately and forever.

The following story of a niðagrísur is quite typical:

Long ago, a servant girl had an illegitimate child, killed it, and buried it in a stocking belonging to a servant man called Pisli (he was not the father).  Sometime afterwards she married Pisli; and the bridal dance was underway in the big kitchen when suddenly a niðagrísur rolled into the circle and danced about, singing,

My mother bears gold,
I dance in wool,
I dance in Pisli's hose.

Then he ran on all fours to his mother; but she fainted, and the festivities were at an end.


"The festivities were at an end."  You don't say!

Hmmm.  Anyhow, our festivities are not at an end.  Do you have a spooky story to share?

Spel

[Valerian]

 Jean l'Ecorcheur -- also known as John the Flayer -- was a butcher by trade who had his shop and home on the grounds where Queen Catherine de Medici decided to build her new palace that would be known as the Tuileries. She enlisted him to carry out dark deeds for her, some political and others for occult reasons. Some believed that he provided human viscera for her acts of witchcraft.  There is no doubt that John the Skinner had knowledge of many secrets, some were about the Queen, and others were about the powerful lords and ladies he was instructed to spy upon. In other words he knew where all the bodies were buried.

What motivated Catherine's assassin to turn against her is unknown. Some claim that he wanted to leave her employ, but she refused to give him an allowance so he could retire into obscurity. Others believed that she started to fear all the knowledge that he had about her nefarious acts.

As the story goes, John the Flayer imprudently talked about the Queen to force her hand to pay him off. In some versions it's about her lack of morality, in others it's to stir political opinion against her as a "foreigner". Whatever the motive, Catherine knew of only one solution to this problem, which was to assassinate the assassin.

Catherine chose a knight of Neuville to carry out the murder. He waited until night when Jean l'Ecorcheur was unarmed and staying at a small shack in the garden of the Tuileries.  The butcher tried to defend himself, but he could not withstand the onslaught. He was strangled, and pierced by the knight's sword. As he lay dying bathed in blood he said, "Be cursed, you and your masters! I'll be back!" The knight for good measure slit his throat and Jean l'Ecorcheur gurgled as he drowned in his life's blood. Once his eyes became glassy and unseeing, the knight left convinced he killed the man.

As he traveled down a dark and deserted alley he felt as if a hostile presence followed him. When he turned around, out of the shadows the image of John the Flayer stepped forward, dripping with blood and looking at him defiantly.  He thrust his sword towards the apparition and encountered only empty air. He hurried back to where he had left the butcher's body, but inside the ravaged cabin he found nothing but the pallet where the corpse once lay.

Jean was said to have haunted Catherine and many other members of the French royal family, and even Napoleon was said to have spotted the specter.  To this day he is thought to roam the halls of the Louvre Museum, frightening visitors and employees alike.

[Lilias]

Have you ever walked into a room and found a vampire?

No, not the sexy kind, but a foul creature with bony limbs and ashen skin? The kind that snarls as you enter, like a beast about to pounce? The kind that roots you to the spot with its sunken, hypnotic eyes, rendering you unable to flee as you watch the hideous thing uncoil from the shadows? Has your heart started racing though your legs refuse to? Have you felt time slow as the creature crosses the room in the darkness of a blink?

Have you shuddered with fear when it places one clawed hand atop your head and another under your chin so it can tilt you, exposing your neck? Have you squirmed as its rough, dry tongue slides down your cheek, over your jaw, to your throat, in a slithering search that’s seeking your artery? Have you felt its hot breath release in a hiss against your skin when it probes your pulse—the flow that leads to your brain? Has its tongue rested there, throbbing slightly as if savoring the moment? Have you then experienced a sinking, sucking blackness as you discover that not all vampires feed on blood—some feed on memories?

Well, have you?

Maybe not. But let me rephrase the question:

Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly forgotten why you came in?

(By IPostAtMidnight on Reddit)

[Valerian]

On August 4, 1892, Andrew and wife Abby Borden were found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home. Though murder wasn’t uncommon in the late 1800s, the fact that they were bludgeoned to death with an ax and the main suspect was their 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie Borden, certainly was.
The crime and trial that followed made headlines around the world. Lizzie was ultimately acquitted of murder, but she remains forever linked to the heinous killings as does the home where they were committed.

Now a bed-and-breakfast, the Borden home attracts history buffs and thrill-seekers drawn to the scene of the crime out of morbid curiosity and to see for themselves if the house lives up to its reputation of being haunted.

“When I started working here, it was more of the history, I really didn’t care about the paranormal,” said Suzanne St. John, Century 21 realtor and tour guide at the Historic Lizzie Borden House.

That changed after St. John experienced a few unusual happenings of her own.

“Guests tell us they hear laughing and playing in the middle of the night, things get moved around,” she said, explaining that she once found toys scattered around a room that no one had been in.  There was also a picture that fell over and slid two feet across the floor without any plausible explanation. Plus, a closet door that opened on its own volition.

St. John said that on the eve of the anniversary of Andrew and Abby’s murder, she and two other tour guides felt sudden sharp, piercing pains in their left eye — the same exact location of Andrew Borden’s fatal injuries.

Perhaps the most unnerving, however, is a story St. John tells of a tour guide at the Lizzie Borden house who asked her group to silence their cell phones before starting the tour. Moments later, a guest’s cell phone rang, she looked up and said, “It’s my mom.”

The tour guide asked if she wanted to leave and take the call, to which the woman replied, “She died two years ago.”

[Azy]

I recently went to visit a friend in his new apartment in Houston.  It's a fairly new building, finished around this time last year.  The first two nights we slept on his couches because he didn't have a bed yet.  When his bed was delivered and set up, I went to bed before he did.  I don't remember where he went or why, but I was alone, at least I thought so.  I felt someone get into the bed and snuggle up to me like one would a romantic partner.  A hand caressed my side.  I was still very much awake, but I didn't feel threatened, so I went to sleep.  It felt like a very feminine energy. 

I told my friend about this the next day.  He said the very first night he spent there he felt a woman's hand caressing his back as he was trying to fall asleep.  Also, his balcony door had a habit of opening and closing all on its own randomly.   

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you very much, Valerian and Lilias!  More creepy creepers.  Mmm, and welcome, Azy!  Thank you very much for bringing us that story -- eerie, but equally interesting!

"Something old," "something new"; "something borrowed" would be a (super)natural progression, now wouldn't it...?

Hmmm.  Perhaps you'd be entertained by a story that involves, but is hardly limited to, the most iniquitous kind of borrowing: that of possession.  The "Conjuring Universe" represents a series of films and comic books based on the experiences of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (both now dwelling on this side of the Veil).  Its maiden offering, 2013's The Conjuring, tells the tale of a farmhouse in Rhode Island that's being haunted by the spirit of a witch who seems to take some satisfaction in possessing others.  That would be frightening enough; but did you know that the film itself and its immediate sequel were gripped by sinister events?


Bizarre Things That Happened on the Set of The Conjuring

A lot of people are a little superstitious.  We often have lucky numbers or lucky sweaters and little idiosyncrasies we've picked up from our cultures, families, and experiences.  And even if you wouldn't classify yourself as superstitious, you might get a little nervous if you found yourself in a place that was notoriously haunted.  And the set of a horror film allegedly based on a true story?  That's enough to give pause to even the most stoic among us.

For a fictional film that sprang out of a true story, The Conjuring spawned quite a few real-life scary stories of its own.  The 2013 horror film wasn't just a ghost story: By many accounts, the "spirit" of the story really came alive on set.

A spiritual setting

Just as it's not a typical horror film, the inspiration for The Conjuring was also not the traditional story.  Most fans of the horror universe know that it's based on the real-life case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the husband-and-wife paranormal investigative team who rose to prominence in both the paranormal and entertainment worlds.

The writers, directors, and producers on The Conjuring and its sequels consulted extensively with the real-life Lorraine Warren until her death in 2019 (sadly, Ed Warren passed in 2006 before he was able to see the film adaptation of the Perron case).  What's fascinating is that this story in particular, out of all of their cases, had a profound effect on the Warrens themselves: The late Ed Warren himself insisted to producer Tony DeRosa-Grund that the first film made explicitly about his and his wife's investigations be based on the Perron case.

There are other films, like those based on the Amityville haunting, that are indirectly inspired by cases the Warrens have investigated, but none of them had yet focused so specifically on the investigators themselves as main characters along with the families experiencing the hauntings.  The Perron case clearly carries a great significance and left quite an impact on the Warrens, just as it would on its cast, crew, and audience.  This particular set likely brought some palpable spiritual energy with it.

Vera Farmiga certainly felt that presence

The actors who played the Warrens were strongly affected by both the Perron case and its dramatization, just like their real-life counterparts -- and not just because it spawned a successful film franchise whose universe is still growing today.  No, there were some things that happened during the production of The Conjuring that were too creepy to be coincidence.

Vera Farmiga, for example, portrayed Lorraine Warren, who professed herself to be a clairvoyant medium.  Lorraine's intrinsic connection to the spiritual world seems to have rubbed off on the actress who portrayed her, because Farmiga found herself mysteriously and repeatedly waking up between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning on set.

It's jarring enough to note that this time frame is commonly known as "the witching hour" or "the devil's hour," a time of night associated with heightened supernatural activity due to the belief that witches, ghosts, demons, and the like reach their greatest power during this window and that the line between life and death, physical and supernatural, is at its thinnest.  But it gets even creepier than that: In this particular film, the specific time window in which the witch character, Bathsheba, died was during this "witching hour."  Farmiga was so shaken by the experience that it was she who pointed out to the director the uncanniness of this connection.  The actress's sleep troubles persisted even after the movie wrapped.

The mysterious claw marks

In addition to sleep disturbances, Farmiga also dealt with mysterious claw marks that seemed to follow her wherever she went, even transcending both physical and digital barriers.  The first time she encountered a set of three mysterious claw marks, they appeared on her computer screen, an interesting choice for a spirit to reveal itself.

She had been working on her laptop, then closed it normally to take a phone call about being in The Conjuring, a phone call in which she expressed both her interest in the project and her desire to have Patrick Wilson play the part of her husband, saying that if he was in, she was in.  When she opened her laptop again, she found three diagonal, digital claw marks descending from right to left.

Later on set, she again discovered three claw marks, but this time they cropped up much closer to home: The marks now appeared on her thigh.  That was the last time they showed up, thankfully.  And Farmiga did admit that the claw marks that appeared on her computer were slightly different (a little thicker) from those that appeared on her leg.

Bruise it or lose it

Speaking of bodily marks: Joey King, the actress playing Christine -- one of the five Perron daughters -- also apparently ended up covered in strange bruises after just a couple of weeks of shooting, despite not being involved in any of her character's stunts.  Patrick Wilson revealed in an interview that there was no rational explanation for why a child would sustain such marks on set, as the production was very strict about not putting the children in physical danger for stunts or any other reason.  And King never had a bruising problem before -- or since.

One of the craziest parts about this occurrence is that while she wouldn't have encountered any sort of physical danger on set that would have resulted in the bruises, there was a bit of a connection between these marks and The Conjuring.  In the film itself, Christine's mother Carolyn does wake up with bruises, establishing it as a method that the spirit world uses to reach into the physical world.

The artifacts room set was a little too real

You might know how important the "special artifacts room" is in the The Conjuring universe.  In fact, it is the locus of the Annabelle spin-off franchise, as we first meet the famous Annabelle doll in this very room in The Conjuring.  The spin-off series of films follows the initial evil infestation of the Annabelle doll, its various violent escapades preceding the events of The Conjuring, and the Warrens' eventual confiscation of the doll and placement in the consecrated glass box in the artifacts room.

The Warrens kept relics from all of their cases, not only as reminders of the lessons they learned, the evil they encountered, and the people they helped, but because destroying the most evil and cursed artifacts doesn't destroy the evil itself, only the vessel.

The artifacts room itself looks like a cross between an antique shop and a museum.  The Warrens' objects were guarded with extreme care, but it's terrifying to even think about having a collection like that in your basement.  It was probably pretty scary just having a replica built on set, and the scariest part of all is that some of the artifacts on the set seemed to have a life and nature all their own.

This was probably the phenomenon confirmed by the greatest number of people, including producer Rob Cowan: Certain objects, most notably a specific wooden pig, mysteriously kept moving all around the room.

Lights, camera, premonition

When the family visited the set of the film, one of the original Perron girls told co-writer Chad Hayes with conviction that she had a feeling something bad was going to happen that day.  Later that day, to the shock of production and family alike, the girls' now-elderly mother fell and broke her hip so seriously that they had to operate and replace it that day.  The family got the phone call right after the incident with Cindy and the witch -- and when the rest of the family left the set to tend to their mother, the poor woman's first reaction was that it was Bathsheba trying to do something to her.

Coincidence or not, she was the only one who hadn't come to visit the set, and the family all had to leave to attend to her.  She had also been the one who appeared to get the brunt of the witch's wrath: The husband even said that he had had "good" experiences with the presence in their house, while his wife felt so tortured that she insisted they leave.

While her accident didn't happen on set, it alarmed everyone involved, especially those who had heard the daughter's prediction.  And if Bathsheba's vendetta really had been focused primarily on the mom, perhaps the witch was still able to send a message even over a distance.

Even one of the movie's writers was haunted

Writer Carey Hayes actually had to confide in the real Lorraine Warren on the set of The Conjuring about something he was going through -- something Lorraine seemed to think was connected to the fact that he was spending his days on set and away from home.  While Hayes was away, his wife would find mysterious water formations, appearing around his house without explanation.

At first, he thought his elderly dog was to blame, and his first response was to remind his wife that the dog had bladder problems and needed to be taken out frequently.  But his wife insisted that not only had she taken the dog out, but that the water didn't smell at all despite requiring three huge beach towels to be cleaned up.

Finally, Lorraine deduced that Hayes was dealing with a water poltergeist.  She informed him that spirits often reveal themselves more when men are away and women are home alone and defenseless, so wives and mothers often encounter more of the supernatural.  Additionally, a water poltergeist feeds off adolescent angst, which is why the water formations always appeared after a spat between Hayes and one of his teenage sons.  Once he understood the presence, Hayes was able to get to the root of the situation.

Patrick Wilson, too, says that his house is haunted, and has also confided in Lorraine, but overall the actor seems to have a more "devil-may-care" attitude about it.

The creepiness continued on The Conjuring 2

If the set of the first film was "haunted" based simply on its relationship to its supernatural subject, imagine the fear inspired by not only shooting a second film, but doing so in a notoriously haunted studio at Warner Bros.  Apparently, Studio 4 is the "most haunted" sound stage on the premises.

On that allegedly accursed ground, The Conjuring 2 placed one of horror's most infamous stories and most creepily accurate sets, which added to the general feeling of unease.  Frances O'Connor revealed that a priest actually blessed the set at the beginning of production, but apparently this wasn't enough to stop some unsettling things from going on.  Reports from the location attest to the fact that there were sounds of construction, like drilling and hammering, under the set on the haunted studio even when there was no actual construction and no one even wandering about down below.

Pictures or it didn't happen

Mysterious sounds weren't the only creepy things that happened on The Conjuring 2.  When Leigh Whannell, who wrote and starred in James Wan's 2010 horror film Insidious, stopped by to visit his old friend, photos from Insidious mysteriously showed up on his iPad.  This was despite the fact that they weren't even saved to his PC or iPad at all.  He couldn't get rid of them, either.

And while Wan was focused on directing -- so much so that he said he wouldn't have noticed if a ghost appeared right next to him -- a crew member ended up taking a video of curtains repeatedly moving by themselves.  This happened after everyone had wrapped production for the day and gone home, with just a few of the crew left on the sound stage.  At the far end of the stage, a set of huge curtain drapes started to move on their own and continued to do so even though the air conditioning was off and none of the doors were open.

Patrick Wilson took the video and showed it to Wan.  The craziest part was, in the video, the person behind the camera walks up to the curtains and looks behind them to find no one and nothing responsible for the movement.

Nothing we can see, anyway.


"Something old," "something new," "something borrowed"... "something blue"?  Dare we?

Spel

[Spookie Monster]

The "blue" in this case will refer to the Deep Blue Sea, home of countless events both mysterious and horrifying.  We could whisper about ghost ships, ghost divers, cursed pirate treasures, sea serpents, the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil's Sea, vanishing ships and submarines, vanishing crews, USOs -- "unidentified submerged objects" -- or, heck, carnivorous seaweed.  Oh, or sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads, obvs.

This time, though, I'd like to relate a tale remarkable for not one but two uncanny elements, each of which would on its own be concerning.  Please welcome Richard Parker, and his terrible fate, and the ocean of strange coincidences (?) born of that terrible fate.


Cannibal Castaways and Incredible Coincidences

There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them.

- Edgar Allan Poe             

Arthur Koestler was a famous writer and researcher who bequeathed his fortune to found a chair for the study of the paranormal at Edinburgh University.  In 1974 he offered a prize for the most extraordinary coincidence to be sent him.  My cousin Nigel won.  But the weird story he unearthed was only the start of a run of peculiar events that have plagued our family ever since.

Dinner on 25 July 1884 will always be remembered in our family because of the unusual main course: my grandfather's cousin, a 17-year-old cabin boy called Richard Parker.

Our family roots are in Woolston on Southampton Water.  And, like many of my family before and after him, Richard ran away to sea.  He boarded the Mignonette, a ship built on the Thames for an Australian millionaire who wanted to explore the Great Barrier Reef.

The captain of the vessel, Tom Dudley, had trouble commissioning a crew for her long voyage, so to avoid delay her owner went on ahead by ocean liner.  Later the Mignonette, with Edwin Stephens as mate and Edmund Brooks as hand, left Southampton, their last port-of-call, for the long haul to Australia.

It was Richard Parker's first voyage on the high seas.  Thomas Dudley was a sturdy and resourceful captain; Stephens and Brooks went about their duties efficiently.  Richard, though, had problems.

They were 1,600 miles from land when the South Atlantic hurricane broke.  The Mignonette was hit by huge waves and sank.  In the panic to board the lifeboats the crew were unable to salvage any provisions or water except two small tins of turnips.

The crew had very little to eat or drink for 19 days and became desperate.  Richard Parker drank seawater and became delirious.  Captain Dudley considered drawing lots to choose a victim to feed the remaining crew.  Brooks was against any killing whatsoever; Stephens was indecisive.  The Captain decided to kill the boy, therefore, as he was near to death and had no dependants.

They said some prayers over Richard's sleeping body.  Dudley shook then him by the shoulder and said, "Richard, my boy, your time has come".  The three sailors dined and survived on Richard's carcass for 35 days until rescued by the aptly named vessel SS Montezuma -- named after the cannibal king of the Aztecs.

The resulting court case fascinated Victorian society and became the best documented study of cannibalism in this country.  Dudley, Stephens and Brooks were each sentenced to six months hard labour and later emigrated.

But the story has a strange twist in its tail.  Half a century before the grisly events, in 1837, Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.  This book tells of four shipwrecked men who, after many days' privation, drew lots to decide who should be killed and eaten.

The cabin boy drew the short straw.  His name was Richard Parker!

My cousin Nigel Parker was the first to notice the link between the Poe story and actual events which Arthur Koestler published in The Sunday Times of 5 May 1974. The author of a book about strange coincidences tells how sometime after the news story, he casually mentioned it to John Beloff at the University of Edinburgh, who had, that day, written about it in his journal.

Nigel's father, Keith, thought that Richard's story would make an interesting theme for a radio play and began to plan a synopsis.  At that time, to supplement his writer's income, he reviewed books for Macmillan Publishers.  The first book to arrive through the post was The Sinking of the Mignonette. A few weeks later he was asked to review another play, among a collection of short plays, called The Raft.  It was a comedy for children with nothing sinister about it at all, apart from the cover illustration: Three men seemed to threaten a young boy, which is completely out of keeping with the play's tone.  The Raft was written by someone called Richard Parker.

In the summer of 1993, my parents took in three Spanish language students.  My father told them about Richard Parker one evening over supper (probably in an attempt to keep the food bills down).  The television was on in the background.  All conversation stopped when a local programme started talking about the remarkable story.  Dad went on to break the silence by saying how weird coincidences always occur whenever Richard's tale is mentioned.  He told them about Edgar Allan Poe.

Two of the girls went white.  "Look what I bought today!" said one.  She reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of the Edgar Allan Poe story.  "So have I!" said the other girl.  Both had gone shopping that day and independently bought the very same book containing the Richard Parker story.  And as if events are trying make my story totally unbelievable my father told the same story to his language students the following year.  Again one of the girls pulled a copy of the Poe book from out of her bag!

Last month I received a letter from a man who had read another article I wrote about Richard Parker.  Immediately after he'd read it he gave professional advice to a friend, who was complaining about his employer.  His employer he discovered had been researching his family tree and said to the person who wrote to me, "Well, I reckon this riding roughshod over legal procedures is in his blood.  This guy is into tracing his ancestors, and one of them was a sea captain, Dudley, who was done for eating a cabin boy and cheated at drawing lots..."


This Season of the Witch is now well underway.  Do you have a spooky story to share?

Spel

[Valerian]

Lavinia Fisher and her husband John lived near Charleston, South Carolina. The pair made their living operating a hotel called the Six Mile Wayfarer House, which they managed in the early 1800s. Mysteriously, men who were visiting Charleston began to disappear. As more and more reports were filed with the authorities regarding these missing men, it was determined that they were last seen at the Six Mile Wayfarer House, which was called such because it was six miles outside of Charleston.

Though the local authorities began an investigation, there was no evidence that the Fishers were involved. This, coupled with their popularity in the town, led to the investigation being dropped. Lavinia was a beautiful and charming woman, adding to her popularity in the community and the hotel’s business. However, it would later be learned that she utilized those characteristics to help her husband rob and kill many male travelers. And, as more and more men went missing, the rumor mill began to do its work.

The locals soon gathered up a group of vigilantes who went to the Fishers in February 1819 to stop the activities occurring there. Though it is unknown what they may have said or done, they were satisfied with their task and returned to Charleston, leaving one man by the name of David Ross to stand watch in the area.

Early the following day, David Ross was attacked by two men and dragged before a group of men along with Lavinia Fisher. He looked to her for help, but instead, she choked him and smashed his head through a window.  Somehow, Ross was able to escape and alert authorities.  The next day, a man the Fishers had attempted to drug and rob also escaped their clutches.  Police then arrested John and Lavinia Fisher, as well as two men they had been operating with.

The Six Mile Wayfarer House was thoroughly searched, and the grounds dug up. Filled with hidden passages, the Sheriff reportedly found items that could be traced to dozens of travelers, a tea laced with an herb that could put someone to sleep for hours, a mechanism that could be triggered to open the floorboards beneath the bed, and in the basement, as many as a hundred sets of remains.

On the morning of February 18, 1820, the Fishers were taken from the Charleston Jail to be hanged on the gallows behind the building. John Fisher went quietly to his execution.

Lavinia was another story, however. She had requested to wear her wedding dress and, refusing to walk to the gallows, had to be picked up and carried as she ranted and raved. Before the crowd, she continued to scream pointedly at the Charleston socialites, who she blamed for encouraging a conviction. Before her executioners could tighten the noose around her neck, she yelled into the crowd, “If you have a message you want to send to hell, give it to me – I’ll carry it.” Then, before they could finish the job, she jumped off the scaffold herself. Not quite reaching the ground, she dangled down into the crowd. Later, onlookers would say they had never seen such a wicked stare or chilling sneer as that which was on 27-year-old Lavinia’s face.

It should come as no surprise with a terrible story such as this that the ghost of Lavinia is said to still roam in Charleston. Almost immediately following her death, locals began to report seeing her face floating behind the window bars of the Old City Jail where she was held.  To this day, the jail is a haunted place, and its most famous ghost is Lavinia's, still wearing her wedding dress.  It is reported that she will attempt to choke the unwary visitor to the building, and others have reported receiving mysterious scratches upon visiting the site.

[Lilias]

People started falling from the sky by the close of the decade. They were never clothed, always naked, always a petrifying grin on their faces.

It had been just a few at first, but then hundreds and thousands would fall at a time, destroying cars, homes, blocking off highways.

Strange discoveries were made upon research; they were human, but lacked any blood, intestines, even a heart. No one could explain the hideous grins they had, or even where they came from.

It was a woman in Costa Rica who made the latest and most disturbing discovery. She recognized one of the fallen bodies as a long dead relative, one who died back when she had been a teenager. Then more and more identifications were made.

Soon people were picking out their long dead loved ones amongst the video feeds, cadaver piles, and crematoriums. No one could explain why they were coming back, falling from the sky.

Even more distressing, after disposing of the bodies, it wouldn’t be long until that same body came plummeting from the sky again. You could not get rid of them, no matter what. People were getting killed by the higher volume of falling bodies, and soon after burial, they too, began to fall.

My mother was killed when a body landed on her car, crushing her. The next week, the news reported on a body that had gotten lodged in an airplane windshield. I saw my mother’s grinning face, the happiest I had ever seen her.

They say when hell is full; the dead shall walk the earth. What about heaven?

(By dastard82 on Reddit)

[Valerian]

I Hardly Recognized Myself: A Drabble

That isn't my face in the mirror.

I'm not sure when it stopped being mine.  It happened so gradually I can't say when it started.  But there's no me left any more when I look at myself.

It was easy to blame on other things at first.  Being tired or stressed.  Then I started losing bits of time, first an hour here and there, then days.  My friends mentioned things I'd never done, words I'd never said, posted pictures of me at events I couldn't recall.

Hard to ignore that.

Even harder to ignore the blood on my hands.


~by Val

[Oniya]

Perhaps not scary, but in keeping with the season.

Oh, you take the high road
and I'll take the low road
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye.
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond

The tune is well known - the chorus has shown up as far afield as Disney movies.  But why would a man get to Scotland 'afore' his listener, and yet never again meet his true love?

The story goes that a Scot who dies while away from Scotland travels underground - the 'low road' - back home.  His living listener cannot possibly travel faster than the soul of a dead man.

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you for the further spooky tales, Valerian and Lilias!  And it's so cool to find you here, Oniya; thank you very much for coming.  A lot of "innocent" folk songs and folktales are in fact pretty unsettling, aren't they?

Hotel guests -- hotel proprietors -- the ascended -- those not yet ascended -- those who might never ascend -- Scots abroad -- Valerian herself!  Who among us can elude the Other Side's sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent, often mischievous beings and forces?  They appear either oblivious to or amused by divisions of sex, gender, age, ethnicity, philosophy, creed, orientation, nationality, politics, incarnation status, shoe size, or even whether or not one likes candy corn.  Certainly they visit the famous -- say, Tinseltowners producing films for the The Conjuring franchise -- just as they visit the unsung.

Even the most famous of all must remain wary.  I am referring, of course, to Telly Savalas, renowned throughout both the world of the living and that of the dead for his spoken-word cover of the song "If" by Bread.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axdkv0_kJZQ


Who loves you, baby?  Might it be a curious man with a curious voice?  Or some other being entirely?  Do tell...!

Spel

[Valerian]

From the memoirs of Galen Clark, the United States' first park ranger: During his 1857 exploration of Yosemite National Park, when he reached Grouse Lake he “heard a distinct wailing cry, somewhat like the cry of a puppy when lost.” He decided that Native Americans “must have left one of their young dogs behind.”

Clark mentioned the cry to local Native Americans that evening. They told him that it was no dog, though. Many years before, a boy had drowned there, and whenever anyone passed, his ghost cried to them.

If you visit, don’t get too close to the lakeshore, though. The tribal members told Clark that none of them would go near the lake because the boy’s ghost would grab their legs and pull them under.

Return the way you came – and ignore the cries of any lost pups coming from the lake.

[Lilias]

I bought a new house in the small town of Winthrop. The house was cheap, but the most important part was that I needed to get away from the city. A few months ago, I had a run-in with a stalker. While I had managed to get him arrested, I couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes just constantly watching me. I felt like there were eyes everywhere, at home and on the street, so I decided to move out into the country to somewhere with less people, just for peace of mind.

The house itself was big and somewhat old, but otherwise very welcoming. The agent who introduced me to the house had been required to mention that a serial killer had lived here in the past, which was why the house was so cheap. However, he, and later, my next door neighbor Sarah, both told me to pay the thought no mind. Four other owners had lived in the house since then, and all of them were very happy with it.

I loved the house. Its interior furnishings were beautiful and very comfortable. The people of Winthrop were friendly, often bringing over freshly baked pastries or inviting me over for dinner. “Get-togethers,” they said, “were the key to making sure everyone who lived in Winthrop loved it there.”

Yet after a week, I stopped “loving it.” The feeling of someone watching returned, worse than before. I tried to ignore it, but soon I started losing sleep. Giant bags grew under my eyes and I began yawning almost as much as I breathed. Sarah was kind enough to let me stay in her house for a few nights.It was during this time that I heard the legend of Forrest Carter, the serial killer who had lived in my house. While no one knows his exact kill count, Carter, also known as the Winthrop Peacock, was a man with extremely severe case of narcissism. Legends say that he couldn’t fall asleep if he didn’t feel like he was being watched. He was finally arrested for putting up a scarecrow to watch him during the night. Only it wasn’t a scarecrow. Carter had murdered a 17 year old girl, just so her corpse could stare at him.

The story gave me shivers, and after I went home, I felt like there were hundreds of pairs of eyes just watching me no matter how I turned.

Today, however, was the first day that I acted out. I was cooking breakfast, when I felt the eyes. Instinctively, out of fear, I threw my kitchen knife, which lodged itself into the wall. As I pulled it out, I found myself staring at a pair of eyes, pickling in formaldehyde.

I’ve been watching the police peel away the drywall of my house for hours now. So far, they’ve found 142 pairs of eyes in little glass jars. The scariest thing is, each and every one was staring at me.

(By recludus on Reddit)

[Valerian]

The Hoia Baciu Forest in -- where else? -- the Transylvanian region of Romania - is often referred to as a "Bermuda Triangle" as it is said to be inhabited by the devil in person, by ghosts and perhaps even aliens. The forest gained notoriety around the 1960s, when biologist Alexandru Sift photographed a flying object in the sky above the forest. After this incident, other inexplicable events soon followed, including the disappearance of a shepherd and his 200 sheep which were never found again; and the disappearance of a five-year-old girl who reappeared five years later wearing the same clothes and without having aged even one day.

Many people who walk in just for a quick scare walk out with unexplainable symptoms. People claim that as soon as they walk in, they suffer from severe anxiety and feel like there is somebody watching them. Others walk out with scratches or bruises, having no idea where they came from.  Ghosts and other sightings of paranormal activity have been spotted here too. Sometimes people hear voices in the forest, giggles of women or screams of young girls.  People have also heard the sounds of deer or horse hooves, even when there were none to be seen.

Even the trees themselves hold an enigma, as these two-hundred-year-old trees seem to be young, and most of them are twisted at the trunk or unusual in shape. Most of the paranormal activity seems to be concentrated in a particular part of the forest which is free of vegetation and formed into a circle. The soil of this vegetation-free area has been tested and no anomalies were found that would prevent the growth of any plant life.

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you very much, Valerian and Lilias, as always!

Telly Savalas's freaky experience began just off of the Grand Central Parkway in New York City.  Perhaps in this case the players and the time were more significant than the place: After all, the Grand Central Parkway isn't particularly known for anomalous events.  About an hour's drive north, however, a road does exist whose reputation is, shall we say, less than savory.  Similar to New Jersey's Johnston Drive, New York's Buckout Road snakes through Weird World toward a destination as concerning as it is mysterious...  (I'll be drawing from here and from here but not from here because why would I do that?)


Buckout Road

While the paved pathway is called "Buckout Road," it was named after the prominent Buckhout family (spelled with an h) that once inhabited the area.  They originated in the town of Sleepy Hollow, which you're probably familiar with from Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."  One of the Buckhouts murdered another in a mansion located on the road: Isaac V. Buckhout discovered that his wife Louise was having an affair with a man named Alfred Randall, and he viciously murdered the two lovers.  Issac was eventually hanged for his actions on New Year's Day, 1872.  Still another member of the family, Mary Buckhout, hanged herself from a tree on the road; it is believed that a ghost, a spectral lady in white, which continues to haunt the area in fact belongs to her.

Albert Fish

Albert Fish was one of the worst human beings imaginable, and it is alleged that he owned a residence on Buckout Road.  He was a child killer -- and a cannibal, too.  Some consider him the real-life Hannibal Lecter; he's been referred to as "the Brooklyn Vampire" and "the Gray Man."

Fish was born in 1870.  He appeared to be a quiet and unassuming man who kept a very private life.  His family had a history of mental illness: His brother was permanently institutionalized, his uncle was diagnosed with mania, and his mother routinely suffered from hallucinations.  Albert himself consumed human waste, stuck needles into his pelvic area, and just overall became very unstable.  He began to eat raw meat, eventually graduating to human flesh; in the end, he went on to murder and devour three children.

The Red House

Perhaps the most infamous tale from Buckout Road involves a now burned down and demolished property, which included what was commonly referred to as "the Red House" or "the Albino House."  This particular property had several structures including houses, barns, and slaughterhouses.  The legend stated that if you parked your car in front of the Red House, the property's main dwelling, and honked your horn three times, a family of cannibalistic albinos would come out after you.  There was one report that a teenager went to put an M-80, a powerful type of firecracker, into the property's mailbox to prank the albino family; but when he opened the mailbox, he discovered the head of a child inside.

Witches Three

It is said that sometime before the Salem witch trials took place, three women were burned at the stake on what would become Buckout Road on suspicion of them being witches.  The fires left three white X's on the road and, although the X's gradually fade, although they're sometimes intentionally removed, and although the surface of the road itself has of course changed a lot over the centuries, they always in time mysteriously reappear, fresh and distinct.  Supposedly if you flash your headlights three times at the markings and turn off your engine, your car will not start back up.  Further, many locals claim that they've had mysterious car trouble on that stretch of road.

The Leatherman

Another popular tale told about Buckout Road is that of the Leatherman, whose ghost is said to haunt the area.  Also whispered of in neighboring Connecticut, the Leatherman was an infamous vagrant who walked a 365-mile route through Connecticut and New York, living his life out of caves.  The actual identity of the man has been argued for ages, but one thing we do know is that he was dubbed "the Leatherman" because of his entirely leather wardrobe.

Ready to visit Buckout Road but can't convince your wary friends to join you?  Remind them that legend also has it that the cave the Leatherman lived in on Buckout Road is where he stashed away some of his money!  Just watch out for his ghost...


Whoa!  If you ever find yourself on Buckout Road, it seems that you should get the buckout of there!

Right?  Am I right?

Right...?

Ahem.

O.K., then, here's a question for you: Do you have a spooky story to share?

Spel

[Lilias]

Here they come again, the brave ones. Another Halloween night, and the kids are back, here to prove their fearlessness. The old house’s floorboards creak beneath their sneakers.

Only half an hour until midnight, so I have to work fast. I start with their flashlight, blowing lightly against it, so that it flickers, but this inspires little more than a nervous giggle.

Fifteen minutes until midnight. Time to take things up a notch. I hover up to the ceiling, and will my body into flesh. My every nerve is on fire, but they’ve given me no choice. I force drops of blood to trickle out my nose, but the boys below don’t notice. I knock against the ceiling, but they won’t even look up.

”I thought this place was supposed to be haunted,” says the leader. “What a joke.”

Five minutes until midnight. I’m running out of time. With the last of my strength, I scream— so loud that they finally turn to look up at me. I like to think I put on a good show: I sway on an invisible noose, and the blood flows freely from my nostrils now. A couple of drops hit a skinny one with a crew cut. The boys scream and run into the night, just in time.

Below me, I hear the Thing turn, its disappointment palpable. For now, it sleeps. But one day, I will fail. The boys will be too brave, and I won’t scare them out in time. One day they will wake it.

(By scarymaxx on Reddit)

[Valerian]

Sylvester Pierce was a wealthy business man who achieved his fortune as the owner of the S.K. Pierce and Sons Furniture Company.  The success of the company and the furniture industry led to Gardner, Massachusetts being known as "Chair CIty".

In the late 1880s Pierce decided he would build a mansion befitting a man of his public stature.  The mansion he created was a marvel for its time.  The nearly 7000 sq ft mansion boasted 10 bedrooms and took 100 men a year and a half to build.  Hand carved mouldings and cornices are seen throughout home.  Painstaking detail was used to create every inch of this masterpiece from the master bedroom to the servants quarters.  The guest list was one for the ages as the home is said to have hosted the likes of former President Calvin Coolidge, Minnesota Fats, Bette Davis, P.T. Barnum and Norman Rockwell, while also serving as a well-known meeting place for the Freemason Society.

Pierce, his wife Susan, and their son had big dreams when moving into this one of a kind mansion, but their dreams fell apart when Mrs. Pierce mysteriously succumbed to a bacterial illness just weeks after moving in.  After a year of mourning, Pierce remarried to a woman 30 years his junior, with whom he had two more sons.  Pierce passed away in 1888 leaving behind his new wife and their three sons.  When Ellen Pierce passed away years later, the three sons bickered constantly over ownership of the mansion and the chair business.  The Great Depression ended up stifling the business and eventually SK's youngest son, Edward, took control of the mansion.

The mansion underwent hard times as the family fortune dwindled.  Edward turned the mansion into a boarding home where some unsavory activity such as drinking, gambling, and prostitution became the norm.  There were even tales of murder.  It is said that a prostitute was strangled in the infamous red bedroom on the second floor while another boarder, a Finnish immigrant named Eino Saari, burned to death in the master bedroom in 1963.  Some believe that this was a spontaneous combustion as there was little damage to the surrounding room.  Another story has a young boy being drowned in the basement.

Over the subsequent years, guests of this mansion have suggested that it is rich with paranormal activity.  The ghosts of S.K. Pierce himself, Susan Pierce, Edward Pierce, as well as a nanny named Mattie Cornwell, a gentlemen named David who some believe to have been the red room strangler, the prostitute who was murdered in the red room, a young boy, a younger girl who was perhaps the granddaughter of Pierce, Eino Saari, and some unnamed dark entities in the basement have been described as some of this mansion's many ghostly residents.

Guests have experienced everything from voices, chanting, full body apparitions, moving furniture, screens flying off windows, slamming doors, the sounds of footsteps on the stairs and halls, sudden temperature changes, foul odors, shadow people, and an ominous lions roar which can shake the house, which many believe is the former Mr. Pierce imposing his displeasure with the current state of the home and its residents.  Others have felt the pressure of hands actually pushing them.  One visitor felt that a presence was attempting to push her down the steps while another was almost forced out of a third floor window.  Paranormal experts have said that the entities in this mansion are the "most advanced" they have ever seen, as they are capable of harnessing electrical energy and converting that power into the ability to move large objects and impose their will physically on their current surroundings.

[Spookie Monster]

More tricky treats, eh, Lilias and Valerian?  Thank you very much!

Although the denizens of the Other Side seem delighted to visit us in person, they're hardly averse to using other means to communicate with us -- phones (still tryin' to figure out who was phone), computers, televisions, radio.  Our next tale involves the last of these; what would you have done in the same situation?


Who Turned On the Radio?

When I was about 10 or 12, I don't really remember, I had an odd experience. At the time, I was sharing a room with my sister. We had lofted beds and I slept on the top bunk. We had this stereo and when you would press the button to turn it on, it would "click" and a red light would pop up. Our beds were on one side of the room and the stereo was on a desk on the opposite side.

One night I was woken up by the "click" sound that the stereo makes when the power button is pressed. I recognized the sound and sat up in bed. I looked over at the stereo and the light blinks on. I look over at my sister and she is fast asleep (her bed was under mine but perpendicular, so I could see the top half of her from my bed).

The stereo is playing that white noise sound that it makes when it isn't on a specific station. Suddenly, I can hear someone saying, "Away," coming from the stereo. Just one word, "Away". First, it starts off soft and gradually gets louder, until it becomes a yell, "AWAY, AWAY, AWAY". It took about 10-15 seconds probably to build up to the yell, and then it died back down to a whisper. I thought this was a dream. I was frozen out of fear. I thought this had to be my imagination, and I tried telling myself that during the whole thing. I had almost convinced myself of it until it stopped.

After the voice died away, the stereo went back to static. Then, I heard the familiar "click" and the light turned off. I was positive I wasn't dreaming the ending "click". I stared at the stereo for a few more moments, too freaked to move, looked back at my sister and saw she was still asleep, and finally laid back in bed, covered myself with my sheets, and willed myself back to sleep.

I consider myself a rational person, but I had no rational explanation for this. Freakiest shit that has ever happened to me.


A world away and yet so near...

Spel