Danced with Death

From The Washington Post:

It helps a little bit, even as your heart is breaking over those TV hurricanescapes of New Orleans under water, to remember that "the city that care forgot" has always danced with death. New Orleans was born amid ghastly yellow fever epidemics, where corpses stained with black vomit were piled on carts to be hauled to above-ground crypts. The sepulcher flower vases bred the fever-freighted mosquitoes. Climate, Catholicism and voodoo shaped the city, along with Latin fatalism, languorous hedonism and an atmosphere of poignant and elegant decay. It's no accident that Anne Rice lived there to pen her vampire tales. And yet, inseparable though they may be, New Orleans has always been more about the dance than about the death. Somewhere in the shade of its majestic live oaks and the shadows of its lacework balconies, among the saxophone riffs in its echoing alleys and the soft magenta glow of its crape myrtles at twilight, the flickering ghosts that haunt New Orleans whisper huskily of sweaty, sensual love and the promise of enduring memory. Even the street names whisper promises: Desire, Amour, Abundance; Pleasure, Treasure and Joy.

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A love letter or obituary?

An Associated Press writer doesn't know whether she's writing an obituary for New Orleans or just a love letter for a city submerged:

We have loved it for the police who took pictures of women flashing their breasts on Bourbon Street, or dressed in drag to prowl for Halloween drug sales in the Quarter, hauling up their skirts to pull handcuffs out of their pants pockets. We have loved it for the drunks, the nut cases, the punks, the vampire wannabes drawn by the Gothic romance of Anne Rice.

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Until death do us part

Until death do us part and beyond. From CNN:

When Xavier Bowie died in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood, his wife did the best she could in a city so preoccupied with saving the living that no one can deal with the dead. She wrapped his body in a sheet, laid him on a makeshift bier of plywood boards, with a little help, and floated him down to the main road. For more than an hour, Evelyn Turner waited along Rampart Street outside the French Quarter, her husband's body resting on the grassy median as car after car passed, their wakes threatening to wash over the corpse. "This is ridiculous," Turner, 54, said as she sobbed into a dirty washcloth. Bowie, 57, a truck driver who had been with Turner for 16 years, had advanced lung cancer and could not be easily moved. When Turner could find no one to take them out of the city, she decided to stay home and hoped the storm would spare them. snip With hundreds, if not thousands, of residents still stuck on roofs and in attics across the city, officials have concentrated on saving survivors of Katrina and floodwaters. "We're not even dealing with dead bodies," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday. When Turner got back to the corpse, she collapsed onto the plywood sheets and wept.

Heartbreaking. For the record, should I ever die in such circumstances, my wife and children should leave my body to the elements. Also, if I'm in a vegetative state, my family has my authorization to disconnect me from any tubes preventing me from dying a natural death. I want that on the record so that I never cause a real national crisis that requires prompt action from our Dear Leader and Congress. UPDATE. Georgia10, an occasional commenter here, also blogged on this and hers is a classic must read.

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Moundsville ghost hunt

From an email from Jared Stroech (published with his kind permission):

Finally, last weekend I had the opportunity to go on an investigation at the Moundsville State Penitentiary.  The usual ghost tours there include at least 50 people, most of whom have very minimal ghost hunting skills and are there for the thrill and a good scare.  I was with Alicia, Joann, and Carol, three very talented investigators.  After a brief tour from the guide, we were off by ourselves.  We attempted to set up a night vision video camera in the corridor of the North Hall, where the "Shadow Man" has been seen. The camera would not work properly...most likely human error, but the malfunction of equipment is not uncommon at sites like this.  Alicia brought her fancy new IR Thermometer with laser precision...a great piece of ghost hunting equipment. While in the basement, where a maintenance man was brutally murdered and in the spot where the only CONFIRMED ghost of the penitentiary resides, we took some temp. readings, snapped some photos, and did a 10-minute dark.  After getting nothing, we proceeded to an area of the prison where many men were killed. This was the room that lead to the yard.  I tried my baiting and luring techniques to try and get a reaction from whatever was there...we got nothing.  As soon as we left that room and continued to the elevator shaft, we heard a cell door slam shut behind us, not 10 feet from the room where my luring techniques had failed, minutes earlier.  After another hour or so of investigating, very few good photos, no temp. variances, and a bit of fatigue, we went to the basement again to retrieve my recorder, which I left in the room where the maintenance man was killed.  As soon as we walked in, the cold hit us like an arctic chill.  Alicia took a temp. reading and it read 65. The temp. only an hour or so before, was 74-77.  We decided to hang around for a little while and try to get a reaction from him once again. Nothing. Although we got only a few valid pieces of evidence, the night was very exciting and I plan on going back. Jared

Here's a link for more information on the Moundsville prison ghost tours.

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Curse and luck of the Carters

Excellent story on a descendant of Howard Carter, the Egyptologist who discovered King Tut's tomb, in The Wolverhampton (UK) Express & Star. He's an antique collector and auctioneer who says he inherited the "Carter Hunch" — not a curse — which has helped him make exceptional finds of his own.

But, like Howard Carter before him, Africa has always fascinated John Carter. In the heat and dust of Egypt Howard found the "Carter Hunch" drew him like a radar beam into the greatest collection of Egyptian treasures the world had ever seen. The golden mask of the young king, the chariots, golden beds and stunningly beautiful jewellery excited the imagination of the world and changed the face of design. Obviously Hollywood was affected, and rumours of the mythical curse of Tutankhamun lay behind movies like The Mummy's Hand. Curses were in - common sense went out of the window. And John Carter smiles cryptically when he says he found curses of another kind in darkest Africa, Mali to be exact, and the curses were of the mosquito kind. "I've always been an armchair explorer and I devour features on faraway places. I saw a programme on Mali and decided to go. I had collected antiquities and ethnic pieces for some time, so this was to be a buying trip for the Cleobury shop. "I was looking for genuine African masks - the real thing. Mali seemed to be the place to visit. I shall never forget my first African sunrise. Around 7am a huge red orb rose over the tarmac runway at Bamako airport. It was a dazzling sight. The sun's disc was a motif which recurred again and again in the jewellery Howard Carter found in Tutankhamun's tomb. "I found a young French-speaking African guide, Abdoulaye Cisse, who guided me to a local antiquaire. I felt like Howard Carter must have felt all those years ago. It was an Aladdin's cave with antique masks, old ivory, animal skins, weaponry, textiles and old, old furniture lying everywhere covered with dust. "The Bambara masks were stunning. Carved with geometric designs and with traces of original paintwork they were like centuries old art deco before the word was invented. It all left you gawping. "In the evenings an old man came into the hotel garden carrying objects from remote villages he knew. They were just sold on to tourists - if there were any around. Some were fine. You couldn't stop your heart from beating. Any collector would have shelled out his last dollars to own these exquisite bowls and figures. Obviously I did."

A really fun read.

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Bump in the night

There's a lot of tragedy in the world, from the Gulf Coast to Baghdad. To me, this blog has always been a way to escape from the incomprehensible horrors of reality into the more acceptable horrors of the supernatural. Although I'll continue to post occasional pleas for money for worthy causes and rants about the insanity of world affairs, I find comfort in returning to the abnormal and I hope the readers of this site agree. From the East London and West Sussex Guardian:

RATIONALISTS beware, Chingford is one of the most haunted places in the country and a ghost may patrol a home or hotel near you. Disembodied footsteps, a mysterious man on horseback and the ghost of a woman killed in a hotel fire at the beginning of the last century are among the phantoms inhabiting the cemeteries, byways and hostels of the area. The Guardian has taken a number of calls recently from people claiming to have "heard" things and felt "strange" in the vicinity of Chingford Mount Cemetery. We contacted local paranormal experts Eerie Investigations, who confirmed the burial site's spectral reputation. Ian Pleasance, an investigator with Eerie, said: "The cemetery is known for being haunted and many people have reported sounds of footsteps walking on the grass behind them, even though there was no-one present.

Very spooky article well worth reading in its entirety.

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Call to the Hunt

From Stephen Hunt's Crows Nest:

Steven E. Wedel has a passion and his is the cry of a wolf, a cry unlike any other wolf. A call to the hunt, an inclination to run, a desire stronger than love or hate...The wildness of werewolves. This anthology brings together his short stories that follow the double-lives of his werewolf characters. It crosses time frames by starting on a Pilgrim Fathers ship entering the New World. The finding of the Native Americans, the independence of America from the British, right up to present day. As the introduction by Kelley Armstrong quite rightly states we have in recent years become 'vampire obsessed' leaving our lycanthropic friends out in the cold. Wedel writes believable stories that are effective with their imagery. He uses recurring characters to tell an ongoing story of how the werewolves survive and deal with living amongst their human counterparts.

...we have in recent years become 'vampire obsessed' leaving our lycanthropic friends out in the cold. And rightly so. For those who feel werewolves are neglected, September is Werewolf Month at The Groovy Age of Horror.

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Terror during True Horror

Paging Buffy Summers. Buffy Summers to the white courtesy phone please. Anthony Steward Head, host of the new supernatural series True Horror, could have used his fellow Buffy The Vampire Slayer co-star for protection. From Digital Spy:

Anthony Head was left shaken after his camera crew were kidnapped in Haiti. Head, known for playing Rupert Giles in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, is part of reality TV show True Horror which involves him going on location to comment on strange goings-on and interview experts. However, when he signed up to the project he claims that he was only expecting to perform his part from the safety of a studio rather than being on the field. His unexpected duties have reportedly begun to worry him after his camera crew disappeared. Contactmusic.com quote him as saying: "I thought I'd be in a studio... Instead, they flew me to Haiti for an episode on zombies and the camera crew got kidnapped."

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New Orleans - Latest news

I've always wanted to visit New Orleans with its dark history and spooky cemeteries and vampires and ghosts. Hopefully New Orleans will survive Hurricane Katrina for the 485,000 people who call it home and for the people who love the city from afar. UPDATE 1. 8:43 p.m. Sunday: Read antifa's comment on Digby's Blog.

I called Mama Marisol, got her on her cell phone. She had her crystal ball in the front seat, and she was 'leavin-leavin, cher.' Heading up Basin Street past St. Louis 1, she saw all the skeletons sitting on top of their tombs, rolling their bones and readin' em, shakin' their heads at her.

Not a good sign. UPDATE 2. Noon, Monday: Good round up of bloggers and others in the midst of the storm.

"9:45 a.m.: Homeowner Says Water Rising: Chris Robinson says the water is rising in his New Orleans-area home, but he's 'holding off on breaking through the roof' to escape. Robinson is keeping a hammer, ax and crowbar at the ready, though. He spoke by cellphone as water sent by Hurricane Katrina flooded parts of the city.

and

I'm looking at the wind smashing the trees outside this building, and thinking of those 80-foot-tall pines that snap off even during tropical storms. And that storm surge. All we can do now is pray for our family members in harm's way. ... most frantic calls about downtown hotels, where a number of windows have blown out. Guests huddling in halls. Water blowing in through windows, leaking through ceilings. ... Building collapse reported on Laurel near Washington in the Garden District . . . possibly with people inside. Emergency workers trying to see if they can get a National Guard deuce-and-a-half to get through the storm for possible rescue.

UPDATE 3. 12:30 p.m.: Please give as you are able: the American Red Cross. (See also great suggestion from cookie jill in the comments.) UPDATE 4. 2 p.m.: One bright humorous moment in an otherwise grim day. UPDATE 5. 3:30 p.m.: No word yet, though on NO's famed cemeteries. The risk is contamination on the living.

There also were concerns about everything from environmental damage — major oil refineries and other industrial operations are in Katrina's path — to the possibility that bodies would be dislodged from city cemeteries, where people are interred in aboveground tombs because of the city's high water table.

UPDATE 6. Tuesday 1 p.m.: The situation is extremely depressing and scary as the flood waters rise with trapped people forced up to their attics.

• Katrina blamed for 68 deaths, including 55 in Mississippi • Reports of bodies floating in water in New Orleans • New Orleans 'in state of devastation,' water still rising • Search and rescue efforts under way for survivors

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Anne Rice on Jesus

A round up of upcoming fall releases from the publishing world. From The Houston Chronicle:

Finally, there's little pre-pub word on Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (Knopf), her novel about Jesus' early life. According to the publisher, it's "based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship."

Also mentioned is horror blogosphere fave Neil Gaiman's new release:

From Hugo and Nebula award winner Neil Gaiman comes Anansi Boys (Morrow), about a conventional Englishman who discovers his late father was the human incarnation of an African trickster god. Stephen King, William Gibson and Peter Straub are big Gaiman fans.

And for the comic book loving segment of the audience:

Norton is reprinting the late Will Eisner's graphic novels. November brings The Contract With God Trilogy, first published in 1978 and considered a classic. Set during the Depression, it grew out of Eisner's boyhood in the tenements.

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Gil's All Fright Diner

Considering how much time I spent in my local diner re-writing my book about vampires, werewolves, ghosts and a witch, I'm going to have to order up Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez. From The Decatur Daily:

Start with a diner in the middle of nowhere, where the cups of coffee are bottomless and so is the pit leading straight to hell. Add one vampire, one werewolf, one lovelorn ghost and one 17-year-old sorceress bent on bringing about the End of the World. Then liberally add zombies to taste. For added zest, use zombie cows. That's the recipe for the funniest book you ever read about the undead, the occult and Armageddon. Earl (a vampire) and Duke (a werewolf) are two good old boys in a beat-up pickup, tooling around the desert in search of gas, food and a quick buck, when they come upon a roadside diner called Gil's.

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Festival in Dracula's city

From The European Jewish Press:

Representatives of the 21 minorities living in Romania came to celebrate the Fifth ProEtnica Festival in the medieval citadel of Sighisoara. This event was organized by the Interethnic Educational Youth Centre and was attended by over 700 people and was held from August 19 to 21. snip The citadel of Sighisoara itself is famous for its connection with the story of the Romanian King, Vlad Tepes, better known as Prince Dracula. Located on the Tarnava Mare River, Sighisoara has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999. Now, after more than six centuries, this citadel is one of the very few medieval locations in Europe that are still inhabited.

If that doesn't sound like short horror story fodder, I don't know what does.

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Spear point missing

From CBS2 Chicago: A spear that has been dated at 12,000-years-old went missing during an event called the "Artifact Road Show" at the Indiana State Fair. The spear was part of an event where artifacts displayed by the public are identified and dated by archaeologists. The missing Paleoindian Clovis spear point is believed to have been used by early Native American hunters and gatherers.

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More tasty celluloid darkness

For whatever reason, it's turning out to be a movie weekend... While taking our son to the local indie theatre to see March of the Penguins (a lovely, if somewhat over-anthropomorphising film), I saw that MirrorMask is going to be showing early in October. MirrorMask is Neil Gaimain's film collaboration with Dave McKean & the Jim Henson Company - and it looks like, well, a Sandman issue come to life: dark, lush, richly characterized...

Destined to become a classic for fans of Gaiman, cinema, and fantasy alike, MIRRORMASK tells the story of Helena, a fifteen-year-old girl who works for her family's circus. Helena juggles, sells popcorn, and wishes that she could run away from the circus and join the "real world." Then, one day she wakes up to find herself in a magical world filled with fantastic beings and creatures, an alternate reality. It is a land of opposing kingdoms, one perpetually existing in light, the other in constant darkness. These lands have existed in perfect balance, until now. And Helena finds herself about to embark on a most remarkable journey.

(quote from http://www.neilgaiman.com/) The official site (annoying music/Flash you can't bypass) is here. The Apple.com trailer is here, an interview with Gaiman & McKean is here, stills are here, and last but not least, Gaiman's site for it is here. This puppy has been in the works for a long time - it officially hits theatres 30 Sept 2005, though given that it only has a 1-week run at an indie house in Seattle, I'm not sure what kind of distribution it's going to get. Still, I'm glad it's (finally) coming to fruition.

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The haunted winebox

Go read this story about the Dibbuk Box on The Jewish Haunted Wine Cabinet Official Web Site.

The granddaughter told me that her grandmother had asked that the box be buried with her. However, as such a request was contrary to the rules of an orthodox Jewish burial, the grandmothers request had not been honored. I asked the granddaughter what a dibbuk, and keselim were, but she did not know. I asked if she would like to open it with me. She did not want to open it, as her grandmother had been very emphatic and serious when she instructed her not to do so, and, regardless of the reason, she wanted to honor her grandmother’s request. I finally ended up offering to let her keep what seemed to me to be a sentimental keepsake. At that point, she was very insistent and said, No, no you bought it! I explained that I didn’t want my money back, and that it would make me feel better to do what I thought was an act of kindness. She then became somewhat upset. Looking back now, the way she became upset was just plain odd. She raised her voice to me and said, you bought it! You made a deal! When I tried to speak, she yelled, we don't want it! She began to cry, asked me to leave, and quickly walked away. I wrote the whole episode off to the stress and grief she must have been experiencing. I took my purchases and politely left.

Hat tip to Tina for posting the link in the comments.

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Filming in Dracula territory

An interesting article about Hollywood directors filming in Eastern Europe to save costs. From The Globe and Mail of Toronto:

Twenty-one feature films were shot in the Czech Republic in 2004, compared with 14 in 2003, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory, based in Strasbourg, France. In 2004, 57 films were produced in Britain, down from 68 the year before. In France, the number of films produced fell last year to 167 from 183. Fifteen movies were made in Poland, 11 in Romania and four in Bulgaria.

Of course, everyone wants to go there to imitate the success of Vampire Journals.

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A spooky college tale

From The Flat Hat, the student newspaper of the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

The move-in was rough (water fell from the sky) and the schedule following it intense: I’ve done more things in the past week than I did during my entire summer. I’ve heard speakers ranging from newly-appointed President Nichol to supposedly-dead Patrick Henry, went on a ghost tour, bought sixteen textbooks (with more to go), ate a lot, walked a lot, met a whole bunch of people, watched people played Ultimate Frisbee, bobbed back and forth while other people serenaded a girls hall, and took part in countless other activities.

Nothing else in the column about the ghost tours. Anyone know if this is a tradition for William & Mary students?

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Iowa ghost hunter

From The Des Moines Register:

Pat Olson is a level-headed, feet-on-the-ground, middle-America kind of guy. He's a staff sergeant in the Air National Guard. He lives in West Des Moines. I run into some kooky people. It goes with the job. Olson, 41, is not a kooky person. He couldn't even play one on television. Sitting in the deli at Hy-Vee on Fleur Drive, decked out in his camouflage fatigues, he seems as dependable as a flag decal. You'd never figure him for someone who's obsessed with ghosts. Olson doesn't just believe in ghosts. He chases them, hangs with them, studies them, writes about them.

Entire column worth a click.

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The Brothers Grimm - a brief review

I'm not a reviewer, nor do I play one on TV (which is good, because I'd probably wind up being the fat one with glasses), so I'll keep this quick. We just got back from seeing the film, and it is a great mix of humor, horror, and fantasy. Deftly weaving together bits and pieces of various fairy tales (mostly Grimm & Mother Goose, as far as I can tell) into a multi-layered tapestry, Gilliam has outdone himself with this dark confection of a movie. If you're a long-time Gilliam fan, you're probably aware that he's prone to awkward transitional scenes that drag on a little too long - there is little to none of that in this movie. The visuals are astounding, the pacing excellent, the stupid humor bits are well-timed. The film is eye- and brain-candy of the highest order, and has no aspirations beyond providing an evening's worth of twisted entertainment. To this end, I think it succeeds. Go and see this film on the biggest screen you can find. Oh, it'll be okay on your standard multiplex screen, but it'll lose some of its magic, and that'd be a crime because this movie is all about magic. Enough of this drivel - go see it. What else is there to say? See it. Big screen. Don't wait for the DVD. And with that, I'm off to bed...

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The treasure of Sherlock Holmes

From The Times of London:

SHERLOCK HOLMES stories written by authors other than Conan Doyle continue to be a prolific sub-genre of the detective story. Doyle wrote four Holmes novels and 56 short stories; others since 1927 (the last Holmes collection) have written thousands of imitations, homages, tributes, parodies and pastiches. The formula is almost always the same. Dr Watson, the Great Detective’s sidekick and chronicler of his adventures, is known from the original Doyle stories to have kept a full record of all Holmes’s cases, in a “battered tin dispatch box” stored in the vaults of Cox & Co in Charing Cross. Many, Watson explained, were too sensitive to be revealed to the reading public. Others, Watson did not have time to write up.

It's amazing how the previously undiscovered stories from Dr. Watson's pen continue to turn up. I found Lucy Westenra's diary, Henry Armitage's Journal and an unpublished tale from William Hope Hodgson in an old Wood's Primrose Tea crate with a stack of London newspapers from 1893. I almost had thrown the crate out, but the color print of Chinese workers sifting loose tea leafs and the logo of the Thomas Wood & Co. of Boston attracted my attention and I kept it.

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Haunted book auction

From an eBay auction:

Well there's no easy way to put this so here it is. My wife and I bought a house about 3 years ago (2002) located in the historical district of Piqua Ohio. The house had only two previous owners. The original owners who built the house in 1886 and their daughters who we purchased the house from. Not actually from her but from her Estate. The house had barely any updates since around the 20's we believe, with the help of the historical Society. Everything was quiet in the house until last October when we started to replace some of the plaster walls in the upstairs. We came across a small 5'x7' room that nobody knew about, not even the realtor when we contacted her almost two years after purchasing the house. In that room where pretty neat things. There was a 16x20 framed picture of a woman, wearing a cross necklace, she almost looks like a old salvation army type woman...not smiling or anything. A few hats in some boxes, a few books, a few hatpins, and a spoon and fork. I don't know anything about the room and can't find anything out about it because the only decendents of the original builders were his two daughters, which the last one passed away in 1999. Neither of the sisters had any children, and both sisters lived in the house together and never married. I had heard from the older lady that lives across from us that that house had served as a private school during the 30's and 40's. She wasn't clear exactly what year, she was only going by what she remembered years previous. Anyway....to make a long story short, strange things started happening almost immediately after opening the wall to the little room. The usual strange noises and you think you see something but you know really that it can't be anything other than you mind playing tricks on you. I'm not a believer of this kind of thing normally but I can't ignore all of the things that started to happen either. I've just been telling me that it's the cat or the dog doing this....Well, not exactly! On October 27th of last year, we came home and we thought we had been burglarized. There was stuff everywhere, thrown across the room. Nothing big had been moved, upon further looking it was two of the books that we had found in the room, shredded to pieces all over our downstairs. I don't mean in just one room in one little pile, I mean thousands of pices of these two books totally destroyed. So I thought the obvious thing was to assume the dog had gotten into the books and tore them up since we examined everything and nothing was stolen. Well, not exactly! The books were on the bookshelf with about 100 other books none of the other books were touched or moved just the two spots where the missing books were. Not only that but we couldn't find one chew mark or bite mark on any piece of those pages. That was the biggest and most difficult thing that had happened. There were always the dog barking looking up at the ceiling when nothing was there...that happens all the time. I frankly getting tired of it. I've decided to try and sell all of the items that were in that room, one at a time, and see if this makes a difference. If that doesn't work we'll be forced to sell our home and move. We'll be listing other items later. The picture of the woman fell from where we were hanging it and the glass broke and we had to take it and have it replaced, behind the picture was another photograph of the same lady in the same pose. We've selling one of 5 books we have left and that is the one listed on here today.

Hat tip to Curt at The Groovy Age of Horror for emailing the link. You're right, it is right up The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire's alley.

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Haunted Voices

EVP site Haunted Voices has a great new look.

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Friday vampire cat blogging

Hat tip to PhillyGal Another hat tip to Bibi for sending me other cat photos. For some reason I can't get images to upload today so here's a classic from the past until I figure out what is wrong.

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When giants walked the Earth

Paging Hagrid, Hagrid to the white courtesy phone please. From The Scotsman:

IN OUR time, giants are treated as creatures of fiction. But the people of ancient Scotland thought these leviathans walked the land bringing terror in their wake. These monsters may be long gone from our world but our ancestors' belief in them is evident in their habit of naming places and features in the landscape after them. snip But could there have been actual giants among us instead of simply taller people? Modern Scots, as well as our ancestors, have certainly believed they have seen these creatures. Perhaps the most famous sighting of a Scottish giant is one known as the Big Grey Man of Ben MacDui. The first modern account of him belongs to a London professor who felt a giant presence as he climbed Ben MacDui, the second highest peak in Scotland, while on holiday in 1891. Since then other climbers have claimed to have seen the giant on the hill. All over the world these sorts of strange sightings are not as uncommon as might be expected and giants, or creatures like them, seem to be naturally found on the mountainside. One report in The Scotsman of 2 January 1888 records their sightings in Scotland and across the mountains of Europe in great detail.

Several NBA teams are reportedly funding the search for giants.

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Fate of haunted landmark affected by Pentagon base closings?

I saw online this morning (it's still the 25th out here on the Left Coast) that one of the bases the Pentagon has approved for closure is Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital. Apart from the historic significance of the site (and the cool medical oddities museum it houses - the bullet that killed Lincoln; skulls from Civil War casualties; tumors, organs, pickled punks floating in formaldehyde or alcohol... but I digress...), it also got me wondering about the fate of the Walter Reed Forest Glen Annex. Just outside DC sits the former plantation-turned-seminary of Forest Glen. Taken by the Army during WW2 for use as a convalescence facility, the campus has a number of Victorian architectural follies built while it was a girl's school. We actually stumbled across it while trying to find our vet's clinic back when we lived in DC - dilapidated surreal buildings (a pagoda, a chalet, all joined by sagging wooden bridges) leaping out through foggy gloom behind chainlink fences with "No Trespassing/US Government Property" signs. Even if it wasn't haunted, it certainly made for an astonishing and creepy sight as we drove past. Come to find out, it was turned over to a private developer not too long after we left the DC area. The developer is going to restore the historic buildings, converting some to condos, and preserving others as community spaces. While I'm glad that the decay of these historic (and quite unique) buildings will be prevented, the feeling is somewhat bittersweet: what isn't available for private redevelopment these days? Click some of the links - the photos, while cool, (sadly) do not do the site justice. Stumbling upon them as we did, in the drizzle and fog, with the Gov't signs - it looked like the perfect site for a horror movie.

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Zombie Walk

27 August 2005, Vancouver BC:

Mark your calendars! 8/27 BBBBBBRAINS!!!!!! VANCOUVER ZOMBIE WALK!!! RAD!!! ZOMBIEWALK 2005!!! Usually held in Toronto, this shambling, stumbling, flailing good time will be held in Vancouver this year! Yay us! So if you have a mild bsession with Zombies (as many of my friends do), or you simply love to get rotten and yell "Braaaaiiins" at random people, then mark this one on your calendar: Saturday, August 27 - starts 4pm from the VAG [Vancouver Art Gallery] and 5pm from 15th and Sophia (near Main St). [...] Nothing says you love someone quite like caking yourself in make-up, limping down the street together and eating them in the park!

Heh indeedy ;) The closest thing I've been able to find to an official website is here, from one of the bands that will be playing at the open-air party at the end... It's a gothic/horror flashmob, with only with costumes, props, and a party! (Similar one in San Francisco recently - pics here, first-person details here.) Braaaaiiins!!!!!!!

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Vampire love

Like Waylon Jennings, I was looking for vampire love in all the wrong places. But from site meter, I just discovered that if you search with MSN Search, my site is 10th out of 890,507 hits for "vampire love" which is pretty meaningless except it did give me the opportunity to work the great and incomparable Waylon Jennings into a post.

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