Halloween

No post today, Ape-friends.

Just have a fun Halloween!

 

Wednesday Weird: Sleeping Sickness

Today is the last of our Halloween themed Wednesday Weirds. Today, we're talking about the Sleeping Sickness.

So let's say your SO comes down with what you assume is a bad cold. But after getting worse over the next few days, they suddenly freeze like a statue. They lie there, motionless, in a hospital bed. Then, finally, they wake up. Which would be a cause of celebration!

But, it gets worse.

They start to act completely different -- they're emotionless and distant, which makes you think of this delightful film:

THEN! (because so far, it's just not bad enough) they start gouging at their eyes and/or violently, sexually assaulting people.

 

That, right there, folks, is a real disease that first cropped up in the early 20th century. It's called encephalitis lethargica, or the sleeping sickness, and it struck as an epidemic just after the Spanish flu died down.

And, nobody has any idea where it came from or where it went.

It begins with a sore throat right before it escalates into hallucinations and madness before the body ultimately locks up. While sufferers appeared to be asleep, they were actually fully conscious but unable to move. Many died during this stage.

 

Survivors of the sleeping disease suffered behavioral problems for the rest of their lives, becoming excessively violent and -- regardless of gender -- kind of rapey. They also became emotionally indifferent, unable to recognize, for example, the beauty of art. They became completely different people.

Ten years after the epidemic, new cases suddenly stopped appearing.

Today, doctors still don't know what the deal was, though clearly it had to do with the brain. But whether it was a bacteria, or a virus, no one really knows.

 

.

Currently, it still occasionally shows up. So while the world is worried about Ebola, sometimes there are even scarier things that can strike when you least expect it.

Wednesday Weird: Herxheim Mass Grave

Continuing with our Halloween Wednesday Weirds, let's talk bones and skeletons.

Back in 09, archaeologists were digging at the site of near the village of Herxheim, in Germany. The site was from the Neolithic era, (7,000 years ago) when farming had spread into Europe.

The site was first excavated in 1996-99 so they expected to find much of the same. Instead what they found was a human bone.

Which, if you're an archaeologist, yay, right? But then they found another bone. And another. When they were finished digging, they had uncovered a mass grave of over 500 bodies. 500 bodies is a lot, but it's even more when you consider how small the population had been at the time the bodies were buried. Not to mention that Herxheim and other nearby settlements had been mysteriously and completely abandoned, ohhh, about 7,000 years ago.

So what had caused this massive die-off of the population and subsequent abandonment? The archaeologists weren't sure.

Until they found the bite marks.

Yeah. The mass grave was a mass cannibal grave. The bones in the mass grave had been chewed on, been cracked for their marrow, even had marks on them that suggested they had been spit roasted.

Cannibalism was extremely rare in Neolithic Europe (why would you need to eat people when you could grow your own food) and yet, here there was not just a single case of it, but a massive amount of it.

What happened at Herxheim, that caused much of the settlement to be eaten by other people, and that caused the rest of settlement to be abandoned?

We may never know . . .

 

Wednesday Weird: Screaming Ghost

Here we are, the beginning of Halloween season. Which means for this month, the Wednesday Weirds are going to be as Halloweeny as I can swing. I'm going to try to pick scary or creepy or gross topics. What will they be? No clue. I figure out when I write the posts.

But for today, to launch our Halloween series of Wednesday Weirds, we're looking at a ghost video!

I picked this one because A) it's creepy as all hell. And B) it's different than a lot of the other types of ghost videos.

Whether it's real or not, I have no clue, but it's full of tension and it's an absorbing video (no worries. There's no jump scares or anything. I wouldn't do that to you.)

 

Thoughts?

In Which It's Halloween!

Hi all! Laptop is busted right now, which means blog posts are a bit of a PITA to write, but here's a little Halloween video to cheer you up on this spookiest of holidays.

 

In Which It's NaNo Season

So we're halfway into November and I have yet to do a NaNoWriMo post yet.

Mildly Pathetic, Sarah. *Shakes head at self*

To be fair, though, I had some Halloween posts I wanted to get to, and then it just snuck up so fast. Startling really.

Just so startled!

 

So anyway, I'm participating. Natch. You can see my little wordcount score keeper widegety thingamabob over there somewhere ----->

Once again, my user name is Falen1 so friend me if you're NaNoing and we've missed each other.

The first NaNo weekend, Hannah, Tricia and I attended a Twin Cities NaNo getaway weekend. It involved driving 2.5 hours to a cabin on a lake with other Twin Cities NaNoers and writing until our backs gave out.

So because of that, I'm ahead by like 5 days, which is awesome. Also because I'll be out of town this coming weekend and for thanksgiving so I needed to get ahead and need to stay ahead.

I'm also being a NaNo Rebel this year. Instead of starting something new (because I need another unfinished MS like I need another hole in the head) I decided to use NaNo to put the final 50K on my WIP All That Remains (I had already put about 45K into it before NaNo started)

That MS was giving me tons of grief around this time last year, but I'm happy to say I got past that and now I've reached that manic part in the MS, where things are ramping up towards the climax and I want to be writing on it ALL THE TIME mostly because I can't wait to finish it and dive into revisions.

So there you have it.

How's writing been going for you?

Wednesday Weird: The Beast Of Bray Road

Happy Halloween everyone!

And how apropos that Halloween is on a Wednesday this year, for a Wednesday weird? And since it's Halloween, it seems fitting to focus on a halloweeny weird: werewolves.

I've actually read quite a few first hand accounts of "werewolf" sighting, (they're actually kind of common up here in MN, WI and MI) and though many can surely be chalked up to a bear with mange (see below for a photo) (OT: That's the name of my Rockband band: Mange Bear, purely because they get mistaken for sasquatch and other cryptids. True Story) there are some that can't be explained away so easily. One of the most famous series of encounters is the Beast of Bray Road.

On October 31st, 1989 (Yay! 13 years ago TODAY! (Halloween of all days)) Doristine Gipson, from Elkhorn, WI was driving along Bray Road. As she neared an intersection she leaned over to change the station on her radio when she felt her right front tire jump off the ground as if she had hit something. Concerned, she stopped the car and got out to see what it was. Finding nothing on the roadway behind her car, she began to look around.

As she peered into the darkness, she suddenly saw a dark, hairy form racing toward her. She did not see what the figure looked like, but she did see it was quite bulky and she would later compare the form to someone who works out continually with weights.

Startled by the oncoming form, and by the sounds of its “heavy feet”, she got back in her car. She was attempting to drive away when the beast jumped onto her trunk. Luckily, it was too wet for the creature to hang on and it fell off onto the pavement. Doristine returned to the site later on that evening with a young girl that she was taking out trick-or-treating and saw a large form on the side of the road. When she saw the creature moving, she ordered the child to lock her door and drove quickly away from the scene.

A few days later, 24 year old  Lorianne Endrizzi was rounding a curve on Bray Road and saw what she thought was a person kneeling and hunched over on the side of the road. She slowed down and was no more than six feet away from it. The sighting lasted for about 45 seconds and she clearly saw a beast with grayish, brown hair, fangs and pointed ears. "His face was … long and snouty, like a wolf". Endrizzi was completely unnerved by the sighting. She later stated in an interview that the creature “appeared to be so human-like that it was scary.”

 The media picked up these stories and more eyewitnesses came forward, as well as people who had seen the creature in years past. Other details about the sightings include:

The animal walking on two feet
The animal kneeling like a person
Human-like hands with claws at the end
The animal carrying and eating food held on the palm of it's hands
When on all fours, a sloped back and collected hind legs and a stronger front end
More than one encounter where it chased people or children

The sightings would continue for a few years before finally drying up.

So what do we think the animal could have been? Some people want to say a wolf, or wolf-dog or coy-dog. Some prefer the idea of a shunka warak'in which is a wolf-like cryptid that resembles a hyena.

taxidermied animal believed to be a shunka warak'in

And still, a mange bear may be the best culprit. But even bears don't eat their food in the palms of their hands.

What are your thoughts? And do you have any exciting plans for Halloween?

 

In Which I Talk Scary Books

Since we're coming up on Halloween super quick now, I figured today was a good day to list, in no particular order, my top 5 favorite scary books.


House of Leaves - Mark Z Danielewski

 

 

 

Synopsis:

 

A young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane discovers something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams

 

 

Thoughts:

 

House of Leaves is one of those books where the back cover (the synopsis above) isn't accurate. Though it is a story about a house that is bigger on the inside than the outside, at no point do the children wander off or go missing.

 

BUT! That said, this books is terrifying. It's a story within a story, following a tattoo artist who discovers a video where a family does an experiment to show that their house is bigger on the inside than the out. The tattoo artist's tale is told via footnotes (pages and pages of them) as he becomes obsessed with this video (and the obsession builds to a point where you can't tell if he's gone crazy, or if the mystery of the house actually has some effect on him). And as you follow his story of obsession, the reader learns everything he learns about the house and the family that lived there.

 

Seriously scary, both in a psychological way and also in a "WTF is in the HOUSE??" way. But, it's not an easy book to read. At all. At points, the footnotes will last for whole chapters, and they'll be written upside down, and in spirals and in any other weird way you can imagine.

 

 

The Amityville Horror - Jay Anson

 

 

 

Synopsis:

 

The Lutzes moved into their dream home on December 18th, 1975. Four weeks later, they fled in terror. The home was the scene of a mass murder a year before, and the Lutzes claimed paranormal phenomena caused them to fear for their lives and forced them to abandon the home

 

Thoughts:

 

The Amityville Horror is touted as a true story, but it's not. Though, to be fair, the murders did happen, but the Lutzes made up the stuff that happened to them.

 

BUT!! That does not change that fact that this book is terrifying. This is the kind of book that you can read in broad daylight, in a crowded public place, and still need to set it aside at points because you're just so scared.

 

The first time I read this (back in high school) I had to share a bed with Twin because I was just that scared. I mean, come on! Ghosts are scary. Very few things scare me more than ghosts.

 

The book is hard to find, though. It went out of print for a while (I used to snatch up any used copies I could find) though I did see a new paperback at a borders closing last year (snatched that one up too).

 

 

The Season Of Passage - Christopher Pike

 

 



Synopsis:

Dr. Lauren Wagner was a celebrity. She was involved with the most exciting adventure mankind had ever undertaken: a manned expedition to Mars. The whole world admired and respected her.

But Lauren knew fear. Inside—voices entreating her to love them. Outside—the mystery of the missing group that had gone before her. The dead group.

But were they simply dead? Or something else?
Thoughts:

This book isn't overtly terrifying. There aren't ghosts, or monsters etc. But there are moments of extreme tension and fear, and most of them take place when the characters are on Mars. And let's get real here, space horror is terrifying because you can't escape it. There's nowhere to go.

There's a scene in this book where the MC is floating on a boat in a cave on Mars and the scene is so wrought with tension and fear, it actually gave me nightmares when I first read it in high school.


Grave's End: A True Ghost Story - Elaine Mercado

Synopsis:

When Elaine Mercado and her first husband bought their home in Brooklyn, New York, in 1982, they had no idea that they and their young daughters were embarking on a thirteen year nightmare.

Within a few days of moving in, Elaine and her older daughter began to experience the sensation of being watched. Then came scratching noises and weird smells, followed by voices whispering, maniacal laughter, shadowy figures scurrying along baseboards, and small balls of light bouncing along the ceilings. From the beginning of the haunting, "suffocating dreams" were experienced by everyone except the younger daughter These eventually accelerated to physical aggression directed at Elaine and both the girls.

This book is the true story of how one family tried to cope with living in a haunted house. It also describes how, with the help of a parapsychologist Dr. Hans Holtzer and the medium Marisa Anderson, the family discovered the tragic and heartbreaking secrets buried in the house at Grave's End.

Thoughts:

I LOVE this book. I read it at least once a year (it's short and fast. I can read it in one sitting). Like I said, ghosts freak me the eff out, but also, I LOVE reading real ghosts stories.

The author isn't the best writer, but the experiences she and her family had are terrifying and every time I read it, a different experience strikes me as the most terrifying (the last time I read it (a few weeks ago) it was a scene where the youngest daughter went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and when she came back into her room, she saw an old woman sitting on her sister's chest, and she was too scared to say anything so she CLIMBED BACK INTO BED WITH HER SISTER and closed her eyes. OMG I can't even...)

If you like true ghost stories, definitely check this one out. It's also great because they do get some answers to their haunting at the end. Not everything, but quite a bit.


N. - Stephen King

Synopsis:

There is something unearthly and mysterious deep in Acherman's Field in rural Maine. There is a Stonehenge-like arrangement of seven stones with a horrifying EYE in the center. And whatever dwells there in that strange, windswept setting may have brought about the suicide of one man...and harbor death for the OCD afflicted "N.," whose visits to the field have passed beyond compulsion into the realm of obsession.

Thoughts:

Okay, this is actually a short story/novella in King's Just After Sunset collection. BUT it's also been made into a comic.

This short story is just terrifying. To me it has the number one aspect needed for a great horror story: something that cannot be stopped. It's so creepy, you can't help but wonder if just by reading it, maybe the standing stones will affect you too, which is when you know it's a good story, when you start to wonder if maybe it's not fiction.



So there you have it! My top 5 scary stories.
Let me know some of your fav stories - I'd love to read them!
 

Wednesday Weird: The Starchild Skull

In the 1930's, in a small rural village 100 miles southwest of Chihuahua, Mexico,
at the back of a mine tunnel, two mysterious remains were found: a complete human skeleton and a smaller, malformed skeleton.

An American girl of Mexican heritage in her late teens (15 to 18) was taken by her parents to visit relatives living in a small rural village 100 miles southwest of Chihuahua, Mexico and went exploring through some of the nearby mines.

At the back of a mine tunnel she found a complete human skeleton lying on the ground's surface. Beside it, sticking up out of the ground, was a malformed skeletal hand entwined in one of the human skeleton's upper arms. The girl proceeded to scrape the dirt off a shallow grave to reveal a buried skeleton smaller than the human one and also malformed.

The girl recovered both skulls and kept them for the remainder of her life. Upon her death they were passed to an American man, who maintained possession for five years before passing them to the American couple who now control them.

the starchild skull

Experts suggest the child's high degree of rear-skull deformity could be from cranial binding. But squeezing a skull's upper bones out of their natural shape leaves them permanently separated, which results in a life-long "soft spot" at the top of the head.

The child's skull is well-sutured (no soft spot), with none of the usual distortions normally caused by binding.

 

The average volume for a human brain is 1400 cubic centimeters (cc). The volume of the human skull is 1200 cc, typical for a small human. In contrast, the volume of the child's skull is 1600 cc, which is 200 cc beyond the average for adult humans. And had it lived to become an adult, its brain capacity would have grown to 1800 cc or more, well beyond the human average

 

In paleoanthropology a 200 cc increase in brain capacity of a human type creature warrants the naming of an entirely new species. Homo Erectus averages 200 cc more than Homo Habilis; Homo Archaic is 200 cc more than Erectus; Neanderthal is 200 cc more than Archaic. Thus, this child might well represent an unknown species of human-like beings.

starchild on the left, regular skull on the right

There are other aspects of the skull that make it different from a normal skull (the bones are much thinner than the bones of a normal skull, it's missing frontal sinus cavities, the ears are larger and deeper than norma ear canals, etc).

There are two schools of thought regarding the skull: it's either an as of yet unknown deformity, or it's an alien-human hybrid.

Either way, no one can argue that it is a strange discovery and we may never fully know the answer to what happened to the child.

Wednesday Weird: The Toxic Blood

Since it's October, the month of Halloween, I figured I'd try to pick extra weird or scary things for my Wednesday Weird posts. Of course, I already missed two (one was for ISWSG and the other I just forgot) but also, there's 5 Wednesdays this month so I think it will all work out.

Today we're going to talk about an urban legend.

Have you heard that story about a woman who arrives at a hospital who's blood turns out to be so toxic that people have to flee for their lives?

Well, if you have or haven't, the story is totally true.

On February 14th, 1994, 31 year old Gloria Ramirez was suffering from advanced cervical cancer and was admitted to a California ER.

Gloria was not doing well at all, and at one point the hospital staff had to remove her shirt to defibrillator her heart. When they did so, they noticed an oily sheen on her skin and a few other staff said they noticed a fruity or garlicky smell that seemed to be coming from her mouth.

When a nurse drew Gloria's blood for tests, she detected a foul odor - chemical, like ammonia. Other staff could smell it too, and one staff member noticed manila colored particles floating in the syringe of blood.

And then hospital staff started to gag and collapse.

23 people were affected, and the ER was evacuated while a decontamination unit was brought in.

Unfortunately Gloria died 40 minutes later. An autopsy was performed (in hazmat suits, natch) but despite a detailed and massive forensic investigation, it's still not known what happened to turn Gloria's blood into a toxic ooze.

A lot of people try to write this case off as mass hysteria. Which, let's be honest, could totally be the case.

EXCEPT. The worst victim of the 23 people affected by Gloria's blood spent two weeks in intensive care, suffering from hepatitis, pancreatitis and avascular necorosis (a condition which cause BONES to DIE) so that kind of nukes (heh) the whole mass hysteria theory.

The mostly likely case is that a medication Gloria was taking, interacted with another medication, etc and turned her blood into a potent nerve gas. But nothing is conclusive yet.

Just don't forget, human beings are walking, talking chemical reactions, so sometimes, you never know what you're going to get.

In Which We Carve!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Are you doing anything fun tonight? Did you do anything fun over the weekend?

We carved pumpkins, as usual. Two apiece, to get as many seeds as we could for roasting.

Sarah's Pumpkin #1

Sarah's Pumpkin #2

Brother's Pumpkin #1

Brother's Pumpkin #2

Twin's Pumpkin #1

Twin's Pumpkin #2

So how about you? Do you carve pumpkins?

In Which I Shout Out

Shout out time!

Maria Zannini's newest book Chain of Souls is now available for purchase!

Isn't this cover amazing?!

If you want to help give it a proper birthday launch, please check out either Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Smashwords to get yourself a copy.

Also, the amazing and cool TL Conway is hosting a NaNo extravaganza for the next two weeks on her blog. It will be filled with awesome guest posts (including one by moi) so check her out! (I believe my guest post will be on Thursday. I'll post a blog reminder on that day).

So, anyway, how are things? I'm OK. Not really ready for NaNo yet, but hoping to make a lot of headway this week. BUT, I also have some sort of crazy sore throat going on that I'll probably have to have a doctor check out here soon, cuz it's driving me CRAY CRAY!

Also, for some unknown reason, my Internet Explorer has stopped working. I wrote this whole post using safari (which I've never used before) which is fine, except that all my favorites are saved under IE so I'm super frustrated. Sigh.

How are things going for you?

Ready for NaNo yet? How about Halloween?

Update:
I've created a rage comic in relation to my sore throat experience:

In Which We Celebrate Halloween

Happy Halloween!

I hope you have a fun day full of candy! (mmmmm candy...)

Twin and I will watch a scary movie while handing out candy tonight.


BUT, what we really enjoy about Halloween is pumpkin carving (that, and the subsequent seed roasting). We each carve at least 2 pumpkins. It's always a challenge to make sure no one sees your design until we unveil them to each other.

I don't think this year was my best year, but it still turned out OK.

I like to do either large eyes or large mouths. Brother likes to point out that I excel at huge mouths with a crap load of sharp teeth. And this is true, I do.

Here are my pumpkins for 2010.

I wish I had taken the time to scrape the teeth of this one, but it was late and I was the last one carving as usual

Twin likes to do simple pumpkins. And she likes to brag that she's always the first one done. Which is true. She did 3 pumpkins this year

Brother typically likes to do weird or complicated ones, like a witch doctor wearing another pumpkin as a hat. Or a pumpkin who's been cut in half by a scythe.




Unfortunately it was late by the time we were done, so we didn't have time to roast the pumpkin seeds, so no picture yet of those. Hopefully I'll have a picture of that tonight.

Does anyone else carve pumpkins, or do anything fun for Halloween?