Friday, October 31, 2008
Dressed To Kill?
Oh boy, KissOnline.com has offered a first look (see below) at the new KISS "Rock 'N' Roll Over" shoes and jeans from Vans. I know what I'm getting my Mom for Christmas!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Arkansas Ghost Stories
This article was published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Thursday, October 30, 2008
By Jeannie Stone
LITTLE ROCK — The best ghost stories are told around a campfire. Generations of Arkansans, however, have learned tales of odd and downright frightening goings-on in and around the Ozark hills in the storytelling tradition of their forefathers and mothers. Even today the region clings to stories passed down - some for hundreds of years.
Here are just a few:
Dover Lights, north of Dover
The deep valleys of the Ozarks are rife with stories of strange occurrences. What is known locally as the Dover Lights has long perplexed inhabitants of the rural and rugged portion of northern Pope county.
The phenomenon occurs about 10 miles north of Dover in an unpopulated and inaccessible pit of a valley known asWainscott Bottoms, located between Helton’s Farm and Long Pool off Forest Service Road 1801. The lights are best viewed on clear, cold nights from a place called the Narrows located along a gravel road near the small settlement of Treat. The lights, hovering some 1,200 feet above the Bottoms, can be viewed from the vantage point of the Narrows.
The most common interpretation of the three yellowish lights (although some locals have witnessed different colors) is that they belong to the ghosts of Spanish conquistadors looking for their lost treasure.
The legend goes that the soldiers, heavy laden with gold and other treasures looted from the new country, were heading back to their ships when, one by one, they died in the hills but not before each man, wary of his fellow smug-glers, wrapped his treasures in elephant skins and buried them in secret. Their ghosts now roam the countryside searching for their lost gold.
Several accounts exist which claim the lights become agitated if you yell, “I’ve got your treasure!” The dare for young people then is to do just that. Several locals have claimed the lights chased them out of the woods.
Tim Poynter of Dover, who’s seen the lights several times, said, “It could be coon hunters, it could be campers, it could be ghosts, but it makes no sense at all. There are plenty of logging trails all over the place but not to where the lights are. People have been seeing them since at least the early 1800s.” The Poynter family has lived in those hills for 200 years, so they’ve heard them all.
For 25 years, retired ATU professor of biology Glyn Turnipseed offered a more scientific explanation for the lights to his students. “We were out there all the time,” Turnipseed said. “The outdoors is where science is.” What he offered was an educated opinion. “Those lights are not easily explained,” he said. He should know. He has seen them dozens of times.
“Our whole life is based on a little chemical reaction known as photosynthesis,” Turnipseed said. Chlorophyll found in deciduous trees and other nonevergreen plants captures the light energy needed for photosynthesis, and photosynthesis, in my humble opinion, is the only remaining production naturally occurring on our planet,” he said.
“All life is based on chlorophyll,” he added, “and it doesn’t die instantly.”
Turnipseed continued the lecture by summoning images of fall. “We get to enjoy beautiful fall colors because of the changes in pigments. Some of the pigments hang on a long, long time and it’s not all that uncommon to see flashes of light. Old-timers called unexplained lights in the ground fox fires. Some people pass the lights off one way, some another. Heck, it’s hard for me to explain. There are so many factors of time and space to consider.”
The professor encouraged folks to judge for themselves. “They’re easy to see especially during this time of the year when the leaves are gone. Even when you see the lights, it blows your mind.”
Tobe Inman mines, Moccasin Gap
Not only gold lies in those Ozark hills; long ago, silver purportedly was mined there.
Somewhere around Moccasin Gap, according to legend, came an “odd” family from Kentucky, with the name Inman. The husband, wife and two young boys arrived by wagon in the 1800sand seemed to live in squalor as was the norm in the Arkansas hills during those times. Only the man was occasionally seen in town. According to Buried Treasures of the American Southwest written by W.C. Jameson, the family kept to themselves.
One cold winter one of the Inman boys fell deathly ill, and Inman rode into Dover and fetched “Doc Martin” who stayed with the family for several days and nursed the boy out of death’s grip.
With cash scarce, Inman paid the doctor in bullets he mined himself from an abandoned cave. Martin thought little of the box and set it on a shelf only to discover it two years later.
Much to his surprise, the tips were fashioned from pure silver. Wanting to confront Inman, Martin found their cabin empty. The Inmans had moved on in pursuit of an easier lifestyle.
“Doc Martin spent the rest of his days and all of his fortune searching for the lost Inman mine.” Many locals, who have seen a lone light swinging and swaying in the Ozark hills above Dover, believe they are looking at Doc Martin’s lantern.
Even the hills are reluctant to give up their hold on treasures whether they are imagined or real.
Another story which has circulated over the years has been the tale of a young bride slain on her wedding day.
Price Cemetery, London
In western Pope county comes a century-old tale based partly in fact.
County records show that Laura Starr Latta was born Sept. 19, 1879, and died Aug. 22,1899, one month shy of her 20th birthday. She was the daughter of Andrew J. Latta, born May 7, 1829, died Jan. 15, 1905, and of Sarah Ann Latta, born Jan. 13, 1845, died Feb. 1, 1926.
The Latta family resided in the Georgetown community west of London. Although local newspapers recorded the deaths of both parents (Andrew Latta died of what was considered to be “congestion of the brain”), listing them as prominent citizens, little is found on Laura.
Stories have circulated in the community over a ghost robed in white who is seen flagging down cars along the north rock wall of the cemetery on U.S. 64. She is presumed to be the ghost of Laura Starr Latta dressed in her wedding gown. According to legend, she met with a violent death, and several sightings include the fact her wedding gown is stained with blood.
Many peculiar experiences are attributed to Latta, but the most common thread in recorded tales is that the ghost of Latta is a hitchhiker. Several accounts exist of folks giving her rides, but she always disappeared before they got too far away from the cemetery. One account describes a motorist seeing her in the middle of the road and driving right through her.
Another local resident noted that her grandmother saw the ghost sitting along the side of an open grave dangling her legs over the edge. “There was a pair of new blue party shoes right beside her,” according to a newspaper account.
Cemetery caretaker Darwin Price grew up down the road from the cemetery and has never seen or heard anything out ofthe ordinary in his 74 years, with one exception. Every few days there is a pair of shoes on the rock wall where the ghost is said to walk. “It’s the strangest thing,” he said. “I’m cleaning the cemetery up, and I throw the shoes away, but, sure enough, another pair will show up in the exact same spot a couple days later. It’s been going on for years.”
Local teenagers have been enraptured with the rumors, and another cemetery caretaker expressed concern over vandalism. The marker was missing for two years and found in a dorm room at the University of the Ozarks. “That tombstone has been stolen so many times, and the last time it was broken in half when we recovered it at a car wash in Russellville 10 years go,” she said.
Today, only the footstone with the engraved letters “LSL” and the top of Latta’s headstone bearing flowers is evident at her grave beside her parents, grandparents, infant niece, sister and nephew under several tall old fir trees.
“Out of respect for Miss Latta’s remains, we decided to follow local law enforcement’s suggestion to keep the tombstone in a safe place,” the caretaker said. It is being kept by a third caretaker. There may be another reason for the hiding place. According to persisting stories, reading the inscription aloud invokes doom. It reads:“Gentle stranger passing by As you are now, once was I As I am now so you must be
Prepare yourself to follow me.”
Some haunts were never based on human flesh and bones. From Mt. Vernon comes the story of the Mo Mo.
Farmer’s Tale, Mount Vernon
The story of the Mo Mo, which lurked in the barns of Mount Vernon in 1959, followed a long line of Mo Mos that are described in greater detail in Ozark Ghost Stories.
A farmer was returning to his house at dusk after working in the fields all day and spotted what he thought was an “old farmer sitting in the unfenced field beside the road.” As he got closer to the figure, its true form materialized, and the farmer saw that it was“too big and too hairy to be a human being.” The beast seemed to be resting on its haunches with its head lowered, but when it stood up it was 9 feet tall, according to the farmer’s account.
The farmer was apparently too stunned to move as the beast strode across the road within spitting distance of the shocked man. During that close encounter, the farmer noticed the beast had long, black matted hair and glowing orange eyes.
When the distraught farmer returned home he found many a trail of blood, entrails and feathers leading out to the field where the beast had been sitting. The man’s chicken house had been raided. The account included the fact that the beast killed and gutted the dogs as well but didn’t devour them.
To be protected from things that go bump in the Halloween night, recommendations are made to avoid hitchhiking brides, antagonizing ancient Spaniards and an old country doctor and, by all means, avoid Mount Vernon chicken houses.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
By Jeannie Stone
LITTLE ROCK — The best ghost stories are told around a campfire. Generations of Arkansans, however, have learned tales of odd and downright frightening goings-on in and around the Ozark hills in the storytelling tradition of their forefathers and mothers. Even today the region clings to stories passed down - some for hundreds of years.
Here are just a few:
Dover Lights, north of Dover
The deep valleys of the Ozarks are rife with stories of strange occurrences. What is known locally as the Dover Lights has long perplexed inhabitants of the rural and rugged portion of northern Pope county.
The phenomenon occurs about 10 miles north of Dover in an unpopulated and inaccessible pit of a valley known asWainscott Bottoms, located between Helton’s Farm and Long Pool off Forest Service Road 1801. The lights are best viewed on clear, cold nights from a place called the Narrows located along a gravel road near the small settlement of Treat. The lights, hovering some 1,200 feet above the Bottoms, can be viewed from the vantage point of the Narrows.
The most common interpretation of the three yellowish lights (although some locals have witnessed different colors) is that they belong to the ghosts of Spanish conquistadors looking for their lost treasure.
The legend goes that the soldiers, heavy laden with gold and other treasures looted from the new country, were heading back to their ships when, one by one, they died in the hills but not before each man, wary of his fellow smug-glers, wrapped his treasures in elephant skins and buried them in secret. Their ghosts now roam the countryside searching for their lost gold.
Several accounts exist which claim the lights become agitated if you yell, “I’ve got your treasure!” The dare for young people then is to do just that. Several locals have claimed the lights chased them out of the woods.
Tim Poynter of Dover, who’s seen the lights several times, said, “It could be coon hunters, it could be campers, it could be ghosts, but it makes no sense at all. There are plenty of logging trails all over the place but not to where the lights are. People have been seeing them since at least the early 1800s.” The Poynter family has lived in those hills for 200 years, so they’ve heard them all.
For 25 years, retired ATU professor of biology Glyn Turnipseed offered a more scientific explanation for the lights to his students. “We were out there all the time,” Turnipseed said. “The outdoors is where science is.” What he offered was an educated opinion. “Those lights are not easily explained,” he said. He should know. He has seen them dozens of times.
“Our whole life is based on a little chemical reaction known as photosynthesis,” Turnipseed said. Chlorophyll found in deciduous trees and other nonevergreen plants captures the light energy needed for photosynthesis, and photosynthesis, in my humble opinion, is the only remaining production naturally occurring on our planet,” he said.
“All life is based on chlorophyll,” he added, “and it doesn’t die instantly.”
Turnipseed continued the lecture by summoning images of fall. “We get to enjoy beautiful fall colors because of the changes in pigments. Some of the pigments hang on a long, long time and it’s not all that uncommon to see flashes of light. Old-timers called unexplained lights in the ground fox fires. Some people pass the lights off one way, some another. Heck, it’s hard for me to explain. There are so many factors of time and space to consider.”
The professor encouraged folks to judge for themselves. “They’re easy to see especially during this time of the year when the leaves are gone. Even when you see the lights, it blows your mind.”
Tobe Inman mines, Moccasin Gap
Not only gold lies in those Ozark hills; long ago, silver purportedly was mined there.
Somewhere around Moccasin Gap, according to legend, came an “odd” family from Kentucky, with the name Inman. The husband, wife and two young boys arrived by wagon in the 1800sand seemed to live in squalor as was the norm in the Arkansas hills during those times. Only the man was occasionally seen in town. According to Buried Treasures of the American Southwest written by W.C. Jameson, the family kept to themselves.
One cold winter one of the Inman boys fell deathly ill, and Inman rode into Dover and fetched “Doc Martin” who stayed with the family for several days and nursed the boy out of death’s grip.
With cash scarce, Inman paid the doctor in bullets he mined himself from an abandoned cave. Martin thought little of the box and set it on a shelf only to discover it two years later.
Much to his surprise, the tips were fashioned from pure silver. Wanting to confront Inman, Martin found their cabin empty. The Inmans had moved on in pursuit of an easier lifestyle.
“Doc Martin spent the rest of his days and all of his fortune searching for the lost Inman mine.” Many locals, who have seen a lone light swinging and swaying in the Ozark hills above Dover, believe they are looking at Doc Martin’s lantern.
Even the hills are reluctant to give up their hold on treasures whether they are imagined or real.
Another story which has circulated over the years has been the tale of a young bride slain on her wedding day.
Price Cemetery, London
In western Pope county comes a century-old tale based partly in fact.
County records show that Laura Starr Latta was born Sept. 19, 1879, and died Aug. 22,1899, one month shy of her 20th birthday. She was the daughter of Andrew J. Latta, born May 7, 1829, died Jan. 15, 1905, and of Sarah Ann Latta, born Jan. 13, 1845, died Feb. 1, 1926.
The Latta family resided in the Georgetown community west of London. Although local newspapers recorded the deaths of both parents (Andrew Latta died of what was considered to be “congestion of the brain”), listing them as prominent citizens, little is found on Laura.
Stories have circulated in the community over a ghost robed in white who is seen flagging down cars along the north rock wall of the cemetery on U.S. 64. She is presumed to be the ghost of Laura Starr Latta dressed in her wedding gown. According to legend, she met with a violent death, and several sightings include the fact her wedding gown is stained with blood.
Many peculiar experiences are attributed to Latta, but the most common thread in recorded tales is that the ghost of Latta is a hitchhiker. Several accounts exist of folks giving her rides, but she always disappeared before they got too far away from the cemetery. One account describes a motorist seeing her in the middle of the road and driving right through her.
Another local resident noted that her grandmother saw the ghost sitting along the side of an open grave dangling her legs over the edge. “There was a pair of new blue party shoes right beside her,” according to a newspaper account.
Cemetery caretaker Darwin Price grew up down the road from the cemetery and has never seen or heard anything out ofthe ordinary in his 74 years, with one exception. Every few days there is a pair of shoes on the rock wall where the ghost is said to walk. “It’s the strangest thing,” he said. “I’m cleaning the cemetery up, and I throw the shoes away, but, sure enough, another pair will show up in the exact same spot a couple days later. It’s been going on for years.”
Local teenagers have been enraptured with the rumors, and another cemetery caretaker expressed concern over vandalism. The marker was missing for two years and found in a dorm room at the University of the Ozarks. “That tombstone has been stolen so many times, and the last time it was broken in half when we recovered it at a car wash in Russellville 10 years go,” she said.
Today, only the footstone with the engraved letters “LSL” and the top of Latta’s headstone bearing flowers is evident at her grave beside her parents, grandparents, infant niece, sister and nephew under several tall old fir trees.
“Out of respect for Miss Latta’s remains, we decided to follow local law enforcement’s suggestion to keep the tombstone in a safe place,” the caretaker said. It is being kept by a third caretaker. There may be another reason for the hiding place. According to persisting stories, reading the inscription aloud invokes doom. It reads:“Gentle stranger passing by As you are now, once was I As I am now so you must be
Prepare yourself to follow me.”
Some haunts were never based on human flesh and bones. From Mt. Vernon comes the story of the Mo Mo.
Farmer’s Tale, Mount Vernon
The story of the Mo Mo, which lurked in the barns of Mount Vernon in 1959, followed a long line of Mo Mos that are described in greater detail in Ozark Ghost Stories.
A farmer was returning to his house at dusk after working in the fields all day and spotted what he thought was an “old farmer sitting in the unfenced field beside the road.” As he got closer to the figure, its true form materialized, and the farmer saw that it was“too big and too hairy to be a human being.” The beast seemed to be resting on its haunches with its head lowered, but when it stood up it was 9 feet tall, according to the farmer’s account.
The farmer was apparently too stunned to move as the beast strode across the road within spitting distance of the shocked man. During that close encounter, the farmer noticed the beast had long, black matted hair and glowing orange eyes.
When the distraught farmer returned home he found many a trail of blood, entrails and feathers leading out to the field where the beast had been sitting. The man’s chicken house had been raided. The account included the fact that the beast killed and gutted the dogs as well but didn’t devour them.
To be protected from things that go bump in the Halloween night, recommendations are made to avoid hitchhiking brides, antagonizing ancient Spaniards and an old country doctor and, by all means, avoid Mount Vernon chicken houses.
Yet Even More Arkansas Ghost Hunting
Another story from the Arkansas Gazette this week, which apparently is your home for all ghost stories from this great state, along with this blog at least. So if you click on that little label link after this article that says "ghosts", you'll get spooky tales from the Booneville Sanitarium, the Arkansas State Capital building, the haunted Hardy Hotel and many of the ghost hunting groups. Do it!
LITTLE ROCK — Not all hunters wear bright orange and sit in tree stands.
Karen Shillings’ prey is the paranormal. She is the director of the Central Arkansas Society for Paranormal Research.
“The group used to be huge,” Shillings said. “It was more like a social event than anything else. Now we have a group of a few ladies, and I can do what I love to do: investigate haunted locations.”
With ghost hunting, she said, the smaller the group, the better the results.
“We usually get more evidence when fewer people are involved,” Shillings said. “Maybe the spirits get confused and back off when there are too many people around. For some reason, spirits seem to like me. Sometimes they even do things I ask them to do.”
As a child growing up in Cabot, Shillings said she knew she was sensitive to the supernatural world.
“There was one interesting thing that happened to me at my grandmother’s house while playing in the backyard one day at about the age of 4,” Shillings wrote on the CASPR Web site. “My mother and grandmother saw me playing at the fence and talking. At first they thought I was just playing, but upon further viewing, they decided that it looked as if I was having a conversation with someone.
“When I came inside, they asked who I had been talking to. I answered that a very sweet old lady had been there, and yes, we had been talking for quite awhile. This disturbed my family, since they never observed anyone else around the fence, but they wrote it off as a playful imagination.
“A few days later, I was looking through our family Bible and from out of the pages dropped a photo of an elderly woman. I got excited and told them that this was definitely the woman who had been speaking with me in the backyard that day. My mother and grandmother were shocked because the photo was one of my great-grandmother. She had been dead for over 10 years. Although I can’t remember the encounter, I believe that it is possible that she was visiting me,” Shillings wrote.
Children, she said, are often less fearful of the unknown.
“I think that children are allowed much more contact with the spirit world than adults,” Shillings said.
When going on a ghost hunt, Shillings said it is vital to stay strong when confronted with an unknown entity. She recalled a particularly scary encounter with an unfriendly visitor that her years of experience didn’t prepare her for.
“One night I arrived to investigate a home where three teenage girls had been terrorized repeatedly by an aggressive and violent unseen entity,” Shillings said. “This is the type of haunting considered to be classic poltergeist activity by most researchers. I chose to stay alone in the bedroom where the most ghostly activity had occurred, in the bed where one of the teenagers had been attacked repeatedly.
“No one had slept in this room for months. In fact, the whole family refused to enter by day or night. Fearlessly, I made my way to the bed. A few minutes passed and, still wide awake, I turned from my right side onto my left and immediately became aware that someone or something was lying in the bed facing me. In the semidarkness, the shape and outline of a shoulder came into focus.
“My shock turned to horror as I realized that I was nose to nose with the entity. Instead of a face, though, I was staring into a faceless black hole. It exuded an oppressive, tentacle-like aura that enveloped me with an icy mist.
“For the first time in my experience as a ghost hunter, I was frozen in fear. I pulled the coversover my head, curled up in a ball and waited for its next move. As I lay there, my heart pounding in my ears, I sensed it had gone and quickly made my way across the room to the light switch.
“It was at that moment that I finally understood the reason some people are afraid of the dark,” Shillings said.
Although the terms spirits and ghosts are often used interchangeably, Shillings said she believes there are distinct differences between the two.
Spirits, she said, have crossed over, gone to heaven and then chosen to make their presence known to some. They most commonly visit family or loved ones and never do anything to cause alarm.
“Most of us never know that we’ve been visited by a spirit being, but sometimes we get lucky enough to remember the visit through a vivid dream, the kind that we could swear was real,” she said.
Ghosts, on the other hand, Shillings said have died but refuse to go to the light and end up wandering the earth in either a dazeor some other type of existence.
Haunting, Shillings said, can be either complex or simple in nature. The simple ones are called residual. This occurs when an event plays itself out over and over again without interaction with its surroundings.
“Ten-mile House in Little Rock sets a good example of residual haunting,” she said. “The owners report that, almost like clockwork, they can expect to hear the marching footsteps of the soldiers who once occupied their land during the Civil War.”
CASPR has investigated everything from historical locations like the USS Razorback in North Little Rock and Sylvania Cemetery in Cabot, to private residences and hospitals. The group gets countless requests for investigations from those who are convinced they have a haunting and, sometimes, from practical jokers.
“After awhile we’ve learned to weed out people who aren’t serious,” she said. “Some people are straight to the point and just say, ‘I think my house is haunted.’ Others have kept records of occurrences and write us a novel.”
If CASPR does investigate a private residence, Shillings is quick to say that all information is kept private.
“People trust me and I never post private investigations on our Web site,” she said.
While some people find paranormal activity in their home exciting, others just want it to go away. Shillings said she offers some options.
“I tell people to call their clergy and to try and pray and ask God to remove it,” Shillings said. “They can also try and talk to it like they would to a person and say out loud, ‘I am speaking to you, and I want you to leave.’ Sometimes that works.”
This article was published Sunday, October 26, 2008.
written by Tammy Garrett
Pages 119 on 10/26/2008
LITTLE ROCK — Not all hunters wear bright orange and sit in tree stands.
Karen Shillings’ prey is the paranormal. She is the director of the Central Arkansas Society for Paranormal Research.
“The group used to be huge,” Shillings said. “It was more like a social event than anything else. Now we have a group of a few ladies, and I can do what I love to do: investigate haunted locations.”
With ghost hunting, she said, the smaller the group, the better the results.
“We usually get more evidence when fewer people are involved,” Shillings said. “Maybe the spirits get confused and back off when there are too many people around. For some reason, spirits seem to like me. Sometimes they even do things I ask them to do.”
As a child growing up in Cabot, Shillings said she knew she was sensitive to the supernatural world.
“There was one interesting thing that happened to me at my grandmother’s house while playing in the backyard one day at about the age of 4,” Shillings wrote on the CASPR Web site. “My mother and grandmother saw me playing at the fence and talking. At first they thought I was just playing, but upon further viewing, they decided that it looked as if I was having a conversation with someone.
“When I came inside, they asked who I had been talking to. I answered that a very sweet old lady had been there, and yes, we had been talking for quite awhile. This disturbed my family, since they never observed anyone else around the fence, but they wrote it off as a playful imagination.
“A few days later, I was looking through our family Bible and from out of the pages dropped a photo of an elderly woman. I got excited and told them that this was definitely the woman who had been speaking with me in the backyard that day. My mother and grandmother were shocked because the photo was one of my great-grandmother. She had been dead for over 10 years. Although I can’t remember the encounter, I believe that it is possible that she was visiting me,” Shillings wrote.
Children, she said, are often less fearful of the unknown.
“I think that children are allowed much more contact with the spirit world than adults,” Shillings said.
When going on a ghost hunt, Shillings said it is vital to stay strong when confronted with an unknown entity. She recalled a particularly scary encounter with an unfriendly visitor that her years of experience didn’t prepare her for.
“One night I arrived to investigate a home where three teenage girls had been terrorized repeatedly by an aggressive and violent unseen entity,” Shillings said. “This is the type of haunting considered to be classic poltergeist activity by most researchers. I chose to stay alone in the bedroom where the most ghostly activity had occurred, in the bed where one of the teenagers had been attacked repeatedly.
“No one had slept in this room for months. In fact, the whole family refused to enter by day or night. Fearlessly, I made my way to the bed. A few minutes passed and, still wide awake, I turned from my right side onto my left and immediately became aware that someone or something was lying in the bed facing me. In the semidarkness, the shape and outline of a shoulder came into focus.
“My shock turned to horror as I realized that I was nose to nose with the entity. Instead of a face, though, I was staring into a faceless black hole. It exuded an oppressive, tentacle-like aura that enveloped me with an icy mist.
“For the first time in my experience as a ghost hunter, I was frozen in fear. I pulled the coversover my head, curled up in a ball and waited for its next move. As I lay there, my heart pounding in my ears, I sensed it had gone and quickly made my way across the room to the light switch.
“It was at that moment that I finally understood the reason some people are afraid of the dark,” Shillings said.
Although the terms spirits and ghosts are often used interchangeably, Shillings said she believes there are distinct differences between the two.
Spirits, she said, have crossed over, gone to heaven and then chosen to make their presence known to some. They most commonly visit family or loved ones and never do anything to cause alarm.
“Most of us never know that we’ve been visited by a spirit being, but sometimes we get lucky enough to remember the visit through a vivid dream, the kind that we could swear was real,” she said.
Ghosts, on the other hand, Shillings said have died but refuse to go to the light and end up wandering the earth in either a dazeor some other type of existence.
Haunting, Shillings said, can be either complex or simple in nature. The simple ones are called residual. This occurs when an event plays itself out over and over again without interaction with its surroundings.
“Ten-mile House in Little Rock sets a good example of residual haunting,” she said. “The owners report that, almost like clockwork, they can expect to hear the marching footsteps of the soldiers who once occupied their land during the Civil War.”
CASPR has investigated everything from historical locations like the USS Razorback in North Little Rock and Sylvania Cemetery in Cabot, to private residences and hospitals. The group gets countless requests for investigations from those who are convinced they have a haunting and, sometimes, from practical jokers.
“After awhile we’ve learned to weed out people who aren’t serious,” she said. “Some people are straight to the point and just say, ‘I think my house is haunted.’ Others have kept records of occurrences and write us a novel.”
If CASPR does investigate a private residence, Shillings is quick to say that all information is kept private.
“People trust me and I never post private investigations on our Web site,” she said.
While some people find paranormal activity in their home exciting, others just want it to go away. Shillings said she offers some options.
“I tell people to call their clergy and to try and pray and ask God to remove it,” Shillings said. “They can also try and talk to it like they would to a person and say out loud, ‘I am speaking to you, and I want you to leave.’ Sometimes that works.”
This article was published Sunday, October 26, 2008.
written by Tammy Garrett
Pages 119 on 10/26/2008
Boogie Man's Gonna Get You
Your frightastic Halloween video of the day is White Zombie's cover of the song "I'm Your Boogie Man" Something tells me this wasn't exactly what KC and the Sunshine Band had in mind.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
This Sounds Like Good Halloween Fun
EUREKA SPRINGS - Rarely do people who “sleep” in a morgue have an option to get up and leave, but it’s supposed to happen next week in Eureka Springs.
Last year, the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa developed a Halloween package that would include a night in a suite and a night in the part of the hotel that served as a morgue back when the Crescent was run by a quack who promised cancer cures in the 1930s.
There were no takers for the morgue beds.
This year, the hotel held a drawing for the package. The winners, chosen Oct. 20, are from St. Louis.
The couple will stay the weekend and take along a couple of family members, said Bill Ott, marketing director for the Crescent and its sister hotel, the Basin.
The Crescent is known for supposedly having ghosts, and the morgue area is where a television crew claimed to have captured an image of one.
Nightly ghost tours that take visitors around the city finish up in the former morgue, which today is a maintenance room.
There are still some touches from Norman Baker’s time, when the former vaudeville performer turned the hotel into a den of false hope for cancer patients.
Baker’s autopsy table is still in the room, as is the former cooler where Baker stored corpses and body parts he used in experiments.
A few steps away is the closet where he kept body parts preserved in jars, the shelves now home to light bulbs and paint cans.
The sink still works on the autopsy table, which is now put to a more constructive use.
To the right of the sink on a recent day was a jug of Gojo hand washing cream for the workers. A coffee maker to the left had a fresh pot.
Ott said the staff will move furniture into the room for the big night.
“The couple will have all the comforts of home: a bed, night stands and an autopsy table,” Ott said. “They can always exit and go back in their luxury suite.”
Baker cleared out of the hotel when he was charged with mail fraud, which led to a four-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors caught him sending phony letters to relatives of patients saying the treatments were going well and instructing them to send more money. Some of the patients were dead when Baker mailed the letters.
The hotel remained vacant through the end of World War II, Ott said, and then passed through a series of owners. Marty and Elise Roenigk bought the Crescent and the Basin in 1997 and have spend $6 million to renovate the buildings.
Ott said the hotel has been featured on ghost-hunting television shows, and that has helped spread the lore.
Ott said last year’s Halloween promotion drew a lot of interest.
He was called for radio interviews from across the country and from Australia, Canada and Great Britain.
“We had great, super interest in it,” but no one ever bought the package that includes the morgue stay, he said.
Just after Halloween last year, someone booked for 2008, Ott said.
This article was published Monday, October 27, 2008 in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
written by Chuch Bartels
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 10/27/2008
More Arkansas Ghost-Hunters
Here's another story that ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette this week for your Halloween fun:
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ most famously haunted old places include the 122-year-old Crescent Hotel and Spa in Eureka Springs. Ghosthunting guests ask for room 218 in hopes of a midnight visit from the ectoplasmic entity they call Michael.
The King Opera House in Van Buren is home to another ghost, by some accounts. The lore is that a young actor fell in love with the wrong girl, and her father whipped him to death.
Legend claims the Gurdon Light - a strange light that hovers over the railroad tracks - is the spirit of a decapitated railroad worker, out with a lantern to look for his head.
And other ghostly fingers point to The Old State House Museum in Little Rock, the Rialto movie theater in El Dorado, certainhouses in Fort Smith’s Belle Grove Historic District ...
Some people laugh at the possibility. Some get the chills. Some go have a look.
“We’re out to help people find answers,” says Alan Silva, founder of Arkansas Paranormal Investigations in Fayetteville. The 4-year-old agency is one of several that seek out the unnatural in the Natural State.
“I’ve been doing this for over 16 years,” Silva says. “I got into it when my brother committed suicide.”
He’s never seen a ghost for sure, and the question remains: “Is there life in the hereafter?”
But evidence of strange energies? - weird things in the dark? - things that prickle the hair on the back of your neck? - yes, Silva says, and especially at the Old Hardy Hotel Antique Mall.
The team’s dozen volunteer members investigate about one site a month for free, Silva says. They answer calls for help, like the one they received from the hotel’s owners, Steve and Marcia Weaver.
The Weavers reported happenings they couldn’t explain- a dresser drawer that opens by itself, and footsteps they both heard coming from rooms they knew were empty.
(“When you hear it by yourself, you just don’t know,” Steve Weaver says, “But when two people hear it ...”)
The team responded with a 16-foot trailer “command post” packed with cameras and other recording gear, thermometers, barometers, night vision - all the gear it takes to catch a ghost.
“Thirty seconds we can’t explain, that’s like finding gold to us,” Silva says.
Here’s what they found at the Old Hardy Hotel.
The cameras caught “over 117 orbs,” floating balls of light, according to the team’s report.
The investigators found a “30-degree drop in temperature” inone room, and took pictures of “an unexplained shadow in the main lobby and the doll room,” where staring-eyed dolls are for sale.
Also, they reported “the smell of perfume, the feeling of a young woman running up and down the hall on the second floor ... a sickness near the Murder Room ... feelings of heaviness ... the presence of at least four other entities at this location.”
And there’s the video that shows, well - a squiggle, a blur, something ... could be a ghost that seems to pass right through one of the investigators, a woman in the narrow hallway on the building’s second floor.
Not to mention the “Yellow Room,” where the awful presence turns out to be, hmm ... just the icky yellow paint.
“We’re scientific-based,” Silvasays. Without recorded evidence, “it’s just another one tossed up as ‘an encounter.’”
Some places, nothing happens. But the old hotel convinced him it has secrets.
“It’s definitely not normal,” he says.
Arkansas Paranormal Investigations is at ParanormalBeliever.com. Also, the hotel owners report a visit from The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), the group featured in the SciFi Channel’s Ghost Hunters series, but no report yet. A Google search for “Arkansas paranormal” turns up still more ghost trackers in the state. And for do-it-yourselfers, there’s the Ghost Hunter's Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings by Troy Taylor (Whitechapel, $24.95).
This article was published Tuesday, October 28, 2008.
written by Ron Wolfe
Style, Pages 30 on 10/28/2008
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ most famously haunted old places include the 122-year-old Crescent Hotel and Spa in Eureka Springs. Ghosthunting guests ask for room 218 in hopes of a midnight visit from the ectoplasmic entity they call Michael.
The King Opera House in Van Buren is home to another ghost, by some accounts. The lore is that a young actor fell in love with the wrong girl, and her father whipped him to death.
Legend claims the Gurdon Light - a strange light that hovers over the railroad tracks - is the spirit of a decapitated railroad worker, out with a lantern to look for his head.
And other ghostly fingers point to The Old State House Museum in Little Rock, the Rialto movie theater in El Dorado, certainhouses in Fort Smith’s Belle Grove Historic District ...
Some people laugh at the possibility. Some get the chills. Some go have a look.
“We’re out to help people find answers,” says Alan Silva, founder of Arkansas Paranormal Investigations in Fayetteville. The 4-year-old agency is one of several that seek out the unnatural in the Natural State.
“I’ve been doing this for over 16 years,” Silva says. “I got into it when my brother committed suicide.”
He’s never seen a ghost for sure, and the question remains: “Is there life in the hereafter?”
But evidence of strange energies? - weird things in the dark? - things that prickle the hair on the back of your neck? - yes, Silva says, and especially at the Old Hardy Hotel Antique Mall.
The team’s dozen volunteer members investigate about one site a month for free, Silva says. They answer calls for help, like the one they received from the hotel’s owners, Steve and Marcia Weaver.
The Weavers reported happenings they couldn’t explain- a dresser drawer that opens by itself, and footsteps they both heard coming from rooms they knew were empty.
(“When you hear it by yourself, you just don’t know,” Steve Weaver says, “But when two people hear it ...”)
The team responded with a 16-foot trailer “command post” packed with cameras and other recording gear, thermometers, barometers, night vision - all the gear it takes to catch a ghost.
“Thirty seconds we can’t explain, that’s like finding gold to us,” Silva says.
Here’s what they found at the Old Hardy Hotel.
The cameras caught “over 117 orbs,” floating balls of light, according to the team’s report.
The investigators found a “30-degree drop in temperature” inone room, and took pictures of “an unexplained shadow in the main lobby and the doll room,” where staring-eyed dolls are for sale.
Also, they reported “the smell of perfume, the feeling of a young woman running up and down the hall on the second floor ... a sickness near the Murder Room ... feelings of heaviness ... the presence of at least four other entities at this location.”
And there’s the video that shows, well - a squiggle, a blur, something ... could be a ghost that seems to pass right through one of the investigators, a woman in the narrow hallway on the building’s second floor.
Not to mention the “Yellow Room,” where the awful presence turns out to be, hmm ... just the icky yellow paint.
“We’re scientific-based,” Silvasays. Without recorded evidence, “it’s just another one tossed up as ‘an encounter.’”
Some places, nothing happens. But the old hotel convinced him it has secrets.
“It’s definitely not normal,” he says.
Arkansas Paranormal Investigations is at ParanormalBeliever.com. Also, the hotel owners report a visit from The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), the group featured in the SciFi Channel’s Ghost Hunters series, but no report yet. A Google search for “Arkansas paranormal” turns up still more ghost trackers in the state. And for do-it-yourselfers, there’s the Ghost Hunter's Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings by Troy Taylor (Whitechapel, $24.95).
This article was published Tuesday, October 28, 2008.
written by Ron Wolfe
Style, Pages 30 on 10/28/2008
Prune Power
Here's a feel-good story for your humpday, because there's so much bad news lately. Actually, this may make you feel like an old, lazy fatass. I mean this dude is 73-years-old and he is hoopin' it up like a teenager. I'm playing NBA '09 on the Playstation while I drink beer.
Here's the skinny; Ken Mink missed out on his second year of juco basketball 53 years ago when he joined the Air Force. It's something he's always regretted. Today, he's one of the Roane State Raiders, at 73.
Wait... what?
Here's the skinny; Ken Mink missed out on his second year of juco basketball 53 years ago when he joined the Air Force. It's something he's always regretted. Today, he's one of the Roane State Raiders, at 73.
Wait... what?
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Haunted Hotel For Sale
This nice little ghostly story of an old hotel in Hardy, Arkansas that is for sale, and quite possibly haunted, was printed in today's Arkansas Gazette. I included a video below it and relevant links within the story.
LITTLE ROCK — HARDY - The Old Hardy Hotel Antique Mall is one of many sites in Arkansas where people claim to see ghosts. But there’s something else in the air, hovering over this creaky, 110-year-old landmark on downtown Hardy’s Main Street: It’s for sale on eBay.
The building and contents, including its “Murder Room” and certified ghost (or ghosts), are for sale on the Internet for $125,000. Owners Steve and Marcia Weaver want out. But the ghosts are apt to stay.
“I know they’re here,” Steve Weaver, 60, says, “but they’ve never done anything mean, so it doesn’t bother me.” He tells of hearing footsteps in the empty hallway on the second floor and the sound of doors closing up there, even though he took the doors off. “And we’ve had hundreds of customers tell us stories.” The latest, just the other day, was the man from Romania. He was keen to the same legends that Bram Stoker heard - creepy tales of bats and shadows, the makings of Stoker’s Dracula.
This man wanted to see the room upstairs where the killing happened, the “Murder Room.” It’s still the way it probably was that night, around 1940. The room holds a single bed, a chair, a two-drawer stand with a basin and pitcher on it.
The doomed occupant, a soldier, had made enemies in a bar across the street.
Details are vague, but Marcia Weaver, 62, keeps a book to record the bits and pieces she hears about what happened. The victim’s killers followed him back to the hotel.
And here’s what the man from Romania told her: He recounted the vision he said came from the room. The killers didn’t skulk in through the back door, he said. They crept over the roof, and dropped to the balcony, and sneaked in that way, and stabbed!
And if the victim’s spirit lingered, well - It seems he’s not the only one.
Marcia tells the strange thing she saw one recent morning. It was early, she says - no big lights on, just a couple of night lights. She came in to open the business, and ...
If anyone had told her the same story a year ago, “I would have looked at them like they were crazy,” she says.
Who would believe it?
Some do, some don’t in this timeless little town. Every brick and stone on Main Street has an aura of the past. Hardy grew out of a railroad construction camp, in 1884, and trains have wailed through ever since. Mist clings to the hills. Crows gossip in the treetops.
Ghosts might seem more likely here.
Ghosts have people talking.
Alan Silva’s Arkansas Paranormal Investigations team - ghost hunters out of Fayetteville - looked into peculiar doings at the hotel in August 2007 and again in March.
A sign on the front door reads, “It’s official, we’re haunted.” The ghost hunters made it official.
“Yes, absolutely,” Silva, 46, says. “That particular building has a lot of activity going on.”
The investigators recorded “a female voice that says, ‘Yessssss,’ clear as day,” he says. They caught on video a blur of “some unknown energy source,” he says. “I don’t know ... it appears to be in human form.”
The video is available on the Internet at YouTube.com, and on the hotel’s site at www.old hardyhotel.com.
The hotel haunting seems to be “pretty much playful,” Silva says - nothing angry, nothing dangerous, more like a play for attention - and “residual,”linked to the hotel’s past.
“I don’t believe it would stop just because of new owners,” he says.
Tillie Stark, 91, has lived in Hardy since 1930. The hotel “was a nice boardinghouse,” she remembers. It catered to traveling salesmen, and then to renters with families, children, babies born there, “good people.”
But ghost stories have been drifting out of the hotel since “15, 16, 18 years ago,” she says in the still of her shop, Stark’s Antiques, near the hotel. “If those walls could talk ... ”
Haunted?
“From what I’ve heard,” she says, “I have reason to believe it is.”
Paul Hall of Hardy’s Wolf Creek Realty is the Weavers’ agent. He’s not so sure the old hotel building has ghosts, but it’s right across the street from his office, and he hears tales to the contrary.
“I listen to part of them,” he says, “and part of them, I don’t listen.”
Hall, 60, is convinced of this much: The classified listing on eBay (search for “Old Hardy Hotel”) has attracted more than 11,000 lookers so far, and “14 good responses,” he says. Half the potential buyers consider the ghost a plus.
The Weavers bought the place four years ago. It had the space they wanted: 3,500 square feet to fill with glassware and figurines, old books, this-and-that to sell; two floors and 10 rooms that take some time to explore.
Also, it has a balcony off the second floor - the only such stately tier on Main Street - and that, the wide front door, and the front desk still give the premises the look of a hotel.
Five steps lead up from yesterday’s hotel lobby to a room that used to be an old-time card den. It smells of here-and-gone cigar smoke some days, Steve says. He can’t say why.
Marcia glanced toward the steps in the dim light of early morning. She saw a young woman - about 20, she says - auburn or red-haired in a dark, “not quite black” dress.
“It was a Miss Kitty dress,” she says - long and bustled like something the character of Miss Kitty would have worn in the TV Western series, Gunsmoke, that was set about the same time as Hardy’s wilder past.
Today’s Hardy boasts three blocks of antique and crafts shops for tourists. The town is a rustic getaway in far northcentral Arkansas, where most days the Spring River lolls by aslazy as a dog on a warm sidewalk. Amid candy and curios, Hardy’s Realtors sell the idea of tranquility to the especially charmed, like the Weavers. They moved from Orlando, Fla., adding to Hardy’s 578 population, and they plan to stay.
But Hardy was a tough town in the 1800s. Today’s Hardy is dry, but old Hardy poured whiskey. Rumor has it, the hotel was a nest of soiled doves.
The young woman appeared as real and solid as Miss Kitty did to Marshal Dillon, and she looked in a hurry as if she’d been startled, Marcia says. Up the steps she went. Gone!
Years ago, this stranger could have vanished out a door to the adjoining carriage house and corral. But now, the corral is gone, the carriage house is a candle shop, and the old way out is sealed off, hidden behind a sheet of drywall.
All the same, Marcia says - Miss Kitty had left the building. AND NEXT DOOR ...
Yesterday’s carriage house is today’s Kozey Kandles & More Kountry Store, where Rhonda Messer, 41, makes the sweetscented candles.
The Weavers didn’t pay much attention to ghost stories whenthey bought the hotel, and neither did Messer when she set up her gift shop about a year ago.
But right away, there was something odd about the back of the store, she says. Children seemed scared of it. She describes the little boy who started crying right where the front carpet ends, giving way to ocher tile.
Follow the line across the floor, and it leads to where the old passage used to be.
“I’ve never actually seen anything,” Messer says. But still ...
Candles seem to move around in the night, she says. A towel rack, tightly screwed to the wall, fell off. And one night when the ghost hunters were at work in the hotel, she had a weird problem with the lock on the front door.
“The key wouldn’t go in,” she says, as if hotel’s spirits had taken refuge among the candles.
“I’m going to say it,” she musters up: “They would not let me in the store.”
Up the stairs to the second floor, down the tight hallway, under the bare bulbs - floorboards creaking, popping - past the Murder Room, out there is a pretty view.
The Old Hardy Hotel’s balcony offers a unique scan of the whole downtown, including the cemetery at the end of the street. The gray stones go back to Hardy’s founding days, some too worn to read.
Midtown, a mural depicts the town’s pioneers, celebrating the spirits of Doc Johnson and Aunt Tee. And the hills, rolling green with twinges of yellow and red, the ghosts of green, are worth the climb.
But the 16 steep, claustrophobic steps from the hotel lobby are a big reason the Weavers are selling. Steve says the climb is too hard for them nowadays.
Health troubles are why they’re selling, he says - not phantoms. They’ll be glad to train the new owners in what to expect. The usual. And the not so usual.
The lights go on and off by themselves, he says, and it’s strange how you can lose a pen right under your fingers, and some people are scared that ghost might follow them home, and others want to stay the night.
The only bed left is the one just for show, that marks where the killing happened, but Steve is ready with a different offer.
“There’s no tour,” he says. “We can’t guarantee you’re going to see a ghost. Just go on up there.”
This article was published Tuesday, October 28, 2008.
written by Ron Wolfe
Style, Pages 25, 30
Video:
LITTLE ROCK — HARDY - The Old Hardy Hotel Antique Mall is one of many sites in Arkansas where people claim to see ghosts. But there’s something else in the air, hovering over this creaky, 110-year-old landmark on downtown Hardy’s Main Street: It’s for sale on eBay.
The building and contents, including its “Murder Room” and certified ghost (or ghosts), are for sale on the Internet for $125,000. Owners Steve and Marcia Weaver want out. But the ghosts are apt to stay.
“I know they’re here,” Steve Weaver, 60, says, “but they’ve never done anything mean, so it doesn’t bother me.” He tells of hearing footsteps in the empty hallway on the second floor and the sound of doors closing up there, even though he took the doors off. “And we’ve had hundreds of customers tell us stories.” The latest, just the other day, was the man from Romania. He was keen to the same legends that Bram Stoker heard - creepy tales of bats and shadows, the makings of Stoker’s Dracula.This man wanted to see the room upstairs where the killing happened, the “Murder Room.” It’s still the way it probably was that night, around 1940. The room holds a single bed, a chair, a two-drawer stand with a basin and pitcher on it.
The doomed occupant, a soldier, had made enemies in a bar across the street.
Details are vague, but Marcia Weaver, 62, keeps a book to record the bits and pieces she hears about what happened. The victim’s killers followed him back to the hotel.
And here’s what the man from Romania told her: He recounted the vision he said came from the room. The killers didn’t skulk in through the back door, he said. They crept over the roof, and dropped to the balcony, and sneaked in that way, and stabbed!
And if the victim’s spirit lingered, well - It seems he’s not the only one.
Marcia tells the strange thing she saw one recent morning. It was early, she says - no big lights on, just a couple of night lights. She came in to open the business, and ...
If anyone had told her the same story a year ago, “I would have looked at them like they were crazy,” she says.
Who would believe it?
Some do, some don’t in this timeless little town. Every brick and stone on Main Street has an aura of the past. Hardy grew out of a railroad construction camp, in 1884, and trains have wailed through ever since. Mist clings to the hills. Crows gossip in the treetops.
Ghosts might seem more likely here.
Ghosts have people talking.
Alan Silva’s Arkansas Paranormal Investigations team - ghost hunters out of Fayetteville - looked into peculiar doings at the hotel in August 2007 and again in March.
A sign on the front door reads, “It’s official, we’re haunted.” The ghost hunters made it official.
“Yes, absolutely,” Silva, 46, says. “That particular building has a lot of activity going on.”
The investigators recorded “a female voice that says, ‘Yessssss,’ clear as day,” he says. They caught on video a blur of “some unknown energy source,” he says. “I don’t know ... it appears to be in human form.”
The video is available on the Internet at YouTube.com, and on the hotel’s site at www.old hardyhotel.com.
The hotel haunting seems to be “pretty much playful,” Silva says - nothing angry, nothing dangerous, more like a play for attention - and “residual,”linked to the hotel’s past.
“I don’t believe it would stop just because of new owners,” he says.
Tillie Stark, 91, has lived in Hardy since 1930. The hotel “was a nice boardinghouse,” she remembers. It catered to traveling salesmen, and then to renters with families, children, babies born there, “good people.”
But ghost stories have been drifting out of the hotel since “15, 16, 18 years ago,” she says in the still of her shop, Stark’s Antiques, near the hotel. “If those walls could talk ... ”
Haunted?
“From what I’ve heard,” she says, “I have reason to believe it is.”
Paul Hall of Hardy’s Wolf Creek Realty is the Weavers’ agent. He’s not so sure the old hotel building has ghosts, but it’s right across the street from his office, and he hears tales to the contrary.
“I listen to part of them,” he says, “and part of them, I don’t listen.”
Hall, 60, is convinced of this much: The classified listing on eBay (search for “Old Hardy Hotel”) has attracted more than 11,000 lookers so far, and “14 good responses,” he says. Half the potential buyers consider the ghost a plus.
The Weavers bought the place four years ago. It had the space they wanted: 3,500 square feet to fill with glassware and figurines, old books, this-and-that to sell; two floors and 10 rooms that take some time to explore.
Also, it has a balcony off the second floor - the only such stately tier on Main Street - and that, the wide front door, and the front desk still give the premises the look of a hotel.
Five steps lead up from yesterday’s hotel lobby to a room that used to be an old-time card den. It smells of here-and-gone cigar smoke some days, Steve says. He can’t say why.
Marcia glanced toward the steps in the dim light of early morning. She saw a young woman - about 20, she says - auburn or red-haired in a dark, “not quite black” dress.
“It was a Miss Kitty dress,” she says - long and bustled like something the character of Miss Kitty would have worn in the TV Western series, Gunsmoke, that was set about the same time as Hardy’s wilder past.
Today’s Hardy boasts three blocks of antique and crafts shops for tourists. The town is a rustic getaway in far northcentral Arkansas, where most days the Spring River lolls by aslazy as a dog on a warm sidewalk. Amid candy and curios, Hardy’s Realtors sell the idea of tranquility to the especially charmed, like the Weavers. They moved from Orlando, Fla., adding to Hardy’s 578 population, and they plan to stay.
But Hardy was a tough town in the 1800s. Today’s Hardy is dry, but old Hardy poured whiskey. Rumor has it, the hotel was a nest of soiled doves.
The young woman appeared as real and solid as Miss Kitty did to Marshal Dillon, and she looked in a hurry as if she’d been startled, Marcia says. Up the steps she went. Gone!
Years ago, this stranger could have vanished out a door to the adjoining carriage house and corral. But now, the corral is gone, the carriage house is a candle shop, and the old way out is sealed off, hidden behind a sheet of drywall.
All the same, Marcia says - Miss Kitty had left the building. AND NEXT DOOR ...
Yesterday’s carriage house is today’s Kozey Kandles & More Kountry Store, where Rhonda Messer, 41, makes the sweetscented candles.
The Weavers didn’t pay much attention to ghost stories whenthey bought the hotel, and neither did Messer when she set up her gift shop about a year ago.
But right away, there was something odd about the back of the store, she says. Children seemed scared of it. She describes the little boy who started crying right where the front carpet ends, giving way to ocher tile.
Follow the line across the floor, and it leads to where the old passage used to be.
“I’ve never actually seen anything,” Messer says. But still ...
Candles seem to move around in the night, she says. A towel rack, tightly screwed to the wall, fell off. And one night when the ghost hunters were at work in the hotel, she had a weird problem with the lock on the front door.
“The key wouldn’t go in,” she says, as if hotel’s spirits had taken refuge among the candles.
“I’m going to say it,” she musters up: “They would not let me in the store.”
Up the stairs to the second floor, down the tight hallway, under the bare bulbs - floorboards creaking, popping - past the Murder Room, out there is a pretty view.
The Old Hardy Hotel’s balcony offers a unique scan of the whole downtown, including the cemetery at the end of the street. The gray stones go back to Hardy’s founding days, some too worn to read.
Midtown, a mural depicts the town’s pioneers, celebrating the spirits of Doc Johnson and Aunt Tee. And the hills, rolling green with twinges of yellow and red, the ghosts of green, are worth the climb.
But the 16 steep, claustrophobic steps from the hotel lobby are a big reason the Weavers are selling. Steve says the climb is too hard for them nowadays.
Health troubles are why they’re selling, he says - not phantoms. They’ll be glad to train the new owners in what to expect. The usual. And the not so usual.
The lights go on and off by themselves, he says, and it’s strange how you can lose a pen right under your fingers, and some people are scared that ghost might follow them home, and others want to stay the night.
The only bed left is the one just for show, that marks where the killing happened, but Steve is ready with a different offer.
“There’s no tour,” he says. “We can’t guarantee you’re going to see a ghost. Just go on up there.”
This article was published Tuesday, October 28, 2008.
written by Ron Wolfe
Style, Pages 25, 30
Video:
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall
Granted, I already have to spend a lot of time in the mirror in the morning. No, it's not because being this sexy is hard work, it's just that anything I can do to improve the horror that is my morning reflection is worthwhile. So how much time would you spend in the mirror with this little toy? An interactive mirror is something I'm not sure anyone on the face of the earth would ever need... but that's obviously not the point. The point is... well... errr... I just want one!
Interactive Mirror from Alpay Kasal on Vimeo.
Interactive Mirror from Alpay Kasal on Vimeo.
Tonight There's Gonna Be A Jailbreak
Due to a break-out earlier this year and his subsequent time spent on the lamb for a day, Shakes has decided to do his trick or treating (mainly treating) dressed as a chain gang convict. Or I should say he'll start the night dressed as such. He's usually mauled a good part of his costume off by the end of the first hour. It might actually even take slightly less time this year since that ball attached to his leg there in the pictures seems to provide chasing and chomping entertainment. Essentially I spend money on the costume for a couple of pictures and laughs then they're history. Oh well.
If you live around the central Arkansas area, I highly recommend the Haunted Hostpital in North Little Rock for some scares. I went on Saturday night and it was great. It's in the old abandoned Baptist Memorial Hospital, which is pretty creepy by itself, and it's for charity for the Police Athletic League. Plenty of ghouls, mental patients and butchers and it's very well done. It's only $10, but I'd advise spending a bit more on some adult diapers to wear. It's great.
Anyways... here's some stuff coming out today you can spend the money none of us have anymore on:
* The Cure ~ "4:13 Dream" CD
* Lordi ~ "Deadache" CD
* Funeral for a Friend ~ "Memory and Humanity" CD
* Mushroomhead ~ "Vol. 2" DVD
* Queen + Paul Rodgers ~ "The Cosmos Rocks" CD
* Journey To the Center of the Earth DVD (3-D adventure)
* Hellride DVD (Quentin Tarantino flick)
Monday, October 27, 2008
Slipknot's Dead Memories
Slipknot's latest bizarre video from All Hope Is Gone for the song "Dead Memories":
New Trailer for Harry Potter
The new international teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is showing up online. The movie is due out in July 2009.
Movie Review: Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead
4 friends on a road trip to Vegas break down in the middle of nowhere, until they find a seemingly abandoned home. They break in and end up "borrowing" a car to get back to civilization. Unfortunately for them, the home wasn't actually abandoned and the really bad news is that it's home to a killer trucker, who comes looking for them.I'm actually a pretty big fan of the first Joy Ride movie, produced by J.J. Abrams (Lost, Cloverfield) back in 2001. It was really more of a thriller than a horror movie though, or actually just much more psychological torment than physical. This time around, there's a lot more of the physical variety as the body count mounts. But the bad news is really they've replaced the suspense and mood of the first film with gore and violence in this one. The suspense in minimal and the plot get's pretty silly at times.
The production values are about what I expected and the soundtrack is OK. As far as the acting, it's acceptable for a direct-to-video title and the characters are pretty believable and likable except for 1 obvious annoying tool, who you'll be happy to see go except he becomes much more sympathetic in his finals scenes. Nicki Aycox is great eye candy and gives probably the best performance of the film.
The plot gets pretty derivative and silly, as "Rusty Nail" becomes almost supernatural in the way he's just always there, sees all and knows all. They try to explain it by him having all truckers as "his eyes and ears", but it's really not enough to explain how all encompassing the guy is. Another thing that is really disappointing to me is the ending. Let's just say he's got to be Criss Angel's father or something.
There is a scene in a basement where our pal Rusty tortures the guys with a little game, and it's got a bit of a Hostel feel to it. Putting yourself in their place it becomes a pretty hardcore little horror scene, and I think it was really well done. Easily the best bit of the film.
So all-in-all, for a direct-to-video title this is a pretty fun flick. It's not as good as the first one and it's really nothing new, but it's got a lot to like with plenty of action and thrills. Ignore the stupid ending and go along with the cliches and you'll have fun.
6/10
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Movie Review: Saw V
With everyone else dead and rotting, it's up to Detective Hoffman to continue Jigsaw's murderous traditions. When he feels that his identity might be discovered, the killer has to use all his training as a detective to track down anything, and anyone, that might expose him.The Saw series has turned into a series that's really only for the fans. If you just walked into Saw V and sat down for your first Saw experience, I think you would be completely lost. There are a lot more flashback and clarifications of what took place several movies ago. I didn't find it confusing in the least, but I've seen the other 4 films in the last few months. I could see how a casual fan could get lost.
But the strength of the series is the traps, and I think this one delivers on that again. In addition to plenty more back stories, there are 5 people placed in a maze of traps and they have to solve each one to advance. The traps themselves are pretty inventive, and of course gruesome. You get a guy sliced and diced by a pendulum trap, a beheading, nail bombs, a shotgun rigged chair, a shocking bathtub, a room with closing walls and a trap that will make anyone flinch who has ever had a papercut between the webbing of their fingers.
The ads continually advertised "you won't believe how it ends" and I disagreed with that strategy, thinking it would only overhype and set expectations to high. I think I was right really as the ending is no more crazy and gory than a lot of other scenes in the series. So my tip is "you will believe how it ends, but it's pretty cool".
So again, there is blood, mayhem, twists and flashbacks. If you didn't like Saw IV, or any of the first 3 for that matter, don't bother. If you've never seen any of the films, don't bother. If you are squeamish, by all means don't bother.
Personally I found it to be another twisted bloody good time.
7/10
LR Culture Shock
I went out to the Little Rock Culture Shock Tattoo, Bike and Horror Festival last night and had a pretty good time. They had some bands playing, a few celebrities signing stuff, lots of bikes and tattoos and cold beer. I talked to the folks from the local show Night Frights that I watch on Saturday nights here and got my pic made with their hostess, Evelle. Also got a chance to chat with horror icon Kane Hodder for 5 minutes or so. Another horror icon, Elvira, and her rack (icons) had just arrived and everybody was putting the bum's rush on her booth and he had been there an hour or so already and was sitting alone for a bit. He talked a bit about his film coming out soon about the BTK killer, told me about Hatchet 2 coming out next year and he then shared a couple of things about working with Tony Todd and Robert Englund on both Hatchet and Wishmaster. He also talked a bit about doing stunt work for The Devils Rejects. It was pretty cool to listen to the guy, who was super nice. Then I got an autographed picture and also had a picture taken where he choked me, his idea not mine, and let me tell you the dude is a monster.
Friday, October 24, 2008
T.G.I. Saw V
One of my faithful blog readers told me the other day that AC/DC wasn't really all that bad for Wal-Mart to choose to promote. I laughed and quoted some lyrics, then laughed again. I mean I don't really care and think that Wal-Mart should carry things and let people decide for themselves what their kids and themselves listen to or watch. I love AC/DC and have all their CDs myself. But Wal-Mart is always so quick to jump on a soapbox about certain filth, and getting cozy under the covers with AC/DC isn't something I expected from them. I'm sure they'll be playing this at their next big corporate meeting:
Go Down (from the Let Their Be Rock CD... on sale at Wal-Mart for $9)
Ruby, Ruby, where you been so long
Done took to drinkin' whiskey
Baby since you been gone
Ain't no one I know do it as good as you
Lickin' on that lickin' stick the way you do
You got the lips to make a strong man weak
And a heathen pray
Tell you ain't just the way you speak
You know it's just the way you go down
Hmmm... lickin' that lickin' stick? You think that's something you can pick up in the grocery isle? Gives "Clean up in aisle 5" a whole new meaning. Your kid can walk into the neighborhood Wally World and get that without any age restrictions. Rock on. Just sayin'.
Moving on... I'm off tomorrow so I'll be hitting Saw V on a matinee. Oh how I love the Saw movies! Here's what's out this weekend as Halloween bears down:
Saw V
The Plot: Forensics expert Hoffman goes on the hunt in order to prevent being identified as the newest person to carry on Jigsaw's legacy.
My Thoughts: I personally love the Saw series. I'm afraid they've overhyped the "ending you won't believe" bit, because it better really be awesome or people will be let down. I expect another fun bloodbath though.
Pride & Glory
The Plot: A family of prominent New York City cops is shaken to its core when one brother (Ed Norton) uncovers a scandal at his sibling's precinct.
My Thoughts: With Ed Norton and Colin Farrell in it I expect it to overcome the cliched dark cop pictures of late and be pretty solid. The trailer looks good.
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D
The Plot: Jack Skellington, king of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas Town, but doesn't quite understand the concept.
My Thoughts: One of my top 10 movies of all-time. Believe it or not though, I haven't caught one of these 3-D theater releases yet. It looks like this will be a yearly thing so I should start a new tradition and get out to see this. Love the songs, love the animation, love the story. Awesome film, perhaps made awesomer (my word) by 3-D?
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
The Plot: As seniors in high school, Troy (Zak Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) struggle with the idea of being separated from one another as college approaches. Along with the rest of the Wildcats, they stage a spring musical to address their experiences, hopes and fears about their future.
My Thoughts: Dear God, please make this crap stop. Wasn't Saved By The Bell enough? Sincerely, your pal Cracker.
P.S. Thank you for Albert Pujols.
Go Down (from the Let Their Be Rock CD... on sale at Wal-Mart for $9)
Ruby, Ruby, where you been so long
Done took to drinkin' whiskey
Baby since you been gone
Ain't no one I know do it as good as you
Lickin' on that lickin' stick the way you do
You got the lips to make a strong man weak
And a heathen pray
Tell you ain't just the way you speak
You know it's just the way you go down
Hmmm... lickin' that lickin' stick? You think that's something you can pick up in the grocery isle? Gives "Clean up in aisle 5" a whole new meaning. Your kid can walk into the neighborhood Wally World and get that without any age restrictions. Rock on. Just sayin'.
Moving on... I'm off tomorrow so I'll be hitting Saw V on a matinee. Oh how I love the Saw movies! Here's what's out this weekend as Halloween bears down:
Saw V
The Plot: Forensics expert Hoffman goes on the hunt in order to prevent being identified as the newest person to carry on Jigsaw's legacy.
My Thoughts: I personally love the Saw series. I'm afraid they've overhyped the "ending you won't believe" bit, because it better really be awesome or people will be let down. I expect another fun bloodbath though.
Pride & Glory
The Plot: A family of prominent New York City cops is shaken to its core when one brother (Ed Norton) uncovers a scandal at his sibling's precinct.
My Thoughts: With Ed Norton and Colin Farrell in it I expect it to overcome the cliched dark cop pictures of late and be pretty solid. The trailer looks good.
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D
The Plot: Jack Skellington, king of Halloweentown, discovers Christmas Town, but doesn't quite understand the concept.
My Thoughts: One of my top 10 movies of all-time. Believe it or not though, I haven't caught one of these 3-D theater releases yet. It looks like this will be a yearly thing so I should start a new tradition and get out to see this. Love the songs, love the animation, love the story. Awesome film, perhaps made awesomer (my word) by 3-D?
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
The Plot: As seniors in high school, Troy (Zak Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) struggle with the idea of being separated from one another as college approaches. Along with the rest of the Wildcats, they stage a spring musical to address their experiences, hopes and fears about their future.
My Thoughts: Dear God, please make this crap stop. Wasn't Saved By The Bell enough? Sincerely, your pal Cracker.
P.S. Thank you for Albert Pujols.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
More Literal Lyrics
So I'm sorry, as I know I just posted one of these a few weeks ago for Aha's "Take On Me", but these things are just brilliant! More 80s fun with videos, this time for Tears For Fears "Head Over Hills".
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
New Video From Sammy Hagar
Sammy Hagar's new video for "Cosmic Universal Fashion". It looks sort of like Van Halen's "Right Now" video part 2. I like the lyrics and it's a catchy track. Check out Michael Anthony in it!
The new CD is out November 18.
The new CD is out November 18.
First Openly Gay Racehorse To Compete
As controversy swirls around thoroughbred Ship's Captain, the horse's trainer says people should focus on the horse's abilities, not its sexuality.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Movie Review: The Substitute
The sixth-grade students of a small town begin to realize that their new substitute teacher is an alien. When their parents don't believe them, they are forced to take matters into their own hands before it's too late.Another Danish film, this one is much more sci-fi really than horror. It's got a lot going against it right off the bat, having mainly young child stars (always tough) and a really goofy sounding plot. Then it starts with a terrible voice-over telling how humans are different from any other creatures in the universe because we know how to love. So at this point there's just too much going against this movie and I settled in for an hour and a half of total suckage. Surprisingly, that's not at all what it delivered.
The same group of Danish children I'd wondered about did a remarkably good job with their roles. Most are likable and believable in their roles, especially the lead boy. It's not easy either as they've got to be charming, funny and terrified at the same time... all while not being annoying. The woman who plays the substitute is fantastic as well. She switches effortlessly from charming to super bitch to alien without a hitch.
The tone of the movie is one of dark humor. There are parts that are really funny (loved the end conversation) and parts where you're not sure whether to laugh or not (dinner). There is some building tension to the story as the kids begin to fear for their lives from the new teacher and what she has in store for them. There's also some social commentary hidden within the strange goings on. The script overall is very good and well executed.
There aren't a whole lot of special effects, but what there is are well done and fun... which really sums up the whole movie. It's never boring and by the end I found it to be very entertaining.
About the only part I don't like were the end credits, where they have the kids dancing to some electronic music sort of like how Footloose might end if set in modern day. Very odd and it doesn't fit the movie at all. Granted, it's just the credits though.
A simple yet funny sci-fi film well worth a watch.
6/10
New Mushroomhead Video
Mushroomhead have debuted their new video, "Save Us", at MTV.com. Check it out below. They will release their new DVD ‘Vol. 2‘ on October 28th.
If you let the whole song play and sit through a quick ad, you can some of their other videos as well. Burn and 12 Hundred (awesome song!) are on there from the Savior Sorrow CD.
If you let the whole song play and sit through a quick ad, you can some of their other videos as well. Burn and 12 Hundred (awesome song!) are on there from the Savior Sorrow CD.
Wal-Mart Sells It's Soul
I went to Wal-Mart (one of the 20+ around my city) yesterday to pick-up the new AC/DC CD "Black Ice" and the freakin' place is like a shrine to the Aussie rockers. There's AC/DC displays all over the place with DVDs and CDs on sale as well as shirts, games and all sorts of other junk. I know it's just the way things work nowadays but it seems sort of comical that the very conservative chain, which has banned Marilyn Manson and even Sheryl Crow and airbrushed CD covers (see White Zombie), would be so big behind the band that has brought us "Highway To Hell", "Let Me Put My Love Into You", "Big Balls" and "Hells Bells" (all of which have falling prices right now!). They even censor a great bunch of CDs for language (but at least they mark them as such). I don't really care, I just found it all sort of funny as I pushed my wobbly cart (left front wheel this time) around the aisles and saw AC/DC shirts in the young boys section and a CD display right next to the Christian book selection. I only wish the old greeter would have flashed me the devil horns on my way in.
And speaking of Mr. Manson, he has revealed that he is "pretty much finished" with his new studio album and that the album "will be more like Antichrist Superstar." Which I interpret to mean "heavier". Every song on the disc was written by Manson with bassist Twiggy Ramirez who rejoined the band back in January. He also revealed the former Limp Bizkit/current Black Light Burns guitarist Wes Borland will only be part of Manson's band for touring purposes only. So I take it that he didn't contribute to the new CD at all.
So anyway, here's some new stuff you can waste your hard earned money on today if you so desire:
* AC/DC ~ "Black Ice" CD (actually released yesterday... Wal-Mart only)
* Kenny Chesney ~ "Lucky Old Sun" CD
* Hank III ~ "Damn Right, Rebel Proud" CD
* Paul Stanley ~ "One Live KISS" DVD (live concert CD from KISS frontman)
* The Incredible Hulk DVD (see my review here)
* The Strangers DVD (see my review here)
* Family Guy Volume 6 DVD
* Anaconda III: Offspring DVD (see my review here)
Monday, October 20, 2008
Book Review: The Heroin Diaries
The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star
by Nikki Sixx
Synopsis: In one of the most unique memoirs of addiction ever published, Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx shares mesmerizing diary entries from the year he spiraled out of control in a haze of heroin, alcohol, sex and cocaine, presented alongside riveting commentary from people who were there at the time, and from Nikki himself.
You'd think I would have had enough of this story, having read both The Dirt about all of Mötley Crüe and Tommyland by drummer Tommy Lee, so even I was a bit skeptical going into this book wondering just what other insight I could get about the wild 80s from a Motley point of view. It didn't take many pages to figure out that this book is quite a bit different than the other 2. This is really just the tale of 1 year of heavy drugs and ridiculous excess.
Nikki writes in his journal like he's talking to it and it comes back as a read that is both scary and sad. I felt like I was right there watching Nikki as he spiraled from wild partying rock star to a dark, depressed, paranoid drug addict that despite having achieved his lifelong dream of playing music for a living, wasn't able to see past his next fix. The love/hate relationship he had with the drug mirrored a lot what was going on in his life with his band, friends and family.
One thing that makes the book much more enjoyable is how you will read a diary entry from 20 years ago, and then there is a quote from current times from someone who was involved. There are quotes from the other band mates, girlfriends, managers, roadies and family members. It's sort of an update on the tales and keeps the book feeling new and it's much more insightful as such and also makes it feel a lot more honest and they don't pull any punches in clarifying his tales or disagreeing with some entries.
I got a real kick of the entries by his now ex-girlfriend Vanity, since turned Evangelist, as she's about a big of a whackjob now as she was then... only then she was obsessed with drugs and now she seems like a major Jesus freak. She's got some really confusing and odd remarks that left me shaking my head.
There is also a lot about the 80s LA metal scene in general, a lot of insight into Mötley Crüe's backstage and touring lives, the dangers of excess, the music industry and Nikki's childhood. In the end after he's decided to really try and clean up from the year of hell (and actually having his heart stop twice) there's a chapter he calls "Life After Death" that updates a quick time line of what's happened in his life since. It's amazing he's been able to accomplish what he has after what he's gone through.
You don't have to be a Mötley Crüe fan to enjoy this book, but Crüe fans should love it more obviously. It's just a good book on addiction in general as well a book on the potential pitfalls of being a rock star and lastly something anyone battling depression might want to read. I really think in the end the whole message is a hopeful one, because if Nikki can live through a year like this and escape the hold, there is hope for anyone. It's also a nice little piece of Mötley history and rock n roll history as well.
"Drugs make it better. Drugs make it worse." ~ Nikki Sixx
8/10
McCain Left On Campaign Bus Overnight
Campaign officials downplayed the incident, saying the senator was fine as soon as he was fed and taken to the bathroom.
Palin Rap
Saturday Night Live sure seems to be back to me. Maybe not to the glory days of the late 70s but at least it's a lot funnier than the last few seasons. I've been watching it every week and there are almost as many hits as misses. Sarah Palin's guest spot on Weekend Update was classic. Here it is from Hulu.com, so you have to sit through a quick commercial but it's worth it:
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Cool Halloween Costume's Vid
I love looking at creative Halloween costumes, despite my lack of creativity with mine. I think I went as a member of KISS for like a decade as a young ghoul. Now I'm usually just some drunk dude in a mask at the parties... so really the mask is the only difference from a regular party for me. But some of these are pretty fun and of course I love the song Monster Mash, so check it out:
Friday, October 17, 2008
Movie Review: Room 205
Wanting a fresh start, Katrine moves into a university dormitory but quickly learns the myth about the ghost of a former resident who was killed, only to have the myth become a terrifying reality.Here's a horror movie from Denmark and I must say... it's easily the best Danish horror film I've ever seen. Also it should be noted it's the only Danish horror film I've ever seen and it lacks any originality whatsoever. It's good to know the Danish are as out of ideas for horror movies as Hollywood is I guess.
It's not horrible though, as it's just a low-budget copy of The Ring or The Grudge maybe with the recent film Mirrors elements thrown in for good measure. The atmosphere created by the director can be sort of spooky and it's got a few good shock scares in it. I like the story a bit even as the girl moves into college for her first time living away from home and begins to feel isolated and alone as she doesn't fit in with the "in-crowd". She also battles her own doubts as to whether she's going down the same path as her crazy mother did. She breaks a mirror releasing the ghost of a girl who was brutalized in the same building and the ghostly chick begins knocking off the in-crowd one at a time.
Once the killings start, it actually gets pretty brutal at times. Truth be told if it wasn't so unoriginal plot-wise and if the first 30 minutes didn't take forever to get to the good stuff, I'd easily bump it up a few points. It's a fun ghost flick after it gets going and worth a few kroner (that's Danish dough... I think).
4.5/10
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Movie Review: Trackman
A perfect bank heist turns deadly when the robbers and their hostages flee to an abandoned underground subway station where they encounter the Trackman, a deformed madman that prowls the darkness.From the country that brought us such great things as the Kremlin, the Chernobyl disaster and lots of guys named Boris comes this horror film, and I use the descriptive "horror" loosely. It's really more of a thriller, minus a lot of thrills.
Pay close attention to the opening credits, which consist of strange drawings paired with some creepy kid's voices singing in unison. It's in Russian of course, so I had no idea what they saying, so it's very spooky and atmospheric. Maybe they're singing about lollipops in which case I guess it's not that creepy The reason I say to pay close attention is because that's really the best part of the movie.
These guys rob the bank, head underground into some old tunnels with hostages in tow, and begin to bicker and fight with each other well past the point of annoyance. So we can cheer for the hostages right? No, they're just as annoying. Everyone is annoying, which is not a good sign. It adds to the annoying factor that I watched the movie in English, despite them speaking Russian, so the lines are said more flatly and their lips aren't in sync.
More annoying is that they all have guns and the "Trackman" guy only has some eye-removal tool thingy and a pick-axe, and he begins wasting them. Give me a gun and send me down there and I think I'll walk out in a bit with a dead freak laying somewhere in the tunnels behind me. This guy even chases a couple of them at one point... and yes they have the gun in their hands. Also, when you get to the end you'll see just how completely stupid it all is. They set you up to make you think you know who the Trackman is, and he does things that are supernatural, like sneaking up right behind them only to have them turn around he'll be gone. When the end is revealed though it makes you questions about a hundred things that happened, mainly why did he pluck their eyes out (which I can only assume is because the writer watched Hostel, Jeepers Creepers, See No Evil or Feast and thought he do the same) and why he didn't just have a gun of his own and the movie would have been over in about 2 minutes.
But let's get to the good stuff, and this shouldn't take long. The set in the tunnels is really creepy and nice and when the movie feels like a slasher film there is a bit of gore and it gets to be sort of fun. It's short lived though unfortunately.
So my first Russian horror film was so bad I had to drink some Smirnoff to get through it. Maybe that was their plan all along. They should have called this Suckman.
2/10
Avenged Sevenfold's New Video
Avenged Sevenfold's new video for the song "Dear God". The video is like a must for bands... they must have their "Home Sweet Home" or "Wanted Dead or Alive" with lots of slow-mo and buses and tour footage. I think it's Rockband 101.
Anyway, I like the song and video, despite the fact it's a bit cheesy and mushy. I prefer them to be screaming and blasting their geetars... but what do I know. This should make them some money. Nothing wrong with that.
lyrics:
A lonely road, crossed another cold state line
Miles away from those I love
Purpose hard to find
While I recall all the words you spoke to me
Can't help but wish that I was there
Back where I'd love to be, oh yeah
Dear God the only thing I ask of you
Is to hold her when I'm not around
When I'm much too far away
We all need that person who can be true to you
But I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again, oh no
Once again
There's nothing here for me on this barren road
There's no one here while the city sleeps
And all the shops are closed
Can't help but think of the times I've had with you
Pictures and some memories will have to help me through, oh yeah
Dear God the only thing I ask of you is
To hold her when I'm not around,
When I'm much too far away
We all need that person who can be true to you
I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again oh no
Once again
Some search, never finding a way
Before long, they waste away
I found you, something told me to stay
I gave in, to selfish ways
And how I miss someone to hold
When hope begins to fade...
A lonely road, crossed another cold state line
Miles away from those I love
Hope is hard to find
Dear God the only thing I ask of you is
To hold her when I'm not around,
When I'm much too far away
We all need the person who can be true to you
I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again oh no
Once again
Anyway, I like the song and video, despite the fact it's a bit cheesy and mushy. I prefer them to be screaming and blasting their geetars... but what do I know. This should make them some money. Nothing wrong with that.
lyrics:
A lonely road, crossed another cold state line
Miles away from those I love
Purpose hard to find
While I recall all the words you spoke to me
Can't help but wish that I was there
Back where I'd love to be, oh yeah
Dear God the only thing I ask of you
Is to hold her when I'm not around
When I'm much too far away
We all need that person who can be true to you
But I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again, oh no
Once again
There's nothing here for me on this barren road
There's no one here while the city sleeps
And all the shops are closed
Can't help but think of the times I've had with you
Pictures and some memories will have to help me through, oh yeah
Dear God the only thing I ask of you is
To hold her when I'm not around,
When I'm much too far away
We all need that person who can be true to you
I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again oh no
Once again
Some search, never finding a way
Before long, they waste away
I found you, something told me to stay
I gave in, to selfish ways
And how I miss someone to hold
When hope begins to fade...
A lonely road, crossed another cold state line
Miles away from those I love
Hope is hard to find
Dear God the only thing I ask of you is
To hold her when I'm not around,
When I'm much too far away
We all need the person who can be true to you
I left her when I found her
And now I wish I'd stayed
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm tired
I'm missing you again oh no
Once again
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Gifted Youngster Sells Cookies To Buy Attack Ad
In this installment of Beyond The Facts, a precocious 8-year-old girl participates in grown-up politics by spreading smears and lies.
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