Creepy Clowns Making The Rounds

Just in time for Halloween....is the appearance of Creepy Clowns all over the South, striking terror in the hearts of college kids far and wide.  Undoubtedly your local news has reported on these Clown Stalkers, but the question is....are they for real or just some hysterical urban legend making the rounds?  Well, turns out that I can now post photographic evidence that at least one of these Clowns is the real deal, and alive and well in Knoxville, TN.  Turns out my daughter called from her college dorm at UTK this week to tell me all about how the Clowns in the news stories are real.  Of course I tried to console her by saying that they were surely just Fraternity Pledges being forced to dress up and play copycat for laughs.  She said the clowns have shown up right down from her dorm in the court yard, and have chased people at night returning from parties.  She said they are not only haunting the campus, but have also been lurking around Downtown Knoxville.  She insisted that the police can't do anything about them if they aren't committing any crimes....to which I suggested that loitering on a college campus without student ID must surely be grounds to at least force them to leave.  


Then the very next day, she sent me the image below which was circulating in the local media and creating a buzz around campus.  It was taken at a parking garage right there in Downtown Knox near the school, and it was a Creepy Clown with the name Buckles on his belt.  She said that they've since learned that most of the 'Clown Clones' on the campus were indeed just young Frat Boy jokers. However the police did confront the Creepy Clown below who was stalking around a downtown parking garage late at night, and he turned out to be a strange 40+ year old man.  His intentions?  Still unknown. So what do you think...are these Creepy Clowns that are lurking around, just harmless pranksters....or are they the ill-intentioned stuff or your nightmares? 

An All Hallow's Eve Story

The Halloween party was a splendid affair with glowing jack o'lanterns grimacing from every corner of the barn.  Festive revelers with their true identities concealed behind feathered masks and elaborate costumes, danced the night away to the hauntingly hip tunes of the Bone Janglers, with their skeleton painted faces and Grave Digger top hats. The table resplendent with every Fall treat imaginable, filling the air with the seasonal scents of pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves and apples.  The scents mingled sweetly with the earthy smell of the hay bales and cornstalks that decorated the barn.  Yes, this was the Soiree of the Season and the perfect way for you to ring in All Hallow's Eve!
  

But alas, all good things must come to an end....and as the clock struck 12, the witching hour was upon you and it was time to make the short journey home through the woods.  It was light when you headed to the party earlier in the evening, but now darkness had fallen, and the path back home looked just a bit more ominous than it had on your arrival.  But no fear, as you have traveled that stretch of road many a time with no perilous results, why should tonight be any different.

After all, tonight was the most anticipated night of the year.  It was finally here...All Hallow's Eve!  The night when the veil between the living and the spirit world grows thin.  It's the time for young and old alike to don their disguises and take to the streets in search of sweet candy treats and devilish tricks!  And tonight the air is crisp and cold with a shroud of fog that has settled in to mask the unknown evils lurking in the shadows, those things that go bump in the night!  Yes, though the path is a bit more daunting than it had been earlier, the setting couldn't provide a more picture perfect ending to this enchanted night. 
 
As you gaze up into the night sky, you notice that the Moon is full and mysterious....an amber yellow glow illuminating the spindly bare branches of the late Autumn trees.  As you sink deeper into the wooded path, you begin to notice every little sound amplified around you.  The rustling of the air as it shakes the last remaining leaves from their branches, sending them to their yearly death on the forest floor.  There they will take their place in the cycle of life, their decaying forms making fertile the earth for next Spring's rebirth.  Oh how splendid the Autumn season is, you think to yourself.

Then suddenly, you feel a shiver run up your spine, and you get the eerie sensation that something or someone is watching you from the shadows. Your eyes are trying to adjust from the brightness of the moon above, to the black darkness of the woods around you, when you startle at the jolting screech of an owl overhead.  You look up and are met by the intense, icy stare of his big yellow eyes.  Whew, thank goodness it was only an owl.  
As you continue down the path, you can't help but remember the Tale of the Headless Horseman.  It had been a favorite of yours as a child, and oh how it had scared you so, to walk this same path back then.  Ha...the fertile imagination of childhood.  You don't believe in ghost tales anymore, you're far too old for such folly.  Ignoring your growing sense of unease, you see that you are almost at the forest's edge where the old covered bridge leads back to your sleepy little hamlet, tucked idyllically among the turning maples.  Ha...how silly to let that old tale creep back into your mind tonight and ignite that little flame of fear again.  You chuckle and think to yourself, that it's what makes Halloween so much fun anyway....to be a little scared.  No one is ever too old for a good ole fashioned fright!

Just then, you hear the unmistakable sound of a galloping horse coming from the dark woods behind you.  At first you think your mind and ears are playing tricks on you once again.  But as you strain to listen closer, it is unmistakably real.  You turn to look over your shoulder, but you see only darkness behind.  You turn back around and listen once more...the sound is most certainly real, and it grows louder, as does the beating of your heart.  You hasten your steps and can no longer deny the adrenaline coursing through your veins.  You dare not turn around as you begin to run towards the clearing as fast as your legs will carry you, your breathing labored by the inhalation of the cold dense air pushing hard and heavy through your lungs.  You race through the bridge until you safely clear the other end.  Then you lengthen your stride even more, and you run like you haven't run in years...not stopping until you have reached the door of your house, wheezing and huffing, and euphorically out of breath.  You've made it to safety to be sure, but now as you stop to look around, you realize there is no one in sight, you listen, but there are no sounds to be heard, save the occasional croaking of a woodland frog.  Your heartbeat begins to calm, and you grin at your own buffoonery. Man what a night....this All Hallow's Eve couldn't get any better if you had scripted it yourself.  And to think that you were actually scared like a child again....you can't help but to chuckle in spite of yourself, and you contentedly head off to bed yawning.

You awaken from your evening's slumber, and brave the frosty morning air as you take the dog out for his early morning walk, deciding to to take him back to the wooded path.  The sun has not completely risen in the eastern sky, so the brilliant colors of the glorious fall foliage are still muted and dark with shadows. The frost is thick on the brown grass and plants, and each footstep is marked with a decisive crunch. You can smell that old familiar Autumn smell that you love so much...the wood smoke wafting through the foggy morning air as the chimney fires are stoked in the surrounding homes.  As you begin to approach the trail, your dog begins to bark excitedly and runs ahead into the mist.  You lose sight of him in the fog, but you hear him growling at something in the woods ahead.  

 As you draw closer to the covered bridge, you're astonished to discover a flaming, grimacing jack o'lantern smoldering in the ashes and embers of the flickering flames.  You take a moment to absorb what you are witnessing when you notice the horse prints in the sand.  You look around cautiously as that old familiar chill runs right back up your spine, and the hair on the back of your neck stands on end.  Intrigued and slightly unnerved, you think to yourself that perhaps there really is some truth to those eerie tales that prevail in the area, those haunting legends that refuse to die.  Maybe, just maybe, you really do believe in spooks, specters and haints after all!  :o)

Tomorrow will be All Hallow's Eve once again my friends....Go forth and enjoy the Magic!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN and SAMHAIN 

Moonlight Drive by tmac0723 

Ghost Story - Island of Deadly Dolls

“He is the intermediary between us, his audience, the living, and they, the dolls, the undead, who cannot live at all and yet who mimic the living in every detail since, though they cannot speak or weep, still they project those signals of signification we instantly recognize as language.” 

~ Angela Carter "Wayward Girls and Wicked Women

Halloween is all about being spooked right?  And let's face it, there are a LOT of SPOOKY people, places and things in this world.  One such spooky place that I just learned of may be old news to some of you, but it was all new to me, so I thought the Halloween Countdown was a great place to share it.  I saw it on my homepage yesterday, and the image was so creepy that I had to investigate it further...

 

This is one of the creepiest Tourist Attractions in Mexico and it's called "The Island of the Dolls", or in Spanish, “La Isla de la Munecas”!  Creepy Dolls rank right up there with Creepy Clowns in my book.  I think there is something disconcerting about seemingly innocent, childlike things having a dark and sinister side to them, that really taps a nerve in our collective psyche!  So here is the bizarre tale....

A hermit by the name of  Don Julian Santana, moved to the island.  Now he was married, but is rumored to have lived the last 50 years of his life alone on the island.  When he moved there he discovered a small girl drowning in the canal and was unable to save her.  He was understandably quite distraught by the events.  Later, Don Julian found a doll floating in the water, and he believed it had belonged to the drowned child.  So he fished it out of the water and hung it up in a nearby tree.  He did this to honor the young girl's spirit and to help protect the island from any further tragedy.

This marked the beginning of his obsession with collecting old, broken dolls and placing them all around the island and the waterways.  He was also said to have fished other old dolls from the waters believing them to be drowning children.  But other stories recount the man as being tormented by the spirits of the dolls, and his collection and placement of the creepy dollies was as a shrine to appease the spirit that was tormenting him.  He believed he could hear the dolls whispering and that the spirit was beckoning him to come into the water.

Now you may or may not think the man was just slowly succumbing to his own madness, and perhaps he was.  But there is one last chilling twist to this terrifying tale.   Apparently, in 2001, old Don Julian was discovered by his nephew, drowned in the very same canal, at the same place where he'd found the young girl.  Coincidence?  Or are there more malevolent forces at work on that island?

The island is now being operated by Santana's family, as one of the world's weirdest and creepiest tourist attractions.  But there have been many a visitor who has felt the unnerving sense that the dolls are watching them.  They've claimed to have witnessed the dolls moving their broken limbs, blinking their eyes, and whispering through the trees.  As such, it is now recommended that visitors offer the spirits a gift of appeasement upon first stepping foot on the island.

I've included a video below that has some good images of the very creepy mutilated dolls, along with a recounting of the tale.  So what do you think?  Do creepy dollies make your skin crawl?  Do you think there could really be discontented spirits on the island that drove Don Julian slowly mad, and eventually beckoned him to his own watery grave?  And would you dare go there for a visit?

Sleepy Hollow

 So as you all know, we try our best to get to New England in the Autumn because Florida has no such thing as an Autumn season.  Well, a few years ago, I got a wild hair to add Sleepy Hollow to my list of places to visit on our trip.  Since we stay in Vermont usually, and hit Salem each visit as well...it required a bit of a drive and a change in hotels to make it happen.  It's about 3 hours west from Vermont.  And we were going to see the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze, (which is incredible and totally worth doing if you get to Sleepy Hollow in October!).  We also planned on checking out the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery so we could see the actual bridge where the Headless Horseman rode across in Washington Irving's classic haunted tale.

The cemetery was beautiful and I took lots of photos...but sadly, I lost them all, as they somehow got erased from my compact flash card.  I can't tell you how sick I still am about that!  The town, originally Tarrytown, is a very quaint town in the Fall.  The colored leaves blowing by, the shops with their Halloween wares on display, and streets decorated for the season...all collaborate to add to the magic of the legend itself. 

During the month of October there are a variety of activities to enjoy like the Jack O'Lantern Blaze in nearby Croton-on-Hudson, the Haunt Attraction, Horseman's Hollow, Irving's Legend, a master storytelling performance complete with organ music, the Haunted Hayride, Lyndhurst Mansion After Dark, site of the first two Dark Shadows movies, family fun at the Legend Weekends Event, the spectral tales of The Ghosts of TarryHollow and of course, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Tours where you can enter the crypt of Barnabas Collins and find the graves of Brom Bones and Katrina Van Tassel.  I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to live in this town...what a spooktacular October we would have!
 

As for the infamous bridge where the Headless Horseman chased ole' Ichabod Crane....well, you can find the bridge, and it is pretty....but it was a bit anticlimactic due to the fact that the bridge you see now, is not the 'real' bridge, and is not actually standing in the exact same place it was back in the day.  But it was all still a heap of fun, very cool....and absolutely perfect for a Fall vacation!

Friday the 13th!

Well, it's Friday the 13th again! Are you shaking in your boots? Is anyone hiding out in fear, buried beneath their covers? Yeah....me neither! In fact, I think I'm going to go out and catch the newest Sherlock Homes movie tonight. I was just reading a few takes on why we harbor a fear of the number 13 in the human psyche and frankly...I still don't get it. Do these really seem like things that should make us scared of the number or the day?

I mean, I can see how it was a bad day for the Knights Templar....rounded up, tortured and executed on October 13th, 1307. And I understand how 13 got a bad rap in Christianity, as apparently the extra guy (#13) seated at the Last Supper was called out as a devil who would betray Jesus, which Judas did. Hmmm....that also sounds very similar to an even older Viking tale of 12 Gods being assembled at a banquet at Valhalla, where apparently, Loki, the Evil One, God of Mischief, crashed the party bringing the total to 13. He then invited Hod, the Blind God of Winter who proceed to use a spear of mistletoe to kill Balder the Good. Okay...so again, guy #13 is apparently a trouble maker. And yes, even the Hindus believe it unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place.

But the Egyptians saw 13 as lucky because it represented the 13th stage of life as the afterlife and beyond....hence, they felt 13 represented death as happy transformation. And in the Tarot Deck, #13 is the Death card, which actually has meanings that can be construed as positive....like regeneration, change, completion, transition and transformation! So why all the fear and loathing against the #13? I've never had anything bad occur on a Friday the 13th, have you?

Well, with the exception of one thing....

Love this image © Temple Illuminatus

I will confess....that I did sneak into the Friday the 13th movie when I was but a young tween, and it did scare the living daylights out of me. I laid in bed for about 2 hours, paralyzed with fear that Jason was standing outside my door just waiting for me to make a desperate run down the hall to my parents room, so that he could chop me up into pieces. So convinced was I that he was there....that I dared not move a muscle, for fear that if he new I was alive in my bed...he'd come in and kill me....ha! The mind is powerful thing, no? Eventually however, my human instinct of fight or flight kicked in, and I did indeed make a brave cowardly run for it, to the safety of my parents room. I spent the rest of the night, sleeping on the floor at the foot of their bed. Needless to say, the jig was up come morning....parents aren't stupid, and they knew just what I had done. They figured my sleepless night of fear and panic were punishment enough for sneaking into an R rated movie. They were SO right!

Happy Friday the 13th!

Tree Spirits in the Cemetery

These are photos I shot at West Wardsboro Cemetery in Vermont. I love the simplicity and slight spookiness of the old, small white picket pence and stone wall in front. It beckoned me inside. And the cemetery itself was quite lovely with stately trees and a backdrop of gorgeous fall foliage. But most instantly noticeable were two very stately, barren trees that seemed to stand guard in the middle. They seemed to give off their own aura, and what felt almost like a hushed distant warning. I can only describe it as a heightened sense of unease when walking too close to them. So what was it about these particular trees anyway?

I read somewhere that the Native Americans called Trees, the Ghosts of the Forest. And sometimes told tales of certain trees that were 'haunted' by evil spirits. The early settlers of course scoffed at the Indians' absurd beliefs, often taunting them and threatening to cut the trees down for firewood. That was until the fateful night that one over smug settler tried to chop into the tree with an axe, that promptly flew out of his hand, hit the tree and ricocheted back on top of the man himself.....severing an artery. The poor unfortunate man bled to death under those very trees he mocked. Guess that will teach him!
I like to think of Trees as Sentinels or Guardians over the land they oversee. Like the two large foreboding trees in the photo above that I took at that cemetery in Vermont. When I was walking through that graveyard, as I always do, shooting pictures and enjoying the reverence I feel there....it was those two trees that seemed to keep sending out a 'vibe', for lack of a better word. They just seemed to tower over their dominion in a somewhat unsettling manor. And I did give pause, as I thought that perhaps they may not appreciate strangers like myself encroaching on their sacred domain of the afterlife. But other than that slight uneasy feeling when venturing beneath them, I noticed nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. UNTIL...I returned home and viewed my photos! And sure enough, there were the tree spirits clear as day, scowling at me, warning me no doubt...to turn back while I still could, lest I join them there forever!

So there is a moral to this story, and those cautionary tales of the Native Americans. Some forces and spirits in this world, be they evil or benign....aren't readily apparent to the casual observer. One must be open to the magical ways and always on high alert....as you never know when those entities may choose to show themselves for who or what they truly are! ;o)All Images © 2006 Wendy A. (All Rights Reserved)

Haunted House for Sale

For those of you who have been searching long and hard for that perfect 'Haunted House' to buy and inhabit....I have great news! Yes, one of the premier Haunted Houses in America is now up for sale. The "Amityville Horror House" in NY, is now on the market for a mere $1.15 million. By my accounts, that makes the selling price far more terrifying than the house itself. But then again, how can you truly put a price tag on a bonafide, real life Haunted House like the Amityville Horror House? Not only does it have an authentic 'bloody' background story, but it's also been made famous by Hollywood in an original 1979 horror movie (and some bad remakes). The background is that the DeFeo family who lived in the house, met their untimely demise at the hand of the disturbed eldest son Ronald DeFeo Jr., who shot and killed both of his parents, two brothers and two sisters execution style while they slept in their beds.

The house was later bought and inhabited by George and Kathy Lutz who lived there for a month, reportedly experiencing assorted psychic phenomena and an onslaught of terror at the hands of demonic spirits. They eventually fled the house. A book was written, the now famous movie "The Amityville Horror" was made, and the rest is not only history, but is apparently widely debated and often disputed. But the fact remains that this was indeed a true house of horrors in it's past, and is thereby considered to be a 'Haunted House' by many. And although its appearance has been altered to try and conceal its identity and slow the progression of curious on-lookers (especially at Halloween)....it is now up for sale, with all ghosts included! Muwahaha!

The Hook-Man

Have you ever heard the story of 'The Hook-Man'? Some say it's an urban legend that made it's first appearance in pop culture in 1960 in a Dear Abby column. The general story is about lovers parking on lover's lane and a radio announcement comes on about an escaped patient from a state asylum who has a hook in place of his right hand and is considered very dangerous. The girl gets spooked and wants to go home. The boy is frustrated and undaunted by the reports, but finally relents and drives her home in a huff. When he gets to her house to drop her off and goes to open her door, he finds a bloody hook hanging from the handle. Moral of the story...don't be naughty teenagers and go necking in a secluded area, lest you come face to face with the Hook-Man. Other versions have the boy getting out of the car to check things out and not returning, thereby prompting the girl to go looking for him where she discovers him hung over the car by a hook, sliced and bleeding. Does this story scare you?

Well it used to scare the dickens out of me. And it's no secret that I am easily spooked. I have a really over-active imagination, especially when it comes to scary things. But I can squarely lay all blame for that on my older brother of 6 years, for constantly seizing on that quality of mine as a child, and taking every opportunity he could find to scare the living daylights out of me. But it wasn't usually done in the physical, 'jump out of a closet' kind of way....although he did plenty of that too. But he rather preferred a psychological form of torment, telling me they were true stories, playing on my mind and unleashing all those hidden fears that lay inside a young girl. He'd spin terrifying tales of the Hook-Man, and other oddities like Cannibalistic Pygmy Indians. Once he even diligently made a tape recording of the Hook-Man's voice and put it on the window sill outside my bedroom, and cracked the window just a tad so I wouldn't notice. And while I was in my room alone...I began to hear the voice. When I became still to listen more closely, it was the 'Hook-Man' whispering that he was standing outside my window and had come to get me. At the same time, my brother was hiding out there in the bushes shaking the branches and clawing on the window screen with something that convincingly sounded like a HOOK to me. Needless to say, I ran screaming down the hall to my parents room, certain of my impending doom. In comes my brother, laughing in complete hysterics at his sinister accomplishment. I hate him!

And what's so bad is that my Mother in all of her un-infinite wisdom, would let my tormentor babysit me. So he had a captive audience for every demented story he could come up with. My dear older brother would cut off the electricity in the garage and bang on the windows outside, while we screamed in the dark. He would chase me around the house with his huge pet tarantula spider, threatening to put it on me as I ran and screamed at the top of my lungs. (To this day, I have arachnophobia.) Once he even boiled spaghetti noodles, peeled the skins off the grapes and made bowls of ketchup and put them all in boxes with holes for your hand. And he made my cousin and I stick our hands in there to feel what we were told was brains, eye of newt and blood! I guess it does seem a bit funny now in retrospect. But he is the reason my mind begins to imagine all sorts of scary things when I hear a noise outside my window. And why I have never really enjoyed the sensation of being scared. I'm curious if anyone else remembers any Urban Legends or tales of horror inflicted on them by their siblings. Below is a short video I found on the 'Hook-Man'....enjoy!

Urban Legend - The Hook