I’m Going A Little Macabre Today.
Want To Danse With Me?
If you go to the Ye Olde Curiosity Shop in Seattle you can visit Sylvester.
He’s famous for being a Mummy.
It’s well earned because as far as Mummies go he’s a good one.
But when I go down to the shop I’ll stand there and stare at him-
like I’ve been doing at least 40 years
and I will look to the people standing next to me as they speculate
and ohh an ahh over the Mummy
and think:
Does anyone see the
DEAD MAN?
Photo: A.M. Moscoso
Yesterday at my bus stop I was leaning against the wall, watching the alley across the street.
So what is it with me and this alley?
It’s just weird looking, it’s got the brick road and if you know what to look for you can sort of see old Seattle down there- the fronts of buildings get ‘face lifts’ but not the backs so looking down some of those alleys is sort of like going back into time- or
like seeing a ghost.
Anyway.
I was looking down the alley with undivided attention because I can see this tan truck with tinted windows in the back and I know what that truck is.
It’s the Medical Examiners Truck.
Actually, the city uses the same truck for other Departments, but only the Medical Examiners truck has tinted windows in the back.
So out of the building pops two people with the M.E. jackets and one has a camera and eventually a Police Officer comes out and last but not least out comes this and M.E. with a bag about the size of a suitcase and I think-
Ouch.
I mean, I know what they put into those bags.
It’s sort of a ‘to-go’ bag if you know what I mean.
So he pops it into the back of the truck and goes around to the front and gets in and drives off.
I don’t think anyone else noticed.
Photograph(s) copyright Shaun O’Boyle
Over the week I watched some shows as well as a couple of movies about abandoned insane asylums.
One of my favorite shows is called Ghost Adventures where the investigators are running around ” screaming did you see that, did you see that” ( no, and I doubt if they did either, being that most of the action takes place in the dark ) during the course of their investigations.
Anyway.
Ghost Adventures is always a good watch and I enjoyed watching them do their build up (their interviews with witnesses are great, they just open the mic and go for it ) to the big night when they would be locked down in the haunted asylum– which as I’ve already mentioned was my topic of the week.
But as I watched and- make no mistake- I enjoyed the stories, it did make me feel bad for the ‘ghosts’ who were supposed to haunt these places- because in the story- be it a ghost hunter show, or a movie- is the not so subtle message that if you were mentally ill in life you’re going to be in the after life as well.
I would argue that maybe– if you were to not head down to the morgue in these places to look for ghosts ( I’ve worked in morgues, mostly I might do some cleaning or paperwork- and they are BORING BORING PLACES ) and really thought about it you might realize that you’re in a building where some weird things are happening and all that is actually in the room with you is…
you
and the room.
You might come to the conclusion that maybe Shirley Jackson is right- maybe some buildings are not sane and what walks in them doesn’t walk alone-
especially if you’re foolish enough to go into those places by yourself.
Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Abandoned NJ Psychiatric Hospital
A Macabre Tale of Love
Photograph(s) copyright Shaun O’Boyle
Jim and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital. One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, Jim suddenly jumped into the deep end. He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. Edna promptly jumped in to save him. She swam to the bottom and pulled Jim out.
When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Edna’s heroic act, she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as she now considered her to be mentally stable. When she went to tell Edna the news she said, “Edna, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you’re being discharged, since you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life of another patient, I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness. The bad news is, Jim, the patient you saved, hung himself in the bathroom with his bathrobe belt right after you
saved him. I am so sorry, but he’s dead.”
Edna replied, “He didn’t hang himself, I put him there to dry. How soon can I go home?”
Photograph(s) copyright Shaun O’Boyle
Once Upon A Time
There was an explosion at the edge of the Universe.
And on September 13, 2008 a satellite saw
the explosion happen.
The explosion actually happened 825 Million Years after
the Universe began.
In case you’re curious the Universe is said
to be
14 billion years old.
There are a lot of zeros involved here
Anyway.
What NASA’s Swift satellite saw
-in my opinion-
was a ghost.
Right?
Right.
Halloween, it’s coming.
And I am SO ready for it.
Once Upon A Time
When I was about 6 years old my family realized I was a little girl who was fascinated with stories about Head Hunters and Zombies and a guy named ” Burke’s Hare ” who robbed graves and sold the rotting bodies to ” Franks Stein ” who in turn made Monsters out of them.
I guess my family were more then a little disturbed by my taste in literature so they tried to balance things out by introducing me to your more traditional fairy tales…
Like
Cinderella
At first I liked Cinderella, but it became clear to me during story time that she needed magic to be prettier then her sisters. I was not encouraged by that as I was not exactly the cutest kid on the block and unless someone showed up with a magic wand I figured I was in trouble.
In the end I was scared of the Cinderella story, it used to give me nightmares.
However I LOVED Snow White.
She got to live in the woods and she ate a poisoned apple and lived-which made perfect sense to me as I had swallowed kerosene on a dare a year before and I had lived.
So I felt a kinship with Snow White and her weird friends who looked like trolls.
She was one lucky girl I remember thinking- her friends were monsters and carried axes and in addition she had black hair too ( which wasn’t something girls in fairy tales had unless they were bad ) so I happily saw myself in that role and asked for that story a lot.
But the Fairy Tale Character who offended me to the marrow of my little girl bones and the one character I truly learned to hate was Beauty- from Beauty and the Beast.
More then halfway through the story I did whatever it is kids do during story time to be disruptive and my Grandma tossed the book into my toy box and that was the end of that.
Or so I thought.
So why did I get so upset?
Here.
Let me count the ways.
First of all her Dad ditches her in the woods and she spends all of her time wishing he would come back-had that been my Dad there would have been serious Hell to pay if he had ever shown his face around me again…
but I digress.
The only person who is nice to Beauty is an Ugly Man who almost dies when Beauty’s kid ditching Dad shows up and takes her back.
Now that part made me cry and it was awhile before I agreed to hear the end of the story which my Grandma was glad to tell me because I had taken to drawing pictures of Beauty being visited by ” Burkes Hare ” and I was hanging them up all over the walls in my bedroom.
Well.
I was mad, but a sport so I learned that Beauty goes back to the castle the Beast and everything around the castle comes back to life and…
Beast turns into a handsome Prince “and they lived Happily Ever After” my relieved Grandmother sang out as she finished the story.
I remember telling my Grandma ” If she had eaten a poisoned apple that would have been a very happy ending.”
” You really think so, don’t you. “
It really wasn’t a question.
I didn’t say anything but I remember my Grandmother looked at me with those wicked green eyes of hers and winked at me. I remember she said something about not winning them all…
and I was never treated to another Fairy Tale by anybody in my family again.
….And we all lived happily ever after that.
The End.
What a story…
this is the kind of whopper you tell when you REALLY need to explain why you couldn’t do something you SWORE on your Mother’s ( who is NOT DEAD ) grave that you would do.
Enjoy
I’ve been thinking about words and ideas and how important they are- so I wrote a story about it.
Enjoy
Towns and Cities can disappear and die just like people.
Some small towns disappear because the main highway is moved and that brings on death just as surely as if you sever an artery in you arm or leg or neck.
And some small towns disappear from the world because they want to.
Just like people.
First Down Turn disappeared from road signs and then it disappeared from road maps.
At some point most of the phone lines that fed into Down Turn fell against trees and into ditches with the storms that always hit the Olympics during the Winter and Spring. When the last set of lines came down in 1979 no one from the outside world noticed because by then Down Turn had all but disappeared from the rest of the world.
You’d think that the people living in Down Turn must have planned their escape from the world, that it must have taken them years to figure out how to erase the tracks they left as they moved in and out of Down Turn when they went to work or for drives or on vacations.
Nothing that grand happened in Down Turn.
The town just faded away bit by bit- just like a photograph encased in a frame with a dusty sheet of glass hanging on a wall that takes the sun for hours at a time.
If you lived in Down Turn you wouldn’t have noticed that you were cut off from the rest of the Universe or the main highway which was less then three miles away, after awhile you couldn’t hear the trucks or cars going by when the traffic was heavy anymore.
Nobody noticed.
Emalee Cupid was just like her neighbors and friends and co-workers. She was just like the people who came into the town’s library looking for ‘stories’.
She didn’t question why in over 20 years no children had been born or why no one ever changed their hairstyle or clothing style or had even bought a new car.
Emalee Cupid lived along and worked alone and now that the rest of life seemed to mirror the life she had resigned herself too all she felt was…
calm.
One day, it was probably sometime during the start of the week Emalee was fixing the spine on a Stephen King book and she wondered why no one seemed to be writing new books anymore.
The thought was a whisper but it was loud enough to make her wince and that’s when she turned the book in her hands over and saw that the title which should have read
” Salem’s Lot ” now read ” Alems Ot”
” That’s not right. ” she whispered to herself and she slid her thumb over the title thinking there MUST have been something covering the letters.
But there was nothing there- unless you counted the blank spot where the ” S ” and the ” L ” should have been.
Emalee looked around the library hoping that no one else was there to see her mistake.
How on Earth could she have not noticed that the cover of a book that she- the town librarian- had received to stock herself when it first came out had a huge problem like a type error on it’s cover?
She dreaded what she knew she had to do next.
She opened the book and as she flipped from page to page she saw that here and there the page numbers were missing, that words were misspelled and that in some places even the pen and ink pictures that were under the Chapter numbers were only partially visible.
Emalee went to the door and locked it and in a panic she went from book to book, magazine to magazine and found the same exact problem.
So just after lunch Emalee closed the Library and decided she had better talk to somebody- anybody about this awful thing she had let happen in her own library.
For years she must have been buying defective books with the towns money.
There was no hiding this- she had better talk to the person who hired her and that was the Mayor.
Down Turn’s Mayor was Mr Ferndale- the Mayor also owned the little General Store with the post office in the back and he also owned the garage and gas station just across the street.
His Offices were above the Gas Station and that’s where he was the day Emalee Cupid came in with her four defective books and two atlases with entire countries missing from the colored plates inside.
Mayor Ferndale was on the phone and he smiled as he motioned to Emalee to wait.
It didn’t seem right to Emalee to watch him so she went to the window and that’s when she saw the stop sign on the corner.
It was red- like it should be- only the words STOP were…
” What can I do for you Miss Cupid? ” the Mayor asked.
Emalee pointed out the window and found the words she need were …gone.
” Yes. They’ve been missing for a few days now, but really, I think we all know what to do at a four way corner, don’t you? Besides, it’s not like there’s a lot of traffic out there nowadays.”
Emalee walked to his desk and put the books down. ” The words. ” she whispered ” The words are missing. “
” Yes, it’s been happening all over the place. Mrs Carlyle at the Pharmacy is having quite a time adjusting but she’ll make do.”
” This isn’t right. ” she told Mayor Ferndale, you can’t just make do when words start to disappear.”
” Some of us don’t have a problem with it Miss Cupid. Some of us don’t like the clutter that’s made it’s way into our town and into our lives. And words- they’re nasty beasts. Those little monsters suck the very air out of your lungs before you have a chance to scream ” no ” and the racket they make as they tunnel their way into your brain.
It’s deafening. Deafening and messy.
Really Miss Cupid- think about it, don’t things seem much more quiet and orderly now?”
” No it isn’t.” Emalee went to his desk and snatched the books up and held them to her chest.Don’t you get it Mr. Ferndale? Those words aren’t clutter, they’re ideas, they’re dreams, they’re voices and if you take them away.”
” What. ” Mayor Fernadale asked
Emalee turned her full attention to the Mayor, she looked him straight in the eyes and when she did she saw the faintest outline of the bookshelf he was sitting in front of looking back at her.
” You take us away too.” she said to the faint outline of Mayor Ferndale.
” It’s for the best Emalee Cupid. You’ll see, it’s all for the best.”
Irregular Bones 