Update: The New Markhat Book, THE FIVE FACES, slated for June 2014 release!

I know it isn't Sunday, but I have news, and again it's good.

The new Markhat book, THE FIVE FACES, will be released next June. It was originally scheduled for a September release, but the good people at Samhain bumped the release up by a full three months.

I'm already at work on the 9th book in the series, which I'm calling THE DARKER CARNIVAL.

Mug and Meralda? No, I haven't forgotten them. Their next adventure, ALL THE TURNS OF LIGHT, is also underway.

Which means I'd better get back to work!

Just wanted to keep you folks in the loop.

Good News, For a Change: New Markhat Book is Accepted!

Fireworks, for the new Markhat book THE FIVE FACES has been accepted!

That shriek you heard today was me, upon reading an email from my lovely editor at Samhain. The new Markhat book, THE FIVE FACES, has been accepted.

Edits and second edits and yet more more edits (i.e., work) will soon begin, but now it's time to emulate Snoopy and do the Jubilant Dance of Selling a Novel.

This will mark the 8th entry in the Markhat titles. What started as a novella  in the long-since defunct print magazine Adventures of Sword and Sorcery is now a full-blown series, complete with supporting characters, an overall story arc, a chronology that gives me fits, and the opportunity to write as many Markhat books as I can until A) I die or B) the publisher says 'no.'

I dug out my tattered copy of the Adventures of Sword and Sorcery featuring the original Markhat story, The Mister Trophy. There's a man and a Troll on the cover, although it's not an actual scene from the story, and anyway my Troll knees are jointed backwards from ours.

But it was a big deal, seeing my name on a cover. And there was interior artwork!

Which pretty much demonstrates that in Markhat's world, Trolls trump vamps every time.

The art was by George Barr, and he's probably most famous for his work illustrating Dungeons and Dragons manuals. But his art has also graced a multitude of books covers and prints, so scoring a George Barr illustration was a real honor.

That story also saw the first sighting of a Markhat witticism. In the story, a Troll shows up looking for Markhat, and naturally the Troll finds him in a bar.

The Troll proceeds to describe his long, arduous journy from Troll country and through the devastated Kingdom of Man and finally to Rannit and Markhat. Because that's how my Trolls talk -- a Troll would never come out and say 'I am here on urgent business.' Instead, the Troll would describe the many obstacles he faced just getting there to tell his story.

Markhat knows just enough about Troll culture to understand this. And he knows to respond in kind. After all, the Troll weighs a ton and half and stands ten feet tall and could pull the bar down to the ground without any real exertion.

But Markhat is Markhat, and he can't resist the urge to tweak even a Troll's nose, so his reply to the Troll's retelling of his journey is this:

Which the magazine editor, Randy Dannenfelser, saw fit to stick in a page-block. Because he thought it was funny.

I mention this because Randy taught me an important lesson here, and the lesson is this:

If you can make a harried, hard-bitten editor laugh at a line of dialog, you can get paid for it.

And of course it goes farther than that. The Markhat series deals with some heavy themes -- loss. Guilt. Rage. Betrayal. Death. Addiction. Aging.

But Markhat keeps the wise-cracks coming, even when facing down Troll five times his size. Why does he do that?

Because Markhat sees all the bad, and it weighs on him, every moment, every day. But he's not quite ready to give in to the emptiness. So when he gets the opportunity, he looks the implacable, unbeatable world square in the eye and he tells it what it can do with its dreadful algebras and inescapable losses.

I think that's why the humor works. Because he's mocking awful things, and they deserve to be mocked, right up until the end.

So now that THE FIVE FACES is sold, I can reveal the working title of the Markhat work-in-progress. Drumroll, please:

THE DARKER CARNIVAL

Yep. This time Markhat visits a traveling carnival in search of a runaway daughter. And if you think the traveling carnival is merely a rag-tag collection of happy misfits plying their trade from town to town for the innocent amusement of their visitors, well, you haven't read much Markhat.

If you haven't read much Markhat, please click here to get started.

This has been a rough few weeks. Getting good news felt so refreshing, I will close today with this:

A CAVALCADE OF COVERS

And now, coming soon, THE FIVE FACES!

Please feel free to join me in a heartfelt WOOHOO!

Our Stupid Bodies, Redux

It's been a bad week.

I sat in front of this bloody monitor for hours today, trying to be funny, to be informative, to be sarcastic or caustic or anything but angry or maudlin. But the empty spot on the floor where Thor ought to be isn't going away, and the only words I'm inclined to write are words best left unpublished.

So, tonight we're going to do a rerun. Here's my (in)famous blog on wellness and general good health. Enjoy. I'll be back soon with new material.

(From 05/2013)

Your body is either a wondrous living engine powered by a spark of the divine or a ludicrous assemblage of evolutionary short-cuts, depending on your point of view.

Having seen myself naked (police video enhancement techniques have shown a marked improvement in recent months), I know where I stand on the whole wondrous construction / meat-based Rube Goldberg contraption controversy.

An injury to my back last week left me thinking about the fleeting and fragile notion of health. Since the injury also left me in a crumpled heap on the floor, I had plenty of time to ponder my attitudes toward wellness in between bouts of cursing and attempts to raise myself by climbing a nearby window-frame.

So, with a renewed appreciation for the simple things I took for granted -- walking, standing, crouching to hide from store detectives, lifting liquor bottles or barrels filled with deep-fried hamburgers -- I'd like to offer a few thoughts on our bodies, and how to keep them healthy.

Your body is a biological machine, powered by food and air, which will give you many years of trouble-free use if you perform regular maintenance, especially routine oil changes. Wait. I got my body mixed up with my riding lawn mower. Let me start over.

Your body is a wildly inefficient hodge-podge of finicky, unreliable chemical processes and damage-prone tissue structures. Even with the best of luck, it's going to start failing faster than a Russian-built sports car after forty years, and probably well before that.

Let's take a look at the major structures and systems that make up the human body:

Might as well pick out a plot....

1) THE SKELETAL SYSTEM. Beneath your skin is an appalling volume of gooey wet stuff.  Hidden inside this gelatinous mass of goo are your bones. Each bone connects to another via muscles, tendons, ligaments, and cleverly-hidden wires. This complex arrangement of jointed bones and opposing muscles allows you to wave awkwardly at strangers who you thought waved to you, but were in fact waving at their friend behind you. Too, whereas the lowly ant can only lift a mass fifty times its own body weight, your skeletal system grants you the ability to beg for help opening a jar of mayonnaise. Maybe that stranger has a stronger grip than you do, from all that bloody waving.

The most common skeletal problem is that of having to endure a skeleton in the first place. Face it, used  skeletons wind up wired in humorous poses by bored medical students or spend decades popping out of doors in carnival spook-houses, and even then the things are prone to make a lot of clattering noises and require frequent repairs. Many commercial and medical establishments have switched to sturdy plastic skeletons these days, which is a move you should check into as well.

The human brain.

2) THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. Your nervous system conveys the brain's instructions to your muscles via a series of nerves. Given the poorly thought-out nature of most of your brain's instructions, this crude and error-prone delivery system is probably a blessing in disguise, since it gives you time to reconsider flipping off the burly, tattooed Neanderthal who just bumped you in a checkout line.

Humans share virtually all of their nervous system chemistry and neurobiology with the graceful soaring hawk and the surefooted mountain goat, but you'd never suspect that after watching the average person put on a drunken rendition of the 'Mashed Potato' dance at a karaoke bar. Honestly, half the population is likely to suffer minor injury just playing 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and the other half couldn't walk across a foot-wide plank without falling if their lives depended on it.

Nerves are composed of neurons, glial cells, and quite a number of other microscopic structures which are wasting their time and effort on a species that still hasn't quite mastered the rhythmic finger-snap.

3) THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. Your body requires proper nutrition to function at its best. A quick appraisal of your body's so-called 'best' clearly explains the shelves lined with Cheetos and the presence of a McDonalds drive-thru every sixty feet in the developed West.

You can spend forty years nibbling on nothing but free-ranch kelp and gluten-free naturally-occurring whole-grain tofu and still wind up diagnosed with the exact same terminal diseases as the 400-pound trucker who has eaten nothing but tobacco-soaked gas station burritos since 1987.

Still, you might improve your odds a tiny bit if you maintain a body that conforms to the following simple formula:

Height > Maximum girth.

Thus, if your waist measurement is six feet, remember to maintain a height of AT LEAST six feet. Seven would be better. Eight is just showing off.

Choose a height and stick with it. Your digestive system will seek to undermine your efforts at every turn, but  if you can ignore the aching constant hunger and nearly-irresistible urges to consume the entire Sarah Lee display in a single sitting, you can at least maintain a healthy weight. This ensures your last words can be smug ones.

A healthy heart is a bloated misshapen heart!

4) THE CARDIOPULMONARY SYSTEM. Your heart and lungs comprise your cardiopulmonary system. The hearts pumps the blood, which passes through the lungs. In the lungs, the blood releases carbon dioxide, absorbs oxygen, and craves tobacco just like it's done day after tiresome day since Prince released his breakout '1999' album.

Much ado is made by physicians and the media concerning blood pressure and the importance of keeping one's blood pressure within certain clear limits.

Regardless of your age, general health, or activity level, doctors have determined that your blood pressure is well beyond both the upper and lower safe limits and you will soon expire unless you:

• Switch to a healthy diet by removing all food from your diet.
• Pester harried waiters with demands that your tablecloth and silverware be certified gluten-free.
• Lecture everyone you know about the benefits of a Vegan lifestyle.
• Reduce your body mass by no less than 67% between now and the next celebration of Earth Day.
• Stop using bacon as both dental floss and chewing gum.

By taking care of your heart, you will ensure that Cyborg Dick Cheney has a steady supply of cardiac tissue for at least the next half-century.

Fig. 3, the anterior brachiostatic excretory array. Eww.

5) THE BRACHIOSTATIC - ARTERIOPEDIOTIC SYSTEM. All the squishy things not covered by topics 1 through 4 above. Feet, nose hair follicles, ear wax glands, etc. Basically, all the squirming bits of this and ropy parts of that which ancient Egyptian mummy-makers hurriedly sealed up in jars. Because, yuck.

If something goes wrong here -- and it will -- odds are you'll first learn of it in that brief moment between floating above your motionless body and being pulled into The Light. Early symptoms of a sudden demise from brachiostatic complications include itching, sneezing, feelings of calm or well-being, anxiety, hunger, thirst, any sensations of fullness, sounds or vocalizations from the mouth, blinking, yawning, skin, or regular bouts with sleep.

There is a way to keep your complex brachiostatic system in perfect function by consuming a half teaspoon of a certain Greek plant pollen per day, but this same pollen causes rapid, irreversible heart failure. Who says Nature doesn't have a sense of humor?

Really, the best you can do is keep those toenails trimmed so the morgue attendants won't snicker and post awful pics on Instagram.

HEALTH CONCERNS: AGING

From the moment you are born, your body begins to renew itself.

Sadly, your body is no better at this renewal business than it is at regenerating limbs or developing acute night vision. Now, if you cut a starfish in two pieces, each piece will heal and become a really pissed-off starfish, and no one will ever leave you alone with their pets or small children.

But cut off the tip of your pinky finger, and aside from profuse bleeding all that happens is a rapid realization that your Blue Cross insurance coverage is woefully inadequate.

Aging is merely a slow-motion fatal car crash into a rather solid stone wall. You are placed in the doomed car at birth, the doors are locked tight, and the steering wheel and brakes don't work. But take heart; each year, advances in medical science bring us closer to a truly lifelike embalming process.

We really, REALLY mean it this year.

HEALTH CONCERNS: DISEASE PREVENTION

Not a flu season passes without dire warnings from the CDC that the current strain of bird flu will wipe all of humanity from the tortured face of the soon-to-be-barren Earth. We are bombarded with media instructions to get flu shots, wear breath masks, and refrain from huffing the missing CDC canisters of experimental bird flu viruses.

This year will be no different, and the outcome will be the same. The worldwide death toll from the latest incurable superflu will be dwarfed by the sum total of all Nerf-related injury deaths suffered while riding atop a rhinoceros at noon on Arbor Day. If this is pointed out, CDC spokesmen will mutter under their breath and hint that next year the Great Unwashed are really gonna get trashed.

The only way to prevent disease is by avoiding childbirth, especially your own. Once you're here, disease is both inevitable and a vital component of our thriving Health Care and Mortuary industries.

You've got to really *feel* the burn.

HEALTH CONCERNS: EXERCISE

Use it or lose it, they say. They also say five times five is thirty-six and London is the capital of China, so listening to them is a complete waste of time.

Another complete waste of time is exercise. You can run, you can lift weights, you can practice Yoga every hour of every day for your entire life, but your body will still direct its energies toward devising ways to undermine your efforts. If you run, you will ruin your knees. If you lift weights, you will tear things with cryptic names such as the 'ACLU' or the 'Isles of Langerhams.'

You may forestall this inevitable decay by injecting steroids directly into your muscles, which will make you  stronger, faster, and easily capable of swinging that blood-soaked claw hammer for hours on end while a SWAT team peppers you with rubber bullets.

An alternative to this is low impact aerobic exercise, which consists of rapid-fire channel surfing while seated at an athletic and unyielding 46 degree angle. Additional motion may be added to the workout session by incorporating the chip-dip arm action, or by walking briskly to the refrigerator at regular intervals for another Coors Lite.

Marathons, triathlons, paragons, pentagons, and the Running of the Bulls are best left to the obsessive-compulsive, the rabidly insane, and the Spanish.

Grab your ankles, sailor.

HEALTH CONCERNS: YOUR DOCTOR - PATIENT RELATIONSHIP

Finding a competent, caring physician is an important step in maintaining wellness and a healthy lifestyle. However, you could achieve the same results by engaging in a quest for solid physical evidence of Bigfoot. In fact, that's altogether the better idea.

The modern physician left medical school only to find him or her self buried under a veritable mountain of debt. The only way to ever hope to pay it off is to run patients through their practices at speeds normally reserved for slaughterhouse cattle-chutes. Pharmaceutical reps help out by pushing thousands of pills and saving the poor beleaguered doctor the time of actually listening to his patients, who are by nature a whiny complaining lot anyway.

The modern doctor-patient relationship works like this -- you, the patient, are presented with a bill. You pay the bill. If the bleeding resumes return for another rapid-fire office visit, receive another bill, and this time, a blue pill.

Repeat until wellness or a body temperature equaling that of the ambient air is achieved.

It's just not that hard, people.

The spiders tell me to dance!

HEALTH CONCERNS: MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

Many mental health care providers recommend quiet introspection and frequent self-examination as part of a health-conscious lifestyle. These health care providers recommend these practices because that BMW 328i with the 36 speaker Bose sound system and the heated leather seats isn't going to pay for itself, and the usual reaction to any interval of honest self-appraisal is panic followed by weekends in Vegas spent mainlining pure grain alcohol.

An important first step to achieving true mental health is learning to distinguish between the voices of friends and family, the voice of Grolog, Dark Lord of the Underworld, and the voice of Mark, who will be your server for this evening. Honestly, if you can refuse to loan your cousin Theo money, ignore Grolog's suggestions that you emulate the dietary practices of Hannibal Lecter, and convey to Mark your wishes for iced tea, the turkey club, and a side of spicy fries, then you're already in better shape than 75% of the other diners in Chili's.

Spiritual health is best achieved by waiting to become a disembodied spirit yourself, and if you keep ordering the spicy fries, you won't be waiting long, Mr. Unchecked Hypertension.

I intended to end this section on health and wellness with an audio recording of the noises my back now makes when I stand, but the FCC stepped in and I'll either have to skip that altogether or move to and post from Singapore, where the rules are more relaxed.

BIG NEWS

BIG NEWS

BIG NEWS

Aside from a brief mention by Robert Stack in a 1988 episode of Unsolved Mysteries, I don't get a lot of media attention. Writers usually don't, since we spend most of our time scowling at monitors or staring off into space until our tires skid off the pavement.

Nevertheless, the University of Mississippi Department of Media and Documentary Projects just released a short (18 minutes and change) film which chronicles my writing and my brief stint as a costumed crime-fighter. Most of the costumed crime-fighter bits were removed, because the FCC also had concerns about me appearing in Spandex after mass suicides among the first test audience, but the writing parts are pretty cool. You get to see my underground lair, my ferocious pack of mutant wolverines, and of course sharks with frickin' lasers in their heads.

The film is free, there are no logins or signons, and popcorn is provided by the ghost of Orville Redenbacher himself. Sure, it's ghost popcorn, but give it a try!

So settle back into your chair, click the link below, and prepare to mock my outrageous Southern accent.

I Have To Write

I'd like to offer a big thanks to Media and Documentary Projects, and of course to the film's creator, director, editor, and all-around architect, Karen Tuttle.

That's it for this week, folks. Take care of yourselves, eat a few vegetables, and remember not to age.

All the Paths of Shadow

Things That Go Bump, 2013: Issue #4

Ghosts, schmosts.

Too good to speak into my microphone, huh? Too busy flapping about dilapidated old houses to appear in front of my camera, is that it? Waiting for a guest shot on Ghost Hunters and don't have time to waste on some amateur, that's the way of things?

Well, fine. Stick to your condemned rental properties and your knock-off Ouija Boards. I suspect most of you are as banal and tedious in death as you were in life anyway, judging from the lack of sparkle in the EVP recordings I've heard.

So let's leave the world of hauntings behind for a moment, and talk time travel instead.

Yes. Time travel. The stuff of science fiction and bad television show plot devices. Am I about to trot out a list of incidents which are intended to prove the existence of time travelers in our midst?

Yes. No. Maybe. Look, just keep reading, and see what you think.

THE WATCH OUT OF TIME

In 2009, archaeologists accompanied by a pair of Chinese journalists excavated a tomb in Shangsi they dated to the Ming Dynasty (15-16th century). The tomb was undisturbed, and the contents had remained sealed for some 400 years.

Among the objects unearthed inside the tomb was the one shown below.

That's right. It's a watch-ring, the hands stopped at 10:06. On the back of the tiny watch-ring the word SWISS is engraved.

So. We have a timepiece which couldn't be much more than a century old (the first recorded watch-ring was not manufactured until after 1780) found inside a tomb which has been sealed for some 400 years.

That's what Fortean enthusiasts call 'really weird, dude.'

How did the watch get there? Who left it? Is the whole thing a hoax?

The answers are, respectively, I don't know, don't know that either, and who knows.

The only thing that could make this story better is the discovery of a drawing of a blue London police call box on the tomb walls. Sadly, that didn't happen.

But the watch did. That's weird enough for me.

RUSSIANS SCREWING AROUND

There's a lot of gold mining in and around the Ural Mountains in Russia.

And it's not just gold (and empty vodka bottles) the miners are bringing up.

This is just a sample of the machined, metallic artifacts that have been discovered in places that date 100,000 years old, or more.

My knowledge of history is admittedly vague in spots, but I am relatively sure the design and manufacture of metal springs, screws, and threaded rods was not much in evidence a hundred thousand years ago.

But there are the products of such a technology.

Such discoveries are not limited to the Urals. There are stories of similar findings right here in the US, and pretty much everywhere else people poke around deep underground.

AND NOW: JOHN TITOR, TIME TRAVELER EXTRAORDINAIRE 

You either recognize the name John Titor, or you don't.

If you don't, you're in for a treat, because his story is in my opinion the most fascinating thing to come out of the Internet since Epic Rap Battles of History opened their webpage (check out Skrillex versus Mozart, if you need a laugh, and who doesn't).

John Titor emerged on an obscure internet bulletin board called Time Travel Institute on November 2, 2000. He didn't call himself 'John Titor' yet, but posted under the handle TimeTravel_0. At first, TimeTravel_0 posted brief declarations about the nature of time travel, and the specifics of time travel machine design.

In January of 2001, the same poster began posting on another board, the Art Bell BBS forums. It was then he chose a posting name (the site required one), and 'John Titor' emerged.

Titor claimed to be a time traveler from 2036, sent back to 1975 on a mission to snatch a vintage IBM 5100 computer. Titor claimed he made an unscheduled (and unsanctioned) stop in 2000 to collect some family photos, meet with family members, and try to warn people about the emerging threats of 'Mad Cow' disease and the American Civil War, which he predicted would begin in 2004 over a heavily-disputed Presidential election (ring any bells?). He also claimed that the Russians would nuke the US and much of Europe in 2015, after the civil war reached its peak and political destabilization and the presence of so many nukes made them so paranoid they panicked and pushed the button.

According to Titor, World War III ended with nearly all of the major cities in the US left desolate, much of Europe a wasteland, and the rest of the world limping along aided by the remaining pockets of industry and technology. The Russians, he claimed, were obliterated, because the Chinese took exception be being nuked and responded in kind.

Titor's story was riveting. Partly because he was so matter-of-fact, and so detailed.

His time travel mechanics were equally fascinating. According to Titor, his history was not necessarily ours, because simply by being present in our timeline, he caused it to branch off from what he recalled as history.

He could return to his own timeline, but only by hauling his 500 pound time machine across country to his original point of emergence (he claimed to have traveled to Florida to find his family) and then traveling back to 1975 and re-entering his own timeline from there.

Yeah, it got complicated, but -- PICTURES!

Here are a few of the images Titor shared with the internet back in 2000 and 2001.

He claimed this was scanned from the machine's operating manual. The device, he claimed, was a C204 Gravitational Distortion unit, built by General Electric.

And here is an alleged photo of the device, which Titor installed in the back seat of a 1987 4-wheel drive SUV.

Titor simply stopped posting in late March of 2001. He never reappeared.

He left behind a veritable mountain of images and posts, though, and though the original forum may be long gone, the Internet lives forever. If you're interested -- and I hope you are -- please check out Wikipedia for a just-the-facts-ma'am outline of events and this Strange Dimensions site for details.

Do I believe John Titor's story about a violent future and time-traveling sports cars?

No. Not really. But I do believe the Titor postings represent some of the most compelling story-telling ever seen on the net.What the Titor poster did was exactly what we writers try to do, every time -- suspend disbelief long enough to spin a tale of danger and heroism before closing with the words THE END.

Titor never wrote those words. He left us to believe he fired up his time machine and headed back to 2036, because while it might be a poisoned, desolate wasteland, it was also home, and that's where people go when all is said and done.

That's the kind of ending I can believe in.

THE END

If any time travelers are out there chuckling as you read this, I invite you to drop by and pay me a visit. I won't pester you for photographs or ask about the future or even beg to see a lost of Best Sellers in Fantasy for the next twenty years.

I'll just listen quietly to any stories you have to tell and brew you up a good cup of coffee. Maybe we'll listen to some music, played from vinyl, and make small talk about dogs and cars and sea monsters.

My door is always open. Stop by, and have a cuppa.

Things That Go Bump, 2013: Issue #3

IN WHICH THE GHOSTS FALL SILENT

No ghosts here, just fog. Fog I can sneak up on. Ghosts, not so much.

It's true, I'm afraid.

I'm the world's worst ghost hunter.

I've absolutely nothing even mildly suggestive to report this week. No suspicious EVPs. No blurry spots on photographs. Not a single frame of what might, from a certain distance and viewed from a certain angle and after a certain number of powerful gin & tonics, looks like a face in an ITC session snapshot.

Nothing.

I should probably be hired to cleanse haunted houses. All I'd need to do is visit with my meters and microphones, and the house would be forever more free of ghostly goings-on, because I am apparently a natural-born ghost repellent.

Nothing to see here, move along...

For anyone curious about what an actual ITC session looks like, I've provided a short (about 2 minutes) clip of a session below. Warning -- if you're prone to seizures or already have a headache, do NOT view this clip full-screen. The strobing effect is pretty nasty, especially toward the end. I've been through the thing frame by frame, and didn't see a single image worthy of singling out.

ITC Video Session sample clip

Since I got nothing this week, let me direct you toward a brief video I shot last year at the gravesite of William Faulkner. It's not an EVP, but it might qualify as an instance of ITC, since a device called an 'iOvilus' was involved. You don't even need the actual device -- you can get an app for your Android or iPhone that turns it into an Ovilus unit.

Now, I'm not a huge proponent of this device. Basically it's a speech synthesizer coupled to a few thousand common English words and the phone's EMF sensor. It's going to spit out a word every now and then, because that's what it's built to do. That shouldn't come as a surprise, because there's nothing inherently supernatural about it.

What is surprising can be the choice of random words, and the timing. I must admit this sent chills down my spine, but watch for yourself:

Faulkner Says My Name

Coincidence? Yeah, I think so.  Still neat though.

Here'a another cemetery EVP from last year. I still can't make out what the voice is saying. I've looped it, so maybe you can.

http://franktuttle.com/podcast1/cowsee.mp3

This last 2012 EVP is much clearer. It seems to be saying 'go ahead.'

http://franktuttle.com/podcast1/goahead.mp3

I recorded a couple of long half-hour sessions with my new germanium microphone, and after applying nearly 30 dB of amplification (which is an insane amp level) I got nothing but this:

heartbeat

Which was easily explained away when I realized I'd left the ALA (automatic level adjustment) switch set to on. Turning it to 'off' made the 'heartbeat' vanish. What I was hearing was simply a by-product of the mic's electronics.

Let's hope the ghosts were merely taking it easy this week in preparation for the big Halloween blowout, which is right around the corner. I'll be trying again to come up with something strange and unexplained for next week's blog, so wish me luck!

A FEW MORE SPOOKS AND SPRITES YOU MAY NOT HAVE READ ABOUT

SPRING-HEELED JACK

The latter part of the 19th century saw the emergence of the first recognized serial killer (Jack the Ripper) and a much less sinister but no less interesting supernatural character, who came to be called Spring Heeled Jack.

I'm FABULOUS!

Jack was described as a tall, menacing figure who often wore a large helmet and skin-tight white clothing, rather like a steam-punk Evel Knievel. Jack's apparently supernatural ability to leap and run earned him the Spring Heeled monicker, after witnesses reported the man easily making leaps of 20 feet high or more. Prevailing wisdom at the time attributed Jack's amazing jumping ability to springs concealed in the soles of his boots. I suppose bones were a lot more tolerant of both sheer and compressive  impact forces in 1838.

The first detailed published report of an assault by the creature appeared in the February 22nd edition of the 1838 London Times. A young woman named Jane Alsop was attacked and nearly abducted by Jack, until her struggles and cries were heard by her family. According to witnesses, Jack ‘vomited forth a quantity of blue and white flames from his mouth’ and ‘tore at her neck and arms with his claws’ before escaping over nearby fields.

Such was the ensuing panic that the Lord Mayor formed a vigilance committee aimed at capturing the fleet-footed creature.

Arrests were made, but only copy-cats were apprehended. Jack's exploits continued until an attack on Lucy Scales, during which Jack was reported to breathe blue fire at the terrified woman.

After that, Jack and his habitual fire-breathing vanished. The case was never solved, and the identity and nature of Spring Heeled Jack was never established.

I once breathed out a great quantity of blue and white flame after sampling a particularly enthusiastic plate of chicken vindaloo, but I'm ruling myself out as a suspect because my days of leaping 20-foot-high walls are over.

So what was Jack? A figment of a newspaper reporter's fevered imagination? The product of mass hysteria? A drunken nobleman obliging the terms of an ill-advised bet?

We'll never know. But I do want that cape from the newspaper drawing above. Spring-heeled Jack, away!

THE DEVIL'S FOOTPRINTS

On the heels, so to speak, of Spring Heeled Jack was the so-called Devil's Footprints incident of February 9, 1855 in and about Devon, England.

Diagram from the Times which accompanied the story of the Devonshire Devil

In the space of a single night, witnesses reported the appearance of 100 miles of strange footprints. Resembling those of a shoed horse, but clearly left by a bipedal walker, the prints ran in a straight line over the snow. Whatever left them didn't bother walking around houses or barns or sheds -- it simply walked right up the walls, across the roofs, down the walls again before continuing on its merry and quite possibly infernal way.

Such perambulations naturally perplexed and perhaps even bedeviled the residents of Devon, who attributed the source of the trail to everything from escaped kangaroos (I take it few of them had ever actually seen a kangaroo) to Spring Heeled Jack himself.

The story was carried by the Times and the Illustrated London News. There was considerable speculation concerning the nature of the tracks, but not a definitive explanation.

I'm going with robotic kangaroos.

That's it for this week! See you next Sunday. Until then, don't go in the basement....

Things That Go Bump 2013, Issue #2

Welcome back, gentle readers, for another edition of Things That Go Bump.

For tonight's entry, I visited three local cemeteries in an attempt to record another EVP voice.

I used my Zoom H1 recorder, along with a couple of new toys -- a magnetic pickup mic and my germanium microphone, all shown below.

EVP SESSION: OXFORD CEMETERY

I began my tour of cemeteries with a visit to Oxford's largest, which is also the final resting place of William Faulkner. I parked my truck at the caretaker's shop and made my way to the nearest shade.

Graveyards don't look particularly sinister in daylight, do they? I realize I'd get much more dramatic photos if I did this at night. Of course, I'd also probably get to have fascinating conversations with the local police.

And out in the county, I might also meet up with tweakers and vandals. I'd rather avoid the company of both.

Three old above-ground vaults. I noticed the top was shattered on one.

Yep. Broken, and the contents exposed...

What, you were expecting skulls and femurs? Sorry to disappoint.

Here's the complete EVP session, if anyone cares to listen to 15 minutes of my babbling.

I caught two odd sounds. The first is a single short bell-like noise, which I didn't hear during the recording. It occurs about a minute and a half in, and it sounds like this:

BELL EVP

Right after I say '...have anything to say,' you'll hear it. I then looped it to repeat 6 times, and amplified the heck out of the 7th iteration.

Interesting, at least to me.

My second possible EVP occurred during the failure of my Ramsey Tri-Field meter batteries. They were fresh, but after about nine minutes of use they failed.

I was about to hook up my new magnetic mic when I looked down and saw the Ramsey was lit to full deflection, indicating a powerful magnetic field. But the K2 wasn't lit. I then realized the Ramsey was simply going nuts because its batteries were dead (that's how it acts when they go poof).

Listen to the clip. You'll hear a voice say OH really loud, before I say the same thing.

OH EVP

This would be a great clip if it wasn't already debunked. Karen listened to it and said 'that's you, no doubt about it.' And she should know, so I guess I said 'oh' twice without realizing it.

That's why you should never go ghost-hunting alone, kids. If I'd had a partner, or at least a video camera, I'd have realized that was me without getting all excited, thinking I'd caught a Class A. Bummer.

The magnetic mic caught nothing but silence during its two-minute test.

You can hear all that below, in the full Oxford EVP session:

OXFORD EVP

EVP SESSION: TULA CEMETERY

My next stop was a small graveyard just outside Tula, Mississippi. I've visited here before and caught a couple of interesting sounds.

Tula is very quiet. The wind had died down a bit, which my mic appreciated.

I tried the magnetic and the germanium mics, but caught mainly silence. The germanium mic did record some bursts of static and clicks, but I couldn't make anything out of the noise.

That's it, on the grave above.

Here's the complete Tula session, including the mag and germanium portions. I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary.

TULA EVP

EVP SESSION: MIDWAY CEMETERY

My final stop was the tiny, remote graveyard called Midway.

I have a number of family members buried there. Here is one W.D. Gardner, for example, a great-grandsomething who was quite dapper, for his day:

I wandered among the headstones, talking and hoping for a faint reply.

If I got any answers to my questions, I couldn't hear them. The complete session is below. Maybe you can hear something I can't!

MIDWAY EVP

And that wraps things up for my Saturday ghost hunt. One possible ringing bell, one case of mistaken identity.

Oh, and editing video ITC sessions?

At this point, the ghosts of Edison and Tesla would have to promise to show up to get me to wade through another eighty gazillion frames of random splotches of color.

I'll do more EVP work for next week's entry.

OTHER GHOST STORIES FOR YOU TO ENJOY

I'd like to present you with a few photos and stories of paranormal incidents you may not have heard of before. These are obscure, but I think they're fascinating!

AN UNFINISHED RACE

Maybe you've heard the story of James Worson, who many paranormal sites and researchers will claim vanished into thin air during a drunken footrace in September of 1873.

If you haven't heard the story, I'll retell it briefly here. James Worson and two pals, Hammerson Burns and Barnham Wise, entered into an ale-fueled bet one night, after Worson boasted he could run all the way from Leamington to Coventry without stopping.

With Burns and Wise following along in a horse-drawn carriage, Worson set out, laughing and joking. According to the legend, he was about 3 miles into his twnety mile run when he stumbled, screamed, and fell.

Fell, but never struck the ground. He vanished, quite literally, into thin air.

So what happened? Did an inter-dimensional portal open long enough to gobble up the hapless Worson? Was he spirited away by, um, spirits?

I'm going to vote for 'none of the above,' because what many so-called paranormal sites and researchers fail to mention is that these events were first recounted in a short story by Ambrose Bierce.

I totally rock this 'stache.

The story is entitled, perhaps not surprisingly, 'An Unfinished Race.' It was published in 1873. There are people who still assert Bierce was merely reporting actual events. I refer these people to the latest issue of Weekly World News, which features Bat-Boy on holiday with Nessie in Atlantis.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that author Ambrose Bierce himself vanished without a trace in 1913, though Mexican bandits are a far more likely culprit than wandering interdimensional portals.


GEF, THE TALKING MONGOOSE

I've read a lot of strange stories over the years. Most of them share many of the same characters and events -- shadows in the night, ghostly voices, tragedy, misty shapes at the windows.

The story of Gef, who may or may not have been a talking mongoose who appeared on the tiny Isle of Man in the 1930s, features none of these things. Instead, you have a smallish furry animal which at first bedevils and then befriends the inhabitants of a lonely farmhouse.

Only one person claimed to have ever gotten a good look at Gef. Several heard him describe himself thusly:

“I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you’d faint, you’d be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!”

Legendary ghost hunter Harry Price himself was involved in the investigation. Some aspects of Gef's activities are classic poltergeist antics, while others are strange. Very, very strange.

Look, go read the story for yourself. Do I believe it's true?

Probably not. but it's so far removed from the usual gamut of ghosts and goblins I thought it worthy of inclusion this October.


THE SOLWAY FIRTH SPACEMAN

Taken in 1964, the famous 'spaceman' photo:

The photo was taken by Jim Templeton. The subject is his daughter, Elizabeth. Mr. Templeton took 3 photos of Elizabeth while on an outing at Burgh Marsh and saw nothing amiss until his film was developed (1964, remember?).

The middle photo contained the image of the 'spaceman.'

Kodak examined the negatives, and claimed they hadn't been tampered with.

Mr. Templeton claimed he was visited by Men in Black about the photo.

Skeptics claim the 'spaceman' is nothing but Templeton's wife, seen from behind.

I don't see that, but who knows?

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Did I mention I am in a movie?

Well. I am.

Click here for details. The movie goes live Halloween, with a sneak preview at the Powerhouse here in Oxford on October 30!

Well, that's it for tonight. I admit I'm tired and more than a little frustrated -- I cannot wheedle, beg, coerce, or threaten Corel Video Studio Six to cough up an MP4 movie of last week's ITC sessions in any kind of usable format. Oh, I can see the video well enough while I'm editing -- but when I convert it to a playable video file from the Corel native editing format, I get nothing but a green screen with audio. I spent a good five hours trying to figure out why, and I simply have no idea.

Maybe I'll the clips ready for next week. Wish me luck!

Things That Go Bump, 2013: Issue #1

Welcome to another edition of Things That Go Bump!

Every year in October I celebrate all things spooky and macabre with a series of supernaturally-themed blog entries, in which I poke Things Man Was Not Meant to Know with sticks and generally make light of the dark.

Tonight, I'll post a few interesting images from a video ITC session I conducted last night. I'll also ruminate on the nature of the universe, and slip in a few quick adds for my books, because it's one thing to ponder the underlying quantum construction of reality and it's quite another to pay bills.

Let's start by sashaying right where angels fear to tread, and see if we can catch a glimpse of the Great Beyond using common household items and a bit of computer magic!

SATURDAY NIGHT ITC SESSION

ITC. The letters stand for 'Instrumental Trans Communication,' which generally involves putting a video camera in front of a TV and recording the images formed when the camera's output is connected to the TV's input, resulting in a video feedback loop.

The Scole Group claims they captured the image above using the standard camera-and-TV method. The man's face is clearly visible, and my first thought upon seeing the image was how much it resembled a cut-out of a photo affixed to the TV screen for a frame or two. Because I'm a suspicious lad by nature, you know.

But the people involved with the Scole Group were reputable, respectable people who seem to be above the clandestine use of scissors and rubber cement. So, thought I, why not try and recreate some of their results?

My ITC setup.

I did this before, back in July, and got a few odd examples of video noise. Nothing like the face above.

A frame-by-frame analysis (which is still incomplete) of last night's video left me with a few images I'll share below.

First of all, my very own face amid the static!

Look center, then left, then down a bit. See the patch of green amid the white and the blue?

Let me blow that up for you.

Weird, huh? I see a rather stern man's face, neck, and shoulders. As well as his eyes, nose, and unsmiling mouth.

I shall call him Mr. Pareidolia, after the tendency of our brains to find faces in random patterns.

But it does look like a man. Not as much like the Scole Group's image, sure, but it's closer than anything I expected to catch.

Next up is a figure we'll call the Dark Angel, because that sounds spooky, and it kept popping up in the video:

Look at the image just above. If you've seen the movie The Ring, then you'll understand why I half-expected the figure to climb out of the TV. Too, can you pick out a vague face shape to the right of the dark figure?

There were lots of other images too. The one below went to blues and greens, like a watercolor done by a particularly inept painter:

So far I haven't found any other faces. But the process of going frame-by-frame is excruciatingly slow, and I do have books to write.

Books such as:

Brown River Queen

I did warn you I'd be hawking books.

I got nothing on the audio as far as anomalous voices go. I was planning to visit a couple of cemeteries today to try out my new germanium microphone in the wild, but the weather had other ideas. 

STORY FODDER: COSMOLOGY GLITCHES

A school of thought concerning the nature of the universe claims that we may all be simply bits of a gargantuan simulation, created by beings for purposes unknown and by means so far advanced beyond us we lack the capacity to understand them.

This isn't kook fringe science. There are even efforts underway to search for evidence that our universe is in fact a vast Sim.  

Which started me thinking. These physicists are looking for the cosmological equivalent of 'glitches' in the Matrix. 

I've seen much the same phenomena, on a much smaller scale, when it occurs as what PC gamers call glitches.

Most of the time, glitches are the hilarious but unforeseen effect of some obscure part of the game's code. It's not a program failure, as such -- no, it's doing precisely what it was designed to do, but with results the game's creators never anticipated.

Funny Glitches Video

Stay with me for a moment. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that our universe and more importantly me are merely the product of a cosmos-wide simulation.

Then let's assume that nothing, no matter how advanced, is this large without a few teensy-weensy flaws here and there.

Glitches, if you will.

My assertion is that Fortean phenomena are our universe's version of video game glitches.

Let that sink in. 

Never heard of Fortean phenomena? There have been, for example, numerous well-documented instances of frogs raining down from clear blue skies. Of spark plugs found encased in million-year-old quartz. Of objects appearing in places and times they should not, could not be found.

Most Fortean phenomena are simply ignored, because science has given us a clear, consistent model for how the world works and no one wants to jettison all that and start over because it rained live frogs in Paraguay.  It's easier to simply assert such things never happen, because doing otherwise gives you that queasy, unsettling sensation that maybe we don't have things figured out quite so neatly after all.

So maybe it does rain frogs, at times. Maybe people do simply vanish into thin air, at times. Maybe voices do ring out from empty air, now and then. 

Maybe those glitches in the universe.

You heard it here first.

LOCAL GHOSTS, SERVED FRESH DAILY

As the IRS and many of you know, I live just outside Oxford, Mississippi, home of the University of Mississippi, a number of fine eating establishments, and of course a history of hauntings.

In honor of October, and as a lazy way to snag some ghost stories for this very blog, I have created a Facebook page called HAUNTED OXFORD. I hope people will use the page to share their own spooky tales of the supernatural, and maybe give me some spots to visit.  

So, locals, please head on over to Haunted Oxford and share with us your ghost stories!

Okay, that's it for tonight. Take care, all, and remember -- those scratches and knocks in the night might be just branches in the wind. Or they might be....

....something else....