The Strangest Rock Concert Story I've Ever Read

I read this today in the "Midwest Journey" column of this week's Petersburg Observer. The Observer is a weekly published in Petersburg, Illinois, and it contains some of the greatest news in the world.

Well, this week, I was really in for a treat, when I opened it to read the oddest, yet totally sincere, review of a rock concert imaginable. The author is 47 year old Larry Crossett, who lives and writes in Mason City. Despite how this review sounds, he is not a being from another planet.

Life doesn't get old. People do, but life doesn't. It always has something new to offer. In the last few years I've changed careers; I've learned to ice skate; I've taken up golf and then dropped it again . . . . And just this week, Amy and I went to our first ever rock concert.

The group we went to see is called Point of Grace. This band is very popular on the radio station my wife listens to, so they must be the real deal. They were performing at the University of Illinois at Springfield in order to raise funds for Contact Ministries, a charitable organization. A friend with connections got us a pair of tickets.

I was a little worried, going in. I'd heard that the volume at rock concerts sometimes exceeds the recommended 85 decibels for safety. Also, that some of the lyrics are impolite, and people don't always turn off their cell phones during the performance. I'm bothered by discourteousness.

I needn't have worried, though. The evening's program opened with a word of prayer; the musicians talked about their families between gentle songs played at a reasonable volume; and everyone sat and listened respectfully. Ushers were on hand in case anyone tried to bring an unauthorized drink into the auditorium.

See you shouldn't be afraid to try something new. You might like it.

This wasn't a rock concert, my friends, it was a nap. Or a long wait in the lobby at your doctor's office. Any concert that begins with a prayer is not a rock concert. I'm sorry. It just isn't.

A Tale of My Experiences with the Astrophysical Anomaly Referred to as an Aleph; or The Horrors of Unspeakable Evil (part five)

Here is the fifth and final chapter of my Halloween story. Finally the payoff. Hope everyone enjoys it.

For part one, click here.
For part two, click here.
For part three, click here.
For part four, click here.

It had been years in the works, really. I know how crazy this is going to sound, but I have to tell it anyway. I know there are naysayers and skeptics out there who will try to shoot holes in my story, but you have to believe that I’m telling you the truth. You can’t make this kind of story up.

So I’d been cruising the deepest shadows of the internet for some time, trying to find black market buyers for the things I was dredging up. I was quickly amassing a fortune, but I didn’t do it for the money. I did it for the joy. For the adventure. For the excitement.

One night I secured a German SS pistol for a man in France. Jean-Louis Truffaut was his name. He was a pretty well-known chef in France, and it seemed he was a huge history buff. He was still quite angry about what the Germans had done to Paris during the war, and it seemed that this anger drove his historic interests.

I kept up a relationship with Truffaut for a couple of years, and we communicated regularly. I helped him get his hands on some more rare collectibles, just what he could afford, and I also helped a few of his friends.

Then, one night he sent me an IM with an international phone number. “Call this number,” he told me, “I have an important deal for you.”

So, I called the number. It seems that Mr. Truffaut and a group of his culinary friends had gotten together. They had pooled their funds, and they had even secured extra funds from some well-to-do international businessmen.

It seemed the chefs threw a party each year. It was a theme party revolving around World War II. Everyone invited would bring their most expensive war collectibles, and everyone would sit and dine on the fine foods prepared by the chefs and they would talk about the war and their conquests to own the finest war treasures in existence.

This particular year, they had planned the biggest party ever. “We need you to secure a certain something for us,” he informed me, and then told me the total sum they had amassed for the item’s purchase.

“What would you like, Mr. Truffaut? I am happy to accommodate you.”

What Mr. Truffaut told me next, I will never forget. It was unique to me in so many ways. Even for someone as me, who had seen more of the universe than anyone else alive, I was shocked at Mr. Truffaut’s notion. For it was not an item that Mr. Truffaut wanted at all. Rather, an ingredient for the feast. The key ingredient, in fact, and perhaps the most rare and unique ingredient known to the history of the human race.

My silence must have alarmed him, for Mr. Truffaut spoke again, “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine, yes,” I told him.

“Is this a problem for you?” he pressed.

I sat for a moment turning the thing over in my mind. “No, I told him. This will not be a problem.”

So, I set off that very evening, knowing that I needed to act as quickly as I could or I would lose my nerve. The task they put me at was such a juxtaposition of horrors that I could barely stomach the thought of it at all.

I arrived in Paris the next morning, and Mr. Truffaut had sent a car to Charles De Gaulle to pick me up. I was delivered to his estate, a palatial French mansion located thirty or so miles to the west of Paris.

“I’ve put you up in here,” Mr. Truffaut said of my room. “I know you need the maximum in comfort and security when you work, so do not fear. You will be safe here.”

I took a look around. Everything was of the finest quality. The bed linens were as soft as anything I’d ever felt before. The room was immaculate and bright and beautiful.

“Dinner will be served at 8:00 this evening,” he informed me. “We need the main ingredient to be delivered to us no later than 2:00 this afternoon. We are braising it, you see. We have a ceremony planned.”

I looked at the clock. It was right now 10:00 AM, and I was exhausted. “I need to set out straight away if I’m going to get this done in time,” I told him. He left me alone, and I went straight to work.

A few hours later, I returned to this world, with the requested bundle. It was swathed in a blanket, and it squirmed ever so slightly on the bed next to me. I carried it downstairs and to the kitchen, where I found Mr. Truffaut and his staff waiting anxiously.

“You have it?” he asked, eyebrows raised in anticipation.

“I have it,” I informed him. As the words slipped from my lips, I knew I had done the wrong thing. As vile and evil as the world had gotten, I knew I had crossed a line that could not be uncrossed.

“To the dining room,” he said, boldly. He took me by the arm and led me to the dining room.

As we approached, I could hear the murmur of voices. I stopped. “I’d rather not go in there,” I told him.

“But you . . .” he said. “You are our hero. Without you we would never be able to enact our ultimate revenge on the villainous SS.”

I handed the bundle to him. “I just can’t. I’d like to retire to my room. I will leave later tonight to fly back to the states.”

“Would you not like to sample our delectibles,” he said, an evil smile on his lips. “We will perform the slaughter momentarily, and then the dish will braise for six hours.”

“No thanks,” I said, the thought of dinner with these people making my knees weak.

“It will be quite tender and succulent,” he told me. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll pass,” I told him.

He took the bundle fully from my arms, and peeled back the blanket to see the squirming little creature inside. “Excellent,” he said, and his eyes grew wide.

He paced through the dining room doors and held the bundle aloft as I walked away. Just before the dining room doors closed, I heard a collective gasp from the crowd, and I heard the innocent little creature let out one lone cry.

“What the fuck was it?” Johnny said. “What were they planning to eat?” he asked me.

“You think you know the evil that exists in the world,” I told him. “Every person thinks they have a pretty good bead on what is sick and twisted in this world, but no one really knows anything. Not even me.”

“What the hell was it?” he pressed me.

“It was a baby,” I told him.

We both sat there in utter silence for a long moment. I could tell Johnny was running the words through his mind, trying to grip them fully.

“They cooked and ate a human baby,” Johnny said flatly, looking angry and bewildered. “What were--" and then a look of enlightenment crossed his face.

“Adolf Hitler,” I told him. “Born April 20, 1889. Abducted from his crib on May 8, 1889.”

A Tale of My Experiences with the Astrophysical Anomaly Referred to as an Aleph; or The Horrors of Unspeakable Evil (part four)

Here is part four of my Halloween-inspired short story. I think there's only one section left, so look for the final chapter tomorrow. For those of you who are actually even reading.

For part one, click here.
For part two, click here.
For part three, click here.

So, I’m visiting Johnny in the hospital while he’s recovering, and we get to talking, and I tell him about my aleph. “Bullshit, man,” he says. “You ain’t got no aleph.”

“Not only do I have one,” I informed him, “but I can go into it. I can transport. I can transcend time and space.”

“You’re a liar, man,” he said. “You’re a goddamn liar.”

“Past, future, you name it, brother,” I told him, “And I can go there. And I’m figuring out how I can mess with stuff, too, man.”

“What do you mean, ‘mess with stuff’?” he asked me.

“Well,” I told him, “if I concentrate really hard, I can generate a physical self wherever I go.”

“You a bullshitter, man,” he said and picked up his copy of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and started thumbing the pages.

I’d been working for awhile on bringing stuff over with me from the other side. Collector’s items, you know. Rare gold coins. Ark of the covenant. You know, real crazy shit, and sell it on the black market. I told him this.

“Like what kind of things?” he asked me.

“Like, you tell me, man,” I said. “Whatever you want. You tell me, and I’ll go get it.”

“Okay, wise guy,” Johnny said, looking me in the eye. “I was just reading about the lost tomb of Alexander. According to lore, he was buried with a manuscript of his exploits. You bring me that manuscript, and you’ve made me a believer.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

A few days later, I showed up with the papyrus scrolls upon which Alexander’s military scribe had written all of the great ruler’s exploits. They provided a first hand account of his entire ruling life. For all intents and purposes, these were the only known copies of these accounts, and I held them in my hands. These scrolls were so rare, they were literally priceless. I handed the scrolls to Johnny.

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

“It’s Alexander’s manuscript,” I said. “You asked for it.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “This looks like it was just written.”

“It was,” I told him. “I took it from his tomb right after it was sealed. It’s as fresh as the doctor’s notes on that clipboard,” I said, pointing to the clipboard hanging on the wall next to the bed.

Johnny sat there for a long time turning the scrolls over in his hands. He unfurled one, looked it over. “I can’t read this shit,” he said, finally.

“Do you believe me?” I asked him.

“Either I believe you or I know you’re crazier than an shithouse rat,” he said. “But doesn’t this just fuck everything up? You taking things from the past.”

“Not really,” I informed him. “It just creates another alternate reality. Every time a decision is made in this world from the most important human on the planet to the smallest barnacle in the sea, an alternate reality is created.”

He didn’t say a word.

“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve seen it. The universe is just like a giant reality engine. It is capable of creating and storing an infinite number of realities all overlapping one another. It’s really quite amazing. The engineering behind it is truly fascinating.”

“So what stops you from hopping over to these other . . . realities?”

“Nothing,” I told him. “I do it all the time.”

“Why are you telling me all this stuff?” he asked. “What’s this all about?”

“I recently did something that I wish I hadn’t done,” I told him.

He asked me what it was and I told him.

A Tale of My Experiences with the Astrophysical Anomaly Referred to as an Aleph; or The Horrors of Unspeakable Evil (part three)

Here is part three of my Halloween-inspired short story.

For part one, click here.
For part two, click here.

I first knew something was different about me when I was in the seventh grade. I was at this girl’s house, and it was homecoming day in my hometown. There were a bunch of us kids there: my friend Ben and Mike, these girls Angela and Jill and Ashley. We’d all come from the parade that morning, and we were just killing time before the football game that afternoon. I was desperately into Ashley and all I could think about was getting her attention. I didn’t know what to do, but being in the seventh grade, I still didn’t have a lot of experience with romance. I told everyone I’d do a backflip off of the front porch and land on my feet.

I’d never done a flip like that before, but everyone knew I had been taking karate classes, and I assured them that it was a piece of cake. I got up on the brick railing, and I balanced myself. I stood, squatted, and with my momentum springing up and back, I went for it. There was not a fear in my mind that I wouldn’t make it. I had absolutely no fear.

I went back, my feet came up over the top, and stopped parallel to the ground. I bellyflopped completely on the hardpack ground.

Once, earlier that year at one of my first ever football practices, Coach Sanderson had gathered us around and said, “Boys,” he said, “you play this game long enough and you’re eventually going to get hit hard. I’m talking hard. You are going to feel transcendent pain, and you’re going to wonder what in the hell is happening. But this is normal. It’s just part of the game.”

“Coach,” I’d spoken up. “What’s transcendent mean?”

“It means you’re going to find out things about yourself you never knew. You’re going to change a little bit. You’re going to go into that hit a boy, and you’re going to come out a man.”

I didn’t really know what Coach was talking about, but I nodded my head just the same. I guessed I’d figure it out at some point.

When I bellyflopped on Ashley Moore’s front yard, I finally understood transcendent pain. It was like for a moment nothing in the world existed. Nothing at all. Then, suddenly everything existed, and it was all fire and chaos. Time stood still, and I could catch glimpses of things I’d never seen before. Flowers from the coast of Madagascar. Strange-looking electric fish that swam around in the deepest darkness of the ocean. Two men having sex in a changing room in a boutique in Munich. The inside of an alfalfa sprout. Particles of pollen as large as planets circling around me as I sailed through the air over swaying grasses. Just so many things. It was like I was surfing through all of these things from every angle all at the same time. And then it was gone.

And I was gasping for air. Ben and Mike were trying to roll me over, and Ashley and the girls were hovering overhead asking me questions I couldn’t answer. They finally got me up, and I sat on the steps and collected myself, thinking about how all of my guts felt like they were loose. My bones ached, but I knew I was going to be okay. Everybody else sat on the porch, telling stories and shooting gossip, but I just sat there on the steps feeling my pain and thinking about what I’d just seen. I knew I couldn’t talk about it. No one would understand.

That was my first experience with the aleph. That was the first time I realized that I had something inside of me that allowed me to see everything that had ever existed just like changing the channels in my head.

Now, my aleph was different than the one Borges saw. His was a passive aleph; mine was an active. He could only use his to see the universe. But me, I could use mine not only to see, but to travel. To experience. To live. That’s right, good reader, using the aleph in my mind, I could travel to any place at any time in the entire universe, and I could experience it safely with no fear.

I started to adventure with my aleph more and more over the years. Working with Johnny by day, and exploring the universe by night.

One afternoon as Johnny and I were buzzing around back alleys trolling for loot, Johnny wasn’t paying attention, and we got T-boned by a pick-up truck at a rare intersection over between Roderick and Grant Streets. The kids in the pickup truck were high, and they thought it would be fun to play cops and robbers in the back alleyways. The two boys in the pick up were killed almost instantly.

Johnny Tremain, tough SOB that he is, was nearly killed. He broke damn near every bone on the left side of his body, punctured his lung, ruptured his spleen, and suffered some pretty heavy duty memory loss. He was in a coma for several months, but he eventually came out of it and lived.

I escaped relatively unscathed. One of my legs got banged up pretty bad, and I still don’t really walk right today, but anyway, this isn’t really about that.

A Tale of My Experiences with the Astrophysical Anomaly Referred to as an Aleph; or The Horrors of Unspeakable Evil (part two)

Here's part two of my story.

For part one, click here.

Johnny Tremain was a dumpster diver, an alley goblin, a curbside vulture. These are all his names for it. He cruised town every day, looking for junk that people had left behind and turned it around to sell it for profit. Everything he gathered was free, and everything he made from the sales was profit. He needed my help because he picked up a lot of heavy shit, and he just couldn’t do it himself. I’m talking old boiler furnaces, refrigerators, freezers, reclining chairs . . . you get the point.

Every morning before dawn, we’d hop in Johnny’s rusted-out, maroon Ford F-150, and we’d start criss-crossing the alleys and side streets of Sangamo Town looking for our treasures. As soon as the truck was filled, we’d head back to Johnny’s garage, which doubled as his home, and dump.

Johnny drove fast down those alleyways. It was crazy dangerous. He’d be thrumming along at 50 mph down an alley no wider than the truck we were in, tree limbs and weeds slapping at the open windows, filling the cab with leaves. He had those alleys memorized. We’d be speeding up and down the alleyways, classical music blaring, and I just kept thinking that riding with Johnny felt a lot like playing Russian Roulette. Every so often, Johnny’d say, “Fold the goddamn mirror in! It’s gonna get tight up here,” and he’d mash the accelerator as I was yanking the mirror in, and we’d go shooting through a spot in the alley just a hair wider than the truck. I never knew when the end would come.

Another thing about Johnny. He loved to fight. He made money fighting, but I don’t think he did it for the money. Every couple of weeks, he’d manage to stir up some back alley brawler and a group of investors, and he’d fight for money. He never told me he had a fight coming up. We’d just be cruising along one day, and he’d stop in an alley somewhere. “Time for a break,” he’d say, taking the gold chain off of his neck and hanging it over the rearview.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a group of men would gather around. Johnny would get out and tangle with their wrangler. Although it would probably make for a better story if I told you that Johnny was a badass who won every fight, that just wasn’t the case. Oh sure, Johnny could handle himself, but he didn’t win every fight. Some of these guys he fought were seriously hard. And big. Johnny was a big guy, at about 6’2” and a little over 200 pounds. He was lanky, wiry, muscular. Some of the guys he fought were built like dumptrucks. Johnny won some, and he lost some. But he never complained. He won more than he lost, he said, and the money was always good when he won.

Win or lose, we’d get back in the truck and do our best to finish the work day. Once, I had to practically scrape Johnny up off the pavement. This was only the second fight I’d seen, I think. He was just laying there on the ground, bleeding out of his eye and nose, and wheezing. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I gotta get you to a hospital or something.”

“Fuck that,” Johnny said. “Help me into the truck. We got work to do.”

He was just that tough. But he was also what I think most people would consider soft. He was as environmental as they come. He was green before it was cool to be green. “Every piece of garbage we pick up is a piece of garbage that doesn’t go into a goddamn landfill,” he’d say. “If only I could sell used paper towels and toilet paper, we’d make a fucking mint.”

He loved to learn things. He read encyclopedias and hardcore political journals like repressed Midwestern women tear through romance novels. But he could throw a punch. Man he could throw a punch.

I guess one of the things I have a problem with, and one of the reasons I’ll never be a good writer is that I can’t keep on the subject at hand. The subject at hand in this story being the aleph I mentioned at the beginning. Please understand I’m getting there. It just takes some time.

A Tale of My Experiences with the Astrophysical Anomaly Referred to as an Aleph; or The Horrors of Unspeakable Evil (part one)

Here is part one of my Halloween story. As you will see, it is quite different from Micah's tale, but I hope it is equally as enjoyable to you. This story is quite a bit longer (and not nearly as concise). It will likely be spread out over 5 or 6 parts, so beware for those of you who hate serials (Gish, I'm looking in your direction.)

Oh and enjoy. If any of you other Springfield bloggers would be interested, write your own Halloween tales. Might be a fun way for us to make this Halloween in the blogosphere unique.

A Tale of My Experiences with the Astrophysical Anomaly Referred to as an Aleph; or The Horrors of Unspeakable Evil

Jorge Louis Borges was not fucking around when he wrote about seeing an aleph. He got it right. He saw. He saw. I have no doubt about that. There’s just no way he could have made up that story and gotten it so right.

I have an aleph. I’ve looked into it hundreds, thousands of times. And you might not believe me, but it is not just a random point in space like Borges'. No, my aleph exists inside of me. There are other alephs out there, but mine’s the only one I know of that lives inside of a person.

You probably wouldn’t like me very much if you got to know me. I’ve always had this problem that I have no level of intolerance of scumbags or assholes or people of a generally foul demeanor. It’s not even so much that I put up with them, but that I attract them. And then I put up with them. These people have a tendency to rub off on me, and I find myself time and time again looking around and wondering what the hell I’m doing here.

It’s always hard to start a story like this. It’s always been hard for me to start stories in general. In books you read, it seems like everything starts cleanly. Chapters start and end cleanly. The story ends cleanly. In real life, though, nothing is clean. Nothing starts cleanly, and nothing sure as hell ever ends that way.

So, I’ll start here. His name was Johnny Tremain.

I’m not kidding, and I’m not making this name up to protect the identity of an innocent man. His name was Johnny Tremain, and he was anything but innocent.

Johnny Tremain was, I am convinced, a truly mad person. By mad, I mean insane. Totally and utterly insane. He was a madman and should never have been trusted on the streets. He was insane in just about everything he did. His entire life was a tangle of juxtapositions and contrasts.

When I first met him, he had shoulder-length hair, and a big, bushy beard and he reeked of garlic. This was because he ate a bag of raw garlic cloves every day. He carried them with him as he worked, and he ate the cloves raw, like they were little white apples, picking and sucking pieces of skin out of his teeth. Johnny thought the raw garlic was good for his immune system; said he’d had a college professor once who had lived vigorously to ripe old age and that it was all because of raw garlic.

Johnny also smelled because he rarely bathed, but the garlic helped to cover the dirty odor. He looked like he smelled, and everywhere we went together, people stared and grimaced at his scent. They could see him coming, and they knew it wasn’t going to be good. I remember reading once that American colonists could smell slave ships coming in from the sea well before they could see them. This was the basic gist of Johnny’s smell. You could always smell him before you could see him.

Johnny looked and smelled like a bum, but he was one of the most well-read men I’ve ever met. He could quote equally well from the works of Jane Austen and Charles Bukowski, although I think he always favored Bukowski. Johnny loved to read books, but he hated reading current events. He refused to read newspapers, and he refused to watch the news. He only listened to the radio during the afternoon when NPR’s Performance Today was on. He loved classical music.

Johnny went through phases. One day I showed up for work, and he had completely shaved his head, and trimmed his beard into a long Asian-style Fu-Manchu. He looked like something out of an old Bruce Lee movie. The American trucker turned karate ass-kicker.

For awhile, he refused to grow eyebrows. He shaved them every day before work and sometimes he would nick himself and they’d be scabby and red.

He collected tattoos like little boys collect baseball cards. His back and arms were covered in skulls and slogans about hard living and fast, easy women. Obsessed with push-ups, Johnny would stop numerous times throughout the work day and just crack out a couple hundred pushups. At first, I’d just sit there waiting for him to finish. Eventually, I started carrying an apple with me, and when Johnny dropped and started pumping out reps, I’d sit, gnawing on an apple and enjoying a short break.

I worked for Johnny for almost two years. It was the worst time of my life. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I never really knew how. I read the covers off of Billy Burroughs’ autobiographical novels when I was younger, and I got it in my head that I could pump myself full of booze and meth, and I could go out into the world and all these things would happen, and I’d be able to write them out and become a rock star.

In fact, I pumped myself full of booze and meth, and I didn’t give a shit about the writing any more. All I cared about was getting high, staying high. Whatever it took to stay high, I'd do it. And I did some awful, terrible things. Just horrifying things for drugs.

Ultimately, though, I wound up sick, stabbed, lovestarved, broke, and eventually jailed. After a stint in prison, I didn’t have a lot left open to me in this wide world. I looked and looked for jobs, starting with semi-professional work. Then I looked at retail. Then I tried to find a sales job. No one wanted to hire me . . . so, when I got the chance to work with Johnny, I took it.

Louise Woods (Part Two)

Here is the conclusion to Micah's Halloween story about the Whitley family. For part one, see here. Enjoy.

The cool air began as a breeze following a brief thunderstorm in the fall of 2003. The sun had gone down nearly two hours before and the fire had found new life with the addition of dry logs from underneath a tarp by the cabin. At least 20 children and several adults sat around to listen to Jimmy tell one of the tales of terror that his grandfather used to tell. A drip, drip, drip fell on his head from the sky above. “The rain began to fall,” he’d begin. “It was a night just like tonight.”

Jimmy had inherited the gift that his grandfather had used for so many years. He had studied Grandpa Whitley year after year and had perfected his delivery through the use timing and sound effects. His grandfather, still alive, stopped telling stories a few years back when he decided that it was time to pass the tradition on. He was nearing 90 but in great condition both physically and mentally. He still had a great sense of wit and his spirits were always high. He never missed a trip to Louise Woods. It made him feel closer to Louise, and it was time with the family that he cherished.

Grandpa Whitley spent most of his time to the many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Sometime he would venture to the lake for some alone time. Most believed that he sat there on his old rocking chair that sat on the dock and reflected on the great family tradition. In the last few years, there was always one grandchild assigned to watch him from falling into the lake.

As Jimmy told his story of an escaped patient from a psychiatric hospital that had run a terror in the woods of northern Wisconsin, the children began to huddle together. One descriptive murder after another, the fear in their eyes grew. The fire was beginning to die out and that usually signaled the end of the story telling. Jimmy, like his grandfather before him, always brought the story closer and closer to the camp ground until the end when it would conclude with the killer was just beyond the woods. Jimmy, like his grandfather before him, preferred the use of leaving bodies behind in the trees to be found by unsuspecting campers. It was a narrative technique that always left the children looking up as they walked back to their tents and cabins after the telling of the story. Occasionally, the now grandparents of the children listening to the stories would leave dummies in the trees. It became a game that would end in getting the dummies down and finding loads of candy.

Jimmy finished. There was complete silence aside from the occasional crackle from the diminishing fire. A scream rang out from a little girl sitting next to Jimmy. Jimmy spotted a red drop on the girls arm. He felt another drip on his shoulder. As he touched his shoulder, he wiped away what he thought was a bird dropping. A smear of crimson red on his fingers. He jumped. The kids screamed.

“This isn’t funny!” exclained Jimmy. The kids were still screaming in terror. One of the children was completely still, looking straight up into the trees. His face was as white as paper. While the other parents were trying to calm the children down, Jimmy spotted the small child staring up into the trees. He looked up. Nothing. He couldn’t see anything except the swaying of the tree. “What do you see?!” he asked the child.

The child had no answer, but it was clear he was watching something horrific. Jimmy grabbed a flashlight. It wouldn’t flip on. He jabbed it a few times. It flipped on. He aimed it upwards quickly and turned it off. Jimmy grabbed the still child and handed him off to his wife. “Get the kids out of here, now!” The other parents grabbed the children and ran for the cabins. Jimmy was the only one left. He closed his eyes for a moment.

The other parents grabbed the children and ran for the cabins.

As he opened them again, another drop of blood landed on his face. He turned the flashlight on again and looked up. He began to shiver as he looked up. He stared for what seemed an eternity, the struggle for emotion churning inside. Then a voice came from the tree line.

“Your stories were getting boring, Jimmy” said the familiar voice. “I haven’t been this bored in 30 years,” he continued.

“Kent?” asked Jimmy.

“I thought it was time for them to be together again. Grandma has been so lonely up here. I think she’s in good shape for her age though. Look at her,” he suggested politely. Then, he shouted, “Look at her!”

Jimmy looked up. He saw the severely decomposed body of his grandmother hanging in a net wearing the same clothes she had been wearing the day he last saw her in 1971.

“I had in her in an airtight box under the dock. She’s always happy to see us. But I think she needed grandpa and I think you needed a better story. Everyone is a winner, Jimmy.”

As the tree swayed, Jimmy could see something else hung in the tree. Just to the left of Grandma’s body, he could see the bloodied body of Grandpa Whitley. Eyes eerily opened, staring at his long lost wife.

“It’s our secret Jimmy,” said Kent before running back into the woods.

That was the last year of the camping trip. Kent was never found. Since that year numerous people have gone missing while camping in the northern woods of Wisconsin. Officially, they are considered missing persons. But unofficially, Jimmy Whitley knows what happened to them.

Albert Whitley, patriarch of the Whitley family, had a dream. He dreamt of a family tradition that could be passed on and on for generations. That dream died with him, but his horror stories will live on through the real life terror of his demented grandchild.

Louise Woods (Part One)

Here is the first part of Micah's Halloween story. Look for part two in the next couple of days. This is Micah's original story, with minor revisions on my part.

The Whitley family fall camping week is a special time for the children of the family. It has been an event that has occurred since Albert Whitley, the patriarch of the family, had begun the tradition in the early 1940’s when he brought his young wife and children on their first camping trip in the woods of northern Wisconsin.

The elder Whitleys had four children and by the late 1960’s, they began having their own children. The camping trips that started with only six people eventually ballooned to forty-two nearly 30 years after the tradition began. By 1971, Grandpa Whitley had bought a plot of land in the area that the family used for its annual fall camping trip. They now camped on 100 acres of land that included a boat dock, cabin, and even a crudely developed baseball field. Favorite family activities included cookouts, boating, fishing, softball games, and storytelling. But a new tradition started out of a tragedy that occurred in the fall of 1971.

The week was traipsing along quite well except for some unusual fall thunderstorms that swept through the area. One evening, after a particularly fierce storm trudged through bringing with it a wave of cool Canadian air, the entire family huddled around the crackling fire eating s’mores, drinking hot cider, and swapping scary stories. The campfire area had grown throughout the years to accommodate the growing family and was surrounded by dozens of old, overhanging trees that creaked spookily in the slightest of breezes.

Grandpa Whitley had just finished telling a story about an escaped patient from the state mental hospital. No matter what story Grandpa told, it always ended with a gruesome murder in the woods near the campsite. The kids ate it up, but it was the grown children that were still amazed at the creativity of their father. He had a real knack for developing new and exciting ways to essentially tell the same story.

As the story wrapped up with the body count in the woods higher than ever before, Jimmy, 12, and the oldest of the grandchildren spoke up. “Where’s grandma?” he asked.

Jimmy looked around. Grandma was nowhere to be seen. The other grandchildren who were old enough to be scared from the story began to cry and shout out after grandma. Kent, 11, and often seen as the daredevil of the group ran into the forest screaming for his grandmother. The others chased after him. After an exhaustive search that lasted all night, the park authorities were called in for a bigger search.

Nothing. No trace of Grandma Whitley. The official inquiry concluded that she had probably drown in the lake and that her remains would be found the next Spring after the thaw.

The next Spring came and went with no trace. Grandpa Whitley was heartbroken. He had no interest in continuing the tradition. He lost all interest in the family’s annual camping week. “It just wouldn’t be the same without your grandmother,” he said. He even contemplated selling the land and everything on it so he would never have to set foot up there again. How could a place that brought such joy now bring such tremendous sorrow?

Access road to Grandpa Whitley's plot of land.

The grandchildren petitioned Grandpa. The local grandchildren begged Grandpa to to keep the land at all costs. The distant grandchildren mailed letter after letter pleading with Grandpa Whitley to let them have the same experience that their parents had had growing up. Grandpa Whitley changed his mind and decided to keep the land. For the family. He decided that the family should, and would, return that fall. They would now hold a memorial service for Grandma Whitley every year and name the location “Louise Woods” after their beloved mother and grandmother.

The tradition continued for the next 33 years with growing families and even the addition of great-grandchildren. The numbers at Louise Woods grew into the hundreds some years with the addition of in-laws and extended family members. More cabins were built and even a few members of the family moved to the area permanently. Kent, the second oldest of the grandchildren and the growing outcast of the family, was the main architect and builder of all the new attractions at the camp site. The corner store in the nearby town Pocotah began depending on that time of year for a boost in business. They called it the Whitley family bump.

The family even started receiving state and local media coverage some years as fluff pieces for their stories and publications. The memories of how small it used to be faded as well as the memory that it was the sight of such a family tragedy. Even great-grandpa Whitley, with years of healing behind him, began to joke that grandma ran into the woods so that she would never have to return home. “Your great-grandma,” he’d tell the younger children, “well, she lives up here year-round. She just hides when we show up. She never much was for lots of noise.” The great-grandchildren get a kick out of that story, and often during the day they form Grandma-hunting parties and scour the woods to high adventure.

Despite the passage of time, the children and grandchildren always wondered what happened to their mother and grandmother that fateful fall in 1971. That mystery would soon be solved.

Palin Rap

Why in the hell can't more actual rap be this awesome? Amy Poehler is seriously good as a hardcore gangsta!

Halloween Stories

For our most recent show, Micah and I decided to do a "Halloween" show. Instead of opting for scary videos or sound effects or a review of horror movies, we went a more traditional route: scary stories.

Micah came up with the idea that each of us develop our very own "Halloween" story. There were really no guidelines other than just kind of what we envisioned as an appropriate Halloween story. So, we each wrote an original story . . . something scary . . . creepy . . . or otherwise Halloweeny. We read them on the show, and we plan to share them here on the blog for you. So, in the next few days, start looking for chapters of our stories to appear.

Micah's story is an awesome example of the traditional campfire tale. In fact, the story features a family that loves to huddle around the campfire and listen to well-spun stories, so it's kind of an homage to the great American campfire horror story. It's a great family history with a unique twist. I could easily imagine Micah telling this story someday to his grandchildren around a campfire, flashlight to his chin, wild dogs yipping off somewhere in the distance.

My story is a little different. It's a little more in the vein of the 60s sci-fi, hallucinogen-and-amphetamine-induced short stories that were meant more for shock than for horror. What can I say . . . sometimes you control the story, sometimes the story controls you. If you like Jorge Luis Borges and/or Philip K. Dick and/or William S. Burroughs, you'll enjoy this story.

The George Brett Video

For those who have been questioning the validity of the George Brett video, I submit the following. Now, Nancy, I also thought the same thing that you did. I wanted to believe it was real, but I also felt like it could be easily faked. This website points to the believability of the video.

RealClearSports - Blog: "The video has been removed from the Web site at the request of Time Warner/Metro Sports, according to Damon Porter, director of public affairs for Time Warner.

Porter told us that the original footage was shot for Metro Sports as part of some typical spring-training coverage in which players or coaches are miked up for future programs. Brett serves as a Royals instructor during spring training.

But Porter said the particular footage that found its way to YouTube was never meant to be aired.

“It was never shown by us, and it shouldn’t have been shown anywhere,” he said. “For that, we apologize. We apologize to George Brett and to the Royals.”"